July 29, 2006

A Rush Of Blood To The Head

I am working. Working over ideas. Working on my skills as a designer, developer and a writer. I am working on giving a name, an identity to the work I do. All I need to do is try not to lose attention, it’s the only thing I am good at losing. Things are now in motion that might make some changes. Changes that might be good, hopefully great.

Do Stay.

July 23, 2006

24

Just turned 24. Happy Birthday.

July 15, 2006

Gone. Will Be Back.

Gone: travelling.

Be Back: July 20th.

Until then, Check out the archives. Starting from the last post. And Comment!

July 07, 2006

Getting Wasted on Frankies

It’s hard to keep up with your attendance at college when you have more important things to attend. Like attending the local fast-food joint/café “Fifth Avenue”, for some quick chicken frankies. Or hatching ingenious plans to destroy the day for Badruka and his cronies (snobs all of them). It’s hard to keep up with classes when you are needed at the college parking lot to carry smoked out Javed to safety. Or when you have to listen to Savage Garden and Mission Impossible 2 OST back-to-back because Rahil won’t lend the CDs to you.

I attended the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (BVB) for a whole year. By attended, I mean that I was a student of Bhavan’s for a year before dropping it for an under-grad in computer applications. My real attendance at college was 23%. I am still surprised at how I got past our screaming principal, Kakade.

We spent most of our day in the college parking lot or the cafeteria. In case of excessive monetary funds we would be chilling out at FAVs (local acronym for Fifth Avenue) munching through Frankies and sandwiches and gulping down cold/hot beverages. I must say I have never eaten anything as HOT as a Frankie at FAVs.

When we somehow happened upon a class it would be either QT (Quantitative Techniques) or Eco (Economics) or a language class (English/Hindi).

The QT professor was a newbie, this job being his first-ever gig. This was about the time when that movie Mohabbatein was out. Suddenly being a Professor became cooler than those frigid tins of coke at FAVs. So the QT professor, the young chap that he was, started acting all RAJ A. MALHOTRA on our collective asses. He would come to class, a sweater thrown over his shoulders like Shahrukh Khan, and a pair of plain glasses on his eyes. He also wore those pleat less pants. Those vanilla-palette shirts. The poor fellow even acted as nothing was out of place with that sweater on his shoulders, keeping his back warm. Even when we tried to bring out the sweater-issue he would deviate us with some deviations questions. The weirdest part was his name: RAJ.

Half the Eco class was ruined most of the time because it came right after recess. And we attended recess rigorously. This caused us to return to our classes a bit late, 10-15 minutes usually. Plus, there was Rakesh’s awfully distracting entrance in the class every once in a while. He used enter the class last, wearing his helmet and then would sit half-way through the lecture without taking it off. The professor who had already witnessed/annoyed/threatened over this regular masquerade wouldn’t say a word and carry on with her lecture.

The only professors I would ever like were the English ones. Right from school, through junior college and the under-grads I had some great English professors. It is only now that I’ve realized the amount of interest I paid during those monotonous sessions of Keats and Wordsworth. I didn’t like poetry as much as the next guy sitting beside me, which would be Javed most of the time. But it would have been worth the attention that I never gave. At least I would have had a grammatically correct blog.

It is funny how we waste our college days over these moments. These moments of convenience food and parking-lot-adventures. These moments with peculiar professors and their prejudiced remarks. These moments, they become surreal, almost dreamlike after you leave college. But they persist. Funny how these wasted days are perhaps the best days of our lives.

July 04, 2006

Bookworming!

I picked this up from Shoe Fiend, whose Other Shoes are Manolos (Great Blog. Must Read). Since no one would tag me a meme I started a fuckin’ meme meself. This meme is all about books. I love reading. Just give me something that catches my interest and I’ll devour it once and again. It so happens that writing this meme has allowed me to look upon and review my book choices and the hidden meaning behind it. Yea, this is becoming very mysterious and not much interesting. So we’ll skip the mysteries.

01. What is the total number of books you've owned?
  • 150-200
02. What are the last books you bought?
  • To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    Simple and Beautiful. I’ve been looking for it since I saw the movie. I searched everywhere, found just one last copy.

