Nostalgic for Disaster

When I started blogging, around six months ago, blogging was already a 'thing' but I may as well have been Amish for all I knew about it. In fact, I started blogging when the world had turned to micro-blogging and I was still a blogging snail. (I still am, by the way.) I made my grand appearance on Blogspot and began narrating the mundane saga of my life for those unfortunate souls who did not have ring-side seats to the real deal.


(FYI: Half an hour ago, while I was working on a project, Microsoft Word displayed an unexpected sense of humour by correcting 'defect' to 'defecate'. Nice try, Word. But at least I gave up on the project then.)


Now that I quit the internship and have so much time on my hands, I have no excuse to not write, and if I do write, to write crap on my blog. I owe it that much. (I think.)
Because, I suddenly realized, if I keep spouting rubbish here and many years later, people come back to find this  blog in the cobweb on the ceiling of the internet (Please, it takes imagination to come up with such stupid phrases), it will come back to haunt me.
For example, if I ever write a book, it will be kept beside the "10,000 Love SMSes" collection, whose pages bristle with corny poems and quotes for those spontaneous times you wish to express your love for that special person in the most despicable manner possible, typically by skipping vowels and over-punctuating with <3.
All the people who know me will desert me without a second thought, and I will be left with no choice but to rent friends. Know about that concept? It's springing up all over world, it seems. I read it on BBC or CNN or some such reliable website, so I bet it's true, too.To use the service, you need to sign up, pay a membership fee, and browse for a friend you’d like to hang out with. You then rent their time, paying for all expenses incurred while you’re spending time with them—like buying them coffee or tickets to a movie. Then, when the meter runs out, you bid them goodbye—or maybe take an appointment to meet them again.
How sad and pathetic will my life be if things come to this?


Out of fear more than anything, I pledge to make more sense in all future posts. And not just be a person who knows her grammar and random big words.
Bear with me.


P.S. Abhishek Bachchan needs to get a life. Every time he says 'Get Idea', I feel like punching him in the face.


P.P.S. People who, in the "Favorite books" section of their social networking profiles, list all the books they've read. Please note - it says "favorite". Hence it implies, you pick the ones you liked best. If you liked "One Night at the Call Centre" and "Dan Brown" best, you deserve to die. If your favorite book is "Agatha Christie and Sidney Sheldon," you deserve to be slaughtered.

Life in a Whirlwind

"How... how fragile situations are. But not tenuous. Delicate, but not flimsy, not indulgent. Delicate, that's why they keep breaking, they must break and you must the the pieces together and show it before it breaks again, or put them aside for a moment when something else breaks and turn to that, and all this keeps going on. That's why most writing now, if you read it they go on one two three four and tell you what happened like newspaper accounts, no adjectives, no long sentences, no tricks they pretend, and they finally believe that they really believe that the way they saw it is the way it is... It never takes your breath away, telling you things you already know, laying everything out flat, as though the terms and the time, and the nature and the movement of everything were secrets of the same magnitude. They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands on them, people brought up reading for facts, who know what's going to come next and want to know what's coming next, and get angry at surprises. Clarity's essential, and detail, no fake mysticism, the facts are bad enough. But we're embarrassed for people who tell too much, and tell it without surprise. How does he know what happened? Unless it's one unshaven man alone in a boat, in all this... all this... Listen, there are so many delicate fixtures, moving toward you, you'll see. Like a man going into a dark room, holding his hands down guarding his parts for fear of a table corner, and... Why, all this around us is for people who can keep their balance only in the light, where they move as though nothing were fragile, nothing tempered by possibility, and all of a sudden bang! something breaks. Then you have to stop and put the pieces together again. But you never can put the pieces back together again. You never can put them back together quite the same way. You stop when you can and expose things, and leave them within reach until you can bring them back and show them, put together slightly different, maybe a little more enduring, until you've broken it and picked up the pieces enough times, and you have the whole thing in all its dimensions. But the discipline, the detail, it's just... sometimes the accumulation is too much to bear."

— The Recognitions by William Gaddis


I quit my internship at Yrals on 31st. 
I start work with CRY tomorrow.
I finished the Steig Larsson trilogy.
I shall attend the Kala Ghoda festival this weekend.
I'm experiencing a certain clarity in my head today. I don't know what I want from life, but I think I'm getting there.


To loose ends and happy beginnings. :)

How many have you read?

