There is a restlessness in my soul, a sort of stirring that is giving way to a myriad set of emotions. One minute there is confusion, the next despair. One minute my inner voice urges me to reach for the stars, and in the next minute the same voice fades into complete oblivion. One moment I am singing and dancing like there's no tomorrow and the next moment I am burdened with the very thought of a tomorrow. I find myself reveling in my simpleness,then again, the very thought of simplicity bores me to death. I scoff at the idea of perfection, but then demand perfection at every turn. I preach tolerance but fail miserably at practicing it. I never give up, but then I find I do. I want cerulean blue skies, but when the time comes, I look for grey clouds, the ones that come with silver linings. 

I am only human.

Yes, Here I Go Again

I am in a dangerous mood, one in which resolutions such as "never write a blog that might end up incriminating someone" or "never poke fun at others for your entertainment" or "never pour your heart out unnecessarily" go down the drain pipe and get flushed into the Mulla-Mutha river. It's one of the reckless "to-hell-with-the-world" kind of moods, one where all you want is your own company and the four walls of your own room.

 What do I do when I am in those moods? Sometimes I hitchhike to the middle of a park and sit and stare at the stars willing them to turn into supernovae in front of my own two eyes.Sometimes, I read. Sometimes, I cook. My histrionics in the kitchen have been topics of gossip at the dinner table, often-times. The reason for it is my innate quality of mixing the most obscure of ingredients together and hoping for a miracle. In a very Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde kinda way, the best inventions have been the results of such obscurity. 

 So what quadratic turn of events are responsible for my such moods? I am, of course, the primary variable in these equations. My some random behaviour in the past, is now bearing it's fruits, causing such upheavals in my persona. However there are singular instances that completely throw your thinking off-balance and cause you to act/react in the strangest ways possible. Like for instance, I have a rain-shoe in my closet that gives me a shoe bite every time I wear it. Every time I wear it, I pledge never to put myself through such torture again. Come rain, all my other shoes become useless and I end up wearing them shoes. Now, I know that those shoes will lead to calluses. However, I don them from time to time. Why I do it, you ask? Because of the lack of other options.

 Strange, you could go buy yourself another pair of them rain shoes.

 No, they are pretty shoes. They are the shoes that I like. If I wanted other kinds of rain-shoes, I could have picked them up a long time back. Plus, I don't think I will find rain shoes of the kind that I want.

 Weird reason to get worked up about don't you think? How would you know, dear reader? Have you walked close to 5 kilometers with shoes that give you calluses.
 Also, there are variables like the buzzing mosquito that will never leave you alone when you are trying to sleep, the constantly hovering fly that lands on your food just when you are about to eat it, the omnipresent light that stops you from shooting that basket, that person who pretends to be your friend but really isn't, the person who wants to be cool but doesn't know how to spell it, the person who wants to grow up but doesn't know how to live it, the person who might be a nerd but doesn't want to admit it and that interesting book which you really loved made into a movie that completely messed it. Yeah, I did try to rhyme a couple of words here and there.(In my head I was rapping these lines out). Don't blame me for trying to make it all sound likable. Nobody like to read a blog where all the writer does is complain.
All the above variables feature in my life prominently. They are the part of my "every day equations". Being a quadratic equation, I should be able to solve them out simultaneously. The solution should be simple. Then again, I might have already stumbled upon the solution.

Reasons to NOT get a new battery.

My cellphone's battery has died. No, I cant charge it, I need a new battery. So go out and buy a new one, you say. I say, what's the need. Now, before all you techno freaks and pseudo-realists decide to blow my brains out let me take you through my list of  "Top 5 excuses to not buy a new battery".

Numero Uno: Low on funds. Seriously, low. No, I'm not asking my parents to bail me out because it was my fault that my battery died and so I need to take complete responsibilty for it's demise. Strangely enough, they seem to be okay with getting me a new battery. That does not mean I shirk from my moral responsibilities.

