cogitated thoughts

2005-06-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

It’s fascinating to see my pen making contact with the sheet of paper that I’m writing on. I write slowly, tentatively. The curvature of each letter and the slight untidiness due to lack of practice make me want to keep looking at the way my hand moves. The ballpoint pen’s blue ink that manifests itself in different shades depending on the amount of force that I apply at the tip of my pen makes my handwriting unique. There are curious stares from the people I’m in the car with. I never write, let alone write in the presence of my family in a car. But, I’ve been so wrapped up in a little blanket with small, intricate patterns that they think I’m building a fort around myself. No one possesses the courage to say it but there is realization written in everyone’s eyes. The realization that these are training grounds for life after college starts. We are too used to doing things together. I try to pay attention, to be interested in the little things. The anecdotes that seem meaningless and the stereotypical questions about what’s going on in each of our lives; things that are essentially embedded in car- drive conversations. These are the conversations that are being sketched on an easel placed in my head. I’ll probably never remember them, as they are at this instant. When I try and look back, it won’t be a sketch any more. It’ll be a painting. It might even turn out to me a masterpiece. A contemplated memory that’ll provide me with light at the end of any dark tunnel that I might have to travel in. I try. But then, I haven’t had this desperate an urge to write for so long that I decide to block myself out from the voices around me. And they let it be. Tacit understandings within families don’t happen too often and so, it’s a very gratifying feeling when they do.

The idea of having to make my own decisions is a little scary. I haven’t really allowed myself to feel the impact of the idea, yet. There are so many things to come to terms with that some times- no, most of the times I convince myself that it isn’t really worth the effort. You clean out your closet with painstaking determination and the skeletons just keep coming back. But, I would rather start at some point and make sure that I’m more careful the next time, even if it involves visiting occasional states of gloom. The aftermath of getting unexpectedly bad results is like having an over extended period of Monday morning blues. It’s slightly irritating to be so fickle minded about what I should be doing with my life for the next four or five years. Some times I think that it doesn’t really matter, all I need is a little initial interest to build upon. But these times are rare.

Time crawls past you slowly. On one hand you wish it would take in some Glucose and speed itself up while on the other you stand by and just watch. Who knows when you’ll get the chance to watch time again? If I want, I can divide twenty-four hours into different sections. I could allot one for Southpark, one for Kafka, one for Sylvie and Bruno, one for foolishly played bad tennis, one for other people and maybe one for myself; but this sort of thing poses so many dangers of turning into routine that I don’t watch time at all. I close my eyes and play music in my head. I suppose the future’s too enigmatic to think about. It’s a tad too challenging and so, I think about the past.

Last week, when I went to collect some documents from my school, the place was already performing the rehearsal of a play called nostalgia. It of course, still needed a lot of brushing up and finishing touches. I don’t really feel like paying a tribute to it right now. I’ll just tell you about the huge banyan tree that stands about hundred meters from my school gate.

I breathe in the air around it. It is the same air that I’ve breathed in the moment I enter my school, for the last four years. Like always, it reminds me of an ancient age. It has the ability to make me believe anything. Old things seem to have this strange attribute of making you forget that they were like all of us, once young. It views the world as a silent observer. It looks at it as though it could go on that way forever. Always being a part of the coherence and yet slightly alienated from the current. Every sway of its leaves, every movement in harmony with the blowing breeze speaks to me of its wisdom, of all that it has seen. I think about it and the noise in my head is silenced. Yes, that is exactly how I remember the banyan tree, at peace with the world and more importantly at peace with itself.

I feel a sudden jolt, look up and see that we’ve reached Kabini. I wouldn’t call the place untouched by civilization but they try hard to give you that impression. And if you have to pay them two thousand bucks per head for one day, who wouldn’t? We stay here for a day. They give us a programme that says Check- in- time 12 p.m, June 13th, Chuck-out time-11 a.m June 14th. It costs my parents a lot of dough. They make it a point not to mention the tariff rates. They tell us once so as to make the impact of the place more powerful. My family doesn’t believe in planning and fitting in schedules, moods and happiness into one frame. It decides to do something and goes ahead and does it. I’ve doubted the validity of the entire statement for a while. But right now, I’m just happy to be here; after a beautiful car drive, after a refreshing day in Bandipur, with the people that I love.

We dump our luggage in our cottages and rush to take a look at the place. I discover a comfortable rock by the riverside and sit down. I listen to the river for a long time. And then, I open the book in my hand, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (here, you have a perfect justification of the phrase, ‘what’s in a name?’) and start reading. I have never done book reviews on this blog and I don’t intend to do one now.
But the book meant a lot to me. It was a gift from my Dada and it was too precious to leave behind. Anyway, I’ve a strong attraction to good- looking books. This one’s hardbound and black in color

A day’s gone by already and I sort of got tired of my journal style of writing. I get tired of things too easily. But the interest’s revived back at the same rate as its disappearance.
I’m looking outside the car-window. Shifting my eyes laterally from frame to frame of scenery. Each frame’s different from the next or the one before it but is a part of that stretch of the road, a part like the tree of coherence. I look at the four people that I’m the car with. The music’s been turned off at my request. I want to remain silent and they let it be. Tacit understandings within families don’t happen too often and so, it’s a very gratifying feeling when they do. I think about the last year and the diverse people that I had a chance to interact with. I think about how I’ve been influenced in a varied range of things, about the books that I’ve read, the music that I’ve listened to and the movies that I’ve watched. I think of this year and think about the major events that occurred in the last six months. I think about the number of photo albums that have been stacking up in a tiny cupboard in my head. I think about victory, happiness, flight, disappointment, sadness, denial, complexes, confusion and failure. And then I think about love, friendship, passions, blue skies, green trees, grey smokes, terrace tops, energy and hope. I think about how conveniently our brain can be partitioned into segments and yet function as whole, a part, if I may be allowed to say so, of the coherence. I think about this blog and realize with a slightly sinking feeling that I don’t possess the drive to update it anymore. I may of course come Bach. But right now, there is too much to catch up on, too much love to offer and to receive, to many things to set right.

For the first time in the last so many months, I feel like things are beginning to fall into place. I look at the road ahead through the gap between my dad’s seat and the car’s door and feel a finger nudging my shoulder a little roughly. I turn to my left and hear my brother asking me why I’m smiling like a half-witted ape.

2005-05-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

I'm in love with the eye.

2005-05-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

Yes, you ARE right. We all know that we've seen those two faces someplace else. O where art thou Douglas Adams?

2005-05-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

It must be the glossy tinge of light that all magazines have, I would have never thought that a bell could look that classy.

2005-05-30T11:18:00.000-07:00

motley, motley, MOTLEY!

2005-05-30T11:16:00.000-07:00

exclusively beatlemaniacal.

2005-05-30T11:14:00.000-07:00

There wasn't really any space left to write out band names...

2005-05-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about redoing my room for a while now. In my opinion, familiarity doesn’t exactly breed contempt but it does possess this knack of making you want to be dynamic. The feeling, like so many other feelings, sets in a little later than it should. In my case, it has set in at a time when the chances of my going to a hostel are fairly moderate if not prodigiously high. The kind of chances, you will agree, which narrow down my need for reinvention.

My room, in over-used words is a ghost from the past. One of it’s walls even has a Guns n’ (‘n’ ’ smirk) Roses poster on it. So I suppose you can imagine how far it goes back.
I would have been unaware of the walls or the atmosphere in my room, if it weren’t for a certain video I happen to have had the privilege of watching a couple of days back. The video, you see, was of a room. Queen’s English knocks on my head with her fist and asks me to be more precise. The video, you see, was of one of the most beautiful rooms I’ve ever seen.

Most of the people on my very eminent friends list feel that rooms are no big deal. They do exist after all for the sole purpose of giving you the chance to make them unclean. But as most of them belong to one-of-those institutions, which support the word ‘unclean’ with banners, hands up signs and trumpets, their opinion doesn’t really amount to much.
Even the thought of bare walls makes me feel like I’ve had my first viewing of the Ring.
So yes, bottom line: a room is where your heart is.

Along with the just-turned-teenager-I-want-to-be-cool attribute that is splashed across all over my room, there are a number of memories attached to it.
It was in this room that I celebrated my Tenth std results and it is in this room that I have now moped over my Twelfth std ones. Everyone tells me that it isn’t that big a deal, which in a matter of speaking is well and good. But it’s the first time that I’ve managed to miss a hundred marks in a goddamn exam and that is of course not a very pleasant feeling. In the short span of 48 hours, jaws have dropped, eyes have been strained, indignation masks have been put on faces, silences have been spoken into telephones and wild queries of true identities have been made. ‘‘Was it really YOUR roll number that you typed in?’’ And to all this I would like to say, ‘‘DUH! Shit happens’’.

I sincerely wish that it didn’t happen to me but it sincerely chooses to wish other wise.
I’ve been trained not to brush things under the carpet because of which, it wasn’t that hard to let the 80% slap me on my face, shake me up for a while and make me break down for a little bit. So, I patted everyone’s head and told them it was all right, made others pat mine and tell me the same.

There was nothing else to do but to call up the cousin-with-most-guest-appearances on this blog and ask her to please bunk college so that she could come to my rescue like one of those United States Marines Bertie Wooster keeps talking about. The place you are in, moulds your conversation to quite an extent and this was justified in ‘Rice Bowl’ where both of us treated ourselves to some nice Chinese food. The place as such is a cosy, quiet restaurant…the A.C, cushioned chairs and of course the food manage to give the dim lit place a certain feel, which makes you feel warm, laid back and that sort of thing. But I think they have an exceptionally bad DJ or whoever- picks- their- playlist because they had this crazy CD/cassette on which seemed to be a mixture of the most horrifying music that anyone can possibly be subjected to. Imagine Britney Spears, Christina Augielera, dik chik remixes and a not-so-good-percentage stuffed into one paper bag, then burst right in front of your face and you WILL genuinely feel as if ‘‘ AUGH! I’ve been shot.’’

