Auld Lang Syne

yesterday night I found online one of my batch-mates from my old school. We have been keeping in touch through chat occasionally. Actually, I usually disappear for long durations and then when I resurface, we have a long conversation catching up with each others fast-paced lives. Yesterday we had a particularly interesting conversation recalling the good ole school times. And there was one particular incident that involved the two of us...

See, the story goes like this: We barely spoke to each other in class for the four-five years we studied together. At that time most boys and girls were still excessively shy around each other. So, while in school, I hardly knew this person. After loosing touch for 8 years, he initiated a chat with me some four years back. We had both joined a school batch mates group and came in contact again. Although I haven’t seen him in over 12 yrs, he is now a good friend.

While reminiscing about school days, I didn’t remember as many people and incidents as he did because I changed schools twice after class nine and I even moved to a new country for my A levels! He reminded me of this very embarrassing event in my school life - an event I shared with him: We both took a supplementary exam together.

These exams were held for those students who were either absent on the day of the exam or had not passed it the first time. Both of us were NOT in either of these categories. But by default everyone around would think that we failed the exam, and therefore, it was embarrassing! I, for one, was mortified. I was never the best student in class, but I was not one to fail exams either. I usually did moderately better than most. I wasn’t hardworking and diligent. I would spend all my time reading fiction, hardly bothering myself with homework! But I was not blasé enough to not care about failing or passing. It was a matter of big shame to get low marks! and failing was the pinnacle of humiliation.

Anyway, what really happened was that we both landed up at school to take the exam the day after it had already been held! I had forgotten about this episode until my friend reminded me of it yesterday! I spoke to my mom about it today and even she remembered it! And she told me that dad didn’t scold me the first time it happened (how could he? I came home red having cried my eyes out at a friends place coz I couldn’t go home directly!!). My dad chose to scold me after I came back from the supplementary. And I was mollified in retorting I wasn’t alone in this mistake! :)

It’s amazing what the mind wishes to keep stored up there. It’s been twelve years since it occurred, but I never thought I might forget this affair when it happened the first time round. It took my mother and a person whom I never thought that I’d be good friends with in future, to remind me of this small chapter in my life. It was funny remembering this stupid incident. And all this while I had not even realized it was this guy I was chatting with for 4 years who was the same guy I shared that mistake. And it’s probably the only interaction we had in school!

I was rolling on the floor laughing out loud yesterday chatting. It was nice. I haven’t laughed like this in a while. :)

Reason for a Headache

I went shopping with my cousins today. Even though I hate shopping, that's not really the reason for the most massive headache I have suffered from in a long while. I actually initiated this spree as I really was in need of stuff. Have been living minimalistically for some while now - just one pair of jeans, 2-3 shirts, and a pair of floaters!

When returning, less that 3 kms away from home, I got stuck is a massive traffic jam because the red-light at the crossing had stopped working. Of course every single one wanted to go and not stop to let anyone else pass. It resulted in the worst jam I have been in in a while. Some wise man actually came out and tried to resolve the confusion, and I wish there were awards for such pro-active citizens! I wanted to call the police but my cell phone signals disappeared. That has never happened to me before. I tried calling my dad and sis but how could I with no signal... What bewildered me most was that for the longest time there was no traffic cop in sight to resolve the mess! We have faced bomb blasts in two major cities of the country on 2 consecutive days, and 500 people have died because of terrorist attacks in the past year, and every time we are told that security is being tightened. What utter crap! What kind of security is it if a policeman is unavailable for over 20 minutes with over 500 vehicles mixed up and lined up at a major crossing??

The truth is that in a country with the 2nd largest population in the world, there is absolutely no value for life. So what if a few die, when there are more than 100 being born every minute? It is disgusting but our intelligence agencies are full of shit. Corruption is rampant and work is limited to how much can go into one;s pocket. The attitude is "Who cares anyway for something that is not benefiting me" and it is ingrained in every one of us. I mean, if people actually cared for the greater good, would there be such a jam in the first place?

Dali is awesome! So is Marquez!

Recently, I finished and turned in a 4000-word research paper on the representational similarities between Salvador Dali and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The basic point of the paper was to draw the commonalities of Surrealism in the paintings of Dali and of Magic Realism in Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude; the way in which imagination is deployed by the two in order to portrait the universal themes that cut across cultures; and the depiction/manipulation of time.

