Season's Greetings

Maybe life is like a flower, each petal, a trajectory in time that must be traversed. Yet you must return to the start, to look upon that loop and contemplate. Then, start again :)

Happy New Beginnings!

:)

The Raven

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

-------------------------------------------------------------------

This painting was made and gifted to me by my friend about a year ago.

Few days ago and article on The Raven was featured on the main page of Wikipedia. The Poem has the typical poesque eeriness, that continues to haunt you long after. I dreamt about this painting that night. And it all came together.

SOS

What kind of educational systems are we promoting in our country?! Why do we want to downgrade humans into animals or, worse, machines? Sri Chaitanya, Narayana, Vikas, etc ... names every student in AP shudders at the mention of. The idea is to treat children like cattle. Tell them exactly what path to go down and if they happen to wander a step flog them! I call it the ‘Slog or Flog’ methodology. What kind of schools still advocate physical punishments? Beating up adolescents with steel rulers to the extent of drawing blood for not being able to score well in an exam? What problems is this solving? It not only breaks the child being beaten up but the psychological disturbance that it causes in the rest of the students for having to stand by helplessly and watch their friends being beaten up, because apparently they signed up for this. You’ll never get to an IIT or even your local engineering college if you don’t subject yourself to it.

Girls and boys separated into different sections, classes from seven to seven in dingy old apartments in the middle of the city, with zero facilities for recreation or any other form of personal development like sports, art etc. All answers must be verbatim from the college provided text book, No, you are not even allowed to correct the grammar. We don’t care about your approach as long as your answer is correct. Why did you add those points in your environmental chemistry paper! They are wrong as they are not in the textbook. We talk about farmers committing suicides in Andhra. Has anybody done an audit of how many students hang themselves out of despair and stress every year? (If such a survey has been done, do point it out to me.)

All this for what? To become another cog in the machine? To become another Software engineer or tester? To do a ‘low end’ job for your counterparts in other countries? By supporting such an education system we condemn them to servitude.

Wake up parents! Wake up Governments! Wake up media, talk more about the state of education in India than just stories of molestation in UP. The molester btw is a product of this educational system. If we continue to churn out bricks like this IITs will never become the top engineering in the world, IIMs will never become the top management schools. Creativity, innovativeness, observation, morality (In the sense of being able to decide for themselves, what is right and wrong) are more important than MARKS in any exam. Develop a questioning mind not and dead conforming one! First hand knowledge of experience instead of second hand from books.

Save your souls and those of your children.

The Genesis of Butterflies

by: Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

HE dawn is smiling on the dew that covers

That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings

In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,

That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,

With muffled music, murmured far and wide.

Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the lays

That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays,

Of the fond hearts within a billet bound,

Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound,

The messages of love that mortals write

Filled with intoxication of delight,

Written in April and before the May time

Shredded and flown, playthings for the wind's playtime,

We dream that all white butterflies above,

Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love,

And leave their lady mistress in despair,

To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair,

Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies

Flutter, and float, and change to butterflies.

This English translation of "The Genesis of Butterflies" was composed by Andrew Lang (1844-1912).

Tagged: 8 Random Things

Welcome, welcome. Please to make yourself at home with my new look . Yes, yes you are free to admire it all you want. Kanishka here has tagged me. Yes me, moi, I, mein, mala, maney, naan... or atleast it said 'Neha' in his post wait lemme check. Yes, it's me! That leads me to random point number 1. Having a popular name really defies the entire point of having a name at all. I can't ever benefit from a vanity search, even though I can hear my name being called out distinctly, there is a high probability it's not me being summoned, and neha.agarwal@gmail.com probably receives at least 10% of my e-mails and 10% of the e-mails meant for every other hum-naam in the world. I once had to fight it out with another girl at a job interview after the names were announced that it was in fact me they were referring to since both of us answered to the same name. Random thing number 2. The walls in the room are actually navy blue and i have orange curtains. No, I'm not colour blind. Not, yet. number 3. 'ooki' means big in Japanese and 'chotto' means small, 'hai' means yes, 'so des ka?' means 'is it so?' This is a universal response. You can say this to anyone whether you understand them or not. number 4. In boarding school i never washed my socks until they became too hard(like stiff) to pull on. I found that if I soaked them in hot water with Arial overnight, they would be like brand new again with little effort. point number 6. I will never forget that our school principal once compared adolescents/teenagers kissing to eating raw mangoes and adults kissing to eating ripe mangoes. point number 7. I read Anne Frank's diary (abridged) when i was 12 and concluded that my roommate was old enough to kiss people as she was as old as Anne Frank when she got her first kiss. Her brother married a Japanese girl. Point number 8. I missed point number 5. and I've never been to Japan but I have been to Bhutan.

I would like to tag TP and my little brother :)

Thanks Kanishka for this perfect opportunity to show off my new blogskin I really had nothing to write about. :)

Fat-a-Fat Cricket

In boarding school we used to play this game of our own device, called Flash Uno. We got rid of all the mulch, i.e. the number cards except for 1, 2 and 3. So there were comparatively more Draws fours, Draw twos, Wilds, Skips and Reverses.

It was the atmosphere of the 10th board exams. We didn’t have time for long drawn games. It had to be quick. It had to be thrilling. Flash Uno gave us an action-packed 15 minutes.

But soon the Draw fours, Draw twos, Wilds, Skips and Reverses weren’t as exciting anymore and we stopped playing Uno, altogether.

