#scurf 91: march in 15 days (not a meme)
its going to be march in 15 days again, so this newsletter very obviously will touch upon a host of *feelings* and *thing* that i've missed in the last (almost) one year. join me, sing this sad song with me, let's raise a soggy toast to having made it so far, however haggardly. kaafi sentimental hoke, i'll write about my inner most missed things from this last year. feel free to judge but more so, feel free to share, screenshot, reply and pass it on to friends. i promise i'm only two rums down, so this list might as comprehensive as it might be off-kliter. also, i start work at nine tomorrow, what a joke!
so, here goes it, a celebration and mourning of what all we've lost. the things that will never be the same again, no matter how hard you get vaccinated, things that will shift, turn and change, but never find their original form again (but then did this even happen before the pandemic?). anyway, lots to ponder on, lots to jive about, here comes the slush pile:
- i miss squeezing out of the angry crowd of a zillion people walking through the hauz khas metro station at 9pm
- i miss running into beautiful men and women on the road and stealing glances at them
- i miss the very rushed walk from the metro station to my office
- i miss skipping hopping and jumping my way through the terribly potholed Delhi roads
- i miss the way my ankle would twist in unexpected places and i would just dip in slantly and then come back up
- i miss farting in public places
- i miss smelling Delhi's peoples perfumes. so much they spend on it, kyun nahi bhai!
- i miss overhearing a fav punjabi track playing on full blast on speakers of a car thats come to a screeching halt next to me in the traffic
- i miss pausing my podcast to just listen to the music in someone else's car
- i miss the cozy confines of Ubers
- i miss being drunk in shady pubs and taking the cab back home alone too late into the night, too drunk, too alone, too womanly — and regretting all of it next morning, only to thank god for nothing having happened
- i miss kaafi kuch
- i miss being in office and wanting to be home
- i miss those fucking clear boundaries
- i love being home
- i miss feeling that incessant rage towards my ex employees
- i miss being around people i would ignore
- i miss ignoring people in my new office
- i miss feeling that pent up urge to rush home after work everyday, that mad urge
- i miss observing the road for scenes of inanity and inanimation, when nothing of consequence seemed to be happening, and then a car would crash into a bike rider, but miss it by a whisker and then a scene would implode
- i love listening to music on full volume on my earphones as my choice of commute whizzed by stations, streets, roads, localities
- i miss riding the auto rides to and back from the delhi high court and stopping each time at Khan market to buy an orange lolly for myself and for the auto driver
- i miss the constant feeling of being on the edge that the city tends to make you go through
- i miss being able to lamely bunk office by saying i had a cold or whatever, though i dont want to. i just miss being able to do that.
- i miss chancing upon famous people on my metro
- i miss walking from my house, hurriedly, cutting through the coldness of January mornings, looking for an auto
- i miss coming up with random really lame ideas on my walks and quickly putting them down as voice notes to myself
- i miss eating chewing gum! so much.
- i miss being inside an auto while in the rain
- i miss being out there as a people watcher, and absorbing everything that's unraveling on the road, and bringing it back to my notebook that night like a little magpie
- i miss lazily eavesdropping on other people's conversations in my commute
- i miss hating those lame, bad auto drivers
- i miss crossing the beautiful facades of Delhi's moneyed neighbourhoods during my travels
- i miss being able to peek into other people's cars and spot someone tear into a burger
that's all for now, folks. there's a ton more i miss, but i don't think i'd want to tell anyone except my notebooks about it now.
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reads:
if there's one thing you read this week, make it my book review of Tom Lutz's Aimlessness for the Los Angeles Review of Books: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-case-for-loitering/
if there's one more thing you'd want to read, then make it this essay for n+1 by Fancesco Pacifico where he writes about how "every reader is a victim & a bully" and I love it : https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/a-breakup-letter-to-my-writing-career/
if there's more you'd want to read, you should follow my twitter thread about essays I'm reading this February: https://twitter.com/anandi010/status/1356629627041533953?s=20
music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd49FF27BUU
(because its been oh so long) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3JGxj2rvAs
https://youtu.be/9P16xvwMQ5A
listen to mooroo's music wherever you can and cling to it with all your life
and OMG LP <3 https://youtu.be/wDjeBNv6ip0 and muddy waters <3 <3 <3
movies:
i might be going back in time, but i miss watching all those movies in my free time. i miss it. that's all. i watched nothing new. and it feels light and fresh somehow???? am i making sense? who cares!
follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/anandi010
instagram: @anandi0102
the new(est) kitty in the hood says hello to y'all tweeple!
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