bad hair day number three.

my hair has a mind of its own - and a mulish, willful, malicious mind at that. today i had to suffer tendrils pointing at all the directions on the compass, and some more. i'v tried oil, serum and prayers. nothing works. my own personal purgatory.

the day i wash my hair, i have to walk around with the disquieting feeling that a voluminous, dark, hairy cloud is following me about. i quite literally feel under the cloud on shampoo days.

the next day is worse. much, much worse. then, i look like medusa. (not so bad, eh? rather a glamorous ol'girl, i always thought.)

life would not have been so difficult, inspite of all this if i were not cursed with a pest of a brother who thinks it is funny to take potshots at my crowning glory.

putty in my hands

everyday catastrophes apart;

clay workshop today.
it was fun, but it did shatter one illusion i'd carried for a looong time - getting one's hands all gooey with clay is not much fun if one does not have patric swayze around. then of course, it is an entirely different matter.(or does one have to look like demi moore too? that would be a bit too much to ask for.)
i made among others, a bug eyed snail, an equally bug-eyed fish, a tortoise/turtle and an octopus who must indeed be one of his kind-all his arms are of different sizes and thicknesses. they all have one thing in common,though -all of them seem idiotically happy. maybe the eyes have something to do with it. esp the snail. it looks particularly imbecile-like - like the idiotic offspring of an unhappy snail couple.
will post pictures once they are dried and painted.

gorefest

just finished reading elizabeth kostova's 'the historian'.

very enjoyable. almost gothic in the terror department. one will almost forgive stoker the dracula influx into pop culture, if it in any way inspired this book. it is both literary and entertaining at the same time. kostova creates atmosphere admirably. mountains, monastries, architecture, food, travel, east european countries, filial love, the impact of the iron curtain, religions and the superstitions they foster, and above all, the power of evil are all delt with, with a wonderful acuity.maintaining the suspence through such a long book cannot be easy,that too in one's first book, but she manages to capture one's attention and hold it. all the research -ten year's worth- is put to great use.there are the occassional, lovely turns of phrase.a very compulsive read. rather in the league of 'the rule of four'.


went rakhi shopping with shraddha today. just the right thing to do when u have a huge assignment to submit tomorrow and u haven't yet done a thing. when facing deadline, shop!

gutter poetry

hold your breaths - an original creation.

rythm's haiku -

"coackroach
struggling to stay alive
overflowing gutter."

i should probably drown myself in some gutter too.
(and to think it was 'edited' to this from
"an old pond
a frog jumps in
stillness disturbed.")

that said, i now have multiple deadlines to meet. at this rate, they'd find us all dead in a line in no time.

oh by the way, im going to start teaching the detective genre to my class. this should be fun.

Shikha is threatening to strangle himalay. why? well, Because.

the other day, he did what he is best at - he lost his little book which was to go into his evidence file. again. and again. and again.
he seems to have a special kind of genius for this kind of thing. quite inhumanly superhuman, the way he manages to lose, misplace, tear, drip water over, drop snacks over, and generally destroy utterly the papers we most fervently wish wouldn't be subjected to his evil genius. (this is one of those instances which make me feel almost nice - almost, mind - about shifting to grade 6.)
to continue,
shikha found him lurking near the waster paper basket engaged in his favorite occupation (what else?) - sharpening his pencil to a stub. when demanded that he produce the little book, the little devil pronounced he had lost it.
of course, it is not the first (or last!) time he has lost anything. but to someone new to his charms, it could be heartburn-inducing. no wonder his mom looks as if she might drop dead any minute. this guy is a surefire health hazard.

did i mention somewhere here that he is quite in love with me? in case i haven't, now you know. he had been after my life for a while now, demanding my address and email i.d. he managed to corner me near the bus last friday. i predicted that he would lose the scrap of paper with my email i.d. on it in no time. miracle of miracles! he hasn't yet, and loses no opportunity to remind me he still has it.
i'm now having to eat humble pie.

hp7 atlast

i just got the HP7(that's Harry Potter 7 for the uninitiated) today!

