Quote of the Month. Original.

"One of the good things about living alone is that you can throw stuff around whenever you are frustrated, and nobody would say anything....but the irony is, you yourself gotta pick it all up later and set it right. "

Nailpaint, OJ, and Hiatus

Notice the contrast between the black and the orange. Cool, yeah? :D

(BestFriend said blood would have been better instead of juice, and I threw a marble vase at him. Hypothetically, of course. :P
Like I happened to enlighten somebody who asked about him, he’s actually a very nice guy who sometimes says wise stuff after…like…getting hit on the head with a football during a game, or something like that. But that is less often and so he’s usually at the receiving end of all my hypothetical violence. :D )
(Oh and by the way, the pictures are mine.)

Anyways,
I had a full-blown nostalgia trip a few days back. Went to school for some work and it was like- Whoa. They’re going on just the same even with all of us not in it anymore. But that was a fleeting weird thought. So I came back home and decided to bring some order to the chaos in the universe. Now I’m the kind of person who can’t stand clutter AT ALL. Even if the clutter consists of precious objects. And sorting / organizing stuff is almost therapeutic, next only to shopping (which translates to bringing in more stuff to be organized. : | Uh. Ain’t life so paradoxical? ).

So I sorted re-sorted and organized re-organized all my skool stuff- questionpapers, tests, random notes passes in class, scribblings and idle doodles, poetry drafts, keepsakes from trips with friends and a whole lot of other unclassified stuff accumulated from the past three years or so- into neat paper-clipped sheaves, then envelopes and dustproof seal-able folders and stowed it all away out of sight in the hinterlands of the closet.

Yeah, I’m emotional like that. But it felt better. Like, now my future biographers would have no difficulty at all in reconstructing in total detail the story of my life even if I happen to grow into an 85 year old amnesiac eccentric old woman. :( That’s a morbid thought I know.

Oh. What in sweet hell is the point of this post? It is this. I’m going on a break from blogging till some of the entrance examinations I gotta give get over. And that’s gonna take two months at least. Might be blogging intermittently and replying to comments.
Funny part is, people go on hiatuses between blogging. And I, apparently, blog between hiatuses. : / Yeah whatever.

However, I’ll be Twitter-ing and updating upon the general state of the world around me and so I put its widget right here on the sidebar *points* . So keep checking back. Or follow me on twitter. (You could comment on the twitters in this post's comment page, if you would like to.)

There’s no point probably even in informing about this since nobody is like dying to read what I write anyways. But if somebody actually is, *pauses to blow delicately at her fingernails* I have some other alternatives for ‘em:

• Go check out Tumblr and Plurk. Pretty cool, both of them. Miniblogging services, with Tumbler being the more advanced cousin. Plurk is almost like twitter but has a really delightful interface and an actual timeline that’s totally worth checking out. Tell me if you join so I could add you to my network. (As of now, Plurk appears to be open only to invites. This was not so the time I joined that. So if you can't wait to join that, drop me a line and I'll send you an invite.)

• De-clutter your own life.

• Write eulogies and sorrowful poetry dedicated to remembrances of me :P (Okay, that was a farji random suggestion. )

• Add goodness to somebody’s life. In any way.

• Spend more time OUT THERE than in virtual reality.

• Make a to-do list and complete it.

• Then repeat the above process until you finish all your pending/overdue work. :D

(Do any of all this above, then blog about it and let me know. I’ll give you a special handwritten certificate of commendation. :D Except for point#1 of course. :P)

By the time you do this, I’ll already be back, promise. :) Hopeully with the extra pounds lost and a place in a med college. Wish me luck.

Till then, keep on rocking.

Love and peace, universe!
:)

PS: How's the new header pic I created? Was the previous one better?

