this is what my life has come to :

1) Barely Known Stranger : screeches car to a halt on seeing me, jumps out, asks for my number and then calls me up late at night to say "my girlfriend and I are having ego problems, what should I do?"

2) Very Distant Acquaintance : obtains number from elsewhere, calls and says it's a life or death situation! I rush to the rescue to discover what? Acquaintance has crush on someone, doesn't know how to reveal it and is afraid of becoming centre of gossip.

3) Little Better Known Acquaintance : has number already, calls up in wee hours of the night "my boyfriend has left me, I'm going to commit suicide!!!"

and I say
WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!!

I seem to be the universal agony aunt and after years of experience I now have the perfect solution......all future applicants to agony aunt column will get the following reply

"It is the will of the Immortal Celestial Beings and the machinations of Fate that have led to your unceasing woes. The only solution to end your boyfriend/girlfriend problems is Dump Them!!!"

achha......if I'm the one providing solutions to other people's love lives why don't I have boyfriend problems?!!!! All I ever get is boring exam tension......which is a lot more depressing and has the minus point of bringing along tommy woes.....you'll never have a stomach upset when you're in the throes of love lorn agony but with exams around corner, tsk tsk.

Of course I also have random stranger problems, getting rid of jerks problems, trying to keep my sanity around insane people problems, crying my heart out over adorable professor who gave me only second highest in test problems, being unable to find enough strong cusswords for the sons of bachelors in this world problems........

sigh........what a life........and to top it all my pride is trying to kill me, my mind is trying to outwit it and kill me first, my body has declared it doesn't care either which way and my heart just wants me dead........it's a conspiracy against me by.....erm.......me.

A few nights back I saw a dream. This is exceedingly restricted, if boring, material; so all those below eighteen please go away while the others had better reconsider if they really want to read this........
Sure?
Righty ho, here goes......

So......
I'm married!
In the dream.
Of course.
And somehow or the other my husband has changed into a bottle of water!!
To be precise, two bottles of water!!!
And I'm pouring out the bottles of water, that used to be hubby dearest, into glasses!!!!
Only one of them contains - not water, but sprite (!!!!!) which, since I'm in a hurry, froths all over the place!!!!!!

eh?!!!!!!!!!!

At the present moment I am feeling most disgruntled with unreasonably negotiable Bengal Taxi Driver's Association. In the past I have faced cabbies and whether I was righteously demanding my change back or playing at damsel-in-distress pleading to be rescued from torrential downpour, these cabbies have always shown that they are men of steel. With a firm, frequently disdainful, glance they have said "no". And to add emphasis they have sat there and vehemently / sagely / sadly / apologetically / angrily shrugged their shoulders and waved their hands and heads and generally implied that what I wanted was impossible. But what happens when the transport minister gets into action? BAH!!!!
Where is all that iron which seemed to be permanently embedded in their soul? Are these men or lily livered transporters of living flesh??!!!!

tone changes from righteous anger to sheer anguish........why oh why oh why did they have to cancel the taxi strike tomorrow?!!!! Waaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!! Now I shall have to write this test.

And the erstwhile departmental head, being what she is, has threatened to proceed with the test even if there are only ten people in class. I ask you, what sort of logic is this? What about the remaining fifty-five?? What if all those present are men??? What if only the women turn up???? What if there are more men than women and the carefully preserved sex ratio of two girls to every boy in our class is undermined!!!!!

Of course I might not go as far as calling the examiner a "spiteful malicious tormentor", as other people, hem hem, have. After all she does have a bit of an axe to grind with our class........
hehehe......... not an axe so much as a thirty foot long extremely sharp weapon of destruction perhaps.....for those who know not why she doesn't like our class in general.....weeeell.......it's a bit like this.....our class happens to be filled with bright sparks........one of them within the very first month of college told her "nobody wants to do your class" and another one in third year just before the exams went and quite condescendingly informed her that "we were willing to do her classes now"......on the first occasion I am informed she was struck speechless.......on the second all that pent up excitement and agony of three years erupted.......I was there........*shudder*........not what one would call a pretty sight.

