Still hitchiking

Manic Pixie

2012-02-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

It easier to fall in love with the idea of a person.

------
I'm struggling with advanced thermo, a thesis and a very disorganized life presently. I would like to rent some mental peace form someone of it's up for grabs. Figured I'll drown my sorrows in work. It's about time.

------
There are so many things to wish for:
1. A more selfless self.
2. Cheaper books
3. More songs to fall in love with. I heard Gotye's Somebody that I used to know and felt an inexplicable sadness.
4. Summer. I'm done with chilliness and hands so dry that they sting worse than dettol on fresh bike wounds.

Enough.

2012

2011-12-31T22:53:00.000-08:00

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?

2011-12-08T14:03:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-07T16:31:00.000-08:00

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

2011-09-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-31T11:38:00.000-07:00

Fourier, thank you.

And no other people.

2011-08-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

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 :)

2011-07-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

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 :)

2011-05-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-27T10:50:00.001-07:00

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.

2011-04-05T18:43:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

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

2011-01-30T21:24:00.000-08:00

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.

Hair there and everywhere..

2010-12-27T21:59:00.000-08:00

And to think in a previous life I used to hate bunnies.

They have the softest hair though :)

I think Boston is a mixed bag.

Snow v/s Suchi.

Vodka v/s Veera

Bad movies v/s bowling

See, it's tough to be on vacation.

Mostly, it's dealing with a difficult Christmas and too many things happening at once :)

But Muchi and Veeri I owe you one man. Too much love :)

Looking forward to more sunrises,

Weasel.

Muchi

2010-12-12T11:24:00.000-08:00

Dude,

Happy Birthday!

Crap, i forgot the birthday post this year.

I foist the blame on Marston Science Library.

Love,

In whichever sense :)

Maggie

7

2010-11-27T21:04:00.000-08:00

What did you do today?

Today, I was a little in love.

La Douleur Exquise

2010-10-07T17:34:00.000-07:00

You know what it feels like.

Eeeeeks, I'm just about suppressing the urge to write down Skyrocket Love's semi-emo'ish lyrics out here. Thank god the inner cynic has affected some quality control by killing the whiny child in me.

It's winter here :) Is it just me or does winter smell a certain way, because that's what's making my prodigious nose very happy.

Oh, and coffee just does not taste the same here. I recommend that you'd be better off carrying your body weight in Nescafe before you land here so that when painful withdrawal symptoms hit you at 3 am before midsems/assignments, it's not your body that lies withering in spasms on the carpet.

Spams of writing are better than nothing at all, right?

It's weird to move to a whole new country with no foreseeable options to return home. Grad school sucks you into it's complex, frustrating and incredibly challenging maw, till lack of sleep, thought and hey-let's-chill-this-weekend are bygone conclusions. Before you know it, you'd have spent 5 years here, hopping countries and continents. The only constant you could hope for is Friday night's

Shwetu, I repeat, I'll never ever mock you about your science library days.

Yeah, so a new country, a new list of things to fall in love with. new cities to sink roots into,especially when you are a distinctly rootless thing to begin with. From being a confused Goan-Mallu-Dig-Bombay blend to here is a puzzling journey.

Oops, over my head :)

Oh, and it is humanly possible to miss pani-puri more than your parents. Testified by Aggie.

I'm going to Universal Studio's this weekend :D And New York in December! :D

yay!

"An increase in population leads to fluctuations and social competitiveness for resources and then stuff dies"

- Johns Lewis

in some random class.

PS. I'm sick of missing you. Sick.

Hair and there.

2010-09-14T20:22:00.000-07:00

So, why weren't you blogging all this while?

My ass wasn't comfortable enough. To sit down, stare suspiciously at space, balance a cup of coffee and a lap top, potter about online and type. See all that multitasking? The least one can ask is for a warm, soft place to park your rear end.

Which I found in a purple bean bag. The pride and joy of my life right now.

Extremities taken care off, I'll bugger off to the significant aspects of life here. The flora, the fauna and all that they get tipsy on. What's life like here. I wish some of you were and then we could collectively ignore that question.

But like, America, OOH. For an unashamedly consumerist capitalist pig like me, there are big, shiny, vastly pointless and amazing things to possess. Colored, flavored bubbles for your bath, sleek i phones everywhere, purple velvet bean bags, you get the bright glitzy picture.

Ah, sensory overload. I must stop hyper ventilating like this. There is so much to say here. Convey the whole concept of Big. Which is everything here. Classes, people, portions, cars, bikes, the sky.

I feel like I'm on a new planet where a whole new vista called the sky has opened up. I swear, the scales are completely off. The sky stretches endlessly here. In perfect blue. Swept with puffy white/soft golden/neon pink clouds all the time. Like outrageous bits of beauty wantonly strewn on an endless canvas. You learn a whole new landscape that never heard of heat and dust.

In between missing regular food and the mindless calories I eat here. In between calculating the in's and out's of thermodynamics. In the vast aisles of 2 gianormus libraries surrounded by what feels like the combined output of all the world's printing presses(where Sandman lies next to Chaucer and the New Yorker). With slow cups of coffee on sheltered windows. On park benches, worrying three sets of complicated equations. This is when life creeps up on me.

Univ is different. The relentless pursuit of knowledge for starters. I was awed at how much they want us to study here, and how undergrad at VNIT stamped the last bits of that out of me. I'm wondering if all this cross referencing and endless comparison between two lives is right, but try stopping :)

Waiting for a train.

2010-07-20T10:32:00.000-07:00

Oh man Inception.

When we keep moaning about how movies suck these days and how you'd rather rip them off from a torrent with free homemade popcorn, there comes along that one movie that makes you a Believer.

And how.

Inception takes movies to a whole new level where you spend every second caught up in its relentless pace and edgy brilliance. Wiki tells me a lot of things about the plot which I'm still having problems assimilating and marveling at. The acting is flawless, there isn't one scene I'd like to see done differently.

Christopher Nolan is the Man. Awe!!

That apart, this was the first time in my life that I've ever seen a quiet hush in a crowded multiplex during the interval. Also the first time I've heard applause for a scene that dint involve demi-godly sporting antics or Aamir Khan. Watching people sit on the edge of their seats, mouths agape, another first.

That apart the movie hit me so hard, I stumbled out. Literally.

Muchi, best thing we've done in ages mon. Like ever.

And if you still dint get this post, go watch the movie. Scram!

Why bother?

2010-07-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, a month left.

Jittery :|

There is no Plan B

2010-06-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

There are some movies that make it worth crawling out of bed at 7 am and driving in pissing rain for. Movies that help you forgive the mouldy seats, crappy popcorn and the hormonal couple going at it two rows ahead.

The A Team was pretty Awesome, the sort that makes me move my bum and blog about. This used to be a series on TV that I missed on account of not being born back then. I can't really decide how it compares to the original but as a movie by itself it was one hell of a watch.

