RainSmoke

Dream Diary #4

2011-04-11T08:58:00.002+05:30

There is a lovely place where people live in spacious apartments with white curtains of Egyptian cotton and beautiful paintings and amidst jacaranda trees and the smell of lemon leaves and sunshine and general loveliness. And suddenly there's a TYRANNOSAURUS REX, okay, and it's stomping around the place and roaring and somehow my tattoo makes it think that I'm also a big-ass dinosaur in disguise so now I'm the only one it talks to. Except it's being all territorial so our conversation goes like this.

Me - Go away. You're frightening my cats.
TYRANNOSAURUS REX - FOOOOOOOD.
Me - One fat aunty and that's it.
TYRANNOSAURUS REX - EVERYONE.
Me - Nevah!!

We start fighting. The dinosaur, who I now think of as Jeremy, TRIES TO EAT ME. I run towards a balcony. Everybody screams.

I club Jeremy with a jagged steel rod from the balcony. His puny little knees start to buckle. I go a little berserk trying to stab his eyes out. Everybody has gone. Now the dream becomes terrifying because Jeremy's wounds must be self-healing or something, because he's in full predator form. I'm running frantically around in some kind of institution trying to find a room without windows. There are none. A janitor turns out to be Jeremy's friend. I run around a corner and there Jeremy is, looking smug. He is standing on a bed of roses, most of which he has crushed. I know how much time and effort it takes to rear tea-roses in Cal, and hence I am filled with righteous rage. Instead of trying to attack him I give him the most derisive and scathing speech about how disgusting his scant respect for life and property makes him, his horrible irresponsibility, how obnoxious he is, why his species and indeed genus became extinct, how the world has moved on since then, how he is unnecessary now. Incredibly, this works. Jeremy blubbers, moves off the roses, and tries to subtly repair the damage by using one large claw to pat down the savaged earth and pretend that nothing has happened. I add the final blow by telling him that despite being from the Jurassic era, he is the worst example of post-colonial patriarchal oppression I have ever come across. Jeremy then hunches his shoulders and goes away. I wake up feeling incredibly, overwhelmingly guilty about hurting this rampaging monster's feelings and suddenly I want to apologize and maybe hug him and give him a chicken to eat or something.

Dream Diary #3

2010-12-08T09:14:00.002+05:30

I stop for a rum and chocolate cake somewhere in Jodhpur Park. I'm supposed to be meeting Piu because I'm leaving the next day. The Dripping play is going to be staged at Madhusudan Mancha in a couple of hours. I'm walking through Jodhpur Park, then I'm on a bus at Dhakuria and Kalua is telling me what everyone on the streets already knows - the zombies are coming for us. Bhaskar is not there but his voice projects through the bus, saying, "We have to run." Arijit misses the bus because he was rolling a joint and didn't see the bus. They ate him in front of our eyes. Kalua looks sad.

I suddenly remember that I left my bag and my cousin sister in the dressing room at the theatre. I get off the bus and run back. My shoes are slippery, but I can't take them off because there are dead leaves and dead limbs everywhere. I get lost almost immediately. Then I find my cousin, who is a child again. She makes a fuss, so I pick her up and run with her in my arms. She squeals in delight. Five minutes of running and she's adult again and fucking heavy. I put her down and pull her along by the hand. She is reluctant about running but caves when I tell her how important it is that I reach the theatre in time to perform.

Then she's gone, and the zombies are right behind us, running with geometrical precision up and down walls, climbing trees and eating crows. Now it's me, Trisha Barua and two elderly people who we have to keep slowing down for, but of course we can't leave them behind. Through a long tree-lined avenue we can see Somak, Soumashree and Kalpan, all dressed in bright purple, doing their scene. Our panic intensifies. Following is the conversation at this juncture.

Me - Fuuuuck.

Trisha B. - Run!

Me - Zombies! Sitting on a park bench, eating that dead person who looks like bald Thakurda!

Trisha B. - Oh the play's gonna be fucked.

Me - No, Dr.Lal will be praised by critics for staging it during and despite the zombie attack.

Trisha B. - (fearfully) - Oh we are dead.

Me - We could still make it.

Trisha B. - Sir will kill us, though.

Me - I wonder what scene they got to.

*Behind us, zombies jump on the elderly couple, tear their heads off and eat them*

Me - We should go around a different route, this one is filled with zombies.

Trisha B. - But Dr. Lal?

Me - I'd rather we were late than dead. (hehahah)

Trisha B. - But Dr. Lal.

Me - Ok, we'll run through the zombies. I hope the play is worth it.

*We run. I wake up shivering with terror. We arrived AFTER the interval, so the play was ruined.*

Dream Diary #2

2010-10-23T22:14:00.002+05:30

I'm thirteen again, but this time I'm strangling people. Nice people, but they pointed and laughed when I came to school without my clothes. I got dressed and they weren't laughing when their faces went blue, oh no.

Bloop

2010-10-05T21:51:00.002+05:30

Gtalk statuses, in the order that i saw them :

1. happy
2. just because
3. god bless you
4. I'll cry instead
5. berate jabo
6. is so evil
7. listening to ziggy marley

my status was Busy.

Dream Diary #1

2010-08-23T22:43:00.003+05:30

Weird dream I. I kill two children. I decapitate them. Not clear if that's how I killed them or if that was incidental. Anyway, I then spend an hour of dreamtime running around trying to hide the heads, which are in a clear plastic bag. Hmm, I think harriedly, should I drop them from the roof, let them splatter on the street and confuse people into thinking they were vegetables? Do I roll them down the stairs of another building and hope no-one associates it with me? Do I just keep them in my room, take them out later and dump them somewhere? Decisions, decisions. Possibly inspired by Dexter, except I know the kids, they live near my house. Arr.

Day in July

2010-07-27T23:47:00.001+05:30

Interesting twenty-four hours. Studying, check. Movie-with-popcorn, check. Teaching, check. Tattoo, fucking hell yeah check.

no worries

2010-07-09T03:13:00.001+05:30

Hakuna fucking matata, okay? Now get me drunk already.

Stumble

2010-07-03T22:43:00.000+05:30

Remind me why I even started to give a flying fuck?

Summer

2010-06-26T23:20:00.003+05:30

Went to Someplace Else. Ekuil-i-brium played, they were good, it was fine. Hip-pockets started playing, I look around, everyone's turned twenty years older. Including the band.

Audition happened. Thank the Universe I picked a nonentity of a play, because I riffed around with the lines more than Bill Gates on Guitar Hero. Also, sang. Like a bullfrog with amusing forehead contortions.

Ran around during a transport strike. Private car drivers made an accumulated fortune today.

Holy shit, it's been six months already. And almost a year for the wife and spice.

So much has changed. I'm no longer allowed to impose bans on puns. I have to always sit with my legs crossed during international calls. And my adored spice totally respects me - the both of me.

To conclude. What did the vada pav say to the customer in the Star-Wars themed restaurant?

"Luke, I am your vada."

(copyright, trademark, mine mine I made this up mine)

Fiction. Sing you rain.

2010-04-30T22:45:00.004+05:30

You ever had a friend you used to be tight with and then later you don't give a damn? They stop giving a damn too and then you're unreasonably pissed off, but what's up with that, you should've seen that coming from a mile away. And after all that's over, you meet, accidentally almost, and it's so weird and yet so fitting that you no longer even feel like hurting them. Like the bitterness is gone, like the like and the love and the heart are now just online emoticons you make to each other, like there is nothing beyond a forwarded text and a set of insider jokes lying rusty for lack of opportunity. There's that relief, that you don't have to put up with That Shit anymore. Forgive me Father for I have not hated but I have stopped caring and sometimes that is infinitely worse. No going back now, says the fortune cookie. She will be loved, but frankly my dear, I don't give a flying fuck. I will and am loved, but that is a whole different ball-game and all the seats are taken already. Confucius say, If you don't know life's a bitch, get the fuck out of town. Confucius was a wise, wise man.

There. Is. Nothing. Not even the desire to kill violently.

Love

2010-03-03T18:55:00.000+05:30

Wish you were here.

For my Valentine

2010-02-13T23:33:00.004+05:30

You know what I'd like? To have a few hours with you, when I could explain why I like you the way I do. I see us, sitting hand in hand on the beach on a stormy night. You'd be in your wheelchair, I'd be wearing something that flaps in the wind. I'd apologize for having to make you like this, for having to break your legs, break your teeth, cave in the back of your head. You'd look at me with that silly grin you have now, the one I love - it's so unconditional, so different from how you used to smile, the half-indifferent, half-contemptous smile. Your thin shoulders would twitch in the cold of the sea-mist - you don't like wind and water the way I do - and I'd talk to you, tell you the first time I saw you, sitting there with a cigarette and an attitude the size of Brazil. How I instantly wanted you because I knew you wouldn't want me. I may be sick, my darling, but you're the cripple. Don't look hurt, you know where we are. This is the sea, it is night, we are alone. Why wasn't I good enough for you then?

The thing is, I brought you down. I followed you home, I lured you away, and like a fool you followed. Then I took you apart, and I realized how you function. It was sad. I stopped loving you then.

But I'd already broken you, no? What else could you do but stay? What was I supposed to do with you? I didn't break your jaw out of anger, darling, I just wanted to shut you up for a while. Just for a little while. The screams had to stop, I couldn't hear myself think anymore.

You breathe harsher than you used to. Is it the cold, or are you afraid?

It's a beautiful night, eh, love? The kind that makes your heart pound with the longing of it.

Tide's coming up soon, they warned us to stay above the low line. We should go now.

Waves washing in. The rocks can bear it, but they will be sand beneath someone's feet one day. They will crumble and break and go out to sea and find their way to the bottom. They'll filter through the sea-bed and try to go to the centre of the earth. They'll be liquefied with the heat, but their particles will make it.

The moon's just hanging there, like some kind of ancient dim lantern. I see the black and purple haze of clouds swirling around the sky, I taste the coming storm in the strong, cold wind, and the fierce joy of it makes me want to weep.

I'm going to go back to the house now, love. I've had enough. I can't take this anymore.

Stay here. I know it's low, yes. Don't clutch at my shirt, you're embarrassing yourself now. Of course we're below the level of the tide. You're not that stupid yet.

Let go, I said. Concentrate on the waves coming in. They'll carry you out, hopefully, and if you're lucky, you'll miss those rocks. I'll take the wheelchair back now, thank you.

Don't cry. Be a man. There, there. I'm not an emotional kind of girl, you know. But it's Valentine's Day tomorrow, in a few minutes now actually. Look at me, getting all sentimental.

Oh well. Goodbye, sweetheart.

Us and Them

2010-01-24T18:18:00.001+05:30

they told me a child of five could understand quantum credit theory. i said, fetch me a child of five and have her explain it to me.

they said god made humans in his own image. i said, look how that turned out.

they said that there's a line and limits that must not be crossed. i said, then i'll make my own bloody limits. if i feel like it.

they told you not to come near me. you walked towards me anyway.

they said it's not worth it. but no-one even knows what 'it' is.

i told you not to dream, not that much. you said, we are our own dreams.

what the hell does that mean?

that means me.

at least, that's what they said.

Two Thousand and Ten

2010-01-01T19:41:00.002+05:30

Dear Universe,

In this new year I ask for only one thing, and that is the ability to keep myself from fucking something, anything up when I know I got it good. Please, sisters of fate. All I'm asking for is happiness and the freedom to screw up under my own steam. I realize that that's kind of a paradox but still. I'll be the best I can manage if you send a few chunks of luck my way.

love,

the-kid-you-never-saw

Wasting Time

2009-11-28T16:37:00.005+05:30

Why am I writing this? Oh yes, because the times I need to study usually coincide with my periods of eager enthusiasm for anything and everything else. This is not surprising in itself, because I've been too busy, lazy or forgetful to get around to updating my blog lately. But then a couple of days ago I had to undergo a rather traumatic experience, and rather than repress it by studying and/or turning up the music in my head, I decided to do this. Y'know, because it's not like I take my exams seriously or anything..

Three days ago, I'm told that I'm expected to turn up for the school annual function to collect my prize. What prize? Oh, the history toppers' prize, the one I got by default because the other twenty people who had history in school were studying economics instead. I didn't bother, because eco scares me. (And I passed healthily, so there.) Anyway, I wouldn't have shown up, except that I live in the same house as one of the faculty, so really, it wasn't worth the drama *not* going. Which I would have totally wanted to do, because of all the mind-numbing, soul-draining, ghastly, disgusting, completely and tragically boring experiences..........

So I went nervously to bed the previous night, bolstered in confidence by a brief chat with a devil-worshipper on #fb and an extra wax doll of Rekha Ma'am-at-the-burning-stake under my bed. I managed to get up in time, and ignoring the mater's frantic scurryings around my bedroom door, arrived nonchalantly late at the venue. The science city auditorium, of all places. Yes, kids. Our school has the best academic record of any CBSE school in the Eastern region, not to mention several media accolades and extra-curricular honours, but our own auditorium? Hell, no. If we had our own auditorium, the school might have to cut funding for, I don't know, another completely unnecessary and aesthetically puke-inducing building, thereby doing away with the last of the trees and making killer red ants the only remaining wildlife on campus.

Anyway, thankfully Ashutosh P. Shukla, one of my favoritest juniors and current Head Boy badge-holder was at the entrance. He gave me a rapid handshake and a huge cheesy grin in quick succession. At least someone was happy that day.

Inside, Titas, the-junior-whose-life-creepily-mirrors-my-own, and current head-girl of our godforsaken school, was doing the harried hyper hazed thing, bless 'er. And then I met some of my batchmates. Oh joy.

I strained my cheek-muscles, smiling cheerfully as tiny people I didn't recognize waved and called my name. Later I was told that I used to be on duty for their classroom. If I remember them correctly, time has not improved them at all. And then there were my batchmates, who chattered on about life after school as we all sat in the same row and craned our necks to see around each other. I thought the Joo had given me more social finesse by now, but no. A year ago they were pontificatingly boring, and college has only brought out their inner-school-kids. Their pasts now seem bedewed with rosy visions of favorite teachers, BFF's, favorite songs and messy tiffin boxes. I still vividly remember the double standards, the general inept idiocy and the outright bitching that went on, however. Incredibly, some of this was even outside the bounds of the staff-room.

The greatest joy that those three wasted hours of my life had to give me were the two times, in quick succession, that I was able to look RBT in the eye on stage and cut straight past her to the prize-table. Did I nod? No. Did I smile? Hell, no. I walked past her like she doesn't exist, and I wish I'd been in the position to do the same to the Political Mammoth, the Rekha, and maybe, just maybe, the Hazra. Would've done my seven-years-aggrieved-heart a world of good. Sigh.

The good side? I exorcised a couple of ghosts that day. I got over my fear of walking on stage in front of my school-peers, something I'd had to do so many times, no wonder I hated it. I realized the genuine fondness Titas, the sweet bitch, has for me, ushering me out and soothing me after an eye-popping confrontation with Arun Sir, leaping out of the woodwork to take official pictures. I missed my link to sanity , Ani, so so much it's not even funny! Yet I realized that I'm now strong and sure enough to face those ghosts on my own, even with all the inane, completely mindless drivel that swamps our school system. One rule for the favored ones, another for the 'good' ones, and none at all for those outside the charmed circle - that's the way it's always been; and thank the heavens I'm out.

Leaving, I realized how much I have to be thankful for. The Joo, finding Shy and Riddhi, discovering my true passions, learning to be kinder to myself, even learning how to love again. And for that, you, my hearts of hearts are responsible. Andie, my favorite violin prodigy and always-sister; RGD, my scholargipsy wife; the black man Kalua, my beloved first husband; Piu, my chocolate-darling-spice-girl; Bedo, my perennial partner-in-crime; Suki-Di, my surrogate and much-loved Mamma-Demona; Pal, the one person I know in real life who I'd have liked to be; Soham-the-gelato-man; my big brother Adi and my baby sister Brinda; Atin, my cross-country mirror-image; His Divine Awesomeness Aditya Bidikar, and of course my own stolen piece of sunshine :P. You all keep me sane and happy and alive!!

It's a beautiful night tonight, clear and quiet. A more than half moon, pitted beautifully against the purple-black-blue sky, and a single clear star to the south, and just the smallest taste of a breeze. I should be studying, but I wanted to tell you how much I love you. Good night, and good luck. <3

P.S- I saw bhole sitting alone in the middle-section, prize in one hand and a desperately bored expression on his face. Poor boy, I know exactly how he feels. One day if he reads this, I'd like to tell him that for life after school, it'll only ever get better. In the meantime, stay strong and try not to kill yourself during sports marching practice.

P.P.S - Debaditya got the prize for Best-behaved-boy. I believe the title includes the words 'Harmonious Conduct'. I mean, I'm very fond of him, he's a very promising karateka and has clearly picked up the debashish bug, but harmonious conduct? Tsk tsk.

Coded Gibberish

2009-10-14T01:27:00.002+05:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po9LwQ9X9_I&feature=related

You're not sure that you love me
But you're not sure enough to let me go
Baby it ain't fair you know
To just keep me hangin' 'round

You say you don't wanna hurt me
Don't want to see my tears
So why are you still standing here
Just watching me drown

[Chorus]
And it's alright, yeah I'll be fine
Don't worry 'bout this heart of mine
Just take your love and hit the road
There's nothing you can do or say
You're gonna break my heart anyway
So just leave the pieces when you go

You can drag out the heartache
Baby you can make it quick
Really get it over with
And just let me move on

Don't concern yourself
With this mess you've left for me
I can clean it up, you see
Just as long as you're gone

[Chorus]

You not making up your mind
Is killing me and wasting time
I need so much more than that
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

[Chorus]

Leave the pieces when you go
Oh, yeah
Leave the pieces when you go
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Leave the pieces when you go

A Yummy Heart Pome

2009-09-26T16:44:00.004+05:30

I love you, my darling, I love you everyday,
I love you even more than chocolate souffle,
And more than chicken soup on a rainy day,
I love you, I love you, and that's why I say,

That I love you more than the frosting on the flake,
I love you so much more than the last piece of cake,
I love you more than I love chocolate milkshake,
You're my cherry pie, sweet, my scrumptious heartbreak.

You're the chocolate chips in my pudding, the crust on my pie,
The utterly delicious chocolate fountain, built sky-high,
You're the flavour in my French toast, you're the 'ummmmm' sigh,
When the coffee's just right, with scones on the side.

You're the half-melted part of summer ice-cream,
And you're the yummy heart part of my every sweet dream,
And though you're far away, at times it seems,
I love you more everyday, to delicious extremes.

