Above the influence

The class clown

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 16:58:00 +0000

Being the class clown suited him. It was the only identity he had ever found in a class of 150 testosterone and hormone-laden boys. He was thin and lanky, his hair stood up near his ears and he had a slight hunch that made him look like a giant question mark.

He would leave school and take the long route home. He would pass the girls' school and wait by it till Mandy walked out with her friends, giggling and slowly pulling the ribbons out of her hair. Until a few months ago, she would barely smile at him, soon she started coming up to him and asking him about his day, before scuttling after her friends. Now, she waved good bye to her friends and held his hand while the walked to her house, about three buildings away. He had a girlfriend now.

Praveen sat ahead of him in class and was always turning around to talk to him or laugh at one of his jokes. He was the first one to notice the end of the fart jokes. The jokes about the anatomy of certain teachers, the sex jokes, the black jokes, the masturbation jokes, the dead baby jokes, the German jokes, the Muslim jokes, the gay jokes...everything was too offensive, racist or disgusting. He had stopped speaking altogether.

Being in love suited him.

Unshelved Memories #3

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:50:00 +0000

Kafka on the shore

"Are you really Colonel Sanders?"
Colonel Sanders cleared his throat. "Not really. I'm just taking on his appearance for a time."
"That's what I figured," Hoshino said. "So what are you really?"
Since I don't have a shape I can become anything I want." "Huh…"
"This time I decided to take on a familiar shape, that of a famous capitalist icon. I was toying with the idea of Mickey Mouse, but Disney's particular about the rights to their characters."
"I don't think I'd want Mickey Mouse pimping for me anyway."

---

There are usually two kinds of book I avoid reading; books about mythology and anything that has talking cats or fishes falling from the sky.

Kafka on the shore by Haruki Murakami has all of the latter and more. It is the first book I read by Murakami. Mixing magical realism with fantasy blended with innumerable pop culture, literary and musical references (Colonel Sanders, Johnny Walker, Radiohead, Yeats, Beethoven among others), Kafka on the shore is something you will read at break-neck speed.
A narrative so simple yet so captivating.

Kafka Tamura is a fifteen year old boy who runs away from his house to escape the prophecy that he will kill his father and sleep with his mother and sister.
Nakata is an old man who cannot read and is 'not too bright' but possess the ability to talk to cats.
As Kafka meets Oshima, the library assistant, Sakura who might be his sister and falls in love with the ghost of Miss Saiki, the story takes you on an unbelievable yet real journey, that slowly starts to merge when Nakata kills Johnny Walker (the man who kills cats, eats their hearts and collects their souls) and on pure instinct travels along with a driver named Hoshima.

Rationally speaking, many questions (or all most all of them) aren't answered.
Is miss Saiki really Kafka's mother? Does he really rape his sister through his dreams? Does he have anything to do with Nakata killing his father? What is that colourless salamander that Hoshino kills? How does the ability to speak to cats transfer to Hoshino? Who is the boy named Crow?

But you don't need these answers. At least I didn't.

In between leeches and fish raining from the sky and meeting soldiers unaged since WW II, Kafka on the shore manages to capture intense emotions that shake you up. Kafka's incredible strength, Nakata's simplicity, Oshima's theories and metaphors.... and when Kafka stays up all night to catch a glimpse of Miss Saiki's ghost, I came undone.
Murakami manages to capture a kind of resilient sadness without too many words.

Not the kind of sadness that makes you tear up and cry. Just the kind that makes you sit still, impassively and listen to your rapidly beating heart slow down to a dull thud. Even if those headphones you've jammed into your ear is playing a party anthem. A profound unhappiness, not as a concept or an emotion, but as a physical thing you can carry in your palm; for eternity. It is small enough to let you do other things but heavy enough, so you are never truly without it.

I cannot truly say whether the book bought this reaction in me or whether I projected my state of mind unto the book so much that I cannot tell them apart.

But Kafka on the shore will still be one of those books that made me head for the core of the labyrinth, giving myself up to the void.

Black Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:14:00 +0000

She smeared the tip of her finger with kajal from the lakme pencil her mother had bought. She pulled each eye open and ran her finger along the tip and rubbed off the extra on her hair the way she had seen her mother an all the women in her house do. She opened her drawer and picked out the new silver earrings. The leaf-shaped ones went well with the floral motif on her dark blue kurta. She twisted a stole around her neck and looked at herself critically in the mirror. No, this won’t do. She pulled the stole around her head, almost covering her face. Yes, this was more fashionable. After fishing about in her large yellow cloth bag, she pulled out her Jackie-O shades. It was way too retro but she didn’t seem to have any other option. She applied the lightest film of foundation near her left eye to balance out the dark colour. She slipped into her kolhapuris, put on a big smile and convinced herself. She looked happy.

Unshelved Memories #2

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:23:00 +0000

Snow

I always say the railway announcement on the Western Railway is the background score to my life. If I have to get a drink, get dinner, meet people, buy a cupcake, shop on the streets, attend a gig, watch a movie, whatever, it almost always involves me having to take a train.

So it kind of makes sense that I have started and finished a lot of books on the train. One of them is Snow by Orhan Pamuk. Only my friends will think it is fine to throw in this bleak and depressing a book as part of my birthday gift. Not that I’m complaining. (Ok, I’m complaining a little bit)

Snow is a story about a poet, Ka who loses his voice (not physically; as a poet) and returns to Kars in Turkey after many years spent in exile. A story of political unrest, a suicide epidemic and long lost love, all wrapped in layers and layers of melancholic white snow. It is beautifully written, every page filled with silent misery and making even the excitement in the protagonist’s life seem restrained and muted.

