Jiggy-wiggy with you

Life changes in fucking seconds man.

Kshama's getting married this Saturday. Its okay if you don't know who she is. I dint either till about an hour ago.

Before:

So there I was. The molecules in my thighs were integrating themselves with the couch. The Stand by Stephen King was in my hands and life was a slow Thursday night.

30 minutes later, I was out of my ratty home duds gyrating onstage to, umm, well Jiggy-Wiggy.

Nobody tells me anything in this house. Things like Kshama's (who is very Awesome. And hot) getting married and that and her sangeet and mehendi party happens today. My dad and her's have major business plans in the offing, so there were increasingly frantic calls to make our presence felt at the event.

Mom and Jenny were AWOL, so my Dad's extensive emotional blackmailing skills were exercised on me.

My ass was hauled away from the couch. Semi-decent clothes flung out on the bed and in a daze, I was enveloped by girls in shiny salwars and led to dance.

After:

A stage, 50 glittering ladies(and a Marwari woman knows glitter. Every diamondy bit of it) and a video cameras.

I was nudged onstage by Kshama. Frantic pleas for help intensified when I realised I was expected to dance alone. Alone. With big strobe lights. On a stage . And a huge room full of people looking at me.

Awkward shuffling on stage. Silence. Pained silence.

Then the asshole DJ plays Jiggy-Wiggy with you.

What's there to say; most of you have seen me dance. I eliminated the slutty bits, reduced the butt gyrations a tad and danced away.

For the full frickin duration of the song. Aunties smiled, Kshama laughed and the DJ gaped.

And these guys know how to do a wedding. The colours!! The food!! The music.

Sensory overload.

Beep.

Life drags you by the hair, spins you around and leaves you feeling massively foolish and strangely happy. And spontaneity is so underrated.

I think I need Stephen King now. His wry, searing uncut wit should get this stupid Jiggy-Wiggy thing out of my mortified head.

Solitary mosquitoes :)

Happy Birthday Much-o!!!!

Yes.

The one with all that hair is finally legally there :)

As usual, there is an exam chasing her ass on the other side of 7th, but as if that is going to stop us from spending long hours doing nothing.

My offerings this year are slinky blue eyeliner and a gianormus card. Hope these should appease Her.

Fans of The Suchi may pay their homage in the comments section :)

A momentary lapse of reason

Im sick of this blog :|

Barf.

The Other Nihillist

" I wanna free fall out into nothing

Gonna leave this world for awhile

And I'm free.

Free falling"

- Tom Petty

Free Falling

My head is currently compartmentalising :)

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I love winter. Its clamminess and its smells. Its warm, flab-masking jackets. Hot coffee on a cold night. I love all of this to itty-bitty pieces.

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I liked Spirited Away. It was so dreamy. Like you accidentally stumbled into someone's life and then started living it. They should make movies like this and kill whoever made Ugly Truth.

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Cant write anymore. My mojo's gone. I stared at the words Statement of Purpose for multiple hours and came up with great shiny gobs of nothing. Why do they make us do things that are hopelessly irrelevant?

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I have a job now. This is a weird feeling. Someone heard me talk and then seemed eager to have me work with/for them. What? How? Huh?

Oh and the weird bit is that I feel coldly neutral.This changes not one tiny atom in my increasingly meandering sort of life.

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Not dealing with problems apparently does not make them go away. I'm appalled. My entire approach towards life is sadly flawed.

Its been that sort of week. You know, the kind when each day is staggeringly worse than the last. When invisible fingers are being flipped at you from the sky and your knees are about to grind themselves into nothingness after 6 hours kneeling in front of a topo glass and 4 flights in cramped seats.

I think nihilism might be the answer. None of this matters right now and the rest is all crap anyway. I think I get the Platypus of Doom on this one. Be careful what you wish for. On the off chance that you end up getting it and then wondering why the fuck was it so important in the first place.

Yeah so the week that was: a job interview, Muchi, three days without my phone, Muchi, 40,000 assignments(i swear im not kidding. Sadistic bastards), Muchi, drawing sheets, Muchi, applications,Muchi, mailing gianormus packages home,Muchi, worried mum, Muchi, cold fingers.