If you're the kind you enjoys meaningless wacky action, brash, loud macho stuff then A team is totally worth it. The Alpha team consists of Hannibal Smith, Face, BA and Murdock who specialize in the "ridiculous". 8 years and 80 missions down the line, everything's good for our guys till the conventional shit hits a very large fan and becomes effervescent.

In any brash American type of movie, throwing the words Saddam, counterfeit notes and CIA in any permutation and combination constitutes a well though out plot. Hence, expect nothing from A Team in those respects. What scores here is the dialog and the way the team comes together.

Most of the action leaves you awed and laughing hysterically at the overtly macho and supremely awesome way they pull off successively crazy stunts.

The best thing ever was the flying tank sequence and the window cleaner free fall one. Considering we are all very jaded movie veterans, it still is fun to see a larger than life tank falling from the sky and firing ammo mid air.

Murdock spinning on rotor blades and singing "You spin my head right round" is one of the funnier scenes and the car in a 3D movie one is KILLER.

Man, I dont want to spoil this. Get over your instinctive disdain for all things big and American, leave a chunk of your hippocampus at home and A team is a fun deal :)

Phantoms in the brain

2010-06-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

Way back when life was divided into 12 A and 12 B, bio v/s computers, girls v/s boys, whatever, I remember having the following conversation:

Certain dude (easily guessable if you know the more vocal elements of 12A) : Why Bio? Bio sucks!

Me: No it does not! It makes to sense to study your own fricking body.

CD: Yeah, but all that mugging, where does it gets you? Studying Bio is pointless.

Me: I'm hungry and I have to finish HP 7 again. Please go away.

Oh, thee of little faith! I wish I could shove Phantoms in the brain at this guy. It takes cool to a whole new level. If thoughts about the voices in your head, your other personality, Hugo the Mexican chef and The Zombie in your brain(an actual chapter header) keep you awake at night, this is the book mon. I kid thee not.

V.S Ramachandran is one of those charmingly brilliant types who sees the world in a more enlightened and curious ways. Through his work in neuroscience, we get to know all these little detail about how an immensely complex entity like our brain functions.

Shwetu, I owe you one for this.

On the frequently recurring and complex subject of Shwetu herself, a delayed HAPPY FRIGGIN BIRTHDAY man!!!!!!!!

YAY!!! Now we're both 21 and old.

That apart, I miss you. CBD is just plain old crap as usual.

And the Harry Potter theme park. Let's make up for every lost birthday of the past there. We have to do this!!!!!!! :)

To nowhere and back

2010-06-07T06:42:00.001-07:00

Is an interesting journey for those who posses:

a) A lack of purpose

b) An active imagination (six impossible things before brekkie, that sort of thing)

c) Are perpetually dazed and confused

d) Have a car

No i mean really, a car just puts my entire fricking existence in perspective.

The rains finally decided to make their presence felt. I think they magnify everything you feel by a factor of 1000. Like spurts of mega happiness, then bits of melancholy( a bit of a standard thing on days as sepia orange as these) swerving through giant mini-lake sized puddles and having random songs rips your heart out.

This is what the monsoon does to me.

This was one of the best first days of the rains ever.

Mostly due to the fact that we got to drive around aimlessly while the rains lashed the roads into a frenzy. Then we chanced upon a lake and stopped to stare at sheets of water ripping on its surface. Add coffee to all of that, and we were as close to nirvana as one can get when one is 21 and languishing in New Bombay.

Suchi and Himanshu, muchas gracias amigos :) One hell of an awesome day.

Then there's the bit about Visa forms, Nine Lives, A Suitable Boy, Glee and my Origami crane. Another post dudes. Soon

That Girl.

2010-04-06T11:21:00.000-07:00

I drew this girl ages ago. Got the image of Sharan's tumblr. Her dress was supposed to be red. But purple is what I felt like.

P.S: I shouldn't say it. Or even think it. But I will. Whattodo? Come back. Pretty please.

P.P.S :Man, I just keep internalising this blog so much :|

Will

2010-04-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

There is this ancient sitcom called The fresh prince of Bel-Air which used to air on Zee Cafe way back when I was in class 8. The entire funny factor of this show can be attributed to the Awesomeness that is Will Smith. I mean, ever since then , I've been in a constant state of love with the guy.

He's funny, and he came up with Jiggy with it . Respect man. I think I loved him most in MIB and Shark Tale :)

Jay: Did you ever flashy-thing me?

Kay: No.
Jay: I ain't playing with you, K. Did you ever flashy-thing me?
Kay: No.

See what I mean?

What happens in Goa

2010-03-11T10:42:00.000-08:00

Should stay in Goa :) Should!

Muchi and me came up with another one of our convoluted theories. Goa is our very own Desi Vegas. A place where people are expected to be remarkably drunk and blonde. When half of VNIT makes a beeline for the land of the excise free stuff, you can expect some monumental piles of crap to hit the fan.

The repercussions of 6 beers for 100 bucks are, needless to say , being felt horribly in college right now. Our temple, Facebook, is overloaded with 1,00,00,000 pictures of flabby people lounging in the sand and posing with flashy rented bikes. The rumours of hook ups and the unnecessary graphic detailing employed by the callous majority can turn a person off making out for life. In true VNIT style, the amount of bitching about the chuddy-buddy-friends-f0r-life that you travelled with could prolong the Gossip Girls series for the next 40 years.

I'll be nice and refrain from posting a lame pic. I have had it with Goa, a place I used to love, right down to its weirdly nice fishy smell.

Wait, I started this off as a nice post, where the tiny roads and coconut trees waving down from church steeples had their say. I was supposed to focus on the pancakes , the moonlight on the beach, karaoke and hot guys. Stupid, repressed, pissed off feelings. Goa used to mean eavesdropping on Konkani conversations, writing on the sand and eating doce. Now, I'm probably never going there.

If you do go, make sure its a SAS type of commando op, where the hoi-polloi are blissfully unaware and can be simply eliminated if they get annoying.

Game plan for next holiday: Karnataka.

This is it man. After years of having my dad going all sappy when it comes up, I think I'll give it a shot.

Its very Roots, but what the hell. Maybe someone there has my awful nose. The Goan bit of me is sulking.

Sunday

2010-02-21T08:58:00.000-08:00

So I'm playing this game called Plants v/s Zombies. For the uninitiated, it is exactly what it claims to be. The Zombies want to feast on your brains and your trusty plants ensure they don't. That simple.

I like the sunflower most in this game. it's a smiley thing that waves about like a mass nursery rhyme recital by 3 year olds. It is well, very gay. As in the happy sort of gay. we lose a lot of words don't we?

I think I've set some ugly precedent for avoiding work/all responsibilities. I hate me :|

Muchi, where the effing hell are you mon?

