I nowadays keep getting the weird feeling that am somehow stuck in one of those hilarious foggy forests, made popular by the Ramsay brothers. How can u not know what u want in life? By the same principle, how can u be certain of what u want? Perhaps it is true that those whom the gods wish to punish, they give their hearts' desire..for the closer i am to achieving my goal, the further i feel i have moved from what i want. My life has become a caricature of indecision and soon i shall spew it all out in another cheerfully depressing book, with the shelf life sufficient enough, i hope, to keep me in morasses of confusion for life :)
Rang de Basanti is movie that can make you hate yourself. We seem to be a nation of people suffering from attention deficit disorder. 30 seconds of gandhism, patriotism and many other isms and bugger to the world again. How many peo even know that retired defence officers sat on a bhook hartal in hot May, demanding decent pay. I have had too many peo saying, "oh they have such a cushy life, govt gives ghar, naukar, ration..what do they have to worry abt". Tell me, how many of us would work for such a company where u can be posted out anytime, anywhere, u have no choice in terms of work profile, u cannot quit also without ur superior's permission, and u get an in-hand of 6000 a month. My dad served 32 years with the air force and retired with a monthly salary of 30000 rupees. This after a double first in his graduation and post graduation. My brother is in the air force today and he will earn (after the pay commission adjustments) 12000 bucks a month, after 4 yrs of service. This will include all his 72 continuous hours of manning radars in a place like Uttarlay, 10 kms from Barmer, a true hole in the wall where the idea of a trendy restaurant is Udupi and spiderman 2 released a month back. This for a salary less than a call centre employee gets today. How many of us would even try for a company like this?????????? I am all in support of the corporate world, but we ought to have better to do than belittle what we could not even dream of. I do not expect anyone even will read this, but if u do, please try to atleast pay attention to such things in the news and support these peo, or one day u might realise that everyone else also feels to hell with the defence and we become the latest banana republic.
i had an idea sometime back. Actually this is an idea Bau and I had way back when we were tuccha bacchas in 9th, to open a book cafe. At that time, I was still obsessed with books (a lot more than now trust me..i mean i actually got the 'best in library science' award in school, simply for the amount of time i spent there!) and Bau liked baking (thats her maternal complex, she cant help it :D). unfortunately by the time we grew old enough to appreciate the workings of our prodigal minds, the barista buggers had taken it up.
But recently I have been thinking, that if i must remain umemployed for life (and its seriously beg to look like that!) and the if the only escape from that is to be the matrimonial bliss of feeding my pati parmeshwar (and if he is a true chaubey baalak, he will appreciate nothing else!) I might as well make a business out of it. A nice little book cafe, seating perhaps no more than 30-50. Books will be available for rent(or an hourly basis, with discounts for no. of orders) and purchase. Serve healthy, home cooking..sandwiches, cakes, pies and stuff (look up Cranks' menus). Open in some pseudo intellectual posh locality like siri fort (shahpur jat?) or perhaps even north campus (or embassy avenue?). SO people, come and give me advice..how does it sound??all constructive suggestions welcome (this leaves u out am afraid, Sistu).
Last night, i somehow ended up watching episodes of Fauji, a serial telecast in 1990 on DD. Serials then were very simple, ending in 13 episodes and certainly no reincarnations or remodelling of characters. It turned it to be quite engrossing even now, perhaps because no one turned up 20 yrs later with plastic surgery :) Shahrukh khan, in his first serial i believe, got top billing and even then u can see the charm he has (and whatever else u say abt the guy, he has got charm!). Some good acting, some seriously hilarious (in the last episode there is a scene of old woman randomly announcing a jawan's return from war with kathak movements and then vanishing into thin air..too funny!) and all adhering very properly to army life, except for one of the characters' tendency to say "I say chaps" (which normal army offs definitely do not!!!). I am surprised no one has yet come up with another serial on army life yet. I mean, they all keep crying abt the dearth of interesting scripts and new dimensions. The last one i rem in Mission Commando or something which was a documentary on Indian 'Commando' training, very well done and with the permission and full support of the army. But i suppose i should be thankful for small mercies that no love triangles, vamps and evil accidents on unlikely amavasyas are taking place in a cantt in the near future.
When u sit down and read abt all these soldiers who have died young, its striking how easily we believe that life is set for us or over as we know it. I suppose its partly the Indian mindset which sees a change in ur life setting as a lack of decision making prowess instead of a growing of vision for a person. After all if we can forgive all sins of childhood and youth, why can we not forget a basic mistake of being unsure abt what we want. Its hardly true that all of us are struck by enlightenment the day before we submit our graduation applications. For that matter, I do not believe most of us achieve nirvana in this matter for a long long time. So for once, lets raise a cheer to taking risks, being stupid and closing our ears to whats expected..al infierno con todos nosotros!Festejando a la estupidez!!!
