Un-savant.

Okay, the most amazing thing just happened!

I was randomly clicking on "Next Blog" every 2 minutes, in search of a an interesting read. My eyes first roved around a blog written in Spanish, (Nexxxxxxxt!) then one on Vietnamese handicrafts (Nexxxxxxxt! You can only admire wooden elephants for so long!) and then.....

I landed on Daniel Tammet's blog! Now the blog kinda irritated me. It was one of those My-article-got-published-in-the-papers and I-am-famous-know-my-every-move blogs.
On any other occasion, I would have clicked on "Next Blog" in an instant.

But the name seemed vaguely familiar, I remember some teacher saying the name with reference to something in some class some years ago.
Yes, that vague! :P
So, I just decided to Google him.
Daniel Tammet.
186,000 results in 0.22 seconds.

He's 31. He writes. He draws. He talks. He eats.
But he also happens to be what they call a "high functioning autistic savant".
Yeah, I'm not sure what it means as well. And I'm not really buying the idea of the savant- syndrome anyway.
 "Savant Syndrome refers to what are called Islands of Ability, but are usually exceptional skills which seem to come out of nowhere with no previous learning or experience. Savant skills can cover everything from exceptional memorisation skills, to outstanding mathematical skills, calendar calculation, astounding special skills, unaccountable ability to acquire foreign languages, exceptional artistic or musical abilities and, some people have added, exceptional sensing abilities."

Okay, back to this guy.
He sees numbers as shapes and colours. For example, he thinks 333 is very attractive and 25 a party going number and pi is beautiful. (Wtf. :/)

He has recited 22,514 digits of pi in five hours. I don't know what comes after 3.14.
He speaks ten languages, and is developing a new language Mänti.
He is a bestselling author.

In the Oscar winning film American Beauty, young Angela Hayes declares, "I don't think there's anything worse than being ordinary."
Normally, I wouldn't agree 100%. I could think of worse things. Like being stranded in the middle of an ocean etcetera etcetera.
And then I read about guys like him.
And wonder why wasn't I one of the 0.0001% of the population with Savant syndrome!
Un-savant these geniuses, or savant-ify me!!!

The Collegiate.

Since I am not a graduate, and it's only my first day at NMIMS, I title this post "The Collegiate". Movie buffs, take a wild guess what I really could have called it instead! :P

Entering the portals of the college you've (somewhat) aspired getting into, trudging up the six floors with crazy anticipation concealed under the garb of  utter aloofness, being ragged FOUR TIMES by seniors (Why why why did they keep picking on me? This is a conspiracy against the short, I tell you. :D ), cold coffee for just ten bucks and politely smiling at people you've never met before and will invariably be (stuck?) with for the next 3 years...Aaah, what a day and a half! :)

Yesterday was our orientation ceremony. The dean and his entourage gave us the standard this-is-a-professional-college-make-the-most-of-it-or-die-trying speech, scaring the living daylights out of some, and slightly unnerving the others. Then certain well spoken second and third year students encouraged us to join student clubs by inspiring speeches, presentations and the like.
The funny part is this.
The very seniors who were dressed in crisp shirts and ties yesterday and were inspiring us to join this club and that, were the ones who blatantly entered our classes today saying, "Oye, you have to belly dance for us". :P

Going off on a tangent, my Financial Accounting teacher, or professor, or whatever I'm supposed to call her now, showed us this presentation where the educational backgrounds of Mukesh Ambani to Ratan Tata to K.V.Kamath were shown.
The bottomline- They all came from a science background but turned out to be mavericks in the field of finance.
The punchline(and I quote)- "Science students have no excuses." :D

God(the one I don't believe in but use often as a literary device to denote exasperation or irritation), I hope college is as interesting and stimulating as people say.
But there are people who say that the Holocaust never happened and that maths is their favourite subject, so I don't really believe people too, come to think of it. But I just hope I have a good time. I'm keeping my expectations suitably low, coz I fear that they might be dashed away in the weeks to come! You know what Edward Koch once said," The fireworks begin today.  Each diploma is a lighted match.  Each one of you is a fuse." I don't want to be a slacker or someone who is the same person 3 years hence, from where I start today. I hope the college experience is a journey of evolution and discovery, as much as one of mid-terms and examinations.

P.S. Being sensitive to my gravity and relying on the renowned female intuition,the three clubs I seem interested in right now are the entrepreneurship cell, literary and marketing. There's also this club called SRF or Social Responsibility Forum, but I would much rather do some social work by myself than do it as forcedly as a college activity.


