Reload

Its been long ...almost a month and a lot has happened....A somewhat memorable b'day followed by an amazing trip to Goa and a hectic period of seminars and back-breaking project work(my project-mates will most probably say that all I did was recite inane stories,take 'power' naps and generally fiddle around with the laptop).A lot of trips to CCD's and random restaurants happened.The sem so far has been pretty roller-coaster.Also finally began reading Ulysses and am absolutely loving it.

Also, thanks to Uatu I finally could lay my hands on Sandman.Most amazing stuff and I am already head over heels in love with Death :-D.What a character!Actually I would place Death along with Dagny Taggart as my favorite female characters in any form of literature(for clarification, I hate Ayn Rand's philosophy but love her characters,Hank Rearden being my fav).My Orkut profile pic has dream and death sitting together and gives my profile a slick look me thinks.My roomie is worried 'coz just today I listened to Beethoven's 9th some 7 times...somehow I am finally coming to terms with some of the addictions that I have: currently Beethoven's 9th,coffee, Orkut...the most dangerous being Orkut.I am on auto-pilot most of the times on Orkut and would have scrapped people without knowing and have joined communities without actually being interested in that particular topic.I am seriously addicted,suggestions for de-addiction anyone?

College has almost come to an end and I might just have attended my last classes without realizing it......and can't help feeling extremely nostalgic about our dept. who have been extremely sweet this sem without harassing us too much about attendance and internals and stuff...compared to CSE,we have teachers who 'understand' our 'problems' and give us extensions on deadlines.Just in case somebody from any other branch is reading this...my friend Avinash has attended only about 10% classes in all of engineering..thats like he has attended only about a semester out of eight.So there... that I guess would put all arguments about superiority of branches to an end.I would follow this post with a few posts on the various characters that inhabit our dept. and college in general and another one on my fav subjects throughout engineering...so geeky technical post alert on subsequent posts. Maybe I will do a Goa post too.....

PS:The pic-Miramir beach,Goa...the greatest holiday destination in India and if you have not been there yet, you are seriously seriously missing out on something.

Playlist

Iris-Goo Goo Dolls
Free fallin' -Tom Petty and the heartbreakers
The reason-Hoobastank
Wonderwall-Oasis
The warning sign-Coldplay
Desert Rose-Sting


I keep trippin' on Iris...been listening to it continuously from the past 4 days, it just gets to you...feel happy/sad,hopeful.... listening to it
and I want to run away and never come back......


PS: went to the Iron Maiden concert this Sunday and it was crazzzzzzzzzzy....will post about it sometime in a few days....

Food

Motivated by Saanjh's this post I am going to talk about food or the lack of it in my life right now.Ravaged by chicken pox at an unheard age of 21,I have drastically curtailed the mischievous excursions of my tongue into spicy excesses.Coconut water,milk,sugar,small quantities of tea,coffee,curd rice,chapaties with dal...basically anything without a even a trace of chilly.Bland-distasteful mundane stuff.Under the influence of inadequate spice in life,the tongue has become loose.I had two foot-in-mouth moments in a single day.Serious gaffes.People who have tried eating four plain idlies(without chutney without sambhar) can raise their hands.Nightmares of drowning in a pool of hot scalding, boiling rasam keep happening to me.

Food has meant different things to me in different ages.school was about tiffin-share.Home was about tomato-phobia and puris and aaloo parathas and fruit/vegetable salads on sunday afternoons(to name a few?).I have tried my own combinations too.Honey in tea,Kellogg's Chocos with cut banana and coffee instead of milk(try it....absolute gastronomic heaven).Best thing about food is the anticipation of a fancy meal and the Pavlov's dog like reactions induced by the aroma wafting into your room from the kitchen.Eating great food is like an intense orgasmic experience for me.If I like whats on the plate,I don't usually remember anything after I pick up the spoon.....its all a daze.... but the strange thing is that I don't think about food all the time or even most of the time.Whenever I lay my hands on some good grub,I am thankful to god but if not, then I will eat whatever is available and not regret it and I eat surprisingly small amounts of food. For me,nostalgia is nosy and particular smells trigger particular memories....always happens with deodorants but I am digressing now......

