The mental me

Funny how the mind works.



At first it is like the seed, waiting to grow, to learn more, and never forget what is learnt. That is when the child learns to walk, talk and do all the other basic stuff. The world would be a fun'ner' place to live in if it were the other way wouldn't it? Man and baby learning to walk at the same time??

Then the kid gets bigger and so does the mind. It starts knowing. There's a difference knowledge from learning and jus..downright knowing. It knows how the way of the world is. But yet keeps the innocence intact. The child enters his teens.

The mind is at its prime. It hasn't yet lost its ability to remember stuff, either e=mc2 or the pretty-girl-at-the-coffee-place's number. It is a whirlwind of thoughts, each striving to be prominent. Direction plays an important role here.

Funny how the mind decides against something, but spends a whole lot of time contemplating it. Funny how the mind which cannot be sothed by silence is soothed by the reverberating guitar chords.
Funny how the mind gets angry at the ones it loves and instantly forgives them because the thought that it loves them so much not to allow hate to barge in, strikes it.
Funny how the mind finds that last drop of honey on the thumb tastier than the whole bottle.
Funny how the mind suddenly feels like bringing up memories which it thought were long lost, just to dwell in them for that extra minute it never got.
Funny how the mind which has just seen transformers and found that an exhilarating experience also studies z transforms and convolutions and finds that interesting too.
Funny how the mind feels like blogging when it has an internal to face tomorrow.....
Funnier how it plans to listen to blackfield after closing this window.
Funny how the mind which is said to be idle is nothing but that.
Funny how the mind works.

Who..What..When..Where... TAG!!

1.(a) Pick out a scar you have.

One on my forehead, not shaped like the lightning bolt however weird your imagination is.

(b)and explain how you got it?

Brother hit me and ran. I charged at him like a bull. Did not notice the doormat and the fact that he dodged. Slipped and hit my forehead smack on the edge of a wall. Blood spurted like in the low budget horror movies.

2.What does your phone look like?

A cuboidal mass of black and grey with a 120x120 lcd screen and a few very scratched up keys resulting from the many trips from the hand to the floor.

3. What is on the walls of your bedroom?

One clock, which is ten minutes slow, One portrait bought, one portrait drawn by my brother, and a lizrd (now)

4. What is your current desktop picture?

Inspired by "The Loop"

5. Do you believe in gay marriage?
I don't have anything to do with them. If they like it.. fine! Have a gay anniversary!!

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
To talk about my entire life right from my childhood with someone.

7. What time were you born?

I did not know to see time then :P

8. Are your parents still together?
Yep. And they'll remain that way.

9. Last person who made you cry?

Jonathan Stroud

10. What is you favorite perfume/cologne?
Eau de Cologne used as aftershave

11. What kind of hair/eye color do you like in the opposite sex?
What comes naturally.

12. What are you listening to?
My fingers hitting the keyboard

13. Do you get scared of the dark?
Sometimes.

14. Do you like pain killers?
Do YOU like painkillers??

15. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
Naah..

16. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?
Wai-wai noodles

17. Who was the last person you made mad?
Mom.

18. Is anyone in love with you?
Wish that person would tell me :)

I tag sathya, upasana, athos, surya and shiva. Please do blog sometime :|

I've returned to do WHAT I LIKE BEST

Yep sorry for all the cobwebs that got accumulated here.(Sorry only for those who bothered to visit me int he past ten days. :| ) It's been one helluva week what with Let's Talk (A five day workshop on GD conducted by the English Literary Society of which, I'm proud to say, a member of) turning out to be a whopping success and me returning to the world of blogging. But not without pressure, mind you! I was tagged twice and now I sit down to do them. As the title says...

What I Like best :

*To stay in bed for the recursive five minutes whenever woken up in the morning.

*Sit tooth brush in hand till the thought that you've been sitting idle for God knows how long strike you and you wake up realising that you've spilled paste on your shirt.

*Stare at the wall, outside the window when I'm bored.

*Write rhyming poetry.

*Eat wai-wai noodles after getting drenched in rain.

*Masala sundal at the beach in a paper cone with wet and muddy pants!

*A walk back home, alone under the shade of trees befuddling passers-by with my singing skills.

*The good feeling when you turn the last page of a book.

*The "pull arippu" up your spine when "jaya he..jaya he" part of our national anthem is sung.

*To laugh until your stomach hurts and your eyes stream and you like a stupid duffer surrounded by similar people!

*The bus ride home, in the window seat, asleep to the world around.

