Ok so here I am...back in the sack. College's started again. Same old faces....tch tch, sadly!
Sigh!
Got a lotta 'ur gettin fat' from a bunch o ppl, so have planned to hit the gym(a really hypothetical PLAN B for now I must add!). I am putting on weight though, the worst part is that all the fat gets accumulated somewhere around the mid torso area giving justice to the shyly visible paunch in the making. My sis always used to scare me that I'm gonna be fat and bald when I'm 35, the only silver lining in her statements where the absence of usage of the word 'ugly'!
Haha! take that. At least i'll be good looking then.....or would I!!!
*ominous music*
Ok so here I was sitting in the lecture(as in synonym for lullaby), sitting on the first bench (what the hell was i doing there!) and trying to absorb every ounce of nonsensical jargon thrown at me(metonymy for the class). [I'll stop using the parenthesis right about now....(i guess not!).]
And was feeling bored, same ol' same ol'. Some new faculty members this time. Each of them professing in their preposterous usage of the English dialect. Butchering everything that has been ever been invented and know to man about the English grammar. Clearly the little red book called wren and martin was not meant for them.
Sometimes it gets torturous just to try n figure out the mistakes.... i tell you the part to figure out what they mean by their speech is much more an arduous task than learning about 'data structures, algorithms' and all bloody what-nots.
Getting too bored I seemed too interested in the dysfunctional verbiage(note the sarcasm please) that one of my very 'dear' teacher was emanating. I scratched a single line for each time she used 'understand or not'...and later found 37 lines sprawled on my page. That's what the definition of 'fun' is reduced to in that hour of mental agony.
Somehow after a year and a semester of this same torture treatment I've grown quite numb to it and now feel immensely immune to the random rantings from our educationists!!
...So here I am now feeling tired n hungry(a perennial state of mind proving my normalcy) and eying the pillows which just seem fluffier right now.
I end on a pleasant note on what Floyd(see: god) once said :
"We don't need no ejju-kay-shun..................
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Another prick in the wall
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Taare Zameen Par
Rarely do I write reviews for movies. To add a pinch of weirdness to that - rarely do I write reviews for 'bollywood' movies. But yesterday I went n watched 'Taare Zameen par'(TZP) out of curiosity to know what all the fuss was about. And behold! I was enlightened by the movie.
I am not such a big fan of bollywood, which all has recently become too glamorous and downright bland. Most of the directors follow a formula and viola! there they are getting what they want...their usual (target) audience. So going through all the monotonous rut of "bold" item numbers, flaming cars elevating (even though they were shot just by a bullet) and cliched humour is quite a pain in the *beep* and I would rather save my monetary holdings for a better purpose. And so here comes TZP saving bollywood from its decayed decline gracefully.
The movie gets into the head of 8-9year old dyslexic Ishaan Awasthi(brilliantly played by Darsheel Safary), who finds beauty of the world around him through his imagination and is captivated by the sights of what life has to offer. The innocence and restlessness of a child is well reflected and portrayed by the characters antics. The expressions... may it be fear,anger,sadness or pure exultation are carried out by the young actor quite flawlessly and naturally with not even a hint of overacting.
Amir Khan with his a la patch adams entry into the school has given the movie its share of completeness. With his unconventional tutelage, Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Amir Khans character) coaches the children to do what they want in life, i.e 'live life' it rather that just 'succeed in life'.
The movie explores how children nowadays are being pressured on and on to stay ahead in the rat-race. There's a beautiful dialog in the movie where Amir Khan criticizes how parents want to grow toppers and scorers in their houses. Brilliant.
I have really appreciated Amir Khan for his diversity in acting roles in his movies, and this movie is a proof how he has evolved as an actor. Hats off to Mr.Khan for making this movie.
This movie is really a work of art.
Ummm...well....thats it.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Entropy
For the past few hours/days all I've been doin is 'puzzles'. Yeah! thats right...puzzles. I'm putting my mind through every sudoku, crossword, kakuro, loop the loop, crypting and jumbled up anagrams in every newspaper I could find.
It now has taken a turn to an obsession. I've not stopped solving these things since morning. I dont take a bath, I barely think of food(unless it smells great...hey I got my soft spots too!) and stop thinking for a while of the stuff happening around me.
