Why 2014 is better than 2013

Hello guys! It's so good to see you again!

It's 2014. 2013 is now in the past and no one can really do anything about it. Victories, luck, happiness, mishaps, mistakes, regrets, moments you totally owned with Stark-y confidence, and the moments you absolutely have no intention to remember again. You cannot go back (unless you are Doctor Who or own a Time-turner). Not being able to go back can be a bliss, don't you think? I mean, who would want to go back when they can go forward?

Anyway, stomp on the past because here are 7 reasons why 2014 is going to be a far better year.

1. Sherlock season 3: After years and months and hours of conjuring theories about how the object of our obsession can survive a fatal fall, we have some hope of knowing what actually occurred. The wait was excruciating and many gave up hope of ever coming to know the truth while others surmised in vain. But now 2014 offers us the elusive season 3 and here we are, ready to pounce upon any chance of getting enlightened with the genius of Gatiss and Moffat.

2. Baravi* sampli: Yes, exams are a part of life when you are a student and even after that. But never again would we have to go through the demotivating numbness of appearing for the Boards**. That is reason enough to rejoice. It's like when the Dark Lord disappeared when baby Harry had survived. Everyone was in the jolliest of moods, not caring whether they were being noticed by muggles. Getting through the 12th standard boards deserves that kind of joyous abandon.

3. FIFA: Woohoo! \m/ I still don't get why world cup has to happen every four years. Why can't it happen every year? Anyway, 2014 is the FIFA year and I  couldn't be more happy. Argentina will be back and so will be we, supporting her through thick and thin. And even if you support any other nation, it's time to celebrate and paint our faces with flag colours. The game will be on and our spirits will rise with the haunting anthems.

4. One more Federer: Hearty congratulations to Mirka, Roger and the to-be big sisters. We are overjoyed with the news. It's a sign that purity, love, warmth are infinite and life is abundant. God bless the Federers. They keep spreading smiles and kindness. We wish we could give them a big hug, especially Mirka. :'")

5. Adele's new album: Get ready to bathe in sound. Adele's new album is a hit even before its release. It promises happy songs this time but we don't care what the mood of the album is as long it's Adele rendering it with ruthless style. All the best, Adele. We are all ears.

6. Driving license: Many of us are turning 18 and some of us recently have. It's such a liberating thought, driving around in a car through the dusty labyrinth of the traffic in Pune. Just you and your friends going to the pictures, no helmet, no scarves, no raincoats, ahh, hmm.

7. The Hobbit: Well, well, well. Bilbo has just asked 'what have we done?' We'll get to see the high definition, thrilling and magnificently terrifying repercussions of 'what they've done', in The Hobbit: There and Back Again. Smaug the Stupendous is in a terrific mood to show them what revenge is and we are more than excited to witness what he does with his glorious voice (wink, wink) and Bilbo's commonplace, Baggins-y cuteness cannot be done without.

So, friends, great things are about to happen. Brace yourselves. It's 2014. You are going to own it. Have a little faith and pixie dust. ;)

*means 'twelfth' in Marathi. Refers to the 12th grade in the education system in India.
**Refers to the secondary school examination held by the education department of the Govt. of Maharashtra i.e. the Board.

A few things to live for

Hi :) How are you?

We live on such a beautiful planet. Earth is truly divine. Not just because it has life, and it has us but because it's just so beautiful. No, I am not a traveller, as yet. But you don't really need to travel to Switzerland, Kenya or India to know/realize your planet is incredible. You, on some Sunday afternoon, lie on your bed and do nothing, and there it is. Among thousands of negative thoughts, you finally manage to produce a positive one. And you realize there are a lot of things you can't live without (excluding the obvious scientific ones, like oxygen), and that you are immensely thankful that those things exist, because they are sort of what you live for. So here is my list of the best things about this planet.

1. Perry mason books: One owes a great deal to Gardener, Doyle, and Christie. I mean, sometimes you have got a hundred assignments to complete which were due yesterday and you've got an exam tomorrow and your head is about to burst with all the pressure and you start rethinking the benefits of academic education instead of studying. Who can you turn to? You simply open The case of the drowning duck and you are on it! You do not look up until you solve it. Who cares about stupid exams? There is a man dead in the kitchen.

2. Fifa: Sometimes you feel your life is segmented into parts containing four years each. Fifa starts, gets over, and you manage to breathe through the four years that it takes to begin again. And when it's on, everything else has to wait. I mean seriously you have got the massive responsibility of shouting 'VAMOS!' at the television. Plus, you tend to get more involved because your country does not have an international football team yet. So you go full out to make sure you break the T.V with the glass of whisky in your hand when Argentina loses to Germany. And maybe you were drunk but the Latin blood you never had charges through your veins and you are not a fan. You are aficionado. 

                                

3. Roger: What else could bother you when Roger is about to lose a set? Mirka is folding her hands in submission. But you are dancing about the T.V set, cursing his opponent, throwing popcorn at the T.V. If he wins, you hug your mother who is quietly witnessing your hysterics and tell her that you love her. If he loses, you refuse to turn off the T.V till they start showing other matches and cry with him until he stops. Roger, Rogi, Fedex, Fedya*. When you love Roger Federer, you love everything about him, his game, his daughters, his laugh, his Swiss-ness, his wins and his losses, you love it all because it's his. And he is just so damn lovable.

