It all started on a clear autumn morning when I was getting ready to go to school. Another god damn day of absolute boredom and whiling away precious time. Reading textbooks was never a very wise option. There were enough distractions, and never anything too interesting to think about.

Always too much to imagine. Too little to do. Less work. More play. Somehow. It all fitted in this neat little box of everyday school time normalcy. Looking at normal people act out their made up idea of life. Carrying out self assigned duties and living on the rights they thought they had over their life. While being so oblivious to exactly how slave-like their existence was to just simply every little thing around them.

Maybe it started on multiple days getting ready for school. Maybe every day.. getting ready for more crap everyone had to dish out to the world. Every day, waiting for it to end. Every day. Waiting for everything to make sense. Something to make sense. Everyone to? Someone to? Maybe waiting .. expecting myself to stop expecting. Some day. Some time. Soon. Maybe.

Wondering all the time going through all of this.. what kind of a mental disease is this exactly. Not caring most of the time. Making personal commentary on everything that went on. The madness. Did it go on outside? Or was it inside? Life is just made up of an impossibly long string of rhetorical questions.

Was it an autumn morning? Just a personal version of an Indian autumn. When the monsoon said a weak goodbye. Not wanting to leave me be.. nor did I want to part. Not so easily. Always so heartbreaking. And when the winter sent towards us those cold, damp droughts which I personally liked. It was just a slightly colder version of the sometimes warm misty rain that blessed us on some very lucky days.

It just makes the clockwork of the brain go around so well. Like a little phase of life. A little phase of a normal stressful day.. like the night when I am not as tired as I want myself to be. Never as tired. As the Beatles put it.. a hard day’s night. When I would’ve had been working like a dog the whole damn day and should’ve been sleeping like a log at this time in the night. But I’m not because of the things that I do. It won’t let me be.

Tip tap tip tap. Who doesn’t love the sound of uninterrupted pitter patter raining of words on the blank screen. Like this. All so blank and nice with little black letters forming on the screen. It’s like some real mind magic. God. Makes me a believer. It’s like sufi music when you’re alone and the sun’s shining hard and hot on you.Standing there alone on the roof, standing mindlessly against the railing, looking at the horizon. Feeling your bare feet on the slightly scorching floor. That old nostalgic feeling of cold water being splashed on dust or earth or hard, hot granite. Love it. The smell of it. The sheer shining sights of nostalgia it invokes. Or peace. Like the strums of a lone guitar trembling on to your earbuds..

Sounds of a soft drum drumming drumming.. That little tinkle of a cymbal. Or a loud disoncerting, yet welcome tremble. Random random random. Just like right now. Unsequential ununderstandable. Uninteresting maybe. Unsung, probably. But mine.

The dry summer. Feeling the sun on your brow. Trying to keep it unfrowning. Unseen. The distant horizon. Alone and alive. The sun beating down on you. The music beating to your heartbeat. When everything’s as clear as the summer azure sky. Cloudless. Just blue. Blue all around.

The heart swirling around like a blissful whirling dervish.

Free.

When life is as it is. Not how it should be. On a summer afternoon, alone with the horizon. Hot. Hungry for more. Hung up on life. Happy. Hostile. Home.

Without people. Pain. Perceptual pureness, peppy personalities. Pettiness. Pink pins prickling. So pristine. So unreal.

All ponderous. Pensive. Puns are perverseness. Persuasion and pasty wallpapers to the walls on your brain. Splattered with a plethora of inks and a multitude of injections of intentions. Insiduous. Insane. Ingrained. Preserved and maintained. Whitewashed, put in chemical X and Y and Z. And everything bled.

While the world worked in grey and monochrome. White and black. Like little books on a rack. Not a hundred thousand loose frayed pages of flack. Faulty forays. Faded deadends. Cut up and curated. Ready to be arranged. Sequentially. But never done. Too hard. Too soon.

Those little books on a little book rack. Filled into a sack. And

burned black.

Flexing the phalanges.

I’m so sorry. This is pretty much directed to myself more than anyone else. But due apologies to ANYone who was looking forward to posts. This tiny show of creativity is such a shame. Going by the saying that if you don’t use your brain it stops working or something along that line, I’m just going to push the little sleepy Escribtionist in my to just pelt out any kind of rubbish that can be written. So you’ve been warned. If you cannot handle everyday common rant just click on the little x on the upper right corner of the screen.

