Ramu Learns to Write

Letting the write one in

2011-10-09T01:44:00.007+05:30

It was the night of the Lunar eclipse, witching hour and the three of us stood outside cackling curses at the clouds. There they were, making sure we wouldn't see, that we couldn't see, the moon. It was very rude of them, we sulked, to come and spoil our fun.

Disappointed and embarrassed, the pointy hats had come out for no reason and our neighbors were now staring at us for want of nothing better to look at, the three of us trooped indoors.

My sisters left me to brood the unfairness of a lunar eclipse devoid of occult experience. I had been sure that something would happen, I had pinned my hopes and happiness on something happening.

It wasn't new. I have been pinning my hopes and happiness on something happening for a long time now. Indicators of something happening have included, online horoscopes, the number of mynahs I spotted and wishes made on shooting stars (which must have been airplanes). I was willing to dress up, make believe, party, make an ass of myself, be self-deprecating, day dream, build fantasies but I was not willing to work, try something, fail......

When a scream interrupted my inner monologue. My sisters came flying out of our bedroom. Followed by a bat. Followed by my mothers ultimatum to stop screaming and get the bat out! Balcony doors were opened and because of the power of the witching hour, with the help of my polite but firm directions the little spazzed vampire found an exit and left.

The pointy hats came out again and the three witches sat and dissected the Bat episode. It was renamed the vampire episode, the significance of the lunar eclipse was discussed, perhaps we had discovered a vampire-werewolf hybrid. We disagreed over which one of us it had come to meet or eat. We agreed that it was the power of my sisters screaming and the help of my imagination that made it look like the bat left after my directions. We cackled gleefully and my mother called us batty. Which made us cackle some more. I went to sleep with a smile on my face, something had happened.

Something which made me want to write again. It wasn't easy, I wrote and rewrote this post a hundred times over. I added a phrase, or a line, or a paragraph every week. I excised awful alliterations ('clouds cutting into a celestial conga line'), entire themes which were ahem clouding the post. I started laughing at horoscopes again and I stopped wishing on plucked out eyelashes. I started an internship, I applied for a job and I got a job. My confidence in myself increased.

But those single mynahs continued to plague me. So tonight, on a night which is simply a hard days night I've finished the post. I've written the last few paras, I've reworked the alliteration into the post (even if I had to use a parenthesis) and added one more. Tomorrow when I see two mynahs, I'm not going to wait for something nice to happen, I'm going to come back and change the have in the fourth paragraph to a had.

The chicken or the Egg

2010-11-26T14:19:00.005+05:30

Which came first? The chicken or the egg? According to The Second Book of General Ignorance, it was the egg. Well, duh!

But which one is the egg and which one is the chicken? Are these feelings of insecurity caused by depression, or am I depressed because I've always been a little insecure.

It's been a long year. It's been exactly one year. And it's been a horrid year of unbroken depression. At the end of it, I find myself, crippled, unable to take on even the simplest of tasks without straining myself, second guessing my beliefs and finally acknowledging the fact that I seem to have lost all direction. Useless, is the word I'm beginning to associate the most with myself.

I need to know which came first. If insecurity is the egg that hatched the depression, well I need to make myself useful, build a little self-confidence, the onus is on me. If it's depression,I can wallow some more and pray that the medication works.

I hope it's depression. I have more faith in meds than me.

Paranoia

2010-09-18T20:35:00.003+05:30

As I lay awake last night, I could hear myself in the other room, walking around, turning on lights, opening drawers, pulling apart curtains, looking for something, searching for someone. I waited for the door to burst open, for me to enter, maniacally happy to have finally found the person I was looking for, me, shivering in the night, cowering under the sheets.

Some people are deathly scared of death, others of ghosts, dogs, dustbins or snakes. I don’t need a boggart to show me what I’m scared of, a mirror will do.

I thought of locking the room, but a calm voice in my head assured me that it wouldn’t help, I was already in the room, there was no keeping me out. I was already there to talk, to taunt and to hurt.

When I’m showering I make sure I never close my eyes, I check underneath the bed and behind the curtains whenever I enter an empty room and I’ve removed the bed from my hostel room.

I know what I'm scared of, but I don't know why, maybe it's all in the head, my head.

2010-06-17T23:43:00.003+05:30

Spent the last semester a little stir crazy. Spent half of my time wishing to fall down a rabbit hole, spent the other half trying to make that happen by doing a lot of crazy things.

New semester break, new city, new internship, new medication but same old heart break. There were a couple of posts written about learning to walk, walking out of the woods, but the truth is that I seem to be walking in circles.

The gentleman with thistle down hair

2010-02-08T10:06:00.004+05:30

For someone who dishes it out as much as I do, I am painfully slow when it comes to detecting other peoples sarcasm, lies and general deceptions. Essentially I’m a cheerfully oblivious kinda person who accepts whatever other people tell me as the gospel truth. Like the time I was five at the republic day parade and my mom told me that the dinosaur on the float was real. I believed her, I had no reason not to, except for science and I knew nothing about it back then. Then there was the time I was in 4th Grade and our science teacher took an extra class during the computers period, and announced in unmistakably icy tones that those who were more interested in playing on the computers could get up and leave. I got up and left, I still wasn’t too fond of science and I thought she meant it.
Then there are other stories I was told as a kid, such as the one about my cousins grandma owning a little menagerie, which contained peacocks, rabbits and tiger cubs amongst other animals. It took me 15 years to doubt that story and the 7 year old in me still wants to believe that it’s true, that anamma actually owned 3 tiger cubs. Reading people has never been my forte.
I’d like to think that my 4 years in college where I have had the opportunity to observe human nature and behaviour up close has made me more adept at detecting deception. But it’s not so. When I read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I believed that the footnotes were carefully researched out references to “magic” books that actually existed, until I hit the footnote which began to talk about England’s Faerie King. My science may be weak, but my history is a tad better, and the believing footnotes stopped right there.
It’s a good book, a tad confusing, but fun to read. What really drew me into the story was its antagonist, the gentleman with thistle down hair. The gentleman with thistle down hair, holds people captive in his faerie kingdom of lost-hope where he forces them to dance the nights away, while in the human world these captives withdraw into shells, drowned in misery, unable to talk about their troubles, unable to sleep, eat, or live an ordinary life.
How often have I longed to track down the gentleman with thistle down hair whose been holding me captive, and stab him to bits and pieces, which as wishes go is slightly more acceptable than wanting to stab my teachers, assorted auto drivers and occasionally myself.
Anyway there you go, caustic, unable to read and therefore relate to people, mildly to moderately depressed and with a propensity for angry violence, it’s been a long time growing up and I’m still not done. The last bout of depression was particularly bad, I’m not yet out of the woods, but I’m finally up on my feet, walking and trying to get out.

Feeling Better

2010-02-07T02:52:00.006+05:30

I haven’t written anything in a long time. I haven’t been able to, I’ve been too busy. Busy wallowing in equal parts of self pity and self loathing. Depressed, dejected, feeling dumb and dull, I’ve lost the ability to articulate my opinions. Have a conversation. Write. Think.

I’ve spent the last couple of months eating, sleeping and sleep walking. I’ve “done” quite a bit, but none of it has registered over the persistent throbbing dull, sad feeling. The only things that come to mind are unpleasant breakdowns I’ve had, failures and dead ends I’ve hit in the past few months.

I’m being dragged through college by family and friends for a degree and the promise of something better after (just) one and half years more. I’m due to give my third repeat exam and at the rate my CGPA is dropping I wonder if I will be able to convince my college to let me out with a degree, much less convince some other college to let me in without a capitation fee.

I’ve been waiting for something to happen. Every day, every hour, every minute of my existence I pray for something to happen. Something which will come, sweep me out of this funk I’m in. But nothing happens unless you make it happen and the only things that I feel I can make happen are, to put it bluntly, not pleasant.

So instead I am going to write about what all has already happened to me, what I’m grateful for, and what some of my coping mechanisms are. It’s a little gratitude post, it’s going to tell me that all is not lost, that I still have a life worth fighting for and the means to fight that battle.

One of the most important things that has happened to me is blogging. It’s been a year since I started blogging, and words cannot express how much it means to me. Nonetheless I will make a short feeble attempt at explaining the role it’s begun to play in my life. Blogging gives me a sense of accomplishment, something that I badly need in the face of my failing academic career. I’ve been accused of TMI on my blog, but I don’t really care, being brutally honest on my blog has helped me deal with personal issues and insecurities with a sense of humour, it has helped me come to terms with a myself that I wanted to hide. It’s helped me understand that these insecurities are shared by others and that if I say it out aloud, I will have received and given empathy. Blogging is an outlet for a great deal of frustration, whenever I find myself in what would earlier have been a stressful or anger inducing situation, I now tell myself to take a step back, observe the situation with a sense detachment and humour so that I can blog about it later. And when I fail to achieve that state of detached humour, writing invariably calms me down and helps me sort out the very strong opinions and emotions I feel.

I owe blogging to my friends and sisters, hereinafter referred to as friends. I owe a lot to my friends. They read my blog, they listen to me and they love me. I doubt that anybody will find so perfect a combination of love, craziness, intelligence, individuality and spirit than what’s housed in my hostel. Often when I listen to other people talk about their friends, I find myself pitying them for not having mine. From my school days (when I would walk around alone in the lunch break, eating food continuously, trying to look busy, so that no one would notice I had no one to hang out with) to today (where I have in my room a wall painted bright red by my friends, so that as they explained to me, when I’m depressed and have locked myself into my room, I can look at the wall, and remember that I have friends, that I am a person people want to be friends with) I have come a long way. And it’s because of them. I’ve found my happily ever after.

Then there are the parents, they listen, they counsel, they support, they put up. I have faith in them. They are individualists and I know that whenever they have to make a decision regarding me, they think of what I would want, instead of what they want for me. They understand that I’m not them, that their values aren’t necessarily mine and that I will do things differently from them when the time comes.

So, I’ve written. The tears which prompted me to write this post have dried up. I’m feeling a lot better. From tomorrow, I will begin taking baby steps towards even more betterhood.

Instead of sleeping for hours and hours in my room, I will sleep in various rooms across the corridor, while the owners of the room do whatever it is that they’re doing. When you’re depressed and not in a position to talk to others, laugh with them, this is an easy way to gently ease back into a social life. I will resume jogging, I have no self-control when it comes to stimulants of any variety, food, music, alcohol. Jogging is a “safe” stimulant, but I end up abusing jogs as well. Once I’m in the routine, my body begins to yearn for the jogging high, I spend the entire day waiting for when I can go jogging, unable to do anything but look at the clock, when something threaten the jog, like rain or a dinner plan with friends, I get panicky and worked up. When I’m jogging, I find myself unable to stop until I’m exhausted. I will not let that happen. I will listen to anyone else who needs to talk. Because to know that you’re not alone, is the most important thing. I will ask for help when I need it.

(for those of you who are wondering, I started writing this post on the 9th of January. That day all that I could write before I gave up was the first line, also I have given and passed my repeat since then)

Lurid Orange Underpants

2009-12-14T22:21:00.002+05:30

I climbed a tree in front of the Parsi Dairy. It was fun. I went for a midnight carriage ride on Marine Drive. It was also fun. We helped a stranded five year old wade out to sea. Brave little brat, came up to two complete strangers and asked to be taken to the rocks popping out of the sea. We obliged, we gave a lecture to her sisters who had left her on the shore while they enjoyed the view from the rocks. We got called Aunty. It was fun. Except for the “Aunty” part.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks sleep walking through Bombay. I’m sorry, you deserved better, maybe next time. This Sunday, Divi and I went to see “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf” at the Prithvi Theatre. I put my head on her shoulder, shut my eyes and listened to the dialogue as it was mercilessly mangled by the actors on stage. It wasn’t all a bust though, while my eyes were open, Nick dropped trou and the name of my future band was born.

Get the guest. We played it last friday, or rather it was played on us, Divi Hakuna and Me. We tried playing humiliate the host, but didn’t get too far. All in all, the weekend gave me a lot to think about. I wouldn’t have thought much about the play without Friday and wouldn’t have given two hoots about Friday if it hadn’t been for the play. Do you enjoy being nasty? Do you notice it when you’re being an unpleasant prick? How do you shut up, get up and get out before someone gets hurt? When I wake up from this daze I’m in, I shall think about it.

“It was because you taught me to do things right, that I’m being forced to do them the wrong way” I’m translating and paraphrasing Rocket Singh, but you get the gist of what he and I are trying to say. The movie ultimately ends up implying that you can do things the right way and do them the right way. It becomes a tad preachy and it’s not as smooth as Chak de India, but Ranbir Kapoor’s colourful turbans and cute butt more than make up for any other flaws.

I leave you now, to look for a drummer , a bassist, (apparently if I can be the vocalist, Divi can be the Guitarist, we’re just THAT good) and a hug.

Dear Mumbai,

2009-11-27T21:54:00.002+05:30

I first came to you, back when you were Bombay. I was three or four, maybe five, and had been sent to stay with my aunt while my mother dealt with an illness and two babies. I hated you. I hated the fishy smell, the cramped high rise apartments, having to walk up the dingy 5th and 6th storey staircase because I couldn’t reach the 7^th floor button in (on?) the lift, the barren playground with the incredibly high see-saws and most of all having to stay in a crèche while my aunt worked. I was too much of a scaredy-cat to enjoy Essel World and Fantasy Land, and I have no memory of ever having visited the beach.

The second time I visited Mumbai was on the way back from Goa with my college friends. I cried again (of course I cried the first time... I was four! Seven at the most), I silently curled up on the couch of a second class waiting room and cried. I was physically tired and emotionally exhausted from my week in Goa. The night spent travelling in the general compartment from Goa to Bombay (we didn't try booking bus tickets until an hour after the last possible minute, by which time there were no tickets available, instead we had to race to a station one hour away in 45 minutes time to catch a train for which we could get only tickets in the general compartment) had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. We were a bunch of spoilt rich kids refusing to shift, refusing to squeeze in, refusing to adjust in a compartment where everyone else was cooperating trying to make an uncomfortable journey slightly more bearable for everyone. If you can’t travel general, can afford not to travel by general, don’t try and travel general. It hurts the others more than it hurts you. Also, and this is harder to admit, my hair was in a horrid state, it was all frizzy and unmanageable, and looked like an afro gone wrong. I am incredibly vain and self-conscious about my hair, It was the hair that broke my back.

