Little Crooked House

Did I ever tell you about that time I broke my teeth?

2012-02-17T14:21:00.001+05:30

I was fifteen years old, and therefore, remarkably stupid. Even stupider than I am now, because, from what I've seen, that's what happens when you're fifteen. You reach the pinnacle of stupidity. It starts at twelve, naturally, and in my case, it was accelerated by a visit to Thailand from which I returned convinced I was a hippy. There's a sudden spike when you reach thirteen ("I'M A TEENAGER, I'M A TEENAGER! DO I LOOK LIKE A TEENAGER?" "No.") and from there it continues to steadily grow. At fourteen, you look back in disdain at your twelve year old self and your thirteen year old self, and you are convinced that you have finally matured, but then you spend three months dressed in nothing but black with too much makeup which you inevitably forget about when you start playing football and it trickles down, and then you go home and write bad poetry about it.

For me though, fifteen outdid it all. By the time I was sixteen, I was comfortable with who I was, I even started liking who I was (looking back, I put it down to bad taste), but I had to go through fifteen to get there. It didn't help that most of the time, instead of focusing on developing into a fully functioning adult, I was busy pining for someone who only remembered I existed when he needed a twelfth man for cricket (and have things changed, really?)

Anyway, I was fifteen, stupid, and I wanted to get the attention of this boy - known as Bastard, because that is what I constantly referred to him as in my diary.

The children in my building used to play sport according to season. Spring was usually football and basketball, summer was always cricket, autumn would bring football back, and the months between November and February were reserved for badminton.

Next to the badminton court is an open garage, the roof stretching from the first floor of the first block to the first floor of the second block. While playing, it was not unusual for the shuttle cock to fly up and land on the roof of the garage. It had to be retrieved by climbing a pipe, and using that to climb a wall, balancing on that wall lightly holding on to the barbed wire on top, and then stretching across (or leaping across depending on leg length) to the garage roof.

I don't want to brag, but I was the only girl who could do it.

Anyway, one evening in December, a week before I was due to leave for a family Christmas in London, the shuttle cock went up. The person who sent it up there was Bastard's little sister.

"Trisha," she said sadly, looking at me with big brown eyes, "my shuttle cock's gone up there. Please get it down for me, please."

What could I do? I had to play hero. There's something about six year olds with big eyes that just gets to me. I also knew Bastard would be on his way back from tuition any moment, and I envisaged myself as a selfless being who'd risked life and limb to help his baby sister, whom he has a huge soft spot for.

So I climbed. I'd chucked the shuttle down to her, receiving with quiet grace her cries of thanks, and was making my way down when it happened.

I was balancing on the wall, holding on to the barbed wire, when a bunch of dogs suddenly started barking. I was startled, I lost my balance, and I felt myself falling backwards. It all happened - luckily for me - in slow motion. I saw the moon, and I knew I was falling, and some instinct told me that whatever happened, I shouldn't fall backwards, so I did a sort of flip in the air, and dragged the barbed wire down with me to break my fall. And then suddenly I was falling face forward, and I remember seeing a woman standing close by with a very shocked expression on her face and thinking, "yeah, that's helpful, bitch," and then I hit the ground. My chin hit the ground first, and something plopped out of my mouth.

It took me three seconds to realise that my front teeth had fallen out.

I shakily stood up. Blood was pouring out from everywhere. From my mouth, from my hands, and my tshirt had been ripped and there was a long gash on my stomach. No pain, I was in shock. So I did the only thing I could think of - I started running around in circles, hands placed firmly over my mouth, screaming that my teeth had fallen out.

My friends had all landed up by this time - including Bastard who was laughing in a very un-chivalrous sort of way - and everyone was standing around helplessly.

"Go home," someone said.

"I can't go home," I shrieked. "I'm bleeding and I have no teeth. My grandmother will have a heart attack! She'll die!"

At that precise moment, my mother drove up. Her sense of timing has never been good - the only time she's ever been early is when she gave birth to yours truly, because that's what happens when a heavily pregnant woman goes dancing on New Year's Eve - but on this occasion, she was right on schedule. She took one look at me and bundled me into the car, but not before I'd managed to shriek, "FIND MY FUCKING TEETH!" to my dumbfounded friends.

She drove me to Jayatri's dad who is the doctor my family always turns to. He cleaned my mouth out very gently and put some cotton wool where my teeth used to be to stem the bleeding (I'd started crying by this time - the pain had set in by now, and I'd also caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror) and he bandaged my hand and stomach. It was a Saturday night and there were no dentists available, but we could, he thought, get the teeth put back in if I saw a dentist that night.

He called a friend of his - Dr Rajiv Butta. Dr Butta was in the outskirts of Calcutta, enjoying a dinner date with his wife, but upon hearing that I was a toothless fifteen year old, he told Uncle Jatrik that he'd head back to the city as soon as possible, and for me to get hold of my teeth and bring them to him.

My mother and I drove back to Kusum. My friends had already found one tooth, and were currently hunting for the other one.

Suddenly...

"Auntie! There's something long and white and shiny under this car!" yelled a little Sardarji boy, nearly falling over in his excitement. He recovered quickly, and crawled underneath, while we all stood around with bated breath. He emerged in a few moments, dusty, holding aloft my admittedly long, admittedly white, admittedly shiny, tooth.

My mother took me home after that - but not before Bastard gently held my cut hand, tracing the bandages, asking softly whether it hurt very much, which in itself made the entire ordeal worth it, in my eyes, at that moment.

Dr Butta called around eleven pm to say he was back and to bring me straightaway to his surgery. So Mum took me - and my teeth in a little container of milk. I don't remember much of what happened there. I was in the chair for about two and a half hours, and the pain had made everything sort of numb. My mother told me later that I was very brave, the way I just sat there, very still, with my mouth open, but to be honest, I think I'd passed out by then.

He operated on me and put my teeth back in and held them together with a band that more or less merged with the teeth.

"Keep this on for a month," he told my mother. "And then bring her back. Once I take the band off, if God is willing, her teeth will stay on,"

"And if God is not willing?" I murmured, not thinking too highly of God at this point.

"They'll fall off," he said cheerfully, "and we'll put implants in."

Wonderful.

I spent the next three days in a presription drug fuelled haze which made me feel like I was floating through space, and that nothing mattered. Eventually recovered, though much to my dismay I was banned from badminton for the rest of the season, and a week later I was off to London.

"I can't eat this," I told Sue on my first night, as she placed salmon steak in front of me. "My teeth will fall off,"

My uncle, who was sitting there, said nothing, but on Christmas Day, as I attacked turkey with vigour (I'd learnt to eat without using my front teeth by then - a habit that remains to this day), he casually remarked that it was quite incredibly how my teeth never seemed to interfere with food I enjoyed eating. I chose to maintain a dignified silence.

When I returned to Calcutta, Dr Butta carefully took my band off. I'd stuck my tongue out, ready to catch my teeth should they fall off. I didn't want to swallow them.

But they didn't fall off, they stayed on. As Dr Butta said, as he fervently shook my hand, it was a miracle. He'd never seen anything like it before.

"So, everything's alright now?" said my mother, who'd aged about ten years.

"Well," he said, "they will fall off eventually, but I don't know when. Come back to me when that happens."

It's been a little over five years, and my teeth are still in place. I'm resigned to the fact that they will fall off eventually, probably just when I need them most, but I'm grateful to have come out comparatively unscathed.

And believe you me, the story makes for excellent bar conversation. Disastrous experiences usually do.

The teeth - ten days after they'd fallen out. Not bad, considering.

Valentine's Day

2012-02-16T12:12:00.005+05:30

I don't really pay attention to Valentine's Day, but this year, I wanted to celebrate it - mostly because I needed an excuse to have a good time, to do something fun.

"We should celebrate Valentine's Day this year," I said to Mawii, the night before.

"Eh?" An understandable reaction.

"Tomorrow I'm going to go to CP and buy chocolate covered strawberries and port wine," I said, my eyes glazing over at the thought of the chocolate covered strawberries.

Mawii's eyes glazed over too.

A little while later, Rhea Dubey accosted me on chat.

"BRO. Watcha doing on Valentines?"

"Drinking wine and watching a film with a devastatingly handsome male lead," was my answer - or something along those lines.

"My school friends want to hang out - "

"Fuck them. Join us," was my eloquent invitation.

"Yeah. They all have boyfriends they're going to ditch me for. But you're the one friend I have who's single!"

Aren't I obliging?

Anyway, so Valentine's Day dawned bright and clear, and I got no texts, no flowers, no messages, but I'm already resigned to the fact I shall probably die alone so it doesn't matter, and I cycled off to college, singing What A Wonderful World in an attempt to convince myself that it is indeed a wonderful world and not a lost cause, as I often fear it is.

After college, I was dead tired, and I gave up on the idea of CP, I gave up on the idea of celebrating, and came straight back to the PG and climbed into bed.

"I'll go buy some wine in the evening," I told Mawii, because she was tired too and I thought she was planning on going home in which case I was going to spend the evening drinking alone out of a bottle. Very appropriate.

But that didn't happen - Naintara landed up out of the blue, and then Rhea and Ketki came over, with that wonderfully cheap port wine you get in plastic bottles, and rum, and beer. It was nice, it was really nice. We all sat around and drank the wine and watched Misfits. Ketki drank more than she usually does, and then decided to light a joint, and naturally, she had to throw up after that.

Mawii and I are incapable of handling our own vomit let alone someone else's. She stared at me, hoping I'd take control. I stared at her thinking, Me? Have you seen my side of the room? You really think I'm going to deal with this?

We both dealt with it - rather admirably. Nain and Rhea conveniently left soon after, and eventually, Mawii and I dragged Ketki to her car. She stopped on the way to throw up on some of Mrs Khera's flowers, but as I remarked to Mawii, at least there's some part of the PG that is forever Ketki. We tucked her into her car, the driver looked at us very disapprovingly, and waved as she drove off.

"Now what do we do?" I asked Mawii.

There was half a bottle of rum left, and I'd stashed whatever remained of Ketki's joint, so, it turns out, we found plenty to do.

At one point, I went to the shop to buy cigarettes. It was dark, the air was crisp and cool, and all was right with my world. I was giving myself a pep talk on the future. It will all be fine, said my mind, you've been panicking over nothing. Just study everyday, study as much as Supurna, and you'll be fine. You'll graduate college, and I'm sure some sort of college abroad will want to take you in, you're not a complete retard, and then you can go to London and live at the National Gallery and eat lots of strawberries in summer, and nothing will ever go wrong -

I was interrupted by a pack of cows. I'd already bought the cigarettes and I was walking back towards the PG, but they'd decided to hang out in the middle of the road, and I'm not sure what happened, but one of them broke loose and started coming towards me. I am NOT afraid of cows, but this one was moving towards me with a purpose, if you know what I mean, and it had a very menacing look in its big cow shaped eyes, and it let out a low, warning moo. I fled. The cow ran after me.

"AAAAAAHHHHHH!" I screamed.

"MOOOOOOOOOO!" Yelled the cow.

But I beat the cow, and flung myself through our gate and then ran to our room and burst into it.

"I GOT CHASED BY A COW!" I shouted to Mawii, flinging the cigarettes at her. She looked at me with the befuddled expression of someone who's drunk, and after I repeated the story three or four times, gave a cursory little laugh and turned her attention back to the rum. Being a Mizo of Principle, she always has her priorities very fixed.

Ipshita joined us later, and we shared the rum with her, and all three of us took lots of photos with my webcam and put up an album on facebook then and there (the next morning, I saw it up on facebook, and I was like, WHAT. THE. FUCK. and Mawii was also like, OH. BLOODY. HELL. and we both hastily deleted it) and then we ordered pizza and then Ipshita brought out a joint.

It was a good day.

At one point, I started staring at Mawii.

"What is it?" said Mawii.

"This is our last Valentine's Day together," I said sadly.

She started laughing.

"It is!" I said indignantly.

"You're such a fool,"

Considering she was also wearing a purple flower clip in her hair, in honour of the occasion, there were many things I could have said to her. But I decided to be noble and let it go.

Happy Valentine's Day, folks.

The old, the familiar.

2012-02-06T22:44:00.008+05:30

When I was in Calcutta this winter, I went to visit my piano teacher, Shormi. I've known her since I was six, because that is when I started learning the piano. To this day she believes I have prodigious talent, despite evidence to the contrary, and has fondly planned my life for me: move back to Calcutta after college, finish off my grade 8, perhaps do my LRSM, and settle down to teach the piano to angelic little children, having married a suitable Bengali man.

But even Shormi - despite her affection for me - has long acknowledged that singing is not my forte. Nonetheless, she tries.

"Why don't you come and sing with the choir on Saturday?" she said to me, on my last visit.

"I can't sing, Shormi."

"Of course you can sing," she paused, and then added gruffly, "well, you would have been a lot better if you hadn't left the choir. I told you not to leave the choir."

I laughed nervously, and forgot to cover my mouth, which is something I've been doing for the past three years whenever I'm in her presence, because Shormi cannot bear piercings (the only reason my friend Kahini didn't get a box on the ears from Shormi after getting her nose pierced was because Shormi was still recovering from Kahini's tattoo).

Now the thing is, in my first year of college, I pierced my tongue. I'm not sure why. I think it's because Mawii pierced her tongue first and I admired it immensely. Piercing my tongue hadn't occurred to me before - I nearly fainted when I got my ears pierced.

But as I stood in front of the mirror soon after Mawii's triumphant return (her face was only slightly swollen) examining my tongue, already having googled the effects of a piercing in that vicinity, I thought to myself, why the heck not. I was in college, it was time to rebel. But then I realised that I didn't have anything to rebel against, so I changed my tactic. I was going to get my tongue pierced to prove a point - the point being that I was eighteen years old and away from home for the first time, and it was my tongue, and I could do what I liked with it.

So I got my tongue pierced. We went to a little shop in GK to get it done, and Mawii held my hand. When I was sticking my tongue out, watching the gun coming closer to me, going cross eyed in the effort to keep it in focus, I will admit, I was tempted to back out. In fact, I was just about to scream a protest when I noticed a group of school children gazing at me in awe. That did it. I kept my tongue out and the gun or needle or whatever they use to make holes in human body parts went in, and soon there was a little silver stud there, and all was right with my world.

I swaggered out of there my chin in the air, while the school children gasped in admiration, and I only let the tears fall once I was out of sight.

Anyway, to go back to Shormi - for nearly three years, I'd successfully hidden my tongue stud from her. I'd nodded violently in agreement, mouth firmly closed, as she deplored the various hooligans who went around with shiny bits of metal embedded in them.

It was a nice long run. She would have found out someday.

"WHAT IS IN YOUR MOUTH?" She said, as I laughed, loudly and delightedly, my mouth wide open in front of her face.

"Er,"

"SHOW ME!"

"It's nothing," I said feebly.

"SHOW ME." The thing about Shormi is when she uses that voice - and all her students, even the ones above thirty, even the ones above thirty who are nuns, would know what voice I'm talking about - I revert back to being six years old, completely in her power.

So I showed her.

She nearly threw her mug of tea at me, but did not, probably because she thought it would be a waste of tea. And then she yelled a lot, and finally calmed down, contenting herself with telling me I'd get mouth cancer and describing mouth cancer in graphic detail.

"When did you get it done?"

"Last month," I said feebly.

"Are you planning on keeping it?"

"No, no. I'm getting rid of it next week." I smiled weakly at her, and she nodded and harumphed and turned the conversation back to choir.

"You should come for choir,"

"But I can't sing!"

"You know, I told you when you sat for your piano exam that choir helps you with your aural tests. Do you remember what happened in your aural test?"

"I made the examiner wince," I said sadly.

"Which is why you shouldn't have left choir," she said triumphantly.

I nodded in agreement.

"So," she said, changing the subject, "do you have a boyfriend now?"

"I'm not interested in anyone at the moment," I said with dignity, being careful to add that it didn't mean there weren't people interested in me. Shormi waved my attempts to prove my popularity aside.

"What happened to that Vikram?"

"You remember Vikram? We broke up years and years ago."

"Of course I remember him. He used to hide in my garden while you were in choir."

"He was terrified of you," I recollected fondly.

"Good,"

Shormi really does sometimes remind me of my mother.

Whenever I have a male friend over - especially if it's Man Whore Friend - I always warn her to be nice because she can be intimidating. Not that she's not fond of MWF, she thinks he's a very "together boy" which shows how much she knows and it's obviously not much, but to this day, she's convinced that he spends his spare time trying to get into my pants.

"Mummy," I say patiently, "MWF (except I don't call him that outside this blog) does not want to sleep with me. Anyway, he wouldn't dare, he's terrified of you."

This information, though shared with her many times, never fails to please her, and she always says, "good!" with great satisfaction, and proceeds to be extremely sweet to MWF whenever she sees him.

He's terrified of me, is her logic. He won't sleep with my baby girl. Not when he has me to deal with. Hah!

...

Anyway.

Somehow Shormi bullied me into making a vague promise to land up for choir. I hugged her goodbye, promised to visit again soon, and made my way down the familiar path from her house to her gate. The garden was still the same, the tall leafy trees framing the path were the same, everything was the same, and it always is, and that's one of the reasons I love visiting Shormi.

Of course, that Saturday, I called her and faked sick. Could not come for choir as promised, very very sorry, was on the verge of death. She grunted, told me to drink hot water, and hung up.

It was a story I'd concocted many times before, with Shormi, with Nondon, with Manjudi, and I'm pleased to say, I haven't lost my touch.

"Why are you looking so pleased with yourself?" said my mother, entering my room just as I'd hung up. "Stop drinking so much beer, you're getting fat. And how many times do I have to tell you to stop smoking?" Whereupon she proceeded to walk around my room, picking up random objects and sniffing them.

I lay back on my bed and valiantly told myself it was good to be home.

Jaipur Literature Festival: Part 3.

2012-02-02T17:18:00.001+05:30

Our hotel insisted on cutting the power twice a day. The afternoon didn't matter, because we were all at the festival, but it got really annoying in the morning. Bathing in cold water in north India during January just doesn't cut it, so we had to hang around and wait for the geyser to ping its red light which also meant we always missed the first talk.

There was no power cut on our last day there. Mawii and I sat and waited for it to go, and waited and waited, and then we realised it probably wasn't going off.

I must confess, I felt aggrieved. The power cut always gave me a good excuse to get back into bed, and it failed me, failed me, on my last day.

It took us ages to get there because Oprah was due that day.We got there halfway through a talk on superpowers of the twenty first century. The tent was packed - we sat outside on the grass, listening to it through the speakers. I felt like a hobo.

We managed muscling our way in for the next talk which was on Pakistan, and the panelists were Fatima Bhutto and Ayesha Jalal. It was probably one of my favourite talks - a cow, a lonely and emotionally fragile cow, kept mooing mournfully in between, and naturally the moderator had to turn it into a running joke, thereby stripping the entire situation of all its humour. Mawii and I, for our part, enjoyed ourselves, and passed snide comments about all the plebian fools who'd flocked to see Oprah.

I kept bumping into Dhruv Rajashekaran everywhere I went. I'm in the middle of a crowd, Dhruv pops out from nowhere with a cheerful hello. I'm sitting under an umbrella on the lawns, engrossed in a book. Dhruv pops out from nowhere with a cheerful hello. I'm walking from one part of the festival to the other. Dhruv pops out, still cheerful, with another hello. He also plucked his mother out from thin air for more cheery hellos.

I was standing under a tree at one point with my mother, delicately trying to extract money from her for more books.

"HELLO!" said a cheerful voice.

I have no objections to Dhruv popping up like a jack rabbit and disappearing again. I'm just making an observation. It's important to make observations. This is what this particular observation boils down to: Dhruv is omnipresent, and also omnicheerful.

Anyway, we were leaving for Delhi soon, so I said farewell to my mother. We put our arms around each other and hugged as if we weren't going to meet for another three years, even though I was going to see her three days later. She also gave me some money and told me not to spend all of it on books, but obviously I did. After all, it's not like there was anything else to spend money on.

The car ride back was quiet. We slept a lot, we paused at regular intervals so Mawii could relieve herself. Mawii and Vikram cuddled in the backseat. The weather was nice, the roads were long, yada yada yada.

By six, we were hungry.

"KHANAAAAA!" said Rhea to her driver.

