Sweet Nothings

Its past midnight and I'm listening to Adele crooning out her love to someone. I feel light tonight and I haven't even downed any breezers today.*Mighty pleased with myself* :)

I've just instilled some new enthusiasm in me to start walking again after a rather painful week with my knee and also study again.

But we shan't waste valuable post space on injured knees and ruthless exams!

This week I made a little ad/poster for a friend who's starting a lunch delivery service. It was only half-hour's work but my mind felt rather alive in those few minutes. The bonus was that my friend was quite happy with it!

Adele's moved on to setting fire to the rain by the way.

Read in Cate Blanchett's voice :D

"The world is changed

I feel it in the water

I feel it in the earth

I smell it in the air

Much that once was is lost."

I love Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings' and I can't stand anyone who doesn't like it.

Well, its been three days in this new house and I came across my copy of the book with the bookmark in place from the last time I read it. I got transported to the Shire immediately. I love how beautifully they shot the movies.

The beginning lines I picked for this post quite accurately sum up how I feel about how this past fortnight has been. On second thought minus some of the dramatics from the lines.

Its been a depressing week mostly cause I've been fighting with people and also cause I've flunked some important exams. I expected that, I fell sick and dizzy at the exam center.What's completely infuriating is how close I was to passing for the second time!

Now I have to start from scratch at finding a cheap place to stay in the US while I make the short trip to write the exam again.

Oh about the new house, its okay,I guess. It was a nightmare finding a place to stay after coming back.

This time I've promised myself that I'll do whatever I want on my own and without taking any help. Accepting any sort of help from anyone is not turning out to be very good for my mental health.

I'm going to hell ye all!!

Or maybe I'll end up stuck in limbo forever before I can even get there. Hell seems too ambitious a dream to have.

Reading the above does make me uneasy now. I've usually been able to make at least one dark or mildly funny joke in my head during tough times. This time nothing feels even remotely funny.

Well, I think I'm going to hell cause I'm collecting so much bad karma. Everybody around seems so disappointed in me. I think if I went near Janis, I might just disappoint her as well. Dogs like dead meat better.

In fact I think I should set up my own customer complaint desk to field all the calls. Send me a memo!

I remember when I was on my flight back to this place, I kept praying "Oh please God, can't we land in Jamaica rather than Bangalore?". I mean the two aren't very far,are they? A teensy, little detour could hardly do any one any harm.

Then God granted my wish and sent me to a place that goes by the name 'Rock bottom'.


P.S. Whenever I feel better, I'm quite likely to come back and remove this post. I guess its better to just leave it alone for better or for worse. So what if all this sounds rather pathetic and self-indulgent

The silver is gleaming
and the table set
The chairs are drawn
and the curtain raised

I look out the window.
the moon streaming down the cobbled path
made me wonder
could there be a more loyal friend?

The Wake-up Call

I have just had my equivalent of Archimedes's 'Eureka!' moment. My discovery is a lot humbler than buoyancy though. I recently saw a marriage invite from a frienemy and suddenly found myself reminiscing about my own past dates, more precisely the time when I had only just begin talking to the guys without having gone out with them ever.

Its struck me quite suddenly that while dating, most of the time I got involved/found myself (in the power of!lol!) for a long/short/fleeting period of time with unremarkable guys who I did not find overwhelmingly attractive in the beginning but all of who had the same innocent sounding request to make.

They've all asked me for a wake-up a call for the next day. This is around the second or third time that I have spoken to them over the phone or chatted over the net or while among a group of friends.

I used to find the wake-up call request a bit odd initially but didn't want to draw much attention to it(or to myself by saying no) cause it wasn't as if I was being asked to lay down my life (which they usually do,especially towards the end). I thought it was probably usual and I didn't want to be the girl who sat reading too much into a silly little wake-up call. After all, its just a wake-up call,right? Doesn't even take two seconds!

