A Bundle of Contradictions

​​ Everything about me is Dormant.
I am Lazy. I like to sleep.
I like doing Nothing.
I HATE doing stuff for other people.
But sometimes I love making somebody happy.
I love being Unpredictable.
Everything about me is Dynamic.
Kaleidoscopic. Incessant. Carefree.
I am Restless.
I get bored very easily.
I lose interest very soon.
But sometimes I insist on learning difficult things,
And then I stick by my decision.

I am Scared. I hide behind a mask.
I am not confident. I am Insecure.
I HATE myself.
I HATE being ridiculed.
But at least I know I’ll never do this to other people.
I am Ecstatic!
I can carry off anything with ease.
I can look Good. I FEEL good.
I ADORE myself. I am Beautiful.
I live everybody. Everybody loves me.

I HATE the Night-time.
When owls hoot. Or when dogs howl.
I clutch my blanket and wait for the Sun
To spread its light…
I AM the Night.
I wail with the wolf.
I am one with the stars.
The night engulfs me in a blanket of Nothingness.
The night swallows my fears.

I am Unsure. I am Terrified.
What if I were to die in the next second?
Fear grips me.
I am Clueless about what is going to happen next.
I live in the moment.
I Enjoy myself.

I make rules for myself.
I do not follow them.
I do not like living a routine.
I feel Inhuman.
But I have some unconscious Laws.
Strict Laws.
I abide by them faithfully.
They are the very essence of my being.

The world scares me.
The world is Big.
Full of strong, confident people.
I am very Small, Insignificant.
I am Nobody.
I am Suffocated. Strangled. Choked.
I cannot be myself.
I am full of Hope.
I am Limitless.
I am Infinite.
I am Me…


Sukriti Sekhri
The Book Club, SRCC

Trying to be whole again...

A myriad of emotions,

In a day I feel;

One moment I am elated,

In the very next I am defeated.

Is it the people or my own restless mind,

That just doesn't let me unwind.

Thoughts suffocate me;

People infuriate me;

Every unkind word kills a part of me.

Where is my tolerance;

Where is my patience;

All I have now is helpless emotions.

Trying to be normal,

I break down every time.

When did I become so vulnerable?

The girl in control

Seems a distant dream.

Every moment of introspection is a silent scream.

Yesterday was golden;

Today is a burden.

Tomorrow brings another ray of hope,

To build what lies in crumbles,

To steady the poor heart that trembles;

To mend the loose broken ends,

To become whole again.

So that some other day,

A myriad of emotions,

Don’t bring me down again.

-Nimisha Anant

A day in the metro.

It was just like any other day in the metro. There was me, a compartment full of strangers and the noise of them chatting, some on the phone, some amongst themselves. Everything was just as it was everyday, and it was a very long a lonely journey back home.
My legs were just about to give up on me when finally we pulled into Rajiv chowk station and I breathed a sigh of relief by plumping myself down on the seat that had just been vacated by that teenager memorising Italian words.
No sooner had I put my headphones on that I noticed a group of girls that had just got on. I don't know what it was about this particular group (just three to be precise) that caught my eye. I was sure I knew them. I racked my brain and then racked it some more but I couldn't figure it out. I often noticed well dressed people in the metro but this time seemed different. Not to say that they weren't well dressed! They looked like goddamn super models. But since I couldn't figure out who they were I just let it be.
I was just going through my Facebook notifications when suddenly I saw one of the girls on my wall. It was Nandini! And who is this Nandini you must be wondering? Well, she was in my school in 4th grade. Or rather I was in hers with the other two, though I can't seem to recall their names. This was when I was in Bombay. At the end of 4th grade my dad changed his job and we moved here to Delhi. Like any normal teenager I later stalked my old friends and added them on Facebook. I never saw any updates from them though and frankly I wasn't majorly interested because I was sure I'd never see them again. I did want to stay in touch with a few but time changes circumstances and nobody is at fault. Anyway, how did I recognise this girl? I didn't have to guess, she looked exactly like she did when she was 9! She was just more, how do you say, polished now. All of them were, like they'd just come out of some glossy magazine cover. So now that I knew that I knew her, I didn't know what I was going to do with that realisation.
Did I talk to her you ask? No. No i didn't. I thought about it. I thought about it constantly for the next hour that they sat opposite me, talking about where they'd been and where they were yet to go. I don't know why I didn't talk to her. It could've been so easy. Either she'd remember me or she wouldn't. But even though there were only these two possible outcomes, the likelihood of the second and it's accompanying embarrassment kept me from saying anything and I just sat there looking at them, silently, thinking about what my life could have been had I not moved away. Would I know them? Would I be popular? Would I look like they did? Have their life? My life's not bad and neither do i look too shabby. But staring at them and their aura I felt smaller than I'd ever felt before. I was sure she didn't remember me. Why would she? What would remind her of the me I used to be? That girl wasn't in me anymore, I'd let her go a long time ago. In her place now was someone who was hardened by the pain of loneliness and the loss of innocence.

Two stations before mine they were finally getting up to go. None of them had noticed me till now. Just as they were about to get off, Nandini dropped her wallet on the floor, right in front of me. I panicked. I'd done such a good job of ignoring her all this time, I wasn't prepared to blow my cover.

