full split.com

Three Women in a Boat!

2011-09-05T08:12:00.000-07:00

Letting out our boats into the reflections of time that once stood still...
(Poetic, I know! However, I remember doing something similar in the entrance test where an image was provided and we had to write a piece on it)

P.S : captured on a rainy day after steaming chai and pakodas
: wouldn't have been possible without the deft hands of my friends- Vasu & Arch (they own two of the vessels)!

:) Weirdly, I remember reading 'Three Men In a Boat' after this (so the title of this piece!). Must read. Must Have!

Revelation-in-Rain

2011-04-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

Skewed apartments, haze & blur...
a revelation when a few drops of rain landed on my phone camera lens yesterday.:)

Yeh u are right, I am this - 'Rain Rain, Come Again' types...;)

Bejewelled Heavens...

2011-03-23T22:52:00.000-07:00

The view from my terrace this morning...
Pune, 6.30 am

Pune | First Glimpses

2010-11-27T07:32:00.001-08:00

OK ok...another landscape! Cant help it...

This ‘I-love-botany-so-I-took-biology’ and ‘Can-I-have- another- Ruskin Bond- collection -please ‘ driven girl cant help but notice the blue skies, the green grass, the pink flowers etc & etc. So loo n behold- another landscape. But this time its from Pune. Loved the twinkling lights of the apartments against the blue skyline. (Added some watercolour effect, my phone camera couldn’t do much to do justice to the romance in the scene, but I still love my camera)

But this piece isn’t about nature (the first thing that comes to mind when someone shoots the question who Wordsworth was in school! Nature poet!!God !he was not! HE was a poet of the Romantic ages, this I learnt in college). Did I drift??? See, thats the effect of nature!:)

This piece is an ode to the cheerful bus conductor I encountered on my way to Phulegate (its a rare phenomenon that I witnessed in 20+ years, you see I am careful in not revealing my age ;) )!

And to my dear friends ( specially Vasu, who keeps encouraging me for a literary piece or so, so that one fine day when I would win the Booker prize, I would have her name mentioned in the acknowledgements of the book) . Well you see, am on my way...

Meanwhile, the rare phenomenon I was taking about occurred in the early morning and existed in khaki attire armed with a semi-circle brown bag. Saaaaarrrrrrga! He sung (mind you, he didn’t scream, I figured it meant move aage) And all the way 45 minutes straight his transactions with passengers were of musical nature. ‘Deccan, decccccaaaaaan! He sung again. But surprisingly his chirpy demeanour diffused smiles around, where you would only witness frowns that would say ‘when is this person going to get out of the seat, man’. And I had a happy(otherwise tedious) musical bus ride to Phulegate.

And here I don’t know how to end this piece. No wisdom, no end liners...only the realisation that I kept remembering the frame (here I am taking like a photographer) where from a point at night you could see consecutive bridges over the Sabarmati river adorned (I am taking like a poet) with the street lights. A similar view at Pune is reminiscent of this particular frame. The realisation not only could I miss Guwahati but also Ahmedabad. From the city that held NID grew to the city that became my second home.

Also words that would never get erased from my mind. Hadapsar.

Its a bus stop and all the buses that go past me seem to go to that damn place(ooopss all the waiting makes me say that, no offence) except the place I am supposed to go.

And of course ‘Saaaaaarrrrrrga!!!!’ :)

A walk (I want) to remember!

2010-09-09T21:54:00.000-07:00

For The Love Of Perspective and Tranquililty...(thanks to my humble Nokia phone camera)

Xonaru aru olop Borukhun

2010-07-22T22:40:00.000-07:00

Xonaru aru olop Borukhun
(Xonaru and some rain...)

This morning on my way to my insti, I spotted a Xonaru tree. I took a pic...I didn't know why...It rained this afternoon and as raindrops splattered across the window pane of the library(i was sitting there) I took a pic... I didn't know why.

And then I realized how I was taking refuge in these small little things around me to temporarily sedate my pain...my anxiety of the present. I couldn't help but recall with fondness my carefree childhood when my father would take me walking in the morning and very lovingly point me to the Xonaru trees that lined a lush green field.
...I learnt the word xonaru.
...I learnt it was beautiful.

Speaking of rain, it has become a spectacle here...to the extent that whenever it rains, I call home to share my revelation in the change of weather.And when in rained today...i just looked at the cloudy sky and the way it made the glass pane look jeweled with the rain drops...I couldn't help but smile in my mind.
...I gently floated into ether...

{ (Xonaru in Assamese) Cassia fistula is widely grown as an ornamental plant in tropical and subtropical areas. It blooms in late spring.}

Painting Paisleys!

2010-06-21T23:21:00.000-07:00

Submitting a sketch for Illustration Friday, a maiden try:)
You can see me conjuring paisley butterflies into thin air...

