In love, just two days more...

The second season of Games of thrones, based on the George RR Martin's epic fantasy series- A Song Of  Ice And Fire will air this Sunday. Never before I have been so excited by season premiere of any tv series barring Sherlock of course, I mean who wasn't, Moriarty and Sherlock were on a way to an epic showdown but I digress. Apart from the obvious reasons - politics, intrigue, betrayal, love (sickeningly so), nudity ( :D ) and fantasy, I like this series this TV series even more because it introduced the world of the seven kingdoms of Westeroos, which in turn forced me to devour all the 5 books (I read book 5 on PDF instead of having a hardcopy back at hostel just because I couldn't wait for 3 days).  

Now if I start writing about what I like in this book it will take ages, so things that I shall be looking forward to in this season 

• The war of 5 kings

• Melisandre 

• Melisandre's shadow children.

• Wildfire

• Tyrion's chain

• Arya and Valar Morghulis ( I know its a word not a person but still...)

I shall be watching each episode and in my opinion you should too :)

Adios...

PS: Watch Sherlock (BBC TV series) if you haven't already

The Monster And The Bully

In the age when the witch was the doctor and the inn was the pub and bar and the muddy creek was the swank swimming pool and the prostitutes well were the prostitutes- it’s the oldest profession you see-our story is set in.

In one of the many villages –villages were abound then- was a hill(of course what’s a village without a hill- remember “jack and Jill went up the hill”) and on the hill there was a cottage( and what’s a hill without a cottage) and around that cottage was a garden( there are gardens around ever cottage on a hill- didn’t you read any story or for that matter harry potter, remember his friend the weasel lives in a cottage and boy they have a large garden). In that house or should I say the cottage lived a monster (no monsters don’t usually live in cottages).



So that monster that wasn’t a monster per se but since he was a child he had an unusual countenance and so was called monster by everyone. And since he lived alone he started to think that he really was a monster and started behaving like that. See this is how we ruin our children; they have an impressionable mind you see. But I digress.

That monster did what all the monsters usually do. He scared the shit out of anyone who ventured in the woods around his garden which was around his house or for that matter the cottage. And hence he lived on plying his monstrous trade.

And as with villages go there was a bully there in that village too. And as with bullies go he used to bully. And again as with bullies go he met his match. This match wasn’t a bimbo nymphet but one other bully who bullied the other bully into venturing into the monster lair.

The monster was sleeping when our brave, heroic, gallant and spunky (well euphemism for big scaredy cats ready to shit in their pants- we use euphemisms a lot you see) bullies entered the cottage with a garden around it lying on the top of the small hill. And while they were jumping the boundary wall a fly sat on the nose of the monster, and as it goes with monsters he swatted it, missed, hit his own face and woke up with an ouch that was mighty roar for the ears of the bully.

One of the bullies wet his pants and fainted- at this juncture I don’t think that we care which bully that was, the one who met his match or the one that was supposed to be the match- and the other started to cry. The monster that wasn’t a monster per se saw him and since he wasn’t a monster per se went out to console him.

Bully: "don’t eat me please."

Monster: "Why’d I eat you, I only eat vegetables and fruit and sometimes dirt too. I don’t eat ‘humans’. I am a vegetarian, a ‘v-e-g-e-t-a-r-i-a-n’. Now come to me and let me console you."

The bully caring not to make any sound with his feet, caring not to breathe loudly, cursing the vile wind that was spreading his vile bodily smell, albeit silently, approached the monster( who was welcoming with his arms spread),closing on the bully opened his mouth, picked up the monster, chewed him to pieces and swallowed him whole and merrily went back to his home.
Adios...

PS: This post is a satirical take on our habit of typecasting anyone and everyone. For us anyone with a  bad habit is a bad person. While all those who are don't indulge in any vices are inherently good. However in actuality this is not always the case. More often than not a seemingly normal person is the one who is a monster. 

PPS: The word monster is used in a broad sense.  

A Tepid Start to 2012

The good

•  I am reading books.  I loved reading books, back when I was a kid (I still am a kid, but others have started treating me like some grown up adult ), I always had a book in my hand. It didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing, and even what I was reading. If it had a cover and printed pages and I was nearby, I read it.  However somehow down the line I lost that habit. I forgot the pain you felt when a beloved character died or the sense of loss when you finished a particularly good series of book or when you read the entire works of an author. So after a period of 6 years, in the winter of 2011, when I didn’t have any distractions I started reading books again. And by reading I don’t mean reading 100 pages, and then leaving the book for the other day, I mean picking up a book and reading it nonstop till your mother starts shouting at you and confiscates the book. Yeah those kinds of reading, when you read like a fiend without a care in the world. So, in these 15 days I have read 7 books, and the 8^th one is in progress, and boy I am loving it.

