Different

He sat on his bed, hugging his legs as close as he could to his chest. Maybe, he thought, just maybe if he held them tight enough he would stop breathing, an all of this would be over.
Why did he have to open his big, fat mouth? Till last week he was Adrian Cherian. Till last week he was one of the school's best football players. Till last week he had at least 3 friends who he considered his best, the kind who would never let him down. Then he started fancying one of them. It wasn't a girl either.
It started off with Adrian wanting to spend more time with Varun than the others. Wanting Varun all to himself. Wanting to impress Varun. But hey, that's normal. They were best friends after all.
Then Adrian caught himself thinking about Varun, and not just ordinary straight thoughts either. That's when he realised he was what he made fun of all the time, different.
What followed was a period of intense self-withdrawal. Adrian avoided talking to everybody, especially Varun. He was worried he would say too much. All his friends were worried about him, Varun included. What's wrong with you dude, they asked. He almost told them.
Then self-deprecation turned to justification. So what if he was not like the others? What was so wrong in being different? They would understand. They'd been his friends since the 6th standard. That was 5 whole years. Yeah, he'd heard them make gay jokes, heck, he'd even made them himself. But they wouldn't cast him out. Specially not Varun. Maybe... maybe Varun would reciprocate his feelings.
So he decided to come out of the closet. He told Varun what he'd become and of his feelings for him. Varun reacted like every adolescent homophobic teenager - with disbelief. "Are you serious man?"
Disbelief quickly turned into revulsion. He avoided Adrian as much as he could. Now Adrian was Gaydrian. Now no one passed the school's best midfielder the ball, for fear of getting too close to him. Now they didn't tell him about practice sessions.
Adrian returned to the present. At least his parents had been supportive. They understood. After Varun's rejection, he hadn't even tried making his other friends sympathise with his plight. Varun had taken to incessantly passing snide comments whenever Adrian was in earshot.
And the worst part was, Adrian continued to love Varun. His bruised heart continued to beat with the hope that Varun might one day care for him again, even if it was just as a friend.
30 Years Later
It never happened. Adrian changed schools the next year, wisely deciding never to reveal his sexual orientation. His parents did not talk about it, and neither did he. He graduated from college, to his friends he was a quiet withdrawn guy, who did not make a single friend. His parents did not bring up the question of getting married, and Adrian never did.
Varun grew up a popular guy, with loads of girlfriends along the way. He got married, fathered a pair of twins, and to everyone was the perfect middle-class husband. He never acted otherwise.
Now Adrian is 46 and alone, all because of a 16 year old teenager who once broke his heart. He never told his secret to anyone again. Nobody knew the real Adrian his entire life. Nobody but me, that is. Varun Malhotra.
I wish I'd told Adrian the reason I'd reacted with such hostility. Life would have turned out so differently for both of us if I had. Adrian had brought to the surface the fears I was having about being gay myself. I too, had increasingly become obsessed with Adrian. I never admitted to myself though, that it was anything more than a healthy friendship. When he told me the truth that eventful afternoon, I chose to walk away from it rather than embrace who I was. In Adrian I saw who I could become - the gay kid everyone made fun of. To protect myself from the same ridicule as Adrian, I spearheaded the anti-gay brigade against him. I never admitted my feelings about him to anyone, including myself.
In this world, it is better not to be different. You are crushed if you are.

Silent

He stands there hungry
Emaciated arms
Encompassing all he holds dear
His two children
Equally emaciated, equally hungry
They feed on love
Love for each other
That is all they have left
But it has been three days
Since rations have arrived
Stolen no doubt
By the very people who
Are supposed to deliver them
Well, he reasons,
Maybe those people
Have more children than he
It is understandable
Anything is justified
When you are hungry
So he stands there
With his children
Silent.

