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 .

Media Jungle

“Do I climb the ladder or go up the rope?’ I read this somewhere in a handout about a play, I think. Isn’t it so relevant for people like me - wondering what the hell to do with life?
An outlook journalist gave a talk at college yesterday. Generalizing on outlook I thought he must be those journalism is infotainment with not an ounce of social responsibility types. Thankfully he wasn’t and had a lot of interesting things to say. One of them being that it’s not all about low waist jeans, butt cleavage and donating one’s youth to M.G road and Brigade road. This made my friends and me cringe in a bit of well deserved guilt.

Anyhow there was some talk about whether newspapers will soon be extinct in this age of technology. He said firmly that they will not. However the print media will constantly adapt to competition from the broadcast and internet media and cater to shorter attention spans at whatever cost. Whether its sms alerts or shorter articles change will be rapid. In the west there are free DVDs etc for subscriptions which attract readers. Unlike in India where newspaper sales are booming, they are on the decline in the west.

Talking about the aggressive marketing strategies of the Times of India, he said that they employed this strategy he termed as dumping-conquering as much advertising space in a town as possible. Another strategy is, he said, cost cutting. A dealer would probably make more out of a bag of newspapers from the raddi wallah than actually selling it. This is obviously possible because of ridiculous amounts of advertising revenue from elsewhere. An advertising manager from TOI who quit apparently told him that he wouldn’t trust the TOI with is daughter .Interesting.

Then, again, I don’t think journalism is all serious stuff and intended to bore us to death. True, it is a valuable tool for democracy and its purpose is to create awareness. However,
The fact is that it has to inform in entertaining or at least reader/viewer friendly way to get the attention of the masses. There is obviously a thin line between sensationalism and good ethical journalism. Also there is a thin line between boring drab journalism and good ethical journalism.
About the tehelka tapes he felt, they were needed. The media is accessible le only to about 10% of a largely illiterate country. The tapes left no room for doubt about political corruption. What were the larger publications doing then is a valid question he asked. Has the print media become complacent just churning out the regular day to day stuff?


Outlook man felt the most boring journalism came out from Bangalore and Chennai. Possibly.
Anyhow what did I start with? Ya, the ladder and the rope. I’ve always been attracted to journalism. Now, I feel overwhelmed by the jungle the media is beginning to sound like As a journalism student it seems unnerving to enter it .

Prejudice

What is prejudice? Why do we educated urban people assume we are beyond prejudice?
In reality all of us are biased about economic class, alma mater, religion, brands and God knows whatelse . Everyone does however have their own prejudice. Some are unaware of their prejudices. Some are afraid to admit it even to themselves.
To have prejudice is to pre judge and to generalize. We did a valuable component on the nature of prejudice in my 7th std class. I know it is assimilated somewhere into my thinking but can’t remember the details now. My school didn’t believe in teaching s details of the numerous pacts and other History History things. Though I am quite clueless, I am glad about that.
Anyway the point of all that was that one of the abstract chapters we did was prejudice.


Recently, I traveled from Jammu to Delhi by a night bus. It was the first time I was taking a bus alone and I was the only female on the bus. For some reason, my mind turned all bitchy and I was shit scared of all the men in the bus. They probably were looking at me because they were letching or because they found it odd that I was traveling alone. I don’t know. Suddenly I began to have thoughts I was ashamed of .I didn’t even know I had such prejudices in me . Once, a friend had told me Sikhs in turbans were very trustable and I found comfort finding one on the bus. I was very suspicious of the Muslims and didn’t feel like trusting anyone in general because they were Men. Is it because I felt that my identity as a woman was threatened? In the sense that I felt unsafe being the only woman in a bus in some unknown town. Do prejudices pop up when one’s identity is threatened?
Anyway, I turned my head to the moving moon and distracted myself from vague thoughts.

15 , Park Avenue

I just watched Aparna Sen’s 15,Park Avenue. It is about Mitali(Konkana Sensharma) who suffers from schizophrenia and how her disease affects her and the relationships of those around her.
It is interesting because it brings into focus the schizophrenic’s point of view. What is reality anyway? Whose reality is more real? Meethi’s world of saddam and him helping her escape to her husband’s house where her five children are? .Or Anjali’s (her sister played by Shabana Azmi) world of being a physics professor and day to day life?
‘How would you feel if I told you, you were not a professor and you were imagining it’? , Meethi says making even the self convinced Anjali pause for a minute.
The film explores how such an illness affects people around the patient. Anjali feels responsible for her sister and has put her own life on hold, caring for her sister, leaving no time even for self pity.