Nombre deux: This brings down the number of distractions around me to a much better figure of "four". The other distractions are of course, the idiot box (Cliche alert!), the internet (my saviour!), Sugar (my pet dog who I just need to keep talking to ALL day long) and my brother (who is an inimitable distraction, also a permanent member of the Distraction Committee).Since four is better than five, my daily work output goes up by 20% (Simple math involving taking fractions and converting those into percentages).

Number three: My imaginary friends might abandon me sometime soon (they've been threatening to do so for quite some time now!). Before the unthinkable happens, my battery dies and lo! I get the the best opportunity to re-connect with them. Now I can have long chat sessions with them without the need to keep checking my incoming texts.

Number four: I will not let the years of planning and blue-printing my efforts at building the perfect "Happy Place" bite the dust anytime soon. It's time to return to my "Happy Place" and ensure its beautiful as ever.

Number Last: The universe just does not want me to have a phone. Let's face it. All the mobile devices that I have ever been the owner of, have all died gruesome deaths. They have been tortured and harassed till their metal bodies no longer had the strength to support the electric force in them. And why fight the will of the universe. It knows the best, after all.

Sugar: A Case File

Date: Sometime around 2nd February, 2011.

Place: The mountains, somewhere around Pune city.

The following events took place between February and August of the year 2011.

On the above-mentioned date a brood of tiny creatures were brought into this world. To this day we don't know the exact reason for this conception but then, the universe does function in mysterious ways. These creatures would go on to become part of six human families, make a mark in their lives, and settle in. They would shed their innate forms and become as close to humans as they can, marking them, observing them, learning from them.
And my family is one of the six families responsible for one such creature.
The creature was escorted to our home, one surprisingly dark June evening.According to eye witness accounts, (in this case it happens to be my brother) the minute she got home, the entire atmosphere around the house changed. Her territorial instincts (which are still in training) , kicked in. She gave off a strange odour and refused to move about. Meanwhile, all efforts were being made to hold communications with the strange creature. Their were cries of "WE COME IN PEACE" echoing all around the house, the loudest being from one 12 year old kid, who himself belongs to another alien race.
The ice breaking event that finally opened all bridges of communications between the creature and the humans was the simple act of dousing the creature in water and giving her a soapy scrub. Trust mothers to think out of the box. When all logic fails, its time for the Mums to work their magic .
And in the creatures case, it actually was magic. The bath was the first step towards the acceptance of the creature into the family and vice-versa. All the hostility and strangeness kept rolling off the creature until all that was left was a forlorn looking puppy dog, with beautiful black eyes, looking around at humans to get some love. The metamorphosis of the creature is in itself a mark of some higher intelligence.
So now the doggie form of the creature has been christened "Sugar", form of highly addictive hydrocarbon which when taken in large amounts can wreak havoc in a person. ( Mum says she was named thus, because of her "'sweet" nature. *sigh* Mums!).
It has been three months since the above-mentioned episode took place. Everyday brings a new change in Sugar's behaviour. She is the new celebrity in the house. Like human beings, she"s learnt the joys of socialising and has guest coming to visit her often. She has learnt the art of tantrum-throwing and how to use her natural abilities to get what she wants. She is now learning to adopt the superciliousness of humans and amble around the house as if she owns it. She is the perfect example of a mega experiment going right.

Current Location: Pune.

Status: Officially been adopted as a member of the Prasad family.

An encounter of the "generous" kind at Starbucks.



