Blogger’s block seems to be my natural state, with some intermittent blogging scattered here and there. Hi!
Nothing remarkable has happened lately, if you discount the fact that I am WORKING. In a MUSEUM. And they PAY me and everything. I have a pension plan. ME. I mean, my day consisted of eating an apple here, reading a book there, watching TV, laughing at the BJP. And I am now in a flatshare, paying RENT. And I cook my own food (or what I call food, my parents beg to differ. Apparently Rajma does not a meal make). I sleep at reasonable hours and cannot actually function anymore with three hours of sleep. I joined the gym (That’s all, I haven’t actually been there after that little walk on the wild side). And I use a washing machine and worry about interest rates. I caught myself thinking of investments the other day. Christ. Dangerous notions need to be quashed at infancy, or I’ll soon be watching Sanskar TV and learning yoga, and then where will we be?
So, besides independent and semi-responsible living 101, what else is up? Nothing much, really. But I did see a guy running past me in Euston station, in trousers three sizes too large, flashing grey underwear. Yes, it was that evident, and yes, it is burnt into my retinas forever. Seriously. If you do need to show everyone your underwear, at least wear interesting ones like those Chandler has in one episode – ones with hearts (yes, again, I have spent years of my life watching Friends. Ask me to quote them. Go on, I dare you.) Or ones with Calvin and Hobbes, or Superman ones. Otherwise, KEEP THE DAMN TROUSERS UP. What will your grandmother think, eh? Heard of something called a belt? Handy things, those.
Oh, did I tell you about the 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle that I did, just to see if I could? It was finished after a lot of stubborn determination that I would not let something called ‘Flower Fairies’ defeat me. I think I might have become slightly more short sighted after that little adventure. It was very satisfying though, I can tell you that. These days, I am flapping around in art shops looking for marble paper (that’s craft paper, non-Indians) to make origami cranes. I learnt how to from someone at work. While I don’t intend to make a Thousand Origami Cranes to make my wishes come true (if I had to wish, I’d probably wish for a thousand of them first, made and delivered to my doorstep), I am contemplating making a few to hang about in my room. That, my friends, is the extent of my arty side. After that I am going to learn how to knit. A sock, anyone? Fun times! I am clearly living life on the edge here people!
This blog post, in case you haven’t already noticed, is not about anything in particular (unlike all my other very focused, profound, thought driven posts). I'm trying to ‘inspire’ myself by actually putting something up, hoping that its ghastliness will scare me into quickly writing something sounding slightly more intelligent and not make my parents wonder where all that money they spent on my education went.
Or I could always go back to watching Vampire Diaries I suppose.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
An odd, disjointed post
Silence. Some feel oppressed by it, some live with it. I love it, just as I love darkness. I love it just as I love sound, just as I adore light. Everyone sees the world in different ways; I see it in these terms – silence, noise, darkness and light. We have already assigned value to everything. Dark is bad, light is good; as for silence and noise, both have their virtues and vices – silence may be peace or death, noise may be chaos or life.
I can wish and hope that I will live in a quaint village far away from ‘the maddening crowd’, but the reality is, I have always lived in cities, plonked right into the centre of humanity. Life hurries past, its impatience and breathlessness is stunning. Why does no one wait? Why does no one look a person in the eye? Why the shuffling, pushing and hurrying? Where are they all going? No, I am not trying to ask some profound existential question - seriously, where the hell are they all going? I imagine them running through their days, mechanical, schedule bound, day in and day out – and suddenly, stunned, surprised – they are 70 and life as they know it, youth, has passed them.
Life, as I know it, is baffling at times. What is our purpose? At 20, we battle confusion and anxiety to answer this very question, some lucky ones come up with answers that satisfy their minds, while the rest just muddle their way through life, or so I suppose. For me, life is one huge learning process - but for all that learning, we get only one shot at it. So next time I am confronted with a big decision, I suppose I should remind myself of this: one life, one chance. No regrets. In the end, I will be worm food. Might as well make my journey toward the inevitable more eventful. So, I will continue to wear my childish socks, and love my colourful laces, and I will continue talking to myself. I will write here even if no one read this, though I sure as hell will try to make people read it. I will continue to watch sitcoms and dramas till I lose interest in them, and not care that I haven’t listened to, or don’t like, classic rock bands.
Wait. Watch. Breathe. Now go.
I can wish and hope that I will live in a quaint village far away from ‘the maddening crowd’, but the reality is, I have always lived in cities, plonked right into the centre of humanity. Life hurries past, its impatience and breathlessness is stunning. Why does no one wait? Why does no one look a person in the eye? Why the shuffling, pushing and hurrying? Where are they all going? No, I am not trying to ask some profound existential question - seriously, where the hell are they all going? I imagine them running through their days, mechanical, schedule bound, day in and day out – and suddenly, stunned, surprised – they are 70 and life as they know it, youth, has passed them.
