Athene

the sweetest thing

2005-09-23T21:13:00.000-04:00

some of the nicest things people have said to me

Shashank, big brother extraordinaire :
"well, I'm thinking of upgrading to an Ipod nano, so I maaaay think about at some point, giving you my old Ipod"

there is a LOT to be said for older sibling cast-offs:)

Arul, the very sexy Arul of course :
" you aren’t weird, Natasha, u just...umm...have a mind of your own"

I think this says it all ,
I am a not-weird chick who will beg for an Ipod.

p.s. Have to say this-did a spell check on this post via blogger, it offers an alternative for shashank.....shagging!!!

have you ever?

2005-09-14T17:13:00.000-04:00

Have you ever stood before a house of cards and pulled one out, knowing, knowing that this is going to topple that fragile , ephemeral house?

Have you ever felt despair at that?

Have you ever felt relieved that the decision was taken out of your hands?

Listen to the Silence

2005-08-22T04:20:00.000-04:00

Listen to the silence.

Fucking words of wisdom.

Do they even know what silence is? The deafening sounds of nobody to hear you, listen to you, witness your life….the sheer terror of knowing that you are in this alone, everything thing u do., is your own fucking choice and everything you’ve accomplished means a shit load that you haven’t,…and its all your fault.

I wish I could believe in a god, a god who told me that he would take care of everything, good or bad…and that if I did something wrong I would be doomed for eternity, and someone, when I paid my dues, would give me a break.

I wish I believed in a happily ever after, a someone who was out there made for me. Someone who knew by just looking into my eyes that I was the one and I felt the same way.

I wish I could believe.

My name is Nupur..and I am a twenty-something independent brittle women.

My shell is oh so fragile; I feel like porcelain sometimes, looks like marble, shatters like glass. My glass is almost always half full…but that’s the fucking problem- it’s only half full.

Where does this story go? I don’t know, just another list of things that are as directionless as I am. I wish I could be less visible, or maybe just more visible. I wish my hopes and dreams would fade away into the sunset, take a bow, smilingly refuse an encore, “that’s all folks; all good things must come to an end.” Or that all these dreams just crystallized, my castle in the air, suddenly shimmered and snapped into place.

The only place where any of these can happen is the wicked wonderful world of the mind.

* old post, just comfortable enough to post it now*

Update

2005-08-05T12:25:00.000-04:00

Reality is really not quite there yet, the studios I went to see in San Francisco were in pretty much the worst neighbourhoods EVER, and the studio itself was barely the size of a closet:)...

looks like it reality is going to take a little more time to catch up with my fantasies;)

the beginning...or the end?

2005-08-03T12:18:00.000-04:00

I remember a time, I must have been in the 9th grade, I was just starting to think about what I wanted to be in life, did I want to be a engineer (Hell NO!) or a doctor (yeah right! sometimes a forget my own name imagine forgetting a patient!) ....always the pessimest, i knew what I DIDNT want never quite knew what I wanted.

My father proposed an exciting idea, do you want to be an architect? But what does an architect do dad? An architect brings ideas to life, an architect is an artist talks about the metaphysical, about space and yet, builds with bricks and mortar. An architect belongs to the fields of engineering (aleast most academia treats it as such) but soars in the realm of the artist, never really belonging anywhere. Sounds like me dad, but how do I know for sure?

He suggested I start with something simple. He told me to imagine my house, imagine what it would be like, draw up a plan for it and make a model of it. In ways i still dont understand in about 2 days I made a model of what would be called a studio apartment ( I didnt know such things existed then.) I designed a self contained unit with a corner with skylights for me to work in, a raised platform to sleep on and a kitchenette with a bar/breakfast counter. Its frighteneing in how much detail i remember this.

Next Monday I start work in an architectural firm, designing houses for people, making the same kind of models I made so many years ago. Today I look for my studio apartment in San Francisco city.

Is this the end of a dream? Or the beginning of reality? Did my destiny work its way around, did the world conspire to give me what I wanted all those years ago? Or did I make that happen?

Maybe all of the above. Whatever force got me here, internal or external I thank you now, and I pray that that dream metamorphoses into a wonderful exciting real life.

poetic license

2005-07-01T00:37:00.000-04:00

I LEAVE
on a grand adventure
I pack my bags and walk, walk out that door

What do I seek?
Adventure? Love? Peace? Success?

I know not what I seek
I know only fear, fear and pain

I feel this yearning
I see this mirage

It lies before me, shimmering, glimmering,
joyful, complete

I know the nature of the mirage
It does not exist, My mind knows!

And yet my mind tells me to do this

Does it know something I don't?

Does it know that one must seek?
Always

Because if there was nothing left to seek
Why would we walk?

A complete impromptu post ...unfortunately blogger would not let me put it up instantly, in retrospect it only sounds lame

And then there were none

2005-04-27T11:46:00.000-04:00

As long ago reference from a long ago novel by Agatha Christie (whose reading was triggered for me from a long ago movie – Gumnaam, one of the much better adaptations by Hindi Filmmakers of an English book, especially for its time).

Anyways the point is, these words always seem to hold a significance for me, call it an inherently pessimistic nature but this idea of everything negating itself in the end has always fascinated me.

These days I try to train myself to believe this negation as inveitable .

There were a bunch of friends who you thought would always be around…….and then there were none

There was an ideology, a group of people who believed in something, politicians who believed in the good of the country…….and then there were none.

