I'm a little kicked right now, and I'm not too sure why, but I think it's got something to do with blowing all that money at Oxford. Or maybe it's because I met P, and we walked to college, did the back-gate stuff and reminisced and bitched. The gate guy saw me snapping the demolished green benches, and furtively shut the gate. We bitched some more, had shikanji at Delights and smoked, before Ma suddenly appeared out of nowhere and we dropped the cigarette phat and looked all deer in the lightsish, but somehow managed to escape unscathed - you know, parents, denial, and all that jazz. The Delights guy was all like, aap log aur kyon nahin aten, and I felt so happy that he remembered us as regulars that I said through a curtain of teeth, oh, hum logo ka college ho gaya, although, it wasn't a particularly happy thought. Shit, college is over.

Hmm. Anyway. I realise we've been saying "Dude" a lot these days. And it's funny, because when we started it, it was in a very playful, snobbish manner - because c'mon, "Dude" just sounds so wannabe. It's like saying "Take a chill pill" or "babes" or something. But then, we say "chill" a lot too. In fact, any conversation under the sun, would inevitably include a sentence like this one: "Like, seriously dude, you need to like, chill man". Yeah, weird - more so, because it implies that someone or the other is always "freaking out". It's true enough though. Someone always usually is.
Heh. It's like Shakespeare classes all over again - if you're laughing, you are essentially laughing at yourself. Whattosay. We get carried away with everything. Like the Hindi thing. Every-fucking-one would speak in really bad Hindi. Bong-Hindi-Hindi. And we still fucking do it. Damn it. Ney-heeeeee!! Or the adding a "the" before everything. Or doing the Gopalan Mullick talk. "Like, short of, what you say, and all that". Gawd.
The entire ape connection makes so much more sense now. Anyway. Whatever it was, it was. It was like, college, dude. Like, chill and all [note to self, not you]. I wonder though, what next? It's not quite this though, is it?

Ladies and Germs, presenting Couchsurfing. Go jump.

I know what it amounts to, all this. Ulcers and spectacularly bad poetry. But I think I'll live.

Mersault recollected what his mother told him when he was in prison - something like, if you are forced to live inside a hollow tree trunk, you'll hate it at first, but eventually get used it.

"I often thought in those days that even if I'd been made to live in a hollow tree trunk, with nothing to do but look up at the bit of sky overhead, I'd gradually have got used to it. I'd have looked forward to seeing birds fly past or clouds run together just as here I looked forward to seeing my lawyer's curious ties and just as, in another world, I used to wait for Saturdays to embrace Marie's body".

Yes, well.

Guess who broke down?

I like lights out by 8. I like it when you're driving down an unknown hilly road and you switch off the headlights and see nothing but darkness. I like getting wet in the rain and listening to thunder. I like it when the phone doesn't work, and I like it when I can sleep like a baby at 11. I like being caught in a storm in the middle of a lightless night with nowhere to go. Most of all, I think, I like being alone.

Because when I come home, I come home to an empty house - and funnily it doesn't matter. And when I call someone I find the phone busy or just have hasty, disinterested conversations.

And when I'm alone, I can think of the wonderful things I'm going to say. When I'm alone I can dream effortlessly. Because when it comes to meeting or talking, time keeps giving us the slip or you . So when I don't meet or talk, maybe it's because I love you. Ok?

Fuck me, I'm a bit Philistine, ok? But I still love the travel. To the hilt.

I am extremely depressed about the camera. It's acting up right before the trip. Anyway. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed.
I'll be leaving tomorrow, early morning. I finally have accomodation, but am still quite clueless about the concert. I wish there were more people, you know, kinda like KGP '05. But issokay. I think the "f-buddy" and I will do fine. Heehee.

