...

it's been a while, and i've touched so much grass i forgot about everything else. (literally, i sat down in grass and remembered that it's been a long time since i had last.) i've been gritting my teeth and resisting the impulse to not not do things this year, on account of it potentially being my last in mumbai, and it seems to be working :) my first navratri was beautiful even though i was lacking practice altogether, and it was definitely an experience i'll remember for my whole life. i haven't been physically exhausted for a while now, i think probably since barchi, and it does feel beautiful in its own way.

i've never felt much appreciation or emotion for dance, maybe because i've always seen them as performances, or reality shows, as exhibitions of skill, which is deeply inaccessible to my mind as an observer due to the disconnect from feeling, and my absolute lack of understanding of the effort that does go into it. why?, i always found myself thinking. the first time i understood was when i stood just outside a circle, watching everyone smile. chat, am i turning into a hedonist?

i was part of a conversation about the topical selling out of tickets, and the move to experiences as an expense instead of materialism among the youth. i said, there's also a sense of fatalism, the feeling that we're all sinking, so why not? we were on juhu beach, so it felt suited to the occasion. tangentially, i was also part of a conversation about minimalism. it doesn't always mean something when people complain about something: the kids these days just want to click photos of everything, but i do feel a sense of credibility implied when there's a degree of exhaustion to it. anger's easy and quick, but exhaustion? usually derives from watching something you care about besmirched in some sense or the other, at least if i understand correctly. maybe i'm wrong.

i also have an idea for a WiP for the first time in ever, but it's barely an inkling of a seed of a plotline of a subplot, so i'll ruminate on it for a bit. materialism has its merits, but i feel increasingly drawn to living without recording, kid me was always right: we don't need a camera in our faces, and i still always prefer recording stills of moments without people, i find them easier and more comfortable. the only exception is the selfies my friends take on my phone, i'll always cherish those. implied consent makes a difference. i just want to wake up on new year's, play some soft a r rahman while having harsh's tea and listening to birds chirp. (the location in my mind is anandvan, but i really don't care as long as the people remain.)

lakshya and i were talking about jumping from interest to interest, and i find myself concurring again. when i dove into numbers, and maths, and precision, i found myself loving it, even being fascinated by concepts that everyone else seemed to be frustrated by (the cramer-rao lower bound on variance is a beautiful proof). now that dance has made me turn my sights back onto art, and softer things, i find myself drawn back to writing poetically. surabhi told me she loved the language i used here (paraphrasing), and that just inspires me. i love plays of words, from books like ella minnow pea to poems that specifically exist to flaunt all known rules of wording as an art form. there's nothing more beautiful to me than when things you expect to be 'normal' suddenly aren't, but maintaining consistency. play with it! that's what art is for! push everything further than you imagined it to have possibly been, and therein lies the potential future. time, to me, is like the point where the river meets the sea. the path before has been etched through stone, and the present splits, but the future is infinite. where will we go?