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.

 .

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!

Reminiscence

Cups lay on the tray, half finished.
Soft sunlight filters through the orange-tinged curtains into the closed room.
Pictures on the green wall glow as if alive
as though they are not of this world,
Bathed in the amber light of that winter afternoon.

Incense burns before the deities, smoke rising steadily
filling the room in its heavy sandalwood scent.

There it is - a scene from a memory,
playing again, but with little parts of the script rewritten.
The signal that time has come full circle, meeting Now.
The same familiar voices rise and fall, just as they once did,
The same laughter rings again
But the song has changed.

The old one has lost its way coming here
while journeying  to this moment in time and space.
It has laid to rest with the moments it made,
ebbed away slowly, rid of everything it bound to
Ceasing to be anything but just a song
Or maybe less.

And slowly, the afternoon melts away into dusk.
Light plays its game of shadows
As light falls and darkness takes the reigns.
A game they never tire of,
playing it every day for billions of years.
Even before we were there to watch.

But we change, every moment, every day.
Time traces her own intricate patterns
and takes us along with her on her journey.

The sky is now being painted sanguine
By the great Artist above.
The last bit of incense burns away
The scene fades away in smoke.
The room is dark and silent, voices gone.
Another day is over, carrying its moments away with it.

Tides on the sea of life have changed us again and again
Carried us through unknown waters till we were lost at sea
and found new worlds to live in
Only to bring us back to the shore where we set sail
Familiar sands.

Coming back, much has changed.
But not everything.

Bookworming.

I'm reading a new book after a long time. Its something I love doing, but don't get as much time as I would like to read. I love the feeling of going to a book shop and buying a book. There's a different kind of pleasure in that.
 I bought a book for myself a few days ago after a very very long time.
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrel. A lovely little book to sink into. To lie down and read before bed.
About beaches and boat trips and olive groves, charming little islands and animals.

Its very sad that kids these days don't read. Reading is like getting lost in another world. Its one of the best ways to get away from the real world for a while. People who don't read can never experience that feeling. Very unfortunate. Who wouldn't like to go off on adventures with the Famous Five(to say nothing of their picnics, as anyone who has read them will recall!), or solve a mystery with Poirot, or explore life and magic with Harry, Ron and Hermione?  

After Three Men in a Boat, this book is probably going to be one of my all time favourites. 

Thought bubbles with macaroni.

I come back again after abandoning my blog. To write another silly post. The new blogger is great! Maybe that will inspire me to write more?

I'm obsessed with Masterchef again, the show has redefined the meaning of 'foodie'. Being a foodie doesn't mean eating huge amounts of food. Its about appreciating different kinds of food and being open to new flavours and new combinations of tastes. Its about really allowing yourself to eat with all your senses. Really observing tastes, smells, textures, temperatures and everything about food. Not just stuffing it down your throat. Of course, there are people who claim to be foodies, and love to eat, but really whats the point of eating tonnes of something without even realizing how it tastes? So even if I can't really cook much , or cook well for that matter, I can atleast enjoy food.

For the past few days I've been having this urge to cook pasta, so I'm cooking some macaroni today. I wanted to try something different rather than the tomato sauce I usually make with pasta, but my family doesn't like anything too cheesy, so I wonder if I should experiment with mixing some flavours, or go with a safe recipe. There's a problem both ways - I don't end up cooking much, which is why I want to experiment but maybe its a better idea to do the basics first? The tomato sauce has a popular vote, but I was thinking of saving that for sometime later when I cook spaghetti. I've really wanted to cook spaghetti but since there was a packet of macaroni lying at home I thought I should finish that first. So maybe I'll make a lemon  butter sauce with garlic and put cheese and tomatoes and then bake it. Or maybe the flavours will get all mixed up which I dont want. I always have a problem with taking decisions. Always.

And I want a new camera. I wont get a DSLR yet, but something good enough.
I'm also waiting for my Pottermore beta access email.
I love watching Glee AND I want some new music. Desperately!

"Summer stretching on the grass"

Finally a post after god knows how many months.

I'm having a pretty nice summer so far, with my project and everything and it feels good to be contributing a tiny microscopic little bit to research that will some day go a long way to cure people with spinal cord injuries. We are working with clinical samples of cerebrospinal fluid from patients with varying degrees of spinal injury, and trying to analyze what proteins there are, compare their expression and eventually figure out what causes degeneration. At the end is the answer to the very fundamental question we've taken for granted all along - why can't neurons regenerate? What I find very interesting about this is that we'd learnt all along, ever since we had biology, that nerve cells are the only ones that cannot regrow. Something we were just made to accept as a fundamental fact. But now, we asked why. Of course there must be a reason! And we're going to get an answer some day.

I guess for the people who do this all the time that novelty isn't there because this is their work, the procedures are things they do routinely.  But for me its exciting now not only because the procedures and concepts are totally new to me, but also because when I learn something there and so something with my own hands, I feel like I too am playing a tiny part that will eventually lead to a solution to the problem. What little I'm doing is probably inconsequential but to me the experience matters, and maybe the little work I'm doing now is repetitive and monotonous, but its thinking about the big picture that will shape up one day because of this work that keeps me on my toes. Its like a drop of water in a bucket.
But whatever it is, I'm learning and I know this is what I want to do!

And otherwise I'm failing miserably regarding my plans to go to the gym (again!), I desperately want something to read, and I wish I could play more table tennis.

Another few weeks and we're 3rd years, officially! :)

Beauty.

