The School Farewell!
The excitement that precedes any event involving a gathering of friends started on the day we got our Invitation Cards, with Anwesha screaming, “WHAT! We have to wear school-dress to the Farewell!?” and self exclaiming, “A Farewell for us! Wow, we’re growing up!” with a strange sense of awe at how quickly I found myself at the threshold of one of the events that marked the distant growing-up world from the eyes of a twelve-year-old.
I didn’t have the faintest shadow of an idea about what a farewell was, but I tried my best to gather a more or less rough idea from the people around me. On purpose, I didn’t ask anyone in Class 11. Knowing exactly what to expect, I felt, would spoil the surprise.
Armed with the following information, I came to the following conclusion.
Information:-
Deyasini: How can anyone not attend the farewell? It must be something simply beautiful, a token of what we’re leaving behind.
Devpriyo: Of course I’m attending the farewell. You never know, I might even cry.
Rohan: I’ll come to the school farewell, but we’ve had our own farewell. I think I’ll remember that one more, won’t you?
My Music Aunty: In our farewell, we were given red roses at the door. Younger students performed variedly, and we were asked to perform too, if we liked. The Principal’s speech was wonderful, redolent of warmth, love and affection, and at the end of it, we all had tears in our eyes.
My Mum: In our school, things are done mostly the same way as that. We don’t give red roses, though, that’s a bit too much. There are performances, short speeches, good food and so on.
Conclusion:-
I gathered that a Farewell must be something filled with nostalgia, mushy songs, and boring speeches.
So imagine my surprise (too mild a word, I know) when the Farewell party started with a…..ok wait, I shouldn’t spoil the surprise by disclosing it so soon. One needs to build up the atmosphere huh? I don’t know how one goes about doing it, though. I guess, for an amateur like me, it would involve something in the line of boring my readers to death with small details of what happened before the farewell started, till they fall asleep. Ok, here’s the list of those little details that filled the 45 minutes that we spent waiting for the stuff.
1. I jumped up to the footpath where Kaustuv and Anwesha greeted me with an ear-to-ear grin and an enthusiastic, “YOU came on time! Woah-ha-how!” Laughing and waving cheerily while waiting for Deyasini was all we did those 30 minutes. I expended a good amount of energy waving jauntily at a couple of people only to discover that I didn’t know them at all. But they waved back twice as jauntily and so it didn’t matter.
2. The ground floor of Uttam Mancha was stuffy. To my horror, I discovered that we were going to be seated section-wise. Pratiti and I gave a short pre-farewell concert using our vocal chords to the best of their merits, complaining in a high-pitched melodious rhapsody about how the school authorities were involved in a conspiracy against EFL to keep them separated at all costs.
3. I said, “Hell!” in my special-effects-enriched banshee voice a good many times before realizing that I was screaming right into the ears of someone who had been unfortunate enough to place his ears two inches from my mouth. It was while bracing myself for a profuse apology that the body in question turned around to face me. Upon seeing who it was, my apology swallowed itself, and I turned away pointedly. The Law Of Interactions With Certain People states firmly that you never waste your breath apologizing to Debaruns.
He looked at me thrice and looked away again, before saying with what seemed like a monumental effort,"Er, have you completely forgotten?"
I don't have to explain exactly how warm I feel towards a person who needs this huge an effort even to talk to me.
"Forgotten what?" I asked coldly.
"Um, all of us, I mean.”
I didn’t snort, not because it’s unladylike, but because I don’t know how exactly one snorts. Coming from a person who had not even recognized me for the past few months, this was one golden snort-extracter.
“Remember who?” I said, to accentuate how well I had forgotten.
“Ok, fine don’t bother trying to remember who. How were your tests?”
“That’s the reason I don’t bother to remember certain people after the tests. If you want to boast about yours, you’re welcome. Don’t have to feign an interest in mine.”
“No, mine was really path…”
I turned away again, more pointedly than the first time. So much for an interview with a long-lost “friend”.
4. My excitement was increasing in leaps and bounds when we filed together. As is the rule when we stand within two inches of one another for more than two minutes, Roro and I started an Eardrum-Shattering Contest when I spotted a well-fed round fat tabby cat glaring virulently at me, its dangerously green eyes boring into mine. “Look who’s here”, Roro said in an undertone. “I spotted her first.” I shot at him, still in the quarrelling spree. “Ok, I give that to you.” He said with unexpected generosity. “Spotting tabby cats in the middle of what is supposed to be a happy gathering is not a task I take pride in.”
We made our way into the auditorium, mounting a dusty flight of stairs, to be led to the balcony. The BALCONY. My first disappointment.
“Wow” one of my friends said. “What a gorgeous view!”
“What the---” I exclaimed indignantly. “Is this the first time you’re inside an auditorium? We’re on the balcony, for heaven’s sake! Balconies don’t have gorgeous views.” Even I knew that, with my very meagre common sense. But then, I’d been in an auditorium scores of times, albeit on the other side of the curtain. “We have the worst view, dammit.”
If I’d known what was coming, I wouldn’t have regretted having the worst view. In fact, I was glad of it 15 minutes into the show. And now, after having put all of you to sleep in the process of “building up the atmosphere”, I think the time has come to plunge into a direct narrative of exactly what the alleged “Farewell” had in store for my unsuspecting perception.
“Insomnia” a microphone or something that spoke as loudly as a microphone, declared. Yeah, wake up!
“Huh?” was my reaction.
“Woah-ha-how”, a scream from Anwesha, who was sitting right beside me, gave my right eardrum quite a turn.
“Huh?” I said again. “What’s going on?”
At that moment, the Insomnia or whatever it was, burst into clamour. Thousands of elephants started to trumpet at once, forests after forests were uprooted, all the monsoon clouds started roaring simultaneously, and the Apocalypse began!
It was a while before I realized that it was nothing but the keyboard, guitar, and all those metallic thingies (whatever they are called) that were trying to create what was known to them as music, and that the hall had erupted into a tumultuous burst of cheers to assist them in the process.
I looked around helplessly. The laser rays were creating a marvelous design on the ceiling and to me, it looked to be the only place where you could glue your eyes. Everywhere else, the world was breaking into pieces, people whom I had believed to be sane all my life, were mocking my belief ruthlessly, the devil was working his will in the minds of all those I knew. There was not a single eye I could lock mine with for a look of silent sympathy. I gulped. My head was throbbing. I knew what one felt like when sinking into a mire.
The Farewell began.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
A slightly different week
Life’s pretty eventless these days. I wish something dramatic would happen to me to break the monotony of this incredibly (or perhaps, quite credibly) eventless life of mine, with each day following and duplicating the last. I wish, one day, as I closed my eyes at night, I could surmise, or even dread, what would come the next day, instead of knowing every detail from beforehand the way you know the dialogues of movies that you’ve watched 144 times. Well, I guess we all spend our lives wishing for more drama, and wishing all the drama away when it comes. Personally, I wouldn’t ask for the romantic melodramatic kind of eventfulness; something as ordinary as Pratiti’s appendicitis will serve my purpose quite well. That reminds me, I really envy that girl. But as she herself said, one shouldn’t PNPC in a public domain, so I think I’ll keep my list headed “101 Reasons To Envy Pratiti Deb” to myself.
The only reason this week has been slightly different from the preceding ones is because I had to sit for those stupid Pathfinder Mock Tests everyday, which was the first Mock Test Series I ever sat for in my life. It began on the 15th with Maths for us. “Us” here refers to the EFLians (Or does EFLite sound better?) viz. Deyasini, Rohitashwa, Rohan, Raunak, and last and definitely the least, myself. On the first day, I prepared, practiced, looked at the theorems, went though the objectives, sent a good many SMSs to various people enquiring about what the papers were like, indulged in a good deal of hypertension, and, in short, did everything you’d expect a normal mediocrity to do before a normal Maths test. However, in spite of the fact that I found only two marks unknown, I flunked the test as badly as you can. Result: Ebbing of enthusiasm.
On the second day, I prepared a little less enthusiastically, I indulged in only tension without the previous prefix, and sat for the test moderately prepared. Not at all surprisingly, I flunked this one too. But since I’ve been flunking Life Science nearly all my life, it didn’t make me stop caring completely about Mock Tests. It simply diluted my enthusiasm a bit more.
