Hello again!

Hello everybody!

Sorry for my long absence. I’m just back from a trip to Chennai and Mysore and, having finished an exercise in Chemistry to inaugurate the five-month study marathon that I’ve launched for myself, I decided to post (finally) something on my blog.

I was in Chennai mainly to spend time with my grandfather, who is in hospital there. He broke his hip a while ago, and went into coma while in treatment. It just went downhill from there. His lungs failed, he caught an infection in the blood, and all sorts of other things. Anyway, he’s on his way to recovering fully. I’d like to think it has something to do with our presence.

I also had the opportunity to catch up with some of my Lawrence friends, which was super fun! There’s a really nice shop in Chennai called Amethyst, and they have an equally pleasant café. There we discussed all the old gossip, all the old people and all the memorable times we’d shared over steaming lattes!

Christmas was also spent in Chennai, with Christian friends of ours. It was great! We had carol singing, a lovely tree, presents, and an amazing Christmas dinner.

But the weather in Chennai is so damn uncooperative! It was blazingly hot and I was just wilting with lethargy. I got no work done despite powerful spasms of tension. Mysore was better that way. Our house there is one that I’m very fond of, and peace combined with the cooler clime made working easier. The most important thing is that I managed to get all my applications out on time! I took much longer than I anticipated. I was working on them for three consecutive days, literally from morning to evening, before I thought them fit to send of. It would have looked like quite a charade to any outside observer! There was no Internet at home, so I used to go to my dad’s office, and all the employees would be working voluntary overtime because the boss’s son just wouldn’t go home! It was terribly embarrassing, but there was nothing that I could do. My college counsellor was holidaying in Tuscany, and given the time difference, all my frantic calls had to be made in the late afternoon/ evening…

However, I was able to do my French at my own pace, and thoroughly enjoyed learning two new tenses and new vocabulary. I also spent some fun time going through my Chemistry book.

Now I need to get down to doing English, Business, Physics and Math, subjects that I have a somewhat diminutive tolerance for. I know, I know, you’re wondering why English…it’s just that my new English teacher is so infuriatingly knowledgeable that discussion during English class is virtually non-existent, his responses to arguments and so intimidatingly condescending, and the grades that he gives people are so crushingly discouraging that one ends up very forlorn.

But needs must be met! To work.

Sorry!

Hi everyone,

Sorry! Haven't been posting for a while. Been very busy with all sorts if things. Hoping to get back soon!

Arvind

Of Air Castles on Marble Floors

The day was bad even before it was day yet. I had two TOK essays and one English essay due, all three of which had to be sent off to the IB for evaluation. They all accounted for between 10% and 20% of my final grade in all those various subjects. I began working at them at about three past twelve in the morning, but was just far too tired to be productive. I set the alarm for twenty past twelve. Just 20 minutes, I told myself, would be enough to get a power nap and re-charge. The alarm might have gone off, but I simply didn’t hear it. When I finally woke up, it was morning. 6 o’clock. I told myself – half an hour to spare. I could still do something…

It was break time. Memories of the shock when I found at ten to seven that the saved version of the TOK essay on my laptop was incomplete by a page and a half were still fresh in my mind. The clouds were grey and it was slightly chilly. I remembered the wind howling through the window of the bus as it hurtled towards school, while I desperately fought to type in the rest of my TOK essay from a hard copy that I’d found in one of my files. The laptop was thrown around quite a bit and typing was virtually impossible as we rode over the fissured tarmac. I never want to travel down this road again, I thought to myself.

I found a little black marble square in the floor of the portico where biscuits and juice are served at school. To my left and right were green plants contemplating silently in the corner. Everything was a little subdued as wisps of cotton wool of gloom hung in the air. Standing in my little black square, I began to read through the TOK essay. Out of the corner of my eye, I could still see that no one was coming into the little black square. Suddenly, for some strange reason, and for one I am at quite a loss to explain, I felt a little better. It was like I was in my own little black square. I could stand in it how I wanted and do in it what I wanted. I began walking in a circle in the black square and couldn’t help but smile a little, even though there wasn’t any conceivable reason to do so.

Looking back on the incident during lunch, I decided that appreciation of the small and childish things in life, something as simple as standing on the main portico floor and standing in the black square inlay, and knowing that they are different, can make one happy. These things appear at one like realisations sometimes, single lines from unfinished limericks, and can make a difficult situation so much more bearable!

The machine didn’t transmit nuances of expression.

