Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying

Trying to study copious amounts of information for the exams in January is a lot like trying to deep-fry a Thanksgiving turkey or, better yet, dragging a piece of furniture around wherever you go.
To put it simply: I’m tired. Exhausted. Clearly there’s a significantly lesser amount to study as compared to the gargantuan amounts that had been prescribed for the 10th std. Yet the content of the lessons for these exams are enough to make you question your sanity and wonder whether your life is taking a turn for the worse. I think the only reason I’m giving these exams and going to college is just for the sake of ‘getting educated’.
It’s quite a strange way to end the year. Inhaling textbooks and then flinging them across the room.
Happy holidays and all!

Can't Get There From Here

The funny thing about sleep is that it doesn’t always come when you want it to. Sometimes, I feel tired enough to doze off yet once I tuck myself in, I feel wide awake. While at other times, my mind tends to work overtime at precisely the moment I want it to rest. It’s usually an hour after I’ve tucked myself in, that I manage to get some of that much coveted REM.
They say that the simultaneous counting of sheep has been known to help. You know, when you count one sheep after another as they jump over a small fence. That’s never really worked for me, though. Instead of actually counting the sheep individually, I actually start to question and inquire the effectiveness of the method. Why sheep? Why not horses or badgers or otters? There’s an entire animal kingdom waiting out there, and yet the proprietor of this method picked sheep as the chosen form of visual imagery. Was he or she a farmer? Was he or she an animal rights activist? Or did he or she simply find sheep amusing? I guess we’ll never know.
Another procedure involves me playing a song in my head that can effectively drown out all my thoughts, musings and aforementioned questions. That tends to work quite well for me. But there will be one of those rare instances where the lyrics and melody are compelling enough to keep me awake and my foot moving along with the beat.
Writing this blog post seems to count as another method too. My eyes are beginning to close.

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This is something that’s been on my mind for a while now.
Van Gogh, the profoundly gifted painter was plagued with mental illness and frustration throughout his life. Yet he was so brilliant and articulate when it came to his art.
Or Sylvia Plath. Her poems always have those morose undertones which indicates how she must’ve been feeling at the time.
Even one of my favourite bands wrote their best and their most emotionally charged songs on their second album, where the songwriter lamented his feelings of isolation, pain, longing, disillusionment, anger and overall negativity. Even though at first the album was a commercial failure, it went on to receive cult status. And currently the same band, who now seem to be happy, radiating positive vibes and quite free from turmoil, are writing songs which are sewn and fitted for the mishap that we call the 21st Century. They seem mainstream and robotic, rather than their early material where they were more honest and original.
I’m just questioning the fact that is it possible to create a piece of work that has an overwhelming out pour of negative emotions, just so that it can go on to become great? Or is it possible to be peaceful, shiny and happy to create something that you hope can be just as great, yet it comes off as mediocre, mainstream and boring? Do people always need negativity to influence every creative muscle and organ in their bodies? Does negativity always define success? It just doesn’t seem quite clear to me.

Plane Tickets Are Too Expensive

As I passed the international airport about a week ago, I was overwhelmed by a waft of an extraordinary scent. A familiar one. The one I knew all too well. The fine-blended aroma of travel, passports, metal detectors, and language problems. It made me yearn to get away from this infernal city for a while. From the heat, the people, those damn textbooks…Anywhere. Absolutely anywhere.
Ysad, Sweden. … Or lost somewhere in the forests of Finland. I’m a great admirer of those Scandinavians Or, lolling about the rich, verdant pastures of Scottish Highlands. Or walking down the streets Florence, paranoid about those pickpockets yet managing to stare at the Duomo in utter glee. Or ambling down a street in Lucerne, munching away to glory on Swiss chocolates. The last time I was in Lucerne, it was a Sunday; everything was shut including the restaurant that served chocolate fondue, that I’d set my senses on. Or, spend the entire day at the Louvre, drooling over masterpiece after masterpiece. Or being burnt to a crisp under the California sun. Sigh.
Instead I’m forced to bury myself in a heap of textbooks along with barely a hint of a social life. Exams are next week. Yippie.

Will Diction Be Fiction?