Third day. Physics test. Or rather, Physical Science test. And it was because I forgot the difference between Physics and Physical Science that I had to suffer on this day. After completing the whole paper minus the Chemistry part in 2 hours quite happily and confidently, I was shocked to see that I was staring at a page of Hebrew before me. I gulped once or twice, blinked stupidly a few times, and then imagined I was sitting for a History test and switched to the “Invent Wildly” mode. With some brilliant guesswork, I managed to answer around four marks correctly. Then, realizing that I had completely covered up the shine of the Physics part by the slush of the Chemistry part, I burst into tears (metaphorically) and broke my heart into three meticulous pieces. The first piece said, “To hell with exams!”, the second said, “Who the heck cares about Mock Tests anyway?”, and the third declared, “I give up! No more studying for these wretched tests”. Thus, my tests ended.
Wait, that doesn’t mean it ended for Pathfinder as well. We still had History and Geography to go, but I couldn’t care less. I spent the major part of the next morning bombarding a friend of mine with SMSs (knowing him to be too polite to tell me to shut up), and the rest of the day glancing through a few objectives and important long answers. That was all the preparation with which I sat for the test, and surprisingly enough, I didn’t flunk it! I mean, considering that the lowest I ever got in History is 48 out of 100, flunking for me corresponds to getting less than 50.
Till that day, I had thought of the tests every night and every morning. I knew that the reason I went to Chetla was to sit for tests. On the day of the Geography tests, however, I had reached such a degree of emotional saturation that Geography was the last thing on my mind all day. My net came back, I chatted happily with a couple of friends who were sitting for the same tests in the same batch with me, lost my geography book and didn’t bother to search for it, and when I boarded the auto to Chetla, I knew I was going because—
1. I enjoyed travelling alone.
2. I loved meeting my friends there.
3. I wanted to sit beside Deyasini because it was probably the last time before July that I would be doing it, or maybe the last time in my life (if either of us failed to make it to SPHS in +2).
Someone was really, really shocked when I told him this, but it was true. I didn’t care two pence about what happened in the goddamned exam. Heck, I didn’t care a quarter of a pence! I didn’t know anything about the type of vegetation seen in Rajasthan and quite happily filled a page writing all about xerophytes’ adaptation that I had read in Bio, vaguely hoping that a science-ignorant teacher would take “phylloclade” and “sunken stomata” for learned Geographical terms. It amazes me to know that someone actually loves Mock Tests, but well, he’s an android after all, however vehemently he denies it.
I don’t know why I wrote all about this in my blog. It’s not that I’m really proud of my achievements and want to make a nice musical comedy of what is supposed to be a serious business. I guess it’s because I wanted to take my frustration out on everyone else. Or maybe because I wanted to update my blog but couldn’t wait to finish the long ones I’ve started. Well, whatever, don’t bother to tell me that my attitude towards exams is abnormal. And don’t bother to preach either. Have a happy Christmas!
Oh wait!! I totally forgot about Christmas! Yay!
“Christmas time is drawing near,
Santa Claus will soon be here,
With his presents and his toys,
For the little, girls and boys!
For dear old Santa we’ll give three cheers,
He’ll soon be coming with his swift reindeer,
And he’ll come so quick, with a ‘click-click-click’
In the e-a-r-l-y Christmas m-o-r-ning!”
Feels lovely to remember Nursery rhymes! Cheers! And adios for now! :-D
The only reason this week has been slightly different from the preceding ones is because I had to sit for those stupid Pathfinder Mock Tests everyday, which was the first Mock Test Series I ever sat for in my life. It began on the 15th with Maths for us. “Us” here refers to the EFLians (Or does EFLite sound better?) viz. Deyasini, Rohitashwa, Rohan, Raunak, and last and definitely the least, myself. On the first day, I prepared, practiced, looked at the theorems, went though the objectives, sent a good many SMSs to various people enquiring about what the papers were like, indulged in a good deal of hypertension, and, in short, did everything you’d expect a normal mediocrity to do before a normal Maths test. However, in spite of the fact that I found only two marks unknown, I flunked the test as badly as you can. Result: Ebbing of enthusiasm.
On the second day, I prepared a little less enthusiastically, I indulged in only tension without the previous prefix, and sat for the test moderately prepared. Not at all surprisingly, I flunked this one too. But since I’ve been flunking Life Science nearly all my life, it didn’t make me stop caring completely about Mock Tests. It simply diluted my enthusiasm a bit more.
Third day. Physics test. Or rather, Physical Science test. And it was because I forgot the difference between Physics and Physical Science that I had to suffer on this day. After completing the whole paper minus the Chemistry part in 2 hours quite happily and confidently, I was shocked to see that I was staring at a page of Hebrew before me. I gulped once or twice, blinked stupidly a few times, and then imagined I was sitting for a History test and switched to the “Invent Wildly” mode. With some brilliant guesswork, I managed to answer around four marks correctly. Then, realizing that I had completely covered up the shine of the Physics part by the slush of the Chemistry part, I burst into tears (metaphorically) and broke my heart into three meticulous pieces. The first piece said, “To hell with exams!”, the second said, “Who the heck cares about Mock Tests anyway?”, and the third declared, “I give up! No more studying for these wretched tests”. Thus, my tests ended.
Wait, that doesn’t mean it ended for Pathfinder as well. We still had History and Geography to go, but I couldn’t care less. I spent the major part of the next morning bombarding a friend of mine with SMSs (knowing him to be too polite to tell me to shut up), and the rest of the day glancing through a few objectives and important long answers. That was all the preparation with which I sat for the test, and surprisingly enough, I didn’t flunk it! I mean, considering that the lowest I ever got in History is 48 out of 100, flunking for me corresponds to getting less than 50.
Till that day, I had thought of the tests every night and every morning. I knew that the reason I went to Chetla was to sit for tests. On the day of the Geography tests, however, I had reached such a degree of emotional saturation that Geography was the last thing on my mind all day. My net came back, I chatted happily with a couple of friends who were sitting for the same tests in the same batch with me, lost my geography book and didn’t bother to search for it, and when I boarded the auto to Chetla, I knew I was going because—
1. I enjoyed travelling alone.
2. I loved meeting my friends there.
3. I wanted to sit beside Deyasini because it was probably the last time before July that I would be doing it, or maybe the last time in my life (if either of us failed to make it to SPHS in +2).
Someone was really, really shocked when I told him this, but it was true. I didn’t care two pence about what happened in the goddamned exam. Heck, I didn’t care a quarter of a pence! I didn’t know anything about the type of vegetation seen in Rajasthan and quite happily filled a page writing all about xerophytes’ adaptation that I had read in Bio, vaguely hoping that a science-ignorant teacher would take “phylloclade” and “sunken stomata” for learned Geographical terms. It amazes me to know that someone actually loves Mock Tests, but well, he’s an android after all, however vehemently he denies it.
I don’t know why I wrote all about this in my blog. It’s not that I’m really proud of my achievements and want to make a nice musical comedy of what is supposed to be a serious business. I guess it’s because I wanted to take my frustration out on everyone else. Or maybe because I wanted to update my blog but couldn’t wait to finish the long ones I’ve started. Well, whatever, don’t bother to tell me that my attitude towards exams is abnormal. And don’t bother to preach either. Have a happy Christmas!
Oh wait!! I totally forgot about Christmas! Yay!
“Christmas time is drawing near,
Santa Claus will soon be here,
With his presents and his toys,
For the little, girls and boys!
For dear old Santa we’ll give three cheers,
He’ll soon be coming with his swift reindeer,
And he’ll come so quick, with a ‘click-click-click’
In the e-a-r-l-y Christmas m-o-r-ning!”
Feels lovely to remember Nursery rhymes! Cheers! And adios for now! :-D
Friday, November 28, 2008
On Being Thin: Catharsis Of A Proverbial Pencil
Problem 1: Tenderhearted long-nosed guests
“Riki”, my mother’s melodious voice rings from downstairs. “Tidy up your room today. I’ll have some guests.”
It’s unlike me to respond at once to anything my mother says, but the guest-is-coming danger signal works miracles.
“What kind of guests? Why do I have to tidy up MY room for YOUR guests?”
My mother sighs. “Oh, it’s Mrs. XYZ. She’s been offering to call for days now, I never really had the time. Do up your room you must. They’ll ask to be shown around, you know.”
