All smiles...

yiippeeeeee
that describes my mood today
euphoric
just came back to the insti while it was raining..got a little wet..came to my room which is soooo beautiful..(its has to be considering the pains i took to decorate it:) )..i have wall hangings..i have posters..i have cuuuuteee flowershaped yellow slips..a bright curtain..great bed..ganpati idols..a gentle breeze coming in..
what else does a gr8 room need:D:D:D..nd most of all its my ownnnnnn for 2 years now:)..gr8 feeling..tho i do find being alone a little odd..but il get used to it soon i guess:)..
so the result being i'm all smiles:):):):):)..i wish blogspot had smileys...just want to stay in da room and take in the beauty of the rains outside now..

The catcher in the rye

I dunno if most people have heard about this book..its been a very controversial book at the time it was released..written by J.D.Salinger..i still dont understand why the author wrote what he wrote..but still i loved the book..couldn't put it down once i started though not much made sense to me..but just putting some quotes here i loved..

“You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.”

"If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody. "

"If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible."

"I'm always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though" "I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it. "

"I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible. "

"People never notice anything."

"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to."--and I think thats what the author did..:D

PS:its finally raining here..yaayyyyyyyyy...mmmmuaaaahhh mumbai:)

Phir bhi dil hai hindustani

Recently when my cousin who lives in canada came to visit us, we ended up discussing on settling abroad and I heard myself telling her how I didn't want to settle abroad.

Even I did not know my views clearly until that moment.
I don't want to settle abroad as I don't want to sit in taxis playing english songs and kill the pani puri craving with burgers always.

Mindgames..

I was thinking today about the things I fear in life. There came out to be a lot of fears like losing my loved ones, people I love being angry with me, lizards, cockroaches etc. and one of the major fears was a situation in which people can read my mind and heart.

I realised that, thats the most private thing; your thoughts, your true opinions about people, your memories. Is this true for everyone? Or are there people who are dead frank with all they feel. Because I know am not.

Everyone's mind jumps from one cue to another uniquely. There are so many links to my thoughts--like books make me crave for coffee/tea and cake..rain always reminds me of mumbai..a particular person always makes me smile--and i would never want to reveal those links to anyone at all. I detest some people in my life(i have a vague feeling they know my true feelings) but sadly i can't say it to their face; but it wud be pretty bad for me if they came to read my thoughts :D..(waise not bad for me..just awkward..hehe)

Just imagine a situation when your mind gets a voice of it own.

You're sitting with some relatives saying"what a beautiful dress" and your mind blurts out "this gaudy dress makes you look even fatter than you are"

Or you are sitting with a classmate talking and suddenly your mind blurts out "why da hell are you such a flirt"

Or you're listenin to a friend talk and suddenly your mind starts snoring...zzzzzz...

:)))..hehe..thank god people cant read minds..and our minds dont have voices..

To kill a mockingbird

the cover page:) at least of the edition I read

Jem and Scout in the movie

I just happen to be plain lucky these summers to chance upon one good book after another:). Just finished To Kill a Mockingbird written by Harper Lee. Its a beautiful book:) and quite hard hitting as it shows the hypocrisy and prejudice of society through the eyes of an innocent 8 year old.The plot revolves around 2 siblings-jem and scout-elder bro and younger sis(maybe thats why i loved it even more:) ). The story is narrated by 8 year old Scout of her childhood, based in a sleepy town Maycomb, when the society was fraught with feelings of racism towards the blacks. It also covers the rough times faced by these kids when their father, a lawyer, is handed a case to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. Inspite of everyone knowing the fact that the black man was innocent, the jury pronounced him guilty, despite all the efforts put in by their father to save him. At one point in the book, Scout is baffled by one of her teachers who criticizes Hitler’s prejudice against Jews while indulging in her own prejudice against blacks. So, the book shows in a satirical way, how irrational adults can be, due to prejudice. It also makes you reflect upon the fact that children are the purest human beings, as they haven't been exposed to the evil in the world yet and thus have clear-cut concepts of what is fair and what is not. Putting some lines I liked below:

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of geting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. Its when you know you are licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see through it no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."--said by Atticus(father of jem and scout)

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember its a sin to kill a mockingbird."--Atticus

"I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar. I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until i was forced to."-- Scout

"..chewing gum cleaved to her palate and rendered her speechless."--reason a lady gave to Jem for not eating shewing gum :D

There is a movie on it also. I haven't watched it yet but I can bet it can never catch the essence of the book. And its a short book of 300 pages so an easy read also. Do try it:)

PS: The book won the pulitzer prize in 1961, an year after it was published.