And so here I am in Bombay again. It still smells fishy, it’s filled with even more high rises, but I can press the 7^th floor button on any lift and that helps. I love that the autos and taxis go by the meter, and I have a crick in my neck from looking up and down at all the buildings (the fountain area reminds me of London). There’s lots more that I want to see and much that I want to begin doing. Until then I like you Bombay, I’m reserving love for when I get to know you better.

Update: My mother tells me I was five when I was packed off to Bombay. I eventually cried my way out of the crèche and accompanied my aunt to work instead, there I would sit quietly, doing heaven only knows what.

Attack of the killer blahs from inner space

2009-11-18T23:18:00.005+05:30

Anybody can be crazy, it takes an artist to put it down on canvas. Anybody can do drugs, it takes a musician to write a song about it. Anybody can be depressed, you are a poet if you can express it.

P.S. I'm depressed, and no poet to boot, the best I can do is direct you to Divyas' brilliantly written post that I oh so empathize with, go read it, NOW!.

'tis the season to be sorry... or not.

2009-11-03T18:56:00.004+05:30

It’s that time of year again, when my eyes go all puffy (due to an excess of sleep). Where my back gets a cramp as I sit obsessively at my laptop for hours together (watching movies). When I stop moving out of my room, talking to anyone, interacting with anyone (because everyone refuses to).
Oh yes it’s exam time and while everyone else is busy studying I can feel my brain shut down, cell by cell. I can hear the whirr of my usually hyperactive head turning into a wheezing hacking noise as it slowly grinds to a dead halt. Brain for sale. Slightly used. Very damaged.
On the other hand, I’m finally free! Free from moots, vivas, projects, tests, teachers who irritate, classes which kill, classmates who I’d like to kill (To classmates reading this, I like and respect you outside the classroom. A lot. Just not in class.)
I hate vivas, I hate having to go and face teachers and justify what is an obviously crappy project to them. I hate having to look at their disappointed faces, as they try to ask intelligent questions on an idiotic piece of work. I squirm and feel guilty when they’re nice and let you off easy. I squirm and feel guilty when they give me the “underachiever - pull yourself together” tough love talk.
I like deadlines, they bring order to my otherwise chaotic world. I might not always make a deadline, but I will never ever make it when there’s no deadline, or even worse when a deadline keeps getting pushed around and is in effect no deadline at all.
I like exams, they get over in one clean and silent swoop, unlike presentations, tests and other forms of continuous assessment torture which go on and on with no end in sight and keep getting moved around, involve one on one interactions, mess, noise, confusion and cheating.
Exam time is bliss, sleep, movies, alone time, fixed deadlines, what more could I ask for? Silence.....

The Sound of Music

2009-10-27T10:26:00.002+05:30

My grandfather used to be paranoid, he worried like all grandparents are wont to do that I’d go deaf listening to pop music, and every time I saw him he would warn me about the dangers of listening to loud pop music (complete with anecdotal evidence taken from The Times.) “In America and London, 12 year olds go deaf listening to loud music through their ear phones” it was the ultimate condemnation of western popular culture. He needn’t have worried. Back then.
Way back then I didn’t listen to pop music, nothing, zilch, zero, mute, no hindi filmy music, no backstreet boys, no nothing. It was vulgar, shameful, used words like “sexy” and was not allowed in our house. And I would comfort my grandfather by proudly telling him that I don’t listen to pop music and that I would never listen to any pop music. Ever. Yet I remember cringing and feeling embarrassed in front of the cool kids in my sisters birthday party when we had to play passing the parcel to “the sound of music” instead of “Whigfeilds- Saturday Night”.

Then one day they showed this little, story-less, black and white movie on TV. It was an important movie and the entire family gathered to watch it, and I was hooked from that first indefinable twang of a chord of “A Hard Days Night”. I might have been sitting in my parents bedroom circa the new millennium but in spirit I was transported back half a decade, cheering, crying, running after and swooning over the Beatles. I have never looked back since then. Except to find those old, classic songs and bands (and movies) of course.

I worry now, that I will go deaf. (Turning down the volume on my ipod). Anyway, music makes my world go round, straight, up to the skies, it takes me everywhere, and I take music everywhere I go. I started listening to the early Beatles , ABBA, show tunes, Petula Clark, Simon and Garfunkel, the carpenters, Nancy Sinatra and other old pop songs on my mothers recommendation who warned me that while sexy songs were not banned, bad music was definitely barred from entering our house
I moved onto the later Beatles and bands like The Who, led zeppelin, Queen, Pink Floyd. And before I knew it I was listening to all kinds of music. I revisited the lost pop music of my youth and realized that most of it was now “uncool” trash. This means that I can with a very straight face and clean conscience tell people that I never got caught in the Aqua, Backstreet, Britney craze, my music tastes are far superior (what? I like Boney M in an ironic way and umm... Britney and Mika.....)

Today I jog, stride up and down corridors, jump around and live life to flashdance, songs from musicals, eye of the tiger, Rahman, Shankar Ehsaan Loy, Guru Dutt, Backstreet Boys, Bhajans, Brahms, Beethoven, the beatles and weird Al Yankovic. I listen to what I like. Whether its un-cool or cool, popular, indie, obscure, classic, old or new, even good or bad.

At a recent party, my ipod was being used as a jukebox. Everyone was dancing furiously to the latest fast paced noise in vogue, when suddenly the song changed and a melodious nun started singing in a crystal clear voice “she. Climbs. A. Tree. And. Scrapes. Her. Knee.” I stifled my laughter and ran over to a very baffled looking guy who was standing next to my ipod, jaw hanging and muttering “I thought it was Maria”. This time I was not embarrassed by The Sound of Music in front of the cool kids. You see, if I like a song, I will listen to it, and even my grandfather can’t do anything about it.

Hush.... it's a secret!

2009-10-25T17:24:00.001+05:30

When the twins were born, my mother was shown only one baby. The two of them were pointed out to her in the ICU only the next day as they lay under sickly yellow lights trying to fight jaundice. Happily enough, they survived and blossomed into two healthy happy bouncing babies. And that’s where any similarities ended. To put it in my mothers words who was repeating my aunts words. “One was a pleasure to see and the other was a joy to watch.” While Sumana sat around stolidly, batting her pretty long eyelashes dressed in perfect little frocks, smiling, gurgling, cooing, Nandini would be running around, constantly getting into trouble, disappearing and reappearing with torn frocks, mysterious scratches and cobwebs in her hair.
To put it in my own words; Its pouring with rain outside, Sumana will manage to make it home from school with nary a drop of water on her and not a crease out of place on her uniform, while Nandini will make it back home two hours later, after having spent the last hour in the blazing after-rain sunshine soaking wet and drenched to the skin.
They grew up into two different people something which my parents very actively encouraged by refusing to twin them, they never wore matching twin outfits, they went to the same school but were in different sections, they had different interests which were encouraged independently. Of course nature helped, and even on the surface the two of them are as different as they get. Nandini grew up into a 5 foot and something, big, curvy, dusky beauty, while Sumana is a 5 foot nothing petite, doll like girl. Forget about looking like twins, they don’t even look like distant second cousins, twice removed.
I have a theory, which is slowly becoming an unshakeable belief, that one of the “twins” is a changeling. Some hapless woman having given birth to a girl ..... again....... bribed the nurses to exchange her girl for a boy (only one baby was shown remember!). and so our family were born, Mummy (I was copying my cousin) and Naina and Me and the babies as I remember telling my parents while swinging from their legs. My Parents on the other hand remember my telling them to send one of the babies back to the hospital (I was trying to copy my cousin who had only one sister, disaster was averted when they asked me which baby to send back and I couldn’t decide.)
I tried telling my aunt this theory, and she flared up “every mother recognizes her child”. I disagree, my mother recognized the changeling as her daughter and that’s exactly what she has grown up to be. Every Day I thank god for the switch, because I can’t think of a life where I didn’t know either one of my beautiful sisters and didn’t have them to fight with and lean on. The switch theory means that no matter how far apart the three of us were born, we were meant to be sisters and would have found each other. It means that we owe so much to our parents for bringing us up to be happy and friends and it’s not a question of genes. That love runs thicker than blood. If the changelings biological mother reads this somewhere, keep your son, he’s yours, we’re keeping our sister.

Daddy Issues

2009-10-21T01:23:00.006+05:30

Firstly I could never call my father daddy. He has always been addressed by the traditional Telegu “Naina” and referred to as “My father” by my sisters and me. Even when I was a 18 month old, blindly aping my hero-worshipped older cousin and saying everything he said, I began calling my mother “Mummy” but my father remained “Naina”.
Nomenclature while indicative is the least of the issues. The main issue is not even that my Father doesn’t understand me(I’d trust him to pick my friends, my career, the books I ought to read, the life I can and ought to lead). But rather that I don’t understand him. I don’t understand how he understands me so well, what he does or did, and why, what he’s thinking, how he judges people, how he judges me (understanding and judging being different), how he got to be the super-liberal that he is coming as he does from his uber-conservative family. Everything I know about my father, his values, his life, his opinions is through my mother. My father, in short remains this mysterious, intimidating, quiet, hard working, brilliant, congress supporting, can’t remember having hugged (and I’m sad/sorry to say this last part) ATM.
It’s not like we haven’t tried. Imagine you’re a 19 year old, culturally confused, guilt stricken, ADHDd girl, trying to gain some gyaan from her father on how to deal with college (he went through the same thing after all, balancing family values with new-found freedom, the pressures of a professional course et al). You pluck up your courage and ask him what he did in college, how he spent his time, you stammer and you stutter and after minutes spent trying to frame the conversation in your head, imagining a nice heart to heart, you get this reply “TT- I played a lot of TT in my spare time”.

My mother still tries to get us to talk, and he very sweetly does call me every now and then enquiring about my state of affairs and finances, the weather and my health, but I still hem and haw and I’m no closer to sharing myself with him the way I am able to with my mother or even you who’re reading this blog and nowhere near getting him to talk about himself.
If I’m bad my sister is worse, she isn’t able to extract conversations from my mom and has to use me as the guide to understanding our mother. Knowing how it feels to not know a parent, I decided this situation required some expert interfering and subtly ordered my mom to start talking to her. The next day I get a call from my sister, who tells me that mommy rang her up and whined to her for an hour and she wants to, but doesn't know how to tactfully tell my mother to stop whining because,...... thats how life is. Just imagining the sight of my mother being told that “thats how life is” by my very lost and extremely lazy and unaccepting sister makes me want to burst out in laughter and made me realize that some people are just not meant to talk no matter how closely they’re related.
I tried to cheer up my sister by telling her that I’m not able to talk to our father which didn’t cheer her up one bit since neither is she. So I asked my sister for permission to tell my mother the whole story in a humorous manner, and it was grudgingly granted. My sister then messaged my mom on gtalk telling her that soon she and I would be laughing at my sisters expense, this she thought could be another opportunity to chat up our mother. Unfortunately my dad... ooops my Father saw the message and called back wanting to know what the joke was. My sister has given up. Naina if you read my blog, now you know. I love, admire and respect you and if we can’t talk, well, I'm not worrying, thats How life is!

Sing. Smile. Dance. Blog.

2009-10-05T12:18:00.006+05:30

There was a young teacher who got married and left for the US of A. Then there was the young teachers old teacher who left to go live with her son in Anand. There was the teacher with the irritating grandson who went to visit her other grandsons and never came back – they were presumably easier to live with. There was the teacher who sounded like a toad with a cold on the phone and beautifully powerful when she sang, she shifted to Hyderabad, presumably to be with someone near, dear and not irritating. Not to be outdone, we left the next teacher, we didn’t go anywhere, we just stopped going there one day (I’m still hazy as to whether we told her we were dropping out).
AS a result of such intensive and extensive classic carnatic music training, today when I sing (Rasputin by Boney M being my favoured song) I bring tears to the eyes of my friends.
In his autobiography “Moab is My Washpot” Stephen Fry, the Gay-ly Profane P.G. Wodehouse, rants, in capital letters spelling out F-bombs about his inability to connect with his peers because of certain musical shortcomings. I empathise. When you can’t dance without tripping, sing along to the latest singalong song without people leaving the room, you’ve lost out on a very important and primal form of socialization, of connecting at a level beyond words, you my dear friend are out of sync with the rhythm of life. To make matters worse as Fry points out, its’ not like we’re tone deaf, If Fry and I were tone deaf we wouldn’t know what we were missing. But for someone who traces her cultural awakening to watching “A Hard Days’ Night” and falling head over heels (literally, when I tried to dance to them) in love with the Beatles, its just plain old cruel. With apologies to Brendan Behan, It’s like being the eunuch in a harem, you know how its done, you hear it being done every day, you just can’t do it yourself, it’s like being a critic (gasp)! Shudder.
This weekend I danced, I shut my eyes, stopped caring about my hair getting messy, what other people might think, other peoples feet and danced. WooHoo! Jodhpur Riff, I went to listen to Dharohar, a project/collaboration between Rajasthani Folk Artists and Jason Sigh a Beatboxer, it was absolutely fantastic, you just had to get up and dance to them, I started out with foot tapping, swaying, and bobbing my head trying to look dignified, until I finally gave in and started jumping around like crazy. Then there was Swarathma, an urban-folk-rock band from Bangalore who have issues with this classification according to their facebook page, but since I don’t know anything about their music except that it kept me dancing and I have been listening to it all Sunday and all through the writing of this post I will submit to the superior wisdom of the writer of the RIFF Pamphlet, use the classification and declare myself a fan of urban-folk-rock-bands. I went to listen to Antonio Rey one of the world’s top three Spanish guitarists, and watched Farruco a third generation flamenco dancer seduce the crowd. I didn’t dance, but I definitely drooled. And for the finale there was Sivamani, the most recognizable name in the line up, I danced again, but mainly I watched and admired the potted out hippies grooving to his beats, until that is, Dharohar came up to Jam with him, and kicked his ass. Ramu does dance. To Dharohar, with enthusiasm. With a smile.

