Inane insomnia

The amount of things you can do on the internet when not logged into Facebook is just amazing. I deactivated my account (probably temporarily), even after I was given the heartbreaking news that a few people will 'miss me', and after sending in another abusive message on the reasons section which will only be ignored by Zuckerberg and his entourage of devils. I have finally got at least two hours of studying today after days of dirty lounging in my round chair watching gossip girl-unable to get over Chuck's insanity and Nate's stupidity. 

Thank god for Yale's free online lectures so lesser mortals like me can be provided with a little Ivy league hospitality. 

Paradise Lost is the only part of my course I have studied yet mostly because I love it and it is so beautiful and frustrating at the same time. 
Studying the arts gives you the impression that you have learnt something mind altering,  that most people cannot comprehend or understand, even if you try and explain it to them. We go on with this incentive and vague idea of supremacy. What is also absurd and inviting about theory is that there is no definitiveness, no measurement, no right or wrong, no solidity, nothing that is wholly, real. 

Idle youth 

Enslaved to everything, 
By being too sensitive 
I have wasted my life. 
-Arthur Rimbaud

I want to go to Paris. I want to read in the winter sun. I want to study in a fancy school one day with ancient buildings and hot professors, the kind that know a million languages and tell you things in a lecture that make you go 'Oh man why didn't I think of that!!'. I want to dance at a shaadi. I want to go to the Metallica concert in Delhi in October with my friends and be all "Make room for St Anger MOTHERFUCKAAAAS" just to be thirteen years old again. I want new clothes and shoes. And maybe a bag. And a hat. I want to drink neat whiskey really slowly. I also want to cycle in the mountains and drink beer in the sea. I want to sing old hindi songs loudly in a car. Unfortunately, I also want to do well in my exams so I guess I must get back to reading or googling 'related' things. 

I feel like I use way too many commas. 

Charles Bukowski is hopelessly cool.

This song and it's akward dancing is making me grin like an idiot. Also because skinny, bespectacled Erlend Øye reminds me too much of Queerfish whom I now miss terribly. Get well soon bhai. Tera dard mera dard.

Kings of Convenience are nice.  

If Katy Perry posts one more tweet like "Fuck yeah America always here to save the dayyy!!" she's going to have a plane flying right into her teenage dream sending it up in flames. A little more tact please, US of A. We still don't like you. 

It is six fucking fifty one the morning and I still can't sleep. Fifty three now. Fifty five as I'm thinking if there's something else to say but there isn't. 

I can't get this bloody song out of my head and by now I'm dancing to it around the room with my hands up in the air.

And why is everyone in this band an INFANT?!

I must now go and finish reading Paradise Lost and witness the triumph of evil that has continued ever since. 
Flipkart is a freaking fix. 
.....Mmmbop bubadopdopba whaaaaaa!!???????

The Indian middle class society is the most interesting and least generic section of the population. We struggle between aspirations and reality, impulse and opinion. The intelligent middle class is constantly having to answer to the conservative, because according to the latter, liberties of being tasteful or indulgent only belong to the rich. By contemporary middle class adults, the wealthy are treated like a different species. When I told my mother that everyone my age drinks at bars, and goes to 'discos', and it's really not a problem, she insists that it's different for 'people like them'. But people like us, we had a higher power to answer to. The supreme authority of gossiping aunties and disapproving uncles. We had to face the criticism of the saamne vaali Jain aunty who looks at me everyday with big eyes like I had just entrapped and violated her entire family. Only to knock at my door in the evening and ask for 'thodi si cheeni beta, bas woh uncle ke liye halwa banana tha.' 

Mishap number 1 on 17.04.2011

C and I were returning from Paharganj after meeting two friends and on our way to anyplace but home. A hobby of mine, which also comes naturally to me, is to get lost on roads while driving. While expressing some very important opinions on things, I jumped over a divider. Before I knew it, I had jumped over another divider. My car landed pretty hard on the ground and another stopped about a foot away from the front of my bonnet. All I could think of was to look at my passenger best friend and see if she was alright. There was a sudden crowd and hysteria that follows all accidents on Indian roads. It is everybody's business. Because I was a girl, people were sympathetic and decided I was a victim, not a predator. I was a little shaken by the entire thing but with the help of my amazing out of the world friends we managed to get out of everything, even enjoying it a little.

I drive without a license and the confidence of  head cheerleader at prom without realizing that I wasn't ALLOWED to be on the roads. I have driven drunk (even though I wasn't this time), stoned, without hands, and every single trick you name in the badass book. 

