Tuesday, July 26, 2011

How the lazy reader was frustrated by Potter, angered by Twilight and mocked because of Chetan Baghat


Diary Entry 21 



This post is not meant to offend or criticize. Views expressed in this post are opinions formed by personal experience. Some of you might think I could have had a more neutral opinion but I will be writing lies if I wrote any other way. :)

Most people assume that I read a lot. They think that my English is a product of thousands of hours spent alone in the library reading literature. It is so not true. I read maximum of two books in a year. But there are times when I read more than two books. When Harry Potter came out, every girl I knew was talking about it. I sat down and read all the books just so that I will not look like a ignorant fool every time someone started talking about wizards and magic. When I was done with all the books, I assumed that I will be able to impress women with my newly acquired knowledge about magic. I mean I knew the entire story by reading the book and I saw all the Harry Potter movies released so far. So armed with the knowledge about the fantasy world, I felt confident that I will have something to contribute when the girls took the conversation to Hogwarts. Sigh, it turned out that reading Harry Potter ‘once’ is not enough. If you wanted to have a conversation with them (leave alone impressing them), you had to remember each event that happened in each page in each book along with the page numbers. I tried reading it the second time but the thought that I have to read it several times more made me resign in defeat. I really liked the book but still I felt I should have just watched the movie.

So when the girls left Harry Potter and moved on to Twilight, I got smart. I was afraid that reading the book 'once' was going to be pointless so I thought I will just watch the movie (several times if I had to). When I was told that the movie was about vampire, I got all worked up and excited. I mean, I love immortal, good looking, blood sucking monsters who can seduce and control the minds of beautiful women. Before I saw the movie, I actually thought I should read the book first for a richer vampire experience. When I saw the movie I realised that not reading the book was the best decision I ever made in my life. If you see Twilight you will notice that they have made the Vampires in the movie less vicious and more girly. What has the world done to those poor soulless beasts. Vampires whose skin glitters when they come out in the sun? Really? Sigh, I wouldn’t be surprised if vampires started riding around in unicorns next. I don’t really hate Twilight or anything, but you just shouldn’t deceive people by telling them Twilight is a movie about vampires. Vampires give guest appearances in Twilight. I watched the first movie with my friend and that is one of the reasons why Twilight became one of my least favorate movies. This is what happened:

Friend: Edhavadhu Padam Papome da. (Let’s see some movie da)

Me: What kind of move do you want to see?

Friend: Some action or fantasy movie.

Me: Hmmm. There is this movie called Twilight. It’s a vampire movie. Want to watch?

Friend: (all excited) Seekram podu macha. (Come on. Put it on fast.)

Me: Lol I like vampires too :D.

Half an hour passes

Friend: Are you sure this is a vampire movie?

Me: That is what my friend said.

One hour passes

Friend: Dai *@#^ (abuses in Tamil). I don’t see any vampires.

I open IMDB website in the back.

Me: Look at this da. Its IMDB. Even they say it’s a vampire movie. What the hell am I supposed to do?Not believe the authority when it comes to movies?

Friend: If you wanted to see a award padam, you should have called your grandmother. Did you have to see it with me? You know how much I hate such movies.

Me: Award Padam na enna macha? (What is a award padam?)

Friend: Award Padam is a boring movie that puts everybody to sleep but ends up getting all the awards.

Me: I am sorry da. Everybody said this was a semma movie (awesome movie).

Friend: Yeah rite. They must have said that because it must have got the Oscar or something. :x

Me: It has a 5.4 rating in IMDB. I think most people felt the way you are feeling now macha. At least that is what I think because it has a low rating in IMDB.

Friend: YA. AFTER PUTTING ME THROUGH ONE HOUR OF BORING SHIT, YOU DECIDE TO TELL ME.

Sigh the movie was a disappointment in so many ways and my friend has mocked my taste in movies ever since. Is this not enough an excuse for not reading the book?

Some girls that I know come and talk to me about how awesome the book is. I try to conceal my irritation and tell them politely that I haven’t read the book so there is no point in talking about the book to me. But instead of moving on by talking about something else, they get a big ego and act as if they just read War and Peace. Sigh, if only I could curse them with all the abuses that flood my head. If it were my friend, he wouldnt have held back. I don’t read a lot of novels, so I don’t know about a lot of authors. There was this one girl who kept talking about books, and I thought this girl must have really fine taste in books. I thought since I have never heard of any of the authors she is talking about, she must be really smart and well read. After a couple of months I learned that one of those authors she liked a lot, wrote Twilight.
Photo provided by Araknus (Sunki)
So whenever a girl starts showing off by talking about unheard authors, I ask about the book to one of the two people who have an English far superior to mine. Their English is so superior that sometimes I think it’s best to talk to them in a vernacular dialect so that I will not look stupid. (Thank god we have Tamil). The first one is Toxicpunk. Toxicpunk is her nickname (she is not in any DoTA or Counter-Strike clan). When someone talks to me about some unknown author, I check with her. If she doesn’t know about the book then it’s some horrible book that is being given too much hype. A lazy reader like me picks small books like Sydney Sheldon or Paulo Coelho to read. Its short and its fun. But ever since I met Toxicpunk I have been scared to even claim that I know how to read. Well this is what happened:

Me: Your boy friend is really smart is he not?

