through darkness and light

Just finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy, and of course I loved it! Midway through the first book I realized I was dangerously close to become attached to the characters in the book like I am to the Harry Potter series. yes yes, nerd is my middle name and I take a lot of pride in it.
No my blog post is not a book review centering around the Hunger Games, nor is it an overview of the books either, for those too lazy to actually read them. If you're curious, go read. Or like most lazy people who think the movie of a book is a good substitute, by all means, watch the movie next March.
Never is a movie ever what the book is.
The Hunger Games is about what the next world will be once we all die. Humans, yes. But what kind? Will they be as compassionate as us. But first, are we compassionate? Have we earned that right?
The more people you love, the more vulnerable you become to those who want to destroy you.
The more people you try to protect, the thinner your protection to each of them.
The more you care about their safety, the easier it is to harm them.
The more people you let into your heart, the more easily it is in the danger of shattering.
When you love, you leave yourself exposed to that which can destroy you.
Never for a moment think the world is full of self-less people, because it isn't.
Everyone wants someone to protect and someone to protect them, someone to love and someone to love them back.
But is that safer than just looking out for yourself alone?
Where you have no one to think of, no obligations to fulfill, no one whose back you need to watch
no one you need to protect, a one man army maybe?
But my best friend says such people lead a sad life, with no one to love, no one to look after them.
He says you have to become vulnerable to have people who love you, you need to see how scary real life is before thinking it is okay to be alone without any support.
To give someone else the power to destroy you from inside through someone close to you is a very scary thing.
But we all do it, knowingly or unknowingly.
Maybe when the time comes to have enough knowledge to be able to chose between these options, who knows what the person beside you might choose to do?

random musings in the middle of the night

The feeling of being alone in a room full of people hits you at the wrong moment, always. Catching you at the most vulnerable of times, but then that is the whole point of that feeling isn't it? It hits us all at some or the other point in life. Whether we acknowledge it or not is a completely different matter.
Some people are prone to not accepting the way things actually are. They prefer to live in their own version of reality. Problems begin when someone bursts this bubble, real big problems. Ignorance is not always bliss, you just end up making a fool of yourself in front of 10 people you don't know. Not a very good feeling is it?
That is why reality checks are a necessity. Burst you out of your bubble before other people realise how stupid you are.
Haven't we all heard that we die alone? Life just gives us a dose of this time and again by swooping in with the feeling of loneliness in the middle of a crowded room. reality check much?
Perhaps it is in Life's bet interests to give us those reality checks, so we crib about it less in the after-life. If there is one.
This raises another question, what happens to us when we die? yeah well no one knows, so don't think about it too much. Watch Ghost Whisperer and you'll figure out all the after-life answers apart from having th shit scared out of you at 2 am.
Typing in the dark is really a skill isn't it? Yes I just accomplished writing a whole blog post in the dark. Not to say that this will only serve to increase my parents' expenses since I am going to need a new pair of glasses when I go back home. Too much typing and reading and watching ghost whisperer and 90210. On a completely random note, I wish pretty little liars would return. Such epic teenage drama.
Just read this on one of my favorite sites I go to when I need to procrastinate, " the moment when a tv series you've been following gets over and you don't know what to do with your life anymore" such epic words haha!
on a musical note, listen to PennMasala, they're an amazing group of singers. An A Capella group, don't stare at the screen trying to figure out what it means, Google it!  Google is not just for doing your homework, it actually is a source of other information apart from the solutions to all your assignments.
Gotta give the eyes some rest and fall asleep listening to PennMasala. 

