madness and civilization

Everyday is an endless stream of cigarettes an empty dreams...

2007-08-02T20:12:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-04-25T09:46:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-04-14T05:11:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-04-13T08:37:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-04-07T00:05:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-04-06T23:41:00.000+05:30

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*

2007-04-05T05:04:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-04-01T14:21:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-03-29T00:46:00.000+05:30

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 :)

2007-03-28T00:03:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-03-24T03:08:00.000+05:30

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!

2007-03-23T23:48:00.000+05:30

It is OUR Kubla!

and now, inspired by the Don...

we go to the mattresses.

2007-03-18T21:28:00.000+05:30

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

2007-03-12T00:34:00.000+05:30

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!

2007-03-08T22:18:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-03-08T00:58:00.000+05:30

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

2007-03-07T01:16:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-03-05T02:44:00.000+05:30

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...

2007-03-03T22:46:00.000+05:30

cal suddenly feels happier.

2007-03-03T22:03:00.000+05:30

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 :)

2007-03-02T16:05:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-03-02T14:55:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-03-02T10:41:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-03-02T10:16:00.000+05:30

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

2007-03-01T02:08:00.000+05:30

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

2007-02-26T10:31:00.000+05:30

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*

2007-02-25T11:49:00.000+05:30

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...

2007-02-23T09:50:00.000+05:30

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...

2007-02-20T11:53:00.000+05:30

photo credit : the brother-in-law

2007-02-19T23:08:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-02-18T13:14:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-02-18T02:01:00.000+05:30

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...

2007-02-17T03:19:00.000+05:30

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!)

2007-02-15T22:30:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-02-14T11:56:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-02-13T11:56:00.000+05:30

I hate certainties as much as I hate uncertainties.

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

2007-02-12T22:03:00.000+05:30

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

2007-02-12T10:53:00.000+05:30

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....

2007-02-10T12:33:00.000+05:30

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 :)

2007-02-09T23:21:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-02-08T23:12:00.000+05:30

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

2007-02-07T20:52:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-02-06T23:46:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-02-05T23:26:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-01-30T03:04:00.000+05:30

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.

2006-12-29T01:55:00.000+05:30

My dad watches action movies on mute. Which is an excellent idea of course. It’s an altogether different matter that he has watched some action movies fifteen times over (with the exception of True Lies which he has seen 73 times thus far).
What disturbs me somewhat is that, these days, he has taken to watching the NEWS on mute. Does that say something about my father or about the state of the world?

Not that there has been much action on the local News channels in the past few days. On Christmas day those poor dear TV channels were reduced to reporting how people had spent their holiday visiting
a) Victoria Memorial,
b) the Zoo and
c) Dharamtala.
Apparently the star of the Dharmatala show threw a bit of a tantrum and drew her curtains and refused to let little children oggle at her while sucking on their ice-lollys. The reporters seemed duly perturbed at this uncooperative attitude of the leading lady of the Opposition and they expressed their distress by devoting the next seven minutes of the News show interviewing the ice-lolly-sucking/unfortunately-unable-to-be-oggling children on the advisability of sucking said ice-lollys in December.

hmm...you know what, i think my dad's got it right this time.

2006-12-16T05:28:00.000+05:30

"he made me roses and icebergs and frost and never understood..."

Sometimes love is about not understanding. Which isn't such a terrible thing really. All stories have happy endings, some just take a little longer.

2006-12-04T12:32:00.000+05:30

I have an exam in less than two hours. And as the least observant reader has probably figured out by now, I am
a) not studying
b) blogging

Somewhere in the background the parents are getting progressively more nervous. To be precise they're biting their nails and occasionally letting out strange noises, which could be snorts but which sound a lot like hysterical giggles.
After almost eighteen years of watching me prepare for exams they still haven't come up with survival strategies on what-to-do-if-the-daughter-shows-no-signs-of-swotting-before-an-exam. Amazing really. It makes me wonder how parents survive at all. The number of times I've had to tell them to breathe/watch a movie/go do prem by the lakeside, is not funny. But instead of listening to me what do they do? Yep, they sit right there biting on their nails and laughing nervously.

I mean, it's simple really, the entire point of an exam is not to panic. At least not to panic before the exam actually starts. Which is my justification for going out and getting sloshed the night before the exam actually.
My rule for these exams is basically not panicking and not studying till the last minute. In ther words, I'm saving on the hysteria. It's all going to burst out in fifteen minutes of non-stop laughter *after* I see the question paper. Which will be my way of spreading sweetness and light in the classroom. After that of course I might have a heart-attack or be throttled by forty-eight irate and decidedly nervous examinees. But at least I shall have laughed. Which is what makes life worth living. And if we're getting philosophical, here's the phishy definition of happiness for today.

Happiness is laughter and hugs. It's also studying till dawn and dozing off for a little bit, only to be woken by the phone ringing and an equally sleepy voice wishing you luck against the backdrop of one solitary myna chirping brightly and one river flowing its own way. On that cryptic note, Oh World go out and be happy!

2006-11-28T12:17:00.000+05:30

*beeble*

That's one word which could mean a lot of things.
It says, I'm happy. It says, I'm studying and need to run away. It says, I'm really high/stoned/smashed out of my wits. Sometimes it just says, I'm really embarrassed at making an ass of myself, but I know you find it cute, so hehe to you too.
Yep, that's one hard-working word alright.

And sometimes it just means, I need a hug. Badly. Not concern, not curiosity; just a hug.

You don't get those easily. People wanna know what's wrong, why it's wrong, what I'm thinking, how I am, what I'm up to. And I don't want any of those questions. Not because I don't appreciate concern. Mostly I'm grateful that people care. But gratitude doesn't change the fact that I still don't wanna discuss what's wrong. I just want a hug.

*beeble*

2006-11-25T21:27:00.000+05:30

would someone please keep reminding me that getting sloshed out of my mind with exams less than ten days away is *not* a good idea.

ye gads. my head is so reeling.

what was i supposed to be studying? plato..hmm...maybe not.

i think i shall find a very soft pillow and go to sleep. if i'm cranky tomorrow morning, blame it on the hangover willya.

but, it was fun *huge grin*

completely in love...

2006-11-23T03:43:00.000+05:30

*happy sigh*

happiness is keeping off the grass and still floating high

happiness is reading story books when i should be studying my gills out

happiness is finishing a book and realizing i'm in love

it won't last of course. these things never do. but at the present moment, the fish would like to freely confess that she's in love with sam.

sam the sudden.

what a book! what a man!! go read it *now* if you haven't already. on second thoughts, don't. he's too good to be shared.

2006-11-20T02:09:00.000+05:30

exams bring out the blogger in me. actually they bring out the ranter and this blog is daily turning into a rant space. well if you leave a fish alone at home for a day, it is to be expected that she will turn into a ranting lunatic, inevitable only. especially if fish in question has been studying derrida (whom she would dearly like to deconstruct, piece by painful piece) and such like thingys (observe how ze fish politely restrains herself from using words like mindfucking rubbish, other people may think theory is the most inane balderdash humanity ever came up with, second only to himmesh reshammiya perhaps, but you won't read such things on the blog. definitely not.)

clarification : studying does not mean studying. for all ye innocent non-theoretical/ non-pretentiously-intellectual-gittish type of people who thought a word means what it means, here's news, it doesn't. specifically when you see the word studying on my blog it means sitting at home, whining, dining (alas without the happier sort of wining) and most assuredly *not* studying.

don't ask me what i do with my time. if i knew, i wouldn't be doing it. don't tell what to do either. chances are, i won't be grateful.

undated conversation snippet

2006-11-08T09:18:00.000+05:30

babelfish : i’m so brilliantly workless that the thought of the world weighed down in work is twaumatic.

boy : aha we. twaumatized hocche wocche.

bably: (breaking into gushy tone) awwwy…aha we is jaake bole boddo cute :D

boy : yes. i am reaching for my twusty ewwephant gun

babel: (shocked at such suggestions of violence) erp!

boy : (brooding tone)or is that weaching?

babe(l): (wide eyed stare, jake bole bolo bolo chokh) you're gonna shoot a fish with an ewephant gun? a *fith* actually!

boy : (gleefully) fishy wishy go boom!!!

2006-11-08T08:09:00.000+05:30

Waking up at four in the morning never does suit me; makes me feel cranky and truly ancient.

And then someone addresses me as you brazen niece person you...

and suddenly i'm chirpy and feeling fourteen again.

Thank you, you precision-obsessed uncle person you!!!

2006-11-08T07:29:00.000+05:30

Imagine fishy bedroom. Fish struggling to rise at some unearthly hour of the morning, ten o’clock probably. Enter The Father.

Father Fish : (deeply suspicious tones) Are you going to college now?

(suspicion dear reader is the one thing which always turns the fish off and jump starts her bad sensayuma)

Babelfish : (exaggerated sigh) No Dad. I’m going for a movie.

Father Fish is deeply perturbed at this bewildering announcement. Exits room muttering to himself. Bably almost collapses back into sleep. Almost that is.

Re-enter Father Fish : Kon hall-e? (which hall are you going to?)

Bably sighs. Realizes sleep is not happening anymore.

Babel : Dad it’s a new hall. It’s called JUDE. Jadavpur University Department of English.

Father Fish exits room wildly relieved. Re-enters in five minutes, just as Bably has decided it would be so much nicer to just go back to sleep.

Father Fish (having thought up wildly witty retort in the five minutes) : Hero ke? Dr. Abhijit Gupta?

*erm, yes well, explanation…dad remembers the names of four of my professors …the man who is god (because I talked of him all the time at home as well as on the blog, dhuh!) the divine brother-in-law (who is generally very famous) dr gupta (because they share the same name) and umm never mind the fourth, let’s just call him dr bleep bleep.*

Bably : Uh no. Actually it’s Dr Bleep Bleep.

For once wit isn’t a problem. The father jumps in his place and declares : Oh tahole toh flop show!!

wildly exciting life...oh my eyes...

2006-10-25T00:09:00.000+05:30

Ze fish would love to write about how she has spent the last sixty three hours but she fears that would result in the hasty departure of the last remnants of her reading audience as it might be too much for their collective moral sensibilities; suffice to say ze fish has slept for all of three and a half hours out of those sixty odd hours of darkness and light, heehee. On that happy note...goodnight world!

Kali Pujo in Kommunist Kolkata

2006-10-21T12:42:00.000+05:30

There's a kali pujo pandal outside my house, one of those non-descript para'r pandals, which inevitably has a sound system which is about three and a half times as big as the clay idol where they've been playing songs from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi gham all morning...gah!!!

And there's a little stall beside it, which is all decorated in red. Not in order to be kolour ko-ordinated with Kali but because it's a book stall set up by the CPM selling books on kommunism. Karl Marx would presumably be tossing and turning in whatever non-religious nether world he landed up in.

With abject apologies to Tori Amos and heart-felt gratitude to Sandy for providing half the lines and all the funny bits...

2006-10-19T14:14:00.000+05:30

Long long ago, in a land far far away there was a fish. To be precise a Babelfish.

Actually if we're going to be precise about this thing, I might as well state, it wasn't that long ago and it certainly wasn't far in the same way as Eccentrica Gallumbits of Eroticon 6 could be described as far off.

But there certainly was a B'fish. And she knew a not-sandy haired gentleman called, strangely enough, Sandy.

And on a certain night, at a certain hour (well 2.13 A.M. actually) when sane and sensible people should be in bed, sound asleep and hopefully dreaming of things with large tentacles and larger teeth, ze b’fiss and ze sandy had a conversation.
Which was, as these things tend to be, too funny not to be blogged about.
But which was also, inevitably a bit erm..ah..ahem, well y’know…
Let’s just say that the gentleman who on a certain occasion castigated me for not being a tad more considerate of the sensibilities of aged honorary relatives should go away right now if he doesn’t want a heart-attack. Also anyone who still thinks that the stork leaves new babies and that four letter words (or three letters words spelled as s-e-x) should be whispered in hurry, well if anyone like that should be reading this page, there’s a little button at the top extreme right with a cross sign on it, go for it!!
The rest may read on…

So there was the b'fiss, wasting time as only fishes from the joo know how to, on the computer well past witching hours and what-not with a status bar on gtalk which read...what if I’m a mermaid in these jeans of his…
Yeah random I know, so shoot me for it!

And out of the blue this little box popped up....

sandy : then his crotch wouldn't be of any use to you?
(Ladies, gentlemen and little kiddies who cannot be chased away by mere A ratings, I ask you, what an opening line?!)

b’fiss : (discreetly raises virtual eyebrows) why not?

sandy : (with an air of breaking the news gently) because it would look awkward; i don't think mermen have their equipment up front.

b’fiss : (hastening to explain all) nonono, i've got it all planned....dufus he wouldn't be a merman to begin with!

sandy : ah! (takes a moment of to let this sink in and ponder the possibilities) oh well...so is he a centaur in torn jeans?

b’fiss : (a little stunned at this lack of faith in the male members of the species homo sapiens) ordinary men would be too boring i suppose?

sandy : (decidedly) wouldn't be acceptable

b’fiss :(fishing for escape routes) he could be a man with a wooden leg called sam

sandy : no no...(in his most charming convincing tone) i mean...there must be an imbalance, part animal...i mean..if he was a centaur..then his jeans would have four legs...which then makes it ironic

b’fiss : (drily) why because i would only have one leg? or no leg?

sandy : yes! (then stops to think it over and lets loose his imagination) or...actually..he wished he had a tail to scour the seas..and you wished you could ride a horse!!

b’fiss : (slightly confused at this change of subject matter) butbutbut...this was something else bothering me...forget the merman's equipment...where does the mermaid, you know, get it off?

sandy : (pauses, wonders and launches off on new exciting explanation) so that's the great mystery that entices the centaur in, you know...one of those unanswerable questions...reasons why couples stick together....and he'll probably never find out....and they'll live happily ever after :)

b’fiss : (pauses at length to let *this* sink in) happily ever after on no sex? sandy, you're losing it man, slowly but surely! i mean, the assumption of every great romance is that the lovers die *before* the sex gets boring! there is no great love story based on no sex!

sandy : no...honestly...first of all there is taboo involved...a mermaid and a centaur! doesn't happen everyday, so..if they got together...it would be for a very brief instant and he'd be interested with the above mentioned...
and she'd be cherishin the moment...hahaha

b’fiss : i still don't buy it...brief instants are often enough to fit in a raunchy romp, so to speak

sandy : this isn't a great romance..but it has just the right ingredients to make a crappy one...and perhaps..if they do have sex...she'll turn into a woman...and he'll turn into a merman

b’fiss : nono

sandy : so..she'll be able to ride a horse...but not him..

b’fiss : her turning into a woman is fine, but i vote he stays a centaur, way more turning on!

sandy : and he'll scoot after all the other lovely mermaids, hehehe

b’fiss : yes except i think we have the same problem of missing equipment

sandy : i'm sure a mermaid would know where his equiptment is

b’fiss : yes, but it's just that after being a centaur this new merman would just die of frustration!!

yes well, we didn't reach much of a consensus on that one but at least it got me posting again *stretches virtually* it's good to be back in the blogsphere!

