bookless

i decided to give Art, the play by Evam, the miss. maybe it was the title — not very exciting, not as much as butter and mashed bananas — or maybe it was the fact that it was by evam, which doesn’t sounds as exciting as Harami Theatre.

however much i try to leave the subject of balls behind, “not happening dude,” screams this voice in my head. this is what happened in my risk models class the other day. “ok, now you have a bag with two black balls and you have another one with two red balls and two black balls,” said Dr lalitha, lolita to us. “i choose a bag at random and take out two balls which turn out to be black. what is the probability that…jack, why are you giggling?”

you need to be a regular church-goer or someone with a very mild imagination not to smile at all those balls.

i just realised that i haven’t read a book in months. months, jack the compulsive reader hasn’t touched a book in months. bleady heresy, shout all the librarians i have troubled in my life, including the one from the trivandrum public library who fined me Rs 1200 for keeping a book for an year and a half. but it is true, i am sorry i let you down, i tell them. i don’t know why, but i have been having trouble finding a book that interests me. fiction has lost its charm, i was never into biographies anyway and good non-fiction is…no idea, never tried to find out how they are. but take any survey of the 100 best works of fiction and i would have read at least 20 of them. that’s more than most of you combined. most of you readers still stuck with grisham and sheldon. boring!

i made the mistake of attending our course coordinator’s lecture today who was kind enough to admit in class that he was teaching the subject — financial economics — because he wanted to get a feel of the subject. i knew the faculty wasn’t really interested in our course since it is just a PG Dip, but this is hilarious. wanted to tell him that we wanted the same thing but is it ok if we got the feel studying by ourselves? i don’t intend to attend his lectures anymore.

i have been contemplating guitar classes for sometime now. friend varghese even agreed to bring me a guitar from shornoor, his sister’s, which has been lyng unused at home since she got married and pushed off to the gelf. but he called yesterday to say that his madras plan has been cancelled since his father was not very keen on him studying here again (he was coming for an interview). Sunny B, my pop star friend, suggested i buy a pluto, a japanese guitar which come for as less as Rs 2500. quite reasonable and pretty decent guitars too, according to him.

i have my french DELF exam on the 18th. don’t know how i will study for that considering my internals are starting on the 19th.

i was waiting at the signal when the traffic cop accosted me. “where do you study,” he asked gruffly. “Anna university, sar,” i gave him my cheeky smile. ever since i have been cutting my hair real short, cops, i have noticed, always gave me the glare treatment as they passed me. i suppose i would be in hawalat, getting the 3rd degree now, if i had dared to wear a skull cap. anyway, this guy realised that i was from out of town and proceeded to enquire about where i was from. satisfied that i was not from kashmir and just from malluland, his line of enquiry became even more funny. “so did you get into the university with some minister’s quota?” only when i assured him that i got in on merit did he let go of me, stopping some oncoming cars and waving me to cross. nice guy after all. wonder if he would have fined me if i had told him i paid capitation fees or something like that.