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I was recently commissioned by the Camden Council in London to respond to Sarat Maharaj's text "Pidginy Linguish" for Camden Kalā, as part of the UK-India Year of Culture. Below is an excerpt from the resulting essay, which was a reflection on walking, anthropology, and my time as a student in London.   Highgate Cemetery, London, 2012 Migrants are not churned out uniformly: they have varying status, staying power and agency determined by the legal machinery that processes them. How they are tagged makes this apparent: exile, émigré, expatriate, refugee, asylum seeker, detainee, deportee, alien, other, illegal, clandestini, sans papiers, removees, non-subject, non-citizen, job snatcher, benefits-tourist and equivalents [...]   - Sarat Maharaj (2003)  And then the category that described my own experience, but doesn’t quite fit any of the above: the international student. The non-EU international student, to be specific, whose status once the post-study work visa...

I guess the day had to come when I'd finally be traveling alone. All alone. I just didn't think it would come this soon. But it did, and has just passed me by, leaving me feeling very different...older, somehow. It's always pleasant to find out that you really don't mind your own company! So I traveled down south, Manipal being the exact destination, but having seen a few places--well, airports, really--along the way. The flight to Bangalore was pretty uneventful, the only interesting thing being the conversation between the little boy and his mum sitting next to me ("I know how planes fly!"..."where does all our luggage go?"..."can I open the window?"..."why is it always night in space?"). Aw. Whizzing to Bangalore in a taxi, I was accompanied by my thoughts and a lot of phone calls. The pleasant weather made my spirit soar, and I could feel a tinge of adventure in the air. Of course, my juvenile sense of humor didn't ab...

The title looks weird. Anyway. What a see-saw! Everyone is now rather bemused at the fact that out of the five projects I've been harping on, like, forever, I've still only finished two. What the hell, I can't help it if brilliant ideas come to me only when I'm under pressure. Like now. When I have no time to execute them. Or execute them well, rather. The project on Shakespeare dragged on longer than it should have, but it was quite fun. I discussed and compared two of his plays -- A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. The fairy mythology, the use of magic and dreams and stuff. The man was quite brilliant. I know alot of people who reckon he's way over-rated, but let's not forget that he was a writer of popular theatre, which was intended to help him earn money and entertain an audience comprising of every class, and not to be compiled into books and dissected by literature students. There was always a crunch of time, and I think he was one of...

Ha, the title scared you, didn't it? Don't worry, I will explain. Or translate, morelike. I've been wanting to post for quite a while, especially about the Mumbai terrorist attacks (we had a tearful memorial for an alumna at college), but when I really got into the mood I couldn't get on the computer, and I find my frame of mind doesn't permit me to write a post of that nature right now. I need to do it justice, and I need to be angry. On Sunday I finally attended an event whose ad I'd cut out from the newspaper. I've cut out ads ALL YEAR, and not attended a single one of the events. Chiefly because there's never anyone to go with. People have weird taste. So anyway, I went with my ever-willing companion, my dad, to the German Christmas Market (yes, that's what the convoluted title means). Christmas is my absolute favorite festival, for some reason. Not that we really celebrate it or anything. It's just the aura and spirit...it totally gets ...

I can't believe I've gone a whole month without blogging. Blasphemous. And what a month it was...it's time for a nostalgic look back. November has gone, the college fest is over, the MUN is over, and I've survived another semester of German, miraculously this time. The days have slipped into winter rather subtly, and if they've sped by before I could catch my breath, I've enjoyed every minute. I've worked hard and consistently, and been so lucky sometimes it was almost as though I swallowed a dollop of Felix Felicis. At other times I've thanked my stars for having made such awesome friends, at whatever time of my life! Seriously, without them I'd be nothing, nowhere, nohow. MUN- The best three days I've had in a long, long time. I've never really been the sole head of a team before, and I have to admit that freaked me out many times. But I also felt like I was being given a chance to prove myself. And I think I did okay; I managed things I...

Spotted in college:

My new philosophy seems to be working quite well. Live in the present, look at the good things. Keeps me happy, mostly. Not thinking about the future means few disappointments. But for a dreamer like me, it's quite hard. I mean, I see stuff so clearly in my head, like a film, but it never happens that way, does it? Does it ever happen the way you dream of it? Maybe. Maybe not. I guess the key is to dream, and be happy while it lasts, and then forget about it. If that's possible. Anyhow, the 'worst' months of college seem to have past, now there's good stuff ahead! We had our Diwali Mela on Thursday, ( yes, I know there's still a month to go for Diwali ) which turned out to be quite fun. Bab was slaving at a stall, and she gave me free stuff. Now it's holiday time, lots ter do, but still. Holidays are holidays. And knowing me, I won't do half the stuff I'm supposed to. But come what may, this time I shall NOT make a list. I've been wanting...

