Random Thoughts, Episode 2

1> Tom Hanks in the photo in one of my earlier posts regarding Forrest Gump eerily resembles Aamir Khan in Ghajini/Three Idiots (closest I can think of). Also, now that I have photo-shopped these two images together, the one of Gump sitting on the bench somehow reminds me more of the character of Mr. Bean (whom I religiously hate, even in the cartoon series), though I can't exactly make out why. Weird.

2> The shortest of naps are the ones generating the most interesting of dreams. 

Conclusive Evidence Activity: Read Come Again.. Or, Have I?

3> For some days now, I have been deliberating on a very interesting theory that there has been a link between the writer's block, well, blocking me and the last two years of my engineering that somehow culminated in me having only two posts each on my blog for the consecutive years 2010 and 2011. Total = 4. Was it because of:

a) About one-third of my last four semesters being spent in the volleyball court that the Electrical Department was so generous to bestow upon a bunch of sincere engineering brats who would do anything to avoid getting into the Department?

b) About another one-third being spent in numerous trips to the Cafe House, the FabLab, the stores, the Boat Club, Uttam Copiers, and Rajeev Electronics (with at least 60 minutes of staying time)?

c) About a last one-third being spent in the B.Tech Lab that was so dear to us Electrical peepul, where the word B.Tech was lavished upon with a meaning that has been fully done justice to by each and every person of the class, if I might proudly say, by boycotting every single thing meant to be done as a Final Year student, and doing exactly the opposite of it?

Note: These compulsorily included, every day: photography in weird poses - at a minimum of 3 photoes/student/day, playing Angry Birds (in my case, Titan Quest), scribbling idiotic messages on the chalkboard, burning up a minimum of 12 electronic components (if minor, less costly), and 6 (if major, more costly), Facebooking in the face of the poor professor who was unlucky enough to be present in the lab at that time, playing volleyball inside the lab with the door closed (FYI, glass door with wooden framework that possessed the sound-proofing capacity of a teacup) with a lecture going on in the adjacent classroom, and of course, playing volleyball in the court.

4> I miss volleyball. :(

5> However, when I spent one whole day sitting in my prestigious workstation, not doing a single bit of work, but going through a lot of my posts, and a lot of my drafts (which, by the way, are greater in number than my posts), on my Samsung Galaxy SL (of course I had to mention it somewhere! Do you think I would risk leaving out any opportunity to brag :P), I realized that my writing has changed. A lot. Not in essence, but in style. At core, it's still the carefree, wildly enthusiastic and a bit of a stupidly emotional soul writing, but the wrapper has metamorphosed to a more refined kind. If I have to use the word, mature. Also, have let go of the innumerable italics, bolds, underlines, caps, dots, punctuations and colloquial what-nots that I had compelled myself to use in my writings under the guise of assertion, thanks to well-worded advice from a couple of folk. (No, now do not go back to my earlier posts and check out how many exclamation marks my posts include :P) So, the involuntary block was actually a painfully slow makeover, I think.

6>  A Timeline on everything is not necessary. Sometimes, haphazardness is the key.

7> Linking Google+, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all the other hundred thousand accounts that each retarded entity (including me) on this earth possesses online is as easy as the pain in the ass it causes thereafter. It's just like sticking a poster on your forehead that says - "This is the address of my current residence, these are the exact locations of the money, the jewellery, and the documents of the assets I hold, this is the combination key of my locker that I so intelligently generated, please come and loot me." The only advantage is that, probably the chor will leave behind souvenirs in sympathy.

8> My office \m/ I won't say anything more, for after all, it is a publicly accessible blog. Maybe, some day in the future, when I am more courageous and less cowardly, you might hear more. (Hint: Watch out, 1.5 years from now.)

9> Random thoughts are too difficult to collect.

10> I just found out that me joining Twitter has had a significant effect on the length of my writings. Shorter words, shorter sentences, healthy keyboard. (Note: The word short in this context is inevitably defined as "in comparison to my earlier compositions".) 

Conclusive Evidence Activity: Determine the differences between Random Thoughts, Episode 1 and Episode 2.

Enough for now. But, the fingers will be hungry once again, soon.

Come Again.. Or, have I?

