:-/

There are times you're happy. Joyful. Excited. And then there are these times. When more than anything else, you feel lonely. You reach out for someone who isn't necessarily there. My best and most reliable friends are books. That in itself, makes me feel sad tonight. This is crazy. I have a lot of friends, but tonight I feel lonely. Apart, not a part. I'm not feeling happy right now and i'm not sure why. I'm making myself some hot chocolate now, and will read myself to sleep. Night.

To be or not to be.

The French author François de la Rochefoucauld wrote, "We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves."

This is the guy who came up with 500 reflections on human behaviour. You'd think more people would listen to what he had to say, and take him seriously!

As someone who is 17, not a kiddie, not really an adult, no one knows better what it means to live such a schizophrenic life. 

With your friends you're one person, with your parents another, with your sister you turn into a crazy monkey and at a book-club meeting the sober intellectual with spectacles falling off your nose.

So, what does it mean to be yourself? To be consistent in your behaviour and body language?

I don't see it that way, but most do.

To me, being yourself is being consistent in your basic ideologies and thought processes at all times. 

For example, do you believe in the necessity of violence? No, you say? If that's your answer in any given situation, you're being yourself. On the other hand, if you decide to tell your parents, "No, no, I hate war. Violence only provides temporary relief from hopelessness, and can never be a permanent answer," and tell your friends "War, from time to time refreshes the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants and of patriots. War gives otherwise broken down old men something important to reminisce on. War is good."

.... That is being a little spineless and hypocritical in my books. 

What are your real opinions? (Do you even have any? :P)

I don't see how your behaviour with every single person in your life has much to do with "being yourself". 

You relate to every single person in a different manner, don't you? You can't possibly treat every single person in your life as cattle trains. Laugh at every joke every person in your life cracks, scream at one as mindlessly as you can at the other. They're all different, they all deserve a relatively unique place in your life. 

So, it's okay to be one person with your friend, and another with your parents.

That's what I believe to be correct. Theoretically, at least, it sounds okay to me.

The question is.

Does that not make you a little schizophrenic in the end? A little confused about who you really are? A tiny bit disillusioned with people, expectations, morality?

When and how do we come to terms with who we really are at the core?

Nietzsche wrote, "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe."

To Friends.

At the very outset, Happy Friendship Day to whoever is reading this right now!

I may know you very well, or not at all, but at this moment you're reading something written by me rather than doing the million other things you could have been doing instead. 

And that matters to tiny, baby faced me. So,before I write any further, here's a big hug. :)

Yaaaaay,it is the first of August. 213th day of the year.

The one day of the year many gladly fall prey to the enormously successful marketing strategy of Archies and Hallmark, spending mindlessly on colorful friendship bands and cute little photo-frames. And admittedly

,till 4 years back, I was an avid buyer of all of the below. :P

(These are Archies bestselling items,by the way. I took this picture of their website!)

Today is also the day you are bound to receive countless SMSes on your cell-phone that go something like this.

"If CARE is a WAVE,
i give u SEA.
If RESPECT is a LEAF,
i give u TREE.
If TRUST is a PLANET,
i give u GALAXY,
if FRIENDSHIP is LIFE,
i give u MINE 4 FREE..
keep smiling.my dearest frnd."

Do you feel like smiling with gratitude or throwing up at the cheesiness of that? :P

But today, I think of all my friends.

The girl with whom I played with Barbie dolls in first grade in Coimbatore.

The guy who introduced me to Backstreet Boys in sixth grade.

The girl who I sat with on a scary ride at Essel World for the first time, and who hugged me even as I screamed at her.

The guy who calls me Bundo and messes up my hair all the time.

The girl I've had the most horrible fights with and laughed about them all later.

The guy who gave me 2 music CDs as a farewell gift when I left Calcutta.

The girl who I bunked school with to watch a Himesh Reshamiya movie, "first day first show" just for the kicks. 

The guy who gets drenched in the rain to get me a Dairymilk when I'm not feeling so good.

Tangled up in Blue, Srishti, Sankoobaba, Einstein and others- People I've never met, but have become close companions on my blogging journey.

And I thank all of them.

Just for having been a part of my life, exactly the way they have. :)

"Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg’d comrade."

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3.