Hostel food is....well...edible and strange.It cannot be put down as downright bad.....but somehow I always get the impression that I am partaking of someone's anger and bitterness.The food is angst-y,usually very spicy and not very conducive to hmmmm...gulping without chewing.The rotis are leathery...how can they not be...its hostel-protocol followed by cooks all over India using telepathic-mind communication.'thy shall struggle with our rotis puling with both hands until your jaws or teeth give away'-they conclude in unison.The warden writes absolute gems when it comes to bringing out the lurking fear of food-poisoning in the student's minds.sample this:
Dear hostel students
mes will be function from tomo i.e on 23/2/07 pooja will be arranged in kitchen at 7 AM on 23/2/07.all students are cordially invited.all the best to all of you.**

Did I happen to mention I am a vegetarian?I have these discussions with my non-vegetarian friends about which is a better lifestyle and I enjoy the anguish on their faces when I pull out my 'animal-cruelty' argument or 'non-veggie-lifestyle-leads-to -quicker-deaths' one but frankly I don't give a damn what people eat and even my not eating non-veg food will not prevent the zillions who eat like they are Eskimos of the far-north .so I am not really very hot on the 'prevention of animal cruelty' thing.There are actually a lot of genuine reasons why people should stop eating meat and I don't want to list them here.If you are wondering why there are so many incomplete loose ends in each one of my posts.... well its because I am a lazy bum and procrastinator supreme so you have to do with what you get........see I am too lazy to even think of a decent ending(I know its not something new ...one does not realize how many lazy people are out there until one gets onto Orkut.)



**this part of the post was in draft for quite some time

I see faith in your eyes
Never you hear the discouraging lies
I hear faith in your cries
Broken is the promise, betrayal
The healing hand held back by the deepened nail

Follow the God that failed.......

lyrics from METALLICA's landmark Black album .The song was inspired by the death of James Hetfield's (the lead singer) mother from cancer; she was a member of the Church of Christ,Scientist and therefore refused treatment.It speaks of his anguish in seeing his mother die without seeking medical help of any kind and it brings out very poignantly the eternal battle between religion and science.Though I do not approve of this particular branch of Christianity,I am a believer.....of Hindu philosophies.'belief' is more of a word which I use out of force of habit,my 'belief' is more of a logical conclusion and my religious beliefs do not conflict with my scientific knowledge.I know I should really do a detailed post about all of this...but my mind is totally numbed by a whole day of Perl programming and SQL querying.The reason I have been thinking about this is that in the space of 2 days I have had two people tell me that they would rather agree to disagree with me than have me speak on length about religion/spirituality.It so happens that most of my closest friends are atheists or agnostic.There is Sam,Deb,my roommate(though he wouldn't admit it),Ankita and of course K. Nikhil if you are reading this....I have never asked you dude...what beliefs do you have?and yes let me make it clear that I am perfectly at ease with what people believe and what they do not.I am not out to convert people to my school of thought.But it sometimes makes me think,why is 'belief' as in religion always equated with 'illogical' thinking and 'stupidity'?

Right now I am thinking about a lot of things at the same time...like how Metallica lyrics so damn always nail the point that they are trying to make,how my life is so freaking turbulent right now, how this sem god has kept me occupied to the hilt,how Bangalore is such a strange place that I can feel neither disgust nor love for it....

P.S:I am a big-big sucker for music lyrics ok?this is the only form of poetry I enjoy.peace.

The post he did for someone else.

Asterix-modernism-Darjeeling-Tsangu lake-morning three roses tea-77E-60's earrings-Sophie's choice?-Steinbeck-Makkalakoota-1st year fest-agony-depression-zany haircuts-the wasted 3.5 years of engineering-emails-post-modernism-suduko-regret-Kannada kali-Zidane-margaritas-milk-Karl Marx's beard-French-ESI bus stop-Queen's-42/8-Chord road walks-Yahoo messenger-Hari Sarvottama-To kill a mockingbird-can I be anonymous?-rose garden road(Nanda road)-accidents-cappuccino-stalker bitches/fatsos-black-Alphonso mangoes-old Hindi songs-Grey's anatomy-Goa-Southpark-agnosticism-Vedanta-giving up on 1st kriya-by the window-'don't send me forwards'-somewhere between two layouts-Midnight's children. and whatever happens...........that sums up about everything.

Visual DNA

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There is this incredible radio station on Yahoo Launchcast...a new one called Guitar Gods and words are not enough to describe its brilliance... Metallica,Sabbath,Satriani,Aerosmith,Deep Purple,Van Halen one after the other ...mesmeric.The sad thing about Yahoo Radio is that it does not run in Firefox..only IE.I read The Catcher in The Rye in the hols and was not too impressed.it is a nice book,the New-York lingo of the '50s is really appealing and I really liked Holden's idea of 'phoniness'...and how inadvertently he himself morphs into one...but was not ground-breaking in any way I thought.Guess I have a weakness for longer works of literature...small works don't leave much of an impression on me for some reason...


missing hostel and the ensuing hullabaloo and really miss laughing my guts out...haven't done that for quite a looooong time.feel like racking my head on a really hard quiz or a crossword.college is going to end in about 3 months...and it is ending in a very chaotic and hateful way....like a downward spiral ....anti-nostalgic with a bitter after-taste...and strangely I feel like a spectator in my own life...and don't feel sad about this...watching it unfold almost like a book.

