French Roast

2010-01-29T11:53:00.000+05:30

I just realized that my blogger's still set to IST. An odd comfort.

Guilt

2010-01-29T11:44:00.002+05:30

Since we're not young, weeks have to do time
for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp
in time tells me we're not young.
Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,
my limbs streaming with purer joy?
did I lean from my window over the city
listening for the future
as I listen with nerves tuned for your ring?
And you, you move towards me with the same tempo.
Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark
of the blue-eyed grass of early summer
the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring.
At twenty, yes: we thought we'd live forever.
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somehow, each of us must help the other die.

-- Adrienne Rich

I want to talk about death, but I'm superstitious.

With age and responsibility comes the burden of knowing exactly when you aren't doing your bit. Suddenly I'm scared.

Because I haven't time to fish out your emails

2009-12-08T00:23:00.002+05:30

And because you know who you are...

I miss girls' night. Who would've thunk?

2009-12-02T05:11:00.000+05:30

I live with a dessert-stealing chocolate burglar. Just thought you should know.

Note to Self

2009-10-28T10:15:00.001+05:30

It shouldn't take 22 books to write a 5-page concept paper.

Amreek

2009-08-28T11:40:00.001+05:30

The last 48

2009-08-03T22:05:00.003+05:30

One of the reasons why I started blogging was the need to get away from everything that was happening in my life - the break-up, the resultant loss of a best friend, the loneliness - and I did that by writing humorously about inconsequential things in my doped-up, hazy life.

One of the reasons I have stopped blogging is because now I can tackle whatever is happening in my life by talking about it with DD, instead of pretending it isn't happening and lighting a cigarette. [Gosh, cigarettes. I'm going to miss you. Downside of living with a sensible man. Pah.]

In about 45 hours I'll be at the airport, contending with a knot in my throat, and an obsessive-compulsive propensity to blink.

It's hardest dealing with the faces. So I'm trying to think of mishaps. Like my suitcase crashing itself open and pet bottles of home-made gorom moshla raining on customs officers. Or being held back at Singapore for carrying a suspiciously large quantity of underwear. Or being punished by God for placing my Toulouse-Lautrec print over a packet of shoes.

Which reminds me: thanks be to my friends for giving me thoughtful and fabulous gifts, all of which I am taking with me!

When I'm in pain [waxing, stitches, rage], I keep muttering to myself, "Think about childbirth. This is easier. This is a breeze. Think about waiting to dilate to 10cm." Possible factual inaccuracies regarding childbirth aside, it works. I can steel myself. Not working now, though.

Is anybody praying?

Educating Rb_P

2009-02-10T21:18:00.003+05:30

Me: I'm going to do a Ph.D. in theatre.

British-Indian aunt: A what?

Me: Uhm. A doctoral degree in drama?

B-I A (Confusion. Discombobulation. Total befuddlement.) : Well, I've never heard that one before!

Ladies and gentlemen, that which I call life.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T02:00:00.004+05:30

There is no way to Peace.

Peace is the way.

May we find the way in 2009.

Archiving

2008-11-05T20:11:00.001+05:30

When Barack Obama visited Berlin a few months ago, more than 200,000 of its citizens turned up to hear him speak. Victory is theirs.

Less than twelve hours ago, in Chicago, a similar number of Americans joined him in celebrating an extraordinary moment in their history. Among them was Rev. Jesse Jackson, who saw a man fulfil his own unfinished American dream. Victory is his.

Around the same time, a middle-aged, semi-literate man from a West Bengal village, who follows not a word of American English, stood glued to the live telecast on CNN in my house. He was watching with genuine joy another man, thousands of miles and cultures away, who does not speak his language and of whom he knows precious little, be on his way to becoming the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. Because they share the same name, Hussein. Victory is his.

I have nothing to add to the immense body of commentary that has and will be recorded about Obama's election to the Presidential post. This post is a personal tribute to a moment in history that I am proud to have been around for. Barack Obama has made big promises, and it remains to be seen whether he will deliver. His victory reflects the wish for change more than the conviction that this change can be brought about in any certain way. But that the American people have embraced the need for this change, and welcomed it in so triumphant a manner, speaks of good things to come. This is a victory for the minority voice, a recognition of the fascinating hybridity that embodies the American (and global) life. It is a remarkable moment to be a part of. Victory is ours.

Listmania

2008-11-02T19:06:00.005+05:30

Right, so, hullo and everything. Long time n awl.

Here's the deal, you need to close your eyes and think of 3 books that make you happy. The first 3 that come to mind. No thinking hard allowed, tell me just off the top of your head.

Here's what I came up with:

1. My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell
2. Boy - Roald Dahl
3. Abol Tabol - Sukumar Ray

I was a little amazed at what I got. Primarily because the last time I'd read any of these 3 books was over a dozen years ago, sometimes more. Yet these are what came to mind immediately. Now tell me yours.

As an afterthought, maybe we could share some of the less common books with each other, those who are in the same city could, at any rate.

2008-09-02T19:06:00.000+05:30

The way you treat a thing can change its nature.

Rose Aylmer

2008-08-30T02:15:00.001+05:30

Ah, what avails the sceptred race!
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.

Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and sighs
I consecrate to thee.

-- Walter Savage Landor

I did not know her at all. It feels horrible now to wish I had. May she have left behind survivors.
To think that my last post featured a woman who had fought that same battle. And won. The irony.

2008-08-24T03:37:00.002+05:30

1. There is such a thing as knowing too much. An eventful past to reconcile with. And we haven't even got to my own.

2. I hate this template. But I hate the alternatives more. I also mean the blog.

3. With feeling comes pain.

4. I own 7 articles of maternity wear. My biological clock is set on snooze, apparently. This is costing me more than a baby. Dammit with the bloody hormones.

5. I still can't spell accommodate and obsessive correctly the first time.

6. I am incapable of writing academic papers. I am even less capable of writing chicklit. I have tried my hand at both. Not an hour ago. The paper begins with the myth of Echo and Narcissus. The chicklit began with the legend,"She blew a smoke-ring into the night air and declared, 'I hate tampons and men.'" I have wisely abandoned both. Paper and chicklit, not tampons and men.

7. This means I will never be rich or educated. Looking for one number millionaire male. Single, fat fetish preferred.

7. I have been winking at tiny human things. The response veers from great amusement to heartbreaking indifference.

8. Twice I dreamt of a room without a floor.

9. I think I got tricked.

10. I hate not being able to tell it like I feel it. I think I will do the fashionable blogshift.

11. Long-distance relationships:
pro -- No waxing! Ever!
con -- Right when you begin checking out that sexy geek, he will call and proceed to guilt the shit out of you. Besides, sexy geek can't tell if you're a man or a woman, what with all that virile undergrowth.

12. Bosses. Sleep eludes.

13. I'd written virulent outgrowth back there. I have GRE in a month.

14. Shit, I have a deadline and I can neither work nor sleep.

15. I watch Stacked to take fashion tips from the fat woman behind the counter. I don't know what the hell is going on in that show, and I don't see why Pammy's boobies should be considered ample substitutes for wit and humour. But that is none of my concern, because doods, I'm rooting for the fat chick. [I am not being condescending here, I just don't know her name or that of the character she plays. Or any of those characters. It's a very forgettable show.]

Five minutes later

Okay, googled and hyperlinked. Nobody's gonna call me a weightist. Her name's Katrina on the show. Her real name's Marissa Jaret Winokur, and she won a Tony! I liker.

Ten minutes later

This woman survived cervical cancer, had to get a hysterectomy done and didn't tell nobody about it! PLUS she won a TONY! And she was on one of them celebrity dance shows! Where she swung like a mad momma! She's big and pretty. I liker loads.

Pics courtesy www.etonline.com and www.instyleweddings.com

Words, wide night

2008-08-05T22:03:00.002+05:30

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

-- Carol Ann Duffy

Being alone was easier despair.

Boss.

2008-07-08T00:16:00.000+05:30

The FIRST thing they do is attack the ladies' loos.

I went up and down the Arts building Thrice to find a functioning ladies' toilet. They were either locked or being renovated. Or one had to leap over the (uninviting. [duh]) piece of shit at the entrance of the only one that was open.

So I made horrified Science dork stand guard in front of a men's loo in the paasher building while I peed. I never imagined I'd call anyone bhaiti. Khyak. I must be getting old.

No, seriously, I must. I can't hold it in for as long as I used to be able to.

What's troubling is, we used to not have to be nice to the boys while we hijacked their toilets. Ah well, a little discretion relieves tummy ache. I will stop now.

It's good to be back. Stories to tell already.

But I need to flush sometimes dudes. Give us back our rest rooms.

[Yesyes, comments. I remember. Lovely little people, feel my pain. And paralyzing lethargy.]

Things/thoughts/people

2008-07-02T01:20:00.001+05:30

Cold and wet, like the days.

Smile. Better than speech and discovery.

Which is a better word - fulsome or blossom? Blossom. So how come I get to use the other one more, hain?

Walk towards the light, walk into darkness. Either way, you're blinded.

Much has been left behind.

Stop asking me how I feel. It is enough that I feel.

Pursuit. Persuasion. Perjury.

"What does freedom taste like?" she asked. Rain? I don't know. Your thoughts?

Nothingness and a constant buzzing.

Unwell. Like a fever. Like a viral fever? Like contagion. Well, unwell. khyak

Yes, I feel better. Because you only want results. Because there is no truth in what you do not know. How I laugh sometimes.

Voices spilling. and William Butler Yeats.

For you I bleed myself dry. Coldplay. Yellow.

William Rubin, Esq. Him of the pickled liver and artful despondency.

Dan.

Was cat, now hanky.

Rubicon

2008-06-24T19:50:00.001+05:30

Ascension by Anish Kapoor

2008-06-22T13:46:00.004+05:30

I swear I'll reply to comments. Sorry I haven't been. I haven't looked at this blog in over a month. Over Two months. Its oppressive radiance is .... uhm .... oppressive.

Help me God.

2008-06-22T13:11:00.002+05:30

Listen, there's no point telling me to GET ON WITH IT PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. I'm not going to post until I have a happy post, okay? I shan't. And there is nothing happy about my life right now. Well, except this one thing, but I won't tell you about him. He's on the gorgeous side, and if I block everything else out and concentrate on him then life is all peachy and full of fat-free sugary goodness.

Butbutbut. It isn't, really. And when was sunny side up a fun read anyway? Right. So I've just been googling "how to build self-confidence", and girls (and Tygr), I need to stop. Or, and I'll grant you this, get on with it. When I am out of this relentless cycle of self-pity and deathly lack of creative impulse, I shall fill your lives with joy again. In the meantime, I need a song. Someone give me a song. A Beatles' song. Now don't be predictably snarky and say "Help!".

Anyway I only blogged because one self-help site says to. And all this whining is "chipping away" at my flaws or something.

Step 3 is finding my "inner sunshine". Jeez.

Bye.

The Way Through the Woods

2008-05-30T16:33:00.002+05:30

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
When the otter whistles his mate,
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods...
But there is no road through the woods.

-- Rudyard Kipling

Unsent - ii

2008-04-29T10:36:00.001+05:30

Dear Newspaper that pays me pittance,
Please let me have a life? Please help me afford the life I want? It only involves a couple martinis and a liposuction.
Did I ask too much?
More than a lot?
You gave me nothing
Now it's, all I got.

Dear Chief Sub-Editor who should totally not be reading this (but invariably will),
Look, it's a love song. Don't dooce me.

Dear Man who directed CS to this blog, all the better to cause its doom and mine,
Are ya happy now?

Dear All,
I have pms.

Dear People who have left me comments on the fat girl post,
I will respond. You know I want to. But I feel bloated now, and not at all phenomenal. I will respond when I have more conviction. :-D

Dear Empowered aunties who show untoward concern for my matrimonial career (and the fact that it never took off),
If you tell me about my designated role as a caregiver one.more.time, I shall ... fart.

Dear Boys,
Is it really true that men can't be friends with women they're not attracted to? Has every woman who has ever watched When Harry Met Sally asked you this question?
It really is quite intriguing.

Dear Bank Balance,
Where are you?

Dear Friends who have deserted me for other women and weddings,
Whoa? Let's get drunk soon. And dance to "hindi numbers".

Dear Blog,
I will be your caregiver.

Dear Rainbeau,
That sounded pathetic. Please stop.

I wish it had been something else I was writing

2008-04-25T21:45:00.000+05:30

We remember the dead by what they meant to us.
I didn't know him at all. But I used to see him on the bridge with his girlfriend. We would laugh in our little corner, wishing they'd get a room. But then they kept at it, and we just got used to having them around. He was another bridge fixture, like we were. Weaselly little boy, always on the look-out for a joint. And now he's dead of an OD.

Is it just me or does it happen to everyone that when you hear that a friend, or a relative, or just a distant uncle or that boy you knew existed, passed away, the first thought that comes to mind is, "Why did it have to be someone I know?"? Why did it have to be someone I can associate with a face and a body and a voice. And glimpses from the past. Maybe it's just me.

One mustn't speak ill of the dead. I haven't very nice things to say about him. In all honesty, I don't know when the news of his death stopped being about him and became about me. The news came to me in an offhand way. Some boy in my department had died, I was informed. And I remember thinking of this other girl, who, a few days back had written that she couldn't stop crying. And at that time I'd thought she was crying because she had maybe messed up a test. And I thought I'd message her and say something inane like "stay away from Derrida, he cashed in on his poor spelling skills", but then I thought better of it because she's another person I don't know but was used to seeing around. I know you read this blog occasionally, and I want to say I feel stupid now. Although you probably didn't have to know any of this. Hang in there.

In the midst of life we are in death.
It's amazing how you think your life is pretty unremarkable and you've got it all chalked out, and then suddenly someone dies of substance abuse. I used to do all that myself, because hippie trash seemed like an effective emotional outlet. It wasn't. Maybe I was lucky I began falling sick and knew I had to stop. Or maybe I grew up.

I hope his parents forgive him. Jackass. I hope he finds what he was looking for.

2008-03-09T18:31:00.001+05:30

I wish words were music. Just pure sound, without language. No lyrics. If only we could all communicate through music, which needs no historical or cultural specificity for its beauty to be recognized, for its mood to be conveyed to even the lay ear. There would be no cultural crises. My cultural milieu and yours would be at par.

Of course, music has its own technical language, can be studied in terms of its own complex semiotics. But what if we didn't try? Would I feel any less in touch with something primal, something inexpressible when I listen to a raga whose grammar I do not care to fathom? There is a sense of betrayal - of the art, the artist and the feeling - in the attempt to decode music by talking about it in terms of 'good' or 'bad'. Some of us were having this discussion a while back, and all of us agreed that it is not rare to be unable to articulate one's enjoyment of a piece of music. Sometimes any kind of articulation becomes inadequate, unjust. I suppose it is true of all art forms.

Articulation in terms of identifiable language, the language of speech - that can be very problematic. Too determined by one's social background, 'upbringing', 'culture'. Too many misreadings, therefore. Too much inadequacy.

Sometimes I prefer the language of silence. Or the language of the body. They are not culturally relative, or a little less so.

Mostly, these days, I just wish words were music.

An apologia for my thighs

2008-02-23T22:35:00.001+05:30

I had a couple of peanut-butter-and-chocolate biscuits yesterday. A concerned friend told me I "should have some control", because I am capable of looking like "a goddess". Sure. Because getting off the carbs and onto a treadmill is the key to faith and world domination.
Skipping the gym and eating chocolate having thwarted my chance at divinity (only of the visually-appealing kind, though. a pity, but nevertheless), I've been wondering what it is that made me all defensive and angry at my friend. Our Indian goddesses aren't criticised for their belly, I was reading Sanskrit plays where the desirable woman's thighs were compared to banana trunks. I've got that metaphor down pat, promise.
I haven't read The Beauty Myth, but I'm curious to know why my responses to enjoying myself, to being comfortable in my skin - all wide circumference of it - is so ridden with guilt. I did come across this link about Wolf's book, though. It's messy but has some of the statistics that are in the book.
I am fat. I have a problem being fat, but it also bothers me that I should have this problem.
I refuse to go around telling myself that it is my "fault" that I am fat. It is not my fault that I enjoy eating food. It is not a fault that I have chosen not to adopt hunger as a life-mantra, but rather to indulge myself in the art of food, to be seduced by the wildness and variety of flavours and smells and colours that good food provides. My friend is proud of girls who measure out their intake in calories, who take only a spoonful of something sweet because it shows their "control". We are obsessed with the body, but I am yet to come across any woman, fat or thin, beautiful or plain - who is comfortable in her body. I don't know of a single woman who wouldn't change any one thing in her appearance, if she could. Prove me wrong if you will, and I will take comfort in your confidence.
When I was younger, I was also larger. I have grown up being fed on the concept of "thin is in". I was told that I will automatically be more beautiful, more attractive, more powerful, more of an achiever, most importantly, that I will be accepted more willingly - if my thighs are slim, if my stomach is flat. My teenage years were spent running (ok, ma, waddling) from one room to another, away from my mother mocking me for my flab, telling me I will never have a boyfriend, never be loved. I have grown up believing I am too large for love. I fought it then, it seemed too hollow, too hurtful to give in to. I didn't want love that was measured in proportion to the size of my hips. I didn't want to succumb to my mother's taunts - I fought back by refusing to fall in with her plans of sculpting a new, more socially acceptable, desirable daughter. I decided to disregard my body because it would make her mad, and it would make me hurt less at the humiliating paradox of being inadequate because I was too full.
But things didn't quite go according to book. I met men who loved me despite the girth, who loved me with all I came. I felt comforted by their acceptance of who I was. It was too unfamiliar to me. But the self-victimization of which so many - too many - of us are a part, caught up with me. I wanted to be perfect for those men who loved me. I thought if I fell in with these classifications of 'beauty', of "perfection", then I would make them happy. I thought I was doing it for them.
So I punished myself - I went without food, I ran, I walked, I swept floors, I did crunches, lunges, I pumped iron, I lived on soup and cigarettes. And the weight kept dropping. The lighter I felt, the closer to 'perfection' I got, the more deprived I felt, the more hollow, the more empty and unhappy, less liberated. Sure, I went shopping more often, but I also looked at myself more often, took the little things in life too seriously - thought twice before a dinner with friends, kept looking to see if my butt looked bigger or smaller than last week. Meanwhile, people were dying, kids were malnourished, and there I was, all proud that I had skipped dessert. Which would have been OK, if I had been happier, or healthier, but I wasn't. With every kilo I lost there was the discontent of finding that I still wasn't perfect, wasn't even near perfection, because I didn't have the perfect skin, the perfect nose, perfect mouth. I was not prettier than that girl at the movie hall the other day, leave alone the one in the movie. It wasn't about anyone else, it was about me not being ok with who I was.
I don't know where this self-hatred stems from. It's simplest to blame patriarchy, and perhaps also not completely unjust, come to think of it. I know a strong woman who has fought with poor body image all her life because it was the only resort of her emotionally weaker husband. He needed to make her feel small, to make her feel like she was too much where she should have been less. Less is more. A male friend's candour the other day:

i like slim people. because they look smarter, and and more agreeable to me. this is a notion that i have since i am born. and i cant change it.

