Old, Fat and Critical.

The year is over and I feel old. I have been home for nine days, and I leave in six more. Each day that I stare at the health faucet in my loo during my early morning commune with nature, I am tempted to rip it out of the wall and take it with me to college. Rip the health faucet, i.e., not the commune with nature. I am mixing up my phrases. It is a result of great emotion and (I think) indigestion. I believe I may have, at lunch today, erred on the side of fried baby potatoes, and not caution. I am perfectly willing to err on the side of caution the day caution comes eight pieces to a plate, fried golden, to exactly that brilliant crispness between 'almost brilliant' and 'burnt'.

I also went on holiday to Pondicherry, and no, I will not call it Puducheri. It could be my shameful Tamil, but does not Puducheri translate to 'new slum' in Tamil? No? Just checking.

I have watched Kurbaan, Paa, Rocket Singh - Salesman of the Year and Avatar. My observations are as follows -

1. Kurbaan has its points. However it also has Vivek Oberoi. Therefore it falls into the deep, dark, tragic abyss (transferred epithet, I'm right, shut up) of bad movies that are not bad enough to be AWESOME.

2. Which reminds me, who wants to watch Jaani Dushman with me? Bring a DVD. I'll buy it off you. Shopkeepers cock their heads thoughtfully at me when I ask for this movie, as though idly questioning my upbringing. I am tempted to invite them along for the watch-a-thon... truly, what is a life if it does not include the (very) occasional watching of Jaani Dushman. The epic love, the epic pathos, the EPIC cross-species coitus above a meditating sage...what's not to love?

3. In a burst of petulance, fate has denied me tickets for Three Idiots, which means I will sulk silently while my insensitive friends discuss plotlines and characterisations and draw parallels to that excrescence of a book. (Though I have to admit I thought that Ryan guy was hot. Wasn't he? Wasn't he? Wheeee)

4. Back on topic - it's been said a thousand times before, but it bears repetition: kids with progeria are NOT almost seven feet tall, and it's more than a little disconcerting to see a Shrek-lookalike Amitabh Bachchan acting out his little fantasy of being son to his son who is his father who doesn't want him but then wants him, interspersed with an interesting, if highly WTF message about how not using condoms sucks donkey balls when you find yourself with a little diseased, unwanted son, but later proves to be awesome because you've grown to love the son you didn't want but you had anyway because you DIDN'T USE A CONDOM, DUMBASS.

Also, here is some punctuation dedicated to Vidya Balan's unexpected pro-babies lecture - ?????!!!!!!

But little kid Amitabh manages to be truly endearing 80% of the time. And as though vindicating my faith in her as being the prettiest woman in mainstream Bollywood today, Vidya Balan GLOWS like a (classy, understated) bulb in a nice holder. Or whatever. But woman is pretty, God, she is. And importantly, shoutout to fabindia who (I presume) clothed her in the movie - I'd lost faith in you guys, but you are indeed tres hot. My apologies, and I am coming in right now to buy more clothes that I don't need.

Lastly, Abhishek Bachchan? A couple of things - i. Remember that crush I had on you during your Bluffmaster days? Consider it ended; ii. Stop pouting, you are jowly, and you are not Hannah Montana iii. Bring the face fungus back.

4. Avatar is a mediocre story in a mindblowingly cool package. Like Nirvana, but that is an argument for another time. (For clarity, the mindblowingly cool part is Kurt Cobain, so maybe I should have said 'mindblowingly cool and dead'; but seriously, have you seen those eyes? *swoon*)

5. Rocket Singh is excellent, if you excuse the questionable morals of the premise (maybe it's only me, but I was mentally shaking my head in disapproval of the undeniable illegality of the whole deal). But it moved quickly, didn't take itself too seriously, and (thank you God!) did not involve itself in an uninteresting love story. Also, it stars Prem Chopra as an absolutely edible grandfather, which shocked and delighted me, having only seen him so far in OBSERVE!-I-AM-EVIL-BWAHAHAHAHA roles. Y'know what I mean?

6. Also, I eat my words and Ranbir Kapoor is the next big (mainstream) thing.

Okay, everyone, please blog. I have six days left here and it feels like Death Row. :(

Before I forget - oh valorous commenters, be not deterred by the Word Verification thingie! I have been courted by spam kumar, spam kapoor, spam verghese and spam balakrishnan and WV is my shelter from their unseemly affections.

Ta.

Bengaluru - the Interim Post.

I hope I have appeased local rowdies with the usage of 'Bengaluru' in the title. I will now proceed to say 'Bangalore' throughout the post. Adjust maadi. :)

So I am in Bangalore. A proper Bangalore post is creating itself at the moment. It will be unleashed as soon as -

1. it is finished, and
2. a freak - and highly localised - earthquake causes my landlady to move her good self away from her PC.

You see, I am highly internet deprived. My fingers tremble in the night, but there is no keypad to soothe them. My eyes glaze over in expectation, but there is no ugly monitor to stare at. I lech at the three hundred and eighty seven cyber cafes on my way to work, as they beckon to me with their curvaceous modular keypads and their beautiful dark cable modems; my poor financial situation leads me to rebuff their advances. I stare sadly at them for five seconds and then go eat excellent tomato rice (with thick coriander chutney and thicker coconut chutney, with side order of excellent tadka dal) at Imperial Hotel, for the princely sum of eighteen rupees. Yum.

I think I will bring the two-lunch system into fashion. You will eat one lunch, and then you will eat another, just to keep the first one company inside your stomach. Cows may eat eight lunches, because they have four stomachs and of course, for a proper partay you need two lunches for each stomach.

(I am not responsible for any cows keeling over and dying out of indigestion.)

If your digestion is not strong, you have no place in the world I am going to create. The same one where I am going to be Supreme Lord(-ess? Ramu, your opinion?) where I will eat two lunches out of respect for the law (which I have created) and two lunches each for every unfed citizen in my country, just out of the kindness of my heart. I will cry copious quantities of fat, sympathetic tears for them, but I will stop as soon as I get to the puliyodharai, because you know how the rice tends to be quite salty to begin with.

I have seen some lovely sights in Bangalore, including the interestingly named Philistine Auto Repair Works off Old Madras Road, and Bux! Bux! Bux! on Bannerghatta Road, the latter being a bookshop. I have keenly observed its location (in between Chamundeswari tea shop and Chamundeswari Auto Repair) and as soon as I figure out where in this neverending tangle of roads, this bloody Bannerghatta Road is, I will run off and check Bux! Bux! Bux! out.

Strawberry Fields is a nice place to spend a jobless weekend afternoon. There is a nice assortment of good South Indian boys with curly eyelashes and adorable little jiggly paunches in place, who are cunningly attired as METALHEADSSSS. (Ya right.) There is a relaxed atmosphere composed of lots of sun, good egg rolls and a general happy unwashedness.

But seriously, some of the bands are quite nice.

--

PS - To Kannada-knowing peoples: I have been faithfully trotting out my extensive Kannada vocabulary consisting of "Oudhu!" "Illa!" and "X Colony olige hogitha?" at regular intervals, to sundry bus-drivers, bus-conductors and bus-terminus Enquiry Officers. Oudhu and Illa have worked ok, but one bus-driver laughed when I asked him whether the bus, X-Colony olige hogitha. How exactly have I screwed up? Kindly be enlightening.

PPS - One excellent side-effect of my luck to always be finding auto-drivers with road-rage problems, is that I may not be able to ask where the loo is, in kannada, I may not be able to order food in kannada, I may not be able to ask for directions in kannada, but if I am pissed off I can shout Nin Hendruna Kaiya! But I have been advised that this is not a smart move. Whattay bore.

Bye.

One Day..

I will write a book.

Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Mohammed?

I want to know from anyone who reads my blog- how does one choose one religion for oneself, if one wants to?

On what basis do you evaluate a particular religion? Does it even make sense to 'evaluate' a religion, i.e. examine it using logic and reason, when belonging to a religion is completely dependent on not logic, but faith?

If you insist on examining it critically with logic, in an absolutely unbiased fashion, then you do not have faith. And if you do indeed have unequivocal faith, truly objective criticism is impossible. Consider a devout Catholic attempting an objective evaluation of Catholicism; it simply will not work. Equally applicable to all religions.

Here is the circular trap as I see it -

I've read over fifty accounts of islamic apostates, i.e. people who left Islam, and at least as many of people who've left Christianity, and most accounts of why they left their respective religions are logic-based. I'm finding it difficult to understand how a logical criticism of a religious text can be a valid criticism when religions simply ask you to have faith.

If you are sceptical of it in any way, (one way being attempting a critical evaluation of it) then how exactly do you have faith? And even if you go on to prove successfully, that the primary religious text of a particular religion is logically inconsistent (say it is full of anachronisms and self-contradictions), what exactly have you proved? Your criticism will not make any difference to the devout, for they have faith, and faith is not critical. Your criticism can only make a difference to the skeptics, which makes no difference, because by virtue of being skeptical, they do not have faith to begin with.

