The Fourth One- Of Photographs and Charmed Work

Ah, another month goes by. Like millions of other people, when I started writing the blog, I decided to update regularly. Then I discovered two things.
a. My life is boring- no wild parties or hot drunk catfights to mention
b.I'm very lazy

Sad but true. I have spent the whole of last month doing work and studying. There have been lots of times I have itched to come onto my blog and bitch about my life, but then nobody is interested in knowing about messed up XS and S size T-shirt orders, right? :)

Early this month, the year-long efforts of hundreds of people at BITS-Goa paid off when QUARK, our Techfest came around. For some strange reason, Quark went off relatively smoothly, with minor glitches. The external crowd seemed to be happy, and it was fun all around. But for some reason, I was feeling empty and blue throughout the festival. I had done a decent amount of work for the festival, and QUARK was everyone's baby, so I was glad when it went well. But everyone, including me, were too busy making it a success to have any fun. Seriously, at some points I felt it was like a proper job, with plenty of job satisfaction, but no fun, and no pay (in some cases negative pay!!).

I hope I feel much better when WAVES, the cultural fest comes around. I'm working for it as well, and won't get to have much fun either, but maybe I will shake a leg at the DJ night. In my pretty bleeeew dress (anyone understood the Jeff Dunham connection?). Coming to Jeff Dunham, please google Achmed, The Dead Terrorist. Please. He will 'keel' you.

Now back to my very happening personal life. I had tests. And now they're over-yaay! That's actually the most interesting thing I could come up with about myself. No wait- there's my new hobby to talk about. I have developed a taste for phtography. It's mainly due to my amazing new Digital Camera, and partly due to Flickr.com and Rasagy Sharma(http://irrashonallyurs.blogspot.com). An extremely talented guy who advertises his blog a lot, I decided to actively start taking photos which were 'artistic' after I saw his post on photography.
Thanks Rashie.

My father is an amazing photographer, and sadly I have not inherited his talent and maybe not his Nikon SLR. So I'm trying to get there, keeping an eye out for great moments and great things to click away. As I click more photographs, I realize how one moment makes all the difference. How one flicker of sunlight, how one smile, can change a picture. Strangely like life, when you lose that one special moment, it's gone forever. That one perfect moment, you either capture it, or it scurries, and disappears into the hurried motions of life.So that's why I choose inanimate objects more than people. There are no moments with them, they just lie there, waiting for you to shape their moment (no, that was not a physics joke). So here are a few pictures that piqued my interest as I shot them.

Floodlights in the BITS-Auditorium. Standing in a row, quietly.


My watch with the streetlights reflected on it.

My very creative friend Liza in her room. You can see the origami and the

decorative tree she made out of a dead branch, by painting tiny acorns and

sticking them onto it. Happy 20th Lizzie. May you forever score full marks in

TP.

Self-explanatory. Taken with the cam's auto-mode in a dark

room.

Please feel free to comment on them (concrit is welcome). Now I want to say many more things, but I shall keep that for another hour, another day. I'll leave you with a list of songs that you must definitely listen to. This is artist, song and what makes it special.

1. INXS- Suicide Blonde- Michael Hutchence's husky voice, and an old west feel.

2. R.E.M- Everybody Hurts- Slow, and soulful.

3. Dario Marianelli-The Atonement Album- Lovely, lovely classical music.

4. The Who- Baba O'Riley- Simply great music

5. Elton John- Tiny Dancer- A romantic ballad about a ballerina

6. Brad Paisely and Alison Krauss- Whiskey Lullaby-A short, simple song about pain

7.Incubus- Megalomaniac- Why Hitler can never be fuckin' Elvis

8. Judas Priest- Electric Eye- A superhero song!

9. John Mayer-Slow Dancing in a Burning room- Lovely words

10.Pink Floyd- Coming Back to Life- Pink Floyd

11.Iron Maiden- Dance of Death- A nice, powerful song

12.Eric Clapton- While my Guitar gently weeps- Eric Clapton at his best

13.Porcupine Tree- Arriving Somewhere- A long, rich song

14. Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood- Summer Wine- A very addictive song

15. Richa Sharma -Choro more Baiyyan (from Zubeida)- Go back to the world of the 19th century courtesan

Adios for now! Listen to these songs and tell me what you think!

The Third One- Of the Winds of Change

Transitions are never easy. They might leave you insanely happy, or might leave you frightened and broken. Or they just leave you feeling strange.