Maybe it's the media's projection of unreal, impossible-to-achieve body images - airbrushed, botoxed, thighs vacuumed out, tummies tucked, food vomited, waxed, threaded, siliconed. Ripped apart. Stitched back up.
Then there's our cook, Sabita di. She's a large, beautiful woman, and one day when my mother (who obsesses about bodies, as much others' as her own) asked her, "Sabita, tumi eto kaj koreo mota hou ki korey? Onek bhaat khao?" she was quick to retort, "Ta bhaat khaabo na? Sharadin khetey khetey mori, bari giye duto bhaat na khele korbo ki? Mota roga tey kar ki aashe jaaye." Something to that effect, it was too long ago. Here was a woman who was blissfully unaware of what it is to be expected to conform to a particular kind of body - to be told that this is a desirable body, and this other one here, that's two sizes too large? that needs to be struck off the menu. Sabita Di diregards her body too, but she is not in denial of it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't support over-indulgence, I don't support gluttony, and I am not opposed to exercise. It is important, I feel destressed when I exercise. But to do it solely to conform to a popular conception of the body, of assembly-line women, all of them with ironed hair, tiny bottoms and flat chests - I will not fall into that trap. I'm doing it all the time, yes. But I want to get out of it, I need to get out of this constricting view of my body. My body is not bad, or ugly, or undesirable because it is not like a thousand other bodies. My body holds all my stories, my memories of touch, my experiences. It is mine to control, my domain. I want to live in it, not to try to run away from it. I want to be healthy, but not ashamed of who I am. So don't tell me about control, don't tell me I will be better if I'm two sizes smaller, because I'm pretty darned great anyway.

Happy Valentine's Day a.k.a I still don't make any sense to you

2008-02-14T03:03:00.001+05:30

[last lines]
Clementine: I'm not a concept, Joel. I'm just a fucked-up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. I'm not perfect.
Joel: I can't see anything that I don't like about you.
Clementine: But you will! But you will. You know, you will think of things. And I'll get bored with you and feel trapped because that's what happens with me.
Joel: Okay.
Clementine: [pauses] Okay.

I waited for that trite 'okay'. There is something very reassuring about how the film ends. We're all seeking acceptance, trying to come to terms. But the desire for sameness constantly clashes with the powerful allure of difference, of something new, untried, wild. Unfamiliar yet anticipated, dreamt about. Primal.
He didn't say it, at any rate. My imagined reality.

Unforgotten

2008-01-28T21:58:00.000+05:30

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

The Little Prince

Absolutely nothing at all

2008-01-26T22:32:00.000+05:30

Much in the nature of my newly-purchased coffee plunger, I have been leaving out the scummy sediment in slow, gentle pushes. Sometimes though, it gets a little overbearing. I wish people would come to terms.
Do you know what I hate about this blog? I will tell you. It's that you read it and I know exactly what you look like. Oh come now, don't go away. It's not like I'm going to be telling you anything meaningful in the slightest. Oh no, I don't feel angry and exasperated at AWL. Picture of calm, that's me.

I am so angry and exasperated. Doods.

The good thing is, I have crazy expensive sneakers. They're Nike, with shiny laces, but black and frightfully classy. I feel like I'm walking on bubbles. They give me a camel gait. It's something between crouching and walking on tippy-toes, and running. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but it sure as hell feels comfortable neck down. The neck hurts, though. How them camels manage it I'll never know. If any of you drop in at the South City Nike store, don't mention my name. They'll think you're crazy too.
But I have two kinds of laces. Yay!
I also have lovely coffee brung from foren. And chocolate. Tere paas kya hai?
Is it a little too obvious that I have nothing to say? South City mall scares me. It is mammoth. I keep thinking it'll come alive and be mean while I'm hunched over a window display.
But the Starmark! I heart the Starmark. I want to buy it and bathe in its literary abundance. I just wish there weren't so many unnecessary people.
I feel stupid sometimes.
Okbye.

2008-01-25T12:54:00.000+05:30

All that remains is 9 saved conversations. A few emails. And a memory in half-truths. I have a bad habit of turning to the buried past, taking comfort in its deadness. I am averse to new confidences, I owe many who genuinely love and care for me my deepest, most heartfelt apologies. You are not the one I need. What I need is receding in time. As memories fade, archives get auto-deleted, I sometimes wonder what I will grab at next.
There are new memories, though. Beautiful photographs. I find myself singing these days. New experiences, mature, reasonable company. Impractical, passionate people. Love everywhere. I will not forget. And be forever grateful.

There are things I want to say, but this is not the place.
I am glad for french roast coffee.

Year-ender

2007-12-28T11:22:00.000+05:30

It's been a year of big changes. There was the job, of course - huge change. Imagine waking up and feeling like shit - because you never were much of a ray of sunshine, now, were you? - and not being able to go awl, "Fuckit, I couldn't give a damn about a lecture on Samuel Pepys when my life is falling apart." Which is pretty much the theatre that played all 4 shows right through my college life. Now I go to work because that is what one does. It's been a year or doing what one ought - since July, at least. I'm not complaining, but funny though, how there still isn't much by way of order or discipline. Must be the exuberant company I keep.
Perhaps, it's all the growing up (and out) that I've been doing. Despite all the tumult there's been a certain numbness of thought. Things have happened, as they are wont to. But I find I take things in my stride more easily now. Something that would affect me deeply some months ago, ceases to now. Maybe it's the kind of training my job gives me. In the face of despair, file a copy.
I'd call it cynicism, but it isn't. Because I feel so liberated by it. It is a very unforced detachment from things. I would be worried if I'd stopped being able to love. That hasn't happened. Sometimes though, I wish it would. It must be the growing older that makes one appreciate beautiful paradoxes.
Around me, people wager their hearts this holiday season while mine beats just like yesterday, hole n all. An ordinary miracle, I don't ask for much.

I've had an eventful year. Gimme another one of those, please. With a dash of lime and some dancing. Have a great year ahead, all of you.

[Cat]ching up

2007-12-16T09:33:00.000+05:30

Leave the past in its permanent home. Do not make that reality so strong that it tears down this one.

- Jeanette Winterson

It's amazing how you'll remember things that you hadn't held so very dear to you when they were in the present. I finished school a few months before I turned 18. Seven years down the line, when I think of school, the first two images that come to mind are of Kanchi didi, the Nepalese ayah at kindergarten, with her "lal dawai" - a mysterious bloodred concoction of Lord knows what devilspawn that worked wonders on cuts and sores - and Johnny, the ice cream man. Kanchi didi never tended to me, I spent most of nursery and KG being bitten by my friend T, who was quite the bully then, and has since metamorphosed into the picture of grace and comeliness. 20 years ago she was running riot, making boys and nursery teachers alike howl in pain. Now she frowns upon my decadent lifestyle and is often to be found shaking her head in disapproval at the world at large. She's getting married soon, to Gullu Mian, who adores her and looks suspiciously like her ex-crush/my ex-boyfriend. It's complicated. On the upside, he's nicer than ex-crush. By far.
Johnny had a white cart and sold Kwality ice cream. I'm sure he must've switched to Walls, but that's not worth a memory. I reckon his name wasn't really Johnny. In all the time I was at school, which is all the time one can possibly be at school, I hadn't once spoken to Johnny. T used to climb up one of the wheels of the cart and peep inside the freezer. There was something other-worldly, positively magical about the way the brown, skinny man in shorts would let screaming children harangue him, would chide them good-naturedly and sell his ices all the while - with artful precision. Like a juggler, really.
It could be that I remember more of him than was. The past will do that to you, because when you know it isn't coming back, you'd like to remember the best parts. What amazes me, though, is that I would ever consider Johnny and Kanchi didi to be so much a part of that past that makes up my childhood.

Not that any of this discounts the severe sense of loss I'm feeling at having donated my favourite bookmark to one of those spoilt little mutts I frequently travel with on the Metro. They're the same lot that picks on smaller kids and thinks passengers are waterbeds, all the better to headbutt, jump and stamp their feet on. Bloody kids, with bloody puppy eyes. But there's only so much you can do when you're trying to catch up on a good book and this tiny little thing keeps poking her head in and playing with your bookmark. It's kind of sweet, all said and done. I just wished this bunch had more manners. But my poor pretty bookmark with lemony cats and cat's ear edges. It was a gift from my UK mashi too and had silly puns made with cats and literature - like "Cats 22". Crazy cute. I heart pretty bookmarks. It's the only one I had too. :-[ It's not even like I gave the thing to her. I only handed it over to her to keep her busy while I got on with my reading. But then she started showing off to the others that I'd given her this "thing". And then she showed her mother, who said, "Uff, abar koththeke ekta aborjona tuley enechhe!" and everyone else laughed, and I glared at the mum and asked the kid with as much dignity as I could muster, "Nebey?" She nodded vigorously, the little demon.
You think I may have got bullied into parting with a favourite possession by a 6-yar-old who has no use for it?
I'm never having a screaming kid, I promise. I'm never having anything that isn't well-behaved.

Perchance to dream

2007-12-07T03:26:00.000+05:30

Dudes, sleep. It is the luxury of those who keep sane company. What with one lot of people with real relationships that are in shambles, and the other lot who keep having relationships that are all in their heads – my life is pretty full right now.

Excuse me, large women of the world. Please come together in a round table meet where we discuss the prospects of my ever walking into a shop all tralala and walking out of it, still tralala, but with a pair of ossum jeans that make my ass look nice and my thighs look notgross. Because what is the point of being large if you can’t tell the whole world about it, and discuss and analyse it yet never once consider going to the gym for it. Correct. So anyway, I’ve needed a pair of jeans ever since this blog was born. Children, that is not good. On Saturday then, I shall set out, sagging belly in one hand, and brand new plastic card in the other, and shop for jeans. I cannot even begin to explain how momentous this event is.
The trouble with winter is, what with all the moisturising, you can’t quite ignore issues like surface area. Ok wotever. Seriously, I want recommendations for jeans that look nice on fat people. I need brands, and don't say Levi's. Levi's jeans are too thick. Me no like. You wouldn’t either if you kept scraping the skin off your fingers every time you had to pull your thick jeans on, which, even though you bought them 3 months ago, are now so tight you have to lie on your back and do a complicated wiggle, because your ass? It grows exponentially. So Levi’s is out. Don’t say Guess, because I have seen those mannequins, and they could do with some fried chicken. I am ethically against entering a shop that has irrationally skinny mannequins. Tell me other brands. Quick now.

In other news, I will never get a tattoo. Or go bungee jumping. And there is absolutely no way for you to prove that I’ve been blogging from work.

Head of umbrella

2007-11-27T22:22:00.000+05:30

Finding is the first Act
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
The "Golden Fleece"

Fourth, no Discovery—
Fifth, no Crew—
Finally, no Golden Fleece—
Jason—sham—too.

*********************************************************************************

Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays.

'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust—

Ruin is formal—Devil's work
Consecutive and slow—
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping—is Crash's law.

- Emily Dickinson

In the gutters our stars decay.

- a line from a poem by Vasko Popa, Serbian poet, in trans.

Boddo discontent and heavy bleeding.

On the bright side, my lil niece was born on the very day that my other niece was getting married!
Oh wait. This means I'm growing old. Okso, Not a very bright side.
But my lil niece, doods, she will kick some serious ass with her blooming gorgeousity. and I could not get more shitty amreekan hipstery if I tried. Yo &c.
Honest, she is incredible looking. With haughty eyes. I mean, which 2-day old kid do you know with haughty eyes? I am in awe. I will cause grievous harm to boys who try to mess with her fifteen years later. Mind it.

Memory's children

2007-11-21T17:37:00.000+05:30

Whoever the homeland may belong to, it is not merely a piece of geography. It is also not just history. Nor is it the rivers of the region, or the mountains. It is all those things that keep getting absorbed in your very being whether you want it or not. It constantly nurtures your mind, heart and soul. Keeps it alive... It is our land that gives us a vision. Gives us strength to see our country and see beyond it. To connect with our place and times.

- Krishna Sobti, Memory's Daughter, trans.

The state government would have us believe that normalcy has been restored in Nandigram. A "new sunrise", they're saying. I wonder what that means. All those women who were raped. Is the government going to dictate to them what normal is? Is 'normal' handing a red flag to you after your women have been raped and murdered, your men beaten up and burnt alive and your houses razed to the ground?
The burden of the past, it is a great one. Will anyone forget?

There is no activism in me. Just a lot of rage. And severe, numbing shock. I look at photographs we spare our readership. Photographs of rape victims, of men with faces so badly smashed all you can see is coagulated flesh, not even the eyes can be made out. No, these will never be published, there is only so much intrusive journalism - we try not to cross the line. But I see the pain, I see the blood, I see a torn sari and mauled limbs and stains.
There must be a way out. Please, God, let there be a way out.

p.s.: Please, spare me the inquisition. The last and penultimate paragraphs are not necessarily related.

Children of a lesser god

2007-11-12T15:38:00.000+05:30

Sometimes, the thought of going home becomes an intrusion. Like when you're driving down the expressway, happy to have lost the road back to the city. The thing with happiness, though, is that it has an evil twin.
Tonight, I will go home and be thankful, for the big house, my two rooms, for my middle-class birth, for every material comfort that I so often scoff at in the name of humility. Because we live in a world where these things matter enough to save your life. Because my parents have two cars, their own house, and comfortable bank accounts, our lives are worthy of being saved. It sounds insane, doesn't it? But when I read about all those lives that are so dispensable because they have no other defence than their tears of anguish and helplessness, whose cries and appeals go unheard - this is all I can come up with to explain how this sort of continuing terror can be perpetrated on the people who have put the present government in power. The people whom the government purports to protect. Instead, children are dying, men and women lie wounded in hospitals, each reduced to a name and number plastered across their forehead with duct tape. The language of diplomatic communication has always been maddening; annoyingly passive. The prime minister has been kind enough to say that Delhi is "concerned". When your child falls down and hurts his knee, you show concern. When your house is full of termites, you're entitled to be concerned. But when the women of your polity get raped and murdered, when you can look at the fear on the faces of the men and children, and still shoot them to death to make a sham of all your promises, a mockery of the democracy you claim to ensure - I'm thinking there needs to be more than a show of "concern" and "direct interest".
Nandigram embarasses me. On the way to work, when I see a group of foreign tourists wandering aimlessly near Raj Bhavan, looking appalled at the empty streets of a city whose charm lies in its people, its overwhelming crowds, I am ashamed for the anxious alertness in their body language. When the police crack down on artists raising their voice against the atrocities, the complete disregard for the democratic rights of the people in my state embarasses me.
My city's silence, and my own, embarasses me. My 'education', the 'awareness' and 'exposure' that has cultivated for me and for those like me an ostensible 'voice', embarasses me because of the way in which it is being threatened and systematically quashed by my government.
And when I go back home, and think of all those people who have been rendered homeless, landless, and, in so many cases, without a family, I will be embarassed for the comfort I was born into and for the inability to do much else than to wallow in it.

Picture hit hai

2007-11-10T03:27:00.000+05:30

The sole purpose of this post, written at quarter past 3 in the morning, is to inform you that I am just back from watching the late night show of Om Shanti Om at City Centre, and doods, lets face it, I've totally seen it before you have. :-D

Also, it's an amazingly intelligent, beautiful film. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's a tribute to Bollywood, but it captures the essence of Bombay cinema in a way that's never been done before. Go watch it, quick.

And, hullo? It is IMPOSSIBLE to get transport from City Centre at 2:30 in the morning. And no, even crazed women running after cabs in stilletoes doesn't work.

Of course, this post wasn't meant to be either a review of the film or a chronicle of my day.

Frankly my dears, I'm only gloating about how my Diwali was pretty darn ossum. How was yours?

*tomorrow, Saawariya*

Oho, Happy Diwali kintu! Have a blast! :-]

Jodhpur heaven fetish

2007-10-28T11:05:00.000+05:30

Those, my pretties, are apparently search words that will bring you to this blog. Not that I've ever been to Jodhpur or heaven, and I don't remember discussing my fetish here either. What does it even mean, Jodhpur heaven fetish? Some kind of strange desert-spirituality-gone-perverse thingy, I suspect. Leave me out of it, is awl I'm saying.

I made my first plastic purchase on the 19th of this month. This is not something you need to know, of course, but then, most of what I write here isn't either.

Like my chocolate cravings, I suddenly have this intense, inexplicable, paralysing desire to be fabulously rich. It's different from the garden-variety desire for wealth, which, I usually don't have anyway. Suddenly I want a weekend getaway chateau in .. oh, I dunno ... Belgravia (am I making up this place? I don't know, but I sure as hell know exactly what it looks like) and want to be able to afford every fucking spa treatment at Ananda.

I also want to live on tuna and truffle cake for the rest of my life.

Yes, that is correct, I am burning up with fever.

I thought Pujos would be miserable this year, what with the job and everything, but I had an enjoyable Pujo. I didn't sleep, worked from afternoon to evening, then festive-cheered all night till late morning, then back to work in the afternoon, till I was ready to collapse. But it was great.
It bothers me a little bit that I spend every fucking Pujo with a new set of friends. Every single year. I'm a drifter, aren't I? Bob, I apologise. There is in me, a very screwy something that I do not care to share. I hope that excuse was cute enough for forgiveness. Ish, that was not sarcasm, promise. Just defensiveness. Promise. Please don't leave a comment.

Ok, what else. My friends. They're great. I just wish they wouldn't try to deconstruct me. Or, assault me physically [I'd say rape, but that wouldn't be politically correct. I'm a fucking journo now. p.s.: They did try to spread my legs, though]. Panu and Pablo, I'm looking at you.
My other friend thinks I'm an idiot. Plenty of people, I suspect, think I'm an idiot. But I think I'm smarter than many of them. Emphatically. Look at these last statements. Q.E.D.

Gawd. It's the bleedy paracetamol combined with some other fecking pills. I swear I'm quite nice. Haha, plenty of people think I'm a "good person". Thank you, brothers and sisters.

Doods, if I don't quit smoking I will seriously die. It's a struggle, this breathing. Honest bolchhi. Ma go ma, I am so never going near a cigarette again. Of course, it may also be that I'm so FAT now that my lungs are clogged up with all the cheese and the 24/7 thoughts of crispy chicken and Valrhona.
Deep, deep inside somewhere, I think I'm Britney Spears.

I can't fucking believe I'm writing this shit. Who is reading this, I wanna know.

Ok, I'll stop. Forgive me, gentle reader, for the liberal use of fuck. You will now please to fornicate fiendishly elsewhere.

[holy crap, I must be very ill]

Bhulbo Na

2007-10-14T00:52:00.000+05:30

Most of you are familiar with the Rizwanur Rahman incident that's been getting national coverage.
For those of you who aren't, I'm going to copy paste the facts that someone has very helpfully put up on the 'Get Justice for Rizwanur' group page on Facebook.

On September 21, Rizwanur Rahman was found dead on the tracks near Patipukur. The 30-year-old computer graphics teacher had been about to send a complaint to the Human Rights Commission about the police harassment he and his wife Priyanka Todi were facing over their marriage. The source of the harassment was rumoured to be Ashok Todi, Priyanka's father and the proprietor of Lux Hosiery. Within the space of a few weeks, Priyanka and her husband were summoned three times to Lalbazar on very flimsy grounds, and they were threatened, intimidated and abused. Priyanka was then induced to leave the family home in Tiljala by rumours that her father was ill; her uncle Anil Saraogi signed a bond promising to return her to Rizwanur in seven days. That never happened, instead Rizwanur's body was found, lying face up on the railway tracks with the back of his head blown off. The Police Commissioner stated that it was suicide, in advance of the evidence, and moreover justified the Todis' 'outrage' at Priyanka's marriage and the police interference that had ensued. A probe was announced but none of the concerned officers were suspended.

