In a couple of hours it will all be over, and then we begin over again.

I'm not in the mood for words.

So here are a bunch of pictures, each of which symbolize important times this past year. Moments of change, of happiness, of discovery, of living dreams. Moments I hope to take away with me....separating the grain from the chaff.

Happy New Year!

PS: Some of the dates are a bit wonky because the camera wasn't set right, but they were all from this year.

Au Revoir

I have never liked to say goodbye. There is always such a finality to it. And something dies somewhere in the soul. Instead, I'd far rather see it as something very temporary. I'll see you later. Au Revoir. We shall meet again. That instills hope.

The past four months have proved to be simply wonderful! There have been so many adventures and I've done things I've never even considered doing before!! What stands out though are the people I have met here. Liz, Brat, SS, Cowboy being right on top of that list!! Not to forget Gautam, Shibin, Aaranya, Cathy, Adithya, Sheena, Naomi, Toju, the Toucan and the entire Derivatives presentation bunch, the contingent of Indian LLMs, my clustermates, Shobhit, the TF squad and so many many others I have spent special moments and forged bonds with. It's been a beautiful time. I will always maintain that Singapore is a lovely place to be in when you have got the right bunch of friends! And I have been blessed abundantly!

So here's to memories of spending the night on a bench under the stars in a foreign land, parasailing and weightlessnes, camping in a hotel lobby in the wee hours of the morning until we could finally check in at 6 am, Bailey's Comet, the Lube, almost getting peed on by a bat, the fountain of wealth, spontaneous river cruises, conjunctivitis, tears, Hard Rock Cafe, green tea cake, Scruffy, long walks around campus and furtive oreo cookie mcflurries, the ten courts of hell, the crunch times before derivatives presentations each week, roti prata and teh tarik around midnight, Sheares suppers, IMH sessions, black and red nail polish, falling in love with the oh-so-expensive dress, camping, patai!!!!, chopsticks, kayaking, failed attempts at ice skating, trying to catch the baby monkeys on camera, lying at the base of the merlion and talking on and on...All of these memories so special because of the people associated with them.

I am glad to have known you and will miss you! Until we meet again then...!!

Coming to Life

The last few days have proved to be some of the most fun days I've had here so far! From frantic group discussion in the 20/30 minutes prep time for my derivatives class presentation, to sitting by the water at Clark Quay and talking about everything, to running up and down the green slopes of a reservoir, to watching (finally!!) UP, to finally experiencing the local phenomenon that is milo dinosaur. I can feel the blood pumping through my body, and my brain cells stirring somewhere up there. It feels just wonderful!!

Before I sign off though, I must tell you about the extra inmate of my cluster (group of single rooms sharing common bathing and kitchen facilities). I wasn't living long in the residences before I discovered him. He was the culprit behind the dustbin's contents found strewn all over the kitchen, the mischief-maker of tiny brown dots on the table and floor, the thief behind cereal stolen from a bowl left unattended on the kitchen table for just a few moments....what marks him out is his hairdo...feathers always awry, and somehow contrived into a messy mohican on the top of his head! I affectionately named him "Scruffy" on the spot, and even though he flies away every time I enter the kitchen and watches me from the opposite building, I have developed quite an attachment to him.

Picture 3 = A blurry bit of Clark Quay...the bridge where drinking in public seems quite acceptable, unlike elsewhere over here.
Picture 2 = A view of the lower reservoir.
Picture 1 = Scruffy in a post modernist picture after he flew away just as I clicked down the shutter.

The Singapore Chapter begins.

Singapore, and the chance of an exchange here, represented a truck load of things for me. It promised a chance to enjoy humid weather, to clear my pores, decorate a fresh new room, meet new friends, take a step back from my life as I know it, and of course, gain new perspectives.

So far, I haven't been disappointed. There have been added advantages of course...my hair has leaped at the chance to gain new heights in volume (refer pic. above, and ignore the date, I never set my camera), and I have discovered the Chinese translation of my name. None of which could have happened if I hadn't come here!!

