"I'm doing my makeup."

There is one characteristic my mother has that universally pisses off my family (or entertains, it depends on their mood).

And that is her inability to be on time. For anything.

When my grandfather was still alive, he'd be her alarm. Every time she had to catch a flight.

The poor man didn't even live with us, but he'd still set his alarm religiously for 5 AM (depended on the flight of course, but in my memory, it was always 5 AM). And he'd call her.

"Mimi, Mimila. It's time to wake up."

I'd hear her groan.

"Come on, Mimi. You can do it."

A few scuffling sounds. Another little groan.

And then, finally - "Okay, Daddy. I'm up."

You almost wanted to give her an award.

And then half an hour later, another phone call.

"Mimila. It's time to leave now. Have you finished packing?"

"Yes, yes, Daddy. Nearly done." A blatant lie. She was still doing her makeup. She's always doing her makeup. And she hadn't finished packing either.

And then we'd leave half an hour late, and make the flight by the skin of our teeth.

The reason I never missed catching a single plane as a child was because of my grandfather.


***

When her friends come to pick her up for a night out, they usually resign themselves to a long wait.

When I was still living in Calcutta, her friend Nandini would take it upon herself to call me.

"Trishaaaaa. Trishaaaaa."

"Hi, Auntie Nandini."

"Tell your mother I'm leaving."

"Yes, Auntie Nandini. She's already in the shower, Auntie Nandini."

"Okayyyyy. I can't come up, okayyyy? Tell her I can't come up. The car can't be kept waiting. Tell her to come down in twenty minutes."

"Yes, Auntie Nandini."

I don't know why she even bothered. We both knew how it would end. Auntie Nandini would end up coming upstairs after all, and having a glass of whisky or wine, before my mother emerged from her lair.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry. I was doing my makeup."

The more optimistic of her friends, the ones who don't know her quite as well as Auntie Nandini, choose to sit in the car downstairs. They think it'll take her only five minutes to join them.

The poor fools.


***

As our visit to London drew to an end last month, she spent a lot of her time nagging me to pack, to be on time.

"We have to leave at nine in the morning." She said, over and over again. "Don't be late, finish all your packing on time. Your uncle is driving us to the airport. You know what he's like."

Yes, Mama, I do know what he's like. I've seen him practically have an aneurysm because you're late every time we have to go somewhere with him.

(During the holiday, she was supposed to go to an exhibition with my uncle and two aunts. She wasn't ready, so my aunts carried on. She left with my grumbling uncle. I left the house about twenty minutes later - I was heading out to meet a friend - and bumped into my mother and uncle at the station. My uncle did not look happy.

"I thought you left ages ago."

"We missed the last train. Because of your mother."

"Don't be such a stick in the mud," my mother said shrilly. "The exhibition isn't going anywhere."

Ironically, it did. It got too late so they ended up drinking tea in Covent Garden. My mother also managed to get some shopping done. She was the only one who returned from that expedition in a good mood.)

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah, she was nagging me to pack.

Now this may surprise you, but I can be a little fiendish on occasion. My mother's packing had started two days previously. This is one of the great mysteries of life. She spends at least two days sorting things out and packing, and she still can't finish on time.

So on our last night, when everyone was sitting around watching television, I went up to my room and did my packing. Didn't take me long. Admittedly because, unlike my mother, I don't fold things. I just crumple them in a ball and throw them into the suitcase. And then I went down.

"Trisha," she snapped, as soon as I entered the room. "It's nearly ten pm. Go pack."

"I've finished," I said. "Just need to put the toiletries in - I'll do that after my shower tomorrow."

The look on her face was gratifying. It was exactly what I was aiming for.

Because, after two days of 'packing, she still had to wake up at the ungodly hour of five am, while I slept on blissfully.

I woke up at eight, showered, put the last bits and pieces in, and merrily sat around for an hour, drinking coffee and chatting with the family.