Latest love and source of many sappy sighs and minor drooling is Rahul Bose. After seeing him as Mr. Iyer, life cannot be the same again. No man will ever measure up to him :|

Apart from these miserable occurrences, I've laid my hand son the Agatha Christie 1960's omnibus. It has a snazzy cover and brilliant writing. I feel massive doses of the usual awe.

Crap. I don't feel like writing anymore.

Recovering blogger,

Aggie

Sulky Butterflies

2010-02-17T09:02:00.000-08:00

"When you're happy, you notice butterflies"

- Vivek Vattipalli

He's right. They keep fluttering about, but you really notice them only when you're tripping on some random happy thought.

Of which there aren't too many these days.

What sticks significantly in my craw is the college administration and its narrow minded bigoted existence. It takes 30,000 kinds of varied shit for you to wake up and see that things around you are extremely unfair, mightily annoying and very stifling for general human rights. I wish I was one of those people who knew exactly what to do and how to shake a few people sadly places in positions of authority. Sadly, this is not a movie and I don't have the benefit of a background score and stunning oratorical prowess.

Running away to Goa in a week. This is what last sems are for. Friends, tequila and beaches. let's admit it, things are only about to suck a lot more from this point onward.

In the meantime, I will shut my cynical little brain down. If you need a little radiance in life I suggest:

1. Suchi's blog.

2. Ginger tea

3. The men who stare at goats

4. David Sedaris

5. Cadbury Flakes :)

Lessons in humbility :)

2010-01-09T12:02:00.000-08:00

Some words should be allowed into the fray I think. Humbility. Rolls off nicely :)

Also, lessons in How Not To Be A Narcissistic Bitch And Avoid Searches of Your Own Name Thus Saving Life From Being Scarred And Traumatic 101 by Professor Agnes Mendonca (duly shaken and much scarred herself )

You never know what you'll find lurking out there. Sigh

Jiggy-wiggy with you

2009-12-10T09:52:00.000-08:00

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 :)

2009-12-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-05T09:43:00.000-08:00

Im sick of this blog :|

Barf.

The Other Nihillist

2009-11-06T08:50:00.000-08:00

" 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 :)

------------

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.

-------------

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.

-------------

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?

-------------

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.

-----------------

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.

-----------------

Agnes Mendonca is in a relationship with Suchismita Mohapatra.

Comment/Like

Just Like That.

2009-10-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

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 :)

2009-10-11T17:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

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 :|

2009-07-29T09:22:00.001-07:00

Smite me O Mighty Smiter!

Cheers :)

2009-07-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

"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?

2009-07-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-07T07:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

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 :)

2009-06-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

" 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

2009-05-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-05T00:29:00.000-07:00

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 :)

2009-04-12T06:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

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.

I like to move it :D

2008-12-19T02:02:00.000-08:00

They're back and how!!!

I was reeling from the shock of the sheer magnitude of awesomeness that is Madagascar, Back to Africa. Its of those sequels that manages to go one up on the first one

Its cleanly displaced The Incredibles as my favourite animated movie of all time.

Apart from being incredibly funny, Madagascar has some pretty amazing characters and their quirkiness stays with you for a long tome.

Here are my selected favourite bits from the movie:

1. Mafia monkeys *Snort, giggle*
2. The dancing girl and Skipper. The ending was one of the best wedding scenes in the history of cinema.
3. Gloria and Melman. Yay! Reinforcing the point that love is blind and batty. Suddenly its cool to love way out of your own species. And that lame sentence "we don't fit?" Try fitting a giraffe and a rhino together.
4. When the penguins carjack the tourist vehicle. Slick!!!
5. Nana who got the crap pounded out of her, and of course gave it right back Its horribly, excruciatingly funny.
6.Sacha Baron Cohen as King Julien. We all like to move it now!!
7. Moto Moto. yeah baby, you were Hot Hot!

McDonald's is giving out Madagascar toys with Happy Meals. Since no force on Earth can make me consume one, I'm woefully toyless. While children are capering around with Alex, Melman, Marty and Gloria in their hands. There was one weak moment when I caught sight of an unattended Alex toy. But the kid's sharp pointy eyes prevailed. I'm toy less :(

Please eat those gruesome Happy Meals and give me your toys. Please!

Pretty please. *picture the classic Aggie puppy dog look here*

I'll reimburse. Pinky swear.

Bithday spate!!!

2008-12-10T07:45:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Sharan :D
I'm pleasantly shocked that I dint make a huge boo-boo by forgetting (again?)

Here's to thine awesomeness. Have a blast !

Sharan verb

to pull off an an act of very cool and near impossible proportions.

example: I sharaned off to the mall to see Salman Rushdie. He signed a book for me :)

Sexy Back

2008-12-08T06:59:00.000-08:00

"I'm bringing sexy back "
-Justin Timberlake.

And so is Muchi. Tirelessly striving to bring Sexy back. With a bang( I don't know where these sad puns are coming from. Its not intentional okay?) When sexy is a dying art, limited to pointless clothes, weird accents and booty shaking, Muchi is redefining it every minute.

Muchi seems to breeze through life, vaguely serene and laid back even as her lungs are trying to eject themselves out through her nostrils and into the tiny hankies she always has on her person.
Her permanently leaky nose, hair that can blind people and a tiny cellphone that she magically conjures from the middle of nowhere are some traits by which mere mortals identify her.

4 years of constant exposure to her made me realize the whole stunning extent of her awesomeness.

Muchi is dreamy, funny and her scathing Muchi-isms(collected through the ages) make me collapse all the time. She has of course aged horridly much since her birthday yesterday and this post is to keep her happy :)

Random Muchi-isms:

1." How do you expect me to sort through all that t effervescent crap?" referring to my GRE folder.

2 "Hmmm... so 20, Maggi. But you look like 7 years younger and I look 2 years older. We are practically mother and child." on of course turning 20(God, spare me the horror)

3. "Its hard to speak to someone for that long when your not banging them"
after my legendary 2 hour phone conversation with Natu.

4. "Faggy remembered??? Maggi get back with him na. "

5. "Oh, Dick-lits!! "
the masculine version of chick-lit referring to educational *cough*prOn*cough* literature for males.

6. "Yes, your Royal Ass-Holiness!!"
to an irritating sub humanoid person who was bugging us.

Muchi complements my innate immaturity with doses of her brand of madness. She is sagacious where I am chronically lost.
Happy Birthday Muchi.

Thou art reinventing sexy everyday :D

Faking it

2008-11-30T03:06:00.000-08:00

It hit us in a painful blast of pure epipheny.
Veera and me were walking down the street. Both in sexy black shoes, hair open, skinny jeans.

Except that my shoes were turning my feet an ugly shade of pink, my hair kept getting tangled in my watch and my jeans suddenly developed an aversion to my butt.

We're faking this girl thing.

It's as if we are constantly playing at being girls without actually having a frigging clue about what's happening. Real girlie girls scare me because I know they can see through all the layers of fakeness.