The chief minister met Rizwanur's mother today, and asked her for time. In the past three weeks not a damn thing has happened. There have only been meetings and defensives issued by the government and the police. No ostensible efforts are being made to investigate the nature and cause of the death at all. The police commissioner, entrusted with the security of citizens, was quick to decide that the death was a suicide even before the post mortem report was out. For a man more concerned with offices in cricketing associations, he should have known that statement was, well, not quite cricket. Ashok Todi, the father-in-law of the deceased owns a company with a 200-crore turnover. They're the ones with the tagline "yeh andar ki baat hai". Ironic, that. Priyanka Todi, Rizwan's wife, has been systematically silenced, with only the State-run Women's Commission, paying her a visit, only, apparently to see how she was doing and to, in effect, give the impression that she was alright and essentially, didn't want to be involved in the fight for justice that would invariably implicate her family, her father being considered to have masterminded the whole "mysterious" death. Again, it is important to read between the lines. We only know what transpired from what the representatives of a state-run body are telling us. Already, police officers who have admitted to having acted on orders from seniors and interfered in the marriage have not had any action taken upon them. The police, today, are marriage counsellors, protectors, and, it appears co-conspirators in the plot to terminate innocent lives and ruin families. A devastating talent pool of multi-taskers.

The problem is very basic, if you want to get to the root of it, really. When a government is given absolute power for over thirty years, units of its state machinery are likely to think they are god, given that there is nobody to challenge their stake as guardians and keepers of the welfare of citizens. They tend to find it convenient to forget that they are responsible for millions who have put their trust in them.
The purpose of democracy is to ensure that this kind of complacency is not allowed to afflict the larger State. In India, the idea of democracy has never quite been uniform, I think. But the present government in West Bengal would like to believe that they can make an utter sham of democracy and rest easy. They did it in Singur and Nandigram, they're doing it again now. Question is, are we, as educated and aware citizens, going to let them get away with it?
Those of you who have been following the case, are aware of the 24-hour vigil that has been on outside the main gate at St. Xavier's. The response to the vigil has been overwhelming. People from all over the city,across socio-economic *insert correct word that I can't remember. What I mean is, the rich and the poor alike* have come to Xavier's to light a candle for Rizwanur. I don't know how I've come across with what I've written so far, but I need you to know that the protest to get justice for Rizwanur has taken on dimensions of a mass movement that is not political. It is a demand for justice, a demand for the truth to be told like it happened, and without fabrications to save the asses of people in high office. Most of you already know what I'm talking about. I don't know if you've gone to the vigil, but even if you've just passed through Park Street lately, you couldn't have missed the spectacle of people, sitting on the footpath, in the midst of thousands of candles. It's a beautiful, touching sight. The Telegraph has been covering the case and this movement pretty extensively, and there are accounts of how senior citizens have travelled from the other end of the city to come and express their solidarity, and how, people who never knew Rizwan have sat at the vigil and shed tears for him. The facts of the case, and the way its investigation is being handled, are gory and polluted, but the public reaction has been inspiring, and is taking on historic proportions.
This is the part you actually need to read
Ok, enough. You don't need me to go yapping on about things you already know, and it's amazing how everyone has been reacting to this in their own personal way. So I'm going to cut to the chase now. The government and police authorities have been silent all this while, possibly in the hopes that the Pujo craze will push attention away from this issue. But we're not going to let that happen, are we? I know the Pujos are a festive time for us, it's about meeting relatives and friends and having a great time. Which is fine. But somebody lost a relative and a friend for no better reason than that our system does not treat all its people equally, and is favourable to those with money and power. There is an unhealthy lack of concern for the value of human life that must not be allowed to persist. A bunch of us are trying to organise events through the Pujos that will keep the protest going strong even at this time when the city takes on a different life altogether. We are not an organisation, just a bunch of individuals trying to do our bit, and we need as many people as possible to join in and help out. I'm going to list what we have planned for the Pujos, and this is where you all come in:

1. On Saptami, there are going to be groups of performers - musicians, theatre performers and the like, coming together at the vigil in front of Xavier's, who will gather around and perform. Span and Nevermind have confirmed. There will be others. Any of you interested in performing .. anything at all ... a play, a song, reading poetry .. absolutely anything you would like that will commemorate the cause will do. This is NOT a concert, timings are flexible. Anyone can come up and speak or perform, basically lend support in any way possible. Even if you don't want to, you could come and sit in, light a candle, sign the register and posters. Every little gesture counts. I cannot reiterate enough that those who have volunteered have done so from the goodness of their hearts. There is no money involved in this. When I say generate support, I mean your presence, your signature, your ideas on how we can take this forward.
2. We're trying to meet Pujo committees of pandals across the city, including residential pujos and ask them if they will allow us to just keep a register and a poster with Rizwanur's photo maybe, and a compelling slogan. When people come to visit the pandal, all they need to do, if they want to, is sign in to register their support. The problem here is, when I said we're a bunch of people, I really meant just a handful, most of whom will have to work through the Pujos. We need more people. Whoever reads this, if you know someone or are yourself involved in your para pujo, would you try and see if this is a doable option? Pujo committees need to be reassured that there is no political colour to this, and their pujo will in no way be hampered for a register being placed in its precincts. The point is to remind those who need to act on the matter, that Calcutta is not so easily distracted. We have not forgotten. We demand immediate action.
3. Again, we're trying to gather people who will be willing to generate interest on the issue by performing even at the small pujos, the residential complex pujos are more personalised spaces. Reaching out there, through the same means as I've mentioned [albeit sketchily. Sorry, but dude, it's the fucking middle of the night] will give favourable results, no? Anyway there are usually functions in the evenings at all these places, so why not have something that is exactly on those lines, but has ... oh I dunno .. a mention of Rizwanur in it? For this also, volunteers are required. If you can do nothing else, just spread the word. Ask around for people who are willing to do this. I mean, maane, please and all that.
4. Because The Telegraph has been covering this issue and the public response extensively, I'm confident that it will cover whatever happens, in whatever scale. And so, if we can reach a complex of 200, or even 100 people, and then that is covered, another several thousands can get to read about it, so support builds exponentially.
5. Leaving this blank. Insert Whatever ideas you guys have. We could meet, you could leave a comment. Anything man. Call me. Anything. Lets ACT. [Please don't call me or leave a comment saying, "Lets blow up Writer's Building, or lets kill the police commissioner." etc etc. Primarily, because hullo, lets not go to jail? And more importantly because the beauty of this movement so far has been in the way it has been so united in a very personalised, emotional, peaceful way. Ok, that sounds corny, but you know what I mean, yea?]

The nameless, faceless individuals who have been sitting in at the vigil, some for 8 hours every day - for days on end, are not doing it for any sort of gain. Neither am I or those with me, and those all over the city, who have, in their own way lent support to this cause. The government needs to know that it hasn't been elected so it can get away with murder, as it has been, repeatedly. This is a mass movement.

We Will NOT Forget.

Lets show 'em what we're made of? Spread the word.

Shadows, signs and wonders

2007-10-05T00:33:00.000+05:30

There's a lot of chocolate in the story of my life.

I paid the tana-rickshawalla extra because I told him, "Dada, ojon [only, I said 'ozun' because I couldn't remember 'wazan' or whatever the Hindi for weight is] jasti hai?" and he laughed,"aarey .. heh heh heh," and I was glad for the evasion. Also, he was very old, and didn't drop me once, like he promised he wouldn't.
New Market in this pre-pujo rush? NO. DON'T. Except that molesting shoe-shop person is too busy for his tricks, which is a good thing. While a million people crammed Shreeram Arcade looking for just the popular sort of tacky, I hid in a bookshop. Oh, and some Hindi, wouldn't you say?
I heart Anokhi. Hideously expensive clothes, but they play to the large woman's sentiments. I bought pants that were a size medium. I am NOT a size medium. Any more. Ah, pity.
I was told I'm "touchy" about my weight. I am not "touchy" about my weight. Merely aware.
This blogpost? It's called commitment. Because there are plenty of things I have given up on, and every other day I'm this close to giving up on this, but then I tell myself, no. I can do this. Look at me, such willpower. Such fucking strength of character. It's easy to forget something you have no use for any more. I will fucking prove that theory wrong.
Not that I'm stubborn or anything. Nono.
Look, I'm not whining, OK? Go away.
The mirror is such a cliche. I look into the mirror and the woman who stares back at me has no mouth and red eyes. Ok sofine, that's the conjunctivitis.
Wot ev ver, bad joke. Bad cliche. Boo.
Walking bothers me these days. I'm always afraid I'm going to fall. It's not a weight thing at all.
Khub exasperating, Ma Kali bolchhi.
I'd love to tell the story like it happened, but you never can, can you? Reality is just so .. very ... layered? Mottled? Both.
I'm going through that phase - the wotthefuck-wherethefuck-howthefuck.
I'm so glad for fuck. Releases me.
Lissen you pervs, that wasn't a sexual innuendo.

In college they're playing a corridor cricket series. And I wake up dreaming of jstor. Disconcerting, that.

There is an imagined future. Do you have one? What do you do when you know it shan't come true?
Look away. Sweep it under the carpet. Search for alternatives.
I will. It's been too long. I will.

OH!!! Listen!!!! Haleem at Aliyah! Dudes. Come eat with me. It is sexual satisfaction.
Now pretend I scratched out that last sentence because, my life? Totally not so lame.

Om Shanti Om

2007-09-22T22:19:00.000+05:30

Is "dard-e-disco" that inscrutable condition wherein one's limbs remain paralysed and one sees in one's head missiles being shot from a thousand splendid guns the morning after a night of heavy drinking and dancing? That Shah Rukh had better watch out.

I'm beginning to miss being able to be funny without five shots of vodka down my throat. I've become a weekend alcoholic, or have I said this like, seven hundred and nine times before? My sense of humour is ablaze with a glass in hand. And only then. Dear Lord, give me fodder for funny in my life. [Lily, c'mere. :-p]

In Behrampore, young Inayat settled for five rupees to show us around the tomb of his forefathers, the nawabs of Murshidabad. Like this one. His ancestors left such testaments to opulence and technological foresight as the Hazar Duari Palace, whose marvellously progressive architecture has to be seen to be appreciated. Inayat's brother ferries tourists across town in his rickshaw, while Inayat sells his unlived glorious past with rehearsed precision as a guide at the burial ground of his famous forefathers.

In a macabre way, there's always a lot to laugh about. In a macabre way.

The lawless

2007-09-14T00:14:00.000+05:30

Every day, she paces up and down the platform, crossing the red line - the forbidden. Staring at the tracks, till the train comes, and she stands frozen, like a deer caught in the headlights.
Every day, I say a little prayer, begging her not to jump.

Fighting for meaning, that's us.

Conversations

2007-09-09T21:55:00.000+05:30

At a seedy nightclub

Shaggy: Hullo! I'm gay now!
Me *whoa? this is the first time we're speaking. Also, you were so screwing some women I know*: Oh? Heh. Uh...heh. How does that feel? *for lack of much else to say*
Shaggy: Oh, I don't know.
Me: Uh, but .. I mean ... aren't you supposed to know? I mean, you know, with the shift in perspective .. and all.
Shaggy: I've realised that the greatest love is self-love. So I just love myself. Say, can I have your number?
Me: Ok, waitaminit. You think you're gay because you love yourself? Dude, I hate to break this to you, but in the heterosexual world that's called masturbation, and straight men totally do it too.
Shaggy: *breaks into incomprehensible poetry*

I keep stupendous company these days.

At the gym, a place in distant memory

Lady who smiles in greeting every time we meet: Are you almost done?
Me *getting off crosstrainer* : Yea. *in a hushed whisper* Be careful though, the man on the treadmill has terrible gas!
Lady *stony stare* : That's my husband.
Me: Oh? Uhm! Oh. Oh, I'm so sorry. *fake apologetic grin* Well, maybe it's the boy on the left, then?
Lady: *looking fearsome, as though she will slap me long and hard with not a moment to lose*
Me *catching on after an uncomfortable silence*: Uh. Your son?
Lady *goggle-eyed and spitting fire*: My brother! *stomps off. understandably*

I am never going back there. Never. Ever. I'd rather be fat and socially acceptable than fit and socially handicapped.

In other news

I need slippers. Posh, but cheap.
" " pretty clothes that make me look less-fat. "Slim" - no can do no mo.
" " my sense of humour back.
" " to do something about the fucking exhaustion and my bloody eyes.
" " " figure out the conundrum that makes 30-something single men with very broad shoulders think I'm 35 years old while 20-something DJs dedicate "Sexy back" (and a song that goes "if i lick your ice cream will you lick my lollipop?" but we're not talking about that any more. kids these days) to me.
I need to bring sexy back, mairi. Starting tomorrow, I eat only cream crackers. My double chin now extends upto my effing ears. Everytime I tilt my head I feel this great wave of fat waddling to the side. I mean, I've always had that in the hip area, but this is new. And not nice at all. Crackers, I tell you.

Explain to me why I just spent five hundred bucks on chocolate, though.

Feel it on my fingertips

2007-08-12T23:03:00.000+05:30

Some questions just don't have straight answers.

"Why do you like the rains?"

I look away, out of the taxi window. Lets see now. That time it cleansed. All those times. Then there were the drives across the bridge, leaving the city behind, that boy, those friends. That time it was ... youth? Love? Settle for a bit of both. You'd think they'd all be hazy by now.
The simplest questions can surprise you with how clear certain associations still are in your mind.

Often these days, I find myself quietly observant, unable to participate.
It is a quiet one, my nature.

"So? Why do you like the rains?"

"Just," I said.

Life in a Metro / The Case of the Predictable Post-title

2007-08-06T00:19:00.000+05:30

Listen. Boo.
I am DONE with the voices in my bloody head. I have NO bloody time for them.

* Anyway, I've been taking the Metro to work nearly every day, and there's a lot to learn from those trips. For instance, to avoid being teased or having your boobies elbowed, it's important to really observe potential teaser/molestor, and - ok, this is a timing thing - just at the right moment, when you can see they're edging towards you, ready with filthy tongue, (or hand, as the case may be) you ask them a question. Anything at all. Like, bhaiya coffee house walla gate kis taraf hai? or something. Takes them completely by surprise, and all they can do is answer and go their way. Cuz these people? Cowards, all of em. Of course, the method is far from foolproof, because most of the time we're aware of the harassment only AFTER it's been done to us. But you know, on the rare occasions that you Can tell that a man is walking directly into your path because he does want to ram straight into you, yea? You get the timing right with practice.
Ok, explain to me, someone, why I canNOT say breasts.

* Little children can be horrifically nasty to each other. Seriously mean. Just the other day I made a child nearly cry and got glared at by her doting mum.
There was this bunch of tiny girls and one of them, presumably the ringleader, was literally heckling this other girl, who was from the same school but was standing slightly apart. Why? Because the poor kid was drinking from a small water bottle, as opposed to the gigantic ugly ones, which, now I know, are the latest fad. So the bully got her cronies to make up a tuneless song about how only stupid girls drank from small water bottles. So, ever the supporter of the underdog, I caught the bully by her hand, made space for her to sit next to me and then went on to make up a story about the Evil Water Monster of Bigbottlia who took the shape of water and entered the tummies of naughty children and caused the 100-day tummy upset. Uhm, and some other things.
Ok fine, I feel just slightly bad now. I swear I was NEVER a bully in school. Honest.

* When the train stops at Kalighat station, from Rabindra Sarobar? You need to sit still and watch how the women run to get a seat. Their faces light up with purpose and determination and they pounce on the nearest empty space. Straight out of Animal Planet. It's a beautiful metaphor for life. Not good that it's all I can do to keep myself from laughing out loud. I've always mixed up my metaphors.
No, but really, and it's amazing how there are so many women who think they're half the size they actually are. They're going to squeeze in for a sitdown, have one thigh on mine, rest their perspiring arm on my shoulder, and sit hunched and crooked and almost out of the seat, like there is no discomfort in the world. So, YOU, who are reading my blog from work right now, instead of subbing tomorrow's top piece, if I ever come in all sweaty and stinky, that isn't me. That's Jolly Boudi's left underarm.
So really, what is the deal with magazines and men complaining about how we're always thinking we're fat? Dude, get on the Metro.

* This has nothing to do with the Metro, but if I ever write a play or a story about this city, it will have an old man in a white baniyaan and lungi, smoking a brass pipe by the window. I see him every day. Sometimes even when he's not there.

Ctrl D

2007-07-25T21:54:00.000+05:30

I don't understand when people say "move on". Move on to? To whom? Funny thing, this love. Funny, how it's always the same story. You never move on, unless to move on to the same expression, the same emotions, those same three words exchanged like a cliched quotation, but a different body. Funny. Frightening. I sit in the auto and next to me I hear a man speaking the same words that have been said to me. Four times over. Love as duplication.
We love like it's for ever. Every time. Is that moving on? It's never forever, because there you are with your watch in your hand and you're thinking, this is not it. I've been here before, and it's been better. Time to move on. I've done it myself, too often. And now, when I hear at one place that marriage is about retaliation and at another that love is mystique, I sit back and wonder at the smarminess of it all, while I'm sipping my coffee and writing this, thinking about you, and how, right now, you are saying to someone else those things you once said, and claimed to feel, for me. I don't blame you. I've done it myself.
So, while you repeat, unrepentant, excuse me for repenting and refusing to repeat.

And you, if I cannot tell you I love you, know that it is because I don't.

'I want you to come to me without a past. Those lines you've learned, forget them. Forget that you've been here before in other bedrooms in other places. Come to me new. Never say you love me until that day when you have proved it.' - Jeanette Winterson.

Don't tell me to move on. Don't tell me to get over it, because 'it' was a person I loved, 'it' was the way I changed my life just so I could fit snugly into yours.

Parents

2007-07-16T22:43:00.000+05:30

They're such an intriguing subspecies. I've been coming home late since I was fifteen years old- often after 10, alone in a cab, and in my school uniform. They didn't bat an eyelid, quite positively spared the rod. I've spent most of college leaving the house at 11 or 12 in the day, and coming back never before 8 in the evening, or sometimes, not coming back at all. They took it all in. Barring of course the occasional phone call enquiring when (as opposed to if) the police needed to be informed. [As in, "Hullo, will you let us know when to call the police, or shall we just go ahead and do it past eleven?"]
So, now that I'm 24 years old, have more grey hair than my mother (who has none - gray hair, that is) and my father (who has none - hair, I mean); and am two weeks into my job, why is it that I am sent frantic and frequent SMSes every hour, on the hour, from 8 PM onwards? I mean, really, I reach office only at 1, it's only respectable to put in at least 8 hours.
Ever since I can remember, I've never been coaxed into eating. The routine is to quietly sidle all edibles away from my gluttonous eyes and obese mind, which, my mother believes are the two most defining characteristics of my otherwise charming disposition. Ok, so the "charming disposition" was my inclusion. But now I get text messages that go, >you last ate 3 hours and 46 minutes ago. Please eat a sandwich.< and then, >it's been 5 hours since your last meal. Time to grab a bite!< Yes, like an automaton. (I wanted to say 'like an rss feed' and go, 'get the pun? get the pun?', but then I'd be tech-illiterate and in all probability wrong.)
Thankfully, none of this newfound, oppressive attention comes from my mother, who remains ubercool and unconcerned, confident in the assumption that hers is the singular life worthy of debate and deliberation. But what is more surprising is this sudden, disquieting interest that my father has begun to take in my life. He was always the first to say,"I'm not worried, my daughter can take care of herself." And now, he needs to know if I'm carrying water, if I've eaten, if I'm coming home in fifteen minutes and thirty-five seconds or seventeen minutes and twenty-seven seconds like I'd come 2 days earlier.
And what is the point of scolding me for eating in my room and not at the table with you , when you're the one who set the precedent all those years ago, whereby the 3 of us always eat at separate times and separate rooms. What is this sudden hankering for conversation, when in the 24 years of my life, you have maybe interacted with me for a total of 500 hours, and this includes vacations?
Yea, so I'm a little pissed and it shows. Boo.
My point is, they've been awfully liberal all along.
My point is, is this an outcome of old age - this almost debilitating need to hold on, to establish connection through ruthlessly monitoring a life that has been allowed such complete freedom and independence all along? It's a frightening, mortifying thought. I've known my father as ... debonair ... devil-may-care. This new sign of weakness is ... well, it's new. And it's hard to come to terms with. Am I being unreasonable? Is the onus of repairing over two decades of complete disregard for any notion of 'family' really on me, because now I'm an "earning member"? Pah.
Of course, it could be a sudden realisation that he is, after all, a modhyobitto bangali. Hmm. I'm going to pretend the problem's solved.
Oh look, turns out it's past my bedtime now.

