Pritha Chatterjee!!!!! (Isn't that enough?)

I have just realised that my blog would have been incomplete without a post on this preposterously funny individual. She has tried and tested my patience many a time.You might have come across her name in many of my earlier posts. She makes my day go by in NLU. She has shocked and surprised me. She makes me  want to pull my ears off my head. She can have me going from LOW to Extremely HIGH in a few seconds ( though she does know a bit or two about being high, herself! )  She has in innate gift for cracking the most unimaginable sastaas ever! Yes, I am talking about the ever-present, and very loud PRITHA CHATTERJEE!

She is among other things an assiduous student, and I am a big fan of her mooting skills.She is a lovely person and yeah I think I have praised her enough. Her other 'skills' shall be explained and analysed in this very delayed post. The limelight lover that she is, Pritha sits right in, what can be called, the MIDDLE OF THE CLASS. Yes, a perfect place to sit, observe and comment on every single thing that happens in class. Her jokes range from plain dumb, to really cheap and very very perverted. Her jokes have our very dear Yum, shaking her head in frustration!

Last semester, Aditi came up for the reason for or rather came up with the medicinal term for Pritha's condition, yes ladies and gentleman it's Prithaeria. Symptoms range from yelling loudly in class, feeling the sudden need to crack lame jokes, and being being very very narcissistic and you also you may have sudden uncontrollable urges to sing loudly, yes, wherever you are. You might also have more than a few tongue in cheek moments, like the whole "necessity is the mother of invention............................................" incident. Prithaeria spread like wild fire and people went from stage one to stage five in a matter of days! We even had one casualty! and slowly Pritha became the official sastaa queen of NLUJ2013!

She plans on marrying the Oxford educated Bhilaval Bhutto, yes anyone who knows of anyway to contact the poor man, can contact me!

She thinks she's perfect, (she's almost, but we don't tell her that!) and calls herself 10 on 10! Her FB profile pictures are legendary, yes the person photographing her will forever have tales of her radiance, her awesome photogenic face, and most importantly the number of times that poor soul had to take her photos to get that one "PERFECT 10 on 10" shot! There are times when she can make you feel 'uncomfortable', yes she's very gifted in that sense too. Ask a few people in our very large class!

I have complete faith in her that she'll become one of India's best lawyers, but then again the SCC will want to quote all her sastaas, and our already miles long judgements will become longer, and Pritha Chatterjee will be quoted in moot courts and real courts across India. Yes, the Bong Bomb, who supposedly looks like a Bengali Actress will be remembered forever, her sastaas will outlive her! Yes, yes everything about Pritha is a loud, noisy and very striking affair whether its her voice or her crazy imagination. Love you Chatt, thanks for all the awesome times, and I am sure we shall have many many more!

Signing off,
Sneha.

"Guess what?"

A rumor they say is like a baby. It is generally conceived in a moment of heated passion, and cared and cultivated slowly. Everybody loves it and everybody has something to add to it. It is often very hard to actually get to the root of the rumor, nope, you can never find that one person who first planted it. Nope, not ever!

Maybe the first rumor was way back in the Stone Ages when a caveman's mother saw her husband's mate ( well this was before the institution of marriage, remember? ) looking at another hairy and 'handsome' ( yes, back then people actually did want hair on their body!) caveman, and spread the first rumor about,well, adultery. Yeah well, it could have actually happened. Yes back then in the Stone Ages a rumor was born in the pointing and grunting language of the stone people! 

As man evolved rumors also evolved with man. The earliest instances of rumors I have read about was in the Mughal era. In this really nice book I am reading. Shah Jahan's (yes its that dude who built the Taj for his dead wife, only) younger daughter Roshanara spreads a pretty disgusting rumor that her sister, Jahanara is sleeping with their dad, after her mum passed away! But yeah later in the book the little bitch gets what she deserves! But yeah think of it the atmosphere back then was PERFECTO for making and spreading rumors about well, heated moments of passion!

 You are a princess, young and bored, forced to stay with women all day, despite the fact that there are soo many hot dudes around you, I mean you can 'hear' them, hear about them, but you cannot see them! wow! So what do you do? All have time to do is sit around the whole day bitching about your elder sister. Yes, that skank, fathers favorite, everyone loves her! Jealous as you are, you just pop a few coins to a few eunuchs ( who are by the way pretty good at keeping their trap shut! more out of fear than anything else, I am sure) and ask them to stalk your sister who is obviously prettier and has more clout than you, when that does not work you resort to paying the eunuchs more and SPREADING what can be termed as the most DISGUSTING rumor of the Mughal Era.