We left when we were supposed to leave. I won't lie. I was disappointed - the last time we were in London, I'd spent a memorable hour listening to my uncle bang on my mother's door, shouting that planes don't grow on trees, while she yelled back the words we all know by heart.

"I'M DOING MY MAKEUP."

But this time, like I said, she was ready. Just before the car rolled out of the gate, she turned to me and said, "Did you take your medicine?"

I cursed under my breath. Ran out of the car, my aunt and cousins were still at the door. Looked for the medicine on the dining table. Ran back to the car, checked my rucksack. Wasn't there. Ran back to the dining table - eventually found it under the newspapers.

As we finally pulled out of the driveway, my uncle started lecturing me. You need to be more responsible, you need to be more prepared, you need to be more punctual, etc.

My mother was sitting in front, but I could still see the small, satisfied smile on her face. And the triumph that draped itself across every line of her body.

8 videos of the moon.

 I was never too keen on experiencing acid. Mostly because the Servaias and Sharma have been telling me to try it since I was about eighteen. The Undoable One once declared that if he were a world despot - the implication was that it would be a deserved position - he'd make a law ensuring every human being tried it once in their life after 18. Anyway, the general consensus was: acid opens the mind, acid changes your perspective, acid will, in a way, alter your life.

Hut. (The snort of impatience, not the one with thatched roofs.)

Because that's what put me off it. I didn't want my perspective to change because of acid. I didn't want it to open my mind either. I have always believed in figuring stuff out by muddling around, I have always believed in trial and error. I regret to say that there has been more muddling than figuring, and more errors than there have been trials, but that's neither here nor there.

But obviously, one day, I succumbed and tried it.

About a year ago, I was having post-work Friday night drink drinks with H. and her, er, person - Rohan - and Shlok and Mickey and Hitesh and we got completely hammered and went back to my place to continue our downfall. And then, all of a sudden, H. took a strip of acid out of her back and I decided that maybe I wanted to see if my, um, perspective changed.

I checked with Hitesh first because I always think of him as the level-headed one.

"Hitesh, should I take it? Do you think I should take it?"

"No."

Like all good advice, it went unheeded.

Mistake the first. You're really not supposed to take acid when you're drinking, it dilutes the experience. Nothing happened for a while. Shlok and Hitesh and Mickey eventually went home. And H., Rohan and I went down to my terrace (yup, down to the terrace, not up). I have no clue what H. and Rohan were doing, coochy-cooing or something.

The acid had kicked in by this point, mildly. I don't know how to describe it. Sort of like being stoned except more than that, much more.

I floated to the other end of the terrace and looked at a big tree that hung over it like a canopy and waited for Life to Change.

Nothing really happened. I took a deep gulp of air, wanting its freshness to seep into my body, but unfortunately the smell was an unpleasant combination of tree sap and garbage and I started coughing in a most un-philosophical way.

Undaunted, I continued standing there, looking at the tree. I felt grateful for the tree, it was a nice tree, a big one, the biggest tree in my lane, and it was pretty, the way it hung carelessly over my head. But I'd appreciated it before (during my many 'the world is beautiful, life is wonderful' phases).

And then, another thought occurred to me. Alright, so my mind hadn't dramatically altered. I was indeed appreciating, not only the tree, but also the one lone star above my head, and the heavy silence that, er, silently makes its presence felt at 3 am.

But, like the tree, I'd stopped to notice and appreciate all these things before.

That meant, my mind argued, I already had in my possession what the rest of the world could only acquire through drugs. I didn't need drugs. I was already evolved.

I even took a moment to feel sad for all the un-evolved ones, the little people who needed acid to change the way they looked at a leaf.

Smug and content, I floated back to the other end of the terrace. H. and Rohan were still whispering sweet nothings to each other, but I barely noticed their presence. Instead, I lay on the ground, my phone beside me.