And the funny thing is, even at this time, when I had managed to break down my car in the middle of Parliamentary street almost crashing into another, there were no cops. The inefficiency of the traffic police only complimented my stupidity. A little dramatic, yes, but anything could have happened yesterday. I was the luckiest imbecile on the planet.  

I was going to write an intense, my life flashed before my eyes death-encounter post about this but all I feel right now is extremely ridiculous. I have cost my father money and caused myself shame and sheepish embarrassment. 

I am not touching the wheel again until I have been officiated by the useless powers that rest in the state. According to V, 'yeh toh Dev aur Chunni vaala scene ho gaya yaar!'. Our choice of mentor speaks our case perfectly. 

Mishap no. 2 yesterday, whatever date it was 
My friend Mohit and I decided to drink post drinking. When we got very drunk, we decided it was the worst idea in the world to stop drinking and leave. A bright thought struck us. 
Another beer? Another beer! ('Carpe Diem! Seize the night!')
I raised my hands up in the air proclaiming with confidence that money, wasn't a problem. 'Are you mad? I'll pay for everything!!'
When I looked in my wallet for proof of my wealth a spotted a crumbly hundred rupee note and no ATM card. Our waiter, though, decided that we were honest despite our explicit inadequacy and trusting in our regularity at this particular bar, decided to forgo at least thirty percent of the bill and rewarded us with a free bottle of beer(!!). So instead of feeling horrible about my carelessness, I felt blessed by this undeserved gift of free booze. Mohit decided that 'this is why we need to start a business man! To have the world at our feet!'. 


The number of belongings I have lost to the world is greater than that of Solomon's wives.
My mother says that no one will marry me(one of her many reasons) because I shall lose all their possessions, and mine, and no man will be able to trust me with their property. Her only way of scaring me into good behavior is threatening me with the fact that I will die bereft of a husband. 
Hangovers are weird. They make you feel like everything that happened between you and the alcohol was a mistake. An error of judgement. Which is why I arrive at an important conclusion every time I'm hung over.
Must not drink ever again, must only smoke pot.
Oh yes, yesterday we also decided that the only way to be a great wo/man is to commit errors. And to 'drink and talk'. 


Now I must go to college for the one purpose of my existence- to get attendance so I can actually give the exams this year. It is an education that is never going to leave us. 


I know this shouldn't essentially be a life crisis, and I am the only one who can do something about it yadayadayada but I'm just really BORED. 
I want to be....moved. Exhilarated. Like when you see or hear or eat or read or feel something really beautiful and something inside of you changes. Like how Beethoven's audience must have felt when they heard him play. Like the moment when you smell something you really like-a flower, a perfume, a food. Like the brief instance when you and a random stranger know that you're sharing the same feeling. Like the first time you were touched by someone you loved. 

I have installed some Vuze toolbar on my browser by mistake and it's annoying the living(slowly dying) daylights out of me. (Vuze is fun to say though. Voo Zay )
I haven't written in a while but that is because nothing has changed. It's exam month though, so it's supposed to be slow and mundane. It is also offically summers in Delhi which means we are all officially now residents of a furnace.


All I've done for the past week is go to college, come back sleepeatcomplain, plan to study but do nothing, scour random shit on the www,stare at my new phone and send people texts only because they appear as 'conversations', stare at my dog and attempt to wake him up in the middle of the night to talk(He listens with solemn sincerity), play loud music in my sister's ear while she's asleep because that's what good siblings do to each other, and eat endless amounts of ice-cream. Mother Dairy, BTW! has this new collection of freakinoutoftheworld fancy flavors like rum and raisin and shit and you can eat out of the box like people on TV YAYYY!
Life is bleak.
The happiest I've been today is when a Justin Bieber marathon played in my gym.
Speaking of which, today I chose to exercise over beer. BEER. Scared, precious, beautiful,amazing, loyal, restorative, divine- beer. And I ditched it. For what? For good health, better utilization of my stupid gym membership!? I deserve to be punched in the face. Or like my mother likes to say to me while I follow her around the house begging for food- "Just shut up ma or I'll kick your face". 
No one tells you how bad making good decisions is going to make you feel. I should've stuck to what I knew best. After many constant ranting smses of 'you GUYS i shall lose my mind if I don't drink tomorrow', my friends have had to hesitantly consort. It's been a week, dude. Or more. I don't even want to think about it it's catastrophic.