Her Princess Dreams

Our local presswali’s daughters Beena and Puja got married recently. Beena’s a bit older than me and Puja is all of 11-12. Yeah, and she was wed off, though she will be staying with her mother only for a few more days. When I first heard this I did, but now I don’t really blame their mother as such. What else was she supposed to do- her husband walked out on them after a bout of heavy drinking once 7-8 years back and she doesn’t even know he is alive or not; she can hardly scrape some money together from her daily job of ironing people’s clothes and other such odd jobs here and there in a few houses. And she herself is a very frail, weak woman, having recently suffered multiple fractures while repairing their one-room shack. I guess she needed some anchorage- an assurance that someone will be there to look after her daughters if she’s dead and gone. There’s another reason as well. She couldn’t afford to organize two different wedding ceremonies, however unlavish, at two different points of time.

But will the girls really be ‘looked after’ as such? I wonder. From all that I know of Beena, she’s a very serious, very somber girl, already apparently weighed down by life. I haven’t seen her smile often. And she’s probably gone to just another small town and will have to keep on doing all that she did here, with the added cares of a household that she would be supposed to manage. And her husband will perhaps, a few years down the line, hang out with the village prostitutes, come back drunk and possibly walk out on their relation just like her father did.

God forbid, but if something like that happens, what about her princess dreams- you know, the kind where everybody gets to live happily ever after? It’s hard to believe that, but maybe her circumstances never allowed her to have any. Who knows.

A Polynesian Rhapsody

I was experimenting with a style I hadn't tried in poetry: experience projection. Describing through somebody else's eyes, not your own. Writing as how they would have felt in a given situation. And I came up with this, inspired by "Pioneers of the Pacific" a recent article in the National Geographic Magazine (Roff Smith and Stephen Alvarez, March 2008) about an ancient race of Native Pacific explorers who discovered and colonized almost all of the hundreds of then uninhabited, scattered Pacific islands east of Australia, including Fiji, Tahiti, Easter Island, Polynesia, starting 3000 years back. Their daring voyages in those ancient times have been equated to lunar landings of 1900s in terms of their relative boldness at the time they were undertaken.

They used to undertake long voyages on their hand-built and hand-rigged canoes (no fossil fuel power 3000 years ago :) ), searching for new islands to settle upon. It wasn't like they were forced to move, or that there was pressure on the land. They numbered only a few thousands and the islands were way too many, nearly 300 in Fiji alone. They did it all just for the sake of exploring new frontiers. Researchers now say that one of the reasons why they were able to undertake such long and daring voyages was that they went against the direction of generally prevailing wind currents, so that even if they did not discover any new land, they could just turn around and the wind would take them back where they started from.
Eventually, in a 1000 next years or so, their descendants perhaps reached South America also, eastward from Australia.

So I kind of got inspired from the concept and the wonderful photography in the article and wrote something. It captures a particular moment in the life of two of these people---a couple. The man is setting out on an indefinite voyage to the sea, not knowing when he will be able to return, and even if he will return or not---because after all it's going to be him against the ocean. Here is what his beloved says to him before he sets out.

Go forth, mariner
The blue stretches to infinity
Discover a new paradise
For the two of us...

May the gods guide your way,
The heavens steer you right
And when your spot new land
Marked by towering banks of cloud
Beyond the dusky horizon
And billowing fumes from boiling lava
Oozing into the ocean,
May the guardian spirits
Protect your canoe from the heat..

But if you do not find it
Ride the trade winds back home soon
I'll be waiting
In our moss-hung cave beneath the cliff
Obsidian will shimmer
Vivid tropical blossoms will sparkle
In my soul
Getting a whiff of
Your intoxicating scent of the sea
Paradise wherever you will be.

*Obsidian is a kind of beautiful natural volcanic glass used in that culture for making ornaments and stuff.

This collage was complied by me for the poem.



The text of the NGM article can be found here.
Pics courtesy Google Image Search, Corbis and Stephen Alvarez for NGM.
Poem (c) Sanyukta, March 2008.

T.G.I.F

Womanhood is a gift. Thank God I'm Female! :)

Happy Women's Day to us.

