Little Boxes

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

The life of an average individual is so predictable. Though different in the details, everyone leads the same life in essence. Like Malvina Reynolds says, we are all like little boxes! Sure I may be a 4*4 box painted in orange and you may be a 3.75*3.75 box painted in green, but at the end of the day we are both cuboids!

And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

Each one trying to find your own niche in the world, looking for essentially the same things. I can bet that 90% of people reading this post will have a similar list, Security, Comfort, Family, Love etc...
There is a said way to go about this. Do well at school choose a good profession and spend more than a quarter of your life slogging towards it and the rest, slogging to keep what you have achieved.

And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.

Many people whose blogs I follow have been speaking about love and marriage increasingly lately. Not that I'm reading anything into it but we all eventually do want to be settled and not live out life alone. Children when they come along will have their futures planned so that they in turn can be secure and comfortable.
Restarts the circle...
Little boxes...

And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

Life goes on..

I do not venture to comment on the integrity or achievements of anyone's life but don't you feel like being a different shape sometimes.
I want to be a cone made out of mount board painted in fuchsia!
I don't want to graduate I want to paint and only paint through my life!
I don't want to care where my next meal is going to come from and whether I'll be able to retain this roof over my head tomorrow!

Well but in the end, we are all little boxes, little boxes and we all look just the same!

I love Peter Seeger's songs which my father exposed me to as a child. This is also the theme song for weeds. Do listen to the song.

I Need To Know!!

A person without thoughts is not a possibility. The thoughts may be redundant, silly, stimulating, destructive..anything but, thoughts they are!
We think about multifarious things in a day. Thoughts triggered by different events, with a varied essence and of varying magnitudes.
According to me Maslow's Pyramid of needs helps in answering a lot of questions which are physiological and psychological in nature. It can help each of us identify the pattern of our thoughts.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs consists of five levels: the four lower levels are grouped together as being associated with Physiological needs, while the top level is termed growth needs associated with psychological needs. Deficiency needs must be met first. Once these are met, seeking to satisfy growth needs drives personal growth. The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are satisfied. If a lower set of needs is no longer being met, the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs by focusing attention on the unfulfilled needs, but will not permanently regress to the lower level.

So when we actually reach the stage of self-actualization we are apparently materially and emotionally satisfied individuals.

After a lot of analysis I figured I think I'm in the "Need to Know and Understand" segment.

So where do you figure you stand in the hierarchy of needs?

FACEBOOK

The latest in a line of fads online is FACEBOOK and it has been for a while now!
It does have its positives vis a vis other networking sites like the profile block options have taken the security to another level and the graffiti options lend it a very personal touch.
Another thing that makes facebook popular is its innumerable applications. There is available a wide spectrum of applications from the cutest ones like "What comic strip character are you?" to completely outrageous ones like, "What is your secret sexual fantasy?". Most of them are absolutely random and thus amazingly popular.
The human touch comes in with the superpokes like cuddle, party with etc (and can also be as silly as 'throw sheep at'!) and the Hug me applications. When used in moderation it can genuinely put a smile on your face. Awarding superlatives and nicknames to friends has become the coolest and sweetest gesture!
I find myself taking the most random quizzes on earth to simply kill time (it results in mass murder though!). My friends typically sned me atleast an average of 10 crazy requests a day.
A nice thing is that I met a couple of my blogger friends on facebook as well- helps me know them better.
What is sad is that the core purpose of the site .ie. Networking and Communication seems to be getting lost in a melee of applications!
Of all the people reading this..If you are on face book-
How many use it to leave your friends a message instead of throwing sheep at them?
Also your opinion on the place and importance of networking sites in our life is welcome.
Cheers.

This is unfortunately how MY facebook profile looks.. :(

Words Of Wisdom

1. No one can ruin your day without YOUR permission.

2. Most people will be about as happy, as they decide to be.

3. Others can stop you temporarily, but only you can do it permanently.

4. Whatever you are willing to put up with, is exactly what you will have.

5. Success stops when you do

6. The biggest lie on the planet: "When I get what I want I will be happy."

7. The best way to escape your problem is to solve it.

8. Look for opportunities...not guarantees.

9. When things go wrong.....don't go with them.

Most importantly....

10. Now is the most interesting time of all.

With a Parsi tinge

"Family Matters" by Rohintan Mistry is a book I read at the recommendation of a friend, whose judgment I fortunately trust. I say fortunately because I adored his style of writing.

There is absolutely nothing climactic about the novel. Family Matters is a story about Parsi family living in modern Mumbai dealing with the day to day gravities of youth, age, death, duty and desire.

Only in his words the humdrum of daily life gets transformed. The best parts of the novel are the simple accounts of daily life breakfast time in an household, the children's jokes, family rituals etc. Here is one of those authors who does not just give you an insight into the lives of his characters but nudges you to laugh, weep, despair and live with them.

The novel opens with an account of old Nariman Choudhary's birthday party. Nariman is old and frail, constantly haunted by memories of his past. He lives in Chateau Felicity with his middle-aged step-children, Jal and Coomy. The family is visited by Nariman's daughter, Roxana, with her husband and their two young sons. It show cases the relationships in a family which though fragmented by history is bound together by mystery. The suspense of Nariman's apparently scandalous but in reality helpless and painful past is revealed through the book in bits and pieces, like random isolated pearls to collect before you can string them together. The prose slips in and out of different perspectives: sometimes we feel Nariman's pain, sometimes Roxana's concern or Jal's guilt. The novel begins with Nariman, but the final word goes to Jehangir - from the old to the young.