So when you have no faith, and yet you cannot criticise, how do you choose a religion?

Or do I have it on backwards, and does the religion choose you?

Regular commenters, please oblige, and lurkers, please make an exception and delurk, pretty please. :) I want as many opinions as I can get. Atheists, agnostics, everyone please come forward.

Thank you.

***

(No disrespect is meant by the title; the title stays as it is because it seems to sum up my problem perfectly.)

I am a Ninja, and you are Not.

Allow me to comment on the weather once more. It is in that blessed twilight moment between summer and winter, where summer seems to pause on its way out and look us straight in the eye, and we have caught that moment, captured it indefinitely in our skin and our eyes. Crisp and cold and so strangely clear in the mornings, with that large white winter sun that simply cannot heat, unexpectedly hot afternoons, where you pull off your sweatshirt, cursing (or if you are a Dilli-person, you point and laugh at the 'Saooth-Indian' who, poor her, is feeling cold already and it isn't even winter yet. Are you reading this, you Saddi-Dilli-type person? POO on you. One day you will call for me in a weak, shaky tenor that comes from chest catarrh, and extend a pale shaky arm to me for help and I will coldly watch and even more coldly laugh, and with infinite pleasure swat your pleading arm away. Ahahahahahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHA.) and chilly nights, where you observe all the work that you have planned for the night, and then you observe all the warm, toasty blankets you have piled up on your bed, and the work does not stand a chance. And you climb into your bed and assume a foetal position and remain in said retarded position until four minutes before class.

I am the first to admit I spent the first winter here freezing my extremities off, drinking much shitty coffee and declaiming loudly to the world in general what a very large craphole University is, and what a much larger unwashed craphole a desert winter is. I never realised what a fan I am of warm, humid, rainy winters (think Madras, think Pondicherry, think Bombay!) until the Jodhpur winter snuck up and stuffed icecubes up all my orifices when I wasn't looking. And left them there for three months.

But, you know, I really like this winter now. I like the cold that brings tears to your eyes (literally), I like the fact that winter clothes beautifully camouflage any and all flab you have gathered eating rasagollas with with every meal. And of course, I like eating rasagollas with every meal.

What I DON'T like is having to hover sneakily in the freezing bathroom to fill my two buckets of hot water every morning before it runs out. HOT SHOWERS, DEAR GOD! By Methuselah, has nobody heard of MODERN PLUMBING?!

But this post has gone in a different direction than intended. No really. Sometimes I do come here with a specific intention in mind; of course, it usually happens that I end up doing happy backflips in an entirely different direction, and remember my original thought only when I am exhausted and flat on my back and dreaming of Honey Nut Crunch ice cream from Baskin Robbins, to satisfy the keening, growling sugar craving I have from doing backflips on the internetz.

Anyhow.

My original intention was to applaud the neat social structure that my University has developed. It appears to follow, unhappily, the standard format of every high-school American show I have ever watched. But it is still a nice, neat social structure. And by neat, I mean dependable also. Like we are a bucket of pondwater where the layers have settled down, and you pick it up and shake it, and when it settles down, the scum is still on top and the gravel is still on the bottom. So this social structure. Nice and exclusive. Each little clique talks to its own little clique and watches the same shows and hugs the same teddybears and dates a generic boyfriend, who wears a generic shirt, and also generic undies, which he will duly display above his generic jeans. Or I may be referring to only the Ballerina-Flats Clique. You know the ones, yes?

"Do you watch Friends? OMFG wasn't Joey so cute, there, where he pulled the same stupid face he's pulled for ten seasons and paused for just the right amount of time and made a deep yet funny comment? OMFGROTFLMAO. LOOOOOOOL. OMG what did you say? You don't watch Friends? Like, how can you not watch Friends, like, where have you been, like, ew."

I am forever put off ballerina flats and white pants, I think.

Look out for them. They have horns and fangs. And straightening irons and hot wax.

I'm the quiet one in the corner, the one in the extra-large hoodie. The one who you know, instantly, is a NINJA.

*Dramatic closing music*

Oh Yay, Vitamin B tablets!

This is a hot, sticky night, cold desert nights are a myth. Suffocation, and the smell of vodka and pineapple juice is not leaving my tshirt. Hairs, too many hairs on my head and they are tired and dying moist, sweaty deaths on my neck, my itchy, salty neck, the one that I would like to cut off and cover carefully with a sheet of cellophane and store in the freezer for 3-4 hours. Allow to set and serve with whipped cream and a sprig of mint on top. 

This taste of salt is everywhere, and MY GOD, WILL EDDIE VEDDER SHUT UP NOW RIGHT NOW, iTunes, iTunes, pause! Pause pause PAUSE pause pause!!!!!!!! Oh no, it hangs, oh please don't hang my project is open like a bombay duck sliced into half on a cold dead slab like itself, but not a slab, a fish, adjust as per taste, and Crawford Market is a smelly, smelly place. Don't believe them when they say it's Historic, because what use is Historic when there is Smelly? They try to con you with that OO LOOK IT'S HISTORIC PLEASE OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND MAKE APPROPRIATE AWED NOISES at Agra too, but you just say I don't care if it's historic, I'm not going in there and two people are dead in there and there is no eternal love cos there's no bloody romance when you're bloody smelly. Being dead is secondary, or tertiary or even quaternary because you have saat janam anyway but I don't know what comes after quaternary or I would have said it. 

If Kurt Vonnegut wasn't an angry man I shall be disappointed with fate, because I Vonne Gut someone too, but I was not blessed with a name like that, was I? No. It would make everything so convenient, like who are you? i am Vonnegut and what do you want? i Vonne Gut.. that is hilarious, that is. LAUGH.

If I could do a keg stand, would it be worth it if I were teetotalled? No. I would have to be totalled. That just goes to show you not to aspire for things that are not within your grasp. ..Grasp is SUCH a satisfying word to say, like 'debilitating' and 'ridDONKulous', which is the way 'ridiculous' should be said, but it is MY way and if you say it like that without my permission I will shoot you with a Colt .22 cos I have no aim, and That Person says you don't need to have aim to shoot with a Colt .22. That other one said I'd suck at shooting too, but that's what they told Gandy before he put on his dishcloth and went to London to see the Queen. Pussy cat, pussy cat what did you do there? I executed my diplomatic responsibility, but that doesn't fucking rhyme now, does it? 

Anyway, that's not what they told Gandy, they told Gandy he SHOULD shoot but he said he didn't wanna. 

Happy birthday Gandy.

Oh your birthday was three days back. Oh shitttt.

Oh no, oh no, Vitamin B...

I Love the Smell of Crazy in the Morning.

One good way to concentrate directionless anger inside you is to read Ann Coulter back to back until you've either kicked the computer screen in or unintentionally redirected the Slice in your mouth to your keyboard via your nose, thereby precluding the ability to scroll to read further.

She says good science and good religion are based on the same principles. She says these principles include the ability to be factually proved.

I'd say WTF, but I have come to the conclusion that quiet understatement is the only way to go here. 

In connection, I think some women are meant to talk and be heard and some women are meant to be quiet and look pretty. Ann Coulter looks like a skinny blond horse -  a fairly pretty horse, but a horse nonetheless - so I was momentarily perplexed as to what to do with her. I have come to the conclusion that she could be a potted palm.  Inoffensive, quiet and pretty in an anaemic, apologetic way. Hotel-doorway-ficus-plant. One would put Coulter's feet in the planter and fill up with good nutritious mud. Then one would stretch her arms out and fertilise them. Water regularly until green shoots are seen. 

If she remained quiet, people would pass her by without comment. If she began talking, little boys would pee in her and people would surreptitiously dump bad Paneer Butter Masala in her. I often wish that this could happen to her in real life.

I grew a plant when I was six, as part of a school assignment. It was a little kidney bean. I put it in a plastic cup (sorry, I didn't know of Al Gore.. Not that anything has changed now that I do.) and filled it with cotton and arranged my bean artistically in the centre. Then I watered it and watched it night and day like a hawk (Would I be that mum, the one giving her kindergartener kid advanced algebra lessons?). My bean cooperated commendably, textbook-fashion (shoots on day 1, lengthening on day 2) until the third morning  when I was to take it to school where it would sit on a shelf and compete in size, colour, positioning aesthetic, length of shoot, shotput, weightlifting and 100m sprint with all my classmates' beans. But when I picked it up and did the final rearrangement, the shoot broke off the bean. I was unfazed, reckless and not excessively  encumbered with scruples.

I stuck it back with fevikwik. 

What? 