This book has cast some pretty dark clouds over my days and I kept going back to it. I tuned out all the noise around me (that’s tough to do in a local train) and actually let Ka dictate my mood and take over my day.

I have Pamuk’s My name is Red still lying unread on my shelf. I’m almost too afraid to start reading it, but I think tonight’s the night.

Somebody get me some coffee and a box of tissues please.

Unshelved Memories #1

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 15:58:00 +0000

The Time Traveler's Wife

There are some books that don’t grab you by the ankles in the first 10 pages. They take more than that. Audrey Niffengger’s The Time Traveler’s wife took me almost three weeks to complete.

I struggled to understand Henry’s condition; I struggled to decipher which phase they were in each scene. Wait, she’s 13, so that makes him…no, wait, what? I read at snail’s pace. Which is why, this was the book I carried in my backpack when I climbed on to a bus to Pune. It was getting the slightest bit interesting, but it is difficult to read when your sitting next to five excited boys from IIT Powai who are having a passionate discussion on the most ‘faadu’ metal band.

But I trudged on and I was rewarded. I don’t read romance novels (at least none without wishing an anvil would fall on the stupid girl’s head) but The Time Traveler’s wife was romantic and passionate in the most unusual way.

I was at a music festival in Pune that began in the evening. I spent the nights swaying, jumping and bobbing. The rest of the day, I spent in little coffee shops, drunk at a stranger’s house and my feet tucked under me on a mattress in an open park; reading. Everybody around me wore jackets, warmed themselves with cigarettes, scotch and momos while veils of white accompanied their breath and that is a vision permanently forged in my mind’s eye.

That is how I read the book. With mist all around, almost feeling Henry’s love in my frozen fingertips and in great awe of the delicious nefarious year I had lived.

Gender Writes

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:40:00 +0000

It pains me to even take this viewpoint into consideration, but recently Pulitzer-award winning author V.S Naipaul called all women writing ‘tosh’.
In the past I have heard women writing being called ‘sentimental’, ‘emotional’ and my favorite ‘chick-lity’

My first instinct is to protest at ‘women writing’. What, men can’t write emotionally?
But I know it is idealistic to believe that gender plays no role in writing. It plays a role in almost all occupations. Nobody says oh, look he is the first short guy CEO, but first woman CEO, first woman in space, first woman president…Almost like its simply shocking to the world that these women could achieve something. If a woman became CEO, she must really be something (Pratibha Patil is India’s first woman president. Simply by bestowing president-ship on a woman, must make us progressive, never mind her credentials or capabilities)

How much does gender really matter in writing? Assume for the sake of this argument that we accept all the stereotypes attached to women and men. Men are tough, like sports, business, science fiction, war…I don’t know, sex maybe. Women like men, feelings, girlfriends and the emotional aspects of things. If everyone must write about what they know, should women writers only have women protagonists and should men (male) writers only have men as protagonists?
A woman wrote Harry Potter, a man wrote Sophie’s choice, Steig Larson came up with Lisbeth Salander and Audrey Niffenegger created Henry DeTamble.

Chick-lit for me is light reading. I don’t consider it the genre all women read and I’m not going to belittle women’s intelligence by saying that most women only read chick-lit.
But you would be hard-pressed to find a man who would willingly read chick-lit.
Personally as a woman, I have read war stories, sports stories, science fiction and equal parts ‘chick-lit’.
Is this because woman may want to read ‘men’ subjects but men will never want to read ‘women’ subjects?

Even as kids, we expect girls to of course watch movies and read books that are entirely about boys, but we also accept quite cheerfully that boys won’t read anything about girls. [ref]

Daisy Goodwin, author of the novel My Last Duchess, in an interview, said “If I read another sensitive account of a woman coming to terms with bereavement, I was going to slit my wrists.”
So what must women writers do to not be considered chick-lit?

Author of Rites of Spring, Jessica Duchen says “Most women writers who want to be perceived as tackling themes beyond the buying of high-heeled shoes and the seduction of Mr Perfect loathe the concept of chicklit and don't want their work to be mistaken for it.
Therefore we have resorted to the tactic of choosing themes that are as dark and miserable as possible.

As I read this, on a side note I think, why are women writers constantly trying to shrug off their gender to prove a point? Maybe it is the emotional factor that makes us who we are. It is what gives our writing and our characters a depth that creates empathy and sympathy from readers.
I quickly brush aside this thought because I dot want to be considered un-feminist and because this comes to my mind:

“I often hear people exclaiming that they're astonished that a particular book was written by a man. They seem stunned by the notion that a man could write with emotional intelligence and honesty about our human frailties.
Women, on the other hand, are supposed to be experts on emotion. I've never heard anyone remark that they were surprised that a book of psychological depth was written by a woman.
So men get points for simply showing up on the page with a literary effort.” - Author Julianna Baggott

And it makes me mad. What must women do to be taken seriously by male readers?

While we continue to fight these infuriating nonsense, men have to fight their own stereotypes.
The general numbers prove that there are more women publishers and women a read a lot more fiction then men do. So, pitching a book targeted towards men is extremely difficult, because the chances of profits and popularity are marginal. [ref]

The percentage of all published fiction is for women is much higher than it is for men.
Ha! Poor men. If they want to read something 'manly' well, they have very little choice. They have to fight to prove that they read too.