answers you are always looking for and never getting

Depressed? Everyone is, at some or the other point in life. Sometimes it doesn't take a lot to pull you down, and sometimes it takes everything to pull you down, eventually. 
So what do you do? sit in a corner and cry? yeah well, that is a very effective initial stress-letting-out technique. But then what? get up a and get on with life. You could do that, buttttt, you're not going to have satisfactorily released your stress. Break a plate or two, throw stuff around, THAT is what is more effective. Listen to your favorite songs, drown out the rest of the world, that is by far, the most effective method I'd say. Music is the singularly most powerful tool to shut out the rest of the world, all you have to do is crank up the volume on your ipod and you're all set!
through all this thought, there's one thing you must never forget. and that is, there are people in the world who love you.
No matter what you are, what you were, what you will be, they will love you nonetheless. Unconditional love? Maybe, maybe not. But they're people who you can fall back on. You know who those people are, but forget at a time when you need to remember it the most.
Make a note on your phone, set reminders for every two days, write it on your hand, stick a list on your wall, stick a post-it on every book you own, just don't let yourself forget it. 
Always looking for answers and never getting them is super-annoying. Knowing that even if you dont get those answers and are a mess, you have someone to fall back on, literally. Its gonna be a lot of people, not just one person. 
Like the lyrics of crash and burn by savage garden go,
Let me be the one you call 
If you jump I'll break your fall 
Lift you up and fly away with you into the night 
If you need to fall apart 
I can mend a broken heart 
If you need to crash then crash and burn 
You're not alone 


If you have people who are there to cushion your fall, make sure you're there to cushion someone else's fall to. Coz what goes around, comes around to bite you in the ass!

procrastination 101

writing a blog post is much more interesting than wasting time sitting in the Student Center listening to weird conversations. No I definitely don't want to listen to a professor conducting his office hours right in the middle of the room with an unusually annoying voice and a cell phone that keeps on ringing and is never silenced.
Sometime tell him, the silent button is there for a reason and study lounges are not the place to conduct your office hours >.<
the study lounge also is, apparently, now, a socializing spot for senior citizens. why is the only question I ask!!
To the lady who's pushing equipment around the room making an insane amount of noise, lady, we're studying/procrastinating. Leave us in peace! wow she's one pissed off woman! :O
toady's class discussion in global women's lit : In attempting to eliminate randomness, the person gives rise to a new kind of random randomness, therefore making the point of attempting to eliminate randomness moot. Therefore,  wise people should not attempt this, it will just lead to more randomness now.
In accordance with the class discussion, I attempt t create more randomness. Do my bit of goodness for the world by introducing more randomness in it to off-set for the randomness mad people try to eliminate .Thankyouverymuch.
Quick question, Are randomness and craziness proportional?
Addiction to spotify just reached new levels. Instead of opening facebook the first thing when I switch on my laptop, I switch on Spotify. hah!
So they kicked everyone out of the lounge again.
So much for my attempt to introduce randomness into this world. sigh.

as pretty as it gets...

So it is fall and everything around me is turning a pretty shade of yellow, brown and orange. If not for the cold, i would say fall is the prettiest season ever. I decided to talk a walk around the place I call "home" for now. I re-realised how much i love my campus, and that it is the prettiest out of all my college campuses :D
Testimony? My friend saying over and over again that she was in love with this campus. no kidding.

The steps to the cliff

Pretty colors, the sunset only makes them prettier 

The Raritan 

The place we call the cliff, only because it overlooks the Raritan

Vorhees chapel at sunset

                                                 

The walk around Douglass put me into a thinking-seriously-about-life mode. Yes, the trees made me do it, not my fault! The place is just so beautiful you never get tired of walking around, and that's something to say since I am lazy as hell.
I could try to compare the trees, the sunlight, the scenery to life, but that would be too cliched. What it made me think I should do what I love, study what I want to. At a point in time when i have a "Major" dilemma, pun intended, I think I have my answers. Sigh  Douglass, you inspire the shit outta me. Anyone with a major life crisis? Take a walk around this place, and you'll have your answers, much like instant coffee, instant food, instant everything :D