*Thayir sadam with pickles.

*Thayir sadam with mor molagai

*Thayir sadam with _ _ _ _ _ _ (Anything that is not sweet)

*Anything to do with dogs

*Watching a common interest on TV with dad and mom. And then talking about it later.

*Looking back. Literally (On the road, you know when :D), and figuratively.

*Spending a whole hour eating a cream bun at RV, with ten other people

*Smiling and seeing others smile.

*Taking photographs and saying to yourself "Damn, you're not bad!"

*The times when I realise I've eaten enough but grab the nearest cup when desserts are served.

*Conversations on the phone which last for an hour or so.

*Pulling people's legs (Those who don't take it seriously, mind you! Phew I've had the experience of teasing someone who did not like it and he almost punched me. And he was my classmate!!) and then joining forces and pulling somebody else :D

*This past week.

*Being dumbstruck after a phenomenal movie ends.

*Badgering mom for breakfast/lunch/dinner.

*Talks with people like Shreyas, Hari Babu, ET, Nithya which range from downright dumb to absolutely philosophical and thoughtful.

*The school gang meet.

*Photo sharing.

*Sharing lunch with people.

*The usual impromptu meetups at ARC with surya and shivram

*And all other stuff which I like best...

*And yea, My life.

I tag annette.

A long time coming . . .

He strode out onto the pitch and looked up at the skies. It was a bright sunny day. His captain had made the right decision of batting first. The pitch was perfect too. He took guard at the wicket


. The bowler steamed in fast. A quick jab and he was off. One in one ball. The perfect start to the test match. But then the going became slow. He scored at around 1 run for every four balls. However slow he was he would not throw his wicket away. He scored no boundary. The most he scored of one ball was a solitary three. From then on it was a torrent of dot balls interrupted by a few sparse two's and the frequently intermittent singles. He took 50 balls to enter double digits. That wasn't that bad considering it was a test match and it sounded good even, because it was a batsman's nightmare. However the next 30 balls were more productive for the batsman. The moisture in the pitch seemed to have dried up. He moved from 10 to 22 in just another thirty balls. Another hundred balls passed seeing him slowly incrementing his score till he stood at 46 n.o. at the end of day one having faced 163 balls.

The next day dawned. It seemed bright enough. He got off to a wonderful start scoring of his first ball of the day!! He needed just three more for the half century. But that took another 15 balls coming. A relieved and exultant batsman lifted his bat to the stands. So far so good. He had stood his ground though it had been tough conditions. But the job wasn't over. A hundred more balls passed with him just adding 17 more runs to his total. His father's birthday had just gotten over.

He swiftly got past his next milestone. 75 runs in his first ever inning and he was still not even a bit tired. He swiftly moved into his eighties and into the nineties as well in the same time.
Now the nerves started jangling. His score was 99 n.o (397 balls). It had been the best effort of his life. And he was determined not to let it slip. He faced the 398th ball with an apple stuck in his throat. He put his front foot down. MISTAKE. The ball headed for his head. Had he not ducked fast he would have thought he'd been in vegas. He tried to swallow the apple but it just got bigger. 399th ball came up. His bat was not steady. But the bowler was. Every step of his was amplified ten times over in the heartbeat of the batsman. He released the ball. Whew! Wide of the stumps. He let it go. He calmed himself. He tried swallowing the apple again. No. It wouldn't budge. He walked a few steps from the crease. Closed his eyes and let the wind dry the sweat away. Then as though he knew it all along he spat the apple out. His hands were steady.

The bowler ran up. Released the ball. The ball inched towards the batsman (Slow motion!) It bounced. But he had not anticipated the fact that the batsman was two steps down the track. So the intended good length ball ended up being a half volley.

The scoreboard read :


An Idle Mind --------- 100* (400)

Surreal days

I enqueued some music in win-amp on my computer, and I realized it has been 8 days since I did that last time.


I also realized that I had not visited any blog page for the last two days. That is a record in my standards.

Ever since July second half started, I always found myself playing Hide and seek with time and I somehow I always ended up being the catcher. I was never a good catcher even back when I was little. First the conference came. Next the internals came. Immediately ELS came. But with all of 'em came parts of life I've never experienced before.

Conference - MCed first time in my life.(Formally, that is.)
Internals - Guess what??
ELS- Now that's a big story.

I've never been this busy in my entire life. We had to prepare for an Independence day program which we were informed of only 5 days before independence day. We had to campaign for Let's Talk which starts in a week. We had helluva lot of records to write and the work just increases exponentially only when you least want it to come.

