Rantings

I like to think of myself as someone who is not influenced by others. No, I did not say I was, merely stated that I like to THINK of myself as it.

It would be wrong to propose that things around us don't change us unless we want them to. Like flowing water caving a canyon, it is a slow influence. Inevitable.
Truth is, it affects me. And a little too much I think. And  maybe its not even that slow.

So much for the things outside us, for within the problem is more difficult.
Life seems like a bitter jest. Forgive the bitterness and remember the jest. That should work.

***

***

Impulses. Don't ask me why I started thinking about it.

Our impulses are what drive us, like wind in our sails.
But if let to go wild, it will drag us after it. Haven't we all seen men after men fall victim to greed and play?
While impulses and instincts have saved the lives of many, there is one basic flaw.
Human impulses have remained almost changeless while we have transformed the world around us, they are like our responses from yesterday, not today.
Someday, our minds will catch up with the technology it has created.
Someday our purposes will match our powers.

Impulse, I believe leads to character. Partially at least.
Between knowledge and desire, the very reason to reason, we build a character.
We build a fashioned self, fashioned from impulse, reason, knowledge and imagination.

I wonder what they mean by individuals fail but life succeeds.

It makes me want to look at life like an evil player, I don't want to. I don't want that. 

I don't want a day of dark, depressing thoughts. I don't want to be anywhere near dearkness. Metaphorically, of course. Otherwise, taking that literally, I think I quite like the dark. To walk around in the night, and look up to the sky, I like that very much. 

Okay, its the lack of sleep talking now.
4:32 am, I should leave. 

Sister, sister

I really don't want to write about it. I just had to get it out of my system.

There are feelings I don't understand, attitudes I can't figure out. 

It's not  the actions, its not the words. It's the absence that kills me. Like nothing happened, like nothing ever did. 

Sister, sister

Don't leave me alone

Sister, sister

Don't forget me

Or maybe its the paranoia.

It's okay, I'll bottle it all up. 

Nothing new.

Blah

I hate it when you can't put your thoughts down on paper.
I started with the intention of blogging about my awesome, adventurous day at the farm with my cousin, but- nothing.

I swear when I was sitting on the little bridge over the stream, and when I was in the car on my way back I had what could have been a fun post. The sentences came easy, emotions flowed.
Now I sit here, laptop on my lap, and I can't remember a WORD. =.=

I know what it was, I know what it felt like, but words don't seem to like me today. Because what I have is probably worse than a third grade essay.

So, blah.

Oh, what a world

 The only thing harder than waking up is staying asleep in a nightmare.                               

                    

So I woke up this morning and I just didn't feel quite right. I felt like I was drowning in a pool of muddled emotions. Nothing really HAPPENED, just one of those days that you get caught up in your own depressing thoughts and nothing seems to set it right. One of those days where everything seems to be going downhill,   when everything you don't want to think about just crashes in. Really, I just wanted to enjoy and have a nice day with my cousin, but somehow my life seemed to be in the way. 

Its days like these when I feel that its not worth it, nothing is. That life is completely pointless. I mean, after all that you are put through, after all the pain, heartache and agony, what do you get? Death. Even if we suppose that there is life after death, we have no idea what it is going to be like. Will there be less pain? Is is going to be easier to love? Will anything, anything at all make any sense? Will I feel like there is more meaning to living, more meaning to being me? But these questions of mine have no answers, not in this life, and not in (if there is one) the next.  

So all day I've been thinking of a million things;

Is there really any meaning to all of this? 

Why do bad things happen to good people? 

Who am I?

Is there anything called the absolute truth? 

Infinity, eternity- do they exist? 

Why was I born? 

Why do we exist?

Would I really want the change the way the world is?

When will what we are living on the outside meet what we are on the inside? 

.

.

.

 There are trillion books out there telling us how it is all based on just us, on how nothing matters except our attitude. The world is filled with people telling us how to be happy, they are preaching about how easy it is to live an ideal life. And that, we all know, is a big fat lie. 

