Nobody said it was easy

The blues.
They are back.
And they're not going away without a fight.

Unfortunately, that's not the tagline of a new flick "coming soon to a theatre near you!" They stare me in the face everytime I look in a mirror. They're there everytime I sit down to study. It's as if my life is some bizzare Ujala ad. Everywhere I look, it's blue. (Naalu sottu thaane! pfft.)

I'm not quite sure how they started this time. But they've been around for nearly a week now. It's pretty bad. Look, I couldn't even come up with a decent title for this post. Had to rip off lines from "The Scientist" Not good.

I've spoken to atleast three different people about it. And I've come up with very interesting responses. estarra told me to go get myself coffee, do something nice, something to make myself feel better 'cause goodness knows you deserve it. Aww, sweetie. Thanks. That really made my day. But it didn't lift me enough to make me feel better. Although the coffee did help :)

(note: I use strong, black, sugarless coffee as a pick-me-up. Not espresso, since I can't make it myself, and there's no decent place for espresso near my hostel. And Mithali "can't understand for the life of me, how that works")

Anyway, coming back to le bleu mood, Dad told me to try out his breathing exercises. Apparently they really help him calm down and focus. They just made me sleepy. Dad, I'm not running you down. I'm just saying that maybe it doesn't work for me.

And the third person I spoke to drowned me in HER sorrows. So not much help there. Although I hope I made her feel better.

Sigh. Anyway, I've got a load of work for this weekend. Chem reports, phy reports, bio test and chem practical exam on monday. And I just want to walk away from it all. Which is the sort of attitude that leads to posts like this one. No aim, no direction. Just a reflection of the past, but without any lessons learned.

SOS!!!Tell me! Does anyone out there have suggestions on how to get past this deep blue funk and actually get some work done? 'Cause I sure as hell could use a little help here. And no, scaring myself with the consequences doesn't work. It just pushes me into a, "Oh no, I'm gonna flunk. And there's no escape" mood. Which is worse, as you'd agree.

Sigh. The blues. Hope I'll have a less self obsessed post next time. And I may be going to look at the Science Express tomorrow [the scientist lives on :)] Hope that goes well.

BTW, listening to "Yellow" by Coldplay doesn't help. I thought mixing the colours would turn things green(go!go!go!)

P.S. You know ess is in trouble when he starts trying to end posts with horrible PJs

Coolness

Was just looking through some of my old chat conversations and I found this one that I had with soupy sometime in January. We somehow switched to how nearly everyone we know went through a "Backstreet Boys! Aaaaaaaa! OMG! I LOVE them!" phase. To quote her:


soupy: some of it was ok. actually. if you look at it. it was the thing then, cheesy bubble boy lyrics. backstreet boys were actually late on the scene. if you look at it.
and everyone who grew up then, had "i love the backstreet boys" phase.
even though you hate to admit to it now! ;p
but it explains how you know all the lyrics when they play them randomly somewhere and you sing along! ;p


And that reminded me of this episode of "How I met your mother" where the following exchange happens:

Barney: Marshall, you look like a Backstreet boy. And not even the good Backstreet boys, the lame comeback tour boys.
Ted: The "good" Backstreet Boys?


And that got me thinking. How did the boy and girl bands of the '90s become so big? How did people even think lines like "Get down, get down and move it all around" or "I wanna see you out that door. Baby Bye! Bye! Bye!" were cool? I guess we all know why they faded away (their songs are plain stupid). But how did they capture our minds (me included)in the first place?


I guess this sort of thing's been happening since the time of the Beatles. Sure, they did play some good music. ("Yesterday"'s one of my favourites). But how could a song with lyrics like this become popular:
"Oh please, say to me, you'll let me be your man
And please, say to me, you'll let me hold your haaaand
You'll let me hold your haaaand
I wanna hold your hand"
I mean, are you kidding me? This song was on Vh1's list of 100 most popular rock songs of the 20th century. And for the life of me, I can't understand why anyone would listen to it.


I suppose every single fad works that way. Bell bottoms, hula hoops, floral print shirts,denim jackets, disco dancing, baggy jeans (which are making a comeback, btw). And every subsequent decade we talk about how lame people were "back then". Why is it that till date nothing has achieved any kind of lasting, eternal cool?


Maybe it has something to do with the fact that "cool" is defined by "young" people. Being young and rebellious, we naturally reject anything that's not ours. That we can't claim to have "discovered". All of it seems so old-fashioned, awkward....uncool. It's only after we're "older" and "wiser" that we realize what's actually useful and worth keeping. But by then we're too old to decide what's cool and what isn't. And there's a new bunch of youngsters to reject everything we liked. (this coming from me when I'm still in a position to decide what's cool)


Of course, that's not to say that adults don't have fads as well. What can one say about the sudden emergence of veganism, new-age living, strange far-eastern martial arts and all the myriad mutations of yoga. Nothing but fads. Not many people have the commitment it takes to keep at something like reiki or t'ai chi. They're just looking for a quick fix. What's the problem? no one knows.