Aaaand I'm back! Long time, no me, huh? But I'm here, now, alive and before y'all to present my excuses case. Just three weeks into college (and German) and I'm already overworked, ill and un-bored (chiefly because I'm overworked). I've been to North Campus (for a meeting that was over by the time I got there), to Barista (for another meeting), for a drive in my friend's car (to get away from the heat), my results came out, I'm already bored of the cafe food, I have some ten books to read, plus I chose the worst time to fall ill. Work is just piled on top of my tiny head and threatens to smother me any instant. So why the cheery title, you might ask. We-ell, I'm fine now, so I'm happy. Plus teachers decided to go on a strike so we got a holiday today. Plus my Saturday class got cancelled. Plus, people have been nice. Well, some people have been nice. Plus I've been taking full advantage of my illness and watching movies and getting mum ...

Well, technically, summer was never here, it's been more of monsoon-ish, sluggish, humid weather. But whatever. My latest activity has been a list titled 'Why Summer 2008 Was Not A Waste', aimed at making me feel better. Which it is magnificently failing at. I finally finished my second 'major' read of the summer , Exodus by Leon Uris, and it's absolutely fabulous.* In a bittersweet way, because nice people die in the end. It is, as far as I can recall, the first 'historical fiction' I've read, and the story revolves around the struggle of the Jewish people in the post World War II era and the birth of Israel. I've been trying to research the factual accuracy of the book, and from what I've found, it seems to have done justice to the real thing, except maybe this . Now it's my house that's turning into a zoo . Especially on rainy days. SPOTTED on Monday outside my drawing room: Huge Ugly Crow and Baby Monkey In fact, the...

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed. - Anthony Powell Another birthday has come and gone. I turned 19 on Saturday...next year I'll be 20...and 20 years later I'll be 40...oh boy, do I feel old. But I made a nice resolution this time--to be happy :). And that's not as easy as it may sound. I've been tried on my birthday itself, when the internet refused to work so I couldn't check my birthday wishes. I think it was some kind of judgment on me for telling HB condescendingly that I couldn't see how she lives without it and that I possibly couldn't. I've become a victim to the addiction. Last Wednesday, Babbitty and I went (escorted by my dad; talk about over-protective parents) to Teen Murti Bhavan to attend an interaction with Amitav Ghosh!!!  I swear, we're totally turning into English (Hons.) nerds. Except I guess I already have been one for quite awhile. Oh well. Amitav Ghosh is here to promote...

The view from Tiffin Top, Lansdowne About the short, short holiday-- I had gone to Lansdowne, a sleepy hill station in Uttaranchal. It's pretty unheard-of, which was just as well because we escaped the madding crowds of other hill stations like, say, Mussoorie or Nainital. There's going to be a huge, detailed account on The Wayfarers soon, which, by the way, is getting a makeover for its first birthday on June 3. So keep visiting. I also (finally) got over with my German exams just before I left, though I'm rather disgusted with the MMB people. First they had the audacity to prepone our viva by three days (and they told us only the evening before, mind you. As though we weren't scared enough already). And then, when we found out (much to our relief) that we had passed, they went and spoilt it by holding the certificate ceremony without telling anyone. Sneaky, I tell you. Nevertheless I still love German, and I've been (trying to) read German magazines and...

Aaaaand I'm back! I was prevented from posting on my blog these last few weeks because of a major obstacle called exams. However, I now have 3 whole, glorious months to drive myself nuts. Joy. Sniff, sniff. Smells like freedom all right! I'm already bored. I tell you, its a vicious circle. You stay up all night studying, trying to force happy thoughts of how you'll spend your holidays out of your mind, and when the holidays start, where do all those huge, ambitious plans disappear? But I'm smarter. I make lists. My summer break list now has some 20 very ambitious plans. And I'm going to spend the next couple of months, as usual, watching them fail before my very eyes. Sigh. But hey, I'm happy today! Lalala. La. Anyway, I must bore you with some details, right? So the first two papers were miraculously good, preparation-wise. The marks obviously depend on the mood, position in life, etc etc of the examiner. So no point worrying my head about it. Then came Hindi....

I've recently been attempting to complete my projects for college. One done, three more to go. The one I've completed is for our "Twentieth Century Indian Writings" paper, and I chose to research on the Tamil author C. S. Lakshmi, better known as Ambai. Her writing interested me, perhaps because it's so different compared to the other authors we've studied so far. There's a certain tranquil quality to it which she uses effectively to convey hard-hitting messages. Beautiful imagery. Voices. Myths and legends. Utterly feminist. Reflective. I actually got caught up in the whole thing and dragged N off to two libraries for "research". The British Council Library (I knew it wouldn't help, obviously, but I wanted to see it anyway) and the Sahitya Akademi (darker but definitely more helpful).  The project dragged on for ages. The writing of a project is truly cumbersome. But anyway, the point I was trying to make is that...um...go read Ambai. My f...

For those of you who don't know, this post is about the Poetry Workshop I attended in college from September 24th to 27th, with Sampurna Chattarji. (Yes, I like poetry. And yes, I write poetry too. I think it's one of the greatest forms of (written) expression.) Sampurna (or Shampoo, as someone christened her) is an Elsa; it's no wonder we all connected so well. The first session was a poetry reading (and book signing) from her recently published anthology called Sight May Strike You Blind . Then followed sessions spread over four days, including writing, one-on-one feedback, and critical appraisal. And because I liked the workshop so much, I'm afraid I'm going to bore you with the details. The very first exercise required each of the nine participants to compose a poem based on something another participant shared. In ten minutes. Which seemed impossible, but I guess we managed just fine. Then we had to read it aloud (uh oh). Hearing everyone's seemingly e...

