It feels good to be home. In bed. On familiar plane. This white screen.

Last couple of days have been nothing but a series of similar blurring events, mostly forgettable. Inspite of having finished one more semester at college, I've nothing new to add to the list of things I've done. Okay, that didn't come out the way I'd intended it to be but we might be able to establish it later. I'm almost through with my winter break and the sonorous weather has just kicked in (...the balls). Fucking hate the winterchills. I only realized this when I extended my hand to put down my roll number on the question paper- seventeen lakh, sixty three thousand oh wait, one crore, seventy six thousand...you get the drift? It confirmed couple of things. Amongst other, my disdain for writing 'exams' in winter and how I suck at numbers.

Today marked my third attempt at NET. Or, that which may seem to be the qualifying bitch or the overriding stone I need to cross, before I huddle into the battle ground, which is the other side, which is in better terms, an academic job. One needs to clear this wretched paper to prove you're as dumb as the idjits employed on duty while you're colouring the OMR sheet black and blue. The lady in the room today reminded me of 12 grade accountancy classes in school, of how I'd ignore my teacher (primarily cause she'd dyed her hair orangutan red and would wear awful colour combinations- example, she was dressed in egg yolk yellow saree, parrot green blouse, red lipstick and red wayfarers when she came to wish us luck before our board exam- a sight that I can recall at 1:33 am when I'm drowsy and on antacid. Yuck.) and how I found her role in classroom to be insipid overall. That's another case that all of us had tuitions and nobody studied anything in school, because we were covering our syllabus on our own, way ahead of school. Too cool for school, then and now.

NET was pretty boring, overall. I mean, if you remove the exception of the dude- who was far more intimidating than Bane and scared the crap out of our invigilator, there was nothing else that went down. Came across a masterpiece Bengali from JNU. Now, before I get morcha-ed against, just everything about this person was reeking out to be every bit of what I avoid on principle. She stood and argued with the canteen server about how tea costs 5 bucks cheaper at JNU (at rs 5) and how, at the venue of the test they're charging more (*drumroll* rs 10). I know, I know. Bad Snobster, thinks she is rich and so is the world, blah blah. But, if you can afford yourself a Micromax smartphone, cough up love. You can buy yourself chai for dash taka. Nothing to get angsty about.

During NET, we got ourselves an hour to kill and I couldn't get more predictable. I went Christmas gift shopping for a bunch of friends, to pick up a pair of earrings (that the owner packed a single one). Rushed through the market, fully dressed, complete with suede boots and leather jacket. I was remarkably well dressed for 9 am on the coldest winter morning, also freezing to death inspite of the weight and the layers. What a shame. The intent behind this stunt was to land straight up for a birthday party, of a friend from second college (that's how it'll be referred from now on), who is a fashion blogger by the night and during the day, she runs the show at the university as an assistant professor at a private institution. It was exactly a year ago, she and I, along with a whole bunch of interested or well, interested to waste time candidates sat the NET first time around. She was the only one from our entire institute to have cleared that and a year from now, she's throwing a birthday party and some such, while I am still writing my exam. It's all so vivid, we were in the same room, we went home together and made a stopover mid-way at Pappu Tea Stall to grab Maggi. Bloody surreal how she's made it big, while I get to write exams in 2 degree. Here's your cue for dramatic Bombay cinema pause.

Speaking of Bombay cinema, I've gotten to re-watching some of the staples I've grown up on. It's almost as if I'm making recent cognitive developments and readings as I watch these films again. My reading of these films have changed quite a bit. I remember back in the day I thought some of these films were not half bad. Until yesterday, of the 9 odd films I'd streamed on the TV, I thought all of them were a gross waste of everyone's time, including the filmmaker's and the actors'. You don't really step in the same river twice. You step twice, but the river remains the same, you remain fixed where you are. You establish a relation between what's already there and what's going to be. You forget that which goes, exists in its absence. The films have been bad, individually as well as in a cluster. It's the temporal element that binds the argument together. Incase you find this hard to navigate and feel, this is too obscure, I'd say, wait till I dispose of laziness and decide to write some more about this break. I wish I had something interesting to say. My will to write has gone missing like my best friend's cat.

Like I said, life is same old. I still wake up with a puffy face and on the wrong side of the bed when my alarm goes berserk. I still party after NET (bachelorette, birthday) and I still, believe I'm never clearing NET. Kindly admit your shortcomings. They don't want to ruin your 'new year' with the dead corpses of your skeletons past.

Strangely, I'm craving nothing and that's how cold it is. In this room, in my bed and on this screen. If you think your life is warm enough, I suggest you to watch some Burton (Batman 1989), Nightcrawler (2014) and Ugly (2014). You'll need a day off to register what all went wrong around you.

(Keep a lookout for the year end post. It should come before the year ends, ideally. Which is soon.)


Bye.