Camphor's

Switches

2007-02-01T06:46:00.000-08:00

Edit: http://camphor.wordpress.com/

^.^

I'm there now.

Anchor

2006-03-23T04:35:00.000-08:00

It is my security blanket, my safety net, my strength. Like an anchor, it holds me and binds me to one place. Restless pacing aside, I cannot move. The length of the room is the further est I can let myself go before the anticipation of its coming, and the despair at missing it, calls me back.
Eventually, over the days, I learn one simple fact. It does not come when I want it to; it comes when I least expect it. I learn to sit with serenity, and eventually to do other things in the time that I wait. I read, I work. I think, I dream. I live, it is true, because living does not stop even when one does not live that life to the fullest. I talk, I laugh, I cry. But always, amidst all chaos that surrounds me and the whirlpool that tries to pull my attention away, one corner of my mind and heart – even my soul – are keyed to that corner, that anchor.

I linger, knowing that the moment it comes, my heart will take a wild leap of joy, and I will go to receive it with more energy and enthusiasm than I have for anything else in my day … or night.

So I wait.

As time drags on, and there is no sign of it, I must admit my tolerance fades and patience grows thin. Yet I wait, patiently or impatiently, for it does not care. What does it wait for? It will humble me, and then it will come. Or will it?

I run full tilt towards it, this fixed point of my life, as my patience pays off.

The phone is ringing.

~*~*~*~

It's one of those days...

2006-03-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

It's one of those days, you know?

When you feel nothing can go wrong.

When you do have one of those missteps, you shrug it aside lightly as a lesson learntand not a failure met. When you can't put a foot down wrong, and when you do, it's exploring new grond. When you feel confident that the world is your oyster, it was made for you, to be, to live, to take, to give.

It's one of those days that you should aknowledge that you are in love. Yes, I do love you.

It's one of those days when no difficulty is too hard to take because it isn't a difficulty at all. When you can't get a 'no' for answer, the world is so positive and you see the good in the not so pleasant.

When you are happy with whom you are, where you are. At peace, but your desire to acheive is not submerged. Your will to live makes itself heard, and you are confortable with dealing with it. When you are ready to cope with - nay, ride through - every step of this glorious journey someone called life, and you are too busy living to call anything.

It's one of those days when you are totally confident, your steps are an inch off the ground, and not all the world telling you to "come back to earth" can convince you to. :)

It's a day of acceptance. Of catharsis, the purging long done.

It's one of those days that you're grateful to be alive.

It's one of those days you want to share with everyone, because they do not smile enough, and you have smiles to spare.

When you can write a sappy post, believe it, and not cringe to accept that you felt that way.

When you wish that life could be like this forever, even though you know it won't be, and that it is precisely because this is so rare that it is so precious.

When you realise the true meaning of 'empowerment'.

It's one of those says when you feel limitless. When action and peace are not at loggerheards with each other, when anything, but anything is possible.

It's one of those days that your eyes shine and your soul speaks, and people wonder what it is that you have and they don't. And no, the answer is not Rupa underthings. ;)

When you feel alive.

When your thoughts and emotions are not in conflict. When you leave fear (of what, anyway?) behind, and walk in the middle of the road, really, exactly where you want to. When every new sensation is a delightful puzzle to resolve and a peice of the jigsaw that is coming together with no trouble at all.

It's the sort of day that the fruits of your labours show up, land in your lap, and feel like undeserved honours and pleasures until you realise that that you've earned every second of it.

When if you ask questions, you'll find the answers. When treasure trails have the treasure waiting, but you have a gala time looking anyway.

When you feel complete, and fulfilled, and when the people in your life are not perfect, but just perfect as they are. When it's ok to be exactly as you are.

It's one of those days that the scratchy tip of the ink pen settles down to a smooth flow and a three page write up has not a single scratch out in it.

It's that sort of a day, you know?

And there then there was light...

2006-03-10T08:12:00.000-08:00

There was a disgusting school - or junior college on the way to the best bakery in the City. They had avoided it for months now, but Shema was allergic to eggs, and the only decent eggless cakes were in that bakery. They'd put their heads together and come to the conclusion, after much mulling over the pros and cons, that someone had to go order the cake. They found dates when at least three of them were free and made their way to the Bakery as rapidly as they could. Placed the order. Unanimously – and silently - decided to forget the message on the cake, just get it blank. Didn’t want one of their names said out loud – just in case. Ignored the stares from the small group of boys-men who were smoking just outside the sparkling glass front of the bakery. Left as soon as they could.
Luckily, only one of them understood the local language, and she refused to translate. As it happened, her ears had turned red with embarrasment and her eyes were flashing anger. But she only urged her freinds - lets leave a little more quickly. The others understood. One did not need to understand what was being said to know the general drift of it. Anyone could recognise the ugly tones of what people were content to call 'eve-teasing'.

What a simple, almost harmless name for such a terrible thing to do. I would not claim that I am scarred for life, but those incidents do leave me feeling - ugly. Greasy. Anything to get the feel of those eyes and those words off...

But back to the 'story':

However, they forgot that someone would have to go pick up the cake. It had to be cut, hadn't it? And on that day, there was only one person free. She resolved, nobly, that she would do the job. It was fair, after all, and besides, what could happen? She finished lab - being a normal college student, after all - and felt unusally jittery. It was just a cake! She considered calling a couple of guy-friends for backup. She checked her clothes, found the jeans and t-shirt that were normal for college far too 'dangerous' for the job at hand, and went back to the hostel and changed into the loosest set of clothes she could find. Salwar Kameez too. She did her darnest to hide the streaks in her hair, all the while frantically SMSing her friends, hoping someone, anyone was free. There wasn't. She bit her lip and decided to bust a solid 80 bucks extra on taking an auto for those 120 meters of the city.

Her luck, the autos were nowhere to be found. Worse, the school wall was lined with blue-and-navy-blue wearing hooligans for whom (unfortunately) school had just let out. She hadn't prayed for her last exams (no joke) btu she prayed now, but for what, she wasn't quite sure. Please, God, let nothing happen. Her normally lesiure stride was short and rapid, and her bag was clutched into fisted hands. She all but ran to the Bakery.

She did survive. Nothing - much - happened. She did not know what was being said, but she knew what it was being said about. She would learn, as would others, to shut thier ears to these things, and move out of range quickly, especially if you are alone. What a joke, like numbers would make a difference!

And it would happen again.

Really, and they call it teasing? Like what you do with your best friends when you are at ease? TEASING?

I first wanted to write something about this when it first happened to me. I was amazingly protected as a child, I never realised how much till I moved into the hostel and 'independent life'. Again, when I read MumbaiGirl's post. And now this BLANK NOISE PROJECT, even though I am a few days late.

By the way, that anecdote, except for Shema's name and the allergy to eggs bit, happened. I cannot write about the time that something DID happen, but rest assured, that too is 'normal'.

It is 'civilised' and it is 'acceptable' and even in sarcasm I cannot say it is the girl's fault.

It isn't.

Little somethings

2006-02-24T21:46:00.000-08:00

Her hair leaps into my hands, clinging to the plastic comb she hates. I let it go and immediately, like blown by some unseen wind, it rushes to cover her small round face. The cackle of static electricity sounds as I swap the comb for the hairbrush and run it through the length of the hair. There are no knots, but I continue brushing. Her little face shows extreme impatience, and she’s begun to shift around uncomfortably in the high backed wooden chair she sits on.

Hold still, I murmur, enjoying the smooth silky hair, but she won’t. She is too anxious to be off. Her mother had leaned into the strokes. Her mother was a little lady, unlike this one, who was tomboy if I ever saw one.

Enough, please! Comes her still sharp voice, and she jumps off the chair. Her legs had dangled well off the floor when seated. She grabs my hands, the contrast of my dry wrinkled calloused hands – softened by time alone – and her pink fat little hands strikes me suddenly. I feel old. She suddenly kisses my hands and takes off, to her friends. To her life.

~*~*~*~

Even IF

2006-02-17T23:48:00.000-08:00

Do you see the moon today? Such celestial beauty cures all pain.. think of it, that little white sliver of silver shines sedately over and over me… and there is a connection – can you not feel it? Across the miles and through the fabric of time…
Can you not see it?

And even if the storm were to brew as it threatens to, out of sight, out of earshot, even if the clouds were chased across that sky to cover that crescent symbol of peace and harmony, you know that the beauty hides there, waiting to be revealed, if only one would put aside that pain and look.
My body tingles with electricity, and look, the plants feel it too. A shiver passes through them, as if they are telepathic and empathic, I can hear them echo the sigh that I release. Was it a shudder? A release? A relief? A moment of respite?
It is so still, it seems as if time has stopped for me, for this moment, just so I can pause, take a breath and … miss you. Why have I been running myself ragged? Does enough action help me not to think?
I miss you.

And even if this is the dead calm before the storm, and the whole world suffers tumultuous change, even if I get up now that my cup of coffee is over and leave to the familiar world of cement and concrete and men who act as strangers would, I’ll know I had that moment to cherish all those memories, on this lonely bench in the middle of a park, surrounded by high walls…
I feel tied to the trees, the bushes, the little pink-white flowers and bow their heads and wait for the opening of the jasmine in the time between twilight and true night, knowing they will be overshadowed by the blooming queen of the night, knowing that their time is past, and yet waiting patiently as nothing else changes…
Tied to the teak that I sit on, the land, the air that does not stir and carries with it the faintest traces of chill, cold decision – is it contempt? Is it malice? Is it just what is, and for me to take as it comes? Weightless, and yet so heavy that it bears me down, though in this moment, I am free from responsibility and those bonds that I wear willingly. I soar. Into yesterday, and what was.
When I leave, I know I will put this behind me, I fell no longer feel as I do now, this instant, but I will not forget. The magic is as much with the place and the time and the state of being as it is to me - whole of the cosmos – yes, even that I can see the Orion clearly and not the pole star at all – as much as it is with me, and I do not wish to leave this enchanted stop. But I will.
Someone told me ‘don’t cry because it is over, smile because it was.’ And even if you don’t, I will.
I promise, my friend, I will.
I do miss you.
~*~*~*~

XX

2006-02-08T02:37:00.000-08:00

Twenty years up, and as anyone with Google or perhaps the right statistics can tell you - as an Indian Woman, I have 46.66 years to go. That’s one third gone… Today doesn’t feel any different from yesterday or the day before, but one more to the counter that man created when he chopped up time into what he considered as regular intervals. No earth shattering changes, no reassessment of life and a change in the way I live or am treated, really.

People change. Fact of life. People ought to grow. And I certainly hope that I have. Grown, that is.

Two decades spent here, and it's been unbelievable. That seems like so long to have invested in one project, in one item, one life. Then you look back, and wonder, where did time fly? Here I am, and I have spent that much... And you know the best part? I have just begun.

So yeah. I've hardly wished anyone on their birthday on time. No reason why I should be an exception.
Happy Birthday to me.
Belated, of course.

Summit

2006-02-07T18:35:00.000-08:00

My hands are cut. I have assorted aches and pains and bruises that will complain later, tonight, but for now they can be ignored. The nettle has given me shallow gashes in so many places that I have lost count. The grass – bearing short thorns – is almost taller than I am. If the trip up was scary, I can’t imagine what the trip down will be like. Most likely I will roll like the little balloon I have become, and hopefully not damage any vital organs. Meanwhile, I let my hands and arms take the brunt of the scratches, I am mortally afraid of a thorn entering my eyes. But that is in the beginning. As we go higher, the sun becomes fiercer, and I lose fear. All there is, is the line of people behind me and the few in front. We keep moving, though the muscles in my legs are crying for a stop, a break. I know they will begin cramping when I do stop, and we do not intend to stop till we reach the summit.
Friendly banter continues somewhere behind me, somehow, today I have not the heart to join in. I am terrible at the whole hill climbing, physical activity front, and so the one right in front of my keeps checking and making sure I’m still alive. The one behind leaves enough space for me to back up if I have taken a path that is too difficult for me. I know that there are rips in my jeans – jeans for Christ’s sakes! This is entirely the wrong season to have gone trekking… but I enjoy the exertion. At some point, the wind becomes a huge factor, tugging, pulling, yanking. We tease a painfully thin friend that we don’t want her to fly off into the horizon. She clings on tenaciously. Finally, the company gives. There are too many of us inexperienced climbers to go up the last quarter. We all collapse where we stand, for more than fifteen minutes. Then we turn and go down, spider like, leaning as far back as we can. Defeated, but not forever. The summit still waits.