Why physics always reminds me of Rome

Yeah, life is generally good. Except that I kind of screwed up my Chem Board Exam paper. No it ain't that bad actually, but not as good as I wanted it to be. (And that, my readers, is the metaphor for life.)
(Gawd. I sound like Charlotte Bronte.) :D

Now next is physics and I'm taking no chances with it at least. But for how long can you keep appreciating the elegant nuances of subatomic particles and the intangible dynamics of semiconductor electronics? Not that I don't like studying stuff. But I'm wishing I had studied harder last year. Heck, even this last month.
And I increasingly feel I have more inclination towards literature, languages, history, myth, art, designing, ya know, stuff like that. Non-technical intellectuality. More human stuff.
Or Life Sciences. I could read biology day in and day out and not get tired of it. And I like all that. Yeah I know I'll have enough of even that in some med course (for which I'll have a fiz exam first. Argh.) I have enough of that supposed-to-study-stuff in bio even now.
But. I'm. Supposed. To. Mug. Fiz. Now.

On second thoughts, physics is kinda cool. And people hold science people (like, real science people. Researchers, scientists.) in more awe than they do designers/authors/historians. I mean, not as people, but their work in generally more respected, or should I say, considered more erudite. Or at least that's what I have observed. (Remember Vittoria Vetra, anybody? :D)
( I wouldn't mind being a physicist if that would, in addition, also make me as lean, as confident, and as smart as what she was portrayed to be. It's not like I'm particularly horrible. Glowing skin, check. Long black hair, check. Earthy features, maybe. "Raw sensuality"? Not for myself to judge :P But slender like that? I wish.
No seriously, I think she was pretty cool. Her whole character. And driving around Rome examining old churches for clues to a wild macabre treasure-hunt-like chase...and that too with a smart, macho, swimmer-physique, Harvard-brain guy (*sigh*) while an un-found Antimatter bomb is ticking away to total annihilation. That all would be totally my thing too. :D )

See? Started off talking about physics. Guess I gotta go back to my teeny-tiny atoms and nuclei doing that crazy decay-dance of theirs.

But who would ever believe that of all the people in the world (or now out of it :D), it was nobody else but Dan Brown who inspired me to study fizix with less hatred. :D At least for some time.

Mission Intro

I don't think the new year has had a really great start for me. I mean, I'm lagging in all my study schedules, am past all the deadlines I set for myself...but no end in sight...And the strangest thing is, I’m not getting pro-active, like I usually happen to do.

Wish someone, something would show me the way, soon. I have the potential; don’t want to be just another wreck.

But I’ve realized that writing or any other form of creative expression is kinda necessary for me. When I don’t do anything creative for a long period of time, it’s like a clot in my head that needs to be gotten out to rid me of the pressure. Not very pretty analogy, I know.

So I think from now on I’ll blog on schedule—say twice/thrice a week at least. Or maybe I should fix a particular day. Yeah, that would be better. Blog on Sundays, Tuesdays; lock myself in a room with books, caffeine, and no internet on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays; and finish long-overdue tasks of saving the world on Saturdays. In between all this, teach my kid sister the alphabet and the correct words to “Johnny, Johnny” while trying not to think about little Johnny’s namesake supermodel-actor.
Also wash my little Carrie and supervise the maid while mom’s gone to work. (I found the maid watching The Bold and The Beautiful---just watching, coz she doesn’t understand English---in some of her idle minutes yesterday. :D)

Got to do some self-maintenance as well.

Maybe I should put off saving the world on Saturdays till all of this gets done. :D

So will try to keep you updated about Mission Status as often as possible, and other general randomness. Keep coming back.

(pics courtesy Corbis.com)

About a man, his daughter, and a nonexistent son.

Sometimes I think Dad misses a son in his life. Of course, my parents don't believe in all that super crap about the son being the pride of the family and the parents' "ladder to heaven" like so many people in this majorly sick and prejudiced society of ours do. Me and lil sis are the very cornerstones of their life....they would do anything to see us happy.

Yet, sometimes I think Dad would have liked a son. He never ever hints/mentions anything of that sort, in fact, I don't even think this idea ever crossed his mind in its full realization. But perhaps it's always present in his sub-conscious.

When I was that little girl with short tomboy-ish hair, Dad used to rub them dry for me everytime I washed them. After a point, my hair grew too long for him to manage. That was the end of it. He once hinted at a set of toy cars when the same little girl wanted a new plaything. I made a face and chose a Barbie instead. And that was the end of it. When I was still that little girl, he used to buy denims from the garment store for me. After a point, I began to choose floral prints. That was the end of it too.