My blog is not heading in any well defined direction...ends up being a rant post after post,so from now I vow to stick by coherence and humor....cross my heart etc

Jaded

The world has changed.My world....and can no longer claim the immunity of an innocuous whippersnapper.........and feel depressed.'bcoz of the chicken pox---the bland diet to be followed---the inseparable boredom--the lack of meaningful conversations----and not being good enough for anything...for quizzing ,for love, for acads....life should only be uphill from here...surely

In other news.....

From the last 72 hours I have been eating and sleeping non-stop...12 hours of sleep almost everyday followed by eating...and having those amazing hot-showers for long periods of time(tired of the bucket-and-mug routine in the hostel) ah! time stands still in the steam and the serenity of the hot shower...have been planning to do a lot of stuff but end up doing nothing....TV is surprisingly boring with both Zee Cafe and Star World having become pretty much lifeless...I pick up the TV listings everyday to scout of interesting stuff but end up finding some obscure movie or the Nth re-run of Friends....I am sick of it.....except Roadies-4 on MTv which I think is a pretty cool show....gets to show that its not only ability but also politics which is the key to success on these reality shows....have been reading Crime&Punishment and I must say that its seeming to be a major force as far as my reading experiences are concerned.......I would reserve my opinions about it as I have not read it whole but I would recommend it to one and all...

The thing I like about Jam is that its not really a town in which I grew up(as my folks moved here after I joined engineering and was away from home) and it allows me to take an outsider's perspective when it comes to weighing its pros and cons over Ranchi...Its a fabulous city...neat..well planned and so so peaceful......tree-lined broad avenues and the house that we have here is just absolutely amazing!My room overlooks the garden at the back of my house and for all the complaining that my mom does about my lack of interest in the natural world...its just great waking up and looking at the lush green grass and the trees and the birds!!whereas Ranchi is the city of memories...of childhood..of the innumerable special things...there can't be any comparison really.Ranchi wins hands down...notwithstanding the beauty of Jam.

**have been fiddling with the digi-cam at home and though I am not much of a foodie....couldn't resist taking this: PIC OF THE PICKLES

Hols!

Exams almost over save for a stupid Constitution of India paper and I can already smell the food at home and the silent,tree-lined avenues of Jam enticing me into taking a long, solitary, peaceful walk to places I am yet to explore...maybe an early morning walk upto The River's Meet and down the Marine drive.....I look forward to catching up on reading,TV(Austrailan Open here I come!) and probably tennis and swimming....lazing around in the afternoon sun in the garden...and meeting up with old friends........after a month long ordeal ....I hope to make the most if the 19 day respite that I have been given... happy hols to all!

2007

2007...already!! the last six months of college life stares at me and I feel so old!I will graduate in six months...the thought gives me a strange kind of chill down the back....I just got outta school and now I am almost...expected to be responsible and behave as an adult .... 2007 was always somewhere out in the distance...somewhere in grown-up time...the millennium just seems a short while ago...its not as if time flew by or something...but its just that as a kid 10 years back seems all hazy and you hardly remember anything ....but now 10 years back or 7 years back is so clear in the memory....4 years in Bangalore...its not a long time...its an era! and I have an eerie feeling I have not done anything worthwhile all these years...allow me to go out there and get a life..........

meanwhile why is it that Aerosmith have this uncanny ability to mirror just what you are thinking?...... leaving you a sample(lyrics) of one my favorite Aerosmith tracks,Hole in my soul:


I'm down a one way street
With a one night stand
With a one track mind
Out in no mans land
(the punishment sometimes don't seem to fit the crime)

Yeah there's a hole in my soul
But one thing Ive learned
For every love letter written
There is another one burned
(so tell me how its gonna be this time)

Is it over
Is it over
Is it over
cause I'm blowing out the flame

Take a walk outside your mind
Tell me how it feels to be
The one who turns the knife inside of me
Take a look and you will find there is nothing there girl
Yeah I swear, I'm telling you girl yeah cause
There is a hole in my soul that's been killing me forever
Its a place where a garden never grows
There's a hole in my soul, yeah I should have known better
cause your loves like a thorn without a rose

I'm as dry as a seven year drought
I got dust for tears
Yeah I'm all tapped out
(sometimes I feel broken and cant get fixed)

I know there's been all kinds of shoes underneath your bed
Now I sleep with my boots on but you are still in my head
(and something tells me this time I'm down to my last licks)
cause if its over
Then its over
And its driving me insane

Is it over
Yeah its over
And I'm blowing out the flame

Take a walk outside your mind
Tell me how it feels to be
The one who turns the knife inside of me
Take a look and you will find
There is nothing there girl, yeah, I swear
I'm telling you girl yeah cause there is a hole in my soul
That's been killing me forever
Its a place where a garden never grows there is a hole in my soul,
Yeah I should have known better
cause your loves like a thorn
Without a rose