But once you finish them, that felling, THAT feeling is SOMETHING. A happiness. A responsibility given to you and you have taken care of it excellently, be it small, be it big.
I feel as though I'm a part of somebody's life, with all the same people but time moves fast only for you. Niveditha (One of my best friends) said,"You know sharan, I haven't been close to this busy in my life. I feel so happy that I'm trusted with work!" (The reason people detest ELS is obscure as of now. Some generally hate guys and girls beings together, being friends, doing work and having fun. To them, it is just consorting with the devil. I'll gladly go on a hunt for the ugliest looking rat in this world, catch it and shove its bare ass up the noses of people who hate the ELS for that.

Today I bunked morning first hour just because I was blissfully late by 15 minutes. I was not in the mood to explain. Went straight to the IM canteen, had coffee under the trees. Got 8 alpenliebes because he did not have 4 rs change. Sent a message to people asking them to inform when first hour gets over. It was the first time was completely prepared or a lab class. The smoothest lab class ever. Then I ate to my satisfaction after two days following a serious case of stomach unease. Had a great evening. I listened to my favorite songs for one and a half hours. It all came flooding back. I stepped through a trapdoor and back to my life, the tempo slowed down. Sanity came back. I visited blogs and commented on excellent pieces of writing I had missed. I went home early after 2 weeks. I sat down to blog. The blood flowed through my fingers.

Felt angry about certain narrow minded people.
Felt happy for the life I have and the people who star in it.
Felt like a warm cup of coffee with a coat of cream which has just been sipped by the prettiest caffeine junkie on this planet.
Felt like me again.

I am the all singing all dancing crap of this world...

The road not taken....

Wish I had something called wordspot or blogpress. But I will never desert my first protege..

first week of august..

The old gang (which still exists)

We happy happy happy..

Nice eh?? ( Objects in the mirror ARE closer than they appear!)

Birthday headbumps

Order in disorder


Gud ol' G2 (One yr old in fact :P)

The first row looks as though the dullest teacher came on stage..but then look towards the back!!

Never knew so many could fit in three benches did you??

G2's angels!!

Enlightened

I've always loved dogs, the bundles of joy who prove that happiness is contagious. And so naturally I love wolves too, the ancestors of dogs. (Actually the animorphs say it is "the chee" who are the ancestors of dogs and pieces of their hearts are in the wolves). I associate the term " liquid power" with a wolf whenever I see a picture or one in person.(the photo is of a pack i shot at the darjeeling zoo). The sheer cool with which it stares at you makes you want to bow down before him. And recently Annette gave me a book "The Loop" by Nicholas Evans. I loved the quote she sent as an extract. So I got it from her a week back. A story of the circle in which men and wolves live and how in essence both are the same, the wolves even better in some ways.

"The scent of slaughter, some believe, can linger in a place for years. They say it lodges in the soil and is slowly sucked through coiling roots so that in time all that grows there, from the smallest lichen to the tallest tree, bears testimony.

Perhaps, as he moved silently down through the forest on that late afternoon, his summer-sleek back brushing lower limbs of pine and fir, the wolf sensed it. And perhaps this vestige of a rumor in his nostrils, that here a hundred years ago so many of his kind were killed, should have made him turn away.

Yet on and down he went.

He had set out the previous evening, leaving the others in the high country where even now, in July, there lingered spring flowers and patches of tired snow in gullies shy of the sun. He had headed north along a high ridge then turned east, following one of the winding rocky canyons that funneled the snowmelt down from the divide to the valleys and plains below. He had kept high, shunning the trails, especially those that ran along the water, where sometimes in this season there were humans. Even through the night, wherever it was possible, he had stayed below the timberline, edging the shadows, in a trot so effortless that his paws seemed to bounce without touching the ground. It was as though his journey had some special purpose.

When the sun rose, he stopped to drink, then found a shaded nook high among the sliprock and slept through the heat of the day.

Now, in this final descent to the valley, the going was more difficult. The forest floor was steep and tangled with blowdown, like tinder in some epic fireplace, and the wolf had to weave his way carefully among it. Sometimes he would double back and find a better route so as not to puncture the silence with the telltale snap of a dead branch. Here and there, the sun broke through the trees to make pools of vivid green foliage and these the wolf would always skirt.

