A massive dose of Nothing: Welcome to a Purposeless World

Thunder and lightening ought to stimulate the mind into producing a half decent post, nyet?

Last movie seen in a theatre:
Race. *Grin*

What book are you reading?
Odds and Gods (Tom Holt) and a Kafka short stories collection.

Favourite board game:
Hm. Haven’t played one in a while, but I hate Ludo and I remember I loved MAD

Favourite magazine:
Hm. I would say…Reader’s Digest? Frontline? Cooking periodicals! I’m not big on magazines, although that’s entirely my fault.

Favourite smells:

Hm again. Spice, rain, old books, shampoos, lemon and citrus fruits, mornings in hill stations, chicken curry, roasts, cooked potatoes, home.

Favourite sound:
Water running wild, splashes, bass lines, heavy metal. Oh yeah, and bird calls

Worst feeling in the world:
Being hopeless.

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up?
How many minutes of (more) sleep can I steal?

Favourite fast food place:
Varies.

Future child’s name:
Something luscious and yummy (one that will produce much rebellion once the kid gets to an age where such things matter )

Finish this statement, “If I had a lot of money I’d…”
travel. Buy things for friends and family. Use it for development. (the order isn’t in order)

Do you drive fast?
Erm. Considering I just got my license-no.

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?
No. Tried it once or twice as a kid, inspired by story books, but I kinda like the bed to myself

Storms - Cool or Scary?
Both 8)  *shiver*

Do you eat the stems on broccoli?
Ofcourse!

If you could dye your hair any colour, what would be your choice?
Red, yellow, green, blue. (At a stretch- that IS one colour…its all contained in white )

Name all the different cities/towns you have lived in:
Kolkata, Delhi.

Favourite sports to watch:
Cricket. Well, used to be anyway.

One nice thing about the person who sent this to you:
We’re related! Lol

What’s under your bed?
A stray book. Bottle of water.

Would you like to be born as yourself again?
Let me think about that one

Morning person or night owl?
Oh, night owl…anyday and anyway! Lol.

Over easy or sunny side up?
Sunny side up.

Favourite place to relax:
Under trees, in grassy places, nooks and crannies, in orange surroundings. Many, actually. But they have to be beautiful.

Favourite pie:
Put meat in it, and I’ll eat it. Teehee.

Favourite ice cream flavour:
Chocolate chip. Kesar Kulfi. Butterscotch. Vanilla if it comes with chocolate sauce. Natural flavours. Actually- other than strawberry, I’ll eat ‘em all

You pass this tag to –

Whoever will do this Ish? Vasudha? Jnarin? Haz? Kriti? Nishant? Vidha?

Of all the people you tagged this to, who’s most likely to respond first?

It’s a general tag, so…

Been tagged by Indrani…

Will fillit tomorrow There’s another tag as has been pending. Perhaps better late than never…

I have been divorced from Cable TV (and Dish TV and Tata Sky…oh, you get the picture, don’t you…) for quite a while now; probably about a year or so. So it was quite a strange experience facing the Idiot Service (God bless it) on the Idiot Box, while waiting for our order of takeaway food to arrive .* They had the channel fixed on the IPL match between Chennai Super Somethings and the Jaipur team, and I was treated (I use the word with caution here…) to my first sight of a live IPL match. It was, well, for the first few balls I felt the familiar warming of the cockles of the heart, before I remembered I was not a fan of the IPL and, for that matter, cricket, anymore. That instinctive reaction led to a more measured, and hopefully scientific, scrutiny of the next few minutes of play, and, not surprisingly, I didn’t appreciate it much.

There were 2 beautiful cover drives, as opposed to a hell lot of slogging and poor bowling. A ball down legside (which deservedly got punished) got no comment for being a loose delivery; the commentator was more focussed on the four it brought (and that may be the whole point of Tamasha Cricket, but still. Commentary…?). Again, a slog shot received an excited response from the commentary box , something to the effect of what a big hit it was, only to be appended by a non-apologetic, anti-climatic (for as viewers, we only see the camera angle of the white cherry soaring into the sky. Presumably, the commentator has a better view. His calling it a Big Hit is queer, strange, inexplicable)…aaand it clears the infield. Wow. A big hit that clears the infield. Back in the good ol’ days (yes, imagine me with the croaky, granny voice), a big hit signalled a BIG HIT! It meant the ball had atleast TOUCHED the boundary rope. But no. Apparently these days, a ‘big hit’ is inflated commentary. That, or the poor bloke (I couldn’t catch the voice clearly enough to figure out who the commentator was. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that grotesque clown, Srikkanth) meant to indicate that the ball had been sent miles up in the air-vertically. Only.

