Sticky Notes on Chinese Breakfasts

On a less than thrilling tuesday, ani (she writes it as annie, but she’s spelled as ani on my phone and this entire discussion is slightly pointless as it isn’t even her name) had this to say on a sticky note she left on my desktop:

I added the smilie.

Wayfarers All…

Sometimes books bug me – in a very ordinary sort of way. For instance, Jo and Laurie not ending up together in Little Women is a universal sort of bugging-ness. I can live with romantic tragedies and have selective memory loss about unimaginable german proffessor husbands who came afterwards. I can look at a credit course outline, and try and read above and below that part about Ayn Rand. Ender’s Game bugged me so I never read any of its sequels and so stayed far away from the poor buggers and the creepy children. Stephen & Mary in the Mill on the Floss were meant to be, but I’ve kinda taken comfort in the fact that at least in Middlemarch – Dorothea and Ladislaw are, despite whatever unimaginable scholary type husbands had to say!

There is however this one odd story that continues to perpetually bug me. It’s not even a full book – just one random story thrown in as relief to the greater story arch. I am talking, you’d be surprised to know, about the Wind in the Willows and the story in particular is ‘Wayfarers All‘. If you look it up – Wikipedia, Amazon etc will tell you rot; like how it is a children’s book with talking animals in it. It’s a good book and yes it does have talking animals in it. If you’ve not read it, well I don’t know how exactly I can convey the way I feel about  that story  but then again when have I ever let that stop me blazing on about a book?

And so here goes:  follow the link and you will come across the River Rat. The River Rat who was restless and did not know exactly why. Summer was slowly  winding to an end, and the River Rat is struck by how all his friends were busy making plans for the winter…especially the birds…the birds who were flying south as usual. As as he listens to them, he grows even more bothered and pissed and anxious. What’s so great about the south? He asks and yet as he looks across his own little backyard, everything seems duller and dimmer. Still very confused, he finds himself a spot near the road to sit down and think. And that’s where he meets the Wayfarer- a sea faring rat from Constantinople who has been all over the place stowed in a ship – Palermo, Corsica, Marseilles Lisbon, Oporto, Bordeaux and a hundred other exotic places he has been in and out of. He talks of it in much detail and the River Rat is spell bound. He comes home and  in almost a trance gathers together a few small necessaries and special treasures he was fond of, and just as he was out on his threshold his friend the Mole arrives. Here’s where the story ends. His friend being worried stops him; sits him down and doesn’t let him leave until the fit passes. At least the Mole thinks its a fit as even though ‘Poor Ratty did his best, by degrees, to explain things;  how could he put into cold words what had mostly been suggestion? How recall, for another’s benefit, the haunting sea voices that had sung to him, how reproduce at second-hand the magic of the Seafarer’s hundred reminiscences? Even to himself, now the spell was broken and the glamour gone, he found it difficult to account for what had seemed, some hours ago, the inevitable and only thing. It is not surprising, then, that he failed to convey to the Mole any clear idea of what he had been through that day’

And so we are left to assume that it was just a fad, a whim, a fancy. Considering the rot about the children’s book – it may even be interpreted as a diabolical plan to keep all young boys and girls who wanted to run away to the sea firmly at home.

For me however every single time I reach that point just when Ratty is on that threshold I wish for what could have been.I wish he had packed faster, I wish the Mole had been caught up in business and hadn’t arrived on time, I wish Ratty had made a run for it, and that the spell had been to strong to break. I wish for what the seafaring rat had suggested: ‘Take the Adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!’ ‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company. You can easily overtake me on the road, for you are young, and I am ageing and go softly. I will linger, and look back; and at last I will surely see you coming, eager and light-hearted, with all the South in your face!’

I wish for that. I wish for that very much indeed!

Serious Emailing Problem

I hate serious emails. Emails till the time of college were just plain fun. I spent an entire summer break swapping emails with a friend of mine on the attributes/defects of such persons as Brett Lee and Tom Felton …in rhyming couplets. That is how I wish I could remember email. But that’s just not going to happen. Instead now one has to deal with sad stuff – like why you shouldn’t shut our little enterprise off or how really it’s all just a big misunderstanding and I did not totally threaten to sue a lawyer .  Worse, when I look at my dad who replies to eighty or more mails a day, I know it can get a lot worse.

