tremlanquer's Xanga

Breaking Dawn - A Review

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 03:36:34 GMT

The last book of the 'Twilight Saga' and possibly the worst. The first three books were wonderful, flawless - they had a rhythm to their pace and they were very gripping. Come Breaking Dawn and I got this feeling that Stephanie Meyer (SM) herself had no idea how she should go on, like maybe the story suddenly stopped flowing in her head, like she had the writer's block and still she wrote, just to get on with it!

Her conflicts were all over the place. It seemed like she just drifted past each obstacle; in a sense she was very superficial. She never did address the crux of each event that she created. All the issues that came up were resolved instantly without any struggle. And where there should have been a struggle like perhaps Bella dealing with herself being a newborn - that part was skipped right away. Bella was born the perfect vampire, no struggle at all. There was no drive in the story.

She was very repetitive too! There has to be a recap of the previous books, sure but it should have been done subtly and not taken up pages and pages of the novel. If i wanted to know what happened in those books, I would've just read them. Also her vocabulary seemed to be limited. If Bella was "stubborn, plain", then Edward had "a smooth velvet voice" and Jacob always had a "fist of rage" and they all seemed to be "wary" very often! I had to re-look up my definition of the word "wary" after I read in how many different contexts it seemed to have been used by SM in the book.

I got disinterested in the middle of Book Two of Breaking Dawn. In my opininion, the Twilight series stopped being a fantasy series at 'Ecplise'. Breaking Dawn was purely fanfiction - the favourite characters were happy in the end like she's named her last chapter "The Happily Ever After" so she can keep her fans happy. It stopped being a story SM wanted to write and became one that her audience wanted to read. She killed her own story and lost a lot of fans, me being one of them.

4 Minute Movie

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:02:52 GMT

This is our miserable attempt at telling a story...

Hopefully it isn't too embarassing

Just... anxious

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:27:12 GMT

It’s raining outside – a good sign in this time of drought but it doesn’t personally feel too good. My feet feel cold as I take in a particularly long drag. I feel my senses awaken as the smoke hits my head. My heartbeat increases. The rain falls down harder and faster and my hands clutch the wheel as though it were my dying mother. My head is spinning now. The traffic gets worse. A white Maruthi drives itself into the sidewalk a little ahead. There is chaos. My heart is racing at this point and my senses are so awake that I can feel every beat, one after the other, throbbing against my chest like a wild creature trying to escape. Sounds of horns all around me of vehicles trying to meander their way around the accident, anxious to get home, seem heightened, and echo into my ears. My head seems to be in unison with my heart, hammering in tune with its beats, making it difficult for me to even blink. Everything but time moves in slow motion, like my life thus far.

As I inch forward in this utter chaos, Fear hits me like the smoke did. That is what my heart was trying to get away from: fear. Fear of being ridiculed in front of someone I look up to. Fear of having him look at me in a disappointing sort of way. Fear of having my already shitty college look even shitter in front of all those intellectual people. Fear of being tongue-tied, of losing control of myself when questions are being thrown at me like light bolts. I suddenly realise that I am not prepared mentally and physically to face all those people. I don’t have a presentation ready. The paper is beginning to fade in my head. It’s getting too cloudy up there with all the smoke and all the Sims. The lens seems to be getting out of focus. And I have exactly seven days to get back on track and chisel the wood. Is there still time, or is it already too late?

First Week At FLAME

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 16:29:51 GMT

Well technically its not over yet, this first week, but I already know how I’m going to feel this year. I gotta admit, I got a great roomy. Its another thing that she’s never on campus but when she is, I guess it’ll be fun. But besides that, I honestly feel like I’ve flunked one year because all my ‘friends’ have actually passed out, and the feeling I’m getting now is like every time I see some part of campus it reminds me of some good time reddy and I had there.

