Schrift

And... back

2011-12-13T21:31:00.000-08:00

I've come back home for the winter break now.
It feels funny to be back. I feel there's a huge change. Everybody looks you up and down trying desperately to find some change finally decides to tell you that you have changed byt they just can't point to what exactly the change is. Its funny to hear them struggle to "point out".
Home is just the same. Even better now your family treats you with a new found respect based on the fact that you're going back to study within a month or so.
I somehow miss university. I miss the big reassuring library and being secluded and isolated on my room.
It all feels different. Home has changed.

drift..

2011-11-23T04:59:00.000-08:00

Life only makes sense backwards but you have to live it forwards.

I dunno why this made so much sense the other day. But it feels good. Its like flipping through an old yellow photo album. You see yourself happy but only you know the context behind every one of those situations. Its interesting as a cognitive construct. Science apart, the spiritual construct rings out loud. Clamouring.

Over these days, I taught myself that teaching ourselves something can be the toughest task ever. In this case, I am the student and also the teacher. You have to learn from your mistakes. You have to teach yourself what to learn from those mistakes. Thats the tough part. If you're going to sit back and crib about how the mistakes are getting the better of you, it actually will. Let go.. Learn..

I'm still struggling with the teacher/student role. Its something I have to get used to I guess. The thin sheet of restraint, shyness, ultrasensitivity and all those things, I was tugging on, I have to let go. She told me how not to hold on to anything. To just be myself. To not think too much into the future and its failings. Experience newness.

After all that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger.. good old Nietzsche.

hope

2011-11-18T16:14:00.000-08:00

There was something Pandora let loose. Something that keeps the depressed from taking the final step.
Hope.
A loaded word that.
Contemplative in essence.
Hope.
Every night after a dull trudging on through the day, I still am.
Hope struck.
Hope for a brighter and happier something.
She brought Prufrock up in the conversation. Ennui. The oh well.. sensation that you have to live. To be.
I have to learn to let go.
Hopefully, this can be a vent for me to transform into the happy fool. Ignorance is bliss sometimes. But do I really want that? The hardest questions in life have to be answered by yourself. Am even ready to ask myself those questions yet? Or should I have already a strong framework of answers by now?
I hate answering.
Something I hope to come up with through this blog is answers. I have to face them sometime in life and the sooner the better. Do i want to be a Prufrock? Am I already a Prufrock?
Some of the answers I may not like but have to start baring myself to me.
So a journey being necessary, awaits..

the unaccmommodated..

2011-11-17T15:34:00.000-08:00

I ran around for a whole month in Brighton without a place to stay. I stayed at friends' places and roughed it out all the while, repeating to myself how everything would be alright once I get settled properly with an accommodation. I learnt to smile when I was sad and cry myself to sleep. Everyday I would get up, scared of how it would end uncertain about where I would sleep that night.
I was tired and depressed.
I would travel endlessly on trains and buses. I would swallow all the abuses that were hurled at me, telling myself it would be alright. This too shall pass.
I got a place after a month.
My neighbours are all Chinese. All those who lived here from other countries moved as they couldn't stand the Chinese. They in turn gave their flats up to other Chinese people. So I am surrounded by Chinese neighbours who refuse to take the garbage out and never clean up after them in the kitchen.The cleaning woman who comes on Wednesdays refuses to clean the kitchen saying 'we' never clean up the garbage. I throw out the garbage every week since I came here. I go to the reception; ask the porter for garbage bags and throw the garbage out. I never cook in the kitchen because its too dirty to set foot in but I clean out the garbage because nobody else does and the cleaning lady yells at me as we're all 'Asians'.
But I got a place to stay.