2006-08-01T23:01:00.000+05:30

Ze babelfish has a question. One that has long perturbed her tech-retarded soul. She has tossed and turned and pondered long and hard and unable to come to a satisfactory conclusion herself she has decided to throw the question open to the blogsphere. Or at least those blessed, beloved individuals of the blogsphere who occasionally drop by ze fishbowl.
Yes well, this question, or to be precise this insoluble mystery of mysteries which has long bemused, befuddled and bamboozled the phishy mind is this....
What is phishing?
More importantly how does one report it?!!
And why does one report it?!!!

Those who have no clue what this phishy is talking about should now turn to that Great God of Little-Geeks, namely GooGLe.

Googleshwar incidentally is a charming thing. When it's not being an utter pain in the virtual ass of course.
One of the less charming things it did in the past was to introduce a direct chat option, without the polite invisible setting. Grrrrrr.
But that is inconsequential.

What perturbs the fishy soul is that everytime she gets a mail she is faced with a number of reasonable options such as reply and reply to all, some moderately unreasonable ones like show original and message text garbled and the truly unreasonable report phishing.

And much as bably would like to believe her reputation precedes her to the extent that google forewarns it's several million users against her this is obviously not a feasible option. Happy thought, but impossible.

So what eet eej??

2006-07-23T23:43:00.000+05:30

I seem to use this blog for nothing but cribbing. It's very sad. And anyone reading my posts would receive the distinct impression that I lead a very sad life. Which is probably true.
I mean, at least half the people I know think my life is terribly sad and I really need to reform myself. The other half seem to have given up hope. Somewhere in between are those people who valiantly insist that I'm a good girl, or a good fish, as you will.
Just the other day a friend of mine declared that not only did he firmly believe I was a nice sweet girl, but he was willing to come over and convince my parents if need be. I can do no better than to copy paste his own words...

Maybe I should go speak to your parents. And say she is a good girl. Only smokes when she's not drinking. Only drinks when she is not gambling. Only gambles when she is not doping. And only ever dopes when she's not...hehe, well you know what... Otherwise ekebare sweet bengali girl type.

Yes well, as you can see the people I know really take their duty as my friends seriously. Since my foes don't seem to be remotely interested in destroying my repustation or my life, these guys have just taken over the task.
If people who had never met me were to believe my friends they'd find themselves convinced that the babelfish smokes really really rarely...on two days in the year wonly...on the day when it rains and on the day when it doesn't!

Even so, given a choice between having a reputation and having friends, I'd still opt for the latter. It would be a gun-held-at-my-head-and-lighted-matchsticks-between-my-toes kind of decision but at least it would be a firm clear choice. What a fish wants and needs and has is fiends, I mean friends.
What a fish also happens to have is people who love her like a daughter/niece/grand-daughter/sister/ or better still mother/grand-mother/aunt although they are not even remotely related to her.

Yes well it's a complicated life. But I'm not complaining. I'm absurdly happy. For one thing I'm over being sick and I'm going to make sure I don't fall sick again in the future. For another I love it when long overdue things come to pass and prove to be better than expected. And for the last, I'm just happy.

And on that happy note I shall sign off with the merry thought that if anyone who thinks I love them is reading this they should now go away and seriously wonder if I do and if after five seconds serious thought if they still believe I do they're obviously wrong, hehe.

2006-07-23T22:49:00.000+05:30

there are eighteen screeching women in my living room.
i think i'm going crazy.
most of them i've never seen before in my life. they've all seen me though. and they keep tabs on me, every one of them. they know when i leave my house and when i enter, i think some nights they stay awake and watch from their balconie,s even on nights when i return at 2am.
in other words they're the neighbours. and they've descended on my house to solve their problems.
the parents fishes have been playing referee.
and i've been clutching my head for the past two hours and imploring any mephistopheles who happens to be in the vicinity to take my soul in exchange for even ten minutes of peace.
oh my good sweet lord, will no one have mercy on a fish's soul.

they say trouble sires three children. the first passed through last weekend. the second was the fever which almost killed the fish over the last week and certainly had the parents palpitating in panic. this must be the third. if there's anything worse on its way i don't think i'll survive.
and whoever said man is a social animal obviously didn't have neighbours like mine.

insanely angry

2006-07-19T15:16:00.000+05:30

Babelfish says:
arunava
Babelfish says:
two things
Babelfish says:
firstly i thought X was your friend, or rather you were X's friend
Babelfish says:
Secondly you're proving to be something of a loser, in fact i am so mad right now i would go so far as to call you a fucking loser
Babelfish says:
amend that, a fucking losing god-forsaken worthless piece of nothingnedd
Babelfish says:
nothingness
Babelfish says:
excuse the typos
Babelfish says:
and you can put this up on your blog if yu like
Babelfish says:
if you won't i will eventually
Alluder of Alliterations says:
fishy... you may consider me to be whatever you want,,, you will always be a fishy to me..
er in case you havent noticed.. i thought you were the one lecturing me not to put up convos on blogs and extolling the virtues of discretion and all that.. and look.. you are free to post whatever you want... why tell me? and believe me i have better things to blog about than this...
Alluder of Alliterations says:
and why on earth such a big deal about nothing
Alluder of Alliterations says:
??
Babelfish says:
excuse me?
Babelfish says:
big deal about nothing?
Babelfish says:
listen up, very carefully
Babelfish says:
if i blog this
Babelfish says:
i would NOT
Babelfish says:
NOTNOTNOT blog the bit abot X
Babelfish says:
i would blog the bit where i call you a worthless good-for-nothing loser
Babelfish says:
that's the bit i meant
Alluder of Alliterations says:
goahead.....
Babelfish says:
and discretion has nothing to do with that
Babelfish says:
it's my opinion or worse, it's my judgement of you
Babelfish says:
and i'm judging you out here boss
Babelfish says:
and you're failing every god damn test there ever was
Babelfish says:
im not a perfect person, in fact i'm a horrible person
Babelfish says:
but hey i'm not as bad as you it seems
Babelfish says:
what kind of fucking right do you think you have to say such things about X
Babelfish says:
who died and gave you the right to gossip about X
Babelfish says:
what the fuck
Babelfish says:
how many other people have you told this "wildly exciting piece of gossip" to
Babelfish says:
have you been hauling people up in the corridors and telling them this?
Alluder of Alliterations says:
no one else ... and it isnt wild and exciting... and no
Babelfish says:
fuck it you bastard
Babelfish says:
you have no fucking right to put things that way
Babelfish says:
HOW DARE YOU?
Babelfish says:
how dare you say something like that about X
Babelfish says:
are you stupid or what
Babelfish says:
go back and read what you wrote
Babelfish says:
read the words
Babelfish says:
if a friend of mine said something like that about me, in those words i would kill them
Babelfish says:
or at least disown them for life

that was a random conversation snippet. it's not supposed to make sense. the rest of the post is a rant. that's not going to be making sense either. sigh. this blog is getting to be too personal. then again, i'm getting too emotional these days. what to do. such is life.

*begin rant...*

If I love someone it's usually for life, and I'm as protective as hell. It doesn't matter if the person doesn't want to be protected. Maybe X wouldn't have minded such things being said about her. But you will not, not and NOT gossip about my friends in front of me. Not unless you want the police to have to drag out your body from under the JU jheel . I don't wanna be hanged for murdering someone, least of all for stabbing someone with a blunt knife fifty seven times. But there are times I would do it, and when you say something nasty about someone I love trust me you're micro-millimetres away from the land of the dead.

*end rant*
**phew**

Oh and yeah I'm probably sounding self-righteous as hell here but truth be told I'm not a perfect person; as prone to lying, bitching and being nasty as the next person in the room or you the reader. But some things I don't do. And I do not bitch about people who are my friends. If you wanna yell at me cos you've heard I bitch about you and you feel betrayed, sorry boss you're obviously not that special to me. Deal with it the way you want to but this is how I am. What random people think about me is not an issue. I care without limits for a limited number of people in the world and you watch your trap when you talk about them. Otherwise I always have my trusty blunt knife or alternatively this rant space I call my blog.

2006-07-17T23:51:00.000+05:30

A few hours back I wasn't sure if I should be happy or if I should cry.
Because I thought things were ok, I thought we could forgive and forget and move on. And I was touched; incredibly, insanely touched that there are people who are concerned. People who aren't even family but who care enough to think about me when I'm not thinking for myself.
It kinda made me happy. And a little sad. If you know what I mean.

Now I'm just howling.
Cos I've discovered life ain't that simple. And it doesn't help that none of the people I'm howling for will ever see this space and I have no idea how to make things ok again.

I’ve just had everyone taking my trip all day. Taking. My. Trip. Again and again.
And obviously I deserved it. Also equally obviously I've been an idiot. Correction, an idjit.

This is a cross between a public apology and a private rant. That means people who don't know what this is about should not ever ask what this is about. And if the people this is about do accidentally or otherwise drop by, well, I'm trying to say I'm sorry.

I made a mistake. I know that. I wasn't thinking straight. Hell I wasn't even thinking. But it's over. Really. It won't happen again. Ever again. I don't know if I can say sorry often enough to make you forget what happened. I'd swear by everything I hold dear but swearing ain't a test of anything. I haven't given you any reason to trust me. But I need your trust. Because I love you. All of you. For caring enough to yell at me. And if you can still find it in your hearts to care for me a little I won't let you down again.
Phishy promise.

2006-07-05T14:09:00.000+05:30

Imagine fish. Imagine dead drunk fish. Now imagine dead fish. And there Ladies and Gentlemen you have a summary of the b'fissy existence.

The fish hereby formally announces her intentions of joining a nunnery. Or, since no self-respecting nunnery would admit a self-respecting babelfish, the fish shall run away to the mountains and live a life of solitude, meditating on her sinful past. In other words, the fish is in deep trouble.

To cut a very short story even shorter, here's the jist, without the prelude.
The Father Fishy was at Oly Pub last evening.
*enter long line of beeps censoring some bloody strong language*
**whiskey tango foxtrot I say!**

First the sister comes home and does a sweep search of my computer. Then the father lands up in the one place I would never ever have expected him. Is there nothing called privacy and the sanctity of human space. And anyone who wants to interject at this point that the father has as much right to enter Oly as I do can go stuff his or her head into a dragon's orifice. This is moment of great anguish and trauma.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-06-19T11:20:00.000+05:30

My best friend told me to stay away from nineteen year olds. My sister actually told me that when I was fouteen and I didn’t pay much attention then. Damn me for not listening this time either. Cassy, if it’s any consolation you were right. Trouble is an understatement.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

umm, sorry, just needed to get that out of my system.

no, wait. cover up for a bit please.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sigh.

yeah, i'm done.

Right now I could spend a good bit of time just grumbling about boys...and I use the word very pointedly...all men are boys and I don't care how matured and menopausal they pretend to be.

sigh again.

And whichever idjit first said women can't keep secrets was a brainless dimwit. It's the males of any age between say twelve and a hundred and twelve who blab. Bloody indiscreet pigeons.

Ah well, I'm done grousing for now.

Somebody get me a gun.

ahem. fine. change of topic.

So...Last night I was telling this utterly adorable Jedi/Samurai/Vampire-Slayer I happen to know, that someday I should just write a book and call it A Day in the Life of a Fish. If I ever do, there'll be a whole chapter dedicated to earrings. Well, maybe just a paragraph. For you Dear Reader, here's the preview...

The art of extricating earrings from ears is a delicate one. Traditionally it is known to require intense concentration. However earrings have also been known to succumb to the gravitational attraction of the earth and mysteriously vanish from the ears. Inevitably this seemingly innocent phenomenon will have the most disastrous consequences possible. The fishy explorations in this matter suggests that it is part of the Ineffable Plan (to be referred to later as I.P) that
a) the laws of gravity will apply to only one earring while the other will remain ensconced in its place and
b) that the detached earring will fall in the most inconvenient place imaginable, usually a place where one is not supposed to have been at a given time, or for that matter at any time.

Practising the fine art of taking the damn danglers off is a good idea when going in for a shower (let's forget the fish analogy for a second please). Leaving them on the bed however is not quite the smartest thing to do. Forgetting to wear them again is of course an even worse idea. Especially if the bed does not happen to belong to the owner of the earrings. Or if the bed happens to belong to one who does not own any earrings at all. In fact, earrings on the bed are a bad idea all things considered. For one thing, they have been known to break. Into two irreparable halves. Thus leading to much fishy woe.

Chances are I'll never get the energy to write the rest of the book, so this paragraph stands as testimonial to the Babelfishian masterpiece that never will be.
Besides life is too good and far too indiscreet to be written about.
Which reminds me...
Gentle Reader, if you ever have a son (or indeed if you have one already) would you make it a point to teach the kid, How To Be Discreet.
Trust me it'll save the universe a lot of confusion later.

On the count of three...

sigh!!!!!!

filling in the blanks

2006-06-14T21:53:00.000+05:30

been busy and missing for a while. the blog's been lying around like a little lost soul while i was roaming around like a little lost lamb. much gratitude is felt for those who still drop by the fish bowl. the fish promises to write at length, and soon.
for the moment
for those who really want to know...the fish has been and is happy as hell
for those who really want to know...the fish has been and is unhappy as heaven

2006-06-05T20:11:00.000+05:30

Rule Nineteen is: Remember Never to Forget Rule One. And always ask yourself: How come it was created in the first place?

When it comes to Pratchett, Rule One is Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men.

When it comes to the Babelfish, Rule One is way simpler.
Do not mess with this fish.
She doesn't get mad and she desn't get even.
She simply forgets.

2006-05-28T18:47:00.000+05:30

the sister is on orkut.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
curses and bloody a thousand and one abuses on whoever invited her there.

my virtual life is now officially over.
this after i extracted a promise from every person i met on orkut who knew her vaguely to never ever let her know of the place.

the next thing i know she shall get a blog.
i did not just think that.
anyone who knows the sister, is not to tell her what a blog is; and is certainly not to tell her i have a blog.

the fish is now off to drown herself.
and yes bhooter raja, i know that makes me a bad fish, but i'm a bad fish anyway and worst comes to worst i can drown myself in air as the duck has testified on orkut.

post script : erm...i just happened to sign onto this orkut thingy and i have a message from someone whose user name is bitchslave who says and i quote, hello maam do u want a sex slave?
how does one deal with these things? will it be too rude if i say no. i wouldn't want to traumatize this person for life. such a polite person too.

