Portrait

left-right : adam, chanch, asvajit and twiggy (i don’t know where yanik got to), posing for a picture that someone else was taking.

they are not flake.

but they were ama-a-ze, for those of you that were wondering.

they absolutely nailed ‘white room’ and chanchala did ‘roll right’ like she’s been rapping since the day she was born.

this is one of the essays i wrote for my applications. they give you a host of options on what to write about, significant people, experiences that changed you etc etc. and the final one is ‘a topic of your choice’. this essay will, invariably, come under that. it needs to lose about 200 words, and i’m eager for any feedback anyone can offer me. i plan to write a few essays so that i will have more than one to choose from when it comes to selecting the one that will actually accompany my applications. this is attempt number 2, and i definitely like this better than the first. what say you?

A topic of your choice, you said. Choice is a funny thing. What is human existence, but a series of choices, choices made by us, choices made by others on our behalf? Choice itself is an overwhelming burden, just as much as it is the blessing of control. On one hand, I can decide. I can choose how my life is going to be lived; I can choose which things will change me, and which things won’t. I can choose what I’m going to spend my life doing, and which causes are worth my efforts, and which are simply not. I can choose. On the other hand, I can go wrong. It is a huge responsibility: the burden of choice, the pressure of decision. How am I ever to know that the choices I make are the right ones? What will I do if later, I regret the choices I make? How can one fix a wrong decision? How can one right a wrongly made choice?

Our ability to choose sets us apart from animals that only have their instinctive nature to live by. Our ability to choose sets us apart from even each other. But, we will never have the comfort of knowing that the choices we make are the right ones, the best ones. After all, what are ‘right’ choices? What are ‘safe’ choices?

Our choices depict a lot of how our lives turn out, besides the usual dealings that even an Atheist like myself must believe comes down to fate or something like it ; birth, death, ageing. But maybe human weakness is larger than even the power to choose. Maybe choice has less control than we’d like. Emotions; often, we choose how we feel, subconsciously as it may be, making the saying ‘it’s in your head’ a little more true than we care to admit. We can choose to be angry, happy, sad, defeated, elated. But can we really choose to fall in love? Can we really choose to refrain from being hurt?

We can choose safety over risk, we can choose health over illness, we can choose stability over danger, but does the general uncertainty of life exceed all this? Sure, we can defiantly refuse to take up smoking due to its injurious effect on our health, but can we prevent ourselves from being run down by a car while walking on the road purely by choice? Sure, we can tell ourselves bungee jumping is simply too unsafe to be engaging in, but can we stop ourselves from being taken by illness? Is there any way to be entirely safe, safe from harm, safe from hurt, safe from pain? Can making the ‘right’ choices really protect us from the consequences of merely being alive?

Our lives are wrought with our endless efforts to find answers to these questions. With every choice we make, we take a little blind leap of faith, hoping with against hope that we are right. Sometimes, most often because we like to make it so, we have made the right choice. Sometimes, we regret it. Sometimes, you can fix it and have another go. Sometimes, you just have to learn to live with it. Life goes on and we all end up wiser, a little jaded, a little older.

We can choose to feel damned by the uncertainty, but we can choose to revel in it, to live while we can, and do as we please for ourselves. We can choose to be scared our entire lives, but we can choose to celebrate the beauty of what is unknown, to regard it always with positivity. We can choose to be hopeless, but we can choose to make the most of whatever parts of our life are governed by our choices, and for the rest, to be hopeful.

Life is like making an entire journey with one headlight, never really knowing what’s ahead, never really seeing what’s behind, never really knowing for certain that we’re taking all the right bends and swerving in all the right ways. Despite all these setbacks, that one headlight has proved sufficient to human kind time and time again, and we must not forget that.

I chose to write about choice itself, to question what we are mostly afraid to question, to challenge my own beliefs and disbeliefs, about God, fate, life and the inevitable suffering we must all endure in some form as humans born into this cycle. I chose to try and interest you, perhaps even provoke you. Will you choose to read this and let it invoke something within you, a sense of panic, better yet, a sense of hope? Or will you choose to put it aside and never think of it again? And, in your choice, I must place my faith, I must gamble my luck. I trust you will make the choice you were meant to make. That is all I have, and that is good enough.

flake is on at the TNL onstage semi final tonight, at gatsby’s, the galadari hotel.

i hope all goes well and there are no cases of fried mixers or the electrocution of certain band members.

i’ve had the privilege of listening to some awesome tracks by this band called mimosa, for which our friend is the drummer. they sound great, and have a wonderful vocalist. i’ve been sending him long and whine-y emails about how stagnant the local music scene is and how nice and refreshing it is to hear a band play good music.

