My Tryst with Classical Music: Chapter One

I have a friend who loves to listen to classical music and by classical music, I don't mean the modified version with  contemporary music and rap, but the real deal with just the music in it, sarod, sitar, veena etc.Thanks to her, at least now I can differentiate between them!
This Thursday, there was a concert by Amaan and Ayaan Ali Khan at St. Stephens and she asked me go with her and I decided to give it a try.
Only because the other day i was listening to some songs she had given me and one by Amaan Ali Khan stood out, Rhythm of love it was called and it set such a beautiful backdrop to my writing that I liked it.
And so I went to the concert and there they stood, Amaan And Ayaan Ali Khan, young, good looking Sarod players(one is married and the other in engaged, that counts against them) and they started playing. It went all over my head, i wont lie but for the first thirty minutes or so, it was good. The next hour passed with me climbing the steep curve towards migraine, only to prove that I really am tone deaf.

We got top interact with the two and they really are such humble and friendly soles and did I mention, they look good?
Ayaan is the younger one, with a twinkle in his eyes, a dimple and a spark that showed how talented he was, he played without any concern. Amaan is the elder one with intelligent eyes and as he played, he managed the team as well, his brother and the tabla Players.
As for me, I continuously try to broaden my limited music horizon and so now, I can tick of Sarod from my list. And now I know what it looks like as well!!
My other classical music efforts include Claude Debussy who is really good but sounds a bit amateur, Beethoven, who sounds sad sometimes and sometimes so grand that I wish i was born in the time such music was played and random Operas for I haven't really been able to identify the singers and the styles yet, though I would love some suggestions.

Battle with the bulge: My Sonam Kapoor Story

I have decided to be honest and by being honest I get to confront my biggest malady, the War with the Weight, fighting the flab etc.
To people who know me, it is not a big secret, I mean seriously, how can it be a big secret when one is so big?And with this I have constantly battled fears in my head, confronted diets,catapulted in and out of weight limits and obsessed over inches. The war is far from over, but in its course I am glad I have done away with the worst.
It's a story like everyone else's, eat a lot and play a lot less then eat some more and sleep a little and then eat some more. I wont go into the cholesterol high details but the gist was I ate and ate and ate. From chocolates to butter chicken, from condensed milk cans to cakes, I gobbled it all up. And except for this, I really didn't do anything else, I used to go out and play as well(as a kid) but then again, I was a reader and I loved to read and I preferred doing that. But it all capsized on me as I topped the scale by crossing 100 kg(I am guessing here because at that point, I had stopped checking my weight.).I lost all visible bones that I had, grew larger than my mother, my granny and the neighborhood fat aunty and expanded horizontally.I somehow fit JK Rowling's description of Dudley Durseey,"Wider than he was tall".
Obviously, I had to begin somewhere, I started controlling my diet, exercised, went to a gym, danced, did aerobics and everything else that there was. My vice is that I don't have patience and no trainer can really work around that(trust me, I tried!) and so I became my own trainer, changing and improvising as and when I lost the will. But the trouble with being your own trainer is that your weight loss rate becomes really slow, I don't mind that because I am sure the fat is off permanently. And it is fun, devicing routines and creating diets(I do talk to experienced people!).
I am still far from my ideal weight(i read it should be below 50 kg) and I still have lose skin and un-toned body parts, but at least I fit in medium sized clothes!!
Why I mention Sonam Kapoor is that off late I have had issues with my body, the usual, cellulite and sagging stuff and it irks me(I even considered going for surgery if the toning exercises don't work).Then I read about her weight loss and I am not disparaging other wight loss stories but she, being a celebrity and coming out about it(because, trust me, it is a sensitive issue) made me respect her even more. And she talks about the cellulite she still has to confront, despite being a size 2! How she overcomes that, what she does to keep off the fat and the best thing of all, this tall, svelte lady talks about not having a perfect body. Like how during the shoot of Aisha, in a particular scene with swim wear, she had to wear jeans over her swimsuit for the other girls were perfectly toned.
I look at her and I know that even in the celeb world where they airbrush your cellulite and give you abs, all is not well. And then I look at myself in the mirror, I may be far from perfect, but i am somewhere and i can see a goal and I work on that.
And the best thing about weight loss? I discovered hitherto unknown stuff about myself that used to lie beneath all that flab, the dent on my arm, the chin dimple, the shape of my jaw and my real size.

And my latest exercise routine? Zumba and toning and sculpting with weights.(It is fun!)

The Difference between need and want.