2006-05-28T10:43:00.000+05:30

the sister has returned home. has gone through the computer with a virtual fine-tooth comb. babel is now very pissed but also in very deep trouble. the sister claims to be merely concerned. she also claims to be not very morally perturbed. in reality she is a volcano. shit.

2006-05-26T19:24:00.000+05:30

The pheesh has the phevaar. To be frecise, the fever haf the fish. And while the fish was lying in delirious throes with a fevered brow and wotnot she was treated to much sympathy from her friends. Of course when I say friend, while I might not mean fiend, I mean something not far from it. Read on for choice snippets from the self-scripted play, Sympathy for the Fish...

Scene One :

babelfish : I'm ill and weak and dying.

sympathetic-fiend : Ki hoyechhe?

fissy : Jor! Shordi!! I'm forbidden chilled stuff for practically the rest of summer!!!

Unexpected interlude of unsympathetic silence on messenger which stretches to the next day.

sympathetic-friend-continues-on-phone : Well, I was working. And I thought oh, she'll survive. You just had to factor in all the awws and shaat shaat.

*i'm factoring in a lot of things mistah. grrowl.*

Scene Two :

sympathetic-senior-citizen-who-shall-not-be-named-because-he-is-much-respected-blogger : Abaar shorir kharap keno?

babelfissy : shorir kharap mane cold :(

respected-senior-citizen-whose-sympathy-is-grieviously-suspect : dhyatt

babelfissy : ???

evidently-unsympathetic-senior-citizen : You should have a mysterious wasting sickness.

*yes saar, as soon as i can manage to get wasted saar.*

Scene Three :

concerned voice over phone : Ki hoyechhe?

Babel repeats same old story

concerned-voice-promptly-changes-to-wickedly-grinning-voice : Hneehnee, and *what* have you been up to?

Yes well, there are those who think that fever and a fearful cold are poetic justice and divine retribution for the fish's complete avoidance of studies over the past month.
To which ze fiss has this to say : yeeeeargh!!! (and you can factor in the tongue stuck out)

And finally to add to all the phisshy misery the sister has returned home. Which is not to imply that I do not love the sister muchly. She is the jewel of my eye and wotnot. But, I kinda draw the line at her coming home. For one thing, she has the knack of coming across things I would ideally not have her come across. Sigh, I might as well tell you the story of my final woe...

This afternoon, while I lay nursing one pillow, one glass of warm milk and one bad temper the sister did a conspiratorial crawl across the bed and whispered to me in as conspiratorial and concerned and elder sisterly a voice as my gentle reader would care to imagine, "bably, why was there a packet of condoms in the back of your cupboard?"

To be honest, I did toy momentarily with the idea of giving her the catchline of buladi ads or alternately informing her that the parents must have decided two kids was two too many for them to handle. But then I stuck to the safe story and explained to her how I'd been handed these packets at an HIV-AIDS awareness workshop I'd attended in college.
And Dear Disbelieving Reader of mine, for once I freely confess I was not lying.
Yes well, there are times when I shock myself by telling the truth.

All in all then, tis a sad life but there are the occasional bright spots. Today, for example, I got this one line in the mail from a dearly beloved source, who wishes in the hallowed tradition of magazine help columns to withhold his/her name, address and gender here.
Read and decipher this if you can Oh Gentle Reader,
"Seat no 15 man middle aged, cheating on his wife with his secretary two children and one cat.."

2006-05-16T00:58:00.000+05:30

This is a guest post. Sort of. That is to say, the guest who's posting it doesn't exactly know he's posting it but I'm guessing he shouldn't mind given it was his idea to post it in the first place. At least I think it was his idea. Never mind,. Clarifications can be sorted out later.

First the standard Parental Guidance type warnings.
Ahem.
Yes well, observe the delicacy with which I side-step the issue of age.
For one thing, the first time I suggested censoring a post for all those below eighteen I found a comment from two American bloggers who were aged thirteen. I have no idea how they found the page, but it's perfectly possible that they simpled googled for all pages which refused access to those below eighteen.
The second and more important thingy is that the guest in question is practically eighteen himself. Well no, nineteen. About to be twenty. But still, he's a teenager. So umm age is not a criterion in warning people off the rest of the post.
On the other hand moral sensibilities are a bit of a bugger. If you don't like hearing the word sex repeated too often skip this post, it just ain't meant for you.

Right, having tempted ye enough Dear Reader, let me introduce the guest poster. Who is probably in bed right now oblivious to the fact that I am ghost writing his guest post. Little in fact needs to be said about him; suffice to say he is a Duck.
*pause*
**ahem**
***clarification***
Gentle Reader, I understand this is a difficult statement to accept at the best of the times, especially since there is a famed duck of destiny and a quackpot duck who went to sea who both happened to visit this fishbowl once upon an ancient age. Give it a minte and remind yourself there are other ducks in the sea. This one for example is a blogging duck who used to be a travelling duck. Now he's the Red Bantoo and never mind why. He also happens to be a duck who says things like "I don't give a flying duck". And he writes poetry. I think that says it all.
Oh last point, before anyone brings on the criticism, he is also my darling choubachha*.

*This at the best of times is a difficult idea to translate, but to simplify a bachha is a child whereas a choubachha is a water tank; as you can see it's just a bad pun, so never mind.

Enough of introductions, on with the post. Which in fact is also in fact a tag.

The rules are simple enough, those tagged have to answer the questions below to the best of their ability. Having answered all the questions they have to add one question in the same vein. And then tag one other person. Just one please, not an indiscriminate tag list of your eight favorite people.

The questions incidentally were provided by the Duck who obtained them by fishy means from a reputed insitituion in the city which believes in teaching its students to be fine upstanding moral citizens of the country. Not that I have a problem with anyone who fits those three adjectives but in view of the fact that these questions were part of a hundred mark examination it seemed appropriate to address them to the blogsphere....

To begin with then, I tag the choubachha himself...awright baby, enjoy answering this lot...

we begin with the medical and the practical type of question...
1) If one doctor tells you that you have asthma and another tells you that you have bird flu, are their statements contradictory? Explain why or why not.

move on to the metaphysical and spiritual...
2) From the behavior that is found in human beings only ( 'I know myself', i.e., 'I know I'), prove that a human being has a soul that is not material.

and then to the literally *spirit*ual
3) Explain how drinking enough (a) alcohol to be drunk and (b) smoking causes addiction.

then comes the good bit...
4) Explain how the focus of attention in a sexual dream is different from the focus of attenion when one stimulates oneselft sexually by masturbating. Explain why masturbation is both sinful and addictive.

from good to better...
5) Contraception, of any kind, is always an action done to oneself and hence, contraception turns the attention to oneself and destroys love. If a woman uses a diaphragm (a woman's condom) as the only way to avoid a life threatening pregnancy, she is doing unnatural sex to survive. Which is the way to reach eternal life : to die as a martyr instead of violating natural law (God's law) by doing sex in a condom or to do sex in a condom and survive? Explain your answer.

possibly to best...
6) Just as one should avoid high-calorie foods to control weight, the couple should abstain from sex when conception is possible to control birth. How is this natural way to control birth different from contraception?

and finally the question which left me speechless in all its seriousness...
7) Why do premarital sexual relations hinder a boy and a girl from knowing each other before marriage?
OR
Why does a married couple who married as virgins have a better chance to have happy sexual relations after marriage than a married couple who had premarital sex?
OR
Why does premarital sex tend to lead to divorce?
Explain.

Explanations anyone?

2006-05-14T14:00:00.000+05:30

early morning conversation between two sober sane serious studious friends intent on preparing for the next day's exam....

cass : i was told bhogoban hishi korle brishti pore...*it rains when the good lord maketh water*

babel : eeew!!!

cass : na seriously that’s what they taught me as a kid.

babel : i think my parents balked at the thought of saying such an offensive thing to their incorruptible innocent daughters and simply told us that it rains when the big man upstairs cries

cass : well, the best thing I ever heard was that when it rains it means god’s defrosting his fridge

babel : hey that’s nice. unless of course he’d kept aasnthe maachh *smelly fish* in it in the first place.

cass : eeeeeew!!!

babel : i have a feeling after this conversation we’re not going to want to step out in the rain for a few days.

cass : haan butbut imagine peeing for forty days!

babel : maybe he had a bladder retention problem.

cass : maybe he’s sitting up there laughing himself off his chair.

babel : or he’s going, where’s my thunderbolt? lemme strike these blasphemers down this minute!

cass : well depends on whose god it is. if it’s the chrisitan one, he’s like oh these people are going to hell anyway. and if it’s ours they’re like, where’s the ganja?

babel : na boss, they’re already high on ganja.

cass : na na they’re probably going, where’s the rest of the ganja?!

babel : or they’re like, bah, ei duto-to gaanja na kheyei arom bhaat bokchhe!...*wow, these two don't even need ganja to get psychadelic and weird*

cass : but seriously i think we ought to get really high and write the exam tomorrow, emnitei ja chhorabo!!...*we'll make such a mess anyway!*

like i said sober, serious and studious that's us. sane i'm not quite so sure about though.

just for the record

2006-04-29T01:15:00.000+05:30

"Once upon a time you loved him. A lot. That's the only reason you hate him now. Otherwise you'd just be indifferent."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"You're beautiful."

"Tell me something I don't know that happens to be true as well."

"You're beautiful."

2006-04-27T02:38:00.000+05:30

First I rant, then I have to recant.
sigh.
I walked into college today and was informed first by beloved friend *who will soon stop being best friend if she continues to be this nasty* that she thought my post was silly.
pout.
Then AG very kindly informed me that I had probably been too clever for my own good.
ouch.
In short I feel like a misunderstood moron.
whimper.
In long, therefore, if you've already read the post this is the after-thought. If you haven't read the last post take a second off, read it and then get back.
But read before jumping to conclusions please.

And Gentle Reader, forgive me if I was too subtle in the previous post.
I forgot people still take me seriously.

So, the basic clarification is as follows.
Despite the over abundance of saccharine sweetness in the department at this present moment, despite the fact that the first years have exhibited a disturbing tendancy to pair up faster than you can say, oh ki mishti couple!!, the babelfish would like to announce very clearly and firmly and as loudly as possible that she has no, no and no plans of
a)getting a life
b)getting a man
c)getting a man to address her as sugarplum
d)getting whatever else spring has on offer.

In case this clarification doesn't seem to fit in too well with what I wrote last night let me put it this way; the problem with leaving myself deliberately open to misinterpretation is that I am liable to be misunderstood. Yes well, obvious innit.
So yeah , I know everyone got pretty excited by the "dark alley" bit but umm when I mentioned the "strenuous activities" I meant "heart-stopping" in the sense of permanently heart-stopping.
Yes well. Go figure.

And as for the *requited* passion. The primary difference between this and unrequited passion is that any hindi film second string heroine worth her salt(y tears) will give up her life for any man who doesn't love her back. In real life when two people feel truly requited passion for each other they're ready at any moment to kill each other.

Oh and I assumed everyone had heard of Lucrezia Borgia. If you haven't I can only quote the darling of the department, "you can never trust the Borgias you know". Now you can go google for her name.

And finally, this fish would like to clarify that she might mix politics with pleasure but never prem. Despite my inordinate passion for this man, I don't feel the slightest inclination to spend the rest of my life calling him sugarplum. I only want to kill him.

2006-04-25T11:39:00.000+05:30

The babelfish has a most grievous confession to make. It shames her and mortifies her to say this in a public blog accessible to vast millions who may never even choose to read it but she has wrested with her conscience, she has spent sleepless nights tossing and turning and turning and tossing unable to get these thoughts out of her head and bed and she has finally come to the conclusion that an open confession might be the best way out.

*of course when I say nights I actually mean one night, but let's not get too carried away with details here oggay...and when I say here, this rather hold for the rest of the post too....but, I digress and for once I shall try to cut a long story short and thou dear reader are most welcome to imagine for your gentle self a five page preamble with extra dollops of drama*

In short then, I have committed the unforgivable, the unfathomable, the unforgettable, the unforeseeable.

I have fallen with bone-splintering-rib-cracking-nose-fracturing-jaw-breaking intensity for someone.
And this is where I must clutch my breast and rend my hair and confess most shamefully that when I say someone I don't just mean someone I mean a political rival.
*the italics by the way indicate hushed tones...go back and read it again, this time drop your voice for the last two words...*
And you were wondering what the drama was all about.

*sigh*
*and sigh again*
Will my gentle reader excuse me while I indulge in some heavy-duty furnace style sighing...siiiiiiiigh!!!

I will not bore you with the when and where and whom, I shall only describe the epiphanic moment when I first realized this heart-stopping, horrific happening.

So, there I was, in a room full of very politically motivated gentlemen. There was just one other female in the room, which says a lot about the male female ratio in political outfits and never mind the occasional sonia/maneka/mamata/indira/jayalalitha/uma! *interesting innit how all their names end in a. nevermind.*

On the one side, there were the men from the engineering faculty, across the aisle were the men from the science faculty and bang in between were the arts faculty reps. And this man, this jaw-breaking-rib-crusher was speaking. And when I interrupted his beautifully worded very persuasive monologue in pure undiluted bangla he turned to me and rasped out, "wait, let me finish...".

And I almost swooned as I realized that this was the man I wanted to drag off into a dark alley for some heart-stoppingly strenuous moments. And ever since that moment, to be precise, 8.07 PM Monday, the 24th of April, my heart flutters at the thought of him and beats faster.
And to all the cynics who say this is only because he has threatened to cut me into ickle pieces and feed me to the fish in the ju-jheel I say nahi!!

This then is the fish's confession. If she is, someday in the not-too-distant future found drownded on dry land it will because of this man for whom she feels such requited passion. Conversely if she is found guilty of indulging in acts reminiscent of Lucrezia Borgia...you heard it here first!

2006-04-14T02:54:00.000+05:30

Much has been happening in ze fissbowl. For one thing the mother has discarded home, hearth, husband and the one and only younger daughter in order to re-enact some well chosen scenes from trashy ekta kapoor serials at the no-longer-tranquil home of the newly-wed one and only older daughter.
The father predictably is pining away. Ok, that's an understatement but I have no words to describe how melancholy he is these days. He hangs around the house and mopes. In snatches he remembers that he is supposed to be playing mother hen to b'fissy and comes around clucking with a vengeance.