Fascinating, these parentpeoples.

2007-07-08T01:34:00.000+05:30

This happened several years ago, when I must've been around seven or eight. A relative had started a chinese restaurant 'neath her unnecessarily large house and we were all invited for the grand opening. It wasn't very grand, though - the sort of opening a patio-turned-chilli chicken fried rice place should have - tacky tuni bulbs hanging from a large tree in front of the house, decorator-hired white chairs with the plastic weave ripping off from the backrests, unreasonably overdressed women in their best kanjeevarams and the finest jewellery they own all the better to show whose husband earned the most for. And plenty of free food that was, and presumably remains to this day, unpalatable and unhygienic in equal measure.
I remember feeling tortured like I always did at these gala familial rendezvous, where gossip flew about in hushed whispers and rolled eyes - when a little boy in brown shorts came up the street, holding his father's hand. He stood, mesmerised, looking at the restaurant's cheap chinese lamps and the celebrations- it was as if he'd never seen something so marvellous before. They were the archetypal bangali middle-class. You meet so many of them during the Pujos, the fathers looking disinterested but happy (proud), the tiny boys with bright eyes, wearing silly paper hats and clutching onto a party whistle or a plastic toy, constantly being scolded or fussed over by their mothers who walked two paces behind the husbands.
As is the wont of all children, the boy was abrim with questions. "Ki hochhe ekhaane, baba? Eto shajano kyano?"
I remember the boy tugging at his father's hand and begging to be fed at the restaurant. He was very hungry, he said. The father gave in, after some coaxing, and they sat down. For an interminably long time nobody attended to them. The boy and his father sat on two rickety decorator-decrepit chairs in the middle of a footpath on a Kolkata residential alley, feeling underdressed and unwanted. They waited patiently without hollering for a waiter. Finally, the father got up and managed to get hold of a menu card. He pondered thoughtfully over it and furrowed his brow just a little bit while the little boy could hardly contain his excitement and wanted to know immediately what they were eating. While the boy rattled off "chicken chow mien" and "mixed fried rice", the father kept shaking his head but keeping quiet. Muted in his discomfort, while some gaudily made up eyes looked questioningly at him and turned away, disinterested. Eventually, a waiter went up to them, and I heard the man ordering a half-bowl of chicken soup, much to the son's dismay. When the child protested, the father simply said, "Na baba, eibarta otai khao." The boy's face fell, but he said nothing. When the soup arrived, he ate quietly, while his father watched and wiped the sweat off his son's forehead, refusing to share his meal. I took a look at the menu, it was the cheapest item on it. When the bill arrived, the man took out a note from his shirt pocket and didn't tip. They went on their way and I haven't seen them since. That's all.
I can't remember the last time I met my extended family, but I do remember, sixteen years ago, while I was stuffing my face with food I could have in plenty and didn't want, there was a young boy sitting across from me, understanding lack with dignity and silent endurance.

Dujon

2007-06-29T22:18:00.000+05:30

"Aamake khNojo na tumi bohudin - kotodin amio tomaake
khNuji nako - ek nokkhotrer neeche tobu - eki aalo prithhibir paare
aamra dujone aachhi; prithhibir purono pothher rekha hoye jaaye kshoy,
prem dheerey muchhe jaaye, nokkhotror'o ekdin morey jetey hoye,
hoye naki?"

- Jibananda Das.

Banalata Sen

Seinfeld Moments

2007-06-27T21:26:00.000+05:30

Oh look. Another post about absolutely nothing at all. Couldn't have done it without you, by which I mean you, and your constant hankering.
Although, remember that interview I wrote of, where I was asked about my reading of Bangla literature and I said, "Oh bangla literature? Sure thing. Tenida."? Yea, well, I got the job. I'm minutely freaking out right now, because I don't know how I'm going to pull it off, but yay me!
So I went out and bought myself some shoes. Green shoes. The kind of shoes elves in green tights and hats with bells on them might wear. Or even, while we're on a manic linking spree, the wicked witch of the west. I did look in my wardrobe once I came back home, and all I could find was blue. Blue, everywhere. If you just muttered "manic depressive" under your breath then be rest assured I'm not sharing my herbal happy-making pills with you.
Anyway, green shoes, but no green clothes. Other than the one I wore when I was shopping, which clearly influenced my decision. So goddammit I'm a thoughtless shopper, but hullo? Try shopping while you're being molested and then you come and tell me if you're overparticular about colours. There's this commune of shoe-shops at the New Market basement, around 5 of them huddled together, all with the same owner. So I went, because my nice stilletoes from Singapore are dying slowly and painfully, their leathery tentacles giving away one at a time. And a girl needs heels. If she's short and fat, she needs to swear by heels, while cursing them when they aren't looking. Very much like a workplace sitch. Ok, who said that? I didn't say that. Anyway, these days I only wear flat slippers and go around looking like a pasty ball of sourdough.
So I spent an hour having my thighs felt up while trying on shoes, which were mostly delightful (the shoes, not the feelings up), but because I have the feet of a mangled penguin, they looked horrible on me. Then, since that didn't seem like thanking the good people over at sexual harrassment inc. enough, I parted with all my money, down to the last twenty rupees. And after having warded off repeated demands from molesting shopkeeper to drop me home on his "naya A-1 bike", and having reluctantly accepted a bottle of Maazaa practically shoved into my face (only after I sniffed it suspiciously and asked him, "Drugs toh nehi milaya, na?" Because I am upfront like that.), I was on my way. I didn't protest, other than shoving his filthy hands off each time they slid up my thighs. It was closing-time, I was more or less the only customer in those five shops, and I don't know why, but it just didn't seem worth it. That shop has lovely shoes at cheap prices, and though it won't be in a very long time, I'll probably go back there, unless I find a different place as good. I know, it's very lame, and I have protested in the past. But it felt wiser to just leave - you get a gut feeling sometimes.
So between arbit shoe-shop molestors who insist on having my number and dropping me home, and Ottoman, my stalker auto-lover who also boasts of his bike and his large house and knows exactly where I live, as also the number of days ago I last rode his auto, but is otherwise very polite and has never made any offensive advances - my love life is abuzz with activity. Yup.

At least I have a new watch to go with the shoes. Surprise gifts can be nice sometimes. Maddening, at others.

While looking for career alternatives during the past couple of weeks, which, I have to say, have been very trying, I came across this - behold the Whore of Mensa - the dark and comical underbelly of scholastic learning (with special ref. to the study of Eng. Lit.). I wouldn't have made the grade myself.

Finally, words of wisdom. Gandhiji said that for the seeker of pure and true goodness, there must be no close friends and no exclusive loves. I'm just saying.

Oh, and don't expect me to post again for a very long time. This blog is becoming increasingly despicable to me.

How I Got B!@tch$l@pped by Life and a Little Green Man Called REGURGITATE

2007-06-12T19:26:00.000+05:30

Riiight. So I must be evil or Jesus Christ or something. Because nothing explains this suffering, and I don't bloody care who I'm redeeming, 'cuz this sucks. Do you know where I'm supposed to be right now? In Sikkim, on my honeymoon, 8000 ft above ground, in a little hamlet called Ravangla, dancing with the clouds and my one true love. Instead, where am I? At home with viral fever, coughing blood and arrrrrghhhhhhh. Writing a blogpost. *aaaaaaaaaaaargggh*
Oh yea, while we're doing updates, I'm married. It's a surprisingly short story. Don't congratulate me yet. I've clearly not taken well to the change in social circumstances. Anyway, our parents don't know yet. Likely never will. Not mine, at least. [Trust me, it's not a very big deal. Hey P, uhm ... lover bunchie wunchie ... type. Don't fall off a cliff!].
I've had a headache ever since I can remember, so I'll probably just do this in tabular form. If none of this makes sense, you'll know I'm still same ol' me.
First off, it's raining and you know the regular smell of rain-fresh earth? Yea, what I'm smelling is freshly-baked pizza bread, complete with toppings - herbs, the oregano, the anchovies. What the hell? My ..... ok, I want to say nosebuds, but I know that's wrong .. the smelling things .. are all haywire. I'm on too much medication. Fruit juice tastes like water, water tastes like the sea. I'm not making any of this up. Ok, i'm not making most of this up.
Right, in point form. My life and how regally it sucks.

* I caught the viral fever the day before we were scheduled to leave for Sikkim. My aunt said I got it from her mother-in-law, who passed away on Friday night, having lived 82 glorious years, partying wildly and praying fanatically in equal measure. She was very generous too and much of what I insist is my puppy fat is all that chocolate and cheese she fed me as a child. God bless her soul. So, here I was,shivering me timbers and wondering why the rum was gone, and my beloved mother was on the phone with my aunt, taking instructions as to the shape and design of just the right sort of leaden key that keeps recently belated grandmotherly types from having you join them in their heavenly abode.
And you know what's spooky? Everytime I had the key under my pillow, the fever was slightly under control, if you call veering between 101 and 103 under control. This one time the key slid away without any of us noticing, and the fever shot up to 105! I realised later that the key wasn't under the pillow, but for that period of time I really thought I was a goner.
And clearly there were forces conspiring against letting me go on vacation, because at 10:20 last night? Which was about 20 minutes past the train had left Sealdah station with half of my honeymoon and many of my friends? What do you know, the fever was gone! I mean, 99 is nothing. NOTHING i tell ya.
This sucks. They're sending me weepy smses and calling me pissdrunk from the hills. But that doesn't help. Primarily cause the network's a bitch. (:-[)

* Ok, what else has been happening, now that I don't want to talk about my stupid fever, and this stupid jinx that I have on me, which will never ever let me go to Sikkim, like, twice in a row. Oh, I fell asleep in the gym the other day. Was woken up by the instructor barely 10 minutes into it. Pity.
So yea, I'm bringing sexy back, alright.

* Why am I on a mad linking spree? Because my friend Joy, and I swear to God I want to link his webpage and a thousand other things that googling him has brought up, but I know he'd blow my brains out if he ever found out, or at the very least make my computer grow wings and do the birdie dance -so anyway, my friend Joy, taking into consideration my abject state of unemployment, suggests I should blog on topics that will bring more people to my blog. And then I could approach corporates to place their ads here and make money while I teach you a thing or two about Justin Timberlake or Raspberry Lip Balm.
So am I going about this the right way? Is this just the beginning of a million bucks and a private island? You bet not.

* Speaking of jobs, I had a job interview some days ago, and when asked about the kinds of books I enjoy reading in Bangla, I meantioned, not a Mahasweta Debi, or even a Sarat Chandra or a Bankim or most commonly, a Tagore, but, Teni Da.
No they haven't called yet and you needn't rub it in.

I will now pop pills with not a care in the world, and then proceed to watch some good ol' Monty Python. Screw the links.

My Friends / Why I am Nucking Futs

2007-05-25T00:14:00.000+05:30

Written in the hand of a four-year old. *For no better reason than that it makes poor grammar and shabby writing so much more excusable.*

Bob : Does illegal things to underwear. Takes off with mine. [Both statements are true, Bob, and you know it. Nyeh heh heh.]

Kaichu : Recites perverse limericks at 5 in the morning, in a careworn and spiritual manner, following an entirely sleepless 48 hours of examprep and post-exam debauchery respectively, much like you would do the surjo nomoshkar, or listen to Anuradha Paudwal as you sit for morning prayers. [I wouldn't either. But, you know, in a manner of speaking]. Also thinks masked men with mouthfuls of spiked and yellowing teeth are hot.

Panu : Undoubtedly evil. Knows things about me my closest friends have no clue about, just by taking one dismissive look at my palm. Predicts a shockingly sparse sex life but an incredibly fulfilling love life for me. Go figure. Or, To a nunnery, go?
Is under the mistaken notion that Kaichu belongs to her, when it is as it were, famously known across the land that Kaichu, as we know and love her, is entirely mine.

Dhruva : Has a shocking taste in house pets. Used to possess, nurture, and call his own the reptile-that-must-not-be-named. Not on this blog, no. Now every time I see him, I think he looks just that little bit more like the r-that-m-n-b-n'ed. But he doesn't know I think that. Ok, now he does. [Hi Dhruva! You're funny! *waves*] Tells ghost stories that cause light amusement, much to his chagrin.

Deep : Provides a soundtrack for and graphically describes the act of taking a crap in the buff while cussing cockroaches losing their way through the labyrinthine enclosures that are the individual curls of his leg hair.
Haha, I actually wrote that. Haha.

Prepostopoulos : Creates alternate sitcom universes. Has covered Seinfeld with me. Once thought he was escorting a girl to the dance floor, only to turn around and find her in a brawl and subsequently on the floor with an injured foot. Yes, he Did still dance with her. My friends have grit. They have determination. What? They do!

There are the others, of course. But they're seriously messed up. It wouldn't be funny talking about them. Really. That other lot is in Trouble.
*or I'm too tired to narrate those funny stories just yet. Wait for it. 'Twill come.*

So you see, dear reader, whom I love like a lost puppy - it really isn't my fault.

Stupid, Stupid Tag.

2007-05-16T14:01:00.001+05:30

Tagged by Dhruva.

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it:
Can't remember if it was 7+2=9 or 9+2=11 stitches, but, on the right knee - a deep one. I was jogging by the Lake, and there was this idiotic couple, and the man was yanking the girl's hair and pulling her toward himself, and she was trying to break free, and here I am, jogging, and I'm thinking OK, sexual harassment, I will go rescue, and in this cerebral tumult the next thing I know is I'm going down down down and then sliding on stone chips and my knee's split wide open and bleeding. I tripped on a piece of broken brick, or it could've been a pothole, of which there were several then. I fell on all fours and couldn't get up from the pain and the embarassmen. So, I'm on all fours and people are gaping and I look up, and I look right, and those fucking lovebirds are fucking kissing passionately. So it wasn't harassment at all, it was nyakami. Stop laughing. It was all very painful for me, and now I have no drive to do anything about my flabby ugly thighs, cuz I'll never be able to wear short things anyway.
Also, I hadn't gone back since. Well, since yesterday. Anyway, I lost interest in exercise from that day on. That's my alibi and I'm sticking to it.

2. What is on the walls in your room?
There's a copy of one of those Renaissance era milkmaid-in-torn-clothed-innocence-holding-goat type painting. A gift from a distant cousin. And a lizard with tummy upset. Runs in the family.

3. What does your phone look like?
Huh? It used to be white and khoo. Now it's scratched and old and comfortable-looking. Not snazzy like when I bought it. Also, the 'Panasonic' rubbed off slowly, leaving, first 'Panic' and now just 'ic'. Which is kewt. I like my phone. It's dying, though.

4. What music do you listen to?
Oh, not much. Anything. Nothing much. Ok, anything that doesn't screech incoherently. I
dislike those Black Eyed Peas.

5. What is your current desktop picture?
A lonely snow-capped mountain in bluetone.

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
My period. No no, to lose weight quickly without effort. It's too hot for exercise.

7. Do you believe in gay marriage?
Certainly not. Also, I don't 'believe' in condoms and vote Pope for President.
Uff. El stupido.

8. What time were you born?
Either 12:56, or 1:46. Can't remember exactly right now. Both AM.

9.Are your parents still together?
Aare?!

10. What are you listening to?
My mum screaming at some stock market broker or other.

12. The last person to make you cry?
It's a secret.

13. What is your favourite perfume/cologne?
I don't know of too many. I'd treasure a bottle of Chanel No 5, and I like my Davidoff Cool Water, but I'm sure there are other nice perfumes. There's one by Givenchy, one by Jean-Paul Gaultier and one by Elizabeth Arden that my mum wears/used to wear - all were/are lovely, but perfume is not important enough for me to remember names of. I mean, it's always more fun to go and try on new smells and choose each time, rather than stick to the same bottle always.

14. What kind of hair/eye colour do you like on the opposite sex?
Uuuufff. Cherry pink and apple blossom white.

15. Do you like pain killers?
Do I wha? Do I like ...?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
statutory warning: Pain killers can screw you up for life.

16. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
Yes. Always.

17. Fave pizza topping?
Uhm. Pepperoni, anchovies, gorgonzola. Smoked chicken is good too.

18. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?
Pizza, goddammit. Also, chocolate mud cake. Cherry tart. Dark chocolate.
Wait, there's frooti and chhana pora in the fridge. Yay!

19. Who was the last person you made mad?
I dunno man, I'm doing it all the time. Was it you? Or You? Or You or You or You?
Like a musical.

20. Is anyone in love with you?
What's the deal with this tag? Are you done embarassing me already?!
Ishtupid.

I tag fancy schmancy, DD, b'bot [which, you must admit, is a welcome change from the usual atrocities done to her name] and panu.

Being Unemployed

2007-05-14T11:13:00.000+05:30

is good stuff, as it turns out. I've eaten all meals outside the house since the exams got over on Thursday, had a rather enjoyable sleep-in with beeyootiful company that made me go all sappy-canape [or sappy ka nappy] and write long mails that would do Adrienne Rich and her lesbian continuum proud. I have also been caught prancing around with lit cigarette by friends of parents whom I meet regularly in an atmosphere where they think I am a role model for youth with my *dumdedumdedah* [read: prudishness]. I have also boozed moderately and been told that I say the most preposterous things when I'm drunk. Which means absolutely nothing because I say the most preposterous things when I'm not drunk. And I forget each and every preposterous thing I've ever said, honest. In my head, I'm a picture of sobriety and propah. Meh.
I am also intensely disliking writing this post because I'd much rather lie down and hold my aching tummy and will my head to keep off exploding and my nose to keep off dripping for ONCE. I grow old, I grow old.
Ok, so anyway, we're at Princeton, and I'm on all fours trying to reach for my drink - because it's precariously positioned, and not because I generally like embarassing myself, as you'd imagine- and we're on that familiar and much-loved topic of the greenhorn - My School Kicks Your School's Ass. [Mine does, honest]. This time we're debating the superiority of my tNyash "convent school background" over .. uhm ... this other school that could just have been a city by itself. A mini-Gotham City brimming over with hooligans and mad monkeys. [hyuk hyuk. i think i will disable comments for this one]*. So.

Me (unfairly outnumbered, with a feeble attempt at tossing of hair and sneer of condescension) :We have class!
Dhruva (taking a relaxed sip of beer and oozing nonchalant coolth) : We have classes.