I was discovered when it remained the exact same size for the next three days when the other beans in class continued to show off, pushing out fat little shoots of suspicious length in an obscenely enthusiastic manner with no consideration for the delicate sensibilities of their disabled brother. When confronted with an accusation of Sproutal Malpractice, I maintained at that time - and this continues to be my official position - that my bean was simply suffering from performance anxiety. 

Modern parenting is a fucking headache. 

It is an indicator of delicious weather that your first reaction to it is the barely controllable urge to tear off your clothes and run through the sprinklers in the football field. Or anywhere. Personally I prefer sprinkler-dampened football fields. Temporary insanity is uplifting, but hot asphalt will bring you down to earth, which would be ok if the earth weren't so skin-peelingly, nose-shrivellingly, hair-fryingly hot. In any case, I do not run (not dignified, and my limbs protest and jerk about stupidly in different directions. I look like a 1956 washing machine that's come to life without notice. The day I run in a cohesive fashion, I will run in public. This excuse may or may not be a poor cover up for my sudden and inexplicable desire to own Juicy Couture trackpants.)

Oh, and I do not go naked, because my jiggly bits are shy, unlike my talky bits.

When my throat gets very dry and I keep talking, I sound like Billie Holiday. (At this point, a friend wishes to record her rather offensively strong dissention; apparently I sound like an aging bullfrog. To my good friend I say my blog, my opinion. Go make your own blog. Gngngngngn)

Modern American biology textbooks are enjoyable for the reason that they're very, perhaps too approachable; they make complex discussions of mitochondrial function sound like something that can be learnt off a Magic School Bus episode. You're always left with the vague but persistent feeling that it's got to be more complicated than that! It is for the exact same reason that I dislike American Physics textbooks; they make me feel like an idiot for having whimpered miserably at the mere mention of Physics my entire life. IT WASN'T THAT EASY, OK?!

The world is slowly and inescapably moving towards anarchy. One good way to prepare your children for this is to teach them to hunt for their own food. Place a Milano biscuit packet across the room and have your child stealthily stalk it with silent grace until the perfect moment where he (or she) may attack and be sure to succeed. Then take the packet from them and eat all the biscuits in front of their eyes. What? You're bigger, it's the law of the jungle. 

Sleep appears to be a good idea, but I won't really know for sure until tomorrow morning, will I? Unless there are larger, more distant repercussions unknown to me now, which I will be sure to record here for your benefit in the  last few moments of my life. 

Bye.

Revolutions begin with Haikus in Loos.

Sometimes you need a template that matches the mood (mood = dark, not constipated; also, NO, the mere reference to a toilet in the header does not mean you're invited to make toilet jokes. I've heard them all, anyway. I've even made a few.)

Speaking of headers, many thanks to this girl, whose habit of arming herself with permanent markers and skulking around communal bathrooms occasionally produces interesting results. ;) Welcome to National League of the Underperforming, Jodhpur - even our showers are educational. As the man has rightly said, Revolutions begin in the Bathroom*. 

We are toying with the idea of doing a whole series of these. 

If you were religiously inclined, for example, you would no doubt appreciate this little effort in that direction (I cater to the masses; after all, it has been so correctly said, pee is the great equalizer*) : 

And now I sit me down to wee

Dear God, I hope the seat is clean

I hope the pot, of proof, is free

Of someone, earlier, having been.

Haiku enthusiasts? 

one stream of water

showerhead blocked (surprise?)

bath will still happen.

also,

O soap that vanished,

i left you on the wash-stand!

soap thief!! i smite thee.

More as and when inspiration/insomnia strikes, or public enthusiasm/support is shown. 

Oh and before I forget - Revelsign, this post is dedicated to you. 

Please don't kill me. I couldn't resist. :D

------

*Or Charles Dickens did, only may have used the words 'Charity' and 'Home' instead. Quiet down, nitpickers, I aim to capture the spirit of quotes; accuracy is SO 1997.

*Susanna Moodie in Life in the Clearings versus the Bush, 1853 (though wrongly attributed to Thomas Carlyle) and she was talking about death, but it's a fairly flexible phrase, no? Oh shut up.

Hello, trolls..

.. you little shits. I love receiving email from you, if only to marvel at the creative spelling and the vacuous mind that thought it was kewl to spell that way. I also wonder, idly, where you get my email from, but that is probably my fault, my ID is everywhere on the internet.

Dear illusion_of_the_mind, I quite enjoy my sarcasam, thanks for asking. I gathered from your long and rambly email to me that you do not like my sarcasam. Because it shows I have a 'cowardly mind which cn only make fun n not fight bravely'. Tell me, dear illusion_of_the_mind, is your ass nice and roomy? It must be, no, considering you sit on it all day to think up these startlingly novel critiques? Why don't you stick your clever little head up your ass and rest in peace, then? Unless your posterior has an inbuilt modem, I doubt you will ever be troubled by my sarcasam again. The day your ass acquires an internet connection, do email me, I'd love to hear all about it. Also, compliments from my sarcasam. He loves to be the centre of attention, and the next time you write in, remember he enjoys truffle pastry. Thank you for writing in. :)

Dear sumit, thank you for writing in. You were greatly amused by my post on f****** like b******, and told me I was "cool.... to be writin on f****** wid girlz" . While I blush delicately with delight that you have enjoyed my blogpost, I must express my horror at the idea that I enjoy writing on asterisking with women. I was brought up well, and in my family we do not asterisk with women. We do not asterisk with men either, nor pets, and none of the household appliances has ever complained of being asterisked. Asterisking is frowned upon - nay - asterisking is taboo. I assure you, dear sumit, we do not asterisk.

Fucking is different though. Everyone enjoys a good fuck.

Keep writing in, sumit! :)

Dear elvenwindow, hi. No, not interested in an ab machine, though God knows I could use it. Which reminds me, how did you know I was a fat slob simply through my blog? Perceptive. But creepy.

Do keep writing in, elvenwindow..... NOT!

heh. Sorry. I'm a bit of a sucker for not-jokes. :D

-----------

The above are the only three trolls I've had the privilege of interacting with over the last year. Last year there were only two, one of whom tried to sell me Viagra at an unbeatable price. These people simply do not do their market research properly, do they? Who tries to sell a poverty-stricken, celibate law student Viagra? What would you try to sell me next? Prams? Pampers? Breast pumps?

The rest of nice people who wrote in with funny stories and all (numbering a grand total of two), thanks. :D I read your email, I just don't reply.

But for all of you trolls out there? Do write in, loves, mommy's simply aching to write back to you. ;-)

Ta.

What Would Uma Thurman Smoke?

So, the Lord of the Rings. Shoot me, but I've never felt the magic, and god knows I've tried. Due to my policy of not watching the movie until I've read the book, I have no idea what you're talking about when you rhapsodise over the perfection of the casting system that picked Gollum, or was it Gandalf. Dude with the long hair that should have been Dumbledore, yo.

I like Pulp Fiction. As a rule, I do not watch movies more than once. I barely watch movies at all, but I have watched Pulp Fiction three times. All three times, my breath has caught a little bit at that moment that the camera follows Uma Thurman's bare ankles and feet around the house. If there is one moment in modern cinema that exudes pure, effortless Sex, this is it.

School reunions sadden me. We have not grown out of the shadow of the people we were convinced we'd be by now, and we have not grown into the people we will become. Somewhere in between what should have been and the absolute least that we could be, we've paused in an uneasy sort of equilibrium that we try to defend to everyone else with high-pitched laughter and different clothes. No one ever tells anybody else exactly what they've been doing for two years. No one is going to get along like they used to; indeed, no one ever got along quite as well as their memories would have them believe. Why do people do this to themselves?

Me, I go for the discounted pepsi and the smiley potato patty things. :)

Sometimes it feels nice to simply be quiet. Six unbroken hours of silence, and you float quietly through the day. Perspective, order and unless I am very much mistaken, acuity. Watching your average joe emote while tuning out the bullshit he is saying generates a far clearer picture of what he means as opposed to what he'd like you to believe he means. Intuition is not, I think, the word for it; in any case, the closest to a 'gut feeling' I've ever had is indigestion.

Apparently the only close-to-healthy way you can eat Maggi, is by cooking the noodles by themselves in water, draining away the stock, washing the cooked noodles in cold water and dry tossing the masala in, as you would toss a salad. I'm probably also the kind of idiot that would rather die than switch from Marlboro to Nicorette, but if this was the only way to eat Maggi, I would not eat Maggi. No offence to Maggi - baby, you've been by my side through thick and thin. Though these days, you are tending more and more to thin... it's all the cost cutting at the factories and as an informed enjoyer of a quality noodle of generous thickness, I protest the new Size 2 Maggi. I like my Maggi old-school: fat, soupy and simply exploding with the goodness of Vitamin FUCK-this-is-bad-for-you.

