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.

Momentary Lapses of the Unintelligible

Sitting on one of those Nature Comittee Benches, legs stretched out conveniently, sipping the ‘not too bad’ slightly too sweet hostel tea, some vaguely familiar music playing in the background and watching a couple of second years dribble a football around for no particular reason, and I think quite cheesily…this here is a moment.

Then again, I am quite capable of coming up with them in retrospect…extra time of a slushy rain swept football match, played in borrowed red spiked shoes two sizes too big, then the goal…we’ve all hugging after that and toppling over into the mud… of course when it happened it was all a blur…which in itself is kinda perfect. Though they always need to slow it down in sport movies for the effect.

There are however the really ironic ones that I wish I would not notice – one really bad moot court later, walking back to hostel and from the most inconspicuous of places – the bloody gym, one hear Eminem taunting ‘you get one shot, one opportunity …that’s all you’ve got…” and, I am not making this up…honest!

There are also the ones, that are truly of one’s own making…for example the fact – that every time I am in a metro train, a part of me keeps waiting for the moment – when the ceiling of the train will be ripped open to reveal our protagonists who will then proceed to have a compulsive cool samurai fight across the length and breadth of the compartment. Sigh, I am still sadly waiting for that one.

Moments, when you notice them are nice. As in, the thing with moments…is that they kinda make the clock stop – there is always a ton of stuff floating around in the background of your head but when you see a moment, you go “WoW! Stop, rewind“…and then again “WoW”. I know I am explaining it in a really bad Bill & Ted impersonation, but the truth is I am glad I see moments…real or otherwise.

It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world or Hello, again…

For the past few days, I’ve been feeling a lot like Gordan Way. I don’t remember much about this character from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, but what’s stuck in my head is a description of how he would call up people, preferably being directed to their answering machines, and then talk his heart out as to what all was needed to be done. I don’t remember much about him apart from the fact that he kinda gets killed by an electric monk and his horse – at least I think it was a horse, it might as well have been a donkey- but the more important thing is – I kinda understand his urge to tell people about his elaborate list of Things to Do.

I find myself trusted with responsibility; tons of it. Sure, there might be the tad bit of me that’s pleased with this development but a larger more ‘get me out of here’ part is sick with worry. It’s not that big a deal, except I can’t seem to quit making lists. Also, I might be secretly a tyrant in the making; what’s worrying is how pleased I am by the idea.

I spent twelve hours yesterday and today morning formatting and editing a piece of work, just to realize a moment after I had dispatched it, that I’d forgotten to do something as basic as run it through an MS Word Spell n’ Grammar Check. I’ve most probably over–edited it and most definitely forgotten to add page numbers. I am not quite sure whether I could pass it off as a balancing act.

The LAN connection in College has been tweaked so that certain searches on key words evoke an error message. Considering the Third year First Round Internal Moot Problem is about a gang raped woman whose bisexual husband runs away with her first gay ex-husband, the ingenuity of this tweaking is mind numbing. Ah well.

I wish I could say that I am mooting again for the right reasons; more than the right reasons, wish I could say with a theatrical smirk and a half shrug – ‘Coz I am good at it.’ A lot of people in my batch seemed to have given up on it…at least for this year. I persist because…well, because I don’t want to regret not giving it another shot, because I love the high and the effort that goes in, and even at its worst, there is a delirious part of me that knows that looking back it will all seem funny. I realize the last lines straight from one of those American movies, where the hero/heroine amidst cheery pop music decides to do whatever big thing that he/she had been feeling rather ambivalent about. Chances are, this being the real world and all, if I don’t make the cut, I’ll be bawling my eyes out, but I am, for most parts, certain that, heartbreak or not, I’d still be glad that I did it.

In other news I still do not have a Law and Economics topic. Also, though the ‘geeky coolness’ of saying I am studying Space Law still makes me grin, my project topic on spectrum and orbit leasing might have wooshed over my head, narrowly missing my hair. Not that, technology was ever my forte…have I told you about the time when I crashed not one but two laptops in the space of a week? Oh wait, that was last week! Philip, to whom all my laptop woes are directed, told me he was going to donate to a corpus fund so that he could buy me a typewriter. I went through all the classic symptoms of de-addiction. All I could think of doing when all my friends were listening to music, playing games, watching movies, doing projects – in short hanging out with their own respective laptops was well clean. I dusted my books, regained the surface of my table from piles of accumulated junk, ironed my clothes and when all that could be done was done, I did something more along the lines. Think about it. I spent entire Sundays cleaning! The Horror!

