Monday, May 30, 2005

Out, damned cold! out, I say!

my immune system sucks, a little night chill and i get a damned cold. many things have happened over the last week which deserve a whole post each, but im too tired and i'm walking around like johnny depp in the pirates... because i'm groggy with cetrizine, so lets see then, a brief recap of the week past :

monday: aah yes, the RVCE farewell, well what can one blog about something called the "at home function"?. gowday extracted a promise from me, that i blog extensively about it. i will. eventually when i'm bored to death and have nothing to do. i'm not a saree person, my previous two experiences with it have jarred me for life. first time was at the 10th standard graduation, where i kept tripping on the hem and the second time was at the 12th standard graduation, where i needed to go to the loo urgently but couldn't do so because, a saree is a volumnous bulky shit and makes life miserable. forget bras, burn sarees. i honestly can't imagine how women like me mum work in them. where are you madhu kishwar? our nation turns its lonely eyes on you.

oh btw, gowday gave me a free ride to coll and back, so chics who read my blog, hes single and ready to mingle, i'll pass on ye resumes to him, and i promise no sting operations

tuesday: the house was spruced up to get it ready for my brother. i was asked to wet wipe my room so that the dust wouldn't affect the phoren returned. it reminded me of the times when aunts and uncles, returned from the states, trundled about with boiled water, crinkling their noses at all things indian and telling their kids not to drink colas and other stuff because it contained "germs". No wonder all of them grew to be such sissies.

wednesday: well dear anna came out from the immigration at midnight, and we all hugged, rather a huddle. that indian cricket team is a bloody bad influence. when we got home, we all talked, mom & dad slept, but anna and i talked till 5 am!!!. i got a pink ipod mini. yayyy. hoot.
okay, i confess, i didn't know the ipod existed till i saw it in the september issue of cosmo last year. it was featured in the girly girl's "must have" section. my bro vehemently objected to pink, but for me white is albino and i don't like my posessions to be white, because after a while it will become dirty and then i'll wistfully look back at the time in which it was white and then chide myself for not handling it better. white has such potential to be tainted. i hate the feeling!. so pink it was, even if it was just 4 gb. its so girly i love it!!!

thursday: went to forum and shopped for anna, the man hasn't bought any clothes!!!. just a huge suitcase filled with chocolates to keep the relatives happy.

friday: went shopping with kay for some "unmentionables". my favourite kind of shopping. i love girl friends because they coo so soothingly from the outside when you're infront of the fitting mirror, thinking aloud that you're fat. went shopping for shoes too, i got two pairs of real trendy low heels from Soles. i can't wait to start working and spend my pile on shopping. after that i went shopping with anna again, this time to central. i love shopping malls. clothes, clutter music, escalators, price tags, ingratiating smiles from the staff, aching feet... my future is retail baby. Mango here i come.

saturday : submitted my project report, developed a sore throat and gave up tickets to bunty aur bublee. the latter ofcourse was the silver lining to a gloomy day.

sunday: slept all day. the sore throat developed into a full fledged fever, i'd like to think it was anyhow. one gets more sympathies when its a fever. i hate being under the weather. it dampens the vivre.

and before i go, some posy poetry.

well there, that was my week,
my life is a bore and my throat is sore,
the drugs are taking over, i'm off to sleep.

goodnight world.

Thursday, May 26, 2005


From inside the quizcorp "huddle".

shiny happy people

thats right, we can-can !!
ashanka

last tango in RVCE. *ing: gowday and jalan Posted by Hello Posted by Hello

at your own peril

been busy. anna's come home and i'm feeling pretty neglected :(
not really, he's bought a huge stash of chocolates and got me a new ipod mini, so yayy! anna

anyhow, acqueising to gowday's demand for farewell pics, i'll put it up, but readers be warned, these quiz corpers in no way reflect my mental state and oh, im not putting up any pics in which i feature in a saree or feature at all. that would be priceless wouldn't it? :P

