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Of six months and 75 years

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

It’s a strange feeling. It’s been six months since the move back to India, six months since I became a student again, six months of feeling like an old, wise, out-of-touch-with-India woman, six months of alternating between missing Singapore and digging India. SO MUCH has changed in these months, and today I realized, for the first time – and maybe it’s simply a carryover effect of all the good things happening in university over the last few days – but I’m totally happy about the move. So ...

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How I watched Rockstar

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

Rockstar was the only Hindi movie I wanted to watch badly in 2011. And with much enthusiasm, despite reports of a sagging second half, I set out last weekend to watch it in Eros in Mumbai. Before anything else, it was a pleasure to not watch the movie in a multiplex – it’s been at least six years since I did so! The screen was huge. I was prepared to be blown away – with amazing visuals, and most of all, what I’d come for, Rahman’s music on dolby surround sound (which was surprisingly non-functional ...

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Wrapping up the first milestone

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

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The moment of reckoning

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

Somehow, all this while, returning to studying didn't feel that difficult. As in, you had to sit in lectures, listen to some interesting professors, some drones, some 'ok' ones. And submit a few assignments - reading books and reviewing them, getting lost in technical jargon; writing term papers - starting them with utmost ambition only to see it all whittling away in the face of the deadline. It all got done, and got done with relative ease (yes, in retrospect, but still...) - maybe it was just ...

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Existential thoughts

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

You are probably tiring of the number of times I mention the creepy crawlies that my home abounds with, but they really set me thinking. And this evening, it was a snail that set me going. Moving slowly down the white tiles in the bathroom, shaking its head and two antennae slowly, pushing forward in slo-mo. Snails have always terrified me - not for the fact that they are insects (or animals?) that creep me out, but because they move so, incredibly, slowly. No, look at one the next time you see ...

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The Dogs of Deonar

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

I was waiting outside an ATM. The white kurta-ed man inside seemed to be taking an eternity to come out. I started humming, tapping my foot lightly, looking around, till my eyes caught hold of my reflection on the glass doors of the ATM. I stopped humming and tapping my foot. My breath quickened. Calm down, I desperately told myself. They can smell fear. Did I have any food on me, I thought; no. For right behind me, were two street dogs, cream-coloured – you know, the typical street dog kind. One ...

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Here and there...

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

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Disorientation

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

It's bye-bye to Singapore. Spent my last few days in the country frantically meeting people, saying goodbyes, taking endless photographs, packing stuff into cartons and suitcases, weighing things endlessly on the weighing scale (only to know I’ve still screwed it up!) and trying to pack everything special about the country with my friends into few days.  And when I reached Mumbai in less than 5 hours (on an Air India flight that took off and landed on time, yay!) I felt completely disoriented. ...

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Mandu, Makku

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

- I should rethink the name of this blog. Really. To quote one friend: 'Idhu boangu!' Chennai gal is moving. Back to India. Far from Singapore. Far from Chennai. To Mumbai. - I have always thought of myself as a less materialistic person. My prized possessions are notebooks (the kind you write in), greeting cards given by friends, scribbles on the back of flight tickets, my camera stuff, books - basically, things that are tied more to experiences than the happiness I get with possessing them. - ...

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Janma, Karma and such things

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

I'm highly amused by my own thought process. In the ten-minute walk from the train station to home, my mind thinks of at least a dozen things. Amazement at the fact a train is speeding away on a bridge a few metres above my head. The moon and its stage in its fortnightly life. Why some women look pretty in skirts and why I can never pull it off. Counting the number of people smoking in that ten-minute distance. The old man who has his special little flashlight to shine at the rubbish bin to see ...

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Greeced and Turkeyed

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

And a much awaited journey came to an end as I stepped out of the Emirates flight and immediately took off the fleece jacket that had saved me during the cold and windy days in Greece and Istanbul. Directing the cab driver to my apartment, telling him which 'deck' to stop at, and simply looking at the red-and-cream apartment buildings, simply felt weird. All I could think of was if I had really lived here before, gone to see some of the most beautiful places in the world, and actually returned. ...

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(Another) New Beginning

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

Black Beauty is now history. For the first time in nearly seven years in Singapore, I'm moving houses without lugging along my desktop with its CRT monitor (I know!), CPU, keyboard. I felt a twinge of regret and sadness as the karung guni (how rag and bone men in Singapore are referred to) opened up the CPU, asked me where the hard drive was (I'd removed it last morning) and kindly offered me $2. 'Just take it,' I said. 'I don't want any money!' And there, the monitor, CPU and the keyboard (I will ...

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For posterity's sake

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

Hey kiddo, I wonder if cricket is still big in India in your time, or if football or basketball has usurped its place. Anyway, in this short letter you'll learn about a historic moment for the game, how I lived through it and simply how it felt. Growing up, we all heard about 1983 and Kapil's devils, and photos of a grinning, mustached Kapil lifting the cup were immortalized often. We're talking about the cricket World Cup, held once every four years. 1983 was before my time, but after I'd turned ...

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2012 could happen

posted on , by Vani Viswanathan

Given the spate of disasters damaging the world recently, my friend and I were discussing how 2012 might, after all, actually happen. We were musing on how terrible it would be that millions of people in our age-group would be dying before seeing so much in life, and how it's even worse that kids were coming into the world without seeing anything at all. As horrific as it sounds, I thought it was ok, because if the whole world was dying anyway, there won't be any life - no one - to think back on ...

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