Delhi International Arts Festival

life has its many firsts. the DIAF was a very attractive multi event, multi venue affair. the only drawback I'm a sunset Cinderella in a city labeled unsafe for women and i doubt I'd ever be big enough to be let out for such things unchaperoned by a member of family. so moving out of self loathing misery let's get to the point.

oridssi:
on 16th dec my parents and i were witness to the opening of the classical dance segment of DIAF and it was splendid!
the evening under the sprawling branches of the peepal tree on also the coldest delhi day, began with mrs. sanjukta mohapatra performing oridssi. she's the disciple and daughter-in-law of famous oridssi exponent late shri kelucharan mohapatra. i've previously only seen oridssi in school and never could(and still can't) tell the difference between the various mudras in the various classical dance forms! i doubt they're different at all so majorly but for me they do mostly the same stuff in different dresses! i never thought i'd ever say such things about a beauty that is dance, but ignorance brings out the trash. so the dance we enjoyed began with a ganesh vandana and then a prayer to lord vishnu. these were followed by dance presentations on a poem and the very beautifully done-varsha. I've never watched a professionally done dance and with such reverence...it was touching! i don't know what else to say... my hands are frozen!



kuchipudi:
the second piece of the evening was a dance performance by the very famous couple-raja and radha reddy. before the dance began i was showered by snippets of well known information like he's got two wives-radha reddy and kaushalya reddy, each has a daughter who've both completed school etc. soon enough the attraction of the night himself came forward on stage and gave a li'l explanation of what was to come...shiv lila! he mentioned why he's called the neelkanth, umasutham and mrityunjaya and also a little tale of the demon tripura! i only sat wondering why a whole state in a deeply religious country of ours would be named after a demon, considering superstition almost in every way rules our lives. but then we love contradiction don't we? so now that mr reddy explained the whats and the whys of his dance performance,i just waited for the how! it started pretty slow...mr and mrs just entered from ends of the stage and started moving around in circles...literally! then it picked pace with mrs kaushalya reddy doin the rhythmic toda bit...man i loved it! the ballet carried on in much the same way as he'd mentioned with beautiful characterisations of and by the couple, facial expressions and mudras. now since I'm no art critique nor an avid follower of dance of any kind, i'll stick to my version and impressions. it was good but the petite mrs reddy was seemingly getting too old for this while the chill seemed to have travelled up mr reddy's leg. i mean no disrespect to these very talented far superior seniors, but then 'bandar kya jane adrak ka swad!'. so basically it was something new, something good and something that went over my head after knocking some sense into it!
lesson of the day: i should've stuck to learning bharatnatyam when i got an awesome teacher instead of showing him how adamant a donkey i could be! boohoo...i started making wrong decisions when i couldn't even spell it!





modern ballet:
on the 17th, monday, we went to catch a contemporary dance performance by a group from the Slovak republic. the presentation was titled "night peace". momma chose the dance over kathak and manipuri because we'd had enough of open air theatres and chilly evenings and as kamani
auditorium is far better, we headed to it! we got there a li'l late, though just in time for the dance. I'll give you my interpretation of the ballet...i have no idea of what was meant to be portrayed or what was. going by the title of night, here is what i picked up: night falls among chaos and people having spent all day in their own activities, in their own world at their own leisure, forget that there is a world beyond their own. to them every stranger is a nobody, you'd not even register their presence were they to stare at you in your face. the night brings to you its own gifts of peace and rest, but the human psyche always has a zillion things to do before it goes to bed. no one stops to take the selfless gifts she brings, no one wants it. period. you've got parties to attend, people to meet and of course carnal pleasures to be attained, but the night can
wait. then comes the burn out! life comes to a standstill and you just land up like a log on the bed. once the sleep takes over that is when life's beauty actually comes forward. but sleep is hard enough, dreams are harder. you've got to fight the demons of the life in daylight in the darkness of your head, you've got to get it out of your system. peace can only reign when the place for it is free of clutter that blocks the drainage system of the mind! that is when night becomes peaceful...that is when life becomes beautiful! relationships becomes clearer and emotions becomes sort themselves out. love pours through life! this is night! this is peace!
we had to walk out towards the end due to lack of comprehension by my company, so i'm not sure how it all ended but i do know(and console myself with) that we didn't miss much.
my cheeky comments go like this: the guys were very good...tall well built good looking hunks! their dancing agility made me realise that if i were to roll like they were, I'd keep on rolling like a cylinder! all in all a good show, with typical Indian humour and movie like comments. the best ones i heard went like,"yaar yeh to saanwariya style hai, samajh nai aayega!"; when the music went boom like a bomb, a little baby cried making the whole crowd laugh out real loud! next time the baby spoke, it was a cute giggle when they were trying to portray the self-demons being fought and most people thought she had a terrible itch, one guy even said she was a chicken!!

