ushering in 2011..

2010: The year that in few hours would become and remembered as a different time. This whole year, there might have been ups and downs, some memories made to savor till lifetime and some experiences to learn from. There might have been some people to be left for good while some good friends found to be beside you forever. Whatever 2010 might have been, its going now and making space for a new time to come and we can only usher it in with hope that 2011 will be blissful, rewarding and will bring happiness for all of us. So,
 HAPPY NEW YEAR !!



image sources: tumblrphotography.tumblr.com, loveisfreak.tumblr.com, fuckyeahhappy.tumblr.com

An itch to write..

When reading fails to usurp my boredom or quench my longing for a more adventurous and exciting life, I run to writing.

-via teaching literacy 

 

image source: sassy-stock.deviantart.com

happy christmas!

What are things you love about christmas the most:

1.  Lots of gifts?

2.All that awesome Christmas food and drinks

3. Quality time with family

4. Holidays!

Leave your answers as comments!

Dream, Believe and Hope, 2011 will be great

here's a large photo collection that i put together with the help of images i stole from internet (:p)

The Book Thief

Goodreads.com's  Review:
It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul


My Review:
To say that it was 'touching' would be an understatement. It is heart wrenching at many points. The book is narrated by death and it is set in the nazi Germany. It tells the story of a girl leisel who later on acquires the title of 'the book thief'. 

It has beautiful use of words and expressions that evokes very different, moving feelings. The author has painted every character with colors of heartfelt emotions: of separation, love, achievement, sacrifice, pain and lot others.

The Bell Jar

Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.

-The book's review on goodreads.com page

All that i have to say is-

I found it a reflective read, the kind of book that you keep dwelling on even if you've put it aside for a while. it made me feel sad and depressed and yet i felt a kind of yearning to keep on reading because everything in the book seems as if its truly happening. maybe because of its bitter reality or being it 'remorseless' (as NYtimes have written). 

i think i am in love with knits

Its December, mornings start with biting cold and evenings are frosty. In such a weather who wouldn't love to wrap themselves around in knits. They're so woolly, soft, comfortable (and they're in trend too). You don't believe me? take a look at these:

beautiful red scarf

cool trendy knitted cap

knits suit college nerdy look too.

nice pullover there.

Contagious (boys like girls)

Its been  a long time i posted anything, i know, (i needed to sort things out) and until i come up with something more creative, i'd like to share this song that i keep listening over and over again. it's called 'contagious' by the band 'Boys like girls'. Its the first time i've listened to the band. Needless to say i loved it.


  

 BOYSLIKEGIRLS

Contagious

I’m flying down the fast lane,
Doing ninety-five, ninety things on my brain.
Don’t know where the hell I'm going,
But, I'm going after you.

I’m jumping on the last train,
With the crazy kind of feeling that I can't explain.
Don’t know where the hell I'm going,
But, I'm going after you.

And I know you think I'm crazy,
And I dress up like im four,
I don't do dinner and movies,
But, if I showed up at your door.

Would you give me one more minute,
The story's far from finished,
We could fill in all the pages.
I'm feeling sick,
Girl, you're so contagious.
Just wanna say I miss you,
I caught it when I kissed you,
And I've been through all the stages.
I'm feeling sick,
Girl, you're so contagious.
I'm feeling sick,
Girl, you're so contagious.

It was raining on a Wednesday,
Doing ninety-five, ninety things left to say.
Told myself to keep on driving,
'Cause I left my heart with you.

Why secondhand bookstores smell good

Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.



source: Perfumes the guide written by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez

autumn/fall trend in shoes (wedges)

Wedges; yes, that's the trend which is here to stay for a while. everyone seems to be in love with them. They seem to be an integral part of THE look this season.

There are various varieties of shoes in which we see wedges:

boots with wedges: 

straps with wedges:

open toes with wedges:

wedges with shoelace:

open toe wedges with shoe lace:

some other gorgeous shoe photos i found on internet:

for memories of summer:

for more...click read more.

autumn

things that i love about this season:
1. the crisp chill in the air
2. you get to wear beautiful cardigans and jackets.
3. sound of fallen leaves as they crunch beneath you feet.
4. vast range of exotic fruits that fill up the market shelves.
5. the warm sunlight tingling on the skin softly as opposed to scorching heat of sumer.
6. i seem to savor and enjoy my coffee more for some reason.
7. its festive season in india with navratri leading to diwali- the festival of lights.

back to December (taylor swift)

  really a beautiful song, lovely melody and great lyrics.

Taylor Swift - Back to December

I'm so glad you made time to see me.

How's life, tell me how's your family?