For you, RGD. Love you, if you didn't know already :D

We

2009-08-23T22:17:00.003+05:30

Sometimes your family can say the damnedest things.

As in, I'm sitting on the roof today watching the sun set behind the clouds with my grandparents. My grandpa is humming 'Yeh chand ka roshan chehra'. My grandmother is giggling and trying to look like she isn't covertly watching the whole performance. I'm staring at the seven dahlias on the rooftop across the street and laughing like crazy inside, wishing I could get all this on video without freaking the two of them out. Then my grandma spots some long-lost relative on the adjoining roof, on the house that belongs to her sister's family - we're a huge family, and when that generation crossed the border from the old country, Bangladesh, back in the day, they decided to buy up the block and divide up the houses so that every brother, their wives' siblings, and their fourth-cousin-nineteen-times-removed gets a piece of the land. So then my grandma and grandpa have this shout-across-roofs discussion of you know who got married and pregnant and who else is busy on weekends visiting prospective brides (gah) for their three sons (!!!) and then my grandpa turns to me and goes, 'Will you try to get married before I die?'

My grandma tsks gently at him but I try to stare him down in outrage. He gives me the old-broken-man look. The light is bad and it doesn't work.

There's a boss-fight with kites going on in the meanwhile, string against string so high you can barely see the red and black tails of them. Neither one breaks loose. More people come out for the sunday evening rooftop adda - the roofs are all more or less the same level and I can now see people descended from my grandfather's maternal great-uncle on the south roof, people from my grandmother's aunt's sixteen-children brood on another, the whole five-brothers-and-their-descendants clan here to the front, and on a lonely northern roof, my grandfather's next-to-youngest brother on a prayer-mat, pretending to meditate but watching the kites go at it like everyone else. And everyone's lethargic - it's a cloudy and humid day, and Sunday lunch was classic, and the street is quiet, and all you can hear in the tiny overshadowed alleys of this ancient neighbourhood are the bells on the anklets of the little girl who goes door-to-door selling flowers for the evening pujo. And then it's seven, and the conches ring out, and seven different kinds of incense waft around the innermost courtyard that the whole family still shares. In the meantime, there's an extended football metaphor about semi-finals and finish lines and trophy cups that turns out to be related to some aunt's pregnancy. Then later people filter off to have their evening snacks - stuff like roasted muri and peyaji's and laddoo and jilipi, whole stacks of jilipi that someone just went and brought from that extremely famous two-hundred-year-old hole in the wall sweet-maker five streets away.
And then I come home, but home is there too, always has been. And on the bus on the way home, standing with my elbows bumping against the steel window-frame, I laugh inside all the way, and people wonder why I look a little strange tonight.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inventory

2009-08-16T11:48:00.002+05:30

Item, bruise, one each on forearm, shoulder, and ankle,
Scar on throat, one, from that burn last week,
Headache from worrying about what-happens-next,
And really, the eyes are going far too weak.

Sunburn, extreme, from walking around outside all day
Dent to the ego - why, when I thought she was my friend?
Heartburn, slight, because I have to move on,
And scars are all you take with you, in the end.

Red slashes, from all the times I felt left out,
Even when I wasn't; perhaps it's just me,
Angry welts, three, on brain, body and soul,
Black hole where my laughter used to be.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fun is friends, is food, is money and a little booze.

2009-07-27T09:13:00.007+05:30

What an exhausting weekend. Karate sessions at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning every Saturday and Sunday until mid-September means I get to kick off my weekend by going early to be on Friday night, start off Saturday getting beaten up by a man who tells us we are pathetic and useless and a passing turtle could kick our butts if we do push-ups any slower, and go home and moan a bit before doing other, weekend-y things like a little shopping, a lot of hanging out, and Trying New Things (comma, quote, quote, full-stop). Then we get to go back on Sunday at seven, which means getting out of bed at five a.m, incidentally, sleep-deprived and hating Sir with all our hearts but desperately wanting his approval all the same, because look at him, the man is a fucking ninja.

And then I get home and yesterday there was a kind of formal gathering of my father's umpteen colleagues and friends and people-he-used-to-know-once-upon-a-time, being a teacher and passing through several faculties and all. So there I was, crouched in front of a low table poring out drinks for almost two hundred people, and every now and then someone would come up and ask leading questions like, 'Do you remember me? You saw me when you were a tiny kid - you don't remember me, do you?' and I smile uncertainly up at them, and then when I uncurl myself and stand up I see the eyes widening as the uncurling keeps happening and then they look up at me and blink and say to whichever one of of my parents is nearby, 'But she's so tall! Ki hobe?' implying my lack of marriageability given that I apparently look like a brontosaurus even without heels. And then my parents mumble something, and I mumble something too and crouch down again quickly.

Anyway, the haul was good - lots of swag and G's, and the day before I'd comprehensively finished off my summer shopping list except for one thing which I intend to get today; and best of all, apparently everyone knows I love books so about ten gift-coupons for Starmark and Crossword are in my possession now, and yes, I can see you drooling, :P.

I'm very chipper when I'm blogging in the morning. Last night I blew a couple of things completely out of proportion and freaked out about feeling alone and was close to tears by the time I finally fell asleep. Funnily enough, all that seems relatively trivial today. Moving on feels particularly good this cloudy morning, by Loki! Good day to you.

Show Me The Money

2009-07-19T21:44:00.004+05:30

Today, I got my first pay envelope. It's not much, but it's huge for a complete novice tutor like me. And the kid is totally bright and curious and intelligent. Snippets from our conversations go like.....

Sadiya (the ten-year-old kid in question): Achha, Trisha di, who is the Dalai Lama?

I do a simplified, comically-acted-out one-woman skit about Asian power-relations and religion in politics. We are studying Mowgli being adopted by a family of wolves. By the end of the explanation, she is able to find an analogy between the big bad tiger and China in context to Asia and also partially to the British colonists pre-WWI, which I explained last week when we went from a discussion of how dhotis aren't really skirts for men to a brief overview of the life and career of Gandhiji.

Sadiya : This panther looks skinny. I can see his ribs. I saw a picture of a model. Why are models so skinny?

We talk about perceptions of body sizes through the ages for a bit, touching on the media and Oprah Winfrey and then digress to how chocolate is related to increasing hip measurements. I explain everything in two-to-three syllable words and throw in lots of dry humor and patience, but the concepts are tough to grasp. Hence, I am amazed when once again, she GETS it.

Me: Sadiya! We'll talk about wildlife conservation later. Finish the paragraph on how the wolves want the lion to keep to his own territory.

Sadiya: But if the forests were better organized.....

Me: You have a good point. I'll show you pictures of the savannah and the rainforests and all the amazing animals on the Internet if you finish reading this chapter in ten minutes.

She doesn't, because we get sidetracked discussing the similarities between Tarzan and Mowgli, and then we talk about plagiarism. We do not use these big words, however. The conversation is like......

Sadiya: Is Tarzan and Mowgli the same story?

Me: Huh? Oh, no. Well, similiar, but see, the authors lived years apart and.....*another discussion ensues*

Sadiya: Maybe this one cheated from the other one?

Me: I don't think so. Tarzan's battle-cry is all him. (This may be wrong. I haven't cross-referenced it yet, but it was a safe guess.)

We practice Tarzan howls for a while. My mother looks in, vaguely concerned, then withdraws hastily when Sadiya shows signs of swinging across the room using my bedroom curtains. We return to the text. Soon, the chapter is done.

Me: Ok, so write the questions, and-

Sadiya (sunnily):I'll write the questions from this chapter and bring them next day?

I give her a lemon lollipop as a reward. We talk about an ad for McDonald's party reservations that she brought to show me and progress, perhaps inevitably, to an intense and deep discussion about how unfair parents can be and how to handle it. She looks me in the eye and goes, at her most adorable, 'I've never been in a movie theatre.' Tragically, 'EVER!!'

I instantly resolve to take her to see Ice-Age 3. She knows the first two movies better than I do anyway, plus I can't wait to see how she'll analyze the return of the dinosaurs and compare it to neo-Nazism, which will inevitably come up because her next chapter is a short poem by a Jewish refugee post-Holocaust,I think. Ooohh fun.

And now a shout out to Pal, for the excellent treats and the baby pictures and the parting gift (te amo) and particularly the Cult of the Lollipop, which Titas and Ankana assure me lives on in Bhavan's.

In related news, a certain RGD and Shahana Yasmin are excellent people to go blow big bucks (I meant shopping!) with. I like, but we need the Spanish fourth member to make up the Sisterhood of the 'Oh, no, you did NOT' Bitchslap. Applications at front desk of this blog, please.

And finally, if you couldn't tell already, I is having a very good time, despite the pressure (because of the pressure?) Many, many good things going on for me lately; academic, professional and social fronts aside, I've found some great new people who are honestly like the new books in a discount store (and bookworms will know exactly how much that means) and damn, I'm working and having fun like never before. Been a long time since I blogged seriously like this (well, half) but if you've been here before, you know what I mean. Summer fun, people. See you all soon! And te quiero, *A*n*i*.

Music For A Quiet Night

2009-06-17T19:16:00.004+05:30

This is James Blackshaw. He is a ridiculously good musician.

Below is his album cover. The Glass Bead Game. It is hypnotic and completely awesome. I am in love with his fingers, although you can't see them here.

http://www.myspace.com/jamesblackshaw - This is his Myspace page. Go listen to his playlist. Then report back here, comment and thank me for telling you about him if you didn't already know.

P.S - Some parts of his music are actually rather evocative of the way sitar players arrange their compositions. Just a thought.

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SOS, Mayday, or HAAAALP!!!

2009-05-24T22:20:00.001+05:30

I need to get into college. Kolkata ones are ok because HS results aren't out yet. What about the Delhi ones?? What do I do, where do I go, and how do I proceed? Any help/advice/knowledge/sage wisdom will be greatly appreciated. Please? Pretty please with whipped cream and a strawberry on top?

Made it through!!

2009-05-22T14:33:00.001+05:30

I'm ok. In fact, I'm so ok right now, I'm probably the definition of ok. This feels so good that I'm going to say it again. I'm ok.

Holocaust (or Coming of Age) on Friday the 22nd of May '09

2009-05-20T18:40:00.004+05:30

These are the terrible dreams that I have had with increasing frequency in the months leading up to the day after tomorrow.

I dreamed I failed in economics (expected that), Bengali (kind of saw that coming too), 13 on 100 in geography(what the fuck????)

In another dream, I was walking to the school bus and suddenly Krishnaroop Chowdhury tackles me to the ground in a sweaty blur from the right and starts punching my jaw. I beat him off and (I think) break both of his kneecaps. Then I go home and find that my teeth are dislodged. Soon my fist is full of bloody tooth that I mourn silently. Not sure what relevance this has to my results.....probably just a metaphor where the CBSE is equated to another threat, KC, and thus both punch my teeth out........naah, it was just a dream where that bleeping bleep of a bleep, bleep him, breaks my bleeping smile up.

I was standing by myself in front of the school gates, and everyone had gone home, and everyone got their results before that, and I didn't, and I didn't know my marks but I really really wanted to............and I stood there and stood there and waited and waited, and then it was midnight and my knees were aching and then Spock beams down and says they'll have to deport me to Uranus because that's the general vicinity of my results too.........(why the Federation gets involved is not something I chose to question at that point, probably because of my throbbing instep).

And finally, the worst pre-result nightmare of all........I only get good enough marks to qualify me for the Bhavan's evening management training classes. For the next five years, I'm doomed to come back everyday to the SAME BLOODY CAMPUS. And that just about sums up school life for me.

I'm doomed. Doomed, I tell you.

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The Storm

2009-05-11T20:39:00.004+05:30

As you walk in the rain, with your head bent to the ground,
the cold wind lashes you, you can barely stand steady;
the chill rain is a full frontal attack, your eyes cannot see;
and the thunder sounds like the reflection of an earthquake.
The strikes of lightning make your head jerk up,
and you stop walking, and stand, and breathe underwater;
the familiar street changes around you, as you see the water hit your eyes,
and in a moment of clarity, you see the stars glowing straight through the rain;
your world falls away, and you are alone,
alone on the slope of a mountain beside the sea;
the wind lashes the waves, and the water pounds against the cliffs,
you tremble at how fierce your joy can be;
and your senses scream to you to run with the wind,
to take to the sea and the wind with a running jump off the cliff,
a free fall that will never end, a whirlpool of the elements that embrace you.
If you ever had a soul, the stars call to it now,
and it wakens, and yearns, and strains to the maelstrom sky;
it tries to soar to the vast nothingness beyond the storm,
but you are afraid, and your soul won't fly away without you.
You reach up on your toes, and you stand like a dancer in the rain;
the wind tears your breath away, and your heart is at peace at last.
The rain dies, and the wind slows, and the stars' fury fades,
you are left drained by the spirit of the storm.
You return to the empty street with the single flickering light,
as you start walking again, your hands feel empty;
you look down and there is a heart sized hole in your chest,
and as your joy fades away and then comes back stronger,
you know your heart lies bleeding on a cliff beside the sea,
and when the blood of your heart runs with the rain into the storm,
the storm reaches the stars, and then your blood colours the sky.

Open letter

2009-04-27T22:45:00.003+05:30

Dear Mr. Basu

Thank you for following me on Twitter. I show your updates on my page to all my friends. My geek credit has never been higher, and thanks to two personal replies from you I've convinced this one guy to let me read his vintage first-edition Asterix and Obelix collection for the very first time. You've changed my life around. My mother now tells people I'm in contact with a real author, no, not the layabout kind, a published writer. The whole family knows you now because my grandmother once read your name in the paper and remembered about it. She thinks you're a famous journalist - no-one knows why, but she's pushing seventy so what the hell, you know? My father is going to try and read your first book, and my cousin would like to be just like you one day, and maybe own a Corvette too.

Sincerely yours,

Trisha

from Kolkata

P.S - my cousin would like to know what brand of car you own (if at all). this postscript was not my idea.

Happy Morning

2009-04-25T21:00:00.003+05:30

Hey there, beautiful guy with a cool scarf around with your neck,
its summer, will you grow the hell up already?
Hey there, man in a rush with a briefcase,
I think maybe your train's left already.
Looking good, taxi man, with the brand-new fender,
maybe the traffic policeman will be nice to you today.
Stop crying, little kid at the school bus-stop,
life will only get better for you today.
It's alright, man at the candy store on the corner,
an accident could kill you before smoking does.
Don't worry, mister stockbroker at the traffic-light,
you know money is always as economy does.
Don't sweat, pretty girl in the front of the bus,
you don't want your make-up to melt itself off.
Don't rush, old man, there's time left to spare,
don't kill yourself as you trip on the steps getting off.
Run, rush, hurry, speed, man on the bike,
your son has that crucial exam this morning.
Slow, smooth, nice, easy, girl with the radio,
I wonder why I'm so happy this morning.

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Five Things, Post-Exams

2009-04-21T00:16:00.003+05:30

Five things I've finally been able to do now that my exams are over:-

1. return to blogging
2. return to karate
3. return to library
4. go see the abode of the Bard
5. sleep all day and play all night

Five perfectly reasonable things I would like to do now that my exams are over but can't because the above things don't leave me enough time:

1. Learn French. All I know at present are yes, no, is it not, and some obscenities.
2. go see all the oscar winning movies out now, in a twenty hour marathon, with or without potato chips.
3. clean out eighteen years of junk from my room and donate the intact things to a charity.
4. finally do the long-distance adoption thing, now that I'm about to turn eighteen. Have kind of started this already though.
5. clear up my hard drives, ASAP.

Five completely unreasonable things I would like to do now that my exams are over but I don't have the money or the willpower:-

1. go to the UK to meet Susan Boyle (and Simon Whatsisname)
2. finish writing that stupid story!
3. register for real on the Simpsons website and play in the virtual Springfield.
4. fly to Delhi to personally thank the creator of Aishwarya, the Duck of Destiny, the great Samit Basu himself, for doing me the (reciprocal) courtesy of following me on twitter. squrrawwwk!!
5. start that horrible fluids-only diet that shrinks you then kills your stomach in ten months. ack!

Do you like my socks?

2009-04-14T15:10:00.000+05:30

random things to say at specific times -

walking along the street with a friend(s)

1. what colour is your underwear today?
2. will you come with me if i move to germany?
3. i've always loved the shape of your ears.
4. your feet smell nice from here.
5. i want to stop and buy a lollipop.
6. here, hold my earrings while i go beat up that mcdonald's clown.

in the middle of a room at a party

1. i've heard that ingesting sugar and salt TOGETHER cancels out both tastes. here, try it!
2. i love my top! why are you wearing it?
3. oh look, there's a man on the ceiling.
4. will you dance the chicken-dance with me?
5. marry me, bugs bunny!
6. your socks are sexy *flutter eyelashes*

in a clothing store

1. i wanna try on the mannequin in the window, please
2. does this come in very large and orange?
3. this floor is very slippery! *skate around here*
4. so, where do you guys keep the day's money?
5. hey, there's a dead rat in your trial room!
6. your socks are sexy *flutter eyelashes*

to your neighbour

1. i love lemon pickles.
2. most people hate house-lizards. you must be so brave.
3. do i smell blood?
4. there's a mad dog in the street! close your windows and turn on animal planet!!
5. why don't you love my dog?
6. i want your socks, please.

to a taxicab-driver

1. don't worry, i've made myself a rate-conversion chart.
2. you look very familiar. have you met my grandma?
3. follow that tortoise!
4. stop the cab! i want to throw my socks into the river.
5. alright, where do YOU want to go?
6. do you take mastercard?

to any complete stranger

1. behind you!! no, it was just a mosquito.
2. what do you mean, you don't remember meeting me??? but, darling -
3. your socks are sexy *flutter eyelashes*
4. hire me! i work for chocolate cookies and discount coupons.
5. do you like my socks?
6. your eyebrows are the most beautiful things i've ever seen.

Tagged!

2009-02-19T23:42:00.002+05:30

EXCERPT FROM FACEBOOK -

[Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.] From deboleena di's page :-)

25 things about me? :P

1. i'm possibly the fastest-talking, most obscure conversationalist you'll ever meet.

2. i'm trying to give my black belt exam this year

3. i'm also trying to get admission into a decent college, but as you can see, that comes lower down on my list of priorities.

4. i confuse latin street music with african street music literally all the time, except when i see/recognize the artist.

5. i can't draw for peanuts. give me a table and i'll draw you a surreal rendering of an elephant with severe arthritis and an abstract comment in the speech bubble above the head.

6. extreme heights, deep water, exam stress, fear of failure, dogs, cats, snakes and my mom don't bother me. red ants, however, scare me to hell.

7. i love to write. normally i don't put it online when it's this random.

