Wanting to write a book has been in my mind for a long long time now. I am no great writer. I started writing a couple of chapters.. But, the more the books I read, the more did this ‘want’ fade, because I will everytime get a feeling, that I will be able to make no difference :) After reading books like “letters to sam” and “unposted letter”, I really gave up on this wish of mine, to publish a book, for I came to know I can never even come remotely close to the elegance of such great authors.

But books, have always been had ‘that’ exciting effect on me. Take me to a book store, or a room full of books, I get totally engrossed. Enchanted, is probably the word. So, one fine day, a fortnight back, I was in a odyssey store in Chennai, when the thought struck on my muddled head. Why not I start reviewing books! So, in that way, I will be able to analyse, understand, and revel in the joy of reading a book. So, am going to start another blog, giving life to my passion – reading. Am hoping to give the first review by next week.

Can you suggest a title for the blog?

“The childhood shows the man, as the morning shows the day.”

There are a lot of people, who have left profound impressions in my life. People in day-to-day life, who have inspired me and who have knowingly or unknowingly have influenced my living at various stages. Ashwin, who redefined my perspectives, the sweeper in my department  who does the gardening every morning singing a song, Aravind with his go-get-it attitude, rajagopal anna, with such levels of optimism when he talks, my mom and dad, for being able to live such a happy happy life together, to name a few.

But this post, is about the girl, okay, she is a working lady now, who used to be my auto mate  back when I was in school, and I distinctly remember, that it was like her, that I wanted to grow up to be. :) It was “preeti” akka..I never used to call her “akka” though. Okay, so the incident dates back to my class 6, when I used to be the youngest of the kids in my auto. Preeti was just a street away from my home, and we went to the same school. Okay, she must be really surprised if she reads this post anytime, because, we lost touch once she passed out of school, and we weren’t really ‘friends’ at the first place. Today, I was going through her blog,  and somehow I wanted to just write about all those days, when she was my “super-girl”.

She was the first person, I saw, who copied in an examination. :D Not the right kind to start off with, but still yeah. The examination hall, it used to be, 2 people in a bench, a student of class 8 and another of class 6.  Preeti was the queen of the whole process. she, being the brilliant girl, used to write all the answers and pass it on to all her other classmates. And, she sat next to me in the exam hall. As a result, I had to pass on a lot of papers to and fro. Well, that, left me in total awe and I later grew up to learn the art..:)

And then, came class 7, she, in class 9. Their entire batch, was kind of very notorious.Everyday, they used to have some or the other problem in class. feud between their class guys and the girls :D , and they ended up being brilliant friends later on. And the way, she used to handle them.

It was from her, that I learnt about “friendship bands”. It was during this period I guess, that her classmate, sheela(am not very sure of what her name was) was unwell. I saw her cry that day. Empathy. I was moved. She was the first person, who inculcated in me,what it was to care for other people.

Coming to the most important part, her english, used to be so elegant. Most of you wouldnt believe,when I was in class 8, I used to just manage passing my english exam. Back in auto, I see her, being so fluent and impeccable. She was the first person I had listened to, who spoke such flawless english.

And then, Mrs.Mary’s classes. Mrs. Mary was supposed to be the most strict teacher, and everyone in our school used to get really scared of her! and there, preeti used to be, who used to adore her, and she even one day, during our journey back home, talked of how much respect she has for the teacher. Preeti, you dont know this. When I was in class 10, after one of my english exams, Mary ma’m called me up to say, she saw preeti in me. That was one of the proudest moments in life..

There were other things too. She used to tell me, that she never hid anything from her mom. I have grown up to be that way too. Somehow, all the little things, I just realised have made a huge difference to my life. Thank you.

She passed out of school. The last image, I remember of her, was the teary-eyed preeti, during her farewell!!

May god bless you. You have been one of the best things that has ever happened in life.

They say – “A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed”.

I will never forget her!

Seems BBC did this survey to “search for the nation’s best-loved novel”… Lets see how many of them i have read.. a X means read :-P

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien    – X
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen    – X
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams    – X
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling    – X
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee    – X
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne    – X
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell    – X
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis    – X
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë    – X
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë    – X
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier -X
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger    – X
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens    – X
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott    – X
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell    – X
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling    – X
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling    – X
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling    – X
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll    – X
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez    – X
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett – X
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens    – X
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl    – X
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson    – X
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen    – X
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen    – X
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery -X
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas  -X
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell    – X
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens    – X
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy    – X
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth    – X
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell    – X
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden    – X
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens    – X
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough – X
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton – X
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman    – X
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett    – X
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett    – X
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl    – X
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding    – X
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar    – X
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy    – X
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo    – X
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett    – X
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho    – X
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer    – X
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot – X
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie     – X

49 i guess! hmm.. not bad :)

Playing around, connecting the diverging dots :)