It was just as I’d feared. A lady guest! One of those housewives from our purono para who have nothing better to do than calling on various people and making their lives hell for a day. I know that wasn’t decent of me. Ma would probably kill me if she heard me thinking along those lines. But the truth is that I hate some of these visitors of ma’s. In fact, to say I DREAD them would do better justice to the feelings that swell up from the pit of my stomach when I hear the sounds of their paan-chibano voices in the basement, the nasal “Oma, ki sundor”s punctuated by the scuffle of their saris, and yes, the sounds of their laughter. They’ll give the hyenas a run for their money any day! Having never seen my own mother wearing lipstick or any kind of make-up, I’ve always had a kind of prejudice against women who redden their lips like they’ve been sucking blood, and line their eyes deeply with blue-and-black as though they were afraid that their eyes wouldn’t be spotted otherwise. Sometimes, they even happen to be teachers from mum’s school, but for some strange reason, I never quite manage to put them in the same position as Tabby Cat or our dear old Ruchira Aunty. They come, they gorge on mum’s lunch, they eat up the best pieces of chicken, they make awful comments about the younger generations…And then come those dreaded words: “Koi apnar meyeke toh dekhlam na!”(Why, we didn’t see your daughter!) As if daughters are exhibition articles, to be viewed from all angles, commented upon, and priced.
Not wanting to appear rude, or rather, not wanting to face my mum after behaving rudely to her guests, I come down the stairs, almost always forgetting that to have a countenance that looks at least remotely like a cheerfully smiling face is an absolute necessity on these occasions.
The first stage is the worst, when they ask, “So which class are you in now, dear?”
Stoically sealing my ears, I let the mechanical reply cross my lips, “Class Ten”.
“Oh! (gasp) Then you’ll be sitting for the Madhyamiks this year!”
Thanks for the reminder; I’ll go jot it down in my planner right now!
“How she’s grown! Why, the last time I came here, you fitted in my lap!”
Ugh! Don’t tell me you ever took me in your lap! Now I know why I hate strong perfumes!
“Isn’t it amazing, the way kids grow?”
Once, hearing such a comment when I was younger, I had asked the concerned woman right away, “Wouldn’t you have been a bit more amazed if I still fitted in your lap?” Thank god I was only nine then, being cheeky at nine is considered an asset. “Oma, ki smart meyeta!” she had said. Now, however, I can only fume; comments in that vein are no longer welcome. Of course, I’d LIKE to try that again and see what happens, being fond of experiments with unpredictable results, but the reaction of my very excellent mother is so distinctly predictable that I wouldn’t dare!
The next inevitable statement: “Why, she’s gets thinner everyday! Don’t you EAT, my child?”
That’s a cue for Mum to take up the thread with a pathetic grimace, and with the air of a lifelong sufferer, she begins: “I can’t make her see sense! She has no appetite for anything except fast food! Why don’t you talk to her—”
I suppress a sigh.
“Oh, dear child! My cousin’s sister’s friend’s daughter is exactly the same age as you, and she looks way older! She eats everything that’s set down before her, you know.” Turning confidentially to my mother, she starts, “Vegetables, dearie. Feed her more vegetables. And kacha amloki sedhdo! My cousin’s sister’s friend believes in that!”
All I can do is watch in mute horror as my mother turns a sickeningly cheerful face towards me. “Hear! Hear! Are you even going to touch it if we get you something like that?”
You bet not! I glare.
“Oh yes she will. She’s a good girl. Madhyamiks do make one lose appetite, tai na ma?” In a sympathetic tone, “You must be a very sincere student. Do you study all the time? When do you go to sleep at night?"
Usually, I stop studying at 11, though I go to sleep at 2. But I cannot embarrass myself by telling her that! So I choose silence,
"Ah, I see! You surely study very late into the night. Don’t study so much, darling. Eat a bit more and yes, another useful vegetable is--”
My hopes of escaping them are dashed. I need to interrupt the conversation. At any cost! Or else we’ll probably have a raw-vegetable feast for dinner. “Ma”, I hurriedly chime in, “Did you see the pink rose that has come out today? It looks so amazing…aunty, you must see it!”
That always works!
My mother’s greatest pride is her garden. Indeed, she’s raised that garden with greater care than she’s raised us, and well, it’s paid back. It blooms and smiles and she can show it off; unlike her two children who have rewarded her care and concern by growing into two proverbial pencils that draw sympathetic sighs from every corner.
The mother-daughter love scenes
As soon as the visitor goes away, the real scene begins.
“Mum, there’s no way I’m eating that horrible stuff. I’ll continue the way I am, thank you!”
Ma, of course, goes up in smoke! “Look at you” she fumes, “Just look at you! And look at your friends. Now, Deyasini, she looks twice as big as you and she’s just your age! Remember her?”
Remember her?! She’s my best friend!
“She isn’t! She isn’t even taller than me!” I protest, starting to have second thoughts about organizing a Penta meeting at my place. The rest of them are bigger and fatter than Deya, and I can’t afford to have my mum noticing that. “And if you’re going to start the comparison cruise, then let me tell you, she doesn’t eat amloki seddho. She eats at Dominoes and Zeeshan and goes out to eat with friends—” My mum’s eyes have narrowed so much that I feel it’s prudent to stop.
“I suppose we make you live on raw vegetables?”
“Well, no, but the last time we had chicken was—”
“Yesterday” she finishes coldly.
Damn my memory! We’ve had chicken for the last five days.
“And how do you know your friends are going out?” I can feel her heating—“YOU’VE BEEN CHATTING ONLINE INSTEAD OF STUDYING?” She finishes in a dangerous whisper.
“CHAT! WHAT! She SMSed, Ma!” I didn’t lie, she did SMS. But sensing that the conversation is about to enter the danger zone, I quickly make up my mind, choosing the lesser of the two evils. “So you’re adding amloki seddho to the list from tomorrow? Chhola-badam, doi, chhana, amloki…I suppose the next will item on your list will comprise something in the line of cow-dung.”
"You need to get a shape", Mum says. "You cannot remain a straight line forever."
Stunning analogy. A straight line is dimensionless. So, no more arguments.
At the family dinner table
Though momentarily closed, the topic resurfaces at the dinner table.
“Why do you take half an hour to come down to dinner everyday?”
“The beautiful food!” I answer impertinently, and immediately regret it.
“Does this kind of thing happen even in the afternoon? Jupiter!” my dad calls strictly.
Jupiter, the maid, appears. Her answer is direct and to the point. “Oh well, I have to call her around 50 times then, she hardly hears a word when she’s at the computer.”
I close my eyes, knowing what will come next.
Why, oh WHY do I never have my lunch in time?
“COMPUTER!” they both shriek. “She sits at the computer!”
“WHAT DO YOU DO AT THE COMPUTER?”
All I can do is ensure my mouth is filled with food. I don’t have the guts to follow any of the two courses of action left before me: Invent a lie, or tell the truth.
“I know.” My brother says complacently, “She blogs!”
My beautiful bro!
“Blogs! What are they?”
“A place to make all sorts of announcements, probably.”
“Or is it a place to e-mail friends?”
“I think it’s an indirect mode of chatting.”
I keep chewing. Unimaginative parents who are completely computer-ignorant are REAL blessings, compared to the computer-educated ones. But imaginative computer-ignorant parents are anything but b's.
“Relax!” My brother says. “She doesn’t chat much nowadays. The last time I saw her chatting with some Devpriyo Pal and Kiki S on Facebook was—”
“Yuck!” I interrupt hurriedly, “I can’t eat this stew, it stinks. Yesterday's left-over, isn't it? I'm going to be sick.”
“Does it,now? No, don’t eat it then, wait, let me check it!” Clever me! The conversation is diverted immediately. My father is very health conscious. “Jupiter! How many times have I told you NOT to give left-over food-items to the children?”
I knew my mother wouldn’t buy that. “That stew,” she says slowly and coldly, “is more nutritious than all the other items on the table today. And it was cooked an hour back. May I know exactly why you think it'll make you sick?”
I decide to quote a 7 year old kid I had chatted with online that day. “I just don’t like stew. It has stuff in it.”
“Really? What kind of stuff?”
“How do I know what goddamn stuff you put in my stew? Something that will make me grow into a Michael Phelps overnight, no doubt.”
She takes a deep breath.
“My dear,” she begins. It’s never a good sign to have mums beginning sentences so tenderly. Her next words confirm my worst fears. “Just in case you think you are the most beautiful girl on earth, let me remind you that you resemble a Sakchunni more and more with every passing day. (Consider myself beautiful? I suffer from obtuse mirror phobia, mom!) I can almost count your bones. (Big deal! I can too...206! I knew that in KG!) Your figure, though you never noticed, makes you look like an underfed lizard.”
