A thousand little stories

I stood in my corridor in the dead of the night and looked at all the rooms around me. I walked in the corridors, and smiled at the little posters, drawings, messages, or names hanging on the doors. A door suddenly opened, and I peeped inside. Framed photographs, post-its, lights, books, mess, laughter. I knew the girl. She smiled at me. She had a mug of coffee in her hand.

I smiled back. There is a story behind every door. Suddenly I was filled with a sudden happiness. So many of us. SO many of us. Studying together. Living together! You enter any room and there is just so much happening behind it. You cannot even begin to fathom it. Tiny little worlds inside a big one. And all of us live in our bubbles, our own lives, friends, problems, memories, experiences. Sometimes the bubbles collide momentarily, and then off we go our separate ways. Sometimes the bubbles collapse and merge into one big bubble, and we float in it together.

Also, another observation. When I came here, I used to have these sudden imaginations where I would mistake people for my own friends back home. It happened very, very frequently and it was almost freaky. I used to tell so many people they remind me of so many other people I knew. Fast forward to yesterday, when I saw a group photo of my old college friends on Facebook, and I mistook three of them to look very much like my friends here! What’s more, one of the teachers looked like my current professor! It’s nothing big, but it’s just funny how we get accustomed to faces. And then we find those faces in other faces.

Also, you should listen to The Shins’ latest album: Port of Morrow, if you are into their kind of music. But pliss to give it a try. I just had Top Ramen noodles, and I had a very weird day. Don’t know what to make of it. Well, except for tea time, where I sang Linkin Park songs and looked at the sun dipping behind the clouds till the moon rose on the other side of the sky. The song ‘Aashiyaan’ (Barfi) is making me super super emotional right now and I am resisting a fierce urge to cry.

"Dabe dabe paaon se, aaye haule haule zindagi.
Hothon pe kundi chadha ke hum, taale laga ke chal
Gumsum taraane chupke chupke gaayein.

Aadhi aadhi baant lein, aaja dil ki yeh zameen,
Thoda sa tera sa hoga, mera bhi hoga, apna ye aashiyaan."

The crickets are extra loud today. And the silence brings the pre-exam feeling in dangerous amounts. And I miss the curled up figure of my roomie inside her red blanket and her gazillion jerky loo breaks which occur throughout the night, every night. And there is a big ugly insect inside my room and I’m not going to do anything about it.

If I’m making no sense, it’s the CH30CH3. Let’s hope for a better day tomorrow.

Hope.

Yep, let’s do that.

Black holes and revelations

Even though it’s nice to come back to a roommate who yells a loud ‘Hi!’ even before you’re inside the room, and one who threatens to throw you out of the room if you don’t get some fresh air when you’re down, it does feel good to have the room all to yourself for a week. You can wear whatever you want to (if at all), you can fling your mess around the room for a change, you can listen to whatever you want to and at whatever volume, you can cry, and you can trash someone on the phone. You get the picture. It just feels very, liberating, ‘sall I’m saying, even though it gets lonely after a point.

I just finished a Photography assignment. Clicked a few macro shots. Flowers, bees, butterflies, stones, whatever I could find. I love butterflies, they’re beautiful. And they do not fly away when you go close to them. Also explored my voyeuristic side as I snapped pictures of them making babies. Dragonflies, on the other hand, are tricky little paranoid creatures. But I love how their wings glisten and sparkle in the sunlight. It’s brilliant. Sharing some of the pictures here :)

(Butterfly, fluttered by)

(Sunlight dipped petals)

(Glittering wings)

(Yellow)

(Spiraling down)

(Love is in the air, and on the wall)

(Ribbit)

Mark Knopfler’s voice is caressing my ears, and calming me down. His voice is like chocolate, which is also what I’m eating. I really like it when sunlight permeates through the pink drapes into the room. Today was our last day of classes. The official last day of Journalism and Audio Visual students together. Ten days before the final exams begin. We had night photography classes where we captured light trails, and where we sang songs and rejoiced the ending of the first phase of a wonderful journey at SIMC. The wind echoed with the soft acoustic strums of the guitar and our voices trailed far into oblivion. The first semester is already over. One and a half years later, I’ll be writing a similar blog post about the end of the course, and the end of my stint here at Lavale.