He offered to take us to a motel, but no. For some reason everyone had their sights fixed on a McDonald's just outside Delhi.

So eventually, after an hour, we got to McDonald's.

"I haven't eaten at McDonald's in two years," I said excitedly to Rohin, as the crisp hot smell of fresh french fries wafted its way lazily towards me.

Half an hour later, I remembered why I hadn't eaten at McDonald's in two years.

The food sucks, man.

And I don't hold with this chicken burger nonsense (don't even get me started on their paneer selections). A fast food burger should be beef, but you don't get beef McDonald's in Calcutta, so obviously there is no way to expect it in Delhi, where cows are ranked only second to heavy gold and silver chains.

We dropped Vikram off, and then the Dubeys dropped us to the metro.

In the metro, Mawii kept burping on purpose because she takes delight in being a public embarrassment.

We came home and collapsed, and remained in that sloth-like state for more than twenty four hours. A banal end to an interesting trip.

PS There was an article in the newspaper the next day about the cow that conversed with Fatima Bhutto and Ayesha Jalal. It mentioned that the cow got agitated whenever its calf was taken away from it, but harmony had been restored later along with the calf. Nothing about the talk itself, nor the issues it dealt with. Only in Delhi...

Jaipur Literature Festival: Part 2.

2012-01-29T13:22:00.005+05:30

Because I've demolished my iphone, I'm currently using an old Nokia model whose only claim to fame is that it simply won't break. I've tried everything. Nothing deters that phone. You drop it, it neatly collapses into three parts, and then there's nothing to be done except sigh in resignation and put it together again.

The phone also has a loud and annoying ringtone, and call me biased, but I can always tell when my mother's calling because the ringtone gets just a little bit louder (I'm not sure if she reads my blog or not, so I shall desist from using the word annoying. After all, how could anything associated with my mother be annoying. She's such a bundle of calm, deep delight.) It was ringing particularly loudly at nine thirty, the morning of the second day.

"Hi Mama," I said, without even bothering to check the caller id.

"Are you awake yet?"

I was awake, I'd woken up an hour earlier to a trashed room, I'd had tea, and bread that the hotel insisted on calling toast, and a dubious white looking piece of fluff that was supposed to be scrambled egg, but I couldn't have a bath because there was a power-cut on till ten. So I'd gotten back into bed, and was lying there, contemplating the purpose of literature and other high brow things that seemed suitable for contemplation in the hours before attending the talks.

"Yes,"

"The concert last night was terrible. TERRIBLE!" She'd arrived with her book club the previous evening - and as soon as they landed, they went to their guest house, put their lipstick and concealer on, and went off to the evening concerts which I'd already warned her were going to be bad.

"I told you it would be,"

"Yes, well. But then we came back and we were all talking till past midnight,"

My mother....she's a wild one, isn't she?

"Anyway," she said, "what are your plans?"

"Waiting in line to have a bath, and then we're heading to the fest."

"Okay. I'll see you there. Want me to buy you lunch?"

"I love you so much, and I've missed you so much," I said fervently, genuinely meaning it from the bottom of my heart.

The nice thing about my mother is that she doesn't snort when I say things like that, she gets equally soppy, and a few I-love-you-and-I've-missed-you's went back and forth before we hung up.

I went in for a bath after Mawii and Rohin. Rhea was nothing but an immobile shape under the bedsheets - the only signs of life were even, well paced snores.

Jaipur was cold. Especially at night, and inside our hotel room. Therefore, taking a shower had to be a very careful process. Mawii came out, looking very relaxed, saying the water was boiling hot. Rohin repeated this observation. I went in with a light heart. Turned the hot water tap on. Shrieked. It was not boiling hot. To be fair, it wasn't freezing cold either, but because the bathroom felt like an igloo, the lukewarm shards of water falling on me made me feel like I was repeatedly being stabbed by icicles.

I could write an entire separate blogpost on this experience, but I will carry on to us getting into an auto, and heading to Diggi Palace. Rhea, when we left the room, had managed getting out of bed, but she told us to carry on.

"We can wait for you," said Mawii.

"Nah," said Rhea, staring at a wall. "I'm really slow in the mornings. I stand around and stare at things a lot."

She's always had a flair for stating the obvious.

I called my mother when I got to the fest and told her I was standing by the deep pit where the installations were.

"I don't know where that is,"

I sighed and asked her where she was.

"I'm sitting on a bench under a tree in front of the British Council reading room,"

I knew where that was. I went to the bench under the tree and saw, not my mother, but Teesta Nayak's. Mawii had spotted her earlier and they were in deep conversation. I said hello, and then set about searching for my own mother.

After a long phone call which involved raised voices towards the end, I found her on a bench, that was not under a tree, to the left of the reading room. But why quibble.

She'd made friends with a Chinese lady and they were both enthusiastically discussing Amy Chua and Ben Okri. I introduced myself, made small talk.

Finally I managed dragging my mother away but just after they exchanged addresses, with my mother commenting on her unusual name, the lady said, "I'm Chinese from Singapore, yes?"

I nodded because I didn't know what to say to that.

"The Chinese from China are very different. They are brainwashed. They're not like other Chinese people."

Okay then. My mother passed a remark on how cosmopolitan Singapore was, and then we departed.

Mawii and I went off for a talk by Steven Pinker on declining violence in human history, and I told my mother I'd see her at lunchtime. The talk was disappointing because it was really nothing more than statistics. Left halfway, found my mother, dragged her to the bookstore, bought so many books that she started grumbling, but not really, because the fantastic thing about my parents is that they always let me get as many books as I want, and never say things like, "No more than three now," or, "Oh that's too expensive and not worth it."

So I came away with a bagful of books, and then she fed me lunch ("THE FALAFEL! THE FALAFEL! YOU HAVE TO EAT THE FALAFEL!") and then I went in for a talk by Jamaica Kincaid and Anna Pavord which, disappointingly, was on gardening, but it was still pretty good - just because of their personalities, especially Ms Kincaid, who never looked at the other speakers, nor at the audience, but straight ahead towards the ceiling, and whose face was one of those faces that have thoughts written across them, and so are incredibly interesting to watch, because the expression changes so frequently: sometimes smooth, sometimes jarring, but always distinct, from one minute to the next.

I'd gone really early for that talk, with Mawii, so we could keep our seats for the next one, which was called 'After Bin Laden" and had MJ Akbar, Jason Burke, Max Rodenbeck, and Ayesha Jalal among the panelists. Mawii went out after the Kincaid and Pavord talk to get tea, and couldn't get back in because of the crowd. But I stayed and listened and enjoyed it so much.

After that, everything else was really crowded, so we wandered around. I kept bumping into various members of my mother's book club (including Pixie, who was kind enough to feed me and Mawii patties and tea), and I kept seeing visions of my mother everywhere especially when we lit up cigarettes.

And then we went home. The others went out to get dinner, but Rohin and I stayed in, and we started on tea but by the time the others came back, we'd moved on to whiskey and rum, and I was feeling pretty happy. But as usual, exercising admirable self restraint, I got myself into bed by eleven (okay, so maybe I was drunk enough to force poor Mawii to tuck me in, and also drunk enough to inform her I was switching beds because I refused to sleep next to her if she was going to cuddle her Vikram, a different one from mine naturally, all night, which she violently denied she was going to do but she did) and then I rolled over and fell asleep.

I wish I could think of a more interesting way to end this.

Jaipur Literature Festival: Part 1.

2012-01-23T15:57:00.007+05:30

We travelled to Jaipur in style by car. Myself, Mawii, the Dubeys: Rhea and Rohin, and their stud driver whose name I forget but who can put away rum like no one's business.

As usual, I packed last minute, and I had to rush out of the PG, two bags slung around my neck, and my toothbrush held firmly between my teeth.

The drive was very long. We ate KFC burgers and fell asleep half an hour into the journey. The sun was out, Rhea was snoring - loud, long, content snores - and all was right with the world.

Stopped for a pee break and I mention this because it's worth mentioning.

"I need to pee," said Mawii, and this was a sentence which she would echo continuously, on the way to Jaipur, and on the way back as well. Mizos can hold their alcohol, but not their urine.

So we stopped at a petrol pump station and went to the bathrooms. Rhea went in first and when she came out, she had a look of horror on her face.

"Someone's pooped in there," she said, "and the flush isn't working, man. The flush isn't working."

I peeped in. Indian style toilets - you know, hole-in-the-ground and all that. I don't usually have a problem with them but I did have a problem with the brown gooey mass that was occupying most of the marble pit.

I backed away nervously and looked at the others.

"No," I said defiantly and walked away. Mawii, braver than I, went in.

There was a little tea stall nearby, and in front of it, a bunch of men were playing cards on a cot. Rohin was standing by and watching them, they asked him if he wanted to play, he politely declined, and went to get all of us some tea.

I ambled over to where the men were sitting and watched them. All of them - all of them - turned to stare at me. Alright then. Women are not supposed to observe men. I hastily turned away.

By this time, I couldn't, I just couldn't, ignore the damn-I-really-need-to-pee-and-a-state-of-emergency-has-been-imposed feeling in my gut.

"I need to pee," I said to Mawii.

"Just go pee then!"

"I have problems with peeing on other people's poop."

"Snob."

At which Rhea launched into a hugely uninteresting story about holes in the ground and poop underground and goodness knows what else, it was making me feel ill, I am barely comfortable with my own poop let alone the rest of mankind's, so I snatched Mawii's scarf, wrapped it around my mouth and nose, and shuddering with distaste, stepped into the bathroom. I didn't look, I had no wish to look, I just crouched slightly, did my business faster than I've ever done before, and ran, slathering that anti bacterial hand gel thing fussy people like Mawii (but oh, how grateful I was for her fussiness then) carry around with them all over my hands.

And then we got back in the car and carried on. On and on and on and on and then we stopped by an English-Wine-and-Beer-Shop, and Rohin and I bought lots of beer and staggered back to the car holding them bottles by the neck and I really wished I could have captured that moment, just walking from the shop to the road, crossing a ditch, surrounded on all sides by mustard fields, no one in sight except the owner of the shop peering at us through his grills, Mawii and Rhea pressed up against the windows laughing at us.

And then naturally we got a bit drunk and by this time it was dark and Mawii decided she needed to pee again (fourth time, just for the record) and this time Rhea and I joined her, and we had to content ourselves with a field, and we held hands and ran across the field, and the stars were majestic above our heads, and I pointed out the wonderfulness of that moment, but the others ignored me and then Rhea fell into a ditch.

And then we reached Jaipur. Couldn't find the hotel, the Dubeys started fighting because Rohin didn't trust Rhea's Google Map, and Rhea was highly insulted by this, and instead we asked various people directions getting a different one every time, but in the end it turned out that both the Dubeys were wrong, and we reached Hotel Swagatham, which was as shady as it sounds, eventually so it was all for the best.

Half our college was staying in that hotel, and everyone landed up that night, and promptly took over, and there was lots of drinking and yelling and running around, but I was determined to get to the lit fest on time the next day, so I was out like a light by midnight.

Aaaand the literary festival the next day: Rhea could not get out of bed, but Rohin, Mawii and I carried on. We got taken to City Palace, and it wasn't the last time someone tried to take us there because all the auto and rickshaw wallahs in Jaiupur seem obsessed with City Palace, but eventually, we reached Diggi Palace which was where we were supposed to be and there we were.

It was so crowded. We had to stand outside the tent during our first talk, but it wasn't too bad because they put television screens up. It was called 'The Disappointment of Obama' but David Remnick didn't seem too disappointed in him, and it was a really good talk, but I won't go into the details here, although it really brought up quite a lot of interesting things. Oh, interesting tidbit -

"Do you know," said Remnick, "what Obama said when he heard he was getting the Nobel Peace Prize?"

"No," said the moderator, and encouraged him to go on.

"Well, I got this from a really close source. He got the call in the morning, first thing in the morning, and what he said was, "get the fuck out of here."

A sentiment shared by quite a few people then.

After that was lunch, which was a nightmare in itself, because Mawii and I were starving - STARVING - and it was so crowded we couldn't get anything to eat, and then we went outside, but turned back halfway because we'd miss the post-lunch session, and then we went from stall to stall, and we were reaching cranky stage when we finally got hold of some food, gulped it down, and then dashed over to the front lawns to attend 'The Arab Spring: A Winter's View'. Unfortunately, I only remember the names of two of the panelists: Max Rodenbeck (I fell completely in love with him, he was just so good) and Karima Khalil (found out later through William Dalrymple that they're married), but the others were really good too: very nuanced in their views. Unfortunately it was moderated by Barkha Dutt who has got to be one of the most annoying women on the planet, and she kept dragging it back to Salman Rushdie being banned from the fest, which was just really annoying, because we didn't want to hear about Rushdie, we wanted to hear about the Arab Spring, and we didn't want to hear Barkha Dutt, we wanted to hear the panelists. Something interesting that was said, I remember it was brought up by one of the panelists whose name I can't remember, was that the western idea of democracy can't be imposed on any state, and what needs to happen, is for change to take place internally, for new institutions to be formed from within as it were, even if they take the form of Islamic institutions and not secular ones, which then turned into a debate about secularism and democracy and the connection between them, but I won't go into details here.

After that 'Writing the New Latin America' (Pola Oloixarac in conversation with Chandrahas Choudhury) which was very disappointing because CC is an idiot who trivialises everything and kept making bad jokes and PO had a really annoying laugh, but I got the impression she'd actually have some very interesting things to say if only she was being interviewed by someone more decent. I have to admit most of my focus was on her legs because she was wearing a short blue skirt with red boots and sheer black stockings and she kept moving her legs about and I was worried (the men, I'm sure, were hopeful) that her skirt would ride up and I would see things I didn't want to see, but that didn't happen.

And then everything else was crowded, I also saw a bunch of random people from Calcutta, and two of them were rolling joints (surprise, surprise), we couldn't get into any of the talks, I started getting grumpy, it started getting cold, we left, bought alcohol, went back to the hotel room, everyone got drunk and rowdy. We started playing this drinking game called Pyramids, and I managed putting away quite a lot of vodka, but I really wanted to get up early in time for the talks, so I crawled into bed by midnight.

Apparently the party carried on till four, and I'm told that there was lots of yelling, lots of singing, lots of people clambering over me, but I slept through it all, and woke up, fresh as a daisy, by eight thirty the next morning to a room that looked like a hurricane had ripped through it, leaving behind empty alcohol bottles and ashtrays and half finished drinks.

And then the second day began, but that's going to be a sequel, and unfortunately, my mother and her book club are going to be in it.

2012-01-18T21:15:00.004+05:30

To turn over the hour glass, to neatly slice a sliver of time off and to wrap it up and put it away and pretend it never was, and to leap back over the abyss that is left and fill it up again, wiser this time, more cautious, less vulnerable. If only.

Boy.

2012-01-15T17:59:00.005+05:30

Almost based on a true story.

So there was this boy, at university somewhere in the United Kingdom, and he was pretty average on the whole. Not too good looking, but passable, tried to be charming when the ladies were around, failed regularly and admirably, didn't study throughout term, but frantically the night before the exams, and got okay sort of marks.

Anyway, one day, he was standing outside his college gate, and he saw this girl that he'd seen before - you know how it is, you see random faces at parties, or with friends, and sometimes you attach names to them, but more often you can't - but he saw her this time, really saw her, as she was, except perfect. And since he had nothing better to do, he fell in love with her.

His luck was in this time round. He got a mutual friend to introduce them. Names were exchanged, phone numbers, and as the days went by, a lot more - like interests and hobbies and personal histories - and then as even more days went by, real thoughts and real feelings and real dreams: all the usual kinds of things, often disconnected, that miraculously weave together to form a thread, a link, that makes you feel no one has ever understood you this way, and no one ever will.

And then came the special night, and everyone knows what a special night is, and to prepare for it - he wasn't one to leave things to Fate because Fate had, in his eyes, been notoriously unkind to him since the day he was born - he went to his local store, I think it was Tesco's, and he bought twelve condoms and a bottle of scotch, much to the admiration of the fellow behind the counter: a fellow sufferer at the hands of Fate.

And the look the fellow-behind-the-counter gave him, one that was full of awe and admiration, one that said mate-you're-the-man, was a look he'd never received before, not from anyone, and it made him feel, simply put, very good indeed.

He wasn't feeling very good a few hours later, as he lay alone in his bed, with half an empty scotch bottle beside him, and the condoms, all unopened, surrounded by ashtrays (not that he smoked, he just liked having ashtrays around, he collected them) staring unblinkingly at a message on his phone that had just brought his world crashing down forever - or if not forever, then at least for a while.

In a way, he mused, staring up at the ceiling, it fit in with everything else in his life so far. Things always reached a certain point, and then just as he let himself hope they'd keep climbing, keep raising themselves higher, right to where the mist touched the sun, they'd all come tumbling down, and there he'd be, lying on his bed, with a lump in his throat, wanting to cry, but not crying, because after all, he was a man - or trying to be, desperately, blindly, in the only way he knew how.

He went back to Tesco's everyday for the rest of the week and everyday he bought a bottle of scotch and twelve condoms, and the fellow-behind-the-counter came to see him as god on earth.

He didn't drink most of the scotch, and he never had to use any of the condoms, and it was all a terrible waste of money, but when he went to bed at night, despite the ache in the pit of his stomach, it was always easier going to sleep knowing that someone out there thought he was a Man, and that Fate, for once, had to be silent, had to leave things untouched.

Update.

2012-01-12T17:27:00.002+05:30

Delhi's really cold. I don't remember if it's as cold as last year, probably not, but it's cold enough. Thank goodness for thermal underwear. I'm not kidding - I'm wearing thermal leggings under my track pants, and I'm wearing a thermal vest under my two t-shirts and thick sweater, and I still feel the need to lie shivering under one blanket and two duvets.

It's good being back though. I never realise how fond I am of Delhi, and of college, until I spend a month away from both. The it's-good-being-back-feeling really hit me when I walked into college yesterday, and the sun was out, and I saw all these familiar faces by the dhaba tree, all doing the usual things. One was staring blankly at a book, the other was marching up and down, legs working in military precision as he sipped tea, and the Philosophy students were, as usual, engaged in deep conversation with their professors.

The last non-academic conversation I had with one of my professors, was when I showed Roy my medical certificate and he told me that he had the same doctor. "Very good with lungs," he said, with a smirk. Yes, Dr Roy, you would know, and my own lungs being in a precarious state, or so my mother always (loudly) claims, the news relieved me a bit.

And it's such a relief having Mawii around again. We made a trip to Costa to catch up, and I told her my winter stories, and she made just the kind of remarks I wanted to hear, and laughed just when laughter was supposed to occur, and made what-a-douche faces just when a what-a-douche face was needed.

Anyway, I don't want to brag or anything, but I'm really keeping up with my New Year Resolutions. Have hardly been smoking, I've already got down to work, and I switch my laptop off every night and put it away in its case, and I've locked my camera up. So: 1) being healthy, 2) being productive, 3) being careful with possessions. Sorted.

Anyway, my life is going to be boring for the next few months, but this kind of boring is alright, because it's not boring really, just monotonous, and I've realised that this monotony - which I've become accustomed to over the past three years - will be over soon, and I'll never get it back. In May, I graduate, and then the excitement, the step down that road I believe is called the-rest-of-my-life, all that will happen, and I'm looking forward to it so much, it's like this great big blurry light locked away inside me and spinning madly, but for now I've sort of tucked it away, because this - this moment right here, lying on my bed, with my books spread out around me, and Mawii checking her Blackberry, this is precious, simply because there aren't too many moments like this left, and it's making me appreciate things I've always complained about before.

It's funny how even the dullest, most familiar of things take on a certain glow once you realise that they won't last forever.

The best birthday present ever.

2012-01-06T15:48:00.000+05:30

(Apart from my dad walking into the house casually on my birthday morning carrying a giant wooden fish and other knobbly, intriguing, newspaper wrapped parcels).

It was an email from my uncle in Dulwich - and the rest of that family - telling me that their twenty first birthday present to me is a holiday in Europe this summer, once I've graduated college.

Hello 2012, you're already looking a lot brighter than your predecessor ever did.

2012-01-01T23:49:00.000+05:30

Ten minutes before I turn twenty one. What will this year bring, I wonder.

2011-12-31T14:07:00.001+05:30

Thank goodness this bloody heartache of a year is over.

Forward ho.

