Brain Freeze
Friday, December 31, 2004
New Year BlogHello 2005!
I hope you treat me much better than the previous year!
What do I want from this year? Loads of things...
1) WANT to bell the CAT. ...I. Seriously. Want. To. Do. Well. In. It!
2) In case I don't, a reasonably good campus placement
3) Pass all my labs! (scary thoughts keep entering my mind!)
Here are my resolutions for the year...
1) Be more serious from without.
2) Talk & smile much less! (weird resolution, but I NEED it!)
3) Pray more
4) Work hard to ahieve aim (1)!
Love
Shruti
Monday, December 27, 2004
And I have Pictures to Prove It!Today's the 28th of December.. my sister's sixth wedding anniversary.. She's 8 years elder to me and the "little voice of conscience" in my life. Most people have difficulty believing we are sisters when they compare our personalities. Half of it is erased when they see my niece, (heh) she's quite like me (yayy!) Achachan, (my brother-in-law) is someone everyone loves to know.
A lot of things happened since Christmas, some good, some great and some not quite...
Well firstly, my sister and her family landed in Trivandrum on 24th, so I get to see my niece regularly now. That's a barrel load of fun, and I am enjoying myself.
Christmas was okay.. Started off being lousy, then towards the end it was great.. So it's a nil-all win for me right now! Don't ask me to justify that sentence, it's way too hard to do!
26th December was what it was at! Sangam-2004 aka my school's reunion... 82 people showed up and though, the programs themselves were boring, we all had a fun time trying to recognise each other & exclaiming how much everyone had changed. Being in CET, I get to meet a lot of them, but it was terrific nevertheless.
So here are the pictures.. I can't wax lyrical, I am still exhausted...
This is what happens when you want girls to look ordered and neat, some of them get crammed in and the rest of us have all the palce in the world... Say CHEEZE!
The 70's walk, the 70's talk, the 70's moves and the 70's grooves... Where the hell are the 70's threads? *GO Flower Power!*
Yeah, the shamming on the guitar would have been more realistic if the hero here had both hands ON the instrument! *sigh*
The Backbench Boys (in their first ever concert).... Hope they have back up careers!
That's a whole lot of us with our old Physics teacher, Santhakumari ma'am. I think we overwhelmed her with the amount & volume of noise we generated. Her doctorate thesis will be on that...
Slightly late in the year for fireworks... nevertheless
Friday, December 24, 2004
Yuletide Cheer!It's a quarter past one, Christmas morning. The night is silent enough, but strangely doesn't feel holy! Almost 3 time zones behind us, Bethlehem is still seeing Christmas Eve.
About 4 years ago, in May of 2000, I made the pilgrimage: to the Holy Land of Israel, Palestine & Jordan. We still have a laminated picture of "Jerusalem Millennium", showing all the holy city of Jerusalem, and the Dome of the Rock dominating the landscape! (Incidentally, we bought the picture for a dollar, or 42 rupees from Cana and got it laminated for 350!)
I remember the day we landed in Jordan, we were supposed to visit Jericho en route to Tiberias, but the spectre of terrorism loomed large, a car bomb had exploded in the vicinity of the ancient city. So, we started off with floating in the Dead Sea and went off to Tiberias & the Sea of Galilea.
The third day, we set off for Bethlehem.. the birthplace of Jesus and the ancestral home of the House of David. (No need to groan. This blog IS about Bethlehem!)
Digressing a bit, Tel Aviv- Haifa are two of the prettiest cities I've seen. Haifa is the twin (port) city of Tel-Aviv and the Mediterranean Sea there is the bluest and the sands are very white. Tel Aviv houses most of the embassies, since Jerusalem, the actual capital of Israel is disputed land. Jerusalem is divided into parts according to who has authority over the land: Palestianians or Israelis... Jews, Muslims or Christians. The Via Del Rosa (Path of Sorrow) winds its way through the city and ends in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The ancient city of Jerusalem is walled and has 9 gates for entry, one of which, the Golden Gate is permanently closed and will only open on the Day of Judgement. The walls are pock-marked with the scars of shellfire.
