Which Calvin and Hobbes Character are You

http://www.quizilla.com/quizzes/result/100393/10410/

You're Calvin! You're imaginative and hyperactive. For the most part, you are an average six-year-old kid (except for your extraordinary vocabulary...) You have an imaginary best friend because most other friends your age don't really understand you.

(I think that's stretching it a bit far)

A few days ago, I found a few days-old pup mewling in a box, under a thyalagari, in the darkness while coming home. I like animals etc, like most people do, and I am not completely in love with dogs etc, though I really like them, and would actually like one if K and I set up house some day. I am generally greatly buoyed in this wish by K’s obvious rather more obvious wish for a dog. He talks of their pet Daschund Shabitri (they called him Shaboo, Shabi bhalobeshe), who would, (well, isn’t this a darling?) when the boy was a mewling infant, guard him when he had been given his oil massage and apparently left to sun on the dining table.
I brought the thing home somewhat instinctively. I was also curious, and probably a little glad to have such a young thing on my hands, even if just for the time being. I called PFA the next thing, because I knew they would take him, and that would mean that he would live.
Well yadda yadda, I brought him up to our flat, ma fed him, I got over my squeamishness and held him up by the scruff of his neck (it was flailing its miniscule paws) and put him in a clean shoe box. Frantic calls to people, to K, who suggested making him a bed of rags. When I did it, he promptly dug inside and buried himself underneath and fell asleep. The people who received my calls were all kind. Then, the PFA guy came and took him away.
He’s at their hospital, I went and saw him today, and people are asking to bring him home, or else she (it’s a she) might have a reduced chance of survival cause germs/infections abound in the hospital. Ma has thrown a fit after being told I want to bring her, she doesn’t know that I am so doubtful about it. But well, once again, it’s a wish, and a bit of curiosity, to have her, to play with her, to feed her and stuff. How hard can it be? It’s not so much guilt as dreaming how nice it will be.
I dunno what I’ll do, I might not even bring her. It will be an instinctive decision, probably. It was such a spirited thing, mane she didn’t have her mum, but she wasn’t scared, y’know, she was ever so inquisitive: think, she couldn’t even see, but she’d managed to stick her head out of that box, extricated herself out of it, and was going out for a small exploration of her surroundings when I came to her enclosure. I mean, I dunno, but this one certainly feels like it’ll live if there are people to love her, even if she doesn’t have the immunity you get from mother’s milk.

(And it was easy for one person to say it was a hasty decision to give her away to PFA. To not bother about infrastructure and pass judgement.)

i was going to feel really angry about k. i saw today's pages and they are really empty and lots of stories, and i saw the stories that are going, and most of them i like very much, and it seems like a handful of a good day's work. it might not be that enjoyable for those who have to sub it, but if you look at the pages now, you can't help but feel satisfied.
and yes, there are problems galore.
also, i am going to bishnupur this weekend or the next. haven't figured out a companion yet. i guess i can say people are welcome to join.

days that come to an end

O leaves on Tuesday. I have little idea of what to do after.

about trees

following the thread in https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=28397684&postID=5381586477227978588&pli=1

i thought of that too, that if it were being done with the permission of the authorities, you couldn't really do much, could you? but a) you have to let people know what is really happening, and what the rules are. and that rules are being grossly violated. most of us see trees with branches trimmed in so many places that we pass, but we don't know that there is actually part of an organised racket in the city. b) about taking action about it. when the tree outside my flat was being hacked off, i called up a reporter in my office who has been working this field and knows people high-enough in the hierarchy that he could make some calls to people who would ensure that the hacking was stopped. but i found that the guy who'd asked for it to be cut, had approached the local cpm goonda turned political honcho for permission and he's been given it.

the police came and eventually the forest dept officials too. but i recognise that they did it to begin with, because of the reporter's contacts. of course, none of this would have happened if i hadn't pushed both my reporter, and another actually: the guy who covers the area i live in and knew the thanar OC, to help me out. i haven't figured out yet what it will come to if the tree came in way of, say the politician honcho's real estate interests and he had to have the tree removed.

one effective tool that i see is to get it to the media. the media does only as much as it serves its own immediate interests, but this is one kind of story that papers still carry, as opposed to the version of events that people who've visited Singur will tell you.

and meanwhile, i do think we can go far by letting as many people as we can know about it.

and madhura, do you really care if people think you are overreacting? would you not do what you had to do cause people thought you were overreacting, or any other term they had for it?

