To Every Flawed and Beautiful Soul

About to complete 20 years of my life on this Earth, I've tried to be a good person,

Tried to be less of a hypocrite, tried to be fair, tried to stick to the ultimate mission.

I have met people, I have seen places, and I have been awed at their beauty,

And I've stood in front of the mirror and cursed at the Creator for making me ugly.

I have thought sinful thoughts, have said what was not on my mind,

But I've tried to rise above it all, I've tried to be kind.

I've heard nasty things, about me, her and him,

I've blurted out words all of a sudden, have acted on a whim.

I've  wanted things I could never have, have craved some people's company,

And later I'd realized that I just had to let myself be, and that's how I was free.

I've made great friends, friends who taught me more than books ever could,

Friends who showed me what is wrong maybe right,  friends who if they could, certainly would.

I've listened to music, resonated with the lyrics, sang at the top of my voice,

Have had torturous struggles in my mind, had forgotten that I still had a choice.

But in this beautiful struggle that life is, there are still many, many roads to travel,

So many sights to see, so many souls to meet, so many stories to unravel.

Today might not have been a good day, but then again, tomorrow might,

I've got to remember that the brightest day comes after the darkest night.

And thus I shall travel, travel with a light heart, for what may come will certainly go,

There's plenty of love to go around, the world ain't  filled with woe.

And to you, you my fellow traveller, the accidental reader of this rambling, I'd just like to say,

Be brave enough to be happy, you're never alone, and this too shall pass away.

Dat College Life, doe.

'It's been a long time since I came around, been a long time, but I'm back in town...'

Felt right to start off my return to bloggerhood with a Lady Gaga song. Well, a line from one of her songs, anyway. 

If I'm not wrong (I know I'm not, because I checked. Hehe.), my last post was on the 6th of September, last year.

The past few months have been a wild, colourful blur, with some known, unknown and mysterious colours thrown in, to make a raucous cacophony of hues that had lit up my life in a shade I'd never seen before.

I have grown more in these 8 months, than I had in the 19 years before that. I have learnt about life, about people, and I continue to discover new things about myself with every passing day, with every passing moment.

Once you start living in a hostel, you realize that there were so many things that you took for granted, which you never realized before. You need to take care of your side of the room, and that doesn't only mean keeping it neat. You have to change the sheets and the pillowcases at regular intervals, you need to make sure the window sill is clean, you need to wash the bottles you drink from, regularly, you need to keep a count of your underwear, make sure none of the clothes you'd hung out to dry are missing, wash your shoes, and of course sweep and mop the floor with your roomies every other week.

You must've thought that I missed out on the most obvious thing you have to do once you start living without parents: your own laundry. Actually, I'm so disgustingly lazy, I give all my dirty laundry to the washerwoman who comes to the ladies' hostel 6 days a week. She and I share a good rapport, and every time I see her, happiness and relief burst inside me. She charges a really small fee every month, considering the amount of washing I give her every day, and hasn't yet complained about the underwear I give her to wash. That's right, I let a stranger wash my bra and panties.

Now, before you start judging me, let me list for you the other things we have to do on our own: keep our desk clean (mine is in a heinous condition right now), our cupboard orderly, and we have to do our own dishes! Isn't that the very limit?

Oh, one time, the washerwoman didn't turn up for an entire month, and I was compelled to do my own laundry twice. I made a mess of the entire process, and had it not been for my extremely helpful neighbour, Riddhi, none of my clothes would've had their original colour.

When she finally did show up, I was way too happy, way too relieved, to be angry with her, I greeted her with an overloaded bucket in one hand, the packet of detergent powder in the other and a big grin on my face.

Because we're still faltering young colts in a world of grim faced adults, we haven't yet managed to master the art of managing the money our parents send us. Thus our days go by in an endless cycle of 'Listen, from tomorrow, we won't eat out' to 'Oh crap, sambhar for dinner again!' to 'Shit, I blew up the 2k my dad sent me in a week!'

