6 days later situation is here. Aaaaaaaah

Writing today for several reasons.
The foremost being that of telling my folks( who are regular visitors of this blog) that i am very sorry for not being able to call/ come on skype/ seeming so "uninterested" in everything, but myself. Hollering out - " you guys are the best! truly adore you"

The other being that i just wanted to write...

Lastly, for Anais (whether she reads it or not is not the question. Wanted to pen down somewhere that i really enjoyed the dinner, giving it it's due) - the dinner was superb. Glad that i stopped by.

And with that, the blog entry ends. Thankyouveryyymuch

Tired...

Waiting for 6 days from now.
I have an essay to write and and exposé both scheduled for the same day, and i am tired. I cannot get more of the case, it's absolutely maddening.

Law and Justice.


Justice in Law?
Justice by law?
Justice through Law?

Justice or Law?

Till when is it right to give oneself second chances?
Call it being easy on yourself or escapist?

To be CALM

Happy Birthday!

" Eat, Love, Pray"

"All of life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly." --Martin Luther King Jr.

BEAUTIFUL Quote!

I have a Japanese Test tomorrow but, not being able to work… Sitting on your bed, with the warm Laptop warming your lap is such a comfortable position that it makes you a complacent and lazy moron. I am lazy and am ideally browsing the internet. I've been telling myself for quite some time now to get up, read The Economist but haven't budged. Instead, I've streamed you tube videos, successfully creating mini India right here, on my lap.

I had a relatively free today… Not tiring on the mind is what I mean to say. Or maybe it was my ignorance/indifference towards the events that made it ‘free’ as opposed to other days. Just one of those days when you’re sincerely your own master and no externalities are able to make it through to you.

I came back home so hungry that I hurriedly put pasta on a boil (extra supple, 3- minutes-and - ready -to – eat pasta) all while dropping my bag and layers of clothing at the same time. I ate this very unhealthy meal like a fat man. Sausages and scrambled eggs in protein-full accompaniment only vivify the fat man image. I’m feeling unhealthy about it already! But, the far tossed point I’m trying to make here is that when you come back from a long day of controlled eating, the hunger pangs are so sharp and well aimed that you’re ready to do anything to quell them! Any amount of fat, cheese, kebabs (and euros) for those hunger daemons to relinquish their hold on your stomach and more so, the mind!

Also, something interesting- Read Shobhaa Dé’s blog and learned of the serious blogging that exists in china and the restrictions posed on it!

Going to decode Japanese in a while… For the moment, it’s music, music and pondering.

Niel

Was going through my pictures and came across this one. Thought it was worth putting up....
Spent a lot of time with this little chap, this summer. He definately played 'actor' in my life! Haha!

"Tender is the night"

Spare the why of this pic

My biological cycle is so « screwed up » that once again I couldn’t sleep the entire night. But, at 6 24 (am, mind you) as I write this I can feel my eyelids becoming droopy and… I yawn.
So, brief synopsis of the past six hours: I studied and then decided to sleep at one. Trouble came when I couldn’t sleep! So I got up to write a mail to AIR INDIA. Yes! Air India ( long story cut short- my flight was delayed and I ended up missing my train, being stranded at Roissy having to book a hotel room, running around in cabs with two 30 +15 kg bags in this crazy city called Paris ) Despite the maddening, mouth drying, fatiguing day and a half it was, it had been forgotten (somewhat). But tonight I thought otherwise-that it should be known to ‘em. Donc j’ai bossé sur une lettre à envoyer.
Did that…but couldn’t send the mail because I didn’t have the documents scanned. Air India left there, I decided to watch a movie. The trouble is that I find it difficult to sit through a blurry movie, which is streamed online. In view of that, I’d download Wake up Sid this afternoon (I do this often enough in an attempt of having company during those fifteen minutes of lunch and dinner.)I ended up exhausting my stock. I saw Wake up Sid AND liked it. It was a good movie. Light but sensitive… Ranbir Kapoor, who has never really caught my attention before seemed very “good”. Naturally funny and lovable to be accurate with the words an all.
It’s 6 45 now. What’s planned for Saturday? Well, for the moment, a jog, a saunter in the weekly “marché” for fruits and veggies, maybe a walk to a local store to buy a mop and Economics

I turn to my blog more and more in times of solitude. When I’m “alone not lonely” (mind you ;) )…

Perdu

Last night, ( I don’t know whether it was as a dream or just another thought)I could word a certain complexity most accurately. But, it so happens that I’ve forgotten what it was. All that remain with me a little trace that I could…
How irritating this can be only I know. For now, I rack my brain to somehow find those words that came to me last night...

