and thus the long awaited brother-sister road trip finally happened

Everything else took a back seat for these past 7 days.

Yes, all you jealous ppl, I had a fantastic brother-sister-road-trip-of-sorts. The destination wasn't fancy by any means, but there was a comfy house tucked away in a suburb of Tamil Nadu. my uncle's place. our favorite vacation retreat.

My favorite parts from the trip?
*EVERYTHING! EVERY SINGLE MOMENT!

*the lure of the train. [you know i love them!There's a gypsy in me that LOVES roads,wheels,winds,traveling and the whole package about road trips]

*my favorite cousin/brother for company.

*sharing the music [Than ta naaaa!!!!!!!!{kaminey} for one]

*Kite Runner. [my choice for on-the-move read. Bro had "The Broker"-John Grisham] i swear i almost cried thru several parts of it.

*making acquaintances on the train. i chose not to ask their names though, what's the fun if you can't add some imagination to all those friendships you made?!

*all those late-night movies and laughing at tacky old Tamil movies. [no offense meant!]and throw in the bits where we fought over the remote like we were kids.[never mind that we are both way past the age to fight like kids!!]

*and add to that the fact that we two bought a whole box of chocolates to go with the tv watching. munch,munch,munch.

*THE Shopping. ohhhhhhhh, the shop-all-day at Coimbatore!

*Uncle lent me a book of his, the one which he hadn't parted with in all of the 20 odd years of owning it, yet. And I'm the lucky girl who gets her hands on it. The book?
Between Ourselves: letters between mothers and daughters.
*Him saying that I was going to be his heiress. No, not money. But to his VAST collection of books. Think of every masterpiece, memorable books and all those good books- he's got 'em all in his shelves.
And I'm going to inherit them all!!!!!!!
-------------
I don't care if I don't actually get those books. Just the idea that he thought me important enough to leave his precious books with... that's the best part of it.

*The food. We dined out virtually every day. Went to many of the well known South Indian restaurants around there.And I have tasted some of the best veg food, plus discovered how spicy the "dragon chicken" dish was. Yum!

And the best-best part of all? That bonding time. With the best uncle in the world and my aunt and,most importantly-
with the best cousin in the whole wide world.

Beyond sharing music,books,movies,chocolates and some sizable portions of good television watching [which would include NDTV, Nat Geo as well-IF you're wondering what i meant by good television watching]
and some dumb fights,
and 'fessing up on past relationships [read-ruined relationships],
our shady records of shady vices,sins and our dealings with:
Stuff-considered-taboo-in-our-family;

i know I have a wonderful brother of a lifetime.
He's always been so good; despite me being one big jerk of a sister to him. :D





The part I didn't like-

*Eating prior to long journeys makes me queasy, for some mysterious reason. On the other hand, when I travel on an almost empty stomach, I'm so good!

Maybe I'm just being psycho.


-this shot taken from Flickr

Uber happyness! [with some streaks of anger]

I'm back, I'm back, I'm soooooooooooo back! And awesomely happy too! :)just got my results out and guess what?
I'm a winner!
a champeen'!!!

First rank of my university!

I'm just so pleased I made it thru,since we had a hard time with this course.So, if that was the best feeling, things get euphoric now,cos my closest friends both bagged the second and third ranks!!

Congrats Namitha(2nd) and Vinaya(3rd)!!!!!!!!
talk abt keepin' it within the family! *chuckle!

felt better than best with the flood of congratulatory phone calls and gifts- add to that, dad's wish granting,"Ask for whatever you want, thou shalt get it!"[not so Shakespearean when he asked what I wanted, but u get the point!]

so where do the angry streak come in? for one thing-our result has come hell late. plus the last dates for admission to SEVERAL, no, almost ALL possible universities has closed down already. since one needs their mark list for applying for admission to just anywhere, the Big News got dimmed just by some watts or volts (sorry, I loved my Physics classes, but can't remember which is what now). So there's all this frustration and irritation cos they [*gasp] HAVE NOT YET PUBLISHED OUR RESULTS. me and my frnds got prior info abt our results thanks to our ranks.

damn my university for playing with everyone's results.
and all praises and thanks to God for such happy news! :D
even better feeling since it's been raining non-stop here.


ps- anyone got ideas what I should ask dad to get for me? I'm thinking abt a jazz cd. suggest some good artistes. or suggest a nicer gift!

Ain't I awfully happy to be back in bloggersville?
Aye!

The beautiful and the secular

I begin with the beautiful aspect of last week. And it feels bizarre to say that that good, wholesome peaceful feeling in me and a lot of other Keralites, was created in the first place by a death.