the movie

2011-10-31T14:33:00.000-07:00

I don't know why but i always feel happy after watching zindagi na milegi dobara.
V gave it to me a set of movies which she'd burnt for me on the day i left for the uk. She said and I remember that as I will need time out from studying and so that I won't miss watching himym (acronym for How I Met Your Mother; V being a huge fan). She even burnt a couple of movies in other dvds.
Once a phone call with her, before I was leaving, I remember her going on about not knowing how to burn a dvd which her mom needed urgently. She wanted me to go and help her. I was busy with preparations then and couldn't go. On the last day I met her at the airport, she brought the dvds over with all things burnt and copied telling me that that conversation had been for this purpose. Thats how V is.
So coming back to zindagi...
It was in one of the dvds she'd given to me. Because of a technical snag I guess, it only worked half way. I watched the rest of the movie at A Bhaiya's place in the month I'd stayed in Woking.
I cannot even begin to describe the change that the movie brought into my thinking. Although ut can't be said to be that radical or arty or anything, the thing I most enjoyed about the movie was that it celebrated life and freedom.
I guess that may sound cliched, but when you realise the value of your life, that is an experience worth a lifetime.
So here I am in Northfield, since four days. I shifted on Friday. Everything seems too good to be true here and I still wait for something bad to happen.
Pessimist people may call me. Realist I prefer.
Vs said he didn't like the movie. He would laugh and say that it was too silly or something to that effect.
I enjoy the freedom even if it be secondhand.
I enjoy the deep-sea diving.
I enjoy the sky diving.
I enjoy the bull run at Pamplona.
I enjoy the tomatina festival.
I enjoy the dancing.
I enjoy the songs.
I enjoy the run of the wild horses.
I enjoy the speaking of english with a spanish accent.
I enjoy the snippets of poetry that actually ring true and don't spoil the scene for a change.
I enjoy the freedom.
I can never get enough of that movie.
It can never go wrong for me.

A New Day..

2011-08-30T00:28:00.000-07:00

So here I am, living my 2nd day as a fresh 21 year old feeling rather oblique. Oblique about everything. Oblique about the fact that although I got an offer from the university that I thought was too 'big' to have me actually gave me an unconditional offer, I actually turned it down. I honestly have no solid idea why I did it. Probably everything just became clear after I actually received the answer. I met a new person, me..

Although I did risk sounding too cliched, that last passage is true. I'm perennially amazed at how I learn so much about myself in the littlest things that you feel don't really matter in the grand old scheme of things. But it does, I guess. To sound intelligent and to appear intelligent, one must scoff at feelings. That's another thing I learnt from those pseudo intellectuals. Thats not really true is it? It's just because feelings are the most difficult things to understand and ignorance in a way is bliss. So a defence mechanism kicks in and scoff scoff...

Still reeling in euphoria. The hangover of success. Eloquence all forgotten...

Not that I want to sound so self absorbed, but the concept is as intriguingly confusing as Shakespeare's Dark Lady.. I did it again didn't I? Pseudo intellectual bullshit..
Scoff Scoff..

2011-08-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

The fact that a writer can take you to the very climax and disappoint you is something I don't think I can ever get over. A proper detective story should always have all the ties neatly tied and properly bound so that no error occurs and the reader feels a sense of fulfillment and content that had been illuding him all along till the very end of the novel. It hurt if the author doesn't feel for you. Doesn't care for you but feels that you're just the money horse and that he or she can get away with writing anything.

I was very disappointed about something I'd read recently. It was detective fiction and I had enjoys it so much that I went on to tell my friends that its even better than Agatha Christie's work. But the shoddy ending left me with a disillusionment. The author had tried to make it sound simple, but artistic license had been carried a bit too far with absolute disregard to the reader.

I admit I will still keep reading the work although I will reserve judgement and comment till the very finish has been reached.

Tempestuous

2011-08-03T02:05:00.000-07:00

Life has been tempestuous this last month.
From a feeling of complete hopelessness and depression to a feeling of absolute calm and happiness. Its wierd what life does to you.

I remember all those times when I looked around bewildered, everything slipping away from my fingers, out of reach and mocking me.
Its over and peasce prevails.
For a while at least...

The Isolation Experiment will be continued. A reminder to how things can go wrong but also one which instills the oft-quoted this too shall pass...

