What I thought was an appointment with the orthodontist before I got braces turned out to be the appointment with the orthodontist when I got braces.....
Now though it was due to my own insistence that i got them.....but I was prepared for it...
But now I feel awkward and ugly....and I hate it...I have lost my smile.....and I dread to go to skool this way.......I sort of know how my friends and all would react and I know how I should take that....but I am not sure of how I m gonna take it....
I conjecture that I am looking either ugly or stupid or funny or all the three..
Coming to ugly- I have never looked that good..so its ok, I think.
Stupid- I have always been stupid....only that its not so obvious to others..I think it should be fine if they realize that now.
Funny- I have never really been funny...and I should think that there is nothing wrong in making others laugh.
So I see, school should turn out just fine but its not fineee.....it definitely isnt..
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Crazy thing called the internet.....
The internet can really drive me crazy..
Sample this.....saw a few clips of the movie "Girl, interrupted." on Sony pix....since i cudnt catch the whole of it and memories of Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie still fresh in my mind...i decided to find more abt it and did so...but imdb recommended that i see "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" if i liked "girl,..". I had heard that One flew over was one of Jack Nicholson's best...and turned out that it was set in a mental institute just as the former movie.
Then while goin thru the same movie's spoilers on wikipedia.....comes a word called "lobotomy" and how i really hope that curiosity was not an attribute of the human mind.....it was a surgery that included destroying parts of the human brain to treat certain mental illnesses....it resulted in major personality changes and even mental retardation......
While going thru all of this i suddenly felt necessary to know more about Harper Lee's " To kill a Mockingbird" and it was another story that gives u that sinking feeling.....it rather reminds me how i choose to away from such realities simply coz its less troubling and a grave reminder that the world's not so kind to some...and i m not one of them....
A documentary on Charles Sobhraj and i m trying to find out more abt him only to find myself somewhat a little upset on finding it out....and then i m like searching for "the greatest crimes ever" and then i m not exactly happy on learning the about Jack the ripper murders in Victorian England and the holocaust....
And how abt music....listened to some old song abt "Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen" (was it by boney m or wat) and i had to know abt this so called evil monk which i did gradually........bringing me to the last generation of the romanov dynasty.....quite interesting to know that the purported heir to the throne was actually suffering from haemophilia an ailment not curable then...the tsar nicholas and his queen had to hide this fact from the kingdom and it was also the cause of the queen's dependency on Rasputin who called himself a monk but was actually a hedonist....things go that he cud somewat control the child's illness by hypnotism and how the last generation of the romanov dynasty was shot by the bolsheviks.....which wasnt exactly a happy ending and i was not too cheerful when i got to know about it either.....
Thanks to the internet i got to know that Indira Gandhi felt insecure amongst educated people -courtesy Khushwant Singh....it felt pretty nice to know that....
and i wudnt have ever known that the british rock band Queen's lead vocalist Freddie Mercury was actually Farrukh Balsara and how he tragically died of AIDS......neither wud i hav ever gotta know wat Gia Carangi actually looked like...
And another net research spree triggered by some mention of the indian witch Ipsita Roy Chakraborty( much before sacred evil came out)......about a cult called 'Wicca' (abt witches and magic and stuff)..now that was intriguing....and so was the story of a movie called White Oleander based on a book and starring Michelle Pfeiffer in the role of a woman who kills her lover with the poison of her favourite flower....
Coming back to music.....a pearl jam song called "jeremy"- caught my attention when i heard it on the radio......the song was apparently wrote after the suicide committed by a teenager called jeremy wade delle"( that happened before i was born).....the kid being depressed planted a pistol in his mouth and shot himself in front of his english class........i cant ever forget this......
All these things form a world from which i m totally untouched but which has had a profound impact on me....its a world beyond the limits of my imagination....and it leaves me dazed....because it is in fact a reality which i did not know if existed.....
Sample this.....saw a few clips of the movie "Girl, interrupted." on Sony pix....since i cudnt catch the whole of it and memories of Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie still fresh in my mind...i decided to find more abt it and did so...but imdb recommended that i see "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" if i liked "girl,..". I had heard that One flew over was one of Jack Nicholson's best...and turned out that it was set in a mental institute just as the former movie.