I have decided it's high time that I have kept ignoring my inclination towards expressing my completely irrelevant thoughts in the light of less important things (ex: work, office). :D Well, I was just going through the multitude of drafts in my blog that had collected alphabetical dust over the past few years, having never seen the light of the desert that is in the middle of nowhere. I found many that will soon come out, a bit dusted and toned, but there is one that I would like to put up, uncut now.

14/06/2009

The last week was one of the most bizarre I've encountered, in terms of night-time adventures. One of the rare few string of days during which I've gone to bed extremely early (around 10.30 - 11pm), and dreamt the most inexplicable of dreams. But yesterday night will take the cake, baker and his oven in the Department of the Unexplainable. Let me jot it down before it trickles away, and I’ll try to interpret it later.

Scene: My home, the place where I've been staying since 18 years. Now, it's very important to picturise the venue of this incident to take in the fantastically out-of the world nature of this dream. I stay on the 3rd floor of our measly three-storeyed building, and there's a couple more flights of stairs separating us from the terrace. Meaning, from our flat (no. 25), the terrace cannot be viewed directly, but which can be done from no. 28. There is a small square space before every flat, and similarly, before the entrance to the open roof area, enough to put a chair or two.

Time: Sunset, around 17:45 hours, and my granddad is sitting on an easy chair in the squarish space before flat no. 28, and staring on in front (exactly at what, a person can't see from behind unless they walk up to that level, combined with the fact that the door to the terrace was not exactly open). I, after finishing a yummy snack, came out to wash my hands (Yes, there was a wash basin outside the house, and yes, my mind has the capability of conjuring up just about anything :|) and saw grandpa sitting alone, so I just went by to sit with him and spend some time. He told me to take him up the the last flight of stairs towards the terrace, and when we reached there, he told me to completely open the half closed door, saying he wanted to show me something. I was on his left side, closer to the door, and when I opened it, what I saw could not be digested with jaw closed. It was one of the most mysterious sunsets of my life. 

I pushed the door and it slowly twirled on its rusty hinges, to reveal a brightly shining, perfectly normal, evening sun. Then, just as we were admiring its beauty, in about 5 seconds it turned into a just-about-to-go-down beautiful, golden orangish hue-giving off, calm, all-pervading, light sun. I looked on, mesmerised. But then, in the next 5 seconds, the colour of it swept off to reveal a shy sky blue from right to left! Just as my sluggish mind realized it had to register panic, the sun camouflaged itself into the light it itself gave off to the sky (making it light orange), and dark black spots started hovering in the sky, in the place where earlier the sun was visible, making it appear as if there was a black sun in the sky, with huge chunks torn apart from it, and the other remaining chunks started vibrating violently as if they wanted to be set free from the tortuously restricted circular sunspace. 

The next few seconds were so shocking that I almost fell over on grandpa’s easy chair; the black spots actually broke off from the space (as if someone had suddenly jerked off the invisible chains holding them down to the roundish prison) and flew off, leaving behind nothing but the slightly orangish sky. When they were breaking free, it appeared as if the spots were great, big black bats that had all but covered the sun, and they were now flying away into the horizon after gobbling it down. 

No sun, for a few minutes, and then the cycle kept repeating. And when I looked back to see the expression on grandpa's face, he had dozed off.

I stood there, perplexed. All the contentment that my post-nap snack had filled me with was gone. What does this mean? Did I just see a novel form of eclipse that has never been witnessed before? Perhaps, Bird Eclipse? :| 

*At this point, I woke up, covered in sweat, as if I had been the one doing all the flying, cursing the pillow for being too hard, at which point, I realized that my pillow had actually been a set of internship assignments. Sigh.*

Found quite a nice bit of thought in one of my unopened mails I was skimming through; never thought those endless forwards could be any fun! Here goes,

Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice!

Too lazy to change even the font size up there :P

WHY

...is it that when you sit down to write random thoughts, you never get a single one, no matter how hard you try to extract them from your snooker of a mind?

...does your intellectual rationalization of pain stay only till you are not left alone with yourself?

...does power make it feel deliciously content for people possessing it to wield it, just for the sake of wielding it?

...does your strongest point let you down in the most unexpected of places, but probably where it's quite verily needed?

...can people never live up to what they preach?

...do they preach?

...does there have to be a substantial difference between public opinion and professional?

...do your friends' takes on you matter, over your own? Or, do they?

...do you lose all known power of communication when...(Wait! Is that what's happening to me right now?)

