Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Green is the colour

That be the song I am listening to right now.

I am not the kind of person who prepares drafts before posting, which is why I shouldn't have experimented with the draft option that blogger provides. I ended up editing and re-editing the drafts and then hated it all so much that my favorite word right now is "random". But then a girl should try out new things. Why, I know not.
Also, I was kind of waiting for new comments on my last post. Now that "77" is a very cool and soothing number to look at and sits royally beside the "smoky imprints" of the last post, here I am to narrate the story of my life.

I am 20 years old because I was born 20 years back.

That was the story of my life in its most precise form.

Now the song has changed to "Incomplete_enigma" - Deep forest, Vangelis, Spirits of the Nature. I always confuse between the artist-name and the song-name.

Talking about confusion,
I look very, VERY confident when I am lost and confused. But I look lost and confused when I am the most confident.
But whats causing all the tension and worry is the fact that I am feeling really really confident about the upcoming interview. THE Interview,btw really really want to get through. Now all I have to do is to be confused so as to look confident. But thing is, how do I forcefully confuse myself? Wait, I think reading and re-reading this very paragraph will do the trick.

Ok, now a little bit about my film. MY FILM. How great does that sound?! And well it is my film because,

a> I did the subtitles. That means, I cried, begged, rolled over on the floor begging other classmates for a little bit of time. Just 45 minutes. I just need to do the subtitles, because, the thing is, even though the technically adept people taking care of the technical stuff have come up with the most fantastic sound ever recorded.No sarcasm NO SARCASM, dreamy. Stay away from sarcasm,will you? but you see, just one problem. People are not being able to understand the dialogues. Now the technically adept people will obviously say that its because of the actors' ALL the actors, mind you. diction problems, but the thing is, without the dialogues, the film is nothing. Anyway. I fought the bravest, the most fastidious battle of all times in order to be granted some 45 minutes for the subtitles. We had to beg...no..I had to beg for time from other classmates because we'd run out of time. The time alloted was long gone and the film far from finished.

well iye, thats it. Thats the only claim I have to consider the film my film. Apart from coming up with the concept.

Anyway. All's good now.apart from the fact that I have been alienated and kicked a lot, a lot by the most unexpected people


But me is happy today. [What with 77 comments and all!]
Me is really really looking forward to the blogmeet. [27th May, T3, 5pm]
Me is going to end this post by putting up some production stills.

The actor actually turned my pink bag into a character!
My favorite-est photo/frame/scene/sequence of the film


Ladies and gentlemen, presenting, the cutest shrink of all times! :D


Oh, and I am going to Bombay. Yay! actually, it should be YAY!big grinbig grinbig grin

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Untitled.

Well ok.

It all started from Rishi's tag post comments. A huge brouhaha over our children, their names, inter-blogger-offspring marriages, heartbreaks, heart brakes, hurt breaks, heart hurts, brakes break, broken hearted brakes etc etc.


So I thought we should all meet up and talk.
Going by my feeble and yet to develop managerial skills, I thought it would be best if I think up about of all the bloggers I know, from Calcutta and link them all to an exclusive pre-blog meet post.

On second thoughts, I realized and realized quite correctly that I am too lazy to link them bloggers and I' decided to just name them.

so, Rishi, Nunkuda, Onnesha, Poojo, Ad libber, Amazing Greys, Noisy Autist, Shuvo, Saptarshi, Dhruva, Royal Bengal tigress,Monidipa, Mishtizaa, undifferentiated, Inihos,

Thursday, April 24, 2008

A post about the next best thing to every freakin' thing in this world.

More or less on this very date , particularly in the month of April, exactly one year back, I was in a similarly contemplative mood that I am in right now.

The exact reasons for being so might not be exactly exact, but they are more or less exact.
I had my university exams back then. I have my university exam tomorrow.
But there are differences too.
Last year I was mildly paranoid about not having studied. This year I am mildly paranoid about not being mildly paranoid about not having studied.

Last year I was contemplative about what questions might adorn the question paper next day because I wasn't too sure I understood the meaning of the terms cited in the syllabus.

This year, I am contemplative about what questions might adorn the question paper tomorrow because, frankly,
1>The photocopy of the syllabus, which has been , if you must know, photocopied from another photocopy of the syllabus was too light-inked to decipher.