When you're a teenager, you are acutely conscious of people labeling you as something or the other if you did something no one else does. In order to substantiate this statement,let me go down in my history when I got my hair colored (which was a disaster)in college and was henceforth called "Miss BlondIntelligent" (spelt like that). For the hundredth time,the color was not blonde! That title was put together by another unremarkable guy who thankfully I do not have the misfortune of having given a wake-up call.

Its a crafty trick but does not require a lot of wit. You want to register in someone's mind, you give them a task that they have to do by a certain time. The person will spare you at least two or three thoughts where they wouldn't have any,had you not asked for something. Plus you become the one who called!

This realization has not been pleasant but its been funny. I wish I'd smarten up already! Tired of being the naive one!

As of the last guy who asked me for a wake-up call, I said yes to the request and then proceeded to forget all about it. Guy wants wake-up call, guy buys rooster!

Finis

Money is the root of all evil.

I've never completely reconciled myself with this belief but I experience it more and more in daily life now. It can do wondrous things to relationships. Its proven even in fairy tales. Cinderella and Snow White both married rich princes and so did Rapunzel. The story wouldn't have been quite so enduring or glamorous if the princes hadn't been rich and if they didn't have big castles to party. The princes could condescend to fall for the pretty but poor stereotype simply cause they were lucky enough to have the money for such frivolities. I hope for the sake of all the children who grew up reading these tales including me that the prince didn't remind the poor girl about the money she didn't bring with her during recession. :p

I wish I could learn to make more sensible decisions about money but despite all the pitfalls I've had, I still find myself frequently heavy at heart and light in my pockets.

Sometimes in my most desperate moments I've imagined that I've become fabulously wealthy and have hired a financial manager who keeps the tabs on money which I'm so pathetic at doing myself or maybe make me a pauper depending on the kind of mood I am in at the time. A dream should be entertaining if nothing else.

I am starting to enjoy the genre of gothic novels. I wish I hadn't read my first, 'Wuthering heights' as early as I did. I didn't really enjoy it at the time, being more inclined towards cheery, happy novels. Now I feel that gothic novels are a bit like entire movies shot in the dark and I'm taking my time to start appreciating them.

Its best to pick up a book without being bothered what category it belongs to,I simply picked up Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier because I like the mystery description at the back.It was very enjoyable and I did not know this was a gothic novel until much later.

I have just finished Nathaniel Hawthorne's,'House of the Seven Gables'. The writer seemed so involved in everyone of the characters in the book. I must admit that in the beginning I grew a bit tired of his much too detailed descriptions of the habits of his characters. I wanted the story to get started! When it did start,it was very engrossing. I felt rewarded for my patience when I reached the chapter where we are told the story of the eerie and twisted way a man seeks revenge on the family which was his enemy since the time of his grandfather by binding the girl of the house to him through some spooky magic.

I think I am going to read more dark,creepy novels!

Holiday Homework

I am absolutely thrilled about taking a really long holiday at home very soon! Home, here I come!! 6 years away seems to have drained me of lots of essential things sooner than I like! Here's the grand list of things-to-do to bounce back!

Note to my friends: Anybody got a bicycle that I can borrow?

1. Feed Janis loads and loads of fish and meat so she can outbark the neighbour's dogs whenever they bark at me.

2. Stick lots and lots of colourful charts and decorations on the ceiling so I can imagine I'm in heaven when I open my eyes in the morning.

3. See Rodney Yee every morning for two hours.

4. Categorize and give fun names to the different books in the little library because the words Fiction,humor,horror etc don't cover my feelings for them anymore....

5. Drink lots and lots of lime,water and honey and hope that it drains the toxins of both the body and the spirit! My last coffee shall be in Bangalore.

6. Take slow walks with Janis. Give her lots of time to sniff at whatever's caught her fancy on the road while I take lots of time to sniff at the amazing fresh air and flowers.

7.Maybe bring Pandorasstead back from the dead.