Here

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

I was reading Supriya di's Novel and Modernity blog. It was extremely calming, the seamless flow of words about people in a book. Is it that in today's world, you have to learn to be happy by yourself, and never otherwise, the fragmented nature of modern existence etc..
I am listening to Indian Ocean, stuff that RIM had given me. Feels like I didn't hear before. Although it is more beautiful than not, my ear is aching a little from listening to it as loudly as I am. Yet that's the only way to listen to full-throated song, this one, anyway. I am hoping that sometime not very far into the late eve - early night, I'll tire myself out and feel at peace.

To begin with, may I say that Rock On is a horrible film. People often have reasons for liking a movie that have nothing to do with its merits. The film echoes things I remember, but well, that makes no difference. The story is, may I say, pathetic. Farhan Akhtar can act, and I loved the songs, but is it cause I nurture hidden wishes of being a groupie. Seen in the crowd of apparently ecstatic people in the audience were disenchantedly clapping extras. Heh.

I am so depressed, at the complete lack of flight, nothing, rien: it’s as if the world might not have existed and no difference would have been made either by living or dying. How can another person do so, do this? I could not have existed and the world would have been the same. And my room felt so dirty, unwelcoming for anyone except me, or anyone who would make it his/ her own. Where to from here, where can I escape?

Which fantasy, where inside my head, when all the fantasies have been explored and feel like ashes?? I wish I could take myself away to someplace where I would not have known myself.

In real life, the Adityas who go away as far as they can from what they loved don’t find it again so easily. I wish I could become another me like Aditya.

I feel so completely alone, I wish I could go away, go away.

I was awake through the night, after a three-hour sleep till 2. It’s 5.30 now, and light has awakened. In the nights, I feel free. I was watching Seven Years in Tibet, and thinking about, well, so many things.. It felt so light, and completely untied to any obligations. Why do people need drugs? For a fix of this? It was as if there was nothing you couldn’t do, nothing you couldn’t imagine, anyway. Dropped my plate of dinner, ma came along so kindly and took it away, and gave me whatever rice was left, I felt so broken at another thing going wrong in the course of the day. It was so nice, to be comforted like that, and the space to let one be: she didn’t yell at me cause I’d dropped food.
We had a fight of sorts, K and I, and I was indulging in all sorts of possibilities, of going away etc, combined with work ambitions, wishes if you like. And while contemplating dire possibilities, following them through, I thought, you know, that it was too much of a good thing to let go for this, at least. Not unless something happened that I had no control over.
The night gave over to morning, and I didn’t worry that I didn’t have enough sleep to see me through the next day, cause I didn’t have to go anyplace. That’s such a liberating knowledge. And looking at Brad Pitt as Heinrich Harrer walking down Lhasa streets in a distant shot, and of clothes, customs, and the stories about the Forbidden City that they seemed to talk about, I wondered if I would find myself doing that too.. that is, leaving what I was doing cause I didn’t like it, without something to fall back on, and look for something to do. I probably won’t, I might. I hope I do, without better back cover, though. In the mountains, there you feel free. There is something to this solitude, the knowledge of having nothing, or rather, of not having exactly that which you longed greatly for, that sets you free. There’s nothing to anticipate, and all experience comes without strings attached, implications.
And Heinrich Harrer found peace in a young boy, did he? Who was as much a reflection of his own self, as the son who he could not meet? It’s a curious tale, cause heroes are rarely so imperfect..
If I were to go far away, to indulge in those thoughts of mine again, would I welcome K back into my arms when I returned, and more importantly, would he?
It’s a beautiful morning, all the nicer cause I was awake as it came alive. I wish I didn’t have to sleep, that I could go on being awake. I want to sit down to a good bout of reading.

"I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going," Ledger said. He confided to the reporter that he took a prescription sleeping pill and, when that failed, took another.


I think he was lovely.

My horror world

It was peopled with the corpse of my father, my actual father, who was sick with his last illness, bending down to help me get something from the rotting body of the dead one. And a slit eyed wizened man who tried to kill with a chop of the hand, and whispering to someone in a hunched cupboard while trying to soak a thin book in water to make myself heard: that was a transient one. Nightmares within nightmares, knowing that I had to get through one to extricate myself from the other.
The nightmares of the awake life: believing things will be alright, dealing with silences like a wall, bloodied striking yourself against it repeatedly and pretending at the best of times that it’s nothing. God, I didn’t want to live like a grown-up this way. For the fear of loneliness, of leaving things behind….. P told me about a girl in New York State who calls up R asking him to talk to her for 10 minutes.
Will I marry in this belief, and the rest of life will be spent trying to unshackle myself and being afraid to walk away? It is so tempting at such moments to turn to him whose nirashokti you fear: to have your fears lovingly turned away.
P wrote a long time back that it was time I let myself fly, for it is time. I feel too afraid, believe me. I had hoped that someone would give me a push. And I have stood poised at the brink, waiting for years and years and years to take the final plunge…
And to see how things are, it seems like I could stand forever and become petrified in this eternal wait and nobody could care. Yes, we know nobody does care, but I don’t believe it, really.
I am afraid I will be the kind that will be unable to find peace with another. Cause none of the baubles of civilization seems to satisfy. Listen to me, yes. But if you’ve seen what flavour of happiness you like, once, nothing else will do.