Three Idiots – Half of the facebook feeds and blog updates in the last week, have been centred around the movie. And, here I am, being no exception. I was emotionally bonded to the movie even before watching it. For one, five point someone was one of the initial books I read. And, I liked it! I still remember the conversations I had with nive, and rohit, back then, regarding the character sketches and all that. Okay, so back to what I was wanting to write about, 3 idiots, the movie did justice to my expectations. It was a typical ‘feel-good’ movie. It gave me a really nice feeling, because, for once I found a movie in par with the standards of the book! :) There were, a few glitches though. Aamir’s know-it-all role, and quite a few scenes in the second half, but it is definitely going to let you have a ‘worth a watch’ feeling, when you come out of the theatre!  “I want to grow up once again” – in awe!

I have always been against the extreme hype that Chetan Bhagat’s books create. A few days before the movie, I was actually fed up, reading ‘two states’. The only element that I appreciated in his earlier attempts, the fast-pace, lost its relevance completely in this one. The book was let-down, a total drag. Or probably, because I have inculcated this thing against IIT grads turning authors. I happened to read the book “Anything for you ma’m”, by some IIT guy. Hundred fifty odd pages of absolute non-sense.

I definitely did not want to write the post, reviewing the book or the movie. I wanted to write about something that has been bothering me, ever since class eleven. The thought that struck me first, on one of those days, when I rdead “morrison and boyd” before going to sleep. I wanted to write about – “I have forgot the last time, when I had learnt something, because I wanted to”.

I am going to be an engineer in six months. And for me, engineering is cramming up for 2 hours before an examination. I look back, and I know, engineering is the last possible career option that I will associate myself to. Back in twelfth, even when I had to do nightmare’ish electronics and thermodynamics, I did not have the guts, to even think of what I really wanted to do in life. Engineering somehow seemed like ‘a must’, and I didn’t know that other options existed. The 2 important stages – classes 11, 12, and engineering, in my life have been disastrous. Okay, I mean, I was fortunate to get 93 percent in 12th, 8 odd pointer at coll, I am happy with the job that NIT Trichy has given me, everything. It’s a blessing, trust me. But, that feeling inside you, that contentment of graduating, is depressingly non-existent.

I still don’t understand why I was made to learn inorganic chemistry. I don’t think it served any purpose in my life at all. Excepting math, everything else to me, was gibberish. My parents are both physics graduates. And, I was struggling to get the basics right. I knew I was not meant  for all those equations. I didn’t have a fascination for machines, not for high raised structures, not for mobiles, nothing. I didn’t really care about why and how something worked, as far as it worked fine.

Four years, at college. Memories of doing anything at all that relates to academics, is zilch, but for an operational research course. I know only whatever I was ‘taught’. But, that’s not how the learning process works right? By second year, I realised, I wasn’t meant to be an engineer, and convinced stating, someone had jinxed my horoscope, as well! Quitting, was out of the question. And, I had to go on. I successfully did. But, the regret of having wasting six years in life, is bound to haunt me for a lifetime. Setting aside academics,  both college and school, gave me a lot of things. A platform to write/talk/think/discuss, and what not! I look back, and I will proudly say, I have made the best of whatever I was given.

The fundamental question being, wouldn’t my life have taken an all new turn, if only, if only I had taken up some career option that would have suited me? If only, I had invested all the time, in learning something I had wanted to? If only, I had known that ‘engineering or medicine is not everything’? And, how very many of them are like me? Do I blame it all, on the Indian Educational System? or, should I blame it all on myself, for not having stood up and said – ‘no, i dont want to do this’?  Agreed, I have heard about a lot of non-engineers having made real big in life back then. But somehow, the proportion, seemed few. I was scared. I wasn’t mentally prepared to do something, unlike the rest of my classmates. ‘What is she good at?’ – the answer in school was invariably physics or chemistry or maths. Lack of awareness, that’s the real culprit.

A miracle, yes, that should happen!

Not all, is well!

P.s : Sorry for the incoherence. I will edit it again, sometime soon.

Inspired by the article on today’s editorial column of the Hindu – “It is shameful to misguide people”.

Three years back, I had read a book, written by Irwing Wallace. Darn, I forgot the title. However, the plot (struck somewhere in the back of my mind) goes like this. The main character will be the editor-in-chief of a not-doing-well newspaper and enticed by the idea of shooting to instant fame and making millions, starts “making” news. He plans bombings, hires terrorist outfits to execute the plan, gives account of the detailed happenings in his paper even before his rivals smell the news. What I thought was a work of fiction 3 years ago, is almost in the verge of coming true. The clowns are willing to do anything for money.

Okay, agreed, the article today, is not something new. I have known ever since I was a kid, about the bias in the television channels, atleast in Tamil Nadu. How the same incident, gets reported in the different  channels, in a million different ways (each one, contradicting the other). The 8′o clock Sun Tv News, which my grand dad used to watch (and later crib), will have 15 mins, invariably supporting the ruling party. So, publicising and coaxing the public, with the help of media has been happening, for god knows how long, but I know, for sure, in the last decade.

