Portrait

yesterday was pretty much uneventful. culturally atleast. ammi, saurab and i went to the institute of social studies which is in the hague. its one of the biggest institutes of post grad studies in sociology in the world. its the place ammi was studying at when i was born, and also where she was finishing up later in 1994 when i was here over the summer. some people who were in her batch are still around, they’ve either come back to do their PhDs, or they now teach at the ISS. everyone has all these stories from when i was a baby and i was being carted around in a wicker basket while ammi went for her lectures, and also from when i was here in ‘94 and i tagged along with her in my ballet shoes. their pretty shocked to see me. ‘you’ve grown so much’. you don’t say. you think…?

anyway, after that saurab and i ditched my mother to her happy reunion and we went to see madagascar. sadly madagascar was sold out by the time we got there, so we had to settle for batman begins . it turned out to be not so bad a waste of time and money at the end of day. it’s actually quite cool. i especially enjoyed the fact that it really questions the borders of what justice is, more so than any other comics and movies of its genre. in my opinion, this really kind of ponders on the lines of ‘what is good and what is bad? can violence be fought any other way except by violence itself?’ etc. also, in this there is no crazy criminal in a crazy get up, along the lines of the riddler and joker. this is about batman fighting real criminals, and the real crimes. christian bale as bruce wayne/batman is nice, good looking and all. but i didn’t warm to him too much, maybe because i still remember him all too clearly playing the relentless psychopath in american psycho. katie holmes is good, perfect for the lady love. pretty, proper and religiously hell bent on being inspirtationally just. i even forgive her for having been able to kiss both joshua jackson AND chad michael murray on dawson’s creek. and as always, beloved alfred the butler was the sweetest. michael caine plays him with the warmth and wisdom of the good old englishman. anyway, it doesn’t have much dramatic or theatrical value, but its fast paced and upbeat. its entertaining.

today ammi and i went back to amsterdam for the day. we visited the vincent van gogh museum there. the art is just lovely. picked up a few things for the art lovers back home. then we when to haagen dasz (the ice cream there just has to be the best in the world), sat outside and ate ice cream while a group of young black and south american guys performed a combination of a native south american looking dance and some acrobatics in the square. they were really good, totally rhythmic and flexible. then we took a train back to the hague and went (for a short time) to madurodam, which is a really big tourist attraction here. its a kind of a miniature holland, a carefully built, mini replica of all the biggest landmarks from all over the country. there are the canals, and the buildings, and running trains, planes and boats/ships, the churches, the palaces. its all very pretty.

anyway, tomorrow morning we leave for heathrow. i wish we had more time here. i have to leave just as i was beginning to fall in love with the place. all in all, i’m glad i made it. and undoubtedly, a lot awaits me in london…

a quick post.

yesterday i visited the mauritshuis, the royal picture gallery. its a really old building that is now a meseum for some of the most beautiful, and old works of art by dutch painters. the mauritshuis houses some of the most widely famous paintings by artists like rembrandt and vermeer. the museum has a really large collection, paintings that they’ve collected over the years from private collections of the dutch and english noble families.

all the paintings were really beautiful. there were portraits and still drawings and landscape sceneries. the portraits especially are really stunning. they just dont draw like that anymore. the expressions on the faces, the lines on their hands. so much attention has obviously been paid to the tiniest detail. the main attractions are, for obvious reasons, the vermeers and the rembrandts.

nothing in the novel or the film, i mean nothing, prepares you for the reverberations of the actual ‘girl with a pearl’ earring. she is nothing short of utterly gorgeous. it’s called the dutch mona lisa, and quite appropriately too. she looks right at you. the painting is really something, but the expression on her face is just something else altogether. i’m hoping my pictures come out well.

anyway, that was really nice. i’m not generally an art buff, or a museum buff, but i really enjoyed this. i was also alone, so i just took two whole hours and wondered from painting to painting. then i walked to near by mcdonald’s and waited for amrita’snhusband to come and get me. i wited for about 20 minutes and this dutch dude called alex tried to talk me into letting him take me out, and i was like ‘that’s ok.’ atleast he was nice about it. and i didnt’ laugh. what an achievement.