I am afraid to leave, the city, this job, the trappings of this life, cause I don’t know if I will be good enough to make another. Also cause dunno if he will come there with me. Won’t. So am trying to stay as long as I can. Also hoping that some day I will find this festering compromise with life too unbearable and venture forth in desperation. I am hoping for my own desperation.

I was watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I thought of memories that were ordinary, trivial, that would surely be lost if I didn’t keep them away somewhere. This is of an afternoon just days ago when the boy lay on me, and he shifted his weight so that I gasped with absolute certainty, ebar ami more jabo. The boy is tall, you know, and I am just a midget.

When will there be a time when that afternoon will be lost, merged with countless afternoons past, and those made later? Will there be a time? The boy is beautiful, you know, quite like the Joel Barish of Clementine Krzinski.

I watched Stand by Me, and I can't wait to read the book by Stephen King. Oh god o god I want to watch My Own Private Idaho. And River Phoenix I love.

I am home, and today seems to have greater vestige of normalcy than yesterday. I was watching Wonder Years (all thanks to B), and the episode itself spoke about regularity, humdrumness. I thought of R in office, whose father died when he was a tiny kid. I thought of A and me, a bit of martyrs, consciously bearing our scars, and I thought what it must be like for him. His and his mum’s hardships must have been greater, and his sadnesses different, cause did he know what it was to have one, a dad, at all. What would it be like for his mother, to have lived alone all her life, bringing up her son the biggest thing she did: it seems an awfully long life when without the person to share it with, and yet, how do I know what it is for such women. It must be a different frame in which they recognize their happinesses. And R speaks of those times like telling a fairytale, asking us to imagine, what it must have been like. He speaks of a lovely, pampered, delicate boy, and a mother who did everything so he could have all he wanted, and well, actually pulled it through. He told me, us about all this a long time back, but I think, y’know, his happinesses would have been no different, from say, that of Kevin, as he sat around the dinner table, the sanctuary of home, with the securedness of what came after.

I am not quite sure why I am trying my damnedest to make myself crash.

It's gonna be 5 and I haven't slept. The back, I think I am pushing too far. I am, was working hard. I should rest, but it irritates me to no end to be told what I should do cause it's good for me, I want to be left alone, given what I want, and have the space to recover my rhythm at my own pace, not with dire threats of what will happen to me in the future if I don't do all that is good for me. And it doesn't matter, it's random, and it'll pass. Excuse me if I sound like Calvin.
There's little joy in this wilfulness, but it's as if one thing leads to another, and when things are not at peace, many things happen which you wouldn't want otherwise. It's just irritating, and it seems so soon that night has ended and it's light again. The past few hours went by so fast, it seems. And tomorrow, wake up feeling peeved, bathe, eat and run. Don't do anything you remotely like.

Met Shantanu after a long time. Pleasantest meeting with him if I may say so. Found him agreeing to things, and he looks comfortable for the first time, though he is bloated. He seems to be doing well for the first time, and the self -possessedness that comes of working hard came from him. He had to leave, too soon, it seemed. He takes good photographs, quite instinctively, it seemed to me. Not like he was conscious of using craft, which I liked.

What I really wanted to write

i went to subir dutta laboratory, then walked along lenin sarani to sealdah, looked in wistfully at all the old houses that now have squatters in them, starting from lawrence d souza home. there was a tiny tiny kid crawling on the street, lawrence d souza r adjoining barir shamne anekta khola jayga, an old man played football with three young ones. ratey jokhon phirchhilam, past the book fair that was shutting shop, there was the jilipi man counting up sales, and another cooking for the group, another washing up utensils. i wanted to sit around them. tokhon mone holo nothing would give me as much peace as sitting around them and listening to what they spoke. and there was this kid, he mans the ghugni stall, he was being sarcastic at his mother: sharadin dokaner shamne dariye thako, tarpor dekhbo. koto hajar hajar taka sales hochhe, and i wondered that he caled it dokan. for him, it was. and then, well, that he would move on to the next fair. did i wish i also went from place to place, that home was where i hung my hat?