Let me make something very clear here. I have no delusions about my looks. I DO NOT fancy that I look round, cute and lovely; in fact I know I probably come as close to the physical demonstration of a dimensionless straight line as possible. And it’s bad enough to have the mirror pointing that out mercilessly everyday, without having my mum picking it as an excuse to stuff me with all the food items in the market that compete for tastelessness. Whenever I try to show off my knowledge of Life Science by telling her that vegetables do not contain fat, she silences me with a you’re-not-the-only-educated-member-of-the-family look.
Catharsis Continues...
I wish I could wake up one morning to find myself swelled up like Aunt Marge. I’d bounce mildly down the stairs (Okay, maybe I’ll miss the joy of jumping 3 stairs at a time like I usually do!), and mightily refuse all the garbage they offer me in the name of nutrition. Being fat, you may not have a lot of admirers, but you at least have a long line of sympathizers. Skinny people miss out on both! :-( If you’re fat, people are never blunt enough to add to your misery by pointing out that you could sink through the floor any day. On the other hand, thinness is considered to be a mildly amusing joke, and people keep telling you all the time that you’d get blown away if you sigh too hard, or that you’d be indistinguishable from your shadow if you ate a little less.
Only yesterday, I was reading an article written by someone who I bet weighed more at conception than I did at birth. (Wait, no! I was born overweight!) Well, the article ran as follows:
If only I could enjoy that kind of a diet, and make all the fat people jealous, then being thin would be WORTH it. But thanks to my over-cautious mother and also my metabolism, I don’t. Pshaw!
I guess I’ll sign out now. I’ll be skinned alive if I don’t finish the doi that’s waiting for me downstairs. Sigh! And bye!
“Riki”, my mother’s melodious voice rings from downstairs. “Tidy up your room today. I’ll have some guests.”
It’s unlike me to respond at once to anything my mother says, but the guest-is-coming danger signal works miracles.
“What kind of guests? Why do I have to tidy up MY room for YOUR guests?”
My mother sighs. “Oh, it’s Mrs. XYZ. She’s been offering to call for days now, I never really had the time. Do up your room you must. They’ll ask to be shown around, you know.”
It was just as I’d feared. A lady guest! One of those housewives from our purono para who have nothing better to do than calling on various people and making their lives hell for a day. I know that wasn’t decent of me. Ma would probably kill me if she heard me thinking along those lines. But the truth is that I hate some of these visitors of ma’s. In fact, to say I DREAD them would do better justice to the feelings that swell up from the pit of my stomach when I hear the sounds of their paan-chibano voices in the basement, the nasal “Oma, ki sundor”s punctuated by the scuffle of their saris, and yes, the sounds of their laughter. They’ll give the hyenas a run for their money any day! Having never seen my own mother wearing lipstick or any kind of make-up, I’ve always had a kind of prejudice against women who redden their lips like they’ve been sucking blood, and line their eyes deeply with blue-and-black as though they were afraid that their eyes wouldn’t be spotted otherwise. Sometimes, they even happen to be teachers from mum’s school, but for some strange reason, I never quite manage to put them in the same position as Tabby Cat or our dear old Ruchira Aunty. They come, they gorge on mum’s lunch, they eat up the best pieces of chicken, they make awful comments about the younger generations…And then come those dreaded words: “Koi apnar meyeke toh dekhlam na!”(Why, we didn’t see your daughter!) As if daughters are exhibition articles, to be viewed from all angles, commented upon, and priced.
Not wanting to appear rude, or rather, not wanting to face my mum after behaving rudely to her guests, I come down the stairs, almost always forgetting that to have a countenance that looks at least remotely like a cheerfully smiling face is an absolute necessity on these occasions.
The first stage is the worst, when they ask, “So which class are you in now, dear?”
Stoically sealing my ears, I let the mechanical reply cross my lips, “Class Ten”.
“Oh! (gasp) Then you’ll be sitting for the Madhyamiks this year!”
Thanks for the reminder; I’ll go jot it down in my planner right now!
“How she’s grown! Why, the last time I came here, you fitted in my lap!”
Ugh! Don’t tell me you ever took me in your lap! Now I know why I hate strong perfumes!
“Isn’t it amazing, the way kids grow?”
Once, hearing such a comment when I was younger, I had asked the concerned woman right away, “Wouldn’t you have been a bit more amazed if I still fitted in your lap?” Thank god I was only nine then, being cheeky at nine is considered an asset. “Oma, ki smart meyeta!” she had said. Now, however, I can only fume; comments in that vein are no longer welcome. Of course, I’d LIKE to try that again and see what happens, being fond of experiments with unpredictable results, but the reaction of my very excellent mother is so distinctly predictable that I wouldn’t dare!
The next inevitable statement: “Why, she’s gets thinner everyday! Don’t you EAT, my child?”
That’s a cue for Mum to take up the thread with a pathetic grimace, and with the air of a lifelong sufferer, she begins: “I can’t make her see sense! She has no appetite for anything except fast food! Why don’t you talk to her—”
I suppress a sigh.
“Oh, dear child! My cousin’s sister’s friend’s daughter is exactly the same age as you, and she looks way older! She eats everything that’s set down before her, you know.” Turning confidentially to my mother, she starts, “Vegetables, dearie. Feed her more vegetables. And kacha amloki sedhdo! My cousin’s sister’s friend believes in that!”
All I can do is watch in mute horror as my mother turns a sickeningly cheerful face towards me. “Hear! Hear! Are you even going to touch it if we get you something like that?”
You bet not! I glare.
“Oh yes she will. She’s a good girl. Madhyamiks do make one lose appetite, tai na ma?” In a sympathetic tone, “You must be a very sincere student. Do you study all the time? When do you go to sleep at night?"
Usually, I stop studying at 11, though I go to sleep at 2. But I cannot embarrass myself by telling her that! So I choose silence,
"Ah, I see! You surely study very late into the night. Don’t study so much, darling. Eat a bit more and yes, another useful vegetable is--”
My hopes of escaping them are dashed. I need to interrupt the conversation. At any cost! Or else we’ll probably have a raw-vegetable feast for dinner. “Ma”, I hurriedly chime in, “Did you see the pink rose that has come out today? It looks so amazing…aunty, you must see it!”
That always works!
My mother’s greatest pride is her garden. Indeed, she’s raised that garden with greater care than she’s raised us, and well, it’s paid back. It blooms and smiles and she can show it off; unlike her two children who have rewarded her care and concern by growing into two proverbial pencils that draw sympathetic sighs from every corner.
The mother-daughter love scenes
As soon as the visitor goes away, the real scene begins.
“Mum, there’s no way I’m eating that horrible stuff. I’ll continue the way I am, thank you!”
Ma, of course, goes up in smoke! “Look at you” she fumes, “Just look at you! And look at your friends. Now, Deyasini, she looks twice as big as you and she’s just your age! Remember her?”
Remember her?! She’s my best friend!
“She isn’t! She isn’t even taller than me!” I protest, starting to have second thoughts about organizing a Penta meeting at my place. The rest of them are bigger and fatter than Deya, and I can’t afford to have my mum noticing that. “And if you’re going to start the comparison cruise, then let me tell you, she doesn’t eat amloki seddho. She eats at Dominoes and Zeeshan and goes out to eat with friends—” My mum’s eyes have narrowed so much that I feel it’s prudent to stop.
“I suppose we make you live on raw vegetables?”
“Well, no, but the last time we had chicken was—”
“Yesterday” she finishes coldly.
Damn my memory! We’ve had chicken for the last five days.
“And how do you know your friends are going out?” I can feel her heating—“YOU’VE BEEN CHATTING ONLINE INSTEAD OF STUDYING?” She finishes in a dangerous whisper.
“CHAT! WHAT! She SMSed, Ma!” I didn’t lie, she did SMS. But sensing that the conversation is about to enter the danger zone, I quickly make up my mind, choosing the lesser of the two evils. “So you’re adding amloki seddho to the list from tomorrow? Chhola-badam, doi, chhana, amloki…I suppose the next will item on your list will comprise something in the line of cow-dung.”
"You need to get a shape", Mum says. "You cannot remain a straight line forever."
Stunning analogy. A straight line is dimensionless. So, no more arguments.
At the family dinner table
Though momentarily closed, the topic resurfaces at the dinner table.
