hmmm

there are days when you indulge in some unflinching introspection...and those when you look back upon life, in lazy retrospection....there are moments when you have to make those tiresome, life-changing decisions, there are times when you are on your own, just you and your life. i feel like an architect, (yes, that analogy had to come in), trying to construct something of a career...but i am a desultory being...i wish i could pursue anthropology now...i wish i knew what is best for me...can any one ever know? the concept of one 'best' decision...whether it pertains to one's career/partner/friends/etc is problematic....best among all the options seems a better bet....i am re-kindling old friendships and that feels good. have i really dug my roots into JU? will i miss it as intensely as i still miss school occasionally? i don't know...only time will tell. as of now, i just wanna make some new beginnings.

*blink*

in the light of the tilted orange lampshade,
with the half broken bulb,
the words of the book
stared dimly at me.
my eyes were swimming
in the blurred,
articifial twilight.
my brain kept rejecting
the words, which tried
forcing their entry:
my sleepy mind
the faithful sentry.

a night lamp is just not the way
to prepare for these tests every single day.

statement of purpose

thst's what i'm supposed to be working on, the operative word being obvious. it's simplistic to assume that a 500 word essay can ever hope to contain the desultory ambitions of this confused being. sometimes i wish i could be engaged in activity that's more "hands-on"...not that scholars are remote analysts or distanced aesthetes. it's just that i'm still looking for a calling to respond to, and narrowing down my choices has ALWAYS been the hardest part, ever since i had to choose my subjects for my O levels. i sometimes can't help but feel that i am exceedingly different from most people my age...with the exception of some friends...was it my school, or my family or what? am i over-wary, are my foot steps too cautious? sometimes i read the blogs of others, and more often than not, they invariably strike me as more complex, deeper, their posts more evocative, somehow more experienced. but i have no regrets...it's just so much easier being me...atleast for me...does the world in general has a prediliction for complexity, which is sometimes a synonym for pretension.
and it's not that i lie in a pearly sea shell...i've been through a vast number of hardships which life has intermittently belted out. but so what?

title?

ok...so i was wondering...a recurrent past-time...about things in general...so much rubbish happens in the name of "love and relationships" i see it all over, more so in the microcosm of my uni...how about some old fashioned, marshmallow flavoured romance? now i don't know what i mean by that...but sometimes a tiny part of me wishes that life was a little less complex(read:ulterior motive infested} and a little more, well,for the lack a better word, romantic. hmm. people fall in love so indiscriminately...and most often because they are bored...wow, wayyyy to beat the monotony.
also some people write SUCH pretentious academic essays on blogs...
also some friends were just NOT worth it...so glad that's over...at least for the time being...and i thought things were going fine for once.
and i'm haaaaaaappy about several things as well!! life's good. great and delicious////ohh, and i never grow too old for books...they grow up with me...and i just discovered that Tagore and Beatrix Potter have some ideas in common.
and i still lurve beverly clearey...and for some random reason, the name Darla suddenly appeals to me...
ok, would the randomness of this post qualify for the stream of consciousness category?

//

believe me, i loved her,
beneath the feathered skies of a blurred Moon night,
the moon flitting in and out of sight...
protecting our privacy, yet on guard
to ensure all we did was right.
the sands on the beach were listening
to our bare feet shuffling
along
like two crabs
only our grip on love
was not as tight,
as theirs.
the stars were swaying
or was it our heads?
while she was saying
what i'd never said.
and what i never ever managed to say.
that was the last day
i remember with her.
it'll be sixty years ago
this year.

buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......................

i'm tired and sleepy, exhausted and drained, but still awake cuz' my mind is buzzing with activity...maybe it's the inertia of writing a never ending term paper.i hope the alphabets on the keyboard will lull me to sleep, the clickety sounds will serve as my lullaby. man, is this a cheesy post or what? but remember i'm tired, and this is my own little blog, willing to forgive a few occasional lapses into cheesiness on my part...ok, ok, i know...i should really go...and visit sandman for a spell...aah well.