Hello Goodbye reminds of college, towards the end, when I felt free, completely unencumbered.

I was walking through Lenin Sarani today. My camera was not working, so eventually I felt criminal. And I felt, perhaps for the first time, realized that what I was seeing today and couldn’t keep pictures of, I won’t see again, though I’ll pass the same houses, people even. But what I see won’t be the same, my mind, with that happiness, won’t be. The urgency I felt was the first, I do think.
And I went for Ironman, eventually. I am seeing Robert Downey Junior post-Zodiac, so I can’t help but like him a lot, really. But the movie was not really great as superheroes go. But never mind, I only went to see what RDJ was doing..
And then eventually having dinner of a sort with A, I felt so lonely, I dunno why. That life stretched out interminably, and that the dreams would not happen. It was so sad, like being grown up, as if. This kind of grown-up I don’t want to be, that takes occasional vacations with kids, and is fat and eating out at a pizza joint with nothing before or beyond it. That nothing stood for anything, didn’t lead to other things, like a complete limbo. I am glad to be home.

Central Calcutta was so beautiful today, and it was like it would never want to come and inhabit my heart, that was what I felt saddest about: about the stagnancy of passing the same place everybody, and it not making a difference to you, ever. It seems as if that is being grown up. And that grown up I don’t wish to be.

I am addicted to the Net. Not funny.

I went to get the trouser made today. The one taking the measurements asked where I’d gotten the material from. I told him the place, but not the shop or the price. He told me it was of very good quality, that you did not get this kind anymore.
I felt very sad, for the shop that will no longer be there, your sadness, all of yours, at its loss, and of what I fear might be lost to me too.

Last Movie You Saw In A Theatre:

Khoya Khoya Chand. My first at 89 Cinemas, if I may say so. Liked it very much too, the movie, and also, watching it with the boy wasn’t half as bad as I thought it’s be.

What Book Are You Reading:

The Opium Clerk, Kunal Basu. I like it very much. Very welcome variation from the usual fare dished out in the name of Indian bleeding writing in English.

Favourite Smells:
Smell of earth after rain, smell of impending rain.

Favourite Sound:

The boy’s voice, filled with kindness. One of my favourites, anyway. And yeah, O’s: the broken voiced aai, which I manage to hear even through crowds and loud noises. She hears mine too.
That’s it, I guess. I am not really a sound person. Don’t dig them much.

Worst Feeling In The World:
Feeling your energy thwarted. Fairly common occurrence.

What Is The First Thing You Think Of When You Wake?

Office, again!

Favourite Fast Food Place:

Café Coffee Day, Park Street, I am embarrassed to say.

Future Child’s Name:
I wonder. They’ll be nice names, though, I assure you.

Finish This Statement.

"If I Had A Lot Of Money I’d…"Travel

Do You Drive Fast?

Don’t drive yet.

Do You Sleep With A Stuffed Animal?

I could have, but by the time I got to know that you could do them, I was kinda grown up. Tried, a few times, very uncomfortable.

Storms-Cool Or Scary?

Very nice.

Favorite Drink:

Coke, lassi?

Finish This Statement, "If I Had The Time I Would ….."

I have time.

Do You Eat The Stems On Broccoli?

I do, on the few occasions I eat broccoli.

If You Could Dye Your Hair Any Colour, What Would Be Your Choice?

BLUE. Emphatically. Certainly.

Name All The Different Cities/Towns You Have Lived In.

Delhi and this. Bleeding Calcutta

One Nice Thing About The Person Who Sent This To You:

I picked it up. No one sent me it.

What’s Under Your Bed?

Shoes.

Would You Like To Be Born As Yourself Again?

Sure. How would I know what it is to be anyone else?

Morning Person Or Night Owl?

Night Owl. Definitely.

Over Easy Or Sunny Side Up?

Over easy, I am guessing.

Favorite Place To Relax:

My room, O’s room.

Favorite Ice Cream Flavour:

Not quite sure.

You pass this tag to –No one, thank heavens. When you read other people answering questions about themselves, you think, ooh, it must be so interesting to write all about yourself, even answering questions, as if someone were really so interested. Then you sit down to write it and it’s a bloody pain, and you feel like answering them all dumbly, cause the questions are so stupid. Cummon, how does it matter what ice cream flavour I like, or whether I am a morning person or night owl????
This one was a relatively easy one, and I think it’ll prevent me at least for a while from answering bloody tags.

It's time to leave.

I so want to be gone.