“Why do you take half an hour to come down to dinner everyday?”
“The beautiful food!” I answer impertinently, and immediately regret it.
“Does this kind of thing happen even in the afternoon? Jupiter!” my dad calls strictly.
Jupiter, the maid, appears. Her answer is direct and to the point. “Oh well, I have to call her around 50 times then, she hardly hears a word when she’s at the computer.”
I close my eyes, knowing what will come next.
Why, oh WHY do I never have my lunch in time?
“COMPUTER!” they both shriek. “She sits at the computer!”
“WHAT DO YOU DO AT THE COMPUTER?”
All I can do is ensure my mouth is filled with food. I don’t have the guts to follow any of the two courses of action left before me: Invent a lie, or tell the truth.
“I know.” My brother says complacently, “She blogs!”
My beautiful bro!
“Blogs! What are they?”
“A place to make all sorts of announcements, probably.”
“Or is it a place to e-mail friends?”
“I think it’s an indirect mode of chatting.”
I keep chewing. Unimaginative parents who are completely computer-ignorant are REAL blessings, compared to the computer-educated ones. But imaginative computer-ignorant parents are anything but b's.
“Relax!” My brother says. “She doesn’t chat much nowadays. The last time I saw her chatting with some Devpriyo Pal and Kiki S on Facebook was—”
“Yuck!” I interrupt hurriedly, “I can’t eat this stew, it stinks. Yesterday's left-over, isn't it? I'm going to be sick.”
“Does it,now? No, don’t eat it then, wait, let me check it!” Clever me! The conversation is diverted immediately. My father is very health conscious. “Jupiter! How many times have I told you NOT to give left-over food-items to the children?”
I knew my mother wouldn’t buy that. “That stew,” she says slowly and coldly, “is more nutritious than all the other items on the table today. And it was cooked an hour back. May I know exactly why you think it'll make you sick?”
I decide to quote a 7 year old kid I had chatted with online that day. “I just don’t like stew. It has stuff in it.”
“Really? What kind of stuff?”
“How do I know what goddamn stuff you put in my stew? Something that will make me grow into a Michael Phelps overnight, no doubt.”
She takes a deep breath.
“My dear,” she begins. It’s never a good sign to have mums beginning sentences so tenderly. Her next words confirm my worst fears. “Just in case you think you are the most beautiful girl on earth, let me remind you that you resemble a Sakchunni more and more with every passing day. (Consider myself beautiful? I suffer from obtuse mirror phobia, mom!) I can almost count your bones. (Big deal! I can too...206! I knew that in KG!) Your figure, though you never noticed, makes you look like an underfed lizard.”
Let me make something very clear here. I have no delusions about my looks. I DO NOT fancy that I look round, cute and lovely; in fact I know I probably come as close to the physical demonstration of a dimensionless straight line as possible. And it’s bad enough to have the mirror pointing that out mercilessly everyday, without having my mum picking it as an excuse to stuff me with all the food items in the market that compete for tastelessness. Whenever I try to show off my knowledge of Life Science by telling her that vegetables do not contain fat, she silences me with a you’re-not-the-only-educated-member-of-the-family look.
Catharsis Continues...
I wish I could wake up one morning to find myself swelled up like Aunt Marge. I’d bounce mildly down the stairs (Okay, maybe I’ll miss the joy of jumping 3 stairs at a time like I usually do!), and mightily refuse all the garbage they offer me in the name of nutrition. Being fat, you may not have a lot of admirers, but you at least have a long line of sympathizers. Skinny people miss out on both! :-( If you’re fat, people are never blunt enough to add to your misery by pointing out that you could sink through the floor any day. On the other hand, thinness is considered to be a mildly amusing joke, and people keep telling you all the time that you’d get blown away if you sigh too hard, or that you’d be indistinguishable from your shadow if you ate a little less.
Only yesterday, I was reading an article written by someone who I bet weighed more at conception than I did at birth. (Wait, no! I was born overweight!) Well, the article ran as follows:
Scrawny waifs are not happy unless they are making us fat people cry. They gulp down five or six donuts, an entire box of chocolate-covered cherries, a box of cookies, a tub of ice cream, a couple dozen bagels with whipped cream on top, and a bowl of chocolate mousse, and then they cry about how unfair life is, because they don't gain an ounce, and they really want to gain at least ten pounds. Meanwhile, we fatties have just gained ten pounds by watching them eat.
If only I could enjoy that kind of a diet, and make all the fat people jealous, then being thin would be WORTH it. But thanks to my over-cautious mother and also my metabolism, I don’t. Pshaw!
I guess I’ll sign out now. I’ll be skinned alive if I don’t finish the doi that’s waiting for me downstairs. Sigh! And bye!
Saturday, November 22, 2008
On Loneliness and Romance and Blogging…
I hate the orange colour of the blog-post headings. Can anyone tell me how to change it? And....“Random Reflections” is such a nice name for a blog! I wish I had come up with a name like that; mine is the stupidest and egotist-est name ever! Not that I mind it, everybody’s pretty much the same when it comes to egotism; some are probably a few shades cleverer than others at covering up the fact. I don’t know how one can be human without being an egotist. A friend of mine says, “Talking about myself makes me feel like an egotist”. Heck, as if anybody’s foolish enough to assume that you’re not an egotist if you don’t talk about yourself!
Okay, before I drift off the point with my incurable talent of rambling, here’s one point I wanted to make: I love blogging! Here’s a toast to Pratiti and Rohan and Kiki, for introducing me to the world of blogs. It was a bit annoying at first to find that people whom you’d never have invited to your blog in your right mind visiting it and commenting on it, but the fact remains that the best part of blogging is looking at the bottom of the page and seeing a new comment or two waiting there, so cheers to all those who took the trouble to comment! *raises bottle due to lack of glass nearby* The “Comments” link looks as inviting as well-wrapped birthday gifts, waiting to be opened and explored and exclaimed at. I maintain that the best part of a birthday gift is the opening of it, of which simple business I always insist on making the grandest possible ceremony(as grand as permissible when you have to open some 20 gifts in a Bengali class of 35 minutes which is to be followed by an English exam in the next period. Never shall I forgive Ruplekha Aunty for dropping a test on my 16th b’day). I’ve known people who, on receiving birthday gifts, tear away the wrapping unfeelingly, claw at the box, and feel absolutely nothing till they hold the actual gift in hand. Poor things! They’ve probably never felt the thrill of the first sight of a wrapped gift, admiring the gift-wrap from every corner, opening it slowly, as slowly as possible, making dozens of improbable conjectures as to the contents of the box, letting the inward excitement reach its boiling point, and finally drawing out the gift with a sharp intake of breath. And catching their jaw, and gasping, and feeling an irresistible desire to hug the giver right there.
Er, I hope you didn’t miss my original point. It was that comments are very nice and I invite them.
_____________________________________________________________________________________I I wish I could type fast enough to complete one post at a time; I hate it when I have to continue something I started in a cheerful mood in my current mood which is anything but cheerful! Heck, I WON’T continue with what I was writing, I’ll begin anew.
It’s a pretty nice day, today. I wish I were as gifted as some of my more-gifted-than-me friends who can make their surroundings materialize all around you with their amazingly vivid descriptions. I wouldn’t even dare to try and put into words the magical melody of that naam-na-jana bird that went “Krrrr” right now, or the harmonious cacophony of crows, sparrows, and all sorts of birds of all sorts of colours and shapes and sizes adding to the surprisingly resonant chorus that shatters the silence of this otherwise quiet afternoon. I’m so glad I don’t live in the alleged “heart” of the city, where the melody of a beautiful fall afternoon is broken by the honking of traffic, and the beauty of a full moon night destroyed by street lights and brightly lit hoardings. It is here in Garfa, an unassuming remote lane in an unheard-of corner of Kolkata, that its “heart” lies. Here, the music of the birds is broken only by the sound of a woman’s voice in the distance, accompanied by the hiss of a running tap. Who would wash dishes at this time, I wonder? Maybe some maid who wants to leave early. Maybe she has a sick son or daughter to attend to somewhere far away. I wonder what she is thinking as she scrubs the dishes, vehemently fighting against her heart that tells her to abandon her duty and rush of to her sick child! It would be lovely to read her mind right now. Oh, I wish I had a mind-reader. Or wait, I don’t. I wouldn’t be able to survive very long with an outrageous power like that. It’s not as simple and harmless as flying or going invisible. Flying would be pretty boring as a pastime, I think. If I were a bird, I’d spend more time at my nest feeding my chicks and peeping in at the windows of little girls who sat at computers, wondering what they were doing, than I would spend flying. Anyway, a bird can’t fly beyond the sunset, I can. Having the ability to fly would simply reveal the limitation of destinations to fly to. Invisibility, now, is one hell of an amazing power! What wouldn’t I do, starting from peeking into Tabby Cat’s private life, to…? Well, let’s not think of the extreme limit of what I’d do, lest I should lose interest in the power!