My free fall sort of approach to things sucks. I recommend it strongly if you to experience the mental equivalent of a vibrantly pink rock smashing your skull.

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Agnes Mendonca is in a relationship with Suchismita Mohapatra.

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Just Like That.

What do you do when newspapers die?

I spent 5 minutes at the paper guys tapri. Looked at all the mags, the tabloids, the Tinkles and Champaks. And then I walked away. Nothing out there is worth sniggering over anymore.

JLT's gone. They shut-down or whatever.

Anyone who's known me since class 9 will also know that I worship JLT and have always nursed a thinly veiled "secret" ambition to someday be , ahem, a JLT writer. Except that of course, they no longer print it. Sigh.

JLT was the zenith of cool when it came to papers. They were eons ahead of the other lame-o mags, and believed firmly in paper quality, awesome posters and brilliant writing. oh, and at one point of time, you could buy it for 2 bucks.

This feels like an obit now. Anyone who wants a peek into its awesomeness- the Potty thoughts section(for briliant thoughts that somehow strike you only in the potty), The Mon, Vahista Mistry, those poems like:

I must, I must.

I must increase my bust.

The bigger, the better,

The tighter the sweater,

The boys will look at us.

and a thousand other things- is free to dig into my JLT collection :)

Every article was like this. Weird, funny, irreverant, blah. The covered Bomaby, college, clothes, music, food, games, anything under the sun. And I miss it so damn much :| Idiots had to go away, just like that.

Monday morning :)

Sunday night

Coffee.

Sleeplessness.

Haruki Murakami's Wind up bird chronicle

Dark windows.

Long movies.

Messages.

Faint morning light.

Hazy corridors.

Wet grass.

Dew.

Green. Sleepy green

Chirping crickets.

Cold stone bench.

Half moon right overhead.

Pale sky blue.

Three blackbirds.

Eyes wide open.

Pink. Bits of it.

Twitters.

Slithery noise in the grass.

Warm socks.

Red, red roses.

This is the best Monday of my life.

Marry, boff, kill

I'm bored. Let'splay Marry, Boff, Kill :)

Its one of the awesomer things that 30 Rock shoved into my life. the other notable mentions being Tina Fey(goddess of snarky wit) and Alec Baldwin(that voice. ooh).

Here's how we do this:

1. Three people. Celebrities,friends,weirdos, any damn human under the sun.

2.Pick who you'd marry, boff(as in nail/have sex with/get jiggy with/do the nasty with. you get the drift) or kill.

3.Dissect the results :)

Ok, here goes, Marry, boff, kill : Hugh Jackman, Hugh Laurie, Hugh Grant.

I'd marry Hugh Laurie (supreme hotness), boff Hugh Jackman ( henceforth known as The Body) and kill Grant (too foppish. eeks)

Or: Angelina Jolie, Scarlett, Megan Fox

Kill megan(yuck. i hate her), boff Scarlett and marry Angelina.

MBK. random fun. Pick and tell. Fast. I'm still bored.

Choose us. Choose life

O shwetu!

Thy wish is my command :)

Blog. Don’t blog. Write. Suck at writing. Give up. Come back.

And then listen to Shwetu.

So here we are. A few brain cells lighter. Where is our mojo?

This post is about a lot of things, TOEFL, spoons, condescending voices, pretty boys, weird food and Veera Manek.

The latter three of which are seriously amazing.

Eric

Fickle heart. I think I just fall in and out of love a little too rapidly.

this is Eric. From True Blood.
I cant look at him directly. All that hotness is too much for my tiny brain.

TOEFL

General gyaan for anyone who wants a 115+ in this most moronic of exams with exactly one hour of preparation. I'm assuming of course that you have a basic grasp of English here(read at least one PG Wodehouse, know the meaning of zeitgeist and wince when you hear a resident of Nagpur speak)

What you need for TOEFL is phenomenal will-power, Hippo chips and the ability to ignore annoying voices that deliver pointless instructions while assuming that you are a retard.