Here is what I think. Fiction has no gender. There is intuitive, emotional writing and there is cold and dry writing. And both men and women can do either and both. As a serious writer, I can understand how being stamped 'girly' is an attack on our craft and talent itself. But the only way to write is to not bother about what genre or compartment of the marketing world our writing fits in. Because I honestly believe that its all messed up. Can't I write about finding love and still be a serious writer? If a guy wrote about his pursuit of true love what compartment would that fit? Is it chick-lit, is it dude-lit or Chetan Bhagat's two states?
Emotions/feelings are not the prerogative of a specific gender. It is just assumed that one gender can express it better. Its a generalization, not the rule.
The chick-flick, He's just not that into you, was adapted from a book written by a guy.
This proves absolutely nothing but the fact that we can either accept that all of these are exceptions and the usual 'girl writing v/s boy writing is a large and clear divide or we can accept that while there are assumptions, all these so-called 'exceptions' are simply writers, not defying stereotypes, but just simply writing.

I know this argument is incomplete, inconsistent and maybe idealistic but its just my opinion. I leave you with this :

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:10:00 +0000

Sometimes I wish I had a more ‘visible’ creative outlet. Maybe if I was great dancer and I craved the stage, or a great singer who could sit in the evening light and sing along with that lone acoustic guitar. Or maybe painting.

Something that doesn’t require you to sit in a chair, hunched over a keyboard, gnawing at the dark and weepy bits of your head. You have a story idea.

It’s a blind date.

The guy picks a new cosy café.

She’s pretty, she seems pleasant.

It is going well.

And now to think of a disgusting twist. Maybe she’s a dude, maybe she’s a cannibal or maybe that chain she’s wearing around her neck is made of toenails of previous lovers.

I’m not a big fan of rainbows or sunflowers and I have never found the appeal in unicorns even as a little girl, but there is a certain lack of the ability to ‘parade’ a thing like writing, that I’m staring to resent.

So when you are itching to do something new and put to use the cliché of letting your creative juices flow, writing doesn’t offer you the cool aspect of taking a camera out, taking pictures, putting them up on networking sites. People take 2 seconds to look at a picture. They comment if they like it. It is not the same as putting up a blogpost. The chances of people actually clicking on a link and reading anything that’s more than 4 lines is almost negligible. Appreciation or criticism in the form of comments is impossible if people won’t take the time out to read.

You don’t have a bunch of colourful pictures or paintings or drawings or the new skirt you stitched to show people. You have documents. Boring, insipid looking documents.

Say Chai

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:10:00 +0000

Coffee can never be tea. Coffee can, especially never be chai.

I have been a chai drinker for as long as I can remember. Ok, that’s a lie. I started out being a chai-dipper. That is what my mum had us believe, was a good evening snack. Biscuits in chai, khakra in chai, rotis in chai, bread, khari, rusk, everything went with chai.

We weren’t allowed to actually drink chai, (I was a proud horlicks drinker), so we would dunk whatever was available, make sure we got as much chai we could absorb and then pass the adulterated remnants with gunk floating on it, to my mum.

When I finally made the decision to live alone, I was 10 and the using the gas was simply scary (along with losing the house keys, waiting at home while my parents never came back home and pigeons). My mum would make breakfast and lunch before going to work and a big flask of tea.

At 5pm, when Small Wonder started (In hindi. Vicki ek robot hai!) I would pour the tea out and eat.

I don’t remember when drinking tea become a practice so obvious and so natural that I genuinely feel like I’ve been doing it forever. In very un-south Indian fashion, we have chai in the morning and not kaapi. Then I would have a cup mid-morning, then one in early evening and then one cup at about 7ish, because I felt like it. During exam time, all I drank was chai. My sister still hates tea, so I started drinking her share of gunk-floating chai. Over the years, a teacup become too small, and I started having chai in a proper mug.

For many years nobody made chai as well as my mother did. My grandmother’s was too mild, my dad’s too milky, my camp guide’s…yeargh.

But guess what, I now make brilliant chai. Brilliant. It is perfect. It is refreshing, it hits you when you want it to, and it calms you down if that’s what you need. My adrak chai is the stuff of legends, really. My mother on the other hand adds too much leaf and always gives me tea with a mildly bitter aftertaste. But I am a lot more open and all embracing of other people’s chai. Apparently, all thapris in Bombay make beautiful tea (special mention to the cup of road chai I’ve had from opposite jai sandwich on Linking Road, Bandra. 10 rupees and a cutting is actually a full cup)

Oh, what would I do without chai? There are no coffee thapris. It is not romantic to have coffee on the side of the road when it rains. There is a vague sense of beauty when you settle down to write with some chai, like you are part of a still photograph that uses the correct amount of shadow, light, black and white. There is no beverage, cold or hot, that will ever compare to chai, not even a long island ice tea, that actually has no tea, but uses the word to make it more enticing. You see what I’m talking about?

********

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:44:00 +0000

“You don’t know who Gandalf is? Didn’t you read Lord of the rings in college?” “No, I had sex in college”

Were you offended by that joke? Did you find it dirty, vulgar or inappropriate for the public? I’m going to guess here that your answer is no. All it implies is that he (Joey from Friends) had sex in college. Nothing scandalising, nothing to make you clap your hands on your ears. And yet, I watched an episode of Friends, a show that has run for years and continues on Indian television on WB, where they simply cut the entire punch line. I heard Ross say, “You don’t know who Gandalf is? Didn’t you read Lord of the rings in college?” And that’s all. Commercial break. What?