And not just some usual death. Last week, one of Kerala's finest bi-lingual writer died.
Kamala Surayya. A strong woman, and the epitome for secularism. She was born into one of Kerala's most established families. One that was amongst the founders of a leading newspaper. She was born into an upper caste Hindu family and later on in life converted to Islam. That created a huge chaos back then in Kerala. She was under tremendous pressure from several to take back her decision and got infinite threat calls and all.

Anyway, that's not the point. The charm of all this was how gracefully her children accepted her decision. So there she was. A converted pious Muslim living under the same roof with Hindus. No ill-will, no bitterness.

And when she died. All her family, her Hindu children and her2 adopted Muslim sons. all of them together offering prayers together, shoulder-to-shoulder, praying for her.

Isn't it beautiful?

That this happened at the very time when there is so much fights happening in the name of religion?

So what if I'm Muslim and you happen to be a Hindu or Christian or Parsi or heathen or anything?

As long as we understand that beneath all this difference, we are all just the same. What matters?

So what if there are all those fanatics imagining themselves to be oh-so secular? We can show them the way and show them what true secularism is. Like this one incident.

All we have to do is put some effort into reaching out and being there for others. Don't bother what their race is, what their religion is or anything. Because in the end, nothing else matters, ya know?

Reaching out, with lots of hope for a much more happier,stronger,safer and secular India,
Raphael. I dont give a damn what god you believe in, I just love you all!

Entre nous

There comes a point in my life once in a while, when I doubt the things I'm passionate about, and sincerely care for. Like blogging.
You might have noticed that I haven't blogged for almost a month now. And you will DEFINITELY notice that this is a looooooong post,so either you bear with me or well, you always have the option of not reading. [oh,sad, poor me!]

And who would have thought I had end up NOT blogging with so much free time?! There was so much happening with me after all. Loneliness;
facing the imminent future;
understanding how much friends mean to me;
how much materialism counts in my life-but I can do without;
trying to detach myself from cluttered and complicated emotions;
trying to make sense of relationships- the conventional,traditional ones AND the unconventional, free-styled ones-the ones to which you can't give a name but are significant anyway.


So what happened to me? Guess all too much of me-time I got didn't exactly translate to constructive blogging or even make me a better person. hell, I don't even have much of a tolerance yet for things I don't like.

All that I did was waste my time, almost. Cos the one good thing I did do was start to take driving lessons. I feel sooooo goood abt it! Plus I watched a lot of good movies and dramas thanks to cable tv. yay!

RELATIONSHIPS

Anyways, I wanted to make sense of my myriad relationships. as in- family, friends, non-friends, everything. I have done a teeny post on how I wanted to trade some junk members in my family for friends instead. Seriously, am I supposed to really like you just because you happen to be my relation? No!

Just the same with friends, I can't exactly say how much I love one friend more than another because in one way or another they are all important to me.
This one brings wisdom and sense to my life[vi].
Then there's my singing/ harry potter maniac partner-[vai].
another darling brings out the nastiness in me to the surface-in a sane way, yep-that's my soul-sister-in-mean-thoughts [N].
Then there are the innocence, sweetness, feminity, freakiness elements.
And there's her, without whom I'm practically lost. She helps me with numbers,-if i'm more specific-money matters. cos trust me, I'm kinda bad with numbers.

Funny thing is- I'm in awe of numbers. They're fascinating and I love them-from a distance. The closer I get to them, the more mysterious and complicated they become to me.Just can't handle 'em!

Then there are these fascinating relationships totally based on one aspect of life alone. Sometimes it's music, it's movies, travel, my Korean-drama-obsession, people, books, etc.

Do I have to give names to each and every relationship in my life? Is it necessary that I have to give expression to how I feel about people I love? Isn't it enough that we understand each other, we share something in common or maybe something in difference, and that we complement each other in the weirdest ways?

why should we go with the convention of giving words to every single emotion we feel? sometimes isn't it easy to just let things get tangled up and complicated? why handle things? whoever wanted us to handle things? maybe these things were supposed to remain like this, entangled in knots and knots of incomprehension!

but when you let things be the way they are, there's always the danger of relationships becoming static and un-living. which is why, it's always better that you reach out to people who are different from you,whom you can't understand- then there is always a challenge, every conversation is an excitement, every moment together is full of life.

related to this, I will quote part of a narration i heard on a korean drama. it goes like this,

"It's strange. Even a few days ago, the words 'I can't understand you' carried a negative meaning. But now holding her, whom i can't understand a bit, I find those words appealing. Because we can't understand, we can talk more.
Because we can't understand, all our senses stand on end.
Just because we understand, doesn't mean we love.
We learn one by one.



It has been too much for a post, so I'll save up the rest of my ideas for the next post. Yes everyone who might have noticed that I haven't been blogging in ages,

I'm back!