Chennai vs. Kolkata

I'm a Bengali girl who was born in Chennai and has lived all her life there (barring one and a half years spent in Kolkata) so I guess I have a little bit of an identity crisis. Kolkata is definitely the more happening, cooler city among the two; plus I have loads of friends there who are possibly even crazier than I am, so it is great fun to visit. Chennai is the calmer city. It's cleaner and much more developed than Kolkata.
So this post is about how sick it makes me when the folks from Kolkata make fun of Chennai. Yes, it's just joking, I understand. But I spent about 12 days there recently and I had to endure mocking of so-called "Tamilian" accents for all 12 days, so pardon me if I get mad about it. If it wasn't my friends it was my neighbours; although my friends weren't as bad as the neighbours. I don't need to worry about them reading this because they'd probably be too busy partying to ever go through my blog (the neighbours).
I'm very proud to be Bengali, I wouldn't have it any other way. I love my culture and I'm ashamed I don't know more about it. (I can't write the language; I can read it, extremely slowly though). But what absolutely disgusts me is how lots of north-Indians think they are somehow higher up the evolutionary ladder than south-Indian people. Well excuse me, but Kerala is probably one of the most developed states in India and Tamil Nadu doesn't come far behind either.
So what if Tamilians have a Tamilian accent? Dude, the Bengali accent isn't heights of cool either! So shut up, all of you!!!

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

P.S. - As I wrote this, in case you didn't realise, I was mightily ticked off.

Me Talking About Nothing.

I have this annoying mini-cold - not enough snot to actually let me blow my nose but just enough to make me sound like a hippo in distress when I try breathing through my nose. Augh.

I have to have a blood test. This is on account of how my hair's falling in cartloads and my mother said maybe I should get my thyroid checked, although I don't really think that's going to help anything. :(. So I'm writing this on an empty stomach. *rumble*.

The only consolation is that I get to have a Barista chicken sandwich that my mum saved for me when everyone went out yesterday (I couldn't as I was supposed to study... which I didn't), after the blood test.

The chicken sandwich is green. Blech. When I saw it I thought it had fungus growing on it but then no, I guess that's just style. Or pudina. =
----------------------------------------------------------
Okay, I wrote that 3 days earlier. I had to go then because the phlebotomist arrived. Just in case you're wondering, I am totally cool with blood. Okay you probably weren't wondering but I wanted to show off anyway :P. When I had dengue fever (pronounced deng-i by the way), I had to have like two needles stuck into my arm a day or something. Not to mention a totally cool IV drip for a week or so. I even took a picture of my swollen hand (on account of the fluids being pumped into me) with the IV drip, but that was on my mom's phone, and she's lost the USB cable that lets me transfer photos, so you guys will just not be able to see it. Tcha.

Oh, also in case you're wondering, there wasn't anything wrong with the thyroid. I'm just destined to go bald by the time I'm 20 or something. :'(. Lucky I had really thick hair till I was 12 or something, because otherwise I'd already be bald. My mum says it's the after-effects of the dengue, but I don't think so. But after the dengue it's certainly gotten worse. *Sigh*.

The mini-cold is still around, not escalating into a full-blown cold or just disappearing altogether. Have I mentioned that it is extremely, extremely annoying?

And the chicken sandwich was awesome. :D

Why am I rambling so much? Probably because I'm insane. And jobless, since the boards got over yesterday! :))))). Well there's this pesky little MCQ exam for 20 marks in Science tomorrow, but that is so insignificant it doesn't even matter! I'm all in celebratory mood. My parents restored all my privileges - my phone, my iPod etc. They even gave me my end-of-boards gift! A 10.1 MP Sony Cybershot babyyyyy!!!! My very first digicam! God knows I don't deserve it. I'm very, very, bad with gadgets.

My sister gave me her old digicam and I broke it. The iPod I mentioned in my "privileges being restored" line is my 3rd. Not that my parents would actually get me 3! They got me just one, for my 13th birthday. But I got water in it before my 14th birthday rolled out, so I got a free new one on my warranty. Then that one dropped and broke (who knew iPods were so flimsy?), so I was iPod-less for like more than a year or something. And then, totally out of the blue, these relatives got me one! It was/is a 4th generation Nano, described by Apple reviewers as the fun-nest iPod ever! (Apart from the Touch of course, because that is just God.) And it is! Except for the fact that the charge goes off very quickly. But apart from that, the graphics are just amazing.

