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.

Aaaaand...I'm back.

I just took a look at the date on my last post. The one which actually makes sense and isn't simply random webcomics or lyrics I liked. It was March 28. That makes it about two and a half months since I last wrote.

The past two and a half months have been rather kind to me. Life's good, on the whole. And I'm not complaining. A lot has happened.
April and May were spent working on something rather dreadful, and I'd pretty much lost all hope, not least because I myself sort of lost the motivation to work on it towards the end. But the results were better than anything I could ever have hoped for considering the kind of work I put in. The details are boring and inconsequential. Now I'm faced with the prospect of choosing between two options, both of which seem to be rather good. You see, when one gets a reasonably high rank, one has a multiplicity of choices available. It's the rich man's problem :D

I also had a rather fun birthday and got a haircut which people tell me, has completely changed the way I look. For the better, they say. I decided it was high time I should pamper myself. And the people at the salon did a pretty good job. I actually look, if I may so myself, rather hot. All thanks to a friend, who knew exactly where to take me and what to do. I basically put myself in her hands. She took me to this brilliant place I haven't been to before, near college. This has helped me overcome my previous fear of such places. You can read all about that here.

Exams were, as expected, absolutely horrible. I am very seriously facing the prospect of failing in at least a couple of subjects this time round. I'm just trying to enjoy my life before the results come out and I die.
Also, I've started my internship at this law firm, which I'm actually kind of liking. It's the first time I'm interning at a firm, and I've got to say, it's not bad. It's not one of those big firms, so everything is a little more chilled out here. Plus most people are on leave and the courts are closed, so workflow is less. (Which is why posting frequency on my blog has now gone up, as you may (or more likely, may not) have noticed.) There's lots of other interns, all of whom seem to be rather nice and fun to talk to. It's taxation, which is kind of boring, but for me, being inherently a researcher at heart, nothing beats the joy of finding that one case to clinch the argument your associate is trying to make.
I've also started taking French classes every weekend. Those are fun sometimes, like the other day we were supposed to write a dialogue (in French) in groups of two, where both the people had been dumped by their significant others, but one was happy about it while the other was sad. Rather entertaining.

I am currently sitting in office with not much to do, passing the time reading random things on the net, listening to good music, occasionally talking to people. I'm in a room with 2 ACs, with a constant stream of cold coffee and chocolate chip biscuits. And I'm being paid for this.
Life couldn't really get much better.

P.S. You can now follow this blog by email! How exciting! And no, I am not ashamed in the least to admit that this is a desperate plea for more readers. So go fill in your email address on the little widget thingy (is that what they call it?) on the right. No seriously, do it. I'm watching you.

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.

(An Attempt at) A Normal, Non-Emo Blog Post

The past month happened to be rather an eventful one. I have found inside of me a newly acquired propensity to be COMPLETELY disinclined to attending class, I have seen a few more movies (to which we shall come in due course of time), I have gotten a prize with absolutely no prize money whatsoever (very useful, that) and I have found out that due to leaving my hair down almost all the time, I now am victim to a disease of sorts wherein my head starts to hurt if I tie my hair up for too long. While these might be mundane details to you, my dear, cherished reader, to me, these are the little tids and bits of everyday life that keep me trudging along the sometimes dreary and sometimes rather topsy-turvy hill that they call my life.

The first batch of tests for this semester had the gall to ruin my life about three weeks back, bringing with them fresh experiences from the darkest pits of hell. When reminded of their existence, I made an effort to study for a bit after giving up completely and inevitably screwing up majorly the next morning. By the end of that week I was so disheveled that I was near to the state of walking into walls and staring dazedly into nothing whatsoever. Not from the continuous studying, you understand, but simply from the certain sensation in the heart of my stomach of having disastrously messed up my first terms to what I was sure were to be dire consequences. At about this exact time, I was also struck with a rather persistent cold which made my nostrils spew like the Niagara Falls. Missing class seemed only natural, and ever since then I have not been able to get myself to resign to the necessity of attendance as much as I used to.

I also have new music from a variety of different sources, mainly S. S's songs have a tendency to grow on me, thus brightening up my life but gradually and only eventually. Sort of like well matured wine.

As for the movies. I finally got around to watching Delhi Belly, albeit rather belatedly. For me this exceeded expectations because I had never planned to watch it in the first place. Either way, excellent movie and very well made. Please do get your hands on it if you haven't already. I also saw That Girl in Yellow Boots. A decent watch but frankly not brilliant stuff and to me for some reason, rather predictable. And today I went and saw Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster, which was also quite a well made film and should be watched by anyone who has a little bit of time on their hands. It has its basic flaws but these are few and far between and I found that its...boisterousness and kitsch rather make up for any shortcomings.

College has declared a rather long holiday and today is my first day back home. The prospect of having not much to do over the next week or so is making me rather happy at the moment. Even more so, the thought of falling asleep to good music. Ah, the little things in life.

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.