The weekend is almost here. And yes, for a change, something called a weekend does exist now and even though we usually have to work on saturdays, its more casual and relaxed, not like weekday pressure. I haven't had a good week but I'm hoping it will end well. Last weekend too was great, just like it should be. Saturday was off because of an institute power shutdown, thank god. Eating home-cooked bengali food, playing with adorable kids, sleeping and watching sunset at the sea. How much more could you want?

Walking along Colaba causeway, buying really pretty things(most of which turned out to be purple, predictably) for really cheap at street shops and walking into a random bakery we happen to cross and eating huge chunks of red velvet cake with the most buttery icing is an unbelievable pick-me-up.

If I'd read Feynman earlier, I'm pretty sure I would have become a physicist. Well, atleast tried to become a physicist. Sometimes I think that's what I should have done. It's just that I didn't find physics all that exciting in school. I probably just didn't look at it right. I think in the end, all scientists look for origins. Where we came from and where things came from and how things came to be the way they are is the ultimate question. And physics is at the root of it all.

Another 'growing up' post.

There are too many 'growing up' posts in this blog already. But the thing is, I don't think you can ever really grow up completely. You 'grow up' in different ways at different times.

You accept that the world isn't perfect.

That no one is perfect. Nothing is perfect. 

What is perfect is a mishmash of many separate things that don't come together.

People come and go. Some stay a little longer. Some are people you meet along your own journey - with each of your lives going different ways but crossing for an instant. But some become more than that - they become part of your journey, part of your life. They are friends. You need them. But you also need the other kind, for diversity. For moments. And being able to separate them is important too and its something that comes in one of the later phases of 'growing up'.

Streaming thoughts

Always keep chocolate handy for dementor attacks.

Rains will be here soon. Sometimes when it rained heavily and the city got flooded, everyone would stay at home and not go to school/college/office. I would curl up in bed with coffee and hot chocolate and wrap myself up in blankets and read. Or just sleep blissfully in the dark room with the soothing sound of rain pattering against the window. Or sit at my table by the window and watch the trees getting washed, greener and greener.
Rainy days meant being lazy, eating khichuri, aloo bhaja and omlettes for lunch. The ultimate comfort I wish I could sink into.
Enjoying a day off with family. I miss home.

But I guess at some time or the other, we have to get used to it. You need to find a way.

The Sunday mood.

I want to do too many things. I want to eat chocolate and cheesecake. Watch a ton of movies. Read something nice. Sleep. Lie on the grass all night and watch the sky. Smell lemons. Paint something with watercolours, a lot of light green and yellow. Write. Watch sunset, though I have the fortune of doing that every day. Meet old friends. Take photos. Travel, go away somewhere. Where its very green. 

Like a dream

The faint sound of temple bells, somewhere

Shadowy corners tucked away in the trees.

The pale sea reflecting the sky of a thousand colours,

still as glass except for the low murmur of ripples on the rocks.

The vast sea whispering her secrets.

Ship lights line the horizon

The sky darkens as stars rise

While the city on the other side glitters.

The calm wind

and silence. Solitude.

Like a dream.

Some days are just bad. True, chocolate helps. Specially if its crunchy.
Its nice to play trippy trance-like music in the evening or late at night when the lab is empty.
Porcupine tree, all time favourite.

If you fall asleep with me
You can dream and drowse
The miuntes turn to hours

We could climb a tree or two
And watch the sun go down
Upon our sleepy town

Reminds me childhood and the innocence. When we really did climb trees. Ran around outside, broke numerous windows playing cricket or football. When all we had to worry about was how to retrieve the ball that fell into the neighbour's terrace.

We've come a long way, yeah.

Rise

Fires left burning. Lapping up everything.

Too many things, just gone.
I am unforgivable.

Charred shadows follow, haunting me wherever I go.

Catching me when I try to run.

Destroying, when I try to build again.

Drowning me in ashes when I try to bury them.

Again, and again.

I may be a darker shade of grey
but I never wanted to be this.
What I have been.
The destroyer.

How long will these ghosts possess me,
my thoughts, my life
Maybe its time to exorcise.
To rise.

To make my way out of the ashes I created.
Dust them off.
Unchain the shadows tied to me
 And let myself  live again.

The life.

We do science because we want to find things out. We want to know what, why and how. We demystify.

Life is like science. We demystify too. We want to know.
 Except sometimes it takes courage to know.
Sometimes you want the mystery to stay unsolved, just for the excitement of there being a mystery. 

Life is like an experiment. Sometimes you need to carefully think about what you want and design your actions that way. Or sometimes you just do it for the heck of it, to see what happens. Without thinking about what the end could be. 

But either way its all a mess. We have our good days and our bad days.
Times we think and think and can't find an answer.
Where is this going, what am I doing, what do I want, and what will I find at the end of it all?

Rush

Doing something new. Being out there again after ages of hibernating. Opening up to let yourself free.

That feeling in your stomach, of insane fear mingled with excitement. Feeling your heart pumping away while you try to breathe. Blood throbbing through every vein. Feeling crazier and dizzier. Forcing yourself to not topple over as your feet try to take the next step, one closer, as your head gets fuzzier and you think you're going to black out.

