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. 

corn

Let me introduce you to the joys of a corn-cap. If you develop a patch of harmless tough skin on a limb or digit, you are expected to promptly cap it with a white bandage with what can only be described as a ‘ring of fire’ in the middle. The little felt surface contains a ‘medicinal’ (read mildly acidic or skin-eating) paste that will destroy your corn within a span of five days or less.

Meanwhile, you have to sit around, with a dirty white bandage on your foot or finger, patiently waiting for your skin to be corroded slowly. Is it just me, or does that sound like a government conspiracy right out of a flesh-eating-virus movie?

Just me, then? Fine!

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.

story

So then the ravenous monster says to the tiny fly: "I'd eat you in a jiffy, but I'm a little worried about the quality...you might disagree with my system..."

Here, dear readers, I'd really like to say, that like most tiny protagonists, our fly was really witty and smooth-talking, but I'm afraid i cannot lie.

He wasn't. He was downright stupid, in fact.
so he said, "well, i know what you mean, but if it helps, i have taken a hot shower this very morning...do you like your meat rare?"
(and all with a smile)

"that'd be nice." said the R.M. and swallowed the fly whole.

-the end-

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.

2

when the afternoon sun hits the asphalt, I want you to be there with me.
stand right behind me and watch it with me.
I want you to witness the exact same things I see, if only to confirm my sanity.




yes, phase 2: emo blogging :)

Indian summer

sometimes i feel like i'm made entirely of sweat and grit.
weary from the overwhelming, exhausting heat of the afternoon. the breeze flickers and dies around me.

i carry the flustering heat of the dreary summer, carefully tucked into my hair, like a forbidden letter, an outrageously beautiful trinket.
Now i become the heat.
i can see you flinch as you come closer.
even as you touch me i can feel you recoil, subconciously.

i wait for it to rain. i can wait forever. there's a summer sun in my soul that devours the water before it reaches the ground.

for now, i want to wear a flower in my hair, every day for the rest of summer.

*sigh*

films are always misleading.

the best films are really the ones that can lie to you most convincingly. and we totally buy everything they tell us. especially if they tell us good things.
if you are a human female, chances are, you delight in warmfuzzy, happy-ending type stories. if you are a human male above the age of 10, you probably also like romantic comedies, but are embarrassed to admit it. (issokay, it happens.)

but, the most annoying are the movies that lead you to believe that the most perfect men, all sense of humour, and intellect, and incredible handsomeness, are everywhere.

they're not! all the men you encounter on the Internet are likely to be people you already know or creeps and stalkers. there's no Tom Hanks or Rahul Bose just waiting to be befriended and/or drooled over.

my life's a lie!
*sadsigh*

search

there's just so much that i don't understand. people and places, stories and their stories, and music.
sometimes it all becomes a desperate search for meaning. a frustrated, sighing, lost sort of search.
because there isn't really anything i expect to find.

but then if everyone always found what they were looking for, wouldn't it all stop making sense?
everyone would just give up and go home, if they had nothing to search for, nothing to find.

phase

stage 1: posting madly:
this phase constitutes of a period during which the blogger checks his\her blog everyday, and posts almost every other day.

(stage 2 of the occasional posting, and stage 3 of the 'whereyouwent' or temporary disappearance, follow)

As of now, stage 1 has begun (unintentional rhyming...symptomatic of lameness of blogger, what is otherwise known as 'not having a life')

Goo goo g' joob

i was listening to 'I am the walrus' for the 786th (approx.) time today, when i realised that it was one of those songs which i had always just assumed to be deeply meaningful, you know,you ones you would speculate about, if you weren't conserving energy by not working your brain muscles.
imagine my disappointment when i finally got around to looking up the interpretation of the song, and was told by wise old Wikipedia that Lennon "wrote the most confusing lyric he could" because some kid from Quarry Bank Grammar School,wrote him a letter that said "the English master was making his class analyse Beatles lyrics".
so then Lennon went "Let the fuckers work that one out", and wrote a whole bunch of stuff,added some 'nonsense lyric' for effect, and made a song out of it.
in conclusion: 'I am the walrus' doesn't make any sense, because it's not supposed to.

that like totally made my day! NOT!

'have you been high today...?'

why yes, i have! how very nice of you to ask!

:D

weird

the other day, i had the most bizarre thing happen to me.
i was walking (yuss, i do this a lot!) along gariahat road, and rather slowly because there's always this entire mass of people who move in a particular direction along the sidewalk, and you can only walk as fast as the person in front of you, or you'll end up either pushing people or stepping on their toes!

so as i walked sleeewly, random guy walking in the opposite direction, drew up close to me, leaned over, and smelled my hair!!!

i mean, wtf!!? what is that even supposed to mean?!!!
does that at all count as eve-teasing? because he didn't really do anything to offend me, just really freaked me out!
maybe he was conducting some sort of shampoo-user survey...maybe!



p.s.: it's a free country, you can choose to be a blur if you want to. but only if you really, really want to.