startling banals

this is an email I wrote to a friend in a fit of frustration last semester. It seems funny now but I still believe it has some truth :D a mix of marathi-hindi-english. Notice the liberal use of the word 'but'.

... lekin sach much mein pagal ho jaunga. life = zero.
kaam karke pak gaya. mumbai ko jitna bhi gali do.. magar achi jagah hai yaar. shayad duniya mein koi achi jagah hai hi nahi. yaa yeh feeling bhi temporary hai kyunki mereko abhi kaam khatam karne ka tension hai. tension bhi nahi shayad sirf manasik thakvaa hai. thak gaya mein doosro se seekh seekh ke. i am tired of professors telling me what to do. but on the other hand if i bear this faltu pain of doing homework and attending lectures for 1 or 2 more semesters i will be finished with all the course work that is required for phd and i can start research. but what research ghantaa! aur kitna bhagunga. when will i finally accept that my life is a waste and i am born to do just time-pass. why don't i just sit down and tell myself ki i am fooling myself by pretending to do something 'useful'. yet i know that the people who are happy to do work - always busy types - are fools. so why do anything at all. but because they do not see the whole picture. because they don't know that whatever they do one day they are going to be dead. but on the other hand, if i can do even a small thing that i earlier thought i couldn't do, i feel very satisfied and congratulate myself mann hi mann mein. But this is not true always. 99% of things that i do are those that i am forced to do. and only maybe 1% things give satisfaction. then why take the effort at all? but whatever i am saying is self-contradictory so nothing is true. what i feel now is not what i feel 10 seconds later. this changing mindstate is something i got to accept. i am tired of accepting the world as it is. patience is what i need. but how long have i been waiting. nothing makes any sense yet. people are supposed to mature with age. but i can see that i am running only because people want to think that i am doing something. even people who care for you do not understand. and i dont want them to understand because it is too tiring to explain everything and talk talk talk...

Last week I went to New York to meet my dearest cousin Aditi. My friends told me that there are two Chinese bus companies that take you from Boston to NY real cheap. One is the (in)famous Fung-Wah and the other one is Lucky Star. I met Aditi online on Tuesday 10.30PM and she told me that she is going back to LA on Wednesday in the afternoon. Its been 5 months that she has been on this continent and I hadn't met her. So I decided to go to NY by the 2 AM Lucky Star bus. It reached NY at 5.20 which is some record. It was f$%#%@g cold there. Had a nice time with the doctor and her friends. I did not like the city and longed to be back in good old secure familiar Boston. Anyway on the way back, thought of yet another silly haiku :D

Wash the blood off the kheema :D
Finely cut/ make a paste of ginger (more) and garlic - mix with kheema.
Add dahi, meat masala, little turmeric, some red chilli powder, salt and mix well and marinate for as long as you want.
Cut onions and fry till brown(referably in a stainless steel pressure cooker), add some dalchini, whatever etc etc.. (doesnt matter much).
Then pour the marinated bloody mixture into the cooker and keep on stirring for 15-20 minutes.
Add tomato puree if you want. If you don't have dahi then lemon juice will do.
Add appropriate amount of water.
Close the lid of the pressure cooker and let it blow steam (:D) for 3 or 4 times.
When the lid comes off, take off extra water for a dryish kheema by boiling it off.
Get some uncut Italian bread. Cut it. Melt some butter on a pan. Let those pieces of bread soak in some butter.

Open the lid of the cooker.
Decorate the kheema with some coriander (cilantro) leaves.

Serve in a dish with paav with a piece of lemon :)