This novel traces the lives of many individuals and how they fit into each others life to weave a fabric that gives us the essence of life and the living, youth and its innocence and age and death.
In case you do plan to read it. I will recommend a corner with minimal intrusions for this one.

MY BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!!!

I just completed the 21st year of my life on February 8th and this year the celebrations
have been the best of all. This was all due to my friends who were wonderfully brilliant!

The day started at 12.00 am with friends and family from all over the globe calling to wish me a Happy Birthday. Many friends with whom I had completely lost touch called me as well, that felt really great. Amidst all of this, come 12.10 am a couple of my friends from my building landed with a cake. I know this is no new thing, but it was the first time that it was done for me so I was extremely excited.

Well one of the unfortunate things is that I had to sit through an entire day of lectures. Once that was done with I had planned a stay-over at a college friend's place. There the day seemingly began to go downhill. My friend told me in the middle of the day that we might not be able to manage a stay-over because she might be having some guests at short notice. Also most of my friends dropped out one by one due to some reason or another.

When the lectures were done, the friend whose house I was to stay at convinced me to at least spend sometime with her at Pheonix Mills, irrespective of whether or not we could manage the night time party. Churlishly I conceded.

Then began the surprise! I reached the McDonalds at Pheonix Mills to find that all my college friends were there, they had only pretended to drop out! We sat around ate and chatted for a bit, but my friends were strangely reluctant to leave. After about 20 minutes I come to know why!
They had co-ordinated with all my closest friends in Mumbai and got them all to come as a surprise for me. They also said that the stay over was very much on the agenda, the drama was simply to keep my mind of their other plans. The best part was that when I realized my friend Madhuri, sitting in Pune, had co-ordinated all of this!
We made merry for a bit while I was just unable to wipe a silly grin of happiness off of my face!

The rest of the evening went as planned. Cake, pizza, pepsi, party games and a late night drive!

It was my best birthday ever!!
I thank God everyday for my family, now I've realized that I HAVE to include my friends in that list as well!

I've fucking been torn apart!!

I'd come across this review site- Ask And Ye Shall Receive, when Neo got his blog reviewed.
So I decided to submit my blog as well. Not just for kicks but because I genuinely want to try to take it to the next level.
I know that, no one person's opinion is the be all and end all of the world, but for me EACH ONE COUNTS!
So here goes:-


She's giving me a toothache
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
There was a time, many, many years ago, when I had a Molly Ringwald perm and 20 pairs of Guess jeans and wore white Keds with everything. I made mix tapes of slow songs from the radio and wrote heartfelt and weepy poetry. I sent rambling notes to friends with cutesy acronyms (KIT, FFE, BFF) and used hearts to punctuate my exclamation points.

Because I was that girl once upon a time, it makes it hard to slam Sneha from Life is Above it All. Oh, she's quite a bit older than I was during the time I'm remembering, and she's a good deal smarter than I was, but that core of innocent youth remains. I don't want to squash that earnest hopefulness.

It's not that this is a hot mess. It's just... young. And fluffy.

To start with she's managed to include two of my pet peeves. There's a huge ass banner that takes up the entire page and I have to scroll for ages to get to content. Why do people do this? Why? Next, she uses ellipses constantly. Look, y'all. There's a time and place for these popular little dots: to indicate the removal of text, to indicate a thought trailing off, or to indicate a pause in speech. And that's about it folks. Overuse can be extremely annoying to read.

Some more problems? Lots and lots of poetry. Sappy, angsty poetry. It's not for me. Some people enjoy it, I'm sure, but I can't get into it. Especially rhyming poetry.

Also, the subtitle portion in the banner means absolutely nothing to me. "Emotion is not a football." What? I'm sure there's a cultural disconnect here as she's Indian and I'm American, but I can't for the life of me understand what she's getting at. And unfortunately that happens a lot for me with this writing. Oh, she's smart. No doubt. And kind and good and sweet and hard-working. But unfortunately for me this blog boils down to a lot of words on a screen. And not much else.

This is a young girl's diary, a smattering of thoughts and poems and daily experiences that, while meaningful to her and her friends, does not lend itself to wider consumption. And maybe that's fine. Maybe that's all she wants. But by submitting her site to be reviewed my guess is maybe she's ready for more. If that's the case, some suggestions:

Tighten up. Edit. Get rid of the ellipses, use proper spacing around punctuation, refrain from using cutesy IM-speak (ur, u, 2, shud, cuz, randomly capped and lowercase words, etc.). Don't write in all lowercase -- e.e. cummings can get away with it, you can't. Write for yourself but consider your audience. What do we want to know? Do we want to read paragraphs and paragraphs of your daily experiences? No, absolutely not. Find something interesting to write about. Boil it down, find the good bits, wrap it up in a bow, be concise.

Find your voice -- right now you're one of thousands of sweet young girls with nothing much to say. What makes you different? What do you have to say? Where is your individuality? I read your whole blog, and I know there's more you're not sharing: you're observant and insightful and you have a charming spirit. But it's flat on the screen. There's no dimension.

Right now it's a



but don't give up. Get cracking on my suggestions and let's see where you end up.
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Well, the rating means-
We meant to rate you, really we did, but we fell asleep reading your shit. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. snore.

Oh well!! Nothing lost!

RESULTS...and more

After a busy and eventful beginning to the year, February has brought with it a slump.
The only thing on my agenda seems to be waiting for results.
Today finally one wait is over..I came to know this morning that I have not made it through to SIMC.
well that only leaves me with my semester exam results to await..

I am co-authoring a new blog with my friend Balaji..
Please do drop by and leave us ur comments..

IDLI CHUTNEY