......post coming up....till then.....

2005-04-01T10:26:00.000-05:00

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
- Douglas Adams

Part I - all that glitters.....

2005-03-10T13:13:00.001-05:00

is probably part of the golden gang.... the golden gang....aaah what can I say about them...a series of stars glittering, dancing and lighting up the monotonous drivel of a college full of traditional lamps. They stood out, sometimes for their brilliance and sometimes for their fragile ability to burn up at the slightest provocation.

They were unique, or atleast they thought they were…..they were a group of six single (at various points of time) females, in an atmosphere that was never really meant for them and never really understood them. They formed a constellation by dis-association, they could not get along with anyone else…hence they got along together.

They knew everything and everyone, they were the lord-esses of all they surveyed….and like all true royalty had their fair share of notoriety and public washing of private linen. They knew they were better than everyone else and so of course everyone else knew they had to bring them down ….some were more successful in that….. and some tried really really hard. In the end, they stood the test of time, of bitching and back-biting, of the rigors of school and the fragility of friendships.

I would call this a coming-of-age story but in a post full of clichés that would just be the last straw.

Sonali – the one who betrayed the code, the deserter, the one who chose to walk away and ride the fickle wave of popularity rather than hold on to a bond of friendship.

Malvika – our own little princess, bright and funny, preened when guys were around and gossiped when women were around, the one who's eyes would light up the brightest whenever we thought of something fun (illegal) to do - and yet maybe the most practical of the lot.

Bimba – the nurturer, the mother, the sensible one and the other half of the mal/bim inseparable duo, mimic extraordinaire, and yet the only one who could make us all quake in our boots.

Pritika – our own posh spice, posh for her fancy cars and mobile phones, fancy life and spice for all the fun she was, the one with the biggest dreams and the most will power to make them happen. She was the counterpart of Mal, two of the brightest stars of our little constellation.

Shikha – the bridge between everyone, one who had the greatest arc of self-discovery in her years as founder member of the golden gang

Natasha – the one who always sat on the fence.

shes loves me /he loves me not?

2005-03-07T15:01:00.000-05:00

So what is with us people and love, mittra spoke about the movie Closer that we watched last week, starring Julia Roberts and a whole crowd of very good actors....

The one thing that struck me the most about the movie was how the characters all used a particular justification - Im with her because it was love at first sight, I fucked around with him because I love him, Im leaving you- I dont love you anymore....

What is this damn love? since when did we start using it as a bargaining tool, as a choice, as a reason for every "sacrifice" we make?

Coming from a die-hard romantic, who devors mills and boon and their ilk and who's views of life is very influenced by bollywood movies it was almost sacrilige for me to see these characters spout the idea of love as an excuse for everything bad - from leaving to screwing up each others lives...

I guess no one has a moral right on what love is, and what it should be...

My mom thinks that apart from love for her children and her husband ,it is her dharma to love everyone else (from annoying mothers-in-law to random strangers who need help)....my dad thinks love is a habit (my words but he agreed..wholeheartedly)....

me?...the jury is still out on that one....

Brown sugar hardens if its out too long....

2005-03-03T23:06:00.000-05:00

So do people if they spend too much time with other people. Chikita says the one thing she thinks has changed since I came from India is that I have become aggressive.

She thinks I used to be this nice, sweet (mama's chweet lil girl - thats what I was teased as all through junior college, coz once when we were going on a college trip my mom came to the railway station and begged one of my seniors, my brother's friend no less, to take care of me.....sheeesh...mom I think you may have just scarred me for life;) who may occasionally be taken advantage of but whose heart was pure and smile genuine, now I'm this harradin who peers suspiciously at every offer of friendship, and wont let ANYONE get away with ANYTHING.....

ok. so she didnt really say that, but you get the message:)...am I more aggressive than I used to be? The answer is irrevocably yes, I could deny it, but my harradin-like nature would spark - Why would you want to deny this? Do you think thats its wrong? Are you ashamed of who you are? or who you have become???

I am not ashamed of who I have become, it is who I am...no point being ashamed of that......and I think it is mainly a good thing, when I was nice (note the was...)...I suffered from a common affliction called guilt.....if I was not nice to one person...even to be nice to another....I felt guilty....thats not to say that I didnt do that...I just didnt feel good about it.

Now its easier in some ways.....I have a voice, a not very nice voice, its sometimes petty, sometimes vain and very often selfish, but I feel better equiped to deal with the world now.

Hit me people, I got my armour up.

p.s....ok now I feel guilty about this, I wanna be the one with the pure heart again.......sigh...

old friends/new friends

2005-03-01T21:58:00.000-05:00

So my bestest friend in the whole world read my blog today (yeah ok she takes her time, so what? anything worth doing, is worth doing slowly;)....and that haaaaaas to be an occasion for a post.....nothing like reassurance from an old trusted friend to remind you that you have something to say, and something worthwhile.

So Pritika(just for you madam;) wrote me a beautiful mail telling me how much she has always enjoyed my reading(which is true, I am the official journalist/wedding invitation writer in her life)....and how I should continue...and someday I will have a "sex and the city " show based on my life and when I make millions she gets to take a commision of that!...so madam this one's just for you....

