Kidnapped

 
 
 
 
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L and I just about escaped being kidnapped in Dharamshala. Technically I should write about this here but that will only pay tribute to my pompous assumption that I am this big succumbing to wanderlust every second kinda person. Which I would be if I didn't need to satisfy an attendance requirement that would give me a hall ticket to write an exam , after a set of which I will get a paper with a stamp on it that will qualify me to further my passions in this world . Also maybe I should delete wanderlust and start another one called feminist angst to filter this one of it

Anyhow, so L and I go to Dharamshala. I am the bookish knowledge expert because usually when I have nothing better to do I read travel books and dream. I did not however with my knowledge of even the Tibetan doctor's residence know that there are people in unlikely places who we will have to learn to watch out for.

Kashmiri man will be called Faisal though now I think that was his brother's name.
He spotted L and me outside his shop and said come in.
F: Not for business purpose, come have a look, see what you like...

So in we go looking at a more embellished version of Kashmiri shops that are all over Com Street. Some one tells me how do they make money? I mean, except for the gullible foreigners who buy things from 'exotic ' India..?
I don't know HOW but it ended up in him offering us to take us to Kashmir and us, silly, excited, AGREEING.

He offered us a good price, a ridiculously cheap price and an overnight journey on a Sumo from Dharamshala to Srinagar and accommodation on a houseboat...

Now Y , cynical , untrusting bitch begins to suspect something wrong.
But of course she is still tooooooooooo eager to go to Kashmir. ( Two days after that major October earthquake).
Then we find ourselves in this dingy little room in a narrow lane looking at pictures of the Dal Lake . L goes on about how her aunt , a journalist has shown her all these pics before.
Faisal shows us pictures of himself at various locations with girlfriends from different countries.
'At that time she was my girlfriend'.
(Ten years ago he may have been hot)
By now the cynic explodes.

He tells L: You seem like a very trustable person. It’s your eyes.
This was in acknowledgement of Y's cold , indifferent , bordering on rude behaviour.

He launches a new strategy. A French woman , he said will be coming too. One that he knows well and is friendly.
A man in the meanwhile brings a tray with three tea glasses. True Hindi movie style , he takes the small one , and we are handed tall glasses. This , he explains is Kashmiri tea. Some yellow thing whose taste I can't remember for reasons that will be explained later.

I wanted to be out of this dingy little room soon and be in the all pervading sunlight
He said we could talk to the French woman
L is assigned the task. French woman speaks worse French than me. And sounds more Indian than me.
We left , L gave her number and we agreed to meet for dinner before pushing off at night to paradise on earth
a) Just had an earthquake
b) Was a 24/7 59 year war zone
( I just calculated 59 years don't call me unpatriotic)
The plan was to avoid him for the rest of the day but Dharamshala is a small town. By the end of one day we knew many many many people and they knew we were south Indian women from Bangalore blah blah.
But yeah before all that I started feeling incredibly dizzy. I knew that either
a) There was something in the tea
Or
b) I was too influenced by Hindi movies
But since I survived I thought it'll probably be
c) By now my body is immune to intoxicants.

Yeah so later , that is for the rest of the week we SOMEHOW avoided the Kashmiri man who eventually got the point.
Yeah KLPD for you'll , we didn't end up in a harem in Saudi Arabia.

Anyhow that wasn't all. There was another guy from Arunachal Pradesh who was convinced we had run away from home and more stories later.

You have to listen to Susheela Raman . As J says , you can make love to her music.
And my college apparently is a soft target for terrorist attacks so yeah , may die.

On water , the freedom of expression and then what a brilliant movie it was

.

With blogspot urls being blocked in India, I've been off blogging and reading blogs for a bit. It just makes you realise that the internet isn't necessarily the free democratic belonging to all space that you conceive it to be.
Talking of freedom of speech makes me want to write about Water a film by Deepa Mehta who was forbidden to shoot it in 2000 in Varanasi when people burnt the sets and threatened to kill the Canada based Indian film maker.
The film is about the lives of a group of widows in the 1930's. Hindu widows had to renounce material comforts, shave their head and were even forbidden from eating sweets and fried food.
This was the period when the freedom movement was gaining momentum and Gandhi was just entering the political scene. The story is told from the perspective of Chuyiya a 7 year old girl. In the first scene we see her, young and innocent, a girl with long curly hair chomping on a piece of sugar cane as the bullock cart rattles its way along.
In the next scene, perhaps the most poignant in the movie, she is woken up by her father who asks her if she remembers having been ,married. She says she didn't. Her baba tells her that she is a widow now.
'Till when..?’, she asks, shrugging off sleep .


 
 


Chuiya is taken to an ashram for widows where widows renounce all worldly pleasures to live a life of austerity. The youngest girl in an ashram where very old women have been living since childhood, Chuiya is rebellious and child like. The realities sink in only later.
A child has not yet been conditioned to settle in the niche that a rigid society has reserved for her; she responds instinctively , intuitively to situations. For instance she asks the Hindu priests where male widows went and this is blasphemous to the women who have been conditioned from birth to LIVE for the male. They pray that such a fate never befalls their men and she is accused of uttering inauspicious words. Whether its revenge towards the bossy Madhumati or thoughtfulness for the very old widow whose only desire in life is to eat sweets that she has been denied from the time she was widowed as a child , Chuyiya's response is natural and spontaneous. The child's voice is the rational , unbiased voice.
When she first comes to the ashram , she harbours dreams of returning home but later she realises she can't. She befriends Kalyani (Lisa Ray) who is pimped by the leader of the ashram ,Madhumati (Manorama) and is the only one who is allowed long hair.

Narayan , an idealistic law student enters their lives and falls in love with Kalyani.

 
He is Gandhian and wants to work for the emancipation of widows. Talking of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and admitting to his conservative mother (played by Waheeda Rehman) that he wants to marry a , god forbid, Widow ....does he succeed?
His progressive father supports him but is he really that progressive?
Child abuse in the movie is portrayed realistically , without the drama. Chuiya enters the room saying ' I've come to play'. And it breaks your heart.