Oh well, I’m afraid I’ve been digressing for a while now. Do accept my apologies and allow me to welcome you back to whatever it was that I was saying. (Scrolls up…Ah...oh…uh huh... yes) So, all that manages to mould conversation, making it the inane, rugged thing that technically isn’t supposed to happen between two people between whom silences never get uncomfortable…especially when there are things to be said and intensities to be evoked. The REAL thing is thus, built up, allowed to gain more energy and has a strong, structured foundation. If it’s done the right way…it can EVEN have a PLOT.

So, when we had finished lunch, made a customary visit to Blossoms (That was after Shalu promised me that she WILL NOT allow me to buy any thing as she likes my house and probably didn’t want my parents to disown me on accounts of prospective bankruptcies…she obviously ended up buying two books for herself.) and aimlessly walked the streets of Brigade Road, we found ourselves drifting towards the Barista on St Mark’s Road. By the time we’d ordered our coffees and laughed at the morons who actually managed to screw up a 5 lettered, easily spelt, clearly pronounced name by calling me ‘Snaiae’ or something of that sort, the REAL thing had grown and developed a voice of it’s own. If I’m not mistaken, it was at around this moment that time came to a dignified, silent, unseen stop. The words were heart felt, the emotions were genuine, the silences were comfortable and the frantic phone calls from both our mothers, asking us to get ourselves to home this instant because it was thunder storm-y and terribly cloudy were unheeded. Someone must have finally come and pressed the pause button because time had decided that it had had enough of inertia, making us realize in a simple, yet not abrupt way that the intensity had been sucked out, transported some place else and goodbyes were due.

There was something about the wind outside that didn’t quite feel right. It was too strong, powerful…a tad too icy cold. The world outside the stone walled, subtle Barista seemed to be in a chaotic mode. There was a lot of noise, too many traffic jams and a lot of people hurrying up. I realized then that this wasn’t going to be Rain Supreme. It was going to be something else. It was going to be Tempest-esque...

It doesn’t help in such situations, if your direction sense is close to zilch and your knowledge of bus routes is worse. These factors basically mean, auto zindabad and auto zindabad means raised eyebrows when you tell the driver ‘Old Madras Road’ and in a somewhat unhearable mumble, ‘Beninganahalli’. I finally did manage to find an auto and bid a goodbye to my cousin who suffers from no such ailments and got on a bus, reaching home about one and a half hour later than I did (Ha! :-P )

The auto had moved just a couple of meters when it started raining. Raining is actually understating it and doing it a whole lot of injustice. It wasn’t the sort of rain, which starts slowly, gradually turning into cats, dogs and all that. It was the kind, which thought that Darwin was basically a jobless man with a mid-life crisis and wanted to rebel with theories of evolution…making you wonder ‘what the (what’s that four letter word that begins with the same letter as fancy does…well…ahem, can’t remember) thundering typhoons?’ The auto driver immediately decided that the rain was MY fault. I immediately decided that I was going to go home broke...penniless…pleading ‘no, NO…not mea culpa’.

This time, my good friend, ‘time’ decided to slow down. It wanted me to contemplate, mix and match occurrences, question myself, question the heavens…. it wanted me to THINK. And for the next hour, that is exactly what I did. It was crazily cold and there was a constant spray of water hitting me. There was so much electricity in the air that I actually started feeling that things were following a synchronous pattern. Every time my thread of thought changed, something around me would change. Oh fine! little voice inside head, you been reading the Alchemist or something? But, I swear…the moment I decided that I HAD to do something about the walls of my room, they started a hail storm….

I needed yesterday. I needed the terribly sweet coffee. I needed the REAL thing. And I needed the wash. The rain that wasn’t a tempest anymore but more like a prequel of Noah sitting back with all his animals on a sunny island. There are no defined answers yet. But, there were at least questions. ‘Quo Vadis?’ you will say. And I will tell you to open your eyes and watch it rain...while I wait silently…wait for the mists to clear.

2005-05-09T01:23:00.000-07:00

Alright! So, everyone knew this was coming. I’ll just hand out a couple of invitation cards, make some welcome speeches, assign you all a few mood- codes (you there, its your turn to be the clown of the day, and you, YES! you thought you could avoid my powerful gaze if you twiddled your thumbs and looked at the ceiling? You have my sympathies, but it’s your turn to be the miserable creature that sits on the last seat and looks at all the glamour around him/her, longingly…well I’m certain that you get the drift. Beg your pardon? What is it that you whisper amongst yourselves? Have I like….uh…lost it? Well, let me put it this way, everyone anyway seems to be going slightly mad…. and poor, wretched me isn’t really the trend setter here…
We are suckers for punctuality on this show, due to which you have just a little time to put some powder on that radiant face or spray some perfume on that majestic double-breasted suit.

So now that we are all ready to receive the mawkish queen of reiteration, I might as well make an appearance and deliver my piece. And since allusions aren’t really a language on their own I assure you that I’ll try to speak some English which, I suppose, would make it a tad easier for everyone including my lovely Sunday newspaper critics.

When I was a little kid, I used to have this crazy hobby of collecting stones. I used to pick up stones from all over the place (my favourite haunt was a construction site; they had the best shiny and glossy stones) and put them in these plastic bags and keep them in my cupboard. It was good fun till it started freaking my mum out…so one day, when I brought this circular, absolutely symmetric, black and glittery stone, home and told my mother with a pronounced mysterious drawl to my voice that the stone was going to bring us bad luck and destroy the world MUHUHAHAHAHA, she must have figured that this particular hobby was not doing much good to her imbecile daughter and in the matter of a few moments, the babies of my months’ efforts and devotion were thrown outside, lying like victims of the accident that was the big bad world. I was needless to say (yeah Mr oh-so-smart Alec now that I’ve admitted that there is no need to say it I AM going to go ahead and say it) devastated and bitter. But, that was still manageable…even for a 7-year-old kid. What I couldn’t manage though was the biting feeling that it had been a waste of my time and more importantly a waste of my mum’s. I could have ‘utilized’ that time to do other things with my gazillion friends… And when you are forced to concentrate on unpleasantness like that, you start blocking out the parts that really matter. The ones that were the cause of the dreamy looks of fascination in my eyes, or the ones that made me believe that any thing was after all possible… If She could encapsulate such interesting stories about an ancient age on a miniscule stone, then how much could she do with a whole world…

For a couple of days now, I’ve been waking up from dreams that consisted of people that have been or are a part of my life. But, the strange thing was that they were always set in some vague place…like old forts and riversides. It’s been pretty difficult for me to check myself. I would suddenly find myself thinking about those dreams as if they really happened and confuse it with what was happening in real life right now; because you see, the people were real…

And they’ve always been real. It’s not their existence that’s the problem…it’s mine. I wish now, that I’d realized where and when to fold the page into two. But, as is the case with most of the things that you know you are supposed to be doing but don’t do because it’s less complicated this way; I chose not to realize it. It’s not really my fault though, I’m just a juvenile idiot…I got so carried away by the pats, the smiles, the modified quotes, the rush, the file transfers…. that I didn’t bother differentiating. And when there were uncalled for goodbyes with the deer being sent on a hike, I chose not to understand it… Someoneonce told me that we were just nobodies in here…and damn me for not having listened then.

‘‘They press their lips against you
And you love the lies they say
And I tried so hard to reach you
But you're falling anyway

And you know I see right through you
When the world gets in your way
What's the point in all this screamin'
You're not listening anyway’’
--Acoustic#3, Goo Goo Dolls.

Well, it’s about time too. But, if I try and analyze every thing that I’ve been doing for the last four years then I would choose to regret it. I would choose to be unfair. And I don’t like doing injustice to choices. So I would rather just move on, thanks for all the bananafish. Seymour's still around to show them to me anyway.

In the words of a young man who claims that his momma told him that life is like a box of chocolates, that’s all I’ve to say about that.

I dare say that my head would have been muddled up for a long time but I thankfully experienced some thing yesterday, which saw to it that I don’t dwell upon things for more time than is actually required. It was more like a series of events actually…

I’d just finished an excruciating exam and they’d given us a break of an hour and 15 minutes before we could be belted, squished and trampled again.
My dad drove down to Cubbon Park and we were sitting in the car, eating the Tomato Rice that my mum had lovingly packed for the two of us. Dylan was asking Mr tambourine man to play a song for him. And at this exact moment, there’s no escaping what time it was; it was 12:15 P.M, I saw this family right ahead of us…there were seven people; five of them children (all of them were boys), a lady and another man which I assumed was the head of the family. The H.O.F was clicking photographs and the rest of the family was sitting on one of those benches-that-are-found-in-parks. The kids were doing crazy poses and all that. There was nothing particularly interesting about this whole thing except for a tiny, little detail, which I of course being the kind-hearted writer that I am, am going to disclose to you. All the members of the family that belonged to the sweatier, gory, darker sex, which if you recall, amounts to a total of six people, were perfectly…bald. I nudged my dad and both of us sat staring at this strange group, at the way the sunlight rebounded from their shiny heads, till we started smiling, grinning and finally ended up laughing. Not those loud laughs, or the crack-you-up till you feel like your sides- would- split laugh or even those subtle ones that are marked with politeness. It was just this really pleasant laugh that you do once in a while when you are peacefully happy about some thing. It makes its way through the clutter in your head reaching the epicenter and once it gets there, it starts generating waves in all directions so that by the time you are done laughing, your heads been sprayed with some fresh water and isn’t really that muddled up any more.