~*~*~*~

Later...

2005-12-31T05:25:00.000-08:00

My writing has become redundant. My muse has decided to devote itself to someone else who probably needs her more. I miss her. (I'm being melodramatic, but cut a girl some slack!)

Thank you.

Happy New Year.

Mine

2005-12-18T08:10:00.000-08:00

In front of me is a wall to wall of books. Curious, I reach for an interesting looking red-and-black spine and pull it out. It is a sheaf of bound yellowed parchment. Expecting a tale of magic and fantasy, I open it at a random page. I drop the book in shock. On the open page is a movie playing, balck-and-white characters obviously going through the motions described in the book. It is not my book. Gingerly picking it up, I smooth it closed, replace it and reach for another one.
And another.
And another.
Frustration and panic mounts, of all the one I have seen so far, none of them are the one story I want, the one book that has my words - not another's vision.
Mine.
Where is it?
Where is it?
Where is...

Echoes

2005-12-12T21:33:00.000-08:00

Rain.

There has been too much of it lately, it has become a dreary downpour, and she’s grown used to it.

One strain of music flitting through the air and she’s lost again, to the magic of the music and the rain. It is soft, so much so that she sensed it before she heard it. She has left her book on the window ledge where she had been perched. The glass windows are sealed shut, and the rain strikes it with a constant pounding rhythm that would have been perfect for her to read in what with the yellow light gentling the shadows and scattered across the room… if it weren’t for the faintest traces of intoxicating… something not-quite-heard. She paces the room, looking, pausing mid-stride to cock her head much like a sparrow, as if she does not know the cause for her restlessness... she doesn’t. There is a call in the air, and she does not even hear it, heeding be far from the question.

She feels lonely again, her enjoyment of the aloneness and silence utterly destroyed by a simple desire to hear, to connect, if not to another person, the music itself. What if to her, the music is another person, to dance into her life and dance out again? To be remembered, perhaps, forgotten, maybe, but for the section of time that it lasts, to be sought after, to be important. The only thing that matters in the here-now being only the undulations and the complete surrender to a force that she does not understand.

Slowly in the background, the beats become more distinct. The song nears the end before she can identify it, and it fades away.

And the rain still thumps relentlessly.

Watch...

2005-12-09T23:25:00.000-08:00

Watch...
This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier. (Except that of course you can't have a final frontier, because there'ld be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it's pretty penultimate...)
...Great A'Tuin, star turtle, swims onward through the void.
On its back, four giant elephants. On their shoulders, rimmed with water, glittering under its tiny orbiting sunlet, spinning majestically around the mountains at its frozen Hub, lies the Discworld, world and mirror of worlds.

Welcome to Discworld. That is my favourite opening paragraph out of Terry Pratchett's masterpiece(s). No, it’s not a preview or a review. It’s a shameless plug for one of my favourite series. I guess now is when I warn you that you are entering fan territory.

For the uninitiated, DiscWorld is a series of 35 (at last count online count, 23 according the last book I possess) novels by Terry Pratchett.
They are all placed on this world that is shaped like a disc – unsurprisingly called Discworld. It has a tiny sun orbiting it, its single polar icecap is called the Hub and the sea is incessantly throwing itself off the Rim of the World. But greater wonder awaits those who look over and below the Rim of the World (which I think only Rincewind, an inept wizard and his company have seen. Rincewind, by the way, is an absolutely unbelievably inept wizard who misses dying by a hair’s width several times – and literally).
Now, as I was telling you, this world rests on the shoulder of four giant elephants (which I always imagined were white) and which in turn stand upon the broad back of a Giant Turtle (sex unknown) which is swimming through space with its beady eye fixed on the destination - a point only it knows. The Gods, definitely, do not have a clue, being too busy playing (ahem, gambling) to know things like that.

As you can imagine, magical things happen on this world, although most stories are about ordinary people (read wizards, witches, trolls, dwarfs, zombies, werewolves, vampires) doing ordinary things on an extraordinary world…
It started out as a parody of the fantasy that surged in the 1980s (The Colour of Magic was published in 1983, I think, and since then Pratchett’s life has been made.) So, you safely expect satire. There are “themes” running in the series, but if you pick up any random book, you ought to be able to make sense of it. For instance, my favourite are the stories that revolve around Death or Magic. Death is the skeleton with the scythe and the black robes – riding a white horse called Binky because a horse made of skeletons is quite uncomfortable...

Carpe Jugulum is a latin phrase that means seize the throat. It's about a bunch of 'modernised' vampyres who decide to take over the world as they have grown "smart". Expect different humour here, and the strangest thing I have noticed is that while Terry Pratchett has one of the highest number of laughs per page his jokes are rarely repeated.

If you liked the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you'll love this. If you ahve a taste fro Wodehouse, you'll probably enjoy it too. Like fantasy, can enjoy.

If you are about to begin now, go for "Mort". Mort is the assistant that Death hires.
Equal Rites
Pyramids
The Colour of Magic
Small Gods
are also highly recommended. Look for a witch or Death in blurb, becuase frankly, those are the best.

For old fans - have you seen the annotated pratchett file? The jokes fans spotted have been compiled and explained. :D

A Whisper

2005-12-08T07:20:00.000-08:00

The wind rushes on the plain. Swaying to its magic is the whistle and tune of the wild. A lone tree stands in the middle of the moors bowing to it, dancing like it is searching for its lost soul.

Except her soul is not lost... the rustle of the breeze ever present on her now-twisted length reassures it. This is a tie that the willow has known for almost all its life, and she hears the celebration burst to life again.
Spring begins.
Not forgotten.

Ze tag arrives again...

2005-12-03T03:40:00.000-08:00

I have incredible bad luck. I’d just finished putting together the most interesting *ahem* tag – in notepad. And then the computer crashed on me. Or maybe I’m blessed with a crumby pile of circuits that I call a computer. I’m seriously considering calling her The Bitch. But 20 things about me:

1. I dislike sweets. I eat them, and I won’t complain, but I don’t like them much. I particularly dislike silver foil. I don’t know why. Although the person who gets me chocolate will probably instantly become a good friend.

2. "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve." (Bilbo Baggins ,The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien)

3. I hate saying goodbye. I don’t like saying “farewell”. I don’t believe in either concept – lives meet, they touch, perhaps for sometime, perhaps for more. When they diverge, and sometimes meet again. I hope for meeting again “later” rather than looking at anything as the end. “Bye” is too much like the end. I won’t say it, unless it slips out.

4. I am biased. I am prejudiced. I am superfluous. I am extremely irrational. I have issues. I am volatile. I am me. I cannot change.

5. Drat, I’m running out of things to say. But I’ll bluff it out anyway. Have loads of practice.

6. A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. – Wilde. I wonder how I’m still alive.

7. I quote random people at random point, with a random relevance. And then I expect people to understand it, except sometimes the quotes are so random that they don’t even realise it’s a quote.

8. I like the concept of randomness and chaos, but somehow keep my life ordered. Don’t ask about the mess that is my desk or my bed. Did I already tell you about the yin-yang principle?

9. I don’t hold grudges (waste of energy) and I find it difficult to hate people. (Actually, whatever I might say, I don’t hate you, babe. :P ) Perhaps because – “Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.” (Wilde again).

10. I go overboard with things. Like with the quotes in this tag.

11. I also crack a large number of jokes. Pity they are PJs. You define PJ.

12. I’m vegetarian. Like Shaw said, “Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.”… Bheja khana* is a different matter entirely.

13. I believe normal is an illusion. Or relative. For instance, my normal body temperature is 0.7 deg F above normal. You might say I’m hot.

14. I like to think of the positive side of things, because “if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” (Nietzsche)

15. The easiest way to piss me off is to lie to me, or call me a liar. I take both very seriously.

16. I contradict myself. I still make perfect sense. :D

17. When I say 'leave me alone', I mean it.

18. I argue a lot. If I agree all the time, be suspicious. I may not be listening at all, because I’ve discovered that the easiest way to shut people up is to agree.

19. I use qualifiers by the kilo (refer: this post) and I’m incredibly verbose.

20. I’ve never wished ill for people, except when I’ve asked that they just disappear, and that isn’t “ill” because I have a temper that blows like camphor taken to a hot enough (and dry enough) climate. As if to contradict that... zydar, you can consider yourself tagged. :P

I’m tempted to tag Abhi, but I’m not going to tag anyone. Anyone who wants to can go ahead and tag themselves. Leon, thanks for giving me a chance to say ‘I ‘ (at least) 50 times in one post. One doesn’t get opportunities like that too often :D

--------
*Bheja khana is to eat someone’s brains

Rodentified

2005-12-02T05:23:00.000-08:00

This really should begin like a series of Unfortunate Events book does, for it certainly is a collection of the few incidents that I “met” the .. err.. rodents.

There are those women who scream at the sight of the furry brown creature that streaks through the corridors, ricocheting off the wall like the car of the Men in Black did in the tunnel. I know men like that too.

By now, however, I really should be used to them, and I thank whatever Gods exist that I never was afraid of them. I’m wondering if it was the karma of dissecting a poor white Rattus norvegicus that has made mine a rat’s life. It was a huge specimen, the one I brutally cut up. Don’t run away just yet, I’m not going to describe the process in any sort of detail. Or at all. It was just that… it looked like a fresh sleepy rabbit once chloroformed – very cute and incredibly innocent.

Anyway, the tail continues to the day that sore with our life, we decided to catch a movie. It didn’t matter what was running (it happened to be Elaan) all that mattered was getting out and doing something with what seemed to be too much time on our hands. So off we went, two friends and I, and bought the usual chips (popcorn we didn’t trust – the hands that made them looked downright dangerously soiled) and settled down. We took back row corner seats, and we were delighted to find that in the run down theatre, there was a ready made dustbin in the form of a hole in the wall behind us. (There wasn’t a dustbin in the entire area.) and so after munching our chips, we gleefully stuffed it into the hole. Boy, were we sorry.
Just when Lara Dutta began a hot number (and I do not even know which one anymore) I felt something running up my front. Engrossed in the movie (though it pains me to admit it) it wasn’t until the rat bunched its talons in my shoulder and dug in that I noticed the brown furry creature. I stood up with – I suppose – a shriek. The rat used that momentum to leap into its hole. And to my stunned astonishment, no one even noticed that a female screamed in the theatre. One look at Lara Dutta’s skimpily clad figure told me why. The friend sitting next to me noticed, (obviously, I was now blocking a part of her view) and asked me what had happened when I sat down with a plonk. I said, “Rat ran up me.” She shrieked. No one looked up.
*sigh* That damsels in distress come second to the cavorting on screen… but I swear, it must have used the chair leg (as usual) to climb up and ignored a small inconvenience like a human sitting in the way.

Did I mention that my exam dealt with genetic sequences out of Mus mucasis (household mouse)? Well, here I was, relaxing in the hostel after a hard day at the examination hall. Our corridor leads to a dead end. Mine is the second last room, towards the dead end. They are (still) constructing a staircase behind the dead end, and as such, we have only a slab of plywood (well fitted, to be sure) protecting all the outrageous views of a Girls Hostel from the men on the other side.
We regularly get to hear loud conversation (speculating about what is happening on the other side of the wall and because they mistakenly assume that none of us speak Tamil or Rajasthani, a few giggles out of the translations), the smell of a cigarette burning, sometimes a beedi (thank god no fumes of alcohol – if the workers drank on the job, they’d be kicked out), the fumes of concentrated sulphuric acid, (for when they are ‘cleaning’)
So about a couple of weeks before this incident, we noticed a circular hole in the wall. We still aren’t sure what made it, because it was perfectly smooth and though it gave my friend and me a second thought – we did remember the Elaan incident, after all – We assumed its purpose was to let us catch a whiff of sulphuric acid once in a while and suffer dry throats for a few days and we ignored it. Boy, were we sorry.
Anyway, here I was, (like I said) relaxing after the exam. My room door was wide open, and I was lounging in someone else’s room, generally chit chatting. Out bolts this tiny creature and leaps into my friend’s room (yes, the same one) – the room in which I was lazing around. Screams cascade. The poor thing (mouse) leaps out of its skin and the room. I see it rush away from the dead end, towards the general direction where my open room is. Cries of “Mouse in the corridor” echo, doors bang shut. “My door is open!” I yell, struggle to get the friend’s room open, get out and get the broom. All the people who had open door while the creature streaked through the corridor, bouncing off the dustbin, are viciously attacking with a broom all the areas that the mouse could possible have hidden.
I think we were locking out room tight after that for a while … about two weeks or so. :)

I haven’t mentioned the one that was a foot long I saw in a village – I thought it was a mongoose for a few disbelieving seconds - or the time that one entered the second floor classroom and the class used it as an excuse to prevent the lecturer from teaching anything… but I think you get the picture.

