Meanderings…

So! In the spirit of pondering and discussing questions that can probably have no answer in the near future… What would happen if you lost your memory? I mean, if your whole memory completely and irretrievably wiped out?

Being a linguistics enthusiast (read: geek), of COURSE the first thing I wonder about is if you’d be able to learn a language again… If you forget all the words, grammatical constructions, etc, and you’re no longer a child (whose language abilities are very special) would you still be able to learn them back?

And suppose you DON”T lose language but lose everything else…. Would you be the same person still? Would I still love reading, Mother Dairy’s Mango Bar ice cream, my friends, photography, ALL kinds of food and all the things that I now think make my life meaningful? Would I still be a linguistics ethusiast (read: geek)?

If I did, it would mean everything I am is predetermined! That all my weird character traits, preferences and talents are just a product of genes or some other equally disappointing form of biology. Major thumbs-down! But if I didn’t, it would simply mean that I am a product of the environment I grew up in–how my parents brought me up, the kind of jerks I thought were my friends,  the accidental experiences I happened to have, etc. 2x thumbs-down! Probably, even if, like a psychologist’s dream, such a situation arose (it’s probably already happened), we’d still be no closer to an answer. If only someone stupid enough would voluteer to have their brain dissected while still alive, and studied by someone evil enough. Ethics just ruins science!

Of course, all this is probably just an outpouring caused by a horrible exam I just wrote, the kind that makes you want to wipe out your memory. Sigh.

Ok, I haven’t updated in nearly nine months but I just came across this blogpost I had written and not published a long, looong time ago… No idea why. So while I continue to neglect paw prints for a while longer, here it is:

I have not updated in more than a month. This does not bother me however, because certain changes in my living arrangements have driven me to distraction. I now live:

1. in a hostel that has a strangely yet appropriately misspelled “Dinning Hall”.
2. in a hostel where not only spellings, but punctuations also suffer and I wince every time I enter the “Girl’s wing” where no “male’s are allowed”. Some noble soul has noticed the misplaced apostrophe in the word ‘males’ and made attempts to remove it but I still itch to have at the “girl’s” bit of it. Argh.
3. with two roommates, only one of whom is human. I have not observed this wonderful human being washing a single item of clothing in all the time I have occupied Room No. 229. And I can’t say I’m particularly surprised by this as I had to do a LOT of cleaning of my side of the room when I moved in, including scraping away for what felt like two years at a piece of chewing gum that was stuck to the floor. And then found two more such spots. Thankfully, these were on the other side of what I think of as “LOC”–her side of the room, HA!
4. with my other roommate, too, Karma Chameleon, aka Cameo aka Unwaba aka Sojakutty, who is, you guessed it, a chameleon. “Sojakutty” was, of course, the suggestion of a mallu friend, after reading a certain mail about the ancient secrets of Mallu Christian naming practices. The names of the two human occupants of the room were shortened and mixed in order to come up with “Soja”. “Sojamon” and “Sojamol” were rejected due to our inability to determine the gender of said chameleon (although s/he DOES seem to enjoy climbing onto my bed. Hmm. Which really doesn’t prove anything.) Anyway, this name also has the added advantage of capturing the somnolent atmosphere of the room (“So ja, munna, so jaaa…”) But I’m still open to suggestions from the gentle reader.
5. in the farthest point from the academic building, with the closest dhaba also a good distance away. This means I have to a LOT of huffing and puffing all over campus to get anywhere. And with most of my friends living in much more pleasantly placed areas, I end up walking at LEAST four kilometers a day. I console myself by thinking about the fact that my jeans are becoming looser and looser

I would like to conclude, at the end of all this, with absolutely NO sarcasm,

I LOVE HOSTEL LIFE!

—-

Interesting to read this old post… I’ve since moved into a new room with really the perfect roommate I do miss Cameo, though! Ah, such is life…

Well, it’s been a month since my last post. Questions of whether my blog has been abandoned have begun to be asked by the privileged (ha. ha. ha.) few who read it. So here I go…

There’s been so much to write about, ranging from the light-hearted, to the giddy, to the sickeningly depressing. And sometimes, when you have too much to write about, you end up not writing at all. Oh, plus I’m so lazy Anyway, moving on…

Looking back at my last post, I realize how silly we human beings are. We live in a world that is so much our own creation and then have all these huge arguments about who created it, how it should be, who has more power, etc. Now, I’m not talking about anything so profound as whether there is a god or not. I’m talking about the simple fact that our ideas of time and space and all that crap are just that–our ideas, not some universal truth. Ok, take ‘time’ for example.

So, we celebrated the new year, hoped it was a new beginning and life would become wonderful again/more wonderful. But the fact is, time is a human invention, isn’t it? If we didn’t mark it with new years and deadlines and almanacs, it would  just be a huge blob that passes by without our even noticing it. And we know all this! Even if we’re not aware of that knowledge, we know it. Yet, we get caught in that very trap. We hope for “new beginnings” even though nothing is really new. The irony is that, things are just getting older with every “new” year. The same things continue to happen, life still doesn’t really have any meaning other than what we give it, and yes, people still catch colds. Still no cure for the common cold.

And yet we continue to do it, continue to fool ourselves. Continue to believe that the little imaginary marks we make on the huge puzzle that is time mean something real in the world. But then, we human beings are and have always been good at self-deception. I think that’s our greatest strengh. We can believe that we as a species are essentially, “naturally” good even though good/evil is our own invention. We can shut our eyes to truth and reality while claiming to be engaged in an investigation of that very truth and reality. Yes, self-deception is our greatest strength.