4. Sherlock: You have spent the last two years in searching, guessing, theorizing, analysing or trying to ignore the probable answer for a single question- 'HOW?' 
Following a series is like living two lives. Or multiple if you follow many. You are a C.I.A agent, you are a drug-dealer, you are a Lady in an Abbey, you are all this while trying to do your best to explain how a man can survive a fatal fall. Huh, irony. Oh and plus, you are you. The dreary problems in our mundane lives seem to vanish, giving way to exciting ones. See you at 221 Baker Street.

5. J.K. Rowling: Did you ever wonder how poor the intellectual quality of our lives be if we didn't know about Hogwarts?
We will always be thankful to J. K. for showing us what lies beyond the cars on the road, behind the grey clouds on a summer sky or an unobtrusive wall on King's Cross station, that someone out there conjuring spells and mixing potions, doesn't know how to work a computer or a smartphone and doesn't need to. Destination, determination, deliberation.
Anything you go through in life seems petty and you start looking up to the characters of Neville Longbottom, Professor Lupin, Sirius Black, Molly Weasley, Professor Mcgonagall and several others who died or sacrificed their loved ones for the battle against pure, unflinching evil. J.K. introduced us to the most endearing, heart-warming, and courageously loving characters ever to be born in print.

6. Adele: She is brash and sexy, warm and haughty. And she knows how to make his head burn. She is unapologetically herself and she cackles like the devil. She has the voice of unleashed victory and she rules. Oh and she knows she rules. There is nothing about her that you don't love. She makes you feel empowered. Smooth adrenalin gushes through your veins as you sing with her and you are ready, ready to heal, ready to love, ready to crack, to forgive and ready to burn.

7. Shah Rukh Khan: His smile, his confidence, his energy are contagious. You cannot help but laugh at his witticisms, and his oozing self-confidence somehow warms you towards him rather than intimidating you. He is a superstar at every level and yet he feels strangely approachable. Although he wears a heavily practised expression on his face, the way his eyebrows cluster, raise, move up and down, feels genuine. You cry when he does and laugh when he laughs. When he speaks you are completely engaged in listening to what he has to say and how he says it. You adore him and envy him. You love him but in a selfish sort of way because at every level you want to be like him. And somehow his mega-super-stardom does not come in the way of your wishing to be like him. He makes it look effortless. He is affable, charming, sexy, and by all means, yours to dream. 

"These are a few of my favourite things..."

Thanks for reading!




*In Marathi language, "ya" is used in someone's name to show affection and familiarity towards him.

Her

Hallo! How are you? Nice to see you again!

I would like to thank Sasha Mahuli, Tanvi Joshi and Tanaya Shivname dearly for their thoughtful and efficacious present. Thank you ever so much.

No matter how much I tried to believe in Robert Galbraith (I scratched out the circular sticker on the book, that falsified his existence, and covered the letters at the back of the book that did the same), you cannot erase from your mind what you already know unless you forget it with time.

I did my best to read the book without any prior judgement and pretended to myself as if I did not know who Robert Galbraith really is. But only if we all could exercise even a tinniest bit of mind control!

Am I happy I know who Galbraith really is? 

No.

Why? 

Because I wasn't supposed to know! She didn't want anyone to know. (that bloody law firm!) Yes, even though I am fully aware that if not for the stupid publicity-seeking law firm I wouldn't have ever held the copy of that book in my hand, I still wanted it to go as she wanted it to. (that's fandom for you)

How was the book? Did I like it?

The book is great. But I like to believe I would have guessed it's her even if I hadn't known. I mean when you think of it, she stares back at you through those pages, unmistakably.

Is the writing manly?

Well, no. But then again, I already knew. And that is my sorrow. But why did she use Galbraith anyway? I mean I would hate it if I randomly overlook a book written by some Tony Clarkson or Andrew Fielding when in reality as in my oblivion, it has been written by her. How dreadful that would be! 

Like millions of other readers I want her to keep on writing and keep on giving birth to characters aching to take birth. And I would also like her to choose better lawyers.

All hail the Queen!

 

Have a bad day!

YOLO guys! What's cooking?

Please, don't say meth. x''D     (sorry)!

I had a really bad day yesterday. Nothing exactly happened. But does something bad have to happen for your day to be bad? I mean a day can go bad even when you've spent it lying in your room. Outward forces hardly matter if you have to have a bad day. It's all inside.