The dining reminds me of the time I used to pretend not to have noticed him when he entered although I what I really got was that fluttery feeling; the infirmary reminds me of some of those nights he’d come down to see me, especially when I was depressed; the wisdom chair, oh goshh!! I remember crying there because they were gonna go away from FLAME. The plaza was where we’d meet up to booze. The adda where we’d we once hung out and mixed drinks and reddy spilt some vodka all over the place and then we had to run away from there. And the worst, the parking lot where we’d simply hang out after dinner. Oh oh the tapri, which was right opposite reddy’s room too.

I miss him a lot here. Its not fair, its harder for me than for him to survive. I got to spend every minute of my time alone now in a place I used to share with him. When I spoke to him last, I nearly choked! This fucking place has him written all over IT! And to make matters worse, everyone likes to ask me how things are going between us. Like FLAME doesn’t torture me enough already!!

I need to shake myself out of this dooming feeling I get here. I need to occupy myself to something more meaningful before I lose my head completely! And this time there’s no reddy to comfort me either!

Another Brief Visit: Ahmedabad

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:28:06 GMT

On another brief visit to Ahmedabad recently, I lived at the MICORE guest house. It was a pleasant experience. I got to see peacocks that would dance for me in the rain, langoors randomly crossing the roads; I found and tried Sosyo, an exotic soft drink that used to be sold around India in the times when Coca Cola was banned. I finally had the Pav Bhaji at Honest that I always wanted to but couldn’t make it. I got to watch at least two movies during my brief visit there: Harry Potter, unfortunately in Hindi, and Luck, which was so horrendous that I left during the interval. I also paid visits to my Paying Guest apartment and met all my friends there. I looked for my water-bottle that I left in my room, I guess, like many of my other water bottles, it was either stolen by one of the girls or by the langoors. there was one peculiar thing that I noticed about this city though. Like Pune, this place is also a two-wheeler city. But what struck me odd was that all men and women, wore dupattas/scarfs/pieces of cloth arounf their face instead of just buying and wearing a helmet! They reminded me of moslem women in hijabs, somewhat!

I worked a lot too. I wrote out a 4000 word document that included analysing 130 questionnaires. It was tough fitting all that into 3 days. Tough indeed. But it was a fruitful visit, all in all. I got my cheque of Rs 6000 and my certificates also! I’m glad I did this internship and enjoyed working hard for a change.

Dreams

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:03:25 GMT

# 1

And this time I dreamt that I was outside a mosque, curiously trying to get a peek inside it but all I could see was a vestibule and nothing else. I stood there wondering what I must do, while a flock of women draped in black clothes, whizzed past me. This gave me an idea – why not wear one of those burqhaas and sneak in. So I asked Sharbath, my-sized friend, to lend me one.

I wore the burquha and confidently walk into green-white walls of the mosque and was curiously looking around, rather like a terrorist looking for a place to hide a grenade, I might add, when Mr. Mozzarella knocks me on my head and asks, “Excuse me, are you a male or a female in there!” Doh!

Scene Change: Picture a dim-lit café with absolutely naked walls – with nothing on them except random rat-holes and paan-spits, a couple of tables haphazardly scattered about, occupied by shady Indian people, who seemed to be up to no good over cups of milky tea.

And in that café sat I, with Nicholas Cage. He had appointed me as, perhaps you could say, his nurse, and companion. People were after him. He sat facing one of those nondescript walls, and from one of those rat holes emerged a muzzle, that ejected bullets into Cage’s back and he sputtered and frothed but in spite of 4 bullets right into his back, he was still alive and able to walk (c’mon he was the hero of my dream! How can he die already?)

The wall divided the bathroom and the café. This part of the dream fades in my mind. I don’t remember when he left, but I saw Cage re-enter the café from the front door, limping with a grave expression on his face. He asked me to get him some shampoo, shaving cream, soap and conditioner and place them on the shelf of the bathroom. Promptly, I got all he needed, and while I tried to place it on the shelf, there were just so many mugs, and brushes (the ones to use to clean your clothes with, not the ones you clean your teeth with, in case you didn’t figure that out!) lying there that not all the bottles could fit. I tried to stuff everything in that shelf, and during my struggle, Cage emerges from a side door of the bathroom, in a towel only (drool!) but in pain and that determined serious expression that he has in the movie National Treasure when he finds out he has to finish what his dad began in the first movie.

