The View from 5'2"

The City Is Wilder Than You Think And Kinder Than You Think.

2012-02-23T19:39:00.000+05:30

'The city is wilder than you think and kinder than you think.'
I have never read words more befitting Mumbai.
I wish this piece of artwork found its way to this city someday. It perfectly encapsulates everything everyone has ever said about it.

And yet, like every piece of art, it's imperfect. It's too blatant.

Perfection would have been strolling through Bandra and chancing the poem upon the broken walls adorned with graffiti in those narrow, narrow lanes. The words would be founding calmly leaning against the walls, the type traced through the innumerable cracks. Many would pass by the route daily, and yet, the words would be found by a few. Those who would spot them would slow down, intrigue and a slow smile wrapping their faces. They would stop, read, read it again and eventually move on, with something on their mind that probably hadn't been there earlier.
It would resonate differently with different people. It would resonate. It was spark thought. The element of surprise, of chance; that would have made these lines of poetry perfect.

A lot of these pieces are constructed using 'recycled sunlight'. I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds lovely anyway.
Here is a link to the artist's website. It opens to Recycled Sunlight Piece#5. http://www.robertmontgomery.org/robertmontgomery.org/5.html

:)

Shit Indians Say.

2012-02-20T20:04:00.000+05:30

Listen up, Indians all around the world!

Original Indian memes are finally here. There's this new page on Facebook called 'Shit Indians Say'(click to visit) and it is absolutely hilarious. :D

Here's a sample :

How can one resist clicking the like button with funny shit like this? :D

The Difference.

2012-02-03T20:01:00.000+05:30

The difference between pride and dignity. Ego.
The difference between justice and revenge. Motivation.
The difference between knowledge and wisdom. Application.
The difference between beauty and superficiality. External validation.
The difference between bliss and ignorance. Waking up.
The difference between bitterness and pragmatism. Clarity.
The difference between intelligence and stupidity. Close-mindedness. Not profanity.

There's a liberty that comes with accepting the fleeting nature and breathtaking (in?)significance of the human condition. Forever is word best suited to fairy tales, don't you think?

That Awesome Moment.

2012-02-02T19:30:00.000+05:30

Harry Benson: "Brian Epstein — Beatles' manager — had just told them they were number one in America, and I was coming with them to New York, 1964."

Henry Miller's 11 Commandments of Writing.

2012-02-02T19:04:00.000+05:30

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can’t create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

Judge a book by its cover.

2012-01-28T17:26:00.001+05:30

Head on over to http://bookcoverarchive.com/, fellow bibliophiles. Feast your eyes on this.

Desinence.

2012-01-19T18:27:00.001+05:30

Off late, my thoughts are among the many things I no longer know. If you enter my room, or head, sometime, you'll find me looking at the ceiling, as if the words I need are up there. No, I don't want to say Wow or Goodnight, or any of those expressions with words that should have weight, but hover weightless in everyday conversation. The words I used to write now have different meanings, and the words I use, I don't know their meaning anymore.
I need to keep writing, or I won't know how to speak; to myself.

Someday, I would love to fit words together into a lasting sentence of incredible meaning.
I lace my fingers behind my head, looking not for answers, but for unanswered questions.

The ice cubes are melting. The calender pages are fervently being flipped.
Life needs more life than this.

Tasting Happiness. :)

2012-01-13T16:10:00.002+05:30

I love my life because I set an alarm for 7 p.m. everyday, and make myself a quick cup of cappuccino. Just because I can now.
Best. Birthday. Present. Ever. ^_^
*slow clap for gift-giver*

The Younger Daze.

2012-01-07T19:58:00.000+05:30

I celebrated my 19th birthday yesterday.

A day into being nineteen, and here I am. This moment, right here, is perfect.

Well, almost.

I wish I were basking in the glow of a million candles at my desk while writing with a delightfully scratchy fountain pen; crimson ink staining the pages of a weather-worn diary. I wish I had a coffee mug at arm's reach, deliciously chipped at the right places, and a cup crafted for citrus juices. I am too adrift from myself to tell you my favourite novel, but I'd want it nearby too. I wish I were experiencing a white winter. The blanket of white, the promise of renewal; that's something I'd like to see. I wish for a lot of things, and birthdays only make me appreciate the brief history of time between yesterday and today, then and now, you and me.