Of course, I am back to my old ways, now that my laptop’s returned. I just spent an entire evening writing this long drawn out rather pointless post…which was the only way I could think off coming out of a really long hiatus. It was either this or one of those mindless ‘you’re tagged’ blog polls. And I used that, the last time

Cooking Up Memories…

I am learning to cook. Well watching my mum cook at times is more like it. Even though there are some primitive notions attached to the whole process (GirlReaching Marriageable Age – Must Know To Cook) I quite enjoy it. Especially when there is this cooking show inspired voice over going on inside my head- “now that you’ve added the onions, stir the contents until golden brown” or “lift up the lid and mmmh the flavour just hits you, doesn’t it?” I’ve got my very own ‘You Can Cook’ going on in my head.

My childhood is polka doted with memories that are connected to food. My first (hopefully made up) memory is being irritated with all the other kids, at my birthday party, for eating my sweets, my memory of leaving Lucknow as a seven year old, is connected to the fact that Anup uncle bought me not one but TWO packets of Lays chips from the railway station and that when I went to the planetarium for the first time in my life I had vanilla cup ice cream. Need I go further?

Reading about food itself for me is terribly satisfying. I am sure one of the reasons I always loved the Enid Blyton books was because of all the food that was spread out. I mean most of the Secret Seven’s started with an inventory of all they could eat at their latest meetings, the Famous Five’s though very dicey about the whole toiletries issues never lacked in food supplies and was there ever a St Claire’s semester when there wasn’t a midnight feast?

One of the quaintest books where book foods have been gone into is What Katy Did Next. She spends her time in England eating all the food that is described in books and surprise! Surprise! not all of it is good! However good or enticing it may sound- sausages pressed into gingerbread do not mouth watering make.

One really cool food book that I’ve got recently is Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. For someone who’s grown up thinking that the genial Sanjeev Kappoor is the archetypical chef the transition to Bourdain’s life of sex drugs and well cookery can be something of a culture shock. His cast of chefs seem more suited to the Mafia than the kitchen, but the love for food and cooking – what matters most- is very evident. I am half way through, and it est good.

Last year, we, in the intrepid editorial board of our college’s rag tag magazine Writer’s Block, scouted the city’s streets and back alleys in search of good food on the excuse that we needed to fill the odd 600 word Restaurant Review column of our mostly monthly rag. Never again, do I think that I am going to be in the company of such, for whom the ability to ingest copious amounts of food is a matter of pride and honour.  Of course our original intention was not forgotten and we wrote about the food and though describing ‘Pancakes at Piccadilly’ in a profusion of food clichés is hardly the literary heights of food writing, it was extremely entertaining.

When I read our very own food reviews now, it’s weird how it’s not the food that I remember.  It’s the subtext that stands out clearly – the stuff we didn’t write about.–– Bhavna singing from the back seat of a mostly empty bus, waiting at a railway crossing for the longest goods train ever to pass, Anuj’s attempts to finish a kula of lassi in one go – the sad realisation that I must never ever be photographed with food ever again.

And suddenly I am glad, that my memories are all connected to food.

Desperate Pleas for Help as oppossed to Do Not Disturb Signs

This notice went up outside my room at approximately 1:30 on Saturday afternoon. Unlike the many, who write DO NOT DISTURB OR I WILL KICK YOUR ASS outside their door, come exams, I approach them with…well desperate cries for help.

Dear Everybody,

Hello and Welcome to another edition of “ This crazy girl has gone mad again!” What can I say except that I have been frittering away my life in wishy washy pursuits. I’ve been editing the magnum opus of the Kick-Assest Issue Ever (Yes, it is called that, yes it is that much Kick-assest); I’ve been reading about the latest p-sets those crazy kids have to do; I am also suddenly and irrevocably in love with Jess from Gilmore Girls…again. (what can I say, there is just enough James Dean in him.)

As a result my studies have been (what’s the right word) rather ‘neglected’. In other words, the time for PANIC is now. The time for action was in all probability two weeks ago. But NO, my delusional mind tells me: there is hope. And this Hope person/ voice tells me that if I know what’s good for me, I will lock myself in my room, throw away the key and study like mad. So if you see me wasting time, Scream At Me; if you hear too much ac/dc playing in my room; Scream At Me. Remind me about prioritizing. Give me Notes and Advice. If All Else Fails, (gulp) as a last resort – Call My Mother.

Love

Me

Ps: by any chance have you seen a key lying around anywhere?