As the society evolved rumor became more and more sophisticated and slowly there emerged a species of rumor called well, we all know it, GOSSIP! Just a minor difference, gossip is generally exaggerated  truth, and rumors are generally make belief. People slowly starting making a living out of well spreading gossip and rumor how else do you explain shows like TMZ? or channels like ZOOM and ZING? These days anyone with access to an internet connection can start a rumor. 

The recent rumor about Facebook shutting down in March sent the world wide web into a frenzy, I am sure when THAT does happen, all the stock markets in the world will CRASH! All hail Zuckerberg. You can read about it here! I found whole websites dedicated to analyzing rumors about Iphones ( welcome to the era of the muchly suppressed NERD!)! 

I guess rumors about gadgets is the new 'in thing', and rumors about filmstars are passe, yeah just like animal prints ( are they? not if you look around in our college! more on that later.). Movie stars these days are as public as you can get! Case in point : Koffee with Karan. They spread rumors about themselves, leaving common people like us to get all excited about, yeah well the IPHONE revolution ( Geek revolution is well and truly on!). Don't believe me? Google 'rumor'.

I am stuck within this 50 acres of land with 600 other supremely bored young adults like myself. The line here between gossip and rumor here is probably the thinnest in the world. What you see is what you spread, well not really. Everything has to be analysed and debated upon in the halls of living, in the mess, in the acad block ( I refuse to call it Halls of learning), in Cool Palace, Hans and Sweet Dreamland. The tales of a drunken friday night at Geoffreys are generally well documented for the whole college to know byMonday morning ( burrp! actually Saturday evening)! True Story. Ask. well, anyone.

Who's seeing whom, who went with whom to Pushkar, which is the latest catfight,who beat up who where? who 'likes' whom? who's a bitch and whos a snitch and my recent favorite, who's wearing what?? Which teacher is doing what to which teacher (lol!) , the list is endless. You make two of us sit in the mess, give us a cup of hot steaming coffee and we'll give you loadsa rumors ( or Gossip, or wadeva!). It generally starts with "You'll never believe what I heard/saw" or "Oh my God! Guess what happened?" and ends with "too much no?" or "I never thought that chick/dude was capable of doing THAT!". Ask anyone here they'' all say it's true.  Tried and tested.

So next time you hear a rumor, think twice, examine it and dissect it and try to get to the actual truth behind it all. Or maybe not. Just hear it and LEAVE IT BE.

Dunno what to call it.

"India is a puzzle.", said the grey eyed Professor Smith, as he quietly sipped the glass of scotch my grandad poured out for him. His face had the look of someone who had not only visited India, but also bothered to get away from the 5 Star Hotels and explore the 'real' India. "It makes you love it, but at the same time, you realise  it's not perfect." That day sitting in the living room of my house in DD colony, Hyderabad I realised how true he was.And how privileged I am.

The very next day, when I went to my usual teatime hang out spot outside the CAT with Edward, Anwar bhai, the magnanimous Naan wallah observed,"Indian mein na kuch bhi ho saktha hain, humari Dubai mein bahut strict hain loga". He claims to be a descendant of the Nizam. As he says to everyone who bothers to listen, his mother was the last Nizams concubine and he was born in Dubai. Yes readers, you might be all fascinated, but you roam around Charminar, you will find at least 10 more men like Anwar bhai. True Story.

My country scares me. It makes me think. I feel disgusted, at the same time I feel proud of being an Indian. The diversity is gut wrenching. Just the sight of a little boy begging near a big mall tell you a story. I have tasted champagne a bottle of which costs anywhere from 3000 rupees to well, I even saw a 90000 rupees worth champagne. There are millions of people who do not make that much money in a year in this country. 

Human Rights activists have maids to clean their house, and cooks to cook their food. 

The diversity is not limited to the economy. People in the North would not know what's  an Appam. I din't know what Bhujia was till I came to Jodhpur. I don't get what people mean when they say "I want to see real India.". Dude, you have landed in India, and so you are in real India, as opposed to a 'fake' India. DLF Promenade in Delhi is as much a part of India, as Lepakshi is. People still think India is full of snake charmers and old men with big black moustaches!Golly!