Increasingly, television channels airing English shows are beginning to annoy me with blanket and reckless censorship. Why air a show like Two and a half men, known to make, for the majority of the time, penis or masturbation jokes, if you are going to censor it in a way that I not only miss out on laughs but also important links to the story? It’s one thing to replace them with asterisks or with a milder word in the subtitles but to cut out an entire section of an episode is just unacceptable.

Recently, in an episode of White Collar on Star World, the word ‘coke’ was edited out of the subtitles. Last night, on an episode of Modern Family, Alex said “I hear they are going to have a hoedown this year.” And this is what I read – ‘I hear they are going to have a ***down this year’.

[hoedown

noun

1.a community dancing party typically featuring folk and square dances accompanied by lively hillbilly tunes played on the fiddle.

2. the hillbilly or country music typical of a hoedown.]

Clearly, the subtitle writers can’t look up a word in a dictionary. (I fully expect to see ‘She adopted a new *****cat’ soon)

What is the justification? What is the argument? Indian’s can’t hear the word ‘fuck’ or one of the most populated countries in the world can’t handle the word ‘sex’? Now, I haven’t done a detailed study of the demographic, but I’m guessing anyone watching Keeping up with the Kardashians, Grey’s Anatomy, or Californication clearly knows what they are watching and what to expect. And if you are watching these shows with your kids, you clearly are insane.

Which brings me to, why is Zee Café showing Californication? What are you going to do? Edit the sex scenes and the boobies, and play a 10-minute long show? We are bringing Mad Men and Dexter to India, so what if we have to edit, censor and beep half the show, but look how cool we are.

Do we still believe that TV viewing is family time? Are we still shy of every whisper or manforce ad? Do we really deserve to watch a tamed version of Dexter, known for its gore and bloodiness? Aren’t we devaluing every thing that makes the show what it is, by putting a trap on it?

Tarana

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 10:44:00 +0000

Bottles clinked against each other, laughter burst periodically and the sound of high-fives echoes around the table. People occasionally turned towards the source of commotion and went back to their aloo gobis and kingfishers with the slightest raise of an eyebrow.

It was one of those nights. They had watched a movie together, filled each other on the customary details of their lives. Madhu was going to get a dog, Riti had finished her biggest project successfully, Sid was secretly dating a girl in his office, Vicky had a huge fight with his parents and was looking for cheap apartments and naty…naty was just that. Naty. Natasha. Enthusiastic to the point of irritation, bouncing off the walls and as Riti had once pointed out, in a bid to prove her girlyness, brightly dressed in green, pink with hidden trinkets, bows and beads that jingled as she moved.

After the first round of drinks, a general air of bonhomie hung around their slightly hazy heads. Butter chicken and paneer tikka had been devoured quickly over talk and little cigarette breaks. Conversation jumped from pop culture, Virat Kohli, the new album by Death cab for cutie, the Malad murders, Madhu’s pet kittens and Sid’s sex-capades. The usual. The bar played new song and everyone quickly started singing it out loud, swaying their heads while resting their arms around each other.

Tarana lip-synced. Contrary to her name, she was tone deaf and couldn’t be bothered to listen to lyrics. Especially not tonight. She swirled her swizzle stick anti-clockwise in her drink and watched Naty. She was animatedly talking to varun about how she could help him with brokers and realtors and her friend who was apartment hunting. Tarana’s head was swimming; it took a turn for….bollywood. Things slowed down around her, she watched naty’s eyes sparkle, her hand constantly moving her bangles up and down her wrist, the little bow on her hair band appear from under a lock of hair, with her bobbing head. Enough is enough she said to her self. Or the old monk said to her. She believed in him. She slowly slipped her foot out of her shoe and edged it towards the end of naty’s skirt. She naughtily noticed the shock on her face that lasted a fraction of a second as she continued to tell her story. She didn’t seem angry. No, she definitely didn’t. But she wasn’t smiling. Tarana was incensed. She took a mini swig and pretended it gave her bravery. She moved her foot higher till she had reached a knee. No reaction. She slowly moved it higher…slightly higher…a flash of bare flesh. And steel. She moved her foot back quickly as a sharp pain shot through her and she pulled out the fork embedded in her gut.

5 things you can’t do when you are single.

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:50:00 +0000

Why do you need an introduction when the title is so clear?

This picture is supposed to add value to the post.

1. Go for a romantic dinner.

Forget about the romantic bit, lets focus on just getting dinner. Now, I’m all for individualism and I have watched a movie alone* but going out for dinner crosses the line into the pathetic zone. You just can’t sit alone under mild yellow light, listen to cheesy piano music and eat. It’s just sad. Apart from the fact that people will look at you with loser-eyes, and if it’s a popular restaurant, than all those people waiting will throw you dirty looks for hogging an entire table and will loudly discuss how the restaurant also delivers. Also, you cannot order for more than two dishes. Or one. Most restaurants have quantity equal for two. Now even people with big appetites like me cannot finish an entire portion of stir-fried rice by myself. Which means you have to end up calling for just appetizers and dessert. Or worse, call for a full meal and then make them pack the leftovers. And eat it for breakfast. Alone. As you cry.

