Foodering

Everything is better with ketchup.

Everything is good fried.

Tea goes with everything.

The best things come in twos.

Am eating, cannot brain.

;)

Incarnadine

So today was a bimbo day. Hair cut and colour and spa, and I always rather like these days, but never quite enough to do this more often. Though maybe I wouldn't enjoy them as much if I had them more often. Meh.

Anyway, there was a teacup human in the salon at the time I was. First she kept moving her head, and her mum had to come hold it so her cut would be uniform, and there'd be less risk of her getting nicked. Then she decided she couldn't possibly sit in the next chair during Mommy's haircut, oh no. So everyone painstakingly cut moved around her with blowdriers and scissors and section-clips, and she sat eating biscuits and looking smug. <3

Of course, at that age, I used to poke my head into every cabinet and try brandishing scissors the size of my entire arm, so it is possible that my perception is a little skewed.

Endnotes and Acknowledgments

I've written my last honours paper today. Barring the possibility of failing, I'm done with my undergrads. It's been a good three years, and some of those days have actually been rather good, as well. I'm not very efficient at the task of personal happiness; I tend to check the teeth of all my gift horses, and get stuck in the eye by enemy spears.

But what does not kill us simply makes us stranger, to quote the Joker (r.i.p, Heath Ledger), and there's no doubt that JUDE encourages strangeness. Or perhaps it's simply that strange people come to the forefront in JUDE. Don't know, can't say, wouldn't make a difference.

I do know I love JUDE with a passion only equal to the way I despise it, sometimes. I have been content here, someetimes I've been ecstatic, at a word, an approving nod or passing smile, at any acknowledgment that my often unacceptable insanities are alright, here.

I do know I've been frustrated that we're often treated as somehow a little less than other batches. Which is probably an unwise thing to articulate, but it's true. Or maybe it's simply that we've been terribly unlucky; we have.

I do know I've realised that I shall never be a nice person, however much I try, but shall always be vicious. But I've learnt to hide it better than I used to, and that's something, at least. It isn't that I'm malicious, but I think I try too little to be civil.

I do know, and this is the best of all these little nuggets of knowledge, that the few friends I have I'm madly in love with, and if I have to leave them I'll be more than a little heart-broken. And perhaps even better is the fact that I feel some strange bond of kinship even with those I am not close to, even with the very few I fail entirely to comprehend.

I do know I'm grateful for these years, and that my first instinct of JUDE as home was in no way wrong. Thank you, everyone.

Renaissance

This blog, as you can see if you so choose to, has been inactive oh these very many months, and it feels a little futile to write this post. But it feels stupid to not write it, too, since all those troubles (and excessive reactions) were lo these many months ago, and the past is another country, and besides the wench... er, has been made amends with.


Anyway, all that said and read, tomorrow is the beginning of my last finals for the undergrads, and there is (one hopes) a very real possibility of it being my last JUDE finals. Which is not to say I did not make a hash-job of my JNU entrance-exam, because I did, but I'm hoping EFLU goes a little bit better. Hell, I'm hoping it goes better than these finals so near-approaching, since I've studied just about nothing, and can't really make myself care.

It's not that the courses suck. Okay, IWE sucks, but that's just one paper, I rather like everything else, even Criticism, though Saussure remains impossible to understand. I just can't stand being here any longer, and yet. And yet it isn't the must-leave-Calcutta fever that's seized some of my friends, it's not even entirely a must-leave-JU thing. Perhaps it's that IX-X, and then XI-XII got me used to the two-year-then-gap system. Certainly UG-III has been dragging from the very start, despite the brilliant courses I've been taught.

Maybe it is simply time to move on, past time to move on. Maybe all this yearning will amount to nothing and I will stay here another two years. I hope not, I really don't want to have to study PoCo ever again, but hoping might well be futile.

But hope springs eternal.

This is a dead blog.

Bye.

