moonlight drive

Now What???

2009-06-04T22:00:00.003-04:00

I finally realized my dreams and visited NYC. Since i left the US almost 10 years ago, i had vowed to come back and conquer Manhattan. It was a long, arduous journey but i managed to make it. as i walked on fifth avenue by myself listening to my carefully planned new york city album replete with Sinatra and Dean Martin, i thought to myself, now what? is this how shallow i was that for the last ten years all i wanted to do was to visit the city and imagine myself to be in 'Moonstruck'. while in my head, back home in Bombay, sitting on my couch and watching all the movies and staring wistfully outside the window, i was so enamored with the dream, the idea. when the idea became a reality, when actually at night, the streets are filled with huge, black garbage bags to be taken the next day, when the subways are transporting hostile people, i wonder how shallow my dream really was.

Now i have moved on to Paris. and i can actually imagine it already-me, with the song in my ipod, strolling down the Champs-Elysee in a chic outfit that i would have meticulously planned for years just for that moment. and the photo at the Eiffel tour and the feeling of absolute wonder at the Louvre. isn't it scary that i am able to actually feel the emotion before it has even taken place? and if thats the case, what is the real substance to my goals really?

maybe i am feeling this way because the harsh reality of going home to bombay has not hit me as yet. now i sit in my cozy room, with good weather and belt out my emotions at the type writer. i am willingly giving up on alot of luxuries as a result of my move to go back to bombay. but i am convinced somehow that this is the right move. i actually always somehow knew, come to think of it, from the moment i started math camp, that i would go back. maybe thats an exagerration, im not sure.

shreya called me and said that the transition sucks. i know it does, i still remember getting off the flight and going with my mom the next day to school. i walked in the rain in the most disgusting street then, Nester Compound road to school. i thought that i was sent to jail or something, and i thought i wouldn't make it. but i did, i survived and did pretty well under the circumstances. i never thought too much of myself from then, begrudging the fact that i would never win some great prize someday. but i have achieved something in my life, and if it is small, then so be it. i found out that chasing after the CV has not made anyone happy and i think so have my parents. the greatest joys in life are appreiciating it for what it is. i thought that i would achieve some sort of 'moksha' when i visited nyc, but i still came home and cried for hours to my mom and my sister. i dont have the answers, im only 24. but i think that going back is not a regression but i am moving forward.

i am going home.

A New Day

2009-01-11T14:07:00.002-05:00

so i have a new day and a new life ahead of me. I am ehausted emotionally, the qualifier and the lack of correlation between effort and reward has definately taken a huge toll me on me. But i resolve to be better now and fight stronger. I cannot believe that this place can do all of that to you. I know that i am kind of cutting away from people this year, because i myself have become to used to being by myself, all that i need is the laptop and the internet and i am fine. i dont need anybody or anything else.

thats what people here do, they study by themselves, spend long hours alone and then they just have their laptop for compnay. the irony of this whole matter is that i am doing the exact same thing right now. man if someone were to come here and look at me right now, they would see a smartly dressed indian girl working on her laptop with a glass of water near her. this is what american is all about. i see her struggling to deal with it, and i know how she feels, infact i know exactly how she feels. i had so many expectations from certain people that never got met. and that makes me feel alot better now to deal with situations, because i just learnt that the minute you expect something from someone, you are invariably setting yourself up for hurt and disaster. what have i learnt over the past year and half. i grew up, i thought that i knew what it was like to be alone, but i didnt then, and i do now. i know what its like to expect things from people and i expect nothing from anyone. that way whatever i get is a bonus. its such a cynical way to look at things, but i think that its the only way to go over here and increasigly all over the world.

what can we do to stay sane? adapt. that is the human conditions, humans have always been adapting to the new enivironment, some people adapt better than others, but i think that ultimately that is the only thing that will keep us alive, and mentally healthy.

words of advice for my mental health, develop a healthy FUCK-YOU attitude.

that, my dear, is the way to go....

thank you!

2009-01-07T22:11:00.002-05:00

i read about this concept of a gratitude journal. it basically says that at the end of the day, we should focus on what we have rather than what we don't have. so here are four things that i am grateful for today:

1) i am grateful for recognizing that i am still as intelligent as i was. i am not going to let one subject, let one exam define me
2) i am grateful for my mom. she is such an amazing person, i cant believe sometimes that she exists. imagine someone who will always be there for you no matter who you are and what you do
3) i am grateful for the advice that dad and S gives me. it feels good to be grounded to realize that maybe the joy in life lies in working hard and achieving something.
4) Guddu- my defibrillator:)

i think that the above list is amazing! i am so lucky....

confused

2009-01-03T13:47:00.003-05:00

well, i woke up at 8 am. so thats good, but i woke up at 8 am to turn off the alarm and get back to sleep till 10 am. then i rolled around in bed in this state of limbo-neither asleep nor fully awake. i had strange dreams in which people in UNC and Xaviers were mixed up and i was very confused when i got up. i then had a conversation with sergey regarding my educational system. i was so sad after that.

he was telling me, and many others have told me before that they hate the people who just learn stuff before and exam and once the exam is over they forget it. i was exactly like that. i really had no idea what i was concretely studying for a good five years in the middle. i thought i was doing something really great when in actuality i was just like the rest of the herd. i even gave up the idea of learning in my masters as i wanted to learn international relations instead of economics.

so i have come here, come so far that despite the fact that either i chose such a shitty education or i was not given the opportunities, i am still here with my collegues who have had better educational systems than me. i am so surprised that not many americans study so much, they have no idea what i gold-mine of a system that they have. so is it too late for me with this exam? i think so, i cannot bridge the gap that i have in such a short space of time. i am trying, trying my level best to internalize everything, but every time i read micro, i just seem to forget it soon after. people might say i have not given it my best shot, but i have. i had been studying only micro practically during my semester and just to survive. i dont know what is worng with me and this subject. i guess everyone has their phobias, mine was marathi in school. now this...

i took a lovely walk today all the while listening to coldplay. chris martin says, " i was scared, i was scared, tired and underprepared..."

I wonder if i have crossed lines i shouldn't have crossed...

failure is the stepping stone to success

2009-01-02T12:33:00.003-05:00

i woke up at noon. but i look at it as a significant achievement from waking up at 2pm as i used to do. i know my biggest problem now is going to sleep, no matter how tired i am i just cant seem to go to bed by the time that requires me to wake up at 7. ok lets see, i need 8 hours of sleep. 7 am means......11 pm! zikes! i know i can do Math, but that seems way to early for me. how can i get sleep at 11 pm? looking at the time now its 12:35. see if i study continuously, i mean with 5 minute breaks till 11 pm i probably can get tired enough. i guess thats it.

so i have auctions now to study, i will study continuously in batches of one hour each till 11 pm. maybe then i will feel tired and get the necessary sleep that i require to get to bed by 11 pm. lets hope that it works.

maybe i will be back in the day. i have to get to getting up at 7 am by the end of the month. i will do it even if its the last thing i do.

again i reaffirm that i will not be scared and afraid of anything today so badly that it paralyzes me and makes me doubt myself.

all is quiet on new years day....

2009-01-01T09:15:00.002-05:00

so its new years, and i am going to start my resolutions today. the biggest thing that i did was wake up at 9 am. thats good. considering i was always used to waking up at 2 pm and sleeping at 4 am. how can anyone pretend to be productive like that. i think that this whole owl, night person thingy was fun for a while. but i cannot sustain this owl habit any longer. i am thinking about when i have a family. of course, realistically i cannot wake up so early by 6: 30 am so soon, but i think that is going to be my goal.

my goal now for the month of january 2009, is no matter what i am going to wake up by 8 am and do yoga or take a walk weather permitting for half and hr. my cardio plan may have to wait till Feb. i guess what i need is some dopamime in m brain to kick in and reward it for something. getting up every day early is something i am looking forward to.

i will give myself concessions for only days on which i have drank something the previous day.

also i need to cut back on my coke intake and negativity. so everday i am going to tell myself that " shaila, today i will not be afraid fo what i am going to face. because everything that will happen to me, good or bad, will help me grow."

my resolution is not to be so lethargic as i was last year. i was so lethargic.

its well now 11:02 am, i have woken up and in the last two hours i have:
a) had a shower and wore some nice clean clothes
b) cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed stuff that i had been meaning to do for a while now
c) do the dishes and clean the gas top
d) ate breakfast ( a huge deal for me)

i am feeling great and so less lethargic already! imagine if i had gone for a walk. that would mean waking up at 8 am and going for a walk for an hour. its too cold now, but i will consider going for a walk at 4pm.

what are my goals today? wow i cant believe that i will be writing this every morning. yes, tomoroww morning you will come back to this blog and review your goals. but you should not write anither word today as it is just an excuse to waste time.

my goals today are:
a) not to waste time on the internet
b) study lotteries and finish as many problems from chap 6 as i can in MWG
c) take a walk at 4pm for some time and leave phone behind
d) not be negative and scared about things in life

i think the last one is very important. it is just holding me back so much.

tomorrow i want to write about how i actually feel about all these things.

i know that i have become one of those annoying people who want to make every single thing into an event. but when lethargy takes over you and turns you into something so lazy and tired all the time, you know something is wrong. i have to start off on so many things this year, like cooking, my diet, health, excercise, etc. but i need to first achieve something, one thing even, which is waking up everyday at 8 am. if i achieve that, then i will move on to other things. waking up at 8 am is my # 1 priority for the month of Jan.

see you tom morning!

New Years Resolutions

2009-01-01T00:53:00.002-05:00

i called my dad and told him that i was making my new years resolutions. the clock had just struck 12. he told me that resolutions are made to be broken. but is that really true? i was reading an article recently on msn that said that most people fail at keeping up with them because the immune system of their psychology kicks in and starts to protect them from anything that could emotionally hurt them.

my new years resolutions are as follows:

1) wake up every morning at 6: 30 am and sleep by 11 pm.
2) write on my blog every morning to track my progress
3) get some excercise, take a walk on bolin creek every morning

i have tried to do this many times, but i am just sick of the lethargy that i feel constantly.

i need a dramatic change in life-style and self-discipline.

see you tom morning!

