Bangalore Diaries..oops Bengaluru Diaries

My second visit to the once upon a time "garden city of india", and now the current IT hub of the city. I was staying at my cousin's place . And me, being "almost like a newcomer " to this place, she offered to give a tour of b'lore city. It began with lifestyle, moved onto brigade road with a culmination in Garuda shopping mall.. I basically wanted to check out Crossroads, while my cousin pointed out that books come WAY cheaper in the footpaths. As I was moving down the escalator, I spotted a senior of mine. She did too, came forward, then realised that i was on the escalator. In my excitement and joy(that generally happens when i spot a known face in a sea of unknown faces- mind you we are just hi hello how are you friends), i failed to hear to some angry remark that my cousin made. We reached down and then took another escalator to the top where the senior was . The reunion, well.. as mentioned earlier the degree of our closeness.. we did some small talk and introduced me to her friends, which included a guy.. the only one in their group. Then it struck me odd, that the guy was not looking, let alone smile at me. On the contrary , he constantly kept staring in the opposite direction. After bidding adieus and making no promises at all to keep in touch, my cousin whispered in my ear :"How cheap!! That was that very guy i told you who was winking at me!! Plus such hot chics are standing next to him, yet he could only wink to me. Despo of the first order!!"
"Umm..Did u actually tell me that??"
"Of course!! On the escalator. Gosh!! Which world are you in ?"she said in a frustrated tone (btw m more of a daydreamer)
"I did not hear you. Well.. that explains it. I was wondering, why he was so engrossed in buying nuts that too, that he couldn't even look up?"
Sigh..Some guys.. When will they grow up??

Phobic Me

I suffer from an acute case of ochlophobia and agoraphobia. To a certain extent xenophobia and acrophobia, though am trying really hard to come out of it, acrophobia i mean. As for the other phobias they remain, and all are so interrelated. So by now you must have guessed what an introvert i am. I mean come to think of it, making new friends is such a hard task for me unless there is some initiative from the other person's end . I have tried but as its not working out i guess its some case of genetic disorder , or else why would the problem persist despite repeated attmepts to come out of it. My generally audible voice enters the infra sonic range when meeting a new /fundoo/senior/superior persona. It did cause some ripples in the class when the head of department announced that i am softspoken. This statement's response elicited itself in the form of sour throats and stifled coughs. Now can u call me responsible if i suddenly get cold feet or butterflies in the pit of the stomach when speaking with him, to such an extent my temporal lobes go all numb and the corresponding nerves get paralysed so that no voice transmission takes place? That is another reason why i hate confrontations. I like solitude in familiar environments but i feel highly queasy when alone in unfamiliar environments. Mr Shark gave me company in the whole one week when i was alone and i entered this domain. But after shark's friend came, absolutely no hearing from him. With my ego hurt, and deciding not to trample it anymore i decided to embrace solitude . However even then the ugly head of ochlophobia resurfaces from time to time. In the meantime during the luncheon sessions i entered the world of medical thrillers to keep me company . Meanwhile sharky dear has totally forgotten my existence.( The medical realm i entered was not engrossing enough to pull me away from this). So thats a case of ochlophobia, agoraphobia and xenophobia combined, as its all new people around without the familiar face of sharky. Not to mention my bouts with frustration and depression during this interval. This is coupled with anxiety, worry, and dunno what not. At the end of the day, here i am with a melange of all possible introvert- related phobias to form, voila,ME!!!!!

Dostana revisited!!

Oh dear,Oh dear , will u please lend me a ear
And tell me if it is true What I hear?
My boyfriend s born on a sunday
“So ?” you might say
But haven’t you heard what they say?
“A person born on Sabbath (Sunday)
Is bony and blithe and good and GAY!!!!”
Now you know why the tension,
The worries and my hyperventilation
Right now he s calm and formal
But dunno when he’ ll stop being normal!!:(

Ode to Boredom

Boredom, why do you continuously haunt thee?
Why do you make your presence only to me?
My patience has reached the end of my tether
And it ain't made me any wiser.
Papers after papers i sit and surf
With only gloom & angst to turf..
Luck , have i grown so ugly
That you cant show thy face to me.?
Where art thee?
I am keenly awaiting your presence to aid me
Take me out of this dilemma.
Before it becomes a tragic drama.

Call of Fear

I have often wondered what Franklin Roosevelt meant when he said “ The greatest thing to fear is fear itself”. As the adage goes “ Experience is the greatest teacher”, in the course of time, experience taught me its true implications.

The days leading to the piano grading exams, especially the practical exams are generally fraught with tension in the academy I went to. The din of the piano, violin and bass is superimposed with the angry and frustrated voices of the instructors. What with high goals and standards to meet, honors and reputations to protect coupled with our degrading performances, the frustration was totally justifiable.

The bright spot was that I had an edge over my contemporaries , being the oldest. During my mock tests, I had trouble with an allegretto while the other two pieces went fine. On D-Day, I walked into the exam hall , totally focused and played the allegretto to perfection. I heaved a sigh of relief- one headache over. I also realized that I was not nervous at all.

