this text was also unexpected like the found glass and the tree. so, I found a lot of black and white rocks the other day. Some had more black spots than others. I want to start looking at the white. White is blank. Let’s write a new story on it. The story of anticolonial mapping and the places its taking us. Night is followed by day; everything has an anti. Let’s find the anti of the night. If we were to take it as just one night, isn’t tomorrow a new day? Love |
When it Rains--Is it the earth or a naughty girl, under thick trees, clad in a sari of bleeding colours, trying to hide her body from even naughtier waters--and failing miserably.
These walls were the hardest to break because sensory skyscrapers are invisible. And to locate them, where we felt them.. what they obstructed, where the pain lay and the entities that entered as we hammered them down. Wasn't a gentle breaking I have to admit. It was an explosion...we were shooting in the dark so we broke down almost every damn wall we saw/felt/sensed/touched. We shook...we broke...and we were bare. |
Compared with England, Pakistan is a poor and humble country but she aches for it, because to be thirsty is to crave a glass of simple water and no amount of rich buttermilk will do. | If we bury our sins in the earth… will the earth still speak to us? Will the sea refuse to meet us at the shore then? | The idea of anticolonial mapping initially began for us from the idea of what we recognized as a meeting point of 'land' for her and a 'crashing wave' a fleeting emotion for me. The land where the tide hits is what she identified as home. For me the home was transient. Is land stationary or does it shift? This hitting of the wave on land corresponded to a feeling of a transience that touches and leaves. In its fleeting moment of heightened love/emotion/bliss, it is often interrupted by a sudden rupture of sorts, a slow rupture manifested as sudden or a sudden natural calamity, so to speak. I began to investigate how the two sentiments, that of rupture and that of a fling-like emotion, coincide and run parallel in our memory. She started to see the two as companions "saathi," not as two separate entities but one. | I hope you keep some things solely for yourself. A film you cannot talk about in public, a favorite song you do not feel like sharing in your stories. Favorite lines from a poem carefully copied into your personal diary, a book quote you'll never forget. An island of little things that remind you only of yourself. Things that are too fragile to be shared, things that--perhaps, over time--have learnt to escape the superfluity of words. And when someday, tired of travelling through the lives of others, you suddenly feel an indomitable urge to return to yourself--in all its urgency--you know what's waiting for you, because you have allowed yourself the privilege of being protective of all the things you love, all the things you call home. |
It is eid day here so was drowned in meeting people, chooriyan, great smelling food, and gratitude. | I see you, I hear you | I understand the feeling. What does it mean to you? | When you remove the boundaries it's also a kind of ungluing. I feel like what was bound together has split, it is in a million pieces and I don't know where to start collecting them.
A part of me curses me for ever beginning this journey. Wasn't I okay drawing myself in a linear world of lattes and politically correct conversations? | As I sit by the river today, tears roll down uncontrollably. But, today the tears are of sadness, a breaking, and I know that no matter what the world around us is like, if the heart is torn, you are torn. I also know that no outside force can mend that heart, only I can. | How boundless could i make my life which for all its smallness still exhausts me. Balancing act of all my margins all my conjugations of cannot. If i live through the night i will bleed into all my edges until I am no longer a stroke of some careless man's pen. | After a particularly liquid lunch [man ] was said to have created [country] with a stroke of his [implement] & isn't a map only a joke we all agreed into a fact & where can i touch the equator & how will i know i am touching it & where is the end of my country
the beginning of the next how will i know i've crossed over. | As these undercurrents were invisible and intangible, we were learning the language to communicate through our present experiences of these two months. During this time, I moved to another city for two weeks and she travelled to another as we silently experienced the half-broken map, half-broken walls, beginning to interact with our new surroundings. Uncannily enough at this point she connected with the waves and I, with land. These are snippets of our process.
this text was also unexpected like the found glass and the tree. so, I found a lot of black and white rocks the other day. Some had more black spots than others. I want to start looking at the white. White is blank. Let’s write a new story on it. The story of anticolonial mapping and the places its taking us. Night is followed by day; everything has an anti. Let’s find the anti of the night. If we were to take it as just one night, isn’t tomorrow a new day? Love |
When it Rains--Is it the earth or a naughty girl, under thick trees, clad in a sari of bleeding colours, trying to hide her body from even naughtier waters--and failing miserably.
These walls were the hardest to break because sensory skyscrapers are invisible. And to locate them, where we felt them.. what they obstructed, where the pain lay and the entities that entered as we hammered them down. Wasn't a gentle breaking I have to admit. It was an explosion...we were shooting in the dark so we broke down almost every damn wall we saw/felt/sensed/touched. We shook...we broke...and we were bare. |
Compared with England, Pakistan is a poor and humble country but she aches for it, because to be thirsty is to crave a glass of simple water and no amount of rich buttermilk will do. | If we bury our sins in the earth… will the earth still speak to us? Will the sea refuse to meet us at the shore then? | The idea of anticolonial mapping initially began for us from the idea of what we recognized as a meeting point of 'land' for her and a 'crashing wave' a fleeting emotion for me. The land where the tide hits is what she identified as home. For me the home was transient. Is land stationary or does it shift? This hitting of the wave on land corresponded to a feeling of a transience that touches and leaves. In its fleeting moment of heightened love/emotion/bliss, it is often interrupted by a sudden rupture of sorts, a slow rupture manifested as sudden or a sudden natural calamity, so to speak. I began to investigate how the two sentiments, that of rupture and that of a fling-like emotion, coincide and run parallel in our memory. She started to see the two as companions "saathi," not as two separate entities but one. | I hope you keep some things solely for yourself. A film you cannot talk about in public, a favorite song you do not feel like sharing in your stories. Favorite lines from a poem carefully copied into your personal diary, a book quote you'll never forget. An island of little things that remind you only of yourself. Things that are too fragile to be shared, things that--perhaps, over time--have learnt to escape the superfluity of words. And when someday, tired of travelling through the lives of others, you suddenly feel an indomitable urge to return to yourself--in all its urgency--you know what's waiting for you, because you have allowed yourself the privilege of being protective of all the things you love, all the things you call home. |
It is eid day here so was drowned in meeting people, chooriyan, great smelling food, and gratitude. | I see you, I hear you | I understand the feeling. What does it mean to you? | When you remove the boundaries it's also a kind of ungluing. I feel like what was bound together has split, it is in a million pieces and I don't know where to start collecting them.
A part of me curses me for ever beginning this journey. Wasn't I okay drawing myself in a linear world of lattes and politically correct conversations? | As I sit by the river today, tears roll down uncontrollably. But, today the tears are of sadness, a breaking, and I know that no matter what the world around us is like, if the heart is torn, you are torn. I also know that no outside force can mend that heart, only I can. | How boundless could i make my life which for all its smallness still exhausts me. Balancing act of all my margins all my conjugations of cannot. If i live through the night i will bleed into all my edges until I am no longer a stroke of some careless man's pen. | After a particularly liquid lunch [man ] was said to have created [country] with a stroke of his [implement] & isn't a map only a joke we all agreed into a fact & where can i touch the equator & how will i know i am touching it & where is the end of my country
the beginning of the next how will i know i've crossed over. | As these undercurrents were invisible and intangible, we were learning the language to communicate through our present experiences of these two months. During this time, I moved to another city for two weeks and she travelled to another as we silently experienced the half-broken map, half-broken walls, beginning to interact with our new surroundings. Uncannily enough at this point she connected with the waves and I, with land. These are snippets of our process.