Category Archives: Loves

Glee/RCB

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Today, I sit here and tell myself I will write. About what I don’t know, but you’re here already reading this so I might as well say something.

I’ve been watching Glee lately, and I love it. It seems plastic and superficial at first, you know high-school-drama (sigh) and cool kids and not-so-cool kids and teacher crushes and same-age-boy crushes. But then all these characters sing amazingly, fantastically, mind-blowingly well AND none of them are clear cut black and white (I kind of have a weakness for those kinds).

Also this week, I re-discovered my love for a certain RCB batsman. Well not re-discovered, it had just kind of subsided into a little corner that I visited occasionally when I saw his name in the papers or on television. But then I got to watch him play live against KKR at Chinnaswamy Stadium on Saturday, and there he was in the flesh – running, smiling, hitting gorgeous 4′s and 6′s. There is beauty in the world again.

I start my advertising internship tomorrow. Let’s see how that goes.

I love that I do not take things lightly

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An excerpt from Eve Ensler’s book “I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World”. Thank you Gaurav for making me listen to this!

I love being a girl.
I can feel what you’re feeling
as you’re feeling it inside
the feeling
before.
I am an emotional creature.
Things do not come to me
as intellectual theories or hard-shaped ideas.
They pulse through my organs and legs
and burn up my ears.
I know when your girlfriend’s really pissed off
even though she appears to give you what
you want.
I know when a storm is coming.
I can feel the invisible stirrings in the air.
I can tell you he won’t call back.
It’s a vibe I share.

I am an emotional creature.
I love that I do not take things lightly.
Everything is intense to me.
The way I walk in the street.
The way my mother wakes me up.
The way I hear bad news.
The way it’s unbearable when I lose.

I am an emotional creature.
I am connected to everything and everyone.
I was born like that.
Don’t you dare say all negative that it’s a
teenage thing
or it’s only only because I’m a girl.
These feelings make me better.
They make me ready.
They make me present.
They make me strong.

I am an emotional creature.
There is a particular way of knowing.
It’s like the older women somehow forgot.
I rejoice that it’s still in my body.

I know when the coconut’s about to fall.
I know that we’ve pushed the earth too far.
I know my father isn’t coming back.
That no one’s prepared for the fire.
I know that lipstick means
more than show.
I know that boys feel super-insecure
and so-called terrorists are made, not born.
I know that one kiss can take
away all my decision-making ability
and sometimes, you know, it should.

This is not extreme.
It’s a girl thing.
What we would all be
if the big door inside us flew open.
Don’t tell me not to cry.
To calm it down
Not to be so extreme
To be reasonable.
I am an emotional creature.
It’s how the earth got made.
How the wind continues to pollinate.
You don’t tell the Atlantic ocean
to behave.

I am an emotional creature.
Why would you want to shut me down
or turn me off?
I am your remaining memory.
I am connecting you to your source.
Nothing’s been diluted.
Nothing’s leaked out.
I can take you back.

I love that I can feel the inside
of the feelings in you,
even if it stops my life
even if it hurts too much
or takes me off track
even if it breaks my heart.
It makes me responsible.
I am an emotional
I am an emotional, devotional,
incandotional, creature.
And I love, hear me,
love love love
being a girl.

Quarter life crisis

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Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I’ll be right beside you dear

Grey’s Anatomy has got me listening to a bunch of songs I used to listen to a hundred times a day. Run by Snow Patrol is one of them. It’s probably one of the most amazing songs ever.

When did life get here? I’m nineteen. My get-to-be-emo days are almost over. My little cousins are not so little anymore. One told me the other day that she likes Taylor Lautner without his shirt on, and another other one has just developed her first crush on a classmate.

Sigh.

I may not be as dark and twisty as before, love age can do that to you. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it. The dark and twisty period, it can be defining. Holed up in your room, with heartbreak songs in the background as you begin to pack away another unfinished chapter of love. Chocolate wrappers spread on the floor, and a romance novel lying spine up on the bed.

And then one day, you wake up, and you realize you’re halfway through college.

Apologies to Harvard

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Poetry spammage soon. Watch out. Not mine though.

Excerpt from John Updike’s 1973 Phi Beta Kappa poem:

APOLOGIES TO HARVARD

We took the world as given. Cigarettes
Were twenty-several cents a pack, and gas
as much per gallon. Sex came wrapped in rubber
And veiled in supernatural scruples—call
Them chivalry. A certain breathlessness
Was felt; perhaps the Bomb, which after all
Mushroomed us as we entered puberty,
Waking us from the newspaper-nightmare
Our childhoods had napped through, was realer then;
Our lives, at least, were not assumed to be
Our right; we lived, by shifts, on sufferance.
The world contained policemen, true; and these
Should be avoided; governments were bunk,
But well-intentioned; blacks were beautiful
But seldom seen; the poor were with ye always.
We thought one war as moral as the next,
Believed that life was tragic and absurd,
And were absurdly cheerful on that basis.
We loved John Donne and Hopkins, Yeats and Pound,
Medieval history was rather swank,
Psychology was in the mind; abstract
Things grabbed us where we lived; the only life
Worth living was the private life, and—last,
Worst scandal in this characterization—
We did not know we were a generation.


I stumbled upon a couple of lines from the above excerpt in the book “The Class” by Erich Segal.

The last line is just.. inspiring.

If this were Facebook..

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..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.

The Duchess and Virgin Territory

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I’d been meaning to watch ‘The Duchess’ for a while now, and I finally watched it today and I loved it! I think Keira Knightley is a very, very talented actress – she’s put up a stellar performance in all the movies I’ve seen of hers right from ‘Bend It Like Beckham’, the POTC series, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ to this one.

The movie is based on the life of 18th-century English aristocrat Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. There’s actually a book about this lady, written by Amanda Foreman, which I must get my hands on now. I love the costumes, I love the music, I love the actors ( Ralph Fiennes in a totally detestable role but very well enacted!).

I seem to have a fascination for these eighteenth century type things..

Also this afternoon I watched ‘Virgin Territory’ starring Mischa Barton and (drool) Hayden Christensen, which caused me to fall in love with him all over again after Star Wars. This one’s a romantic comedy, a bit on the American Pie side but in a more medieval setting, I guess. It was funny, Hayden was hot as usual, so I had fun.

Next on the my list is ‘Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist’ which I am solely watching because it has Paulie Bleeker (Micheal Cera) from Juno!

My Day.

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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.

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn

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In school , after every exam, my teachers would complain “You would score better if you just wrote MORE!” Of course now in college, I’m just another register number so no teacher would know if I was the girl with the 80 in her Business and Corporate writing paper, the subject which requires you to be as brief as possible !

I like brevity, when it comes to writing. Personally, I think that a lot more could be said with shorter pieces, instead of those that ran into pages and pages of nothingness. I remember an incident where I represented school in an another schools inter-school Creative Writing competition. There were two entrants from each school, and the other guy from mine was.. well.. a bit over confident when it came to his writing. My story was about 3 sides long, and his ran into 8 or 9. I will never forget that look on his face  when he saw how short my story was. Anyway, I came second. And he… didn’t.

The other day in college, we explored Flash Fiction, and I LOVED it! My favourite piece would be Hemingway’s six word flash fiction story :

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn

The story is sad, yes, but I love it more for the fact that it shows how the speaker/person/character who put up the sign is attempting to overcome such a difficult thing. Every time I read it, a new wave of awe develops.

Nice article on Flash Fiction here