8. i'm making an exception because i got tagged :P

9. when in doubt, i shut down my brain and crank up the automatic part of my cerebrum that plays cheesy dance hits from the 90's all day.

10. i miss dancing. boogying to justin timberlake in my room doesn't count.

11. i also miss swimming. this summer, i think i'll pretend to drown in the shower so my dad lets me catch up on swimming in a proper pool again.

12. uptil the time i was five, i honestly believed that i could fly, because that's how my brother explained the concept of superheroes as 'normal people' to me.

13. my brother subsequently lost the use of his left arm for a few months when i jumped off the second-floor balcony with a cry of 'excelsior!!'. i landed unhurt on his back, saving a few bruises.

14. i voted for obama online. in my own way, i helped shape world history *_*

15. i also voted for jay-z, but i don't think the world is ready for a black president who rolls like the big dawg. shame.......

16. i only blog once a week, just to keep my creativity in reasonably good use.

17. why do people believe in god?

18. do people believe in god more than they believe in the power of money, or vice versa?

19. who cares? my computer can eat your momma.

20. i can't think of a decent indian writer whose books are not terrifyingly emotional to read, apart from samit basu. what does that say about the indo-global publishing world?

21. what does that say about me? my novel isn't even worth laughing at, at the moment.

22. that must be why i choose to read only comic books and comedy books (yes, non-geeks, there's a difference) and no other literature these days.

23. my neighbors hate rock music but i see them be-bopping to the RnB that plays from my room. weird.

24. perhaps they're all just very funky people at heart. one day i'll play techno-funk at midnight and see what happens. note-to-self- get a decent web-cam for that day.

25. i'm glad i decided to do this. and i'm too brain-dead to be sarcastic right now, anyway.

ciao.

The Paintings

2009-02-02T23:43:00.003+05:30

A little story i thought of today. please tell me if you like/hate it!

The Paintings

Since the time I was born, I’ve always been a city kind of person. I appreciate the quiet and serenity and beauty of the countryside, of course, but I can’t get to sleep without the buzz of traffic on the road outside the house and the sound of street vendors cursing each other in three dialects on the pavement just across. So when our parents inherited a rundown house in the countryside near our father’s ancestral home, my sister and I just knew that the trip to see the house firsthand would turn out bad.

The house was a creaky old behemoth, half-sunk in waist-high grass, forty minutes away from the nearest ATM machine and twenty minutes from an actual asphalt road. We had to hire the jeep outright for everyday, with a driver who looked younger than me but was probably twenty-three or something. My father’s people had their own almost ruined mansion about five kilometers away. When we went to see them, an incredibly aged lady told my mother that our house used to be the guest-house for visitors and unwanted relatives back in the days when our common ancestor was a well-respected zamindar in those parts. My sister and I choked on our sweet tea when we were warned to keep a light burning in at least one room throughout the night, carry little silver amulets to ward off snakes in the grass, and keep our voices down if we ever discussed dead people, in case they heard us and came back in the night to trade their souls for ours and re-enter the world of the living.

In this new age of technology, of course no-one in the real world would take such warnings seriously. We didn’t laugh, because the lady was our great-grand-aunt five times removed or something equally ridiculous, and without question she had held our great-grandfather in her arms when he was born and slapped him into crying for the first time. So we lowered our heads like good girls should, and by the time we returned to that tumbledown old house we were too tired and too bewildered by these people of ours to remember to laugh about their silly superstitions.

We were there for the winter holidays, which was a good idea because the house had no fans and our lights at night we got from candles and an emergency light that my father had bought for the trip. It was like camping, and as we shivered pleasurably in the chilly evenings, the house seemed to creak and shiver too, in companionable silence. It was like a living person, this house, with its front resembling a face – the bigger upstairs windows for eyes, the verandah on the second floor like a nose, and the front door like a mouth set slightly askew on the jaw, which was the portico running all around the ground floor. One of the best things about this house, apart from the French windows, was the paintings. There were paintings of former family members, reproductions of famous European and Indian painters, scenery, landscapes, ships on the seas, sketches of Calcutta when the British were still here, pictures of an unknown British family, either grouped together or individually, watercolors of horses, dogs, trees, courtesans, temples under the moon, housing any one of thirty three thousand gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon of divinity, even paintings of the ancestral village nearby as it must have been before, at the time of the Raj, and that one faded canvas that was not a painting but a photograph, of the entire family, children, servants, dogs and all, snapped on a day when the patriarch chose to take the central seat with the tricolor flag on his knees, dated 16th August 1947………………..

A funny thing about these paintings was that often we would find the same face in two different canvases. My sister and I would spend hours searching within the frames, shouting gleefully to each other when a fisherman in his boat on the Ganga at sunset turned out to have the same features as the rich nobleman in a Mughal style painting. A mother holding her child in an Italian Renaissance print would have the same exact features and expression as the goddess in the painting of the temple below the moon. The clothes would change, the style of painting, even the medium used could be different, but we thought for a while that a single painter had created all these canvases, using the same models for different purposes at different times and in different settings, like a director giving the same cast of actors different parts in different plays. We later found out that this could not have been true, because our father said that some of the paintings must have been done at least a century apart, and in very different circumstances. So we thought we must have imagined it, especially when we couldn’t find the similar-looking figures when we searched for them again. The paintings looked the same, and no-one could have moved them, because we were the only people in the house, and yet we simply could not see those haunting similarities when we looked for them again. So we dropped the game for a while and went out to help Baba crop the grass to keep away the snakes, or Ma to can yet more pickles, and by the time we came back to the house we had forgotten all about the faces in the paintings, and by then it was too dark to see anyway.

The longer we stayed in this house, the better we liked it. Baba was curiously contented, although he had been raised in the city too, and I thought I knew how he felt. The entire atmosphere, the way we were living, the things we were doing and seeing each day, like grass stretching on for miles and miles, blending with the croplands in the shimmering distance, the sun taking forever and half to set over the massive distance of the plains, the echoing, echoing calls of the village boys calling the cows home, the birds sitting near at hand and not flying away in startled fear like they do in the city, the daily visits to the old house nearby, where the people lived life slower and better, I think, than we had ever lived – everything seemed like déjà vu, but of something that was happening for the first time. In the city I never had time to think like this, but now I found myself lying in the grass, far from and yet in view of our house, wondering if perhaps humans have genetically passed on memory banks, recollections of living like this on the vast plains, near rivers, watching sunsets uninterrupted by concrete towers. These race memories would only surface when we see the things our ancestors saw for the first time, ignited by centuries, perhaps millennia, of a people breathing with and into the land, bringing a feeling of sudden exultation and terrible sadness at the same time, joy and sorrow for things that were and could and will be. Perhaps this could even explain why in the paintings the faces seemed the same, because the painters drew their race memories into their art.

My mother and my sister, I knew, did not feel the same. This experience was new and exciting for both of them, and the paintings kept my sister curious and slightly wound-up for hours on end, but they didn’t have the same sense of coming home to a long-forgotten but beloved place like my father and I. We never talked about it directly, but there were nuances in the things we said, a certain way of breathing in deeply and strongly, a sleepy content at each sunrise that reassured both of us that the other was feeling the same, and so we felt safe in this new contentedness.

But we saw signs of restlessness in my sister and tried to draw her in. Our mother noticed nothing wrong, she said it was just homesickness, but I knew, and I think our father knew, that my sister felt threatened and lonely in this house, and so every day she spoke a little more, a little louder, of the reasons to go back home. We paid her complaining no attention, spoke comforting but meaningless words, and then she would hunch her shoulders in rejection and go into the house to brood over the paintings, gaining no satisfaction, because of course the figures were never where she saw them last………..

One day, I was lying under a desiccated banyan, teasing a goat tethered nearby with my admittedly bad whistling, when my sister arrived panting with a piece of paper flapping in her hand. Breathless, she flung herself down, catching her breath with great whoops while I lay with my eyes half-closed in my new-found somnolence. Then she sat up and delivered the great news.

“Didi, I found out where the figures go.”

“You did? Really?”, I said, sitting up abruptly.

“They don’t vanish like we thought. And they are the same figures, except they move around the paintings at night”, she said.

“Are you sure?”, I said, trying not to smile.

“Yes, almost. I’ve made a list, you see. You’ve seen me watching the paintings, surely? I was so frustrated, but then I started writing down where I saw the same figure in succession. And I did it for the fisherman first, then for the goddess, then the English sportsman and his yellow dog, and some others too-“

I cut her off.

“Did you tell anyone else?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Ma and Baba wouldn’t believe me, and the crazy women back at the old house would, all too readily. I don’t know which would be worse.”

I pretended to think for a while.

“I’ll tell you what we can do,” I said, and she brightened perceptibly. “We’ll stay awake tonight and try to catch these figures in the act of moving painting, so to speak. Let’s see if we can prove it. We’ll note down their positions tonight, and then we’ll be able to tell when they go.”

She agreed eagerly. We went back to the house, and as we climbed the stairs, I looked at the paintings on the landing more keenly than I had for a long time. As we neared the top of the stairs, I was looking straight into the eyes of the tightlipped Bengali matron’s portrait, and perhaps it was my imagination, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was looking back at me. As we turned at the banister, I felt her eyes on my skull, and looking back, I thought that the slant of her gaze had changed direction and was focusing straight on me instead of looking ahead and to the right as she was before. I thought with a shiver of apprehension that she would be looking at me as I climbed the stairs, that her eyes would rise as I went higher, that long after I had turned the corner she would be staring at the top of the above-stairs landing where she had last seen me, watching for my return, even listening for my footsteps to come back down those stairs………….

I shook myself and turned back defiantly to face the portrait. Beside me, my sister paused too, but I barely noticed, because the painting’s eyes seemed to glow a dull red now. Just a trick of the light, I said to myself as we continued upstairs, aware of my sister looking at me oddly, aware, too, that the sun was setting on the wrong side of the house for the light to reflect on that particular painting at any point……………

That night, we both sat up in bed. For obvious reasons, our parents knew nothing of our plans. We went over the list of figures and positions as of that evening in hushed concentration, brows furrowed in determination and impending terror. Soon, we would take a torchlight, creep downstairs, and look for our figures again, but in different paintings. Somewhere on that landing, I had turned into a believer, but one desperate to prove herself wrong. So I clutched at my shawl and tiptoed down ahead of my sister, feeling the way with my bare feet on the cold stone floors before reaching the landing and switching on the torch.

By mutual accord, we moved together and silently, checking the paintings as we had marked them earlier. Fifteen minutes later, we stood together at the base of the stairs, both looking foolish. All the figures were where they were supposed to be. Only we were out of our places, out of our warm beds so close to midnight, looking for ghosts like two silly girls. Without speaking, we went up the stairs shamefacedly. At the top of the stairs, I released my pent-up breath, and at the moment I switched off the torchlight I heard a faint creak downstairs. My sister whipped her head around, and then stared at me in the dim moonlight.

“Did you hear that?” she whispered, her voice throbbing with fear. “Did you hear that?”

I shook my head, no, but she had already turned away, her cold fingers clutching my wrist like a vise. She started back down the stairs.

I wanted to call to her, don’t. From where I was standing, I could see the woman’s eyes again, and they were focused straight ahead of her. Yet had I not seen them looking straight at me standing where I was now earlier today? Had I not seen them glow red where there was no light? Had I not been afraid for myself and my sister then?

I half-whispered, half-shrieked down the stairs, “Come back!”

My sister did not look at me, but ahead of her. She straightened her shoulders and turned the corner of the landing, a small, brave figure standing there in the eye line of a thousand malevolent ghost paintings. I felt my heart contract and squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, she was gone.

I leant over the railing, not daring to go down, hovering with my light switched on to show her the way for as far as possible. She crossed the room below and disappeared out of my sight. I sank down in the corner of the railings, shivering, and my light still on to give me courage. I waited for her, able to see nothing, hear nothing. I twisted around and kept watch on the landing for her return, my hand unsteady. Then all of a sudden, the eyes of the Bengali woman switched suddenly, swiftly, straight up in my direction, through the wooden railings to where I was sitting, and at that exact same second I heard a soft gasp down below and my brain blacked out.

When I came to, it was dark and late and still. My heart was thumping madly, like I had just been running, and my torch was still lit. Shakily, I stood and made my way back to my bed. I did not go downstairs to look for my sister, nor look over at her bed to see if she was there. I dived straight under my covers like a coward, choosing not to realize the horror of what had happened that night. I went straight into a dreamless sleep as though my life depended on it, and beside me, my torch shone on.

In the morning, my mother shook me awake. Had I seen my sister, she asked, her voice laced with irritation and something more, and turned away before I finished saying no.

Below stairs at breakfast, my father told me to go out to the fields and look for her, and I went and stood under the banyan a while, trying to think where she could be now.

By the time I got back, my mother had dropped all pretense of irritation and was frantically scouring the house and questioning the servants, trying to find my sister. My father was sitting on the balcony, holding the paper, but his eyes were not moving and his hands were shaking. Does he know what I think he must know, I wondered, but before I could ask him, our great-grand-aunt was there in front of me, out of her own home for the first time in twenty years or more, looking blindly straight into and through me while she listened to my mother’s panic-stricken speculations about rogue cow herders and kidnappers and lonely fields in the winter.

Standing there in the sunlight with the open fields around us, my brain began to work again. Pieces began to fall together, pieces of different pictures that now formed a single empty picture, a picture of an old woman warning the newcomers not to speak of the dead at night, to let a light burn to keep the dead from returning to trade souls, a picture of a place so permeated with memories of the past, so soaked with recollections, not of a race of humans, but of the dead, that even the living started to drown in the quiet peace of the afterlife, a picture of my sister refusing to drown in that quiet peace, questioning, searching --- and then?

I went inside, blanking out everything around me. My mother tried to reach out to me, but I sidestepped and began looking at the paintings again, dreading to see what I must find, among figures of peasants and kings, dancers, tigers, ports, temples, forest, brides in palanquins, and – there. A slender girl, sitting cross-legged at the periphery of a village scene, not watching the dancers in the circle, face half-turned away, questioning, searching, dissatisfied, and trapped even, looking at the horizon beyond both of us. My sister’s face, immortalized in a painting older than my great-grandfather, looked out at me as for the second time I blanked out completely and fainted dead away. As my vision blurred, over the ringing in my ears I heard an unfamiliar sound, like that of a new cow herder’s cry, and briefly I thought of the figure in the painting before this, a sallow looking youth with a bell in his hand, like cow herders of his time, now striding through the fields just an echo away………………

As I’ve said before, I’ve always been a city person. The fast pace leaves you no time to breathe, let alone think too much. The urban muddle can drown out your loss, smooth out your grief. It can blank out your memory and belittle your fear. In a place where you cannot see the sky for the concrete, there is no time to think of ghosts or of guilt. In the city, where it is never quiet, you are safe.

tell me what you think!!

much love,

trisha

______________________________________________________________________________-

world, hold on

2009-01-25T20:44:00.002+05:30

will be posting soon again, but after the 28th, which is when my results come out (ack!) am very very happy to be where and what i am just now, barring the constant chocolate chip cookie craving. and as a sidenote, shoili di, i hope you're not serious about leaving off blogging (????????!!!!!!????????) for all the reasons i put into that earlier comment! see y'all later this week.

much love

trisha.

_________________________________________________________________________

Go on, say hi

2009-01-22T14:39:00.004+05:30

I'm back on blogger.....after WEEKS! how did i go so long without it? well, the answer is simple.......a steady diet of exams and watching comedy shows in the breaks between exams must have left me without the desire or capacity for self expression. fortunately, my pre-boards are over, i'm newly single again, obama just got sworn-in, the tv's almost off limits because of the impending board exams, i finally have some time to myself to read some good storybooks, and there are no chocolate cookies in the house to stupefy my brain and prevent self-articulation. *rummages* oh, look, potato chips! :-)

what a lot of things have happened since i last blogged, to be sure. i successfully flunked my exams, watched ghajini, kalbela, and the president is coming, (all of which i liked, except the last, which i literally adored), downloaded an entire season of whose line is it anyway, slumdog millionaire, and about five other movies, finally escaped from an increasingly oppressive relationship, read too many fantasy genre books for my own peace of mind, and more or less did all of it sitting down, which accounts for the old saying ,"All work sitting on lazy ass and no play standing on own two feet makes Jack one chubby dude".

anyway, after my exams ended last friday, i spent a coupla days rehashing my project files, then it was off to hang out with all the other no-good layabouts in this neighbourhood who call themselves students. then the day before yesterday, i rejoined my karate class, or as i now like to call it, boot-camp for the out-of-condition teenage karateka. suffice it to say, it's two days later and my left knee still hurts from where sir slamdunked me over his shoulder to the floor and i landed with my foot curled under my back and my elbow popped out of joint and lying very close to my eye, oddly enough. funny how how when you're in pain, the only thing that seems important is working out how the hell your right leg is STILL somehow suspended in the air.................

anyway, i actually woke myself up early enough yesterday to go watch a noon show of the president is coming at south city. very funny movie........if 'the office' was about a competition among six very different indians to meet bush, and the humour was at once relatable and more ribcrackingly obvious, that would be this movie. after a nice tour of the south city basement afterwards, which was my first time there, me and my cousin went and had those huge rolls at golpark that have enough cholesterol each to feed paris hilton for a year, and than i daringly bought a polka-dotted top that seems like a mistake in retrospect, if you know what i mean. and if you don't, that's ok. read the jon stewart quotes at the bottom of this page if you're getting bored.

and then i came home and brought my brother along and had a nice time watching him choke himself laughing over a russell peters clip filmed in los angeles years ago, bless his soul. going to the park later, i found that it's really true what they say about it being colder in the suburbs than it is in central, coz we were frickin' freezing down there! the cold and the pain even inspired me to work out today in the morning, just to stretch those muscles i'd forgotten i had.

i should probably get up now and clear up the room, since i'm expecting male company of the eligible kind, (it's not you think, momma!) and i'd rather he didn't find out about my chocolate fetish straight away :-) i'm just kidding about the fetish, it's actually an addiction that won't let me escape....ever......

wow, just typing this felt good. so long, everyone! death to all diet book authors....

_______________________________________________________________________________

The 'Rebuild India' Mission

2008-12-01T23:08:00.000+05:30

The 'Rebuild India' Mission

Mumbai Attacks - The Seven Good Things You Should Know

2008-11-30T12:42:00.005+05:30

Hello, readers. As we all heard, the Mumbai terror attacks started on the 26th of November this year, and the snipers are still going at it as far as we know. Now, a lot of negative things have been written about these attacks. Everything and everyone that can be blamed has been blamed - politicians, the government as a whole, the apathy of Indian citizens, the rabid communalism in India, Islamic militants, Pakistan, China, the USA, Greg Chappell, Bin Laden, etc.