bharatnatyam:
since we still had time on our hands and momma wanted to see the youth festival, we headed to ashok hotel's amphitheatre just when bharatnatyam group dance began. a young duet was on, and was done very beautifully. i mean it...vigour and vitality severely contrasted with ageold movements of the day before. the last piece presented was a group dance titled "geet govindam" and was an outlet of gopis' love for lord krishna. good coordination, simply to comprehend and
quite tastefully presented. i enjoyed it, and thankfully so did my parents!

muzok: fusion music
the last jig of the day was a fusion music band. this one from kiromal college's music society. i had absolutely no expectations and since i'd never heard of them, or heard them, i simply waited. guitars rolled out. the usual. a synthesier was placed, i yawned. a tabla came, i took interest. a violin and dholak followed, i decided my parents will now sit easy. the guys came out and my eyes were wide open! now we're talking...they looked pretty much like the rest of 18-21 yr olds i know, but still i soaked in all at offer. :D hehehe! then came the pin prick-pa says,"kitne lousy ladke hain, koi bhi khana nai khata kya?". does he always do it on purpose? oh whatever! so now back to the band...tehy began with a female choir doing a prayer, then a duet choir doin the necessary desh bhakti, then a powerful rehman composition to top it up! by this time, my mother is thoroughly bored! then they bring on bruce springsteen's june! yahoo! umm, well, my parents are looking at my beaming face...wondering if they're finally on my turf! bring it on! so they...and the cutest guy is the lead singer, ah my luck! if only we'd stayed till after their jig, i could've known his name. but then my parents had had enough. so here we come to an end of my diaf...i think so.

another year

a year gone by
and still it feels like new
the things i've said here alone
make me all the more easier for you!

another year of blogging...more coming up!

Spirited Stories

Getting into the mood of writing is not very easy for me. There are the dry months and then there are days like these when each morning I decide to revive my darling blog. So today I’ve decided to share my talli experiences with who ever will care to read this stuff!

Having an older sibling meant starting early with everything...basically following them blindly! So when they decided to explore alcohol at their ‘proper’ age this baby as a faithful sidekick promptly followed them around just wanting to take a sip! Naughty baby ;)

so what if our first bottle of beer had to be washed down the bathroom sink because neither of us liked the taste or smell of it? It taught me to wait till my proper age! Good bottle of beer! And it taught to stay away from beer forever too. Wine, whiskey, vodka and gin...ah, well they came in much later and stayed more like tasting jobs needing to be accomplished.

Wine, white wine, will stay special to me for reasons beyond the high. I got my glass of wine a day before my maths' pre-board and I managed to score a 98 with an almost hangover beating drums of hell in my head! it was almost all thanks to a jerk I happened to know back then, who thought I was kidding in the middle of the night, but then realised I wasn't because I was really talking drunkard crap! So you see wine wonders!

People may say Johnny Walker is expensive and delicate. But how many of those people have washed down their whiskey glasses in the rain because it was too strong? I did! On a chilly February night, with a thunderous rainstorm beating down on a hapless city, somewhere a youngster decides to taste the god’s drink. It tastes okay by adult standards but yucky by Hershey’s chocolate syrup standards. So well the rains had to wash over all sins!