There's an age and a personality to perfumes. Chanel No.5 is for the quiet sexiness that comes with some age, much maturity and a comfort in one's own skin, like those women who modelled Chanel's early suits, wearing berets and seamed stockings. I don't know if the pictures ever showed them smoking cigarettes, but in my mind, they always are. And this might be an anachronism - I have no idea, does anyone know? - but in my mind, they are smoking Gauloises. Why? Because it is French, and also because it is short and stubby and unfiltered and black and so totally not marketed towards the chicks, but they smoke it anyway, and of course, understated rebellion is so feminist, and so very 1920's Chanel. No?

See:


Coco Chanel in one of her own suits, and happily enough for me, smoking a cigarette. Is that a Gauloise?

It could be any other cigarette, of course. I know nothing about cigarettes.

Speaking of things I don't know, I don't know Chanel today. Karl Lagerfeld and suntan-in-a-bottle are BFFs and I don't like my designers orange.

Chanel No. 5 is one of the few perfumes whose progressively changing scents I both noticed and liked. Lacoste's Touch of Pink smells dramatically different at first go - aggressively bright and citrus, like one of those chirpy , vacant girls who used to annoy you in school, but by nightfall it is all gently sweet and wistful and musky, and I can't help but like it. I am convinced that more people would both try and buy perfume if not for those annoying people in malls who follow you everywhere with perfumed paper strips and stick em into every visible orifice, until you smell like a flower market, but you don't know because all you can smell is alcohol. But I mean, paper strips. Really?! Philistines.

Also -> boy readers who wear Axe - please don't. Thanks. :)

Simply out of curiosity, why are you opposed to consensual, non-procreative incest?

I wonder when this topic-jumping incoherence is going to end.

Digression

I am aware that this blog is reserved solely for ranting convenience of self, but I simply must record that the weather here for the last week has been beyond excellent. I have heard it said and I must now agree that there is nothing more beautiful to watch than the metamorphosis of a desert land in the rain.

My spirit is exploding in little electric spurts of happiness, at my fingertips, as I write this. :)

Where the snowflakes were still, but I was floating up...

Laughing, burning heat, and you can't see farther than five feet in front of you because the white metal sun has lit up on everyone's head, where each hair is a wick and every wick has caught fire in a tiny explosion of light, and you shut your eyes, and people are a talking, laughing, gently undulating sea of blue shoes and brown umbrellas and white noise around you, and then suddenly, without warning, the noise is gone and you're all alone in a vacuum, and the happy, oblivious world does not even notice. One moment of isolation so complete it feels like you're drowning, and your mouth, your throat, your nostrils are filling with loneliness so fast that you can do nothing, and all that there is the world, in your head, in the universe, is you.

And in that one moment if you realize that you like yourself, you know that you will be safe anywhere.

Dorks PWn.

...also, how much do you love me? Show me. Buy me a tee shirt. :D

Seriously, though, just because I am a dork with an affection for androgynous clothing does not mean that I too, cannot have a fashion wishlist. The existence of couture thankfully means that the term 'fashion' can be prodded into literally any direction. Exhibit A:


Also, the fact that fashion tends to repeat itself means that sometimes dorks can be credited with prescience. You are absolutely correct, I DID precede Heidi Klum in the boyfriend jeans trend. *smug* The poor man's Micheal Kors, that's me. And now I define this year's trend in tee shirts. Not just any tee shirt, no. Tee shirts wholeheartedly espousing the cause of Dorkdom. Tee shirts celebrating the superiority of Dorkhood. Tee shirts that would gel fabulously with the persona of people with usernames like prince_of_dorkwood. Not that I know anyone with that username, of course not. (J, you can hide inside my cupboard until the scary internets peoples go away. There's a good dork, now.)

In keeping with being on the cutting edge of fashion, I will now present my all time favourite tee shirts. Needless to say, I possess none of them, although websites selling them have invited my lascivious attention for very long. Here they are, in any case. Kindly direct your drool to the comments section -

1. "ARMANI - Just another Sindhi tailor" - What, I ask, is not to love?



2. "FREE TIBET - with purchase of another Tibet of equal or greater value." - Let's see; one small territory fighting heroically for a semblance of independence from a modern behemoth? check. Poignant photos of the Indian youth expressing intellect and solidarity at Janpath? check. Several weighty philosophical, moral and legal issues? check, check and check. Good, ya. Where's the popcorn?


3. "PillowFight Club" - That's right. If it's your first day here, you must fight. And if you don't know who Tyler Durden is, please go back to drooling over The Notebook posters.

Front of t-shirt -

Right side corner (even more awesomeness.) -


And that covers, for me, as of July 13 2009, the Holy Trinity of tee shirts. Subject to change at any time, of course.

In case you are wondering if this is the (lukewarm, you think?) limit of my passion for fashion, I'll have you know that I also do possess a healthy appreciation for Christian Louboutins. However, while my relationship with these t-shirts is convivial, my relationship with Loubous is like yours with God - stand at a distance and WORSHIP, ye undeserving. :D

I leave now, but always remember - I am a Dork, and all your base are belong to us.

Over and out.

The One with the Halfhearted Chocolate and the Morally Upright Parakeet.

White chocolate icecream with hot coffee syrup snaking black, sticky trails of awesomeness all over it. I am not really a dark chocolate person anymore, I think. To truly be a dark chocolate person requires just a soupcon more snobbery than I feel capable of at this moment. At the moment, I am not feeling capable of much more than a languid sort of snobbery. I am not feeling capable of much more than a general sort of languidity at all, actually. The comparison I am trying to draw is between a ferociously active 24x7 Queen-Mother sort of snobbery ("WE are ROYALTY. We look like HAW-ses, go to EE-ton and pet our CAW-gis") as opposed to a half-hearted, minor-English-aristocrat brand of snobbery ("I'm sorry dah-ling, we only do snobbery from two to four on Tuesday evenings, could you please go away now so we can bathe our temples in Eau d'Cologne, lie gracefully on our French chaise and have our aristocratic afternoon headache in peace.") . I now subscribe to the latter school of thought. More energy-saving, I find. It is to reason, then, that I enjoy white chocolate better now. Also, I prefer Milkybars to Lindt Blanche Truffles. Thus do the great fall, eh?

White chocolate, incidentally, is a thing after my own languid heart. It is so halfheartedly chocolate that it isn't even chocolate.

Outside, the sky is a sharp, clear blue. The air is cold and crisp. The grass is green. There are puddles everywhere. I spent a significant portion of my morning personally paying my respects to each individual puddle. I am now left with itchy calves and feet, and a pair of boxer shorts resplendent with grass stains and high caste Rajput mud. That is, I think Rajputs are high caste.

Company Law, I think, is beyond my understanding. The professor tends to bandy words like 'debentures' and 'equity' with an ease that is frankly frightening. I had an earnest discussion on the topic this morning with a delightfully green parakeet. While the specifics of his opinion escaped my comprehension, I concluded that he felt strongly on the issue by the explosive manner in which he shed a hundred bright green feathers when I asked him, and followed it up promptly with a rather forceful poop on the local tree branch. Having metaphorically expressed his opinion of insider trading thus, he flew away with silent dignity. I have a new respect for parakeets, those chaps do understatements rather well.

Birds remind me, Hark! I believe I am hearing the soft and distinctive call of that rare and elusive species, the Carpenteris Jodhpurus. I quietly open my door. I see his earthy plumage. I shall slink off and attempt to trap him forthwith, with the aid of my indisputable charm and whiny voice. I have a shelf that lost its battle with gravity six months back, that needs to be restored immediately.

A wooden shelf, I meant.

A wooden bookshelf.

Perverts.

How much I am loving you all. :)

Ta.

Government-sponsored Debauchery.

Ya, ya. I know there are roads and mohallas and cute lil dead-ends in your city glorifying washermen and cobblers and goldsmiths and silversmiths. But in my city, you have -

Text loosely translated as - "The street of the dude with the beer".

Next to Beerkaran Street No.1, we have -

Text loosely translated as - "The SECOND street of the dude with the beer."

So I am trying to say this in a sophisticated, indirect and non-confrontational manner:

Beat THAT, suckers. :D :

My Friends are Retarded.

No wonder I like them so much. Also, they sometimes buy me lunch. And say the following:

"I hate the idea of male gynaecologists. The very idea that I am showing off everything I have to a man and he is STILL not going to fall madly in love with me, is too depressing. I want a female gynaecologist."

"Divya, talk to me. Don't be silent but violent."

"Same sex couples confuse me. As an engineering student you learn several things... here is a nut...and there is a bolt... and you can't do jack with two nuts or two bolts."

"Divya you have a blog?" (yes) "Am I in it?" (no) "Why the hell not?!"

"Pakistanis are just Indians with bad judgment and hot sisters."

"You study in Jodhpur! Awesome, I love Gujarati food."

"Divya's like Gujarat in peace time. No alcohol and constant yammering."