Ye gads!!! why am I still here? All the class has by now read the sixty odd chapters of.........that bloody-god-awful-mammoth-chunk-of-pomposity........erm........of the text........or at any rate they've all read the convenient little summaries on the net.........I have also been online for the past three hours, twenty seven minutes in the hopes of reading the afore mentioned summaries but erm......well.....sigh.........

I'd rather be reading the Imperial Blandings Omnibus for the n-th time anyway (n greater than 1, less than fifty).........who in their right minds would prefer to read a doddering, victorian, soporific writer of unwieldy tomes (useful only in bashing errant boyfriends' heads) over good ole pelham ?!!!! Even the Duke of Dunstable would be less potty than that!!!!!

it's so easy to say leave........it's even easier to say forget.........
I can't do either.........
I wish things would go back to being the way they were..........
I wish I could be a lot less intense about people........things....goddamit.... even places!!

"It's just that everywhere I go all the buildings know your name,
Like photographs and memories of love......
Steel and granite reminders,
The city calls your name,
And I can't move on........"

I need to move on.
I need a life.
I need to get out of this morass of depression.
I need to be a lot less anguished about life in general (and erm......people in particular).

More importantly, I need a break from exams!!!

disclaimer in extra fine print : the whole world seems out to convict me of writing poetry (anguished shriek of distress).......just letting you know the lines quoted are not mine, they happen to be by Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones

"Moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding."
-- from Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman (copyright © 1996, 1997; published by Avon Books, New York)

but still I'm waiting......perhaps I'm not really sure what it is I'm waiting for.......a sign that we're on the same planet maybe........or maybe I'm just waiting for my Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic to start winking so I can just hitch a ride outta here........

Crankiness continued through the afternoon with me yelling head off at buddy....almost ten hours later I’m getting guilt pangs….sorry cass!!!…….my irritation could be attributed to general feeling of stuffiness (sunday lunch…..sigh……..the well peeled potatoes added to the flavour of maangshor jhol considerably…..smirk) but the primary reason for annoyance would be parental determination to take me shopping.
I abhor shopping for clothes……as opposed to my dad who for some inscrutable reason revels in going on shopping trips with my mom(!!!) I would much rather be shipped of to Singapore on a shutter than go shopping! ! !
At any rate we scoured three malls for about four hours and picked up two shirts......
This be because there are no good stores in calcutta and the rare pretty things I can find are obviously meant for ten year olds or those without ummm…..overtly feminine contours......shall we say…..sigh….fashion is not meant for not-thin-people……glump glump…….

"morning comes and morning goes with no regrets
evening brings the memories I can't forget"
which proves Don Mclean be a lovely singer with excellent metrical sense but no clue as to reality!!!

cos when you go to sleep at 3.30 AM after a brilliant trip on a great, fat, self-made (patting meself on the back) jay, you wake up in the morning cranky as hell.....at least I did.

spent first part of morning yelling at adoring worshipper who just wanted to let me know how beloved I am.....which was extremely unfair of me but I was too busy being depressed to hear other people waxing eloquent about my non-existent virtues........AAAAARGH!!!! Plus I get claustrophobic around people who want me more than I want them (tragic reflection on my life.......it's an endless litany of A wanting B who doesn't want A but wants C who in turn doesn't want A or B but D......oh, never mind!!)

Still the morning brought one epiphanic revelation........I realized (oh glorious day) what the perfect career is for me(!!!!) I shall be........hold your breath for this one.........I shall be......fanfare on trumpet.........
a potato peeler! ! !
Oh, I can just see myself rising like a shining star above all other measly potato peelers of the world......and my post-grad degree (if I ever get it) will be immensely apt for a future in spuds........after all if Van Gogh could find the perfect expression of his aesthetic sensibilities in potatoes, so can I!!!!!

also it shall be most appropriate revenge on parent who made me peel potatoes all morning when I wanted to do other, better things........like sleep......I shall show her, I shall do nothing but peel potatoes in future, hah!!

blame it on the rain.......

there are times when the music you're listening to says it all......I spent the morning cleaning out my closet........
and there was much wailing and gnashing of arachnid teeth as I swept out the cobwebs.........
if only it was as easy to sweep out the clinging filamentous strands of memories.........