Going into adulthood is a little scary actually. It's like exchanging one set of fads for another. Here's hoping that FRIENDS stays cool for ever. And that BSB never become cool again. Or the Spice Girls, for that matter.

TRAIN of thought

There's something very strange about the way my mind works when I'm on a train. It keeps fluctuating between nearly comatose inactivity, and march-hare hyperactivity. Almost comatose cos most of the time I just stare out the window watching trees, poles, telephone cables, roads, small stations, dogs, cows , schoolkids, fences, other trains whiz by. And none of it registers. Nothing at all. It's like I'm still watching a movie even though I've lost all interest in the plot. I'm just looking at the changes in the lighting, listening for wrong notes in the music track and smirking at the odd accent the heroine speaks in. And not giving a whit about the story line. Yes, I realize that the countryside cannot actually have a story line. But wouldn't it be so much better if it did?

As for the hyperactivity, here goes. I'd just read this piece by estarra before boarding the train for Delhi. And once my imagination kicked in, I created my own interview with Dr. Kalam. Complete and picture perfect. With estarra's college in the background. With that endearing style of speaking that Dr. Kalam has. I won't go on about how the interview went, but suffice to say it was enlightening. Apparently, I can enlighten myself :)

Fact is, I've got a love-hate relationship with trains. I love the sense of occasion that a long distance journey brings. I hate the fact that trains here are so slow. I love the sights I see along the way. I hate the fact that almost all of the Indian countryside is a boring, identical, unending mass of farmland. I love the idea of eating different kinds of food along the way. I hate the way the railways has standardised all the meals. (stiff idlis for breakfast, rice with weird gravies for lunch, stiff chappatis for dinner. On every route that I've been on!)

The worst part is that I can't live with trains(for all the above reasons). And yet, I can't live without them. Travelling halfway across the country between college and home means that the train becomes a part of your life. Okay maybe not nearly as big a part as it is for someone who works in the railways. But you've got to remember that my first long train journey (and by long, I mean a journey that's longer than a day) happened when I was 15. So I'm not much of a traveller and this is a big change for me.

Flying is simply too expensive (and irresponsible. It contributes far more CO2 per person that any other mode of transport. Yeah, I'm environmentally conscious.). And it makes me burn up whenever I hear about the high-speed rail networks in France, Japan. Even China! In comparison, our "superfast" trains travel at a mind-numbing speed of over 55kph. WOW!! :P

Sigh, what to do. A Pune-Delhi journey is gonna take 26 hours for the forseeable future. Might as well just sit, lean back and stare out the window. Maybe those pethas in Agra will be pretty good.

(Written on board the Karnataka Sampark Kranti express on Feb 6th. And the pethas were far too sweet :D)

It's the pits

(I wrote this last night when I was in a really rotten mood. So read it only if you want to know how I sound when I bitch. And no, I don't regret anything I've said here.)

Depression’s a bitch. You never know when that deep blue funk is gonna come up, you don’t know how long it’ll last, you don’t know why it happens. It just hangs over your mind, like a giant Dementor, sucking every positive thought out of you. Actually, sucking every thought out of you. And just filling you with this big load of negativity. Sunrise doesn’t move you one bit. A bird chirping makes you curse it for being so noisy and apparently happy. And you just want to tell the next guy who says what a great day it is to shove it up his arse.

If I could, I’d get a big load of junk food, chocolate, espresso, then seal myself off from the rest of the world and watch some cheesy Adam Sandler movies, or some dumb romantic comedies until I fall asleep. It probably won’t do me any good, physically or otherwise, but it sure will remove the need to think. Or at least get rid of the single thought going on in my head. Namely, what’s the whole point?

Really, what IS the whole point? Of anything? What is the point of going to class when you don’t understand anything? What is the point of a class which isn’t designed for students like you? What is the point of a lecturer who doesn’t know what he’s talking about? What is the point of college? What is the point of there being an opposite sex? For that matter, what is the point of there being other people? What is the point of life on this dumb planet? What is the point of doing anything if it goes unnoticed? Why does it seem like some people exist just to tick you off? Why is my roommate the leader of that lot? Why even bother?

And what really pisses me is that it all starts out of the blue. It’s not as if I had a bad day at college. It was about average. And if anything I should be happy and excited about my trip to Delhi for this inter-college meet. But I’m not. I just keep thinking that it’s gonna be a huge letdown, that the accommodation will be awful, that the competitions will be poorly organized, and that I’ll screw up the quiz there.

It seems really easy to give up. To just take a couple of sleeping pills, hit the sack, and wake up from a dreamless sleep the next day. And yet I know that if someone came up to me even now and told me that they were feeling down, I’d do the best I can to cheer them up. Regardless of the fact that I’m the one who needs cheering up more. Why would I do that? Why not just tell them that life sucks, so piss off. After all, I don’t see it any other way.