For people who are acquainted with the Bible, it comes as mild surprise that Bethlehem is about 20 minutes away from Jerusalem. In fact, most of Israel is 3 hours away. The country is very small and is surrounded by hostile or cautious Arab nations. Their carrier, El-Al makes frequent changes in flight paths and never flies over Arab countries. Israel is massively armed and most of its youngsters are dressed in fatigues and hold a machine gun in their hands.
Bethlehem is a sleepy little town in Palestine proper. Most of the buildings in this part of the world are made of limestone. Bethlehem's chief attraction is, of course, the Basilica of Nativity. It lies on one end of the Manger Square. Surrounding the Manger Square are St. Catherine's church and Salladdin's Mosque.
The Basilica itself dates back to Byzantine times and the original floor is that of mosaic and was built over the Grotto where Jesus was born. It was reconstructed by Emperor Justinian. In AD 614, invading Persians came upon the Basilica, but did not destroy it because it had pictures of the Magi dressed in Persian costumes.
The surviving church looks like a fortress, mainly because the Crusaders rebuilt and repaired it. Meanwhile, invading Muslims soon overrun Israel. Salladdin turned all the churches into mosques by the simple expedient of adding a prayer niche facing Mecca. But, the Basilica of Nativity was again spared. Instead, he built a mosque at the opposite end of Manger Square. Looking at the doorway to the Basilica, we realise that it has been resized many times. The present doorway is 4 feet high and very narrow.It was reduced so that the Turks couldn't get in riding on their horses. This is why it is called "Door of Humility" because in order for someone to enter the temple he has to bent over.
The Basilica is under the control of the Greek Orthodox Church and the smell of incense permeates it's whole being. The Cave where Jesus was born can be reached by a flight of stairs. The Star of Nativity blazes on the floor of the cave, and candles burn around it.
The Star of Nativity is different from the Star of David, which is the traditional six-pointed star. (inverted triangles)
Next to the Basilica of Nativity is St. Catherine's Church. Here Rome celebrates Christmas with festive messes. One grotto of the Church is called the Grotto of Innocents, in memory of the infants killed by King Herod. Also there is St. Jerome's Grotto, where Bible was first translated into Latin by St. Jerome. (I vaguely remember a story involving a painting of St. Jerome and the skull!.. Let me Google!)
After intense Googling (whew).. Here is St Jerome's story!
For hundreds of years, St. Jerome has been a favorite subject for artists. Some artists chose to depict the saint as a hermit in the desert; others prefer to show him as a scholar in his study.
St. Jerome was a 4th century scholar who could speak, write, and read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He used his knowledge to translate the New Testament gospels and all books of the Old Testament into Latin, the language used by the educated elite. The project took him twenty years.
In both prints of St. Jerome, a LION keeps the scholar company. According to legend, the lion came limping up to St. Jerome when he lived as a hermit in the desert. Unafraid, St. Jerome carefully removed a thorn from the lion‘s paw. The grateful lion remained with the saint and became his loyal companion.
The skull that is shown in some prints, symbolises the brevity of life.
Hmm, not exactly the story I remember, which involved the skull talking!!
PS: The ice-creams in Israel are ace. They cost 1-2 shekels each and are irresistable. Good value for money!
Friday, December 17, 2004
Wedding Blues!One of the most wonderful things about being a Indian is that half the world (and his neighbour) is related to you in the "mamma ke patni ki dada ke padosi ka saala hain" way. Any given time, half of them will be in the process of being married. Of course, since you are such a close relation of theirs, your family will garner an invitation. For your mother, it's a wonderful idea, since it means she doesn't have to cook. For you... not so much...