Can you hear me Cheer?

2009-10-03T12:03:00.004+05:30

My hands are sore and my throat is cracking, from too much clapping and wooting. I’ve had two consecutive weekends of fests, the colleges first ever sports fest “Yuvardha” was held last weekend and the Jodhpur RIFF is being held this weekend. I cheered at them, I cheered a lot.

My cheering has always embarrassed my sisters, when you’re sitting next to the girl with weird hair who’s the only one clapping and screaming encore in the otherwise silent auditorium, you’d be embarrassed too. My cheering takes classmates and friends by surprise, I am not exactly known for my spirit, being aware of what’s going on in college, or even what whathisnames name is. Add to this the fact that I don't know a single thing about football (it’s some sort of team sport which inspired quidditch!), and it’s umm weird that I'd come scream my lungs of at a football match in the blazing jodhpur heat instead of brooding about morality and goodness in the comfort of my darkened and suitably gloomy room. In fact a slightly ignored and disgruntled boyfriend accused my enthusiasm for Yuvardha as bordering on WAGish. But the truth of the matter is that I clap equally hard at sitar recitals, people taking an unpopular, un-cool stand in class and “National Seminars on Multiculturalism in India: Constitutional Provisions and Future Remedies”.
I like to clap, I like to cheer, if you have something you love doing, and the will to follow through on it, take opportunities and the courage to do it in front of an audience, I think you deserve to be cheered, and told to go for it (irrespective of how much you suck at it). The only thing I seem to be able to follow through on and do in front of a large audience is cheer!
The cheering seems to go hand in hand with my never wanting to tell someone not to do something. No matter how daft or dangerous the idea you put before me, I would tell you to go for it because if you don’t take chances, don’t do what you want to, you might as well not live, and you’ll never learn. Of course I’ll also try my best and hardest to be there if you crash and need a shoulder to cry on, or someone to come bail you out of jail at 4 in the morning.
This also seems to be a difference between elder sisters and elder brothers. Elder brothers want to protect their little sisters, elder sisters want their little sisters to go live and learn even if it means getting hurt. At least I want my little sisters too, I am never going to tell them that I have been through something, so that they don’t need to.... I’ll never ask them to learn from my mistakes, they need to make mistakes for themselves. I want them to do whatever it is that they want to do.
So, you know what? Go! Do something. Shut that laptop down, pick up a guitar, kick a ball around, whatever it is, I’m Cheering for you. Woot!

Would you rather be good or nice?

2009-09-30T12:14:00.003+05:30

Being good versus being nice is a matter of definition, if you define good as being good hearted and nice as being superficial, then I’d rather be good than nice. But if good means being a sanctimonious know-it-all and nice means having genuine feelings for others, than it’s better to be nice.
I was good for a very long time, I also didn’t have many friends, because I decided that part of being good meant having only friends who were good and, and I could find no one who met my high standards of goodness. I was good in the worst way possible, I was a pious priss (still am). I am trying to learn to be nice, to have friends, to see their point of view. It’s hard.
There is an argument floating around doublex, attacking teachers who encourage and promote “niceness” amongst students as opposed to (and thus preventing them from) thinking about deeper moral issues and serious self introspection. In my very, very humble opinion, I’d rather be nice, and have friends, the only thing, deep introspection and thinking have ever given me is a headache. It’s not like I’d get along with a bunch of people thinking about "deep moral issues", if everyone thinks about “moral issues”, everyone will also fight over the moral issues and their take on it. Simpler to be nice, get along and eat chocolate ice-cream while watching chick-flicks.
Today, has not been a good day, I have burst out laughing in the middle of one class trying to be nice, screamed in the next trying to be good, and frankly my dear, I couldn’t give a damn. I haven’t been good and I haven’t been nice. Maybe it’s time to get back on my meds again. Maybe it’s time to apologise. Maybe its time to cut down on the crazy.

(The title isn't a rhetorical question by the way.)

The Trickster, the Bastard and the Holy Crow

2009-09-29T11:10:00.005+05:30

In the beginning, all the stories belonged to Tiger, and they were nasty, brutish and short. Then along came Anansi, and he won the stories from Tiger, he tricked tiger and took them, all of them. The stories now belong to Anansi and the world is a better place. Thanks to Anansi, brute strength and eating up your opponent is no longer the point, instead it’s about wile, about brains about taking, or rather about finding the easy way out. It marks the point in time where strength of the mind defeated strength of the body. It’s the start of creation, invention and innovation it’s the point where Human beings evolved.
Anansi is a trickster god, a culture hero from Africa. He is there all over the world, in all the stories we read, Brer rabbit, Tenali Raman, Baby Krishna, Coyote from American-Indian Mythology, even the book you just finished and put down is an Anansi Story. I don’t believe in god, but I do believe in Anansi. I believe in he who thinks, who has a sense of humour, who’s annoying and charming in parts and thanks to whom even the weakest, tiniest, most insignificant creature can be the (s)hero(e) of a story.

I believe in the Bastard, the bastard is the god (or demon depending on which theory you follow – quintarian, quadrene) of balance and all those who are shunned and neglected, not understood by society- homosexuals, women, orphans, along with the incestuous, criminals and paedophiles. I believe that everyone deserves a fair trial, a right to be heard and a punishment which is proportionate to the crime. That emotions and lynchings are no substitute for reason and the law. That morality changes, what was a sin yesterday might become perfectly acceptable, or a fundamental right today, what was acceptable and justified yesterday, can be immoral and outrageous today. The bastard reminds us to avoid being judgmental, to remember that standards change, that no matter how heinous the others crime is we don’t have the prerogative to give up on our humanity.
I also crush on Nawat, the crow who became a human. He’s the intelligent, slightly perplexed by human beings, utterly charming and adorable love interest of one of Tamora Pierces kickass Sheroes (that’s “female protagonists” as opposed to “heroine love interests” for those of you who don’t know). I also like crows, the birds, they’re intelligent, they’re beautiful, their voice is as harsh as mine (those of you who have never heard me sing Rasputin, can thank the trickster and bastard for your good fortune), they’re associated with the trickster and the bastard who represent my beliefs and values, they’re not pigeons.
To learn more about Soumya “Ramu” Ramasubramaniams religious, spiritual beliefs and principles please refer to Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, Tricksters Choice and Tricksters Queen by Tamora Pierce and Curse of Chalion by Louis Mcmaster Bujold.

Mad Pride

2009-09-28T14:45:00.001+05:30

Dear Everyone,

I have ADHD, which means I don’t have the patience to tell you what it means, so please go and google it, if you care. I can’t stand loud noises, unpleasant chattering, mess and confusion, my brain can’t process it, everything comes too fast and it hurts. This is why I hate class, and refuse to go to class. This is also why I run. I can’t write, when I started my blog, I was on Ritalin, that helped me focus and I managed to type out a few sentences here and there, by the time I had finished typing out the first line of one post, I would have had an idea about another post, and would start trying to write that. I have a folder on my desktop labelled Ideas, it has 20 documents consisting of one line each, they’re brilliant ideas, I wish I could tell you about them, maybe some other day when I am not so high. I can get High on air, pure air, I don’t need caffeine, though I love caffeine (must have pepsi!) I don’t need chocolate, Just breathing in and out can make me high. So can movies, so can music, so can a charged atmosphere. This means that to stop myself from getting high I need to avoid these situations, which means I spend a lot of time dead to the world trying to stay calm. That sucks! I am no longer on Ritalin, it worked great for a while, then it made me a zombie, that by the way is why I flunked Admin Law, also I hate class, I hate class and that’s why I flunked history (didn’t know about ADHD back then). I love history by the way, I love the way it was taught to us, and I think everyone owes it to themselves to study history. Go read “India after Gandhi” or make a family tree of the pre tudors. We (Meghana and I) made a family tree of the pre tudors, we spent 12 hours straight researching genealogy, making inane connections, deciphering the murky politics of the war of the roses, but we did it. Ask us to sit for 12 seconds, and work on labour Law, that we can’t do. Not that it matters.........

Love,
Ramu/Ramsub/Soumya.

P.S. I can’t talk on the phone either, so please, if I suck at it, forgive me. If I’m rude, it’s because I don’t know. If I don’t care, it’s because if I started caring I wouldn’t stop until I died of exhaustion. If I stare at you weirdly, don’t worry. If I charge at you, get out of the way. A big thank you to my friends and my Family, they have been so awesome about this.

P.P.S. Amma, don’t worry, I am fine! It’s just that I am tired after cheering at the sports fest, and I will be good and attend classes.

The Girl Likes to Run

2009-09-21T12:12:00.001+05:30

One of the nicest compliments I have ever received is from Hakuna, she says she can’t sleep at night unless she’s lulled to sleep by the gentle patter of my footsteps as I pace up and down the corridor of our hostel. I don’t know whether the rest of the girls on the corridor feel the same but I do know that I love running up and down our hostel corridor, thudding, dodging clothes stands, charging at people, ipod blasting in my ears so that I’m oblivious to the rest of the world. Eccentric? I guess, but hey! That’s me!

I love the feeling of wind in my hair, the sky above me, the ground beneath my feet when I go jogging. I’ll put up with the dust up my nose, the couples I have to jump over (true story!), the potholes I have to dodge as I take my rounds around the football field, in order to feel the way a good jog can make you feel. Heart pumping, feeling alive, wide awake and wonderfully exhausted all at the same time. Not so very eccentric I guess.

I like to run away to different places, be on the move, see new places, see old places in a new way, wander aimlessly around the city I live in, fall asleep on a train, fly around the countryside in a bus, go for a silent drive on a long road that goes nowhere.

I run away from and with a great deal of things, other people, my feelings, work, headaches, depression, stupidity, a sense of fun, adventure, independence. I just want to run, keep running and never stop. It clears my head, stops my brain from over thinking, my mind from going crazy. It lets me deal, it lets me be.

If she wants to run, let her.

Danny Ocean meet Jamal K. Malik

2009-09-20T16:41:00.000+05:30

Last winter, we went to see the famed (and might I add, utterly fabulous) Faberge Eggs. Those ill-fated relics of the Romanov Dynasty, stars of the blockbuster (and might I add, utterly boring) Oceans Twelve movie were being displayed at the National Museum in Delhi. What a contrast between the movie and the display. At the museum the jewels had been dumped, quite literally dumped into a room with peeling paint. Some hideous, cheap and makeshift gold moulding had been done around their (flimsy) glass cases (intended no doubt to convey to us the glamour and grandeur of European castles, but ended up reminding me of some cheap Punjabi wedding Tent). The write-up about the jewels was taped on to the wall and in fact fell down as we were walking through, the lone guard placed there to protect this king’s ransom in jewels was busy trying to prop it up, failing which he started a conversation with a cute little five year old who was whooping it up by doing gymnastics on the railings. If I remember correctly, in the movie the Faberge Egg was housed in an actual European Castle, (with much better write ups, though they are never shown in the movie, I am assuming that these at least were not copied of Wikipedia.....) and protected, guarded and transported with such care that stealing it was deemed to be the ultimate test of thievery.
Standing there, turning my patented shade of green, I had an Idea. An Idea which could make the world a better place. They ought to remake the Oceans Twelve movie. Not only will a boring movie be bettered but as a consequence (perhaps) museums and transportation in Delhi might also improve. In the new movie the Oceans gang and the Nightfox instead of wasting all those resources, time and intellect on trying to steal the egg in the western world, will simply wait for it to come to India. The actual stealing will be a piece of cake (all they need is cute 5 year old Kid, a hammer and a sturdy bag, gloves if they want to be really careful) and could play over the end credits as a sort of bonus scene, instead the movie will focus on the Oceans Gang and the Nightfox racing each other to see who gets to the Museum first. Delayed, Diverted or Cancelled flights would be the first obstacle for them to overcome. If they do touchdown, their luggage could get misplaced or else they would get held up in immigration by our esteemed and bumbling airport staff. Then they must race through the busy streets of Delhi navigating traffic, touts and beggars by using a variety of transportation modes. The oceans gang would definitely have the upper hand, they could use a variety of modes, and see which one works faster (thus ensuring their pre-mandated win). George Clooney in a DTC bus! Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Bernie Mac in an auto! The nameless others in cars, metros, taxis, cycle-ricksahws or walking. Who will get held up in traffic? who will be forced to intervene in a case of eve-teasing? who will end up in an accident? and who will have to bribe a corrupt cop? Watch them as they scramble through the city, going past slums, high rises, posh malls and through the gullies of Old Delhi. Not only would it be fun and entertaining but it would also make for a deep and insightful film on the problems plaguing the transportation system (and cultural history conservation problems) of the Capital City of the world’s largest democracy.
Critics would applaud it for this innovative take on a third world country (public transportation rarely being the focus of big blockbusters, Titanic and Speed Excluded). The audience would appreciate the deft combination of humour, exciting chase sequences and exotic locations. Serious cine buffs would ooh and aah about the cinematography, editing and compare it to Slumdog Millionaire. George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon et al would get to add India to their list of countries for which they’ve raised awareness and done general good (Darfur is getting kinda old). And hopefully it would shame the Indian authorities into improving our museums and our public transportation system.