On Writing…I think.

I found this little…something  in a forgotten word doc:

To write would be an awfully tiresome venture,

and yet to read and to know

that one has not written and has not even tried -

Slaughtered before utterance half thoughts of mine-

waiting forever for the other shoe to drop.

Perhaps it is the Cinderella tale all over again-

left with one shoe? What would you do?

For the other one, start a quest?

Or grumble at being an unlucky fool?

I think this was a result of reading a qoute by Henry Miller on writing  at the time and and hence the title of the post.

On & On…

Have you ever found, how, it is at the most importunate times that you are seized by the most wonderful of ideas? I always have the most awesome (albeit not the sanest) plot lines take hold of my head when I have exams. I start day dreaming scenarios and dialogues while my civil law module lies abandoned. Of course, by sheer force of will, I try and prevent furthering of these thought processes. funny thing is, the moment the exams over, the plots lose their sheer intensity in my head. weird.

but that wasn’t what I really wanted to blog about. (then again, the fact that it was the first thing that came out, kinda defeats the above argument) what I wanted to tell you about is how I feel like rambling on and on.

Yesterday, I made a new gmail account. I’ve had one before but it wasn’t the sort you give to possible short term employers (no it didn’t say flowerpower87 or bazooka900 but it still was not formal). The new one, has my college name attached to it. .NUJS it says and I will probably need another one, say three years down the line but it meant something to inextricably link my name to .NUJS, though it probably has been linked to it ever since I decided to come here almost two year back.

Of course, now I have to make the painful switch from my old hotmail account to the gmail account. My first and foremost plan, is to have my mail transferred automatically from hotmail to gmail via pop3 or the Mail Fetcher option. Only problem is hotmail for some reason best known to itself, allows pop3 only for users situated in the UK, Italy and other such places. No problem, a little google search for post office numbers in England, and a little tinkering with my personal info on hotmail and voila I am proud citizen of the Great Britain. This should have worked, as they seem to rely solely on the personnel info (and not the more tricky IP addresses) to allow pop3, but I still seem to be encountering an error, and probably will have to do more tinkering around. Any Ideas?

In other news I finally went to the Kolkata Book Fair, one terribly dusty event. The bigger names Random House, Oxford, Cambridge and Co were terribly disappointing, but the smaller shops had the sort of collection that fills you with the bittersweet thought that you can never have read enough. There was also Benfish apparently one of the best fish food people in cal but it only made me realize how much I miss my mama’s fish curry…sigh. Anyways, ended up buying way too many books and will therefore probably end this semester in near penury. More about the books later.

Also, I seem to have a writer’s block when it comes to writing for Writer’s Block. (Aha Aha truly contrived providential pun, but what the heck). I need all the points I can garner and yet the words refuse to come. I do believe blogging takes care of all my urge to write and thus have no ready prose available When I Really Need To Write. Gah!

Bunked class today because of itchy red spots on my body that itch. I seem to have the strangest luck with Docs. they usually are good at what they do albiet eccentric. this one has been inviting me to his daughter’s Bengali Wedding in November of 2009 ever since last year. He was terribly excited at seeing red itchy spots that itch and was convinced that it was a) Diabetes b) chickenpox. Later, I had him wittle it down to an infection/allergy and now am forced to take pills that cost a fortune. I googled it and was not very surprised to find, that there was a generic drug at half its cost. I think there is some provision in some law that lets me have the right to demand the alternative cheaper med, but I’ll probably  lose that wedding invitation.

I seem to have a small albiet regular readership (yes, yes, it’s all thanks to you, Sroyon). I keep thinking that people must end up on my blog by mistake, but how many times can people end up on my blog from the same set of urls, eh? at least, that’s what I’d like to think.

A Serious Discussion on Why Weird Awesome Things Will Never Happen To Us

Darshana and I had today (you guessed it!) A Serious Discussion on Why Weird Awesome Things Will Never Happen To Us. We realized in synchronized ‘enlightenment dawned on her’ moments that we were a little too perfectly wired toward appreciating the weird and fantastical to actually come in contact with anything that could really really fit the description.

What I mean is, imagine one day there is an actual real Zombie Attack…while everyone would run screaming through the city, we’d probably be giddy with delight at the fact that FINALLY it is actually happening. We’d kick vampire butt if ever called to do so, with our knowledge of n+1 ways of killing the bloodsuckers, or if an alien life form were to suddenly appear before me and ask my help to build a Galactotranspositer you can bet you’re arse, I’d be calling up my engineering cousin to enlist his help pronto.