What has really struck me though, is the very varied perspectives I've come across. If you put a whole lot of lawyers in a little campus in the middle of nowhere, they are bound to start thinking in a very similar way (much as you may hate to hear this, my dear fellow law schoolites, we are actually a little too alike!). Here, especially through the massive exchange programme, I have met people who have travelled widely, who are studying everything from business and mathematics to English and French, who have gone to a school right next to a beach, who have been a part of a circus, who have been in their national swimming teams, who have had a tribesman offer his two very beautiful daughters in marriage, who have been nerds and lived to tell the tale.....all of whom, see life through very different lenses from the ones I've been wearing. And this has been so refreshing!

It's been almost a week since I moved on campus, and already I can feel myself healing. My usual jadedness seems to be mellowing with the sea breeze, and much of the pain and anger which from time to time drives me onto the very edge of insanity seems to slowly be dissipating with long relaxed conversations and walking at the edge of the sea. Memories, as always, remain. But as newer ones come crowding in, the old bow their way to the back of the drawer.

Hair notwithstanding, I am glad to be here.

3 AM

It is 3 am, and the ghosts of insomnia arrive...floating around just out of reach, whispering over your shoulder, tickling your lacrimal glands...you can hear them, feel their presence, know their effect....but you can neither touch them nor feel them.

Apparitions glimpsed and stories whispered the night before Julius Ceasar's cataclysmic death...these are but small manifestations of the inhabitants of the wee hours. More terrifying still, are those you cannot see - voices hurling accusations, screaming lies a more rational mind could reason out as untruths, the loss of everything as it should be and everything as you know it is...And then, there are the disguises - Hideous creatures peering out from faces loved and known, complicated plots hidden deep within trusted advice, hatred and disgust seeping from the pores of hearts held close, cutting words hidden in some mental box brushed over on the surface with the powder of honesty and care - crawling out of the shadows and into your head...A masquerade of hooded jeering apparitions, circling round and round, crowding closer and closer, sucking you deeper and deeper into that dark whirlpool of inadequacy which lies dormant in most minds.

Finally, the knifing finale - the feeling of abandonment...that on a shelf lies rows of goodbyes, one for everyone you know; and tears, for the permanent departure of those you love. For once gone, they will never return, and everybody leaves in the end. Or so the voices menace.

And so, the tears keep falling, and the fingers keep typing...fighting off those incessant cries, vainly battling to block off their words, as the sadness and despair deepens, as mental walls weaken, and you feel your mind yielding. Somewhere, just beyond the rim of consciousness, you hear your own voice screaming, pleading for help from somebody...anybody!

But nobody can hear you. It is 3am and they are all fast asleep.

PS: It is easy to be a sunflower in the day, but when the sun sets, there is nothing to gaze at or follow, except the darkness around, and that is when the mind closes in on itself.

Little hands and a little salt.

I sit in the library right now. Outside the window, the golden dazzle of the evening sun smiles, dry trees barely move, dragonflies dart jerkily, trying to appear busy, yellow flowers fall to the ground...the lightest of breezes nudges my tightly plaited curls, and the wall fan in front of me appears to have stuck. But this post isn't about today, or the hot summer, or even about the virtues of curly hair....it brings back a summer, many years ago, when I was a wee goody-two-shoed lass, and a little building in the middle of the middle of my city.

Every so often, there used to be a lunch at church. Maybe there still are lunches there, but I would never know, as I no longer frequent that little building in the middle of the middle of my city. To come back to my story, ever so often there used to be a lunch. While the adults engaged in their segregated important conversations downstairs, the rag-tag bunch of little ones, this wee lass included, used to run up the stairs, and between the pews, and behind the pulpit, and everywhere we possibly could without reprimands raining down on us.

It was while we were energetically engaged in one such run (ah, the days when I was young and slim and could run!) when we came upon the salt.

Now, salt, for the uninformed, provides an important metaphor in the Bible...as Christians, we are to be like salt...a little of us spreading a lot of God in the unflavoured food. But, then, metaphorical salt isn't the topic of this post either.

So, to get back (again!!! How my mind wanders!) to my tale, we came upon the salt. There it lay, on a piece of dry paper, on the railing of the balcony of the first floor, glistening pure and white in the hot summer sun. Being valiant young adventurers, debate was the first thing called for:

"Oooh!! What is this??"

"Who kept it here???"

"Why doesn't it blow away?" (Retrospectively, this was probably the most important philosophical question.)

"Can I touch it?"