I dont know if everyone has had a chance to have a best friend that has survived for over 15 years( I lost count when I got her a charm bracelet with the roman numeral for the number of years we had been friends...and I got the NUMBER wrong!:)...yes, I do that, often), but I have had the good fortune. I could tell you about all the numerous things we have done together, over the seemingly endless years, but thats for another day...

Today I wanna think about Pritika when she was just pritam, this tall gangly incredibly thin(yeah even then!) kid with the slightly funny hairstyle (for todays times, not for then...god forbid madam is ever not in the height of fashion!) who walked into my school in the 4rth grade. I say my school , coz I had been there forever and she was the newcomer...I actually remember the day she walked into my class...but I didnt really pay attention to her for a couple of years after that.....she was thin and I wasnt, she was popular and I wasnt, she hung out with the cool kids and I hung out in the library one whole year when all my friends abandoned me. Then one day we discovered that we lived pretty close to each other and miracle of miracles! we had a measly 24 hours between our birthdays!!!

Now when I think about it, it seems like such a lame excuse to become best friends, but thats what we became. She taught me everything I didnt know about boys, all those nights I spent over at her place and we spied on those very foreign species (this doesnt sound the way it was...but she knows what Im talking about)...she seemed like the epitome of cool, someone who knew all the right moves, had a life outside of school(most of us kids never did) and yet was a great student, bright and competitive.

I dont know what I brought to her life then, I do know that now I bring to her life a shared history, a trust that lets her be be true flawed self around me, a belief that I will laugh at all her silly jokes when no one else will and a promise that I will never judge her and be in her corner....always.

I know this because I feel the same way.

this ones almost personal

2005-02-19T17:32:00.000-05:00

So it has been a while since I wrote....just started writing back on little scraps of paper...but you know what the silliest thing is....I read them again and say...u know its pretty nice...maybe more people should read these....but then they cant coz its waaaaaaaaaaay to personal to show anyways....and then when I write something thats not too personal....then its just that...nothin touching....nothing extraordinary....so is my creativity "confined" to a certain..system?...or is it just that when I write to myself....it is so important to me that I can appreciate what I say to me much more?....or am I just delusional:)...maybe a little bit of each...

(* note boys: maybe comes right under the category of depends ;)

So last night we wanted to see a movie....I think Hitch is a good idea...in fact I think it is a wonderful idea!....but Mohit's seen it and from common consensus we come upon "Hide and Seek" (by the way guys check out the website...its kickass...NOW this is what you want to do with Flash!!). Not the best idea ive given into...but what the hell...you live only once......We reach the theater...after a thoroughly enjoyable ride with Mohit and the very sexy Arul;)...and I start thinking to myself again...why am I doing this again?...why did I agree to this?

But of course...no one should see how nervous I can get(everyone already knows I dont like this stuff....thats obvious...but no one needs to know just how much I don't like it)...and am I going to jump in my seat?....noooooooooo....I resolve nothin is going to faze me....not even the very sexy Arul with his evil laugh and ominous position right behind me. I slide further down into my aisle seat (all the better to sneak out of the theater with)...pull my jacket over me...and everytime the music turns up just the slightest bit I shut my eyes and think happy thoughts.....see very simple....I congratulate myself when I get out....

We make our way back to 33...(does even that number sound ominous now?)...with mohit and the very sexy Arul..with Mal,Ashish and Mittra in another car.....when we pull in I see their car and I wonder why the lights in their house are still not on....we enter....there are some shrieking sounds outside the door...the Frat house is having company tonite......the very sexy Arul stops to investigate (apparently even he likes to live vicariously through frat boys lives;) looking out of their window...and I hurry to switch on the light....im starting to get uncomfortable in the dark....

fumbling for the light switch the door right next to me swings open...and 3 idiots scream "boooooooooooo"....for a spilt instant I scream....with the shadows framed against the light in mittra's room...and the next instant I am soo mad ..so very mad that they would do something like this, I swing the chain for the chandelier...let them have it!...I throw my hands out...ready to get anything in the way...which unfortunately is poor ashish's ear:)...and then I break down...

Guys....when I said I was embarrassed I didnt mean the screaming....u all already know I don't like these movies....it was the crying that got to me...you SHOULD not have seen that....I covered my eyes with my hands and I could hear a voice inside me say...let go...its alright...let go...and im embarrassed that I did....

This,the very sexy Arul, is my control issue.....no one should have seen me that vulnerable.

Its all about the money......

2004-12-04T16:42:00.000-05:00

So this morning I sat to do accounts....I knew I owed people lots of money....but i didnt know quite how much!.....my god im broke im broke im broke!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.....how does this always happen?
I usually insist on looking upon this as an adventure....a temporary phase...enjoy the feeling of having nothing to fall back on!?1?.... and I guess its all part of being Independent.......but see if I was like Shashank..my brother...I would have been independent AND rich!...but that would mean I would have to be super-intelligent(ok,..i can be that...sometimes;) along with being organised,steady,have a PLAN in life...know what i want to do..and go out and get it!..that i am not,......sigh...Shashank you rock!..

Instead I let myself coast along life...gently sometimes and with rapid currents sometimes.....Saurabh tells me im not a "I WANT IT and so I will do it kinda person".....he is absolutely right....but I live with this constant fear that it brands me as kind of a pushover....I go along with other people's plan to easily....does that mean I should put my foot down always?...If i dont have a plan for the evening and other people always do...does that mean I should refuse to go along with it...just coz i DONT WANT TO?....hmmm....maybe theres a point to that...

