Book-Happy.

Yes, I am a book nerd. Pictures of books make me happy.

Why Aliens Will Leave Us Alone. Or Kill Us All.

It's insanity. Absolute lunacy.
I shouldn't.


Nothing can explain my infatuation with people that exist on paper. There is nothing rational about actually caring for a character that I know from the very outset is a figment of imagination. Jane Eyre was the first literary character I ever cared for. Intellectually towering over my sixth-grade self, I got scared with her and for her and recognized her faults as mine as she served as truly beguiling company on damp afternoons. Ever since, I have turned to judging books by the strength of its characters. I want to know about their coffee-stained teeth, their uncontrollable habits and the reason for their slouch.


Conclusion:
Some day, aliens will find me crying over Kathy in Wuthering Heights while not giving a poor beggar change at the traffic signal, and that alone will be warning enough not to land here. Or to wipe humanity off the map.

Joan Didion: On Self Respect

Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a mater of misplaced self-respect.


.........To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. 


It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands to much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

Joan Didion, 

a personal icon.

Shedding Monkey Tears.

See Evidence of this travesty.
Let's bow our heads and mourn the death of the English language.

P.S. I made the above. Teehee. ^_^

Where I found the pensive monkey? Adam Foster's flickr photostream

Let Her Fly. :)

CRY truly is one beautiful organisation. Beautiful is the word. 

While it continually makes efforts to ensure a lasting impact in education reforms for young kids here, it realizes that the most effective form of  change is emotional. It allows children never to lose sight of their innocent wide-eyed aspirations. 'Let Her Fly' is their latest effort to empower girls to dream...and believe they can convert their dreams to reality. All they needed to do was scribble down their dream on a bright yellow kite and see it fly.

Context is of importance here- School is the high point in the day for most of these girls.
They come from homes with corrugated tin roofs, sporadic electricity, rationed water and uniformly uneducated parents. After the sun goes down, a profound darkness sets in their dark alleyways. The lack of streetlights in the interiors of some slums, converts busy vegetable markets by day, dimensionless black. One girl told me how she studies in the cozy glow of flickering candlelight.

Well, the kites didn't really take off, there was a scuffle for pens, the corridors were noisy; but as the girls drew batons and blackboards, wrote 'thanks' in erratic cursive handwriting, stretched on their tippy-toes and held up their kites as high as they could....It was a breathtakingly beautiful moment.

These girls want to be teachers. :)

These little ones want to be dancers. ^_^

And these, most courageous of all, want to become police officers.

One girl gifted me an airplane made with myriad shades of marble paper. That, along with the beaming smiles, reassures me that the scenario is brightening for children in the city. :)

Much Ado about Everything.

This picture was first posted on Tumblr 4 days ago. Now I see it has gone viral. And of course, why wouldn't it?
Loved it. ^_^

Lyrics To Live By. :)

Strawberry Fields Forever. 

This song has been stuck in my head all morning, and I made this right now. Newly found fascination. :)

Image Source: Melinda ^.^ Flickr Photostream

I Love Pai :)

Because Suppandi made me laugh till I cried.
Because if all men could carry off a moustache like Shikari Shambu, I would have liked moustaches more.
Because if all crows were as cute as Kalia, I would have been less scared of crows.
Because Ramu and Shamu told me that being naughty was much more fun than being a sincere kid.
Because Kapish's ability to extend and shrink his little monkey tail was magical before I read Harry Potter.
Because every scheming politician in the country has learnt a trick or two from Tantri the Mantri.

Uncle Pai, you may be trending on Twitter because of today's Google Doodle, but I have loved you ever since I first laid hands on a Tinkle comic.Your stories were companions on every long-distance train journey, every night before I slept, every afternoon after The Lulu Show.

I love you and I miss you.
Happy birthday :)

Catalog under: Confessions of a Grammar Nazi

Today is a great day :)

Congratulations! Your LLP: AdHog Interactives LLP is Successfully Incorporated.

Not what you would expect to find in the mail of an 18 year old, but hey, I'm ambitious. 

I, along with brilliant partner-in-crime Kshitij, can now legally start our entrepreneurial venture. 

That's us, laptop and a bag of cookies in hand. 

To the critics who might tell us we are too young/inexperienced I say, we may not be perfect, but perfect is just so boring. We're the quirky company that's anathema to you, and that's alright. We would hate being defined by being in the box, or out of it. We'd like to be defined by our ideas. (Which are going to blow your minds, by the way.)