I had no clue about any of this when I went to the centre. Most of this is through the efforts of Gopalkrishnan, Indumati and Akshat Malu.

Section 1: this is the reading section. They'll give you 3 passages(easy ones. No culture and anthropology crap here)ask you lame questions and mostly you wont be too bored.

Unless of course, they go all psycho on you and decide that 5 passages will test your skills better.

Beware of the dreaded 8. yes, it happens.

The questions are very simple. Most answers are directly from the passage and there are some pretty interesting question formats as well.

No sweat.

Section 2: Listening.

There are three listening exercises. One is a conversation, and two lectures( I think). Take notes and listen carefully while battling sleep.

The number of listening sets vary. I got three. This was a true test of character. All survival instincts operate on full swing mode.

Section3: Speaking.

This was the one I fucked up majorly. They want you to comment/summarise/give opinions.

What you need to do is think fast and not stare into space.

This for instance is how my first exercise went

Lady(in a sloowww voice) : you have 15 seconds to prepare and 45 seconds to speak. You may start preparing now.

Me: 15 seconds? How long is that? 15? 14? Huh?

Lady: You may speak now.

Me: What? Oh? Culture is blah. Blah.

Don’t do that. Train yourself to know exactly how long 15 seconds are. And crap to rustle up in that itsy-bitsy interval.

This is the only section that need a wee bit of prep. Don’t screw it up.

Section 4: Writing.

Ha. Joke.

The chips come in handy since this is a 4 hour exam and you don’t want the growling of your stomach to overpower the annoying microphone voices.

I managed a 113 after screwing up speaking. Its easy to get much more than that.

One hour. Just do it.

Amelie

She's in my head. If I ever made a movie, this is exactly what I'd want it to look like. Its charming, weird and has undercurrents of the funniest sort of love. I like Nino, his vespa, his quirky photo collection. And Amelie, with her need to make the people around her happy, her cat, her fear of facing the man she loves , I cant get enough of her.

Watch this. This is the only movie I've seen that spoke to me of orange days. I used to think that was solely between me and the voices in my head.

Trainspotting

So i read it. Made it through the Scots and the drugs and the puke. Bits of my sanity are neatly pressed between the pages of Trainspotting. Some books take too much out of you.

Choose us. Choose life.

Haunting. Scary and weird.

Irvine Welsh is cruelly funny. And all of them, Renton, Sick Boy. Begbie. Spud, Tommy, they'll stay with you for days after.

Grey Hills

After 3 years of living 250 meters away from it and inhaling its fried chicken-onion odors, we caved in and went to the erstwhile Anna. I figured out that the average chicken means more to me than half the people I know.

Chicken makes me happy. Throw Veera into the equation and I'm slightly trippy with joy.

Blue milk

Milk is awesome when its blue.

Aggie's recipe for Blue Milk:
1. Take one mug of milk
2. Add to it the complete contents of a large packet of Gems.
3.Stir. The Gems will leak their fuzzy colours into the milk. And if there were a large number of blue gems to start of with, Voila, blue milk.
4. Mash the remaining chocolate shells.
5.Slurp. Repeat.

Boredom does various things to you.

There are approximately a billion admit related things to do. Guess who's sitting pretty and not doing them :)


Independence day tomorrow. I like the flag hoisting followed by dull speeches and customary pedas. And the tiny paper flags. Its like a case of displaced nostalgia.

Blood donation camp tomorrow too and I don't qualify :( the awesome things in life have sputtered out and died. All that remains is Stephen King and Pearls before swine.

Damn, i finally ran out of things to blog about.

I so hope this happens :|

Smite me O Mighty Smiter!

Cheers :)

"Please make it cheerful, not like your blog"
-instructions on how(not) to write a newsletter article.

This blog is hardly cheerful. Spacey,whiny, cynical, whiny, lost,whiny and random. Yes to all of that. Maybe I just dont do cheer.

Its been a week since college started. I want this sem to be awesome and fun. So obviously this far, its been morose and gloomy. You know what, this is just going to turn into a whine :| Dont bother reading since I'll just pull you into melancholy's purple depths with me.

