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.

Wabi-Sabi

The beauty in impermanence. The exquisiteness in  imperfection and asymmetry. The allure of the authentic.

To embrace the scars as they come and the wounds time gives us.

To cherish frayed edges and look for beauty waiting to be discovered.

Bared to the essence, this is what the Japanese world view of "Wabi-Sabi" is.
And what a beautiful thought at that. The mere profundity it implies renders it virtually untranslatable. And that only adds to the enigma of the concept.

As another year draws to a close, I cannot help but reflect on the events,however fleeting, that have occurred and the memories,however trivial, that have been formed.
Certain events, people and conversations made me grow in terms of developing a educated world view and to develop an understanding of the unknown.
Certain events made me realize the flaws in my opinions, and the defects in my character. I am learning how to opine, without generalizing. And I am learning how to accept, without judging. I am learning how to lead, without dominating. I am learning how to laugh, without yearning.

One of the things I am most proud of this year is this blog. Yes, this blog has been an achievement in the sense that its very existence has forced me to sit in front of my laptop and write. If this hadn't existed, I probably wouldn't have been forced to think the things I did, and however trivial my thoughts were, I am unimaginably thankful that they occurred to me. And I am hugely thankful to the 45 people who found this space worth their  few minutes of Internet-happy time. :)

2010 has been a year of surprises.
A man made a million plans(and bucks) and succeeded at most of them, until his office was raided and he was asked to quit being chairman of the IPL.
A cricketer on the other side of the border may have married the love of his life, until it was discovered he was telephonically wedded already.
The best golfer in the world, a happily married man by the looks of it, would turn out to be a tiger outside the golf course as well.
An amazing trip to Europe may have been planned down to the last detail, but an unpronounceable natural disaster somewhere in Iceland may have thrown you off track.
The most respected and venerated journalists in the country would lose face when tapes of their lobbying for a corrupt telecom minister were made public.

Who would have thought?

The natural cycle of ups and downs, growth and decay, fast and slow have been witnessed in this year more apparently than ever before.
2010 truly, has been the year of wabi-sabi.

Snowflake in An Avalanche

At the very outset, my most sincere apologies to the four and a half people (including my sister's two friends) who truly missed my blog posts. And average apologies to the rest who missed my blog posts just because they had nothing better to do than be bemused by adolescent jargon. (You know I love you guys and completely suck at being nonchalant, right? :P)


(Okay, I have something to share with you, but I'll do it later because I have to behave modestly for the sake of propriety, but please remind me if I forget!)


__________________________________________________________________________


When I was 8, it was such a big word. I couldn't imagine ever being able to spell it correctly.
When I was 11, I was blissfully ignorant about it.
16 was when I found it fashionable to shirk it.
I'm turning 18 next month, and am already bogged down by it.
I’m talking about that 14-letter word that fills every newly inducted adult with a sense of excruciating dread – responsibility.




Ah, those simpler times when responsibility meant doing your homework fast enough so you could play "Hide and Seek" with the building friends. Oh, that period of carefree abandon when being irresponsible only meant forgetting your homework at home and inventing creative excuses to cover it up. Responsible was the person who got picked Class Monitor, or School Prefect.
Responsibility has arisen from its murky depths (or glorious ashes, as might be the case), to take on its arch nemesis- the hapless young adult. From something as simple as dealing with team members during projects and warming up food for your overworked father to making pertinent life choices.


You know when the enormity of this struck me? 
When I went to SBI the other day, to fill in a scary-looking form to open a bank account. To deposit my intern-happy stipend. It's not too much, but makes me glad nonetheless. It's my first salary. (Stipend, my boss corrects me for the umpteenth time!) 
When I went for Independence Rock the same evening, and saw a nuclear mushroom hovering above the venue. The ghastly migraine-triggering smell informed me, it was just a drug-produced smoke cloud. 
( I have decided to make an effort to not be judgmental about the latter. Drugs, alcohol and the like are their personal choices, and I have no business opining and meddling. My definition of correct isn't the same as theirs, as someone very wise told me recently.)


But anyway, it made me realize that "I've become a big girl". 
And I'm happy about that. A little terrified, but happy still. :)


Oh, and for my big news!


I stood first in the Story-Writing Competition held in college. (I have a cool new pen drive and discount vouchers to prove it!) Of the many topics, I chose to write as a serial killer who has to justify his actions to the reader. Twisted, and rather interesting. 
I wasn't too happy with the way I concluded my story, but who cares? I won! I beat the second-year scribblers  and third year pedants! :P


"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."
Voltaire

The Wannabe

A "wannabe" (slang for "want to be") is a person with an ambition to be someone or something that they are not. The term is mildly pejorative, intended to convey the foolish nature of the desire due to the incompetence of the "wannabe" to accomplish the goal.

There you go. The Wikipedia borrowed perfect introduction to my blog post. I bet my old English teachers would smirk at this.

Those guys who wear their jeans so low you can see their apple red Jockey underwear.

Those guys who flash the Yo/Peace/I think this means the metal sign symbol.

Those guys who show off their interest in music by rattling off all the genres and sub-genres of metal, with no idea what's the difference between death metal and progressive. The wannabe girl says "Oh, what's your favorite song, guy-I'm-so-impressed-with <3 <3?" And he says In The End, that Linkin Park song. The anthem of the wannabe.

Those guys who think saying "Kewl" is so cool.

Those guys who say "Ssup Bro" and think it rolls as smoothly off their tongue as a typical American teen. 

Those guys who think unbuttoning the top 3 buttons of their shirt makes them so much more attractive.

Those girls who think using the F-word five times in a sentence makes them a mama from the hood.

Those girls who buy that tight tight t-shirt without looking at their bulging t-t-tyres.

They don't understand something critical.

It's okay not to be American. And it's perfectly all right to prefer samosa to sushi. Faking your music or literature interests can only get you so far. 

Who are you trying to ape, anyway? Those bunch of morons in 90210? 

Seriously. Wake up, smell the coffee beans and get real.

You have one life. Don't live it like someone you are not.

P.S. I sound like a motivational speaker. :O