I don’t know if you’ve had the feeling of being in slow motion. Kinda like the Matrix bullets funda. It usually happens to me when I’m sitting in the car and looking outside the window. Dad will be speeding up. My mum will be chanting some shlokas under her breath, seemingly soft but loud enough for my dad to hear and figure, my brother will be sitting around doing nothing and suddenly I’ll see the world whiz past by me in slow motion. Maybe it has some thing to do with the fact that it’s night and there are neon lights all around…The world’s still moving…but it’s moving slow, it’s moving at a speed that will make me notice just about every thing…Neon lights, apparent high speeds, music, skylines, buildings, traffic signals, people…lots of people…and thoughts. Like a disembodied entity once observed, ‘Things began to come to him. Not drawn by a pull, but just passing him by almost as if suddenly they'd given him the permission to live in their world.’ It’s not a very nice thing to happen often but to happen when you are on a low, it’s just as good as it gets. Everyone deserves it once in a while, because it involves clarity. Things just have to make sense from time to time. It’s a defective need but that’s how it is.

It’s about concentrating on the tiniest piece in the frame. Looking at a worm crawl past by you, or a flower moving with the breeze, or seeing the way water flows into your open mouth from a bottle or laughing at bald people posing for photographs.
And I think that the ability to do that with any success is something that disintegrates with age. So, I like the way things are right now. I don’t mind the fact that I get to be called ‘juvenile’ by someone at least twice a day. And I’m not giving up on my teenage fantasies at least till I’m 21 if I can help it.

After periodic pleas from the, Pul(r)p(l)ish Fiction fanatic I finally got around to hearing the joke that wasn’t really funny but was told if we wanted to hear it anyway. No, of course I’m not going to tell it you here. Lets just say that it involves tomatoes...and well, ketchup.
So, basically ‘all we have to do now, is to go get that five dollar milkshake’.

‘‘So, if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive?

Whatever tomorrow brings,
I'll be there with open arms and open eyes, Yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there..I'll be there.’’
--Drive, Incubus.

2005-04-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

When you want to write something about a dish you just cooked,
I think the wisest thing to do is to write immediately after you are done with the process; when the strong, yet not so offensive smells of garlic, onions and a various assortment of spices still linger stubbornly in your hands, nasal passage and just about everywhere else. One of my wildest fears used to be that my kids would have to survive on Maggi/Top Ramen and eggs. It is thus with a distinctive contentment that I now announce my prospective menu card to the public. My kids will have to survive on Maggi/Top Ramen, eggs and….trumpets, drum roll……..DUM ALOO.

I was spending my day with my head in the clouds, reaffirming my faith in the fact that anyone who watches 12 Monkeys on Star Movies starting from 11:05 P.M must be slightly touched in the head, (Boy! N.U.T.S I tell you, I wonder who that could be) lazing around and doing what I and a lot of people like best, namely nothing…when I suddenly had this crazy idea of cooking something. Poof went the nothingness into thin air and bang came the smug, angelic expression on my face as I trudged along to put forth my wishes to the one person who could help me accomplish my goals; the virtuoso when it comes to food in the Nagesh household, the chef extraordinaire, patience in culinary matters impersonated…my mother.

So after about an hour packed with burning eyes, silent shakes of my mother’s head at seeing a certain nutter we-all-know-so-very-well-by-now try and peel the potatoes, broken peelers, jammed mixies, dirty dishes and a lot of sweat and grime; a nice looking bowl, containing the dish created by my sweet self was placed at the center of the dining table.
It’s one of the most marvelous feelings in the world to be able to take a spoon, dip it in the gravy and bring it as close to your nose as it is required for you to smell a delicious aroma, then realize that you are the one who’s created it. And when your mother takes a sniff, a taste and then gives you a small smile which you interpret as ‘Atta girl! It’ll take a while for your kids to get bored of this’ the feeling is so satisfying that it’s worth all the sweaty effort and of course it deserves a dedication on your blog.

Good food is one of those things that add a little more flavour to our lives...but it takes more than rich smells and gravies for you to remember the taste of whatever you’ve eaten. Yesterday, I went to my cousin, Shalini’s place. My aunt, Shalu and me were sitting in the semi-dark-cloudy light that is characteristic of rainy days and days bestowed with power cuts, both of which had decided to make an appearance yesterday. Shalu and me, both had a plate of akki rotti (akki is rice) in our hands. Now, akki rotti IMHO is one of the most nicest rottis any Karnatak-ite has ever come up with. But a very few people have the ability to conjure it up perfectly, crisp in the right places, not too oily and the right amount of thickness. My aunt is of course one of those people. And for a couple of moments, we forgot about how we are supposed to tick away the moments that make up a dull day and wait for someone or something to show us the way. We talked and we laughed and we ate and we listened to it rain. There have been many akki rottis in the past and there will be many of them in the future but I will remember how right it tasted yesterday for a long time.

Rainy days have already been dwelt upon by a countless number of writers/4th std kids (it’s them teachers’ favourite ‘‘essay’’ topic…that and my ambition of course)/poets/bloggers. But, when you are compelled by something like the fear of catching a cold before an exam and have to force yourself to disregard any thoughts of performing a yo ho ho and a bottle of run-tribal dance-thing out in the rain, windows play a mighty role in taking your spirits for a walk high up in the hills. Car windows, in particular have mastered the art to perfection. When raindrops fall on closed car windows, they form patterns, webs, designs; they end trains of thoughts, start some more…they are so clever that they can make me forget about everything else, so much so that I become oblivious to my dad and brother’s voices which are discussing one of the how-does-that-work questions that 12 year old kids keep coming up with or for that matter to my favourite Knopfler- song- in- the- car. And before I know it I am on one side and the entire world is on the other. It’s like everybody just decided to show me a free movie. Everything seems so perfect that it almost kills…dark looming clouds that make you forget what time of the day it is, black glistening roads, lush green trees, raincoats, drenched clothes, vehicles splashing water, almost intoxicating smells and oily rainbows. Suddenly the world’s not only beautiful anymore…it’s also pretty.
And being aware of that fact polishes my day. Perfection doesn’t kill anymore. It just installs itself in my head as a temporary boat ride. In a matter of few moments, it’ll be gone, showing someone else how the ripples move or helping something else to become pretty. Maybe it’ll pay a visit to a lake or to the kids in my apartment who get all excited when it rains…

‘Another turning point;
a fork stuck in the road.
Time grabs you by the wrist;
directs you where to go.
So make the best of this test
and don't ask why.
It's not a question
but a lesson learned in time.
It's something unpredictable
but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.’
- Time of your life, Green day.

Kids can get excited for just about anything. A couple of days back, I was sitting on my bed with my guitar and playing this song called I’m the highway by Audioslave. It didn’t matter that the song didn’t quite sound like how it’s supposed to. I just needed a little energy so I was doing my act quite loud…singing it loud...playing it loud and when I finished I let out this satisfied-with-everything deep breath. I was aware of some movement to my left that sounded unmistakably like applause, so I immediately looked to my left and discovered four faces held close to my window’s mesh. Vinnie’s friends aged 7,12,12 and 6 respectively. The sort of age when you can get excited if someone can play ba ba black sheep on a guitar, when just the possession of a guitar by your friend’s sister is ‘cool’, when promises are meant to be kept irrespective of any external exigencies, when disappointments hit harder than they should…
Yeah, we’ve got a lot to learn, don’t we? And like I always say…learning can be a tad unpleasant sometimes. But optimism is a stubborn thing and has a loud, clear voice that says that they are quick learners…them kids…

‘I used to think, as birds take wing
They sing through life, so why can’t we?’
-I’ll take the rain, R.E.M

2005-03-30T13:45:00.000-08:00

‘A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled’
-Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
I think I was in 8th std when I heard this song for the first time, that is, when I was consciously aware that I’d heard it. (My father’s interests in bands like the Beatles, Queen, Dire Straits and Floyd guaranteed that I would be subjected to music that had foundations built with guitars and percussions; not just plain showbiz and pretty lads). Back in the days when Bryan Adams used to be a favourite and when my music choices thrived on certain other boyish bands whose names I won’t even bother mentioning now, Pink Floyd was evolution thrown at me with a huge thrust. ‘Learning to Fly’ was the second song on ‘A momentary lapse of reason’, which was this rusted old TDK tape that my dad had recored in Dec, 87 in one of those shops that you could record music in for just a little dough and time (the latter being available in decent quantities and hence canceling out any lack of the former whatsoever)

(From here on, you, my dear reader will, in all probability, experience an undeniable sense of déjà vu. The sentences in inverted commas are mostly from my favourite posts written by you. It shouldn’t, honestly speaking, take a bloggiversary to hand out credits but such is life and a spectator can hand out a thunderous applause only when the curtains drop and it’s the end of Act 1. )

Maybe the year and the month had chalked out this brilliant plot amongst themselves, maybe there is something remarkable about being able to hear a cassette that had the unmistakable buzz of age and time or maybe, I just needed a change from the drab, stark, empty music that I’d been listening to. You’ll know that you’ve heard a good song, if whenever you type out the words of the song or try to remember them; the music comes to your head along with the words. Lyrics never sound complete without the rhythm.''There's a distinct nip in the air and the gentle breeze rippling the lake, sets its waters into a steadily rhythmic movement, in parallel with my thoughts.'' Leads.Bass.Rhythms. Drums. Sound Effects. Vocals…

That’s probably one of the reasons why I don’t fancy the idea of mixing poetry with lyrics. Poetry, in most cases, is this abstract structure of words…lyrics, on the other hand, have this pact with music. I’m strictly talking about bands like Floyd here, not instrumentals. ''Accompanied with the growing up is the inevitable sense of loss. A sense of having left something precious behind''…but why regret when there is so much more before us…when ''there’s a full day of possibilities'' and ''it’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy.''