But let's stop a moment and consider the positive aspect of things, shall we? Here goes, then.

1. This is India's most severe organized terrorist attack to date. Our politicians must be so happy that our country is considered powerful enough and democratic enough to provoke random killings by minority militants. "Just like USA, we are. Beer, nukes, problem with China, terrorist attacks, everything we have."

2. al-Qaida links have been touted in connection to Pakistan's hand in all of this. The USA defence ministry is probably ecstatic that India and Pakistan are not only still at loggerheads over anything and everything, but that Osama bin Laden can still be blamed for all the world's problems. [Note - US Republicans will read Osama as Obama, by the way]

3. Raj Thackeray will no longer have a political leg to stand on. More North Indians, Delhiites and Marathis died trying to protect Mumbai than Maharashtrian Mumbaikars. From a purely vengeful point of view, a great amount of grim satisfaction is due to all non-Maharashtrian people who had to suffer due to this ridiculous Raj's communal posturing. I don't know about you, but this makes me, personally, very happy.

4. Many stalwart stars of the police and special forces have died, shot fatally by the terrorist snipers in the head, guts and chest. These men were some of the bravest, most intelligent and experienced fighters on the planet. I've no doubt that criminals across the country are rejoicing at the headlines announcing their heroic deaths.

5. This attack has scared a large number of corporations, luxury hotels, apartment complexes, malls, schools, etc to step up their security measures. Indians can no longer look at CNN reporting bomb-blasts somewhere else in the world and think - that could never happen to us. From the point of view of the Indian government's security and defense branch, that's a good thing, provided people take this threat seriously in the long run.

6. The nation is horrified that this kind of thing could happen in India, in Mumbai of all places. The reality is that bombings and attacks are nothing new to certain parts of our country. What about Jammu and Kashmir, and the NorthEast? Maybe now that people in the financial capital of the country know what it feels like to live under the threat of violent death, there will be more sympathy and help going out North and North East after a while. When people realize that every life counts, regardless of state or assets, that's an improvement in terms of common humanity.

7. In hotels like the Taj, the terrorists released more white foreigners than they did Indians, and many more Indian citizens were killed as opposed to rich Caucasian
people who were held hostage. Maybe I sound overly bitter, but this should at least reassure the tourism industry that India is a safer place for Western tourists than it is for our own people.

Please, leave a comment with feedback if you did/didn't like this post.

Much love,

Trisha.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Warning!! Sentiment Overload

2008-11-24T19:44:00.003+05:30

for a friend

when you say the right thing at the right time
you make me smile, because it was what i wanted to feel
when you do the right thing in the right way
i'm thinking you're the best thing that ever happened to me
you're like the familiar roadsign, two miles away from home
you are the one place in the world my wounded heart wants to go
you're the sun behind my cloud, the eye of my storm
you're the one person in my life i would do anything for
when i'm broken, you pick me up and put the pieces back together
when i'm empty, you tell me that i have you forever
when i'm riding the wave, i know you're beside me
when i crash-land back to earth, i know you'll still be there for me
and whatever happens, know that i'll be there for you
cross my heart and hope to die if that's not true
in good times and bad, in hope and in sorrow
you know that i'll still be here tomorrow
both of us against the world, loyal to the end
god knows i love you forever, my sister, my friend.......

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The Maze

2008-11-09T16:01:00.005+05:30

Twisted maze, running through my brain
sudden corners, dead ends that come alive at night
coil, spring, jerk and recoil the thoughts
the confusion cannot decide where to begin
I wander, wander, trying to lose my way
but the lie is the key to the truth, I should know this
there is a web of revelations, it hangs from the sky
but I will only see it if I choose to see it
I twist and turn like a storm
breaking away, yet clinging to the ground
and there is nothing I would not sacrifice, to be at peace.
but then the morning comes, and the clouds split open
the look of the sun makes me give it a sleepy smile
the air hums in soft anticipation around me
I wake, and then reassurance and logic clear my head
I sigh in relief, that the maze is straighter now
and I smile, I am grateful that I can be happy in peace
I feel as though I am swimming in joy
so in the middle of a happy backstroke, I go back to sleep

Trisha

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Yeah, he did

2008-11-05T23:44:00.005+05:30

World, stand up!

Because President Obama says yes, you can.

2008-11-01T21:06:00.001+05:30

in reference to

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4fe9GlWS8

is the following response. judge for yourself.

dear mr. we need mccain

2008-11-01T20:53:00.000+05:30

Response – to Dear Mr. Obama video on Youtube, posted by mr. we need mccain.

Dear Mr. we need McCain, this is a personal message for you

Forgive me when I say this, but the US soldiers in Iraq did not die defending the freedom of Americans or of Iraqis. They died because at a certain time, a number of US politicians and lobbyists and power-players decided that the US needed a monopoly on the oil reserves of the Middle East. Obama is not disrespecting the soldiers and their families when he says the war was a mistake. It seems clear he believes, like me, that you should be giving those in power a slap in the face for sending brave and patriotic men like you to die for the sake of America’s grip over the world economy when the fuel crisis hits.

Dear Mr. we need McCain, I am an Indian, living in India, I’m a teenager, and I have no stake in who wins the US presidential election. yes, Obama's eloquence is impressive, and yes, McCain’s experience is vast, but here in India we are very used to political leaders who promise change and experience, too, and most of them don't live up to it in any case. From an objective outsider's point of view, then, it sounds like you're mad at a presidential candidate because he states that sending the cream of America’s youth to a destructive, pointless and frankly manipulative war was a mistake. Men like you are surely needed in your own country, to work, to raise families? and you defend a man like McCain, who would send you to war again, who would find new, resource-rich, impoverished countries whose people suddenly need to be 'liberated' in the name of 'democracy', where you, not you personally perhaps, but your friends in the army, would go to sacrifice themselves? I’m sorry; perhaps it's because I don't approve of war in the first place that I don't understand the republican compulsion to 'fix' the world's problems with guns and ammo.

And personally, I find it offensive that you believe that the USA is responsible for freeing the world. We’re fine, thank you! Apart from a limited few, no Iraqi will ever say that things are better post the US troops. Previously, they thought US citizens were just un-Islamic, capitalist westerners with too much money for their own good. Now they think that the USA wants to wipe out Islam, that all American soldiers are brute infidels and that white people are essentially a poisonous race, in the same way that many Americans believe Iraqis are unchristian, fanatic, terror-mongering, uncivilized people. This is the backlash of war on human nature.

Obama has the potential to change that, because he stands for tolerance. McCain does not. That is my considered stand. I had not taken sides previously, but your well-prepared speech has forced me to rethink that. I feel for your plight, I do. that was a moving appeal, but I do not believe that Obama would for one second call your sacrifice, your pain, the adjustments you must have had to make, your patriotism, any of that, a mistake. No-one with a minimum of intelligence would call your loss a mistake. You did it because you believed in your government. But I believe your government made a mistake when it played you for a fool, sending you to fight for oil and assets and power in the name of democracy.

I hope you will reconsider your stand. If you do not, that is your right, and I respect that. But while all of you over in the USA are still fighting it out, I just thought I’d let you know something. Here in India, people who respect human rights, tolerance, and peace and want a stable economy are hoping to see president Obama meet with Manmohan Singh in January. only those who are hoping for outsourced jobs, more US dollars pouring into our economy, the kind of people who couldn't care less about the rights and wrongs of politics, are supporting McCain.

Please, do take the time to reply. I respect you immensely and I would be honored to know your response to my opinion.

With love, from India

A friend.

p.s. - just think for a second, Mr. we need McCain, whether, irrespective of your own needs, the world needs Obama more.

Random thoughts post-diwali

2008-10-31T18:46:00.005+05:30

new discoveries as of yesterday and today

1.oxford has turned into a pop bookstore that plays piped RnB hiphop.

2.tiny hidden shops in alleyways (like bookline) are better. there, you can get real tarot cards, authentic art books, good translated works, and asterixes, two of which my mom bought me as a present for the pujas (switzerland and the roman agent).

3.nizam's is the THE place to go for kebabs and firni. and other stuff, but i wouldn't know.

4.there is a church called the choong thong (or possibly yong) church. which sounds like 'choose (own) thong' if you say it fast.

5.i officially endorse md. salauddin, proprietor of rishi rich's juice bar, near chandni, as the best maker of fruit beer and lemon soda in the city.

6.fashion, the movie, is nowhere as cliched as the t2 review by p.d.gupta made it sound.

7.cheese popcorn can solidify on your fingers if you keep your hand in the tub long enough.

8.subway has to have the most expensive and putrefying smelling topping sauces i've ever inhaled.

9.it was dark at 6pm today. india should adopt a daylight saving time system.

10. the very adorable couple sukhalokha di and [censored on request] da will henceforth be known as tontu and pintu. don't ask.

[*_*]

Diwali

2008-10-31T18:29:00.005+05:30

Horizon

2008-10-25T15:28:00.003+05:30

close upon midnight, the sky is purple
hanging so close it looks like it's falling
ghost lights, iron ladders, reaching to the clouds
globes of sunlight glowing in the night
from where you stand you can see the end of the world
it's so much closer than they said it would be
your eyes ache trying to see where the horizon stops
your heart aches trying to imagine it
the towers of man in the middle of the desert
lost in the sands, hidden in the dark
the wind comes to you, it fills you
it promises you what nothing else can give
stretch your mind, it whispers, you are not alone
there are others who dream of secret lives, like you
the moon is hidden, but you know it is yours
your dream, your fear, the absent part of you
the clouds shift, the wind goes past you
you forget why you were in a trance a moment ago
you crush your apprehension, your hope for something that is not real
what a beautiful night, you say, and you walk on.

------------------------------------------------

me inside my mind

2008-10-20T17:36:00.003+05:30

to follow up

10 good things about being me implies

1. my overactive imagination - it has actually saved my life, more than once
2. lack of prejudice in any form
3. the fact that i'm a well-read individual
4. my loyalty - to family, friends, causes, abstract concepts and old stuffed toys
5. i'm a tomboy - yes, that IS, too, a good thing
6. my ambition to be someone as in SOMEONE, who is seriously good at what she does
7. i hold a brown belt in karate - not that i need more than caustic wit and a knife to defend myself, aka scare the balls off anyone or anything that tries to hurt me
8. i enjoy the finer things in life, like music, movies, chocolate, good food, and milk cheese
9. the capacity to see life after loss - which means i know how to cope, and then learn how to hope
10. i have enough sense of humour to understand the stupidity of cliches without bashing up the perpetrators - almost

i've suddenly realized that i had the visceral need to write this in order to work it out myself. is seventeen a good age for self-revelation, or will it only hasten my midlife crisis? please advise!

tr!$h@

!!!!!!

me outside my mind

2008-10-20T17:22:00.002+05:30

randomly writing down weird stuff is what a blog is for, right? without explanation, completely vague and unnecessary but enormously you? here goes, then......

10 bad things about being me implies

1. complete lack of diplomacy in social situations
2. anger-management issues
3. violent moodswings between suicidal depression and intoxicating euphoria
4. obsessive bookworm-ish tendencies
5. extreme intolerance of extreme intolerance
6. unhealthy addiction to chocolate
7. tendency to paranoia
8. low self-esteem
9. commitment phobia
10.extremely low boredom threshold

Some poison in your wine, sir?

2008-10-14T16:54:00.003+05:30

008........shaken, not stirred........

Aftermath of Chaos

2008-10-14T00:40:00.004+05:30

things to do post-pujas

1. remember to thank jayanti aunty for throwing a great after-party last week. award-winning recipe (hers) plus mad games and laughter (ours) plus lapdances (anonymous for the sake of diplomacy) equals a hell of a lot of fun

2. curb constant urge to shop. repeat the mantra about shopaholics going to basement bargain hell everytime i pass a clothes rack anywhere.

3. lose the weight! although to give myself credit, i did abstain from OTT guzzling this time. i could only have gained what i keep down through exercise. then again, what with all the walking and dancing i did, perhaps not.

4. find time for pal before she leaves. is chocolate cake an appropriate goodbye present for a train journey?

5. my mother keeps taking me out to eat these days. first the biryani jaunt in golpark coupla weeks ago, then that ultra upperclass bangali place, then chinatown, hakka noodles,and garlic lamb tonight after my tuition. possibly due to the fact that it's a drag cooking after a long, hard day of shopping. must remember to praise her wholesome, delicious homecooked meals once in a while.

6. vacation classes start from thursday. must finish practical file for maitri ma'am!

7. slog on with the whole writing thing (yawn)

8. present for d????? consult, browse, purchase!!

9. start studying for board exams?

nah.

10. do like my father says and get serious about life, career, future, responsibility, eternal boredom, etc.

11. will see ani and co. again on thursday. yay!

must check back to tick off this list now and then. signing off for now,

happily yours,

crazy ray

(!!!!!!)

The Puja Diaries

2008-10-10T22:01:00.003+05:30

epilogue

yes, yes, i know the pujas are over. but with the inevitable sense of letdown comes the realization that life (implies parties implies fun implies life again) does not stop. living proof of this edict? 'charlie's angels' , well, just two of us, me and at-present delhiite shoili pal, are proud to present the 'Stupendously Calorific Recipe For Good/High Living' a la chocolat. - serves two.

1. first, confirm earlier in the day where you want to meet. why's and wherefore's are extraneous if the two of you are comrades in arms. city centre, saltlake, and highland park are recommended.
2. secondly, turn up. this is all that is required to make your companion(s) happy, if you're lucky.
3. then, sit, chat, catch up on good times and old friends, gossip, scandalmonger, say obscenely improbable things whenever aatel people pass by.
4. later, walk around, browse in shop of choice, like (insert name/brand ________)then make your way to the nearest confectionery.
5. buy chocolate cake. lots of it.
6. go somewhere else. buy drinks like club soda, apple juice, 7UP, and mountain spring water (last was frickin' delicious, incidentally)
7. find a nearby park. sit down on the grass, preferably barefoot. bring extra napkins.
8. mix the drinks. taste. adjust in proportion.
9. buy every kind of junk that goes by, like jhaalmuri and spiced tea, to add bangali zing to the chocolate and club soda mix.
10. do not start with the creamy cakes first. if you're like me, you could actually get punch-drunk on the chocolate and wobble and giggle and feel lightheaded when you try to start on the serious stuff like wedge sliced chocolate cake. leave that for twenty minutes before you have to leave, then have orange juice and black spiced tea to shake it off.
11. sit there till its dark, and inevitably the parents start ringing. give them ten minutes leeway, then make for home.
12. buy something nice for your mother (like purple shimmer nailpolish, for example) to make up for leaving her alone so much.
13. come home via the bypass. don't go straight home, though. make time for your neighbourhood friends who will then want you to join the mishti and aam sorbet party hosted by your favorite parar aunty, the same jayanti aunty who brought me noodles and sympathy when i was down with the flu on my birthday.
14. come home after extended chat. do something nice for your father too, to make up for not touching a textbook since the midterms ended, like making him hot, sweet tea.
15. blog about everything in detail, so that others may benefit from the precedent set by you.
16.sign off.

we, the authors, are pleased to inform you that this method of access to the good life is tried, tested, and virtually idiotproof. precautionary warning - avoid the jhaal aka the lanka in the jhaalmuri if you're like me, allergic to having a flaming fire on your tongue.
well, enjoy yourselves in moderation, and drive safely. good night, friends, indians and party people across the world. a special shout-out to pal, for making my day.......much love, buddy! ciao.

The Puja Diaries

2008-10-10T13:29:00.003+05:30

day six - dashami

depressing, anticlimactic, nostalgic, regretful, somewhat relieved - what a medley of feelings on dashami! first there's the inevitable sadness because

1. the pujas are over, therefore
2. the pandal will be stripped down
3. no more dressing up at the drop of a hat, no more day (and night) long adda sessions, music and word games, no more sponsored prizes, no more community lunches, no more traipsing around the city, no more group photos
4. back to the crushing grind of the educational system

then there's the relief

1. can revert to my normal tomboy dress sense
2. less pressure to socialize
3. good things always come in sizeable but restrained portions, except at the pujas. any more of this hysterical party merry-go-round i've been on and i might never readjust to having my feet on the ground

yesterday, the high point of my day was the bhashan. two lorries of people, one of which broke down on the way back so everyone had to crowd up on ours. setting the murti afloat on the river at the exact moment the sun fell below the horizon, which is supposed to be auspicious. insane dancing and singing, calling out and handclapping on the journey there and back. synchronized dancing in a circle at the ghat, and then again in the pandal back home. cold drinks and balloons on the trip, the bruises on my feet and arms, even the tetanus vaccine shot when i got back because i scraped my wrist somewhere, then the evening trip to adda bites for drumsticks of heaven, the round of word games up until eleven at night sitting in the dim lights of the park. the chocolate i got for my mom to say sorry for never being at home for about a week. the chores i did in the morning because of how exhausted she looked. the pictures, the videos, the extremely sumptuous community lunch.

i can't describe all this in coherent joined sentences apparently. in my mind, i have a filmstrip of memories, and hopefully the picture files on hard disk as back up soon. but perhaps the best part of yesterday was watching casablanca with my mom for the very first time. what an iconic film! "here's looking at you, kid" "this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship" "play it again, sam" man, oh man what a classic golden oldie! although ingrid wasn't as ethereally beautiful as i was told. she's swedish, go figure, must've been 5'10 at least.

and last but not least, the saddest part was us taking the photo gallery and some mishti to shanky's house for his parents. aunty cried, we sat around for a while making plans to have the cardboard gallery properly framed, they gave us sprite and cake, bless them, and we might've cried a bit too. rest in peace, shanky, dear friend.

what a day, what an ending, what a grand finale! am too drained to type any more now. be seeing you. much love, and subho bijoya!

[!!(~^~*~^*)!!]