Made a random reading list today of books that I will never get over. They're firmly lodged in my system.

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
2.The Moor's last sigh by Salman Rushdie.
3.Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling
3.Life of Pi by Yann Martel
4.Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
5.Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
6.Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sue Townsend
7.The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver
8.Diary by Chuck Palahniuk
9. Memeories of my melancholy whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I know I'm forgetting loads here, but this stuff is magic. Get your hands on them and read.

2 years to the day, Niranjan :)

Oh Spidey, this is the poem:

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely road,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea and music in its roar,
I love not man the less,
But nature more,
In these our interviews in which I steal,
From all I may be or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe and feel,
what I can never express yet cannot all conceal.


-Lord Byron

Can you dance like a Hippogriff?

Turns out, I can!
Its what i did on the road outside the GRE center stranger with auto drivers looking appalled and street urchins laughing.
But you know, sometimes, you just have to do that little jig :)
Today is the day that redeemed these hols in one fell swoop.


GRE is over. I can breathe and forget what exegesis means. 1560 people. I could die!

I saw HP 6!

Mind blowing graphics, smooth acting and a hotter Rupert Grint. I was a Puddle Of Aggie.
Sensory overload.
Cant type.
YAY!!!!!!

Babe, I'm gonna leave you

Babe, baby, baby, I'm gonna leave you.
I said baby, you know I'm gonna leave you.
Ill leave you when the summertime,
Leave you when the summertime comes arollin
Leave you when the summer comes along.
-Led Zeppelin

Will and Wont :|

I hate imaginary conversations. HATE.
And GRE is tormenting me :|

I think this post should halt the comment wars.
All hail Take the Hickey, Suchi's new child after her old one, the ball Spiky was lost to orphan children.
Someday, Ill provide detailed explanations about all these terms and their relations to each other. Today is not that day.

We must all vent and whine sometime. I think our brains might implode otherwise.
I don't want brain juice pouring out of my ears.

What I do want is more Led Zep.

Over and out.

Sky Pie.

3 days till I scram :)

This blog is living upto its usual erratic and weird standards. Like, I blabbered about the rain and random songs, but I cant write about the major significant stuff that happened in this whole 2month long chunk of life. Missing the point. I've got it down to an art form.

Anyway, in strict order of importance:
1. Dee's home: This is the awesomest place to spend a Sunday. You step into its calm sheltered peace and unwind. I can feel bits of me actually melting from the sheer relief of warm sambar and a mother :)

2. Tada!!!!
When I first saw the mountain, this is what flitted through my brain : Big. So Big.
I mean I can't tell you exactly how high it was. All I can think of is words like ginormous, and turns out that isn't even a word.
Tada is a tiny village near the Tamil nadu- andhra border and its has an immensely trekkable mountain with waterfalls on top to make all that prancing and jumping slippery rocks worthwhile.
You follow a dry riverbed upstream and keep climbing up rocks. Trees, monkeys and wacky flowers provide the scenery and there were some pretty awesome lizards too. the breeze is sweet and cool. For details read Wordsworth.

The waterfalls on top were apparently good. I never swam out that far to verify. But this green pebbly pool was sweet :)
The best part was when we were sunning out on a huge boulder right on top. You look up and see this rectangular slice of sky, hemmed in by huge cliff faces and ferns. You know exactly how tiny and tired you are. But its okay, just for that shade of blue, that sound of running water, and the pretty ferns.
We for the record were : Mahita, Bharat, Srini, Spidey, Aman, Priya, Preeti and me. Tada rocked mostly because of them :D
These pics are from spidey's cam and one from my phone. I wasnt kidding about the green pool.






3. There was of course more: trips to Landmark, bus rides, deer spotting, Horlicks at 11 in the night, PG Wodehouse, walks in the rain and tiny objects that fly(Spidey, I owe you one ).

Chennai's over. I think I know what to do with the rest of my life and I'm officially in love with my prof for his awesomeness.

