What Flower Are You?

I'm a Foxglove

You really want to be a good person, but you have this little mischievous streak that seems to get in the way.

Deep down you mean well, but you are just so good at being just a little bit bad

'Twas Several Nights Before Christmas

And all through Anne's place not a mouse was stirring 'cos they were 'fraid of the Cat

So Saad was left to decorate the tree in peace (Nitin and I had forgotten the lights - but my never-say-die-attitude came in handy as I managed to find lights in Chinatown at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night, although they were technically not "Christmas" lights as such)

Toasts were drunk with Saad's eggnog (he made it all by himself and it was de-li-ci-ous!)...

...though some of us could not withstand its potent effects

Anne was the brilliant hostess...

with Pei Li assisting ably

The boys, though, had to work for their supper

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

Dancing

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance

Never settle for the path of least resistance

Living might mean taking chances

But they're worth taking

Lovin' might be a mistake

But it's worth making

Don't let some hell bent heart

Leave you bitter

When you come close to selling out

Reconsider

Give the heavens above

More than just a passing glance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

I hope you dance

(Time is a real and constant motion always)

I hope you dance

(Rolling us along)

I hope you dance

(Tell me who)

I hope you dance

(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)

(Where those years have gone)

Christoph - I miss dancing with you!

Sol - Stop slamming yourself against that wall!

Someone Who Loves My Sneezes More Than Anyone Else's Kisses

Whenever I board the train to and from Malaysia, I would have this thrill of anticipation- maybe this time it would happen. I would find my seat by the window (always a window seat) and wait for my seat-mate.

You see I had this secret fantasy that I would meet the love of my life on the train and we connect and engage in witty banter (albeit with the trademark twinge of sarcasm on my part) all the way to our respective stations, where we would part in an understated (yet dramatic in what followed) fashion and meet once more after a series of serendipitious events. Occasionally, my fantasies would involve getting left behind at some unearthly hour in some obscure station (Kulai perhaps) and having a string of adventures where we encounter Malaysian culture, society and kindness close-up and discover we were soul-mates in the process.

After 13 years of travelling up and down in the same 7-8 hour train journey, I have sat next to old guys, wailing kids, elderly aunties, idiotic chappies and all other manners of specie but I am still yet to have My Great Train Adventure [though in the interest of full disclosure, I did meet this Nigerian chap, but thankfully Renu made short shrift of him].

So when I first saw Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, I was furious at myself - here was my story transplanted to Vienna! Why hadn't I written it first?! It had all the elements of my fantasy -the chance meeting on the train, roaming a strange city, meeting strange local characters (I loved the fortune-teller!), the witty banter, the forming of connections, even the need to leave their tale to serendipity.

It was a simple movie really, relying mainly on the charm of Julie Delpy, the streets of Vienna and the conversation between the young idealistic French girl and her jaded-before-his-time-but-still-open-to-the-wonders-of-meeting-a-beautiful-french-girl-on-a-train, Amerian new-found friend/lover.

Celine: No, then it sounds like a male fantasy. Meet a French girl on the train, fuck her, and never see her again.

But mainly it relied on exhilaration. The exhilaration of the audience as it echoed and followed the exhilaration of two young people connecting with each other - almost against all odds. A connection we all search for but so rarely find - and when we do, we can only wonder and bask in it for as long as the connection lasts, though frequently it is too brief. As with Jesse and Celine, who have one night before Celine leaves for Paris. But they promise to meet again 6 months later at a specific time and place and on that note the movie ends leaving us to wonder at the outcome of their tale.

Celine: I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.

Their conversations through the streets of Vienna meanders through the profound, the inane, the ridiculous, in fact through the unusual nooks and crannies that two people who have met each other for the first time take. We all love that blank slate of a new person- to have the opportunity to paint ourselves in the hues that we have always seen ourselves in. Far too often, in the people we already know, these colours get tarnished, soiled and muddied turning into a painting we do not recognise and most times even abhor.