Anyway, so like I was saying, I really don't deserve the camera or the iPod. But I have it, so that's what matters right? :P But I solemnly swear, right here on my blog, that I'll fully take care of these two. They're my babies!

The camera was great. It was lying on my table when I got back from my Board centre, all giftwrapped in silver. And my dad had stuck one of my Post-It notes on it. It went - "For Ria. For severe endurance during Boards!!! Love, Baba".

Haha, if it was for "endurance", then it should have gone to Baba! On account of how much I freaked him out during my boards for not studying. :P

Anyway, that's the end of my random rant. ;)
Toodles =)

Best Song EVER!

The purpose of this blogpost is to write about the best song I have ever listened to in my entire life. It's called Carnival of Rust and it's by a Finnish rock band called Poets of the Fall, and it is just a god song. There's this guitar solo at the beginning and at the end, which is like my favourite part of it, and it is amazingly haunting. The video of the song is a piece of art too, it's by a director called Tim Burton - and it is just as creepy as the song, it matches the tone of the song completely. I want to say more about it, but words will seriously not do it justice. I wish there was some way I could imprint the melody and Marko Saaresto's (the lead singer's) powerful voice on paper (or, as the case is, on screen), but all I can do is write about it. And maybe link you to the video on YouTube. I was so taken by this song, that I decided to download POTF's entire discography using BitTorrent - and I got 3 albums, plus one solo Marko Saaresto album. The solo album was crap, which went to show that POTF is not a one-man show. Marko's amazing voice would be nothing if it wasn't supplemented by Olli's guitar genius and keyboardist Captain. The songs in the 3 albums were, of course, amazing, but nowhere near Carnival of Rust quality. But Poets of The Fall has totally upped the list to become my favourite band, beating Savage Garden, Green Day and Panic! At The Disco. Other songs by it are also on my "Top Rated" playlist on iTunes. :)
Listen. And love.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRVrQsdWDds

Ten Most Droolworthy Guys - compiled by The Asm.

This is sort-of, but not completely plagiarized from Elfin Bank, blog of The Atu.
______________________________________________
(in no specific order - they're each as hot as the other)

1. Hrithik Roshan - That face, those abs and he's a family-guy? You've got to be kidding me! Jodhaa Akbar would have been such a yawn without him! I mean, I didn't even understand half the Urdu they spoke in the movie - my only respite was getting to drool over Akbar for 3 hours or so. Ah!

2. Jake Gyllenhaal - Well, I've only seen The Day After Tomorrow, and he was total eye-candy in it! I hear he's dating an older woman, I forgot who though.

3. Chad Micheal Murray - Again, I've only seen one of his movies, it being A Cinderella Story. My best friend told me the lead actor was a total hottie, and when I saw the cover of the DVD, I totally didn't think so. But man, was I proved wrong when I actually saw the movie!

4. Imraan Khan - Again, on the posters of JTYJN, he looked like a vampire (and I'm not talking Edward Cullen here ;), and he looked like he had a unibrow. But whoa, I was hooked when I actually saw the movie. He looked amazingly hot (and totally different from the chocolate boy we knew him as in JTYJN) in the trailers of Kidnap too.

5. Hugh Grant - Someone as hot as him does not deserve to have that sexy English accent thrown in! His accent is the hottest part about him, although the amazing good-looks don't hurt either.

6. Kaka - I wonder how I left him off till no. 6! He is simply the hottest guy I have ever seen, and he has that beautiful wife Caroline too! That is simply too unfair. How can too such beautiful people get married? What about the prettyness quota for the rest of us ugly ones then? They just had a kid - Luca. No points for guessing how gorgeous he's going to turn out!

7. Hugh Jackman - That's Hugh #2 on this list. People's magazine (or whatever it was) voted him World's Sexiest Man for a reason! Aussie accents usually do not appeal to me, but Hugh Jackman's so does! And that opening presentation he did at the Oscars was amazing! He looks so, so, hot as Wolverine in X-Men.