yay/wail

i had such a great diwali weekend. a complete maelstrom of hurried, flurried activity!! hyper - social as i like to say. so many new people i met, i can't say. i was pampered and stuffed with dish after delelctable dish.hmm. i wish i could have gone for the kali thakur bisharjan with my neighbours. i've been twice and it's a divine feeling, it is. travelling in a rickety open air truck, under a 'fireworks' sky. and then you see whole hordes of other bisharjan groups staring over at your vehicle, and for once you don't mind the stares. you're all a part of an inexplicable, collective process. and then the insistent clamour of the kasha. hmhm. why do i have to write term papers whn i could be enjoying a perfectly poetic, incredibly intoxicating, mesmerisingly memorable night out? ohh and not to forget the chaos on the ganges and the last minute goodbyes to the pratima who has silently accompanied you on your journey. she stays silent though all the festive sounds are occasioned for her. and the wonderful, warm people who feel like family!! and the squeaking balloons we annoy the sound out of on the return journey and the salty taste of warm groundnuts we are always treated to...and finally the delicious warmth of a snuggly bed, after a long, tiring, hard day's night.

unresolved crises

hand in hand
over land
and sea
we
travelled, the
untramelled
bits of the world.
round and round
unbound
and free were we
as we
strolled.
him and me.
we had nowhere to go
but that didn't slow
us down.
not one frown
of worried anger
corrugated our brows
now
was the time to roam
with no desperation
to find a home.
to explore
and create
new homes, in new plots
each in different slots,
each called us with
a different flavoured voice.
ephermeral
seemed better than eternal.
until we had to make that one choice.

bisharjan blues, sharod's hues.

the other day i was curled up on my balcony railing, the sound of valedictory dhaak beats resounding through the air, and i was battling an incurable case of bisharjan blues. this inexplicable(hardly) malady afflicts me without fail on an annual basis. and since i spent most of my pujas pent up at home, things seemed doubly worse. sobsob. i am always comforted, however, by the intoxicating fragrance of the wild chhateem flowers that toss their perfume so indiscriminately into the incense filled air.
the funny thing is that i actually saw Kash phool for the first time on the drive from Mumbai to Pune, and they were the featheriest things i've ever laid my eyes upon...erm, barring feathers. sorry for my newly developed sad sens'o'humour. i am in pune now, and if i could eat the weather i gladly would, it is so delightfully delicious. sigh. the sky is many hued, complex, clear, bright, mysterious, alluring and evasive.
life can be really delectable and deplorable...like the whimsical, half made up mind of a child feeling suddenly capricious and difficult.

i've been up to some prosaic deeds off-late. like mending the undone chain/zipper of my bag. and i really miss the last year, as in pg 1.

left and right the city breeze blows, scattering the scent of the urban rose.

people complain that my blog is devoid of posts...and so it has been of late...i think i'm suffering from emotional anaemia...and every time i think i might just wish to begin liking someone, i suppress it as quickly.

i can't come up with titles

jasmine looked over her wedding jewellery yet another time, sitting on her silent bed, isolated from the boisterous bustle of the rest of her house. the necklace was an ornate affair...a symphony in gold and emeralds...not that she cared much for emeralds...at least that was what she'd told varun on those pleasant evenings which now seemed so distant. her eyes didn't reflect the heaviness of her heart...maybe because she wasn't feeling as bad as one ought to on such occasions...perhaps she was relieved that she was spared the ordeal of an ugly confrontation with her family. or maybe the heavy make up, which was causing beads of perspiration to trickle down and tickle her neck was doing a good job of concealing her grief. she was being given away to an unknown stranger, a man she'd only seen posing against a huge car in a flashy photograph. and to think she used to squirm at the mere mention of an arranged marriage! or had she secretly accepted this as an inevitability, through out the long years she dated varun? maybe latching on to varun was her devised method of keeping this final truth in abeyance? i can't make up my mind. and what am i doing imposing my fertile imagination on a woman who might be a perfectly prosaic, formerly unattached bride? i move away from the open door of her bedroom, leaving her to admire her jewels in peace...and turn away quickly, before my mind concocts a new story.

