Illusions

When I started typing I didn't know I was going to write this.

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:14:27 GMT

Keynote Speaker

Begin.

Step up,
Clear your throat --

butterflies in your stomach
no, snakes
twisting writhing snakes
scaly clammy snakes
green and brown
one is called sam
i want to throw up
i should have written this down
help
the sarus crane mates for life
no that was last week
oh no i've said too much
NO SINGING
my hands are shaking
william shakespeare
to be or not to be
is that the question
the question is when do i begin
let's start at the very beginning a very good place to start
I SAID NO SINGING
wow this is going to be such a disaster it's not even funny
i am not afraid of speaking in public
audience in their underwear
winston churchill
winston churchill won a nobel prize for literature
winston churchill wasn't a vulcan
v for vulcan
v for victory
v for vendetta
what's his name? mr smith
hugo weaving
hugo weaving is australian
yes but he played douglas jardine in bodyline
yes but douglas jardine was english
yes but bodyline was australian
yes but i digress
boy, do i ever digress
scream scream scream
STOP INTRODUCING ME CAN I TALK NOW
breathe breathe breathe
i'm going to begin with the quote after all
it's a good thing i didn't write this down
i should end with the quote
let's be all dramatic about it
excuse me, miss mc, i do not play the piano
i am not a pianist ha ha
i should tell a bawdy joke
THANK YOU FOR SHUTTING UP CAN I GET ON WITH MY SPEECH FINALLY
damn it, get the mic working
does mic rhyme with sic
yes but sic is latin
yes but
oh
okay

-- clear your throat.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen."

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:13:31 GMT

When there's nothing to say what do you say?

"I-i-it's supercalifragalisticexpiallidocious!"

So. My life is supercalifragalisticexpiallidocious. *wry grin* Yes, yes. I am a musical-mad nerd. (Or am I a geek? I haven't got that sorted out to my satisfaction yet.)

What have I discovered about myself in the last year? Apart from a propensity to put my right leg in gutters, that is. Seriously: the International Sewage Systems Association has it in for my right leg. (Or rather, my right leg is in the International Sewage System a lot. I'm so funny sometimes I can't think for laughing.) It happened, famously and without injury to my leg, my shoes and my favourite jeans (phew!) in Kochi; it happened AGAIN in Dadar, with slightly more injury to my leg but thankfully still no injury to my jeans, apart from some blood smears on the inside that I can't see now. I hope they washed off -- though, since the jeans are black, would I be able to tell if they haven't?

I have lost the ability to write intelligibly. *g*

But then when has that ever stopped me?

I have no way of knowing when I'll be here again; if anyone still reads this thing, I would advise that you await my return without the customary baited breath: you might turn blue in the face if I continue to follow this trend.

How liberating it is to talk absolute and utter nonsense.

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 06:53:08 GMT

Poem has been written. It's called 'Recipe for a prose poem'.

Pretty fancies:
bright, shiny,
brand new --
over a cliff!

Watch the sun play
over the polished surfaces
as they tumble
to dirt
into gravity's arms
to stone
to animals' droppings
and carcasses
and half-finished meals
and other things.

Strain to hear
the distant
c-r-a-s-h
of frail glass
on dirty, gritty ground.
Lean out,
look down
and watch the sun play
over the broken pieces
of fanciful prose
twinkling
far away enough
to give an illusion
of beauty --
an illusion of being
almost as pretty
as you originally wanted it
to be.

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:46:49 GMT

I'm trying
so hard
I want you to think I'm
beautiful
I flaunt myself
twirl my skirts
let my hair
spill
down
my back

you look for a moment
amused
and then, bored
you move on.

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:25:25 GMT

The truth about loneliness: you can live through it -- at least some kinds.

No doubt any friends who have flown or will shortly fly the family coop will snort derisively and tell me I don't actually know what it's like to be lonely. Well, to them I say pah. (I am comforted by the fact that none of the people I really give a damn about will snort derisively.)

Anyway, as I was saying. The truth about loneliness. It doesn't kill you slowly from the inside, or make your life unliveable. I wish it did. At least the drama would be some comfort. The only thing that loneliness does is make life flat and colourless and boring. It makes you plod through every day with NOTHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO. It makes the automatic response to every suggestion an apathetic 'meh'. (If you still read my LJ, Chintu, I admit I stole that from you.)

