Every day is an endless stream of cigarettes and empty dreams...

Dearly Beloved,
We have not been at home for a while. We have not been anywhere for a while, excet in office and/or in a stupor. We are alive, but only just so. There are parts of us which are irredeemably lost, but these being such minor inconveniences, the heart and such like, we do not regret the loss. At least not noticeably so. What we do regret is Leaving Home.
Home, which was a flat in Jadavpur, Kolkata. Small but beautifully done-up and always comforting. Home, which was a rather over-sized university campus, just across the road. With a pan-wallah who always took out two of my Special brand when he saw me crossing the road in the morning, ten minutes late for my first class. With a jheel, and corridors I'd practically slept on and certainly eaten off. With people (and dogs) I won't even talk about because I'd rather not start crying at this moment and I feel I'm well on my way already.
Home, which was, and will always be Kolkata.
I've lost count of the number of times any and all of these homes have made me clutch my head and tear my hair in despair. I've loved them and hated them. With equal fervour. And the reason I know Delhi will nver be home is becase Delhi leaves me cold. And this has nothing to do with the near-Arctic temperatures of my office. It's the place, the people...they're bleeargh. Someday I'll tell you horror stories of this place. For now let me resort to cliches. Home is where the heart is, or so they say. At this moment, my heart is fourteen hundred and sixty one kilometres away.
Dammit.

My life, right now, is trying to stand on its head and doing a pretty bad job with the balancing. I fall asleep by 10 every night and find myself waking up at unearhtly hours like 4 or 5. Which isn't really bad, and I'm not really complaining. Except I have a feeling I should be studying. Except I'm not. Then again, the bright side is if I was studying I couldn't be reading Death in the Afternoon. And given a choice between renaissance drama, post-colonial theory and Hemmingway, well I prefer reading about bull fights. So bleh.

I'm overwhelmed by remorse at this moment. Read this, early in the morning, and felt like howling. I don't regret any of the things I've done these four years, but I do have moments of extreme regret for the things I didn't land up doing. Sometimes I wonder if I could sit for the B.A. admission test this year, if only to attend Supriyadi's classes.

Excuse me while I go blow my nose.

College can not be over. Not. Would some prof be generous enough to flunk me this year? Pwetty please.

lathhir mukhe gaaner shur, dekhiye dilo jadabpur!

The first time I heard this slogan was on a hot June afternoon in 2005, marching with a few thousand students from Jadavpur University down towards Writers Building. We didn’t make it that far, of course. Somewhere near the Academy of Fine Arts we were stopped by the police and we sat down peacefully to sing songs while cameramen ran in circles around us.
Two years down the line, if I close my eyes and try to remember, I have to make an effort to recollect every rationale and every logical argument behind the student movement, behind our protests. What I can remember effortlessly are the emotions , the sentiment; the feeling of walking in unity with a thousand strangers; of walking beyond exhaustion and thirst, for a cause that we believed in. Somehow that memory can still make me cry.

I can’t explain it if you weren’t there. I can tell you why I was in a michhil, I can tell you who was right and who was wrong and why I still believe that, but I cannot explain what it was that made me throw dignity and self-consciousness to the winds and scream slogans till I was hoarse. Maybe it was the policemen who were lining the roads, flaunting their uniforms, their batons, their right to beat up the innocent and protect the guilty; or maybe it was just my impulsiveness.
I still can’t find words to express what it felt like to walk backwards, down the main roads of kolkata, in the middle of two lines of quietly marching people and clap my hands and scream till every single person within ear-range was screaming responses not with their voices but with their hearts.

This university taught me a lot of things through five long years, but that afternoon I learnt what Passion can be.

Afterwards, to be precise, over the next one year, ten months that came after, I’ve been taught what Apathy is. It’s been painful at times, but worth it.
Because at the end of the day this campus; this warm, friendly, welcoming, inert, lifeless, unconcerned campus has taught me one thing. That no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much you feel like the world is coming to an end, most of the world around you will not care. It’s a lesson worth remembering.

Chances are, I’ll forget it. Because after all there is just so much more to remember.

I spent tonight crying over memories. Which was a little ironic, because every one of them was a happy memory. But the thing about leaving a place, when you have come to love it and when you have built so many memories around it, is that it's a little like leaving a lover. You know you have problems, you know you were never meant to be together forever, you knew from the very first day that one day, you would have to move off. But in between, the years have gone by and the memories have accumulated and you’ve made love so many times through golden afternoons, hazy with the heat, and foggy dawns, and the bitter cold of winter evenings that when the time comes to leave even the happiest memory makes you look back in love, in pain and eventually in tears.

But I’ll leave college with a smile. I promise you I will not cry. Chances are when the final day of exams and farewell parties comes I’ll be so drunk and high that I won’t even remember my name. Just tonight I needed to cry. For you, because I love you. Because you’re the most difficult place I’ve ever encountered, but you’ve made me so happy. And leaving is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to. But you know how my old mantra goes; no strings, no loose ends, and above all, no regrets. I can't promise to cut ties, I have a feeling I'll bump into you again and there are a few loose ends we didn't get to tie up but at least I can promise you, I don't have any regrets. Not one. Not for the times when I sat on the side-stairs and bawled my eyes out, not for the times I got drunk, got stoned, got caught in embarrassing positions or managed to get away without getting caught in worse situations. No regrets, only memories, that's all I can take away. And all I can leave is a little bit of love. For you, for the people I'm leaving behind, but most of all, for the dream that is JUDE.

