work wear

It’s funny and interesting to see how people (consciously or unconsciously) dress for their jobs.

My current flatmates all dress incredibly appropriately for their respective profiles.
Or at least stereotypes associated with them.

The better half dons a suit and crisp formal shirts to fit in with his swanky office and overdressed colleagues

The legislative assistant friend wears kurtas and Nehru jackets (and a beard!) to make an impression at the parliament.

The trade publishing editor bestie mixes and matches quirky prints and geek-chic glasses with hair-bands, danglers and ballet flats.

And me?

Well, I have a bloody dress code! :\

distance makes the heart grow colder

a year ago in winter

something changed.

abruptly. irreversibly.

what had become a lonely sort of custom,
quickly turned into a shared joy.

before I knew it, I was intertwined.

and I suddenly had an answer.

yes, sometimes in life there is a dramatic build-up
to a “grand finale of realistion.”

catharsis.

It’s been a year, and for the first time in five years or so,
I am missing my beloved Kolkata Film Festival.

but I’m there in spirit, I guess.

because you are too.

*in case you were wondering, the title of this post is borrowed from a movie I watched at the 15^th kolkata film festival, which blew me away.

bravado

Bravery is overrated.

All these fables and tales, quotes and songs about courage. What is that?
It's like we have, as a civilization, been fed and reared on these delusional ideas of courage above all, and we have swallowed it.
Like gullible, obedient children.

What that basically translates into, is an unhealthy desire to get yourself killed to achieve glory.
The brave are remembered. Yes.
The keyword here being 'remembered'.
Do you know why that is?
Because they met their horrible, sticky ends in their efforts to be brave.

I personally don't see what the hoopla is about.
The way I see it, a healthy dose of fear is good.
Heck! It's essential!

Why do you think the rodents survived while the dinosaurs went extinct?

gourmet

 the tomato rice was a success

drive me to distraction.
take my serenity and shatter it.

what good is the calm 
if there is no chaos 
to precede it?

getaway love

The quaint bungalow in the hills, the family, the dog, stolen white rum, rain in the mountains and conversations in a star-lit garden.

The cottage in the middle of nowhere, hill paths and adda as the sun goes down beyond the mountains, and the lights come on.

The mist slowly descending from the mountaintops, hypnotic silence, the blue café and steaming glasses of ginger lemon honey.

The lake palace glittering at the centre of an expanse of water, the city lighting up in the distance, the fireworks, good whiskey and good company.

I’ve fallen in love with getaways. Thank you.

relic

I've been keeping a diary since I was 13.

It started small, with a sentence a day scribbled into a tiny datebook. Then it became less regular, till it turned into just an erratic paragraph or two, scribbled on any available sheet of paper.
Over the years, my diaries have changed shape, size and texture.
The way I write has also changed.

What hasn't changed is the joy of going back and reading my old entries.
It gives me perspective sometimes and sometimes makes me facepalm at the silliness of young me.

Either way, going back to my diaries reminds me that everything passes.
When you look back, things that once broke you, make you smile.

jobless

It amuses me how female leads in hindi movies almost never have boring desk jobs. If they have jobs at all, that is.

They always have some quirky or fun occupation like school teacher or artist. Something that involves meeting new people or dealing with kids.

So that you can see how lively, fresh-faced, compassionate and fun-loving she is.

Of course!

The hero, however, may well be an investment banker or entrepreneur. So that he has tons of money to lavish on her when they finally meet and fall in love. But he has also sort of lost himself in being a workaholic or some such.

So she rescues him from his bleak life. He learns to smile again, loosen up, enjoy himself, live again… stand atop a mountain and scream “I’m aliiiive!!.”

And she can then proceed to comfortably settle into the life of luxury that his years of toil and being a workaholic have yielded.

Ah. Perfection.

commemorative

This month, ‘it’s a jungle out there’ turns seven years old.

Seven! My blog is the same age as a moderately sized child! My God!

I wonder if this blog is one of those things that get better with age.

Probably not.

But in all these years, I’ve stuck to my principles. I’ve not succumbed to the blog-glitz and glamour trends and corporate propaganda.

I’ve not switched to WordPress, added any fancy widgets or ads, jazzed up the template, or even changed my picture for God’s sake! :\

Maybe that’s why everyone went away.

Hello? Anyone out there?? *crickets chirping*

Anyway, I’m very fond of this blog. It’s a faithful record of my rantings and ramblings since I was a puny first year, thoroughly awed by college. I’ve incurred people’s annoyance through this blog (one time), made people laugh (chuckling mildly counts!), even met new people here.

It’s been a quite a journey.

Happy birthday, blog. 

temporary homes

I’ve always been very taken with hotel rooms. Not because of their sanitized, neatly-tucked-edges look (which would delight any obsessive compulsive), which promises comfort, but because these meticulously kept units always have oodles of character. They gather personalities over the years, by bits, from the numerous occupants who come and go.

When I was a kid, I used to explore the impossible nooks of hotel rooms I stayed in, while my parents snoozed or conversed. What I found always told me a little about who had occupied the room before us. A bindi stuck onto the top right corner of the mirror (a woman), a bead fallen off someone’s trinket (a decked up woman), a big pink nappy pin in one of the drawers (a baby), a cigarette butt in an unreachable corner (a smoker)…

People set up makeshift homes in these impersonal spaces. And they always leave transitory traces of themselves behind. Those seashells you gathered, and the sand they came with, those wildflowers in a glass, that matchbox on the windowsill…

When you walk away, you always leave a piece of who you were in those hours and days. Maybe for someone else to discover.

epic

"used diamond-tipped wires to slice ingots into wafers"

doesn't that sound like a line right out of an epic poem?
I can just hear the heroic saga in my head:

"...and then he used his diamond-tipped wires 
               To slice the ingots into wafers!"

yeah...it's actually an extract from an article about renewable energy. :\

Dilli

This stranger of a city is seducing me. In it's own, rough, arid sort of way. Even as it bustles, blares and blazes all around me, my bubble of serene wonder at waking up 1400 kms away from 'home' stays intact.

Everything is new. and yet, not quite. Life goes on. but when you resume it in a different place, in unfamiliar conditions, it surprises you every so often.

The other day, the auto I was taking to work took an abrupt turn halfway down a dingy lane, and suddenly I looked up and saw the ruins of some Mughal structure or the other. Tucked away like a secret gem in a dirty corner, in the heart of a city that is too busy to notice.

hello

hello there.

who are you?
yes, you, nosily reading these words I've typed. do I know you?

if you are still reading my blog at this point, you've either just stumbled upon it, or are a very old friend who just comes back to read me out of a compulsive sense of loyalty.

or you're someone else. I don't know who you are. but i like the idea of you reading me, like a distant pen friend. quaint like that. but you never write back.

it's like writing to daddy long legs. :)
have you read that book? you should, it's lovely.