i didn't mean any of it

the heaviness of the heart
the path of a dried up tear
a throbbing headache
and you wonder
if this is worth it

time substituting for glue
and letting go makes it harder
how do u open a tightly sealed envelope
without ripping
scars unhealed resurface
conversations
become
discussions
become
arguments
become
dislike
which
eventually
become
nothing

we live for ourselves
we live with this fear
that it should not
go wrong
but it
still
does
and then it hits you
after the
lost pieces of heart,
words stabs,
confusion carps,
smudged eyeliner on cheek,
a wave of
relief

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Kill the messenger

I'm seriously hating this week well for one there's been more of the double dip feeling going on and that  the world is going to the dogs. It's hard to make money now with the internet basically my theory is the faster news travels the fewer the arbitrage opportunities. So my suggestion is cut out all the news channels. Right theres my alph strategy right there.
Anyways so this week sucks for that and of course lest i forget to mention how pple literally don't care at work, showing up all dressed up for interviews, yes interviews at other firms . Dude show some discretion, really. i feel like the last of the Mohicans or the last man standing or whatever the equivalent of that is - you get my drift. I want to say I'm the equivalent to a loyal munshi in the Akbar era but that's just euphemism for I'm scared as hell to interview. And of course to answer the age old question of how much bullshit is reaalllly there in me. Apparently not a whole lot.
Between juggling exams ( I hate you so much ), pls God help me. And getting dumped with thrice amt of work thanks to pple leaving getting fired ( I miss my lunch time of reading bollywood news gossip ie my 10 minute of me time ). Coupled with trying to find a possible date, aggreable to everyone , to get married and to finally live in the same city without killing each other.

Life is involving way too much juggling. If I stop decide to close my books, decide to quit work and then elope. I'll probably fail become illegal and my mom will disown me. But would I be happier ( insert alternative rock music) ?
Most definetly not .

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swallow it down, jagged little pill

so a little late, but i just heard about the mathematician Grigori Perelman who was awarded the Fields medal, in 2006 - basically the math equivalent to the oscars, but decided to reject it. someone in the committee spent a day or two trying to convince him, that there was no harm, in taking an award for solving one of the most complex mathematical problems to date. in fact it took mathematicians years to figure that his solution was actually correct..anyway more recently though, he rejected a million dollars for winning the millenium prize problem.


ok seriously, who does that?

i took abstract algebra on a lark in my undergrad years during summer school ie when the homeworks are longer, weeks are shorter and you are practically living and breathing those three courses that you signed up for .i can say for sure it was one of the most challenging courses i took and even after the course was over, i was confused on whether i actually learnt anything at all, forget the practicality aspect.

on a randomn but similar track (aah the confusion!) is this news article about a european girl who woke up from a coma and started speaking fluent german despite knowing very little german prior to the coma

which brings me to the question. very simplistically, are we really all geniuses (or in fact is being genius the norm,ie we haven't scratched the surface of our potential), and all we need is to figure out the correct wiring of our brain, in order to trigger our geniusness?

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je crois que c'etait mon idee

anyways its been a long long time since i blogged and i promised myself i would not abandon my blog no matter how uneventful/eventful my life gets. so here goes ,couple of randomn thoughts, i will try to ignore the fact that i actually blog when im a. supremely bored b. have nothing better to do, oh wait thats a. again. c. have to study and don't feel like it.

so anyway today i was studying at barnes and nobles for a long time. the first hour was spent reading michael lewis's new book, the big short. so far im giving it a B, i mean its a lot of subprime mess started eons ago, subprime mess bad, etc etc but noone really is explaining where exactly in the math things went wrong. and i hoped this book would shed some light. but anyway im just a quarter done so im hoping itll answer some questions. so i read that, got a mild headache, not coz of the book, just in general so i went downstairs to the starbucks area thinking crap i have to actually order coffee related stuff which i dont drink, yes yes i know they have food. so i notice these two chairs and i sit on one of them, placing my books on my lap trying to study. after 2 minutes or so, an elderly man im guessing 50 maybe comes over sits there and proceeds to just stare at everyone. just stare. i glance up at him from time to time and ok im not proud to say this but it really felt like one of those people who go crazy one day and start shooting randomnly in a public arena. im sure there is a word for this some kind of weird profiling. but anyway i did feel like that. i got up after a while and found a desk to sit at. this guy finally moves goes to the men's "interest" section and ogling at weird magazines. then walks away. im still very uncomfortable, i guess my question today is when someone does something to you that crosses into discomfort zone you have every reason to a. punch them in the face or b. complain to someone who will but how about those who you just have an inkling about and where you don't know for sure. but your gut tells you that. should you trust that? just coz pple say one should follow their gut. or is your gut so influenced by mainstream media anyway and anyone different is programmed to be regarded with suspicion? unfairly, meanly and just plain plain plain wrongly.