On afternoons like this, loneliness is the best friend you could possibly ask for. Loneliness, at this hour, is a transcending presence; it has a spirit of its own. It hides in between the lines of Hey There Delilah, in the invisible spaces in my darkened room, and the momentary pauses in the dulcet chorus outside. Every song you listen to, seems to take on a new meaning in these surroundings. Even though I’ve never had my heart broken in love, I can feel my heartstrings being stirred by the insidious pain that reverberates in every note of “Soledad”.
“If only you could see the tears in the world you left behind,
If only you could heal my heart just one more time!
Even when I close my eyes,
There's an image of your face.
And once again I come to realise
You're a loss I can't replace!
…………… …………… ……………
Soledad,
In my heart you were the only
And your memory lives on,
Why did you leave me?
Soledad…”
In the middle of a well lighted busy street, loneliness is a curse, because then it is a soulless vacuous space, not a presence. It’s even more painful if the vacuous space has a definite shape and size. Here, however, loneliness is simply too beautiful and romantic for words.
Romance!
Well, if you sit in a dark room all by yourself listening to heartbreaking love songs, you are bound to ruminate on romance, even if you know that there are more constructive topics that can to be cogitated upon. After some reflection, I have come to the conclusion that old-age romance is after all the most romantic form of it. I know it sounds amusing to hear a teenage girl talking about old-age romance, but really, after observing most of the so-called “committed” teenage couples around me, and also after a test of my own commitment, my opinion of teenage romance has taken such a low profile that I can safely say I’m not likely to fall in love anytime in the next five springs, let roses bloom as red as they will. Imagine falling in love at the age of, say, sixty or seventy, when you’ve seen enough of life to know what you want from it, and grown cynical enough to believe that you’ll never have it. That, I think, is truly beautiful, as beautiful as pink roses blossoming in the middle of summer. The joy of suddenly discovering that life still has something new to offer, to feel the hope and promise of young love at that age, to watch your life taking on a new meaning after 60 years or so…wouldn’t it be the amazing-est feeling ever?
Well, I guess I must stop my long and romantic post here! Or else I’ll have to wait one more day before posting it, which I couldn’t bear! Here’s wishing a happy romance to everybody, at whatever age it finds you! Cheers!
Okay, before I drift off the point with my incurable talent of rambling, here’s one point I wanted to make: I love blogging! Here’s a toast to Pratiti and Rohan and Kiki, for introducing me to the world of blogs. It was a bit annoying at first to find that people whom you’d never have invited to your blog in your right mind visiting it and commenting on it, but the fact remains that the best part of blogging is looking at the bottom of the page and seeing a new comment or two waiting there, so cheers to all those who took the trouble to comment! *raises bottle due to lack of glass nearby* The “Comments” link looks as inviting as well-wrapped birthday gifts, waiting to be opened and explored and exclaimed at. I maintain that the best part of a birthday gift is the opening of it, of which simple business I always insist on making the grandest possible ceremony(as grand as permissible when you have to open some 20 gifts in a Bengali class of 35 minutes which is to be followed by an English exam in the next period. Never shall I forgive Ruplekha Aunty for dropping a test on my 16th b’day). I’ve known people who, on receiving birthday gifts, tear away the wrapping unfeelingly, claw at the box, and feel absolutely nothing till they hold the actual gift in hand. Poor things! They’ve probably never felt the thrill of the first sight of a wrapped gift, admiring the gift-wrap from every corner, opening it slowly, as slowly as possible, making dozens of improbable conjectures as to the contents of the box, letting the inward excitement reach its boiling point, and finally drawing out the gift with a sharp intake of breath. And catching their jaw, and gasping, and feeling an irresistible desire to hug the giver right there.
Er, I hope you didn’t miss my original point. It was that comments are very nice and I invite them.
_____________________________________________________________________________________I I wish I could type fast enough to complete one post at a time; I hate it when I have to continue something I started in a cheerful mood in my current mood which is anything but cheerful! Heck, I WON’T continue with what I was writing, I’ll begin anew.
It’s a pretty nice day, today. I wish I were as gifted as some of my more-gifted-than-me friends who can make their surroundings materialize all around you with their amazingly vivid descriptions. I wouldn’t even dare to try and put into words the magical melody of that naam-na-jana bird that went “Krrrr” right now, or the harmonious cacophony of crows, sparrows, and all sorts of birds of all sorts of colours and shapes and sizes adding to the surprisingly resonant chorus that shatters the silence of this otherwise quiet afternoon. I’m so glad I don’t live in the alleged “heart” of the city, where the melody of a beautiful fall afternoon is broken by the honking of traffic, and the beauty of a full moon night destroyed by street lights and brightly lit hoardings. It is here in Garfa, an unassuming remote lane in an unheard-of corner of Kolkata, that its “heart” lies. Here, the music of the birds is broken only by the sound of a woman’s voice in the distance, accompanied by the hiss of a running tap. Who would wash dishes at this time, I wonder? Maybe some maid who wants to leave early. Maybe she has a sick son or daughter to attend to somewhere far away. I wonder what she is thinking as she scrubs the dishes, vehemently fighting against her heart that tells her to abandon her duty and rush of to her sick child! It would be lovely to read her mind right now. Oh, I wish I had a mind-reader. Or wait, I don’t. I wouldn’t be able to survive very long with an outrageous power like that. It’s not as simple and harmless as flying or going invisible. Flying would be pretty boring as a pastime, I think. If I were a bird, I’d spend more time at my nest feeding my chicks and peeping in at the windows of little girls who sat at computers, wondering what they were doing, than I would spend flying. Anyway, a bird can’t fly beyond the sunset, I can. Having the ability to fly would simply reveal the limitation of destinations to fly to. Invisibility, now, is one hell of an amazing power! What wouldn’t I do, starting from peeking into Tabby Cat’s private life, to…? Well, let’s not think of the extreme limit of what I’d do, lest I should lose interest in the power!
On afternoons like this, loneliness is the best friend you could possibly ask for. Loneliness, at this hour, is a transcending presence; it has a spirit of its own. It hides in between the lines of Hey There Delilah, in the invisible spaces in my darkened room, and the momentary pauses in the dulcet chorus outside. Every song you listen to, seems to take on a new meaning in these surroundings. Even though I’ve never had my heart broken in love, I can feel my heartstrings being stirred by the insidious pain that reverberates in every note of “Soledad”.
“If only you could see the tears in the world you left behind,
If only you could heal my heart just one more time!
Even when I close my eyes,
There's an image of your face.
And once again I come to realise
You're a loss I can't replace!
…………… …………… ……………
Soledad,
In my heart you were the only
And your memory lives on,
Why did you leave me?
Soledad…”
In the middle of a well lighted busy street, loneliness is a curse, because then it is a soulless vacuous space, not a presence. It’s even more painful if the vacuous space has a definite shape and size. Here, however, loneliness is simply too beautiful and romantic for words.
Romance!
Well, if you sit in a dark room all by yourself listening to heartbreaking love songs, you are bound to ruminate on romance, even if you know that there are more constructive topics that can to be cogitated upon. After some reflection, I have come to the conclusion that old-age romance is after all the most romantic form of it. I know it sounds amusing to hear a teenage girl talking about old-age romance, but really, after observing most of the so-called “committed” teenage couples around me, and also after a test of my own commitment, my opinion of teenage romance has taken such a low profile that I can safely say I’m not likely to fall in love anytime in the next five springs, let roses bloom as red as they will. Imagine falling in love at the age of, say, sixty or seventy, when you’ve seen enough of life to know what you want from it, and grown cynical enough to believe that you’ll never have it. That, I think, is truly beautiful, as beautiful as pink roses blossoming in the middle of summer. The joy of suddenly discovering that life still has something new to offer, to feel the hope and promise of young love at that age, to watch your life taking on a new meaning after 60 years or so…wouldn’t it be the amazing-est feeling ever?
