The writing on the paper

To each of us, our very own theories about notes taking. To most of us, a technique is in place. The factors - time of day, subject in question, the crisp new notebook, classmate to the right, color of the chalk, contents of lunch- all twist and tweak the entire experience. But its been a constant, solid, inerasable part of all our student lives and the experience is worth taking a look at.
*Scene: Notes taking*
*Location: Classroom*
*Actor: Self*
Takes:
· Hand races, tries to keep up with mind. Each word heard is spilt onto the book with a loving perfection. “Blood rushes to my head- Perching precariously on the edge of the seat- I am actually in synch with academia.”
· Written with a tired exhaustion. “Is it time or what?”
· Scrawled across lazily. “Incoherent strings of letters on pieces of paper, pieces that I may not ever look back to.”
· Hand writes. Mind dreams. “You can’t get into my head and hold me ransom- heh!”
· Hands off the paper, Prefers to listen and take it in. “Its all about the learning”
· Or prefers to pretend to listen and take it in. “I care enough to pretend”
· Or not. “I don’t!”
There are people who know that their notes are legendary, that those words they write will be caressed by most Xerox machines in and around college. With such pressure and expectation to live up to, they willfully meet their challenges head on and keep writing. There are also people who are aware of and believe with strong conviction that whatever they write will never again be looked at, and relish the “memorylessness” of their white pages. Then ofcourse, there are the bunch of people with their pages of “hard-to-decipher-scrawling” and a handful of white pages thrown in here and there. Like I said earlier, to each, his own.
O, not to forget how the doodling and the notes exchanging, apart from spicing up said activity, present a range of “in her notebook she actually..” and “In that note he sent me..” stories that will outlive the relevance of the notes themselves.
After all, notes do document- apart from the subject- a slice of our lives, our moods and time.

And one fine intel morning

Today we had a quarterly(They should just call it a "frequently". Why limit it to once in three months? :)).
*O and quarterly translates to fun day out from work*
It involved cycling. To me cycling brings to mind, a pink/blue lady bird with preferably flowers on the little basket that we would have fixed in front of the cycle. Clear blue skies, nice green meadows. A picnic basket! And nice melodies in my head. :)
Was i in for a surprise or what! I descended from the bus, already checking off the clear blue skies and green meadows on my wish list. TALL sturdy mountain bikes awaited
us, geared ones- with helmets, hand gear, knee caps et all! Surprised but super excited (Show me one person who wouldn't want to wear all that stuff? Even if they did like
little flower baskets?). I got all decked up and hopped on. Yes, literally hopped on. :) Some more complan way back in 4th std may have helped me out, but that's how tall i am,
and THAT was how tall the bicycle was (Despite whatever G3 says! ;)) For one thing, the cycle was geared, and as much as I love my scooty pep back home, Iv never ridden a
geared two wheeler. So Im trying to process gearing in my head while also trying to rekindle my cycling instincts. The last time I rode one, and I pedalled, it moved!
Today, either physics gave up on me or I am really that big a wuss! I hav a sneaking suspicion that the tire was punctured. At least thats what I'm telling myself! ;)
Well about twenty minutes of that, and I gave up all hope. I walked with my cycle while every one else rode past and tried to make it up to my bruised ego. But then, honk honk, came the truck behind me. With G3, Deepika and some extra cycles riding on top of it! One look at their hair flying in the wind, and the smiles on their faces. Next minute, I was up there in the truck. So was my cycle. So much for cycling. Heh! Well, I'v always wanted to ride on a truck as well.Wish list check!
The truck was just pure bliss. I want to state that the air smelled sweet. Iv only read that phrase in the books, and always wondered how you could smell a taste. Dont ask me
how. It did. It smelled sweeet. Green expanses for as fas as the eye can go, and a random localite now and then, stopping to look at all the excitement. And the green,
what a green! How many greens! And we club all those shades under a single name. Degrade it by adding Light slash Dark against it! :)
That was the upside of the truck. The downside was, well, watching the rest of the gang cycle, watching them pant at stop points, handing out chocolate bars and water (technically G3 did;)) to well deserved sporty people! sighs!At one point, some one mentioned it as being mostly down hill from there, and that brought all of us on the truck back to life.We jumped down, chose cycles and hopped on again. Woohooo! Rising from the ashes it is!
Down hill, it turns out, was not exactly what i had in mind either. I dont even know what i had in mind. Maybe that was the problem :) But Im digressing.
Downhill, turned out to be mountain slopes that were super steep. Steep Mountain slopes whose paths were studded with rocks And on a cycle that followed Einstein's thoughts on gravity. (On second thought, physics din't actually give up on me. Thanks, you!) I was flyyyyyyyyyyyying thud thud thud down hill, with my cycle bouncing up and down the muddy slope,its slushes, its rocks,and its pits. Holding on to the handle bars for dear life as it twisted and turned on the tricky slopes. And me surprisingly on the cycle all the while. Eyes may hav been closed. But on the cycle, all the same. Well, not for long, there was this once, no actually, more than once no of times that i wasnt on my cycle and was seen sitting/lying/between-sitting-and-lying on top of/below/entwined with said cycle.
Not what I had in mind, but one of the best sources of adrenaline rush I have ever had.
And to quote some one I know, "Doing things like this leave you feeling good about
yourself." And it did. :)

All the colorful people, and all their beaming faces.

People have this capacity to leave behind a slice of themselves, their moods. And thats wat makes life so awesome when u run into people. People with big bright smiles. Colorful people. People whose pasted memories got all non-grainy when you saw them. In your head.

Inside a seminar hall. Or outside it. On the fourth floor of M block. Under a tree fiddling with twigs. Or on fourth seaward road, amidst flashes of light and christmassy blankets. An attempt to surprise twice even!

I, btw, am still smiling.

Extolling the virtues of a noise - *gaaaa*

Wikipedia says gaaaa stands for Georgia Alliance of African American Attorneys. I disagree.

I mean, gaaa could stand for Georgia Alliance of African American Attorneys for all the African American Attorneys in Georgia, but for the rest of us non African American, non attorneys not in Georgia- gaaaa is a noise, that does not belong to tamil or english, that my brain conjured up, that other peoples brains can still understand.

Because the noise is the meaning.

Its beauty lies in the timelessness and reasonlessness of its existance, I think- The way it colors itself and sometimes, the entire mangled up sentence that i spew, that its a part of.

When there s nothing to say. When theres too much too say.
When that milk overflows in the cofee mug.
When that street dog is one inch away from your shoe and is flirting with ur shadow.
When you realise you'v actually spent eight thousand all month and not six.
When irctc shows all train tickets booked for one week during,before and after the date that you want.
When you hav a joke about a vacuum cleaner that u want to send to a friend and u dont know how to title the subject.
When you havnt blogged in a long while and dont know what to blog about.

I thank thee, gaaaaa, for making thyself available at all times, in all contexts. For just giving me something to say.