2. Whine about your friends.

Lets agree on one thing. Friends are awesome. Yes? Agree? Shake on that? Okay? Okay.
Now friends are perfect for whining to, because they will listen to you for exactly 4 minutes and 36 seconds (or if you have pre-approved time limit, that much) or when you start doing that annoying thing where you stretch every syllable. Buuuuuuutttttt gggggguuuuueeeeyyyysss, she’s a beeeeeeeeeetch! Cross that limit and they will whack you over your head and hand you a beer. Which you will have to pay for later, but hey, at least you’ll stop crying and as everyone knows beer leads to introspection and you will soon realize things about yourself, you didn’t know. Like you love lighting your hair on fire or that gin makes you horny.
But every once in a while, they will drive you up the wall. Yes, with those same quirks that you totally love them for. Then watcha gonna do, yeah? If your dating, you have someone who will listen to you whining about your friends without assuming that you now hate them and understanding that you just need to let off some steam. Then you might get some action later.
Also, your boyfriend/girlfriend will not secretly tell your friends.

3. Get corner seats.

Like, I said in point no. 1, millord, I’m all for treating art as art and not turning cinema into a form of entertainment (Stolen lines. I attended a film appreciation class once). But, it is impossible to get corner seats in a movie theatre. At least, without being an asshole that takes the corner seats.
Corner seats are meant exclusively for couples to politely hold hands during the first 25 minutes of the movie, scooch in together and put their arms around each other later and after the interval, you can’t even look their way without getting elbowed in the neck or your eyebrows grazed (But do look at them if its a 3D movie. Grown-up couples wearing plastic glasses and trying to locate each others faces is hilarious).
But anyhoo, buying a corner seat is just a long exercise in tolerating dirty looks and weird voices (might as well be canoodling with someone if your going to put up with that). Starting with the person at the ticket counter, to the guy who sells popcorn to every other couple how were looking to be near a wall for support, people will give you dirty looks and say “ALONE?” in a screechy, judgmental voice. Yes, they will. Variations may include, “just one?” “Is no one coming here?” and “Ewww”.

4. Watch chick flicks.

Let me rephrase that, guys can't watch chick flicks without being called gay or a chick. Now, this sucks balls, really. I can watch 27 dresses and 10 things I hate about you infinite number of times. Chick flicks are fun, they are happy and stupid and go well with butter. Lots of it.
But dudes watching chick flicks simply must watch it alone and never ever discuss it. Which is truly unfair because, we girls can watch action movies or sci-fi movies and will be only considered cool. (Social experiment: make one Star Wars reference and see the reaction. You will bumped up into 'cool and want to do' or 'at least she'll understand my princess Leia fetish' category. Or, well, 'She's cool and one of the guys', depending on your luck). I know this point is endorsing/promoting/discussing gender stereotypes and I would apologise, but so is this entire post. So, yes, single straight guys have no legitimate excuses to watch Princesses Diaries. A hard drive full of porn is macho but watching 13 going on 30...not so much.

5. Cheat.

What kind of world do we live in where you cannot cheat on anyone if your not dating anyone? Huh?

Nothing is of consequence

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Sat, 21 May 2011 16:26:00 +0000

I realize that confusion is a big part of everyone’s lives. But this is mine and I need an outlet. This is going to be rambling; you have been warned.

Sometimes I wonder if I my decision to be a writer is masochistic. Writers, all better and more talented, surround me. I read all day; I’m amazed at the brilliance and the gut-wrenching realization of my own mediocrity. Navel-gazing till I want to slash my wrists is a given. But hey, why kill yourself when you can be depressed and a tortured artist?

The dream to create beautiful art by channelizing your sorrow and depression is strong enough to loath happiness, to seek misery. No amount of alcohol, drugs, sex, music, movies or shopping will soothe it. In fact, it’s easy to find the sadness in all of these too. But every once in a while, the misery takes control and then begins a never-ending search for a place to drop my anchor. I have been rocking this boat for almost a year now. We don’t want to stop but we don’t know which way to go either.

While going with the flow sounds glamorous and a worthy decision for your twenties, unlucky (only in the sense that things don’t happen to me, I have to proactively that a step. It sucks) ones like me just can’t handle it. Fuck the flow and give me some directions already. Or hand me a map at least.

Now, if I had a job, which was unbelievably fulfilling like a surgeon or something, that would be something. I’d put up with anything for that. But I am a writer.

I love being a writer. Bylines are my choice of high (figuratively of course). And we are all narcissists, the whole lot of us. I crave fame and I crave attention. But I justify the lack of it pretty well too. I’m sure if I had fame, I’d resent it. And mostly whine to my friends about it.

Just to be clear, this is not self-loathing. Deep down, I’m proud and sure and crave nothing more than being a happy and successful cliché. But it’s just that I’m also certain, I can find the underlying sorrow in everything. It’s a skill, really. It’s the only way to justify our fear of happiness. Also, the pursuit of happiness is just so romantic.

The confusion kills me. It depresses me. Its exhausting. Where do I drop my anchor?

Normal Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Sat, 14 May 2011 13:31:00 +0000

It’s mandatory that I post this disclaimer before I go any further: This post comes from a place of complete humility for the job and ignorance in the form of actual experience.

I do not have babies of my own but I have seen innumerable aunts, uncles and cousins raise their own. And here is what I’m left wondering. How difficult is it to raise normal kids?

For the sake of rational argument, lets not judge kids under the age of five. Boundless energy and incoherence when narrating stories of their friends from kindergarten cannot be subject to judgment. But kids older than that, yes.

By normal, I mean un-bratty, kids who have been taught to work for what they want, get what they deserve and never think there is a fall back if your too bored to study.

I mean kids who don’t have cars before they are fifteen, who don’t think it’s a great tragedy if they don’t get the brands they want, kids who have opinion on brands, kids who think reading is for losers, kids who don’t worry about consequences because they have a parent who will cover them, kids who will commit suicide when their television time is rationed. Kids who don’t scream bloody murder at airports when refused a gelato, only because they have a cold.*

It can’t be that tough, right? But it still is.

