and reading aurora leigh.
at one gathering.............


an uncle: "jadavpur-e meyera cigarette khaye...chhee, chhee, ki baaje"
ami: "chhelera khaye, shetao toh jaachhe tayi baapar"

did i mention being teased out o' my wits?

what have i been busy doing?

writing short stories and pondering for hours for suitable titles
helping out with the organic utsav
attending family re-unions
eating lunch at seminars
reading, reading, reading(the latest being "many stones"...am currently reading "odd women."
meeting new people
finding new friends
using the metro on my own
talking to old friends
acquiring loadsa new words...{the newest being "lyadh"---a favourite among one and all as of now
discussing films
thinking about I.R.
thinking about my term paper
playing with kids

i wish life was less complicated. human beings are very complex. trying to clear something just muddles it up all the more. oh gosh! am exhausted. busy week, and restless sunday. hmm.

dog-talk

i can't see my dog anywhere on the campus of late. the one with the pink nose who used to shake off his slumber whenever i was anywhere near, honest!
i was so shaken to see this other black and white dog, a regular on our side of the campus, suffering from a horrible skin infection of sorts...i am afraid i don't know too much about the veterinary sciences, but something ought to be done. yesterday it was trying to lie down on its side, but flies kept buzzing around the site of infection and the poor thing was almost out of its mind in agony!
i remember when i was 7 years old i had a best friend in my neighbour's dog, sherpa...i loved how he used to almost eagerly await our evening saunters on the mayfair road terrace, how he used to jump all over me and how intelligent he was. incidentally, he was a spitz.

long time no post

i'm back to being an unproductive blogger. but i really haven't CHOSEN to be lazy of late. i've just been crazy busy...with tests, course work, thinking about not thniking about term papers, and of course the organic utsav. i'm so glad i've begun to involve myself with all sorts of social and environmental work. i'd always , always wanted to but had never quite figured out where and with who to begin. lately some seniors of my departent have been really wonderful and welcoming and so now i'm wrapped up pretty much most of the time. and then of course there are my italian classes. we were asked to finish 22 exercises over the week and just as i wrote out the last answer of the last exercise, with a smile of smug satisfaction on my face, i was told by a friend that we had to do 25 and not 22. sigh. i haven't yet gotten around to finishing them yet. yesterday i watched chak de india again! kabir khan is one terribly interesting and abominably attractive character. this is the first, first movie i actually loved srk in. he wasn't srk playing kabir, he was really kabir khan, incidently played by srk. why am i rambling such rubbish?
the other day i wormed out of attending a lecture in the A.V. room and have been feeling rather ashamed ever since. consience, conscience, conscience. when i grow up a leeetle bit more i'll keep a pup.

Movie Reviews. Or an attempt at them. in fact, nothing of the sort.

Shakespeare in Love----most people have been refusing to believe that i watched the movie for the first time ever this february. i am so taken with it. i think my many courses on the elizabethan stage and theatre really helped me creep into the skin of the film. and whenever i read will's plays now, the image of jo fiennes has to keep floating arond in my mind. the screenplay was so brilliant! one of my favourite plays by the bard is romeo and juliet, i can actually {seriously} rattle it off by heart! heheheh, boy, that sounds modest. gwenyth paltrow was seriously good as viola. the entire construction of this imagined love story was fabulous. sigh. who cares about historical accuracy? the same applies to jodhaa akbar. why are people pulling it apart because it isn't 100 per cent historically accurate. the art of the story teller lies in his own re-creation of certain historical moments.

the grass is so green now. as green as the fat little catterpillar I pain-stakingly lured on to a leaf in school when i was 6. this was in 18 Lee Road. sigh. and what of the time we buried a butterfly which had died owing to its wing being caught on a shard of glass
/ it was so soft, fragile. so delicate. that was over 14 years ago. it has probably been rolled over and over in earth's many diurnal courses since. like worsworth's lucy, only i didn't know of lucy, or wordsworth then. the following day a band of us marched over to the burial spot and dug the place up to see if the butterfly had gone to heaven. we had no doubt that it would. but then i suddenly saw its white-streaked wings greet my unbelieving eyes. that was my first ever encounter with disillusionment.

i was such a shy, shy girl in my first years of school. gosh. i'd be homesick all the time, longing for my mum's soft hands to cling on to. once i started weeping so much, my teachers got annoyed enoygh to call home. and then there was my nose fascination. i was sooo very obsessed with noses. it's still there, i suppose. the first thing i notice in a person is the nose. distinct noses really attract moi.

this is such a weird post. so desultory and aimless. kothay theke kothay chole jachhe. the surprising thing is i'm not embarassed by the embarrasing moments of my childhood. i quite miss them. those were the days. lol.

i feel so funny today. my mind is in quite a turbulent state. things are not hunky dory. old "friendships" are crumbling...i'm awakening to the horrid realisation that most of these relationships were not real at all. i never conform to peer pressure, i have always enjoyed being myself, being lost in my thoughts and ideals, but i suddenly feel alienated. i have so many people i love around me. i am getting to know so many more people. but certain things are bothering me. i hope i can face up to them. hmmm. initially i placed academics at the centre of my universe. now i find myself incessantly pondering over things i never assigned much importance to. oh well.

lil' tubs

adopt your own virtual pet!

j.a.---jodhaa akbar!
s---sawaariya

the evening is quivering with potential..this line gets stuck in my head whenever i'm confined indoors on particularly pink evenings with violet skies and perfumed breezes. when the songs of the cuckoo are rivalled by the croaks of crows. hmm. not that i can't go out for a bit. but i'm enamoured by a certain someone. a certain brilliant actor. i don't knoow what others thought, but i LURVED j.a. it was a haunting film. i think every emotion was played out so very well...finely tuned acting...it was more than "acting"...it transcended the confines of the word...just like the Sufi musicians. a.r.b. was brilliant too. i actually found her terrific in h.d.d.c.s. most people i notice are averse to the opulent grandeur of sb's films, but i am quite fascinated by them. whereas most people didn't have too many good things too say about 's,' i found it magical. poetic, yet sordid, real yet fabricated, a perfect allegory on the film world itself, where one has to fight it out, not depend on one's predeccors and carry one's own recommendation and no one else's. even if the already established actor sweeps the girl away in the end, the struggling actor keeps boxing his way into the realm of cinema. one of my favourite scenes of h.d.d.c.s. was when s.k.'s character kept refusing the food a.r. was offering him by pushing the spoon away and the way in which she kept raising the spoon with unflickering patience. now how did i get from J.A. to S.B.'s films? hmmm.