Nescience

March is a really unfortunate month for me. The exams are steadily drawing near and all I want to do is not study. Happens to the best of us, I guess. I blame the weather, really! January and February are too frigid and cold, April and May are hot and sweaty...but March - it's perfect. It's not too hot, nor too cold, and the sky is a perfect never-ending blue. The birds are chirping, and there is laughter, and long, languid evenings spent out on the terrace with the family. The madness of March hits me out of the blue, and makes crave ice cream, and long drives, pani puri and the company of friends, and makes me want to fall in love with a person, a serial, a book, or a song. It makes me want to paint (though I haven't lifted a brush for the last 3 years), and sing (my music teacher from school liked me better with my mouth shut) and write (even though the exams are drawing near) and do all sorts of wonderful crazy things. But I can't. I have to pull out my te...

Rangapanchmi just passed me by. This year, I was one of those sad, desolate faces hanging around by the window, spying on the people playing colours in the street below. I got up as usual, and dragged my economics text book on the table, and spent ten solid minutes looking up at the sky. And then there were shouts and giggles, and of course I had to investigate the source (rather than accept the inevitable and read about Planning in India). There was a small group of people in varying shades of maroon, blue, green and yellow on the street and were shrieking with laughter as they drenched each other and threw colours. I will not deny it. I felt a twinge of jealousy. Was it really so bad, that I was cooped up in the house on a glorious March morning, while all my friends from school and my sister were off gallivanting with their friends from college. It is understandable, really, and I do want to be all mature and grown up about it, but sometimes, I feel like an outsider. They go ...

It's such a cliche. Year in and year out, it's the same old routine. The same red roses (at bloody high prices), cute teddy bears and all sorts of useless, fluffy items that won't see the light of the day in normal circumstances. The red pillows, perfumes, diamond necklaces and the strings of pearls aren't that important in retrospect - it's the stories. The stories of how people meet and fall in love, tide over their differences and sometimes succumb, fail to bridge the gap, and part with only the memories and the occasional gift that was left behind after the break up. But sometimes, there is harmony and understanding, maybe the circumstances are favourable and it becomes the prologue to the 'real story', the point where all our Bollywood movies like to end and leave the details of the conjugal life to our imagination. This year, I was home for Valentine's Day (kokam sherbet at the canteen had it's revenge, I guess) and I flicked my economics note...

The Book Birth. It was already written and he didn't like that fact. He turned the pages - he was fond of beautiful, white pages from the snow of Himalayas and the foam of the Arabian sea. And the ink of the soil that was turned and overturned, year after year. He didn't decide it. Brought into the world by a pair of lovers like any other, he didn't have any say in it. He was here, breathing and blinking, alive. And there was nothing he could do about it. Life. His was a triangle in the jungle of circles and pale green leaves on the staid, old pool. He sang of stone butterflies and waxen bees who drank from the honey of thoughts. He walked in squares and on the lines his ancestors had painted. He often stood on those, bucket and mop in hand. They weren't erased and the drops from his mop went running ahead of time. Death. He stood with infinite patience that the centuries had ingrained into his collective imagination. He wavered on the edge of light a...

Okay, so Romance. It's such a quintessential topic, isn't it? I mean, every time you turn your back and - whoa! there is a guy and a girl (or a homosexual pairing, doesn't matter) falling in love, or in the honeymoon stage, maybe breaking up and moping around - only to fall in love again. It isn't only about 'romance' though. I'll rephrase it as 'love'. Popular culture revolves around love - off the top of your head, mention a book or a movie that is famous and does not have a romantic element. Sure, there are such films and books, but the majority has a romantic tinge to it. A friend of mine said, 'Popular culture is about blindly aping the stereotypes without validating the truth'. He's not entirely wrong. But pray, tell me, what are stereotypes but characteristic commonalities that have been emphasized? Hence popular culture, though stereotypical strikes a chord within each of us - because it has a basis in reality. So when I decided t...

I am like an alcoholic or a druggie who relapses, time and again. It was something of a mystery to me that I make so many resolutions, but fail to follow any of them through. That is when I discovered my true nature. It was rather like waiting patiently on a machan and hoping for that elusive tiger to appear, but I tried to observe my behaviour with the same disaffection. I like cleanliness - as long as it's not me who has to clean. My room resembles a field that a tornado may have passed through and from then on, it's a downhill journey - literally. Mountains of books and clothes pile up in the room, and a treacherous path between them is my normal route in the room for months. Then one day, it's like wiping the glass clean and I am noticing the filth for the first time. I run the cycles on the washing machine, get out the iron and within the day, my clothes are washed, ironed and folded in the closet. Gathering the books and stowing them according to the authors and subj...

It has been more than a year since I updated this blog. I had forgotten about it quite happily, as I chased my imagination through the realms of fiction and reality, when my friend Disha reminded me about it. What is it like, returning to a thing you know you loved, held sepia toned memories of close to your heart? It may not exactly be what you had imagined and glossed, put up on a pedestal due to the absence. It may have changed, you may have changed. I used to love the feel of colours on my notebook. Every hue, every stroke mirrored my thoughts and became an amalgam of colour and me, spread out on a paper for all to discern. I no longer experience the same, when I hold a brush in my hands. Passion is the fuel of life, for me, and the reason of motivation and excellence. Though I try and fail in many things, I fervently hope for this passion. It makes me observe the world, not see, though ignorance too often blinds me. To Disha, for reminding, there was one in the first place, Pooja