Introducing My(!) George Orwell

This is a special post because here I introduce My George Orwell. Yeah, My George Orwell. Everybody knows George Orwell, the author of the famous book Nineteen Eighty-Four, but My George Orwell is not the same person. So My George Orwell or GO, for the sake of brevity, is a friend with whom I discuss books, blogs, music and many other things. He has introduced me to some wonderful things and I love my conversations with him. To begin with, it's refreshing to know a guy who can talk intellectually about books and music and technology in the same breath. Being from the Engineering background, most of my guy friends are either useless computer nerds or else too much into girls and movies, shallow I should say. Books are something most of them stay away from and even if they read, it is mostly autobiographies or self-help books. Fiction is a far-cry for them and if they do try a work of fiction then their reading efforts are limited to Chetan Bhagat and Sydney Sheldon.

Now, GO knows his books. He is the only guy in my friend circle who can make me feel ignorant when it comes to discussions about books. We give each other a lot of gyan and I just luuurve talking to him. Anyway, now why do I call him GO? I told him today that since most of our conversations are intellectually stimulating, I would like to post them at times and therefore I wanted to give him a pseudonym. He absolutely did not want to be called by his pet name so after much thought I asked him which was his favourite book. He replied that it's difficult to single out one book but still the best would be, To Kill A Mockingbird (I told you, GO knows his books!) but since the author of this book is a female, I couldn't have given him her name as a pseudonym. The next favourite book that came a close second for GO is Nineteen Eighty-Four. Moreover, GO tried to convince me for a good ten minutes yesterday that how important it is to read Nineteen Eight-Four, since I haven't read it yet. Hence I call him My George Orwell now and I think it suits him. I could have called him by his real name and there is no real need for a pseudonym but it struck my fancy that I want a pseudonym here. This makes it important that GO can't reveal his identity when he posts comments on my blog. You are reading that My George Orwell??

Our conversations mostly are something like this:

Me: you know something... yesterday's conversation triggered some thought process

GO: about books, music?

Me: yeah, i was thinking of what you said about those books..... Namesake, Gone With The Wind, The God of Small Things

GO: ok, go on

Me: I think you have a good point there. They ARE girlie kinda books.... a guy won't enjoy them as much as a girl

GO: not chicklit.... but feminine

Me: yeah not chicklit. They are wonderful books, anybody would enjoy them but yes feminine

GO: so I won't read Gone With The Wind then :-)

Me: haha... I still think Gone With The Wind is worth it. I mean I have read Great Expectations and Oliver Twist and liked them despite the fact that they were all about guys

GO: me too me too.... but I read the abridged versions

Me: oh don't do that!! abridged versions spoil the fun

GO: I was in 7th or 8th at that time

Me: have u read Pygmalion? By George Bernard Shaw

GO: No. He is known more for quotes than books I think. He has said so much

Me: yeah true

GO: father of one-liners

Me: btw i share my birthday with him

GO: oh wow

Me: couldn't help bringing it up. 26th july.... me and GB Shaw.... 2 great writers :-)

GO: sun signs, birthdays and girls

Me: yepp... anyway... Pygmalion is a play. something like Shakespeare's works but more modern

GO: hardcore literature? come to think of it I haven't read hardcore literature much

Me: me neither. But I love classics any day. That was such a romantic period, I feel drawn towards such books. So, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, GB Shaw all work well for me

GO: Fountainhead?

Me: yeah read that too. Ayn Rand is awesome. And the other book.... whatsitsname?

GO: Atlas Shrugged

Me: Atlas Shrugged yeah....

GO: they are difficult to comprehend

Me: you know there is a school of thought based on Ayn Rand philosophy

GO: yes, about individualism and all that

Me: yeah, the idea is wonderful. It does provoke thoughts

GO: oh yeah, talking of abstract books... u read ulysses?

Me: well, no. ashamed as I am of not reading Ulysses but I haven't

GO: don't be. I read 1 page and then left it. It took the author 7 years to write it.

Me: wow

GO: read Mitch Albom? Tuesdays With Morrie? Five People You Will Meet in Heaven?