By the popular method of induction i might say 'THIS IS NOT ME'. I had an attention span of like ....1,2....5 seconds i think. This is new.
Though I do shy away a bit when I bare witness to the 'Medium' or the 'Hard'(rarely occurs) tag beneath each sudoku challenge, the next moment I jump onto it as if hunting down a gazelle! I admit that crosswords are not my cup o tea...but there's hope. Even solving 1/4th of the darned array of strategically arranged characters makes me go 'woohooing' around the house like a marionette. And yes I'm humble and modest so I wont give myself the total credit, rather share it with my dad and my girlfriend. Though I still manage to scribble my illegible handwriting(rather close to hieroglyphics!) all around the newspaper.
There's this one thing I was thinking about when I was solving all this stuff. I usually get stuck, as human I am at every 5 min period at a particular part of any puzzle that I'm working on. Slowly the latency deteriorates and frustration sets it. If this period of getting 'stuck' still goes on the mind gets close to a saturation point when all the collective barrage of logical explanations and solutions have a sudden breakdown. And then the logic stops and you solve the given problem through illogical means. However improper and erroneous it seems the mind would satisfy itself (temporarily) and an illogical base is set. On further proceeding the numbers or the characters loose its value and the whole element of the puzzle becomes a farce of its actual components.
Its like writing your favorite words in the crossword boxes without paying heed to the clues. Eventually it makes no sense, but somehow sometimes you're satisfied by ending the puzzle.
Here I would like to draw an analogy of how the "society" or the "modern people" accept what they believe is right through logical or illogical explanations. The objective eventually is skewed as it is not the 'authenticity' of the outcome its just the 'presence' of the outcome. We take things given to us, information fed to us through any form. We're satisfied by the information we get, coz we get it from "reliable" sources. There is no authenticity. There is no absolution of truth...no evidence. Everything is straight from the horse's mouth.
Reminds of the System of a Down video in where a newsreader spits out :
"...I wish I could tell you more pertinent news, but we're in a rating system here. And the key factor is "Sensationalism". They've got you running in circles, nine to five and five to nine (you're mine). I tell you what they want you to know and you consider it the truth. Nobody is opening their eyes! Our global economy is depleting the world of our lives and natural resources and ARE YOU HAPPY? ..."
I leave it here.
I've strayed pretty far away from where I started.
Hehe! thats the beauty of blogging, isnt it?
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Its 2008!
Ahhh! Its 2008 already. Happy new year!
Somehow, I feel as if the years are gettin' shorter. (*cough cough* or maybe i'm growin older!)
2007 has been a great year for me, although really bad things have also happened in these last 12 months the good things just nullify them off.
Its been two years since my blog started, starting with the 'People R strange' post. And now have come a long way in terms of maturity and understanding.(Ummm! well thats what I think at least.) I'm in a relationship now, though I have seldom mentioned it on my blog(actually never I think!) I prefer not to make everything public. So here I am.
Here's the 2007 chronology:
Jan 1: Not much a happy new year it seemed. I was fed up of college. So as a new year resolution I decided I would make efforts to get into a better institution by giving the engg. tests all over again.
Jan 23: I caught up with Purav through orkut, who called me in to join 'Morbid genesis' as a guitarist coz Sankalp(their original guitarist) had an accident and got his hand fractured. So I go in with my guitar,amp and processor over to some place these ppl call me, which turned out to be mruganks spare house. And I get recruited. So met all of them - mrugank, purav, Maulik, Joel on this day. I was erally excited.
Jan 26:My first show. I was somewhat superproud of myself and it really felt awsome going on stage for the first time playing to the songs that I had been listening to for so long.
The show was at CEPT called 'Metamorphosis'. I was dead nervous when we were about to play...and I kept saying "Dont screw this up!" again n again inside my head. It turned out pretty well. I wasnt facing the crowd much coz I was headbanging and riffing most of the time. And somehow there was some conspiracy which resulted in our performance being cut short and robbed us off of playin our trump song - 'Hallowed be thy name(Maiden cover)'.
Though I was really happy when it was over. 'My first show'!!