Happened to read these updates on Twitter. Liked the wording and wanting to share.
--ShashiTharoor RT @KS1729:(@shashitharoor)w/Anup Jalota sing "saare jahan se acha"4 diwali. Small reaffirmations of a vanishing ideal!

--priyankachopra the mind is a magician; it can make heaven out of hell and sadly hell out of heaven!

Postcard visits

September, 2009

This was a grand site indeed...
Looking upon these turbulent, Azur waters while standing on grassy cliffs, the Earth's topography came alive for me. I now know why the "Planet Earth" looks like what it does.

Lady Writer and the Water of Love...

I haven't written for so long not because of a lack of ideas but because of a lack of a unifying theme. A unifying theme for these many ideas, thoughts, and reflexions my brain churns out minute after minute, second after second. I've tried writing during History Seminars, during History Seminars but the incoherence of the text is so palpable that posting it would be ludicrous… Lot has happened over the past few days and again, I’m amazed at how life keeps unrolling itself like a film reel, and how when you look back at all that has happened, you cannot help but smile. Yesterday was Diwali. I cooked chicken curry, kneeded French Dough for pooris ( a sticky affair). The chicken turned out to be delicious and the pooris too were worth the mess in the kitchen. I ate with a friend who enjoyed the meal immensely. The evening was reserved for a "big party", a birthday party of a good friend, an " are you coming ? " event. I was pretty happy about my Saturday night scene. After all, some celebration on Diwali! So at 10 p.m. we headed out. A few of beers were what i'd planned and that's exactly how I went about it. I danced, spoke to people. It was during once such moments, when i held a 'bottle green' bottle of beer and sipped this splendid drink that someone enlightened me beyond imagination. She said, “think with the front of your brain” and gesticulated a movement, which cut the brain in two, very unequal parts such that the front was just a sliver. The sliver was to do the thinking and the rest - the large, dense, 97 percent of your brain was to do the unconscious pondering. Come to think of it, limiting the size of your brain so as to reduce the score and scores of idle thoughts is effective as a strategy. Allowing good things to come to you by surprise and take you by surprise. Good things that you've wanted but not pondered the “fluffiness” out of them…

So, there she was, “speaking words of wisdom, “let it be…” ”
Therefore, I'll stop thinking of whether Mr Kiffe would happen or not. Just wait for the day I might be taken, by surprise! “In shah Allah”

A note to myself- Odious Opinions.

"Cause when you showed Me, Myself , you know, I became sAomeone else"- In the Sun, Coldplay ft Michael Stipe

I’ve realized something about myself-that it does not take a lot to make me Happy or, for that matter, Sad. Call it good or bad? But why call it anything at all? Why be of an opinion? Why opine? Why call it anything at all, but just what it IS, just a characteristic truly?
Why not be neutral, like water? Let things “be” just like they are; without tarnishing them with a film of judgement?
I try to not have an opinion. See things in the moment. Live in the present.
But because I talk of it like a knowing practice, it’s surely something that doesn’t come naturally . However, I try, because I know its worth.
To see things and people for what they are, just like they are in that moment of time, without concluding anything about them is truly a virtue. To believe even remotely that you know what they entail is detrimental. What becomes more existential is our short-sightedness than the opinion drawn.
Opinions change. To label anything or anybody would only destabilise us if our label is mismatched. It pains to have people not meet up with your expectations. But inspecting this statement closely, the defeat stems from the existence of a pre- conceived opinion.
Water neither corrodes like acid nor emulsifies like oil. A tentative to live without opinions would expose the world as an iridescent vista before us. It would be like sipping water off a water-fall, running bare footed in velvet green, undulating fields, plucking strawberries and sitting under the shade of a tree. It is much like the archetypal painting of children- Mountains, Smiling sun tucked between one central valley, a brook that runs just beneath his nose and flowers (of course) in their blossom, spanning the length of the paper.

Think

Excessive contemplation. Should I or should I not. Interpretation of all around you!
Should I or should I not?
Land me safe...

" Quote"

"In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary. "

-Aaron Rose

N and N, love always.
I had another post that I’d wanted to post but thought it would be a mockery of blogging, defeating the very purpose of real, intimate, heart-felt writing. I say this is because my earlier post circled around a theme that was rather jovial and happy (like a kid who’s seen a shooting star); what I feel write now is quite the on
contrary. Today, I don’t feel so right and nothing I do seems to undo that. Thus, staying true myself, my blog and you, I post this. I save that post for another day, not sodden but light.