onstage, despite all it’s setbacks, is the greatest opportunity for upcoming sri lankan bands and is interesting to watch. i hope the organizers get better at what they’re doing and that the competitors find themselves in what they’re trying to do. i hope, in the future, we see some identity in music here and that bands will give creativity priority over popularity.

for me, the thing about flake that compells me to like them and enjoy what they do, is the same thing about mimosa that compells me to like them and enjoy what they do. it’s the same thing about glen terry or jerome speldewinde. they’re interesting. you witness a sort of self discovery in their music, a sort of irresistable sense of fun that is both keen and infectious. it is, in all it’s right, different from the rest. and that, is where you want to be.

see you tonight.

my life, as is, currently, in a few, dismembered sentences.

i am addicted to Lost (finally) and enamoured by Sayid.

i am applying to university in the united states of america, and i’m hoping that they will want to not only accept me, but fund me financially, despite the fact that i spent a lot of my life hating on that country publicly and privately. (i’m hoping US university deans don’t have the inner eye that would have been able to see into the efforts i put into my vendetta against their kind)

arun is in london with his beautiful sister, living it up and not even pretending that he isn’t.

the first onstage semi final for this year got postponed last saturday night at 11 pm due to technical difficulties. flake will be back on this saturday. the groupies better all come back, banners, boards and all.

did you know that they performed william shakespeare’s ‘the merchant of venice’ 30 times in nazi germany between 1934 and 1939? i can’t help thinking they couldn’t have picked a less anti-semitic text to represent their cause.

i just re-read libba bray’s ‘a great and terrible beauty’, and it was as beautiful as it was the last time, if not more so. i had momentarily forgotten the delicacy of her style, the fragile emotions, the evocative sentences, the irresistable characters. how alive she made the world of corsettes and tea dances for me, how well she drew the parrallels between their feelings and mine; their irrepressible youthfulness, their hunger for love, their undying romanticism and all the truths about truth itself.

i must re-read audrey niffenegger’s ‘the time traveller’s wife’ and love it all over again, too. thank you, anush. it was a perfect birthday present. so perfect it’s a little poetic.

i panic a little about my future and if am i am going about things the right way. i suppose i cannot know the answers to these questions until i am sure it’s too late.

i get a little nostalgic over my past and the things i’ve left behind, wondering if i did wrong by leaving them at all. i suppose i will never know for sure until i am almost certain it has become another wrong decision i must learn to live with.

he still makes me laugh. every day, there’s something new i like about him. i find great comfort in this, the one thing above all else that i do know for sure when it seems like all life is about is mystery.

‘there are no safe choices, only other choices’. uh huh. i don’t think any of us ever know. it’s just a leap of faith we all have to take.

yeah yeah, what a joke. laugh it up.

so cute, men. giggle giggle. so sweet and naive. so you’re…in love? seriously?

er, yes. so?

oh, darling. you’re so young. you can’t be…serious! they address seriousness like it’s a disease. only, they have no idea how serious i am. and what has being young got to do with it? if at all, that should make it all the more understandable…

yes, very serious.

that’s what we all said, at that age. there we go again. ‘that’ age. ‘what’ age, exactly? this is so unfair. it’s offensive and tactless; what do they know?

what age? i’m old enough to know, i think. and i’m not a baby. i’ve been there, done that. i know enough.

that’s what you think. i think it’s safe to assume that…this will only last awhile. that’s nothing to be upset about. you’ll…move on. you’re both so young, after all! oh you damn pessimists. have you forgotten what it was like to be young?

you were young once. you must have some memory of being in love and believing completely that it was meant to be forever.

oh, yes! of course. we all thought that, didn’t we? giggle giggle. but you must never make the same mistake. explore…your options, darling. yeah, i ‘explore’ my options and you’ll call me a slut, i decide he’s the one and you’ll call me naive. what can i do?

well, it’s not like i haven’t, you know. just because i’m young it doesn’t mean i don’t know anything about life. it doesn’t mean my feelings are any less real or should be taken any less seriously.

of course not. yes, you’re very right. we believe you about how you…say you feel. oh, we believe you. mutter mutter. in love. really. how preposterous!