I worry for the future, where people will bomb the steps and reach the top without learning to walk.

*True story

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Wed, 04 May 2011 06:30:00 +0000

Dear, writers of How I met your mother,

Come sit. Here, have a beer.

Yes, this is an intervention. You've changed. So much so that I don't even recognise you anymore. I gave you 5 years of my life. What has it all come down to?

You wrote a song about a mall. You invented a cockmouse. You come up with the three-day rule. You made every idiot say legendary with a pause in the middle. You made me want to drown a puppy every time someone says awesome. It was all you. You made me hate my house for not having a bar right below.

You made TV ~~awesome~~ funny. You gave us concepts like lemon law and slap bet, you made me hate Sarah Chalke, you almost made Barney human and made him fall in love with robin and you made Donna bourgeois.

And then you wrote about Marshall getting mugged by a monkey. And soon, we were stuck having to clutch on to one scene-full of dog puns in an otherwise meh episode and convincing ourselves that we must continue to be loyal to the show that has given us much to discuss.

What the fuck happened guys? I know, I know, the quest for love is tough. But did you have to make it so tough for Ted? You could have changed that no? Who do we blame? Mean network bosses? Too much pot? Charlie Sheen? Sure, everything can be blamed on Charlie Sheen, but lets face it, things were going pretty badly before that. When did Ted become such a wuss, when did Marshall become so jaded and why the fuck are Lily and Robin even on the show anymore? And where are the fucking laughs?! Where are the smart flashbacks, the perfect background scores and the little pieces of wisdom by Bob Saget?

But all is not lost, I know its going to be tough, but you showed some promise with 'the perfect cocktail' I know your stuck writing 2 more seasons but you can do this. Just re-watch the older seasons. Surely, you have them on DVD. When every episode was hilarious and Marshall wasn't so fat.

Please, please let me not search for a torrent, wait patiently to download and then bore me so much that I spent watching your show while thinking about that funny joke on community. Do it for everyone who has watched all your 136 episodes plus repeats on Star World. Do it for us.

The same old story

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 18:15:00 +0000

He had no stories to tell.
Why did everyone consider him to be a treasure trove of information, simply because he is old? The kids would gather around him in the afternoons at summer or when the electricity went off, expecting him to entertain them. What was he, a clown? It's not like every old wrinkled man had tales of fame and fortune.

Let me tell you about these stories your grand father in the village tell you, he would say, annoyed with the boy’s friends. They are all untrue. Just made up. But they wouldn’t believe him. They’d rather believe that a man fought with a man-eating tiger than be told otherwise.

He even tried making them up. He told the kids of the time the princess had insisted on marrying him after he had single-handedly beaten an army of a 100 strong men, without any weapons, while they used guns and sticks on him. It's how he lost his tooth he said, grotesquely opening his mouth wide to show them the missing molar. But he had rejected the princess, as she wasn’t beautiful enough for him…the kids had gotten up to play cricket without even letting him finish. Liar, they called him.

The lines ran like rivers across his face, creasing them and making multiple partitions. You could trace the Sunderbans near his eyes. But they all told stories of hard work, manual labour, grief and unbending monotony. Not of adventure and travel. He sat mute all day, thinking and eating supper when served. He walked to the temple sometimes. He never sat in the park and had interesting conversation with an old lady or a wayward youngster. He never survived a terrible accident or won a lottery only to blow it all on something trivial. He never fought a war.

There were no stories to tell.

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:28:00 +0000

The confined space of a rickshaw is the last place to have this conversation. Every little bump made him conscious of how close she almost came. Every red signal a welcome mat for peering eyes.

“So?” she said, in that tone he had heard a hundred times before. Experience had taught him “so what?” was the wrong answer but he couldn’t help himself. “So what?” she thundered and immediately grew thrice her size and sprouted fangs before him. The rickshaw driver gave him a half smile through the rear view mirror. “This is not just my responsibility, this is equally your fault,” she continued, her eyes bulging like a frog’s.

He rummaged through the words in his head. None of them seemed appropriate. He thought of her hair, neither poker straight nor curly. He tried to create a metaphor about her hair reflecting her personality but failed. He ran his fingers through her hair, combing it till the last strand. That was the last time they met. It is what caused this. Today.

She continued to glare at him and then blinked rapidly. A thin line of water droplets shimmered right above her dull kohl line. How predictable. He looked at her face. No, her nose did not scrunch up cutely; her lips did not quiver gently. She looked quite terrible when she cried. A tear rolled down her cheek leaving a trail. This was not working.

He shuffled his feet and wondered how long before he would have to hold her as she cried on his shoulder. It was a new T-shirt.

He looked at his feet, then hers. Crossed. He thought about all her ‘big foot’ insecurities. It’s why he liked them. They were truly clownish. He suppressed his laughter and turned into an awkward closed-mouth smile. She smiled back and put her head near his face. New shampoo. The rickshaw driver’s eyes flashed. Chutiya.

He put his hand into his pocket. He hadn’t washed them in a while; he could still see a stain where he’d dropped a bit of mayo from his Sub. He felt around for his last cigarette and fished out all its contents. Two one rupee coins, a Singaporean dollar, a bus ticket and a condom.
If only.

The pursuit of cool

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:40:00 +0000

We can't deny, the pursuit of cool is the bane of our generation.

We must look like we have lives. Even if don’t.

We might prefer being home instead of going out drinking but then our foursquare friends will know we are not cool.