Friday, May 20, 2005

Before Sunrise

i just finished seeing a wonderful movie, you know the type that you recollect when you're watching scenary from a moving bus or that brief interlude when you're just about to sleep, when you watch the ceiling and silent images come back.I have poor taste in movies sometimes, i really don't understand supposedly brilliant cinematic techniques, the only ones i like are the ones that come back to me on the ceiling.
its late in the night and my time, i've just learnt is finite. i have my very last internals morrow, i don't give a hoot naturally, but i think that if not spectacular, i should atleast make a graceful exit. but my nonchalence has been dented somewhat, knowing that the time between my internal and now is finite. But it is filled with so many possibilities. i can do so many things while the clock ticks away, i can study, watch another movie, the sequel, talk to strangers, do something terrifyingly exiting, hmmmm. i'm going to say something very trite, but oddly feeling good about it. finite time but infinite possibilities.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Sur la Table

thats the dessert restuarant i will run when im done saving the world.

yes this is a random post, where i ramble on topics as i please with no regards to structure or metre.

what did i do today? well i made money, the only way i can, by quizzing. its the the only thing that has saved me from impecunious circumstances, largely. i like quizzing, i really do,hell it even got me on t.v, but i generally found that i had a dichotomous attitude towards it. i liked it but i also consciously tried to keep away from the nerdiness often associated with it, i tried to be the hip and cool quizzer and today i realize what i fool i was. i drove all the way to the back of boon docks to take part in a quiz today and i get nostalgic about sunday morning quizzes at the KQA. i finally realize. I'm throwing my lot in with the nerds. *hugs*

the UTPT blog looks awesome, Bib and Ganj put up two superb posts. i miss those days, when we were the juniors and had these guys to look up to. i miss that. its such a comfort when you have someone to look up to. i went to IISC today after coming back from the aforementioned boondocks. put up the UTPT poster in and around IISC, un-aided by a roll of terrible scotch tape. i HATE badly behaved scotch tapes. but the poster looks great though, jalan, has done a fantastic job and its absolutely magnificent, makes you feel small and significant at the same time. the awesome picture of the buddha is by Mando gomez who acquiesed and allowed us to use his picture for the fest.

my house is an accent wall mess. mom's busy painting the house and my main pre-occupation these days is coming up with ways to avoid being in the house. the flooring is on, everything is displaced, construction goin on and mom is generally armed with a million shade cards, harassing me to pick colours. sigh. She's majorly into accent walls this time. she saw one at a friends place and now we have one in everyroom. the living room has a bright orange accent wall, dining chrome yellow, my room has a purple one, the kitchen has a buff coloured one......... sigh. momsy they are called colour consultants, for heavens sakes!

found a couple of good links on the guradian, simon schama my favourite historian talks about the recent elections in the U.K. i loved Schama's "the history of Britain" on the beeb. i've always loved history, but this show was so stellar, that i often stayed up till 3 am to catch the second telecast. British history is fabulously checkered. Drama, intrigue, lust,sex.... like a toe curling soap opera.

also found Margaret Atwood's excerpt from her new book "curious pursuits", in which she talks about her first visit to europe. i've always wanted to do that, backpack across europe armed with a lonely planet guide book, inshallah, one day i shall.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

A little house on memory lane

well i'm back to my curling up with a book habit. people from RVCE will flog me if i say i didn't have time to read because of engineering, but the truth is i had a little falling off with reading, ( do people have that? hmmm) half way through my engineering, can't think why, anyhow finished quite few books in the past week and really utilizing my Eloor membership.

i don't know why i picked up Chetan Bhagat's
Five Point Someone, i scoff at all things IIT, i can't stand the mythic hype that surrounds this institution, and the inside cover said, Mr. Bhagat graduated from IIT and IIMA, and was now an I-banker (yawn), obviously this book was going to be one annoyingly cloying ode to his Alma mater right? (he even dedicates the book to it!). inspite of all these disconcerting misgivings, i began reading the book and did so for five hours straight till i finished the book.

it was absolutely antithetical to my preconceived notions, far from an ode, this book is a rant against the entire IIT system right from page 5, but thats not why i liked this book. i liked it because it made me utterly nostalgic about my own engineering experiences. its a story about the trials and tribulations of three guys, Hari, Ryan and Alok and their attempts to sucessfully complete the mechanical engineering course at the IIT. Right from the start when the protagonists groan at Manufacturing process classes, i remembered my own class, their fidgety doodling, bored yawns, those smart ass comments that elicited a tired chuckle, those nerds at the front benches, licking their lips and axiously copying notes, it brought back so many memories, this book started a nostalgic movie in my head.