I don't feel Special anymore

2009-09-07T00:02:00.000+05:30

The best way to cure a hangover is to pour yourself another drink. And to cure yourself of pouring drinks through the day, you need good friends.
I always wanted to come to Jodhpur to study Law, I was enticed by the fact that we would have individual rooms with balconies and 24X7 Internet. Needless to say I didn’t get in, I cried myself to sleep that night. Instead I went to Pune, and it turned out to be a great city, a fun college, smart kids, a different “me” away from home and I began to have a blast. Two of the best weeks of my life (until then) later I got into Jodhpur on the second list, I cried myself to sleep that night.
I landed up in Jodhpur, determined to make the best of it, if I was fun, smart and managed to make friends in Pune, I could do the same in Jodhpur. Except that I couldn’t. My new classmates were not as smart as the old ones, and I wasn’t as smart as my new classmates, I couldn’t follow what was happening in class, I couldn’t follow their conversations on the Basketball Court where they would gather every night en-masse, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t connect, I couldn’t do anything. I became my old drab, scary, studious and off-putting self.
Nothing was going right, I was in the wrong class (the other section was so much more “me”), on the wrong floor (the ground floor had the more interesting girls and conversations), on the wrong side of my corridor (Hakuna was all the way across at one end and I was at the other end) and on the wrong side of everyone. I was crying and complaining every night to my parents. I was trying to stay in touch with “the guy- the ex-future boyfriend” and “the girl- my Gureeji” from Pune and not handling that too well either. I was refusing to give my new college a chance.
But slowly, somewhere, things started to change, connections were made and deep friendships formed. There was the shy girl directly across my room, who I first saw through a haze of dust and parents, who introduced us to each other on the day we were moving into our rooms, there is the girl in the room next to me, I first saw her at the medical examination, giving a long list of allergies to the doctor, my competitive spirits were roused, I prodded my mother in the ribs and asked her if I could tell the doctor I was allergic to show-offs, She told me to shut up. Today I know I’m on the right floor, in the perfect corner closeted between my two bestest friends in the whole wide world. I am also allergic to dust as I found out very painfully in the third semester.
I remember the night I sat with Indiegurl out in the corridor, all night long talking and becoming friends. I remember the auto ride back to college where I was grilled by that shy quiet girl and we found out we could have been twins and should be friends.
Hakuna and I withdrew and shut ourselves into our rooms, shut ourselves out of the world, went emo, grew apart until each thought the other was a freak. Then last semester we came out of our rooms and realized we had spent the same life, thinking the same thing, just on the opposite sides of the corridor. Along the way we found a couple of other girls who were doing the same in their rooms. We now sit together and wonder why we never looked around us earlier, exchange angsty emo songs and dance to bad music while brooding over how we will never be understood by anyone else......... apart from ummm.... each other.
A friend and I went for a drive tonight, as were pulling into college, an old Hindi Song started playing on the radio. It brought back a flood of memories, the back seat of my car, my parents up front, my sisters beside me, Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar songs lulling me to sleep. The security of home and family. We pulled up to the front of my hostel, and I realized I had come home, to the security of my friends.

Theres a monster in my Fridge!

2009-08-30T00:48:00.000+05:30

Its 12 at night and though I am well fed, nay stuffed on some excellent Mediterranean/Italian food from Fresc co's excellent all you can eat buffet, I am feeling hungry! Very very hungry!

Since I am at home (those of you who thought there was an all you can eat mediterranean/italian buffet in Jodhpur, I am sorry for having led you on), kindly, well-meaning but sadly ignorant friends have suggested that I simply raid my fridge, what could be better than home food after all?

Pretty Much everything, including my college mess food, would be an honest answer. My mother has given up cooking. Instead the cooking is left to our maid of 10 years, who seems to have spent the last 10 years un-learning any cooking she might have known when she first came to us. The fresc co dinner was in fact to make up for the singularly unsatissfactory lunch I had consisting of some burned Bhindi, sludge like Sambar and Soggy rice. Even my longing for a simple curd rice could not be satissfied, for when the curd in the fridge was inspected it turned out to be sour chunks of Ice a couple of days old.

The curd however was the least of the horrors that the fridge contained, consider as an example the 10 day old Rassam. Unlike Wine and Cheese, Rassam does not getter better with age (Unless you're some sort of mutant disease carrying bacteria looking for the ideal breeding ground). When Rassam has spent 5 days in a fridge, the Ghee in the Rassam congeals and floats to the top of the bowl, forming a greasy green gloop, below that lies a layer of mud coloured water which is resting on a bed of sludge made up of Dal and lightly rotting tomatoes. Rassam which has wasted in the fridge for 10 days should not be described publicly.

If that isn't enough to put you of food forever, theres the Tori, Lauki, Tinda Ki Sabji made without any Fat, any Masala or anything that makes food taste good. Then, there are the tins of grated coconut and dried Curry leaves and bags of shrivelled up lemons and green chillies. Yum!

My mother is (was?) a good cook, I remember a time when my Tiffin Boxes were famed and would be devoured by hordes of hungry classmates even before the bell for the first period of school rang. It's just that ever since I left for college, she's developed this antipathy towards Kitchens and all things domestic (when I come home, I am met not with pampering, but rather a paper containing a list of chores). Why? I don't know, whenever I ask her she mutters something darkly about freedom, not wanting kids and poison. Some kids can't wait to go home and have a nice meal. Me? I can't wait to get back to college and eat a meal without the fear of being poisoned by my mother or food poisoned by my maids cooking.

Thou shalt not blog publicly ...... (who knows what people might think)

2009-08-27T10:06:00.004+05:30

I study in a small desert town, and the first proper rain of the season is always intoxicating. When the grass turns a lush green, and the ground is coloured in a multitude of deep reds and browns. The sky is washed a brilliant blue, and the scent of water on the ground hangs everywhere. I wish I could bottle this scent, wear these colours and feel this way forever, Wet Earth.

My two best friends and I woke up to this earthy yet ethereal feeling last evening, and decided to enjoy every minute of it. We went to a close by dhaba frequented by our College students, sat outside, enjoying the rain, the weather, the glorious feeling, good food, ourselves and the company.

Did we do anything wrong? Apart from smoking in a public place (I’m sorry, I apologise for that, allow me to put out that cigarette) I can’t think of anything, yet popular public opinion seems to be that we did a very stupid thing. We ought to think before we do things like this!

There was the guy at the dhaba who followed us into the city, fell at my friends feet, begged her not to take him wrongly, that he considers her his sister and asked her not to smoke openly. I honestly thought for a second that he meant it for her health, when I remembered that he’d been smoking too. He asked her not to travel publicly and not to eat at hotels or else her reputation will be spoiled and presumably no one will want to marry her. We ought to have thanked him for his concern, promised to be good little girls and quietly moved on. But there’s a reason the two of us are best Friends, and both of us immediately launched into an incoherent argument with him, “you were smoking! What if we were boys? No we won’t!” He got more agitated, we got more incensed. Finally our third friend had the sense to tell him, that we had heard what he had said and would consider it, he let go of my friend’s feet and we drove of fuming.

There were the guys at college who told us we had it coming and that girls should never got to Dhabas on their own. You have no Idea what people might think. There were girls who agreed. There were friends who were surprised that we went to the Dhaba on our own without manly men to protect us. There was my mother, who very thoughtfully pointed out that the new flexible and accepting me, might actually agree with him ten years down the line after reconsidering and re-evaluating what he said.

Let’s give the guy at the dhaba a break, he doesn’t know better. I’ll pass on my mother, I think she was trying to be funny or making a point. But I refuse to listen to the Big-Town-Kids-Stuck-in-a-Small -Town, with their bored, utterly condescending attitude, they’re worse than the guy at the Dhaba. They pretend to know better, they ought to know better, yet they don’t. They are the ones who need to be the change they keep saying they want to see. They’re hypocrites who think it’s OK for girls to party with them, get drunk with them, sleep with them but not OK for girls to go to a dhaba on their own.

I’ve been told I need to stop reading books, and learn to be a good human being instead, that girls should leave swearing to boys, I’ve been told by guys that they don’t believe in feminists so I better keep my mouth shut. That if I keep spewing feminism, I’m going to die sad and alone. I intend to die screaming my head off, so what if I’m alone and no one else can hear me, I’m doing it for me.

Dear God, this is Ramu

2009-08-26T18:17:00.002+05:30

Most of the times I am a secular agnostic. Let me be, let me think on my own and I veer towards deism, preach to me, take me to a temple and I’ll become an atheist. In the 6th grade I developed a strong antipathy towards religion, it’s a long reason which involves civics, history, certain irritating family values, proselytizing, feminism and Aastha Channel. At around the same time I lost my faith in reincarnation and god, it’s a long story involving, goldfish, Mr. Walt Disney and the Discovery Channel, it’s also more boring that it sounds. I became an insomniac, awake at all odd hours of the night pondering the meaning of life, the universe and everything else. I was scared of death, scared of not being able to think anymore, of not being able to be. I felt like a hypocrite because I couldn’t tell my family, and would still visit temples, still pray when expected to and even worse, ask for favours from a god I didn’t believe in (please..... please...... please, do something about the pimple on my nose)

In 3rd Grade my Parents signed me up for a Hindu Sunday School called Bal Mandir. This is the first time I am publicly admitting that I went to Sunday School, and while I’m admitting things I’ll admit that I enjoyed myself there. Bal Mandir was surprisingly Fun, they had a lot of stuff happening on the side which I got to take part in, unlike school where I was lost amongst the great un-charismatic, very-ordinary masses. There were elocution competitions which I got to win, being a natural at blab even at that young tender age. There were cultural programs with really bad dancing, I was always Krishna, and had to stand in the centre like a statue, in a blue T-shirt, Yellow satin Dhoti holding a bansuri while the other girls got to dance around me in pretty lehangas. There were annual day functions with bad acting, I remember the first time I took part, and I had only one line, “arre! yah nevala toh manushya ki boli mein bol raha hai!” I ended up forgetting my cue and had to be prompted, I consoled myself with the thought that this line was supposed to be said with astonishment (“ashcharya mein” was the exact description), and that the delay merely indicated how very astonished I was- at least that’s how my loving mother consoled me.

I guess what I ended up taking away from Bal Mandir came from the time I refused to be Krishna, and was given a 2 page moral to recite at the end of a play. No I don’t remember the moral, in fact I didn’t even memorize it like I was supposed to, I lost the only sheet it was written on, and forgot about it until D-Day dawned. My mother instead of behaving like the loving parent she normally is, refused to call me in Sick and sent me, a shaking, quavering 9 year old to face and ‘fess up my misdeed to Tara Di. “Chee! Chee! sab gobar kar diya!” That line still rings in my ears as I’m about to do something wrong, let someone down or embarrass myself. As a punishment I was given the lead role in the annual day function. Needless to say this time around, I knew all my cues, all my dialogues and didn’t protest too much at having to play an old Man, a Crazy old man at that, complete with fake beard and very real stick with which I could hit people. My adoring Aunt was appalled when the best actor prize was given to someone else, my loving mother told me that someone else who won it did a better job and deserved it.

My experiments with religion and god still continue, I am no longer scared (there’s no point..... it’s not going to matter), I no longer stay awake all night wondering what will happen to my (fabulous! And Narcissistic......) mind when I die, and I (very surprisingly), no longer hate Religion the way I once did. In fact, from thinking that I could believe in God but not Religion, I now feel that I could appropriate some religious values in my life, but I’m still not sure about God. Remembering Bal Mandir, even though I don’t remember any of the shlokas I was sent there to learn, I do remember snippets of their meanings, and they’re beginning to make more and more sense to me as I grow up, not-so irritating Family Values, studying history again, re-reading and re-evaluating the Ramayana and Mahabharata, all this has led to a very gradual change in my beliefs, I didn’t realize it was happening until it happened and I can’t tell you in which grade I realized that It had happened. Perhaps for these reasons this belief will be a more permanent and flexible one, I’m allowing myself to change naturally, instead of clinging to what I think is right. As of writing this post I am an Agnostic, Secular, Hindu. If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.

(yet) Another brilliant Idea for bringing peace to the weary soul

2009-08-22T06:46:00.001+05:30

Its one in the morning and there a party going on just outside my hostel (its freshers!). I am bored. I don’t dance, don’t drink, don’t dope and don’t date, the only d I am given over to is sadly enough depression. Did I mention I’m bored and depressed?

There was another girl over there, she didn’t date, drink or dope either, but she was having the time of her life dancing. She didn’t have technique, but she had grace, she didn’t know the steps but you could tell she was having a ball. She was the belle of the Ball. Every Guy (sober enough to notice her) would talk to her, twirl her around and wait eagerly for a smile from her. She was 4. How she got onto the dance floor, I don’t know, but I’m glad she did. I love little Kids. I love little kids left alone to do their own thing, When they’re just learning to walk confidently, When they’re discovering music and dance, when they’re inquisitive, when they stumble, when they smile, when they laugh, when they gurgle, when they make the most adorable faces all scrunched up in curiosity intent at enjoying and absorbing everything about this wonderful world they’re in. Not so fond of them when they’ve learnt to talk properly, if they begin to cry, begin to stink, or have to be baby sat for a long time. But watching an 18 month old tot trip over itself while waddling towards....... well nowhere in particular, remains unparalleled as a source of joy and happiness.

OK.... so maybe I didn’t have all that bad a time at freshers, maybe this actually comes second to the party where I sat in the Lobby reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and eating chocolate Ice-cream. (X: did I see you in the lobby reading a book last night? R: Yes that was me I like boo..... X: oh thank god I thought I’d had too much to drink and was hallucinating)

Which is why I propose (for those of us afflicted with depression and other such DSM VII categorized illnesses)..... drum roll please....... (badam bam boosh!) the Toddler Zoo!

It would be a large room with glass walls and padded flooring in which a whole lot of toddlers will be let loose. The room will contain a bare minimum of toys which will be of a terribly basic nature, so that the spectators don’t feel jealous of all the fun and gee-whizz-bang toys the little kiddies are allowed to have and which are now forever denied to them on account of their age (and also because little kids just seem to do so much more, when they have less). You can stand and watch them amble around, trip and laugh, dance and hop from a safe stink free distance (until you get bored, in which case you are free to leave). Should a toddler begin to cry he/she will be removed from the enclosure and delivered to its mama (or papa) and another happy tot will be brought in as a replacement.

Pure Bliss! It could replace Yoga and meditation or Koi fish and Japanese Rock Gardens (with sand raking) as the latest and the most effective method for calming the mind and bringing peace to the soul, cults could spring up around its therapeutic value and the phony field of psychiatry could finally be annihilated from the face of this earth........... Anyone interested out there?

Anyway much as you can learn from little kids and derive enjoyment at the same time I doubt that it’ll replace books (they’re still my favourite).

To think or not to Think

2009-08-18T11:07:00.004+05:30

It was easy to rant about and critique Kambhakt Ishq, even the half a brain cell watching this movie leaves you with was more than enough to figure out and point out what all was wrong with the movie. It’s a little harder to tell you why I liked, nay Loved Dev D. Of the top of my head and without much analysis, I’d say it was the music, the look of the movie and the character arc of Dev which was portrayed brilliantly by Abhay Deol (sigh........)