Seriously, you can't top that! I been snubbed, Pointedly. *snicker* [note to self: stop snickering. you're no good with subtlety]. Always good to know people who can swipe the carpet from under you. And if you're here to point out to me that that last line is awl wrong, then you may quickly proceed to drown yourself in mucous. My mucous.

I have billions of good books to read. Yay!
I have a tag to do. Yay.

* So ok, fine. They've produced a handful of brains in a couple of lightyears and they do alright by way of HS results, and some important people in my life studied there. Pah.

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

2007-05-11T14:38:00.000+05:30

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,
Crying like a fire in the sun.
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense.
Take what you have gathered from coincidence.
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home.
Your empty-handed army is all going home.
The lover who just walked out the door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor.

The carpet too, is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

- Bob Dylan

Tribute

2007-04-28T21:14:00.000+05:30

2007-04-26T00:04:00.000+05:30

At the street corner, my past walks stridently up in pinstripes and a snazzy phone, offering to take me anywhere I'd rather go. And all I was doing was waiting for my bus.

When I'm done chewing my head bit by bit, savouring the remnants of my sanity before it all goes down the toilet, I might write a post that means something to either of us. Till then, just walk away.

Amused.

Friday the 13th.

2007-04-13T22:34:00.000+05:30

Every day for the past five years I've taken the Jadavpur-Taratala auto from my house to University, and then back again at all hours of the evening. I didn't wait at Bengal Lamp for the auto today like I usually do, I walked up to 8B, because I wanted the journey to last longer. I'm not good with goodbyes. Usually, I like pretending it hasn't happened.

Today was the last day of class. For us PG IIs that means no more semesters, no more assignments, no more running about the corridors dodging lit cigarettes and professors whose classes you just bunked. And as Bob so insightfully pointed out, no more bunking classes. When a junior told me to write something for a yearbook they're going to make for us, I sniggered at the impossibility of the task. How do you sum up a coming of age, how do you sum up five years of .. and I can't even finish this sentence. I sat in an empty classroom for a long time today, just because. I can't say why, maybe because it's a privilege I shall be deprived of, and no, it didn't take the final day for me to figure that out. So I sat in class while students walked by to the departmental library, and I thought- lucky bastards. And I can count the number of times I've been to the library on the fingers of one hand. But I swear, if you told me today to go and read every damn book in there [even the ones on Lacan and Derrida], I would. Just so I could walk down that corridor again, just so I could enter the computer room or go sit in a class and say, yes, this is where I belong. This is home.

Studying for a test this morning, I suddenly had a panic attack, and randomly messaged friends, because I needed to get it out. When it sinks in, nothing else matters. You just want to go to college and hold on to something. Anything - just a stupid desk or the department ledge will do. I thought I'd go and pick up an MPhil form, but better sense prevailed. You'd say this is the unwillingness to move on, to start with a new phase of life. Where there's going to be no mollycoddling, and certainly not the kind of freedom JU allows. Perhaps it's that. But it's also the cups of coffee at Milon Da's, those three years of ghastly chowmein at Moni Da, the swim at the jheel, playing 29 anywhere possible. The bridge. I walked past the bridge several times today, like we do everyday, and it was difficult. There are memories there. With the same people I meet now and pretend I haven't seen. There's a video being made for us too- these juniors are great - where all of us come on camera and make fools of ourselves, and it's difficult knowing that that video will not have the three of us in the same frame. There's too much of these five years on that bridge. Too many people, too many episodes - the bitch brigade coming to beat us up, the falling in love and the break-ups, the slut, the grass, the cigarettes, the mihidana wala, Cezanne the diva dog, that slippery shortcut from the bridge to Moni's, playing wordgames or charades, or just sitting for hours on end with nothing to say but comfortable in our silence.

And when I was sitting alone in class today, this one junior comes rushing in in a tizzy and demands,"Rohini, tumi choley jachho?!Tumi PhD korbe na ekhaane?!" and I say, "Na" because there's more finality in having to spell out "Hain choley jaachhi" than I can deal with in public, and he goes,"Shit. Aami tomake bhishon miss korbo," and I know he's an incorrigible flirt and he's probably caught each of us girls and said the same thing to them, but I can see he's genuinely sad, and if I didn't know better, I'd sit him down and tell him how unbearable this is and how I will miss every damn thing in this place.

We took a lot of photographs. This is probably a very disoriented post, but if you think I give a damn about coherence right now, then you have no idea who I am. I grew up in this place, man. And no, I don't just mean from a waist size 28 to a waist size 30 and some. Humour doesn't help. We've gone through the whole day trying to think this isn't true, I think. I remember the last day in school being about tears and promises to be together always and forever, and to live in each others' basements if all else fails, and all the signing of the uniforms and the general breaking rules. That was 2001. Six years down the line, we're either busy with our jobs, or our studies or our boyfriends. And yes, I'm humongously to blame too.
There were no promises made today. Maybe we don't want to have to break them. Maybe we've grown up.Maybe it's because you don't need to say these things to family. And this was family. And I don't just mean JUDE. I've sat at the Union room- nursing heartbreak, fighting tears- till11 in the night for days on end, with people I didn't know, watching them wrap up after an evening of carrom, and I've felt safe, and it was OK because this is just as much home as sitting in front of the comp typing crap. I've come for a jog here very early in the morning with Shoots and J because there could possibly be no other place as beautiful.
That's what it's been. Beautiful. And saying thank you just doesn't cut it. But I am. I'm thankful for these five years. I'm thankful for the friends I've had, for the friends I don't have any more, for those people, with whom my best memories of JU are inextricably linked. I'm thankful for the professors and the stellar lectures and the impossible boundless unimaginable freedom that we are given by them- of speech, of creativity, of space. I am thankful to every single person in the faculty for being family and not just faculty, for trusting us enough to know that we will not disregard the feeling of oneness you help us create, that we will not direspect you for the leeway you allow us. And I sincerely hope we have not let you down, like you never have.
Even now, at this very end, we're being eased into our future. Heh. Thank you Rimi Di and Tintin Da, for helping us cope with a sense of loss too overwhelming with your kind offer this evening.
Thank you the juniors, without whose relentless insanity I would never have grown up. Or had white hair. Thank you to the friends I have, and the friends I have lost. We've made memories and I'm taking them with me, because looking back on these five years will be incomplete without what we've shared, and I want to tell you in a totally non-lesbian way that I love you, and though you will never read this and though we both don't like having other people's boobies on ours, if I had the guts, I'd go up and hug you. But I don't have the guts. Only the ego.

This is becoming some sort of award acceptance speech. Damn.

With all the stuffy rooms and the dirty benches and the filthy toilets and the decrepit buildings and the moss and the jheel and the long winding paths and the bigger jheel and that kingfisher and those kingfishers and the stairs and the dark and the lamplight and the fireflies and the mosquitoes and tea cups and politics and poetry and madness- you're beautiful. Thank you for letting me belong.

2007-03-30T00:07:00.000+05:30

shit.

Whose Kubla Is It NOW, huh?

2007-03-23T23:23:00.000+05:30

This one's for JUDE. Other readers, bear with me. This might seem like a bit of hijibiji.

At 8 p.m. this evening, a bunch of seven students [and a couple professors] huddled around the Department notice board, and history was made. It's difficult for a non-JUDEan to understand the jubilation that was our results being declared. I've posted before about the harassment and untold emotional distress and humiliation caused upon our English Department, a place whose reputation has been built over the years by students who have excelled in their respective fields, and professors, many of whom are living legends. It took one man to saunter in and try to hack down this solid structure of excellence with his outrageous, unthinkable, impossible allegations. Months of rigorous enquiries, deputations, tackling media circuses, meeting the authorities, meeting representatives of the Government to plead our cause, to vehemently protest this harassment of innocent people, days when we were left despairing at how being in the right was still not enough for justice to take its course - has yielded in victory for us. Victory for the right. Justice for the innocent, the falsely accused.
For those who don't know this yet, following the months of fact-finding done by the Enquiry Committee chaired by our Registrar, all accused students have been exonerated - all charges of sexual harassment filed against them have been dropped due to the failure to provide evidence by the individual who made these charges in the first place. Despite repeated communications sent to him to submit concrete evidence [in the form of the original answer scripts in which he claimed some students had made obscene statements], he failed to, in fact, refused to do so. An Executive Council meeting was also held, the minutes of which the students are not privy to, and the matter of the exam results had been referred to the Examination Control Board as well. All that we know is that the results of all PG students are out, as of 2000 hours today. The marks of the erstwhile "disputed" students have been tabulated on a pro-rata basis, with an average of their 3 remaining papers in the same semester being considered the marks for the 'disputed' optional paper that created the havoc of these past few months. The original answer scripts of these students have been declared 'lost' following a final attempt to procure them [the prof concerned was once again given notice and allowed another 24 hours to submit scripts. He did not]- this is all in keeping with University statute. I know I'd posted about this issue in some detail, but I've been asked to hold my horses because another important step in the legal proceedings will be taken on Monday.
We've spent a good part of the late evening hugging each other and screaming celebratory slogans across the department corridor. Congratulatory phone calls and cha-parties complemented the warm feeling of goodness that comes with a cause well fought. And well won.
On behalf of all JUDEans, I would like to thank our professors for standing up for us; the University authorities for *finally* getting their act together; and very very importantly: our student representatives Babelfish and Thoth *wink wink, I looked it up*, without whom, we'd still be spending our days feeling glum and discontent. And the whole Department deserves a joyous handheld whoopee-jig - which is scheduled for the next time we meet collectively.

For now, All JUDEans come together and say with me

IT EEZ OUR KUBLA!!!

Having said that, you all know that this is still a war half-won. We've got what we wanted - the results and justice for the falsely accused. But the defamation- the maligning of reputations, and the fact that we have to see the cause of it all still walking freely in the Department- we're not going to stand for that, are we? There's a long way to go yet. Our stud reps will bring everyone up to date regarding further actions. In the meantime, all PG students must collect their marksheets on Monday.

We gotta keep this fire burning! Once again, gather around people, and say with me

DON'T MESS WITH MY KUBLA!

:-]

500 Reasons I Need To Quit Smoking - #651

2007-03-22T10:56:00.000+05:30

Having been interrupted mid-sneeze by a 10-year old girl falling on my head from the diving tower far far above me, I was then coaxed into racing her by her apologetic mother who clearly wanted me to win and feel good about myself. I suspect this was her way of checking for concussions too.
Reader, I got beat.

Is it strange that this was probably the seventh or eighth time in the last 5 years that somebody has enquired of me whether I thought I had a concussion?

Bob, you were right, it's impossible to focus on other things when you're keeping the 1,2,3... breathe count. There's a lot of chlorine water circulating my innards from trying to work out world peace on the eleventh lap. What you don't know, though, is that a purple-lipped smoker will find a way out for everything - there's always the 1,breathe,2,breathe for voice-confs in your head. :-D

It feels special to get gifts from people you'd never imagined would ever be thinking about you at all.

Otherwise, I've had one number godawful test, one number godawful test result, one number presentation to work out, one number children's story to write, n number term papers and upcoming tests to not deal with till the last moment and occasional fits of madness to cope with it all.

Peep-tip of the day - Ever tried sneezing under water? Don't.

2007-03-14T23:11:00.000+05:30

Keeping in mind the legal issues involved, and in consultation with my fellow students, I think it prudent to temporarily remove my previous post. I hope I will be able to make clarifications once the air gets cleared.

Thank you commenters for your support.

Do It For The Memories

2007-03-13T02:32:00.001+05:30

I've been a part of JUDE since 2002, and it was really, for me, quite momentous, because getting here meant a radical career-change and the loss of a year, the better part of which was spent wanting to jump out the window of an important law school.
These five years have been astounding. College is like a second home, and I remember the bunch of us coming in for adda sessions even on Sundays in the undergrad days. I'm using cliches here, but really, we're a big family - our relationship with the faculty is the cause for envy of students from other colleges, and I know, because I've had too much of "oh my God, your profs are sooo coool!" to hear from my non-JU friends. College has given me memories, stories to share with my kids - like the time the entire city was flooded but an enterprising bunch of us waded through the water to get to college, because of course we wouldn't do classes, and the next thing we know is that Tintin Da, with generous foresight has made elaborate plans for us to watch LOTR: Return of The King - with complicated contraptions like projectors white walls laptops and wotnot. I will not forget Prodosh Da, who does not grudge me exhilarating addas and advice on a possible future on the jatra stage :-, despite my having attended only 3 of his classes in these 5 years [and those because I couldn't escape. I mean, really, I haven't a thing against the jolly man and he really is a delight - but Old English? Declensions? Nominative sumthingortheothers? There's only so much a girl can take]. He does recommend considering leading roles in Kobore Kaadchhe Konkaal, and a namechange to the likes of an Amodini Debi or summat, but I'm convinced he means well.
I will not easily forget The Family. It is hard to not remember being absolutely mesmerised by ADG's lectures on the Theban plays - it is difficult to come across another professor who can so completely take you inside the world of a play, can make you understand the characters, be maddened by the plight of Oedipus - despite being perfectly logical and strictly academic in the way he delivered his lectures. Sukanta Da, easily recognised as a legend in academia, manages somehow to make you think independently despite giving you different points of view and different critiques of a work over various centuries. Supriya Di has the ability to make a man as unbearable and unforgiveable as Derrida worth paying attention to. I really must apologise because this just trivialises the immense value and depth of the lectures of each of these three individuals. I can only perfectly honestly say that you come out of a class taken by any one of The Family members, and you know you're immensely lucky to be a part of JUDE.
We share an amicable relationship with our faculty, almost all of whom are eminently approachable and I can safely speak for myself - will get you out of an awful mess without even telling you it was they that saved your ass.
So when I am interviewed by the media, and I come home and see "JU tey Sex Scandal" all over the bangla news channels, it is no wonder that I feel outraged. I'm not sure that I am yet at liberty to speak freely about this but - a certain, new member of the faculty has gone to press, having made allegations of sexual harassment against ... get this ... SIXTEEN female students in the department ... plus 3 boys. The allegations are absolutely false - I mean, seriously, would you believe that sixteen girls have at once decided to throw caution to the wind and jeopardised their careers by making sexual propositions to the concerned professor in their ... hold your breath .. mid and end semester ANSWER SCRIPTS? This has been simmering for a while - this issue, and we had kept discreetly silent, in the hopes that the University would handle the issue. We have a lot of respect for our department, and we did not wish to go to Press and bring this dirty, ghastly, farcical issue out in the open. But to come home and find the news showing photocopies of answerscripts where students have allegedly written "I want to have sex" and obscenities, all of which are in block letters, mind, so that it's very difficult to match handwriting- well, if now's not the time to talk then I don't know when is.
I want to furnish all the details about this matter, but I need to speak to my Department first to clarify that this is OK. Also, Rimi, who is far more lucid and articulate than I can ever hope to be, has promised to blog about this in detail, so those of you who want to get the full picture, watch out for her post. I shall cross-link it soon as she puts it up. In the meantime, chew on this - a professor hauls up an unfortunate First year student, claiming she has harassed him by making innuendoes in an answer she wrote on William Blake. Sure, happens all the time. :-[
Two, [forgive me, I'm not sure that I'm proceeding in chronological order, but I am listing things that have occurred], this same professor, sent an inappropriate sms to a girl in his course, and then flatly denied having sent it, saying that his phone had been hacked into - and there's a background to this story too, that I may elaborate but not right now, but it's been established that the cellphone number was his.
Three, he put up a notice in October last year, of a list of candidates (all female) whose answer scripts were allegedly "disputed". He refused to explain to the students why this was so, saying only that their answer scripts were with the Registrar. The list that he put up was not countersigned by the Head of the Department, the move to send answerscripts of the JUDE students to the University office was not made in consultation with the Head either, I think- all of which is in violation of protocol.
Come endsems, same rigmarole, more names added to the ominous 'list'. I'm skipping details, but the next thing we know is that our illustrious showman has sent in an appeal to the authorities asking them to conduct a formal enquiry into the actions of 16 students [more to be added as enquiry is under way - list to include 3 boys] who he alleges, have sexually harassed him in their answer scripts. The students involved express utter shock, and why wouldn't they, since they themselves were in the dark about having committed such offences.
Each and every student in the list is interrogated, and although the information was kept confidential for a long time, now that photocopies of their answer scripts are being bandied about on TV, I might as well come out and say that the enquiry yielded 2 bits of information. That almost all the objectionable parts were written in block letters (with a few minor exceptions for, credibility, I suppose. Or variety), often written over those words that the girls had scratched out while writing their papers, and that our - let's call him a dull man, though he's anything but - had not submitted the original answer scripts, even though he was way past the deadline for submission. All this while, he's been not only making false allegations, but he's also been sitting on University property, causing the results of 130 Masters students to be withheld, wreaking havoc on those who want to apply abroad this year, and those others like myself, who shall be out of college and jobhunting before you can say eminem. And about the obscenities? Let's just say they were outrageously obscene, as has been dramatically shown in close-up on TV all of today. Also, this student from the North-East, who can't speak, let alone write, a word of Bangla? Well, she wrote some juicy things too. In Bangla. How fascinatingly believable. The reason for this slight faux pas on the part of the admirable scriptwriter [of this our story] may have been that because the answer scripts don't have the students' names on them, communities may have gotten mixed up, in this bid toward uniformity in madness.
Oh, and did I omit this? He's also suing a bunch of the faculty and the administration on ... oh I don't really know - it could be anything really, with this individual - shall we call him a man-git? And today, he took the cake by going into a TV studio with photocopies of students' answer scripts, the originals of which are we have no idea where. Tra la la. all in a day's work. Students' careers be hanged, I'm just gonna go nuts and screw up everybody I know's lives. And why he refuses to show the originals to anybody at all is a mystery. We're making our own conjectures - feel free to make yours.
It's 1 in the morning now, and I've been stuck in the mire that is this controversy for the last 12 hours. I feel sick. And it isn't just me, we're all in it - the entire English Department. Some of us students have been interviewed by at least 4 TV channels through the day. The man himself was present at one of these TV studios, and there was a live little tete-a-tete with him, where he, among other things, shrieked at me from the sets demanding to know how dare I speak on this issue seeing as how I'm not even a 'disputed' candidate. Perhaps he failed to notice that most of the students speaking on the issue were not 'disputed' students. Because, even if one were to grant the response of 1 viewer who dialled-in to the live programme to voice his/her opinion on this matter - that JU is a den of decadence where *shock!horror!Ye gads!* even the women smoke and really what more can you expect of a place like that - despite it all, we share the common JUDEan spirit [and just this once, I don't mean alcohol] - we're all in this together because of our love for JUDE and because of the tremendous respect we have for the department, the faculty, and all that each one of us has got from it. And I know I speak on behalf of every JUDEan, when I say that the entire department is with the students who are being defamed with these farcical allegations - they have our full support and we fully understand that there is not an iota of truth in the offences that they have been accused of. If you've only seen us lighting a cigarette or discussing the avant-garde, then you've clearly ignored the strong feeling of solidarity that exists between us, and our ability to speak up for and to uphold the source of pride that is our institution. Nobody's going to burst in with a [if I may quote our mono-marvel] "cock-and-bull story" and malign this place that we call home, and get away with it.
We don't know why he's doing this. Some of us have an idea he might be schizophrenic. We really don't know. All that I can say is that his allegations, and the repercussions of what he's doing are all sickening, and all seem to be the work of a mind that is in urgent need of treatment. In the true legacy of Gandhistic thought, I wish him a speedy recovery from whatever dangerous disease it is that he is suffering from.
But to be more to the point and I say this especially to my fellow batchmates and uggs, the issue at hand is to get him to return the original answer scripts and to have our results published, because too many people are being jeopardised by this delay, and also because this breach of service rule is an important allegation against him as this affects the student body at large. I know this is too late in the day for an announcement here, but I've already posted about this on the Blab Forum - we're meeting this morning at 10:30 in college, and going to the VC to ask of the outcome of a letter that has apparently been sent to the mano of all men, asking him to return all original scripts by 11 a.m. today under threat of legal action. Should the scripts not be returned, we need to have a discussion with the VC - I don't want to repeat all this here, go check the forum.
But more importantly, show up. We're going to go through this together, because you know there are innocent people being grievously wronged here, and because it isn't very nice to have reporters and camera crew taking shots of our ledge and our building and going "sex scandal" at the back of their minds. We need to put an end to, as Azeem so succinctly put it - 'this "sex scandal" with no sex in it'.

update: you have got to read rimi's post for a bit-by-bit account of this whole fiasco. it's detailed and articulate. *go rimi!*

Awakening

2007-03-10T02:35:00.000+05:30

arey ruk ja arey thham ja
arey ruk ja re bandeh arey thham ja re bandeh ki kudrat has padegi ho

arey neendein hai zakhmi
arey sapne hai bhookhe
ki karvat phat padegi ho

arey ruk ja re bandeh arey thham ja re bandeh ki kudrat has padegi ho

arey mandir ye chup hai arey masjid ye gumsum
ibadat thhak padegi ho
samay ki lal aandhi kabristan ke raaste
arey latpath chalegi ho

arey ruk ja re bandeh arey thham ja re bandeh ki kudrat has padegi ho

kise kafir kahega kise kayar kahega
teri kab tak chalegi ho
kise kafir kahega kise kayar kahega
teri kab tak chalegi ho

arey ruk ja re bandeh arey thham ja re bandeh ki kudrat has padegi ho

arey mandir ye chup hai arey masjid hai gumsum
ibadat thak padegi ho
samay ki lal aandhi kabristan ke raste
arey latpath chalegi ho

arey ruk ja re bandeh arey thham ja re bandeh ki kudrat has padegi ho
arey neendein hai zakhmi
arey sapne hai bhookhe
ki karvat phat padegi ho

yeh andhi chot teri kabhi ki suukh jaati magar ab pak chalegi

- Indian Ocean. singing my generation.

