I Know This Much Is True

I would really love to post pictures from the weekend but my internet is being annoying and I'm busy trying to finish the last 100 or so pages of this big fat book that I've been reading for almost a month now. It is now overdue at the library (darn it!) so I have to finish it tonight...
It is a brilliant book by the way. Granted, it took me a while to really begin to appreciate it (around 650 pages to be precise! :P) and it's intimidatingly long but I would highly recommend it. The characters are really beautifully developed and they just grow on you... I'm actually kind of sad I'll be finished with it soon.

"We'd all be a bunch of geniuses if we had hindsight ahead of time."
-- Wally Lamb (I Know This Much Is True)

p.s. I know you should never judge a book by its cover but isn't it just beautiful?

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! :)

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 :)

Be still for a spell.

Hello! I almost forgot I had a blog. Okay, that's pushing it but yeah. It's been a while.

There are things that I want to blog about - things that suggest that I do think about things beyond my little world ;) but that requires time to sit and ponder and stuff and quite honestly I haven't really had that kind of time. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I like to be busy and between classes, K'SCOPE, and all this crazy reading that I've suddenly gotten into; it has been pretty busy around here. I like to be busy because that helps the missing-home thing and other various things that I worry about (Global Warming, world peace and all that stuff :P) but according to my doctor, somewhere along the way I am apparently subconsciously thinking about all of this anyway which finds it's expression not through my mouth but through my body and this is not so good. So maybe I need to make time to sort out my thoughts and EXPRESS myself and this is one of the primary reasons I started the blog so... Hello blog.

Yesterday, my friend Antu and I went to this amazing exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery and it was just... beyond words. It was organised by this man called Neville Tuli and his OSIAN Foundation who has this massive collection of photos, paintings, posters, artefacts, etc. There were paintings and photos from like centuries ago depicting the 1857 Mutiny, actual photographs of Mahatma Gandhi, original Clint Eastwood and Amitabh Bachan film posters... It was crazy and oh-so-exhausting to take it all in and apparently what we saw yesterday was just a tiny fraction of everything that he has... Whoa! If you live in Mumbai, it's still on till the 2nd of July and then they're starting in Delhi on the 3rd. Go check it out!

I decided to do my Gender & Society project on Aung San Suu Kyi and Shirin Ebadi as Human Rights Activists. I'd been thinking about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from the beginning and the lady with whom I had the amazing conversation with on the train a few weeks back also suggested it so I talked to my teacher and she seemed pretty enthusiastic... YAY! And then I went to this place Centre of Documentation in Colaba which is this amazing place where they document all these newspaper/magazine articles in these huge files according to the topic and I came across Shirin Ebadi who I'd never heard about but it'll interesting finding out more about her especially in the light of the current circumstances in Iran. So yay, again! :)

On Sunday, Sonu and I went Landmark bookstore and spent some quality time there flicking through books and even though I resolved not to buy anything because I have so much to read anyway, I couldn't resist and ended up buying a classic. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. We had studied North & South by her in A'levels and so mostly I wanted to read another Gaskell for nostalgia's sake but I am glad I bought it. Classics are the cheapest books to buy so it's almost guilt-free and I am really enjoying reading it...

I'm also reading Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman (my dad's recommendation). Honestly, I was pretty skeptical about getting through this book because I'm not much of a non-fiction reader and if you see the size of this one... it's pretty daunting! I have to admit though that I am impressed and am actually enjoying it. It is so well-researched and such an important issue and one that I am concerned about so I recommend it too!

In the music scene, I'm still mad about Brooke Fraser. Her songs bring me joy for hours on end. :)

In the autumn on the ground,
Between the traffic and the ordinary sounds,
I am thinking signs and seasons while a north wind blows through
I watch as lovers pass me by
Walking stories - whos and hows and whys
Musing lazily on love
Pondering you
I'll give it time, give it space and be still for a spell
When it's time to walk that way we wanna walk it well

I am waiting for you baby,
I'll be holding back the darkest night.
Love is waiting till we're ready, till it's right
Love is waiting

-- Love is Waiting by Brooke Fraser

All in a day of third year!

Look who we found on the train ride to college at 7:20 in the morning almost dozing off while reading The Return of The Native? Sonu lives further from town than we do now so she has joined the masses on the local trains... I think this might be one of the first times we got to sit down on the train in the morning after travelling second class for the first couple of days before we got our first class passes down. We're "happy" commuters now. Second class is treacherous!

Sharan, darling that she is, got me some C.S. Lewis book from the British Council Library! More books for my Book List 2009!Classes started on Wednesday and it's kind of weird not having anything else but Sociology all day long! For the first time I don't have to write the name of the subject in my timetable only numbers to denote which part of Sociology I have at different times... Crazy! Sitting in the classroom after a fun lesson with a fun teacher! I had to make some posters to advertise Photography Team interviews for K'SCOPE (our college festival). I'm on the interviewer side this year and not the interviewee :DStrange as it may sound, our timetable is actually more relaxed than last year! On most days we only start at 8:50am instead of 8:00am and there are breaks in between classes too... YAY!

After college yesterday we decided to grab some lunch and watch a movie at Colaba. Lunch was at Leopold Cafe which is a really old and famous eating place in Colaba (Shantaram anyone?) It's like a melting pot of cultures actually, there are usually a lot of foreigners around and they have all kinds of food for reasonable prices (although they've increased the prices of everything a little now...)