The outcome of the pater familias doing mother hen imitations has been rather mixed. For example, having lovingly watched me set off for college one morning and in the process of standing at the door and waving a forlorn metaphorical hankey in farewell he noticed that my shoes were pretty shabby. And then he forced me to go shopping with him and bought me two pairs of shoes. That was the good bit.
The bad bit was the time the father in a fit of excessive love and misplaced zealous tenderness decided to put a bottle of water into my college bag. In the process discovering a match-box in said bag. Father questoned daughter and daughter gave an answer which was a hazelnut surprise and two layers of truffles short of an entire chocolate box of honesty and then father and daughter went on with make-believe world where suspension of disbelief rules bigtime.

We get along my father and I. More than happily. When we're utterly bored with everything around us we start some bizarre conversation which keeps us high on aantlami *pretentious intellectualism* for prolonged periods of time. And occasionally we do father-daughter talks where he asks me interesting questions like who's the flavour of this season and *you don't even want to know the context of that one*! But through it all I know he's too busy missing Ma. Me, I'm the half-hard-hearted one of the family, so I don't miss her at all *and if you heard me howling I want my mommy in college the other day you were obviously hallucinating*. But he sits by the phone all the time he's at home. And gives it little looks and occasioanlly picks it up to check if it's working. And sometimes he prods it a bit with his little finger like he's gently trying to nudge some divinity in charge of communications to get her to call.
But while I'm not as mushily mopey as he is, home isn't home unless Ma's there to yell at me. And Baba can't even yell properly if Ma's not there. Sigh.
Change topic. I can feel myself getting morose and sentimental over this, gah! Instead I shall write about the other major event in fishy's life. Which is a continuation of all my electoral woes of last month and the surprisingly not-quite-woeful results
To cut a very very long story short. There was an election today. Students from all three faculties of the university voted for six students members of the court council which is supposedly a hi-falutin inexplicably powerful administrative body *basically blah*. And out of the six very elite court members not one has any affinity for shades of red. But one of the six is a fish. This fish to be precise. In other words, this is a happy fishy right now.

2006-04-04T23:02:00.000+05:30

Various people at various points of time have asked members, honorary and otherwise, of JUDE what it is that they do all day in college. The answers, roughly summed up, are as follows :

*half-concerned shrug* "nothing"
*look of philosophical acceptance* "nothing"
*look of mortified realization* "nothing"
*vaguely embarrassed look* "nothing"
*blank look* "nothing" (this last one I find rather unnerving because it leads me to suspect that JUDE is slowly filling up with dull half-wits of all shapes and sizes)

Of course "nothing" often includes prem kora and panu kora or wait....the two are the same right? Ahem. Never mind.

And of course, there's sitting at Monida and doing "nothing". Monida, for those glorious millions fortunate enough to be ignorant of the existence of such a glorified place, is a canteen. In the glorious (not that I know what's so glorious about it anyway) tradition of canteens on campuses across calcutta it is named after the supposed glo-nevermind proprietor.
When I say supposed of course I may be erring on the side of caution but one does so like to get these little details right and anyone sitting at Monida's for long enough will get the distinct feeling that the place is actually owned by half a dozen dead flies, a few thousand dozen live fleas and a random assortment of dogs, male and female, perpetually horny and occasionally gay. Oh and by The Smell. And the crows. By Blind Io and the crows who ate his eyeballs, how could I have forgetten to mention the crows.
Crows!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles...and well, substitute babies with innocent college-students and you've got the general idea.

This then is Monida's. A place we are all inordinately fond of. Why is not a question which should drift into the reader's mind at ths moment. The reader had best assume that the average JUDEan's love for Monida is all part of the Ineffable Plan. And in case you were wondering what the Ineffable Plan is, well, it's a bit like this you see, thereasonIcan'ttellyouwhattheIneffablePlanisisalsopartoftheIneffablePlan. Can I get on with the story now?
Oh. Except there is no story. Well, not as such. Just another random snippet from another random conversation on a random day at a random table at monida's :

babelfish (half mooney voice) : sigh. you know what, I just realized the other day he looks like a greek god.
cass (in her did-you-loan-your-brains-to-the-crows voice) : no. he doesn't.
bably (jolted out of her monida-ydreams) : b-b-bbutbut he does!
diva (in her why-did-I-ever-join-this-madhouse-I-wannawannawanna-go-back-to-delhi voice) : No!
babe(l) pouts
cass (trying to be sensible and turning out to be most condescending) : look. he's adorable but he looks like a teddy bear not an imitation apollo!
bably (small voice) : umm...what about one of the smallish greek gods, like herme-
diva : NO!
bably (barely audible voice) : but the whole look that he has...umm maybe a bit like zeu-
cass : NO!!!
babel : I shall sulk.

I'm still sulking by the way. Because whatever those disbelieving gits might say, he does look like a greek god. Does too.

And in case you're wondering who he is. Stop right there. I'm not about to tell you. So teehee to you too.

2006-04-01T06:44:00.000+05:30

To my best-best-best-best-est friend.....
I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
Really really really sorry. I didn't forget, I swear I didn't. I am just a complete, utter, inexcusable ass. I shall grovel and plead for all eternity. Pleeeeeeeeease forgive me.
I have a seminar in another two hours and a paper to present which I still haven't written and am about to write now. Stayed up all night and all of last night tao lekha hoye ni kintu mane that does not mean that I've stopped grovelling sincerely and seriously.
And you have every right to be mad at me and hate me for all eternity but please don't, mane I'll be even more heart-broken tokhon.
Thorry.
Will leave now to write paper but will also keep apologizing indefinitely.
**pleading pleading puppy dog eyes**

2006-03-28T03:04:00.000+05:30

I have to do this. I'm sorry, I apologize most sincerely and profoundly in advance for forcing this on all my readers and all those who might accidentally stumble on my blog but I had to had to do this.

This is the warning, the final watchumacallit, that censorship stamp. I'm about to put up some umm rather uh graphic umm visuals which err happen to be about *whispered undertone* best positions in bed. But before that unfortunately I have to do this long overdue tag.....

1. Were you named after anyone?
ooh now that's a long story. I share the first half of my name with a cool twenty percent of the population of India but my parents tagged on a bit at the end which resulted in my name becoming one of the most uncommon common names ever.

2. Do you wish on stars?
No.
*insert sickly sweet voice* I think they're God's own daisies chain...barf!!!

3. When did you last cry?
I'm a fish.
Salty drops of water on my cheeks....naah, these ain't tears, they're an existential hazard!

4. Do you like your handwriting?
I prefer my hand doing a lot of other things but it's cool when it wants to grab a pen and write.

5. What is your favourite meat?
If I was being obtruse and aantel I'd talk about Freud's analysis of a certain dream in Interpretation of Dreams. But that would be downright dirty, so let's just leave this question aside shall we.

6. What is your most embarrassing CD on your shelf?
umm that depends on who's looking at it. I mean I wouldn't be embarrassed by stacks of pornography; then again you might, if the stacks existed that is. For now we'll settle for ummm the original vcd of Shrek II...bit of an inside story, suffice to say embarrassing.

7. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you?
oooh, would I be another male person or a female person. This is one hell of an important question...go figure.

8.Are you a daredevil?
This is a blog frequented by kiddies, what sort of a question is that?!! Oh wait, you're not asking why I'm a daredevil? A yes or no would do...hmm....dhuh!!! That's a yes, for those who are slow on the uptake/intake/anytake.

9. How do you release anger?
This one involves nails and teeth and a lot of passion. Let's not go there shall we, it's ugly.

10. Where is your second home?
Easy ain't it...JU.

11. Do you trust others easily?
According to everyone else yes. According to me hell yes! Until the second i'm about to betray the other in question that is.

12. What was your favourite toy as a child?
Barbie. Oh yes, absolutely. You have the option of disbelieving me and not believing me. Wouldn't it have been easier to ask what my favorite toy is now?

13. What class in school/college do you think is totally useless?
umm....compulsory bangla *all judeans who were looking to hit dirt out here, forget it, courtesy a certain five fingered piece of fluff my blog is accessible to certain profs *polite smile* so we don't discuss these things here anymore*

14. Do you use sarcasm a lot?
Who me? Sarcasm? How could you even think of such a thing? It just goes to prove, you're obviously not as stupid as you look.

15. Have you ever been in a mosh pit?
Short and sweet...NO.

16. What do you look for in a guy/girl?
In? umm in where? *scratch head..rub nose, look embarrassed* uh, maybe I should just gently move on to the next question.

17. Would you bungee jump?
Well yeah. But what's more interesting is my list of people-I-would-most-vehemently-urge-to-go-bungee-jumping, preferably without a safety rope.

18. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?
I cannot answer this question as it is against my religious principles.

19. What's your favourite ice cream?
This one is against my other principles..whatchumacallit...ethical, aesthetical, i'mtooboredwithsillyquestionsical principles.

20. What are your favourite colours?
Ooh now this question is discriminatory. Seriously. It's against all principles of equality and democracy and basic decency. What kind of a question is this? What if I were colour blind? Does whoever started this tag realize that I could have been left psychologically scarred for life...harrumph!!!

21. What are your least favourite things?
Books. Absolutely. Hate them. Can't stand them. Wouldn't read one of them if you hit me on the head with ten of them.

22. How many people do you have a crush on right now?
See, it's like this. You know Pratchett? Wait, I'm not saying I have a crush on Terry Pratchett, which I might but which is irrelevant right now. The reason I mention Pratchett right now is because he writes about Trolls. And well, trolls can't count beyond many. So they say one, two, many, many many. I'm numerically challenged too. Let's just say one.

23. Who do you miss most right now?
Someone who knows it better than I do. Is that too vague as an answer? Well, it's supposed to be, it's going to save my sorry ass when fifteen people ranging from beloved best friend to beloved sister some day want to know why they aren't indisputably on top of the list. But it's also an honest answer. You know who you are and I miss you.

24. What are you listening to right now?
The imitation railway engine in the next bedroom which goes by the name of My Father.

25. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be?
Pink. If you believe this after everything else clearly you deserve to believe it.

26. What is the weather like right now?
There's a volcano erupting outside my north-east window and a gentle breeze banging the south-east windows. Are you going to rush to rescue me from the hurricane that's sweeping things off my balcony?

27. Last person you talked to on the phone?
Oh, wouldn't you like to know. Next you'll be expecting me to tell you what we talked about!!! No wonder they say privacy is an outdated concept in this age of convergence technology *I didn't come up with this, Don C did*

28. The "first" thing you notice about the opposite sex?
If I was being soppy, I'd say the eyes. If I was being honest err remember the bit about this being a blog frequented by kiddies. I mentioned it a while back. Next question.

29. Do you like the person who sent you this?
Drat. He's going to be reading this ain't he. Freaky why daahling how nice of you to send it! *blows kiss, waves enthusiastically* But, it's like I luuuve his blog and like what fascinating posts he like writes and what a wonderful like soulful person he is...umm is that enough?

30. How are you today?
You're dying to know aren't you?
Well, if you're not, then why bother.

31. Favourite non alcoholic drink?
What's that? Oh, you mean like water? Can't think of anything else, so water it is.

32. Favourite alcoholic drink?
Yeah right, you want me to pick one. Fine, mutter mutter, eenie meenie...Vodka.

33. Natural hair colour?
I don't have hair, I have scales and the occasional fin..dhuh!!

34. Eye colour?
Why don't you look into my eyes and tell me?

35. Wear contacts?
See that's another of those questions which discriminate against the visually challenged, the myopic and the plain unfortunate. In other words, yes.

36. Siblings?
I copy this from Freaky......."A darling, hardly-ever-heard-of sister… married happily!"

37. Favourite month?
As and when I deicide I'll tell you but I wouldn't suggest you hold your breath in anticipation.

38. Favourite food?
I could be on a diet, you know. Not that I am, but if I were this wouldn't be a good time to talk about eating umm things.

39. Favourite day of the year?
Refer to the 37th question. Or wait. What if I tell you my least favorite day of the year? 8th December.

40. Have you ever been too shy to ask someone out?
Shy? Me? Obviously this tag was accidentally sent to me. Come to think of it when was the last time I had to do the asking?

41. Scary movies or happy endings?
What I consider a happy ending might well scare someone else out of their wits. Oh hell, go read this.

42. Summer or winter?
Air-conditioned rooms in summer and leper tola in winter.

43. Do you want your friends to write back?
If I'm taking the bloody effort to write to them in the first place, they better write back. If they don't they're obviously not my friends and I hardly care tuppence about them *huffs and tosses hair over shoulder*

44. Who is most likely to respond?
Respond to what again...

45. What book/magazine are you reading?
You don't want to know...oh wait, you do want to know...deep breath... ruthrendallunkindnessofravenspgwodehousepicadillyjimhanifkhureshiintimacythepoliticsofaristotlebeowulfanditsanalogues
So, did you really want to know?

46. What's on your mouse pad?
One of those toon figures in a flimsy yellow dress with flying auburn hair and huge brown eyes and a little snub nose and a big smile and huge umm I mean a very curvaceous figure. Also the word ALBA. Is anyone going to analyze this? Personally though I'd have preferred this...

47. What did you watch on TV last night?
Bunty or Babli. Yep. I know they showed it cos there were ads all over the papers so how about you assume I watched it.

48. Favourite Smell?
There are some smells which you think will make you gag but then you fall in love with them all over again each and every time. Like the smell of wet earth after the first rains. It's a muddy oozy smell but it's beautiful. Does that answer the question or should I have been even more explicit?

49. Have you ever regretted breaking up with someone?
Two things I learned before I even forgot how to lisp..no loothe endth, preferably no thtrings and no regretth!