The last two months have been the most beautiful and the most unexpected and unusual months of my life. I didn’t even come to know when the rain gave way to the lush green plants, the trickling waterfalls, the rainbows, the colourful flowers, the slithering snakes and the peacocks. When the fog took over the sunlight, when the breeze got colder, when the moon became bigger, when the sunsets became even more heavenly, when the friends who I hardly talked to became my best friends, and when my feelings transformed. It is funny really, how sometimes you don’t have a control over how you feel. You try to cling on to what is right, quite like Jim Carrey trying to grab hold of the memories of Clementine washing away from his conscience in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And you fight, and you deny and you hurt yourself and despite it all, you feel yourself slipping and sliding down. As Leo Tolstoy said, “Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”

You look at the sunset, you feel the breeze against your face, you walk on moonlit drenched roads, and watch the clouds glide past the silvery shiny orb, and your eyes water with ease, and you feel like you can laugh and cry at the same time. Sometimes feelings can be so illogical; heck they are mostly always illogical, and no matter how much you try you can’t prevent yourself from crashing deep into the infinite abyss of treacherous emotions. Sigh.

Sometimes it feels like a dream, or like life is playing a silly joke with me. And sometimes, I don’t mind it. Not at all. It is really hell inside my head sometimes. Do I like to sabotage my own happiness? Do I revel in being miserable? To add a dramatic tragedy in everything I do? I wish the wind would carry my feelings away, far far away into the valley, or the rain would wash away my confusion. I don’t like it. Not even one bit. And sometimes I do, and I want to be entrenched into this sweet sticky painful sickening feeling. 

I’m listening to Dream of a Drowned Submariner and thinking of a close friend who very conveniently is chilling at home and happily rubbing it in. The Heartbreaker misses you.

“From down in the vault, down in the grave

Reaching up to the light on the waves,

She did run to him over the grass,

She fell in his arms and he caught her

So went the dream of the drowned submariner

Far away on the water,

Far away on the water.”

Yesterday

I miss a time long, long ago, and yet it feels like it was yesterday. I miss a world far, far away, and yet it seems like it’s right in front of me. Or is it? It is, right? Isn’t it?

I miss the negotiation of thoughts, I miss the careless flow of seemingly unimportant observations, I miss the natural flow of the unending chuckles, I miss the infinite pings and spurts.  I miss the flurry of emotions at a phone call, and peals of laughter after reading a text. I miss the sleepless nights and the restless days. I do not like the emotion running through me right now. I dislike the laughter in the hostel corridors; I hate the music wafting from the other room. I hate it when my eyes sting. I hate the gnawing gorge forming in my chest, and the hurtful stab in my gut. My days are breathless, a blurry array of countless activities. But the nights are hollow, throbbing with angst.

When you think you have nothing, it decides to give you everything. And when you finally realize you can have absolutely everything, it decides to take it all away from you. It takes some, it gives some. It gives all, and then takes it all away.

Well played, life. Well played. 

Now

Every face is beautiful. You just have to look close enough.

I sat in a group of 15 odd people in college during a meeting today, and looked at every face slowly. No face can ever, ever be ugly. There are the little things about them.  Stubby noses, long noses; curly hair, straight hair; big eyes, small eyes; pimples, smooth skin. The beauty lies more in the kind of expression they wear on their faces. I have been feeling continuous pangs of affection for all my friends. Such beautiful, beautiful people some of them are.

Sometimes I feel so fortunate it feels like a dream. It rained a lot today, and when I got out of my room to go to the mess and have dinner, a huge grin spread over my face. Yes. It was the same powerful gush of wind that blew my hair off my face, the familiar smell of roses, the puddles of water, tiny little chocolate frogs jumping all around me, green leaves, greener than the ones you’d have ever seen, and the familiar, smiling, welcoming faces of some of my closest friends. I literally walked through clouds today. They engulfed me as I walked towards the mess. As I held my umbrella tight. As I smiled at the laughter around me. As I looked at the moon shining down on me. Sometimes it becomes too overwhelming. Too breathtaking. And then you cannot help but just swallow that bubble rising from your chest and up your throat. That painful, lovely feeling you get when you look around you, and you grin like a hopeless baboon. You can’t help but fall in love.

If I could stop time, and expand it, limitlessly, I would. I simply cannot get over the sheer exquisiteness of this place. Life, you astound me. 