i just realized i forgot to blog about the panorama. and since i have always been too impatient to maintain a travel journal with any of my travels, i’m hoping that blogging it will turn out to be an equivalent. i really regret not keeping an account of my trip to india about 2 years ago. that was really quite fantastic.

anyway, yesterday before we went to the beach, quite at the risk of boring saurab half to death, i convinced him to take me to the william mesdag museum. mesdag lived from late 18’s to the early 19’s, and was famous was having painted, with utter devotion, many scenes of the beach. dan haag is one of the few such popular beach cities. it seems people travel from all over the country to come to beaches here during the summer. now rest assured, its nothing like any of the beaches at home. but its a fully commercialized beach well built for lots and lots of sun worshipping tourists and visitors. it doesnt have any shade or any green, but the strip of beach is quite wide and its just pakced to its capacity with white people getting pink. its out of the movies. anyway, will mesdag drew this very same beach a little over a 100 years ago, and the contrast between the scenes depicted in his painting and what i witnessed yesterday, is what’s interesting. it has changed so drastically. im mesdag’s time, the beach used to be a place for fishing and the fishing communities. its not anymore, and hasn’t been for decades.

the panorama is just the biggest painting from all his paintings, and the central attraction of the museum. you walk up these narrow, steep steps and step into a kind of a really large dome, and find yourself surrounded by, well, the beach. mesdag, his wife amd 14 of his students painted a life size, humongous drawing of the beach on a busy day, and this screen on which it was painted, is streched around the walls of this dome. you stand in the middle, literally surrounded by the beach as it was more than a century ago. the soundtracks of the waves and birds also add largely to the effect. its quite overwhelming really. i imagine it must have been a near impossible task he took on. but its simply amazing. its so massive, and so intricately painted. the details are all in place, there are people, and fisherman, and ships and boats, the sand glistens, the sky is flawless and blue, dotted by a few fluffy clouds, there are sea gulls soaring high above you. its fabulous.

i just wanted to record that.

i promised someone that i wouldnt drink till i get to london. what kind of absurd deal is that? god knows why i complied. because i bet he isn’t even attempting to keep to his part of the deal.

i really wish that there was someone with me right now. any of my friends. i’d give nearly anything to have one or more of them with me. its lovely and exciting to be almost alone, but it would be more perfect than i can say to have someone that reminds me a little of home. i dont miss anyone too much, i’m actually having too much fun to miss people, but i suppose wishing they were here constitutes to some extent that i do miss them…?

also, i miss the food.

i’m in this city called dan-haag, or the hague. this is where i was born. ammi and i took a train from amsterdam on sunday afternoon, she went all the way to luxembourg and will join me here tomorrow, and i hopped off at the hague and now im staying with old and good friends of my mother’s. when i was last in holland (i was 5 and a bit or 6 i think) this house is where i stayed. ammi’s friend amrita (an indian woman) owns this palce because she lives and works in holland. she was the one who was with ammi throughout ammi’s pregnancy and the delivery of moi. she even named me, hence the slightly indian name. she always been a great godmother. looks into all the things my mother knows and never knew anything about! she sends me make up, unwearably sexy underwear and the likes! she has a son who is 12 now. when i last saw him he was a baby, and now he’s all grown up and makes wise-ass comments every two minutes. the train ride here was short, just about 40 minutes. my mother and amrita both have endless stories of when ammi was pregnant with, and also about me soon after i was born. they make me nostalgic. this is my birthplace, and these are the first people to have seen me and held me, even before my father, or any immediate family. i can feel that in my bones.