Read 2 chapters while gulping down some snacks, drinking some scalding coffee, tying my shoelaces, combing my hair and wearing my jacket (quite gymnastic of me,what?) prior to rushing to school for the sadela DTT.

at this rate, i might start rivalling shraddha at time management. till now, the mad hatter and i shared the same idea about time- a kind of hopeless exasperation. i'd even started thinking of time as a very malicious 'he'.

saw the sun after three rainwashed days. nice to see the smiling face of Phoebus.
and oh! i just blew out the fuse of the bedrooms. again. lucky i had to come to school today. escaped the customary tonguelashing from mom. this is what they call the silver lining, i guess.(or is this particular dog having her day atlast?)
whatever.

i just discovered these great blogs, and now can't figure out how to add them to a list here.
so well,
http://www.dooce.com/
http://pkblogs.com/jaiarjun
http://indiauncut.com/

beautiful nightmare

the surreal and mundane intersect seamlessly in this brutal, unflinching, yet visually lovely magical-realist movie by Guillermo del Toro. this visually stunning adult fairytale won three Oscars -- for cinematography, makeup and art direction.

the story takes place in a remote rural army bastion in post-civil war spain. franco's regime is spreading like a corrupt, indelible stain over this lovely land. though the war is over five years before the 1944 of the movie, insurgency is alive in the mountains of spain, supported by villagers.

the protagonist, prepubiscent Ofelia(Ivana Baquero in a stunningly mature performance) is called to her stepfather's garrison with her pregnant mother Carmen. on the way, she comes across a praying mantis-like creature, who she assumes to be a fairy, like those from the many fairy tales she reads to escape from the bleakness of her situation. she follows this creature into the ruins of a laybrinth,where she meets a faun,who tells her she is the princess Moana of the underworld, who must complete three tasks befor the 'moon is full', so that she can return to her kingdom and her father, who has long been waiting for her. the laybrinth is one of the many portals her 'real' father had openend to let her through to her rightful land. in the pursuing of these tasks, (two of which she fails, incidentally), she comes across creatures both horrific and fascinating.

her stepfather is the villainous ogre of this story. we see him summarily, sadistically kill and torture those he take to be republican insurgents. (Captain Vidal is played most menacingly by Sergi Lopez). his heart set on having a son who will carry on his name, he does not hesitate to direct the doctor, 'if you have to choose, save him, save my son'. his chilling disregard for human life, especially of 'the vermin' as he calls the rebels is one of the strongest pivots of the movie.

in this atmosphere of daily cruelty, Ofelia finds a friend in her stepfather's housekeeper Mercedes, who is living a dangerous double life-her brother is one of the rebels-the 'men in the wood'. Mercedes later becomes mother-substitute for the desolate Ofelia, but even she fails to protect Ofelia from the cruelty that awaits her.

Del Toro does not make you comfortable, indeed, this is one of the most disturbing films one may see. but it also remains one of the most original, forceful, fascinating films of recent times. what i personally liked was the ambiguity of the film. Del Toro leaves it to the audience to figure out if Ofelia's fantasy-world exists outside her dreams or not.

not to be missed.

p.s. i rather liked the mantis-fairy.

i have this really sharp pain somewhere in the solar plexus. bhargav tried to comfort me saying 'don't worry ma'm, it's probably food poisoning'. now why does that make me feel worse? after all the groaning and moaning i did in school today, it would be rather embarrassing if it turned out to be a case of saada gas. i am beginning to think that khanbhai's chaat could be the culprit.
i guess this is what they mean when they say only time will tell. if i'm alive tomorrow morning, it's gas, if not, well......i bequeath my books to B,dresses to Shiny and teddies to Shraddha.

that apart, i'm planning to watch Pan's Laybrinth tonight.

oh happy day!
samit basu added me to his friend list on orkut. i now have a true-blue, authentic, sachh-mucch ka writer friend.