Anyhow, I refuse to spend more character space on IPL. I saw the cheerleaders. I didn’t get cheered. Sivamani was more festive for me. But then again…Sivamani’s been at other cricket matches before. The only good thing I can see about the IPL is that the lesser known cricketers, those left languishing on the terrible Ranji scene, are now presumably getting more of a fair deal.

The original point of the post was the Pulpy Orange advertisement. The one where they show how all the oranges are now hollow and deflate when approached, as all the pulp is now bottled by the owners of Pulpy Orange. I thought it was extremely insightful and very apt,although I don’t quite think they meant it to be so. It’s a good way to sum up the Onward March of the capitalists, isn’t it? Turn the naturally available into packageable commodities that can be bar-coded and stocked in stores to generate capital for corporate houses. Create newer and newer unnecessary COMMODITIES, and get the consumer to covet it. ( I haven’t met too many fans of Pulpy Orange, and I still do prefer the round, waxy skinned fruit, thankyouverymuch…)

This is not to say that the orange is a particularly accessible fruit. Last time I checked (last week…) it was going at Rs40 a kilo. However, by turning it into bottled slush, you are definitely doing something…capitalistic and wrong. Okay, fine, let me qualify that. You take away oranges from the market to make drinks that are accessible to the very few, and in the process use up MORE water that you are probably taking away from the farmers who want to irrigate their fields, just as Pepsi and tribe are doing.

It’s just…wrong.

*I have vowed to give up all junk food for a month starting,what else, tomorrow

I am finally bored of my template. It shall be changed.

Graffiti: The Tale of the Table

Generations of dissidents have stamped their rebellion on walls, streets and public toilets. Generations of LSR students have silently subverted the fifty five minute class by occupying themselves in creative expression on desks.

Graffiti, the bane of the Establishment, and boon of countless bored students, could provide fodder for an intensive neurological study. Our brains are wired to produce rationality and coherence. How the process got hijacked midway is left to conjecture, but let there be no doubt: our minds are twisted and strange. Here’s why.

In the beginning God created the pre-oedipal Dada fodder. That would be us. Born free, born wild (in a manner of speaking).

Then we met the parents.

Then we become institutionalized.

And THEN… we went to college.

(Should that be enough? Need I go on? Do you not know what is to follow?)

Like a rubber band we were played by figures of Authority. They all took turns, and mocked our impotence. We waited, we watched, and in college, we produced this-

1) ‘DIE’

That out of the way, we moved on to other things. If Wordsworth and Co. would like you to believe that poetry is genius of the moment, then so would the undergraduates at LSR. If the thought appears, catch it before it flies away, or so would seem the motto. And judging by the artwork on the desks, it would seem we lack not the genius. A not-so-careful scrutiny will reveal pop art, elaborate squiggles, and the many wisdoms that pop to mind every now and then. The Tale of the Table; a relatively non-elitist occupation (esotericism is not an accusation that can be leveled against our art) of a fair section of elite LSR. Peruse at leisure.

To counter my absolute blankness when faced with the books I am supposed to answer 75 marks worth questions on, I opened my notebooks. I had a total of four notebooks this year (no, make that five…I think) to take, well, notes, and I had picked them all with tender loving care. My favourite one was the one with the champagne glass on the cover. It’s appeal is obvious Then there was the breathtaking art on the red one, which I reserved for one of my ex-favourite teachers. The one with the abandonment and music on the cover was rather nice as well, but the point I am trying to make, is that these beauteous notebooks…contain no classnotes.

I flip page after page, and find graffiti, doodles, graffiti, maiden, graffiti and…you get the picture. So I thought I would dedicate this post to my class time activities. Let me reproduce here the things that held my attention, while the rest of the class was (presumably) engaged in scholarly pursuit.

• 29/02/08 (I have a habit of obsessively dating my ‘notes’) : In parentheses- Chucked out of previous two classes for not reading text *grin*

This would be the Conrad class, where for about 3-4 four classes the teacher taught 5 out of some 40 students, because the rest hadn’t read Heart of Darkness, teehee.

• 15/02/08 (This is in Pallavi’s handwriting; we were mocking something, but I forgot what…) ‘Every woman needs her daily male’

• 22/01/08 sees the pictoral, stick figure representation of The Life of A. Parthosarathy, and involves an attempt of said gentleman to understand his solitude…’cept there’s a power-cut and he forgets the question. I shall try and post a pic of it sometime.