English: Well, I suppose with its extensive use all over the world it can be regarded as a melting pot of cultures. A potpourri of sorts. I’ve always loved the language. My favourite part of studying English in school had nothing to do with the adverbs, pronouns, infinitives, gerunds, auxiliaries or any of that technical grammar stuff they usually force feed kids. It was the eloquent words of Shelley, Wordsworth, Browning, Blake, Tennyson, Frost, the short stories of P.G. Wodehouse, O Henry, Somerset Maugham and Hawthorne and the great tragedy Julius Caesar by Shakespeare that actually made it possible for me to sit up in class when I knew that I’d be better off sleeping to the sweet tune of my REM cycles. The exquisite use of words in telling a story or expressing a pivotal emotion is a sort of a literary banquet. The level of English being taught in college on the other hand…
Forget global warming, oil spills, natural disasters and corrupt politicians. It’s the English language that’s being repeated annihilated. Today’s English has metamorphosed colossally both good and bad. Well, mainly bad. I’ve made it a point to compile a list of words that are misused, mispronounced and frequently misspoken by people today.
Reeely – I hate to break it to you, but it’s not pronounced ‘reeeely’. It’s ‘really’. You might want to pay attention to that ‘a’ smack-dab in the middle of that word. And as to how it’s correctly pronounced: ’real’ as in ‘ The Spanish Inquisition is real’ and ‘ee’ as in the sound one makes when one is attacked by giant squirrels in the Peruvian Desert. So… I’m sure the general public and other homicidal rodents would duly pay heed to this.
Fab or Fantabulous – I’m tired of A-listers and wannabe A-listers using these particular words to describe a recent party or an air headed shopping spree. I mean, it’s bad enough that a word like ‘fabulous’ gets to suffer by being shortened. But to club it with ‘fantastic’?
Normalcy –Well, in reality, it’s ‘normality’. Sorry, I just needed to mention this technicality.
Bestie – This is what it’s come to, hasn’t it? Bestie?! Bestie?! Well, the worst part has not only to do with the phonetic sound of the ‘word’. It looks a hundred times worse when it’s texted from one walking, talking glamazon to another in the following sentence: ‘Shaddup. U ma bestie, okiee! Muahhh!!!!!!!!’
Like – I cannot stress on how many times this word gets used incorrectly in a sentence, let alone in an entire conversation! Everyone has the common misconception that it can be randomly inserted, just to link a sentence together. Like, ‘I had my hair done and then I like, went to the mall and like…’ See?
Believe you me – What is this? WHO did this? And why doesn’t that person have a conscience?’ Believe you me, otters are said to be taking over the planet as we speak.’ Well, I believe that this makes no sense whatsoever. Excluding those manic otters.
Beciz - It’s actually ‘because’. It’s pronounced ‘beciz’ in that L’Oreal ad which features Aishwarya Rai. Even though the ad has been running for close to a century now, I still don’t know how no one has noticed the mispronunciation before.
…And over the next few years there’ll be many more words which will be flogged, electrocuted and shot point blank. Till then, I guess it’s best not to speculate about the victims and continue making grammatically correct sentences. MIND IT.
Cheerio!