Too many rats in my life. Perhaps not just literally.

(You're It ) *7

2005-12-02T02:01:00.000-08:00

I have been tagged by Abhi! and thus the tag continues. *sigh* After chain letter and ythou-art-doomed-if-thou-doest-not-forward, the blog equivalent.

7 things that I plan to do:
Laze around.
Go bungee jumping.
Not think about studying
Update my blog once a day
Write the CAT.
Recover my hindi music.
Tag others

7 things that I can do:
Tag others
Read for hours together
Listen to just about any type of music
Laugh
Be nice
Think of seven things to fill here
Embroider :P

7 things that I can't do:
Find the answer to life, universe adn everything. (No, not 42!)
Watch movies back to back
Stop at seven :D
Dance at all :P
Understand hindi movies
Understand men
Understand women
Understand

7 Words I use most Often:
lol
oh
ok
hmm
cya
*g*
yes

7 blogs(untagged ones) that I wish to tag:
(picked randomly :D and not so randomly)
Ashish
MTTime
Leon
Gawde
the Monk
Kini
Vibha

Suicide Point

2005-11-30T22:23:00.000-08:00

Inexorably they march on. What drives them to sacrifice themselves? Jihad? Duty? Animal Instinct? Why extinguish your life when it is precious, every instant to cherish, and every moment to live? Why give it up for a cause that will not bear fruit? For a truth that none understand? For a purpose that will not be served?

Besides, cleaning up the mess they leave is a chore. Even when they offer to clean up after themselves. As for what I think – well, I sip formic acid enriched water* and wonder- why?