I saw Metro last evening, and it was fun. The Konkona-Irfaan story was, well, mine. Hehe. I could get by with just one or two positive people around me. As a family, well, we're close, but we all have our issues. We function in a semi-disfunctional way, as most families do, I guess. But sometimes I miss the positivity. I think the Grandparents had something to do with it. As long as they were around, hale and hearty, life was simpler. For both my parents and us. Now we're all kind of grown up, and not really old - and have too many things to do at the same time. It's really like a prolonged adolosence. I can't quite explain it.
My friends are all a bit like me, I suppose. Exasperating, confused, moody and rebellious. Some are calm. Some are spitfire. Some just don't know. We're all close, but all a little isolated at the same time. That's how it is at this age I suppose. These are just the girls. The boys, well, I don't know. They've all had a kinda vague influence on my life. There are no Will and Grace or Harry-Sally kind of friendships, you know - not pretty enough to be a girlfriend, nor warm enough to be a good friend. Yeah... I am kind of distant with the guys, barring maybe one or two. I just run out of things to say after a while and they're not interested enough to keep me interested, you know? But we get along, in this vague superficial manner. And I guess no-one really cares.

It's easy to feel isolated in the city, I guess. And after a while, you're okay with it. I hate any kind of interference with my space. Everyone has space issues. But you don't know what to do when you have too much of it.

I think we should all get a dog. Or that Honda Robot dude. Asimo? Humans just don't cut it anymore.

What do I like about my new haircut?
Nothing.
What do I hate about my new haircut?
Everything.
Who looks like a fat wannabe Zeta Jones with mop hair from Chicago?
Me. Me. Me.

Total number of books owned
I'm not sure. Quite a few between the four of us.

Last book(s) I bought
The Outsider, The Grapes of Wrath

Book(s) I'm currently reading
The Second Sex, Grapes of Wrath, Heart of the Matter

Five books that I have really enjoyed or have influenced me
Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mocking Bird, On the Road, The Collected Stories of Roald Dahl, Of Mice and Men (also - The Great Gatsby, Blues for a Black Cat, Nine Stories, The Sound and the Fury, The Old Man and the Sea, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

Books I plan to buy next
Fight Club - Chuck Palahnuik, Slaughter House Five - Kurt Vonnegut, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson, Tortilla Flats - John Steinbeck, One of those cool coffee table books with loads of pictures - either about films, retro music or art down the ages.

Books that caught my attention but have never read
Dharma Bums, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a lot of stuff by Vonnegut, Hemmingway and Capote, Terry Prachett's Discworld series - there's a lot I need to read.

Books I own but have never got around to reading
Catch-22, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Bridge Across Forever, Women in Love - and a whole lot more actually.

I pass this onto Sudu and Vatsala.

Now Seriously Sam

This is not my Spidey. This is a deux ex machina parody. And better viewed in Bhojpuri.
Shit, it could have been so, so good. Guess this dude scores for the time being. And they shouldn't have done what they did to him. *sigh* The world is full of disappointments.

Wow. Camera, is hard work. I have aches all over my body and was pretty close to hysteria yesterday after 2 and half hours of sleep and standing on my feet for over12 hours in stifling heat. Yet. I had fun. I was far from satisfied with my work, but I was proud of all our efforts. Now I know why the place insists on Yoga (my degree college will henceforth be referred to as, the place). You need patience. Loads and loads of it. Hats off to film-makers, actors, camerapersons and the rest of it. It's fucking hard work.

Anyway. After the shoot (I know I speak of it like everyone knows, but now you do), I came back home dog tired and watched Manhattan on Tv. I saw everything in terms of left pan, tilt, track, zoom and continuity. But Woody Allen being Woody Allen made me feel all fucked and fantastic. Neurosis and New York. I had to love it.

Mary Wilke: Don't psychoanalyze me. I pay a doctor for that.

Isaac Davis: Hey, you call that guy that you talk to a doctor? I mean, you don't get suspicious when your analyst calls you at home at three in the morning and weeps into the telephone?

Mary Wilke: All right, so he's unorthodox. He's a highly qualified doctor.

Isaac Davis: He's done a great job on you, y'know. Your self esteem is like a notch below Kafka's

Man. There's so much to read. So much to watch. Speaking of. I will take up Srin's tag in the next post.