2011-12-28T00:51:00.001+05:30

Everywhere she goes, she smells the sunflowers.

The plastic chairs on gravel, dilapidated houses with musty books and familiar beds, bright lights and music that make her nauseous, tiny dhabas obscenely lit.

She desperately looks around for escape, but there is none, not even a tiny one, and the truth is, even if there was, she wouldn't take it.

The Arrival of Ringo Starr.

2011-12-26T23:46:00.001+05:30

My mother was clearing out my grandparents' desk the other day, and found this story I'd written soon after Ringo Starr entered our lives. I was fifteen years old.

Ever since I can remember, I've wanted a dog.

Unfortunately, being blessed with a mother who has a heart of granite, I've never been successful in getting one. Last year however, she softened somewhat (must be because of age...I hear people get sentimental when they reach their mid forties) and on March 24th, 2006, Ringo Starr arrived.

He's a pug puppy, with big beady eyes and a squashed black face ad velvety soft ears and a curled up little tail. He's also slightly mad, which is why he fits in so well with out family.

The first time I saw him was when his owner brought him up to our flat in a tiny little basket. I glanced casually at the basket (you couldn't really see what was inside) but didn't really register anything. I was disappointed because the owner, Mr Sinha (a nondescript man but possessor of the largest mole I have ever seen till date...right on his nose!) hadn't seemed to bring the puppy with him.

Finally (my brain always does work exceptionally slow on Sundays) I realised what was in the basket. I deducted this, not from Mr Sinha whose English I couldn't really understand (not because I am retarded, but because it was so terrible), but from little scrabbly noises coming from inside it.

I tiptoed over to the basket, and opened it, and this little, tiny...thing (for want of a better word) scrambled out of it. He kept slipping and sliding all over our floor, looking absolutely proud of his horrendous sense of balance. My mother and I didn't exclaim over him. Not at first. We just stood there and stared.

We stared as he slid over to the wall and inspected it. Then he tried to walk through it. Having discovered that he couldn't, he snorted at it, and having told the wall exactly what he thought of it, he moved on to explore greener pastures...such as our carpet, which he promptly started chewing. He shredded up the carpet edge in under one minute, and then started on our dining table leg.

Mr Sinha, noticing our shell shocked expressions, said a hasty, "bhery good, bhery good...eggcellent, eggcellent...I am go-eeng, bye bye, bye bye."

He went.

The puppy (he hadn't been christened yet) now decided that my shoelace would be a good thing to chew on. So he chewed on it, his beady eyes looking up at my face suspiciously all the while. I bent down and gingerly patted him. He obligingly chewed my finger. I glanced up at my mother. She had a huge soppy smile plastered on her face.

She held out her arms, and the puppy tumbled into them.

He had come to stay.

The first time we fed him was an experience. I had to hold him down, while Mum gave him his dinner (milk mixed with some other bizarre yet apparently nourishing substance). It was obvious, as we watched him eat (or more appropriately, swim in) his dinner, that this was a dog, whose stomach would always take precedence over his heart. He ate so enthusiastically that milk kept going up his nose (pugs have a very squashed face) and after he was done, he started banging his paws on the floor, which was his (very ineffective) way of getting the milk of his nose.

Almost as if he was playing the drums.

Hence the name, Ringo Starr. Ringo Starr was the name of the Beatles' drummer. (If you don't know who the Beatles are, I advise you to go soak your head).

Of course, we didn't come up with it right away. We went through Sumo (because he looked a bit like a wrestler. Sumo wrestler, get it? Ha ha. No one else did either), Jughead (an obvious choice because of his appetite) and even King Kong (my mother's suggestion. I would never do that to a dog.)

Ringo Starr is now nine months old and thriving. So far he's chewed up every single carpet in the house, a couple of table legs, my grandmother's silver cabinet, all my socks, sixty six fingers, and forty toes. Not to mention a dozen ears. He has also boosted the sale of biscuit companies all over India. He's terrified of milk cans and cats and babies infuriate him. If he ever sees a lady in a salwaar kameez, he will promptly put his head up it, regardless of whether he knows her or not. When I take him down for a walk, he barks furiously at everything in sight, but if something dares to retaliate he hides behind my legs. He's not very graceful...he can walk without sliding all over the floor now, but unfortunately he has not been able to achieve that when he runs.

As I write this, he's sitting at my feet looking hopefully up at me.

It's 11:00 am right now.

Time for a biscuit as usual.

Funny, but when I read this, I sort of remembered what the fifteen year old me was like. Thought I'd forgotten, but in essentials, not much has changed.

The Annual Recap.

2011-12-17T08:51:00.009+05:30

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?

i) Reached my 20's. (It feels so WEIRD.)

ii) Got my first paycheck.

iii) Started using a cycle (goodbye, autos!)

iv) At one point, I became something close to a pothead and even had my own drug dealer (a lady who owns a beauty parlour). That's over now though and I'm never repeating it again.

v) Started something I've told only one person about, but it feels pretty special.

vi) Cooked a proper (and edible) meal.

vii) Dyed my hair.
viii) A back arch.
ix) [added 20th Dec]: LATE NIGHT BIKE RIDE THROUGH CALCUTTA ROADS IT WAS BLOODY AWESOME!
x) Started watching polo. Next year, I might play.
xi) A couple of other things which I can't mention here.

2. Did you keep your new years resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Didn't keep my new years resolutions (surprise, surprise), but I am, as ever, undaunted by my own perpetual uselessness and I have made a couple for next year.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Yerr.

5. What countries did you visit?

I VISITED NO COUNTRIES I DID NOT TRAVEL I HAD NO HOLIDAYS AND IT BETTER NOT HAPPEN AGAIN.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

The usual inner peace (it just slips further away every year), and more travel, and an iphone that actually works.

7. What date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory and why?

Nothing really. It was a pretty forgettable year.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Probably passing Hindi.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not getting a first division end of second year. IT WILL BE RECTIFIED.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I've suffered a lot of injury since getting my cycle. I also battled through illness and emerged more or less unscathed, but in possession of an inhaler. FML.

11. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

A, for battling a lot of set backs and attaching the prefix Captain to his name. And A.O., for being happy and content which in itself is a huge achievement.

12. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

I can't say here.

13. Where did most of your money go?

Costa Coffee, probably. :/

14. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Planned holidays which always fell through at the last moment thanks to landslides and other disasters. My internship which is just the most hilarious story ever but I can't talk about it here.

15. What song will always remind you of 2011?

This Year by the Mountain Goats (because it goes like this: I WILL MAKE IT THROUGH THIS YEAR IF IT KILLS ME).

16. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

I'm not sad, but I was a lot happier this time last year. Oh well, highs and lows, they come and go.

17. What do you wish you'd done more of?

I wish I'd worked harder, travelled more, and been more careful with my possessions.

18. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Drunk texting.

19. How will you be spending Christmas?

I'm going to eat a lot and wear a Christmas hat, and I'm going to spend it with family and friends, giving presents, and being happy. I might even ho-ho all day. And I'm going to bribe my friends with mulled wine and mince pies, trick them into coming over, and force them to play Christmas Articulate.

20. Did you fall in love in 2011?

Haha. No.

21. How many one night stands?

Zilch.

22. What was your favourite TV programme?

I watch them all on my laptop, and the only one I follow on a regular basis is How I Met Your Mother. I really like The IT Crowd though, and Black Books.

23. What was the best book you read?

I DISCOVERED F. SCOTT FITZGERALD AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE HE'S BEEN ALL MY LIFE.

24. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Phish, I don't know where they've been all my life either. And I've realised that when I'm feeling all heartbroken and sorry for myself, I can always count on a certain trio to pull me out: Madonna, Adele, aaaaaand Leonard Cohen.

25. What did you want and get?

The trouble was - and is - that I didn't, and don't, know what I want.

26. What did you want and not get?

See above.

27. What was your favourite film of this year?

Dono. BUT NEXT YEAR IT BETTER BE STEPHANIE PLUM BECAUSE I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THE MOVIE SINCE I WAS TEN YEARS OLD.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I drank too much champagne, I made the mistake of letting my thirteen year old cousin into my party, I made the bigger mistake of introducing him to Vikram who fed him all sorts of dubious substances, and I turned 20.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

I think I just needed to get my act together this year, and I didn't. So that, and also maybe new shoes.

30. What kept you sane?

Mawii, Mawii, Mawii. And Friend tried.

31. Who was the worst new person you met?

Didn't meet anyone particularly disastrous.

32. Who was the best new person you met?

Shoi. :)

33. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learnt in 2011.

The most important: make the most of something good while it lasts, because it won't last always. And also (Mawii, this one is for you), good friends and hysterical laughter are irreplaceable.

34. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

As usual, no.

PS I JUST RE POSTED THIS SEVEN DIFFERENT TIMES TO MAKE THE GAPS EVEN BUT THEY JUST WON'T GET EVEN NO MATTER WHAT I DO. And I'm sure there are sticklers out there who are cringing over this like I am, but sorry, there is nothing I can bloody do. This bloody blogspot. I'll move to tumblr.

2011-12-12T03:36:00.001+05:30

You think it will be easy. It isnt man.

Talisman.

2011-11-28T11:37:00.003+05:30

I don't know when it will happen,

or where. Perhaps it will happen,

on a hot afternoon, as streaks of sun

slice open our faces. Shadows of flies

dance their twisted trails on crimson coals.

Or maybe under a canopy of smoky skies,

sharp toothed sapphires striking down,

pelting gentle rolling waves of soft cotton.

As the sharp scents of cinnamon and

of something once forgotten,

now remembered,

as these

race towards a waiting world.

AAAAAAAAAAAARGH I'M GOING TO FAIL.

2011-11-23T20:06:00.001+05:30

2011-11-13T18:25:00.003+05:30

Approximately seven weeks left before I turn twenty one.

I'm feeling a little alarmed. Not because I think twenty one is old (I did when I was twelve, but what do twelve year olds know, right? Especially if the diary I kept back then is anything to go by), but because it's a reminder that I should by now be firmly entrenched in what vague voices call Life, and I don't think I am. Or if this is Life, whatever Life is and I'm using a capital L for a reason, then it's sort of - disappointing isn't the word - not enough. It's not enough.

Because when I look back, I see my life as one event after another, a series of sequences, of consequences, of oh-this-was-that-time-when-I-was-happy, and that-was-the-year-that-I-was-glad-to-leave-behind. That's the-thirteen-year-old-Trisha-being-an-idiot, and the seventeen-year-old-Trisha-not-being-an-idiot-but-not-being-much-else-really, and the nineteen –year- old –Trisha- being-a-fool-albeit-spectacularly.

Is there anything spectacular about foolishness?

Going through the motions. That's what I'm doing. Right now it's a sort of ho hum, just want to get term over with man, because the past few months have been crap, and want to go back home. And once I am home, it will be an oh my gosh, I'm having so much fun and Christmas in Calcutta is always so wonderful, but I'm worried I'll only feel that when I'm drunk. Anyway there's a reason I don't particularly want to go back to Calcutta right now, but let's not even go there because it's a stupid reason, and anyway I have better things to do than pay attention to it.

What things?

Nothing.

That's my problem.

Everything feels like a hand moving mindlessly, instinctively, to swat at alien fingers on my wrist: there is no real emotion, no real thought, because all of it will be replaced in five years by something new, or it will have died and not been replaced, or it will stay the same, and either way, I'll be no happier, no sadder, no different than what I already am.

Of course being the same sort of person through the years is something that is often looked up to, something that is applauded. I never understand why. How boring to to be the same, to have the same thoughts, the same reactions, the same points of view, through the years, at fifteen, at fifty. People should change, they should grow, they should have past selves and present selves and future selves, because what happens if you stay the same, and you know yourself inside out, you know what you're going to say, or what you're going to do, at any given moment, and then you just get bored of yourself. Like a stale marriage, except I don't think they've come up a way to divorce yourself, although by the looks of things, I'm sure they will soon.

So here's my problem. I am not yet twenty one, although time will soon take care of that, I am reasonably happy, reasonably enthusiastic about the future, reasonably reasoning my way through this bloody Life thing, and I am completely and utterly dissatisfied.

It's like you're walking down a college corridor and you hear voices behind you and you can hear what they're saying and it sounds stupid so you roll your eyes contemptuously and then the next minute you catch sight of a familiar face and you feel a pleasant warmth light itself inside you because you're fond of that face, and at the same time you notice a patch of sun on the a red brick wall and you feel the back of your neck itching, just slightly, and while seeing and feeling all these different things, essentially, you're just distracted, unable to focus on any one thing, unable to get a grip, get a grasp.

But it's not like you're losing your balance, stumbling, tripping, falling, desperately trying to look for something to hold onto either.

That is the tragedy.

The Trip That Wasn't: Part III

2011-11-05T15:32:00.003+05:30

"Is it seven o'clock yet?" I asked, cracking an eye open.

Mawii rolled over and looked at her phone. "Damn."

"What?"

"It's ten in the morning,"

"So much for sight seeing," I murmured happily - I could see the sun streaming through our window, despite the faded green curtain, and I could tell it was going to be a hot day - and I closed my eyes again.

"New plan," I said to Mawii, half an hour later, as we ate our breakfast. Hunger pangs had forced us out of bed in a way no 8.40 am class ever has. "We do lunch first. And then we go sight seeing."

"Sounds good."

"It'll give us more energy anyway."

"This really isn't sight seeing weather," said Mawii, a couple of hours later, as we were trudging our way to the metro station in the heat.

I sighed, and looked down at my feet. Keep walking, keep walking. A terrible sight met my eyes (well, eye, I was still wearing only one contact lens) and I groaned.

"WHAT?" Mawii spun around, probably thinking I'd stepped in cow poop. Our lane harbours the occasional cow which appears and vanishes without a trace (it would be too optimistic to think that someone turns them into beef), only occasionally leaving big lumps of feces for hapless people to step in.

"I forgot to take my nail polish off." I was wearing sandals and I'd been picking at the nail polish on my toes the previous night (disgusting habit, I know, I know, my mother has told me a thousand times) and now half of it had gone, and half of it was there, and my feet looked terrible.

"Just ignore it?" Said Mawii hopefully.

"I can't go sight seeing with ugly toenails!"

So then I walked past the metro station to the pharmacy, while Mawii sat outside the Exchange Store resignedly sipping a cold coffee, and bought nail polish remover and cotton wool and lip balm because the saleslady told me it would make my lips look luscious and who the hell doesn't want luscious lips?

I joined Mawii outside the Exchange Store, and started rubbing frantically at my toenails, while passers by gave me curious looks. I ignored them. It comes with the territory.

I finally got my toes looking clean (although depressingly colourless) and for extra measure, I'd luscious-ed my lips, and we finally got onto the metro, and away from the heat.

"I could just sit here all day," I said, blissfully, leaning back and stretching my legs out, enjoying the air conditioning and the empty compartment. Of course, then we stopped at Kashmere Gate, and all of a sudden the metro was jam packed with frantic people and decayed people and smelly people, and suddenly life outside the metro began to look rosy again.

We got to Big Chill eventually and asked for a table outside so we could smoke (you're allowed to smoke when you're on holiday). Because it was so hot, no one else was sitting outside, and so we were rushed past a line of people waiting to be seated in the air conditioned interior. They looked at us enviously. Ha ha, non smokers, ha ha.

We'd both been exercising (or we intended to start, I'm not sure) and it was really very hot, so we skipped the pasta and had salads instead. Would've felt very healthy if it wasn't for the pack of cigarettes lying between us.

"I can't believe we've turned into the kind of people who eat salad in restaurants," said Mawii sadly, when we were done.

"I know. Dessert?"

"It would be a crime not to have dessert."

I don't remember what Mawii had, but I had the Belgian Chocolate shake, after two years, TWO years (the last time was when A.O. was in town and I scared the crap out of him by eating more than he did) and it was joy, it was heaven, it was all things miraculous and wonderful, and I'm not even exaggerating. And I didn't even feel guilty because I'd had salad for lunch.

We really didn't feel like moving after that, but we did move, all the way to Humayun's Tomb. We went to the ticket booth and gave the man forty rupees (Indians pay twenty each, foreigners pay a hundred something). The man looked at us suspiciously and asked us where we were from in Hindi. (Kidhar sei hai?")

This is an old trick, and it's been played on me before. So I replied in Hindi too, saying "Idhar sei."

Unfortunately, he looked even more suspicious and said, "Dilli?"

"Haan."

He gave us our tickets and just as we were about to move away he said that we looked like we were from Japan.

"I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU BUT I DO NOT LOOK FUCKING JAPANESE." I yelled at Mawii, much to the shock of a bunch of German tourists standing near by. They looked at me nervously. Oh well. At least they weren't Japanese.

The guard who was standing at the entrance insisted on checking our id to check that we were nationals before tearing our tickets. I was itching for him to say, "Japan se?" so I could kick him, but he didn't, and in retrospect, I think it was a good thing.

I must say, Humayun's Tomb was incredibly disappointing. We climbed a flight of extremely steep stone stairs, which struck me as ironic considering the reason for Humayun's death, and reached the courtyard which was lovely - at first glance. There were a few tombs to one side, and I strolled over and examined them. They were unmarked.

We walked around the courtyard a little - let me again reiterate that it was bloody hot - and the outside was quite nice, because it was all red stone and there was a lovely view of the gardens from all sides. The gardens were very well maintained, but the fountains and water holes were dry, or nearly dry.

Then we went inside. I reeled back as I stepped through the archway - there was a terrible smell there. I don't know what it was - probably from the construction work that was going on everywhere which really didn't help the atmosphere, let me tell you - but if I had to put a name to it, I'd say it smelt of decay.

The tomb is in a large, shadowy, cool hall, but the thing is, it's the sort of room that should be empty and quiet for you to appreciate it, and there were people strolling in and out (which is only fair, I suppose) but they kept taking photographs and talking really loudly and the smell was terrible and there was drilling going on from all sides, and really, if I were Humayun, I'd be seriously annoyed. Also, there's no information about Humayun which is a pity because he was so interesting (though admittedly useless) - nothing that tells you about his reign, or how he died.

We strolled into some of the ante chambers. The walls were all marked with graffiti.

There were a few tombs there as well, but all unmarked. Nothing that told you about who lay under them, or why, or how, or when they'd been put there. And I didn't know and I wanted to know, and it was incredibly frustrating.

After that, we went out (glad to get away from the smell and the noise) and we went down again, and strolled the perimeter of the building (the building itself is beautiful) and the gardens (also beautiful).

Mawii brought her camera, but it wasn't working, so I walked around taking photos with my phone, because taking photos made me feel more like we were on a trip.

I suppose everyone wants to leave their mark on history.

The courtyard.

Cute door and Mawii.

Humayun's Tomb in all its glory, baby.

Scenes from the gardens.

What the hall could have and should have felt like, but didn't.

We sat in the gardens for a while, and then decided to carry on to the Purana Quila. I have mixed feelings about Humayun's Tomb. I liked the Red Fort much more, because there's so much more to know there. And there are things to know about Humayun too, you just can't find it there.

So I said goodbye to the son of Babur, the same son, legend has it, whom Babur sacrificed his life for (according to legend, Humayun was very ill, Babur was distraught, he walked around Humayun's bed and begged for his life to be taken and his son's life to be spared and three days later, Humayun was hunky dory and the first Great Mughal was dead), the same son who lost Babur's kingdom and then won it back, only to promptly die (he fell down his library steps and broke his neck. Now do you see why the fact that you have to climb steep stairs to reach his resting place is ironic?), the son who fathered Akbar (general consensus seems to be that was Humayun's greatest achievement.)

We walked to the main road and saw an auto. The autowallah was a relatively harmless looking old man. We got into the auto and asked to be taken to Purana Quila.

Apparently that was asking for too much.

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.

2011-10-28T12:48:00.000+05:30

Interruption.

2011-10-22T19:25:00.002+05:30

People are just so nice, man.

I went to the convenience store behind the PG, and the man there - I fondly refer to him as Peter Pettigrew #1 (the story of Peter Pettigrew #2 shall be saved for later) - told me had a present for me.

"A present?" I said, surprised.

He opened the fridge where he keeps the soda and took a piece of chocolate, carefully wrapped, out.

"My friend got me a box from Thailand. I saved one for you. It's filled with wine."

"For me?" I was so touched, I nearly blubbered.

"Try it,"

And I did, and wine exploded in my mouth.

