I had been reading some lines of a poem which was a part of our course in Alt. English. They went something like this… and they made me spiral into some rather strange questions...
“This is a man who talks of pain
As though it belonged to him alone.
Maybe he has invented it himself
And made a virtue of it.”
(Of a Questionable Conviction by Jayanta Mahapatra)
This led me to think whether I too hold any resentment and pain within me. Am I living in denial or is it that I have not seen anything ‘real’? Why is it that I find it difficult to be morbid about anything for more than a day or two? (Yes believe me, being upset is such a rage these days that I feel left out at times and start questioning myself!) Am I living in a bubble? Why are so many people depressed and go about proclaiming their depression as if it’s something to be proud of? Do I get everything so easily that I have (almost) nothing to feeling bad about? To be depressed about? Have I had it so easy that I haven’t really gone through the ‘polishing and cutting’ phase would would eventually ‘mould me into a stronger being’? Am I actually very weak within?
Then I came across these words while reading Shantaram(it's in my Currently Reading section), which by the way is a must-read for all of you. This definition of suffering, gave something to think about—
"Suffering , of every kind, is always a matter of what we've lost. Real suffering is measured by what's taken away from us."
I agree. I couldn’t change it or better it in any way (of course this is only one instance of the author’s way with words. The book is sprinkled with quote worthy lines, many of which are debatable which in turns adds to the fun.)
So, going by that definition, I should really be suffering. But suffering isn’t being miserable. It’s just there, somewhere inside. I wish I could have some things back, which I can’t.
Then, may be what I have lost never really topped my priority list. Yes, they may not have. That’s because I always took those for granted! And that doesn’t decrease the suffering in any way.
You may think, what you’ve lost isn’t probably that big, so you don’t feel it. Okay then, so I take you away from your home to some place you’ve never liked living in (because you haven’t really ever lived there), turn your life upside down, take you away when you think you’ve got friends for life and then ask you to start all over again. Then you’re asked to ‘make new friends’ and ‘fit in’ and ‘do the right things to be in the good books of people’. I make you feel horrible, suffocated and lost.
So, it isn’t really a small thing. Of course, many lessons were learnt and tests were passed. In those first 2 years when I felt I (at times) could just die, I had once called up this friend after a long long time. It was diwali. I didn’t think she’d recognize my voice. She knew it was me the minute I said hello. When I asked her whether my voice hadn’t changed at all, she said it had changed but it still had the ‘happy ring and enthusiasm’ in it which she was sure only one person she knew in the whole wide world could have despite all that she may be going through. (me). That did make me feel glad, to be honest. And since then, I have started noticing if people whom I’ve never spoken to before on phone recognize my voice the first time. They always do and they tell me the same thing that the old friend told.
This again led me to think that yes, I may be suffering (but I am not ‘depressed’ or ‘miserable’. You can suffer silently without being a pessimist) but I don’t let that be the major part of me. I haven’t got everything...anything... easily. I have been through my share of testing time for this phase of my life. I have gone through the ‘polishing and cutting’ phase which I am sure many people my age haven’t even gotten a clue about. A lot of time people do get annoyed with me for not getting annoyed with them. Strange!
Despite all this, I somehow manage to see the silver lining. I don’t need anybody’s pity. I don’t need to be morbid to be different. I am already different, just by being the happy me. So don’t ask me why I keep smiling so much because I’ll only tell you one thing- I find things to smile about even where there isn’t anything, because if I didn’t, I’d probably have become a coke-addict or a chain smoker or a total goner by now. And I am never going to be those things. The only thing that can help one out of their lonliness, ‘depression’ and addiction is addiction to something else- happiness. You’ll never feel the need to drug yourself to be happy. That’s the way we were made. When we were children we never needed a ‘fix’ to get a ‘high’. We were always ‘high’, if you ask me. You don’t need to feel 'low' which would lead you to do things to make you artificially and temporarily feel high. So why take so much trouble? Feeling low isn’t cool, at least not in my book, so why feel that way?
Please Note:
1)Yes, I have digressed a hundred times in this post and even I don’t know what the actual topic of the post should be.
2)These are my views and they work for me.
3)I am not an intolerant person who despises addicts (to anything ie). I just wish they’d see the light within instead of searching the whole world for it.
4)No, I am not preaching. In case you thought I was, then you should look ‘preach’ in the dictionary. I am just saying what I want to say since this is MY blog.
5)Yes, 'happy' is a very general and relative term. I have used it to only denote not being sad and upset and just being pleased in general.