Finding a balance

2008-11-14T02:44:00.003-05:00

i remember one of the famous quotes of Ally Mcbeal:

so here i am, the victim of my own choices..and i haven't even begun as yet.

something like that.

i had written in a previous blog about how listening to classic rock made me so sad. right now i am listening to 'so far away' by dire straits. i feel such a mixed feeling listening to this song. i can see anil, kavi and guddu across from me, we are drinking beer and i am singing along with the song. we talk about many things. i guess you know that you are having a great time when you don't reminince. instead you are creating memories that you will reminice about. good times dont last forever, thats what makes it special.

other moments in life, on the other hand, are disappointingly mundane. i get up every morning, i teach once a week and i sleep alot on the weekends. i dont know, when im gone, what will be left of me in this world. what is life, its routine. i have always been trying to fight routine, but i think and i am only now beginning to realize that maybe the answer to happiness in life lies in routine. it probably lies in finding something in life that you love, and devoting yourself to it.

i dont love economics, i just am good at it. i am confident that i have not yet found out what i love as yet. it cant be a person, because in todays world it is impossible to base your happiness totally on someone. i am not being cynical, just realistic. after the glasses are taken off, you get back to "reality".

but now since i am on this never-ending path to personal grwoth, i want to make sure that every moment in my life is real. there is no unreal moment in my life, and there are good times in life and bad times. i tend to think that life can either be disastrous or fabulous.

veering between these two extremes has been taking a huge toll on me. now i am reaching a stage of self-awareness, in that i realize that i cannot sustain my mental health in this manner. i have to strive to find a midway between these two emotions and stabilize myself. because the euphoria of the good times cannot compensate the sadness that engulfs during the bad...

right now, i am wide awake and come to think of it, i find myself in the same state of mind, that i usually have been finding myself in for as long as i can remember. sitting in my couch in the hall, watching tv, watching music videos, and dreaming away of a life, far away, dreaming about actually, ironically being at this very spot i am right now, writing this blog, in beautiful free amercia with green grass, blue skies and smart winter clothes. but i still find myself, at 3 am, alone with my insipid thoughts.

alone, not lonely. i am glad that i FINALLY got that right.

what are our emotional foundations? are mine strong? what will i do when my child gets a fever? crumble?

shaila: you must have strong emotional foundations that cannot be based on a career, money, and especially not on any one person. take any of the above, as can easily be done, and what are you left with. yourself. funny, social, annoying, worried, scatter-brain shaila:)

no, je ne regrette rien

2008-09-06T02:03:00.002-04:00

I passed the macro qualifier. i wonder if there was a way i could go back to the summer and tell myself that i would and could do it.

what an achievement, so many tears and doubts and fears. i am on the other side, and i don't know how to feel. i feel happy in a long time. but i am wondering if thats where i should base my happiness-on academic achievement.

i have been feeling so bored the last few weeks. actually in the last few months, since May, i have been healing and recovering from the last one year-such a traumatic year that i had. personal and professional roller coaster.

but i would not have it any other way. now come to think of it. and there are many times where i sit down and feel-like tonight, that i have made a complete and utter mess of my personal life at the expense of my personal life. that i cannot have one without the other. but you know, while life is about sharing it with someone, you got to like that part of yourself that you are sharing. there are many people who will regret not working hard enough for a relationship because they had to do something, be somewhere, become someone. i think that if you just be with the other person blindly without thinking about your own personal growth, then you will land up very unfulfilled and very unhappy. i know someone, who i feel should have gone out into the world and seen for themselves how hard it really is, how lucky they are to have that person in their lives.

i went running to alot of the wrong people for answers that i couldn't find and for reassurance that i just wasnt able to give myself. i dont know if i can still do that, but i know now that the most important part of my life, is not onlyto be in a fun-loving relationship with a great guy-but to also have that relationship with myself.

like it says on my wall, i dont know where im going.....but im on my way:)

je ne regrette rien....

When you fail, read this.....

2008-08-06T10:49:00.002-04:00

hey shaila,

this is a letter to you. yes, you have studied hard for the macro qualifier. you actually did the best that you could do under the circumstances. considering that you had initially not intended to come back to chapel hill and finish the course, is an achievement in itself. yes you started late, and totally hated everything. once again, you were alone, in an apartment, in a lonely country and you used to spend hours with yourself, contemplating if this is the life that you really want.

at the end of the day, it is the fear of failure that drives you to make excuses for yourself. that prevents me from till today accepting that i wanted to do the phd and write a fantastic macro dissertation on endogenous growth theory. and i was so blinded by the goal that i forgot to enjoy the ride.

what about this ride that i keep talking about? its the ride of life, its not where you get, but how you get there. we are all going to the same place essentially-death. at the end of the day, we are all going to die and thats that. i am not thinking about death, but just about the important lessons in life. how did i live? did i give up too easily, did i try to always put myself in a comfortable position so that i would never face failure ever?

yes, and i stopped it. in fact the last one year has seen me grow in leaps and bounds. there were many times that i wanted to give up, and i actually have been quite depressed about it and in a quandary. am i genuinely unhappy in this place? or is it that i am out of my comfort zone and that is why i am unhappy. i left india to get a good education, and that is exactly what i have got. yes, i prob didn't choose the easiest paths to achieve it, but i did it nonetheless. look at the things that i can do now, the things that i know. a year ago, i would have never imagined that i would able to do it, but here i am. and i am proud of it. what will change between today and tomorrow, probably nothing.

i may completely screw up the exam by getting stuck and taking too much time on one question, then come back home, and think clearly and go.."shit i knew that!"

i may come back totally disappointed because i thought i knew my stuff...and i am really way behind what this place expects from me. and i would have done badly.

i may be estatic that i have done exceptionally well, only to realize that i have failed after one week. remember, in this case i deserve a mourning period for sure.

either way, whatever the outcome, whether its nerves or something else, be happy that you did your best. there is nothing more in macro that you could have done. and that at the end of the day is what counts. pray to balaji, he has a plan for you.

yes its the first time that you have failed at something, and it has come late. i wish i had failed at something before to prepare me for it. but the good thing is, after tasting failure now, you will know what it feels like. remember JNU? that not working out turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.

chin up shaila, face the world and know that you did your best. and if it doesn't work out, you should cry, and you should be upset. for a few days, then get back on your feet. because that is life.. it keeps rolling on......

Cultish behaviours and life lessons

2008-07-27T16:40:00.003-04:00

As i pondered over some meandering thoughts on this lazy sunday, i decided to do my favourite past-time on the internet-googling "leaving grad school". its always fun to know that you are not alone in the world, i remember having so much fun reading "Snapshots from hell" so many indian students i met, tell me, " how tough can it really be?" i have never been to engineering, and so i dont know what level of toughness is exhibited there, but yeah, working 60 hours a week can be exhausting. and its not just working, its studying 60 hours a week.

anyway i came across this interesting article that described grad school in humanities as a cult. i dont think many people realize just how cultish grad school really is. read on:

Behavior control: "major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals"; "need to ask permission for major decisions"; "need to report thoughts, feelings, and activities to superiors."
Information control: "access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged (keep members so busy they don't have time to think)" and "extensive use of cult-generated information (newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.)."
Thought control: "need to internalize the group's doctrine as 'Truth' (black and white thinking; good vs. evil; us vs. them, inside vs. outside)" and "no critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate."
Emotional control: "excessive use of guilt (identity guilt: not living up to your potential; social guilt; historical guilt)"; "phobia indoctrination (irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader's authority; cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group; shunning of leave takers; never a legitimate reason to leave"; and "from the group's perspective, people who leave are 'weak,' 'undisciplined.'"

I was blown away! not only could i recognize my program in this, i could also recognize AIESEC in this. even there, it was just driven by a very small segments inane love for the organization that made everyone else feel worse off if they werent a part of it. agreed it gave me alot, alot of friends, alot of lovely experiences, just like grad school. well, not lovely experiences, but alot of experiences nonetheless. but they do it, in the same way. AIESEC's selection procedure, just like grad school, was intense. we had to go through a series of rounds, tests, by seniors in the field. and when we got the acceptance call from them, we were elated. i even remember the two women that i spoke to, and literally its the moments that change your life.

once you get intiated into them, you meet everyone else gingerly. at first everyone is shy, and everyone is sizing up everyone else. its something new and exciting that you feel "priveledged" to be a part off. then its alot of euphoria intially that you have made it, and you feel a deep sense of superiority over everyone else-like this is definitive-that what you do is the best thing and what everyone else does is crap.

of course, then the real work starts. the bitching, the complaining, the long hours. what hurts the most, atleast for me, was the disillusionment. like Alanis said, i should thank it, and eventually will. for now though, it stays. you think that you came to be best friends and ended up being bitter enemies instead. that kind of complete role-reversal can be damaging to a person. i feel like i married someone and after the wedding, they have completely changed and become a horrible person that i no longer wish to be with.

i hope this is not reflective of my personality. it is true that i bail out of tough situations pretty quickly. i left @ very soon, instead of sticking it out for longer, i may have learnt more about leadership, how to work in a team with people who you did not necessarily like, how to take orders from people who were not necessarily smarter than you and how to deal with dynamics and complicated friendships.

but i know that things are slowly changing. for one thing, i no longer fear people who are smarter than me, especially women. i embrace their intelligence, and in grad school, instead of fearing them, hating them, i enjoy them and applaud them for being so smart. i am not afraid to ask for help, and not ashamed to do so. i realized now, that aksing for help is not a sign of weakness, but a positive step that you want to learn and you want to grow. i genuinely wanted to learn and grow. i no longer view women as the enemy, over the years, more than anything, my female friends have been my source of support.

do i hate men? men would have to include my dad, my brother-in-laws, my uncles and some other wonderful men that i have met. so i cant. i think with three billion of them, its horrible to stereotype. but to sound metaphorical, i am going to drop the tonnes of weight that is slowing my journey through this life. the good thing, the way i deal with the myriad emotions, is by telling myself that its not worth it. simply put. also i read what this man had said about women, it put so many things in perspective. he said " Female insecurity is a gift that keeps on giving"

So does that mean i wish i had not joined @, or grad school. i don't know. a part of me wishes not, a part of me wishes that i could sail through life smoothly without any rough waters. but the most important things that we learn about life are in the bad times, not the good. they reveal who we truly are.

who am i? i dont know. i recently saw Randy Pausch's last lecture, in which he described his theory qualifier as the second most painful thing in his life, after Chemo.

but the most important i have to realize, and maybe that goes through for life in general-its not about learning about how to get a quick match(@ lingo for finding a good volunteer for your work place), solving a CIA model, or solving a game, analyzing peoples responses to future taxation-its about what i learnt about life-that life that i am living and breathing every single day. when i take my last breath, i wont remember all of this stuff. i will only be left with memories of the people i saw, the places i went, the lessons i learnt. i guess i don't want to tell my children to give up the first sign of trouble, and bail out when the going gets tough. i want them to fight it out.

in the context i am talking about i tried, but i do believe that i am human, and the circumstances were just not conducive this time. but there is always next time, and i will prevail. the most exciting part about this, is that i get to learn something new everyday. so i am going to stop blogging, have a nice warm shower and learn something new. who knows what benefits it will render me? maybe not in the immediate future-but i have faith that it will definitely teach me something down the road of life.

the pursuit of happiness

2008-07-18T14:39:00.002-04:00

it was the second day in a row, and i was not planning on getting out of bed again. i couldn't face the world again, and the gazillion disappointments that faced me. i got up yest at 5 pm, and then was awake till 9 am. i don't know what kind of sleep schedule that is. i also found out i lost 5 pounds and that i look visibly think from a month ago! if you compare my NC state ID, i look fat in that.

its all coming back to me again. and i know i am going to blank out again in the quals. i had heart-attacks and barely managed to get through each midterm. now i have to combine 8 midterms and four finals in two exams. there are many days in which i was like fuck-it, i dont care, many days i studied and did care. but i am emotionally exhausted from last year. my friend tells me that my whole approach last year was very unhealthy, and that might explain my burnout+lack of interest.

many people tell me, ill regret this, the work place sucks blah blah. hahaha i met a friend who told me, ohh the work place sucks, people get fired, and you have to work everyday and do the same thing everyday blah blah.

haha

tell that to 7 people who got kicked out, the 14 weekends in a row that i studied, in addition to weekdays and actually once, bef an exam, i imagined tasting blood! some people tell me that life is tough, get over it. i had a wise person tell me that the same things happen to the same people but affect them differently. people have been preachy to a point where they know exactly whats good for me and what makes me happy. its annoying. at the end of the day, only I will know what makes me happy. sometimes, no matter how good people think you have it, it may be the worst thing for you.

so today i am going to list things that made me feel happy.