saturday night in amsterdam was crazy. all of us went first to this party and just sipped wine for awhile. then we went to this huge (i mean huge, 3 floors) bar called soho. we walked throug the red light district. it was kind of eerie, and saddening even. there are innumerable ’sex shops’ and even a sex cinema and a sex museum. wtf is a sex museum?! the girls stand, dressed in next to nothing, in shop windows for everyone passing by to see. if you fancy someone, you go into the shop and ask for them. its depressing. most of the girls are foreigners, those who left their home countries and need the quick buck. they stand in shop windows like they are literally items for sale, for shoppers and window shoppers to see. anyway, once we went to soho we stayed there for about an hour. ammi wanted to go home, so she did. kevin, linda and i stayed on and drank some more. the bar was great. lots of really polite people, good music, and the drinking is not that expensive. i drank screwdrivers and bacardi breezers and it was relatively cheap. afterwards, we went to this nightclub (also 4 floors) called exit. that was really cool. the music was really good, and the guys were to die for. went home about 5 am.

its such a relief to be able to walk on the street simply for miles and not be tooted at, felt up or be at the butt end of slimy comments. the guys are not lecherous. their really good looking, most of them, and they are not afraid to look, stare or even approach you, but they aren’t disgusting.

the hague is a beach city. saurab (amrita’s 12 yr old son) and i went to the beach today, and we walked around for a bit and then i bought us lunch. the beach is packed with sun worshipping crazy dutch people. most of the girls were half nude. its lined with all these neat little cafes and restaurants. i feel so sorry for those poor people, they treat the beach and the sun like it’s magic. they should see the beaches back home. what a deprived life they much lead to think that this beach is beautiful.

its indescribable. the feeling of knowing i’m in a different country. knowing that i’m not going to bump into anyone i know while walking on the road, taking the bus, or staggering drunkenly out of ‘exit’. ah…just thinking about the possiblities makes me shiver.

got ot of the heathrow airport at about 8.30 pm london time last night, a little after my last post. and the ‘getting out’ of there. sheesh, what a nightmare. we had to walk and walk and walk. and walk. and walk, some more. and then take a bus to a train terminal, and then a train to a bus station, and then a bus to the hotel. by the time ammi and i reached the park inn hotel to spend the night before our flight to amsterdam, it was way past 11 pm, and i was feeling like they might as well have asked us to walk all the way from sri lanka.
would have well been almost the same thing.

so anyway, we slept over, and woke up early morning to catch a 6.30 am flight to amsterdam. the flight was short and uneventful, except for this boy andf girl who were flirting in rather audible tones in the seats behind us. the view was so different than from flying from sri lanka to london. the fog and the clouds were unreal. sometimes you just couldnt see anything, you were smack bang in the center of just sheer, swirling fog. when you were above the clouds, the clouds were so many in number and so dense that they looked like huge formations of ice and snow frozen weirdly in mid air. it felt herculean, to be so high above the clouds. holland, even at 30,000 feet beneath me, looked and looks so unbelievably different from sri lanka. everything is so neat and orderly, so pretty and quaint, so proper and ‘developed country-ish’. i can remember very little from my last trip here (hell, i was 6…?) but i certainly feel the familar pang of ’sigh…how perfect’.

i love this city. we arrived at home (friend’s apartment) at about 9.30 am. i took a long shower and systematically made sure that the layers upon layers of dirt that had accumulated in the last 24 hours on me were violently scrubbed off. then we sat and just enjoyed the view. the apartment is right above this huge body of water, and the view is just fantastic. the weather isn’t great, cloudy, cold and gray, but it’s not freezing or raining or wet, so this is actually a relief from the sunny tropics of SL. then we (this dutch friend of mine, 16 year old girl, linda) took a bus to city, and just window shopped a little, and generally checked the scene out. it’s right out of all the picture books and postcars you grew up seeing. i can’t get over the buildings, their so beautiful and majestic. some are more than 300 years old, and so well maintained. the insides of these buildings are mostly refurbished to be modern and well equipped department stores etc, but the outsides remain regal and ancient. dam square was nice, the usual square scene. people flocked around clowns and jugglers, pigeons and and the fountain and pond. there are little cafes and restaurants every two centimetres. the aroma of coffee and from the bakeries are so yummy. we had lunch with my mother at an indonesian place, the food was good. we looked around a little more, didnt buy much. on our way back home, we stopped and joined in this salsa class being held in another square, being taught free of charge by this lady. that was nutty, but fun. we came back by tram, then bus. the public transport here is magical. the roads are a dream.