They come in droves to drown themselves. There is not a water body to be seen that they do not go all out to attack, and trust me, there is nothing to be found in the darn place EXCEPT water. Whatever be the conditions that meet them, knowing that many before them have perished in this pursuit, they come. They might as well leap off cliffs. They certainly have me baffled. Holding a water bottle with floating clumps of dead ants.

~~~~

*I’m vegetarian. In first year, I used to be teased about drinking water that ants have died in… there wasn’t an option, you left water out for five mixtures even with the cap of the bottle screwed tightly shut and you’d find an ant or two dead in it. Even when it was clear, one always had a sneaking suspicion that at some point of time, that water had seen first hand death. Leave it overnight in the middle of a clean floor and you’d find about a hundred or so floating together in two or three clumps. Where they came from was a mystery, because there were none seen running on our floors or our walls – we were merciless in executing our “death to the ants” regime. It was ‘kill on sight’.

Bibliomaniac

2005-11-29T04:57:00.000-08:00

I think it been too long since I felt the weight of a book in my hands, even though it was only this morning that I finished one. I knew there was something missing while reading eBooks.

~*~*~*~

The pages of the book were yellow, several had dog ears. There were marks from pens blue, black, red and green, ticks, crosses, and other little scribbled words and notes that made it obvious that for someone, somewhere, this was a textbook. There were parenthesis and numbered lines, points for an essay question no doubt. There were double lines marking the end of section, and I remember my photocopies of notes that bear the same mark denoting ‘end of syllabus’. The point from which you skip the rest of the chapter, and look for the next topic to study.

I hate marks on my book. I even dislike the ridge that is formed along the spine of the paperback when you hold it too wide open. I don’t like the pages to be tattered, though I do not mind when the pages have yellowed with age. I scream every time I see someone nonchalantly put down an open book on its face. Or when they lick a finger to flip a page...

Its dark chocolate hardbound cover is held together by sticky tape, the spine carries the library accession number in white, pasted with transparent cellophane tape. This book awes me when I open it. I do not know what made me pull it out, because there was nothing written on it, nothign to mark it special - perhaps there was nothing all that special about it... My fingers lightly skidded over the spine and then pulled it out, one among shelves and shelves of books, and just like that, I’m transported.

It not only opens the portal of my imagination to the world it speaks of, it frees me to think of those who came before me - I see countless people pouring over it, some studying lines from places, others memorising a special bit they come across. Some chewing nervously on the end of the pen they twirl as they read. (Not a single one with a pencil however, why don’t people use pencils anymore?)

I like the smell of new money, new paper and new books. I also like the beaten and weathered – but not termite eaten – pages and the aroma that takes you to a different world. It’s like living in three realities: that of your physical being, the story that the book carries, and the romance of the book itself. What romance? The one that unfolds when you find a pressed white grass-flower, and you wonder what the book saw. Did a lover wait for another under a tree, nervously pulling up grass? Was it the only gift, and meant to be preserved? Was it just carelessly trapped by an impatient reader too eager to abandon the book for the outdoors?

Or did someone leave a message?

Hamlet. What’s new about him?

2005-11-28T04:59:00.000-08:00

Oh yes, Hamlet. What’s new about him?

I always had difficulty in relating to Shakespeare’s most famous character. One of my friends, however, seems to identify with him quite well. So here I was, discussing the man’s characters, and being on the critical side, for I must admit - I never liked him much. He might have been a man of action, but I considered the way that he broke down to grief a weakness. I disapproved. After airing this opinion a time or two, I paused. By what authority? What did I know about him – Hamlet, I mean, not my friend - anyway? Why was I making judgements based on a person I had read about over two years ago, when I am no longer the person that I was then? The way my friend looked at it made me think that my view was shallow, because he certainly saw depth in the man.

I did not have the knowledge fresh at the top of my head, and what I remembered of Hamlet was a little more than what every man knows – Father killed by his brother to marry his mother and take the Throne of Denmark. His sweetheart death by his hand – an accident. His two friends – Fortinbras and Laertes, who suffer a similar fate but react differently.

So I picked up my fat brown bound volume of ‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare’, opened Othello by habit, flipped back to Hamlet and began to read.

Rediscovering all the small things that one forgets with time is a beautiful feeling, seeing lines and thinking, “Wow, I remember this, and it’s beautiful!” is rewarding. It is impossible to approach a book like Hamlet without preconceived notions of everything that happens and everyone in it. I cannot say that I succeeded in casting aside those prejudices, because I did not. For instance, I was surprised in the very first act - one assumes that Hamlet always was melancholy, but the way everyone keeps harping on "Hamlet is changed" - it is obvious that the man was once very cheerful, though we do not see this side of him in the play. I still found it beautiful, and that I understood a great deal more than I did before. The intelligence that read it before was the same, perhaps the immaturity made me appreciate it less.

It is a work of passion, and… frankly, I was reminded on Túrin Turambar. Turin is a character out of Tolkien’s world (the ‘Lay of the Children of Hurin’ in BOLT3 and ‘The Silmarillion’) - 'I am Agarwaen the son of Úmarth (which is the Bloodstained, son of Ill-fate), a hunter in the woods’ says Túrin in the Silmarillion, and perhaps a comparison of these two is in the offing. I know I want to do it.

A few days back, as I was walking down the English section of my library, I found ‘Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes – Slaves of Passion’ by Lily B. Campbell. Curious me picked it up, checked it out and went back to the hostel. I skipped the parts where she analyses Lear, Macbeth and Othello (not reading the Othello section first took a lot of self control) and finished the book as far as Hamlet was concerned. ( I have since finished all those sections as well - fascinating analysis)

She mentioned ‘Shakespearean Tragedy’ – A C Bradley, and I went out again, got my hands on that, came back and read it.

Bradley and Campbell present the 'tragic hero' in different ways. While Campbell prefers to try to think of Shakespeare’s characters as he would have thought of them by studying the Elizabethan philosophy, Bradley seems to forget the fact that these were plays, not books. Several devices that Shakespeare used – for instance when Iago talks to the audience – Bradley interprets as Iago trying to convince the audience. Perhaps. I think that Iago is merely informing the audience of what is happening, what he feels and what he plots, because there is no other way of doing it. The author cannot write narratives in a play like he can in a novel. Anyone who has tried a play with too much narration knows that the audience gets restless. I’ve seen some who nod off.

The point to the whole exercise was that given these two totally different interpretations of Hamlet, I accept Campbell’s. Occam’s Razor does have its uses after all.

I am no student of literature.
So yes, Hamlet. What’s new about him?
I still like Othello better than Hamlet, but now, I think I see more to Hamlet than I did before. :) Just goes to show that even what is "done" is a tresure trove of more information... if you just look

p2p: The Artist

2005-11-18T02:14:00.000-08:00

I attempt a sketch of someone who can sketch everything else.

She is a painter, and every time I see her paintings, I realise that this - THIS - is something I have never had and never will. It is not that I feel less than what I am, but that I acknowledge that this is greater than what I can be.I realise that she does not know the value of what she holds. She turns to her range of colours, her box of paints when she must express what she cannot otherwise. In those vidid streaks, her soul is wide open for anyone to read. She can abandon herself to that medium, without thought of who will see and what it will mean.... and she lets her ability speak for itself. She only tries to rid herslef of excess emotions, but in every picture, I see a message to me, for me.Where she sees confusion and the attempt to rise above it, I see my inspiration - let go. Let it be.

And if it were not enough that with her brush she weaves magic, her voice is that of an angel. She can trill, sing, carry the audience with ther strength of her voice and melody. She can make you feel the song and believe the words she sings... and the promises it carries.She is Vikram Seth's Nightingale, and I ferverantly hope she never meets Mr. Frog.. in her desire to find comfirmity. She is the essense of a vibrant proactive, dynamic woman. That elusive being who belongs in her world.

She is, in short, superwoman.

~*~*~

Other p2p:
Chitchat
First Love

Belated pictures of Palar

2005-11-18T00:48:00.000-08:00

When everyone was talking about the flood in TN, I was writhing in my seat waiting for my photographs to be developed. (Digital cmaera, alas, is on my "to buy" list, and has been bumped to #2 since I urgently require a new motherboard *sob*) The roll was overexposed. *sigh*

Quite a few people were expecting those pictures of Palar with water in it (hasn't happened in 15 years, I'm told) and so, I begged borrowed and stole these. All pictures in this post were taken by Thumbdrive, who currently isn't upto putting them up herself on her blog. :) They were taken on Tuesday (second day of rains). Water rose for another couple of days, all that greenery drowned, and then the water level dropped again on Friday (When I passed it) and rose again from saturday night. Or so I'm told. I don't know the dates, but I guess I could hunt them up.

by Thumbdrive

by Thumbdrive

by Thumbdrive

by Thumbdrive

What one does when one has no time...

2005-11-09T22:40:00.000-08:00

.. find more things to do.

Exams here.
Big time.

Frantically last minute studying to begin.
No time.

So why have I signed up to write a novel in a month?

You

2005-11-03T08:39:00.000-08:00

She sits on the bed, her knees drawn to her chest, a writing pad with a sheets pinned to it lying next to her.

On it are careless doodles and a careful semeblance of the profile of a face. She stares into the distance, her thoughts obviously somewhere else, and shakes ehr head to glance at the sheet again. Emotions roil inside her, as she searches for the words to express her feeling. That tumult that ... she has not succeeded in expressing, not ever, not yet. Still, she takes another shot at it, setting her pen on that not-quite-clear sheet and penning the first word.

You

You are entrenched within me
Immovable and irremovable
At least in the here and now
As permanent as flesh can be.

This warm heart-blood
That pulses through my veins
And throbs through my pain
Suffuses my being...

All laced by the drug of you
That thought that holds me
Steady through the day and nights
Vision that I see through time

You are entrenched within me
Immovable and irremovable
At least in the here and now
As permanent as flesh can be.

Her face closes with concentration as her hands move swiftly. What is on them? Perhaps given a mirror she would have known, but I do not. They may not have been perfect words, but they flow now, in a smooth stream, the things she has not said. When done, she draws a line underneath it, lays it down and closes her eyes.

Not even this was enough to say what she felt.
Not even this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Note: No, not RL.

Tea, Coffee and Bias

2005-11-02T07:01:00.000-08:00

Fact #1:
I love and drink gallons of tea.

Fact #2:
I love and avoid coffee.

Apparently I am moderately baised towards coffee rather than tea.

A group at Harvard are out to determine just how much of our prejudices are inherent/ implicit and how much is learnt. Mine just happened to be based on coffee and tea. Check it out here. And I think it'd be a favour to those researchers out there too. Thanks to Vavoom's blog. :)

p2p - First Love

2005-10-31T04:13:00.000-08:00

Payal. What can I say about her? What is there that I could describe and still capture the essence of her? She is the white flower, untouched by the frost – unbent, and coldly awaiting the first of the sun's rays to bring her to full vibrant blooming life. Rarely does she laugh, but when she does, it is the refreshing dew on the morning rose.

Slender pale beauty that she is, she carries herself like a paragon of virtue. Whenever I picture her, her head is bowed, but her back is straight. She is… messaging. She makes me sick with envy, for she has everything.

For I am not her lover, I am her rival.

And she has my loyalty before all else.

It falls upon me to write of her love to the love of my life – and I must do it. There is something that people call friendship, and they tell me we have it. This sombre tone does not suit me, but these reflections cannot be made in another. The man who said no, and rose several notches in my estimation –so much so that I would take him as he is, if he but speaks – it is to him that I must speak, beseech, beg, all on her behalf when I would do it on mine, and may whatever God looks on give me the strength to go through with it and commit to it all the resources I have available to me.

Though he said nay the last time, I know this time will be different; my plans for his ensnarement with Payal were quite comprehensive. I have enough confidence to say it will work, but oh, how I wish I would be wrong! These words are not to be spoken, and I will commit them to this slender volume and then perhaps burn them. The knowledge that my protest has been recorded somewhere soothes me, and helps me do what I must. The world is cruel that I must… in the name of friendship… give up the one man I have loved, and perhaps always will.

It is a sense of rebellion, and aye, a touch of self-pity that I will close this book and walk out of that door…

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The other p2p stories:

p2p -Chit Chat

Argh! Another test!

2005-10-30T19:19:00.000-08:00

You are a freeform writer. Individualistic with a
sense for the different and challenging, Walt
Whitman and his poetry lacking meter and rhyme
is just what the doctor ordered. You're quick
to write something that the rest of the world
doesn't accept as poetry, quick to separate
yourself from the average joe. An author with a
true sense of self, you have confidence in your
abilities and aren't afraid to show it. :) GO
YOU!
What's YOUR Writing Style?
brought to you by Quizilla

A few changes...

2005-10-29T06:33:00.000-07:00

... in my blog. I got bored, which is a pretty common reaction with me. All graphics used are MINE, baby, mine. I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how a template was coded, and the bottomline is that I managed to learn a bit of HTML.

The sidebar is huge, but it's now somewhat organised. Don't worry if you can't see the 'organisation'. It follows my logic, and well.. that doesn't really make sense to many people.

Suggestions and comments are welcome...

Carnatic and Jazz Lovers...

2005-10-28T21:13:00.000-07:00

... gather around. I know I get over enthu about stuff, and therefore put a brake when I'm about to recommend something, and see if after week - I'm still be enthu about the thing... General rule to follow, but I was sure even when I first heard this guitarist that a week's waiting would make no difference. I waited a week. I'm still enthu. You probably don't really need me to introduce you to this guy, but I have to anyway:

Prasanna

If you haven't heard his music, you have to! All credit to Kini for introducing me to him/it!

Ahem, can we speak in English?

2005-10-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

You know those clusters of friends generally hulking about aroudn corners or near staircases (why the straircases? Not like there is a lot of room there already!) - anything between three to fifteen of them - out of whom most speak one language and a minority does not? Lets just take hindi as that language for now, though I've seen doesn't happen so often with northies(North Indians) as it does with mallus(Malayalis), bongs(bengalis), and tams(Tamiliams). Why do they insist on speaking hindi, when English is available? I realise some things are best said in your mother tongue, but when there is a conversation in a group, it is most unfair to exclude the minority - and when an alternative is open, and ready for the taking! Do they not realise how uncomfortable and irrtated the few get?

Must admit, I'm guilty of this too... but I've actually seen a pair in a group of three do this - brings a whole new meaning to "two is company, three is a crowd" almost like tacking on a "... so go away". There are people who ALWAYS use thier mother tongue, at the slightest oppertunity, blithly ignoring the need to translate for those who don't understand. This total lack of consideration on their part - and I've been a party somtimes - is very irksome. It's a whole different ball game when it's just two people talking - then, yes use timbactooian if you wish...