Then while goin thru the same movie's spoilers on wikipedia.....comes a word called "lobotomy" and how i really hope that curiosity was not an attribute of the human mind.....it was a surgery that included destroying parts of the human brain to treat certain mental illnesses....it resulted in major personality changes and even mental retardation......
While going thru all of this i suddenly felt necessary to know more about Harper Lee's " To kill a Mockingbird" and it was another story that gives u that sinking feeling.....it rather reminds me how i choose to away from such realities simply coz its less troubling and a grave reminder that the world's not so kind to some...and i m not one of them....
A documentary on Charles Sobhraj and i m trying to find out more abt him only to find myself somewhat a little upset on finding it out....and then i m like searching for "the greatest crimes ever" and then i m not exactly happy on learning the about Jack the ripper murders in Victorian England and the holocaust....
And how abt music....listened to some old song abt "Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen" (was it by boney m or wat) and i had to know abt this so called evil monk which i did gradually........bringing me to the last generation of the romanov dynasty.....quite interesting to know that the purported heir to the throne was actually suffering from haemophilia an ailment not curable then...the tsar nicholas and his queen had to hide this fact from the kingdom and it was also the cause of the queen's dependency on Rasputin who called himself a monk but was actually a hedonist....things go that he cud somewat control the child's illness by hypnotism and how the last generation of the romanov dynasty was shot by the bolsheviks.....which wasnt exactly a happy ending and i was not too cheerful when i got to know about it either.....
Thanks to the internet i got to know that Indira Gandhi felt insecure amongst educated people -courtesy Khushwant Singh....it felt pretty nice to know that....
and i wudnt have ever known that the british rock band Queen's lead vocalist Freddie Mercury was actually Farrukh Balsara and how he tragically died of AIDS......neither wud i hav ever gotta know wat Gia Carangi actually looked like...
And another net research spree triggered by some mention of the indian witch Ipsita Roy Chakraborty( much before sacred evil came out)......about a cult called 'Wicca' (abt witches and magic and stuff)..now that was intriguing....and so was the story of a movie called White Oleander based on a book and starring Michelle Pfeiffer in the role of a woman who kills her lover with the poison of her favourite flower....
Coming back to music.....a pearl jam song called "jeremy"- caught my attention when i heard it on the radio......the song was apparently wrote after the suicide committed by a teenager called jeremy wade delle"( that happened before i was born).....the kid being depressed planted a pistol in his mouth and shot himself in front of his english class........i cant ever forget this......
All these things form a world from which i m totally untouched but which has had a profound impact on me....its a world beyond the limits of my imagination....and it leaves me dazed....because it is in fact a reality which i did not know if existed.....
Friday, June 15, 2007
The obsession continues....
The Fountainhead
In continuation of the previous post……
Going ahead with the novel at the place where I had stopped….I have come to the conclusion that reading a novel doesn’t always mean that I have to believe it.
Firstly a look at Ayn Rand’s biography helps immensely in understanding her outlook. Her transition from the communist dictatorship of the soviet union to the capitalist land of America had a major influence on her thinking…as far as I can remember it was due to some rather unpleasant incidents during her days in the soviet union that made her develop a strong bitter disliking for socialism..and made her embrace capitalism. The sort of freedom made her believe that America was the fairest nations of all….
Secondly coming to the character of Howard Roark…his character was rather not human like…never in my not so long life have I heard of, seen or encountered who is so self-assured, who doesn’t ever feel insecure, who has not a trace of malice in his heart, who has no contempt having faced literal ostracism and denunciation from that very society. In her attempts to present her ideal man…, ayn rand, the very miss rand who had shunned religion and taken to atheism, in howard roark, has created a character that is so unworldly that it almost seems God like……in creating a man so heroic, she created a character that is not even human..
Next coming to the character of Ellsworth Toohey….who is basically lacking in genuine creativity or talent and so he cannot see anyone else rise above his mediocrity due to his desire for superiority. But the character is shown to be an extraordinary speaker…one who can sway the people with him…to me that counts for genuine skill. He had the ability to make people think the way he wanted them to….he had a remarkable influence but a lack of idealism…now the author has underestimated the power of words here. Ellsworth toohey uses words just as the author did in writing…
The author states that it was the lack of ideals that made toohey such a degraded being.