There are days which are happy, not because anything wildly exciting happens but just because they're so-so-so-so full of laughter. Like yesterday. For the greater part of the hour and a half that we spent on the phone I was jumping around in front of my bedroom mirror. Not jumping exactly; it was more like hysterically funny faces and turning round and round because the world wasn't spinning fast enough to keep up with my giggling. And I decided no one, and just no one can make me laugh the way you can.
*beeble*
and *
burble*
and
*beebleburbleboopplantbleepblink*

Happiness is laughter in the morning.

There are times when I feel sorry for my parents. Having to deal with me isn't easy on the best of days. And today just wasn't the best of days. Nothing happened of course. Nothing that was dramatic or eventful. Or even memorable. It was just one more day in a long line of days filled with mind games and power games and people fucking around with my life and my head. So I cracked in the morning.
Woke up at 7, sat to work. Waking up early is a bad idea, working all morning is a worse one. By the time it was noon, the house was pretty near flooded. Dad wasn't at home. Ma was, and she tried, poor thing. Tried laughter, tried stories, tried comfort, questions and closeness.
And I kept crying. Like some kind of brain-dead zombie.
It hurts to think about it now because it was so unfair on Ma. So bloody unfair.
But when do we ever think about parents anyway. Not we, I.
And then Baba came home.

We talked. I don't need to tell him things. He always knows, exactly what I'm doing, when I'm doing it. He doesn't know who or where, but that's because he doesn't want to know. And there are certain bits of my life that he knows for sure, but he won't say anything because he's letting me out on trust.
So I did the crying, he did the talking.

And he told me about the time I was in kindergarten. He would go to drop me off every morning. And every morning I would howl. And the teachers would tell my parents that I just sat in class and kept staring out of the window. So every day, my Dad would drop me off, and stand outside the window of my class.
I have no memory of this. I don't know how many months this continued. But I watched his eyes as he told me today, and I know that if he remembers it, it must have hurt him more than he cares to forget.

And today he offered me the sun, the moon and the stars if only i'd stop hurting. And I promised him I'd stop. So this is one promise I have to keep. Because I love him. And because for twenty three years whenever I've been hurt he's picked me up, defended me, protected me and fought for me. And when I was lonely he was there for me. So I owe this one to him.

Baba, I love you. I promise you I'll be ok. I won't let it hurt anymore.

I came home pretty early tonight, for once, so we sat and watched the nine o’clock movie. Which happened to be Walk the Line. We’re all suckers for romance in this family, in case you didn’t know.

Movie ended in sweet sappiness and the father went all contemplative, “ Jaast imagine. They were married for thirty five years. Ki bishal ghotona!”
Then realization struck him and he jumped up all excited, “No wait a minute. Eta bishal ghotona keno hobe? We have been married for thirty one years. Aaro unish bochhor hole ponchaash hobe!”

At which point of time the mother started simpering and I rolled my eyes at puppy love and left them to it.

Did I say we were all suckers for romance?. Correction. When I said *all*, I meant the parents and the sister and brother-in-law.
Love, romance and happily ever after sums them up perfectly.
Now you know why I’ll never get married, too much sappiness/happiness runs in the family.
But it’s good watching them.
Warms the heart.
And us fish have awfully cold hearts.
*beeble*

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!

My deadest deadline for submitting a story is five hours away. And I haven't the faintest idea what my story is about.

where have i heard these words before? oh. right. this is the story of my life.
*sheesh*

So far I've written seven drafts for this one assignment.
To begin with, the story was supposed to be about a fish called Raghobboyal Bottoboyal who lives all alone on a planet of purple water and golden land and who is so big that a shark would slip through the gaps in its teeth.
But then I decided fish are essentially mundane things. And no one likes my stories anyway. So I'm writing about this lonely alien called Oolikibajenaamba.
And I hope the story is really really really bad.
Because by now I don't care how much I get for this stupid story, I just want it to be so bad that the prof who thought it would be the most brilliant idea of the millenium to force us to write stories for children gets traumatized for life.

I have class in four and a half hours. Sleep is obviously not happening. I need a walk, a smoke and post 1.40 tomorrow, once classes get over, I need to vanish. For a long, long time. Otherwise my head is going to implode. Which might not be such a bad thing after all.

Granny Weatherwax always held that you ought to count up to ten before losing your temper. No-one knew why, because the only effect of this was to build up the pressure and make the ensuing explosion a whole lot worse.

I actually waited a good twelve hours before ranting. I should probably have waited twelve months.The ensuing explosion might have been a lot worse, or there might have been no explosion at all.