"It is clear the future holds great opportunities.  It also holds pitfalls.  The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o'clock".  
~Woody Allen, "My Speech to the Graduates," Side Effects, 1980

On New Beginnings.

Aaaaaaah, college starts on Monday!!

I go from being a high-school senior to being called a "fresher"??

Take a look at the prescribed curriculum for my first trimester.

India Social Political and Economic System
Principles of Business Economics
Fundamentals of Business Mathematics
Fundamentals of Financial Accounting
Effective Communication – I

What do I know about any of the above?
Zilch. Zero. Nil. Nada.

I am a little jittery. But also very very excited!!! :)

P.S. Who will be nice and give me tips on what to wear for the college orientation programme??

P.P.S. And this is just random. But, I was just thinking, if an atheist has to appear in court, is he obliged to speak the truth if he places his hand on the Gita or the Bible?

The Lowest Animal

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."

You know how almost every examination that tests your grasp over the English language has this question after the most mundane "Unseen Comprehension" passage- "Write a suitable title for this passage."
Well, the aforementioned Douglas Adams quote seems a fitting opening for one of the most sarcastically and intelligently essays I've read. Wave hello to "The Lowest Animal" by Mark Twain.

Yes, I admit Huck Finn was one of my favourite fictional characters growing up, (What's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? is still as endearing today as it was when I first read it!) but it was after reading this essay and realizing that a book like Letters to The Earth existed, that I finally accord Twain the status of a literary genius!
(Hint, my 18th birthday is coming up in 6 months. :D)


Although this essay has been written very obviously as a satire and we can only guess if these are the thoughts genuinely echoed by the author, it is sharp, crisp and surprisingly well-supported in logic and argument. He uses rhetoric and wit to prove that man, rather than ascending from animals like Darwin proposed, actually descended from animals.

He goes on to write, and substantiate with examples, how man is consciously loose in morals, is territorial, experiences the desire to seek revenge and subsequently is the only animal that practices cruelty and engage in organized crime and mutilation. Twain's remark on the hypocrisy of patriotism is hilarious in particular.

"He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy ex­pense to grab slices of other peoples countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his.  And in the intervals between cam­paigns, he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his mouth."

What separates this essay from so many others is that his arguments, no matter how flimsy they seem at the outset, are backed by several studies and social experiments. This isn't sitcom-inspired satire, this is intelligent sarcastic writing.

My opinion? No, I don't think man is the lowest animal.
By their very DNA structure and the complexity of their neuron functions, man should be the greatest. It is its vices that hold it back from being superior, virtue-wise.
But then again, virtues are subjective, aren't they?

Humans and animals make bad judgment calls alike.
Otherwise why would that fly come and sit on my hand right now, and expect not to be killed? :P

Incoherence.

Your Blog Should Be Orange

Your writing has a star quality - it's charming, bold, and flamboyant.
You write what's on your mind, without fear of embarrassment later.
You are one of the most honest bloggers around, and people appreciate your daring persona.

     
Yes, I took a random quiz AGAIN on this site "blogthings.com".
Sad, I know.

On the bright side, I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. FINALLY! The story is too long and complicated for me to write a book review and do justice to it, so don't expect one. All I'll say is that dysfunctional, anorexic, under 5 feet Lisbeth Salander is the most original, intriguing and might I add, the coolest female protagonist in decades!!!

Aaaaaand, I got a new phone. A Nokia E72! :) :) :)
Shit, shit, no more smileys.
But as one of my abnormally tall friends reminded me, "No smileys here, you are a big girl.":P

And this is completely random.
But I've been thinking about it for almost a week now. There isn't a word for "being smiled at". (Is there?) Atleast I haven't found it.
I think there should be, don't you? :)

Btw, I was thinking about the state of Indian advertisements today. I have one word for them. Rubbish.
Neither do they get the shadow of their point across, nor do they make even the slightest sense. At the end of the ad you're left wondering why you didn't go blind and deaf before that torture was inflicted upon you! Like the one where chimpanzees are jumping around in bright red underwear and then the tagline is "Yeh toh bada toing hai". What the hell is THAT all about?
To think so many of these people are IIM graduates. :/
I remember reading this Ayn Rand quote somewhere once, "Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason."
They should chew on that for a while.

Did you know that Albert Einstein was offered the Israeli presidency and he turned it down?
Or that the first recorded account of plastic surgery is in ancient Indian texts?

THIS is what I write about when I feel I am running out of blog ideas. I refuse to put my name at the end of a blank blog post, and I refuse to go on a writing sabbatical as well.