People in the nation are STILL watching cricket.


Chunni told me about a film called The Dreamers (A Bernardo Bertolucci fim) to watch, and I did. It's magnificent. Paris is so terribly painfully beautiful. I have never been out of the country, but might make my first trip to the first world this year and it is my only reason for living. Travel, is therapy. I can't wait for these damn exams to end and take a bus and go to the hills for maybe EVER.
Sometimes after saturdaydrinking at Khan Market , Defence colony and the likes, Chunni and I while drifting off to sleep have a vision.
'Yaar, kitna cool hoga jab hum sab beach pe beer peeyenge aur stoned honge, aur sid ko maarenge. It'll be just Perfect'. I contribute to the vision fried fish and party drugs, and C sings her 'nekkkedd girlssss' song with a satisfied expression on her face.
Yeah so, I watched the Dreamers and it's magnificent. Then I also watched Le chansons d'amour, which means Love Songs in French. It is a musical and is one of those films that doesn't have a definite beginning, ending, plot, or moral. I love both things. (I don't like saying what films are about because I never feel I can do justice to them and my descriptions usually make me uncomfortable.)
Also, this man makes me go a little crazayyy.

Louis Garrel

You keep me rockin' baby, you keep me stolen

I was g-talking with my uncle and while we were talking he'd say something like 'So who's that guy who wrote The Stranger?, let me think, one second'. 

And I'd have googled it in a millisecond, confident and ready with the answers. 'Albert Camus, Shyam!'. I knew who'd written The Stranger. All I had to do was think for about two seconds and it would have come to me. But why must I take seconds to think, when I can have the answer in less? It's incorrigible. We may be fast as fuck, but we aren't learning a thing. I hate it when I have to write assignments off the internet. It's not intelligent, it's efficient. And it's not knowledge that's power anymore (we're all staging a Francis Bacon ki MKC), it's speed. 

Answers are meant to be sought, to be chased, and then arrived at. Not presented to you on a golden platter by google chrome. Old people are right, we have it too easy. My uncle was utterly disgusted and not impressed with my rapid retorts and ask me to 'grow down'. 

'Get off your computer and live a little and stop being such moron.', is what he actually said.

Smartphones, are also a farce. They may be really goddamn smart, but they only make you stupider. Which is why I don't see a point to 'Dude, with Airtel 3G you can stream live tv and ALWAYS be online!'. WHY on earth would you want to STREAM TV on your phone. (Unless India is kicking Pakistan's ass and you have to be on the road in search of booze. Thank god for Chunni's phone during those days of hardship and patience.)

It makes me sick, how we live our lives on and from the internet, but I cannot seem to stop or find a way out. 

As Crosby Stills Nash and Young say in one of my father's favourite songs, 'I may be faster, but I'm still way behind' 

He also told me to stop reading so much existentialism and switch to Buddhism. 

How can you carve out the Buddha from a rock? 

You take out everything that is not the Buddha 

My exams are in a month, and this usual foreplay of wasting time that lasts till about five days before is actually necessary and significant. 


You know who I hate? Those kids who seem to have their whole freakin life planned out since they're FOURTEEN. StStephens to Yale to rich to married to rich. I don't understand it. And I actually still possess some sort of inverse snobbery to people with direction. Man, they must feel REALLY sorry for wastrels like me(us). If you're one of these thriving individuals, you can tell yourself that I'm jealous, which is probably true. 


I apologize for this worthless display of absolute nothing.
I can't believe you're still reading. My uncle would have something to say to you about this. 

I'm watching the victory march for Anna Hazare with my grandparents. My aunt is there with a few other relatives and friends. 

I cannot help being infected with the euphoria. Isn't the whole point of a democracy to implement the appeal of civil society peacefully through the administration? It took an old man to penetrate through my youthful pessimism. Who knows how this will turn out, but being a passive disparaging spectator while the country strives to change isn't going to make me feel any better about myself or where I live and operate. For all those who think the candlelight vigil at India Gate is overdone, I would like to say that beheron ko sunane ke liye dhamake ki zaroorat hoti hai. 

I am down with the influenza and all I've done all day is send ranting smses to Chunni and sing ye jawaani hai deewani at the top of my voice from under a razai. 

I feel a little better because of some ayurvedic concoction put together by my yogic of a grandpapa. 

There's no school like the old school. 

I just realized that this post is almost exactly like the last.


BUKHAAR KI MKC!!