Gauche dosent even begin to sum it up :(

This is why teen fiction sells so amazingly well. Hunky stud boy-who-omigod!-also-reads-Niestche, always digs the rebel non-girly misfit leaving cheerleaders pouting in the background.

Real life is alarmingly,well,real. Straight shiny black hair always wins. Always!

Girls have looked at me like I'm frothing at the mouth when I confess that I personally look my best in my ratty Che teeshirt, shorts and grungy hair. We need an alternative universe where there is more than one appropiate way to sit in a mini-skirt.

It ended with me holding my shoes in my hands, skipping on hot concrete, hoping that gravity would ignore me for 2 minutes.

Ah, well, here's to fellow fakers out there for all the greusome social hara-kiri we may have comitted:

"Razy underwear creeping up my butt,
Razy underwear always in a rut"
-Phoebe Buffet.
F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Drift

2008-11-27T09:52:00.000-08:00

Then fly away from here
Anywhere
Yeah, I don't care
We'll just fly away from here
Our hopes and dreams are out there somewhere
Won't let time pass us by
We'll just fly
-Aerosmith.

I wish I could.

Its been that sort of day.
Woke up this morning to Suchi's voice and that note of barely supressed horror in it.Mumbai is very far away right now. I feel like half a person. Rushed out in the cold to see the papers. When did life become this way?
My head wont even stay in one place. I've given up trying.

Its one endless drift. I think I understand despondancy now.

Exams over. A week of too much coffee, inkstains, paper and no sleep.
It was too cold to study much. I can't write when my finger nails are a revolting shade of blue.
Drift.

Manny passed away this morning. I cant picture his face without that half smile on it. And he brings back memories of all my classmates brought together after all these years by an aching sense of loss. I feel crappy that I cant be back home right now.
Drift.

I couldnt get out of bed all morning. Weird sleeping bouts, endless phone calls and this horrid cold daze. Drift. Drift and then drift some more.

For Manny:
(this is what my mum always prays for my grandma and grandpa)

"Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord and let your perpetual light shine upon them.
May their soul rest in peace. Amen"

Caramel latte

2008-11-11T08:40:00.000-08:00

lCoffee cravings kick in at absurd times. In the middle of a viva for instance. Try answering rapid fire, with the words CoffeMocha singing themselves in the Spiderman tune in your head. Very psychedelic.

Nine days to go till the exams. DeeDee and me went out shopping of all things. for absurdly overdue birthday gifts. To this noble cause were sacrificed chilly auto rides and a caramel latte ice cream. Cold winds and ice cream go together brilliantly.
I should be studying. the moment is just right to be running around shrieking and screaming. there are a million things that should have been done yesterday.
made the following lists.

Things that make me happy:
1. Cadbury Shots
2.Walking around in the cold
3.Mark Knopfler

Things that make me mad:
1.Annoying geeks in my class who have their faces stuck so far up collective professorial asses, its a wonder they can still breathe.
2. Stupid hostel rules.
3. Studying in general :(

Dear God, Give us this day our daily chocolate.

Family matters

2008-10-29T10:25:00.000-07:00

There is no such thing as fun for the whole family
- Jerry Seinfeld.

These words should be carved in stone and then used to whack my parents over the head.
We are back form our "family" holiday at Daman- a tiny poky little place that made me appreciate home a little more.

For a change , I'll be fair and present both sides of the story.

Mum and Dad.
Daman is a 3 hour drive from Thane. Everything there is green and nice. The resort was 5 seconds away from the beach. There are many tiny places of attraction all around- Silvassa, Vapi, gardens, dams, a lion safari etc. There was a masseur!! They had Happy hours!!!! The car trunk will never be the same again after hauling 50 tons of excise free cheap alcohol!!!! *incoherent babbling and excited chatter*

Jenny and Aggie.

Its a long, boring, arid drive from Thane. Everything outside was a varying shade of dry and brown. The beach*shudder* had ugly blackish sand, the water had no waves to speak of and old uncles pottered around in their underwear. We are scarred for life. The road to Silvassa is bumpy and filled with suicidal cows and children, Vapi is a dull city, the dam was just big and the lion safari consisted of one, yes one lion. We cant sit still for the long, numbing duration of a head massage. They sneered at us when we asked for Pulpy Orange during Happy Hours.
Thank God for Star Movies and air conditioning.

We are insanely relieved to be back home. We spent a quiet minute in respectful silence before the security doors of InOrbit. I hugged my laptop. Civilization is a glorious concept.

My parents are making eager plans to return. Severe episodes of pouting and sulking have softened them a little though. Mom agreed to let me get a tattoo. If my future career as a groupie flounders I can always become a professional whiner-negotiator or something.

Guess who's back!!!

2008-09-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

I'm back.
I do this periodic abandonment of my blog. Sharan's blog is pretty, Shwetu's blog projects this aura of being way out there and Suchi's is crammed full of awesome Muchi-isms.
My blog on the other hand is simply a blog that nobody reads :|
Okay, yeah, so I whine a lot.

I finished all the stickers in my Captain underpants book. Reading Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk right now.I'm gobsmacked to say the least.
The only other thing i'd read by Palahniuk before this was Guts.(http://www.seizureandy.com/stuff/guts.html). Gross is an understatement

The ugly cat is back in our hostel. According to some people it had babies and ate them all up. Do cat eat their babies? .
I like the way cats move. They are so utterly fluid and beautiful.

Half the people I know are convinced I was a dog in my past life(s), because:
1. I sleep wierdly. All sparawled out with my legs in positions best left to an active imagination. Very un-ladylike and very canine-like
2. I whine.
3. When I was a wee kiddie I used to bite kids who pissed me off. In my defence,I was a skinny runt and pointy teeth did what weak fists couldnt.
4. Dogs like me. Just like litte boys like me.Both have been known to follow me around and gaze adoringly at me.

But I'm still a cat person. My current ambition is to learn Parkour. Wiki that. Its awesome.

i'm back. this hardly qualifies as a bang, but my blog is happy with its extended mortality.

Captain Underpants

2008-08-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

I got the Captain Underpants Extra Crunchy Book of Fun 2!!!
With Stickers!!!
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
free diaper baby and diaper dog supplement too :)
All hail the waistband warrior!

Chicken Nuggets.

2008-08-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

Chicken nuggets are of course the best thing since PG Wodehouse. Both fill me with that undefinable happy bubbly feeling of contentment.

I'm going home tomorrow.Something to do with my passport. Its ultra freaky to head back home 2 weeks into the sem. And try doing it with exactly 24 hours notice to get tickets. All the travel agent could do was laugh annoyingly when I asked her for tickets. Apparently there is a shady guy at the railway station who miraculously procures tickets hours before the train leaves, but I'm honestly not into shady guys right now.

There is a bus that goes to Mumbai. Since I've never been known to sit out 30 minutes in a poky bus without spectacular projectile vomiting displays, 18 hours were totally out of the question.
Manged to get flight tickets for tomorrow evening .

