Watching uncensored versions of the Roadies auditions to satisfy my reality TV fix. Our country is full of absolutely fascinating madmen. 

But I love this guy.


I have always been extremely frightened of any sort of medical encounters. I hated my pediatrician and used to cling for dear life to every piece of furniture in my house when it was time for a usual check up. I detested injections and blood tests and behaved like a survivor of war every time I came out of one. I used to bunk school for at least two days after an injection, claiming I was 'too weak' and 'you didn't know how much it hurt okay!'. Ma has her own hindi film kahani for this phobia. She claims that when I was two, I was diagnosed with a hole in my heart, because of which some quack doctor ('recommended by your FATHER'S family!!') put me in a large machine and did many weird things to me that she or I cannot remember. I was obviously too little to comprehend the fear of the entire thing but ma ke dil ke upar kya guzri thi, tumhe kya pata! Instead of getting one tight slap for all my stupid drama to escape medical cure I usually got 'That's why you're so scared, It's okay, I understand, I'm scared for you too.' 
Eventually I grew out of my fear, but kept my survivor of war attitude post any treatment. When I was diagnosed with Typhoid, they inserted an intravenous into my right palm which I wore to school just to show everyone how brave I was. T'was awesome. 


Yesterday, I had my very first dentist appointment. After spending sleepless nights crying 'fuck ma I can't take it no more i wish i didn't HAVE teeth MAAR DALO MUJHE' , I decided it was time. My mother, smug as ever, after putting me through a long painful lecture-  'Smokers always have bad teeth and bad lives. I keep telling you not to smoke because you will DIE Sharanya, you WILL...die'. After which my father called to contribute- 'I don't want ANYTHING else from you beta, just rinse your mouth after every meal. That's all I'm asking from you in life'. Why thanks for dreaming big for me dad. 
So I plucked up all the courage I wasn't sure I had and visited my very first dentist- Dr PM.
PM was a not so attractive, extremely calm, stern man. Which I think was perfect. 
'So you have a million fillings and your teeth are well, dying. Apart from a little drilling it's going to be almost painless.' ALMOST!?!! Thanks, Dr Precise! 
But he was right. Apart from the initial glimpse of that gigantic chair which looks an instrument made only for savage murder, and the omfg there are needles in my mouth(!!!), it was nothing much. Some parts, where he put this pipe that I think puffed out air?? into sections of my gums was actually fun. After PM has resurrected some teeth and saved the others from dying, I felt alive once again. I have vowed, as you all must, to brush before I sleep. Maybe even get one of those cool motor brushes. 
There is a banner in my colony offering free dental checkups that reads FREE ORAL. 


Looking at the Brown University website to find motivation to study. 
Because one day I definitely need a break from humaar pagal-khana.  But I have made no visible progress, yet. Par ek din hum bade aadmi banke dikhayenge. 
I have to pull an all nighter again because I am STILL staring at my desktop looking for everything to do except start writing my fucking paper. 

Also, Twitter > Facebook. 

Bieber Fever

I tried really hard to hate him.

On new years while sulking in a corner drinking from a bottle of whiskey I remember hearing 'Baby Baby Baby oooh' and literally jumping out of my skin. My 'OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS SONG SO MUCH' was proof that I had failed in all my attempts of scorn. I knew I was warming up to the Beibs when I got addicted to Baby, justifying it as 'Man I'm only listening to it for Luda!'. 

But now as I do my third time dance routine to this song, I know I have been taken.
Because eventually, all we all need is somebody to love.

I have never been a resistor of popular culture. The sheer simple pleasure that lies in being lame is not one that can be surpassed.
You can bitch all you want but this kid's really got it goin' on. And how much can you hate on him, he's SIXTEEN! I am aware that Americans are almost too easy to please and his haircut's a new and improved Nick Carter look, but sixteen is a bad age for everyone.
It is also a bit pathetic to spend too much energy trying to hate the Bieber. Pick on someone your own size, mans! And after watching enough videos of screaming, wailing, distraught mobs of 16 year old girls I have realized that there is power in Bieber fever.
In whatever I've seen of him via youtube and twitter he seems genuine enough. Unlike most of these Disney Channel morons(one of whom apparently he is dating) and predeccesing boybands- who pretended to be romantic pretty boys but were actually homosexual coke fiends, he is transparent. There is nothing more to the Beibs. What you see is what you get. A voice at the fragile state of transition from boy to man(good nonetheless), and bad-ass dance moves copied from Usher and co. It is less, but at the same time, more.
And respect to him only because he probably still hasn't  learnt how to solve a linear equation but he's doing this all on his own.
So go on and be, a Belieber.


