Behind the Quill

               “Rita Skeeter reached into her crocodile bag and drew out a long acid green quill and a roll of parchment…”.That quill, known as the quick quotes quill, transformed a normal sentence like “Testing...my name is Rita Skeeter, Daily Prophet reporter” into “Attractive, blond Rita Skeeter, forty three, whose savage quill has punctured many inflated reputations”. This rather self obsessed quill that had a knack for spouting out eloquent sentences fascinated me ever since I first encountered it in ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’.

          Getting one, albeit a non magical one, was a rather serendipitious moment for me. Here I’d like to share it with all you quill dreams readers.

          During the course of my exchange program I went on a lot of tours. At this time last year I was on a Eurotour with over 50 other exchange students. It was on the Italian leg of the tour when we visited the beautiful city of Siena that I first encountered the quill. I was browsing through the shops for souvenirs and when in a stationary store I stopped in my tracks when I spotted it…the most beautiful pen I had ever seen. I stood admiring it for a few minutes and then rushed to share this find with my friend Volimte.We ooh-ed and aah-ed over the simple beauty of the quill before deciding that we could not go without having it for ourselves. She bought a green one and I a lovely deep pink one. For the rest of the day I was bursting with joy[no exaggeration] reveling in the bliss of having bought the most beautiful pen in the world.

          The next morning when I was looking through my things in my bag, I couldn’t find it but quickly put it down to the fact that I’d perhaps forgotten it in the bus the previous night and figured it would turn up when we got back on the bus for the day’s journey. It did not despite my searching long and hard and I spent the entire day distraught and worried about having lost it so soon.

          Later at night one of my friends came to my room. He’d heard me talk about losing it and immediately thought back to the stuff he had found while on bus cleaning duty. He’d gone back to look through the stuff and having found the quill, came looking for me right after. I squealed and couldn’t thank him enough. It was so gratifying to get it back.

          I thought back to this memory the other day when I wrote with it for the very first time[yes a year after buying it].you see, I couldn’t find a cartridge that would fit in so I chose the old fashioned route and dipped it into an inkpot, writing the way it was meant to be written with.

          And sometimes, that’s all you need to start writing………..

By Nirmitee Mehta

A Feeling called Serendipity

          The dictionary describes serendipity as an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. What it does not do, however is describe the feeling behind it, the excitement when you’ve made a serendipitical[new word. I made] discovery and the joy it gives to you .How long after its over, you can look back to that golden moment where it seemed like time was standing still just for you, because that’s part of the magic of serendipity, it does not rush. The moment arrives gradually and takes its time leaving you to go to someone else who needs that bit of magic.

          Incidentally how the quill came into being in the blog name and symbol is also a story involving serendipity but I’ll dedicate an entire post to just that another time.

          The idea of doing a blog post about serendipity came to me the other day when I stumbled upon a blog called Green ink that had an interesting book-related quote on the upper right hand corner that got me thinking.[FYI :Book People=Awesome. Always].So then I read a couple of her posts getting completely mesmerized in them.. Then I stopped an started reading from the very first post and stalked the blog for a few days until I was done reading them all :D

          What captivated me was the easy writing style that was clear yet dreamy…the fact that it was so well written and there were so many things written about. I’ve found a blog doppelganger who gets why I love showers anytime of the day and loves hummus as much as I do among so many other things.

          You know how in books or movies, characters find the most amazing places out of the blue? For the die hard “How I met your mother” fans, how Marshall comes across the best burger in NYC shortly after moving to the city? I had a similarly themed experience one afternoon when I was touring Berlin. My friend Sharkanada and I were wandering through the streets, taking more photos than we’d ever want to look through later when we spotted it, the chocolate shop from heaven. Calling it just a shop however would be an understatement and an insult. Hundreds of varieties and forms of chocolates. Huge chocolate monuments-of the Titanic, the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin bear, the Reichstag building sculpted out of the most mouthwatering chocolate[or schockolade as Germans call it] ever!

The first floor held another surprise-one in the form of a chocolate restaurant where we indulged in the best hot chocolate in Berlin and in large portions of chocolate desserts.

Though I returned there twice after that, those visits didn’t have the special feeling the first one did, when we found it inadvertently and spent a perfect afternoon.

          Moments of serendipity, I think are a lot like love, you don’t go looking for them, it is when you stop looking that you find them in the most unexpected places.

-By Nirmitee

One Serendipit(r)ee Hill

Sometimes, things we start doing with no intention of allowing to become an integral part of our lives, end up becoming more important to us than we would’ve imagined at that time. In this article, I write about one such TV series I started watching out of boredom, only to be surprised with what I’d inadvertently discovered.

The show One Tree Hill, conceptualized over two step-brothers, Nathan Scott and Lucas Scott, who come from two different worlds altogether seemed pretty interesting. Nathan hails from the wealthiest family in town, while Lucas, a loner, is the only child of his single working mother. Nathan rules the Tree Hill High School basketball court, while Luke rules the Tree Hill riverside basketball court. As both their worlds clashed, bringing about refreshing and disparate developments along the way, I got sucked into their lives… Mesmerized and yearning to learn more about them.

The reason why OTH is so close to my heart, why I consider it to be so special is inexplicable. OTH's characters, stories, music, spirit... Speak to me. I feel the love between Nathan and Haley as they always stand by each other through good times and bad, I feel the cheerfulness and childishness of Brooke when she wins little competitions like Best Choreographer of her cheerleading squad or when she surpasses all the boundaries to land up at the back of someone's car entirely naked to 'achieve' him, I feel the pain and wrath of Peyton as she deals with her step-mother's death and the sudden revelation of her biological mother dying with cancer just as she encounters her, I feel the despair and confusion of Lucas as he is forced to choose between someone he strongly wanted all his life and someone who wants him strongly with all her life... I feel it all.

OTH is not just about entertaining the viewers with its characters’ experiences; it’s about teaching us through their failures, as well as successes. It’s not about sermonizing or preaching; it’s about learning about life as it comes. With Nathan struggling with the pressure he’s succumbed into by his father, or Lucas attempting to get out of his comfortable space to face his arrogant step-brother, or Haley taking the chance of increasing proximities with an evil person just to protect her best friend…. OTH is not just about high-school drama. OTH is about Life.

What brings out the spirit of the stories more than the impeccable direction is its music. Its music remains fresh, forever. Even after listening to an OTH song five years after having heard it on the show, not only does its rhythm ring in my ears, but it also brings along nostalgia of the story it’s connected to…

I’m still rather skeptical of how to put my feelings across the way I want to. I’m pretty sure OTH may not seem the same if seen through someone else’s eyes. But if you look at it through my eyes, you’ll see so much more than just some TV series that airs on The CWTV every Monday… You’ll see vitality… You’ll see passion… You’ll see sentience.

I sign off with one of my favorite OTH quotes:
If you look close enough to the world around you, you might see someone like you. Someone trying to find their way. Someone trying to find their self. Sometimes it seems like you’re the only one in the world whose struggling, whose frustrated, unsatisfied, barely getting by. But that feeling’s a lie. And if you just hold on, just find the courage to face it all for another day, someone or something will find you and make it all okay. Because we all need a little help sometimes. We need someone to remind us that it won’t always be this way. That someone is out there. And that someone will find you.


So, to all the TV junkies out there, do you have a TV show you're as passionate about? :)

By Chahita Lalchandani