Come on, work with me here!

Ahem. So we all need a little bit of change. Life can get so monotonous. Doing the same things over and over everyday... Looking at the same faces, the same books, the same... Ok, ok, I'll get to the point.

See, here's the thing. I like trying new things (not like THAT, you dirty minds!). I mean, new things especially if it is related to technology, the internet, that way. And in my defense, this blog has been going for nearly 3 and a half years now! (Ok, ok, I killed it once in that duration and haven't been too regular either. But...) Everyone needs a change, don't they! (ok, I'm beginning to whine, I know. Time to cut to the chase.)

http://pawpaint.wordpress.com

So there, I said it. The new address. Admittedly, it's still experimental. So you can either adjust your blogroll (if you have me blogrolled) or just keep that in mind. Pretty please?

I wuv wordpress! (aw, I love you too, Blogger. But you know, people change, move on. These things happen... *excuses continue, fade out*)

'appy nooo earrr!

No, I'm not drunk. But have a nice one anyway.

2008, compared to the average year, may be described as humongously crappy. From Jan to December, June to... well, December. A few nice things happened of course. I became a graduate. I got into... well... a pretty cool institute for my M.A. (big grin). I've met some VERY nice people who I hope will remain in my life till--oh, ok, I won't be greedy, just till I'm 120 or so. But despite all this, I'm saying goodbye to the year with great relief and hoping I don't have to live through one like it for--again, being very restrained, 100-odd years.

I'm really tempted to write something philosophical about how life goes in unexpected ways but enough already!

Have a ball!

(Or a bat... Or even a hockey puck for that matter.)

At the end of the day

Everything goes. It's not depressing, nor cynical, nor greatly philosophical. It's like the wind, the ocean, the million stars.

It just is.

Homecoming...

Home coming is sweet, with bittersweet tinges to add to the interesting experience that it is. When home is a whole city, your joys multiply till you are overwhelmed. You can breathe in and wallow in all that is familiar, those things that were so easy to take for granted but are now so precious. The curl of your mother's hair, your sister's silent creeping-out-of-bed early in the morning so as not to wake you. The silence of the night, comfortable and unchanged since when you were thirteen. The feel of the floor, hard and reassuring, beneath your back. The sofas that echo with the assurance of a hundred memories. The tiny bathroom that remembers the yowls that you called singing, your conversations with the taps, your tears that the shower couldn't drown, your secret phone calls.

Of course, the little bittersweet tinges are there to make sure the sweetness doesn't become nauseating. Those people you miss, whom some part of your illogically expects to find, just aren't there. The little changes that you hardly notice in the beginning make you realise that home is not the static place in your head but is changing, has move on beyond the day you left. That roll-top desk has moved into your room. Your childhood dolls smile down at you from the shelf where they're newly on display. That particular road has a few extra ruts and a whole flyover looms in that familiar horizon.  And you must relearn home, rediscover it so that it's exactly what it was to you: completely familiar.

And then you must leave again.

a slice of time

Riding on the bus on a cold winter evening... The sun has set and it is dark outside. You surprisingly have a seat all to yourself. A jacket keeps you warm and toasty while soft, guitary music plays on your headphones. You slide to the closed window and look out... The world is rushing by in a series of silhouettes lit up in flashes by lights from warm homes and warm windows. You feel a moment of peace and satisfaction as you sit there in the dimly lit bus. With your fellow passengers all around you, the sense of simultaneous comfort and aloneness is heightened, like you're in your own cozy bubble among a million bubbles.

The song ends as your ride ends and you walk smiling towards something like home.

Emptying My Brain

The next time someone tells me that Tamil is a difficult language to learn, I'll thank them and feel flattered. After all, I must be pretty smart seeing that I learned most of this "difficult" language by the time I was four!

How do some people talk literally for hours on the phone?! My roommate holds a Master's Degree in this and just listening to her yak at all times of the day and night exhausts me. Imagine holding a phone to your ear ALL the time. Or talking for hours to someone whose facial expressions you cannot see. Creepy.

It's strange to think that no matter what opinion I express, someone somewhere at some time disagrees with/disapproves of/violently opposes every word. So why this obsession with political correctness and being agreeable?

I feel all weird and eerie if I think about the world getting wiped out suddenly tomorrow. No one would know. There wouldn't even be a question of caring. Even the most self-centred people would not (be able to) give a damn. And even if we whip up a frenzy about the world ending today, when it does, well, all in vain, eh?