I just want home now. Bombay in the rains is surreal :)

Yellow submarine

I think the Beatles are pretty out there. Their music is so weird and happy. As if if you OD on them, you'll have yellow glitter oozing out of your pores.
Yellow submarine heads the list of happy-weird songs. Im placidly content in my closed little world here. I live for Lost and sweaty bus trips down crowded roads.
Shwetu, Happy Birthday :D
Im doing all I can to avoid moaning inwardly at the thought of you being,like,40 gazillion miles away.
why cant you be moronic and lazy and stick your scrawny bum in one country :| ???
have an awesome birthday man.
Fans of The Shwetu may pay their homage with comments.

Colour me Purple :)

" Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just dont seem the same
Actin funny, but I dont know why
scuse me while I kiss the sky
Purple haze all around
Dont know if Im comin up or down
Am I happy or in misery?
-Jimi Hendrix
Purple Haze

I could waste 30 lines on exactly how I feel right now, or let Jimi do the talking.

It rained today. It was around 5. I was drifting through Cloud Atlas, when I heard that shimmery, silky raindrop sound. It took me nanoseconds to move out. Everything was gray, like that Powerpuff girls episode where the colour gets sucked out of things.

I wandered about, said hi to the albino deer, collected tiny red seeds and had yet another endless cup of coffee. Raindrops make me realise how happy I can be :) All those head swimmy questions about the future die a wet death. What am I doing here!!! gets buried under a million tiny drops. A curly haired visage pops back into my brain. Sigh. Long and deep.

I'm hooked onto Lost again. Its like revisiting this intense, torrid love affair you used to have. Deja vu Suchi and Himanshu. In a big I-love-Jack-so-damn-much way.

I have one blurred picture of the albino deer. You can barely see it in all the graininess. I dont know if it's an albino or if white deer exist in nature. I've decided its one of the things I don't want to Google and know :)

23C

The measly few in number who follow this erratic blog, will know me for what I am. A generally gormless, -oohh-look-at-that-blinky-airplane-oops-i-dint-see-that-car-just-about-to-mash-me. My spatial skills are non-existent and I will one day die in a crunchy road accident while crossing some vague, snarly road.
Oh,and I don't know Tamil.
You can picture exactly what transpired when I had to navigate Adyar all by myself. Yes, the three braincells residing in my tiny skull have finally reached puberty :)
Blame it all on Airtel, who have matured into a large scale annoyingly tormenting bright red bunch of jerks. They randomly go on SIM blocking sprees cutting off innocent victims from the rest of the planet.
Which meant that I was obliged to go bust their asses. It took me four hours to find the place, vent and get back. My fingers itch to type out every crummy detail of the journey. Breathe. I'm not actually going to do it. Bits off the top of my head:

1. The lady who was stuck with me for 15 minutes while we tried to cross the road. Yes, 15 minutes without a single break in the seething mass of trucks, cars and bikes. She was on the old doddery side of things and on 3 occasions grabbed my hand and almost wailed for me to wait till the traffic stopped. Our 15 minute long conversation progressed as follows:
Lady: Telugu?
Me: English, English
Lady: Telugu
Me: Hindi
Lady: *snigger*
Me: malar hospital
Lady:Telugu
Me: Cars
Lady: smile
She held my hand while crossing the road though :)

2. The auto guys. These guys are from another planet altogether. A weird yellow place whose inhabitants spout random numbers. One guy asked me for 120 bucks to cover a distance of 5 minutes. Another took me for 30 bucks and said welcome to my to my stuttered thanks. On the return trip:
Auto guy: *random tamil*
Me: What? what?
Auto guy: 60
Me: 30
Auto guy: cynical laugh

3. The dudes who gave me a lift to the gate. There is some screenwriting workshop happening at IIT-M and all these guys spoke about was words, abstracts and directors. Awesome!!

4. Every male in the age group15-22 who helped me out. And all aunties aged 40-50. These are(according to my superior reasoning skills) the best people to ask for directions if you are a female age 18-20. When I'm lost/clueless,my face acquires this helpless puppy expression. The motherly type find this irresistible.The boys are just well, just nice and very obliging. All that helps when you don't know bus routes and want someone to smile a lot and pat your arm while pointing the way.

