Wish you were here

This is an open letter to you. Why is it open? I don’t know. It’s kind of thrilling I guess. It has to be more than just an e-mail when I know you’re completely inaccessible and vacationing in Goa. I hope you’re having exotic drinks and frolicking about in your Fedora hat and being the perfect eye candy to the skimpily clothed girls. Or should it be the other way round? :)

I stood in my balcony today, wearing only a single loose sweater with my hands inside the sleeves and allowed the biting winds to attack me with full force while I noticed the vapours coming out of my mouth wherein my teeth were clattering silently. I kind of liked it. I was thinking of you. And your abnormal gait and the newly developed hole in your cheek, which you purposefully try to pronounce so that I would compliment you. Right, like you need any more reasons to be cuter. And how you put your unimaginably twisted hand on your chest and say “that is correct” with so much of authority in your voice :P

I have realized that I should listen to you more often. I should have seen O Brother Where Art Thou long back, but I didn’t, even though you kept telling me to. And now that I’ve seen it, even I am hooked on to ‘I’ll fly away’. It is a wonderful, positive song and I feel instantly happy when I listen to it. I’m still chuckling to myself thinking of some of the scenes. George Clooney is hilarious. I’ve started liking old time country music so much now. Thank you! You’re awesome.

I’m addicted to OK Computer and In Rainbows. I don't understand why I’m so obsessed with Radiohead. It is so surreal and beautiful. I cannot stop once I start listening to it. Also, ‘Pigs’ is my new favourite song by Pink Floyd.  I talked to one of my friends about you today :) And another friend called us ‘disgustingly cute’! And cute guy with dimples has been texting me :)

I saw you in my dream where you were dancing to an old Helen song. Can you believe it? You! And dancing! We also had an entire conversation in it. You were plucking out your hair for me and asking me to keep it safely :)

I am almost done reading Love in the Time of Cholera and turns out, I like it. It has been written in a poetic, romantic way and yet it is funny in a lot of parts. I’m really hoping the ending to be good. It feels really nice when you follow the story of somebody else’s life and try to analyze why they do the things they do and then try to relate it to your own life. I don’t know, it’s a very good feeling, when you try to imagine yourself to be in their situation and then think of what you’d have done.

I know that I should seriously start preparing for my entrance exams and work diligently on my projects, but there is this huge inertia lurking about. I know I can get over it. My conscious mind says “I’m going to lock all my books away and deactivate my Facebook account and stop blogging and sleep less and switch off my phone and do some work seriously.” And then my subconscious mind guffaws with amusement and says “Yeah right” :|

It is so annoying. Okay, come what may, I have promised myself I’m going to make substantial progress in at least 2 out of the 5 projects at hand. I swear. And again, I need to start listening to you and STOP sleeping in the afternoon. The ‘naps’ get converted into 5 hours of dreams-infused, drunk, death-like sleep. And then I stay awake all night and yawn and nod off incessantly in the classes. Seriously, like you always say “something has to be done”.

I really like this line from the song ‘Tum Ho’ (Rockstar) because it reminds me of our long walks in Baroda :)

“Kahin se, kahin ko bhi, aao bewaja chalein,

Pooche bina, kisi se, hum milein.

Bandishein na rahin, koi baaki”

Okay I realize this is the most pointless blog post I have ever written but I had to do something. I’m missing you. Try to dream of me tonight?

Love,

Tweeky :D

Rahul is a cheater, he is a cheater! Cheater!!

Flicking through the infinite TV channels, and catching glimpses of movie promos which involves a lot of horrifying skin show and unspeakable and unbelievable body movements, and the vaaaast number of news channels spewing nothing but noisy nonsense, I was sitting with my typical half-an-upper-lip-raised-upwards exasperated expression. I was just about to switch the TV off when BAM!

There was a “Miss Braganza ahaaaan!” and a very young and suave Archana Singh in a mini skirt on the TV crooning “Romeo and Juliet.. ek amar prem kahaani!” I HAD to smile. I have seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai about a million times and I know all the dialogues and scenes and songs by heart like a typical 20 something girl who grew up in the '90s in India. It was a movie that changed the lives of many young people. For one, playing basketball and wearing a ‘COOL’ chain around your neck and going on Summer camps became the new rage. The whole  ‘pyaar dosti hai’ theory made sense to everyone and every girl wanted a guy like Shahrukh Khan who would just stand in his iconic arms-wide-open pose and they would want to fly into them.