That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!
-who else but Calvin :)
OK i dont know how many people managed to catch the televised proceedings of the parliament on the no-confidence day (due to their busy and productive life, unlike my present state of vegetation) but if you couldn't you should definitely try to catch some brilliant moments. I would categorically state Rahul Gandhi's speech as The Moment..someone should really tell that guy that he has kind of passed high school and whatever thoughts he (and we) might share about the intellectual prowess of our dear representatives, schoolboy-debate speeches can only be funny. Mama did not find the audience reaction funny and sonny boy ran away. Someone plz get his sister out.
Another brilliant moment was the opening of the three crore bag in the house, without the three BJP MLAs merrily waving wads of 1000s as proof of the essential corruptibility of UPA(though we support them, I dont think BJP should really try for the morally superior role yet). The rest of the debate was mostly made up of people dying to talk beyond their allotted minutes (one guy going far enough to request the speaker to "give two more minutes sir, just two more..how can i end the speech without thanking you honorable speaker sir"!!!!). All in all I suppose a usual days work for the guys. But i would give a leg to present at the next opening session :)
I know(or optimistically hope) that someone somewhere is reading my blog...but please, to make me believe please Please PLEASE leave comments once in a while atleast. I have fallen into the pit of boredom sufficiently to not mind if they are arbit insults too :) waiting for the first blow....
He fired at [the baby] with a .45. He missed. We all laughed. He got up three or four feet closer and missed again. We laughed. Then he got up right on top and plugged him.
Every time some new crime against women (I am beg to hate that phrase) occurs, all the (jobless) news channels (think INDIA TV-who definitely need to do something about their programming, AAJTAK-another channel gone down the drain) start doing the whole commentary on how indian women feel unsafe in certain cities, at certain times, in certain areas and with certain people. The only thing left to be done seems to be starting a list of all people who women should run screaming from(try any guy in UP/Bihar/Delhi and u have begun your list well). But what no one tries to understand is what is the fear we have to face.
Imagine u have a lakh rupees in cash [imagine the currency of your choice here :)] in your pocket and now imagine that its 0200 hrs and u are walking through the scariest areas of your town- try chandni chowk or paharganj in delhi or dharavi in mumbai. Every single sound has a meaning now. That is what it is what it feels like for most women in India today. The constant checking and rechecking of to make sure there are other women around you, that too many men are not looking at you, that you are not being looked at by too many men, that you are not smiling in general, that head in either bent to face the ground or looking vaguely into the horizon. There is no one trying to make eye contact with you, no one behind you, no one in front of you, no one following your car for the last half an hour, no person you have seen twice in two diff places in the same day. Sounds like a pretty weird scenario from some B grade WWII movie? This is the fear women face daily. This is what it means to be a woman in India today.
there is a book in my head
trying to come out
the phrases are twirling
the words are wrestling
the scenes are set
and they are dying to be wrought
there is a book in my head
trying to come out
skipping, jumping
running screaming
shoving pushing
bouncing squealing
there is a book in my head
trying to come out..
ok so i know this is no e e cummings (i mean i can actually already hear sid n pookie laughing) but seriously what do u expect at 3 in the morn??????
I have been granted a second chance at freedom and it’s made me realize what I had been missing. Life has a way of making you fall in line, somewhat as if you are walking on an interminable marathon, and soon you reach that level where you are just walking, one foot at a time, without any interest about where your going anymore. You take turns on the road you don’t even realize were there and somehow you reach a cross roads and then it strikes you. You are in a strange land where nothing likes familiar and you have no more knowledge or energy left to find your way back. I am happy that here I have been stopped and made to take a look.
But am yet to understand what to do with this freedom I have been granted. The prophets had it easy, for their paths were laid out for them and who will question the will of God? But mere mortals must prod on, finding the way by guesswork and luck. I do not see my path yet and I fear that on these crossroads, all roads lead nowhere I want to go.
Once upon a time, a young Tona believed that bby people followed traffic rules...
I am begginning to believe that this is one of those fantasies parents never want to disillusion their kids abt..like bhanumati ka pitara and the eternal gazillion women who have died mysteriously and haunt every separate kilometre of India, the fantasy that traffic in mumbai is traffic and not a horde of stampeding cars, autos, buses and what not. It seems bby-ites have singly handedly decided to shoulder the burden of proving to the world that we cannot follow even basic travel rules. Cars will park were free left turns exist, at the traffic signal people are desperate to pass time by creating honk symphonies, and if possible pedestrians wil cross the road only on seeing a vehicle coming from the other side, i presume so they can feel "the wild side".
