My first critique

I recently read a blog and was so appalled by it that I simply had to write a critique!! So here it goes..

The art of knowing/ mastering something and using it only when required, demands a degree of self restraint which is seen in a matured artist, which was totally lacking in this blogger.

There were lines like “ a gentle zephyr laden with the fragrance of jasmine” or “ mellifluous sound like that of a brook in the lonely moors” what was she trying? Compete with Tennyson?. Looks like the writer only just learnt these words from Norman Lewis’s ‘Word power made easy’ and was anxious to use them before she forgot them (It was a she yes!). “a gentle breeze laden with…” is just as good as zephyr!! Ostentatious and unnecessarily flashy!!

Also she seemed to love food and colours too much.. There was this so- called poem that she had written, which did not have the most important feature of a poem (rhyme and rhythm), where a whole stanza had nothing but colours..no thanks, we learnt about basic colours in our first grade!!

Our Ms. Mother Teresa seemed to love giving advice for free.. I would recommend her to start a general counseling portal. That would anyday run better than this.


To top it all, the poor thing had added herself as a follower of her own blog!! The levels blogging has come down to!

After having read this if you still think you can endure it, please click on the link below http://www.supriyamadhavan.blogspot.com

good bye sastra!!

A couple of days from now, I will pack my bags, and bid good bye to the hostel..This post is intended as it is very difficult to guess, about my days in college, not that I will never study after this. But well, life in an engineering college is just one of its kind.


I profess I am the emotional kind you see in bollywood movies, ( for the ones who know me, duh!!), so I felt there had to be a write up at least, plus am done with my project report and exams for now and hence jobless. So here it goes.


I never knew there would ever come a day when I would say, gosh! I am going to miss this. But well, I am! The first year was a hazy blur. I whined, was a show off and did nothing. Came the second year, I had new friends. Except for bunking classes and coffee and samosas I did nothing much. Then came third year. I moved into the hostel, and still did nothing. And now the final year, I am about to leave and suddenly i realise, I loved it all! Till almost a semester from now, I would have gladly taken the degree had they given it to me anytime. But at the very fag end of these amazing four years, I only yearn for all that magic to come back!!


The hostel, the mess food however bad it has been, the gym that I always wanted to go but never went to, the Sunday magazines, watching movies back to back, samosas at eleven ten break, endless cups of coffee, making maggi, sniggering between lectures, mocking professors, bunking the first hour to get some extra sleep, finishing a novel in a day, the afternoon naps that never were naps (they would eventually last for atleast two hours), chatting with friends well into the night, studying for mid semesters, eating during classes, sleeping during lectures, blankly staring at the board, reading the newspaper from under the benches, texting, the slang I picked up (gaandu, gethu, appatakkar, machi)….
Never again will I be so jobless, get away with being rude, go with barely twenty paise balance in the mobile or borrow six rupees for a coffee or samosa. I have had coffee when labs got boring and I didn’t get the output, when I was hungry, when I was happy, when I was sad, when I was simply bored, when I was excited, whenever I got nervous, well you get the idea!


Here is an interesting observation by a parent who once visited the hostel. Any time in the day, except between 3 am and 6 am, there will be at least one person talking over the phone, sleeping, watching a movie, eating, washing clothes or bathing. That sums up life in hostel.


I literally got away with everything in college, special thanks to my department, I took everything for granted. The marks, the subjects, the classes, the labs and the grades!


With all the fun that I had, I also learnt some hard lessons that I shall always remember. I am much better off than what I was initially and I owe all of that change to this place. It taught me to be tolerant to differences. Everyone need not like what you like. And just because they don’t, doesn’t mean they are dunces and you are better. I have met such amazing people, prodigiously talented and yet perfectly down to earth. The amount of talent that pools up especially during the technical and cultural festivals is mind blowing. If you are the jack of few trades, there are people who are masters in more than one. College humbled me. It taught me to see beyond just marks and prizes, that there are qualities much more priced than all the talent that is there. I do not know how much of the instrumentation I learnt in these years I will remember, but these are some things I learnt and will never forget.


