The Journey

It's been a while since I last posted anything. I have some stuff lying in my drafts that need time and effort before any of it comes even close to being presentable. This tiny thing popped up during REM. Hope you like it.

The story of all our lives. My take on various relationships we form and break during an entire lifetime. Some last,some don't. I am thinking of G'n'R singing November Rain in my head right now.
C'est la vie.

***

We met,
We spoke,
We smiled.
We became friends.

We laughed,
We kissed,
We sighed,
We became lovers.

We moved,
We got busy,
We ignored.
We became distant.

We fought,
We cried,
We broke up.
We are strangers.

Naina 

Turmoil

Today I walked in your city,
You have no idea.
I walked the streets you've walked,
And you have no idea.
I am eating foods you once wanted me to taste,
You have no idea.

I met your friend you told me about,
Do you know yet?
We shared a frame on a camera,
Have you seen it yet?
We spoke about you,
Have you heard?

We've traveled so far,
We'll never reach where we wanted to.
Everything looks familiar,
The music resounds of you.
That stupid woman who sings,
Keeps playing on TV.

What am I to do with all the pictures?
Where do I store all the memories?
What becomes of our friends?
What of the hollowed greetings,
That will never be?

Goodbye, mon ami.
Someday, forgive me.

An Ode

For someone who hates to say goodbye, a one year MBA program is not the place to be. The frequency with which we have to bid farewell to out professors is higher than the frequency of Aravind Kejriwal's dharnas. Every two weeks, we give a standing ovation to a professor from one part of the world or other for delivering the last lecture for the class of 2016. I kid you not when I say the room is charged with emotions, I honestly believe some people secretly break down and cry later with all the energy that exists in that room. This term, we had Professor Katalan taking Decision Making and Optimization for half the term. He is a truly remarkable man. The kind of insight he brought to the classroom with all his understanding of different industries and weird trivia was awe inspiring. I don't think I spent more than 10 minutes of sleeping time in any of his lectures. (Not counting, of course, that one lecture that I slept through because I just could not bring myself to get out of bed.) And then there was dearly beloved little Professor Croce with his little eccentricities and perfect sense of humour. After his sixth lecture, I honestly regretted sleeping through the first five. He made economics fun. I find it hard to believe that I am saying this, but global economics is actually quite interesting. And just like the rest, they are now gone. To be heard from no more. Just two of the fourteen who have been with us in a span of three months. C'est la vie. our paths shall cross if they have to, or maybe they won't.

In another world, another one of those psychometric test reports has called me arrogant. I don't get it? I think I am the nicest person in the whole wide world. How can anybody call me arrogant? I disagree. Just stating my opinion out loud.
Neha is now waiting for dinner. I should scoot!

Another time,
Naina

Through History in Heels

So, I finally got to watch Jurassic World last week. I thought it was well made. Yash Raj would be very proud. They even took the effort to make Rahul Gandhi's strain of "women empowerment" a reelity (That was  not a typo). Apart from the cliched kissing scenes and the over hyper pre-teen, the only thorn in my side, (or should I call it the stiletto in my side?) was the five inch heel Bryce Dallas Howard was wearing through the movie. I don't care if those are Jimmy Choos or never before heard of shoes, here is a fact. Heels break. And I don't just mean the ones attached to your shoes. Here is another fact, Pressure = Force per unit area, which is to say, if you be walking on mud, your heels be sinking in deep. No way you run like a chicken whose ass is on fire like that. So Missy, unbuttoning and rolling up your sleeves is not how you compensate for your choice in footwear. Slipping out of those pretties, gently picking them up and throwing them far far away into the deep blue artificial lake behind you is the only way to go. And yes, you might want to consider putting on a pair of running shoes. Bare-feet ain't getting you anywhere either.

So much for the anti-sexist movies. Would it kill you if the actress doesn't look perfect (read sexy) at all times?

*Spoiler below*

Q: How do you outrun a T-Rex with a flaming torch in hand, pretending to be Anya Major?

Ans: You don't. But when you do, make sure you do it with panache in a pair of stilettos you've been running marathons in All Day Long.

*Spoiler over*

I don't want to get into any meninist/feminist arguments over this. I am just pointing out a big fat blooper in a big fat dino movie. Read it, and let it go.

And yeah, Go Girl Power!

Naina

OCD

How do I make the deaf hear,
How do I have the blind see?
Perhaps the greatest human folly,
How do I learn to let it be?

A fish outside of water,
Or a bird in a cage.
One struggles to breathe,
The other struggles to be free.

What really beats within,
Nobody wants to know.
Not you, nor me,
All we want, is peace.

One day the fish will die,
And the bird fly away.
The struggles will be lost,
And no peace shall prevail.

****

Let me know what you think. I have no idea what it means.

Braino-O

I feel like writing today, and as always, I don't know what I want to talk about. I am having an extremely tough time getting back to studying. I spend five hours reading two pages of text. And then I need to get up and move around a bit. I figured I'll poetize about it.

Brain-O, 

Don't be a pain-o.

Focus,

Else I'll be a mess-us.

It's easy,

What needs to be studied.

Just be a pal,

And we'll do it all.

After all,

We are a genius.

***

This is bad even by my standards, but there, it is out there now, I'll put up something more substantial some time when inspiration strikes.

Till then, I shall go and study some accounting. What DO all the numbers really mean!?

Adios, Chen-Chen

It has been five days since I got back home to Delhi and the fact that I am not returning to Chennai any time soon has not yet sunk in. My bags are still packed. I have effectively managed to put off unpacking them just the same way I kept putting off packing them in the first place. The whole process of packing and then unpacking has a touch of finality to it. The one thing that kept running through my mind when I began packing over three weeks ago, was, how the hell am I expected to fit three years of my life into two miserly suitcases? That would require leaving a whole lot of extra baggage behind. Now that I have to begin unpacking, my 4X7 ft. cupboard somehow feels much smaller than the one shelf that I owned in Chennai. C'est la vie, oui? Fortunately, the multiple visits to the bank and the extravagant planning for my new school are keeping me going. Nim returns to India in about four hours now, my added distraction. (She would hate to be called that, a distraction).
I wrote her a poem last week, which she hates as well. But for the benefit of all my Tamil speaking friends, I shall share it here.
For those of you who don't understand the ways and language of Tamils, you need to look up malli poo.

Nimpoo,
You ain't no malli poo.
But I still love you,
And will always do.

I probably made cummings or the others turn in their grave with this. But I laughed out loud when I came up with it.

There is so much to write about, but for once, words fail me. I keep thinking about all the people I left behind, some of whom I may never meet again. I am beginning to understand that attachment is perhaps the greatest of all human flaws. It ties us down to places and people, and prevents us from moving on. The fact that my luggage while returning home was 20 kilos over the prescribed weight limit speaks loads about what attachment can do to humans. It makes you pay for extra baggage. Things will get better with time. The old may not be replaced, but they will be remembered with fondness and acceptance. And who knows, our paths might just cross again. Let's hope that when they do, we remember each other the same way as the day we parted ways. I know I'll be seeing the girls again, some bonds are harder to break than others. And I hope we can still go crazy like we used to on Friday nights.
And yes, if anybody out there understood the point of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, please shed some light. I have no clue why I spent three weeks reading that book. It made no sense at all to me. I have cribbed about it on every possible platform that I could, yet, nobody has come forward to offer an explanation.
An hour and a half left for us to go get Nim from the airport. I need a new distraction to pass the time till then.

P.S. My last one year paid off. I got into the school I wanted to. Onto new things now. And that I only mention by the way.

Au Revoir, me looveelay.