Friday, November 27, 2009

Tag-m Bag-m




Long back i had attempted this tag. It had taken me a while to answer them and the bhaggam-bhag (hustle-bustle) of everyday life somehow didn't leave me with much time to put it up on my blog. Finally its here. Hope you will enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed answering them. I tag Sid, Swatantra, Ashu, Amrit, Vivek, Ashwin, Simba, Makk, Chiku and whoever wants to take it up.

RULES: Respond and rework – answer these questions on your blog, replace one question that you dislike with a question of your own, and add one more question to the list. Then tag eight or ten other new set of people.

1. What is your current obsession? Attempts to rediscover my love for reading.

2. What are you wearing today? Long tee and pj

3. What’s for dinner? Its 2.40am. Too early to think about dinner.

4. What’s the last thing you bought? Scotch tape and four carton boxes 

5. What are you listening to right now? Sound of the keyboard

6. What do you think about the person who tagged you? No one tagged me. I tagged myself so can I talk about self… (I had attempted it when no one had tagged me and the ones who tagged me later I have lost their count and forgotten who they were. Sorry, someday I shall write at length on each of you.)

7. If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be? Kerala, Venice, my hometown

8. What are your must-have pieces for summer? Cool head

9. If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go? To a sea beach or a waterfall

10. Which language do you want to learn? Language of the faeries and infants.

11. What’s your favourite quote? Loves knows not its own depth until the hour of separation by Khalil Gibran

12. Who do you want to meet right now? You, my dear reader

13. What is your favourite colour? the colour of love and pain.

14. What is your favourite piece of clothing in your own closet? An olive green top

15. What is your dream job? To be my own boss

16. What’s your favourite magazine? Tehelka, Brunch

17. If you had $100 now, what would you spend it on? Bury it where it would multiply into zillions

18. What do you consider a fashion faux pas? Men in skirts.

19. Who according to you is the most over-rated style icon? Gauri Khan (wife of SRK)

20. What kind of haircut do you prefer? No haircut for me as I want my hair to grow like Rapenzal (am not sure of the spelling).

21. What are you going to do after this? Dream

22. Who is your favourite sport star? Steffi Graf, Leander Paes, Ronaldhino, Vishwanathan Anand

23. What are three cosmetic/makeup/perfume products that you can't live without? Kajal, lip gloss

24. What inspires you? Life, nature, children

25. Give us three styling tips that always work for you: smile, my charm, kajal

26. What do you do when you “have nothing to wear” (even though your closet’s packed)? Wear my skin and attitude.

27. Coffee or tea? Coffeeeeeeeeee

28. What do you do when you are feeling low or terribly depressed? Hug my pillow or listen to music.

29. What is your nickname? Ash, koyal, tweety, guriya… (the list is endless)

30. Which other blogs do you love visiting? I seem to be in love with all the blogs after all they are the fruits of leisure and keyboard labour.

31. Favorite Dessert/Sweet? Chocolates

32. Favorite Season? Spring

33. If I come to your house now, what would u cook for me? I shall cook up a story for you and garnish it with wit and humour. Is it tempting enough or shall I try my other secret recipe…

34. What is the right way to avoid people who purposefully hurt you? Give them a cold turkey instead of cold shoulder or cold vibes and a rose everyday in a true munnabhai-gandhian style.

 35. What are you afraid of the most? Of losing my dear ones and another world-war.

My Questions: 36. If you could undo any one of your past actions or acts which would be that?

Thursday, November 19, 2009

How to fall in love all over again?

There was something i used to enjoy since my childhood but i don't seem to enjoy it anymore. I was a voracious reader once......but now i can hardly have the patience to read ten pages at one go... i just don't know how to get back to my old love i.e. reading. I have been doing so many things to get back to reading books but sadly failed. Its almost like trying to rekindle love and physical desire in a marriage that has gone cold. The very sight of books used to be magnetic but it is no longer the same. It just doesn't evoke the same response from me as before. The sight of a fat book is almost that of a hostel matron to me which chases me away. In libraries i look for size zero fiction books which i haven't found till now. I have turned into a book collector now from a true book lover that's what my uncle says. I keep raiding his library and keep stacking my self with books. I don't even allow my friends to sell off their old books and almost beg them to give or donate them to me. I am forever eager to adopt abandoned and orphan books (i know it sounds ironic when i say that i want to fall in love with them). Recently i collected about 30-40 books from my friend who was shifting. I was amazed how she could part with them. I am attached to books but am not justifying my love for them , am simply hoarding them.

Its not that i have stopped reading. In fact i have been reading much more than before but the kind of readings am doing is much different. Am buried day and night in research books, research papers, articles, journals, etc. I am doing more of academic reading than creative ones. It takes me ages to finish reading one single book. I am not exaggerating but it took me almost a year to finish "Notes from a Surgeon". With such a snail pace i wonder how many years it will take me to read "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth (for long this book has been on my wish list. God knows when i will finally read it. Hope am able to do it before my unborn and unimagined great great grand kids do it. )

Sometimes i wonder if academics has killed my love for reading because even when am reading a simple fiction i tend to read it with a critical eye. I begin to deconstruct it and treat the characters as my specimen and apply Marxist. humanist, post-colonial or modernist theories. I tend to do it even unconsciously. It simply kills the simple pleasure of reading as am unable to separate the critic from me. The following quote begins to hold true as i wonder if academics or education has undone me. "I  was born intelligent but education ruined me." I wonder if education has truly ruined.  It surely has added knowledge, sense and reasoning power to my head but i wouldn't agree with the above quote completely. I just laid my hands on some book called "Toad in my Garden" by some unknown author. Hope it will begin a journey towards finding love again.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Memories

Snatching seconds from minutes
And minutes from hours
Weaving a web of sieved time.
Immortalizing mortal moments
Like baptising pagans.

Deceased moments
Banished from the present
Take refuge in the past
Like runaway convicts.

Resurrected by nostalgia
Breathing ghosts
Slumber restlessly
Like the sentinel
Of a ravaged fort
In the deep recesses of our mind.