Ladies & Gentlemen...

I admit. I have given in to the great temptation.

Plagued by the miseries of life and time, the mortal seeming remains tormented by a multitude of evils, all at once. Each trial against decadence, appears as an insurmountable pinnacle. Each battle won against the norms of society, is a war lost to decadence. Such is the plight of the righteous man. And such is the gravity of a moral dilemma.

To quote the bard himself :
"I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire! Why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"

-Hamlet
(Act 2, Scene 2)

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Yes, my friend. Take heart, for I have now joined the ranks of the Tweeters of the world!
*dramatic interlude plays in background*

Having succumbed to the pop-culture fad that Twitter epitomizes and embodies so perfectly, I consider it my job... nay, my noble duty, to pass on the malady. Corrupting the youth of the nation, after all, shall always remain a hobby. Bwuahahaha!

So, go ahead. Join me here.

P.S. Fact of the matter: I seek partners-in-crime. We'll even work out a secret-handshake!

Confession #3

I acquire a decidedly feminine demeanor when I'm upset.

Bear with me, for this is an embarrassing confession of EPIC proportions. ME, being the person who wore pink ONCE in her life and suffered enough mental trauma and general inferiority to never be able to look at anything pink without a grimace again. It was a dark day in the life of yours truly. I still have nightmares about it.

So, for posterity (lest I grow a beard-and-other-things one fine day and become the happiest person in the world), here's a list :

• I cook.
• I clean.
• I KNIT.
• I listen to chick-music. The kind no self-respecting person would be caught dead carrying on their iPod. Not James Blunt. Think lower. Think woozier. Think Belinda Carlisle and Cyndi Lauper.
  
• I watch sappy TV shows and IDENTIFY with the much-scorned and wronged protagonist.
  

Come to think of it, the last time I was in the end-the-world-right-here-right-now mood was in January. I knitted half a scarf and watched the first 4 seasons of Grey's Anatomy in 2 days flat.

Here's a picture, as proof :

I also started this blog.

Riding High on a Deep Depression.

I'm only happy when it rains - Garbage

Because I miss the band.
And this song, hits the bull's-eye.

There are times...

...when one feels competitive.

So one goes ahead and gets nominated for a rat-race. And despite not having much to gain out of it, one wants to win. Because no matter what the stakes, one is a sucker for victory.

Please note:

1. I am considering changing my name permanently to "one", to make the euphemisms and allusions more lucid. I might also insist on being referred to as "The One". Has this moronic sci-fi doomsday-prophecy ring to it. Thoroughly appropriate. I'll wear floor-length leather overcoats and dodge bullets even. I'm sure I can add a lightsaber in there somewhere too. (Darth Vader fascination.)

2. Aforesaid rat-race = Indiblogger of the month. Yep.
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The point of this post being:

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Any inconvenience caused is thoroughly intended.

So...

Diwali came and went.

And I spent it trying to negotiate with a particularly virulent throat-infection. Do you know what I did not do? I didn't magnify my carbon footprint by a million times. I didn't even aim aerial fireworks into any nosy, obnoxious neighbor's houses. Imagine the agony.

I feel decrepit.
The coughing, wheezing, doubled-over in pain kind.

And I sound like Sunny Deol. No shit.

The Opulence of the Absolute.

तेषामेवानुकम्पार्थमहमज्ञानजं तमः |
नाशयाम्यात्मभावस्थो ज्ञानदीपेन भास्वता ||

From The Bhagavad Gita.
(Chapter 10, Verse 11)

Wishing you all a very Happy Diwali.

Uhlmann's Razor.

When stupidity is a sufficient explanation, there is no need to have recourse to any other.


I was in complete and absolute awe when I first read that. I think I still am. There are things you know, and there are things you learn. But there's nothing quite as insurmountable as plain crude logic. It's like gravity. Deny it, refuse to believe in it, wear your ignorance like a crown... and it's still going to drop coconuts on your head.

London Undersound.

One of the better things to come out of Buddha Bar. Challe did brew up some pretty good compilations, over 11 albums and 10 years. Of course, World music does have an unparalleled charm.

Mer-curial-maiden would also feature in the credits, for having introduced me to Sawhney.

Happy Sunday, World!
*dives back into piles of books, files and assignments*

Existential Crisis.

Disclaimer : This isn't really meant to be read. It just had to be written.