"Let's get married and have lots of babies. I'll even have some of mine with you."

----

Good times, good times.

I don't want to go back to college. :(

If only I could work a Milk Cooker.

I hate my shoes.

Thisis the primary aftertaste of my internship days. I was curious to see what it would be after the first week of interning, and this is it. I hate my shoes with a degree of loathing I normally reserve for overweight Iyers with control issues and South East Asian tastes (I wonder if I have been vague enough), Vodafone and jackfruit. 

These shoes are, quite objectively speaking, a fantasyland of ugliness.  The salesman told me it 

was bought by office-going women, which is unarguably an accurate description of the kind of shoe I was looking for. But these shoes, please note, are black pleather with metallic rivets in straight lines. Observe:

No? Not disgusted quite yet? Observe again:

Grim , what? They aspire to be worn, presumably, by the Tamil housewife who goes to work in Andhra Bank from 8 to 5 and secretly aspires to Vengeful Gothdom. (However said Vengeful Goth activities must cease by 4.30am, because then it is time to put on the milk cooker.) 

That reminds me of the time I expressed my desire to know the ideology of Goths, to a Goth. She told me "We do not support society and we protest." Protest what, I said. ""We protest society" she said. Yes, but which bit, I said. "We just protest" she said, and left. I am very sure that she is wrong. I opened the Wikipedia page on Goth subculture and Ctrl+F 'd "protest". No result. 

I took a day off from work. I feel delightful and slightly dangerous. This could be because of one of two reasons - 

1. I am reading Chuck Palahniuk, which always arouses in me feelings of deliciousness subversiveness, or

2. I successfully faked a (resounding and rather impressive, if I may say so myself) hacking cough on the why-I'm-absent phone call to the office today,  and immediately afterward gave my reason of absence as a back-ache. (Sing with me... What the Fuck?! I know. I spend a large quotient of my time wondering why I do the things I do in the remaining part of my time.)

I got a tee shirt with a lovely print on it, for my birthday. However the neckline of the tee shirt is humongous and strangely amoeboid, and therefore I am flummoxed as to the correct way to wear said tee shirt.  If I wear it so that I am modestly covered in front, A good third of my back is aired. If I protect the modesty of my back, there remains much nakedness to be addressed in front . My mother is of the opinion that I should let her take a sewing machine to the tee shirt. I am tempted to let her. 

And to everyone who this concerns - they know who they are - I am not buying skinny jeans. I tried them on. Without exception, they cling annoyingly to my leg instead of flopping around comfortably and shapelessly. Absolutely unacceptable, what.

Ta.

--

Edit: I bought the shoes for 140 rupees from a hole in the wall near where I work, because I'd gone to work with my bathroom slippers on and the partner of my firm is anal about formal dress code. I insert this back-story because, after she saw the travesty that are my shoes, a friend said I should include the reason I would possibly buy them. I agree. My shoes scared her dog. Her dog is an abominably large and scary German Shepherd.

Hmm.

Suddenly I like these shoes.

Fueled by Frustration.

The same circle of faintly pretentious faintly good blogs, the same breakfasts, the same wet, salty, heavy air, the same face in the mirror. (Not same, exactly, though. I believe I see the precursor of a zit on my forehead. Definitely absent yesterday.)

I tried to drive it away with books, so many books, and I ate them all with the desperate sort of grabbing hunger that you see in middle class people for upperclass-hood and therefore for plasticsheet-protected sofas and dustjacket-bound English books that nobody reads. I met people and drank oversweet tepid coffee and warm masala pepsi  and took buses home that surprisingly went nowhere close to home and walked beach promenades and lost a slipper to the Bay of Bengal and made a sand angel halfway to Pondicherry (if you see it, it's the one wearing a tipsy crown) and ate furiously off roadsides, which were all good enough experiences in themselves I guess, but now I'm out of things to do (bad) and out of people to meet (good) and the very sight of books is annoying me, which only annoys me further, and that halfheartedly albino man who was in Johnny Gaddaar is singing incessantly on the bloody TV and my idiot sister is singing with him and one of these days there is going to be a hole in the TV screen the shape of my sister's head.

Jagdish Bhagwati should be compulsory reading at undergrad level at least... the whole concept of a pointwise defence of globalisation is very appealing. There are some issues with what I believe are patches of unwarranted optimism, but it's a very nicely laid out argument overall. Order and method, order and method. 

Which reminds me... how hot is Bips? Really. Phew. (Observe how I say 'Bips' like I've been living next door to her and lending her one cup dahi everyday all my life.)

Also on hot-list was Obama, though his sex appeal quotient fell rapidly from greek-god to snotface-perv when the US tripled aid to Pakistan. What the feckin fish, what? Sorry Obama-man. You're going to have to settle for Michelle. Who is not a bad bargain actually, except that she:

1. Doesn't have my sparkling personality, and

2. Has too many double-toned fluorescent dresses. 

Point two should be sufficient to draw sharp and flattering (to self) contrast to self.

If I have to face one more morning with nothing to look forward to but breakfast, and then nothing to anticipate but lunch, I will murder a cat for the sheer activity of it. I swear I will. 

If you live in a different city, invite me home. Now. 

Keeping Up with the Cojones-es.

They say when your life is in imminent danger, it flashes before your eyes. I only swallowed much muddy Sutlej and energetically kicked a rock. I have the beautifully purpling bruises to show for it. My life did not flash before my eyes, unfortunately. If I had only remembered at the time that this was supposed to happen, I would have concentrated more on it. The idea is definitely interesting... I would finally find out if that boy I lusted after in class eight was indeed more important to me than my winning the math proficiency prize that term.

I have sometimes been called a nerd. I don't mind... always been attracted to nerds anyway.

What is almost as interesting as the rafting itself is to watch the other Gujarati family in the raft fiercely compete with your own in rafting prowess. Who gets to sit up in front, right in the Mouth of Danger? Jethalal or dad? Who can make more ineffectual-splashes-per-minute with an oar? Savitaben or mom? Family-group expeditions are always such wholesome, family-friendly episodes of do you have the Cojones, losers? So very Yum, no? :)

If you're Gujarati, these are all pseudonyms. What? What was that? Yes, I rather do enjoy regionalist-stereotyping actually. 

Now that I have river-rafted, I only have paragliding, bungee jumping, rock climbing and doing several, mostly illegal things to Gael Garcia Bernaz, left on my bucket list. To all of you sceptics: I am perfectly aware of the possibility that some of these ambitions may not reach fruition. I have doubts about my capabilities as a rock climber. See? I am firmly in touch with reality.

I watched craploads of television on that darling big tv in that lovely big chain-hotel in Shimla. It has been five months since I last watched TV. Why, you idiots, did none of you tell me about Coupling? What a very excellent show... in my more spazzed out moments, I simply watch it to hear them say 'bottoms' in that BBC accent.  Is it only me, or does the word 'bottoms' immediately bring to mind my (or generic, really) great-aunt's admittedly respectable but sadly unexciting posterior? It just cannot describe a young and pretty bum, can it.

The multiplex strike confused me. Then I read Filmfare on the Kalka-Shimla narrow gauge, and everything was immediately Light. Now I am only annoyed at the multiplex strike. I am growing very suspicious at the Tamil film industry. The same songs that were playing on the radio when I left for college two years ago, are still being played. Everyone I confront regarding this abomination gets all shifty eyed and mumbles something about a multiplex strike. I have decided to frequent that antiquity, the single-screen theatre, to check whether tamil films are still being made. I very much Doubt It. I am a Doubting Divya. I am a Deadly Dastardly Doubting Divya. 

I bought four very decent and very large gravy-stuffed bun thingies and one disgusting but large chocolate pastry for sixty rupees from a posh baker on Shimla's Mall Road. If that's what posh costs in Shimla, I will grow two more chins and grey stubbly chin-hair and live like an Angrezi Mem in one of those delicious cake-like cottages. I would also wear brown tweeds, but they are remarkably unsexy. I am not talking about the New Styles in tweeds. An Angrezi Mem would not wear pink silk bustiers with tweed miniskirts. That's Just Not Cricket, luv.

One more year of law school down; I am no closer to knowing what I want to do at the end of it. Sometimes I shrug and think I may as well become a lawyer. That would be such an anticlimax though, no?

Ah well.

PS: I now have six followers. Such cheap thrills I am having I tell you. 

Light reading this Summer.

I have no patience with people who want to kill themselves, and even less patience with people who talk extensively and lyrically about wanting to kill themselves, yet, poor unfortunates, never really manage to get it right. Try, try until you succeed, like my mother said, but as with all courses of study, half the battle is arming yourself with the correct textbook.