Me: naah

GO: wonderful books... when you feel low and small in life, read these two books

Me: I love feel good books

GO: :-)

Me: hey I want a good pseudonym for you. what shall it be?

GO: call me KB... sounds like a Russian spy's name

Me: yeah, similar to KGB :-)

GO: yep

Me: hey have you read a book called The First Lady.... too much of sex, but good plot

GO: author?

Me: can't recall his name. Most of his books are like that .... sleazy :-)

GO: you read all of his books? :-)

Me: hey this Nothing Else Matters song that you were talking about is amazing

GO: yeah.... i have started singing.... so close no matter how far

Me: yeah beautiful song

GO: I am crazy for classic rock

Me: and the guitar is awesome

GO: okay, listen to this song at least twice then I will give you a link

Me: :-)

GO: a performance by another band that played it on Cello.... amazing instrumental and video

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=rbTozgoj9OQ&feature=related

Me: hey it was beautiful.... i heard it thrice!!! So sad and beautiful

GO: sad and beautiful, yes

and it continues like that. I and GO can talk like that for hours and it's amazing. I mean you can never get tired talking of books. There are so many books out there, so many genres, so many authors that each conversation about them seems new and exciting.

Okay, I stop Mooning and am back on Earth

Urgh!! I just read my last post of 6th January and I feel disgusted. Such an icky post it is!!

Trust me to get carried away whenever I pen down a poem. But to get carried away to that extent!!! I actually wrote an entire autobiography in that post. To all those who commented back with sweet and encouraging words, I know you guys were only being kind to me. The way we are kind to a lunatic or to kids and let them believe in their fairies and Santa. Thank you very much guys, I am touched :-)

To top it all, I read Shobhaa De's blog yesterday and left a comment there about how I never read any of her books because I was under the impression that she writes depressing stories but that I was pleasantly surprised at the liveliness in her writing and would definitely try one of her books. She actually e-mailed a reply to that!!! A one-liner reply about appreciating my frankness and a thank you. I saw that mail and went all Yay!! and Wow!! and dreamt last night of getting a book of my poems published and Shobhaa De unveiling it for me. Oh when will I grow up???

Poetry And Me

I have been writing poems since the age of 5. I even distinctly remember where the first inspiration came from. Although I don't have a great memory and I often forget many incidents that others around me remember in detail, but I remember this episode. That is because I have a very selective memory. I remember things, people and incidents in great detail if they matter a lot to me. Anyhow, so this incident somehow has remained intact in my head. The image of a 5 year old, skinny and laughing girl, watching TV with great interest when what the only channel has got to offer is a 'Hasya aur Vyangya Kavi Sammelan', yeah that's a gathering of poets who pride themselves in humor and satire. I don't know how it caught my 5 year old fancy but immediately after the program that was what I wanted to do. I told Mom that I wanted to write poems and she laughed and said that I could when I grow up. I never had the patience to wait so I just gave it a try. Writing poetry in English never occurred to me back then. The obvious choice was Hindi because I had watched the Kavi Sammelan in Hindi, and although my vocabulary in both English and Hindi was very limited at that time, I was still more comfortable in Hindi. I remember my first poem was more like a song and it was something about dancing flower buds :-) In fact since my Mom collected a lot of my poems for many years, I had the opportunity to read that poem numerous times in the coming years and every year it embarrassed me more than it did the previous year. I won't even dream of putting it down here :-)

So I kept writing poetry in the years to come and I always wrote of things that I saw in nature; flowers, snow, water, wind and sometimes there was an occasional poem about fairies or people. My family was proud of my poetry, all of my poems rhymed perfectly and I read my poems on a few occasions in the morning assembly at school. On one big occasion during the time when Uttaranchal was still a part of Uttar Pradesh and the people of Uttaranchal demanded that it should be a separate state, there was a gathering of several poets from Uttaranchal who wrote and read their poems in front of a big audience. I had the privilege to be a part of that gathering and as the youngest poet I read one of mine too. It was about the state of Uttaranchal and I had written that only because I was asked some days back to write something for the occasion and not because I had any real feelings on the subject. I was too young to understand why we should have a separate state and had to think hard before writing the poem. Anyway, I did write that poem, read it before the audience and accepted their applause. Incidentally, I don't remember any of the poems of other poets who were present there, some of them were well known writers too. In fact I don't remember anything else about that evening except that I read a poem before a big audience and then rushed back from stage to my Mom sitting in the audience. I was in 8th or 9th standard at that time, not too young but somehow my memory fails me about the other happenings of that evening.