It’s a lot harder (almost impossible) to tell you what I thought of Kaminey, primarily because two days after watching the movie, I can’t remember much about it, what I liked, what I didn’t like, what I was thinking of during the movie, what I felt about the characters, nothing much, no strong opinion. All I know is that I enjoyed watching the movie, I was buzzed out after I saw it and that I’d like to watch the movie again.

There are some movies which defy analysis by me. It’s not that they’re mindless movies, it’s just that I seem to watch them mindlessly. These movies (almost always) contain the following elements. Humour, it could be black, it could be very clean, but mostly it’s inconsequential humour, there’s no deeper hidden meaning beyond making the viewer laugh (even the Mumbai Bumbai joke in Kaminey is an old one, last noticed by me in Jab We Met! And which has lost all meaning due to repeated use). They always have well fleshed out female characters, it doesn’t mean that they portray my ideal woman, but rather that they portray women as they are, without shying away from their faults and emphasizing their strengths, (Priyanka Chopras role was an absolute delight to watch and her acting was excellent, must have more women with machine guns in movies). They have no right and wrong, either all the characters are kamineys with some redeeming feature, or else all the characters are decent but slightly flawed people, the only reason you’re rooting for someone is because they have star billing (this movie does have some obvious variations in good and bad, but since the movie so staunchly refuses to pass judgment on any of its characters or glorify any other, you’re also left unable to decide whether you agree with the movie.) These movies are generally high concept movies that through the skill of the director/ writer managed to avoid becoming gimmicky (excellent direction, great writing). These movies have a sense of fun, they have panache, they have style (cue the wonderfully choreographed to look unchoreographed Dhan te Nan, the relationship between Mikhail and Charlie). And they always have happy endings, sometimes ambiguous ones, sometimes with a twist, but a happy ending nonetheless.

I can’t find anything to disagree with, or agree with in these movies, they’re about style, they’re about the experience and I leave my brain behind and enjoy them. They’re movies like RocknRolla, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Kind Hearts and Coronets (an oldie and an absolute goldie), Arsenic and Old lace (these being the black humour ones), Singin’ in the Rain, Music and Lyrics (Clean Humour and yes I enjoyed Music and Lyrics). Think of them as abstract paintings or instrumental music, often there’s a meaning, but sometimes it’s just about the viewing/hearing pleasure. It’s art.

What do I think about movies like these and Kaminey? I think I need to watch....... enjoy them again.

Emofanal Atyachar

2009-08-16T21:09:00.000+05:30

I have seen a lot of shitty hindi movies in the theatre. I don’t come across as the sort of person who watches hindi movies, let alone shitty ones and that too in the theatre, but take my word for it I have. If you can’t take my word here’s a sample from the list, Hello Brother, Har Dil Jo Pyaar Karega, Mujhse Dosti Karoge, Kaal and of course, Kambhakt Ishq. I was not a big fan of Hindi movies, never did care very much for them, the melodrama, the lack of finesse, the hammy acting, the stereotyping, the sexism, it made me cringe, it left me depressed, disillusioned angry and mad.

That is, until I saw Bluffmaster. I didn’t expect to, but I ended up adoring Bluffmaster, cute story (‘inspired’, but nevertheless), told well, acted well, no melodrama, actually funny and plausible in its own way. I decided to pay more attention to Hindi Movies. Since then I have fallen in love with Hindi Movies, they’ve developed a certain panache, a certain style, there’s attention and realism in the details, in the characters, in the relationships they portray. The song and dance (and sometimes melodrama) is still there but it’s done with a wink to the audience as if the movie acknowledges the ridiculousness of it all. Hindi Movies have discovered a sense of ‘Fun’ and I’m Loving it.

Since then I have loved Chak De India, Rock On, Luck By Chance, Love Aaj Kal, Lage Raho Munnabhai, and of course Dev D. These movies had their flaws, but each one had some little touch that made me sit up and pay attention. Chak De was understated brilliance, I went in groaning at the thought of another Rah! Rah! We are Indians and invincible (............not!) movie, instead I got a steady and believable story about an underdog team and its disgraced coach, the look of the movie was spot on, shabby Indian fields, dingy government offices populated with paan stained babus and of course Shah Rukh Khan on his scooter (and not big flashy car!) in the last scene. Rock On while not all that great on the whole (for starters, which self respecting Rock Band calls itself Magik?) handled its characters and relationships very well, from Arjun Rampals nagging and neglected spitfire of a wife, to Farhan Akhtars society belle with a heart of gold wife, how years later when Farhan Akhtar bumps into his ex-girlfriend (who he dumped by running away and leaving behind a letter) it does not lead to melodrama as much as a temporary awkwardness. And all the horridness that was Deepika Padukones acting was redeemed in that one scene of Love Aaj Kal when Saif Ali Khan after being mugged in San Fransisco stays beaten down, slightly hysterical and bleeding away, instead of pulling together, running after the baddies and kicking the crap out of them a la any movie made in the 90s (when it was some sort of unwritten rule that Hindi Movie heroes could not be beaten up by goondas without their managing to exact some sort of appropriate revenge, especially if the goondas happened to be Firangs). Lastly, Luck By Chance is brilliant through and through. It’s witty, it’s smart satire, it’s polished and it’s the movie I wanted to make about gender equations. Konkona Sen Sharmas ending dialogue/monologue where she dumps the grovelling Farhan Akhtar by telling him that she would rather lead her own ‘imperfect’ life than be a footnote in his ‘perfect and famous’ life still gives me Goosebumps when I think about it. My movie (I was going to win an Oscar for it) was going to end on a similar note, when the too good to be true hero comes back asking for forgiveness from the slightly frumpy heroine, he tells her that he’s sorry he left her but now he wants to be the last guy in her life..... awwww....... not! The heroine then gently tells him that this wasn’t the correct thing to say, he should have said that he wanted her to be the last girl in his life and goes away leaving behind a very baffled looking hero trying to figure out the difference.

These movies leave me High! It’s like a concentrated shot of adrenalin. I think furiously about the story, the acting, the dialogue, the look and cinematography. The Music remains pounding in my ears long after I’ve left the theatre and sometimes I end up not sleeping for days (!) racing up and down my hostel corridor all night (don’t ask!) because I’m that rattled by the movie. It’s a bit extreme, and heaven knows what’s wrong with little ole me (Mom says I’m high strung). I just saw Kaminey and I foresee several long sleepless nights ahead of me, as I try to work it out of my system.

Thank heavens for hostel - Long corridors, heavy sleepers and accommodating friends.

I get By, If we Try

2009-08-10T19:21:00.000+05:30

This blog is supposed to help me improve my (once upon a time) non-existent writing skills. My first, biggest supporter in this endeavour and the person, who finally got me started, is Hakuna Matata. Which is why, I am ashamed to admit that once upon a time I did not appreciate Hakunas Poetry writing efforts. I could do much better, I told myself. This air of superiority quickly evaporated when I actually tried to write something and discovered my lack of any (poetry, prose, drama, test-answers, internship application) writing skills. Since then (that was a good three years ago) I have managed to produce this blog and some pathetic and extremely pretentious attempts at poetry, I still haven’t managed to get around to writing test answers and my internship applications are written by my parents.

The chirpy (and slightly daft, is there ever any other sort) best friend on a TV show announced that, “Yes! She was dating and that they were in ‘like’, she and her boyfriend liked each other”. This made me smile and reminded me of one of my poems I had written earlier. It was all about a girl explaining to her (possibly indignant and ego-ruffled) boyfriend that she doesn’t “love” him but yes she does “Like” him and that she doesn’t use either word lightly. This led to another memory of my birthday, it must have been 4 in the morning and the revelries were just winding down, we were lying on my bed exhausted with dancing and high on cola and ice-cream (I do drink....... It’s just that I drink like a hyperactive 5 year old) and the song “Mera Pehla Pehla Pyaar Hai” was bursting through the speakers, someone tried to get me to name one person to whom I could dedicate this song and I drew a blank! I thought and thought, but it came to naught. No one, no love, no crush no nothing. I guess it made me feel alone. This feeling of being alone used to come quite often, it’s getting rarer as I get more and more comfortable in my own skin and even more importantly as I get more and more accepting of others. But when it does come, I crash and Burn. Last night we were high again, (on alcohol, cola and freedom from moots respectively) and the talk turned to boyfriends, flings and the like, the problems, the fun, the dilemmas, the .......... the high with freedom from moots friend sighed and said that she missed her ex. I could feel a shell starting to grow, I miss exes I never had.

This feeling of being ‘alone’ is very psychologically upsetting and hurting and physically discomfiting, I once described it to my mother as, “you can literally feel the hormones and chemicals whooshing around in your body, reacting, bubbling and boiling over”. I also feel guilty, I have never had these many friends, such close, steady and supportive friendships. Perhaps I feel lonely, because I can’t empathise with them when they have these relationship talks, I feel different, because I have no clue and nothing to say to them, no way of helping them, no way of understanding them. No way of understanding me, is it a repressed sexuality manifesting itself as complete asexuality, or maybe I am asexual, maybe I’m a repressed homosexual thus acting asexual. My head could burst, when will I be able to find answers? I don’t know.

I get by, to quote Richard, Paul, George and John, with a little help from my friends and an abundance of optimism. For you see despite being a brainwashed, brahm - Guilt enveloped, practical, not very girly, man hating, feminism spewing, not a good human being (so, I’ve been told, but that’s another story) oblivious and lost girl, I am a romantic at heart. Things will happen, I will make them happen, I have faith in fate and I have faith in myself and some person out there. I will find my answers and I will overcome the whooshing hormones, whether with a guy, a girl my friends or my family. I don’t have a relationship, but I do have a song.

When I see you on the street, I lose my concentration.
Just the thought that we might meet creates anticipation.

Won't you look my way once before you go
and my eyes will say what you ought to know.
Well I've been thinkin' about you day and night
and I don't know if it'll work out right
but somehow I think that it just might...if we try.

Faces come and faces go in circular rotation.
But something yearns within to grow beyond infatuation.

Won't you look my way once before you go
and my eyes will say what you ought to know.
Well you've got me standin' deaf and blind...
cause I see love as just a state of mind...
and who knows what it is that we might find...if we try.

You're walking a different direction from most people I've met.
You're givin' me signs of affection I don't usually get.
I don't want you to pledge your future the future's not yours to give.
Just stand there a little longer and let me watch while you live.

Well I've been thinking about you day and night...
and I don't know if it will work out right...
but somehow I think that it just might...if we try.
Somehow I think that it just might if we try.
Yes somehow I think that it just might if we try.

Thank You Don Mclean........

The New Inside and the Old Outside

2009-08-04T22:28:00.000+05:30

When I was in school, I withdrew into a shell, a shell made up of shyness, books, geeky glasses, a big red pimple (placed prominently in the centre of my nose ..... making me look like a certain famous reindeer) and a brahmanized version of Catholic guilt inculcated in me (unwittingly, she claims) by my mother. As if that wasn’t enough, I was also enveloped by a bubble, a beautiful bubble blown by my family, which distorted all the harsh light entering it from the outside world into a million happy bright and cheerful colours. Like all things made of soap it was a squeaky clean world, where everyone was good, worked hard and spoke English. In other words I was a righteously indignant, morally superior, highly oblivious, slightly lost girl who couldn’t say boo to a goose. Because there was no goose in my bubble and Brahmin guilt would never have let me utter the word Boo.

But somewhere deep down, I knew that it was different out there and that I too was different on the inside. I had to get away from home, and get away from home I did when I went to college (I refused to apply to any college in Delhi). In the last three years, I have emerged from my shell and the bubble has burst. Do I like what I see both inside and outside me? Most of the times I love this new old- world I’m finally getting a chance to explore and after a great deal of therapy, love and support I have come to accept myself, as I am now and as I was then. But sometimes (to put it very shortly) the world sucks and is too much for me to handle, and sometimes (to put it very politely) I become a short-tempered, loud mouthed asshole. In other words I am a righteously indignant, morally superior, not so oblivious, even more lost girl who has learnt to say much more than boo to animals even bigger than the average goose.

Today I lost my temper at an auto driver. He wanted to pick up an extra fare, a lady whose auto had broken down, because her destination and mine were on the same road. I put my foot down and told him that while I was perfectly willing to let the lady share the auto, I would pay him what had already been agreed upon and that the lady need not pay him anything extra. This upset him and he tried to argue with me, only to be cut short when I began to scream my head off at him. Scared by this outburst he quietly drove off leaving behind a relieved lady who preferred to remain stranded in the dark than share an auto with a slightly insane and most probably violent girl. I wanted to scream some more, when I realized that this would make it my 2nd outburst in 1 week. I sat silently trying to collect my thoughts and realized that I had lost my temper for nothing. I had helped no one, neither the lady who was still stranded nor the auto-driver who would have earned perhaps an extra 10 rupees and had managed to mask it all under a cloak of self-righteousness. Maybe I had made my condition not out of any charitable feeling towards the lady but only to spite the auto driver or because I thought of it as an easy painless way of gaining some much needed good karma. Whatever the fault of the auto-driver, I shouldn’t have yelled at him, the way I did, especially since, he a daily wage labourer was trying to earn 10 rupees more, only to be thwarted by a brat who can’t think of a single thing cheap enough to be bought in 10 rupees.Fundamentally I lost my temper because I wanted to and because I am privileged enough to do exactly what I want. The new Inside is not getting along very well with the Old Outside. Perhaps its a matter of experience and practice.

Not Tacky......... It was Disturbing

2009-07-09T08:08:00.000+05:30

2.5 Hours. 120 Rupees. 1,000,000 Brain Cells. This is what it cost me to watch Kambhakt Ishq. But writing is therapeutic and hopefully by the time I finish writing this post, I will have stopped fantasizing about inserting a grandfather clock which chimes the hour and half hour up Akshaye Kumars ass.

I think the biggest problem I have with this movie is that it starts out with the “hero” calling the heroine a bitch and the turning point of the movie comes when the heroine realizes that she is, in fact, a bitch (because she doesn’t believe in marriage and true love). Other highlights include the song where a whole gaggle of blonde haired bimbos thrust their boobs out (of their dresses) in retaliation to guys who were, well.... just thrusting, the scene where Kareena sits and cries her heart out because she (thinks she) had drunken pre-marital sex with Akshay Kumar and of course the operation where Kareena wears her lucky-mantra-chanting watch over her surgical gloves. There is also the scene where Akshaye Kumar is cavity searched by a big black woman, I didn’t see that scene, I had my eyes shut. But I’m sure that had I seen it I would have found it offensive, racist and included it among the highlights.