You see how it is...

• He won't ever get to hear another masculine voice at home that he can associate with a person in our family.

• Our family holiday album from last year doesn't contain a pic of him playing golf with his son at the Shillong Golf Course.

• We won't ever have an argument in the house about which latest bike to buy.

• I can't go on trekking trips with him all round the month anytime.

• He and mom can never imagine being cared for after retirement by a sweet daughter-in-law, like their siblings can.

• He still has to park both the cars inside the driveway himself every night. [*sigh*.....yeah, I'm still learning the safe parking part...the driveway-cum-parking area is pretty narrow :/]

• He still has to depend only on himself for calling / hassling / bargaining with usually grouchy car mechanics. [Yeah, I can manage the storekeeper / plumber / electrician / appliance servicing personnel...but mechanics are way too much! Plus I know like practically nothing about the anatomy of an automobile...let alone do even some minor fixing myself. Told you I'm learning. Don't label me the insensitive daughter.]

• He himself has to do all the putting-of-strings-of-lightbulbs-on-roof-and-walls at Diwali.

• He has only his voice to drawl along to sad oldie songs on the radio.

• Dad always has to rely on the judgement of the women in his life [mom and me, sis is way too small. :) ] besides his own judgement, in deciding everything from which t-shirts to buy to where to invest.

He is by far the strongest and yet the most sensitive guy I've ever known. Yet, I think he could have done with a little more help in all the everyday stuff. I do help him, but beyond a limit, he wouldn't let me, or would be extra-thankful, thus propelling me back into I'm-Daddy's-little-girl mode. And can you ever help anybody when the other person wouldn't take it, just for the sake of not troubling you, although he needs that help? Yeah, that's my Pops.

Like when I went to pay the phone and electricity bills for the first time, he gave me an extra 100 bucks for the mere fact of having successfully done so! And only yesterday when his car broke down and he called me to pick him up in mine, he said, "Thank God you can drive now..." And I was like "Sheesh, Dad, Don't make it so big...." . These are the times I think he thinks I'm going out of my way to help him, which is not the case. Yet, another day, when I hadn't cleaned up my car for long, he was like "If you drive, maintain the thing as well. See, Mr Y's son does that every weekend..." and I mentally said to him "How can I help it if you don't have a son?"
Now I guess that was wrong of me. I took his words in the wrong sense, he never meant to compare me to a son by his words, was only citing an example.

At 52, perhaps a 16-year-old daughter cannot help Dad as much as a guy could have. I might try to fill the gaps for Dad, but still, none of all the stuff that is the business of fathers and their sons will ever transpire between him and a younger guy. I see him looking fondly, almost-wistfully at my guy-friends, and I feel he misses a son in his life.

Don't worry, Dad. I'll make you proud one of these days. Just wait. And meanwhile, while you wait, just give me this month's bills to pay. And oh, the car mechanic's workshop number too.
I'll learn about automobile anatomy and money-matters eventually in time. But right now, I think we can go shopping for shirts at least.
:)

Just a few words

"Be careful when you give your heart to someone, because when you are giving your heart, you are not only giving that person the right to love you, but also the power to hurt you."

Quote courtesy BestFriend. Hmm…the guy speaks utter truth these days...

Meet IVAN

So, I think I should finally introduce you to someone very interesting, intelligent, and at the same time extremely exasperationg.

Meet my IVAN– Inner Voice that Annoys and Nags.
Rather a loose description, but then, Ivan IS loose. Always present at the back of my mind, this being has a tendency to pop up at the most unexpected moments, and is powerful enough to ruin my mood completely.

For example, a few days back I was kinda feeling glad about having assigned the color blue to love, in the series of haiku poems I’ve been writing in which I gave a color to each emotion. I started to think about a drink to associate love and the color blue with, like hope-yellow-lemonade-sweet, and happiness-pink-zinfandel-intoxicating. And suddenly Ivan shrieked happily : “Copper sulphate solution!”
So, right now, he’s doing an excited tribal dance, celebrating the beautiful (*rolls eyes*) way in which he has bonded together me, love, and—you guessed it—CuSO4.

