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.

keep it bowlin' (?)

It seems I only blog when I have work anymore. Wth man, writing a manuscript seems so impossible I just don't know how to go about it.

So today before getting to lab I thought I was "late" and then once I got to campus I made the mistake of thinking I could find student parking at Gilman (what a joke) and so I wasted more time. The best part was that when I entered the office at noon it was empty. Man I love science.

And, one of these days, I will give myself a fictional deadline and work overnight because apparently, four years of college has only taught me one way to do things. The only way I'm coming out with a first draft I am willing to share with the profs is if I stay up all night and come up with some BS because I have to.

Paraphernalia

I picked up my Jacobs school ring right now. It looks a lot like a guys wedding band, in fact exactly like that, and there is an enscription inside that says UCSD Jacobs 09, and I italicized that part because that's what the enscription looks like. I also got a certificate with an engineering oath, and a Jacobs School alumni pen. I'm not big on paraphernalia because I'm just that boring of a person, but I'm planning to buy that cool diploma holder the bookstore has, I know my mum would want it. The whole time my dad was here I was pointing out all the ways the university makes money off of us when we graduate. And now I'm going to add another $40 to that for the diploma holder. This ring and the oath certificate already cost me $30.

In a serious light though, I think I like being an engineer. Here's the oath that goes with the ring:

As a graduate of the Jacobs School of Engineering, I pledge to use my knowlege for the public good, to innovate for the advancement of humanity, and to be accountable to future generations. As a member of the engineering community, I dedicate myself to lifelong learning and to the growth of my field. I promise to always conduct myself with honor and to uphold the strong ethical values instilled in me by the Jacobs school. I accept this ring as a symbol of this oath.

Sometimes, even though its cheesy, solemnity makes me cry. As do sunsets.

When did we become old ladies?

Not only does my body hurt at the idea of being in clics for long hours (forget all night), so does my brain/id/personality. Still, in the spirit of blogging while studying, I'm going to blog.

My dad got in the country today for my graduation, 5 AM my time, and I was panicky from the second I woke up and realized he called and I missed his call till when I actually spoke to him once he landed in Vegas. I don't know what it is with me. I can't decide if this is an instant gratification issue or a family issue. I already barely check my voicemails, so I guess its a family thing. I kept thinking for hours that I should've been awake/expecting dad's call or something. I also kept feeling horribly guilty like I had failed him or something.

When we were kids we would often stop by a hospital on our way home from a fancy dinner so dad could run a quick check-up round. Shreya, mum and I would either talk or observe the silence or hold our pee in (especially if we were coming back from a movie). I would always be afraid that our car doors weren't locked and that someone could hurt us/enter our car (I read too much Nancy Drew/Famous Five). And then I would always be afraid that dad wouldn't be able to find us in the multitude of cars outside, or that something had happened to him (even though we never had to wait more than 10 minutes.) And then I'd say something and mum would say, he's an adult, he can take care of himself.

I'm an adult, aren't I? Can I take care of myself?