'Tis The Season

We live in an age where television shows are devoured thirstily and periodically by pre-teens, teens and young adults. Whatever’s new and even remotely dramatic is sure to get watched avidly and then judged on whether it can be watched avidly. And we’re part of that age, whether we like it or not. What with the world being currently dominated by murky oil spills, angry volcanoes that spew out drunken football players and fans, riots and heavy violence against a recent squirrel uprising and poetry professors getting elected by email, a tiny dose of fiction here and there wouldn’t hurt.
Television shows are getting harder and harder to not watch, these days. Comedies, medical dramas, legal dramas, police procedurals – they’re tailor made for audiences to raucously laugh at, hopelessly sob over or gasp and then proceed to have a minor heart attack after dusting off the last few crumbs of your blueberry muffin.
Now I’m hungry.
Anyway. You’ve got your story arcs, flashbacks, flash forwards, alternate realities, fatal twists and turns that make you wonder,” But wasn’t she dead?”, bottles of glycerin, witty one liners, false eyelashes and an extraordinary budget. And it’s all for the sake of entertainment. And employment.
I don’t watch too many of these shows but some of them are genuinely enjoyable and really entertaining. They’re smart, funny, gripping and sometimes, slightly deranged. Apart from their regular episodes and telecasts, the thing that gets me all enthusiastic is the season finales of a few select shows.
Season finales are the type of things that end the season of a particular television show, with a bang. It gives the writers a shot to go little crazy, do a little damage and commit some first degree murder and the viewers an incentive to keep watching and to remind them to pay their electricity bills. A lot of them are really expertly written and carefully handled.
Like, ‘Psych’ for instance. ‘Psych’ really stands out in the fourth season finale:‘Mr. Yin Presents’. Humorous, fast-paced and truly suspenseful are the words that come to mind. This episode is slightly darker compared to the others, but that’s what makes it so gripping. This particular one is littered with themes and motifs from Alfred Hitchcock’s films. You’ve got your classic shower scene from ‘Psycho’, the tower scene from ‘Vertigo’, a staircase comprising of ’39 Steps’, the wheelchair facing the ‘Rear Window’… The best part is that when the episode ends, I yearned to know the true identity of Mr. Yin. With the amount of damage he attempted to do and the untimely demise of the creepy-yet-strangely-lovable Mary Lightly, who wouldn’t want to know?
‘Lost’ finally came to end too. Imagine an island that has eerily strong electromagnetism, can time travel and move all over the globe. It has the ability to heal people and then eventually proceed to kill them. I agree. ‘Lost’ is deranged. But that’s the beauty of it, I’m afraid. I too have surrendered myself to this madness, about four years ago. But it didn’t end as beautifully as I thought it would. Without giving too much away, the 2 hour finale consisted of high melodrama involving violence in the rain, a much sought after plane and the highly dangerous ‘heart of the island’. The climax of the episode didn’t have a really big impact on me. The end left so many questions unanswered, so many doubts and theories hanging, so many dead ends left in their graves. It was the only plausible ending to the series, but left me quite unsatisfied. Even though it’s one of the most imaginative shows (which makes it by appearance, confusing and delusional), it’s truly lost itself in an incoherence of religion, science, mysticism and pure preachiness .
I’m not too fond of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. But if you hear of a shooter at Seattle Grace Hospital in the sixth season finale, it wouldn’t be that bad to just take a wee peek as hell ensues. But alas. No major character died. Nervous breakdowns were in the air. High melodrama and sanguinary ruled those two hours.
The ‘Bones’ season four finale was disappointing. Don’t get me wrong. ‘Bones’ is absolutely brilliant. But the season finale, meant to be dramatic and a drastic change from the usual ‘decomposition-and-dissection-in-the-science-lab’, comes off as slightly dull. But what I do love about ‘Bones’ is the no-nonsense bang with which each season starts. Fresh out of the oven and ready to dive head first into decayed human remains! Figuratively, of course.

Have You Ever Seen The Rain?

Ah, finally the Rain Gods have decided to enlighten us with our favourite form of precipitation, after watching us squirm and squiggle in the calorific weather, as they sit on large folding chairs with large KFC buckets in their hands. The heat was unusually high this year. Definitely worse than last year. I remember leaving the house and instantly being reduced to feeling like a burnt pancake or an overcooked salmon that readily invites decoration from Gordon Ramsay. Well, I don’t actually eat fish. The smell is just revolting. And their eyes just bore into you long after they’ve been removed and the entire fish has been cooked and brought before you. It’s no surprise that during the summer, tempers run high. Boredom runs even higher. I’m sure that residents of the city almost felt the diabolical urge to revolt. I know I did.
That’s why I just love it when it rains. The very first legitimate rainfall in Mumbai every year is not only welcoming but extremely enchanting too. I love sunless skies. I love the look of those dark imposing clouds as they trudge through Customs carrying heavy bulks of condensation. I just love the obscurity created by the mist, the sonorous ring of thunder and the overall gloominess. Oh, and the smell of rain. That moment when the rainwater hits the mud. Oh, and the trees. It’s only during the monsoon that you realize that they are, in fact, GREEN. The sound of rain too. To hear it’s gentle rhyming patterns and its subtle verses. Usually my favorite thing to do during this time is to sit snugly by the window with a cup of tea or coffee and a book. My iPod would be blasting ‘Coming Back to Life’ by Pink Floyd, ‘The Rain Song’ by Led Zeppelin or ‘Vienna’ by The Fray. Those real weather-appropriate songs.
Apart from harmless drizzles and a few notorious showers here and there, I do enjoy that violent, nihilist rain too. Apocalyptical rain. The kind that torrents down, uproots trees and saves innocent school kids from going to school on that day.