I simply stared at him, entranced. The bottle of shampoo fell out of my hand. And the thud of its fall to the bathroom floor shook me both, out of the trance and out of my sleep!

Good Morning.

Ahmadabad

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:26:27 GMT

The city

Finally, I’ve had the chance to pen something down about this city. There is so much I have to say about this little city of Gujarat, whose name I cannot even spell right, even after being here for over 3 weeks.

A’bad, (which is how I will refer to this place hereafter, because I’m tired of getting spell check to correct me at every instance) is the city of food and for the ladies, of Shopping! Those, I regretfully say, are the only two activities people tend to engage in out here! It’s almost a pity. There are like two major malls that I’ve been to over here, and they aren’t much really. The malls in Delhi Chennai and Bangalore are way better. So I don’t really get the ‘shopping’ craze over here. They go to the same places and buy the same stuff, All the Time!

The life of the city is somewhat as follows: Nothing opens before 10 am. No general stores, no medical stores, no banks, nothing. Even breakfast places open after 10, as does my office. And people work mornings and shut in the noon for lunch. They work again from 3:30 pm to 6:30 pm and shut for the day after that. By 9 in the night, people steer clear off the streets and all you get to hear is the sound of the grasshoppers and the owls hooting. It’s uncanny. You get no food after 11 pm anywhere.

A’bad is also called Modi-land. And in Modi-land, mind you, you cannot “misbehave”. I put the term misbehave in double quotes because Modi has a special definition for what he considers good behaviour and what he considers bad behaviour. As most of you know, (well at least the ones who like a drink or two sometimes) Gujarat is a dry state and A’bad is no exception. It is sinful to drink here. Seeing women smoke on the public roads draws weird street-Romeos towards them as though they’ve found their ideal prey. Girls with cigarettes in their hands are considered ‘loose’. Hookah bars are places whores hang out at with their fellow-mates. They check your ID to make sure you’re over 18 at a hookah bar, but it’s okay to ride a bike as a minor On the wrong side of the road over here and without a helmet too. Non-vegetarian is a rarity here. You’ll find barely any restaurants serving meat.

Food here is to gujju taste – Sweet. I swear they serve me sweet yogurt along with my dosai here. Its almost funny! The water here tastes like rat poison. Its so bad it turns your body-system upside down until you turn all weak and forlorn (of course unless you’ve grown up to drink rat poison for water. Then you’ve just gotten used to it).

What do people do here after 8 pm? The senior citizens of the house sit on the porch and gossip with their neighbours and the others (men women children) take a stroll, maybe even get some ice cream, if they happen to find an open ice cream store.

I happen to live in the most genteel locality of A’bad called ‘C.G. Road’. All you have on this road are restaurants, jewellery stores, shoe stores and banks. And petrol pumps. May be if you really look, you might find a college or two. You have to walk miles to find a decent general store or supermarket. It’s so frustrating! And you don’t even want me to get started on the weather. It is humid and hot, and I’m talking in terms of it being 46 degrees Celsius in the peak afternoon of mid-June when it rains in most other places on half the earth! God really must hate these poor Gujjus.

Accommodation

my girls in A'bad

Accommodation wasn’t hard to find over here. I found myself a decent PG (as in Paying Guest, not Post Graduate for heaven’s sake!) against 5000 bucks, wherein they agreed to do my laundry and feed my tummy three times a day. A good deal I say! Of course, I did not get the luxury of Air condition or anything remotely close to that. I have been living at the mercy of the weather each day, praying like the Indians did fifty years ago, to shower blessings upon us in the form of cool raindrops. But God hasn’t been too generous yet.

The sounds of my surroundings are strange. Mostly they consist of little boys and girls screaming when someone hits a six in a game of gully-cricket, or when someone breaks a window pane. In the late nights and early mornings however, you can hear eagles, koels, sparrows and crows too. They’ve apparently taken over cock-a-doodle-doo’s job ‘round here.