Being alive, not just existing. Listening to the waves crashing against the rocks you're sitting on. Stars scattered over the sky. The cold night wind that makes you shiver. Rediscovering what you love.
And the rush.

One of those days.

There are some days I'm in such a bad mood, I don't want to talk to anyone or do anything. After days of experiments screwing up repeatedly for some reason or the other and too much to do. All I feel like doing is crawling up in some dark corner listening to Opeth or some of the death metal I used to listen to years ago and just drowning in it because I don't want to get back to the world. And downloading strange wallpapers, the sort of stuff on Porcupine Tree album covers. I find them beautiful and unsettling at the same time and they fit well with my mood.

This one is my current favourite.

My lab has just been built so there's a lot of floor space and under the work tables is a pretty nice place to sit. You can even sleep there. Which I do sometimes. Dark and cosy and people won't disturb you and mostly they cant see you when they come in through the door. Suits me just fine. It's just for a few more days though. After a couple of days I won't be able to do this so I'll just have to walk around looking grumpy.

Settling in.

Its actually ironical how being yourself is the hardest thing to do sometimes. 

I've been in Mumbai a little more than a month and I've pretty much settled in and gotten used to the place. I turned 21, had celebrations stretched out over a week but I still feel like a teenager. 21 is hard to believe. This place is beautiful and most of the time we are extremely busy and right now I have been super busy. I'm still excited about learning new things and I hope things stay that way no matter how difficult it gets. 

I want a camera, I feel almost handicapped without one. So much to click. 

New Starts.

So I am in Mumbai. Still a few days before starting off at TIFR. Apprehensive about not knowing any biology but very excited about learning what I love and finally working.

Right now I am back in this Porcupine Tree obsession phase, and I am totally tripping on the stuff. If this sin't the most beautiful music I've ever listened to I don't know what is. Its repetitive and dark and trippy but strangely energizing. It makes you escape reality, you go into this altered state.
Dark tunnels and alternate universes. Never ending dark streets with dim orange streetlights. Ruins of ancient houses, with crumbling walls, empty except for an old piano. A walk along high cliffs at night, overlooking the sea. Music has this strange ability to construct scenes in your head, and you visualize yourself as if it were a music video in which you're there. Some are almost happy. Perfect if you want to write poetry or something. I would but I'm lazy.

For now I will continue to sink into music. Its something I haven't actually done in a while.

And this is a photo I took from the train on the way here.

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Schoolday memories.

Sometimes I miss school. I miss those uniforms we had in high school. The pleated blue skirts designed to make you look thin(someone pointed that out and I noticed she was right). The blue and white striped shirts with the pocket and the emblem. The badge we wore on our collars. Even those black shoes.
Atleast they were comfortable in summer. In winter we had those nice dark blue, not exactly navy blue cardigans. And our legs would freeze.

We got soaked in the rain a few times. One day it rained so heavily in the morning, the front entrance was blocked and we entered school from a side door, wading through water almost to our knees. We spent the day barefoot, our socks hanging on our chairs.

I miss the uncomplicated lives we had, how we were excited by little things. An outing with friends was a big deal in class 9. I was new to school and new to Calcutta so it was big thing for me. We were excited about every little event - be it a class presentation or organizing a mini-carnival.
I always enjoyed the English and history classes. History till 10(I didn't have it after that) and English always. I miss the beautiful bio lab and the slides and microscopes with beautifully stained root samples.

By the end of class 10, I had a group of great friends. We would spend our breaks singing in the shed or gobbling up orange sticks and talking about each other's crushes.

There were the fiercely competitive school fests. Maybe we didn't have huge guest performances but they had way more spirit than any college fest can ever have. They were fun, because over the course of time, we got to know our opponents. It wasn't just about us doing our best, it was about devising strategies to beat the others by anticipating what they would do. The atmosphere at every fest was electric - everyone was friendly but everyone wanted to beat everyone else.

As life began to complicate, we thought we were all grown up, though that was just the beginning. And the innocence was beginning to fade.

The journey from those day to today has changed us, but change is a part of growing. But sometimes I think the innocent,silly schoolgirls, full of ideas and full of life, still live in a small part of us we haven't totally forgotten. 

Graduating/Growing.

So I am now officially a chemistry graduate. It's pretty cool, come to think of it. I survived the three years. And now I'm leaving Calcutta in about 20 days. Now that is cool, but also pretty strange. So yes, I'm moving again. Its time too. Bangalore, Calcutta, Mumbai. I will have lived in three very different cities.
My brother says that Calcutta is like a human - imperfect, chaotic but getting along fine. Mumbai is more like a machine - smooth, efficient, never stopping. But every city has its charm.

I am getting new glasses again and I'm excited about that - I know thats a really weird thing to be excited about.

Right now I'm obsessed with swimming, food and colours. I'm trying to eat and sleep as much as I can, when I can because when July kicks in, I wont get to do much of that. I'm doing a bit of shopping too and I discovered I have a shoe fetish. I never seem to have enough shoes. I'm also reading a bit and writing a bit more. Though I don't feel much like blogging - I'm lazy.

