HEadacHE

Today is one of those days when I simply AM NOT ABLE to function. In my (over)eagerness to function, I have already sent an email to a professor for the wrong reasons and about the wrong things. Ugh. It is one of those signs from the universe (yes universe, I am reading signs again) that I SHOULD not function today, so I'm deciding to leave it be.

Inspired by Mandy, I was reading Bausch's letter to a young writer earlier today. Part of the reason was that I discovered my sophomore year copy of the Norton Anthology while cleaning yesterday, and anyway, somewhere there (or in that section) I read that I should be absorbing or swallowing (and not analyzing) four to six authors each year. The only author I think I have ever swallowed (or come close to swallowing) is Jane Austen. I think I will reread Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino yet another time though. I happened to pick up another one of his books a year ago (t zero), it was sci-fi-ey, and as awesome as it was I couldn't get into it. But that may be a problem I have with sci-fi in general. My limited knowledge invariably intrudes you know, and somehow it isn't in a good way. Or let me put it this way, while reading about Qfwfq (the lead character of t zero) stuck in a black hole, I felt like I was in a class. It was the same with Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano- classroom vibes all around me while reading about a completely automated society. It starts me wondering if I am less of a scientist for it.

Aaaah anyway. I don't know. Lately I've been feeling like a failure in both science and writing. If this grad school thing doesn't work out this time, I literally have no plan B. I suppose I could get a job. I suppose I could re-reapply. Maybe re-reapplying should be like re-rereading a book. Except of course, the only reason I'm thinking of it that way is because of the number of times I've used re in this blog post. Also, they're nothing alike. Anyway, I guess I should absorb an author- if for no other reason than simply because it would be a wonderful thing to do in the new year. I bought a Gabriel Garcia Marquez short story book and its haunting me. I could probably look into Calvino again, or a poet- I've only read two books by Larry Eigner. And I could delve into unknown territory. Hmmm.

On a side note, I'm a little disgusted by the fact that the Twilight movie is breaking world records or whatever. I remember when the Harry Potter books first came out, I was a cynic, wondering why everyone was reading kids books, and then I read them and loved them. So I decided to give the stupid Twilight book franchise a chance and it was horrible. It was like someone had turned my worst nightmares into print. I mean if that's what people or teenagers even consider as good writing, then the future of humankind is doomed. DOOMED I say. Isn't there a theory of some kind out there that the world is ending in 2012? This is probably related and somehow causal- let's face it the universe works in mysterious ways. What's worse, is that I always believed in an idyllic part of my head that if an art caught the attention of the masses, it must have something eternal about it. Apparently not. Apparently, our entire society can relate to being sexually repressed, with twisted virtues and what not. You know, it makes you wonder if everyone else is insane or if you've actually always been insane.

Figure-resizing is a bitch!

Facebook is telling me to reconnect with my sister because I haven't talked to her in a while. Freaking ridiculous. I'm getting annoyed with the damn thing to the point where I want to delete it for a bit. Today, it auto-added a family member of mine to my friendlist. WTF? Never have I ever done that in the past so ugh. ugh ugh.

And in other news, I'm at that weird moment in the cycle of things when the caffeine rush is fading and you're deciding whether to take another round of coffee/tea because there is so much work to do but also at the same time just exausted.

For the sake of it, I've been training my dog (the bigger one) to stay in position while there is a biscuit on his nose/snout. He finds a way around by tilting his snout so that the biscuit falls- and once it is on the floor he figures it is fair game. It is all a little pointless of course but I figured one of us should know how to resist temptation.

can't write clear

Ok it has been a LONG time since I blogged. I'm back now, which somehow makes me feel like life has to turn out all right because I usually blog to procrastinate and to get into the whole I am going to put in 10 solid hours of work now phase.

Ugh. FML. This year has been just amazing hasn't it? I mean I had SO many plans for how life was going to be by the time I was reapplying to grad school and here I am feeling as stupid as last year, and in fact even stupider because I've been doing nothing but lying in bed, doing physiotherapy and yoga sessions, and writing and rewriting and writing again the same one paragraph that I want to start my personal statement with. (Is it a good sign or a bad one that I looked at last years statement and wanted to throw up just a little?)