boo-hoo.

i want to sob into the comforting shoulder of my blog. snifff sniffffffff.

even in the cold glare of the broken neon
her face looked beautiful
bereft
of the glow offered by sunsets and half moons
her beauty remained unviolated
and unchanged...
being of a different breed...
a beauty which doesn't change
with time or settings,
or the frail flicker of Age's flame.

the rant unravels

see, as i've said before, Calcutta really strips the romance out of rain. i've been fervently praying to the weather-workers for a sound drizzle or two, but i had SUCH an experience last night. Mrinalini and I had gone over to the B.C.library and had a fun time immersing ourselves amongst shelves of Romatic writers. then i insisted on maintaining my tradition of whiling a while away at the new-fangled cafe...on descending, we really walked into the heart of a tempest. and it wasn't quite as romantic as it may sound. we waited, exercised varying degrees of optimism, and finally decided to venture out when the shower had waned to a mizzle. but real perils awaited us. we traipsed up and down camac street, jumping over obnoxious puddles...we were both beginning to feel like pendulums, oscillating to the obscure rhythm of Plain Bad Luck. i guess we walked for miles and miles, from stretch to stretch with no taxi in sight. oh and the buses were literally over-flowinf with floods of people crammed in. and i was silly enough to have taken the trouble of leaving my umbrella back home. so we were drenched, dreadfully tired, (we'd had an excruciating exam that morning), and dis-tastefully dis-illusioned. the occasional taxi bluntly refused to accept us as passengers, preferring to take older people, mostly men. i was so hoping we'd run into a friend, a saviour. finally we decided upon using the metro, and then taking an auto to gariahat and finally walked down the last stretch together. gosh!!

hmm

why don't some people call when i want them to?!

"sweet summer sweat?"

How is this summer sweet? t'is most vile!

mmmm hmmm. cravings. pointlesspost. don'tbother.

i want to eat an enormous slice of a very chocolatey cake, replete with pecan icing. i want ice-cream soda with cherries and strawberries, if such sodas exist. well, i want one even if they don't. and i want to have lotsa whipped cream with blue-berries. i could eat an orchard of rosy, sun-kissed apples. i want a sizzler steak. and an oreo-infested, marshmallow invaded ice-cream sundae. i want cold prawn cocktail in a VERY tall glass...wail i want them all now...boo hoo.

Leia's thoughts on Rover

today is probably the last time I'll see you in i don't know how long. years? maybe decades? sigh. i can't believe that we're having to part on this rather incomplete note. you'll never know how i felt during those several intense days, which now seem so distant. but that was when i associated you with my imaginary construction of you. when i found out what you were really like I didn't like you in the same way anymore. maybe i still liked you, but differently, somehow. we never really talked that much, barring the odd occasion or two. and now we hardly even acknowledge each other's presence. that's alright, really. perhaps someday i will get to meet that person whom i imagined you were.

oouchh!!

well, so i'm going through this immensely painful dental treatment!! gosh, why on earth was i endowed with unecessary wisdom? wisdom inevitably equals pain. nothing more. at least when it comes to teeth.

it is so inpossibly, so unbearably hot. i want to fly off to london. why london? i think it's four years of english. and i desperately wish to visit the Lake District, in an attempt to justify my incessant readings of Wordsworth over the past few days.
erm.
i'm a leetel bit tired of UNI...sometimes i wonder if my Department is more "conformist" than it would like to admit...there's this mainstream crowd, of which i'm hardly a part. but then again, who all comprise this crowd, which seems to keep changing, people slipping in and out. or maybe i don't make enough of an effort. i really don't want to be labelled cliquish though. i like making lotsa friends, despite being closer to a few. and there are many with whom i wish i shared a friendship.