Life, as I know it, is baffling at times. What is our purpose? At 20, we battle confusion and anxiety to answer this very question, some lucky ones come up with answers that satisfy their minds, while the rest just muddle their way through life, or so I suppose. For me, life is one huge learning process - but for all that learning, we get only one shot at it. So next time I am confronted with a big decision, I suppose I should remind myself of this: one life, one chance. No regrets. In the end, I will be worm food. Might as well make my journey toward the inevitable more eventful. So, I will continue to wear my childish socks, and love my colourful laces, and I will continue talking to myself. I will write here even if no one read this, though I sure as hell will try to make people read it. I will continue to watch sitcoms and dramas till I lose interest in them, and not care that I haven’t listened to, or don’t like, classic rock bands.
Wait. Watch. Breathe. Now go.
Monday, April 25, 2011
The Dream
I had a dream that I owned a house. My own place. It was a strange place, not that I expect any home of mine to be any different. Cozy.
There seemed to be no front door to this home of mine (Psychologist friends, have a field day with that one). It was small, just a bedroom and a kitchen (even in my dream, my mind is clear about the fact that I have no money).
I had to break into my own house, by the way. I climbed up a fire escape, and ended up in a corridor. To my right was a window, the kind that slides up, and I entered my house through that window, knocked over something that was on a desk under said window. My bed was next to the desk. Plenty of cushions, lots of reds, browns, and greens. Books everywhere, a small table lamp. There is no phone.
Through beaded curtains on the right, and there is a wash basin behind another curtain, and right ahead of me is a well sized kitchen. (Where is the bathroom? Where are all the French windows I always wanted?)
I worry in this house of mine, because of that darned window. What if someone breaks in through it? I look for the front door, but I cannot find it.
There seemed to be no front door to this home of mine (Psychologist friends, have a field day with that one). It was small, just a bedroom and a kitchen (even in my dream, my mind is clear about the fact that I have no money).
I had to break into my own house, by the way. I climbed up a fire escape, and ended up in a corridor. To my right was a window, the kind that slides up, and I entered my house through that window, knocked over something that was on a desk under said window. My bed was next to the desk. Plenty of cushions, lots of reds, browns, and greens. Books everywhere, a small table lamp. There is no phone.
Through beaded curtains on the right, and there is a wash basin behind another curtain, and right ahead of me is a well sized kitchen. (Where is the bathroom? Where are all the French windows I always wanted?)
I worry in this house of mine, because of that darned window. What if someone breaks in through it? I look for the front door, but I cannot find it.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Please, Don't Tell Me a Story!
Ideas we are introduced to as children stay with us for life. One's personality is, after all, the result of upbringing, culture and, in the modern world, what the media projects on a daily basis. This is particularly true in the case of notions of gender identity, and the roles and characteristics that society assigns to each – male and female. The third gender is not even considered by society, so let us leave that one for another day.
Consciously or otherwise, society came up with certain ways to, and I do not use this term lightly, brainwash us, about what is appropriate behaviour for different genders. Education, modernity and the feminist movement have challenged the most outrageous of these norms, but many continue to exist. Of course, they vary from culture to culture, but some common factors are present everywhere. Let us look at three of them in this post – two are important influences from our childhood, and one that continues to assault us even after we become adults: toys, fairy tales and television programmes/films.
Toys obviously form an important part of play during childhood. In the beginning, we all get the same things – things that make noise, are bright and move. However, once children become mobile, start talking and become capable of absorbing basic concepts like who those tall people who boss us around are, or why drinking out of the fish tank is not an option, the toys they play with change as well. Out go the rattles and in come the toy soldiers and blonde, blue eyed dolls with vacant expressions. Toy guns and miniature kitchen sets. Doctor kits and mock make-over sets, complete with fake lipsticks, blush and mascara. I read about this bizarre ‘Make your own atomic bomb’ kit that came out during the cold war, which actually included four samples of uranium ore (Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory).
The point of this little toy history is, through them are introduced subtle but clear ideas of what is considered appropriate behaviour and careers for different sexes. Boys need to be tough like soldiers, they should not cry, they should be brave. Girls, lets cook! Let us put on make-up, hang around in the kitchen, drink tea and have unrealistic ideas about what women should look like (If Barbie was human: 37-28-40, 7.8 ft. Really?! What a brilliant role model for inspiring a healthy body image). We outgrow toys at some stage, but the question is, do we outgrow what they try to teach us? Of course, parents may not actually want us to learn these precise ideas from our toys, but some forethought while shopping and gifting would be nice.