We must take photos every time we meet our friends, we must pose with alcohol, we must post how ‘crazy and wild’ a night we’ve had, lest our facebook ‘friends’ think we are not cool.

We must pick up that latest best-sellers, even if we have no interest in going from XL to XS, lest we sound un-cool to people we think are stupid. Or people on the train judge us by the cover of the book we are reading.

We must talk about suicide and how damaged we are, lest we sound too normal. Normal is not cool.

We must talk of the night we can’t even remember because we were too stoned/drunk or tonguing a stranger.

We must talk of how we love retro, how new age music sucks, how we hate people who use sms language, we are so different and so don’t ‘belong. Old school is cool. Being an outcast is cool.

We must debate to show we are smart, we must critique movies, we must diss books, and we must hate pop stars. How can this not be cool?

We must want peace, we must hate haters, we must talk of herbal tea and we must defend our drinking capacity. We must not like our parents, we must text, IM, BB, ping and poke. We must love the Internet and we must be commitment phobic.

I love being part of this generation.

There is always something to keep up with.

I'm going to write a story

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:25:00 +0000

I’m going to write a story

It will have a girl who wears frameless glasses

It will have a kitten that looks cute and innocent but isn't

It will have an earthquake

It will have a doctor who stutters

It will have a little boy who has the shiniest bicycle in his school

It will have a guy who sells bhel by the street. Or as I would call it, puffed rice with tomatoes, onions, spices and coriander, to be fancy

It will have a funny and cruel twist of fate

It will charm you with witty insights

It will move you

It will make you copy and post lines as your facebook status

I’m going to write a story

As soon as all of this happens to me

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:22:00 +0000

Dear writer’s block,

It's not you, it’s me.

This relationship has gone on too long. And we both know the fighting has to end. Remember that time when my fingers almost made it to that keyboard and you pried them away till I cried? And that one time, when I came up with that great idea, I thought about it all day and just when I picked up a pen and opened my notebook, you convinced me it was the most stupid, awful, juvenile idea anybody in the world has ever had? Yeah, it’s all those things.

I know what your thinking. Sure, I’m being all practical and logical now, but in a while when you come back, I’ll cling on to you. I’ll lean and depend on you, because when I’m with you, I can make up the most amazing excuses to not write. You make me amazing like that.

But it’s time. It’s time we ended this facade. We don’t love each other, hell; we can’t even stand each other. The only reason we’ve been together is that you let me eat a bag full of potato chips and even take the blame for it

But love, remember, its nothing you did. It’s all me. I’m the selfish one.

P.S - That blue blinking blank feeling before my eyes, when you hold me, is what I’ll miss the most.

Xoxo
S

Things I feel guilty about today:

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:11:00 +0000

1. Yelling at the parent for no reason

2. Locking myself in my room and being supremely anti-social when relatives came over.

3. Eating half a packet of potato chips.

4. Pretending I was busy working when I was actually taking the ‘which sex and the city character are you?’ quiz, on facebook.

5. Enjoying mindless and horrible entertainment like splitsvilla

6. Supporting Chennai Super Kings till the last two overs and then switching loyalties when I realized Royal Challengers Bangalore would win.

My favorite fictional characters

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:13:00 +0000

I have very short-term memory.

I visit places but a few months later I don’t remember all the sights I saw. I watch movies; I don’t remember details, actors. I read books; I remember plots but don’t always remember characters and details.

But there are some characters that stay in my head, long after I’m done reading the book.

So here are 10 fictional characters I will never forget.

-Sam Cayhall from The Chamber by John Grisham.
(He changed my perspective on the death penalty completely. I’m still undecided actually)

-Zooey Glass from Franny and Zooey by J. D Salinger.

-Heathcliff from Wuthering heights by Emily Bronte.
(Tall, dark, angry, obstinate, brooding ruthless man. I hate him so much, I love him)

-Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

-Bertram Wooster from the Jeeves novels by P. G Wodehouse.
(Yeah sure, I love Jeeves, but Bertie Wooster’s my favorite plus who has aunt’s like his?!)

-Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the rye by J. D Salinger.

-Hercule Poirot from the Poirot series by Agatha
Christie.
(I recommend: the murder of Roger Ackroyd and Poirot’s last case. Oh, If I had gray cells like him….)

-Ronald Weasley from the Harry potter series by J. K Rowling.

-Howard Roark from Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
(There is this image I have of him, flaming orange hair and a black shirt on those broad shoulders. In so many ways I hate this book for all it’s preachy-ness, but it is one hell of a book.)

-Don Vito Corleone from The Godfather by Mario Puzo.

And some other characters that didn’t make it to top ten, but I love and remember anyway are
Huckleberry Finn, Fred and George Weasley from Harry potter, Boo Radley from to kill a mocking bird, Gail Wynand from the fountainhead, Harry patridge from the evening news, Frodo Baggins and Gandalf from Lord of the Rings and Jo March from Little women.

Pins and needles

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:42:00 +0000

I’m not scared of hospitals or doctors and used to pride myself for not being afraid of the dreaded needle. Life as an asthmatic child was full of inhalers and injections. But one day, almost the beginning of eight standard, I was admitted to hospital after I fell in school, unconscious and clutching my stomach is pain. “Appendicitis” the beefy man with the well-combed moustache said, “almost at the last level, tsk tsk, we must operate immediately, today itself” and I, having never known anyone my age, who had an operation and admitted to a hospital, had flashing visions of sharp knives and long, pointy formidable weapons, and my eyes filled up quickly, with tears. I pretended to look out the window and used the old filmi, “something’s gone in my eye”.

