Change

About a couple of months back, a close friend told me I had changed a lot. He told me I used to be very different when I had just entered law school, which was a little over 2 years ago. It got me thinking.
Basically, I think the gist of what he was trying to get at was that I used to be much more uninhibited, more unstructured, more fearless. Care less. Do whatever the fuck I wanted. And now it's all about memo submissions, good grades and good placements. Law school's most vulnerable victims, unfortunately, turn out to be those who develop an inherent fear of project deadlines (and the like, you know what I mean) and are constantly looking for things to do, to put it in a very simplistic manner, to increase their value in terms of potential recruitment. Sad, but true. Life becomes a dreary path towards one sole aim, the attainment of what our (let's face it) still-regressive Indian society calls a 'stable job and a settled life'.
Yes, maybe I'm exaggerating. But I have a feeling he's right about me. I was watching a typical teenage music video the other day and it struck me that I think I've forgotten how to have fun entirely.
On the other hand, there's always the nagging fear that if I let myself loose too much I'll never get a decent lifestyle after college. I suppose this kind of mentality is exactly what he was hinting at. And the worst part is, I don't think most law school kids would have the balls to admit it, but this is exactly what law school makes of you. Balancing a life and good academics isn't easy.
I must add having fun to my to-do list.

In other news, it is Benedict Cumberbatch's birthday today. He is so lovely he makes me weak in the knees.

I also went to Nainital on holiday for about 3-4 days. Really nice place. We went to the nearby lakes and stuff too. There was this one particular one which I liked way more than the others. It was huge and nice and clean, mostly because barely any people lived nearby. I think if I could have just one perfect day in my life, it would be to go and find a place to sit on the banks of something like that and spend the whole day there with a good book and some music, all alone. That, for me, would be the definition of absolute contentment. If I could have that, it doesn't matter whether I'm in Nainital or Switzerland.
I also developed the habit of sitting on a little rocky ledge right outside my hotel (which was at a height from the main city) for a short while with my iPod every night after dinner. The weather was absolutely brilliant and the ledge offered a nice view of the Nainital lake. I love the way water turns black in the night. I remember walking along Havelock beach at night when I had gone to Goa. It was pitch dark. You could see the black water only for a short distance in front of you, and then, nothingness.
I have also realized that the perfect music for places like these is the In Bruges soundtrack.
All in all, a brilliant trip.

I haven't done any other traveling this summer so I badly needed this. Travel is something I don't think I could live without. I think I will always love it more than I could possibly ever love any human being, with the exception of my parents.
I am currently reading The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams. People like him give me an immense inferiority complex. I always feel so small and unaccomplished-in-life in front of his comic genius. A long time ago, I had read someone's interview where they were asked that if they could choose one era or time other than the present to be reborn in, which would they choose. I remember thinking then that if I ever grow up to be rich and famous (*snort*...fat chance), and someone interviewing me asked me the same question, I would have answered the time of P.G. Wodehouse without even thinking about it. For one thing, he existed. For the other, it really seems like a brilliant time period to be living in. And people like Adams and Wodehouse, well, reading them is simply...orgasmic.

I'm also almost done with Season 2 of Game of Thrones. It is an E-P-I-C series. And I have officially fallen in love with Tyrion Lannister.

2 of my friends are mucking about in Europe and I'm INSANELY jealous. I know I've seen most of the continent before and it's only their first time, but it almost physically hurts, the thought of them being there and me being stuck here. I would give an arm and a leg to travel to Europe with friends. Hopefully someday I won't have to.
I'm going to stop ranting now. I haven't written so much without editing since...ever, possibly. Now I will dive back into the world of Douglas Adams to assuage my pain. And it will be awesome.

Of Babies (and my somewhat tumultuous relationship with them)

At the outset, I would like to make it very clear that I do not hate babies. No, I do not think they are evil aliens (let's face it: sloppy, messy, icky, have their own language. Just because they're not a sickly green in color doesn't mean we have to give them the benefit of doubt) put on Earth to foil humanity's plans of progress with their own cunning schemes. What I hate is the almost-universal assumption that if you have a vagina, you must love babies. Unlike some of my friends, I like babies. However much I always come down to referring to them by 'it' instead of 'he' or 'she' (just so much more convenient). As long as they're being nice to me.

Think about it. Would you tolerate a grown up person who has suddenly taken to rather hurtfully pulling your hair and stealing your glasses all the time? No, right? (If your answer to that was yes, please get yourself tested for insanity. Or (yay!) start reproducing immediately!) Then why must we extend the same courtesy to persons who are simply a little smaller in size?

I just think kids can be annoying sometimes. I fail to understand how their mothers handle them. For the life of me, I cannot figure out a goal for babies other than to destroy everything they see about them and irritate the fuck out of rational, sane people like me.

Having said that, I must also stress that the following events were NOT INTENTIONAL.

