Colour pencils and small shots of espresso.

I love it when I go to the Irani chai places I frequent and someone comes over to drop off a pen or pencil – or as was last night – colour pencil that I had left behind the other day. There’s something welcoming about the experience, a sense of facilitation.

Someone told me that with the development thats been going on, the Irani chai places are dying away. Sounds like a myth although once in a while I do find one or two of the several that I frequent, quite suddenly abandoned and derelict. I’ve been breaking code and going to the Coffee Days, which would incense several of the few writers in this town that I know. However, my reasons are; the crowd that swings by these - 70/- Rs. a shot of espresso - places, they're interesting and sometimes entertaining people to watch. Although I’m sure that with my scrawly hair, a week worn jeans and repeated T-shirts, not to mention manic scribbling and other hyper-chondriac dramatics, I would make much of an amusing spectacle myself.

I like befriending the waiters at these places, their usually lower-middle class young people serving the upper-middle-class pseudo-classy youngsters and large lap-topped business execs. I was a waiter once, clearing tables, serving bottled water, spitting in the soup, very rarely do you have someone really appreciate service - and not oh so completely ignore you as a part of the furniture.  Sometimes, talking to these waiters, just thanking them causes expressions of bewilderment, like they're not sure they've just heard you. A little bit of recognition goes a long way, I mean isn't that all anybody wants - to be recognized?

I’ve also found that you can get a regular table reserved to write at whenever you want, and other customers are then steered away from your writing vicinity, you can get your own music playing. And sometimes, there is free smaller desert-ery. Which is always rewarding. Once in while, someone will sit down and tell you their story. This used to be fun the first six or seven years of writing, whats remarkable about it is the trust that strangers are able to put in each other, its as if isolation is what the real world is made up of, for a while at least.

To conjure & revive old spirits & other blogs

The worst thing about being able to write, is to come back to it some time later and read, and realize that, not only is it not bad writing, but its actually good, well the worst thing about it all - is that - all time spent not writing feels like this great mass of wasted opportunity; a time that will be accounted for on some great day of judgement; which is of course is a self-prescribed hell. Kind of similar to the exactness of now; sitting here being in this time and place, feeling sorry for oneself, writing away about how hard the writing is and how shittily the time wasted has been spent. Swallowing at every re-reading and re-sentencing. The desire for cigarettes and alcohol suddenly making perfect sense.

I wonder if she's looking for that blue smeared paint brush, theres still the smell of her hair on it, and the turpentine. Every things getting dark, too dark to see, like in the song...


http://acoffeeshop.blogspot.com/