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?

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.

guarder

Bengalis don't trust boxes.
Or even packages, rolled up posters, bundles, etc.
Basically if something can fall apart, we're pretty sure it will.

I don't know if this is an all-India trend, but I can vouch for the fact that Bengali mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and grandaunts prefer to secure everything twice over.

Especially lunchboxes. They don't trust Radha aluminiums, Milton plastics, or even Tupperware tuppers. They treat all 'tiffin boxes' with equal suspicion. They're all prone to leaks and suddenly springing apart and bathing the insides of your bag in whatever oily delight maternal hands packed for you that day.

And this brings us to a small wonder that all these ladies trust blindly. Something the world knows as a 'rubber band', a tiny, tubular elastic band in a loop, nothing more. But to the Indian woman, it is nothing short of a miracle.
Air-tight packaging, sellotape, even cement can crumble, but a rubber band is forever. Except they don't call it a rubber band, they refer to it with a peculiar bastardization of an unidentifiable term.

Have you ever heard of a 'garder'?
yes, that's what we call it. With absolute confidence that it's a real word.
I'm not at all sure if the word originates from the term 'garter' or something completely different, but 'garder' sure isn't an acknowledged synonym for rubber band, as far as I can tell.

But then again, it's only poetic justice that it has come to sound like 'guarder'.
So true. 

for those who leave

What keeps you sane, can't set you free.
At best it can help you live, ease your mind, keep you comfortable.
But it doesn't let the open road unfurl before you and let you take off.

It's only when you take that plunge, that first dive, ride, puff, swig, drag or leap of faith, that you can feel truly alive, completely free.
When your facades, diplomacy and secrecy fall away like tired props, and your mind opens up to dizzyingly new things, then you're free.

We overcomplicate, overthink, overestimate, override, overreach... but underneath it all we are just the sum total of all the things we'll never talk about.
It could be so much simpler if we could just let it.

recluse

when i'm alone, i'm more sedate, more sensitive, better attuned to the million vibrant details the universe wants to show me. i like myself better that way.

late night conversation with a friend made me articulate what i'd known about myself all along. i'm not a people person.

prejudice

In researching for my term papers recently, I've come to realise that two of the four papers I'm taking this semester, are deeply unchristian. every other webpage i found, was run by religious interest groups, warning people against the agents of the devil, who walk among us.

Rock music is the sound of the devil, every rock band and musician in history having sworn their allegiance to Satan, set out to do the only sensible thing for them to do: corrupt young minds through the spectacle of stage shows, and rousing lyrics, steeped in evil.

The other course, queer studies, is even more evil of course. given that God doesn't approve of homosexuality. though he does love homosexuals.whatever that means.homosexuals too have set out to corrupt children, and push what is known as 'the homosexual agenda' under peoples' noses.

I'm so glad I'm not Catholic.

orange

well hello there! :)

i can't believe I've been too lazy to blog all winter! believe me, i intended to, even attempted to, but lost steam halfway through the process of signing in every single time!
blogging is too complicated, i tell you! whatever happened to good old verbal exchanges?!

i had many interesting winter-related observations to make, for example, have you noticed how orange candy is just glycerine soap in miniature? observe:


see!
i've forgotten absolutely all my other ruminations on winter. meh.

feast

i'm reading a book called A Matter of Taste: the Penguin Book of Indian Writing on Food, and this picture is on the cover:



the book is an interesting read, but the cover is what really caught my attention. i've realised that only in a Jamini Roy painting does a cat get a whole lobster to itself.