I might’ve been dead all this while. If one were to judge by the frequency of my posts, then I ceased to exist long back.

I suppose moving to any new city’d include a bit of getting depressed and that’s what the last post was all about. When I moved to Guwahati for a year, I still was in depression, albeit for a really short time. Maybe that was because I went there with 3 other friends from the pind and we pretty much spent most of our time haunting the spaces around each other. Or maybe my pumped out expectations made the move to Delhi a bit more depressing at the starting. With the fading summer, the depression is going away too.

At the starting of this year, which seems a lifetime away now, two very different free concerts happened; Anoushka Shankar and The Orphan Land. The thing with free (good) concerts is exactly the same as finding money inside pockets you’ve not washed for months. A month back, The YP Foundation celebrated their 10^th anniversary and The Raghu Dixit Project was called in to provide it with the befitting finale. Supposedly Them Clones performed the night before TRDP’s concert, which I missed because of my ignorance of them playing there, thank you. If the pre-concert shared joint with the room mate and the random autowallah and the architecture of the India Habitat Centre were not things awesome enough, then the sudden meeting with Raghu Dixit and the free plate of Buffalo Chicken Wings at the All-American Diner certainly were. Yes, we were hungry and broke enough to accept the wings from the casually-rich-laid-back-guy sitting on the stool beside us. If you’re reading this, thank you random kind hearted, much deep pocketed bearded person. Also I failed to recognise Shankar Tucker in the diner, which is a shame considering the number of hours spent on his Youtube videos. About the diner, it was so sexy but so expensive that I won't be visiting it again.

Raghu Dixit is one class act and more definitely than not one of the most iconic figures in the country’s Indie music scene. The way he interacts with the audience, mashAllah. Also that was their first concert in India after a string of concerts in the videsh, so we got to hear a lot of songs from their second album the first in all of India. Yay, bitches.

Now something about The YP Foundation. They’re the country’s biggest youth based Non-profit organisation and they’ve done hundreds of projects throughout India. Started in 2002 after the Gujarat riots landed up the then 17 year old founder in a state both helpless and confused, it has now become one of the most active youth fronts in India. The people involved with YP’re the more awesome persons of NCR and they sure know how to party hard after working their asses off. Also, all of their meetings seem to happen in the hep areas of the likes of Hauz Khas and Khan Market and yes, that surely earned them many brownie points from me (yep, very shallow of me).

The bad, bad thing about working for YP is the military-like time commitment. The volunteership seemed designed for people from or around Delhi only. Which, honestly, is needed for the training for the roles of peer mentors, but isn’t a 11 month commitment a bit too much when the volunteer base is 99.99% college students, all of whom seem to be from Delhi University, and you’ve to figure in days off for exams, pre-exam preparations, post-exam hangovers, trips back home (for out-station students, hint: me)? Even though I’d’ve loved to work with YP in general and their ‘Know Your Body, Know Your Right’ campaign in particular, all my prior commitments and future engagements (Merlin, I talk like a DU Angrezi teacher) would’ve made it impossible. (I hope someone from YP googles ‘YP Foundation’ and reads this.)

Khan Market and Hauz Khas, the merry ground of all people rich and happening in Delhi, ARE SO FUCKING AWESOME THAT I’VE TO TALK WITH CAPS LOCK ON. While Hauz Khas seems more young and ‘rebellious’, with its dingy lanes filled with designer boutiques and graphiti, Khan Market seems more ‘mature’ with all the re-re-refined elegance. While dining out in Haus Khaz is still an attainable exercise (non-sponsored recco: Thadi), Khan Market has an invisible ‘only for the Tatas and Birlas’ tag everywhere. Which, of course, did not stop me from emptying my wallet over goodies at L‘Opera Patisserie. Macaroons, hello. Bread pudding, hello. College Fund, bye.

The other place which seemed interesting was Majnu ka Tila, which I somehow always twist to ‘Manju ka Lila’, which is where I had my first bite of beef. I and my constant companion in crime in Delhi, Monsoon Chronicler, got over excited and ordered everything with beef in it. And butter tea, for Majnu ka Tila is a proper Tibetan settlement, complete with the beautiful prayer flags and Tibetan markets and board signs and everything. Let it suffice with the sentence that I did not like it. As for the beef itself, it was yummy but over rated. Mutton is a zillion times better. The record stands as below:

Mutton>Beef>Chicken>Fish

The ‘illegal’ tribes of meat shall remain undisclosed.

The best thing about coming to Delhi University has been the societies and all the frequent talks that keep on happening in the different colleges. The Literary Society; Grubstreet, The Film Society, The Gender Forum; Parivartan. These’re the ones I associate with as of yet. The Fresher Talent Show and the short film we’re making for that keeps one busy the whole day long. The Film Society’s focusing on Iranian cinema as of now and the Gender Forum is one kick ass place. The Amazing Gautam-Bhan Man gave a great talk on Queer Politics in Ramjas, which has turned out to be my second college in North Campus, what with my French classes and Monsoon Chronicler studying there. D School and Law Fac have become the best place to argue with Chronicler over the most mundane things with a glass of iced tea in hand. And for most days, my breakfast and lunch becomes the one 30 rupai wali Snickers. And the Daryaganj Sunday Book Bazaar the new paradise (though not so in the first few minutes of getting drenched in the heavy rains and walking in road-meets-drain waters). Imagine buying gorgeous, vintage, hard bound editions of Hugo for Rs 30! Aiyo! 

DU had its elections recently and man, it had all the anticipated rowdy North Campus political gundagardi. Smashed buses, bandhs, students being forced to vacate the college, booze for votes for hostellers (discriminating), disrupted classes, gang fights, girl getting molested. All of the drama. Even though 'Dil, Dosti Etc' was set in the DU political sphere, for me, the student politics in 'Gulaal' was a better representative.

Anyway, the University Delhi Ibsen Festival is going on right now and I got to see three plays out of the five; Lady From The Sea - The School of Art & Aesthetics, JNU, Jai Jawan Party - Ramjas, An Enemy of The People - St. Stephens. While I loved the first two, I found the Stephens play to be very disengaging. The lighting was fabulous, as were the video clips they used. And few of the actors, especially the guy who played the drunkard who appeared in between scenes every now and then, were very impressing too. But as a whole, the play fell flat.

The  plays were so differently adapted that it's difficult to say, strictly on the basis of the plays, that they were by the same playwright. I guess it says both of the complexities of Ibsen's plays and the drama societies. While JNU's adaptation of 'Lady From The Sea', my favourite of the three, was aesthetically the most impressive, and the background score and the way that it was used rolled the dice in their favour early on. The costumes, the lighting, the props, the ending scene. While all of the actors got their nuances right, the one who played Ellida was the show stealer. The way she portrayed Ellida's anguish, her, apparently, loosing her mind, her dilemma was simply superb. The actress playing Bolette was another stunner. And the later use of Tamil and Meitei was rather interesting. This one was pure poetry.

'Jai Jawan Party', Ramjas' adaptation of 'The League of Youth', was as colloquial as 'Lady From The Sea' was 'classical'. The actors interchanged their roles at each new scene and the way to know which actor was playing which character was the characterisation and the costumes. The way the costumes were pinned up at the back of the stage and the actors changing clothes on stage with the lights dimmed down, was rather interesting. The play was great and the actors commendable. And after The Players, I see Shunya as the best DramSoc in DU.

Also, thank you Delhi for providing my eyes with the eye candies that you seemed to've in store in galore.


New obsession: Peekaboo from Karsh Kale's episode of Coke Studio at MTV season 2.