Rahul Bose does a fairly good job playing the fiancé of Meethi who leaves her when he realizes he cannot be with a ‘woman he only feels pity for.’ A chanced encounter while on holiday in Bhutan eleven years later presents him Mitali who doesn’t recognize him. And yet believes herself to be married to him.
The most disturbing scene is indeed the rape scene. When on a journalistic assignment outside Kolkata, Meethi is attacked and gang raped by political men. Needless to say this aggravated her to a point of no return.
The scene itself is not as rape scenes in Hindi movies are portrayed dramatic. It simply shows the latching of a door and people walking in and out and moans. At the end of it Meethi I hurled outside bleeding and vulnerable.
It was terrible and made me think about how woman can never be free when the ever present threat of rape lingers around the corner .jojo’s reaction to the rape incident is shocking but real. One part of him wanted to hold her and the other was too repulsed to even touch her again.
That’s how things are?
The movie ends rather abruptly. It is open ended .But, I can’t think of any other ending that would have done justice to the rest of the film.

This is by no means a review of the film but Konkana was as always brilliant. Shabana , I felt was schoolish in some parts and the rest did a fairly good job.

fooling around with photoshop

Mcleodganj

Like in all tourist places, Mcleodganj has locals for whom tourists are part of a culture. It is as you know where the Dalai Lama sought political asylum after the Chinese occupation of Tibet. It is now his home and the exiled Tibetan government is here.
For Tibetans, their occupations revolve around their country. Whether it is selling antiques, traditional attire or T-shirts with Buddhist Mantras written on them, their day to day life revolves somewhat around selling bits of their culture.
As soon as one gets off the bus, hotel owners hound you claiming they’ve had a lot of “Delhi students’ stay with them before. From what angle we were assuredly Delhi students to them, I don’t know.

We were already tired of being cheated so we chose a room in a nunnery which was really perfect and had a terrace attached so it was lovely to see the snow capped peaks gleaming amidst the night’s darkness. For anyone interested in the concept of culture, Mcleodganj is the place to visit. Majority of the population is Tibetan and the rest of the inhabitants are migrants from North India or Nepal. The tourist population is largely Western or Israeli people in search of nirvana or drugs. There are of course the weekend trippers from parts of Punjab who just come for ‘sight-seeing’ (Oh, How I loathe the term).There was a lone mallu shopkeeper as well, longing for the coconut trees conspicuously missing (for him) in this mountainous confine. These mallus, I tell you, are everywhere.

According to the ‘other’ communities, the Tibetans are lazy because they get aid from Western organizations ‘fooled by’ pictures of ‘sad eyed’ children.’ They are, says, D, a Rajasthani, living on charity’. Following the alleged rape of a Tibetan boy (thought to be a girl because of the long hair’) by a Drunken Punjabi man, Punjabis have been looked down upon, says R, a Kashmiri. He warned us to stay away from them. The Tibetans however told us not to trust the Kashmiris and so did the Rajasthani. Another well meaning Indian tourist from Delhi told us not to trust the foreigners. The Indians resent the fact that Tibetans are so well off, even as refugees. According to some of them, the monks are leading luxurious,’ immoral’ lives ‘sporting expensive watches and getting pregnant’. Female tourists are harassed often.

Mcleodganj, in this sense is a cultural mess.
At the Dalai Lama temple, there is a beautiful sense of community as monks and punks sit together and pray and share meals.(No I am not saying that for corny rhyme value, I am referring to those guys clad in extremely baggy pants(gravity’s slaves) ,psychedelic colored T shirts and lots of (non- prayer ) beads. The monks and the chuba clad women carry those prayer wheels rotating them rhythmically to Buddhist chants. We were the only Indians there really, but they were very friendly and invited us to eat with them. We really felt like we weren’t in India and the meat in the soup was making my loyal vegetarian self very paranoid. I couldn’t obviously waste food that has been so graciously offered to me in near foreign settings. It turned out to be Tofu. Phew! (and yea , I was shameless enough to ask.)
There is a vibrant young crowd one meets at TIPA (Tibetan institute of performing arts). Whether it is preparing for Tibetan opera shows in Darjeeling, designing colorful traditional costumes or playing the Tibetan guitar and offering classes for tourists, the students here are an interesting lot. Enrolled for a five year course, they specialize in one aspect of the Tibetan opera in an institute that is struggling to preserve an ancient oral tradition. The 20 something guys playing the drums to western music, on hearing that we were from Bangalore, claimed proudly that when they came here, they hung out at Forum and Brigade Road.
Tibetans are in many ways facing an identity crisis. There is a little known past, the Indian identity and Western influences all merging into the modern second generation Tibetan identity. For the article on this that I wrote , go here or click on link above
.