"Can I taste it??"

It didn't smell of anything in particular. It didn't feel like anything in particular. So six little hands stuck numerous fingers onto the paper, and transferred the tiny crystals onto six little tongues.

"Oh! It's SALT!!!"

But mind you, this was not any salt. And no, it wasn't pure religious sacramental salt or anything of the sort, but it did taste different. It tasted more exciting. Somehow.

So, we ate it all up.

It's effect on us proved to be very similar to yet another white powder I learnt about many years later in college. Every Sunday, we would run up to the balcony after the service. If the railing was bare, six little hearts would descend to the depths of depression for the next sixty seconds. And if the salt was there..?...Well, then we would eat it up, every last granule of it. Eyes bright with happiness, cheeks flushed with excitement. We would even lick our fingers at the end! After all, what were manners when confronted with THE SPECIAL SALT?

Looking back, I can never figure out what was so special about that non-descript white powder lying in its white paper. We never thought we were stealing, so the Augustine pears effect (go listen to the lyrics of St. Augustine's pears by Petra for the context) wasn't what drove us ("forbidden fruit has a strange siren song")....in our innocence, we always imagined that the salt was left there especially for us! I can never understand why the person who kept the salt out never learnt his lesson and continued keeping it out right upto the time the monsoons started. And most importantly, I simply cannot fathom why that paper was never blown away!!!

The Iron Lady...(and how she was melted)

If you asked me who was the person in the university with the most authority, the most power, the most control, and who commands the respect, or at least, the obedience, of nearly everyone in the college from the vice chancellor to the most wimpy first year, my answer, without any hesitation, would be, "The Cleaning Amma".

(For the colloquially uninformed, 'amma' is the term often used to refer to a woman older than you, who you would generally not, due to constraints of a caste, class, or societal nature, refer to by her name, or by other commonly used terms, such as 'madam' or 'aunty'.)

When it is time for her to clean an area, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, can come in her way!! It is a more than familiar sight to see her sweeping out a deskful of students - books, laptops and all; rushing away a professor just come in to conduct a viva voce examination; or even flushing out the boys standing in front of the urinals in the men's restroom! All this solely with a constant stream of words in the vernacular language (which 96% of her unwilling listeners cannot understand).

It is anybody's guess what it is that she says. I do know that she often asks for the time; but other than that, she could be lecturing me on the messiness of students, or the pressures of being a cleaning amma, or the weather, or her husband's latest exploits! You never know!!! Communication doesn't seem to be high on her priorities. But then, communication is only for mere mortals.

My story is set in a classroom. The fourth year classroom to be precise. I had cultivated the habit of eating good home-made healthy vegetarian food every lunch with one of my buddies. The classroom was peaceful, the company pleasant, and the food healthy. My only nemesis, and the only blot on my perfect lunchtime, was THE CLEANING LADY.[sinster music plays in the background]

Everyday, without a moment's respite, she would come in with her broom, and with scoldings and shoutings and naggings and finger waggings, drive me and my lunch buddy from one end of the room to another! It was such torture! And the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months.

Then, the day of change finally arrived. And it amazes me how such a simple thing could make all the difference. I was in a good mood (and I suspect the cleaning amma was too)....When she entered the classroom, before she could part her lips, I welcomed her with an "oota aayitha?" (Which is a greeting in the local vernacular language, roughly translating to "have you eaten?"). She seemed momentarily taken aback, and then answered sadly, (and for the life of me, I can't reproduce her words here, though I give you my word that I did understand her) that she hadn't eaten yet. This being the limit of my linguistic capabilities, I gave her a sympathetic smile, and then we both went our own ways.

But ever since then, things changed. Rather than sweeping us out, she started telling my buddy and me to sit and eat. When she did want us to leave, her tone of telling us to go, changed....it became gentler, and even, in some strange way, more maternal!...she even let my lunch buddy use the bathroom at a time when she had to finished cleaning it!!!

I must say I was shocked at how such a little thing could have such a great effect. But it did make me think...about how caste and class and social status influence our way of treating people...of how the loudest noise could often be an SOS for being listened to...about how little unconscious things can reap such enormous results!...and about how small rules of etiquette and manners are so often easily forgotten that daily life becomes rusty, and less pleasant, and far too self absorbed.