"Nice?"

I gave him a thumbs up, talked a bit about Thailand, and, throwing will power to the wind, bought a pack of cigarettes. I figured it was the least I could do.

What can I say? The world has its fair share of nasty people, but there are also those who surprise and delight and they matter so much more.

The Trip That Wasn't: Part II

2011-10-22T14:50:00.000+05:30

"Are we going to Agra this evening?" I said to Mawii, when we woke up the next morning.

"I suppose," said Mawii, putting a pillow over her face.

"Right!" I bounded out of bed, brushed my teeth, and opened our door to cross the garden to the main house to get some breakfast. I blinked. The sun was pouring down, the sky was impossibly blue, everything was still and oppressive and...hot.

It takes less than thirty seconds to cross the garden but I swear by the time I did, I was already sweating.

"That's it," I told Mawii, over Times Trends. "I'm not going to Agra."

Mawii looked relieved.

"But I really don't want to waste this weekend sitting in the PG," I continued, despondently stirring my coffee that comprises a pinch of coffee powder and a lot of milk and therefore isn't coffee at all but it sort of grows on you. "I want to do something."

Mawii was silent. She wanted to do something too.

"Why don't we have a weekend in Delhi?" I suggested after a moment (or maybe she suggested it, I don't remember, but I'm telling the story).

"Doing what?"

"We could go to nice places to eat, we could visit places we haven't been to yet. Like Humayun's Tomb and the Purana Quila."

Mawii brightened. "We could do that!"

And this was what we decided: it really was unbearably hot and it was already ten o'clock, so we'd watch a nice movie together that afternoon, a mindless romantic comedy, and then, in the evening when it got a bit cooler, we'd go to Dilli Haat and cheer ourselves up by buying out the place, and then we'd go to Hauz Khas village for dinner. And then, the next day, which was Sunday, we'd wake up really early in the morning before it got hot, and visit Humayun's Tomb and Purana Quila, and then have a nice lunch at Big Chill because the thought of cheesy pasta just then was inexplicably comforting.

Excellent plan. At least we were doing something, we were taking initiative, we were being pro-active, instead of feeling sorry for ourselves. Alright, we were still feeling sorry for ourselves, but at least we were going to feel it while shopping and eating and absorbing History, instead of sitting around in our room drinking ourselves into a stupor.

So we watched Mama Mia that afternoon - and sang along with gusto if not finesse - and then we had a bath and we put on nice clothes, and slathered on eyeliner and a bit of lipstick and lots of mascara. Mawii looked beautiful, as always, and I looked quite attractive too although this was possibly because I had only one contact lens on (no way was I going to be wearing my glasses) and so when I looked in the mirror, my features were blurred and I couldn't see my nose properly. But why quibble.

And off we went to Dilli Haat.

We got out of the metro station and asked an auto driver where it was.

"There," he said, pointing towards it and heaving a sigh that seemed to imply he thought we were imbeciles.

"Where?" I said, squinting. I couldn't really see much. Just the sky, already fading to pink, and a few blurry shapes I assumed were cars, and other blurry shapes I assumed were people.

"I see it," said Mawii. "It's ten steps away."

She took me by the arm and guided me firmly. I closed the eye that didn't have a lens in it and that helped my vision. I also told myself that it made me look like a one eyed pirate. Lying to myself is what keeps me going.

"Oh look," I said, pointing to a couple of women in brightly coloured saris who were busy wrapping strands of people's hair in shiny ribbon. "I want to get that done." I was thinking of the time I got my hair braided in Bali, and how happy I'd been there, and I figured that getting strands of my hair wrapped in ribbon would bring me close to that happiness. I know. My logic bewilders even me sometimes.

I actually meant to get it done on the way out, but I made the mistake of making eye contact with one of the women while we were buying tickets to enter, and she strode determinedly up to me, wouldn't take no for an answer, insisted that by the time I came out all the hair wrappers (not braiders) would be gone, and that my life would lose all meaning if I went around with the hair I currently had.

So we mooched over to the low stone grey wall where the hair wrapping was going on. Mawii declined to get her hair done, I picked blue and purple ribbon (it was more like shiny string) for mine, and the woman started wrapping. She stood on the wall behind me, grabbed a chunk of my hair, twisted it, and then started twisting the paper around it, taking very good care to yank my hair as hard as possible. I don't want to be mean, but all this while she was bargaining with Mawii and the more Mawii insisted she bring down the price, the harder she tugged at my hair. After she'd done one lulu, Mawii took a picture and I decided to get only one more. Four, which I'd originally planned, was going to be too much. The lady accepted my decision with very bad grace, but I think she had quite a good time pulling at my roots so I'm sure all was not lost.

Look, you can see that my eye is rolling in pain.

Anyway, we went in after that, and it was already dark, and the Haat was looking lovely with all its colourful stalls and lanterns and faery lights (man, I love faery lights. They make me so happy) everywhere. Mawii made me swear that I wouldn't let her buy more than once piece of jewellery, but as it turns out, I was the one who went beserk.

I went to the first shoe stall I saw, tried on four different pairs of shoes, told the guy (who was already growing impatient because I kept saying, "Eesh. So ugly" to a pair, only to try them on two pairs later) I'd come back and buy a pair on my way out. A lie.

Mawii was roaming around all the jewellery stalls searching for rings because that girl is obsessed with rings. She bent over the displays intently, examining each piece with precision. I leaped in, bought the first necklace I saw, and leaped out again. I was also going around taking bad photos with my phone.

The chess sets really tempted me. They were so pretty. Luckily for my - well, my mother's - bank account, I realised just in time that I don't know how to play chess, so I refrained from buying one. But that didn't stop me from buying other things: shoes, that seriously look like slippers the Sultan of Turkey would wear, two heavy lead pencils (I bought one for Mawii but she said she'd used them before and they wrote badly and wouldn't take it. Ungrateful chit), a green patterned skirt (It took me fifteen minutes to choose between the green and a red one, and I actually held one against Mawii and the other against a mortified salesboy and well, the green looked good on even the salesboy so I figured it was a winner), the necklace, and - a pipe. I bought a pipe! Dark polished wood. It was beautiful. I spent ages looking for an ashtray, but couldn't find one, so I ended up buying a tiny little wooden coffee cup that matched the pipe (bada bing bada boom!) instead.

"What are you going to do with a pipe?" said Mawii grumpily. She hadn't bought a single thing yet even though she'd been round to all the jewellery stalls at least twice. She was being too careful in my opinion. No point shopping for frivolous things if you're going to be careful.

"I'm going to use it to quit smoking," I said proudly.

"Come again?"

"I'll stop buying cigarettes and instead, whenever I feel like I'm about to die because my lungs feel too clean or whatever, I'm going to put a little tobacco in this pipe and light up." I didn't add that I thought I'd look extremely cool going around puffing away at it.

The nice thing about Mawii is that she plays along with my idiotic notions, so apart from a brief snort, she didn't try to dissuade me. She also refrained from mentioning that I'd bought an ashtray (or at least an object I intended to use as an ashtray) which was a pointless purchase if I was going to quit smoking. Then again, she knows I lie to myself a lot, so perhaps she was just playing along.

Anyway.

We finally left, me lugging three heavy bags, and Mawii empty handed. It was a turnaround, I can tell you.

Then we headed to Hauz Khas village because Mawii had heard of a really nice restaurant there where you get South East Asian food and we both felt like eating with chopsticks. We got an auto to drop us off in the middle of a dark street.

"Where is it?" I asked her.

"I'm not sure," Typical Mawii.

I googled the name on my phone and got an address and we went around from person to person asking where the restaurant was.

"Never heard of it," said a man, scratching his beard, when we asked him where the restaurant was.

"It's at number 45?" I said.

"Number what?"

"45."

Blank stare, and this was followed by many blank stares, so we decided to forgo the chopsticks and ended up at The Living Cafe (?) and it wasn't too bad at all. Dim lighting, lots of candles, dark wood, a very nice bar (we skipped the cocktails) and one of those menus where you kind of have to go, "Hm. I'll have this. Or should I have this? Or this, or this, or that? Alright, I've narrowed it down to this, this, and this. What do you think?"

The food was delicious, and then we went to this tiny little terrace outside and had coffee there, with a cigarette (I'll quit tomorrow, I told Mawii) and by the end of it we were in a very good mood because mountains or no mountains, that's what shopping, good food, and people who don't get on your nerves even though you spend practically every waking moment of your existence with them, do to you: they put you in a good mood.

We were even humming on the way home.

"Tomorrow," I told Mawii as we got into bed, "tomorrow we'll wake up at seven thirty and go sight seeing. We'll be tourists."

"We'll be tourists." She agreed.

"First thing in the morning,"

"First thing in the morning."

"It's going to be - "

"Perfect."

Haha. Ha.

The Trip That Wasn't: Part I

2011-10-17T12:37:00.002+05:30

September 2011.

Mawii and I had been having a rough couple of months. Things in college hadn't been going all that great, and to be honest, nothing else had either. We'd both lost money because our PG seems to be harbouring a thief who knows exactly when we leave our room, even if it's just for ten minutes, and the exams had been a complete disaster (the only bright spot: we both passed Hindi), and there were a million other things going wrong, and nothing at all going right.

What we needed was a break and accordingly, we decided to give ourselves one.

What sort of break? A mountain getaway. Away from college, away from the city, away from familiar faces, away from the heat, away from it all. Invigorating air, that's what we needed, and lots of trees, and long walks, and maybe the occasional dancing stream and the odd cafe perched at the end of the world.

So, after a lot of deliberating (and googling) we decided on Naukuchiatal: the place with the nine sided lake, or something similar. It looked like something very close to Paradise.

The weekend we planned it though, our department decided to make its annual trip - to Dalhousie.

"Should we cancel Naukuchiatal and go to Dalhousie instead?" said Mawii, as we lay sprawled on our beds one hot afternoon, both staring blankly at the ceiling.

"Well, it is our last year of college." I conceded.

"Last class trip,"

"We probably won't see most of these people again,"

"Naomi's going."

"And Naomi never goes on trips. I'd like to go on a trip with Naomi."

"But then on the other hand, it won't just be Naomi."

"It will be lots of people."

"I'm kind of sick of people."

"Alright then. Where are we going?"

"Naukuchiatal, obviously."

We were proactive. We went to Connaught Place after college one afternoon. I googled Travel-Agencies-in-CP from my iPhone and felt very cool. I even looked at the map.

"Can you read this?" I asked Mawii, as we got out of the metro station.

"Sure. I can read maps."

Mawii looked at the map, a tiny little network of blue and red blurbs on my screen, interrupted by a long crack (one of the many results of my usual ham handedness).

"Where's the travel agency?"

A brief pause.

"Let's just walk around a bit, shall we?"

"Sounds good."

We walked with a purpose though, because Mawii had been to a travel agency in CP before and she vaguely remembered the direction. After a little asking around, and a lot of climbing over rubble, we found ourselves outside a travel agency (not the one she remembered but c'est la vie) and we walked in.

We were the only customers - I should have known. That should have warned me. The walls were plastered with photos of white Ambassadors. That should have been another warning.

"Naukuchiatal?" said the travel agent.

"Should we go by bus or by train?" said Mawii, adopting an efficient business like air, while I sat back and looked at her admiringly.

"Bus. Train. Both."

"Which is quicker?"

"Both quick. Both good." A beatific smile.

"Wouldn't it be quickest if we took a train?"

"Train...yes. Bus...hmm."

We settled on a bus. We booked our tickets, got them printed, handed over the money, got the details of our pick up point, and scarpered.

"This is good," I told Mawii. "This is really good."

"We've had such a bad time, things can only get better from this point on," She agreed.

How wrong we were.

I phoned my mother that night.

"We're going to Naukuchiatal."

"WHERE?"

"NAUKUCHIATAL!"

"WHAT'S THAT?"

"It's a place near Nainital, or in Nainital, in the state of Uttaranchal."

"Uttaranchal?"

"Uhuh."

Silence.

"It has a pretty lake," I added feebly.

"Are you two going alone?"

"Bo might come too."

"I don't like the thought of you girls travelling on your own."

"I have a Swiss knife with me. I can buy pepper spray too, if you want."

"What have I told you about being facetious?"

"Well, we've already got the tickets, and I'm sure it'll be safe. These places are always safe. Anyway it's only white people who get murdered on holiday and that's usually in Goa.We'll find a place to stay, and we'll walk a lot, and we'll visit the lake, and we'll communicate with nature. I've had a difficult term, I need to communicate with nature. It's not like anyone else has been communicating with me."

A disbelieving snort and then a grudging, "Make sure you call Anjali. She's from that area, she'll probably be able to recommend some places you two can stay."

I did call (my aunt) Anjali. The night before we were due to leave.

"Where are you going, love?"

"Naukuchiatal."

"When?"

"Tomorrow."

"TOMORROW?"

"Uhuh."

"Haven't you seen the news?"

I hadn't been near a television set since leaving Calcutta in July so the answer was no.

"Thirty six people have been killed in landslides there this week!"

Goodbye Naukuchiatal.

I frantically called Mawii who was at home and told her to check the news. She called me back equally frantic. The news was bad news (like it could be anything else). People were being swept away by landslides left, right, and centre. Swish, swoosh, and the sound of silence.

"We could go anyway," she said unenthusiastically.

"NO." I was adamant. I have no faith in Mawii's survival skills, and I have less faith in mine. The only reason I've made it this far is because of sheer dumb luck and I really wasn't trusting luck to do it for me this time round, at the rate things had been going. (There was an earthquake in Delhi last month and Mawii and I felt it and we both sat up in bed clutching each other and mumbling incoherent things, only gathering the wits to run outside long after the earthquake had stopped.) So no.

"Can we please just go somewhere else?" I asked.

"I'll go to CP tomorrow, cancel our tickets, and we'll go somewhere else," she promised.

But we couldn't go anywhere else. She called me the next morning - I was in class and ran out in the middle telling my professor it was an emergency which it totally was because my mental health was at stake - and she grimly told me that there were landslides in Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh, and basically all the nice mountainous areas we wanted to travel to. Rain everywhere.

Except of course in Delhi.

"Rajasthan? What about Rajasthan?" I said, clutching at whatever straws I could. Came up short as usual. We'd discussed the possibility of going to Rajasthan - Pushkar, perhaps? - and though it couldn't match up to the mountains, we comforted ourselves with the thought that we could spend the weekend riding camels. That's something, right? Camels?

"Everything to Rajasthan is already booked."

No camels then.

"AGRA!" I shouted in desperation. "WE'LL GO TO AGRA."

Mawii was not too keen on the idea of Agra, but it was still only Friday, and we could leave for Agra on Saturday evening and then return on Monday and perhaps we could even visit Fatehpur Sikhri. Also, my father had told me about Akbar's tomb which is on the way to Agra, and about how a ray of sunlight always falls on it, no matter what time of the day it is (not after the sun sets. Obviously). That didn't sound too bad. A ray of sunlight on the great Mughal's tomb was better than nothing at all.

But it was Friday and our class was leaving for Dalhousie that evening and we had nothing. Nothing. We could still go to Dalhousie but we didn't really want to.

"Tell you what. We'll dress up tonight, bring out those swishy little skirts and floaty little dresses and put on some lipstick and we'll go somewhere fancy for dinner - and maybe a couple of cocktails. Just the two of us," said Mawii.

I felt just a little less devastated at the sound of that plan.

And so that night, I had nice bath (a bucket bath, obviously, because it's too much to ask for, oh I don't know, a proper working shower in this bloody city) and I dried my hair and I even brushed it, and I'd laid out a little blue skirt, and I was in my towel, putting on one of my contact lenses, when it dropped. The contact lens. One minute it was in my palm, and the next minute, it had vanished. I scrabbled around on the floor, crawled under the bed, made Mawii fetch a torch and explored all the dark corners of our room, hoping against hope that it had bounced its way somewhere. Although contact lenses don't bounce. And then I stood in front of the mirror for twenty minutes, poking at my eyeball just in case it had disappeared up my eyelid. It hadn't - or if it had, it's still there.

That was really more than I could handle. It ended with me bawling on my bed, Mawii's arms around me, both of us feeling weighed down by darkness, despair, de-everything.

"Get into your pyjamas," Mawii told me, finally, "and order a pepperoni pizza. I'm going to go to Mocha to get us some dessert, because we deserve dessert, and then I'm going to come back, and I'm going to roll a joint, and then we're going to get stoned."

I cheered up a little.

And so that's how we spent the first night of the trip that didn't happen, the trip that didn't manifest, the trip that was a complete, er, washout. (Har har.)

Just as we were on the verge of passing out, Mawii got a text from Dhruv. Our class was still on the bus, stuck, stranded, because of - wait for it - landslides.

Perhaps we shouldn't have, but we chortled ourselves to sleep.

The story of a dream untold.

2011-10-13T18:03:00.010+05:30

She always found it sort of embarrassing to admit she had dreams. In college, most of her friends didn’t talk about dreams – they were too busy crafting blueprints, reading assignments, drinking beer, finding love and losing it. Sometimes though, four or five of them would get together in the tiny little room she rented above the busy marketplace. It would be quiet then, because it was after midnight, and even the market area, usually so crammed with college students with Kants and Hegels and Juliets swirling in their heads, and young men and women who’d just stepped foot into the real world, and beggars who’d known the real world since they’d been little children lurking outside coffee shops, and shopkeepers who could tell just how torn a money note had to be before it was deemed totally unacceptable, even this area, so crowded and spilling over with all these lives and the accompanying sounds, sights, and smells – it was quiet then. A couple of dimly lit street lamps cast the obligatory harsh orange light on silent streets, a few dogs dutifully curled up near gutters along with shapeless bundles that during the day were something close to human beings.

Anyway, they’d meet, about four or five of them, and they’d have a few beers and they’d light a few joints, and in between talking about all the regular stuff, they’d also sometimes lower their guards down, just enough to speak some sort of truth about themselves, about what they thought, about what they wanted. One night was the same as the other really; they were almost seamless, the way they wove into one another, marvellously forgettable and infinitely timeless.

Seven years later, she’s standing at the corner of a pavement, waiting for the signal to turn green so she can cross, and she is filled with a deep joy that can only be explained slowly, in bits and pieces, and for some reason, with the sun shining on her, so bright that she has to wear sunglasses although she always feels a bit of a fool in them, and her sleek mobile phone clutched tight in her sweaty hand, she remembers one of those nights, and all of a sudden, it is very clear, a photographic memory, even though she’s not sure whether it’s the result of many similar photographs coming together, or a single, brief snapshot, catching her unawares, as yet another taxi sails past her, and the light continues to remain stubbornly scarlet.

She was twenty one years old then, and like most twenty one year olds, she had the world at her feet. They all did, and they knew it, and the thought exhilarated them and terrified them and for the most part, they tried to bury it away because to contemplate it was frightening: too much was at stake, too much was unknown, and it was all too much, sometimes.

“Do you remember when you were little and you used to play that What-I-Want-To-Be-When-I-Grow-Up game?” A said, and though she hasn’t seen A in six years, she can recall her face as if she’d seen her just yesterday. Big trusting eyes (are they still trusting?), a sharp little nose. Pretty, unremarkable, earnest.

“Oh gawd,” drawled M, leaning back on her elbows: a graceless position to be in, but nothing M did could ever be graceless, because M was one of those people who are born to movement.

“I remember,” said C, eyes flushed with cheap wine. “I wanted to marry our electrician.”

A shout of laughter.

“Why?” She’d asked curiously, stubbing out vague memories of the time she was six years old and wanted to marry a carpenter.

“I don’t know,” said C, uncomfortablv. “He was cute. And he always made the lights come on. I guess I just liked the idea of being with someone who could make darkness disappear.”

There was a pause that very briefly threatened to grow serious before she snorted with laughter and soon they were all rolling around the bed and the floor, shrieking with mirth, and that was why she loved them, that was why they were different from all her other friends.

“What do you want to do now?” said M, stubbing out her cigarette and lighting another. She watched M’s face, its angles thrown into sharp relief against the feeble flickering of the flame.

Fine bone structure, dear.

“After college? I want to go to Oxford,” said C dreamily. “I want to go and read a lot and then I want to find a niche and learn all about it and think my own thoughts about it and then I want to write realms and realms of useless papers on it, and teach ‘em all to students...and I want a garden of my own that grows really nice roses.”