And that is the problem isn’t it? Weird Awesome Things will never happen to us, because we’ve already imagined them happening a million times over. Not for us to see a compulsive cool samurai style fight between the two chaps on the metro, not for us a sudden mysterious blood soaked stranger pushing a dirty torn letter into our hands filled with war time codes. No, none of this is meant for us, because instead of fainting/screaming/going into hysterics/asking what, when, where and a million other questions, we’d be completely in our element and ready to go.

Telling us…me (Darshana doesn’t know I am writing this, though I have been using the collective for a while now) that the Weird Awesome Things …er…um…you see…oh! what the heck…DO NOT EXIST…does not in anyway reduce the gravity of our discussion.

Gods Behaving Badly

I had a gift voucher from my B’day left to kill, and to foil the dastardly plan of my friend, who’d got me the gift voucher in the first place and had therefore thought she’d escaped from going gift searching for me, I dragged her along. Ended up spending over two hours rifling through books at Starmark, before I decided on buying this particular book.

The blurb on the cover page of Marie Phillips’ Gods Behaving Badly calls it ‘very very funny and delightfully original’. I wonder how many people buy books because of these blurbs. I mean, it can’t possible say something bad about the book, now can it? like for instance ‘A sad attempt at humour but kids these days they’ll lap it up anyways?’

Ah well, as for me – I picked it up because it seemed to be an attempt at bringing two of my favourite genres – mythology and urban fantasy together. Think about it, greek gods from the past living right across the street or jostling for space with you in a bus. You gotta admit, the idea has potential.

And I have to say, the book ain’t bad. It’s funny in parts, moves at a decent pace, and as a whole is a good read. I love Eros’ conflicting faith in Christianity, love that the mere presence of Ares is enough to stir trouble between two of the most saccharine sweet characters in the book, or even the fact that Apollo tries to break into stardom by acting in a third rate TV show, that specializes in foretelling the future happiness of old women and their cats. Sometimes when it hinted at the greater fears of the gods – about dying, about living forever in bad company, about being too inconspicuous in the modern world it showed real promise.

Then again, there is characterization that is so run of the mill – Aphrodite as the slutty conniving sexy goddess, Artemis as the  uptight goddess of hunting, Hades, Persephone etc etc who don’t seem to have picked up any character since the bygone eras. I am not saying that the intrinsic characteristics that the Greek myths present should be changed but surely they can be developed upon!  Then again, I am not quite sure I like it when she changes things around. for example, when she says that wisdom and clarity don’t go hand in hand when it comes to Athena (who basically is a twenty first century nerd) it doesn’t make sense. Isn’t the whole hoopla about wisdom that it’s about saying the right thing at the right time and being able to get it across which may not be found in intelligence? Weird.

The  human characters in the book Neil and Alice are terribly sweet and terribly in love which can get terribly boring after a while. I get it, you’re trying to show how the average sweet, nice human is just a pawn in the games of the gods, but give the average human some more credit. We aren’t all that nice!

The ending again is a little too concoted. ‘Faith keeps the gods going!’ the revelation lacks punch, it has been said before loads of time in a much better way (Go Read American Gods, Now.)Also, the author stops just when it gets a little more interesting and of course a whole lot more complex. Suddenly you have tons of people believing in the Greek gods again. Now what? Does the Church declare war?Do the aethists societies go dunk themselves? Do the Americans have Artemis endorse their right to carry arms stand? Do the Greeks charge royality for worshipping their gods? Okay, so my suppositions get crazier by the sentence, but that’s the point. I like endless possibilities at the end of a book, I do, but here it just seemed that the author knew she couldn’t tackle all the wacky possibilities and therefore left her readers with an open epilogue. It would have been awesome, I think, if the book had actually begun at its end point and worked its way through all the tangled compex problems that come with having a sudden renewal of mass scale faith in ambiguously intentioned gods.

I liked the book though, mainly because like I mentioned earlier – I love mythology and urban fantasy. Where else, I ask you, will you get to read the following sentence “I’ve got a god passed out on my kitchen floor and I think the world’s about to end”?  Nope. Nowhere else.  Also, I liked the book because it figured Greek gods who are some of my favourite gods; for I have always thought that if you actually believed in them, then you’d never be surprised when bad things happened coz you’ll realize that as gods they’ve got better things to do than bother about your temporary existence. Gives you a wondeful perpective on fate and stuff.

Also, for those interested in worship of Greek gods in modern times: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/may/05/greece