But, this is not about how my choice of musical artists has changed in the last few years. No… it’s about marking things. You see, I have this maddening desire to stop for a while and catch my breath…to survey words that were written…to recapitulate thoughts that were thought…to acknowledge discoveries that were initiated/discovered and to put a book mark in the book I’m currently reading; not remember the page number or fold the page end or anything book-vandalizing and silly of that sort but to actually put this nice looking book mark in the book so I can open it anytime I want and catch hold of some of the strings that were lost, forgotten…so I can have this radical conversation with ghosts from the past.

Q: So are all these substitutes, or is this amalgam the real thing?
It’s almost too crazy a thought sometimes, how words can make such a big difference to your life. An interwoven land of personal touches, moments captured on a url and before you know it, reading words here is even more gratifying than reading them somewhere else. ''It's not true that we live only one life; if we can read, we can lead as many lives, and as many kinds of lives as we want.''
There are times when you wake up from a dream and it takes you the night’s silence and a cursory look at your bedroom’s ceiling fan, rotating periodically as if it has been doing just that from time immemorial to decipher that what you’ve woken up from, was a dream and not the other way round. The line demarcating the boundary is but a thin one. If life is about experiencing then isn’t that what we do even in our dreams? The most blissful sleeps are those that you have after having this absolutely excruciating day. Dreamless…quiet sleep. But there are others… when you wake up after having a nice dream and don’t feel the difference… you carry on with life as if it were a continuous, spontaneous package.
A: Certain things are inherent in the life that I’m living now. This amalgam is maintaining a balance between things and I’m grateful for that…
Because… ''I do exist. How you ask? Well, when you ask the question, refer to me by name, and I'll exist. I exist in the minds of my friends, of people I've met''

''And it is palpable to most that life is naught but strife and that the human spirit needs a beacon to guide it onwards.''
What a comfort to be able to learn from other people’s mistakes and not your own…to be able to walk in the stars and let others walk in the pot holes for you…to have a catcher in the rye in handy…and I love the visits but there is no need for any undue concern, doc…
''Together, temporal and spatial separation help you cleanse your doors of perception, so everything appears as it is. Time and distance are like a burst of fresh air that dispel the smokescreen formed by jumpiness, excitement and anger that are a residue of the turbulence in your life.''
Most of the time we love things because of comparison, relative grading…retrospect.
That is why evolution is such a fascinating process…from cyano bacteria to man…
From Backstreet Boys to Bryan Adams to Mukesh to Kishore Kumar to Pink Floyd to The Beatles to Vai to Satriani to Mclaughlin and then to Shakti.
(I do have the rule of the thumb and guitar pro, you know:-) )

''This morning, as I walked along Penny Lane, listening to Penny Lane on my discman, Penny Lane was in my ears and in my eyes. And for a few minutes, when the sun was shining, there I was, beneath the blue suburban skies.''
And so I looked at the pictures…felt like I was the one who’d been to Liverpool…
''Impressions.... they creep in, unnoticed, unannounced. They make us what we are; they make us believe what we believe. Perhaps it is only for the best.''

''I have always wanted to experience frenzied pleasure, one that inspires you, fills you with a million words for the while that it lasts. Like violets. Electricity. Caramel. Champagne. Free fall. Dizzy.''
And so when we were having this lovely time together…us and them… and the bulb decided to blow a fuse, I decided to replace the bulb with a custom made lamp shade, with a 15 Watt Bulb (As Rincewind told me, candles are distracting…such a beautiful blue flame…always the last to go out) so that it looked prettier…(Yeah, we care for ambience…sure we do…us philistines)
''I have one-second images flashing before my eyes, which I observe and ignore at will. They are enough to trigger a million memories, which lead to a million more. And when I get sick of thinking, I switch to playing songs inside my head.''

So this is it…the end of a tribute. I will now raise a toast to the blogs I’ve known…(spoon tapping glass) to the people who have been reading my rants and commenting on them, to those who still read them, to some of them who don’t, to those who do but don’t comment, to those who are reading them now, to quotes, to seasons, to enthusiasm, to mutual back thumps, to dedications, to acquaintances, to friends, to brothers, to love, to life, to death, to pleasure, to time…to happiness being a warm gun…

''That’s the thing about beauty. Sometimes it just rushes at you with so much force that you don’t even have time for thought. You just let it fill you up and suddenly there is no room for anything else.''

2005-03-21T23:27:00.000-08:00

Some posts are best written on the other side of 21st March 2005. In the month LONG, excruciatingly painful process of writing exams that were pretty okay, if not bursting with brilliance and breezy scores, there have, of course been innumerable instances when thoughts could have been cogitated and some others when the areas of ‘physical’ or mathematical woes could have been cautiously treaded on. But, fortunately the author of this blog firmly believes in establishing the fact that the 12th std Board Exams for the academic year 2004-05 are things of the past and on no account, can any queries/solicitude regarding the aforementioned issue expect any thing but a severe shake of the head and a hard, long frosty nosed stare.

As you may have observed, most of my posts over the last year have been written after a couple of academic pursuits and about the celebrations that followed. It is but natural for me to thus, embark on this journey by presenting a narrative of the course of events that followed 6:30 P.M on the 21st. After taking down a small list of some of the books that I should read with recommendations from my dear grinning Mephistopheles, my foremost desire was to go and park myself in Select but on discovering that it closed at 6, Blossoms it had to be. I rummaged around for a blissful two hours there and then met my dad who suggested we take packed dinner home. It was, an enjoyable day to say the least.

It’s a great feeling – having to do nothing at all unless I want to (Woo Hoo for Shamanth). I think, that there is nothing but concrete, satisfactory, heart rendering joy involved in being able to hear Joe Satriani on my lovely computer once I’ve come back from the exam hall, flung my bag in the most farthest corner of my room and am turning the pages of a somewhat ancient and dilapidated looking Catch-22 that my aunt has kindly lent to me for the 3rd time since it takes a while for blundering buffoons like me to get used to crazily out of the world writing like that. The deliciously scrumptious icing on the cake has the following ingredients:
1) A strangely pleasing knowledge that in all probability I don’t have to write a Boar-ing exam tomorrow or ever again.
2) I’m finally going to complete reading Catch-22 and have full confidence that it’ll manage to find a place amongst some of my favourites.
3) Joe Satriani is coming to Bangalore on 17th May.

Almost all the time, we tend to anticipate events and things, attaching higher happiness quotients to them than they truly deserve; But, Calvin’s dad has something to say on this subject and I heartily offer him my assent, “You know, Calvin, sometimes the anticipation of some things is more fun than the thing itself once you get it.” (Things like Knopfler, of course, are anomalies in this well-planned scheme of things).

I could have planned it all out more thoroughly, waited for the right company, the right frames, the right scenes and the right celebrations but there are things that are best done at the spur of the moment. Reading Catcher for the first time, playing Dear Prudence in my head when I was sitting in the auto that was taking me home from my exam hall with special emphasis to the lovely bass and feeling the yayy-exams-are-over-ecstasy that I once mentioned, closing my eyes while listening to Al di Meola’s Mediterranean Sundance, feeling happy for Father Stone for seeing Him in the fire balloons, discovering the book I’d been looking for in some corner of Blossoms after I’d been searching for it for about an hour, feeling sad for a dead raccoon in a modified comic strip sent to me in the form of a card ; because the one time that the beauty of any thing really hits you is undoubtedly the first time. Even going through the sequence of events again, trying to narrow down its effect to words or trying to reproduce it for the benefit of your blog isn’t the same. There are feelings, that are deeper than the written or for that matter even spoken word; provoked in you so that you can experience them in a particular way, completely only once and so I may be forgiven if I tend to be a little capricious in doing things some times.

When you bungee jump, there is this part right after the initial horrifying, ear splitting, oh-hell-my-intestines-are-finally-giving-way-to-gravity screams; when you bobble up and down and can see the sky stretched out infinitely, beneath your feet. All your screams come to this stagnant, abrupt stop and you are reduced to a overpowering silence; the sort of silence one experiences when he/she is suspended by a cord in mid air, with the sky beneath his/her feet. You see, its about clouds, losing yourself, free fall, gravity, feeling cool breezes hitting you at high velocities, room for space…. space for you.

Technically speaking, the time when I can actually sit back and view life with a Van Gogh-esque, ‘aha!’ is still a far way off. The closely spaced entrance tests, scheduled to take place stubbornly in the next two months, guarantee that I shall not get a full fledged bite of the ‘aha’. But this is now and I’m content with just the aroma.
''For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed''-Gibran

2005-02-11T22:43:00.000-08:00

A red hatter with a flair for creating literary masterpieces (No this does not count as tampering with your name so I’m forgiving myself on your behalf :-D ) and some dunderheaded echo with a slight lack of the flair (Seymour once said, “I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” If he was around I would have gone and shaken his hand and told him yeah, boy do I heartily agree or what!) succeeded in making me exuberantly delightful yesterday. The first one’s by the hatter and the second’s by the echo.

