Metathesiophobia

No, I did not die and abandon my blog, I was just busy battling a block and no, that's not an excuse either.

Anyway.

You know the feeling when you suddenly realize that things are changing wayyyy too fast for you to have any control over and there is nothing - NOTHING - that you can do about it?

Well, guess who got acquainted with Mr. Aforementioned Feeling yesterday.

You might well say that life is supposed to be like that and that change is the only changeless law but I will hear only yadayadayada because I love control. I love having control over my life and it's entailments.
So correspondingly, I hate that there are things that I can't change and have no control over, it's always been my bone of contention with God saar.

Cause of realization?
Two things:

1) My seniors' convocation. No, I was not there for the actual thing, it was held conveniently on the weekend we were due home but it made me realize that same time next year I will be attending my own convocation. While the event itself is not scary in the least bit (why would it be?), the fact that by that time, I'd have to know what I want to do with my life IS scaring the living shit out of me.

I know I sound like a directionless, spoilt teen but let me assure you I'm none of the three. It's just the fact that I have decided not to go onto PG like the rest of my class, so starting work, being an adult, is making me nervous, to say the least.
And the fact that I have less than a year to make those life-changing decisions makes me want to curl up into a tight ball like a porcupine and poke anybody who even mentions anything related. Poke them REAL hard.

2) Posts by Red and TayTay about their little brothers growing up have brought up all my fears about my own irritating version of a brother to the surface. He's 12 going on 13 and is already as tall as me, knows much more than me and is constantly beating me at NFS. Only seems like yesterday that he was a wheezing ball of cuddliness (who I used to steal Cerelac from, I know, I'm evil that way) and now he doesn't even let me hug him or meet his friends from school.

He talks to me about his PC like a grown-up, breaks my record of finishing HP and the Deathly Hallows every week and locks the door to his room.

I'm petrified.

I have already lost one brother (cousin) to a semi-mohawk, a voice that is as deep as my uncle's, low-waists and 6-feet-tallness. I don't think I'll live through another one of those drastic changes.
And I don't even want to think about when my princess, my baby sister, grows up.

What can I do to stop the race of time and freeze them all the way they are? So that they never grow up, never lose their innocence, never feel the hurt that the world has in store for them? I'll do anything.

P.S: Incase you didn't guess, metathesiophobia is the fear of change.

15 Day Challenge: Day 2

A sentimental possession and the story behind it

I was a complete freak about preserving memories with related random material things. Movie stubs, eatery bills, cotton candy sticks, chocolate wrappers, huggiehearts, fur bits of my first teddybear (incidentally named Cookie), even a dried mango seed – you name it, I have it. (Imagine the amount of stuff I threw out when I broke up with my ex *rolls eyes*)

But the one that now holds immeasurable value is the wooden box that Appu (my grandpa) gave me.

It’s a nondescript box, about the width and length of a laptop, made of polished wood with a latch, a lock and a key, all of which Appu made from scratch by himself. It was my 14^th birthday gift from him and he’d filled it up with an odd combination of knick-knacks - a bottle of scented talc, a small perfume, some pretty hankys, a classy looking pen and a few other things I don’t remember now. Almost like he didn’t know what to get me or what I would like.

Appu preferred to think of me as his little girl, his kochammini. But this gift was, in some way, an acknowledgement that he had come to terms with the fact that I was an adolescent. He understood that his eldest and most favourite grandchild was past the stage of watching Discovery channel dangling from his mundu and smothering her tears on his shoulder when the cheetah killed the deer (the first ever male shoulder I’ve cried on and the most comforting as yet). 

This was his awkward contribution to the process of my becoming a woman.

Somewhere along the way I realised that memories can’t be preserved in material things and the happiness of a wonderful time can’t be captured in an inanimate object; that it’s foolish to preserve meaningless objects just to revive the joy of that memory. That was the end of my ‘sentimental’ collection.