I looked at it (the phone, not the ground) with regret for a moment. It did not fit in with the atmosphere. If this moment of my life was a paragraph or a sentence in The Story of Trisha, I said to myself, that phone would jar the syntax.

I then felt enormously pleased with myself for making such a comparison and doubled my pleasure by modestly acknowledging I was capable of making it while sober.

Anyway, the three of us eventually went back to my flat. I promptly climbed into bed and fell asleep.

This is the part that most people don't get - that I managed sleeping just after doing acid. I'm not sure about the possibilities or the probabilities, but there you go. I can sleep after acid and also, which I regard as more impressive, after downing a can of Redbull.

Anyway, I woke up at seven the next morning, still feeling vaguely high. H. and Rohan left five minutes later. I continued floating around my flat, congratulating myself on acid's inability to make me feel or behave stupidly. It was a glorious feeling given my experiences with alcohol.

And then I picked up my phone and noticed eight videos of the moon in my camera roll. They were each approximately four minutes long, the cinematography was average, and the story-line uninteresting: it was the moon, after all. It just sort of stayed where it was. For thirty-two minutes.

Felt my wall of confidence crumble slightly. Why had I considered the moon worth viewing for thirty-two minutes through a bad phone camera? Was I, after all, one of Those People?

This problem occupied me for another half an hour and then I decided to solve it by going to my brother's. I wanted breakfast and there was no food at home.

I told him about the previous night and when he asked what acid was like (I think he's done it but I don't remember now, all his stories are infinitely boring) I gave him the answer that I give to anyone else who asks me.

"Dunno. I took a lot of videos of the moon and fell asleep."

"Moron."

Whatever, Zaev. If only you knew the true story. And a different insult.

Today is my first day back at work. And time, obviously, is crawling by. I'd forgotten how deadening it is to sit in front of a computer screen all day. And there is no work to do, nada, which a part of me is grateful for because I don't think I remember how to work.

But because I am, as always, starting out the year attempting to be productive and focused, I have made yet another vow to immerse myself in my job, to prioritise it above everything else, to self-train and self-learn and self-teach myself in order to one day become a Master Copywriter.

So I made a list of books on advertising to read/study/absorb. And I diligently started with the first one, I've even taken notes. But after a couple of hours, I slid into stalking people on Facebook and rating the dresses worn at the Golden Globe awards. It's okay, I'm human. I'll start again once I've caught up with Buzzfeed.

It isn't all that bad being back here. Home was waiting for me. S. failed to realise I wanted him to pick me up from the airport (it's not like I told him I did, I'm incapable of saying these things out loud). But he soon realised his stupidity (after I called him an asshole) and I couldn't be upset once I got home. There were flowers and there was wine and red meat in the freezer, and my carpets had been sent for dry-cleaning. So nice.

I expected the cats to greet me with affection - I missed them terribly - but they are cats, so I was greeted with supreme indifference instead. Whatever. I'll get a dog one day. That'll show them.

I want to start writing in this blog more regularly, and to write about funny things, not long rambling results of boredom. I've already started a journal. I start a journal regularly every six weeks, but this time I am determined to write in it every single day. Even if it's along the lines of, "Today sucks." or "I don't feel like writing." or the brief yet eloquent "Blah." I've already written quite a lot even though its only been two days since I started it, but every time I go back to read something, my eyes glaze over, it's that boring. At least I don't have to worry about people reading it.

I'm going to go and write in it some more now. No one can judge me for having nothing interesting to say. I will try to make my next post more interesting although I highly doubt it. Optimism was one of my resolutions for this year - but given the past few months, even that is seriously pushing it. 

I am twenty-four today.

I keep asking myself how I got here which is a bloody idiotic question to ask, revealing that wisdom does not in fact come with age, but still.

I met Friend yesterday - after a year and a half. He told me I looked older. Time doesn't make Friend polite.

It's the start of another year, new beginnings, etc. etc. But I don't have anything to say so I'll shut up and go shower. So a little bit more wisdom gained, maybe.