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koye tau rokei...koye tau tokei..is umr mein ab... kahogei dokei...darr lagta hai ishq karnei mein bhi..

so, i havent blogged in a while. and many a times, ill think of something and be like i have to blog this but i forget. so anyway, i cant remember what im supposed to blog about, so ill blog about three idiots. i saw it with h last weekend. my verdict would be a 6/10. which is good. but not super good, considering the hype and the ridiculous amount of money its made.

so the good,i dont think i have seen an intelligent, coherent, non annoying, non wannabee, college campus hindi movie in a long time. in fact, i dont think i have ever seen one. so this movie really raises the bar in that front. so the actors, firstly madhavan, who i think is normally very cute, much to h's annoyance, has put on a hell lot of weight, making him look a little like the pot belly uncle types and making the college student gig a little unbelievable. anyway he plays the forced-by-parents-engineer. which i kind of got. in fact so much, that i kept saying to myself, so true. soo soo true.

then there was aamir khan's character, who is super passionate about engineering. even though his character is this supposedly humble, down to earth, happy go lucky guy, he really comes across as smug. then there's sharman joshi who likes engineering but who is so scared to fail, that he fails anyway. i really liked the whole sharman joshi tragic family angle, the whole eczema scene cracked me up. kareena kapoor played her role sincerely and her bit part helped in keeping her annoyingness at bay. just the last scene of her leaving her shaadi ka mandap is just plain dumb, and cliched as always. i never understand why hindi movies wait till the very anth moment for the guy/girl to proclaim their love or actually say something.[read: dil chahta hai, love aaj kal, dil hai ke manta nahin, life in a metro...the list is endless] in fact this has totally screwed with pples' heads, where pple will unreasonably expect this to happen in reality too. in reality, this never ever happens.

anyway, the guy who played chattur, silencer did a great job. though the character seems exaggerated, i actually knew pple like this.

i guess the whole msg of the movie is finding your passion, and giving it your all. but how about those who don't know what they want. and who aren't passionate about what they do, but don't particularly hate it either. more importantly, those who dont know what their passion is..whats their solution, the movie doesn't answer that?
what about those, who are at the same time so lost that one doesn't know what interests them. or the case where everything interests you, but doesn't hold your interest for long. im so guilty of this it shocks me how shallow i can be sometimes. i will watch an episode of grey's anatomy and want to be a doctor. i will call my sister and demand her to become a neurosurgeon until she hangs up on me in frustration. then i started watching nbc's new drama, deep end,(the show is not that great) today and now i want to be a lawyer.

luckily, i find american idol to be a big bore, or i would be taking voice modulation classes now, or worse auditioning for that show. i guess there is still some possibility once xfactor gets underway.
so i shouldn't say never. ever.

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cause my dreams are bursting at the seams

so my favouritest couple in gossip girl like all of the teeny boppy teenager population is blair and chuck. after watching today's episode where he starts to push her away, while she does the whole i know you are better than this... im like crap, why do tv writers intentionally breakup couples who are just so perfect and so meant to be. i guess there is something, something romantic about being starcrossed lovers. its hard to say even what that means. does it mean, that your paths keep crossing, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally and despite the odds, despite your stars not aligning you gravitate towards each other and make it work. its literally either do or die. and i guess the romance is in the process and not so much the destination.

i guess my major beef nowadays is with movies taking away the dreaminess factor. i saw up in the air recently, and most of my friends liked it for the reality factor. the protagonist had a really slow growth graph and thats the reality, we have very few and far epiphanies. anyway,i didn't like it much, i felt it was a pointless movie and i would much rather preferred watching a cliched ending, proving to me that all is good at least in celluloid world.

unfortunetly i do forget, its the end of the era of dreamers like me.

