Chronicles of Part 2 Exams: The Results of the Toil

One always ends up learning something from life everyday, regardless of one's willingness or open mindedness. Like how simple it is to distract oneself. You can spend the entire day changing the look of your blog and then recreating widgets, you can spend nights watching Tashan, and if sleep does not come, you can always write a blogpost.

This template was not my first choice. I had selected a rather sad looking fish for an image and a dark blue background, something, I felt, which went with my image- sad and inconspicuous. But the fonts displeased me. They would not be inconspicuous. They were large, overbearing and completely dwarfed my poor sad fish, who was soon lost among the verbosity of the written words. So I bade goodbye to the fish and got these water droplets. Fiery yellows and oranges, loud, brash and blatant, everything I would not let my blog be. But I let it be so. For the one water droplet waiting there at the top, to cool off the heated shades someday when they rage too fiercely.

I kept my fish too. Look around, you may find it, a tiny red thing in a sea of blue amidst a sea of yellow. Sad and inconspicuous. The fish of the Fish Faced Follies. Does anyone realize the title makes no sense? That I am not referring to myself as fish faced. That it is there for the sake of alliteration. That Fishface is a tribute to college, the way ad libber is a tribute to school. Like milestones referring to what meant the most at one point of time.

It is curious that I chose a fish as a motif for the blog. I have never been very fond of fish the way Bengalis are usually fond of fish. Perhaps the most important role a fish ever played in my life before the blog was in Finding Nemo and as a Fish Fry.. A cow would have served better as a symbol. Not because I like consuming it, but because I am obsessed by them. I use them for self deprecations, for insults, as metaphors and examples. The literature in my mind is a cow dominated one. Sometimes, I feel my rather surprising crush on Karan Johar evolved from the fact that I had recently studied about a cow breed known as the Swiss-Karan and had immediately associated it to DDLJ (Cow - Swiss-Karan - Switzerland - DDLJ - Karan Johar). But a fish it was and a fish it is. If I ever make another blog, it will have lobsters. No, I am not fond of lobsters much either, either as food or as entertainment. I think the only food I really like is Begun bhaja and Brinjal does not attract me as a blog motif, purple as they may be.

While recently re-reading some of my blog posts, I realize that the same time last year, I may not have been a brilliant blogger, but I was a happy one. Lately, my posts seem to be rather depressing and doom tainted. As I try to trace back the reasons, I receive a message announcing that results come out tomorrow. Stupid world, stupid university, stupid this-time-the-results-are-important-they-decide-your-stupid-masters. Last time, the results led to a multitude of blog posts. This time, they just lead to incessant brooding, insecurity, an irritable temper, loss of friends, and a probable heart attack. Of course, they also include nightmares where my HoD insults me in front of everyone for failing everything, where my results are not published to save the country humiliation for producing an imbecile like me, where everyone refuses to speak to me, where I am socially boycotted. Sometimes, I think, I perhaps am a little paranoid where results are concerned.

Someday, I may have to accept the fact that results are things beyond my control. That I study under a despot University with whimsical examiners who thinking making paper boats out of exam papers are fun. That if I gave a horrible exam, I may get horrible marks and I will deserve them. Right now, all I know is that my results come out tomorrow and if I do not do well, nothing untoward may happen, but it may mean a end to a lot of things. Perhaps more nightmares. It is always results. Never ghosts, never tigers, never parents, never crushes. I do not prioritize things well.

I will now go back to a sleepless night and a fear laden morning. I will go back to what promises to be the most devastating site since my Hindi paper in class seven. I will go back to listening to Kung Fu Fighting to remove depressing thoughts. Perhaps watch The Graduate on Sony Pix. Brood more on a future which seems bleaker than ever.

The world is a very damned place to live in.

Read more...

War and Peace

"Once upon a Time," says my Grandfather at story hour, " we had a curfew. This was even before your parents were born. I was a young boy then."

Look of disbelief in my face. Are not grandparents born silverhaired and wrinkled?

"Back in our days, we had real curfews. Lasting for hours, with armed policemen, ordered to shoot on sight. No newspapermen to warn us about numbers to call if one falls sick. Back then, if you fell sick, you waited. You could recover or you could die. The alternative was certain death. So people waited. People nowadays get it all on a platter. Yet they complain.

"We used to live on the first floor of an apartment building. Not an apartment in the truest sense though. They were two roomed flats. And we were eight brothers and sisters. We were a bit hard pressed for space. Look at you. You insisted on a room of your own because you could not stay with your one sister in the same room without breaking into free-for-alls."

I have two cousins. Were all those brothers and sisters celibates? Or was my grandfather a black sheep and casted off from the family tree?