I'm not one to make resolutions, but I'd like to find a great book this year. The figures sketched in its pages might impress me as my own, or might resolve something for me. I wish a book enters my life at exactly the right moment. Like people, they tend to appear too early when I'm too intimidated to appreciate it, or too late, when its significance has been captured more wholly by someone else. I want to be as unsettled by a book as enchanted by it.

Today I am nineteen, and relatively untroubled by questions of identity and individuality. I know the person I am, and I'm on my way to being the person I always wanted to be. The stupidity of mankind is infinite, and yet, intelligence is what separates everyone. I revel in the sheer magnitude of all I have to absorb this year.

Happy (belated) Birthday to me. :)

I hope everyone finds happiness this new year. :)

Illusions, Dispelled.

2011-12-16T09:39:00.002+05:30

I was born in 1993, at the cusp of a generational divide. Born into a newly-liberalized India, I lived a life starkly different from what absolutely anyone older than me lived. I lived *with* electronic access to my country’s culture. The family regaled us with stories of life without what seemed like necessities in my life. Every 90s kid will identify.

But it was the regular immersion in literature that was the reason for my self-definition. To this day, I understand my life in the context of Jane Eyre and Raskolnikov, versus Brad Pitt and ‘the Rachel’. In an age of false perspective, where Shah Rukh Khan can appear taller than Deepika Padukone, and where marches are held to stand still, literature helped me gain knowledge in a way that television, or even the internet, never has.

Books have taken me to places I didn’t necessarily want to go, forced me to confront my prejudices, assumptions, and at the bare bottom, forced me to confront my ‘self’ at an intrinsic level. Words make me vulnerable in a way actions never seem to. For those precious moments, when I’m alone in bed with a book, I don’t feel alone. That fleeting moment, where the author actually connects with the reader, makes me realize that the ability to articulate is a beautiful one.

I can't believe half of December has vanished. Bombay continues to be a furnace, the morning breeze nothing but an ambush, the evening chill nothing but a glimpse of an actual winter.

Guess what? We got our very first client. (YAY!) I didn't ever imagine my life turning out the way it has.

2011 has been a breathtaking beauty of a year. Personally. Professionally. Every which ______-ally, there is.

I've been excruciatingly happy. I've been breathlessly sad. I've been indelibly excited. I've been morbidly afraid. I've undoubtedly lived.

Within Me A Lunatic Sings.

2011-11-13T20:19:00.000+05:30

This song perfectly encapsulates everything I've seen, heard and felt in the past few days :')

Sigur Ros is sheer magic. Nobody can ever convince me otherwise. I love their music and how it makes me feel. :)

A Song for Starlit Beaches.

2011-11-12T19:37:00.001+05:30

"There would be birdsong over flooded beach,

and we would be daylight over the shipwreck-sands."

I remember writing a few weeks ago, 'A risk is happiness'. The words echo in my mind, as I return to Mumbai after 4 near-perfect days.

There, the rhetoric of sudden freedom and liberation rings true. Perhaps the sun and sea and the sheer beauty of the place refracts the city gloom out of sight. The laid-back atmosphere there is infectious. I feel a growing sense of calm, something I thought I had grown desensitized to in the past few years, trudging along the corridors of competitive academia and teenage problems.

I feel like something out of a bathing soap commercial. Refreshed. Rejuvenated.
And so I'm back to the daily grind, with no lingering sadness for the sunset on those glorious days.
Perfection, after all, is best enjoyed ephemeral.

Hitting 7 Billion.

2011-10-31T19:02:00.001+05:30

The world's population hit 7 billion today. A number that lasted exactly one second.
The 7 billionth kid is an Indian. Apropos, I think. Gosh, this runaway population growth needs to be stopped in Mr.Plod stopping traffic in Noddy episodes fashion.

FYI: I am number 5, 513,802,182 on this planet.
And here's your number.

'Books' by Dorianne Laux

2011-10-28T12:38:00.001+05:30

You're standing on the high school steps,
the double doors swung closed behind you
for the last time, not the last time you'll ever

be damned or praised by your peers, spoken of
in whispers, but the last time you'll lock your locker,
zip up your gym bag, put on your out-of-style jacket,

your too-tight shoes. You're about to be
done with it: the gum, the gossip, the worship
of a boy in the back row, histories of wheat and war,

cheat sheets, tardies, the science of water,
negative numbers and compound fractions.
You don't know it yet but what you'll miss

is the books, heavy and fragrant and frayed,
the pages greasy, almost transparent, thinned
at the edges by hundreds of licked thumbs.