The Puja Diaries

2008-10-09T11:53:00.002+05:30

day five - nabami

woke up to the dulcet tones of my cell phone - titan's own strident tones followed thereafter, peremptorily ordering me down for the Spot Quiz. therefore i rushed down in an Olympic record of shower-and-change-in-ten-minutes, and within fifteen minutes acquired a gift voucher for answering the question (in which of shakespeare's plays is the heroine called Hero?) duh- much ado about nothing - and thus won the right to squander 75 bucks of corporate money on formidable guzzling at monginis. sidenote - hehehehe...........

in the evening i wore my new black glitterati top with (heaven forgive me) d's HUGE red bracelet (that everyone but me was freshly astounded by, in a good way, i hope) and then taira di, mitu, titan, raju, ayan da, me and akash da made the tour of the housing pujas in our areas (smirks derisively) and endured simmering jealousy at the sight of manjulika a's fantastic turnout this time. on our return, well, i got some bad news about a friend (there is nothing to discuss) and was later cheered up by naughty story games and an impromptu backstage dance around and after midnight. an extremely fun day it was, all round, and am already anticipating going for the bhashan.
anyway. i returned to the parental abode after one in the morning, took a bath, and then settled down to wait for d to call for our usual midnight chat. he obliged within ten seconds of my "i'm free now" missed call and he kept me up until two fifteen giggling at his extended family's antics. after making him promise to wake me up at ten this morning with an elongated call, i flipped over in bed and FINALLY finished Richard Bach's Curious Lives. must've been the adrenalin rush keeping me awake. anyway, gotta rush to go shower, change, and go downstairs to hang out friends. already missed calls and 'whr r u' messages abound. ciao all. stay tuned for the grand finale of the puja diaries,

much love,

trisha
(~_~)

The Puja Diaries

2008-10-08T16:23:00.003+05:30

day four - ashtami

my grandparents came to visit today, after a hiatus of two years of illness, operations and stress. my grandma watched speilberg's AI in the afternoon with me doing the verbal subtitling for her and cried, bless her. my grandfather snored gently beside me for most of the day.
later i went down to the community pandal, hung out with friends, watched the antakshari, etc. high point of the evening - i debuted in the most expensive ensemble i possess, an ethnic mishmash of gold and sunset colours.will upload pix later.
stayed up quite late, first in the pandal with friends, and then a delicious dinner at home, followed by a quick midnight chat with d before bunking down. not a very spectacular day, unless you count the ensemble, which i don't.
night all.
god, my feet are killing me. why are beautiful shoes always the most painful?

The Puja Diaries - Photographic Evidence-II

2008-10-07T18:30:00.004+05:30

THE BOSEPUKUR THAKUR

akash da, taira di, me

The Puja Diaries - Photographic Evidence

2008-10-07T02:32:00.017+05:30

alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254151609285296338" />

The Puja Diaries

2008-10-07T01:37:00.006+05:30

day three - saptami

woke up relatively early for the three-minutes-to-fame hosting gig, which turned out to be exhausting, drainingly heating my skin for what felt like hours as i tried to find new contestants to perform (although titan and i were told later that we did a good job). suki di and pal turned up, letting me know only in the morning, thus catching me off-guard and effectively blindsiding any sophisticated hospitality plans i may ever have harboured. we had fun, though. even my uncle and aunt found time to drop by during lunch........
later, i went to meet d at the crossroads, while suki di and pal tagged along, got introduced, passed lifted-eyebrow-judgements (as usual) as we all took a patuli bus. d got the tickets, thus (hopefully) impressing the heck out of my friends with his generous notions of male chivalry -lol- and he and pal and i roamed around hiland park for a bit - suki di had to go meet her Baby (!!)- until about 4, when we bundled pal on to a bus back home, and then went off to watch drona. although we laughed or gaped unbelievingly through most of the movie, it was still fun, if only for the almost skeletal script and storyline. the special effects were stunning, though, much like the silver bracelet with the enormous red stone that d thought fit to bestow on me today.
and although part of me appreciates the fact that he remembered that we went into a shop the previous week and i wistfully stared at the blue version of the same bracelet and told him about looking for the red in my spare time, thus leading him to scour malls near and far till he found the right one, perhaps this is after all a case of too fast, too furious, too much.............even though i do, too, like him a sizeable lot. wondering now what i should get him in return. perhaps a faux leather belt with a wrestlers' tag, hehe....
anyway, i even won a 300 buck gift voucher for longhorns' for being the first person to get the middle row struck out in housie this morning, despite (nearly) getting into hot water regarding the planned Great Indian Pen Hijack Heist (concerned parties and common friends will know what i mean - and by the way, i replaced that pen with a brand new one of the same color ink), and then photographed well tonight in my new white shirt-jeans-black-waistcoat-silver shoes-pearl drops-ensemble (smirks, bows), so all in all, a very positively memorable day of the pujas. long rule the goddess. ended it by playing silly singing games in the park with a bunch of nice friends close to midnight. irresponsibility is such bliss.

P.S.- am uploading pics of the last few puja days here, tonight. feel free to comment and link up!

patiently yours,

trisha

!!!!!!!!

The Puja Diaries

2008-10-06T01:03:00.005+05:30

day two - shashthi

slept HUMUNGOUSLY late - until after noon (!!!!) and then took my time with a leisurely bath and a cup of chocolate milk, waiting for my favorite uncle-who-is-not-my-uncle (actually just a very old and very loved family friend) to turn up with his beautiful wife, his extravagant gifts, and sizeable offerings of delicious food. the aforementioned individual arrived two hours late, filled to the brim with funny quips about the Universe (as usual) and a classy white top for me, as well as assorted gifts for my parents, grandparents, cousins, and himself (i kid thee not- the man opened up a pack of chocolate he had had gift-wrapped for himself).
later, i went down to attend the para stage performances for shashthi, braving the not-so-kind and rather unfunny digs that most teenage males think it's cool to inflict on one another, and watching what was surely one of the most inefficient, boring and puerile magic shows i've endured, worse than even david blaine's freezing-himself-in-ice escapade (magician or stuntman, david?????? make up your ******* mind!!!!!), preceded by some extremely nervous toddlers charming the audience with their lisped versions of classic bangali songs and poems........
i am supposed to be hosting the telegraph-sponsored three minutes to fame contest tomorrow at 11 am with a friend. i suspect pre-stage nerves are the reason i'm up past the witching hour typing away for my blog...........
on the up side, community lunch tomorrow, followed by a date (^_^) at hiland park with (*******) so yay for that, i guess.
am still waiting on uploading the pictures, principally because the data cable's gone bonkers on me tonight. watch this space for the remainder of this festival's chronicles! g'nite, world. happy dreaming

yawningly yours

trisha

[*_*]

The Puja Diaries

2008-10-05T00:23:00.003+05:30

day one - panchami

slept late. went out pandal hopping with para friends. ekdalia, singhi park, bosepukur...what an extravagant, thriftless, over-the-top, exquisitely beautiful waste of the city's resources! my head aches from the crowds, the heat, the lights, the countless cold drinks. spent some time helping to make a photo gallery to put up tomorrow in our very own pandal. composed a poem to act as the captions (takes a bow). even managed to keep myself on calorie control to a certain extent. will upload photos tomorrow night. am too bushed to type anymore........c y'all later. goodnite, kolkata.

p.s.-of all the pandals we saw today, our own modestly beautiful one appealed to me the most. i wonder what this means on my subconscious level of thinking. perhaps i'm finally beginning to feel comfortable with this whole ornate-religious-festival-thing without letting my own atheism colour my perceptions of it all. who knows? am too dazed with incipient sleep to self-analyze anymore. see you in the morning........

[*_*]

Mid year resolutions

2008-10-02T00:00:00.004+05:30

the title is self-explanatory. and since i never keep my new year resolutions beyond two days (if that) either, i suppose it's indulging in the heights of optimism to think i might be able to keep these " puja resolutions"................

1. watch my calorie intake - fat chance, it's the festival of the celebrations of the return of the first family of gods, of course i'm gonna put on more weight

2. curb my spending habits - and throw away my last breath of freedom before the boards? i think not!

3. study more - ************blank silence************** [still depending on the power of osmosis]

4. start and finish the Great Indian Novel - eventually

5. be more oriental - learn the value and power of patience, humility and compassion. perfect the Pensive Grasshopper meditative stance while doing so.

6. try to start caring more about family (no matter how distant) beyond the immediate clan, and less about the perfect strangers who do the voices of the Simpsons.

7. set a deadline for myself to finish listening to all justin timberlake tracks since the 90's and then move on to sting (!)

8. come to a final decision regarding Life-After-The-Boards.....JNU or JU? home or hostel?

9. attempt to find the meaning of life. last date - next tuesday. (possibilities of answers - love, sorrow, magic, creativity, faith, or the number 42)

10. wean myself from the habit of either posting creepy stories, mindless verse, or cbse-formatted self-revelations in point form on this page.

it's going to be a long night tonight. sigh..........

<^_^>

New worlds to conquer

2008-09-19T22:00:00.004+05:30

They say that experiencing the good things in life translates into utopia on earth, but without the propaganda. So this is my self-indulgent and extravagant list of good things in my life.

1. karate classes start again next week. considering i'm in the best shape of my life since i was fourteen, go kiyah!
2. my exams went not half as disastrously as the maternal ancestor foretold. ergo:- when you leave your textbook near your pillow at night, you can actually study by osmosis! hence proved. in your face, mom.
3. the pujas are coming up. translation-i have a budget for shopping, new clothes, classy accessories and shoes, and of course with so many librans' birthdays coming up, TONS of parties and fun.
4. since i briefly disconnected myself from the internet, i rediscovered my creative streak for writing. i have been making massive inroads into both of my writing commitments as well as blogging.
5. i reconnected with three of my closest friends just today. boy does that make me contented.
props to ani, tito and fido.
6. pal is prolly coming coming back to kol for the vacation. good times seem to beckon.
7. have finished downloading casino royale. just watching daniel craig walk down a street gives one an education in spotting the raw power of prima alpha males. wowza!
8. i have rediscovered my liking for certain types of music. thank god for coldplay, the verve, and the script. also downloaded a certain dreamy manilow cover on mp3. sigh........
9. a new relationship is in the offing. tentative optimism....
10. i also anchored a debate on "computer games are a waste of time" for a cnbc edu channel today. boy am i exhausted. cameramen never seem to be ready on time. that or they lose their fresh batteries five minutes before when you want to go home.
11. we seem set to organize a programme in school for teacher's day, and perhaps even the prefectorial ceremony soon. throwing a party AND giving up responsibility.......hallelujah!
12. checking my passwords folder today, i discovered that i am on no less than seven networking sites. considering that some people can go up to the early twenties, i'm still pretty damn exclusive + relatively carefree. (smug smirk)
13. over a year and both my PC and cellphone are currently in good order. to all the sufferers worldwide-pray with me, brothers and sisters!
14. am on fairly good terms with my immediate family due to most of the above. translation - i can stay out all night at least one time this pujas.
15. i have become optimistic and mature enough to appreciate the good in my life and still take advice to work on the things i can change (or want to). this is the biggest point. i think it's called approaching adulthood.

responsibly yours,
trisha

[*_*]

Master, all is well in the state of Denmark

2008-09-16T18:29:00.005+05:30

My exams are over. I am free.

(blubbers with joy and runs laughing hysterically around the outer wall seven sacred times)

now that that's over and done with, here is a short eulogy on freedom from oppression

food
how nourishing you are
healthier than exams you are by far
water
how cool you are
more refreshing than exams you are by far
sleep
how stupefying you are
more restful than exams you are by far
laughter
how stirring you are
more charismatic than exams you are by far
time
how short you are
speedier and crankier than an old car by far
life
how forgotten you are
lively and creative and happy no more
love
how ignored you are
more desperate and needier than ever before
exams
how despised you are
the most wearying, dreaded and hated by far

Happy Independence Day

2008-08-15T16:42:00.004+05:30

WAKING UP

2008-08-09T15:38:00.003+05:30

my sole attempt at facing my ant-paranoia head-on and making something creatively productive out of it. first time i've had the courage to actually make it public. hope you like it.

[disclaimer-if you actually do enjoy what follows, we recommend you get professional help, because man you got problems............]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WAKING UP

There is a line of red ants climbing up the kitchen wall. They are tiny, each of them, but with a venomous intensity in the way they stay close to each other, each pair of sharp pincers reinforcing every other one, that makes her come to a standstill and watch their progress with a fascinated revulsion that curiously enough precludes her from wreaking havoc with a pesticide spray and wiping the tiny dead, red little bodies of the wall and into oblivion, or at least the dustbin.

She is not really that scared. Neither does she have an insect fetish. She is a very normal, cheerful, teenage girl, extroverted, lots of friends, hardworking but not too bright, firmly convinced that she is pretty, very optimistic most of the time. That’s why she never told anyone about the dreams.

During the day she is very – what’s the word – lively. As night draws nearer, gradually she becomes unhappily restless and starts to fidget. Her parents could never understand, why, even as a child, she had an inexplicable fear of going to sleep. Sometimes she can’t remember herself, why the little voices in the hidden, dusty corners of her mind start rustling frantically whenever her eyelids droop. That is because they fear the dreams almost as much as she does.

The dreams are very strange by anyone’s standards, but even more so from a bubbly seventeen-year-old’s point of view. In these dreams, she is lying on her bed, in the same position when she went to sleep, and now she can hear a surge of rustling from the floor of her room, and then the red ants rise in a tidal wave of tiny torture on every side of the bed, and she squeezes her eyes shut but she can still feel a rapidly thickening stream of ants scurrying up her arms, scrabbling around on her skin until they give a final little twist of their bodies before sinking their pincers into her flesh. It is a unbearably frightening pain, like a million tiny live needles piercing her, burrowing beneath the skin, trying to tunnel into her blood.

In these dreams, she tries to scream for help, but as soon she opens her mouth, the ants move towards her face and pour inside her mouth, biting at the insides of her cheeks, anchoring themselves on her tongue, piercing savagely until her head almost explodes with the pain, even advancing to the trachea, surging into her lungs, nibbling at her veins and arteries, mixing with her bloodstream, setting her insides on needles of fire.

In the end she can’t breathe, because the red ants have now moved up her nostrils and mouth, she can’t hear anything except the endless scurrying in her earlobes, she can’t see because they are swarming over her eyelids and pupils. She lies there on her bed, a human feasting-ground for the red ants that live inside our walls, under our carpets, in our gardens, and she cannot fight them, she is too weak, too frightened.

Eventually the sunlight wakes her up, and sometimes she cannot believe that her organs were not devoured in muted rustling in the night. This is why she is always so happy during the day, because she understands the value of reclaiming life and normality. She is only seventeen but inside her head is the knowledge of a thousand torturous deaths, each of which she has survived. She was frightened, but she lived. She was tortured, but she endured. She was eaten, but she is alive. She knows that life exists outside of stifled terror of the ravages of a million tiny flesh-eating red ants. When she grows up, she wants to be a lawyer.

The ants are a part of her now. The pain they inflict validates her happiness. She has never been able to bring herself to kill a single red ant, however. Possibly she has the instinctual knowledge that the day she does kill one of those red ants that infest her sleep, she will go to sleep that night and never wake up from her dream of being trapped in endless terror.

Trisha Ray
6/4/2008

Birthday Blues

2008-07-09T11:11:00.005+05:30

17 years ago today, my mother saw me for the first time, screamed, and fainted. subsequently she warned me that i had better be worth the trouble. i wasn't.

today, i'm running a mild but weakening temperature, not helped by the thought of an economics test tomorrow (aaarrgghh) and no party until the weekend.

the good part? tons of messages and birthday wishes from all the right people, starting from midnight yesterday.

am missing one day of school (read piles of mind-numbing notes) and falling back on certain Assignments. bleh.

this stupid fever started on saturday. since then i've been having horrific half-waking dreams where killer scarab beetles eat bugs bunny.

note to self :- WHY ME?

i spent sunday night wrapped in two bedsheets and wearing one grey sock in bed (the other one is now my cousin's sock-puppet, apparently) dreaming about achieving normalcy. sobbed myself to sleep, convinced that i was going to die. woke up and resolved to start believing in divinity from Monday.

today is wednesday. i am still an atheist. so much for deathbed promises. i miss lollipops. and pal

seriously, though, why? did i commit a heinous murder in some previous reincarnation? is that why i must spend my birthday with a sniffle, a headache, stuck at home, alone except for some friendly cake in the fridge?

and i've spent so much time convincing myself i'm not sick, i almost passed out in school yesterday. today, for a change, i passed out at home instead. my mouth tastes of mint toothpaste in particular and sour bitterness towards my life in general.

to anyone who's had the patience to read this far - i haven't always been so crazy, i'm just woozy today, that's all. please leave a comment, just to make me feel better about dying. thank you.

trisha

16 minutes later

my father just called to check up on me, and 5 minutes later jayanti aunty from flat number seven turned up with quiet sympathy and noodles. i sense the beginnings of a warm fuzzy feeling in the general location of my left ribs. i wonder if this is what groveling gratitude is supposed to feel like.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Turning 17 Tomorrow

2008-07-08T19:41:00.001+05:30

YOUR BIRTHDAY: 9 July (CANCER)

Your personal ruling planets are Moon and Mars.

The power of Mars and sensitivity of Moon combine to create a somewhat contradictory nature. On one hand the sensitive, caring and emotional elements will be expressed. At other times however, your strong willed sometimes aggressive nature will create head-on confrontations. In the house you are master. You need to control your immediate surroundings.

In work too, you like to take the lead, but domestically your urge to dominate, especially where children are concerned, will create continual conflict requiring a serious look at issues of power and control on your part.

Your lucky colours are red, maroon and scarlet and autumn tones.

Your lucky gems are red coral and garnet.

Your lucky days of the week are Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

Your lucky numbers and years of important change are 9, 18, 27, 36. 45, 54, 63, 72.

Famous people born on your birthday include Edward Heath, Tom Hanks, Kevin Nash, Courtney Love and Kelly McGillis.

The Rising Of The Cake - Part-II

2008-06-26T23:45:00.003+05:30

For everyone who hasn't read the first chapter of this, here it is all over again, followed by chapter two.