But the doors would close soon and all the bags she was carrying made it difficult for her to kneel to pick the wallet up. I decided to do the right thing. In that second when I reached to give her her fallen wallet, I saw the look in her eyes change. She knew it was me. And she was smiling. But her friends had grabbed her and were pulling her out and the doors were about to close so she didn't have a choice. Holding my gaze, she ran out. I could see her standing at the platform telling the others, telling them who I was and how we'd been best friends a long long time ago. What happened next was something I didn't expect. They all screamed out my name to get my attention and stood there on the platform jumping and waving. One of the other two also tried to get the door to open again. I was stunned. I didn't know how to react to their sudden burst of recognition. I just sat there, blushing because of all the eyes that were on me, and I just smiled and waved a little. And then they were gone.

I've wondered what happened to them since then. It's been two days and I haven't seen them yet. I might though. I guess I hope I do. And when I do I'll talk to them. Because they remember me. They recognise me. And that in itself is amazing.

Interesting facts about books and authors

1      Ever wonder what’s the most read book in the world? Well, it’s the Holy Bible.

2      In the book, Les Miserable by Victor Hugo there is one sentence that is 823 words long.

3      In the United States, people buy an average of 57 books per second.

4      It took Noah Webster 36 years to write his first dictionary.

5      One out of every eight letters you read is the letter 'e'.

6      Gadsby was written by Ernest Vincent Wright in 1939. The 50,000 word novel doesn't contain the letter 'e'.

7      J.K. Rowling had difficulty getting published. Finally, Bloomsburry Press agreed to publish it but only published 500 copies for fear they wouldn't sell. They also requested she use initials so she wouldn't be recognized as a female writer. She has no middle name, so she chose the letter K for Kathleen.

8      Before The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown was a pop singer and song writer. His second solo album was titled, Angels and Demons.

9      Sidney Sheldon didn't start writing novels until he was in his fifties. Before then he was creating television hit shows like I Dream of Jeannie and The Patty Duke Show.

10   The largest book in the world is "The Klencke Atlas" at 1.75 meters tall (about 5 feet 9 inches) and 1.90 meters wide (about 6 feet 3 inches when open).

11   The longest novel available to read is Marienbad My Love by Mark Leach at 17 million words. You can actually read this novel by going to Marienbadmylove.com

12   The most expensive book is The Task by Tomas Alexander Hartmann. It has a value by the author for 153 million euros. That's about 213 million U.S. dollars. And the kicker, it's only 13 pages long.

13   Perhaps the most uninteresting book ever written is the calculation of pi to two million places, in 800 pages. Just think of the TV special that could be made from this script.

14   Interestingly, William Shakespeare invented the word "hurry."

15   Leo Tolstoy wrote a large book called War and Peace before computers and copying machines. His wife had to copy his manuscript by hand seven times. 

16   Charles Dickens had to be facing north before he could write a word. 

17   For the last 12 years of his life, Casanova was a librarian. 

18   Jonathan Swift wrote a classic book called Gulliver's Travels that borders on science fiction. It was written before science fiction was what you called such books. In this book he wrote about two moons circling Mars. He described their size and speed of orbit. He did this one hundred years before they were described by astronomers. 

19   More than two and a half billion Bibles have been made. If you put them on a long bookshelf and started driving along the shelf at 90 kph, you would have to drive 40 hours per week for over four months to get to the end. All these Bibles would fill the New York public library 467 and one-half times. 

20   When digital looks real good: The Buddhist Bible was originally engraved on 729 white marble tablets. These tablets are regarded by Myanmar Buddhists as orthodox texts. The tablets are kept in a square, each protected by its own temple. Each marble tablet is about 3 inches wide and 4 inches long. Try to carry that around in your bag.

21   Bigass Library: The Library of Congress (Washington DC) contains 28 million books and has more than 500 miles of shelving. It would take you eight hours to pass every single book, if you were driving in a car at 70 mph. I’d hate to be the one in charge of dusting.

22   Everyone loves a good mystery: Who’s the bestselling commercial fiction author of all time? Not Meyer. Not Rowling. Not even King. No, the bestselling author of all time is Agatha Christie. Since 1920 her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language, and another billion in more than 45 other languages. She is outsold only by the Bible and William Shakespeare.

23   How much is that book? If you think today’s book prices are retarded, consider this: An original copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales sold for a record 7.4 million (in US dollars) at Christies in London in 1998. The book was printed in 1477 though, so unless you plan on living another 500 or so years, you’re not likely to see a royalty from that kind of sale.

24    But are they good? We like to toss around the term “prolific” when a writer publishes more than say, two books a year. Honey, you don’t know prolific. Between 1986 and 1996, Brazilian author Jose Carlos Ryoki de Alpoim Inoue published 1,058 novels in the western, science fiction and thriller genres. But are they any good?

25   And also, about Shakespeare…: Shakespeare makes Lear, whose character was an early Anglo-Saxon King, mention spectacles. In Macbeth, who dies in 1054, and when writing of King John's reign in 1200, Shakespeare mentions cannons. In Julius Caesar, he has a clock striking three. What’s wrong with these things? Spectacles, cannons and clocks were not invented until the fourteenth century, long after the times in which he set these tales. The lesson here: Research IS necessary.

26   Catherine is considered to be the saddest character ever in the history of English literature.