The Isolation Experiment Part-I

2011-07-11T04:30:00.000-07:00

Remember the short story by Chekhov, 'The Bet'?

I used to like that story. I had a problem with it though. I used to think that the man was a fool to have ran away just before he actually won. But I guess everyone did. I mean who'd wait until the very last minute and turn down that huge sum of money?

But thats just not it is it?

Finally what is life for? Is it to get a brilliant education which ensures you a secure future? Right now, as a disillusioned student and a wronged victim of the exam system, I hold on to a pretty thin thread of life.

I was to have a brilliant future. All my teachers told me that. I was to get out of my country for a great education abroad, and then come back and get a great job. Everything was going to be just perfect. I would win national level quiz competitions, I was touted to be one of the most intelligent. People would raise skeptical eye brows if I ever doubted my IQ. I would top my exams.

My parents? They glowed. They were proud of their daughter. She was their dream. They were really good parents. They gave her everything she wanted and she loved them no end. Their friends would tell them that they were letting such talent waste in the small city they were living in. She had to be sent out. To be let loose into realms of intellectual thought which were only her's to discover. And they would listen to these voices.

Spiritual Rafting or Ranting?

2011-07-04T04:35:00.000-07:00

So you know how it feels when the only thing around you shatters?

When the only thing you've felt yourself virtually breathing for; the only reason you get up out of bed, open your sleep withered eyes and struggle out of bed every morning and head towards your coffee completely blows up right in front of your face?

Killer saints.

An all new species. They call them mature and affable.

I don't call them. Yet they always seem to be there.

They look at you and sympathise and all you want them to do is remove their masks and just be themselves.

What's with the fake empathy? Give it up.. It sucks..

So yeah I've had a really bad day.

One I'd probably remember for the rest of my life. An addition to all that which already points at me as being a failure.

The world doesn't make sense. Ever.

Disillusionment prevails. Omnipresent, evergreen..

God... and who's that?

2011-06-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

There's something about rain and Shakespeare.

As i sit crumpled on my bed, books on Shakespeare strewn around me. All open to pages and passages I found interesting, the rain pours steadily. It provides a soft ambient noise to my studies and insects of the night strut into my room and into the light through the balcony.

I toil through the lines of Henry V and his Battle of Agincourt speech while a cricket hops onto my head and sits heavily there watching the computer screen, surveying it with an air of purloined wisdom. Old Cambridge editions annotated and customised to the students' needs offer me all that they can open, unflinching.

There's something about rain and Shakespeare. Something that leaves you with a sense of inevitable elation...

2011-06-01T03:32:00.000-07:00

So, here I am back again typing ferociously at my keypad, knowing fully well that I should be doing this posting in forums to an online continuing education course I've undertaken. I know I'll feel guilty in a couple of minutes for having 'wasted' my time not answering questions put up by faceless people who seem so far removed and distant that they almost seem non-existant and the course seems like a farce. Something out if an imaginary world.

My computer sits happily on my lap, compliant to all the demands I make of it.

Search, I say and it searches.

Delete, I command and it deltes.

Reload I exclaim, and it reloads.

Forward a page, back a page, stop loading, save the page.

It patiently tolerates my stubborn and childish tantrums.

Thats it for now.

2009-12-15T03:20:00.000-08:00

As the first post in my new blog, i'd like to give the reader an idea of wat this particular bog means to me. I'm not a first time blogger. I do have another blog which caters to my superficial whims and fancies. However, this blog is meant to cater to my deepest emotions, subtle feelings and philosophical discourses.

I think its time that i got to speak out as the person i am. And this is just the place for me to pour out my thoughts.

As i've always wanted to be a writer this will also help me sharpen my writing skills and chisel of the few odd bits sticking out here and there. Comments and suggestions are of course welcome.

This blog is supposed to help trace my life as it dawns as a young neophyte to the hopefully accomplished artist. I shall be posting most of my photographs, artwork and videoes.

I feel this life is too short for all the things i've always wanted to do. Hopefully, i'll be able to do a bulk of them in this lifetime.