1. viets video, it made me happy, it didnt make me sad, cuz i felt that life is much bigger than what people around me have reduced it to.

2. the ye ishq song from jab we met. lovely

3. walking by myself everyday at Bolin Creek and listening to the Amelie soundtrack

(notice no groundbreaking understanding of Fischer's equation or determining Nash's equilibrium)

4. realizing that my life's purpose is not to be a caged animal but to be a free bird. that is not physically, but psychologically. a friend of mine told me, that i could leave anytime i wanted to. and that fact itself made me feel so much better. its strange.

i will get back to the happiness entry.

check out http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2007/02/in_which_i_lear.html

i loved it. once i learn how to add blogs that i read, i will stick it on the side.

so to the void, i shout out....im not there yet, but im getting there.....i will get there...i should get there, not anytime soon, though...you get the drift:)

strange dream

2008-07-16T22:52:00.003-04:00

yesterday, i was supposed to meet a friend of mine for lunch. i was studying endogenous growth theory again for the upteenth time and i slept late. i knew that i had to wake up early to meet him, but i was having dreams about being late. i had this dream that i had a boyfriend, who actually was an old friend of mine. anyway, we were being the couple, as in nothing physical or exciting, just the fact that i knew he belonged to me and i to him. anyway i was bugging him about not being late for the bus. we were down at sterling water tank, and the bus stop was the up hill univ gardens ones. i remember walking uphill, in jeans and nice shirt but looking down and walking barefeet on the pavement. its so strange. then i went to a friends house to borrow oshos. we missed the bus for some reason, and i was angry with my boyfriend. literally, the man of my dreams. i take the elevator in sterling to go to my house, but the strangest thing happens...the elevator doesnt stop at the 5th floor but keeps on going to houses i have never been to. and the topmost, is the eeriest house, where i am in the lift, i see the inner door of that house open, and i can sense some ghastly presence in it. i quickly press the button to go back down and i see "him" wearing an orange shirt. he then gets into the lift somehow and tries to pacify me, i am angry at him because he and i think, deliberately made me miss the A bus.

i got up and found out my friend was already at lunch. fine. today i wear the most amazing looking pair of sandals from colaba that pinch like anything. i am so pissed off about it, that while coming back after meeting a friend, towards the end of my walk, i take my shoes off. there i am-barefeet, in jeans, on a pavement and i see the bus stop-it was so freaky, like i had predicted it somehow. i dont believe in freaky incidents, but i think this is pretty freaky.

i still hate this place. i wonder if bollywood nite would help. the good thing i have learnt here is to have no ego. i have no ego watsoever. i dont care about people, places, labels anything. i only pray i get out of this place in one piece, with my mental sanity intact. i dont care about anyone else, about satisfying other peoples egos..blah blah. at the end of the day, i have to live with myself alone, and now i am not happy with the way things are going. i have the ability to change it. look at my engineering decision? at the end of the day, i dont regret it at all. here i am still with an MS degree, and an MA already, ready to tackle on the world. i dont have mouths to feed, luckily and i am sure there are people dumber than me out there with jobs.

lets see....

Home

I'm staring out into the night,
Trying to hide the pain.
I'm going to the place where love
And feeling good don't ever cost a thing.
And the pain you feel's a different kind of pain.

I'm going home,
Back to the place where I belong,
And where your love has always been enough for me.
I'm running from.
No, I think you got me all wrong.
I don't regret this life I chose for me.
But these places and these faces are getting old
So I'm going home.
Well I'm going home.

The miles are getting longer, it seems,
The closer I get to you.
I've not always been the best man or friend for you.
But your love, remains true.
And I don't know why.
You always seem to give me another try.

So I'm going home,
Back to the place where I belong,

And where your love has always been enough for me.
I'm not running from.
No, I think you got me all wrong.
I don't regret this life I chose for me.
But these places and these faces are getting old.

Be careful what you wish for,
'Cause you just might get it all.
You just might get it all,
And then some you don't want.
Be careful what you wish for,
'Cause you just might get it all.
You just might get it all, yeah.

Oh, well I'm going home,
Back to the place where I belong,
And where your love has always been enough for me.
I'm not running from.
No, I think you got me all wrong.
I don't regret this life I chose for me.
But these places and these faces are getting old.
I said these places and these faces are getting old.
So I'm going home.
I'm going home.

Chris Daughtry

whats the point?

2008-07-14T23:15:00.002-04:00

right now, i am in the process of gaining knowledge on a very complicated subject-endogenous growth theory. i did not understand it that well when it was done in class. now of course i am having multiple aha-moments. my problem with these aha-moments, is that i feel either its good that i get them now, or i feel bad that why the hell didn't i get them when he did it in class?

i honestly have no freaking clue how i passed my first year. i think i was totally unconscious in the first sem and semi-conscious in the second sem. my summer was wasted away too in deep depression of coming back to this hell hole, and now i have to suffer my way to pretending that i actually get stuff. i dont know if i actually get stuff or i am lying to myself and the whole world, including UNC! god those undergrads are gonna be like, how the hell did she get here? rest assured those will be my sentiments exactly.

but you know, the world cannot be comprised only of geniuses. i read an article on the NYT recently that said that the most successful people were ones who actually believed that talent and ability can be honed, rather than be innately possessed. this made me feel alot better. the only innate talents that i have are talking peoples ears off and an insurmountable ability to remember inconsequential details about many myriad things. today i was walking in bolin creek and was listening to Led Zeppelin's moby dick. i loved that song, and for some reason a wave of sadness just enveloped me like never before....

i liked the person who i was in Bombay. kind of flaky, happy-go-lucky, loved classic rock and was generally amiable and social. somehow, i always craved for something bigger, something better. i always had this nagging feeling that bigger things were in store for me. i mistakingly assumed that bigger and better did not automatically translate to happier. i did indeed feel that i was being wasted in Bom univ, but here i feel like a waste. like people are laughing at me and are wondering how did someone so dumb and unprepared get in. i know its not fair on myself, but i feel very inadequate here. i have been trying to belong forever now, the only image i have in my head is walking into the exam room for quals and going blank. please god, i pray that at least i remember the easy stuff!

i dont want to give these blasted exams, goddamit! i dont think that life has got some personal vendetta against me or something. so from now on, ill stop treating them like they are horrific( they are) and instead focus on those parts of my life where i learnt the most about people and about life itself. it was the tough times, the ones that really tested me and made me see what i was made of, i made it through some really tough times. and im here, living in an amazing house, in an amazing neighbourhood that i could never imagine i would live in, taking walks around nature and enjoying solitude.

i dont get it, im sure ill find posts where i have craved for solitude. now i have it, loads of it, in abundandt supply, anytime, anywhere. yes, the more i know, the less i know, and now the more i know in economics, the less i care!

Against body clock

2008-07-14T01:21:00.005-04:00

its 1:21 am, i am listening to the Amelie soundtrack. i am wide awake, information is flowing into my brain smoothly and i feel like i can comprehend things in one hour what i would mull over for five.

my name is Shaila and i am an Owl. i think i knew i was one, during my 12std board exams, when i would study every night till 1 am. the best time for me to study was from 11 pm till 1 am. everything went smoothly into my head. well, i think ill give up getting a routine and instead focus on just getting information into my head, anytime, anywhere, anyhow....

i had a really nice time yesterday with my classmates, they all came over and we had a lovely evening playing a board game. i have set up more visits with humankind this week. i cannot stand the social isolation that this genre of studying renders oneself. i think i am better off doing something that involves interacting with people.

i always wanted to become a publicist. i think becoming a celebrity publicist would be a blast! i would get to hob nob with all these famous people. i would also be glamorous myself, if i have to accompany them on the red carpet. get to attend all the glamorous parties and know inside details and gossip before everyone else does...sigh.....

i can afford this kind of shallow reasoning, because i just tackled something very complicated. i try to see it as ying and yang. but being a celebrity publicist would be fun. well, id also have to constantly issue statements to the press denying/accepting things, blah blah. hmmm....

am in a very Parisien state of mind. listening to Amelie, speaking french in my head, imagining walking along the Seine, and taking a stroll and discovering the hidden gardens of paris.

well basically i wish i was anywhere but here. but i am looking forward to the week ahead-meeting new and old aquantainces, being more regular, getting information into my head, and getting rid of this formality that had the possibility of driving me to hospitals...

sleep rehab

2008-07-11T12:53:00.002-04:00

i fell of the wagon- i got up late today:( i got up at 11:30 but i dont know why? i slept at about 1 am and if i needed 8 hours of sleep, i should have gotten up at 9 am. why the extra two hours? good thing is that i am not feeling lethargic, but i am actually feeling fresh. once i go for a walk, after some time i will feel alot better.

everyone knows whats best for me. they analyze the reasons of why i dont want to do the Phd. they all think that i am smart enough, that anyone for that matter of fact is smart enough to do it, but its only about drive and enthusiasm and blah blah. everyone is psycho-analyzing me and it gets on my nerves. now everyone will say that i could have done it if i only tried. but what if i dont want this in the first place? then they say when you go out and see the job market, it sucks there as well. so your better off here, in grad school hell, feeling like a schmuck, and making a fool of yourselves on a daily basis.

i hate this life, i want to go out there, meet different kinds of people, enjoy life, enjoy nature and generally go out on friday nites, have some drinks. shallow right? as opposed to sticking in this hell hole, coming up with some brilliant research no one will read, getting a job in america and driving to walmart every week to buy groceries...scintillating.

i am lonely, thats the honest to god truth. i am going through life without any solid aim. the only people who really give a flying fuck about my existence on this planet are my family and some few precious friends. hmm...maybe one or two. but thats a good thing. some people dont even have that. is this again me rambling on about getting a bf? not really, but i need a companion. someone who i can talk to everyday about my inane notions of life, someone who can go with me once in a while to Franklin street and have some ben and jerrys ice cream with, someone who i can lean on and say, oh my god, i have had the most terrible day. i think i have become like the typical phd people, isolationist, anti-social and it scares the freakin day-lights out of me.

im confused, everyone seems to be telling me what to do, and what to think, and what to feel. analyzing my emotional state of mind. also i dont seem to be in anyones core group here. i feel like an apendix, just floating into other peoples friends and other peoples lives. i miss my core, you know, friends that i can call my own, that i have every right to be myself with and not apologize for who i am.

i hate UNC, i hated bom univ and i hated AIMS. i only loved xavier's. i think i have to look deeply into this matter..maybe i just loathe myself. i dunnooo..

i will still battle on to wake up early, i think that 7 is too ambitious. after all, waking up at 11:30 was not so bad as waking up at 1 pm. so tom, i will set a realistic target of waking up at 8 am.
lets see how that goes.

ill get back to this blog soon...