I almost always want to stay home these days....I dont know why going out just sounds bothersome....I think I am becoming more anti-social as the days go by...I wasnt this bad....I enjoying meeting different people who I was comfortable with...I enjoyed doing something interesting and fun......now when I think about going out....it seems to a) involves SPENDING money....b)involves spending time with people I dont want to be with.....and thats NOT because they arnt nice people....coz they are...and they go out of their way to try and make me feel comfortable...i just want to be home...but when I am home...I dont know what to do. I think I spend most of my time staring at computer screens all day coz it means I dont have to think about anything else.

I remember people saying that as you get older the baggage just keeps on increasing..its like Credit Card debt (see it always comes down to money...or lack thereof;)....everyday instead of feeling like im growing...doing more stuff.....and feeling satisfied...all I end up doing is counting more baggage I have to deal with everyday...didnt do this so have to do that....did such a fucking stupid thing that the repucussions may end up being freaking disasterous..ended up fighting with people I care about because the right words just dont seem to come out.Some people say I have absurd logic....guess that would explain some of it.... but that makes me feel like my intuition is as screwed up as my life....if I can even trust my own sense of logic....

p.s.....that above line sounds waaaay too melodramatic...my lifes not all screwed up:)...is just coasting over slightly rapid currents right now.....going to have to do a quick 5-good-things-that-happened-to-me-today kinda post:)

1)....Did hisaab....most of my pain was caused by it....but its DONE! and im not entirely in the RED...yet...:)

2) ...Met leily.....I absolutely love leily....in what feels like a hundred years ago i once knew this girl....who I hit it off with almost instantly...we shared a camarederie...that was rare as well as enjoyable...she told me that...Natasha when you walk into a room people feel like talking to you!....that was I think the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me....anyways back to the point....I feel like that with Leily....she makes me laugh and shows me how to smile if the face of largest problems...she is the only person I have seen who managed to smile all the way through the last days of her thesis....when it looked like it was going to be this huge disaster with nothing done...I love her courage and her spirit.

3) got my eyebrows done...feel close to human again..

4/5) GOING TO RIO soon ....that haaaaaaaas to be worth more than one point;)

Well.....that certainly brought a smile to my face.....

ohhhhh...2 posts in one day...

2004-11-23T19:37:00.000-05:00

...All this talk about careers and 5 things that I love........made me think of 5 jobs that would be the most fun to do....hence this is quick post to jot them down....

1) - Writer of those funny little "new words" on the paper bags of Burger King stuff....for example......
Bagglers-Some fries are
mavericks. Free spirits that slip over the cardboard wall and make straight for
the bottom of the bag, where they can then plan the next move. We call there
spud separatists bagglers, and they’re especially delicious. Maybe it’s because
they’re a little out of bounds. Life can be like that.
Right to fries-You have the
right to dip these fries in ketchup or mustard or a vanilla shake if that turns
you on. You have the right to stuff them in your sandwich or stack them like the
boyhood home of Abraham Lincoln. You have the right to have these fries your
way, even if it means eating them like a normal human being.
or to be a writer of the by-now very famous Amul ads...

2) - Jalebi maker.........Im not even that fond of jalebi(not a sweet-loving person per se) but there is this memory etched in my mind of this fat lala in a banyan and lungi...sitting over a large kadai of hot oil, with these vapors rising from it that though invisible distort the whole atmosphere around it.....sweat pouring down his face on a balmy summer evening......and using a muslin cloth to squeeze this soft.moist looking dough into the dough...round and round in circles and watching that creamy looking dough become a crisp orange in a startling firework display of bubbles exploding on the surface................umm......

3) - the designer of the google text that appears on their home-page.....one guy i believe picks out occasions and adds a little pizzaz to the word "Google"...

4) -...oh oh oh.....to be the doodle-guy who draws doodles on the board (i forget what its called) on the back of Joey's and Chandler's apartment...I KNOW theres a guy whose job was just that!

5) - Work for an 83 year old lady where the job description is to introduce her to the wonders of the internet (open a yahoo account!) and in return get paid well, and be regaled by stories of the II World War and accounts of when she and her husband were World-famous artists................................oh hey, wait a minute....I have that job:)

Pedagogy or the real world....

2004-11-23T17:51:00.000-05:00

So Azmi thinks if she doesnt like some of the courses being offered next semester, she will just extend her course by another semester and take a course then.........Nikki and Swapna are taking another semester to finish Thesis(they have already spent a year on it)....Mittra is in nooooo hurry to get anywhere close to graduating (his words - " where am I going to get a life like this again?.. a place where i can smoke up and go to class...etc"....I dont remember his exact words....but you get the gist:)....Jason wants to extend another semester too...Mark wants to find another master's to do after he gets his Master's degree in Architecture and Bryan wants to study in Australia after he gets his DUAL master's degree in Architecture and Media Studies (all of the above except for Mittra and Jason already have an undergrad degree in architecture) whereas Chikita is quitting her Phd program only to apply for an MBA.

What is happening to all of us?...Why arnt we in any hurry to get out of school, get a real job and become contributing citizens of the real world ? Are we all jaded with the job market or the work we will end up doing once we graduate? or are we just frightened out of our wits? hasent alllll this studying given us some degree of confidence to greet the real world? and if it hasent.....isnt there something terribly wrong with this???