Shantaram

I have been planning to put up this post for very long now. Happened to read shantaram in these summer holidays and have one word for it"awweessoooommeee". Its the best book I have read in quite a long time. The last book that impressed me this much was Godfather i think or maybe atlas shrugged. This book is one which doesn't lose its pace at any point. Full of action, drama, emotion. And the picture it paints is very colorful. Very vivid descriptions and amazing use of metaphors.aahh..il run out of adjectives but will not be able to praise the book enuf..
I loved the characterization also a lot..of khaderbhai, lee, abdullah tehari, lisa carter and of course karla, one of the most impressive characters(atleast in the initial part of the book). Another thing lovable in the book are the lines spoken by karla..which have inspired an earlier post also..:D so just putting some i liked here(most of them have been spoken by karla my all time favourite:D)..read them with a little attention..ull love them..:)

"The world and I are not on the speaking terms. The world tries to win
me back, but it doesn't work. I guess I'm just not the forgiving
type."

"It's my favourite place in the whole world, to be treated like dirt."

"The truth is a bully we all pretend to like."

"He is the kind of man who wears his sleeve on his heart."

"I could never respect a man who didn't have the good sense to be at
least a little afraid of me."

"Sometimes you have to surrender before you win."

"Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it."

"I'd only give you advice if I didn't care what happens to you."

"If fate doesn't make you laugh, then you just don't get the joke."

"I take everything personally- that's what being a person is all about."

"They look like monuments of something that died. Something very
unpopular.. like... human spirit, for example."

"Sometimes I think that's what heaven is- a place where everybody's
happy because nobody loves anybody else, ever."

"Happiness is a myth, it was invented to make us buy things."

"I don't know what frightens me more,the power that crushes us or our
endless ability to endure it."

"Mistakes are like bad loves, the more you learn from them, the more
you wish they'd never happened."

"It isn't a secret, unless keeping it hurts."

"Depression only happens to people who don't know how to be sad."

"Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting"

"The past reflects eternally between 2 mirrors:the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say"

"Poverty and pride are devoted blood brothers until one,always and inevitably, kills the other"

And for all those who are too lazy to devour the 900 something page book, there is a movie being made on it. But I suggest the book.

summer of '07

holidays finally nearing their end..juss another 10 days to go..i have enjoyed dese hols juss so much..best hols ever..so i thought they deserved a blog post..summer of '07 :D

they started with a family get together after quite some time..bhai me mama papa..livin in 3 diff cities..mum dad in one, me in another nd bhai in 3rd can be quite tiresome..we r together juss 2-3 times an year..and tat too for not more than 2-3 days at a stretch..so it was nice being together for almost a week for a change..

and den came my cousin sis from canada who is gettin married in august..she stayed wid us for a month..and i had a balll...really..had an elder sis for da first time..nd it felt gr8..felt especially nice to have company to talk late into da nite at home..was shoppin everday for a month i think..it was interesting..jewellary..wedding lehenga..wedding suit..sherwani..saris nd da rest..punjabi weddings are so grand really..i thnk dey must be leaving parents quite impoverished:D..

den after she left, i started reading and devoured awesome books this time like midnight's children, shantaram, 1984, 48 laws of power...by the way, those who havent read shantarm are really missing out on something(a blog on shantaram l8r).

also, all this time i started blogging wid new fervour and i think building this blog has been the most constructive thing i have done this summers..because it has given me sumthng to look forward too..i am totally smitten by it and love nurturing it..blogging dus being my fav daily activity:)

and den the gr8est trip ever to mussoorie and singapore..enjoyed just too much coz tried so many new things..and saw so many new places..made me feel i want to host a travel show one day:D:D hehe

and tomorrow, am going to my brothers place for a week ..gosh..cant believe he has his own place nd all..seems like yesterday we shared a room..aahh..ok am gettin senti..probably coz its my last day at home..im gonna miss mum nd dad..im gonna miss my house..am gonna miss my library(320 books at da recent count:D )..im gonna miss home food..nd am gonna miss da clean bathrooms:P:P..
bbye fairyland..aka palace..aka dreamworld..:(:(

eww..ewww..ewwww

I happened to watch a news report on India Tv today..which showed that the sheets that we get in the trains are hardly washed, inspite of them charging extra for it..i had seen the sheets lying on the station, but i always believed they must be washing them later..but it turns out that they are used by about 8-10 people before they are washed.. The only thing which is done to them is that they are ironed, so you can't tell that they havent been washed..Fake bills are shown of the washing and the officials hog the extra cash..
my reaction to this:ewwwwww...ewwwww....ewwww
am travelling in a night train day after tomorrow..:(:(:(:(
ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
bloody corruption

We're like assembled PCs

The credits normally go last , but i am putting them first. This blog is inpired by a conversation with my friend, nimit who was with me in school.
"Be what you want to be, Taking things the way they come,Nothing is as nice as fine in Paradise and sipping on Bacardi rum."

