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

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.....

Sing. Smile. Dance. Blog.

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?

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!

The Girl Likes to Run

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.

I don't feel Special anymore

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.

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

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).

Whats wrong with us?

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.