Contemplations and Ruminations

Let's see... what can I jot down here. Made candles and they came out quite good. Felt good to do something like this after a long long time. Cheryl and Vidhya were here too and they liked the whole candle making process. Anyway, I cooked on Sunday, made butter chicken and bread crumb chicken. It was nice to finally have the time to cook after the exams and stuff. Marinating, using the pressure cooker, getting that first whiff, listenin to the crackling sound of things frying... it's therapeutic. Caught Alladin on TV after a long long time, the Walt Disney one... it was one of my favourite cartoons growing up. I remember wanting to be beautiful like Jasmine, and falling for somebody who could take me on a magic carpet ride... it was good watching it now, knowing that I had a ride like that and it was beautiful. What else, yeah had to receive a TT shot, cause Milton bit me & the shot was more painful than the bite... miss that kid, wonder how he is doing. Wonder if his mom...

Went to school on Saturday. Had a staff meeting, to discuss the progress of students & the causes and prevention of mental retardation. It was an interesting discussion, we were talking about pregnancy, cervical dilation, birth canal ... needless to say it scared us: me, Jency and Vidhya. The guys ... I don't know what was goin through their heads. It was fun to watch them though .... they were tryin to look disinterested. Anyway, later on we had choir practice and we sang 'In His Time'. After the practice we girls went out for dinner to Lynns. Nine of us, Chandini, Ashwini, Vidhya, Cheryl, Shiny, Anita, Stephina, Nameeta and me. It was nice, just sitting around and talkin ... had burgers and strawberry milk shakes. Sunday mass was good, in fact it was funny. Fr. Antony, is young and his sermons are unconventional. He talks as though we are his friends, very casual and interesting. He was smiling and so were we. Then we sang our song. Folks said it was beautiful. In ...

Was updating records in school. Many new kids have joined and all their case histories have to be documented and filed away for future reference: the medicines they take, the delivery process, the seizures, the progress or arrest of disability ... everything has to be recorded. And the stuff I read was .... sad. There's this cute kid, am really fond of him, he's autistic. He lives in his own world... he speaks but he cannot speak to us, he cannot socialise. One moment he is laughing a happy glowing lively look in his face, the next moment he is screaming and crying, like he is being tormented by unseen spirits. All this because he is autistic. And while going through his files, saw that his parents had tried to abort him. The mom had taken some abortion pills, but she did not complete the prescribed dosage. There's another boy small kid, round 4, who was probably normal, but he got into trouble during the birth process, the doctor employed forceps and that damaged his hea...

I caught J.K.Rowling on TV talking about her seventh Harry Potter book and she was saying that two important characters are going to die. I do hope it's Harry... maybe she will kill him by making him accidently trip over his wand or by falling off his chair. That's how she killed all the other important characters anyway... Sirius Black, falls through some freaking curtains, and that's it, he's dead. That is how she killed him and I liked Sirius!!! And Dumbledore, she makes him gobble up some poison to remove the 'locket' at the end of the bowl. The locket wasn't even a horcrux!!! It was some fake dumb ornament!!! Dumbledore dies for nothing!!! She kills off all these great people, like how you would swat a fly. So hoping the next person to die is Harry, he is irritating. But knowing her, she just might kill off Ron and Hermione... that is gonna suck. Hope it doesn't happen, ginny can go, so can ron's father ... I really don't want it to be Fr...

This happened long back, probably 8 months back, at the bank. Was waiting there (not many ATM's out here) and this really old couple walked in. They had their pass book and they were talking to the bank guy, asking him stuff, it was obvious they weren't understanding much. The old man was getting flustered, he told his wife to seat her self and that he would take care of everything. She ignored him and he went back to trying to figure out whatever they were desperate to know. Things weren't going too well, when he turns to her again and tells her to sit down, that he would take care of everything. She ignores him again and stays there by his side. You could actually see the relief on the old man's face when she refused to sit down. It was so obvious he wanted her there, even if she wasn't saying much. As much as he wanted her to be away from this humiliating mess of being old and not understanding much, she knew he needed her there, with him. Made me wonder ... Th...

