You are just an ordinary man in a cape!

Two down, three to go. Yes, papers.
So since Nadal won and Schiavone lost, my exams have .. kinda got ignored. Exam toh hote rehte hain, right? Actually, French Opens bhi hote rehte hain, but let me not see you thinking that. Not that I can 'see' you thinking that, or even see you, for that matter, but whaaa I'm babbling.

So I saw this survey on the net about which superhero people want to be. So I got thinking. I think I want to be Batman. Reasons?

1. He's the only superhero I like; I detest Spiderman, Superman, whatever other funky names there might be.
2. Christian Bale.
3. More substantially, these other losers got these powers and all free mein, luck shine ho gaya. But Christian Bale Batman actually created well, himself. He developed his skills, acquired his machines, he's got the money, you bet, but he's played an active role in being who he is, as opposed to be standing in an entomological museum at the opportune time a spider is going to escape. So I like him.

If I'm something great, I'd like it to be because of me, you know, not because of random shit. Plus, Bale, as opposed to dumb little Brandon Routh and the loser Toby Maguire. But it's going to be Andrew Garfield in the next I heard, that changes things now, doesn't it? ;)

Anyhow, back to studies. Criminal paper tomorrow.

Eggjam aa rahe hai - Bhaago!!

Hey y'all,

It's not a happy day. Tomorrow begin the much-awaited end semester exams. Yayyy? - No. It's Contract Law tomorrow, the syllabus is huge, something we're not used to for this particular subject. Add to that, abhi yours truly ne kuchh padha nahi hai.

I've been reading magazines on the net. You'll be proud to know they were the Frontline and Vir Sanghvi's blog kind. As opposed to whatever you had in mind. :P I have two pdf's and two powerpoints open here, begging for some attention, but draft.blogger.com is like Nadal in front of Karlovic. Oh, did I mention Nadal is 6 time French Open winner??!! I'm treating it like my personal victory, but come on, after 6 years of supporting him ardently, against all opposition (chuckles), I deserve some credit, don'tyathink? Anyway, so he retains the number one spot, which would otherwise have gone to Djokovic . So, all's well with the world. His world. Mine, not so much.

I don't want to study! But then, like my (apparently good-looking) Crim law professor said, when you took up law, you said goodbye to weekends and holidays. He didn't mention awesome food, time to enjoy awesome food, reading, doing NoTh!nG, but yeah, you get the point.

Anyway, before my wingmates resort to physical methods of getting me to study {you're right in assuming verbal (soft < loud < threatening) have already happened} {observe the use of curly brackets} {jeez, whoever named them That, they're so cool} {stop now, Nidhi, stop} So yeah, I should go study now.

Give me joy in my heart, keep me loving, loving, loving

So tomorrow I have my political science presentation.
So tomorrow I have to get my term paper printed.

Remember we used to sing/recite these really corny songs when we were in junior school? I just remembered one that ended with 'Thank you God for everything'. I still remember how we, as little children, with cute voices used to say those lines in the same tune, in the most bored, yet eager to please tone, the same things every day in assembly. I hardly had assemblies in middle and senior school. But I miss singing the national song and 'We shall overcome, someday' - the angrezi version of Hum honge kamyaab. Oh, and marching class, which we all used to crib so much about. It feels so weird to think of those things now; they seem aeons away, like a different life. Perhaps it was a different life.

When people say things like I miss being a kid, and I want to be like that again; naive and trusting etc., I can't quite agree with them. I mean, you're smarter now, and you're allowed to do more things (lol), then why would one complain? We lose our sense of carelessness, they say. Accepted. But about the rest, it's just that we become more insecure of ourselves. That is the only change that really makes us different from how we were when we were kids. From insecurity come jealousy, envy, competitiveness, cautiousness (so you don't lose your position of superiority) and other 'adult' issues. We probably think we have to prove ourselves and our worth to others, but I fear that it's mostly ourselves we want to convince.

Just believe more in yourself, and don't always quantify everything, and you'll be cool.

Try karo.

P.S. Nadal beat Murray, yayy!

Oh, we'll find comfort

The waves flirted with the sand
The snails lost out
They rolled over rocks and turned foamy white
But retreated again,
And the crabs waited.

The clouds play hide and seek with the sun,
You can hear them saying ‘I spy’
While the sun feels cheated.
That moment of no heat is so sweet,
But the sun doesn’t back down; it shines. Again.

Two birds fly behind each other,
Looks like they want to pluck each other’s feathers,
But they circle around in merry paths,
Circle the big tree,
That just watches the fun.