Nothing ever stops all these thoughts and the pain attached to them
Sometimes I wonder why this is happening
It's like nothing I can do would distract me when
I think of how I shot myself in the back again'
.........................

Hearing your name the memories come back again
I remember when it started happening
I see you in every thought I had and then
The thoughts slowly found words attached to them

........................

and eventually thinking about something all the time is not very different from obssesing.........

Maybe someday I’ll be just like you and
Step on people like you do and
Run away from the people I thought I knew
................
I remember back then who you were
You used to be calm
Used to be strong
Used to be generous.......
but everyone changes........people drift apart and everything comes to an end............

Things aren’t the way they were before
You wouldn’t even recognize me anymore
......................
In the end
You kept everything inside and even though I tried
It all fell apart
What it meant to me will eventually be a memory
Of a time when I tried so hard and got so far
But in the end
It doesn’t even matter
....................
I've put my trust in you
Pushed as far as I can go
For all this
There's only one thing you should know
I tried so hard..................

clarification : i suppose I'm flagrantly flouting tons of copyright rules etc.....so in a belated attempt to give credit where it's due.......the above lines are Linkin Park ..........except the very tiny bits which are my own comments.......plis to escoos.....

what a day it was!!! what a play it was!!!! this is one play I shall commit to memory......not so much the play actually as the events of the play......erm, which had not much to do with the events on stage.......to begin with -The Play.
The play was, well....umm.......i think i shall leave it to more intellectual beings to decide what the play was.......what I can best describe are the actions and reactions of the audience.........
there were those who laughed......at the wrong times......like when the hero, who has just clinched a 150 crore project but lost his girl in the process, declaims his similarity to Dr.Faustus who sold his soul to the devil.......this we presume in retrospect was meant to be a sombre moment of tragedy........alas it had most people rolling in the aisles in desperate hysterics)there were there were those who sat in the auditorium and predicted the future dialogues of the characters or made snide remarks on past dialogues........
there were those who watched with avid interest, alongside neighbours who were snoring through most of it and only waking up in parts to applaud the music.........
and of course there were those who took advantage of near darkness and a hall empty enough to provide limited privacy and did the obvious........rolled a jay.
The last mentioned were not many in number, just two......and that too Teleute was doing the actual work while I was mere torch bearer (or rather cell phone light bearer)........one wonders if a certain Indian graphic novelist (that's making it obvious, na) would approve of the use we put his book to; but to us it seemed most appropriate........

so now i be very, very stoned.......which is good because it'll keep me from brooding.......about indiscriminate actions........about what drifting away means........about taking people for granted..........about the fact that if tomorrow isn't another day, nobody still gives a damn...........

Entering the room of the head of our reputed department nowadays is just begging an invitation to get ragged......ever since Satyr Chakrobarty / Don of my Dreams, call him what you will, became the head, every trip to that room has been a trip on a different level..........for one thing, the room has, for all practical purposes, been taken over by the Deadly Duo / Terrible Twosome (whatever it is they label themselves) namely the two most utterly delectable men ever to walk the corridors of JUDE (or for that matter to be seen playing cricket on rainy days in the afore-mentioned corridors).
Today, I innocently entered, having been commissioned to find out the sex-ratio of the class on the behest of the administration (not compatibility or anything like that, just the men to women ratio). They have all the lists but we have to do the finer mathematical calculations. And after I conscientiously procured the attendance register and was planning a silent exit, I was stopped........to be precise I was spotted.......and asked for my candid opinion as to the aesthetic appeal of the arrangement of framed photos of erstwhile professors of the dept (!!!) and after that it got rather confusing.......
Firstly the not-yet-head kept dancing around, incomprehensibly yelling, "vantage point! vantage point!!"; then with a leap and a yell he perched on a handy chair and started taking off the frames in order to shuffle them about.......I discreetly, concealing my fluttering heart, murmured the coloured photo would look best if kept in between the black and whites: of course the revered professors of our department don't believe in simplicity of expression, so Dr. Adorably Divine Guy reeled off "the primordial assumption of the aesthetic faculties is that colour should predominate the pivotal position"........err, I made that up, he obviously used bigger and better words........and then started playing musical photos. Finally with the last photo, which was a standing frame, I said it would look better up front and at an angle......where upon the head burst out with "yes! Yes! Listen to her, the young have better eyes!" and not-yet-head went "no! No! The young have clearer eyes!!"
At any rate we got that sorted out and then we stood around for a bit contemplating our handiwork with prodigious head-nodding and satisfied grunts of aesthetic appreciation. After which I left the room, discreetly went out of earshot and collapsed into hysterical laughter.
In the end, there seemed to be just one thing left to do.......so I went and did exactly that.........I got higher :D