New sleep schedule

2008-07-10T19:45:00.002-04:00

i woke up today at 6am initally. but it was impossible to get up, so i just went back to sleep. there was a moment when i was like, fuck it all, lets just wake up at noon and go though the whole charade again. and then, i anticipated the oncoming lethargy of the day, i thought to myself, no way. i am actually glad that U-Haul did that to me, i could not get sleep, having nightmares that i would be charged forever for this stupid van. i hope to get my money back by this weekend. anyway, that shook me up and here i am, mindful and present.

i also decided that studying for quals might not be such a bad idea, as even though i will fail, atleast i am learning alot. today i learnt definions of continuity that Vijay has been doing forever, but i didnt really get it till today. i finally got it. and now am actually excited for working more. see i think that this is the direct outcome of getting up early. i need to read this blog and remind myself that chronic late-risers like me cant let go of this during the weekends and holidays. its like rehab, and its ok if you slip up sometimes. but when you are intially trying it, you need to know that you can get up all the time. or be sober all the time.

speaking of sober, i have really changed my attitude towards alcohol. but i do miss going out on friday nites and grabbing some beers. i have no one i can do that with in this god-forsaken-forest laden-khaki-polo wearing-healthy-middle-of-nowhere town. i guess thats because alot of people are older than me and thats why they dont have the inclination to hang out with me. but i am a normal, ok semi-normal 23 year old, what am i supposed to be doing at this age anyway? arent i supposed to be going out, having a blast, enjoying my youth. to be fair, i did do alot of that in undergrad.

hmmmm....i think i just had an aha-moment. i escaped engineering in undergrad because i thought that i wanted to enjoy it and have a good time. i did, but look at where that got me. wait a sec here, but maybe i just did not like engineering. i obviously like, dare i say, love economics. and even though i had a good time, i also did tons of academics....im confused. i am falling into the engineering being the be-all and end-all of like trap myself, like so many others.

chances of meeting anyone remotely interested in me are also slim. thought that maybe, if the professional scene sucks, i could marry rich and still manage to live in a mansion on long island. well, firstly, my dreams are not that shallow, i actually just want to be happy. and secondly, i have no fucking clue where women land rich NRIs. i would go to that place right now! i dont think such a place exists, rich NRIs definately do, but maybe they marry their fellow abcds and considering they have so many of those confused cross cultural stuff to deal with, makes sense they bore each other to death about the dichotomy of their american upbringing and indian heritage. honestly, im glad im not an abcd, im a issue-laden person as it is. throw in cross country upbrigings, confused social norms and sense of disconnect from parents- i would have been in therapy a long time ago. i see "them"...i refer to them like they are some other species, i see them sometimes, they honestly have their own thing going on.

but i am so starved for indian company, i feel that i will go up to any indian, guy or girl and start talking to them. i saw a lady in a salwar kammez with her husband and son, i felt like hugging her. all these indian moms come here and remind me of my own mom and i miss her and dad terribly.

heres to any indian who sees a hapless student go in and out of Davis library-please say hi and convince me that there is a life out there.

ohh i get to look forward to the torturous semester ahead, where i have to teach. heaven please have mercy ......

Back to Black

2008-07-09T20:41:00.001-04:00

how long has it been?

almost one year.

i am on a new sleep schedule and i will document changes to my life style on the blog. not that anyone reads it anyway, like i have said before, its a good time capsule. i hope that the goals of writing again regularly, is to see me through a masters degree atleast, not worry too much about failing the qualifiers, and try my darn hardest not to make an ass out of myself this year while teaching.

i woke up today early and am fighting sleep right now. i think i will read salai-i-martin again for some time. i just remember waking up without an alarm clock during the spring semester. but how i let go of all that hard work in just a few days. i couldnt help it though, i had been through a living hell. i still continue to live in this hell. more than anything i am totally irritated.

the reasons for me applying for a Phd in econ are very simple-absolute ignorance. i had no fucking clue it would be like this. man, i dont even know how to start. i guess my best bet for this blog would be a catharsis of sorts, every morning, wake up and start to relate what my life has been, is, and will continue to be for the next year at least. lest i say that i am exhausted, frustrated and disappointed. i know this is the exam that i am supposed to be at my best-the one that i have supposedly trained myself for the past so many years. but i have badly burnt out. i think i burnt out so badly, that i actually felt that i had lost the ability to do even simple economics. i totally get it now, when i heard a story about someone who quit grad school and became a forest ranger!!! i would so do that-of course, not become a forest ranger-maybe an accessories manager type person, you know, Kate Middleton`s job before she decided to finally quit it and follow her BF all over the polo-place.

so i will leave the post for now, tomorrow morning, i will wake up by 6:30 and give an account of the time from the time i landed till math camp. i remember everything...certain details of course will be omitted to protect people`s identities ( hahahaha!)

till then, ill get back to trying to understand differential equations. btw, my inspiration to start again was because of all the help that i had got from reading other peoples blogs. their advice on so many tips have helped me so much. i hope that touching on whats its like to be in grad school hell will help someone in the future.

i know you-surfing the web late at night, dreading tomorrows class and what mathematical horrors microeconomics will spring on you. i was there, and i will continue to be there, till i can successfully wiggle my way out of this abyss and get back to decent living with sane people. if you are reading this blog, and are like me - a fairly unstable, social, above average intelligent sort of girl, who likes to study in the week and catch movies and drinks on weekends....then be careful of grad school. it has the potential of sucking everything positive out of you-like dementors.

read on and be posted. i will present the horror that was and continues to be ...Econ grad school....

Sparky my love

2007-03-06T12:41:00.001-05:00

The Spark has gone from my life

A few years ago, a feeble puppy came to my building and like all appealing cute stray dog puppies, convinced me to feed him some buscuits. Usually these puppies go elsewhere to other unsuspecting and vulnerable dog lovers. This one stuck on. He always wagged his tale, always and was the only one who was hapy to see me. For 4 years he became an integral part of my life. I embraced him whole heartedly and as I did not have a pet, or rather was not allowed to keep one, it was a convenient arragement to keep him in the buliding. My building is so crappy and is a sort of free for all path. So he would protect it thouroughly at night and sleep in the sun the whole day, digging his own cozy hole in the middle of the compound. He had to endure many insults for he refused to move when cars came by. It had its reprecussions once when in Jan 2006, an Innova ran over his leg. For the rest of my life, I will forever hate that Innova model. Its too big for our indian roads. Me and guddu ( his aunt and his mom resp) took him to the hospital where he stayed for a long time and worked up a huge bill. But he came back alright. He went again to the hospital recently for an abdominal swelling. What i loved bout life itself was uninhabited joy-that was sparky when he used to come back from a long stint in the hospital and run around the enitre compound because he felt that the place belonged to him only. He used to always sit over the tank and observe the goings on. And from that vantage point he would bark at unsuspecting strangers. He made so many friends that when i used to walk on the street, and he would follow me, strangers would go ..."sparky sparky come here !"

He was a peaceful dog with adults, but with other dogs he was quite ferocious. He was like one of the gangsters in the goodfellas....family first and would deal with the rest of the dogs in a harsh manner. He would often get into fights with other dogs to prove his strength. I would take him to the vet for his wounds. My aunt would reprimand him for his foolishness but she would get only copper coloured blank eyes...

Those eyes were red today, blood shot red. He had fits and was frothing like an cocaine OD victim. I knew he was gone in the morning but hope floated before the vet came and decided he was good to go. What i never understood was the hastiness in everyone in putting him to sleep. Yes he had rabies, but everyone was like, "did u touch him, did u touch him?" and I would think bout poor sparky following me when i would go outside and beseeching me to buy him some buiscuits. He loved me and I loved him. and in this life we all love so little, that the little we love becomes so precious in our lives. We cant love everyone with the same degree of intensity and with that we cant feel the same intensity of sorrow as we feel for the ones we have truly loved.

I loved him-the real meaning of the word love. Unconditional, perennial, non-questioned, unbridled. I loved him like a human being and I swore to him that i would fetch him from the gallows of death whenever he ventured there. Alas, I couldnt this time. And i feel so guitly because if i had known that he was going to die, I would have fed him his parle G buscuits one last time and I would have ordered tandoori chicken from ROC for him one last time. I was supposed to take him to the vet this evening. He was supposed to be sleeping on the tank sleepy with the medecines that the doctor would have given him.

But sometimes what is supposed to happen doesnt' Its not supposed to be this way. But it is, and the truth hurts and death once again knocks on my door. do i stop to love, do i finally belive in better to have loved and lost blah blah....I do. If sparky wasnt in my life, I would have never gotten to know all his amazing qualities, his regal posture, his ownership of the building compound and his love for me.

I would have gone to the hospital again this time sparky...why didnt u let me save you once again?

That one i have to ask God.

2006-10-24T11:58:00.000-04:00

am back to annoy the hell out of myself!

hoestly i think this blog is like the best time-capsule to have! unless the internet suddenly goes bust one day! here i am, listening to "promiscious" by nelly again! i must have heard that song a gazillion times! other songs i kept on hearing alot in a span of few days:

1. all these things that i have done-the killers
2. don't cha-the pussycat dolls
3. seven nation army-the white stripes
4. hips dont lie-shakira

ill add more to the list. spent the whole afternoon uselessly watching the VMAs. it was such a waste of time. now the us awar shows are trying to promote lesser know ppl, cuz the well-known ones have loads of moeny i guess. as a result, shakira's "hips dont lie" didnt win vidoe of the year. some useless band called "panic! at the disco" won. and oh my god, when i saw jared leto, i was shocked. he is like such a rockstar now. i mean i thought where is pretty boy jared leto with his oh so cool blond jock type looks. and when he actually came with amy lee, i was so taken aback. he's not the high school type jock that i thought he was.

neways ill write some more crap later on.