But this one possession, I never found meaningless or foolish. Now, I hold on to it tight knowing it is the only exclusive possession me and Appu share; it’s my only connection to him. He might have passed on his heritage, knowledge, temper and a hundred other things to me but nothing this poignant, priceless.

I might not be able to see him or hold his pinky or argue with him about politics anymore but this box never fails to evoke a flurry of wonderful, precious memories. 

Two down, 13 more to go!

15 Day Challenge: Day 1

5 things that I can’t live without

Ah, reminds me of the time I filled up my Orkut bio.

Goes without saying that family tops the list along with that Nanda guy. But I have hashed and rehashed about it time and again, so I’ll refrain from doing it once more.

I have made a very loose interpretation of 'things'.

Anyway, here goes and in no particular order.

1) Anybody who knows me remotely will know that I’m obsessed with chocolate. My life revolves around chocolate and I (almost literally) worship it. I can’t do without it even for a single day, unhealthy as it sounds.

In my defense, it has been proved that chocolate is good for the heart, so there *sticking tongue out*

Very mature, I know :D

2) My trusty ole Nokia Xpress Music: it’s like an extension of my hand and I know for a fact that the moment I lose it will be the moment my world falls apart. It’s not so much my contact point with the rest of the world as much an integral aid in my living life, putting one feet in front of the other and moving forward.

My dependency, it scares me.

There should be mobile de-addiction centres, I tell you.

3) The third one arises from my inherently being the poster-girl for Aries. My obsessively compulsive need to win, to be first, to be the best in whatever I put myself to- assignments, activities, sports, writing...

I can get very neurotic about everything being jussst the right way, how I do and redo and re-redo things long after they are done just to satisfy this need and the thirst for recognition and appreciation for it. But I don’t push it, mind you. I want it ONLY if I think I deserve it. And it’s not fame, either, that I want.

Only two people in the world know how much it means to me because I’m VERY good at hiding it. Nonchalance, thy name is Priyanka.

It’s something I and the people who love me enough have put up with for a long time. And I know that I can’t live without that drive because otherwise I am not who I am.

This is also why I hate working in groups.

I was born to be solo.

Like I said, Arian poster-girl.

4) Dreams.

I am a dreamer (I’d say ‘who’s firmly rooted in reality’ but too politically correct and irritatingly so). 

I dream of the big things: a world with no sadness or pain, education abroad, the perfect job, the unending shopping sprees, the house-full of pets, the long vacations to everywhere. 

And the small things: the perfect porch garden, the kurta that beckons me so prettily, winning a lifetime’s supply of Twix bars, the squirrels stealing nuts from my palm, the yummy panipuri and the even yummier Mr. Cooper.

A lot of these might be pipe dreams but all the same they help me wake up and look forward to each day.

When the day is bleak and there seems to be no hope for the future,

When I see people with almost perfect lives complaining about inconsequential things, not knowing the value of what they have.

When the past haunts and I dwell on those untaken decisions that might have made a huge difference.

When helplessness claws its dangerous way in.

When the sheer unfairness of life threatens to overwhelm.

I sit down, close my eyes and start dreaming of that perfect life to come.

Dreams help me survive.

Which is why Inception made perfect sense and remains one of my favourite movies of all time.

5) Books.

The reason why I dream so much. They help me escape into a world I conjure up. For a day, 368 pages of a book help me eat, live and breathe. They open up new vistas of life, new paths I never thought existed, even alternate worlds. While they make me yearn for more than MY life can give, they also give me the ultimate happiness and fulfilment that even chocolate hasn’t been able to equal in so long (and that is saying something: refer point 1).

Philosophy never charmed me though. Maybe my taste is too shallow but The Alchemist never made sense to me (I finished it only because I detest leaving books half read). Nor did I have the patience to even start The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But give me a good sci-fi, mafia war or a whodunit and I am occupied and out of everybody’s hair for the rest of the day. To each his own, I suppose.

However much the world evolves and the technology develops, I’ll always depend on a book to ‘snap me out of it’.