Someone give both of them a couple of awards…

1)Palestine: an allegory

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty was about to fall
Quoth the King, 'Thou errant egg!
Desist at once, lest thee break thy leg'

"How long do I my woes do hide?
My future is scrambled or fried
No hope remains, weary am I
My destiny is omlette or pie."

"Foolish egg! Cease thy perfidious chatter
Thou dost appear mad as the Hatter
An egg to the end eggness must uphold
So come on down, O round one bold!"

"No King, seek thy repast elsewhere
My shell shall break to fragments here
I leave my word to the rest of my race,
Crack, do not stew in this horrible place"

Humpty Dumpty slid from his wall
Humpty Dumpty had his great fall
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again

2)Palestine: an allegory (part II)

Humpty Dumpty lay on the ground,
Feeling fried and scrambled around.
Dispatches were sent to see if he was dead,
But, he was just a little curry-ed away in his head.

So the press lost interest, the king left him alone.
An egg with an existential crisis is bit of a bore.
All he does is create a masterpiece or two,
Taking a bath is something he would rather not do.

Well, Humpty Dumpty played the first Hobner he found,
Basketball you see is exceedingly profound.
He’s a v-i-r-t-u-o-s-o now, he learnt about life, measles and things
Since when have smiles been that easy to bring?

2005-02-09T15:50:00.001-08:00

A majority of this post, in parts if not entirely, was thought about in a Volvo bus from Bangalore to Tirupathi and in a Volvo bus from Tirupathi to Bangalore; the interval between both the above mentioned acts being a time period of about 15 hours.
15 hours in Tirupathi can be spent in a limited number of ways; I trust my readers to have the fair amount of intelligence that is required for any Indian to decipher out what it is exactly, that you do in Tirupathi. The temple as such is not, strictly speaking, a very big deal. But some things have an innumerable number of bald people in all varieties in them, the species constituting even a couple of really cute bald babies, add to that delicious prasadam, laddoos priced at Rs 25 and you have something that has a certain amount of charm to it. We were fortunate enough not to experience any sort of rush that leaves one with the distinct feeling of having been a part of a maddening stampede. I had been mentally prepared for the being -stubbornly-stationary-but-woo hoo-I’m- still -about -2 kms- away -from –where- I- should’ve- been thingy that one is subjected to when one visits and is then pushed from every angle in the temple in Tirupathi. I had also been mentally prepared for losing the game that my brother and I very cleverly devised when we were standing in the queue…yeah, okay so we had to count bald people and whoever counts more wins, but we thought of a twist…we had to count bald people with parabolic namas. My brother put his foot down when I gently mentioned to him that in all probability, he had been counting the same bald-people-with-parabolic-namas over and over. We had to put an end to our brilliant game though; partly because it was driving our mother and father mad and partly because, very honestly speaking, I don’t like losing clever, self- devised games too much. What I had not been mentally prepared for though is to have been dropped by the bus at 1 a.m along with my family outside a hotel...with GREEN TUBE LIGHTS!! Bah! It felt like a scene out of one of those ‘contemporary’, ‘bold’ Hindi movies these guys keep coming up with…you know Chandini bar, Lajaa and all that. But, it wasn’t too bad after all and it was 1 am so all we needed to do was to go to bed…and anyway they switched off them tube lights when daylight came.

Personally, I think, that a really good bus is one that confuses you to no end regarding the issue so as to whether you are on a train, a plane, a car or a bus. The bus is air conditioned, clean, has huge un-jangling windows and is costly.That being said, if you haven’t already traveled by Volvo, I strongly advise you to.

The thing about parents is that they stick together in all situations. When they have two children, one of them a 17-year-old adolescent girl who keeps going into periodic reveries and another a 12-year-old hyperactive, restlessly cranky boy, they go ahead and stick together some more which, I suspect, is one of the reasons that I found myself sitting next to the boy (along with the illustrious adjectives that I just mentioned) on the bus from B to T and from T to B. When my brother doesn’t feel like talking about his teachers (You –know- what??? U.K Singh chews paan in class!>horror filled facial expression) or about his friends (Ajay has many girl friends, giggle. I’m going to remain single all my life>solemnly and in the same breath Snitch (that’s Anirudh’s dog) has a cold) or about his new computer game CD (Carmageddon is SO COOL…it has a lot of blood in it>evil grin) then he can actually be pretty interesting. For example, we had a very scintillating discussion about people’s eyes looking scary in a dark bus…

At some point, he got really bored with me and the Telugu movie that was playing on the TV so he went off to the last seat. After just a couple of moments though, he was back, and with a sense of urgency he literally dragged me along with him to the end of the bus where he pointed at the window and said “LOO-K’’. When an order is too overpowering all you can do is obey it so I ‘’LOO-KED’’ and discovered almost immediately that, what my brother wanted me to see was a lake. This lake, like all other lakes had the world in its immediate vicinity reflected on its shimmering surface. What was so special about the reflection though was that the clear, star-lit night sky seemed to be an integral part of it. I leave it to my readers who I believe are actually aesthetics in disguise and who possess the fair amount of intelligence that is vital for a person to imagine the beauty of a lake pointed out to one by one’s brother. Now that you have imagined it I’m sure you will agree with me when I tell you that the most beautiful part about the whole thing was the fact that my brother wanted me to see it, which brings me to the very heart of the matter, so to speak.

There are times when someone tells you something and it leaves you with a stupidly sporadic grin on your face, the memory of which remains with you for your entire life. It has to be someone telling it to you though. On no account can you expect the same effect even if you get an equally satisfying one, if you read it in a book or watch it in a movie or hear it in a song. You may or may not remember what the thing accurately was, but that is not important or even remotely significant. Significance makes its majestic appearance in the fact that you’ll have stored the memory of that grin in some deep corner of your mind and can vaguely if not vividly, recall the pleasure that the thing, the person and the grin all consolidated together, gave you. I had the opportunity of being subjected to one such experience very recently and I request you to allow me to mention what it was that brought the grin to my face. I henceforth quote my Seymour-esque Doctor,
“Vision is rather over-emphasized in our world, when all the really nice things are non-visual like music, and good food, and nice textures those are the things that really last in memory.’’ The beauty of these words that I see in the most surreal, lucid way possible may not be evident to you at all but that alas, is your bad luck.

For a long period of time, the first thing that I used to do whenever there was a power cut was to take out my guitar and tune it. Only those who have played any instrument will understand how essential it is for the sounds produced by it to be in harmony with each other. A guitar that is not tuned properly is nothing but chaotic disaster. The nicest pieces of music that I have played or created are the ones that I played after I tuned my guitar in the dark. You don’t have to be an exceedingly good guitar player; I’m most definitely not. But there is something about not seeing what you are playing, because the sounds come from your heart. One of the secrets that the fox tells the little prince in the book, ‘The Little Prince’ is, “it is only with one’s heart, that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.’’

Most of the times, it’s only when I close my eyes that I notice a lot of things that I would never have noticed with my eyes open. This statement isn’t meant to be taken in the literal, obvious way that it seemingly demands to be taken in. All I’m saying, is that non-visual things leave a more deeply felt impact on me. Things like background vocals or vague riffs of a song I really like, things like wind chimes in my neighbor’s house on a windy, quiet night, things like the smell of wet mud when it rains, things like knowing that my mother’s made my favourite dish when I’m walking on my apartment’s corridor a couple of yards away from home, things like someone calling me up from an auto rickshaw on a terribly busy street, things like the laughter of the people I love …yeah, doc these are the things that really last in memory. What is essential is invisible to the eye.

2005-01-12T20:12:00.000-08:00

It’s been a hard day’s night,
And I’ve been working like a dog.
It’s been a hard day’s night,
I should be sleeping like a log.

The only sensible thing that my school has managed to do all through this term is to put the Hindi and Comp Science exams two days after Bio…which simply means that I’ve officially finished my second set of pre boards which being the nice, friendly things that all exams are, were pretty okay for a change. Exams constitute a Mobius strip I give you my word… I’ve exams from 29th again. (Sigh)… But, for once I get five days off in succession and actually don’t have to feel too guilty about not utilizing my energy for learning some godforsaken reaction or for hitting my head against the table from time to time, eventually breaking it into a gazillion small, itsy bitsy pieces over some terrible problem. All this gives me a crazily warm and satisfactory feeling and so I decide to write something and put it on my poor blog which has been moaning and grumbling, telling me that I’m a terribly cruel person to have neglected it for so long.

‘ “Well,’’ what I like best---” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.’
I suppose beginnings are always filled with optimism. Everything has such an excitement to it. It’s like people…my dad went to this get together of his college friends, people that were a part of his life some twenty five years ago, people that are now, just tiny fragments of his old memories that in themselves are outdated and rusted. Maybe they had a get together to talk about old times and all that…maybe they wanted to feel like their pasts are still a part of them. When he got back, I asked my father about it and with this look in his eyes that I will never forget all my life, a look that lasted only for a fleeting moment, a look I’ve never seen in those calm, patient, stable eyes; he told me that he had been terribly bored.
And the next moment things were back to normal and he was telling me about his friends in general without any regret whatsoever.

Everything that seems so perfect in the beginning slowly loses its charm, as you get too accustomed…too used to the way things are. Maybe it’s better that way…what if you got too accustomed and then had to get unaccustomed suddenly...that would be infinite times worse. But everything is in balance and we remember…we remember things that have happened and we’ve memories…and once in a while when we may want to revive those memories, things won’t quite work out the way we planned it which is why we try our hardest to live for the moment and all that jazz…we pick out the choicest incidents from our past and think about them once in a while, think about the songs we used to listen to, the books that we’ve read and feel happy or sad about them…that’s just the way it is and most of the times it’s okay with me.

