I sleep in the late morning and early afternoon, I am blind at dusk. Mapping a life I have come upon in its early maturity, I see flags left by the earliest explorers and I am afraid of ghosts. Then I remember the flags I have scattered and that I am also a ghost but not a scary one, so why should I be scared of other ghosts? I have shed my skin in this room and somewhere all of it is slowly accumulating and becoming me again. Who will I be when that is done and what will be becoming then?

What is this nonsense? I told you I had stopped thinking poetic thoughts. I can't dissemble well these days, and worse still are my skills at masking my thoughts in convoluted lines. Just really what is this nonsense!

000000

Augh!! This will never end. The more time I spend on this chapter, the more I find things to put in it. I'm afraid it will just devolve into endless blathering and insubstantial arguments. I can't write. Thank you MPhil! I had ONE skill, ONE!

Muqarnas Lozenge

Muqarnas (the beehive of niches):

Lozenge:

Muqarnas lozenge...would be pretty disgusting. The muqarnas looks pretty disgusting anyway- there is this one phobia of things that looks like this, I forget what it is. Anyway, muqarnas lozenge.

Some things I am not a fan of

generic hair cuts
gel pens
anything cooked with generic packet masala
onion
tropicana juice
fried eggs where the yolk is raw
milk tea
floaters
people touching the screen of my laptop
dust on my feet
dave eggers

this post is for Gayatri. i promised her i would live blog my dissertation writing process because she is not going to be around to hear me whine first hand.

Hi gaya! I'm having a bad hair day. Its also very dry in Delhi but when I put cold cream on my face it melted off.

(I am including these details to make this Experience as authentic as possible)

Ok so I wrote three pages the other day, on paper. This section has gone up to a total of 2500 words or so now. I'm trying to type it up now but all I keep thinking is HOW IS THIS EVEN RELEVANT? And also OMG WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY FIELDWORK NOTES? and WHY ARE ALL MY FIELDWORK PHOTOS CROOKED?

The last two questions are irrelevant right now because they belong to next week and next chapter.

What else?

I just drank lots of coffee.
I wrote it in pencil, by the way. A push pencil!
David bribed me with a Snickers bar the other day. Ivan bribed me with fried chicken.

Further updates as and when. Stay tuned. Over and out.

gectgvbjkyoliku5y43y525we5r6bt8yikvjtyrhtedetqxrfrefvez1!!!!!!!111111

HEY! Writing feels just like this! Except it takes me MUCH MORE EFFORT to wiggle my big toe. The Bride needs ten toes to move, I only need FOUR FINGERS (because I can type only with my right hand and then too with only four fingers but worry not I can type fast with one hand). PLEAASE listen to me, brain, pleeeeeaaassseeeeeeeeeeee?

Edit: But really, nothing like managing to figure out something for myself with a little research and some common sense. Was confounded by "intra muros" tombs, figured it out, BAM! I feel a little less stupid now.

Edit 2: On second thoughts, cannot see why I thought this was an achievement at all. But I guess that shows exactly how far I have progressed and regressed from my MA self. I have progressed in that I feel compelled to seek out references and sources for every goddammed idea that comes to my head and I have regressed in that I am too scared to commit any original thoughts or ideas to paper.  This thesis is an exercise in character developement.

Edit 3: Screw that terrible font! I can't read it myself. Scrap what I said about it being like my handwriting, I can READ my own handwriting I can't read my blog at all.

Edit 4: 19.06, the realisation hits me that I am finally working. Not thinking about working, not thinking about what I have to write or how to write it, not thinking about making notes, or reading notes, or typing up notes. I'm funneling all of this into one thin tunnel from which I'm writing something good, something that I'm feeling excited about, something that has a point, a beginning a middle and an end. It will fit in with the rest of what I have to write, it leads up to it.

Edit 5: 19.14, oh no I appear to be live blogging my thesis writing. Its really helpful, actually. If I write enough LIES here they will become reality. Look, like I wrote the first part of the post when I was only intermittently feeling desperate about not writing and I was slacking off otherwise. But okay, NOW I HAVE MANAGED TO WIGGLE MY BIG TOE!   

I have a great thirst that can only be slaked by tea. Two mugs down, third coming up. Ok its not a mug per se but a large stainless steel glass with a wide bottom, relatively narrower body and a lip that turns outward. It was my grandfather's glass, he used to drink Horlicks out of it and maybe tea also, I don't remember.

Setting up the scene- its darkish outside, low growling thunder, two goats (or young nilgai?) sauntering around the rubble outcrop opposite my window and light drizzle. Curtains block the tanks but I can see a sinister looking tower on the horizon. Nineties hindi film music and sometimes Sufjan Stevens, some Rabindrasangeet and some Simon and Garfunkel.

But the best thing is that I'm writing. Typing up notes, editing them, laughing at my contorted sentences, writing and rewriting. I am writing my dissertation from a place of love and peace, some hassle, little pressure, no desperation, no fear. 'Tis a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done.   

I am finally just what I always feel like. Which is most excellent. I am most excellent.

minor peccavi

Its not nice being a villain in somebody else's story (much fun being the villain in your own) if your villainy is indirect and inadvertent. I have been a Direct Villain and that was okay because it had everything to do with me and I didn't care at all (which is why I was the D.V in the first place). Now I am just incidental to the plot but if you were writing this story out I would not be a character your readers would sympathise with, and that is but natural. I'm not taking it personally, this is not about me, its about other people but I am culpable, albeit in a negligible amount and in an inadvertent manner and I feel a little uneasy about that. This has happened before, this exact situation and then I revelled in it, I had something to prove and I did. That was terrible and this time I feel no such urge (can it be? am I mellowing out? gasp!) just a lot of empathy that I have nowhere to send except here. 

Shonibar

I am a domestic failure. I cooked top ramen curry noodles in my electric kettle yesterday. It was a soupy, bland failure. It was disgusting but I ate it anyway, with the last of my Bombay powder (my sister-in-law says its called JHANJHANAT- what a name, WHAT a name- and it has coarsely ground garlic, coconut and chilli powder). To make myself feel better about my ineptitude I got off my lazy ass and washed the kettle immediately (because the last few times I made ramen in the kettle I left it ramen juice coated for a few days and it took a lot of Pril, sweat and tears to coax that shit out). But you know what, I don't have any dishwashing liquid, I've run out of detergent. I washed my kettle with handwash and you know what else? I made tea right now, Darjeeling tea lightly steeped, no sugar no milk (ssick thought, putting milk in good tea) and it tastes like curry powder.

Choprao beyadop! Chopra-o beyadop?

I know this font is difficult to read but its the closest I could find to my handwriting (which is actually much smaller and even harder to read). Please don't complain, I won't change it. There's nothing to read here anyway- this blog has moved into some other dimension and much of it is just my internal interminable monologue (though less and less of it here as I become more and more and more garrulous in real life).

I feel bright and so my blog is bright- this year has started well. Cheers and beers!

I woke up today with a vague feeling of impending doom. I wanted something to happen but nothing did. I wanted to fight or scream at somebody or cry but I couldn't. I can't seem to do anything but just sit and smoke. I am feeling sombre. I am feeling grave. I am feeling quiet. Something needs to happen but nothing is. I'm just limping along today, no love, no energy, no enthusiasm, no need. I didn't sleep well last night, and now I am struggling to clean my cupboard. My clothes are in a heap on my bed, its simple work, half an hours worth of work. Thrice I have gone to that side of the room and moved some solitary thing from one place to another but I can't do anything more.