A friend and I were talking the other day through the machine. I could hear something like her, and I believe I received something of her tone. I was satisfied…

Beneath those corridors of shining tiles were rooms, tier below tier, reaching far into the earth, and in each room there sat a human being, eating, or sleeping, or producing ideas.

He woke up in the morning and rushed to check if any comments had been left on his blog. He excitedly checked his e-mail to see if there was anything that had arrived since it was last checked before he went to sleep a few hours ago. There were a few advertisements. Digitally enhanced pictures of people smiling, sterile beaches and fully air-conditioned rooms. He was satisfied.

The blog, which contained ideas and discussions about the “philosophical thoughts” that had struck him, had no new comments. It made him unhappy. It upset him that there was nothing there yet, and the satisfaction of a few seconds ago dissipated. He began to rummage around for better and more interesting ideas to post up in the evening. It had to be interesting, it had to be attractive. It had to, above all, inspire comment.

There was the button that produced literature.

All through the day, he scrutinised for things to think. He put them in his blog in the evening. He arranged them in Times New Roman script in a mechanical size of 12, evenly spaced and ready to be presented for the ignition of other’s mind engines. He hit the submit button and the characters were transmitted by electric pulses to the central Machine from where it could be accessed by other human beings and their minds and machines.

The clumsy system of public gatherings had long since been abandoned; neither Vashti not her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her arm-chair she spoke, while they, in their arm-chairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well.

On another side of the sphere rotating in melancholy silence in the vastness of space, uninspiringly, as she who stared at the white liquid crystal screens in her machine room thought, while the last buds of autumn gave way to white white white winter outside the unobserved window, sat the judge of his happiness. The ideas were proclaimed of mediocre quality. They was duly processed and considered. No comment was made. Another blog was switched to. Within the day, sixty-two blogs were read. Some were commented on, some were not.
“In certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.”

Similarly, he looked at the blog. The idea was of some interest but there simply wasn’t any time to comment. There were several other correspondences to be attended to. In a machine room another machine room somewhere between the neutrons and electrons of that atom that the blogger didn’t know, another blog was switched to.

“I want you to come and see me.”
Vashti watched his face in the blue plate.
”But I can see you!” she exclaimed. “What more do you want?”
”I want to see you not through the Machine.” said Kuno. “I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.”

In the evening, he checked his blog again. There was no comment. “No matter,” he thought, hitting the refresh button over and over again, “it’s only a matter of time.” But deep down, where the plastic covering of his wiring met the copper conductor, where all was dark save for the humming, he was unhappy. He wanted his blog to be commented on. It was of no concern that he didn’t know the people who usually commented. It was no matter that he didn’t know their face, whether they were man or woman or child, or what they were reading or saying or tasting or ironing or walking or dressing or eating save for that which they chose to communicate in little electric pulses. It was of no concern that little shapes in regular patterns were all he knew of them who he ought to have concerned himself with only if they could be regarded as insignificant to his own life’s happiness. In the old days they would have been at atom’s worth of significance, a moth in an abandoned shed while the families played in the snow. Now they were sustenance.
The little bicycle stood outside the window, looking like a little grasshopper ready to eat a fresh green leaf. The man stayed at his machine.



The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit.

“Read my blog,” said the friend as we ended our conversation.

“How we have advanced thanks to the Machine!”
“How we have advanced thanks to the Machine!” said Vashti.
“How we have advance thanks to the Machine!” echoed the passenger







Inspired by
E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops

Went to see The Devil Wears Prada! It was quite the most entertaining movie I’ve watched for a while. Thoroughly enjoyed it! I’m going to go see it again with someone sometime (no Vyoma, I’m only going with someone who doesn’t make loud sarcastic comments during the movie).
It wasn’t very true to the book, which I was glad for, because the book simply isn’t as good. I missed James, one of Andrea’s more supportive friends. He was among the only appealing and well-drawn characters. The other appealing ones didn’t even make an appearance, and got by on their real life fame (the occasional references to Oscar de la Renta, Maria Silvia Venturini Fendi), so I wouldn’t willingly read any more Lauren Weisberger, though I definitely want to see the movie again. Other unfortunates were Andrea’s boyfriend (called Alex in the book, but Nate in the movie) who was a bad actor, and Christian, the fashionable writer. Christian wasn’t as alluring as the book suggested he should be.
Meryl Streep was amazing though. She did the pretentious British accent and the “Ahn-dre-ah” better than I’d imagined.
Valentino, the real life one, actually made an appearance as himself. I was delighted, because it added an element of reality, and deepened the impression that the fashion world really is the way it was portrayed in the film. Besides, it’s nice to see the face of a person behind craft that you admire. It was all so glamorous!
I also caught a flaw in the movie. For those of you who haven’t been yet, keep an eye out for it when you do go: when Andrea and Miranda are in Paris, there’s a catwalk scene at Valentino. A white model comes out wearing a red dress with two roses at the waist. That dress is actually a Valentino from last year, and was worn for him by Naomi Campbell. Gisele Bundchen’s brief appearance is very cool. Also, look for Heidi Klum. I couldn’t spot her, but the credits said she was there. There’s the issue about the Hermes scarves as well: during Emily’s accident, a whole lot of allegedly Hermes scarves go up into the air. I wonder of they really are…didn’t look like anything they’ve offered recently.
So now off you go to see the movie.