The angst wears off. It does, and then you're not sure what you're left with. Charred remains of uncertainty, perhaps. Some death-wishes, a little morphine. Torn bits of paper and cracked glass. Nothing shattered though. That would be grief. This is just an unsettling calm. Not placidity. More of the silence you're left with when something isn't there to fill up the space. It's void, it's vacuum. And it's half-silence. White noise. If you define your life in high contrast, it's the stark silhouettes that keep you sane. And now the lines fade away, and colors bleed into each other. Red for passion, green for envy, blue for melancholy, purple for all that is special. All tangled up. They've lost their identity, much like the feelings they represent. It's all a lumpy gray mass of floating debris. It's all a massive swirling vortex. Like ink-stained water down a drain. Every ripple is a meek protest. Decadence. Propriety. Providence. Words that fall into redundancy. It's like watching your world from a distance. On the outside, disconnected. Like one of those obscure art movies no one can figure out. You think to yourself that it's a tiresome storyline, poor narrative, and underpaid actors. The director seems to have quit a long time back. He just sits up there, with popcorn and beer, and sighs every now and then. One questions his existence. Or does away with questions altogether. What are they anyway? An isolated judgment call. How far does logic go? There's a yes, and there's a no. But there's also the maybe. Maybe doesn't count, you say? Doesn't fit into binary logic? Strange how most of existence is based on maybes. On possibilities. On trial and error and randomness and uncertainty and probability and permutations and combinations and odds and chaos and that which we do not know and that which we do not believe and that which we do not understand, in space that has no bounds, time that may bend and laws that we cannot define. We can actually, but we're not even close to doing it. We're not even at the tip of the iceberg. And thinking down to the level of electrons and protons renders everything so ridiculously abstract that we lose sight of what we were looking for in the first place. Because complexity becomes easier to deal with, and the bigger, magnified image is intimidating. We understand mitochondria better than people. And people change. They change and they grow apart. And they don't understand each other anymore. Friendship is traded for familiarity, and knowledge for faith. It's all a trade-off. The universe isn't based on faith. It's based on trade-offs. Society, organizations, religion, faith, relationships, self - everything being the result of an elaborate barter system, spread over cultures, people, places. Little, cataclysmic conjectures at every cornerstone. And what do we do with it? We get on with our lives. Standing with 6 billion other people in 5 different continents in one of the hundred and ninety-five countries on the third rock from the very average star near the relatively less-populated outer-edge of one of the several galaxies of an ever-expanding universe, we drag ourselves out of bed every morning, squint at the scraggly-looking thing in the mirror, and brush our teeth. And then we add another day to the story of our lives, without having any vague idea of our role in the turbulent cosmos. Of how every action really does have an often-overlooked reaction. We remain oblivious of our impact on the fate of a person living halfway across the world eating pepperoni pizza, and vice versa. Then, one happens to wake up one day and realize that sometimes the things you believe in simply run their course and fade away. And you're left with nothing to count on, nothing to call your own, nothing to define yourself in terms of. Just those lumps of indistinguishable color and morphine that you don't need. Because the numbness is almost overwhelming. Everything is measured in almosts and somewhats. The things that you would have given your life for, don't matter to you anymore. Everything seems to be a lost cause. You yearn to feel as intensely as you used to. You crave any form of completeness. You wonder if this lack of assurance could be traded for a dose of disillusionment. You wonder how the world could sell out its morality for a convenient vantage point. A struggle with integrity for some, and self-destructive tendencies. And the vacuum. The black-hole of a thing right in the middle of the cerebral cortex. You can't begin to imagine the things it could swallow into itself. Or all that it already has.

Joy / Wonder

Brave New World.

Tell me this doesn't remind you of Huxley.

Tell me you don't see a hint of 1984.
Tell me dystopia is a myth.

Go ahead. Tell me.


P.S. Yes, that would indeed be China's National Day parade. And yes, I know the differences between totalitarianism and communism.


I also know the one similarity. That, my friend, would be the deal breaker.

The whole world... is still on my string.

For the love of indie music.
And then we go crazy with it.

Amusing Pop Culture Moment of the Month.

Gay black guy(aptly titled Miss J): Go girl! You look so mean honey, that you've got what it takes to become America's Next Top Model!

Girl(bursts into tears and) babbles: I'm for Jesus Christ. Y'know he wants me... to help the world. And I... will do whatever he wants me to do! *Attempts to brush non-existent tears off without ruining makeup*
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I do not watch crappy television. I don't watch television at all. But this gem of a thing was on youtube's homepage. I couldn't resist. And I ended up watching all of it. Which at one point also included a cheerleader with a broken leg, hopping down a ramp with crutches. With a STILETTO on the one surviving foot!

Considering the doses I receive on a regular basis, I was convinced that I had definitely acquired an immunity towards stupidity. But this is just overkill.

There was also this woman who claimed she could castrate a hundred cows a day. And went on to describe the procedure. With the hackneyed hilly-billy southern American accent. That, was the golden moment. She's a frikkin' messiah by those standards. It seems, the day is saved. Hallelujah!

Impropriety and Indulgence.

Pingu: There's fizz coming out. Out of my NOSE!
...and I'm trying to maintain COMPOSSSSSSSZZUUUURRRREEEEEEE...!!!

Me : *giggle* *snort* *giggle*
You think there's any way of finding out if we're talking too loud?

Pingu: And why does that guy across the room have horse-blinkers on?


We got our answer.
Wisdom is a Tamil-Brahmin best friend.
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P.S. I survived the week.

Lets Talk About...

RIDICULOUS DEADLINES.

First, my exams clash with Journo Junction at Kamala Nehru College. Like it happens every year. Now, it's taken me an immense amount of time and effort to accept that fact, and gain some semblance of having moved on. But THIS, is just ridiculous! Just when I had Meet The Media at IP College for a much-deserved compensation, all hell breaks loose. The HOD slams a project presentation on my head. Which means I have a 120-page dissertation to write, edit, format , print and get spiral-bound, a presentation to prepare, and a viva to study for. All in 2 days flat. This, in addition to enough pending practical files and assignments to dive into and drown.

To set the record straight, KNC was my version of Narnia. I managed to grab a brief stint there in the Journalism department before fate socked me in the jaw. Pity, because now whenever I'm studying higher calculus and butting my head into a wall the night before an exams, I tend to fantasize about the "what-ifs", all winding down to the same choice I made. I still have a very prevalent soft-corner not just for KNC and journalism itself, but the acquaintances I have from that time as well. Though I spent very little time there, it's something I ruminate over enough for it to be a bit of a problem sometimes.

The choice I made was based on ground realities. They're not going to change. Logic rules the head. The heart, however, has an inclination towards reckless abandon. I don't regret anything I've done. But there are times when one knows that a time-machine would have been a convenient invention. Some amount of regression is to be expected.

My apologies to Anty and Just ME.
You have no idea how much I wanted this.

I could turn into Hulk right about now.