I never really caught on to the concept of road rage, but when u see that mammoth of an SUV with one single loser sitting there on ur free turn, u r tempted to get down, put ur hands around his neck and shake him till his head falls off on its own. My dreams now feature primarily bus drivers am planning to gun down, though not before giving a lecture on the ills of driving like maniacs. It is sometimes to me a surprise that so many peo continue to exist in this city, for surely this should have decimated the population by now.
As you must have made out by now, I am developing a burgeoning hatred for Mumbai, with every extra second am stuck here. Sometimes it seems its a city of terrorists. But then, i think India is slowly turning into a country of terrorists, with everyone holding someone hostage over supposed slight or harm to them, their relegion, community, language, work...its as if the true uselessness of our lives can only be defined by making others feel even more useless. U cannot have a thought anymore which doesnt seem to hurt someone's sentiments. What an extraordinarily sensitive set of people we r!!!I sure as hell hope the MNS wil not find this soon, or i will be in court day after, for harming their sentiments!But it is the saddest thing today that we have allowed ourselves to become hostage to everyone's opinion. I just hope this will not continue till one day we become a nation unable to think at all, only follow.
I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.
i have wondered how does one know one is in love?by what certainty do u know that this feeling is one to last, that the happiness u get from someone's company will not be transmuted to irritation or worse indifference with time?? does everyone feel sad when it goes wrong? how do u recognise it for love that it is n not some other feeling? what if all the heartburn, the sorrow u fell will only make u laugh at how stupid u were then, softly giggling away when u think abt them alone in the night? or will u feel slightly hurt n lost everytime u think of what was not? does everyone feel slightly embarrassed abt this feeling? do u second judge urself when u think abt someone n the way he makes u feel? do u feel ashamed for ur ill thoughts for everyone moment he is not with u? do u see everything he says n does with a different eye, constantly reading a new meaning n spending hours working out what it means? do u laugh too when u hear songs which seem aimed at this weird emotion u r feeling? do u also feel like crying at times, just going n sitting somewhere quiet to cry because it seems it will never work out n u cannot imagine what will u do, though u know that u will survive this too, only it seems that everything will be slow n painful after this, for nothing will ever attain the perfection this promised, that is lost now..that all that will be ur future will sad n insipid, spent in remembrance of this loss..i wonder too..when will it be over??
Dear whoever is remotely interested:
the nature of this blog stands changed. This should not be taken to mean that I'll begin paying any attention to what others' think about the blog, it only means that it is going to expand its horizons now. I intend to use this as a travelogue of my weekend trips around europe and (hopefully) beyond. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this.
Main Characters:
Tanaya
Ahim
Swapan
Alkesh
Secondary Characters:
Rajat (may shift to primary if shows enthusiasm)
All u losers out there who r NOT doing this!!!! :P
Au revoir!!
The one thing I have always wanted to do in my life is write. And I don’t mean just writing writing but writing well. Unfortunately I have not been very successful at it. Every time I see something interesting I want to write about it. But I somehow never sit down then and there and by the time I do, all the words, the phraseology I have thought and practiced in my mind earlier has flown out, leaving rather trite sounding phrases. This is possibly the first time in my entire life I have actually forced myself to sit down and write right then what I thought out. I did keep a diary once but ended up using it mostly for self piteous tales of suffering and sorrow that I was facing, which is why the experiment shut down in about two months. The thing about writing is what you write sounds brilliant to you but could well be the most clichéd crap ever written and how to make out the difference? I sometimes think that maybe I do have it in me to be a good writer, and frankly, if I could write really good MBs too I wouldn’t be that embarrassed (a bit though). But that feeling really doesn’t last. I wish there was some way you could be sure that what you were doing was good and right and had a point, and very hollywoodly, made a difference.
When I watch some really nice movie or read a really nice book or see something interesting, I feel something that I want to put down somewhere for permanence and show it around, am not sure why. I have this huge urge to talk to everyone about what I thought then, what came into my mind. But that feeling never lasts that long. 10 minutes, half an hour down the lane, I have lost that feeling. And am scared that it is because some part of me that can feel has in some way been hurt that I can no longer feel anything unless am actually going through it right then. And what am most afraid of is that it is because of what I have done to myself or what choices I have made that this part of me had died and now there is no going back. And so I keep forcing myself to be intense about things, to pretend that I feel more than I actually do or should, incase I can use that to go back to a time when I hadn’t lost that part and maybe someday I could feel again and be able to make people understand what I feel and write well.