Also, as another procrastination method I've been in the writing mood, but I haven't written much. I've just been too close to the Welham nightmares again what with Shreya still in that place. And its more than that, the disparity in the many worlds I've lived in has never been more obvious. And the fact that I'm thinking of it that way makes me think I'm missing something big, like I haven't really known any of the worlds I've lived in.

Diwali 2009

After probably 13 years, my family was together on Diwali. Due to the recent family tragedy, we weren't really celebrating. However, have I ever mentioned that we suck at festivals in any case. My family does two things unlike most families I know- we suck at festivals, and we rock at vacations. I guess half of the reason we suck at festivals is because we're never together. Also, I gave up on Diwali fireworks years ago because of anti-child-labour views, and Shreya did too recently because of the whole pollution thing. Anyway my entire point is that we usually can't take the pressure to make a festival wonderful, and since the pressure was off this year because we weren't celebrating, we actually managed to make a good thing out of it- we sat through the pooja as sincerely as we could while the priest kept answering his cellphone and we watched fireworks from the roof for a bit. Then Shreya watched a movie, Dad did some work, Mom watched TV I guess, and I crashed because of a major back and leg pains relapse. Its just a little twisted that my grandfather's death gave my family the only real Diwali I've had in years. (Oh and my cousin Anu came over for a few minuts to visit Shreya so we took pictures.)

My favourite Diwali memory from my childhood, ironically, is from when me and my sister were at the grandparents place. Mum and Dad were going to come and take us home, but we'd been spending the days before Diwali there since school was off. Then when my parents came and we were done with the pooja and the fireworks, dad wanted to be off super early, before like 7 PM, and I remember being really sad because I wanted to keep lighting crackers (as we call them). And then the second our car was out of my grandparents driveway, my dad told us we were going to go do Diwali all on our own, and we laughed during the entire half-hour or so long ride home. Once we got home, we pulled out the real fireworks- as I like to think of them, and if I remember right they were hidden in the trunk of our car the whole time (go dad!). There's something so joyful about rebellion don't you think?

The Nightmares Return

It has been an annoyingly difficult day. I mean the thing about having an intervertebral disc problem is that it is like a timebomb, at any moment you may have an excruciating and unbearable pain and that will be it. I have had spinal and lower back issues for the last five years, I should have known this, but somehow it has never felt more real. Probably because painkillers have never felt this ineffective, and more likely because being in a safe and physically easy environment here at home does not allow me to blame external factors for this pain. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm scared. There's no fix except constant back strengthening excersizes, and the pain won't stop, and I am not allowed to do weights at the gym or even to bend my back. Aaah I just wanted to get that out of my system. In all likelihood I am overreacting, or I just met a weirdass doctor today, but before this, the pain was also undiagnosed so there were other likelihoods. Ohhhwell what the hell.

Also, being in India and visiting my sister a lot seems to bring all my unresolved high school/boarding school issues to the foreground, which is probably a good thing since I want to write and collect some stories about it all and get over it, but also a bad thing because the same emotions hit me with an even higher intensity since my sister is involved this time, instead of me. It's easy to forget how fucked up highschool can be, this coming from the girl who had nightmares about being stuck in it for years. I was telling a bunch of my friends in Delhi that my favourite thing about being in a university was the complete loss of popularity cliques- you either liked someone/somefew and became friends with them, or you didn't quite gel and moved on without caring about their business. And then these friends of mine said that their college experience was nothing like this, and that's when I realized that I had deluded myself into thinking that a college experience was all about some faux real world simulation.

