November 25th, 2008 by galadriel

SEV tagged me to write 6 random things about me. Here they are. Go read his blog for the rules. And I’m tagging the usual suspects - Rayshma, DDD, Preethi, Pixie.

- I cannot go to bed leaving dishes in the sink overnight. Now that shouldn’t have come as a surprise to you. Do you know me but at all?

- I always bite the nail on my right hand thumb before anything important. Usually, it’s before exams and I bite the nail off so deep that I invariably end up with a painful right hand especially when I need it to be most wieldy.

- I have a flair for languages. I taught myself how to read and write Tamil, since I was never educated in Chennai, so it wasn’t part of my school curriculum. I can speak at least as good, if not better Marathi than my Maharashtrian counterparts. Raj Thackeray, back off!! I can understand and read Kannada, I took French for about 2 years in junior college (yeah, I think I even topped the class in the subject, but don’t ask me anything now, I don’t even remember un peu).

- I always work my butt off to get what I want, and when I have it, I throw it away, knowing that the thrill was in proving that I could do it. It makes me end things on my terms, and walk away while I’m at the top.

- I need my bath water to be searing hot. I leave the cold shower knob almost unturned. Even in the summer.

- I have excessively dry skin. I needed to moisturize when I was in India, even during the summer. After coming here I moisturize twice a day in the summer with an intensive care lotion and during the winter I use baby oil (also twice a day).

Ok, you guys. I’m at work so I couldn’t link you up. Will do when I get home.

November 22nd, 2008 by galadriel

I read about this today. And then I remembered this. For all the tall claims we make of making new friends on blogs and social networking sites, it is a pity that such incidents should occur. And people, blog pals, friends, neighbors even, instead of stopping them, should actually encourage such things. What have we become? Have we started losing all the traits that were so innately human? Have we lost the ability to feel someone else’s pain? The feelings of compassion and sympathy that make us human beings, the ability to think, to sense, have we suddenly started losing them all? Is this the next stage of evolution? To me it seems like we are going back a step and becoming more animal.

Not one person watching the boy had the sense to alert someone? His family didn’t realize that he was depressed? No one in Megan’s household noticed that she was going through emotional stress? Have we all lost the ability to perceive danger? What happened to the so-called animal instinct? If animals can do it, and humans can’t what does that make us? And how is this different from photographers and news reporters who care more for their story than the suffering happening in front of them? We condemn such people don’t we?

Years and years ago, just after the Godhra incident, I saw a photograph in the newspaper of a woman having hung herself with her brother calling up their relatives to inform them about the incident, despair writ all over his face. That photograph won the Ramnath Goenka award for best photograph or something. The photographer stood next to the f(r)amed photo, with a smirk on his face after having received the award.  I remember thinking then, if I were that woman’s brother  would I have wanted this moment of my life, this instant of death and desertion to be immortalized in a photograph forever? And I am not even getting started on all the publicity the family must have had to endure, making a mockery of their daughter’s death? What I remember most is this gut-clenching feeling in my insides, a feeling of sinking hope that the world is really not getting better and people are not helping either. Reading about these events brought that same feeling back. Is that a silver lining? To know that I still feel?

Abraham Biggs didn’t kill himself. He was murdered. RIP.

P.S: On a much, MUCH lighter note, this website thinks I’m male. I don’t know how that’s a lighter note, but whatever.

Edited to add: Before I wrote this post they thought I was 62% male. I wonder what that means.

November 9th, 2008 by galadriel

Cary Brothers playing in the background, you have a weird sense of expectation intermingled with a sense of self doubt. You wonder if this was worth the wait. The frustration, the anger, the surrender. And then the resurrection. At what cost? To spend these lonely cold evenings alone? You read, you listen, you write. But nothing seems to fill the emptiness that threatens to consume you. You check the watch every so often, hoping, praying that it’s time to sleep. The clock seems stuck at 8.33. And what will sleep bring? You know you will sleep, eventually, because your body will overpower your thought. Which is what the purpose was anyway.

But while you wait for that to happen, you have no choice but to live with your thoughts. Thoughts that seem to be all around you, in your head, out of your body, ricocheting off the silent walls, creeping into your brain and draining you of any semblance of hope or happiness you might have left. You wonder why it has to be this hard. Why, after all these months of struggling to get here, now that you have it you wish you didn’t. You wish you had something better. Human nature. Never ceases to surprise you.

The clock is at 8.42 now. You are surprised that it took you this long to type out the few sentences above, even though your mind is flooding with thoughts. The pain, the longing, the solitude: how do you express what they are doing to you? How do you explain why it is that you made this particular choice? Does the alternative seem more appealing now? Certainly not. Logically it follows that you chose well. Then why is it leaving you feeling this lousy?

You pick up the phone. You want to call the one person you know will make you feel better. And yet you don’t. Because calling him will only serve to emphatically drive home what you already know.

It’s 10 minutes off 9. You decide to get something to eat because you need your body functioning normally if you want to get through this week. And then the phone rings. You smile. Because, after all, you wouldn’t have this feeling of pleasure and hope, of the joy of your next meeting if you hadn’t chosen this path.