My stay in India is coming to an end and this day, the 20th of August 2009 asserts that it was not a satisfactory visit. Definitely not worthy of that kind of lofty imagination I’d used to foresee my days in dear old Dilli. I don’t like the morbid, melancholic tone this article is taking. Neither do I like affirming with such aplomb the unsatisfactory nature of my visit but, writing is better than moping. Also, it’s a good way to remember- my visit and laugh on the emotional upturn of this day, and for future reference, read it to feel better on another gloomy day. It’s my own boost-thy-morale mechanism. It’s working for me already.

(I’ve ended the post so brusquely that I am ashamed. The point is that it’s my blog and in my opinion it’s supposed to be something that quite simply SOOTHES. It’s done that to me and making most of it. I’m going to "move it".)

It's final. 2009 is the year I go to Sciences Po. Something i've wished for day in and day out...

The city,Priyanka Varma; May 2009

I feel it's amazing how He takes care of you.
Yesterday I received an e-mail that distanced the thought, which had the potency to make me highly doubting... A big thankyou to Him.

à degager...

Je degage ma chambre au jour d'hui, pour passer l'été en Inde. Je me deberasse de tout qui me semble inutile. Une vrai tache. Il y a des epangles, les tubes de cole, des dossiers en bon état. Mais est ce que je dois les ammerner? J'ai une valise pleine de fringues. Et encore des fringues à y mettre. OOOsh!

I am a Risk Taker.







Dealing with idiosyncracies of my own...

For Friendship

"Celui qui n'est plus ton ami ne l'a jamais été." Aristotle
"The friendship that can cease has never been real." Saint Jerome


If I had to describe the year that is going by, I would describe it as a year very high on emotion and unfortunately drama. As much as I do like to alienate myself from the latter, it seemed to hurl itself at me most tactfully, choosing the time I was most unaware of his kindling: Unbraced I handled him awfully.

Time came as the healer. As days passed, the incident began to slowly fade. However, looking in hindsight, it was a clear demarcation, a 'wanted impurity' in my otherwise relatively homogeneous life.

I call it a wanted impurity because it taught me so much. Otherwise haplessly naive, I understood the master piece of a human mind and its tendencies. I lost friends in the process but at the same discovered those who were truly mine. I saw the side of me I detested enough to never unleash it again. But, more than anything, I began to appreciate myself for who I am all over again. Anything for this kind of dawining!

Lotus Pond

My sunday afternoon was spent in the thick, murky, gelatinous waters of the Lotus Ponds. Dispered here an there, to me Lotus Ponds are something of extreme beauty.

Lotus Pond, Priyanka Varma; May 2009

It's a Thursday and that too an unpredictable one. It started as a sunny day but now as a look through my window, the tree rooted a just below my window sways violently- I think soon the clouds would give way to the rain. I opened the window to feel the chill and smell the air. For usually the air smells different just before the rain.
‘Smell of Rain’ as they call it back home; several nuances of this term in fact. You have ‘ the smell of wet mud’, ‘smell of rain’, ‘smell of just before it is going to rain’ ‘ smell after the rain’ ‘barish ki mitti’. I’m sure all of us relate to this sensual activity. Us Indians possess a great deal of ‘mutual understanding’ when it comes to this barish factor.
We like the respite that the rain offers to our otherwise sunny days, so crisply baked by the summer sun. Standing in our terraces we watch the movement of clouds, predicting when these rain bearers would give way. We talk of the harshness/ lovliness of the wind, “Hawa”. Some unlucky member is picked to show extreme nimbleness in picking the clothes off the clotheslines. Doors and Windows are shut in hurry. (At my place, there was an array the odd apertures to shut- Skylights, doors and windows, furniture too had to be displaced)
When the phone rings we answer it as harbingers of good whether. Radio jockeys too get perky. They not only remind of the listeners of the deadly “chai –Samosa Pakora” deal but make their own craving heard. Their play- list brusquely becomes thought evoking. Parked at a Red light you hear those ‘wettish’ numbers: ‘Beetein Lamhein’ and those which incorporate the word ‘Maula’. You stare at through the window, reminiscing of that memory.
Heh! That’s what the rain does to us back home. Here we holler and scream. Pray for the sun to show himself again for without him, it’s gloomy and horrible. Goodness! It is in strange but poignant ways that one misses home. The best part being, just about anything can stir it!

Un arbre , Priyanka Varma; 2007
The picture is that of tree i'd made a year ago. Put it for the tree I mentioned in this text.

When they say that YOU are your worst enemy, it is unabashedly true. In my case my moods are my worst enemy. I feel downright awful today. And this dark mood comes from the incertitude and wait I’m in.
What seemed a shiny bubble of an option seems a little placid today ... I need to move, budge, stir . Get out this mood of doubt.

