Grumpy fragments.

It's raining. Everything outside seems darker than it possibly is.

I am on my bed with the laptop on my stomach, watching stuff and willing the internet speed to go up. It's a lazy afternoon - something I look forward to all week and when it actually comes around I don't know what to do with myself after a point.

There were several attempts at writing, but everything sounded either insincere or unbearably trite. I looked through old things, mails and writing pieces that could perhaps inspire me into writing something that wouldn't make me gag. Instead, I stumbled upon all the college memories that made me more wistful than I'd expect to be.

It's the monsoons. They make me gloomy.

Blueberry yogurt is delicious but that's just a blatant effort to change the subject.

Oh an Arts major? Here, have some of my pity

There is a man I met today. He started a conversation with me about a book I was holding. The conversation went downhill in a matter of minutes.
He said, “You must be an engineer. Or BSc Chemistry or something.” He somehow concluded this from the copy of Midnight’s children in my hand. I said no, I majored Economics. He raised his eyebrows in a manner as though I told him I didn’t believe in education. He said, “Oh God. How are you holding up?” He wasn’t joking. He thought I must be struggling in life because I didn’t have a science degree to back me up.
There was a time when I used to think that this is the attitude of people from another generation. People who lived in a time when the Arts weren’t as developed; people who weren’t as exposed to opportunities as we are. Then one day, I realized that people my own age who I thought of as smart and well read also held this opinion. From what I gathered from a conversation with a rather intelligent person, it would be better to be a failing at a Science related job/degree/course then doing really well in and enjoying an Arts one.
I have lost track of the number of people who look down upon Arts subjects on principle. This same intelligent person told me that this is the thought process because the Social Sciences are easier and less demanding.
I have a lot of things to say about this. But I am going to keep mum and pretend that I didn’t meet the man who felt bad for me because I had to deal with being an Arts major.
A while ago, The Hindu had an interview with the noted historian Romila Thapar. It was about the controversial decision that the Academic Council of Delhi University took to drop A.K. Ramanujan's celebrated essay on the Ramayana from the B.A. History (Honours) course.
In this context, Thapar made an extremely pertinent point about the whole attitude towards the social sciences.
She said, “The interesting thing about this whole argument about interdisciplinarity is that the social sciences are always attacked. But the sciences are never attacked because people are scared of making a fool of themselves by saying that this is not something worthy of teaching. So nobody questions the sciences. But with the social sciences, the world and his wife are there to comment, in some cases, without any kind of background knowledge of the subject. There's a feeling that you don't need to be an expert; this is all common sense.”
I’ll just go sit in my corner now.

A long time ago when college festivals were a deal big enough to be bothered with, the Martyr Momos were born on a July evening. We needed a name for the blog event and we decided that it had to have something to do with food. I don't know about the Martyr part. We picked that out on a whim.

The Momos have been around for longer than the blog they made. I met Krati Tandon on a very rainy day in 2008. Don't tell me it's a cliche, It really was raining. You can ask her. We became friends almost instantly. If I hadn't met her, I am pretty sure I would a different person. I wouldn't write as much, I wouldn't have as many bangles and there would be long blank spaces in my day; spaces which now are devoted to talking to her on the phone about the many inane things that plague my life.

Then we did the blog event and had such a good time, that the blog name became a part of us.

 Krati Tandon is a super momo - with her tech advice and her whizzing around with her camera, her enthusiasm and her jewelery. She does sharp market research by day and writes hauntingly beautiful poetry by night. Her evenings are taken up by Momo meetings, buying wooden bookcases that are full of character, bike trips with her face wrapped up in scarves and educating the ill informed about best technology available in smart phones.

She is very 'sunshine on a Christmas morning interspersed with wise words and funny stories'. The best kind of festive sunshine, don't you think?