She could see C doing that: leading a quiet academic life, revolving around libraries and gardens, and silver rimmed glasses that lay forgotten on polished wooden tables, and she felt a pang of envy.

“Mine never changed. I wanted to write about war and soldiers when I was little and I still do, I guess.” A shot a secret look at M, and she didn’t understand it then and she’s not sure if she understands it now while crossing the road – the light has finally turned green – but either way, she reckons it isn’t important.

That had been the first time she’d heard about A wanting to be a war correspondent and it surprised her because though she could see M doing it, A was the sort of person who just...well, she just sort of floated along, and it sounded terrible to her then, and it still sounds terrible to her now, but that didn’t make it any less true.

“I am going to scram to one of the biggest cities in the world,” said M, not drawling for once, but she suppressed a smile anyway because the thought of M not wanting to live in one-of-the-biggest-cities-in-the-world would have been as ludicrous as the thought of A traipsing around in the middle east or wherever wars happened, dusty and earnest, with a forgotten pen tucked behind her ear and a state of the art laptop swinging from her side. “And once I’m there, I’m going to get a job publishing – or in fashion, I just can’t choose, damn it – and I’m going to make a lot of money and marry someone incredibly handsome and ambitious, and have the perfect family, and deep down all the while, I’m going to be incredibly miserable.”

“Why would you want to be miserable?” asked C incredulously.

She saw the corners of M’s mouth turning up. A secret little smile. “Oh come on, you lot. Like I’d ever be happy if I couldn’t be miserable.”

Laughter filled the room – no stranger to it – once again.

“What about you? You’ve been surprisingly quiet, love.” C turned to her, drawing her in, which was a little odd – she can see it now, as she pauses briefly outside a clothing store to admire the red coat that warms the cold mannequin – because she was usually the sort of person who dove right into things. Or pretended to, anyway.

But they were talking about dreams.

They knew her well so she had to put up a good performance and the only way she could do that was by half convincing herself that she was about to tell the truth.

“I want...” she paused for a second, and took a deep drag of her cigarette. “I want to be a travel writer. I want to travel all over the world and I want to write about what I see – half funny, entirely forgettable stories that make people laugh, just then, when they’re reading it. And eventually, I want to meet the love of my life – maybe have children, maybe not – and keep travelling and exploring and...” she trailed away.

“That’s perfect for you,” said C enthusiastically, clapping her hands and forgetting she had a glass of cheap red wine in the left one. While they were all busy cleaning it up, and laughing hysterically at their own incompetence, M’s eyes met her own. M knew she was lying, and if ever eyes could talk, hers did then.

Pretend I’m telling the truth, don’t ever ask me, don’t ever probe, just play along.

M turned to look at A who was hiccupping uncharacteristically and her eyes crinkled with laughter. M, aggressive, untactful, full of curiosity, had somehow, incredibly, received her message. For a brief moment, she wondered if she’d been imagining it, but when M glanced her way again, she realised that she hadn’t, and felt a surge of overwhelming gratefulness.

And now it's seven years later and she's walking down the road in a city she's always wanted to live in - and now she is, she really is - and the sun is bright and the breeze is sharp enough to add colour to her colourless cheek, and her eyes are brighter than they have been in a very long time, her shoulders are mingling with other shoulders, her legs are becoming part of a world of legs, her future is being lost in other futures, and then she turns a corner - the light is dazzling - and she can't be seen anymore.

On the stage.

2011-10-07T23:56:00.002+05:30

The line between tragedy and comedy is a very thin one. It's easy to cross, it's just a matter of twisting perspective.

If in the realm of tragedy, don't stay there. Tragedy is all very well in literature - it has nobility, it has transformation, it has reflection, it has long cold nights under the stars where the world revolves around you, and only you, and the rest ceases to matter.

It is pointless.

We are all actors on our own stages, but we have no real audience. And why should we? Everyone has their own spotlight, they have no time to pause for someone else's except for a moment: a brief glance, a brief smile, a brief sigh.

So you're alone with your own life, your own problems, your own stage and with an audience that is truly made up of no one but yourself.

See the funny side of things, realise how unimportant the important is. Be dazzled, be bewildered, be surprised, astonished, and bemused at the way the script slowly unravels itself, the ink curving its way into sense only a drop at a time. Look back at the second that has passed and realise that you've survived it, you've lived to speak another line, and be grateful.

Oh yes, and laugh.

If you're on your own, you might as well hear the sound of your own laughter, and it is the easiest sound in the world to live with, for among other things, laughter can be silent too sometimes.

Before December.

2011-10-01T22:28:00.002+05:30

They cannot touch you in the sky,
Those things that made you cringe,
That you disliked.

Shrill voices, suffocating smoke
coiling its way from crushed half cigarettes.
Poisoned words, cloaked.

Tottering girls on magic pills,
Blue inked poetry, smashed guitars asleep on pavements,
No, they never will.

No, their claws can't reach that high,
So I shall softly stroll a beach,
For neither can I.

Under the stars, suitably grieving,
Sand crunching underfoot, suitably dressed,
Suitably singing.

Grey ash spewed out by a chlorined fountain,
Drowned in murky water. Or perhaps merely asleep,
On some immortal mountain.

I will never learn.

2011-09-27T11:36:00.002+05:30

Why am I incapable of working systematically? Every year, I tell myself that this time it will be different, this time I will be prepared, and every year it's the same old story.

I tried, I really did. I've been bloody living in the library for the past month, so why haven't I done any work? What was I doing?

I was howling about this to Friend, who, very puzzled, said, "I don't understand. I've been seeing you in the library everyday. I thought you were working."

"I THOUGHT I WAS WORKING TOO."

"But what were you doing?"

I don't know what I was bloody doing, when I think back to the hours spent in the library, my recollection is fragmented: reading books that had nothing to do with college work, reading the occasional tutorial assignment, writing out long emails to far away friends and never finishing them, playing Phish and - I have A.O. to thank (blame?) for this -Johnny Flynn, over and over and over again.

Alright. Maybe that's why my assignments are still unwritten.

But that's not it. The past four days, I've put everything on hold. Just to work. AND I HAVEN'T WORKED. I start working on Heart of Darkness as a modernist text, I don't know how to go about it, so I switch to Nature being the ostensible protagonist in Wordsworth's poetry, and that just bores the hell out of me, so I switch back to Heart of Darkness again, and I don't actually do anything because I am a useless fool. And Mawii's no help either. She's been sitting at her desk diligently everyday, but every time I look across the room, her head is in her arms and she is asleep.

It's all Mawii's fault. If I was living with Naomi or Supurna this would not have happened. On the other hand, if I was living with Naomi or Supurna I would have drowned myself by now from sheer agony at my own ineptitude. Back to Mawii. She should be inspiring me to work. Watching her sleep is not inspiring. It just reassures me that there is someone out there, very close by, who faffs as much as I do, and having someone else faff validates my own faffing.

Oh good. I feel a meltdown on its way.

So I will do what I always do when I'm having a meltdown: sleep.

Kings.

2011-09-26T22:23:00.003+05:30

A makeshift circle. Cards, new and crisp. Beer. Wine. The same old, same old, same old, same old.

An attempt to disconnect, an attempt to view it all dispassionately but then someone draws a Queen and it's a waterfall and the wine slips so effortlessly down your throat, and your vision gets that much hazier, and your laughter gets that much easier.

And it is genuine, you can't deny that.

"Never have I ever done hard drugs."

No one swigs their drink which is quite strange, because everyone is twenty at the very least and everyone smokes up - some more than others - and everyone drinks (hello, you're playing Kings after all) and some of them are what the people who speak the same language long dead critics do when they're sitting in the ugly cafe and looking disapprovingly at the length of your hemline would call, if this was twenty years ago, fast.

Later, someone comes up to you and wonders in a vague, uninterested, just to pass the moment kind of way whether you're going to record this and you are, you knew you were going to even as it was all happening, but what is the point really?

One evening is pretty much the same as another, they flow seamlessly: the same faces, the same jokes, the same music, but the truth is it doesn't make them any less fun, it doesn't make them any less welcome. Mindless moments of laughter are not to be dismissed, not to be allowed to grow old. Precious, useless, timeless.

2011-09-23T16:06:00.004+05:30

They don't make men like this anymore. To quote Jason, not always the most articulate of people, "He was class, man."

Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway.

2011-09-06T12:14:00.006+05:30

Turner is generally considered to have deplored the Industrial Revolution. The absence of men, and of man made objects (apart from ships being ripped apart by seas) from his paintings, suggest the dominance, the arrogance, the victory of a Nature more sublime, more divine, than any person could comprehend.

Looking at his paintings makes me feel small. The dazzling light, with even shadows being aglow with crimson and gold, the suggestion of space stretching beyond fences set by eternity, the brush strokes that veil a sharp, clear scene in a hazy mist of light, elements of the awesome, the titanic: a sort of gentle rebuke that the world is, always has been, and always will be, greater than we can possibly imagine.

This particular picture disturbs those fragments slightly. The eye is instantly drawn to the black train, the solid bridge, away from the sky in its gently coloured turbulence. The train is not still: it is moving, and moving fast, so fast it should be a blur, and it is a blur, but at the same time, concrete and arrogant, master of the painting.

I can't separate the painting from the artist. What was he thinking? What was he trying to say? If you look at the Romantic artist as a prophet like figure - is this the prophecy Turner was making? Did he, with shimmering oil paints in lieu of a crystal ball, look out of his window one morning, towards the end of his life, and feel, with a sharp, short stab, that the future was one of rain, steam, speed? Goodbye seas that play merrily with history's ships, goodbye endless skies that throw Icaruses down, let's all get into a train and move as fast as we can, try and run over Time itself, and see where it takes us?

And what of the hare towards the bottom right corner? Nature runs too. But can it beat the flashing black steamlined monster that is beautiful in its way: human hands are capable of creating beauty, even the sounds of harsh screeching metal and spitting steam cannot deny that.

And as the old man set his brushes aside and gazed at it, in his studio perhaps, with polished wooden floors and a wind scented sunrise pouring through the windows, did he think to himself that he'd created a promise, or a warning, or perhaps a bit of both? Or did he simply smile ruefully, knowing that all the black steam engines in the world wouldn't be able to strip the sun that he'd spent a lifetime worshipping of its splendour, though vainglorious attempts would try.

Susan asked me to. (Sort of.)

2011-09-04T12:55:00.011+05:30

10:25 susan: trisha do you want to contribute something to our journal

10:26 please please?

me: dyou want to take something from my blog?

10:27 susan: wouldnt you rather write something new to be published?

me: nope.

susan: its coming out end of this month

me: aaargh. if i think of something i'll send it in then.

susan: write about the rain

10:28 its been raining like mad in the nights

me: im not going to write about the rain.

i'm asleep at night.

susan: same here

i keep missing it

me: hahaha

susan: and in the morning its fucking wet and everyone's talking about it

perplexing.

They say it rains at night.

Dark clouds rolling their way through darker skies, splitting apart, ripped apart, by shreds of silver stark lightening, tidal waves broken into teardrop fragments crashing their way to the dusty bowels of concrete cities, winds by the thousand churning the still and murky air.

And inside, tucked away in tiny walled boxes, you sleep. You sleep, with sweat trickling down the end of your nose, down the crevices of your neck, forming patterns around your damp hair on your bricked pillows, and you toss and turn uncomfortably.

What passes through your mind? Glimmers of unread tutorial readings, perhaps. Or the knowledge that the next day's going to be as hot as the day that has just shrivelled up and died: as hot as hell, basically. Either way, you lie there, half asleep and half awake, not hearing the welcome sound of rain lashing and whipping the walls and pavements, invisible even to the unlit street lamp that never works, the one that stands just outside the temple where they start singing in unbearable brash voices at six in the morning.

Strange how you don't hear the rain, but you hear that music (a word used loosely) and the ringing of the bells and you crack open an eye, knowing you still have an hour to sprawl ungracefully on your filthy sheets before being late to class.

And then, finally, when you step outside in a valiant attempt to tolerate a new day: the sun. It shines, it shines, it shines, and your head hurts, and water starts trickling its way down your neck and it's not because you didn't dry yourself properly after your bath.

The ground is ever so slightly damp though the steamy morning will soon dry it out, and later, at college, while you're sitting in the library, Dhruv plonks himself down next to you and describes to you, loudly and unabashedly (and you thought libraries were supposed to be quiet), how hard it rained last night and how cool and refreshing it was, and how he sat watching the rain thinking thoughts appropriate to a third year student of literature (green tea versus peppermint, though he will lie about this if you ask).

You're still thinking about rain as you cycle your way home and perhaps this is why, when you hear a faint rumble and the air suddenly cools for the split half of a second, your heart leaps in a way that portends cardiac arrest in the future, and the corners of your mouth prepare to turn upwards to form a rusty smile.Perhaps things are beginning to look up.

But no. The rumble was a bus that just thundered past you, forcing your cycle into the gutter, and the coolness was because you passed the metro station and a smear of air conditioning had escaped onto the street.

Heart settles back into place, corners of your mouth turn down again, and as you lie awake later that night, waiting for the rain that does not come, you comfort yourself with the thought that winter will have to arrive eventually, conveniently forgetting the frozen, smoggy months spent shivering under two duvets and layers of thermal underwear and a monkey cap (if Bengali).

Lesson learnt: if not in possession of air-conditioning or heaters (specific to context), the only thing that's going to see you through life is that old cliche, a bad memory.

Note: The day after this post was written, it rained and rained and rained, and the weather is currently all things wonderful. You just can't catch a break sometimes.

2011-08-28T16:11:00.001+05:30

Men. Pah.

Resolutions.

2011-08-23T19:19:00.002+05:30

I was just explaining to Mawii how I've sunk to a very, very low place the past few weeks - maybe months. From tomorrow things are going to change. How? Here's how:

1. I will go running every day, not sporadically, but regularly, faithfully, and - er - tirelessly. This will release endorphins into my blood stream and make me a happy, cheerful individual. It will also mean that I'll be able to parade around beaches in my sexy red swimming costume without sucking my tummy in.

2. I will stop smoking up before I go to sleep at night. I'll rely on the exercise to make me sleepy, not weed. I don't smoke up during the day, or with people, so that's alright. But the night thing has to go too.

3. Reading's increased, but needs to increase more. Apart from college work - which I will do sincerely and punctually - I will read at least three non college related books per week.

4. I'm going to stop saying nasty (although hilariously funny, seriously) things about people as well. And make an effort to talk to people I don't know instead of staring through them as if they're invisible.

5. I will be neater. An organised environment makes for an organised mind or something similar and ridiculous. So. I will a) make my bed every morning, b) not leave ashtrays scattered around on the floor, c) not leave empty water bottles and juice boxes scattered on the floor, d) not leave dirty laundry scattered on the floor, d) do my laundry twice a week, e) dust my room.

6. I AM GOING TO STOP SMOKING. Eventually. For now, I will reduce it. Starting tomorrow, I'm not going to let myself have more than five cigarettes and I will gradually reduce them from there. I've bought a pipe, and I will keep it in my mouth constantly and suck on it and thereby satisfy my oral fixation (oh, Freud) without slowly killing myself at the same time.

Okay, I think that's about it.

I don't expect all this to miraculously happen overnight, but starting tomorrow (tomorrow is such a convenient concept, but I'm serious) I will follow these guidelines. It should be easier now that I've actually written them out.

Oh yeaaaaaah. I love overhauling my soul.

2011-08-21T11:00:00.000+05:30

The past two days have quite possibly been the worst this year has thrown at me.

However, I will not let existential crises, uncertainties about the future, emotional turmoil, landslides, filled buses, agonising heat, and lost contact lenses deter me.

A conscious decision to not sulk (much).

I impress myself sometimes, I really do.

The Potato Eaters

2011-08-17T19:52:00.004+05:30

The little girl with her back to you.

She's heard the call of something that has transformed her forever. Did it start after she took the plunge, after she discovered delights and complexities she didn't think could ever exist? Or was it something that, unknown to her, controlled her movements, propelling her across broken roads and fields of ash?

It ripples through her, forming balls of cast iron in her stomach, causing her eyes to dart frantically in every direction conceivable except the direction she most wants to turn her face towards. It does something to her mouth, her words, her voice - they become alien to her, they rise out of her body, and slip into one of those impossibly bright, impossibly fast, impossibly loud, probably empty cars that have not yet been invented rolling contentedly up concrete slopes: blank, focused, blank. It does something to her movements: she becomes tense, tense to the point of tightness, yet she can never be still. Hands have to move, legs have to move, hips have to move, even fingers...anything, just anything, because stillness seems incongruous.

Why doesn't she take the final step - a step that would plunge her into a world unknown, unsought, undreamt? Perhaps she knows that she will find pain and pleasure beyond her imagination there, but never fulfilment. Apparently there comes a time in everyone's life when they know what they want: fear, ambition, morals, none of these can distort it. That has not happened to her yet and there is nothing she can do, she feels, except wait.

A rough wooden table, candlelight, work, banality, ordinariness, goldfish in the bowl syndrome, love, security, contentment, family.

No, she is not ready to leave the painting, because of a whisper: a whisper quieter, softer, and (she hopes) stronger than the call. The hint of a promise, the promise being nothing more than a fleeting and unextraordinary moment imprisoned by eternity, having escaped those gentle and persuasive hands of time

2011-08-14T20:44:00.005+05:30

I don't know if you remember this, but right up to the time you were eight years old, you'd welcome the mornings. I don't mean that as a sort of phrase, as a sort of sentence just to highlight that you were cheerful and enthusiastic. No, you'd actually welcome them.

When you were woken up, those were the days when it was the polished cello voices that woke you, and not the harsh shriek of metal tick tocks, you'd let your pursed up little mouth relax and the corners would turn up and sometimes, a flash of impossibly perfect white teeth would be revealed, and then - only then - would you open your eyes, and look first at the face of the person with the cello in her throat, and then outside the window. If it was sunny, you were happy. If it rained, you were happier. But you were happiest when the sky outside was low and still and calm, and the trees below were whispering secrets to each other, and hundreds of winds blew, carrying carefully, in the palms of their hands, the smell of rain.

It was that kind of day one Sunday in July. You pretend not to remember it, but you do.

You remember waking up to your perfect morning and running downstairs after a hasty breakfast and you remember, sharper than anything else, the sight of a door on the second floor, open, which was odd for nine thirty in the morning, with shoes lying carelessly around it. You remember thinking that it was odd, because you'd been through that door hundreds of times before, and it had never done anything so unusual.

You remember him coming down the steps and feeling a sharp stab of jealousy because he seemed more concerned about her than the swim that you'd so carefully planned, and you remember looking at him with a sort of sadness in the pit of your stomach, because he was going to leave very soon and your eight year old world didn't yet know how to exist without him.

The sun came out while he spoke to you - harsh, blinding, ruthless. And then you heard it, from him, and you really shouldn't have been able to comprehend it all at once, because if you heard it now you know you wouldn't be able to. But children can be very wise, they say, and you realised that it was possible to feel and not feel at the same time. Never had knowledge come to you so swiftly, and twelve years later, it still hasn't left you. Pain really can take over the body, it can slice its way down mercilessly, hacking out paths for itself: in your limbs, your chest, your back, your stomach, your fingers, your face, your throat. You feel it, you can actually feel it, taking over you, but the more it spreads, the more paralysed you get, and I can understand why.

You went swimming that afternoon anyway.

The night that followed was hard, with a different kind of pain. This pain was even harsher, it was more brutal, more forceful, it didn't let you hide. But it also gave you relief, it set you free, and by that, I mean that it didn't stop you from breathing like the other kind did - it pounded away at you until you just had to swallow great gulps of air, along with salt water.

It's funny though. I've only just realised it.

You went swimming that afternoon as if nothing had happened. It's a pattern that has repeated itself more than once, and one that you're not finished with yet.

And your favourite kind of days are still the windy, rain scented ones.

Do you still welcome mornings?

I'm not quite sure, but I think you try.

Scene from the metro.

2011-08-07T20:11:00.001+05:30

The ladies compartment in the metro is crowded as usual. Bodies pressed close together and sweat trickling down faces despite the air conditioning. The floor can't be seen under all the brightly painted toenails.