need to buy a bottle for someone, hash cakes for someone else and a sex toy for yet another someone. ok, the sex toy bit was a joke.

kind of sleepy now, so going to crash for awhile…tomorrow we’re going to try and catch a movie, and then later on in the night hit the red light district…*muhahaha*

at the heathrow airport, have a connecting flight to holland…in lets see…eight hours! EIGHT hours. gag. groan. help. electra : dead. cause for death : boredom.

flight was ok, kinda of long and uncomfortable, but atleast they had good inflight music and some OK movies. the ring two sucks even worse that the ring, and hide and seek is pretty dumb too btw. and those are supposed to be the summer’s hottest horror flicks. PUHLEAZE.

anyway, the airprort bar is constantly crawling with people. wouldnt even want to try and get close to it, so ammi and i had coffee instead. the pub life is really the english way to go. lots of hot girls, but nada for any male talent. any guy who is even remotely hot is a foriegner. like, i could’ve stayed at home for that. all the girls have doneky fringes, and it looks like everyone, i mean everyone, owns a t shirt that says ‘fcuk’. so yesterday, didnt they know that?

its sort of cold, and its just been raining mildly outside. but atleast the airport is interesting, atleast to look at. i didnt sleep all that much on the almost eleven hour flight over here, and right now my bldy clock is fucked up.

why didnt i sleep? spent most of it annoying my mother, watching the stupid so called horror films, and listening to the music staring emotionally out of the window, my mind, as usual, restless with thoughts of a boy. but who the boy was, surprised even me. there were moments that felt surreal, like i was in a movie. moments where the song playing in my eye made me nostalgic for something, and the song felt like a soundtrack to the movie ‘my life’.

cheers everyone! in the words of mariah carey (although i hate to be quoting her) ‘i came to have a party, open up the bacardi…’

just in case no one has noticed :

a) i’m not someone who has ever (for as long as i can remember) been someone who is afraid of who she is and is ashamed of how she feels. i always like getting stuff out there in the open and up front, no matter how embarrassing it may be. my definition of embarrassing is really humoungously broad. so very little embarrasses me now…especially not any of my opinions or feelings on anything. or anyone.

b) i have never been afraid to act on how i feel. never been afraid to act on impulses and spur of the moment whims. this means me resorting to usually desperate measures, but as i said, i’m not ashamed to admit that sometimes i go for things i like or want with a little more enthusiasm than usual. this also usually means i get into big trouble, but acting on impulses and raw feeling, i must say, has always been a healthy expression of myself, and has also allowed me to generally have fun with my life.

c) i judge people. doesnt everybody? i’d like to correct any self-righteous, pompous ass that thinks passing judgements is an evil thing to do. BULLSHIT. its not. its perfectly normal, and sometimes even safe to be able to pass judgements. how vulnerable would we be if we had no basic instinct about a certain person? being a woman etc, i also tend to go with my intuition alot, and tend to strongly believe that most judegements i make are correct. this is only because (and i’m not boasting) i know for a fact that i make reasonably fair judgements. i try my best not to judge people i dont know all that well unfairly, and try not to be too limited in my relationship with them because of what i think of them. after all, this is because i understand and accept the fact that my judgement could be wrong.

d) this brings me to the end… i change my mind. alot. and you know what? that’s ok. i’ve finally come to accept that that’s an inevitable part of being young and restless like i am, and an equally inevitable part of being me. i’m almost a different person everyday. i change my mind, and frankly, i think thats better than someone who is totally incapable of changing their mind. i may form an opinion on something or someone and then decide, once i become more familiar with the subject, that i was wrong, and that i have a new opinion. so none of my judgements, opinions or beliefs (atleast most of them) are set in stone. this is because i have never believed that i’ve been through it all, that i know it all. i’ve lived very little in comparison to many, not just by years, but by experience. and we are little but the sum of our experience right? hence, i’ve come to costantly tell myself that i’m not always right. that i could sometimes be wrong. because of this innate belief of mine that my opinions can be subject to drastic change, i’ve made friends who are irreplacable and come to love those i once disliked. i wouldnt give them up for anything in the world.

