Wherefore art thou, Exam Voice?
03 Mar 2011 4 Comments
in Scribbles Tags: board exams, real life, voice in my head
Hello! What? You still check this blog? Really? Wow. Thanks. (You have issues though) It has been two years since I started the blog and I’m back to writing board exams and apparently back to writing blog posts too. Well, we’ll see how long that lasts. 
A little over two years ago, I made the most amazing discovery in the world. I realised that the voice in my head (the one that says shut up when I’m saying something stupid and sings tonelessly when I’m sleeping in class) turns into something entirely different during exams. It is soothing, entertaining and the first time I heard it-just plain weird.
It was during my second maths revision exam in the tenth that I first made its acquaintance. I was stuck with a particularly difficult proof and the voice was going Fajitas! French toast! Flambé! Flootsnoot! and then out of nowhere it changed to Robert Pattinson as Edward “Glittery” Cullen going ‘As if you could outrun me! As if you could hold me back!’ And repeated that over and over and over again till I wasn’t sure whether I was worried about my unsolved paper or the creepy personality change of the voice in my head. I was getting all tense and the voice seemed to go Asifyoucouldoutrunme!Asifyoucouldholdmeback!,working itself into a frenzy till I did manage to finish the proof at which point it stopped. And sang a little Linkin Park.
Weird as that was, I soon realised that the Exam Voice was an extremely talented being. It could sing-not tonelessly like before- but actual singing and could read parts of books out loud. At one point of time, it even quoted poetry from recitation competitions held in primary. But the best thing of all was how it stopped being a voice and became a TV during English exams. Fancy watching Emma Watson go ‘It’s Wingardium LeviOsa not Leviosaaaa’ when you’re pretending to be Sachin/Sneha writing a letter complaining about garbage problems in the park near your colony to the local newspaper. (If you don’t understand, you’re better off not knowing. Seriously)
Good times. Today was my first board exam. And I was looking forward to some entertainment during Business Studies. I even thought of music I’d like it to play (The Rolling Stones and some Bon Jovi) But then disaster struck. The voice didn’t work! It started the beginning of You Give Love A Bad Name before coming to an abrupt halt and muttering stuff about the principles of management. I felt rather glum after that. I need it back before English! I need it to play Star Wars 
It’s called a case study
08 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
in Scribbles Tags: case study, humour
So, some OCD people like research and endless Wikipedia crawling when they’re preparing for a debate. They like surfing the net to hit upon obscure sites for their examples and case studies. Despite my OCD, I don’t particularly enjoy exploring the interwebz for case studies. I have however, been known to do extensive research at random intervals of time. Which is why I informed my friend that he needed a case study to back up his speech on underemployment. Our conversation went thus:
N: You need a case study/example to back it up.
A: Oh, cool. Lets write one.
N: You don’t write one. You do some RESEARCH.
A: No you don’t. Here’s what you do. *pulls out notebook* Place- Surat. Person- Farmer.
N: Wait I think there are mills in Surat. Maybe you should look it up?
A: Nah. Alright. Place- Surat. Two men- push one button. Hence, underemployed.
N: ….
Of The Supreme Importance Of Dragons In Epic Tales
14 Nov 2010 2 Comments
in Scribbles Tags: dragons, epic tale
Anything is a story. It becomes a tale only if it begins with the words ‘Once upon a time…” And for a tale to be EPIC, it needs a dragon. It is a truth (not yet universally acknowledged) that every writer writing an epic story must be in want of a dragon. My friend didn’t think my theory made sense but I convinced her otherwise. First by repeating ‘I’m right, you’re stupid’ over and over again and then later by coming up with actual arguments that convinced her.
To understand the ultimate importance of dragons in epic tales, one has to visualise a tale bereft of dragons.
Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom of …….. there lived a beautiful princess in a stone tower. The tower was in the middle of a forest and the beautiful princess was a little cold and lonely but not too unhappy. She was free to leave any time but didn’t wish to since the tower was her home. A handsome young knight was riding in the forest on his beautiful white horse and stopped by the tower to see the beautiful princess. “Hey there! Are you a damsel in distress?” he called out. She looked down and replied “Oh no, I just live in this tower. It’s quite comfortable.” This answer stumped the knight. What was one supposed to say to a princess in a tower who was happy to be there? “Thats lovely. But are you sure there are no dragons that you need me to slay? Or even a pack of wolves to fight with?” The princess looked down at him bewildered. He was a mighty queer chap. Who wanted dragons around? So she just shook her head silently and an awkward silence ensued. The knight was intensely uncomfortable. All he wanted was an adventure-not an awkward conversation with a damsel-not-in-distress! He waved awkwardly and rode off into the sunset. And they both lived reasonably average existences. The end.
And that is why a tale without a dragon is nowhere close to epic. Now, if there was a dragon in the story, it would have gone something like this:
Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom of …….. there lived a beautiful princess in a stone tower in the middle of a forest. She was as beautiful as she was unhappy. And she was very unhappy because she was trapped in the tower by a scary fire-breathing dragon who wouldn’t let her out into the sunshine. A handsome young knight was riding in the forest on his beautiful white horse and stopped by the tower. He could see the princess’s silky, beautiful hair at the narrow window at the top and fell in love with her immediately. He knew intuitively that she was a damsel in distress and he had to save her. He needed desperately to get to the top of the tower and rescue her but found the stairs were guarded by a fire-breathing dragon. With his supreme ninja skills, he cartwheeled onto the dragon’s back and clung on for dear life as the beast tried to shake him off. The knight then jumped into the air with a loud war cry and drew his light saber from inside his shirt. The saber flashed green and red as he directed beams of light into the dragon’s eye and squirted tequila into its nostrils. The dragon fell down in a dead faint as the knight rushed to the top of the tower, swept the princess into his arms and jumped with her onto his horse’s back. His horse then turned into a unicorn and they rode off into the sky. They all lived happily ever after. The end.
I don’t think I need say anymore. Dragons are obviously the only cool things in epic tales. Also light sabers. But yeah, dragons.
=) peace
Author’s Note: If I was a traditional Epic tale-ist I would probably have had the dragon die. And there would be an absence of tequila and light sabers. But since I am after all my very own unique little snowflake, I’m going to let my tale stay epic the way it is.
Dear Stevie
03 Oct 2010 7 Comments
in Music Themed, Scribbles Tags: cassette, I just called to say I love you, mom, music, stevie wonder
Dear Stevie,
For more than sixteen years, I’ve had your voice on my mother’s cassette player/my computer/ car stereo telling my that you just called to say you love me. I do not remember such a call ever happening. And it is improbable that it ever happened since you’ve been singing this from when I was 3 months old. You, Mr Wonder persist in saying you called me and then keep telling me when you didn’t call me. That really isn’t very helpful is it? And since it disturbs me that I may have missed a call from you, I did some extensive research to investigate when you could have called me.
No New Year’s Day to celebrate
No chocolate covered candy hearts to give away
No first of spring
This helped me eliminate the New Year Celebrated by communities all over the world (red in the calendar) as well as the month of February when chocolate covered hearts are sold to make single people feel bad about their lives. 21st March being Spring Equinox is eliminated as well.
No April rain
No flowers bloom
No wedding Saturday within the month of June
But what it is, is something true
Made up of these three words that I must say to you
Before I get into checking more days off, I have to ask why you persist by saying you said three words to me. I have NEVER been told three words by you. Not even ‘clean your room’ or ‘go study economics.’ Oh well. Those sentences tell me you didn’t call during April. Pity really, I wouldn’t even have had school. And evidently you didn’t call on any Saturdays in June.
No summer’s high
No warm July
No harvest moon to light one tender August night
No autumn breeze
No falling leaves
Not even time for birds to fly to southern skies
Wow. Now you’re just eliminating months like crazy. No July, no August. And as for Summer- March, April, May in my country and June, July, August for you. And we can’t forget the Australians can we? That would be being hemisphere-ist. So no November, December, January.