If you have got to the end of this blog post, please suggest ideas on what to gift someone on their 18th birthday! :P

Word out. :D

Paan on Provogue.

Something weird and senselessly funny and absolutely 100% disgusting happened yesterday.
I was going to drop my sister for her dance class. In an auto-rickshaw.
Yes, I still use them despite the hue and cry about increased auto fares coz -
1.You don't need to stand at one place for more than 5 minutes before one stops right in front of you.
2.They are able to wiggle their way through crazy Bombay traffic with ease.
3.The occasional auto might even have a radio and you can hear the latest Bollywood songs at their screeching horrendous best.

But, I digress.
What happened, in a (betel) nutshell, was this. Sana and I were in the moving auto. Less than 30 seconds into our drive, someone just spat paan.
No, not on the street. I'm not saying that would have been the best thing in the civic sense, but it was infinitely preferable to what really happened.

(For those who don't know what paan is, here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paan
Although, no Wikipedia can tell you what paan really is and tastes like unless you've seen it made in the deepest trenches of this country.)

That chewed up, red paan with its teaspoonful of saliva and semi-chewed betel nuts, found its way onto my new Provogue t-shirt. And my favourite pair of Levis.

"Ugh. Yuck. Yucccccccccccccck. :(
Why??
Who would do something like this?
What the hell?????
Do we live in the land of the uncivilized uncouth insane?"

Of course, I dropped off Sana at her dance class, vented at my best friend and trudged back home for an hour long shower.

I don't get it. This whole paan-spitting thing.
Is this the mighty God of the Betel Nuts avenging my lifelong dislike towards paan? 

I've had it once or twice. It doesn't really taste that bad. But something that requires the consumer to spit a brick-coloured slime and leaves a blackish-red tinge in your mouth, just grosses me out.
Of course, you don't always have to spit it out. Please please please just swallow that paan. Discolor your teeth and not the walls.
Everything in India is covered with paan spit. We're almost acclimatized to its sight on walls and roads and public schools and almost anywhere else.In fact, I've lived in Kolkata too. Paan-spitting is now an intricate art form there. "How far? How much?" etcetera etcetera.

To think Indians generally consider their personal hygiene and neatness a prerequisite for all sacrosanct endeavors and rituals.

Thoo. :P

To You.

My blog has crossed the 20-follower mark. In just a little over 2 months.
I'm happy.
Really happy. :)

Here are a few things you should know about me.
Haha, come to think of it, why should you? Why should you be reading this post at all? You could be struck down by lightning in the next few seconds, but you're here. And so you deserve to know a little about the person who writes this blog.

My parents have given me a great life, in every which way. I'm not riddled with any anxieties or insecurities. Basically, I'm a happy person.

I don't know how I feel about the death penalty. I consider it cruel, inhuman and degrading most times.Then a Kasab or a Saddam Hussein comes along, and I feel they're getting what they deserve. So, I don't have a stock answer on that one.

I highly doubt the existence of God or a superior being. And I have mixed feelings about religion.
I'm happy that both of the aforementioned work for some. Most, rather.
I know I can't live my life with the illusion of someone making sure my future is all right. I'm a believer of the randomness of life. I try to be a good person. That's my yardstick, not a threat that I'll go to hell.

I have this silly fear of speaking in public. Maybe I'll write about that in a future post.

It is difficult for me to answer the introspective classic, "Who am I?". I hate saying I'm trying to find myself; that would imply that my identity had been lost along the way.
Another reason why I love writing so much. It helps me uncover more about myself. Every time I write honestly, I know I have put in one more piece of my identity jigsaw puzzle right.

I believe in trying to elevate my life to fall in line with standards that are my own, not those made by others.

I am not a Barbie Doll. I don't aim to have a size-zero figure and spend all my free time thinking, "Should I buy those great stilettos?" or "Oooh, that handbag will look so great with that dress."

Reading literature has expanded my world, and opened my mind to myriad cultures. Books have made me what I am, in ways even I'm not sure.

There, now you know a few random facts about me.
This is the person whose blog you read.

Thank you for accepting me for the person I am.
Love. :)

Anicca.

I'm a big fan of The Beatles, but no, I don't "long for yesterday".
I'm a big fan of Barack Obama, and yes, I long for change.

I'm waiting for college to begin. Something new. Fresh. Exciting.
Yes, I'm sure the novelty will wear off in a month. Still.
It's better than just killing time at home.