A lover is like that sand, that crab, that sun, that tree,
Forever waiting, wanting the patience to wait,
Not knowing what to wish for
The sweetness of bitter longing,
Or the bitterness of requited love.

'I will meet you yet again'

Today my mind decided on doing no work. Don't ask me, ask it.

Somehow I always get very interested in people who retain so much individuality, it shocks you how they survived, and even lived (differentiating on the basis of spirit, I guess) in the same world you're so fed up with. Or not. Point being, that they just stick to what they think yaar; it's pretty impressive. Like Amrita Pritam: woman lived in Pakistan and India, independence time, left the dude who was giving her a hard time, had two love affairs, wrote two autobiographies, ultimately lived in with a guy younger than her for nearly 40 years. Is that impressive or what?

I wonder if I have the same conviction in myself, at least a similar strength to just do what I want, what I feel like - right or wrong. I wish I do. I mean, obviously, na. But then comes in that whole issue of collectivism versus individualism. If I have this conversation with my parents or anyone from their generation, they're going to have a very typical Oriental response of society before yourself. Crappy hai. Bahut.

Anyway, now I've got to work on not listening to Carnival to Rust on repeat. So bye.


It's all a game, avoiding failure, when true colors will bleed
All in the name of misbehavior and the things we don't need
I lust for after no disaster can touch, touch us anymore
And more than ever, I hope to never fall, where enough is not the same it was before.

P.S. The title of this post is the title of a poem by Pritam. Translated, of course. Here it is.

Uh .. Again?

It's that time again, when final exams are near and studying seems impossible. One would think we'd get bored of leaving everything till the last minute, and prepare early just ONCE, see what it feels like, you know, but our obstinacy knows no bounds.

I've said this before, and I'm saying it again; I can't believe I've spent a whole year in college: this college, this hostel, with these people, in this place. I'm soon going to be a grown-up senior, in second year, probably seem intimidating to my juniors, and people still in school, and yet I have no sense of how so much time went by. How, and where.

Life's been kinda decent. Political science ka project finally khatam hua. Exams from 6th. Party on 10th. *wink*

Nothing great, but nothing bad either.

The cooler's blowing in my face, and I can feel my heart-shaped pillow under my elbow. It's hot outside, and tense in. It's two o'clock; I should be studying. I've just realised, through talking to others, that I don't care about most stuff. It's like this perfect detachment, or indifference, whichever you like, to most things. Food, marks, social circle, clothes, all these things that people spend so much energy over. I don't quite know if that is a good thing or bad. What I do know is that it's always been like that; I've always been like that. I now get what my dad meant when he said I wasn't ambitious; it's like I don't have that drive that makes people do stuff, work hard, achieve, envy, even. It's weird.

Oh also, I read The Wandering Falcon, by Jamil Ahmad. It's set in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's mainly about the shift of civilisation from nomadic cultures to settled townships. It is a series of stories, many stories, many people, and yet there seems to be this continuity, this thread that links everything in your mind, and you can't quite identify it. It's probably not as great as Thousand Splendid Suns, but the story has this easy flow to it; it's not heavy and laced with emotion. The emotion is laced under every simple line, an emotion that stays with you, even though you don't quite realise you're that involved in the story. It's beautiful.

Anyway, back to studies now. Turrah!

“All good things must come to an end, but all bad things can continue forever.”

About a week back, it suddenly struck me that all the poetry I write is always the grave and sad kind, like ALL of it, and the thought didn't really make me happy. I wondered if I was so sad inside that all I wrote was morose and contemplative. Then I tried to write something happy, and it was kinda positive initially, but became serious towards the end. It felt somehow that sadness is deeper than happiness; all the poems that I love are the sad kinds too. And then I was telling a friend about the theory that cold and darkness are not really entities, as they refer to conditions where their more substantial opposites are absent; heat and light respectively. [Cold is not really something that exists, it's just a name for the time when there's less heat.]

Then the idea struck me that probably sadness is the real thing and happiness is just a condition where there's less sadness. Because, sometimes on the face of it, you might be feeling happy, or feel what you think is happiness, but as soon as you go deeper, think about some stuff, think about your aging grandparents, or the rising unemployment levels, or even the poor salaries of policemen, there's only sadness. So happiness is this shallow, on-the-surface concept, which comes and goes, and when you do remove its thin layer, you'll find sadness; and it's sadness that doesn't go, it stays, always, under every feeling. Sounds about right, no?