Two kinds

So quickly, before i lose steam. Two type of people are annoying me muchly these days.

1. The kind who eat meat but feel the need to be all apologetic about it in a hypocritical way. Yeah. Its one thing to feel a little disgusted with yourself for being a non-vegetarian. I get it. Even I sometimes feel a little nauseated with myself. Very rarely, but it happens. But i am not going to make any excuses about it. I doubt if i could stop even if i wanted to and that is all there is to it.

Now the people who are being all vague and weird say things like this : yes, i eat meat but only one's that have been killed in a humane way. Un-cruelly.

Let me tell you this. There is no un cruel way of killing an animal. A quicker way, yes perhaps, one where it dies faster than in other ways, maybe. But essentially what you are trying to say is, yes though i eat meat, look i do have an excuse for it which i think is something i am not ready to let you get away with.

There is then the group of people who mask it with, yes i eat meat but only locally produced from near by farms. Which is ok. But not when you add : it helps the farmer. you know..

No, I dont. Are you saying you are doing the local producers a service by eating their humanely grown cattle? I have been making my opinions about this very harshly known and some havent taken very kindly to it. Whatever, dudes. Yes, i say dudes now.

2nd

The people who are taking advantage of my general inability to say no. I am not very, what is the word quiet or submissive but i find it sometimes difficult to come up with the right lies, spontaneously. So i find myself agreeing to things that arent quite agreeable to me.
so i work part time at this place. The lady is nice enough but lately she seems to think she can just push me around. Mostly my fault for having let it get out of hand and now its difficult to get back on track.

Say it with me people, NO. en. o. No. That is right. I am sure i can do it. No. no.

I will.

That is all for now, loves.

Cos people are weird and times are strange

So in this country most things are expensive, by my standards. Getting your eyebrows threaded costs you 14 $ and a girl has gotta do what she is gotta do. A decent meal, comprising of Margaritas ( of course) and Appetizers and then a shared entree (we are kinda poor eaters despite all the talk) and then a vanilla bean cheese cake is gotta cost about 45$ which translates ( by me of course) to a good 2000Rs. meal. Which is ridiculous in my head and its not even like some super sexy classy place. A near normal chinthi place is doing this. Anyway

The only thing that people dont seem to value is books. Now they go on sale for such cheapliness that i almost want to cringe in shame. and delight at being the one at the good receiving end. So the local library has a bookstore too which has sale's once in a while and also a bi-annual thing where books go for, wait for it, wait....wait..WAIT..w.a.i.t, yes, enough, for 25cents for a paper back and 50 cents for hard backs. I dont know what else is there to say to this stupid kindle obsessed country except maybe, thanks,losers? Oh and big thanks to whoever was donating them, though.

And the amazingly bestly part is that it isnt crappy novels and romantic dusty paper backs its actual books. By which i mean the following. See for your selves.

John Irving- Cider House Rules
Atwood: Cats eye
Eugenides: Middle sex
Jhumpa Lahiri: The Name sake

Cunnigham: Specimen Day's
Toni Morrison: Sula
John Updike: A month of sunday's
Best American short stories- 2004 and 1998!!

Pearl S Buck: Letters from Peking
Janet Fitch: White Oleander
F.Scott Fitzgerald: The beautiful and the damned
Saul Bellow; Henderson the rain king

Joseph Heller: Portrait of the artist as an old man
Ian Mc Ewan: On Chesil Beach
Wally Lamb: The Hour i first believed in

Irwin Shaw; Short stories from Five decades
Mary Gaitskill: Veronica
Atwood: Blind Assasin!!!!!!

Doris lessing: The summer before the dark
E,M Forster: Howard's end and other stories
Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

Anton chekhov: selected short stories
John steinbeck: In Dubious Battle
John Irving: The world According to Garp
Jerome K jerome: Three men in a boat !!!!

James Baldwin: Going to meet the man
Faulkner: As i lay dying
Ishiguro: The Uncensored
Alice Walker: Possessing the secret of joy

Ethan Hawke: Ash wednesday :/ :/ < Yeah some mistakes were made>

and i spend less than 20$ for alllll this. That is half of that decent meal money. Ridiculous aint it?
Well i am not complaining obviously just exclaiming out aloud. Someday i shall have over 2000 books. some day.




Obviously Mr Bird is also very involved in the book deal. So here is his contribution, Picture and all, Here

Such an aww email

Hi S

Thank you for sending your poems and story towards the April 2011 issue of Spark. We read your work and really enjoyed them. Your story, in particular, was really good. However, our biggest constraint is the size. Usually our articles including stories do not go beyond 2200 words at the max. That's because we also do every issue as a pdf and it gets difficult to handle designing huge articles, given that we showcase the work of at least 11 people in every issue (including interviews). So, as far as the story goes, we would like to put it on hold for now. We are also thinking along the lines of probably publishing it in multiple parts. We will let you know if we decide on something like that.

As far as your poems are concerned, we picked two of them which we liked. 'Is this you?' and 'Answers to your questions'. Please find attached a reviewed version of the same. The changes are limited - just some punctuation additions and line breaks added for better readability. Please do look through and let us know if you are OK with the changes.

