It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Last night at Peco's, Em and I were just talking about what we wanted to do in the next few years, like learning a new language, learning how to play the violin amongst other things. And I thought of all the things I used to think I would do, as a kid when I became old enough to do them. After the whole child prodigy thing flopped for me, i.e after I realized I was infact too old to be one anymore, I almost settled for the ordianary life.
Except I didn't expect it to be so dissapointing.
I still feel that people who work long hours in a job they hate just waste away their lives just to be successful. I knew from the beginning of my teenage years that fame and money were the two things I would not run after. Ofcourse, it means that I am now broke with just enough money to afford the cheapest beer and just enough friends to keep me in check. When one of my friends recently spoke about him having 'negative ambition, if that is possible', I thought I'd give it a try.
I did things my way.
I travelled to the city in the worst of health just to get a booklet printed, despite it not being an assignment at all.
I ran to the city, most days of the week just to drink coffee somewhere; wrote an anonymous message about how the world is sorted on paper napkins and hid the napkin inside a book on Extra Sensory Perception.
And despite coming home late after these trips to the city, I sat down and worked.
But I did it my way.
I cleaned my room yesterday after ages and it looks so tidy now, I  feel like a monk. And like Em said, I didn't do it for a prize or for anybody in particular. It might make me look like a psycho but, I really didn't.


Then where has this floating, ambitionless lifestyle got me? Can I really complain, since I didn't really ask for anything?

Anyway, the reason I feel this dissapoint is because you can't live like this, ambitionless, until and unless you have gotten rid of many other issues that must be tackled first.

Is there ANYTHING I really want, to happen?
Yes, there is.
I keep hoping that this time, I might just get lucky and it might just happen. Yet, every day passes by and somedays I have to make myself believe that tomorow things will change.
Most days when I feel that I'm living for a really silly dream of mine, I run to the city to change that.
I take a bus and sit in a coffee shop and make myself look at new people because I feel stagnant.
Other days I come home feeling hurt at some random comment someone made and cry.
I hate crying now; it makes me feel weak.
I shouldn't be crying if I wanted nothing out of my life.
Maybe I am a hypocrite who wants to go around showing the world how less I care about grades or people's feelings.
Maybe somewhere, I wanted to become that person. That stone.
But I'm no stone and even passing comments or even my own imagination has the power to make me come home and cry. Have you EVER heard of anyone who cries just because SHE IMAGINES situations that MIGHT be coming true?
I think that's why I like drinking myself into a state where everything seems funny and routine life doesn't matter anymore. When I am drunk, I laugh more; feel like my life is worth more than I think. When the lights are dim and all of us are dancing, I dance too.
It is then, that I feel like noone is watching. No one cares.
And THAT is what I want to keep feeling all the time, for the rest of my life.

Maybe people are right y'know? When I came to art school I thought I was incredibly normal compared to the other peirced, tattooed, jhola'd spawns. Now even the people here find me weird. I'm turning into this cold person with issues. Serious issues.
I don't want to tell anyone what the real reason for that is, like, not even on this blog. Not even Em or Unat or Ika. I don't want them to know, if ever, that I am mildly sad. It puts me on this powerless position that I don't to be in. At the moment, I am hardly, not even mildly sad. I am just affected by the little things. If ever, I do feel that way, I don't want them to know.

Till then, I'll just pretend to be this stone with no feelings. And run to the city when I need to be stronger again.

One happy day, two years back.

I could design accordion booklets all my life.



Frontside of the booklet.

 


Backside of the booklet. Read left to right. Written and designed by me. (Price: Rs. 100 + delivery charges.) You may also send in some of your own poems to be bookletted if you want.




That's what she said Tee. (Price : Rs. 350)  Price negotiable.



(Price : Rs. 350-400, will confirm soon) Price negotiable.

 



Specially for 'The Smiths' fans. And if you don't listen to The Smiths, well, you should.

(Price: Rs.375) Especially this song.



(Price: Rs.350 ) Who's yo Daddy? Say it bitches.



(Price: Rs 350) Nerd Kissss. :*

(Price: Rs 375) Header Tee. Creepolaa.