As a child I read a lot of the Sweet Valley Series, Sweet Valley High,Sweet Valley University, Sweet Valley Kids etc and there is a plot in one SVU book in which Sam Burgess, Elizabeth's love interest leaves her for he is afraid of commitment and needy women. Then later on comes back to realize that Elizabeth does not need him, she wants him.That line stayed with me and as I progressed from becoming a book devouring maniac to a partial shop-a-holic, I always had this line running through me as I went to buy anything. Of course, I never really answered it and fell pray to any sales tactic, i am still happy with the things I bought.
But on a deeper level, I think about this and it makes me wonder how much it applies in our life? We always come across situations and people that make us feel so vulnerable and out of our comfort zone. We act strange like we don't know ourselves, slowly deteriorating, becoming our worse selves. We start living in a cage of self denial and disappointment all because we confused between our needs and wants. Thinking that what we want is something we need and we quit living our life for the deplorable want of that want, that eats away at us.
And as a person watching from outside, no one will want to come close to a person like that And here, I cite the case of Elizabeth Gilbert as she talks about her worst days in eat, pray and love, how meeting David had all those effects on her. He thought she needed him and the more she did, the more he pulled away until she went away herself.
But sometimes, it becomes more of a matter of perception. You care a lot for someone, you go all out for a person and that person starts to think that you need them while you just want them in your life. Sometimes, it is important to make a difference and sometimes it is important to understand the difference.
Just a thought.

The Revenge Theory

Does it leave us feeling satisfied at the end of the day or we are the same as ever?

I have been surfacing in and out of the theory of Revenge for the past week or so. There are movies made on this, serial plot lines, books and then real live human action to watch as they battle it with their conscience on revenge.

There has always been a time in the life of a person when they have been wronged by somebody and personally, I am conflicted on how one deals with it. You can either take the high road and tell yourself that what goes around comes around or you can go out there and get yourself avenged. Drama much?

But then again, the feeling of being let down by someone or something, the situation not playing for you and the eventual disappointment and heartbreak, revenge does seem worth it, doesn't it? I watch a show called the mentalist where the lead, Patrick Jane is driven by a strong motivation to avenge the murder of his family and helps the crime bureau solve murders. MI4 had Paula Patton kill the murderer of her love interest and then there are the numerous Sunny Deol and Ajay Devgan films in Bollywood all centred on revenge.

One thing, we all must realise and come to terms with is that life is not fair, nor is it perfect. It's our actions that make it so. And along the way people will disappoint you and things will not fall into place sometimes and avenging yourself, setting the deal right might seem alluring(trust me, to me it does. many times) but its what you are going to feel afterwards that seems to matter more.

I have been through this many times, in my head, over and over again, why  me? So have we all, from the smallest things in life to major setbacks.

But one should think from the other person's perspective as well. Why they did what they did. And why they do what they do. It is hard to think of them as people but that's what they are too. They make mistakes and maybe you weren't a mistake to them but you cannot berate yourself over this. Setting yourself in the whole revenge mode, thinking dark and doing dark might ease you for a while but in the end you are no better than the other person, are you?

As i conclude this, all I have understood till now is that the only person who matters is you and how you can face yourself at night. Ruin the bitch who fucked up your life or rise again from the ashes? A la phoenix.

The Disappointment of being Human.

You pin your hopes and dreams on someone and something and then that breaks you in the end. All that you have thought of, all that you ever wanted, everything destroyed in seconds. What you need to do then is to introspect and think, analyse and re-analyse where you went wrong for at the end of the day its you who matters. You need to be able to stand up there and look in the mirror, at your conscience and be able to answer yourself truthfully.
We all suffer from childish fits, the wants and the needs and we need to differentiate between them, it can be a very difficult task. I have been through this and something i read in a teen fiction came to me once, the lead suddenly realises that that the heroine maybe wants him and does not need him and this changes everything about the dynamics of the relationship. He starts to perceive her as an independent woman and questions his actions. I am just drawing analogy here for this question of need and want always surfaces everywhere, be it in your professional life when you need that raise or do want it? In your daily life when you need to buy that pair of uggs or do want them? personally, it is a good thing to maybe just pause and first answer this question.
But even after you categorise your need and wants no one says that you wont be disappointed when you don't get you "want". For the thing that you want is the thing that makes you the happiest, it is something that can lighten up your darkest days and make you complete or just bring a smile to your face and not getting it will only fuel all your negative feelings and energies. Philosophy dictates that fr every disappointment that we have, we will find something else that will make us happier in and feel better about ourselves. It is the law of karma, newton's third law, the balance of mankind.
And maybe that thing wont be what you wanted at that point but slowly you will realise how important it actually is for you must remember that it managed to break through all your barriers of wants and needs, it ripped through the sadness engulfing you, strong and stoic and it managed to finally pull you out of the dark abyss of desolation.
it will take time and it wont be easy for as humans, although we are presented with a lot of disappointments, we hardly seem to rise above it and keep wallowing in self pity. Cry all you want and exhaust it, do other things that you want to do and just don't ever shut all the doors for that will only lead to a darker night and a darker life.