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No, I didn’t turn into a werewolf and scare the hell out of S (sister).
No, I didn’t start sleepwalking and break half the things in my house while doing such a thing.
No, I didn’t go to a zombie-haunted house to give the zombies a fright (heh, that would be fun though).
So, what was it that I did at midnight? Okay… I just freaked out and did what I do best- act like a lunatic!
It was around 11.45 in the night, S was busy doing something online while I was getting bored in the background. So I decided to clean out my clothes shelf which was desperately screaming out to me--- “DO something about me you..you..you……!”
So, I decided to oblige and set down to removing all the clothes and arranging them and blah blah. Everytime I indulge in this activity, I find something that totally makes me happy and this time it was my old school skirt!! I couldn’t find the shirt neither could I find any other set of uniform. I then remembered, while packing (before moving) Mom had warned me to leave all my ‘unnecessary’ stuff back which could be given away to the bai but I had slipped in my beloved skirt and given away the rest. Oh how I ADORE this skirt. Once in school while I was hanging out in the corridor between classes, this really scary teacher whom I didn’t like was doing her ‘rounds’. When she saw me, she was like—
“Your skirt is like one foot long! You must get another one stiched!”
To which I replied—
“Sorry but it actually is about 1.3 feet long and I won’t be here much longer so I won’t be getting any more skirts stiched!” *smiles*
Her expression was somewhat puzzled and amused at the same time! :D
That was my favourite piece of uniform that I ever owned! I was so overcome with emotions that I even took a snap of it to put it up here. *sigh*
After the skirt-gazing and skirt-photo-clicking I continued with my pursuit of rearraging my clothes when I came across this absolutely warm, fuzzy black shirt with a little butterfly on it! I wore that and clicked like a thousand pictures of myself where one could easily pass me off for a sleep-deprived zombie (er, I think sleep-deprived is contained in the word zombie, but still). All this while S was blithely unaware of my adventures right behind her back and was doing her work peacefully.
Then I came across my wrap around skirts which I hardly wear. Anyway, they were there- all washed and ironed and neatly(?) kept. I started messing around with one of them. I tied the little stringies around my neck and started yelling “Woohoooo here comes Superwoman!” while performing an act of mock flying to which S nonchalantly replied with a practised yawn (she’s pretty used to me acting like a mental-asylum-patient-on-the-loose).
After the flying around ceased, a brilliant idea struck me. I wore the wrap around skirt in an absurd way which was held together by a banana clip on the back (heh) and the stringies at the neck. A pink shiny diva-like belt was worn on the waist to keep the frills and folds of the skirt-turned-dress together. 6-inch heels were worn. Holy mother of God! I asked S to turn around and told her this was my mock-red-carpet outfit. I quickly justified such behaviour of mine by saying I had been looking at fugly people too often these days! S gushed—
“OMG! It seriously looks like those things they wear!”
Then I started posing with one leg in front of the other, waving out, flashing fake smiles and catwalking around and still managing to look perfectly sane for the first time in the evening! S responded to all this diva-act with—
“OMG! You look like Malaika Arora!”
Thengew berry muds!! (I assume everybody has received and read that forward by now!)
No. That was a serious compliment, really! Hee. I do kind of do like Malaika. So, you know…
After all this I am giving fashion designing a serious thought. Erm. No, on second thoughts, I shouldn’t become a fashion designer. If I do, my models will all end up walking the ramp in wrap around skirts and PJs!! :D
All this activity has left me a little drained (did I mention that before all this cleaning started, I was busy dancing away to glory?). Old age is really getting to me! Okay, I take the last sentence back! It’s high time my PBT (Post Birthday Trauma) passed. Okay. Yes. No more PBT. Smiles :)
Of late, S has been thinking a lot (I suppose) and has been adorning our conversations with ‘witticisms’.
I have recollected and documented two such incidents in the following lines.
Scene 1:
S was sitting on the bed with books (and clothes, and bags and phones and every imaginable item that a 17 (newly turned*blush*#) year old Libran could possibly own) scattered all over it. I was rummaging around for some books or something and noticed a frown (very rare in case of S!) on her face. Of course, I acted as if I hadn’t seen it. She waited for me to acknowledge the frown and ask her what was up and when enough time had elapsed and she got no favourable response form me, she remarked wisely—
“Sneha ke books- na shelf ke, na bed ke”
(inspired by the doggie lokokti)
Wah wah!
