cricket.

watching the cricket finals with a bunch of sri lankans, is the only way it is meant to be watched. Riotous swearing and superstitious behaviour (we all stood on one leg in honour of Nelson's superstition at 111-1) and a lot of hair-rending and a lot of particularly Sri Lankan jokes, including one about the President who had flown in for the match.

It was a heroic effort and they played the game well. They lost to the juggernaut that was Australia, who've transformed the way the game is played, and for whom this is their third World Cup title, amidst much ill-planning, confusion and bad luck for the Sri Lankan side (read two rainouts- 38 overs reduced to 36 under the Duckworth-Lewis scoring, and playing in pitch-darkness in Barbados in a stadium without lighting) but they did their side proud and one can ask for no more.

And in a typically Sri Lankan twist, around about midway through the game, all our phones started going off and it was friends and relatives, letting us know that there was an air raid over Colombo and more bombs in the capital. Of course in typical Sri Lankan fashion it went like this: machang there was a bomb just now and we heard the blast. The power is out! What is the score?"

copyrighted for posterity if nothing else

"As a child she had keenly examined movement and life, expended by ants, bats, dragonflies, plants and trees. She had inherited the English love of the earth. The soil and its teeming life was a source of constant wonder to her and she had spent hours sitting silently in the April dampened earth, still as a lake. The frozen insects, earwigs startled, had dismissed her interruption and continued busily around her, climbing on the roots and branches of her calves and thighs. Armies building castles and establishments, enthroning and dethroning, followed by funereal processions of ants, black and red against the sludge green of the earth. Fortresses on promontories painstakingly constructed, futile efforts only to be ravaged by the helicopter drone of a bee, and blitzes by kamikaze dragonflies. Tiger moths, emblazoned with stripes of gold and camouflaged brown, hurling themselves with concentrated fury against the slender flickering candle flame of her night light. Those had been the first victims of her magnesium arrests. Her nose to the ground, eye to eye with snails. She imagined she could see their expressions, caught in the headlights. Herself as a goddess, haughty, only watching until the whim of destruction led her to exhale and blow. "

divisa?

I decided not to do an MBA which caused great waves of distress in my family, though i think my father is finally resigned to the fact that neither am I going to do an MBA or get married in the near future, thus bringing censure down on his head from the worldwide community of exiled sri lankan tamils who're busy financing terrorism or sympathising with it. I'm confused about freedom fighters/terrorists/goverment-sponsored violence. Should I rule the country, I would put the men to graze and hunt and let the women rule. Except Condoleeza Rice, who would lead the pack of men-sheep. The sun has finally come out and I browned further more while everyone else turned red. I also ordered Michael Ondaatje's book from Canada, since it only comes out in the rest of the world a whole month and a half later and I couldn't wait. After DHLing it from Canada to the East Coast however, I couldn't bring myself to read it because it would take another seven years before he published another book and it couldn't be over too soon. Am in class right now, trying to take down the pharmaceutical industry in America. All rich-country problems, who will save my beloved country?

divisadero

ooooh I feel sick, nauseous almost, but deeply excited and thrilled. I just ordered Divisadero, the new novel by Michael Ondaatje, which comes out in Canada tomorrow (yes I had to courier it from Canada because it only arrives in the States next month and I simply cannot wait that long). I feel ill at the thought of reading a NEW oeuvre by him, instead of the same four books that I have reread for the past ten years. His last book was written in 2001 and he averages six years for a book,so its going to be a long time before another one is here and ooh. I'd better make the most of this one as I can. There goes my life.

vonnegut 1922-2007

On pages 9 and 10 of his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

And an excerpt. I remember reading Slaughterhouse 5 for the A levels, along with Catch 22 and Dispatches. I didn't know what war looked like then, or death, or the sheer arbitrariness of it all. I only thought I knew what love was and it turned out I didn't know that either.

"Finnerty shook his head. ''He'd pull me back into the center, and I want to stay as close on the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.'' He nodded, ''Big, undreamed-of things -- the people on the edge see them first.''

studio 60

More tragedy and in Virginia too, genteel south.

Did I tell you I met Nandita Das? She’s someone I’ve always dreamt of directing, and she’s only acted in independent Indian films, controversial ones too. Her performance in Earth, along with Aamir Khan was so haunting, the subverting of love into rage and hopelessness. Anyway she was at school the other day and I met her consecutively and I talked to her briefly, awestruck.

Meeting with a potential investor. Still unable to come to a decision on the other school, though admit weekend is this weekend and perhaps it’ll be easier to make a decision. As for other things, they continue. Right now, I’m on a massive binge of Studio 60, the new Aaron Sorkin (creator of West Wing) television series starring the ex-Josh Lyman and Matthew Perry and here is a lovely line, from this valentine to television.

Bradley Whitford (as Danny Tripp) : “I've been married twice before and I'm a recovering cocaine addict. And I know that's no woman's dream of a man, or of a father. Nonetheless, I believe I'm falling in love with you. If you want to run, I understand. But you better get a good head start, because I'm coming for you, Jordan."

the world we live in

This world we live in. What are we doing here?

Above is a picture snatched from the BBC, one of my favourite sites of all time. A girl hands a female soldier some flowers and is embarassed. As usual it reminds me, the people who say we must go to war are rarely the ones who die.

back and blue

so. We made it into the semifis of the competition and it seems as though things are going well on the nonprofit creation front, as well as can be expected.

Back from a lovely time in Oxford and London, too well in fact for coming back is being extremely difficult. A day in bed solved those problems though. Yesterday after a crazy week (where I attended one class and had like nine hours total of sleep or something ridiculous) I got up at 8am, downloaded Ugly Betty and stayed in bed until 5pm until I finally roused myself to go to the gym and I came back, cooked honey and ginger chicken with tortillas and went back to bed at 9pm. It felt as though my body welcomed it, the intermittent napping associated with a day in bed and today I feel like a million dollars. Two !!

Still deciding on life trajectories. Gosh, if only things at the end could make themselves clear. I don't enjoy orientation activities, it must be said. Sigh.
Spent part of the week translating a documentary from Tamil into English. It was very emotional what my friend/kid had gone into the wilds of Vaharai Sri Lanka to film and then to come back with these tales of heartbreak and loss.

Anyway here's a lovely quote : "Beware the last temptation, To do the right thing for the wrong reasons".

and maybe

more advice from Cary Tennis, Salon's resident advice columnist

"So go for it. Please go for it. Go for it because elite academia needs people who've dodged a flying plate or two. Go for it for all the world's dreamers who question whether their dreams are worth it. Go for it for all the world's minority parties and outsider voices and small strange people with big dreams and curiously insistent inclinations and seemingly trivial preferences and nearly unheard voices telling them that it just might work, it just might be the thing, it just might make a difference. Go for it for all the people wondering if their little notions even matter. Go for it because it's not just about you, it's about setting an example for your kids and your family and your neighbors and friends. Go for it because somebody once told you not to. Go for it because someone told you that you weren't worth it. Go for it so you'll have a story to tell about courage and trusting your instincts.
Go for it for everyone who grew up in abusive households. Do it for everyone carrying self-doubt around like a bag of stones.
Go for it because you don't want to end up wondering 20 years later why you didn't.


Go for it to strike a blow against the tyranny of reasonable ideas.
Go for it because it's spring and spring is extravagant and fearless.
Go for it. "