Relief! Unshackled! Feels good when you are done with some things ... like the exams. A sense of being free. Exams were okay, the studying was fun till I got fedup. But most of the stuff I read was rather interesting: the biography of many authors, the various mix of stories that brought reactions like "Wow! that is some story!" to "What did I just read!!! Did he really become famous for this!!!!!!!" . A few people that stood out were H.G.Wells (I liked the whole Eloi Morlocks theme), Charlotte Bronte, Eugene Francois Vidocq (Sherlcok Holmes was based on this real life character) and of course Shakespeare. Now he is some character... even the girls had something to say about him. Anju thinks Shakespeare is overrated, Shil said "To be or not to be - that's all I remember about him". Tina told me he is bisexual. Whatever he may be or not, his plays are anything but dull. Like somebody said, "Shakespeare tried all styles except simplicity." R...

The day was going really bad, just when I was about to lose my grip on reality .... God sent Binu. That boy has got me, he's a new kid in school .... He, my Redeemer, is amazing, always watching out for me like no other .....

They are the best kind of angels. They can be rude and brutally forthright. But there comes a time when they surprise you .... with the little things they do. They hardly realise what they have done, and that way it means even more because it was unintentional, done at the spur of the moment, comes from somewhere deep inside them. There are many folks out there, with bright shining halo's and they are good at sympathising with you and giving you all kinds of advice .... and people in turn keep polishing their halo's even more. But they are so unreal compared to the other kind. The Haloless angels, really care about you and they know that you are gonna make it through ...

Me, Cheryl and Priyanka were discussing stuff last night... how things keep changing and how life was back then when we were small. Eventually we got to talkin about boys ... Boys are fun... no doubt 'bout that. They say and do the most atrocious things ....There was this boy in school (my sisters class, 3rd or 4th standard) who knew exactly how to handle girls. With the sharp end of his compass he drew a line straight down the centre of the desk and bench dividing it into two sections. And then he passed a law with all seriousness declaring, you shall not touch my side, your pencil box, book etc. shall not cross this line ... I don't even want your SHADOW falling on my side of the desk!!! That's how they were long back, they wanted nothing to do with girls .... dirt was more interesting to them! They were kinda mean and disgusting too .... There was this arab guy in my building around my age ( I must have been 7 or 8 then). One day I was standing outside the door waiting ...

It seems Derryl had come home asking for me.... he came riding his bicycle and gestured (he can't really pronounce words, if you spend time with him, you kinda get what he is trying to say) at my sis asking where I was and nam said I had gone to bangalore. And he was like when will she get back, he wanted nam to call me on the phone .... he kept asking why I went. Isn't that really sweet... went to his house, before I left for bangalore, but he had gone to this prayer meeting with his mom. He's a lively guy, must be about 14 or 15 years old, and he lives near by. So we usually wait at the same spot for the school bus. One day somethin had bitten him down there, in his butt, and it was paining him. He pointed to his butt and and screwed up his face, indicating pain. I asked what happened ... and I could hardly believe what he did next. He was like wait I will show you ... and he sets his bag down, and starts to unbutton his pant. I panicked, I told him it's okay ... don...

It always happens!!! When you least expect it, something happens that makes you see, what you have been staring at for so long, but still missing. I guess its because of the ripples... its hard to make out what's there. But once the ripples subside, things become clearer, on two planes. The bottom is now visible and we see the object that caused the disturbance. Looking a bit closer to the surface we see our reflection and know how the disturbance has changed us. Thank God life is not ripple free .... Speaking of ripples that reminds me of this picture I saw at a factory in Bombay where I was undergoing my training in process control instrumentation. I was the only girl in the training batch of fifteen. So there we are standing near the control valves and checking out the huge machinery and instruments when this guy walks in, kinda old ... obviously in charge of that particular process. He starts showin us how the various paramters are controlled and measured ... we are eagerly l...

A few folks who have kept me busy these last few days ... Carlton Missed that kid, so asked the nuns for his address and visited him at home. As usual he was up there on the window sill, twirling a twine & muching on chocolate. He has this thing for twines, rope, string, rubber band, thread, anything flexible, curly and long .... he keeps twirling that piece around and reducing it into many small twirly pieces. Jeff Corwin I like him ..... a lot. He's funny, witty and he is really passionate about his work. You can feel his love and admiration for the animals and his " The Jeff Corwin Show" is always exciting. He just knows so much about animals, every kind of creature ..... heck, he can look at a pile of dung, poke it around a bit and tell you which animal deposited it there! Ralph Waldo Emerson Now he is somebody ..... who introduced me to Transcendentalism . Yeah, I never knew that was a word too. What does it mean ..... it's deep stuff ...deals with...