50. Most tiresome thing you’ve ever experienced/done?
The most tiresome thing I've ever experienced is putting up with people who really really get on my nerves. Oh but you wanted to know fun things ain't it. Would watching the dawn break qualify as fun tiresome?

pheeew I'm done. Terrible that was.
Incidentally I'm not sure how these tag thingys work. I figure I'm supposed to tag some other people so any dearly beloved reader will please consider themselves tagged if they wish to answer these fifty questions.
Oh and belated realization...was I supposed to tell the truth back there.....ummm....right, I may have err slipped up a wee leetle bit in the general department of honesty and such like thingys. But to compensate there are pictures, as promised, of the best positions in bed. Here goes :

*sigh*

Prochur BhNaat

2006-03-22T01:23:00.001+05:30

This isn’t a a guest post, it’s a guest quote. I’ve been dictated into posting this quote. And when I say dictated, I mean dic-ta-ted. P.B. pretty much ordered me to take out a pen and paper in the middle of class the other day and write down his golden words so I could preserve them for posterity on my blog.
Umm... for anyone who’s not from JUDE, P.B. is the professor of old english in my department. Who is utterly adorable, according to me. Utterly malevolent, according to most of the rest of the department. And is also Grendel’s mother, according to a certain dream a certain member of our department once had.
This semester I opted for the special paper he offered. And happened to be the only student doing so. Needless to say, classes have been fun. Most days we just settle back and chit chat through fifty minutes of class. Other days his conscientous alter-ego threatens to break bottles on my head for bunking classes. Or alternatively, on having it pointed out that his pursuing such a course of action might amount to sexual harrassment, his pragmatic conscientous alter-ego attempts to desperately bribe all female juniors to break aforesaid bottles on my head.
Right... does everyone have a semi clear idea of professor in question? This, then, is what he has to say about the professor with whom fifty percent of the first year population of JUDE inevitably falls in love.

"A**** is part of the Miltonic Scholars Conspiracy to deny Milton’s indebtedness to Old English poetry. And that is why he refuses to openly admit that Milton cribbed large bits of Paradise Lost from Beowulf and Genesis B."

AFTER-THOUGHT : Non-JUDEans please feel free to say eh? And move on to reading other posts.
JUDEans are given the easy options of a) killing P.B. before he gets a chance to flunk bably in her end-sems and b) killing P.B. after he flunks bfiss in her exams. There is of course c) killing A.D.G. for conspiring against Old English but well, we all know what this fiss thinks of option c.) In fact, as I see it, option c.) can go jump into the c.

2006-03-20T00:10:00.000+05:30

CASSY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

umm, you'll have to overlook the colour scheme, i got a bit carried away. hehe. but it was all meant to convey my undying luurbh and devotion.
incidentally, if I don't come for the party it's because I'm mortally offended at the fact that you thought it necessary to invite me.
now run along and have a good day.

2006-03-19T11:47:00.000+05:30

Traumatic things which should not happen to the b'fiss first thing in the morning.
The phone shouldn't ring.
If it does, it should not be the father.
And even it accidentally happens to be the father, the conversation should not start as follows.

bfiss : hello?
the father : yes, sugarplum.
*stunned silence*

*Moment of explanation. The father does not call me sugarplum. No one in their worst nightmares, or in my worst nightmares would dream of caling me sugarplum. Any man, woman or child thinking the words sugar plum and b'fiss in the same sentence would find themselves with a dislocated jaw and a decidely relocated friendship. Having said that it remains only to explain the obvious. That my uh father has umm embarrassing names for my erm mother. Ahem. Yes well. And since I will not reveal their little embarrassing secret names *which i discovered accidentally over the phone right now* I'm choosing sugarplum. Which is considerably less embarrassing than the actual names. Which should give you an idea of how mushy the parents are. And why I am perpetually one step away from dying of madness or diabetes. Or both. So, to return to phone conversation.*

the father, somewhat surprised at stunned silence, continues : hello? sugarplum?!
bfiss : na. babel here.

*embarrassed silence on the father's part*
**even more embarrassed silence on fissy's part**
***embarrassment having dropped in decides to camp out for a bit***

the father : oh, ahem. *embarrassed cough*
bfiss : yes *repeat action with ambarrassed cough*

the father : hehe. so. you sound the same as your mother.
bfiss : *dryly* yes
the father : could you umm give the mumble phone umm to su- er your mother?

Thereafter phone was conveyed to the mother. And I went and got an icepack.

Yes well. Bascally. The reason I shall never get married is this overwhelming, overflowing, perpetually gushy, practically adoloscent luurbh between the parents.
This dear reader is Love Fest 1976-2006.
I need a holiday.

2006-03-18T02:29:00.000+05:30

I signed on to orkut a while back to find this 'teaser' from some random stranger : for someone so adorabel how can you be single?
Deep breath. Right. That sentence should tell you why I’m avowedly single on orkut.
I didn’t bother suggesting to the sender that he should go get himself a word processor but just opening my mail and finding that message sparked off this whole feeling of mutiny and rebellion and unpleasant-ish memories. By now I've figured there's some nascently malignant force at work whenever people sign onto messengers or chat forums.

As a brilliant example of slow murder of the english language this is the transcript of an amazing conversation I had with a complete stranger over yahoo once. Let’s call the man tb, not just because he was as unwanted as tuberculosis but because it’s the abbreviation of his name. Read on…

TB : Hw R U?

*bfiss momentarily confused, since she knows no man/woman or extra-terrestrial creature by the name of TB, remains silent*

TB : wAZZup wid u?

*bfiss continues to be silent and confused*

TB : what U R up to?

*confusion has gone for a walk, to be replaced by slight annoyance; profound silence continues though*

TB : I think U r not in a mood of....... wid me..

*slight annoyance blooms into severe irritation and quells the deep desire to remain silent*

bfiss : I don't know you.

TB : Mera naam Ting Tong Buzz hai.19/m

*m? what’s m? male/married or is he just 19 metres tall? bfiss resolutely ignores rising curiosity and continues in frigid tones meant to repel*

bfiss : L,ook knowing someone's name is not the way to know someone. I honestly don't have time to spend chatting with strangers I don't know. I would appreciate it if you quit messaging me.

TB : Thanks 4 UR advice but really I was MAD 2 chat wid U. som times can I give U wishes{dat only eys remainin wid me} cn I?I will not msg U unnesserily,OK

*who? what? whose eys remain with him?*

TB : so just leave UR 1 msg 4 me Bye.............................Gud Nite....sweet dreams,,,,,,,,,,

*just when you think, phew, good riddance, five minutes sixteen seconds later*

TB : PLEZ LAST MSG{ABOUT ''can I wish U?''}DEN PROMISE I'LL NOT NEVER DISTURB u

bfiss : What the fuck. I said I dont have the time for this. I dont think you're someone I'd ever want to chat with. Let me put it this way...I have a huge problem with people who cannot write a coherent sentence in English and insist on using inane sms short forms even when it takes a few extra seconds to be coherent. Suggestion : learn English. Then try to speak to complete strangers. Byebye.

TB : F''' ''' K u .gOOD BYE

*and the bfiss is left grinning and wondering what prompted such ire in the man. Of course these people never give up, so even after such a dramatic exit, next day there's an offliner announcing…*

TB : SORRY...............! 4 YESTERDE'S DIDS, 4RM 2DE I'll NEVER DISTURB u ,OK BYE

What does one say after this? English is dead, long live english perhaps.

2006-03-11T02:16:00.000+05:30

I've been tagged by the once beloved cassandra and since cribbing, ignoring and outright refusing to complete the tag hasn't worked here goes.
Presumably the point of this exercise is that someday prince charming or the green-golden-hearted-ear-wax-filled version of him will drop by my blog and on reading this list will promptly realize I am the woman of his dreams and then apply the Ickenham process virtually. Of course there's also a fair chance that there is absolutely no purpose to this little tagging exercise. And more importantly that any overtly suspicious prince charming trying too much waggling is likely to get a sharp kick right where it hurts. That said I should add that people with easily offended moral sensibilities should probaby hum a little tune and head for the exit, right about now.

Eight reasons why I would want to spend the rest of my life with one man :

1) He should be drop dead gorgeous. Well, maybe not drop dead but most certainly gorgeous enough to make me drop my jaw. In case anyone feels inclined to comment that beauty is only skin deep this is where I echo Pratchett, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys...and...They said they wanted a soulmate and helpmeet but sooner or later the list would include a skin like silk and a chest fit for a herd of cows. Going by the same rule, this fiss demands a handsome hunk.

2) Having said that I shoul clarify I'm not demanding tall, dark and handsome. Just handsome does fine. I don't even insist on add-ons like brawn and brains. A football-toned body is a wonderful thing of course and brains are terrific in blocking the direct passage of sunlight through the ears but my focus is exclusively on good looking. In fact, tall is not good. I want that comfortable sort of height where I don't have to stand on tiptoes to kiss him.

3) I'm perfectly cool with all socially defined vices, hell I don't think my perfect man would be uptight about smoking, drinking or doping but the one point where I draw the line is promiscuity. I've just met too many men who think nothing of cheating on their girlfriends/wives and while I'm not self-righteous or pompous enough to take it on myself to sit in judgement over them since this is an idealistic list of perfect values and what not, trust is important. And fidelity.

4) More importantly though, he shouldn't play golf. This is a dead no. Primarily because I don't play golf. And anyone who knows their Wodehouse will know that if only one half of a couple plays golf the relationship is pretty much doomed to being ended by the entry of some beautiful young damsel who has a handicap of 18.

5) Going by the same rule, he shouldn't be a poet. Actually that's not as important as the corollary to the point; he should never ever ever accuse *me* of writing poetry. I can happily endure accusations of murder, treachery and stealing my best friend's boyfriend(s) but not even the Spanish Inquisition could get me to confess to writing poetry. Especially related to a) angst b) depression c) love d) nature umm, the list is endless. Point is I don't do poetry. And I most certainly wouldn't do a poet.

6) He shouldn't be a millionaire.Or a billionaire. They're too boring, and they attract far too many dependent and/or conniving relatives and damsels in distress and svelte model types.

7) He should be sufficiently challenged visually to insist that I look good. He should stick to this basic simple plot line irrespective of what I'm wearing. It doesn't matter if I'm in a sari and looking like it's all going to fall off any second or if I'm vibrant in red pants if the man is to be described as perfect I demand that he should be perfect at the little white lies which make a fiss so happy.

8) And since I was obviously saving the best and most important point for the last, listen in carefully. This is like the defining criterion. Points one to seven can go hang themselves but any man who doesn't fit this point is obviously not the right man for me. Basically. He should be a good, no, an excellent gardener. If he can't mange those plantations I keep planning to plant I honestly don't think it's going to work.

hmm...I actually managed eight points. Anyone who's interested, go ahead and tag yourself please. And anyone who fits the bill, hehe, you know where to find me. Or conversely if I hear of anyone who's perfect, I might just hunt him down...

2006-03-04T21:18:00.000+05:30

So. After a week of obsessively thinking of politics and campaigning continuously and shamelessly the elections in our department took place yesterday and the results came out today. I'm terribly upset of course. So we're not going to discuss what the results were. Instead here's my personalized list of instructions for polling agents at the booth. It's meant to be a completely confidential and serious document. I have absolutely no idea why everyone who read it started giggling. Do let me know if you find any part of it funny. I wouldn't want people to think I don't take the electoral procedure seriously. It's a bit long, but since I was planning to suggest to the authorities and all political parties that this should be their format for instructions to polling agents all criticism is insincerely invited. Here goes.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE POLLING AGENT :

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SHOW THIS PAPER TO ANYONE.

Anyone includes professors, polling agents from other parties, your best friends, your worst enemies, vague acquaintances, random strangers, and even the dogs strolling the corridors. BASICALLY EVERYBODY.
Naturally it is implied that since you won’t be showing it around, you won’t dream of giving it to anyone other than the Babelfish. THIS IS REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT. I don’t care if you find it incomprehensible, but it’s important.

1. Do not attempt any sort of campaigning or canvassing for votes inside the polling booth. It doesn’t matter if the voter is your best friend or your boy/girl friend and you think you’ll just drop them a hint. Perish the thought. There’ll be enough people outside to campaign and cajole voters. If anyone inside the booth says anything their candidate might well be disqualified. Play it safe. Smile but don’t open your mouth. You may however offer your pen to a voter who seems to have strolled in without any form of stationary. Pen, not pencil. Black or blue, never red.*

*Incidentally it seems I was dead wrong about this point. The authorities thought it was enough that people actually landed up to vote without expecting them to bring their own stationary as well. So in the generosity of their hearts they provided the necessary writing instrument. Which happened to be a pencil. And red. Sigh. Another of those inherent conspiracies you see. It's all about auto-suggestion and psychological warfare. To understand the full implications of this footnote you have to remember that the opposition was SFI. Which is commie. And blood red in colour. And all government buildings are always painted an ugly red. Which is why I prefer Buckingham Palace. Never mind.

2. Make sure that the name of every voter present is marked by the presiding officer in the electoral roll sheet. This is pretty vital, and the presiding officers have been known to be forgetful. Short term amnesia is not appreciated here.

3. The ballot paper must be signed by the presiding officer before it is given to the voter. Please continue the battle against short-term amnesia.

4. The voter must sign only the counterfoil of the ballot paper which is to be kept by the presiding officer. Voters have a fascination for signing everywhere. Urge them to suppress the desire. One sign, one vote.

5. In the case of certain names there are problems in the final electoral roll. If no objection is raised by the presiding officer or the other polling agents do not mention them. In case of any argument, produce the letter from the Dean. If that doesn’t work call Bably and I’ll create a minor war on the spot. Which should be fun.*

*Always remember peaceful votes are no fun. If you don't believe me ask the head of our department. He of all people can tell you how much bombs and such like things can add to the enjoyment of an election. We don't call him the Don for nothing.

6. Remember to cast your own vote at some point during the day. This is critical. Remind yourself ten times over. In case you forget which names you’re voting for try banging your head really hard on the wall. That works wonders.

Best of luck. Have fun. Vote for me. And remember gazing in rapt adoration at a suitably admirable professor is one of the little things that make life worth living and eggjams worth writing.

Right. That, I thought, was a simple, to-the-point list of instructions. Serious also. Which is what I am. Not simple exactly, but serious. Especially now that I'm marginally heart-broken about the results.*

*All those who promised to come vote and then gracefully dropped excuses for not coming please don't comment on this post. On the other hand this is the moment when I should go all teary eyed and thank cassy and sohini and diya and aniroe and panu and supriyo for landing up just to vote despite the fact that they needed to study for tests.

AFTER-BLOG-THOUGHT :Incidentally this is my hundred-th post. Which should have been a happy post. But in keeping with the gloomy mood of the rest of my posts I thought this had best be as sad as it gets. So, *sigh*, I might as well tell you the results. There are nineteen people in the department who don't love me. Or at least love other people more than me. Which doesn't discount the hundred and sixteen people who accidentally or unknowingly seem to have voted for me. But still. I'm mourning those nineteen votes now. Maybe I should feel happy about the fact that I got the maximum number of votes in the department but well, there were nineteen ballot papaers which had no indication of people wanting to vote for me. In case you're wondering why this makes me unhappy, it does. Unhappy enough to want to get miserably sloshed sometime soon. So if you hear of me getting thoroughly inebriated please understand that's not me celebrating my victory-thingy and the fact that every independent candidate of my department sailed through with a huge majority. I'll be mourning those nineteen. Now if I could only wipe off this silly grin.