People grow up so fast. There was this little girl who used to go to school in the same bus with me and when I saw her today I couldn't believe it was her. But then I've got to realize I've grown too in 5 years. I even got in touch with some people I had last seen about 10 years ago when we were about 10-11 years old, and all of them have just sprouted into such beauties. It's such a nice feeling when you see the metamorphosis. From chubby little kids with two ponytails and braces on their teeth - to 20 year old women -beautiful, confident, poised, with all the baby fat and awkwardness gone.

But still, I think age is just a number. I atleast don't think I will ever feel I've grown up enough. But maybe that's what life should be like.

Connecting.

There's something I realized I like to do. Playing music. Connecting to people through it. Not play music like in a concert where its all rehearsed. Just let it flow into the spaces, filling them up. Because connecting is not something I easily do. But I love this. It feels completely effortless and I'm really playing what I feel at that time, my hands just go where they want.
Music has this power. It brings everyone together. It can make you feel. And when I play, its a way of expressing. Setting a tone, literally.Its a different beauty.

Train of thought.

We spend too much time and energy trying to figure out whats going on and what we feel rather than experience it for what it is. Many things cant be described or explained, and we should accept that as the norm than worry about it. But the way we have grown up in this world, that's easier said than done.

What if we didn't have language? What would we have done then? We wouldn't be able to label and fit everything we feel and experience into specific categories. And life would actually be simpler that way. The range of our capability to think and feel far surpasses the limitations of language.

Sometimes we need to let go, follow our instincts, be spontaneous. Living as we do, we have mostly lost the ability to know what we want. We don't listen to ourselves anymore. And if we want to - well, this is reality and the simplest of things get complicated. In fact, in trying to simplify, we complicate. Isn't it a lot more complicated trying to find a way to fit something into a mould we are familiar with, even when it doesn't fit? Wouldn't it be simpler to let it be what it is? Our web of beliefs and the social norms we have been brought up in waits to catch us in it sticky threads.

Black is black and white is white, but do we have a name for every shade of grey in between? Do we really even need a name? A name is just a name. It stands for 'something'. Sometimes the 'something' is too complex to name. People, emotions, relationships - are so many shades of grey. So many colours, rather.

But we are afraid. We are afraid of letting go. And in trying to fit ourselves, our thoughts and beliefs into a mold that's already there, we try to suppress who we are. We are afraid of making mistakes. We are afraid of being judged, and more afraid of the way we judge ourselves.

And we are confused. We spend all our lives confused. But there's a joy in that confusion if you get it right. What's life if you know everything and understand everything? Life is beautiful because we don't have to explain everything or understand everything. We should keep it that way.

Watching the stars rise after sunset reminded me how beautiful life is.

A random happy sunday post.

I've enjoyed a weekend after such a long long time. Its the first sunday in weeks, maybe months that I'm not under pressure, having to cram like a maniac for exams, or break my head over s.o.p write ups or worry about filling and submitting applications or feel totally sick about an interview. It's also probably the last sunday in a few weeks I'll have so I'm trying to go easy on myself. Yes I have my final semester exams in three weeks. But I can give myself 2 days to breathe.

Its nice to wake up late, read the papers, chat and have a nice cup of late-morning coffee, help dad with a bit of his writing, actually listen to what my brother is saying rather than treat his endless chattering as background noise. Write, think, dream. I also had one of my best saturdays in a while. Saturday isn't counted as part of the 'weekend' for us because we have classes.  We went to watch Kahaani, which is one of the most wonderful movies I've ever watched. The last movie I loved so much was Dhobi Ghat. Well I don't want to write much more about it because it will turn into a full scale movie review. And honestly I'm a bit lazy to do that.

The realization that college is ending in two weeks actually hit yesterday. After we had finished watching the movie, eating, joking all the way on the metro ride home. And while I was walking home I felt a little sad even after such a beautiful day, because it was ending. And every moment that day meant a lot. It's like everything was magnified in my mind, every little stupid thing, things we do every day was more significant significant. Maybe that happens in the end. We all got emotional after watching the movie. Somehow it felt like our bonds were strengthened. In a mysterious, unspoken way.

I felt maybe I wish I'd gotten to know them better. Somehow I didn't manage to become very close to the people I hang out with. Except one or two people. I don't know how that happened. I just didn't open up. But everyone really did make up a significant part of my life these three years. I don't know if I'd leave much of an impression. But it's what I feel about it that counts and I'm quite satisfied overall with what I wanted from college life. I've been what I wanted to be more or less. I've lived up to what I wanted from myself at this phase and I feel good about myself and how I've developed and who I am.

Maybe something I will never get over is my impulsiveness and the fact that I want to do too many things. Like biology for example. I love everything there. So far I've been offered a developmental biology lab for Msc, but I'd equally love to work on the brain, cancer, strange and deadly viruses, molecular motors and machines that flip around and do cool things, artificial life and bacteria that live in godforsaken places like deep sea thermal vents and antarctica and foul swamps and survive on inorganic elements like iron and sulphur and arsenic.

So that's the end of my random sunday post. I like to write but I don't end up posting often. As usual I sign off with the promise that I'll write more frequently!