the aftermath of exulting about fabulous cloudy days in general and rain in particular is that the gods have a sad sense of humour.......so there I was, strolling back from the good old administrative buildings.....which needless to say are at the other end of campus and separated from our more salubrious territory by a football matth, two and a half jheels, several canteens, hordes of dogs and lascivious men......and the rain gods decide all I'm asking for is a little rain, correction a lot of rain.......so what I got was torrential downpour........which was excellent fun, keeping in mind how much I enjoy getting wet in the rain.........unfortunately I was wearing one of those, erm, things which tend to go (not bump in the night) but cling in the rain........which meant that not only did I enjoy getting wet but those around me also enjoyed erm....well......so with the blessings of the rain gods I am now well on my way to some nasty form of pneumonia........

Adam Young
You scored 100% Good, 90% Evil, and 90% Knowledgable!

Hell, you had no idea you were the Antichrist but you sure did know what was supposed to happen and you made it happen just the way you wanted it to. Good for you! Now go run and steal apples and enjoy your summer with Dog.

what, pray, does this say about me?!!!

you are a.. LUSTFUL vampire, you like things hot
and heavy! you seduce all that cross your path.
with that, "come hither" attitude,
all are helpless against your sex appeal. Being
a vampire has changed your look on life and you
have decided to enjoy it to the fullest. you
love attention and you sure know how to get it,
in more ways than one. you are dependant on
love to survive, as well as blood. you get
along with almost any kind of vampire, but you
especally get along well with the
"cute" vampires, they are easily
swayed by your dominent personality

blessed, beautiful, life-giving rain stopped at a suitable moment so I could actually go out for long enough to inhale some life-taking air......which was extremely essential keeping in mind the acute discomfort caused by, hem hem, eating too much and far too well.......sundays in my house are equivalent to meals which go on forever and ever......since the rest of the week I supposedly subsist on one squarish meal a day(!!!!) this, of course, is pure self-deception on the part of the family, which spends monday morning to saturday night bemoaning the fact that I am on a starvation diet and then spends sundays stuffing me like some under-nourished turkey.....not that I'm actually cribbing......

actually the day was one of intersting culinary experiences.......for one thing there was lunch.....and I really shouldn't go into details of the variety of ways in which ilish maach or mangsho or chingri can be prepared and served up at one meal......then there was the little excitement at tea.......Mommy not there, so me decides to make tea for Daddy and me.....which is all very good except there's no sugar in the sugar bowl, so I have to pour it out of the bigger sugar jar....and in my extremely happy, floating in the air state I sat down and started transfering sugar from big container to little one......and I did so for about fifteen minutes before realizing that what I was using to transfer the sugar was a spoon, to be precise, one of those plastic ice-cream spoons which hold approximately five granules of sugar.........I'd only managed to transfer a thin layer of sugar which I poured back to the big jar........and then I started all over again, with the same plastc spoon, and counted how many spoonfulls it took....erm....if anyone's interested I got to one, two, many, many more.......after that of course daddy declared it was the best-est-est tea he's ever had in his life.......and clarified that he wasn't saying it just because I had made it but because the great art of making tea is is entirely dependent on one's discerning judgement on how long one should dip the tea bags......tsk tsk.......fathers I realize can be somewhat unobservant of the finer points of truth and reality, shall we say, when it comes to giving an honest opinion on anything their daughters do......of course in my Dad that's not a flaw, because after all my dad is the best.......I mean the only competition he faces in winning the best parent ever is from my mom..........basically they tie at the top........but well, that's because I did bring up my parents properly......pat meself on me back :D