BELATED UPDATE : umm, since people did ask, here's an update on the results of the entire university :
Faculty of Arts : SFI- 48 seats; Independent candidates - 6 seats.
Faculty of Science : SFI - 1 seat; We The Independents - 23 seats.
Faculty of Engineering : SFI - 10 seats; Democratic Students Forum - 75 seats.
Freaky darling I take sincere umbrage at your friend's remark that the world is good and red again. hehe. it's not. Having bored all those completely disinterested by politics I shall now get back to grinning like a maniac.

2006-02-26T20:16:00.000+05:30

umm..for anyone confused by my last two posts this one's a filler...from a comment left by a sensational junior I realize I've been rambling a bit much, so here goes and anyone who's not interested in hearing the specifics of university politics hehe, this is where you tiptoe towards the nearest exit and run!
Right.

Our university has three faculties, arts, engineering and science. Each faculty has a union which is primarily responsible for addressing students issues. The union elections of the arts faculty were held last wednesday and the outcome of those elections is we have a mixed union held by a supposedly commie Students Federation of India (SFI) and a staunchly anti-left Forum for Arts Students (FAS). My only contribution to the union election was to try and persuade people to come and vote because every vote does count. Oh yeah, and I voted. Very strongly anti-left. I'm not sure if that makes me a right wing extremist because in the past few weeks all those not sympathizing with the left front have been labelled as naxalites and maoists and accused of wanting to introduce revolutionary measures in student politics. And some bright red spark accused a friend of mine of wanting to blow up the university. Drama and all of that.
Anyhow union elections drama ended on February 23rd. Now comes my dramatic entrance into the world of politics. Well, not that dramatic really. I'm contesting something called the E.C. elections.
Basically our university has an Executive Council which is comprised of representatives from teachers, students, non-teaching staff and oh local committe people and lots of hot shots. There are just two student representatives on this council, one from engineering and one from either science or arts. These two student reps are elected by a three phase electoral process. Each department of the university elects a limited number of representatives who in turn elect six people who form the court council. Out of these six, two are them elected to the executive council. umm..does that make any sense? It's a bit like a pyramid, or the rajya sabha elections. Given I've never studied anything like political science I'm not the best person to explain these things. But basically therefore, on march 3rd our department will be electing it's representatives. And I'm contesting as an independent candidate. JUDEan to the core, so if you're looking for party affiliations wrong stop.
But this is where I do my hoimoi part. The date of elections is bang in the middle of mid-sem exams. There are just too many people who will not come and vote because they'd rather study. And I don't blame the students. I do blame the authorities. Excuse me while I formulate my own conspiracy theory.
*dramatic pause*
There's a conspiracy against me!!!
*double sigh. quadruple sigh.*

2006-02-26T01:47:00.000+05:30

I was going to write something profound on elections in general and student politics in particular, but then I came across this. And this. And since we're on the topic this. The last you can ignore. If you're looking for something profound that is. It has the funny bits which have stopped seeming funny to me because right now, short of a bullet in the brain nothing seems particularly entertaining. Not my brain necessarily, although that would be the best place. My head is full of memories tonight. Gah, this post is going to be sappy. Here's the standard self-censorship suggestion.
*ahem*
All ye likely to be offended by a post singularly devoid of humour, sex and such like things please go away. Right.
*begin ramble*
I was in class X the year didi entered college, but she refused to let me step into her campus until my board exams ended. I think it was June 2000, when I stepped into Presidency College properly. I remember didi telling me once that the only reason she chose to study history in Presi was because she fell in love with the main building the day she went for the admission test.
I fell in love with the place about five minutes after entering the canteen. In the next two years I watched my sister throw herself headlong into politics and then retreat just as rapidly into studies. The year didi left Presi I entered JU. And one of the first things she told me was to stay away from student politics.
Except, somehow, with my sterling knack for being completely insignificant and unnoticable, within approximately two months of college, I'd been approached by what seemed like every bloody political outfit there was on campus. And completely self-centred and egotisitical though this may sound, the reason I remained detached from it all was because there was no party I could identify with.
There were about four small parties on campus three years back, apart from the one large one we'll leave aside for later.
AISA, which was made up of three old men *and when I say old I mean forty*. These three have hung around the campus for years on end, getting admitted into a variety of courses. One of them holds about four masters degrees, including subjects like physics and bengali. But the reason I have no respect for him or any of them is because dammit a degree is not a joke, and having four of them does not justify sitting on the same steps year in and year out talking, passing comments on others and pretending to contribute greatly to social welfare.
Then there was PDSF and RSF, both partially revolutionary, both to be passed over barely mentioned because between them they have fewer members than I have fingers.
And there was AIDSO. Which at least had a more presentable number of members but still failed to accomplish anything significant for the students.
That leaves the SFI. sigh. Ideally I'd rather not talk about that party. It happens to consist a bunch of no good losers I pretty much dislike. I do have a few friends who are staunch left-ists, or claim to be, but we keep our political beliefs out of our friendship and pretend the grass is green everywhere.
I find it hard to come up with a comprehensive explanation of why I am not willing to lay a red carpet and embrace all those who wish to hail me as a comrades. Maybe it's because I find it unbelievably pointless that right now their biggest hoarding on campus reads as follows, stop bush, say no to war. Admittedly I would not touch a member of the george bush fan club with a ten foot long barge pole. The man's a moron and an idjit to boot. But wouldn't it be far more relevant if they'd put up a poster which read say no to the new controller of examinations appointed by the university board because he graduated with a bloody 43%.
The again maybe all this ire is because I am sick and tired of the fact that everytime I've passed members of that party over the past week or so comments have been passed in unecessarily raised voices. Of course being red-blooded staunch believers in the need for communal living they find courage in numbers. Normally I revel in the attention and when people come up with threats like dekhe nebo I'm more than happy to invite them to look long and hard because I'm a sight for sore eyes. But sometimes they go too far. A few days back I stepped into the Dean's office for some work. There were twenty of them. I was alone. That they would be obnoxious and loud was expected. That they would say offensive things questioning my parentage was not. Let us draw a curtain gently over the scene of pointless wrath.
I've been rambling pretty pointlessly. Ideally I should be happy right now. This year's election saw one of the biggest turn-arounds in the past ten year history of JU arts. For the last ten years the union has been held by SFI. Last year, 1200 students voted and the margin between the sfi and their nearest competitor was 600 votes. This year, 1500 students voted and FAS *which is the newest thing around* won the highest post in the union and lost the other two offices by a mere margin of forty votes. There's a hung union right now and as I told Tintinda when he asked me what the implications of that were, simply put, roj bawal hobe. both sfi and fas are in charge of the union at present and needless to say there'll be plenty of fireworks in the coming year.
Right now though the euphoria of watching red asses getting kicked has died down. I spent my saturday holiday, which would've been better employed studying, in college, writing posters. I didn't do the writing bit, that involved delicate art work type thingys. I painted the general backdrop and stuck endless sheets of white paper onto cardboard and sliced through immense quantities of cardboard with a very flimsy knife. Na, that sounds like I did a lot of work. Not really. I did next to nothing but my fingers ache like hell. And the reason I'm not particularly happy is because I know that even if we put up the posters on monday, with the elections on friday there is an immense chance that somewhere in the interim the posters will be torn, damaged or simply removed permanently.
I don't like it when people don't play fair. That' a childish thing to say but at the end of the day the reason I don't like politics is simple. I don't have a vested interest. I can't make a career out of this, I'm not even going to make money running for this election. If we could leave behind all pretensions to ideology and then leave behind all th dirty tricks like brain washing and slandering wouldn't life be simpler?

P.S : incidentally did you note the tone of pompous self-righteousness? also the tendency to be a saintly martyr, or a stuffed toad, whichever you prefer. and the fact that by speaking ill of everyone but myself in the entire damn post I have effectively been indulging in some slandering myself. damn. damn. damn. where's the bloody bullet when my brain needs it anyway?

2006-02-19T09:58:00.000+05:30

For the longest time ever, about three and a half new-york seconds* that is, the b'fiss considered using this blog as a means of political campaigning. So the way you have microphones blaring at every roadside corner in the run up to every major election this blog for the next ten days or so would only have posts blaring out in all caps and block quotes views on the political sagacity of voting for me, me and ahem me.
But then sanity took over.
*sigh*
I realized this blog is a little too fissy to be used to campaign for votes butbutbut gentle reader, dearest reader and all ye readers who may or may not be part of my university and my department bear with me for a little because the run-up to this election will only see me whining, whining and whining some more.
Why the whine you wonder. Well, firstly because whining is an acquired art perfected over millenia by accomplished politicians. It's somewhat imperfectly practised on our campus of course but it's there. Now the tragedy of my life is that given I'd perfected the art of whining on this blog months back anyone would think I'd make a perfect politician but well, sigh. double sigh.
So until the 3rd of march, which is the date of elections I shall use this blog to gust wheezily and sigh frequently. And if I don't post for days on end kind reader do bear with me. It won't be because I have a happening love life or a whirling social existence *on my check list of two, neither of those things will ever be ticked off* but there's always a fair chance that someone will do away with me. Which would be a nice thing considering it'd save me the hassle of canvassing votes and writing my eggjams.

*Incidentally the New York Second is the shortest unit of time in the multiverse. hehe. It's defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.

LATER CLARIFICATION : It's been brought to my notice that the above footnote is worded in such a way as to suggest I'm hoping people would think the New York Second is my invention. Gentle reader, bably is distraught at the thought that people think she'd take credit for something as brilliant as the New York Second, so this is just to let you know it's from Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, originally published by Victor Gollancz in 1992.

post phone prattle

2006-02-12T13:00:00.000+05:30

There are moments, when I sincerely wonder why it is that I am friends with the people I'm friends with. This will not be a contemplative post on friendship and such like things. Anyone who's hanging around reading this blog in hopes of philosophical musings, uh sorry we don't do such things; kinda short supply of brains and sentiments out here. Unless I'm drunk or doped out, in which case there's likely to be no coherence. Sad toss up that. But, to return to the point of the post. This post is about the last post. Vaguely. It's an almost verbatim transcript of the bfiss and cassmortmain on the phone this morning. I've left out the not-interesting-to-the-general-public bits of course, hi-falutin stuff about personal oracles and not aantel stuff about the men on whose brothers women have crushes, but these snippets had to be recorded.

cassy : I don't see what you've gone on about. Kunal Kapoor's handome.

me : *silent gasp*

cassy (not noticing stunned silence on other end of the line) : Oh, Abhishek Bachhan's getting married. I'm so heart-broken!!

me : *gasp, gasp, shudder* What on earth! Why?!

cassy : Oh, but he's so handsome.

me (in the original UI style) : whaaaaaaaaaaaat?

cassy : What? Well, ok, maybe he's not handsome but he's hot. And Kunal Kapoor is handsome

me : What? What. The. No, he's not. Kunal Kapoor is not even hot.

cassy (stern voice of retribution) : Do you even know who Kunal Kapoor is?

me (after a hasty revision of memory, coming back all snooty voiced) : Of corse I do. He's that random guy from Rang De Basanti that random females drools over. Hah! He's not hot. Wait, I have my comp on, lemme google.

*One search later, I come up with this and return anguished to the phone*

me : Cassandra, he's greasy!

cassy : So? Just because he's greasy in Rang De Basanti doesn't mean he's greasy in real life.

me : He's greasy in the damn photograph!

cassy : Well, everyone's greasy in photographs. You think we're not?

me : (swearing under my breath...you certainly aren't woman!!) I may be, but I'm not an actor. He's greasy. And Cassy if you're going to moan about Abhishek Bachhan getting married I'm going to have to disown you.

cassy : oof, ki aantel snobbery. People don't disown friends just because they find other men hot. Besides I don't know who you are to say anything. (unbelievably accusing voice) You find Sean Connery hot.

me : *aggrieved gasp* But he is!

cassy : *verbal shrug* No he's not. And you think what's-his-name is good-looking.
(cassy, since you're reading this, I'm not accusing you of ever forgetting whatzzisname's name but let us be the discreet).

me : But he is!

cassy : *silent giggle* Whatever. But Sean Connery's not hot, he's annoying.

me : *gasp, stutter, double gasp*

cassy : And he hasn't made any decent movies recently. Have you seen Avengers? god. And he was the worst James Bond ever. He had a lisp.

me : *strangulated whisper* It wasn't a lisp. He's Shcottish.

cassy (returning to her unjustified stern voice of retribution) : Ewan McGregor's Scottish. Have you heard him speak? Sean Connery just needs speech therapy. (sound of b'fiss almost fainting) Double o sheven on hish majheshty'z shecret shervice, how ridiculous.

*At this point the mother wanders innocently into the room. All this while I've been stuttering speechless in the face of such blasphemy on behalf of best bud. Helpless I now turn with an anguished cry to the mother.*

me : Ma, I give you Sean Connery.

ma : eh? *silly grin instantly in place*

me : na mane, I didn't mean give give but the way presenters on shows do; presenting Sean Connery. What would you say to that?

*mother with pile of clothes in arms stands there gazing into distance looking faintly bemused but with a very definite silly grin on face...incidentally the women in my family are a bit like that, confront us suddenly with people we adore and overtly handsome men and we grin and look silly...but I digress, let us leave mother standing there and return to the phone*

cassy : At least that other guy you go on about is ok, what's 'is name...Yul Brynner.

*by now I'm beyond gasping. imagine fish, if you will, lying in desert, flailing tail against the terrible sandstorm and going "water, somebody get me water or at least a picture of sean connery". still this one was too much to endure*

me : What d'ya mean he's ok? He's god. Dead god but god. Immortally handsome god too.
(Incidentally I could go on about this forever but I won't. Let's just say, Yul Brynner is beyond handsome the limits of mortal fantasy. And the reason I'm not going on about this is because it would amount to perverted necrophilia of sorts. Let's just say the reason I like the thought of dying is because my heaven will have the King.)

cassy : Yes, yes; but Sean Connery I find insufferable. I tell you he needs speech therapy.

me : How dare you? Speech therapy. I ask you, speech therapy?! The man is god, you hear me. Sean Connery is bloody unforgivably handsome; he does not and I repeat he doesh not need shpeech therapy!!