The world is full of people, struggling to comprehend the meaning of happiness and its many facades, people who appear successful but are aching on the inside. People with whopping bank accounts and great looks who have no idea who their real friends are. Couples who look perfect on the outside but have marriages that only end in pain and heartbreak. People who are struggling to get on with life, people who are feeling empty and lost. 

But its life, shit happens, you can't walk away from it. It is not something you can put aside and go on to something else that feels better. When life sucks, its serious. You can't just sit there and do nothing about it, no one is going to come and fix it for you. Get up, and do something different. Because times like these can only enhance what you already have.

And when you do decide to move your lazy ass and do something about it, you can't just get out there and change everything you built through the years. Its easy to get wrapped up in the details. But how does everything add up to what we call life? 

Its is the most profound question humanity has ever come up with. And when asked, you don't exactly get the cleverest of answers. In fact, I think there is resistance to answer. 

And somehow even if you gave me a whole month to answer that, I'd never come up with an answer I would be satisfied with. Because honestly, even with all the layers of illusions peeled off, what the hell is it all about?

I am okay with going over my daily tasks and trying to think of the little things, but when it comes to the big picture, I go blank. 

And I think its mostly because we have grown so used to defining ourselves in terms of something or someone else, that its starts feeling like extensions of our self. To us, if any of these are subjected to any change, our world is unstable. We seem to treat people around us as objects that make us happy (or more often, don't), possessions that we couldn't define ourselves without.

Maybe we should try looking at it a different way. Maybe if we addressed the question with our own actions, we would see the things we do that make life worth living. You'll know that you can enjoy the journey, and laugh along the way. And when you make a little detour for something or someone, and however much you try its just not right without it, You know you found what makes life worth it. 

"it’s not supposed to be perfect, and no one is supposed to understand it. it’s meant to be chaotic, and it’s meant to make you cringe. if you haven’t cried in a while, or felt like shit in even longer, then you’re most likely doing something wrong. this isn’t there for constant perfection, or some cliché happy ending. it’s here to be real, and to keep your heart beating, and to keep you wanting more. there is supposed to be a bright light of hope in your heart, and a black hole of the unknown in your mind. none of this makes sense, but all of it is worth it."

For life must be lived inside out.

Balloons

Time has a way of breaking up our memory into fragments of miniscule pieces.

Trying to capture and preserve them becomes exceedingly difficult. But sometimes something comes along your way and the little fragments play in your mind again, like an old forgotten video tape. 

This morning as we sat for breakfast with one of our favorite hindi songs playing in the background, we talked of how I was such a difficult kid, of how I hated to be with anyone except my mother, and how it was so difficult to get me to do almost anything, even eat. These talks aren't very rare at home. Mom loves to tell them over and over, and I love listening to them. Its a different kind of happiness- little chunks of memory playing again. 


This time it was of our days at Infantry road at Bangalore. I was in upper kindergarten, atleast I was supposed to be because I went to school, but not literally. How? I was studying at Little Rock Indian School, Brahmavar and I lived around 300 kilometers away, in Bangalore. I didn't have to skip a year or anything, they would let me give the final exam and if I passed, I could enter first grade, with the rest of my friends :D 


So I had a one-year long fun-filled holiday.
Dad would leave for work before I could wake up, so when I did it would just be mom and me. I'd go straight to the TV, flip to Cartoon Network and sit there laughing away for most of the morning. It was the only way I'd have any breakfast- when mom pushed morsels of food into my mouth whenever I laughed at Tom running away into the horizon. Around two hours later there would be a roar, one that the whole of the neighborhood could hear. To me, it brought excitement. My (cousin) brother's friend would come on his bullet ( which was one of a kind, the noise it made - like a jet and bullock cart combined :P ). He came everyday, how he had the free time for it, I don't know. But he came every morning, and every morning he asked me the same question- " Still watching cartoons, Janet? " only to get the same excited nod from me. "You'll become one soon." I liked that idea.