The author is one Mister Geo Stone, and the book, 'Suicide and Attempted Suicide'. This delightfully organised work begins with a 'Background' and proceeds to 'Methods' where it systematicaly summarises common methods used to kill oneself and proceeds to evaluate them on a pros versus cons basis. The major arteries are detailed, along with the bones they lie alongside, for easy identification. The angle of slashing is explained. If you're still in practice, he helpfully suggests locations to cut that will result in least social attention. And if you'd rather slash-and-tell, more prominent places as well.

The book is full of these gems:

"..You may prefer to use an ankle vein in order to avoid wrist scars, and subsequent tedious cocktail-party conversation."

"As methods of suicide, cutting and stabbing have little to recommend them: compared to lower-trauma asphyxias (see "Hanging" and "Asphyxia" chapters) they are, generally, more painful, and no faster or more reliable. Their major advantage is that (depending on site and method) you may, after the injury, have some time to change your mind."

Apart from the excellent and commendably detailed instructions, also very entertaining glossary section (H: Hanging (suicide, attempt to; see also Method (impractical), Method (slow), Method (unsuccessful) ), I find it supremely refreshing that there is no moralising.

A short and precisely worded Background chapter makes a classification of the persons who are likely to attempt suicide and some speculation as to their reasons. There is no Bible thumping, none of the usually inevitable and wholly tedious Right to Die argument, no sympathy, no justification. Just no emotion at all.

I loved it.

Dude the Obscure.

The urge to cut and run just when things have cautiously indicated that they are going to go well, is an urge that is tiringly familiar. It's annoying, but it's there. Like a puppy that insists on following you everywhere and humps your leg when you stop moving.

I'm not an animal lover. Kittens frighten me. Puppies, of course, hump my leg.

Anyway.


I've spent most of my life being invisible, being a part of the walls; beginning to blog was the decision to walk out of them and put myself 'out there' in some limited and (limitedly) controlled manner, to make a change. But this has become less about the posting and more about the reactions. It has become less new, less sexy, less fun. I'm bored.

I'm going back into happy obscurity.

Until I'm back - if you've any good taste, you'll miss me. ;) For everyone else, there's always the one-fingered salute.

Love y'all. Some more than others. Most, not really.

Ta.

What the Sparkly Says.

No, this post is not over with the sparkly thingy. After the jump is the actual birthday post :) (check after midnight, on March 27)

Pale Hands I loved Beside the Shalimar

What an annoying song, God. What a terribly annoying song. It progresses from a vaguely nice-image-evoking first line to become a cloyingly sentimental travesty of words eleven lines thence. Bah.

It being a particularly inappropriate time to post for several reasons, I, of course, make it a point to do so.

Lindt milk chocolate has a taste like no other brand of milk chocolate, which leads us to wonder if the difference is in the milk, chocolate or the makers. Or whether the milk, chocolate and maker simply share a dynamic that transcends comfort and approaches romance. Whether those cows are born and bred delicately in full view of the Lindt factories as a gentle reminder that their produce is to be used to satiate the evolved palates of nineteen year old asian girls with vivid dreams and limited funds. Amongst others. Of course.

Do they know that they end up as dog food if they're not good enough, those cows?

(What an anticlimax all this will be if it ends up being buffalo milk. But I expect better from the Swiss ;) )

But I digress; the chocolate. It must be the cows. Because Amul milk chocolate is the shittiest milk chocolate I have ever had the misfortune to taste. And I had it for free, so if I am dissing it, it was that. bloody. bad.

Or it could be the Swiss pastures. Are Indian cows pastured? Or are we reluctant connoisseurs left to contemplate the delicate and competing flavours of sundry Indian roads and garbage cans, in our chocolate? Are cows pastured at all, or am I confusing them with sheep? Aren't cows just 'driven'?

I've never seen cows 'pastured' exactly, and I have been to villages, thank you very much. Two, in fact. Cows're just sort of let loose on scraggly grass patches not far from roads. Hardy looking cows.

Maybe I'm having just having a Ruskin Bond hangover. Where all villages are on hills and there's lots of luxuriant green grass and things. So the whole pasture-deal fits in perfectly with those 'bucolic' images on imported cookie tins. Complete with spotted cows spotted in an eye-pleasing symmetry. And arranged in eye-pleasing symmetry. On satisfyingly pointy hills. With snowy caps.

Alternatively, these villages I visited just may not have been particularly 'rural' villages. They could be one of those bastard ones that are spawned awkwardly on halfheartedly used State Highways. Like satellite townships that grew indifferent before they quite reached 'town' status. You know. Or maybe not. Neither do I, incidentally. Hi, are you new here?

'Random' is a much-abused word. It is almost as though people are frightened of titling their facebook photo albums anything in specific, though the running theme of these albums is often specific enough. Tenuous friendships, shiny photos. 'Random'-ness appears to be 'cool', that other much-abused word. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, darlings. It's not called 'cool'. It is called 'lack of imagination'. Or 'lack of vocabulary'. Equally bad, as far as I am concerned.

Freedom is, roughly, choice. Is a choice a choice when making it alters every other variable that you meant to keep constant? Are only equivalent choices choices? What of conditional freedoms?

And what of the law? There is no compulsion to follow the law if there is no fear of consequences. The law does not require us to fear the consequences. We choose to fear the consequences. Does the law then impose upon our freedom at all?

What of these consequences? Prison we construe as a limitation on physical freedom and consequently mental freedom, though far be it from me to make a distinction between 'freedoms'. Therefore we allow to law to limit our freedom in the fear that if we do not allow this limitation on freedom, we shall have our freedom limited in some other manner? What? Clearly we require naked literality to frighten us. The gun is scarier than the gun-laws. Idiots.

Arundhati Roy's face is planed so beautifully. High cheekbones, liquid eyes and that iridescent honey-gold skin that girls with uneven tans and sunburnt noses will always be envious of. And she wrote that one book that I shall never be sure whether I like or not - God of Small Things. For all the knee-jerk cynicism, I'm a sucker for happy endings. GOST has no happy ending.. GOST has no ending that I could make anything of, actually. But she has a beautiful turn of phrase. 'A viable, die-able age', she said. What age isn't?

A viable, die-able age. Singing syllables.

Provogue Jodhpur does not carry skinny jeans in size 28. Asking for said jeans in said size appears to be reason enough to invite exaggerated expressions of disdain and pity in salesman of said store. I prefer to take this as definitive indication from the Universe that, inspite of all the well-meant encouragement of my enthusiastic and pushy friends, I am meant to spend my life in washed-out, one-size-too-large, held-up-by-clunky-belt blue straight jeans. I hear they're called 'Boyfriend jeans' and that Heidi Klum is wearing them these days. Fashion apparently does come full-fucking-circle.

I must stop blogging when I'm ridiculously sleepy. I just must.

Goodnight, me homies.

In Other News...

Anurag Kashyap just birthed the love-child that he had with Baz Luhrmann. Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie have also registered claims of parentage. Along with roughly every minor director involved in neo-European cinema over the last thirty years.

(Attempts at determining paternity have failed because the child, fondly named Devender Singh Dhillon, pooped unceasingly and unabashedly on every person who attempted to get within twenty feet of him.)

As far as I am concerned it was one big, happy, politically incorrect orgy.

Congratulations, aap sab baap ban gaye hain. :)

Also, all you peoples simply must watch Dev D.

Because it has a actor in the lead role who is not only delightfully debauched, but proceeds to indulge in said debauchery against the background of arguably the best soundtrack of the year.

Because I live in a college that abounds with drunks of every variety and I know what drunks look like. When Abhay Deol wants to look drunk, he looks drunk. (Pertinent case study - compare with Shah Rukh Khan. In Shah Rukh Khan's world, drunk clearly equals spastic.)

Because he is the Snark. (*spoiler* the Haldi-wala sequence at the wedding!! ooohhh swoon */spoiler*)

Because he has dimples.

Because he can act despite his dimples.

But mostly because of the dimples.

I kid, I kid.

(It's actually his arms. What lovely arms. )

I have a thing for arms, clearly.

Ahem.


But seriously, please watch Dev D. It's important to watch a movie like this one purely for the privilege of being able to develop an independent opinion of it irrespective of whether it is favourable. In a sea of self-satisfied silicone-enhanced mediocrity, exposure to the noir side of Bollywood luxuriating in its own selfpity is necessary for perspective. Even if yours is different from mine.

I am Tired and you are Stupid.

You know when you're tired and you reach that point when words are simply bunches of syllables strung together for no reason at all and people are just talking blablabla the words are only sounds and all the sounds are the same and look the lamp's making a pretty pattern on the wall right there and what were you saying? and you squint at talking people but now they know you hear nothing know nothing and the words die down slowly and they stare right back and their stares and your ignorance and your tiredness go straight back into your head and warp and implode quietly inside the oatmeal that is your mind.