GAH!
I can't quit.
It's the one thing I cannot bring myself to do. I wish I could be strong and walk out and not look back and pretend I don't give a damn.
But I can't.
Mostly it's because of the memories. Because at the end of the day I'd still do it all over again, if only for the memories.
I'll still get upset, every once in a while. And then I'll come back to this space and rave and rant and pretend I hate everything that's happening.
But you'll know and I'll know and the big guy up there will know that it's all a lie.
Because I love you too much to forget you.
Because you're not just a cool address to spend time at or a good name to have on my cv.
Because you are home and family and everything else in between dammit.
Because every family has its black sheep and yours are the losers and wankers and soulless fence-sitting morons who will never take a stand because they're too afraid.
But most of all because you are my responsibility and I will not walk away.

oy!

happy birthday!!

i'll call, i promise i will. but it's the middle of the night and i can't call long distance now :(
so virtual wishes which you may or may not see in time are the best i can do.

but i do love you. and see i didn't forget. wheeeeeeee!! now run along and have a terrific day. and night. and miss me please :)

I can never explain why I feel bad. The hurtness comes out in words which don’t mean a thing. Most of the time it isn’t even a rational pain, just a strange feeling, like someone’s slowly squeezing my neck. Not like being strangled, just a lump that grows bigger inside my throat and won’t go away.
And I start howling if people try to be kind. Which is just sad when you’re supposed to be all grown-up and mature and responsible.
And I hate the word responsibility.

To be honest tonight I hate a lot of things. Including my memories of four and a half years. It’s not an easy feeling, the hurtness and the hateness which comes from love gone wrong.

When people call college a second home, half the time it’s an overdose of sentiment. The other half of the time they actually do spend more time in college than they spend awake at home. I’ve always called campus my first home. It’s not something my parents have ever been happy about. It just is that way.
Or rather was.

I don’t love you anymore. You were home but you’re not anymore. You’re just this fucked up place and I don’t wanna go back to you.
I thought I’d miss you when I left.
I won’t.
I doubt I’ll even remember you.
Right now the happy thought in my life is that I have barely two months left.
Afterwards I’ll concentrate on forgetting.

Over the last month and a half, I've yelled at enough people to deserve an eternity in Dante's fifth circle. I kid you not. I've been cranky, unfair, pig-headed and I was rather hoping to hell that people would be calling me really nasty names behind my back because I would completely deserve it.
People, being people, have instead gone out of the way to make me feel special.
Which is why at 3 in the morning I'm holding my head between my knees and weeping like a five year old.
umm pause while I blow my nose. and uh sorry about the incoherence, it's a nightmare putting feelings into words. but my heart's fit to burst, so i will try...

This isn't a blog post, it's a confession.
These last months have seen the most despondent moments of my college life.

It wasn't easy watching my classmates and my juniors cry uncontrollably because they couldn't believe the things they'd been accused of.
It wasn't easy watching the innocent being maligned and victimized and made into a public spectacle.
It wasn't easy controlling my temper when all I wanted was to blast every journalist whose vocabulary contained the words juicy gossip but not the simple word ethics.
It wasn't easy being answerable to everyone.
It wasn't easy not having the answers.
And it wasn't easy holding on to hope.

I've made more mistakes than I should have.
I've been paranoid to the point of driving people insane. Or at least of making them seriously doubt my sanity.

And I'm trying to say sorry. For hurting your feelings. For misunderstanding your intentions. For misjudging you. For misinterpreting you. For accusing you. And for ignoring you.
To each of you, a different you in each case perhaps, I have only this to say...You aren't just friends or classmates or juniors or acquaintances in the department. You're more than family. You are my tribe.

And if I had to tell the world about the tribe of JUDE, I would say...Beware.

Because we know what despair is but we don't know what defeat is.
Because we know what hopelessness is but we'll keep fighting long after the referees have packed up and gone home.
And because every JUDEan is willing to walk that extra mile, and sometimes more than once.

Coherence isn't happening. Sometimes when the emotional investment is too high my brain shuts down. So instead of blathering on, I shall end this happy night with our war cry...

IT IS OUR KUBLA!

It is OUR Kubla!

and now, inspired by the Don...

we go to the mattresses.

some songs can always me cry. not in a tears-rolling-down-red-nosed kinda way (although that happens too, and i'm not even telling how often). just a lump in the throat and a memory out of nowhere. my happiness is always irrational and the pain just runs a little deeper and is a lot more illogical.

and sometimes when you make me feel really bad, i'll play a song in a loop and cry through the evening. and then feel stupid the next morning, because it was a waste of time and it won't seem important the next time i see you smile.

but sometimes crying just feels so good.

so this song, is for you. because you can always make me cry.

You took your coat off and stood in the rain,
You're always crazy like that.
And I watched from my window,
Always felt I was outside looking in on you.
You're always the mysterious one with
Dark eyes and careless hair,
You were fashionably sensitive
But too cool to care.
You stood in my doorway, with nothing to say
Besides some comment on the weather.

Well in case you failed to notice,
In case you failed to see,
This is my heart bleeding before you,
This is me down on my knees, and...

These foolish games are tearing me apart,
And your thoughtless words are breaking my heart.
You're breaking my heart.

You're always brilliant in the morning,
Smoking your cigarettes and talking over coffee.
Your philosophies on art, Baroque moved you.
You loved Mozart and you'd speak of your loved ones
As I clumsily strummed my guitar.