*ma at this point gathers upshot of conversation and puts her silly grin on hold to say, ki bollo? speech therapy bollo? ki oshobhyo!*
(Fortunately cassandra's other manifold virtues pulled her through but for one precarious moment there I thought she'd really fallen headlong down the mother's popularity charts, for life..the mother of the fiss tends to be a bit unforgiving about these things!)
*but the mother merely sighed, shook her head evidently much aggrieved at the revelation of these unsuspected, unexpected flaws in miss mortmain's otherwise spotless-as-an-undertaker-inner-vest character and returned to her work.*

*sigh* I leave you dear reader to draw your conclusions.
Just one last clarification in small print. Irrespective of whether right now I'm mad enough at cassy to almost disown her, gentle reader, anyone speaking one word against her is likely to be found at the bottom of the ju jheel stabbed sixty five times with a very sharp kitchen knife. hehe.

2006-02-11T11:59:00.000+05:30

Shome men should be shot jusht for looking sho good...umm, with a camera pleashe, not a gun!

I'm not pretending to be high or drunk, jesht thiking of Sean Connery. The double o sheven-esht of all the 007's there ever was or will be. I've just spent fifteen minutes that should have been constructively spent deconstructing old english texts in googling names and running image searches. And I came to the following conclusions :

a) Neil Gaiman is an author. Being such, he should write. He should not go around looking like the goddess Czol's gift to women. Or if he insists on looking so good he should stop writing so bloody brilliantly. gah!

b) Sean Connery being an actor, we cannot obvously accuse him of looking too good to be legal but *and this is the all important but* why can't he just stop. Or shtop if you will. So he was drop. dead. gorgeous when he was twenty. And he continued to look amazingly sexay through his thirties and forties but man, draw a line somewhere. Does anyone realize the man was born in 1930? I didn't know this, I googled for it. Good grief, I have a thing for a man who's just about old enough to be my grand-father. Some men, just don't know when to stop looking handsome. double gah this time!!

And while we're on the topic, there is not a single indian man who can be called handsome. Not one single living Indian man.
I'm not looking for distinguished or dignified or oh-so-cute or even attractive and hunky. I'm looking for handsome. Raise your hands if you must differ but last heard, this is the verdict until the cows come home, or the gai-mans (if only they would). There is. Not. One. Handsome. Living. Indian . Man.

After Thought : Fathers don't count. If you say your father is the most handsome man around, you're obviously biased because that post goes to my dad, thank you very much.

After The After Thought : Neither for that matter is anyone allowed to say their boyfriend is handsome. I'm sorry, if you think so, in the words of the last truly good-looking man I saw, you clearly need glasses.

One of those hanging over thoughts : I think cassy and I decided once that Saif Ali Khan came close...umm...if enough women agree on this one, maybe, we'll count him as one then. But hello?! One out of more than fifty percent of one billion? Is it just me or is something wrong with this country???

And before anyone yells at me for misguided perceptions of beauty, let's have a little clarification. This post is about Sean Connery. Who is handsome. It's also in passing about Neil Gaiman. Let's not get touchy just becuase none of you will ever look that good.

2006-02-11T01:46:00.000+05:30

It has been said of a certain first year sweetheart that she is a walking phuchka. A certain third year junior who claims to have brotherly feelings for the greater percentage of the cute female population of JU *and this you must admit is deeply suspicious* waxed eloquent over this description and said, oh but she's so cute!!
Srin, my dear, I'm not sure why, but it seems people want to eat you up.

In other news I have a guilty confession to make.
Guilty Confession : I wish I hadn't promised to post every day, I don't have anything funny to say, and soon all my readers will go away *the more so if I continue this absurd rhyme play*.

umm, make the above G.C. number one; I have another one to add.
G.C. no. two : I don't like stalkers. Correction, hate 'em to be 'onest.

ummetty umm, actually while we're at it, this one's a continuation of the last thing we were talking of when I left college today, so let's just make this Guilty Confession number three and final.

G.C. no. three and final of course : I'm incredibly happy being out of this prem korchhi thingy. Planted in my singleton state. That's me. Happy.

2006-02-08T02:01:00.000+05:30

Ladies and gentlemen, the B'fiss returns from the her twagic state of rigor one-step-away-from-mortis-and-din'-you-wish-i-was-dead in the brightest and chirpiest of moods *so let's be nice and pretend there's a bit of wild applause and cheers here shall we!*
For one thing I've stopped throwing up, which is a wonderfully cheering thing *the stopping that is, not the throwing up*.
For another I went to college and while I only had a single class that class was superb enough in itself to make up for a week of being unwell. After today's class I re-realized why it was that Tintinda apparently declared once in all seriousness, "if he were teaching the life history of barge poles, you should still do his classes".
*And anyone who can't guess who he in this case might be, nebhar mind. Suffice to say, he is the goods or the gods, whatever tickles your fancy*
But just so you, gentle and dear reader, who-will-hopefully-still-be-with-me-at-the-end-of-this-post, get an idea of why college can make me so chirpy here's a bit of today, nice and fresh, unvarnished and ungarnished and untarnished.

*drumroll*

Presenting The Kanti...the one and hopefully the only Soumyak Kanti De Biswas. *the man at whose name even election officers who have been registering multisyllabic complicated Inidan names for decades on end stop, draw a deep breath and comment, "naam-er kono shesh nai?" ...."doesn't his name end?!"*
And this is Kanti's idea of a joke :
question : There was a girl who whenever she met her father used to push him. What was her name?
answer : Pushpa.
(non bharatiyas who fail to get the humour of this joke please do not panic, us residential jud-indians didn't find it funny either.)
*of course he also has a good one about what you'd call a blue cow with super heroic powers but the answer to that one is funny bordering on blasphemy and this-might-get-me-sued-for-libel so let's not go into such things on this 'ere public blog shall we.*

And then, there's Deep...who has been mentioned previously on this blog in a variety of distinguishing roles and special appearances but let me just clarify that he is best known among my friends at present as the man who on being invited to spend the night with some very hot women insisted he had to go home to walk his dog. Quite.
He's the same young man who this very afternoon was adressed by a young (awright dammit not-so-young) woman with the following words : "Deep, I'm seducing your best friend in the back seat of your car. Do you have nothing to say?"
To which he replied, in clipped precise tones : "Be clean."

So what happens when these two sterling (if somewhat junior) specimens of JUDE meet...

scene, three months back, around the table at monida's canteen :

The object of attention being a half skull *borrowed incidentally from the back seat seducee of this afternoon, not that it's of any importance or anyone notices trivial details or it's even grammatically correct as a sentence but whatever*

The question being, what should this skull, which was due to make a special appearance in a play, to be called.

A variety of names were proposed. Bush it seemed, was a favorite. *though why people insisted that an evidently brain-less skull with a demonic grin and no normal human emotions apparent in its ivory visage should resemble George Bush might, of course, elude the average majority of American voters.*

But the selection of names after a point gave way to the more interesting debate of whether the skull, had been that of a man or a woman. The majority of those present said it must have been a man (the cranial space was rather small you see) but Kanti single-mindedly and vehemently stuck to his guns and insisted it was the skull of a woman.
Whereupon Deep burst out with, *in the most pedantic finger wagging style you can imagine* "The reason Kanti insists it's a woman is because he finds in this skull the objective correlative of his frustrated psycho-sexual desires."
*whereupon the rest of the people looked left and right and vacated the premises hastily*

scene, today, at a similar table in the same place.

Kanti having delivered a series of *and since we know that he too blogs and might someday find this post, let us be polite* wonderful jokes starts with : "what did the big black man say to the tiny white man?"
*for the rest of the exchange imagine if you will Sidharth Basu firing questions at an extremely nervous mastermind participant who is pretending to be confident*
Deep : "where did they meet?"
Kanti : "Delhi"
Deep : "which year?"
Kanti : "1985, incidentally you don't get it..."
Deep : "why did they meet?"
Kanti : "no, see. The big black man was in a car and he was passing by the tiny white man and the question is what did the big black man say to the tiny white man?"
Deep : "what car was it?"
Kanti *barely noticable sigh* : "Bentley"
Deep : "which year"
Kanti : "1982"
Me : *for lack of anything better to do* "what was a 1982 bentley doing in delhi in 1985?"
*Kanti recognizing the question for the meaningless piffle that it is shrugs it off with great discernment*
Deep : "you chauvanist. why were they both men? why are you discriminating against the female gender, why was it not a big black woman"
Sweet Fresher : "why wasn't one of them a transvestite, you can't be discriminatory."
Other Sweet Fresher : "was the driver a woman?"
Confused Outsider : "was the driver a transvestite?"
Someone Inbetween : "why was the black man big and the white man tiny?"
Me : "what colour was the bentley?"
Kanti *recognizing with true discretion the value of the question* : "black"
Me : "but you said yellow"
*I was just being mean and trying to confuse him, oh ye already possibly confused reader, the issue of colour hadn't come up then*
Kanti *trying to pull off smart politicial backtrack* : "oh, in that case yellow"
Me *trying to pull off smarter journalistic one-track type questioning*: "are you sure you mean yellow or do you mean black?"
Another Outsider *simply trying to be smart* : "it was a yellow bentley being used as a taxi"
Kanti : "can I just finish my joke?"
all, lean back in evident anticipation....
Kanti : "so-o-o...what did the big black man sitting in a yellow bentley of 1982, say to the tiny white man when he crossed him on the road in delhi in 1985?"
all, lean forward in anticipation....
Kanti : "hi."

Ladies and gentlemen, drumroll again, I leave you with JUDE.

2006-02-06T13:47:00.000+05:30

this isn't a post. it's a whine. i'm feeling bad. no that's an understatement but I have absolutely no words to express how bad I'm feeling, so let's just leave it at, I'm feeling bad. For nicer brighter chirpier posts please come back a day or so later, if there isn't anything like a bright bably post up it means I'm dead.
This wasn't the whine. That comes now. What have I got to whine about, you ask. Hah, I say and hah again.

a) nobody loves me
b) I don't care even if people insist they love me because right now I feel totally unloved.
c) thank you world who insists that discrete portions of your animate population is deeply in love with me but I sincerely wish I was dead.

does any of that make sense? no.
is it supposed to make sense? no.
is there a point to this post. yes.

I feel like throwing up when I lie down, I feel sick when I'm not lying down, I'm hoping mindlessly typing away is going to make me feel a lot less ill. It's faintly working but now I'm too tired to type any more.

I'm generally feeling very sorry for myself. Tomorrow I'll probably feel guilty because there are lots of people who genuinely care and well the parents are sincerely worried and running from post to pillar and doctor to doctor and hoping I get well soon but right now, excuse me world while I go lie down, feel very sick and proceed to howl my eyes out in the general conviction that nobody loves me.

World. I hate you.

update : concerned or not so concerned professor messages to ask : are you still among the living?
damn it, wish I wasn't.
don't take this personally people but yes, I still hate the world.

GAH!

2006-02-05T16:35:00.000+05:30

I'm done talking about myself in the third person, I'm done talking about how traumatized I am and I'm done asking for sympathy. Yes, ladies and gentlemen and all ye betwixt and between who happen to be accidentally, incidentally, conincidentally or (horror of all unimaginable horrors) intentionally reading my blog you will no longer have to read sentences like the b'fiss is traumatized and demands sympathy for x, y, or z incident.

*sigh*

Why this change in the fissy blog did you ask gentle reader, why this sudden determination to stand strong and single-mindedly battle against all forces of illness without swimming around in circles asking for sympathy from all and sundry...because this is what happened when I turned to my near and dear ones :

Event 1 : There I am lying on the bed, weak and queasy, clutching on to my aching tommy and my one and only beloved mommy stands over me and declares "ami to jantam shob manusher pete duto boro boro worm thake". Move along Mr. Twain.

Event 2 : Junior calls, usually concerned junior who is good for endless hours of amusement. Only on this occasion when I tell him I think I'm going to die, his concerned response is "oh. really? no,no, don't worry. you won't die. if you do we'll all mourn you very sincerely. achha, can you tell me how to write a five hundred word paper on how to write a good dissertation" Those of you who know deep imagine the concern radiating from his voice and the next time you meet him kick him for my sake.

Event 3 : Finally, on yahoo messenger, my somewhat brief conversation with once beloved friend runs :

bfiss : i spent all of yesterday throwing up.
disktop : oh dear. Unprotected sex is it?
*stunned silence on my side*
disktop : Ha ha
*pointed stunned silence on my part*
disktop : sorry

And of course there's my dad who since yesterday has been jumping around in concerned agony and yelling things like, "you have to stop eating so much non-veg. only veg from now on. no meat, no, chicken, nothing except fish and vegetables. first thing tomorrow morning I will buy gourd, you will eat only bitter gourd from now on. and no canteen food."

ye gads.

If it wasn't for the ever concerned cassy and the occasionally concerned super heroic counterpart of the super villainish b'fiss, I think I'd have drowned in despair by now. As it I think I'm just going to collapse on the bed again feeling very sorry for myself.

2006-01-27T12:03:00.000+05:30

The babelfish is traumatized beyond disbelief!
A mere twelve days she leaves her blog unattended and when she returns what does she find? Besides the loving messages from the ever too sweet people who evidently missed her updates *muuah, I luuurbh you all*, there was the most heart rending discovery of the year.

Dear reader, you whose gentle soul has perhaps been stirred by the b'fiss's verbal navigations between madness and civilization, you who have been bably's companion through thick and thin and comments manifold, how will you react when you hear this tragic tale. Will you break down and weep uninterruptedly as babel herself did?

The time has come, gentle reader to tell you all. Quail not at the thought of untold horrors to be revealed soon but bear up bravely and more importantly help b'fiss bear up bravely because she is a mere twenty seconds away from a hysterical outbreak.

Dear Reader, there is a shark in the fish bowl! These are murky waters you and I tread and 'tis an age of betrayal when none can be trusted. I shudder to think such ignominious behaviour is possible in this supposedly humane society of bloggers but it's true. There is a nameless, faceless and probably heartless blogger who *hold your breath* has usurped the babelfish's username.

Hoimoi I say and Hoimoi some more!*
*greek word meaning alas and implying the deepest sort of despair...can you blame bably if in her moment of despair she resorts to Greek to express her profound sorrow, even as she has resorted to using the third person in a desperate attempt to stave off the reality of having her personal blogspace trespassed.

Imagine this. The b'fiss returns to the blogsphere still somewhat dazed from the excitement of watching the sister get married, and that too to someone who did not have a gun pointed at his head or other interesting parts of his anatomy. And to make up for the long silence she has stories galore revolving around aunts and sisters and friends who stay up till dawn on wedding nights fighting over cushions and other friends who are heartless enough to leave her unchaperoned on aforementioned nights because they have to walk the dog the next morning. But then she comes across this, this, this verbose Euryproktoi!**
**hehe, another greek word actually. somewhat censored, so all those whose moral sensibilities are likely to be offended, note I didn't mention any specific age group, please turn your eyes from this part of the small print...whispered undertone....umm euryproktoi means...ahem *I blush myself at such a graphic meaning but lets get it over with* elderlypersonwhosearsehasbeenwidenedbyrepeatedanalpenetration. there I said it, phew.