An old lady pushes her way through and a young girl leaps up to give her a seat. The lady sits down with a sigh of relief and a grateful glance. She closes her eyes for a few minutes. At the next stop, a harried young mother enters with a little girl. The child is small and thin and her eyes are very big and very dark in her pale little face. She's standing at the old lady's knee - and she is lost amongst the crowd, standing no higher than anyone's waist.

The old lady smiles at the girl and beckons.

"Come and sit on my lap," she says.

The girl shrinks back a little, scared. A small hand clutches the end of her mother's sari tightly.

"Come here, my child," says the old woman, still smiling. She looks up at the young mother and you can make out some sort of kinship in the exchange of their gazes. A sense that they both know what the other is experiencing, a sense that in this crowded compartment filled with strangers, they, sort of, just a little, know what the other is thinking.

The girl has lost interest in the old woman. She's looking up at all the faces hovering above her. Most aren't looking at her, they're talking to other people, or looking down at their phones and ipods. A few smile down at her. There's something incredibly endearing about the child.

Slowly she inches closer to the old lady and soon, she's standing at her knee. The old lady doesn't say anything. The girl looks up at her and, in return, gets a wink. The eyes widen. Another wink. A little giggle, so unexpected, it surprises even the giggler.

The little girl gets off with her mother a few stops later, carried away in the current of the crowd that surges around her, engulfing her.

And the old lady closes her eyes again, clenching and unclenching the hand that the little girl had, at some point, slipped her own hand into, confidingly, trustingly - as the train gallops on, down its usual route.

The Goat.

2011-07-31T18:09:00.000+05:30

It can't even be called a road, really. The little winding mess that links Beckbagan to the Mainland China lane.

Coming back from school, I always used to keep an eye out for Millie's Primary School, shoved into one side of the street. A little cement box, with the door open and darkness within, but never so dark that you couldn't see row after row of sweaty pupils and a harassed teacher intently - some less than others - engaged in the great learning process.

If I craned my neck a bit, and if it wasn't too sunny, I could see the blackboard inside and the things on it. Didn't seem too different from the things written on the blackboard in my school. Sometimes, the times table. Sometimes, a caricature of some unfortunate soul whose less than stellar body parts were exaggerated for the benefit of public entertainment.

Next to Millie's, stands a pile of makeshift houses surrounding a little square filled with people and birds and cows and goats and puppies, all existing in the harmony that comes with the passing of time. Potential photographs - a crow sitting placidly on the back of a cow chewing hay, a puppy rolling gleefully in the gutter, a little girl picking the puppy up by the scruff of its neck and not seeming to mind that it's covered in mud and cow poop, holding it very close to her chest and disappearing into one of the houses. Puppy has a home. Goats, nudging each other, as they try to get to their food. An occasional angry goat-sound if one of them tries to be too greedy. Animals have a certain etiquette too.

At the end of the road, on the corner, a green and white mosque. Outside, lots of people making noise. A game of cards just by its doors, a yell as someone triumphs, a different kind of yell as someone orders a child to go home. Three or four women drying their saris on the pavement nearby shaking their heads at the futility of the opposite sex. A row of dilapidated cars, rusty and faded, living out their last days. And inside - the doors are usually open - a big empty hall radiating a stillness that the tumult outside does not destroy.

And the goat. The goat on the chair.

There has been a goat standing on a chair on that road for as long as I can remember. It doesn't really do much - it just stands there, surveying its surroundings with a look of haughty grandeur, not unwoven with a certain peace, a certain surety.

Sabir lives in that locality. Once, we were driving through and as we passed the goat, I asked him why it stood on the chair all the time.

"Oh," he said, airily. "He does that. He just likes standing on chairs. He'll go into a sulk if the owner doesn't let him."

"Why does he like standing on chairs?" I asked.

Sabir thought deeply for a minute.

"Well," he said. "You can't expect a goat to sit on it can you?"

Fair point.

The last time I was in Calcutta, when we were crossing that area, I looked for the goat. He wasn't there, neither was the chair.

"Chagol ta kothai?" I asked.

A cryptic question, but Sabir understood.

"He died earlier this year. Just got sick in the morning and was dead that night before anyone realised what was happening." He sounded sad. The goat was a local pet. Everyone knew about the goat-who-stood-on-the-chair. He'd been around forever, and I suppose people didn't expect that to change. I didn't.

I didn't say anything because there was nothing to say really.

When I was going back to Delhi, we wove our way down that street on our way to the airport. Right next to Millie's, stood a cot in the sun. A goat was standing solemnly on the cot.

Oh time, you trickster.

Famous last words.

2011-07-26T16:16:00.002+05:30

Surely this is a moment worth living for?

PS Stumbled across the photo on someone else's blog.

A reply.

2011-07-23T13:36:00.003+05:30

Did he look at her with the eyes of an artist or with the eyes of a man?

The bright metal suspended below her ear, the light bathing the blue of the cloth, saving her face from shadow. Mouth ever so slightly open, the gleam of her lower lip.

And she? What was she thinking?

The book has given her a name, given her a life, given her thoughts and dreams and desires and loves. But she lived long before the book was born.

It doesn't really look as if she's thinking deeply, does it? It looks like she's simply turned her head, a tint of exasperation perhaps, a hint of what-do-you-want-now, interwoven with something else I cannot name. Innocence? Perhaps. Or knowledge. Strange how the same look can come from two very different fountainheads.

Why do we look at paintings of people we don't know, people who weren't anyone really, just anonymous faces, not even beautiful, who were lucky enough to be captured by someone whose long fingers created what eyes saw, what most eyes do not see?

Ordinary, so ordinary. Mona Lisa, whoever she was, was also probably ordinary. An enigmatic smile means nothing, just as these eyes, so wide set, mean nothing.

Ordinary people. Many days worth of gazing and the sharp lines of pencil on canvas and blue being painted over black to settle next to yellow. Hours of, not inspiration, but banal work.

All for what?

A face set in a single brief moment and centuries later, a strange longing to know more about the person it belonged to. There is no point, really. It's just age old human curiosity.

The Thing About Harry Potter.

2011-07-17T12:08:00.003+05:30

I don't remember how old I was when I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Probably about eight. I remember reading the second one, and the third one, and waiting impatiently for the fourth.

What was it about Harry Potter? I'm not sure. I've never been a big fan of fantasy (except Lord of the Rings). I think it was because apart from the magic, apart from the plots twisting this way and that, and intriguing hints, and the never ending battle between good and evil, the characters were so endearingly human. They weren't my friends, I wasn't so far gone as that, but there was something essentially comforting about turning thirteen and fourteen and fifteen, and seeing them change with me.

There was a brief period of time when, at bed time, Daddy would read the first Harry Potter book aloud to me and Mum. I'd already read it - but it was the first time both of them were reading it and I remember lying in bed, with my mother's arm around me and my father sitting at the foot, and I remember how every night they'd insist on reading only one chapter and every night, they wouldn't be able to stop, and had to continue to the next one. It didn't last long - maybe a few weeks - but when I think of my childhood and security and sanctuary, it is that picture that comes to mind: being nestled between both my parents, feeling sleepy and warm, and listening to the sound of my father's voice and my mother's laughter.

The last book came out the day after what was one of the worst days of my life. I locked myself in my room with it, and for a few hours, I actually managed escaping from the real world and it was...it helped. There was a lot of speculation that Harry Potter was going to be killed off, and I remembered being so worried that that would happen, because after all the poor boy had been through, I just really wanted him to live. And I was pretty fed up with death by then. The ending was disappointing. He lived, but to end a series like that, with a trite "All is well" seemed a huge let down. Thinking back to it now though, maybe that's what I needed. Just something to reassure me that everything was going to be okay even though a tiny rubber squeaky toy lay buried with something more incredibly precious to me than anything ever had been, or has been, in a tiny corner of an overgrown garden in Alipore.

The films haven't really meant much to me. I always resented the attention they took away from the books, and how they commercialised a piece of genuinely good writing to the point where a lot of people, who do appreciate literature, scorn the books themselves. But it's the last film, and since the books ended, the films were always something to look forward to because it meant that the world, and I along with it, wasn't finished with Harry Potter yet. Or rather, he wasn't finished with us.

But it's over now, and I'll watch it, and I'll probably enjoy it, but I won't feel a sense of loss because that happened when I closed the last book and put it down and wondered what there was to look forward to now.

I remember reading something saying that now that the films are over with, maybe the books will be returned to their fans. I think there's a grain of truth in that.

Either way, though there are certain things I don't like about the Potter series - especially the last book - whenever I think of childhood and growing up and coming of age, I will, along with thousands of children, think a little of those books, and of Harry Potter who was as much a part of my formative years as acne, piano lessons, and Farhad Anklesaria (who I fell in love with because he reminded me of Harry Potter).

It was true love (on both fronts). And as illogical, irrational, and ridiculous as it may seem, there ain't no love like true love.

A Step.

2011-07-14T11:52:00.000+05:30

A strange sort of setting for the kind of conversation it was. You'd expect, along with the lights and the murmur of voices and the quick, light footsteps and the sharp clink of glass meeting glass, something else.

It was a conversation I've had with myself, and the route it took was familiar, but at the same time it wasn't, not quite, with unexpected turns and maybe an occasional stop sign, and a brief pause before hesitantly revving up the engine again, pushing foot against accelerator increasingly firmly.

It was important. It was important because before it, what I saw was something that was trying valiantly to be a painting though it really wasn't more than just a few vague smudges. But after, after - it hung before me, jewel bright and linseed scented - firmly in its place, in the castle in the clouds.

Things my friends have taught me.

2011-06-27T16:44:00.000+05:30

Min: Happiness

"You can be happy, Trisha. You can be very happy."

"Great. How?"

"Change your personality. Hypnotism's popular these days."

Man Whore Friend: Acceptance

"You're stupid."

"Excuse me?"

"Don't worry, men like stupid girls. You'll have no trouble getting laid."

Mawii: Karma

"Shit. We should stop bitching about her. Karma, y'know."

"Yeah."

"On the other hand, our bitching about her could be her karma. Yes, I think it most definitely is."

[The bitching continues, but our hearts are lighter].

Akshay: Beauty.

"Let's go. Don't bother with the makeup. It's not going to make you prettier."

Friend: Work Ethic

"Don't be a fucker. Write your assignment. Do something with your life."

"You're right. Have you finished yours?"

"No."

"When is it due?"

"Two days ago."

Jayatri: Nature

"Is that a toad or a frog, Jayatri?"

"Why are you asking me, you freak? Do I look like I know about toads and frogs?"

"You studied Biology."

"Oh yeah... it's a frog."

"Are you making that up?"

*Silence*

"Jayatri?"

"You know, Shourjo was right. There are too many toads and frogs in this world. They should start dissecting them again."

Jahnavi: Alcohol

"Drinking is vile."

Two days later.

"I'm dfunk."

Sharma: Standards

"But she's so ugly. She's not even nice. And you don't even like her."

"Listen, standards aren't important."

"You always say how they're important."

"This was a special case."

"?"

"I was drunk and desperate. Standards don't matter when you're drunk and desperate."

Ketki: Feminism

"I know I'm supposed to be a feminist, Trisha, but all I want is to be married by the time I'm twenty three and live in a little cottage with a garden and a really hot gardener."

A.O: Achievement.

"I just retched into a snowdrift. Score!"

Varun: How Not To Discriminate

"I like boobies. Small boobies, big boobies, it don't matter. Boobies are nice!"

Tanu: Faith.

"I want us to win this world cup so bad, Tanu. I'm actually praying for Tendulkar to stay on."

"Who do you think God is, man?"

My Mother (who isn't strictly a friend, but whatever): Obedience.

"If you don't do what I say, I'll freeze your bank account."

The Boil and the Band-aid

2011-06-16T11:43:00.003+05:30

Friend, who also lives in Calcutta, called the other day because Friend wanted to drink (and meet me, he claimed, although I think it was mostly about the drinking.)

I was feeling ever so slightly Smurfish so I hemmed and hawed and suggested meeting another day.

Friend made the mistake of informing me that he had a horrific boil on his nose and suddenly, the idea of meeting him for a drink didn’t seem too bad. It would give me something to laugh about, and I needed a laugh that day.

We decided to go to Oly. He reached before I did and called to say he was waiting for me outside.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I saw the boil before I saw him.

It was a big boil. A little smaller than a coin. It was on his nose, covering most of his nose. Another little boil was growing higher up on the other side of his nose but it was hidden by this particular boil. Which was, in case I haven’t been emphatic enough, huge. The surrounding area of Friend’s face had turned red, but the boil itself was yellow and looked as if it was about to burst.

Friend tried to pretend he had a sense of humour by telling me that it would burst all over me but I knew that he was just trying to comfort himself, just trying to convince me that he was above caring about boils because people who contemplate the meaning of life as often as Friend does (or claims to do) do not care about boils.

But oh, how he cared. I know he cared.

Friend was also drunk because he’d met another friend before meeting me. He described the bar he went to as we waited for our drinks – red light, he said, so dark you can’t see the face of the person sitting across the table from you. An uncharitable thought came into my mind here, but I did not voice it. I merely thought it was quite convenient that Friend had chosen a dark, shady bar to sit and drink in. Unfortunately, Oly, while shady, is not dark. The bright tube-lights cast a harsh glare on Friend’s boil.

“Why are you being so naka?” said Friend. “Why aren’t you talking?”

I wasn’t talking because I was too busy delighting over his boil. I knew it was karma. Friend is always making fun of my remarkably pig-like nose, and boasting about how “at least ten people” have told him his own nose is attractive. Which is a lie. Friend’s nose, while not as hideous as my own, is nowhere close to being attractive. It is hooked, so hooked that if he dipped it in a pond he would probably catch a fish with it. But anyway. This was karma because while I refrain from making fun of Friend’s nose on a daily basis, he does not extend the same courtesy to me. And now the boil (with another one on the way) had taken over his nose. Serves Friend right.

We talked about other things apart from noses and boils (we briefly touched upon carbuncles), because Friend is a delightful person to talk to. However, Friend did not want to go home drunk and he was already drunk, and I didn’t want to be drunk, so after the first drink, we decided not to have anymore.

But where to go?

“We could go back to my house,” I suggested.

Friend seemed hesitant.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want your mother to see my boil,” said Friend softly.

“That’s alright. She’s out.” This was true. My mother was indeed out. She was at the club exercising. My mother exercises for two reasons: one is so she doesn’t die of heart disease, and the other is so she can drink her two (so she claims, but it’s actually at least four) glasses of whiskey every night and fasten her jeans the next morning as well.

Anyway.

“She won’t be back till ten,” I reassured him. This, unfortunately, was a lie.

Friend knew it. Friend doesn’t always know what I lie about, but he does know that I lie a lot, so he treats practically everything I say as a lie unless I have proof to back up what I’m saying, or unless I’m saying something flattering about him. Which isn’t often, but he’s awfully quick to believe me when I do.

“Trisha. You’re lying, you’re lying.”

“Of course not,” but I couldn’t stop the corners of my mouth from turning up at the thought of Friend parading around in front of my mother with his boil.

“Listen,” I said finally, after ten minutes of to-and-fro conversation, “we’ll pick up some band-aids on the way. You can put the band-aid over your nose and if you do see her – I keep telling you she’s not at home – and she asks what happened, you can tell her you got hit by a football.”

Friend’s boil infested face brightened visibly. Even the boil seemed to glow more.

After walking up and down Park Street looking for a taxi to take us to Ballygunge, we found one. On the way, we stopped at a pharmacy.

“You go,” said Friend. “You’re closer to the pavement.”

“Don’t want to buy the band-aids yourself because you’re afraid they’ll instantly know why you want them?” I asked, and the look on Friend’s face told me I was right.

So I went and bought the band-aids.

Then as the taxi continued on its way, I carefully taped one over Friend’s boil. Loose enough to cover it, but not so tight that it would pin the boil down and cause it to ooze.

Yuck. The things I do for Friend.

Friend looked at himself admiringly in the mirror. “I could easily say it’s a football injury,”

“Sure,” I said.

We got back to my place. Mother wasn’t home. Then Mother called to say she was on her way back with my uncle.

We were going upstairs just as they entered. My mother smiled at Friend, didn’t notice the band-aid. Friend didn’t recognise my uncle because he’s been taken over by a ginger handlebar moustache.

“Who was that?” He asked me when we were sitting outside.

“My uncle,” I said.

“THAT was your uncle?”

“Moustache,” I said.

We sat there for a bit. Friend ever so slightly uncomfortable. I didn’t blame him. Not only did he have a band-aid on top of a boil, but the last time he was over, Pud Kaka joined us for a beer and at one point made me turn the light on so he could “see this fellow’s face”. Luckily for Friend, Pud Kaka didn’t raise any objections to the face. Although, I thought, watching Friend sulk under the moonlight with band-aid stretched across his nose and a suspicious bump underneath the band-aid, Friend might not get so lucky this time round.

“You’re going to laugh about this with your mother after I leave, aren’t you?” said Friend suspiciously.

“Of course not,” I said unconvincingly.

“You’re a fucker. You’re also going to write a blog post about this and make fun of me, aren’t you?”

This, I couldn’t deny.

“I’ll write something. I’ll write a guest post.”

“Alright,” I said.

Friend left soon after, refusing to say goodbye to my mother and my uncle, because he was ashamed of his face.

Later on, over dinner, I told my mother about Friend’s boil. I told it with gusto. We sniggered with gusto as well.

(Sorry, Friend, but you knew I would).

Friend, who is demanding his own say in this, has written his version of events which I am posting below. He has referred to me throughout as porkypig but this is only to make himself look better. Friend has used elaborate language (don’t let it fool you because Friend is a fucker) to hide the simple moral behind this story: When you have an ugly boil on your nose, listen to your grandmother (Friend did not) and stay at home.

The Boil and the Band-aid: Friend’s Side of the Story.

red swells. a sea trapped within a volcano, swarming with ghost warriors. dead cries traverse the molten space, rebounding off the closed top, anticipating the beginning of a furious, heroic, horrific outpouring.

the eye roams and settles on the boil. the nose might not universally gratify nasal-aesthetes, but the boil exudes monstrous charm, proudly displaying its viscous viciousness, its crimson charisma. the nose belongs to a callous hound, seemingly impervious to the grotesque import of noseboils, but receptive to porkypigs (and their mothers). a strange situation arises: callous hound imperfectly imagines how facial aberrations might offend mothers of porkypigs, and for the first time, ponders about the postmodern totem. callous hound is also prosaic and silly, and thus commits a significant crime: he calls the boil a boil.

new cries, new pain. anguish expelled in a furious frenzy: a tiny opening. redhole. spurt.

the decision to confront mother must entail shrouding, if not suppression, of the thing-that-repulses. meanings crumble as callous hound imagines his salvation. beauty turns into a silly monolith inside his head, unsophisticated and unvarying. callous hound remains steadfast in his desire to conceal terrible beauty. porkypig easily slips into the role of shallow-accomplice and maliciously plants an idea in his head. time speeds up. passing-lights, horn-blares, pharmacy-pause, band-aid.

anguish reaches a crescendo, and then silence. beauty breathes still, indignantly perhaps, into the uninspiring heart of adhesive bandage.

(note#1: porkypig is a strange creature. her intentions are never clear. she assumes contradictory guises to hoodwink insecure souls, gently feeding poison balm to indecisive callous hounds. something needs to be done about her, but who-knows-what.

note #2: the volcano shall erupt, irrespective of how socially insecure callous hounds handle themselves (and their noseboils)

note #3: mother's eye roamed across the bandage and responded with ordinary, fleeting warmth. callous hound struck salvation.)

The green green grass of Home.

2011-06-10T19:05:00.004+05:30

I’ve been home for a day and a half and I’m already going crazy. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to complain unfairly. There is air-conditioning and wonderful food (and real coffee) and the most comfortable bed in the world with clean sheets that smell of sleep, and I am incredibly glad to be back in this decrepit old city – always less decrepit, somehow, when viewed from my terrace at sunset, with the streaked sky and the occasional crooked tree trying (and failing) to look impressive and the shadows of eagles flying in circles around the green dome of a mosque.

But I’m telling you, I’m going insane.

It’s no one’s fault really. The really important ones, like Minnie and Jahnavi and Akshay and Ishani, aren’t here, and the rest are so used to their ways, it’s difficult to call someone up at noon demanding to be entertained. They’re all asleep. Unfortunately, they’re all asleep two hours later as well. Strange that I’m finding this problematic, but I’ve been filled with some insane sort of energy the past couple of days, and I can’t sleep for more than seven hours. The rest of the time I want to do something, but not on my own, not right now, I’m tired of being a hermit, and there’s no one to do it with.