Heard this country song today ..... A baby's born in the middle of the night in a local delivery room They grab his feet smack him till he cries He goes home the next afternoon Before you know he's off to school and he graduates in May Goes out and gets a Ph.D. and then cures all sorts of things Wins a Nobel Prize and saves a million different lives The world's a better place for all he's done It's funny when you think about the reason he's alive Its all because two people fell in love ....... Man! What a dumb song!!! How long are they gonna keep churning out crap like this .....

You know you have a lot of work to do, and you are just sitting there staring at it and ...you can't get to it, you can't do anything about it, cause of these thoughts that keep hovering around inside your head!!!! They swirl, knock each other, create a mess inside ..... and they don't give a damn to REASON!!!!And the worst of the whole lot are the javelin thoughts! These thoughts keep piercing through the others and they keep impinging on the sides of your head, making your head feel like its gonna explode any minute.These javelin thoughts are the question thoughts, they have to know the answer at once or else they will just keep pounding away inside your head. Yeah like I can go around asking folks " Excuse me, my head is exploding, so could you please tell me why you are the way you are???" Everythin is one big bowl of Avial .... I HATE avial!!! And CHRIS???? seriously??? are they lacking a hemisphere? Whatever !!! (american idol) Elvis saved the day thou...

Yesterday all of us happened to meet online, anju, shil and me. And we weren't exactly in the best of moods ... we were all bugged with somethin or someone. Since we weren't exactly being rays of sunshine, anju said lets make up a story (each of us tells one line as the story progresses). And this is how it started ... Anju : Once upon a time .... (yeah, anju is hopeful, she likes stories that start like that and end with happily ever after) Shil : There was a handsome boy .... (and shil is a hopeless romantic! She's forever hooked on romantic stuff. Very soon she would have brought in a beautiful girl, and eventually love would follow along with babies!!!) Me : Who was gay ... (I was in mood to listen to any romantic ... crap. Sorry shil ! So I made the guy gay ....) After that the story went downhill .... he eventually meets a penguin and the rest is not important. But since I screwed up the first attempt, I decided to try again ..... So we did try again and this...

Frankly I don't give a DAMN anymore!!! It is a question of cubic capacity. A man with so large a brain must have something in it. - Sherlock Holmes . Well, it's not the calm waters but the turbulent seas that give life its Zest ..... and thanks to the people ( who I hardly know, people I don't know and wouldn't really care to know ) life sure is rather .......... zestful ;-)

Went to this house warming ceremony near the beach ... t'was nice. Everybody running around and decked to the hilt ... catamarans lined out on the shore. Kept watchin the horizon .... it's fascinating watching the sea reaching the sky. Love the idea of both the blue's, the blue of the ocean and the sky meeting .....

Had choir practice and we (the english choir) finished practicing early. We were sitting there on sand under an open sky and waiting for the tamil choir to finish their practice. We finally got bored of waiting and so nam asked me to tell them all a story. It was one mixed group of people like the picture up there .... anyway I told them the story about King Oedipus. They were all disgusted by the oedipus story. Heard this story from a professor, and I found it very amusing. Here is the gist of the story .... Oedipus was the mythical king of Thebes (son of Laius and Jocasta ) who, unknowingly, killed his father and married his mother. At Oedipus birth, the Delphic Oracle prophesied that he would kill his father. Seeking to avoid such a fate, Laius had the infant's ankles pierced with nails and had him placed in the wilderness to die. His servant, however, betrayed him, handing the boy to a shepherd who presented the child to the King and Queen of the neighbouring land who ra...

One of my favourite cartoons while growing up. Everything about her world was beautiful ... yet she wanted to get out. Like this song I heard goes: I'm on the outside looking in ..... Ending with the words of Atticus Finch, from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. "Before I can live with other folks, I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience" On a lighter note, this line was taken from the same book. Scout ponders....... I sometimes think Atticus subjected every crisis of his life to tranquil evaluation behind The Moblie Register, The Birmingham News, The Montgomery Advertiser.

That's how today was, just like the picture ..... too huge and beautiful to comprehend. Doomed, but can't stop smiling ........ It was actually weird, was being yelled (cursed, antagonised) at by society conscious people and all I could do was laugh, I was happy! Isn't it amazing when miracles happen ...... HE sure knows how to take care of us. What to do, can't say I didn't try!!! Let me end in the word's of the great bard of Avon himself ..... "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't." - Hamlet. "This above all: to thine own self be true". - Hamlet.