The situation of widows in India has improved in the last 70 years or so and a majority of widows don't have to live seperately in ashrams.
As Narayan reasons in the film , it was never about relegion , it was about money , about having one person less to feed in the household. Shakuntala(Seema Biswas) who has led the life of a ‘good widow’ wonders what to do if her faith clashes with her conscience. The characters are important in raising different questions. The rich bramhin male , the pious widow , the child , the educated idealist, the prostitute , the male priest.
He says that there is a new law that has been passed about widow remarriage. When Shakuntala asks him why she doesn't know about it he says that laws that aren't in tandem with religion are ignored.






I don't however think that the argument that portrayal of India as a backward, primitive culture to draw western audiences holds good as this person thinks so.

Please listen. If a widow remains a pure widow, she is respected. If she wants to lose the respect, she can remarry. Nobody goes and burns a widow if she remarries. But if she wants pleasure, naturally she will have to give up name and opt for pleasure.
Does an average Indian woman have an option?
Who prevents her? Tell me.’

Sure , there is technology ,IT , the booker prize , path breaking research in every fuckin field there is but isn't that a small part of the population?
Isn't there hypocrisy as well? The biotechnologist mother and the software engineer father still want to abort a female foetus. It is the same patriarchy that ostracized widows , that murders baby girls , that made a girl’s marriage more important and her Phd not at all.



Water has some brilliant performances. Sarala who plays Chuiya was amazing and surprisingly even John Abraham sheds his glamorous image to do a brilliant job. Lisa Ray is a tad too anglicized but she does a decent job but Nandita Das would have been better.Seema Biswas is good too.The cinematography is lovely with locales in Sri Lanka where Mehta has tried to recreate Varanasi.

You have to watch the movie..It stays with you.

Do you wear fur?

Even if you don't I beg you to watch the video on this site.
Rethink how you can in your day to day life reduce the suffering an animal feels.
I am not honest because I can't bear to watch the video anymore and am writing this instead. Who are we anyway?
Please don't buy fur. Then again what cruelty is more cruel? Killing a racoon dog for fur is worse than killing a goat for meat? Sure slaughter house methods are more humane thatn skinning alive but still.
How can you avoid hurting animals in EVERYWAY if at all you can?

Are you a girl with brains and do you burn bras??

R and I have this problem of reading gender issues into everything.
Ads, attitudes, conversations well...!!
I will try not to make this one big feminist rant but yeah...as she says recreating space: I can't get over this. If i think a gunshot sounds fun i am boyish, if i think it sounds dangerous i am girlish.">here about the test I've posted below.

I did the test anyway because I am self obsessed and I love taking these tests even though I don't take them seriously.
In the cantonement station , I saw this ad for a newspaper where the woman is shown reading the supplement and the man reading the main paper. Why? Because she is the one who is suppossed to sit at home and is likely to be interested in curtain sales in west Bangalore.Whatever!
I remember when I went 'trekking' outside Hyderabad with a bunch of friends they all said I was as good as a boy. What is that suppossed to mean?
Besides why is it a compliment when a girl is like a boy ( that is , according to society resourceful,independent whatever) and not vice versa?
Infact vice versa would mean pansy, loser etc.

It being a compliment negates the very idea of feminism. That equality is about being man enough.
Man I know I am being very inarticulate and this is a subject that I will write a long well thought out angsty post on but for now you are spared!! Ya another thing that baffled me is this community on

orkut

for girls with brains
Huh? That's an exclusive minority group among females ??

You Are 50% Boyish and 50% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

Your Personality Is Like Acid

A bit wacky, you're very difficult to predict. One moment you're in your own little happy universe... And the next, you're on a bad trip to your own personal hell!

What Drug Is Your Personality Like?

You Are 40% Obsessive

You tend to have a few obsessive thoughts, but you generally have them under control. Sometimes your worries keep you up at night, though they usually don't interfere with your life.

How Obsessive Are You?

 


V clicking into the mirror, Me and A. I like this snap.In a random store we walked in to rest and pretend to look at shoes. 

 

Pritesh tagged me so here goes.


I am thinking about...

How indifferent this
universe is to my need to sleep after lunch instead of having to listen to what post modernism is all about

I want to...
a) not grow up


I wish...
I could draw.
I hear ...
anything that is beautiful and NOT jarring and strange sounds at night that scare me.

I wonder...


to an unhealthy extent
About why this world is so unfair
About whether there is some sort of a pattern to all this , the traffic I navigate on my ride back home , the clouds, why I was so rude to that girl , if there’s an equation to it, like some sort of a choreographed dance of the universe where we are just puppets.
Are we puppets of some force in physics called b say and if some bastard will win the nobel prize for figuring it out and no one will remember that it was Y who thought of it first…Or is it too large for the human mind to comprehend.
I also wonder about whether I will scare you off if I continue and answer myself in the affirmative.




I am...
A neurotic frog

I dance...
to hip hop in Azerbaijani

I sing...
When I am feeling dreamy, on bus journeys and we also sometimes sing vulgar Tamil class at the back of class.
I cry...
for stupid things but when its something big and not comprehensible, I just look cold ,
quiet and feel like sitting at the edge of a river and throwing stones endlessly .

I write:

Angsty
1) blog posts

2) Journal entries ( since the age of 7 )
3) bad poetry (" " " " " " " " ")



I confuse
ya..thats my second name. Just add ..ed

Bad grammar pisses me off .




I need:
My space
Deep conversations with my closest friends
Family
And one tequila shot right now.



And I tag R. It's the only way to make the bitch blog. 

Free

  

Doors of perception

 
Who is taller?


Our world is just raw material. Something as bloody intangible as perception makes finished products out of it. What is reality then?
Is reality a constant or is it a customized commodity packed to confuse the hell out of every individual?


'If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is- infinnite' William Blake

What is fear for instance? I am scared of supernatural things. And at this point in life when there is no electricity in my house when I am alone it is really not a great idea to write .
Considering I missed being almost neurotic by one point in personality testing class.
HOWever, when i look around my house , it is the same things I see , just subtract the light.
The sofa, my slippers lying haphazardly ,the bottle of lotion with the cap almost not shut. Yet, a small creak outside the house causes unnessecary depletion of adrenalin from my system. I have obviously been gradually conditioned , tortured to believe that dark is scary.





When you have preconceived notions about something , no matter what signals you receive , you understand a situation in tandem with what notions you already have.
When I think about this , it makes sense to me. When I blog about it I have an inkling of dooubt creeping in. Do i make sense?
You on the other hand could probably think I am a retard.
AAAAH!perception. 