So I’ve been into devouring the newspaper for hours. Laziness and procrastination plus the old habit to give the same amount of importance to every little piece of writing that interests me. It’s just only after a couple of hours of broken newspaper reading and facebooking and day dreaming that I realize that I have to slog through the rest of the newspaper now. Can’t just abandon it.

And being the classic procrastinating perfectionist that I am, I actually THINK and talk to myself about things mundane to the common aadmi. Like the story in our Individual and Society textbook in which the writer talks about a little article on the plight of peacocks during a nuclear test that distresses him more than the effects of the nuclear bombs itself. He had a particular name for it. Which I’ll type as soon as I gather the energy to pick up the book from the shelf. *sigh*

In particular, yesterday’s newspaper was a real piece of art. A masterpiece. With the World Cup win covering almost all of it (yes!!). For the very first time I’m happy sports took up so much of space. AND I am sure I will not reach the same level of ecstaticness ever (exception : if India wins the World Cup again). One particular piece which caught me by surprise was that our own skipper Dhoni was a Railway TC at Kharagpur before he played cricket professionally. Wow. I mean, wow. Neither did my roomie know it. I may have heard it before but I may not have been actually interested enough in knowing about the man himself.

Now that he’s deemed the hero of the nation. Going into another territory that of choices and it’s outcomes. There’s the part that makes me very, very insanely happy and hopeful. For someone who doesn’t trust her choices too much (and is ALWAYS imagining up alternative scenarios), the move from the profession of a ticket collector to that subsequently of the CAPTAIN of the INDIAN CRICKET TEAM is astounding. Terribly, terribly astounding.

I’m always stressing about where do I throw the newspapers. I did get to donate them the last time but THIS one, sir.. is gonna be forever in my treasure trove. Morever, there were some more little articles of brilliance. Like the one about

Maybe I sound like a newbie to news, but maybe I just AM. Rediscovering paper news. But can’t they award a special distinction to 30 pages of pure awesomeness. That’s probably just my heart speaking. But what the hell. TOI FTW. Just cyberly much.

Another article spoke about some housewives turning wasteland into a herbal garden all on their own. While some people went against it and tried to discourage them, in more ways than one. They put in their own money and just went ahead. That's what makes it happen.

And I am rediscovering Rehman’s music with some of his older songs which I didn’t go into much. But since they were convered by Underground Authority at a fest, it was a treat discovering them. His earlier work sounds so much different in some ways and all the same in some. Much of it depends on the lyrics too. Hindi lyrics always sound so much more soulful. One example is the song from Guru called Shauk Hai. And Jaage Hain which has this crescendo of pure emotion. Needless to say I used to listen to that during the exams, pulling all nighters. It didn't make much of difference, except it made me feel like it did.

But of course, the song will have better meaning with something bigger.

Talking about something bigger, there was an out of the line article I saw today as well as yesterday. Today it was about the cricket hater's reaction to the World Cup frenzy. Of course I can sympathise, except when the World Cup FINALS are on with the country in it. Otherwise I can be as hypocritical as possible. Another article was on women striving for a 'male standard' at work while being the wife and mother. And the thing which clinched it were several facts, that I didn't know earlier, like women being more vulnerable to effects of smoke, having smaller airways, having less tolerance to alcohol, 42 percent women dying within the first year of having heart attaks, etc. etc. It's pretty dismal looking at these facts. The final one being that the male child of a woman who smokes may be born with a lesser number of testicular cells. Isn't that nice?

Another was about the Atheist and Freethinkers in the US Army 'coming out', so to say. Letting people know that they are there. The writers talks about being a non-believe or non-Christian in the army went against the norm. But that only just reifnorces that religion supports violence here. Just a few minutes back I came across an even on Facebook of a Balaclava march on the Royal Wedding Day, starting at Soho Sqaure in London. An excerpt from the description - "In defiance of the police abbusing the intrusive Section 60 powers to remove face coverings and search you at the recent 26th March protests. My proposal is that hundreds, if not thousands of us march with our faces covered." It's through a line of pages on Anarchy that I came across this.

And Shobaa De's article on the Mahatma being a gay icon. With it being banned in Gujarat and Tushar Gandhi calling the move very "Un-Gandhian". For starters, that's what happen when you put people on a pedestal. It was his life and we here can do nothing about what he felt and did. Even if it's only been just suggested. Looking at the reaction in these circumstances, it can only be imagined what would've happened if it'd been proved.