of friends and friendship

Friendship is such a general as well as a specific term.
When you're friends, it's a special connection.
Sometimes you forget how special it is and screw up.
Then you have to be reminded of it and a light in your head goes bling!
Sometimes you forget your boundaries, but does it really matter?
When your best friend hugs you, the world can go die
The world thinks you're crazy, but only you know what you are
When you get together and have the time of your life very single time
That is what being a best friend is all about
When the world kicks you, they're supposed to kick you harder
and say there's a reason the world kicked you
when you cook, they pretend to choke and die
When you make sure they know you want a surprise birthday party
AND you get one
When you know which buttons to press
when you know the right thing to say in every wrong situation
And more often then not, you both end up in the wrong situation
They are to life what spices are to Indian food

the push, the pull and cricket

Let me clarify in the beginning, this blog post is not about the cricket world cup, it is about the spirit of patriotism associated with it (well, only partially, sicne its my blog, i talk about me too!)
The world cup win was amazing! what a day it was! The different timezones did not stop me from watching the world cup from beginning ( 4 am. oh yes!) till the end.
 But it was when dhoni lifted the world cup that the one thing that flashed in my head was, i wish i was home. I couldn't stop the tears in my eyes for two reasons,
1. the WORLD CUP! it was the most awaited moment since the last month and a half
2. i wasn't home when i wanted to be, when i wanted to be there to celebrate with MY country
It isn't a good feeling when you want to be home the most and ure god knows how many miles away :/


the pull of home is very strong. it consumes your nights and days, and everything in between and everything that is not in between. But that you are away from home is because of the push from home, for a better reason. sometimes the pull is stronger than the push and presto, there begins the homesickness.


i guess the past couple of days, with india winning the cricket world and the whole country uniting under the flag, literally,  has increased the pull for me. homesickness comes in the true sense. Even though i go back home in a month and a half, it doesn't decrease the pull one bit. perhaps nothing ever will, who knows?


Across the world, indians celebrated the world cup victory. but it isnt the same being back home. back where you belong. back where home is. it isnt the same screaming in joy here. you want 20 other voices screaming with you when every opposite wicket falls and when any indian batsman hits a 6 or a  4. its just not the same. 


funny thing, when i went to dunkin' donuts in the morning, all i could see was indians waiting for coffee and discussing the weird toss. yes it was werid, we were supposed to have won it >.<


yes it was a great day, a great victory. I just wish i was home to celebrate it.

random distractions

Everybody has blogs today, for various reasons. So i thought, why should i be left behind. And so here i am, creating a blog instead of writing a paper.

Getting distracted by things while writing a paper is the story of my life. It is either facebook, or something like this or its indian soap opera's (yes, i watch hindi serials, as many of you will want to put it, stupidified much? haha)

and even while writing the blog, i am distracted by the bar of milky way in front of me, for which i used a bloody meal swipe, the thoughts of home and the thought that keeps on circling in my head " how are you ever going to write a 4-6 page paper with proper qoutes and citations if you keep on doing eveyrthing else apart from that"

However, like most people , i work pretty well under pressure. Most people do not work well under pressure, you might say. But the majority of people i have seen work extremely well when their butt is on the line.

So it was just a couple of days back i was talking to my friend while waiting for the bus about how neither of us can ever get our work done before time and how we leave all our papers till the last moment. (sound familiar? ) oh well i told her, that's the way we roll! haha

usually a string of random thoughts make up a blog, or the beginning of it. Random thoughts make me think of the stream of consciousness and that makes me think of my high school english teacher Parul ma'm.  (yes i link weird things and get from one end of the world to the other and neither of the ends has any connection). oh yes, the best teacher to ever exist! I was recently asked a question in a training session about my favourite class in high school and i go,english lit. says a lot doesn't it?

i realised the true value of high school teachers after taking just one writing course in my first semester at college, expository writing. Which incidentally made me want to tear my already thin hair out.

so yes, high school is always on my mind. Some people might think that is stupid and i should move on, i say it makes me realise ever so often about the reason i am here, in a  different continent , in a strangely weird land, living with a stranger.

its time i began my paper, if i intend to get some semblance of sleep in the forthcoming days.

Time to get back to writing a paper which glorifies women, but of course!