I realise that I am in an environment where the natural tendency is study (i.e. graduate school in a big research university) but lets just examine everyones stated reasons to stay here........

Jason - hasnt been assigned a thesis chair and committee, but he has the option of taking a studio.......

Nikki/Swapna - dont want to go on their OPT in June some long funda on how its not good to get a job here........

Mittra - ask him!.........

Mark/Bryan- having the advantage of american citizenship and disadvantage of a lack of a practical education consider studying as the only interesting thing to do..............

Chikita - doesnt see herself where she wants to be in 5 years in the program shes in....but considers MBA the way to get her there....

I have a feeling that the underlying reason for all of these is a way to keep reality at bay....as long as you stay in school....you can believe that you will eventually be whoever you want to be/do whatever you want to do...verses being on the lowest rung of an increasingly cruel work environment doing job that gives you no satisfaction ( I am NOT saying this is where we will be....but this is where we THINK we will be)....

This place is then like a fantasy world......

Welcome To My World people....

hope you have a great stay;)

5 Things I love About you........

2004-11-19T20:36:00.000-05:00

so...one way of being not so morose..is always nice to thinkof 5 nice things that happened to you today...its harder than it sounds....and waaaaaaaaaay more helpful than you think.....

let me start with my 5 things...

early in the morning i got to watch DDLJ..a whole 2 hours of it...on big screen!...it was like this unexpected rain ( the indian rain...the one that comes after a parched earth cries out for relief.... the one that lets the earth perfume us all with its sweet smell, the one that forces me every single year to go out on my terrace and dance...really i do that..the first rainfall every monsoon -and not the american rain-dank,cold and boooring:(
I had to finish some work in the library before i sneaked out....this work would have taken me 3-4 hours normally....i finished it in ONE.......i guess inspiration is all i need;).... but its always nice to prove to yoursef that you can be the very model of efficiency and organisation....i just choose not to be so most of the times;)
I met a friend called Swati in the Media studies department,(shes the one who showed the movie to a bunch of undergrads both indian and firang-she teaches them about Bollywood movies...can i call this my official dream job?????),......anyways so Swati is making a documentary about sensuality and Indian women - their perception through Hindi movies(i think this abt sums it up i should suggest it as a future title)....and she wants Mal and I in the movie!!!!!.....she will interview us...and we re gonna be on film!....im all excited now:)
I got to visit the Albright Knox gallery.......thats always fun...and for Free too;)
Mittra's making lamb for dinner....havent had that since i left India.....yay!!!!!

hmm...so no comments.....

2004-11-18T14:38:00.000-05:00

.......hang in there natasha......this is what happens when you dont blog often enough...or write stuff people just wish you would deal with on your own instead of boring them with it......and for your information this is how i write in my personal diaries too....always.....ummm...negative i think is the word.....

anyways lets try and make this one not quite so negative......i worked this morning....im at work very often....but i rarely work.....

So i work in the library, cataloging, sticking bar codes on books, printing out records of books that need to be barcoded....sorta, kinda, boring....but today we did some really fun stuff .

....heres a titbit i didnt know...in 1994 George Kelley donated 25,000 "pulp fiction" books to the UB library......i even found some info on it online.......and we had to catalog them , check each one put them in boxes...so get to look through all of them (the titles atleast) and the little blurb on them...and it was positively hilarious......some of the blurbs were like....." the deep desires and fantasies about women without men".....or "the definitive lesbo book"......french translations, italian translations, spanish translations..

then there were a couple of cheesy sci-fi books and drew my attention sooo much that I was hard-pressed to actually do the work i was supposed to...i just wanted to browse through all of them. Joan, the woman I was working with is this beautiful old lady, who has the wit and humor of a naughty adolescent...so we had the time of our lives , laughing uproariously at the titles and their meanings;)

cant wait to get back there and work on this!:)

another morose post.....:)

2004-11-16T13:38:00.000-05:00

so...im thinking...i will take a break from a sabbatical and write a blog BEFORE my very regular monthly post....yeah i know i know...some people write like EVERYDAY!(fools...Don't they know the value of building up to a post....hmm...ok...so they have like a hundred readers and I have like...2?...so what!...I will not sacrifice my creativity for...readers!!!:)...

its been a while since I wrote(obviously)....But I have been sort of buzy...I FINALLY got my student loan...the wheels of it in motion.....I am constantly amazed at my procrastination.....and this may sound like another excuse....But 99.99% of the time it is not procastination.....it is some sort of fear...

It seems funny but if I really think about the decisions I ve made in my life...the things I have or have not done...or the facts I hold true....can be boiled down to a couple of words.....Fear is one....Control is another..

I live in constant fear....Fear that I will not succeed.....Fear that I will......Fear that I will not be good enough....Fear that people wont like me...Fear that people wont leave me alone to my thoughts.....Fear that I will be left all alone.....Fear to be open and the center of attention and to put myself forth.....Fear that no one will consider me important enough to remember....Fear that I cannot control my destiny......and Fear that my I am responsible for my future......

Control.....itself is a very very powerful word to me...I understand it.....But not in the same way many people do...I DO not want to control the world (jeez be responsible for more than myself???...no thank you...Im in enough trouble as it is:)....I just want to be in control of me....I want to decide how I feel...(not anyone else....hate the fact that other ppl can control my emotions...).....