In a way, you can't blame us. The mouth-watering hostel food is the real culprit, here.

In college, you learn to let go of your inhibitions, let go of your irrational fears, you learn to stop listening to the little discouraging voice inside your head. You do it mainly because you've got no other choice, and also because you realize that once you learn to let go of all those things, you're actually free. You're ready to spread your wings, because other beautiful souls you call your friends are also ready to unfold theirs with you.

You are a Part of It!

Hello there.

Happy Onam!

I know, I'm 83.2% South Indian already. I just need to stop puking at the sight of sambar.

In all seriousness, the continuous ongoing cultural exchange here is a truly delightful thing. Some of my closest friends here speak Malayalam as their mother tongue, and though they come from a different state, and a few others have even lived in a different country, the lives they've lead so far, and the kind of experiences they've had, are not really that different from the one I've lived or had. 

This is what binds us together, the Kannadigas, the Malayalis, the Bengalis, the Tamilians, the Assamese, the Hindi speakers and the (sole) Nepali: the universality of the experiences we gather as we grow, the lessons we learn as we walk, the stripes we earn when stumble.

But leaving aside that philosophical crap, hostel life has been a blur so far. The days whiz by without us noticing, and the weekends disappear at the speed of light. We just don't get the time to miss our hometowns and the people we've left behind, that much.

But of course, you always miss it. You miss the sights, smells and sounds of the city you grew up in, the city which knows you as much as you know her. Kolkata, as I type this, is gearing up for the loud, noisy, festive, lively carnival every year, called Durga Puja, and I miss every bit of it.

I miss my family, of course, but at least I get to hear their voice whenever I want to. How do you listen to the sound of your home? How do you bottle up a city's humming spirit and it's thrum of life, and carry it with you to listen to, when you miss it too much? 

But it's alright. In a different place, you learn to appreciate your own language, and your own culture a lot more than you did in your own place. You learn that diversity IS truly beautiful and that you are a part of that diversity, and you are contributing to its beauty. 

 On that note, I leave you. 

See you next time!

Living That Hostel Life

The Biomedical class is going on as usual,

My eyes are getting heavy, I'm seeing things dual,

Sir's 'OKAY?'s are resonating inside my head,

My traitorous thoughts keep returning to my bed.

The DC power supply has now ceased to work,

My bulb has gone off, but the teacher continues to irk.

Alternative or direct, no current is now passing,

'When will he go? Oh when will he leave?' my mind keeps asking.

This pretty much sums up my college life, so far. 

It's been a little more than a month since I've started living in Mysore, Karnataka, to study at the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, an institute, from where incidentally, my father had passed out exactly 30 years ago.

I wouldn't blame you in the slightest if you had no idea what an audiologist and speech language therapist does, and if you think I said that because I was about to give you a lengthy explanation of what I'm actually studying, then you're very much mistaken. 

Google is a verb now. Example:

GOOGLE IT.

No, in all seriousness, college is very interesting, and despite the hectic schedule, the hours of rehearsals for the Annual Day and the hours spent cutting bits of cloth and metal wires for Friendship Day decorations, hostel is fun too. 

Besides me, there's only one other Bengali girl in my batch, and others are from different states. 

And if there's one thing that I've learnt from my stay at a girls' hostel so far, as long as you're with people you like and who like you back, you can bear any amount of crap thrown at you with a grin.

And the freedom is...heady.

Sniff it with caution.

And on that note, I say Ciao for now.

Stay tuned. :)

Surfacing!

What? It's past the middle of the year already? Wow. Time does fly when you're watching TV 24/7.

HELLLOOOO! I have been slightly busy these past few weeks, and a lot of things have happened, some good, some not so good and some downright stinky.

I received my board results and I scored:

English: 86/100 (I don't know why or how. I did expect a little more.)