Pushkar, a melee of people and colour, Hyderabad, hot and lonely and lots of money, Bombay, scary that I'll fall in love with it, Delhi, the place you have to go. Trekking, mountains, hope, strength. Writing, my only hope. A lover, everything. Absence, acceptance. Friends, relief. Parent, presence. The world, fear of ending. Pictures, beauty. Body, truth. Death, incomprehension.

Laughing jackass

listen:

http://aviary.owls.com/kookaburra/kookaburra.html

anglerfish: ugh

How anglerfish find mates and why:
When it is mature, the male's digestive system degenerates, making him incapable of feeding independently, which necessitates his quickly finding a female anglerfish or else dying. In lieu of continually seeking the vast abyss for a female, it has evolved into a permanent parasitic mate.
When he finds a female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads, which release sperm in response to hormones in the female's bloodstream indicating egg release. This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available.
It's kinda unbelievable, the hideosity, also the remarkable adaptation, but the hideosity too.

Once I get Broadband, I can upload my photographs on Picassa (not Flickr, that’s for the good people), can surf, go to Orkut, blog, find out about infrastructure bonds……prattle prattle prattle

very very interesting

Several swan species exhibit lifelong homosocial behaviours, and the same phenomenon can also be found in a number of other waterbirds, notably geese and flamingoes, where it serves as a flexible life strategy.
In swans, the pair is the central social unit. The birds reinforce the unit with frequent preening and sex. Should one die, the other will usually live out the remainder of its life alone. The pair builds nests, raise cygnets and defends a territory. Two cobs, being bigger and stronger than a cob and a pen, can hold down a larger territory, and provide their cygnets with more to eat.
Such same-sex pairs represent a major fitness bonus to a pen, and pens without partners will seek out these couples, have sex with one or other of the cobs and lay eggs in their nest. She is then chased off, not being a part of the pair, and the cobs raise the cygnets themselves. Having access to more food the brood have up to ten times the survival rate of a brood with a heterosexual swan couple. From an evolutionary point of view, this is a very rewarding strategy for the cobs as well.
This situation only holds true as long as a nest and a territory is in short supply. The two males will have a fitness loss in that they (1) have no guarantee they are the actual fathers of the cygnets (not being bonded with the female) and (2) will anyway have to split reproduction between them.
A same-sex lifestyle will be advantageous in some situations, but not in others. However, having a partner is a requisite for building a nest and keeping a territory, and an opposite-sex partner may not always be available when forming pairs. Thus, the ability to form a male pair is a normal part of the Black Swans social behaviour and an example of a flexible life strategy in the species.
From Wikipedia

Lyrebird

The pic is of the Superb Lyrebird

During the early 1930s, a male lyrebird, called "James", formed a close bond of friendship with a human being, Mrs. Wilkinson, after she had been offering food to him over a period of time. James would perform his courtship dance for her on one of his mounds which he had constructed in her backyard — and he would also put on his display for a wider audience, but only when Mrs. Wilkinson was one of those present. On one such occasion, James' performance lasted for forty-three minutes, and included steps to a courtship dance accompanied by his own tune — and also included imitating perfectly the calls of an Australian Magpie, and a young magpie being fed by a parent-bird, a Eastern Whipbird, a Bellbird, a complete laughing-song of a Kookaburra, two Kookaburras laughing in unison, a Yellow-tailed Black-cockatoo, a Gang-gang Cockatoo, an Eastern Rosella, a Pied Butcherbird, a Wattle-bird, a Grey Shrike-thrush, a Thornbill, a White-browed Scrubwren, a Striated Pardalote, a Starling, a Yellow Robin, a Golden Whistler, a flock of parrots whistling in flight, the Crimson Rosella, several other birds whose notes his audience were not able to identify, and the song of honey-eaters (tiny birds with tiny voices), that gather in numbers and "cheep" and twitter in a multitudinous sweet whispering. In order to mimic the honeyeaters' singing faithfully, James was obliged to subdue his powerful voice to the faintest pianissimo, but he contrived, nevertheless, to make each individual note of the soft chorus audibly distinct. Also included in James' performance was his perfect mimicry of the sounds made by a rock-crusher at work, a hydraulic ram, and the tooting of motor-horns.

From Wikipedia

David Attenborough's video of the lyrebird:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3433507052114896375

Black-hooded Oriole, Oriolus xanthornus

I saw a Black Hooded Oriole today at Jadavpur University. At the hem of the Engineering maath. I so wish I had the camera, and it was so close that even with my limited zoom, I’d have got a good shot, what with the bright light and all. Wikipedia says they are shy creatures, so perhaps I am lucky I saw one at all. It sat on a branch right above my head and chirrupped, then took off. Gliding up and down in a wave across to the other side of the grounds.
Also heard one other bird sitting right inside a baby eucalyptus. Krrruu Krrru, that kinda thing. I actually even saw the rear half of the bird, long black tail and white underbelly, it seemed big and gawky, yuuuk! I was looking around a tree, when a dove swooped out of the tree and flew off. Oof, I was so surprised I jumped!
Yennyway, I am putting up an emni picture of a black hooded oriole so one knows what it is. It’s a beauty.