The next important factor would be the stories we hear and read as children. “Please tell me a story!” is a line most of us would have said at some point in our childhood. Growing up in Bombay, in a family that considered reading as the best hobby a child could have, I got access to both western fairy tales and Indian mythological stories. Western fairy tales included Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, Ugly Duckling and the like, while Indian ones, thanks to Uncle Pai and his Amar Chitra Katha, included stories of Indian kings and mythological heroes. In retrospect, both were sexist as hell.
Among the European fairy tales, almost all had a similar theme running through them – beauty is everything, step mothers are beyond evil, weak women are cool and need to be rescued by Prince Charming. The duckling is shunned till it turns into a swan; the Princess lets the Prince climb up her hair (!), kisses random Princes and frogs, sleeps in strangers houses and lets Prince Charming slay her demons for her. And now, the
Princess has made a comeback in the form of Bella Swan and Twilight (refer to previous post). Grow a backbone, please! These stories give new heights to the more ridiculous ideas of being feminine i.e. be weak and wait to be rescued; simultaneously, they instill completely unrealistic notions about how men should behave. Unconsciously, many women do look out for their Knight in Shining Armour, who, when he comes along, may turn out to be a loser in aluminium foil...(Thank you Facebook, this one is priceless).
As for the Indian stories, don’t even get me started on them – why are almost all the mythological heroes men, and why do women feature as prominent characters only when they are playing mothers or wives to these said heroes? Sorry, I refuse to be the woman behind a successful man. I want to be successful, screw him. And though this is not related to what is being discussed, I would just like to point out that Indian Sultans and Badshahs were not lecherous and evil beings waiting to kill Rajputs and take their women. Bloody Hindu propaganda.
And finally, thank you Ekta Kapoor and co, for depicting women (and only Hindu ones as that, god knows how she would have depicted the Muslim community) as the ever suffering, silent victims of archaic patriarchal traditions. No, no, please do not rebel, do not have a career, worship your mangalsutra and sindoor, have ridiculous names and tolerate your cheating husbands. Yes, that is what all Indian women should aspire to be. A Mrs. Somebody who does not have self respect or an independent mind.
What we need is stories that teach children about independence and self-confidence, emphasise on the importance of inner beauty and loving oneself, and tell them that they can be anything they want to be. Prince Charming can go back to the happy land of singing serfs, benevolent Fairy Godmothers and evil step sisters - we new age women can take care of ourselves.
Consciously or otherwise, society came up with certain ways to, and I do not use this term lightly, brainwash us, about what is appropriate behaviour for different genders. Education, modernity and the feminist movement have challenged the most outrageous of these norms, but many continue to exist. Of course, they vary from culture to culture, but some common factors are present everywhere. Let us look at three of them in this post – two are important influences from our childhood, and one that continues to assault us even after we become adults: toys, fairy tales and television programmes/films.
Toys obviously form an important part of play during childhood. In the beginning, we all get the same things – things that make noise, are bright and move. However, once children become mobile, start talking and become capable of absorbing basic concepts like who those tall people who boss us around are, or why drinking out of the fish tank is not an option, the toys they play with change as well. Out go the rattles and in come the toy soldiers and blonde, blue eyed dolls with vacant expressions. Toy guns and miniature kitchen sets. Doctor kits and mock make-over sets, complete with fake lipsticks, blush and mascara. I read about this bizarre ‘Make your own atomic bomb’ kit that came out during the cold war, which actually included four samples of uranium ore (Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory).
The point of this little toy history is, through them are introduced subtle but clear ideas of what is considered appropriate behaviour and careers for different sexes. Boys need to be tough like soldiers, they should not cry, they should be brave. Girls, lets cook! Let us put on make-up, hang around in the kitchen, drink tea and have unrealistic ideas about what women should look like (If Barbie was human: 37-28-40, 7.8 ft. Really?! What a brilliant role model for inspiring a healthy body image). We outgrow toys at some stage, but the question is, do we outgrow what they try to teach us? Of course, parents may not actually want us to learn these precise ideas from our toys, but some forethought while shopping and gifting would be nice.
The next important factor would be the stories we hear and read as children. “Please tell me a story!” is a line most of us would have said at some point in our childhood. Growing up in Bombay, in a family that considered reading as the best hobby a child could have, I got access to both western fairy tales and Indian mythological stories. Western fairy tales included Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, Ugly Duckling and the like, while Indian ones, thanks to Uncle Pai and his Amar Chitra Katha, included stories of Indian kings and mythological heroes. In retrospect, both were sexist as hell.