Now you see why I hate this Ivan sometimes?

Well...

Have you ever noticed how sometimes some things just happen, or not happen. The same goes for me and blogging. All day long words, phrases, topics keep floating in my head, about people, situations, anything that can make a good something to write about...but then it just doesn't happen.

Guess I'm having a writer's block right now. It's good, in a way, Now all those huge, thick, hit-on-your-head-see-stars chem and physics books don't gather layers of dust like they used to. Having nothing better to do, I apply my precious creative imaginative mind inside my pretty head to actually think about how infinitely large charged metal plates with a dielectric between them behave and how are the properties of diamminechloridomethylamine platinum chloride different from those of tetraamminechloridonitrito-N cobalt chloride. (Yeah, don't you just love scientific jargon? :D )


Four long hours, actually six from tomorrow, of coaching classes in our supposed-to-be-summer-holidays doesn't really make a good background for being able to write happy-happy, non-crabby blog posts.

Friend since the silly days of eighth, Ank, says one day : "Gawd...life has become so complicated ever since we passed class tenth.. I really wish I could enjoy my present..." (Yeah, she's the type who would much prefer that to all boring phy, chem and math.)

But then, looks like we only have two choices: chill marofy now and suffer later in some tedious boring underpaying job, or slog, slog, slog through the present and shape out a good life for ourselves.

I much prefer the latter.

You just can't put a title to certain things.

My unintentional hiatus from blogging has gone pretty long. But well, life these previous days was all about trying to make peace with boring routines, study, and the general absence of me-time.

I always feel there should be a place you can express yourself in without having to think how it would be interpreted in the light of non-context events...and I'm relieved none of all the people who know me personally , as in like everyday life, have the address to this blog. Except Best Friend, of course, and I don't generally put him in the same category as the other "all the people" . :)

Sometimes things strike you in full, complete realness just when you least expect them to. Drove past Best Friend's dad's office the other day and remembered him telling me they might have to move to another place. And suddenly I felt how really khaali-khaali it would be if that happened.
:(

Certain people are so much a part of your days, your life-- that you begin to wonder how you EVER lived without them, isn't it?
:)

Moonlight Musings

So, after a long, long time, there was a power fault somewhere in the city and our colony was plunged into delicious darkness.

In the days before the pretty low-cost power backup systems, when I was a little kid; small-towners us, I mean the whole neighborhood, used to gather onto lawns/rooftops in the event of a night powercut--- kids telling each-other spooky stories, dads together blaming the electricity department for irregular maintainence and picking the faults of the administration in general, and moms all together preparing dinner by candlelight and discussing the latest trends in jewellery to "101 Ways Of Tackling Unruly Children" and everything in between.

It was all interesting, in a way. And doesn't happen anymore.

But me, I preferred solitude today; and armed with a scarf, went outside on the patio, shut the door of the room to prevent any streaks of light from inside falling on the patio and thus spoiling the effect; and sat down to enjoy the scene.

There was a light mist all around, a nearly-half-moon floating in an ink-blue sky among silvery-gray clouds; and the leaves of the kachnaar tree against it. It was good--- the fuzzy, blurred shadows and silhouettes because of the mist, the absolute stillness of the night, the pale moonlight--- it was wonderful.

What disappointed me was the limited presence of this ambience around me. Lapsing into an almost-dream, I wished I could have a huge estate in the suburbs of some beautiful place. A stone mansion with long French windows overlooking wide gardens; a cobbled pathway; a panoramic view of the countryside; some old windmill in the distance; bright white fences; flowers; huge oak and maple trees...
Then a succession of images floated across. Rain, thunderstorm, lightning, candlelight reflected on polished wood, a friend, remembrances...

I woke up and smiled at the obsessive charm of such an unreal, idyllic life, something which happens only in novels. No way this was gonna happen to me. Ever. Reality is so completely different. In reality, I'm just this ordinary girl, hoping, studying and struggling to shape a life for herself.
In reality, I would most probably get to have nothing more than a moderately-sized house on a noisy city street.