Toxicpunk: Yeah I guess. He gets me so impressed sometimes.

Me: He seems to know a lot. He must read a lot like you I guess.

Toxicpunk: Haha he reads my ass. Lol he reads Chetan Baghat and Paulo Coelho. That’s what he reads. Haha

Me: eh huh huh :D (uncomfortable laugh)

Ever teased someone because the only thing they read is Tinkle or Spider man comics? Well Toxicpunk scoffs the same way at anybody who reads Paulo Coelho or Chetan Baghat. She never holds back insults and its best to pretend that you have never heard of Paulo Coelho when she is around. Well I never thought Chetan Baghat was a great author. I thought his first book was a terrible. I read it during my 11nth grade and I couldn’t connect with it. I am in my 4th year of college now and I am having a even more harder time connecting with it. (How is it possible to clear all subjects and still be a 5 pointer huh? It’s impossible.) It took great stamina to go from one page to the next. But still when I was done with the book, I thought it was sort of my reading achievement. Everybody except me liked the book. I did not drop the book mid way even though I was a little bored and that by my standards is quite an achievement. She in a matter of minutes demeaned one of my achievements as a reader. You can’t blame her. She has probably read every book that has ever been published. You probably want to see her now :D. But if I put her picture here, guys will find her extremely pretty and she doesn’t like people raving her looks :D. If I did not have someone like her as my friend, every girl in the block would have made me think that they got a degree in literature from Cambridge.


The second person who has superior English is Toothpaste. When I was told that 90% of the people who took the GRE test got a score lesser than me in English I thought my English was good. Well for Toothpaste the percentage is 98%. That will reflect in her every day conversations. If you know how to read and write Hindi, and if you have ever tried reading the Bhagavad Gita, you will realise you can read it, but you don’t understand what you are reading. Or if you are a Tamil guy and if you have heard the Thirukural being recited, you will know it is Tamil but you can’t exactly understand what is being said (atleast I dont). Well when Toothpaste writes or speaks in English, it’s the same thing. You know what you are reading or hearing is English, but you can’t exactly understand what is being said. I can understand what she says only because I studied for the GRE. You should check out her blog ‘Five Feet Talking’. If you haven’t studied for the GRE or if you don’t read as much as she does, then it will be pretty useful to have a dictionary by your side when you visit her blog.When Toothpaste read my blog she said, “I think you are an obnoxious, chauvinistic, womanizer. But since you are a little funny, I like your blog”. She did not say it in underlined bold :D. Toxicpunk will not be as kind as Toothpaste if she thinks what I write is pathetic. I am doing everything to butter these two people, so that they won’t say mean things about my blog :D. Of course it’s not going to work but it is still worth the try.

Note:

For the reader - I like Harry Potter. But I cannot be called a fan because I have not read the book so many times. I dont hate Twilight. But that doesnt mean I can talk about it in conversations. I like Chetan Baghats Two state but think his other books were only average.

For toothpaste - I gave you a free advertisement here. You better be nice :D

For Toxicpunk – I will get you a blue berry cheese cake if you are nice :D  





Moral of the story :

Have confidence to write. Star your own blog or write your own book.




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44 Comments for this post:

Mishilicious Mishi said...

hahahahahha
hilarious!

and btw i love your language da!;p
its so sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet ..plz teach me some!

Mishilicious Mishi said...

haha yeh i live in pakistan and its 2am here..bt i had things to do so i was awake and im still awake! and I clikced it right after you published it...;p

Neha said...

Nice post...You have the capability of making others smile...
Cheers
neha

Nirati said...

First time I'm reading your blog so late :P no?
I love Harry Potter and I've read each book like 10 times , without exaggeration :)
And the Twilight series are just for time pass, it's not good literature or even an actual "vampire" story!! Hahahaha I'm laughing at that conversation u had with ur friend :P Also the caption of that high school pic :D
Chetan Bhagat x_x He writes rubbish stuff and if someones reads ONLY chetan's books, then that guy/girl rather not read only!! :|
BTW I love the way you write , as me said before .. I like how u write stuff which makes me laugh :D
Ciao :)

Araknus said...

pigroll.com/img/i_love_twilight.jpg

Unknown said...