2> I am both profoundly confused and confusingly profound about the different papers. i.e. I have been confusing the contents of Paper 6 with that of paper 5 and the contents of paper 8 with that of paper 7 ..etc . so logically , tomorrow is the exam date for paper 7 and I am , as you might have guessed not too sure about what to study. The faintly- discernible, too light-inked to be true syllabus isn't helping either.

3> Three days back, when I was in a similar situation and was aimlessly convincing myself to study for the exam to be held the next day, yet another wonderfully and weirdly fulfilling thing happened. To understand the exact nature of the wonderfulness and the weirdness, you must know a little about ...(sigh)..the syllabus of that particular paper. The paper in question was Editing and the newest new syllabus devised by the university had nothing to with Editing. So, our tactful editing teacher, who by the way, refuses to understand the basic exam-hating tendencies of the youth at large and of our department in particular told us categorically that it would be best to study all the editing related stuff mentioned in the old syllabus and all the non-editing related stuff mentioned in the new syllabus. Apart from confusing my alert-yet-immune-to-confusion state of mind, the religious following of my teacher’s categorical instructions would mean, to cut a long story short, a lot of studying. Which, my alert-yet-immune-to-confusion state of mind was not fully equipped for. So I decided and not so surprisingly ended up doing the next best thing to every freaking thing in this universe--> Procrastinating.
So I was in a multicolored mood. The colors being confusion, alertness, irritation, impatience and a certain level of uncertainty on the lines of “so will the university set questions conforming to the editing related old syllabus or the non-editing related new syllabus.”

Here comes the wonderfully and weirdly fulfilling thing I was talking about.
The exam got postponed.
By one whole month.
Now another wonderful and weirdly fulfilling thing happened while I was writing my Paper 1 exam.
All my life, the one thing I’ve hated conspicuously and consistently is writing exams. I mean the actual act of writing answers on cheap quality paper. Now this hatred stems entirely from the fact that my classmates, at all given stages of academic life have shown this affinity towards becoming paper-crazy maniacs during exams.

Like they will go on writing and writing and writing and will go on asking for extra sheets. Now this always makes me heinously insecure about getting the lowest marks, since, clearly I take the least amount of extra sheets. I can’t write. To be more precise I cant write crap for my answers. To be a little more precise, I can’t waste my dazzling crap-writing abilities on answers being written for exams.
Those abilities are to be wasted here, dear blog.
Personally I don’t think I am much of a writer. Since I can only write on topics either dangerously specific, like “a close study of the moles on the upper lips of the hypochondriacs in the Shuiguohu district of central china” or scathingly vague, like “Does George Bush really look like a monkey?”

Anyway, back to the wonderfully weird thing that happened. My classmates-turned paper-crazy maniacs found out that the university has adopted a new rule of debarring students from taking extra sheets!

To top it all, I seem to have the most creatively distracting conversations only and only during the exams …like,

Fraand : Hi, Ads , are you studying?

Me: I am feeling very lost and naked.[I generally come up with alarming answers when I am asked alarming questions as such]

Fraand: Yeah, what will happen?

Me: I am sure tomorrow will be a mixture of the two kinds of nightmares people generally have. One, where they turn up in the exam hall with zero preparation and two, when they suddenly realize they’ve come out of their house without wearing any clothes.
Fraand: hmmmm.

Me: so did you study?

Fraand: yeah, I was studying the factories act of 23 September 1938.

Me : WHAT? Excuse me? How the hell is that in the syllabus for video production? More importantly, what the hell is that?

Fraand: I was studying for the next exam. Not for tomorrow.

Me: ok. Whew. I almost had a heart attack.

Fraand: so wassup with you?

Me: Nothing. I am just feeling very dazed and confused since morning…

Fraand: and?

Me: Yeah, in the evening I watched Harry Potter and Ally Mcbeal side by side. My head is a lot clearer now.

Fraand: you know what I realized?

Me: what?

Fraand: we don’t know what we look like. I mean we have just seen ourselves in the mirror or in snaps or on video. All those are virtual, reflected images, we will only be able to see the REAL us after we die!!!!!!!!