The next few hours were spent getting me ready for my moment. I had to wear green patient clothes and had an IV-drip-thing stuck through the back of my palm. I have vague recollections of the actual operation, though. Just the anesthesia being delivered and the anesthesia specialist (I think) asking me inane questions like, ‘what’s your favourite subject’ and such.

When I woke up next morning, they gave me my tail in a jar.

But my ‘condition was still unstable’, so I had to stay 6 days in the hospital, a maternity one at that. It was actually not that bad. I had my own room with a television and the hospital food was so tasty! It wasn’t your typical bland roti-sabzi, it was good dal and pulav and dessert and stuff. They gave me sponge baths and this one nurse brushed and tied my hair up in this really nice style, I still haven’t been able to figure it out myself. I told everyone who would listen that the appendix was so infected that the smallest delay and I could die.

But the only downfall was that it made me hate the injection. They gave me 10 a day for 6 days, people, you do the math! That was torture! After that I was simply averse to the idea of sharp things going into my veins or arteries. But, when I went back to school, I did tell everyone that I was given sixty, ‘SIX. ZERO.’ injections a day, and I didn’t complain once and that the nurses said I was the bravest girl they had ever met.

I still have scars of stitches from the operation. And if I ever want to show it to anyone, I have to heave up fat layers on my tummy, and there it is, a memento from the only time I was admitted in a hospital.

My first kiss

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:44:00 +0000

My first kiss came too late in life; almost by the time I was resigned to wearing a big L on my head forever or truly contemplate my sexual orientation.

Bu it did come. Not in a dark alley or drunk in club and I really don’t have anything to say when girls discuss the song that played during their first kiss. I had no song playing; I don’t even remember what I was wearing or what he was wearing. I was lying on a bed with green and gold sheets in Munnar, Kerala (we were on a college trip), enjoying being someone’s girlfriend for the first time while a friend was lying sprawled out on a mattress on the floor. We had been together for a whole 4 days then.

I was just lying and holding hands and talking and thinking, ‘awww, this is so sickly sweet’ then there was a complete five second blank in my mind, and then the next thought was, ‘oh, that’s tongue’. Ugh, and I painfully remember that stupid expression on my face. I looked like a fish. (I’m still convincing myself that the expression was because I heard my friend on the floor stir. But it wasn’t)

Then I spent the next day preparing not to look like a deranged woman if my second kiss happened, which I was starting to doubt after I saw the fish face in the mirror a couple of hundred times. I would stand on tiptoe and put my hand on his chest and close my eyes slowly and elegantly, my eyelashes would flutter…

It didn’t happen exactly happen the same way. I didn’t stand on tippy toes because he lifted me off the ground, my hands had to be around him, holding tight, else I would fall a good six inches (!!), but it was so perfect.

Every time I think of my first kiss, I feel like I’m forgetting another small detail, another little thing that makes that picture in my head complete. I don’t remember what room it was, or what we wore, or what he said after, etc. but I do remember the moment pretty clearly and it was so special and it always will be.

You don’t ever forget your first kiss, do you?

P.s. - I can write even when I’m drunk, see!

If my mother was on facebook…

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:14:00 +0000

..she would definitely expect me to be her ‘friend’ and I would have to mind my P’s and Q’s online and things would have to change. I’m not sure how effective adding people on limited profile works, but all she has to do is go to my profile to know my deep, dark cyber activities.

The first thing to change would obviously be my relationship status. She knows I have a boyfriend but she conveniently chooses to smiles and assumes that I’m a naïve little girl and boyfriend means, someone to hold hands with.

The next big change would be language. No cussing like a sailor or a sixteen year old. No ‘where the fuck are you’, or ‘I’m so mindfucked’ or ‘she’s such a bitch’ or vodka.

Status updates must be controlled. Nothing to let on that I drink or get depressed (topics to which my status updates are normally related to), she hasn’t yet come to terms that I’m have ‘feelings’. Because when she was my age, there was no time for all this, she used to only study, help her mother in making dinner and have fun, in moderate quantity.

And then of course, the visual proof of all teenage ways, the photos! Photos with alcohol, boys, in a club, when I was supposed to be ‘working’ on a project all night, wearing clothes she said I could wear in public only if I wore a jacket, etc. God, that would be embarrassing.

And what’s more embarrassing is that she would beat me on geo challenge and word challenge.

Plus I don’t want to see what my mum talks to her friends about, (I’m hoping it’s her kids, computer programming i.e. her job, recipes and bollywood gossip, I hope) I don’t want to know who my mum’s celebrity crush is, or which of the seven deadly sin, she is.

My mum’s quite cool but I so don’t want her to raid on my facebook world. Because apart from everything else, I link my blog to FB and I don’t want her to read my blog.
Plus what if she has more friends on her list than me?

People watching

noreply@blogger.com (Sharanya) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 05:36:00 +0000

I was out at a club with my girl friends last night, and we are drinking and talking and doing our thing, with about fifty other people doing just about the same thing. There’s music and food and a general air of cheerfulness and congeniality. And amidst all of this is a couple; I’m sneaking glances at. They just stood close to each other and kept talking. The girl did a few mini jigs and he just kept smiling at her. He drew small patterns on her back with his finger as he pulled her closer towards him. He didn’t even notice when someone bumped against him, like they had a little bubble around them that sheltered them from the happy drunk people around. I had a super great time and I really don't know why, but I couldn’t help feeling a teeny-bit jealous.

I remember reading a similar post on the mad momma's blog, but unfortunately, I can't seem to find the link anymore.