"On one those curfew nights, all was silent on the streets below. The girl living on the rooms above looked out of her window to see whether anyone was about. She was shot through the head. Her age? Possibly fifteen. Maybe fourteen. Definitely not more than sixteen. Her religion? Its more than sixty years now girlie, I do not think she cares anymore."

Tonight, I passed through all those areas war was declared in yesterday. The bus I took included sleeping men, lecherous men, blank faced women, absolutely no cute guys and me, trying to look like a sad faced Madonna (the Raphael version, not the pop star one). However, as soon as we entered Park Circus, everyone suddenly got alert. Eyes began to search the roads, stripping it of all humility. What were we looking for? The illogical fear that someone might decide to stone us? Or, like the vulture every human is, for a remnant of the horror yesterday, one sign to show us how civilization died? But there was nothing. Just common men walking around for common businesses. The city had moved on. Not proudly, not with a head held high, but with sheer doggedness and force of will.

Which is how I will always identify the spirit of the city as. A bent backed sweeper, sweeping all signs of sins committed yesterday to create a cleaner place to live in. There is hopelessness, for one knows it will get dirtier during the course of the day, but, as always, there is no dearth of new beginnings. So the sweeper sweeps on, too proud to beg, too ashamed to forget, yet, too desperate to give up.

Yet, not a shard of broken glass...


Results come out this Monday. If you hear a silence on this website for more than a week, please assume I have gone on a self-induced coma.

Read more...

Reflections on Oranges, Death and Om Shanti Om

Its five months since my first University examination (yes, this will be a cribbing, moping, depressing post again). They have been an eventful five months. I have been hospitalized, fallen in love twice, have suffered an entire month of joyous celebrations, have convinced my parents that I actually have an ambition by sheer glib talk and have made a foolproof plan of bombing the University building. However, the people in charge of correcting my papers appear to be having an even more eventful time, for the results are still as far off now as they had been five months ago. And there has been not one day since these five months I have not moaned and groaned and wished death on myself. Yes, I have been a pretty depressing company. My university does that to you. For all I know, my examination answer sheets have been recycled as flyers in the Nandigram issue, used to make temporary refuges in the cyclone ravaged areas (bit of a prediction here) or crafted into jhalmuri containers. They may never have been checked. I may not exist in the University registers. Its the sheer madness of uncertainty which actually brings on the severe depression and the forewarnings to close relatives to buy something white this Puja.

It was while I was watching OSO when i suddenly realized what is the implication of death. No its not the reincarnation jazz. My very own personal view of the movie is that its sheer rubbish and watching Budhdha Mar Gaya is more fruitful. At least you know what you are watching will give you the headache of a lifetime. But it did give me food for thought. So I will be more kindly to the movie and agree it has a few amusing moments. And I do wish Shahrukh Khan's hairdresser has that baby and gives him the damned hair cut already. He is beginning to look like a mop.

Death, I realized, is not just the end of troubles, its the end. A simple end of everything you know, wish, love, think and experience. Its not a forced removal of the future, its the discontinuity of the present. The end of the sheer excitement of existence. When I die, it just would not be the things I am looking forward to I would losing out on, even if they are rather nice things like finally getting to watch all the F.R.I.E.N.D.S. episodes, actually watch the last episode of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, know why Kyle XY has no bellybutton (I am thinking I watch too much TV), marrying Johnny Depp, and, of course, see how I finally turn out.

But there is so much more to life right now. There are some lovely things to live for even if Johnny Depp never finds me maddeningly attractive. (This post is just another way to convince myself that life is not all about getting a first class, bear with me). So I began listing out all the reasons I enjoy just being alive for. Here is a bit from the last revised draft

• Oranges : They mark the beginning of winter for me, my favourite season. What is winter if not spent on some rooftop, soaking in the afternoon sun, eating orange after orange and doing Maths? (This actually goes in good points about High School. Nowadays, I do maths with the radio on, snuggled in rugs, with mugs of coffee surrounding me).
• Mathematics : Much as I hate the subject, I love the organization which comes with it. It appeals to my messy self like a spirit finite calling to the infinite (I do not know what that means). It has begun affecting my writing style. Now whatever I write has to be bulleted. Its by sheer force of will power that I do not add footnotes.
• Mosaic floors: They have all these small stones where, if you squint slightly, you can actually make out faces. Marble floors are cold, inhumane things which provide us with no imaginary human company. When I have a home of my own, I will keep the marble floors and get a puppy. That, I think, will be slightly less mad.
• A.R. Rahman
• Chalk: I eat them. More accurately, I nibble them. I find the dry texture fascinating, despite the fact I often choke on them. Of course, I mean white chalks. Coloured chalks have a weird bitter taste.

So there you go University Examiners, even if you fail me now, I still win.

You have not broken me.

Yet.

