cogitated thoughts

By personal experience, I am compelled to infer that the worst thing for any student to do is to question things during preparation-for-test time. Here's a part from the interrogation that I subjected myself to one day before a bio test:
Q: What do I gain by studying about plant reproduction?
A: Well... who knows, I might become a farmer in the distant future...
and presto!The Biology text book is closed and I venture out to do more constructive things... 'Mum, whats for lunch??' All this being perfectly alright ...but in comes the catch towards the end of the day...any inquisition about the depths of learning become fading things of the past and yours truly, is trying desperately to put mug... simultaneously remembering ...the words, 'ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, you fritter and WASTE the hours in an offhand way...'' with twinges of guilt.
Oh well, the tests are done with for now and the only time that I'll start the interrogation again is probably when the marks come out...

To initiate my one day freedom from acads I went along with my brother to shoot baskets in the basketball ring outside. As usual, we got told off by entire Bong family who reside in the house just adjacent to the basketball ''court''. Tragic, their lives must be. I mean my apartment has it's entire play ground right next to their house. Cricket balls, plastic balls, tennis balls, basketballs, shuttlecocks and the likes somehow always manage to find their places in the renowned Bong house.

Lovely place, my apartment that is. It's got this absolutely rad design..loadsa trees ,fresh green lawns, brilliant 'stonehenge' passage, amazing terrace with even more amazing view...the drive way from the main gate to the basement is the best...it has these eucalyptus and bamboo trees lining the footpath...It's a real nice feeling when I'm walking home from school, and all I can see is the stone passage ,feel the movement of the trees...and see the rising building...in the distance. The thing is that this place has about a gazillion kids all over the place. In fact it's extremely rare to find anyone above the age of 5 years and that makes it even nicer.

The bathroom has to be given the highest degree of certification. Right above us, in the first floor, is this family with some ten month old baby and all..and they ALWAYS seem to be bathing him. To top it all they are tam brahms so we actually get to hear the baby-coochey-coochey-coo talk in Tamil! Twice a week,my brother and his group of thugs have karate classes on the 6th floor and believe me, you can actually hear them screaming in Japanese or whatever. The bathroom singing of course is a common ritual ( I myself indulge in it pretty wholeheartedly) but then fact is that I live on the ground floor so all the sound waves kinda superimpose and reach my precious tympanic membrane in the bathroom...like i said lovely place.

In 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance', when the narrator's son,'Chris' asks him to help him with a letter, the narrator actually tells him to list out what he wants to say in no particular order and sort it out later. The son ends up writing a three page long list! Try it sometime if you have a writer's block or something and then let me know if it works... if it doesn't, well you aren't meant to write anyway, go stick your head in mud...but if it does, then we'll go together and shake Robert Pirsig's royal hand...

Yesterday was dad's b'day and all.. I had an exceptionally nice day...went to some pseudo mall, stood around watching other people buy stuff and feeling financially and mentally secure. Then we went to Blossoms which is a pretty decent second hand book stall...stale smell of old books and that sort of a thing...then had dinner in sorta pseudo but nice Chinese restaurant, 'Mainland China' and all that so obviously,I was pretty touchy about having to attend special classes in school on a Sunday.

So what I did , right after getting up, without brushing my teeth and all, was to read a story from'Nine Stories'- J.D Salinger, called' For Esmé- with Love and Squalor'.
I got this nice, satisfactory feeling after reading the story so, I didn't read anything else. I mean, that's the thing with short stories... I can never read two at a stretch or something. Okay, I thought that I would devote at least one paragraph to the greatness of the story and statements like 'Salinger is God', but I don't feel like doing it anymore so I might just as well talk about his book covers... Salinger's I mean. The books that are published by' Little Brown books' have this pure white cover with the names of the book and author written in black. On one corner of the book, are these colour strips and thats more or less it. When I went to buy 'The Catcher In The Rye' some two years ago.. I was pretty much in a daze when I saw the book . I mean for a book that is universally talked about, it looked pretty plain and all that; not that I really give a damn or anything but then the feelings sorta imbibed in you anyway...human tendency probably. It's like our man, Salinger did everything he could possibly do, to make his books as plain as possible and boy! do I love it! It kinda binds you to it, the cover binds you to the book I mean.

I, like a lot of other sensible people, love the I'm-at-peace-with-the-world mode which is currently the mode that has been activated. And so, I think,that it is time for today's Chautauqua to come to an end.