Tech pest

It seems to me that I should have been born in the 17th century. Apart from getting to live the simple life, I would not have had to face the wrath of technology, which has, for some inexplicable reason, decided that I am not worth using it.
Thanks to doting parents, I have everything I could ask for. Computer, laptop, ipod, kinetic, pen drive, mobile, you name it. Due to reasons I cannot understand, they all have decided to abandon me. One by one.

First my kinetic broke down. The fact that it almost never has enough petrol has still not trained it to run on air.

Then I lost my pen drive. In college, to make it worse. Strike two.

THEN, my laptop suddenly decides to die. Just like that. Without prior notice. The details are too painful.

My ipod decides it can’t live without the lappy, so it tries to die. It is revived, but without the videos and half the songs. Putting those in it again requires loads of patience, which I regrettably lack.

Mobile phones are not happy with me and switch on and off as they please.

I think we should have like, a users union, so we can make our appliances give us a month’s notice before going poof. Then, at least I could have saved the pictures. :(

A hundred shades.. which one’s mine?

I finally thought I should throw away the pieces of conversation I’ve saved and stored for so long. They’re meaningless, I thought. Then I took them out, and I opened one. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did. Conversations scribbled on backs of notebooks, pieces of paper, surreptitiously written when the teacher was saying something we weren’t interested in. The beginning of the friendship, the faint hint of there being more to it than that.. all recorded in black and white and hidden away in a file, apart from the recesses of my mind.

I was lying in bed trying to make sense out of a confused jumble of thoughts. And slowly I succeeded. Empathy, forgiveness, letting go, all of the phrases made sense. As I read these scraps a few minutes later, I felt no anger, instead, I was smiling as I remembered. And I marvelled at how a part of me had been revealed to myself, previously unknown, hidden, and maybe even non existent. Its buried now again, hidden and protected, not to be taken out for some time. Healing. But I now know that when it does, it can be as beautiful as the setting sun. And that’s saying something.

I couldn’t throw them away. Not because I had foolish hopes. Those I'd dispelled as I lay thinking about it. But how can you throw away something that makes you smile and sad at the same time, reminds you of what you held dearest, reassures you about your worth, teaches you about love? Everyone should have memories like this, that they cherish for as long as they can, even if it had a sad ending. Now I know how its better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

But, honestly, it wouldn’t hurt to have a happy ending.

“Maybe there are one hundred shades for explaining the truth, a spectrum of light to dark, depending on the vulnerability of those who have to hear it. Things are not always so clear-cut, they are not either black or white, life just isn’t like that.”

--'Hundred Shades of White', Preethi Nair

A wedding in the making

Planning for a wedding ain’t easy. So I’m assuming. Since the planning for the upcoming wedding in our family has just barely started, I can’t say.
The wedding planners, if u can call them that, had come home today. With loads of pictures on colour themes and menus and more confusing colour themes. Of all the weddings I’ve ever been to, I don’t think I’ve ever even noticed the colour themes. But there you have it.

And then the confusion about the bride’s identity. Of course, we know who’s getting married. But my sister’s conspicuous absence requires me to fill in for her. I’ve draped so many saris and lehengas and chosen so many suit pieces that I feel like the bride’s maid of honour. Which, by default, I am, I guess.
The confusion became apparent when one salesman started to say, “Don’t worry, everything is going to be just as you want it..” Before he could go any further, he was interrupted by an uproar, successfully created by me, my mother and my father.
“No no its not my wedding!”
“elder sister, not her…”
“not her”
“haha..”
I think the poor guy actually got scared.
Very funny it was.

Also, the fact that there are three other cousins who have either gotten married or are getting married within six months of each other, spices things up a bit. Four weddings in a half year is not a simple feat, even for our family.

Three love marriages
One arranged match.
People coming from all over India, and more.
Add some sugar, a little salt, pepper, and you have a first class recipe for a chaotic, fun, eventful, unforgettable year.

Ooh, and I get to wear a sari!!

Him that I love - let him be free, even from me.

Now, i forget who said this, but why would I want the person I love to be free from me? Him that I love, let him be just as bound to me as I am to him, thats what i say. Hmm.. I’m not exactly the advocate of selfless love.

A review

The really good things about exams is you realize how much you love your life when they’re not around. And so, as soon as mine got over, I got down to serious business..after all, lazying around is hard work. Saw Runaway bride for the hundredth time, and read Love Story for the thousandth.


The reason I find Love Story such an amazing book, I might even say comforting book, is because unlike other books, it does not question the existence of true love. The book begins and ends, and you never doubt the fact that love, when you find it, is true and everlasting. No frustration about relationships not working out, about right and wrong, misunderstandings, people cheating, and all else that is mundane. It makes you sad, yes, but in a good way. It may be cliched, but it is original for me. You get really involved with the characters and their story and there are a very few books that can do that.

Oliver’s Story, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. I didn’t like the sequel, because it is everything that love story is not. While Love Story is a pure, innocent love story, here it seems like Oliver’s got an agenda in his life. Which is why it lacks the charm that the first book has.

Even so, I don’t think I’ll be taking it on my journey tomorrow. Most idiotic to start crying over a book on a plane.

I like my new telephone, my computer works just fine , my calculator is perfect, but Lord! I miss my mind.
-- Anonymous

Recently I acquired a new cell phone. Usurped my dad’s actually. The fact that its already about a yr old in no way deters me from telling everyone I got a new phone. Just like the fact that hardly anyone ever calls me in no way deters me from subscribing to and keeping a “hello tune”, which is what they call it when you get to hear a song of my choice instead of the boring tring tring when you call me. The day I got it I told my friend to call me up, who promptly did and was dutifully impressed and excited. Next I told my sister to call me up. And let the phone ring a bit, so there’d be no room for doubt. Her response was a bit discouraging.