It's not a new concept of people being in a very close relationship based on sharing the same viewpoints, ideals and respect towards each other. But when it comes to someone as revered as him, it all comes down to national pride. A pride of a nation of homophobes. Even the suggestion scares them to no end. I don't understand what part of love do you not like. How does gender even define love. How can anyone even point fingers and say anyhthing about two girls or two guys in love. It must be unthinkable for them to imagine someone making fun of them being in a heterosexual relationship. But the same unthinkableness SHOULD have been there in the homosexual mind. But it isn't. Which is the main deterrent for them for "coming out".

The Kevil Keller character in the Archie comics will now have his own comics. He's just a guy. But for those who don't know, he's openly gay in the series. The most I saw of him was online with the cover showing him falling for Archie. But WHY does everyone fall for Archie. That's an argument saved for later, perhaps. Mane cartoonists have too dealt on that topic but it's pretty hard to understand, but being GIVEN he's the most wanted guy here, it takes a lot of time for anyone to question his credibility as Riverdale's sweetheart. I would say it's the same with Shah Rukh Khan.

I could just go on about everything.

Saw the movie Monster, on the life of Aileen Wuornos, the female serial killer who was exceuted in 2002. I didn't even need to look for this info again since I now just know everything about her. Videos of her interviews in prison are on YouTube. I suggest the movie to anyone who'd like to indulge in good cinema. But while being a very violent movie of sorts, it's the most sensitive one I have seen in days. I'm rediscovering watching a string of movies too. Since reading doesn't involve that much of a visual indulgence. Of course, imagine I can. But there's just been too much of that lately. There are a lot many movies to be reviewed in the days ahead.


Falling in love with The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony. With the soul stirring music and the lyrics as though have come out of my very own heart. Cut up and just stolen.

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life
Trying to make ends meet
You're a slave to money then you die
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places
where all the veins meet yeah

No change, I can't change
I can't change, I can't change
But I'm here in my mind
I am here in my mind
But I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mind
No, no, no, no, no, no..

And every word speaks truth.

Mundane Monotony.

Three months is a break long enough from my beloved estranged blog. Time to reconcile, kiss and make up and head towards another break up. So let's see.

Coming out from the cinema, all good movie drugged up. 7 Khoon Maaf. Well, definitions differ and how they do. Sometimes they are bigger than items of pure entertainment. And hidden symbolism that some people find are beyong their little bubble. Or maybe some of the big headed freaks want to get out of things ideas they don't really possess but which possess the person.

Sadly, normal popcorn movies cannot be relied on. And there has to be some degree of dependence on the movies that keep your hands away from the popcorn tub and hovering about different little things in the movie. The quirks and the questions and answers and little adorable admonitions to the mind.

So what finally pushed me to finally type something out here on the blank white I've been keeping away from for these "busy" months.. a couple walking behind me. The guy explaining to the girl who Ruskin Bond is and that the movie is based on one of his short stories. Well, she finds it hard to understand who the guy is. How hard can it be to infer the meaning of "a very famous writer". And the fact that movie is based on a story. I hope she knows what a story is. Unless she's been living under a rock. The rock would've cried tears of anguish.

I narrate this incident to my father and he laughs and tell me some people just don't believe in reading and writing so much. Well? There must be a certain amount of "reading and writing" an average person does. Maybe that has gone way, way down or maybe I have been living under a rock. And I am pretty happy living there until someone somewhere knocks it over.

And on my way, all throughout.. I'm standing there on the Metro, between two girls who are discussing some pseudo important issue regarding some people. And I wonder what would've happened if the situation with the couple be reversed and the guy's asking the girl the questions. Or would that even happen. Guys I've known have always known things like who's who. Not in the page 3 sense, of course. But even that.

I spent around five minutes wondering how many girls around me in the Metro knew who Ruskin Bond is. Or are they too stuck up in their own pretty world to look at the rest of the ugly world. Or will stuff continue happening and what flashes infront of my eyes is a makeup brand stall that graced our canteen lawn with their presence today. Is that all it means to them? Cash in on the all girls college? Gullibe little girls who think caking on makeup will solve all their problems. Turn them into a princess maybe.

There's a lot to say about that. But things rush through all the time. And there's not enough time to write it. Maybe the problem is not enough reading, it's the sheer thought that they don't need to read. I know girls who'd go through their life without touching a sheet of paper that does not give them marks or is not related to a celebrity.

