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.