THE RISING OF THE CAKE-PART-I

The girl paused momentarily, torn by doubts. Already she was a heroine, having saved the day from being a catastrophe of epic proportions - death by fire must be terrible, she thought. Then she took a deep breath, and made up her mind. Closing her eyes, she lifted the ladle and added just the lightest trace of brandy to the baking garnish on the stove before her.
The redolent fragrance of eternally unwashed socks drifted through the kitchen. The syrup must have arrived then, borne by the local delivery boy(? old by now) whose breath must surely be one of the first warning signs of armageddon. Ushering him out, she turned back to her first love, the oven. The cake had risen.
Two hours later, the cake stood, imposing as a behemoth at bay, towering on the dining table. Like all great kings, it was grand and intimidating in its power on the outside. Inside, however, it was just a mushy, gooey, sticky core of blissful indulgence.
The base was a solid yet crusty platter of mocha biscuit. The lower foundations of the cake were made of sweet, crumble-as-you-touch classic brown walnut cake, encrusted with sizeable chunks of milk-and-cherry chocolate. The second layer, tapering to the third on top, was a soft creamy layer of soft coffee chocolate, the lightest and cloudiest of milk white frothy cream, and a dash-just a dash-of freezing cold blackcurrant syrup, running like a vapour trail through the whole layer. This layer was seasoned with a sprinkling of chocolate chips and the faintest whiff of brandy that hovered only at the surface and disappeared as you sank into the heavenly chocolate bliss of it all.
But the topmost layer-that was literally the royal jewel in the crown. Set like a chocolate boat atop this delicious edifice, it was a large-ish shallow cup made of chocolate biscuit wafer, and swimming with chocolate syrup. Gently floating in the middle was a cake island, made up of delicate-looking yet tough petals of black bitter chocolate, which surrounded a cup-sized flower. The gently placed core was a small ball of pure, sweet chocolate rolled around a cherry, and encrusted in a coral shaped layer of a mixture of coffee wafer, chocolate syrup, vanilla frosting, and a single candied rose-leaf. The very slight waves of the pool of chocolate syrup gave it a look of a chocolate island pleased with itself, and at peace with the world.
The heroine looked on proudly, the light of love and joy in her eyes as her creation rested in a magnificient pose on the table. Suddenly, as she looked down to wipe the last of the tasting spoons, still lightly smeared with melted milk chocolate, on her apron, the door burst open with a thud. She wheeled around with a sharp cry of alarm to face three large men wearing balaclavas framed in her doorway. Her glance fell on the foremost of them, whose t-shirt bore the legend MMU. Milkshake Movement Underground. Oh God............
With a slow dawning of horror, she realized the truth. These men-these men must have heard of her cake somehow and come to plunder it. with a faint gasp of terror, she moved bravely in front of the chocolate cake, brandishing her still creamy ladle, ready to risk her all to protect the cake she loved................

FIND OUT THE REST OF THE STORY NEXT WEEK, IN "THE RISING OF THE CHOCOLATE CAKE-PART-II"

On the other side of town, the MMU Don raised his eyebrows and barked the word "Moron!” into the phone.

“It was one woman! One diminutive pastry chef and one masterpiece that was yours to take! How does a cake-crazy midget overpower two MMU assassins and escape? And more importantly, where to?” A deep breath. “Find her. Take the cake. If you have any problems, call me.” A pregnant silence. “And listen, one last thing. Don’t call me.”

The waves of fear seemed to carry over the phone, because after a short silence, the Don hung up.

The man on the other side of the desk smiled. His teeth had gold fillings, every last one of them, even though he was only about thirty. Years of sinking himself into the treacly delights of fudge and marshmallow had left him with permanently rotting teeth, rolls and rolls of sinking, pudgy flab, and a phobia of dentists. His was a benign face, a face that promised cheer and goodwill to all things baked, creamed and frosted on this earth, masking the cunning and greed beneath the ponderously chubby cheeks of an ultrasize Pillsbury Doughboy.

The Don gave his cream-mint flavored cigar an uneasy look.

“The cake seems to still be at large.”

The doughy man kept smiling. Inside, his flabby drooping guts twisted themselves into an agony of apprehension. The pink hands clenched a little.

The Don kept talking, with a shade more confidence.

“It is only a question of time. The woman cannot be trusted, but the cake she will keep intact, if she values her professional integrity. I swear this on my mother’s life.”

The man facing him forbore to point out that the present Don’s mother had died twelve years previously of a surfeit of chocolate éclairs. Instead, he spoke dreamily.

His voice was like him, rolling, ponderous, pleasant, but with undertones of homicidal mania.

“I must have that cake,” he sighed, rocking slightly. “It is my dream, you understand? Started years ago as a child, built up into massive proportions in cordon bleu school, frosted with my hopes and dreams all these years in the safety of my classic dessert lounge, yet everything I have ever achieved is nothing to what that one small woman produced in two days, on her own, in a pitifully antiquated kitchen. And I ask myself, why? Is it her natural talent that surpasses mine? Impossible. It is well known that I am the king of dessert. Is it her undivided time and attention that made that cake what it is today? No. What thirty pastry chefs could not achieve working together is out of her reach. Then – and mark this – it must be the recipe. An heirloom, perhaps, passed on for generations, added to but never changed in its essence. And that is why” – clenching his fists – “I must have it. Already, news of this supercake drifts through the corridors of the Confectionary Kingdom and begins to titillate the tastebuds of leading pastry critics, leaving my recent creations in the dust. My reputation, my career, my life’s work is at stake. I must have this cake. I will taste it, then I will break it down to its base, then I will savour the ingredients until I have captured the soul of each one of them. And then,” – a predatory smile changed the Pillsbury Doughboy face to the awful visage of a plump barracuda – “ I will bake my own Cake.”

The Don shifted in nervous acquiescence, staring at the wall behind his guest.

In the distance, police sirens blared.

STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER, COMING SOON, ONLY ON TRISHA-MYCRIMINALTHOUGHTS@BLOG

Garfield

2008-06-16T00:03:00.005+05:30

I'm sorry, but I got a message today, found a new site, and after that I couldn't resist

trisha

The eleventh commandment - thou shalt not get caught

2008-06-08T22:56:00.004+05:30

my top ten quotes, which exemplify everything i believe in and admire, to be reviewed and caustically shredded by the discerning public

Before all else, be armed -- Niccolo Machiavelli

Men are pigs, and I love pork -- Tyra Banks

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it -- Oscar Wilde

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake -- Napoleon Bonaparte

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell -- Aldous Huxley

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth -- Umberto Eco

What do you take me for, an idiot?-- General Charles de Gaulle when a journalist asked him if he was happy

If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough -- Mario Andretti

It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion -- Albert Einstein

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win -- Mahatma Gandhi

introspectively yours,

trisha

Barely legal lollipop mania

2008-06-01T22:39:00.005+05:30

yes, here we go again... the lollipop chronicles have the potential to embarrass us both horribly in the not-too-distant future, but its not like we care.

for further details refer to

http://shoiliunleashinmyspirit.blogspot.com/

good luck pal! (i'm the one on the left)

note how pretty the lollipops look under the dim streetlights in a dark back street............

fave movies n books (for now)

2008-05-28T15:44:00.000+05:30

borat, i like! need i say more?

simultaneously, im reading

It Is Summer

2008-05-28T15:32:00.000+05:30

it's been a while since i wrote this, and i didn't have the nerve to post it until now. i'm still not sure, but here goes...........

It is summer.

Winter has passed. No-one noticed spring – whether it came and went, or was overtaken on the race to this country by the summer waves of heat and decided to go back home is none of our concern. All we know is that our country is hot again. Our hot, sultry, humid, exotic, passionate, frustrated, wonderful, beautiful country.

I am sitting here alone on the roof of our house. I came home alone, and instead of going to my room, I stayed talking with my friends, until everyone went home and I came up here .I used to do this much more two or three years ago. When I was thirteen years old, and as I recall, very depressed with myself and my life, it was almost an addiction with me to come up here and look at the sky and untangle my thoughts in a way that didn’t make my sanity seem redundant.

The sky fascinated me. I stared at it, sometimes for the better part of an hour, at the patterns of sunlight on clouds, at the rising of the sun behind a cotton blanket of morning clouds that looked like they guarded the horizon of the ocean at the end of the world. The stars were always my favorite part of any view of the sky. I’ve sneaked up to the roof at two in the morning, four am before dawn, the stroke of midnight, in time for sunset, late evening, even high noon – I could probably find my way up there with my hands tied behind my back and blindfolded. Sometimes it would be like distant tiny sparkling gemstones lying scattered across the mindbendingly vast dome that is the sky. Sometimes there would be just a few strong constant points of diamond light shining through the enormous skies of the plains, turned a brooding yet serene purple for the night, bringing an anticipatory shudder of response to the promise of rain in one’s spine. Delicious, dangerous yet welcome thrill of the prospect of a storm, perhaps a chill breeze, the smell of wet earth and the salt bracken of the marshlands further inland. That is the heaven of our country, the bliss of the cities of the green plains of the east.

I never thought that the stars were my friends or that the moon had a person living inside it. I knew perfectly well that the stars were immense fireballs shining across unimaginable lengths of distance and time. On clear nights, as a child I remember seeing the craters on the face of the moon through the lattice veil of the leaves of the huge trees on either side of the quiet lanes near my home. I still think that the moon looks like an ancient ruin hanging in the sky, a legacy of an ancestral race that lived when the moon was still a part of us.

The greatness of the sky, the distance and beauty of the moon and the stars has never made me feel “small” or “insignificant”. Always, always, I have felt as though I was a part of that glory. I remember with reasonable clarity at least three occasions when this happened to an unusual extent.

Once it was late evening, and a cool summer breeze made me lift up my face, and the sky was sparkling like a tiara with countless stars.

Once it was sunset, and the blood-orange light of the sun struck and fell away from massively banked clouds across the entire sky.

Once it was the time of the approaching monsoon, and the heavy, massive, steel, almost black clouds appeared to be closing in on the horizon around the edges of the world.

On each occasion I could close my eyes and suddenly my mind was swirling with some unnameable primeval feeling, and I felt that I could be at the centre of it all, like the siphon at the eye of a hurricane. It was an exhilarating, terrible, slightly frightening, empowering and heartbreakingly sad moment each time. Tonight is the first time I have ever written of it.

So many beautiful times on this roof. So many thoughts resolved, feelings decided, doubts cleared, situations thought out, conversations held. So many memories. Sad, enigmatic, doubtful, deeply important to me as a person, as a human being with a soul at the core of me.

I intended to write about only tonight. But I knew as soon as I brought my pen to paper that I must make a record of all I owe to this place. All the gratitude I feel to the sky for being so beautiful, powerful, strong, imposing, arrogant in its immensity, so much a part of me. Memories I must record for my own sake.

And now I come to tonight. A beautiful breeze, the heat is not enough yet to make one gasp for breath, as it will be later, but still the wind blowing my soft hair across my face is very welcome. The moon is full, colored a dull red, the craters visible, looking like an ancient temple of beautiful white skystone behind the red tinted ragged curtains of clouds fringing it. The sky is that serene, gloomy tint of purple that I love so much. So beautiful, all of it; so painful, the pull of unbearably desperate longing inside me.

I can hardly stop to breathe in my hurry to write, afraid that if I stop then these feelings will leave me for good this time and I will never be able to recapture this soul-filling exultation in my core again, much less put it in words.

The sky is overcast now. The breeze has died, almost. My hands hurt from balancing myself to write for so long. But I am finished recording my secret life as a skygazing dreamer (how clichéd it seems to say this – until it is true for one) for now, that is. The music in my ear has become intrusive. I am done writing for tonight.

Summer is here.

Trisha Ray
23/3/2008

I'm Back

2008-05-24T13:36:00.000+05:30

And that's all I have to say about that. Delhi was good, yes, and i shopped till I dropped, yes, and I don't know much about the red alert, no, and now bugger off.

trisha

Miffed

2008-05-11T00:24:00.000+05:30

to whom it may concern

i am not suicidal, schizophrenic, paranoid, or more than normally depressed and/or isolated. if any of you readers wish to indulge in "supportive counselling" on my blog, at least READ the post or even PRETEND like you know what you're talking about, goddammit!!!

thank you for your time

My Last Will and Testament (For Now)

2008-05-08T23:13:00.000+05:30

I will be leaving for delhi on sunday for a school summer camp for ten days (!!!!!!!)

and before i go i'm making a will, so if i die or get kidnapped by terrorists, y'all know who gets what, so you can go ahead and blame the right people for nicking my stuff.

suddenly the term "over my dead body" acquires a whole new dimension, doesn't it?

anyway, here goes nothing

in my last will and testament, i, trisha the goofy, child of satan's fold, would have all my earthly possessions left to various of my kin and companions. in event of my untimely demise. my properties are to be apportioned as follows

my bounty of rich garments reverts to my parents, as they paid for it to begin with

my music cds and the unexplored crevasses of mp3-s on my hard drives i leave in equal portions to my good friend akash da, because he started me off, and to shoili di, who "freaks" music, much like me

my cell-phone i leave to my best friend anindita, because she needs the radio add-on

my computer goes to my favorite relative, gautam mama, even though he's actually just a family friend, because he taught me about attack being the best form of defense

my collection of comics goes to his dweebiness the tito, just because

my fantasy and thriller novels go to amit (fido) in memory

my funny novels go to shoili di and anindita, because once i'm gone i won't worry about them figuring out where i get my joke material from

my text books go to my cousin babai, because that's how nerdy he is

my collection of black metal chain i leave to titas, because she's the one who'll probably want it the most

my junk jewellery i leave to my cousin brinda, because i owe her

everything else can rot until eternity, who cares, except my first stuffed toy, the grey dog i got the day after i was born, which i insist be burnt with me, and the liquid in the all-out in my room, which i hope someone with a reasonable amount of brains and guts uses to poison my worst enemy, that awful librarian at BCL. (********)

goodbye, life! what the hell, you sucked anyway.

trisha

Funkalicious Food___ What A Day

2008-04-27T19:54:00.000+05:30

Today, dear reader, this freaky blogger will attempt to describe a day in the life of a foodie, with all its attendant pleasures. This blog will now proceed to show, step by step, how the nirvana of foodalicious bliss may be achieved.

Step 1

Wake up not earlier than nine and proceed to have a leisurely shower, leaving yourself enough time to get adequately dressed and cast a contemplative glance at your firmly closed textbooks. On no account must you open them. That is a surefire recipe for guilt-laced disaster for the rest of the day.

Step 2

Saunter at a peaceful pace out of the house, and make your way to the (specific) person's house, where you are supposed to make what promises to be a difficult, time-consuming project. Stop off on the way to do a little mild shopping for aforesaid project.

Step 3

Walk with delighted surprise into an old-style house that is so reminiscent of my grandparents' home that I actually expect to see my granma pop around the corner with a plate of sweetmeats at any moment.

Step 4

Work at a collage in perfect unison, harmony, and to the tune of funky radio beats and a slight breath of scandal, along with Ankana and Ashutosh, two very talented and intelligent juniors from my school, Bhavan's, for our upcoming school trip to Delhi.

Step 5

Sit down to a lavish lunch of at least four courses and several finger-licking side-dishes, courtesy your friend's (Ankana)mother. Refuse third helpings and wear a silly smile of satisfaction on your face for the rest of the day.

Step 6

Finish part of the project, have the world's most yummy strawberry shake, and take yourself off for a wonderful walk along the banks of the nearby lake. Enjoy the wonderful breeze, the beautiful trees, and ignore the brimming jealousy inside you for not living in this neighbourhood and no other.

Step 7

Walk back to the main road, explore a bookshop, then return to the house to have drinks, chips and FINALLY decide to tear yourself away from this wonderful, beautiful woman, who makes THE best home-made lunches in the cities with exquisite skill, care and presentation. [THANK YOU AUNTY!!!!!]

Step 8

Say goodbye to Ankana, after having borrowed a book (Sidney Sheldon) and leave.

Step 9

Reach home. Realize with resigned resignation that you must get chores and homework and studies out of the way before you can sit down to blog about this. Do your chores and go out to meet a couple of friends and pick up a few things. Return home, and instantly decide to start blogging anyway.

Step 10

Come to terms with the fact that despite approaching adulthood you still have not acquired any sense of responsibility or any propensity for mature reflection. Shut down the PC and think dark thoughts about Life while struggling with homework.

Trisha

Easy Wings

2008-04-23T00:26:00.000+05:30

Was it easy when you said you didn't love me
Did you have to want to throw me away
Did you never think that you might need me
Is it a lie that you once cared

Is there any way I can take it all back now
Can I make it up to you somehow
You're my heart, my life, my world
But your words fill me with doubt

How can you say you don't love me
Look at you, you can't even sleep
How can you say you don't need me
Look at me, I'm the one you need

Fly away, fly away, fly away now
Is there any way to stop the pain
Why did you make me stop loving you
Why is my tomorrow your yesterday

Trisha

Land of Lollipop Looniness

2008-04-17T22:06:00.000+05:30

Land of Lollipop Looniness

This is something that happened today, in a parallel reality far, far removed from this grim land of Mundania.
Shoili di and I finished karate class. We walked out of school together, at the exact same time that a hazy cloud of madness swooped down upon the lamppost just outside the school gates. Consequent events bear out my (working) assumption that either some strange germ of mindfreak got rooted in our dual consciousness of happy sarcasm, or else that fatigue and a certain amount of euphoria (don't ask) got to us instead.

Anyway, we wanted to walk down a back street so we could listen to some music with the sound up and loud. So we turned left, then we turned back and turned right to get chewing gum, 'cause I can't live without. Standing in front of a tiny vendor's shop whose owner knows us from yore and is firmly convinced that we are the mad children of Satan's Cloud, I asked for a coupla bucks' worth of gum. At this point, Shoili di suddenly develops a fierce craving for lollipops and jelly and can't decide which to have. In order to compromise, I buy both. We walk a solid ten feet away from the shop before giving vent to near-hysterical sniggers of glee and hunger induced by carb-cravings.

Next thing we know, we're halfway down that lonely, badly-lit back street, and I'm propping my bags up on a car that Shoili di hit (not too hard) to make sure it doesn't have a security bleeper, fumbling for the most delicious little fingerful of litchi jelly I have ever tasted. This is after we struggled valiantly to get the wrapping off the top of the tiny cup (eventually we wound up using a pen that I extracted with great nimbleness from my pencil-box, fatally injuring the zipper of my bag in the process).

Later we also struggled to get the wrapping off the lollipop, and realized with burning shame that packaging designed and made easy to handle (I assume) for tiny children was eluding us with fiendish cunning. I think we also stopped at some point to take a picture of me giving the finger to the lollipop(!!!!!!!) in Shoili di's hand. Eventually we boarded an auto, where, for only the second time ever, we were outdone in our outrageous banter by three badly-dressed men arguing about money, who even made US go quiet for as much as five consecutive seconds. Until we realized that it took us 35 minutes to walk down a road that normally takes 5. Apparently fooling around tacks on an extra half-an-hour and some seriously memorable tastebud experiences on to that, by now legendary, walk.

Much later, on the bus home, I bought more sweets (the black, sticky, DELICIOUS kind), ate a mango candy and started on chewing gum, both of which just happened to be lying around in my bag, and mused on how having so much concentrated, fattening sugar in my body just made me feel like a better, happier, more peaceful person.

This totally makes up for the disappointment we had a couple of weeks ago, when we made up a cheeky April's Fool song and tried to gatecrash Sriparna Ma'am's elegant domicile, only to be ejected by a senile dog's wheezy "intruder" barking (I thought it would die from the vocal strain) and an alarming lady in white who told us kindly but firmly that Sriparna Ma'am' was not, in fact, at home.

