Midnight and facebook do not go well together

You look at old profile pics of people and you wonder the stories behind them, wonder how they could always have been the assholes they are now, wonder if they had friends who liked them and who miss them, wonder if they went through the same heartbreaks you did, wonder who taught them to be the way they are now. You look at the profile pics of the people you hate, smiling and feeling loved, and you wonder....

Twenty things to do before you grow up (the feel better list)

This is not a list for responsible people. This is not a bucket list for the ambitious. This is not the typical list you make on your 21st bday/ new year/ after watching motivational movies/ when you enter college/ when you finish college/ after a birth/ after a death/ any important milestone in your life. This is the differently successful (no we'll not say it) list. Because, after all if you are gonna make mistakes (if they are mistakes), it might as well be now. And in the immortal words of Calvin's dad, "It builds character". Again this is not a list for responsible people. This is the loser's (There, said it) list.

1. Break a hand/leg/assorted body part or grossly disfigure yourself a day before an important social event.
2. Lose your wallet/handbag with your house keys, car keys, credit cards and/or passport in it.
3. Break your cellphone and/or drop it in a large body of water.
4. Get dumped. 
5. Have a one night stand with a guy you've never met before and whose last name you dont know.
6. Get trashed. Totally. Strip off your clothes and dance on the table.
7. Grow your own weed. Brew your own beer. Create your poison.
8. Accidentally set fire to your apartment.
9. Get a traffic ticket.
10. Lose your job for facebook-ing from work.
11. Fight with your best friend over a guy who doesnt deserve you.
12. Get an F. Screw up your GPA. Lose your fellowship.
13. Yell at your family. Walk out of home. And come back again.
14. Empty your checkings account in one day of shopping.
15. Stand up or get stood up by your date.
16. Fall for an online scam.
17. Lose a month's salary or more in Vegas.
18. Study all night for a test and then sleep through it.
19. Get suspended for getting into a fight.
20. Write an ugly mail to someone you once loved.

Doubtless there are several more. And doubtless I shall discover them soon and write a blog about them. If I've missed more, leave a comment and the list can continue over there.

All ye fellow faithful Castle fans

Now doesnt this look like the climax from Vettaiyadu Villaiyadu?

What the fricking frick was that??? Am I the only person in la-la land who thinks Castle is devolving into a predictable tamil movie. Seriously? Castle single handedly saves all of New York City from becoming the sweet spot for a mushroom cloud, he almost dies in a freezer and then miraculously lives again, saves Ryan and Esposito with Beckett's help and then saves Beckett with no one's help, solves cases that the NSA and some other hidden supersecret unheard of cogs in America's paranoid wheel couldnt, helps Beckett in her quest to lay her personal ghosts (which she has too many of) to rest AND manages to be the sensitive sweet chivalrous rich gentleman that every teenaged girl and elderly woman dreams off???? What were the writers thinking? What next? He wears tight red underwear and saves the world from a meteorite shower and gets back to the precint in time to cook dinner for Beckett??? And dont get me started on the part where the last letter a guy on the run would write to his ex-partner is that she should follow her heart to her true love. And the season finale!! Dude what was that??? Holy crap. All of season 3 was 1 big crap fest. Honestly, seasons 1 and 2 were much much MUCH better and much funnier and much more believable! What do I say now to the people who tease me for watching Castle. What can I answer. What reasonable reason can I give. Must not let it be known in public that I see Castle. Must not.

14th May 2011

Note to Readers: As you may probably have realized, my blog is undergoing an identity crisis as it tries to figure out what future path it has to take- a personal diary of random thoughts and rantings, a letter to friends in another place and time, a 'what not to do in grad school' guide,  a boy bashing forum or a selective coolness showcase to the selective few i want to either impress or piss off. In this confusing period, while it undertakes psychometric evaluations and career counselling, let us draw forth on our well of patience and understanding and give it room to explore its options with the hope that some day organization and structure shall be imposed on this chaotic child of thought.

Now for the customary paragraph on nostalgia. Walking back from a project discussion listening to stairway in heaven, I thought back of all the other times I have listened to this song in the last couple of months- curling up in the guest bed in my grandfather's house, crying into strange pillows over relationships lost and ended; walking home at twilight shaking with cold and the passion of the last few chords wondering if things would ever improve and if anything even matters; sitting in the library staring blankly at the laptop. Everytime I've wondered if I would reach this place where I am not, where I can be sure of what the next few days would hold, what the next few months would hold, searching for some certainty life wouldn't give. And now looking back, walking down nearly empty roads faintly smelling of perfumes and sounding of high heels on a Friday summer's night, the memories make me smile with acknowledgement. And gratitude. Storms are nicer looking back on.

Graduations happen all around me. Every weekend I see pictures of robes and hats and smiling happy faces on Facebook. And I feel so so jealous. Someday... someday.... 

I seem to play the "What was I doing this day last year?" game a lot these days. There is something comforting about summers. Something comforting and restful and full of hope. It makes you feel like you're a kid again- the little girl in grandma's house making up fantasy lands as the adults slept.

Its funny how much time you have to think nostalgic thoughts when you only have enough time to do your projects.