Ryan the bored genius in this book reminded me of one such guy in my own class. i used to sit next to him and during classes he would drum his pencil on the desk furiously, fidget and sometimes even sing handle's Messiah, give everybody the "can't believe you want to listen to this crap" look, then go on to design a radically different dog clutch, and would give me a triumphant look and say " these classes kill creativity!". he was right! and i felt like a pro-establishment loser.

the mention about machine labs reminded me of the first time i handled a lathe machine, a serious boys' toy. being the sentimental fogey i am, i desperately wanted to keep my first ever machined part, but was not allowed to do so. now during machining, the metallic chips have this beautiful way of curling up. watching them curl up was like watchin a waterfall, or waves breaking, it was mesmerizing. i even took the curled chips from my first machining endeavour and made it into a bracelet and wore it so proudly, showing off to all my classmates, who rolled their eyes at such "girly" antics.

semester exams brought back tons of memories about my own harried semester exam preperation (rather the lack of it!). the all nighters, midnight SMS's to find out what to leave or to check the status quo of the other person, the smart alec who tells you 30 minutes before the exam that a chapter you thought insignificant was infact very very significant, the subsequent panic attack for not studying the aforementioned chapter, the malicious determination to cause panic attacks among other people who have also not studied the said chapter, the bored genius traipsing through as if life was sunshine itself, and finally dying a million deaths during the exam, because the only chapter you did not study features prominently. you know the last bit has happened so many times that i'm sure theres a science to it

i did not review
five point someone because tonnes of people have already done that and my reading was too intertwined with nostagia for me to be objective about it, but i really liked the writing, it had some chuckle worthy smart lines and ofcourse the three of them are such goofy idiots that they are utterly endearing, but it would be really interesting to get a non engineers perspective though.

soon, college will be over for good. our farewell is in the last week of may, and i owe a full post dedicated to the idiosycracies of my all male class and as one discerning senior rightly pointed out, sometimes, nostalgia is opium enough
sigh

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Who's gonna drive you home tonight?

i hate riding on bangalore roads, absolutely loathe it. i've been riding on it since i was 15. those were the halcyon days, i was one of the very few kids who got to come to school on a bike, and perks included, running the school security guard over, (truly fun!). mom wouldn't send me out without a helmet, so i looked like a mysterious school girl biker chic lol. mornings were fun, school was at 8:30 and i left home at 8:15, and covered a nice 8 km in 15 minutes, not bad huh? on the way i'd meet guys from the boys' school and well it was fun racing them, i did not like to "race", but those guys used to get severely affronted every time i overtook them, and so gave these smirks when they in turn over took me, i can't handle men smirking, it wakes up the feminist demon in me and so a race was on.not any more though, driving has become a nightmare. i used to be a rather timid, unadventerous person before i started driving, it unleashed the thrill seeker in me. but now, i'd rather trek through leech infested forests than drive in bangalore traffic.

its a bloody nightmare,honestly, trained baboons can drive in a more orderly fashion. people yell, honk, take atrocious turns, swerve, brake, speed...... so i've had it with atrocious driving, i really want to educate people about scientific driving. yes, theres a method to this madness. bangaloreans please start taking notes.