•   I am not watching any mindless TV series

•  I got 99.08 percentile in CAT without studying, without preparing. This was a much needed boost for me because the results came when I had started doubting my abilities. It was a bit of a restoration of my faith in myself.

The bad

•  I got 99.08 percentile in CAT without studying. It’s like running the marathon and then collapsing on the finish line just because you didn’t drink enough water so you dehydrated. There will be a small part of me that will always nag me, that small voice which will always claim if only I had studied a bit more. If only I had remembered the formula for sum of a GP. If ONLY.

•  I broke my laptop, and had to pay a lot of money to get it repaired.

•  I messed up my application forms. I won’t give out details; however the gist is that I am a big moron, and it would hurt that even after getting a good (read as awesome) score in GRE and TOEFL I would not get an offer from a graduate school just because of my idiocy

The Ugly

•  I realized that there are some people who will use you for nefarious purposes. Like for example there exists a certain someone let’s call him Mr. X  who will bitch about someone else  and should you say anything against that someone else, Mr. X will promptly go around and relate the things that you said to him with utmost relish. This was something which I always understood and tried to stay away from such persons. However there is something good that can be found in these kind of people too, they never kick you when you are vulnerable. Hence it was news for me when I found people of other kind, whose sole purpose is to derive everything from you, no matter how it may have harmed you. I can’t comprehend how a person to whom you presented your vulnerable side use you to make your best friend jealous by presenting as if something is going between you and her (she was his girlfriend long time ago, a relationship which she broke). I never thought that I shall be the dupe of such kind of people, and it is ugly because it will be very difficult for a misanthrope like me to be vulnerable again.

This start of 2012 had more lows than it had ups, and it kind of scares me because I rose very high in 2011 and it’s a long fall when I look down.

Adios…

Edit:  there has been a change in the situation, it appears what I feared has been delayed. :D

A question of decency.

It doesn’t look like it (it is always the same case every year) but the consensus is that the annual cultural festival of IIT KGP for the year of 2012 has started. Today was the first day. And like every earlier edition this year too they had a Hasya Kavi Sammelan (transliteration: humor poet convention) and like every year they invited some of the famous poets. This year too, there was overcrowding towards the back of the OAT, while front seats were kept reserved for the “faculty” who were conspicuously absent. This year too, the poets arrived late, all in all, the event was every bit mismanaged, just like the earlier years
.

However there was a change this year, a change which made me aware of the mob mentality of crowd, how they are like the pathetic sheep that need herding, and how they have such a low sense of self esteem that they feel proud of humiliating a person who is standing on the stage. Now before you start wondering what actually happened (here I am assuming that I am not the only person that reads my blog) I shall explain.

So there were 4 poets, who were invited this year. The first one to come on the stage had a knack of writing poems having intelligent humor. He was standing on the stage reading his poem, trying to mix it up with jokes, anecdotes just to make it interesting for the audience, and I think that he was doing a good job. Enter, a group of students (they were a motley bunch, of various colleges and states) and the drama begins.

Some of these people were sitting just behind me. These people starting mouthing off the poet, trying to add something vulgar, produced weird sounds when he was trying to say something and made obscene rude gestures. From their acts it looked as if they were never chastised by their parents or they never were taught the basic tenets of living in a civil society. Now that thing is also pardonable, there are some cases when even the best of parents can’t inculcate the desired quality in their offspring. What was not pardonable was the enjoyment, the satiation that I saw on their face, the smug look which conveyed how they pulled one over the person standing on the stage. What was unpardonable was how the most of the crowd took the leave of their senses and started a proud display of similar antics. What was unpardonable was their continuation of this when the seniormost of the poets- a septuagenarian tried to calm them. What was unpardonable was their blatant disregard of his age, his prowess, his mastery of sarcasm and even his requests to calm down.

There was a person in that earlier group of miscreants who I know; I wanted to ask him why he was doing what he was doing. But, I knew the answer that I would receive beforehand. I knew he would simply tell him that he didn’t like him. And I knew that he hasn’t even tried to listen to him, he just wants to have a centerstage among his group of friends, and that he wants to be able to boast about how he was better than the poet on the stage.

There was another person in the crowd who picked up the baton, who I know; I wanted to ask him why he was doing what he was doing. But, I knew the answer that I would receive beforehand. I knew he would simply tell him that he didn’t like him. And I knew that he liked the poet but the mob feeling, the crowd was telling him not to do so. And I knew that it was not in him to be individualistic, that he wanted to find conformity from the crowd.