Sunday checklist

To think about:future

To learn : to say no to people

To get : Driving license


To use better: Camera

To save: money


My random Sunday checklist doesn't have any relevance to your lives bu tI will post it for my sake.

The world's oldest profession

A prostitute to her daughter - K. Satchidanandan


Dear child, say without shame
that I am your mother
and this city is your father.
Go, tell the chaste wives,
I teach their men how to love.

I offered myself
in place of a thousand women,
and became a saint.

Man, my child, is endless Desire,
you should cross that sea
the way I rose above my body.

Raise your head;
be my survivor, grow to be great.
You should have a tryst with tomorrow:
you should see the sun
that I could not.

I do not want to weep before Jesus
nor do I want Upagupta to weep before me.
Every night I turn red hot,
every morning I become gold.

I conquered lust;
you should transcend greed.
We are the bountiful Earth
and we, the giving Nature.


(Translated from Malayalam by the poet with Rizio Raj)
R was doing a project on violence against sex workers. I went with her to a dingy little room in K.R market, a group of sex workers working against HIV chatted with us there. On their profession, the challenges, the ostracization, life.



From Rio to Rome, from Dakar to Darwin, laws on prostitution are illogical and contradictory. They reflect the confusion felt by lawyers and by the general public about work so clearly connected with sex.

An estimated three million women do sex work in about 400 red light areas in India, approximately 30 per cent are children; a majority are dalits and tribals - issue.

‘My husband doesn't know I am a sex worker. I work by day and go back home by night. I tell him I am working in an NGO spreading awareness about AIDS'.

'My children are made fun of because I am a prostitute. They resent me.'

'Legalization will expose our secrets to an unaccepting society.'

'I hadn't heard about HIV, condoms, AIDS even years after joining the profession.'

'I am much better off living this life, earning a living than in my husbands house where I was beaten up, and our earnings were used for alcohol. My daughter is in the second year of Bsc . I can't afford it anymore. Tell me what opportunities she has.'


'At least now I have this support group of other sex workers. It helps me deal with it.'

'You are paid less when you insist they wear a condom. Out of four fifty rupees, I am left with hundred. The rest goes to the lodge owner, the police or the 'pimp'.'

The 'pimp' refers to the role that is inevitably played by a blackmailing male presence in a society where a man less woman is nothing. To rent a house, they need a man who pretends to be married to them.. Revealing the details of their profession will mean they will be vacated. These men constantly blackmail them and even threaten to break into their house. Hence trapping them into a vicious cycle.

'We can't complain to the police because they will say that we as 'lose women' deserve it. They will go to the other prostitutes when they want sex.'

'I need to drink to forget that I have to sell my body to earn a living.'
'Only they drink. (Disapproving). We are Muslims. We don't drink.'

‘HIV workers don’t care about sex worker welfare.’

'In my next birth I don't want to be born as a woman. That is the worst fate.'

We asked if they would mind alternate employment like sewing, working in a factory etc.
They said that if they were paid at least three thousand five hundred rupees a month, they wouldn't.

'We are sex workers. We are still entitled to a life of dignity.'

(Translated roughly from Hindi and Tamil) Photo from flickr.

Did the planet betray us?

I forgot when it stopped being an urgent thing to do.
When I was a child in Hyderabad , they cut down about seven trees that lined the plot next to our house. They RANDOMLY cut the Jamun tree in my house one day. The wires were causing problems . I was sick upstairs with Malaria then . I wanted to cry.


 








I wanted to grow up and save the environment and become an environmentalist.
I am extremist in loving animals. Nowadays when I think of the unimaginable cruelty meted out to animals everyday I shut the thought out , divert myself and start thinking of something saner.
I used to actually worry about what would happen when all the non renewable resources like coal and petrol got over.I used to consciously use less plastic, paper etc.
Over the years its just been ' why not?' without thinking. It's stopped being an urgent thing to do.
I've been caught up with my own life while doing small things like not going to McDonalds and KFC and putting up with being called an hypocrite.
That logic doesn't make sense . You might as well do SOMETHING and be called names than do NOTHING
One McDonalds beef burger removes for ever from this earth an average kitchen sized area of rainforest.

Last week I went to hear Medha Patkar speak. I was amazed, moved, inspired and ashamed.
I was ashamed of my relative indifference to what is happening in the world . I was ashamed of considering a career in the corporate world to be part of the little drop that defiles the entire ocean with its needs.
It was career confusion again.
Yet when I was at Mango yesterday I wanted that stupid soft grey t shirt that cost a thousand bucks. I told myself that I can afford it when I start earning.

link through chamique

I am 19.I am 19. I am 19 years old.

 


That might sound awfully young to some of you but the fact is I can't bear the thought of not being 19 anymore in a few days.

Because when I think I still think like' when I grow up' or when I think of what I have to do next i quickly run 'maths , english , social studies....' in my mind though I don't do these subjects anymore.
Not like am going to be a grandmother at 20 but still!
Because I have lived so much and done so little and don't know what the hell I want to do with the rest of my life.
I feel so young and am expected to be so old.
And that world that you are unconsciously promised to reach when you 'grow up' doesn't exist.Because I am such a baby and yet I can't deal with how Pipe Dreams: clinical vegetable?!">">dependable,Clinical, intellectual, cynical I seem to have become. 

little moments in a cluttered shared judging public place

 
The street isn't yours.You can't behave like its your bedroom. But there are moments when you are so lost , you lean to the side of the auto and look out , in awe of the cloudy windy weather that Bangalore is blessing us with these days. You sing and you are lost in your own world. Till suddenly you realise people are staring at you like you are weird. You quickly assume the defensive sitting straight, being rigid and attempting to buy your self respect back by typing self importantly on your phone.
These little moments in a cluttered shared judging public place are so beautiful.

Today V and I were walking on the beautiful tree lined road from Cunningham Road towards M.G road singing on the top of our voices. James Blunt and Coldplay type!
Suddenly it was all quiet. I was jolted out of my singing 'reverie'.
ALL the traffic had gone ahead and at that moment it was just V and me on that usually busy road SINGING.
Imagine a traffic less road in this city shocking me so much! 

Is there a cure for cynicism?

