Calcutta

Just got back from Calcutta. I had initially planned to spend a week there, ended up staying for two. Seems like I was there for a lot longer, though not quite long enough.

There’s lots to see and do in Calcutta. High-end restaurants with hilarious descriptions of the food on offer. (Whatever the people who wrote that were smoking, I’d like some of it.) Angry, somewhat bemused glances for singing silly Backstreet Boys and Westlife songs in said restaurants. Male waiters who wear generous amounts of eyeliner and absolutely demand tips. Smelly, overcrowded pubs with drunk college kids merrily singing old Hindi songs, while loud fights between other sufficiently inebriated people break out all around.

A shady brothel, a renowned temple, a court, a prison and a posh residential area, all within two minutes of each other. A large, popular museum that may or may not have fake relics and fossils on display.

Friendly old drug dealers who try to sell you the finest “Bombay Black”. Scary rickshaw drivers who try to browbeat tourists into getting onto the hand-drawn carts. They might seem eager and friendly enough at first, but if you decline, their eyes say “get on, or I slit your throat in your sleep”. (One of them even claimed to have all of eight sons living in Bombay, for some reason.) Clean metro platforms. Uncrowded, punctual trains. No fist fights in train compartments. No yelling. No separate compartments for men and women. Yellow-coloured, expensive Ambassador taxis.

Pink iPods and purple Walkmans. Movie theaters with pretty cats running around the back seats. Big stationery stores. Bookstores. More bookstores. Even more bookstores. Glorious, glorious Starmark.

Dusty, colourful, confusing, crowded marketplaces where you can get pretty much anything you want.

Snooty, condescending women. Pretty women. Men who can’t stop staring at women’s chests. Scorching heat. Friendly people. Great new friends. Big, scary birds, handsome tigers and sweet cotton candy at the zoo. Lions in heat. Sitting by the lake at Victoria Memorial, surrounded by couples getting cosy under trees. Bright green leaves against a brilliant blue-grey evening sky. Lots of bad jokes. Lots of laughs. “If you know what I mean.”

Aimless wandering. Coffee and conversations. Comfortable silences. Lots of brownies and ice cream. Double chocolate chip muffins. With chocolate sauce.

The Girl™. Heh.

I’m going back in a few weeks.

Flying for the first time tomorrow.

I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again in the same way. There’s some things no six-year-old boy in the world should have to be told, but the way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. The world’s a hard place, Danny. It don’t care. It don’t hate you and me, but it don’t love us, either. Terrible things happen in the world, and they’re things no one can explain. Good people die in bad, painful ways and leave the folks that love them all alone. Sometimes it seems like it’s only the bad people who stay healthy and prosper. [...] But see that you get on. That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on. — Dick Hallorann in Stephen King’s The Shining

I cannot pretend that I regard this with favour, but the purpose of life is not to do what we want but what needs to be done. This is what fate demands of us. — Oromis, Brisingr

I will be keeping an eye out for you. Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well.
— Peter Stevens, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

“The problem with talking is that nobody stops you from saying the wrong thing. I think life would be much better if it was like you’re always making a movie. You mess up, somebody just walks on the set and stops the whole shot.” — Jerry Seinfeld

I’ve been feeling this way quite a bit lately. Heh. It’s fun, though. Kinda.

Crossroads

2008 didn’t start very well for me, to say the least. This year has, so far, mostly been about dealing with change and trying to move on. Naivety and morality are gradually being obscured and edged out by cynicism and Real Life. I’ve had quite a bit of growing up to do in a relatively short time span.

Now is as good a time as any for a fresh start. I’m going back to college after having dropped out close to four years ago. I’ve already been accepted into a good college and will be pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree. I’ve picked biochemistry as my major. Classes begin on Monday. Bit scared apprehensive, actually. Don’t quite know what to expect.

I will not be taking on any web design/programming work for the next year or so. I will be writing here quite regularly, and I will, of course, be doing a lot of stuff with Split. I will also, as time permits, continue to maintain and work on the Morning After theme for WordPress (a “clean, mean, magazine-style machine”, apparently).

I’m interested in taking on the occasional freelance writing project, so if you have anything in mind, please feel free to get in touch.

Here’s looking forward to the near future. Hard work. Perseverance. Realistic expectations. And lots of deep breaths. Wish me luck!

Excerpts from J K Rowling’s rather brilliant Harvard commencement speech:

An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass. And by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope, rather than a reality. So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. — J K Rowling’s Harvard commencement speech, June 2008