My PG, although shabby, is extremely lively. Lots of fun-loving, hard-working chicks around here, all of whom have left families back home to pursue careers and studies and make something out of their lives. There are chicks from Madhya Pradesh and Rajisthan, from Mount Abu and Kutch, from Chennai and Bihar, from Delhi and Hyderabad (ahem, that included me, if you noticed). Mostly it consists of MBA students, CA aspirants and well interns like me who work summers. There’s also a Law student around here. Another frequent visitor at my PG is the Langoor. Yes, I’m serious. Unlike the normal brown-faced monkeys that come by my home to steal the mangoes in Hyderabad, these are the grey ones with black faces that you would normally see an the Hyderabad zoo. They come early mornings and try to get their hands on my watch that is kept on the window sill. They’ve never been able to reach it though.

Langoor!

Besides the lovely sound of birds every morning, another amazing thing about A’bad is its auto rickshaw. I’ve never seen ricks this cheap and auto-wallas this honest, Anywhere. I mean it. If it takes 7 bucks to some place, they will not charge you a paisa more. As a person who is used to commuting by autos in other cities like Pune and Hyderabad, and paying a minimum of Rs 20 irrespective of the distance travelled, I feel so happy to see such honesty that I actually pay them extra! It takes me 12 bucks one way till my office and I usually walk back.

Workplace

It’s called MICORE – M udra Institute of Communications Research. It’s the best part of the city. I sometimes don’t believe I’m saying this (and I usually crib about going to work) but I look forward to working most days (there are always exceptions of course!). As the name of the suggests, I’m into Media Research broadly and Journalism and New Media Research in particular.

If everything goes my boss’s way, I will hopefully be able to present the paper I’m working on, at a well-known international conference in Noida. But that is still an ‘If” so keep your fingers crossed for me!

The environment is extremely conducive to work, except at noon, when I get a bit drowsy because of the full tummy and the droning sound of the AC. People there are nice too, and not all of them are gujaratis. Some are rajisthanis, some Bengalis, some marathis and well, the rest gujjus. An interesting amalgamation of culture, I say!

One month at work is almost over. There is another month to go. I spent one month (4 weeks) at my office at C G Road and the other month, I will spend at MICA, which is about 40 kilometres to get to from where I’m located today and on the way I cross nearly 3 villages. So I’m almost going cross country starting next week. I’d probably be dog-tired by the time I reached home.

Entertainment

One weekend I saw a rock show here in Gujarat. There were four bands, two from Baroda and two from Surat. It took the first band, which was from Baroda, called Lazy Bums, one hour to do sound check! The other band from Baroda, Sweetblame, was a high schoo l punk band that mainly did covers of Blink 182, green day and the likes. The third one was a classic rock band from Surat called New Fools of Old Skool, claiming, as the name suggests, to be a classic rock band. They were okay. Their setlist was lousy. The fourth and in this case, I’d say, the headliner was called Antariksh from Surat also, who did a tribute to Pink Floyd. They were great. Like a really good friend of mine says, you can’t go wrong with Floyd!

Other entertainment here has been purely my roomies and apartment mates at my PG. one weekend I saw 3 movies – Crusade in Jeans, Aa Dekhe Zara and Kal Kisne Dekha. The two Hindi movies seemed to be the same to me. They both had similar themes. In fact all the three had something to do with time travel.

To conclude

Not having updated so ever so long, I’ve compensated by writing an entry that went into 1500 words. So before you run away (if you already haven’t that is), I shall put an end to this post. I still have another 4 weeks to go before I am done with my Internship here. I plan to visit baroda one weekend before I go. My fan makes an awful noise, quite like a million mice scuttling about nibbling on slabs of cheese. So before I gross myself out completely, I better stop right here.