So, thanks to all people who have tolerated me, known me and the ones I have seen but not known  in these four years!! Good bye!!

a poem ...

this is the first time i considered writing it.. (well, if you can call it a poem!!) so here it is..

A mad rush, is the world beneath,
and she is almost a non-entity..
ah! all that is a hazy blur,
for, she is everything, vast and unbounded,
stretching on up to the horizon and beyond…

At one instant mild ochre, golden yellow the next,
and then a fiery orange, only to turn deep red,
a sudden smile, a merry laugh, a flash of anger, a dash of sobriety,
a psychedelic of colours…

What has passed, she remembers not,
what is to come, she knows not,
only a dream, a desire, that she yearns for,
a peaceful world, full of blithe and joy…

Black, grey, azure and yellow,
this changing of shades, alone is constant,
so is your life, uncertain,
but not to be feared, she tells me

Spread your wings, soar high in the liberated sky
fulfill your dreams, satiate your desires
and then come back to me,
I shall be right here, she tells me..

about cartoons and crying....

I still love coloured balloons, feel jealous when my mother pets my brother too much or makes pickles exclusively for my cousins, cry at the drop of a hat, petulantly argue with anyone who calls me a kid, love watching make way for noddy and Oswald, lick the last wisp of maggi off my plate and the sugar in the bottom of my coffee cup . I am scared of ghosts, snigger in the middle of a serious lecture and get pleased if someone gives dairy milk or just appreciates me or my work (which includes this blog too :)). So, does all of this amount to being kiddish .. yes. Is it wrong to be one when you are supposed to have grown up.. is the bone of contention.
I recently observed a cute thing. I made masala dosa one day at home and thought of giving my thatha some. My patti being very orthodox does not have anything made anywhere but in her kitchen. So she peered into it and intently watched thatha as he had it. He later said that he liked it, especially as the dosas were crispy.. my patti seeing he had liked it, started off about how easy it is to make it and explained the recipe the way she imagined it to be.. she declared that it was not a big deal on the whole and that if it had not been for her austerities she would always make it at home… what I found to be cute in this exchange was, she seemed to be slightly jealous that thatha liked something made by someone other than her.. She is 80 plus.. I did not get nettled, instead found it really cute!!
Just because one grows up need not mean that he or she should suddenly turn matured and never act stupidly. We all do funny things like a kid, so why is watching cartoons and crying for a melodramatic movie kiddish?? (so what if it is kiddish). Cartoons are the easiest way to get into a world where everything is a lot simpler. Toy land has a major problem if it is going to rain or a puppy goes missing. Noddy goes around searching for the pup or brings clouds in his helicopter. I feel like a kid when I watch and laugh for these little things. And why is crying a sign of weakness associated with children.. why can it not be just venting ones feelings.. btw, I recently found out that in shakespeare’s period it was a fashion for men to cry. And what is wrong with licking sugar off the cup (strictly at home) or being scared of spooky stuff.. well, if people can be scared of cockroaches why not something you have not seen at all..
No one can never really become fully matured.. it’s nice to have a childish demeanor,probably makes people young at heart like my mother (I loved it when she excitedly typed a smiley for the first time and clapped when she saw it animated on the screen) . It feels nice to just relapse into a world, where losing a pen or not getting to have cotton candy is the biggest problem.. cartoons and crying do not necessarily get rid of the existing tensions and worries.. but definitely help us face them with a lighter heart. So my conclusion, it is okay to be a kid (at times) :)

one of my favourite poems :)

Upon Westminster bridge- William wordsworth

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear

The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

an evening in the campus....