I haven't seen them in a while.

You've been good, busier then ever.

We small talk, work and the weather

Your guard is up and I know why.

Cause the last time you saw me

Is still burned in the back of your mind.

You gave me roses and I left them there to die.

So this is me swallowing my pride,

Standing in front of you saying I'm sorry for that night,

And I go back to December all the time.

Turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you,

Wishing that I realized what I had when you were mine.

I'd go back to December, turn around and make it all right.

I go back to December all the time.

bloglovin'

i've now joined this fabulous network of coolest blogs on the earth..:) i f anyone wants to keep track of my blog posts or remain up to date with this blog, now knows what to do!

  click this:

Follow my blog with bloglovin

Reason of my Shattered Existence

“NO!”

I scream out loud shattering the peaceful silence of a tranquil night. Only that it hasn’t been quite so peaceful or tranquil for me lately.

My breaths come out in rugged whispers. My heart is beating frantically. They are coming to get me again like they had got everyone else.  But I won’t let them.

Silence is again pressing all over against me in its attempt to suffocate me. I’m not surprised that no one has stirred yet, in spite of my eardrum splitting scream. They are all inside my head, trying to push through my cerebral shield to insert their own functioning algorithm into my brain and I fight.

Perhaps I’m the only one alive who has fought real hard against those multiwired demons and perhaps the only one remaining with a functional consciousness.

My breathing is still uneven. I feel a trickle of sweat run behind my earlobe, leaving its wetness on my neck and continuing its trail on my shoulders before falling somewhere. It might have evaporated, I am feeling so hot.  I have my eyes shut tight and my hands clutching my hair. I’m still fighting them out in my head. Although my eyes are closed, I see patterns of vivid colors, representing the oscillating algorithm perhaps created to hypnotize my mind into giving up......

I keep fighting.

The fractal patterns of blue, green and yellow are fading into another similar outline of yellow orange and red and this again blooms back into the symmetrical geometry of previous blue, green and yellow. This keeps on repeating itself in regular manner.

I try to fight and not to give up. I push my effort further. The pattern is fading now, vivid and vibrant colors are now dull and murky. I try harder. The rhythm now seems to be broken. As opposed to fading and reappearing the designs are jagged and stuck now. I feel all of them going, creating an empty void of vacuum. Darkness presses me again inside my head. I feel myself succumbing into the void, losing myself.

“NO!”

I scream again and my eyes fly open. I let out a fresh stream of breaths like shrill gasps. I feel beads of sweat dripping from my forehead and tears in my eyes; then comes relief. I think I have won.

Perhaps they are considering a new tactic to break into me and have given up for the time being. I raise my head in gratefulness.

I look around my room, the same old room where I’ve spent most of my 19 years of life.

My grandmum’s antique dressing table is resting against the wall in front of me. A sick white tissue paper rose perched on its top. It is poised so sadly that all the grief in the world would have been embraced inside it and any moment a petal would fall off and the grief would pour out and take the world by its momentum.

 My left wall is covered with paper sheets where my pleas of escape are sticking pathetically one over another, torn in many places. I used to work on them frantically. That was when I had started realizing the changes around me, in the people around me and truth was dawning on me with the subtlety of a spider enclosing around its prey.

Beneath these sheets, I remember, used to be a beautiful pink colored wall adorned by my creative photographic captures of nature and life. That seemed to be a millennium ago. This wall also had a window, through which sunlight came streaming into my room, golden rays dancing off the marble floor. Now the window is carefully sealed up and padded with cardboard sheets sticking firmly with the sills, making my room a prison cell.

On my right is the door (the door of doom, as I call it now) which is now the sole way of exiting this room. A creaky, ancient looking cupboard stashed in the right corner adds to the miserable look of my room.

The whole surrounding within my viewing range has a restricted appearance. Like an old gloomy, shadowy painting dipped in monochrome that gives you a kind of forlorn and forgotten feeling in your guts. The room’s bathing in that eerie, black and white glow, discharged by my miserable electric lamp.

 I have the privilege of a bedside table with a functioning lamp on it. A jug full of water is kept there, accompanied with a glass tumbler.

I reach out and pour myself a glass of water and drink it down in one go. I feel my life returning back. I take a deep breath, let out a long sigh and wash down my throat with some more water.

My bed is all messy. The grey bed-sheets are all look kneaded up with the blankets and create an effect that I’ve been strangled in it.

I get up and in drunken steps reach to the antique dressing table. The mirror is dirty and spotty and through this greasy, translucent wall, my reflection stares back at me.