This is what happens whenever I have to go see a wedding ceremony. I whine and moan, "But mamma, I want to stay home and watch 'Friends'/'Will & Grace'...". The retort to that invariably is "They have invited you personally as WELL"!
So, I have to drag myself to my 'wardrobe' to get a suitable costume.. err OUTFIT. (and you thought only the bride and groom had cold feet!) I open the door and all my clothes fall over me. "Gee, that could make selection SO much easier". I pick up the most 'zari'fied and red dress I can find off the floor, and stuff the rest into the shelf, just so that it would achieve the perfect landing the next time I open the door!
Ironing clothes in my house is one of the most adventurous things anyone can do. There's some sort of anti-magnetic field around my house that invariably ruins any iron (hehe! notice the pun?) that we buy. The present one (Philips, I may add) has frayed wires and a propensity to burn anything that does not come under the header: Thick cotton/Linen. Ironing anything that you might wear for a wedding (or as most people say MARRIAGE) is begging for punishment. The solution is, yell for mother!
So much for dressing up. Next, I have to practise that fixed smile that is going to come in useful soon enough. Off to the mirror. "too less teeth.. too much teeth...uhuh, face is looking like it's cracking..." Once the perfect smile has been practised, I go switch on the tv and lounge around. That's when my mother comes down, all clad in heavy silk. One look at me and it's time for her BP to hit 'very dangerous'. "SHRUTI.. Get up THIS instant and change your dress. You have completely crumpled it...." Well, that's fini for 'I am ready'!
Finally, the family is off for the wedding ceremony. *sniff* That's always so touching, except for the videographers shining their oh-so-dim-bulbs into your face for posterity. The shine off the bride's ornaments alone are enough to blind you temporarily. Then, of course, if you just attended an MOSC wedding, it pretty much means you will be standing for 2 hours, unless you are 80 years old and walk with the aid of a cane.
The church and the hall were you may legitimately stuff your face with food are often in 2 very different parts of the city. Which means you have to get out of the church just early enough to beat the rush, yet get in just as the hall is opened.
Then begins a long wait. 8 people sitting around a table with food placed before them, yet their mouths are gagged by courtesy. (We are only allowed to eat when the bride and groom turn up) Only to food,though, not to talk. This is when I tune off. I can't really say what the talk is about.
At about 1:30 pm, when the hunger pangs start to consume you and your thought is "grab the cutlets before anyone notices", the couple enter. Ceremony on stage.. Cut cake, light lamp, groom jokes (laugh dutifully at groom's joke), drink (eeyuch) milk, priest says grace, hungry hordes descend on feast like angry locusts.
It never fails, just as I start on the chicken leg, photographers turn up. With as much grace I can muster, I slowly lower my hand and start playing with my food with my head bowed down. ("Oh look at me, I don't eat anything they give for wedding feasts")
Hunger sated, all the people get up to leave. Close relatives you haven't met in, oh 17 years trot up and begin exclaiming on "How long it has been". The next sentence invariably is " You were this small when I saw you" *indicating an impossibly small length*
a) If I was that small when you last saw me, did you have specialised ultrasound to see me by?
b) How on earth could I STILL remember you then?
This is were the ismile practice comes in handy!
"Do you know me?" *big smile*
"Do you remember who I am?" *bigger smile*
"So when is it going to be your turn (*wink wink nudge nudge*) to get married?" *face cracking smile and hope that the questioner would sink through the ground and into the darkest corner of Hades where he/she belongs*
"You have your grandmother's face and height and your father's smile." Hey, that's GENETICS, I didn't STEAL them!!
By this time, I am dragging my mother by my hand as fast as she'll allow herself to be dragged. "Let's go go go go, before they ask me if I like babies..."
Yeah, yeah... Have a wonderful married life, guys!
And Gored and Kerryed.. okay that's just a REAAAALLY bad joke. I apologise!
Exams are over.. Finally!