However, the poetry writing spree was abruptly stopped when I studied in 10th. I had a big accident and in the aftermath a big loss that nobody including me noticed for a long while was that I had stopped writing poems. A couple of years later I tried but I couldn't. I thought that it was just a childhood thing and I had now grown out of it. But it seems that poetry is too much a part of me because it resurfaced many years later and this time in English :-) I don't write great poems, in fact I feel embarrassed in sharing them with many people, so they lie dead in my laptop. And I don't even write that often now, only when I feel so full of some emotions that they cannot be expressed in any other way, I write a poem to let them out. This happened when I started writing a post on December 11, the only way I could write on that day was in the form of a poem although it was very unstructured and effortless. I composed directly on blogger and edited very little and thus happened my first poem after years that was written for anybody to read.

Yesterday I read a poem on one of the posts of The Unsung Psalm, which was beautiful. I started writing a comment on that post and what came out were few lines that started with the last line of the poem that he had posted. I like the lines that I wrote and would post them here too

I do not die

I just live on

To see what you do

When I am gone

Would you feel me

In the morning dew

Or forget my touch

In days too few

Would you hear me

In the gentle rain

Or would I call you

Just in vain

Would you know

That I caressed

Or would you be

Forever unimpressed

When The Unsung Psalm asked me where those lines were from I paused to think before replying that they were out of my own head. I read the lines again and again to decide whether they were any good but then I decided that good or bad, they were mine and I liked them and I would not abandon that poem as an orphan that belongs to no one and yet exists. Hence, I replied that they were mine and therefore I am putting them here on my blog too. Good or bad, they are mine :-)

The New Year Begins

I watched Ghajini on the first day of the new year and really liked it despite the violence and just okay music (except Tu Meri Adhoori Pyas). I had a mind to write a review of the movie but I just read a post by Chandni, who is one of my favourite bloggers. She wrote a review of RNBDJ and it was plagiarized word by word by a certain Ms Salty Sea Breeze who posted it on her blog as her own. I feel offended for Chandni and that kills the mood to right a review now. I will write it some other time.

Anyway, the other day I read some lines by Vikram Seth that really touched my heart. I will dedicate them (even though they are not mine :-)) to The Unsung Psalm whose writings I enjoy. Here goes:

Some men like Jack and some like Jill

I'm glad I like them both but still

I wonder if this freewheeling

Really is an enlightened thing,

Or is its greater scope a sign

Of deviance from some party line?

In the strict ranks of Gay and Straight

What is my status: Stray? Or Great?

A few years back I read A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth and found it unnecessarily stretched out with irrelevant details although the plot and its setting were really good. There were many things that I liked about this book but the unnecessary length killed my interest in it when I had managed to read only about three-fourth of the book. It was the only book of my life that I had not been able to finish and I blamed Vikram Seth for that. However, when I read the above lines of poetry by him they salvaged his reputation in my eyes :-). Also, I found that Vikram Seth did his schooling from my hometown Dehradun (Welham Boys and Doon School), so that kind of settled the fact that I would definitely read more books by this author :-)

Luckily, the day I watched Ghajini I found that there was a Sale at the Om Book Shop in MGF Mall at Gurgaon. A sale and that too at a book shop is too tempting to ignore and so I went inside telling myself that I would not buy anything but would just take a tour. I already have around 5-6 still unread and good books lying around at my home and I had told myself that I would not buy any more books until I finish those that I already own. However, the shop offered a great bargain on many books and the shining hard covers of books had an almost lusty appeal. I think everyone would understand if I say that I finally did buy books but only 2 of them. One is of course by Vikram Seth (An Equal Music) and another is a collection of spooky short stories :-). It has some stories by authors like Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens and has a beautiful cover, hence I bought it.