In short then, bably is shattered. She has had her blogdentity snitched and while she would love to call this new blogger an upstart usurper she won't. But be warned dear reader if you find strangely worded, marginally pretentious comments on your blogs claiming to be from the babelfish do not assume at once that it is this fish.

This babelfish will now sigh profoundly and swim away to a quiet corner of her fishbowl to mourn in silence the loss of her virtual identity. Farewell gentle reader, perhaps some day in some distant planet we shall meet again, for now this fishy heart is broken.

Fare thee well indeed.

2006-01-15T12:16:00.000+05:30

The b'fiss family bowl has recently been taken over by one nos. aunt, one nos. cousin and one nos. bride-to-be sister.

The aunt is the life and soul of the wedding party, never fails to mention that she has flown ten thousand miles for our sakes only and keeps reminding me that if I am to get married it must be after a minimum of four years and I am only allowed to pick a boy from the city. For those who know not the intricate details of our fishy lives my sister is getting married to a boy from Arambagh. Which is erm..somewhere in the state of Bengal, possibly in the district of Hooghly, but my geography being what it is, let's just say the place is a three hour drive from the city. The family has no inbred prejudices of course against anyone who should not chose to live in the very heart of the city but when it comes to a wedding it all gets very complicated. Right now our biggest worry is what time the groom will reach on the day of the wedding, there being just the faintest chance that he'll arrive at eleven at night when all the guests and possibly the bride as well have gone to sleep. The aunt is suitably traumatized at the thought of having to drive out three hours to attend the reception at Arambagh and every possible chance she gets she repeatedly urges me to ensure my life-mate lives on Southern Avenue but failing that anywhere within Calcutta or some major metropolitan city will do. Major arguments have arisen over this between the aunt and the father since the latter is currently insisting I marry either a Frenchman or an Italian or possibly a German. What I find most bewildering is this general insistence on my marriage given that I made it perfectly clear to the family from the time I was four and capable of constructing a grammatically coherent sentence that I was not getting married.

The cousin is presently giggling her way, somewhat hysterically, through her India trip. While the bfiss has never entertained the slightest doubts as to her ability to be entertaining, the cousin's sudden bursts of laughter are somewhat unnerving.

This ain't a fishbowl any longer it's a whirlpool.

After-thought : the difference between my cousin and me is when she's on the computer I very conscientously look the other way. whereas when I'm on the computer if she happens to be in the same room, she will, without fail look over my shoulder. I'm exceptionally fond of the kid, she's a year younger than me and one of those bherry nice types but this is a killer.
And since one reader athas questioned my love for my aunt, I have a minor clarification. This is the one aunt I actually like. Well one of three at least. Then again, family luuurbh is always on the border of love-hate-and-kill-yourself-before-I-kill-you.

2006-01-08T13:48:00.001+05:30

Act I :

cassy (standing at the threshhold of that sacrosanct space of the don of all Judean times, the Head's room; earnest, serious, polite) : sir, may I come in?

don c (with all the (cor)leonine gruffness of the original Vito ) : no!

exit cassandra.

[the story is told with much anguish to the babe(l)fish who on realizing a week later that she has to visit the head for some work feels suitably petrified]

Act II :

b'fiss (standing at the same place; wide eyed innocence radiating from voice, also slight element of breathlessness) : sir, may I come in?

don c (benignly) : yes.

*b'fiss does mental dance of jubilation, steps into room, walks up to desk, ignores feeling of solidly muscular and boney knees changing to jelly like consistency and instead focuses on fluttering eyelashes to full effect*

don c (stern voice of judgement) : biye bari jachho? *off to a wedding?*

b'fiss (looks left, looks right, feeling overwhelmingly panic-stricken and mutters) : eh?

don c (raises eyebrow of stern judgement) : eto sheje guje keno?! *why are you all decked up?*

b'fiss (looks down at self, grapples to understand the import of the question, looks up at don, sinks back into stupidity in the face of eyebrow of doom and repeats) : eh?!

don c (looks fiss up and down, mutters ) : oh na, shawl-ta dekhe mone holo *no, the shawl misled me*

short while later, exit babelfish.

Thereafter had anyone been present on the corridor outside the room they would have been treated to the sight of the babelfish taking off her shawl to reveal semi-tattered jeans and fairly non-descript kurta and staring at shawl for all of five minutes.
It was a nice shawl. But there was absolutely nothing about it which suggested I was decked out for a wedding!

If anyone assumed that the Head of the Department of English at JU, like Principles of schools and Abbots of well, abbeys occupied the sort of exalted position where appointments have to be obtained well in advance to catch a glimpse of the glorious being, such an anyone would be dead off the mark. The best place to catch a glimpse of the man is at the canteen. Actually it's not quite the best place going by prevalent definitions of best, since my reaction usually is, damn, he's there, oooh, he's hot, aargh, hide fag!!! Finding him is easy. It's the next part where people generally discover that they've finally reached the top of the minaret but the stairs have mysteriously vanished. Put it simply, the don is unpredictable.

These days however gone is that look of joyful delight at the misery of hapless students and he looks merely weary of the world in general and the department in particular. So much so, that the last day I went to badger him into giving me the optional I wanted, he looked so tired and forlorn I actually just handed him the application letter and left instead of making a general nuisance of myself as I would've on other occasions. It's just that he was sitting there looking deluged with work and my instinctive reaction was to wish I could pick him up, croon over him and cuddle him for a bit and then pat him on the head and put him back.

embarrassing silence.

yes well...I know everyone who actually knows the man I speak of is probably wishing they hadn't read that last bit but that's what I felt. And there was no disrespect meant, I feel the same about my parents these days what with all the pressure they're under with the wedding in all of two weeks and the bride and groom missing and the bride's sister being utterly unhelpful. Maybe the world would just be a happier place if everyone was crooned over and patted more frequently.

In conclusion, the fiss's recipe for world peace : cuddle the world!

coming up soon *never mind how soon* : the fiss's plans for world domination and why she is better off as a super villain rather than as a super hero(ine)!

2005-12-27T14:00:00.000+05:30

One Line Update (cos I don't have the time to write a full length post, last exam tomorrow. I'm fubbared over Foucault.) : Deep you're a gem!
Now don't blush and run around in circles wondering if I'm planning to stalk you, we all know I'm too lazy and you're my hatur boishi, but this not-one-line-anymore update is my formal expression of gratitude for sage advice in the middle of the night...amidst all the hysterical giggling and mockery at my unfortunate state...what the hell boy, we're in the same boat and tomorrow we're gonna sink it...and after that, this town needs to be repainted!!!

The Original Post :
awwww...everyone who's been so sweet as to wonder why I haven't been blogging, I luuurbh you awll so much. And those of you who didn't do the wondering I luurbh you too but a lot less actually.
For the last ten days or so, I've been swept away in the general merry festivities all around. This involved preparing for exams *anyone who joined this party really late, in other words anyone who is unaware of my sadistic university's discriminatory agenda against Christians, get this: we have exams stretching right through this joyous season.*
Of course when I said preparing for exams, I didn't exactly mean studying for them. That has to be the one thing, I haven't done. On the other hand I have felt exceedingly guilty at crucial moments about not having studied, so let's say I'm prepared, in a manner of speaking.
As of now I have one exam left. My only excuse for not having studied is that I have been generally occupied in various activities which might not have had much to do with mistletoe but were nonetheless entirely in the loving spirit of Christmas.
The parents of course are utterly bewildered. Whenever they ask me to do lend a hand in the wedding preparations, which presently involves endless hours of last-minute shopping, I insist I'm terribly busy studying for my last exam; unfortunately as Baba astutely pointed out the other day, I haven't been at home long enough to do much other than eat and sleep.
The problem is when I try to write everything that happened I can never explain why a day which reads met x person, did y thing, said z things should have made me feel so wonderful. Suffice to say there have been a number of superb days but maybe I'll just mention some passing highlights *which unfortunately were usually not the high points*
hmm.....the most repeated occurrence of the week has to be getting lost in various parts of the city. There was the time I spent almost two hours with a bemused cabbie trying to follow directions yelled over the phone by an increasingly cranky friend *cell phones are the most blessed things in the universe and to be honest I deserved to be cranked at, seeing how I was over an hour late and the poor thing was missing lunch*.
Then there was the time the bus I was on decided to follow an unexpected detour and I jumped off the moving bus and into a cab, promptly got confused as to which way I should go and only reached my destination on time because Sohini yelled brilliant directions over Cassy's phone. The worst of course was when I got lost on my way to Cassy's house twice in the space of about three days.
Actually no, the worst was when I got lost on the landing between the stairs and the lift in someone's house. In my defense though, I should add that I was stoned. This would be the same night I looked out of the car window on the way home and said, "which city is this?" Of course, that's what Cassy claimed I'd said, and she may have made it up since I have no recollection of this part but then again, maybe not.
On the whole much fun has been had. Some of it has been embarrassing to say the least. Various people for example, insist that I did this dance thingy in an inspired moment some nights back. All I remember is someone asking me if I wanted to dance and then a few minutes later I was like, ok, that did not happen, whoever saw it will now forget that that happened. I can't dance to save my life, so I'm rather glad I don't remember the finer details of this one, but how I wish the wonderful people who were there would forget it as well!
Of course one of the highest points of the week was the blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment of my convocation when dressed in the brightest orange robes we strolled up to collect the degrees which declare us to be graduates. So one has now formally been declared a bachelor and an arty one too.

2005-12-16T19:19:00.000+05:30

For six months now my explanation for not being a page 3 star on a mission to redecorate the town in vivid shades of scarlet has been as follows; "Oh, I don't have a life. I have a blog."
Normally this is muttered in the grouchiest of tones to my happening friend who leads a social life that would *almost* put Paris Hilton to shame.

Occasionally though when I'm out of witty things to say...and yes, before some well-meaning commenter points it out, I know I generally don't have witty things to say...the above line changes into :
"Oh, but I don't have a sense of humour, I have a blog."
Over the months enough blank stares of incomprehension have however forced me into the realization that this line is not only not-funny but also grammatically incoherent.
Of course, as people have noted and commented on, often and again, grammar and coherence have never been prerequisites
on my blog.
In case you were wondering, now of course, I don't even have a blog. I have exams.

gah! sadistic beasts who run my university...die all of you. Die!!!

post blog script : for those who have yet to learn to read between the lines and discover meaning in the little white spaces where there actually is nothing written, what this whole post translates into is this...WAAAAAAAAAAAAH.....my exam was so bad!!!!!

post blog script thought : and my anonymous friend who said and I quote, "if you temme tmorro that ur gonna flunk... ill give you...." *umm...never mind the rest of the sentence*....I'm not gonna flunk!! Get scrapings from the bottom of the barrel of marks, yes but flunk, no!

2005-12-11T03:22:00.000+05:30

Noses and mouth, Bakhtin tells us, dominated the medieval popular image of the body, whereas in modern times expressive features like the eyes dominate…

Never mind where I’m quoting from, suffice to say it’s from some erudite essay which ain’t making any sense to me, bleary eyed as I am after having stared at the computer through most of the day in a desperate attempt to study for bally exams-scheduled-to-screw-up-my-christmas-week.
Anyone who’s interested in how much I actually did manage to study, let’s see, what would be the best way to phrase this…let's just say…NOTHING! ! !
Nothing in the 15 hours I’ve been awake and sitting in front of this screen.
*yes dammit I woke up after noon, so sue me!*
**I was just following the corny advice to be found on the back of a particular brand of matchbox (for 50 paise, they give you 50 matchsticks and a proverb/joke/wise-crack-you-never-wanted-to-hear-in-the-first-place) and this particular pearl of wisdom read “If you do something you’ll regret the next morning, sleep till noon.”**

Yanyway, the point of this post is not that I’ve been up doing things at night which make me marginally unwilling to face the morning light; yes, I know people are fainting of curiosity out there and probably itching to slay me for being cryptic but I’m not going to elucidate. The point I wanted to make is closely tied up to the seemingly innocuous fragment I quoted right at the beginning. This would therefore be a good time to scroll up and refresh your memory.
*Incidentally if you don’t know who Bakhtin is, don’t bother to google for it, there are enough people out there (me for one) whose heads have been screwed up by reading things like Carnivalesque Traditions in Comedy, I really don’t want more bloggers succumbing to the curse of pseudo-intellectualis-bonbonitis.*

hmm…so apart from the fact that I have not been studying…aargh, shudder, ami phail korbo!!! what did I want to talk about? Oh yes. Eyes.

Well. Let’s face it. I am not quite reigning-beauty-queen material. In school I used to be this stick-like wiafish figure (and this was when I’d have killed for some curves). And when I hit the age when thin is in…..*sigh*
Somewhere in the not-too-distant-past someone mentioned epic proportions as being more suitable than my usually modest description of myself as a leetle plump.
*deep sigh*
**turns to mirror to realize mirror has already cracked in anticipation of this moment.**

Not that any of this matters of course. I can deal with the groaning weight machines. I can deal with friends who remind me that it’s not just the colour of my clothes that enhances my similarity to a blue whale.
*deep breath..slowly exhale*

Right. There’s just one thing I have always liked about myself and this is where modesty can go for a walk. I like my eyes. They’re not huge or beautifully shaped. They don’t look that good in photographs and they’re not even a sexy interesting colour. They’re plain black. Or probably darkest brown. But having got the necessary clarifications over lets just say if you don’t like my eyes, I don’t really care but I love them.

And then today this random female accosted me and said "Why are you looking so bland, dahling. Your eyes are all small and droopy."

And I realized, damn, I’ve just lost my one and only charm.
Cassy, I’m all sympathy on this one.

Addendum : I’m growing quite fond of this small print thingy, and this is the little disclaimer…at least this would have been the disclaimer if I could figure out what to disclaim.
O what the heck, my gentle reader, you know I’m attractive, charming, young and beautiful.*ahem*
So yeah this post really isn’t me fishing for compliments. It’s just the outcome of too much not-studying, a really screwed up brain and the recollection that I have juniors who call me an old hag.
*slowly exhaling breath*
**I’m twenty-two!! If it’s old hag now what on earth will they call me when I’m forty?**
low muted scream.
Now you know why I’m not studying. Cos I’m writing insane blog posts about my inane insecurities.