A Warning to Cat.

Ever had to make up wild stories about why you didn't bring your homework ("My dog ate it") or were late to class? Well, I was late to my one and only class (thanks to ongoing strike) this morning and I wish the story behind my delay was made up...

There's this cat. Let's call her... Cat. (Holly Golightly style!) Cat has some sort of affinity towards me. She lives on the street and I'm pretty sure that I have never sent her "love-vibes". Never. Her love for me is totally unrequited. Last night, or rather EARLY this morning - 3am to be precise - Cat decides to pay me a visit. She climbs in through the window which was only slightly open to let some air in and sits on my bed, at my feet. Obviously, I am asleep because that's what normal people do at 3am and I like to think I'm relatively "normal" so she decides she needs to wake me up to get my attention and thus she proceeds to whine in her screechy and loud MEOOOOWWWWWW.

Oh, I'm awake alright. I sit up straight in bed, slightly dazed and thinking OH CRAP, there's a cat in my room and it's sitting on my bed and MEOOOWWWING! I'm not very happy about this because I don't like cats, especially not dirty stray ones so I turn on the lamp so I can chase the darn thing out and I look at the clock - 3AM!!!! Okay, now I'm really mad! I have to go to college in the morning and I need my sleep! Get out you stupid cat!!

So there I was at 3am chasing Cat out of my room and she got all confused like she couldn't understand my reaction to her "friendly neighbourhood visit". She thought I was overreacting or something so it took some time to get her to exit where she entered from and she even stood one the window sill for a couple of seconds meowwwing one last time just in case I change my mind...

Well I didn't. I secured the window shut after she finally left and sat on my bed for a while cursing Cat and letting my heart rate come back to normal before I could try and get back to sleep...

...

It was funny the first time. (Yeah, this has happened before.) Cat was literally Meowwwing in my ear the first time before I chased her out. I laughed it off even though she woke me up in the early hours of the morning. The second time, I didn't even know she was in the room until she surreptitiously slipped out from under my bed and out the window giving me a fright!

This time I'm just having murderous thoughts about Cat!!!

Come Saturday.

Another week of non-classes. Teachers (supposedly all over India) have been on a strike for a week now because the stupid government refuses to pay our teachers their due. Goodness knows when it will end. I've never been the kind of person who enjoys non-classes for long periods of time. The only exception was Econ classes but then I dealt with that issue by dropping the subject so... I'm not very happy about this strike!! I WANT MY CLASSES! :(

Anyway, thank goodness for K'scope (our college festival) which allows me to still stay outside the house for a good portion of the day :P We've started with our workforce photo-shoots which keeps us in college till at least 3 o'clock.

I also visited the Library yesterday and spent almost an hour trying to decide what to read next! (So many books to read!!!) I kept picking books off the shelf and then putting them back. Finally I decided on The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - a book that's been sitting on my virtual to-read list for a while now. I've read a couple of chapters so far; I was pretty hooked from the first page. (And... I just found out that's there's a movie based on the book in the making too. Not surprising.)

So there's an update on my not-so-happening-life.

On the bright side: This Saturday I'm going to watch a famous play by Samuel Beckett called Waiting For Godot. It's a totally weird play and I'm pretty sure we're all going to be pretty dazed by the end of it but I'm finally getting to go to this theater that I've heard so much about - Prithvi - and even better, wait for it... I get to see Naseeruddin Shah on stage! :)

"Whoever saves one life..."

I'm still mulling over it and my eyes are stinging from all the crying although my nose is not blocked anymore. Yes, this is possibly the best films I have ever watched and apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks so. Made in 1993, this film by Steven Spielberg is the Winner of 7 Academy Awards, nominated for many more, and is apparently rated number 8 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 best American films ever made. That's gotta say something, don't you think? It's right up there with other brilliant films like The Godfather, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, etc... Films like Slumdog Millionaire (as much as I enjoyed it...) is a total loser in front of this film. I don't know why it took me so long to getting around to watching it. I guess you don't realize how good it is until you actually watch the film...

p.s. I also watched Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince (2009) at the theatre today but it's really barely worth a mention. The only good it did for me was make me want to read the book again.
And I watched Singin' in the Rain (1952) on Thursday which I positively LOVED!! :)

You want rain?

