Gone with the wind.

I don’t read love stories, that isn’t my genre. Even if I try reading such stories I end up abandoning the book halfway. But Gone with the wind by Margret Mitchell got me hooked.There are no two ways about the fact that GWTW is a rollicking good yarn.It will make you hate  Scarlett O’Hara the main protagonist and feel bad for her too. She is selfish, jealous of her best friends and often cruel and mean in her pursuits.And you feel bad for her all that she is going through.

Rhett Butler is of the same league and he is the only one who can see through Scarlett but you might end up loving his sarcasm.Ashley is disgustingly weak throughout the book.Its Melanie who is the real hero. Only one other time can I remember being so moved by the death of a character as I was by the death of Melly in Gone With the Wind, and that was by the death of Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter.

It’s melodrama at its best and is long-running and at one point after 300 pages I wanted to stop reading this too but something kept me going. Set in the American South before, during, and after the Civil War, the story catalogues Scarlett’s attempt both to hold on to her idyllic past as southern aristocracy and to survive the harsh changes inflicted upon her land. Its hard to write a book with the main character so spiteful and full of hatred, but Mitchell did it pretty convincingly.

The book is quiet racist but I think that is Mitchell’s way of depicting the era.Its probably present reality with all the faults and weaknesses of the humankind. The book has made me really curious about the civil war and I would love to read more books about it. The way it has been depicted is quiet enthralling.It was heavy-going and somewhat frustrating all the way through with consistent themes of death and sickness, deprivation, grief and inequality.

Even if you are not an ardent romance, chick-lit, historical fiction reader you have to give this book a read. Though the sheer size of this book may seem intimidating but it is definitely worth reading.

image courtesy: Google Images

A letter to the ‘hot’ Panjabi guy.

Dear Panjabi Guy

How are you? I know you will be bewildered to get a letter from me, knowing the fact I am not exactly a big fan of yours. Don’t be disheartened, but by the end of this letter you will probably know why and will agree with me as well. I might sound conceited here but I talk on behalf of all the girls around you. I have been single almost all my life and no, it’s not me who is to be blamed, it’s you and your kind.

Have you ever wondered why none of the girls pay you any attention despite the fact you stalk them to their college and back home? They don’t even spare you a look except maybe one glare and a few swear words they murmur. Don’t worry I will be the angel and solve the mystery for you, just read on. Reasons why not just me but all the girls are repulsed by you:

Reason #1: You use sunglasses even when they are not required and think you look really cool in them. Well, let me just tell you, you look like a monkey in those. You seem like a complete wannabe, what were you even thinking when you bought those fake Ray Bans?

Reason#2: Your spiked hair, I am sorry to comment on your appearance but spiked hair…seriously? They make you look like the guy from the havells advertisement. Why do you want to give an impression that every time you come out of your house, you have experienced a 220 volts shock? You are no stud spiking your hair like that, it will just make us pity you.

Reason#3: The above mentioned stalking is our reason#3. I mean who in their right mind stalks? Only maniacs’ stalk, why do you think a girl will fall for you if you bug her like this? Our lives are no old Hindi movies where Dev Anand followed the girl everywhere and did not give up till the girl said yes. That is not reality. Oh and if you are following the girls all throughout the city you apparently have free petrol supply, please be kind and get my car fuelled every weekend. I might end up falling for you then.

Reason#4: I have nothing against the language but Panjabi the way you speak it will make any girl run for her life. I mean just imagine if someone yells at you in the middle of the road “Oi kudiye mere naal fraanship kar le ?”  Even if you don’t have those sunglasses and spiked hair your accented English with the all the Panjabi and Hindi thrown in will just invite the girls to make fun of you.

Reason#5: How many times have you seen a girl saying yes to a guy when he randomly approaches her, when she is with her friends? You see her for the first time, like her, see her for the second and go upto her. Tell her you can’t live without her and love her more than anyone else. Dude this is the worst thing you can do, embarrass her publicly and make a fool of you as well. She will only have the urge to get up and punch you right in the face.