Favourite Words

Driftwood – Every time I hear this word I think of chocolate brown logs of wood drifting serenely and contentedly down a loch, against the backdrop of oak trees and a sunless sky, somewhere in the middle of Scotland. Even if the word denotes movement, there’s also a unique stillness to it. And, of course, there’s ‘Driftwood’ by Travis, a soothing song with a deep meaning.
Serendipity – A fortunate accident. The word gets its true essence from ‘serendip’ which is the Persian name for Sri Lanka. One thing’s for sure. If it wasn’t for good ol’ serendipity here, America would’ve been discovered years later, Archimedes would’ve gone on to have a long leisurely bath where he would rinse and lather in peace, nobody would’ve known that nitrous oxide told jokes for a living and chocolate chip cookies would be the stuff of another universe far ,far away.
Cerulean – It’s a crystal clear sky blue. A lot like how the sky is looking right now, thanks to the non-existent rain and the present furnace we’re forced to reside in. Ah, well. I’ll save my indignance for some other time then.
Eyjafjallajökull – Big words and misanthropic volcanoes fascinate me.
Arpeggio - In music, it represents a broken chord. Notes are played one after the other. The word has a really nice sonorous ring to it.
Vienna – The home of Mozart and Strauss. There’s a certain charm and elegance to the word. And according to Billy Joel, Vienna does wait for me indeed…
Golgi –I remember coming across this word in my biology textbook, in the seventh and eighth grade. It’s part of the cell and secretes hormones, enzymes and proteins. One of the cutest words I’ve ever heard of! If I ever get a dog, remind me to name it after this hallowed organelle.
Crumpet – Though I’ve never had the opportunity to try one, it sounds all nice and quaint. Oh, ‘quaint’! That’s another interesting one!
Gild –I always picture a beach lit in various hues of golden sunlight just before sunset. I guess that image will be gilded in my memory.
Bourgeoise – It’s French for ‘the middle class in society’.
Ennui – It’s French for ‘boredom’. Usually the language of ‘ennui’ is spoken quite fluently by most, during the summer where the only interesting thing is getting a haircut because your hair tends to inflate in the humidity. Or eating a bit of Cadbury’s Bournville and imagining someone getting ironed out by a piano falling on their head. Or watching the film ‘Serendipity’ twice in the same month.

The Yellow Brick Road

As I type this on a keyboard veiled with dust, I’m in one of my philosophical states of mind. Having just heard some real thought provoking music (The Importance of Being Idle by Oasis) and sipping some tea, my thoughts and sentiments have been stirred and strained thoroughly.
The latest subject to hit my cranial convolutions is a dainty little thing called ‘life’. The delicate topic of discussion which has baffled people for centuries. A topic which a countless ocean of people (philosophers, poets, painters and pedicurists to name a few starting with ‘p’) have mulled over, cursed at and embraced through the meandering yellow brick road of Life.
I confess to knowing not much when it comes to this hallowed subject. But through these sixteen years, I’ve found laughter, love and trust, even though they’ve been wrought with mistakes and regret. For the past year, I’ve been walking through life with a rather unhealthy spleen. But what I’ve painstakingly learnt is that all my mistakes have been made for a good reason. It’s a blessing, heavily disguised in the form of an innocent looking cloud. It’s all Life’s way of helping me keep my individuality intact. At least I hope, because this is the only conclusion I can come up with, thanks to episode two of season three of ‘Psych’. That episode is the work of some murky divine intervention, if I may say so.
Another important albeit heavily clichéd lesson is the whole action of ‘letting go’. Just leave the past to recline in its humble abode and carry on through the concrete jungle ahead. And with this parting statement I’m letting go of all the regret which I’ve harboured for some time now. Well …Letting go…Letting go…Still letting go… Okay, this could take a while…

Ode to Boredom

O how surreptitiously deft thou art,
With your defiant and determined countenance
For I can no longer afford to finish what I usually start,
Hence, I retire with no more persistence

As I lay my head on my surrealistic pillow,
And dream about existentialism, neo classism and what not
While feeling a stiflingly hot summer daze,
I see a punctilious chateau,
which Lady Ennui dominates with haught,
Her eyes emitting an unusual blaze.