Shimla

Sat, 23 May 2009 05:49:28 GMT

The British called Shimla The Queen of Hill Stations because of it's bountiful hiils. but as a tourist, I'd call it the Manhattan of Hill Stations. Shimla should be easily your last option if you were to choose between Shimla, Nainital and Kullu-Manali, simply because its cramped, crowded and commercialized. You see cemented structures everywhere you go in Shimla. The Mall has stores like Pringle, Adidas. It even has chain stores like Dominos and Subway! We were in Shimla for 6 days.

Hills Of Shimla

When we left home, both, my father and I had a fever and a severe cough. We were in no state to travel but luckily, we had our tickets booked in such a way that we got plenty of time to rest and recover. We flew to Delhi and booked a room at Dehli Gymkhana, where we stayed for the night. Initially when we made this booking, what we had in mind was that we'd do a little socializing, meet a couple of friends, have dinner with them in Delhi and then continue with our trip. As it turned out, neither did we have the strength to get out of our room, nor were our friends free that particular evening. So we just tended to ourselves, took lots of medicines, made lots of trips to the bathroom and whiled away a whole evening in the room of Delhi Gymkhana.

Next day, we took the Delhi-Kalka Shatabdi Express to a tiny town called Kalka, which was our link to Shimla. There were two ways of getting to Shimla from Kalka, One was getting a prepaid cab from the railway station and the other was catching the toy train to Shimla. The latter is known to be a slow painful journey so we opted the cab, which was a good decision because the way the weather changed as we climbed the ear-popping heights to Shimla through the Pine and Deodar trees was nothing short of breath-taking. But once we actually got there, the awe for beauty fizzled out completely because what we came to was just another busy town. It was just-another-place. It didn't feel like a hill station at all. I cannot describe the kind of shock we got, when our cab drove though the massive multi-storyed buildings of Shimla.

We stayed at a Resort called Eastbourne. It was not located in Shimla but in a suburb nearby called Khalini. Eastbourne, from the outside, was a delightfully pretty place to be in, with its cute little rose garden and its lovely sit-outs next to the old grand oak trees The first day, we only rested. As it happened, both of us recovered well, but my mom fell sick, with slight fever for the next two out of six days that we there.

Rose Garden Of East Bourne: A View From Our Room

Let me tell you this. There isn't much one can actually DO in Shimla. It isn't like Manali where you have Rohtang Pass and Lovers/suicide Point and that fancy 12 km ride on the horse or even the white-water rafting. Manali has lots of adventure sports you can do even over the summer. But in Shimla, sadly you just have to make do with spa and enjoy the aminities and luxury your resort gives you over the summer, which in our case, wasn't much.
So instead of breaking this up into a day-wise detail of our stay there, it would be more informative if I described our stay in terms of what we actually DID in Shimla. Well, here I go:-

White Water Rafting

Yes. About 50 kilometers from Shimla is a place called Tattapani. This is where the brown waters of Sutlej flow. The place gets it's name after the hot-water sulphur springs that flow around the river. white-water rafting here wasn't very widely known like in Manali. Not many people are aware of the fact that rafting is actually done in this river. But there are some private agencies that take people white-water rafting. And if you are living at the Hotel Wild Flower (i'll come to that in a bit), you get to do white water rafting for free! Otherwise it costs as much as a 1000 bucks per head, which is about 4 times more than what we paid for the same in Manali.

White Water Rafting at Sutlej

We did a 12 kilometre stretch. There weren't too many rapids and it wasn't as dangerous as in Rishikesh but it was still fun. When you do white water rafting, you never know how time flies. For the record, i've done it in Beas, Parvati, Ganges and now in Sutlej. Amazing sport I tell you! Especially when the raft topples (ours toppled in Rishikesh A.k.a The Ganges)

Hiking

Looking up the steps of Jakhu Temple

The other thing to do there was hike. In particular, there was this temple high high up within the mountain ranges called the Jakhu Temple. It was a steep 45 minute climb upto this temple. At every square, we'd come across people who'd say to us, "you're gonna climb? why dont you take the car, it'll take you up with ease"...or "Are you sure you want to climb, it is really difficult, why don't you take this stick, we rent it out , it'll help you climb up." Unshaken by these very discouraging comments, we continued our journey to the top. We had to climb 2 very steep hills. And none of those locals were wrong about the difficulty level. It was to say the very least, HARD indeed! Every bench ahead would motivate us to pull our tired legs that were giving way under us, under our heavy bodymass. We would have to stop every few minutes to catch our breath, you get the picture. We would occassionaly cross people heading back to the market from the temple and they'd say to us, "bahot dipphicult hain jee, nahin kar paogey" and initially there was a point were we sat and contemplated whether we were actually going to climb all the way up after all those warnings! But we did. We went on. And it was a beatuiful climb up , exteremly picturisque.