The foreigners who come are mostly here for yoga and meditation following the new nirvana seeker brigade to ‘incredible exotic India’. There are many yoga, meditation and Tibetan Buddhism centers around town .In Dharamkot; there is the famous Vipassana mediation centre. (The course requires you to shut up for twelve days and eat very little and the other intricacies of Buddhist tradition, I honestly cannot do justice to.)
Perhaps the troubled Western psyche is used to market a lot of tailor made courses that advertise freedom from indecisiveness, stress, negative thinking and the like. Some of these courses, people claim are money making techniques. The Tushita meditation centre and The Vipassana centre, I gather from all the people who went there are very good.
For regular, tourists, there is not much to see except the dirty Dal lake, the Dalai Lama temple, pretty paths in the hills with mountain streams, meadows, amazing views et al.

Turkish Lover

Turkish Lover by Esmeralda Santiago is the story of a Puerto Rican woman who fights all stereotypical fates to lead a decent life and finally graduate from Harvard. It is a powerful personal memoir that starts with her migration to the United States and her life with a large family headed by her single mother. She graduates from the performing arts high school, having learnt Indian Dance. She finds various secretarial jobs and pursues courses from a Community college alongside.
Unable to find her identity and space in her mothers house, she moves to Florida with her lover , Ulvi. Ulvi who is much older than her is Turkish. Her mother, needless to say is more than just upset with her.
Esmeralda portrays the contrasts between her native culture and her adopted one beautifully. For those who have grown up in any kind of a multicultural setting, this book is a must read.
While she escaped from her mother for the sole reason of finding an identity, she finds that with Ulvi too , her individuality is submerged. He only loves the person who he thinks she is and cannot accommodate her individuality. ‘You are becoming too free, Chiquita.’
Finally, she overcomes his dominance over her life and graduates from Harvard University, a far fetched dream for a Puerto Rican girl in those times.

It’s amazing how one sight you saw when you were a kid can have more impact on you than your critical years in school or whatever. When I was about five years old, a 'caged' truck came and some people caught all the dogs in my neighborhood. (Rajaji Nagar , Bangalore). They yelped like I would if my eyeballs were touched up with cigarette butts. When they were sitting comfortably in the truck’s grilled enclosure, they were silenced, peering at passersby with gleaming soulful eyes.
My brother told me they were going to be electrocuted in some place. I imagined a special place just for killing dogs. Dogs would be thrown into a machine and feel lots and lots and lots of pain and finally die. I knew even then that it was because they spread rabies and all that. BUT there had to be some other way!!!!. The solution surely was not in just killing them so brutally. This was way back in 1991 and even bear trainers would walk the roads of Bangalore, their living sources of livelihood were often bleeding while being forced to do ridiculous tricks. Their small eyes looked so helpless; parakeets, monkeys, elephants.
Which perverted mind will see an innocent adorable dog walk on the road, minding his own business, aim a stone and laugh at his pain??
I don’t know. It’s always bothered me. While my friends were on their way to becoming engineers, lawyers, doctors, I always confidently said, I want to be an environmental activist. Now in the real sense, I don’t know how but I want to find a voice in me.

What manipulated crayons, we are!

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well.An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly.You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view.A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

This is one of the most sensible of the quizzes I can't claim to have not taken. What is my world view? (I was materialist) , What were you in your past life? …and others that I was too amused to take. (What rejected crayon are you, Kissing purity test, what is your underwear type)
I mean, who gives a shit?
It's catered for the self obsessed internet users/bloggers around the world. The creators are hoping that in the one second before they hurriedly start answering the questions assigned, they’ll glance at the car insurance and dating ads, and be tempted into them. The creators of these quizzes are probably bored students who are paid a bit for it.
It's a bright idea, though horribly manipulative. This new type of advertising. If you have a gmail account, you'll know that you have links related to mail content with every mail. A mention from an unassuming friend about his arrival in Bangalore is used to market 'cheap' airfares to Bangalore, property there etc!
Behind all this is the concept of knowing what you are most interested in and using that information for advertising. I am pasting an article I wrote for the college paper below:

Will the media be history?