Books II

This is by way of being an update to this post. Since then, I have acquired the following:

Anne Rice: Interview with a Vampire

Margaret Atwood: The Penelopiad

C.S. Lewis: The Narnia books.

Also, I have obtained Renault's The Persian Boy and The Bull from the Sea, so the mytho-historical novels, save one, are all with me.

As before, if you want 'em, say so in the comments.

Arunachal VI: Bomdila

The resort is called Elysium. Hmph.

Very pretty, though. Down from a deserted-looking terrace to a set of rooms fronted by a balcony with lovwly flowers. There's a greenhouse nearby that I wish I could get into. This is a good place on the whole-- nice wood floors and good view and pretty bathrooms.

Good food, too. Though, really, in this weather: warm = good.

Scotch is being drunk. Not by me. I'm buried under a quilt, sweaters still on. It's more than 8,000 ft up. We're going at least double that.

Dinner = warm = good. The manager says it's 4-6 degrees Celcius. Brrr.

Before I forget, there's a humongous stray dog-- well, I'm referring to breed, not ownership or lack thereof-- belonging to the manager, or at least the place. We called it-- this is before we knew-- and it came running up. Raka thought it was chasing her and scrambled off.

Just swaddled the precious SLR camera (film *sigh*) in blankets and woolens. Froze on us, last trip.

Morning's all sun-dappled mountains and tin-roofed houses and cricket chorus.

Arunachal V: Bhalukpong-Bomdila

We just rolled down the road from Assam to Arunachal-- still in Bhalukpong, though.

Assam's symbol is the one-horned rhino, btw. Dunno what Arunachal's is-- prolly the bison, if the huge head atop the entry gate is anything to go by. Told Dad the theory. The others are trying to call home. Dad just accusted a local kid. *sigh* Turns out I was right. P.S: The hornbill's the state bird.

Jiyabhareli/Kameng-- lovely; rolling green-blue water, gleaming white sand, dancing white kash.

Orchids. I have nothing more to say.

Forested mountains and waterfalls and the first fanged bite of cold.

Crickets like a hundred ghostly castanets. The Boy has freaked out again. Auntie M finds everything sweet. *sigh*

Huge landslide-- black mud and machines.

Car quarrels. Men. *rolls eyes*

Ill. Dammit. So ill.

Tiny dark plum-like apples.

Arunachal IV: Bhalukpong

At long last. Can't see anything-- too dark. I'm numb from sitting wedged in the back seat. And then there's the Boy.

Great food, though, very warm. Nice beds, too.

Morning. Trespassing to get to the Jiyabhareli river and the unbelievable kash fields in front of it. Raka and I climbed on the ledge outside the roof of our hotel. heheheh.

Nice little look-out spot. But. Must get to river.

Went down almost to the river, Mum leading. The Others freaked the hell out, dunno why.

Arunachal III: Guwahati-Bhalukpong

Well, here we are-- in tourist lodge rooms, trying to freshen up and change and eat in under an hour (yeah, right).

We were sitting at the station for just about the same time, probably longer-- not the most auspicious start to the journey.

Heh. It's the long way round to Bhalukpong. Normal route's fucked up.

Reception's shot, btw. And the battery was leeched away by the train trip, dunno how. Charged the phone for about half-an-hour at the lodge. Let's see how long it holds.

Apparently we get fed what these people want us to eat. Hmph.

The menu: Rice, khar, dal, pitika (alu-sedhdhho, basically), bhaji, chanar anja (paneer curry), mahor bor tenga (dunno), kanhudi/kharoli/khaisa, mahor guri, payas/dahi. Good food. No, I don't know what it was.

Amul On!! ad. teh funny-- the band-members-in-black-in-pool shot. tch. no pics.

Looong drive-- way too long. Hemmed in by cars and people and bhashaan parties in the towns.

Dark now. Surreal, the only car in the forest. Haven't seen any wild animals, though saw six tame elephants ewarlier, all told, carrying stuff.

Driver refuses to let us wish for wild elephants, btw. He has a point.