Wrote this crap last night when the internet decided to screw me over, just like the universe. (hahaha)


My sister's board exams are over which means all we're going to do for about a week or more, till whenever I decide to start studying(probably nev-ah) is stream random movies and eat chips in my room much to the Beagle's displeasure, who only wants to sleep ALL the time. This dog's life ain't one to complain about.
The best thing about teen cinema, is to jump on your bed grinning and whooping, immediately stream all soundtracks on youtube, google 'whos dating who' in the cast, and be engrossed in unsubstantiated excitement for about half an hour, post the end.
Suks and I just finished watching Easy A (for awesome!!). I want Emma Stone to be my best friend and Dan Humphrey a.k.a Penn Badgely (whom I HATE in Gossip Girl for being the whiny supposed writer obsessed with beautiful rich girl) is really cute.
Maybe this movie isn't as great as I am thinking it is right now but it's cured me of my constant sulking all day and searching for reasons to justify it.
Family Guy runs on Indian TV (yay) also helped, and Community-which is quite a decent show now airs on Star World. The theme of my day might have been to sit on my throne and watch endless American television, but I feel good.


I went to my first Wills India Fashion Week with two crazy fashion friends who provided me with strict instructions. 'DON'T be late!!, Ok so I'll signal when I see a famous person, Be comfy but chic. Don't look like you're trying too hard'.
I was a little frazzled with the initial realization that I'm probably as tall as everyone's legs, but it was too much fun. Fashion is essentially about feeling good. And even though it might seem like it, there isn't a definite code. You just have to remember not to look, or be, uncomfortable.
I sat meekly in the front row thanks to K's fabulous connections, and tried to keep my hands in a ladylike manner in my lap. (Droop your palms slightly, try to make them look longer etc. It's an art in itself I tell you. )
I could hardly contain my excitement as that light at the end of the runway lit up, and Indrani Dasgupta glided across (she's so beautiful I wanted to steal her and put her in my bag).
I would like to say, despite my lack of critical perspective on fashion, that I loved Rajesh Pratap Singh's collection of steely dresses and flowing robes. 

Delhi University has once more fucked with our exam dates and consequently our brains. I am absolutely positive there exists nowhere else such an incompetent bunch of piece of shit administrators. My exams have now been postponed and I must burn with agony for about two more weeks in Delhi heat and give myself TWENTY DAYS to recover before I return to the devil's mouth. But there's always hope and determination and most importantly, the boozes.

I think the assholes know we shall count on our debauched drunkenness to survive their torture. Most of the devout adorers of the almighty (excuse my language) who happen to be the majority of my not so academic are happy with the decision though, since it is probably for the greater good. (Give it up for... GOD!!)

(Everything I say in strictly in the spirit of secularism. Any resemblances to persons living or dead are not fictitious, but mean no offence. This is only for my cheap attempt at humour.)

Even though I had resolute intentions for the Anna Hazare protest, I never did. Maybe because of this horrible cold that is killing me slowly, or the small and hopefully wrong voice in my head that told me there was no point.

But just because we render ourselves exclusive of a cause or a system doesn't mean we don't belong in it. Man is by nature, political. Whether we like it or not, we belong as arms in a state. I don't know whether this Lok Pal bill will change anything. It lacks any direct access to members of the parliament, and can only operate through the Rajya or Lok Sabha. And corruption exists not in individuals separately, but entire organisations. It is present on different levels, with different people, in different ways.

 The entire goal of uprooting corruption entirely seems unreal and far fetched because sadly, this, is 'how it works'. But by rendering a system, social, political or otherwise as natural, is elevating to it a position of permanent power. All causes unfortunately are sooner or later rendered trivial, but the questioning of something that is essentially wrong is important, and healthy. Even though I strongly believe that idealism is false and overrated, as is cynicism.

But the question is that are we only rooting to a cause because we want to belong? Because being part of the larger picture adds an element of significance to our smaller one? Or do we ACTUALLY believe and want things to change. I will be honest and admit that along with the almost indifferent others like myself, my life will go on exactly as it used to, despite whatever happens with this parliamentary bill or the next. 

I have to get back to a yoga tutorial with my grandfather who is now standing on his head. He is seventy eight. 

'Kyun, naye naye se dard ki talaash mein firaaq mein udaas hai dil?' 

While Anna Hazare was fasting against corruption, I was drinking beer plus eating fried garlic chinese stuffs with a friend. I hope you were all doing different. Youth is infact wasted on the young.  

This is my dog. He is Beagle.