I don't remember when he left, but soon an uncle would come. He was a family friend of ours, and with him came the happiest things of the world- Balloons. 
And loads of them too. 
Together with mom, they'd blow them all up and put them in my room till it was full. Big, bright, small, polka-dotted, patched and colorful- they were all there. And I'd just jump right into them. It was the best feeling in the world.  
I was a kid of four and I had a room full of happiness that I could just splash into. EVERYday. It could't have been better. 


But it wasn't all games for me. Late in the afternoon mom and me would sit down with walls of color around us. With a slate, a few colorful chalks and an unbelievably happy-looking abacus she'd teach me everything my teachers 300 kms away did and more. 


Some days, a boy who lived nearby would come to play with me. I remember one day in particular. We were playing doll-house, as I'd suggested. But he might have been in one of those evil 'lets-destroy-everything' moods guys seem to get into because soon he transformed my happy story into one with wars and guns, I didn't like it but I played along. Before I knew it, the head of my favorite Barbie was thrown away (literally) in a 'bomb blast'. I stared at my headless Barbie, looked at him with disgust and burst into tears. 
I don't think I've ever really forgiven him for that. 


Anyway, before I knew it it was evening. Time for dad to come home! 
Every evening, once he was back he would take me out for a drive, and on our way back we'd stop at a little shop and he'd buy me a packet of cheese balls. Peppy
To this day, I've never had cheese balls that tasted better than them, even if I buy the same pack. 
As I grew older I realized it wasn't the cheese balls, it could have been anything. It must be the innocence and the love. I've stopped buying them, I now just look at them and smile.


The day had ended and I was soon tucked to sleep. 
Cartoons, chocolates, balloons and cheese balls. I was the most content kid in the world.

A lot has changed over time. 

I don't need balloons and cheese balls to keep me happy anymore.

I look around myself and I know that my family and friends now take their place.

But these memories will keep me going.

I will keep them, because it is a happy place that I can escape into. 

Section K, as I knew it

"You know you're in college when you think it’s Friday on Tuesday and you didn’t know it was April yet."

Its crazy how time flies. I remember the anxiety of getting into a good college, exactly an year ago. This time last year, I was almost certain I wouldn't be where I am today- home. After an overnight decision to continue right here, I stepped into the Manipal everybody knows, India's university town. 

And my, what a year it was! 

College to some, is a place to absorb knowledge that will prepare them and help them in the journey of life. To others, it is key to freedom, a place where they are finally free of all supervision and its time for fun. There are those who combine both. Those who excel, and those who fail. But what it is to everyone is that it is unforgettable. 

I am going to miss everything everyone going from the first year to the second will. And the past two sems: the first year of a new life, has given me enough memories to keep me going. The more I think about it, the more fascinating it seems. The more I look into  it, the more overwhelming it is.


This post is dedicated to the one thing I will miss the most. Being in Section K.

First days usually remind me that first impressions are NOT the best, or the last. 

I walked into class the first day and made my way to the the second desk, a desk of complete strangers. I sat down next to a girl in a red t-shirt who immediately turned around to say hi. Seems sweet enough. Next to her was a girl, who was writing something and seemed to be trying to engage the other girl in a very worked up conversation. One of them stress-ers. The rest of the students filed in and I noticed one guy in particular, anybody would. Extra baggy jeans- torn, messy hair, earphones that seemed to be a part of him, and the most significant trait- his long (braided) beard. I wasn't sure what to think. Interesting. 

                  A week or two into the sem and I was waiting outside the food court for a classmate, with no credit in my phone to check if he even knew I was there. That's when I saw the new Canadian guy walk around looking truly like he stepped out of an alien ship. Being very.. lets say 'me', I walked up to him, and asked him for his phone. Then followed the usual introductory conversation. I still think he was both amused by me, and scared of me. Poor guy, he looks freaked. Now I'm in the food court, still waiting when another classmate comes in and turns out he's waiting for the same person. So we sit, he gets me coffee and we talk. That's how we started talking, but his first impression was made in class. Gonna be the typical college guy. Asks too many questions.