They used to air the video of Enigma’s return to innocence on MTV a lot when I was a kid. I used to love it…especially the unicorn and the baby. I never tried hearing the words...never tried to understand… just listen to the music and wait with bated breath for the unicorn and the baby to appear and then feel happy about it.
‘Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that’s impossible, but it’s too bad anyway.’-Salinger. We keep going back…we keep thinking about people we’ve known, schools we’ve studied in, feelings we’ve felt, places we’ve visited…we keep looking…and now I’ve heard the words and am posting them on my goddamn blog like the words of some arbit song matter more than the unicorn and the baby.

‘If you want, then start to laugh.
If you must then start to cry,
Yourself don’t hide,
Just believe in destiny.
Don’t care what people say,
Just follow your own way
Don’t give up and lose the chance
To return to innocence.’
–Enigma.

There are so many vague, abstract, lifeless thoughts in my head…it takes a book or some other written material to form an organized mass out of the cluttered pieces and bring them to life. I try not to go around feeling bad about it though. The fact that my thoughts don’t remain that cluttered anymore fills me with deep gratitude.

What I love about certain books, is that they manage to make you love them when you read them for the first time, manage to make you love them when you read them for the second, third and fourth time…and after a while when you quit reading them completely…they’ve managed to give you so much pleasure that all you can do is to continue loving them.
I suppose there are many books that come under this category …one of them being this beautiful thing called The House at Pooh Corner by A.A Milne.
I’ll tell you the sort of book it is. It’s the sort of book, which you’ll find lying by itself in your room, when you’ll be studying for your Physics exam or doing something that has the same amount of maddening dryness in it and suddenly you’ll feel like picking it up and read just this small part of it…take a break from mugging and all that…and in no time at all you’ll find that your closing the book with this tenderness after of course reading it completely.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.’’- Holden Caulfield.I concur, but I wish I could call up Pooh, talk to Piglet, Roo, Christopher Robin and then maybe after I’ve finished talking with them I might ask for A.A Milne just for a little while on account of telling him how much I admired him and how thankful I was because he existed and all that. There are these times when all I want to do is to go around
thanking some people for their existence. Never make stuff like that known though…you’ll end up not being so thankful in a while.

I think I’m going to end this goddamn thing now. I kinda wasn’t thinking about stuff when I was writing it…or maybe I was thinking about them too much…that always kills things…too much thought. It’s like writing the right answer to a question in your exam and finishing the paper real early, and then you look around at everyone writing diligently, look outside the window, look at the sunlight seeping in through the branches of the tree right outside the window and something makes you cross the answer out and write some other crap as a replacement…things go wrong way too easily.

Everybody seems to think I’m lazy,
I don’t care I think they are crazy.
Running everywhere at such a speed,
Till they find there’s no need.
-The Beatles

Honestly, I’m not gloomy or cynical about life in general…its all about passing moments…everything’s good fun really…happiness is a warm gun.

“Pooh,” said Christopher Robin earnestly, “if I- if I’m not quite--’’he stopped and tried again---“Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won’t you?’’
“Understand what?”
“Oh, nothing.” He laughed and jumped to his feet.
“Come on!”
“Where?” said Pooh.“Anywhere,” said Christopher Robin.

2004-12-11T01:57:00.000-08:00

They’ve destroyed the park outside. The curtains are drawn, my window is closed and the park lies in ruins with the ghosts of the past, of a past that was full of children and their carefree, fun filled pursuits floating in the deadbeat, decaying, dusty atmosphere surrounding it. I’ve spent a large part of the last two years living a part of those children’s lives; cursing them half heartedly during exams, letting my gaze shift from time to time to the beautiful manifestations of innocence outside my window...running to the balcony to see if I can have a momentary conversation with just one of them…they break your hearts, these kids. You try talking to them and they’ll run away, and if they actually do talk to you some point of time…they just break your heart once again. Only this time it’s more like killing you in a real nice way. The Salinger way. That’s how beautifully symmetrical it is. They tell me that it shall be built again, other side of the hedge…other side of the apartment…but, it won’t be the same…it won’t be ‘the children outside my window’ anymore.

My first ever pre boards finished a couple of days back. As far as first pre boards go, they were fairly decent and that is all I shall say about them. Like Keerthi’s maxim states, write exams so that they can get over. Suddenly March seems just a few days away and people at school have generally started getting senti. The thing about Kendriya Vidyalayas is that everyone is from defense or ex defense background so, the maximum time that anyone would’ve been in a school is probably 4 years. But, exceptions arise in all cases and my school justifies that to the fullest. I’m probably the only one who’s been here for a miniscule 4 years. The others have been here since 1st standard, before which their siblings have been here since first standard and blah. Its been nice to see K.V’s developing and all though. For an education that is almost free, I think they serve us quite well. Its like everyone’s stuck in this major time warp, right out of a Spidey comic.

Everything involves a lot of paperwork, people don’t know that there are streams other than Science, they hand out these forms for parent teacher meetings and stuff that look like they would’ve been better off in an art gallery, all you’ve to do is to win a competition, any competition once and you can rest assured that they’ll send you for anything that is even remotely competitive for the rest of your school life, people distribute chocolates on their birthday, no fundoo lunches at some pseud place or anything…I guess stuff of this caliber. It’s kinda nice though. The simplicity of the people here can give you a goddamn heart attack sometimes while on the other hand, there are people who try to be ‘cool’..that can pretty much kill you too. But, everything said and done…it’s a nice place to be in. The nicest part is that people can be about a gazillion times different from you and you’ll still manage to have some of the nicest conversations with them. This one day, three of my teachers decided to take an off from school so in the two hours that we were free, my friends and talked about acads, current affairs, the U.S of A, regional movies, ghosts, death and finally when the school bell rang (it’s this rusted, ancient, railway track piece that the peon ‘rings’ atleast 6 minutes late periodically) we had just finished discussing God.

It was moi janamdin day before yesterday. Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my recently ‘electrostated’ head and precisely at that moment my folks sprung one of the greatest surprises in the history of all my birthdays by gifting me a splendid Digicam. An hour in the evening was spent in Blossoms. I must’ve spent half of my time trying to coax my brother into buying Tinkles, Amar Chitra Kathas and Marvels, who in turn spent half of his time trying to coax my mother (who if given a chance would’ve spent all her time in coaxing my father to please for heaven’s (and hard earned dough’s) sake to get the kids out of the place but unfortunately for her, he was going to join us only for the exquisite Chinese dinner that we later had), so all the coaxing wasn’t in vain because we generally ended up bringing at least 50 comics home.

Perfect days must have perfect endings and all you have to do to achieve that is to go home, lay out the three books and 50 comics that you bought from Blossoms on your bed and survey them with a motherly, affection filled look. Then, you must switch on your recently purchased 730i Pentium 4 computer, rush to ‘my documents’, open the file that says ‘salinger, j d- the uncollected works (22 ss)’ and read a story called ‘A Boy in France’. After you read the story once, then re read a coupla parts that you thought were amazingly swell; you must close your eyes and pray to God, telling him to please never let that plane crash.

2004-11-11T10:54:00.000-08:00

I don't like being disturbed when I'm sleeping. That is probably one of the reasons why I don't care too much for alarm clocks... and so, I usually ask my brother to wake me up at a particular time if I want to sleep in the afternoon or something. Extremely tragic, how he takes undue advantage of the situation. If I ask him to wake me up at 5, he starts by about 4:30 (and tells me later that everything needs warm up practice)Now, his method doesn't involve sweet words of encouragement or anything of that sort....what it does involve though is a series of karate stunts...moron recently got orange belt too!!!!!!!!! And before I can even open my mouth to reprimand my brother, my mother sides up with him and starts handing out generous amounts of the oh-you lazy, UNGRATEFUL, alarm clock disliking ,useless, bum thingy....But, anyway for some strange reason it always ends with all three of us in hysterics so I don't really complain too much.

There is something that is mildly disturbing about alarm clocks. Somehow, at precisely 4.00,yesterday morning, (joint exploits by rest of parivaar to bring about ruin of Sneha's sleep probably...) I found myself waking up to five different alarm tones, piercing into the almost deathly, pre 4:30 a.m slience. The fact that I'd read Animal Farm the previous night didn't help too much because as far as I can recollect, the alarm clocks had only disrupted a very complicated pattern of dreams in which pigs with green ribbons on their tails kept asking very fierce looking dogs to kill horses who said 'I will work harder' and the sheep stood by screaming ''four legs good, two legs better''.....so, when the clocks called, I found myself with eyes wide open, sitting upright on my bed, wondering whether I was still asleep; when the one year old kid on the first floor decided to intensify things by letting out a ear splitting wail...(I remember, very vaguely saying something about alarm clocks being mildly disturbing....well one year old kids who wail their heads off at 4 in the morning give them a fair competition!)

It is diwali for us tams today . What we do very early in the morning is.....to take a bath. It is called ''Ganga snanam'' and isn't too much of a pain except for the fact that we have to get up real early and apply a gooey oil on our bodies and then take a bath. Then, we flaunt around in new clothes with remains of the gooey-ness on our faces and generally sit around doing nothing. Basically, good fun this whole diwali thing. Every year I very resolutedly plan not to burst crackers ....think about the child labour, think about the noise and other such ramblings I tell myself but somehow apartment people always put too much enthu and I give in. This year I'ven't burst any crackers yet and have as always resolutedly planned not to.