2006-09-10T08:36:00.000-04:00

Not scoring "brownie" points

hmmm....tremendous sense of relief i feel now after giving my gre and toefl. i dont know if neone has neidea how tough giving these two exams are...tho the toefl is easy, being tied to a chair for 4 hrs is not my cup of tea. and the mere ceremony and formality of it all is finally over! and now i am sorta free! but going thru the whole process of apps is still left. but i have to now enjoy this year.

also smthing new is that i am on a tight budget. and i was short of cash and literally from the heavens, my cousin pavi, sent me money...i think she must have seen me go to the church on tuesday at Stanisclaus, Bandra. i resolve to go to that church more often. i wish that siddhivinayak was not so crowded. in these times of uncertainty in my life, these places of worship are seen as such a refuge for me. i wish i could go to sm lonely country-side and reflect, but in bom, rubbing shoulders with 15 million ppl aint cutting it. and so i went to the Sundernagar temple for a while and that was nice. now its good to go to this church. the sense of serenity and calmness that ehcoes from the walls is smthing that i need. and its not bout which god that u pray to that matters. i guess i felt this sense of gulit ...like i was being unfaithful to my beloved Tirupathi Balaji, but the more i get older, the more i relaize that its all the same.

and smhow, spirituality didnt seem to cut it. i remember watching the bizzare video of Martymandir, Aurovilee and thinking to myself..what baloney. and seriously, i mean i guess i am a religious person, because i acknowledge that not everything is in my hands and spirituality seems to suggest. and the best part is..i get to drink coke!!!

i was in the bus the other day ( man i take the bus now!), and thinking bout how patriotic i feel when i listen to "rang de basanti" and i started missing India like nething already. i was very apprehensive at the sense of insecurity that a brown person now has to face in the world. but i keep remembering the quality of eductaion that i am recieving here...and i quickly begin to relaize that it is a price worth paying for my dreams and aspirations...guiding some countries ( not mine..cuz my natiion is filled with pompous economists from delhi who wont give me the time of day...unless i knew smone who knew smone who mite be vaguly related to the janitor of the prime miniters driver...you get it)

so well, pompous economists, bad undergrad eco syllabus for bom univ, no Ir due to reservation and scrwe up in international relations paper, non-recognition of my drive and enthusiasm...

i need to leave...if i stay here in this system ne longer, my brain will rot...

bring on the racism....its the price i have to pay for being unwanted in my own country.

2006-07-01T06:24:00.000-04:00

its been a while

in order to report some progress on this blog of mine, must note that have:

1. Successfully stopped watching E! news
2. Give a GRE exam-a torturous experience i would not bestow on my worst enemy
3. Gotten 10 more paranoid about my life
4. Came to the conclusion that i need therapy

part of the fun of writing in this blog is that no one really reads it. and its a good thing because i can ramble on and on and no one cares except for me. thats the beauty of writing-its a v.selfish act because you are just putting your feelings and emotions out there and you know what-no one really cares about ur piddly-diddly probs except yourself. and thats a good realization.

Its been exaclty one year since i started my blog. and it has turned out to be quite tumultuous. the summarize the year, it has undoubtedly been the worst year of my life, professionaly, v.confusing personally but v.v.v.v.rewarding from an "aunt" point of view. couldnt get more direct than admiring my newphew who seems to get cuter by the day. but the more i love him, the more i am scared. i dont know ...i guess because i am overflowing with love.

Still havent recieved my international economics paper. i dotn really consider myself part of the university system. i dont know why, i have stopped caring about alot of things. and a huge part of my apathy stems from just being emotionally exhausting. no one told me the whole "relaize your dreams" scenario was fruaght with so much exhaustion, so much uncertainty. i am emotionally drained from the gre itself, and i am not even half way there. everyone also always told you that hey follow your dreams, you can do it. part of my raving and ranting from last years JNU debacle is due to the fact that i dont think i can afford a IR degree elsewhere. i just cant see myself speding 10-15 lakhs of my Dads hard earned money on the desire to be like Lyce Ducet. thats why it hurt me so much, it was my last chance an doing IR. but never say never right. i am so disgusted with everyone telling you that al you need to do is dream, the rest will follow...how?

i am extremely practical now. i have been burnt too many times before. i fear that to an extent i have become dead inside. i dont feel hurt, pain, agony, joy, pure, unmitigated joy. i will only feel a sense of disappointement, for this sentiment has plagued me for the last 4 years. alot of my apathy also stems from alot of unvented anger. i need to vent and have a fight or smthing i guess.. i actually need to get out of the city. will be going to ponicherry soon. c'est bein parce que je pouvais y pratiquer mon francaise.

well, its good to know that after one year, im still where i started-angry, depressed, sad and pissed off that i cant get on that flight sooner and it feels even longer now than it did last year.

how bizzare...

2006-04-24T16:28:00.000-04:00

I Dont Wanna be a Stupid Girl

i have no fucking clue why i watch E! news. i cant stand the show, even "fabulous life" and the ALL access VH1 shows all the time. but i still watch it. and for some reason, in the middle of my so boring and inconsequential life, i was worried for Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan, i really felt bad that they felt the pressures of Hollywood were getting too much and they had to diet. i felt bad oh so bad for poor Jennifer Aniston, who i must ( honestly) admit has brought me so much delight everynite at 7 pm on Star world. and i wonder also if Charlie Sheen ever cheated on Denise richards, i mean why else would she leave him while she was 8 months pregrant! and the list goes on. i have lived through two Bennifers, Tomkat, Brangelina, Vaughniston and dont know how many more are yet to come. and i seriously wonder, how much can i take. that i am sitting with my family watching a news channel, Headlines today and the bar goes like " Eva Longoria doesnt mind playing revealing characters because she wants to do it before she loses her sex appeal" or that " Madonna had a lesiban relationship with the same woman that Angelina had"

For crying out loud.....really loud....

and honestly, i have been sapping it up-every word, every trend, every beak-up, every on-again, off-again relationship, baby names, ridiculous baby names, which i think is just to put the world off. i think that gweneth paltrow and her hubby chris martin ( i loved u man before u went to the other side, what happened to protecting subsidies of vulnerable african economies mate!) call their children like sarah and john in real life, instead of apple and moses. and that stupid Kat Jiantis, she just keeps on feeding me with more gossip that i can handle. more designer bags, more luxury houses, more more more....and its all so bloody rich. there is this layer of rich and vacant people the world over who seem to be just 1% of the population and occupy almost 20% of news space. even this has seeped into the Indian media where now our Bollywood stars have just become out of control. their every move is beging tracked, when they broke a finger nail, who is Ash dating, who is sleeping with who and not to mention which model is Abhishek Bachchan seeing. and if neone wrongfully accuses me of plagarism, i get all this information from Bombay Times, Mumbai Mirror, Midday etc-the Kings of Convenience of both sides, id like to call them. while its celebrities on one side and media on the other, normal life is being pulled in the middle.

what is normal life?

1. normal life is not going to the gym
2. normal life is not getting your hair fried and dried every six months
3. normal life is not owning most of Oprah's Favourite things
4. normal life is not having aspirations to be like paris and nicole
5. normal life is having a pimple on your face and still going out
6. normal life is wearing boot-cuts even though Milan Fashion Week said they are so-yesterday
7. normal life is reading books-losta losta books-and just not because you can give some interview in some stupid supplement blabbering bout all the books you read
8. normal life is not hoping that someday you will own a pair of jimmy choos
9. normal life is cramming before finals
10. normal life is making mistakes and not being perfect
11. normal life is BBC not E!news. if you want fiction, Star World, Star Movies, HBO are always there
12. normal life is not always looking your best 24/7
13. normal life is definately not make-up
14. normal life is not about spending money, getting an ipod is not gonna make me happy. am miserable and i love it

and if neone seems to belive that what i have said above is totally fasle, they belong to a demographic that i dont and hence will not be affected by my views. why cant we all stop pretending to want to live these celebrity LA lives. especially living in India, its hard to talk on the new Nokia N-series in a ric with a 4 year old selling u a Midday.

kinda puts things into prespective doesnt it?

so please enough is enough. i am not some LA celebrity highroller who gets a massage for $2000 dollars at some "trendy" spa, or gets a table at the new "hotspot" sporting Balenciaga bag, big sunglasses and ponchos. i agree with Pink, i dont wanna be a stupid girl. so i am now gonna do something useful...

switch the channel...

juliana dippandi..i have had enough of you!

2006-04-17T09:37:00.000-04:00

what if i dont get to go

what if...all my dreams and aspirations and all what i have worked so bloody hard for go up in smoke. someone mitght as well beat me to pulp and leave me for dead. two hours of sleep and i get the most horrible exam. yeas i dotn expect them to hand me down a degree like candy. but i didnt expect them to just spew venom. and its like a challenge...its us v/s them. no scope for actually learning aobut the practical applications of our subject. where is the small class of ten discussin current topics with the professor over cups of coffee and weekly multiple choice tests that test our ability to understand rather than our ability to mug.

yet....

what if i dont get thru..and have to give it all over again. where did i go wrong? did i go wrong? is economics even the right subject for me? am i not the intelligent person that i thought i once was?what happened to me? and if they are trying to break our spirit, what do they hope to achieve from all of this? to prove a point? that they are not that predictable after all? then why be predictable for ten years and change now? am i just unlucky?

will i actually be leaving on a jet plane?

2006-03-27T09:59:00.000-05:00

Aretha rules

i simply lurve aretha franklin...her voice has the power to heal. i will always remember her song 'i say a lil prayer for u' i heard it when i went to the library to study. it was fun, i met some new people from the university. which i am now beginning to suspect may not be all that bad, considering i have to grit my teeth and go thru for just one more year. i dont have much confidence in a place where they are already convinced that we are a dumb lot. but the stuyding was fun, infact it was the long lunch and coffee/tea breaks that i took that were fun. it was with some people who were actually interesting and had some sort of substance to their personality. theres this one guy who looks totally lazy, but yeah apparently he likes to travel alot and be by himself. so that automatically qualifies him as an interesting person. the other one wore a t-shirt that said...the more i know bout men...the more i love my dog...hahahahaha! was thinking botu how sparky would def bite my hypothetical bf's toes off if i was caught not petting sparky. i mean this mutt almost bites my toes off for not petting him! he is such a sweetheart. years from now, i will be reading this blog with tears in my eyes thinking bout how much i miss sparky, and the way he was, at one point of time in my life. the only thing happy to see me and have me in his life. maybe he does that to everyone, but the fact remains, i clean his ticks and have saved his leg, he owes me his allegiance!

these four days were so much fun, i hope that i remember the feeling...it was a very warm feeling. like spring weather that we had for two weeks in march this year. just perfect. and i havent become a total non-social person, i actually like this whole thing about hanging out with random people (hahaha thinking bout Swingers club when wrote last sentence) but yeah and im sure they must think that i am the most bizzare person in the world hanging out with starngers. and taking them up on their offers of movies, treks, etc. frankly i am so bored ...i sang aretha franklin to a puppy yest..i have reached a new low.

reading english august and i know something for sure- i can never be like augustya, i can appreciate what he is talking bout. but unfortunately i recognize that agustya would in real life hate me. i am verbose, yelly, hopelessly curious and have trouble shutting-up. the funny thing is that i recognize it and realize that its ok that he would hate me. but i just cant kick my personality in the gutt. i decided a long time ago to accepy my annoyances which are numerous and embraced the yelly, overbearingness that i have. i am sure that some agustya-type people must have already laughed at me. but hey...

now i have to get bakc to my boring life which now, after reading english august, seems not as boring as it could have been. technology has been helping me along. even if there is no human contact.

but serioulsy... aretha does rule....