Today happened to be the first java lab session I was attending for the semester. As the clock approached five I was already looking at the prospect of attending a programming lab with a good deal of irksomeness. My aversion to programming languages is because I don’t get it easily but well, I never admit it and argue that they are not one bit as good as biology(that’s actually true). So anyway, I ambled lazily to the computer science department and finally to the third floor, where I stood for a while relishing the picturesque view of the college and fields beyond. And finally two hours of whiling away the time, chatting, copying stuff.. and we were out.. My college as it is, never lets girls roam in the campus after six thirty and because of this readymade excuse, me and my friend decided to stall going in for a while.
We were both ravenous and decided to go to the canteen, where we greedily hogged crispy dosa with chutney and sambar. I then had this urge to go to the temple. I am not exactly a religious person and do not frequent to the temple or pray regularly. But somehow, there is this nice soothing solace that sets in whenever I go. So, we went to this little ganapathy temple that is in one corner of the campus and man, was it good! There sat mr. ganesha in a crisp white dhoti, adorned by red and white hibiscus. Beside him were a couple of other stone idols(I dunno who they are) who also likewise were in white dhoti . Some of the college boys totally unrecognizable in dhoti where chanting Vedas along with the pundit. After a very long time, I actually was able to summon the feelings of devotion today and prayed to God that everyone should get what they deserve (like they would’n otherwise). It was a bedlam of chirruping in the trees nearby. On a normal day I would not really enjoy it, but today it blended so well with the scene.. the blackish blue sky, the calm campus, chill evening breeze of the spring, dark trees, a small little temple, the chanting of Vedas and the birds chirping in their cosy nests !! I felt a strange, pleasant peace engulfing me as I walked back to my hostel.
And I realized, I don’t exactly have to go to Switzerland or Ooty or Kashmir to see the wonder that nature is. It is seen in all its splendour in every little thing around me.. the fluttering butterflies, the cuckoo singing on summer evenings, the setting sun in a shade of fiery red, the sun shining resplendently on the lustrous green fields, as its rays filter in through the tinted windows of my classroom, a lonely bus in the highway seen from my hostel window, the rainbows that stretch against the azure sky over the football ground after a brief raining spell, the smell of the moist earth freshly wet by that rain, the hazy blur that my campus becomes when it rains madly, the little lavender flowers and ochre buds in the bushes that stand on one side of the campus roads, the little flowers in a riot of colours, white, pink, shocking pink and yellow all over the campus, the rising silvery moon on wintry evenings, right over my favourite tree with dew drop like fragrant white flowers, in these does nature show her grandeur that leaves me mesmerized, speechless as it did today.. I almost feel like wordsworth as he stood admiring the London skyline at the Westminster bridge!! Ah,Life is so beautiful..