Since I anyway have lost and forgotten the point I’d set out to make in the beginning of the post, I’ve decided to end this post without any conclusion and therefore definitely very abruptly.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

A tag, my past life and some sugar cubes.

This is not entirely a just-a-tag post. I will rant a lot after this tag.

Was tagged by Onnesha. Yet again!

1. LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN A THEATER?
Jodha Akbar

2. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING?
Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

3. FAVORITE BOARD GAME?
Snakes and ladders

4. FAVORITE MAGAZINE?
JAM.

5. FAVORITE SMELLS?
Wet chalk. Cement. Shoe polish. Langra aam.

6. FAVORITE SOUND?
I don't like sounds. Or wait. I like it when theres lightening cracking up the sky.

7.WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD:
Betrayal.

8.FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE?
"Oh come on.IT was just a dream."

9. FAVORITE FAST FOOD PLACE?
Errrrm..Pizza hut?

10. FUTURE CHILD'S NAME:
Khunti,Khisti,Khichuri.

11. FINISH THIS STATEMENT.
"If i had a lot of money i would...go for a liposuction and some kind of a surgery to even out my uneven teeth.

12.DO YOU DRIVE FAST?
I don't.

13. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL?
Oh please. I am not that big a despo.

14. STORMS-COOL OR SCARY?
Cool. I would do anything for a storm right now.

15. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR?
I Don't have a toy car. As yet.

16. FAVORITE DRINK?
Mango drink. Any kind.

17. FINISH THIS STATEMENT,
"IF I HAD THE TIME I WOULD... multiply that with the ample amount of time I already have and then build up this bigshot Palace outta all the Time.
Shucks I am getting more and more depressed.

18. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS ON BROCCOLI?
Yet another question which makes me go "ummm..what?"

19. IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY COLOR, WHAT WOULD BE YOUR CHOICE?
The darkest brown possible.

20. NAME ALL THE DIFFERENT CITIES/TOWNS YOU HAVE LIVED IN.
Patna. Calcutta.

21. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
*bursts out laughing..and is laughing very hard and hence is unable to answer this question*

22. ONE NICE THING ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU:
She writes like a dream. :)

23. WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED?
I don't know. Finding out will require me to so something similar to an ab crunch which I absolutely refuse to do.

24. WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE BORN AS YOURSELF AGAIN?
Yes. But a thinner version,please.

25. MORNING PERSON, OR NIGHT OWL?
Both.

26. OVER EASY, OR SUNNY SIDE UP?
Sunny side. [Frankly, I dint get this question]

27. FAVORITE PLACE TO RELAX?
My balcony.

28. FAVORITE PIE?
I don't eat much pies.

29.FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR?
Chocolate and black current.

30. OF ALL THE PEOPLE YOU TAGGED THIS TO, WHO'S MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND FIRST? I don't think I will tag anyone. You know, just for the heck of it. :D

So its that time of the year again when I start hallucinating a lot and generally make and support a load of nonsense every now and then.

Like I discovered that I am losing the thin line of difference between studying and sleeping.
The situation at home is indeed very soothing. My mother has opened up about her expectations from me. and she just wants me to pretend to study. So every day, I have a bath in the morning and I lock myself up in my room. My mother seems happy with my pretension and I just sleep and stare at the blank computer screen. I also listen to Bryan Adams. A lot.

Although, come to think of it, I do have to study a lot. I mean they start from the 18th of April. The exams. And all I can think of is how to differentiate between mauve and violet shades of dried up nail polish.

And I was on Facebook and I had this dangerously lame feeling. Something to do with around 20 of my friends having sent me the invites to the "what were you in your past life?" test.

It was scary.
Since I've been staring a lot this week, at things , at animals at sugar cubes even, I have mastered the art of selective staring. Like when you select an object out of a cluster of objects and just stare at that object.

I feel very peaceful after having stared at something for more than six minutes at a stretch. I also feel a little stupid but then peace, is the essence of life. I will do anything for peace.

But the facebook-staring-exercise-gone-wrong was far from peaceful. Just how would you feel if you saw something like..