I remember making all these plans last year, while I was trying madly to understand Calculus and never did.
I will go here with my friends after my Board exams, I will go there, I will go everywhere.
When was the last time we all met as a group?
At a not-so-interesting birthday party.
We've all sort of lost touch with what's happening in each other's lives. Yes, the occasional "What's up?" message is sent and duly replied to, but that's barely a shadow of what our crazy high-school years were. Did I not make the right friends? Did I not make the requisite effort that goes into maintaining a friendship? Didn't they? Did I change? Did they?

Makes me wonder on the finiteness and impermanence of everything. Be it the quantity of food on your plate, friendships, or even life.
I'm not religious or spiritual myself, but I like what the Buddhists say about impermanence. They call the concept Anicca, which says that "impermanence is an undeniable and inescapable fact of human existence from which nothing that belongs to the earth is ever free."

I've studied Biology till tenth grade. I know enough about cell division to know that it takes place continuously in our bodies. Old cells die, new are born.
Seeds turn into plants, plants turn into trees.
Water turns to vapour.
Science is on my side too(for once!). Of course, change is inevitable.
It would be a lie to say that you love or hate something in exactly the same way, for exactly the same reasons, all your life.

I enjoy the finiteness of things.
It leaves the possibility for something new.

P.S.The only realm where I cherish infinite-ness, is when experts debate about the origin of the universe. Knowing that it really is infinite, would be kinda cool. :)



"That's it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college!"
-Homer Simpson. 
:D

10 things I love.

1.Mentally stimulating conversation, peppered with wit and humour.

2.Those 2 year old jeans I refuse to give up coz they fit so right. Levis rules! :)

3.Hershey's Dark Chocolate.
  Lindt dark chocolate is a close runner up, along with Bournville.

4.Twinings' Green tea with lemon. I love the delicate taste of it. And it has all these antioxidants which will keep me looking young. I'm 17, so of course I'm worried about wrinkles. :D

5. Black and white photographs. I'm just fascinated by black and white anything, photographs, paintings, album covers, zebras, you name it!

6. I absolutely love nice inscriptions on the first pages of a book. Inscriptions are always a nice gesture.:)

7. I watched the Woody Allen classic, Annie Hall today and fell in love with it, head over heels. La-dee-dah!
"Love is too weak a word for what I feel - I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F's, yes I have to invent, of course I - I do, don't you think I do?"

8. The prospect of the world ending in 2012. Haha, really. Be it coz of some defect in the CERN particle accelerator, the Chinese Book of Changes predictions coming true or the Yellowstone volcano blowing up. That gives me just one and a half more years of life. To laugh or not to laugh at the minuscule possibilities of the above. :P

9.A mug of freshly brewed, properly ground and properly brewed coffee and I have attained nirvana.

10. A book that doesn't lose its way. That keeps me hooked beginning, middle and end. A book that doesn't make me want to keep it down, even for a second. A book that makes me ignore my mom's tenth call to eat dinner. That kinda book.

Let it rain.

"...These are the seasons of emotion and like the winds they rise and fall
This is the wonder of devotion - I see the torch we all must hold.
This is the mystery of the quotient - Upon us all a little rain must fall."

These are the lyrics to The Rain Song, one of my favourites by Led Zeppelin.
Also, this is my favourite "I'm too old for *Rain, rain go away, Come back another day*"  song. :P

Why do I love it? I don't know. I just always have.

Rain is an enigma, a symphony, a powerful force, a lifegiver.

I love how rain can almost always prove you wrong. You may be angry or frustrated and you angrily walk out into the rain, hoping for some sort of understanding,denial or absolution. Like the gray clouds and the tiny puddles will give you answers. But before that earth-shattering moment occurs, you are drenched. Completely. Not just by the droplets, but by the smell of rain, and what it does to the environment around you. The rain commands your attention. It's just you and the rain now. No, you don't want to attain nirvana, like you first thought in your fit of chagrin. All you want is to roll around in the mud. You want to stomp around in puddles like noone's watching. You want to love, laugh, live. (Those last three words are copied off my red Converse chappals!).

You can crib about the traffic jams and the floods all you want. I do, too. 

But you just cannot deny the beauty of this weather. Raindrops falling elegantly on the black asphalt of your potholed road. The exquisite smell of wet mud. The long walk with no umbrella over your head. The element of surprise as it suddenly stops. The glimpse of a rainbow.

I just had great masala tea with raindrops falling intermittently on my shoulder. Hence, this whole "I love the rains" rant, in case you were wondering. :P

Do I idealize the rains? Call it a genetic defect, that I love. :)

"Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby."
-Langston Hughes