stop it! stop patronizing me! i know it. i’ve known it before, and i know it now. surely, that’s good enough. you can laugh all you want, but if i could remind you of all the times you were young and in love, then you’d cringe. you’d cringe at the memory of how deeply you felt everything, of how internal it all was. you’d cringe at the amount of times you’d yelled at adults to take your feelings seriously. so, yes, maybe this is naive. but let me be, then. you were once, too. this is my time. my turn. it is so like age to make you feel so weary about the reckless things in life. people grow up and forget what it is to be alert, sentimental, what it is to be consumed by how you feel and pursue your dreams even stupidly. people grow old and forget idealism and dreams and what is it to want something more than anything else in the world. age should enhance these things, not take away the excitement for it. time should teach you experience, not take away the desire for it. wisdom should understand youth more, not underestimate its conviction.

you’re older than me: that’s all. it’s just age. don’t be fooled into thinking it makes you smarter or that you know everything about life. you don’t. you never will, none of us ever will. you only know more. significantly more, true, but that’s all. there’s nothing about you that i won’t be one day. i’d have made the same mistakes and learnt the same lessons. after all, what better time for that than when one is young? let me have this, please. and don’t tell me i’m being silly, because really? i don’t care.

the layout looked so good, lights in the trees, little thatched-roof huts, the DJ next to the pool… photo by indi

another awesome party last night/this morning courtesy of our like minded genius friends at offshore. there aren’t that many good pictures of the party itself, but indi, as usual, managed to get a few before it was ‘too late’.

i like this a lot and i hope that it keeps happening. these parties are amazing: the venues, the people it draws, the music they play. offshore is really trying to take partying in colombo to another level and are succeeding increasingly. they’re trying to move it out of these hick clubs we all get stuck going to under the influence of boredom and most often other people, they’re trying to take it beyond alcohol and music and dancing: they’re turning it into a whole new experience that exceeds the normal boundaries of what ‘fun’ really is.

eventually, the place fills up and everyone is happy. the kind of person that comes to these parties doesn’t care : they don’t care what anyone else is wearing or how anyone else is dancing. everyone is caught up in their own madness and is more than happy to spread the happy vibe generously around. no one gets drunk and gets into brawls, everyone is more than happy to party and let party, to live and let live. the feeling in the air is hard to ignore and the awesome music makes it hard to not want to move. with the offshore parties, partying itself is turning into something we’ve never experienced before. it’s growing up, becoming more sophisticated and yet more realxed, its becoming more extravagant but more carefree. they’re slick and well organized and they know exactly who they’re catering to and how to deliver.

rock on.

finally, i’ve been able to look at and upload my pictures from my trip to india…there’s not a lot i can say, but let me share with you some of my favourite photographs from the trip…hopefully they’re a little clue in on our experiences.

cochin was our first stop, and we decided to use asvajit’s camera here. we did, primarily, so i have very few.

waiting for the bus to cochin in bangalore - deanne, asvajit and the sisters, kush and iromi.

cochin from a trishaw - we had to take one to get to fort cochin which is more or less an island.

we came back to bangalore after 3 days in cochin and hung out there for about 4 days…

deanne, asvajit and iromi on the streets of bangalore, outside a hutch shop.

iromi took this ; asvajit and i walking back to their flat.

sisters and i at peco’s, super pub that plays awesome music.

deanne in the flat with toothache.

everyone, at purple haze. awesome bar, again, good music. diya, kush, iromi, asvajit, me, uttara.

us in some godawful club. terrible music, but company as good as this always has a way with me…me, diya, kush, iroms, uttara.


sudhan and asvajit in a supermarket, bangalore, buying oranges for our long bus ride to goa.

goa was our last escape. it was amazing.

anjuna was our first stop. this is the view from some restaurant we ate at. anjuna is a beach which you can see from clifftops, which is where the buildings and people are.

anjuna beach.

asvajit…still in anjuna…

calangute, outside this beach shack/aspiring beach restaurant-bar type thing. made some worthwhile friends there.

watching the sunset in calangute.

neat restaurant in baga, called britto’s, 5 minutes away from calangute.

this is the aguada fort. aguada is a little away from calangute, which is where we were in north goa for a some of our days.

asvajit in the fort.

arambol ; beautiful, secluded beach.

asvajit, trekking to the nicer beach in arambol.

the friends we made ; boys, en route to the better part of arambol.

asvajit, arambol, near the lake by the beach.

us, in arambol. happy till the end.