[Some jobless person]wants to know what you were in your past life.
[Some jobless person] wants to know what you were in your past life.
[Some jobless person] wants to know what you were in your past life.
[Some jobless person] wants to know what you were in your past life.
[Some jobless person] wants to know what you were in your past life.
[Some jobless person] wants to know what you were in your past life.
[Some jobless person] wants to know what you were in your past life.

etc etc.

It just scared me so much that I stopped staring.
Instead, I decided that I should behave like a responsible person for a change and do something to change the world. If not change the world, then at least do things that will not ruin my future and will help me to become a better human being at the end of the day.

I started playing scramble.

So all you people, whenever you have bright and grand plans of changing the world and you're about to set forth to fulfill your ambition,don't even think about taking me along.

I was thinking about all people I've had crushes on till now.
I was amazed to find out that I think very highly of myself.
Just when I was fooling around with fond remembrances of all the school girl crushes I've had and the odd three crushes that I've had while I was in college and then this thought struck me "how lucky of those people that I have had a crush on them!".
But then this thought was so very weird and arrogant by my standards that it was strongly unfamiliar.
And then this other very useful thought struck me.
"Maybe I should blog about it."

And then I thought.

"I won't be able to explain stuff as nicely as ..say..Salman Rushdie...See thats the difference. Thats why he is a writer...and me..I am just a blogger".

Now this was the kind of self-demeaning thought that made me sigh a sigh of relief and assured me that I haven't changed after all.

Now all people reading this post...you might be wondering yet another time... Whats the point?

but then I would have to remind you yet another time ...there is none. Even if there is one, its well hidden under my plump confusion about the state of affairs in general.

So well..what I wanted to say is that. I had this brilliant idea of getting back at all those random people who have made me look stupid at some point. [You see I often am at a lack of arrogant get backs in real life]

I start off with a junior in college with a French beard of sorts. I had wished him "Good morning sir" once.

so, Hello mister... Its not my fault that YOU look old.


Then there was this guy who had passed snide comments when I was feeding some street dogs in front of Classic stores.

so again... Hello mister... [is this Hello mister thing getting very cheesy?]

I am so sorry I dint feed you first. I was just following the "Bitches first" rule.

[Technical clarification. It was a bitch,which of course, I found out later]

Before I get into a bash-full mood, I will go sleep a little. =))

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Another Tag.

okay folks.

Since my exams, [FINAL exams,mind you] are earth-shatteringly near and are dancing the tribal dance, I will be blogging more often.

I was tagged by Onnesha.

A for Adrita, "aakash chhoa" and adorable

B for Bandra.

C for Ceasefire, Cindrella and chi chin faak

D for Dostoyevsky

E for egg roll

F for financial security.

G for GMBC

H for "him vs him"

I for Insipid inspirational input

J for Judgment Day

K for Kaleidoscope

L for lalaland

M for motichur ka laddoo

N for nautch girl

O for opaque

P for pedestrian

Q for queer queues of quintessential queenships

R for rag dolls

S for Sindbad the Sailor

T for toffee

U for umbrella

V for Veronica

W for Waste of time

X for xylophone

Y for yelling

Z for zing.


I tag all people on my blogroll and specially Arka, because this tag reminds me of alphabet soup.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Kindly ignore

the last post. I personally don't like myself much when I am all so dark and philosophical. True, shit happens, but then the idea is..at least my idea has always been to twist circumstances and situations in retrospect and make them sound funny.

So here I am.
We've completed shooting for our film.
I am happy that its finally over.
I realized , as usual a lot of things while the shoot was going on.

1> I get frustrated very easily.

2> I look dangerously pregnant when I am frustrated. Now this, could mean a lot of things but my personal opinion is that my potbelly protrudes a little too much when I am hyper.

3> I don't run away from responsibilities. I just sulk. and later, perhaps laugh it off by writing a funny post in my blog, which, btw could be lethally irritating if you happen to know me and have been with me while I was sulking.

4> Out of all the things I need, a hair straightener and an i-pod or an mp3 player or a plain FM radio tops the list.

5> Life is all about shouting when things don't go your way.

Anyway. Enough. It was all a maddening experience.
I thought the madness was over, but yet again I was surprised to be proved wrong, and I was proved wrong while editing.