Hello all,

Here's what it looks like outside my window on this very very WET and dark monsoon afternoon. Water, water, everywhere. It looked much the same last night when I went to sleep around 10:45pm. And of course today, we didn't really even consider braving this to go to college. I haven't seen this kind of rain in a long time or maybe... ever. It'll be bad news if it keeps us like THIS for much longer.
Anyway, so what am I doing at home? I just finished reading another book - Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. Remember that fabulous Audrey Hepburn 1961 film? :D

I found it at the American Centre Library of which I am now a member!! It all started last Thursday. Our Sociology class was invited to the American Centre in Churchgate where they showed us this documentary about the workings of the student newspaper at Penn. State University. It was interesting since one of our subjects this year is Sociology of the Media. After that they gave us a tour of their library and I was smitten. Especially because you can make use of it at a nifty price of Rs. 300/= for students! Lucky me, I'm a student!

Libraries and book-shops are my happy places and since book-shops work out to be more expensive, I joined the library! :D Obviously since they're the American Library, most of their books are American but I found that they have a better collection than the British Council Library and also being a member means you can access the online databases that they have institutional membership to. Very useful for my projects. And the general atmosphere is just nice... after you get past the rather paranoid security at the entrance of course ;)

Lots of reading to do. And then of course there are the bundles and bundles of notes that we're given in class to go through and movies to watch and blogs to read...

So yeah. I'm keeping myself busy :)

Mumbai Monsoon Movies!

Last night I fell asleep while praying for rain. Well, I got my wish. It rained alright. Actually rain is an understatement. It freakin' POURED. I woke up to the sound of it and apparently it had been going non-stop while I was asleep... And I was in a HAPPY mood! So I even left a little early so I could walk a while in the rain before my friend Antu, picked me up in an auto and we went to the station. Things were pretty normal. Umbrellas all around. We skipped over the usual overflowing water right in front of the station and became a part of the hundreds of anonymous faces. Our train was jam-packed as usual - full of wet and some grumpy people. My back was beginning to protest due to standing in weird positions with my bag-full of books. And I couldn't really talk to Antu cause of the wall of people between us.

Then we reached Bandra. Still raining. No big deal and then I started overhearing conversations about the rain and how "Grant Rd. is totally submerged". Ah, big deal. Stupid rumours. Paranoid people. And then Antu's phone rings. One of our classmates reached Grant Rd. and was about turning back to Andheri. "Grant Rd. is totally submerged. Knee-deep water. I'm going back home!" Oh she hates the rain; gets really scared when it rains a little.Me and Gauri monsoon-posing in college last Saturday

We should've listened :P Especially when these girls who were on our train from the BMM dept. in our college got off at Dadar in response to a phone call which apparently told them "Classes Canceled!" At this point, alarms should've been going off in our head. Go back home!!

Lol. Anyway, we reached Mumbai Central, just one stop before our stop (Grant Rd.) and saw for ourselves. The tracks were indeed pretty much submerged in water and the trains from Churchgate were running wayyyy behind schedule. So we got off, went to the next platform and waited for a little while. Told the others in the gang not to bother heading to college. Stay home!! And then took a train back.

It was all very exciting for me actually. There's something very comically adventurous about living in Mumbai. Especially during the monsoons. It's comical because after sooooo many years of this manic rain and high-tide combination, after so many floods, so many people dying and buildings collapsing and trains stopping... etc, etc. Mumbai - govt. and municipality - STILL seem to be completely taken unawares when it comes. It's so... FUNNY! :D

Anyway, so that makes it two college-less days this week. (Monday was a holiday for other reasons). I came home and sat around with Antu for a while (we had to wait out the rain and traffic a little before she could catch an auto home) and then after lunch, I watched a movie! A fantastic movie that you need to watch - The Boy in Striped Pajamas. Miss Smith, my maths teacher from school, had told me about the book by the same name (by John Boyne) upon which this movie is based when I met her up in Ooty this summer. Still haven't found the book but the movie was just fantastic. Seriously, you need to watch it.

Movies I've watched recently: The Boy in Striped Pajamas, The Secret Life of Bees and New York

Made in India!

Saturdays are good days! Even though we have classes which means we technically only get a one-day weekend, we finish by 10:30am and are generally free for the rest of the day to do whatever we want. So today we decided to take a ride on Mumbai's newest "landmark" - The Bandra-Worli sealink (which is what we will call it until the political parties finish with their ridiculous petty political arguments over what this engineering marvel "ought" to be called...)

Anyway, so the bridge which connects Bandra to Worli over the sea, has been under construction for TEN YEARS and was finally opened to the public this week. The tolls for using this bridge is pretty expensive but they haven't yet started charging so we jumped at the opportunity of a "free-ride"!

Although most of us have our driving licenses, our parents don't yet trust us enough to drive their cars on these manic roads because passing a driving test in India DOES NOT mean you can drive so we hired a cab instead (no walking or motorbikes allowed on the sea-link) and made our way to Bandra on this awesome bridge... MADE IN INDIA! :)

The happy passengers in the back of the cab: Antu, Jo and Sharan...