Physics: 95/100

Chemistry: 95/100

Biology: 95/100

Mathematics: 95/100

Also, I turned 19 on the 30th of May, and I didn't receive any sudden flash of wisdom or some great enlightenment. I continue to remain fat and stupid. All aspiring 19-year-olds out there, don't get your hopes up.

I DID however, receive a superb phone courtesy my parents, and frankly, I'm in love with it. It's not an iPhone, but to me, it IS better. *proud mom moment*

Many of my other entrance exam results were disappointing, though a few were not. I did get through St. Xavier's college with Integrated MSc in Biotechnology, although I'm waiting for some more results to be declared. 

If you're feeling sad or depressed and on edge, and about to throw in the towel, I just want to tell you to hang on. It will get better, I promise. I have faced the darkness, and yet here I am typing this, am I not?

Hang on.We'll get through this. We'll emerge as stronger people.

Until next time!

Why Doesn't My Brother Flush The Toilet?

Hello, dear reader.

Wassup, m****rf****r?

If you've been following the news, you'll know how pleasant the weather is, right now in Kolkata. And if you believed me, go BBC yourself.

Imagine this: it's 6 in the morning, and your bladder's ready to burst, and you grope your way towards the bathroom, rubbing the sleep from your eyes, and as soon as you open the door, you're hit with a blast of the strongest odour of pee that you've ever come across (though chances are, you live in India and you've had to use a public toilet at least once and well... you get the gist) and suddenly doing it in a bottle doesn't seem that bad an idea.

Hey I get it bro, you were sleepy and you couldn't find the flush lever, so you just did your thing, and you left (probably without even washing your hands), but think of the next person who uses it and suffers severe, irreversible damage to the olfactory receptors and dies. You will be solely responsible for a very, very smelly situation.

Plus, your girlfriend might think you're some kind of a Romeo-Superman incarnate, it still doesn't justify me having to suffer the sight of your yellow excreta every time you become 'forgetful'.

Every time you don't flush or just half-heartedly tug at the lever, I die, I die a little inside.

Maybe you do it because you like the smell. Or you do it because you really care about our planet Earth and want to save some water. Or maybe you don't flush because you just like being an effing pain in the ass.

Also, you may walk out the bathroom like the world's your bitch, but oh I was listening, I was listening for the full, hearty symphony of a full toilet flush and then the thoughtful spritzing of water to do away with the careless 'stray drops'.

But guess what? I didn't hear any.

Isn't it absolutely adorable having a sibling who's so thoughtful and considerate?

That isn't a rhetorical question. I'm asking YOU, because I really have no idea.

Love you, Dada? Hehe. For the sake of all things holy, I hope you never read this.

Love Thy Damned Neighbour's Voice

Now I'm sure many of you have dealt with weirdass neighbours at some point or the other, and I'm about to tell you a little bit about mine.

It just so happens that my neighbour's kitchen and my room are kind of close together, and we almost, almost share windows. And let's just say you wouldn't exactly have to strain your ears to catch what they're saying when they're in the kitchen.

Now both the schools that I've attended in my life have been really close by and I would just get up 15 minutes early to reach on time, but my neighbours' kids apparently needed to wake up nice and early and apparently their mother would have to do all the screaming that was required to get them out of bed in the KITCHEN, and no other place.

Example:

Neighbour: 'GET UP,YOU LAZY BASTARD! GET UP! YOU'RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR SCHOOL! GET UP AND GET READY, don't just LIE there!'

These words would penetrate the thick curtain of sleep and pierce my brain like shards of glass and  I would actually wake up, and would actually start getting ready, because I'd feel so guilty. 

Yes, she unintentionally rendered me a great service, something which even my alarm (set at two-minute intervals with inspirational messages like 'WAKE UP, FATTY!') had failed to do.

The husband is no less weird, and he'd often tell me when we met downstairs in the morning to 'hurry up' like he told his kids, and I'd smile nervously, tighten the satchel straps and quicken my steps.

So kids, what have we learnt today? 

Neighbours are nice. 

Even if they are complete fucking bonkers.