take for example this chick savithri, who ‘met me’ while leaving comments on indi’s blog. at first i thought she was malicious, vicious, the works. then it just hit me ‘hey, who the hell am i to be judging her and hating on her? i dont even know her. i know nothing about her, or her life, and i have no right to be thinking things like that about her’. there. savithri, you’re ok. i have no problem with you. at all. it doesnt matter if you feel differently. take for the example the twins. i’ve been told endlessly that they’re this and that, and i actually took a few careful looks at them and thought ‘what spoilt rich kids’. now that i know a little (just a little) better, i must say, i’m pleasantly surprised. they aren’t spoilt rich kids, even if they are, its ok, because their not horrible spoilt rich kids. they’re really nice, actually. atleast from what i can tell. and even if they are, what gives me the liberty to judge them? in someone else’s eyes, i’m probably a spoilt rich kid too. there’s this girl, who is allegedly a lesbian with a crush on me. i confess, that was a little unnerving, and she IS a little weird. but then so am i. after getting to know her over the past two months or so, i have to take back everything i thought about her. she is really nice, and i’m so glad we’re friends.

so…whatever i once said about you or to you, i probably think differently now. you should probably mail me or something and get the update, because i’d hate for you to go through life thinking ‘that chick electra you know, she never liked me’ because i dislike very very few people. because that’s probably wrong.

ps - i’m leaving in about an hour…i’ll keep blogging! this should be fun…right?

this day is turning out be better, and weirder, than i thought!

my mother was supposed to travel to amsterdam and then london for some work (she travels alot…if you were me, you’d be used to this by now) and decided that this one time, i get to tag along. everything got set and settled, flights got booked, visas got applied for…the works. ofcourse the british and the dutch then refused to give me my visas or even tell me anything about it till today, and i’m supposed to fly tomorrow. for three whole weeks the visa office officials sat on their asses and refused to give us a word. they were really unpleasant.

yeah, so i got my visas. this decision got so prolonged and it all seemed so negative that i fully geared myself for having to stay back. and then i figured ‘hey, its not that bad’. i had gotten so used to wanting to stay, that now they decide to give my the visas very last minute, im kind of feeling strangely unexcited.

but what the hell, this is bound to be fun. got bags to pack and jeans to shop for. and cousins in london to email. boy are they in for a surprise.

i’m only doing this because i promised to keep ya’ll posted…and also because, as you may have noticed, i enjoy gloating.

i woke up around 8 am this morning, to find two messages in the inbox of my phone, from an unidentified number. it turns out they are from (drum roll…ta da) the relevant twin! one message just saying he wanted to say hi, and that he was texting from his brother’s phone due…to um…having lost his own, and the other actually (get this!) clarifying that i remember him! like, wtf?! despite the early morning grogginess (8 am is early ok…) i manage to absorb this information that was dropped on me like a pile of bricks. cautious of the fact that it could be one of my evil friends trying to get an early morning kick out of playing an evil trick on me, i message the friend that introduced me to the twins and ask her if the number does belong to the other twin. she tells me ‘yes it does! have fun!’. right. then i message a (mysterious) friend of mine, telling him about the messages and asking ‘i should reply right?’. he tells me, quite promptly, ‘just text the man men!’ thanks S/C (whichever one you want me to call you, you’re still the same you) for being so so so sensible to me! and i’m not talking only about this morning. anyway, so i do. reply him that is.

although the messages excited me in a very ‘teenage-girl’ manner, it more easily put that self satisfied, stuffed-cat grin on my face because i had some insight that this was coming.