Consider the case in the lab today. We went to the teacher to demonstrate our project, and that man, on learning I was Tamilian, switched to that language. (On the positive side, we were spared the torture of his broken english) It would not have been a problem if I weren't the only one who understood the language. ALL the suggestions, ideas and corrections were made in a stream of strongly accented palghatian dialect. Understandably, my teammates were pissed.

I'm multilingual. I call myself the jack of all languages... and master of none. Obviously, my English is reasonably fluent, and my hindi comes a distant second. Hindi mein kuch na kuch bol to detein hoon. (I manage to say something or the other in Hindi) Those are the only two I can read and write. Of course, I can write Sanskrit too (comes with the script) but what little I learnt back in school seeped out of my head - sideways. ..

But I do speak Tamil. But (here's the catch) it is Iyengar Tamil - that most of my fellow state-mates deem alien language and pull my leg for. Therefore I dont' speak it often enough - I'm constantly told that I can't even talk like a Bram properly. Not my fault Iyengars are a minority. It took me some time after I landed up in Tamil Nadu before I realised that 'You speak Bram tamil!' was NOT a compliment. But I've always been dense that way.

I can also manage Telgu and Malyalam, and understand Punjabi (duh! anyone who know hindi...) ... And at the end of the day, (btw) struggle for words to clearly, concisely express what I'm thinking. So it's very rarely that I get excluded from the rgoup we were talking about earlier (ah! you thought I was rambling aimlessly, just blowign my own trumpet) ... but anyone who has seen the lost looks or blank faces or staring-off-into-the-distance-with-a-grim-set-to-the-mouth has got to agree with me.

One just has to use the language that maximum number of people use - the object of it, after all, is to communicate.

Dear Dairy: Unskilled labour

2005-10-27T01:19:00.000-07:00

With an exam today, and not having ever seen the syllabus ever before, I still was possessed by this desire to have a clean floor and clean bed late last night. (To attempt to clear out the towering pile of books that cover my table is an impossible task without a lot of delicate balancing, time and concentrated effort. And what's the point? It'll come back to the same state within two weeks. Not enough shelves, too many books.)

I am not a messy person, I just have so much clutter- my room is full of things, possessions and objects – someday I have to try this idea of 'if you haven't used it in six months, throw it', it'll clear out most of my room – it's chore to clear all surfaces and actually get down to cleaning. I'm also the type of person that when I start doing something, I'm obsessive and meticulous about it – hence cleaning = purging the entire room.

For all this, in my three years at college, I had never learnt to sweep and mop correctly. All those people who call sweepers and mop-ers and other kinds of bai-s unskilled labourers don't know what they are talking about. Efficient, quick and complete sweeping is achieved by holding the broom at a certain angle (almost parallel to the floor) and moving it is wide arc. An engineering student would have told you that, after all, it's simple logic, but it would not surprise you to know that most engineering students don't both to clean their rooms, leave alone calculating the perfect angle to use a broom at.

Then there is the technique in squeezing the water out of the cloth, using the correct texture of cloth (I strongly recommend you do NOT use turkey towels as mop-cloth material. Excellent cleaning agents they may be, but you'll ruin your back. My back still has spasms, and I'm only 19.) and the correct way to handle the thing... As for dealing with the wayward hair that litters the floor! Well, I'm glad that I won't have to keep doing this. Or I hope I won't.

I'm a Wizard

2005-10-27T01:15:00.000-07:00

Not just on the LotR Fanatics Plaza but also on How to be a Hero. The test told me something I've known sicne I was 10 and half years old...

My Inner Hero - Wizard!

There are many types of magic, but all require a sharp mind and a cool head. There is no puzzle I can't solve, no problem I can't think my way out of. When you feel confused or uncertain, you can always rely on me to untangle the knots and put everything back in order for you.

How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.

Got it through navin's blog.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs

2005-10-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

Always had a fascnation for Egyptian Hieroglyphs... (I think I've been fascinated by everythign that has ever been exotic) so when I saw this on Abhi!'s Blog , I just HAD to do it too. In case you were, wondering this is 'Camphor' using Egyptian Hieroglyphs!

Script by

Autopsy

2005-10-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

I once had a yearning to be a forensic surgeon, but that obviously did not happen. Besides, I'm sure it was just a phase. I still have no problems with blood and guts, and thus I was fascinated by the Interactive Autopsy I found. If you are squeamish, don't go for it. It's not gory, no blood at all, but.. it's an autopsy... meaning cutting and removing organs and all. Well, your call.

PS. Surpising how the liver and the brain weigh almost the same amount. (almost = the liver weighs more) The liver processes your beer and vodka, the brain - just about everything. What does that mean?

And I am...

2005-10-22T18:02:00.000-07:00

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Too many tests I've been taking at that website...maybe I'll stop about now. My blog seems to be an advertisement for the site!!

The Signs

2005-10-21T20:20:00.000-07:00

I am convinced that there is a collective subconscious or something of the nature in action. Nothing else can explain the coincidences that occur - the world is NOT that small, it's got over six billion people. So how is it that the ones I know I know by more than one route? Strange indeed.

Consider the word verification option in blogs. Half the time (afterI began noticing) the word verification has something to do with my reply, my unsaid thoughts, or the blog itself. I was thinking about not posting, the words came up to be soemthing like 'ostrich'. Hesitating about pushing "post" when the verification word turned out to be 'rytwrds'. Was reading something about home, and it's 'maschn'. (railways code for CHeNnai Central is MAS.) Beat that.

Maybe the Universe has a Sense of Humour. Freaky. Or maybe I'm just seeing patterns in too many places.

p2p - Chit Chat

2005-10-19T23:10:00.000-07:00

They were perched very comfortably on the old cement seat. Behind them was carved "Lover's Seat" and never for a second did they forget it. In fact, several of the fits of giggles that were breaking out of the young girls was turning into explosions when they, out of a corner of their eye, caught sight of the carved words, and if was enough for one to grin to set the other off with the bosom heaving, breath gasping exercise.

They held hands under the shadow of the huge tree - Priya could not identify the species, but it was one of several on the green campus, and she was unlikely to ever know, or if she did know, she would most probably forget. There were too many important things to figure out, and too many things to just do to worry about botany and whatever else they were teaching at school these days. Her free hand - the left - tucked her short hair behind her ear and then smoothed her grey-and-white school uniform before going back to hold her friend’s hand.

This was probably the news of the ninth standard and though she wouldn't blab it, she really had to know. Curiosity was eating at her. Behind them, across a road, the owner of the little shop smiled indulgently at them. They were not regular customers, but they were nice when they did show up. At least he had never caught them shoplifting.

"Well, what happened? What did he say?" There, it was out. The question that had been keeping her on tenterhooks over the weekend, because one could not be expected to talk about such serious matters over the phone, and definitely not within earshot of parents who would take a dim view of such happenings. This was a - what was that line Uncle Veni had used? - 'sober community, and such things just do not happen, child!' But they did now, she thought rebelliously as her elbow prodded her friend to spill the beans. Yes, these things became private, but not between old chums like Payal and Priya. Every aspect would be dissected, every twitch of the eyebrows analyzed. It was probably this that made Priya more excited than anything else.

Payal had that sparkle in her eyes again, "Huh?"

Exasperated, "Oh, I know you heard the question!” Punctuated by giggle, ”Hurry up and answer it. Stop being a meanie!” Another stream of giggles ensued, and as the school bell rang the end of the fourth hour it subsided. They'd been here three hours now, and they had thought or talked about nothing else... 'just getting comfy'. But from the tone of that last exclamation, it was obvious to anyone who knew Priya - and it must be admitted, most people did - that she meant business.

"He said ‘huh’."

“That’s all?” Priya couldn’t keep the disappointment and dismay out of her voice. What if this guy never made up his mind? What about their plans to… err… help him? And of course, all that plotting they would have to do to get Payal and him some quality time together – they weren’t going to give up these between-classes (and these days through-all-the-classes) long talks, they were too important!

”Yeah. Said he needs to talk about it… and think about it.“ That wasn’t precisely what he had said, but lets let that pass for the moment, Payal, after all, was slightly worked up. "What’s there to think about it? Man, can you believe the guy is crazy enough to want to think about forever?" A slight shudder ran through her.

“Betcha he’s playing hard-to-get.” Priya offered, in her infinite wisdom from zilch experience, “You just wait, we’ll…”

And so the masterminding continued, to bring their life to heel, to find something to do. At least they were occupied for now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PS: I know it’s not like that a lot of the times.
Oh, and I write about this pair quite a bit. Just never posted it.

Apocalypse Now?!?

2005-10-15T02:13:00.000-07:00

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Found it blog-hopping. www.freakspace.blogspot.com , I think - woot, I've never even seen the movie! Need to go looking for it... find and watch.

The Stand: IIPM

2005-10-15T01:01:00.000-07:00

Jumping on the bangwagon.
No, you are not.
You haven't verified all the details yet.
(Impatient) You've verified all that you could. Why don't you get on with it?
But wait, there are...
*keyboard violently seized by the one with the Power of Action*

Yeah, well, the IIPM controversy. There isn't much to say:

Gaurav rocks! So does Rashmi!

One the one hand is the freedom of speech of Mr. Gaurav, and the other - one big giant college apparently elbowing and making inaccurate claims on paper. Thank Eru for VIT, at least the claims it makes are correct as far as I can verify. I'd go for the freedom of speech everytime.

On one hand, a journalist deciding to go for an expose. On another hand, intolerant attitude over lesbianism (not like it's their buisness anyway!) and bringing in personal issues where it was work. I'll go for the right to be whom I want to be every time.

On one hand word being spread over blogdom raising support for these two people. On the other, emails sent extorting money. You don't have proof for that! I'll take my fellow bloggers everytime over bullies.

Besides, STOP trying to tell me what to say, what to do or what to be!

Links:
If you don't know what I'm talking about - this blogpost has been written with the assumption that you do, check out Desipundit.
Once you know what this is about, you've got to read this.
Gaurav's blog and the posts he made - The fraud that is IIPM, More about IIPM
The JEM article - The Truth About IIPM's Tall Claims
The Fine Print in the IIPM ads.
What Amit Varma said about freedom of speech.
What Varna got an email-legal-notice for.
Why the legal notice is a hoax.

Note: If rumours are to be believed, IBM laptops were to be burned. RotFLMAO. Which student in India would willingly burn an IBM? Laptop?? And which management of a wealthy (apparently they made that claim) would throw away the money? Can you please keep the threats real? What sort of dumb people do you take us for? Wish the bluff had been called.

What's with the Rules these days?

2005-10-10T05:53:00.000-07:00

*Steps on Soapbox*
I have been very irritated with all the new dress codes and other types of moral policing that have been going on. Managed to keep it inside me though, there was no point in just ranting. No point whatsoever. But if you are in Chennai and are disgusted by the reactions of the police, the law makers, the people in general - the hypocricy and the double standards for men and women, there is a way you can contribute.

I know that some of us call Chennai a village. The mindset is particularly - distressing (for lack of a better word.) - and finally, something I saw at Whyte Space convinced me that it was worth it to take a look at the group that is forming to get RID of the moral dictation.

Why is it that when I can decide whom to vote for, I cannot decide what to wear? Thankfully, VIT has not enforced a stringent dresscode yet. It is a matter of time, there was a rally outside the college "by concerned mothers". In Coimbatore, where I was recently, a teacher told me that from have 12 co-ed schools a few years back, there are only two now. What happened? Are we back sliding into the Dark Ages? What are we afraid of? The way to defeat temptation is NOT to hide from it. And when are women going to be looked upon as mere objects of tempation, with different rules, different standards? Why do we stand for it?

If youa re interested in joining a forum where we discuss all these issues - email sanerchennai [at] yahoo [dot] com.
'Nuff Said. For now.
*Steps off soapbox*

Dante's Inferno Test

2005-10-10T02:28:00.000-07:00

I found this strange site, and being a personality test freak that I am ... did the test:

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent Me to the Purgatory!
Here is how I matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	High
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test. <- Link. I must warn you, however, I do not share the beliefs of that site, or agree with anything there - meaning, "No comment". I only did the test for I felt like it.

Chess

2005-10-10T01:31:00.000-07:00

David Eddings. That's the author I think of, as I sit here with my chin resting on the cup of my palm, and eyes focussed on the board that carries the 32 pieces of chess. His character - in the Belgariad, I think, placed chess with Fate - a blank, unknown quanitty. That image does not seem amiss here. My right hand blindly reaches for the mug of cappuccinno that has got to be around someplace... and after a few seconds of groping, and not taking my eyes off the polished wood, the warm mug fits snugly into my hands.

I am not thirsty, but I need something to do as I wait for my opponent to make his move - and my eyes fix on his blank visage. Now, if only he wouldn't try to protect the pawn, I can knock out the Queen ... it'll be check... I'll lose a knight, but I think I can swing it... and then, the Bishop from can take the Queen... if he leaves that pawn at d3 alone... If... What other move is open?

I interupt my ponderings to wonder if my face is too expressive. We are seated here, in the open air Barista, playing a game of Chess over a cup of coffee, and ever since this man sat down with his antique check set with ebony-and-ivory peices, he has not said a word. He fascinates me, enchants me, but I do not know how or why. He is an enigma, a puzzle... one that I am determined to crack.

Why is he an enigma anyway? It was he who suggested this game of Kings of India and Persia after we'd caught each other having coffee at early hours of the morning for nearly -- four weeks now. My newspaper lay untouched in the morning for the first time in a long time, and he has not brought his today. Soon it will be time to return to the mundane life, but to be in his presence brings me such joy now. Him, with black hair lying flat on his head, his clear cut jaw and stubborn chin.

It is a cold morning, a slow one in this hill city, so I pull my cardigan tighter. His eyes flicker and follow the action and I feel a deep sense of satisfaction. He noticed. There was a game of chess going on here, and this one had only two players... and it was far more interesting to me than the movement of my black intricately carved peices across his board - after all, when there was the man himself to study, who would waste time on the game?

I shove an imaptient hand through my hair, flick a smile at him, and study his hands. Not for him the hestitation of a hand movign over all the coins on the board, as if in blessing, instead, his hand rushes out and in one swift, sure motion, the next step is taken. I enjoy seeing the long, strong, and firm hands when they are in that mode of action, as it is now, they are resting on the table top, flat against the cut and damaged plastic, peaceful unlike mine, which are drumming some tune.. a tune even I cannot identify.

Tomorrow? he asks, and as I gape - Checkmate.

The Festival of the Dolls

2005-10-09T04:42:00.000-07:00