You can always be what you want to be. What you are today is not what you were at any point of time before. As we have all heard before, nothing is constant except change itself. Consciously or unconsciously, we keep changing ourselves continously. A habit here, a habit there. Changing to become a person that what we want to see ourselves as. That is the reason that from childhood to now, the no. of role models has been decreasing for us. For example, at one time i admired a family friend for the way she carried herself. Now i don't. Probably becauseI carry myself da same way now. At one time, i used to admire a close friend for her confidence. Now I don't, as I am tat confident myself. For example, one of my friends now signs off in mails as her bf used to, wid da same exclamatory expression i mean. Some people may call that aping, but thats not aping as you are not copying someone totally. You are just building qualities in yourself that you admire in people. So as a person, you may be made of several bits and pieces, developed at different times within you. Sort of similar to an assembled PC. Where you get da best of everything.(this expression assembled PC is copied from someone's orkut profile..sorry:D)
And if you want to be , you can reorganise the pieces and make yourself a new person. I realised tat everytime I changed schools (which was every 3-4 years because of dad's job), I became a new person. If my school friends from two schools try and compare my qualities, they would find huge differences. Talk about major time mpd:D(multiple personality disorder). hehe. and if my skool frnds (frm 11th 12th) saw how lukhi I am in college they would never believe it.
Waise I can't say if the above said holds for everyone. It does hold for me.

Everything happens for a reason

Everything that happens in life is for a reason. The consequences of every occurrence are pre-decided. Things that may seem very small also have a reason as to why they occur.

Sometimes you can see the good things hidden behind an event, but sometimes you can’t, as the bad thing has been prevented from happening(which is also a good thing:D). Sometimes you can understand the reasons immediately, at other times it may take a lifetime to understand why a certain thing happened. Somehow I feel that I am able to comprehend quite a lot of things from my past(not much of a past waise considering only 19 years:P) understanding why it was good they happened. Some things are unexplained yet, I cannot understand everything, but quite a lot that happened makes sense. As a friend told me(I thought it was original but later realized those were steve jobs’ words) you can only connect the dots looking backwards. It makes much more sense then.

The jigsaw does get completed eventually to form a full picture. So if you find certain past events unnecessary or wrong, wait. You’ll see the better side of them sooner or later.
*******************************************
ekta kapoor continues to catch my fancy:D:D
chanced on another serial my grandparents were watching today:D
take a look at the dialogues(put senti music in background for effect)
"aapne apni zindagi dekar jis bagiya ko sawaara hai, koi bhi bahar ka mali aakar nahi ujaad paayega"

"batwaare ke zehreele beej boke ja rahe ho tum"

wouldn't you say the script writer was obsessed with gardening?:D

*******************************************
a nice quote
"live some loves, let go some"
-gurveen bedi:D;)

Care for a smoke?

Belonging to a Sikh household, among my peers I was the one who detested smoking most I think; probably because since none of our acquaintances smoked, I never had to face anyone smoking except strangers at railway stations, bus stops, and such other public places(where actually smoking is banned). I hated the smell and used to get furious at the forced passive smoking, so in such situations, I always made it a point to give a huge glare to the culprit. I had this notion that anyone who smoked was either a rich spoilt brat or a poor addict; whoever it was, always managed to induce a dislike in me for them and their weakness, hence the glare.

But gradually things changed. I moved on to college, where almost every 4^th person smokes. No one considers it a big deal anymore. In fact in dram practices, we have had cigarette breaks at 4 in the night for people who are not able to work without their standard puff. I found all this weird in the beginning but gradually accepted that people do smoke, and that too without any sense of guilt which I (as a kid) thought they would have.

I really respect people who stay away from this slow poisoning habit or who have quit it; that shows a will power which is admirable. Though I don’t give angry glares to people who smoke anymore (now I even have good friends who unfortunately smoke), I still continue to detest the habit. Or maybe I just fail to understand the reasons for smoking. All I can see is that probably something which started as an experiment went on to become a habit, and then supposedly a tension reliever to which they got addicted. For a non-smoker, it is difficult to comprehend why killing yourself slowly is such a fad. People who smoke and by chance happen to come onto this blog , please do enlighten me.

