Blog Resurrection…

Long time no write. I guess I’m not too surprised about the ill-presence on a blog considering the amount of things that went on in this span of time. Life for one has changed in many ways. In a span of a year, I’ve gone from becoming a graduate, mindless, jobless wreck to a spiritual yoga-loving freak, to a supposed intellectual media student, to an alcohol loving reckless, free-spirited woman and so on and more, later a (sort of) mature, ‘been-there-done-that’ overgrown (hardly) child…ahem..woman(?). 🙂

I missed blogging. I missed that longing urge to sit back and recount the happenings of the day/week/month and pen it (key it) down and watch it virtually immortalise on the web. And after being pestered and poked by my loved ones and more so that little voice in my head (that hates me more with every passing minute considering the royal ignorance it receives), here I am back to my long lost friend and mirror of my life- My blog.

Before I go on about the thoughts that I promise to share earlier on when I started the blog, I might as well keep this post about my life and the updates about it. As mentioned earlier, in a year I went from being this to that and that to anything and everything I could in an age where I’m not supposed to be doing anything significant so to say (no this isn’t the renaissance come on, that generation was different).

I was sort of enjoying anonymity for a while and well, didn’t really have the time for popularity really. Grad school isn’t really a cakewalk, and there are more compromises than surprises. Among the good stuff, I’m almost a pro at driving, (and yeah, wriggling my way out of chalans with a puppy face as well); mastered the art of pulling all-nighters, without a wink of sleep (yes, coffee is still my best friend); put on 8 kilos in a month (trust me that’s a huge achievement); discovered an inherent work OCD or workaholism, more so; and so on. More about which would follow on the blog. 🙂

So here I am, now a masters student (yes, I got there 😀 ), with metaphoric bruised knees from all the ‘growing up’ that has been shoved down my throat, trying to revive, rather resurrect my blog in coma for nearly a year. I am going to try my best at keeping up with the times and not let my blog die out now on, and well I can only hope it goes back to what it was when I first started and it gets all the love that it got all over again.

On that note, see you soon..
Cheers.. 🙂

To a 30-Year-Old Me

Dear older me,

I’ve been thinking about you lately. Thinking about how you’ve turned out. It’s been 10 years since I’ve written this to you, and I’m writing this because I don’t want you to forget me, or that I was there in your life.

There are these questions in my head I want to ask, and I really wish to get answers to them from you.

I am 19 as I’m writing this. I know you’re older now, and you’re probably finding this childish but you’ve got to admit you’ve always loved letters, writing as well as receiving them.

I really want to know where you’re reading this. Is it in an air conditioned corporate office with an attendant at your beck and call or are you reading this at your home stealing some time away from your kids?

Or maybe you’re still a lot like me and you’re just reading this sitting on the pot in the loo.

Whatever it may be, I hope you do read this, because like I said, I want you to always remember that I was there.

I’ve been going through a lot of changes lately. College does show you the best and the worst times. But true to its every worth, a lot of what you’ve become today (whatever it may be) you owe a lot of it to this place.

I hope you’ve learned how to play the piano or guitar by now. Remember how you’ve always wanted to? I feel you should have by now. I hope you’ve learned to speak your mind, ’cause I still am not very good at that. I still prefer to write my mind rather than speak it.

I’m thinking of doing social anthropology, I hope you’ve done it by now. If you have, it would’ve helped you understand things better. And if you haven’t I hope you have a good enough justification to give me for it.

I know you’re older than me, but I still don’t feel awkward giving you advice.

I hope you’ve become a little less messy now. I have been proud of being it many-a-times but I still think you should’ve changed that in you by now. At least a little. Do you still hate alcohol as much as I do? I sure think so, ’cause I don’t think I’ll be able to develop the taste for it ever. Like I always say, I don’t think it’s immoral or wrong, I just don’t like the taste. Pretty impressive huh?

Are you still in touch with old friends from school and college? I haven’t had much experience as yet, but I can tell for one that these are the most real friends you’ll have.

I’m sure you remember Tejaswee. How can anyone forget her? Please remember her life always, and not her death. My faith in God hasn’t still been restored after her death. Maybe it has as you’re reading this? You know, she is the one who inspired me to write this in the first place. If you’re a good person today, you owe a lot of it to her.

Because, unlike a faceless God, of whose existence we can never be sure of, I was always sure that she was looking out for me. And I always refrained from doing anything wrong in life because I knew she was up there looking at me, and she wouldn’t like it. I just hope you haven’t seen a worse time than her death and I hope you don’t see it either.

Do you still go by my crazy philosophies? I don’t know about the rest, but I hope you haven’t let go of my ‘no-regrets theory’. It’s an original. I want you to follow it always. And I want you to have NO regrets in life whatsoever. I’m working towards that too, so that you don’t have any opportunity to blame me.

Oh! I forgot. I guess you’re the only one I can ask without hesitation. So, are you married yet? Well, if you are, I hope you’ve done everything I have dreamt to do before doing that. I hope you’ve chosen the right time and the right person (Is it who I think it is?).

I do want you to have lots of kids though. You know how much I love kids.

I just hope you haven’t become too fat. I don’t want to foresee you being fat. Okay fine, I’ll try and exercise a little so that you don’t have to face any trouble.