So I made myself tea, inspired by a friend who, in his response to a "what's happening" told me that he was having mint tea: I made myself cinnamon tea, a concoction I’ve been making with the cinnamon powder that I’d originally bought for an apple crumble and the tea bought for a mere 50 Rs from Mittal tea house. A quaintly beautiful tea shop in Jor bagh... Invigorating is the effect of tea and of course writing.

This evening I meet up with friends for dinner. Look forward for I’ve been a loner through the day (Choosing not to go for college). I don't know what is in store for me.
So I leave to Him.

“Inshahh Allah”

I'm hoping and wishing like never before...

Semothrace, The Louvre;Paris 2009

'' I really want to see you, I really want to feel you but it takes so long my Lord, my sweet Lord..."

To Madhav, who watches me from above... I don't know what to say to you. Are you smiling? How do you react to my wishes? Do you smile?


The wait ended today on a positve note. My hands trembled even after i'd finished reading the e-mail. Heart throbbed.
However, a new wait has begun.

Still Waiting.

Moi je t’aimais, toi tu étais amoureux.
Ce n’est pas la même chose…
- La femme d’à coté de François TRUFFAUT

Another day passes. I am awaiting results. I’m in a constant “attente”. When I complained to my mother about this perennial waiting aspect of my life, she enlightened me yet again: She said the wait is never over. My mother never fails to surprise me with the strength of character and mind. I adore here to morsels and I make it a point for my entourage to know.

What were the highlights of my day? I bought a book! Despite all the work I have on my plate, I bought a book. Looking forward to the reading that should follow…

I took this picture when i visited Paris, Feb 2009; It's a local bakery shop; I love my papa:Donc <> me parait adorable.

Tentative.

Parçe qu'il s'agit toujours d'initiatives et tentatives...

I have never had the practice of writing a blog and thus this message here becomes an honest tentative. It might not be what you want to read: a write-up on some common worldly issue or a new-found (maybe even old but revived philosophy) but it is certainly a minds battle, my minds battle, with my fingers, with the veracity and complexity of my statements and there coherence. I wish to deliver something through this text.

I feel, on a Sunday evening, after a satisfying dinner of steak and salad, a little restless and a little at a loss of expression.

The past two weeks were spent at a "chantier", a construction site for my internship with a construction company. I was the non- naturally Franco phonic member of this boy gang. The odd ball and so there source of extreme amusement. The fact that the currency was called 'Rupee' , me Priyanka, the fact that India did not position anywhere on the carte de Euro 27, the fact that cricket and not football was the craze became there source of light humour. I laughed with them when they came to lunch at 12. A one hour break after serious rigour of 5 hours. We heated our lunches in the microwaves placed in the portable cabins and lunched together. I usually didn't have a lunch that needed heating because it was sandwiches, cheese and 'yaourt' that i ate. Something that i packed in haste at the wee hours of the morning so as to report at the depot at 6 45! They called me Pochantas, Josephine or Marionette. Priyanka was a rare surprise.
The Boss was a meaty old chap, wicked to the core, who spared no one. Apparently, he'd spared me on virtue of being a girl. There was an old man who handled the remotes of the cranes. He'd become a good friend and we would talk while he operated. I'd met him first when i was walking to the company's offices and it being pitch dark in the morning, he'd asked me where i was heading. We were heading in the same direction, unaware of what was to follow. He was a French of Algerian descent. Monsieur Hassan I called him though he spelt it like Achen. He lived alone, and now that i think of it, his lassitude brought him to bring a lunch that resembled mine. Paninis they were, but unlike my sandwiches, they did neat the microwave. Profiting of the fact that he didn't have the earth to dig and walls to freeze, we spoke of many things under the sun. He said to me one day, something so simple that it struck. He said, "chacun a son propre chemin", that everyone has his own path. This simple clarity of thought made me like him immediately. I walked back till a common point with him. He even took me to the placefrom where he bought his paninis but alas! they had run out of the bread! Happened for the good- his paninis that he ate day after day would always be a source of inquisitiveness for me. I’d broomed their cabin once, and they though delighted they had dirtied it within hours. Coffee in the morning before starting work was something I looked forward to. There were so many things I looked forward too…

So, tomorrow I shall miss these fellas. These fellas who smoked like engines and worked liked engines too. Who joked around with me because they felt close enough too. Who made me coffee and gave me there greasy wooden pencils to stir.

I made them coffee on my last day. I shall miss them. They shall miss me too.