Sigh, your sense of humor is kind of cool as I always say. And Even I hate this "Twilight Thing". Watch 'The Vampire diaries' and you might like it. It's not a movie but a TV series. Anyday better than tolerating that Nerolac white painted Rob Pattinson :D
Btw, I loved your friends, toothpaste and Toxicpunk, they both seem awesome to me ;)

Unknown said...

That above image says it all. What an insult. M lovin it ;)

Cindrella said...

Now for some reason I have also been a Lazy reader!! I too read very very less books!! And sometimes I am so ashamed to say I haven't read the HP books and Twilight books!!

When my friends start talking about it I try my best to change the topics!! :P Never had enough patience like you in trying to read all of them!! :D

Come to CB, I have read 5. someone! That I read 'coz I had no choice!! Sigh! I thought I wouldn't survive engineering without reading it :P

Unknown said...

I have seen true blood but nothing really beats The Vampire Diaries for me, I love it :D

CheeseCakeWorshipper said...

All said and done, please start reading :P You're missing out on a lot. Believe me.

Oh the post is nice.

P.S. Blueberry cheesecake? Really? *lights up like neon christmas bulbs*

~ The Punk that wasn't all that toxic.

Ayushi said...

Face to face with the title, I thought this post will make me much more sad and teary than I am right now (coz I heart Edward Cullen and no, I'm not a teenager :P), but your humor is the best thing that could happen to me at this moment :).
And Chetan Bhagat's work has reached heights of being lame.
Not that I'm a writer or something myself, but I have to appreciate his guts. He's got the nerve to write all that shit and get it published.

P.P.S. Kindly do not pick up on Edward Cullen here, I'm already too upset to deal with it :(

jaiprasanth said...

Hahaha! Brilliant post macha!!
Loved the Inglorious Basterds thing :D
Hans Landa for the win!! :D

Ayushi said...

My bad, I forgot to mention, I don't like the actor, I like the character, its not about good looks dear.
And No, its not the greatest book ever written. Did I mention that ?
I'm not coming back on this post, don't prompt risha :)
Happy criticizing :)

Quirky Writes said...

I agree that twilight (the first part) was not so interesting and I also don't understand that why people like that movie a lot. People are crazy about that. But 2nd and 3rd movie were a lot better.

And I just don't read novels. I tried to read a novel for the first time when I was 14 or 15. I actually brought that from a library and I was so excited about the book but that book was so pathetic that I got irritated and found it easier to stop reading instead of understanding the actual story. After that I never dared to read another novel. I'm not interested anymore. I like short stories with less details. Then I gave the same book to one of my friends and believe me her reaction was the same as mine.

BTW funny post. I've never met any person who has a terrible reading habit.

Thanks for sharing your personal feelings.

Roshni said...

toothpaste???? seriously?? ROFL :D "trying to butter???"" nice attempt i'd say :D ahem ahem...:P :P

athul said...

dude reading is fun and a nice way to build ur vocab...... in a building when u have a flight of stairs to the third floor and a lift which pretty much can get u there u reserve the right to choose..... but please note a person who sees u choose the stairs is definitely gonna presume that ur stupid.... and ofcourse u do have escalators as well so watching movies or sitcoms or speakin to a female is good enough to make ur english sound pleasant to the ears.......... hope u got that.....
whoever toothpaste is a random title is not necessarily awesome.... but frankly talking makes sense(the content not the title).... Ofcourse it does stir the logic buzzers to point out the answers to those seemingly charming queries regarding the beautification deeds.... hope u have heard of this simple word "competition" its pretty natural for her to look better than the one beside her....


And melancholy could receive a more fair treatment considering the vocab that u are said to have a little bit more philosophy may just add that panache that could light it up........
no offense meant...

athul said...

and rosh didn't think i'd see u here :)

Vijay Menon said...

Hilarious!

Roshni said...

neither did u :)

CookieCrumbsInc. said...

Narcissist indeed, the last pic was creme de la creme :P

I would have loved you more if you'd loved HP:P I'm one of those girls who know all the pages by-heart along with the page number xP

Tripthi Battapadi said...

Hahahah! :))
Awesome da!
:P

The Damned Writer said...

I'm one of those crazy harry potter maniacs! or should i rather say, i WAS!

it was a phase, man...and i believe you gotta have read it in your mid teens, you know...thats when you could really appreciate it n let it influence your vocabulary n writing skills BIGTIME!

trying to read it now-nah! chuck it! yo better off with sidney sheldon n paulo coelho! :):)

n twilight! trust me! i couldnt bring myself to read more than a couple of chapters! it's a truck load of CRAP, for crying out loud!

n Chetan bhagat...i did like him SO much at one point...but now i think he's kinda lame! if it werent for two states, i wouldnt like him one bit anymore!