Not-a-Sonnet for a Not-so-good man

when i read a poem i

try and

just read it

but sometimes

when i recall it

i hear it in my grandfather's

rhythmic

voice

and try and push the voice

out

from my head

but i'm laughing

by then and then

i try to judge if it fits the

rhyme

thinking concurrently

that that

shouldn't be a basis for

judgement

but it always is

and if i like it

it always fits

Annoyingly Cryptic Post that I suggest you avoid

I made a startling discovery today, the kind that, if I had any journalistic instinct, I'd know would make for a big expose or something. The disheartening truth about this post is that I have no journalistic instinct and perhaps this discovery is of enormous significance to me and of almost no significance to many other people. I did have this moment of absolute clarity though, when I knew over dinner that someone had let something very important and consequential to my life and all of my (Indian) friends' lives slip through their tongue, and I do wish that they weren't such a reliable source. All I know is that the past hour has been wretched (yes, with startling and wretched returning to my vocabulary, I bet I sound more Indian already) because I've been wrestling with all this information. It's one thing to know you live in an unfair world, but its another to imagine that every cruelty or harsh reality that you face as an adult (and I don't think I have faced much of that) is one you've been facing all your childhood and school life- you just didn't know about it.

All right. Yasha out.

My life and other animals

So yesterday I totally tripped on Chini, our pug. Fell on a knee. The strangest part about my (half)dull life these days is the involvement of animals. Yesterday I saw a cow take a leak at an intersection, and wow can those things pee! Then we made a U-turn at said intersection and the cow, being accustomed to unwritten traffic rules, moved aside for us just enough.

Someone asked me if it's frustrating, the slow pace of it all. I replied that I view the two as separate cultures and see no reason why one should be "better" than the other. I still cannot decide which cow has it better- the stray cow (yes, stray, where do they come from?) or the one that only exists to be eaten.

the reason this post feels incomplete is because it is

I mentioned to someone today that I write and they asked me if I have a blog. So I came to check out my own blog and I think I wouldn't respect myself if I only knew me through my blog, not that anyone does. The idea of all my writing being reduced to a bunch of "ands" and "ughs"  bothers me. I'll try and fix that.

My grandfather died the morning after my last blog post about how I didn't like his ghazal. I contemplated deleting that post. I decided against said contemplation. I have heard and observed a lot of people say both good and bad things about my grandfather during my lifetime, and as expected people have tried to colour these past few weeks with only the good memories of his lifetime. I however, don't want to tarnish my impression of him with only the good. He was colourful and inspiring and horrible and exaggerated and small and rich and so many other things that I am awed by the very spectrum.

Bulletin

Just about three hours ago I had many many ideas for a blog post. Now I'm going to say this: I thought I was done with that college/homework feeling, the constant anxiety because some deadline is yay hours and yay minutes away but with trying to write this paper I'm beginning to wonder if I've signed up for that for life. I think I have. Or at least for now, because that's how I seem to work, and I wish I was working at a better pace, as usual.

So what's been happening lately is that my genius plan with the grandparents backfired because my grandpa showed up Friday evening and started mouthing off poetry that I wasn't into. I even asked him to explain something else to me, but he got off on his own thing, coming up with ghazals (that I didn't like) and telling me that I should use them as my own (ugh.) I told him when I went to visit on Thursday that I think the poetry of the past belongs to the past but I'd like to know a little about it anyway. It serves as a means of providing me a window into culture and language and so much more. Anyway, then he comes up with the classic "poetry is no longer deep line" that I hate. I'm thinking of taking the following poem to him on Thursday:
"Nobody sits like this rock sits. You rock, rock. This rock just sits and is. You show us how to just sit here and that's what we need." Maybe I'll also mention that I plan to go stand in front of a bulldozer and read this.

And on the note of I ♥ Huckabees, I'm beginning to remember why I loved it just SO much for the longest time. I like to think that being an adult in my own country partly involves accepting responsibilities of some sort for the state that it is in, and I honestly wish I could look at all the squalor and do that. There's something so completely relatable as well as hilarious about hitting yourself in the head with a plastic ball in order to achieve a moment of complete detachment and nothingness. Aaah I probably sound stupid right now and only make sense inside my head.

Chandra Bindu

My mum called me a few minutes ago from university where she is proctoring or something. Apparently the latest gossip in the extended family is about how one (very distant) cousin of mine is "engaged" to a girl on facebook. Also, apparently, in the US of A no one jokes about being gay so this girl really must be gay. I honestly didn't know what to say. I happen to know that she's not gay, but either way, the idea of idle mouths and minds running wild because of what is so obviously to me a facebook joke is quite disturbing. I mean thank god for limited profiles, but seriously, how much can a person possibly limited profile? It wouldn't strike me to hide my basic information, although I know my sister does. Ugh seriously. I don't even feel like making the effort to explain that people at some point must have found the idea of 7 different options about your relationship status quite funny, and the whole thought of knowing all you needed to know about someone through facebook even funnier, and so they must have started mock marriages. I mean what else right? Its not even a joke about being gay, its a joke about facebook and its entire culture. UGH. Seriously, I'm contemplating privying up my facebook to an almost extreme amount.