Today's Special

2007-03-07T22:40:00.001+05:30

This post

Is a hurried attempt at distracting readership from the last post, which, unfortunately has caused much hilarity and quiet sniggers among my readers, all of whom I still revere. *bleddy @#$%^&$@!s*
Is to bring to your notice that I shall gradually draw myself out and become ay sosheeul enemal egen [like in the Happydent advt with the seductive moocow]. [not that I think she's hot. It's the Australian Jersey Bull who does]. [I get the feeling you knew that awready.]
Is a cry for help. I have to have to have to stop smoking. I have to have to have to stop eating chocolate biscuits with maniacal fervour.
Is to announce that although I was going through another one of those "phases" that actually you know nothing about, yet I was brought out of "the phase" because of a strange man farting loudly and in public and then looking sheepishly around to see if anyone noticed. Now, I'm usually polite with strangers and I swear I didn't mean to but I snorted. I had to snort to cover up for a resounding guffaw.
Now that I come to think of it, that was appalling behaviour. I feel awful for the poor old man. I really didn't mean to laugh, promise.
Ok, it still is kinda funny. Shoot, I'm going to hell.
These days I laugh at the most brutally humourless things.
Daaber jol is fabulous.
I alternate between loving and dreading sleeping alone.
I shall reply to all your comments once that page stops disappearing. I can't explain, but the page disappears. Uff.
There is absolutely nothing I can do about the caps. It comes with the tiny sunshine icons. It's either the caps or the sunshine. And I want the sunshine right now. Lights up my life.

I'm Calling This A Post

2007-02-25T02:45:00.000+05:30

And there's absolutely nothing you can do about that.

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind

2007-02-12T01:29:00.000+05:30

If the pain of loving you becomes unbearable, will I erase you?
Because the burden of being loved is overbearing, you have erased me.

When love becomes anonymous, language breaks down. I have no words for you. Or, so much to say that I must be silent or choke in the torrent of words couched in the silence of time.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd ...

We are the loving dead. The ones who have loved so much and so often, that love becomes quiet and everydaymundane.

2007-02-11T10:33:00.000+05:30

We're watching Salaam-e-Ishq, and laughing our guts out at the things the audience is expected to take seriously. Vidya Balan's character has had a train accident and needs her head to be examined. She's being put through a CT scan and we've politely left off laughing because really, a CT scan? There's only so much fun you can make of it. When:-

Sahana, a pretty junior: Is that a washing machine? Ohmygawd, why are they putting her head inside a washing machine?!

I spend a lot of time in the vicinity of suchlike befuddlements. My inanity therefore, is well accounted for.

2007-02-04T21:49:00.000+05:30

My father's closest friend passed away this evening. I found out when it was raining outside, and I was listening to Sympathy For the Devil. God has a macabre sense of humour.
When the weight of the world becomes too heavy to bear, we make light of things that concern us most deeply.
My father has spent the last three hours since he got home making phone calls to anybody he can think of and talking about the weather. In our family we don't express grief.
The loss of a best friend. It begins with a cold numbness while you stare wide-eyed and disbelieving at the world, suddenly bereft of the company you didn't think you would ever be without. Months, sometimes years go by, until you stop questioning the existence of that heaviness caged inside your ribs that travels up to your throat sometimes but no amount of gagging will release it.
The pain, sticky, slightly sweet, never leaves.
My mother is counting the money she stands to lose, now that Arun Uncle is no more. They were business partners.
My father is suffering a financial and emotional loss far beyond anything I can comprehend.
I am tearing down the plastic moneyplant that winds itself around a lamp that hangs down three floors from a long brass chain attached to the ceiling on the top floor of our house. Superstition is a weakness born out of weakness.

2007-01-31T01:29:00.000+05:30

Having been held at [finger]gunpoint by a a congirl formerly known as Rimi, it seems I must, at peril of life, feed you titbits of my obscenely uninteresting existence.

I am reading Tom Brown's Schooldays and so far all that has interested me of the book, of which I am now on the 6th chapter, having begun reading from chapter 5, is the fact that all these chummy Brits ever did at school was play football, drink beer, sing and have someone clean their shoes for them. I do not wish to read any further, and understandably so. Nobody offered me any beer at school.

I am rehearsing for a play. One of my co-actors takes the role seriously enough to be in character all the time. We play Dirt.

I have also been repeating the phrase "pantomime of shadow-puppetry" over and over and over in my head for the past 72 hours. Which might explain the 13th hour of my splitting headache.

It is my ambition to continue being effortlessly unfathomable to the populace. Humour me.

Thanking you, yours sincerely.

2007-01-28T04:12:00.001+05:30

I have just come back from a party to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a couple who have spent the greater part of their married life being involved with other people. Their together forever is certain, but meaningless.
Odd that marriage, a public display and free to all, gives way to the most secret of liaisons, an adulterous affair.

Because they won't break bread together, I gave them cake.

I am copioously drunk. if you will please excuse me.

The Peep Show(down) / I Don't Want To Do The TikiTiki You

2007-01-07T20:23:00.000+05:30

Now, look. I've been blogging for about over a year now, and everyone's been really kind. I swear I haven't got a single hatemail from any of you. I'm cleverly bypassing the fact that you don't find my e-mail anywhere on the blog, of course. But not even an IM telling me to go dump myself in the nearest ditch, or a threat to cut off my fingers so I may never verminate the sacred space that is the blogosphere. Can you believe that? Of course, there was this one anonymous commenter who took offence to what s/he called sexual innuendoes, and said I was trying to make people think I'm really hot [you guys know i'm 5 feet 2 inches and 63 kilos, right? I have 17 strands of visible grey on my head, and have lost count of the acne], and that if I didn't stop with all the sex talk - this was on a post titled "we're all doing eunuchs", I mean, we were, you know, for our Queer Studies term paper, we were researching the lives of hijras, more than one of us, I made that amply clear - then I would lose all my loved ones, and nobody would love me ever again, and I would die a lonely and proud maid. Something of the sort. We became friends after, I think, because s/he apologised and wrote about her/his love life, blessing me with a lifestyle superior to the one s/he had previously painted for me. Which made the sun shine anew.
Incidentally, if you're still around, anon, hullo there! You disappeared as swiftly as you had come! And when I say "come", I swear I mean the synonym for ''arrive''.
And now this. I've been informed today that talking about my uterus and relating on print a conversation [that actually happened] where the word 'labia' was mentioned, makes me sexually frustrated. This, by another friend, apparently concerned for my image. I mean, wuh? In a country where the best-selling sanitary napkin brand is called 'Whisper', and shopkeepers insist on wrapping the packs with newspaper so as to save from embarassment, presumably theirs because certainly not mine, I feel it is important to be able to joke about such things.
Dude. It's real, we have our periods. There's blood loss involved, and no, I'm not embarassed about it. When you're clutching at a hot water bottle, and can see your knuckles and every part of your body go white and cramp up with the pain, there's little else to do but be able to laugh about it.
While we're at it, here's a confession, o cultured indian male, who squirms on seeing the word labia being casually tossed about on a bharotiyo nari's blog, but has no qualms about renting videos to watch bharotiyo or other naris give blowjobs and have intercourse - I've got a t-shirt that has "i'm a vagina warrior" written on it in bold. Oh look, I used *that word*, and guess what, I've got a vagina too! So has your mother. And assuming all went well, you even came out of it. Astounding, huh? When I talk about body parts, or menstruation, it is NOT because I want to be cool, 'cuz hullo? menstrual pain is not cool, it is because it's high time that everyone realised and accepted these things as part of life. And that can happen only when we talk about it as casually as we would, uhm, cornflakes. Now there's going to be some unduly cerebral reader somewhere fabricating a sexual innuendo out of this. I just know there is.
I have no feminist agenda. Heck, I have no agenda of any sort whatsoever on this blog. I write because people keep asking me to update, this blog has for long been far removed from the more significant aspects of my life. I've never wanted to be taken seriously, and my posts have consistently been posts that one is not supposed to take to heart. It's a little alarming therefore, to learn that there are people who think deeply over my writing, and who take out time to draw their conclusions about my sex life from it. Tell me, how does describing an entirely true incident about the purchase and wear of jeans - by another individual, at that - indicate my sexual frustration? Go read that post. Come and tell me if you can make a mundane event like helping a friend button her jeans seem funny, and remain honest, without writing it the way I have. I'm not denying that I have a dirty sense of humour, but I don't see how that is anything to be ashamed of. I still have strangers come and tell me the blog makes them laugh. That's all I'm after, really. But no, OHMYGAWD, a quicksearch indicates SIX places where I've used the word 'SEX'!!!! What a devious, calculating pervert am I, really? Children, stay away. Close your eyes and get away from the pernicious presence of the Peep!!! Because no sex please, we're Indian.
I'm not saying all men do this, but I really want to know, what's it all about? When a woman is expected to behave in a certain manner, to talk about certain things in a certain fashion, and stay away from discussing things like sex [there, I said it again] and God forbid if she jokes about it! Of course, that's because she can't stop thinking about sex now, can she? Let's watch some girl-on-girl action while we discuss her problem, eh?
I've gone on about this long enough. If you think there won't be another post about my protruding belly, or my big behind, or even my bloated uterus, then you don't know me at all. Being able to talk and laugh about our problems, to make light of things that have a socially conditioned tag of taboo attached to them- it doesn't make me sexually frustrated. It shows that I am independent enough and educated enough to be able to discard such illogical tags, to be able to surpass irrational expectations of difference in behaviour between men and women. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in creating a genderless society, there are reasons why men and women have been made differently, we do think and feel differently in a lot of ways - but that doesn't give any one sex the right to demand [or command] more liberality in thought and action than the other. I treat my friends not as male or female, but as friends. And so, when I interrupt a chat session with a male friend to tell him if I don't pee NOW I will wet my pants, it is not because I'm in dire need of a good lay. It is because if I don't pee NOW I will wet my pants.

Excuse me while I powder my nose.

I Will Remember This Day

2007-01-04T23:00:00.000+05:30

As the day I stood in line for one and a half hours, in the presence of 500 rowdy driving school representatives - one of them breathing alcohol breath down my neck and trying to engage in polite chitchat - until I thought I would collapse from stomach cramps [here is where you give my uterus a standing ovation. Better late than never, as it were.] and decided to let money speak. I went up to one of the men behind one of the million counters and having contorted my face through the excruciating pain into some semblance of charm, I slipped him some money to let me get ahead of around 70 others waiting in line to get their driver's licenses. I have a valid excuse, I was getting late for class. I bribed a man to be able to make it on time for my Publishing course. Is Tintin Da in the building?

It worked. I'm not proud of it. I'm a little disgusted that it worked. Disgusted with myself, that is. But my driver's license will be renewed. For 20 years. And I will go back to having a license and never going near the steering wheel of a car. And, I made it to class on time.

Stop judging me. You'd do the same if you were sandwiched between men singing Pardesiya on your left and Crazy Kiya Rey to your right, while the one behind you reeked of alcohol and the one in front kept turning around and making snide comments about the contradiction in terms that is 'women drivers' to his friend across the room. Especially, if you had to do this twice on the same day. Uncannily enough, this also happened to be the day when all other women motorists requiring a license renewal chose to stay away. It shouldn't matter, I know, but it felt awkward being the only woman there the entire time.

Moving on, the faculty member whom we all love and who is loads of fun, now that most of us don't have to learn Old English declensions and more importantly, seeing as how he has stopped masquerading in our collective pre-exam nightmares as Grendel's mother- on enquiring about my next theatre production [read: acting fiasco], and being informed that it has been my lifelong wish to do jatra in Garchumuk, has expressed a desire to see me in "Kobore Kaadchhe Konkaal". It is a frightfully attractive proposition. :-] Our professors, ki volvo.

I haven't wished you guys, have I? Have a fabulous new year, all of you. I'm going to quote someone from the New Year's Eve party, and say, " I don't remember a thingle thing!" about the celebrations. *cough cough ahem*

Whaaaaaaaat?!

2006-12-29T23:48:00.001+05:30

Ok, I shall play it safe and not comment on the quality of the review. But, Mr. Tathagata Chowdhury, I solemnly declare that I did NOT squeal "I could have cried..." at my own performance. I mean, hullo? Am I fucking Eliza Dolittle? [Yea yea, I know. She sang "I could have danced..." Shutupnow.]
I resent such insinuations.
And the names are Soumitri. And Rockaby.

Anyway, if the lights went out, how does he know who screamed? Unless of course, he would like people to believe I was speaking my thoughts aloud while still on stage.

Oshobhyota egulo.

The Winter of Our Discontent

2006-12-27T11:26:00.000+05:30

For as a surfeit of the sweetest things

The deepest loathing to the stomach brings,

Or as tie heresies that men do leave

Are hated most of those they did deceive,

So thou, my surfeit and my heresy,

Of all be hated, but the most of me!

- Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II Scene ii

'Nuff said. Heh.

Because It's Past 4 o' clock on A Christmas Morning And My Feet Are Killing Me

2006-12-25T04:15:00.000+05:30

Ho! Ho! Ho!

... and a pimp!

Distasteful joke courtesy: The Office

Merry Christmas everybody! :-]

Ok, my head hurts.

Please Don't Think About Sex While Reading This Post

2006-12-20T21:36:00.000+05:30

Subject: [breathes heavily behind closed door]
A person, let's say X: Do you need help?
Another person, while we're being imaginative, Y: Open up! Let us in!

Subject opens door. Looks embarassed. Focus on unzipped fly. X and Y go in.
Door closes.

Subject: Uh, oh my God. No, I can't do this. I can't do this!
X, presumably: Yes you can, we're here to help.
Y, without a doubt: Suck it! Just suck it in!
Subject: Hochheee naaaaaaa!

Heavy giggling ensues.

Y, as it would seem: Look, I'll hold it up from the back. X, try to get it through the hole.
Subj: Oh! Aaaa! Oh! Oh! Oh mummy!

Noise of communal panting.

X: Ok, almost there. I got it.
Y: Suck in, goddammit!
Sub: Yes! Yes! It's going in!
Y: Lean against the door, it'll be easier!

Crescendo of unmentionable sounds.

X and Subj: YES!!!!! We did IT!!!!!!
Y (wiping the sweat of toil, as the case may be): Wooh! There there. You're not a virgin any more.

Dramatis Personae:
Subject - Our beloved lil numb.
X - The inimitable Bobby G., otherwise known as Bob/Vuv/The Starlet.
Y - The Rainbeau in all your collective consciences.

The Setting:
Inside a fitting-room at the Park Street Levi's store.

The Action:
Trying to get Numb to fit into the pair of jeans that had fit snugly the evening before, but stubbornly refused to acknowledge her presence the morning after. [So like men, do I hear you say?] The 'it' in the first instance thereby, as all substantially endowed women will recognise, meaning her stomach; and the 'it' of the second instance and all subsequent instances referring to all several parts that make up a pair of blasted denims.

The Themes/Lessons Learnt:
[1] If you want a pair of jeans to fit perfectly, you must seek the help of friends and proceed to embarass a storeful of customers who just want to shop without distractions that take the shape of seemingly lesbian orgies.
[2] The Peep, should she ever be reckless enough to buy and wear jeans ever after, shall do so alone, in top secrecy. And it shan't be at the Park Street Levi's store. Nope.

To celebrate our success, we lunched at KFC, and vowed to stick by each other in fatness and in belch.
Which makes for a happy ending. Except that I need to buy a pair of jeans.

And Because You Were All Animation And Tell-Me-More

2006-12-19T09:37:00.000+05:30

Yay!

I did it!

I'd like to thank 3 bowls of rabri, 5 Benarsi peras, 4 nolen gurer kachagollas, and an enormous amount of Irish Cream.

:-D

The Biannual Potty Post/What You've Been Waiting For With Hated Breath

2006-12-16T17:00:00.001+05:30

Friends, backslappers and assorted glorybees. Burn the sweetest incense and dance ritualistically round a holy fire, because these times are so very wrong. The Peep, the one abrim with the booze of satanic wildness, is in the teeth of a butt-clenching crisis. She, and her toilet, as it were, have fallen apart. At loggerheads, them both. And if you think people are going to be sympathetic, on this the second day of my bowels not rising to the occasion and shining forth toward the path of duty [or potty, if we're being specific], then you're wrong. It is with a sense of bitter resentment that I have resigned discussion of my ablutionary activity to this my only vent, my beloved blog, as opposed to that which is haunted by unfeeling types whose bowels, presumably have vowed lifelong allegiance to the upkeep of their well-being. I will not name names, but the pimple on my left cheek and I are feeling grossly misunderstood.
I've tried eating bananas, drunk warm water, pots of coffee. I even put on trackpants and took a long, long walk. Still nothing. I'm telling you people, this is war. And stop trying to tell me about Isabgol. My system works in wondrous ways, which are least affected by the onslaught of guzzling glasses of tasteless fleaseed husk.
Ok, I'm tired of this now. Bottomline, Peepie needs to poopoo. Khyak, I just really wanted to use that line and chuckle while you squirmed.
But seriously, it's my only weightloss programme - this relieving myself business. If I keep stuffing myself anymore with no hint of release, it's going to be a really really long time till I can buy a pair of jeans that I'm not going to be embarassed about when people suddenly come up from behind me and lift the backside of my shirt just that little bit to expose what is not the shapeliest bottom in the world (panu, thank you for the comment you shall now proceed to write), all the better to see what brand denim i'm wearing. Seriously, why the fuck would someone do that? You can just ask, yea, and I'll tell you? It's not a secret that I've got to keep or else the evil Mr. Strauss is going to monkeywash the world and put it into his slimfit pocket? And what is the DEAL with Levi's having the waist size embossed out on that patch for all the world to see, eh? My waist size, now That's an important secret. Notice the caps in the middle of the sentence and the italics, and appreciate the gravity of that statement immediately. And stop lifting my shirt from the backside already!
Uhm, that's a weird phrase. Pretend I didn't just use it twice.