Yes, as I told my Lebanese neighbor in  the bus journey to Jodhpur, we speak Hindi not India. He wanted to know what water is called in 'Indian'. Whether it's in the bylanes of Charminar or in the Second Class compartment in the Rajdhani Express, Indians are Indians. We care. One day during my internship I was sick, and the next day I went back to have chai in Anwar Bhai's shop he gave me free 'Paya', and not chai. I can never forget the Assamese family who totally helped me stay calm in the much delayed train to Delhi. I was even offered a house to stay the night in. Yep, all cause my Gran got all senti and asked that lady to 'keep an

eye' on yours truly who was travelling alone in a train for the first time. Well, if the decree passed by Ammamma stays it could well have been my last train journey alone!

As we have all read in second grade there is unity in diversity in India. If some work does not get done over the table, whether we are from Banjara Hills or Siatafalmandi, we all look 'under the table'. Fat uncles (whether rich or poor, south Indian or North Indian) all over the country gyrated to the beats of Sheela and Munni and oh yeah, Justin Bieber on the New years night! And when New Year dawns we call our friendly neighborhood Astrologer, or go to the nearby Baba or attend the midnight mass or go to the mosque, Gurudwara, temple, etc.

Try as much as you can, you NRIs, you can never run away from your heritage. Nope not the fake accent, nor the fake Gucci sunglasses, or the cheap Christian Louboutins and not even the "Oh my God! my baby will not survive in India" can make you look non-Indian. No amount of hand sanitizer will rub away the Indian-ness, that is inherently there in you. You will still have to fight the urge not to litter and not to employ household help. Gotcha! 

We have all types here, the watchers, the hopers, the 'live'-ers and the prayers. Each group with it's own attitude and own beliefs. The guitar players and the Sitar players, the rappers and the classical singers, the pickle lickers and the Pizza eaters, the cheap roadside romeos and the hot suave college guys, the mountain climbers and the beach goers. 

I differ from what I said at the beginning of the post, My country does not scare me, it amazes and sometime amuses me!

P.S.- Another post which is a result of this never ending writer's block! 

Bad Hair Day. Everyday.

I totally get Harry Potter's frustration about his unruly hair. The fact that his mop of unruly hair gets mentioned at least once in all the books is a great credit to the hair itself! Harry, I sympathize with you, I know how it feels to have hair with a head of it's own. No matter how much you comb it, wash it, condition it, and as the fancy shampoo advertisements go, "take care of it", it still does what it wants.

I have been blessed, as some say or cursed, as I say with thick, wavy and most importantly unmanageable South Indian hair. As far as hair stories go, my hair has a pretty long tale. As Ammamma fondly remembers I was born with a crop of hair, so my hair troubles began on 21st September, 1990 itself. For as long as I could remember I had short cropped hair. Yet, everyday before I left for school my mum used to literally sit me down and struggle for 10 minutes to get my hair to 'not stand up'. By the time I got down in school my hair was just as it was before my mum combed it. Then thanks to my mum's and Sharon Aunty's combined efforts I had shoulder length hair by the time I was in class 4. So I let it grow, and took great care of it, it slowly started listening to me. At some point in class 6 I had even got one of those Pushkar type hair extensions in HOT PINK, don't even ask! 

However then class 6 summer holidays happened, and I suddenly decided to get all serious about my place in the swim team, yeah yeah, hard to believe now, but I was pretty good then. Hajira Mam happened and all of a sudden I decided to crop my hair! Yep! My mum was aghast, my music teacher, well let's not even go there. She almost fainted when she saw me! But then I found it really nice and very convenient. Even then, my hair used to never ever listen to me. NEVER EVER.

So my short cropped hair continued for quite a long time, sometime in class 10 I decided to grow it back, much to my mom's and grandmom's great relief! By the time my tenth boards finished and I came back from our awesome trip to visit daddy in Shillong, my hair was as long as it was in 6th. Then my real problems started. My hair as I sadly realised has some kind of energy with which it made up its mind to not do what I want it to! For as long  as I could humanly remember I wore a tight braid to Junior College, sigh! 

When I realised I made it to NLU, another fear overtook me. HOW THE HELL WILL I MANAGE MY HAIR? To my relief I managed it pretty well the first semester. Back then my hair was this long unruly mess, full of tangles! The desert winds have made it even more indisciplined. So, as year 2011 dawned upon me I made a decision. I decided I'd get get my hair cut off it reaches only shoulder. Yes, Sharon aunty was shocked once again, when I walked upto her, determinedly and said, "Please Aunty 5 inches!". She smiled sheepishly and said "Ok, sit". And an hour later, I realised to my HORROR, that my hair might not reach into a ponytail, but then it did! So, I begin this year with  shoulder length, OK, a Lil more than shoulder length,Sharon aunty left it there for good measure. 

So here's to probably having less bad hair days this year. Then again I realized how much I miss my long and unruly mop!