Well, I guess I must stop my long and romantic post here! Or else I’ll have to wait one more day before posting it, which I couldn’t bear! Here’s wishing a happy romance to everybody, at whatever age it finds you! Cheers!
Monday, November 17, 2008
Post II
Here I am again, after long deliberations on whether it would be advisable to continue this blog. I know a more sensible person would have thought about this before actually starting the blog, but I, being me, decided to act on the impulse of opening a blog first, thinking there would be plenty of time to rationalize my action later. But, heck, to my surprise, I found that the more I thought, the more unaccountable and irrational my action seemed. Whatever could I have been thinking of when I opened a blog--A BLOG--of my own? Who am I, so important, that I assumed there was some point in adding another one to the millions and zillions of blogs that are already there? And more importantly, what the hell was I going to write about? I have nothing new to offer the world!
Well, pointlessness in my element. So in the end, I decided to write a post about my feeling of pointlessness. I decided to let myself fulfill the task of updating my blog first, and think of a point later. Dunstan Cass-ish, I know. Caring more for "immediate annoyances" than "remote consequences".
___________________________________________________________________________________
Somehow, after reading Pratiti's blog...I feel comforted. It seems to have given me a purpose for blogging. It made me feel the same way I'd felt when I'd read Anne Frank's Diary, filling me with a sense of unity with all other teenage girls everywhere. Most girls of my age, irrespective of their time(Anne and I belong to two different centuries) and nature(Prat and I have almost nothing in common) share some of the same passions, hopes and fears. I'm no good at enumerating my thoughts, but maybe, once I get used to the concept of blogging, I too might come up with something that will link me to others with the same currents of thought, help me identify me fears and perhaps even fight them, knowing that there are others who battle the same enemy.
Am I making sense?
Maybe not right now, but I probably will, pretty soon. And that's another thing I've noticed in many of my peers, the fear of not making sense. The fear of being different. The fear of having to choose.
Ever stood still at the corridor of one of the SPHS toilets and watched the myriads of girls sailing in an out, in a blaze of colours(though all of them wear the same dress)? And heard them chirping about their various problems, the daily happenings in their lives? "Heck, how do I sit with XYZ all throughout the year? She's a lesbian, I tell you..."(in the tone of declaring the headline of the day), "Don't you DARE tell him,it's just a crush, I'm flirting..."(fishing out a make up box and various kinds of combs from a pink coloured bag), "But this is my deepest secret, dear, promise you won't tell!"(imbecile enough to assume that the toilet is a private place just because it can be locked) "I hate that teacher, did you hear what she said about my skirt length?"(wearing skirts that expose two inches of skin above your knee)....Sometimes, you find it hard to stop yourself from choking when you hear sympathetic comments like, "Yeah, I know how irritating dandruffs are, yaar, tor oily dandruff na dry dandruff? Oily holei toh beshi jhamela!" If we didn't have our classes to attend, I'd spend a few hours everyday standing at the toilet corridor, observing girlhood, hearing their secrets, watching them cry, laugh, let themselves go. Watching them being what they are, what they cannot be outside, the outside that is frequented by boys to impress, teachers to watch out for, and strangers to estrange themselves from. Somehow, no one remains a stranger once you enter the toilet. Not that you suddenly blossom into a girl when you cross the threshold of that place, you are quite as much of a girl outside as you are inside it, but the inherent bonding of trust that exists between all girls suddenly reveals itself, and without noticing it, you become more of a girl than you ever are, outside. Yet, if you simply stand at the corridor, observing, as I do, you're bound to wonder how you can possibly be part of this crowd. You're bound to look for a link that might help you identify yourself as one of them. "Them". As if you're someone different, someone who doesn't really belong there. It's not just me, any other girl in my position would feel the same.
The desire to be different is inherent to everyone, yet the fear of being different is always stronger. To have your choices made for you is unbearable, but to make your own choices is terrifying.
And...what was the point I wanted to make?
Heck! I've forgotten.
"Heck" is my new disease. Probably caught it from Rohan. Very soon, that interjection will grow to be a part of who I am, it will help one to identify me. And Rohan will get lost from it.
I remember a friend of mine saying a few days back, "I know very well who I am". Thank god I don't remember who it was. I'm having an irresistable desire to raise my left eyebrow at that person, and shrivel him by boring my eyes into his.
Heck, i won't apologize, as is the fashion, for boring you. I didn't invite you to read this. Your choice, you take responsibility. GEDDIT? (Now who did I get this from? Devpriyo, I think.)
Okay, mickey's ticking, I have to go. Oh, I wish I DID have a mickey clock!
P.S. Blogging IS fun! I intended to talk about, um, whther I have a purpose in life or not, and I ended up writing about the SPHS girls toilet. Fun! :-D
Well, pointlessness in my element. So in the end, I decided to write a post about my feeling of pointlessness. I decided to let myself fulfill the task of updating my blog first, and think of a point later. Dunstan Cass-ish, I know. Caring more for "immediate annoyances" than "remote consequences".
___________________________________________________________________________________
Somehow, after reading Pratiti's blog...I feel comforted. It seems to have given me a purpose for blogging. It made me feel the same way I'd felt when I'd read Anne Frank's Diary, filling me with a sense of unity with all other teenage girls everywhere. Most girls of my age, irrespective of their time(Anne and I belong to two different centuries) and nature(Prat and I have almost nothing in common) share some of the same passions, hopes and fears. I'm no good at enumerating my thoughts, but maybe, once I get used to the concept of blogging, I too might come up with something that will link me to others with the same currents of thought, help me identify me fears and perhaps even fight them, knowing that there are others who battle the same enemy.
Am I making sense?
Maybe not right now, but I probably will, pretty soon. And that's another thing I've noticed in many of my peers, the fear of not making sense. The fear of being different. The fear of having to choose.
Ever stood still at the corridor of one of the SPHS toilets and watched the myriads of girls sailing in an out, in a blaze of colours(though all of them wear the same dress)? And heard them chirping about their various problems, the daily happenings in their lives? "Heck, how do I sit with XYZ all throughout the year? She's a lesbian, I tell you..."(in the tone of declaring the headline of the day), "Don't you DARE tell him,it's just a crush, I'm flirting..."(fishing out a make up box and various kinds of combs from a pink coloured bag), "But this is my deepest secret, dear, promise you won't tell!"(imbecile enough to assume that the toilet is a private place just because it can be locked) "I hate that teacher, did you hear what she said about my skirt length?"(wearing skirts that expose two inches of skin above your knee)....Sometimes, you find it hard to stop yourself from choking when you hear sympathetic comments like, "Yeah, I know how irritating dandruffs are, yaar, tor oily dandruff na dry dandruff? Oily holei toh beshi jhamela!" If we didn't have our classes to attend, I'd spend a few hours everyday standing at the toilet corridor, observing girlhood, hearing their secrets, watching them cry, laugh, let themselves go. Watching them being what they are, what they cannot be outside, the outside that is frequented by boys to impress, teachers to watch out for, and strangers to estrange themselves from. Somehow, no one remains a stranger once you enter the toilet. Not that you suddenly blossom into a girl when you cross the threshold of that place, you are quite as much of a girl outside as you are inside it, but the inherent bonding of trust that exists between all girls suddenly reveals itself, and without noticing it, you become more of a girl than you ever are, outside. Yet, if you simply stand at the corridor, observing, as I do, you're bound to wonder how you can possibly be part of this crowd. You're bound to look for a link that might help you identify yourself as one of them. "Them". As if you're someone different, someone who doesn't really belong there. It's not just me, any other girl in my position would feel the same.
The desire to be different is inherent to everyone, yet the fear of being different is always stronger. To have your choices made for you is unbearable, but to make your own choices is terrifying.
And...what was the point I wanted to make?
Heck! I've forgotten.
"Heck" is my new disease. Probably caught it from Rohan. Very soon, that interjection will grow to be a part of who I am, it will help one to identify me. And Rohan will get lost from it.
I remember a friend of mine saying a few days back, "I know very well who I am". Thank god I don't remember who it was. I'm having an irresistable desire to raise my left eyebrow at that person, and shrivel him by boring my eyes into his.
Heck, i won't apologize, as is the fashion, for boring you. I didn't invite you to read this. Your choice, you take responsibility. GEDDIT? (Now who did I get this from? Devpriyo, I think.)
Okay, mickey's ticking, I have to go. Oh, I wish I DID have a mickey clock!