Madhuri, Shruti and Sonu

Looks picture perfect doesn't it? Vini's order...

Outside the theatre after the movie. L-R: Vini, Sonu, Madhuri, Monisha and Shruti

The movie - Bride Wars - was okay. You know how chick flicks go... :D

In a nutshell.

*On my playlist:
Come Back To Me - David Cook ♥
Touch My Hand - David Archuleta ♥

*On my mind:
Cinnamon Rolls!

*On my desktop:

My granny, me, my brother and cousins in Kolkata, 1988!

*On my feet:
Salsa! (and a little Bachata!)

*On my tabs:
Hotmail, Facebook, Forming and Baking Cinnamon Rolls: All Recipes Tutorial!

*On my bedside table:
Embroidery threads and cross-stitch patterns

*On my currently-reading list:
Rumours of Another World by Phillip Yancey
The Breakdown Lane by Jacqueline Mitchard

*On my movie-list:
Well, I decided it's time I watched some of those "guy-movies"...
So far:
Full Metal Jacket: Can't say I loved it, but it is a good movie and led me to Google the Vietnam War. Gotta love a movie that leads me to expand my knowledge :P
Batman Begins: I declare Batman to be my favourite fictional super-hero! :D Loved it. But The Dark Knight wins thanks to Heath Ledger.
Ocean's Eleven: Loved it. Have to find the other... two(!?) {p.s. this is not really a guy-movie actually} Other movies:
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: Umm.. ok.

Bombay today, Bangalore tomorrow!

Yup, it's finally here. I'm going home after about four months and am soooo looking forward to it!

I board the train in the morning tomorrow and reach Bangalore on Sunday morning. It's a pretty long journey but I have books (Wuthering Heights and Five Quarters of the Orange), movies (Oscar movies!), my mp3 player (with new music thanks to Sharan!) and about a dozen batteries to keep it going and well... me. I think I'm pretty good at keeping myself occupied and am actually kind of looking forward to the journey. Traveling through rural India is always a treat!

Anyway, I'll see you in Bangalore!

Jo, Sonu, Gauri, Antu, Sharan and Vini: I miss you already! :)

The New Era.

Hmm, seriously lacking 'gusto' to blog nowadays.So I went to the post-office yesterday - after we visited with Gauri who is down with malaria (GET WELL SOON!!) - to post a letter to Gail, a friend of mine from Hebron who studies in California and there was the man sitting behind the counter checking his EMAIL. Irony?

My 'cancerous' laptop is acting weird again. Tata Indicom - STUPID STUPID Tata Indicom (my internet connection). Studying for exams and realising that I actually like studying but I hate how tired it makes me feel. Jhumpa Lahiri is so awesome - I think I like Unaccustomed Earth the best out of her three books so far; it's like she's taken thoughts, anecdotes and stories straight out of my own life and expressed them in words that I would never be able to put together so beautifully. We finally have water again in our time-warp of a house.

I'm learning that patience is essential to maintain sanity. And accepting forgiveness is as essential as being forgiven.

I can't wait to go home. I'm looking forward to going home.

And now... Time for the unrelated and random photo of the day!

This one was taken by Grace when she came to visit me last month. These boys were on their way to school or something and they got all excited when they saw two foreigners standing outside VT with their cameras and kept going, "Didi, didi, mera bhi photo lo!!" (Didi = respectful term for sister - Didi, take a photo of me too!) So Grace and On You indulged them. Aren't they cute?

Book-Worm 2009. (Updated with Strikes!)

I don't make much of New Year Resolutions mainly because I'm pretty bad at keeping them... I don't think I had any last year, except that I wanted to read at least 30 books in 2008. Now, I have no idea if I achieved that because I never bothered to keep count. I could probably find out through Goodreads (which is a very cool networking site where you can record all the books that you've read, want to read and are currently-reading and get recommendations and read the general public's views on various books. If you love to read, do jump on the Goodreads bandwagon, its not like your usual social networking site and you'll find it useful.) Of course there's always the "Lose Weight" resolution which I make and break every year. Nothing new about that.

Anyway, this year I'm going to keep count and aim at 40 books for 2009. Here's a few for my list so far. I'd love to get some recommendations too.

1. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
2. Tramp For The Lord by Corrie Ten Boom
3. Persuasion by Jane Austen: Currently-reading.
4. The NIV Bible: Currently-reading.
5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: To-Read.
6. Five Quarters Of The Orange by Joanne Harris: Finish Reading.
7. Brida by Paulo Coelho: To-Read.
8. The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho: To-Read.
9. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis: To-Read.
10. Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins: To-Read.
11. Doctrines That Divide by Erwin Lutzer: Finish Reading.
12. The Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur: To-Read.
13. The Famished Road by Ben Okri: To-Read.
14. Candide by Voltaire: Finish Reading.
15. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri: To-Read.
16. What's So Amazing About Grace? by Phillip Yancey: To-Read.
17. The Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis: Finish Reading.
18. The Swans Are Not Silent by John Piper: To-Read.
19. The Hidden Smile Of God by John Piper: Currently Reading.
20. Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: To-Read.
21. Night by Elie Wiesel: To-Read.

Recommendations??

P.s. How do you strike words? You know like putting a line THROUGH the word??

Update: Thanks Kari, I took your suggestion and googled it and now I know how to strike out words! Yay! Here's the link to the online tutorial if you want to know how.