Anyways, the reason I started thinking all this recently was because I happened to come across a good idea I wanted to put up. On cigarette packets in India we have a statutory warning “smoking is injurious to health”. On my recent holiday to Singapore, I saw that on their cigarette packets, along with the same statutory warning, they have images which show what smoking does to you. The images(spoilt teeth, tongue, disfigured neck) are quite gross and I think they may be able to remove the glamour part (which I think lot of people associate smoking with) from cigarette packets. Maybe this would at least encourage beginners to stay away from this poison. I don’t know whom to suggest the idea to, so just putting it up here; so that it may circulate, and maybe, reach the right head so we can have something like this in India too.

On a lighter note, couldn't resist putting these up..

“People always come up to me and say that my smoking is bothering them... Well, it's killing me!”

“I tried to stop smoking cigarettes by telling myself I just didn't want to smoke, but I didn't believe myself”

“I'm not really a heavy smoker any more. I only get through two lighters a day now.”

“smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.”

Provoked - Official Trailer

Provoked

I saw provoked yesterday. It is a beautiful story of indomitable human spirit. It is a real story about the life of kiranjit ahluwalia, an indian staying in UK, who after having been emotionally, sexually, physically abused for 10 years, burnt her husband to death.

Imagine being scared in your own house for yourself..imagine protecting your kids from their own father..imagine just being quiet , suffering, so as to protect family honor..imagine being abused physically during your pregnancy..having to beg money from your own husband to feed your children..And this is the hell that, kiranjit ahluwalia faced and a huge number of battered women continue to face everyday of their lives.

So finally, after another particularly vehemant beating, quite rightfully provoked, she killed him and landed in jail. People feel restricted in a prison and she, ironically, felt free for the first time. In her words "jail of law where atlast i found freedom". It is in prison that she started living her life finally, learnt english, made friends and rebuilt her broken spirits.

Aishwarya rai's acting in the movie is really commendable. She has raised the bar for so many actors with this superb piece.

Some lines i liked in the movie-

"In life there is no honour in silent suffering. There is no affection,no comfort to be found in love that is abused. It is our responsibility as mothers, to raise our sons to treat women with love and respect not violence and anger only then will the suffering end. My story is a part of the picture. I may not be important, but the issue is. Please donot forget that there are many women who need help from you"-(spoken by kiran(aishwarya) at the end of her trial)

"a women is a toy, a plaything broken at will, stuck together at will"-(spoken by kiran(aishwarya) describing what she felt about the abuse)

"wat sort of a world is this..where a women has to lose her marbles to get justice and a man just has to lose his temper"-(spoken by nandita das who plays a woman working for the NGO which helped kiran)

What kiran faced and how she managed to hold herself through the torture reminded me of a line by karla in shantaram-"I don't know what frightens me more,the power that crushes us or our endless ability to endure it."

PS: the society that supported her cause is SOUTHALL BLACK SISTERS
in case you want to read more on the case

singapore trip

Finally back home after an amazing holiday..can't remember the last time i had this much fun..infact this strengthens my resolve of travelling all around the world..its really interesting to go to a new place..you learn so much about a culture so different from yours..so here am putting up a list of things i did for the first time on my trip..

1) I saw penguins ..they are sooo cutee...they walk in this weird manner as if theyr too fat to walk..found dem adorable..esp the baby penguins..global warming has a huge impact on penguins as they need cold waters to survive..never thought of that..so if also find penguins cute..save electricity and pollute less nd all u can do to prevent global warming..2) At the jurong bird park we paid 2$ to feed the birds and while 2 birds were pecking in the bowl, a bird came and sat on my shoulder..and i was..i guess scared initially..coz it was so sudden..but it was such an amazin feeling..of exhilaration..pure fun..u can tell from the pics i guess..
3) i saw dolphins playing football:D nd doing somersaults and wat not..it seems tat dolphins are grey when theyr young and turn pink once the grow older..the ones i saw were pink..tho the pics are not clear i guess

4) i knew parrots talk but dint know that they sing..they paint..they act..and even add and subtract..theyr intelligence is equivalent to a 4 year old kid..wow rite?here is a pic of a parrot hoisting a flag..
5) had chinese tea at this traditional chinese tea shop where we had gone to shop..the shopkeeper was very nice and made us drink chinese tea..
6) sat on da top of an open double decker(they dont run in mumbai anymore)..had seen it in old hindi movies and always wanted to sit in one:D
7) sat in a shoehouse:D
8) saw an amzing laser and lite show..never seen nythng like tat..
9) the best example of the world becoming a global village.."a cheeni baby in hands of a sardar":D:D..haha dats papa holding a chinki kid..
enuf for today i guess..rest later:)

untold story

what was it that enticed me about this pic?

a color i find gawdy
soothing it seemed
serenity and mystery
beauty partially revealed
maybe 'twas the mischief
or the suppressed twinkle
the smiling eyes
or the concealed dimple
defying the norms
without defying any
she beheld an untold story
which was best untold