Her back is aching, and her eyes are streaming tears. She rubs a dusty hand across her nose, and a few short seconds later, a resounding sneeze shakes her body. Tomorrow is a grahanam - an eclipse - all the dolls to be set before the dark day comes around. She would not eat for the two hours of the next day's grahanam, and the two hours before that. Her feet ache from standing for seven and half hours, but she does not think of skipping the custom of Golu at the Navarathri.

Sometime during the day, her thoughts had ventured to never having started the custom, to having a smaller one, but she believes that if she gives in to the temptations of settling for less than the complete, less than the best, it will be all too easy to do so again. And so she had gotten the wooden cartons out of the loft, the ones that were filled with her mother's collection. She had never done this by herself - but it was an obligation that she had taken upon herself the eyar that her mother had died. Not that year, of course, that year, there had been no celebrations at all... but the next year.

She notices the flaking paint - the white peeled away to reveal a sky blue, one that always reminded her of the sister hospital green and a tiny frown etches itself down her forehead. The house needs a touch up, but right now... Her mind takes off, trying to calculate the financial status for that year, and she finally comes to the concusion that the paint job has to be held off another year, what with the expanding family. She bends, her hand on her slender back, and sets right the idol of Saraswati - Goddess of Knowledge - that wasn't quite facing the right direction and steps back to survey her work.

Five steps of dolls, the floor and the divan besides. The windo sills too she has filled, as they each count as a surface bringing to total of "steps" to 9 - an auspicious number. The little patch of sand that sits on the floor, she knows, will one day be made by children, and had it not been for the theory of 9 surfaces, she would probably have given it a skip this year. It is a childish passtime... and there are no children.

The house is empty, her husband at a different city entirely, and her children - she places a hand lovingly on her abdomen and smiles. It is the first smile that has appeared on her face this day, where there has been only concetrated-lets-get-this-done-look before. Another sneeze shakes her. She really has to get going, she thinks, a warm shower calls to her... Hot drops trickling down her back, kissing the skin and the steady pressure of the water soothing stressed muscles. Black hair getting slickly wet, and straight as they do nowhere else... Meters of clothing fall to the ground outside the bathroom, and she loosens her long hair.

She stands under the shower, feeling satisfied with the work she has done, another now-almost forgotten custom fulfilled, another link in the intricate chain of her culture held together. She misses him, and yet is confident... of herself, of life, and of the webs of water and light surrounding her.

Dear Diary : The Cell Phone

2005-08-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

If I could, I would just throw away the dratted cell phone. What purpose does it serve, anyway? What is this need for it? If I am in trouble, I could call for help, but otherwise? I have come to intensely dislike this chain that binds me to do other’s will, the line that allows others to break into my privacy. Is there a time that I am not carrying around this little menace and not being told that…”my dear, you really should reply more often?” in honeyed tones of poison? Gag me.
So many misunderstandings because there was no tone of voice to accompany the words. No face expression to lend a cue. First Man invents this elaborate system when one speaks what one does not mean, when precise meanings are dropped to make room for more a language that leaves room for me to say ‘that is not what I meant. I know that taken literally…’ blah blah blah.
Then he took away one of the crucial elements for interpretation needed – presence. With letters and phones, out of the window went the body language cues. Do not misunderstand me, I think the phone – within limits is one of the best things that ever happened- long distance communication made possible. When that is used to talk to your neighbour, however … I begin to have second thoughts.

Then came the cell phone. Logical extension, this mobile phone. But sms? It is evil. Yes, it saves time, and money, but if you have ever had those long conversations where when you finally meet the person you had the conversation with, you realise that both of you had taken the words to mean something else entirely... you’ll know what I mean. Or when something you say is taken to mean something else.
Don’t get me wrong. I do not hate technology or its’ products. I’m not even techno-phobic. It’s just that letting anything take over such control over your life is foolish. If it were not for the cell phone, planning of events would not be left to the middle of nights and the morning of D-day, confident that the messages that need to get through would do so... How often do people plan in factors like cell phones not working, power lines being cut? Why are these things taken for granted, and their absence taken as an act of Nature, like a cyclone would be?

What of computers then? Talking to strangers? I don’t mind. The picture of me that you have across this screen is consistent; it will probably never meld or attempt to meld with the ‘me’ that people who see me typing this see. You will probably never have to reconcile what you think the ‘real me’ with whatever latest stunt I have pulled.

But when you mix the two? You’d probably think I’m some sort of hypocrite. Because you’d see different sides of me, and you’d probably not be able to accept that this person and that are the same. I can think of other people whom I know who seem exactly the same when I meet them online, but if I had not know that X whom I am speaking to now I also know as Y, I’d probably never spot the similarity.

Nobody can ever know another person. There is too much to know, and people change too fast. Problems arise when you think X is something, and by the time you look again, and act on the knowledge that X will react in such-and-such a way, X would have changed. At least across the screen, one finds it easier to accept that there are huge sections that one does not know or understand.
It is a strange morality, and one that… would not make sense to many, but it is crystal clear to me. And I’d still like to throw away that cell phone.
~*~*~*~

Dear Diary

2005-08-26T08:22:00.000-07:00

I’ll never understand people. Am now convinced. Nor will I understand machines, but that is a totally different thing. Wait, what do I understand? Rhetorical question , and I do not see an answer forthcoming. But the fact remains, I will never understand people. If, by some miracle, I do mange that, there is no way I will ever understand relationships.

I guess I’m also blessed. I cannot imagine my dad packing his bags and moving out, for whatever reason no matter how bad a fight. I cannot picture my parents favouring either me or my brother unfairly over the other. I cannot picture me going out with one guy, breaking up, and within weeks, be going out with another.
I cannot see myself being discriminated against at home by my immediate family, for being a girl, or for being what I am. Or for my eccentric habits. I am a rude, sarcastic, and a totally unbearable nag. Yet I cannot imagine my friends and family leaving me for that, for I would not turn my back on them.
And for all this, I am profoundly grateful.
~*~*~*~

The Winds of Change

2005-08-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by
Listening to the wind of change

The blue convertible with the silver line lasing through its side zoomed on the highway, purring softly under his hands. There was music playing there, inside the car. The man was tapping his fingers to it on the steering wheel, his eyes at some distant point. The road was empty as far as the eye could see, and the hood of the car was down. Her sunglasses were perched firmly on her nose as she stared out into the barren land around her and he... continued tapping. It was as it they were letting the magic of the rhythm tale away their pain, and the speed of the wind that would soon turn their faces red-raw take away all feeling, so that they could forget. Just drive baby, drive, and forget. The music drifted listless behind, as the car moved further and further away until all that could be heard of it were beats. Thud-thud-thud-thwak…

The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers
The future's in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change

They exchanged a glance. It was becoming entirely too noisy these days, living right next to the highway, with these new age kids deciding ever so often to crash through the roads, leaving behind bruises in the eardrums for all who happened to be around. Where was the genteel music of their youth? Where had all the softness and the pain gone? Where was the concern for the world that they were living in? It seemed that they were all drowned in noise, like it was unacceptable for the youth of today to admit the fact there were issues that had to be addressed. The glance warmed and changed to a comfortable smile. One that was born of familiarity. Whatever else the world was coming to, they still had each other, so they leaned back to relax and watch the vast emptiness that stretched out in front of them. It would be a long time before they would be disturbed again.

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
in the wind of change

She soared far above both couples, easily catching the thermal, for it was a warm day. There was the wind in her feathers, and joy in her mind. This was what she had been made for, to soar, to fly, to reach out to the sky. She let of the cry of her kind, “cree-ee-ee” and swooped. There was a lizard on the ground that she feasted on before taking off again. Her winds beat more and more rapidly until she was high again. This time, there was a weight in her belly that pulled her down, but she ignored it. Her flight seemed effortless to her, and she was caught in the joy of just being. She went so high that there were spots in front of her eyes and her winds began to freeze. Another cry rang out in the fierce passion of this flight, flute like and touching, as she folded both her wings tight against her body and fell…

Walking down the street
Distant memories
Are buried in the past forever
I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change

As they watched the hawk continue its antics, his hand sneaked over hers. The sun was blazing in the clear blue sky above them, but they were seated in the porch, safe from sun-tan and sun-stroke, sipping from the cool drink that they took turns to refill every few minutes. They were enjoying a lazy afternoon together, soon enough it would be time to return to the hustle-bustle of ordinary life. The children that were born to them had long since moved away, left the nest, so to speak. Once it had been them trying to forget the now, but now they held on to it like they wished to never let go. They knew all the times that they had spent – worked and laughed, wept and lived together – and some of it apart – but it all came down to the now-moment. And neither of the two would trade their today for anything else. Someday, they would all get together again and talk about old times but for now, today was enough.

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams
With you and me
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
in the wind of change

She dug her fingertips into her back, right above the shoulder blade, closed her eyes and twisted her head. That helped, it did. He ignored her, deliberately, telling himself to not notice, not care. He focused himself on what was coming out of the speakers. She arced her back, restless over sitting still for so long and turned to stare at her partner. The enigmatic stare from behind the opaque sunglasses made him uncomfortable, and he set his jaw, irritated. After a couple of seconds, she took it off and continued to just look at him. His drumming ceased and slowly, the speed of the car dropped. The volume of the music faltered, and then it died. The wind stopped seeming so intrusive as he pulled over at the road. And finally, finally, they began to speak.

The wind of change
Blows straight into the face of time
Like a stormwind that will ring the freedom bell
For peace of mind
Let your balalaika sing
What my guitar wants to say

“Cree-ee—ee!” she cried, catching sight of her mate. Her wings flashed open before she hit the ground and the force of it tore at her wings. But the euphoria of falling was like that only on rising, and she swerved towards him. The two fledglings had flown away, and as she came closer to him, her voice softened. The trill that came out was a plaintive cry, one of loneliness. It would have caught at and tugged the heart of a human, who knows how it affected him for whom it was meant? A glitter in her eyes, and confidence as her wings propelled her closer and further, as she chose, she made a playful swipe at him before gaining height again, teasing him, taunting him to catch her. And as they disappeared into the blue, little specks that fell as one to make more, it seemed as though the wind was whispering again, content, and at peace.

Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams
With you and me
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
in the wind of change

Gems and Her

2005-07-02T07:30:00.000-07:00

Sharp, smooth edges, perfect crystal. And another. And another.
There had to be a flaw somewhere within. Perfection could not exist. The universe does not permit it.
An amethyst there is, for intuitive powers, its smooth water rounded edges clicking on her silver ring. And a quartz glints at the hollow of her throat for clear thinking. Too many aquamarines and jades and agates litter the elegant bronze vessel that contains pot pourri of dried flowers on the table.
Many more stones are all about the tiny room that is her home. One large piece is the colour of the sky at sunset behind a red bloated sun over the ocean, and another the exact shade of the bluebells. A string of prisms dangle from the window, and refract the dyign light of the sun into beautiful prisms that light up the shadowed room.
What stone is that, prominent and eye-catching - the one that looks like it is her lips captured when she was laughing? Or for the blood red one, thirsty for sensuality and ready to be caressed? Would a name for these ever define them satisfactorily? Cooling, calming, soothing, it slides over her heated skin, and she grits her teeth, bitter. Her nose flares slightly as she has the urge to smash something, and hear the satisfying crunch or crash. Would that she could let go and get it out of her system.
No such luck.
The stones still stay in their perfect locations around the little prison, and she silently screams.

Tandava

2005-06-28T02:44:00.000-07:00

There is a strange thumping noise that I heard. Paying a little more attention revealed that it wasn't just thumping, there were many tiny taps, and bumps, and soem cruel imitations of clicks and cracks. On investigating, it became obvious that a large number of Little People were engaged in that most ancient of dances. It is said that Shiva danced it - rarely - as an act of fury that would destroy the world, since it was usually succeeded by the opening of the Third Eye.

I would welcome the open Third Eye at this point, I am sure. There, on the crimson tubes that regularly pulsed, there is a life that beats and does not stop. The tunnels wind their way through God knows exactly how much useless matter. Somehow, it seems that the material itself constricts and relaxes. Springs, my dazed minds thinks, and Browning. The connection still escapes me.

Meanwhile the Little People’s dance gets more fantastic and even more furious. Clearly, they have an agenda to complete, and it does not include peace. Round and round they whirl, colourful skirts and cloaks of crimson, red and maroon flying behind them, their little feet hitting the smooth white floor hard. It might have been an upside down world, but it was theirs. Around them, is a heavy liquid, as dense as can be imagined, apparently trying to cushion the effects of their hammers and tongs.

All seems blurred and the area of confusion spreads, will this Tandava never stop? I have a headache.

One More Inch

2005-06-28T00:30:00.000-07:00

Where did Ramblings of a Diseases Mind go? Into the Void. I definately Ramble, and my Mind is wierd to say the least, but I guess Diseased gives it the wrong picture altogether.

So well, I changed it. Hopefully I'll not budge after this change, but it just seemed right.

Oh, someone told me I'd "growed" One More Inch, and I guess I'd like to "grow" a little more too... So, abracadabra, and we have a change.

If you don't know what to say....

2005-06-27T23:06:00.000-07:00

Stay silent I told myself, but it just does not work. I've got to be one of the biggest chatterboxes of the century, and completely tactless to boot, but the worst is that I never seem to learn.

Here is my tongue wagging away, letting slip a hundred secrets by the off-chance remark route. Can you believe that there was someone brodcasting that they were so glad that they didn't flunk when they'd got phenomenal grades? Yes, you can. Luckily, that person was not me. I managed to not mention that I was expecting a C somewhere.

Oh yes. Our grades are out, and methinks I've lost the scholarship. I've counted four people so far who have higher CGPAs than me, and only six get the scholarship. Oh well. What does a huge amount of money matter?

Oh wait, that was supposed to be "what do grades matter?", but I realise that without the money tag attached, I wouldn't really care. Yup. I'm materialist enough for that...