I may be wrong but I think these are the driving factors of most of our lives...some sre just more meglomaniacal( is that even a word?...who cares.,...I CONTROL this blog;).....than others....

As for me...lately I have been struggling to control my identity....my problem has always been that I don't take snap decisions and have strong preferences for many things...thus I get influenced by people who do....my mom for one.....so I guess this war for control of identity isnt very new......my best friend Pritam is another...for years (ive known her for 15/16 years now)...

I never wanted to much do what she thought was great fun...like go out and party at night...But she will be the first to modestly accept her incomparable skills of persuasion;)....and I didnt have a better idea...so for years I would chaperon her and her boyfriend to places to party at....and for years I would feel like an outsider....nothin makes you feel more lonely than to be in a crowd that makes you feel like an outsider...I would pretend that I am "observing" people...and I would and I enjoy that..But I was always very consicious of an aching lonliness in that crowd.....that no amount of alcohol or dancing could cure...I would be sitting quietly at a table nursing one drink(couldnt afford more...and didnt have no one to buy them for me)....so Im sober....and the one thing thats glaringly obvious to me is that no one ever asked me to dance...no one ever hit on me...a blow to my feminist ideals Im sure....But all I wanted was for some guy (didnt even have to be Brad Pitt....I was never attracted to amazingly super-gorgeous men...I may be naive....Im not stupid...when would they EVER look at me)...to come up to me....(not be a jerk/drunk/horny/loser)....say I look beautiful tonite and could he please dance with me?..or talk to me...find out what an intelligent/funny conversationalist I am?.......

*sigh*...needless to say...never once happened....week after week...I would see pritam and my other "hot" looking friends...be hit on constantly...get a little tipsy...and declare each night a roaring success....when all I thought about was....another validation for how unimportant and unpretty I am....

hmmm...this blog has an unfortunate tendency to bring out the morbid in me...doesnt it?:)..well...atleast is catharatic......

yet another cold rainy day....:)

2004-10-22T13:35:00.000-04:00

...so its yet another cold rainy day...and I'm sitting at work doing nothin at all....this work gets to me ....coz what i have to do ...i DONT want to....its non-intellectual, non-responsive....im not saying that Putnams was thrilling work...but I learnt something everyday, from a better way to make/serve food.....to shortcuts..... to how to deal with people...that I miss....i spent one year here and for all the work i had to do in school before or after that I found my job a relief......this work!?....isnt like that.....let me just put it that way...

...so my thesis advisor doesn't show up (they seem to forget about me on a regular basis - would that be coz they have faith in that i know what i am doing....or i don't do enough for them to think about at all!.....hmmm..something to think about:).....and i spent a constructive 45 minutes designing...and then a whole ton of time day-dreaming.....where would i be without day-dreams?....a lot more bored for sure:)......so these days with the end of my education career approaching an imminent end....i fantasize every day about my new job....and oh...please don't think this is some way-out off the cuff kinda thing....it is a very organized world in my head.....it has a past , a present and a future....everyday i take off from where i left it the day before....so you see its not as much a fantasy world as it is......an "alternative"reality.....that......doesn't exist:)....you get my drift don't you?

so this morning...on my bus ride from South to North i figured out exactly what I want to be doing....in my alternative world of course.......so I imagine giving a very successful Thesis presentation with my advisors and Josephine (my VR prof)....and she brings along this person who is headhunting people for a job....you can see where this is goin.....he looks at my Thesis and Eureka!...this girl is it!!!!....well you see he is the head of a company that design Virtual Environments and Games....he is the head designer too...and he needs a second-in-command.....my job description would be ..first a purely architectural one...he designed the world conceptually and I detail it out....if it was set in a city i design the city...the massing of the buildings...the roads etc....
this design i hand over to the the model makers...and they actually build the city.....then comes my second role as the co-ordinator....i work with the guys making the models..and the people scripting the language to detail the environment and I ensure there is a cohesive product at the end of it.....logical huh??....of course I would be waaay thinner and wearing designer clothes(mal's latest shopping comes close...id settle for that..right mal?;).....and commuting between San Francisco and New York.....in both places of course I would have apartments (not big ones...just one in Manhattan and one in Market Street SFO..just enough place for me:)....

see no biggie at all........

just another cold rainy day......

2004-10-21T14:02:00.000-04:00

...from intense pressure from the only 2 ppl who read my blog (or try to atleast;) regularly this is a new post...a new beginning?..hardly....just u know making an appearance to prove that i am not TOTALLY without things to say in life:)

its funny this idea of blogging....i think i mentioned this before....but isn't it amazing?...before this how did we get to be "just me" and make authoritative statements about the life, universe and everything?...Social situations would have one or 2 obnoxious people who would insist on giving there opinions about everything and expect instant awe....Or you had only the celebrities or those who claim to be that...Penning sordid details of other peoples lives and calling them autobiographies...And now?....In the space of a few incredibly short years it has become the norm that each one of us gets our own forum...Our own little platform to stand on and spew forth our beliefs like the ancient Romans did in town squares.....And the best part is..the nerve-racking fear of no one listening to you is negated....You create your own audience, you imagine it...And so your audience can be as large or small as you want, as witty or dumb as you would like and as critical as u can take....what more could you want to become witty charming orators with so much to say???