...does having lunatic thoughts that you know no one could know you're having give you insane pleasure?

If you had to choose between Innovation and Joshi Vadewale, what would it be?

P.S. The privacy and limitedness of the last question are such that its technomics won't make more than a handful of people start. And even those who did might just give it the slip.
PPS: Those who weren't meant to get the last question can ignore the PS too.

Life

Beautifully wrapped up in the one line:

Men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever.

That’s your life for you. My life for me.

Because I am my life. And my life is me.

Errrrrr. That sounds quite lame, and weird, and a desperate attempt at poetry. But I just discovered the quaint analogy the line [from “The Brook” by Alfred Lord Tennyson] has with life and I’m reeling from the idea itself. And I turn extremely philosophical at such times. And at most of such times, I’m in no mood to elaborate. I expect my thoughts to jump out and plant themselves in others’ minds by telepathy. And at such times, if they don’t, then it’s incorrigibly irritating and I’m rock-convinced it’s just their unbelievable lack of insight and my inexpressible gain of logic. Those are the few times when I pity them. And glorify myself. And this is just such a time.

Another lame attempt, to my second year of whatever-I-came-to-do-and-whatever-I-am-doing :

Cheers to my first year,

Gone by in a pee,

Lows and lows (not highs and lows),

Bringing near-death to ME*.

Cheers to my second year

Come forth in glee,

I hope to god it’s lows and lows

But lows that get high on me**.

Here,

*ME = my academic life

**me=myself

Cheers

Random Thoughts, Episode 1

Okaaaay. So this is a random tag I picked up from The Randomiser. :)

And I picked it up for the complicated[U don't say!] reason that I've had sooo many fuller, more abstruse topics to write on this month, but I've just been too lazy to write. So I wanted to do justice to the blessed month of March. Atleast once. And in such a way that it would do justice to meself too.

Maybe I prefer thinking to writing. I say that because it goes something like this. Most of the times. Whenever I have a long, fruitful [ that's VERY important.] brainstorming session with myself, I promise myself I'll blog about it; and then, I move on to THINK about the writing part. In quite a reflexive sort of way. I think about how I have to take the pains of switching on my desktop, opening Word, or Notepad; writing, saving the document at intervals or risk losing everything to an unpredictable power cut, then doing the bloody spell-check [which gives weird substitutes for words like "li'l"...I get ill's, ill, lilt, lily, and lid's. I mean, even the just-born li'l pink one in mama's lap in the nasty disinfectant-smelling cubicle would deduce that "li'l" means "little". Not quite, but I just couldn't resist the funny statement. :D "Li'l" sounds just soo much more little!! Talk about phonetic symbolism. :D :D ], changing fonts, text colours, alignments, connecting to the LAN at the abysmal velocity my broadband has, and though my brainy neurons spew out things which are quite a thousand times worth all the tediousness, I still ultimately end up reckoning I'd rather just sleep over it.

That's what happened with Regatta; and what I now have is just a brilliant post on it. IN MY MIND. "The Spiritual Rendition Of Regatta'08 -by Miss Anuradha Ganesh." That was one of the three spiffing titles lined up.[I don't remember the other two.] That's exactly what happened with the dissection of my post before this post. Although practically speaking, that can be done later too. Granted that I don't keep on putting it off till eternity, of course.

Come to think about it, I have written some of my best posts in my mind; they could never make it to the material world with the same intensity. For by the time I have roused my tousled-up anatomy to do the many things prior to attacking the keyboard, the storm has stopped raging and become more inertial than sticky cream. The few vagaries I’ve haphazarded on these pages are mere GT imitations of what they were.

And can you believe it! I've yet again managed to drift away from the topic as smooth as silk! Random sure enough the thoughts are, random enough the write-up is, but random I had planned on putting it up in The Original Randomiser’s way[Bully for you, jd! ;) ], and random it ends up in MY ishtyle! wH0A!! Strange things lethargy can do to human beings. Maybe, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

But the tagged, I will be. For the sake of my blog, at least. :P

Random Thoughts - Episode 1

1> If YOU are a damn good writer, and MOST of your friends aren't, then U end up writing over-hyped testimonials for them [outta pure habit, more than anything else… just coz…well..U simply can’t seem to go beneath a certain level of writing u see :D]; and in return U get very humble ones, the whole procedure effectively making THEM sound more cooler[screw the double comparative! It still ain’t pun enough! ] than you, when in fact, it is quite the opposite. Believe me! You are in the drag here. :P

No offence meant, people! U know I just can't resist the sarcasm! :D

2> All significant application forms should have only two columns regarding NAME. First name.