No matter the absurdity of some of the aspects about the film, including the obviously artificial falling stars and the fact that the London returned raspy-voiced Tina spoke in perfect Hindi and sang “Om Jai Jagdish” in the most melodious, magical voice you could imagine smack in the middle of their college to prove that she had her 'sanskaars' intact and that the eight year old girl had the sense and wisdom of an eighty year old, I have a strange affinity to this movie.

I love it because it is so flawed. I love it because it reminds me of myself when I was eight years old when I first saw it in the normal, non-multiplex cinema hall and had cried and made futile attempts at hiding my tears when Anjali left Rahul and went away forever. It reminds me of my childhood and the innocence and the eagerness and excitement to grow old. I still sing along to ‘Koi mil gaya’, which I once thought was the coolest song, like, ever and I couldn't wait to learn how to play the guitar like Tina (who by the way, just holds the instrument in the movie without so much as moving her fingers on it artificially. I guess she knew the audience would know she was faking it anyway. Oh wait, they didn't. Because they were all dumb like me) And I still weep when Anjali tries to hide her tears as they get mingled with the rain, because Rahul loves Tina and not her :(

I still laugh when Mr. Malhotra (Anupam Kher) climbs up his own house like a robber trying to locate the next rung of the ladder with his feet. I like the silent 'Jalebi' kid and his “tussi ja rahe ho? Tussi na jao” dialogue. I love the whole Dumb Cherades scene and the oh so romantic, wet, dreamy, silent dance under the shack. Sigh. SRK is so hot. I still like the scene where Anjali’s saree is blowing and blowing and blowing and blowing in the wind and Rahul is watching her with desire and sorrow and it’s STILL blowing. I still like the dialogue “hum ek baar jeete hain, ek baar marte hain, aur pyaar bhi ek hi baar hi karte hain” however lame it may sound now! I still smile with contentment when Anjali and Rahul finally reunite in the end and SRK flashes his gorgeous dimpled smile again!

After watching it today I’ve realized how much I’ve grown and how attached I still am to my childhood. I recalled so many different scenarios and people with whom I watched this movie. This one time I watched it with my friends where we were fighting over who SRK is best suited for and how cute he looks in shorts. I want to be that innocent, chirpy, happy, stupid girl again.. or not. I think I just want to stop growing old now. Ugh, I'm 21. I guess I’ll be okay. I guess these are the type of movies which we will still love when we're fifty and our kids will be like "What DO you like about these movies mom?" And then we'd realized what our parents meant. Or maybe even they'd like it. 


Well whatever happens, cheers to a time of innocence!

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai Rahul, tum nahin samjhoge :)


P.S. Please be Rahul again SRK. Or maybe you can be a dad to a new Rahul. Anything but Ra.One. Pretty please?

So how are you Holden up?

I have a new favourite fictitious character! Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye. The book, to put in Holden’s words ‘killed me’. I had always heard about it but never ended up reading it because someone told me your mind has to be ‘developed’ enough to actually appreciate it. And boy, did I appreciate it or what! (Okay, I think I’m under the influence of Holden’s manner of speaking :P)

It was such a pleasure reading the book, I almost read it in a day and felt that it got over too soon. It was written as a narrative by Holden, who is this crazy little kid. A seventeen year old who flunks out of school for probably the third time and who thinks the world is full of ‘phonies’ and ‘corny people’ and mostly everything about his school and his friends ‘depresses’ him. The language used in the book is probably one of the strongest reasons why it is so famous and why it started this cult of young rebellions. It is brutally honest, has a predominant usage of swear words, is extremely human and it feels like you actually live inside his head for a span of three to four odd days and see how feverishly it functions.