To those who have encouraged us or will after reading this,  I have one thing to tell you: Sit back and watch us go places. 

My nerves are on edge and my voice is shrilly with excitement.
Here's celebrating a small step into the world of power lunches, and a giant leap for a girl with miniature stature.

This is going to be fun. :)

Academia is not my cup of green tea.

The professor thinks I'm understanding everything and diligently solving every question. 

Oh, these innocent, trusting teachers.,. *head pat*

Here's a secret: This is what I'm really doing in Quantitative Analysis lectures. 

If you can't read what's written above:

1. Get spectacles.
2. Click on the image to see some monster-size handwriting.

The only reason I get marks in examinations is because I have the ability to make gibberish sound like something as important-sounding as 'fiscal consolidation'.
Also, because I am competitive and don't like being thought of as an idiot.
If  people think I study like crazy and have a genuine love for studying, the joke's on them. My class notes are of zero help anyway thanks to scribbly-doodles like these. Last minute clicking through Powerpoint slides (such a first world manner of studying :P) and teehee, I'm done.

P.S. Is anyone else watching Bones on T.V.? Or Masterchef Australia?  (Cheers, maiite)
You aren't? Losers, the lot of you.

Reality: A pain in the bum.

I was this person. I really was. 

Then like half the student population, I got admission into NMIMS. :P

Image Source: herecomesthenoise.tumblr.com

Oh dear god, I LOVE the Dexter Season 6 Trailer.

On The Road.

Eeeee, I just made this all by myself! 

That's Jack Kerouac. 

The line is from On the Road.

And I ordered it on Flipkart. It's on its way to my bookshelf as you read this.

Memories of Sunlight.

For a couple of years, I studied in this beautiful school in Coimbatore as a child. Stanes Higher Secondary School, it was, yet I never experienced the 'Higher Secondary School' part of it. My first grade class teacher was a certain Mrs. Newness, and shouting Good morning Mrs. Newness in an innocent sing-song tone is one of my fondest memories of the place. Where people expect grass or just concrete roads to connect school buildings, the entire school was flooded with sand. On raw, wrung out Monday mornings, it almost seemed like a royal sandcastle standing majestically in the quiet South Indian city. I tricked myself into believing I was queen of the castle. I didn't know then that magic was just tricking the mind.

When the class opened, a musty air accosted us until we finally succumbed to it a few hours later, and did not notice it at all. The room was opened everyday, but gave the air of the unused and untouched. The class was lined with antiquated wooden desks. Each came with a seat designed for two to sit comfortably. As sore as the hard seat made my bum by the end of the day, the desk came with myriad cracks, along with 'Raju was here' scribbled with whiteners, that kept me entertained. I remember the sun streaming into the class room through the large windows to the right, as I fervently memorized the table of five and mugged up the spelling of stomach for a test. All our innocent faces scrunched up as we looked in the direction of the sun. The warmth on our faces was a welcome delight, especially on winter mornings. We loved the sun on our faces. All of us. At that age, we didn't know how to tell time but with the sun to our right and with sharp pencil in hand, we knew the day had really begun. And that recess was near.

Now, I study in a class room where I cannot see the sun, where words are used as leverage and where everyone pretends they are somewhere else.

Who Loves the Sun?, the Velvet Underground ask.

I do.

:)

I hope the sun finds me again soon to remind me that everything will be okay.

I found this really old picture of the school on the Stanes website. I remember that tree! A crow crapped on my head while I stood in  its shade. People told me it was considered good luck. I just yelled Yuck and dashed for the washroom.

My Experiments with Truth... And Mom's Samsung Galaxy S2.

Magic is Poetry wrapped in Jeans, yes? :)

I am no huge fan of Bukowski; that arrogant, anarchist and defiant anti-hero battling the literary elite. He was a dirty, dirty man by all accounts. But the poem in question 'The Laughing Heart' that makes its appearance in the latest Levis commercial is a work of staggering tenderness and innate beauty. 

The Laughing Heart -
by Charles Bukowski 

 your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Astounding, isn't it? :)

The company has chosen his words as the new anthem for today’s denim wearing generation. 

Frankly, I can't blame them. It is a brilliant idea. 

It seems to enforce the belief that the new definition of cool is to own a pair of jeans that tells the world you believe in Bulowski's view of a better future .'Your life is your life...' does sear through the brains of the impressionable lamb-like youth who own 75 pairs of jeans already.

More Jeans. More Poetry.

The world is a happy place. :)