RAYS OF SUNSHINE.

i love notebooks. too much. i love how they somehow whisper you can do better tomorrow. its a fresh new page. i love how you can rack em up to either tell a chronological story or an illogical one. the simultaneously represent all the tenses: have been, will be, am currently. i love straddling that line--telling stories that are not quite one way. i love melding my unique experiences and stories, marrying them with what could have been. where my expectations far surpassed my realities or where living in the moment far superseded anything in my wildest imaginings.  notebooks live in that moment before that moment. you buy them when you know you're going somewhere, starting something, making big plans. they encompass that crisp apple crunch on a fall day; that satisfying slurp of a milkshake while the sun bakes the back of your neck, sickly sweet, laughing next to the one of your dreams. they are the fulcrum of the balance between a spoon of maple walnut and that spicy chaider, ...

maithreyi 'ray' shankar : 21. studying human development and psychology @ Harvard   USC Trojan '13 striving to become a hurricane of eloquence & social change. but how did i get here? i was born to a simple tech/tamil brahmin family in mumbai, maharashtra. INDIA. the hospital was the same one used for mine, my brother's, my cousins' births except for one glaring exception. that hospital represents our lives--journeys. facing a train that always was ephemeral. a fashion store on one side. life buzzing. ghatkopar. my birth was linked to my aunt's engagement party. the night before i came to the world, my aunt and uncle became my aunt and uncle. that idea was born. the family was born. just as the cars left town, my mom had to turn around. i was en route, and eager! this theme of waiting for the right moment to EXPLODE onto the stage is something so natural to me, i cannot explain. i do it again and again to the point where most do not realiz...