The life of a student is full of stumbling blocks like papers, exams. Results. Classes - ye gods, classes! I hate havign marks for attendence...

All in all, a beautiful beginning to a new year. What else had I expected from this wannabe?

Of Dads and Daughter's Pain

2005-06-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

The house is in an uproar. A child has hurt her foot – perhaps a sprain, perhaps a fracture. I think it’s likely it’s a sprain. Seeing how much this kid is like me, I am sure it’s a sprain, because I just am not capable of bearing pain silently for long. A fracture and she would ahev been screaming long before this.

Her father, a cardiologist, is perhaps loosing his cool the fastest. I don’t think he can listen to his daughter crying, and him, helpless... his yelling at the mother, and the grandmother and everyone else is upsetting the daughter more than the pain itself, I think.
I understand that situation. It is the same thing that makes sure my father leaves the room in a fury of guilt when I burst into tears. Truth be told, I hold things in until one small item triggers the bursting of the dam. And usually, it’s a normal thing which at any other time I would have ignored that makes me – turn the taps on. And usually, it is my father who tips me over the edge.

I wonder, will I be that protective?
Are you that protective, if you have kids? And if not, do you think you will be?
I hear other sitting around, commenting, ‘why did the child not cry when she first hurt herself?’, as if it were her fault. And when she does cry, she is told to shut up. I don’t understand, and I don’t hope to. This entire huge emotional blow up frustrates me, and in a strange way, drains me. I have taken refuge in front of my screen, hoping to block out those words that he directs towards all around him.

And in the middle, he worries that he hasn’t gotten me what I need. I wish I could set things right, but my meddling will only make things worse. They’ll fix themselves on their own, with no aid from me. But it is so difficult to wait. Of all of life’s lessons, one of the most important is – I must learn to wait. And it is one thing that I despair of ever learning.
I’m feeling so bad for the father, who is probably feeling worthless - powerless... In spite of, and perhaps because, he is a “doctor” himself. That is likely the reason why he loads the blame on others. The mother, who is getting to hear a lot of stuff that she neither deserves to listen to, nor needs to hear on top of her own guilt. And the child, who has a sprain and is weeping, “Mommy, I don’t want anyone to touch that, Mommy.” Over and over and over again, so much so that I think I shall dream of it tonight.

It’s no big torture, but it’s bad enough, for me. My hands are trembling. It’s right at home, where it always hits the hardest. Sometimes I wonder how I live among humans at all.

Happy Fizz

2005-06-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

It bubbles and fizzes. There has been too much darkness and depression and all around sad things lately, and it seems to mock the drinker, telling him - look, when I can dance and be happy and generally take life easily, why don't you?

Why don't you indeed?

It bubbles up, gurgling its happpiness at being, just Being, if only momentarily. Perhaps it is short lived, but it is so complete for that little while! The fizz gushes up as the drink is poured in a glass. No specific type of glass this time, but there are always stereotypes.

To those who like the slightly dry taste of alcohol - did you think of champagne?
Others exist to whom it is coke or mountain dew or the like...
And for those who perfer the unfizzed I ask a question - how on earth do you survive?

Inside the Purgatory (aka The Purgatory 2)

2005-06-22T07:16:00.001-07:00

I'm not hungry sweetheart, she told him, and he shrugged it off. Food was beginning to repulse her. Where had the days gone when he would enjoy ever meal she cooked, even though it was thrown together in the dorm? He seemed so distracted, so not himself. He hadn't cut his hair in a very long time now. Didn't he care anymore? How he looked, how she looked?

She stood in front of the mirror, analyzing herself. The jeans and the baggy t-shirt made her look fat, she decided. She stripped off those incriminating layers and stood there, staring. That was it. The moment she was slimmer and more beautiful, Rob would start paying attention to her again.

A few days later, she almost leapt through the ceiling with joy. He'd noticed her! All right, so it was only to tell her that her hair needed correcting, but at least that much. Of course, he hadn't cut his in a longer time - no doubt he was going for a new look. She'd spent the day as usual, missing school and its activity. But she understood, they didn't have the money at this point in time for her to continue with her education. So, prosaically, she decided to go for the haircut, and waited anxiously for Rob to return.

His eyes were glazed. He hardly even looked at her. She couldn't blame him, really, she was getting fat. She hadn't had the time to look up an Atkins diet, and besides, a tailor made one cost so much money. She just decided to reduce the amount she ate. After all, with her activity levels begin so low, she didn't need many calories anyway.

Finally, some attention! They would have a whole weekend to themselves. Oh! It would be just like before! They hadn't even had a proper honeymoon, just stayed at home, but they were starting early and had to save up and not spend. He'd told her that today too, and she was determined not to disappoint him.

Slowly, her stomach stopped asking for as much food, but it still seemed to her that she ate too much. He forgot all about her birthday ~ which had passed by that weekend, and told her he had 'work'. She wondered if there was another woman, and wept buckets. Not in front of him though. So when he told her it was for them, their future, she had agreed, praying desperately that that was the case.

He bought her chocolate and roses to make it all better. There was a dinner they had to go to, and she would come, wouldn't she? His career depended on it. Of course she would, and she dressed in an evening gown of silver and light, and dazzled all whom she spoke to that day. She ate tit-bits, and firmly clamped down on the nausea. There was no way she was going to betray Rob in front of all those others, and she was sure his boss would be around. Fat and pompous in his business suit. There she was, slim and beautiful. Instinctively, she looked down at herself, and decided to go on a crash diet. There was just too much fat on her!

She couldn't help it, all that foul food was in her body. In her body! She felt like screaming. The roses were strewn all over the bedroom, and she brought out what she had eaten the evening before. How she had held it in so long was a wonder. But she was feeling tired, and weak. He made her coffee and went to his perfect boss, with the education, and the body and the brains and everything else that she did not have.

She could no longer move much from her bed, but she cooked for him. Soon, I'll be perfect. She promised herself. Soon. She felt weak, and Rob was too worried that she wasn't eating. Of course he didn't want to be bothered with her, he would rather go to that shedevil at work. She gritted her teeth and told him a lot of things about a doctor that he was only too happy to believe.

The months flew by, a blur of grey and white spotches, with nothing in them but food - for Rob, and bed - for herself. She'd missed her third monthly and when Rob asked, she told him it usually meant pregnancy. He seemed happy. Was he happy to be rid of her? He hadn't touched her for longer... Could he believe that she was... She was... She couldn't bear to think of it.

She had to become thin and beautiful again. To be otherwise would be unthinkable. And he had drifted away because of her sins. Her defects. It was all her fault, because Rob wouldn't have moved an inch if he hadn't been pushed away.

Only a short while longer, she told herself. This is my purgatory. Only a short while longer. This is my purgatory.
This is my purgatory
This is my purgatory
This is my purgatory
This is my purgatory
This is my purgatory
This is my purgatory
This is my purgatory
This is my purgatory
This is my purgatory
This is my purgatory

Note: Here is a bit about Anorexia. And a cartoon / movie I liked on it is here. And no, not a RL experience. And that's no one I know either. And there is a Part 1 to this - the previous blog.

The Purgatory

2005-06-22T05:49:00.000-07:00

I’m not hungry sweetheart, she told him, and he shrugged it off. It was getting increasingly normal of her to refuse her meals, and he assumed that she ate something or the other sometime. No one could stop eating altogether, could they?

Besides, he was tired, and the day had been horrible as usually, and what he desperately needed was one neat brandy. She wouldn’t like it though, so he refrained. Anne was losing weight these days, and he couldn’t make out why. Her skin was paler than usually, and no longer glowed with the health it used to. Her long brown hair seemed lank, and he suggested that she cut it.

The next day, the hair was shoulder length, but she was till pale a wraith of her usual self. He shrugged it off, knowing that she was working too hard, and there was nothing he could do. The weekend was coming, and they would go away from all this hustle bustle in the city an have a quiet time together, just enjoying life. She seemed delighted with the prospect.

The weekend came and went. He felt very guilty, he really did, but he knew that she was disappointed. He was irritated with her. After all, he was working for them, for their family and one day, for their kids. She understood that, didn’t she? She nodded solemnly, a tiny pout on her lips.

He bought her chocolate and roses to make it all better. There was a dinner they had to go to, and she would come, wouldn’t she? His career depended on it. Of course she would, and she dressed in an evening gown of silver and light, and dazzled all whom she spoke to that day. She ate tid-bits, and he was relieved. He hadn’t seen her eating in a long while.

The roses he found the next day, lying in her hands, and the bathroom was filled the smell of someone who had thrown up. She said, Nothing really, I just had a wee bit of stomach upset He shrugged, made her coffee and got his own breakfast, and pushed of to work.

Life went on, and Anne only got thinner. Later, he promised himself. He was so close that success, that promotion, and once he got it, they would be in the lap of comfort. They had just gotten married, high school sweethearts, and she was barely 19. He would make life perfect for her.

Anne fell sick, and she told him she had been to a doctor, and he had given her medicines and she was eating them. How could he have known it wasn’t the truth? He left by seven, and more and more, she was having breakfast in bed. Or so she told him. He came back so late at night… and found that his meal was waiting in the table, and Anne was asleep.

He was happy, Anne had missed her third monthly. She told him what that meant, and the child was early, as per his plans, but he could make it work. He would make it work. It had to work. He flung himself heart and soul into his work, and his hours got longer. People called him a success and wondered at the secret that made him push so hard. But he was content, there was Anna at home, a baby on the way, and the world was his oyster.

One fine day, he found a notebook of Anne’s that filled him with dread. It was filled with the same phrase over and over, from beginning to end. He went home to find her dead, her pen stopping, as she wrote yet another time - “This is my purgatory”

Note: Here is a bit about Anorexia. And a cartoon / movie I liked on it is here. And no, not a RL experience. And that's no one I know either. And there is a Part 2 to this.

Father and Chocolate

2005-06-22T01:19:00.000-07:00

“Yeth. I like thocolate. Mama thaid it ith bad for me, though” She told the man, her tiny face very brave, and her liquid brown eyes trained on the hand that was tucked into a coat pocket. Oh course Mama had told her that she must never talk to strangers, but she had been talking to Mr. Man forever now, and he never did anything bad to her. He was so nice that he even gave her chocolate, but Mama had said never eat food from strangers, and so she hadn’t. They were all neatly arranged in on her wooden shelf.

She looked adorable in her little pink frock, an angel really, he thought. He was a handsome man, and still young. They had hair the exact same texture and colour, curly and mousey brown, htough the eyes were different. There was a part for him that wanted to sweep her up and carry her off to his home, his perfect baby doll. But he didn’t. He wished it he could say that he didn’t because he knew what was right and what wasn’t. Truth was, her mother was a hellcat, bringing up ugly words like laws, courts and suing at the drop of the hat. She could, of course, being one herself. Thrusting aside all thoughts of her, he smiled at the little one. “Are you happy?”

She tipped her head to the side like a bird and considered him and his question gravely before answering. One tiny hand was gripping a toy - a soft cuddley soft toy that looked like a unicorn - very hard, and she saw him through the low door of the front gate of the huge bungalow that was home. Mama would be home soon, she knew and she had to get back in. Mama would not like these daily meetings, but she liked Mr. Man. Seriously, she told him, “Yeth. Very.”

That settled it, in his mind. Spontaneously, he hugged her, and lifted her like he longed to, over the ancient minitaure gate. Then he set her back down and watched while her short legs padded to the house and stopped at the front door. Ayah would be out soon, having finished her tea. The sun set behind him, warming the face of the girl, and he drank in the scene as one starved. Hair flying around in wisps caught the light, and the bricks too appeared to love the last few minutes of sun.

Then abruptly, he turned and walked off into the sunset.

Battle Over the Control of a Pencil

2005-06-21T06:35:00.000-07:00

She wants to write. Desperately. I can feel her reaching for the pencil, with all of her tremendous strength, all that power that was saved in a tiny frame. Not now, I think at her, I have this report to finish up and then … but arguing with her is worse than useless. I could picture her pouty lips set in a stubborn line, and silent, she exerts pressure on the left hand, trying to distract me from what I am writing so she can take over.

I have never seen her so desperate to communicate, because she never lets me talk when I really need to. When those times come when the dam should break and feeling come through, there she is. She only protects me, in that she refuses to let me make a bigger target for anger by shooting my mouth off. She only stops me from talking to stop me from making a fool of myself – ourselves - in front of others. I can take the words, but not the frustration of not acting. Sometimes I wonder if I have outgrown her, and if she is no longer needed.

But I cannot discard her. She is a part of me unlike anythign else - except the others.

Imagine the strength that she has that she can control all of us, screaming for blood, the pound of flesh, peace and what not, and stuff us all into a dusty little corner of our collective mind. To keep the body out of all our control. To prevent action, when all the rest want it. To keep us quiet when we are either sobbing from fright, fear and pain or screeching blue murder.

I think of Terry Pratchett – Angie and Perdita, the two minds in one body, and Perdita “growing stronger in the left hand” and almost groan.

She is, perhaps, the most powerful of the lot of voices in my head. Silent, and lurking in the background. Quiet I call her, and I have seen her come out only when I need to be protected. Yet, what is it that she wants to say? Curiosity gets the better of me.

No, I overrate myself.
She would have broken through my resolve anyway.

Imagine my surprise when I saw my hand now scribbling freely, and my being completely independent of it, just watching. It is a sight to behold, the relatively small crisp handwriting with the points on all the letters abruptly changing form. They become large and artistic, clear words and ideas, and things I had not heard before, or that I had heard and ignored. My eyes grow wider at the message that comes through, and the core appears to be amidst a lot of other words. They hold my eyes and my mind, and I wonder – how could I not have known?

I am Me.
We Are.

What’s in a Name?

2005-06-21T00:49:00.000-07:00

Faceless
Nameless

What comfort do I find in being not known? Perhaps I lose the compulsion to be more than what I am, and be only me when I do not have a name to the face. This isn’t a factor when I deal with people who don’t know the RL me – with them I am the real me, and with no trouble with the name-person conflict. It is only with people I already know who have this preconceived notion of who I am, that I feel the need to live up to what they think I am.

Consider this tendency of mine. None – well, almost none – of my characters in a story revolving around only them ever have a name. It is only when there are so many characters that to tag to identify which one I speak of names. They are redundant.

Quite frequently the name and the person don’t match. Or even the place. Consider “Nimrodel” – what if it was applied to a boring person with no interests in life beyond her books? It wouldn’t go. Easier, to leave things unnamed, and get on with the story.

It also cuts down on conflicts. As X, I am Y’s something, which dictates that I react to Z a certain way. Not being X gives me the freedom to just be me, minus constraints, and do what I would have done, had I not been Y’s something. It is that individuality that I cherish, that freedom. Because, sometimes I think I do not have the guts to say that I am X and I am this way, and deal with it. It hurts too many others whose pain is my pain.