Ágætis byrjun

That’s the music of Sigur Rós. Brilliant. And beyond beautiful. I’ve never heard anything like it. Being an Icelandic band post rock band with classical and minimalist elements, their music is incredibly unique and meditative. It’s gracefully woven and sewn with the threads of melody, meaning, feeling and beauty. And they seem to do it so effortlessly. Sure, they’re singing in a completely different language which is one of the hardest languages to master and you tend to wonder whether he’s singing about the bacon and eggs breakfast he’d had or something more meaningful. But, once you hear their songs, the overall sound overpowers your thinking. His falsetto voice has an incredible quality which stirs you up. Everything else you’ve heard just pales in comparison.
One of the most astounding things about this band is that their ability to make their songs completely ambiguous. They have the capacity to make you happy and excited and yet leave room for a bit of sadness, nostalgia to trickle in. Depending on what I’m feeling at that precise moment, the songs allow me to revel in that emotion. Extremely few musicians can manage that, no matter how many records they sell. And that’s what I call real music. So here’s to the four brilliant guys in Iceland and their musical quartet, who bring peace to a sixteen year olds disillusioned soul!

Only Superstition?

Ahh…Smell that? Yep, that’s fresh stench of pure struggle and strife. The nose tingling fumes of frustration and anxiety. Because it’s that time of the year again. The time where all tenth and twelfth grade students are confined to about two months of house arrest, the dutiful task to swallow all their text books, and to eat steamed vegetables for supper. Believe me, exams are one of life’s grueling obstacles which are just not worth the backache, nausea, damaged corneas and swine flu. But along with the exams comes an interesting, if not completely desperate, plea to the Gods to survive the entire ordeal. I’m talking about superstitions.
You know, the lucky sock that got you to score your first goal, that lucky pen that earned you that perfect score on that test, the lucky song that was blasting in your head at the time you were writing the previously mentioned test with that lucky pen of yours…you get it. We all have these tiny little superstitions, routines and rituals to make a seemingly impossible day, possible for us and to stop our absolute worst fears from coming true. Gives desperation a whole new and bizarre meaning, eh? Especially for exams, which have set out to determine your immediate future for you, most people need to take measures so that everything goes according to plan.
When it comes to being superstitious, I’m not you’re conventional operator. No, I don’t own a lucky pen, nor have I ever scored a goal with socks on. That being said, I did score a goal once, but I think it was by accident. Anyway, being superstitious isn’t just about owning various items of intrinsic value, it’s actually more of a way of life. That’s why, at approximately this time last year, I went a tad bit overboard with this noble art. I recall watching a melodramatic Marathi serial known as ‘Kalat Nakalat’ from time to time to make sure the Maharashtrian Gods were on my side. Plus, I was bored of studying Hindi. Apart from that it was essential for me to keep a certain song in my head as I studied, so that I would be able to remember what I’d learnt. Also, for a good part of those two months, I was obsessed with some sort of mad Gujarati play called ‘Rock On, Faiba’. A play which I had never seen in my entire life, mind you. Though that was purely for reasons to entertain myself since I was going nuts. Then, I refrained from going out onto the terrace at night, just to avoid a nightmarish paper the next day. Don’t ask.
Well, after all that eccentricity I don’t quite know how it all affected the way I did in my Board exams. I mean, I did fairly well, but was it just the because of the overwhelming sway of the superstitions? Or was it because I had studied well beyond saturation point? Or, maybe it was those steamed vegetables after all...