I have really missed blogging. Once it gets into your system, it’s really difficult to stop. So as you can imagine, it’s been really difficult to stay away these past few days, but I’ve had to because of the sheer volume of work that needs to be done.
Theory of Knowledge presentation is on Monday. I’m doing it on why Her Majesty The Queen should rule a sizeable portion of the world. I’ve been collecting quotes to support my position, and am rather pleased with an Aristotelian one that I recently came across. It’s from his Poetics, and essentially says that the state of advancement of any civilization can be measured by the state of its arts. The presentation argues that since Her Majesty is the epitome of the arts, it follows that she is a being elevated above those others of the human race.


A portrait of Her Majesty by His Lordship The Earl of Snowdon, to celebrate her 80th birthday.

******
Off to see The Devil Wears Prada with the family tomorrow! I’m really excited. It has all the juicy details about the inside workings of the fashion industry. In fact, Miranda Priestly is supposed to be a caricature of that formidable (though rather tasteless) Anna Wintour. Merly Streep, I’m sure, will make up for Ann Hathaway’s amazing lack of expressive variety.


Note: Readers who wish to discuss the role of the monarchy today on this blog are requested to take note. All references to the monarch must be made such: Her Majesty The Queen, Her Majesty or The Queen. If you wish to cast aspersions on the monarchic institution, your comment must make excessive use of the euphemism. They must also be deferential, even if it is presenting a feature that perhaps could be considered disadvantageous in that most venerable institution, the crown.

I could feel the suppressed snoring of the rickety old bus, somewhere under me. I wished I could sleep through my journey on the fissured roads, like it.
It began raining outside. I wondered if I’d feel better if the cool rain feel on my face. But I didn’t want my blazer to get wet. The books in my school bag too. Once I concluded that I might like to feel the rain, I began deciding if I’d be able to open the window.
The rain stopped. I was at my stop. I couldn’t get the image of the boy sleeping next to me and the girl who opened the window and wet herself in the smile of the rain out of my mind.

I'm feeling rather pleased. I wrote off to the Japanese Prime Minister yesterday, expressing my views on the succession issue. Getting in touch with him requires you to fill out a short form giving your age, country and e-mail address. I hope a sixteen year old Indian monarchist writing to him is unusual enough to solicit a response. I tried to keep it in the same tone as his slightly literary speeches. I also tried to keep the sentimentality attune to the sort exuded by Japanese haikus. One the whole, I think, I was fairly successful. The line “I sincerely hope that Japan’s forward thinking people will be able to implement an historic step such as this in the near future and once again show the world that Japan is indeed The Land of the Rising Sun”, I think, was well writ, though I do say so myself.

It’s certainly good news for Japan. I’m thrilled that Princess Kiko’s given birth to a baby boy. The only question in my mind is what’s going to happen to the plan to allow women to accede to the throne? My mum and I were discussing this yesterday, and we both feel that with a Harvard educated, foreign service associated, cosmopolitan mother like Crown Princess Masako, little Princess Aiko is bound to be a good Empress. Besides, the two women rulers – one Empress and one Regent Empress that Japan’s had in the past have both been very powerful and successful.
The succession issue isn’t the only thing I’m worried about. I think it’s awful that former Princess Sayako lost her title when she married a commoner. Nobody is saying give the commoner a title, but once born royal, always royal, so why take the title away from her?


I wish the Emperor and Empress would say something but there's little chance of that. The Imperial Household is very traditional. All the same, here's a brilliant picture of them.