:/

The mist had drifted away. The moonlight turned from pure clean pale blue to a dull sickly yellow; and the shadows and silhouettes of the tree leaves were starkly outlined, the jagged edges clearly visible.
No softened, blurred edges; no dreaminess.

Slightly disappointed, I came back inside.

Someday

I'm just darn freaked out about this sleepy town I live in. Always so dusty, so hot all around the year..and now it has simply REFUSED to let the winter enter. It's November 13th and still the day is so really hot..argh.
I don't like this place, the dust, the grime, the everything.


My dream-place-to-live-in would be some lovely riverside town, with a quaint and ancient look about it. Promenades along the river, maple-lined streets that turn yellow-orange in autumn, a large cobbled square, warmly lighted storefronts, and lovely weather. Oh, and I would like a suburban villa with lots and lots of trees around it.
And did I mention a red convertible?



Maybe someday I get to live my dream.

How would your dream place look like? Has anyone of you got to live the dreams you had at 16?

Sixteen

So last month I turned sixteen. Nothing much, really. In fact, I was rather sad coz one more teen year had gone by. I obviously don't know how it feels like to be twenty-something, but most of you would agree that teen years are the funnest years, right?
[Heck, there are important-er things than proper grammar, no? :D]

Anyways, you guess what-- Mom n Dad decided to gift me a new car.
Oh yes oh yes *bows graciously to your applause*
*glee*
Actually, here's a confession: I don't know how to drive a two-wheeler. AND I've never rode a bicycle since..um...like ..say..seven years. BUT I learnt to drive a car last year and of course, having no other choice, ahem, I take it along to coaching classes and stuff.

[Now if anyone of you reading this is a trafffic police officer, or the mother's aunt's son's cousin of the second cousin twice removed, or whatever, of a trafffic police officer, please don't come to get me about my drivers' license. Pleeaassse.]

So what I now need to decide is the color of the car, which is going to be delivered in about a week. Shortlisted colors are red and black. At times I have a vision in my mind's eye of myself driving a black car, and at other times a vision of myself driving a red one. These two images change and fluctuate so much that what I now see is myself driving a brown car.

Okay, that was plain silly, but what do u say? Red or Black?

Wrote a Haiku

"Clutched the coffee cup
Until no more warmth was left
In its emptiness. "

"My Love grows deeper everyday..."

It happened yesterday. No, sorry, I'm not going to tell you any corny story. Actually I was getting bored yesterday and decided to try out the dictionary feature of my cellphone operator service. For the word 'love', it gave this as one of the meanings:.

Love: (noun) a climbing species of Clematis (c. Vitalba)

Clematis, by the way, is actually a "temperate woody plant of the buttercup family, with showy flowers", my encyclopedia says...

:D
Haha..so now I think you can grow 'love' in your own garden....what say?

This is a forward I received today. It said the more people I send it to, the more happiness I would get...Personally, I don't really believe in this kinda stuff...but the message was interesting, so I decided to post it here. Just suppose, if sending it to 15 people or above could get me "lots of happiness", how happy I would be if I made it available to the whole world (figuratively speaking) !!!!!!(I guess I told you I didn't believe in thsese things really..., didn't I? )

Hmm..so here it is--

ONE. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
TWO. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.
THREE. Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.
FOUR. When you say, "I love you," mean it.
FIVE. When you say, "I'm sorry," look the person in the eye.
SIX. Be engaged at least six months before you get married.
SEVEN. Believe in love at first sight.
EIGHT. Never laugh at anyone's dream. People who don't have dreams don't have much.
NINE. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.
TEN. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.
ELEVEN. Don't judge people by their relatives.
TWELVE. Talk slowly but think quickly.
THIRTEEN. When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, "Why do you want to know?"
FOURTEEN. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
FIFTEEN. Say "bless you" when you hear someone sneeze.
SIXTEEN. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
SEVENTEEN. Remember the three R's: Respect for self; Respect for others; and responsibility for all your actions.
EIGHTEEN. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
NINETEEN. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
TWENTY. Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.
TWENTY-ONE. Spend some time alone.