There's so much change in the world today. People are changing, lives are changing, social structure, mentalities, in fact everything is so different today than it was, say, ten years ago. Quoting friend and very talented writer Ritika, " It seems strange, but the word that is here to stay is Change." Obama was just the tip of the iceberg.

Why am I writing about change? I don't know myself, but somehow Facebook pictures are to blame. It's been four years since I walked out of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's Public School, leaving a lot of good people and good memories. I don't forget people easily, and now when I look at facebook profile pictures, I sometimes am left shocked. A plump, very tomboyish girl (and by very tomboyish, I mean very- she used to think boys were better than girls) has become a slim and sexy siren. A very naughty kid in his younger years who used to play ball with my father before class (and once broke a window, I think :P) is now a cute young man doing his CA. Two troublemakers who used to get on the nerves of teachers at school and mine too at times :), got into Law School and Engineering (with pretty good ranks) and are doing very well.

A guy who used to call me ahem...names on the bus back home, is now a mature and intelligent guy, and an avid blogger with 24x7 opinions about the world. Another junior of mine, who is one of my closest friends, was a reed thin guy, half-my height, who would always hang out with girls (we called him a gynomaniac :), is now very tall, and still reed thin (and still poses like a girl).

In short, do people change that much? Does everyone turn into a new leaf in a few years? The change leaves me bewildered at times. In retrospect however, they might not have changed at all. They might have just shown their true colours (and I mean this in a good way) later. I guess we never know who we really are, when we're in school. As kids, we don't have opinions, or rather, we never think about having opinions. Everything is decided for us. It's only when we are teenagers, that we change. It's only when we grow up, and are free (or at least, partially free) to make our own decisions or to explore the world on our own that we change.

This led me to ask one more question- Have I changed? I didn't think I did. Or at least when I began the whole self-evaluation thingy.

Have I changed? Oh god, so much. When I was in 3rd class, I used to feel scared that 1st and 2nd classes had already gone by, so fast. When I was in 10th, I was scared that my whole school life had passed me by in a flash, in a whisper and I didn't realize it. Now I'm nineteen, in 2nd year, wondering where the previous semester of college has gone. Okay, coming back to the point... I've changed.

I used to hate the idea of disco. I never wanted to be a teenager. I thought having boyfriends was disgusting. My aim in life was to work at the NASA. I used to think rock music was just plates being thrown together. I was the perfect teacher's pet. And oh, I was domineering and short-tempered.

Now, I want to go to the Disco (stupid timings at BPGC). I want to fall in love (read my earlier post talking about stupid lou). My aim right now is to finish college with a good CGPA, NASA baad mein. I love rock and metal, Guns' n' Roses, Queen and Floyd literally saved my life. I don't know any teachers here, but I wouldn't mind being a certain one's pet. And now, people say I'm too compromising, a doormat, and sickly sweet.

I don't understand how we change, so suddenly. How one day, we wake up and decide, I'm not going to look like that anymore. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to be different. I'm going to be much better than before. Maybe I'll never understand it. Maybe people will also never understand how and why they have changed. Because it's a long, slow process. Becaus eit comes upon us when we least expect it. Change and Transition, we're your pawns, dancing to your silly tunes, are we not?

Now I have to go and change.Literally. :P Dinner awaits, and today, i'm eating out-for a change.

The Second One-For Shwet Di and Ashu Jiju

There's a big space between November 20 and January 2. Big. It incorporates angry rants, attempts to understand the obfuscating ES1 portion, exams and marriages and PR work. You wonder how it all connects together, don't you? Well, a lot has happened between this post and the last.

Now, about marriages. Marriages are meant to be happy times when you spend time with family, spend a few days running around, party like hell at Sangeets, and look through a zillion mehendi designs before you finally pick one. Oh the hustle and bustle of the Great Indian Wedding!

I've never been to a wedding before (well, because most of my family consists of either jerks or they live in Kolkata, which is too far) and when my dear Didi's wedding was round the corner, I all but ran out of the gate at BITS-Goa. This is the girl who saw me the very day I was born. This was the didi who's old books I used at times. No, wait, the books were her brother's, my bhaiya's. And I was hardly able to make it to her wedding because of my exams.

Well, I did rush home on the 12th of December, and I was dressed in an hour, decked in my mum's gaudy jewelry, and a dear old sari that I wore on my Teacher's Day four years ago. We sped to the venue at the Taj, and barely made it in time.