I'd like to take that chance to be friends with the "new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade" today.
In case, I don't know you, here, I repost an old blogpost I'd written for you. :)
http://contradictoryexistence.blogspot.com/2010/06/to-stranger.html

My Retro Room!

As promised, here are a few pictures of my new and improved living space. :)

                              What you see the moment you open the door...

The new love of my life. My very own bookshelf!!!

That's the U2 "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" album cover on the top there.
Below that is Eddie Vedder, lead vocalist of Pearl Jam and one of my icons.
And that white guitar you see is being played by Jonsi, lead vocalist of one of my favourite bands, Sigur Ros from Iceland. Notice something awesome? He plays it with the the bow you generally play a violin with!

                  Oh, my awesome Elvis poster I drool over every waking minute!

                        My super duper cool one of a kind Simon and Garfunkel mug!!

Where Murakami, Larsson, McCarthy and Tolstoy come under one roof. And where George Orwell's 1984 is found under a dog's paws.

Do you like it?
I'm absolutely dying to know! :)

Marim-blah.

Okay, (un)fortunately(?), I'm back from my blogging hiatus.

And yes, I shall offer the lame excuse of the internet cord having snapped into two last week. Don't even get me started on that. :/

Last night, the seniors organised a fresher's party for us BBA babies. At a club. A certain club/lounge/dark room filled with sweaty drunken people named Marimba.

Now, before I elaborate on that, keep this in mind. I'm 17. By all conventions, I should be going through some sort of teenage rebellion phase. This is the age I should be dying to try out funky tattoos, black nail-polish, hair streaked electric blue, navel piercings, partying till 4 a.m.,cigarettes, alcohol, drugs etcetera etcetera before rejecting it in 4 years thinking, "Man, those years were wild. But I am a sensible adult now, time to get my act together."

Reality check. I'm experiencing nothing of the sort. I am not even kidding you. Not even a little bit. I think it's stupid. And right as I might be, I feel a little out of place with others my age who are reveling in their new-found freedom, however drug or alcohol induced it might be.

Take last night for example. 

Of course, I was really super-duper excited about the Freshers. Point no. 1 (and probably the only point),it was in a club. I had never been to one. And everyone I know seems to love it, so I figured of course, I'll like it too.
Well, that didn't happen.

Here are my not-so-nice observations on clubs.

1. Clubs are like concerts without that awesome stage act you've been waiting for. So it's dark, crowded, immensely sweaty and reeking of booze. For what? The heck of it.

Soooo cool.

2.You don't talk. Not because you don't want to, but for the simple reason that you can't. it's so abnormally and irritatingly loud. Just dance, drink, drink,  dance. But it gets so crowded, all you can do is rock back and forth before some girl digs her stiletto into your innocent foot. The whole point of the freshers party is to interact with people you've barely known for a week, not watch them puke on the dance floor.

3.If you're wondering whether non-verbal communication is possible, long story short, it's not. Clubs are dark. They're laden with fog machines. Jarring disco lights are sporadically swerving on and off your face. IRRITATING. :/

4.Almost everyone is fake in there. Fake nice. Fake I'm-so-cool-I-have-my-shirt-collar-turned-up. Fake Woah-I'm-having-such-a-fabulous-time. 

Yes, I'm sure that's a pretty lopsided view of the whole affair considering it's based on just a one-time experience. 

So let me now think of clubs as the silver-lining girl I'm purported to be. :P

You get to see people all dressed up and do something more glitzy than they do in real life.

I guess it may be a great way to blow off steam for some. No one's obligated to do something meaningful and productive and profound 100% of their time. Clubs provide mindless fun to a whole bunch of people. 

And I'm sure people don't go to clubs with any expectation of having a half-decent conversation anyway.

But one thing is for sure.

It's not my cup of tea/coffee/ fresh lime soda.

I got out of there in a little over 40 minutes. Yeah, really. :P

P.S. I take this opportunity to thank Kshitij, my best friend, who made the entire club experience something to laugh about and not a crying over- experience.
Also, 4 days too late on this forum, but here's your very public birthday greeting- Happpppppppy Birthday! :)

Going retro.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, I have a brand new bookshelf!

And my room is being retro-ed up!! I get to share my living space with Elvis, the Beatles, Eddie Vedder, Simon and Garfunkel soon.

I'm super excited. I'll probably put up some pictures soon. :)

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