I would have been unable to say what I just did with my name known. There is an ego and a pride involved with me with my name that denies all weakness. I can do away with without the name. Probably this does not make sense to others, but to me it does.

Shrouded she lurks unknown
Comfortable in clear darkness
Perhaps it hides the flaws.

Besides, one day, I’ll be known all over the world, and then I don’t want to be mobbed for an autograph. *sticks out tongue* Unfair perhaps, is that I know other’s names, and who they are… but hey, life is unfair.

The Tramp

2005-06-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

Please come now I think I'm falling
I'm holding to all I think is safe
It seems I found the road to nowhere
And I'm trying to escape

He looked like another tramp with nothing else to do, but walk the streets. So walk the streets he did. Clearly, however, he was not a beggar, for his manner was too proud and the back too straight to permit him to ask another for aid to make his living. His hair was a trifle too long, not by design or the dictate of fashion, but because he just hadn’t gotten around to cutting it. The once silky hair was a wee bit shaggy and a whole lot ruffled. The wind insisted on lifting it around and playfully try to interest him in herself, but he only ignored her. There was another in his thoughts.

I yelled back when I heard thunder
But I'm down to one last breath
And with it let me say
Let me say
Hold me now
I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking
That maybe six feet
Ain't so far down

He wore loose fitting clothes that billowed in the gusty wind of the sea nearby, and on his blue-grey kutra were neatly mended rips. Several of them, but no patches. He did not believe in there being things that could be sewn back together once a big enough piece had been removed. Somehow, the new patch never fit as well or matched as well. And he liked his whole kurta and the whole life that had been his before he had taken to this habit. There were lines on his face that made him look a lot older than his twenty-something, and the crow feet of laughter seemed to have faded, the same way that the sun was hidden behind the clouds these days. Instead there were the passive lines of loss and worry that marked him, and aged him before his time.

I'm looking down now that it's over
Reflecting on all of my mistakes
I thought I found the road to somewhere
Somewhere in His grace

He was walking on an asphalt road, buildings reared tall all around him. There was a blank look in his soft brown eyes as he strode though the narrow confines of civilization, his mind was full of just one other person. Suddenly the buildings stopped like a giant knife had scraped off the mammoths off the face of the planet, and in from of him lay a beach. Blindly he went towards it, for it held a fascination to him that nothing else did. This was where the he-that-was had ended, and he wondered if it was tiem to end the he-that-is as well.

I cried out heaven save me
But I'm down to one last breath
And with it let me say
Let me say
Hold me now
I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking
That maybe six feet
Ain't so far down

Dirty yellow sand, bits of plastic and fragments of glass littered the area. The glass called to him as surely as the sea did, as he made his way to the nearby dhabba-cum-chaiwalla, and sat himself down, staring at nothing. He never asked for it, but the chaiwalla got him a glass of steaming hot masala chai silently and left it in front of the gentleman, as he had for the few weeks past. For once, the Tramp acknowledged the glass that had always been left as it had been given – untouched.

Sad eyes follow me
But I still believe there's something left for me
So please come stay with me
'Cause I still believe there's something left for you and me

A few gulps later, the tea was down, burning his throat along the way. With a sudden action born of frustration, the glass went flying and broke into pieces. From the depths of a pocket, he picked out a few notes and left them on the sturdy wooden bench- table behind which he had been considering the sea, and broke into a jog. He had picked up a few shards of the glass he had broken, and his speed picked up. Before long, he was struggling against the blue-black waves of a stormy evening, and wading deeper and deeper into the water. It came up to his ribcage now, as he stood at the edge of the continental shelf. He held the deadly edge at his wrist when, for the first time, the tears burst forth.

For you and me
For you and me
Hold me now
I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking

Credit: Creed, One Last Breath.
Kini - for the song + blog idea, that I stole from his blog. Thankies.

Another Person, Another Pain, Another Day in Paradise

2005-06-20T02:56:00.000-07:00

I feel filthy. Again.

Someone, somewhere shot an accusation at another that I cared for. Too much. It is something that I cannot bear. And here, thousands of miles away, my eyes fill with fire as I leap to defend the one who was probably wrong. It is all so ugly, how can anyone actually want to put oneself through all that chance of betrayal? It does not matter – the truth. The pain does. It is not fair to anyone, I know, but this is how I am. That I will not change, unless for myself. And in between it all, there is the Lament of the Addict - why do I choose to do this to myself?

Another Day in Paradise.
His eyes are livid,
I shrink back from the force of his fury,
His hand makes rapid chopping jerking motions,
Loosening the tie to shout the better
While the other hand gesticulates.

Five feet is too close,
This shouting fest is heard three doors down,
I cower in the shame of being an object,
As accusation fly my way everyday,
While silence holds me in thrall.

He’s at it again,
This scene is repeated far too often,
At all times of the day and night I feel
His scathing gaze and jealous voice,
While I search ever for escape.

No physical violence,
Only the greed and arrogance of the Owner
Strips me to my tiny shell of no confidence
Strange how powerful he is in faded grey pyjamas.
While they say, silence is assent.
~*~*~*~

It is selfish of me – for that other did not ask me to feel angry for her. I am driven beyond what one can expect for those I give more than I should. And there are others to whom I have nothing to give. You can only transfer credits to countries that have banks, not to those whose system is so alien one cannot understand it even if one wished. And still others I hold back from, after all, I have too many weaknesses already. And another soft spot in my armour will not help me any. Not now, and not ever.

Dreamer (my Muse) comes to my rescue again, with another picture in my mind. I am at peace again, for a short while. Until this happens again.

Cookie Jar Light
His fat short fingers were in the cookie jar
Though I looked for beauty wide and far
His round stubborn face with a little grin
That beam of his, it always wins.

This little child with the soft brown curls
His skin in twilight had the sheen of pearls
The world was caught in his little fist
He gazed into the shadows and the mist.

Slowly as the heavy air cleared,
Though ‘twas the night of darkness and fear,
The garden was lit up, beauty unmarred
That cookie-jar smile was the light of stars.
~*~*~*~

Spellchecks and Cherry Blossoms

2005-06-19T04:39:00.000-07:00

How I hate being wrong. She stares at her screen and outside her barred and shuttered window, little pink flowers grow.

She had heard that they were cherry blossoms, loved in Japan for their ethereal beauty and another quality. Dangling precariously from their slender stalks, they are ‘Here one minute/Gone the next.’ Transition. Beauty. Impermanence. There is a lesson to it all, only if she could see it.

Her moist eyes switched back to the screen. Much of what she was tied up in there and there was one last thing she had to so before she left for the day. The walls were closing around her, and the silence was an oppressive blanket. She thought she heard a whisper, but it was the wind, urging her to hurry.

The corridor was dark, and along a row of identically cubicles, only hers was active. Another glance she threw to the trees as her hands continued typing, confident of making no mistakes. The soft pale green leaves, young and fresh and totally unable to fend for themselves reached longingly towards the cherry blossom that laughed and flirted.

It would not stay long now, soon a gust of wind would come and blow those light faced creatures away, and the leaves, being what they are would be none the worse for the loos. They would grow strong and dark and would continue their function of old age, who had ever heard of leaves pining away?

But the blossoms died everyday, and she knew it.

One wayward lock tugged free from the knot of the hair and drifted slowly to her face. The dying rays of sunlight caught it at an angle and made the brown hair appear reddish. She did not notice. Absently, she tucked the strands behind her eyes as her hands stayed busy at the keyboard.

Again she looked around, her eyes darting this way and that, looking for a reason to stop, but there was no one and nothing, only her feeling uncomfortable. There was something that bored a hole into her back, and she felt she was being watched. A guilty conscience, she was sure. She completed her typing waited while the spellcheck pointed out numerous errors. That was because she always switched letters around when she wrote… but she did hate being wronged. The tips of her fingers beat an impatient tune on the table as she waited, and then she stopped. She wanted, and needed the silence though it unnerved her.

Her sun tanned hand moved with the quick grace of long practice to pick up the CD that popped out of the drive. She cocked it in her hand, the index finger through the central hole and the thumb on the rim of the slim cylinder, the shiny reflective surface tucked in towards her. She pushed her chair back and it rolled obediently. Her other hand reached for her bag, and she put the disc in with a lot less concern that what she should have had.

She glanced around the cubicle, ensuring that there was nothing there that could incriminate her. There wasn’t. With a firm step and a “clip-clop” every time her shoe heel came in contact with the marble flooring she left, scurrying outside the building at last. As she left, it seemed to her that something watched. She stepped under the tree outside her window, on her way to leaving forever, and there was the evening breeze again. And cherry blossoms danced around her all the way out.

Lament of an Addict

2005-06-19T03:55:00.000-07:00

Substandard in every way, my self esteem took a blow. It wasn't even me. There are things that happen that take a person to new levels of low. It does not happen to me, I have never fallen in love, nor have I had a crush that I can recall. Or perhaps, unrequited it stands still, unaknowleged so that I may insist that - no, I was never hurt, never had another cuased me pain. It was all my doing, and it's absurd, for me to take this world on my shoulders.

I'm addicted to my pain, there is no other expalnation for it's continued presense in my mind. It is the same issues I alwas saddress, and never do I listen to the rational myself.
I'm on a roll of words, and I don't really know what has occured. My freinds are hurt and I ache, (for them, and with them) while another part of me contempously speaks - why not find your own pain? Why must my life be spent in secondary pain? And yet, I have not the courage to face my life and it's struggles and take the pain. How much easier it is to just stand there and watch, and perhaps lend a shoulder if it is asked?

Lament of the Addict

While on the computer I spend the entire day
I would do with this ever-night as I may
I’ve seen beyond forever in my mind
Sadly, nothing is a surprise of any kind.

I expect this twist of fate is to be expected
This life was supposed to be respected
But see, truth is, I have no time for others
And with me – well, no one ever bothers.

I have read of sweeping emotional changes
And a landscape of killing love and saving rages
But with this one little sigh, I must declare
I’ll die as I have lived without any fanfare

Like plague I’ve avoided coffee and tea
There was the fear that they’d addict me
Now I notice what I never thought I’d assume
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

~*~*~*~

A long long time

2005-06-09T06:49:00.000-07:00

It has been a very long time indeed since I blogged. In my defence, however, I had discovered www.lotrplaza.com and became involved on the forums. Very involved, and then I came home. As usual, when I get invoved in something I really get involved, I never had time for anythign beyond that. I could mechanically list my achievments and my failures, but what is the point? You see, even though I have a scholarship now, there is next to no chance that I will will retain it. And then again, there is another thing. I have freinds online, but have told none of them abotu this blog. I think that is because I let meself say those private thoughts here. All these days I was feeling bad that I could not make journal entries while at home, and only today did I remember about blogs.
Also saw star wars, and being a star wars freak, I loved it. Felt bad about the inconsistancies, of course, but maybe Lucas does not have an eye for detail.
Have to run now.

Normal, natural.... but Paradise?

2005-02-09T20:51:00.000-08:00

Going online is the worst of punishments these days. Never a computer to be seen free, nor, if you do somehow (with some useful application of elbow pressure and such) get one, does it work!

My birthday just passed. People closest to me - well, some of them, - forgot about it and all the people whom I did not expect to rememebr it did. I got a book called "Why sex is fun!" and contrary to all expectations it doesn't have much on sex. Just baboons and how thier ass turns brigth red during mating season and not otherwise. Apparently we are the only species with 'recreational' sex. Sex without the purpose of reproducing. Ironically, while most of the other (animal) species tend to get 'hot' only for that, we seem to take measures extrodinaire to precent conception.
You dog, the author says, would be horrified by the idea of contraceptive. How... amusing.

So looks like we are rather wierd. And that's 'normal' to us. (Aha! Now I know why I distrust the words 'normal' and 'natural'. We aren't either.) So no point in getting all 'speciest' and raising a hue and cry about X being lesbian or Y being gay. After all, we don't at least turn bright red when we ovulate. Not only that, it appears that the baboons actually have vaginal swelling and they advertise this by squatting right in front of all the adult males in thier 'clan'... and ... um... solicting 'customers'. Makes me shudder to imagine it, but see how deep our genetic bais is?? THAT is normal and natural, so I'm rather unhappy with the way people with sexual deviations have to fight so many prejudices.

One would wonder in front of these monumental staggering implications from these facts, what is the significance of a mere birthday?
Or maybe it has EVERYTHING to do with the birthdays...
Camphor

New Year REsolution

2005-01-02T23:13:00.000-08:00

ok, ok, so that is not very original. but that's what this is, so deal with it, ok??

never had much sucess with the concpet or the theory or a the practice. is it any different from deciding to do anythign on any other day? more likely, i'd do it more if i weren't obligated to just becasue its a new year resolution.

of course, its alwyas the same thign that the REsolve to do. and what does that matter?
only the phrasing is different.

fest comign up, decided i won't work for it. does that matter? i guess it does. will i let that stop me, i don't think so.
sometimes wild horses can drag you away from 'duty'. besides, there is a lot of political manuvering and back-stabbing goign on over there and i like that not at all. oc ourse, my liking something was never mandatory for it to be done...
which is why i am here and cribbign about it.

anyway, i have REsolved not to Resolve to do anything. i'll just do what i feel like and see if it is possible to become in truth what i say i am.

The First Blog.

2005-01-02T22:59:00.000-08:00

i've never blogged before, i but i guess this is one of thoset hings i will learn on the job.
hands on experience or whatever else you call it.
of course, with the internet connection that we get over here in college, i'm pretty sure i won't be regular with this. not like i am regular with anything else either. most probably it'll be a weekly blog.
provided again, that we aren't going to have MORE classes than we have already. how many? well, chemical engg has less than us, and that should tell you something.
yeah, am in college, bumbling through my first blog, determined to figure out how this works. and then to start blogging.
like with my name though, i get all fired up about something, go crazy over it, adn then it just ... dies out.
like it was with haiku last week. went crazy with it. credit for it goes to ohwhatevernevermind blog. he showed me a few.
then,
nature took over.
talkign about nature.. you'd just have to mention that earthquake and tsunami. and i'd just ahve to tell you that no matter how much my college raised, putting an advertisent in the peper about it was downright cheap.
an ad technique, yes, effective. but still... considering none of it was voluntary, and everyone was required to pay at least 50 rupees...
yup, i'll be right back. and lets see how long that takes.
and for all of you old hands out there - is is as addictive as it could be?