The Parisienne

4.30 pm Paris: While braving the heavy graffiti laden walls in the outskirts I caught glimpses of the mighty tower and it seemed nothing close to romantic. I let out a deep sigh and turned away to browsing my Ipod. Though my eyes weren't on it anymore, my mind was still unknowingly lingering over it. I wasn't even close to being mesmerized but a frail thought of disappointment started settling in. I quickly diverted my attention to the old buildings and even the more modern tall ones which reminded me so much of Bombay. So much was written and said about the Eiffel tower before. Tall claims from friends and reviews by other travelers who gave the testimonials of it being the perfect mush spot. And there I saw it stand in all its steel glory in a blackish grey garb just like a tombstone- pale and dead. It just stood amidst life as a silent observer.
In the next 20 minutes I was in the middle of busy Parisian roads trying to reach the main center for a good French meal.


10.30 pm Paris: Within hours of being around the same place suddenly I felt as if I had traveled thousands of kilometers and was transported to a different world altogether. The Paris of the crazy , hot afternoon was nothing like the Paris of night rather twilight, considering it get darker only after 11.30 pm in the summers. Rows of light in different shapes, sizes and colours spread out through the entire city, till eyes could find a boundary. Like twinkling little stars they shone as I made my way to the Eiffel again. This time my eyes transfixed on its beauty, she looked like a beautiful bride almost ready to walking down the aisle.


The clock struck 11 and there was a sudden urgency in the air, people turned towards the tower and there it looked as if someone had infused it with kilohertz of life. She sparkled, twinkled, dazzled for five minutes and those were the best five minutes of my life. What would have been more perfect if I had that someone to share a little French kiss with and then probably I could have claimed to live the French way :)

My virtual Bombay

What do I do to keep in touch with Bombay when I am not in Bombay?

1.       Subscribe to Brown Paper Bag and read it religiously. The two scouters are like my saviors. CNNgo  is pretty cool too.

2.       For all the Bluefrog  gigs that I do not make it to, I have Awdio. It is the coolest thing ever only if you have good internet speed.

3.       Read highlighted lines from the Maximum City by Suketu Mehta and Shantaram

4.       Get updates from fellow Bombaywallahs.

5.       Snap at people who call it Mumbai or Mumbhaaai or Mumbaeee.

6.       Dream of Bombay every night

I need some Bombay 

<3

Its not just a book..

This is one of my most favourite poems.. 

Love for This Book - 
Pablo Neruda
 

In these lonely regions I have been powerful
In the same way as a cheerful tool
Or like untrammeled grass which lets loose its seed
Or like a dog rolling around in the dew.
Matilde, time will pass wearing out and burning
Another skin, other fingernails, other eyes, and then
The algae that lashed our wild rocks,
The waves that unceasingly construct their own whiteness,
All will be firm without us,
All will be ready for the new days,
Which will not know our destiny.
 

What do we leave here but the lost cry
Of the seabird, in the sand of winter, in the gusts of wind
That cut our faces and kept us
erect in the light of purity,
as in the heart of an illustrious star?
What do we leave, living like a nest
of surly birds, alive, among the thickets
or static, perched on the frigid cliffs?
So then, if living was nothing more than anticipating
the earth, this soil and its harshness,
deliver me, my love, from not doing my duty, and help me
return to my place beneath the hungry earth.

We asked the ocean for its rose,
its open star, its bitter contact,
and to the overburdened, to the fellow human being, to the wounded
we gave the freedom gathered in the wind.
It's late now. Perhaps
it was only a long day the color of honey and blue,
perhaps only a night, like the eyelid
of a grave look that encompassed
the measure of the sea that surrounded us,
and in this territory we found only a kiss,
only ungraspable love that will remain h

I love metaphors

What could be the worst kind of self-realisation? Mine is more like a one act play. It sort of brings me down at times, I have no one to blame. It starts with me and ends with me. I drag along others to play their part, sometimes they fit the bill but most of the times their presence just fucks up my script. It turns out to be quite a play. Real emotions, tears and resonating evil laughter in the hall. There is always a bad guy and I play that role really well. In the end you know who wins? The bad guy is aware of my Achilles heel, the bad guy knows that I am vulnerable, impulsive and an ugly thinker. I do not wish to repeat the show anymore. It was a bad script, just like a bad nightmare.