The ‘vodka and gin affair’ happened on a very important day. In the morning my bosom buddy decided I had to be initiated into the very important phase of life and took it upon her to do the honours! So before much ado we were sitting with vodka in our hands trying to act as if we’ll gulp it down like grape juice…only trouble its fermented grape juice and it tastes and smells awful! So somehow I managed to finish my drink and felt elated that I’d had my first drink! Wow! Man my head is swinging and is the same sun that’s just shining brighter?

The evening came and my parents decided that should their daughter drink, she might as well do it with them. So I got to choose my drink and I chose a ‘lady-like’ Gin. Only trouble its drier and hits harder than vodka! At least with me it did. So I did a very lady-like thing of passing my drink to my saviour-my brother, who though is not much of a gin person, very nicely finished it for me. Thanks dude!

So basically I’ve had my share of spirits and alcohol adventures and somehow coming to the conclusion that it isn’t quite my drink, has been more satisfying than perhaps other frustrated females who are just told that ladies don’t drink. My foot!

Alcohol has been an adventure that’ll continue as long as this world shall exist. But to be able to taste it, label it unpalatable and then gloat about it has its own high!

Cheers to life!

its a new world

i'm now officially a hosteler. my hostel warden may disagree due to lack of attendance but i still feel like one. personally i hated it the first few days and having home at a distance of five or six and thirty kilometers can be quite a temptation to a baby like me! so i came running home(only metaphorically) whenever i possibly could.
last week i resolved to stay. and i might add, on the third day when my mother asked if i missed home, i promptly replied a no! i really didn't! yes there were other things that pulled me home wards, but definitely not stuff like an ac room or momma's cuddle. they are things that i need to resolve in my head and which if i mention will not even relate to a hosteler's life. but then my life was never that easy.
the kind of independence and a whole grown up kind of feeling that i've experienced has been an eye opener of sorts. in the hostel u're left to yourself and u actually come to realise what bonding is all about! i always had a fear in my mind that i may be left all alone like a loner i portray to be at the point when i am in most need of human company...but here i've learnt and realised that not everyone can see through the facade and to let the bee into the parlour, even the spider had to invite it! i've made some friends who're unusual to say the least, they're unique. each one with their own ideas of life and each one with their own tastes.
i've been lucky in more than one way. my roomie is a gem... getting to understand me and protect me in so little time as we have spent together, she's precious to me. it was almost magical to know that our likes, dislikes, hobbies and mind tracks run almost parallel...she writes poetry, loves decorating the room. loves earrings, keeps an extensive wardrobe and believes in cleanliness! although i give her enough reasons to keep cleaning the room after me...she never loses her temper. we can laugh at jokes together that no one else even noticed, we can discuss movies and grammar with the same level of ease and then we can just roll with laughter just trying to imagine femina with a playboy like centre spread!
i owe my love of the hostel to the sexy female i live with(i thought of worse lines, but then it maybe taken n kinky forms!). she's a true blue gem and i really thank her for it.
this one's for u Sexy PJ!

Barriers

to wake up one morning and find barriers around you may be a more conducive environment to swallow the fact that there are boundaries that must never be crossed. but to actually have them round you since the moment you first wailed, while being swung in mid-air and not to be told what they meant till you understood on your own. to see it there and always be told how wrong they are, to be allowed the freedom to dream that they'll vanish into thin air some air but then to be reminded that dreams just acts you'll never accomplish, hurts.
it hurts far more than what it must to have them imposed overnight. at least in that case you have the option of tearing your lungs out to make your voice heard, that that what happens is wrong! in this case you can't even say you didn't see it coming. it was always there for you to see. it was you who chose to ignore.
what difference will it make if someone is so narrow that they fail to acknowledge that dark ages are over. what do you do if they refuse to believe that their understanding of liberation was justifiably valid some ages ago when man knew only a few desires-power, food and sex. i can't disagree by saying that man has in anyway changed his priorities or ambitions, but i do believe that they do not employ any kind of force to acquire it from unwilling people. again psychopaths abound. but what i question is can we let fear and socially acceptable behavior rule our lives? especially in a world when you're not sure who your next door neighbour is.