The lady Barista on the right, the sweetest lady who handed me the coffee samples

You might wonder what I am doing uploading pics of random people on my blog (no, my brains haven't been eaten by zombies, they are very much intact thank you very much).  This is the photo of two very sweet Baristas I encountered at Starbucks (which happens to be the best place to have coffee, no questions asked). So the story goes like this. I was at Target shopping away the blues (actually just whiling away time, you know me), when good ol' Joe called out to me. Naturally, I complied and off I went to the counter to place my order. The Barista and I got talking. Once I get talking, i KEEP on talking. "Verbal Diarrhoea" is a very apt term for it, actually. Anyway, moving on from my shortcomings we talked about how great home brewed coffee is and how it "sucks", (excuse me english language purists, but I'm trying to keep it real!),  that there's no starbucks back home. She was, so as to speak, pretty amused by the revelation that I did  not have access to such amazing coffee. Quick as lightning, she took out a couple of instant coffee mixes and handed them out to me!. I turned into a fish, opened and closed my mouth a million times in one second and managed to splutter out a mild "thank you". Then after getting my order in hand and taking a few sips of the delicious brew (trust me, coffee helps to think), did my thinking get restored. I thanked her profusely, made her go red out of embarrassment and finally, just to make sure the colour did not drain all too quickly from her face clicked a photo of her with promise to make her a mini celebrity back home.

She had no reason to hand me out the samples. She could have at the most, sympathised with my tough luck. She could have just muttered a few words encouraging me to drink from Starbucks everyday of my blessed trip to this country. Or she could simply have smiled, taken my order and with cold indifference handed out the change and bid me goodbye and good luck.

She might not even remember that brief encounter with me. However, she will be remembered by me for the rest of my life. Whatever mix of star dust created her, she made one tiny little person extremly happy. God bless her soul!

This next photo (excuse my clumsy photography) is for all the die hard chocoholics out there. Located In Manhattan at 841 Broadway in between 13th and 14th street this little piece of chocolate heaven as featured on a large variety of food shows and magazines. It was founded by Max Fichtman and Oded Brenner.

Story behind the image: I was passing by in a car by this street and I saw it out of my window. Instinctively, I reached for my camera and snapped a photo of it, and not a moment too soon because the car took off soon after. Having read about this place and watching it feature on some of my favourite travel shows I couldn't resist taking a pic of the place and sharing it with the rest of the world. Since, I consider it my duty to spread the joys of chocolate to the rest of the world, all the more reason for my actions.

Why I blogged it: I'm a chocoholic. And I hope that maybe someone out there, reading this blog is too. And if you are one then you would know exactly what I'm talking about. To the uninitiated, I'm talking about the Willie Wonka, the Actual Willy Wonka, of the chocolate business. They have on their menu chocolate soup, bagels with chocolate cheese and an award winning chocolate pizza, apart from the usual hot chocolates and other chocolate truffles. That right there is Mecca,for me for sure.

A new country is bound to be full of new experiences.Naturally, because of the different kinds of people and different lifestyles and different time zones. And especially if the country is US of A or "Amreeka" as the people back home refer to it then there is a bucketful of experiences to share. So I think this is as good an opportunity as any to be putting up blog posts about the crazy things that my little trip to this great cradle of modern civilization has led to. Regardless of the limited readership I have, it'll give me great satisfaction to document my "voyage premier" to the land which Columbus was desperate to discover.

  So let me start with a picture of yours truly with an officer of the NYPD ( and no, its NOT a wax statue!!!) ,one of the most easily recognizable law enforcement bodies around the world (yes, we do have the gazillion american crime fighting tv shows to thank for this).

Story behind the image: Impulse. Pure, simple impulse. I knew I wanted a pic with the NYPD officer the nano second that I saw the parked car and the blue uniform on the street in Manhattan.

Why I put it on my blog: You've got to admit its cool (the number of likes this pic has got on Facebook has nothing to do with the coolness, mind you). I mean would you just look at how happy the man is posing for a photo with a strange tourist who regards him as some sort of celebrity from another world? Now that's something innit?

Befuddled Musings of One Chandni Prasad

So what is going on in my mind right now? A lot, as usual. A million conflicting thoughts and emotions are dancing around. There’s doubt, there’s hope, there’s happiness, there’s sadness, there’s excitement, there’s guilt and a million other emotions, which my limited vocabulary prevents me from enunciating. Charles Dickens expressed the contradictions of states best in his novel - “A Tale of Two Cities”.