Among the European fairy tales, almost all had a similar theme running through them – beauty is everything, step mothers are beyond evil, weak women are cool and need to be rescued by Prince Charming. The duckling is shunned till it turns into a swan; the Princess lets the Prince climb up her hair (!), kisses random Princes and frogs, sleeps in strangers houses and lets Prince Charming slay her demons for her. And now, the
Princess has made a comeback in the form of Bella Swan and Twilight (refer to previous post). Grow a backbone, please! These stories give new heights to the more ridiculous ideas of being feminine i.e. be weak and wait to be rescued; simultaneously, they instill completely unrealistic notions about how men should behave. Unconsciously, many women do look out for their Knight in Shining Armour, who, when he comes along, may turn out to be a loser in aluminium foil...(Thank you Facebook, this one is priceless).
As for the Indian stories, don’t even get me started on them – why are almost all the mythological heroes men, and why do women feature as prominent characters only when they are playing mothers or wives to these said heroes? Sorry, I refuse to be the woman behind a successful man. I want to be successful, screw him. And though this is not related to what is being discussed, I would just like to point out that Indian Sultans and Badshahs were not lecherous and evil beings waiting to kill Rajputs and take their women. Bloody Hindu propaganda.
And finally, thank you Ekta Kapoor and co, for depicting women (and only Hindu ones as that, god knows how she would have depicted the Muslim community) as the ever suffering, silent victims of archaic patriarchal traditions. No, no, please do not rebel, do not have a career, worship your mangalsutra and sindoor, have ridiculous names and tolerate your cheating husbands. Yes, that is what all Indian women should aspire to be. A Mrs. Somebody who does not have self respect or an independent mind.
What we need is stories that teach children about independence and self-confidence, emphasise on the importance of inner beauty and loving oneself, and tell them that they can be anything they want to be. Prince Charming can go back to the happy land of singing serfs, benevolent Fairy Godmothers and evil step sisters - we new age women can take care of ourselves.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Of sparkling vampires and 'irrevocable' love
When I see girls going gaga over Edward Cullen, I am amazed at their obsession with the blood-sucking ‘undead’. Edward Cullen, in case you have been living under a rock in Antarctica, is the vampire protagonist of the Twilight series authored by Stephanie Meyer. It’s not like the books weren’t bad enough (and I should know, I read all four in two weeks. Ah, the insanity of an idle mind); the powers that be decided to compound the present craze over the book by making the truly terrible Twilight movies, which boast of incredibly bad acting, laughable make up and no creative imagination whatsoever.
Quick synopsis: Bella moves in with her father who lives in a rainy town called Forks, so that her mother can go on tour with her step-father. She starts high school, boys start falling in love with her, though she can’t figure it out, and at this point, which is about 20 pages into the book, the author introduces Edward, handsome, ‘perfect’ Edward , thus conveniently bypassing the need to give Bella any background history whatsoever. She seems to have had no semblance of a life before moving to Forks, and quickly falls in looove with Eddie boy, after exchanging about 20 words with him. Eddie boy is not any boy, he is a vampire, an old vampire, and a vampire who sparkles in sunlight. Seriously, sparkles. Now falling ‘irrevocably’ in love with a sparkly stalker vampire (he sneaks into her room at night to watch her sleep, the creep) vampire is never a good thing, and neither is having a hormonal werewolf for your best friend. The series should have never gotten past an editor without undergoing some serious hacking, but evidently, said editor was on vacation.
The series are not the best books for impressionable teenagers, and the main reason for that is the female protagonist of the series – Bella Swan. I have never come across a more needy, spineless and annoying character in a book. She shows no sense of self preservation, is morally ambiguous, and her world revolves around her boyfriend. I mean, going numb, curling up into a ball and jumping off cliffs because a boy ditched you? Not cool. Surely falling out of love is an option? No guy is worth jumping off a cliff, for Christ’s sake. Her aim in life is to turn into a vampire and be with her guy forever -- go get a degree, a job!! She idealises Romeo and Juliet (and look how well that story ended). So in the end, what message is the author giving out? Forget about defining your identity, be ambitionless, selfish, dependent on a guy for your happiness to the point of being suicidal; be a perpetual damsel in distress and be careless about the feelings of family and friends? And what is this talk of 'irrevocable' love? Besides sounding slightly daft, it is also sounds completely wrong when a 17 year old says it, who simultaneously wishes to have the sparkly prima donna as her boyfriend for ever or die. What a choice.
Give me Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel (ooh, David Boreanaz) ANY day. They have courageous, independent and strong characters who can act as perfect role models for teens, rather than whiny Bella Swan.
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