Scene 2:
This is an unsaid, unwritten law in our house. When either of the two weird sisters is sitting on the comp (okay, not sitting ON the comp, but working on the comp. it’s just a way of saying this same thing, okay?!) the other feels an incredible urge to displace that sister and herself occupy the comp (okay… you got it!) even though she has much better work to do. In order to accomplish this feat, the second sister starts roaming around the comp-chair and peeking into the screen, all of which are clear indications of her desire to oust the incumbent comp-user.
One evening, I was merrily reading blogs, orkutting, checking mails blah blah when S started exhibiting all the properties of the second sister (as stated in the law above). Now, as I have already once mentioned, I HATE it when people look into my work and the comp is no exception. I always get irritated and cranky when this happens and minimize all the windows and drive her away before I regain my normal, calm and composed state.
However, this time, S said she DID NOT want the comp and only offered me one of her wisecracks—
“We are like honeybees and the comp is the honey” *eyes gleaming*
Wah wah!
Will anyone ever run out of sources of entertainment with sisters like THESE around?
I tell you, even brother-brother jodis aren’t as good as sisters! And I loathe Ms.De for writing a book on two ‘sisters’ at emotional war with each other. Hullo. They are proper ‘sisters’ neither by blood nor by any form of emotional bonding whatsoever. Then why call the books ‘Sisters’ and make ‘sisters’ look so bitchy? I don’t like that woman! No one has the right to tarnish the pure bond of sisterhood, as Elle rightly pointed out in Legally Blonde (LOVE that movie and ADORE Elle).
#- I have no clue why I blush when I say I am 17. I just feel a little old and weary now. Sigh!Someone who lived in the college hostel has committed suicide. Yet another case. Exam season, so it’s likely that more such cases will be reported now that December is close. It’s pretty upsetting to see (alright, hear) such things happening around this time of the year, every year. Why? Why can’t proper counsellors and Student Advisors be made available to students who need someone to talk to? Most of the time, it’s lack of communication of what’s troubling one that causes the sufferer to cause such things to happen. Miserable.
The technician guy who had been called by my Dad to come over to load a new OS has screwed my existing one and didn’t even load the other one. So basically all my data was at stake like 4 hours ago. The funniest part was when he produced a 64 MB pen drive to take back-up of my old data (we wanted to get the damn thing formatted). I even let out a little giggle in that very serious situation (I know it must’ve seemed a little rude, but hey, it was just toooooooooo funny to see that someone could even IMAGINE that we’d have like THAT MUCH data!!). We told him gently that we’ve got more than 60 GB data and blah blah (rest is irrelevant here). So well, the point is that I have to wait till Sunday when that guy gets his posterior here and loads the other OS and I can go use my comp without worrying about spyware and adware embedding themselves on my poor HD.
I didn’t even do 10% of all the work that I was supposed to do today. Bleh. I feel horribly guilty since exams are from Monday!!! Lord save me. Pleej!!!
As a cherry on the pie, maid made BAINGAN for dinner. Urgh!! Of course, it wasn’t the seedy, yucky variety but it was still baingan!
However, looking on the brighter side, I got a 250 GB external USB HD. It had to be bought in order to save all my data :).
Oh, by the way, Abhu just messaged me to tell that she got a puppy! So the day wasn’t that bad for all of us, eh?
PS. Today was a bad hair day too!! Everything goes wrong on like, ONE CHOSEN day, right? In a way, that’s a good thing. You don’t have to waste all the days of the week cribbing. Seven things going wrong on one day is better than one different thing going wrong every day of the week, right??!!
I couldn’t think of any dish that I would want to try neither did I feel like finding the dusty old Sanjeev Kapoor and Tarla Dalal recipe books. So, like everytime I’ve made something for the first time, I trudged along with with only my instincts (which actually must be enough for seasoned cooks since my mom (and everybody else’s of course!) keeps coming up with new innovative ideas every now and then).
The charu I made-
Yea well, it doesn't look great but it did taste so! Yes, i have no modesty left in me!
It took me about half an hour to prepare the charu. It took me 10 more minutes to toast some bread and cut it in shapes. My mom was home by then. I immediately served all I had made (hot hot!! Yay! it all tastes best when it’s hot :)) and she, being the understanding mom who has spent 20 odd years of her life trying to make a slow-eater S eat while the food is still warm, got down to the eating business. Of course, she told me it was wonderful and called up my dad to tell him about the Sneha-making-actual-dinner story! God! That feeling, watching mom have the food I’d made was most heart-warming. I was so happy to actually see her…. Okay well, istead of trying to put the feeling down in words I’ll just leave it on the hindi saying – Khaane se zyada khilane me mazaa aata hai!