And in other news it finally rained yesterday. Delhi was flooded (which never happens) all the way to the arrivals terminal, and I want to be sad but we've been waiting for rain here for far too long. And if the rest of us have only been bothered by the heat then I bet the farmers were real happy. Lately I've been observing exactly how "blessed" a region I live in. There's plastic everywhere, but the soil happens to be just so fertile that you're likely to find a wild amount of wilderness even at a dumpster. And that is something to be thankful for, right?

And I don't know if you know but, I've been suffering from filial guilt. My grandfather cried a lot one day (literally cried) because I hadn't visited him. I felt super guilty and went over early the next morning. It was quite awesome. One moment he was talking about how sick he was and how he couldn't read. The next moment he was animatedly reciting a play he had written that I wanted to write down and correcting my hindi spelling (from five feet away). Anyway I've decided to visit him and my grandma once a week for a couple or more hours. I'm just going to hope that I'm wiser than I was at eighteen and can take only the good out of this relationship, especially with my grandpa.

Hmm what else. Lab work is INSANE right now. IN-SANE. Its a little more insane with all the parental pressure I'm seeing to be fit and healthy. Both my parents are convinced that my backache and other limbaches will only go if I am healthier and stronger. I think I've managed to get out of gymming temporarily under the condition that I swim on weekdays, and thats not so bad.

PS- NBC videos are US-only, ugh I'm not getting my office fix. Also, did I mention, I walked into a rope? Luckily I only hurt my nose and my eyes are fine.

epiphany- of sorts

I was laying on my bed this evening, promising myself a few minutes of napping before I got out of bed to finish my manuscript, and all I wanted was a peaceful nights sleep but the whole routine was so familiar. I think I'm finally beginning to realize exactly what sort of a commitment I am making for the rest of my life, signing myself up to be a student for like, forever. And I want to say its not going to suck, but well, it is going to suck. I just always justify the suckiness by remembering the momentary feeling of achievement that hits me now and then while doing science, and I guess its because I've been doing nothing new and basically been spending the last few weeks transcribing my results, and because everything is changing and that itself is so overwhelming I keep pretending like nothing is happening and then suddenly get this urge to burst into loud emotional childish tears now and then, but seriously, one of those pure, brief moments that make me feel proud of me would do a lot of good right now.
God I can't sleep before I send a draft in, and I can't send a draft in till its perfect, and it will never be perfect because perfection doesn't exist, what the hell have I gotten myself into?

my day in lab today

NUMBERS NUMBERS NUBMERS BUMNERS SNUMBER SNUBMER BUMNERS RUMBENS NURMBES UBMERNS UMBERNS SUNBERM SRUBMEN SRUNBEM SRUBNEM SNEBMUR SNERBUM SREBMUN

here we go lu-ba-lu, here we go lu-ba-la

I've got this line from Inner City Pressure by flight of the conchords stuck in my head:

You want to sit down but you sold your chair.
So you just stand there. You just stand there...

I didn't even sell my chair yet, but it is a beautiful line and I wish I had written it. I don't even think I empathize with it as much Mandy and Sarah did in the beginning of this year.

So that got me thinking of starting a blog series (like ayfkme- had one of those moments today btw) of things people wish they had written, and think that maybe in a moment of genius they actually could have written.

However that's an old idea. And what I really wish I could write right now is a good scientific manuscript, with just the correct papers cited as references and just the most appropriate background info highlighted. In retrospect, my high school principal Mrs. Brar was right when she said that scientists wish they had a magical potion, I shouldn't have quoted that sentence every time I wanted to convey how biased she was against us lot.

I'm sort of half sick of people using public/fun avenues to let out frustration/communicate passive aggressively and then pretending like nothing happened.

So that's what I'm doing right now.