Three days of amazingly unexpected home scented bliss. My TV is sending me happy telepathic vibes. I'm destined to meet an unsuspecting chicken soon:)

Can watch Dark Knight without having my ears combust spontaneously. And pray at the altar of Subway Chicken Teriyaki.

Vee and Dee and sick. I'm not cut out for Mother Goose type of roles. I suck at mothering sick people. Trying to make them laugh is evidently the wrong thing to do.Poor souls end up spraying goo all over you.

I figured out that if my realtionship ever had a themesong, it would be 'Scotty doesn't know'. Just replace Scotty with Aggie and sing along. I've so totallybeen had.

Big yellow taxi

2008-07-31T08:55:00.000-07:00

You know those days when a song gets stuck in your head and a line goes on ad infinitum? yeah, its that kinda day. Big yellow taxi by the Counting Crows
" Dont it always seem to go,
that you dont know what you got,
till its gone,
they paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

through with a week and half of college. I feel old. Being in third year is not for the likes of someone who is mentally 13 and cannot deal with first years looking at her with barely suppresed apprehension.
Everything about the hostel is so fricking wrong this year. An in-time of 8:30 , no shorts in the mess and of course the same food which they apparently cooked and stored over the summer.
I'm living in medival times.

Saw a really pretty glowy green insect in my food today.

Oh, Happy Birhtday Harry Potter. I gave out free chocolates toady. Shewtu, i know thou art proud. Have a very harry day.

People here are all pumped up about "Friendship's day" i think they still play Kuch Kuch Hota Hai in select theatres in Nagpur.

WHAAA???

2008-07-18T11:34:00.000-07:00

I dint know about Life, the Universe and a little red dot !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
why dint I know? I will slaughter the three of you and sell the detritus to buy expensive books. How did I miss this. Explain. NOW!!!!!
okay.tagged. the third summer of the sisterhood was handy.
God is subtle but not malicious- Albert Einstein
The ferocity was back on Valia's face, and it was more ferocious than ever.
They were due in the hospital again. this time for the double whammy of blood teating for Valia's kidneys and physical therapy for her knees.

I'm going back to colleg; after two and a half months of food and bumming around, its back to no food and bumming around. Sigh!

Bridget

2008-07-01T00:17:00.000-07:00

I've always been unduly inspired by Bridget Jones. I'm not in my thirties, or in and out of failed relationships, or a semi- alcoholic with a nicotine addiction. But there is something about Bridget J, albeit a little old and forgotten now , but I fell hard for her floozy-woozy charms, when I first read her diary. Here's mine, Bridget style.

1 st July, 12 pm

Weight: must not think about!
tang units: 3, Chocolate twists: 1 (big one at that), number of unsuitable men in head: 1

Mum's birthday today. Must arrange for cake in pineapple flavour which she likes. Will be strong and not give in to meaningless chocolate cravings that will only settle in region of cement block like thighs.
Saw self critically in mirror today. Resulted in severe need to down one's misery in Chocolate twirls. Suchi mailed Twilight. Eyes are screaming in protest. Have read enough to require two sets of replacement eyes.

Doing the usual at home. Must try to look at least slightly concerned when Jenny is cleaning whole house as I lie prone on the sofa for hours at a stretch. Maybe cleaning will make thighs less pillar like. Hmmm....

Have resolved not to:
1.Waste money on random things like shiny headsets and eye wateringly bright .
2. Talk to people about random things like resembling red riding hood and forget to mention important things like fee details.
3. Drink lesser quantities of tang
4.read in short stretches and rest eyes. ha.
5. mail Shweta.

Must go now. feel thirsty. Can feel Tang calling out to self.

Get Smart

2008-06-27T02:29:00.000-07:00

Get Smart was a totally awesome movie. When you're reduced to blogging about random cool movies you saw, it clearly indicates that you don't have anything planet-shatteringly cool to say. Since I figured out that the point of the blog was new posts and not detailed conversations on the comments page, I'll post. Happy Shwetu?

So yeah., Get Smart, starring Steve Carell (that other news reader from Bruce Almighty moved on to bigger, better things with Horton Hears a who, Little miss sunshine and snogging Anne Hathaway and Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson.) was excruciatingly funny.

For once here's a movie that makes you laugh more than the tacky ads and the shady multiplex employees who sidle up to you in the dark and whisper " popcorn?"

That should be banned. Okay, its really funny to see people suddenly roll in the aisles when they hear that cooing whisper from the general dark zone near their left earlobe, but it gets really old after a while.

The movie is what counts and Get Smart appealed vastly to my distinctly puerile tastes.

There is very little that is genuinely funny out there. I've run out of Russel Peters and Scrubs. Season 3 of How I met your mother sucks. I cant watch Shrek anymore. Saturation.

Come to think of it the only consistently funny thing in life was Shwetu. Those unfailing daily doses of walking into fire extinguishers, falling down stairs, crumpling in a heap on roads for no evident reason and saying the most outrageously funny things anyone ever could. Everything is a lot more stable now that she's busy with her faux-project.

Oh yeah Shwetu, GAIL where you supposedly live has the following motto : Gas and Beyond.
Have made so many toilet humour based jokes on it, that we've stopped passing the GAIL building altogether.

Thou art missed.

Love is.....

2008-06-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

I'm in love with Snitch - laptop, friend and everything-thrown-into-one entertainment system. I've had him for 6 months now and I'm truly madly deeply in love with him. Got about 40 gazillion movies today which might explain this post.

Snitch scores over the other (erstwhile and current) loves of my life for a prolific number of reasons, which I'm obviously going to enumerate in painful detail. People in love think they can get away with puerile behaviour like this.

1. Snitch is always listening. To every little happy thought, every whine and bitch, all the things that stick in my craw and all those mundane things that happen everyday.
You know, movies like princess diaries where the kooky lead always has a journal and writes spontaneous witty funny and awesome things constantly? like when she's in a moving car, in the bath or having sex with her boyfriend? And how that never works out in real life because someones always over your shoulder?
Yeah, MS one note is my dream come true :)

2. Snitch never stares pointedly at my fat arms. never.

3. And he's so portable. I can, like, have him any time I want ( sick pun totally intended)

4. He's funny. At least the movies stored in him are. And you know that Shift+delete thing really gives you so much control.

5. Does not need regular cigge breaks. thank god.

6. He's always free and he's on the huggable side of things.

Sharan, shwetu, this is where you start worrying about me. I'm feeling vidictive, happy and surprisingly,I'm all there for a change.

Shiny disco balls

2008-06-08T03:02:00.000-07:00

Tiny drops of rain that glide off musty-stored-in-poky-cupboard-for-the-past-six-months umbrellas, drops that dangle from your hair in tiny , shiny blobs and that fall on books, bags, and food lending that squelchy rainy to everything around.

I like the rains.
Especially when they herald the end of humid,horrid, crazily hot summers.