Otherwise, the exams are over. I am done with the outstanding menace that was the Lit Theory paper. I need a 6 in the endsems to pass, which, considering how I unabashedly wrote 2/3rds of the paper based on life's experiences and buttercups, and NOT on any kind of literary theory, is still a tough call. But I mean, come on, I'm going to get a 6 out of 30, no? Touchwood.

And now for the true, the blushful Hippocrene! :-]

Shoopin' Hour

2006-12-12T03:27:00.000+05:30

Listen, I can't think. The voices in my head are having a tea party.

Chew on this.

Minstrel Man

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,
You do not think
I suffer after
I have held my pain
So long?

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter,
You do not hear
My inner cry?
Because my feet
Are gay with dancing,
You do not know
I die?

- Langston Hughes

Excuse Me, Mr. Derrida

2006-12-06T04:15:00.000+05:30

I would like my mind back, please.

You Know

2006-12-02T10:10:00.001+05:30

There's no hope in hell for me, when barely 2 days before my end-sems I'm googling, not 'waste land sparknotes', but 'boots for short fat women'.

And you know I'm not entirely out of tune with academics, when the best site I reckon that suits my requirements, is an article by a Victorian Baroness, published 1893.

Now all I need is to find the "long boot, buttoned or laced at the sides". They're still making those, 113 years on, yea?

Help me. I'm nuts.

No, seriously, someone ram a book on my head and tell me to STUDY at gunpoint.

Study Leave

2006-11-27T20:02:00.000+05:30

Don at Inox- check

Casino Royale at Inox (precisely the day before the morning show ticket price was brought down to Rs. 50) - check

Barnarda Alba'r Bari - check

2 parties with moderate amount of alcohol intake - check check

Zinger combo at KFC - check

Cha and egg tarka at Russell Dhaba - check

Endless cups of coffee and chicken bhaja at Milon Da's - check

Two kilo weight gain - check [goddamit]

Early morning ticket booking at Jadavpur station - check

Numerous hours spent online trying to figure out which sikkim treks are death traps (read: which trek routes entail mati khurey potty) - check

Dust allergy extravaganza thanks to two dozen mistiris ramming the house from all several sides and sprinkling debris in the very spots i inhabit - check

Feeble attempt at keema'r chop which, for no fault of mine, ended up becoming alu'r chop - check

Syllabus for endsems commencing Monday - checkmate.

And there's shopping for biye bari, screening test for editing and publishing course, cast party and attending biye bari left before I can figure out exactly which 70% of the syllabus i'm not going to study.

The point of this post is to let you know that the Peep, oh the Peep - she lead glamourohsobusy life. You may discreetly blow your nose, but turn away before you snigger contemptuously. Oaf.

Those professors who are so kind as to defile (which, as we all know, is the khoo' way of saying sanctify, honour, glorify) my comment space will look away and pretend this never happened, should they chance upon my hapless answer script. Let the Peep's academic imbecility be a private joke, to be lightly indulged, eh? :-]

uh...

Eh?

p.s.: Dan, keep out.

The Psychological Trauma That Is A Masters Degree

2006-11-18T23:57:00.000+05:30

Example Un:

Me(18 hours before the Modernism Core internal, for which i have neither the texts nor the notes- hanging from the ledge, as I am prone to, before a test): Fish!!! Do you have notes!!!
Fish ( visibly perturbed, as she is prone to being, every single day of her life. Hullo, Fish, I know there's a thin chance you're reading this. But you do always look hassled, love): Vulva! Labia!
Me (nonchalant, as if that's just the sort of reply any normal human being would expect): Yes, that's alright. But NOTES?!?! for tomorrow's TEST?!?!
Fish (being cat on a hot tin roof): 85 rupees! For print outs! Bloody gender studies paper! Labia clitoris! Majora minora!

Kind readers, please note that Fish is not to be confused with our friendly, neighbourhood Babelfish, who has always been endearingly referred to as Bab'ly on this peace-love-n-harmony promoting blog. Inquisitive readers must therefore not assail Bab'ly with questions about female body parts and suchlike. Leave Fish alone too, of course.

Example Deux:

J (emerging from a classroom with glassy eyes, a grey-green pallor to her skin, and laughing like the devil): HAHAHAHAHA! Humanism porikkha!!! HAHAHAHA!!! I used the word 'madness' in every sentence of every answer!!!! HAHAHAHA!!!!
(proceeds to make some particularly distasteful jokes, till I lure her into Milon Da's and guzzle coffee down her throat)

Example Trois:

Squee(on the day of one of the 21 thousand tests we've taken in the last couple of days, grinning like a pleased peach, following a very loud and very public confession that she knows nothing): Don ko pakarna mushkil nahi, namumkin hai
Me (poring over notes and occasionally looking in the direction of Gate No. 4, for Knight in shining armani to arrive with a halo of smart perfume and an entourage of Mercedeses): Shutki, shutup.
Squee elocutes the entire plot of Vivaah, which she has watched and is very excited about.
Me: Look, I'm going to bury you under my mound of xeroxes.
Squee: AAHISTAAAA AAHISTAAAAAAAAA, HUM SHAHEED HUYEEEEE!
(she claims this is a song from some film starring Abhay Deol. Yes, she's seen it. Yes, it has the potential to become the next pre-exam Departmental anthem, following in the footsteps of such masterpieces as "gaand mein danda" and "mujhe sutta na mila")

The times they are a loopy, my friends. The department is full of raving lunatics, overstressed, underslept, scuttling about with term papers in their hands and murderprofs in their eyes.

Me, I shouldn't be writing this at all. I have yet another test and yet another paper to submit on monday. Right now, I am supposed to be writing things about Shakespeare. And then reading some about how a conniving *cock-a-doodle-doo* named Jacques Derrida, wrote a million pages of theory because he wasn't man enough to admit he didn't know the spelling of 'difference'. Bloody hell. No, really. Man wrote an essay about a spelling error and called it his theory of deconstruction. Or at least I think that's what happened. I am so not passing that paper. I mean, what else do you expect, when the classes for the course entail your professor wanting to know in all seriousness, the answer to his query:-
If the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre, then where is Hamlet?

I mean, really. Wot the fuck. First "wherein lies the bedness of the bed?" and now this.
Excuse me while I bang my head against a stonecold wall.

Anyway, this post is in honour of my friend Rahul, who has just informed me that he reads my blog! Hey ya, Rahul. :-] Stand up and take a bow, will ya? And don't forget - only 12 years to D-Day. :-p

Women On Top. Are You Interested?

2006-11-03T10:44:00.000+05:30

I have been asked to promote a play on this blog. A play that I am a part of. I have been told to promote it with the catchphrase "women on top". But then I came across this news article.
Thanks to Greatbong.

We're doing a play called Top Girls, while there are girls in our villages being paraded naked and raped in public. We're rehearsing the roles of successful women Popes and famous warrior queens, and coming back home to read of how a girl younger than we are, a topper at her school was found dead in a canal with rods sticking out of her genitalia.

There was a brainstorming session to come up with promotional ideas for our play. Our Jude production, 2006 - Caryl Churchill's Top Girls. Someone came up with "who are the top girls? where are they?"
Indeed. Look for them, dead in a ditch.

Or, I suppose, find them at Gyan Manch on the 14th of November.

My apologies to the drama team. Of which I am honoured to be a part. Marketing was never my strong point.Perhaps I will have another go at this. Not now, though. I don't want to be a top girl, not right now.

By the way, the blog header is not original. I've lifted it from a poem by Anne Sexton.

PMS Peep

2006-11-01T08:34:00.000+05:30

Listen, I'll tell you something. You know what's wrong with women's emancipation today? And reading goddamn blogs? Hah.
So I once read something a blogger called Vulturo [I think] had written - it's the only post I've ever read of his. He talked about how he'd got on a bus and sat himself down next to a lady, and she squirmed and edged towards the window. That's the basic gist - he felt violated. Insulted, even. Because apparently the woman had assumed he'd try to harass her - something of the sort. Now, that's his idea, of course. I'll tell you what, the woman wasn't doing nothing of the damn sort. But that goddamned post ruined my life, didn't it? Ever since then, when a man sits next to me on the bus, and mind, no slim man has ever sat next to me, it's always the big hulking ones. And a big, hulking man + a big, hulking Peep on 1 minibus seat = hell, someone's falling off. Which could have been avoided if, on finding that I could no longer be queen of my domain, I'd have shifted towards the window and made some space, for the goodly co-passenger. But I can't, can I? Because now, suddenly, I'm considering his feelings. I'm wondering if he'll think I see him as a potential groper if I move away to make space for him! So I spend the rest of the journey clenching my bottom and trying to shift millimetre by millimetre, so as not to offend anybody, instead of just simply sliding to the side. Bloody hell, I tell you.
Oh, and by the way, Sagnik, women love shoe-shopping more than men, presumably, because we've got variety, we've got colours and cuts and beautiful beautiful desgins to choose from. Unlike men's shoes, which can only come in 13 kinds anywhere in the world. In any case, I have male friends who allot a certain amount of money every month for clothes-shopping. Which makes me snigger, seeing as how I only shop before Pujo and my birthday [and no, I don't buy 20 tops and 17 skirts and other things in heaps], and I haven't bought a pair of jeans in 5 years, even though mine are battered in inappropriate places [uff, i'm not making any bleeding fashion statement - it comes with being fat - uh, friction, and ... oh never mind. now i'm embarassed]. And anyway, even if someone's a compulsive shopper - why do you even have to try and understand women's fascination for nice clothes and accessories? Do we ever question your obsession with watching ugly men in skimpy clothes wrestle each other? And don't even get me started on obsessive-compulsive gelling of hair.
Ok, I can't think of anything else to snap about. I need to write a gazillion assignments, and I've caught the 7th bout of cold in the last 2 weeks. Things are *not* [I'm sick of italics] good, and it's pissing me off.
Oh.
Dear good stuffs, I'm awfully sorry I didn't reply to the comments on the last post. I just don't wanna. I mean .. uh. :-[ No offence, though.

Why The Peep Must Stay Single - Reason #36387

2006-10-22T14:40:00.000+05:30

This morning, my mother's speaking over the phone with a socialite aunty, who's called up, absolutely disconsolate that I couldn't make it to her 'Diwali nite card party n dinner-dance, darling. dress sexy! ha ha ha!' and have absolutely dashed all her hopes of making me a match made in heaven with Aunty R's lives-in-london son. [ok, she only almost speaks like that]. So, my mother shakes her head at me, who am reaching out for the ten billionth tissue the better to wipe my nose with, and says to the Nokia:

"Aarey, M, all these nyaka girls! Lying in bed for 6 days with fever. Nothing to do?! And look at you! I mean, JAAST LOOK AT YOU!! Like a good parson, finding a good-boy for this girl. WHICH GIRL, JAAST SEE?!?! Just come and see, lying like moharani on the bed! *the doc had advised bed rest. which, i admit, i don't need. but hey, if i'm not allowed to leave the house, then i'm not quitting the bed either*
ladka dikhne mein achha hone sey kya hoyega? mera ledki ko dekho na abhi, beelkul shoshan ka mora ka maafik dikhne mein hai. goru ka maafik bhNuri hai, aur mukh mein ekdom gaal-tobrano. .. hain hain, aarey .. u know .. the cheeks ... almost inside the face *don't even ask*. And the hair is not there anymore! *wonder where it is* whatever she has, gone completely white. *grey*
anyway, i have given her so many rishtas, M. she only wants poet with jhola-daari! *i certainly don't. anyway, i suspect she meant jhola and daari. not .. uhm .. hanging beard-like* Ekdin uttha ke leyke aayegi mera matha khaane ke liye. .... no, no! jhaaru peetke peetke i will kick out any ghor-jamais!"

sigh. Happy Diwali everyone.

A Very Meaningless Post

2006-10-19T15:00:00.000+05:30

Bed rest? Bed rest?! Do they think i have NOTHING better to do with my life than lie in BED?!?!
Dearly beloveds, pray for the Peep, for she ails.
I have a sore throat, a snotty nose, red eyes, and a splitting headache. And I spend most of my day standing in front of a mirror looking for dengue-symptomatic rashes. It is not a happy time.
I have my own rehearsals, which I am missing. I'm telling you, they can't do without me, there. And I'm missing rehearsals of Squee's play too, where I'm helping out - generally. They can't do without me either. Honest. [Hey, the LEAST you can do is indulge a sick ol' friend, who, for all you know has given her life up to a swarm of mosquitoes with ugly names].

Incidentally, I have ogled at a pair of Biceps with watery eyes, sniffing next to me at the Doc's chamber. As in, the watery eyes belonged to person with biceps - the biceps themselves didn't have eyes on them. I had eyes on the biceps. Oh dear, too much the head aches after excitement.
Of course, this is a good time to work on my litcrit assignment, but tell to me, does any of this make the vaguest sense to you?

1. Theorist as artist
2. Theorist as criminal
3. After theory

I'm not kidding, if you know what these phrases mean, feel free to help. I haven't for the life of me any idea. Shotyi bolchhi, I might not pass the lit theory paper. Oh god, oh dear god. Too much chinta in my life!

Dyspe(e)psia

2006-10-09T14:51:00.000+05:30

Listen. I shan't have it anymore. There's only so much I can stands, i can stands no mores. I mean, it's O.K. to holler for me across the department corridor and come trotting up to jiggle my arms and watch amazed at the 4 and a half 'good vibrations' [stop pretending you didn't know i was cheesy] they will execute for you. And sure, when I'm having my evening coffee at Milon Da's and you're all a-rosy and prepared to play ranna-bati with my arms, making me spill my coffee as you enthusiastically knead like it's time for dinner - I don't mind. I'm even going to smile indulgently, and say a little prayer for the ground to crack open and swallow you up, you little termite, you *notice terribly indulgent tone of voice*. But I'll tell you what I won't stand. I will NOT be disturbed mid-jhaari at a pujo pandal, and I will NOT have crazy women sprinting for my fat, wrists asunder. There is absolutely No point in trying the seductive come-hither when the other-party sees trusty aides massaging your biceps in public, like you were some sort of pehelwan. Girls, i love you, I do, but ... break on through to the other side, as it were.

Very nice. Point number two. I do want to make friendship with you. Oh yes. But I don't need to join Orkut for that. Please cease and desist sending invites, o wellwishers and one and a quarter lovers of the Peep. You may all contact me on Yahoo, and we shall talk of beautiful things like life and it's intricacies. Victoria's Secret. Or yours and mine, even.

I've been a little distracted. A trifle angry. I'm also afraid it probably shows.
Anyway, I've been drinking like a fish, making new friends and doing some other things.
Maybe, another day, I will tell you the story of how my cousin sister punched an aged relative on the nose, and promptly got a bottle of water emptied on her clothes. In the middle of a crowded street. Tiring, this.

By the way, does anyone think Nizam's serves its kebabs half-cooked?

And this is frightfully important. I need a topic for my writing in practice assignment. A short story. Please. Anybody. Interesting topics. Quick, before I become an alcoholic.

p.s. : i am NOT becoming an alcoholic.

update : Kindly extend your sympathies to a certain Pom Fretty who has been hurling herself under falling trees with disastrous consequences. May she continue to provide entertainment, albeit minus health hazards to her frail frame.

Tagedy!

2006-09-29T09:47:00.000+05:30

The Dee has the tagged me. Which would have been tiresome, except that since I'm too exhausted to write a proper post, this works fine.

So I'm to list my 10 "simple pleasures", eh? And they can't just be 10 different kinds of food?
Oh, awrite! Spoilsports.

In no particular order of preference :-

1. The company of old friends I haven't been in touch with for years.

2. Tastes - dark chocolate, mixed fruit jam, australian grapes, absolut vodka, mid-afternoon cigarette when I haven't smoked all day, ... D.

3. Smells - first cup of coffee in the morning; burning incense, camphor and sandalwood at the pujo pandal; wet earth during heavy rains, my Lux shower gel, ... uhm, y'know.

4. Flowers. Unpicked flowers. White or violet. Also, watching the shrubbery outside my house tremble in the wind.

5. Waking up to the cooing of the friendly neighbourhood kokil.

6. Meeting someone for the first time and realising you're going to be friends forev - .. for a very long time, at the very least.

7. Standing on the weighing machine and whooping for joy because I weigh 20 grams less than yesterday, which means I'm closer by 0.00023% to not being overweight any more.

8. Whole-night, all-girls parties. There's booze, there's food, there's conversation, and you don't have to wear a bra. [we're having one tonight, yabba-dabba-dooo!]

9. Tears.

10. Coming back home - to my computer and YM, to Monday comedies on Star World, to Radio Mirchi, to the reassurance that my parents are only a floor and two away.

I will continue this chain of evil by tagging utey, Laura, "sen"sational, sandman and Madame Sosostris.

Required

2006-09-15T01:16:00.000+05:30

One number husband. In less than 11 hours. Ceremony must be completed by noon.

I mean, what the FUCK is the bedness of a bloody bed?! Fucking Plato. Idiotic Aristotle.

Porikkha devo naaaaaaaaaaaa. :-[

Let's Play ...