The reason – media is a business. People invest way too much. So, absolutely anything that fetches you money, and more so, popularity among viewers is deemed right. There have been cases in the past, when, a popular English news channel, hacked the mobile phones of celebrities, to find out what has been happening in their personal lives, and shot to fame, by broadcasting tit-bits, that the public received with extreme enthusiasm. Well, one of the celebrities sued the channel, but I am not sure if anything at all happened there-on.

All this, during the stage, when human needs, in today’s world, are driven by the media. Media empowerment is a sign of true democracy. Millions of people have absolute faith in it. The truth dawns – In this competitve world – the media is a victim as well. Stating that the media has gone oblivious to its responsiblities, is not completely right. But, it puts me off, when you, hear of a 15 year old getting brutally murdered, and the news channels give a report of all the personal messages sent b/w her and her boyfriend. One thing, is for sure, the standard has been deteriorating today. Probably because, people do expect such ‘news’ and all the players are doing their best, to stand up to these expectations. Who is to be blamed – I do not have an answer.

Today’s media actually sensationalises news. Giving out facts and details to the public which are not true, or even worse, manufacturing them, is what has become the latest trend. Even if media is in the business of selling, where do we draw a line? What exactly is the limit? It is the responsibility of media to confine itself to moral ethics  and through its scholarly research, the media has a larger contribution in reducing the sources of conflicts to produce a more just and peaceful world.

The irony of it all, it is this very media, that enlightened me on whatever is happening around!

The fb profile of the girl :

Love psychic – “Someone will melt for you, and will die in your arms.”

The boyfrnd “likes” it.

- Get a life people.

mood: Sigh-ed.

Meerabhai – my first inspiration :)

I still vividly remember the day i got back from that hindi class, class five, after having learnt a lesson about meerabhai, the unparalleled devotee of the highest order – the versatile genius and the magananimous soul.  Every moment of the class was mesmerizing and I walked back pre-occupied. I came home, told about it all to grand pa, the only person who knows (knew, that is..) of the incident, till date. Went out with dad, to get meera’s sculpture, the very next day. Remembering it all, seeing that most precious thing in my life , adorning the ‘golu’ at home, for this navraathri. That will be the first thing, I would take to my home-to-be..

P.S: Thatha, I miss you too.

I don’t remember the last time I sat down and wrote with all my senses working together. I don’t think I’ve done justice to this blog or to myself. My mind just wanders away I guess. I think I’m just sick of everything. And don’t put in any effort in anything at all, for I seem to think it’s futile. But I can’t imagine that I’ve changed for the worse. Even if I have, the optimism and self.. I don’t even know what is still the same. So I don’t think I’ve changed for the worse. I’m better now than I have ever been. Maybe unfocused, confused and full of rage. But I’m better because I trust myself and I excuse myself, forgive myself and move on. So what if things from the past creep up at times? I know I’m alright. I maybe even meaner or just mean, because I don’t think I was like that before. But I’m a grown up. That’s how they are. At least I show it, even flaunt it! I’m here to prove nothing to anyone. I’ve had enough tolerance and learning. Now’s the time to acknowledge the change, to accept nothing but my own terms, and nothing but my own standards. I’ll thrive for any good or bad that I want and stop at nothing. For I’m not nothing anymore. This is me.. And I’m redefining myself.. For times ahead..

To those days of summer,

And those hours of rain,

Am returning,

To forget all the pain!

P.S : Nive, I miss you.

P.P.S: Ppl!!! Got bugged?? :)

Inspired by mahesh’s post, the first thing I read this morning, I have decided to pen my views on the ‘you-know-what’ – homosexuality.

“Legalisation of homosexuality is an attack on Indian religious and moral values” -  endorse certain leaders (for once, unfrotunately, the religious leaders are in unison). Some go to the extent to say that it is a social evil.  Why is there so much fuss?? Aren’t they human beings too, who thrive for an identity? Don’t they too covet living with someone they love?

I am happy that the Court has upheld the values of human rights and the right to live with dignity and equal opportunity (at least in the eyes of the law). And, I don’t really understand why it is against our Indian culture. Is not love the basis for all religions? And is not true religion real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness? Do we have any right at all to disdain their pursuit to happiness?

Indian public is totally ignorant about the medical facts on homosexuality or it is having half-baked facts that are not dependant on scientific facts. And I am no exception. They say, it causes more cases of HIV/AIDS. But, wouldn’t the very same people come out of the closet after legalisation? Wouldn’t it be easier, if the ‘cases’ were identifiable?  This cavalcade of antediluvian attitudes and half-formed misinformation is supposed to serve as justification for keeping an unknown but large number of otherwise law-abiding citizens of India in a state of permanent criminality.

Hues may vary, but humanity does not!

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