 
 
 


More here 

Was at Kodaikanal

  

adorable adorable adorable

 
 
  

Autumn in my neighbourhood

 


This weather is truly incredible. Cloudy and grey and introspection friendly. Just went for a walk.
The yellow leaves falling down Forrest Gump style making me believe I am actually in this British University during autumn walking to my French Literature class. The leaves are a dark dignified green and they cover the street lights . I am sorry to intrude on the imagery. You will however have to subtract the stubborn drone of traffic, the blood and death at K.V chicken shop, the dust from half constructed sites. This is Jayanagar after all ..
I was wishing I had a camera. (That pic wasn't taken today).


I’m always wishing that nowadays. Though when I actually have it I chicken out of taking all the lovely pictures of children laughing, men playing cards , a cow suckling its calf in the middle of the road with a silver building as background.
I chicken out because they might mind being photographed. (not the cow calf duo..) I don't yet know photo ethics.
I must study.
I must do a lot of things.

Ten days of heavy 'internalizing' ahead....

It is that time of the semester when we have those ubiquitous things called university exams.
Now, ever since school, I haven't really written real exams.
University exams are a farce. You go in and are tested on grammar that is second standard level and you write as slowly as possible. If you finish too fast, you'll end up getting bored staring at the yellow walls of college and scared watching other people write pages and pages.
They ask you questions like ' What was the colour of the dress Princess Doro Boro was wearing?' for 8 marks.
How much can you write?
She wore a red dress that had pink frills. (ugly) .She was in a pensive mood . She also wore black shoes.Go on for a page. Take a break to dream about where to eat lunch. Continue.
(I think one is encouraged to plagiarize/ ’internalize’ as much as possible from bad guides. )

Six months later some sheets will be put up on the notice board. These are the results of an exam you have forgotten about.
Needless to say, more often than not, the numbers will have no connection to what you remember having written in the exam. The evaluators who corrected your papers could be non English speaking people sitting in Gulbarga or double PhDs sitting in Frazer town.
It will remain a mystery to you.

Yet, to satisfy and be part of the ( ahem..) system , we go write exams that have questions about how to make notes , write memorandums , dialogues , blah.
Intellectually stimulating eh?

Now when I think of how I consumed a thousand pages of chem in school and managed to get decent marks, I think I might have at some point been intelligent.
University education ruined me, methinks. :)

Living alone

 
 
  

Blank Noise intervention-2

When I was travelling to M.G road, some men in a car blew kisses at me and were screaming. I had the courage to scream back at them. (Quite dramatically, I must add) which made them turn the car and speed off.
I would have never have done this earlier. I would have given them this mild (almost ) dirty look and walked off.





The girl who took part in the Blank Noise intervention was much more confident this time, almost aggressively so . To casually demand SPACE on leching zone, Brigade and M.G roads came naturally.

What we did was stand in the middle of the road in the line and give out testimonials from the blank noise blogathon to those who responded in some way to our gaze.
To reverse the gaze of ‘ starers’ and curious onlookers while handing them out the hand folded copies of the blank noise blogathon testimonials was easy. Some readily took it, some walked ahead, thought for a bit and came back to take it, some didn’t.

Most women were not interested. Some women looked me up and down and looked disgusted.

A lot of girls (college types ) had bemused expressions and were like 'what the hell do they think they are doing? ' .
Two women who asked me what it was all about read the testimonials and seemed interested. One of the women had just experienced 'eve teasing' and the two had been discussing it when I gave them the testimonial.
Another middle aged man read it intently and came and asked me what I wanted. I asked him to 'think about it'.
( I wasn't allowed to engage in conversation with them.)

Most people were extremely curious about what it was all about.

Personally I think it has helped me a lot. WHen I walk on the roads now I am not as rigid and scared as I used to be.




I think however to make a greater impact and to ' transform the nature of the place' we need a LOT of women. As far as eve teasing is concerned M.G road is friendlier .
Brigade road is narrower and gives ample opportunity for anonymous gropers to get away with whatever!
And if these interventions are carried out more often, it is going to make people think. The same people frequent these places: Brigade Road, M.G road, Majestic bus stand etc.


Apart from everything else it is interesting to stand on a street you walk on so often and observe people. It makes you realise how diverse Bangalore is and eavesdropping on the variety of conversations is fun. :)

okaaaaaaay then!

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Black Comedy

In your life, things are so twisted that you just have to laugh.You may end up insane, but you'll have fun on the way to the asylum. Your best movie matches: Being John Malkovich, The Royal Tenenbaums, American Psycho

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

Marketing Strategies for elections-Unit 1

An election ,like everything else that involves power and money and people needs some sort of marketing strategy.
It needs to recognize a target audience and their needs.
What young girls in Tamil Nadu need more than education , health facilities and a status equal to that of their brothers is gold.
Voila.
Promise to give all unmarried girls four grams of gold.
Girls must be a burden to the grandparents , parents and brothers so , yes the whole population is targeted.
With the gold prices increasing it is so hard to accumulate a dowry. Thank God ,the government is so compassionate.

Now that the target audience has been dealt with.
Think about the enemy, the fellow contestor . Buy a bit of media and trash him on it as much as you want.
If there is any unwanted news ,dispose it in favour of more important news, advertising all the goodies that people will get when they vote for you.
After all ,your enemy is doing the same.

Development without destruction

Narmada bachao Manav bachao

Guess who got an awesome new digi slr?...meeeeeeeeeee!

So I will exploit this blog now for posting all my random pictures.
yea!
And it's taking toooo long to upload them so will just post one and also coz my friends who are non netty will kill me if I post the rest. Not like everyone on the net is some psycho photo manipulator.
But lots more will be posted later.

of cats and mishti and other work rants

Am sitting at work and contemplating how different work is from college. I mean I have spent the past seventeen years sitting in class rooms listening to teachers!
Been doing some very *rewarding* assignments.
Went to cover the karaoke night at Opus which was quite fun! I love Opus. . We(A and I ) were acting polite and well mannered and had only one drink each . Cranberry breezer. We should really have been more opportunistic, the last time I went there I spent like eight lakh bucks !