#1. If you can't drive, don't drive.
cardinal rule methinks. people who can't drive, shouldn't, or if they wish to, should do so with a giant L sticker on the left of the road where all the other inconsequential things are

#2. Right, left or centre
believe it or not your speed should determine which side of the road your vehicle should be on. since you can over take from your right (on the side of the driver's rear view), the fastest vehicles should move on the right of the road. so if you are zipping home to have sex you should be on the right, but if you are puttering around taking in the sun, stay to the left, and if you are pacing yourself, stick to the centre of the road

#3. don't go hamlet on the lane
this is driving that would make a schizophrenic feel pretty well adjusted. i hate people who change lanes to suit their convenience. when traffic on one lane gets blocked, mr (or ms.) selfish decides to switch lanes causing an "in situ" traffic jam. urgh. and then theres the tiresome business of reading these "to be or not to be" souls. they swerve madly from lane to lane, its almost like watching a tennis match

#4. yellow yellow, makes you mad and mellow
i personally hate it when the green changes to yellow, just when im about to cross the signal, but the done thing is to stop at the signal when the yellow comes on. people are such rotters that they move on even when the light turns red, thus blocking traffic at other signals.

#5. don't dream when its green
this is especially for those people who are making grocery lists when they are at the forefront of a stop signal. isn't it odd how people with the slowest response times always tend to be on the frontlines and you, who just want to bolt, is at the back, honking madly, trying bring attention to the fact that the light is green?

#6. scourge on the free left blocker
this for those people that block a free left at a signal because, they duh, obviously don't want to turn left, but they just have to encroach on the space, move to the front of the line and make grocery lists. hate you guys.

#7. send those running pedestrians to the olympics
damn straight!. people just dont understand how uncomplicated and unimportant their lives really are. i don't get why pedestrians scoot, scram, bolt to the other end of the road in between busy traffic. all you have to do is wait at the pdestrian crossing till the walk sign turns green, and then you can stroll about, breathe in, listen to the birds, swish your hair a lil bit. no., they insist on running to the other end of the curb, when the green signal is on, when most vehicles are going full throttle on their accelerator pedals. honestly its olympics or road kill

#8. you ruddy fool, when you have an indicator light, use it!
my favourite pet peeve. people who don't indicate which way they want to turn. its like they're going, ..going, still going, and suddenly they have a "oh fuck theres my right" moment, and swerve suddenly. people, indicator light is to INDICATE which way you're going, not because its particularly psychadelic. sometimes, a person intending to go right, goes to the very left of the traffic signal, usually by squeezing & snaking through traffic, and then when the green light comes on, its diagonal movement towards the promised land, without using the indicator.

#9 you ain't no moses and the red sea ain't gonna part
when you are stuck in a signal and some car outhere cannot seem to start, please don't honk your annoyance out. everybody knows its green, and its time to go, so honking really doesn't serve any purpose, it just makes the driver of the car more nervous, unless its me, then the honking could be counter productive because i refuse to start my car in excess din and when my chi is broken so :P. why do people honk at a traffic jam any how?. its bizzarre. traffic's not moving, you are on a road thats like the lunar surface, life sucks and then you honk.(???)

#10 antichrist is an autorickshaw driver from bangalore
ummm, nothing much to add to that one. yup nothing.

there goes people, if i think of a few more i'll let you know. meanwhile the cutest thing happened to me while i was riding back home. i stopped for this guy who was crossing the road. (cute too), and then he stopped to let me pass, i smiled and indicated that he should pass, but he stood right there and gestured at me, to pass, and then i smiled at the irony of chivalry, and said " pedestrian's right of way", he gave the broadest smile ever, also sensing the irony, how chivalry, is not a male bravado act, but something that shows people you respect them

oh i bet he was married!, he had that "happily married" aura :(


Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Discography of me- part deux (the rise of the radiohead)

as we know in episode 1 (here i'm inclined to mention that there wont be an episode 3, ever, i really don't want these posts to sound like star wars prequels), i put forth my musical influences till standard 12 and left off saying that music in college was a raging inferno. actually that last bit was a bit of an exagerration, i'm not sure if it was an inferno as much as it was different.