Poor little Holden. He is just confused and has his own set of problems and insecurities. Although he comes across as a cynical chap, in fact, he is soft hearted and curious about a lot of seemingly insignificant, but delicate things. And the way he describes his relationship with his sister and his childhood friend. Man! It’s as if you’re actually listening to an adolescent talk about his life, you know? He is this innocent, bemused student who doesn’t understand a lot of things and why some people behave the way they do and is probably going through a rough patch in his life and he gets all these crazy ideas in his head. He literally wanted to be a ‘catcher’ in the rye. I thought that was adorable.

I loved the ending, where he just watches his sister on the carousel going round and round. It was so open and honest. I will probably read the book again, after a few months. Definitely one of the best books I’ve read lately! Yips!

Just catching up on a few more things: This is my last semester! Last!! It’s delightfully cold and appropriately sunny enough every day. The kind when it your hands are too frozen to makes notes in class in the first lecture. We have really good teachers this time. And good subjects and interesting projects to work on.

I’ve had what can be described as the most amazing, surreal start of 2011. Oh, Happy New year! :D I don't really get why a new year is supposed to be a big deal though. I mean, sure, it feels nice to write a new date on the exam answer sheets for a change. But then, it does bring a lot of positivity with it, doesn't it? New promises, resolutions, dreams. A fresh start.

New year’s for me this time involved a road trip to Delhi, (with some of my closest peeps) stopping to have tempting parathas on the way, eating and dancing with family and friends, lighting night sky lanterns at 12, swinging on tiny swings like kids while singing “I’m with you” (by Avril Lavigne), standing in the balcony in the chilly breeze, clicking the cutest of pictures together, meeting En (I’m thrilled about that actually!), running around in the rain and reaching a pub all damp and trembling and looking like wet chickens, eating with chopsticks and sinking teeth into delicious doughnuts, cracking ‘that’s-what-she-saids’, more dancing and just plain ol’ horsing around. And believe me, this is not even HALF of it. I wish I could mention everything! I really do! Oh, this so does not justify what New year’s was like. Sigh, but I guess you’ll have to make do with this much, for now.

There is a lot of stuff going on. Nothing major, but just stuff that might lead up to something major. I’m excited! Yes I am! Too excited I guess, it’s 4 in the morning for Christ’s sake! What’s the matter with me?

I’ll hop for now. But I’ll be back. Very soon :)

Veronika Decides to Die

Yesterday I finished reading this book by Paulo Coelho which I'd bought at the Nizamuddin railway station, Delhi: Veronika Decides to Die. It is a story about a young, good looking, 24 year old girl with a steady job and plenty of boyfriends who attempts at killing herself by consuming an overdose of sleeping pills. Why did she want to kill herself at all?

Monotony. She felt that her life was too boring, too predictable and from then on it would only go downhill, with her becoming frail and weak and diseased and watching her loved ones die. She didn't see any point in living any further. She believed that every human being had a choice to take their own lives if they wanted to and 'God' shouldn't punish them for doing so, in fact, if anything, He is the one who should be apologetic for putting them on a place like the Earth in the first place.

Anyway, she survives somehow and wakes up in a mental hospital where she gets to know that her heart has been irreversibly damaged and she only had a week to live. While she waits for death to arrive, she suddenly realizes that she needn't care about what people think about what she says or does or how she behaves because she had nothing to lose. She needn't care about the walls she had constructed around her, trying to be correct, to be precise, to be proper. And so, for the first time in her life, she allows herself to be free. To do things she had never done, to experience beauty and love and hatred and perversion.

It is when she is so aware of death lingering around her that she finally understands what it is to live, to fall in love, to experience extreme emotions, to find joy in simple things. Isn't it ironical? Her decision to die teaches her how to live.

I read somewhere "The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost." It's only after we lose something that we realize what it meant to us. Veronika realized that she hated the way she had lived her life. She never let herself be a little mad, a little crazy; she always tried to be a cistern, containing all the water inside her; but never a fountain, overflowing with emotions and enthusiasm. She never took risks, she never liked adventure, she was never rude or spiteful, she never made moves on guys thinking they might dump her; she never lived life on the edge. There was no excitement, no meaning, no purpose in her life.