Or well, even if they read.. it's stuffed with subliminal ideas that permeate into their brain with a lot of love and no reality.

Maybe guys have an upper hand at being the better equipped in the grey matter group when they know they gotta deal with it in the real world. Not to say women don't work, but I do not spend my days with totally awesome working age women now. And I don't encounter eighteen year old males enough, face to face than I can dish out deserving insults at them. And those I do I won't say are much lacking in the mind matters.

But without making this a long monologue about anti feminist feminism, let's move on to the movie of the moment. And the moment's a long one. Going by the reviews I found on the net, the makeup is not cakey, the art direction was not overdone and the acting was awesome. I don't know what's deviating them from the story. I think it's a wonderful depiction with fresh, witty dialogues and a different mean streak to it. But I think it's a continuation of the crush I had on Delhi 6 with the pang of love for 7 Khoon Maaf. I mean what's not to like about a mainstream awareness created on sadomasochism. An obsession with poisonous mushrooms, a plagiarising rockstar gone wrong, an insecure soldier of war, a desperate police officer, a cheating Hindi-speaking Russian, and a very, very disturbed woman who's yet gone on to maintain her sanity enough. Reminds me of Dahl's dark fiction.

Not to mention the treat it is for the lovers of language. Dyachenko's seemingly funny shuddh Hindi that's so rare to the native ears. And Shah's amazingly accurate Bengali accent. Khan's Urdu. Also worth loving were the tiny lines here and there which give a difinite shape to the timeline. From the Berlin Wall to the recent Taj firings.

But more than that it's the whole idea of psychological extravaganza that the movies portrays that tends to snatch up my fancy. I only wish I was studying psychology right now to delve more into it. But so naturally, it's better handing in my own interpretations, because Freud and other "scholars" were just only thinking individuals too.

I think movies certainly reach out to a much larger group than books. And it's time someone did something about everything. Been thinking so helplessly that this world stands no chance until the demand for good genes is inclined towards the demand for good brains.

And when girls get enough time to stop looking at themselves in the mirror enough to look at the world and think instead. Specially when those books does them no good. Preaching ideas of a male perfection and the helpless damsel in distress syndrome who can't spoon up even her breakfast without the "comfort" of having someone in their lives. No taking names.

What's scary is that these girls will be tomorrow's women. And the men are gonna be running behind them. I'm going to get nightmares tonight.

This all was probably much of mindless judgments. But when things and mindless, it happens. I was gonna write something about people's opinion on war but more important things come up :P ;)

Also, the stong slashes of religious symbolism that decorate the movie, for those who have seen it. The idea of forgiveness reminds me of a Spiderman 3 quote:

"You want forgiveness? Get Religion."

She pressed the phone to her ear and hmm-ed absent mindedly while she scanned the screen mindlessly. And thought about nothing in particular. It's so easy blurring your thoughts to an almost incoherent buzz in the background. It all dulled to a certain black spot in the back of her mind. And she pushed it all in, it got sucked into it as if like a tiny black hole.

The white screen reflected in the almost black of her eyes and she closed them. And then blinked. Put down the phone. Slid the laptop off her lap. And stood up. Things you do. So human. So meaningless, so harmless. Missing people so much and then not showing it. Showing it and not feeling it. Hiding things, lying, making a show of empty emotions and pulling in raw feelings of perplexing intensity down into the back hole.

And it's almost gagging with the convergence of all that is in the world.

All of it is nothing. And nothing of it is important. Just get if off you, go to sleep.

Long time, old friend.

It's just one of those days. Fortunately, when I feel like writing. There's been a long hiatus, a very long one. Life's been busy, the mind's been sidetracked into something of a less fantasy-friendly direction.

With all the Historians, their words, ideas and the facts and theories, the vital part of creaitvity was probably being ignored but I think Erich Segal's Only Love tapped into the dozing, lazy writer, jerking up tears, making me miss things, being homesick and citysick and nostalgic. For everything. And every one.

Making me think about the rain at my old house, the pattering on the roof and the partial comforting darkness of the late afternoons, enveloping me in the utter love and the essence of what life is made of.

And I guess the worst thing I hate about the room I'm in now is that it doesn't have a window. Probably the ONLY room I ever saw so unfortunate. It's like being blind. Reminds me of eyes being the windows to the soul.

And it's only through the screams and shouts from the corridor that I come to know that it's raining right now, as I type.