Also? A brave new world is worth nothing if you can't share it with anyone you care about. And I can't. *cries*

In passing, I've remembered how much I used to like Kipling's If. For anyone who wants to refresh their memory, not under a cut because I don't think anyone actually cares:

If -- Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

I'll leave you on that note. More soon!

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:26:32 GMT

Coming back home from Malhar this evening, Sanica, Tushna and I were talking about how Sanica and Tushna first met.

Sanica: It was in twelfth.
Me: During the exams? (I actually said, "In the exams, na?". I'm polishing the English to make it easier to read.)
Tushna: *grins* Yeah,
Sanica: I still remember you, with your blue eyeshadow and braces.
Tushna: They weren't braces. They were, uh...

Tushna: Clips.
Sanica: Plates.
Me: Retainers.

*wobbly smile because I MISS EVERYONE SO GODDAMN MUCH*

Mon, 05 May 2008 04:43:52 GMT

The National Brain Research Centre. Integrated Ph.D. programme. Interview. Tomorrow. Me.

Wish me luck. I really, really want this.

*steels self*

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:15:56 GMT

A little background first: my grandfather was very fond of this very wise, very sweet, very wonderful gentleman who used to work with him. Mr Dinshaw and his wife spent many, many, many mornings and evenings with my grandparents, and when my grandfather died they came home to offer their condolences. Mr Dinshaw spoke maybe ten words that whole hour.

That was five years ago. Today I met Mrs Dinshaw on my way home, and went over to say hello. It was plainly obvious that she couldn't place me, so I tried to help. "Mr... Mrs Venkatramani's granddaughter," I said.

Did I cease to belong to him when he died?

Made me cry

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:42:17 GMT

Here Dead We Lie

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

--A E Houseman

No matter my opinion of war, war poetry touches something inside me that nothing else does.

Naught broken save this body, lost but breath...

--Rupert Brooke, Peace

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:24:33 GMT

I finished the crossword today, for the first time in a long time. It felt good.

"...but I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

-- W B Yeats, He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

While I was sitting looking at my blinking (literally) cursor and wondering what to say next, a voice said those lines in my head and it sounded like music. *sighs*

I shall attempt to make some repairs for all the time I've wasted in the last three days, and try to get a handle on my studies. It's my last chance to conquer myself. If I don't do it now I don't think I ever will.

Wish me luck.

Redundancy and necessity

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:27:03 GMT

I have five notebooks strewn about my house: one small lined notebook wherein go thoughts and somewhat-poetry and disjointed, impersonal musings; one large, expensive notebook that I bought in an indulgent mood and used to call my diary, which has more personal and less disjointed musings; one notebook that I covered at age fourteen in random words and wrote poetry in; one teeny tiny notebook wherein I record expenses, debts and day-to-day things like 'buy red pen' and 'make notes on electrophoresis'; one that I carry in my bag all the time, that for lack of a better word I call an organiser, although it's the most disorganised document I've ever seen.

Then I feel the need to say things, and think I have nothing to say them to. *thunks self on the head*

What I think I'm trying to say is that I tried to negate the need for this blog, and came back, somewhat sheepishly, because I love love love typing. *grins*

I want to be a pleasant memory. I want the thought of me to make people smile. I want to make people smile. I want the time that people spend with me to be good times -- they might not take much more from that than a warm feeling, but really a warm feeling is a good thing to want for people, isn't it? -- good times that will make them happy when they look at photographs. I want them to forget the times I was a pain, or I was immature, or just generally demonstrating how to thoroughly ruin a great day.

But really? What I want most is not to be forgotten -- and I want to be remembered not for being fun or warm or smart, but just... just for how important you were to me when you knew me. I want to pull people into my little world, make them important to me, make their happiness and love and kindness and warmth and character quirks necessary to me, and then tell them every day how much they can mean to one person.

I want to make people feel better about themselves just from knowing how much I love them.

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:56:15 GMT

*sobs* The spirit is willing, but the flesh belongs to a student with a journal to finish.

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:52:33 GMT

This is not a post. This is not an apology. This is a promise to be back inside of twenty-four hours.