I guess this is what happens to most people somewhere through life. They lose the spark, they are too afraid to go out of their comfort zones, they don't live life on the edge, and they end up existing, instead of living. Reading the book has once again changed my perspective about life (earlier it had happened after I watched The Secret) I guess we should all live our lives like its going to end very soon. Like we only have a few days to experience everything we can and to do everything we wanted to do. Like there's very little time left. Like there's no tomorrow.

Be crazy. Be daring. Try things. Try things which are considered wrong. Make mistakes, make lots of them. Experience bitter resentment and extreme anger and maddening euphoria. Weep with happiness, jump with joy and laugh out loud. Live. Life is too short and there is a lot to be done. Like a wise man once said, "There is no time to act dead; for one day, we will be."

In the End..

One moment you’re here, one moment you’re not.

One moment you’re a living being, with your own set of problems, qualms, insecurities, qualities and fears, 

And one moment you’re just a pair of defunct organs wrapped inside cold, pale flesh trying its best to start decaying and turn into something inhumane.

Your entire life, which you built around you, formed and nurtured relationships, painstakingly accomplished your goals, suffered losses, shared happy moments and sad, went through joy, pain, love, laughter, arguments comes to nought.

As if there was no point at all.

One moment you’re talking, breathing, feeling, living and the next moment you’re lying on the floor, your lips gray and body soulless, oblivious, unaware, and inaccessible. Can you feel, then, the soft touch of the trembling hand stroking your forehead? Can you hear the murmurs of prayers around you? Can you feel the silent tears sliding down the weary cheeks of the people you loved? Could you hear her asking you to come back? Were you weeping with her, looking at her, from somewhere far off? Helpless and alone?

How can you just.. stop functioning? Just like that? As if you were nothing but a piece of machinery that cannot work anymore. What happens to you after you’re gone? Become an object that has to turn into nothingness? Your entire existence comes to an abrupt halt, and..and that’s it? And after you’re gone, are you still there somehow? Do you still linger? Do you still exist somewhere?

Or is there nothing else left except for old photos and memories? Nothing else but the thought of your face in its final moment, the peace and serenity on it, the way you were carried and flowers adorned the white cloth you wore. Did it matter, then, whatever you did in your lifetime? The things you achieved or the people you loved or lost? Or the lives you touched or the lives that will never be the same without you?

In the end, it all comes down to one thing. We all are born, we all have to live and we all have to die. We all have to become what we used to be: nothing. We all have to mingle with the earth and become nothing more than an added ingredient in its topsoil. Or is there something more to that? Maybe it is not the end; maybe it never is. 

Chee's morning text

"Squeaky ball bouncy ball bounces off the ledge,
I catch the squeaky ball and hug it against my chest :*"


I just HAD to write it somewhere and preserve it forever. Texts like these are the reason why I smile while solving statistical problems during exams.


I still can't believe he's a human being.

Endless Faith

As I sit here on my bed, fingers icy cold, nose red and frozen, and shivers running down my spine, I realize that the shivers may also also due to the Christmas carols that I recall every year during this time. The four purple and white candles, burning incessantly, fighting against the chilly breeze; the wax sliding down and forming eerie shapes on the floor; the expanse of red blazers and caps, mufflers, scarves and pompoms visible everywhere. 

The season of Advent begins four weeks before Christmas where everyone in school (actually only all the sisters and Catholics) would begin to wait for the arrival of Jesus and the eradication of evil from the world. Sister Lawrence, our Principal, would read out versus from the Bible, say long prayers and tell us stories about him. But it was always the carols that touched me the most.

There was so much of positivity in them. It's like they believe; they long and yearn for Jesus to come back to them. EVERY year. Or that some miracle will take place and all the pain and suffering will cease to exist in the world. Do we really have that kind of faith in anything anymore? Me? I have a lot of problems getting convinced by anything at all. Even if I do get convinced, the faith doesn’t come into the picture easily; which is quite ironical, because my name, quite blatantly means faith.