I've been seeing this on too many blogs, and now that I've been tagged in one particular list, I have no choice but to put this up myself. The BBC booklist. BBC is under the impression that most people have read only 6 of the 100 books on this list.

As per instructions, I have marked in bold the ones I've read and shall italicize the ones I've at least started.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Divine Comedy - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Final count: I've read 40 of the above. 

What about you? :)

There's a Sucker Born Every Minute.

People whine and vent all too often. And that's okay most of the time.

But this past week, the internet was just brimming with people dealing with some identity crisis.

Over a changed Zodiac sign.

/complete and utter fail

My Facebook home page had at least 30 people with updates such as, "Mr.I-Don't Have a Life refuses to be a Virgo,' and 'Ms.La Dee Da cries that she is now an Ophiuchus'.

I mean, seriously? :O

In my opinion, this (new?) zodiac sign just sounds like the name of some cough syrup that a doctor scribbles down hurriedly which only the chemist can read.

Anyway, if you're still crying over it. I have some news. Nothing's changed. I'm still Capricorn and I'm still short. Here's what I read on the CNN blog.

"That's worth rephrasing: If you considered yourself a Cancer under the tropical zodiac last week, you're still a Cancer under the same zodiac this week.

That's because the tropical zodiac – which is fixed to seasons, and which Western astrology adheres to – differs from the sidereal zodiac – which is fixed to constellations and is followed more in the East, and is the type of zodiac to which the Star Tribune article ultimately refers."

Happy? :)
But I was still fascinated by how seriously people took their horoscope. So I decided to read up a little on this. And look what I found.
The Forer Effect. It explained a lot.

Basically, the Forer Effect is a term used to describe the tendency of people to interpret general statements as being accurate for them personally, even when they are not.

This American psychologist Bertram Forer conducted a personality test in 1941, and asked the students to rate how well the test results described unique aspects of their personality. They received these statements.


You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.


Students rated their results on average at 85.2% accurate. 


Here's the kick.
They had all received identical personality assessments.:D

Obviously, the description applies broadly to every living soul who has ever existed on this planet. Which is why I find this experiment so self-deceptively awesome. :P

I guess it all comes down to belief. When you want to believe something, when you want something to be true, then even a general sweeping statement about your love life becomes specific. Suddenly, it all makes sense. You see order in things. You see patterns. 

And admit it. Who doesn't find comfort in the predictability of life?

Got to go now.

I have a Information Technology exam tomorrow.

Dead meat. 

Later. :)

Urban Nothingness

A printer without cartridge.
A car without petrol.
A bikini in winter.
A mobile phone whose battery is dead.
A dozen wasted cans of Coke.
A chicken burger to a vegetarian.
A slice of pizza that slipped out of your hands and sat pretty on the road.
A millionaire you've never heard of before.
A genre of music undiscovered.
A man without a mission.
A movie lacking any semblance of a plot.
A slacker who convinces himself of his 'potential'.
A lot of untouched study material.
A thousand empty Microsoft Word documents.
Writer's block.

All Things Vivid In A World Of Grey

Happy '11, everyone! :)
The date was 1.1.11 yesterday. A numeric knock-out, don't you think?

It's a new year, and tradition begs a few resolutions be passionately made and avidly forgotten about.

Just for the record, here are mine:

• Resolution No.1- Read less but read what you want to. Not necessarily what the Booker Prize winning book is. Maybe I haven't matured enough to comprehend the book. Give the book time. Let it grow on you. In the meanwhile, read good stuff. :)

The year was 2008, and the Excel spreadsheet I had maintained of all the books I'd read that year tallied up to 72. Seventy-two! My friends still remember that number and burst into laughter. But it was a number I used to be proud of, no matter how sheepishly I admitted it. Reading isn't 'cool', right?
Last year, I purchased a lot of books that I wanted to read desperately, or had heard a lot of amazing things about, but never managed to finish. Too heavy on philosophy, too verbose, boring in the middle etc. I love words, and I love books, and I can't live without reading. So, this year, I'll read what I want to, at my grand old pace.

• Resolution No.2-Do not download music. (Now this is going to be a REALLY tough one to keep, almost impossible, I think, but still, I write it here because the new year starts with hope for a better tomorrow.)But then how will I ever listen to Sigur Ros?And Simon & Garfunkel? And Smokey Robinson?

Okay, I have NOT thought this through.

