Children like me and children like them

Of late, I’ve been thinking of what a great influence our upbringing has on us. I took a mid-of-reading-week-vacation at the home of a dear aunt who has very young children. As I watched them, it hit me with quite an extraordinary force, how the things you learn as a child, really get printed onto your soul.

It made me wonder…Do parents realize that their role extends to beyond that of primary care givers, as far as soul-printers? If people knew, that their half baked beliefs and their protective helmets, their customized paradigms, their myriad insecurities- were being written into the eyes, lips, thoughts and actions of their little children, would they volunteer to take up such a tremendous responsibility? Simply for a thing so trivial as pure, unadulterated, unconditional love in return?

What about when these children grow up?

It’s so heart breaking to think that the people you love and respect so much, your very own super heroes, could have been so wrong.

The mythical enemies…

• That the world is dangerous and everyone’s out to get you
• That you must guard your wealth and not share, don’t even think of trusting.
• That marriage is not about you, but about the people who raised you.
• That you must never, ever trust your feelings but keep the strongest of them locked in your chest. Even when they pound hard enough to crack your ribs. ( If you’re confused, call your parents, beta)
• That you must always expect the worst and spend your energy gearing up for scarcity/catastrophe.
• That a bland and predictable life is far better than one that is even slightly tinged with risk.
• That experience is to be avoided in favor of imitation.
• That happiness is rare, that life is about hardship
• That it is important to appear conventional
• That, if you are a girl, men are only interested in chewing you up and spitting you out, that you should avoid them completely until your parents find a socially acceptable jerk-off who will do the above mentioned within the confined canopy of holy matrimony and that your only choice as a woman is to put up with this sort of baloney.

I know that for so many, life has been persistently ugly and unfair. It is only natural for such people to want to teach their children to save themselves.

So they teach you all they know, they give you all their armor and ammo, and send you out to the world, to war with it.

But that is the greatest lie of all. There is no war. There is nothing to fight in this ‘real world’. There is no great evil nemesis. All our monsters lie on the other side of the mirror. You start to win when you can begin to look them in the eye…even as you know it is yourself you will see.

I wonder what their parents taught mine. I wonder what life taught them. I wonder why they didn't notice that the world was changing.

प्रातः काले

Lately, I've found myself up and about at sunrise. And when I do so, its beyond me how I could have ever slept through the enormous racket that those birds manage to put up.

I would never have imagined that I'd say this, but here goes...

The world is awash with such glory early in the morning that late risers can never imagine. Crisp, cool air, mellow, buttery sunshine, the fragrance of freshly blossomed flowers, the song of early birds that have caught their worms ...aah.

If there is heaven on earth, I'm certain that it looks better at dawn.

My friends , on the other hand, have been going the Transylvanian way. They stay conscious between midnight and the beginning of the next workday. This means that our waking hours coincide only between 7 and 8 30 am. So nowadays, breakfast is the new lunch. ( Or dinner, depending on how you look at it).

As we sit at YIH canteen, sip on Teh (which is not chai, mind you), munching on buttered kaya toast , I see new sides of their personality that lay hidden beneath the dust of daily monotony.
In fact they even came up with the most novel idea to solve the problem of bitch batteries. You know, the kind that kills off your computer exactly when you're in the middle of a writing fit, for the mere crime that inspiration hit you somewhat away from a plug point.

"Kinetic Keys," say Aditya* and Vijay**, their eyes shining with boyish excitement, "The machine takes the energy you use to type and uses it to recharge the batteries!"

Simbly ingenious. Never mind the fact that all their epiphanies at dawn are promply followed by crashing into bed, now my fantasies of writing really deep, emotional stuff while sitting amidst swaying golden grasses shall come true. Hurrayy.

* Names changed to protect privacy.
** To be said in Bachchan. Sr. fashion as:

vijay, vijay, vijay, vijay.

the last intelligent forward...

GEOGRAPHY OF A WOMAN

Between 18 and 22,
A woman is like Africa ,
Half discovered, half wild, naturally beautiful with fertile soil.

Between 23 and 30,
A woman is like America ,
Well developed and open to trade, especially for someone with cash.

Between 31 and 35,
A woman is like India,
Very hot, relaxed and convinced of her own beauty.

Between 36 and 40,
A woman is like France ,
Gently aging; but still warm and a desirable place to visit.

Between 41 and 50,
A woman is like Great Britain ,
With a glorious and all conquering past.

Between 51 and 60,
A woman is like Yugoslavia ,
Lost some wars, won some great battles but haunted by past mistakes, still
very strong and proud.

Between 61 and 70,
A woman is like Russia ,
Very wide, and borders are now largely un-patrolled.

After 70,
A Woman becomes Tibet,
Off the beaten path, with a mysterious past and the wisdom of the ages...
still desirable but only those with an adventurous spirit and a thirst for
spiritual knowledge and true love dare visit there.