And last name. Why do all the offices and institutions in MH rebel against me when I tell them I DON’T have a surname ?? Is it such a horrendous crime not to have one ?? Does Clause 172 of The IPC Bare Act, 1860 state that NOT having a last name pertaining to your hometown means you don’t have a hometown ?? Does that mean I originated out of emptiness ?!?! DARK MATTER ??????? WOW!!! I’m a cosmological miracle! :|

3> Why are people’s cell phones set to the silent mode and left lying around when U need to call them in life-threatening situations ?? I tell you, I’m gonna look up the IDEA helpbook one of these days and see if they have a suing facility for habitual overuse of emergency amenities.

4> Typing out in short-note form is soo much more hassle-free. You don’t need to figure out where the paragraphs are s’posed to start everytime.

5> Rediscovering things for yourself makes you feel so much more matterable. Substantive. Humble. Proud.

I mean..I could give you an example..which might sound quite childish..but it mattered the world to me. Atleast when I discovered it.

One of the most basic axioms of the most logical subject there can be: Mathematics. “Three non-collinear points determine a plane.” I always used to wonder [in 5th std.] what the heck it meant. I dunno if anyone else ever did, or I was the only one naive enough; but none of my friends ever mentioned it then, maybe coz they were just as mortified of being made a laughing stock of as a low-understanding-capacity-wala-blunderer as I was, and the professor was just as interested as a baboon would be in explaining it. Maybe he didn’t know it himself. Hardly matters. No one was game for him.

Drifting back, the point I used to mull upon was “Why the damn, THREE points? ONE point determines a plane too. Two too. ‘n’ number of points determine a plane as well as three. THEN WHY THREE MAN ???? And why NON-collinear??” And I sat and figured my head off for aeons. Everywhere. All the time. In the kitchen till the food graduated to an inevitable state of inedibility and I stomped off cursing the household for not providing me one of the basic needs of living in its most hygienic form. In the bathroom till all the water siphoned off, stimulating mom to shout her head off maniacally at the door, wanting to know if I had hung myself by the shower out of depression. I thought and thought till all I could see was a myriad of multi-coloured planes, revolving in front of my eyes…jeering away at me.. and the nerves in my cerebrum morphed into hordes of sticky points joining each other by crooked lines, resembling the jagged teeth of an Ice-Age giant; threatening to overwhelm my sanity if I didn’t agree straightaway with the three-point-plane. You’d think I was Archimedes caught in the climax of his career, just about to discover the Law of Buoyancy!

And then, one evening, in a similar state of haziness, unexpectedly, the full impact of the golden statement came crashing down upon me!! One point “convokes” a plane. Constitutes a plane. True. Two do too. But then, they might convoke MANY. But three “determine” a plane. A unique one. An entity. Four do too. True. And ‘n’ without doubt. But then again, they MIGHT NOT. THREE is the boss sure enough! The fine line between the only three probable cases. And then, came crashing down another indispensable truth. Language. The most powerful weapon mankind can possibly wield if he cares to. The difference one almighty word can make. Of life and death. Or, more euphemically put, a girl’s sanity mattered in this case. :D And believe me! With the bombardment of two apparently unrelated absurdly-obvious-once-u-realized-it-sort-of facts, on a temporarily-misaligned human system, I felt as euphoric as Archimedes did !!! I even shouted out “Eureka!” !!! Ahem! Unfortunately [or fortunately!], I wasn’t insane enough to do the physical act he did on impulse. I caught myself. Bless his bath sponge. :P