People in life acquire certain beliefs and notions, to which they remain strongly bound either by faith or reason, whichever they may choose. As a result, we are all rigid in our thinking and beliefs….I mean...the end we all think that we are right in believing or doing something….but the greatest contradiction is that a person with totally antagonistic views is just as much rigid about his views as we are….that person thinks with the same amount of certainty that he /she is right. So we cannot state that we are right in criticizing someone else’s views when the other’s belief is as strong as our own.....because we really don’t have a validation......and so as much the author would like us to believe that man’s ego is the fountainhead of progress.....I really don’t support the idea. How else can the author justify her thoughts and notions, her picture of an ideal man except that they are her beliefs which can vary from person to person.
Its amazing to see that how strongly she believes that her perception is so right and the contrary so wrong. Considering how she justifies man’s ego and if people start to think that way....every idiot who thinks himself a genius would go about thinking that the world is his. The author has failed to distinguish selfishness from ego and ego from self respect. A tremendous sense of self in a person or ego would in fact breed insecurity for it is then one would not be able to see someone rising above us......Someone with a deeper understanding would rather stay away from propounding any sort of idealism.......its already there in abundance....
So with due respect to the late author....I would not let this book make me question my life long beliefs ( I almost did).....guess, I am way too egotistical to yield to someone else’s philosophy....
( I really wished I hadn’t taken this book so seriously)
In continuation of the previous post……
Going ahead with the novel at the place where I had stopped….I have come to the conclusion that reading a novel doesn’t always mean that I have to believe it.
Firstly a look at Ayn Rand’s biography helps immensely in understanding her outlook. Her transition from the communist dictatorship of the soviet union to the capitalist land of America had a major influence on her thinking…as far as I can remember it was due to some rather unpleasant incidents during her days in the soviet union that made her develop a strong bitter disliking for socialism..and made her embrace capitalism. The sort of freedom made her believe that America was the fairest nations of all….
Secondly coming to the character of Howard Roark…his character was rather not human like…never in my not so long life have I heard of, seen or encountered who is so self-assured, who doesn’t ever feel insecure, who has not a trace of malice in his heart, who has no contempt having faced literal ostracism and denunciation from that very society. In her attempts to present her ideal man…, ayn rand, the very miss rand who had shunned religion and taken to atheism, in howard roark, has created a character that is so unworldly that it almost seems God like……in creating a man so heroic, she created a character that is not even human..
Next coming to the character of Ellsworth Toohey….who is basically lacking in genuine creativity or talent and so he cannot see anyone else rise above his mediocrity due to his desire for superiority. But the character is shown to be an extraordinary speaker…one who can sway the people with him…to me that counts for genuine skill. He had the ability to make people think the way he wanted them to….he had a remarkable influence but a lack of idealism…now the author has underestimated the power of words here. Ellsworth toohey uses words just as the author did in writing…
The author states that it was the lack of ideals that made toohey such a degraded being.
People in life acquire certain beliefs and notions, to which they remain strongly bound either by faith or reason, whichever they may choose. As a result, we are all rigid in our thinking and beliefs….I mean...the end we all think that we are right in believing or doing something….but the greatest contradiction is that a person with totally antagonistic views is just as much rigid about his views as we are….that person thinks with the same amount of certainty that he /she is right. So we cannot state that we are right in criticizing someone else’s views when the other’s belief is as strong as our own.....because we really don’t have a validation......and so as much the author would like us to believe that man’s ego is the fountainhead of progress.....I really don’t support the idea. How else can the author justify her thoughts and notions, her picture of an ideal man except that they are her beliefs which can vary from person to person.
Its amazing to see that how strongly she believes that her perception is so right and the contrary so wrong. Considering how she justifies man’s ego and if people start to think that way....every idiot who thinks himself a genius would go about thinking that the world is his. The author has failed to distinguish selfishness from ego and ego from self respect. A tremendous sense of self in a person or ego would in fact breed insecurity for it is then one would not be able to see someone rising above us......Someone with a deeper understanding would rather stay away from propounding any sort of idealism.......its already there in abundance....
So with due respect to the late author....I would not let this book make me question my life long beliefs ( I almost did).....guess, I am way too egotistical to yield to someone else’s philosophy....