8. Bilawal Bhutto - What can I say? He's just got that sexy, brooding aura about him, don't you think? ;)

9. GOD - Oh man, how could I forget this guy when I was talking about hotties? I don't know his name, or anything else about him! He walked into our school to pick up his sister (I wish), or maybe his girlfriend, and he was about 20 and I saw him and I was sold. He came to pick up that girl for 2 days but I think I scared him off because of my continuous ogling, because he wasn't there on Day 3. :( =P

10. Rafael Nadal - Okay, I know I know he isn't exactly hot, but if niceness = hotness, then Rafa would beat even Hrithik man! And you didn't really think I'd write this without him did you? ;) <3!>

Weird.

Why can't I write short, witty posts? I was like, going through Atu's blog and Vid's blog and comparitively - my blog seems like such a yawn.
The End.



How was that? :D

Bombay.

I wouldn’t be Indian if I didn’t write about the Mumbai terror that shook my country for three days starting on the 26th of November. I know this is really late, considering it’s been nearly 4 months since it happened.
I was talking to my best friend (who incidentally lives in Mumbai) on the phone when her sister ran into the room yelling, “Bomb blasts in Bombay!” We, of course hung up immediately and went straight to the TV.
Of course, I wouldn’t even BEGIN to anticipate the drama that would unfold in the next 60 hours…
This terror attack, it wasn’t like the others, for me anyway. I was watching the news right from the start of the horrific siege, and I really followed it, right till the end, and I guess that was why this one really shook me. As I was watching the gory TV feeds, I was so ashamed of myself – why didn’t this sadness, this grief, reach me for the other gazillion attacks on my country? Have I become that jaded just because I live in India, where so many terrorist schemes take shape?
When I heard about the train blasts in Bombay and the Malegaon blasts and the Bangalore blasts, I just tutted in sympathy for a little bit and went back to whatever I was doing. But for the 26/11, the shock and sadness hit me hard. And I was super angry at whoever didn’t share the same level of empathy for the bereaved.
Some losers (and notice the plural… there were more than one) I have the misfortune to know actually made a joke of it. A joke! Of people’s deaths! What if it were their mothers or sisters out there in the Taj huh? Their dads getting shot in the gut?
And then I guess I realized I was being a hypocrite because I didn’t give too much of a shit earlier either, but atleast I didn’t laugh!
Why does this happen to our country? Sure, India is corrupt, money hungry and has one of the highest rates of illiteracy in the world. But so what? Does that mean we pay with our lives? No sin deserves this much punishment, this much grief. It’s just not fair.
What impressed me was that the politicians didn’t sink to playing petty blame games this time. And the soldiers, the policemen! It’s like I never truly realized their worth before this. I so completely salute them, and I am so grateful to them for saving so many lives.
This of course has worsened the ever-fragile relations between India and Pakistan – but that can’t be helped really. I pity Pakistan though. Because of the bloodthirsty violence of some of its people, the entire nation is looked at as a bunch of terrorists, which is completely untrue! Some Pakistanis did shed tears for the dead in the 26/11 massacres, while quite a few Indians didn’t. I have Pakistani friends, and they’re really nice people. Don’t brand the country on the basis of its worst citizens! And the poor Pakistani cricket team will be totally isolated from the cricketing world now that none of the other countries are willing to play in Pakistan because the Sri Lankan team got banged up. But hey, how is that the fault of the Pakistan Cricket Board? Not that I blame the other countries for bailing out though, because safety is the main priority. But having said that, I do believe Pakistan should be more assertive in wiping out the many, many terrorist camps that operate on its soil.
Back to the 26/11. Lots of news channels called Taj the “symbol of India.” And then I saw this article in a magazine that said – “The symbol of whose India?” Which is so true. And this attack was way more hyped and publicized than the earlier ones. Is that because the rich got hurt?
Anyway, pray for the dead and the bereaved family. Amen. :)