Enough. I should be talking about something else.
I thought my headphones are not working. I was sulking all along, and then, one fine day, I discovered that I had unmindfully turned the volume control knob and thus leading on to the misconception that they are not working at all.

The point is, now I can listen to music. :D

They just told me there is no word like unmindfully.

Its either mindfully mindful unmindful mindfulnesses mindfulness' or mindfulness.


I have no clue why I am boring you to death.
Maybe I should copy paste stuff from my real diary where I've been writing ever since I discovered this fountain pen in one of the bags containing all the discarded knick-knacks from our ex-households.

so here it goes...

"I should be writing more and sulking less. I suddenly feel strong enough to conquer the world.

I want friends like r.d.a. You know, the assuming types..the kind of person who's gonna decide on showing off his glittering brilliance with JUST an I-Don't-give-a-damn attitude.
Of course he doesn't give a damn, no doubt about that and its far from pretense.


r.d.a wrote six-page letters to d.d.b.I wish someone wrote ME six-page letters. sometimes I wish I could communicate only through hand-written letters.

Since I have nothing else to write about, I am gonna try and write about my college.

My college, is beautiful. It is vast and magnanimous and it deceives me into thinking that at night, there are ghosts who dance on the spiraling front stair-case railing.

During the day, it just looks at the hordes of students like a retired Government officer, who used to control things, at some point, but now, is just too tired to do anything beyond staring nonchalantly [sometimes with a mixed look of despair and concern].

Classic stores, is the hub of a lot of activities. Most people go there to buy cigarettes, roll joints and basically to chill with an air of indifference. I personally like that place because it gives me ample opportunity to look at people seated inside the Cafe Coffee Day.

I just stare at those people and speculate about the difference between Us and Them. I mean here I am, not smoking while with friends who are smoking. Sitting, practically on the road with a bitch seated beside me who sniffs me every now and then with an air of approval and there they are, inside an air conditioned shamiana and sipping cold coffee or whatever from those ridiculous looking glasses...."






Saturday, March 22, 2008

The true Hero.

Its very difficult to write readable stuff at a time when a person has been dreaming about far-off railway stations and has been trying to convince people that her film's protagonist might be a schizophrenic...but thats just besides the point.


Anyway.
My goldfish died today. It was two weeks old. I was thinking about naming it, and well, it died. Right at that moment, while I was holding the dead fish in my hands I realized I need to run away from things. Run far away. Perhaps some place where they have dingy-yet-pompous railway stations.


List of things that make me happy nowadays :

  • The song "Ye jo zindagi hai" From 1947 Earth.
  • MTV Roadies.
  • Milk Powder.
  • My future prospects.
No seriously, it would have been natural to wince at the very mention of the word "Future"...forget about "prospects" and "education"..but nowadays all these phrases open a new avenue of thoughts. Very refreshing thoughts of me living far far away from the people who surround me now.

How amazing would it be to stay disconnected. Cut off. Invisible. Unnoticeable. How amazing would it be to not be answerable to people, not justify the one thousand and thirty six useless and meaningless things that make it easier for me to exist.

But then I am getting whiny again.

So what would you all want to know about?
My college life? Its gone. Ceased to exist. My friends? they're all there for me. Just that I've been having dangerously desperate thoughts of detaching myself from all my friends. Throughout my childhood/tweenhood/teenhood, I've been craving for that perfect life with good friends all around me. I craved so bad that at age 20 I actually am in a position to boast of the perfect life with three or four good friends.

But now I want to distance myself. Just listen to music and watch TV and read books while traveling by the metro. There is nothing else that I wish to do. Surprisingly, I don't even want to talk. I wince every time my phone starts buzzing. That explains why I haven't been blogging much.

but then there is the future to think about. I have to start reading the newspaper. I have to get through. I have to go far away.


OK. What else should I tell you.
My film.
Ah.
Now I know whats so sweet about making films.
The notion of making things inside your head come real.
Something that was just another blurb of colour inside your brain,suddenly is a recorded entity. Digitized. Ready for you.On the timeline. Waiting for you to fiddle around with it. Cut. copy. Trim. One frame?

I am a Life Blogger!
My blog is the story of my life - a living diary. If it happens, I blog it. And make it as entertaining as possible.