Living life inside a bubble

I feel like I’m perched on a cloud. The window is opened strategically enough to let a flow of cool breeze inside my room, and the night light is on. Coldplay and Radiohead keep me company. And a bit of Led Zeppelin. It is so peaceful tonight.

Yesterday I saw another splendid sunset, after long (owing to the fact that there was hardly any sun for a long time). But yesterday, there it was, hiding behind the clouds, in all its glory. I sat on the ledge outside our mess with my legs dangling and watched the clouds moving continuously, and the sky turning pink to orange to purple, and the last few rays of the sun glowing and then dying out. It is always so beautiful.

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make you happy. A sunset, getting wet in the rain, a cute dimpled smile, a gentle squeeze of the hand, a good meal, a laughing session with friends over tea. And sometimes it feels like nothing in the world can change the way you are feeling. I’ve given up on my emotions, I have just decided to embrace however I’m feeling and make the most of it.

Things move so fast here, it is not even funny. These two months have changed me in so many ways. Being a journalist requires you to be hard-hitting, factual, cynical and probing. But I feel like I cannot help being a dreamer. I enjoy the classes, the events, the rush of performing on the stage, the banal chatter with friends, but at the end of the day, I feel like I am floating through it all. Sometimes I just want to close my eyes and feel the nature around me, without being questioned or judged. It has always been about the little things with me. The seemingly insignificant things that sometimes even change the course of how things turn out. Like standing and looking over the valley and then noticing a lone brown leaf, floating and fighting against the strong breeze, and dancing in the wind till it is finally forced to fly away, far away in the distance.

I went to Mulshi recently with a friend, and the beauty swept me away. We sat with our legs dipped in the lake, we felt the streams of cold water rushing against our toes, we saw the clouds looming over the green hills, we felt the breeze against our faces, and there was nothing but the long winding road in front of us, the waterfalls and the greenery all around. The world is such a wonderful place to live in. How do we not look beyond our daily trivialities? Why don’t we appreciate the beauty around us? How are we trapped in our daily chores, enslaved by routine, upset about marks, assignments not well received, gossip.. how do these things even matter?

Sometimes I feel like feel like I’m a very, very difficult person to deal with. Even I don’t know how my brain functions. I have started questioning things a lot, which might seem unnecessary, but important to me. Gallivanting aimlessly across various links on the internet, I somehow started reading about Sylvia Path. She was a poet and a writer who committed suicide at the age of 20 due to depression. I read some of her quotes, and my god, it was like reading something that I would write. My thoughts resonate so well with hers. Read some of her quotes:

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.” 

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.” 

“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.” 

“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.” 

“Is there no way out of the mind?” 

“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.” 

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.” 

“We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.” 

“I write only because
There is a voice within me
That will not be still” 

Tell me you don’t love her?

Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to observe the beauty around us. Sometimes it just takes a friend to notice the cacophony inside your head. Someone, who you know is going to be there, to look out for you, to infect your face with his own smile. And if nothing, at least he is going to hear you out. Or walk with you silently. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Rise

It began with a hesitant message on Facebook,

A question about one of the most important steps I was going to take in my short but reasonably interesting life.

A reassuring reply later, began the extensive conversations about life, the universe and everything.

From absurd ideas about making movies (IJJAT), to exposing our ‘personalities’, to talking about sunsets.

From dreaming about rock concerts and trekking expeditions, to discussing Douglas Adams.

From little ideas to random khee-kheeing about,

You have been a constant guide, adviser and friend.

A friend I felt I had even before I joined SIMC.

And now two months later, I feel like I know you quite well,

But there is so much more to know.

I hope we have a million more of our crazy conversations, and I get to see your scary unsmiling face more often (which sometimes breaks into the cutest grin),

And I see you getting excited like a little girl about the things you love,

And I continue to bewilder you with my multi-polarity.

So I dedicate this blog post to you, and I'd like to take this opportunity, to ask you what you know I am going to ask. I think it is a good way to immortalize the Yule Ball kind of a thing we are indulging in. No?

So, Mr. Spanzy, wouldja? :) *batting eyelids* *smiling radiantly*

P.S. Is this ‘irresistible’ enough for you? :P

Rain down, on me.

(Hostel view)

I love this moment for what it is.

I love it that I’m all alone, and I love it that it has been raining since morning.

I love the colourful umbrellas hovering about our campus, which looks green and freshly bathed.

I love the leaping frogs mucking about and I love the puddles of water.