While we are on the topic of thinking inappropriate thoughts at inappropriate times, classes seem to stimulate more than their fair share of realizations these days. Just the other day, I was auditing an undergrad class when I realized that everyone else in the class had probably had sex. And that was enough to make me feel old and depressed the rest of the day. Even a good overdose of Cosmo tips after couldnt restore my mood. Graduate classes with their saturated Asian international student population are comforting. Undergrad classes with their over-inquisitive, hyper-energetic, hormone-driven teenage communities unnerve me. And incur in me a recurring need to check my hair for split ends.

I am all excited about visiting India in a couple of months. Already I am making plans in my head. My friends do their righteous best to not let me get too excited, but this time even their dampness cant kill my joy. At the same time, the prospect of seeing old friends scares me. Some people i am closer to now. Some people I can no longer relate to. Some people I'd rather not meet at all. I wonder how close reality will come to expectations, if ever it could. But we're still young enough to say, this has got to be the good life, this could really be the good life.

Sleep beckons. Dreams call. A nightwalker's tale pauses. And you, to you I will say goodnight.

Maya

To all my blog readers, I think it is time I owed an explanation. The last few months have been.... irritating to say the least. My mood was fluctuating on a daily basis, my confidence on an hourly basis. I could have drawn a statistical chart with the number of times I cried versus the time of the day. And I subjected you to my pain through my blog. Now that I have a job and the near future no longer seems as uncertain and shrouded in mists as it did till a couple of days ago, I think and I hope I will be happier. The last few months were some of the best in my life but the one fact that I didn’t have an internship was a lingering niggling itch in the back of my mind. Hopefully, I can be happy in peace from now on.

I was working on an internet draft that finally got submitted. And now there is a piece of internet paper with my name on it floating in the cloud. And like the ex-girlfriend character from the ‘Social Network’ says “what you write in the internet is written in ink” or something along that line, this will stay on forever, my work is eternal, my name shall ring through the corridors of history or atleast remain smudged in a corner of the wall. So a job offer and an internet draft later, my life seems much sunnier. Or maybe that is the California weather getting reflected in my mind as well.

The last few weeks have been a series of emotional lows. The grandpa I stayed with in Chicago passed away. It was a sad time for all of us. I wanted to go for his funeral but I couldn’t get the tickets on time. He opened his house to me when I was a stranger to the land and at a time when I was feeling alone and sad in the little world inside my head. I wish i could have said goodbye. My paternal grandpa managed to fracture his hand. So my parents’ plans of visiting me in LA got scrapped. My mom’s 50^th bday passed without me in it. It cut me up that I couldn’t do anything for her. A friend of mine is getting married in September. She insisted that I be present in her wedding. I wish people wouldn’t do that. Keep asking me when I’ll be coming and demanding that I do. It is very sweet of them and it makes me very happy that they miss me. But it is painful that I cant give them the answer they want and I want. I seem to have fought with every single one of my friends now, the ones here and the ones back in India. It makes me wonder how every one of them could be wrong about me. But I cant find anything wrong with anything I did with regard to them, so they must be. I’ve never been one for crying unnecessarily but the last few weeks have been too much even for me. I have cried in random classes, in the stairs leading up to my house, in the middle of the university grounds behind $5 dark sunglasses. I have felt betrayed and lost. And when a friend asked why she would possibly want to go back home when she has nothing to look forward to in India, I wondered too. But life goes on. And this aint no place for the weary kind. So you pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try.

On the brighter side, I have discovered a latent domestic goddess-liness within me. The day I screwed up my Intel interview, I made an awesome Chicken Saagwala (Chicken in spinach sauce). And I realize what gazillions of women have realized before me- that cooking calms me. It calms me and soothes me. The act of producing and giving, if only to yourself, helps correct a day’s worth of emptiness. I have also discovered a new song. If ever I survived last week, it was because of this. I havent been able to stop listening to it since. Bin Laden was killed. America celebrated. Castle released a new episode. And I am getting addicted to a new person to talk for hours with.

You might wonder what the title of the post has anything to do with it. But i think the fact that I am writing this post looking back, is testimony to one person who has always been there for me, regardless of the circumstances, unselfishly and with no hidden agenda. When i’ve felt utterly alone, when i’ve felt like the world i knew was collapsing over me, when i’ve felt happiness beyond measure, there was always one person who was there through it all, with me. If i were to audit how much i owe to the people in my life, she would need an entire book. And so, this part of my life shall be called....

Give me a world of hellos. A world without goodbyes.

It’s tough being an adult and dealing with adult problems and taking on adult responsibilities. Its tough to miss out on friends’ weddings. Its tough to deal with grandpa sized holes in the universe. Its tough to represent a family’s hopes and dreams. Its tough to have to smile and show up for project discussion meetings when life as you know it is imploding in on itself. Its tough to have to explain why you have to make the decisions you make when you’d rather not make them at all. Its tough to take it all and deal when all you want to do is shut out the world and sink into sleep.

Priorities shift and rise and fall. And crumble like dust under the traveller’s feet. And Life takes its course. And Time leads me, dancing in its wake. And I follow. With only faith and with music, and the salvations of everyday that keep us going.