I'm sometimes freakishly possessive. I feel like people, books, movies, even SMELLS belong enclusively to me. Hmm. Weird. And creepy again.

We, as a species, are all morbidly (if unconsciously) obsessed with death and yet seem experts at ignoring this fact. Born astride the grave indeed. Existentialists rock!

Vina nooru kanaavum nooru, vidai solladi...

What is aliens are all around us but we have no clue cos we don't have the right kind of senses to... sense them? It might explain a lot of unexplained phenomena. An alien could be reading this right now and pointing at me and laughing. And now reading <--- that and frowning. And reading <--- that and... ok, this can go on forever. I'll stop.

Brain transplants would be, like, todally coo-uhl!

Would I be a wimp if I wanted to wear gloves already? Freaking frozen fingers!

A dimly lit room seems pitch dark as soon as your enter it and in just half a minute you wonder how you ever thought it was dark. I'm sure there's a deep and significant metaphor in there but too lazy to look for it now.

Why is it so hard to stop looking for approval, either peer or societal or parental or familial or whatever-al, even when you know in your head it's stupid and you must be who you are?

Darn mosquitos!

There's something strangely fair in the fact that life isn't fair, you know?

Life is absurd. The sheer absurdity of the fact that I'm sitting here and pressing down on these weird protrusions that in turn produce some weirdly shaped marks on a weird-looking flat surface which stand for some chemical impulses in my head is absurd enough. Add to that the fact that you are looking at these weird-shaped marks and they stand for something in your head which may or may not be what it stood for in my head. Uh.

It's past midnight. No wonder I'm treading the thin line between randomness and sheer nonsense. G'night then.

P.S.: Brain nice and empty now! :)

Waning Lyrical...

(... As opposed to waxing, get it? Sigh. I must stop explaining my jokes.) You may ignore this if you a like. Just a little parody for my amusement...

I've just eaten my fill and
I'm ravanous
I've just woken and
I'm already sleepy

every hour I'm away seems
like a second.
the minute I return
stretches for hours

your eyes are like endless pools of warm honey
but really, closer to molten lava in hell
your voice is dark and smooth like chocolate
or rather like a blackboard when nails rake it.

serious symptoms of an illness, you'd think
but my love, these are symptoms
of the long-awaited cure:
I'm falling out of love!

appa

Why would I miss you? You are in my every word, every action. Your blood flows through my veins. I quite literally carry half of you in me. One of the only two privileged people in the world to do so, in fact. Everything I am today somehow leads back to you. Those words of wisdom that you gave me always guide me--perhaps because you so rarely gave them and when you did, they were always so honest and something I could see you live by everyday. Moments of laughter, anger and so much else are saved in my mind, forever frozen, like a photograph, only much more real. The way you would shake your leg while reading the morning paper. The way you would just look out the window, lost in thoughts. The way you would muss the hair at the back of your head. The way you would give me your little finger back when I was small enough to reach up for it. The way you would demand I vacate your bed when you returned home from the office on sleepy Saturday afternoons.

So much of you lives on in me: your love for photography, your kadi jokes, your forgiving ways, your generosity! How can I ever have these without always having you with me? Is it any wonder that I often think you're just a phone call away? It's not so strange, then, that I still picture you as being "there", when I think of family and home. Yet, I still feel you here, with me. I believe you're here with me. Always. So why would I miss you?

Why do I miss you?

Things That Were Created Exclusively to Drive Me, yes, ME Absolutely NUTS!

--Cooling off in the middle of a darn good temper tantrum!

Come on, we all love a good temper tantrum once in a way. Ok, why the blank look and raised eyebrow? You don't?! Well, I do! And let me tell you, there is nothing worse that working yourself up to a good sulk or outright tantrum and then realizing you've stopped being angry with whatever or whoever it is that gifted you with just that mood. You just feel so... betrayed and let down by yourself, but not enough to inspire another sulk. It's like being offered a whole bar of chocolate all to yourself and then, when you're halfway through it, being told that's all you can have. Oh, the cruelty of it!

Sulk Rating: 8 FF*

-- Morning People!