A comeback! :)

2010-02-19T02:23:00.000-08:00

3 reasons why i am posting this

i love landscapes
been some time dat i posted something
just been to Kankaria lake(here at ahmedabad) yesterday :) :)

GO GREEN!!!!

2009-09-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

Amidst an assortment of dull grey and blue hues
( my bedsheet is white with blue tulips, so is my pillow with horizontal stripes of blue, the blue hardbound notebook i carry for french classes, my blue backpack resting unassumingly at the corner of the room, the blue mitsubishi pen i write with..., whew!!!) lands a delightfully fresh whiff of green...!

Ahem...sory!;) all this hullabaloo is about the plant i bought yesterday...i potted it in a glass bowl with white stones in it..

.............its nice to see some life thriving around you...:)

LOST N' FOUND

2009-09-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

A greeting card with an dear ol' friend's name signed on it, an old fading photograph with you in your hilarious best, a newspaper clipping of your favorite bollywood hearthrob... how many times have you not found any of these amidst tons of personal paraphernalia when you went weekend cleaning? And ya... what about old poetry pieces... sketches...

Well i found one..when i went cleaning and sorting yesterday. A sketch of Mother Teresa rendered in oil pastels.

Checkmate!!!

2009-08-14T07:18:00.000-07:00

Another sketch..this time its pencil colours and ball pens.:)

CHECKMATE, sounds like some pun. Its amazing how some musings urges you to take up pen and paper and set about rendering. Checkmate- Checked shirt, chess, mate, Whew!......& blue.( here it rhymes..hehe).

Foundation year saw myself struggling at human proportions. Am still the same four years down the lane. But that doesn't deter you from bringing imagination to paper..does it?

P.S Front profile grew hard for me to draw, so chose the back view..;)

Bamboo, wooden table and a window!

2009-08-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

Well, uploading the first sketch(i hardly sketch), on my notebook,thanks to all the online watercolor tutorials.;)

This imaginative space is actually a dining area i concocted adding slender bamboo, old looking furniture and comfy cushions.hehe. A window to enjoy nature. Aru ki lagise!!! hingi maas aru narahinghor paator anjaa!!

friends r forever

2009-07-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

The Full Split is not some acrobatic stunt that I can boast I can perform, but a small little incident with my friends - Hoikia and Turkey…they couldn’t contain their laughter and I was there clueless about what actually sent them into a laughing frenzy. What they told me was flaterring to me, so I decided that maybe full split can become my blog’s name. the ‘.com’ was added to put in a little jazz, I hope it does (wink!)

But thats a different story. What rang a bell was the thoughts that flooded my mind when I thought of laughter. How we friends used to laugh together at the drop of a hat or at the minutest minuscule speck of a joke or at the most obvious dull dry drab fact ever put across. But we had hilarious times together.. I bet.
Lemme start with me. People say I am like a tubelite, nay a ‘sarkaari tubelight’(no offence to all the govt services, they r doing their best), that requires a long time to get lit up. So next time you see me laughing alone or smiling, don’t wory I might be relishing the d- day- before-yesterday joke. O ya I will be dead( my friends would be after my life) if I do not mention the YUHU I do for a laugh..if ever I was a character in a cartoon strip, the speech bubble would never contain the usual ‘haha’ or a ‘hehe’, it would contain a ‘yuhu’!
And now that I have already jumped into the mud, I would like to bring my dear friends into it. ( disclaimer : content following isn’t copyrighted by me and the people with the copyrights would never allow me to publish this..hehe..but u see I am doing it. They wud gonna be mad at me but I love you people. Ahem! PDA!! )

O ya where was I, ya. Have you ever travelled by a deluxe bus that has become incessantly creaky and cranky…if you haven’t , save yourself a back ache and sit with Turkey..You can enjoy the creaking sounds of the bus when she laughs! Trust me.
Man, I bet not many of you have got to see Haley’s comet..sigh even we haven’t heard Hoikia laugh. Comes once in a while, you need to be attentive and on your toes to actually hear her hearty laugh..Toni is altogether on a different tangent, u actually cant hear her laugh! If you see her choking, don’t rush towards her with a glass of water , relax, she was laughing. But mind you, shes all video, no audio. And haan I miss the laughter of two of our friends, Vandy and Kanikao. Well am waitin for them to return from the city of dreams.

And now how do I end this piece on a happy note…aha..what can be better than hearty laugh..YUUHUUUU!!!! (chuckle chuckle…)

2009-06-13T23:27:00.001-07:00

TRYST WITH TINKLE!

Some things you never grow out of.

For me, I never grew out of TINKLE, the fortnightly children’s magazine (also published in monthly digests) edited by Uncle Pai (who, I later realised was a sort of a pen name for Anant Pai). Just the other day I went through a recent issue of Tinkle. Whew, a lot of memories are attached to this colourful periodical publication.