Well, excuse me, guess I've mistaken you for somebody else,
Somebody who gave a damn,
Somebody more like myself.

These foolish games are tearing me apart,
And your thoughtless words are breaking my heart.
You're breaking my heart.
Jewel

Random net-surfing led me to this picture. Intellectual copyright be damned, I'm posting it. And should the photographer ever accidentally stumble across this blog, my apologies and all that but I'm only posting cos I liked it.

And because if you ever asked me and I was not-drunk and not-stoned and not-a-lot-of-other-things, I'd probably tell you this was my idea of picture-perfect romance.



umm err. ok, i have nothing more to say. except...
*beeble*
tumi!

My Dad just asked me why there isn't a Day for Men. So I told him about the time when Alice met Humpty Dumpty.
Since I cannot put it better than Lewis Carroll himself, I shall copy-paste the relevant bit for those who haven't read Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.

"What a beautiful belt you've got on!" Alice suddenly remarked. (They had had quite enough of the subject of age, she thought: and if they were really to take turns in choosing subjects, it was her turn now). "At least," she corrected herself on second thoughts, "a beautiful cravat, I should have said -- no, a belt, I mean -- oh, I beg your pardon!" she added in dismay, for Humpty Dumpty looked thoroughly offended, and she began to wish she hadn't chosen that subject. "If only I knew," she thought to herself, "which was neck and which was waist!"
Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though he said nothing for a minute or two. When he did speak again, it was in a deep growl.
"It is a -- most -- provoking -- thing," he said at last, "when a person doesn't know a cravat from a belt!"
"I know it's very ignorant of me," Alice replied in so humble a tone that Humpty Dumpty relented.
"It's a cravat, child, and a beautiful one, as you say. It's a present from the White King and Queen. There now!"
"Is it really?" said Alice, quite pleased to find she had chosen a good subject, after all.
"They gave it me," Humpty Dumpty continued thoughtfully, as he crossed one knee over the other and clasped his hands round it, " -- for an un-birthday present."
"I beg your pardon?" Alice said with a puzzled air.
"I'm not offended," said Humpty Dumpty.
"I mean, what is an un-birthday present?"
"A present given when it isn't your birthday, of course.
Alice considered a little. "I like birthday presents best," she said at last.
"You don't know what you're talking about!" cried Humpty Dumpty. "How many days are there in a year?"
"Three hundred and sixty-five," said Alice.
"And how many birthdays have you?"
"One."
"And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five, what remains?"
"Three hundred and sixty-four, of course."
Humpty Dumpty looked doubtfuly. "I'd rather see that done on paper," he said.
Alice couldn't help smiling as she took out her memorandum-book, and worked the sum for him:

365
1
--
364
--

Humpty Dumpty took the book, and looked at it very carefully. "That seems to be done right -- -" he began.
"You're holding it upside down!" Alice interrupted.
"To be sure I was!" Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round for him. "I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right -- though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now -- and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you get un-birthday presents -- -"
"Certainly," said Alice.
"And only one for birthday presents, you know, There's glory for you!"

As I gently explained to my Father Un-birthdays and Men's Days are rather similar, given they're celebrated on every day that Birthdays and Woman's Days aren't. There's glory for you indeed.

The only time I remember bawling in public (or at least outside home) in my school years was in class nine, in the ground floor kindergarten loo; after losing in the semi-final of an inter-house basketball tournamanet. We lost for about five points and I had been the shining hope of the team. After the match and the handshakes I took myself off to the loo to change. Only instead of getting out of my sweaty (and inevitably stinky) jersey I collapsed into a dramatic huddle with all the pathos of an angsty teenager and shed many many tears before realizing I’d been sharing the bathroom floor with a very dead cockroach.
On the whole eeew.
On the bright side of course no one ever found out.
And if you Dear Reader try telling anyone who knows me this story I shall flatly deny it. So there.

random snippets of reality

Rgr : Jboi was afraid I might fall in Love!

Jboi : Yeah, yeah. That's bad shit man. Don't smoke it!

That is effing awesome advice. Now if only I would remember to follow it.

****************************

On a happier note, I went and scored alone from a Completely Unknown Place. Bit of a first time that. Wheeeeeeeee!

****************************

Happiness continues because I've written a story about a Pig. As an assignment for the Children's Lit course. That is to say, I havent exactly written it out yet. But I made up the story the other day to send a 21 year old bachha to sleep. On the happy thought that there is little difference between the mind of a 21 year old and that of a 12 year old, I shall type out the story and submit it tomorrow. If I flunk, I can always blame the Pig.

I haven't thought a name for the Pig yet. I think I shall call him, quite simply, Peeeg.

For those who are dying of curiosity, or not, the story is about a Pig who doesn't have a home. He gets one in the end, a nice little cottage.

And the moral is...you should not cut trees.

Slightly confusing that. But actually the moral was added when I retold the story to my mother at the breakfast table. It's all very complicated, like my life.

of candle-lit drawings, and footsie, and missed appointments i have nothing to say. but i could say i'm happy. kinda happy. the same way people say kinda hot.

just in case you didn't know...

cal suddenly feels happier.