So what is causing this motley set of emotions? Hormones? (I forbid the reader from doing a Dr. Phil on me!) Apart from that it’s really the lack of insight/foresight into what I want from life. And I’m not just referring to my career and goals and the other what not’s.

The simple things in life like: “what I want to eat, what I want to wear and how I want to spend my afternoon”, are easy enough to figure. But gods forbid if I’m asked: “What do you want?”  Or “are you ready to take a chance?”, then I’m rather at the loss of words- “perte des mots”, in French, which is an achievement in itself for a chatter-box .

The reader might scoff at the simplicity of these questions (it is not as if I’ve been asked to verbally define the theory of relativity), but answering them is not.  Yeah, I tried using the good ol’ cranium, but no cerebration has occurred. The search always returns error 404.  Also my new found bible- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s friendly advice on “42” being the answer did nothing to abate my confusion.

So what is the suggestion? The whole “look deeper within you”, “search your heart for answers” routines don’t work with me. I mean, if I was into the whole “Eat, Pray, Love” thing I wouldn’t be sitting here, writing this blog post. Meditation, on the other hand, bores the living daylights out of me. Turning into a shingle is not on my “Top 25 things to become until you die” list.

However the “truly annoying award” goes to my extremely creative and imaginative dream creating brain. If I were to assign one true reason for my state of confusion, it would be because of this image producing wizard. The other non-helpful thing is that weird noise in my head that keeps buzzing through the day, contradicting every plausible solution that I may stumble upon. And then there is the almighty universe which gives out the strangest signs, especially when I’m not looking for them.

So what do I do? Google the answers? Nah..too many possible permutations and combinations for a simple search engine to handle. The maybe I should seek advice from Mom? Not if I want to be put in the friendly neighborhood institute for the mentally challenged. Friends are always there. Yeah, not if I'm busy all the bungling time or when they are not around when I need them. Then what, a psychologist? No, I’m not demented enough to inflict such torture upon myself.

So it’s back to square one. Buzzing in the head is still around. Solutions do not seem likely to appear on the horizon. So do I take a leap into the dark? Or do I wait around, as the moments pass by? It’s one helluva choice that I’ve just got to make. 

"A year's worth of social learning"

Ok so it has been awhile since I last blogged. Yeah that’s due to a large number of factors primarily exams and the other reasons include the sheer summer heat and post-exams languor, coupled with the inexorable lack of time. It wasn’t due to laziness ok?

So now that I’m 19, I’ve decided to write about all the things that I learnt in the one year from my 18^th birthday. It’s been one hell of a year, so naturally there has been a lot to take home from it.  Now obviously there were a lot of things on my “things to do before I’m 19 “ list, which remain undone but that’s a different story.

So, enough with the bantering.  Here’s the list:

·         The first thing I realized is that your life is not a movie. No, the entire world does not break into a song and dance sequence just to celebrate your happy mood. Nor,does your knight in shining armor come to help you out every step of the way.

·         Parents have a sort of screen in their heads that automatically captures and stores the images of their kids as two year olds. Also it has the unique ability to superimpose that image on any subsequent images that occur. What it simply means is that no matter how old their kids actually are (they may be graying for all you know) they would appear like the two year old toddler minus the crying and the barfing.

·         The tinier and the more visually horrifying a place, the yummier, more flavourful and exotic will be your food. Trust me, that’s the secret to a happy tummy.

·         Medieval torture devices could take a beating to the present day form of torture: exams.

·         Hoping for talking robots as teachers is being optimistic to the point of lunacy. Hoping for talking humans as teachers is what my dream is.

·         The more the number of people you can baffle with your speech the better the chances of you appearing uber cool and spectacularly brilliant.

·         Making friends is one of life’s more challenging operations. No, employing the use of CIA or CID to do a background check on your would-be friends does not help at all. And it’s not about spawning doppelgangers or nurturing sycophants but creating long lasting friendships and bonds of trust between people.

