Satre versus Streisand

My college organized its annual literary fest last week ( VIBES,2012 ). And we had a blast!

Not that we (by ‘we’ in this post, I mean Binita- whose blog is here here - and me) won too may prizes but we participated in most of the events as teams or individually. We almost made it in ‘lost your translation’ and ‘mind your language’ as a team. She won JAM (all applaud please! firstly because it’s one of the biggest crowd pullers and you have to be crazy awesome to make it to finals and secondly, because she gave the college some legendary one liners, which of course, can’t be put up here publicly ;-)). I won MOCK PRESS and couldn’t have been happier. This is our last vibes because next year will be our final year and neither of us will be sane enough to participate. Ahhh…. The first signs of the end of college life.
Anyway, ‘CREATIVE WRITING’ was one of the daily events and I had decided to do it all five days, just so that I could have something at the end to put up here. Ok no, I wanted to pick up some prizes too, which I did ! So the the next four posts will be the ones I wrote last week on four consecutive days . they are definitely not my favourite- a little too ‘serious’ for my taste but I did the best I could. Leave a comment if you like them!



DAY 1.        TOPIC : SATRE SAID THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE WHILE STREISAND SANG THAT PEOPLE WHO NEED OTHER PEOPLE ARE LUCKY. WITH WHOM DO YOU AGREE AND WHY ?

Satre and Streisand sit across each other, in my drawing room, with the usual aromatic, yet bitter, Assam tea in their cups. As they sip it noiselessly, the questions for this evening rumble in their minds. The red sunset on the sea, visible through the glass window, fills the air with anticipation of a definite conclusion. But as every day, neither of them breaks the ice. Thankfully, their eyes meet, and with no pleasantries setting the foreground, they set out arguing, unrestrained .Excerpts:

SATRE: Hell is other people, Streisand. You see them beating you in life. You see them taking the ignored road, and have a beautiful journey through it. Seeing them, you push yourself harder and pity your own shortcomings. Thus every single day, they make you a living hell.

STREISAND: ‘people’ are not just people. They are also friends and family. They beat us in order to set higher standards. They walk on that different road, to taste rebellion and to leave behind a legacy of change. They point us our failures so that we can have a good laugh at ourselves and understand that we are humane, not God .We need these “hells”. We are kind of lucky to be needing people.

SATRE: lucky? What lucky?

STREISAND: lucky because only the loners and the dead don’t need people. At least we know that we are neither!

SATRE: Not funny. Look, I am not talking big fancy stuff like you. Forget the legacy part. Look at ‘now’. What are you scared of at this moment? Death? Na... Bankruptcy? Nopes …You are scared of losing this argument to me, who is a ‘people’. At office, you fear your boss. At the gym, you envy the great bodies OTHERS have. While on road, you are angry at those who honk unnecessarily. The source of everything evil in your life is ‘people’.

STREISAND: Yes right. They are all many steps ahead of you and me. Only that none of us are on the same staircase! The social equations work both ways, implying that we will be needed too. And if hell is other people, heaven is NO people. Who wants to be in such a barren place? ‘People’ around us come in readymade packages, mixed but fixed proportions of good and bad.  Make peace with it, SATRE, don’t hate mankind.

SATRE: I love humanity!! It’s just the humans I can’t stand .You know that, don’t you?!!?

And then there was the sound of their characteristic laughter. For some time, I watched them both argue to and fro.

 Satre sounded a firm realist, but also an egotist.

Streisand appeared an altruist, but also an escapist.

In this ageless classic war between cynicism and hope, whose side should I be on?

My Assam tea had been sipped till the last drop. The sun had diminished into the horizon by now. Gradually, Satre and Streisand evaporated into thick fumes. The last ray of sun diffused into the twilight sky and the fumes, into ME.

Life of a blogger part 1

Starting of an odyssey

"the walls are yellow and the ceiling white.the fan churns slowly with a slight wheeze.books on my table.i am sitting on the left edge of the bed ,the pillow between my back and the wall.my phone, head phone and a bottle of water on my right.its drizzling outside and there is a streetlight right across my window."

for quite a while now , i have struggled within myself to decide the fate of my 'feelings'. a constant,nearly uncontrollable urge to write versus the practical merits of staying mum.not that the conflict has ended today leaving me victorious or undivided.neither have i suddenly evolved to be a wiser person today.as most other things in our lives , the logic behind this start-up,is perplexing for me too,and hence goes unexplained on this page  :-)

as you would have guessed, the act of  'publishing' what i write is the biggest deal of all for me. thankfully, its sealed.the blog name was a confusion too till i got the right name.thankfully,that is sealed too.hopefully,there will be more to this blog than this proud declaration of  'blog-opening' .i have imposed huge expectations on myself as a 'writer',if that's a fit enough word for somebody with doubtable calibre, and i sincerely,deeply,honestly hope to keep writing...