Srirangam

This is about the place I call my home town. Like about 85% of India s youth, I hail from a little town too.. a small place called srirangam, a suburb in the city of trichy….before starting off.. I wonder what it is going to be in this post that is different from all that has been written by so many people about their home towns.. should I write at all? I write this for two reasons, one- if there is anything on earth that I know best and if asked to talk about(apart from eating and myself), I can talk on and on for as long as I want to, it would be this.. second, like all other accounts on home towns there is this authentic flavor of rangam that is unique to it..something I both hate and love equally.. a place that is part of my identity.. and thus inseparable from me.. most people even if they know this place would be for the temple or probably because their grandparents or some distant relative staying here.. and tamil literature buffs would know it as the home town of the great writer sujatha… for me it’s none of these.. This is the place where I spent the first fourteen years of my life.. I still remember the day I left this place (we were actually shifting base to Chennai) in spite of knowing I would come at least four times a year as my grandparents are here.. I cried like one might have when moving to amritsar, leaving behind Lahore during partition.. Back then, this was the only place I knew and thought was the best on earth.. I loved everything about it.. friends, playing paandi(hopping), cards,the pigs and piglets bathing in the sun near the main sewers , cycling to kollidam( a distributary of kaveri) with friends on summer noons, paternal and maternal grandparents, the evening market, all the festivals, school, music classes , being asked to sing every time someone visited my house, the tall coconut trees I could see from my balcony as they swayed gently in the chill morning breeze, everything… for a long time I was convinced that there existed no better place than this and drank every word of praise as my father spoke about it. I remember the times when I tried being this obedient granddaughter of my austere weirdly orthodox grandmother, trying to show off in front of my other cousins that I had superior knowledge about rangam who visited this place only during holidays from the north talking mostly in hindi or English, who never seemed to hold it in all the awe I felt it should duly get. ( a pompous know-it-all show off yeah)
Srirangam is on an artificial island, the kaveri on one side and kollidam on the other . it has been famous for the ranganathar temple, which is one of the largest temples with the tallest gopuram(equivalent to the dome) in Asia. The sanctum sanctorum right at the center has ranganathar in anantha sayanam which means he has stretched out like one would on their bed when watching t v. It’s supposed to be really famous down south and is usually thronged by tourists and devotees (that’s what they call themselves) from all over the world (oh yeah, of late there are people coming from places like America and Europe). For me none of these mean anything. What I do love is the less known visage, something that is still pristine and untouched by the hazy blur, that is the 21 st century world outside, something that I found out much later as I commuted from here to college in the first two years of engineering and now whenever I come in holidays..the sleepy town as it wakes up to every new morning, a cool zephyr laden with the fragrance of mullai(jasmine) and pavazha malli(a kind of mogra), making the leaves of the coconuts and neem rustle and brush against my face as I amble on, in the lane immediately around the temple, parrots chirruping as the gopurams bathe in the golden glow of the setting moon, giving them a sheen mild, serene and enchanting, the jingling bells of the milk man in his cycle as women wash the front yard and make kolams..after a while as the town is up, there goes a small procession from the kaveri to the temple with two elephants with the silver kodam (pitcher) and men chanting Vedas taking the holy water for the deity..
The tamil month of margazhi is my favourite time of the year when srirangam is at its glorious best. Margazhi that coincides with phalgun, from mid December to mid January is known as the music season particularly for thiruppavai a collection of poems written in praise of Krishna by andal ( tamil version of meera), the sole female among the twelve alwars (preachers of vaishnavism). Thiruppavai echoes like the mellifluous sounds from a brook in the lonely moors in the mornings and evenings here.
I remember how as a kid I would wake up early, wrapped in scarves make colour kolams and then if possible take a quick shower and then go to the andal temple behind my house to get steaming hot pongal(khichdi) cooked in fresh ghee spiced with pepper and cumin seeds. In the evenings I would go with friends to sit and chat in the manal veli( court yard of the temple) munching roasted peanuts and cotton candies.
One evening, I decided to go on a long walk after buying vegetables in the market. Away from the colourful crowded main bazaar, at one corner of chitra veedi a bharatnatyam concert was on. The place was crowded with women clad in nine yards and men as they watched rapturously some girls dance for ‘theeradha vilayattu pillai’. I walked past my favourite house, small thatched, a patti (old woman) sitting on the pyol, the front yard decorated by a beautiful kolam and a huge tree with little white flowers hanging like dew drops, the sweet scent of which wafted through my nostrils reminding me of r.k. narayan’s books..the patti glared at a boy as he sped past in his two wheeler.. there was the jasmine entwined with the lilies in one front of one of the houses.. I gazed at the kolams which were probably made in 5-10 minutes..yet so intricate, symmetric and elaborate..it all looked like part of a perfectly painted scenery.
In the houses in this temple town there is internet and every other facility. The women gossip all day. People are extremely orthodox and conservative and look at anything other than salwar kurta or sari on a girl with a stare that can mean anything from mild amusement to ‘this is blasphemous’. Middle aged and the old starved souls seem more interested than the young men in trying to brush against women, who instead are timid and satisfied passing stupid unpleasant remarks. If a girl wears jean and has short cropped hair she is certainly of a bad sort and would show no interest in god. If someone rants off in rapid English (even if it’s a garbled version of the language) he/ she is trying to be too modern and it is simply atrocious to be seen hanging out with someone of the other gender (the word sex is tabooed). The main roads are usually crowded with tourists and impatient honking vehicles. With more of these the place is getting increasingly polluted and noisy.
But what sets it apart and makes it so beautiful is the less noticed or often unnoticed quaintness, something that gives you the feeling of having gone back in time to a period that you never knew existed. Every little town in India I feel has its unique authentic flavor, probably what Max Mueller saw when he wrote about India. It is this unscathed, pure inexplicable thing and my childhood memories that make me love it. There was a time when I had a problem identifying myself as a srirangamite. Before that, I thought this was the best place on earth. But now it’s neither!!