Then there is the other small issue about the objectification of and violence against women (I lost track of the number of times they got pawed, mauled, kicked, kissed and verbally abused) the fact that sex is portrayed as OK for men and great for fun but that true love and women must abstain from sex (the “Heroines” are virginal and Akshaye Kumar stops just short of having drunken pre-marital sex with Kareena because sniff* he realizes he’s truly in love with her as opposed to the other harlots he was just stringing along .... wipes away a tear). Akshaye Kumar gets all the insults, punches and one liners in, while Kareena is left staggering from drunkenness, being kissed against her wishes, being chased by a (politically correct, racially integrated!) street gang (she is rescued by Sylvester Stallone who hearing her maidenly shrieks for help and the sound of ka-ching decided to appear in this movie and save her), leaving a watch in Akshaye Kumars Stomach, realizing her mother was a bitch (Mommy dearest refused to take back philandering hubby despite his honest and earnest plea that he had changed and wanted things to work out between them) and that she is a bitch (for not believing in true love and marriage and believing in the fact that all men and Akshaye Kumar are jerks).
I did however like the first proposal scene, it was thoughtful, romantic and everything the movie wasn’t. If I ever get proposed to, I too want to be dumped overboard a yacht into a coral reef from which my proposer will pull out an oyster which will open to reveal a handful of pearls and a 24 karat diamond engagement ring. I did not care for the second one, the one where Akshaye Kumar shouts at Kareena and orders/forces her into a car after leaving Denise Richards (playing herself, and who obviously doesn’t understand any of the hindi dialogue insulting her but can recognize the phrase “you come before camera with less clothes and we give money to you” in 37 different languages).

This movie was essentially written by a dick, a dick which managed to wrap itself around a pen and move it across paper. The audience seemed to enjoy the movie. As for me..... Does anyone have a grandfather clock they’re not particularly fond of?

The Extra Sister

2009-06-21T10:06:00.000+05:30

When my twin sisters were born, the world-wise nurses consoled my mother; they told her not to worry, that she would eventually come to love her two extra daughters. The concerned doctor asked her whether there’d be any problems at home. And there were. My grandmother refused to come to the hospital to see her two new grandchildren because they were girls (however like the nurses had said, she came around to love them, within the next 24 hours). Not-so-distant relatives landed up, offering to adopt one of them. They were childless and my parents had too many girls, it made perfect sense to them.

We’re in this beautiful hill station. “We want to go for a nice gentle trek, breathe in the fresh air, reconnect with nature, far from the maddening crowds. Preferably some place with a stream we can splash around in” The guide listens, nodding his head thoughtfully. He looks over the five of us and after assessing our needs and wants proposes that we go to Mata Betapakkahogas Temple. “It’s only a 1001 steps, you can do it, you can stop in between and drink nimboo paani at any of the 2002 tea shops that line the cemented staircase leading up to the temple, the hundred other people also climbing up with you will give you strength, and once you reach the top all you have to do is buy and plant a Trishul at the steps of the mandir and all your wishes will come true. My brother’s wife’s nephew’s daughter just had a son, only through the grace of Mataji. Of course once your wish has been fulfilled you must come back to thank the Mataji and that time you must stay at my sister’s husband’s niece’s son’s hotel.” Of course there was the guide at Jaisalmer, who philosophically shrugged and told my father that what happens will happen and who knows what gods will is.

Growing up as one of three sisters we’ve had to deal with sympathy and incredulousness all our lives. The three of us have perfected the “No, just three sisters, thank the good lord” line which we repeat, often several times, to the same person, heads bobbing vigorously, smiles plastered on our faces until it sinks into their thick skulls that we are perfectly content, thank you very much. We’ve learnt to deal with friends who try to convince us that we need a brother to balance out the family and my parents have learnt to deal with the well-wishers who try and introduce them to support groups for parents afflicted with too many daughters.

While I can’t claim to the fact that I never let any of this get to me (I am rather high strung and my sainted mother has often been at the receiving end of tirades directed at these friends and too defamatory to publish), I can very confidently assert that I never understood what these people were going on about. Until this summer that is. This summer when the two of us who are now living in hostel returned home, we were given a space of 5 square feet, in which we were expected to keep our suitcases containing all our possessions and a rolled up mattress. The sister who was still living at home, not content with taking over our room and converting it into her room had launched a successful offensive against the rest of the house as well. By the time I came back home the drawing room, living room, guest bed room and tiny store room had all fallen. Alex the G would have been envious of her strategy. Which is why if this post is a bit ranty or whiny, excuse me. Sleeping scrunched up on a lumpy mattress never did anyone any good and I am a person who needs her inner-beauty sleep even in the best of living conditions. I have finally begun to appreciate and understand the sympathy out there for families of three sisters. However I am still confused about how an extra sibling in the form of a brother could make things any better.

Did I hear you say Movie?

2009-06-15T18:56:00.000+05:30

A day well wasted is a day well spent. And yesterday was a day very well spent indeed. My sister, cousins and I decided to celebrate the return of new releases to Multiplexes by going and watching 17 Again. As my sister and I were leaving, my mother looked at us and in accents of great torment and despair announced that she was being Bheja Fried yet again by us.

According to her Being Bheja Fried means being cruelly left out, deserted by your near and dear when they go to see a movie without you, that too a movie which you might enjoy. The origin of this term she explained her voice quavering with neglect and deeply repressed emotions comes from when my Dad and took me and my sisters to see the movie Bheja Fry without her. She accused us of having Bheja Fried her numerous times since then, the most recent incident being when we went to see Star Trek behind her back. My Father she had forgiven, but being Bheja Fried by those who she not only gave birth to but also gave reasons to live by introducing them to the wonders of Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings was unpardonable according to her. To watch us so shamelessly stalking out without a care in the world (My sisters Final exams are on and I had some left over Internship work to be submitted today) without so much as a backward glance at her as we bheja fried her, it broke her heart, she wailed.

We would have been deeply moved and might have considered inviting her or perhaps even invited her to come along with us except that, my mother got snagged in a technicality. In order to be Bheja Fried the movie you are left out of should be one that you actually wanted to see, or think you might enjoy (like when my friends went to see Dev D minus Me!). My mother to put it quite simply has not enjoyed a movie in quite some time. All the movies she’s seen recently have given her a head ache, and she always ends up pulling a 99 on them. A 99 you ask? It means plugging into your ipod, shutting your eyes and completely ignoring the movie. She first did it in the movie 99, she then pulled a 99 at Angels and Demons (a movie I was Bheja Fried from because I had Internship work to submit the next day. Those of you who think that I am a hard worker, carrying work home, please don’t read the rest of this sentence, for the rest of you who’re still reading- the reason I get stuck with work at home is because I’m busy sleeping at work, that or writing blog posts). My mother would have pulled a 99 on 17 again. If she came, her Ipod stayed behind, we warned her, she sheepishly agreed that perhaps it was best for her to not come.

So it was just us kids who went and saw 17 again, and then because it was playing in a theatre conveniently close by and because even my cousin hadn’t seen it, but mostly in order to bring balance back to the Universe I decided to skip doing the work due and we watched Angels and Demons instead. It was day very well spent indeed.

But it was as we trailed out of the movie theatre after watching Angels and Demons that it hit Sumana that this coming Wednesday she was going to be Demonised by her friends. That is what happens to you when you have a movie crazy family (did I mention that my family has a movie lingo which defines the different ways in which we watch or don’t watch movies?) which takes you to see every single movie released (even those released during your exams) so that when your friends eventually get around to going to see a movie with you (say for example to celebrate the end of the exams) you’ll be watching that movie for the third time in a theatre.

Confessions of a mathematical society president

2009-06-07T16:39:00.000+05:30

My parents didn’t take us, when we were Kids to see many movies and the few that we did get to see in the theatre were always kiddy movies (like keeping your cell phones off, not taking hyper kids to the movies is a courtesy my parents very firmly believe in). So the three of us were pleasantly surprised, when my Parents returned from a shopping trip one evening from which the three of us had been excluded (Ok…… in hindsight it looks they didn’t believe in taking us kids out, Period.) with tickets to the Night show of a movie called star wars.
They tried explaining the premise to me “stars and lasers and wars…. Lots of fun!” and I remember trying to picture the movie in my head as we went to the theatre “twinkling stars in a night sky, occasionally a laser beam would emerge from one star and go hit another star which would disappear ……. Lots of fun!” (I really hadn’t seen many movies then). It was my first night show, my first grown-up movie, my first movie with action and violence and a real true Villain, who actually managed to be villainous and not comic relief. That night I fell in love with Movies for the second time (the first time was when I saw Singin’ in the Rain on TV).
And there was so much more to come, finding out that Darth Vader didn’t die in the first movie, that Darth Vader was Luke’s father, that Han Solo Didn’t die in the second movie, that Leia was Luke’s twin sister and that the prequels I waited for, for so long and so eagerly, sucked. But once a star wars fan, always a star wars fan. And Star wars geek I remain to this day, I was after all the girl who had a crush on Lando Calrissian (not Luke the guy who was supposed to be the hero, not Han who stole the show and became the actual Hero). Lando? Who you ask? Precisely I reply. To those of you who are equally clueless about Luke and Han…. I don’t know what to say.
In my grandparents house down south there are many important traditions which must be honoured or else consequences faced. Absence from the sacred early morning pooja for instance will invite the wrath of all your dead ancestors upon you, to make noise, or disturb the peace during the even more scared post-lunch siesta will earn you the wrath of all your living ancestors. On one particularly long sojourn down south my mother began to tell her three hyperactive daughters (perhaps that’s the reason we never got taken out anywhere) the story of the Lord of the Rings, a new episode every afternoon in order to keep us amused and quiet so that the rest of the household could sleep. To cut a long story short, I eventually got around to reading that even longer story, a several hundred times. I have read the companion book Silmarillion thrice and made notes and family trees to keep things in track. I can tell you both the names of Aragorn’s Sword, what Minas Morgul was originally called before the evil lord Sauron took over it, I can recite some of the poems in the Books and most of the dialogue from the movies. To amuse myself in situations of boredom, I make lists of the cast members of the LOTR Movies. I can name 30 of the top of my head! How many can you name?
This summer my sister introduced me to Anime. I fell for it hook line and sinker, I sat up all night and watched 25 episodes of an anime called “Darker than Black”. I marvelled at it, I woke my sister up at 2 in the morning to discuss the significance of the last episode, cried like a baby after one particularly touching episode and when it ended I lost no time trying to find out what was the next anime I should move onto.
And it was as I sat at 5 in the morning, my head spinning with BK Nimarishi, mediums, and the very, very cute protagonist (I totally have a thing for chinky eyes!) that it hit me, the only thing holding me back from total geekdom was the fact that I was not (also) a Trekkie.
That was then. I just saw Star Trek the movie last night. I liked it. (John Cho is the cutest! His eyes……….).
Its official! I am the female Raj Kuthrapalli. Minus the IQ and mathematical aptitude (I became president of the mathematical society on sheer geekiness). And with a longer and even more unpronounceable name. After a night of serious introspection and much contemplation I’ve come to realize that the only thing keeping me from dressing up like my favourite characters and attending movie premieres or conventions is the fact that we don’t have movie premieres and conventions in India. Anyway I’ve almost made peace with myself (writing being very therapeutic) all I want right now is a pair of prosthetic pointy ears for it to be complete.

DAS: bringing adventure sports to the Masses

2009-05-28T17:24:00.000+05:30

I went rafting this weekend. I Bumped, flew out of my seat, hung onto handles for dear life, nearly fell out and barely escaped with my life. Whatever people tell you about White Water rafting let me give you my personal word that it cannot compare with Rocky Road Rafting.

So how does one go Rocky Road Rafting? Well first of all, you shouldn’t have a plan and definitely no tickets, plans and tickets are fatal to road rafting. What you need is a little bit of crazy and a burning desire to drop everything and run away (run anywhere…… but not Rajasthan, the roads are good in Rajasthan). Land up at ISBT, Delhi (that’s the inter state bus terminal for those of you who are jet-setters, and not bus-sitters out there) in the middle of the night, look for the rattiest public bus (the smellier the better) driven by the most enthusiastic looking driver (the smellier the better, though investigating this too closely is not recommended), into Uttar Pradesh (or Madhya Pradesh, the roads are terrible for driving ergo excellent for road rafting in these two states). Scramble on board elbowing out of your way the paan chewing dude, the 80 year old grandma, Bunty, Babli and their kids Chunnu and Munnu. Make for the back seat (you may sit in the middle or front if you have heart problems), secure your luggage, secure yourself and hang on for the ride of your life as your driver takes you 80 miles per hour over potholes 80 inches deep. If you did your research carefully and picked a craz- I mean experienced driver, you can be assured of the fact that not a single crack on the road will be missed (despite the fact that the busses headlights aren’t working) and if your driver is a real sport he’ll speed up as he approaches the really good pot holes.

If you reach your destination in one piece, thank god …………. profusely. Then proceed to take part in the nearest adventure sport available, Hang Gliding, River Rafting, Bungee Jumping, Mountain biking on narrow dirt roads or temple stampeding (the other less acknowledged but extremely popular Desi Adventure Sport (DAS)) trust me the experience, the thrills and the heart rate levels will fall way short of Rocky Road Rafting.

Books Versus Movies (No Contest)

2009-05-20T02:31:00.000+05:30

I can’t sleep. So while I wait for the latest episode of “How I met Your Mother” to download, allow me to practice my Acceptance Speech for winning best adapted screenplay (preferably a Tamora Pierce Novel adaption) at the Oscars, on you.