Its all dark and cloudy outside. You know, the sort of weather that makes you want to curl up to a book and bloat up on fried chip like things. Thie previous sentence is so tacky that I've been w dying to use it somewhere. I'm so happy i have a blog that no one reads so that i can be as tacky as i want.

Th best part about the rains is that they keep up this constant sideshow outside your window.
Mom may be raising hell about wading through he sea of clothes that is your room, your supervisor at work might be dishing out choice taunts about your bingo addiction, sify could be painfully anal, but all you have to is gaze out and focus all your senses on the rains. Never mind the glazed look on your face as you contemplate the sheets of water and the pretty clouds and amazing walks you could be having in the rains. They really help you dim out all the things that bug and make staying indoors a royal pain.

Airy fairy lyrical tunes haunt your head and everything seems to be bathed in eau-de-wet-dog.

Shiny disco balls splatter the windows.
I'll proceed to my strike staring -into -infinity-while-looking-whimsical/melancholy pose at the sill.

I'm awake

2008-04-20T13:32:00.000-07:00

Its frickin 2 in the morning!!aggie is supposed to be dead to the world, battling with pilows, tangled in sheets and dreaming of foxes biting her ankles. Not staring blankly at her facebook profile.
I'm not a late night person and it shows in the morning when three people in a row draw unfavourable comparisons between toads and my pouchy eyes.
I'm not just sick of life, I'm utterly disgusted. If it were a person, i'd marinate it in horse pee.

Saturday Night Fever

2008-03-29T01:54:00.000-07:00

Saturday evenings are one of those blessed times when the mess shuts down, requiring you to forage for food outside its dank confines.
After 2 years of Nagpur, we've exhausted its limited eat-out-on-a-measley-budget dinner options many times over. Saturday night raises a series of burning issues: whether you can afford anything more than maggi, people you'll have to coerce into coming with you, wondering if you'll be asked out and if LM's making its presence felt. All these complicated equations have to be sorted out before mess off.Life is damn stressful :(
This Saturday's story is seriously muddled. We're uniformly broke, so it seems like maggi orgies are in the offing. Dee dee might go with joey and veera with the loved one, leaving me trying to figure out ways of lighting the gas without burning the mess down( which by itself is not a very dismal thought). Then of course there's Niranjan and the fact that we're both pining away for each other. I'm a goner if he asks me out when I'm staring at charred lumps of maggi.
I'm sick of Saturdays, being socially disfunctional( Shwetu, I really miss you), breaking up and dark circles.
Woe is me!!!

Go, the mass has ended.

2008-03-24T01:41:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favourite hymns. Maybe because it's a mind numbingly simple tune. Or possibly because it's sung right at the end of mass.
The past week has had a distinctly churchy feel to it with Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter all requiring meaningful hours spent in worship and introspection. Dad, Jenny and me have founded a secret society, inductees to which have to master the subtle art of carrying nefarious, giggly conversations under the eagle eyes of their wives/mothers. This is what three continuous days of church taught me:
1. Dogs look very adorable when they try to get you to play with them bang in the middle of Our Father.
2. Glittery gowns are very distracting when you're trying to nod at the priest in an intelligent, repentful manner
3. Merely looking at Dad or Jenny makes me want to giggle insanely. Sadly the same applies to both of them, so mass is mostly about avoiding eye-contact and keeping bouts of absurd uncontrollable hyena like laughter at bay.
5.Mum has an amazing repertoire of chilling looks. They kill a giggle mid way through, interrupt frantic conversations about hunger, and make us light our candles without so much as a whimper.
6. Sleep is a real person who talks to you, coos soothingly, pats your head and hypnotises you to nod off at every moment in an hour long service. And of course magically disappears to the strains of Go, the mass has ended.

Fester

2008-03-21T00:09:00.000-07:00

My plant Fester died :(

She died a long time ago. Except that no one bothered to tell me about it.

A month after stroking her tiny pink flowers goodbye, I walked in( more like stumbled in with 2 bags) to see her withered corpse still stuck in the pot. The people who call themselves my parents shiftily turned their eyes away from my horror struck face . Apparently Fester's death does not warranty emergency phone calls or even a proper burial.

It is these incidents which scar us for life. If I wake up one day at the cruel age of 46 and scream "I can see her dried withered skeleton still clinging to the pebbles in her painted pot!!!!!", I'll be having a delayed shock reaction about Fester's painful end.

I called her Festerella after Uncle Fester from Addams family, a man who is almost endlessly fascinating. I painted her pot and almost drowned her while watering.

She was loved. I miss talking to her and counting her flowers. She was a nice plant.

RIP fester.

Going Solo.

2008-03-19T09:08:00.000-07:00

Walking alone is therapy. Walked back alone from the orthodontist today with funny wires poking my gums and a little light headed from the pain. I like my ortho. He looks like a human version of the human Shrek in Shrek 2. He's goofy, smiley and very nice. Even though he treats my mouth like a furniture hauler, and leaves it tasting like slimy rubber latex gloves, I like this man. I'm twisted when it comes to men I like.

I'm home right now. Three days of hols at a stretch and I start pining for dal dunked in roti.Home is where my blog flourishes after horrid dry spells in college.

We have a tiny bamboo plant at home. Our old plant Fester died :(
other new additions are a violently florescent green mosquito repellent and Fiama di wills which i personally think can be used as a drain killer. Ok so I have a thing against fake sounding shampoo names.

Will move my cynical ass to the sofa now. Feeling very vitriolic.

C lab

2008-03-17T02:27:00.000-07:00

My ass is on the line here. I've calmly shoved aside numerical analysis and Simpson's rule because blogging when you're not supposed to, is one of the kookier things in life. I can happily ignore my blog on average days, but give me C lab and the mind wanders. It drifts and meanders. It reads Sharans blog and feels over-awed. Sharan you write and think so pretty.
I'm inspired.
Second mid term exams done:) Have a gazilion unfinished, almost abandoned plans right now. Like going home. Its not sinking in. Cant wait to get there.
Leaving behind a slightly morbid Dee Dee, a very bored boyfriend and the heat. And college of course which is the whole briliant point of the exercise. Ah, I'm rambling and she's squiting weirdly at me. More later.

Chicken run

2008-02-08T23:28:00.000-08:00

Lent and bird flu at the same time. Pretty much ensures that chicken remains a a distant gastronomic experience for the next 40 days. My overwhelming chicken lust died a very tame death over the past few weeks. I'm in shock. Butter chicken dosen't turn me on anymore :( No imminent plans of selling my soul for its shimmery fake red charms.

Oh yeah and I'm back. Home sickness hit a year and half late. Nagpur was jarring my nerves which have healed pretty well under a chocolate, warm blankie, food layered haze of home. College was weird this time around and I went through it like a zombie. Not just random sulking, try like a month of constant pms-ing.
Home is healing :)

This blog is dying. One needs to resurrect it (a thing that i keep thinking and fantasizing about but will never actually get down to doing.)