Driving past college today felt so weird. Like it was just another building on Park Street. I half thought of strolling in, but it's not the same. I already feel like a bit of a stranger in there. Too many new faces. But the library man has my library card. Which doesn't really matter, but I'm sentimental about these things. Oh well. I'll grant him my card. He was after all, exceptionally nice to me all these years, not fining me even once for returning books so late.
I'm so stupid. I shouldn't have chosen films over literature. I should have been a struggling writer, writing trashy Mills and Boon novels under anonymous names like Ellora Thunderbolt. I'd be perfectly happy with that. I'd be happy with that and also be happy with making gorom gorom rutis and taking the dogs for a walk. I'd be 'that woman with the dogs', whose specific role in society would always be a bit of a question mark.
There's nothing more I want to do now than waste a year. Preferably away from people I know. Incommunicado. I'm a little tired of questions, of expectations, of disapproving glances. Maybe I should get married to some stranger and move to some strange land where they speak a different language. And have lots of dogs. It's funny. I don't think I'll ever give up on the notion of being rescued by someone utterly different and wonderful. I wish I could force the damp squib in me to shut up for a while and let me dream and be silly for longer periods of time.

Anyway. I have a massive headache. I can't bear to look at the screen any longer.

Remember before...

I got arty and took a lot of random cross-eyed pictures?



To the girl who always helped me keep it real, you are much missed :)

Today, yesterday now, actually, was great fun. Operation Soo-doo Day, a great success, if I may say so myself. :D
I can understand how some non-Calcuttans can find Cal a tad boring. The culture-shmulture jazz is just too heady after a while, and if you're the party type, you aren't exactly spoilt for choice. Also, Cal is not the kind of place you go upto random strangers at a pub or a disco and hook up or whatever. A good group of friends is imperative for any kind of activity here. And Cal is a small place. Nearly everyone knows everyone (or chooses to). However, if you are a bit, uh, socially challenged, just dress really shabbily, put on a pair of glasses, carry the dirtiest possible jhola, wear loose chappals and hang out in college street, boi para and all that jazz, and pretend to be an intellectual. You see, intellectuals are so smart, they don't really need company. Of course, that's all bullshit, and the above described individual doesn't have to possess an ounce of intelligence, but that's how it usually works- you dress that way, you're branded an antel. And if you are an antel, a little bit of solitude and eccentricity is your birthright. Anyway, I digress. Like I was saying, you can run out of things to do here, after a while. Even with a good group of friends.
But, here's the thing about most Calcuttans. We like things the way they are. Too many changes disturbs the average joe Bong. And for heaven's sake don't disturb the average joe Bong. An uprising in a distant village, never heard of before, can shake the Bongs out of their peaceful slumber and motivate them into... a standstill - in other words, we have a lot of bandhs. We just stop everything and get even averager and Joe-er. There are a bunch of idealists (sometimes antels - the ones mentioned before, sometimes just local goondas) who get a little excited and write a street play or just break a couple of car windows, or blog or have a session of adda (which in plain English means bitching).
So we, a bunch of schizophrenic Bongs, struggling between revolutions and the comfort of tried and tested ways, do indulge in the latter, on a day like today. That was a round-about way of saying, we all went to Nicco Park today (which has, I think added 3 more rides ever since it opened, what, 14-15 years ago? ) and we REALLY had fun. Hehe. Don't you just hate me for making you read so much?

I'm 21. I spend 85% of the day playing Spider Solitaire. I've plunged into uber-reclusive hell.

These Scots I tellya. They are the coolest. And undoubtedly the machoest. It takes guts to wear one of these, especially if you're strictly following tradition (that optional underwear thing always fascinated me...I mean, it does get cold in Scotland).
A wonderful lot, with their whiskey, kilts, bagpipes, Burns and that killer accent of course. Yeah, so they're a little conservative with money, but that's a good thing, eventually, right?
Anyway, love them... even if all my perceptions are generalised ones, and as is with me, thoroughly conditioned by popular culture.

And of course, if a certain Scotsman does happen to ride a bike and look like this -
well...you'd understand, surely.The reason why Ewan Mcgreor scores above the Jude Law types, is because he's a little rough 'round the edges, you know? Like the Rent boy thing won't leave him. And he wears his Scotsman pride on his sleeve. Which is always a good thing. Long Way Round has been a bit of a Godsend really. Bikes, crazy routes, reality tv, Ewan fucking Mcgregor. Oh yeah. I'm a happy kid.
God, never shave.