As for having much to say, lets touch on the ubiquitous religion and politics......President Bush says all his decisions have been governed by God.....when politicians in India say things like this....and the one instance that has stuck in my mind was the Babri Masjid fiasco, carnage and destruction in the name of politics made me sick...made me ashamed of being a "Hindu"...of my association having anything to do with that....when politicians in India do that, it struck me as pathetic, but atleast i saw a reason....evil as it was....their acts reeked of desperation..of power-hungry old men who knew how to manipulate a volatile nation. But when Bush does that I just don't get it......he has ALL the power he should want or need...he had a 4 year run as the most powerful man in the world (caused by default of being the head of the most powerful nation in the world)....WHY does he want more??????????....i guess its the same hunger that drives an Advani or a Bal Thackerey to stand in front of hundreds of misguided, desperate men and women reducing themselves to caricatures of themselves, faking a veneer of the "common man" and use their fear, their frustation to make power for themselves, that drives a sophisticated urbane president of the MOST POWERFUL country in the world to debase himself by claiming to be merely a puppet in the hands of GOD.

I guess my point is......i don't expect any better from Indian politics....but NOT from these people....here I see these people, take the best thing they have, there benevolent power, the respect this country has earned for taking leaps where older countries have feared to tread, the passion of their people to be the best, their belief that they can do anything...and have turned it to a simpering snarling dog that barks at anything remotely threatening to their way of life and have created a monster that has eaten its own insides and now needs to annihilate everyone or everything else to feel good about himself.....

phew...and I thought I didn't have anything to say:)

ramblings from a frustated soul....

2004-09-22T23:13:00.000-04:00

I am not sure, really not sure, even after what, 6 years of going to architecture school if the initial frustation of not knowing where the hell are you going with this, leads to some truly innovative, interesting ideas or are just ringing death knells for the rest of your semester. This time its different, there is a weariness I feel, an exhaustion with the "idea" of what i should be doing. Maybe if my life was more structured, atleast my design program was it might help, if i was told to do this and this and this I would do it.

I don't think so though, I taking classes...and i feel the same weariness there....do you know what is the worst part...when you KNOW you can do better, when you know you should be striving for the best of your ability and you dont care enough to get to that point.

My greatest fear and my strongest inspiration has always been a crippling fear that I am not good enough - my first ventures in uncharted territory are always with hesitant steps that what I am doing isnt what I should be doing...and after the first step its easy, I realise that I can do this, i am not quite as hopeless as I thought I was , and I can be pretty good at this. I have lost that confidence....and I dont know why. I dont know if it was the studio I took last semester and blightly jumped into something I was terribly interested in but had no experience at all, or just a resignation borne out of my advancing age:) or just 4 months of doing absolutely nothing academic.......in that studio I learnt that interest doesnt automatically generate skill, and repeated failures at "getting the point" can just make me give up instead of striving for more...and most importantly I can have a theoretic interest in something and have developed absolutely no interest in the actual working of these theorys. Sounds too complicated to say a simple thought? too bad.... I feel like being obscure.

Thats another game I have liked to play with my diaries...I remember making obscure references to things that have really really upset me, playing a game with myself, - natasha, it feels like the end of the world right now, lets see by next week if you even remember what the hell you were talking about!...and more often that not I never knew what got me so riled up in the first place....theres a profound thought in there someplace....i know there is:)

For all that postulating, what I am doing these days is actually extremely fascinating. Even with my resignation and lack of confidence, I still jump feet first into things I have no idea about...with the confidence that I will pick it along the way....or maybe I just gave up on expecting to do well at all.....anyways, my thesis explores the divide between the real and the virtual....what do we mean by this.....why are we , for example writing web blogs instead of diaries?...only because we can? obviously not...there is this huge shift in our perception of our world happening in front of our eyes, exploding almost...and we are acclimatising to it so fast that we dont even stop to understand what we are doing. It is this new world I am interested in exploring...and what it means for architecture.....am I straying from the topic? no doubt....am i taking on more than I can handle? OF COURSE.....will that lead to miserable failure?...probably...but hell...if i ever thought about what I was doing...i wouldnt be where I am right now...and for all my cribbing I dont regret a moment of what i have done till now....

....so back to this new world....i found this fantastic book by David Weinberger called "Small Pieces Loosely Joined" that talk about these really profound ideas of what the Web means to us as a social structure but in the easiest reading possible. He uses examples we take for granted, like for example me adding a link to his page , without his consent, effectively creating a new "pathway" for people to travel on ....this tiny action of mine, in parallel terms in the real world have huge consequences.....I would be persecuted for creating a back door entrance to his life(his webpage etc.) and the ramifications of creating pathways to connect these differents nodes would be just mindblowing. His perspective is fresh and unusually startlingly resonative with how we think...

more on my extremely fascinating academic life...milenge, break ke baad....

We have a new visitor!!!!!

2004-09-21T13:20:00.000-04:00

life marches on...relentlessly....sometimes thats good and sometimes it bad....always always inevitable....
the day my brother called me and said he was getting married to priya....i wept.....he emailed me...saying...what are u women all crying? (beginning from my mom of course:)....and i wrote a long mail telling him on how i can see him married soon and with kids.....and to imagine the boy who would chase me around the house to hit me;)....or fought with me over the last basan ka ladoo...will someday have kids of his own...and will have to suffer everything mom and dad went through bringin him up:).....i cant but cry...
well...the good news is.....that day is finally here.....we wait with bated breadth for the entrance of lil pepsi luthra:)...pepsi..for the adorable little thing he/she is gonna be.....she(only for you priya)...cant help but be that with the gene pool she comes from:)....
love you guys can express my happiness in word...written or spoken....