UPDATE!!!
Okay, so originally I had not included the procedure that I had followed to make this charu (I don't use the word recipe here, because it's not the real recipe!). Anyway, here goes....
1) I heated some oil (about 3 teaspoons) in a kadai and added a little mustard seeds, saunf or fennel seeds and asafoetida or hing powder till the mustard seeds spluttered (which was very early!!). I then addded some curry leaves, crushed ginger and about 3 cloves of garlic which had also been crushed.
These are mustard seeds!
Saunf (or fennel seeds)
Asafoetida Powder.2) I then added some salt (to taste of course!), some curry powder, a little chilli powder and finally 3 (I didn't really know how many tomatoes I should be using, however since I was cooking for 3 people, i thought why not 3?!) tomatoes which had been cut in thin slices. The tomatoes were medium sized.
3) I cooked the contents of the kadai for a while (till the water from the tomato had almost evaporated). Then, I added about 3-4 cups of water (I was really generous with the water :)).
4) I added a lid and let the water come to a boil. After it came to a boil, I cooked it further for about4-5 minutes (till the salt-water balance came ie!) with stirring from time to time.
5) Then....... my charu was ready! :)
Enjoy!
PS. I added the pictures (which I found from the net) of those 3 components because I thought it would be easier for other novice cooks like me to figure out what all these ingredients actually mean. I didn't know those black chaunk seeds were mustard seeds till I googled it this morning!!
Saying it all and still not saying anything....?
Labels: Self, thoughtful-thoughtful Thursday, November 09, 2006She’s sorry. She didn’t know. Now she does.
Did you know it for real? Or did you only think that she needed it? No, she didn’t need it. She only wanted it. There’s a difference. A huge one.
She only wanted to break the cycle. She has set you free. She really has. She feels she doesn’t even know you. She’s right.
She doesn’t need to know you. She may want to know you though.
She took it all and went away, because she wanted to break the cycle. She needed to break it. She didn’t want to break it though. But she needed to.
May be you don’t yet know what she wanted to do and what she needed to do. By the time you get that, she won’t even know you. Actually, she doesn’t know you even now. But that time, she will refuse to know you. She won’t want to know you any more.
She says she is sorry for it. Is that okay?
I know it’s not.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Almost a year of blogging (but hardly a couple of months of regular blogging) ! Celebrating(?) blog anniversary with the same theme that gave rise to it all in the first place......
S, Abhu and more fun!!
Labels: abhu, calvin, convo, misc, news, Self, weird sisters Tuesday, November 07, 2006Lots of things have happened in the past week....
Firstly, Abhu and I finally went and paid the canteen fellow our dues while he shot nasty glances at us. Read this to know what had happened earlier!
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Secondly, Abhu happened to entertain me once again with another of her chemi lab faux pas. She really has a stock of them ready of boring afternoons! Today, we were supposed to perform an experiment, a part of which required us to take some dil. acid in a test tube and add it to another solution and blah blah. I was rinsing the burette while Abhu was to fetch a test tube and fill 10 ml of acid in it. She went to the test tube area (or whatever). She returned after 2 minutes. I was merrily rinsing away to glory when I heard a frightened Abhu shriek with horror…
Abhu:*looking at her finger* OOOOHHHH there was acid in that test tube!!
Test tube falls and breaks.
Me:*disgusted* Hullo! You have broken the damn test tube.
Abhu:*washing her finger under the tap* I didn’t break it! It broke on its own. It had acid in it!
Me: Er… is it wise to wash skin with acid on it with water? It should be er.. an exothermic reaction producing a lot of heat and all nah? Your finger should be burning. And what do you mean by there was acid in the test tube?
Abhu: Yeah, there was acid in it. That’s why it broke. And there isn’t ANY exothermic reaction taking place. *mutters something incomprehensible*
Me: Whatever. Hullo!! Test tubes don’t go breaking when they hold acid in them! *giggles wildly*
Abhu: *blushes shades of pink* Er… well.. whatever. I didn’t break that test tube though. It just… broke. Mysteriously or something.
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Thirdly, TC, Abhu and I have made the second page of the Times of India!! One morning, while I was online, orkutting I guess, an excited S (sister) rushed into the room with the paper in her hand and pointed towards the picture of a girl with brilliant, gorgeous, absolutely envy-worthy hair sitting with her back towards the camera at some café…
S: *smiling meaningfully* Who’s this?