  • Lost World by Michael Crichton
    A better sequel to Jurassic Park plus it came real cheap for a Hardback, Rs.50.
03. What is the last book you've read?
  • Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
    Some people ought to accept that Harry Potter is not just for kids. Half Blood Prince is perhaps the best written Harry Potter book till date.

  • To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    What can I say; I am inarticulate in describing the beauty of this book.
04. What are you currently reading?
  • Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
    Tyler Durden. Anarchy. Insomnia. Support Groups. IKEA-Nesting Instinct. BLISS!
05. What are the 5 books that have meant a lot to you or that you particularly enjoyed?
  • Faraway Places by Tom Spanbauer
    A taut and brutally told Rites of Passage story. Growing up in 1950s Idaho. Surreal. The writing is beautiful, wound tight.

  • To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    See the same in #03.

  • The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
    The most rich and most beautiful adventure/fantasy ever written.

  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
    Magic and Fantasy as never before.

  • Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
    War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

  • Awaydays by Kevin Sampson
    Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch on Steroids. Yes, I need an extra.
06. What are the 5 book characters that have meant a lot to you or that you particularly enjoyed or relate to?
  • Atticus Finch (To Kill A Mockingbird)
    I want to be Atticus Finch when I grow up. :D

  • Tyler Durden (Fight Club)
    The one from the Dark side.

  • Michael Corleone (The Godfather)
    My favorite Sicilian.

  • Frodo Baggins (The Lord of the Rings)
    The hobbit who became an elf.

  • Jake Weber (Faraway Places)
    I want to perceive life like Jake Weber. Everything is an Illusion. Haji Baba and Geronimo. Read the book to know what I am talking about.

  • Hari and Ryan (Five Point Someone)
    I am kind of like Hari. I want to be Ryan.
07. What book(s) caught your attention but you never had a chance to read?
  • All by Chuck Palahniuk, Tom Spanbauer, Amy Hempel, Hunter S. Thompson (Gonzo)

  • Some by William Shakespeare, Somerset Maugham

  • Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
    Elder days. Morgoth. Beren and Luthien. Beautiful.

  • American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
    Even a great movie can't justify a book.

  • A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
    The book most personal and close to the author. Weird story, drug abuse - I love that in a book.
08. What book(s) that you've owned for so long but never read?
  • Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
    I just can't read lenghty sentences. Give me some clipped sentences and choruses.

  • Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
    Pinkie, ahem! No can do.

  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
    Blade Runner. Got it for Rs.20. Surreal. Trying.
09. Favorite Reading Spots?
  • Bed/Lying down anywhere
  • Café (Black coffee and books, just perfect)
10. 5 favorite authors?
  • Tom Spanbauer
  • Chuck Palahniuk
  • J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Harper Lee
  • George Orwell
So there it is. Passion is in the details, people. Pushing this meme to Arshiya. Write some, sista.

July 01, 2006

Bed-Ridden Ranting

You do a lot when you are bed-ridden with a viral. You get up earlier than usual. You read a lot than usual because you are nowhere near the PC. You think. You think when you are eating. You eat consciously. You come up with new ideas, new conclusions about things that doesn’t matter. You abruptly become more thankful than your average. You are thankful to Steve Jobs for the iPod, for letting you indulge in R.E.M.’s Sweetness Follows repeatedly. These songs change with your mood, seriously. You are thankful to Jo Rowling for writing a much-needed dark tale; at least some kids would read, including this 23-year old “boy”. You are also thankful to Chuck Palahniuk and Harper Lee for bringing gore and beauty during this (hopefully) short outing on the bed. This also brings to your mind that some people really think that reading books is uncool and only geeks do that. You digress, since that’s not the case. You are thankful to the ONE EVERYWHERE for bestowing people around you who don’t implicitly worry about your slackness. “I always wonder why did we bother” is gratefully not your case, although “distance from one” did work out few years ago.

Your medication includes 4 different drugs, two of which are anti-histamine and moderately sedative, which is bad since you are not able to indulge. The sedatives start to rock you to sleep in a quarter or so of an hour. The only downside is the fuckin’ weakness. You hate being weak even as you are all raving about Superman Returns and have already got the tickets for a Sunday afternoon show – IMAX 3D. Catch you there, hopefully, F-13. This is the second movie where you got the seat #13, M:I:3 rocked, hoping the same from Bryan Singer.