Drop Before I Shop

What is it with women and shopping anyway? I mean, the second you mention the words ‘shopping’, ‘sale’, ‘bags’, ‘shoes’, ’Prada’ or any of those insanely priced brands which design clothes fit for Barbie dolls, things happen. Appallingly abysmal things. For the aforementioned are enough to make any woman drool and rush out of the house before anyone mentions the word ‘bankrupt’. It’s amazing, really. Women have antenna-like ears and no matter how much they glitter, dazzle and create a scintillating aura of wealth through their copious amounts of bling-bling, they still manage to eavesdrop on conversation within a half-mile radius. Especially if those snippets of conversation are centered around the next sale at Mango.
Sure, I’m a girl. But that doesn’t stop me from detesting shopping. The whole idea has never quite appealed to me. Some people find an it okay, once-in –a-while kind of experience. I myself find it irregular and agonizing. After a recent shopping excursion, the scene was this: Me in the midst of a war field of clothes of every possible shade and hue, being ravenously devoured by blood thirsty women of all ages. Let me tell you, the Battle of Waterloo was just about as fierce as this. But this has, of course, resulted in me going colour-blind and becoming dangerously claustrophobic. Don’t worry, my condition is stable as of now.
Oh, and there’s the whole process of trying on the clothes. For some odd reason, the clothes at certain places never mange to fit me. I always have to try on the clothes and then realize that they’re either too tight or too loose. Then there’s the whole production of finding exactly the right size for you. I could have written an entire novel in approximately that amount of time. Who knew that shopping could be this frustratting? Though one of the things that amuses me the most is when women intrepidly traipse from store to store and flit from corner to corner in search of bags, fancy footwear and the occasional necklace. I‘m sure they use them from time to time and all, but I’m beginning to suspect that they shop for them partly to open museums in their houses with a flashy, display of the said materials. Trust me, this is materialism at a whole new level. But, they do frequently say that they find shopping therapeutic and equivalent to finding yourself amidst a world of deep, dark bonhomie. Oh, well. Let them engage in their enlightening endeavours. For all I know, I’d rather drop before I shop.

Keeping The Fate

I don’t know about you but I’m a huge believer in Fate. To me, it’s not only a force which shapes and guides our lives, but it’s also a person. The way it throws things at us when we least expect it, the means with which it shrewdly manoeuvres us through the course of our lives and its ability to make us experience a myriad emotions and spectacular views. Fate is the ‘reason’ in ‘everything happens for a reason’. It prods and pokes us gently with ‘What is meant to be is just meant to be’. For years, I’ve tried to figure out how accurate these sayings actually are, mistaking them for useless proverbs made up by a bunch of completely clueless Chinese people. But everything does really happen for the best and things which don’t usually seem right can just be a blessing in disguise. Trust me, I know. It just takes a rather long while to see it.

Sure, it’s responsible for the maximum number of natural disasters, plane crashes and train derailments for the last few centuries. It’s also guilty of several murders, untimely deaths, other countless turmoil and turbulence and damage to the mental health of many innocent people out there. It’s almost as if Fate must’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed and been forced to find out that there’s no coffee at his house, on those days.

Mid-Morning Musings

Robert Frost was right. Life certainly does go on. Though sometimes it feels like it’s at an absolute standstill. Don’t you find yourself sometimes in a rut, going from morning to evening at the same velocity and through the same itinerary? Ever been so deplorably bored of life and society that you begin doing things in a sleepy daze? Because from time to time, people keep propelling themselves through all the days, weeks, months and years, battling the seemingly stormy sea of the same old jobs, same people and same type breakfast cereal every morning. Think about it.

‘Innocent’ little school kids are forced to trudge grumpily to school every day only because it’s the law. Though there is some momentary ‘enthusiasm’ during exams. The same goes for teachers too. Their surly countenance looms up before you, as they prepare to teach the same chapter which they’ve only just finished explaining to the previous two classes. College students applying to all the big universities around the world would probably be having daily nightmares of exam papers stalking them. Thirty-something year olds obediently oscillate from their homes to their desks and cubicles at their offices. The senior citizens and old folks do seem to enjoy their long retirement by watching television shows, eating ancient fruitcake and barking orders into the phone. But they can get a little too comfortable by that routine.

Apart from the aforementioned long, drawn-out daze, have you ever gotten to a point where you find the people from society starting to get on your nerves? Where they just seem to be too conventional, too conforming and all of a sudden, extremely annoying? Well, I’m not exactly a people person but I can tell you that half of the scenery around me is inhabited by people falling prey to mob psychology, getting influenced and swayed by the people around them. I mean, it’s like school all over again. Everyone’s the same. Where’s a Howard Roark when you really need one?