Today, it was my fourth Sem Signals & Systems improvement. I am wondering why I even bothered. For the first time in my life, I didn't know what exactly was happening in ANY question in the paper. I kind of gave up in the middle and then used all my creative powers to the max.. Very satisfying.
CET is giving us 2 WHOLE days before sixth semester starts. "Gee, how very kind of them to give us a weekend off to relax". It will extend till the 24th, (why do they EVEN bother?).. and then of course. LAB exams!!!
Okay, now that I have completely bored whoever is on the receiving end of my schedule, I am going to sign off! Next blog WILL be interesting!!
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
I always keep my promises...Dear Manu
So, here is
"Something interesting"
Hope you won't have a need to complain again
Shruti
Monday, December 13, 2004
The Price of FameWhat I can't fathom.. Obssessive people who think that film stars "care" whether they have seen their films 100 times, (thereby making a crappy film a superhit), people who plaster pictures of cricket stars or pretty people all over the walls, fanatics (yeah.. diehard FANS) who waste time, money and energy on plastic people..
Okay, I won't be a hypocrite, I am a fan too.. of some books, I like some actors, I look upto successful people who have made a difference. But when it comes to mouthing (with a fake flutter of eyelashes) "Mother Teresa is my biggest role model", I say "Give me a BREAK!" and for good measure I might roll my eyes! Go ON, Prove it! Stay with poverty ridden souls, please don't spend the years after your reign, doing the jhatkas and matkas to some cheesy item number.. Plastic Barbie dolls and machi GI Joes are SO passe! And more pity to the poor idiots who idolise them!
On the flip side, I guess life in the celebrity circuit must not be not all hunky-dory.. Zero privacy at all times, cameras flashing, comments everyday and in every magazine, every single mistake you do amplified. The price of fame is heavy to pay, indeed.
Reality TV springs up attention seeking morons who desperately need their 15 seconds of fame! And of course, they're all SOO representative of the population. The women are all ex-cheerleaders/ dancers/ models/ other dumb profession, the men are unattractive clods who are models/ actos/ gay/ unempoyed/ unemployable and ALL of them are neurotic! Argh!! Some one put a stop to the foolishness plaguing this world! Restore some degree of normalcy!
Friday, December 10, 2004
Mind your LanguageHere's a rant. I am posting after quite a few days. There's a reason. Nothing has been happening in my life. No flying saucer has been spotted idling away above my terrace, noone has kidnapped me yet, and I certainly have not won the Nobel Prize for Literature.. Not even a minor storm...! That's kind of depressing!
What prompted me to take up the keyboard, (in a metaphorical sense) and type my usual quota of nonsense?
Well, for one, to inform certain people, that, in fact, I am NOT dead! Oh, you didn't have to groan THAT loud!!
Rub your noses in the fact that Exams were so-so!
Talk about my boring life....
Right now, I am reading the 4th part of the famous trilogy (!!) "HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Douglas Adams has the cynicism right down to an art. Marvin the Paranoid Android, if he were human, would be one of the depressed coves that slouch around, thinking about how truly sad their life is! (and whom we try to avoid best we can!)
"More than you can imagine," dreared Marvin. "My capacity for mental activity is as boundless as the infinite reaches of space itself. Except of course for my capacity for happiness"
Stomp, Stomp, he went.
"My capacity for happiness," he added "you could fit into a matchbox without taking the matches out first."
"Life, The Universe, And Everything: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
This almost-human outlook (except that his brain capacity is the size of a small planet) endears Marvin to the reader!
Besides reading HHGG, other activities that are engaging my free time are sleeping, seeing reality tv (the best kind right now) and dreaming!
Now we come to the crux of the whole matter.
One of the dangerous side-effects of commenting about any aspect of my very strange behaviour, is that I am very liable to write about it. So here are my thoughts about a comment I received some time ago!
The basic accusation was this:
I am trying to keep people from visiting my blog by making them constantly refer their Concise Oxford Dictionaries to find out what in the world I am saying!