And I knew that they both made me nauseous.

I don’t say that you don’t have the rights to boo someone when you don’t find him good enough, I don’t claim that you don’t have the right to criticize a performer (In fact I am a big criticizer of Twilight Series and Justin Bieber, and Uttran and Roadies and Big boss). But I say that unless and until you listen to him, you see him perform, you hear him sing, unless you see his feet moving on the floor, you don’t have the right to judge him. You can’t bloody claim that he is not melodious when you were sitting on your arse listening with ear plugs in your damn ears. You can’t claim that he has two left feet when instead of watching him perform you were looking at that pretty girl and were fantasizing about her. And even if you have listened and watched him you can’t shun your decency and shout at an old person who is requesting you to keep quite.

 If you are reading this, remember no one held you in high esteem for your behavior. Nobody applauded your efforts. The words of praise that were showered on you were interspersed with “Jaahil” and “Ganwar”. So take a long, hard look in the mirror and I know that if you have even a bit of shame left inside you, you will realize how despicable you were in that moment.

Adios… 

A scary feeling called love

It’s a disconcerting feeling when you start caring for someone beyond the circle formed by your close relatives.  You don’t even think about it and at weird unexpected moments your thoughts turn towards something that someone did sometimes. You feel a slight euphoria, the same kind which you felt when you had your first drink a few years ago. This giddiness is more pronounced when that someone is of the opposite sex.

The feeling of being disoriented turns to that of scare when you realize that gradually over the time you have stopped just 'caring' and have fallen in love with her. A bit of despair starts hanging around you after this realization. As you sink deeper into this quagmire of one sided love the despair grows. You try thinking ways of talking to her- a task which becomes more difficult because you don’t have any clue how to behave around her. So you take the refuge of the cupid of our times, yeah you scurry to your Facebook account and start visiting her profile ten times an hour, and wait for her to come online. Unfortunately for you she is not slave of virtual world and has a life beyond it-which is utterly incomprehensible for you, So you wait, and you wait for a long time and when she comes online you lose all the courage that you had built up during that vigil of yours, instead you update your status with innocuous remarks stupid comments about anything and everything under the sun. Then one day she pings up to ask for some casual detail, for you that’s like Christmas came early. That innocent chat has given you more excuses to have further conversation with her-online of course.

However the jubilation doesn't last long. You wait painfully for her replies, misconstruing her silence for her indifference, you shun food, you become resentful and start hatching desperate plots. You consider sending her a mail, and then after sending that mail you consider calling her up.  This thinking goes on and on and for you that’s painful. But you soon develop some camaraderie and are chatting every day. Now your helplessness take another shape, you lose any sense of purpose once you complete the daily chat quota, anything else in the day doesn't hold much of a promise.

You console yourself saying that this is not love, it will soon pass away and you try thinking about something else but your thoughts always return rabidly to her hair, her eyes or her smile. You have thought about other females in the past but those thoughts had lust written all over them, you try imagining her in such a scenario but try as you may that is not possible. You see her face, her smile and you imagine a kiss, that kiss- a tender caress of lips, staring at her eyes never breaking the eye contact, all the while trying to convey the depth of your feelings from that simple but potent gesture. And that’s when you realize that you are firmly entrenched in a quicksand up to your neck, your only solace being her ignorance of your feelings. True she might be having an inclination about it but she can’t be sure unless you tell her.

One day you receive a call from her, you are in a train travelling to some place to be away from the sorry state that you are in. You excuse yourself from the conversation you are having, and attend the call. She confesses her love for you.  You give a yelp of pleasure; however it takes all your self-restraint that you don’t start dancing around. You are beyond ecstatic.

But this euphoria soon passes away, and you start assessing your situation. You think back to those moments when you doubted yourself, the see through plots you cooked just so you can have a conversation with her.  And that’s when the nightmare strikes you, the despair that was lurking in some back corner of your mind descends upon you.

You feel like a marathon runner forced to crawl even when he knows that there is nothing wrong with his legs. The feeling is utterly debilitating, because you know that your love is not unrequited, however you have seen your descent to such despondence that you know that is not in you to love someone. And how could that be because you always had a logical mind, but you find this logical mind betraying you.

You don’t find in yourself to trust the other person, every fiber of your being already cursing you for becoming dependent on someone else for your happiness, of taking that proverbial crutch, the knowledge that you can’t ever go back to “playing” that carefree happy person you earlier were.  This helplessness forces you to think of her and the despair at that sorry state of yours doesn’t let you accept her.

It’s now, when you realize that you are deeply madly and irrevocably in love and that this feeling sickens  you to your core
Adios…