What you'll remember is the dumb joy
of stumbling across a passage so perfect
it drums in your head, drowns out

the teacher and the lunch bell's ring. You've stolen
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn from the library.
Lingering on the steps, you dig into your bag

to touch its heat: stolen goods, willfully taken,
in full knowledge of right and wrong.
You call yourself a thief. There are worse things,

you think, fingering the cover, tracing
the embossed letters like someone blind.
This is all you need as you take your first step

toward the street, joining characters whose lives
might unfold at your touch. You follow them into
the blur of the world. Into whoever you're going to be.

This poem just seems right on this blog. I identify with it on so many levels. Beautiful. :)

2011-10-27T20:32:00.004+05:30

Click here if you can't see it. Comments welcome :)

Happy Diwali, Folks :D

2011-10-24T19:53:00.000+05:30

I'm sure I'll be busy eating laddoos on Diwali morning, but I wish all of you a very very very Happy Diwali! :)
Light up your houses and your lives, guys. Stay happy. Stay awesome. (Awesome loosely translates to be eco-friendly).

My man, \Rajni/, says it best. :D

This One's for the Word-Crazy. :)

2011-10-24T13:42:00.004+05:30

It is common knowledge to readers of this blog that I am absolutely, legitimately word-crazy. I admit my knowledge of words is mainly superficial, I am often unaware of their origin. So I'd best classify myself as a word-scavenger owing to my never-ending fascination with all words beautiful. With a word being added to the English language every 98 minutes, English remains a personal favorite for its resilience and flexibility. What interests me are words from languages around the world that are seemingly untranslatable into English. Here are a few I loved :

Pana Po'o- To scratch your head in order to remember something.
(from the land of hula dances)

Tartle (Scottish)- The act of hesitating when introducing someone because you've forgotten their name.
(Reminds me of my absent-minded dad)

Gummuservi (Turkish)- Moonlight shining on water.
(This made me smile :) )

Esprit d' Escalier- The witty comeback that you think of moments after leaving the situation in which you might have been able to use it.
(We've all been there, haven't we?)

Katahara Itai (Japanese)- Laughing so much your stomach hurts. :D

Zhaghzhagh (Persian)- The chattering of teeth from cold or rage.

Kyoikumama - A mother who relentlessly pushes her children towards academic achievement.
The word originates from Japan. Befitting, I say. :P

Meraki (Greek)- Doing something with soul, creativity and love.

Luftmench- An impractical dreamer with no business sense.

Plimpplamppletteren (Dutch)- The skimming of a flat stone as many times as possible across the surface of the water.
(There is a word for this. Yes. :O)

Mencolek- You know that trick where you tap someone lightly on the opposite shoulder from behind to fool them? The Indonesians have a word for it. :D
A similar word is Vybafnout of Czech origin, which is to jump out from behind and say boo!

And the most offensive but the one that cracked me up the most IS:

Bakku-Shan (Japanese)- A girl who looks pretty from behind but ugly from the front.
Hahahahahahahahahaha!

Share your favourites with me :)

That Awkward Moment.

2011-10-21T13:02:00.001+05:30

^^ This just happened. And yes, it did freak me out a bit. Happened to you yet?

I also just made this. I'm cool like that. Turning into one of those creative Tumblr-ish people, I am. ^_^

For Life's Not A Paragraph. :')

2011-10-16T20:26:00.003+05:30

14th October marked the 49th death anniversary of e.e.cummings. These lines of poetry from 'Since Feeling is First' are breathtakingly beautiful .

"...we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis."

Gosh, I love those lines.
Another favourite of mine is his poem, 'who are you, little i,' which goes like this-

who are you,little i

(five or six years old)

peering from some high

window;at the gold

of november sunset

(and feeling:that if day

has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

The innocent sense of wonder and incredulity at natural beauty is stunning. I love his poems, as virginal and unassuming as they are, I love them. :)

Here's To The Crazy Ones.

2011-10-15T18:29:00.001+05:30

I don't own a single Apple product, never have, and that's probably why I didn't feel the vacuum created in the wake of Steve Jobs' death. Yet, I've read about him in papers and magazines since I first entered my teens, and unarguably, he was a genius. He was not ahead of his time as much as just right for his time.

