A massive dose of Nothing: Welcome to a Purposeless World

Monalisa thought she smelt leaking gas, so she went to the kitchen and lit a match. Monalisa(her parent was a fan) had time to utter a mildly surprised, oh, before the flame was snatched out of her hand. Ah, I was right, she thought to herself, watching the flames curl around her.

Just as the last bit of her turned to ash, she blinked her eyes and woke up.

“Welcome to Heaven” said a disembodied voice.

“Ah, but I am an atheist”, said she (now nameless, owing to death).

“Yes I know,” said the disembodied voice (no thunder bolts of lightening, very, very frightening. Just a woosh sound).

And Monalisa (just so you know who I am referring to) woke up to find she was now —- . The Grandmother was a fan.

The disembodied voice clicked off google and had a giggle.

…sort of indefinitely. I began my internship from 1st June, and after a 7 hour day staring at the computer screen, and 4 hours of travelling thrown in, I just don’t have the inclination to turn on a computer. My desktop, with its MTNL broadband also refuses to open any wordpress sites, so weekends is the only time I get,really

I’m reading (re-reading actually, though its been so long, it feels like a first time read) the Bartimaeus trilogy, and the narrative style I do like. I’m very much a P.S. person- life’s not complete without P.S.’s, and Bartimaues’s narrative is peppered with footnotes. That was one of the things I loved about No Smoking, too; those thought bubbles. I wonder why people don’t use it more often. And an informal, casual, but tight, method of presentation.

Oh, btw, IPTV, anyone? It’s cheaper than Dish, Tata Sky, etc., and claims the quality is superior. We installed it a few days back, and so far, its been ok. The connection conks off sometimes, but after more than 2 years of no TV, it feels fine! It has very decent channels on offer (which is why its cheap- for a flat rate, you get pretty much all the channels you want.) I only wish SOME provider would offer Hallmark. It used to be my favourite channel, and nobody offers it anymore

My work is pretty interesting, mostly because I’m stepping into an alien environment. Most people give me blank looks when I tell them I’m interning with a Trade Union, but the work atmosphere is great. Lunch is cooked in the office and everyone sits together to eat. Its a tiny place, and 2 of my bosses often bring their kids to work as they don’t have any other option. I’m going to work on stuff I have never worked on, and mentally attuning myself to their radar will be an interesting process. I like it here.

I’ve been told I’ll follow one policy issue and one labour issue throughout my 6 month tenure, and spend a month-ish at an affiliate trade union in west bengal or north india. At the moment, I’m reading up on the India-EU free trade agreement (I REALLY don’t like economics )

The weather was lovely yesterday, wasn’t it. The sky was that colour which offsets trees and flowers to their best. You know…the greens glow and the reds literally pulsate. Picturesque background to the man on the footpath who looked ill. There were flies around him. I knew I was never going to take him in an auto to a hospital and see him through his treatment, but I thought what if I did. I kept imagining myself ill on a footpath. I can’t.

FINALLY!

WordPress refused to allow me to access my little home in cyberspace for too damn long! And now that I’ve stopped using my Reliance Netconnect (too slow, suddenly), midnight inspirations (ha!) don’t get translated into posts.

So what would I have blogged about? The elections, my love and hope for the Third Front, Vir Sanghvi’s article  damning and spelling the doom of coalition politics (it may not be functioning perfectly, but to call for a two party system in India is like begging for the end of democracy, me thinks), the experience of voting for a Lok Sabha election (powerful, and not just because I had to roll out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7:30 AM; it made me strangely warm and happy to see people everywhere going to vote. Old men and women, people with newly repaired limbs, people with less than month old babies…they all came to vote).

I’ve also been steadily flirting with the idea of appearing for the UPSC exams, and had a first proper look at the syllabus. Let’s just say my admiration for civil servants mounted many times over on seeing the volume and variety that needs to be intelligently studied. I’ve sort of settled on optionals of Geography (strangely alluring and less frightening), and English literature (but ofcourse ). It remains to be seen whether I have it in me to put in the work that will be needed.