So what are we here for again?

2004-09-13T10:03:00.000-04:00

so what do we write blogs for? Do we really think we are that important each one of us, that our private thoughts or our various "important" activities are of use to anyone?
I think they are just a fascinating peak into our inner worlds...we are all narcissists , all of us who write blogs....I know i am .....my previous blogs...few as they are have been referred to as ramblings of a "private angst" or proving the dictomy of my life....i wrote them in anger..repressed pain and fear....but I did want to tell people about that in the most indirect way i could think of.... reshma spoke of suicide in her blog some time back....mentioning how if you need help just ask...dont hold the fear of death as a toy on a string....i dont think it can be that calculated...we all need help...some of us are better at asking than others....and some of us need to ask not in so many words ...sometimes through anonymous blogs...and sometimes through a cry that say I see no way out...can you help me?

no one wants i think to die....sometimes i wish i could just Not Exist ...and sometimes ive thought of ways to make that happen...but that would be just too proactive to the way I am feeling then....the feeling of not existing should not need work...should not need action....I wish i could just fade away not ever having existed....coz though I may not have "touched" many lives....i am a daughter , a sister and a good friend....and no one deserves the pain of losing that just because I find my path too hard.

Im ready now....

2004-09-06T23:28:00.000-04:00

Its one of those days...after being given subtle hints by arul;)...on how i should be more "upbeat" in my blogs...im finally ready to see the joy in life...having successfully blocked out all the bad in my life right now...i begin to enjoy the shear joy of learning. Its a good feeling. Believing that you are going to know more everyday!... also have a new passion....the idea of virtual reality, VRML, interactive environments and their relationship to architecture have begun to excite me. Thats what im going to look at in my thesis and like my chair Kent gave me a fantastic inspiration..it maybe the beginning of a life long interest and passion. wish me luck guys and the stubborness to hang on when the going gets tough...when nothing makes sense and i Curse the Day i thought of this silly idea.....

2004-09-03T09:57:00.000-04:00

sloooooooooooowly things starts getting better...you realise that you could crib all you want...lifes not changin....so slowly you start accepting the fake mask of happiness on your face and start believing your own deception. Become the character you pretend to be.

I have been told this time and again...natasha your thoughts makes no sense you have powerful ideas but hell no logic...i jump from topic to topic barely taking a breath in between.

some people are better abt saying that than others. I remember a prof I was writing essays for....she "discussed" my essays in class and was like "i like natasha's abruptness....she keeps me awake when i read her stuff:)"

well...for this blog...it looks like saurabh is the only one who reads regularly..so too bad saurabh this diary isnt geared towards public consumption...its my thoughts...in writing thats all...make sense if you want too;)

spoke to dad last night....the call to them was just a im so homesick but i dont wanna admit it kinda call....i told dad abt classes i wanna take...comps i wanna buy and then i start bawling....i wanna come home!!!!!....do most ppl do that or is it just me?...i will practically never ever cry for the reason im upset abt...ill pinch my lips together, sulk (as sanketh would put it;) or pretend nothin ever happened....till something else triggers it off....my coffee isnt hot enough maybe?....i guess i musnt be the only person....i mean Ross does that too...and he is SO a real person right?

Just another day.....

2004-09-02T10:22:00.000-04:00

A brand new days dawns again...will this ever end!?!?...since when did life become a chore...since when did opening my eyes includes a desperate urge to shut them again...pray that my mind not start working....i can hear the dull thunk...u gotta do this and this and this...and u didnt do that yesterday so it is imperative u do this now...and pray no one notices that you didnt get that done yesterday.......
sigh...life will get better eventually...
azmi and I had a long talk yesterday...life,universe and everything....what she says makes sense...I have to just wrap my mind around it and take a few unpleasant but necessary steps....eventually...when all reasons for procrastination run out....

I GIVE UP

2004-08-31T12:37:00.000-04:00

thats it...i give up.....i officially dont want to have to do anything ever again....i am sick and fucking tired of putting myself forth every day , putting out another cheek to be slapped loud and clear....i mean how many fucking times do i have to be told i am not good enough before it sinks in...before i keep sending out more shit to be told....they were so many fucking qualified applicants for the job and yours was the most fucking least impressive.
I should have just flunked out of archi school when i had the chance.,...atleast the last year wouldnt have built up my hopes my expectations that someday i will be good enough.,..and maybe i am...you know...like pretty good...i know my shit. I know ZILCH absolutely zero....i could bust my ass of but all i get to do in the wild and wonderful full world of UB is to be a cashier/or a librarian......i wish i could just pack up and go home tail between my legs....Im not good enough....why cant i just live with that?

Eureka?

2004-08-12T16:57:00.000-04:00

After days of thinking, procrastinating & rationalising I have come to a decision to bare my heart and soul to a bunch of random strangers , who should have better stuff to do than hear my thoughts on really random shit.....but if I ever wanna write there can be no better demo version...so all you random strangers out there.......welcome to my humble heart.