Me: *with an air of nonchalance* That’s me and my hair duh. *tubelight jalti hai* OMG!! That is SOOO me!! And Abhu, with her profile visible and TC with her whole damn face visible!! Woah! We’re celebrities!
S: Where and when was this?? And why have they picked pictures of nut-cases like you to write a story on ‘GenX’ ?
Me: Excuse me?
S: Nevermind, carry on.
Me: This was back in August! The four of us- me, TC, Abhu and T (another friend) (taurean friend) had been to CCD for a while. We were just having coffee when this reporter type fellow came and started clicking pictures around the café. This has happened many times before also, but no one ever printed our picture! Well, anyway, they were lucky we were there that day. *gestures around like a movie star*
S: Shut up. I have been on TV, newspaper AND on radio. You are only getting the taste of stardom.
Me: Hullo?? This is my second time in the newspaper, okay? First time I’d made the front page! That too not as some anonymous teenager, but well, as an anonymous (but really nice) dancer. Hmp!
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Fourthly, S has discovered a novel way of shooing ants away. Read this to learn more about S’s enchantment with ants. She says, if one whispers lightly to a group of ants, they disperse. One mustn’t talk loudly. Only whisper. She even demonstrated this little thing to me. My! Was I surprised! It works, people, it does! Try it :)
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Fifthly, I have successfully downloaded Dark Side Of the Moon. I listened to it (only a couple of times so far). I liked it. Suk, tu bach
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Sixthly, this one describes my mood rather well…
I hear you Calvin, I hear you!
Actually, I do have an idea about the latest hits thanks to the dhabas outside my building where they play LOUD music every alternate day. But, I just know the tune of the songs. Not the name, the movie, nothing. Zilch. So I inserted this mp3 and listened to the songs that sounded nice and came up with a list of songs which I liked. Here goes…
>> Chand Sifarish (Fanaa) - I really really liked the tabla beats in the song, especially the whistling and the ‘subhan allah’ part. I even danced with imaginary-cute-boy in Indian style with latka jhatkas and all *blush*
>> Tumhi Dekho Na (KANK) (hee I wonder why KJ decided to call it that. It sounds like skank) – Nice song. I had heard it earlier. I didn’t know that it was this song.
>> Teri Yadon Mein (The Killer) – Atif Aslam (he is the singer, right?) has this drunk-devdas type voice which works very well for such songs. I like that Tere Bin also. I hear that song has been blatantly plagiarised from an Indonesian song or something. Or maybe, that was another song. *gives confused look*
>> Kya Mujhe Pyaar Hai (movie starring Shiney Ahuja and Kangana Sen)(I don’t know the name of the movie!) – Yeay!! I have seen the video of this song. I saw it only yesterday. I had heard it before, of course *lop-sided smile* . That is how I know it has Shiney Ahuja and that bangle female in it :D
>> Pyaar Karke (Pyaar Ke Side Effects) – I just liked the beginning. The song is pretty boring actually. So I don’t know why I listed it here. I think the list was too short. Only 4 songs. So I added a fifth :)
AND. I saw the Dhoom2 promos last night! Actually, it was on some news channel and mom was watching news and I was lurking over there doing practically nothing no I happened to see it! Well, I am not a big Abhishek Bachchan fan (he’s like a teddy bear!) so I didn’t get all that excited. The excitement was because I saw the promo of some to-be-hit-type movie at the same time as my friends and not 6 months after the movie has released. I haven’t yet seen Lage Raho. So you can imagine. I am dying to see it though!! Because I had loved MBBS and circuit and chirkut and all those taporis. I can’t wait before zee or sony or star or whatever airs it! For your information, I saw RDB on sony :)
I am quite positive that TC would be most pleased to hear that I am increasing my bolly music awareness exponentially. Plus, this happens to the month when I am listening to new music, new genres of music blah blah. And before I forget, I think I’ll just buy the damn Dark Side of the Moon (this reminds me of a little faux pas of mine. I had referred to this album as DSO the Mirror on Mac’s blog *blush* ) CD since I tried downloading it like FOUR times and EVERY SINGLE TIME, something went wrong with my net-connection and the download got aborted.
May my net be blessed!
Amen and Awomen! *sigh*
UPDATE: I have FINALLY downloaded DSOM succesfully! Now, I shall listen to it and strangle(virtually of course) Sun if I don't like it. Some trouble I've taken to download it. Whew!