Jesse: There's these breeds of monkeys, right, and all they do is have sex, all the time, you know? And they turn out to be the least violent, the most peaceful, the most happy, you know? So maybe fooling around isn't so bad.

Celine: Are you talking about monkeys?
Jesse: Yes I'm talking about monkeys.
Celine: Ah, I thought so...

Thankfully, we were not left to wonder about the fate of Celine and Jesse too long, Linklater and his two leads collaborated and came up with Before Sunset nine years later. Unsurprisingly, in a brilliant move of cinematic conceit, Jesse and Celine meet again - nine years later. Through a series of unavoidable events, they had missed each other at the designated rendezvous point and since they had not taken each other's respective contact details (they tempted fate and fate rarely rewards such disrespect), they never found each other in the intervening 9 years. That is until Jesse comes up with a brilliant idea to write a book about his one-night encounter with Celine and is soon a celebrated writer (ironic since Celine is the writer/dreamer of the pair). He has a reading in Paris which Celine comes to. His expression when he sees her again for the first time in 9 years says it all.

Jesse: You want to know why I wrote that stupid book?
Celine: Why?
Jesse: So that you might come to a reading in Paris and I could walk up to you and ask, "Where the fuck were you?"
Celine: [laughing] No - you thought I'd be here today?
Jesse: I'm serious. I think I wrote it, in a way, to try to find you.
Celine: Okay, that's - I know that's not true, but that's sweet of you to say.
Jesse: I think it is true.


The movie is filmed in real-time and covers the 1.5 hours until Jesse's flight back to the States. The pair wander the streets of Paris much as they did Vienna all those years ago. They go on a boat-ride on the Seine and despite the myriad of emotional defences constructed in the last 9 years - connect, much as they did before. It is quite obvious that though Jesse is married with a child, Celine still fills his mind.

Jesse: In the months leading up to my wedding, I was thinking about you all the time. I mean, even on my way there; I'm in the car, a buddy of mine is driving me downtown and I'm staring out the window, and I think I see you, not far from the church, right? Folding up an umbrella and walking into a deli on the corner of 13th and Broadway. And I thought I was going crazy, but now I think it probably was you.
Celine: I lived on 11th and Broadway.
Jesse: You see?


On Celine's part, though she has moved on from that night in Vienna, life has not been as kind as she expected it to be (remember the fortune-teller?) and she is more brittle somehow - almost blaming Jesse for their not having met and her life after that, even though the fault lies with her. That was hard for me. She was so much the cooler character in Before Sunrise. The one more open to the possibility of magic and love, though faintly wary as well. It was almost a relief to realise that she was just protecting herself, really, from Jesse - trying not to show how much she cared. But even that was kind of sad. That life had battered down this wonderful, luminous, talented, beautiful woman.

I wondered, do women become bitter and brittle if they do not find/ lose the love of their lives? God knows we try not to be.

Celine: The past is the past. It was meant to be that way.
Jesse: What, you really believe that? That everything's fated?
Celine: Well, you know, the world might be less free than we think.
Jesse: Yeah?
Celine: Yeah, when given these exact circumstances, that's what will happen every time: two part hydrogen, one part oxygen, you get water every time.
Jesse: No, no, I - I - I mean what if your grandmother had lived a week longer, or, you know, or passed away a week earlier, days even. You know things might have been different. I believe that.
Celine: You can't think like that, it's...
Jesse: No, I mean, I know you shouldn't on most things, but - It's just, on this one it seemed like something was off, you know?

But the wonder and amazement in Jesse's eyes whevever he looks at Celine, almost exactly the same expression he had 9 years ago in Vienna, gradually bring Celine out. Her poison spent she shares with him her hopes and fears. And as Before Sunrise resonated so much in that it actualised my most cherished fantasy, Before Sunset vocalised my deepest secrets...

Celine: I was having this awful nightmare that I was 32. And then I woke up and I was 23. So relieved. And then I woke up for real, and I was 32.