Just when I was about to display my impatience for the next show in which I might perform, Mrugank pops up and informs me,"Oh we've got a show tomorrow, and you're playing!".
Jan 27-28: This was really unexpected. I never thought the moment I start performing I would end up playing back to back. But here I was...at IIM chaos. Anubhav got tense on the last song and so I got the opportunity to vocalize my love for the metallica song. Singing and playing on stage...whoo! for a second timer it felt like scaling half of Mt.Everest. Had a blast at IIM at night/dawn too. Sadly our turn came at 4AM...so we had an audience of some seriously sleep deprived people, some staring with bloodshot eyes ("When will this end!") others successfully making makeshift beds out of the leaning chairs (hats off to them actually!). Oh yeah and was the day when I witnessed the wonder know to us fellow humans as 'Prestorika'! Amazing!
Feb 3: The third show. A notch higher. This was the campus rock Idols, and my smile got creepier. I had promised my sis the next Idols I would be up there on stage performing. Alas! My sister wasnt there. Although the show was pretty awful at some parts with the problems in bass tuning and anubhav screwing up a bit...It was really fun to be at sucha level of stage perfomance. I really did a lotta monkeying around, almost went berserk and prancing around like a pony on steroids. One word - Fun!
March 9: The DAIICT show. The best one of all. Again here I was super proud to me on vocals and guitar. But sadly I got a shocker when I heard my own voice on the video. We lost badly coz we were expecting to win, but at a level in barely mattered with all the fun we had. More on this post.
March 16: A day I would never forget. Ishan calls me up to ask me if I was interested to go for a college techfest held that day or not, I got too sleepy and said that I'll rather stay home n study. My parents werent that convinced that I would study at home so they suggest me that it would be better I went for the techfest. Finally I agree and tag along with Ishan. And so I met Dagny. It was pretty friendly and formal that day actually, but was a beginning.
June 6 - Quite smoking cold turkey. Sounds easy...I tell you its not. But I had to before it consumed me.
Jun 7 - The worst day of my life till now. Never have I cried and I felt so close to death. The joy of living was redefined in a way.
June (16 - whole bloody month!) : Had my first year final exams...the not so grand finale. Alas! It was disappointing but the period was amazing coz I was mostly on the phone or on messaging with Dagny.
July 2: The exams end. Believe me...this might seem insignificant but it was humongous relief for me. And what followed later...
July 29 : My fifth show. This time with a band called 'Untouched Corpse'. And yeah! I did feel like a corpse while performing that day. The best part though was that I was not at all tense on stage and I felt really free and wasn't scared even with people staring at the erroneous blunders that we committed ourselves to - The band! But then I forgot every bad thing that happened. Result : time stopped. Archive here.
August 4: A day I personally found really really important and heavenly.
Aug 27 and Sep 3 : Discovering the godliness by foodliness!
September (Last week!) : Jinal making his major decision of taking a year long drop. I first thought he was joking when he came forward with the idea...but then swoosh! Ching-bam! Here he is back in the city. I didn't make any preparations for a warm welcome coz I was too ahem 'bizzy' with my stuff. But at last we did meet, we still do. And talking abt it like a matter of national security does make me feel weird.
October 9 - Dagny's birthday. And there was awesome cake too! I apologize for my ravenous appetite! Khee khee!
October 13 & 14- My trip to Surat NIT with Amit and Ishan. It was really fun. Did a lotta timepass. Particpated for the contraption thingy competetion. Ate the menu. Fun travelling with friends!
November 6- My sister is back, only for a really short time tho.
November 8 - I am old(er)! Age : |1-20|. I would say this was my first birthday though.
November 9 to 15 - The shimla trip. The whole family(all four of us!) together after a long long time. Twas splendid. Quality time I say, and adventurous too!
December 26-My sis leaves for the US of A. Right now in Urbana champagne, Illinois. Miss her. But happy that she's getting to see a whole new world.
December 31 - Bloody exams on the 1st on jan....can ya believe that!
ha! Crappy new year!
Ummm....well that's some of it. I wrap it up here and leave a bit to my amazing power of memory storage.
I loved this year.
Cheers!
