Monstrous fate, most unkind!

That's just it. I've been cheated. I was supposed to have a five-day holiday and a holiday is the furthest thing from what happened. Not one day of being, reading, sleeping, working on photos, or catching up with blogging, mailing. Instead, five days passed in a blur of KP duty.

I've also just found out that every (or almost every!) idiot on Earth's getting to do everything I want to do. While I must sit here, biding my time. Smiling sweetly. Pretending not to be seriously annoyed.

Life's often unfair, I told a dear friend the other night. But really, what's so unreasonable about these things happening to a person? Among many, many, many others, of course.

• Road tripping from Panjim to Kanyakumari with endless rolls of Fuji Superia 100.
• Experiencing the Rann of Kutch at sunset.
• Spending a month in the North East of India.
• An art historian taking me on a tour of Le Louvre.
• An architect walking me around New York, Morocco, Damascus, and Florence.
  

• Lunch with Umberto Eco.
• Dinner with Gordon Ramsey - at his own restaurant.
• Breakfast with Jonathan Stroud.
• Days spent with Steve McCurry.
  

• The first violinist of a string quartet explaining chamber music to me - in Vienna.
• The only real musician I know teaching me how to sing.
• Front row seats at U2, Marc Cohn, and Tori Amos concerts.
• Chris Cornell singing Ave Maria for me - live.
• Learning the nuances of the Gregorian chant.
  

• Backpacking across Europe participating in every festival on the way.
• The Master Blender at Glenfiddich teaching me how to be one.
• Talking with a socialist/marxist Catholic priest about the Holy See.
• Eating the perfect paella in Barcelona.
• A pint of Guiness built by a handsome Irishman quoting Yeats - in Dublin.
• Being taught how to Samba on the streets of Rio de Janeiro - during Carnival.
• Desperately wanting to be in New York City. This second.
• A conversation in flawless Latin about the Song of Solomon.
  

And now that I've made a list of it, it seems even more unfair that I haven't got to do any of this. That's just it - I want out and I want my money back. Sigh...

And oh? Any smart ones about why any of the famous people on this list would do these things for me? Well, the answers are simple. One, I don't want anything from them - no personal gain except the pleasure of picking their minds. Two, I'm worth their time. :-)

Season's Greetings!

*Clears throat importantly; Muzak starts*

E Vestigio wishes all its readers a very happy Diwolly and New Year!



*Muzak ends!*

Now that I have that out my campy, cheesy way, allow me to wish you and yours a very, very happy Diwali! I hope you have a wonderful holiday surrounded by those you love.

It's been a lovely start to the festive season. I've giggled madly through Diwali pooja and been chided for being a chocoglutton - as if there were such a thing! I've shared chocolates with colleagues and realised that they really are a good bunch.

I've also incited rebellion - bunking work on Monday - with a number of them! *evil laugh*

I've begun making preparations for 25 of my relations descending upon us for dinner. In a very peverse way, I am enjoying the thought of cooking - but just not for them. Pray for me and my sanity on Monday, won't you?

Pièce de résistance? I'm going to watch Don and the firecrackers at Marine Drive as well. How else does one enjoy Diwali with a five day weekend? Seems, I think, a good way to start the New Year, eh? :-)

Well then, Saal Mubarak, my dears. May the year ahead be full of every benediction that you deserve and, more importantly, desire.


***
Image courtesy my colleague, Shreyas.

...

It's been a year now and I'm still wondering if they did it deliberately.

It is easier to exonerate him. Neither he nor I knew or understood - neither us nor you and I. We were merely two years of assuaging my desperation to be loved. And my hunger to be the Saviour... I was unable to make my own faith true.

But her? Wasn't she my soul sister? Didn't she understand me best? Value me most? I wonder now if she was laughing at me... all those times I confided in her. When I gave her things that didn't belong to her?

In the remnants of cigarette smoke and relationships, was there mocking talk of my naiveté? Or perhaps, my stupidity? Were the two of them, lying in each other's arms, laughing? I know that all the others were. Even the ones I didn't know. For all that time, that's what they did.

How can this be trust?

So much I didn’t say. Not a word about the humiliating incisiveness from outsiders who had no right. Or even a breath about the silent, insidious calling cards of deceit and guilt? Instead, I sewed all my questions into a diaphanous dress that made me ugly.

For tears unnumbered, I created new apologies everyday for feeling... thinking... believing... begging to be wrong. I should have asked the questions... if only to be the the bigger person. Then perhaps, I would not have been left in the dark. Regret is a wick I secreted into a paper latern to light the way out.

These were pictures I'd composed. One of a lover, a husband, a father. The other a friend, a sister, an aunt. The first was a truth made illusion by insensate confirmation. The second was a lie given shape by the weakness of my own hands. I can now only be grateful that I did not release the shutter then.

Once, I left you on a mountain, under a fathoming grief. I tied you in a handkerchief to be opened today. Today, the grief and the handkerchief have both crumbled to ash. And yet, I stand here naked, negotiating with a fractured present to bury a bit of a broken past.

Instead, in the killing fields of my own dreams, I bury myself.