In your face, Rufus Sr, your royal woofiness!!!!!!!!!

Shoili di's version:- coming soon on ________________

http://shoiliunleashinmyspirit.blogspot.com.

If this sounds crazy to you, and you would like to express your disbelief/contempt/fear/morbid curiosity/mediocrity through a comment, please refrain, you stupid !!!!@#$%^&* of a @#$%^&* whose !@#$%^&U* is nothing more than a ()*&^%$#%^&*@!#$^%&^*^, you little *(&%^$%%)^%$#Q$#..................!@#$%^&*()*&^&)_*(&$#&*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

trisha

everybody else can leave comments, email, etc, etc.....so that's like what, three, maybe four people?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CANDY SHOP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Poila Baishakh

2008-04-14T16:36:00.000+05:30

Send Multiple Scraps to your friends

and i will now proceed to hog out on rosogolla

............ (below)

Snow

2008-04-13T00:05:00.001+05:30

This is the book I'm reading right now.

Really amazing, insightful, sensitive, creative, goddamn PEACEFUL writer. Honestly, when the scene is a snowed-in town reeling under a bloody coup, it's like he manages to make the reader feel that that same town is the quietest, most contemplative beautiful place in the world.

I'm reading it like I sip a cool drink, slowly and happily in the summertime, savouring it fully, enjoying the gentle introspection like bubbles at the surface, drinking the emotions like the delicious top layers.

I'm yet to reach the dregs. I'm in no hurry. Eventually I know I will have this very calmimg yet invigorating book sloshing around in the hollow corners of my mind, filling up the blank spaces between Umberto Eco and Frederick Forsyth in the library catalogue of my subconscious mind. Until then ...... tesekkur ederim, Orhan Pamuk!

Trisha

Rain

2008-04-04T16:19:00.000+05:30

the elements of nature are supposed to inspire creativity in aspiring poets. you might think that this is a gloomy poem, but it is one of the most joyful things i've ever written. as always, i would appreciate comments.

RAIN

i've cried a thousand times
i lost my mind in the pain
i wrote my songs and my rhymes
i broke my heart in the rain

it is morning and there is no light
cold winds don't stop blowing because i broke my heart
and the moon rises brighter than the sun
i don't stop living because i tore myself apart

i freeze and i burn, and i hate myself
my world stops turning, and i don't die
the wind starts blowing and i'm burnt and broken
but i'm still not going to die

this feels like ripples in a silver stream
like dawning sunrise behind the mountains
like good luck floating inside a moonbeam
like tiny rainbows inside a marble fountain

it tastes like raindrops in the middle of the night
like ice-cold honey at the break of dawn
like a lake of mountain-water filled with ice and light
like the heart of a rose within the thorn

it sounds like angels singing beside the ocean
like birds taking flight at the sight of sunrise
like desolation at the thought of separation
like sparkling tears of regret in dark black eyes

from dust to ashes,from laughter to hate
from the clouds in the sky to water underground
like the difference between choices and fate
like escaping to dreams to hear raindrops, that sweet sound

trisha

Blogthings

2008-03-23T17:18:00.000+05:30

You Are a Phoenix

Driven and ambitious, you tend to acquire material success easily.

You have grand schemes - both for your own life and for changing the whole world.

You are a great leader, and you have no problem taking the reigns.

However, you aren't all business. You also have great talents for performing and visual arts.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

trisha

the phoenix

?????????????????????

Costume Dressing For the 21st Century Outcast

2008-03-23T13:11:00.000+05:30

A SHORT TREATISE ON DRESSING FOR THE AVERAGE REBELLIOUS TEENAGE GIRL circa 2008

The first word on dressing for teenage girls in Kolkata is of course the Mall. This holy institution houses eclectic styles, several designer brands and absolutely no sense of chic dressing. It is a godawful mishmash of fusion trends at the moment. Apparently garish is in. Go Kolkata.

ANYWAY, the kind of girl (see above illustration to SO prove my point) who buys this stuff is usually one very optimistic chick. No amount of gap jeans or Manolo Blahnik shoes or Satya Paul accessories can make you look less

a) pudgy, wobbly, and pouring out of that tight waisted halter-top

OR

b) like a stick insect lost inside clothes that SHOULD make you look good but end up making you looking like a loser of a , well, stick insect with brittle twigs for limbs and cotton fluff in place of a brain.

But then this particular piece of admittedly self-indulgent writing is not about that brand of air-heads, appealing though it may be to rip their psyches apart. No, today I would rather think about the girls that fall outside this category. Like the sporty ones, the funky trendsetters, the punks, the moushumi-s, the romantic ones, the aspiring heroines, and the ones who honestly couldn't care less.

The thing about (us) girls is that we like dressing good, but we don't think the world is coming to an end when we turn up somewhere and the bi*** across the room is wearing our outfit. We're more laid back about clothes and life in general. We don't freak out on accessories and although we do look at winter/fall showcase lines we only "approve and follow" when we "like". Not fanaticism. Just appreciative consumerism. See illustration below.

YES this is going somewhere.

I usually wear jeans and something on top. Mostly ethnic-chic/smart-casuals/punk-grunge if you will, sometimes with a jacket, earrings at a stretch, minimal camouflage, and HEELS. I CANNOT live without heels. I may be topping 5'7ft by now but i still need to feel literally "on top". At all times.
Throw in a ponytail or a bandanna and a bored expression and I am set to go out and conquer.

But recently I've been forced to make some really weird (for me) fashion choices. On the 11th of February I wore a sari. Yes, that's right, a sari. I could barely walk, I was chilled to the backbone from the wind, and it all fell apart as I raced back upstairs to change for my very first date with (bleep), so that I burst into my room wearing nothing but two fistfuls of unravelled sari and a panic-stricken expression.

And today I woke up and put on a skirt.
In self-defence I must say that I never actually went out and bought this thing. Some girls bought it for me for a (disastrous) dance performance in January. I kept it and broke it in today.
It (the aforementioned skirt) is knee length. It is a light cornflower beige in colour. It has TASSELS, for god's sake.
I wore it with a close-fitting white top with long sleeves, brushed open hair and black heels. When I finally worked up the immortal nerve to look in the mirror I swear to god I thought I saw a teenage amazonian version (T/Ray 0.2008??) of Oprah Winfrey. Holy crap.

No guests are ever worth this. Thank god they're gone, so that now i can curse their souls into oblivion in peace.

I will now undress. I will put away this outfit with meticulous care, following all the crease lines along the pretty tassels to perfection. Afterwards I shall don old shorts and a grungy T-shirt, find an isolated corner, and then I will sit and scream for a while, until I'm convinced of my own return to sanity.

Trisha

Chocolate Cake

2008-03-21T17:13:00.001+05:30

ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, today i will be behaving very self-indulgently at the nearest pastry shop. just to prove to myself that the TOTALLY mind-blowing experience i am about to have is really really real, i'm putting up my cake
wish-list here. hee hee.

trisha

Happy Sun Colours

2008-03-21T15:42:00.000+05:30

Ohmigod what a great day!!!!!!!! but lemme explain........this is SUPPOSED to be my online journal, when all's said and done............

i finally got to sleep late as its an "official" holiday. when i woke up, i had a lazy and prolonged bath, then read the latest Artemis novel in PDF form before getting a call inviting me to get downstairs to the para park and get colour dunked.

i duly obliged. since i was late (so what's new) i was just in time to get an entire bucket of colour water splashed on my head by my (loving) para friends. a bandanna and old clothes that i've lately taken to sleeping in couldn't save me from looking like a complete barbarian.LOL i know i scared my mother when i came back up. she thought i'd come from the local youth club to ask for donations.

anyway after we finished slapping water and colors around, taking cool pictures and baking ourselves in the sun (one of us spread himself out on the park bench and declared his intention to see if permanent colour could be genetically passed on to his descendants) we lazed around for a while (as for me, for the first time in a very long while i took a turn on the swings, bringing memories and nausea rushing back in equal proportions).

a friend read my palm. according to him, i have three life lines, two of which project my early death. the third is long but dependent on following a life-pattern that both of us are clueless about. my education/career line is well-developed, i'm going to have an attractive partner, and i have bad luck in trivial affairs.

although i didn't need an amateur fortune-telling yogic to realize the truth of that last bit about bad luck.

anyway i had a fun day so far. judging by moments spent with this particular group of friends, it ranks right up there with the new year's rooftop party, the hangout session on the day of saraswati puja and the jam sessions at akash-da's house. those
in-depth chats on emo/rock music, sci-fi literature and careertalk in the evenings all last year remain unparalleled, though.

let's see what the evening brings.

anyway, this last bit is not for general consumption. for my CLOSE friends -- i mean ani, fido, shoili di, nilaj -- Happy Holi!!!!! included in these wishes are of course suki di, arnab da, akash da, titan, ankana, titas, debu, rimi di, sourav, shanky, debatri, kaustav, arnab (barat), srijita, and my baby cousin sister brinda. love y'all.....be happy, you guys!!!

trisha
21/3/2008

Happy Birthday Suki Di

2008-03-16T21:31:00.000+05:30

dear suki di

a million apologies for my cluelessness in forgetting your birthday. anyway.........i have a present for you that is actually a combination of two of my favorite things- writing and chocolate. and here it is -- i call it

THE RISING OF THE CAKE-PART-I

The girl paused momentarily, torn by doubts. Already she was a heroine, having saved the day from being a catastrophe of epic proportions - death by fire must be terrible, she thought. Then she took a deep breath, and made up her mind. Closing her eyes, she lifted the ladle and added just the lightest trace of brandy to the baking garnish on the stove before her.

The redolent fragrance of eternally unwashed socks drifted through the kitchen. The syrup must have arrived then, borne by the local delivery boy(? old man by now) whose breath must surely be one of the first warning signs of armageddon. Ushering him out, she turned back to her first love, the oven. The cake had risen.

Two hours later, the cake stood, imposing as a behemoth at bay, towering on the dining table. Like all great kings, it was grand and intimidating in its power on the outside. Inside, however, it was just a mushy, gooey, sticky core of blissful indulgence.

The base was a solid yet crusty platter of mocha biscuit. The lower foundations of the cake were made of sweet, crumble-as-you-touch classic brown walnut cake, encrusted with sizeable chunks of milk-and-cherry chocolate. The second layer, tapering to the third on top, was a soft creamy layer of soft coffee chocolate, the lightest and cloudiest of milk white frothy cream, and a dash-just a dash-of freezing cold blackcurrant syrup, running like a vapour trail through the whole layer. This layer was seasoned with a sprinkling of chocolate chips and the faintest whiff of brandy that hovered only at the surface and disappeared as you sank into the heavenly chocolate bliss of it all.

But the topmost layer-that was literally the royal jewel in the crown. Set like a chocolate boat atop this delicious edifice, it was a large-ish shallow cup made of chocolate biscuit wafer, and swimming with chocolate syrup. Gently floating in the middle was a cake island, made up of delicate-looking yet tough petals of black bitter chocolate, which surrounded a cup-sized flower. The gently placed core was a small ball of pure, sweet chocolate rolled around a cherry, and encrusted in a coral shaped layer of a mixture of coffee wafer, chocolate syrup, vanilla frosting, and a single candied rose-leaf. The very slight waves of the pool of chocolate syrup gave it a look of a chocolate island pleased with itself, and at peace with the world.

The heroine looked on proudly, the light of love and joy in her eyes as her creation rested in a magnificient pose on the table. Suddenly, as she looked down to wipe the last of the tasting spoons, still lightly smeared with melted milk chocolate, on her apron, the door burst open with a thud. She wheeled around with a sharp cry of alarm to face three large men wearing balaclavas framed in her doorway. Her glance fell on the foremost of them, whose t-shirt bore the legend MMU. Milkshake Movement Underground. Oh god............

With a slow dawning of horror, she realized the truth. These men-these men must have heard of her cake somehow and come to plunder it. With a faint gasp of terror, she moved bravely in front of the chocolate cake, brandishing her still creamy ladle, ready to risk her all to protect the cake she loved................

FIND OUT THE REST OF THE STORY NEXT WEEK, IN "THE RISING OF THE CHOCOLATE CAKE-PART-II"

P.S-if you find this thrilling story delicious (or otherwise)please leave a comment. i'll use your suggestions and even reply if i feel like it.

MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY, SUKI DI!! THE FORCE OF THE CHOCOLATE IS WITH YOU......

trisha

dark horse underground

2008-03-14T19:09:00.000+05:30

and yet another dark horse from these literary stables....it's catching up fast

don't you remember you left me alone waiting
don't you recall you never came back to me
don't you worry i'm happier without you anyway
don't you know that finally i've begun to see

wish for the stars and all you get is tears
smile through the rain and you hold the world in your hands
wait for a miracle and the world tries to break you
fight your way up; it's the only life you'll ever understand

people call you sad, but you never gave up smiling
your family is your heart and they think you're crazy
you fell on your knees but you always kept on trying
how am i going to live, live without you, baby

you drew a summer dream in chalk on the pavement
you sang in the street when you thought no-one was watching
you danced blindfolded with two left feet
you stared at the moon and then i knew you were dreaming

who asked you to be a hero
who asked you to die this way
you said you'd stay forever
but you left me anyway

miss you, hate you,can't make up my mind
wasn't it enough you're gone without turning me blind?
not enough that i've buried my heart with you
not enough that it seems i'll never forget you?

trisha

HeadCase Extraordinaire

2008-03-03T21:08:00.000+05:30

and another attempt that kind of meandered off the first time.....let me know what y'all think!

NINTH SIGHT

one more time please let me breathe
one last time, how can you not see
see me, see you, see how we feel
for the first time i can see

i was holding back for far too long
i'm trying to believe that this is where i belong
it's hard to know what's right, hard to say it's wrong
life's a bitch, trust no-one, that's why i wrote this song

tired of hearing the things you always knew but never talked about
and then understanding your nightmares that you're never without
the musical explosion overtakes you before you can get out
and that's before you get angry and start to scream and shout

you break the rules, break the walls, break your own mind
hate yourself, hate everyone else who ever walked the line
hate that you loved, loved where now you can't stop hating
love that you're free to hate, then you can start forgetting

forget the laughter, forget the pain
forget the way he left you feeling like rain
forget the reasons you counted at night
forget that it was love at ninth sight

can i dance with you, you're a king without a crown
trying to fly but you can't lift off the ground
i'm sorry but not even for you will i clip my wings
we love, we fly, but only one of us will sing

trisha

Fate

2008-03-03T20:34:00.000+05:30

FATE

my latest stab at writing. please comment

live in peace, die in war, dance in the sunshine
hold hands with fate in the garden of death
bring god and satan out of your own mind
try to smile, can't stop crying with every breath

you walk with misfortune down a lonely street
she looks kind and gentle but very very sad
thorns in her hair, blood on her feet
she wears her sorrow proudly like a badge

sing at midnight, and memory watches you
leaning lazily against a moonbeam
he laughs and mocks your happy sleeping hours
and he tells you that joy is just a dream

you laugh and you cry and you have to decide
which one of them fills your heart more
you cry when you're awake and you smile in your dreams
unhappiness - what is it good for?

so you say that you're happy
and by now you should know
what makes you the way you are
today's going to be sunny
and by now you should know
that your clouds are no closer than your star

trisha

I too can be free

2008-02-19T16:42:00.000+05:30

oh boy, its 4:42 pm, and what a miserable day it is.............cloudy and dank and rather defeatist, just like my feelings towards my exams. although if the past year has taught me anything, its that i can do no better than to always focus on the positive (but then i have had an extraordinarily successful year in 2007-08 by my standards - no suicidal depression in the winter months for the first time since i was nine years old, and a lot of things received, achieved, and believed). there are always reasons to be miserable - i tend to indulge in frequent bouts of intense self-pity, punctuated by occasional euphoric outbursts triggered by elation, paranoia, apprehension or all three - and of course there are the predictable moodswings that follow the trend of the lunar cycle, of all things............but funnily enough, for the first time last year, all that ***t didn't happen. i don't know what it was, maybe the relief of handling easy subjects (for me), the creative scope i got to do stuff; write, act, speak, maybe the fact that after being put in charge of some projects at school (for whatever reason) i learned to handle authority for the first time, maybe because i was so busy and so tired and worn out all the time i didn't have a chance to introspect too much, maybe a combination of all of this - but for the first time i truly shrugged off the pressure of expectations, in the way i promised myself since i turned thirteen. after hitting the teens, i've always stuck to the principle that you shouldn't care about what others think of you if you want to keep your sanity and self-respect alive and in good working order. but there was always a sense of playing to the footlights, like i wouldn't dare to be me, to stand out there and rip off the disguise and show people "this is me, whole and true" for fear of what they might think of me............that paralyzing self-doubt, the fear of not being good enough, being laughed at and mocked, always just under the surface, always on the guard, waiting for something to rip the carpet out from under my feet.

but this year.....oh, this year i achieved the right things at the right time, with the right attitude as a side bonus, and then i picked up momentum, and before i knew it insecurity and fear were going out the window and courage and success and the sweet, sweet feeling of not giving a damn took their place. and i'm happy, goddammit, and proud of it! a monumental achievement of mine, this being happy....because as always no-one is better than me at dragging me down, especially whenever i get close to the top.........weird thing to write, isn't it....."today i didn't make me unhappy" ....but so new, so wonderful, so addictive a feeling for me, i can't get enough of it.

even the rain can't make me sad! i love the chill wind on my skin, and the faint smell of wet earth that you get in the suburbs, and the grey sky makes me all dreamy and makes me wonder about the steel fortress of the clouds...............

i have uptil the 3rd of march to live with the pressure of exams. after that i'm free...but this is a weak bondage anyway.

i have a good life. a good family, the finer things of life, good friends, a shelf on the wall with a lot of glass and metal on it, a lot of ambitions, my health, even potential for a "soulmate" (though i doubt it - big deal anyway) and a crazy imagination that is the most vital part of me.

when i write this, i almost can't recognize myself from even a year ago. it seems like someone else, someone who's not insecure and sullen, resentful and introverted anymore. all that i replaced with layers of self-confidence (ok, let's be honest-arrogance, but who cares) and an inches thick layer of immunity to negative vibes (very essential). my friends think i've grown more caring and comforting though. looks like security breeds empathy.

this blog is going to sound insane to anyone who doesn't know me. so what, i'm still gonna post it to prove i'm real.

this is basically a declaration of independence from me to myself.

i may be crazy/but it's working for me baby/and oneday it might work for you too/and if you're the only reason/that i'm supposed to stick around/then i might as well be done with you

peace out. goodnight, world

still and always alone

2008-02-19T00:20:00.000+05:30

dear blog diary
i just want to post something on the spur of the moment. i know it won't make sense to most people; it doesn't even rhyme right, for crying out loud, but its still the most honest thing i've ever written, and the witching hour seemed like the right time to put my soul online

STILL SO ALONE.........

i sit here now
an empty desk before me
empty thoughts, empty words
empty feelings flow through me
my eyes open, the mind stays closed
my fingers flex without feeling
i feel myself beginning to sink slowly
and then my mind starts reeling
at last i grasp the implication
of what i suspected for so long
i live outside my own body
my life is not where i belong
i wish i was normal,like everyone else
i wish i didn't think so much,that i could be happy to be blind
i wish i could choose not to see what repels me
i wish i could be blank inside my own mind
i used to think i was lucky,to see things from a higher place
now my tower is an island fortress, with only me inside
i look for the people who might have lived here once,or might want to
i search,i probe,plead to Fate to take my loneliness on a joyride
i try to be happy that i'm so alone, that i speak in a code language
with only one existing key,that i hold, alone by default
but i need someone,anyone,to say they know how i think,why i feel,how i act
why my guilt brings me to my knees at an abrupt halt
i've almost given up waiting to find someone like me
almost surrendered,but not quite
maybe if i hide myself behind me for a little longer
one day i'll find the light
and so my mind goes blank and my conscience switches off again
my fingers uncurl themselves,my eyes stare sightlessly
my mouth feels numb, like there's no more to say
and then - my ghosts resurface remorselessly

valentine's day

2008-02-14T18:24:00.000+05:30

i love to hate love. even when i'm trying to want to love. maybe because i'm bored by the incessant and excessive sentiment that is love. a clean, empty heart with efficiently-docketed emotions just seems so much more appealing. thank the gods i have sarcasm instead.

go simpsons.....up yours, mr.burns!