2006-09-12T22:10:00.000+05:30

My initiation into theatre began in my Third year of college. That pretty much makes it around two years now and I can count the number of productions I have been a part of on the fingers of one hand. I've never discussed with any of my co-actors why they took to theatre - it should make for very interesting conversation. But I can say why I did. To deal with break-ups. uh huh, uh huh.
I'm not even sure what has prompted this post. Somewhere in the middle of last night's drunken spree at Athena's, Shahana [renowned on this blog for being one of those bonker-babies of this our holy JUDE] asked me why I could never be real in real life. It's worth a thought - I haven't been myself for so long, that I can't seem to be able to tell who I really am anymore. All I could think of when she put this question to me, was Lisa Ray sitting atop a barstool and telling Rahul Khanna, "I can be anyone you want me to be." Hollywood Bollywood, I think. Yes, we have remarkably cerebral taste, thank you for bypassing.
I remember rehearsing for 3 different plays at the same time and doing classes and writing term papers, simultaneously, in January this year - when D packed his bags, stubbed his cigarette [I really really want to say "on my bleeding heart" right now, but notice how I shan't], and left swiftly on a jetplane.
I act, not for a love of the stage. Heck, I'm shit scared of the stage. I act for the love of the characters I play, and for the range of possibilities they offer me of finding myself. Of letting go. So when I'm killing people softly with a 24-minute long Beckettian monologue, and I have tears in my eyes because the 24 minutes span the entire lifetime of an old woman - an entire lifetime spent standing at the same fruitless juncture, no hope of redemption, yet tranquil despite it all- I can weep tears that I would hold back in my own life. Sometimes, I can run away from myself - but it is a space within my control, always. The emotions are mine to play with. And there's a tremendous sense of security in knowing that at the end of it all, you can wash off the pancake, and go home, because your life is still where it was before the show. Those with more experience, have told me this is a wrong approach to theatre. I should try to be the character, not look for myself in who i'm playing. That is possible, and I'm not making any more excuses. That guard - it's up again.
To try and give shape to the purpose of this post - the show's over. It went well, I think. Except for the part where I went delirious and started screeching like a crazed hyena, for no particular reason other than the fact that the spirit of one such accursed creature had miraculously possessed me halfway through the progress of the play. I can't for the life of me figure what went wrong. I've managed to boil it down to the idea that I may not be cut out for such things. Let us briskly skirt this issue, before I crawl to the floor and get into a foetal position to nurse my angst.
Since the birth of this blog, I have acted in 4 productions. Not once has there been any form of publicity here for any of the other plays I've been a part of. I've always shied away from publicising plays that I do, because, like I said, I'm shit scared of the stage, I'm scared of the audience. I don't like being judged by people who matter to me and so my parents have been banned from attending any of my plays. Again, wrong, very wrong.
But Lokkhoner Shoktishel was different. I have never felt so close to a production before. I'm not very sure what it is I want to say - it must be something very simple, really. I'm heartbroken that it's over. I'm heartbroken that I couldn't give the performance my very best, because I owed it to the team. This was not just the director, Joy's baby. This was all of us together - we made a play. I've never made a play before this - acted in one, yes. This production has given me memories. Stories to tell. Unforgettable moments.
There will be reviews, those who came and watched last evening, will have things to say - favourable or otherwise. I should probably be bothered, but I'm not. How do I put it - it's like how you're proud of your child no matter how s/he fares at school? Ok, somebody burn me down NOW.
I will not forget doubling up with laughter at my dismal attempts at a kalaripayattu roll-on-floor-n-upsy-daisy [there's a sophisticated name for this, but damned if I can recall], I will remember sitting dazed at the tiny balcony of our rehearsal space, all of us in a huddle, talking about who knows what - but deliriously happy - who knows why. Every tiny detail, from exhausting possibilities of things that you can possibly do with a large green umbrella in a very public area, to singing unfettered, and the walk back home in one large group every evening. J, coming in at the very last moment and dazzling us all with how stage-free she was. Uttappam staring languidly at Shugrib's breasts. Utey being sizzling eyetum numbur.
The whole-night stage rehearsal - smoking up one joint after the other in a fit of unconsumed insanity at 5 in the morning, and then ... heh, it's all plastic now. Trippy G, the resident rockstar-cum-set designer-cum-poster designer-cum-actor extraordinaire - singing nursery rhymes to a psychedelic-rock rhythm early in the morning, while people lay sprawled across the greenroom floor, after an exhausting 6 and a half hours of midnight-to-morning rehearsal. Babon da, the lights man and his wife Morjina Di, who has the sweetest voice. The musicians - I know them all - we've been in it all together.
Friendships have been forged, I'll be honest, I don't know if I belong. But these two months, it's been about not stopping to think about whether you belong - I have disagreed, but I have also respected other viewpoints and had my opinion given respect to. I have felt closer to people whom I have known over only a handful of weeks, a couple of drinks and several joints; than I have felt to friends I have been meeting almost every single day for the last 4 years.
Laura, I have been directed by her before, and this time it was Joy.... it's hard to put a name to what he means to her. I have seen how powerful love can be, through these two people. I have seen Laura frantic, always looking out for Joy, worried for him - she has, in my opinion, put more effort into Lokkhoner Shoktishel, than she did for her own productions. They are, if I may quote from a conversation at Oly a few days back - two forces that combine to form a larger, impenetrable force - a burst of energy, that drove us to improve our own act.
Joy - he holds high ground in the list of people I have tremendous respect for. I can't say I know him well, because I've been too afraid of him to actually try. But in his own quiet way, he urges you to find yourself- to get the best out of yourself. I have learnt some things from him that I will always hold very valuable. I will always be grateful to him for helping me understand theatre and its nuances just that little bit better, and for leading me to figure out for myself exactly how potently it has taken over my life these last several months, since D left.
Midnight conversations about the fate of Shoktishel, panic on the day before, utter chaos, and in the midst of it all, long chats about life and what it might hold for each one of us. And oh, the horror stories! Uhm .. you know you're not going to be quitting smoking anytime soon, when you're willing to relinquish 23 years of socially conditioned homophobia, and kiss 2 individuals of the same sex, for the sake of a cigarette. And yes, we're leaving it at that. I don't kiss-n-tell. :-[ I have, in the span of one minute of shocking debauchery last night, had my arm repeatedly bitten and my butt slapped, while my foot was being gnawed at. All, by women in various stages of intoxication, trying obviously to replicate some sort of depraved Dionysian ritual.
Cups of tea and toy guns. All come back like snapshots. I don't know how much I have given to this play - but I've sure got back a tremendous lot. I've been rambling endlessly about things that theatre persons have perhaps experienced already, and that those not particularly keen on theatre will not be very interested in. But this was a first for me.
I needed to get this out - I will soon cease to be a part of the stage and I am glad and grateful for having been given the opportunity to take with me the experience of these last 2 months.

One Last Time

2006-09-09T07:34:00.000+05:30

Onstage peeing?

Intellectual monkeys?

Pretty boys in the semi-nude?

Pretty girls in tight skirts?

Prohareno dhononjoy and maar dala?

Seduction? Deception? Waltzing to war?

Read the second preview

Get it all at Gyan Manch, September 11.
7 p.m.

Don't cancel dinner plans. You'll be out in an hour or so.

Hurry! Offer valid till stocks last!

Wasted

2006-09-06T23:31:00.000+05:30

I have just come back from a party and dropped my toothbrush in the toilet. I have subsequently orchestrated a manic wardance of aggravation around the pot, for about a quarter of an hour, because it would not flush. I am being unnecessarily prosaic.

I think I might be high.

Invitees to the party are forbidden to comment.

2006-09-05T04:17:00.000+05:30

The sad courtesan

On her sad satin ankles,

Flashes her leg-irons of diamond.

The manacles on her wrists a-glitter

Under the moonlight as she dances

(Like a crumpled paper ball

Like dead leaves in the wind)

Her hair is whispering its dark secrets

Indisciminately (quietly)

Under the candelabra, the frozen water fountain,

Across the iced courtyard

She spins.

(Like a broken top like a dancing doll)

Every note in her step is anguish

All the watching men shift uncomfortably in their seats

Even as her whirling form stirs life

Between their clenched legs. She whirls

(Like a crazed dervish,

like an eddy in the bath) they want her

But are stonewalled by her sorrow.

It bleeds out of her with every

Laugh, in every soft spoken note.

In her they understand the meaning of

Loneliness. They have felt alone

At times, (who hasn't?)

But the sad courtesan has been alone,

All by herself her whole life.

It is this they shrink from,

The thought that it might be catching

And that they might catch it from her

(Like lovers do with kisses in the wind

Like terror spreading from eye to eye)

And so they offer their excuses and slip away

Before the night is done

Before her dance ends.

Must she dance alone, the sad courtesan?

More alone all by herself than before?

She has been learning every evening

Since her dance of days began

To let men leave as they choose

wary of the soul that weeps

through her (through them all)

... like a stain on brocade like a

pennant in the wind like the moon in a lake

like a foghorn in the fog like the glow of the

stars like a shadow at night like the smell

of the tide like the thunder in clouds

like summer lightning in the sky like

blood under skin like fever in the blood

like the wings of birds like the lost pages

of books like the fissures in stone like

knowing what darkness is.

(a way to see light)

Orey Pashondo, Tor Mundo, Khondo Khondo Koribo

2006-09-03T10:07:00.000+05:30

Read the preview.

Be excited.

Be very excited.

Aashbi Na Ki Rey Byata? Jutiye Lal Korey Debo!

2006-08-25T08:49:00.000+05:30

dyance[!] drama[!] acsun[!] reacsun[!] passun[!] emosun[!]

Do come and watch, not because by doing so you’d be sponsoring our cast party [I wish] but because it really promises to be fun.
And if that isn’t incentive enough, you can come and watch me in all my facial-haired glory. :-[

Don't let the timings bother you, by the way. It's quite a short play.

Bride & Prejudice

2006-08-24T15:22:00.000+05:30

Ok, ok, I've had it with people offering me fake money and others chasing me down the department corridor begging for a new post.
So, while I was being "stalked" at the club by Utey's boyfriend [entirely her claim, mind, entirely hers. Me, if I could notice an eligible bachelor when I saw one .. well, I don't know what I would've done, really], who should chance to drop by, but my alleged future husband. This particular personage's hand had been offered to me in marriage a few months ago, but having drowned myself already in the love of an individual at last count being hunted down by hot mexican women and hunting down hotter spanish waitresses, I had politely declined. At this point, it would be pertinent, I suppose, to bring to your notice, that my sentences are interminably long.
Moving on, said personage is a former national-level tennis player, very shy, very sweet and very hirsute. I don't yet know whether he was aware that higher powers had contemplated tying my pallu to his dhoti [isn't that how you get married?] at a blessed time in the future. He is known to my mashi, my mother's aunt, an intrepid matchmaker if there ever was one. So there he was, hovering about the shamiana, sweating profusely. And then [this is going to be in bangla. Dee, go away, I'm not translating :-p ] :-

Alleged Future Husband : Hello, Aunty, how are you?
Mashi: O ma! _________ jey! Hello hello!! [she uses his full name, even though she obviously knows him well, just so I can understand this is the famous AFH]
*wink 1 to me*
AFH and Mashi engage in some small talk. AFH also addresses my brat of a young cousin, showing what looked like very genuine interest in her sporting progress. He even offers to teach her to improve her backhand.
My mother gazes, amazed.
My mother (notice how she dominates most of my posts): Aei, are you married?
AFH is decidedly befuddled. Smiles shyly.
Mashi: Koi, na to! His mother has been searching for a suitable bride for so long! *wink 2 to mother. wink 3 to me*
My mother (eyes lit up, ready with bait): MEET MY DAUGHTER, NAME ROHINI, AGE 23!!
Mashi: *wink 4 to anyone who will care to look*
AFH (in a state of shock): Oh, achha! I mean ...
Me (meaning to be angry, but breaking into chuckles at AFH's facial expression. He really is cute): Hullo. Don't mind my mother, she's doing her Pujo shopping.
Mashi: *wink 5 to me*
AFH (whimpering, like he's in an alternate reality soaked in evil): Oh. Achha.
Mother (a trifle impatient): You have a girlfriend, at least?
AFH (these are words he has finally understood): Eh heh heh .. ki jey bolen, aunty!
Mashi: Aare, girlfriends?! I have seen women falling over him at the tennis club! But our _______, does he care?! No no! Very good boy, our _____. [the exercise of proprietory rights over eligible AFH has begun].
AFH (blushing) : I think I have to leave now.
Mother: Where do you have to go? No no, no going, you sit and chat with us!
AFH: No, aunty, I'm very sorry, but I'm here to organise a golfing event my company is sponsoring. I'll come another time, ok?
Mother: Oho! You're working! *dazzling smile* Good pay?
Mashi: Everyday he buys a new car!
[Have I mentioned she's been winking incontrollably all this while?]
AFH (realising he's fighting a losing battle, smiles in defeat): Aunty, please! Ebar thhamun apni!

Anyway, this is just the gist. In the meantime, my mother has obtained from him the name of his company, his designation, the number of clubs he is a member of, the number of matches he has played, and undoubtedly, when I wasn't looking, the number of his bank account.
Uhm, incidentally, the way I've falsely dramatised the conversation, it would appear he was desperate to leave. Truth be told, he wasn't, he seemed pleased in fact, when I told him how my friends had been a huge fan (used the word "heartthrob" for the first time in my life. It was fun to see him wince) of his when we were pimply teenagers in school. I've never seen a person, male or female, blush so deeply and so frequently in such a short span of time. Then again, he was being extremely polite, beaming benevolently at one and all, and not showing any sort of interest in me. Aah well.
The important thing is, and now I have to leave to do my bratty cousin's homework for her, the important thing is, the moment he left, my mother demanded of my aunt why this masterpiece of God had not been made available to me. When she pleaded innocent and said he had been rudely dismissed as a marital prospective, my mother raised such a hue and cry that, June Maliah, who was sitting at the next table with a bunch of kids, turned around and looked at her questioningly. Decisions were made to get in touch with the boy's parents that very evening, based solely on the fact that they were very rich. And no, this was getting to be serious, because my tech-illiterate aunt was actually fiddling with her cellphone to retrieve AFH's home number.
It was no good explaining that I was not interested in marriage (uhm, don't let this discourage you. You may continue your search for a suitable boy for me, or even present your own glorious self), there was absolutely no way she was listening to the fact that I was still in love with ... uhm ... who I was in love with.
So ... and I'm really late now - I need to present, in december, an IIT graduated green card holder, obviously doing something in the software sector, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, and tall. Because, I have declared undying, and ardently reciprocated, love for said fictitious individual - a man of sparkling wit, and doubtless reliability. Believe it or not, my mother and my mashi are so pleased with my valuable, if inordinately lucky, find, that I have actually been offered money to get a boob job done, before aforementioned non-existent individual makes his false presence felt in Kolkata. In December. I have time till then to be free of further harassments and threats on the pre-marital front.
Hmm. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they will forget all about this with time.

[Anyway, since we're at it. Any takers?]
*wink wink*

Weightist Slur

2006-08-20T09:20:00.000+05:30

Dan: Hello moto.

BV(Sean): Hey, Jumbo!

J n Squee: Oye Motaaaaaa!

And this takes the cake. Or bakes it :-

Shahana, a pretty junior [please keep in mind that every single JUDE junior is completely off her head. Bonkers, to put it mildly] takes time off from some intense romancing to spot me, trots up, pokes prods and squeezes my arm as if to test the authenticity of her new toy, and ultimately declares with unparalleled glee: Tumi kiii moidaa !!

Aami jaante chai jey, WTF?!?!

[Yes, yes. The blog is dying. Either pay me a million so I can spill the beans on my hot romance with the President of the Togolese Republic or just shut up and read whatever crap I can come up with on a hungover Sunday morning].

Laxative

2006-08-12T13:25:00.000+05:30

Call me bitter and prophesy for me a loveless future of grey hair and 17 cats, but I don't get certain couples. You know, lovers.
There's the sort that will go out together, coochie-coo on couches and dance the hubba-hubba with a red rose 'tween their teeth, but they will also have separate lives. Separate friends, whom they will concede to meet. Alone. That's the sort I'm rooting for.
I can just see you invoking the Curse of the Catfur on the red velvet sofa I shall be purchasing in a burst of orgasmic passion and optimism when I'm 25, only to realise that, hello? wherefore the passyon? whozza gonna do da jiggy-wiggy wid me? Yo, Nobody. [Stopit. I don't do the ... uhm ... vagina monologue.. to put it subtly]. And then I shall spend my lonesome nights brushing illusory fur off my raggedy lilac sweater and nursing my gout and my grief.
It's this other sort - the joined at the hips, the ones who can't breathe a blooming second without each other, that I can't get. I have a friend, I've known her for 20 years now, we're all about the ya-ya sisterhood and these days she can't meet old friends without the boyfriend freaking tagging fucking along EVERY bleeding where. Uhm, ok, so, he's alright. Not bad at all, loves her and seems like a good person. I mean, I have nothing against him. But this is the girl who used to bite me in lower nursery when she was peeved. We had a warrior dance. We grew up together, we cried together [she did. me, i'm a clown. ahem.], we fell in love with the same boy [ok, yea, that was bad] and spent endless nights talking. Just talking. And now, I can't meet her unless her boyfriend is free. Anyway.
On a more festive note, please congratulate J and Kneo, who are at this moment wallowing in love over good wine and pepper devilled crabs at Mocambo, in celebration of their third anniversary. Those two, they're incredible. They've squabbled and fought their way through love like I've never seen before. I'd raise a toast to them, but the bastards didn't invite me.

In other news, my mother and my aunt have taken it upon themselves to get me a life. Much in the manner of Opal Mehta, I suspect. Topmost on their agenda is to drag me kicking and screaming to the Tolly Monsoon Bash, next Saturday. Turns out, men will think I'm really hot and oh-so-cool, if I'm seen at a place of debauchery and forbidden fruit with aged family members.
I need company - anybody I know going?

As I had always known, applying mehndi on the hands of an unmarried woman proves lucky for her marital prospects. I have been proposed marriage by 3 individuals on the same day. So what if two were women? I am most pleased with the progress.

College Chronicles

2006-08-03T19:26:00.000+05:30

And because I have painstakingly wasted precious Lord-Jim-reading time on painting this blog in different hues of prettiness and must oblige it with some text [however irrelevant to all our lives] in celebration of the sidebar's miraculous dhei-dhei naach to it's rightful place from the depths of oblivion wherein it hath resided these many sunsets, to the right side of this exuberant piece of literature, I shall tell you of the things that excite the Peep's edgy nerves these days. To make matters relatively easier, I shall shorten my sentences. And tabulate.

Don't blame the media and Hollywood for this fascination for stick-insectitude and a propensity towards complete drainage of bodily fluids in order to wear that size supersmall nanoskirt. I have been taught that, Aristotle, and may he be reborn as an anorexic grasshopper [positively illiterate. this is of the utmost importance.] declared that beauty is a matter of size and order, and that, goddamit, a whole can be seen only in terms of its parts to be called beautiful. Hence, thus and therefore, what he's pretty much trying to say is, that a very large person will be beyond our aesthetic perception. Uhm, something like that, anyway.
I have been flung about and hurt my knee and danced like I had a lizard doing cartwheels about my spine and thoroughly enjoyed it all, during rehearsals. Don't even ask what we're putting up. I'm not quite sure myself. All I know so far is that it involves bangla, bamboo poles, oil and jazz. Yes, I'm keeping the suspense. It makes for good publicity.
I have received my 2nd semester marks. Predictably, queer studies has fucked me straight. Which would have been fine, if I hadn't been so completely convinced I'm not going to pass Literary Theory this semester. Don't get me wrong, I don't harbour any delusions of grandeur about my Intelligence Quotient. I've been made to feel stupid before - like the time back in school when my friends dared me to summon a waiter by screaming,"Squeeze Me!" across the room and I did, because, hey i'm the too-coolz. It led to a series of unfortunate events, and we shall leave it at that. But nothing, nothing absolutely, has induced that unnerving feeling of sandstorms inside my brains as much as every single Lit. Theory class is doing. I Do Not Understand A Damn Thing. Refer to unintelligible Point 1 above. And no, do NOT recommend tearing hair and gnawing knuckles. They don't work.
I have watched Omkara and simultaneously fallen in love with Ajay Devgan, Saif Ali Khan and a little bit of Kareena. I love Ajay Devgan more, and I don't care that Saif was brilliant as Iago. He was, though. But Ajay was leytaal Omi. I will watch it again. It is fabuloso. Strongly recommend it.
I have come to the conclusion that our juniors, collectively, are hopping mad. Each and every one of them. And I mean cuh-razy. Nuts. Screwdhila. Sadly though, their insanity is spreading like an epidemic and now we, who are the old-n-wise have started suddenly speaking in broken hindi, even though we're all bangali, and saying things like "heads mein no brains only you have" and giggling hysterically for no particular reason like we were pony-tailed pubescents. Most unbecoming, wottotell only. dammit.
I have begun completely, utterly, totally forgetting things. Like what other points I had in mind. This makes for a fabulous conclusion, then.