Now ,Mr. Das of the K..C Das fame has eighty five cats. We went to do a story on them.
I generally don't like cats but these were adorable. They had names like Shivaji , Dadabhai( who was one aggressive ,attitudey cat I tell ya) and Leo .
There is a terrace with lots and lots and lots of cats. Two kittens were just two days old and hadn’t opened their eyes. They were as small as the palms of my hand . It is unbelievable to think that those predator like elegant older ones began like this.
That whole wonder at Life feeling overwhelmed me.
One ginger cat was extremely curious about the camera and kept following it and yet was petrified of it at the same time. :D
Would the cats, when left alone, bitch about these garish intruders of personal space in cat language, I wondered? Now, I really did wonder so..

Oh god I am thinking I am looooooovvving animals.:)
We interviewed the vet also. When I was young, okay, a child, I was dead serious about becoming a vet.


Mr Das is a quiet, regal man, dressed in starched white. The caretaker says he himself gets bugged with the cats and ‘screams at them sometimes’ but Mr. Das loooooves his cats and they love him back.



And he fed us lots of sweets. We left and they called us back and gave us some to take back home. Wow, very nice no?
And we were of course highly excited .
I could live on bong sweets!!!!! Yummmmm ..



Now then what else do I write about?
Ya sorry ..Call…so someone from HDFC calls and I act hep and put on my disgusting pseudo professional accent and say:

'Hello ...yes. .blah news.. How can I help you? Who do you want to talk to?’


She thinks for a while and says
‘It is you madam, are you interested in loans?’

Yeah right, I need money to holiday in the Scandinavian lowlands.

Where I grew up

Sunday Mornings

Sunday morning is the short space of happiness before the dread of Monday insidiously seeps in.
Sometimes it is hung over with me downing glasses of water and lime juice in a desperate attempt to save my Sunday before the dreadful drudgeries of college draw me in. (Sorry about the attempt to be awesomely alliterative). Sunday mornings are otherwise , getting up late after the ambitions of getting up early are shattered like the batteries of the alarm clock lying outside my bedroom window. Reading The Hindu Magazine and feeling idealistic or angry at the world. Or glancing through the largely crappy stuff from TOI. Making lofty plans that are badly badly co-ordinated. In boarding school it was dosa breakfast and too many glasses of tea. Dusting, cleaning, mopping, washing with the ever present fear of the house parent. Taking obese textbooks and walking to class to study for ISC. Sometimes it was putting on an extra innocent face to act like I was actually the packed bundle left on my bed when we were far away on some hill throughout the night. We slept with the stars and woke up to the sunrise and in awe walked to the dining hall. Or in younger times, going for picnics in the hills nearby with bits of grub.(bits of choco pie, two chips, half a dosa smuggled from breakfast). When I was really a kid kid it meant that the driver wouldn't come and I was under house arrest and aunties and uncles would visit to pinch my cheeks.

I am mindlessly exploiting the internet at office. I need ideas for features - the 'visual masala' type. Please Please suggest.

 

reality bites

I went to this 'villagelet' on the fringes of Bangalore .This was for a socio economic survey. I am not those types who thought the whole world was friendly streets with lots of trees and houses in which a switch means light.
I've seen severely anaemic women who had no money to buy greens to eat.

It was however a needed reality check . Here is a place where people of a caste live together and more often than not don't intermingle. And dead rats decorate gushing gutters in frontyards , having been there for days.
The urea factory spews a thick constant toxic smell . Nobody in the village of five hundred families has studied beyond class ten except one Tamil actor who has a B.A degree.Everyone is happy though and welcoming. Insistent that we have milky coffee that they make on a stove quickly borrowed.
They are chatty and ask if I am a 'bachelor'.
~A~ says I assume Bangalore is Brigade blah and Indira Nagar and Koramangala.
Mojos , Koshys , coffee day , barista, college ,autos ,taika , crossword , landmark ,theatre, corner house,Forum.

I sometimes think I am bored of Bangalore but there is so much I still have to discover and have been here just two years!

it is the system man!

Read this
Thirty-three million people. Displaced by big dams alone in the last fifty years What about those that have been displaced by the thousands of other Development Projects? At a private lecture, N.C. Saxena, Secretary to the Planning Commission, said he thought the number was in the region of 50 million (of which 40 million were displaced by dams). We daren't say so, because it isn't official. It isn't official because we daren't say so. You have to murmur it for fear of being accused of hyperbole. You have to whisper it to yourself, because it really does sound unbelievable. It can't be, I've been telling myself. I must have got the zeroes muddled. It can't be true. I barely have the courage to say it aloud. To run the risk of sounding like a 'sixties hippie dropping acid ("It's the System, man!"), or a paranoid schizophrenic with a persecution complex. But it is the System, man. What else can it be?

And this in The Hindu
On March 8, 2006, the Narmada Control Authority gave permission to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam to 121.92 meters. This was just one more stage in the step-by-step raising of the dam height. Yet, there is something final about it. At this level, the dam wall is complete, and only the gates remain to be fixed. So far, a part of the river has still been flowing. If this new level is reached, it will be the end of this. The senses that have been numbed with assault after assault in the last decade are suddenly overwhelmed. I myself cannot help breaking down. But these are the last tears. After all, how long can one keep crying for the dead?
more on this later.

Randomophillia

I've been wanting to write about this interview with the politician and how the police commisioner - (the man who expects pubs to shut at 11:30 ) is quite charming in real life . :)
There are actually so many things I want to write about but the mood and the time I have to write never come together.
Life Life!
If only Bangalore Uni decides when it plans to have exams , I can run away to somewhere faraway. Though I said I will stay grounded for a change and learn to drive and renew my passport and be practical and take CAT classes and other things that I have been postponing indefinetely.
They need English teachers in Ladakh. I want to go!
Fat, you still haven't posted by the way...

This is India . I am a Man. I will stare .

What are we hoping to do with patriarchy parading around so determinedly? And ... the blank noise intervention. And how much more confident I felt after it.


It may not change the psyche of men. According to an IIsc student ,part of the group, men are genetically more likely to 'eve tease’ or assert unwanted sexual aggression of some form .
However it still makes us more confident on the road!
Really, the simplest thing to do is to stare back at 'offenders'.
They will coyly look away!

The intervention sounds vague at first thought.
'yea dude, these chicks are gonna dress in skimpy clothes and stare back at men.'
'yea rite, you wanna go watch? '

'Was your social cause achieved '?
(condescending air above text message) .