School-revisted

its been over a year since i left school and stepped into a place they call college. saying it is quite a change will be an understatement, it is a revolution! The Mother's International School to Delhi College of Engineering is a major jump, to say the least. i have changed into someone who no one from school would recognize and if any one from college were to see me backin school, they'd laugh their guts out!
this is not some revelation that dawned on me in the early hours of my sleep like other ideas i get, but something right in the middle of the day. my two better friends and i were having a girl's day in...eat, chat, gossip and indulge. so in the middle of all this we decided to pull out the school album and see all our friends again. so out came a big album full of pics, mostly of class 12 and voila! all three of us suffer from a bout of something that can't be explained. it was definitely not nostalgia(we weren't quite missing the people, coz those who matter are still in touch), it was not depression(we're butterflies now, not caterpillars), it wasn't even a regret as to what we are, but something absolutely inexplicable.
looking at those pictures and looking at all of us now, its really a magic of a newly acquired fashion sense. not just the three of us...but each and everyone that i've happened to meet this summer from school. be it long unruly locks for the guys or some hippy skirts for the girls, everyone has a new identity beyond the daily white yarns we all ever saw the others in. and everyone seems to always notice the other person's changes more prominently than their own. i thought i was still the plain jane, the goodie two shoes i always had been in school. but no i am not.
i personally have undergone a metamorphosis of sorts. looking back at my pics from school, i could only cover my eyes! i looked so terrible!!! not that now i am in any position to give any one a run for their money, but still i have some sense. back then i was the trouser wearing, plait porting tomboy! at least now i can say i have some female clothing of repute. i can behave like a girly girl too. something i never could back in school.
so ignoring the academic parts of school and college, the two still stand apart with which shivani they know. the dumb looking smart fatso or the not-so-outstanding female with some brains. two worlds apart yet ingrained in me. a part of me that shows as and when i need it. but i still wish i never look the way i did back in school!
but i still love my school!

Love is Blind

It’s a quote immemorial-Love is Blind. Well I happened to live through it. So I sit here, listening to my any time companion, the very musical radio, and I wondered what made me not to notice the obviously flawed little creature that is so very dear to me-my teddy.

Now King Kong is not an ordinary teddy. Starting with the unusual name to the incomparable little tweed pants he wore when he was first gifted to me to even his inane ability to cry like a little baby, he has been quite a part of my life. To put it quite simply no one liked him-not my mother when she first set eyes on the crying monkey (yes he’s not a bear! I discovered it to my horror only recently), not my grandmother who noticed his flaws like they were mentioned on the packing. The only exceptions were the men in my life because one of them had bought it for me and the other didn’t bother to notice! Even I never realized how much I loved my King Kong till I grew out of my Barbie world and stepped into teenage holding onto the faithful monkey for my life.

To mention his flaws is just to prove how love is blind. King Kong is a monkey-not that it is bad but it is shocking. I mean people always say a teddy bear (thanks to the Yankee prez) but you don’t quite associate a stuffed toy a decade back to a monkey. I am still to spot a stuffed monkey like mine and I certainly abhor those chocolate coloured swinging chimps you find everywhere. My darling is different. He has a squint too. And this too surprised me…I never noticed it all of the eleven twelve years that I have had him. When I did mention it to my mother, she just smiled and said,” You noticed that today?”

This lovely teddy of mine has seen me through all the clichéd teenage events of my not so eventful life. I have cried gallons of tears into his fur, clutched onto him for moral support esp a night before the exam, shared my deepest fears and uncensored comments on everything around me, pretend he can talk to me when I need someone to say exactly what I want to hear and more recently used his expanse of a belly as a very comforting pillow. And then I innocently took him to the family doctor to say he’s lost weight!

He’s more to me than most other people I know. He’s precious and I just have to kiss him good night before I sleep even if in the morning he’s on the floor. It’s hard to imagine spending my life without him…so maybe you’ll just see him shuttling like me between home and hostel every week. Love seriously requires no criteria and never any biases.