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torei bigei sei torei num hai hum..kal sei soyei huei kam hai hum.

she was 18
she shared her notes with him in class
she competed with him in every grade
he got in to medical school she didnt

she was 20
he helped her on her homework every week
she made sure she went when he was at the lab
he did not know her name

she was 22
she was not interested, he was, then she was
they knew it was a mistake
and they waited for the threads to break away
they did

she was 24
she did not know him, he did not know her
she liked his gruff but comforting voice
he liked her lopsided grins
they took the risk

she was 72
she felt alone for the first time in 48 years
it was her last birthday.

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woh tum wali feeling

we were strangers
we became
acquaintances
perhaps
we can say
that we progressed
to being facebook friends
then we evolved into
friends who message
each other everyday
then
friends who call
each other everyday
its hard to say
when and at which point
we ceased to be friends

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sab ki ek kahani

days go by

she does not hear from him
he does not hear from her

she thinks he does not care
he thinks she does not care

she wants to call him but does not.
he wants to call her but does not.

days go by

he starts to forget her
she starts to forget him

she is in like with someone else
he is in like with someone else

days go by

she accidently dials his number
she never deleted his number
he picks up and says hello, is that you?
he never forgot her voice
she says hello


and then it feels like days ago.

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pehli baar mohabat ki hai...aakhri baar mohabat ki hai

the first time
she sees him
is on the downtown train
she tries not to stare
but she can't help it.
he does not see her.

the first time
he sees her
shes buying coffee.
he is right behind her.
she does not see him.

the first time
they see each other.
they are crossing the street
from opposite sides.
he smiles.
he says hi.
she says hi.
she smiles.

they meet each other
everyday
she waits all day
for the 10 minute train ride
she does not know why

she waits for her stop
she sees him
she smiles
she sees his hand interwined in another
she steps back unable to enter
its 9 am
rush hour traffic push her out of the way
he sees her
he smiles from the inside
she smiles from the outside
the train doors close
the last time
she sees him.

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Lagay bol meray mann mein. Koi bol de.

you are not
what i wanted
you are not
what i expected
you are not
what i hoped for
you are not
what i dreamed of

you smile, you breathe, you curse, you speak, you cry.

but you.

you are different.
you are
what i wanted.
you are
what i expected.
you are
what i hoped for.
you are
what i dreamed of


you don't exist.

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lekin menei apnei liyei kuch nahin socha hai..aur aaj mujhei baar baar ek hi khyal ata hai - qsqt




some things will never get old

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yei dooriyan...

sometimes
the distance
keeps
us
apart

and sometimes
the us
keeps
the distance
apart

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a change would do you no good

one of a girl's or even guy's biggest nightmare, is a bad haircut. i remember when i was 10 and someone was getting married and we were all at the hairdressers and i remember how they had a trainee try their skill on me, coz i was the least demanding client of the lot. so they thought. well anyway, they totally screwed up my haircut and even for a tomboyish 10 year old that i was , even to me - it was devastating. and my dad who was the only person who could console me told me he would make it right and so we went all the way across the city where i got a haircut (yet again) , but this time something that wasnt weird sticking out kinds. a major salvage situation. it may not seem a big deal now, but it was then, it was crucial, it was late at night and hardly anything was open then.

after that, i stopped getting my hair cut ( yea for maybe a really long time). i have had always unmanageable long hair. when i moved here i thought i would get it cut, a bit, so i would look like an insaan for a change. and i did find someone miraculously who gave me a regular, i-dont-even-notice-your-hair-is-cut look every three months or so. and who would check with me before doing anything. possibly she has had her share of whiny 10 year olds and upset dads.

well everything changed yesterday. there were signs everywhere that i should not get my hair cut. for one, the hairdresser i went to was not there and was told to come back at 11:30. at 11:30 they were too busy , i said i would come back later. the salon surprisingly closed early. so i was like damn ill walk around and get another person to cut my hair - i mean its only a trim, really.