( I really wished I hadn’t taken this book so seriously)
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The Fountainhead Obsession
THE FOUNTAINHEAD- a bestseller written by Ayn Rand
First published in 1943
I bought this book from the bookstore at the delhi airport because of one simple reason- i had read it in an interview, some bollywood actress had named this book as the one that changed her life. This book has had an effect that is inexplicable, the book celebrates Objectivism , exalts
and glorifies the individual ,the genius, the sheer power and ability of man to create and to experience joy in Creation.
I wont go into the details of the story , the plot etc. ( they can be read elsewhere). Its about an aspiring architect Howard Roark who stands for his ideals , defies all convention tradition, lives for himself, its about his love for architecture. His character is powerful one. The world doesnt exist for him. He refuses to compromise on his ideals , his ideals which are totally his own - neither preached nor necessarily approved by any book , tradition or human. His creations were not of any particular style, they were not what had been taught to him ( studied at stanton architecture institute from where he was expelled for not following what had been pronounced as the greatest, for trying to surpass what was considered to be sacred). His creations in the author’s words " were simply howard roark".
He was simply himself, not what people expected him to be or wanted him to be. And he was not different just for the sake of being different, he was that way simply because it was HIM - and it was his love for creation , for building, his brilliant mind that he was a genius. He lived not to desire success, not to gain acceptance from others, not for money, but for his love for building and that made him happy ,satisfied. Roark’s love interest is Dominique Francon ( the perfect woman for Roark) who marries Peter Keating (Roark’s antithesis). Another important character is Ellsworth Toohey (who is the villain) who does not want the world to rise above mediocrity beacuse he has not been able to rise above his own.
The book celebrates rationalism, that there is a purpose for everything, it celebrates man’s power. It emphasises on the need of honesty and sincerity , to break away from the false lives we are leading. This book is an inspiring one- but it is against what I have thought was right all my life, the idea of objectivism is much too radical and at times ,it seems to border on selfishness.
The danger posed by reading such books is that one actually starts believing in what has been written, it seems to be too convincing. In the end this book leaves my mind thoughtful and muddled- to believe what i have believed for most of my life or to approve of the notion that "human ego is the fountainhead of progress".
Seems like the book that propagates individuality has taken away that very individuality from me- Because now I dont know which school of thought I stand for.
First published in 1943
I bought this book from the bookstore at the delhi airport because of one simple reason- i had read it in an interview, some bollywood actress had named this book as the one that changed her life. This book has had an effect that is inexplicable, the book celebrates Objectivism , exalts
and glorifies the individual ,the genius, the sheer power and ability of man to create and to experience joy in Creation.
I wont go into the details of the story , the plot etc. ( they can be read elsewhere). Its about an aspiring architect Howard Roark who stands for his ideals , defies all convention tradition, lives for himself, its about his love for architecture. His character is powerful one. The world doesnt exist for him. He refuses to compromise on his ideals , his ideals which are totally his own - neither preached nor necessarily approved by any book , tradition or human. His creations were not of any particular style, they were not what had been taught to him ( studied at stanton architecture institute from where he was expelled for not following what had been pronounced as the greatest, for trying to surpass what was considered to be sacred). His creations in the author’s words " were simply howard roark".
He was simply himself, not what people expected him to be or wanted him to be. And he was not different just for the sake of being different, he was that way simply because it was HIM - and it was his love for creation , for building, his brilliant mind that he was a genius. He lived not to desire success, not to gain acceptance from others, not for money, but for his love for building and that made him happy ,satisfied. Roark’s love interest is Dominique Francon ( the perfect woman for Roark) who marries Peter Keating (Roark’s antithesis). Another important character is Ellsworth Toohey (who is the villain) who does not want the world to rise above mediocrity beacuse he has not been able to rise above his own.
The book celebrates rationalism, that there is a purpose for everything, it celebrates man’s power. It emphasises on the need of honesty and sincerity , to break away from the false lives we are leading. This book is an inspiring one- but it is against what I have thought was right all my life, the idea of objectivism is much too radical and at times ,it seems to border on selfishness.
The danger posed by reading such books is that one actually starts believing in what has been written, it seems to be too convincing. In the end this book leaves my mind thoughtful and muddled- to believe what i have believed for most of my life or to approve of the notion that "human ego is the fountainhead of progress".
Seems like the book that propagates individuality has taken away that very individuality from me- Because now I dont know which school of thought I stand for.
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