I got these two books for just 500 bucks, can you believe it? Such beautiful, hardbound, original books together cost just 500 Rupees!! Wow what an amazing start to the new year :-)

The Year That Was

2008 is finally nearly over and am I glad? Well, yes I am. This was one year which was neither entirely good nor entirely bad but was too good and too bad in spurts. Come to think of it my whole short life till date has been like that but this year was a bit too much. It was a year of surprises, shocks, new beginnings, sudden endings, success, failure and everything being utterly unplanned.
I will list down major events of this year in chronological order and reminisce, so that I can breathe a sigh of relief and look back at the rollercoaster ride that this year was and pat my back to congratulate myself for surviving.

January- I visited Mumbai for the first time in my life and stayed there for a month with my brother. Yeah, I had never been to Mumbai before. Although I come from a family of travel freaks and I have been to nearly all places in India from Jammu to Kerela to Goa to Kanyakumari to Kullu to Jaipur to Mysore, and the list goes on, but I had never been to Mumbai. It was a good start to the year.

February- My best friend NV got married on 24th February in Kanpur. Although this is a major event of her life and not mine but when your best friend gets married it results in a lot of changes in your life too. For starters, NV moved to Hyderabad from Noida to live with her husband and this meant that I had to lose my favourite company. I did feel lonely, a lot.

April - The big break-up. Needless to say it left me shattered. Particularly because of why it happened and the way it happened. Enough said.
On 21st April, that was just 2 days after my break-up and the day I exchanged a last hateful sms with my ex, I went to US for a 20 day trip. The trip had been planned hardly a month back and I was naturally very excited about it, until the break-up happened. I lost all willingness to even exist let alone to go on a vacation. I had never imagined that my first overseas holiday would happen in such disastrous circumstances that I would have no interest or inclination towards it. Even just before stepping out of the airport in New York, I had not realised that I was on a long-awaited trip for which I was insanely excited until a week ago. However, the trip turned out to be a really needed break for me and took me away from the sad scene in India for sometime.

July- I decided to prepare for GMAT and started my blog just a day before my 25th birthday. Both the decisions turned out to be very good.

September- Dad joined a new company in Gurgaon on 1st September and Mom and Dad moved to Noida to stay with me. It was a great thing to happen for many reasons. I have always lived a pampered life when it comes to money but this new job of Dad pays him mindblowingly well because he works as the topmost executive of a very good company. This ultimately translates to the fact that I live an even more lavish life now :-)
Another fact is that, my parents moved in with me at a time when I needed them most. I was very lonely after NV's wedding and my break-up. There were other friends but they were not enough. I needed a stronger emotional support and I got that from my mother. Moreover, I could prepare for GMAT without worrying about what to cook for the next meal.

October- I took the GMAT on 25th October and got a really good score of 680. Although I had hoped for more, this score was enough to carry my MBA dream forward.

November- I found a consultant and took TOEFL. I was taking little baby steps forward towards my goal. I was excited and worked hard which gave me immense satisfaction. We also moved to Gurgaon from Noida on 7th November. The new home is BIG, beautiful, comfortable and rich. Plus I left my Noida flat which was full of memories, some horrid some good but I wanted to run away from all memories for sometime. My Noida flat is empty these days, empty because nobody lives there but it is still full of old furniture and old memories. It had become too cramped for me, the memories took up too much space. This was a good month.

December- I lost all steam for MBA, simply because the application process is too long to hold my interest. Although I got my TOEFL score and it was a fabulous 115/120, it wasn't enough to fuel my engine which has turned cold. I am still working on it but it's just because I have got myself so involved that i can't back out. Moreover, this is the only sensible thing to do right now. CARRY ON.

