Most of the Delhi stuff will be on the photoblog. Writing not happening. Walking happening. Et cetera. So follow there if you feel like.

I think it's best that I stop. A farewell post thing would be way out of order. I mean, what. Happy Birthday et cetera.

Not much to write. Hopefully this too will witness a turnabout. Think in image sometime, think in words sometime, that's how it all plays out. Differing attitudes to movement. Run till you drop through the ground. Run till your head bursts. Run until you're the blur. I don't think I've run since class eight so this is merely metaphor but run nevertheless, 'til the sunlight burns a happy hole in your heart. The world moves faster nowadays. Or is it merely aaai?

 

The best part of any evening. 

Trumps watching an entire movie by a mile. Or, yet another excuse.

http://www.hbirddesigns.com/~launch/inspiration/movie-title-sequences-by-saul-bass/

People always fit into moulds, we wouldn't have typecasting otherwise, but I saw a man today who looked exactly like a rat. Which is to say he looked ratty. And rodent-like. I'm sure he's a perfectly nice man and definitely more human than rodent but he definitely scurried across the road. I wish I could be more descriptive about this, witty even, but that's all there is to it. He looked exactly like a rat.

I've found out I look like a Staffordshire bull terrier. Not that this proves a point or is accurate in any way as far as comparison goes. Just mentioning it to keep with the spirit, gather?

OWACK THOO.
OWACK THOO.
OWACK THOO.

My knee's been hurting again, on and off for a while, and now I've been told not to walk so much. Before this I was told not to do yoga but to run on a treadmill. Before that I was told not to do squats but to do asanas. Before that I was told to wear an iron shoe and do leglifts but I think I ran out on that doc. The formula being care for it but don't overdo it, the success rate being next to nil, I still have a weak knee and muscle and fat accumulating right above it and nowhere else, man, how do these things happen. I've never been a sick kid but these strange persistent ailments really put me in a funk sometimes. I can bend five different ways thanks to all the stretching and yoga but nothing will fix this knee short of surgery and it will always hurt in rainy weather. All I need is a shotgun and a flearidden cap and I could beat your arthritic neighbourhood colonel at being cranky. But I don't have a dog. And now I'm forbidden to walk. Amar jibon ekta tragicomedy. Ab bas Everest Expedition then heroic death, nothing to be done. I think I'll go wade in some dirty water now.

a
pop
leck
tick
fit


a-class.

fastfolks

Looking at things so that I can get started. All images from here. Crazy crazy good. 

I have a ginormous wishlist right now that I cannot begin to prioritise. No matter. No matter is my answer to everything nowadays. I can't help it, that's how it is. No matter this, no matter that, no matter death delay destruction deadlines. Occasional instances where I wish everything wasn't no matter, naturally, but too late to turn back now. I feel nothing for where I am currently and it's a quiet sort of ecstasy, a controlled indifference, another of the many cityfreezes. Only I hope this won't turn out like the others. Returning has never sucked this much but I know I'll always return so it's all a matter of conserving energy and killing time and watching people whirl. I don't think I've ever been cool enough for the city. All I want to do is dig around in the dirt and sleep when I feel like. No matter, take a swipe, go on, no matter. Keep your cool, man. God knows I don't have any use for it.

Also, I'm done with this tag. It scores far beyond the other side of redundant, especially on this blog.

Day Eleven: A book you hated: 

I'm not saying I was a tough unprincessy kid, it's just that Sara Crewe has always struck me as exactly the sort of girl who gets a raw deal because she's such an annoying little martyr. To cut it short, this book bored me senseless. Of course, there's always the possibility that I might learn new things about how and why it was written if I choose to pick it up now, and view it differently and all that jazz, but that's not bound to happen anytime soon ever. I hated it thrice as much as I hated Noddy, and that's saying something.

Favourite classic book, but of course - To Kill a Mockingbird.

9

Day 9: A Book You Thought You Thought You Wouldn’t Like But Ended Up Loving 

                               

I've two stellar examples here because Vernon God Little's another story altogether. Anyway, if you have a choice between swatting books away nervously because you know they'll drive you into darkness for a while, and reading them in spite of, uhm, abovementioned knowledge, it helps to not be a cretin. Always remember that darkness is a small price to pay for beauty. 

(If that wasn't a loaded sentence I'm a baboon.)

7 + 8

Most Underrated Book:

I think calling The Beetle underrated is a little off, a better word would be neglected. I have these pulp phases where I read purely to feel the satisfaction of being fed a ludicrous story, so imagine my wide, wide smile of happiness after I finished reading this for our secondyear course on Popular and Genre Fiction in the 19th Century. I'm prone to thinking that most pulp authors are underrated purely because they're pulp (and because I am unwaveringly supportive of flagrant drama) so this shouldn't come as a surprise, more so because all of this book is sheer stupendousness. I realise this tag's become a reiteration of things I've already written about when it comes to books I like, which is why I should've saved myself from agonising over this and done the one on movies instead.