I did go to a dinner party last night, expecting to spend most of the night standing in a corner glaring at people like I usually do, but I had a good time. I talked to people. A lot of people I thought were stupid, weren’t stupid at all. But there were a couple who remained confirmed in their stupidity (can it be true? Am I quoting Dryden? I think so) so I wasn’t completely disillusioned.

It’s also a little difficult getting used to my mother again. Yeah yeah, she can be wonderful and unfortunately I think I might love her more than I love, or have ever loved, anyone but she’s also not quite right in the head. Sometimes.

Take this morning for instance:

Mother: Wake up.

Me: Uhhhh.

Mother: Are you hungover?

Me: Uhhhh.

Mother: Have you been smoking again?

Me: Uhhhh.

Mother: What do you want for breakfast?

Me: Uhhhh.

Mother: Do you want breakfast?

An eye opens. Then the other eye. Images of Real Coffee and muesli with bananas and a piece of toast slathered with crunchy peanut butter (Skippy’s only please) chase sleep away.

Mother: She hasn’t made your bed right!

Me: Huh?

Mother: See? The sheet you’ve got covering yourself should actually be the other way around.

Me: Are you serious?

Mother: Yes. It should be the other way. I’ll tell Brihoshpoti about it.

[She did tell Brihoshpoti about it].

Me: Mama…

Mother: *Wandering around my room peering at things*Yes?

Me: It’s a sheet.

Mother: Trisha, I don’t want you smoking in your room. Your room reeks of smoke.

Me: *forgetting temporarily about the sheet like she intended* You’re always telling me not to be deceitful. Isn’t it better than locking myself up in the bathroom and smoking furtively out the window?

Mother: It’s healthier.

Me: Huh?

Mother: It’s healthier because if you smoke in the bathroom you’re not sleeping in your own smoke.

Me: Alright.

Mother: And you need to quit anyway. It’s a filthy habit. I can’t believe you started smoking. When you were little you were so anti-smoking. You’d lecture your father on how bad cigarettes were.

(I didn’t tell her that the last time I saw my dad, I was countering cigarettes with him. In our defence, we both decided it was the best way to curb smoking).

Me: *Realising that at moments like this there’s only one thing to say* Uhhhhh.

Later, (while writing this) I asked her why the sheet bothered her so much.

Mother: It bothers me because when it’s upside down, it looks faded and it hurts the eye. Your room hurts the eye. And don’t you dare make fun of me on your blog because I know your father reads it and the last thing I want is him calling me up and cackling with delight at my expense.

I smiled very sweetly at her.

Hindi Exam: Round Two.

2011-06-05T23:45:00.001+05:30

Unsurprisingly, I failed my Hindi exam last year. Failed spectacularly in fact, with an admirable eight out of fifty. Despite Masterji (who fell sick after a few weeks, don't worry - he's still alive), I had a sinking feeling I was going to fail this year as well.

Was confident at first. I mean, I went to Masterji. I had Notes. I'd also touched his feet (receiving blessings for both my exam as well as to catch a man). I also had a dream in which I passed Hindi. (Friend was in the dream. Friend, who needs a pass if he wants to graduate with his honours degree, failed.)

The day before the Hindi exam, I started feeling a bit helpless. My notes were of no help because I couldn't understand what they were on about. The difference between boli and bhasha, the different kinds of bhasha, etc etc. It was terrible. I vaguely knew what they were about, but I knew I wouldn't be able to reproduce it accurately on paper. Nonetheless, I soldiered on.

Grammar. Opposites. Vilom. Huge improvement: last year I didn't know what vilom meant. Not to mention synonyms. Friend and I quizzed each other on the phone. I can say this now the exam's over but I really didn't think Friend would pass. Friend was worse than I was. He'd spent the past year smirking over how he was going to pass Hindi, but I think hearing about my dream shattered him.

Anyway. This isn't about the preparation (or lack thereof). This is about the exam.

Went into the exam hall with that old familiar feeling: the one where you know you're going to fail, there's nothing you can do, it's out of your hands, it's always been out of your hands, and you just want the next two hours to go by quickly.

The first question. No clue what it meant. But I identified a word: bhogoal and realised it was Geography (oh Manjudi, it turns out you have your uses even now). So then I wrote about the geographical distribution of Hindi. This is what I wrote: Bharat mein 65% loag hindi meh baath kartha hai. Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Dilli, etc. There were a few more states but I didn't know how to spell them.

The second question. The difference between boli and bhasha. Masterji's notes, I thought. Yes! The trouble was even though I vaguely knew what the notes said, I didn't know how to put it down in correct Hindi. So I drew a neat little column, wrote boli on one side, bhasha on the other, and put in a few key words that I remembered. Like, one of them is what you learn at school. The other is the stuff you speak at home. One has vyakaran. The other does not.

Grammar was awesome. I think I might get six marks there. I knew all the synonyms and I knew one viloam and I could identify the nouns and verbs and pronouns. Then we came to the proverbs. The proverbs were a problem. I decided to avoid problems and turned to the next question which are kind of like proverbs and you have to make a sentence using them.

Masterji has warned me about these.

"You will never be able to answer. Your Hindi is too poor," He'd said, shaking his head sadly. "But I will teach you a method." And he did.

'"[Proverb like phrase] ka arth kya hai, Masterji?" Larka Guru ko bola.' Haha. I'm a genius. Except I have a sneaking suspicion that the examiner will be unable to overlook the grammatical errors in that sentence to give me a mark for it, but still. Every little thing counts.

Then was a short essay on mobile phones. I wrote about how they came in many different colours and how there were many different kinds and how "accha nahi hai" for little children today to go about using them. Bloody show offs.

Then there was a letter. Drastic improvement from last year because I actually knew the format this time, thanks to Masterji. Unfortunately, I couldn't make out what the hell I was supposed to say in the letter. But instead of putting little dashes in its body like last year, I merely transfered the question to the body. At best, the examiner will see a few key words and not realise anything. At worst, well...at least I had words there. Words with correct spelling even (since they'd been filched from the question paper).

With great relief, I turned to the last question. An essay.

Mera Priya S-s-s-something.

It started with S and the word looked vaguely familiar. Could it be Subject? Were they asking me to write about my favourite subject? I wasn't sure, but figured I might as well. Kept the essay loose just in case there was a chance that it meant something else.

So I wrote about English and books and authors, and I mentioned I didn't have a favourite author, but went on to write about several (those whose names I could spell). Added a nice little tidbit about VS Naipaul being a misogynist (Naipool bola lekhika accha karke likh nahi sakta hai. Yeh bahooth kharaap baath hai) in case the examiner liked current affairs. Also talked about how I read in English and Bengali (the latter: a lie. I added it in case they thought I was too Anglicised) but not in Hindi. Fervently hoped the examiner would take pity on a poor Bengali, used to language that flows like honey, being forced by Delhi University to sit for a useless exam that is based on a language which is only any good for swearing in.

At the end, I was going to write: Please take pity on me' at the bottom of the page, but there wasn't time. I'd been writing slowly hoping to impress the examiner with my neat handwriting.

That's alright though. I'll write it when I'm back there in the same room next year. I could be optimistic and say that I'll pass this year, but though lying to myself is something I've taken pains to master over the years, even I can't stretch the truth that far.

On the bright side (I believe in bright sides), I'm pleased to note that I didn't take any naukars to sea this time round.

2011-06-04T07:30:00.001+05:30

I'm going to fail my Hindi exam. Again.

The Seven Ages of Woman.

2011-05-21T22:08:00.003+05:30

All the world's a battlefield,
And the women are subtle warriors,
They're armed with Atkins and Chanel,
And they mean business,
Which they transact in seven ways. As an an infant,
Armed only with limpid eyes and gurgling laugh,
Twisting bearded daddies around their little finger.
Then, the pig tailed schoolgirl with satchel,
Polly pocket in hand, an occasional misfit
Wielding a cricket bat. And then, the teenager
With private agonies in the form of a blemish,
Lakme, quick, before Boyfriend sees. Then, the threshold,
Slinking gracefully from school to work, juggling
Men and perfecting, thanks to them, the art of woe.
And then the wife, but this is the twenty first century,
Banner bearing the last name that is her own,
Unlike Madame Bovary [who was a fool]. Menopause.
Declaring war on impending age with needles and corsets,
While bellied husband slips between secretary's sheets.
Retirement. With partner perhaps, or without,
Swaying on humped camels, or sitting by broken blinds,
Wondering whether it really ends as ingloriously as this.
A grandmother now, as dimpled as the
Hope clutched to her sagging breast. And finally, at last,
laying down a lifetime decided by Art, interrupted by
Varicose Veins, tinned eyelashes drift down.
The Unknown Soldier deserved not such a sleep.

I'm not complaining. But.

2011-05-18T13:03:00.001+05:30

Picture a desert at noon in the height of summer and then picture a city filled with cows and flies built on that desert. That's what I'm living in. Baths are no help because the sun is so strong the heat seeps through the tank and does a better job than any geyser I've come across.

Also, I'm in the middle of exams and I've forgotten what seven hours of straight sleep feels like. Or even four.

Also, I went to buy water today because the PG water is too salty. A bird flew into me. It flew into me, beak first, feathers not far behind, into my right arm.

I have a right to complain.

2011-05-07T23:59:00.000+05:30

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1384592/Muslim-religious-leaders-told-leave-U-S-domestic-flight-pilot-refuses-aboard.html

This makes me so wildly, furiously angry.

How do you get the world to stop putting people in boxes?

Why you* should snap me up.

2011-05-04T21:22:00.010+05:30

*You, in this context, is very specific and only applies to a minuscule number of the human population who may or may not exist. (Most women I've come across lean towards the 'may not'.)

Because my exams are around the corner, I spent the evening watching the Bridget Jones movies. (An important relaxation technique as everyone knows which will only serve to enhance my performance in the examination room.) Some of my friends have often told me that when it comes to my love life, I am like her. Heaven forbid.

I do not read self help books (fine, I did read Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, and I did subscribe to the rubber band theory for quite a few years but that was a minor teenage blip), I do not let my decisions be ruled by the doom and gloom of friends, I do not freak out if a boyfriend goes 24 hours without being in touch (although post that, I do start obsessively checking my phone but whatever), and I am not worried about dying a spinster though not a sexless one as a life without sex does seem quite bleak. In fact, come to think about it, I am wonderful and easy going and I am going to list the reasons on this blog so if ever a good looking, intelligent, sophisticated man (tough luck, Dhruv) reads this...

Well. Ahem.

1. I am neither clingy nor needy, demanding communication at all hours of the day/night, needing to be told I'm beautiful, perfect, loved, and other sickening things.

2. I am not insecure about other girls, even if they have long hair, breasts the size (and shape) of melons, willowy waists, legs starting from their neck, can speak in five different languages, etc etc.

3. I would not expect my boyfriend to give me expensive clothes, jewellery, etc etc (yes Diya Ghosh, I am talking to you)

4. If my boyfriend wanted to have nights out with his male friends (poker games, binge drinking, strip clubs - although I might draw the line at a lap dance), I would not kick up a fuss. In fact, I would encourage him to do that (occasionally) instead of sitting at home painting my toenails for me or some such similar thing (I'm talking to you this time, Min).

5. I would not expect my boyfriend to remember our anniversary which is a ridiculous concept anyway unless you're married (man, I'm awesome). Although I would be annoyed if my birthday was forgotten but that is understandable.

6. I do not nag. Much.

7. After a fight, once I've cooled down, if I'm in the wrong, I apologise with great sincerity. (It's not my fault if I'm hardly ever wrong.) Also, I do not hold grudges, constantly bringing up fights that occurred months ago.

8. Although I don't watch much sport on television (Wimbledon and Cricket World Cups excluded), I do follow them in the papers and sports analyses do not bore me especially if they take place in sports bars with lots of beer. And I'm awesome at Tekkan. And Warcraft, despite what some of my male friends claim.

9. I'm a terrible cook, but I make awesome sandwiches. Although if a boyfriend ever told me to "go make (him) a sammich", I would hit him on the head with a frying pan.

10. I could go on and on about how calm, confident, and poised I am(inner poise in this case since I can't walk across a carpet without tripping), but since I know when to stop, I will stop. Another plus point to me.

Really, what an introspective post this has been.

PS I should warn interested personnel that my affections are currently engaged by somebody who better appreciate this post should they happen to chance upon it.

Sex and art. (Fat women take heart.)

2011-05-03T13:51:00.000+05:30

From The Visual Arts: A History. [The words are not my own.]

The little figure of a woman, only four and a half inches high, was found at Willendorf in Austria and is one of the earliest works of art being about 25,000 to 30,000 years old. It's carved out of limestone, and seems originally to have been covered with pigments, of which traces remain.

The exaggerated rotundity of the body has a yielding fleshliness, felt ratherthan seen. The hands resting on the breasts, the arms and the lower legs are no more than sketchily indicated and the woman has no face. Tiny curls of hair cover the entire head. There can be little doubt that she was carved as an image of fertility. Other female figures which are dated slightly later (in millennial terms!) similarly emphasise the breasts, belly and buttocks.

From these figures, there can be little doubt, that the shape most admired in women was one that was soft, rotund, and full, for these shapes were considered the most fertile, and therefore the most sexually appealing.

2011-05-02T20:07:00.002+05:30

What's the point? I'm going to fail.

And fail ingloriously.

2011-04-27T19:21:00.002+05:30

It creeps up on you slowly.
Slowly, slowly, slowly.
Slowly.
It creeps up on you.
BAM.

And you stand in the sun and blink.

Blind man.

2011-04-18T19:52:00.000+05:30

You claim to see so many things. You do, you do, and you're not entirely wrong. That's why you can take a piece of paper and rip it up and then neatly stitch it back together with clean bold figures printed on them without ever having put pen on paper, that's why you can talk endlessly about subjects that other people don't even consider, in your clean and clear, slightly posh but not too posh accent. That's why you can pick up tears and roll them lightly down your finger, twisting your hand this way and that to keep them on course. That's why you can tear and rip and hurt and still have people nestling against you for warmth. That's why you can drive through a black tunnel and your headlights don't blind.

But if you can see so well, how can you miss the pounding, the heaving, the flashing, the topsy turvy on a boat in the middle of a storm, the light that continues to spin spin spin mindlessly, a firefly trapped in a glass jar, desperately hurling itself against its invisible prison, towards an inviting darkness that whispers promises.

No, you can't see.

Or are you wise enough to see and not say anything? If you are, then we all give you less credit than you deserve.

Ahhh.

2011-04-12T14:22:00.000+05:30

One essay. Two marks. First division. Post-grad at a university that will make everyone go ahhh. Not sure what comes after that, but if everyone's ahh-ing, then you assume it will be something good.

Basing your whole life on someone else's ahhh.

It's terrifying.

Sari night.

2011-04-10T16:24:00.000+05:30

With Supurna in the first one, and Mawii in the next two.

2011-04-08T13:59:00.005+05:30

They don't know what love is.

They talk about it for hours. Sometimes they are eloquent, drawing on images and words and carefully etched thoughts. Sometimes they struggle, trying to find the right sounds for something within them that is nothing more than a shadow, a smudge, the lingering impression of an unknown colour.

Does it even matter?

That's the question that scares them the most.

Long drawn out days, with sunlight grazing their shoulders, hands clasped together. There is laughter, sometimes harsh words, sometimes a soft nip on a ear, sometimes a mouth exploring secret crevices unknown to everyone who lives outside their honey tinted world. There is friendship, companionship, and sometimes - understanding. It's the understanding they appreciate the most because is there really anything more wonderful than being able to articulate thoughts and feelings that have long been asleep, or perhaps in hiding, and watch them travel through a smooth stream to be grasped, wholly and completely, by another human hand.

It should be love, they think. Because if this isn't love, whatever this is, then there is no such thing.

But what happens when the time comes to leave the room? One day, the walls soaked with honey will lose their warm golden glow, and will begin to oppress them until they are covered from head to toe in unbearable sticky sweetness. And then they will leave, with a firm shake of their hands, or a soft kiss for old times sake, and maybe hitch a lift from someone on the highway and depart in two different directions, leaving the little room to crumble.

That's the question that bothers them. Eventually their room, like their love, will fall, and as time and distance dims their memory, they will look back and wonder if it ever existed in the first place.

What scares them is not that this moment - a moment of hands, hips, low voices, and new thoughts - won't last forever. What scares them is this: that years from now, they will look back and smile wisely, indulgently, dismissively, at the remains of something they once thought was love, though by then they will know better.

Observation

2011-04-05T13:56:00.002+05:30

Two bearded men flash on the screen. You can tell they're Muslims. Curly beards without moustaches, caps and sherwanis, dressed in Indian colours. They're cheering like mad, leaping up and down, because India just scored a four and Pakistan looks thoroughly fed up.

"That's weird," someone says. "How come they're wearing Indian colours?"

No one reacts. They're too busy watching Zaheer Khan attempt to hit a six.

They taught us in school how India is a secular country. It echoes everywhere, despite the turmoil, despite the unfairness, despite the saffron tinged jaundiced newspapers.

It only takes a stray comment like that, from someone who is oh-so-smart-doing-her-MA-reads-a-lot-you-know-always-up-to-date-with-the-news-strong-supporter-of-this-and-that-just-what-a-twenty first century-modern-girl-should-be, to make you realise just how ugly the faces underneath the masks could be.

On the bandwagon.

2011-04-03T12:31:00.001+05:30

I was watching the World Cup final at the pg. Some of the girls brought beer, but I decided to stick to Red Bull which was a mistake I think. It definitely didn't help my blood pressure.

The mood was euphoric during the first twenty overs. I've never seen India field quite so superbly. By the end of that innings though, I'd returned to my room to calm myself with a never-you-mind because I was convinced we were going to lose.

Second half. Sehwag was already out by the time I went back upstairs. Everyone was shaking their heads and muttering about how he really doesn't perform when he should, but people were still calm. That's because Sachin Tendulkar was at the crease. But he didn't last long.

I didn't think he'd get his coveted ton that day. It would have been too perfect. But in the end, it didn't really matter, because after all the ups and downs (and man, were there a lot of downs) and a lot of desperately smoked cigarettes, Dhoni hit a six and we had the cup.

It's difficult not to sentimentalise sport. It's even more difficult not to be sentimental about a player like Sachin Tendulkar.

Virat Kohli said something afterwards, and I thought it was a pretty accurate sum up of what many Indians have been feeling recently. He said that Sachin Tendulkar had been carrying the Indian cricket team on his shoulders for twenty one years and now it was their turn to carry him.

That's the beauty of it. He didn't get his hyped hundredth ton, but in the end, it didn't really matter. The younger players kept their cool and guided India to victory - a good omen for the future. And it was a team effort. And it reinforced the impression I got throughout the tournament - this was Sachin Tendulkar's world cup, but it was for him, not because of him.

There was one scene from the final that caught my eye.

It was soon after Sehwag's dismissal. Gambhir was looking terrified and he was struggling. Tendulkar had a few quiet words with him, and Gambhir hit the next ball for a four. He eventually went on to make 97 runs, even though Tendulkar got out soon after.

They carried him around the field after what was probably his last World Cup match to thunderous applause. So what if he'd had an inglorious personal exit from the World Cup stage. He's done more than enough already and I'm glad, glad, glad, glad, that Indian cricket could do this for him.

Room.

2011-03-29T19:07:00.000+05:30

"This is my question to you," she said. "How do you expect to change the world, lying there on that mattress with the stuffing spilling out, three burnt out joints (not right to the end because you got distracted) nestling each other by your elbow, your mind full of monkeys against poles and pigeon feathers falling out of windows like grotesque feathery waterfalls and crazy metal edged tops spinning around in patterns and not much else. How do you expect to change the world?"

"It's easy, man."

A tilt of the head, an inquiring look.

The tightening of eyes could be a clue to the shadows taking shape, but then again maybe not. It doesn't matter because the words are being spoken now, slowly, thoughtfully, drifting out and sunning themselves in patches on the faded wall.

"I'll get tired of the things I see eventually and leave my room to look for something new."

She doesn't say it because he won't believe her but it's so easy to get used to that room.

Work?