Now that I look back I can see that there were more good things and few bad things that happened this year. However, the bad things took the charm out of every other good thing. It was an year full of a lot of emotional turmoil and upheavals. It somehow seems to me that this year was a year of changes. Changes that are preparing me for the future, and changes are always painful even when they are for good. Well, I really hope that they are for good.

I am eagerly looking forward to 2009. If 2009 was a person, I would have welcomed it with big banners and flower garlands and smiles :-)

What I Have Been Doing All These Days

The holiday season is here and I am in the holiday mood for nearly a week now. I don't want to work at all :-)

I completed my application to Maryland Smith on 15th because it was the last day to apply. My Spanish classes are going on really well. I have taken 5 classes and learnt a lot of Spanish vocabulary. I now know what does Bailamos mean (remember Enrique's famous song?), it means 'we dance' :-). Meanwhile we celebrated Dad's birthday on 19th. It was a nice and cozy family get-together that included a lot of good food, a lot of laughter and latest family gossip. The following day, I took my cousins to a nearby mall where we played video games and tried a game each of Bowling. I have improved since last time, my score wasn't too embarrasing :-)

These days I am frequenting websites of cosmetic brands like Mac, Body Shop, Urban Decay, Sephora etc. Three of my friends are coming from US soon and I intend to mail them each a shopping list, so that they can get me some really good products. I had a chat with NV the other day on webcam and she showed me her entire shopping. I was visibly green with envy and she was delighted with my reaction. She has bought some fabulous boots and sandals and cosmetics. She showed me each lipstick and nailpaint that she has bought, even though the reds looked like black on webcam. I squinted my eyes to make out the shades but couldn't, so had to trust her claim that they were amazing.

Anyhoo, NV looks like she can have the baby anyday now, infact her doctor has advised her to be prepared. It seemed to be an unreal experience looking at her obviously pregnant shape. NV has always been the kid of our group and now she will soon have a baby. Its still difficult for me to digest this fact, even after more than 8 months of her pregnancy.

I was never so thankful of being on Orkut as I am now. I found a long lost friend with whom I have not been in touch for 22 years. Yes, and I am only 25 now :-). Her name is Shany and she was my first best friend and neighbor. Our families were very close, infact Shany's Mom taught my Mom how to cook south-indian food. Her elder brother and sister were very close friends to my sister and we have spent a great time together. Shany's brother found us on Orkut and we are all back in touch after 22 years. It's amazing how much we remember about each other, Shany remembers more as she is 2 years elder to me. She is now an architect working in Dubai. I cannot describe the feelings I had when I saw pics of Shany and her family, it was beyond nostalgia. She is engaged to a handsome software engineer from Bangalore and would soon get married. I already have plans of going to Shany's wedding although the date has not yet been finalised. Shany still looks the same, plump cheeks and dusky complexion, sweetness etched all over her face. We have been catching up on mails, we have a good 22 years of catching up to do. I am glad she has grown up to be a fun loving and totally chilled out girl. She told me of her entire love story with her fiance and I was in splits when I read that story. Wow, its great to know Shany all over again after all these years.

Estoy Aprendienda Espanol

The past week was heavy, sad, and boring. I have observed that the best way to get out of a depression is to learn something new. It rejuvenates you!
I was really happy when I joined swimming classes (3 years back), when I joined salsa classes (2 years back), and when I was learning French on my own. Although my education in all these stopped after a month each, it nevertheless was exciting.
So, this time I decided to learn some Spanish. I did not continue with French because it was difficult to learn on my own. I could not find a great site for French where I could get interactive video lessons for free. Moreover, French seemed somewhat boring (no offence to those who love it!). It seems a very laid back and mature language, whereas Spanish is full of life and zest. Add to it the sexy latino accent (if you can capture it) and hola! it's super exciting.
I found a fabulous site www.spanishdict.com which gives superb video lessons in Spanish for free. There are various stages of learning, various lessons, and even points to earn. I took my first class today, needless to say I got a fabulous score :-)
Now way to go; and now I know what does Madonna mean when she sings 'Te Dijo Te Amo' in 'La Isla Bonita' :-)