We would also like to know if the poems and the story have been published elsewhere before. 

While you get back to us, please do mention your full name (for the byline). We would also be happy to know how you ran into Spark.

Regards,

Ed team

This is like the nicest things a magazine has said so far to me. Well of course there was the guy who loved the sci fi shit but his teammates thought it was crap :/ 
Anyway i was just so sad for the past few days about how 6, thats right, SIX programs rejected me. I have just one left to hear from. One. 
ok why am i typing these numbers twice. so though i shouldnt be saying this out aloud cos you know the gods of writing might wreck their wrath on me i was kinda glad i didnt get in. only kinda. Mainly most of those programs except BU was 3/4 years. Now thats a looong time for boi and me to away and in different places. I am not questioning if we would make it and all! Obviously we would.Its just all my other plans will be on hold and i will be in the thirties range then. Which is really ok am sure for most people..Just not me. 
Anyway there is also this journalism program to hear back from. But i am so not keen on it anymore. The only reason i want to do a Masters other than an MFA is so that my stupid symbi record gets erased once and forever. Dies. Dies a nice miserable death those transcripts and il never ever have to show it to anyone.
You are curious arent you? To see how bad it is? ha. Pretty bad. 
well. Thats all for now. I will be riding the happiness wave on this for a few days and then yes please to be awaiting the sad angry mopey posts. 


Louw
s

Because thats why we love Sunday's

First there is obviously the fish curry meals. In this case, Fish fry meals. I found some yumm pomfret which has been quite a hunt, let me tell you in an oriental store. And some mackerel. So I made some fish fry and Kootan and Beans-Carrot thoran for lunch with Papadam of course.

Afterwards we watched this movie which though I have seen many-many times over still makes me go gulp in throat and did you know your jaw hurts if you are trying not to cry?

Yeah it does.

Small World and all that

When i first visited bangalore ages ago, i was staying with my cousin then who i liked a lot.But who was kinda a little on the prim-er side of things. But i liked her anyway.We would go out on her kinetic and i would inevitably run into someone from cochin! Everytime. It was kinda wonderful when you liked the person but when you were really trying to escape the creeps and jerks, yeah not so much then. I remember thinking there is like a mini cochin in blore each summer!

But in the amerigas when you run into a fellow malayalee, there is nothing like it. Or maybe its just me. I just cannot contain my excitement.It probably gives them crazy woman-run-vibes but i am just so curios where they are from and just in case one of them says cochin. Well there. I love them already.

So it was like that when Jyothi left a comment on my blog and i went looking in hers and discovered her to be a malayalee in the amerigas. So obviously i ping her and all and we add each other on Google tawk.

We are chatting
Cochin?
yes.
Oh me too!

There is visible happiness in the air for me. I am sad i am not in NJ now. when i get along with someone i always want to be where they are. plus NJ has an amazing Kerala restaurant. You know where my loyalties are. Anyway as chatting goes on

J: Where do you stay
Me: "x" place
J: what! me too!
Me :oh!!!

Basically it turns out that she lives like 5mins away from me. what the game the universe is playing? we ask
We have seen the same guy, you know, the guy who sells pazham pori's at the junction. That is big. Really.

we have quite similar backgrounds and she loves the same movies and all. After a while she wonders out aloud if someone is playing a practical joke on her.
Me, who had till then  been happily chugging along saying how wonderful the universe is, stops to think this new practical joke angle. and then we chat some more to make sure the other person really really exists :)

Much fun.

and then obviously we confirm it through facebook. No that was just an exaggeration. :p I did believe you Jyothi!

So anyway i love when these things happen. Esp when i totally get along with the person. So everyone, Jyothi.
Jyothi, everyone.

There is never letting go

Here is a kind of a problem.

Long back, in once upon a time land my mum stopped opening doors when my father came home late. Well someone else had to stay up and since i am the oldest clearly it had to be me. Such fun. Staying up endlessly on school nights. Anyway i would drag one chair near this window where also the phone was kept. Initially i would call on his mobile phone but then he stopped picking up. And finally i would sit up reading and waiting. Then i took to half sleeping half wakey sort of situations in bed. It was really painful. He would drag him in like 3 or 4 in the morning. Of course beginnings he would "explain" why he had to drink this night. Some times i think i actually bothered trying to see if these were legitimate excuses. My boss was sad today. My boss was happy today. My bonus didnt come. My bonus did come. You did badly in your Math exam, Oh you did well in your English. :/ Needless to say i didnt care anymore. So as soon as i heard the car and the creak of the gates i would open the doors and jump right back in. Then my mum told me, god!! Yeah she told me how robbers and thiefs are prowling these residential areas and in my half sleepy state i might hear the wrong fucking car and open the door and said robber will murder all of us. So there i was back to good old red chair and opening the door to a father who i was as days went by disliking terribly. Then i tried throwing my dirty looks at him. No point. Talking to him, nope.No point.