We the smug students of Media Studies may understandably react strongly to know that the print media may be extinct in nine years. Will we be among the unemployed begging at Brigade Road signals then? Well, we can never be sure but according to an internet forward I got recently, Google will be responsible for the extinction of our profession? Huh? That harmless little know it all thing that saves you for every psychology project the night before submission.?

According to this particular internet forward called ‘The museum of Media History.’, one day Google will compete with The New York Times and the latter will lose and ultimately become a newsletter only for the elite and the elderly. Before I begin this sort of ‘futuristic’ History I want to emphasize that I am nor plagiarizing but merely re-stating what the net forward had to say and am not claiming it ……………….. to be the epitome of accuracy. (Yes, that was a disclaimer in disguise.) It is the year 2014AD. ‘It is the best of times. It is the worst of times.’ Everyone participates in the media and it is a ‘living, breathing medium.’ It all began in 1988 when Tim B. Lee invented the World Wide Web in Switzerland. Ten years later, two scientists from Stanford would invent Google, the world’s most effective search engine. Amazon.com was soon launched and aimed to sell everything online. Google news became a news website that had news edited by computers in 2002. In 2003, Google merged with blogger, a personal publishing tool that allowed one to publish unedited content and maintain a profile of one’s interests and aims. 2004 was when it really all began. Sony launched its first electronic paper. Google launched gmail which had unlimited storage. At that time it was a privilege to never have to delete a message again. It’s something we take for granted today! Eventually all of Google's functions were combined-news, blogger, mail etc and the Google grid was created. What is the Google grid? The Google grid ensured that one had functionally limitless storage space and access to information accessible from anywhere in the world .One could conceal information or publish it for the whole world to see. Internet journalism has matured. In 2007, Microsoft launched Botser, a program that ranks and rates news upon personal taste. The Sony E-paper was cheaper than normal newspapers. In 2008, Googlezon was launched .This combined the technology of Amazon.com which provided the social recommendation information in the form of consumption patterns, demographics and tastes. This meant that if you were a subscriber to Google they’d know that you were most vulnerable to consumer brainwashing a.k.a advertising after college hours, preferred McDonald’s to Pizza Hut and so on. They would have access to your blogs and personal files. In 2010, inefficient news gatherers had no business of prancing about the place writing generalized news stories for everyone in the world. Google discovered a new algorithm that would construct a news story for every user. The real struggle for conventional journalism began in 2011 when the New York Times sued Googlezon for violation of copyrights law and for unethical journalism. The case reached the Supreme Court and needless to say googlezon won. The New York Times went offline! In 2014, googlezon launched EPIC (Evolving personalized information construct).Everybody contributed to what would be news and most were paid. This was still a tiny cut for Google’s advertising revenue. Like we do today, all our news is delivered to us the way we want it. It has what we want to read about, how we want to read it and in the order that we want to read it. We could choose a combination of editors depending on our choice. So is news now, deeper, broader and more advanced’? They know our consumption patterns, our social status, our interests, our potential interests. They view us as a potential finance source for the economy, they tell us the news that will manipulate us into making decisions on what and where to buy and how to be. In this sense, it is the worst of times. There is no place for journalistic ethics. News is a ‘collection of trivia’ that is ‘narrow, shallow and sensational.’ Ted Grasse, dean of the Stanford University journalism program said that journalism is a ‘form of public communication and not a private service aimed at individuals whose demographics, advertisers find appealing.’ Perhaps the extinction of journalism won’t happen according to the exact forecast. No, I’m not saying it in the fear of being sued by Google (!) but the concept of journalism as objective presentation of happenings around the world, its aim being primarily to create awareness is fading.

Loos at The Leela

Yesterday we went to The Leela to watch a movie at the Levis store. Sounds random enough to be sarcastic but the (wannabe) tattered pieces of denim in glass cases there were intriguing. With special lighting effects and all that , there were denims made in 1937,1944,1952 and other such randomly assigned years. To me they resembled my now shapeless 1998 ones .The decor of the shop was interesting to say the least, with chains hanging here and there. Actually I could potentially describe it much more sarcastically. I don't however know political incorrectness limits for blogs. I don't mean to be so skeptical but the life of the rich is fascinating.
I don't know why I am bothering with college and all that. I could just buy some crepe saris from Shivaji Nagar and create some minimalist embroidery(read running stitch, and lesser the better, or more expensive.)I’ll sell it for seven thousand bucks, each . Of course I'll create this brand with a rich sounding surname , have black an white pictures of doped out models wearing them, make them hazy on Photoshop.
I'll go through Bangalore Times and hand pick models from page 3 . I mean those pictures are earnestly waiting there to be seen.( Neha,Sneha and friend) whatever. I’ll later have fashion shows and have actors from Bold and the Beautiful come walk the ramp for me.
Didn't one of those dudes come recently? The Hindu’s article on it had undercurrents of mockery ; in fact all the p3p type articles it does, have such a tone. If I am imagining it, forgive me. Deccan Herald was raving and ranting about him being so hot and all.
If I am unemployed enough for unwanted media comparative analysis, I might as well aim for page 3.
I mean , after using the loos at The Leela, it might not be all that bad, really. :P

Mess of love?