Birds at dawn, the sunlight through the window as you yawn and step out of bed for the first glimpse of the new day you've awoken to. The wind blowing softly and the sunshine just right, warming you skin. Blue sky shining above.
People smiling, working, getting the day started.
Waiting for the bus, the seat by the window to watch the same old roads go by again and again but its never really the same. The cliched saying 'change is the only constant'. Songs on the radio. Energy buzzing around.
Energy, people. Talking, walking, playing, singing, fighting, learning.
Colourful clothes.
Meeting and waiting.
The hi's and hello's and smiles.
A few moments by the window to let your mind fly away for a while.
Dusk and the crimson sun, visible over the bridges and buildings but slowly disappearing.
And walks through new roads, new places as the light dims and the streetlights flicker on.
The wind that gets colder, whipping your skin. A sharp chill that bites, but is beautiful because you want to feel it to feel alive.
Ink blue sky like a blanket with the stars shining through. So vast, so endless. Staring at the sky is freedom. Losing yourself , pulling away from reality.

Love and liberation.
Life is beautiful if you let it be.
So why not let it be beautiful? There's beauty in everything if you give yourself a chance to find it.
There's no black or white or bad or good. They are all colours. There is no 'normal' or 'default' or generalized definitions. There are just people and emotions all intertwined in different ways that don't have to be defined or named. Thats all.
And that's where the beauty is.

:)

I had a nice Saraswati Pujo. Wore a sari and strutted around all day. Met some friends, ate lots of delicious khichuri. :)

And I finally watched Dhobi Ghat and I loved it because it was so real. It wasn't 'acted'. They showed how relationships are undefined, they don't need to be defined. They showed what its really like when people interact, the real expressions, the way they really say things, the way people really converse, the gestures, the little gaps and silences, all of it. How lives intertwine. It was a refreshing change from the movies we usually watch. You know they are movies, you know they are acting but here it doesn't feel that way. These kind of relationships are something every one of us relate to but never talk about or explain, because we don't need to, we just live with them sometimes without even knowing. It's all a part of life, it adds colour. They are like the shades in between. :)

So I think everyone should go watch it. It's nothing that complex you can't understand its quite simple actually. :)

Minutes to midnight.

15 minutes to 2011. The unlikeliest of times to be writing a blog post, especially after not writing for ages.
I'm too lazy to write about my thoughts for the year or actually analyze it. Because time has moved so haphazardly I could barely keep track when the year started and when it ended. 365 days. Seemed very long this time. Probably because too much happened for me to be able to keep track of what the hell is happening. Sitting here now its all just a complete jumble, a mad blur. So okay, I won't talk about it.

Today I watched Alice in Wonderland on T.V, it's one of my favourite stories. I just love Lewis Carrol. And I finally watched Eat Pray Love and I adore Julia Roberts. Its a beautiful peaceful movie. My type of thing, sort of. I also watched Inception and its so brilliant I just couldn't get enough of it. It is complex but not terribly.

I would say I had a nice year. Not the freaking best possible but that's okay, there have to be good times and bad times. It's all part of the journey.

Happy new year. :)

No I'm still not over Harry Potter.

I watched Deathly Hallows part 1 today. After a long wait. I was dying to watch it. And of course I loved it. But what is sad about the movies is that somehow you don't get the essence of the book. They didn't really distort too many details this time. But the main action is in the next part so this one felt like it lacked that punch.

What I loved: The way Harry, Ron and Hermione have grown together, how they've developed. There's a lot of good bit of acting. Emma Watson looks just lovely. I'm straight but I love her! I liked the styling as well, she looks really cool. Ginny too looks more grown up. And somehow I've loved Ginny's character right from the beginning and I knew when I read book one that she was going to develop as a very important character. Maybe I relate to her.
And Bellatrix. She is a wild crazy maniac and is sexy that way.
The scene at the beginning where Hermione is at home and she erases her parents memories - 'obliviate', and she fades away from all the pictures - is to me the most touching scene in the movie.
The locations where they camp are just so beautiful. They're one of the best things about the movie, all these amazing places captured so beautifully.
The part where Harry and Hermione dance is the sweetest scene ever. Harry is a horrible horrible dancer. But its incredibly beautiful how after Ron leaves he tries to cheer her up and in a lot of parts it looks like they have developed deeper feelings for each other but that is also because they're all alone and have only each other.
Then the locket scene and the kiss was something I was looking forward to watching from when I heard to was there and it was just what you call primitve and animalistic, reminiscent of Adam and Eve.
And the torture scene. Hermione and Bellatrix were both brilliant there, Hermione helpless, screaming with pain and Bellatrix, evil and wild, holding her down.
I also loved the animated narration of the Tale of the Three Brothers.
Also the ending to the first part was really well done.
But Voldemort looks to nice. He's not evil and remorseless enough. Thats what disappointed me.

And otherwise - I'm watching Masterchef Australia and I just love it even though I don't understand the food sometimes. Speaking of which, I had this lovely New York Cheesecake flavour gelato which is nothing like anything I've ever tasted before, it had this beautiful mingling of a slight hint of cheese with a tangy blueberry syrup in a very rich creamy base. Just beautiful food. Since I started watching Masterchef I've gotten into this habit of critiquing food when I eat it, observing flavours and textures and how they go together and trying to explain it. And today's gelato was really worth talking about!

Thats all for now. Off to sleep!

Lemon meringue pie screwed up. Actually the meringue texture got screwed. But the pie crust I did well for the first time. Last time I made apple pie it was awful and uncooked. I'm tired. I spent about 4 hours messing up the kitchen and trying all kinds of innovative methods of mitigating cooking disasters. Which seem to have worked, mind you. I grated lemon peel for the first time in my life(I didn't know it could be used). I liked the tiny green shreds in the little bowl :).

I am so tired. Cold apple juice is so soothing :).