1993

2008

childhoods make you rich or poor

more questions... without answers

why do women have this craving to look nice? i mean more than men. i mean everyone wants to look nice but why is it so valuable to women that they do? and what if they dont naturally? why cant the world accept that a woman could be ok with the way she is? is all this craving to be liked, the underlying insecurity, a result of decades and centuries of male dominant societies? or is it natural and hormonal? or are the hormones conditioned to send such signals to the brain, by the attitudes of men who desire us? what has love got to do with looks? yeah it does i guess. with the way people desire what makes them drool. but is desire all there is to love? or is it simply such a large proportion that all else is conditional on it? i didn't fall in love with the faces i'v been bowled over by.

fakin' it

the ugly duckling never turned into the swan. and she met her prince. he didnt like her.

practising gre writing: any critics out there

Topic 1
“Young people frequently fall into the trap of assuming that the difficulties they face today are greater and more troublesome than those faced by previous generations. As they gain experience and maturity however, they eventually become aware of the falsity of this assumption.”

It could be a result of self pity in adolescence when the individual mind considers itself at odds with the world, most of which falls in different age groups than itself. When that unfairness of the world, strikes one, as being targeted at oneself. Or it could be thanks to the inevitable generation gap in thought and behaviour, which derails every youngster’s relationships with his/her elders. Or it could simply be the realisation of the futility of one’s dreams when suddenly faced with too much reality. As usual what is felt personally and by peers is exaggerated to the mind to be much more than what others said they faced in their days. It’s also at times an excuse to brag about successes against the big bad world that didn’t treat them so bad in the early days, that makes the success even larger; or if its failure, then a concession to justify it by.
Whether it has been the 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s, youngsters have felt lost in, and victimised by the world. Art and literature has discussed this over the ages. Songs have been written with this feeling of being born in times, when things are the worst that the world has known, in some way or the other. Whether it was the rock ages when they felt they needed catharsis more than people before them. Or it was the Victorian era when young people felt there had never been this kind of suppression before. Or maybe present day when we feel that it was all very well for people to feel victimised in those ages, and write about it, but only if they had lived with us now they would have realised what difficult times these are compared with those trifles.
Probably its with age and maturity and wider exposure, when people realise that others both before and after their generation went through as bad or maybe worse than they themselves have, that that idea of supreme personal hardship starts to wear off. Also, when that same assumption/feeling is witnessed in people of a younger generation, people realise that the feeling is typical of human nature to exalt oneself against the world (that is easier to do by making the world seem worse than by improving oneself). And it is this that keeps travelling from generation to generation. A point worth remembering also is the fact that once this realisation sinks in and is established as better logic, these same people reduce the cribbing considerably just to make way for younger voices who feel they are the only ones who have the right to complain. This they become convinced of, taking other’s mature silence as their lack of grievances.

one grain can feed all!!!

our household help has started helping another household in the morning. so she rushes through her work in my house glancing at the clock every 2 mins. she makes some 5 rotis every morning. one day i asked her to make 2 more when she was almost done with the last. she stated that as impossible as her dough was over for the day and my demand would require her to spend more time making some afresh. and reprimanded me for not telling her earlier, cos then she could have made the 2 more from the same dough by reducing the size. her cheek amazed me and i couldnt help laughing out loud. i told her i wasnt asking for a skilful display of her reproportioning scarce food resources but simply more cooked food for more mouths!

attracted poles?

what do those intelligent people do when they get married to mindless bums. sometimes u just look at a groom and bride and you want to shout out and warn one of the two. but you daren't. its not proper. not when so much money has been spent on that lahenga and the royal chairs and the hotel/club rent. maybe some under the chair dowry. so you, quarter pityingly, quarter sadistically, quarter gleefully that its someone else and not you, and quarter curiously wish the person your best wishes.

man: yes ma'am can i help you.
me: well actually yeah. i am looking for some happiness.
man: sure. this way please. this entire floor is stacked with happiness in different sizes. there is just a small problem. you've got to buy it with happiness alone.
me: huh. do i get you?
man: oh but you must ma'am.
me: er ok. can you remember if any customer ever managed to buy any?
man: i've heard tales ma'am. of the dog next door. his great grandad when found his girlfriend, bought the whole floor of happiness. its a favourite story here. and thanks to him the floor got new stock. you know even happiness starts getting stale otherwise. humans somehow never trusted the deal. i think its the insecurity with what rare they have

A: i dont know anything about this. B: you are exactly the person we want

how has so much superficiality seeped into our reality?
everything from loving to learning to working is done so much on the surface alone.

in my case the universe conspires to mislead me whenever i need to make a decision. it throws options at me that seem to me, being in my situational coordinates, beyond my normal reach; and more attractive, given my reasons, than anything possibly imaginable. i should learn to recognise it then as chimerical. too good to be true. (who said those words first?) then it laughs while i wonder what went wrong. i'm thrown diametrically opposite to where i thought i was going that way.
i think it could be even simpler. maybe they've set some super fantastic foreign choice maker in me that just helps me choose the best of the best. clockworked me for entertainment. like a clown who sets traps for himself n then falls gleefully into them. does he nurse some fractured bone after the audience has left?
i should give the universe credit for managing my finance department strangely well though. doesnt mean i grow richer day by day. just means that it doesnt ditch me ever. money doesnt ever come to me when its meant to or when im looking forward to some, but its suddenly there just when i so need it.