“tring tring”.. or rather should I say.. “hips don’t lie..”
Me: “hello..”
Sis: “yea, what?”
“What what? Didn’t you hear the hello tune??”
“Oh that.. ya.. what was that?”
“Shakira!”
“Never heard it”
“humph”

Nevertheless, I persevere. Tomorrow, I shall download a new wallpaper to adorn my cell.

Excuse me, I have a message.

writer's block

I suppose if I have to keep this blog going, eventually I’m going to have to write something. But here we have a bit of a problem. While my fingers are itching to write, I regret to admit that my life just isn’t so happening so as to provide me with a little bit of initiative.
So I’m putting in a picture, because I’ve heard a picture is worth a thousand words. Lets see how many this is.

A moment of contemplation

Its funny, how death can change everything.. and sometimes, it can change nothing.
The death of a friend you had 6 years ago, can affect you for a day.. but it won’t for long. You move on in life, and lizards falling on you get more priority. The death of a stranger can affect you for like, five minutes, and then what? How long can you grieve for someone you haven’t even seen?
How long can you grieve for something that was never yours?
A relationship.. a friendship, a sisterhood, a closeness. What was, what might have been, what you gave up that could have been better. Life goes on. You find comfort in others, more importantly, in yourself. In hope.
Death, be it of whatever, can mark a full stop on someone’s life, a comma on others’. And sometimes, you can choose to move on, to not let it affect you.
If you can overcome the disappointment of a hope dashed, and have the strength to make space for hope again in your heart(not necessarily of the hope dashed).. is that wise? Is it the mark of a strong character or a simply foolish one? Is it not better to spare oneself the agony of going through disappointment again? Now that would be “learning from your mistakes”. But then that would also be a very bland, dull existence, won’t it? Hope is that tugging at your heart that makes you look forward to a new day, that makes you do good. You hope that your friend will like your present, so you get them something really good. You hope that you’d make a difference to someone, so you try to help them out. You hope that you’ll have a shoulder to cry on when you really need one, and that makes you hope for everlasting love and security and friendships.You hope that you can someday reciprocate all that you got, and that makes you be nice to your family, and everyone you care about. How can you not have hope?

*sigh* how clueless can one be?

Lizards

A lizard fell on me today. Literally from the heavens.
Now, you have to understand, I have nothing against these reptiles. I mean, c’mon, we all have to peacefully coexist somehow. I’d just rather they coexist quietly, kind of.. invisibly. (In all fairness, the lizard was quiet as a mouse, or a lizard. I was the one making all the noises.) The thing is, house lizards, or for that matter any kind of lizards, just freak me out. I’ve got lizardophobia. So I guess then it would make sense for kismet to think, “hmm.. know what would be fun…” and thus we have today’s episode.
And kismet picked out a nice fellow too… he (or she.. I honestly don’t know how to tell them apart) was a fine lizard, white as marble, and after I had screamed my head off and kicked it off my leg, he stood there, tail high up in the air and looking at me, challenging me for a rematch. Of course, he scurried away after a few tense moments. And a good thing at that.. a few more moments and I would have been the one scurrying off, and then spending the rest of my life with a broken self esteem.

Now people tell me a lizard falling on you is supposed to mean good luck. That’s like, such an antithesis in itself. Didn’t seem like good luck to me when it fell on my head. Just makes it seem like good luck when I reach the elevator next time and I’m still lizard free. Depends on how you look at it.

Anyhow, good luck or not, I’d like to tell lizards that I respect their slimy existence, but really, pick on someone your own size. I am not a bungee tower.

Little Lost Soldier Girl: "love is the desire to be desired 'I want you to want me, I need you to need me, I love you to love me'."

Some excerpts from this book i read.. " Taj, A Story of Mughal India"..

Arjumand:
"..We begin life whole, the sum of many people: fathers, mothers, grandfathers, brothers, cousins, sisters. And then, as they die, one by one, each death lessens that whole. We shrink, we shrivel, whittled down until all that remains from the subtraction is our self."


"Did men die or was it the world that died? Our grasp of mortal things,(isa thought,) is tenuous. When Dara died, he passed from our sight. Or is that an arrogant thought? Did we pass from Dara’s sight?.. It was a subtraction, but of what, from what? If the soul returned to brahma, that was then permanence, the world impermanence. We are subtracted then , not the dead."

All’s well that ends well… 14 dec 05

Well that’s another sem ended. And not a bad end either. A semester marked by the various respective crushes (landmarks for some, all in a day’s work for others..). heartbreaks, heartaches, heartburns, heartthrobs.. you name it, we got it. R and I saw the exam result today, or rather results… 15 in all if I’m not wrong. And we also saw DB!!! looking very very cute. The thing is, he looks cute only to us. I doubt if we displayed him as our crush, anyone else would find him cute. Quote R “ if I showed him to puneet (her bro), he’d bury me right here.”
And this was when I gave one of my not-yet-famous-yet-extremely-wise theories.
I think falling in love is just a matter of will power. If you want to fall in love with someone, you can. And if you want to fall out of love with someone, you can. Its not fate or destiny. Its you. You decide. And so this whole theory of ‘there is one person for each and everybody’ is false. And I do think so. Of course this theory would only hold if the first impression is what you wish it to be. For example you cannot possibly make yourself fall in love with someone whom you think to be disgusting. He or she has to be at least tolerable. But I think there’s always an element of your will that commands your potential to fall in love with him/her.
Poor r had to listen to all of this and nod along, but I think I managed to find a potential follower in my theory.