Reason#6: You pass remarks whenever a group of girls passes by and laugh like that is the funniest thing to do. I don’t understand what thrills you and your cronies get out of being such perverts.

Reason#7: Yellow shoes, orange t-shirt and white pants. Need I say more? I have seen too many guys wearing such unacceptable clothes lately. Try not being one of those guys.

Reason#8: Your pick up line is “So chick, what is your pick.” Err…don’t look at me like that, one of your buddies actually asked me that. What do you even mean by what our pick is? Or maybe “My friends think I am gay, will you help me prove them wrong.”  No, I don’t care if your friends think you are gay, you are likely to be gay to say that anyways. Fortunately no one has used the latter one with me.

Reason#9: Okay so you managed to take a girl out for a date, she barely knows you but you are telling her that you want to spend the rest of your life with her and are already ordering food for her. She will only want to get up and run away from you, and never see you again.

Reason#10: You think being brawny is what a girl wants, well friend let me just remove this illusion of yours, brains is what the beautiful people from Venus prefer. What do we do with your 8-pack abs and 20 inches biceps when your brains are as good as the starfish’s non-existent ones?

I now ask you a question, if you were a girl and I did all the above would you ever even give me a single thought?  Although the girls have completely given hope on you but will be glad if you prove us wrong and be the good guy for once. I wonder why people in rest of the India think that I am lucky to live in the land where the best guys are found. How I wish they were right and I am tired of correcting this misconception of theirs.

Hoping to see a newer and improved version of you.

Yours Sincerely

The girl who is sick of guys like you.

And I rise from the ashes again.

I have been away for a while now. Yeah I know you did not really miss my ranting  much but I will still divulge into it and tell you why I haven’t been blogging. I was in Ambala at my grandparents place for  five days in mid-December. The time spent there was great specially because it was after a long time and I wanted to go there since long but kept postponing it.

1) I learnt how to survive with no internet and almost no electricity for three consecutive days. There was no connection here for 72 freaking hours and I  could never imagine a life with no internet and I needed a break from it. It was nice to be disconnected for three days.And we have power cuts almost every hour of the day. Its difficult to exist with so many power cuts but we managed. I am glad Chandiland is not deprived of electricity.

2) I have had a typical grandma’s place holiday, doing nothing, wasting time, long walks and lazing around. I am spending time here after ages and feels good. Skipped taking a bath one day , guess first time in nearly two decades of lifetime. That’s gross but its getting cold now and I don’t usually get away without it.

3) I hung around with my aunt and uncles , all much older than me but it was great fun. Nothing like hanging around with adults who are really cool. Endlessly talking about music from their times and the other stuff I don’t remember now or some I won’t write here.

And then we had our family get together around Christmas, I love the winters just for this reason and look forward to the end of the year for the entire clan to come together and have the craziest times together.So for another five days blogging got ignored for good reasons. Then came up the year that brings the end of the world, 2012 and I was too busy celebrating the end of the year. New year eve was great, we had a bonfire and I got caught by cop for skipping a red light and pleaded him to let me go and he agreed

Just when I was getting over with 2011, a disaster happened, college started and it has been the most undesirable start, with  one week gone and I am tired of it already. We apparently have good subjects except maybe Math but not very good teachers.Oh lord where are the good teachers? And just imagine waking up at 7am on a foggy like the picture below and waiting for your bus to come when you can be in your bed sleeping.

To break the monotony of the extremely blandly boring and exasperating week, we went on one of our trips to nowhere, and this time I had my Jalopy, and we drove to Nangal a 108 kilometers from Chandigarh. We drove to and fro in 3 hours, yes my jalopy isn’t that bad is it? It was a great drive, I and uncle V drove for the first time on the highway. Although the start of the day was horrible, terribly horrible, I don’t want to recall it, we witnessed a bone-chilling accident. But then it turned out to be a great day, a day that is going down in  phoenix’s history book. Like AV said ” its not necessary to have a good start to have a good day, even bad starts can have happy endings.”

Somewhere on the waySomewhere on the way again