Dear loyal fans,
My computer has packed up! It shuts itself down as soon as I start it!! This means that I could lose... EVERYTHING!!! Can you imagine doing everything all over again? Those chemistry labs, world literatures, extended essay drafts, Math portfolios, VIVUM letters, the vast music collection, the authoritative collection of photographs of Her Majesty, all gone! Gone, GONE, gone gone.
But most of all I miss your adorations. Please, bear with me till I get my computer back. Then I'll be back online and pasting once more.

Yours,
The Acropolian Oracle,
(fortelling disaster in the IB program)

There's just so much yummy stuff to eat in the house now! My friend Avanti from Pune recently brough back lots and lots of Shrewsburys! For those of you who havn't had them, get them! You're missing out on some really uniquely exquisite butter biscuits, made by an exclusive Pune backery only. I first had them when I was six-and-a-half years old, at a Chettiyar community wedding of all places. I longed for them for years, before I had them again when mum's friend brought them for us. We've never failed to ask Pune people to bring us Shrewsburys after that, though they only last a few days and the pain of loss after they're gone is terrible.



Then there's my grandmother's fantastic orange marmalade, nice and bitter like it should be; not like the sweet stuff you get in the market. I really should learn how to make it before I go to the States...
Then there's the plum jam, made by the women supported by an NGO in the Kumaon kills region and procured at an exhibition in Bangalore recently. My aunt first gave us a bottle last year, and we were dying for more, so we dashed off a letter to the makers, who wrote back after some months to say they were coming back to Bangalore. This time we've stocked up well.



Last, to go with the jams is French Camembert. I picked it up at the Nilgiri's on Brigade road recently.






Mum said to be careful when opening it. "French is it? Open it near an exhaust fan."



"It might jump out of the tin and walk out the door"



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I was to meet HLL about VIVUM sponsorship again today, so I got myself dropped off at Palm Meadows which is close to their office. The car that was supposed to pick me up wasn't there, so I trudged 10 minutes from the gate to the club house with a heavy laptop bag and a really heavy school bag only to find that they charge 6 bucks a minute to make calls. Managed to look like the impoverished student I was though, and got my mum on the line. The car was there when I got to the gate after another 10 minute trek. I was feeling like a twisted sausage by this time.
I had to wait one hour in the HLL office before I got to see the chap concerned. All hopes of a good offer were dashed in one minute. By this time I had been bitten everywhere by the GIGANTIC mosquitoes that they get.
When I got home after another hour, through traffic as thick as mousse, I was feeling like a juiceless twisted sausage...
It's nice to sit in front of the computer writing one's blog..~

We started reading Hamlet today. It's amazing what raunchy stuff young children are being made to read these days...



Our teacher is really awesome though! He tells us all naughty sexual parts and goes into detail about the scandalous poems throughout history. I'm looking for Christina Rosseti's Goblin Market just now. Then I have to find Thoughts in a Garden by Andrew Marvell, a poet I've loved ever since I read his To His Coy Mistress for the IGCSE. I'll post you To His Coy Mistress sometime. Have you read Marvell Metamatician? He's far from brooding and dark, but you might like him. I'm also a brooding poem type, but he's my exception.
But back to Shakespeare, apparently Twelfth Night is also full of sex. OORMILA, do you know what an opportunity you've let up by not mentioning it in class? You wouldn't have had any problems with our grade. Honestly, you're no better than Ms.Anila who says "Physical attraction and ahemmm...things of that sort" for even mildly suggestive paragraphs. This is really bad analysis.

Mum and dad weren’t here today, so the maids used this unique opportunity to light aggarbattis, burn oil lamps and camphor and do a little pooja, since today was Ganesh Chaturti.



I was so stuffed on all the sweets that they’d specially made that I couldn’t have anything at the prefect’s tea at Dr. Sullivan’s. Basil Hospitality Service was doing the catering so there was hot chocolate in plastic cups, pineapple pastry and samosas. I think poor Mrs. Sullivan was feeling quite shy and awkward.

I am the only being whose doom

I am the only being whose doom
No tongue would ask, no eye would mourn;
I never caused a thought of gloom,
A smile of joy, since I was born.

In secret pleasures, secret tears.
This changeful life has slipped away,
As friendless after eighteen years,
As lone as on my natal day.

There have been times I cannot hide,
There have been times when this was drear,
When my sad soul forgot its pride
And longed for one to love me here.

But those were in the early glow
Of feelings since subdued by care,
And they have died so long ago
I hardly now believe they were.