When I checked myself in the mirror around 2 this afternoon, I looked a little tired (as is inevitable after a nearly sleepless night) but very pink and clean. 8 hours later I’m still pinkish, but in a different way. In between I have been various shades of green, purple, golden, herbal pink and bright red.
Hopefully by Monday I shall stop looking like a cross between a scarlet mouthed baboon and a purple limbed monstrosity. Chances are however the light shade of delicately purplish pink in various discreet and indiscreet places will take a while longer to fade.

Still, it’s been an amazing twenty-four hours. Even if we had to drag Cassandra out of bed and her pyjamas at midnight. Even though we really missed Diva, who was at home being sick. Even though some people think it a really smart idea to pour half a bucket of coloured water down a fish's back thereby ruining pretty blue lingerie for life.

And afterwards I got home and discovered that the parents had also been living it up. Apparently the neighbours got together and went wild with colours. And it seems the fish-father was one of the wilder ones. At this point I shall discreet shush up and not disgrace the family name by revealing the exploits of the father. Let it be noted merely that we are all happy. Really. Perfectly. Happy.

Happy Holi World :)

Friday afternoon was spent at home, recovering from a test and preparing for the onslaught of a Holi-day. To be specific it was spent taking all sorts of blogthing tests. Since I took them and saved the codes I might as well post the damn results. One little word of warning though. Not one of these is right. Which just goes to prove that psychoanalysis in five questions doesn't prove a damn thing.
Here goes.

Your Love Song Is

Yellow by Coldplay "Look at the stars, Look how they shine for you, And everything you do, Yeah they were all yellow" You're so in love, it's like a drug.

yeah right.
*snorts*

You Are Thong Panties

Woman, you are one hell of a ride! You're a total wild child - and you live for crazy times. Men are attracted to you like flies to honey, even though they know they should stay away. You need a expert cowboy who can keep in tune with your free spirit!

we're not even discussing this one. next please!

You Are a Bad Girl

You are 30% Good and 70% Bad You're a total bad girl, from your wild hair to tattooed toes. But you're too badass to even care if you're labeled "bad"!

30% good? i ask you!
*rolls eyes*

You Are Bad Girl Sexy

Girl, you are nothing but trouble. And that's hot. You've got the classic bad girl sexiness mojo going on. And your badass attitude makes men fear you - and crave you. Don't give into people who say to tone it down. You're perfect as is.

hot? who me?! obviously you've never seen me. well yeah that's obvious anyway but nobody would ever ask me to tone it down. they might ask me to be less boring. dhuh.

the climax of course was the 'which goddess are you' test :

You Are Psyche!

Eternally in search of purpose and insight. You're curious and creative with a total sense of wonder. Totally empathetic, you pick up on other's moods easily. Just be sure to pamper yourself as well!

sheesh. my faith in blogthings is gone forever.

Wheeeeee! I have been tested and I shall probably be found wanting but for now I'm done with venetian merchants. Wild relief.
Further relief at getting home from college unscathed. Campus today was a riot of colours. And not in a good way. Sundry people looked like they'd crawled out of exceptionally slimy seaweed or been mauled by some purple and fluorescent orange alien. I kid you not. The defining word was ugly. Call me a prude but getting felt up by random strangers on the pretext of putting abir is just not my idea of fun. I don't think it wildly exciting to throw buckets of muddy water from the jheel at people or break (possibly rotten) eggs on their heads but I suppose young people must be allowed to have fun in their own way. Speaking for myself, I'm perfectly happy leading a colourless life for today. Tomorrow of course might be a different story.

I just went and rather reverentially asked this magnificent instrument of divination if I would pass my exam.

And it said...
Ye-es.

Which might sound a leetle hesitant but is good enough for me (and you must admit is a beautifully apt answer for once). Now on the assumption that Neil Gaiman does in fact know everything I think I'm due to pass this test. Although he did get a weather forecast very messed up last week. hmm..at this moment that's a very worrying thought for some stange reason.

Eta ki zaataa! I should be studying right now. An hour, ten minutes to go and I still know nothing. Even the Power of the Gaiman shall not save my sorry ass at this rate.

I have to take a test in an hour thiry minutes-ish. And there's the enormous possibility that it is the test which will ,in fact, take me. It isn't a happy thought. As of now I freely confess I have studied almost nothing. Which is a lot more than what I usually study. This time though (and I know I've said this before, but this time it's for sure) I'm flunking. Uh-oh.

In the meantime, if you've got three minutes and twelve seconds to spare, do go watch this. I got the link courtesy J.A.P. who never sends chain mails (unless they're related to Valentine's day of course) and because I howled lots I'm posting the link here. There's a cause of course. A good cause.

On a happier note, if I survive the test and holi I shall be back.