i could be so wrong its unbelievable. the lady who cut my hair, was very charming. a russian lady who watches hindi movies, and proceeded to tell me how her son looks like salman khan. and how she loved the movie babul ( stupid movie) and whether salman khan is married? and i m like okay random information. and in that mess, instead of 3 inches she cut off 6 inches! yes double. who does that! how does one not know the difference. this reminds me why you should always tell people less. and as much as i wanted to create a scene and blast her there and then i couldnt, so i did the next best thing i cried in the restroom of a barnes and nobles.

it will take me a whole fricking year to get back to my current length. and i know pple are going to be what did you do to yourself when i go back to work tommorow . great, thanks, thanks a lot salman khan!

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dhan te na..te na

so i have been listening to the kaminey soundtrack. and im pretty much hooked on the dhan te na song. i was reading bhardwaj's interview and he's like its like when you are telling a kid a story and you are building it up.. you say that for effect. that's very true. and that never really gets old. one still does that. [ or maybe its just me].

oh and yea my pet parrot used to whistle that too. pretty much the only tune he knew. i had no hand in that. khair, its very much a song that you would play on full volume and drive listening to on empty roads at full speed.

anyway speaking of pets, i was walking past brookstone and it is now selling this aquatic frogs aquarium which is supposedly a self contained ecosystem. [ ok i am not sure why i am using the word supposedly..hmm.. maybe coz i dont believe them]

anyway so you feed them twice a week these pellets. they are the diet version of the regular frogs meal, i suppose. who knows. the model diet, if you will. coz the usp is that they wont ever grow.

seriously, how low maintenance is that? ill still end up botching it, i should start with cacti first.

oh, and you clean their aquarium twice a year only! [apparently the tiny snail that lives with the frogs is the maid]

thus validating my theorem that you need three people in a perfect marriage: the couple and the maid.

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“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” - Beecher






please do ignore the mess on my desk and my pet elephant. thanks. all in all a great weekend.
this is the original painting, which i have heavily been "inspired" from. i just wanted to paint something that would match my comforter.

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remember the time

so yesterday i saw a bit of the mj memorial and like most people i thought the last part where his daughter spoke was touching and extremely sad. i dont know of any worse feeling than losing a parent. and i cannot comment too much about whether mj was a good person or not. i dont know that. and since i was always taught never to speak ill about the dead (well alive too), i will avoid the shady aspects of his life and speak about the good. was the memorial too elaborate? yes i think so. it was a media and public frenzy.

i read many articles in his tribute, but there was really only one article which made sense to me ( i dont remember where i read it sadly) . but what the author was saying basically is people are not mourning so much a celebrity (who they didnt know and after a while after all the controversies we were beginning to ignore) but instead they are mourning their passing/passed childhood.

a lot of us associate our first taste of pop music to michael jackson. when i was growing up my sisters would record his and madonnas songs directly from the radio, the era before ipods, mp3s and affordable cds. in school i vividly remember i used to sit in front of a girl who had this mj binder with all the lyrics of his song, his posters and we would all peer over it during breaks. so for many of us its a passing of time, a time that we loved and felt comforted in and just like memories where we remember only the good and we try to block out the bad. we continue do the same with the memory of mj.

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say what you need to say

for the long weekend i went to the carribean with my best friends. it was a much needed vacation. and despite all the work i had, despite my comp crashing an hour before i was leaving, despite colleagues not letting me leave, despite the fact that i was stuck in 40 mins of traffic in a part that would take me 2 mins to walk, despite the fact that i had to run across the gates to catch my plane (desi filmy style) with only 5 mins for the gates to close, despite the fact that i broke out in a gazillion zits coz of the stress only to find out that my flight was delayed, despite the fact that there were signs that it would rain the whole trip (it didnt), despite the fact that old san juan was quite a dead city and no one knows where all the tourists are gone, despite the fact that i hadnt swum in years let alone ever in the sea ( i finally did and completely enjoyed it), despite the fact that i had never ever gone kayaking, let alone in pitch darkness after sunset and when the tide is high and the scene looks right out of a scary movie like anaconda. despite the guide mentioning that 'hey there maybe little sharks in the water'. despite the fact that i got bitten ferociously (on my face!) by mosquites in the mangroves. despite all of this and more, this will probably go down as one of the best vacations of my life.