…life? love? lesbian? who knows?

i’m addicted. this is the only TV show ever, perhaps, that i took this much interest in, and that i put this much effort into following. TV and TV shows repulse me usually (besides the scarce and welcome exceptions), and i never was one to keep track of daily or even weekly shows. the routine of remembering to sit down in front of the TV at the same time of every same day was always too much and there was never much on TV that i couldn’t bear not keeping track of.

i love the L word. isn’t carmen too beautiful?

ok, now go ahead and trash me.

us (thaji, umi, heshi, harini and i) and mira, lionel wendt, january 2006.

as i sat at the battery dance company’s performance that night, i watched it all unfurl. the music, the dancers…it transported me to a place where i could sit awhile, forget about everything and let my skin absorb all the things i felt about it. the way i wanted to be up there with them, the way i dreamt about being a dancer like that ; with professionals, the way i wanted so much to see and embrace more of that, the way i imagined how i’d go to shows like that every night if i could.

when i watched vajira’s and chitrasena’s youngest grand-daughter thaji take the stage in her brief guest performance, things that i had long forgotten welled up inside me. there she was, beautiful as ever, more lithe and graceful than i had ever recognized, all dressed in red, flashing and enchanting. there she was, someone i had known since childhood, one of my oldest friends. someone that i’ve shared the best things in life with : dancing, performing, learning.

how many times i’ve watched her dance, and thought to myself ’she is going to be so fine one day’. and suddenly, as i sat in the audience and watched her, an opportunity i’ve never had before, in all of about the twelve years of having known her, both as person and as dancer, it washed down on me. she has the best of both worlds : she looks just like vajira, the beauty, the elegance, the posture, and dances just like upeka, the same fire, the same vigor and strength. but inside all of that, curled up, gently unfolding upwards, there was an undeniable sense of herself, her youth and her fresh-ness. her doe eyes, her glowing skin, her flair and her infectious joy. after all those years, of dancing with her, of sitting on the side and offering her advise as she rehearsed, it was like seeing her for the first time. like i had never seen her before.

and from deep inside me, there came a wave of happiness, slowly stretching itself up into my throat. there came an overwhelming urge to cry, to cry for the beauty, to cry for her success. from within, there came a childish desire for all of it again, to be able to share this with her, to be able to help her button up her costume and help her with her makeup. there came a deep, dull ache, not full of regret, but full of sadness for everything it once was to me.

i wonder sometimes why i don’t dance anymore. the question baffles me, even though the actual answer is pretty clear to me. but that night, i was happy and sad at the same time. i was happy for all the things i’ve become because of the dancer in me, all the things i’ve learnt to appreciate and all the people i’ve come to love. but i was sad, momentarily, fleetingly, for all the things i may have lost forever when i stopped dancing this year. i’m scared that i’ve lost the ability for good, that i’ve lost the drive, the edge for it. perhaps i’ll never be a dancer, perhaps some day, i will. perhaps i will never really want to, perhaps i will want it forever.

but as i sat there, watching the amazing dancing and feeling the soul in all of it stir deep within my own, i knew that there was a part of me that is indestructible, no matter how many years go by in which i don’t dance at all. a part of me that will always remember what it’s like and love simply remembering it. a part of me that will always thrive on the sheer memory of the euphoria of performing, of the feeling of music in my blood. a part of me that loves those that have shared this experience with me, all brought together by our love for the same thing, by our understanding of the same language. a part of me that will always love watching others dance and appreciate what an effort it takes to make it look as effortless as they do. a part of me that will always be a dancer. and that part of me, is one of the things i will always love best about myself.

photo by yanik, of course.

…and i really must thank you, for all the ways in which you’ve changed my life, and yet, all the ways in which you haven’t. it is wonderful to be so embedded in someone else, but to also be myself more than i have been in a very long time…

…so when i tell you everything i do, i really mean it. it is inexplicable and incomparable. you are so completely everything i want, and you amaze me regularly. if i weren’t me, i’d laugh at how enamoured i have become ; how purely engrossed people can become when they fall in love…

…you are a multitude of things, each one special in its own way, each one necessary and crucial to my being. sometimes i wonder if i will ever possess the ability to tell you how important you are to me, in this very moment and for always, to come…

…i love how everyone loves you, how they have no choice but to be dragged in to it by the same things that did so for me, it is irresistable and unintentional ; i never even noticed it was happening until it had already happened. you are magical…

…i love how we love (and hate) the same things, oh, life is so much easier that way. the beauty of truly sharing life becomes epitomized in what we have, how we live, and i can’t imagine how anyone gets through life not knowing what we know…

…never have i thought this much about one single person, so much so that i even think it might a little unhealthy. but this is how i like, feeling addicted, a little mad almost. i can always look at you and be convinced that a little madness is always worth it…

… i want life to be easy and painless and exciting for you, just as much as i want you to be strong and brave and patient. i only want you to have a glorious life, to have everything you want and every little, insiginificant happiness just as much as all the big, glamorous ones…

happy birthday, lover. continue to live a good one.