                 Two other guys I'd seen around but hadn't spoken much to found their way into my most cherished memories of this year. Not much of first impressions there. One seemed to be the innocent kind and the other seemed very focused. The no-nonsense kind. 

These are the people I've had the maximum amount of fun with. These are the people who  helped make those memories that will now flood my mind every time I think of my first year. 

Seems sweet enough: Soujata Borbaruah a.k.a Souji, Bugerah, Juicy, Chopstick and a lot more. We had new names almost every other day.
She is sweet alright, so I wasn't wrong there. But she is also so much more! Quite easily, she knows me the best in college.
All those laughter attacks, and mad mad gossip. 

One of them stress-ers: Prerna Sinha a.k.a hum and ***** (I'm sure she'd slaughter me alive if I actually said that). 
Stress-ers? OH YES. She's someone you don't wanna run into a day before the exam. but believe me, this girl can surprise you. Totally adorable! Completely unpredictable. Talkative, and loud. PERFECT partner at EG and the labs. 
8th block fun? Maaan. 

Interesting: Utsav Pandya a.k.a Chursey because he looks like he's doped all the time.
Crazy guy, quite out of the world. 
Never fails to interest me with his genuine disinterest in everything about the world. Quite some memories, specially 13th block at 3 in the night. Wasn't too pleasant then, but laughable now!

Poor guy, he looks freaked: Akshat Kumar Dixit a.k.a The Canadian. Like a friend pointed out to me this evening- Of a different specie. I'll need a whole other post to tell you why.
Amazing friend, and some seriously epic times. 

Gonna be the typical college guy. Asks too many questions: Pulkit Arora a.k.a bobo. Thats short for one bottle of beer, backwards. Quite appropriate =P

Your typical college guy? Not even close, couldn't be more untypical, I'd say. Asks too many questions? Yes.

Loves to argue, and is v-e-r-y unpredictable. 
Knows me quite well, I think. A good friend? I think so.

innocent kind: Pranav Saboo a.k.a Guru, The math brain. The silent but awesomely fun kind- I don't know how he does it. 
He's the most chilled out person ever. Actually, I'm not sure he's silent, he SEEMS to be. 
Sem two saw a huge change in the Pranav we previously knew. This one's much cooler, and awesome! =D

Also my 'boyfriend', supposedly. 

very focused. The no-nonsense kind: Sajal Jain a.k.a Noddy! He turned out to be SO MUCH more fun that I thought him to be! 
Calls me moti. Amazing to be around, and simply adorable! 
The crazy inside jokes, and all the 'fighting'- Haha! Also, he got me into his room in the boys hostel. [ Hello there, brother! ;) ] -> Brilliant! 

Laughter attacks with soujata

Akshat

Utsav 

Me- Prerna-Soujata

Pranav-Sajal-Pulkit

I've had some of the craziest- most awesome times of my life with these three. I don't know how, and I don't know when, but I'm glad. 

Drifting apart? Not an option. 

Although the above mentioned people make up most of my memories, there are so many other people, so many other things that have made this year and section K what it was. 


And right now, since everyone's back home for the summer break, Manipal seems depopulated. And I miss them.


First year has been quite an eventful ride.

I have found friends I will keep, forever.

Fingers Crossed

So much is happening while so much is not.
There are a million things running through my mind.

One thing in particular: RESULTS


I am scared. And its crazy.

S

C

A

R

E

D and F.R.E.A.K.E.D.

I think you get the point. 

So we have to go to this site and check our results, sometime. 

And yes, its just an end sem, 

Yes, I AM freaked about it,

No, I wasn't scared of the exams this much, not until it was 30 minutes before the paper anyway,

Yes, I did not study,

And no, I don't have an excuse. 

Fingers crossed. Them toes too ... =X

Aal izz well?  I REALLY hope so. 