Call it reverse psychology or whatever, I suddenly felt the pangs of nervousness begin to engulf me. Butterflies in my stomach coupled with trembling fingers. Hence my diminuendos ended up louder and my staccatos were too prolonged. Result- My cradle song ended up waking the baby. My next piece went equally as bad.

Not to my surprise, when the results were out I had scored the highest for the allegretto while just got enough in the other two pieces to pass the exam with merit. It was then that I realized the magnitude of the call of fear.

Welcome the Idle Mind

"An idle mind is a devil’s paradise". And any one who wouldn’t want to be in that state of ennui would keep themselves busy doing something. However recent research has proved boredom leads to creativity. Some of the path breaking scientific discoveries was a result of purely bored minds.
For example, take the case of Albert Einstein. Once, he was travelling with his wife in a carriage. His wife was fast asleep .Having nothing to do, he gazed out of the carriage absentmindedly at the landscape, the moving hedges and trees, relative to the carriage. It was then an idea struck his mind. He developed on it and thus was born the theory of relativity. If he was forever dissolved in his books (or always busy with his wife), would his busy mind be able to think out of the ordinary?
Newton definitely had to be jobless enough to sit under an apple tree and gauge what caused the apple to fall down. Had it not been for his joblessness then, we wouldn’t have been able to credit him with the discovery of gravity- the most fundamental aspect of planetary bodies.
Poets, artists, and of course writers are forever considered lazy souls always doing nothing . However the works born out of these devil’s paradises are considered masterpieces.
So enjoy the state of nothingness and let creativity spring forth from it.

5 Days

Five Days of Bliss , peace and... REST. Five days of absolute freedom, five days of immense pleasure. Five days where I got to enjoy both friends and solitude at the same time, five days where I got to watch movies, read immensely, and yes most importantly not MOVE out of my bed( thanks to my pretty-recent-most-frequent fatigue attacks which started a little after Festember) I went to the city as many as one time. That's quite a deal as I always reunite with my beloved bed once I am back.Five Days of quiet and Five Days of commotion (owing mainly due to visitors of my room mate) just when i wanted it. All packaged in this ultra awesome way. Two Days of emotional turmoil (that's when i started blogging) and 3 Days of Indifference(the LAN in my hostel from where I am writing this was never free and I just HATED waiting). Alright I am talking about the five continuous holidays we had . And today its just like "Good morning" when you are rudely woken up from this ecstatical blissful dream ( the five days of course) and now ... sigh.. back to the running and hectic ways of classes and college.

Why

Why is it that I am surrounded by multitudes yet I feel lonely?

Why is it that hypocrisy is the trend of the day?

Why is money and power synonymous with prestige, respect and status?

Why is it that people now prefer the fast life instead of the slow one?

Why are cities preferred to villages despite the fact that cities are congested and any day more polluted than villages?

Why do people scrap more, email less and write letters (via post) hardly?

Why do people find more intimacy in virtual friends, the ones you find online, people you have never even seen than the real friends- or is it that its just the introverts who are like that?

Why is generally the weak taken advantage of, used up instead of being helped to be stronger?

Why does selfishness and narcissism triumph at the end of the day?

A genuine question- don’t you think its true or is it that I am just another pessimist living in this “big bad world”?

A Dozen Reasons to be Mad at You

Inspired by a Ten Things I hate about you)

(Disclaimer: All incidents/ Characters in the poem are purely figments of imagination and creativity, any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental)

You come and speak to me

When I prefer being alone

You introduce me to texting

Alternately, to lower my tone

You make me do crazy stuff

Cranky, silly to the core

After all that mess you say

“oh ! It was such a bore!”

You annoy ,irritate, mortify me

An when I tell you to stop

You sit back and laugh out loud

Till the balloon would pop.

You made me hard hearted

And a horrid pervert like you.

You crack those ultra raunchy jokes

And expect me to laugh with you.

Day in and Day out

I have to bear you around

Yet, I feel uncannily weird

When you not there to hound

I keep cribbing all day through

Patiently, you listen all the while

Here I am cribbing about you

Yet, all you do is smile.

Balderdash

Its just that a few days ago i decided after more than a year of pestering by a certain someone i finally decided to give a shot at blogging. And it was pure frustration at this world and a medium to vent my feelings out at this b"big bad cruel world" that i finally made up my mind. Till recently a die hard msg freak.. till the 100 free msg a day scheme was cut off (not for me but for the people i msg) i used that as a medium for this venting out of frustration thing. Being an introvert , i dont scream , or punch or shout or kick at the sorry state of affairs in the world. Just get irritated at things and even get more irritated that am not able to help, or rather am helpless.. or what ever. So this is how i began blogging. There are so many things to tell, to express what might come out in a torrent of word flow.. and again things which cannot be said but have to be let out somehow or else itll pile up and one fine day come crashing down like the World Trade Centre during 9/11. I really don't know what i ll write on. Am basically whimsical, a jack of all trades.. um.. almost but a zero in every thing u can think of!! A cynic in many respects. So there i have named my blog balderdash so that i can write anything under the sun, and above it.. basically anything and it needn make sense at all, like now. And most of all, something which this soceity can never provide, i wish to be a really really free free bird flying somewhere really high in the sk.. Something that i have never been able to do.. at least till now.