so here it goes....the first three posts are a cut-paste from my wordpress blog page which is where i first started to write 6 months ago but never dared to publish... the next ones will be relatively fresher...:-)

three...two..one...go !

day two

These days, with only three more practical exams to go before I head home after a year, I am getting more and more retrospective by the day. what is it that I will remember from this year ?? The overwhelming feeling of turning 21 ?? The overnight addas with the gang? The semester I worked my ass nights off for?? The sunset at the beach? some person ? some profound realisation?? Honestly, none. Its the end of another year I probably wouldn’t be able to differentiate from other years when I look back. But its one full year of my life. one year in the making of me. I wish life could be an indexed book with chapter headings. The lesson names imprinted in bold alongside the year you learnt them. that way, in the later years, we could all have a book .open it wide. Revise certain years. talk about them.....”in the march of nth year, while I was doing so and so.....”.
hilarious wish.isnt it? Who wants such an orderly formatted life? there are small lessons, small dips ,small spikes everyday.no larger than life ,climax-mimicking turn of events. and the lessons keep changing.always.thats the fun,isnt it? :-)

day one

last winter,that is December of 2010,my mother's ancestral house was put up for sale.this house had stood in one of the ancient colonies of the city for more than 75 years.Tall,yellow -brown ,with walls so thick that could shield out all the dust and luu-a constant summer escort in patna.named “Indu Nibash” after my great grandmother’s name “indu”,this house, has a legacy of its own. at one point it used to house some 30 people of the clan. a mango tree in the backyard, fans hanging from the barred ceilings, a small stuffed pujo-ghor on the underside of the staircase.....i can probably sit here writing vividly about each of those ...those portraits on the walls...dusty wooden cupboards with stacked books...and switchboards with black switches-the “click” they made whenever one used them..all these and more keep flashing in my mind as reminders of a bygone era. and all this after having spent only my school vacations in that house. makes me wonder-  my grandmother ,who lived over half a century in that house, what does this leave her with ??
Nothing before that event had inspired me enough put up a blog.it now makes sense.i document my memories.that's the idea.simple. i write, for the sake of it,not to make it a best seller.as i glide by the years, i keep making inferences from my life.and then i infer some more.
So here it is then.25 days before the year 2012.the end of my dormancy towards blogging and the beginning of my blog...happy reading!

day three

i am there already.the dearth of ideas to write about.so i picked up this topic from the list wordpress put up on the dashboard for consideration.

10 things i am absolutely sure about :

1.women are a different species.i mean,we women are a different species.period.men resemble women in tons of things just as chimpanzees resemble men.evolution concept.period.
2.there is no way rakhi sawant can be cured because no body knows what that disease is.they should start researching on it though.its spreading.
3.love definitely does not mean "never having to say you are sorry " (quote by jenny in Erich Segal's love story ).if you wake me up from sleep, love or no love,you gotta be sorry.really really sorry.
4.most people especially those who loved the movies matrix,inception,shutter island etc have not understood these movie entirely.but these movies are intellectually stimulating that is why these are their favourites.but if they are asked to explain it scene by scene concept by concept,they would stutter for sure.same applies to rocket science,psychology and girl friends.
5.the world needs mother Teresa and similar people.as much as it needs water and food.children without childhood on streets/during wars/orphaned by natural disasters makes me wonder how many of us actually care beyond signing facebook petitions,writing essays and blaming politicians for the mess.the answer makes me even more cynical.cycle repeat.
6.we are obsessed with lives of celebrities.as if they are extra terrestrials.but why ???
7.if we actually do start a civilisation on moon,it wont be romantic any more to look at the moon/write poems/sing songs/make promises to your beloved involving the moon.imagine doing all this with sharma jee's house.moon is romantic because its unreachable,intangible.once people start living/shopping/cooking there,it's as good as sharma jee's two storeyed,clothes -drying- on- the terrace ,yellow-brown house.none of us want that.not even those grey-haired scientists working on "civilisation on moon " projects.somebody kill those projects please.
8.coffee plus rains plus books make an awesome threesome.only in movies though.i never understand how to focus on all three at one go.
9.chetan bhagat should try new genres now.no,his books are not inspiring at all.there is a big difference between how he visualises his work/importance and how we readers perceive him.he needs to be guided so much.his one liners are great though.
10.nokia hand sets are the best.at least for ones like me who use cell phones for just making calls and sending texts.given the amount of assault my phone has gracefully endured in the past three yrs, i am beginning to wonder what goes in the making of these almost bullet proof handsets.these companies should try using similar techniques on normal guys and turn them into assault proof marriageable men.great idea ..awesome market..i am telling ya!!