And there are those five things which I, for Hell or high water, can't live without.

That's today's challenge completed. 14 more to go, folks!

One’s that almost made the list: 

• My need to always take the road not taken, 
• F.R.I.E.N.D.S – Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe have gotten me through some tough times, 
• Innate necessity to tease the ‘bejesus’ out of my brother,
• Animals – dogs, cats, rabbits, guniea pigs…. Everything, anything,
• My dear little Dell, I don’t know what I’d do without it. 

The "Brahman"

Scene: Person I know says ‘randomly’ during a study session.
“The house we have in Dubai is being renovated so I can’t really visit the Gucci store these hols. Oh ya, btw I found out today that I’m a Kanauji Brahman. Ain’t that kewl??=)”


Uh, why are you telling ME that, O all-knowing-ultra-rich-flaunt-in-my-face-female-who-takes-herself-WAY-too-seriously?? You could be a Kanauji Brahman or an Australian Cockatoo or even a Ugandan Flea Bird for all I care. Seriously. I don’t, D-O-N-T, give a rat’s wrong side.
Two things that I realized from this statement of hers.


Number 1: Human beings are SO VERY self-obsessed. Too much so. (Don’t get me wrong, I am not making judgments and I very much include myself in that statement) I get updates (and make them) about how bored so- n- so is and how obsessed so- n- so is with his/her love life and how they miss something/someone etc etc. Most of them start with an ‘i’ implication. But has anybody EVER taken a moment to stop and think WHY that piece of info about your life would be even remotely interesting to anyone else?


Obsessive Compulsive Immersed-in-Oneself Disorder. o_O


Note: Saby, however- whatever he is, is the only person whose updates are actually even remotely interesting (he has his own way of putting things).*kowtow*


p.s: when I get too obsessed with a bad hair day or a pimple or what so-n-so thinks of me, thinking about how much it’ll matter same time next month helps.


Number 2: India is supposed to be the prime example of Unity in Diversity and Ethnicity and whatnot. But still, most Indians, read: 95% of the population (and that too mainly the ‘educated’ classes), are so fiercely clannish, it’s disturbing. There are clear lines of division between people on so many bases’ that after a point it seems almost juvenile and villager-ish. ‘Mallus’, ‘Pandys’, ‘Madrasis’- active usages in the student community that I live in. I say: GROW UP and smell the shit you are cultivating. You people suck if you think being a Yadav or a Rai or a Menon or a Chettiar or whatever increases your value as a person, not to mention that you are making utter fools of yourselves.


As for me, ‘mallu’ by birth, with a Dad born in Trivandrum and brought up in Bangalore, Chennai, Bombay, South Africa and Singapore and a Mom born in Ernakulam and brought up in Bhubaneswar, Hissar, Chandigarh, Kolkata and Delhi, with aunts and uncles spread all over from Canada to New Zealand and Kashmir to Kanyakumari (literally) and brought up bang in the middle of TN (I was always an outsider, but that’s another story), it would be safer if I said- ‘world citizen’.
Scratch that. INDIAN citizen. A proud one at that. \m/


Mujhe is ‘state-ness’ ke jhamele main ni padna yaar, jaisi hoon, teekh hoon.


To Varun Nanda: India might suck in a lot of ways. Agreed and accepted. No opportunities, bad politics, horrible technology, irrelevant policies, weird psyche… generally sucks. But it’s the only country in the WORLD where you’ll ever be a first-class citizen. It’s your identity. Agree and accept.*hugsie*


P.S: There are four of you (who’d never prolly read this-_-) I’d dearly love to say ‘shut your trap, get over yourselves and get a real life’ but I doubt that would be diplomatic. To avoid ugly showdowns, I’ll shuddup and keep my opinions to myself.
P.P.S: The ‘Kanauji Brahman’ told me a month earlier that she was a ‘Tamil Iyengar ponnu’.
P.P.S.S:No offence meant =D


Edit: Sreyas Shankar's FB updates are weirdly interesting too =D