My didi was a perfectly beautiful, gorgeous and elegant bride that day. She had never looked so wonderful as I saw her that day. And the whole thing about the shy, demure bride waiting to get married was thrown out of the window. When I went to visit her in the room, she came skipping to the door, and hugged me. She made one of her usual dry jokes, and we both started giggling. Yep, this was one very normal bride. Definitely not the ones you see on the K-serials, spouting fountains of tears during their Vidaai.

My Jiju is- there's no other word for it...awesome. I had never met him before, only seen pictures of him, yet at the wedding, he completely blew me away. He was warm, smart and funny, just perfect for my Didi. And they had such great chemistry together, laughing, smiling, looking great as the cute young couple in love.

And for the first time in my life, I had seen a proper wedding. And it was beautiful.

Talking about weddings always makes me think of love. There are so many kinds of it. You have old love, when you see a sweet old man still smiling at his wife of many years. That's the most beautiful kind of love, because it has sustained many years of hardships and happiness. Then you have the love-hate relationship, where people fight a lot, but ultimately can't do without each other (and the gang up on their children together :P- yep, you guessed who I'm referring to).

And you also have that intense, wild kind of love where one cannot live without the other. You know, the one typically shown in movies where the guy battles the girl's father till he gets the girl. And then you have what I call, friendship love, where the couple is great friends, they understand each other, they get along great and do fun things together (and no, it doesn't mean what you all are thinking :D).

And how can I forget crushes? The weirdest part is, you get crushes when you're not old enough to know that the word 'crush' even exists. And they're quite silly, often involving hot British Royals or hot Physics Teachers or just a fat guy six years your senior who joins the US Military.

Oh god, this is one disjointed post. :) Anywho, getting back to my sad descriptions of love, as I spent a lot of time at home, alone and bored, I kept contemplating on these things. I think I even left a comment on a friend's blog saying one of my New Year Resolutions is to fall in love. Hah, if falling in love were that easy. I kind of sound desperate, but there are times I wish I had fallen in love. Hard. Maybe I'd have gotten hurt, maybe it could have gone great, but instead of a silly crush, I'd have atleast something or someone concrete, to hold on to.

Okay, maybe it's getting too mushy. This is a girl's blog after all. Next time, I promise a sensible post. No more rants about the elusive 'lou'.

This post is dedicated to Shweta Di and Ashu Jiju, with my best wishes. I love you guys!

The First One

After a lot of "Why should I?", "Blogging is just a fad", "Screw it, I'm sleeping" and "I already have one", I decided to start writing a new blog. I've had the account for months, but due to my inherent procrastination, I kept postponing the inevitable. Oh fine, I succumbed! :-)

And why now? Well, I've noticed most people get antsy before their exams and waste their time. I could just say I got inspired, but this is the truth.

This is no means my first blog post. My first blog post read something like this "Hi! I'm from Hyderabad in India, it's September and it's raining. The weather is great." Talk about talking about the weather. Hopefully this one will sound more intelligent than that.

I'm currently holed up in my very messy room. Usually, I pride myself on being very organized, but I've not swept the room in a week or so, and the grit under my feet rankles. My brown pearlpet bottle sits beside me, nearly empty. And it glows in a strange manner, owing to the tubelight. Now I wish I could go into great detail about the exact phenomena or reflection, refraction and transmission, but I seem to have left that knowledge back in Physics-II, last semester.

What else lies in my room? The yellow Maths books and the black electrical sciences book jostle for space precariously above the newspapers kept atop my suitcase. I just hope they don't fall on the speakers kept next to the suitcase, which may in turn upset the box of Tang with the flimsy lid. Oh, and there are the remnants of a dozen bananas beside that. They must have been there for a few days at least. And wait, maybe that's my Mechanics of Solids notebook they're lying on. Didn't I just call my room messy? I believe I did. :D

Now for the name of the blog. I wanted orange-memories, but some other c*** had already taken the name. Now I have just orange-memory. I planned to name it after myself, but that was too self-indulgent and pompous, and I didn't want my parents to find out (my dear mother has a habit of attempting to nose around my Facebook and Orkut accounts). Ah, parents what life would be without them! But then there would be no one to wash my clothes after the dreary weeks of painful exams. ;-)

Well, it's nearly 12, and a cake awaits! Haha, it's actually a friend's birthday, and I shall be going to wish her. I shall be back soon, with more inane stories about my room, my life and Manu (the current dog in my life-don't ask why), and yes, maybe a little bit about the world too.

Ciao, and enjoy your day...oops, er night!