The many theories

Just something I ran into.

The many theories: The death of the dinosaurs

My favorite one:

Its in the little things

Little things make me happy.

There is an unlimited supply of little things in the world. All you have to do is look for them, and its like magic. 

[ Yes, I like making lists. ] 

• Your favorite song playing on the radio.
• The comforting smell of an old sweatshirt.
• Waking up on your birthday.
• The warmth of newly printed paper.
• Ticking things off your little to-do list.
• The rare chance of being ahead of your schedule.
• The delicate old page of your favorite book.
• Finding out something was cheaper that you thought it was. Even if people told you so. 
• Finding that little lost puppy hidden under the sofa.
• Opening that pack of chips no one else could.
• Finding a hidden rupee in your wallet and feeling like you've won the lottery.
• Blowing bubbles into a friends face.
• That feeling of triumph after you clean up your room. 
• Midnight snacks.
• Falling asleep on the couch and waking up with a blanket on you.
• When someone saves you a seat, even if it meant having to fight for it. 
• Looking into a baby store and wondering if someone could really be tiny enough to fit into that. Surprise. Fascination. Each time.
• When someone texts back instantly.
• Finding out that somebody likes you. 
• When your food finally arrives.
• Listening to your mom talk about you when you were little.
• The smell of popcorn.
• The smell of barbecue.
• Finally figuring out the song that was stuck in your head. 
• When you continue talking through a yawn, and someone actually understands you.
• When getting a phone call from someone special makes you feel like your the most lovable person alive.
• When someone is genuinely concerned.
• Knowing a cockroach can fly and still being surprised when you see one; Although, I'm pretty sure that doesn't make me happy. 
• Little insignificant acts to someone that changes your mood for the entire day.
• When riding your old bike seems like a ride to the next planet.
• Writing on the first page of a notebook. Same excitement, every single time.

It needn't be all that different either. A wave when I pass, a smile when you see me. Just something as simple as that. 

Like digging in a treasure chest for a tiny trinket, I find myself overlooking the big things. Almost like they lost their value if there was no trinket. 

Its the little things that make us or break us.

Look out for these little packets of smiles, and eat them up. 

:: This is proof that I have too much time to think. And read. And think a little more. 

I love the rain

I love the rain. 

I love it when those big dark clouds cover the sky, and fail to make it gloomy.

I love watching the rain make patterns on the ground.

I love the smell of the fresh wet earth.

I love that image of diamonds dropping down to earth that used to fascinate me when I was little.

I love how every rain reminds me of my childhood at the farm, of all the dragonflies and earthworms.

I love when it rains real hard and we have to run into the closest shelter.

I love how sometimes you can just stand there and let the water soak through.

I love sticking my palm out of the window and feeling that cold caress of raindrops as it falls on my skin.

I love it when it thunders real hard.

I love how we used to cuddle under one blanket every time lightning struck.

I love falling asleep to the sounds of the raindrops crashing.

I love walking in the rain with friends, all squeezed under one umbrella.

I love walking with an umbrella, and getting wet anyway.

I love walking through the puddles.

I love the new streams born.

I love the green the rain brings.

I love those sunbeams through the rain.

I love those rainbows, and the happiness it brings.

I love the sound of driving through the water.

I love the little waterfalls that flow right around the corner.

I love how the rain makes me want to curl up and get a good read.

I love that I can pull out my hoodies.

I love just about everything about this season.

Every drop, every crash, every flash. 

I love the rain.

I love love love the rain.

To the start

Hello, 

While boredom brought me here, I really do intend on making a good job out of this. If I could just stop facebooking and falling prey to the very pointless 'home-profile-refresh' cycle, I think I'd really have something to contribute here. 

Anyway, I wish I'd opened with a post a little more uplifting or inspirational but that may have created the wrong impression. You want challenging? Wrong place. If you don't mind random ramblings of an 18 year old and and once in a while, something that may linger, stick around buddy. 

Hopefully...