Today my father called me from a traffic jam in Bombay called me to talk. A born and bred Delhi-ite, at the smallest sign of trouble on the road, he'd start doing the angry Dilli vaala routine. Blame a few people, curse the random man in the car next to us who would only be more than willing to curse back, and start giving up-'Ab bas khatam ho gaya sab, BOLA THA maine is road pe nahi aana chahiye chutiya road hai yeh!'. Today in his traffic jam in Mumbai he seemed calm. He told me he was late for a meeting but it doesn't matter, this happens all the time.
Delhi doesn't know how to handle. We only know how to panic, followed by much drinking. One heartbreak, accident, loss, failure in an exam, and we are on our way to the whiskey bar establishing ki sab khatam hai. We are finished.
We don't like anyone else. We seldom like ourselves. We love to thrive in our self made, never ending existential angst. But it's what we know and love and it's never going to change.
Yeh sheher nahi, manzil hai. Aur hum alag(pagal) hai. Tum nahi samjhoge :D 


This song rules.

If you are male, read at your own risk. Or just don't.

The Sartorialist is in the process of changing my life. One of the prime fashion influences all over the world, he doesn't say that you have to be skinny or tall or have perfect skin to be beautiful. You just have to be yourself in the best way possible. It's one of the most inspiring blogs I've encountered and absolute,pure art.

I'd find it hard to believe that just any people could be this beautiful-

This girl reminds me of you, bro.

I remember the first time I discovered I was girl was when Britney wanted baby to hit her one more time. I learnt the dance and did it in my room over and over again. There was another instance when I realized that I had started having the hots for one of the Famous Five- Dick, was incidentally the one I chose. 
When you're growing up you always had to fit into being a certain type of girl. There were the mean girls, the other girls(the victims), the ones no one cares about, the victims who become mean girls, the apparent lesbians. It's ridiculous. If you were one sort of girl you immediately hated the other sort. In my school though, all the social tyranny of girl world was more inherent than on the surface.
I grew up not being one of the girls that all the boys liked and the all the girls wanted to be like, so I started to believe that those girls were stupid. If you were pretty and dressed well, you were obviously stupid. Because I was so smart, I didn't need to look good. I was above that superficial shit.
All that going to a girls college has taught me, as much as I hate it, that categories of women aren't as stiff as we make them to be.
I discovered that I like to feel pretty, and be checked out, and all my inbuilt pseudo feminism needs to go out of the window. And there's nothing stopping me from being smart, and wanting to look good at the same time.
So i went from erasing my fear of fashion (disguised by apparent contempt) to thriving in the excitement of it. I refuse to be any category of person, or woman and can only be what I feel at the exact moment that I'm in.
Which is why I have courageously decided to write this overtly cheesy, 16 year old post.
I watched both these films one after another which have aggressively ignited the 'you go girl!' inside me.

Anna Wintour is a creator of an entire world. I don't believe that fashion intends to dictate. Only guide one to finding their own form of expression.
(Anna also back in the day, dated Bob Marley. score! What mismatched perfection.)

aaaaanddd give it up for the best movie of all time!!

So totally rad.
Like Tarantino, and Shaggy, I now believe in the strength of a woman.


Favorite swagger songs:

Streets are uneven when you're down

Yesterday I went to a party filled with people from high school...tripping. I even had to chill with my mother for about half an hour during my stint with Lucy which was a little traumatic. 

My neighbor had a drop lying around, and it was mild acid. Not the kind that makes you feel like you're in a freakin animation. Thankfully I spent most of my trip(after getting the fuck out of my house) road trippin'. Delhi's chaotic beauty started coming to light(literally :D). 

At the party, I spent most of my time in smoking section with my friends knowing that we were being shunned by society. 

THESE guys I would RocknRoll high school with anytime,man.

 I have a paper to write for college but I have decided to pick my new Irvine Welsh book over Jacobean tragedy. I think I need to be somewhere new for a while to get my mojo back. Maybe someplace with the sea.

I hope that one day melancholy and the infinite sadness can produce more results and articulation.

My annoying as fuck neighbors are trying to throw out the stray dogs in my apartment colony. They claim that this isn't a place for them and they have a problem with their 'excreta'. They used that exact word. I tried to explain to them that they aren't the intruders, we are. We have come and built around their habitat, making it difficult for them to live and claiming it is ours. We have littered and polluted and they still bear with us. I would not be able to bear it if they banished my canine companions, so I put up a fight with disapproving old people much to my mother's annoyance. Also I'm pretty sure my dog is in love with one(maybe all) of them, and his heart would break as much as mine. 
This man is too cool for words. 


Prateik Babbar in Dhobi Ghat makes me want to do things I cannot disclose. 
I wish someone would design my blog.

Day is done

On the hungover happy morning of the 1st of January 2011 I made my first resolution. I said to my friends as everyone was sitting around debating theirs mindlessly- 'Bros! This year I'm going to be....smart.'.

Ironically enough, it was the stupidest thing anyone said all morning. 

At the Jaipur Literature festival, William Fiennes said that the only way to write is to record. Everything that happens to you everyday is significant, so write it down, no matter what time it is, where you are,or if you end up falling asleep on your notebook and waking up with ink on your face. 

So, last night after failing to buy his book on amazon cause of my non-possession of a credit card (Online shopping is a total farce. I have still not managed to pull off one single purchase), I remembered what he said and I went to get my journal- shrouded in a corner, looking dejected and dusty. 