First melted off the hope of youth,
Then fancy’s rainbow fast withdrew,
And then experience told me truth
In mortal bosoms never grew.

’Twas grief enough to think mankind
All hollow, servile, insincere –
But worse to trust to my own mind
And find the same corruption there.


Emily Brontë


This is one of the most beautiful poems that I have ever read, so I wanted to share it with you

Existentialism

It’s at moments like this when you wish you could sing and scream and scream and sing your heart out and cry and be born tomorrow when you wake.

Tropical Fruit

Today’s workload is less than yesterday’s was. I only went to sleep at 1:00 at night and woke up at 6:00. I think I’ll be able to make both hours more reasonable today.
* * *

Today was way better. I think there was some major awkwardness yesterday about seeing people after so long, but things chilled today.
Went and saw the college counsellor about OxBridge. There’s so much work to do for that! I think I’ll just have to reconcile myself to the fact that I can only go there for undergrad now. No way I can finish an extended personal project before the 15th of September.
My English teacher obsessed about every word in “Hamlet”. We did six dialogues in 45 minutes.
Had a meeting scheduled with the vice-principal. He didn’t show up. Apparently he was attending a Grade 9 Spanish class…
Tropical fruit was delicious today.
* * *
Called those dratted sponsors when I got back home. It seems to be a truth of life that getting money from people is incredibly difficult.

First Day of School

I’m just back from my first day at school!
Woke up without too much of a problem at 6:10 after my dad came into the room. As usual the alarm wasn’t effective; got to go and get a new one now. Last year I had two alarm clocks, one cell phone and one iPod synchronised to ring at the same time. Only then could I be assured of waking up! Hoping it doesn’t come down to that this year.

Lots of new kids in the bus this morning…was wondering if I should enforce the grade 12 prerogative in getting the back seats, but decided it was more comfortable in the front. Shiv, Manohar and Sucheta are the new grade 12s on the bus. Rides will be more fun now. Not so heavily dependant on my iPod, which is good, considering it’s been giving me problems lately.

Got to see Mr. Colin, my new and very knowledgeable English literature teacher. Looking forward to his classes. We’re starting “Hamlet” tomorrow.

Found time to speak to Ms. Tracy about my Extended Essay. Prab, you’ll be happy to know I’m beginning to seriously speak deadlines language now. Have to have the EE question and 1 page write up in to her by Monday.

Ms. Neeta, the school college counsellor asked me to join the Oxbridge group tomorrow, so I’m thrilled. Will see how it goes.

Had to meet Mr. D’Mello about VIVUM today. The intensity of work started in the holidays will have to continue as far as that is concerned. Schools, not just sponsorship, seem to be an issue, as out of the 96 schools we’d invited, only 5 have responded.

Spoke to Ms. Tracy about CCA Drama. I’d have liked to be part of the school play “Caucasian Chalk Circle” but it turns out I’ll have to do drama CCA for that. I’d rather do something different this year though. I was thinking about MUN. I’m sure it’s possible to go for the conference even if I do another CCA. I think I’ll do art.

In other news, I saw Vashti. I also got the call. Do you think I should return it?

Cryptix

We had a nice calm little Navroz morning. I was thinking so hard about tropical fruit that I called that inefficient delivery man. I was also dying to confess this to someone, but no one was answering Vashti's cell phone. No call back.

I went and met ITC Foods today. They’ve a very impressive campus in Fraser Town. Didn’t take long to get there, and didn’t have to wait long. The gentleman who met us was patient and considerate. (No seriously. Not because he’s reading this) Went there with Vikas, Oormila, but sorry, no picture! Come to VIVUM and you’ll be able to see everybody J.
Then the whole family had to go to a pooja in a temple. It lasted really long and I was starving, but I chatted with the relatives and it managed through it tolerably.
The kovil yelai sapad (food on a banana leaf, as served in temples), as we tam brams say, was worth the wait! Of course, I pigged and was later prostrate on my bed for 2 hours, feeling bloated but utterly contented!
Managed to get a little tennis going with my dad at 6 o’clock though, so I’m feeling a little better.
TOMORROW IS NAVROZ! The parsi new year for those of you who don’t know. We’re having lunch with our parsi friends. There’ll be dhansak and kebobs, as we descended from ancient Persian nobility say. So in anticipation, and the necessity of keeping ourselves sufficiently hungry for this feast, it’s taire sadam (curd rice (as we tam brams say)) for dinner tonight.