·         Love is still a confusing terminology. Pity there’s no one way to define it.  Although I love Albus Dumbledore I’m seriously beginning to doubt his ideologies about “love”.  Yeah, reading the ending of Harry Potter did nothing to help,  by the way.

·         Cricket is a religion. It’s not just a sport for people in India. And as nonchalant as one may try to appear, or as much as one may pretend that soccer is what is, for higher beings,  it’s impossible to not venerate in joy when India brings home the much anticipated “world cup”.

·         No matter how much money you have on you, you always end up owing/lending cash to your friends.

These are what I call “learnings”.  Pretty obvious, depending on what stage of development, you, as a reader, are at. It was high time I chronicled something and this is a sure way of telling my Mom that look, I’ve been busy!

College Bugger Fun

We collegians are, in general, a bunch of overly excited people. Small things, tiny, inconsequential things are put up on a pedestal with a spotlight on them. Everywhere you go you are dogged by the same inane conversations. The college centre, the ladies recreational room, the library, the canteen and these days even the sporting fields.  Juicy gossip is inevitable. Yeah I know it’s our hormones to blame. Yes I even know that it’s always the other person’s fault. However, isn’t anybody concerned about looking at the bigger picture here?

Look around you. The world seems to be growing warmer.  Global warming you say? I say measure the contribution made by the “heated” minds of human beings to this alarming problem. Think you have a complicated life? Imagine a day in the life of earth. Asteroid attacks, tidal waves, tectonic plates shakeup, solar flares and gravitation of moon. To add to that it has to bear with the constant attack that humanity places on it. Bigger picture is all takes. And I’m not insanely optimistic.

College has to have all the pizzazz to make it interesting. After all it’s always other people’s distress that provides the best fodder for humour. I hear nobody complaining. Why should they? A few days of complete attention to the subjects of slander is just one of the many benefits. The others include inimitable popularity, increased interaction with seniors and the excuse to bond with certain targeted groups of people.

Of course, its extreme entertainment, better than what any reality tv show can provide. The question is: what are we taking home from it? A life time’s worth of counseling sessions for one. For some it’s the subtle art of diplomacy. For me it’s taught me to not have my feather’s ruffled no matter what.

There’s going to be a lot of clamoring and cankering both on and off campus in the days to come. It’s a quintessential part. It’s what gives us the courage to step into the thresholds of academia, brightens our day, and gives us something to think about at night. After all, what are we going to tell our kids?

The Garden

It’s been awhile since I visited the garden. Everything’s the same, I presume. After all, what could have changed in such a short while, one might ask. Plenty? Or maybe nothing at all?

Sure, a cursory glance from the entrance revealed the same smattering of people as before. The elderly couples, displaying their evolved interdependence on one another, the young couples, in a burgeoning relationship, displaying a range of emotions from covertness to general alacrity, the occasional family looking for a few hours of bonding time, and the occasional solitude-seeker seeking insight into a myriad of issues. Yeah on the whole, the numbers have remained the same.  The difference is minute- it’s the faces that have changed.

It’s a funny thing how easy it is to study the humans as a whole, as an entity. The same cannot be said for an isolated human. As a group we behave the same. As an individual, nothing’s the same. It maybe our capriciousness or maybe the sheer force of humanity, who’s to say?

Coming back to the garden. The trees are different. They have sprouted new leaves. The flowers of yesterday have given way to the seasonal ones of today. The migratory birds have taken off and now the usual array of birds is visible. The stars that were once so very bright have lost their luminescence.

Change is how the nature works. Change is good. Change is fun when it’s done, as said by a very dynamic person. Sitting in the clearing, staring at the now hazy stars, there is much time to ponder on the various dimensions that life can take. So yes, every time I visit the garden I look for the things that have remained the same.  But if they were to remain the same would there be a reason for growth?