2008-02-12T23:43:00.000+05:30

power drives men crazy. but sometimes the screenwriters behind them take this power-craze to a whole new dimension of ironic cruelty. for example, mr.burns, courtesy the simpsons. following are some classic lines from episodes over the long, money-hungry, power-mad years.....

Mr.Burns: Quick Smithers. Bring the mind eraser device!

Smithers:You mean the revolver, sir?

Mr.Burns: Precisely.

Mr. Burns: I'll keep it short and sweet -- Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.

Burns: Look at that pig. Stuffing his face with donuts on my time! That's right, keep eating...Little do you know you're drawing ever closer to the poison donut! [cackles evilly, then stops abruptly] There is a poison one, isn't there Smithers?

Smithers: Err...no, sir. I discussed this with our lawyers and they consider it murder.

Mr. Burns: I could crush him like an ant. But it would be too easy. No, revenge is a dish best served cold. I'll bide my time until ... Oh, what the hell. I'll just crush him like an ant.

Mr. Burns: I don't like being outdoors Smithers, for one thing, there's too many fat children.

Mr. Burns: Woah, slow down there maestro. There's a *New* Mexico?

Mr. Burns: What good is money if it can't inspire terror in your fellow man?

Mr. Burns: No one will want to kiss me after this, eh, Smithers?

Smithers: Well, it's their loss, sir.

Burns: I feel like such a free spirit, and I'm really enjoying this so-called...iced cream.

Smithers: Sir, in the spirit of the festival and everything, I'd just like to say that...[ahem]...I...love you.

Burns: Hmm? S

mithers: [quickly] In those colors! [aside] Oh, who am I kidding? The boathouse was the time!

Burns: The watchdog of public safety, is there any lower form of life?

Smithers: Don't worry sir, I rounded up our less gifted employees and led them into the basement.

Mr. Burns: Smithers I'm thinking about donating some money to the orphanage..when pigs fly!(Homer's bbq pig flies past the window)

Burns: Smithers, I've been thinking. Is it wrong to cheat to win a million-dollar bet?

Smithers: Yes, sir.

Burns: Let me rephrase that. Is it wrong if I cheat to win a million-dollar bet? Smithers: No, sir. Who would you like killed?

Mr.Burns: (To Homer)One more thing...You must find the Jade Monkey before the next full moon!

Smithers: Actually sir, we found the jade monkey. It was in your glove compartment.

Mr.Burns: And the road maps, and the driving gloves?!

Smithers: Yes, sir.Mr.Burns:Then its all falling into place!

Burns: I should've known you were the only one stupid enough to kidnap you! Now get down here so I can spank you in front of this gawking rabble. Smithers, take off my belt.

Smithers: With pleasure, sir!

Mr. Burns: Smithers there's a rocket in my pocket.

Mr. Burns: I'm looking for something in an attack dog. One who likes the sweet gamey tang of human flesh. Hmmm, why here's the fellow ... Wiry, fast, firm, proud buttocks. Reminds me of me.

Mr. Burns: A lifetime of working with nuclear power has left me with a healthy green glow... and left me as impotent as a Nevada boxing commissioner.

Mr. Burns: What are you doing man, that's Carl!

enjoy.........

a shadow behind me

2008-02-08T20:52:00.000+05:30

my first shot at horror fiction.....please comment

A SHADOW BEHIND ME

This is something that happened to me in the summer this year, when my parents were out and I was alone in the house.
I was working quietly at my desk when it happened. At first it looked like a flickering shadow behind me. No need to overreact, I thought, that oddly shaped shadow behind me is probably just a trick of the light. Until I heard the first wet footsteps behind me and cold, damp fingers touched the side of my neck.
I steeled my mind and whirled around, just fast enough to see a grotesque childlike figure slithering up out of the window, leaving behind the dank smell of marshland.
I stayed in my room for the rest of the night, my stomach clenching in fear every time I heard the smallest sound. I finally fell asleep, and woke up with a start to the sickening sound of something like slime and dead leaves and branches being dragged across the roof directly above my room. And when I tentatively stretched out my hand to draw back the curtains and look out, there were a pair of gleaming bestial eyes staring straight at me, upside down with the long matted filthy hair hanging like a screen to block out the streetlights.
At that point I dropped the curtains and ran, back into the corridor barely moments before the thing leapt through the window and went for my throat.
I edged desperately along the wall, and all I could see, all I could think of was the strand of brown, matted hair swinging before my eyes as it kept pace with my motions. And then I made a mistake. I looked up.
The child clinging to the ceiling was anything but. Beneath the slime the face was pitted and creased, with unimaginably horrific fangs that somehow still had blood on them, I didn’t dare to think from what.
At that moment a dog howled in the distance. The-the thing froze, and then bounded out the window, seconds before daylight broke.
I was in a state of paralyzed shock throughout the day. I heard the news of the savage mangling and death of a neighbor’s child with complete acceptance, like I’d known about it since I first saw the dank, slimy footprints on our roof, no larger than a child’s but with the imprints of attached talons. Talons that hours ago had ripped out and eaten a human child’s intestines while it was still alive and whimpering in terror.
There were wild stories circulating, stories I’d never heard before because I’d been too young, horror tales of savage swamp creatures that were driven out from their homes once the estate development people came, creatures that skulked in the putrid recesses of the marshland on the fringes of the suburbs, living on garbage and the occasional piece of human meat that came their way.
Apparently no-one had seen anything, or, like me, they were too scared to talk. This was two weeks before things went wild.
They came. Not singly or in pairs, but in an army of grinning, leaping, horrific savagery in the night, when everyone was sleeping. Soon dozens of us were dead, ripped apart and eaten in front of our numbed eyes. Children mostly went first, and strong-looking men and old people were clubbed to death and their bodies left to rot beneath lampposts.
The creatures stank of the marshland. Oozing slime, they threw our possessions around, made nests in our homes and drove us to the rooftops and cornices where we stayed for hours in terrified hiding. We’d lost all communications with the outside world, and soon some of us started dying of starvation. This was until the Army came.
Soon men in khaki carrying rifles stormed the suburbs and demolished about fourteen buildings before they could flush out the swamp creatures, which had taken to scampering around in broad daylight and provided an easy target to expert Army snipers and shooters.
Rebuilding and medical teams arrived within hours. In two days’ time everything was back to normal, except the families who had lost members to the mass carnage.
Life goes on. We have tried hard to move on from what happened this year. The military claimed the “incident” had been a “contained threat”. Everyone is busy trying to forget. Obviously it’s not that easy.
For one thing, there are still reports of the swamp creatures killing and eating some slum children. Various people have claimed that they’ve seen small lithe bodies leaping about in the swamp, especially when the street dogs start to howl.
And lastly, there’s me. Wherever these creatures are, I have a gut feeling that they’ll come back. It’s the marsh air that pulls them inland towards the city. And according to all sources, they breed like rabbits, so it’s only a question of time before there are more of them than there are of us, and they attack with greater strength for the final attack that could wipe us out for good. And next time they’ll mean it, because more than their original home territory, now they want their revenge.

WHY CRY WHEN YOU CAN SCREAM?

2008-02-01T18:37:00.000+05:30

this is a "pome" that i wrote just now, to relieve my rather violent feelings against peer pressure......i suppose it's not much good, but it's all you're getting from me today

WHY CRY

what do you do when you feel alone

do you read a book and stay at home

do you sing a song like "A Heart of Stone"

do you call me up on the telephone

what do you cry about alone at night

do you mourn the way you lost the fight

do you wait and pray for the morning light

do you care when i worry if you're all right

what do you say when they tell you to leave

do you hold your head high and try to deceive

yourself and them, try to make them believe

that you don't really wear your heart on your sleeve

what do you care, when you live your own way

why should you care what you heard yesterday

who are they to tell you how to live your life today

you're you inside and out, no matter what they say

blindness

2008-01-30T19:40:00.000+05:30

This is something i wrote last year when i was very frustrated with the world but couldn't explain why, even to myself.........check it out!

BLINDNESS
Normally, students don’t bother with social issues until they’re well into college and discovering activist politics for the first time. But the subtle psychological indoctrination and counter-motivation start long before students realize the import of what they are told.
It starts off with small, harmless things. Like the other day, when our English teacher in school told us how to write a report, a “factual description of an event”. This is included in the CBSE class 11 English curriculum across the country. Everywhere, teachers teach it the same way. Something noteworthy happens. Regardless of the nature of the event involved, students are told to keep the report brief, simple, to the point. Just set out the important facts, very concisely. Don’t tell stories about the people involved. Keep it as clinically detached as possible, and never, ever get dramatic or sentimental or manifest any emotion that proves you are only human, because that’s how you lose marks.

Then our teacher gives us this example of a report, where we have to write about a traffic accident. She gives us pointers on the relevance on headings, which should be related to the number of mortalities. And then she does something that triggers off a dozen insistent alarm-bells in my head. She tells us to never write something that reads like the beginning of a storybook. She says that what a man was doing before he left his house the morning he was killed has no relation with his death

I agree with you, ma’am. What that man did and said and felt before he got run over has nothing to do how he died. But it has everything to do with how he lived.

There’s a message in this. It tells us that no matter who got killed, where, when, or how is not the issue. The issue is who wants to know. Newspapers know this, from the editor down to the copyboy. That is why despite the efforts of the reporters and journalists who are at present fighting for column space to publicize the horrific state of traffic (un)safety in this city, 90% of the reading public is still going to skim over those parts and turn to the entertainment section.

Because if you write the average report like a story, the trouble is that people might find it interesting. It would follow no format and get no marks, but the reader might pay attention to what happened. And what happened is not just that a man (35) succumbed to his injuries and was declared “dead when brought” at the nearest state-run hospital. What actually happened is that Mr. S.G. Ghosh said goodbye to his family in the morning on his way to work and then got hit by yet another racing bus on a congested street. He died in the ambulance that turned up thirty minutes too late, and his family is now in mourning for him.

The tragedy is not only that he died. The tragedy is that to the people who don’t know him, he will become just another statistic. Because God forbid that we tell his story like
a story. God forbid that we evoke emotions or lament his loss. It’s a factual report, children, not a longwinded speech about ethics. You are not required to say that “ Once upon a time there was a man who left home in the morning” etc., etc., “and then he died”.
Because if you write that, that means the reader has to think about a man (35) who succumbed to his injuries this morning, like that man is a real person with a job and a family and a life and hopes and dreams. And heaven forbid that the public’s attention be distracted from the lurid gossip on page 3 to dwell on an insignificant nonentity of a man whose only claim to fame is that he died a gruesome death when he least expected it. Because the danger of that is that it forces people to stop and think, and maybe deep down even begin to care a little. And because if people start thinking too much, somebody somewhere is going to think “That could have been me”. And no-one wants to live with death hanging over their heads, so they pretend they don’t know it’s there. At least, most adults do, and from the point of view of teenagers, obviously, that makes it the grown-up thing to do. Nothing proclaims adulthood more than an inclination to hypocrisy and the silencing of truth. Except maybe a conscience that blinds itself better than a thousand moral blinkers could.

music makes you lose control

2008-01-30T00:39:00.000+05:30

to follow up...........i downloaded the new(?????) fergie album last night. all rise for the dutchess!!thank god for mp3 host sites (and also good connectivity).
i now have the billboard charts at my fingertips, although that's not saying much these days. alicia keys fails to impress with "no-one" [hard to believe now that she sang "falling"], "crank that" by soulja boy is a travesty of a ghetto "hood" track by a dirt-rich playa asking what must be the most painfully repetitive and self-defeating questions since the spanish inquisition,( about his "switch-style", no less) and even one republic wouldn't have made it to their no.2 peak without piggybacking on supernova producer timbaland.............

WTF???? what is the world coming to, when meaningless songs are chart-topping singles and emo-punk-rock struggles to retain a top-50 listing?? ah, for the heady days of nu-metal, when linking park and limp bizkit stormed the charts with raw vocals on smooth hooks, throwing out 90's studio pop with absurd ease......and now suddenly avril wants to be everyone's girlfriend, akon keeps scoring with tracks even if they get censored, and the crazy frog seems adorable compared to enrique's familiar "sensitive", "tortured" voice as he spouts banal words on estrangement(AGAIN!!!) that are becoming increasingly unconvincing. AARRGGHH!!! someone bring the music back.........please!

only beyonce is still on her A-game, with an album release that sizzles and smokes of assertiveness, attitude, and amazingly likeable song-writing skills that leave lttle to no room for argument. women always did like it on top.........enjoy.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFtICBASrpY

trisha

writing a picture

2008-01-29T23:00:00.001+05:30

i've always wondered about how literature and art are two sides of the same coin. like someone painting a picture of a man and his heart in a passage of words, or a painter telling a shadowed story through brushstrokes. i'm neither a writer nor a painter, but i'm about to give writing a picture my best shot........

In a place far away in time and distance, there are mountains. the air is cold and the wind makes your cloak flutter and flap, and the slanting rain promises a storm; already your skin is cold, almost numb, your fingers in the half-curved clutching gesture that imitates how you tried to strangle him when he told you that he was the traitor, hair billowing yet trapped by your hood, the pain beating at your temples. Your neck is bare, but the whiplash marks from the war make a zigzag pattern,as though the wind would rip your skin off. the mountains loom around you, ice-laden sentinels of the massive grey sky that stretches from the distant shadowy horizon of the steppe-lands to beyond the great mountains that held the fortress of the empire, the central stronghold, as cold and unyielding as you wanted to be before you started living again. you stand there on the edge of a cliff, body battered by the rising arctic wind, eyes glazed over by the sleet and the cruelty that never fades,even after years of being someone other than you. someone with friends and warmth and a heart, not the cold monster you became in the end, when the war was almost lost because of his treachery. treachery that you ordered punished with execution by garrotting, because the sword is too good for blood-deserters. a man who died by your command, by the wish of your vengeance, and after years of trying to reclaim what regret you once had, you feel a stirring of compassion for a soul beyond your control, and you know that one day you might be human again. the war is won, and your people are safe; the enemy was driven into the sea, and you can step behind the throne and breathe out your viciousness where it can hurt no-one; you can luxuriate in feeling forgiveness; you can taste what it means to have a soul.

trisha

online journals of an undercover anarchist

2008-01-26T14:27:00.000+05:30

well, my last blog was last summer, and here i go again this year trying to make a fresh start and concentrate but it's nowhere that easy because to turn over a new leaf you need to have started reading the textbook in the first place and..........well, i guess everyone knows how that ends anyway...........

where was i? oh, that's right i was doing some insightful retrospection into what a sucker i am for procrastination....but let's talk about that later, shall we?

another year flashed by, and although 2007 was probably the best year of my life so far (unless you count the years that i missed out on because i was drooling and trying to learn how to stand up and walk) i'm still glad it's over, like when you read a satisfying book and it builds up to a very nerve-stretching climax at the end and just before that there's kind of a lull in the storm and you can't wait for the final explosive action or revelation or whatever to happen so you can sigh and close the book and get back to reality.......

right now's the lull, but it'll all be over by 21st march.....and then there's a wonderful ten-day hiatus when i get to be nobody and do nothing and come summer it'll all come full-circle again............and all i can do meanwhile is to try and keep my head above water, fly when i can, and in the meantime do stuff like blogging funny quotes online like ::

Sir Thomas Beecham
A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
Brass bands are all very well in their place—outdoors and several miles away.
The sound of a harpsichord: two skeletons copulating on a galvanized tin roof.
There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
Why do we have to have all these third-rate foreign conductors around when we have so many second-rate ones of our own?
[To a musician during rehearsal] We cannot expect you to be with us all the time, but perhaps you could be good enough to keep in touch now and again.
Try everything once, except folk dancing.
[Warning his conducting students never to glance at the trombones:] It will only encourage them.
No opera singer ever dies too soon.
In the first movement alone, I took note of six pregnancies and at least four miscarriages. [On Bruckner's Seventh Symphony.]
What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about. [On Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.]
[When asked if he had played any Stockhausen] No, but I have trodden in some.
[Displeased with a female cellist:] There you sit with one of God's greatest creations between your legs and all you can do is scratch it!

Robert Benchley
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony.
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.
Except for an occasional heart attack, I feel as young as I ever did.
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime for humorless people.
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

have a nice day, and peace be to you

trisha

linkin park

2007-07-14T15:19:00.001+05:30

A lot of people are saying that LP's new album is a dud. But what they don't understand is that LP is not one of those musical acts that stay tied to a signature sound for their entire careers. Obviously they're very drawn to experimentation ( otherwise how else could a rap rock metal band have been formed ) and they're defying , well , "genrefication" , if you will , by pushing their musical limits on " Minutes to Midnight".

i'm here

2007-07-14T15:19:00.000+05:30

oh wow, my first blog,finally ,i'm so excited , i should probably talk about something very meaningful, but all i can think about is to say hello to all you other bloggers out there.....