So much to read! Mythologies, The Second Sex and now I stumbled across Laura Mulvey’s essay“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
Also, totally tripping on T.S Eliot.
“For I have known them all already, known them all -
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?”
- The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock
I have spent way too much money this month on books but what the heck. Just bought “The Second Sex” by Simone de Beauvoir that I have been itching to read for sometime. Also picked up two books at the Strand Book Sale : “Nine by Nine” by Daman Singh and “Endless Love’‘ by Scott Spencer.
“Nine by Nine” was quite unexpected, I must admit. I, as usual, cannot decide if I liked it or didn’t. I didn’t seem to get where the story was going, and if it eventually did reach somewhere, well I think I missed the stop. It left me irritated, as I couldn’t figure out what any of the characters were like in the end.
I also read Eric Segal’s “The Class”, and it made me want to go to Harvard. Again, didn’t like the ending too much. I am too much of a romantic I guess!
Off to watch Harry Potter tonight, but I feel strangely disloyal to the Hogwarts clan. Blame it on Twilight. And oh, I am apparently addicted to glossy magazines. Bad for my budget. Very bad.
..this would say :
Geetanjali Chitnis is back from her blogging hiatus.
Let me say that a) the hiatus was totally unplanned for and b) I have no idea why I’m blabbing about the hiatus but then c) I’ve always wanted to make one of these hello-I-am-back-from-my-hiatus-did-you-miss-me-oh-say-you-did-please kind of posts.
ANYWAY. Lately, I’ve been feeling kind of..old. It might have something to do with the fact that I was a “working” woman for a month, since I interned at one of the city’s newspapers. I wrote for the tabloid, got about 16 by lines, and I’m happy. Like someone put it, it was soul training in a sense. The point is, I’m suddenly realizing heck, I’m not going to be able to say I’m somethingteen for much longer (never mind the fact that my birthday is in March). The tween-teen-twen jump is not looking good.
I went off on a four day vacation with my friends from school, where I got to act totally ditzy and blonde and serious all at the same time, and well, I don’t seem to be like that in real life any more. The time away from parents, boyfriend (there was no mobile network coverage), and life in general was great and I meant it when I messaged my dad to say I really didn’t want to come home! But as I sat there listening to all the girly conversations, it hit me (and the rest, I think) that in a year, none of us had really changed all that much. Apart from a one major break up, all of us were still US. And I don’t know whether thats a good thing or bad.
I devoured Megan McCafferty’s Sloppy Firsts – it made me miss high school. Boys, bitchy friends and bathroom drama.
Ok, so I admit I tend to judge a book by it’s cover! It definitely is one of the factors that leads me to picking up a book, so when I first saw Prep, I thought “Ok, it looks light”, which was what I was looking for at the particular point in time.
Prep turned out to be the total opposite! With a faint Catcher In The Rye quality to it, the book is certainly not gripping in that “oh my god I can’t put it down for even a second” kind of way, but it definitely had me interested throughout. Some people might get bored, or annoyed, or pissed off with the main character’s constant under-playing, undermining of herself, but quite honestly I related to almost everything she felt in a guilty sort of way. As Curtis Sittenfeld’s Wikipedia page says :
[Prep] concerns a girl from South Bend, Indiana, who goes to an elite boarding school near Boston, Massachusetts. The plot deals with coming of age and class distinctions in the preppy and competitive atmosphere of the school.
Lee Fiora, the main character, is someone you’re not likely to spot first in a crowd. And she is well aware of that. It’s not that she’s awkward, a freak, a geek, or humorless. In her eyes, and probably the rest of her peers’, she is ordinary. Lee joins the elite Ault boarding school, but can never explain why. But as a reader, you don’t find the need to question it, just as Lee doesn’t find the need to explain why. Perhaps she wanted to be something special, maybe feel ordinary in “snob school”, but still Lee joins, as one of the few scholarship students. The book was refreshing in the sense that Lee doesn’t do something grand and spectacular that spirals her into the glowing warm spotlight. She doesn’t “find” herself, or end up with the perfect romance. She just emerges probably as real as she was at the start of the story. And, as everybody at Ault School loves to say, “therein lies the paradox”.
This book didn’t change my life. I didn’t fall for the male character. I don’t come out admiring Lee for any of her traits. because I already know those traits, some that I have hidden, some that I have tried to hide and failed, and some that I have allowed to emerge and I’m damn proud that I did.
After all, I did have my own Ault School.
I hate settling.
I get restless the second things get mundane and routine. It was easier to deal with when I was younger, but not so now. I have commitments to keep, other people who are affected by my decisions, and I am intensely aware of this now more than ever.
Today was one of those days when I kind of.. sunk. Into myself, I guess, I’m not sure, but it definitely felt bleak. So I went and had some non-veg lasagna at Sweet Chariot, and headed to Time Out.
Books make me happy. It’s not something I can explain. Their newness, their crispy pages, their sheer number. I like running my fingers over their spines, smiling at the ones I’ve read, looking longingly at the ones I wan’t but can’t have, and looking grimly at the ones that I am determined to buy some day. I must look like a total dork in a bookshop, but I can’t help it. I picked up a fresh, warm looking copy of Jane Eyre that I need to read for college anyway.
Then I headed over to the stationary section. The handmade paper notebooks.. sigh. I just want to grab them all and fill them with everything I can. They also happen to be ridiculously expensive, so I didn’t pick anything up, but I will succumb soon enough, I know I will. I also did a quick round of the Post-it and notebook section.
And after this I felt much, much better.