Who'd have thought yesterday would end like that? Tired as I was, I kept tossing and turning in bed the previous night; try as I might, sleep just wouldn't come. I awoke early-ish, barely able to sit up from exhaustion. My cell phone buzzed. I answered. Talked. Sighed. Another player off the field. Another two players off the field. What on earth was I going to do? Three days ago, the notice, inconspicuous though it was, stared me in the face. A magazine making competition at Rendezvous, the IIT Fest. Rules unknown, it still sounded very interesting. All I had to do was get together a team of six; a herculean task, as it turned out. Dozens of calls and messages later, Sunday morning found me short of three people and wondering whether to back out. Luckily, though, I still had two left to count on. To encourage me. And mom reminded me that I was going for fun, for the experience, if anything. Not merely to win. Upon reaching IIT, N and I decided to find our way to the Se...

Gone are the days when we'd wake up in the morning on August 15th feeling all patriotic. A sad loss, I guess, but contrary to whatever whoever says, this day is, for the majority of us, a welcome holiday in the middle of the week. Especially for me. Life's hectic. And I've been pretty listless of late. Shunting back and forth, to and fro, from college and Max Mueller Bhavan. Standing in front of the wardrobe every night, head hung, wondering what the hell to wear the next day. To think I once would've died to get out of uniforms. And reading...ah me, reading. Studying literature is no mean feat. In the past month, I've read stories by Premchand, Ismat Chughtai and Virginia Woolf; Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines , Mohan Rakesh's Halfway House , some utterly boring philosophical writings of Bernard Williams, Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada (this obviously for my own entertainment; the movie was better. Wow, did I just say that?), Joanne Kathlee...

I am Bored. Bored with a capital 'B'. So bored that I painted my nails green (though it rather suits me, you know). And I don't understand this: why does the All-England Club have to have the tournament in the "rainy" season? You might be wondering why this post is titled so. Simply because I was recalling April the first as it was last year. It was a Saturday, and I was grumpy because we'd been asked to come to school. As if five days weren't enough. If I'd not known that the school has no sense of humour, I'd have said they were April-fooling us. Rather meanly. As it was, however, we were all of us grumpy, so we decided to play some pranks to make sure the teachers didn't do exactly what they'd planned, which was teaching us dead by the end of the day. Enter physics class. Before ma'am could open her mouth to scream, we informed her that we're supposed to be in the AVH*. She totally fell for it, looked around confusedly, then...

So, there are really only two things that you need to know about Bombay. Rain. And traffic jams. And that about summarises my week-long, much-looked-forward-to trip.* I hate rain. I detest it. Maybe I'm simply weird that way, but I don't like dancing in the rain, or getting drenched in the rain, or... in fact, probably the only way I like it is when I'm safe and dry inside and it can't get to me. I mean, I like watching it through my window, and I love the clean new leaves and the smell of rain on mud. Well, I guess you get the drift. My birthday involved an awesome cake and awesome food and gifts (obviously), courtesy the cousins and my tauji-taiji. Followed by a wild drive with my cousin P driving; windows down, we flew through the blissfully empty roads of Navi Mumbai, with P mock-shouting occasionally at pedestrians ("Outta my way, moron"!)  As for sightseeing, we visited Juhu beach, a couple of malls here and there, and though we wanted to see Marine D...

I nearly starved to death during my SAT exam. But let me start at the beginning. After weeks of waiting, the SAT is finally over. And no, it did not go off well, because since I am not gifted with mathematics-related superpowers, I failed to complete both papers. We had a very strange invigilator, who could barely count (or maybe he needed new glasses), making me wait ten minutes before he decided that the number and my name on my admission ticket matched exactly with the list in his hand, and I wasn't some impostor (like anyone would want to be an imposter to an SAT exam). Then he wrote some details on the distant blackboard and stationed himself in front of it. And had the audacity to scream at us when we asked him to move. He also gave us the promised breaks in between the papers, oh yes. They were for one minute. He actually timed them. So by the end of the whole thing, I stepped gladly out of the "hall" with an aching back and parched throat, into the sweltering...

Reminiscing about school makes me so sad.* And yet I can't help it. Yesterday I went on a journey of memories about the last two years of my school life. And now I shall proceed to tell you about the place I spent most of those two years in – The Language Lab, a.k.a (by jealous batchmates) The Classroom with Two Air Conditioners**, and (by us) The Prison for the Innocent. The classroom was a black box. It had walls made of a very strange material, papered with dark film. You could see your reflection on the outside. Gosh, I forget the number of times I looked straight past the teacher, past the blackboard, right at the person trying to model his or her hair and generally confirm whether their own face has been replaced by that of a troll.  Then, of course, it was extremely handy to spy on people collected in the OAT (Open Air Theatre, where the cool kids gathered during break) unnoticed. Though talking to them from the window was a bit of a pain, like Juliet hanging out of her b...