And I am still preoccupied with these great people's work.... I am reading Love in the Time of Cholera, and desperately searching for Destino, an animation project by Disney and Dali. the videos exist on YouTube but they aren't the best quality...

wrong Konnections

so yesterday a good friend and I went to see a movie. We saw Kismet Konnection. Though we really wanted to see another film more than this one, yet our urge to see any movie was stronger. The promos had seemed alright and I haven't been reading the papers these past few days so I didn't know what the critics had to say about it. It was a Hindi Bollywood film so naturally I had my doubts. But, the actor of this movie, Shahid Kapoor has blossomed into a gorgeous hunk (which means I didn't think much of him before his last film - Jab We Met) and I didn't mind ogling and drooling at him for a while ;P !!! And he did look good in this movie too. But, his looks could not save the movie as he overacted many a times.

The actress, Vidya Balan is amazingly beautiful, and photogenic, but, she didn't look that good in the movie, my friend and I discussed (since we had nothing else better to do during the movie) and came to the conclusion that she needed a better hairdo, a better bra, a gym membership and a more serious acting roles. Her hair was done in a way to make her look younger than Shahid, but she still looked older. She was made to wear bras and corset tops to make her figure look better, that failed as well. She has what Indians would call 'a heavy lower body', she isn't fat, but she looks so in western dresses. She looked gorgeous in Parineeta which was a period film, so she had worn mostly Indian clothes.

The story wasn't too great and even though there wasn't anything original about it, it could have been rendered a thousand times better. The acting, the editing and direction overall was so particularly bad that the story just could not be saved!

It was supposed to be a light, fun, romantic comedy, BUT:
the comic scenes didn't work,
there wasn't much chemistry between the two (she just looked older),
the over-acting made it a pain to watch, and
the movie was so light that it was nothing just fluff and mindlessness.

(The traditional from-my-phone-camera-photo, therefore, not the best quality...)

The most interesting part was that we went to see it at a bad movie theater. Which meant it was cheap and run-down and just really bad! We were told to keep our bags out; they had a token system storage thing at the back. We went through this shady, narrow lane to the place, only to discover it was a man sitting on bare wooden takht (which is like a low table, but in India we put a mattress and cylindrical pillows and use it as a sitting place). My friend and I had doubts, as I was carrying a laptop. We decided to put my bag into her's but upside down so that if one would open, it would take some effort to reach the comp. It wasn’t full-proof safe, but we decided to take a chance. When we went to back to it to deposit it, a policeman was also sitting in the takht. He asked if there was any laptop and I hesitatingly told him yes. Then he said we can take it in, they will just check it. All this was due to the ‘strict’ security checks at public places.

Anyhow, during the movie, when a song would start, the lower regions would start howling and whistling, but because the songs were not really sleazy, the noise just fizzled out like a bad cola. And people clapped for the most stupid things! When people go watch a movie out here, they do so to have fun. Because really, there aren’t many places the middle and lower class man can go for entertainment. There aren’t affordable places for enjoyment that also are safe for women. Either its such upper-class stuff, where I don’t fit in as I am too chilled out and happy-go-lucky a person to buy branded stuff and be all snooty page three! Or it’s the roadside “Wine and Beer” shops that cater to the low class. So where does the middle class go?

I complain about lack of fun-spots (to myself mostly), because my friends don’t really go to bars or clubs and I would not go there alone. I want to have the company of friend to have fun... And actually I don't even like bars and clubs so much, just wish there was go-carting, or ice-skating rinks, or bowling alleys, or gaming centers (with purikura and taiko drums!) or... u get my drift!

I wish there were Karaoke places here like in Japan - affordable and accessible. Most of all, I wish there was more safety for women so we could go out without having a male escort to protect us. Yesterday, I came home at quarter to eleven in the night, but I could do so only because of the Metro. And still my parents worried about how I will get back home! If there was a safe environment, maybe parents would allow their kids to go out more, and that would create a demand for more places, and having more places means that the overall standard would increase n price would decrease; and it would also allow men to see women for who they are and not merely sex objects, thereby increasing security!

effects of time