Feel very bad. Is it wrong to ask for minimum decency? And is this the behaviour, the legacy of conduct we will pass on to the following generation? I wish I could up and ante and just go. For there are some things you care about, while the rest you can live with.

Feel very bad. Is it wrong to ask for minimum decency? And is this the behaviour, the legacy of conduct we will pass on to the following generation? I wish I could up and ante and just go. For there are some things you care about, while the rest you can live with.

I was going through this post of Oli’s and I remembered how we’d gone to watch a show of The Divine Child. Alliance Francaise organised it, and it happened at Rabindra Sadan, I think, in first year. It was summer and I think I was quite thoughtless, then. Mane, no deep cogitation went into my actions, and glad for that. I remember it for one, cause the director called it The Divin (as you’d pronounce diving) Child. And there were these scenes: the play is about this child that refuses to leave its mother’s womb when it finds out how terrible the world outside is. And there was a scene where the father of the child has sex with the woman whose carrying the child, can’t get rid of it, and at that, there was a wave of embarrassed laughter through the hall. It was raucous, I guess, and I remember the boys in front of us who laughed the hardest. Were they French students? Perhaps. These are memories, hot sultry afternoons: breathless, meaningless. It is only sometimes that I find the energy that was in those days in the days now.
I am reading Eldest now. My nights and days are being spent trying to finish he book. Note, it is summer now, my favourite time of year. K and I shifted my bed to my room, the first time in seven years. I am pretty settled now: the computer AND the bed in a single room. And I wonder in passing sometimes, how different things were when that bed used to be in that room.. And were they so different really? I yearned for ownership, then. That the room would be stamped mine, now no one says that I can’t stick up what I want on the walls. I am quite agreeable to sharing the wardrobe with ma.
I plan to do up the room a little, whatever my meagre imagination permits. Oli suggested photographs, and I want a lampshade that I’ll hang up, and on summer nights, I’ll close the door that links the room to the rest of the house, light the lamp, open the baranda door, and enjoy bliss.
Je ne regrette rien, goes the Edith Piaf song. I don’t know how to regret, not quite. And I feel clenched today, and it is yet summer.

Victoria Crowned Pigeon of New Guinea

Kakapo

The ancient, flightless Kakapo is the world's rarest and strangest parrot. It the only flightless and nocturnal parrot, as well as being the heaviest in the world, weighing up to 3.5 kilograms. The birds live in New Zealand, an island country which had virtually no mammals living on it for millions of years. It was a place inhabited by birds and reptiles. The only types of mammal were two species of bats. The Kakapo did not learn the defense mechanisms to combat or escape mammalian predators. This made the parrot very vulnerable when new animals started showing up. The arrival of Polynesian peoples thousands of years ago, of Europeans in the 1800's, and ultimately the pets and livestock they brought with them resulted in the massive decline of Kakapo populations from hundreds of thousands to a mere handful of birds. Mother kakapo feeding her chick. Once common throughout the three main islands of New Zealand, there are now approximately 62 Kakapo left. These remaining birds have been relocated to six predator free island habitats, where the birds are relatively safe and have been breeding!
from www.kakapo.net/en/

this here is a coppersmith barbet. it's vague, quite criminal, that, but that it's a barbet will you deny? beautiful beautiful bird. outside my window.
It's call goes knuk knuk knuk, like a hollow tin being beat. It's whole body dances to the sound, like well, it's doing a dance. It's absolutely enchanting. I also think there's another coppersmith in that tree there dehors my window. They are so lovely dear, mane I am just so happy, quite senselessly.

Kokil outside my house.

i'm bored eeeeeee. who knows what witticisms are? am also having mutton biriyani from Saina. it's very hideous, you know. but i really don't care. cause i am going to concentrate on writing two inconsequential stories, one, a tiny one, will be a work of art. yech!

Wilson's Bird of Paradise

This is what I was telling O about, of the same thing in Margo Lanagan's Perpetual Light. It's amazing, the bird, and so utterly beautiful and dainty. Just for the record, though, all Birds of Paradise taste very bad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmmp3wrf9gg

This is a Southern Cassowary. Hideous bird, but wondrous too. It comes after the ostrich and the emu in size. Look at the casque.

