On Secular Christianity & Stupid American Teenagers...

I'm a very secular person, I pride myself on being one. I'm also a Christian, but I believe that everyone is entitled to their own belief systems and is entitled to practise their religion of choice. If I haven't made myself clear about my stand on fundamentalism in the past, allow me to reiterate. I am AGAINST fundamentalism of ANY sort.

That said, I would like to introduce you to two exceptionally stupid and extremely ignorant teenagers who want to convert their friend. And then one wonders who vote for idiots like Bush? Here they are! Future citizens of the super power they call America.

Oh and below that, is one of the video reponses to this remarkable piece of film making!

Random Thought...

Sashimi - Sushi Me!

Don't you have days when you go thinking of food? Not food in general, but in super specific : I wish I could eat ________ from ______ (fill in appropriate food from relevant food joint). Well, I'd been feeling like eating sushi all weekend. Lots of sushi. :) The weekend came and went and sushi didn't happen. Sigh.

Now, sushi has not been a favourite food always, do not mistake me.Like every mallu, mad or otherwise, I love my seafood. But yet another quirk that Serenity and I share is that we hate fishy fish. Yes, I know fish is supposed to taste like fish and not chocolate, but its the fishy fish that we don't like, the fish that smells fishy. And raw fish? eeeugh. Calamity has always been wary of sushi because of the ickiness of eating raw fish... (yeah, getting over that was a jump) until, she went to a Japanese food joint here with a sushi enthusiast ! Before I ramble again, small foot note : I LOVE wasabi, I love pungent mustard that explodes in my sinuses! And Wasabi is what made me put my first mouthful of (raw fish!!) sushi in my mouth, with a warning beforehand that I would spit it out if i didnt like it....

I bit...I chewed..my mouth exploded with flavour and I was hooked!

Fishy? Not AT ALL ! Tasty? Most Definitely! And that, is how I swallowed my pride, along with the sushi(raw fish!).

So now that I've gone and rambled all over the countryside about how wonderful that was, I'll tell the rest of the story really short.

- I, Calamity craved sushi

- Calamity didnt get to eat sushi over the weekend.

- Calamity went on an insanely long shoot on Monday (6 hours - for the recording of a 20 minute shoot!) and called Serenity and told him how sad she was and how badly she neeeded sushi by this point.

- Calamity and Serenity got to the restaurant before it closed orders! YAY!!(Yeah, last order is at 9:30)

- Calamity and Serenity had a platter each of sushi.

- Calamity smiled all the way home and then smiled some more. So much happiness happened that she woke up smiling the next day!

And that, is how much satisfaction there is to be had in fulfilling a food craving!!

Just a random thought....

Calamity and Honesty......

Thankyou Primitive Lyric for my first EVER online badge. I'm rather kicked about it.
So then I get this comment saying I've been tagged, and having no earthly clue what that meant, I tracked back to her blog to see what "being tagged" entailed. And therefore, here are 10 things about me, honestly.....

1. If I like you and consider you my friend, I will trust you implicitly... and nothing saddens me more than when that trust is broken. The journey from friend to non-entity happens in one step.
2. I cannot tolerate stupidity, it irritates me.
3. I am easily irritated.
4. I expect too much out of poor Serenity... intuition, understanding etc etc. (much more than one can logically expect from a man !!)
5. I love and hate horror movies in equal measure.
6. I cannot draw to save my life ! (yes, and THAT is why I use a computer to render 3d spaces! My perspective drawing is Escher-esque in a most disturbing way!)
7. Being language impaired PISSES ME OFF.
8. I have a dirty mind. If there are two meanings to something, I will invariably get the dirty one first. :D heheheeh.
9. I grin and giggle when my flight takes off and lands.... I love flying !
10. I can eat chocolate all day.... Give me chocolate and water and I'll be a happy person. (high on sugar and obscenely obese, but happy!!)

And I tag:

Egg

An Excerpt from Desiderata

Desiderata: (Latin for "desired things", plural of desideratum) is an inspirational prose poem by Max Ehrmann about attaining happiness in life....

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.......

.....And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul......

This is one piece of writing that I first came across in junior college.... it has comforted me, made me see a lot of things and meant different things to me at different times... Today, these particular paragraphs make sense to me as I try to make sense of the death of an old friend..... Of someone snatched away before her life even began...

Through everything we're all going through, the only things that came to mind when I heard that she was gone was

"Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,

and remember what peace there may be in silence......."

And so I looked up the rest of it again to read to myself... and found meaning in it again.

Its an incredibly beautiful piece and if you haven't ever come across it, here it is for you.

I hope it gives to you all that it has given me.

Life is Short....

... and never have I been made more aware of this fact as when I received a call late few nights ago saying she's in a coma. I wrote this post when I heard she was brain dead, but somehow held back on posting it because I still hoped with all my heart that some miracle would work and she'd step back from the brink. She didn't. She's gone.

Death never seems final until it strikes someone close to you. Suddenly she goes from being a person to a collection of memories. I know now that I'll never see her again, not even by accident. She's been more a good friend's friend than my own... part of the same circle, we've shared tiffins and friends.. She and my friend, they shared a name.. I think that made them closer than any one could imagine. By the time we passed out of school, they were practically one entity. We always spoken of them in the same sentence. And I spoke to my friend today and she sounded bereft... "There's only one of us now, ya.... Nobody needs to call us by our initials any more.... There's only one of us left..."

She danced her way through life.. she danced her way into our lives in the seventh grade... and though we drifted apart over the years, our paths met, crossed and parted again...She'll dance again... I know she will.. Somebody who loved the idea of love, she was to marry in a few months time... I called her crazy when her Michael Jackson obsession made her scratch his initials on her arm...laughed at her, laughed with her and shook my head sometimes when they played hooky... I remember shooting rubber bands at her in class, and her uncanny way of popping into photographs... I remember her covering for me (who could only serve really good) in a crucial volleyball match.. I remember the exaggerated "Bambaiyya" accent she used a la 'Rangeela'. Today, I'm not remembering the reason why we grew apart.

I'm aching today for my friend. For the one who's here and the one who's not here anymore. For dreams left undreamt and a life left incomplete. For the ones who have to pick up the pieces and move on. For the void she's left in the lives of those she belonged in. I'm aching for a boy left heartbroken and a family left grieving for their little girl. For people like me who're only left wondering why we never mended those cracks when they first appeared. I'm wondering whether she saw us all, all over, praying for a miracle for her, and now trying to believe the reality that we're trying to grapple with - a reality that doesn't have her in it any more.

Dear friend, be at peace where ever you are.