I remember Atul Sriwardhan, V.B Halbe’s illustrations I was fond of and all the Russian, Chinese folktales that it featured. I remember anxiously waiting for the next issue of Tinkle to arrive. I even remembering bartering my tinkles for other issues I hadn’t read with my neighbourhood friends. Mind you, this ‘business transaction’ entitled that you can only have a digest if you lend 2 fortnightlies ( the cost of digest being some 25 bucks , double of that of a fortnightly)! Such understanding of economics, considering that we were 6-7 yr olds...

And now after so many years, I lie down on my bed, all cleaned up, arranged to form a cosy recline to read my favourite comic, I realise that I read it not because I love the children stories or enjoy the jokes, games etc…but because I find it as a escapade to my childhood. It’s the only living remnant of my bygone days. Every time I pick up an issue to read, I can see a small girl eagerly rushing toward her father (who had just come back from the monthly bazaar, and who had obviously purchased a tinkle on the way back) and jostling through the contents of the bazaar bag only to fish out a vertically- rolled- newspaper- wrapped tinkle. I can also see her munching snacks and relishing every story in it and simultaneously protecting it from the hands of her sister who wants to read it too.. I can see her being chided on the dining table for reading it while eating. I can even see her reading the issue over and over again, with snacks.

Things have changed a lot since then. I don’t live in the same quarters at Dispur, comics got replaced by magazines and books, and my table manners changed. I don’t read while having meals. And tinkle changed too. New illustrators, new characters and new stories, new sections, altogether a new look…Its in sync with the new generation but I kinda miss the old look.. So now every time I go to the Sunday market( an amazing plethora of odds and ends and old books) here at Ahmedabad, I make it a point to buy an old issue of Tinkle. I just love the paper quality, texture, illustrations, stories, folktales, u name it.

My tryst with Tinkle was an engaging one. One of our ( me and my sis) stories, The Boat Race, also got published in Tinkle ( for which one fine day the friendly postman delivered us a postal order of two hundred rupees) We were kids and rich!! J All the way during my reading years, kept contributing stories, participated in competitions which brought in Tinkle Digests, Tinkle labels, stickers, rejection letters with a copy of Amar Chitra Katha as gifts.

I still have those…and when I go through them at home, I can still see the little girl…

here it goes..

2009-05-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

INTERN BLUES
DATED 6TH OF MAY, 2009

Well these days I have been deeply contemplating, reminiscing, pondering (n whatever on earth are the synonyms for ‘thinking’, I have been doing them all) on the things I (or maybe we) generally take for granted.

Check this out.
You get up in the morning drudgingly… only to be received by a hot cup of tea (we assamese are generally fond of tea), or coffee or milk (in case you do not like any of the caffeine dosed beverages) made lovingly by your mom. You are not even blinking your half closed eyes when from nowhere ( your dad just passed it on) your newspaper lands on your lap, and there you are sitting gobbling down breakfast while checking out steamy headlines or chilly cartoon strips. Whew like that was not enough, you are stuck to the idiot box and suddenly its lunch time..hehe..Heavenly rotis, parathas, sumptuous rice, enticing dal, delicious curry, lovely dahi ( you will know later why I have used such lucrative adjectives for these day to day dishes, or so you say) are served before you. Well you hadn’t even digested the afternoon course when the aroma from the kitchen finds way your nose. Its dinner time!!! Oh I forgot to mention the evening snacks you grabbed before dinner..sigh DON’T WE LIVE TO EAT!!!!.. I sure did when I was at home. When I was in the cosy cocoon of my parents, my sis. When I was amidst them…

Now I am here, away from my parents, surviving...or maybe it is intern blues…all by myself. My friends have gone back home, faculty is far away and cant hang around always with the rest of the senior inmates. Sigh in short I have no one except myself for company, no wonder I even am finding time to write this piece infact. And so you see, such aforesaid (lucratively described) mundane things we always took for granted have suddenly assumed mammoth proportions and dimensions ( excuse me I may be exaggerating) . I keep thinking about the next meal, what I am going to eat, how will I procure it, will it be healthy, will it make taller, sharper, stronger, etc etc… sigh now its why do we need to eat to live! No longer anything lands on my lap… I have to myself rush after it, sweat it out , grab it by the hairs end and then place it on my lap. Whew! I am doing it. complaining, huffing puffing. But ya all this has made me grateful to all the things I have in life. Loved ones to even the people I pass an occasional smile to, morning cup of chai to the dessert at dinner, dogs that I am scared of to the books I love, the four walled room I live to the tree laden pigeon path, the global warming effect to the water I am drinking…wait wait where am I drifting to..I was accounting the things I am grateful for but I guess there are to many to list and to varied to even to start sorting them..

Well my eyes are watering..hehe..so please excuse this sleepy soul. Oh ya..i wil be praying today..thank you God for all that you have given me..Amen.

(P.S a special thanks to Vasu aka Vasanthi Velluri whose soft proding and nudging made me type this all through the night till 1 am. God knows why I did this.hehe.)