2006-03-18T13:34:00.000-05:00

small life

i used to think that i had a really great life. i had so many friends and whether they were fake or not really never did matter. i used to go out alot and meet new people every week. college was also fun and had random crushes on many cute boys. basically it was the fun-filled life of every normal college going kid in bombay who lived with their folks and at the same time had the freedom to go out with friends, unlike other college students in other towns who have to go to hostel to truly appreciate the guilty pleasures of fun when your 18.

im 21. and its all gone. i was up last night till 4 am watching CSI: Miami when i realised that my life was the pitts. i hated my hobby, my one true passion-french. i knew that applying for that trip to france was useless. i mean with all the shit happening in my life and the way luck was shaping up, i would have never gotten in. i have even lost my french tongue and i dont feel bad. i know that the last 10 days, ill drive the exam home with what else-hard work and determination. i think i do alotta dumb hard work and have alotta dumb determination. my dad was so disappointed but he doesnt understand. i cant take another failure in my life right now. i just cant. i cant believe that i am still insecure and i hope and pray to god that this will pass. i am utterly convinced that this will pass only when i leave.

confidence flew out of my body like a spirit of a dead man that day. its dramatic but typical reaction of broken dreams. i cant bring myself to even mail R nemore. and i have cut off communication from most people. i cannot really explain where this sense of lethargy is comming from. its definately not depression. its something nagging me at the back of my head, like an itch that i cannot scratch. how to get closure from JNU. how?

i will only get it step by step. each step is miserably painful. once someone had told me that if you really love someone and they leave you, you feel physical pain. when reto left yeah, i did feel physical pain because somewhere down the line, i truly fell in love with him. now, in my heart the sense of hopelessness that i feel....right in my heart, i feel desperation, i feel dispair-physical pain. and this sense of doom felt awful. i already imagined myself middle-aged, reading some book before going to bed to forget what a most boring life i lead. i was so vivacious. its just depleting slowly from my system. and all around me, its very dismal.

please show me the silver linning.....someone or something...some sign....

2006-02-28T00:42:00.000-05:00

bugger off

thats what i would like to tell most of the riff-raff around. and if for some reason ( and i know no one reads my blog) u are reading this, i hope you r wise enough not to get offended and know which category of people you fall under. i mean its just so bloody pissing off, people just cant seem to get the message that u dont wanna talk to them. i am such a big bitch and i am so openly disinterested and and ...rude..just plain rude. rude to the extent that i would be very very desperate to still call the other person and talk to them after such open display of rudeness. i dont take the conversation to more than i think even 1 minute and for these particular 2, thats more than enough. i mean now its come to a stage where i am gonna stop hinting and just say stop! stop calling me, stop bugging me and stop thinking that you are still a part of my life somehow. the funny thing is that they never had any role to play before so why now. the people who im talking bout, they dont know me at all, they dont really have any idea who i really am and they dont connect at all with my intellectual side. and yes i made mistakes before, but like one of my good friend's have pointed out, i am a very bad judge of men! so K and A, if ur reading this, i am sorry...but bugger off!!!!!

am just so bloody nervous for my exams and there comes a stage in your life where the stakes are so high, that nothing else matters now. even though this mild stalking has been getting on my nerves, i just look at it as a mild irritance, but the bigger picture is strangling me! but u know, now i seem to have done so much that i can pretty much relax now. somehow in jan and feb, i brought the portion home. and am feeling so relieved! that feeling of doom and anxiety have now given away to impatience. now i just want to study for the exams and get it over and done with. and then have some fun studying for my french exams. gosh i would have given a gazillion exams before i would have left for the US.

i know its all worth it and for the first time in a long time, i have started once again in liking the journey. i know that its what ultimately counts and frankly seeing Loic yesterday instead of Nicholas was a welcome relief! even though both of them look like they just rolled outta bed and put on whatever they could find and come to class. i mean like they think that they can just come here and not really care what they wear. surprisingly women are not like that. i have noticed this that women the world over are dressed very well. and the women in alliance have started wearing alot of cool chic kurtas and oshos and this new hip indo-western style. not that i expect either of these two to wear ne kurtas but maybe we shall all collectively gift them an iron and say that ' yeah! India is messy and filthy and dirty and it stinks and blah blah blah! bottomline is that - we dont! we still go home and use peppermint foot scrub and scrub our feet till it hurts to get rid of all the dirt. we still use the best face scrubs to get rid of grime and dust. and yes we take great efforts to look and feel clean and rise above the environment outside. so even though its not as clean as france, we still dont look like we need to have a bath. its disrespectful for you to come to class like that.'

and these two, am sure that have left girl friends/lovers/ boy friends ( maybe!) and come here. alot of people have left alot of places and come to Bombay for some odd reason. living here, i cant fathom how difficult it must actually be. and so lonely, so bloody lonely. but i cant help them all. my dear dear reto, i tried to help him, but his sense of alienation in this city was just completely out of my reach. even if was older i wouldnt be able to help him out. and i suspect and fear that one day i would be in that position finding myself alone and expect someone to help me out. but what if all my hopes are shattered. what if once again, like now when i am terrribly lonely and miserable and there is no one to come to my aid. no one to talk to and no one to break the monotony. if it wasnt for rito and shreya, i would have gone completely insane by now. but how can i help someone else now who is lonely and miserable when i cant help myself. but im thinking when im alone somewhere, what if no one helps me then or says like i am saying now...that they simply dont have the emotional capabilities of helping someone else out.

i am so sorry to this one particular person, but mostly after my part 1, i will be proactive and be more friendly with this particular person. i feel bad that he is alone in this city and i wish i could help him out more, but truly truly my emotions are drained. i have just had one of the worst years of my life with one diappointment pilling up on the other. slowly but surely with french and eco, i am trying to salvage my life and confidence back. and its taking time, its taking alot of time. i hope that this person understands, and i hope that ...selfishly when i am alone, i hope to make friends as well and not be emotionally shunted out by my peers. i know i am selfish, i am weak, and i probably dont deserve neone's sympathy when i am finally alone. i guess only time will tell.

2006-02-23T09:10:00.000-05:00

just finished seeing rang de basanti, and conflicted and confonded is not the word. it just is making me feel even more guilty. and i know that i will be reading this when i am depressed and lonely some weekend in the US, but why exactly am i going? what am i escaping or thather what am i running towards? alot of people have told me that i am up for a huge and big and catastrophic disappointment. i know that i wont solve all my problems when i go there, maybe ill end up with a few more. and honestly, there is nothing materialistically lacking in India. we have everything that i could want... i mean yeah i want an 'athlete' tshirt and go for their concert, but life is tuff...get over it. and rito also told me to stop cribbing and i think i need to.

still still still.....my heart is empty. i have all the love and support i could possibly need, and i dont feel the loss of someone. do i wish someone special was there in my life right now? frankly no. am too disallusioned with the whole experience that am just not wanting to dwell on it nemore. but then i know someone is not missing in my life. but something definately is. and i guess its a good education, a life on my own, a chance to see if i would survive in the real world. so many things i want. i want to struggle and buy my own car, rent my own appartment and most importantly conduct my own research with a good professor who knows that i am a motivated student.

thats all my heart desires. i know its a lot and it has nothing to do with my love for home. the way i see u can take me out of bombay but u cant take the bombay out of me. I WILL ALWAYS BE AN INDIAN NO MATTER WHAT! and the fact is that i am scared of losing myself there. i dont think i will if i stay grounded. and the truth of the matter is that i havent even took off yet, so all this speculation will not help. i need to focus on now!

i just hate now tho....

i just am so bloody bored with my life and with the people im meeting-barring a coupla people who have been my guradian angels without which i would have killed myself, i am jus so lost. and this is precisely why i wanted to go to JNU. life is unfair and i think that the unfairness of it all can really kill one's spirit. and somehow i have had the courage to move on and get going with my life instead of giving up. i am definately not giving up. esp since i found out that i can easliy pass the microeconomics paper ( yippee!!! seriously) its all about the journey i know. but i can safeky say that the journey sucks. and the lesson that i am going to learn from all of this is that humans are deasigned to endure horrible ordeals-mental as well as physical. one can never say that someones ordeal is worse than the other. whatever it is, i am going through turmoil and agony and depression. and i have to wake up everymorining and think-somehow i have to make it thru the day, somehow i have to make my life work. i cant afford to give up. but its very hard and the road ahead is very very long. its amazing how the US looked closer last year than it does now. and then the startling realisation that its not aug 2007 that counts, its now. now. now. now.

no matter how sad i feel now, i have to get up every morning and get the job done, there will be light at the end of the tunnel. i need to somehow navigate in the dark for a while before i get what i want. and it will definatly be amazing is what i want is right under my nose here in this dusty slum infested filthy lovely city that i call home.

fate .....surprise me....

2006-01-21T12:23:00.000-05:00

its been a while....

yes would like to unleash my terror upon this blog once again. inspite of the fact that no one in their sensible mind is reading it, id like to think of it as some kind of time capsule. i got the concept from someone in my french class. hmmm....have to remember to ask him his name the next time am in class. i bet if he read bombay musings, he'd be pretty amazed considering his tale is of bangalore musings. i went to blore and can def see how one can get bored over there. though the crowd is better, its the same hackeneyed crowd all over again blidnly follwing the herd just like in bombay. maybe im too critical of my surroundings, but i have yet to come across someone who makes me go ...wow...i wanna get to know that person better. of course the last time that happened, it was a complete and total error of judgement.

yup...as a good friend of mine pointed out-i am a bad judge of men. thats funny considering i kinda went out with him...hmmmmm....what does that say? neways what he doesnt know is that i have changed and have become a top notch excellent judge of men. the conclusion i have come up with is easy and simple...stay away from men under the age of 25 because they STILL believe that one day they are gonna meet and fall in love with someone who looks exactly like jenna jameson and co. i dont wanna c the tears when the awful truth is revealed...

yesterday i was having coffee with this male friend of mine. and i was talking about how exciting and adventurous it would be to take a bike and go around the world like ewan mcgregor. to tell u the truth, i have the biggest crush on him...and yes the awful truth was revealed immediately to me that i would never in my wildest dreams get him or someone like him! neways, such interesting and stimulating talks was no contest to and i quote with much misery "...bitchin a**" apparently some slovak model who i bet is just trying to enter bollywwod walked in shaking her strut to impress some lousy looking shah rukh khan lookalike who i suspect was taking her to see a ahem...producer. now i am as liberal as they come, and what she wants to do with her life i fully support..seriously....but hon! dont upstage the mongolian adventures of my ewan! and thats what she did! my friend of the 25 under category and hence his actions were totally understandable and explainable by ...i guess evolution.