Babel

I watched the movie.
It was a good movie. Possibly.
It being N*****, tickets were dirt cheap and rear stall seats were amazingly cozy.
Except there was a Ghastly couple sitting beside me.

begin whine...

contrary to popular belief it is perfectly possible for a boy and a girl to go to a movie hall and do nothing but watch a movie. i've done it myself, countless numbers of times.
to be honest, i don't really mind couples who confuse the darkness of a movie hall with the privacy of their bedroom. i might go so far as to sympathasize with them. then again i might not.
but but but BUT i loathe and despise and detest and would dearly love to castrate all men who feel it is their social/civic/moral responsibility to pass a comment on every second frame of a movie.

and i've met a lot of women who giggle, hysterically, compulsively and on ocassion uncontrollably. whattheheck i've done it myself. on occasion.
but nothing can be more nerve-wrecking than a woman who doesn't find a single dialogue funny in a 2 hour 15 minute movie but shakes with laughter everytime her male escort opens his mouth.
i felt like slapping the girl more often than the boy.

end whine.

thankyou :)

umm.
ho hum.
The movie itself was, as I said, possibly good. Possibly brilliant even. This isn't a review, this is a personal reaction.

For more than an hour after leaving the hall I couldn't say anything. It hurt. I have no idea why. But it did. Random.

monday morning blues

wake up, remember sunday's over. one more sunday gone from my life. which is ok. kinda. it's one more lot of memories added.

ei i think i'm in love. not with anyone or anything. just with life as it is right now. also, a little, with myself.

*beeble*

I have too many things to do, too many places to go to and too many people to meet. What I need is, a 9 day week with 28 hour days. And I'd still have too much to do and too little time.
*sigh*
somebody get me a life...like a nice leisurely one, maybe on a desert island somewhere, so I can just sleep...

boy in the kitchen making tea, girl standing by the door generally making herself useless...

boy : do you know what goj cha is?

girl : eh?! erm...no.

boy : goj cha holo jeta marwari-ra khay. (goj cha is what marwari's drink)

(it's very embarrassing for the babelfish to have to admit that things cannot be translated, so umm although this is a very bangali conversation, i'll just translate bits and pieces here and there...)

girl : keno? (but why?)

boy : keno maane? (what do you mean why?) you want to know why they drink tea?

girl : dhyat! (expression beyond translation) i want to know why it's called goj cha!

boy : karon ora bananor pore teen baar footay! (because after they make the tea, they boil it thrice..footano is bangla for boiling)

girl : sheta toh m*l*nda'r cha hoye gelo boss (arre but that's like m*l*nda's tea)

(apologies at this point to m-da, that ancient stalwart on the ju campus. i hate to hurt his feelings but his tea generally does taste likes it's been boiled thrice over)

boy : sheta shudhu m*l*nda'r cha noy, sheta bhanu'r cha! (that isn't just m*l*nda's tea, that's also bhanu's tea!)

girl : bhanu maane? (what do you mean by bhanu?)

boy : bhanu ke janish na? bhanu...rabi ghosh. (you don't know who bhanu is? bhanu...rabi ghosh)

girl : waitaminute. you mean bhanu bondopadhyay. but that's not the same person as robi ghosh.

(it is impossible to explain to a non-bengali who bhanu bandopadhyay is. let's put it this way. everytime i read pratchett or wodehouse i thank the ineffable plan that i can read english. everytime i think of bhanu bandopadhyay i thank my stars for being born a bangali)

boy : oof. oi bojhano'r jonyo bollam! (i was just dropping names to make you understand!)

girl : as in, if you wanted to explain who robin williams is, you'd say ali g.

boy *looks up. looks scathing. goes back to stirring in sugar*

girl: haan kintu teen baar footale shei cha-ke keno goj bole? (but i still don't get it. why it's called goj cha if it's boiled three times)

boy : arre karon teen foot-e ek goj hoy na? (because three foot = 1 goj)

oh the bilingual aburdity that is my life!

P.S : Dear Reader, if you didn't find that funny because you don't understand bengali I do apologize sincerely. It's just that some things cannot be translated!
And Dear Reader, if you are bangali and didn't find it funny, I have absolutely nothing to say to you. I do however fervently believe you should go listen to Bhanu Bandopadhyay. Like Now.

once upon a time in germany...

photo credit : the brother-in-law

I’ve been under a fair amount of pressure lately. The uncertain kind. The kind which cannot be attributed to this, that or the other definite reason. Mostly I suppose it’s the realization that I’m growing older (and uglier) and that I am at present extremely jobless and likely to remain so ad infinitum. For another four months I have the sorry excuse of being a student but after that the lack of employment is a serious worry. Deadly serious. People (implying singular person who shall remain discreetly unnamed) are beautifully optimistic and give me hope that the future is not bleak and penniless but the heart is heavy. And no, parental pressure has never been of any use.

The sad outcome of all this uncertainty is that my fuse has become a good deal shorter than that of the average Acme dynamite stick. And the resultant explosions are way uglier than any fate suffered by Wile E. Coyote. I blew up on Shome today. The only apparent reason at hand was that he’d been ill and weak with fever and he hadn’t informed me. The poor child looked utterly bewildered and asked if it was necessary to call me up whenever he had to take a Crocin. And I am embarrassed to confess that my reply was “thatiye chor marbo.”
Ouch.
I tell you it’s a miracle I have any friends at all.