And the people around me. They make me feel worse. Getting excited for the tiniest of things. Laughing at some really stupid, pointless jokes. Making off-colour, anti-establishment jokes. And others who think THAT’S funny. People who act like nothing affects them and that they can roll with whatever life throws at them. People with a holier-than-thou attitude. People who think they can get wherever simply through academics. Dumb ostriches that are happy to bury their heads in denial while life and the joys of youth pass them by. People who are looking for dirt from your life, as if their very existence depended on it. People who MUST trample over you and come out on top. Brown-nosing suck ups who wouldn’t survive without patronage. And didn’t know that there are other things in the world besides their bosses butts.

Plus it’s the little things that really tick me off. Right now there’s some song about ‘pehla pyaar’ playing in the background. What is the big deal? 99% of the time, it’s doomed to fail, for whatever reason. And ,at that time, no one really knows what they’re doing. By the time you’re wise enough to know what you did wrong, you never get the same rush again. Also, I’m the kind of guy who takes myself so seriously, that asking a girl out is almost like applying for a research grant or something. I can’t treat it lightly. Which means I’m definitely never gonna get that rush I did when I was 14. So why do you have to bloody rub it in?

Also, I’ve been going through some pretty weird moods in the last one week. I sent two really mushy texts to my ex, purely on impulse. I never sent her anything of the kind even when we were going out. She isn’t telling me, but I’m sure she thinks I’m turning into some kind of lovelorn, Devdas-minus-whisky type now. And that can’t be good.

Whatever. I hear that apparently men also go through cyclic mood swings. It’s just that PMS is more obvious in women. Plus it’s that much easier for a guy to drown his blues in alcohol, or drugs or whatever. And that may be why it hasn’t been noticed for a long time.

Linda Goodman says that Cancer’s moods vary with the tides. But she also says that the full moon is when they’re at their most imaginative, creative best. I don’t know what to believe. Maybe the full moon’s just turned the energy the other way? Maybe she doesn't know what she's talking about.

Btw, my typing has been pretty bad. Plenty of spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, rewrites. I think this post is trash. I think I shouldn’t even write a blog. I think I need a shot of hot, strong, black coffee. And then I’m going to bed. If you actually thought it was worth your while to read this post, well, it wasn't.

Blink, and it's gone

My mind amazes me. No, not in the sense of, “I’m so gobsmackingly intelligent!” I get plenty of that as it is from parents and relatives. Apparently my aunt tells my cousins to look at me as an example of how well one ought to study (hah!), and keeps goading the poor kids. I’m sure they must hate me by now (they’re in the US, so I don’t know for sure)

No, it amazes me because of the sheer volume of seemingly irrelevant thoughts that pass through my head. It’s like some kind of anti-boredom system (My very own ABS. Cool!) It’s got just one instruction: When all else fails, flash random things through mind. And they’re totally random. F’rinstance, I was ironing a shirt last night, while listening to a song and here are just some of the thoughts that flashed by:

+Male Mallu singers have wonderful, deep voices
+Unnikrishnan doesn’t have a deep voice
+That joke by Vivek on kaakaa biryani and Unnikrishnan’s voice
+Saif shouldn’t have been cast in Abbas’s role when they re-made Minnale in Hindi
+Why does Gautham Menon make so many police themed movies?
+Kamalinee Mukherjee looks hot!
+Dum da dum dum da dum dum dum DUM
+How come no Tamil actor has done a film about a laundry-man?
+Naa isthrikaaran, isthrikaaran / nalla amutthum isthrikaaran / nyayamulla rate-u kaaran …
+How I get my most inspired ideas when I’m doing my laundry
+Maybe I should carry a Dictaphone with me whenever I do my laundry
+Why don’t I write about this in my blog!
+How utterly short of ideas I must be to write about doing laundry in my blog

Some sobering thought like the last one brings me back to reality. I scold myself for being silly (See! More examples of uptightness), and get back to work on whatever I’m supposed to be doing. For a while, anyway. It never lasts. (Mum, if you’re reading this, this is why it always took me so long to study even one chapter). One recurring theme is my current flame, whoever she is at that moment, and how I’d ask her out. Of course, I hardly ever get around to doing it, but I always rehearse, re-rehearse and re-re-rehearse. Complete with a background score, elaborate sets and subtle lighting changes. All of it in my head. Yeah, it sounds pathetic, but trust me it’s loads of fun.

The worst part is that when I need my mind to be productive and come up with ideas, it clams up. Completely. Seals itself shut. Only after much self-goading, self-prodding and self-hair-pulling am I able to get any work done. This paragraph alone took me ten minutes.

Anyway, today is Pongal. It’s the second Pongal in as many years that I’m spending away from home. That’s what I hate about living in a hostel. I can’t be with the people I love the most on the days that matter the most. I’ve spent my last two birthdays, parents’ birthdays, Valentine’s days away from home. At least I’ve been in Madras for the new year every time so far. Small mercies.

Ok, sorry. Shouldn’t bum you out on Pongal. Pongal nalvazhthukkal to you all. Don’t get caught near Alanganallur anytime today :)

Pongalo Pongal!