And the someone says WHY AREN'T YOU PAYING ATTENTION. IT'S ONLY COMMON NICENESS TO PAY ATTENTION. I AM DYING AND MY LIFE IS OVER AND I WANT TO KILL MYSELF AND YOU'RE NOT EVEN BEING NICE TO ME.

Firstly, niceness isn't common. It is extremely uncommon.

Secondly, I am fundamentally a nice person. I eat rainbows and shit butterflies on a regular basis. This is just my off day.


Thirdly - yes, I believe you should break up with your boyfriend. Partly because you are "not on the same plane of Emotional Maturity as far as commitment is concerned" and "maybe our lives are just beginning to run their Natural Courses in different directions from each other" and you are "Destined for different things" , as you so eloquently put it.


But mostly because I know he is cheating on you. Sadly, so do you.



Now stop talking to me about it.

The Small Print, Only Bigger.

FORMAL NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF BORROWED MATERIAL (garnish liberally with 'respectively'):

To both of you Unknown Persons who own sites good enough to show up within the first two pages of search results for "angry jumping woman" and "anal British butler guy" - observe left hand side and right hand side respectively of (BRILLIANT NEW!) header, respectively - please note that I have borrowed your (?) creations and made me a new slap-up header. Which I love. I am sorry that I have forgotten the links to your webpages. However please note that this would not have happened if your webpages had not been eminently forgettable.

Ooh, I almost forgot:

Please don't sue me.

I love you despite your catastrophic taste in colours (Dear Angry Woman - did an extra large bag of peppermints throw up on your dress? No? Then we have a problem.) And is that not the truest love?

Ok i'm done.

I Watch You Smoke.

It is all peer pressure, she said dismissively, with all the happy confidence of one who has had her opinions gifted to her shrinkwrapped, for easy consumption / long shelflife.


She said, Cigarettes are Dangerous and Smelly and Dirty, how could they possibly be sexy.


I don't really know if I like the smell of cigarette smoke.. I've never had the luxury of choice, my sinuses have been making their opinion obvious for as long back as I can remember. I cough and I sneeze, repeatedly and embarassingly, around anyone who chooses to light up anywhere close to me. For every five minutes that I spend in an elevator with a smoker, I sneeze four days. Quite understandably, I try not to linger.


But I look at smokers, that doesn't hurt. I watch them gather in straggling groups around paan shops and outside the highway dhabas, and walking along the railway tracks, and sneaking behind the city hotels, and very rarely, braving the danger of their hostel balconies, standing facelessly in the scary opaque blackness of winter nights, the tips of their fingers lit up faintly by the smouldering ends of their fags. I look at them and for every ten fumbling idiots puffing away at their stubs, there's definitely one sexy smoker.


There are those smokers who clutch their cigarettes gracelessly with three stubby fingers, puffing on them jerkily with a sort of sullen singlemindedness. They smoke furiously, right till the filter, with the urgency of asthmatics with inhalers. Sometimes they pound their fags into their little plastic dip-tea cups, stubbing them out until there's a papery, grey-brown sludge at the bottom of the glass. Sometimes they belabour themselves into doing party tricks and force out a marching parade of stiff, unhappy looking white rings, looking pleased with themselves. These smokers and their silly, pouty, ring-producing mouths are a pain to watch. I don't like these smokers.


I like the other ones.


The ones that inhale slowly, absentmindedly, with their elbows up on the table and their fingers completely relaxed, the cigarette between them barely an afterthought. They inhale, and you see nothing for two seconds, and then they breathe out gently, in faint white tendrils. Their lips barely move as they smoke, the act of smoking itself just an accessory to the whole thinking, talking, laughing performance.


The ones in whose long, tapering fingers the cigarette stays suspended almost miraculously, as they move their hands around while talking. The thing dangles carelessly between middle and ring finger, and they flick the ash away from them in that pretty wrist-flick that they don't even notice they do. It dances dangerously, threatening to fly from between their fingers when they start waving their hands around as they talk excitedly, and pushing their hair away from their faces. They never notice. It never falls.


Then the smouldering tip begins to fade, and they stub it out halfheartedly in their cups, and they leave.


I walked into a dhaba once, on the Madras-Pondicherry highway, to buy chocolate. I saw a girl with long, shiny, messy hair, mile-long fingers and a beautiful mouth smoke a Djarum Black while talking angrily into her phone. To this day I am not sure whether I bought a Dairy Milk or a Gems, but the tableau of that girl and the beautiful long black cigarette dancing angrily at the end of her beautiful, skinny fingers is burned into my mind, like one of those pretentious black-and-white photographs they call 'high art' these days. But this picture is not black and white, of course. Dark brown gold hair, freckled brown fingers, black cigarette, pale gold band. The colour is only too alive.


Smokers should quit. If they can't, they should learn to be sexy smokers.


I mean, if you're doing something that is going to stain your skin, kill your breath, block your blood vessels, collapse your lungs and stop your heart, the least you can do for yourself is look hot while doing it.


No?

Watching Shoe Porn..

..is an excellent way to spend a Sunday morning. It leaves you full of delicious visions of orgasmic silk ballerina flats (transferred epithet, ya -- shoe is satin and I am orgasming) and deLIGHTfully vertiginous patent mary-janes, and you float through the next hour or so in a pleasant haze composed of the million shades of purple that only exist in celebrity shoemakers' minds.

Then you switch off your computer, wear your dusty Nike floaters with ankle socks (what? my toes get cold.) and go downstairs to eat your puri-bhaji.

I have no intention of owning any of these things, these Blahniks or Choos or Loubous or Ferragamos. I love my floaters most of all the shoes I've ever owned; yet, you know, I believe that to obtain a sense of perspective, it is necessary to know that perfection exists at a height of four and a half inches from the ground. It has a delicious little moue nose and wears plum silk.

And today, it retails on eBay for $10.50.

I don't have $10.50.

Today is not a good day after all. I better go back to sleep.

I Half-heartedly Crushes! Oooo <3

Jon Stewart on Fox News, which pointedly insisted on covering Bush going home, while all other channels were watching Obama:

"Let it go. If you love an administration, let it go. If it comes back to you.. well, we're all moving to Canada."

I think he may just have won himself a provisional position on my (sadly underpopulated) Sexy Persons List.

--

A little late, I know. But dah-links, you know I can only find the time to watch American comedy show clips absolutely irrelevant to my syllabus and cumulative grade point (which shall be INSTRUMENTAL in getting me a JOB, and do I want to end up as a HOBO in these HORRIBLE RECESSIONARY TIMES?! Yes, I love you too, thank you ma.) the night before an important assignment.


But a girl needs a little romance in her life, ya know. Even if it is (temporarily) wrinkly, pink and slightly (very) meh. Like a dried prune.


Not to mention one-sided.


(So that would be half a dried prune?)


Hm.


I'm going to die alone, aren't I.

The One where We dream of Vanilla-Butter Cookies and Plot to Sneakily Eat Brownies.

Quite the spoilt one, I am, I should think. The mess food is pretty damn decent and the different-dessert-with-every-meal scheme they have during the winters is a stroke of fucking genius. Four rasgollas with lunch and four jalebis with dinner? Yes, I see one very happy fatass waddling into the girls' hostel. But you know, their baking is not up to the mark. Their baking, in fact, is non existent. Efforts in this direction are restricted to the buying of crumbly yellow cupcakes with disgusting tutti frutti bits within and oily plastic wrapping without, from local manufacturers, no doubt, who'd be unable to tell their muffins from their mawa kachoris (sidenote - YUM.) Hell, I'd be unable to tell their muffins from their mawa kachoris.

Here, then, is the reason I dream about my mother's sunny yellow vanilla-butter cookies the diameter of my palm and the taste of a hundred happy vacation mornings (and afternoons and evenings and midnight snacks and after-breakfast-but-before-lunch snacks and so forth.)

I could, of course, go down to Uncle Sam's Pizza, the Jodhpuri abode of surprisingly good kimchi and pizzas infused with the delicate taste of cardboard, where, for the princely sum of thirty five rupees they will pack me a slab of THE BEST BROWNIE EVARRRR, which I will hold to my heart and protect with my soul, all the dusty way back to campus.

And which I will sneak quietly into my room, without bringing to the attention of fellow resident hyenas that I have in my possession an edible of the chocolate kind (the smell draws hostelites like blood draws sharks.)

And which I will eat sneakily and quietly, crumble by crumble, nibble by nibble, quiet as the proverbial dead man, on my bed.

And whose evidence I shall dispose of with speed and efficiency by springing in two graceful (and ninja-silent) leaps to the floor-dustbin, thus completing my crime.*

I think I may be just a little hungry right now.

--

* hostels usually follow the Communist Approach to food. Alternatively known as the Pulp Fiction rule (mi casa su casa.) Unless it is bad food. Then it's all yours.

Are you part of a Louving Relationship?