GEOGRAPHY OF A MAN

Between 1 and 78,
A man is like Iran ,
Ruled by a dick.

career day

So this Diwali was full of Indian type fun and frolic - a happy bunch of us ate dial-a-curry Indian food, sipped on Bacardi mixed only with paani (true Indian ishtyle) and watched a wide screen screening of Monsoon Wedding, while nibbling happily on Kaaju katli. A half hour long cross-country bike ride deposited me back home at around 4 am and the last thing I wanted to do was get to lab on 4 hours of sleep to save my pet bacteria from dying (so I can kill them in a more systematic fashion later). But I discovered, quite abruptly the next morning, that it was in fact, not the last thing I wanted to do. The last thing I wanted to do was sit for 5 hours at the Lifesciences Career day Talk organized by our beautiful Faculty of Science who want to prove that no, this is more than just a glorified lab course. And fail miserably at that end for the third time in a row.

"You bum."
"b..wa..a....hoo?
"Wake up. Remember the career fair?"
" Iaya..aya... ai.. faara..thoeo...uaghxxj80@#mxiau...aisiana."

"If you rush, you'll still be able to make it. Come on. UP!"

OKAY. Time to wake up. I'm in my final year. I'm in my final year and I'm not even ready for Career day. Dang.

Challenge #1: Be dressed to kill.
formals..formals...formals...where do I find formals. The thing is, I'm not a formal person. I hate wearing anything that makes it difficult for my butt to breathe (an exception are my Wrangler jeans and you may note the not-so-subtle connotations of its nomenclature. Those are for clubs, where I consider it's better, actually, that it (butt) doesn't (breathe)). I've never bought formals. The only pair of black pants I own were bought as part of a dance costume...Okay they'll have to do.
Now for a top. Aaha..Bingo. $8 black tee from Giordano (thank heavens for lycra :P) A forma-lish pullover, steel earrings (I picked those up for the clubbing purposes as well), heels and I'm good to go.

Challenge #2: get through Registration- since I haven't registered.
I'm an hour late but apparently, they have no problem letting me through. It must be my killer look, I swell. But no, once inside, its pretty obvious that the LT's big enough to seat a lot of us irresponsible unregistered ones.

Challenge #3:
Well, there's no challenge three. Its just Career Day for heaven's sake.

I got there, armed with my laptop and Jane Austen's Emma ( so convinced was I of the seminar subjecting me to a greater degree of boredom). But much to my surprise, they had some really fun speakers down.

Stella Tan is a Masters in Life sciences who went on to get a Law degree at NUS. She looks like she belongs in a prime time TV drama. In fact, her work pretty much is a prime time TV drama- she argues for cases from a forensic standpoint and as a result, had some really gory, stomach-upsetting slides on her power point for us.
"You just make your own career route. Try not to do what everyone else is doing."

During the Q&A session, quite a few mahaan students asked the panel how one could become a CEO of something or the other.
"To become CEO. It has always been my dream. So how-a?"
This question was actually considered seriously by our panel and the CEO of Temasek Lifesciences Lab said.
" You have to have a passion for the job. All my friends who made it in Science, they had a real love for it and so did I. Then you work your way up."

Then there was the director of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity.

"All you’re A’s…. no one’s going to know anything about them a year down after graduation. Once you get to the interview table, the things that’ll really matter are:

1. soft skills
2. global knowledge
3. interactive skills
4. emotional quotient
5. knowledge of the world

So, go read a newspaper, I say."

I've obviously used my selective hearing superpowers and sifted through a whole lot of BS that also inevitably made its way through to this day. (For eg, the answer to the question " Why doesn't the Faculty of Science have a graded internship program? Why do you send your kids out with no working experience whatsoever?" was - "Bla..blablablaa.. bla bla..blaa.")

But for once, life sciences career day turned out to be more just, career day and wasn't really half useless. Emma remained unread.

edit. select all. undo.

Waking up is not much fun business anymore. Lie around, wallow for the half hour I should be doing Yoga... dreaming of things that will never come to pass...
Its become a disease now, this motion picture track thats constantly running in my head, full of people and dialogues and events that shouldn’t mean anything at all. To be sure, other people have had much, much worse.

“get up, get up, get up. Get out, get out, get out of this rut.”

I miss work. I miss than delicious feeling, the feeling that’s like crunching on nuts or sucking on gooseberries, this semi-punishing-semi-delightful feeling of doing work you can barely contain your excitement for. When I was in school, I loved my books. They were overused, abused and falling apart. They had been scribbled all over, in many colored pencils, highlighted everywhere in shocking blue and had doodles of girl-faces on the corners of nearly every page. They were definitely the un-tidiest books in the whole class. But I loved them and they were such a mess because I literally, loved them to pieces. I loved the notes I’d write over them, notes that somehow, only I could make sense of and drove my tuition teachers mad. In my mind, I wasn't preparing for any exams, I was learning of the wide, wonderful world so it was exciting and I wanted to master it all.

None of my books look like that anymore. I don't love what I learn anymore. What a fucking waste my education has been.

But then, as I constantly remind myself, other people have had much, much worse.

Working hypothesis/ I believe

If you can't think of any good reasons as to why you're still so unhappy, chances are that you don't have any. The past is right where it belongs, in the past, and the future calls to be made by this very moment. Occasionally, you need a kick in the rear to get yourself out of that self-sorry little bubble that you've painstakingly put up, coated with alternate layers of regret and pride.

Sometimes life gives you a kiss on the cheek instead and its as effective.