Right now

It is my right to be mean and bitchy today. Tomorrow we'll see!

What's up California

Right from The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, The Doors, Eagles to Motley Crue and Green day, I love'em all. Surprisingly they have all originated in California. I still haven't been able to figure what could be this... there ought to be some magic in the air... Till then

"Well, I just got into town about an hour ago
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows

Are you a lucky little lady in the City of Light
Or just another lost angel...City of Night
City of Night, City of Night, City of Night, woo, c'mon

L.A. Woman, L.A. Woman
L.A. Woman Sunday afternoon
L.A. Woman Sunday afternoon
L.A. Woman Sunday afternoon 

Drive thru your suburbs
Into your blues, into your blues, yeah
Into your blue-blue Blues
Into your blues, ohh, yeah "

Boxed In

Pack.Unpack.Pack.Unpack.Pack.Unpack I am tired of living out of boxes.

0-0

Recently when a Turkish hacker kind of equalized twitter with 0 followers and 0 following, many felt lonely and many egos were shattered. So this sounds a little silly, a bug sends you in a tizzy and you start consulting a psychiatrist? Are we so dependent on twitter to satisfy our already inflated ego?



So when Ashton Kutcher went up to the mirror to check him, those with a few numbers of followers were secretly happy. They were all equal for a few hours. Such a waste of time no? Ever thought how many people in real life think you are cool? How many in real life respect you for what you are and not just one of the herd?



This is what prompted this post:- shekharkapur: U guys all there? For sum reason my twitter a/c shows zero followers suddenly. U think I’ve been hacked? (on his twitter page)

Who's in?

Block July 15 to July 18, 2010 this year. It is Ladakh Confluence in its second year, bigger, better and of course lovelier with a whole lotta love promised. The line up looks something like this at the moment: -

Manu Delago

Christopher Pepe Auer

Karsh Kale (Website under construction btw :P )

Viku Vinayakram

Rajasthan Roots

Young Musicians of the world

Something Relevant  (Wonder why, well ok!! )

Jamie Catto

Supersonics  ( :-) )

(Courtesy: The Ladakh Confluence 2010)

Special one

Some incidents teach you rather big lessons in life. I have learnt one today, it doesn’t matter how many read what you write, how many understand and how many acknowledge. When what you write touches one heart, it matters. When what you write makes a difference to a life, it matters. When what you write brings a smile on someone’s face, it matters. These are the people who matter and when they read, its more than enough. This one was for you Bani.



Wishing you oodles of much deserved love.

Is it? Yes

"The heart wants what it wants. There's no logic to those things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that's that."- Woody Allen

Something I did - II

Too much has already been said and nothing can be written more. I love them a lot and no its not a shoe:P

Books = BFFs? or not BFFs?

Yesterday I was shopping for a few books at Landmark

Observation 1: Pune Landmark is nothing compared to the Bombay one (Infinity mall, Andheri)

Observation 2: Teenagers in Pune are obsessed with Linkin Park, that wasn’t a surprise

Observation 3: Most kids flocked the Xbox and PS3 corner in the bookstore, whereas the classics section, children’s books section were mostly empty or had parents dallying around to find something for their kids who were at the gaming section.

I remember reading Heidi, Bambi or even the Tales of the Huckleberry Finn (that was my favourite as a kid). Like all good girls I read fairytales every night, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, I dreamt about the seven dwarfs and me playing snow white. I even owned pretty shoes like Cinderella. Then I slowly moved on to Oliver Twist, Sherlock Holmes and then there was a brief period of Mills and Boons owing to my age and hormones. And all this while the classics never died. May it be Jane Austen or Jonathan Swift and even Shakespeare- I had a habit of reading aloud Shakespeare, especially Merchant of Venice. That was me when the only video games we played were the ones that came in a big box, cousins or daddy would lug along from foreign land. Mario and Luigi it was.