Ye gods! These creatures actually believe in such concepts as "Early to bed and early to rise", "Humans are not nocturnal creatures", "Breakfast at 7 am" and even "11 o'clock is nearly afternoon", for crying out loud! I mean, come on! I go to bed early and rise early too--in the morning and evening respectively! Breakfast at 7? Brunch all the way. And 11 a.m. is the time you crack one eye open and decide to set an alarm to wake you in an hour! And humans, NOT nocturnal? Then how exactly would you explain the reason for the stars and the moon to exist other than to light up our nights?! Hello? Go read up your science. Sheesh.

Ok, having to put up with these creatures' quaint ideas is bad enough. But to endure their cheerfulness when you're forced to rise before noon and rummaging about the room (if you share one with them) when you can sleep in, it's just tooooo much I say!

Sulk Rating: 8.5 FF

--The bus starting just before you get off!

This happens more and more to me these days. I, of course, am always the LAST person to get down at any given stop and the drivers take perverse pleasure in starting the bus when I'm one foot on and one foot off. As a result of which, I step down and have to do an ungainly little dance to the amusement of everyone (including the people in the bus, people on the streets, the snoozing street dog and the lamp-posts.) Foooh! (The sound of steam coming out of my ears)

Sulk Rating: 6.5 FF

(And while on the topic...)

--Having to travel half an hour to get to a place that's ten minutes away.

Yes, you read that right. Bizarre, right? Well, apparently the Delhi Transport Corporation and its sister private concerns have managed to bend the laws of time and space. Remember the straight-line-shortest-distance-between-two-points rule? Apparently, there is another law of the universe that overrules this--There can be no direct bus from the abode of this blogger to her university. Therefore, to get to the university, I am obliged to hop two buses--which are timed in just such way that if one arrives on time, I'm sure to have to wait at least 15 minutes for the other and if the first arrives late, I JUST miss the other. Sigh. The relatively low Sulk Rating for this is owing to the fact that I actually enjoy bus travel. Go figure.

Sulk Rating: 4.67 FF

--Finding that thing you were looking for for so long! [For for? :D ]

Ok, you might be puzzled by that. But what your forgetting is that, according to the Holy Murphy's Laws (which sometimes seem more verifiable and relevant than Newton's), this can only mean that you'd given up looking for that thing only a few days/minutes ago and bought (or married!) something else... Ah, the look on one's face then in priceless.

Rating: 8 FF

--ZITS!

Zits are not as innocent as they seem. They have a secret cult for they are all from the invisible 9th planet, Elp-mip. (Pluto, apparently, is not a planet but actually just a huge, infected acne.) This cult has its sinister rules and rituals. Rule No. 1 is... (No, it's not "Never talk about the Zit Cult") Always appear when least expected, i.e., when the Host is heaving a sigh of relief at their clear skin and laughing at "those pimply, awkward adoloscent days". Rule No. 2: Appear in an area most likely to be accidentally scratched or most tempting to scratch. Rule No. 3: Itch. Itch more. Itch like crazy. Then refuse to leave.

Rating: 8.9 FF

--Poor punctuation

Enough said. (And no, learning all about descriptive-not-prescriptive grammar has not changed this is me!)

Rating: 9.98 FF

____________________

*All values in the standard Frowney Face (Metric) Scale of Ten. For conversion, (these calculations must be done on paper only!) to Grumpy Face scale, add 5968, multiply by 4.943608, divide the result by 94, strike the whole thing out and write the original FF value, this time replacing 'FF' with 'GF'. (Calculations suggested by the Gunther & Ames' Moody Society of Cranks)

The "Moment"

Falling in love...

I think the experience has been so publicized and romanticized by everything from poems to movies to novels to endless discussions that we often forget or never realise that falling in love is something so... full of freedom.

I don't mean falling in love sets you free. I mean falling in love itself defies any fetters and is open to everything. Why is falling in love immediately associated with a member of the opposite (or same) sex? Admitted, it's also often the case that we say "I fell in love with that song/painting/poem!" But I believe falling in love can go even beyond that--you can fall in love with a moment or a person in a particular moment, after which you may not be in love with them. You can fall in love with a certain emotion or a particular piece of stone or... anything! You can fall in love with a person who may or may not even exist, as in the case of this poem (which I've fallen in love with.)

And that moment is as beautiful and memorable as falling in love with a person is. Every time you recall the moment, you feel the warmth and the sheer thrill all over again. Would it be too weird if I said that there is a certain almost... sexual satisfaction in it? The moment doesn't happen a lot but it does take your breath away when it does, cliche as that sounds!