Two big girls

My mom and I share a wonderfully weird relationship. Wonderful because it’s well my mom and weird for the people who see us in full swing. We have a very unusual way to express our love-I know exactly how clichéd it sounds-but it is so unusual coz I haven’t seen another like it. She happens to be the butt of most of my jokes, the ones who has to bear the brunt of my anger and the one who I cuddle like a li’l baby (talk of bear hugs!)

Well most of our time is spent bickering. This is why people think we’re weird-they just assume I’m an unrelenting rebellious teenager who is a royal pain the neck and whose mother has an uphill task just keeping her temper in check. But its not that way. If I don’t “fight” with momma I can’t say I’ve had a complete day. Unless her regular phone calls bug me, I feel something amiss.

That’s what happened a day ago. I was out spending my day at my buddy’s place and as our pact is, I told my ma I’ll be home by 5 or 6. At 5 o’clock that evening my head became aware that’s its time for ma to call and find out where and how far I am on my home and remind if I’ve forgotten. However buddy-buddy we all are, we do believe in deadlines and punctuality. And my mother has always had an idea where I am. She ensures she does. So at 5:15 I checked my phone, incase I had a missed call. None. I board the bus. I pull out my phone from my jeans pocket just incase she calls and I have to struggle with ‘em. I get off to change my bus. 5:30pm and still no call. Now I’m concerned.

I take the other bus and still cling to my phone and now I’m checking it every few minutes. NO CALL! I am now almost home. I start walking home. I check my watch-5:50pm. Why hasn’t ma called? It’s most unlike her? Hey wait, why am I worried? For the first time she has not bothered herself as to my where about. So I get my chain-free freedom at last? Shit! Call ma call!

5:55pm. I am at my colony entrance. I can’t hold myself anymore. Flip open the phone->phonebook->press M->dial the first entry Ma->wait for to answer. She takes her own sweet time. I am worried as hell!
“huh?”
“Ma? Where are you? You didn’t call. I am almost home. Want me to get milk on my way home?’
“Haan…nahi. I got the milk. (Yawn!) I was sleeping! I’ll open the door. You come soon.”

Sleeping?! She was sleeping blissfully unaware of the time and here was I worried why ma didn’t call so I could lecture her on me being a big girl! Jeez! She finally got it that I’m a big girl, but I didn’t. Now I guess this is weird. No wonder people fail to understand us. I still don’t.

Frankly I don’t even want to. Why waste time to rationalize love? And yes now I know never again will I shriek at ma for calling me on my way to find out how far I am. That way at least two people don’t get anxiety attacks for nothing and I save on my phone bill!

love ya ma!

Frost bite and sun burns!

Its been one full semester at the ice kingdom called Delhi college of engineering with its ice princesses and stone princes. Ironically the place is almost an inferno in summer especially walking down the concrete roads all the way to the main gate. how many time I've had a frost bite(jeez!) and a sun burn(real bad ones) I've lost count.

the place is like its inhabitants-two extremes. now calling it two extremes may be due to my inclination to classify things into slots or whatever but this place is so damned confusing! frankly u can get lost here with no luck of being retrieved ever again. the corridors, the staircases the blocks...u really need a guided tour to know where you're headed. i know, i took one from a friend. its really huge and empty!

i use empty because except for a handful of people here and there you will never really find a crowd except in the canteen. that too, the same faces. considering it has over 800 people in my batch only, i happen to see very few. or maybe i happen to register a very few.

now coming to people. if you can recall i mentioned them as ice-princesses and stone princes. that's exactly what they come across as. they can give you a frost bite! well not all of them. some can burn your fingers! on a more serious note i think there's more to it than good self-restrained people-its me. i was the outsider. i was the one who had to break the ice(i love this) with a sledge hammer. the reason I'm so bugged or pissed is that I've tried so hard with not as much success as i would have liked.

if anyone were to ask me what should u do if given an option to switch colleges, I'd say think again. its a real pain to get yourself an identity when people are just not interested to know who or where u come from. when college starts everyone is interested in everyone else. they want to know you, you want to know them and everyone gets a fair chance of being a part of your little world. cut to a semester later(or even a year, if you transfer etc) people have their own little world. you and you alone have to cut through. take a good ninety nine steps and then maybe they'll take one. I've not had it that hard, but I've had it hard. and truthfully its not good for my ego. i hate to say this but i do have a nice ego that has had enough reasons to be inflated through out school, however unglamourous i may have been, and this whole situation of being a nobody hurts.