P.S. : This post was actually supposed to be about the new Julie Delpy movie, 2 Days in Paris in which she writes, directs, co-produces and composes music for (seriously with such talented people in the world, one might as well kill oneself), but trust me to get distracted. In her latest, Delpy plays a French photgrapher from New York (Marion) stopping by Paris with her American boyfriend (Jack) on their way back from Vienna (yes it is very similiar to the "Befores" but a completely different movie!). Hilarious shenannigans abound, especially when Jack meets Marion's parents (Delpy's real-life parents) and her various ex-boyfriends. But it also a rather touching and poignant picture of how despite recognising that we are extremely flawed beings we keep believing that we are deserving of love and go on trying to find and keep love in this day and age. And how that is an extremely courageous act indeed.


Marion: It always fascinated me how people go from loving you madly to nothing at all, nothing. It hurts so much. When I feel someone is going to leave me, I have a tendency to break up first before I get to hear the whole thing. Here it is. One more, one less. Another wasted love story. I really love this one. When I think that its over, that I'll never see him again like this... well yes, I'll bump into him, we'll meet our new boyfriend and girlfriend, act as if we had never been together, then we'll slowly think of each other less and less until we forget each other completely. Almost. Always the same for me. Break up, break down. Drunk up, fool around. Meet one guy, then another, fuck around. Forget the one and only. Then after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as well. There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can’t live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses.

P.P.S. : These days I take the bus

Of Pampering Oneself

The general consensus was that I had been through one of the worst traumas in my life.

Initially, I fully subscribed to said general consensus and listened/obeyed avidly as those around me attempted to comfort me and revive my spirits.

I laughed dutifully at the jokes a cousin whom I adored told me to “lighten the situation”. Thankfully, the jokes stopped as the said cousin eventually decamped to the “other” side, even though he had professed to be impartial – but that is neither here nor there.

I listened dutifully as the Madame de Montespan to my Louise de la Valliere rang me at all hours purportedly out of concern but mainly to vent her spleen in thinly disguised catty remarks such as – Would you like me to find you a boy Sunita? Instead of saying F…U and slamming the phone, I explained patiently and sincerely that marriage per se was not exactly my raison d’etre. Naturally, conversations between such diametrically opposed personalities/psyches/specie were bound to escalate into recriminations and tears on her part and much stuffing of one of my Winnie-the-Pooh days-of-the-week handkerchiefs into my trap (look, it was hilarious to me that in this day and age, one could be so … stupidly parochial for lack of any other way to describe it) on mine. Thankfully, my good-sense emerged out of its hiding place (where did you go?! I missed you so!!), and a swift change of phone numbers stopped the unnecessary pseudo-bonding.

I also obeyed, dutifully, instructions from my Surgeon-Uncle all of 10,000 miles away to consult with medical personnel of the “lobotomising” sort, as repeated onslaughts from various regular church-goers who do not seem to practice what they purportedly espouse, brought about physical chest pains, asthma attacks of colossal proportions (such that I had not had since I was a child) and anxiety attacks (such that I had NEVER had before). Thankfully, I promptly lost all the appointment letters.

But the prevalent tag-line was – Sunita you got to PAMPER yourself! Numerous suggestions were mooted, the prevalent one being some sort of edification by route of spa-ification (sigh, look if I could rhyme or write poetry in any form this would have been some sort of poetry blog ok? Just go with it – will ya? On that note, I will take this opportunity to do a shameless plug for my much-talented, much-prettier and loads-smarter poet-sister’s blog. Please do pay a visit to http://nebulasquill.blogspot.com).

And so like a lamb to the slaughter, I went to the spa/beauty parlour.

Although, I could probably decant my spa/beauty parlour experience (henceforth consistently to be referred to as “spa-ification”) into a chapter-long hilarious piece of prose worthy of a Pulitzer (or God forbid, A Man Booker!), in the interest of the sanity of my sparse and meager public – I will heroically desist. Instead I will merely let slip that after 6 hours of being poked, prodded, scrubbed, varnished and fleeced, I emerged with disgusting red-hued nail polish, (whenever I do deign to wear nail-polish it is NEVER any shade of red, I believe my last colour was green. Am a nail-polish rebel and proud of it!) and RM$300 poorer. But most of all, I was utterly disgusted that I had wasted a day that would have been better spent with my little niece, Isabelle, learning the words to Rihanna’s Umbrella (Isabelle would teach me as she is practically word-perfect. Am thinking of getting her started on “American Pie” next, in preparation for a Battle of the Cool Babies with Sol’s Gabby).