2005-11-27T02:23:00.000-05:00

Bombay musings

last night i slept at 4 am. after answering someone's misconception bout my JNU identity. yes those deamons came to haunt me at the dead of the night when i had actually wanted to post this entry...

it was weird revisiting a place i thought i had left behind. and i will keep visiting that place and probably when im in my own appartemnt finally living the life i want to live with "some cities" by the doves playing in the background, i will wonder how different my life would have been. and exaclty like the moment i had yesterday and like the moment i had when i read rushdie's words in midnights children...it really doesnt matter. whether saleem was shiva or shiva was saleem it doesnt really matter. history and fate would have taken the same course irrespective and the person who sits here today wouldnt have been totally different from someone elsewhere...most specifically delhi. and so i find out that on the 8th of july my deamons of bombay also came bakc to haunt me for the the city i had tried so desperately to abandon had an iron grip on me and told me not to go. and i didnt.

most people didnt realize that the reason why i wanted to leave was not related to people. that would be too fickle to move and even though it has been known to happen, i dont think i would carry out such a drastic move. that is because i have known people who moved across the seven seas for people purposes only to be greeted by false friends or the supposed men of their dreams carrying a sign borad with "emotional fuckwittage" written in bold letters. and for some odd reason, we women who like to torture ourselves look at the sign and say...exaclty.

so i had identified my number one enemy and that was bombay. and i adopted my number one option that was delhi. i heard immense stories about delhi and it was fascinating. the history, the architecture, the oppulence, the good colleges, the universities, JNU, DSE, etc etc. and it seemed like such educational bliss. i had my share of educational bliss with st.xavier's college here in bombay, which in 5 years taught me more that i could have imagined bout life. but it was time for other lessons to be learned. and i had assumed the role of instructor of my life. i had identified the type of instruction i would need for survival-live alone in delhi. that would be my learning slate for life. being a city girl ( i hate that cliche but cant help it) i was used to running around bombay, hopping outta trains, buses, ricks and cabs, grabing on-the-run meals at the railway stations and going bout my business in absolute independance. i saw this new environment in delhi as a learning platform. even the kind of people i would interact with would be so different. i speak only english and french. i am not proud of it for i have the same blood that flows through every indians veins. nor am i vain and stupid enough to beilive in western culture superiority. i belive that most cultures are flawed ( including ours) and we need to make a melange to get the best of what we want. as a result i have developed a sort of individual culture. and i do have my rights and wrongs as well. but this sort of mix would be interesting and i had developed my own life study module and wanted to put it into implementation.

i studied hard for the test and lets say it didnt work out. ne more musings of jnu and my international relations knowledge would be giving it far too much importance. for i realize know that i made the biggest mistake for it was not for jnu i wanted to go...but it was for what the admission represented. maybe thru some cosmic mystical connection, my examiner who read my paper realized that i was trying too hard. too many accurate facts about the wars, too many bonified names of brilliant thinkers like hobbes, machiavelli, morgenthau, too many details, too many...

i would be foolish to assume i has written the best paper of my life, but since i dont claim to be the most intelligent person this side of the globe i can safely say it was the best paper of my life.

and ironically, it happened exaclty like how it was supposed to. i didnt get in. and i looked out into the hard, cold, lonely, poor streets of bombay and it looked back at me with a sad, hopeless expression on its face. it almost was talking to me and telling me that we tried to move too, but we couldnt. and we just have to suffer together.

bombay

the umbilical cord refused to be cut. and after the brilliance of my effort i realised that no other force of nature except for fate would have caused such a catastrophic turn of events to take place...

just want to be with you...my baby

the lyrics of tourist by athlete playing in my head right now. one of the best buys i have ever made, i suffered for the british-indie rock scene by buying 7 cds and starving for the rest of the month. but it was sure worth it, and cant wait to but alot more other albums.

so i listen to athlete and doves and blur and all....in my semi-lit room that gazes over the haze of bombay. in the dead of the night, i can see the ONGC fire buring into the distance that gives it a very mordor feel to it. it lits up the sky in the horizon and it looks just as it did when pipin and gandalf stood at gondor and watched the war begin with a brilliant flash of light. many people write about bombay, i see the books all over the place, the book shelves filled with musings like mine. and i realized that if each of us wanted, we could each write a book about bombay because our stories mix with the stories of the city.

on the 15th of july i got up in the morning and said enough and happened to pick up 'midnights children' that changed alot for me. because that book single handedly covered everything. after that the books kept on rolling...

midnights children-salman rushdie
life and times of michael k -j.m. koetzee
ice-candy man- bapsi sidhwa
ground beneath her feet-salman rushdie
the mystic masseur-v.s.naipaul
haroun and the sea of stories-salman rushdie
living to tell the tale-gabriel garcia marquez
shame-salma rushdie

and now, its a whole new journey all over again. and that is the beauty of books. for i knew that i didnt know the real bombay the life that is being played on the streets and even though i know that it is not my relaity it is the reality of my city. and i love it.

shantaram-gregory david roberts...i am 600 pages into the book and i fear for my life once i finish it. in bibliography in the age, they often ask many celerities which books they wished never ended and this for me is one of them. initial sceptisism of a 900 page book faded pretty quickly 10 pages right into the book when he described leopolds.

someone once asked me about my blog and said that why would u wanna publish all of your personal thoughts on such a public domain. it would be tantamount to exposing yourself and setting yourself up for ridicule. after reading shantaram, i realised the bravery in his act of writing that book. he set himself up for much more than ridicule. he set himself up for moral judgement. how could someone justify his crimes and the actions that he had committed in his life. and that what was is wrong with the world. we always see things in black and white and when we see someones blog filled with their thoughts, and the first thing we do that we do so well....is that we judge...

who gave us the right to judge???

thats why i have my won individual culture my own rights and wrongs and as far as i am concerned i would stay away from hypocracy and not enforce my culture onto someone else.

i guess that is maturity for my 17 year old self would have been pretty quick to judge me now at 21.

karla said : if you turn the heart into a weapon, your most likely to use it on yourself

khederbhai: sometimes we do the wrong things for the right reasons

i must say-gregory david roberts is the most bravest person i have come across.

2005-10-09T12:04:00.000-04:00

the long and winding road

just went to a cd sale recently and was just amazed at all the people i saw there! all of them were rock fans like me and were pretty much like me except that they were men of course. thats when i realised that maybe i have become too much of a man myself. i dont listen to the normal run-of-the-mill music that women my age are listening to and i am beginning to wonder...maybe i am a bit of a tomboy in many ways...

but now, in my 21st year when i am finally and unabashedly getting into my skin, i wonder ( hehe lemon tree song in head again!) if men percieve me to be a threat or they dont want someone exaclty like the, you know the whole argument that opposites attract. and in my carie bradshawish manner i ask the question-are there specified roles that men and women are supposed to play in society?

i used to always think that the person who i am would instantly appeal to most guys..instead it is sinking in that i remind them of their closest buddies and waoh! that aint all that exciting. come to think of it, they all have tons of guys to talk bout music and the british-indie-rock scene. i wonder then if they dont wanna talk bout whether sawyer, locke or saiid will survive on 'lost', whether salman rushdie is one of the greatest writers in the world, whether david gilmor is a better singer than roger waters and finnally whether blur is a good band after graham coxon( my sweet garham)

seriously, i wonder if as a women am i conditionally and genetcially programmed to not talk bout stuff like that and only talk bout shoes and fashon accessories and shopping and stuff? well all this talk is not in some vain and indirect way to attract atttention to the fact that i done have a fella. its just simply an indication of what i love and why there are so few people i happne to meet who like the stuff that i do. and even if they are, why are they all over the hill and married? its because i was 'raised' by a man in my character bulidng days. i just know it. and i cannot escape the fact that he palyed a v. imp pat in the formation of my character and my tatstes. it is an irreplacable process one that cannot be psuhed bakc even though he is not really a part of my life. and that was it. my benchmark is so high and the bar has been raised so high. the only person who matched left as soon as he came-like dying before even being born.

i am who i am and i am going to be all that i can be. nothing is going to stop this train that is chugging along. not the circumstance, not the environment, not the people nothing. of all the expereince i have had in the last 20 years, yeah at the end of the day, i am the same person i would have regardless...

and then one day, ill be listeing to coldplay or athlete outside my appartment after dinner...knowing that...all in good time..all in good time....

2005-10-09T11:56:00.000-04:00

amazingly bizzare

you know, there were times when we were kids and went shopping with our parents. our mothers would always use our elbows as a guding path to the places hey wanted us to go, towards the things they wanted us to buy. the would take our elbows, and guide us there and when we didn't go where they wanted and steered away from course, they would firmly take our elbow and steer us bakc on their course.

apparently, when u get older, you can feel 'fate's' hand steering your elbow and keeping yu away from the things that u want. and i wonder, you can technically go against your parents, but u can never cheat fate. trust me on that one. no matter how hard i have tried over the last one year, i have absolutely given up at this point of time. if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. there is no other explanation fo the curent course of events taking place in my life at this point of time. nothing else except fate. being in a place i tried to desp not to be in, and meeting people i loathe. it all APPARENTLY has a purpose, and the fuck up is that it will be revealed in some mysterious way after two years.

so what do i do till then? sleep?? i have been sleeping all the time in denial of whats to come when i am actually awake. i think that sleep in a weapon i am using against the world and i know that it is harming only me at the end, no one else. but sleep is so easy to do, you just dose off ( esp after some minimal intake of d'alcoool) and la-la land-lo and behold! here you dont need to study and and do nething else. but the more i sleep, the more i have found out that i wanna sleep. and this is setting a dangerous precedent. i dont wanna waste the precious hours of my 20's by sleeping for most part of it. i wanna be alive and active. but there is nothing in the last few months that had actually made me feel alive, nothing is so worth me not sleeping except reading... and so i have this permanant state of a hang-over and its like i am high all the time or something. what i am gonna do now though is start studying economics. apparently, phds in economics earn like shit-loads of money in banks.

frankly i have lost interest in international relations-it all seems very vague and there are no proper rules of engagement. and if there are ne atleast in india, it is hidden in the manipulative demanor of my counter-parts in the capital. thats because people from delhi have corruption oops politics bred in their system rite from the womb and they probably come out with the intention of contesting elections.

as for my demons with JNU, i have none. none nemore. avoided an opportunity to sink into altruistic oblivion..

next post, i am going in for major restructuring. i mean come on! this is the same shaila who like loves to study! the same one who like gets awesome marks all the time, who loves schedules blah blah blah!

i have to make it...its like the golden opportunity to prove myself to myself..and i have managed to do it time and time again. am not giving up this time...not now...