And then finally i just went back to bed. But i could just not fall back asleep, so there would be basically sleepless nights of stewing in anger and getting late for school.So when i got back in the evenings i would just go to sleep straight which then my parents thought was odd. Seriously? People? Seriously. ugh
And then. They actually had the nerve to ask me if i was doing drugs and if thats why i am sleeping all the time. No. I really wanted to say some horrid things then.Like oh no, not drugs,Just being the product of you two. Anyway i didnt.

So the problem is now. I have no issues with alcohol despite all that. I am kinda surprised at that. one would think after all that i would be thoroughly against it but no.I have indulged happily and wonderfully so in it. Right from college days where my sister started panicking and vowed to tell everyone if she smelt it on me one "more time".

And now i am not too fond of hard liquor anymore. I like fruity colorful drinks with umbrellas in them. :/ Margaritas get me nice and high and that is quite enough for me. Anyway the problem is sometimes i dont want to go out. I am quite happy home reading and blogging and movies and music but boi does. So i ask boi to just go out with his friends. Which boi says he doesnt quite want to so i tag along. But i get bored quick.They are all comp science and other geeky activity entertaining boi's. I have nothing in common with them but i try. So boi goes alone.

Now i cant fall asleep till he is home and the longer he takes i find myself resenting it terribly. The clock shows 12 past and this terrible unreasonable anger takes hold of me.Its not like boi gets home sloshed,he is just playing pool or some nonsense. But i cant help it. I sit on the couch not doing much, with my books just sitting around with me sadly and i am just reminded of all kinds of unpleasantness.

Its so sad how the past never lets go. Its always holding me in grips and traps i dont even see sometimes! Its amazing. Obviously i am not going to let this make me some kinda wife monster but you know writing it helps and also boi knows where its coming from,so he is a patient boi. There is never letting go.I am quite sure.

A year gone.

Something about this day always feel strange and lost to me. Its really not about turning older and still not being able to shake off that familiar feeling of looserdom that i carry around so proudly. Its not. I dont know how it started, ok that is not true i do but i dont want to and wont get into those sad moments of personal history. I will someday.

But then some bits happened and then i lost this wonderful person. This really kind, loving person who i think loved me and my birthdays the most in this whole wide world. I could say i was like a big chunk of her small little world. she looked forward so much to calling me and going to the temple and making payasams even if i wasnt there to drink it. she did it anyway.
I really doubt of someone else ever did or will love me the way she did so unconditionally over the years and i
and i. adored her. I still do. I just grew up weird and acted out and was a really big bastard to her for..for sometime. and then i lost her. we lost her..

Anyway i havent celebrated a birthday in over five years and i dont think i ever will again but that doesn't mean i wont be happy on this day when i turn older and none the wiser.

I shall just do a quick thank you sort of thing for somethings i still do have.

For the boi who is definitely my lobster. You know, lobsters mate for life theory, true or not, anyway you are my that. I adore you and i am glad you have been there for the past two one's and this and the so many more. I am glad you understand though i have never given you any solid reasons and thanks for not surprising me or any other stunts.

For my wonderful/ albeit crazy parents who as i turn older-less wiser i find easier to like and love

For my sister, a creature of wild moodswings and phenomenal tantrums but who still talks,dresses and sounds like a mini me. I kinda hope you dont change. :p

For my friend P. Who over the years has had to wish me in strange ways, like calling first and talking about other things and then saying -anyway, well about today.... and so on.. I love you and all that things i usually say.

For June. For This and because you are June. You stride instead of walking and like did i mention you are June. Its odd but i feel we have become closer over this one year that i have been away! And i know i love you cos i am willing to do the same conversations over and over with you over the years, That is def a restricted advantage :) And i am happy that you are so happy. I dont think i have ever seen you this happy. Well you are generally a happy spirit with maniacal moods in btw. :o Anyway. I louw you.

For Shan: who like he says, takes me kinda for granted but i really dont mind. I am super pysched for everything wonderful that is coming your way.
For friends- Tash and Mari who i havent been too in touch with but who yet talk to me just like any other day as if we were in cochin. Who understand or almost do my weird phone phobias and text me to let me know they still dont think i am losing it  by the day :/

For Talent. That though abysmally visible is still lurking around somewhere. Seriously. If i did not have this one thing. These weird stories that come at all odd moments to me i would be.. well i dont know what i would be.

For still being the same me whose priorities stay the same. A baby and my family first and then some kinda writing related job/screenplay/book thing. I am glad despite all the horrid rejections i still want all this.

Here is to a good place. 

In other news

Hi S

Sorry about the delay. I was back couple of days ago but got caught up with many mundane stuff at the channel.

Honestly, I am impressed with the way you've handled the scenes - the settings, dialogues, growth within etc. I really think there's lot of promise. 

I'm just curious to see how the big picture looks, you know. The over all plot development, the arc of the characters etc. Things are a bit verbose right now but I am sure we can fix it as we go.

I'd urge you to proceed. Though at the moment there is no investor in sight but I'm sure we'll get one once there is a compelling script and some stars show interest. 

Do let me know what are your feelings about this.

Best

Ps: Also i am totally googlable. Woohoo.