Need to Escape

Badly. Escape. From everything. Everyone. Family. Friends. Work. Study. French. Room. Anywhere but here. Making half-hearted appropriate noises of enthusiasm while feeling dead inside. Bloody stifling. Suffocating.

(I might always have been bipolar. Will have to get that one checked.)

Star's Believe it or not

(This post is for the Indiblogger's FireFreeze Challenge competition. Please do vote for me if you like my post. Or if you like me. Or even if you don't. :P)
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Being a translator for a company that subtitles Hindi films and TV shows in English is not easy. I don't know whether I love my job or hate it. 

Believe it or not, I recently had to translate 50 minutes of this:

I really didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. It was one of the worst pieces of Indian television that I had come across so far - on job and out of it. But it was also one of those examples of "It's so bad, it's good." If you are not too sensitive, you can totally enjoy watching this one for it's absolute ridiculousness. And for it's unimaginable commentary.

The sad part for me was that I had to translate that ridiculous commentary in English. 

Okay, correction. I had to try and translate that ridiculous commentary in English. Because, obviously, I couldn't do all of it accurately. 

For example: When this King Kobra person was being beaten up, the commentator once said: "Agar is naag ki koi girlfriend, koi Icchhadhari Nagin hogi, toh woh iski haar ka badla legi." (Rough trasnlation: If this snake had a girlfriend, some snake woman, then she would take revenge if he lost the fight.") That was the moment of my Firefreeze.  I was laughing so hard that I started crying. And once I got over it, I realised that I will have to translate that in English. How would you ever translate "Icchhadhari Nagin"?! I ended up using "Snake woman".

And then, the commentator kept telling during every fight that this is brutal and how could they do this and how they come up with new ways of torturing people and blah di blah di blah. So, umm.. what was he expecting on a Wrestling reality show? Flowers and balloons and lots of kissing? I wanted to scream out loudly out of frustration and also laugh out loudly for the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

All in all, it was a brilliant experience and one of it's kind on my job. I never thought I would say this but after seeing this, I am so glad for the Indian television dramas. Short, predictable and lots of loud background score. :P And easy for translation. Most of the dialogues can be copied in some document and then, pasted in various different TV shows. ;)

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Like I said before, this post is for the Indiblogger's FireFreeze Challenge. So, I hope you all like it. Please vote for me here by clicking on "Promote this post". Also, please do leave a comment about similar experiences that you might have had - mood swings, confusions, crushes, heart-breaks - anything and everything. And then, copy-paste the same comment here. Thank you!

Oh Star, Where art thou gone?

Something is very seriously wrong with me. It's probably called "growingupoplasia". But, I have never in my entire life been so depressed. I have always been a very bubbly and optimistic person, to the extent that sometimes I even give myself a headache. But I think one of the most important reasons behind my happiness and cheerfulness was the security. I knew exactly what I wanted from my life, what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it, everything. Everything was so much easier.

But, last year changed everything. It changed my perspectives, my aspirations, my ambitions, my dreams, everything. And now, I no longer know exactly what I want. I don't know in which direction to move forward. Or even whether to move forward or not. I have even given up on my PhD application. If I am not sure that I want to be in the academics, then there is no point in doing a PhD at all. And even if I do decide later on that I want to do it, I can always do it. But if I jump into it right now, it will be a three year commitment. And I don't want to find out in the middle of this very expensive commitment that it's not exactly my calling. I just don't have enough motivation or inspiration to actually pick up my pen (metaphorically only. I actually mean type it out) and formulate my application.

What I am sure I really want to do is travel. So, I think I am going to appoint that as my new goal. Only, this travelling is a very expensive business. So, I am going to work like a donkey so that I earn enough money to travel. And go, visit Sun in New Zealand. Of course, it will probably take me about 2 years of savings or more if I stay in my current job. It's stupid, shitty job that doesn't even pay me well. I don't know why I don't just quit. It was so much easier to tell people to quit if they are not happy doing something. But, I am so confused about everything in my life that quitting will only make me panic even more. Besides, the mind-numbing job gives my over-alarmed, over-working brain a rest.

And I should not even get started on how much I miss Atom and how much it is painful to actually think of it as a hopeless situation. Bloody unfair life, go screw yourself. I just don't know anything anymore.