My dad has this very eccentric type cousin. I love going to his place. His whole family's a bunch of weirdos ....but then he beats them all to it. We don't visit them too often but being diwali and all we went and jamaofied kabza there all morning. Their house is this very beautiful thing ....its ancestral and some haJaar years old and all that. It is very ethnic and stuff if you know what I mean. They've all these real nice sculptures and paintings and stuff like that. My uncle's some kind of a collector....he keeps going all over the world and brings back things. So his house is full of interesting stuff. If you go the right hand corner of the space immediately beside the staircase to the first floor of their house you would find yourself surrounded by exactly four huge tanks. Three of them have different kinds of fish in them and the fourth one has three turtles. I never used to like fish too much .I used to think they are too gluggy and scaly types but uncle put too much enthu and now I think they are alright. The next room is full of DVDs and CDs and cassettes with a gramaphone and a moterbike shaped telephone at one end of the room. The best part though is definitely the books. I brought back this real big Asterix book with 6 comics in it and all,home and have been at peace with the world ever since.

As some kind of a climax, my cousin, Shalini and her folks (there you go..your promised moment of glory, Shalu :-)) came home in the evening. We went to the terrace and sat around watching all the sparks in the sky talking of life, the universe and everything...laughing our heads of at things that were funny and some that weren't. For those of you who don't know my cousin....she's one of the few people that's closest to my heart....you know the kinds I can be silent with and it wouldn't get even trifle awkward...

As my dad, mum and I (bro went off to cousins' place) walked back from the gate after saying goodbye to cousin and her folks...my dad and I discussing some cheesy MTV fully faltoo thing and cracking ourselves up for no apparent reason....as I came back to my room and saw Asterix, the Beatles Anthology and my Chemistry text book lying on my table... and as I realize what a nice, casual, chuck acads and everything else, look-outside-car-window day it has been I feel....well...as though ''I was only waiting for this moment to arise''.

2004-10-21T08:17:00.000-07:00

I'm not even in one of my contemplative moods or anything. I reckon it is one of those days when you suddenly feel like swearing away to glory for no particular reason ; without meaning to cause any harm whatsoever. I mean the kind of mood I'm in, the next thing I'll probably be doing is telling my mother to 'fetch me a goddamn glass of water'.

Last Sunday, I went with my parents to the railway station to see off my brother and grandfather who were going to Rajasthan to my uncle's place. My aunt was going with them too and so, her folks, which consisted of her husband and her daughters came along as well. I was perfectly happy for my brother since he was going and all ( I even helped him pack!) but ah well, such things don't last too long and the stale, mixed smells of a typical railway station have this manner of agitating the traveling instincts in you. Well, whatever be the origins of sadism , point is I was suddenly thinking about why the hell my brother wasn't in 12th std or better still...why I wasn't in the 7th std. But then such things don't last for too long either so my cousins and I thought 'peace' and spent our time, looking wistfully, at the various assortments of food that some hazaar vendors were selling all over the place. Not that train food is even a micro centimeter close to being edible but then it is train food and trains are beautiful. Especially if they are taking your brother to Rajasthan and you can't go.

The thing with having a big, no... prodigious family is that we cant' even go to the next street without tripping on a couple of our relatives. I mean I'll probably decide to go to some arbit village, south of Congo, one day and find my great uncle's daughter's niece waiting for me at the goddamn airport. And when we aren't doing that; tripping on a couple of our relatives that is, we are probably attending a wedding. Meaningless jabber this...I don't even have anything against having a gazillion relatives...atleast not now ..when none of them are visiting us in our house, when I'm not visiting any of them in their house and more importantly when I'm not attending any damned wedding.

I saw this movie called Amelie some time back. It was in French and had subtitles and everything. When I was younger, I could somehow never imagine the whole subtitle movie concept thing. It confused the shit out of me, how you were supposed to shift your eyes from scene to scene, absorb what was going on, read the subtitles and still have your two eyes and your tiny brain intact when the movie was over. But then subtitles aren't the end of the world; and I generally found myself getting used to the idea. One of those things you get used to without actually meaning to I guess.

Only, you can't afford to think about the whole thing more than just that slight amount of thought that almost everything is entitled to, especially movies. The reason I'm saying this is that there is this part in the movie when Amelie finds a box belonging to someone who had lived in her apartment a very long time back. Just then, she has this absolutely perfect look in her eyes. I mean I don't even know how the hell she managed a look as perfect as that and suddenly I was thinking about the number of goddamn retakes, the director must have taken just to get it right and it somehow killed me.

Anyway, that's not the point I was trying to get across. What I actually wanted to say was that the movie is one of those nice, beautiful things that brings light into our otherwise mundane lives...like Salinger...like blackbird by the Beatles...like deer outside Siddhartha's window...like the reflection of a tube light outside your room in a puddle of rainwater... like the feather in Forrest Gump...like the polythene bag in American Beauty...like the memories of a childhood that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland manages to reawaken in you.

In the distant background, The Doors tell me to 'break on through to the other side'.

2004-09-26T01:58:00.000-07:00

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.

2004-09-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

I broke the 'G' string of my guitar yesterday. Eventually, I'll go to the shop and buy a brand new set of strings, hoping that in the distant future some other string might break; to avoid the curious eye popping stares from the old sardarji in 'Premsons' who refuses to believe that my 'E' string never breaks, if nothing else. I've three other sets of strings consisting of all except the good old 'G' string. Right!Chuck it all... I'm not making too much sense anyway... am I?

I attended a fundoo movie quiz conducted by K.Q.A last Sunday. Attended a quiz after AGES. I went with my dad and grandpa( who was extremely pleased when we wrote 'Sneha, her dad and his dad' in the names of the team members thingy!) The quiz, was, as already mentioned, majorly fundoo. Questions about movies dating from time immemorial were asked and since moi knowledge in these things is still strictly in the basic stages, it didn't come as too much of a surprise to my dad when I spent half the time staring at the ceiling fan, taking in the junta and the likes. But all that being said, my dad and I both managed to collect some interesting trivia. So, Sunday morning was spent pretty constructively.

I kinda liked the entire atmosphere. The crowd consisted of a variety of people most of which looked like general engineering junta, 'smells like teen spirit' in the background, a couple of blokes were reading books and all that sort of thing. Some of the team names are worth a mention. People called themselves 'we are like this only', 'we will, we will rock you?'(note interrogatory tone!),'three weddings and a...punal?'(thats the threading ceremony in most of the parts down South) and other such brilliantly jhakkas names; trifle confusing for quiz master 'Madhav Nair' (who I thought did a pretty good job!) who had to call them out when they made it to the finals.

As a part of the teacher's day 'celebrations' in my school, us 12thies have to wear sarees and blazers and crappy stuff like that...which is why at precisely 4 pm yesterday evening, I found myself standing in a crowded...no, thats understating it...OVERCROWDED BMTC bus with my dear mum, going to stitch a blouse for yours sincerely (ahem! And quit smirking ya morons!)

A bus journey is an excruciating ordeal to say the least! It all starts with you standing in the middle of the road, waving your hands frantically in about 42(!) different directions so as to catch the driver's attention. This is an epitome to sending a very sweet invitation to Death, with best wishes and all! Mission accomplished, bus stops and you are just trying to make a very pronounced appearance in the bus when voila, the rest of your fellow passengers make sure you are already inside ! Enter bus, STREAM of Kannada (obscenities?) greets you RIGHT IN YOUR FACE!For people like me with limited control over the language it gets trifle complex to decipher out what in the devil's ass those sweet, happy, sunshine people are actually saying so I decide to give it a miss and move on. I caught sight of a couple of mothers who were actually carrying full grown 8 year olds just so they would get a goddamn seat!! By the end of the one hour that I was in hell, I was smelling of about 50 different mixtures of sweat, oil and what not. Initial purpose forgotten, all my mum and I wanted to do was ro get down and yeah! Even walking the rest of the distance would do.
Alright, I find myself running out of things to say which is why I'll let you in on a final, major secret. For those of you who don't already know...the Beatles RULE!Until next time, 'my guitar gently weeps'.

2004-08-27T00:43:00.000-07:00

We haven't had a 'bai' for almost two months now. Consequentially, my parivar goes into spring/winter/summer-cleaning mode on every damn holiday. I usually manage to escape, mumbling something about a non existent test or making a 'oh my life is so miserable and I've to study all the time'(ahem!) comment. But I just finished a series of tests; so when I was sitting in my room today, deciding after a 2 nanosecond pause that comics, joblessness and music automatically gained more priority than my Chemistry homework, feeling EXTREMELY pleased with myself for being able to evade chores on educational grounds, in walks my dad thrusting a cloth and that idiotic Collin spray in my hands giving a ''do it now, Cinderella or I'll chuck you out of my house'' look, and hence, I knew instantly what the Indian hockey team must have felt when Pakistan beat them 3-0! So yours truly has just been cleaning the refrigerator.

My dad has absolutely NO qualms about cleaning any thing! He cleans the bathroom with as much ease as I might brush my teeth with my eyes closed at the break of dawn and his exploits are absolutely fine with me. I'm ready to even stand around giving him the symbolic thumbs up and all the moral support that he might require! BUT MY dear parent expects me to follow in his footsteps and THAT is when, dear readers I draw the Lakshman rekha. Today for example when I politely asked my dad to remove all the junk on the refrigerator which included medicines, fevistick, a bottle of hajmola and a hazaar other assorted stuff covered with an inch thick layer of dust , so all I would then have to do was just give it a superficial swish with the previously mentioned cloth, he said,''thats like shitting and then asking me to clean your arse'' I mean to say how tough can you get with a kid...your OWN kid? I couldn't even think of a smart ass reply to that!!