• 24/01/08: Pictoral depiction of two clouds trying to eat each other.

• 18/01/08: ‘Fresh, crust, roast, crisp, crunch’. An enumeration of my favourite food sounds (I think I was hungry,lol)

• 03/03/08: ‘We sail away… On ships of wonder’ Beautiful lyrics from Rainbow. Catch the Rainbow, I think. Minor case of ear worming, I think.

• 29/01/08: A stylized ‘REAPERS REPOSE’. Two Eddies on the page, and the inevitable SCREAM FOR ME MUMBAI!!! Iron Maiden Somewhere Back in Time.

• 17/01/08: “Give me freedom, or kill me!”

• 20/09/07: In a Swift class, discussing the living dead, the Struldbrugs in Gulliver’s Travels - ‘Dead-in-Law’ Har har har.

• 4/12/07: I was apparently in a ‘familial’ mood. Figures drawn of Eddie’s Mother, and Harlequin’s brother.

• 17/01/ 08: scribbled along the margin top of the page- ‘sleepy sleepy sleepy Gray sleepy sleepy sleepy’. This was during a lecture on Thomas Gray, delivered by a teacher who is quite good, but unfortunately, possesses quite a soporific drone

• 4/12/07(etched in blood, it says): (Hertfordshire) doesn’t get Maiden… Mumbai does. *GRIN* MODERN MAN fell asleep. Eddie woke him up and said “Will you scream for Bangalore? I am trying to shift the MAIDEN…INDIA…2008 venue.”

• 17/10/07: Rama Rama Melodrama Sniff sniff sneeze Fly with the breeze Eat your pen Inhale.

• 30/10/07: In a DH Lawrence Sons and Lovers class- ‘Mother did actually want to be a man’. ‘ Miriam…books did not matter to her’. (In my defense: I was busy admiring graffiti on desks in all DH Lawrence classes)

• 29/08/07- Lots of Maiden… ‘Transcendental Eddie’.……’IRON MAIDEN OWNS YOUR SOUL (YOU JUST DON’T KNOW IT YET ) …………..Air Harris!……………FREEZE YOUR SOUL AND MAYBE EDDIE WON’T EAT YOU HAIR \m/

And so on, and so forth I think I shall put up a post with all the graffiti I copied from desks…they deserve to be read What creativity people show, I tell you!

Before an exam

I swallow up paper

After paper

With small neat handwriting

Cramming Knowledge

Into a blank space

(Till) there is a revolt

(From somewhere within the void)

And reel after reel

Of broken movie scenes

Swallow me,

Bury me.

An avalanche of gem-clipped paper

(Pretty purple and pink)

Swallowing me.

Everything is stale.

As it so happens, mosquitoes bother me. I am not one of them who can absently swat at one of them irritating buggers and flip the page in the same motion. I start up when I hear the whine in my ear, wildly slap at it, and nurse my coffee waiting to hear it approach again. I cannot concentrate when there are mosquitoes around me, I cannot sleep if I see a mosquito in the vicinity.

People are scared of snakes. I fear mosquitoes.

The other day, I was at a coffee shop, drinking coffee and silently waiting for ideas to catch me. It was good coffee, and the sun was lazy, so I was willing to indulge their absence. Besides, I had money, for a change.

How long can a good morning last? Before soon, I heard an electric crack. The fly catcher had caught a mosquito. My scalp prickled. Where there is one, there are bound to be others. A crazed brood, out for psychological blood.

I think they know their power. I am convinced they know the potency of their whine, otherwise, why do they fly around your ear? If it was food they were after, a quick swoop and a suck ought to have satiated them. I would never grudge them their nutrition; it’s the whine I object to.

I want to reach for my hair and tear them out, when I hear it…

I shifted to another table, but it was futile. The mosquitoes entered like a swarm and smothered the tiny place. I pushed back my chair, struggled with my wallet, and ran for the door. Beads of sweat dotted my middle-aged brow.

Out on the pavement, the sun was suddenly scorching hot, and there were suddenly too many people. Nobody seemed to mind the mosquitoes except for me.

They were blackening the horizon, like the locust clouds I had seen on teevee. My skin was suddenly tight against my throat, and I couldn’t breathe. I gasped and gagged, and staggered past people carrying umbrellas and children.

Shield the children! I wanted to squeak. The mosquitoes are coming!

The mosquitoes are coming…

The mosquitoes are coming…