I don’t know if I believe in God. I still haven’t decided yet. And I would not like to get into that right now. I’ve had long discussions and debates with a lot of people, and the only conclusion I could draw was that it is a highly personal matter and you cannot question the beliefs of someone. I do not know if I want to believe in him. It’s not that I haven’t tried. But every time I think about it I feel that even this small part of me that does believe in him, believes because all her elders taught her to believe in an imaginary omnipotent being that lives somewhere in the sky and watches over us and will punish us if we do wrong.

It’s okay to tell that to a chid I suppose. But once he grows up, he has the right to choose what to believe in right?

Well I don’t know if this faith is going to get rekindled or is going to be put out forever, but I do appreciate the way people believe in something. Trust something blindly. The hope, the confidence, the conviction is really remarkable. Maybe this hope is what gets them through all the tough times. 

There was this dialogue in Catch 22 which really stuck with me. It goes like this:

“There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?” 

Gives you something to think about.

I want to write about school. A lot about school. Which I'm going to do in the next post. I miss school like I never thought was possible.

And yay! Christmas is around the corner. Santa is busy packing the gifts! Are you being a good kid? :)

Beautiful mess

You know your life is messed up when:

1. You best friend with whom you used to spend every free hour talking about the most inane and inconsequential things, has become one of the friends who sometimes drops by for an occasional visit to catch up.

2. Your other best friend with who you really bonded over with in the past couple of months, is leaving town in another fifteen days. And she has a job. And she’ll be rich. And she’ll be in Delhi :|

3. The song that has been running in your head all day is “Ooh la la”. And you're singing it with a lot of gusto (The horror!)

4. Compared to older times when you used to read 3-4 books in a week, now you take more than two weeks to finish an 800 page long book, thanks to your ever decreasing attention span.

5. You try to solve the GK section of a mock test paper for an oncoming exam and you score an 8 on 40.

6. Your dreams continue to get more and more peculiar. And not in the funny way. In the creepy way.

7. You procrastinate so much, that you can even manage to procrastinate procrastination.

8. Your bestest best friend lives miles away and you hate life because you can’t see him every living moment of every day.

9. It’s awkward when you go through your entire phone book and you feel like there’s no one who’d understand.

10. You sometimes feel so lost and confused that even writing doesn’t help. Nor does sleeping or music or talking.

You know life isn’t that bad after all, when:

1. That best friend is still going to be there even if you don’t study together or share midnight snacks and she’s still going to laugh her guts out every time you tell her that when you look at peahens you feel sad, because they look incomplete.

2. The other best friend will always be a call or ping away and she’ll repeatedly tell you that you have long legs (though she has the shiny ones) and that you look good in anything you wear.

3. Sometimes singing and dancing to lame songs can be one of the most fun things to do. Also watching English movies dubbed in Hindi :D

(I once saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix in Hindi and boy, was it a riot.

“Harry pe tampishaachon ne shikanja kass liya hai!”) :D

4. Books are never going to run away. Time will. Time to devour all the books you’ve always wanted to read.

5. You know you suck at GK. Do something about it or just suck it up!

6. Sometimes after the dreams are almost forgotten, you can just laugh about them and say “Yeah well, you guys are just dreams y’know."

7. Maybe you can try to start thinking about procrastinating less. After you finish writing this post, maybe?

8. Your bestest best friend (Chee) will love you no matter what, and send you edited pictures of you that will make you look all pretty. Like this one:

Nice, no?

And will have the funniest things to say like “I’ll talk to you later. I’m going to open this book and do things to it now.”

And you will never have sane pictures together:

9. Actually if you think about it there will always be that one pestering, but somehow sweet and mostly harmless guy who will send you his kid pictures to cheer you up. And they WILL be intolerably cute. 

Seriously, no one is allowed to look this cute man!

And there will always be that guy who tries to be the wise one and he'll give you all sorts of gyaan when you go on one of your “I don’t understand why this happens to me” rants. And he’ll tell you that he thinks you’re wonderful and whacky and blah blah till you grin like a chimp.

10. Sometimes you also know that it’s okay to feel lost and confused. It’s okay to feel let down and downtrodden.  And that feeling will eventually go away

In addition, chocolate always helps! So do good-hair and cute-face days!

Also, check out this pic of Chee’s cousin’s baby girl, Sarayu:

Why can't I eat her?!

