Ruchira's Ramblings

Some stories are clever. They strike with their ingenuity and execution and they hold your attention. Some stories are well-plotted- all the pieces fitting together neatly in the end like a jigsaw puzzle. Some stories however hold your heart with their authenticity and the ones in Julie Orringer’s collection titled How To Breathe Under Water belong to this category. Orringer's writing is beautiful- raw, lyrical and honest. They break your heart and choke you and you, immersed in these other lives, don't even notice you're holding your breath. And you realize why it is so- it's because Orringer draws you out from your own time and space and immerses you in with her characters who are all submerged, in the process of drowning, and you drown with them. Perhaps if we reach the end of the book, we shall become adept by then to breathe underwater. I sincerely hope that the people in the books did- the pilgrim children, the sixth-grader dancer, the drug-addict aunt... I hop...

Where do lost flies go? I mean, they obviously go somewhere, which is how they get lost in the first place, but how do they get back to starting point? The male Musca domestica has an average lifespan of 28 days. It’s top flight speed is 4/5 mph. I wonder if it remembers where it started once it’s reached the end. Why am I talking about flies after talking about gods? Well you see it's a natural progression:   As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods ; [i] which makes me wonder- do flies go through existential crisis? Do they believe in fate? Last Saturday I booked an Ola Share from my college. The first cab never turned up, and when we called him, he said he was waiting at Quest Mall, which, according to the information on his app, was the pick-up location that we had selected. I checked my app- it clearly said ‘Work’, which was a saved location- with the address of my college. Incidentally the place is at least 20 minutes’ walk from Quest Mall. So naturally, w...

This is going to be short. One of my favourite Discworld quotes, out of many many favourite Discworld quotes, is this one: " HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE." ( Hogfather   by   Terry Pratchett ) It isn't something new, but recently there has been an escalation in religion-fueled hatred and aggression, and I have been thinking if the world would be a better place  if there was no concept of religion, no concept of divinity, what would the world be like? As a Bengalee girl growing up in Kolkata, no saree for Saraswati Puja, no meeting friends  and no special album releases and magazine releases for Durga Puja, no cakes for Christmas... What if humanity had never thought of God? Or gods? Man saw the Unknown and called It God, and because of his nature, sought to know it. And therefore came religion, and afterwards, science. If we had never longed to find God, would we ever find scienc...

So, finally, I've come up with the plan to keep this blog working. Writing work-outs! Yes! Over the sparsely productive years of my life as parts of various online writing communities, I have collected various writing prompts, exercizes to generate ideas, work-outs to break that damnable writers' block- all safely pasted, saved and filed away in an obscure folder on My Computer. Now, my plan is to use those exercizes to keep those blog-posts coming at respectable intervals. I might still come up with other posts, though, when the mood hits me, so watch out for those, but here's the first of the exercizes:  1. Think of adjectives that define your personality. For example, mine might be bold, cocky, friendly, straightforward and witty. With those adjectives in mind, write 350 words on your favourite activity, and infuse those personality traits into your words.  Right, I accept I'm cheating a bit here. This was written weeks ago and I just didn't post it. Becau...

This is getting old. I begin  a post with profuse apologies for not posting more often, then I go off again. It's like an endless loop. Meanwhile crazy guys leave their crazy preachy rants under my comments section. Anyway, here's what happened while I was fooling around in my online invisibility cloak. I got transferred, changed workplace, got a new syllabus to deal with, went through my first lot of university exam answer-scripts- honestly, I would take a few hundred dementors instead! And I'm still reading 'Dance, Dance, Dance' and also reading 'Magic Mountain' and my laptop and phone went for repairs and it was crazy. And now I'm posting another pointless blog article and I have no effing idea why except perhaps I enjoy typing aimless words. Perhaps I need a new plan of action. Have a faint idea, let's see how that works out. 

Okay, okay, I know I've gone MIA once again after pledging on my blog not to do that- umm, when was the last time I posted here? Bad, bad me! By the way, is it technically possible to go missing in action when no one's missing me? If I was a character on stage the only lines I would get to speak would be soliloquys, and that would be right after the audience had left. So anyway, I don't remember when I last posted here and I haven't checked, but it has to be a while because I finished reading  Hosseini's 'The Kite-Runner' (finally), Arthur Golden's 'Memoirs of a Geisha', Jane Smiley's 'A Thousand Acres', Murakami's 'Kafka on the Shore' and 'After Dark'  in that time, and have also finished 'Asura-the tale of the Vanquished' by Anand Neelkantan. I've also come across this fascinating series called 'The Song of the Titans' by Patrick Adkins which is up next on my reading list, along with a lot ...

Let’s not look at the date of my last post. I'm here now and I've got things to say. Well, honestly, I don't know why people would be interested to read my miserable whining about my completely messed up academic life , but I need to whine somewhere and the people I generally go to have a whine episode have gotten so tired of me that they have left the country. (It's true. One of them is busy sightseeing at Florence and eating Pino's sandwiches and truffled mushrooms and all sorts of exotically named food items. The other is sitting in Leeds and ignoring my whatsapp messages. ) And the person who's still around has stopped responding to my calls. He didn't even reply to my birthday wishes. Even though I actually got third time lucky and managed to wish him on the right date. He could have congratulated me on getting the date right, right? A little encouragement could help. I mean, I’m already neck-deep in trouble here, trying to fathom Jung. Don’...