A girl a.k.a me stands in front of Mota like it is her bathroom. For five minutes. No one comes to join her.
( And there are fellow conspirators like her all along Brigade Road) 'Yeah , dude! She's available.'
Random boy comes to ask: Umm are you waiting for someone?
me: Umm no can't I just stand here?
Random boy: umm do you want a cig?
me: no thanks. (Polite, not smiling)
Random boy: (after a while, realising no man is going to whisk this girl away to safety): Umm are u sure u don’t want a fag?
me: Yes, I told you I didn't want one.

Which goes to say that a girl can't just stand somewhere comfortably, not particularly throwing her sexuality around without seeming available.


When one of the participants protested against being stared (The difference between a glance, two long admiring glances and outright violating disgusting staring being understood by us that is) at and handed out the blank noise sticker, a group of guys gathered and argued their cause one said.

'This is India. I am a man. I will stare.’

deviants

What are deviants deviating from? How can 'society' be a scientific standard?

How Bangalore's mobs mourn

Dr Rajkumar is dead and Bangalore is going crazy. Buses are being burnt , vehicles stoned , buildings attacked and cable operators have cut off all channels that (presumably) aren't reporting his death or giving it as much importance. I begged the editor to let me go with the crew to watch the happenings. There was excitement in the news room. I felt however that it was just another piece of ‘sensational’ news for them. Anyhow we rushed to his house and there was a huge crowd there all trying to barge in. The police were lathi charging and Devegowda and the chief minister were just coming in. There was chaos and screaming and the cameramen and reporters were squeezing through the crowd to get what they wanted. Towards Palace grounds where his body was initially supposed to be taken, police cars were being stoned and there were frenzied crowds creating ruckus. There was speculation that it was his sons who initiated all this to just reveal how much power their father still had.
It really was something to see one city quickly shut down and steal away after one man's death. A shop keeper I interviewed on MG road was nearly in tears and he was shutting shop of his own accord and not because of any orders, he said . Some IT companies made sure they had placed a garlanded picture of Rajkumar in some visible place. Cars owners too hastily took print outs of his pictures and pasted them on the windows. Whether this is because of fear or respect is debatable. Glass buildings all around town were attacked. The company driver who just assumes I am bong or North Indian for some reason bitches to me about Tamilians .How this is their chance to be accepted by the Kannadiga community ; by mourning the Kannadiga legend . According to him the Tamilians incredible drinking powers will see them creating the most trouble. I continued of course to grill him to get some perspective on this.

It is sad though. Almost as if his death and the violence are two separate unrelated things. Are these mobs actually just grabbing a chance to create anarchy? Someone says it's their chance to settle scores but somehow it seems an ugly way to mourn the death of someone they idolized.

Just back from the blank noise meeting . On the way back Ratu and me took a bus from Malleshwaram to Majestic. At the majestic bus stand, we were quite lost as to which bus to take. This guy went out of his way to help us find the right bus . Ratu and I live in different parts of Jayanagar and wanted to take the same bus. On this long long bus journey we got into this animated discussion about how South Indians are looked down upon. We were discussing this obsession with fair skin and how all south Indians are perceived as short and dark (and presumably according to them ugly). ’Animated’ according to us is imitating, enacting etc on this crowded bus with just three women. This man, A, got off the bus at the same stop and told us that all South Indians are not short and dark and blah. Obviously he had heard bits of our conversation on the bus and hence had a misconception .We quickly (not rude not kind) explained to him what we were saying. His eyes lit up when we said that we too were South Indians who lived in Bangalore. Sweet of him to have actually speak to us and stand up for his ‘race’? He introduced himself as working somewhere etc in a ‘you can trust me I am not weird' tone. But we were just too scared to. Isn't it sad though that he was this nice guy who helped us find a bus etc but because we are scared of any mans intentions on a bus stop at 10:3 0 at night, we had to rudely walk off leaving this man wondering why ?

relevance of Gandhian ideology in thepostcolonial world

Free haircut got by me at the Taj yes Taj west end.
Kicked to get long hair analysis and use acting skills to act like I knew what Loreal Paris trained woman was talking about.
But I think my long split endy ignored hair betrayed my acting skills vengefully.
And because I let them do whatever I want to it( my hair ) and it ended up looking not so bad , it( my hair ) forgave me for years of neglect.
ya i was guinea pig , why else would they even touch my hair for free.

Also got tremendous insight about socialite women which will be part of my experiencing different humans knowledge. which will show in my future book.
futile fleeting superficial meaningless ungrammered blog post as usual, yes?
I promise to post about relevance of Gandhian ideology in the post-colonial world next time .

Visual masala

Today I started an internship with a news channel.
We were asked to come up with story ideas . We came up with 18 - a mixture of lifestyle , fashion and social issue related ones .
Editor applauded some ideas. They are good visual masala ,he said.
Nobody wants to watch sad beggars you know.

Management problems

In a buffet lunch, I always take a little of everything. I want to make sure that I haven’t missed out on anything, at all. (Subtract most things because I am a vegetarian.)
And in my desperation to not miss out anything I stuff myself to no end. Even if it means skipping three meals preceding the aforementioned buffet lunch.

At the end of the lunch I would have had one bit of a leaf of cabbage from the Greek salad , a nail sized drop of caramel custard , nibbled a bit of rice dumplings with a piquant coconut sauce.(Idly with chutney, if you please).

I wouldn’t hence be able to write a decent review of even one item on the menu.
Now, this is my approach to life in general. And this quote is the medicine I should feed myself each morning.

“There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.”


When I finished 12th STD, I had done an oxymoronic mix of science and arts.
I was interested in chemicals and resonance structure and tried to look at the world chemically, reducing emotional states to chemistry and pathofying the crap out of life .But, it fascinated me.
I liked genetics and how one single protein in a gene sequence of millions of proteins determines whether the feathers of a parrot will be blue or red on the head.
I liked literature. I liked tearing the result of a poor poet’s moment of peace
Into a million bits. Analysing anything fascinates me. Dreams, advertisements, speech, boy language...Okay I meant body language but if you wish you can catch me for a Freudian slip there.
I’ve considered all careers ranging from biotechnology, law, environmental science, chemical engineering.