• Resolution No.3- Pick up an instrument, goddammit! A violin or a guitar, preferably. :)

• Resolution No.4- I must learn not to wince when confronted with something that does not fit within the frayed edges of 'my correct'. Never forget that curiosity can kill cats, not young pint-sized girls.I feel I'm brimming with opinions and judgments about a variety of things.  I must keep my mind open to all views and opinions on every subject. 

• Resolution No.5- Save money. 

P.S. My sister, Sana is such a sweetheart, she put in 2 months of her pocket-money and treated me to the perfect lunch at Red Box this afternoon. Eighteenth birthday treat, and all.
Aaaaaaaah, she is so adorable and I love her so much! :)
It's so cool, this year I become an adult and she becomes a teenager. :P

P.P.S. Meeting a friend you haven't met since 7th grade is just the most fun experience. :D

Tonight, I'll stay up till twelve. :)

                                      "What can be said in New Year rhymes,
                                       That's not been said a thousand times?
                                       The new years come, the old years go,
                                       We know we dream, we dream we know.
                                       We rise up laughing with the light,
                                       We lie down weeping with the night.
                                       We hug the world until it stings,
                                       We curse it then and sigh for wings.
                                       We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
                                       We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.
                                       We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
                                       And that's the burden of a year."

                                                                    Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Today is a 'last day'. Strange, isn't it? Today I'm living in 2010, I'll wake up tomorrow in the year 2011.

It's the time of the year to be pensive, to make resolutions, to be excited out of your mind, to be hopeful and to go absolutely insane.

I'm feeling a certain calm. I'm staying at home, watching whatever movie is on TV with family, will wait for the clock to strike twelve, and cuddle up and go to sleep.

I only hope 2011 is a nice happy year. As rose-tinted and simple as that. :)

You know what is really exciting? My 18th birthday is in 6 days. I am approaching the age of majority at a frighteningly fast rate. That makes me so happy! :)

Here's wishing you, your family, your best friends and your cute little puppy a very happy new year.

Stay happy, stay awesome. :)

On Beauty

You are so beautiful, to me. :)

We live in a world of stereotypes, opinions, judgments and assumptions, which we may not have been party to creating but are influenced by, nonetheless. There is no denying that influential beauty stereotypes exist that fill the pages of fashion magazines and brim over in cinematic endeavors. A desire for perfection- the perfect skin, the perfect hair, the perfect nose... has crept into the mind of every girl.

Beauty beliefs start early in life, I think. When my parents gifted me a Barbie doll with a flowing pink gown and a plastic dress, she was my first definition on beauty. The definition has changed dramatically over the years; from a Bollywood actress to a Hollywood actress, from a pop singer to a woman in a corporate suit, from a friend to an aesthetic.


I was in the auto-rickshaw on my way back home from office the other day, battling the usual traffic and eunuchs at traffic signals. As I waited anxiously for the signal to turn green, I saw something. An image that has remained in my memory ever since. A poor old beggar woman was sitting on the pavement. She had deep wrinkles on her face, and the way her sari hung on her gave away her malnutrition.Ordinarily, I wouldn't have been moved by this sight, except probably, sparing a second ruminating on the neglected India. But, then I saw her extend her right hand in front of her and smile. I couldn't help but stare. It was only after a few seconds that I realized there was a broken fragment of a mirror in her hands. She adjusted a few strands of her hair, opened her eyes wide and smiled. 
And in that moment, she was the most beautiful woman I'd seen.


And I realized that beauty can never have a base value. It is such a fragile commodity, subjective by its very definition, that there is no generalized basis for what one may consider a thing of beauty. With Photoshop, touch-ups and cosmetic surgery being the talk of the day, this may come across as being a superficial argument. But it truly is a wake-up call to me, for every day I wake up feeling fat, zit-prone or having a static-propelled hairstyle, I think of her happily. :)


"Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny; Plato, a privilege of nature; Theophrastus, a silent cheat; Theocritus, a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom; Aristotle, that it was better than all the letters of recommendation in the world; Homer, that it was a glorious gift of nature; and Ovid, that it was favor bestowed by the gods."
Francis Quarles

Ho Ho Ho!

              I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.
                                                                                       - Harlan Miller


Merry Christmas, everyone! And here's to an amazing new year. :)

Dwarfed...

...By the Beauty

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

(The world's largest salt flat, stretching over 12,000 square feet and is so clear that the water reflects the sky with mind-boggling clarity.)

...By the Courage

Indian soldiers after winning the Kargil War

...By The Emotion, "Saudade"

A Portuguese word, one of the most beautiful words in the world, refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone who is loved but is lost.