I am not much of a beauty. Really.  My 19 year old female body looks thin and fragile. My pale and bony structure appears to be swaying. Maybe I should’ve had a proper dinner. But then I was afraid that the food they have provided me with might grow steel claws once it’s inside me, inject its viruses in my bloodstream and take over my human senses. My insides lurch horribly at the thought.

I lift up my lids to look clearly. My waist length black hair is frayed, tangled and unkempt.  I inch closer to the mirror and pore over my eyes into those staring back at me; Mystical, twinkling, hazel eyes; my eyes.

I raise my hand and slowly stretch a finger to touch the surface of the mirror softly. A nanosecond before I thought the wall would fall over and this entire mirror and reflection thing would turn out to be the illusion created as a part of conspiracy to take me in. After all these creatures are capable of many advanced things with lasers and holographic images, aren’t they?

But my finger just slides over the surface swiping a clear trail on dust layer.

I wonder how it works. I mean the world inside this room, the world outside my room, the world inside this mirror and most familiar of all- the world inside my head.

I snap my eyes into focus and walk myself back to the bed. But I stop abruptly midway. Funny, I didn’t mean to stop myself here.

I take a step forward. But my feet don’t move. It’s like they’ve frozen over. Oh my god! I’m paralyzed! I scream but nothing comes out of my mouth. I’m trapped inside my head. I desperately try to move my legs, hands, anything! But like a stone I keep standing there.

Then I turn back and to my horror, I move again towards the mirror, not according to my will but I do nevertheless. My body is suddenly acting on its own accord. Or is it?

Once again in front of the mirror I am staring into its depth. The world seems to shine in a new light. Every world except the one inside my head, maybe.

I stare into my reflection. My body is same as ever. My face, my cheekbones, my complexion, my hair are just the way they had looked before. But not the malicious smile playing on my lips, It never belonged to me.

To my horror I feel myself leaning towards the mirror softly, and widening my eyes. I revolt inside the head, thrash and writhe like an animal and scream as I’ve never screamed before, but not even a muscle has moved in my body. I want to shut my eyes but I can’t help myself gazing into the mirror.

 Now I notice. The eyes. They are jet black now. I can’t even distinguish the pupil. I shrink with horror inside the tiny space I occupy inside my head. I am now an insignificance to the body that had belonged to my through its stages of nourishment and development.

My eyes close softly and there is velvety blackness all over. I hear a very fading, distant sound of shattering glass echoing multiple times.

Finally, I surrender.

This is the story i had written for Shaastra's (iit chennai's techfest) online science fiction writing competition. i didn't win but i did get a special mention from the judges Mike Resnick and James Patrick Kelly. View the results here.

vanilla twilight (owl city)

It's such a beautiful song. I can't help listening to it over and over again. Lyrics and tune go very well hand in hand and have the ability to touch a heart. Its so sweet, your heart seems to be floating with every note.



here's the song for the sole pleasure of your senses:




here's is the lyrics:

Owl City - Vanilla Twilight

The stars lean down to kiss you
And I lie awake and miss you
Pour me a heavy dose of atmosphere
Cause I'll doze off safe and soundly
But I'll miss your arms around me
I'd send a postcard to you, dear
Cause I wish you were here

I'll watch the night turn light blue
But it's not the same without you
Because it takes two to whisper quietly
The silence isn't so bad
Till I look at my hands and feel sad
Cause the spaces between my fingers
Are right where yours fit perfectly

A book quote

Let books be your dining table,
And you shall be full of delights
Let them be your mattress
And you shall sleep restful nights.

~Author Unknown

Banned books week (Sept.25 to Oct.2)

"Held annually during the last week of September, Banned books week highlights the benefits of intellectual freedom and draws attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted banning of books across the United States, including books commonly taught in secondary schools."

------according to nytimes.com.

So, what would be the best way to celebrate this week by reading some the most famous banned books? I'm currently reading 'Perks of being a wallflower ' by Stephen Chbosky.

And i'll also be re-reading 'the catcher in the rye' by J.D Salinger.

The reason to read them is just not the 'reasons' because of which the books were banned but enjoy the freedom to read, to open up a little part of world that we didn't knew existed, to drown in that magical effect books have the ability to create.

So let's sit back comfortably on a favorite day of the week and enjoy intellectual freedom.:)

link: banned books week

p.s: Did you know that Harry Potter, Twilight and the adventures of huckleberry finn were also banned! 

QUOTE..

“I mean, visiting any shop for the first time is exciting. There’s always that buzz as you push open the door; that hope; that belief - that this is going to be the shop of all shops, which will bring you everything you ever wanted, at magically low prices.”

—	Rebecca Bloomwood, shopaholic takes Manhattan