and for the last time, why do people still go on about WHY i'm still single? to set the record straight, i'm still rather, well, old-fashioned and anachronistic. i just can't believe in experimental dating. well, yeah, any form of dating is always a sorta experiment, but i jusr don't think i've met Mr. Right-o yet. or maybe i don't know if i have. whatever. but rest assured, hopefully i won't celebrate eternal single-hood. hmm. i just need to meet someone who is worth sharing the perils of a relationship with. lol.

i seriously need to start thinking of what i want to do with/in life. academic? I.R.? author(i want!) sponsored globe -trekker{yes}...not sure...help!

draft

i wait for the sunset, search for the horizon,
Looking for unanswered questions.
why can't i find them when i need to?
around me the roses stir,
aroused by an amorous breeze.
around me the lone fly buzzes,
for once it doesn't irk me.
i'm too ready with answers.
but i can't find those questions,
which had piled up, in
dis-organised stacks.
perhaps,
I'd left them alone too long.
or maybe they were impatient,
and
unwilling to wait a while,
like most people i see around me.
or maybe i'm just lazy.
yes.
that's more like it.
i'm untouched by the beauty of the evening.
dusk descends too soon, obscuring my vision.
ending my search,
while Morpheus casts
an early spell over my eyes.

..!

and also these awesome short stories by agatha christie!!
oohhh, and lotsa beatrix potter!!!

rambling

i read a few books recently:
the kite runner---hosseini
be nice-donald
herland-gilman
the red badge of courage-crane
and two stories by mary liz braddon

grumble grumble:_)

i wish i didn't have to encounter superficial people more often than not. but such is my luck. :-(
i wish certain people wouldn't keep asking me if i was "really" single...geez!
i wish i could write more often. and write readable stuff.
i wish i didn't have to encounter people who like being weird, just for the sake of grabbing attention and making some sorta statement.
i wish some people would actually respect differences and not use them to put others down.

none of the above is to be taken seriously!

khelna--dotara..!

i love anjan dutta's "shunte ki chao..." it's a song i could listen to a million times over! the lyrics and the tune(leonard cohen's "sisters of mercy,"} seems to stir some remote nostalgia lurking in an undetected corner of my soul(?)...

i love joan baez and leonard cohen! :-D...
and the beatles!
and the doors(this isn't an after-thought;)

....

i stare blankly at the moon,
which holds no meaning for me now.
not that it ever did,
coming to think of it.
i imagined, or rather hoped that
a poet in me would emerge, if i
could read strange things into it.
it could help embellish my poems,
like a pretty chain around one's neck.
a dangling ornament.
But it was too haughty, too evasive
and my metaphors too weak
and hackneyed.
other poets have tampered with you enough.
and used you as a handy tool,
for supplying ready-made romance.
maybe it's your soft-pearl glow
against night's impenetrable sky,
that touched many a sensitive soul,
whose quills, pens, key-boards,
reverberate with your name.
I'll turn to the stars instead,
and let you be for a while,
until i'm tempted
to use your alluring charm
one more time.
just this once.

hey there

gosh!! i can't believe i've not written in so long...inertia had cast an unwilling spell on my fingers and mind...i've thought about my blog every day but neglected it all the same...i feel somewhat like an irresponsible parent..lol
in the meanwhile i discovered leonard cohen, who is so absolutely, so indescribably fabulous. WINTER LADY remains my favourite song.
and i've learned that working in groups can be a real challenge, but is also fulfilling.
i quite liked slumdog millionaire...the editing was awesome and though the story was exaggerated, a bit sensational and rather over the top, i found it entertaining...sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, usually both. it was a compelling watch, or so i felt. i didn't think danny boyle was "selling" poverty to the west...it is an inescapable, entirely undeniable truth, which a scattering of designer stores and over-priced cafes can't cover up...india can shine thru' each of its citizens, and learning doesn't stay restricted to the confines of a class-room.
and we've finished three productions of our departmental production...in the course of which i've re-discovered my love for theatre and have fallen in love with "six characters..." this was really one of my most memorable experiences in JUDE so far..maybe i can continue acting!!
oh, and i have a new purple and pink quilt:-)