Rain was there yesterday when I went out but strangely it wasn't pleasant enough and that's on rare occasions that I feel that. Waddling through knee-deep dirty water is never pleasant, I think. For any one.

There was some refuge in the rain-time ice-cream tradition we've come to perform. But even that was short-lived.

The streets are generally alive with the college kids, their shopping and their somethingortheothers, but occasionally there's something deeper and thought-provoking for the listless brain and the periodically blind mind's eye.

Like a few days ago passing between the row of buildings, walking on through the somewhat narrow lanes of restaurants, various stores with t-shirts on display, small shops selling momos and the old, old wooden doors of the ancient-looking houses resting in between them, up there, in one of the first floor windows.

Moving my eyes up from the muddy wet ground to the lighted small balcony, I see an old man sitting very near the railing, with his head bowed down to the people passing below, an almost sinister expression on his face, but blank nonetheless. Craze and anger.

Sitting on a small stool.. he stared down at people, moving his head along the direction we went, sitting deathly still, tensed, with just his eyes and then subsequently his head following us. I jerk my head back from looking at him, but can't resist looking back once more just to see if I just imagined it.

But, no, there he is, looking back at me in the eye, blank and strange. I rush on ahead to my friends and decide then to think about it later.

And it's right then that I know that this will be written about. Now or later. Stories started materialising out of think air and I asked if he could be locked up, nah. Or probably just another normal old person angry for just a minute at something trivial. Or what WAS it that made him this way. It could be a number of things ranging from the trivial to insane. But I keep this for sometime else.

There are other eerily amazing things going around in this so-called young people's abode. This University area we see. There are people living here.. in this ancient city, the old houses, the pigeons in the building next door, which I will never understand is lived in or not.

It was my second night here that I spent an hour sitting in a balcony looking at the building, my friends occasionally shining torch light into one of the windows. Empty rooms in the subsequent floor. Thank god for that. The floor below had a cooler fixed on a window and we could see people moving about in the darkness. An old building with the yellow paint peeling apart, the blue beneath it visible.

Sometimes I imagine out building as the Gringotts Bank, with the striking similarity in the shape. Bit smaller, I think. Us Goblins, working on laptops, watching TV, cursing the terrible food. Funny. Never thought of being a Goblin until now.

The building with the plaster peeling off is lovingly named the Pigeon Building by yours truly. A row of pigeons sitting on a window ledge. And just sitting there. Till the end of time. Not even moving a quarter of an inch.

And it's not just the animals.

On the way to McD there comes a series of permanent people on the sidewalk. It's not every time that I notice but then he's not that easily noticeable too. This little figure couched down on the sidewalk, sitting against the wall, covered and wrapped in off-white clothes, and a makedo turban on his head. And I don't even know if he's a he or even his age.

The face is never seen, just the hands outstretched from under the tattered cloth wrapped around his puny shoulders, a small frail figure with his head bowed low, sitting in a corner, not saying a word. Not asking for money , just not doing anything except sitting there hidden with both his hands opened together as if he's holding something precious that we can't see.

Then there are the two little kids who sit with a weighing scale, ignoring it much of the time, as people step over it carefully moving along the narrow sidewalk. While the two little people carefully and meticuolously copy notes from the textbook to their notebook. Discussing with each other something very important while they study. Not more than 7 or 8 years old. And their heads at the right place. Probably siblings, one girl and one boy. Sitting quietly, lost in their own world. Studying.

And such a crude contrast to us "DU students". Take a hint.

Another are other small children selling mint and tiny chocolates, trailing around people, running behind them, shieking in their little childish voices. Yesterday, as it happened, waiting around in a line for the ATM, a "bhaiya" apparently bought a chocolate for my friend and asked this little chocolate seller to give it to her.

And great laughter ensued. For the stretch of time waiting for the ATM, being inside the room and getting away from there. And the poor child trailing behind us all the way pushing the chocolate on to her unwilling indirect customer. She stopped only after we took the chocolate from her. And ran back gleefully shouting that the didi took it. So much happiness.

I'm not getting around to clicking enough pictures, not as much as I want to. Or expect myself too. And writing too. But I think this much will be enough to while away the time being happy with myself for getting something out of my system onto the keyboard and seeing it on the screen. Bliss.

Such picturesqueness. Such inspiration lies in the narrow lanes and the branded stores and the old houses of Delhi 7. The streets, the sounds, the sights. Loving it.

More to come. Very soon. The College. And The People :)