2005-09-14T16:53:00.000-04:00

bungalow 8

well, i was watching an episode of sex and the city, and carrie kept on talking about how badly she wanted to go to bungalow 8-this sexy, hip new club somewhere in the burrows of manhattan. at the end however, she ended up leaving because ..welll honestly because her date was sucking face with another guy...

but thats not the pount. the point is, and i feel that all art including television is a matter of perception. it doesn't matter what things ACTUALLY are, it matters how we PERCIEVE them to be. while i may see joy with the scene of ally walking home alone, i interpret carrie's exit of hip, sexy bungalow 8 as the testament to my sisters theory-things will always look better in our heads than newhere else.

for some reason, we are all tuned to creating a sort of la-la land in our dreams and our visions of what things might be. and then one fine day you realize that there is a huge difference between that and what things actually are. its almost as if we are in the eye-doctors office, and he is constanly trying to fit different lenses to test to see if we can see better. and we wear the wrong ones most of the times, and its only when we hit a road-blok ( god not literally i hope) that we go back to try on new lenses.

i thought that this process would be finite and eventually we would have this 'awakening' and find the right power for our vision. unfortunately, i think this problem is for the long haul. yes, the dreaded long haul filled with uncertainty and doubts. how exciting that i am turning 21 and am getting older. the older i get, the more i know that i know so little. and i wont have that 'one fine day' when everything will come together.

reality, we always pass this up at our eye-doctors even though we know its the right lens. many of us are so afraid if what we might actually find. and you know, i am not having any of these thoughts due to some sort of depression or 'most wanted therapy list' type of behaviour. its what i generally feel on a normal basis. and i always wonder what type of lens do people wear when they look at me, or what are the different shades of lens i wear when i look at them.

presently, i look at them through the eyes of a hardened cynic. and i know this will pass as nothing lasts forever-even the bad times. but somehow, through the foggy shades, i have come to the conlcusion, that maybe groping in the dark will do me some good.

because riht now frankly, someone is guding me and holding my hand...

my best guess is that its...fate

2005-09-08T09:47:00.000-04:00

cynicism : le plat du jour

indeed i have been classified as a cynic. i have been branded this term for my many random and disinterested views. and i only feign interest when i want something out of that person.

i was at cafe mochas yesterday and i happened to be the fifth wheel in a conversation between two people. i mean they were in some ways the proto-type couple of my nightmares. though the guy seemed nice about his music and love for the beatles, all approval faded into oblivion when i found out that:
a) he was from bombay scottish
b) he knew EVERYONE in south bombay

this seemingly boastful demeanor seemed to impress this lady love ( whose renditions of cho-shweet made me wanna throw water in her face) anyhoo, while she was impressed, i was completely put off. years of observing people from scottish have told me to beware of 'tude. while some of them have been seemingly nice, my own bitter missed chances of not being from a known school till today always haunt me and i wonder whether i would have turned out differenlty had i been schooled eslewhere

everytime i use the phrase 'i wonder' i always break out into a rendition of lemon tree....

i wonder how
i wonder why
yesterday you told me bout the blue blue sky
and all that i can see
is just a yellow lemon tree

writing this i have come to the conlclusion....not really. i am who i am and nothing can change that. i come across a million people a day and at best most of them disappoint me and i them. so i dont think that nething miraculous would have happened had i gone elsehere-this is from a people's percpective.

i truly feel that i have met more pretentious people to last a life-time.

well in conlclusion, i need to meet different people. people who make me think, who make me feel and not people who insist on healing me by telling me ho wi shouldnt drink pepsi and i should take up yoga and get in touch with my spiritual side. who are we kiddin, spirituality never really helped neone and its certainly not gonna help me. i feel i am on the edge of my emotions and i dont wanna run away from it.

once i accept that life is a never endoing journey with only you running the race,, it becomes easier, because now, you dont put your faith in other people, and have only yourself to blame at the end fo your failed endevours.

2005-09-05T10:36:00.000-04:00

heylo me,

i have this presentaion on immigration in france, that i am unusually finding very very hard to do. esp since i made a fool of myself the last time by talking in english. franlky, the jeux the role is like the most childish thing ever. a necessary inconvenience for the sake of my juvenile peers. man its like the third level and i see the way they reminince about the 'good ol' days' when it was so much fun and all the cool inside jokes and all. even i did that with D the other day, it had its moments but they passed soon...

i dont know where this lethargy for existence is comming from, this banality in the need for people. i have been like this for quite some time and i dont just feel like going out there and meeting new people. i think that my life has become stale and the only thing that keep me going is my academics. i guess this is the maturity that comes with being 21 and pursuing a masters degree alongside...

that reminds me, am going to do my project and not waste time talking to myself, essentially a blog is a more sane and discreet way of talking to one's self really...

will be back soon...

2005-09-03T14:27:00.000-04:00

i wonder,

is the main purpose of a blog to dispense off terribly profound statements that would have an effect on anyone who reads it? thing is no one is reading my blog and thats a good thing. ever since i hibernated into nothingness after the 8th of july, things have slowly been gettin on track.

back on track with more faith and conviction in being by myself. and i am finding it so beneficial enjoying life without having to constantly wait for something to happen to someone to happen to you. i have noticed that over the past year, all the people that have "happened" have ended pretty much disastrously. and i dont blame neone but myself. and i guess the irony of the circumstances. and u know, now i realize the difference between cynicism and reality. right now, i am living realistically. i love my life, i love the fact that i get to see "lost" on star movies which i feel is much better than "desperate housewives" i like it that over the past one month i have read 6 books as compared to none over the past one year.

god i wasted so much time and energy on jnu and delhi and hostel life and piped dreams. and i feel that at the end of the day, you sleep alone, even if someone may be physically present at the moment. so i dont harbour any illusions that the minute i meet someone who i like or even dare i say love, everything would be alrite. everything mite be better. and i see it al around me, those lovey dovy idiotic faces with foolish expressions of false pretentions and denial.

i dont care about august 2007, i am not in denial. and i have come to the conclusion that i am not getting outta this shell unless something drastically forces me out of it.

people are overrated and going out is overrated. sitting at home and actually being with your family is better. as i have said before, someone i need to hang out with needs to be much better than the book i would be reading..

which brings me to this....wil i ever be able to be in a relationship? i think that i am a commitment phobic...i love it. men world over think that they got this special patent over bening commitment phobic. thing with me now is that even with friends i have become so commitment phobic. dont expect nething from me cuz i have been systematically trained not to expect nething from you...

hurrah!!

2005-08-31T05:57:00.000-04:00

hmmmm....

what can i say bout my dull uninteresting and uninspiring life today?? hmmm..maybe i can say that i got so irritated with everyone in class that i wanted to blow my brains out. this scene takes me back all the way to 8th grade in mont (un) pleasant middle school where i hated everyone and vice-versa. and i am setting a dangerous precedent by bitching bout univ to everyone i know. and i dont care. i dont care cuz i dont see myself meeting neone whose conversational skills can rival a good book.

yeah it hurts that somehow everyone out there is having a good time...but u know, sometimes people look at me and think that i am having a good time when infact i am having the most miserable time ever. the language and communication skills of my fellow peers have not improved by even an iota and now i go all around college claiming wildy like the CIA is after me or smthing that i am getting bad vibes and that someone is launching a personal vendetta against me. infact people dont give a fuck about me and i know it. they really dont care. and yes i have made a lil bit of an ass off myself but i dont care. i simply hate the people around me from the bottom of my heart. and now i just simply have to get used to being all by myself and well also getting to know more people and get the notes from them...

but yes this is the pace, hard work hard work and more hard work. i dont know why i am complaining bout being alone. people generally are very disappointing and i am sure i am as well. but now i am getting used to settling to life by myself and its nice really. not what i wanted but maybe what i needed. some solitary confinement. and i need to work. but i need an environment that i can actually be confortable in. i feel so damn uncomfortable in college. why is it that in alliance i am totaly myself and the whole 'was xavier's the only place me argument' goes on in my head. i just wanted to get it across that i hate being in the univ where the environment is so hostile, the people suck and i also hate the fact that i am not meeting like-minded people like me. either they are too conservative or they just dont like me. its like...i hate it ..plain and simple as that.

as for JNU, that good for nothing quota infested germ of a place. i hope their IR graduates get some huge posts in the Bush administration or somthing or reccomend a US allied foreign policy. that would be a setback for them indeed-imagine JNu being a breeding ground for capitalists..haha...sweet revenge.

i have had enough of whining and complaning. i basically think that life sucks but sometimes it has its good days...

i think floyd says it best..."Lost For Words"

I was spending my time in the doldrums
I was caught in the cauldron of hate
I felt persecuted and paralyzed
I thought that everything else would just wait
While you are wasting your time on your enemies
Engulfed in a fever of spite
Beyond your tunnel vision reality fades
Like shadows into the night

To martyr yourself to caution
Is not going to help at all
Because there'll be no safety in numbers
When the Right One walks out of the door

Can you see your eyes blighted by darkness?
Is it true you beat your fists on the floor?
Stuck in a world of isolation
While ivy grows over the door

So I open my door to my enemies
And I ask could we wipe the slate clean
But they tell me to please go fuck myself
You know you just can't win

2005-08-30T15:07:00.000-04:00

2005-08-30T11:28:00.000-04:00

well...

before i wrote for others, but now i write for myself. which is why i may causally mention my blog to others, and not advertize my banal existence like i did the last time. and what exactly happened the last time...

writing i feel is the most cathartic experience that one can have. even if there is no one to actually read it...like rushdie said in 'ground beneath her feet' just because the book is lying unread, it is not wasted, its job is already done in those pages. rather it is we who are wasted than the book. and that made all the sense in the world. i thought that taking such a long time to read 'midnite's children' was somehow connected to rushdie's failure as an author to engage me, when in fact it was my failure to get engaged in the book. of course after that, its been smooth sailing all the way.

as i have said before, reading enables you to enter into others people's worlds and problems rather than to dwelve on your own meandering and banal life.

when the ground beneath my feet shook violently on the 8th of july, i didnt know what was right and wrong and more importantly whom i should trust and whom i should not. there is no way of telling either. and this is not some simplistic carrie bradshaw type of mediocre ponderings-it is a fact. and i always spend most of my time trying to get things perfect that i feel that i want that one day ...that ONE day when everything willl be perfect and come together perfectly. and it wont happen.

that kind of utopia..and i laugh because once i said plutopia by mistake, and it caught on. so now me and my sis always refer to it as 'plutopia' neways back to the concept of utopia. i relaized and a good thing i did was that one will never reach it. at the most one will be happy but you cant expect things to be perfect all the time. and in the imperfection of it all..is where the true beauty of existence lies i guess. i feel like im in rehab and have to say it to my self- my name is shaila and i am not perfect!

perfection-why bother.. a tedious waste of time for a non-achievable goal.