Nirali Naik said...

hahahaha :P yeah you're not narcissistic at all :P The conclusion you came to was write your own blog :p

FYI it takes alot more to impress a girl than being a twilight fan :P

Sincerely not a fan of vampires that glitter O:)

Nice blog :D

The Narcissist said...

It is more about not looking stupid and less about impressing if you ask me :D Twilight fans (women) make us look stupid if we dont know stuff about twilight. So by branding all twilight fans stupid, we strip them off that power ;)

The Narcissist said...

LOL I know what Exceeding Expectations in HP is :D I read the book once. :P Yeah I thought 2 states was kind of good too :)

The Narcissist said...

I read harry potter but i never got the mania, no comments about twilight and I share the same view about chetan baghat :D Strangely people say i write like him sigh.

Thank you btw :)

The Narcissist said...

thank you :)

The Narcissist said...

You must know I really tried to read Harry Potter the second time, but then I realised I have to read it several times more before people like you will start liking me :( so I dropped it :)

The Narcissist said...

From Abhishek -

Next time when you comment use a few punctuations so that, its a little easier to understand what and who you are talking about. Do try to not speak in convoluted sentences because I find it hard to understand.

Anyway listen man, I do read. I read a lot more than most people. My vocabulary is not abysmal and most of the vocabulary I have came from reading. When I say I am a lazy reader, I meant I dont read story books and novels. When my friend Toxicpunk tells me that I am missing out on a lot, what she is actually saying is that, I should read classic novels like The Great Picture of Dorian Gray or Life of Pi. I dont read things like that. I find reading about other peoples life boring if it goes beyond a page. But that doesnt mean I find reading boring. I do read everything other than story books man. I even subscribed to NYT. I dont take the stairs that other people take (or ask me to take) nor do I take the escalator. I climb up through the fire escape. I dont think people who take the stairs or the escalator are stupid. I admire them. I dont read because I want to have a great vocabulary or put scene in front of people. I read cuz I find the things that I read fascinating.


Next time you want to comment about Toothpaste's blog, please check the URL and make sure you are on her blog and not mine before you comment. You will receive better replies and clarifications that way :)

I appreciate you reading the blog and taking time to comment man.


From Toothpaste -

For the second two paragraphs Toothpaste has to say the follows.

Toothpaste has a certain style that she's more than proud of, she writes plainly for herself and does not like to pleas. But she does think you need to consider a class in sentence construction. She also says that Melancholy has an underlying sense of philosophy that cannot be synchronised to your barbaric understanding of the term "panache", hence it's good as it is. She also says, if you are so fond of penning blogs in reply to blogs, you should start one of your own. After the sentence construction classes ofcourse.

The Narcissist said...

Thank you :D

The Narcissist said...

she was the one who picked that name you know...

The Narcissist said...

man. Sorry if I offended you :)

The Narcissist said...

LOL I hope you will love reading my blog :D

The Narcissist said...

:D Thanks macha... Araknus sent me the link to the Inglorious Bastards pic. He is my classmate. He writes a blog himself. You will like it A LOT :D

Here is the link http://badabingbadabambadaboom.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/attention-women-from-chennai-especially-down-south/

The Narcissist said...

I knew you will tell me this :D. All I can say is that I will try real hard... :P

Trying to eat the Blueberry cheese cake always turns out messy for me. I end up having it all over my face and shirt :D

The Narcissist said...

Lol we love Kristen Stewart as much as you love Robert Pattinson. But good looking actors doesnt make a good movie :D and it definitely does not make the book good. We dont hate the actors in Twilight. We dont hate Twilight either. What we do hate are the fans of the movie and the book who give so much hype that we end up thinking that Twilight is the greatest movie ever made and the book, the best ever written. I will tell Risha not to pick on Edward :D.

The Narcissist said...

my friends are more awesome than you think :D

The Narcissist said...

Lol I read 5 point someone because some fool told me that it will inspire me and make me want to go to IIT :D.

Lol and if books like twilight can become such a hit, I think you should write a book sometime. Your blogs are awesome and if you write a book it will be the best seller in no time. :)

The Narcissist said...

haha. Macha I am putting that pic in my post. :D

The Narcissist said...

I thought nobody will read it till the sun came out because I posted it at 2 in the morning. Mishi read it in 5 mins. I wasnt even done editing. :D

The Narcissist said...

Has 2 mins passed by since I published this post :D??? lol which part of the world do you live in? Its 2:30 am here. You are not supposed to be awake :D

Thank you very much by the way :)

The Narcissist said...

:D things to do like reading my blog? :D

The Narcissist said...

Lol I have seen vampire diaries. There are other TV series like True blood and Moonlight too if you are a vampire fan :)

The Narcissist said...

Thank you very much :)