Well, that's it then. Exams are officially over. And this is the time I've dreamed about ever since I was, what, 10? Although, back then, the mental picture was deceptively utopian: I had a vision of myself in the near future, as this slick type of character in black leather (don't ask, it was 1996) with the most fabulous body and fabulous everything else, well on her way to becoming Mrs. Rahul Dravid (again, it was 1996).
One thing's remained though. I was equally unambitious then, maybe even more so, lulled into security by comfortable test scores and easy living. All I ever wanted to be was an artist (as in, a painter), which was a notch above the previous ambition of becoming a washerwoman (I was fascinated by clothes being washed - something dreamily delicious about it). But then, hormones happened. Computers happened. I thought I'd be some kind of a computer engineer, because that's what smart people were doing all of a sudden. This was the pre-math disillusionment stage. Then of course, algebra and geometry happened, and all kinds of crazy ambitions were immediately shelved. In between, I went through a "I want to act phase". So there were a couple of banal workshops and dreary roles, my spirits not particularly helped by the fact that all the puppy fat of yore, suddenly seemed to have taken on wild dog proportions. Try and imagine a massive adoloscent girl wearing shiny yellow pants, a cherry red shirt, a pair of wings and a beak on top of her head. Yes, me. So I stumbled and stuttered through that excruciatingly long phase and ended up becoming one of those "nice quiet girls" who don't really exist, but somehow seem to have found a place for themselves in the classroom register. Of course, there were the usual indoor comforts - books, TV, food and little else . College just happened, and I'm kind of glad that it did, because it brought me back to my little girl dreams. Other than a brief, and equally ridiculous repetition of the actor phase (this time a notch lower than the aviary sect - I was a fly. A twenty year old fly, with wings and the works. Sheesh) - I felt pretty happy. I was reading, writing, travelling - and enjoying a strange, albeit limited, kind of freedom. Literature didn't teach me to become a writer, or a philosopher or a journalist or a teacher or whatever. On the contrary, I realised how little I actually know, about books, about life and most importantly, myself. It made me see myself, exactly as I was. Not a brilliant A-grade sort, and not the bleak little wallflower I had allowed myself to believe I was, either. I could be an artist, and not just the painter-actor sort. Heck, I don't even know for sure what sort. But somewhere there, I see a way. It's unaffected by your words, it's unaffected by test results, it's unaffected by the fantastic lives of other fabulous people. It isn't quite the leather-girl-potential-mrs-dravid picture. But it's somehow, more exciting. But shit, it would be good to have leather girl's body. Shame.
P.S.> There was a 'rock-chick' phase as well. The less said about it, the better.

So, where will I stay in Shillong? I'm going, spanking psychedellic in my London Hippie avatar, of course, to the Dylan Fest on the 24th. *clapclapclapclapclap*
But, I have no place to stay, no train reservations and absolutely no spiritual light intensifying flying substances (s.p.l.i.f.f.s.).
Oh well. I'll figure it out. I will make ze desi woodstock dream, happen.
And on that dramatic note, I have my EVS exam tomorrow, which is not particularly dramatic, bit I am sincerely concerned about Global Warming. Do switch off your cell phone chargers when you're not using them, willya? Go on, do your bit you lazy bastards.

Okay, this is completely against ethics and all that jazz (no permission sought), but I'm guessing half the world reads eM's blog, so I'm not going to feel too bad about putting up this link.

Read. It's a blog post that I still think of from time to time - and that's kind of rare. The gentleman in question is an excellent roller of joints and gut wrenchingly hates sub-urban Bombay. Also a pretty brilliant writer, but I'll leave that for you to judge.

I feel less worried about copyright matters right now with this template.
Finished the honours papers. I feel quite sad though, looking at my books, all the photocopied notes and notebooks with hasty scribbles. I'll miss literature. Unless... well. I dunno. And as the picture clearly suggests - this is what I need. Haircut and goodbye to the caterpillar brows.

on second thought, the picture was scaring me too much. Not something I want to look at everytime I log in!