There is a consolation though. Trying to explain how it was totally-accidental-that-I-threatened-to-sue-a-lawyer will probably read funny in retrospect.

Check Your Score…

I should probably have a properly updated link-y list or something to highlight stuff like this. but at the moment, all I can do is go ‘OMG, I Know!!!’.

Unposted

OMG it’s christmas!!! I can hardly keep still with all the crazy excitement. Do you know I meant to post everyday of December? I did, honest. I made elaborate plans for it during the first week of December during my exams. they were going to be journal entries inspired by Saha’s journal posts but only they were going to way less interesting as they would be to do with exams, pregnant cats and extreme nerdiness.   I was also going to post on music and talk of the songs I like but can’t describe…because I am hopeless in describing music as I don’t understand the technicallities behind it nor do I have the passionate decisiveness that make some posts on music so compelling. On the flight home I thought of how I’ll write a post on the ‘On Flight Ear-Blow-Outers’ which will ‘ring’ true only for a few. and now of course I want to talk about Kasmir and hours spent mucking around in snow and how I love my nutty nuclear family that thought sub zero temperatures were the ideal conditions to spend my birthday in. But it’s Christmas and I can hardly keep still with all the crazy excitement.

Particular Instances of Dorky Cool

So there is this chap right who sells pieces of moon to people around the world and his reasons for claiming this right among other things is that he is the first to claim any rights on the moon. This, is defeated directly by the fact that Frederick II, the King of Prussia in 1756 had bequeathed the moon to his servant. Ergo, the chap by no account first to claim rights!

I sometimes (all right, almost always) love the utter ridiculousness of what I study.

A Funny Thing Happened Day Before Yesterday

Day Before yesterday was my friend’s B’day. Here’s a girl who I haven’t seen in roughly five…six years? So I call her up on the morning of her B’day to wish her ‘happy birthday’ all bright and early:

Me: Happy Birthday!!!

Varsha: Ass!!!

Me: Wha..aat?!?!

Varsha: Why didn’t you call me up midnight? Don’t you know how much cooler it is in hostel b’days when you keep your friends waiting at midnight with the uncut b’day cake as you attend to a flurry of calls from your ‘other’ friends?

Me: I am sorry. I thought I was being considerate and all. And look I remembered! And called up long distance instead of leaving fb messages! In between my exams!

Varsha: Hmmph!

Me: Fine! I’ll call you up next year at midnight to feed your ego!

Varsha: you better!

That girl! She sure takes me for granted. but here’s the funny thing: I love the fact that I have friends who take me for granted…even after such a long time.

Mismatched Socks

I wore mismatched socks all day yesterday and felt exceedingly proud of myself. .It was as if I was telling ‘Aha! I don’t need you’ to all those other pair of socks, earings, shoes, gloves etc that go and hide themeselves just when you most want them. I swear I hear their tittering laughter as I go rampaging round my room upturing drawers, chests and racks and crawl under my bed in search of them.  To confirm my theory, my other black sock has come slinking back into view today as if to say: ‘what’s a little hide and seek among friends?’ Aha!

Also, people in this college are too polite to point out one’s utter lack of colour coordination. The other option of course is they’ve long given up and labelled one as a ‘lost cause’ as far as such things are concerned.

More importantly, December is a mere week away. Exams are like in three days, but that is not the point.

In Which We are a Tad Sappy in the Grand Old Tradition of the Thing

Sometimes,

I wish

there was something between us.

Something…anything…just so that I could look you in the eye

and smile;

just smile, damn it; but we aren’t even acquaintances.

And it hurts; at its corniest, it hurts,

that you don’t know me and I don’t know you

And yet that I wish -

sometimes,

I wish

that I knew you and you me;

just so that I could say hi

and have you say it, back to me.

On Being Delusionally Optimistic

There is always a point every semester – during project submissions, end semester exams and other law school trappings when the work from weeks past has pilled up, when deadlines have been stretched out to the extent where they have lost all their linear quality, that I get delusionally optimistic about my ability to get my work done. And then suddenly, I find all the time in the world to do the most inane of things – such as learn Japanese by repeated viewing of Death Note, or read up Wikipedia’s entry on Wikipedia, or write blog posts instead of law review articles…

NAZE??!!!

that’s ‘why’ in Japanese in case anyone was wondering.