Will stop this pointless post now. Have better thingies to do.

Anime

2007-12-11T07:49:00.000-08:00

Anime is beyond me :(
I dont get the graphics and lets not even get started on the story line.
I feel stupid.
Shwetu, you listening?

To Sharan

2007-12-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday :)
Lucky you..

Muchi's birthday :)

2007-12-07T23:36:00.000-08:00

This post is dedicated to Shewtu and Sharan. BURN!!!!!

7 dec goes down in history as the day that gave us Suchismita Mohapatra and her hair. While I can wax eloquent on the former and she on the latter, this post will stick to events that transpired yesterday on her 19th birthday. Which you guys missed :)

Was supposed to "surprise" her at 4 with cake and make myself scarce in 10 mins . God laughs loudest when He schedules an exam for us the day after our birthday.Though you guys need'nt have worried, Suchi did'nt study a word for the 5 hours I was there..

Lugged a card , Samit Basu's Simoquin Prophecies(her's), a Carl Hiaasen(for her) and the cat who lived high(mine).Was constantly stared at in the train. Dark glasses should be made mandatory for some individuals.

Was her first gift of the day :)We chomped through the cake, expostulated on the virtues of her white shirt(which now has tiny almost scrubbed out choco stains)and sat around talking for the next five hours(note that magical figure)

Stayed for the pineapple-cake-cutting-with-assorted-building-children ritual.
Other stuff that happened:
1. Pari called :)
2. Got my result and moped about it for a good 15mins and barely spoke to pari
3. Had noodles and chicken for dinner.
4. Suchi got clothes for gifts.
5. Nishu should have been there. Andheri is too far away :(

Got back home at 9:30. Suchi got a decent birthday. I got cake.
The world is a a happy place.
Both of you were missed.
Must stop. My jaw muscles ache from all the smiling and gloating.

I'm gonna soak up the sun-so NOT!!!

2007-11-28T06:54:00.000-08:00

Sheryl Crowe's dreamy vocals on a brilliant song..Soak up the sun is one of those happy pick me ups on a very non-sunbeamy-and-hence-sad days.
The sun is what I've been advised to shy away from if I want Dry Eczema to curl up and die leaving me thankfully scarless.
Today's avoid the sun artillery comprised of full sleeved black tee shirt, skinny jeans and supremely ugly and uncomfortable loafers :(
Describing my wardrobe on the-blog-that-noone-reads tells you(real or imaginary) that this sun thingy is bothering me and will die out in approximately 11 hours.

Sheesh, I've turned into one of those whiny losers who write crap stuff that happened every day. My day was good/bad/ugly.. whine.. whine.. my bum's too big.. wwhhhiinnnnnneeeeeee... my dog has urine incontinence.. bbaaaaaaaaaawllllll.. well you get the drift. Your stupid day, your stupid life; who gives???

Neurosis aside, this blog shall henceforth be obscure and persnickety.not a word about my day or my current emotional state or my big bum :)
You can breathe

Apple Pie

2007-11-10T08:10:00.000-08:00

They make it scary when they call it things like travel journals. It should be changed to something singularly non-threatening. Apple pie maybe. Appealing with hopelessly low expectations.

Here's my apple pie based on hastily typed out "notes" taken on my cell phone:

1)All shops selling alcohol were tiny, poky and had the same green sign that said Wine Shop. And had men in veshtis hobnobbing around it. If the common factor were only the shady looking men it wouldn't have been as striking as that weird signboard.

2)Saw a xerox shop named Ditto Reproduction. Hee hee.

3)Spend a long day trudging up and down Spencer's Plaza with Vatti. Consumed 4 cookies from Cookie Man. Its that magical cookies-fresh-from-the-oven smell that does it. The double chocolate chip lingers particularly sweet in my dough laced memories.

4)Met God too. if Kaushik Ramu doesn't watch out they'll make him a brand.

5)Dee Dee,Seetha,Sanjay, Sairam, Anushree and me walked for 45 mins from the IIT gates to Tidal park. KFC sort of made up for any anti-Seetha vibes we were experiencing.
5)The auto drivers there are barmy .Case in point being the guy who took us from station to Virugambakam stopping at 4 places to full air in the tyres and then racing a fellow barmy auto driver

I miss Chennai. And Dee Dee, Navanith, Cookie Man.

Apple Pie terminated

Nothing happened today

2007-11-07T07:30:00.000-08:00

Nothing happened today.
Hours spent in front of Blinky and Firebolt don't count.
Family will go ape shit at this rate.
Bonding with Stephen King.
There's a reason why people don't read this blog(and leave their enlightening comments).Its a lame blog where nothing really seems to happen(yeah OK reassure me and all now).
Why is brilliance an unattainable ideal?

Karma Chameleon

2007-11-06T06:58:00.000-08:00

Mommie I owe thee one. For fluffy omelette's and dal-roti
And yeah, a little more than that too.

Navi Mumbai again. Sems just whizz past so bloody fast. Skimming the surface of your frazzled brain, making you wonder about lessons learnt(and unlearnt), food eaten (and puked), spiders killed(and insects given mouth-to-mouth), insane muscle ripping screaming laughter (and painful heart clenching stabs of doubt ,pain, fear and guilt)
Shit a whole sem's over. Terminated. Someone messed up with space-time, by the looks of it.
I want closure on III sem. This is it I guess

Very little studying, very little food, too many tears( they weren't even mine to hurt so much) and yeah those painful giggles that come straight from your gut and leave you wheezing for an hour.

To Dharini and Veera who've shared this wacky sem. Will miss stumbling into their rooms and dissecting vital issues like PMS, men who live in cupboards(and yes,men who'd like to), dieting tips and the sluttier individuals of the female species.Miss the girly bonding. And playing zara zara in class at full volume(hee hee Kadoo. Don't tell me we didn't live a little this sem.). Three consecutive days of choco-ball dinners. Walking for an hour in beautiful pollution-scented, smoke-tinted November rain. Bike rides. Jiving, cigarette smoke, rum-and-raisin Temptations, no space for new messages. Abusing Nescafe and Rupa.
Kisses, cuddles and random happy sun beams :)

Hedonistic, abstract,crazy and fun.

Closure, baby

Chennai was fun, btw. Vatti rocked, so did Shaastra and Ash. And God is still rocking something, somewhere. Talk about making an impression.

Khichidi, potato papad and buttermilk for dinner. I'm a happy kid. Mommie loves me.

Veni Vidi Virugambakam

2007-09-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

Chennai again :) Gleefully happy to go back 3 months after a totally random trip to a fun city. Fun despite the heat, the crazy traffic and all the Tamil jabbering that hits you like a physical force.
This time around Shaastra'07 is the excuse( as opposed to the I-need-a-holiday-and-you-never-let-me-go-alone crap I fed mum and dad last time). Looking forward to meeting Vatti( will bug his brains endlessly) Aashraya(moron get your phone fixed and He-man( ?).
The focus as always will be on food. Normal food. Not cooked in the mess and hence edible type of food.
Life is looking brighter and happier. Assuming I'm done packing. Must move ass.

