Meanderings…

No, I’m not drunk. But have a nice one anyway.

Home coming is sweet, with bittersweet tinges to add to the interesting experience that it is. When home is a whole city, your joys multiply till you are overwhelmed. You can breathe in and wallow in all that is familiar, those things that were so easy to take for granted but are now so precious. The curl of your mother’s hair, your sister’s silent creeping-out-of-bed early in the morning so as not to wake you. The silence of the night, comfortable and unchanged since when you were thirteen. The feel of the floor, hard and reassuring, beneath your back. The sofas that echo with the assurance of a hundred memories. The tiny bathroom that remembers the yowls that you called singing, your conversations with the taps, your tears that the shower couldn’t drown, your secret phone calls.

At the end of this internal monologue, the warden’s son comes and opens the door. He’s gaping at me and goes “You just came in? And the dog didn’t DO anything to you?” I’m shaken, and feeling all alone, scared in the I-want-my-mommy way and all I can do is chuckle nervously and say, “Er, no… As you can see by the lack of missing chunks of flesh on my legs, he didn’t, in fact, take a bite out of me, as he wanted to. And you seem shocked and even… disappointed?… that he didn’t.”

So yes, the summer has been upon us for a couple of months and, unfortunately, as summers tend to be, I have started LEARNING things. Sigh. An unfortunate side-effect of being utterly vetti I guess. It’s most disappointing. I never went about arbitrarily LEARNING things when I was in college! Why should I now, when the days should be spent in decadent wastefulness? Sigh again. Anyway, here are these great lessons:

- Celebrity Crushes Are Fun!
Beside the garden variety everyday crush, which is often painful and almost always embarrassing, there is the Special Realm of the Celebrity Crush (hmm, what’s with the capitals, you ask? No idea!) Now, the thing about the CC is the ridiculous ease of accessibility to the object of your interest/affection/desire/lust (ha!). One google search for certain strangely attractive cricketers and there are about a million pictures to go ga-ga over. One foray of television channels and there’s Hrithik Roshan, bulging muscles, yummy eyes, cute extra digit et al! Now, a few heart aches could be caused by little factors such as… “Oh no, (dramatic hand-to-forehead) Christian Bale is married!” or “Damn that Deepika Padkone, trying to steal my guy!” or “Ah, if only my lowe wasn’t straight…” But overall, your friends tease you and you grin along, safe in the knowledge that you’ll never get caught in THAT trap, at least!

- It’s Possible to Do a Lot of Nothing
Now this might sound like something Garfield would make up, but it’s true! You can pretend to read… while doing nothing. You can pretend to watch television… while doing nothing. You can pretend to be online, doing important things… while doing nothing. Well, you get the drift! It’s a glorious feeling when you look back at a long day of doing nothing. In fact, I plan to write a book about it, Doing and Nothingness. I’m sure it’ll be more popular and… “experienceable” than Sartre’s similar ramblings.

- The Sad Truth about People
It’s a sad truth that people have an endless capacity to deceive themselves. Some (no links here, sorry ) would even sink into melodrama and self-pity rather than admit that they might have done something wrong or work at a compromise. Ah, well, it takes all sorts of nuts to make a fruitcake.

- The Happy Truth About People
You know there’s always another side to the grass but both the less green and the greener sides can be on your own lawn! Ok, ok, I’ll stop talking in metaphors before you throw something at me. It’s just that the happy truth about people is that PEOPLE CAN BE WONDERFUL! Sure, we’re all full of faults and no way is anybody perfect but still, there are people who will understand you and respect you for what you are and bother to stick with you even when you’re being a total loser or completely lame That’s what makes the fruitcake sweet, after all! (Ok, I promise, no more cliched metaphors!)

