This month will be a short one like the two ones before, 24 hours will not be enough and I will panic between art history, film theory, theatre and dance studies.It’s going to be a rough month and I will see very less of this blog. But I’m happy as you can see I have no work assignment to keep up to and I can’t express how much fun it is. No one tells me not to think and only act. Hmmm… who dare tell me that? Maybe this is the change, the experience of a new city.
new new
Dashain 2011
Aba you dashain ra tyo dashain ma aakash patal ko farak cha. Last October I was engrossed in Ruskin Bond and Iyer, I was wailing as usual– how I don’t have time to write and all that. I do wail a lot, just go through the entries in the blog. But coming to the point. This was my first Dashain away from home, I was gloomy all day long until yesterday evening when I accidentally got to watch ‘Raavan dahan’ and I burnt all my woes with the effigy. My first Ramlila in action, the feeling was ecstatic, I sat down with a group of kids, hooted at the Raavan and Ram and even took pictures with the semi actors later.Sadly I wasn’t carrying my own camera then.
Well, the sound of the fireworks were too loud for my ears, after all I hate sound pollution and I’m all for soundless fireworks. I closed my ears and hid behind a couple who couldn’t help but squeeze each other and shout at the top of their lungs.But one fine gigantic gesture and all my gloominess was gone. All these years, I had this desire deep inside to watch this gigantic Raavan being burnt to ashes and yes my fantasy was materialized.
All day I was hung with a hangover from last night, I felt as if I had purposefully opened my own Pandora’s box of woes and then after the lovely ceremony I was happy to realize I had burnt all those bad dreams and haunting accidents a long time ago. There was no going back. Ashes of some reminiscent disaster could never break me down. I had left all I had to and there was no worry about where I was.
Sadly, I couldn’t help remembering home. Turns out I celebrated Dashami dinner with one of the yuckiest meals I have cooked so far. I can’t explain what was wrong with the ‘soupy noodles’. It didn’t taste right, it was more than bland, as if the meal itself was sorry about being cooked. Eating it was missing food. I know I would have eaten dal, bhat and bodi ko tarkari rather than the sad soupy noodles any day. For once in my life I wouldn’t complain. But it was some adventure.
The pictures below however are from a visit to CR Park. The visit was a disaster, there was nothing really happening. If not for the idols of Durga, there was nothing to even ogle at. It was so not worth going to but the pics did turn out nice. So here is my Dashami 2011 in pictures.
Durga mata ki jai
Jai Jai
A cloth hanging with Mata's beautiful features outside the Park.
Suddenly I'm gloomy. The pandora' s box is open...
Hello! life
There are times more than often when I keep writing in my head but I don’t type them out. Then the thoughts go away, time passes by and I have these tints of regret left with me. So finally I figured out I was done regretting about things I didn’t write about.
Let me begin by starting from where I left. It’s been two months since I left home. I have a new address and I’m officially only a ‘bidhyarthi’ I have no other designation.
Ah! The life of a student. Maybe I have been a student all my life but I have seldom fulfilled the duties of a student and after years of doing that here I am doing just that. At JNU I believe you have no other choice but to stay true to what you came for – to learn. The past 10 weeks has been a hell of a ride. If deconstructing and reconstructing your thoughts is life changing my life has taken a new course.
The more I learn, the more I know that what I know is less. For God’s sake, I’m studying art history and bananas constitute an integral part of my daily diet. I have figured out the way to my hostel, my center and I do know the way.
Something I have known about myself – I can survive the Delhi heat. For now autumn has taken over the trees and the rains have parted ways.
Hmmm…. It’s 11:35 and if I don’t post this entry in 5 minutes the wifi will be shut so here I go.
Dirty linen
I remember this somewhat unknown Indian miniseries actor who was once asked why he wouldn’t do reality TV shows. “It’s like washing your dirty linen in public,” was his answer. I figured out blogging is somewhat like that, isn’t it?
But dirty or not, it’s time for me to get back and revamp my existence in cyber space.
جب
عندما تعجز الكلمات صور العمل
όταν τα λόγια δεν επαρκούν εργασία εικόνες
الفاظ کے مختصر تصاویر کام جب گر
No back up plan
Remember the climax scene when the villain in a film points at the hero with a gun. He’s at the end of a cliff with the heroine clinging to him. He has nowhere to go and the frightened heroine clings harder to him, always scared and chanting a prayer. He dies both ways – if he jumps and if he doesn’t. So the villain shoots—dhichyaoo!!! and then the hero gives a smirk. He dives into the waterfall and presses a button or pulls a string and out shoots a parachute. So, that my dear friend is the back up plan.
The hero and heroine land safely on a grassland and make their way out of the forest, hitch a ride to the city, change their names, in due course of time meet the villain, kill him, get married, make lots of babies and live happily ever after.