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:04:26 GMT

I'd rather forgotten about this place, and was reminded of it today by an email notification of a comment. (Thank you, aimlesswanderer.)

Anyway, it made me wonder why. Less than three months ago I loved updating my blog, and deplored the fact that my workload didn't let me do it more often. What changed?

Back when I was fifteen and weepy and diffident (even I was diffident once) I'd just have tucked the diary away in some cobwebby corner of my bookcase and never thought about it again; when I'd got over whatever it was, I'd probably have gone and bought another one. I think I have some four diaries from my ninth and tenth standards...

Anyway, I'm no longer fifteen and weepy (well, not very) and diffident, I shall try to do a little soul-searching and find out why. Actually, I know why. Writing about things is all very well, but writing about myself -- which I tend to do, you know, a lot of the time -- means I have to take whatever it is out of myself, and I don't like myself very much anymore.

There are times when I barely recognise myself. Somewhere beyond the weepiness and the suspected homosexuality I turned into a person who was determined and brave and honest and kind and considerate. I don't see a lot of that anymore. I'm not very brave. I'm not very honest. And as recent events have proved I have no self-discipline whatever.

It will pass. I still have whatever it was that I had when I was fifteen and decided that enough was enough.

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:11:19 GMT

It's just been so long since I came here -- so long since I even thought about my blog. It's a fairly sorry excuse for a blog now -- half the things on it are bits of melodrama that only I can fully ~~appreciate~~ understand. And the other half is me being happy, and I can't see why anyone would care about that either.

My fannish pursuits have dwindled to almost nothing; I can't even drum up the enthusiasm to search for new Gibbs/Tony, which, all things considered, is strange. Not unexpected, perhaps, but strange nevertheless. *shrugs* I'm seeing it as healthy: at least if I don't care about fanfic (as much) I won't lose as much time to it.

Some days I feel a leadenness in my limbs, and my breath feels heavy in my chest, and I wonder, what's the point, anyway? Who would care? It takes a while for me to snap out of these fugues. Not that anyone cares.

I don't think I'll go on. There doesn't seem to be much point.

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 15:43:56 GMT

After I got home from college today I decided to clean out my desk. (The wonder of coming home from college and actually having the time to clean out my desk and having complete journals on top of it! I'm still luxuriating in the glory of so much time.) Anyway, so I cleaned out my desk. I found a few surprising things -- mostly surprising because I didn't remember keeping them, or didn't remember them at all, and a few pleasant surprises consisting of things I wanted but thought I'd thrown away.

Found a poem that I wrote while I was studying for the second term exams. Even now I can see the weariness and the longing in the lines, thought I seem to have taken my time over it -- the writing is extremely neat!

Soft breezes and lustrous eyes
Beckon gently from beyond the dusty lace
As darkness shines warmly
Into my yellow-lit room.
The curtains are lifted,
Caressed,
As breeze almost liquid
Flows over my hot aching feet...
And with the breeze
Come fresh, cool tendrils
Of scents I never knew could draw me so strongly:
Bitter leaves,
Slowly-cooling wood,
Warm, tired earth,
And smells of untainted air...
Silence tempts me too!
Away from the constant indoor noises
The slow grumble of the ceilling fan
Scratching pens and rustling paper
And that strange indoors buzz.
Outside, the smoot silence
Cool and smooth as glass
And clothed in breezes that run
Would run
Like silk through my hot aching fingers,
Like balm over my burning eyes --
Still the curtains ebb and swell!
But I am bound.
Bound to light and scratching pens and rustling paper
And falsely-moving air coaxed round and round and round and round
By ceiling fan barely stirred.
So I am bound,
And must turn away, hard-hearted
And yet yearning, turn away
And tease myself with barest breeze and barest smells.

It was just a beautiful night, and I knew it wouldn't wait till I could have enjoyed it properly. Damn it, I should have just gone. I was doing pancreatic hormones, and that really, really wasn't worth not giving myself something I wanted that badly.

Come to think of it, I can't really call that a poem. It's bad prose broken up into lines. Oh well. I reserve the right to be surprised -- and pleased -- by my creative impulses.

Here is another ditty I found, scrawled on my two spare glass slides (which I thought I'd broken/lost) with a glass marker. I don't want to think about how bored I must have been -- I'd probably been doing plant physiology. (I hate botany; can you tell?)