Finally I realised I want everything but I want nothing in particular.
So I thought of journalism. Where I could work on something different everyday. Where I could review a play on one and write about seahorse DNA sequencing, the next. Write about wine tasting sessions and do meaningful journalism, you know. Write about under privileged people from their perspective, not in romanticized publishing pictures of glazed eyed children way.
As if the world could be changed so easily.
Write travelogues on the south of France in a room with yellow lights that will see me typing on a laptop, sprawled comfortably on a large Victorian type bed.

I keep having stints with journalism. I interned, I freelance, and I study it in college...
But oh I am straying. How do I finally choose one path, one career.
Advertising and market research fascinates me also. I mercilessly cut up an ad and come up with my own judgements about its intentions, its target audience and secret manipulative powers. (…evil grin..)
Besides , should I just settle into a corporate job because it is safer and richer and air conditioned with five star lunches.
Forget career . I can’t even imagine belonging to and following one religion or marrying one man .
Anyhow , so how do I whittle the world into a more manageable size??

 

Being in Love

 

 

 

Being in love with you
Is to abandon the piano:
It is to take up the castanets,
The bugle,
The kettle drum.

It is to sleep naked, with all the doors and windows open,
Fearing nothing.

Being in love with you means many days I am so happy
I can barely feed myself:
I laugh or weep or both and set aside the fork.

It means I wake one morning feeling
Such warmth rising inside me
That I am suddenly confident
All snow would melt
Within my steady gaze;
And I dress quickly
To test this
On the crisp, December
Landscape.

Being in love with you further means the rhododendrons
Are in bloom, the mongoose
Is mating, the moon is full and the wind strong
Along the western ghats of South India.

Being in love with you sings arias
In my head, hums loudly
In my bones.
It beats the drum.

Some complain that being in love with you is merely an airtight ferocity,
Or a kind of rococo piety,
But we proclaim it
This Resplendent Helmet,
A radical and luminous sobriety.

Being in love with you is crucial.
Everything depends upon it.

In summer, being in love with you is red, raw and delicious.
In winter it is blue, lucent, and shimmers when touched.

Being in love with you is to forget
For a moment the use of fruit:
It is to stare long at the splendour
Of a green pear
On a white porcelain plate.

Being in love with you is old as Laughing Buddha,
And as fat.

Being in love with you is only now,
Cannot be remembered
Or imagined.

Being in love with you is to notice the basic radiance of all things,
And is thus a simple, unarmed, fundamental bathing.

Being in love with you is as well, a small well-kept apartment
In the middle of busy Kyoto,
Where, with great contentment,
A young couple sit
At a low table
Eating their evening meal
Of sweet hijiki
On beds of warm rice,
The silence broken only
By faint, almost musical
Clinks of chopsticks
Upon the oval bowls.

Being in love with you for even one second
Is enough. The big picture changes.
(When the honey jar is opened,the whole kitchen is instantly sticky.)

Being in love with you is a deep thirst,
An undermining hunger.
It is a desperation like that of a barn swallow caught
In a kitchen mousetrap,
Dragging itself with his wings
And one good leg
Towards the dog-door,
His only hope.

Being in love with you is ludicrous and cannot be explained.

Being in love with you sneaks up on mefrom behind.
It is a kind of ambush.
Or worse, it is an avalanche
In which I am tumbled furiously
For a time, then stopped cold
In whatever absurd position the snow
Finds me - perhaps only a hat
Or a hand
Visible to the outside world.

Being in love with you sits on my doorstep
And weeps. It calls pathetically
To be let in the house, rants
About my neglectfulness. I run
To open the door but - when I touch
The doorknob - feel a tap
On my shoulder, turn around
And it is there,
Smiling it galling
Cheshire smile.

It is the holy guardian of archways, the faithful steward of alltunnels and bridges.

It is alpine and religious, naked and fierce.
It is the kiss of candour, and the cherished cup.
It is "the low down" and "the real dope".

Being in love with you is to dream, at least once, that you live inside me
Like a mysterious Spanish town at twilight: you are the red dirt road
That winds into town;
You are the squat houses with lamps lit and drapes half-drawn;
On the horizon, you are sunset's silent fire;
You, bouncing are the green and orange swirled ball that children run after
Laughing in the street - and on the porch, the old man, head in hands,
Watching;
You are the young lovers in the town square at nightfall, the moon's play of
Light and shadow on their faces, you are their lips, their kiss;
And yet you are also the several dead drunk matadors, draped
over chairs,
Spread-eagled over the hotel bed;
And you, too, are the town idiot on the tavern roof, dancing a pot bellied
Belly-dance to the slender crescent moon;
And at the farthest edge of town, you yourself are the yelled-at mule, who
Will not budge.

In spring, being in love with you is green, resilient, and sways to the rhythms of wind.
In autumn, it is pale gold and fills the sky.

Being in love with you is centripetal.

Moreover, it choreographs
And christens.
It cradles and cherishes, yet
Confiscates as much as it confers.
It clobbers and clocks, then cloisters - but only to clarify
And cleanse.
It seems to cathart then catnap, but later celebrates
And celestializes.
It cultivates and cumulates until it is continual combustion.
Or, saying the same, is a kind of ever spontaneous consecration.
It cures and cushions,
Compels and completes.
If threatened with congealing, it may creep
Aside, churn and circulate,
Conspiring to colour the cosmos.

Being in love with you is centrifugal.

It is hard to believe
Being in love with you
Was once
That tiny space
In my heart
That has since exploded
Into a vast cathedral
Of sky
Under which I stand alone,
Looking up.

It is raining cats and dogs.
I am drenched.
Being in love with you has soaked me
To the bone
And I will never again
Be dry.

Micheal Londry

 

 

isn't this so wonderful?

“Does this darkness have a name? This cruelty, this hatred, how did it find us? Did it steal into our lives or did we seek it out and embrace it? What happened to us that we now send our children into the world like we send young men to war, hoping for their safe return, but knowing that some would be lost along the way. When did we lose our way? Consumed by the shadows. Swallowed whole by the darkness. Does this darkness have a name? Is it your name?”
From somewhere.

This girl called N and I have this intrinsic need to do stupid things. Whether it’s bargaining for a twenty buck brownie at Rex or smelling pickles at nilgiris and getting absorbed enough to miss a lot of the movie!!(Ya, being Cyrus, we missed a precious 15 minutes).