Thankfully, though the spa-ification was undertaken in Malaysia so I did not need to beat myself up over the moolah - an equivalent treatment would have cost me a pretty penny in Singapore, although Malaysia really needs to know how to do ‘em Brazillians properly. As is, I felt that ‘em prisoners tortured and deprived of their rights in Guantanamo had it better than an Indian girl with an excess of …

Anyways, it took a little more while of listening dutifully to various parties (Forgive! Forgive! intoned my other Uncle, only 3,000 odd miles away, or so I gathered from his long, rambling several-hour long pontifications. Aside: forgiveness is not an issue, I cannot keep a grudge to save my life, try as I might. Hence the frequent shoe-marks on my person as people take me for granted and utilise me as a doormat), before it hit me. Literally.

A book dropped and hit me on the head.

I was going about this thing in the wrong way. Yes, I was traumatized but not as much as all that. And yes, I needed to pamper myself but I had NEVER considered spa-ifications to be comforting or edifying in any way. At best I thought it a necessary evil to partake in so as not to appear like a descendant of the Yeti (have you seen my eyebrows in its natural glory?) and scare off potential clients. So why was I indulging in a form of torture in lieu of pampering myself?

I picked up the book - I believe it was When We Were Grown-Ups by Anne Tyler (said book that had fallen on my head –duh. Keep up with my rambling will ya!)) and since that day I have not stopped.

I generally am a pretty voracious reader but now I am practically inhaling books. On Fridays, I hit Kinokuniya in an orgy of book-buying Before the week is out, I am done. Lately, out of desperation I have resorted to going to the bookshop on Thursdays, yet even so I run out of books and re-read the millions I already I have.

In my defence, my hermit-like behaviour caused by the said so-called traumatic incident did not last for very long and I have ventured out briefly to catch movies, catch-up with friends over coffee or on a rooftop, even a party or two! Nevertheless, the self-imposed partial-exile in aid of the book-ingestion continues. Heh, at least I will never be constipated :-p You know books are made of paper - a form of fibre. I said I am ingesting said books...OK OK Crappy Joke. I Geddit. Enough with the rotten tomatoes already.

Anyways, I know I have to eventually stop and emerge out of the pile of books I have buried myself under but really I am kind of having a great time right now.

Now, if you will excuse me I just got these 4 books from Kino…

Razor

You're born, you live and you die.

When you're born, you get a name, a secret true name that nobody else knows. You spend that lifetime learning it, the angles and curves of it; you learn to inhabit it, you learn who you are. You become acquainted with its delicacy, its beauty, the lapidary outline of a soul. And sometimes, when things are bad, fate asks you to put that name away, somewhere safe, locked up tight, so that it will stay clean. Behind a door in a room you never knew about. There are no do-overs. No second chances to make things right if you frak them up the first time. You make your choices and you live with them, and in the end, you are those choices. And if you believe your name is gone forever, that your hands are too dirty to retrieve it, you could fool yourself that it's gone forever. That you've given it away and damned yourself. I don't agree. Innocent is not the same as not guilty, and fixed is not the same as unbroken. The day everything gets so terribly awesome that you can rest forever, without a single rough patch coming on the road: that's a long wait. Best to take your chance when you can, to reclaim the light inside what you are, and what you've proven capable of becoming. To make the long walk back, from the altar to the temple. Better to find the best ending possible; to hit the end of line and skip down to the next, to straddle that salt, that end of line, like poetry. Better to hear the angel, begging you to step across: into the new shape, into the story to come. Again, again, again.

You're born, you live and you die. This is a gift.

From the "Razor" - Battlestar Galactica recap at www.televisionwithout pity.com