Isn’t she the cutest baby you’ve ever seen on the entire planet? Seriously, sometimes I feel I may be a baby-cannibal.

Okay, time to study and time to beat procrastination in the shins!

Off I go!

*“Chu na na chu na na, chu na na chu na na, ab main javaan ho gayi”*

DAMN.

The Times They are A-Changin'

I was listening to The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel last night, when a friend happened to call me up. He asked me what I was up to and I told him. And he goes, “Ugh, Simon and Garfunkel are so GAY! What’s wrong with your music taste? You need to listen to some REAL music.”

I was so furious that I couldn’t utter a word. REAL music?! REAL MUSIC!?! What does he even MEAN by real music? What does he even KNOW about real music? First of all, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Second, Simon and Garkunkel are not Simon and Garfunkel for no reason, you know. And if he thinks that those meaningless dhik-chiki-dhik-dhik beats spread across various patterns of minutes, which is enough to give you a nice headache is REAL music, and the beautiful lyrics, the velvety voices, the soulful tunes of Simon and Garfunkel is not real music, then thank you very much, I prefer to listen to all the unreal music in the world.

I mean, I sincerely feel you need a lot of depth to appreciate music like this. He even disliked Yes. HOW can you dislike something like that? How can you dislike ‘The Dangling Conversation’ and 'And You And I’ and ‘Scarborough Fair?!’ I mean I listen to all this and I feel like drifting off into space in another place and time.

Okay I need to relax. I’m just livid because I love them too much. Moving on to nicer things, the weather is perfect. Just perfect. It’s the right amount of cold and the right amount of sunny. I have to go through another ten painful days of appalling, creepy crawly, nightmare inducing exams and then I’ll get a juicy stack of a glorious ten days of holidays, spending the most stupendous time with my most favourite people in the universe. Ever. And after this, I’ll have just ONE more semester to go. One. The final one! And people, pwease pray for my exam on the 18th. I am jittery  petrified! *teeth clattering* :O 

All in all, I have this warm glow somewhere inside me. It’s basically because of a singular powerful, um, reason. It’s like a little yellow sun burning inside of me, somewhere in my heart, keeping me warm and protecting me from all the cold outside. (Jeez, was that cheesy or what!) I have a very strong feeling everything is going to be just fine in the end. It is all going to work out. It has to. And if it doesn't, it won't be the end. I’m finally coming to terms with my past. The hurt is gradually receding into a vague indifference. Yes, it’s hard to believe, but it’s happening. It is, it finally, finally is!!


Oh run away time, skip away, hop like a bunny! Hop! Hop! Hop!  


And the others, check out this timeless piece of awesomeness:

"Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind,

Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves

The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,

Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free

Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,

With all the memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves

Let me forget about today until tomorrow."

-Bob Dylan

Tangled up in blue!

I’m starting to love Bob Dylan. And The Smiths, Muse and Nirvana.

I don’t like being alone in an empty house. Which, um, happens every day. Then I try to do things to keep myself busy so that I won’t start to sulk for stupid reasons. So I tried to moonwalk gracefully on Billie Jean a while back. And invented funny steps while dancing to Jailhouse Rock. Invigorating!

Really, everyone should try it. Just be stupid. Be crazy. Make yourself laugh. Let yourself go. Do those steps which make your hair fly and make you feel all pretty and glamorous. Pout, blow kisses into the mirror, catwalk, play an imaginary guitar, sing into an invisible mic, try to look sophisticated. Try. You need it during stressful times during exams.

I read a lot of blogs of people in their early twenties. Man, ALL of us sound the same! Stress, uncertain future, studies, friendship, doubts, misunderstandings. It was like I was reading my own thoughts expressed in different words. It was uncanny! It makes me smile to think that there are so many out there like me who fuss over little things, get cranky and confused and depressed over piddling issues. And then I read about QLC (Yes En, it does sound cool :D) in En’s blog. Makes sense. Makes total sense.

I’m extremely sleepy but I’m just whiling away time because I’ve to go over to my friend’s place in some time to study for tomorrow’s exam :/ Statistics. God, these exams will be the death of me. They’re making me corrode inside. I can feel it.