Have you started looking your age finally? I still haven’t been able to, as you know. I hope things change by the time I’m you.

Gosh! I’ve used hope so many times, I almost sound like Obama.

While I want some things about you to change, there are some things in me, which I want you to still have. I don’t want you let go of my quirky and stupid yet meaningful philosophies. One of them being my ‘in your shoes theory’, whenever I get angry at someone or feel a strong negative emotion for someone, I always put myself in their shoes and see if it is justifiable. If it is, I let go. But if it isn’t I fight back. I know it’s a little idealistic, I’m still working on it. By the time it’s passed on to you, you’d hopefully have mastered it.

I just hope that wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, you’re happy being there and doing that. I’m working towards it myself. I don’t know how true it’ll be then, but as of now, it does not matter to me what others think of me and it never really should.

Don’t lose touch with me. Please do remember me from time to time. I’ll be gone by the time you read this, but hopefully some part of me will still remain in you.

Love,

AK

Old, Most Definitely Gold

Tom and Jerry, As we liked it

When it comes to media, our generation has the sweetest memories of growing up watching kids’ shows which actually made sense. In terms of media content for kids, there have been so many attempts made to improve the things kids’ watch, which sadly has just defeated the whole purpose. It’s most relevant when it comes to cartoons. The content generated today is breeding a whole new genre of mindless and senseless.

If the dear Mr. Fred Quimby were to see any of the new ‘developments’ done to his pet project ‘Tom and Jerry’, he would be rolling in his grave. The whole beauty of the plot where this cat and mouse fight endlessly and don’t share a single word with each other but still share a special implicit bond, was brutally murdered by the new-age version of the show which has adapted an all new level of violence (almost at nuclear in cartoon terms), as opposed to the cute, tolerable violence it had earlier.

Ben10- strictly for boys!

It’s not only the shows which have changed; channels on the whole have changed by manifold, and in the bargain have disintegrated to no end. Take the language for instance. Not a single script-writer in the 90’s would even dare to as much as pick up his pen to include something like ‘ullu ka pattha’ in any dialogue. This language transition happened when the channels tried to broaden their horizons by including regional languages and in turn, destroyed the language of poor little kids. There is a clear difference between the language of someone who grew up in the 90s and one who grew up today. What is the difference you may ask? Simply put, it is a million times better than the latter.

Shows back then catered to audiences of almost all ages. But I can’t ever imagine myself, even if I were as much of a six-year-old of today, enjoying something like a ‘Shin-Chan’ or a ‘Ninja-Hattori’. Today’s kids’ shows are a breed of far more juvenile and plot-less than it’s much more meaningful, older counterparts. Cartoons of those times had a point. They had a story and a latent message. And they even were funny (I’m not talking about the daft slapstick humour, it was genuine innocent humour).

Disney Princess- Strictly for the girls

Apart from that, cartoons today are breeding in little children an innate dormant sexism. Sometimes when I go to meet my little cousins, the boys and the girls take turns to watch television, as only the boys would watch ‘Ben 10’ and the girls would only watch ‘Barbie Princess’. We never really had that in our time, I loved watching ‘Swatcats’ with my cousin brothers and even they enjoyed ‘Little Lulu’ with me when we sat together and spent some good times together. The same goes for classics like Scooby Doo, Flintstones, and all those wonderful shows which did not propagate the Mars v/s Venus clash at an infantile level.

I get shudders down my spine to think about what these kids would grow up to be growing up amid the perplexity of the entertainment media of their time. In foresight, if this trend doesn’t change, a very typical adult male in the days to come would be a sexist soul who has cuss-words suffixed (or even prefixed) to every possible sentence (most of those sentences hurled upon his wife/girlfriend) and he would probably, at the slightest spark possible, throw about things (including furniture and electronics) in a fit of rage. Yes, we are indeed heading towards it.

10 reasons why I didn’t want to become an adult

1. I have to think of other ways to avoid doing chores ’cause now, sadly, i cannot use the accusation of imposing ‘child labour’ any more (now, the law makers really need to form an anti-just-turned-adult-work-law)

2.i can’t get anywhere with a half ticket. Not without looking like an insane retard straight out of an asylum for autistics (Now this one’s heart breaking).

3. I can’t ward off the oh-so-famous ‘behave like an adult’ discourse. (even pouting doesn’t work).

4. I have to have a solid, good enough reason to back up my occasional off the record crying (will someone please explain to people that tear ducts are here for a reason).

5. I’m considered an adult, but i still don’t get to consume alcohol (now this one’s outright unfair).

6. My oh-so-not-wanted-at-that-time paternal aunts start obsessing over, “little child can get married, i wonder who the lucky guy would be” (now, seriously, lucky or no lucky, you people just need to get a life).

7. I can’t watch my favourite cartoons without getting horrible glances from my little cousins, nieces & nephews (hello? We didn’t have the luxary of about a million kids’ channels in our time).

8. I can’t mess up & expect people to melt with that oh-so-angelic-with-a-halo-around-her-head-smile (now you need to know that even 18 year olds can break vases).

9. I’m expected to read the newspaper everyday (no sweat! I can come up with better jokes than this).

10. I can’t read chick-lits in public anymore (will someone please tell me, how many of you have actually gone beyond the cover page of a Shakespeare classic???)