(Glass slide one)
To translucent support am I forever doomed
And myriad tiny lives laid to my care
Till at last they are to me

(Glass slide two)
for all time lost
And I am alone, thrust into Dettol and despair.

So that's how I study apparently. This does not bode well...

My whole body aches, with that pleasant ache that says work was done, and the bed will be cool and welcome. *stretches*

Today's Words: Tired, accomplised, happy, not-stressed, and productive.

Monologue

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:10:05 GMT

Orange.

N-n-n-o... peach.

Dude. It's too bright to be peach.

Um. Okay... peach with a light behind.

*rolls eyes* Peach with a light behind. Uh huh.

It is!

It's the sky. It always has a light behind it. And what kind of lame-ass colour is peach-with-a-light-behind, anyway?

It's not a colour. *spreads hands* It's a... feeling. An experience. It's like poetry. *pauses* Or something. *flails arms*

Uh huh. Sure.

It is!

*long sigh* Okay, yeah, whatever. Peach with a light behind. Poetry. Experience. Got it. *snorts*

*encouragingly* That's it.

*exchanged grin*

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:18:46 GMT

So the other day our prof leans against her desk, and says, almost casually, "What is life?"

At least, in effect that's what she was saying. She started out asking what viability was, as in viable cells. After the first few usual stuttering replies about reproduction and colony formation, she asked almost happily about cell cultures, which don't reproduce or form colonies but are most blissedly alive. There was more verbal fumbling, after which I think she took pity on us and told us what life really is.

All living cells have a membrane potential. Every living cell continuously maintains that potential by pumping out sodium ions and pumping in potassium ions, by means of ATP-driven pumps. And that's what life really is.

For some reason that blows me away.

Many Moods II

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 13:01:27 GMT

Wash my hair.

Draw on the back of my neck.

Stroke the backs of my knees.

Pet me.

Read to me. Poetry, your favourite book, the newspaper.

Put your hands over my eyes and keep them there till I fall asleep.

Breathe with me, in time, together, for hours.

Kiss my eyes.

Tell me what I smell like.

Lie with me in pools of sunshine.

Walk with me in the rain.

Warm my hands in winter.

Smooth down my eyebrows.

Make up stories about my scars.

Teach me how to dance.

Sing to me. Just... sing to me.

Sit with me on sleepy afternoons and listen to the world drowse.

Just... love me. It's not that hard to do.

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 10:09:55 GMT

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked,
Where Tim, the ostler, listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay;
But he loved the landlord's daughter, the landlord's red-lipped daughter;
Dumb as a dog he listened...

-- Alfred Noyse, 'The Highwayman'

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:56:41 GMT

So I thought this one was a little overdue. *grins sheepishly*

For the past three months my life had one unrelenting focus. Everything I did was geared towards the events of two days. Everything else that happened in those three months was incidental -- something that happened anyway, and that I went through in a sort of sleep-haze (often a literal one *g*), like taking a towel into the bathroom, or taking my scrunchy out. (More on that later.)

It's over now. And four days later I have nothing to say... I can't put into words the splendour, the gut-wrenching nervousness, the unbelievable emabarrassment (I said fuck on stage!!!) and the breathlessness, the lightheadedness, the feeling of flying that made my visions swim like it does when you don't eat for a while. The being drenched in sweat and not eating. The cheering when Arjun said my name. The absolute silence of the last hour of Malhar. Again, more on which later.

The howling in the MMR when I said my only sentence of note in the volunteer JAM -- the good kind of howling. (AK shook my hand and called it 'exceptional'. I'm still glowing about that.) Priya Kale telling me that I was a great leader -- something I've always aspired to try to be... Crying into Sanica's shoulder as she cried on mine. Hugging Arjun, and not being able to breathe. Hugging Varsha. Hugging every member of the OC I could. Screaming Reshma's name into the mike because I wanted her to be able to hear me in the Comps Room. Getting so flustered I couldn't talk. Saing 'copy that' into the walkie-talkie, and feeling so damn good about it, heh heh. Running up from the first quad to the forties, to be told that the call was for Mansi.