Oranges keep appearing. My Bombay habits of shopping for food lingers on, and everytime I go to the British Council Library (post-renovation I love the place.), I buy fruits from the lane between Barakhamba road and Kasturba Gandhi Road. My regular Oranges aunty wasn’t there today, and I got massively cheated on stone-like apricots and rotten phalse. I have no idea where I kept my attention, because it certainly wasn’t where it should have been! Anyway, I was very surprised to see oranges being sold further on, so ofcourse I bought some

I’ve borrowed myself a Romila Thapar. Let’s see how I get on with it.

(If you like to read and reserve contempt for the British Council Library, become a member of the Sahitya Academi Library. It is luscious)

(Oh, and I succesfully made chocolate pudding, a cake involving orange rind (finally!), cinnamon, cardamom and other such things, pasta and shrimps with a dash of old port wine)

Wool. Strands of thought that get caught in cold, steel wires. Indecision. Doubt. Every certainty giving way. A slow movement of the inability to feel. A monster upheaval, with the dirt refusing to settle. Stuck in a moment of time that is as continuous as the cliche. Fucking deja vu.

The last ones are always the worst, aren’t they?

Groan.

Bleh. The exams stretch on needlessly. I find myself getting bored in the middle of papers, and disinterested in preparing for forthcoming exams. I have 2 papers on Monday, of which one is a potential killer, and, well, the thing is that while I enoy reading about matters of Decent Work, WTO agreements, history of trade unions etcetera, I do NOT like answering questions on them. I feel like I am vomiting out on paper what people have already said about it. Reproducing facts in 2 hours. Just how creative can you get while defining Decent Work??

This is where I miss answering literature questions.

For the first time in my life, I bought a tooth brush. And it went horribly wrong.

Most of my toothbrushes have been magically supplied by my parents. Some of them have come free with my toothpaste. Since the free maal seemed to suit my teeth just fine, I naturally presumed that the stuff in the markets would conform to similar, ahem, standards.

Evidently not. I need a new toothbrush.

I feel like a potions master as I reassign water. I have an army of bottles in my room. All except one are 500 ml in order to encourage me to drink more water than I actually do. The 2 litre bottle, the one that is being currently drained, is because I am lazy. It allows me 2 litres of space before I have to fill water again.

Reminds me of a short story I read as a child. A city girl goes to visit her cousins in a village, and has to share their duties. One of the duties include filling water. And she sets out with them, with an earthen pot, in peak summer, to a source far, far away. On the way back, she trips and falls, breaking the pot, and losing the precious water.

They trudge back to the source. I head to my aquaguard.

I notice that my laptop is considerably dirty. Dusty. Distressed.

Distressing.

I’m sitting here, listening to Lemon Tree, trying to convince my mind to not realise that it is beginning to feel sleepy. I have 50% of my paper to still prepare for, and I have NO intention of staying awake beyond three o’clock.

I am upon the exams, finally, and I refuse to let it mess with my sleep A paper today (and 7.5 hours of sleep the previous night), and a paper tomorrow (with a 2 hour evening nap and a 6 hour sleep forthcoming). And a paper the day after. I am fairly unused to consecutive papers, but not un-used to enough to have actually finished with preparations before hand

Our institute has a concept of ‘foundation courses’. These are compulsory, and are somehow meant to fill the lacunae of our school and graduate level education. By themselves, they are fairly interesting, but the whole ‘compulsory’ bit drains the juice somewhat. Ok, sorry for that terrible expression (but you get the picture). These could-have-been-interesting-courses fall into the trap of mundane-ity, and therefore, tomorrow is more of a chore than an exercise of academic excitement.

Have I mentioned how I hate time-bound exams?

While I am extremely tempted to play another song (and watch a few Python clips, and generally entertain myself) 3.5 hours before I turn in, I realise, in the interests of my timely graduation, I must not. Not. Not.

(Freedom comes on March 31. And so, hopefully, does Flight 666 on torrent, by then )

Happy Gudi Padwa, folks