2012

This wayward hitchhiker wishes the (non-existent) readers of this blog a very happy new year :) May 2012 be an obscenely wealthy, ridiculously lucky and hopefully non fatal new year where you are blessed with many encounters involving tall, dark , sexy strangers.
There, I love you all :)
I'm riding high on a wave of coming-back-homeness. These are the glory days when one returns from the hinterlands of Florida and gets treated like visiting royalty. This is the life :)
Found a very vintage coffee shop here in Seawoods, with pouffy old lady sofas, giant book shelfs and empty birdcages. New Bombay is getting better. Met a bunch of people and resigned myself to missing them for a whole year more.
Have roamed the streets, dangled from the trains, been one with the heat and dust(that woman RPJ, knew what she was going on about?) ]
I am fat and happy.

Ho ho what?

Holidays. They are here :)
I come from one of the most atypical Catholic families that ever dipped it's brun-maska in hot chai.
We do the usual things around Christmas of course. Like sleeping at midnight mass, having too much rum cake and having more people over than our house can hold.
But then, one year my mum made dal-rice. For Christmas.
See, it's got it's ups and downs.

Christmas this year though, is way up there with the best of them. Too many gifts and more love than I can handle. All this from just one person.Thank you Derek :)
Cant. write. bleargh.

Hispidulously yours

Time to learn a new word children. No hair compares to the Suchi mane.

Today is the Much-ster's birthday. I always wondered when this blog would stop mentioning ages on birthday posts. That awkward time is now. This is that quietly age-censored post.

Happy Birthday Muchi :)
Devoted fans can pay homage in the comments section. Blithering idiots can mail her gifts. For instance, poverty has motivated me to send her the gift of Love this year.
Have a good one muchi. Take care of the hair.

Love,
Maggie

V for

Varanasi.I haven't been there and I'm reading a book about it by Geoff Dyer. I can't stop talking about whatever it is that I'm currently reading since it extends amoeba-esque pseudopodia enveloping my whole life. Dyer writes about Venice and Varanasi, places I've idealised forever and am dying to visit. His perspectives on Varanasi, Hinduism, India and Ginsberg are electrifying (this is it. The only word that fit). I feel like a voyeur into my own nation. Ever picked up a Lonely Planet to nowhere? I have and that's why I think Dyer is such a good travel writer.

***

In the school library, a lifetime ago, I'd read Philip's Pullman's pan-dimensional Dark Material's trilogy. In his chaotic, Dust-ridden universe, there were infinite worlds that existed with each other and there were people who could rip the fabric of their world and travel to any other. They lived happy fulfilling lives in these new worlds, they found themselves, loved, gained power and greatness. And yet, no matter how happy they were, the tug of their old worlds was great. They were simply,physically incapable of staying too long. Their hearts faltered and eventually they had to go back to where they came from or die in their new worlds. It was crushing to read about these people who yearned to stay and yearned to leave.

***

Over the last two weeks, I've watched a football game at The Swamp, seen Gods of Carnage at the Hippodrome, painted, been freaked out at Halloween horror nights and written the most important letter of my life to someone I love and worry about (the pen and paper kind. Where have they gone?)

Brain juice

Fourier, thank you.

And no other people.

Boyfriend,

This is my 10 minute coffee break. For a change I'm dedicating it to you instead of Sharan's tumblr. I need these 10 minutes in the day, when I know what I did today (had a painful meeting, stared glassily at the laser) and I know what I'll do in the next three hours (hunt for NLW clamps, think about what to tell Jim when he meets me tomorrow). But these 10 minutes (which we both know are actually 20) are now yours.

Yesterday was a fitting end to a year spent in this country where I've made my peace with large portions (stop it, stop sniggering) , hippie art, green lawns, red brick buildings and bad coffee. And also living away from everyone I love has been easier because I found another bunch of people who treat me like a child and laugh at most things I say. I find it hard to live away from home, mostly because what is home now anyway? What happens when I go back?

Thank you for bring an idli-vada-sambar plate into my life exactly a year after I'd last seen the sight of a yellow pumpkin blob drowned in sambar and coconut chutney. You are the singularly most unlikely person in the world that I should have dragged to Saravana Bhavan (now in Orlando, people :)) but I did and it was awesome. You stuck it out through 5 chutneys and a cheese masala dosa and I'm proud of you. Even your stoic rejection of the corriander one (this looks like green baby poop) was okay with me after you ate all of your dosa and seemed to like it. You sat through the screeches of Tollywood songs that now have incongruous bits of English rap with shrill women warbling in Tamil. You displayed keen interest in the mango Lassi (which you pronounced like Lassie, the dog). Its funny how the place you come from can sometime make you squirm when you see it through another point of view (Tamil pop, I hate/love you) It's hard to understand someone else's pulp fiction :)

Sea World was of course, awesome. Flashy, yes, but very awesome. I think that duck and her brood of future rock climbers was the best. After the fireworks and the colorful fountains. If I was a 6 year old, I would have hyperventilated and gone into a severe color-induced Disney coma.