5. Buses in Chennai are enormously confusing with numbers like 47A, 19B,29H, 23C,5E,7M. As far as I can make out, the numbers and alphabets have no logical connect. There are infinite such numbers and buses are very picky about where they drop you. Finding the right bus is a very rare event unless you know the exact bus number and the geography of the place you want to reach. I stopped a bus because it was pretty and shiny. That's it. Sole reason. It was new, clean and yellow. By sheer dumb luck,it also went to IIT-M.

My legs are screaming from all the walking they were subjected to. 3 autos and a bus later, I have that weird expression that only the gormless who have managed to find their bearings manage to have.

Made it okay va :)

To the moon and back

Savage Garden is very dead. Its been years since thousands of teeny-boppers have recovered from the shock of a very gay Darren Hayes and whoever that other guy was. People can barely name more than three numbers they came out with. But this song somehow makes me drift off into another happy dimension altogether.

I'm back home. For a week-long breather. Currently spending time appreciating concepts like full length mirrors, water pressure in the shower and 40,000 awesome smelling shampoos/lotions belonging to mom and sis.

IIT Madras beckons; summer internships being a mandatory trial-by-fire for any engineering yuppie.

Chennai will be as awfully hot and sticky as home, with lab work and GRE to add to my ever increasing list of things-I-should-be-very-concerned-about-but-always-fail-to-generate-sufficient-depth-of-feeling-for.
I'm wondering is apathy has become a defining character trait.

IIT M from what I remember from an earlier sojourn was mind-blowingly brilliant. Green, deer-infested and a subsidised CCD. I'll live and prosper :)

As we all know, I was born in the wrong decade. The 70's was where all the fun was. The snazzy symbolism, weird pants and all the free love your system could handle. With my head stuck in the wrong time zone, life here is rather stifling.

I'm watching That 70's show again. I have a predilection for all those psychedelic colours. The thing about shows you grow up with, is that head rush of kiddie memories they bring back. Like your 10th grade self and her obsessions with Gareth Gates, Slam books and Ishan Handa.

I saw Teeth yesterday, thanks to Muchi and her umm.... eclectic tastes. Eating pizza while watching Teeth make one gross combination; I am endowed with steely resolve (and stomach) after living through dinner clashing with Fear Factor and the consumption of maggots/diving in goo etc. My tiny brain could only grasp so much. I think teeth gives female empowerment a whole new mystical spin. I was amused/amazed :)

Semester's ending. this means of course, that assignments are secretly reproducing to produce evil, mutant offspring. I'm on the bad side of swamped. This sem's been a weird one (okay yeah, so I say that about every sem, but this one really has!). If you don't know where you want to be, you'll never be happy where you are. wait, now I'm being sappy

Went to BITS, Pilani couple of weeks ago. Rajasthan is pretty :) and they had McD's.

Back-front-back

So yeah, two months is a long hiatus. I'm torn between boredom and re-reading the Simoqin Prophecies. For those who are unaware of the latter, take a large, violent cat and have her tear your ignorant brains out. I don't understand how Chetan Bhagat can become a literary sensation and leave Samit Basu a mere, like-who??


I love the Game World trilogy for its cool mad edginess and its innumerable references to everything from Indian mythology to James Bond. In fact I love this book so much, I've stolen it from Suchi. Jai ho may make us feel all kitschy-Indian,but for me nothing matched the thrill of reading an Indian author who's writing is in the league of the best fantasy fiction out there.


On the whole, i'm an Indian-hence-I-will-wake-up-at-the-crack-of-dawn-to-gape-at-red-carpet-glamor-as-i-nurse-my-morning-chai, I missed the bandwagon entirely. Woke up at 12 which is brunch and Courage the Cowardly dog time. Rahman = Respect. Cant say the same about Slumdog.


I found post-it Matrix notes :) at this amazing new stationery store called Mango. People looked flabbergasted as I mewled and moaned in happiness. Next birthday, swamp me over with pretty post-it notes,okay?? It takes my compulsive list making to a whole new level.