The Mess of Love
D. H. Lawrence

We've made a great mess of love
Since we made an ideal of it.
The moment I swear to love a woman, a certain woman, all my life
That moment I begin to hate her.
The moment I even say to a woman: I love you! ---
My love dies down considerably.
The moment love is an understood thing between us,
we are sure of it,It's a cold egg, it isn't love any more.
Love is like a flower, it must flower and fade;
If it doesn't fade, it is not a flower,
It's either an artificial rag blossom,
or an immortelle, for the cemetery.
The moment the mind interferes with love,
or the will fixes on it,Or the personality assumes it as an attribute,
or the ego takes possession of it, It is not love any more, it's just a mess.
And we've made a great mess of love,
mind-perverted, will-perverted, ego-perverted love.
--- © 1929 D. H. Lawrence
We did this poem in Lit class;I quite like it though Lawrence is not really a favourite except Snake which is lovely.Would love to write about it but will do later.:)

clinical vegetable?!

The Logical Song-Supertramp
When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees,
well they’d be singing so happily,
Joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they send me away to teach me how to be
sensible,Logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so
dependable,Clinical, intellectual, cynical.
There are times when all the world’s asleep,

The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am.
Now watch what you say
or they’ll be calling you a
radical,Liberal, fanatical, criminal.
Won’t you sign up your name,
we’d like to feel you’re
Acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable!
At night, when all the world’s asleep,
The questions run so deep
For such a simple man.
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd,But please tell me who I am.

the rapist,the suicide bomber,the drunken wife beater

I always try to look from the point of view of the rapist,the suicide bomber,the drunken wife beater an I begin to analyze why peole would retort to such things. And when one looks at possible childhood experiences and the evolution of a severe identity crisis,how the neurotransmitters have been conditioned to go out of control, I understand the situation better.This makes it impossible , almost, to find any solution. The world to me is a subjective mess.(Depends on how you look at it,There's no black and white,On one hand...On the other hand). Man!The shades of grey are fatally dizzying. Worse than that...is the fact that my spaced self is part of a category that someone has bothered to create.Post-Modernist. Imagine there a word for this spacedness that the air of today's world seems to have instigated. I and my spaced out buddies with whom I sometimes spend late nights typing messages about pointless issues.(Pointless coz in this relegion,there's no absolute truth anyway).. Feminist, I surely am.Won't bore you with the proof. So does that make me a Post-modernist,feminist,cynical weirdo??

Ooooops!;)

When i was at Mcleodganj, i faithfully forwarded my project to my teacher from some (excuse for a ) cyber cafe.In the mail, I said I was extremely ill and was sorry on having sent it so late.In short I posed as a conscientious student.
When I returned ,I continued the act.
Today however someone told her I was in Himachal Pradesh all the while!
oops!

1.Monk studying at the unpronouncable named nunnery
2.Entrance
3.A picture of Gandhi and the Dalai Lama at TIPA*.
4.The Dalai Lama Temple
*Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts

Abbsent

I am off to Delhi later an dthen Dharmshala in himachal pradesh. Before that I have 80 billion tons of work and NDTV is scaring me now with its reports of earthquakes in North India.And I hate to admit it but the overromantic ,impractical me is scared.
Sheesh I better say something extra cool to neutralize that statement.
I mean I actually get to be in the Himalayas(my favouritest area on earth aside from Rishi valley and whichever home i've made house in) .I don't need to go to yellow walled classrooms and say 'PRRRRRRREEESSENT' everytime 66 is called out suspend my mind in a cobweb farm type limbo till it's called out again.(66) ,I mean.
for one week atleast.
I think being scared is a part of growing up and becoming so practical. yuck so dowdy i feel like thsoe loose sack shaped salwar kameeezes.Besides youth is not about but the absence of fear or some cliched proverb type thing said.Man , this language usage must be getting to you..so ya good night and I hope I have an awesome safe trip.(Also saw this awesomely creative play by Pawan Kumar called 'Honey,Let's break up'