  
*Prints available. Tee shirts available in round necks. Custom designed Tee's and accordion booklets can also be bought, just mail me the specifications. Contact on mail (adritadas@hotmail.com)


P.S: Quite broke and need money to buy a DSLR. :P

Kaivi dite jais?

Things I have been doing/ am doing/ have been procrastinating about :

1) Making Typography collages, posters, and everything related to typefaces and fonts. Hm, interesting stuff. Hence the Helvetica font used for this post, though personally I am more the Bauhaus 93 'type'. Oh, I am such an art snob. ;)

2) Brushing up on languages. A bit of Mandarin, courtesy Em's Chinese dictionary, a bit of Hindi and a bit of Gujarati, courtesy Karmacy*.

3) Checking facebook every five minutes.

4) Updating the newly created Flickr account (that has most of my photography work till now) and adding random Hindi headers to all of them.

5) Designing a T-shirt.

6) Going to Richmond Road to get A3 size printouts and will eat at Mac** which is around the corner. Actually I think I am going only for the food.

7) Gathering ideas on how to make money this summer and save up for my DSLR, if ever I get one, some of which include Wedding Photography, making lampshades out of photographs, working at McDonald's, Pet photography.

8) Blogging.

9) Flipping through old family photos that I had scanned this winter.

10) Thinking about some people and trying to remember all the nice things they ever said ;) Hmm.

11) Listening to Karmacy's 'Blood brothers' for the fourth time this day, which explains the title.

That's about it. :)

*Karmacy : Karmacy is this Gujarati Rap band that sings about real Indian issues and SO well. Their lyrics are deep and changed my views about NRIs and Rap music completely, two very sensitive topics.
Here's a song by them : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV-fAYd4RP8&feature=related

**Mac (NOT McDonald's) : It's this tiny eating joint near Richmond road that Em had taken me and Unat to, and thank the bloody lord for that. That place has the best Chicken sandwiches and their coffee scores an incredible 9.325 out of my 10 point scores.( more than Georgia's 8.945).


P.S: Since I love coffee so much and I can accurately judge ANYTHING on a 10-point basis, upto 4 decimal points, I have decided to rate everything on a scale of coffee. For example, Karmacy scores a 8.5640 coffees, which is quite damn high and the autowaalas in Bangalore score a 3.762 which is what they deserve.

An open letter to Bangalore.

Dear Bangalore/ Bangaluru (whichever one you prefer to be called),

I still don't get the point of making separate compartments in the buses for women and men. And I definitely do not get the point of something as cham-cham* as Egg Dosa or Chicken Dosa. I don't know the full form of PUC and MTR and your cold coffees have way too much sugar for my liking. The men are mostly ugly and apart from foreign expats, you really don't have too much Eye Candy, girls like us can stare at, glancingly. Your auto-waalas aren't friendly and they cheat me off my swindling-by-the-second pocket money. Your malls are designed to make a man/woman,wanting to urinate badly, run around and wait for the lift with patience before they can finally, well, do it.

BUT.
Despite all your flaws, all I want to say is, THANKS BRO.
A longer letter about the things I love about you will follow.

Sincerely,
The Elastic Chaddi Chronicles.

To those days.

To all those days that have begun like this one.
When every little word hurts after thorough analysis.
I wish I had a better name to give these days, other than just the plain old mood swings.







Cannot allow comments for this post, can I?

Just last night, I was so happy.

And ofcourse that means that today, I am in the darkest dumps. Sometimes, I think it is my own imagination and because others refuse to clarify. But granted that I am a woman and the female brain exercises it's imagination more than neccessary.
Many, many days back, I and Unat and Em were getting ready to go out into the city for some good old eating, shopping, the usual. One of us was cribbing about our looks and considering I am the ugliest of the three, I THINK it was me. That's when Em told us about this research thing she had read sometime back :

See, a while back a few scientists started researching beauty amongst women. So this was the experiment.




A group of very average looking young women with impressive bio-datas were gathered. Almost all of them had/ had had self-image issues despite having achieved a lot. Some were CEOs and stuff. But all of them were average looking. You wouldn't walk into a bar and notice them at all.