Point is: Rediscovery is just as heavenly as Discovery. After all, what matters is YOU. Life beckons you alone. You discovering it is as good as Archimedes discovering it. Hardly matters that he discovered it before U. In fact, if I had the authority, I would've penalised him on moral grounds for having deprived the rest of the earthlings the singular satisfaction of finding it out on their own. When U find it out for urself, U are subjected to all those lines of thought that he was subjected to; U understand the process of discovery. The complexity, YET the simplicity of the beauty, which is what matters. Which is what matters because, if U accept something just because it has been propagated by eminent thinkers, and has been verified by time-tested methods, its existence in your mind is radioactive; but if U know the reason behind the find, if U have experienced the minute dissection each and every aspect of the concept requires, if U have absorbed the topic illinoically; U will remember it for life. Coz it's YOURS now. It gets ingrained into you. It's just as simple as someone telling you that you'll never forget your alphabet! U gave it ur heart and soul; it gave U enlightenment. I know, I understand he circulated the idea for the timely well-being of mankind, revolutionising the world of physics alright; but still....... People don't realize the magnanimity of the find coz they are delighted enough to let others do the work. Coz they are so busy trying to avoid the trouble that they miss the sun. Coz they are lazy. Just as I am.

If YOU understand the secrets of life on your own, and revel in them, the world is ur game. If u don’t, nothing is.

6> I suck at short-note-writing!! Doesn’t point 5 seem as if it could’ve made an entire effing blogpost ?!!? Darn!

7> Darn again! Why can't I be more discrete ?! :|

8> I listened to Celine Dion crooning “ I am Alive” 7 times consecutively as I thought out on the the 7 odd points I typed above. Without realizing I did. Background music sort of. Was it pure co-incidence? Or was it that I could relate to something in the music, something so obscure that I hadn’t accounted for it before ??

9> Am I going perpetually crazy ?? I never was a Dion fan !!!!

10> I use too many exclamation marks. :|

11> And too many straight faces. (:|)

12> Well, now that I HAVE started, I can’t, and don’t wanna stop writing. And I realize it's just the getting-started-part which is tricky. Then the rhythm sustains itself. You can start with a single word and land up building an entire concept. Like the carbon-cycle. Against the laws of nature to pull out; but pull out I have to.

Cheers.

And P.S. If you think I write long whiny posts, I’d say you are blessed U haven’t seen half of it. I used to be the longest essay-writer in school. :D :D

For Starters...

Okay so here I go at last! My baby blog! I've alternately convinced and put myself off since the last season[3rd of Dec'07 to be precise] the stress of creating a blog, and more so the nagging necessity of maintaining it, but ultimately the victorious won! :D And here I am.

Basically, there are several reasons why I graced Blogger,the primary ones being a dawning tiresomeness towards putting pen to paper[I've had enough of THAT in the boardrooms!], bringing my typing speed up to scratch, making productive 'net' use of download periods[which otherwise shall be deemed 'net'ally illegal in this beautiful era of multitasking], plus,if I ever,EVER, find the time to read my own blog, a chance to refresh my abysmal memory[Modesty is a quality!], and more trivial things among others.

However, the most genuine reason i succumbed to the idea is the most intriguing of all.

A stitch in my side. Two. Stray threads hanging. However much I try to channel the formidable rush my thoughts are, they trickle away twice as fast. Not that they are of much use to anyone, just the vague randomness of a vaguer girl. Now there, now gone! One after the other, just swirl away, with me standing helplessly around, trying to gain control over my (very) OWN Goddamn mind! The need, the desperate urge, to express myself, not just, but in the best inconspicuous manner that is. I'm positive that will harbour diverse opinions-"blogs are public!", "you talk of privacy when its possible for the whole world to view it!"...but Possible,guys, is not a word I care to meddle with. The queerest thing about this queer,queer world is we[ME included!] love spying on ANY[be it Beckham, or the sweet nex'door] creature on the face of Earth, but offer it on a platter, and see the smiles drop off 'our' faces faster than mercury off a table! Kiss a guy behind a tree, and turn around to a sea of expectant-cum-prying eyes; kiss a guy in public, and turn around.......to a sea of pointed-cum-outraged eyes. Going public is the best way of keeping what you really wish to be private exactly that. PRIVATE. The very fact that it is open to all makes it fantastic to-be-least-bothered-about material. It is THERE. It ain't banned. So we can get hold of it anytime. And SO we don't get hold of it ANY TIME. Call it your 'personal diary', and you'll have people[esp. closer ones like parents, siblings, best friends] itching to have a go at it; tag it a blog, and they won't even know it exists! In conclusion, a blog's the best personal diary I could have presented myself. [Oops! Did I say Personal Diary?!?!] :D

Happy Reading [Hopefully!]

And oh[before it trickles away too!], I'd be most interested in any suggestions guys. Be generous!