Going in chronological order, when I was 8, I dropped a baby out of a window. . It was a ground floor window so no major damage done (no trips to the hospital and the like, but that was perhaps simply because I went outside, picked him right back up, came in and acted like nothing had happened). And yes, it has been drilled into me time and again by people to whom I can feel sufficiently unashamed telling this story, that any mental retardation that this kid might suffer once he grows up, however slight, will be my fault. However I assuage my guilt by telling myself that on the other hand, he may just turn out to be another Stephen Hawking. But then I remember how Stephen Hawking probably hasn't gotten laid in a long, LONG time.
Again, I emphasize that this was NOT deliberate. Here's how it happened. I was simply sitting on the window ledge with the window open because it was such a nice summer day. For some unfathomable reason, all the rest of my family were busy and had given responsibility of the baby to me. If you think about it, it's their fault really. I'm the real victim here. I mean, who the fuck gives responsibility of a tiny baby to an irresponsible 8 year old?! And the little thing was so tiny, I was simply trying to shift his position in my arms and before I knew it, I heard a loud splat on the pavement outside. This has given rise to one of my rather infamous nicknames, aka 'window-popper'.

Something similar happened when I was 10. Clearly I hadn't learned my lesson. I was very fond of picking up my nephew under the arms and flinging him round and round in circles until we were both dizzy. Dangerous, you say? Fun, I say. After all, Mom used to do the same thing to me. Soon enough, I realized that that was probably because she was more responsible. One of those times a-flingin', he slipped out from under my small hands and fell. Thankfully again, no real damage. But this time I resolved to get my act together.

Cut to 2010, when I slapped a random baby at a metro station. Again, I must stress that this was not intentional. It was simply one of those busy intersections at Rajiv Chowk when I was in a hurry to get to college. It was a rather chilly Monday morning. Now in order to get to college I must put in a good 1.5 hours of commute, which means I must wake up at an ungodly hour in the middle of the night when it is still dark. And I cannot stress this enough, but I am NOT a morning person. Pissed off, cranky and barely keeping my eyes open, I managed to hear the announcement for my next train which was to arrive in a minute, while I was more than a minute away from the platform. So I made a run for it, with some five bags of luggage in my hands. Now under such circumstances, a certain amount of random baby-slapping becomes inevitable. I rue the woman in the burkha who had her son in her arms and was walking calmly in the opposite direction across the bridge which connects the two platforms. She probably used to think the world was a good and happy place. After her young son's head had finished lolling from my impact, her beliefs would have been shattered. My friends seem to find this highly amusing and in such circumstances, I am ashamed to admit, it is a little difficult to be as contrite as I probably should be.

More recently, I have been frowned upon for simply airing my opinions about kids in a metro. We were talking about how annoying babies are and how we might prefer puppies instead. Now there is good reason for this. Right next to us were a couple of kids who were reaching new levels of irksome I did not know existed, fidgeting relentlessly, wiping off their boogers on our sleeves and generally creating a completely unnecessary fuss. Next to them was their mother who was clearly incapable of controlling these two tiny creatures from Hell. Just as we were about to get off, she berated us for our views and told us that it was not her fault, kids are 'like that only'. She even scolded the only one of us who was talking pro-baby. And on the station we saw her pointing us out to who undoubtedly seemed to be her husband, in a rather contemptuous manner. My compatriots seemed to be all up in arms, ready to fight to the death about their right to freely express their opinion in a public place (a sad occupational hazard that law students suffer form), but I managed to calm them down and dissuade them from their death wish, for in a public place like this, the public would surely take the mother's side. In fact my own mother did so when I narrated to her the incident later in the night.

And today all this seemed to be a source of much entertainment for some gentleman eavesdropping on our conversation in the metro while pretending to read his newspaper. Moreover, this has led to many unfortunate nicknames that I've been christened by some of my friends. I repeat, I am not against babies per se. I simply doubt I'd ever like to have one. I just think I would be the kind of mother who forgets that she's left her kid at Walmart or on the changing table, or tells her young child to fuck off because Mommy and Daddy need to get it on.

Nallud Part 2

There's a couple more quirky faculty members I'd forgotten to write about in the last post. I shall do that here.

English teacher: Calls the girls of the class "May-dum." Has no idea how to control the class. Insists we do not clap or bang our desks after a horrendous experience with the aforementioned activities on our first day. Does not know how to handle excessive participation and involvement in plays. Has no idea what to assign as research papers to us and asks US to come up with ideas instead. Insists we make PowerPoint presentations on pointless topics like what is an adjective and where to use a hyphen instead of a dash.

HLCD Teacher (For those of you not in the know (which I guess would be all of you), HLCD is History of Legal and Constitutional Development): For some reason, is known as Chintu among the students. Is much like the Torts teacher. Is also quite possibly the most boring and soporific person I have ever had the misfortune to meet in my life.

Also, the VC in his interview had asked us to sign on a particular target percentage for the first semester. And warned us that if we did not achieve it, he would be setting the bar even higher for the next semester and "upping the ante," so to speak. I made the mistake of quoting an impossibly high percentage. And here I am blogging away to glory while the first terms are only a week away.