8. Water plants while sparing exactly twenty minutes thinking about lessons learnt and not yet learnt at work.

9. Water plants while spending exactly two minutes thinking of every failed relationship and giving it all a water burial.

10. Trick some unsuspecting, old friend into taking me to Civic Center so I can do number 11 below.

11.Distribute flyers anonymously in Civic center among the guys to spread awareness that skin tight, transparent/netted shirts are NOT for everybody! My public service! Oh and you don't look macho in your black goggles from raipur market when you try to scare me by speeding and whirling your little metal tinkerbike at me when I'm crossing the road.

12. Actually try and work on Dad's idea of making compost at home.

Now we've made a lovely, hourglass figure of 12! Think all this looks ambitious enough for now!

Cheers!!!

Peering through rose colored glasses.

Over time,the glasses before our mind became rose colored. Here's the story of how it came to happen.

As we stepped into life's dim and bright alleys on our unsteady feet,we longed for great many things, we sought thrill, we wanted to unravel mysteries,to explore the limitless possibilities the world offered, above all we wanted to love and be loved with no restraints for wasn't that the biggest adventure of all ...

We were growing up and we saw a great many things,some dull,some bright,some dark and some disturbing cruelty,some moving stories of compassion and some rich laughter..

However as time passed, we tasted the sweetness and bitterness that was life, we grew frustrated..there seemed endless pain in our path and there seemed to be more bitterness than sweetness.

It seemed that we would never get what we desired so much... We decided to accept this fate by telling ourselves that this was probably a good thing,We wanted permanence,an end to these obscure unpredictable days.We felt too fragile for adventure. Stability and comfort felt more desirable than the excitement of walking the edge of a precipice. Now we had stability and a certain control over our own destiny,this delicate balance would be preserved only if things continued just the way they were.Who wanted the excitement and turmoil of boundless emotions anyway? We had enough of that sort of a thing. We could take what life gave us and be contented with it.You would not find us planning glorious tales of adventure anymore or jumping to touch the rainbow as were our foolish dreams once.

In this way, through the years, we achieved a state of stability.We felt contented in security.We felt confident in the knowledge that came from our multitude of experiences. We became comfortable with our ideas and instincts about the world as everything happened exactly as we supposed it would. Experiences gave us glasses which not only protected us but also gave us a sharper world view. As we grew more and more comfortable with our loneliness,there was nothing unforeseeable or unpredictable anymore. We painted our glasses rose red as nothing out of the ordinary could happen to us. We held the strings to our own future.

The only thing was that the world wasn't pink though it seemed to be that to us. It was changing even as we had stopped changing.

We stood at the side of the pink sea.The waves suddenly leapt in the air in a way they weren't supposed to and tossed to us in a flash of crimson,a key. Our heart pounded when we realized that we could have what we had always longed for at a time when we had stopped longing for it. The rose colored glasses didn't allow us to see that there was anything different in our hands. Nothing was worth the effort of travelling that painful path again.If it was ours,it would come to us on its own. Hadn't our experiences taught us what came of jumping into things headlong and letting go of ourselves? We would not chase butterflies again even if they promised to lead us to the end of the rainbow. We would not regret this. Or would we?

We shall begin again as if I'd never been away.

Someone should get around to manufacturing a freeloader repellent spray!

Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice -

"There are few people in this world who I love and even fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world,the more I am dissatisfied with it."

Attack of the Crazies!!!

In some parallel world, I am living in ancient Greece, I am studying for the joy of it. Knowledge would come to me sweet and steady. Books and people would not be insipid.

I could spend hours observing nature,listening to scholars,spinning theories about the future and not have wasted any time.

My mind would not be in a constant state of torpor. I would absorb all that I could see and read.

My only employment would be copying famous books for the public and this would be a job completely lacking raises and rivalries but rewarding everyday!

I'd probably be living on three meals a week and thus die young of disease but wow what a life that would be!

Pictures! Ahoy!