I adore this weather.......this is about the only sort of day on which I would go down on my knees and scream hallelujah to the gods of nature in all their benevolent aspects.........please note this is not a good day to be an aetheist, unless you happen to be Dorfl or of similar ceramic mould........but I do so love rain.......it makes me all nice and mellow and nostalgic and quite happily depressed.....sigh..........it is such a happy day.........despite the fact that i am now officially stuck at home for the rest of the day.....no way daddy dear is going to let me brave the nearly-torrential downpour........completely deprived of any and all forms of smoke.......damn, damn, damn!!!

"Those who are labeled as mad can become "trapped" within their own delirious discourse and within the structures designed to confine them: perhaps the experience of being trapped inside some of Foucault's more difficult sentences is meant to echo this. Or perhaps he was just incapable of writing clearly."

this be very astute comment......I was reduced by 5 am to a state of drivelling delirium where I actually took recourse to sparks notes to see if I could make some sense of that brilliantly incomprehensible book Madness and Civilization......all that registered was the above comment........now since I really can't write this for my test I might be reduced to emulating Calvin and giving up a one-line answer for whatever question might come, "I cannot answer this question as it is against my religious principles.........."

some very astute critic remarked

"Foucault-bashing is the favorite indoor sport of American academics."

all I wanna know is where do I sign up?!!!

unhappy......decidedly unhappy........nothing and no one can make me happy ever, ever, ever again.......as long as there are things called exams/class tests/mid sems/internal evaluations I shall be decidedly unhappy........I shall also be melodramatic...aami aar parchhi na!!!!!!!

also I have discovered no matter how unprepared I happen to be it is not advisable to take recourse to grass as a means of calming the mind and increasing concentration........the mind was becalmed, unfortunately the tranquility induced ensured I slept through the evening and saw happy dreams of.....well never mind who or what.......suffice to say it's almost midnight and I am so-o-o unprepared........there goes my beauty sleep tonight.....

I read a book last night.......and no, this isn't the first time such a thing has happened.......my reactions through the hundred minutes or so required to finish the book varied from vaguely interested to gently raised eyebrows on to eyebrows indistinguishable from hairline to pure anguish........
the one question floating constantly through my mind (more like hammering at the portals of my consciousness) was.......why am I reading this book??
of course, a little later the question became a statement.........this is killing me!!
further on, the cussing began and I must have called the author a phony about a million times......
and then as suddenly as it began, it ended, and the memory that remains is of these words.........
"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
I don't think this is a book which I can like or dislike or categorize in any way........it just is......and having told you about it I realize I too am missing it.........

post blog script : my mom saw the book and said "ki shob porchho".........so I considerately explained to her that it was an iconic work creating a subversive counter-cultural identity and amounting to a literary objective correlative of an iconoclast and then added "I cannot help it if your education is incomplete".......the book was The Catcher In The Rye.

these incessant, intermittant, unendurable little aggravations in my otherwise joyous life have got to stop!!! how am I supposed to crib about the thousand and one inanities that fill up my life if I spend day after day after day going crib, crib and crib about examinations........and all bloggers past the stage of exams be warned that if I see one smug comment I shall personally trace you to the remotest corners of the world and....err.....and.....and do something nasty!!! do you call this a life?!!!

also this tendency to repeat my self has got to go......it comes of talking to moronic imbeciles and reading alliterative poetry......not that I'm actually suggesting all morons are poets or all poets are morons…….although.......achha na, I will refrain from commenting on this one.......though i will mention that the last time I wrote poetry was probably class seven.......I leave the world to draw its own conclusions, tee hee.........