“Well…… this is unexpected (audience laughs because I had all five nominations). I’d like to thank the two most beautiful women in the world (camera pans to my two beautiful sisters……. Audience gasps) for never letting me doubt my own beauty (audience snickers as Joke falls flat), my friends for encouraging me to follow my dreams and being true to myself (audience goes awwwwww……..) and lastly my parents for making me who I am.
Thank You for making me the Girl who thought books meant novels and only novels. That a book was not a book, unless it had a story, non-fiction and textbooks being in a category unto themselves. The Girl who did a double take because the text books outnumbered the fiction books in her senior school library. The girl who never understood the families who proudly displayed their entire book collection consisting of a row of untouched Encyclopaedias in their Drawing Rooms.
And Thank You most of all from teaching me to learn from stories. . Thank You for treating a good story with the respect it deserves no matter what the medium. For treating movies and books the same (Movie Making Audience Cheers), the stories they tell and the lessons you can learn from them being the important thing (Clapping Starts). For treating serious and frivolous alike – for you can always find something to be learnt.

I learnt everything from my Values to my Geography from Movies and Books. These Stories have served as the starting points of Deep Introspection into weighty issues like "Is True Love never Having to say Sorry?" and have jumpstarted Extensive Research on Trivial Bits of History such as "Schindlers List" which might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

This is the reason I do what I do (adapt screenplays) I’d like to thank the Academy for recognizing my genius at it. ( Orchestra starts playing, is drowned out by the Standing Ovation, somewhere in the audience George Clooney starts to fall in love with me)”

Thank you for your patience, I am off to learn How Ted Mosby met his Children's Mother.

Whats wrong with us?

2009-04-19T23:44:00.000+05:30

It’s too much to expect anything out of us, but it is nothing to expect everything out of others. I am not a model student by any means, I day dream, I don’t take notes, I don’t pay attention in class, (I’m writing my blog post instead), I don’t come to class and often I am openly insolent to my teachers. I am not alone. That’s the rest of my class for you as well. How did we get this way? We got jaded, by teachers who are terrible, who are biased, who know nothing, for whom teaching is the last resort. Agreed, and then for some of us there are the rest of us as well. If our teachers are bad, we are worse. We wallow in self-pity and self-entitlement and refuse to take charge of our lives and our futures. I don’t think we deserve any better than the teachers we bully, dominate, look down upon and deride.
In my three years over here I have compered conferences and numerous lectures, and I am appalled by the Student behaviour at these occasions. Here is an opportunity to learn, to listen to others, to people from across the world who have flown into your measly little town with the thought of sharing some of their knowledge, and all the students can do is sleep (if they’re nice) or gossip loudly, interrupt the speaker, distract her, ignore the jokes and laugh at the wrong times.
So you don’t listen to the lousy teachers because they’re lousy, but why don’t you listen to the eminent scholars? Because they’re good?
Make up your mind or change your reason. Maybe you don’t listen because you don’t give two hoots, because despite what you told (actually yelled and cribbed) your teacher, “that you want to learn, go beyond schoolroom teaching” you don’t care about anything beyond who’s going out with whom or what Blair wore in the last episode of gossip girl. Maybe you don’t listen because the eminent speaker rambles on and is hard to understand. Well didn’t you just tell (read yell and crib) your teacher that he wasn’t capable of moulding your superior minds, well possessor of a superior mind what good is that damn thing if you can’t use it to unravel one simple lecture. Maybe I’m wronging them, maybe they don’t listen and sleep instead because in their dreams they are visited by much more eminent and interesting persons (like Blair or their crush) who are much better suited to mould their magnificent (superior) minds.
You want to be treated like an adult, “no more classroom teaching”, “We’re in college!”, “We’re 20!” “the teachers don’t know a thing” “ the teachers are biased” “I’m jaded” “the teacher needs to be engaging”.
Well what about us? Do we behave like adults? No, my dear young adults, our behaviour in the conference hall would put even kids to shame, we act like babies. Do we truly not want classroom teaching? Of course we do, we want everything handed to us on a platter, the syllabus, the test questions, the model answer, a perfect lecture. The brave teacher that tries an interesting discussion based syllabus gets shot down immediately (yaaar...... We’re adults, with busy adult schedules, we don’t have time for this). The teachers don’t know a thing.......................... and neither do we by the way (because we haven’t listened to a word all semester, we passed because of the one poor kid who listened through our disturbances and painstakingly took down notes which we photocopied). The teachers are biased................................ and we’re cheaters (we get our 8 CGPA by copying those photocopied notes hidden under our table while the kid who took those notes struggles to remember what the teacher had said because the class had been so noisy that day).The teacher needs to be more engaging, and we need to .......? oh yeah, we need to do nothing.
I wanted to be a teacher, I foolishly mentioned it in front of my professor grandparents, aunts and uncles. They made me cry that day. I would still like to be a teacher, I know the pay is lousy but the deal breaker isn’t that the pay isn’t enough to live on, it’s the fact that it doesn’t compensate for the lousy students.

How to.........

2009-03-11T17:55:00.000+05:30

Does anyone else feel the need to be witty, sarcastic and self deprecating while blogging? I do, most blogs which are successful have a certain flowing, natural level snark. Without which your blog is apparently doomed to some sort of virtual limbo (is a blog a blog, if no one reads it?).

And it’s not just blogs, this need to be witty is seeping down into our day to day lives, sundry conversations you might have with your dhobi also need to be funny, worthy of repeating for the hearing pleasure of the world at large, blog worthy in fact. The pressure to be witty and acerbic is on! How do you deal with it? If you’re anything like me, you can only think of something witty or biting long after the moment has passed, yet I am considered scary for the things I might say, allow me to let you in on my little secret.

It’s a look, you need to develop a look which combines pain, loathing and sympathy for the vermin (who should be) squirming before you, bite your lip, like you’re trying hard to control what you want to say (though you don’t know the exact words yet), sadly shake your head and turn away, It’s (will be) too horrible, too acerbic, too true! If you say what you want to say (when you actually figure it out) the poor person it’s directed at might not recover, with a heroic sigh refuse to say what you want to say. It works! Your reputation for witty verbal dexterity and scariness will shoot up. This isn’t enough of course, you need to back the look with actual lines or you might end up receiving more constipation medication than you have enemies to poison them with. This is done in two ways the first is rather simple, Hours later when you have thought of something appropriate. Refine it! Work on it, and then try and drop it into conversation casually, “I kept thinking that his head looked like a turnip..... but you know, I couldn’t say it.......anyway as I was saying to my dhobi the other day...”. The second is simpler, when you actually think of something witty on the spot, say it! (Everyone is given a break from their nobler impulses once in a while......)

Now if someone would please share their secret to bitchy blogging with me ...............

A New Shade of Green

2009-03-02T14:47:00.000+05:30

I’m a museum tripping, fort viewing kinda girl. I like guides (the printed and the breathing), pamphlets, badly written ASI Boards and random pieces of trivia, this is best exemplified by observing my school trips to museums. I will for the sake of brevity (hah!) limit myself to one example, our class 8th trip to the arts and handicrafts museum in Delhi. While the rest of my 200 classmates and companions in their quest for learning and knowledge ran through the museum learning essential life skills such as social networking, physical feats of multitasking like walking talking and eating while dodging the random teacher or two and of course little snippets of actual fact – “I swear I saw them holding hands .....”, I went around trying to learn about the Ikat sarees of Orissa. Solitarily staring at the plastic reproduction of an authentic weaving handloom from the early 1990s, Fascinated by the moth eaten Puppets from Northern Rajasthan and cribbing to anyone who’d listen (mostly myself or the unfortunate teacher who had to trail me) that there wasn’t enough written up about the wonders of tribal peacock fans.

In London the storybook Cottages, the Lush greenery, the clean streets, the big shops and the spell binding stage shows all made me wonder and marvel, but none made me want to move to London. It was only as I wandered through the 13th museum and passed a gaggle of high school students being instructed on the colours in a painting that I realized that a delicate hue had begun to colour my countenance. The Instructor called it Fern Green, I call it museum envy green.

I don’t care for their Castles, we have our forts and they can keep their Princes, I prefer Farhan Akhtar, I don’t need clean public loos while I have my home and the Delhi metro will catch up with the London tube eventually. The promenade by the Thames is tempting but the cold and rainy weather means you can never enjoy it. Their Food is blah and bland after a while and so long as the Big Chill exists I won’t miss their cheesecake either. Who wants green everywhere when we have green, reds and browns and a whole rainbow of colours in our landscape and who wants picture perfect cows on Rolling Meadows when we have our sacred mud and dung caked cows on pot holed roads. If I move to London it will be for the museums. So that I can spend hours roaming those vast magnificent halls, reading every line, hanging onto every word of the nice lady on the audio guide. So that my kids can learn to draw stick figures and tear paper to make kites surrounded by the masters. So that I can learn everything I want to know about mummified cats in front of a genuine Mummified cat. The knowledge, the visuals, the atmosphere, the thrill (I am thrilled by museums, thank you very much) call to me, they beckon to me, come to London they whisper seductively in my head (stop feeling sorry for me, I have fun!). But I think I will wait for the day when these museums will come to India. Until then I will content myself by advising my kids to (like my friends) focus on life skills, physical dexterity and gossip when they visit Indian museums and petitioning The Arts and Craft Museum to correct their Ikat Saree label, Ikat Sarees come from Gujarat.

of Devs, Dads, Dimples and a Deol

2009-02-24T14:22:00.000+05:30

I did two things over this weekend, one that I never thought I would do, and one I never should have done.
I never should have gone to see Dev D with my Dad. My dad is pretty chilled out about the movies, he likes arty, serious cinema which my mom does not (my mom can watch only mindless action mixed with humour, or Mindless romance mixed with humour, or Humour, real life is arty and serious enough for her), which is why my dad now looks to his daughters for company if he wants to watch something serious. So I figured, what the hey! Here’s a chance to show him bold new Bollywood, even if he doesn’t care for the story he’d like the technical accomplishments, the songs, the direction, the production values, the acting. Aaaaaaargh! I forgot about the Sex, the drinking, the language and the fact that the protagonist is a self pitying loser who we are supposed to sympathise and cheer for after he has run over and killed an entire slum (by the way, said actions are perfectly acceptable in English Movies). It was awkward to say the least. Perhaps I could have pulled it off better had I not already seen the movie (“the reviews were so good..... but this is ......”). But now my dad thinks I identify with Dev D so much that I want to see it twice! More than that it’s a serious lapse of judgment on my part (my daughter doesn’t know what I’ll like or not like). We drove home in silence. When we got home my mom asked us how we liked it, my dad grinned and said it didn’t pass by him. Maybe it’s ok...... but he is never going to take another movie recommendation from me.
I never thought I would fall in Love (this is not a crush) with someone from the Deol family. Abhay Deol is not John Abraham (my long time crush), in all senses of the word “not”. The guy can act, he can pick movies, he does his own thing, he takes avant-garde art courses in New York (steel welding anyone?) he thought of Dev D (the movie I liked so much, that I had to watch it again, Dad or no Dad), he has dimples (Ok John Abraham has dimples too)! He is smart, a smooth talker (swoon) and utterly cute. I know we are soul-mates, no one loves the movies as much as I do, I like art, I like Dev D, I like dimples and have some vague ones myself. We’d be perfect together. I’d help him pick movies to act in and he’d help me with my job as an art museum curator. We’d talk (about smart things ya’know) and take art courses (Blowing glass in Budapest, Tile glazing in Turkey......) and do other things (smart things ya’know) together. Papparazi shots of the two of us would feature our adorable dimples, awwww........ they could call us Soudeo or Rambhay.
John Abraham (should you ever read this blog), I may crush you to death, but for Abhay I’d gladly Die myself.

Twilight Review

2009-02-18T20:59:00.000+05:30

Wanted: Male, aged 109 years, with looks of a twenty year old Greek god, raincoat model, for a clumsy, plain girl not good enough for his godlikeness.
Apparently that’s the personal millions of women and teenage girls all over the world want an answer to. How else do you explain the success of twilight? The writing sucks, the characters are characterless and the story is trite.
I daydream a lot, about the books I want to write, about the movies I want to make, and the things I want to do (awww.........hell even about the blog I want to keep). I wanted to write this book, it was buffy inspired and it was going to be brilliant. An ordinary girl falls in love with a vampire, a vampire who while also attracted to her must fight his temptation to suck the blood and life out of her. The girl was going to be kickass, the vampire suave yet tormented, sexual tension would abound, there would be witty repartee. It would not end in the conventionally happy way, the girl would eventually realize that vampires and vampirism (which are obviously subtexts for some deeper gender issues) aren’t for her, but she’d emerge a better, more confident and stronger (emotionally and physically!) person from her experience. I was going to write that book, it was going to be a best seller. My heroine was going to be the heroine to match. Millions of girls all over the globe inspired by said heroine would dump their idiotic boyfriends even before they reached the last page and millions (minus a few) of the dumped boyfriends would wonder what the entire fuss was about, a few sensitive boyfriends would get it and change themselves accordingly, the world would become, all in all, a better place.
Then Twilight happened, apparently Stephanie Meyer a mormon housewife, mother of two in America also had the same dream, and instead of daydreaming about it and writing her booker acceptance speech (they do let you give a speech right?) like I did, actually wrote the damn story and then a sequel and then another one and then another one. So there they were, four gorgeous black books with mysterious symbolic imagery and seductive titles like Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, what could I do? I bought them, all four in one go. Went home curled up in a sofa glad to have an excuse to not put the more feasible of my daydreams into action (if I went ahead now, Stephanie Meyer could sue me) and started to read, tried to read and then ultimately after several pages of descriptions of Edward “looking more like a greek god than anyone should possibly be”, and finally “so beautiful that he looked like a raincoat model standing in the porch in the rain in a raincoat” I gave up, of yeah I was about thirty pages in. Thirty pages of how beautiful Edward is, of how plain Bella is, of how clumsy Bella is and how graceful Edward is, of how dull Bella is and how interesting Edward is. I gave up! The dumb ass heroine was one of those perfectly irritating girls who say they’re skinny and whine about their pallid skin (translation: I am slender and have great porcelain skin, all the “nerdy” boys keep trying to talk to me, and I’m too nice to put them down! Boo hoo poor me). Do Bella and Edward find true love? Yes they do, does Edward display signs of an obsessive abusive possessive husband? Yes he does, are the books a success? Yes they are, and now millions and millions of girls all over the world have dumped their un-godlike boyfriends who are incapable of modelling raincoats. They sit around being perfectly dull just like Bella, waiting for a Vampire who looks like a greek god to come and bite them and control their lives completely! Millions (minus a few) of the dumped boyfriends wonder what the fuss is all about while a few who catch on go from being nice normal blokes to utter jerks a la Edward and his masterful ways . I weep. And wish that I hadn’t been so lazy. If only I had written my version first! Lesson Learnt: fuck up your Ideas before someone does it for you.