He was a prime four-year-old, the alpha of the pack. He was long in the leg and almost a pure black, with just the faintest haze of gray along his flanks and at his throat and muzzle. Now and again he would pause and lower his head to sniff a bush or a tuft of grass, then lift his leg and make his mark, reclaiming this long-lost place as his own. At other times he would stop and tilt his nose to the air and his eyes would narrow and shine yellow as he read the scented messages that wafted on thermals from the valley below.

Once while doing this, he smelled something closer at hand and he turned his head and saw two white-tailed deer, mother and fawn, no more than a dozen yards away, frozen in a shaft of sunlight, watching him. He stared at them, connecting in an ancient communion that even the fawn understood. And for a long moment, all that moved were the spores and insects that spiraled and glinted above the deer's heads. Then, as if deer and insect were of equal consequence to a wolf, he looked up and again assessed the air.

From a mile and a half away came the mingled smells of the valley. Of cattle, dogs, the acrid tang of man's machines. And though he must have known, without ever being taught, the peril of such things, yet on again he went and down, the deer following him with inscrutable black eyes until he was lost among the trees.

The valley which the wolf was now entering ran some ten miles due east in a widening, glacial scoop toward the town of Hope. Its sides were ridged and thick with pine and, viewed from above, seemed to reach out like yearning arms to the great sunbleached plains that stretched from the town's eastern edge to the horizon and countless more beyond.

At its widest, from ridge to ridge, the valley was almost four miles wide. It was hardly perfect grazing land, though many had made a living from it and one or two grown rich. There was too much sage and too much rock and whenever the pasture seemed about to roll, some coulee or creek, choked with scrub and boulders, would gouge through and cut it off. Halfway down the valley, several of these creeks converged and formed the river which wound its way through stands of cottonwood to Hope and on from there to the Missouri.

All of this could be surveyed from where the wolf now stood. He was on a limestone crag that jutted from the trees like the prow of a fossilized ship. Below it, the land fell away sharply in a wedge-shaped scar of tumbled rock and, below that, both mountain and forest gave way grudgingly to pasture. A straggle of black cows and calves were grazing lazily at their shadows and beyond them, at the foot of the meadow, stood a small ranch house.

It had been built on elevated ground above the bend of a creek whose banks bristled with willow and chokecherry. There were barns to one side and white-fenced corrals. The house itself was of clapboard, freshly painted a deep oxblood. Along its southern side ran a porch that now, as the sun elbowed into the mountains, was bathed in a last throw of golden light. The windows along the porch had been opened wide and net curtains stirred in what passed for a breeze.

From somewhere inside floated the babble of a radio and maybe it was this that made it hard for whoever was at home to hear the crying of the baby. The dark blue buggy on the porch rocked a little and a pair of pink arms stretched, craving for attention from its rim.But no one came. And at last, distracted by the play of sunlight onhis hands and forearms, the baby gave up and began to cooinstead.

The only one who heard was the wolf."

-first few pages of the book.

Naturally, I loved the book. And so would anybody who loves simple english written in a beautiful manner. One of the books which connected with me entirely.

It is true that "The wolves are a part of nature and sometimes man forgets to be...."

Reflections..

Happiness is a good feeling.

Like what you feel when your hunger is sated by an excellent meal.


Like how you feel when it rains ever so slightly, the drops not even making a sound when the fall on your face .

Like how you feel when you hear one of your favorite songs and your mom comes shouting "11th time you've heard that continuously!! Atleast stop singing along!!".

Like how you feel when you start a session of "combined studies" and find yourself laughing till your stomach hurt

Like how you feel when you realise you'll never be lonely when you've got people like these around you.

Like how you'd feel when someone says he/she loves you

Like how you feel when your best friends greet you with a wide and stupid grin every morning, but it somehow looks so beautiful every single time

Like how you know someone will always be there for you but how it feels helluva lot better when someone says it out loud.

Like all the "big hugs" shared through IM, SMS, or physically

Like how you get caught in class for something and always find out that there's someone to give you company

Like how you think nobody could have had such a bad day, but someone comes along and cheers you up, and you think "Who?? Me?? A bad day?? You've got to be kidding me.."

Like how you share a single mentos with a friend.

Like how you some of you see F.R.I.E.N.D.S and some others see "Kanaa kaanum kaalangal" and you debate over which is better and it ends up with a drastic change in topic!

Like how you feel when you realise that exactly one year has passed since you've joined college and it is batch day.

Like how you feel when you realise that time has gone so fast. You feel so close yet you feel like you've met yesterday only.

Like how you feel when you know you have atleast three more years with the same silly, stupid, people but realise life will never be so beautiful without them...

To everyone who feels the same...