Numbness...

I woke up this morning, thinking that it was going to be just one more day, among the thousands of days that pass me by, which I wouldn't remember three months from now. I walked out of my bedroom, to Larry King Live, talking about this massacre at Virginia Tech. How I wish it was one of those non-eventful days I could easily forget.

For me, Virginia Tech is the school where my uncle studied, it's the school which gave me an admit last week and it's the school I hope to attend some day. My first reaction was, rather selfishly, "How is this going to affect Appa's feelings about the university?" Then, as the details sunk in, I was stunned. A feeling of utter numbness crept over me. Such a horror could happen anywhere, anytime, any place. You cannot hope to police all the people, all the time. You ought to be able to trust in the basic decency of human nature. You deserve to be able to look at another person with trust. I think that all of us have to wake up and smell the gunpowder. There's something dangerously wrong with the society we live in. Everyone's always angry, always on edge. It is imperative that we take a step back and see what we have become. How on earth can we justify somebody walking into a room and killing dozens of people?

My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims.

Miles to Go

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost

This was one of the very first poems that I studied in school, or at least part of it. For the interested, it is called Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. This picture was taken during a trip to Nagarhole last year. I was just looking at the album, and suddenly this verse flashed into my head, so thought I'd share..

Little Miss Sunshine

I saw this film a couple of weeks ago, on a very hot Sunday afternoon, with a couple of friends, on DVD, at home. It absolutely made my day.

For all you people out there with utterly dysfunctional families, rest assured, there's someone out there with worse problems. LMS is non-preachy, and yet manages to convince you that family is the most important thing there is. Abigail Breslin glitters as Olive. Steve Carrell is magnificent, so are Alan Arkin, Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear. But for me, the star of the show, after Abigail, was Paul Dano, who actually does not speak a single word for the first half of the movie. You've got to watch the film, if only to see the scene in which he first talks. Guess what his first word is!!!

Watch it, watch it, watch it..I assure you, you'll walk out of the theater/switch off the TV with a wide grin, and a happy heart.

Photo: Courtesy Fox Searchlight

Wishin' n Hopin'

The title is the name of a song that is featured in My Best Friend's Wedding. (Which is a pretty decent film, by the way). It’s also the name of one of the episodes in Grey's Anatomy Season 3, which I haven't got to see, yet.

I was just thinking... There are so many hopes that you don't have the courage to wish for, and so many wishes that you make, after working up enough courage, that you know just won't come true. For me, one such hope was that I would become a doctor. After long, intense conversations with myself, my parents, and a couple of cousins already studying medicine, I decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, my rank was just not good enough. I got a place in a college that my family wasn't really keen on, and for various reasons, I gave up that seat and decided to become, or rather, try to become an Electronics & Communication Engineer.

Every couple of days, I am overcome with this tremendous feeling of regret, that I'll never get a chance to fulfill my dream. I don't know what my career as an engineer will be like, but I do know that I would like to have access to an "Alternative Reality" machine, which would let me see myself as a doctor. Various people asking my mum, how my medical studies are progressing, just doesn't help, at all.

Well, in life, you gotta take the cards you're dealt. It’s probably the one casino in which cheating doesn't work, and even if it does, it carries a tremendously heavy price. Being an engineer isn't so bad, especially when you have a great set of friends, who make life so much fun with all their ridiculousness (if such a word exists), and weirdness. Here's to you all....

This is probably the most serious entry in my blog. Well, it had to happen some day. Also, Happy Birthday Hamsa...Hope our party rocks...