And see this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0wsiLWLQLU I mean, I know, but still you'd think that people might look.

I feel very sick all of a sudden, pukish etc. I want to leave, not be stuck to this desk or the security of people to hold my hand when I need to. Contrary to what O says, you might not have another person to reflect yourself into even if you love. You might want to, kintu it’s just way better not to yearn if it ain’t happening. It’s like being lulled into this cushiony place. It’s no good, you must keep your distance. You can’t hope that another will be the fount of your joy.

The caption says "blue tit exercising". In all seriousness.

Life’s fucked, yeah baby but what’s
new?
Kaku has left. Something else also happened today, I think. I am so
tired, but I wish I were always this way for a long time. I can’t think and I
can’t be afraid. I wish I could be free.
Or, ooo, wonders, can I actually be
happy?
I wish you would be okay but I don’t know how much it matters
anymore, my wishing, empty wishes, empty tempty pempty 30 year-old, twenty five
year old, bumping, dumping, tumpking along, all the old thoughts, and where do
they go…
I was reading Chatwin, Brucos Chatwinos. And I read English August
and enjoy going insane. Hardly, anyway. So the barbet came yesterday morning and
we were very happy, he and I, me and I. I even had a video of it. And didi is
having a baby and C got married, and I am an old king bus riding twinky in the
sea.
Oli came and lit up my day, and we both stood at one Katapukur, under a
dusty sky and lots of trees and yellow sun bursting with the promise of summer,
and I dreamed of jholas and dusty streets. And I am looking up armadillos now.
Merry aye?
There’s a bastard that goes aye, aye. Hate him
bloody.

Our Camay is getting married tomorrow. And we wished for joy and fun and seasons in the sun.
She is the first of our lot, and it’s a pleasant sort of thinking to be surprised at the fact. Who knows what it is like to be married, and why does the world want to tear away the picture in your head and tell you that life is brutal and things are not as rosy as you want them to be? does not matter, cause I think they are rosy anyway.
Misswholeworld is the id of someone. And I really rather love it, mane there’s this completely honest no holds barred self absorption in it although it is so corny. And on the other, this deep deep yearning I find for everything out there separated from you by the transparent film of your indecision, incompleteness: no Hamlet but a fool.

I would let anything happen to let this stay, or rather push it to the worst end it might. Or the worst that could happen to me. Then I would sit amid the destruction, the pieces, and laugh. I wouldn’t have chickened out. I will have killed myself trying.
But this is all in my head, aye.

The Torment Of Existance Weighed Against The Horror Of Nonbeing.

Rules:1. Put any music player (like Windows Medias Player, Winamp, iPod) on shuffle/random mode2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.3. You must write the name of the song no matter what.
It's a hell of a lot of hard work shala.

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY?" YOU SAY?
No surprises (Radiohead)
Heh heh, it’s probably what I am most likely to say.

2. WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Because the world is round, it turns me on (The Beatles)
Perhaps.

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Exit Music, Radiohead.
Wake... from your sleep
The drying of your tears
Today.. we escape
We escape.
Not necessarily. Actually, not at all.

4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Climbing Up the Walls (Radiohead)
Actually, today is one of those rare days I don’t.

5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
The Mysterious Murder of Christian Tierra’s L (Steve Vai)
Yeah right, sure, and then I’ll grow pumpkins on the vacant lot behind my house.

6. WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Electioneering (Radiohead)
I will stopI will stop at nothing
Say the right things
When electioneering
I trust I can rely on your vote.
A bit of that, yes.

7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
A Little Help From My Friends (The Beatles)
Yeah

8. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
When the Levee Breaks (Led Zep)
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break,
When the Levee Breaks I'll have no place to stay.
Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan,
Got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home,
Oh, well, oh, well, oh, well.
Don't it make you feel bad
When you're tryin' to find your way home,
You don't know which way to go?
Yeah

9. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Dear Prudence (The Beatles)
No no, not really, no.

10. WHAT IS 2+2?
Karma Police (Radiohead)
Karma police, arrest this man
He talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge
He's like a detuned radio

11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Strawberry Fields (The Beatles)
Yes

12. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Lucky (Radiohead)
Pull me out of the aircrash,
Pull me out of the lake,
I’m your superhero,
We are standing on the edge.
Yeah, that

13. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Octopus’ Garden (The Beatles)

14. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Answers

15. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Die to Live (Steve Vai)

16. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Let it Be (The Beatles).
Hihi

17. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Four Sticks, Led Zep.
Oh, Baby, it's cryin' time, Oh, Baby, I got to fly. Got to try to find a way, Got to try to get away, 'Cause you know I gotta get away from you, Babe.
NO, if I ever dance

18. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Here, There and Everywhere, (The Beatles)

19. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Going to California (Led Zep)

20. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Right.

21. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Stairway to Heaven (Led Zep)

22. WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
Paranoid Android (Radiohead)
A calls me that occasionally with affection.

I am fucking tired of this. Harami jotoshhob

The sterile wanderer

Nothing to hope for. In fact, it is the only way to be. I can’t take this anymore I can’t I can’t I can’t. I wish I were alone. Then I would be sharp, cause I’d have only me to fall back upon. This passive dependence, sometimes answered, sometimes inutile, makes you blunt, impotent. There’s this woman, actress called Franka Potenta: Franka the powerful. Franka, lovely name. I wish there would be this violent rupture that would force change. I am completely unanchored, suddenly I dunno what to do. The weather as usual brilliant, sunlight and freedom, tinged with rancid despair. The sharp taste of rancid despair. I think I’ll try this tactic now: I’ll let things get as bad as they possibly can, then when I can’t take it anymore, I won’t hafta be responsible for my actions. Maybe then I will be free?

I just discovered that there has been a marginal increase in the number of people who read my blog. At this moment, anyway. Toh amar khoob phurti hoyechhe. Mane, I can’t write copious reams, situated from within a comfort zone, right? In fact, I don’t really want to write, I feel quite comfortable to just be, or that perhaps, hmm, things are too much in a tumble for them to be articulated. You need for them to settle. Anyway, the Amrica-residing uber yuppy, short fella is going back to home. To his work and snow, and to look outta his office at a very large parking lot, I suppose. Mane, I am not saying it’s the only thing he does, far from it.
Anyway, so while walking with him, I also met S at Oxford, with, well, S, Saptarshi, whatthehell. And P. and I was glad how I cldn’t say. Shiny happy faces, like. You would be happy in their happiness. And we were meandering in my aimless way through what seems like oft-traversed streets. And I had ice-cream, bad throat, cough blah blah notwithstanding. B says I’ve read too many books and so am screwed up. I am not for a moment admitting that as a possibility, but I mean, that’s a thought too, right? That someone thinks. I was reading August today, book I’d brought for him. And I noticed that Ogu was 24, what I am now. And I’d wondered while buying the book whether had liked the book through eyes not equipped to discern, but it was, you know, what it had always been: one of those books which are right up my alley, like The Outsiders.
Somewhere in the book, August says that you realise that not even your crisis has the dignity of being unique. I remember it from the time when I was in 2nd year, it had seemed spoken by a grown up then, and what I felt seemed to be same as a grown-up’s life. Now, Ogu feels like an adolescent and his angst that too. A been there done that kind. Or something I will not, a bit of regret. I will not be lost in the so-called Indian heartland, and it’s not dry and dusty seen through a stoned haze as Agasyta’s was, just perhaps endless struggle and bits of epiphany, familiar high drama cause it’s mine.
You know how I feel right? How both things add up to the same? I am happy, really happy. Glad to have things the way they are. And I want to write so much more, just here, but can’t?

I feel terrible. Do I lead people on only to disappoint? But I am only the way I am, you know? When did I promise great things? Or am I am a disappointment to myself, that I can do exciting things, but deliberately restrain myself, as it were? Why do I come close to people at all? We are crowded islands on an open sea. I wish we stayed that way.

I had an awesome day today, as this guy would call it. I was glad to only be on the road, walking, working out energy, that I grow stronger the harder I work. It was "awesome", and the things you fear recede to the back of your mind. Walking is indeed very comforting. I wish I eventually walk alone, that I choose the way and go alone.

I don’t think I have been in a juncture like this before, but I seem to come up against them ever so often now. I doubt if I shall ever have a family. I don’t think I can stay this way. I don’t think it has much to do with the job, but more like what I have become in the past few months. It’s killing me from inside. Must be this ma went through for so many years, I don’t quite know. What to do, I wring my hands in despair, and wait for redemption, release. If there is dying in the head, I am living it, living it. I have little left. And someone seems to be waiting in the wings waiting for me to turn into exactly what I fear to be. Oh God oh God, what despair, what is this what is this?

uhoohoohoo, ki raag..

blue-breasted kingfisher

It is comfortable to know there is nothing to look forward to and quietly rot in hell. There is indeed nothing to lose then. And when you are gone and done with it, you can always get up and start afresh. It helps then if you are alone, but it does not matter. You are alone anyway when you are this way. I like that.