Hallelujah and all that. I hit upon the perfect solution for how to feel instantly better when I'm actually very sick. It's like this. Say you wake up and find tonsils have swollen to four times their size so it looks like there's a thriple chin instead of the standard double act. And the nose is blocked and particularly red and ugly. And the head spins everytime you stand up. In short, you're very sick.
Normal people would advocate chicken soup. Or beef broth. And staying at home and letting mommy take care of you. Or finding people who care and pestering them for sympathy. Blah blah blah.
Me, I go and hunt out people who care the least. Make them make me feel bad. Make myself feel worse about caring that they make me feel bad. And in the process feel so bad that I don't care about being unwell anymore.
It actually works. Even fever gets scared and go away.
Nothing can keep me from world-domination now. Watch out Universe, here comes the Evil SuperBabelfish.

I shall now go to bed and be sick. It's been a wonderful day. Not because anything happened. Just randomly. Wasted it of course and got a little wasted myself but I keep telling myself it's only for a little while longer. Long and lazy and generally happy.
*grins vaguely, trying not to look too stoned*

Incidentally if moronic people do not know they're wonderful that is not my fault. Yes, I called you moron. What you gonna do about it now?
*sticks tongue out vehemently*
umm boke diyo na please...

I was going to post. Swear I was. Except I got home at almost 1. Budday party and all. Three vodkas after an insane day and no signs of a high. Generally floating on a cloud of happiness though. One little hip-hip for O***** which is keeping my nasal passage unblocked and a general hurrah for forgiving and forgetting.

Oh and Happy Birthday to the gorgeous Diva. Wish her if you know her please (although I'm a day late posting this!)

Some days end with the thought that if I could turn back the clock just by an hour..half an hour..ten minutes..anything.
sweetjesuswhatafuckedupday.
The only thing that's keeping me going right now is the thought that everything passes. The worst of days go from being a reality to a memory. And after a while the bad bits just get forgotten.
Right now though, I have high fever. A lousy cold. Period cramps. And a very broken heart.
Heart break is never incidental to people strangely; it's just life which keeps screwing up on me.
Tomorrow I'll pick up the pieces of that vase; but just for today I need to crawl under that blanket and go to sleep.
coherence has gone for a walk with happiness i think.
and listen, if you're reading this, i haven't said this in a really long time and i think you've forgotten but iloveyoumorethani'lleverremembertotellyou. but then you're not reading this anyway so i shall go pine for plants.
peaceful.

In honour of all the people who love the mushiness that is February 14th.

he : If you're leaving for good, leave the phone numbers of all those hot friends of yours please.

she : Will do. But I'm too lazy to get up right now, I'll write them when I get up to get dressed.

he : Haan, chalega.

*silence and cigarette smoke fill the room for a minute*

she : Waitaminute. Why do I have to find you girls?

he : Eh?

she : Seriously. I mean think about it -- why can't you find your own girls?

*even in the evening darkness she can see his raised eyebrow*

he : You want me to find my girl?

she : *after a second's pause which no one else would notice* Yes.

he :*blowing out smoke* I don't need to find my girl.

*she covers her face with the blanket. only to find it removed gently*

he : Now I needed to look for her

I think they kissed after that.

I hate certainties as much as I hate uncertainties.

Now you know the secret to keeping me happy :-)

I got spam mail this morning from a person who had the most amazing signature line I've ever seen. It stayed with me the entire day, to the extent that at the end of one of the most exhaustive days ever I felt impelled to go back and read the line and blog about it. Here it is :
"When someone shares something of value with you and you benefit from it, you have a moral obligation to share it with others."
Beautiful isn't it?
I think what I love most about it is that compelling saintly phrase it uses moral obligation. I do so love it when people tell me I have a moral obligation to do something. Especially when they're telling me I'm morally obliged to spread spam.

Warning : lots of bad language coming up...pliss to skip this post if that is likely to leave you traumatized for life

Die S*F* Broadband Die!!!
Blasted net let me down traumatically last night. There I was all agog with things to say and I discovered my net connection had expired. Only of course, it had not expired(!); the stupid gits at the Broadband place hadn't renewed our account. What's the world coming to when you don't get service after paying for it. Glumpglump I say.
And now given the kind of memory I have, I've forgotten everything I had to say. Not everything really, I can remember two points :
1) There is no transport on the streets of Kolkata on Sunday afternoons
2) Men are choots. Complete and utter choots. The nice ones are choots to bad people but the rest are just indiscriminate when it comes to doing choot-like thingys.

I think choot is my favorite word of this week. It's a very feel-good word. It's the kind of word I can mutter in my head to the fifteen hundred random gropers and lechers who infest this city. It's the kind of word I can use when telling bastards that I wouldn't marry them if they were the last man in the world (the plural is redundant of course but whattheheck!) Definitely a feel-good word.

i really should remember this....

Went to sleep at almost 3 last night with a slight headache (this by the way is what happens when I restrict myself to one joint and one drink...traumatic really!) Amazingly woke up by 9.30 (which is insanely early by my standards). And since I couldn't exactly leave the house at 10 am and expect to return at 10.30 pm(!) spent the morning on the net, trying to weed out unpublished drafts from my blogger dashboard.