- Being a Girl is Fun
Yes, yes, we all know it’s a hard world to be a woman in. Men constantly come up with trivial complaints about how difficult life is for men but it’s obviously just men being men. It’s often the case that women wish they were men but at the end of the day, I realise it’s fun to be a girl! I mean, womes are so comfy in fun sleepovers where previously mentioned objects of interest/affection/desire/lust are drooled over, fashion, world affairs and everything else are discussed, clothes and weird hairstyles are tried out, crazy pictures are taken and hysterical laughter goes on for several minutes over nothing. Now, not being a man, I can’t imagine what male sleepovers (sorry, is that an oxymoron? Let’s call it something more MANLY… Hmm, ok BOOZE PARTY!) are like but I doubt there’s any of the emotional sharing that women do. Wow, I’m being so sexist. It rocks! So yeah, go, girlpower!

- Coo-coo-cooking!
Ah yes, I have leanred rudimentary skills at the kitchen. Never thought the day would come when the old family joke about me having to marry a chef could be shelved. Well, I still wouldn’t go THAT far but I’ve learned some basics. Such as how to make scrambled eggs (ahem, the broken eggs and the weird smell in the kitchen will NOT be mentioned, atomic!) and chapati and dosa and rava idli! So yes, I might survive on my own, provided there are convenient Spencer’s Dailies in every corner to buy bread, idli/dosa mav and eggs from. Hehe.

Oh, there’s more but all this writing really is getting in the way of my “doing nothing” campaign. So it’s bye-bye for now

The other in a drama-writing workshop, we were asked to look back and think of a “crisis” or a turning point in our childhood that changed who we are today.

I thought… I scratched the A4 sheet with my pen… I turned those little lines into meaningless doodles. And all I discovered was a penchant for cartoon faces, leaves, lips and black-and-white alternating patterns!

I couldn’t think of a SINGLE incident that stands out as changing who I am, making me what I am today. This is something that really disturbed me because everyone seems to have one incident–happy or sad–that changed their life. What does my not having one mean? Am I… shallow? Too complacent? Or worst of all–BORING?!

Not that I wish a childhood trauma upon myself, just so I have something to write about. But c’mon, how am I going to become a famous–and more importantly–RICH writer if I don’t have that “something” that’ll haunt me all my life, drive me first to writing, then to drinking, smoking, drugs, indiscriminate sex and finally to death! How will I face the literary world? How will I support myself (consults a previously mentioned list)–LEGALLY!

Sob… oh woe!

Ah, forget it. I’ll just… traumatise myself now. Better late than never, eh?

—————-
Now playing: KT Tunstall – Throw Me A Rope
via FoxyTunes

How important is honesty, really?

I don’t mean the not-lying-to-your-friends type of honesty. It’s not even really a moral question. I mean honesty to yourself. I’ve always thought it was essential. But lying to yourself is such a comfort. Sometimes you need to have certain illusions about certain people and situations in order to be happy. You might know it deep inside that what you think–either negative or positive–is not really true. But we bury this knowledge sometimes in order to love or hate a person in peace. So if the thought slides to the surface, is it ok to push it away? Is it ok to lie to yourself?

Or am I gonna wake up one day and realise that a whole set of my beliefs are–or maybe even I am–actually no more substantial than a breeze?

Here are some pics I took on a recent weekend trip to Yelagiri. The place is damn beautiful. Not (yet) a hot vacation getaway so it’s quite fresh.

Will shut up now and let the photos do the talking

Looming Skies…

The Path…

(Pic by Vaish ^)

The Half-hidden Gate…

Duckies!

(Pic by Vaish ^)

View from Heaven…

Morning Smiles…

Dawn

Checking out the view…

(Pic by Priti ^)

Can’t have too many sunrises!

Reflections…

Waking up to this view

That’s some caffeine addiction!

Highway overload!

Speeding home…

The sun sets…

… My penny’s… er, paisa’s… worth. Since my fellow interns (try all three words) have all spoken about this rather grim(ey) month (grim for me at least [nah, not really]), I guess this is my cue!

Hm so well I really won’t go into details. Trust me, they’re really boring (even to me!) especially cos it was (gasp!) an educational experience. As a result of this, I have:

…become more confident about bus travel

…seen more of the city than I ever thought i would

…realised what exactly dust, heat, unfamiliar company (til they became familiar, that is!) and an untterly amazingly charmless part of the city can do to your morale! (hey, did i say city? wow, so ambattur is actually PART of the city. Hehe. please ignore the cattiness!)

