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. :) 

Confessions of Roadkill on the Tech Highway.

You won't see me in bluish-green pictures looking like an Avatar reject.
You won't find the iconic white earphones dangling from my ears.
You won't see my eager fingers moving around a sleek touchscreen.
It takes me a few minutes to figure out that when people are discussing Cupcake and Froyo, they aren't discussing what to treat my hungry tummy to, but versions of Android.
And when you say the word tablet, my first instinct is to think Crocin.

This is the truth as I know it.

While I am not inherently excited by technology, as I sat staring at the mail from my grandmom which ended with 'Sent from my iPad', I am more determined than ever to like it. Wait, love it and embrace all that changing technology brings with it.

Give me a crash-course in all things technology, please? :)

Image Source: Ben Heine Photography

In Search of the Perfect Coffee in Bombay.

It has been raining incessantly the past couple of days, and the clouds still look happily full, the way a child looks after a bowl of ice-cream. The weather is just right for it...

I close my eyes and find myself transported to a beautiful outdoor cafe in the middle of a small, busy square. As I sit back and breathe in the aroma of freshly brewed espressos, I look around to see a network of echoing alleys filled with gossiping shopkeepers and enamored tourists. The town appeared to consist of a dozen streets made for hours of mindless wandering. Expensive, spotless establishments gleam at the town's center while beautiful, old-fashioned hotels are hidden away behind wild creepers. I imagine myself reading 'Pride and Prejudice' or some such lumbering classic befitting the serene setting. I sit there for hours in a happy daze...

I awake from my reverie to discover that the cappuccino I had ordered twenty minutes ago has arrived. The waiter at Barista has been kind (or conversely creepy) enough to draw a heart with cream on top. The coffee arrives in a standardized and conspiratorially small mug, designed so the customer has to pay much more than what was deserved while not even keeping the option open of stealing that silly mug. Win-win for the cafe guys. I hardly ever go to Barista unless a friend has a discount coupon. 

Hypocrite, you say?

Who passes up an offer for free coffee, I retort.

The same goes for Cafe Coffee Day(CCD). The Tropical Iceberg which tastes exactly like the Iced Eskimo is alright, though. The fact that the more appetizing items on their menu are always, and I repeat, always missing is yet another capitalist conspiracy against the cafe-going customer, I presume. And the music playing makes me want to weep like the windows on a rainy afternoon.

But there's a whole other reason I dislike The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. It tends to have too many people pretending to write novels, and too few people pretending to read novels. It just has this pretentious arty vibe to it that I don't enjoy. Its only redeeming aspect are the adorable tea bags that I'd just like to steal and stash away for a rainy day stuck at home.

This is lamenting the utter lack of cafe culture in this city of dreams.
If the coffee is good, the cafe isn't. Or vice versa.

If you live in the city, do share your perfect coffee haunts.
If the offer of a free coffee and my lively company isn't enough, I promise to tell you about the best ice-cream in the city in return :)

Image Source: Albaflickr's Photostream

18 Going on 80. :)

As part of our grading in the subject Presentation Skills, I had to deliver a 3-minute speech to a class of faces bored with speeches on economic recession, financial reform and the like. I chose to speak on a topic dear to me, and gave a persuasive speech on how reading, though a conventionally unpopular (especially given my age) hobby is a brilliant one. I spoke about how my grandfather inculcated a lifelong love for books in me. I prepared a short Powerpoint presentation that played in the background that elicited a variety of 'awww's and 'so sweeeeeet's. I shared the story due to my firm belief that stories have a more lasting impact than statistics and pedantic facts.

I've put up the slides here. Do take a look. :)

Oh, so that's what people are reading at Tihar Jail.

I never fail to be surprised by the innate ability of the internet to house some of the most bizarre and brilliant things. Look what I found as I was glancing through the Open Magazine website!

The list of books people are reading in Tihar Jail's largest library. :O

Tihar's Jail number 3 has 6,000-odd books, all donated in myriad languages.

From Vikram Seth and Tarun Tejpal to Orhan Pamuk and Karl Kruszelnicki. 

WOW.

P.S. And guess what? I don't see any Chetan Bhagat! Muahahahahaha.