The monkeys. What can i say, it was like i was living a scene out of Planet of the Apes. They were beatuiful, big and MANY in number. Those hills were inFested with monkeys - Hungry and fearless. They jumped on a couple that were climbing down with some prasaadam back from the temple and these monkeys, they jumped on them and siezed all the food! It was really interesting. Even when we went up there, we were asked to remove our glasses, cameras, etc and keep them all away lest the monkeys would snatch those too.

Can't Life Be All Rose, No Thorn?

Mon, 11 May 2009 18:41:03 GMT

It's like this. We're pretty much living in a lovely well-furnished picturisque prison with one mad lady who is out to make everyone under her roof vegetables. So first she says youre always wrong. Whatever you say, she contradicts you. She's sarcastic, dominating, bitchy and plain downright evil.. She has guests at home, no problem, she takes you out on the road in person and yells at you, hits you if she feels like it - in front of everybody. You cannot say a word in front of her, when she's around you keep mum, or she'll hold it against you.

Her guests, she'll entertain oh-so-selflessly. But for them, she expects you to leave your friends and come home by 8 pm right on dot at dinner time, on the dinner table so that you dine with them(her guests). And she expects you to be on your best behaviour. She'll throw your friends out if you have them tag along. When she's entertaining her guests, she wants it to be flawless, perfect. Your friends are lesser beings at this point of time, unworthy of her hospitality in front of her esteemed fucking guests. Your guests are just tiny little dust particles in her eye, itching, bothering her . All she has to do is simply wash them away so that everything goes her way again. Flawless.

Its almost like a mini caste system out here. How do you deal with that?! its so fucking hypocritic. If she wants to deal with you, she goes through different means of communication. By God, i swear this happened - on the dinner table we're all sitting around and they wanted to make conversation with me. They ask question to my dad and ask him to ask me, when i'm sitting Right in front of them!! How do you react to that? your own frigging grandparents!! what the hell is going on?...And to think i've been in town barely a week.

Wow i really feel welcome here....Sheesh i wish i could just go back to Pune or something. At least i can be in my own world there and not bother anyone or be bothered anymore over there... Here, they're just gnawing into my space. Its absolutely crazy. Theyre drving my poor dad Crazy. I cannot bear to see him like that. He wasted his life away in htis house. 50 years, probably if this goes on, i'll be able to present to you the first live vegetable of my family. My mom would probably go next, she's able to hold out better ; pretty strong she is. She tries to shake the evil force off n all. Fights with it once in a while too.

Gosh why does it have to be like this. For once can't life ACTUALLY not be all rose and no thorn?

Internship

Thu, 07 May 2009 04:39:55 GMT

Finally i'm back home~!! Theres so much to do but all i want to do is sleep. Or watch a movie, or maybe go for a dip in the pool. The sun seems to shine brighter down here than in Pune. But i got no complaints, Atleast the moisture in the air is lesser! can't stand that damned moisture!!

So what can i say. Although, theres nothing much left to do, i not at peace yet because i aint got an internship on me yet can you believe it? i'm basically banking on one thing and hoping it should work out. what if it didnt? then i dont have a plan B i never had a plan A to begin with. I'm feverishly waiting for that call from ahemdabad so i can nail it and go there...i really really really hope it works out... before i goto shimla and i hope i get the dates i want....it should all fall into place... god i just hope...!!!

i should probably goto the temple and ask god to make it happen

UPDATE: got me an internship; its all good