Looking Back

So, 2015 started out horribly. I missed my family too much, and the local food hasn't been agreeing with me for some time. Some days I didn't know how I was going to get through the year. Being in a strange place for a long time made me very bitter. 

In retrospect, thought, 2015 was better to me than I thought it'd be. I gained some fantastic friends and valuable experience. I read good books, had some pretty good food (MOCAMBO!!!), played a lot of D&D (still not as much as I wanted to), and licked the jello bowls clean (not really). 

2016 is looking up to be even better, though. I'll be home, I'll have a job (hopefully), I'll be learning German. But before that, there are still a lot of restaurants to visit in Kolkata, more D&D to be played, friends to hang out with, and a dissertation to write. 

I have resolutions to stick to: less fanfiction reading, more blogging, be more sociable/express myself more... Let's see how they work out!

Thank you for the memories, 2015, and looking forward to you, 2016! :D

Letters

"It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life."

-Norwegian Wood, Murakami

The idea of letters is so romantic. I finished reading a fanfiction yesterday about this couple who get together by getting to know each other through letters, and after one of them dies, the other one is left with drawers and drawers of love letters that the now-dead partner left for him. Then there are movies like P.S. I Love You (yes, I'm aware it was a book first) that made me bawl all over my Economics notes (why I thought making notes for Economics was a good idea while watching that movie is still a mystery to me.)

But anyway, letters. Letters are personalised ways of expressing what you feel. Hallmark cards are supposed to do that as well, but letters are like shoes for your emotions. If you don't have the right one, it's always slightly uncomfortable (which is why Hallmark cards feel so awkward.) I wonder if this was the reason why Angela Vicario wrote to Bayardo San Roman for seventeen years: she couldn't write something that fit (Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Do yourselves a favour and read it, please.) Is it even possible to write something that fits exactly right? Most of us actually live with shoe-bites and carry band-aids around. 

If the answer is no, then letter-writing is wrongly assumed as cathartoc. Every time you write a letter, you feel like it is not enough: you could have said it better, added a metaphor or two that might have come slightly closer to expressing what you feel. But I ask this of people who write letters: does writing a letter really give you a sense of closure, as if you've expunged whatever you felt onto paper and don't have to deal with those emotions anymore? I don't think it does. Small bits still stick to your soul; they wrap themselves around you and regrow.

I find letter writing extremely difficult. The other half of this dynamic duo demands letters for her birthdays. I oblige, of course, but it's not easy. Some of it is because I'm immensely repressed and the though of expressing meaningful emotion onto paper for someone else to read is terrifying (which is really funny considering I blog for funsies.) Some of it is because of my woeful vocabulary; I just don't have the words.

Really, I have no idea how people do it. To bare yourself like you do onto paper requires a kind of courage that I do not posses. I feel very strongly for people, and am constantly worried that I'll creep them out if I express what I feel about them in letters (I hope I haven't creeped people out already .-.).

But yeah, if someone asks me to write a letter to them, I'd probably end up not expressing myself fully. In fact, these words by Aaron Smith ("Secrets of an Identity Thief") would probably best express my feelings towards letter-writing:

"[...] Everything that's asked of you is too much.

Say, Too much. Say, I used to. Say, I never wanted this."

Rise of Juggernaut

So, most of us who watch cartoons know who Juggernaut is--Professor X's step brother who, when gained momentum, was unstoppable, and was out to destroy Professor X. While Juggernaut kept being thwarted by the X-Men continuously, the publishing industry is actually expecting the opposite of this phenomenon.

Juggernaut is a new publishing house, infamous before it actually took off because Chiki Sarkar resigned from Penguin Random House to help Juggernaut gain the momentum it needs. With the first catalog here, Juggernaut boasts of some very impressive titles (I really want to get my hands on the Snowden and the RSS books. The crime fiction also looks delicious.) But the thing is, Chiki Sarkar is now competing with her old publishing house to make it to the top. Her claims of knowing what to feed people is backed up by her experience (and yes, I'm fangirling at this point), and Juggernaut is definitely going to be a site where she can think about feeding people one chapter at a time, like a TV episode: 

“Could we think of presenting a book in a way that people access it not just as one big, one-off serious thing with 200 pages, but in snack-sized portions,” asks Sarkar. “Can we make it possible for people to buy it in short, digestible bits?  A chapter or two first, and then if they like it, more? Could each chapter be looked at almost as a TV episode?” 

I feel like Juggernaut is the publishing house that I have been waiting for. Penguin Random House sold its soul long ago, before it even merged. In Juggernaut and its titles, I see a spark to produce good books, ones that should be consumed without compromising on the quality of themes and writing. Even the commercial fiction in the catalog makes me want to read those titles, and knowing how much I dislike reading commercial fiction, that is saying something. They are no compromising on the quality of content to find a bigger audience (*cough* 50 Shades of Grey, Vintage *cough*). Instead, they are looking for new modes to make books accessible to people. I might hate reading on a screen but if reading on screen is the only way some people will read, I can get behind that.  

I definitely see Juggernaut challenging Professor X (Prof. X being Penguin Random House, of course) here, and I'm quite certain that Juggernaut's going to be Professor X at his own game, even if it takes a while. In the meantime, I'm just going to sit here and wait for job vacancies at Juggernaut.

You guys go check out the catalog, though--http://www.juggernaut.in/catalogue
  

Slice of Life

So, I haven't really slept in two days because I had a term paper and a few tests coming up. I got through all of them with lots and lots and lots of tea (thank you, tea god and the chai wala whose shop is just opposite where I live).
Anyway, so, in the morning, I was in college, typing out an answer to be submitted in two hours. I was sitting along a ledge, and there were people milling all around me, singing Atif Ali songs and saying random stuff. And in the midst of such hustle, I was there with my cup of tea, brought to me by my minion, S (thank you, S!), talking about Paris and polyglossia when I realised that I could get used to this.
After almost one-and-a-half years of feeling stifled here, I realise that I could get used to staying like this, typing away on the floor, surrounded by people who talk in a language I don't understand. And then I realise that I'm going to miss this when I leave in another semester.


Maybe I'll come back for convocation, after all  

Of Leaving

It's a story we've all heard:

it's a story of leaving

people and 

places and 

towels behind

to find new people and 

glamorous places

and fancier towels.

It's always been about 

opportunities for you—

you reach out to them,

and I don't reach out to you.

A Chennai Afternoon

On a hot, sunny afternoon, my brothers got lost at the Chennai railway station. The sweltering heat left me dazed—half in the bus, waiting for them to turn up, and half on the railway station, searching frantically for them. I know not how the hours passed and I don't remember anything except the station master's hazy dingy little office, where the twins sat on a table, swinging their legs, their mouths stretched in a lollipop-sticky grin. 

Sometimes, I wonder if my parents lost them forever that day, that I'm the only one who can see them now.

The City

It is always so humid here,

My body feels wrong

Trapped in this godforsaken city

Of concrete, of weed, of smoke

Rising up in the sky from thousands

Of unsuspecting killers.

Beg to report, sir,

I don’t like it.

The sky is sometimes the blue of your eyes

And within that moment

Lies peace.

But that moment is always blocked

By telephone wires,

By broken balconies,

By civilisation.

This will never be home.

Smoke and Rain

It is raining here

And my lungs are dying for one cigarette

Just one

And the good hurt of missing you

Has gone bone deep.

It verges on the edge of being painful

But nobody ever said I wasn't a masochist.

With the smoke of a cigarette

Memories of you will rise in the air

But I do not want to exorcise you

So I sit here and write this,

Wanting you, wanting a smoke

And having nothing.