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.

Liar

I know that things are broken,

and though there's too many words left unsaid.

You say you have spoken.

Like the coward I am, I hang my head.

You lie careless, your head on my chest.

Don't even look at me looking my best.

All these things I can't describe.

You would rather I didn't try.

But please, don't cry, you liar.

Oh please, don't cry, you liar.

You lean in for your last kiss,

who in this world could ask me to resist?

Your hands cold as they find my neck.

Oh, this love that I've found, I detest.

A Softer World

I know that I don't deserve you,
but that's okay.
Life's not fair

but do I love you. Do you want me to loosen the cuffs?

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.

Inspired

Her mind seems blank. Sometimes it tries to think, but it’s hard. It seems to be moving at a very slow, sluggish pace, like it’s just had a big lunch. But it’s a brilliant feeling.

But now it’s moving rapidly, and she feels that the kind of insight she’s getting should be put in books and taught to children as part of their school curriculum. A special course called ‘The Ways of The World’. Because let’s face it, school doesn’t prepare you for the real world, for what’s out there, outside of the safety blanket of those four walls. School’s fucking useless.

It’s amazing really. The range of emotions she feels right now is nothing like the range she can feel normally. It’s broadened, the spectrum. Her horizons have broadened. There’s new sensations, thoughts flying around rapidly in her head. Their speed almost blinds her. They knock against the sides of her brain and fly with increased momentum to the other side. Like dragonflies. She can barely keep track. They switch rapidly, from one thing to the next. Happy, sad, anguished, desperate, ecstatic, nostalgic, amused, bewildered, surprised, sorrowful. There’s a valid reason for each. She wasn’t even aware the human mind could move at a pace like this. What comes out of her mouth makes perfect sense. She wonders why other people find it funny.

It’s pretty, the smoke. It forms images in front of her eyes. Such a waste. Pretty things are almost always undervalued. Why do people run after the grotesque and leave the ultimately beautiful to waste away, she could never understand. It’s the same with relationships. The really beautiful people almost always end up dying alone. She supposes it’s their way of finding hardship in life, to make them stronger, more resilient. Even more beautiful. Yet never appreciated.

She gets lost in the beauty of the smoke coming out in front of her. It’s mesmerising. Even as a child, the soft shapes formed by the lit camphor at Diwali pujas used to invite her, tempting her into their labyrinthine cave. She’d get lost, looking at those forms for hours. It was perhaps the only way for her to get through those Pujas.

She feels heat on her fingers. Time to roll another. 

I have fallen unconditionally and irrevocably in love with Benedict Cumberbatch

...'s voice.

And alright, maybe also a little bit of him.

"This love, which was the first of my life, taught me almost nothing of the ways of the world, for it was perfectly happy, not tarnished by the slightest self interest."

2011

I got my awesome, awesome, awesome laptop. And even though it gives me trouble from time to time, I love it with all my heart. And I would CERTAINLY lose the will to live without it.

I did my first moot. Bleh. Mockery it was. BUT it made me realize my strengths. And now I know what to do in that area.

I got to know a LOT of new people. And for the most part this has turned out to be good. Which in my experience is something new. I call these people friends now. And I'm happy about it, for once.

My first birthday in college. FUCKING brilliant. Credit to some rather...imaginative people around me. SO much fun.

IMS. Boring details that are consequential only to me. But still, a significant moment when I got that phone call. Didn't dawn on me until quite some time actually.

Movie spoof. With amazing people. Of amazing movies. Good shit. =D

And as a good friend reminded me, after which I whacked myself for forgetting, Europe. Summer 2011. Switzerland, France, Italy, London. Heaven. I could NEVER, ever give up travelling.

And this is just some of 2011. I had no idea it would turn out to be so utterly awesome when it dawned. It's been a brilliant year.
2012, you have some stiff competition. Better pull up your socks.

It already seems to be shaping up to be a pretty eventful year. Who knows, 2012 may just knock the socks off 2011. I sure hope it does. Even if we all die at the end. =D

Happy New Year everybody :)