very few will say that an alarm clock changed their musical (i meanter say, taste in music) preference for ever. ok a bit dramatic. actually my alarm clock had a built in radio. it also had that inventively clever snooze button. ordinary alarm clocks, jangle the firt moment of waking existence, my snooze button was so hip i got 4 minutes of grace snooze time everytime i hit it, and well you know would politely wake me up in stages, from deep slumber to light slumber to breakfast aromas, and then finally to "oh shit, im fucking late for school (or college)", oh yes about the built in radio, well see it required 4 extra batteries, and we are not quite the household that leaves 4 extra batteries lying around, so i never did use the radio for a long time, till my brother scrambled out and got them to hear cricket commentary for an important match when we had a power outage. so i fiddled with the knobs, i quite like the radio disturbance, the crackle of mangled sound waves, infact i read recently that these crackles have the remanence of the big bang, (kou!) anyhow i came across unknown stations, i love listening to AIR news, the person reading the news has such a "all is calm"quality, and one day while twisting the knob hoping to get some good music, i got this voice, a voice that was so soothing and strong and comforting, that melted my insides into a fine goo, a voice that i'd like to have for a blanket, and amazingly, that was talking about western classical music. that day i realized i was going to marry a man with a great voice and that i liked western classical music. the show was preetham koilpillai's friday night rendezvous, he introduced me to the music of my life, beethoven, bach, mozart, swan lake, so much so that i took up violin lessons for 3 years after that. trust a man to introduce you to these things!. its funny how men have influenced me the most in my music. my brother influenced me because he was the feudal lord of all the electronics in the house, and wouldnt let me play any teeny bopper song, the men i've been involved with introduced me to artists im still hooked onto.

the radio scene started to pick up and bangalore got its firts FM (private) station, radiocity 91 in 2002 (july 4th). im a radio person, im not one for videos, for me videos distract from the essence of the song. 91 fm was a english station and i loved all their shows especially the late show (10pm- 12 pm) hosted by priya ganapathy. she had the most endearing of giggles, now i sincerely believe that if you can't be a beautiful idiot or a brilliant lunatic you should atleast have an uplifting giggle, she played the most amazing of music and introduced me to the doors, when i first heard riders of the storm, i wanted to die right then, because surely there could none better than it. the late show was this period of calm and stock taking everynight. priya giggled, gave words of advice, cheered us up and crafted a wonderfully hum world filled with great music, if i ever meet her, im going to gush unashamedly. she also hosted the retro show on sundays and i never ever missed it. there were specials on bob dylan, the disco era (fav), divas (fav), nina simone (fav), elvis presely,( i got on air for this one!!). then one fineday they went hindi, inexplicably, and the music stopped. i really miss the english 91 fm, they used have this show on relationships and sex, after 12 and people used to call in about their sex problems. one time, this guy called up and asked the expert if size really mattered, and the "expert" told him that 2 inches was sufficient !( yea right, for conceiving!!!). jonzy and santosh gnanakan had this metal head show on thursdays, where all these "serious metal heads" (oxymorons!!) would call up and ernestly ask for metal, thats where i heard sound garden. im in love with chris cornell and his "spoooonman" voice. especially, the humming interlude in audioslave's "show me how to live". aah soo delectable.

college was such a sea of change from school. for one thing there were men around, coming from a girls only school, a very big plus. and when there are men around, you can be sure there arn't posters of the backstreet boys. i too had that mandatory pink floyd year, and the mandatory angst that came with it. some people thought of it as the ultimate sensory deprivation tank. on retrospection pink floyd was the anthem for every non conformist in the first year, the us versus them, the che guevara affiliation, where we promised to see each other on the "dark side of the moon", yea the conformity of the non conformists, lol. my pink floyd year, was nicely wrapped up by the roger waters concert, that concert was fun, he sang time, and shine on you crazy diamond with an anti-commie animation as a backdrop. it oddly reminded me of 1984 and i never listened to pink floyd again!. i had great seniors who were into a lot of great music. through saigo i got urban hymns ( verve) and 14 albums of the grateful dead, and i guess friend of the devil is a friend of mine.

well my radio phase is still alive and kicking. im on internet radio now and its simply fabulous, any and every artist is on it. i once got onto radio guyana, where all the islanders called in to request, and a scottish radio station where the RJ had the yummiest scottish accent ever!, well now im hooked to the radio station i customized on yahoo's launch cast. its plays a lot of jazz, lot of REM, mazzy star, a lot of my favourite divas, not too much rap, some hip hop, a good deal of experimental music, an album of nick drake's........

yea im happy now.