Staying awake the whole of the night of the thirteenth because I could. Sitting on the windowsill of LR 25 staring at all these people I love either sleeping or going over their events. Scribbling furiously, trying to capture that moment before I lost it, in light so dim I could barely see. Walking alone from Sterling to college and being terrified, because it was dark and lonely and spooky, and I was spooked. Walking Poorna to the gate at four in the morning. Staring out at the first quad at four thirty, thinking about how it was going to look five hours later.

The Malhar closing ceremony... at ten Fr. Frazer came out and told us we'd have to shut up now, good night children. And then Arjun coming up with the silent cheering and the clicking. For one hour, the whole workforce said not one damn word, and put their hands up and fluttered, or clicked, as was appropriate. The Mexican wave with the clicking -- the way Arjun swept his hand and one thousand people did EXACTLY as he wanted. For no other reason than that he was Arjun. I remember sitting with my back against the banister of the Moffis-side library staircase one day, waiting for Arjun to finish with with an interview, and suddenly realising --really getting -- that we could. Not. Have. Had. A better CP. So much, so much love for Arjun Nair, for what this Malhar became. I'll say it as he did -- this Malhar will live on. In here.

In that moment I could have done anything. Even thinking of that moment I can do anything.

faints at the sight of a new entry

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:38:24 GMT

Seriously. It had come to the point where I went online and checked my own LJ for updates. Sheesh.

Bombay

Every night, when she returned home, she saw the same half-made building, one light shining out of the window of each floor and making a dotdotdot trail up to the very tippetty-top of the concrete skeleton. It didn’t matter whether she used the train or the bus – every night as she went home she followed the bright yellow breadcrumbs up to the top of the building, where a large mechanical arm jutted out orangely into the night sky, two lights along the length throwing spots on its steel framework into prominence. And one day for some reason she looked up at the crane and felt the stillness steal over her, as it always did; and she felt (although she had another twenty minutes’ travel ahead of her) that she was home. It was her favourite feeling, and if she had to squeeze her love for this rich, pulsing, sprawling-with-its-legs-indecently-apart city into one frame, if she had to capture everything that took her breath away about this heaving, amoeboid, smog-choked place, she would choose the sight of that crane, rearing over the bright lights of road and rail alike, with its two lights and the dark still blue velvet night behind it, far away and undisturbed and resting.

So, look, I can still write. Well, sort of.

Will continue this later. Just now I'm tired, so tired, and so overworked. Which is no one's fault but my own, since I refuse to do journal work over the weekend and read Harry Potter Seven instead. More on which subsequently.

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:29:48 GMT

Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it? Damn.

*stretches* Though I don't really know that all that much has happened, in all honesty. I mean, Malhar work is going great (I have the best team EVER) and my coursework is amazing. I want to spend weeks just reading my reference books. (I do realise that I probably should have spent my vacations doing precisely that thing.)

I am fantastically busy, and really happy, and yet -- and yet --

But we won't talk about that, will we?

I have fallen -- inevitably -- in love with Wincest. Yeah, yeah, had to happen. The problem is that there's so much Wincest fic out there, and I want to read it all. Which kind of means really, really late nights.

Also due South. Without ever having clapped eyes on so much as a minute of the show. *smacks head*

I really, really have nothing to say. I suppose this is why I haven't updated in ages.

Today's Words: Sleepy, happy, busy, lonely, and frustrated.

Wed, 30 May 2007 16:46:42 GMT

Quite apart from anything else, why did NDTV wait for so long to air their little bombshell? If they were so suspicious of Sunil Kulkarni's motives, why did they let him stop them TWICE before they actually aired the stupid thing? Of course you could argue that the man was right in the whole we-must-not-influence-the-judiciary thing, but if the ONLY EYEWITNESS was being offered money to twist his testimony, then bloody hell, the court should have known about it before he went and said his piece.

Sheesh. There was this little mouse of a reporter telling Barkha Dutt about how SK's wife was in town (wtf?) and so he asked her not to air it. I mean, what's with that? If you have the guts to conduct a sting operation, you have to have the guts to follow through with it. You don't wait till the witness has collected his moolah from the lawyers and gone dancing home having done his damage.

What the hell?!

Tue, 29 May 2007 17:18:11 GMT

There are two very old brass lanterns in my house. I love them. One was a birthday present. I love my father.