The sun shines with the same vigour everyday. But today you wake up, and you are simply not in the mood to see and acknowledge its beauty. Why are you not in the mood? Well, there's no answer to that. You are not in the mood because, hey, you don't want to be in the mood. You go and make yourself a cup of tea and guess what, it tastes horrible. And maybe it actually tastes okay, but hey, you don't want it to taste okay, it's horrible. And then you take a pack of *Pickwick and sit in front of the computer, put on an episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S and then it's all okay until you realize you have finished the whole pack of Pickwick. On any other day you would be proud you finished the whole pack. Today you realize it can make you gain a couple of pounds. And actually, that pack hasn't really made a change in your weight, but hey, you want to feel fat today. You log on to Facebook and sieve through the news feed, you realize people are out and about, doing things, leading a happening life, being happy in what they perceive as happiness while you are here gobbling up wafer biscuits, drooling over fandoms, doing absolutely nothing productive. And in reality, you might be doing hundreds of productive things which are even more creative and stimulating than the activities of those on your news feed, but HEY, NO. 

Today is a crappy day and you want it to be like that. Nothing can touch you today. You shall trample all the good that comes your way and raise your fist in victory! You go meet a friend and she says, 'Did you see last night's match?It was AWESOME! Roger won!'
You make a face which says you're irked and say 'Huh, PLEASE!' The friend says she'll see you later. And the thing is, you have seen the match and you are delighted about it and you know you love Roger Federer, but HEYY, NO, man.

Today is a bad day. You have decided it. And you have no qualms about hating everything that is in front of you. Sometimes it feels nice to pity yourself, to go in the dark cocoon of your mind and ponder over how miserable your life is. And it's actually not miserable, but HEY.  Bad days are not exactly amazing. But they aren't half as bad either. You realize that when you wake up on the next morning and feel absolutely brilliant. Because all your mood needed was a lift. A lift from hate. Now you are lifted, and ready to love the world again.

Have a great day, guys.


*Pickwick is a popular brand of cream wafer biscuits manufactured in India.

Robert Frost's

Tree at my window

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather. 

by Robert Frost

Remembered/found a beautiful poem in reference to the earlier post.

The window and the tree

Hi again :D

The very kind reviews of my first post from my dear friends have misled me to write again. I didn't believe I would return.

I have a beautiful window in my room. What makes a window beautiful is not the panes or the sill or the tapestry, but that what lies outside the window. You can see a pomegranate tree outside mine. And anyone who has been in my room can tell you that it is not just a pomegranate tree. It is The pomegranate tree. Of course, it does things and behaves like any other pomegranate tree- it has pretty green leaves, it bears bright red flowers which then turn into luscious red fruits. And that is perfectly normal. So what makes it The pomegranate tree? What makes it so special?

Well, nothing except my bias towards it.

I love that tree and so does each person that has seen that window. The room holds many beautiful pictures of beautiful people and beautiful places. But that window and that tree are the ones who get all the attention. The tree is full of life, songs, and refreshments. Birds come to it everyday, to eat, drink, and make merry. They don't sleep there. I think, the tree doesn't let them. It wants everyone to be wide awake, to know they have little time. The birds eat the fruit when the summer is on and eat the insects in the flowers for the rest of the year. That tree is where the squirrels make love and the turtle-dove rests its wings.

And if you are a bit of a poet and know that Hogwarts exists, you might even be able to see through the gaps between the branches. You can see an old man and his old wife helping each other to remember how they reached there, while desperately trying to remind their legs how to walk or stand or just be. They seem oblivious to the tree even when it's right next to them, but they are not. They are as aware of the pomegranate tree as the tree itself. But what can they do but take its help to remember how they reached there?

It would not surprise you to know that that window is how I don't get time to study. The wretched window!

Our heroes, dreams, and the silliness

Hi. How are you?

This blogging venture is inspired by my friend, Sasha Mahuli's blogs. Her blogs are amazing. Do read them. She does a great job writing about music, life, and pretty much anything that strikes her mind.  http://sashamahuli.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/let-the-clouds-build-you-a-daisy-chain/

We, that is me and my friends, are at a stage in our life where we hugely depend upon our heroes to show us what life truly is. 'Heroes' meaning all the beautiful people on this planet (or beyond ;) ) who inspire us through their work, their interviews, and just their existence.

We don't exactly know what we want to be yet. We don't even know what to do with our lives right now. There is a void, a hollowness, a large deficit that can only be filled, covered or hidden with time.

We spend our days immersed in watching, listening or reading what our heroes have created, lost in the beauty of their creation, not knowing what use there might be of this indulgence.

We spend our mornings reading Wilde, Hemingway, Rowling, Tolkien, and even a casual Wodehouse or Dahl. We spend our noons listening to the magic of the Beatles, Clapton, Dylan or even the melancholy notes of Adele. The evening goes by, watching a random match of Roger Federer. And in the night we dream of going on romantic outings with the modern Sherlock or the mischievous Loki.

Dawns are meant for brooding and doubting and questioning whether dreams do come true. And then the bitter-sweet morning comes again with all our wretched heroes showing us how 'a single dream is stronger than a thousand realities'.

But how can we go on living like this? After all, 'it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.' We have put ourselves in the dangerous situation where dreaming has become as primary a biological act as breathing itself. And the heroes in our dreams have become an inevitable part of who we are and who we want to be. But the truth is, our heroes did not become who they are by whiling away their time in daydreaming. Any of our heroes never even wrote any blogs about how they didn't know who they were going to be. And that, I think, explains everything. o_O


Thank you and have a great day.