If you are, firstly, hello. Thankyouforvisitingmyblog. Pleasecomeagainsoon.

Secondly, please remove your intolerable self from my line of vision. I don't like you. I am possessed by a barely controllable urge to throw stones at you when I see you. And while it is undeniable that I have the hand-eye coordination of an arm-amputee, I am PERSISTENT. And there are MANY stones.

Are you celebrating your anniversary? Don't tell me. Are you celebrating your monthiversary? I will slowpoison you. (It hurts more apparently.)

Your cuteness repulses me. Your love is retarded.

Do not rub your coupledom in my face. I will rub your face in the ground.

--x--

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA GOD THAT FELT SO GOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD :D :D :D

*zen-like happiness*

Kindly speak up, Treasured Visitor, what did you say? You think the blog is just a smidgeon too ranty?

On the one hand I could agree. Alternatively, I could say - Suck it up. It's my party, I'll cry if I want to.

Oh and if you're the guy from Denmark here looking for "sexing like bunnys" again, what do you know, you just might be in luck this time. Love....rabbitlike sex... here in Mandore, Jodhpur, you'll never know the difference. Try once and see! :D

--x--

If you're part of a couple I know - pretend you never saw this and I'll pretend I never said it ;)

The Inside of my Head..

..is a perfectly fine place to be. A little dusty, true, but fits one person perfectly. With all the other voices that live in here.

Yes, I can feel the walls coming up, the bolts falling into place. Sounds of comforting finality.

I like it in here.

Tag thingy.

Yeah I know it is almost 4 in the morning. So what. I'm feeling oddly awake. Not so much in the sense of 'very awake' as in the sense of how-could-i-be-awake-at-all. Anyway, I am. Everything carries a moral, and this one's is that six teas in an hour (is?are?) a very bad idea. Not even the sight of my fabulously pink and delightfully fuzzy Tinkerbell blanket is making me sleepy.

However I could deflect the blame for this wide-awake-ness on the fact that I am freezing my unmentionables off. Have I mentioned I live in the desert? Yes? Well I would like to point out to all my dear readers, in whose minds visions of sand dunes cluttered with camels and men in frocks (both tending to an excess of facial hair) no doubt manifest as soon as I say "desert", that yes, certainly, the desert can be hot, very hot, oh-god-i-am-evaporating hot, and it is, too, for most of the year. Then it changes its mind and decides to be cold. And when I say cold, I mean cold. Cold. Cold. I cannot sleep in the cold. Having absolved my six teas of any blame in keeping me awake (They're dip-dip. As much caffeine-content as baby formula, and about as much random particulate matter), I have decided that I am awake because of the cold. Thus I have attired myself in two pairs of socks, and three layers in everything else, as also a locally made ugly fat black muffler and a large green knit cap. My nose, only, is exposed to the elements. Which would explain its healthy red colour, abnormally large size and shiny tip. I would cover that as well, but then I would have to stop breathing. An interesting side effect of such is that I would die. I am brought almost to tears at the thought of the waste of all that potential; at the altar of humanity, then, I sacrifice my nose.

(also my nose doesn't like being bundled up. It is big-ish. Note the '-ish'.)

(anyone who says anything to the effect that the fat nose is less due to the cold and more due to the fact that it is actually fat, shall be spammed. And I mean it.)

I am, for lack of anything else to do, going to pick up the tag Divya left me. Here:

RULE #1 People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs and replace any question that they dislike with a new question formulated by themselves.

RULE #2 Tag 5 people to do this quiz and those who are tagged cannot refuse. These people must state who they were tagged by and cannot tag the person whom they were tagged by. Continue this game by sending it to other people.

1. If your lover betrayed you what would your reaction be?

An overwhelming sense of pity for him. He has deprived himself the fabulousness that is me.

2. Whose butt would you like to kick?

Ooh several people's! But first, Big Butt's. I want to test the bounce-back quotient. I want to see if it bounces back nicely like I believe it will or caves in like the beanbag it looks like. Purely scientific venture, clearly. I'm the ideal student. Excuse me for a moment. I believe I am overcome by my own awesomeness.

3. What would you do with a billion dollars?

Wait patiently for the IRS to make it into half a billion dollars. Buy myself a tropical island, a boat and Johnny Depp. Spend rest of my life taking advantage of said boat and said Depp, on said island.

4. Will you fall in love with your best friend?

Have.

5. Which is more blessed: loving someone or being loved by someone?

I have to have both to be happy.

6. How long would you wait for someone you love?

I wish I knew. Especially now.

7. If the person you like is secretly attached, what would you do?

Nothing. Mostly because they're secretly attached. Dumbass.

8. What takes you down the fastest?

The sensing of a real probability that I might not be as fabulous as I believe I am. In other words, loss of conceit.

9. Where do you see yourself in 10 years' time?

Someplace with a toilet that has a FAUCET. And (dare I hope..?) a shower with RUNNING HOT WATER!!!!

I've been told such places exist! Really!

Stay strong, fellow inmates. We shall see this faucet-ed and hot-water-ed heaven soon. Hallelujah.

10. What's your fear?

Losing faith in my ability to pull anything that I really want, off.

11. Would you rather be single and rich or married and poor?

Single and rich.

12. If you fall in love with two people simultaneously who would you pick?

Someone else entirely, and have torrid affairs with both. :) I am nothing if not impartial.

13. Would you give all in a relationship?

I have.

14. What's eating you now?

Literally, nothing. Since I am effectively spherical right now due to the abundance of clothing, not even the most diligent of insects can get close enough to me to matter. But usually "what's eating you now?" can be answered by "i don't know, i think it's a new species, its bites look like a series of ginormous hickeys, and that fraud-doctor on campus is treating me for leukoderma. With Crocin." The desert is not short of crawlies of the more malevolent and less known kind, have I mentioned.

But figuratively? The fact that I am misspelling almost everything I type, the first time. This is mostly because of the (deadly!)cold. But I am also firmly convinced that it has more than a little to do with my fingers themselves, which are roughly four miles long each. And then the nails start. Instructions given at one end are lost by the time they get to the other. I'm glad I don't play the piano. I'd be Lady Divya Banana-hands. Charmingly succinctly descriptive, but nothing I'd be happy about, you understand.

15. Tag 5 people...

Ah just do it if you've read it, no. I'm too bored to think.

---

See, Divya. Indignant at your allegation that I will probably be funny even in answering such an unfunny tag, I have applied myself as seriously as I can. Aside from the occasional ramble, I've managed, no?

Also, I NOW UNDERSTAND WHY I AM AWAKE.

I'm hungry.

For the LAST time.

To you, you miserable engineering student from the college that is possessed of both the size and academic repute of my parents' bathroom; you, who stuck your misshapen nose into the air, and asked me, why are you doing law?, labouring under the delusion that you were being original, witty and interesting, here is your answer.

I am not 'doing' law.

Law is having its violent way with me.

I heart Internship.

This is for everyone who asked about my internship. You will remember I'd said it was uniformly boring. I forgot to mention that it has its points. This is one of them:

"My client is having so much of affaction and is a santimantally smooth man, not enjoying any of the bad habits and a very ordant, desiplined and extinct son. Thusly it is urged of this Learned Court that the petitioner has brought an unclean suit and relief of (---) is subsequently prayed."

This is an extract from one of the more delightful plaints that it was my job to read, enjoy and...well... they said "edit" but I thought that would simply kill the dramatic effect. And that would be criminal, would it not. I love the telling little details. That the respondent is a man who may possess the odd bad habit, sure, but he is very careful not to enjoy them. If that isn't virtuous I don't know what is. Not, also, for our dashing respondent, the attractions of modesty; he is quite clear that he is not only ordant and deseplined, but also extinct. I am not quite clear how being extinct is interpreted as being an argument in his favour, but perhaps it has something to do with the exclusivity of it. ;)

I had no intention of editing this plaint (amongst several others), and I do not regret it. The only thing I do regret is being unable to catch this particular case in court. I'd have loved to hear that judge on this one. This judge has been known to question advocates' knowledge of the CPC in open court. Advocates knowledge of pretty much everything, actually. In much detail, with much glee. He is an evil, evil old fart. I love him.

Ha, yes. I think I quite liked this internship.


Even though I've worn my legs six inches down by dint of walking around the same staircase thrice in the same twenty minutes. Which reminds me, is it some sort of tradition to lose your way the first ten times you visit? Or do the traditions merely stop with the distinctly unflattering polyester waistcoats and tacky gown-thingies? And damp towels slung across the backs of judges chairs? And drinking rose - or badam or chocolate - flavoured milk (i kid you not.) in the lunch break?

Have I mentioned that I have completely eliminated any idea I may have had about practising in the Madras High Court.

(the filter coffee is phat, though. And free. That makes it double-phat. Very phattening, basically. Eh heh heh heh. Sorry. I'm shutting up now.)