We, that is tams, celebrate something called' varalakshmi puja' today. I know precisely nothing about it except that my mum ties some sort of a yellow thread on my hand, my dad gives me a hundred bucks and we all hover around like a pack of wolves, waiting for our share of the yummy delicacies that my mum makes. I guess perspectives change so often that you tend to lose track. I never gave festivals, religion and the likes too much thought (still don't as a matter of fact!) That is purely my mum's department. But, honestly it is kinda nice in a very weird way, to get all traditional once in a while. By getting traditional I don't mean that we dawn on dhotis and ''pawadais''(I reckon that is like a modified version of a ghagra, just in case you don't know) and that sort of a thing. What I do mean is that festivals give you an ample opportunity to catch up with your immediate family and all, and that includes even cleaning bathrooms! Ah! my mum would be pleased if she heard me talking like this! Come to think of it, it is probably all that food. .smart mommy!( I must be pretty influential)

Alright! enough bakar for now ! I'll run along then, go do some strumming and think about ''life, the universe and everything''!

2004-07-31T22:15:00.000-07:00

The thing with maintaining a blog is that half the time I end up writing because I'm tired of seeing the same starting line of the last entry everytime I visit MY blog (to check out what MY written material looks on screen and all that sort of a thing).I was just lying around on my bed thinking deeply about how the week had gone, thinking... about the HORRIBLE organic chemistry test that I wrote today, wondering if I could have humanly screwed it up any more(sigh!). Can't really blame me though. The whole week is spent in keeping up with school or writing records or something so...where is the time to study for a test? And the reason gains even more justification when the subject for the test is organic chemistry!

My tuition batch consists of roughly about 26 students. Young, zealous, waiting to be moulded, desperate to learn more... are some of the characteristics that you might link with a bunch of 16,17 (18??) year olds. Well, look at it optimistically(as my dad would say) . You might have been even further away from the truth. Except for the young part, the other parts are pure elephant's shit.Zealous be damned and desperate to learn? YE GODS! I've never seen a more disinterested bunch of gargoyles.For example, today for the test; only half the class turned up;and out of the half that did turn up 5 people gave up on the one and a half hour test after about ahem.. 20 minutes. And mind you this is a drastic improvement; back in April it used to be 10 minutes and believe me I'm (for once) NOT exaggerating. Not that they are dumb or anything...just plain disinterested and I hate it when I've to sit for 3 hours in the sort of environment where everyone looks like hey its Buffy the vampire slayer time and look its the return of the decaying zombies!!The chemistry teacher obviously doesnt offer big time contribution since, as a bonus, I also get to hear her drawl on forever about the preparation of RDX!!( I mean to say RDX,the explosive)what the hell were those CBSE dudes and dudettes thinking anyway? Anyone would think that they wanted India to be full of terrorists or kidnappers(yeh, we did cholroform too) .

I know what you are thinking (you= general junta)..you are thinking get a life ya moron! If you don't have anything to write about then say it straight! But alas! the numerous history papers that I've written in my previous years of err ''education'' make sure that I say anything 'if and only if' I've about a gazillion ways of beating around the bush and then slowly, gradually WHEN the need arises, make half hearted attempts to get to the point! The fact is, that my life currently revolves (or apparently revolves) around academics; so bear with moi woes, fellow earthlings is all I can say.

Anyway you can let the fresh air in now; I just caught sight of the Floyd-Relics album on my table. The music has a slight weirdness to it but then it is Floyd and whats more, its brilliant!There is this song called 'remember a day' that is currently on my hitlist.

Climb your favorite apple tree
Try to catch the sun
Hide from your little brother's gun
Dream yourself away
-Floyd.

2004-07-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

There is a definite increase in the entropy of my room. The main cause might ofcourse be the ''recent'' (they finished today!) set of tests that I had . The whole week, needless to say has been about a series of equations, reactions, derivations, weird mechanisms involving a salamander's and cockroach's nutrition intake and digestive system respectively. It has ofcourse, also been about my classmates and I endlessly ranting about how 'we wished we could lay our hands on that idiot Gauss who couldnt mind his own business and had to go around making laws about electric flux; and that moron who invented integration' and blah blah but then, thats really pretty normal; I can't, technically speaking call it exam paranoia. What I infer about 12th std till now is that the major thing for you to do is to write tests.Class tests, cumulative tests, tuition tests, unit tests...you would think they would atleast run out of names or something but they just keep experiencing brilliance and when they run out of suitable prefixes for 'tests' they just replace the word tests with exams and voila my life is about 50 times more miserable!!

So obviously my room is in a complete state of chaos. All the people I know (for eg:relatives, friends blah) have this tendency of giving me their old books right after they are done with their academic year. They tell me that they have only ''my best interests at heart'' but I KNOW BETTER there's no room for thrash in my room, you dope; so you take it! is what they are really thinking.

I've been listening to the beatles and stuff and honestly some of their stuff's really good! I mean half the time people are just discrediting them because they are supposed to be like the jhang jhang types and not the pukka fundoo rock that is ''in'' these days. But its like real nice and acoustic; atleast some of their stuff is and hell they've about a gazillion albums! If all of them turned out right I would probably get scared and chuck listening to them!The best part is that my dads always liked them and all so I would've heard most of the tapes that I'm listening to (voluntarily) now. I love it when stuff like that happens, like you think that you are going to listen to a song for the first time but you find that you already know the words and the tune and stuff and its even better if you end up liking the music! Currently theres this song called blackbird on. Here are some of the words:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.
Blackbird fly
Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Ah how could I forget; I still havent come to the sob story part!( general message: that means that the parts till now dont categorize as sob storyish. Right ho! just making things a little clear for the uninitiated). Those cable tv maddy geese have gone on some strike or something so no cable tv and to think I had been nurturing hopes of seeing atleast the news( talking about desperation, I wonder how my friends from school manage...they have only dd1 now that would classify as UNDILUTED TORTURE!!) on my two-week-something old tv which I haven't experienced whole heartedly yet.
The phone's dead as well. The only thing that is left is the power supply but then it had its share of (F*****) cuts all through my goddamn tests.

All this activation of unused energy has made me hungry so I'll go now...sit around listen to the beatles and go speak sweet words to my mum so she'll fix me a snack.

2004-06-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

Okay! So it has been PRETTY long since I last updated this thing. And no, my life hasn’t got down in the doldrums or become terribly boring or anything of the sort. It is just that I haven’t been able to find the time to sit down and actually WRITE something and of course there is also the possibility that I have gotten as lazy as I could get in recent times but ah well, why look at the demoralizing side effects of summer vacations.
I for one am in awe of holidays. They are in a world of their own. They STAND out. Days of complete leisure, a slow uptake on everything that comes your way and other things of this caliber are what holidays are all about. Trust me to see the bright side of the whole thing two days before school reopens. Last week I was probably cribbing about how there was ABSOLUTELY nothing to do. But now, with the prospect of school being 48 hours away, the trees outside suddenly seem like objects in paradise.
I might have not minded going back to school and everything. You always get used to stuff like that (thank god for small mercies). But OBVIOUSLY there IS a catch. Right on the reopening day, starting from the English teacher to the principal, everyone is generously handing out these HUMUNGOUS lectures about how we should be completely refreshed after a 50 day break and get ready to hit the books. And of course they also announce the last year board exam results ‘officially’. And it just isn’t my cup of tea to hear about how people blissfully got a freaking 97.999% in class 12th especially because, after hearing about a living example; the whole thing suddenly doesn’t seem too impossible to my parents and the rest of the ‘oh we are your well wishers’ gang and everyone is trying (tactfully) to tell me that I’m supposed to get a score that is something like that even if it is not accurately that. And of course they will NEVER say it straight to my face. They’ll say something like ‘do us proud’ and then I find myself just stuck there.

The power’s been gone since yesterday evening. It is strange really, just a while back I was thinking if I’ll be able to manage without technology and the likes. Well! That is a pretty quick reply I must say. Who the heck except the ghost of Darwin cares about survival of the fittest anyway? I WANT FAN!

I’ve been reading ‘Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance’ that is to say fitting it between meals and blah. It has been a pretty decent book till now; has some interesting pointers and everything. Otherwise I’m ‘reading’ R.D Sharma- Math for higher secondary; application of derivatives; we even have a test on that today. Constructive way to spend study time, writing about power cuts and so on I must say. Ah well.
Okay! It is time to read the omens again. The power’s back, Led Zeppelin’s on in the music system, I have had a good breakfast and reluctantly if I may say so, it is time to apply differentiation.

2004-05-31T09:55:00.000-07:00

31/05/04
It is not like I’ve anything against rains. In fact, rains are quite nice; but that is mostly when you are sitting by the window in the warmth of your house, with a good book to read. What I don’t fancy, is the idea of getting stuck, after 3 hours of grueling tuitions in the middle of a busy road when the auto driver asks my friend and me to please get out since he couldn’t possibly go any further. We spent the next 20 minutes walking in knee deep ‘water’ (God knows what else we must have stepped in). The market that we were walking in was definitely amazing. And the jerks that were standing outside shops jeering at all the vehicles that got stuck in the slush and laughing their what not off at poor, troubled people like my friend and me were even more amazing. But some of the people were really concerned. There were people who were actually standing outside their houses to warn pedestrians so that they wouldn’t fall in the drain. I then had to call my dad up to come and pick us up. We had to wait for another hour IN THE RAIN till my dad arrived like a saint who performed kind acts for those who weren’t too privileged or whatever. Anyway I reckon it is going to be pretty wet and ‘ichak pichak’ for a while. So everyone might as well get used to it.