…started to acknowledge the number pad on the right corner of the keyboard does, in fact, exist! (long story cut short: a weird MS-DOS-based word processor, unlearning all Word techniques and several VERY frustrating hours of actually getting work done!)

…learned that hunger can actually make all swill taste like amritam

…realised that friends of the same wavelength (aka Ames, Bentley and Pyne) are absolute TREASURES!

…Discovered that journalism, thank you very much, is definitely off the “Maybe This Can Be A Viable Career Option When I’m Desperate For Money and Independence” list. (Becoming a world-famous writer, robbing a bank and kidnapping bill gates for a large ransom are still on, you’ll be pleased to know)

…learned all about the properties, whims, extremely cooling nature of SWEAT and how it’s really not God’s premature revenge on an agnostic.

…shed some kilos (sob!)

…learned that there is a light side to everything… especially dust, which is so light that a tiny little baby breeze can make it rise and settle… on people!

… discovered my skills at creating truly terrible ambattur parody songs (will spring those on the unwary later… *evil look*)

…felt relieved that my social skills are still just hovering at the zero level.

…realized WATER EEEES GOOOOOOOOOOOD!

More later then…

It just struck me that it’s been more than a year since I started blogging. This led me to wonder if I’ve wasted a lot of web space and my time on this blog. What have I gained?

When I started, there were very few people I knew who blogged and the comments were few. But I kept blogging simply for the enjoyment if it and also because it was good practice for writing. Sure, I got a comment now and then and definitely got some irritating spam. But later, I roped a couple of my friends into blogging and somehow just found other Indian bloggers… and there were many more comments. So much so, I once had more than 30 comments for a two-line entry!

Blogging then began to seem to have a real community for itself, one with it’s own rules and etiquette: comment regularly, not just when you have a new entry up and so want to attract notice; be appreciative and put negative criticism nicely so as to not hurt fragile egos; if not, have the courage to say what you want without going anonymous–most bloggers detest anons!; or just don’t comment at all!; and, above all, to remember that what goes around, comes around, especially in such a small community.

But somehow, after a year of spacefillers, thoughts, jokes, comments and template changing, I got bored with blogging and eventually stopped. I’ve made some friends through blogging so I guess that’s one good thing. I don’t really care if my words are going to be immortalised by this blog or something equally dramatic. The blog has served it’s purpose.

And now I guess it has died a natural death at the ripe old age of one. I might revisit with a couple of “ghost” entries, but I pronounce this blog officially dead. The pawprints are left behind in the sands of time

Before I sign off, I’d like to say, thanks for reading, commenting, all the support and enthusiasm.

From comp crashes to crashes. Bytes to bytes.

Rest In Peace.

Birthdays are pretty special. I guess that’s because we have an attachment to time and what is a birthday but a marking of time? That’s perhaps a cynical way of looking at it, so I’ll go on to say that birthdays are… just awesomely fun!

This year was an awesome b’day! I was pretty down in the morning because I wasn’t meeting only one friend of mine because all the others were busy. Anyway, she and another friend of mine turned up.

I went downstairs and had to show them the way to my house cos they’d never been home before. And who should I see standing and talking with them but my sis! Very strange behaviour too–she was dressed so casually and said she was headed out. Anyway, I dragged both of them upstairs, sat them down, went into the kitchen to talk to mom and when I came out…

Anyone heard the phrase, “SURPRISE, SURPRISE!”? Well, I discovered the full meaning of it. The whole gang descended upon my threshold! With balloons, cakes and gifts, to boot! Suddenly, it turned out to be my best birthday ever–the first birthday party since forever, it seemed!

My sis and the gits, co-conspirators, had managed to plan the whole darn thing right under my nose… They later showed me notes the gits passed in class and SMSs exchanged and I, the unsuspecting victim, was totally baffled to say the least. Sigh. My opinion of my investigative skills has taken a nosedive. There goes my career in discovering crime and heinous activity a la Poirot. Ah, who gives a damn?! Surprise parties are fun! Especially when you finally get books–LOTS OF EM–as gifts! Am happy as a bug!

To sum it up… AWESOME!

Pics…