Tamil Teriamma?

I never thought I would ever say this

But this city I really do miss

Once the humidity grows on you and you don’t mind how the mundu rises with the temperature, it’s not so bad.

It’s the only city that I was comfortable in using the public transport. Not that that says anything about the quality of service of their public transport system but just that I did travel on buses and it gave me a kick to pay Rs. 3.50 instead of the 90 bucks I would have to shell out otherwise. Negotiating with the auto drivers is a pain but it’s not like taking a metered auto ensures a fair price either. Traffic however was easily negotiable. It is rational for a city that size to atleast have traffic like that.

The bigger the city the more there is to explore. There’s always a place to go, to see, to surprise you. The city definite had character with so much cultural zeal. Theatre, arts, music, dance, cinema. It’s not true that it’s only about classical Carnatic music or Bharatnatyam. The city churns out quite a lot of rock bands. There’s either a rock festival or a film festival or a food festival or some festival going on.

Most of all, I miss my apartment. It was the perfect little apartment on the fourth floor of an eight floored apartment in a posh colony. It was somehow always cooler than the rest of the city. It had a little balcony overlooking palm trees and gulmohar trees and neem trees and god knows what trees. It was just beautiful eye soothing greenery. The balcony has glass doors in the metal grid of which we had made little colorful patterns with glass paints. Memories that house held, so many memories, happy memories, people memories, things that happened memories.

It was an eventful year, that year in Chennai, perhaps the most eventful year in my life. I met some of the most wonderful people I know there. Some of my worst demons I faced there. Some I slaughtered, some still haunt me. I lived alone. I traveled on buses. I fell ill, lots of times. I fell on the road, once. I paid all my bills. I bought all my groceries. I cooked. I cleaned. Charlie’s little angel, I had become :D.

I can’t say if I’ve changed for the better, but I’m definitely changed.

Goodbye Chennai.

Bachelorette

I'm a fountain of blood
In the shape of a girl
-Bjork

Snip Snip

There is something about getting a haircut that makes you feel anew. It has the ritualistic steps of a tribal ceremony for spiritual catharsis.

Cleansing. Destruction. Rebirth.

I feel like I’m just returned from the launderers'. :)

Is it possible?

On this overnight train to Hyderabad I had found some very pleasant company. A father son duo and do yaar and ofcourse me. The father-son were especially amicable. The father was settled in Chicago. the son lived in Australia. The son’s sister was studying in Europe some where and I think maybe the mother was in India. They were going home; to little England, Hyderabad, to celebrate Christmas with old friends. The two friends were just retuning from their vacation in the Middle East via Sri Lanka. Did you know you can’t exchange Indian currency in Sri Lanka!!! Well they couldn’t and they had this adventure story about how they luckily had some Dirham coins clinking in their pockets; enough to afford them some food while they waited for their flight to Chennai. I have this vague memory of them talking about going snorkelling in Sri Lanka but now it doesn’t make logical sense and I can’t recall the flow of events in their story anymore. I was just going home for the yearend holidays. We were all really Hyderabadis at the end of the day.

So I was having this pleasant conversation with this uncle from Chicago. I was reading Sherlock Holmes at that time. So the conversation picked up from there he recommended another detective series, ofcourse which I can’t recall the name of, and we progressed to us discussing our fascination for old Hindi songs and his love for Lata Mangeshkar’s voice. The son, I found out, was a professionally trained bar tender who didn’t drink. He refused when the boys offered him a share from their bottle which they were secretly glugging on the third tier. The two feiends were of the “milbaithein teen yaar” varienty. We all ordered the meals served on the train and had dinner together. The son gobbled the food down while the father and I slowly but meticulously chewed and swallowed each piece of food in the tray. Uncle said I was good company for dinner and even invited home for Christmas or was it the son who said that… anyway, as we were basking I this warm reverie of bonhomie, a sudden thud against the the bogie shell broke our torpor. There was another thud then a klud and a kud and finally a kinlk. I looked at uncle ,startled and slightly worried, for an answer. He explained in a slightly regretful tone, “ Many animals get hit by the train when the tracks pass though wilderness.” There was a feeling of sickness in the air and on my face; which slowly sunk to my heart. How is that possible? When animals can sense the tiny pre-seismic vibrations that humans are immune to then surely they can feel a train coming! If not that then surely the headlights should startled them off! You think it was harakiri? Would animals do that?

Obituary

Your Angel has fallen, my love
No more in your skies to fly
No more to live, No more to die

Flew before me as i went up the flight
From the eighth window of my tower
Held her wings i saw her leap
I followed but for my coward feet

She lay there quite all night unmoving
As i cried myself to sleep
And if morning were to come
You would see,
her blood,
Was the colour of love

Pencils

I don't like mechanical pencils.
I like sharpening my wood-lead pencils. I like waiting for them to go blunt so i can sharpen them again.

I'm a drop of coffee

I’m a drop of coffee fallen from the mug of abundance, with the alacrity and resolve of an arrow left a bow, on to a piece of paper, plopped patiently, breaking down resistance, seeping into each fibre slowly, persistently, permeating in every direction palpable, strained pale until every grain of the paper is imbibed in my essence eternally, submissive and changed.

If i love you, i'll leave you
My insecurities can't be your chains
Your freedom i gift to you
if ilove you, i'll leave you

Hope on earth you find your heaven
in the year 2007