One thing I'm really happy about is my roommate. She shall hereby be referred to as S (for that is the letter her name begins with (obviously)). She has great taste in music, movies, books and pretty much everything else that really matters. Wodehouse fan, ardent admirer of almost all Star World shows, and appreciator of good cinema. The other day she wanted to kill me for not having watched Iron Man. =D

To top it all off, she's responsible. She's got her priorities right. She studies, but not too much (unlike me, who has neglected to even TOUCH a book since college started, unless it's fiction), remembers to clean the room once in a while, and yet finds time to read a lot of fanfiction and watch a movie when she feels like it. I need someone like that. I shudder to think what would have happened had I had a roommate even remotely like me. That is, crazy and irresponsible, and without an iota of room-sense, if you know what I mean. We would prolly have had filthy vermin crawling all over our beds.

Then there's I. She lives across the hall from me, with N. But I, S and me hang out together most of the time. There's nothing extraordinary about I. She's just a loud, fun and big-hearted girl. But what I love most is irritating her with dirty jokes and gross talk. She's not used to such things, somehow. She used to get completely scandalized, but I think I'm growing on her. Now she can even handle it if I drop an F-bomb every 20 seconds.

So since I'm already exceeding the word limit for normal-sized blog posts, I shall stop here. Now that I have a laptop, hopefully it'll be configured soon and I'll be able to post more often. Unless I decide to actually study for the first terms.

But that's not likely at all.

Nallud

That's the name of my college by the way. NLUD. I got sick of calling it that, letter by letter. It's so long and drawn out.
Not that anyone I know calls it Nallud. That's just my own creation.

So in this post I'll be telling you a little about Nallud.
1. VC: Tends to talk sense but also tends to ramble on a bit. During the Orientation, his speech lasted for about an hour and a half. And the few classes he's taken, he's spent the whole 45 minutes trying to explain a concept for which a mere quarter of an hour would have sufficed. So yeah, just a tad verbose.

2. Chief Warden: Is also a teacher of economics by profession. But all she knows to talk about is how we have imbibed all the evil tendencies of Western culture and forgotten our own pure, holier-than-thou "Indian tradition." Even in her economics class, according to what the seniors tell us. Has an extreme aversion to ANY kind of interaction between the freshers and their seniors, which she calls ragging. Insists we call our seniors bhaiyyas and didis. Which pretty much rules out any possibilities of a junior and senior dating. Not that that's happened. Yet.

3. Assistant Warden for the girls hostel: Goes by the motto "I shall only smile in the presence of those members of society who have a penis." Is female. Of course.

4. Boys Hostel wardens: Incapable of facial expressions and voice modulation.

5. Torts teacher: Speaks bullshit just to check if anyone's listening. Which they aren't. Her sentences aren't gramatically correct by a long shot, let alone being correct on points of law. Always ends her class by assigning homework because she knows the students' ears will perk up at this and enjoys the satisfaction of people listening to her even if it is only for a few seconds everyday. Teacher whose class it is easiest to maaro-fy proxy in because she goes by roll number and never looks up from the attendance sheet.

And that's the faculty. The eccentric (for want of a better word) ones, at least.

Of salons and condescension

I went to get meself a haircut a couple of days back. (For anyone vella enough to actually be wondering what I look like now, you can go to my facebook and check it out. I'm too lazy to put a link up here right now.) It'd been a long time since I'd last been to one of those absolutely loathsome places they call salons, so I'd forgotten how much I despised it. Fortunately, (or unfortunately for me, I suppose) it made all the gruesome memories come flooding back.

First off, the staff has a tendency to cut you short. I suppose they were taught in whatever school hairstylists attend to never let a client finish a sentence. I was directed to a particular room to wait, and whenever I made the grave mistake of opening my mouth, I was told that all further matters would be discussed by the person who would ACTUALLY cut my hair. I had to breathe solely through my nostrils, therefore. Very uncomfortable, that.

After waiting for a period of what felt like eternity, the whole duration of which was spent ruefully thinking how I could have been contentedly watching Whose Line videos or Shane Dawson episodes on YouTube had I stayed home, I was finally beckoned inside, rather patronisingly, by a woman who evidently did not know how to speak, but only to wave her hands and jerk her head rather violently and with a complete sense of urgency, in the general direction of the room where I was now to head towards. Based on the look in her eyes, had she not been doing those movements, I would have hazarded a guess that she desperately needed to pee.

The guy who actually cut my hair did a very good job. The problem was, he KNEW he would do a very good job. This made him arrogant. Very patronisingly, he threw a volley of questions at me, the answers of which were almost always embarassing. Stuff about hair fall, oily hair and the like. I shall not bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that he made me feel the smallest I have almost ever felt.

I was made to exit the premises hurriedly once I had handed over the money, on the pretext that many people were waiting. I promised myself not to go back there for the next three years. At least.