P.S. Blogging IS fun! I intended to talk about, um, whther I have a purpose in life or not, and I ended up writing about the SPHS girls toilet. Fun! :-D
Saturday, November 15, 2008
How [blank] made me [blank]...The History
Er, hi.
And, er, hier.
And, umm, well, er, hiest!
... ... ...
I did hear you sigh and saw you roll your eyes. I'm VERY good at guessing people's thought currents, and this supernatural power of mine enables me to say with certainty that your thoughts, upon reading my opening line, ran as follows, "If that's the average vocabulary of this person, what on earth led her to open a BLOG of all things?" Well, I can't pretend that the question hasn't bugged me. What led me to open this blog is a mystery to me as of yet, you see I never wanted a blog of my own and never even knew that ordinary people, like myself, blogged. I always associated blogging with celebrities, and vaguely looked upon a "a blog"(dark, dubious word) as the most harmless way of kicking each other that celebrities had come up with. Don't blame me, the first time I heard the word "blog" was when some stupid celebrity indirectly abused a stupider celebrity(I'm no good at remembering celebrity names, but I think they were two of the famous Khans) through a blog and the newspapers raised hell about it. That ordinary people could also blog occurred to me after a certain friend of mine was kind enough to post me the link to his own blog, and unkind enough to remind me (albeit in his polite gentlemanly manner) that I wasn't in a hurry to read it. But even after I did read it, all it did was make my jaw hit the floor with an enormous thud, and leave me to wonder dizzily for the next 78 hours how a person with the same cerebrospinal fluid as me could write SO well. It definitely didn't make me want a blog of my own, and I'd have grown into a blogless old spinster had I not chanced upon another friend's blog, which would have given me another bruise in my jaw if I hadn't caught it in time. This was the one that vaguely made me contemplate the possibility of getting myself a bloggy. But direct inspiration, as usual, came from my supremely adored mentor, whose blog I saw right now. And now I advise all of you to stop reading this crap I'm writing, and take a look at the blogs I mentioned right now. Trust me, you won't regret it, you'll only feel absolutely disinclined to continue reading THIS.
But since I've started, I won't stop till I pen down the whole history. This is the first time I'm writing History, and not for the sake of marks. Well, like every teenager, I too have a tendency of doing exactly what everyone else is doing(even if none of them are doing the sensible thing), and I decided that to live without a blog any longer was an impossiblity seeing that THREE of my friends already had blogs of their own. The same thing had happened with story-writing a few days ago, my entire friends-circle had developed a sudden story writing mania which wore off with the first hint of the Tests. I hope it won't happen to my blog as well, though I don't trust myself enough to be certain. Well, whatever, I had no idea how to name my blog and ended up with "I Me Myself" which is actually the perfect name, because I'm no celebrity and I'm writing this only for myself, for the fun of writing a blog, addresing it to a more or less imaginary audience(because I'm determined not to let the majority of my friends read this). I mean, why would I fancy that people would actually be interested in anything that I've got to say about my exceedingly commonplace existence which is in no way even remotely different from their own?
Anyway, when I finally came down to posting, I created a very deep furrow on my brow, gravely switched of Hey There Delilah(which, by the way, is an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G song, and if you don't have a limited internet connection like me, I advise you to download it right now! (I wonder why I keep telling my audience to do things that'll lead them OFF me!)) and ran a Google search for "blog names". Here's what they offered:
Uh oh! My music teacher is here, and I have to stop now. Hey, I HEARD that sigh of relief, how RUDE of you! x-( Well, much as I'd like to pretend to be angry, I'm afraid I can't. More next time. Till then, adios! :-)
P.S. I've just read my whole post again, and have come to the conclusion that the friend of mine who offered me a nobel prize for prolixity was an extremely insightful person.
PP.S. Wow, this thing actually has a multi-lingual feature. I can type Hindi! क्या बात हैं! मज़ा आ गया! I hope you can't read Hindi, becoz I'm sure that was full of grammatical errors. Hindi was my worst language in school, you see.
PP.SS. Wow, I just posted my first blog-post! Yiipiie!
And, er, hier.
And, umm, well, er, hiest!
... ... ...
I did hear you sigh and saw you roll your eyes. I'm VERY good at guessing people's thought currents, and this supernatural power of mine enables me to say with certainty that your thoughts, upon reading my opening line, ran as follows, "If that's the average vocabulary of this person, what on earth led her to open a BLOG of all things?" Well, I can't pretend that the question hasn't bugged me. What led me to open this blog is a mystery to me as of yet, you see I never wanted a blog of my own and never even knew that ordinary people, like myself, blogged. I always associated blogging with celebrities, and vaguely looked upon a "a blog"(dark, dubious word) as the most harmless way of kicking each other that celebrities had come up with. Don't blame me, the first time I heard the word "blog" was when some stupid celebrity indirectly abused a stupider celebrity(I'm no good at remembering celebrity names, but I think they were two of the famous Khans) through a blog and the newspapers raised hell about it. That ordinary people could also blog occurred to me after a certain friend of mine was kind enough to post me the link to his own blog, and unkind enough to remind me (albeit in his polite gentlemanly manner) that I wasn't in a hurry to read it. But even after I did read it, all it did was make my jaw hit the floor with an enormous thud, and leave me to wonder dizzily for the next 78 hours how a person with the same cerebrospinal fluid as me could write SO well. It definitely didn't make me want a blog of my own, and I'd have grown into a blogless old spinster had I not chanced upon another friend's blog, which would have given me another bruise in my jaw if I hadn't caught it in time. This was the one that vaguely made me contemplate the possibility of getting myself a bloggy. But direct inspiration, as usual, came from my supremely adored mentor, whose blog I saw right now. And now I advise all of you to stop reading this crap I'm writing, and take a look at the blogs I mentioned right now. Trust me, you won't regret it, you'll only feel absolutely disinclined to continue reading THIS.
But since I've started, I won't stop till I pen down the whole history. This is the first time I'm writing History, and not for the sake of marks. Well, like every teenager, I too have a tendency of doing exactly what everyone else is doing(even if none of them are doing the sensible thing), and I decided that to live without a blog any longer was an impossiblity seeing that THREE of my friends already had blogs of their own. The same thing had happened with story-writing a few days ago, my entire friends-circle had developed a sudden story writing mania which wore off with the first hint of the Tests. I hope it won't happen to my blog as well, though I don't trust myself enough to be certain. Well, whatever, I had no idea how to name my blog and ended up with "I Me Myself" which is actually the perfect name, because I'm no celebrity and I'm writing this only for myself, for the fun of writing a blog, addresing it to a more or less imaginary audience(because I'm determined not to let the majority of my friends read this). I mean, why would I fancy that people would actually be interested in anything that I've got to say about my exceedingly commonplace existence which is in no way even remotely different from their own?
Anyway, when I finally came down to posting, I created a very deep furrow on my brow, gravely switched of Hey There Delilah(which, by the way, is an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G song, and if you don't have a limited internet connection like me, I advise you to download it right now! (I wonder why I keep telling my audience to do things that'll lead them OFF me!)) and ran a Google search for "blog names". Here's what they offered:
Ultimate List of Blog Heading Templates & Titles for Blogging
Written by Jacob Cass on Sunday, February 17, 2008 – 11:07 am
Below I have collected a huge list of great blog heading templates and titles for blogging. You can use these templates to customise your blog title and is a great resource if you ever have writers block.
1. Warning: [blank].
2. How [blank] Made Me [blank].
3. Are You [blank]?
4. [Blank] Ways to [blank].
5. If You’re [blank], You Can [blank].
I daresay this Cass guy expected me to fill in the "blank"s, but I decided to let them be. And then I grimly proceeded to write my first post, only to discover, to my shock, that the most imaginative opening word I could come up with was "Er"! Imagine that!Uh oh! My music teacher is here, and I have to stop now. Hey, I HEARD that sigh of relief, how RUDE of you! x-( Well, much as I'd like to pretend to be angry, I'm afraid I can't. More next time. Till then, adios! :-)
P.S. I've just read my whole post again, and have come to the conclusion that the friend of mine who offered me a nobel prize for prolixity was an extremely insightful person.
PP.S. Wow, this thing actually has a multi-lingual feature. I can type Hindi! क्या बात हैं! मज़ा आ गया! I hope you can't read Hindi, becoz I'm sure that was full of grammatical errors. Hindi was my worst language in school, you see.
PP.SS. Wow, I just posted my first blog-post! Yiipiie!
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