So the same number of men were called in too, though they were just randomly chosen.

The men and women were not allowed to know/ see each other before the experiment.

Anyway, for the experiment the men and women were paired up. All the men recieved bio-datas of the women but instead of the real woman's photo, they gave each of the men a photograph of a model/ really good looking woman. (So basically all the guys thought they hit jackpot cuz she was hot and she was talented.)



The men and women were given a telephone and they had to talk to their respective pairs. The women though had no idea about their own photo being replaced by a model's photo. They were made to talk for around 4 hours.

After the 4 hours the men and the women were shown their respective partners.



75% of the men found their partners more attractive than the model whose photo was put. You know why that was? Because obviously the guy flirted with her, complimented her. With every compliment she bacame more confident and that made them seem even more attractive than the superhot model.

See what it means is that, even a very average looking woman can be so beautiful if only men tell them.

I'd like to believe that this is true. And I do. What most people don't know about women is that none of them find  themselves beautiful. And I'm beginning to think that all of them, except me ofcourse, are.
I just want to sleep now.

Strike ZERO.

Since I haven't really written anything in a really long time and because it IS infact the New Year (2 days past) and because I have a sore neck, I'm going to waste a little more of this cyberspace to mention to you, my, er, feelings.

1. OKAY I'M REALLY DYING HERE. The word 'feeling' sounds pansy now, almost non-negotiably attention seeking. Maybe I've changed a lot in the past year (College bro) but writing about my feelings seems almost distant. Maybe I've overdone it in the past, stuffed your faces with my sorrows, forced down my guilt down your throat (EW) but I want to stop that now. Not to mention that I am sick of being stalked and added-as-a-friend-on-fb by some of the followers who prefer to DEAL with my feelings (GAHHH, PANSY.)

Accomodation: 5 strikes. That's all I get for a post. More than 5, backspace every word typed till then and never think of it again.)

2. I feel like (Strike 1) I exaggerate my life. Well, my friends feel like I exaggerate it. I mean, right now I feel my life is so lazy-lumpy-boring that noone would even want to live it. But when I explain incidents to some friends, I feel like (Strike 2) they don't believe me. I don't lie about them, I just use gestures and go into describing details. What if I end up like that  old guy from 'Big Fish' with the story of his life. Man, even I didn't believe it. Maybe he wasn't trying to, but he just exaggerated and that's how it sounded like a lie (?).
Anywho, my life is going to be like that. Exaggerated, but mostly true.

3. I think (Strike 2 and a half) I always jinx it with the guys. Really, I do. How does a perfectly average person ruin anything before it even begins? Anyway, girls ranting away about guys is another thing I don't want to go into because it's immature.

4. I thought I was an explorer. An unsatisfied tramp. A famished traveller. Turns out, I'm the cheeky little dingo who roams the roads to see the world and stops at just 3 blocks from where he began ONLY, and ONLY because he was scared of exploring. Okay, I'm scared (Strike 3) of exploring. What if it gets me nothing? What if it makes me realize that all the time I had looked for the wrong things and found the right thing and then came back to find it gone? Or belonging to someone else? For those who think, by exploring I mean, only in terms of travelling places, I'm sorry but you are wrong and no, I'm not giving it away so easily.

5. I can't write about serious things anymore. (^Strike 3 and a half)

6. I suck at photography and theatre, two of my greatest passions. I got the lowest GPA for these two courses and there are people who are SO good at it in my college that I have no intention of pursuing them any further. (Self pity is a quarter strike so, Strike 3 and three fourths.)

7. This new year I have realized how extremely average I am, in general. I was never brilliant in school. Never brilliant at any sport, never played an instrument, never got selected for any cultural event, never been popular, never been the good human being either. I was always second at what I was even remotely good at. I haven't won a drawing competition in god knows, 7 years? I have never been awarded nor paid for my writing, my photography, my shoes.
I'm just so average it's beginning to annoy me. I'm not saying I am good for nothing. I am, infact good at quite a few things.
"But when the world start to give back?" (Can't remember who said it, but it was in Glee.)
When do people acknowledge the average, if ever?

There goes your New Year post.