I’m listening to “If I Fell” by The Beatles on repeat. This song is fast replacing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” as my all-time favorite Beatles song. And you know interestingly, I heard somewhere that “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was written for Patti Boyd, Harrison’s first wife. Another great who I share my birthday with played lead guitar on the album version of the song, and also wrote “Layla” for the same woman! And the acoustic version of “Layla” is currently my ringtone.
Yes, I love complicated connections 
I’m reading lots of chic lit, as usual. Ranging from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre ( for college – and ok so it’s not exactly chic lit heh) to Advaitha Kala’s Almost Single (hated it), and right now Sophie Kinsella’s “Shopaholic Takes Manhattan”. I’m desperately looking for this book called “Marrying Anita” by Anita Jain that I’ve been hearing good reviews about, but I’ve looked everywhere and simply can’t find it.
Nothing seems to live up to Zoya 
I need to invest in a decent bookshelf.
Oh and did quite ok in my first semester examination, and earned a bit of cash so I’m pretty proud of myself.
So I finished ‘The Zoya Factor’ by Anuja Chauhan from start to end today. I absolutly loved it. Each and every moment of it!
I fell in love with Nikhil Khoda right at the start. It’s been a while since I’ve actually sat down and read a book, and Nikhil Khoda’s character was so worth it! I have history when it comes to falling for Indian cricket captains!
Definitely a good, fun read!
I’m currently reading a book called “Everyone Worth Knowing” by Lauren Weisberger, the author of “The Devil Wears Prada“. I’m taking an unusually long amount of time to read it, because of time constraint. I really don’t know where all my time goes, now! It’s my worst nightmare : I settle down in bed, snuggle under the covers and open a perfectly interesting book to read ( romance + fashion + drama + whatever) and the next thing I know, my eyelids are shutting. And this from the girl who can proudly admit that she read each of the fatter Harry Potter books in a day!
Anyway the point of the whole post is the Birkin bag. I first came across it ( or mention of it) in “Everyone Worth Knowing” where one fashion-obsessed creature explains its exclusivity to the lead character, Bette Robinson. Now, while reading one of Nora Ephron‘s essays, I came across the Birkin again:
“—never mind that top-of-the-line thing called a Birkin bag that costs ten thousand dollars, not that it’s relevant because you can’t even get on the waiting list for one. On the waiting list! For a purse! For a ten-thousand-dollar purse that will end up full of old Tic Tacs!”
- an excerpt from Nora Ephron‘s essay “I Hate My Purse”
So the geek in me decided to wiki-search the damn thing to see what all the fuss was about. I apologize if I am indeed the last person to know about this thing, but may I present to you:
The Birkin bag
The above picture is of a red Hermès Birkin. I picked this one because I liked it out of all the other picures I saw. Anyway, a Birkin is an extremely exclusive fashion accessory, that sells at a minimum price of $7500 and according to Wikipedia, can go all the way up to 5 or 6 digit price depending of the material it’s made from. “Allegedly, the waiting list for a Birkin is over two years. In practice, however, many stores have a “call list” and an “order list”, both usually consisting of clients who have in one way or another become “regulars” or have formed a relationship with a particular Sales Associate.” (from here)
Famous clientele include : Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss, Carla Bruni, Demi Moore
Wow. Talk about materialism!
I’ve been shopping so much in the past two weeks ! And mostly shoe shopping I bought three pairs of “rocksters” ( yes I know everyones been buying those but they are so pretty!) in black, silver and PINK. Well see normally I’m the kind of girl who does her homework in advance when it comes to buying what she wants – which means I ask around, who got the best price from where etc and then I just go to that one store and pick up whatever it is I wanted. Of course, this method applies to only when I KNOW what I want, as opposed to “I’m bored ..wheee lets go shopping !” For the record that happens about in once in 18 years. Seriously. I mean it.
Ok coming back to the pink rocksters – well they were too pretty to resist. I’d originally planned to buy them in functional colours i.e black and silver but the second I laid my eyes on those pink ones hanging in that little galli-shop off Commercial Street (which is where you get them, for those interested) I knew I had to have them ! Now I just have to find something to wear them with – ah, the difficulties of life !
I also bought my first pair of All-Star Converse shoes in navy blue. I kept meaning to buy them over the last two years, and I never got around to doing so! Except they give me a horrible shoe bite, so I’ll have to find some way of getting past that.
If you’re tearing your hair out after reading about my shoe shopping.. When Geetanjali Chitnis goes shopping ( especially on Brigade Road) there is always a trip to a bookstore involved! And this time, to three bookstores. Crossword was my first destination – I wanted to pick up a journal in handmade paper (top secret purposes) and I wanted to pick up a copy of Emma and Persuasion. But then I ran through most of my ‘finances’ buying pretty stationary, so I had to settle on choosing between one of the books. And I wanted Persuasion more than I wanted Emma. But as my luck would have it, Crossword had Persuasion only in a combination with Northanger Abbey, which I already own. So that led to trips to The Bookworm (which also didn’t have Persuasion) and finally, Blossom’s (which did). So yay, now I have Persuasion, the last of Jane Austen’s completed works to be published !
The beauty of second hand books is the inscriptions you sometimes find on the inside of the book jacket There was one on the inside of the copy of Persuasion, from a daughter to her mother. The inscription is dated ‘Xmas 1987′ – three years before I was born! I don’t know, I just love knowing that books have their own stories – apart from the one that is printed inside them.
Oh and I forgot to mention – somewhere in between the shopping was a stop at (where else ?) KFC!
Thank you, popsie!