I had an aversion to back up plans over the past year but now I’m questioning why. Well it started this way. A teacher at the Uni asked our class to make a presentation on operating a new media house. Our group got into a discussion over the budget of the operation of the media house. I was the one questioning the budget and how we could survive and collect all that money in the first place. Well, in that confusion I stood in front of the class and presented—So this is the budget, this is how it all runs but in case the media house goes bankrupt we always have this huge hall(a grand complex sort of ) where we rent it to others for organizing different programs. So if the media house goes down we always have another business to support us.
The teacher listened intently and then later critiqued on the whole presentation fiasco. “How can you have a backup plan? If you want something in life you want it. If you are hell bent on achieving something you achieve it anyhow, there are no back up plans, and no I will do this if this goes wrong. You must be confident, sure about your goal.”
I was mighty impressed and when I was doing only one thing to achieve what I wanted to do, unsure of the results, I had the ‘no backup plan’ argument to support me. And then I met a counter argument. Mom dear, appeared and couldn’t take my ‘no backup plan’ argument. How can you be so sure you will get something when nothing is in your hands? When people like you have been playing this game of dice, trying out their luck and not succeeding? Stupid! What you do is grab every opportunity that comes your way. You don’t hold back when you have the time and the resource. The ‘back up plan’ is to be implemented in other ventures not when your life and time is at stake.
Sadly I have no backup plan and as each day passes by I can only feel the anguish inside me growing. It won’t stop if I ask it to will it? It’s a feeling of sinking and the sea only gets deeper.
I say it; I have no backup plan and if it’s not enough to believe in oneself and aim for something without using nepotism or lies, life on earth’s useless. I’m happy I don’t bore people with lies and take anyone I know for a ride and tell more lies to cover up the lies I have already told. If I die tomorrow and if I don’t get what I have worked for let the world know- I have lived a life of pure goodness—Not used lying as a tool, not used fake words to get through life or impress someone, worked damn hard to get everything I wanted and yes made huge mistakes of choices but worked double hard to get over it and if used word s of admiration and been grateful I really have.
So GOD, give me the pleasure of sanity!!Amen
Cloud
My head is in a cloud. I missed a damn good movie, my story can’t help getting technical and I’m waiting.I’m waiting patiently for the cloud to clear away. The date is July 1–it will be the devil or the deep sea. IAM READY!!! YUHUUUU
:)
I have so much to say but each time I stop to write something in my blog, I end up typing a poem, a nonsensical one that few can understand. Even now my hand desires to type those two lines of free verse and leave. I’m holding back , I have realized that I have so much to discuss and there are so many things ringing in my head that I go to sleep, I leave those thoughts in the closets of my mind.
I know I should be writing what I feel, what I experience; the sole reason why this blog exists. But these past months I haven’t been able to do so, it’s what happened after I read a book I had been hunting for a long time. I read it and I knew the book had failed me. It was as if I had been waiting all along to know that what I really wanted didn’t mean much at all. Maybe when I was 17 and if I had decided to write a book it would read that way.
This round up of thoughts and series of regrets equates to the myth of Sisyphus.One of my English teachers in high school would often give us an example. I can still remember his chuckle and that voice,” Remember that feeling after you passed your SLC exams, how short it lasted, that stupid feeling of freedom. We will never be free from this circle of wanting to achieve something. After high school, it will be that bachelor’s degree, then another, sometimes it will be a degree and sometimes it will be an object. This will never stop.”
It doesn’t. I have had time to do a million things these past months, except to write on my blog. Tonight I’m forcing myself to type something; maybe something worthwhile will come out. I wish I could write in details what’s happening to me, what I have been doing, why I like getting lost, why I wish to be left alone. How life’s not easy with or without an assignment.
A whole year of experiences, frustrations and victories has passed away and I haven’t chronicled anything in detail. It shouldn’t be a compulsion or a necessity but it is. It’s a habit of putting what you feel into paper, okay here it’s the web world but it’s so easy to write to please somebody (well even that’s hard) but to write how I feel has now become a whole different endeavor.
I must say my work rules my life, everything surrounds it. My assignment dictates my schedule, how I spend each hour of my day. Yet this time and hard work is not that very satisfying. The way people seem to be discontent over my dedication is often killing.
But turns out I’m still alive and listening to Leonard Cohen, Beck and Tom Waits so I have survived. Yes! I have. I don’t know when that time will come, when I will enter a college premise ever again but I hope it’s soon.
Ah! “hope”, it’s only a word we use to hide our fears. Lies fare far better.
By the end of this month I will know what to do with my freedom, to rejoice with it or gamble it.
I really need to write a poem. Bear with me
Nothing’s the same anymore
Not you
Not the neighborhood
Not our lives
Not the strumming of guitars
Not moving images
Not truth or virtuosity
I live with lies
Each day I create a new one
Each night I forfeit
To the mighty skies
My host of stars
They jeer at me
Yet I hope when you are back
You have found peace and I my ‘self’
P.S: I hope I live to be 42 and I don’t die before I make my first film
l