I Think I See a Horse

2009-02-17T14:57:00.000+05:30

My mother told me that when you listen to music, and shut your eyes you see the music. When you listen to music you picture it in your head, a song with lyrics unfolds like a movie inside your head, you see lucy in the sky wearing diamonds and you’re able to picture a stairway to heaven. Even plain and pure music can inspire images in your head, Beethovens’ Pastoral, Vivaldis’ Four seasons are literally named after the images the music evokes. Sometimes while listening to plain music you just imagine abstract shapes, and colours, Fantasia the classic Disney movie played on this concept by literally painting and animating western classical music – sometimes as a story (the extinction of dinosaurs, Greek Mythology) sometimes as just patterns and shapes(rolling purple hills turn into green lines which become yellow waves) the dancing mushrooms and hippopotamus ballerinas defy description but I assume they fall in between the two categories above. Music videos – do the same the same – they paint the song.
Music and art have been interlinked for me since the day my mother introduced me to Fantasia and explained the visual power of music. And just like you use art to understand music, you can use music to understand art.
Art is just like music, when you look at art and open your ears, you ought to hear music. Look at a painting of a girl sitting by a piano that’s music with lyrics, look at abstract art it’s like an instrumental piece of music. No one questions that instrumental music brings pleasure, no one complains that they don’t “get” instrumental music. Well, it’s just the same with an abstract painting, what instrumental music is to the ears, abstract painting is to your eyes. A truly wonderful piece of art can inspire music in your head. And just like a piece of instrumental music can sometimes be a story or sometimes just shapes in your head, similarly an abstract painting can sometimes be interpreted and sometimes just appreciated for what it is – a pleasure to behold. Treat art like music and you’ll open a whole new world. Open your eyes, look at the painting, do you like it? Does it make you feel good, happy, sad, excited, dulled? You don’t need to know technique or the interpretation of art, just know what you feel and slowly you’ll pick up the rest. Perhaps Kandinsky my favourite painter shared this theory with me- he named his masterpieces in abstract work after musical terms, he called them compositions.

The F-word Rant

2009-02-16T01:16:00.000+05:30

Sindhu Shankar is not a feminist, she doesn’t even like them. When asked to speak about them in an English Class years and years (think two) ago all she had to say was that She was not one, that her friend Ramsub is one and that feminists are crazy, out of control women who muddle up their issues by running after dogs in Calcutta. (Another classmate also speaking about his distaste for feminists had compared them to the always overzealous PETA and Sindhu had muddled up the issues by hearing that it was the feminists who were chasing dogs).
So there you have it. Sindhu Shankar is not a feminist, Feminists muddle up Issues and lastly I am one. I agree with 2 of the above suggestions and disagree with one. Firstly I agree with the last statement, I am a feminist. I also agree with the fact that Feminists muddle up issues and lastly I do not agree with Sindhu about her status as a feminist.
Perhaps Sindhu thinks she is not a feminist because the definition of a feminist is muddled and confused, but anyway this post isn’t about why Sindhu thinks she is not a feminist but rather about why and how I think I am one and my muddled views on what feminism means to me.
Feminism for me is about correcting the cultural lag. Years and years ago (think hundreds) physical strength was a rather important quality for anyone with ambition or a family to provide for to possess. A job on the battlefield entailed wielding 100kg swords and wearing armour which weighed 200 kg (sourced from Fort guides across India) and at the same time being able to lift your hand and legs to strike and run away respectively. A job on the field also required strength, as anyone who has tried to guide an obstinate 200 kg Bull to plough a field will tell you. But find me someone who has guided an obstinate bull across a field, hah! You can’t! And therein lies the rub. Tractors, technology have made physical strength on the field redundant. Machine guns and tanks have made strength on the battlefield redundant. Technology has progressed and levelled the battle err. Playing field for the sexes, we, humans haven’t progressed quite as much.
Ok farming and battling don’t remain preferred professions anymore, so why are and why were women blocked from the remaining and now more popular professions. You see years and years ago (in the hundreds again) women spent most of the productive part of their lives producing – children, they spent 9 months of a year pregnant and another 3 months breast feeding and trying to cheat the infant mortality rate of that time. This ravage on her body continued from puberty to 27 when in a tragic but routine miscarriage she passes from this hell on earth to better things in heaven (for having fulfilled her duty as a woman on earth so admirably I presume). No wonder women were confined to the house – being a woman was a full time job, it involved being pregnant, facing off day after day with an army of brats, the household chores and to top it all off, they were routinely risking death. It’s no wonder they weren’t allowed to work outside the house, who wants a hormonal pregnant lady looking after their accounts? And which employer wants an employee who might die just as the 50 foot elephant palace commissioned by the Maharjah is about to be completed.
But you know it’s not like this anymore, we have contraception now, there’s a little piece of rubber out there which has done more for civil rights than any other person or thing in the world. Today women in the “quiverfull” (what god gives we will accept – it’s a sin to use contraception) movement make headlines, “Denver woman gives birth to 18th child” and there are debates about what she’s doing to her body, her life, her children and the global food crisis.

So you see the technology is in place, yet the attitudes haven’t changed, that’s your cultural lag. Technology has freed women from the house, given them time (both within their lifetime and by extending their lifetime) and they have nothing to do, can’t they be allowed to work outside the house? Technology has blurred the lines between the genders, and yet age old thoughts, stereotypes and functions of gender continue to apply.
It’s no answer to say that giving birth is a divine right or the divine function of women, and that women are acting on their basest jealous natures by coveting what is rightfully the men’s domain. To that you need to refer to the bible, when Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, they were both given punishments, Adams was to toil and Eves was to give birth. Men have helped alleviate women’s punishment, it’s only fair that women return the favour and help alleviate some of men’s burden.
Feminism to me is about allowing men and women to do what they want – stay at home, go out and work, enjoy random sex, enjoy a secure marriage. It’s about helping them to do what they want - Men supporting wives who want to work, changing the laws for a more egalitarian society, raising awareness. It’s not about raising girls like boys but about raising Boys and Girls alike, by teaching both daughters and sons the same values and skills and valuing them the same. It’s about women enjoying the same freedoms as men and men being subjected to the same standards as women. It sounds like equality talk and is equality for the most part, but feminism for me is also about recognizing how far we are from the above utopia, it’s about being aware as a woman woman of the problems I might face, learning to be independent and proud of my gender. Occasionally it even means acknowledging my weakness as a woman and need for help and sometimes it means revelling in my superiority as a woman.

My identity as a feminist was born when I was 10 when my mom gave me “the talk” about sex. Not the Physical act of making love or procreation but the more insidious, the much more delicate one – of sex as a stereotype, as a mental block, as a societal imposition. Bred and raised on Enid Blytons’ (Betsy may to the Five Find Outers) I thought I had grown up on a steady diet of boys and girls having adventures, but that wasn’t so. My mother casually pointed out certain glaring gender stereotypes (too many to enumerate, but the gist that comes out is that Girly things – bad and boyish things – good, only girls who want to be boys have adventures or do things, the rest stay home and hold hands). My whole world came crashing down and I had to rethink my identity as a girl, this grew into awareness about gender stereotyping, restrictions, and finally my identity as a feminist.

Being a feminist is something intensely personal to me, I have never read any feminist manifesto or books or even Wikipedia articles. I don’t know of the history of feminism or the various brands of feminism, My feminism is guided by me, what I see around me, what I hear around me and what is happening around me. It’s guided by my gut, the discussions I have with others and the occasional editorial or blog I might read.
The Enid Blyton episode showed me how the books I read and the movies I watch can influence me and others around me, so I started critically analysing gender roles in them and forming my own opinions. It means that I wait eagerly for the next Tamora Pierce Novel and pull my hair out at the success of Stephanie Meyers inane Twilight series. It meant that I began to notice the 2 sisters , (several aborted sisters) and 1 much younger brother pattern, realized that as a family of three sisters we were rather unique in India and wondered what my paternal grandmother thought of it (she came around to it eventually). I supported abortion and was thrown for a toss when I realized that a beautiful poem that was my mother’s favourite was actually anti-abortion, female foeticide began to trouble me and I became passionately pro-life. Today the right to abortion, contraception and washing machines are the most important rights a woman can have in my opinion (my mothers’ poem was reinterpreted). I am inspired by women all over the world, and saddened by their mistreatment. My grandmother, my aunts all serve as examples I want to follow and when I have daughters (adopted of course!) I’ll point out the strong women in my (and their) family, just as my mother did for me so that they too have close examples to follow. I agree that there is misuse of the dowry acts but I still want them to exist so that that one woman who wants to use it rightly can. I object to stereotypes and got infuriated (and slightly hysterical) when a classmate told me that girls shouldn’t swear but it’s Ok for boys. The quiverfull movements give me bad dreams, the Taliban, LDS in Utah, The Ram Sene and VHP give me nightmares. The men over at saveindianfamily make me laugh with their Rama-Sita-Ravana analogies. The Ramayana enthralled me at age 9 (story!), infuriated me at 13 (agni pareeksha!), and leaves me wondering at age 20 (Sita refused to come back to Rama, Rama had only one wife!). Lastly I get upset when girls say they aren’t feminists, there are so many definitions of feminism out there (all muddled up as Sindhu Shankar would say) that every woman with self respect, dignity, independence, or striving for it, is a feminist. When a girl says that she is not a feminist or doesn’t like feminism, to me it means that, that girl has no identity as a woman, it means she is ignorant or indifferent to the problems that women face, it means she is content and willing to conform with the stereotypes that exist. I think Sindhu Shankar is a feminist.

Here's looking at you, Young Adult?

2009-01-27T18:07:00.001+05:30

In 12th standard, our English teacher asked us to write a short paragraph on our fondest memory from childhood. I immediately raised and waived my hand, drew the entire classes attention and loudly proclaimed that since my childhood was not over, there was still a chance that my fondest memory from childhood was yet to occur and therefore I would not be writing this paragraph (how can I write about something that maybe has yet to occur?). The class laughed.

I said the above either to demonstrate my immense laziness by getting out of the simplest of writing assignments or to show off my amazing flexibility by putting my foot in my mouth. Or maybe it was because I just didn’t feel like an adult.

That was then, 3 years later, approaching 21 I still don’t feel any more of an adult. I keep referring to myself as a kid, and even today in class the word kid slips out of mouth when I refer to well “kids” my age. The class no longer laughs, it groans and moans and I hastily correct myself and replace kid with “Young Adult” (I still can’t say adult, I’m sorry, I’ll compromise, I won’t call you a Kid, but I will definitely not call you an Adult either).

When I look at myself, I see a kid. Not ready to take on responsibility, unwilling to take responsibility (there’s a difference). Financially dependent, emotionally dependent still trying to figure out which rules to break and whether she dares to at all. Turn me out on the streets, and, I am lost. I am sorry, but I am no Adult, in fact I am no adult because all I am capable of right now is being sorry.

That’s the depressing part, the insecure, whiny and dependent kid in me. However there’s the other part, as a kid I have all the time in the world, to find myself, to change myself, do something and find a life worth living. I don’t feel like I need to have it all figured out, carry it all out and die at 40 a successful old Woman. Life stretches out in front of me the kid.

The Kids, sorry, the Young Adults that I see around me seem to have it reversed, they think they’re independent, make all their decisions (who are you to tell me?) and want it all figured out, college Career, Money, the Good Life and Death before they get Old.

I behave like a kid, with my life ahead, to do anything at any age (career change at 80 anyone?), refusing to grow up and take responsibility. They think they’re old, want to be old, try to be mature but are so scared of becoming old that they want to die before they hit 50.

So on this side of the ring we have “the kid” (who’s most probably too scared to become an adult and so makes excuses), and on the other we have “the adult” (who might just be deluded). Who’s going to win? Win what? Happiness, Success, Life. I don’t know.

The class laughed, “grow up” they said “what are you waiting for? Your hair to turn grey? ” Good Advice, and I and all those “young adults” who laughed and gave me this advice will need to do it eventually. Perhaps I said what I said because it struck me as very odd to think of a class full of bratty and immature 17 year olds writing about their fondest memory of childhood. In my mind you need to be a white haired or even better, no haired 90 (500, if science progresses) year old before you’ve grown old enough to refer to a “childhood”, and gained any right to inflict stories about it, fond, miserable or otherwise on others.

Kick in the Ass

2009-01-21T23:04:00.000+05:30

There are two things I find impossible to do – write and have conversations on the phone. So while I can debate, make my point, fight, talk and keep on talking, I find it nigh impossible to sit down and write or sit down and have a phone conversation.

My attempts to talk on the phone are so bad that they go beyond “so bad they’re hilarious” to so bad that even gitmo won’t subject its detainees to them on humanitarian grounds. After 10 minutes of hmmmming and hawing, and basically saying zilch and 10 seconds after zoning out when the person at the other end tries to speak, I cut the call and pretend that the signal died ( Hullooo, Hello, Heyyyyyy…… beep).

I can’t write, I think this point is best illustrated by ……………………

After years of introspection (I never obsess) and discussing (what me whine?) it with various people, I realized that I have no patience and that I need instant gratification.

No patience to sit down and write, no patience to sit down and listen to what the person on the other end of the line is trying to say. Instant gratification in that I need to see my appreciative audiences face as they realize the ultimate truth of what I’m saying and are suddenly forced to question a lifetime of false beliefs (or at the very least a chance to see my victims squirm).

When I try to write or talk on the phone these two very critical elements are missing, and without them I’m lost, eloquent arguments practiced on various people refuse to put themselves down as words on the screen, refuse to travel over phone lines or whatever waves.

This blog is my new years resolution (the first in 20 years) it’s the kick in the ass that’s been coming my way for a long time now. In this blog I’m going to learn to write and learn to listen.