And only we find ourselves so amusing and laugh like retards and feel stoned.
One of the things on the agenda was to hitch a ride back home. So we ignored all the electronic metred autos for twenty minutes clumsily trying to get some car to stop.
Finally one did:
So this man from Haryana stops and we are glad about the air conditioned comfort.
Haryana man: (HM): Haaan so you are fair skinned you must be north Indian.
(N is forced by me to sit in front)
N: hmm hehe haaa actuallllyy…nooo I am south Indian .
H: you are tamilian?
N: No Mangalorean
H: Oh Bangalore and Mangalore not the same thing? I ‘ve been to Mangalore.
N: hmm heee no..Actually (turns around and gives me a sly yet sharp dirty look for getting her into this).
H: Mangalore stinks actually. Whole town. Maney goa mein tho no stink..Aishwarya Rain from there no??
(Wow stinky , largely dark skinned but atleast there’s Aishwarya Rai )
N: ya , but Mangalore has a lot of unexplored beaches . It’s less commercial than Goa.( patriotic, suddenly)
H: I love Goa. In Mangalore , I think near Kudremukh so all iron ores going into water and water is black.
N: hmm
H: Don’t worry haan I am not ‘that type of a guy’. Don’t be scared. In Singapore it is considered normal to give rides to people , here naa mane don’t know what the probleym is .
N: Ya , very true ; you just don’t get autos on Brigade road.( yeah , right)


But then we rightly realised that we can’t bitch about sweet people who offered us rides. Or we’ll have to wait till we can drive cars of our own.

I am so pissed off.
Because I paid 120 fuckin bucks for a sixty buck auto ride and I just didn't want to argue coz I was just glad to be back home safe.

Went to watch rehearsals of the theatre group whose last production I was part of. It was lovely and I felt like jumping up on stage and ACTING again.

It happens at Tunbridge high school which is made up of those beautiful old Bangalore type buildings. When you walk into the common room there are old women in dresses , all smiling and friendly . There is the smell of wet dogs. (sorry but really that's a smell and it's not as unpleasant as it sounds) .And a jacaranda tree that generously showers blossoms on the playground. Bangalore is full of these gorgeous purple flowers in summer and other flowers too.
It makes you want to forget the lousy traffic, lousier tempered auto drivers and the kacha kacha kacha clutteredness.
And you just smelllll and smile and feel all alive.
Like Spring in those English novels. Anyway Right now I wish a)I had a (fourth hand would do) maruti 800 or small car that I could DRIVE properly and b) I get a chance to ACT...

blueberry blues at 17!!!

You are 17 years old!!!

You Are 17 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

Oh dear!!!17?

I just bought a whole lot of yummmmmy toileteries- face wash ,shampoo etc etc. And ofcourse I had to come back home and immediately have a bath to test all of these. Hehe.

The woman at health and glow laughed at me the other day because i was relegiously opening all the bottles and smelling the contents..blueberry, cocoa butter whatnot.

And ofcourse i had some ten bucks in my pocket to get back home.

I've lived a full week without a phone after I lost the second phone in three months. I lost the first in Goa. God GOd GOD! I am trying to sound all undepressed but I am fed up of me and this world. I even messaged the thief saying I am a poor girl and to please have pity on me and that I will offer a reward of two hundred rupees . What world am i living in ? ? Tinkle Comics?

Boo Hoo..Tee Hee!!:)

Blank Noise Project

I was at first cynical about the blank noise project. I was wondering whether those 'road side Romeos ' anonymous hands’ will actually read these blogs and think ' Ah, maybe woman do have souls that might feel violated and I should get back to being a good man.' When I read the other posts , they echoed my feelings so much that it was disturbing.

It has achieved a lot. It's made me realise that this problem is as real to other women as it is to me.
That those invisible untraceable hands that grope your body in concerts, in buses don't only target me. There is nothing wrong with me as an individual except that like other woman I am a pair of breasts and ass in the eyes of these men.
Which is why when I use public transport, I wish I could somehow shroud my feminineness.
It's like when your growing up as a girl, the air around you turns oppressive so you hunch so your breasts don't show too much, you stiffen when you are walking alone on a road and you see some man pass by. Can I help it though? Just like I have a left toe and a right ovary, as a human female, I have breasts.
Chances are that the man is innocent and while seemingly he is staring at you, he is actually worrying about getting fired at work. Huge chances at that because there are a lot of wonderful wonderful men in the world.
But isn't that how prejudicing works. You don't want to risk trusting some strange man on the road by walking normally and singing aloud that song stuck in your head. Lest it makes you seem ‘available’ or some ugly connotation like that,
I am saving up all my writing money to backpack in the North. But as a woman alone I'll have to take 70 times more precaution; that is if I am allowed to go at all. Why why why why?
What is the use of all this liberation and independence if I can't walk alone on any road at any time I want.

I remember once (how can I forget ...duh! to me) On Brigade road, on New Year's eve two of my girl friends and I were thrown on the road and felt up by many men. Whoever came joined in! And the male friends who tried to help us were pushed away.

Another male friend , A , asked me after sometime whether I thought I was doing Satyagraha walking on Brigade road on New Years night.
Sadly , a similar echo floated around in my mind. Because , really, How can I expect a thousand men on a road not to treat the few women on a road in a stampede , as fruit baskets, soul- less objects to grab randomly?

How How How do you change things?

A ragged urchin , aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy;a bird
Flew up to safety from his well aimed stone :
That girls are raped ,that two boys knife a third,
were axioms to him , who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept
Or one could weep because another wept.

From 'The Shield of Achilles' by W.H Auden

Mood: disillusioned ...duh!

19 years of technorized me.

Trunk call ,STD, Cable (star) TV, Personal computer, Answering machine , Windows, Internet,Instant Messaging,Voice Chat ,Mobile phone , Caller ID , Camera Phones, Broadband, bluetooth,infrared,wifi,google,3g phones..'(and so u can correspond like damn fast and do alll kiiiiinda cool things like watching movies(and i dont mean mms type) but proper videostreaming .. in real time ..' says my friend in London who must be feeling sorry for my backwardness .and also says 'im not too knowledgable with this kinda stuff.' .but the thing is . ..can't keep up.

My Blog

is hardly ever read but still exists because I love writing and I love writing on the computer;

actually, this nice person has linked my blog on his so someone does read my blog


which is full of typos that I am sorry about .