It's been an eventful couple of months, and just the kind of events I was hoping for. After a super-fun (if far too hectic) fortnight in india, I came back to an interview for a job up in london with a creative comms agency. Two knuckle-biting weeks later, they called back to say the post was mine. Cue much cartwheeling, shrieking, fistpumping and grinning madly - all in my head of course, cos i was seated at my desk in office then. Needless to say i said yesyesYES, so in a week from now, i'll be moving to a new flatshare in Archway (north london), and starting work bang in the atmospheric, lively centre of the city. finally! this is what i came to england for - to be in the thick of things where the action is.

It's taken a year and a half of small-town toodling to get it sorted, but better late than never. it was not a bad experience; i extended my residence permit till 2010, met some good people, learnt to adapt to a routine, got a chance to travel to Germany, Italy, Taiwan and America on work, found the time to watch 150 films and to take up kung fu... still, the last few months have been pretty drab at work, getting increasingly bored and frustrated; the last few weeks were downright agonising. worse, my soon-to-be-ex employer had some financial wobbles, and two bounced paycheques in 4 months does not a confident and eager employee make. so this move, to a well-known midsized company with a strong portfolio of work - and payment by bank credit on a regular fixed date, plus generous benefits, the way it bloody well should be!! - is long overdue. yes, london life will be much busier and more expensive, and a new job and new house/flatmates in a new city all at once could be as daunting as exciting, but this is what i want and need to do. so hurray, and fingers crossed.

my only worry is the effect said extra-busy-ness will have on the long-distance relationship i'm in. so far it's going well enough, i think, allowing for the basic fact that LDRs suck to start with; she's being great and we try to talk pretty much everyday.. but the undoubtedly longer workdays, combined with the time difference, means it will take some real solid extra effort to keep in the good zone and not gradually lose touch with each other's daily lives, which is the No.1 LDR No-No.

i finally got down to getting my UK learner's licence. hoping to do the CBT, or compulsory basic training (the second of four rather difficult and costly steps to getting a bike licence here) next month. it's too late in the summer to buy a bike now, but if i can pass the theory and practical tests and get my full licence say by the end of this year, i'll be ready and waiting when spring '08 rolls around. and i'll probably have had enough of the Tube by then (though map geek as i am, right now i'm such a sucker for all those cool coloured lines! :-)

tomorrow is my kung fu grade-4 test. the holiday to india sort of crapped on the regular attendance and (relative) mental discipline i'd managed to build up from Jan thru to April.. came back fatter, lazier and less enthusiastic about going to the classes.. but it's sort of gotten back up to speed now. anyhoo, i'm transferring to a london branch of the school as well, so that's another new routine ahead.. i just regret that the inch i'd sweated so much to trim off my waistline in 3 months sprang back in one bloody fortnight of eating like five times a day and despatching many a Kingfisher to the legendary place where all beers go to die.

well then, london ahoy! can't promise future posts will be any less sporadic, but hopefully they'll be spilling over with good shit!

"You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone... You'll see one day when you move out. Just sorta happens one day, and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know? You won't ever have that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself. You know, for... For your kids. For the family you start. It's like a cycle or something. I don't know. But I miss the idea of it, you know? Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

- Garden State


in a couple of weeks i'll be on a plane to india for a fortnight's visit. 15 months since i left. i don't know what to expect. i mean, there's plenty to do. between bombay, bangalore and madras, there's like at least fifty people to meet. but i feel so damn disjointed. i haven't spent a decent length of time in madras, the place i grew up in, in more than six years. is it a holiday, is it a social visit, a homecoming, a reconnection? keeping in touch, staying close to the roots, an obligation, a formality, a polite hello, a desperate reconciliation, nostalgia, what? i have no fucking idea. will customs hassle me? will i get the shits after having a street corner samosa and chai? will hindi or tamil still splutter from my mouth? will i be tempted by cheap fags? can i spend enough time with people i care about? is any time enough? will i hate everything i wanted to leave behind? will i love everything i miss? will there be discomfort, or an easy snap-to-fit? will it still feel like home?