Today, most kids own PS3s or PSPs or what not. What are they reading anyways? Ummm nothing really. It is either J.K. Rowling’s world that takes them far away from reality or it is Paulo Coelho, yes kids are reading that too, talk about growing up a bit too fast. May be the next disability would be inability to read. Thus I do not support e-books or even audio books or anything that takes one away from the joys of holding a book and reading it.

I love the way books smell. The old ones have a peculiar musky smell, whereas the new ones to me are like hot muffins-fresh and yum. This is what I thought as I waited for the staff to hunt for the book I wanted.


(P.S :- I bought Peter Ackroyd’s selected essays)


(P.S. 2:- I have become a pro at typing in the dark)

Something I did

After a stressful day at work, I come home with doors playing in my ears. I start looking for an old book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, because it is one of those "feel good" books I keep going back to in times like these. I end up finding not the book but some leftover paint boxes.

I quickly shower and I make this

 
 
 

 

  "I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps "Oh look at that!" Then- whoosh, and I'm gone...and they'll never see anything like it ever again...and they won't be able to forget me- ever." - Jim Morrison

Economics

Travelling in Poona is very  expensive, especially if you do not own one of those bikes. And Dad you tricked me :X . Anyways


Here is how I look at it


Auto fare from home to office and back= 100 X 2 = 200/-  + 20/-  extra charges post 10 pm (yeah 10 is late night here..whatte city)


 220/- = cost of two packs of Benson

The ugly missy

I saw her name in red neon.
The woman who has an ugly green toungue and she speaks all blue.
Her mind is the dark of a dungeon and her heart is a solid grey.
She wears a filthy yellow while she carries a gory expression.

:-)

They always give me a reason to smile..every morning definitely

Update

I have started my internship with Indian Express in Poona. Its day four today, so far things have been decent. I am in my third internship and I have no real job yet :(


Jinx Diary:-


Entry # 12,765 :- Toppled down the stairs again. Scratched my very expensive Vogue sunglasses. Sprained my ankle. While getting in the car, I had my hands smeared with grease which left stains on my lovely white shirt. It doesnt stop here by the way. I ride 4 Kilometers with Daddy only to realize I have forgotten my Phone at home. So while I beg him to take me back he gives me a long lecture on how I need to start meditating to improve my concentration power.
I have more than half a day to go and I am sure this doesnt stop here. Bring it on

Lets tweet

What are we turning into? A community that communicates in 140 characters or less? I miss writing long letters, elaborately giving details of my recent vacation to my friends. Today it would be. “Meenakshi Iyer returned with sun burns and an amazing tan, she loves Goa.”

Twitter is turning us into people with shorter attention spans, with abysmal retention power. It’s like a disease I say if am allowed to be a little crude here. We no longer prefer reading texts that flows into more than three paragraphs.

It is certainly revolutionizing communication but in which direction is the question? We roll our eyes if we find people who are not on Twitter, celebrities are fast signing up as well. Now, I completely support the new media and its wonders, but at the same time, I also take a step backward and contemplate. Where is this leading me?

Social networking puts you in a spot where telling the world what you up to is more like an urge. People are living two lives- online and offline.

Online they have the control, they can mould their persona the way they would like to see them online, it’s like living a virtual dream. So you join groups, become fans of things you don’t even have a clue about? Why? Because the rest of the world is doing so. It is herd behaviour. You want to impress a girl, just manipulate your interests/hobbies sections of your profiles. But what are you in real life may be totally diametrically opposite of what you pretend to be. You go out with your gang of boys, have a great night at the friendly bar, you come home and the first thing on your mind is to put pictures on facebook. You want the world to know that you have an awesome life (considering the popular definition of awesome= social)

Social media definitely revs up your cool Q but at the same time it is turning you into someone you are not.