I've had this fragment of a post saved as a draft since 29th June 2006; I figure I might as well publish it rather than delete it. Especially since I've hunted it out often enough in between to remind myself of the words. I forget the exact context though, or at least it's not important for the world to know.

*sad she*
he : you're too sensible to be sad because of what people say
snap out of it!
(glare)
do not disappoint me!
(please?)

Somehow it worked and the memory of it still works. Good stuff really...gratitude and wuv to he who said it :)

By February 20th I have to edit and submit one story. The one thing I cannot do to save my life is tell a tale. If I was in Scheherazade 's place I would be dead meat the first night. As it is, if I don't submit a story I'll probably be a dead fish. Not a very appealing thought.
On a happier note I am very kicked. There was a random crossword puzzle being solved on the departmental ledge today. The clue was Evans, Sitwell and Piaf. Number of letters 5. With a D in the second place and a T in the fourth I came up with the name Edith. Which was very random but correct. So yippeehippee to you too.

For as long as I've been a fish the most consoling thought I've ever had is that a goldfish has a three-second memory. Whenever I've woken up panting and sweating in the middle of the night unable to remember what the day was like, the memory of the little orange twit surfaces and I've generally gone back to sleep thinking blissfully happy thoughts along the lines of, hah suckers! I can remember what I was doing four seconds back.

Except now these blasted scientists have come up with the news that goldfish have a memory span of three months. Three effing months!
Holyfatherofallpiscinebeings.
Do I remember what happened in December, let alone what happened before that?!
Sigh. I tell you, it's no fun being a fish if even goldfish remember more than you.
Twits.

Erudite spam

Kaiser Q. Amabel infromed me over yahoomail today :

"If you listen to our show to get an education from us personally, then we will no doubt fail you."

Let it be said for this Kaiser (whoever he may be) that he is an honest man and does not attempt to misguide potential students. Quite different from most schools and universities in fact. If only someone had said this to my parents when I was a toddling fish about to enter kindergarten.

The mother is a genius when it comes to all matters related to the computer. In the past her interactions with said object have been limited to dusting the monitor and occasionally trying to untangle the wires, most often leaving the speakers or the printer blissfully disconnected. The sister having recently gone saat samudra tero nadir pare the mother has decided she must become internet savvy in order to communicate often (and at reasonable rates) with the sister.

So this afternoon, choosing a moment when no one else happened to be at home she made her first foray into the world of google. She got as far as turning on the computer, beautifully. Only when she clicked on the icon to connect to the internet, faced with a little blue box which showed her the user id and password of the boradband connection and asked her simply to login she assumed she was at the webpage of gmail. And therefore proceeded to replace said username and id with my dad's gmail id and password.

The last two hours were spent in a franctic quest for the user name of our broadband connection. The next two days shall be spent in ensuring the mother does not repeat this act of genius.

For a while now coherence has not been happening. I've blogged about it once in a while. More often than not though, I’ve taken the easy way out and let the blog and my thoughts dwindle into silence. It’s been a strange eleven months. I moved from being very focused and motivated, even if I was mostly headed in the wrong directions, to living a life of complete anarchy. Civilization rather went for a toss and my life has been nothing but Madness for almost a year now.

Some of the madness was nice actually. There are a lot of stories I won’t tell now and possibly won’t tell some people ever. Not because of censored content. It’s just that rationality or even foresight has not been a part of my life for a while. I have acted without thinking of the consequences. Maybe I got lucky, but there haven’t been any consequences. And at this point cynics and pessimists and the pragmatic people of the world are welcome to point out that consequences might crop up later but we shall let that thought be for now.

Someday though I will write my memoirs. That is, if I do anything worthwhile with the rest of my life. Chances are it shall be a drab affair. But there’ll be one section devoted to this last year of my university life and that should be one hell of a good read. Because it was one hell of a ride. But now the fish is Homeward Bound…

I think I’m rediscovering coherence. At least I’m trying to. Most of the trying will happen on this blog. Much whining will possibly happen too. And my Dear Readers (some of whom are Darlings for having continued visiting this fishbowl despite the complete absence of activity) will be nice and put up with it. But at any rate, unless I’m not at home for the span of 24 hours or unless my internet betrays me there will be a post a day. Even if it’s a one-liner. Even if I’m dog-tired and can barely sit up. This fish will be disciplined. And what better place to begin than within the fishbowl.

Today the countdown begins. I’m 145 days away from the end of my life as it is now. That’s a very definite deadline. Scary too.

P.S. : Incoherence may be one thing I'm trying to get rid of but Cryptic stays. Definitely. Which means, all ye Dear People who know the Babelfish personally, suppress the urge to ask whys and wherefores. As of today this is officially an anonymous blog.

when i say i love writing, it sounds stupid. it doesn't sound stupid when i type it out but it does when i come back and look at the post a month later. mostly i figure if i wasn't myself, i would be very contemptuous of who i am. because i am myself, i'm rather proud of me. then again there is the off-chance that if i wasn't me i would still be madly in love with me.
when i'm typing out thoughts it sounds stilted. and somehow silted. like there's a hurdle i hit my ankle against. but also like there's been some kind of thoughtscape erosion; like i'm buried under half a ton of mud.

coherence isn't happening tonight. not yet at least.