just woken up at 4.53am, out of the most incredible dream i've ever had. i cannot begin to tell you what it was like. it was the greatest vision i've ever had, and if another human being has been so lucky i sorrow that he has not shared it with the world. it was beyond description. like a religious man going to heaven. events unfolded with a fluency and rapidity i cannot describe. it's a writer's ultimate dream to be able to see a story of such ultimate grandeur, endless wheels within wheels within wheels ad infinitum, snaketails in each other's mouths, till i suddenly awoke. i could not go back to sleep. i had to share it, write it down. i texted my girlfriend. then i started to cry because it was so incredibly immortally beautiful and awesome and i was going to forget it all. even as i booted up my computer and as i write now, as fast as i can, i am forgetting it all. i can barely remember it was about.. monsters and reincarnated spirits and double crosses and illusions built up over lifetimes and generations and worlds in a distant time and space - or perhaps a concurrent one - oh the words are so so weak. you may laugh a little, say, hm, vivid imagination there boy, cut down on the cheese before bedtime. but what i saw now twenty minutes ago was something i may never see again, and i tell you, i will forever be the poorer for it. i now feel like i understand the twisted, living visions of tolkein. i have delved into the timeless space of what was, or could be, and it is infinite. i can't write any more. it's all gone. i have to choke down a sense of simultaneous crushing loss and soaring wonder and push myself down into comatose sleep. wherever my mind travelled, maybe i will never go again.. but i hope you can, sometime, somehow, i really do.

Ground floor of the house i stay in was rubble for six weeks. Renovation and other four letter words. All done now, looking swank, thankee kindly, and l'internet is back on, as you can see - wahey! Plus a housemate moved in his comp so I now have the old terminal in my room and I predict better bloggability.

Got thru my kung fu grade-2 end-feb. Three days ago I went for a club Powerthon in aid of a charity .. did 14,000 air-punches in under three hours. couldn't move my right arm for two days. But - moral of the story: if you can do what you thought you couldn't - what's stopping you with ANYTHING, eh?

I can't fucking believe India lost to Bangladesh in the World Cup. Wake up you twats!

Every now and then, and mostly when I log on to Orkut (i'm a newbie), I remember someone I had forgotten. Many a moon down the line, if i get Alzheimer's - shoot me.

Went to the US in Feb. To Indianapolis, two days after the big-fuckin-blizzard. Snowbanks up to shoulder height and cancelled flights on the way back. Sheesh. Travelling on work really does suck. Except supersoft beds and twin-head showers.

I love her. I do. More than I've ever thought I could love someone. What's life if you don't surprise yourself every day?

Iron Maiden rules.. beyond the scope of English adjectives. Maybe Eskimos should play their best-of each time it snows. You know, Bruce, I'll be your passenger one day.. upgrade me.

'Pain is weakness leaving the body'. 'Pain is weakness leaving the body'.

I don't know about you, but i can never drink too much wine. Beer, yes. Not wine.

Orf to Germany on work this weekend: Wendlingen, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Koblenz, Neuwied.. in 4 days/3 nights. Ha. I want to laze at home and drink cider in the park on Sunday afternoon instead. Provided the weather doesn't tank like it did this afternoon. Well.. in which case, I have Glengarry Glen Ross & Scrubs season-3 on DVD.

Tickets booked for a visit to India in May. The past 14 months have been the longest spell I've been out of the motherland, and I'm dead keen to be home.

It's only as shit as you think it is.

Some people go into hiding, some people are reborn. You have to love them for both.

Whip me, I'm a slack blogger.

Six weeks have sneaked up on me and grabbed me in a headlock, and only this evening i learnt how to deal with one - a sweet little thumb into the point below the curve of the jaw, under which runs the carotid artery.. hm, i digress.

in december, an incredible sparky talented beautiful girl, whom i have known intermittently for some years now and recently concluded i love very much, flew over to england and hung out with me for close to three weeks. we went to paris and amsterdam, and.. look, it's a long story, and deserves a post of its own. heck, a novel of its own, complete with thinly disguised autobiographical characters. but in sum, deciding to get into a long-distance relationship when you've both had bad experiences of it in the past - bad = not worked out - and when 48 out of 50 people you know have too.. well, foolishness and guts make the world heart-shaped. i think i've evolved as a person enough to finally actually want to be with one person. this wasn't how i was for many years. i wasn't a bedpost notcher but i did have the 'heartbreaker' tag chucked my way a few times. i just did not want the committment. i wanted to go where i wanted, do what i wanted. now, i think i have made peace enough to want to be with one woman. trouble is, it's a process of natural unforced evolution, and i don't reckon she's there yet. love is there, yes, but it is the brick.. you need more than that to make the cement. so - patience it is. wait. see. forgive. understand. learn. talk. talk. talk. can i do it? methinks. do i want to? fuck yeah. i know it's going to be hard. i used to tell myself, a hundred times, long distance is just not worth it. too much heartache. an empty space where a loved one should be.. and how much can you humanly love an empty space? but if we don't try, if we don't face our fears and climb our rockfaces, how the fuck will we ever know better? The indefatigable writer of sappy love poems WT says "in the fullness of time, you only end up getting fucked." That may be true, sir, in fact it's almost guaranteed.. but i'd rather have ridden my motorcycles how and where i have than still have my two front teeth and unbroken skin. as uncle M used to say, enjoy the wind in your hair, while you still have hair.