Most overrated book:

Agh, I don't know. I'm more often disappointed with the inability of a writer to sustain one brilliant book after another (what, and you're not?) than the reading of something unsatisfactory, so while the standard answers - Love Story, A Passage to India, and English, August - all stand, may I please take a minute to point out the sheer ghastliness of everything Zadie Smith has written after White Teeth? I couldn't get through either The Autograph Man or On Beauty so I doubt this applies as an answer. Doesn't mean my heart remains unbroken when this happens, though, I love the way she writes. 

TDBC VI

Day Six: A book that makes you sad.

As a companion piece to the last, also the last really sad book I read so no point trying to think of other sad books. Or attempt to describe exactly how it broke my heart. So devastatingly perfect. And vice versa.  

Day Five, Belated.

Day Five: A book that makes you happy, Or, Sohini already took Durrell.

From such a long time ago. The first Wodehouse I ever read. A friend of my mother's gifted it to me on my thirteenth or fourteenth birthday, and it's still my favourite book by him for purely sentimental reasons. I know every story in it by heart but I never talk about it and I never bring it up because I love what it's about so much - twelve vintage cases, as the cover says, of good eggs and decent chaps entangled in snares of young love. I still think Wodehouse does the best job, without hamming it, of making gawky love feel happy, no that's not the word, quietly joyous, and I can't help but appreciate that because it adds much to the moment whenever I pick it up. But this book isn't even completely about love; I keep getting the feeling it's more about those much-required instances, those I Feel Just Like a Child moments. So there, defeat awkwardness with maximum ridiculosity. This is where it all started.

And again.

Yeh tamanna hai ki azaad-e-tamanna hi rahoon.

30 Day Book Challenge, Day Two

Day Two: A book you've read more than thrice:


First-choice standard replies:

 

Because, as has already been established, pithy twisted wisdom is one of my things. I'd throw in Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Little Prince and To Kill a Mockingbird as other standards, but since this is a, uh, challenge, I wanted to think of a book I've reread these past five years. Which is futile because there's nothing I've reread fairly these past five years from start till end. True story. I've only picked up already-read books to reread favourite chapters or scenes, but Bradbury I return to because it's something I puzzle over and like puzzling over. Not because dystopian premises are another one of my things (who're we kidding, of course they are) but because of the deceptively terse sentences and the way it progresses and the way it ends - I don't think this book will ever cease to fascinate me, so my cheat answer would be Fahrenheit 451. 

I'm skipping Day Four and Five. There aren't many series I've completed reading (another thing, kill me kill me carnage carnage aaaa) so no point. Plus I'm a Discworld noob, here's outcast material for you. Off the top of my head I loved His Dark Materials and the first two Bartimaeus books and Artemis Fowl till he went sappy and I stopped reading Colfer, which I should probably rectify because I could very much do with a Fowl book now. But I diverge. Favourite book of favourite series, why the hell, please, don't test my patience. Everyone knows I have a thin with the middle books of trilogies, and I have my reasons for obsessing over this, witness The Golem's Eye and The Subtle Knife - optimum length due to excellently estimated imaginative reign leading to restrained maudlinness leading to the right twist ending paving way for the last book (which is always so grandiose it trips over itself) - they always have just the right amount of everything. But not The Two Towers. Ride and rest. Ride and rest. Ride and rest. Eat elf bread. Ride and Rest. Ok I'll stop now.

30 Day Book Challenge, Day One

Day One: The Best Book You Read Last Year:

I can't explain why exactly I loved this so much, maybe because it's about old people. I love old people. And little children. I love the fact that they're unafraid to be brutally honest about the world, it's like they're one step closer to absolute wisdom when compared to the rest of us. Goes to prove we're born with it and die with it, only hindered somewhat in the middle by a compulsion to act like first-rate morons. This book has an exceedingly smart old lady in it and there are strange animals and buildings and lots of craziness and an inexplicable nuclear winter, but then Carrington wasn't exactly your standard Surrealist. What I love most about it is that it came to me at the right time, just when I needed to read something short and unconstrained. I haven't read as much as I'd wanted to since college started, I've become crabbier and intolerant and impatient and abandoned more books than I care to admit, but this one got me started on a reading spree all of last December and I'm grateful for that. My best read of last year is therefore a choice based purely on serendipity, but the best part is there's nothing you can do about it. So there, watch me grin.

*grins*