Hesitatingly I opened it and with one eye covered looked at the last entry which made me cringe and laugh at the same time. 'I HATE him. but WHY can't I seem to get him out of my head. I can't believe he left me for that slut. I HATE boards i HATE my life'. 
(It was about four years back dudes, so don't judge)

Before that, about five years back was ' Today when I was coming down the stairs I ran into Ankit Jain(name changed) and he actually LOOKED at me. Also, I got highest in Geography!We're going to goa, but D and M broke up so we have to take sides so it might be weird. But the guys have begun to hang out with the A section and we(yuck) don't like it so we told them that they can't anymore. I didn't obviously, but Sukriti (name changed) did..'

Before that about six and a half years ago was 'OH MY GOD MY PEN IS SO GREEN AND SHINY LOOK! AND TODAY WAS SUCH A GOOD DAY IN SCHOOL WE PLAYED FOOTBALL WITH THE GUYS AND WE LOST BUT IT WAS SO MUCH FUN ANYWAYYYY. YAYYYY I LOVE SCHOOL IT RULZZZZZZZ!!! :) :)'. 

Thirteen was better. I wrote about my cousins, hide-n-seek, climbing up on the mango tree in my grandmother's house to get away and read, and the kittens in my garden.

I apologize for the preceeding paragraph of torture, but what I was trying to say is that every year I am becoming, in a nutshell, smart(er). No more crying over pretentious ex boyfriends, no more weird groups, no more 'I HATE my life', no more letting Sukriti boss you around,no more bouncing round like a tennis ball on ecstasy, no more baseless indulgence in all things trivial, no more absurd social stigma, and no more geography!! 

New years are now things I await rather than dread, with the hope that  I along with everything around me change with every coming moment, into something...better.

I also realized that I find it incredibly hard to write on paper anymore. We are a generation of writers(?) driven by thesaurus.com, google, youtube, and everyone else's virtual display of talent or otherwise, rather than the flow of the pen. 

Sir Philip Sidney said very simply, 'Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write.'

But our hearts, and our minds, seem to be only on the computer screen.

Despite our constant rants of wanting to get away from the chaotic disarray of the city, Chunni and I escaped to Jaipur, another city. But chaos nowhere is as full fledged as Delhi, so it proved to be a great break. The Jaipur Literature Festival was fun, though nothing with spectacular impact. But we did go to an Irvine Welsh talk (!!). We jumped around when we saw him like hopeless fanboys and pretended that- 'usne humein dekha yaar. Phir usne smile bhi kiya. I think he likes us.'

And there's always hotel terraces,old monk and much getting stoned. We would talk about things transgressing mythologies, borders, and subjects, making connections with all and with ourselves, only not to remember absolutely nothing the next day BUT conclude that we are extremely profound(Hum kitne sahi hai). We would also grow happier with every baseless conversation- a result of a new drink and confirmation to 'hum kitne sahi hai'.

WHAT would the world be without deluded college students. 

Lalit Modi is one of the most important things that is wrong with our country. The guy is just an inside-out, absolutely unadulterated, prick.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main48.asp?filename=Ne120211coverstory.asp

 We need to stop loving,hating or being afraid of chutiyas in power. 

I think it's time to bring out the bat-signal.

One of the things that I learnt at Tehelka, despite however cheesy a lesson it is, that being afraid is the battle lost altogether. T.Tejpal once said that 'You need to lay fear on the ground and walk all over it like it's your bitch'. 
The 'like it's your bitch' part is mine.


“What are fears but voices airy?
Whispering harm where harm is not.
And deluding the unwary
Till the fatal bolt is shot!”
-William Wordsworth
I can't wait to study the romantics. And the ancient Greeks. (There's some fucked up shit going on with those guys,man!)


My professor to make class more interesting told us fun facts about Jacobean society in England of the early seventeenth century - 
Rats tails were a delicacy. And every time a woman committed verbal slander, which was basically speaking at all, she had to wear an iron mask that held her tongue down in her mouth.
Fun! 
Today I watched Black Swan which was genius. Natalie Portman along with being one of the most amazing,beautiful,talented women ever is a great dancer. 
I am searching for my lost love for dancing and the feeling that you have BECOME what and how you move. 
Now I am going to zone out and listen to Aqueous transmission and Nick Drake. 
I don't think there will ever be a successful recording of an Incubus concert behind all the girls(and boys) screaming. But what else can you do when god descends.
I want wine and cupcakes and waves crashing at my door.

Lewis Carroll discovered dream inside a dream way before Chris Nolan did and I don't understand why everyone was losing it over that movie anyway. I have absolutely nothing more to say and I am sure everyone who reads here is sick of rants of excessive complaints.
This song is the ultimate best [new favorite (two) words]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cAQlDf9Vs0


Also, for everyone like me tearing their hair to find new music, http://audiomap.tuneglue.net/
Not that anyone cares,but I want to and need to and will, write soon.