It’s why we, the weaklings of Nature, still survive.

Ah. Cheerful.

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.

Riding on the bus on a cold winter evening… The sun has set and it is dark outside. You surprisingly have a seat all to yourself. A jacket keeps you warm and toasty while soft, guitary music plays on your headphones. You slide to the closed window and look out… The world is rushing by in a series of silhouettes lit up in flashes by lights from warm homes and warm windows. You feel a moment of peace and satisfaction as you sit there in the dimly lit bus. With your fellow passengers all around you, the sense of simultaneous comfort and aloneness is heightened, like you’re in your own cozy bubble among a million bubbles.

The next time someone tells me that Tamil is a difficult language to learn, I’ll thank them and feel flattered. After all, I must be pretty smart seeing that I learned most of this “difficult” language by the time I was four!

P.S.: Brain nice and empty now!

–Cooling off in the middle of a darn good temper tantrum!

Come on, we all love a good temper tantrum once in a way. Ok, why the blank look and raised eyebrow? You don’t?! Well, I do! And let me tell you, there is nothing worse that working yourself up to a good sulk or outright tantrum and then realizing you’ve stopped being angry with whatever or whoever it is that gifted you with just that mood. You just feel so… betrayed and let down by yourself, but not enough to inspire another sulk. It’s like being offered a whole bar of chocolate all to yourself and then, when you’re halfway through it, being told that’s all you can have. Oh, the cruelty of it!

Sulk Rating: 8 FF*

– Morning People!

Ye gods! These creatures actually believe in such concepts as “Early to bed and early to rise”, “Humans are not nocturnal creatures”, “Breakfast at 7 am” and even “11 o’clock is nearly afternoon”, for crying out loud! I mean, come on! I go to bed early and rise early too–in the morning and evening respectively! Breakfast at 7? Brunch all the way. And 11 a.m. is the time you crack one eye open and decide to set an alarm to wake you in an hour! And humans, NOT nocturnal? Then how exactly would you explain the reason for the stars and the moon to exist other than to light up our nights?! Hello? Go read up your science. Sheesh.

Ok, having to put up with these creatures’ quaint ideas is bad enough. But to endure their cheerfulness when you’re forced to rise before noon and rummaging about the room (if you share one with them) when you can sleep in, it’s just tooooo much I say!

Sulk Rating: 8.5 FF

–The bus starting just before you get off!

This happens more and more to me these days. I, of course, am always the LAST person to get down at any given stop and the drivers take perverse pleasure in starting the bus when I’m one foot on and one foot off. As a result of which, I step down and have to do an ungainly little dance to the amusement of everyone (including the people in the bus, people on the streets, the snoozing street dog and the lamp-posts.) Foooh! (The sound of steam coming out of my ears)

Sulk Rating: 6.5 FF

–Finding that thing you were looking for for so long! [For for? ]

Ok, you might be puzzled by that. But what your forgetting is that, according to the Holy Murphy’s Laws (which sometimes seem more verifiable and relevant than Newton’s), this can only mean that you’d given up looking for that thing only a few days/minutes ago and bought (or married!) something else… Ah, the look on one’s face then in priceless.

Rating: 8 FF

–ZITS!

Falling in love…

I think the experience has been so publicized and romanticized by everything from poems to movies to novels to endless discussions that we often forget or never realise that falling in love is something so… full of freedom.

I don’t mean falling in love sets you free. I mean falling in love itself defies any fetters and is open to everything. Why is falling in love immediately associated with a member of the opposite (or same) sex? Admitted, it’s also often the case that we say “I fell in love with that song/painting/poem!” But I believe falling in love can go even beyond that–you can fall in love with a moment or a person in a particular moment, after which you may not be in love with them. You can fall in love with a certain emotion or a particular piece of stone or… anything! You can fall in love with a person who may or may not even exist, as in the case of this poem (which I’ve fallen in love with.)

And that moment is as beautiful and memorable as falling in love with a person is. Every time you recall the moment, you feel the warmth and the sheer thrill all over again. Would it be too weird if I said that there is a certain almost… sexual satisfaction in it? The moment doesn’t happen a lot but it does take your breath away when it does, cliche as that sounds!

I always get a strange, surreal feeling when I think that the whole of my past is just memory. Every moment of pain, wonder, joy, confusion, every crush, every unforgettable feeling of knee-knocking fear, every betterfly in my stomach, every stubbed toe is now not even real or verifiable. Those moments are just grooves in a soft, easily squishable brain, folds in my cerebrum. That friend who betrayed me and who I haven’t spoken to in more than a year may as well be a ghost. She exists as I saw her only in my memory. My uncle, grandmother, aunt, grandfather… even my father… are all just memories now. From a child’s impressions of popcorn and poppins to a young woman’s helplessness at pain suffered, these people, once easily hugged and spoken to, are just memories now.

My life so far could’ve been a wasteland–I’d never know if all that I’ve felt is real or the drug-induced hallucinations of a crazed mind. And tomorrow, my life so far could just be wiped out by a careless blow to the head and then where would I be? Where would you be?

Does this sound like pseudo-Matrix-existentialist crap? Well, once I hit the “Publish” button, how can I even be sure I wrote it?

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.”