Why I love Eat, Pray and Love

Off late many people have commented much on the fact that I love this book, Eat, pray and Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Some say that a self help memoir is not what they need while some disparage the whole book, crediting Julia Roberts for its success. I had tried reading it before the whole "Julia Roberts came to India" angle and since I was in my Meg Cabot/Harry Potter phase, I pretty much gave up on it, until now.

I read it a month ago and since I have a final exam tomorrow, there is nothing better to do than write about why I love this book.

The book chronicles the life of Liz Gilbert for a year, after her divorce, as she travels through three countries, Italy, India and Indonesia. It is a journey of her thoughts and a mental growth process we all experience. I could relate to this book and suddenly, I had many of my friends queuing up to advice me on how to overcome my depression and sending me contacts of various shrinks.And I did contact one but I realised I was way better than this.

The reason I and a million other people connected with the book is that it is honest, blatantly honest about the woman and her feeling as she traverses the highs and lows of her life. Her courage and willingness to explore all sides of herself, as a person and a human being. Something, we don't normally do. We tend to love in a self created bubble of perfectness, an illusion that we are doing the right, we have what we want and we are perfect in every sense. But deep inside, every human being has this whirring noisy mind that gives a reality check now and then. It is all about how well we listen to it and how well we ignore it.

I have experienced it personally while judging certain situations in my life from an objective point of view, writing down my thoughts and all my convoluted reasons and logic and reading this book made me feel that I was not alone. There is this another person who echos my thoughts. maybe, the context is different but the basic thought process is the same. I could relate to her.

I could relate to Liz and the trauma she underwent during her divorce. The self loathing, the loneliness and the depression. I could relate to her need to indulge in worldly pleasures and her need to cleanse herself and her mind. 

And so can everyone else. As humans and people living life in a world where nothing is perfect, we encounter situations and deal with them in our own way. And the whole time we reason things out, each small step there is, we think about it and list it and keep going on and this is what the book is all about. Reasoning and logic.

And the need to escape.

Maybe, not escape in the real sense, but sometimes, we all need a break from the monotonous drudgery we build for ourselves, a break to clear our minds and experience world in a different light.

And the book gives hope, a hope for change. A hope that when everything in your life is down, you will find light at the end of the tunnel.

Liz lost all her money in the divorce, sold her house, left her country and had no idea where life would take her and she found the best friends and people from all over the world, Luca who became a friend for life, Richard from Texas, who taught her to clear her mind, Ketut and Wayan, who helped her as she helped them and finally Felipe, the man she ended up marrying, for life.

The book is a real account. And the story gives hope.

Attraversiamo!

Exams and the perpetual state of non existence

Come end semester season and I get stuck in limbo. With a non existence I really hate. And here is my post, cribbing about everything and anything that causes me duress during this ghastly season of eternal boredom and brain damaging physics.

1.Too much Physics: I know I signed up for this, but really, I am a writer and forcefully pushing in all the mundane laws of physics, the formulae, the horrendous diagrams and graphs are all just an exercise in futility. I find no real use to all the crap I have been forced to learn because let's be real, no company would want me as an engineer, I'd only destroy anything that comes near me. I don't even know what those triangles are in the circuits we study and we did those in the second sem or maybe the first?

2.Forced break from writing: I love to write. Period. And these stupid crazy days force me to take a break from writing anything I want to. As a result, all those words in me, the great thoughts and future masterpieces of literature are lost to the world.

3. Random Research: That's what I call stuff I like to read about, dig deep into and be a know-it-all about, my random research. from the many serial killers to human behavioral patterns to the legend of the shroud of Turin to history of Mickey Mouse. I like it all and I like to know it all and frankly, people around me will only be scared if I try this "stunt" during the exams when I am supposed to be lapping up all those great new theories of physics.

4.Trade Fair?Not fair!!: Being in Delhi, I sorely miss the Mumbai Vada Pav. I really really do and trade fair is the only time when I can get something that closely resembles the real deal. Why cant Delhi street food vendors be more versatile?!! And my November exams have ruined this experience for me for the past three years. No more Vada Pav. Well someone said they will courier it to me, I am still waiting. ;)

5.Late night talks: The routine of every hosteler. Random chats on the SMS and late night phone calls and catching up with everyone you know. I miss that! Half the people I know are studying during this time and the other half are there but I have to pretend to be a part of the study bandwagon, sadly.

6. TV Shows: The winter season on TV starts and is at its peak in November. And to add to my duress, I have to miss these shows. i cant download them and watch at leisure because of this stupid guilt trip in my head. Hmph! Exams.

7.Work and All that: And all the work I need to do, from the classes to take, to new things to learn and the partying and socialising. I miss it all and this happens to be the best weather of all times!!! Cool and nice.

Exams really are a downer, especially when one is learning stuff that is really pointless. It is to me. Why cant we have a paper on Harry Potter??