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love mera hit hit..na kar phir aisi kit pit

so the thing with parents visiting, you can never really gauge their definition of 'fun'. i mean you think certain things will be fun for parents. i.e a broadway show. its not. its all opera music. you picked the wrong broadway. phantom of the opera.

or you think lunch near the river where yachts are docked will be scenic in crowded manhattan. turns out they are serving hard core amrikan food. and not the good kind. and its raining. so again flop idea.. even desi food cant save the day when the odds are against you. i took my mom to this gujurati place downtown, and as a hardcore non vegetarian this isnt exactly my choice, bu i know my mom likes it. but i have eaten at that place before and its pretty unique compared to the rest of the desi places in new york. but we were super tired and after their dozen appetizers (yea each different form the other), we were beat and couldnt eat anymore. i am a big fan of chole baturei but couldnt finish one mini batura either.so what i had built up all day turned out to be a total flop coz my mom was in jet lag mode and nearly fell asleep on the dinner table. but what made my day was the server who was from turkmenistan ( in my head i was like who where? - i have become the cliched american - only im not american), so she goes i have a kind face and kind way of talking and i look like her cousin. that really zapped me and made me very happy. my mom now thinks im like my dad - bas bolnei ki der hai, and hawa mein urtei hai hum.

anyhoo, i went to a netowrking event last week with a couple of friends. me and my friend and her husband. me and my friend sooo lack the normal casual cool networking gene, we sound enforced and frankly im usually having an out of body experience where im going to myself "stupid stupid stop talking" . or on the other hand weird awkard silence are usually teppered with my thoughts on the lines of "stupid stupid say something". so anyway i didnt have any agenda as such, but i thought it would be good to talk to some new people. so, i spoke to a guy who works in a hedge fund but looks like he works for google. (ie think rolled out of bed and came to work). i was also surprised to know that he works on the trading floor, not to be mean or anything, just being brutally honest ,nerdy geeky people on the trading floor are kept well away from clients (anyone read liars poker) , unless your group is intentionally geeky nerdy and in that case you are the prized posession. but mostly its the latter. this is done since you are unkempt (ie not presentable), you prefer it this way,in fact i hve a friend who is like i wish i could just go my whole life not speaking to any client. my friend is a director at an investment bank. so anyway there was someone who worked for electric company, and i was like what-what my dumb desi blonde gene kicking in (no offence to real blondes) anyway apparently having an electric meter where you read your own meter and know exactly what is using what is damn expensive. its a good idea though. apparently now working in energy companies is cool.

in other random news i was watching obama's group discussion today. the program name, prescription something of that sorts. it was really interesting actually for someone who is a pseudo-medico. by that i mean someone in your family is a doctor such that you think you never need to see a doctor since you can self treat yourself. doesnt matter that your own family who are doctors, go to see other doctors. yes, i belong to that breed. anyway, so apparently getting a medical degree here is super expensive and you can rack up something like 300K in tuition. and there was an interesting point made by atul gawande in one of his books where he mentions the average time to recover the tuition costs for a medico is far greater than the time for say someone in finance. and in order to repay your costs quickly, you end up super specializing -coz thats where the money is. and there in lies the crux of the matter, too many specialists and too few gps. so too many unnecessary costs. and very little prevention.

maybe they should lax the the US entrance exams for gps. every desi doctor will then jump ship. and that will blow up the healthcare sector and at that point i will be shorting it.

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inspector saab, kya aap waqi sanjeeda hai?

so in the middle of my studying, i take these short perfectly timed youtube 10 minute breaks. i am currently hooked on watching this classic pakistani serial called ankahi. its quite entertaining and i wanted to watch it since it has shahnaz shaikh in it. tanhaiyaan is one of my absolute favourites. She and marina khan totally rock.

so anyway, on one of those episodes, i don't understand some stuff (yea im quite unzaheen - wot to say) so i scroll down to see if people have left comments, explaining what has happened in that episode. and sure enough, there are pple who have and then there are some who leave random comments, like i love shahnaiz shaikh - (their phone number).

err...ok dude. im sure shes going to call you.

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