As a byword, in case you watched OSO, they show SRK's reincarnated self was afraid of fire because he had died in a fire. I am afraid of

• fire
• water
• ghosts
• heights
• dogs
  

I am guessing in my previous birth, I died when the ghost of a dog, blazed in flames, attacked me on a rooftop, from where I was forced to jump, falling right in to the middle of a swimming pool where I drowned. Only then do all my rational fears make sense.

Read more...

Because I am Not Sleepy

This post is about nothing. It has no literary value whatsoever. No opinion will ever be dictated here. I probably should be sleeping while I type this, but I do not care. Let dark circles remain a permanent feature of my physical attributes. I will show them they are not everything.

Love is a weird thing. Here you are, thinking there is no man on earth who could be everything you wish him to be (which includes having the guts to dance on the roof of a train and be a criminal mastermind) and then suddenly you see him serenading Audrey Hepburn. Life suddenly becomes topsy-turvy. And anyone who suggests this is a school girl crush, may you get the Wagga Wagga disease.
Kolkata buses have many faults. But no one could label them dull. From banters between a fisherwoman and the conductor to free-for-alls, they never lack the human element of comedy. However, the government thinks otherwise. What with too many passengers being dragged to depots because they fall asleep on long bus rides and snore past their stops, they decided not to risk the unpredictable presence of over sensitive passengers and went and added radios. They possibly voted for television firstly, but what with the universal demand for soaps clashing with the fact that they are mostly R-rated, they decided on the radio, where the most harmful thing for children's ears would be the Bula-di advertisements. But since everyone knows them and can recite them backwards, word- perfect, that was not much of a scare.
(BTW, what is it with minibuses and Big FM? Has Mukesh Ambani taken over RT-72 bus? Is a chain of buses the next big thing he wishes to gift his wife after that joke of a jet plane?)

So here was I, one sad Friday afternoon, dragging my sorry self to a Statistics class, pondering on the meaning of life when the friendly, neighborhood radio decided to play the title track of Bhul Bhulaiya again, for what I could make out, the fifth time in the hour. That was when I realized how desperately I was in love. For Gregory Peck materialized in front of me singing that very song, for ME!!! For the next five minutes, i gazed openmouthed at the conductor, for Peck always seemed to hang around him, resurrected from death, lip syncing a pseudo-rap song from a Hindi movie, all because I have a wild imagination and have watched DDLJ absolutely too many times.

I could not concentrate much on my tuition either. Peck seemed to hang around a lot near my teacher's left ear, just looking in that heart warming manner of his.

As if I do not already have enough reasons to quit bothering to educate myself further.

I still do not feel sleepy. I might prolong this post a bit more. I wonder how many of my blogrollers are busy deleting my link.

People who have ever loved Mathematics might appreciate this. What with too many late nights trying to deduce why a particular question was taking you three months to solve and was a possible contender in next year's examination, the subject tends to overcome your senses. You live, breath and feel Maths. I went a step ahead, I started walking Maths.

The area I live in has islands. They are the names for circular edifices at every crossroad, with shrubberies in them. If the following picture belonged to wikimapia (it does not, its a Palit original), it would show islands like this.



Yes, slightly messy. So was Picasso.

Anyway, here is a crossroad, many cars, its late in the evening, Spiderman here is a figment of my imagination and there I am, in the right hand corner lower footpath, waiting there for fifteen minutes. All because I wanted to reach my destination by taking a path which was tangent to the island.

Given,
OP is the radius, not that it matters.
The red star shows my desired destination.
Drivers do not like me. I am a bad pedestrian.

Required to find:
A tangent which does not kill me.

I actually went to and fro the footpaths, around eleven times, till I found the right tangent, starting somewhere two meters away from my starting position.
Also, the angle alpha signifies nothing. I have forgotten what two tangents do when they intersect. Probably start a family of baby tangents and eventually end up getting divorced, but by then, I was home.

Ah, the first glimmers of sleepiness. Let the end be now.

Read more...

Ode to Too Many Failed Attempts to Solve an *expletive* Maths Question

Staring out of the window,
At the lone light, struggling for existence,
Like the last beacon in a tempestuous gale,
At the silhouettes, endeavoring to recognize each.

At the last scrap of paper, with the futile attempts
Of an entire day, smudged here and there
With hopeless tears, betraying the anguish
Of a bitterly disillusioned mind.

Praying with the belief of an atheist,
Looking out at the night sky, with a new surge of angst,
Light breaks out, the firmament lightens slowly.
Dawn arrives.

How desperately do I need to sleep.

And I have yet not solved the sum.


I am a bitter woman. I can't rhyme words. I suck at poetry. I am sick of Mathematics. If you hate this poem, its perfectly reasonable. I hate it too.

Read more...