thank god for sms! it doesnt have the potential for putting two people through their first few awkward silences like a phone call would, niether is it an entirely hasty, insensitive way of keeping in touch. it doesnt take with it too many underlying implications. its simple, fast and can be treated as something that isn’t that big a deal as it actually is. you can say ‘it was just an sms’ even if your insides are soaring.

this is fun. i’m still impressed with myself that i’m feeling half giddy, but also half recognizably nonchalant. isn’t that cool?

today, atleast for the moment, i have decided that my life is being lived the way i want it to be lived. there is no other life i’d rather have, there is no other life i’d give mine up for. i wonder how long this certainty will last, but for the moment, its strangely comforting.

i live my life the way i have always wanted to live it. the way i always saw myself living it. a little on the edge, a little on the fast track, always constantly, on the move. there have been times that this never ending cycle of motion has made me a little car sick, a little disoriented. but more often than not, being fast paced has been the only thing that has made me feel alive, young and energetic. it has been what has enabled me to take things lightly, what has enabled me to laugh at myself, to move on and get on with it. rather than dwelling on things, mourning, moping, i have always found it easier to simply refuse to ackowledge certain things. maybe if you ignore them hard enough, they’ll eventually cease to exist. sometimes this works. sometimes it does not. when it does not work, ive always managed to identify the fact that its not working, and then begin to deal with the issue rather than pretend its not there.

like now. i thought that i had more control over a certain issue than i actually do. for sometime i’ve told myself ‘i’m ok, its ok, and i dont need to think about it twice because soon it will be gone’. it hasn’t gone. its still very much there. and finally, finally, now that i see its there, i dont particularly mind that it is. it is a part of being me, a part of who i am. there is nothing to feel ashamed of, or be afraid of.

i sometimes stop to wonder if one fine day, i’ll run out of chances. then i tell myself that me being me, i will not sit by and allow such complete destruction. i will not. i cannot. and there are enough people around me who will also not allow it. thanfkfully, i’m not going to find myself trying to salvage a situation entirely alone ever. and this i know with utter conviction, if nothing else.

today a best friend answered this question of mine. she told me ‘dont you know that you’ll never run out of chances? you’ll have an infinity of chances with me. i love you, and that means no matter what’. i cant tell you for sure that in 30 years i will find that she feels the same way, and that when i wind up on her doorstop after having murdered my husband that she will take me in, murderer or not. but today it made me happy just to hear her say it. today, she said it because she really believes it to be true. today, she said it because she means it. and that’s good enough. i can feel like i’m worthy of those words, like i deserve them, because in moments, i realize i love myself. i really do. there hasnt been a day in which i havent.

life is so so simple. so much simpler than we ever allow it to be. if i look back on everything i’ve ever done, or everything i’ve ever done that my memory can recall, there is honestly nothing that i would undo. there is nothing that i have ever done or said, no matter how horrible or stupid, that i would take back. isnt that great? to know that i can die now, and i wouldnt die unhappy, that i’d be dying a hundred percent regret free? i suppose i do believe that everything happens for a reason. i just need to keep reminding myself that.

i like this person that i am. its just that, like with every other person, she gets a little much at times. living in her skin becomes a little unbearable. living in her skin and not really ever knowing entirely who she is becomes a little intimidating. all i need to do is look at the sky, at the stars, or the sea. it will remind me that there are larger things than life itself. more infinite things than i, things that are just bigger and beyond me, that i need to put a little effort into understanding. as scary as this is for us to admit, i must confess it takes a little bit of the pressure away.

i like her, this impulsive, unafraid, stupid, hyperactive fool for love and all other gloriously painful things. she isnt afraid to take a few chances, to risk a few things, to feel overwhelmingly powerful feelings, no matter how heart breaking.

quite the contrary to what spectralcentroid tells me, i doubt there will ever be a day when a person will fully understand themself. and maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. maybe what we need to understand more importantly and urgently, is that understanding yourself is not the point. its about loving yourself.

i just want to let my friends know that i’m eternally grateful for all they have done for me, and for how long they have tolerated me. even the ones i havent even met yet (!).