I love the muddy trails of footprints on tiled floors and I love the water droplets trickling down the umbrellas left on the sides to dry.

I love the thick, dense clouds as they float over your head; and I love the fog which makes its way inside my open window.

I love watching football matches in the rain, the thrill of your team winning and the noise of the people cheering.

I love standing against the window and feeling the spray of water against your face, shivering and hugging yourself tight.

I love hooded raincoats and wet feet.

I love hot water baths and steaming cups of coffee amidst the comfortable chatter of friends.

I love friendly grins and nods of acknowledgements.

I love having work to do and I love procrastinating.

I love always having people to chat with, I love walking out of my room and knowing there are hundreds of people I can go and talk to.

I love walking back to the hostel, and running fast because it starts to rain, and then giving up and getting completely drenched.

I love the wet hair and the sneezes that follow.

I love the constant sound of the raindrops.
I love the thoughts that accompany me on nights such as this one.

I love the serenity of this moment.

I love this moment for what it is.

Let go

Days are just passing by. You’ve hardly opened your eyes and it’s time to close them again. I’m thoroughly enjoying the classes and I’m bonding well with my batchmates. Touchwood.  The discussions we have and the documentaries/films that we are shown have deeply moved me. I have felt the change coming within me, frothing and bubbling underneath. I saw a dream which was related to a documentary we saw about the Hindu Muslim Gujarat riots which disturbed me to such an extent that I couldn’t move out of bed for a long time. But it’s good. I want to be disturbed. I want to know what’s happening in the world. I look forward to the next two years' worth of knowledge that is going to be shared with us.

It’s surprising how much you can accomplish on some days, and on other days you hardly move a muscle. And how both of them can be equally fulfilling. There’s always this electricity running around this place, people running around, people with a purpose, participating, competing, all of them striving to achieve the little somethings in their everyday lives. All of them talking, speaking, shouting over the babble, trying to stand out, to find their identities, to get noticed. I think it’s great, and it gives me inspiration. But sometimes, as I’m walking along on the road leading from our classrooms to our hostels, and I look at the green hills on my left and the lush valleys on my right, and the endless cloudy sky above, I feel like slowing down. I feel like receding, like being silent, like not being noticed at all. Like, being invisible.

It is a scary thought sometimes, when you think about where you stand amongst the thousands of students studying in the same college as you, getting the same opportunities as you, doing the same things as you, eating the same food as you. I sometimes panic at the thought of you being a small unit in such a huge college, and your college being a unit in the city, the city being only a part of the world. And then we know how limitless the universe is. It makes you feel how puny and insignificant you really are. You’re just a speck. And what are you doing? Striving, surviving, trying to find happiness in relationships and learning ways to earn enough money to have a family. Sometimes when I think about all this, it seems very absurd and meaningless to me. Then I feel like letting go of everything, and going on a long soul-searching trip. Yeah right.

Anyway, I’ve decided not to think about it much and immerse myself into the innumerable activities here and grow as a person. So that when I pass out of here, I pass out as a better and wiser individual.

I’m sharing a video my friend made here. It sums up our first month at SIMC in the best way possible. Yes, I do feature in it and no, I didn’t know she was recording when I was, ahem, doing the things I’m doing in it.

Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_DJx7hS8qI&feature=youtu.be

Enjoy and cheers :)

We can't return, we can only look behind

I’m so happy today. I’m just so happy. Maybe because Chee shared this article with me and I realized how much it resonated with how I’ve been feeling lately but haven’t been able to put into words. I haven’t even comprehended how much I love the campus and the weather here. I was just existing, floating from hostel to mess and mess to classroom and back to hostel. One month went by in a blur. I still haven’t gotten over the fact that I live on a hill and amidst hills and it’s always breezy and green and rainy.

I’ve been singing ‘The Circle Game’ by Joni Mitchell since evening. Please go and listen to it?

After dinner I spent my time with friends and soaked it in. Took it all in. I want to make the most of my time here. I want to know people. Make friends. Have crazy times. Difficult times. Go out. Travel (especially to Bombay) Write. Laugh. Live. I never realized before today how many possibilities exist now that I’ve moved out of home. I can do anything. Walk wherever I want to, always be surrounded by so many friends, go out and eat with them, take on individual projects with them. Almost anything I want to! I felt so full of life and love today. I felt so alive. And the breeze and the little raindrops added on to the effect. Music was wafting through the air, emanating from different corners of the campus. People were laughing, singing, dancing, bonding. I looked at the campus and at the sky and just felt lucky to be where I am. I love college. Room 221. The trees. The frogs. The constant chatter. The familiar faces. The smiles. The midnight birthday celebrations. The noise in the mess. The cold coffee. Sparks flying in the air. The conversations that flow. The friendships that bloom. Even the bad jokes. And it has all just begun.