Frappe

2007-09-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

Theobromine can be used to synthesise caffeine. Thus spake our OrgSyn prof with suitable squiggly benzene rings and catalysts.
Finally the object of my affections had a name, a structure and a non stop monologue about " commercial importance "
Coffee keeps me alive. Caffeine keeps me going.
Between 4 hour long Physical and general metallurgy practicals. At 1 in the morning with 45 pgs of pages of inorganic chem tech to go. With project reports and journals to write/copy
5 sems of engg are built on a delicate structure having double bonds and a CH3 group.
Engg sucks.
We bow down to thee o tiny brown beans!!!

Big gods and little ones

2007-09-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

My country is all about irony. The sort that makes you shake your head a wee bit and smirk at issues that are big enough to make your head pound
We as a nation collectively suck at dealing with things that stick in our craw. Apathy is what we breathe in . Indifference is seeped into our melamine tinted pores.
Irony helps.

Like watching a man pee a clear stream onto a dirty red-streaked wall. Which bears the following advertisment" Boond Boond mien sammaye yeh ehsaas"

Jesus wept.

Chow time

2007-08-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

Mum suspects the only reason I bother coming home is food. She's halfway there ( She forgot Blinky and Firebolt-TV and Comp respectively who are closer to me than my sister. Jen and I have blood in common, Blinky, Firebolt and me have entwined souls)

Bitching about hostel "food" is my area of expertise. I can (and have) whine about it for days at a stretch. In college I live on a staple diet of Baggry's Muesli(currently, Honey flavour rules) Parle G and water. Hostel equals instant weight loss

Home on the other hand is all about breakfast, lunch and dinner in the same day. Throw in tea time snacks too.

Fat cells start piling on the instant I spot my apartment.Really.

My MustEat list is half done. 3 days more of pigging out :) Going back with food for deprived people at the hostel.

Love is fleetingly abstract, friends drift apart, books get eaten up by tiny worms, good people die and your favourite jeans get ripped in the wrong places. Butter Chicken is forever.

I want.

2007-08-12T03:16:00.000-07:00

I'm in lust with the new Titan Aviator series.Gimmie

Me Casa

2007-08-12T02:26:00.000-07:00

I'm home....

A little disoriented, very happy and faint thoughts of college stuck to the back of my mind.
Vidharba Express, Nagpur to Mumbai was miraculously average . Weird bunch of people as usual. Saccharine sweet lady who asked me to swap my upper berth within the first five minutes.. Yeah, right, sucker. Descend to the lower realms and bug my brains listening to farty middle aged people around. As if.

Case in point: Bald obnoxious Gujju guy who droned on and on like a dying Luna about " yeh young generation" with covert glances thrown at me since I happened to be the only person below 40 around them. Them being
a) Diabetes inducing lady and her chunky faced boyfriend / husband who were very much in LOVE and had an incredible urge to prove it to the rest of us by holding hands and giggling non stop.

b) Dull auntyji with various aches and pains and her equally dull husband. Within five minutes they'd told us about their married daughter and their jamai and how they were going to "Bambai" for the first time to see them

c) Bald Gujju guy with an opinion on everything from beti ki shaddi(" yeh sab baatien jaldi ho jaaye toh acha hai". Yeah you chauvanistic neanderthal loser) to zameen ka daam(Don't ask. People were actually listening to the loser)

d)Two businessmen types who kept gaping at my eye. I know I look like Morticia Addams on a bad day but there is something called civility.

Things were redeemed by One Hundred years of solitude. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is The One.

Got up at 6 in the morning after a vague,freezingly cold,broken night and stumbled towards dad at thane station.

Multiple series of shocks on reaching home. New car mall opening up, my building's being painted a new quirky colour, coffee shops still alive and there's been a dramatic increase in the stray cat population.

Home coming rituals followed: Casting dewy eyed looks at the TV, opening biscuit tins, touching all my books and seeing Harry's grave.
Home's perfect.

Morning's been a long lazy Sunday. Coffee, Sunday times and calls to everyone at college. Nagpur's so far away. Won't whine about not seeing Dharini, Oly, Veera, Navanith, Niranjan and Das for a week. I can go for pages that way...
I'm so glad I came home. Never realised I'd missed it so much in the first place. 4 days of movies, food and long lukkha hours with Natu and Suchi.

Friday is years away :)

Whose waistline is it anyway?

2007-05-20T02:10:00.000-07:00

Mine( maybe Shwetu's too). And it is causing me much grief. It’s strangely expansive and ballooning features make me throw poisonous death rays at McChicken with fries (and then consume it anyways)

I am now officially worried. Oh, make that Worried.

4 months of consuming assorted versions of crap in the hostel mess had left me completely defenseless in the face of gastronomic delicacies such as Chicken nuggets, malai sandwiches , payasam,

And of course Chocolate cake

This entry might as well be an ode to the common chocolate cake which fills me and my bloated tummy with a sublime ,unparalleled feeling of contentment and bliss. For our first ever joint culinary experiment Shweta and I selected Pilsbury Choco cake to grace the menu ( which after much agonizing and confused deliberation included Chinese noodles and lemonade)

The saga of the most exquisite cake ever created can be divided into three easy to make steps(according to Pilsbury):

Step 1. Snip milk packet and figure out a fifth of the volume .Mix with 2tbps of oil and all the choco powder from the packet.Whip, stir, eye the resulting mixture appreciatively and try to keep equally appreciative fingers from making forays into the mixing bowl. Grease another bowl and sprinkle flour on it. Our flour obstinately refused to sprinkle choosing to settle in moldy clumps

Step 2. Pour an inch of water in the cooker and steam for 30 agonizing minutes.

Step3. Lift the lid and keep on flame for five minutes.This death defying stunt was performed by Shweta at the cost of a painful burn on her palm and dirty looks thrown her mom.

All this was followed by gorging on hot cake. Turned out beautifully considering the individuals pioneering the project. It tasted even better after spending a few unheckeled hours in the fridge.

Our masterpiece drew varied reactions from family members.Chief amongst these are:

Abhishek: The one who loveth-the-whole- world-and-all-in-it took exception by declaring “yuck! Its smelly” (Its not. NOT. Chocolate has only one smell and that is nice)

Jenny: Is that fungus? (Pointing to the clumps of flour tenaciously adhering to the bottom of the cake). She ate it anyways

Shwetu’s mom: Pretty good first time effort.

My Dad: *Happy excited grin on first spotting chocolate cake* “what’s next?”

Damn, wished I'd saved a bit for the people back at driving school.Could have been the only thing between me and a definite fail grade....