Dilettante

That is what I am this summer. I even bought a really expensive mango, harking back to those summer vacations of yore where all my clothes had yellow spots and my face had a mandatory mango heat boil. This limbo between schools means that I have a summer off. School's out. I sometimes say those words to myself on icky hot days where my biggest concerns are which book to pick. I think those two words strung together is the nicest sentence in the language.

After two years of crushing worries in grad school, I spent the first half of this unexpected vacation worrying myself to death about wasted time and a lack of purpose. Maybe I should be working towards a summer project or travelling or well, something. But I'm temporarily sick of work. And the only way I can travel is if someone hires me as pack mule, since being between schools is also a euphemism for unemployment.

Relaxing is hard at this level. Everyone here is a highly motivated graduate student, wishing for more hours in the day to fill with work. Heck, I wasted a whole month just judging myself. If I'm not working shouldn't I focus on fun? Plan trips, invade theme parks, drive forever?

A massive finger to all of that. What I'm doing is various shades of presently enjoying nothing. Working out some transport phenomena problems because I want to, painting, overloading my Kindle so that it crashes and making khana everyday. It's a slow, dreamy life. With tea in the evening, a pool to lounge in and girlfriends who revere Bollywood pulp. I'm happy, anyone would be with this pool :) 


P:S
Sharan, my mother, on Skype this week, asked how you are doing and sends her regards. She is a rather random woman too :)

64 days of summer

Summer's here :) With it comes a weird blend of wanting to just die and gawking at all the butterflies. Watermelon slices are rampant. Shorts too and giant sunglasses. It's time to shed some excess baggage.
What I don't like about Summer here is that it's not immediately followed by a monsoon season. I won't go on and on about the rains. Endlessly romanticizing things has long been a personal weakness.

Saw a couple of movies this week that have both made me think for vastly different reasons:

1. Tiny Furniture
By Lena Dunham and starring as Aura
Is the seemingly pathetic story of a privileged New Yorker whose failure to find employment finds her moving back to her mother's home. Things are a little too real for her as she tries to find her talent and voice while navigating a couple of relationships that made me cringe. Dunham is shocking in how much of herself she puts out there. Physically and artistically. When every woman around me, on the TV, in the bus, while shopping is so perfectly pretty with flippy straight hair, it's unsettling see Aura looking far less than perfect in most frames. I dint really like the movie much. I think it doesn't make itself a very like-able experience, but it certainly measures the unemployment, unfulfillement and deprivation of a new generation.

2. Main Khiladi tu Anari
I love this movie :) That I was forced to watch in parts on Youtube, having no access to those giants of mega bad TV, Star and Sony. I've accepted the fact that being far away from India makes you appreciate all it's pulp fiction vastly more. It's something  only you understand, having being an Indian child in the 90's. This movie has all the early pre-waxed Akshay and Saif hilarity. Haven't laughed so hard in a long time. Why is Bollywood so dumbed down?