not even peacocks' discordant cries keep you awake as rudely as human noise. even when you plug your ears so fiercely that you later have trouble getting the cotton out. can we go back to bein' savages

Which is love
To wish that you go to the other world while I am by your side
Or to snatch all pain or death that comes your way

An excerpt from 'SCHOOL IS A WASTE OF TIME! and other ritings' by William Brown:

What’s wrong with civilizashun

Sometimes you see things in the papers about what’s wrong with civilizashun an’ how it could be put right an’ that sort of thing an’ it seems to me that people that write them are all talking through their hats because they go on an’ on tryin’ to find out what’s wrong with civilizashun an’ what they never seem to see is that civilizashun’s all wrong anyway an’ that nothing will ever be right till we all go back to bein’ savages.
I’ve thought a good deal about this an’ I bet I know more about it than anyone else ‘cause I’ve thought about it more. Ever since I can remember I’ve thought that civilizashun was all wrong an’ I’ve wanted to be a savage. I can never understand how people can go on bein’ civilized when they could so easily turn into savages. If I were the king I’d make everyone stop bein’ civilized and start bein’ savages again an’ I bet we’d all be a jolly sight happier.
Take houses to start with. Savages didn’t have houses. They had caves an’ caves are a jolly sight better than houses any day. You don’t have to wipe your feet before you go into caves an’ there aren’t any ornaments to knock over or carpets to get muddy or things to get sticky if you only jus’ put a finger on them by accident like what there are in houses. The way people fill their houses with things that aren’t any use to anyone an’ that break or get finger marked almost with lookin’ at has always been a myst’ry to me.
Then their food wasn’t dull like what civilized food is – potatoes an’ milk pudding an’ bread an’ butter an’ stuff like that. I bet prehistoric animals tasted jolly good an’ they cooked them themselves over fires an’ I know that stuff you cook yourself over fire tastes better than any sort of food ‘cause I’ve often tried it. I once made...

one of those incidents where i regret not doing anything:

i was in a metro from cp to dwarka. some distance from me on the same seat were two girls, and right opposite them sat a man in his late forties or maybe fifties. there were'nt too many other people near us. this sick old uncle was staring at these two girls as i took the people around me in. he was oblivious to my glares and the two girls were oblivious of him. in front of my eyes, his right hand slipped under his kurta and from then on he continuously jerked off while lecherously staring at them. all i could do was avert my eyes and contort my face disgustedly. i dont know how many times in that short journey must i have resolved to raise a voice. but i couldnt manage it.

I think I’ve been a dormant supporter of capitalism till now. In some way blindly believing that the belligerent have a right to win and fatten, while the weak die out and are replaced by some more, as the fat increase their digestive capacity by working out. I thought this was an unsaid rule of the world, of evolution, and of economics and market forces. Growing up is changing something. Some little bits of me have started empathising with those I dismissed earlier. I like reading opinions of people who have actually been there. Who give me the other side of the story to the so-obviously accepted ideas and entities in our world.

this link builds an argument to support what were till now only fears

And today I was in Habitat center where I saw some photos of someplace in Jharkhand where the uranium miners dump the radioactive waste and where almost everyone is either suffering from some fatal disease or is disfigured for life. And till yesterday I was so proud of my country's nuclear prowess.

i once dreamed of walking on water with my love
of leaving our bodies wilfully and floating to the edge of the other world

today i dreamed of flying with u
and exactly then u were flying in your dream

i do believe in faeries
its only that i had forgotten about it all

men, women and feminism

i suddenly know why i like what douglas adams wrote (apart from the reasons why others liked it): his women characters are so subtly and undemandingly intelligent.

once someone asked me if i would say i was a feminist. i replied thinking with a final, slow, not totally self-convincing, "no". and would you believe that that person also told me that until it was cleared to them by a certain 'feminist' prof, they had thought feminism was all about loving pink, being dainty, hating and blaming men for everything, and in general being useless and nonsensical. this was a B.A. class of girls

some people are the end of the world
and they wield that power carelessly

losing sleep both ways

daylight saving in the US screws me up here. dont know if they manage to catch any extra daylight to their benefit. but here my clocks stare at me pleading innocence and yet my schedules are jerked to change. because of vibrations traveling into my phone. i hated it when they announced delaying time and thought i would welcome the restoration to normalcy but here i am again, reeling.

freudian slip.
which freud?
freud egg

long ago, the milk in my glass came from a cow being milked in front of us every morning, with a generous proportion of water added by sleight of hand. now it comes from a plant which has delayed it today morning! the cow was timed well

its easy to spend 12 hrs alone at night. but the same during day become a task. what is it about night. i want it to last

mean AND rude

some people have this loud manner. not just the extra audible voice but a manner if u know what i mean. its embarassing to be with them in public. they attract admiration-lacking attention. the manner extends to loud unpleasant incidents that make them your guests unavoidably. and it goes further to make your washroom unbearable. no not the sight but the smell. and if that wasnt enough, they want their host at her entertaining best. so they linger in your room when your boyfriend is present and ensure their loudness(includes literal amplitude) is noticed. at the bottom of all this may be a hypothyroid which the person in question cannot help.

(makes me guilty to have written this out. though why exactly am i to blame for what feelings come up in me i fail to figure out as usual)

no i didnt see these myself :(

dharamshala

i hate people who stop by to stay with you just because you seem to be on their travel route or because you live near the airport. wish i could throw them out in the middle of the night on the pretext of a fight or something. would be cool fun.