I earlier use to think it was lack of experience, that once I learnt more, saw more I could do better at everything. But I think one of the real reasons that I still can’t write well is that I am not writing for myself yet. Half my reason is to be read and praised by others. I don’t just want to write well, I want people to think I write well and appreciate it and frankly, I want the jing bang of fame and fortune which some extraordinarily dumb people are getting nowadays for churning out utter rot. My imagination soars high above the ground when I think of what I will do with the money and the fame and how gracious I would be, the oh so simple person at heart. Unfortunately it fails me when I want to write what will supposedly (hopefully?) lead me to this fate. Which is perhaps one more hint that I should stay away from writing till then.
I have always wondered why ur darkest thoughts come to u in the middle of the night. It can be the happiest day or the saddest, but come 0300hrs and suddenly all the demons u have been hiding from come out and taunt u with their presence. The what-ifs, what-nots, all felt and unfelt insults come out to lash u again, to remember what they felt like. All u can do is think of all u could have done better, faster...thats the time to hate the most. There is nothing in this world that can hurt as much as memory of things that u could have achieved but lost due to ur own stupidity. And not all the justifications in the world, to urself or others, can make u forget. Why is it like that- what is it abt this time that will not let u forget?
To follow up on the previous post, we have together worked out a new principle that may (or may not) help you understand better the topic under discussion.
The dog principle works on the premise that everyone wants a dog as a spouse. A dog will run after you when you run away, will eat out of your hands, scare intruders, sit when u want him to sit, be playful when u want him to be and yet not bark when locked up in the loo because the guests are scared of dogs.
I sincerely hope that this will help u in further understanding any party u want to hit on the head. If not, I am sorry for u. My purpose on the other hand, has been accomplished- of seriously irritating the party concerned.
Till later...
i have been thinking of writing this mail from days..mostly because it will hugely irritate the two parties mentioned here (thank god they r far away) but what with exams and other crap never got around it till now...
Now, first things first. The reason for this title is that even though i am a woman, i have hitherto failed to understand what maggots are the reason for the workings of the mind of a woman. In this i totally sympathise with the poor male soul who has an even worse fate..no body would even bother explaining the workings to him (except of course my magnanimous self).
Sometime back i had this really long and as usual, quite arbit conversation with a good friend. This friend is quite different from me but we still get along pretty well. My main point of confusion had been her utter faith in the system of arranged marriage- which to mince no words, i would clearly call the "upaj" of a sadistic mind. So this time we asked this viewpoint. And the upshot of the conversation was that this faith was not due to any supernatural belief in her parents' wisdom or God. It was instead a belief that in an arranged marriage, she might get a spouse who would, i quote, "not be very romantic". To be exact, someone who would give and expect space in the relationship. Another point was that such a marriage was less likely to dissolve, from fear of society.
What i find most amusing about this entire conversation is that while this girl would rather wait for her parents to find her a suitable someone, another friend of mine is dying under the onslaught of what have been named "Rasnaboys" or as they are better known "Chaubey Baalaks".
For the ignoramuses, a chaubey baalak is a unique species. Tending to be fair and round, they are characterised by a total belief in anything written in a book, a tendency to want comforts and a thought process out of the 60s- 1560s to be exact. A beauracratic frame of mind and a love for good food are just add-ons.
The major problem this friend faces is that she is firang returned. The real problem is the fact that she is quite noticeably phoren returned. She prefers english, has a slight accent, dresses more in westerns, and actually has male friends (!!!!). The fact that she has almost 6 years of training in Indian Classical music and is one of the sanest members of her family is beside the point. She would infinitely prefer a love match- even a match with a good friend in similar traits- but that is not exactly her parents' idea of continuing a pure blooded line.
So here we have two cases, both pretty opposite and both on a different side for the oddest of reasons. What i find myself unable to understand is why is either party in such straits. The first friend does not mind a love match but some guy must magically realise that he likes her and she likes him and therefore they should hitch up and voila! happily ever after. The other friend is stuck due to a wish to fulfil her parents' wishes( whatever) and therefore will continue turning out soberly with tea and snacks for a new round of horse tradding.
When i opened my own blog, it was on the understanding that i can write whatever shit i want and therefore i have been happy to oblige u. May u gain more wisdom and understanding through this intellectual critique. :))
will write again soon. Sorry and all that :P
as this world is pretty much a pain...in a generic wish to help humanity i have created this blog to spread my unique fount of knowledge to those poor souls still living under the impression that the world has a reasoning and the moon landing was a NASA achievement...keep track...like the hitchhiker's guide...this is even better than a towel..and i promise no volgan poetry
" LIFE IS A COMPLETE SERIES OF DISASTERS ONE AFTER THE OTHER"