in a completely unrelated paragraph, i recommend this graphic novel to all and sundry: Jimmy Corrigan - The Smartest Kid On Earth, by FC Ware. Brilliant stuff. Also recommended is the film Broken Flowers, starring a superbly deadpan Bill Murray, which I saw a few months back and thought i'd write about but - of course - never did. Whip! Whap!!

my kung fu training is coming along. unfortunately for one reason or another, i've put in just about 25 hours over two months. grr. but i've just signed up for the advanced program, 3-5 years long, which gives access to upto 12 hours of training a week. even in these couple months i can see the improvement. in simple things like more stamina, quicker punches/blocks, remembering the forms and drills. there's still the fucking sahara to cross before i can actually inculcate this enough to actually 'be' a martial artist, but hope springs eternal in the human boob. who knows - one day be an instructor, perhaps? give up the desk job? all digits crossed.

i've decided i'm getting tired of my job. want to make the move to london and a proper big-ass paper/mag/publishing company. so, CVs have been going out (another reason for the tardy blogging) and i hope something works out in the next 3 months (my self-imposed deadline). i love london - all my friends are there - the salaries are bigger - the life is buzzier. i also know the colour-shifting properties of grass, and the good things about my current location. but sometimes a man's gotta do what he's gotta do. (all those who said 'wake up and scratch his nuts' raise your hands..)

lots more to post - events, pictures, reflections, happenings, observations, links - but won't, so i actually have the urge to blog again soon. i will i will i will.

and to all of you who actually checked on me regularly over the past forty-odd days.. bless your little cotton socks. you rock.

Finally, a Eurotrip for pleasure rather than business. Of course, to emphasise the point to myself, I overdosed on the pleasure aspect.. me and my addictive personality.. sigh. Anyhoo, you can take for granted that vast quantities of various toxic substances went down the hatch. But Spain's like that. And this weekend in Galicia, at the northwestern corner of the country that sits on top of Portugal overlooking the Atlantic, was 72 hours of brilliance.

Santiago de Compostela is a student town and a pilgrim town. Nuff said. Means you look up to see great cathedral spires, and down to see bunches of funloving young folk trawling the streets at 4am (or 2am or 6am). There's a fantastically atmospheric Old Town, a maze of cobbles and alleys full of smoky characterful bars which shouts to the gods that it will not go quietly into the night.

You can ask the next table for a joint and smoke it without looking over your shoulder. You can quaff small, full glasses of licore cafe (coffee-flavoured aguardente) till your throat feels like treacle. You can take two hours to eat fried octopus and salty pimentos and mushrooms and tortillas, wash it down with coffee and cigarettes, walk down the midnight streets and sit in a quiet square to hear buskers play violins and Spanish guitar and Gallego bagpipes and sing smoky serenades; people will not put their heads down and walk briskly by, but stop to cheer and dance and enjoy the moment. Even constant rain can't dampen high spirits.

It was great to see old uni mates and meet new people, feel time and pressure and work slip away and just revel in the wonderfully foolish association of younger and more carefree times. To catch up on drifting lives and see that no man is an island, that the bells toll for all of us. These are the moments we live for. These are the moments we will remember.

Ooh, is that the smell of neglect in the air! If this blog was a woman, she'd have given me the unceremonious dump by now (actually, precisely that happened to me once.. a sad story for another day). But, as they say, time flies when you're having fun, and Fun Part One was a working week in Milan.



At the outset let me say: Women of Milan, you are stunning. You can look down your supercilious noses at me anytime.



Despite a spot of November fog, it was clear that it was a beautiful city. The fabulously intricate Duomo has next to it a great big shooping centre that wuld be better off as a church or a castle. Even the McDs in it looked stylish. Style just oozes out of the cobbles, and no wonder the top fashion labels live here.



I'm a big fan of Mediterranean food, and Italy did not disappoint. Heaped plate of antipasti, followed by creamy risotto, or spaghetti with mussels, or thin-crust (the way it should be!) pizza, all washed down with plenty of vino rosso and capped with tiramisu. My god, how do the Italians stay so trim??

Another thing that struck me was how lax the Eyeties are as a people. The Indian in me loves it. When we disembarked at Malpensa airport, the immigration control booths were unmanned; two officers had to run in and shepherd the passengers back. On the way to the hotel, out taxi stopped a metre away from a three-point-turner, who hauled his pickup around with a cigarette between his lips, a mobile in one hand and no eye contact or acknowledgement whatsoever. Meals are long-drawn out, scooterists weave wildly between cars, arguments are loud and smiles, when conceded, are genuine. La vita e bella, indeed.