Ah, coffee over.

Love,

Aggie

P:S: I've posted two pictures of you because you look so cute and they will get lost somewhere in my phone if I don't do this now.

Rest if the world, excuse this sort of unladylike gushing :)

St Louis :)

Apple Pie.

I used to have this theory that if I called a Travelog something innocuous and comforting like apple pie, I would have a harmless and gustatory sort of motivation to write it. This is obviously false since the last one was about Chennai, 3 years ago. Not only am I aging, but I'm also great at self delusion.

Any excuse to get out of Gainesville is a worthy cause. Throw a giant arch, a mad family, a ho-down, frozen custard, anteaters, museums and cats into the picture, and by God, there will be an Aggie there.

St Louis is the kind of place that I like by default. It's a big city with enough buildings that I had to crane my neck to look up to, bad traffic and good food in the middle of a tearing downpour of rain. What makes St Louis such a great place, personally, is the arch, which almost makes me miss skulking around Bombay. Picture a rainy day in Colaba, looking around and grounding yourself with the Gateway somewhere in your peripheral vision. The Arch is somewhat like that, a structure that let's you orient yourself in the middle of a big city.

Over the last four days, I've absorbed a whole new place. With Thai food, Ted Drewes, the St Louis Zoo, Body Worlds, Waterloo, and a gazillion other things :)

They do fireworks on a whole other dimension here. With barges shooting off lights in the sky framed by the arch, as thousands of people watched on. I think it's a hell of a way to celebrate freedom. Imagine having Jana Gana Mana and peda's on steroids.

Other bit's of this trip included the best party I've ever been to, with the formidable party planning skills behind it. Never has a ho down been this awesome, stray fireworks and the heat notwithstanding :) What struck me about Waterloo and the little towns around it was it's quaintness and scattered bits of history around churches, houses and tiny coffee shops. Any Starkey's reading this, I love you :)

There wasn't a free second to whip out a camera so no pictorial evidence exists. Another reason to go back, eh?

I'm a believer :)

I'm going to go ahead and be a sap. Excuse my digression from extreme cynicism and borderline nihilism.

Happy Birthday Derek :) Go fight some supervillians who think their's is bigger than yours. Ego's I mean.

Lots of love,

Me.

In your face

I like my big nose.

It gives me the liberty to say a lot of things to my morning coffee. Chief amongst them being: All the better to smell you, my dear.

I had the best weekend ever at St Pete's beach. I think the awesomeness of a trip is decided by the number of pictures you have of it. I have 3 of the beach, which means I was too busy being grossly salty and happy to bother with capturing anything significant.

This post was supposed to happen on Sunday night, but like, ha.

Apart from OD'ing on icecream and chlorine, we went to a comedy club which I think was a great blend of intensely funny and offensive. I think we need more of this in India, where the remarkable levels of repression might just give rise to genuinely funny standups.

Over and out,

Weasel.

And another thing.

Sharan makes me feel as if I'm in the wrong life. She is among other things the reason I believe in alternate universes. There has to be another me that doesn't care deeply about kinetic isotope effects and their repercussions.

I feel so terribly bad for all those alter-we's that we shed somewhere along the way. And that I hadn't devoured Philip Pullman during those years when my three brain cells were growing.

Things are madly out of control on the work front. Somewhere, Murphy is smirking quietly. Kill me if I write about the weather.

Eeks, where's my mojo?

Rubber Duckie

Today, we performed the Fourier transform of a rubber duck in class.

I think this is one of my favorite equations, now that I see in every class, and in every wave.

Wtf man, the body snatchers are at work.

Even though I love this blog to bits, I've given up coffee which has sapped me of the will to live, let alone write.

Shwetu might be coming here, which makes me furiously happy. Fist in the air, whee sounds etc :)

I'm a little stuck here. Also, I've learnt to cook, crochet and clean cupboards. I'm somebody's grandmother :|

It's fun dating a superhero; one has to keep up.

Over and out,

Duck

Rat Kinesin

Is an interesting thing to study. 12 in the night on a weird Sunday with three functional brain cells is not the time to do it though.

The weird thing about blogging is that you could be have entire days free, a bunch of awesome things happening around you and unlimited access to wifi, yet you find this time, someone else's computer and nothing vital to write about. Stupid Aggie.

Life is a loopy circle.

Things happening right now:

1. I'm reading the Blind Assassin by Atwood and I think it's making me dreamy.

2. I saw No Strings Attached. It was a lot to take in especially if you went in thinking yay, ashton, breezy rom-com. If that was you, the first 30 minutes would have you squirming. There's just no other word for it. There are funny bits but some unmistakably squirmy ones too.

3. Cellular mechanics is on. And I'm semi dead.

4. Somewhere over the rainbow.

5. I miss writing. Savagely much :| Oh wait that could go on for a while.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.