all in all this place has been one good experience. i never knew i had so many emotions in me considering the many firsts i've had here, the most memorable(why?) being my very amusing(to the spectators ofcourse) catfight! i'll maybe divulge the details in another post but lord did i lose my temper. i've been cheated on(no no boyfriend trouble, that doesnt exist), betrayed(my little innocent soul) and embarrased(ask munchkin for details).

whatever said and done this extreme action is where i'm gonna be for another three years and trust me i'm looking for a reason to tear my own comments above apart.

25 things i hope to do before its too late

I've been tagged! it feels nice to do something with a real purpose behind it. i have been very sweetly asked by a fellow blogger of good repute-Sid to make my own to-do list and how can i not oblige?

in no specific order, here is the very boring list( i call it boring, because my current frame of mind curtails my ability at humour):

1. lose weight-this has been dream for as long as i can remember!
2. be a good engineer and actually be able to do some worthwhile stuff, not administrative crap
3. spend a summer in Tuscany
4. cook good food(too many Os!)
5. see the best places in the world, and i don't count those picture postcard stuff only. i mean the real lifestyles and people!
6. write my own series of books on varied topics, and actually have people read it
7. be remembered by the people i have known. being known by unknowns would be a bonus
8. be a professional blogger
9. learn how to ski, surf and swim
10. get over my inherent inhibitions
11. have a bohemian lifestyle( i think i already do!)
12. have my own range of clothing and accessories and have a global brand recognition
13. play with a panda and a penguin
14. eat only chocolate for a whole day...preferably hot melting chocolate that runs down my neck and lower(please don't get any ideas, its a fantasy so don't spoil it)
15. get a nice massage that pampers me-the way those advertisements claim
16. run my own restaurant in partnership with my brother
17. have my own series of Mills and Boons
18. star in a blockbuster movie
19. learn ballet and bharatnatyam
20. buy myself a yacht
21. be more originally creative
22. paint a flawless canvas
23. have enough money to afford my fantasies
24. age gracefully
25. do something about my lack of imagination!


this has been my most uncreative and toughest post ever. i have never before thought of actually listing down my desires and frankly i still am not satisfied. i will though keep it as a ready reference for my actual progress!

party hard, study harder

today is my third week in my new college. i call it new coz i have just swaped colleges thanks to a system that upgrades my stream netime through out my first semester. so this is my new college-delhi college of engineering.
if you by any chance are wondering if the title of this post reflects my views and that i happen to be a "ghissu" then may i please take the liberty of simply saying that this doesnt happen to be my attitude but of those people that i ahev come to accept as my friends. for the uninitiated people who have nothing to do with engineering colleges in india and hence their lingo, "ghissu" is a derogatory form of a cross between a geek and a book-worm. and no one, may i repeat, no ones considers it a compliment but everyone becomes the long lost buddy of those few who are, at examination time.
so basically my new college requires me to travel a good two hrs daily one way and so my habit of making friends and studing unique samples of human life gets enough exposure. i have come to realise a few things about myself too. i, for one always divide people into categories of who and who not i can be on amicable terms with. and trust me my classification is best when instinctive and thankfully correct(mostly).
the ride to DCE in the morning is the best part. i happen to be the only female in the bus mostly and the for the guys i am like an unattainable piece of eve's descent! we have a university special bus and so all of them are either my batchmates or seniors, but still talking to a girl just like that is so unthinkable. sometimes i really wonder, does it say anywhere on my face that i'll gobble you up if u try n talk to me???? they seem to think so, and are shell shocked if you start a conversation with them. no. its a martal sin. guys here are just so incapable of a friendly chat with a girl.
the matters obviously differ when the girl is a bomb. then they'd talk to you to gather all the info they can abt her...building their databases you see. for future references
whatever said n done, i'm enjoying this place and there is always so much distance to walk that you can not get bored.