This commercial first aired in 1997 was part of the dramatic ad campaign 'Think Different'. What aired on TV was a version facing Richard Dreyfuss, no slouch of a narrator. This, on the other hand, has Steve Jobs essaying the role of narrator and personally, think it's considerably more poignant.

Watch. :)

Spot the Arrow.

2011-10-11T20:10:00.000+05:30

Am I the only person who didn't see this instantly?

*eyes wide in amazement*

Old Book Smell :)

2011-10-10T18:58:00.004+05:30

Now this explains my favourite smell ^_^

Found on (the harpy)

What Brims With Optimism.

2011-10-09T19:57:00.002+05:30

Happiness is an imperative. I retain happiness as one of the few constants in my life.
I don't need a valid reason to feel happy.
I need a valid reason not to feel happy. Happiness is my general state of being.
And I adore the word in itself, and can never find an apt synonym. I've loved it ever since I was a five year old licking chocolate off my fingers.

I often see people settling, compromising.
While literature, cinema, music often helps people soar, routine drudgery and societal norms condition people to believe happiness is a destination; the journey a struggle, a sacrifice.
It is anything but that.

A virginal blank page is a thing of happiness. It brims with possibilities of wording deep thoughts, forging experiences, beautiful catharsis, and creating something out of nothing.

A finish line at the end of a marathon is a thing of happiness. The pride is not in the medal.

The shiver even as the sun is in your eyes on a winter morning. The portion of the song you pause, and play on loop. The favorite something, anything, everything.

When I look back at high school, I often don't recognize the person I was.
But I have thought, I have lived, I have grown. As much as I have transformed into the person I am today, and as much as I am still to learn, let me remind myself to find happiness where ever it may be.

Rationality is happiness. Impulsiveness is happiness. A risk is happiness. Cake is happiness.

Deciphering My Non-Verbal Cues.

2011-10-07T11:47:00.003+05:30

This is for anyone who is eager to know a little more about me. (Not that I live a secretive life, considering I have mentioned my entire AND real name on my blog and am easily traceable on Facebook.)
Perhaps you want to know those feelings of mine that I strive to keep hidden. If such is the case, read on, for I have compiled a list of all the non-verbal cues I unconsciously send out.

If I look away or wrinkle my nose when you walk into the room, it means I've begun to associate you with a certain kind of smell. Malodorous, yes. A field of manure or a garbage truck, maybe? Or you may just have put on that perfume I associate all menopausal aunties with, that leaves a weird 'Menopausal aunty was here' smell in the elevator.

If you're talking to me and my eyebrows are raised, it can mean one of two things. Curiosity or impatience. The height of the eyebrows is directly proportional to my level of curiosity or impatience. And since I haven't started threading my eyebrows yet, if you see them disappear into my hairline, do the safe thing and get the hell out of my sight.

If you catch me staring at you, best case scenario is that you're Ryan Gosling from Drive. If you aren't, this may mean you've annoyed me in some way. So, either I am thinking of an intelligent sounding compliment or how I should kick you in the gut. Obviously I don't have the courage to follow through either plan and you know it, hence the smirk on your face.

In case I haven't been able to get out of boring conversation, you may detect a barely audible sigh, a slight shoulder slouch, a stifled yawn or a series of punches to the wall that won't stop till I've fractured all my delicate fingers.

If you find me tapping my feet or drumming my fingers on the desk, I am playing my favourite song on full volume in my head and staring at your moving lips just for fun. I'll probably imitate you in front of friends later.

An interesting feature some friends pointed out is my 'duck face'. This is when I really AM concentrating, and ugly lines appear between my eyebrows and I pout like a petulant baby. Duck face usually appears during examinations when I finally figure out that 25 times 2 is 27, or right now.

If you see a huge smile plastered on my face, I'm actually enjoying talking to you. We may hang out after college at Barista or Candies. (This,however, is a truly hypothetical situation to convince you I am not as antisocial as this post may lead you to believe.)

You may finally, catch me daydreaming blissfully, generally in the middle of Accounts class. Don't interrupt because I am imagining myself one of two survivors in a nuclear apocalypse (the other being Bono, of course), and living the remainder of my days in peaceful seclusion and bloody Sundays.

Fall Foliage Fun.

2011-10-03T19:29:00.002+05:30

October: The season where everyone's an ant stumbling around busily in anticipation of beautiful winter.

Quote: L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
Image Courtesy: Mike Bingley's Flickr Photostream