No Libra sun
No Halloween
No giving thanks to all the Christmas joy you bring
But what it is, though old so new
To fill your heart like no three words could ever do
Oh! kay… So now we’re eliminating a bit of September and most of October. And Christmas day. Huh. Looks like most of the calendar is gone.
Dum-da-dum. Mr Wonder, you claim you called me sometime between the 1st and 23rd of October (except the 11th) or from the 25th to the 30th of October. Now you’d think I was happy I’d actually narrowed down this alleged call to 28 days out of 365. I was. Except, then I remembered I was born in December. And if you’ve been telling me this since I was three months old, you’ve been claiming to call me BEFORE I was born. Lawyered. (kind of)
…..
I don’t know whether to be happy to have (kind of) lawyered you or to curse myself for having spent 20 minutes composing a post about you.
No Love,
The-person-whom-you-claimed-to-call-to-say-three-words-to-though-you-never-did
This post is inspired by my mom who recorded I Just Called To Say I Love You over and over and over again on a cassette and played it for me every night so that I’d go to sleep.
Fraanship Day
10 Aug 2010 6 Comments
in Scribbles Tags: fraan, friendship day
In ancient times, it was customary for children to tie colourful pieces of string around their classmate’s hands once a year, and wish them a happy friendship day. The term ‘friend’ grew to have different connotations with the passage of time. The aforementioned passage of time has caused humans to forget this tradition. However, there seems to be a general inclination to bring the ancient ritual back. Two important questions have hence risen, “What Is A Fraan?” and “What Do We Do On Fraanship Day?”
The first question can be easily answered. Most history books these days include a page which tabulates the changing meaning of a ‘Fraan.’
Stone Age: Fellow Tazo Trader, Chandler To Your Joey
2004: Orkut/ Facebook Pal
2009: Farmville buddy
2012: The guy who promises to have your back till the world ends.
2013: The guy who did have your back when the world didn’t end.
2100: Pre-orders you a flying motorbike.
2220: Buys you a MyTwitFace account. (The unique 23rd century version of Facebook+Twitter+MySpace)
2350:Stands in line with you to buy your first silver jumpsuit.
25o0: Throws you a surprise party on the moon.
This makes things quite clear for all concerned. Though the slight change in spelling of Friend to Fraan in the 21st century did cause some confusion, it was not unduly disruptive. The second question is not resolved as easily. How DOES one celebrate Fraanship Day? The logical thing seems to be to look at ancient traditions and adapt them to suit the current trends. Consequently, studies are being made by anthropologists and the suitable changes are to be formulated.
“The main problem is,” said Prof. Louis Rottenhead, “the changing languages. We speak a very different language from the ones our forefathers used. So our objective is to translate some of the ancient documents into iLanguage for our easy understanding.”
In stone age, most Fraanship Day cards contained messages like this:
To my best friend,
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you!
Happy Friendship Day!
This is obviously nearly incomprehensible to the present generations and even with footnotes will take a while to absorb. Prof. Rottenhead and his team have taken it on themselves to translate this into the more user-friendly iLanguage. “We aren’t doing a complete translation,” says Miranda Fizzo, Rottenhead’s assistant. “We obviously want some of the quaintness of the old poems to be retained. A rough translation of the poem for a present day card would be:
2: Bff / 4m: Bff
Rse=red/vlt=blu/sgr=swuit/u222!
hpy fraanshp day!
Rottenhead’s team expect to finish their research by next May and will have adequate data to prepare humans for the renewal of their ancient custom. “It is going to be a lot of hard work,” says Prof Rottenhead. “Translating the documents, retaining their message and popularising it within a year is not going to be easy. But we are ready for the challenge. We are excited to be part of this process that will allow us to reconnect with our culture.”
___________________________________________
And that is a LONG overdue post. I’ve had blogger-itis and a sad lack of inclination to update. I will get better though, promise!
=) peace