I want to be so much more than what I am. 

Over the hills and far away

There is so much to write that I feel like my head is going to explode. My thoughts are fluttering about, all over the place, like twitchy little butterflies, and I’m trying to grab on to one of them, and write something coherent down. It is really difficult when you have an ardent desire to express so many things at the same time. Well, let’s start with the present. Then I’ll move on to the past few days, the past few CRAZY days and then the future :)

I just went into crazy epileptic fits of laughter with my roommate where we literally rolled into two crumpled balls on the floor, clutching our stomachs and wiping off tears. So much so, that we scared our neighbour a little :P Reason? Well one of them is because two hours back we just had strong coffee which I made in my electric kettle (shhh!) and another reason is that we were watching the most hilarious videos in the history of Indian cinema. So yes, you can guess, hello hostel life! :)

Well, I was right in my previous post, it did hit me hard when I left home, it did hit me when I said bye to my family, it did hit me hard when I saw dad walking away on the busy FC road in Pune, and I knew, from then on, I was on my own. Actually, finally on my own. It was a scary and yet an exciting feeling, to know I could make my own little decisions, do my own work, take charge of my own self, be in command when something goes wrong, and just be … free. And then college routine began. Getting up at 7, having a bath, walking to the mess and then to the class on time initially felt like a herculean task. But as time passed on, it started to feel more natural, more regular. We had team building and interactive group exercises for the first five days, which seemed very exhausting when we were doing it, but when I think about them now, they actually helped me in getting to know so many people. It still is a little difficult to take in so many faces and names at the same time. But now I know them. I know their little idiosyncrasies, their habits and talents and likes and dislikes. It already feels like a family, with some people who you go straight to talk to and those who are bound to brighten your day up.

I was waiting for that moment when all the emotions would bubble out on the surface and I will cry. But it didn’t come. And it was scary. It almost came when I got up in the morning on the first day of college and I imagined to myself be in my own room back home. There was no purple wall, no familiar posters or books, but an alien room, with a girl I hardly knew on the adjacent bed. But it just got better. I have a crazy, cleanliness freak for a roommate, which is good for me, because she likes tidying up my mess as well :P She gets up on time and wakes me up, and calls me ‘beta’ sometimes :P We have a very open and candid relationship and it’s great!

About the campus, dear LORD, about the campus. This place is meant exactly for people like me. The SIMC campus is situated on a hill, which overlooks valleys, and the city far away and is surrounded by even more hills. The weather is always pleasant, always breezy, always dreamy. I feel so floaty and poetic all the time. The clouds come down on rainy days and they pass by you, as if saying hello. There is a mystique and an aura to everything around here. It is just so beautiful. The best part? One, is sitting in a corner and watching the sunset. The first time I saw it, I’d never seen such a sight before. The sky turns orange and pink and the clouds float across it as if some sort of celestial creatures travelling back home. And to think I get to see it every day!

The second is the midnight moonlit walks! The breeze is always chilly, and It blows over your face and caresses your skin and you feel so awesome to be alive! It’s the entire feeling of being free, being able to walk around the sprawling, beautiful campus and the feeling of being on your own. The classes couldn’t have been better. I respect this place so much more for the kind of teachers they have and for the kind of workshops we are getting to experience. I will write all about it in a different post because I want to do justice to it. It’s a Saturday, my room mate and I are listening to Owl City and it’s way past the devil’s time! I’m going to come back and talk about specific things about the college in detail. Right now, I’m just going to lie back, look at my ceiling, and cherish this moment. Can you believe that it has just been a little over two weeks since I came here? :) Tomorrow I have a Sunday-full of clothes washing to do, but strangely I feel so good about it! Washing my own clothes is the biggest testimony to the fact that I am in charge of myself. Oh, how I love this place :’)

Some glimpses of the SIMC campus :)

(Hostel view)

(Sunset viewing point)

(Sunset)

(Hostel view again)