This is my defence.
I was not aware of the fact that the first urge everyone has, when they see my 'creations' is to run for the nearest dictionary to find of what exactly the word, say "crux" means! Thank you for bringing it to my notice!
I never asked you to use (and abuse) the Concise Oxford Dictionary.. You're free to use Webster's, or Cambridge, or Random House or even the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary to clear your recurring doubts. I would recommend using an online resource like www.dictionary.com . It's easier to handle and saves on wear and tear of your feet, if you're as lazy as the archetypal 20 year old.. Oh wait... you might need that link RIGHT now! Go ahead! Click on it!
I plead guilty to two counts, though
1) of using starkly different construction to most people.
2) of trying to fit into one sentence, what could only be properly assimilated in three goes, thereby confusing anyone who reads it, till they either had to re-read the sentence to understand the meaning and context or giving up in despair of ever understanding the point I was trying to make with the whole mess! (like right now!)... I apologise!
The Thesarus is a marvellous, stupendous, excellent, magnificent, fantastic... book. But I really have used it only once. And what resulted from it was a poem of such a highbrow nature that I felt sick on reading it!
Any thoughts? Feel free to spit them out! Maybe my next blog would be about them!
Saturday, December 04, 2004
Veer Zaara MusingsFirst things first, one of my 'regular readers' (gawd! that sounds so pompous) has warned me:
"Any more poetry and I will not read your blog", and believe me, that was NOT a threat, it's just this nameless entity talking aloud to itself in order to retain what last vestiges of sanity it has after spending 10 minutes talking to me. Specialists agree, though, that talking to oneself is one of the first signs of impending madness! Note: If you find yourself banging your head against the wall, you've been warned, and I will NOT take any responsibilty for any such random acts of crackpot-ness!
So keeping in mind, that I have been asked NOT to rhyme, on pain of losing one reader, I will honour 'its' wishes. namely:
1) I will not rhyme (duh! Have YOU been listening?)
2) I will not divulge any information about it on my blog (Hence, the 'it').. So I will NOT be telling you the name of this person.. Aravind RS of 2nd year, Aeronautics, IIT Kharagpur!
3) I will write something interesting on my blog! (That could be a relative concept!)...
Anyway, I digress. The topic of today's blog is (fanfare please) Films!.. Yours truly headed off to see Veer-Zaara, on a wing of a whim, inspite of the very painful fact of an impending exam. ("Ahh who cares.".. refer to Rule#1 in 10 things I learnt at college) The theatre was, for the want of a better term, not the cream of the crop. Electricity was not in evidence for 10 minutes out of three hours. One of the most rivetting objects on screen was a nice little scratch in reel number 18 that kept switching from place to place, and face to face... It had the best time of all!
The film was timepass viewing. Whatever you say about Yash Chopra movies, these facts can't be debated:
1) His films have colour palettes you never knew existed.
2) Sarson da Khet, ghanne da "estem", Swiss da vich Alps and loads of rain ALWAYS make special appearances.
3) Weddings are "affairs" to be dreaded, but oh gosh! They sure DO look 'purdy'
4)Heroines are clad in feminine chiffon sarees and Men in snug sweaters AND a jacket in sub-zero temperatures. Must be the power of love that's keeping the girl warm..
5)A tight embrace is filmed over and over again... round and round goes the camera till the poor viewer is left dizzy and wants to alert the Mush Police for citations.
6)A train scene (or variations of following) is a must.. And it usually features hero and heroine walking away from each other and turning to look at each other at some point... Ahh! *blows nose* So touching!
7) By the end of the whole deal, you are pretty sure how it turns out... hand in hand, walking into the sunset. Ciao, suckers!
Kabhi tho samjha karo, yaar.. Main tumhe aise nahin chodne waali!
PS: IF you highlight this entire blog, hidden secrets could be revealed!
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