2011-03-25T20:07:00.000+05:30

So much work. Such trying times, such despair.

Desk, books, overflowing ashtray, crumpled paper, beeping laptop. Typical.

Mawii goes one better. Her desk has half a bottle of Godfather rum standing proudly on it. She says she doesn't want to drink it but I know she's keeping it for an emergency. One neat gulp to see her through the fourth essay of the week.

One of the many reasons I admire her.

I have a bottle on my desk too but it's empty. I don't deal with pressure as well as she does.

Masterji.

2011-03-11T09:48:00.002+05:30

Having failed Hindi spectacularly last year, in order to avoid a repeat performance, I was forced by my mother to start tuition.

She's pretty much been persuading (nagging) me to start since the beginning of second year so this February, Mawii and I finally found a Hindi teacher through a friend of ours.

"Call him Masterji," said the friend.

So we called Masterji and got his address and, armed with a notebook and pen, we went across.

As we were entering, Mawii told me to be a little careful because Masterji was apparently a religious conservative. One of those saffron wearing Hindus, Mikhail had told her. Which just goes to show that Mikhail is prone to exaggeration because Masterji was not wearing saffron robes.

Just prayer beads.

Anyway, Masterji, an elderly man, was sitting on his bed when we entered and he held out his arms when he saw us. No, he didn't want a hug. He wanted to bless us. So I bowed my head and he waved his arms over it and then Mawii bowed her head and he waved his arms over it and then we sat down.

"What religion are you?" He asked us. "Christian?"

"Yes," said Mawii.

"Catholic?"

"No, Protestant."

"And you?" He said, turning to me.

I was confused. Normally if someone asks me what religion I am, I follow my father's advice and say I don't belong to any religion, but Mawii's words were still ringing in my head and I didn't want him to be shocked or give me a lecture on spirituality. Perhaps I was underestimating him, but I told him I was Hindu.

"Good, good," said he. "Of course, I teach everyone."

Good to know.

Then he asked us to take our Hindi text book out. Mawii and I didn't have a Hindi text book.

"You don't have a text book? How can I teach you if you don't have a text book?"

"We were hoping you'd teach us the alphabet first."

"No, no." A stern finger waggled itself in my face. "There is a book shop close by, to the (directions spoken in very fast Hindi). Go now. Have you understood?"

I hadn't but Mawii nodded so we went.

"Where is it?" I asked her as we stepped onto the road.

"I don't know," she said sheepishly.

"YOU SAID THAT YOU UNDERSTOOD WHAT HE SAID."

"I was nervous."

Anyway, we found the shop eventually - well, Mawii did - but it was shut because apparently Monday is its day off. The one next to it didn't have Delhi University text books.

So we went back and told him there were no books.

"Never mind, never mind," said Masterji. "I'll give you dictation. Do you want tea?"

No, we did not want tea, so we sat down and took out our notebooks. He leaned over and peered at mine.

"You should write the name of the God you worship on top of the page to enable you to maximise your performance."

"Huh?" I looked at him, terrified.

"Ma Durga, maybe?" he probed gently.

I continued staring at him.

"Saraswati?"

I didn't even know how to spell Saraswati in Hindi. Bengali, not a problem but it's pronounced slightly differently in Bengali. The Hindi has a 'w' which -

Never mind.

"Ma Kali?"

I could spell Kali. I must have looked slightly relieved because he asked me whether I'd ever been to the Kali temple in Calcutta.

"Yes," I lied. "When I was little."

"Did you like it?"

"Yes," I lied again. "Very much."

And then we finally got down to business.

"You are good," he told Mawii over and over again. "Very good. You will have no problem."

"You are poor," he told me over and over again. "But don't worry. I'll help you pass."

The hour passed quickly and when it was over, he told us to come again in a few days.

"Only if you're happy with the teaching," he said earnestly.

"Oh, we are," I assured him.

"If you're not..." he groped for the money we'd just handed him as part of our fees.

"No, no," said Mawii. "We understood everything, it was great."

"We'll come back again," I added.

He smiled at us, a beaming smile.

"Now, take my blessings because you must always take your Guruji's blessings. It will help you to master your exams and to get a man."

I bent down and touched his feet and he blessed me.

Anything to master my exams and get a man, right?

From Stuff No One Told Me.

2011-03-10T15:18:00.002+05:30

From Dead Poets Society.

2011-02-24T13:12:00.003+05:30

They're not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they're destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? - - Carpe - - hear it? - - Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.

Brother.

2011-02-19T12:13:00.002+05:30

So we're in a car and we talk about our lives. I tell him about my life. He tells me about his life. Comments are passed, and underneath a few bad jokes - advice also, I think.

So then later when we're watching School of Rock and I've been bullied into a joint and I'm quite stoned, I wonder if this would feel less so if that had been a little more. You know, like dripping honey on toast and a little boy running, through very green grass that brushes his knees, towards a swing that sways slowly, invitingly, as if the very breeze is being caressed in its lap.

We fell asleep then and the next morning, he looks at me and asks whether we should bond.

"Do you have anything to say?"

"No. Do you?"

"Nah. I said everything I wanted to last night."

"Me too."

"Cool." And we did our own thing.

The window is open. White curtains and little pieces of sunlight dancing their way in. The fan's moving slowly and it seems like the breeze coming in is being pushed around, synchronised swimming, sharp against the blades.

Fuck I'm stoned.

Min: A Profile.

2011-02-08T22:33:00.005+05:30

"If you send this message to 25 people, you will find true love within 24 hours. If you don't, you will die alone."

"Stop being a loser."

"Whatever, Trish. You could send this to fifty people, and you'd die alone anyway. So don't worry."

"Min, is it okay if I don't dress up for your birthday party?"

"No."

"Well I'm not going to dress up."

"Then don't come."

"I'm supposed to be your best friend."

"Exactly."

"Trish, there is nothing wrong with red satin hearts and teddy bears."

"They're disgusting."

"They're sweet. You're just jealous because no one ever gave you red satin hearts and teddy bears."

"..."

"Ya. Exactly. See how well I know you."

"He's damn nice, Trish. Just don't let him see what a freak you are and things will be okay."

"I don't know why we're friends."

"Yeah, I like The Rolling Stones and you like Bollywood music."

"Exactly. Who else would be friends with someone who thinks Mick Jagger is sexy?"

Wednesday: "We went to Plush last night. It was sooo much fun."

Next Wednesday: "We went to Plush last night. I got sooo drunk."

The Wednesday after that: "My parents are making me stay at home. You're so lucky you don't live with your parents."

Another Wednesday: "We went to Plush last night. There's nothing else to do on Wednesdays."

"What are you doing Friday night? Going to Sheesha?"

"Yeah. Though we might go to Plush."

7.
"I walked in on Kimi having a bath once. It was sooo embarrassing."

"That happens to me all the time."

"You're slutty so it doesn't count."

8.
"I thought they were friends with me because of Tanvi Pandey but they actually genuinely like me. It's not surprising. I'm very easy to get along with."

"I'm writing a blogpost about you.What do you think defines our friendship?"

"Bad luck, big mistakes, and shitty men."

"Is that all it is?"

"Animated Disney movies."

"And?"

*Pause*

"Don't worry, Trish. I'm sure there's more to it."

2011-02-05T17:08:00.003+05:30

It's slow and it's steady and if it weren't for the fact that it's been missing for the past two years, you wouldn't even notice. It's in every day that passes. Moments crawl by slowly but not so slow that you want to scream. Slow enough to savour.

You're slightly alarmed because it's routine and you never thought routine was something you'd be comfortable with. But it doesn't have to be spectacular, it doesn't have to be shot into the air with fireworks. You've had that already and it was more smoke than anything else.

It's difficult to define really and the only reason you know it is what it is, is because when you climb into bed at night and pull the sheets over your shoulder and lie on your side with an arm folded under you, you feel like ink on heavy paper. Ink on heavy paper forming patterns that won't be lost, not even when morning tiptoes round.

2011-01-29T20:07:00.000+05:30

I have nothing to write about.

Daddy's turn.

2011-01-19T12:40:00.005+05:30

Scene 1: Before my trip to KL and Bali.

Dad: Now remember, if you're going to sleep with someone there, make sure you use a condom.

Me: *scandalised* DADDY! I'M NOT GOING TO SLEEP WITH ANYONE.

Dad: Yeah right.

Me: I HAVE A BOYFRIEND.

Dad: That's okay.

Scene 2: On the phone.

Dad: Zaev's got a job in Prague.

Me: I know.

Dad: You should go to Prague.

Me: Why would I go to Prague?

Dad: You could do your post-grad there.

Me: In Prague?

Dad: It's in Europe and you like Europe. Your brother will be there to keep an eye on you. Think about it.

Me: ...

Dad: Always keep your options open.

Scene 3: In Madras.

Dad: So. Have you ever smoked weed before?

Me: Yeah.

Dad: Hash?

Me: Yeah.

Dad: What do you prefer?

Me: Alcohol.

Dad: Me too. Want a drink?

Me: It's not yet noon.

Dad: It's Sunday.

Me: Okay.

Scene 4: Cigarettes.

Dad: It's those bloody Americans. They're obese and popping it left right and centre, but instead of their food, they blame cigarettes.

Me: YEAH!

Dad: Look at Europeans. A lot of them smoke and they're long lived.

Me: YEAH!

Dad: I'm not saying smoking's good for you, obviously it's not, but those Americans blew it out of proportion and now they've got the whole world panicking.

Me: YEAH!

Scene 5: Talking about my mother.

Dad: You know, your mother used to be fun.

Me: Really?

Dad: Mm. She was pretty wild once.

Me: What happened?

Dad: She had you.

Scene 6: On the phone.

Dad: What did you have for lunch?

Me: Chappati and dal.

Dad: Guess what I'm having?

Me: What?

Dad: Steak with a fried egg on top, broccoli, mushrooms, and sauteed potatoes.

Me: That's so unfair.

Dad: I know. You poor little thing. Go out into the garden and eat worms. Bwahahahahaha. Okay, love you. Bye.

Me: ...

Explanation.

2011-01-15T12:49:00.002+05:30

Choosing, consciously, to not think about Consequences and Futures and You'll Regret It Laters. The present has never been this important before.

A waste of time, perhaps. A mistake.

How can it be when the sun and the wind hit you sharper than they ever have before, slicing through you and pushing their way into secret corners, when even the most mundane things - a bottle, a lighter, a leaf - are suffused with colour and shimmering with light, when with every step that's taken, you feel so incredibly alive that there is no other word to describe how you feel.

It's an education of a different sort, and when it's offered - grasp it and cling on.

The rosemary.

2011-01-09T00:13:00.001+05:30

You know how it is. You know how it goes.

The lights. Not very pleasing, could be less harsh, but pleasant enough. They look better near the bar but that's not the reason people are standing there.

Familiar faces.

"Hi, hello. How's college? Fine. How's yours? Good. Do you like Delhi? I do now." An awkward pause and a forced smile. "It was lovely seeing you. You too. Keep in touch. Yeah."

Things get a bit better after a while because everyone's still at the bar and now most people are talking in capitals. The conversation is smoother. Or maybe it's because the hellos have been done with and now people are talking to the people they want to talk to. Shared inkblots?

It's strange being back. It's night, and you're not used to being here at night. You're used to the not-really-imposing white building being exposed to hot sun and you're used to the fields being peppered with girls - hair escaping despite the forty clips and the forced, false discipline - not with twenty and thirty something year olds, wandering around in ties and jackets and painted with red lipstick.

It's strange smoking a cigarette in the very same place you, not too long ago, leaped across in exchange for a certificate that has long been lost.

The night goes on, and most people look happy now. The conversation, predictably, shifts to remembrance. A surprising amount of people remember. You thought you'd forgotten but there you are, standing with them, clutching a sprig of rosemary in your fist. It doesn't really make a difference though. Things once were and now they aren't and that's all there is to it.

"I miss it," someone tells you.

"Really?"

"Things aren't the same anymore."

That's the point, you think. Things aren't supposed to be the same anymore, things are supposed to be different. But you don't say anything, you just tilt your head slightly and tighten your grip on the rosemary.

Stumbling out at midnight. Stumbling home. Stumbling. The rosemary falls somewhere along the way, unnoticed and forgotten, until next time.

Did you ever stumble when you were inside those gates? Difficult to tell, difficult to know, but either way, you're happier on the street.

He's Dead.

2011-01-07T22:55:00.000+05:30

I honestly though that there was no part of history that could ever bore me.

Until today.

Instead of the usual consequences of the Revolt of 1857, I'm studying about how it physically affected Delhi. Most of the essay I'm reading talks about the epitaphs of the graves of British soldiers who fell.

There was one who died of cholera so they didn't mention his cause of death. Felt it wasn't grand enough.

A gun. A water borne disease.

No one cares anymore anyway. Assuming they did in the first place.

2011-01-06T17:50:00.001+05:30

A mistake is supposed to be forgivable if you make it once.

Deliberate mistakes are different because they don't stem from ignorance, do they, they stem from stubbornness. Knowing that what you're doing is stupid and wrong, but doing it anyway because it's easier (in a way) than the alternative. Not comfortable, no, because there is a feeling inside you that refuses to go away. It pokes you a little, that feeling, and it grows and it changes size and sometimes it becomes more important and sometimes it becomes less important, but it's never so important that you give into it.

Does pride enter the picture? Getting nothing at all, rather than something? Something isn't good enough, something is humiliating, so how can nothing be less humiliating? Perhaps it has something to do with the tried-and-tested method. You have been tested and found wanting. Sometimes it's easier to avoid that test completely.

I think it boils down to choosing between failure and cowardice, to choosing between being found wanting and avoiding judgement completely because you know you won't have what is wanted - what you want rather than what they want - anyway.

I have a feeling the logic I've used here is very flawed. How ironic.

Plan.

2011-01-02T15:24:00.000+05:30

Okay, my exams start on the 4th.

I reach Delhi tomorrow night. I haven't studied anything. Like, not a single thing. All my books are still in my suitcase. It doesn't matter. I can do this.

It's the first paper I'm worried about because that paper's the first. If I start studying by nine - I'll bring five cans of Red Bull back with me - and I study non stop till six, I should manage. Three hours for Chaucer, an hour and a half for Othello, and three hours for poetry. That's seven and a half hours. Plus extra time for panicking and pacing up and down my room, calling Min and whining about how I'm going to fail, throwing tantrums, and taking a ten minute nap. It's sorted.

I'm going to ace that paper. Or at least pass. Yeah.

Anyway today's my birthday so I'm not going to think about that. Today I'm going to enjoy the specialness of being twenty (eek. It doesn't seem possible) and drink until I drop.

Tomorrow, I will worry. Tomorrow, I will turn over a new leaf.

Okay.

2010-12-31T18:00:00.002+05:30

To 2011 and all the possibilities it holds.

I'm feeling optimistic tonight.

My mother in all her glory.

2010-12-29T14:27:00.003+05:30

- Why do you have to lock your door? What do you mean you need privacy? Don't I give you privacy? Alright, so I barge in occasionally. I gave birth to you. It's alright for me to see you naked.

- Why is there a stain on your carpet? What stain is it? How can you not know how it got there? No, it's not water. I know it's not water. Don't lie to me. You think I'm stupid? It's COKE. [She meant Coca Cola, not the other one, by the way].

- I've thought of what you can do on your birthday. You can have friends round for a drink. And high tea. We'll make egg sandwiches. No, you can't have a late night party. You have to leave on the 3rd and you have exams on the 4th. You're partying too much. It's time you buckled down and worked. Everyone has to be out by ten. What do you mean ten's too early? AND WHAT'S WRONG WITH EGG SANDWICHES?

- Stop smoking in your room. It's disgusting. I don't care if everyone does it. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you kids? When I smoked, we didn't know it was as harmful as it actually is. I stopped when I turned thirty. I stopped because I got pregnant with you. I STOPPED FOR YOU.

- No, I don't care for her. She's flighty. She's FLIGHTY. Let her hear me. I don't care. People's opinions don't matter. Stop being so bloody self conscious.

- WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? DON'T YOU CARE WHAT PEOPLE ARE GOING TO SAY?

- You drink too much. Don't you know alcoholism runs on your dad's side of the family? No, I'm not going to be home tonight. I'm going out with Pixie and Nan for a drink.

- It's alright if you don't want to date him. You don't have to be in a serious relationship. Just be...friendly. What's friendly? A few kisses here and there. Don't tell me he's going to expect you to be his girlfriend just because you kissed him. What are boys coming to nowadays? When I was your age...

- No noodles. No rice. Eek. So many calories. Eesh. Hello? Excuse me? THIS BEER ISN'T CHILLED ENOUGH.

- Stop sounding like your father.

Another year.

2010-12-26T13:36:00.006+05:30

1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before?

- Manali with Mawii; Stratford upon Avon and Lake District with Izzie. I've never holidayed with just friends before.

- Drank my body weight in alcohol (not really) but still did not throw up.

- Learned how to roll a joint.

- Saw an opera.

- A Dutch mistake.

- Climbed over a landslide.
- Got drunk with my mother.

- Midnight run on the beach with a stray dog. Very poetic, it was.

- FINALLY saw the annual summer exhibition at the Royal Academy, the Tudor portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, Antony and Cleopatra, and...the list goes on.

- More Firsts but I can't talk about them here.

f2. 2. Did you keep your new years resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I didn't. I will this year: Read more, write more, work more.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Yes.

5. What countries did you visit?

England, Thailand.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?

More focus. And the usual inner peace which continues to elude me.

7. What date from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory and why?

Summer: for good reasons and bad reasons.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Nothing particularly concrete. But there have been achievements. Important achievements.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Laziness.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Vitamin deficiencies, bird attacks, and random bruises that were the result of inanimate objects failing to realise their inanimateness.

11. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

Mama, again. Minnie, for finally doing something she should have done a long time ago. My own, because I'm so cool yo.

12. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

No one comes to mind.

13. Where did most of your money go?

Cigarettes. Alcohol. Autos. [This hasn't changed from last year's answer to this question!]

14. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Travel. People.

15. What song will always remind you of 2010?

Wake Me Up by Wham. Only because Mawii and I became slightly addicted to it and played it over and over and over again.

16. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

Happier. Much happier.

17. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Work.

18. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Smoking, biting fingernails, cutting off hair. [This hasn't changed from last year either].

19. How will you be spending Christmas?

Christmas is over. I spent it getting very drunk with friends, but there was also tree decorating and mince pie eating and family loving. And presents.

20. Did you fall in love in 2010?

Nope.

21. How many one night stands?

Like anyone's going to truthfully answer this question.

22. What was your favourite TV programme?

I didn't watch any television.

23. What was the best book you read?

The Shadow of the Wind. Not because it's particularly great literature but because it was probably the only unputdownable book I've read this year. And the translation is very good.

24. What was your greatest musical discovery?

A few new bands/singers. And the fact that I can sing in bathrooms. But no one believes me.

25. What did you want and get?

Happiness in Delhi.

26. What did you want and not get?

Some friends I wanted to see more of. Meat (that's being resolved right now though). An iTunes library that works. Certain films and certain books. Diligence.

27. What was your favourite film of this year?

I saw lots of good films, but no favourite comes to mind. There must have been. I will think about this, and return.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I spent most of it in bed, being sick and feeling sorry for myself. Turned nineteen.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

A different college syllabus. I dislike most of the stuff we've been studying this year. Next year should be more promising. It would also have helped if I'd managed passing Hindi.

30. What kept you sane?

Friends who have more common sense than I do.

31. Who was the worst new person you met?

I didn't meet anyone particularly horrific.

32. Who was the best new person you met?

I think, most probably, Friend.

33. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.

Debts have to be paid, and they always cost more than you thought they would. I'm not talking about money.

34. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

No.

Yay.

2010-12-11T13:46:00.001+05:30

I'm in such a good mood.

I don't know why. I was feeling okay-ish this morning. Sort of apathetic. Then I got a phone call, and some plans were made, and I am now feeling...uplifted.

I'm going home in a week. A WEEK. I haven't been back for more than a few days at a stretch since May. And even though I'm going to be there for a short time, it's going to be a good time. It always is this time of year. I can picture long evenings on the terrace, surrounded by beer and music and conversation and familiar friends. My low bed, with its thick mattress and multiple pillows and crisp, clean sheets. Bouchi's steaks and brandy pudding and the wine Mama keeps stocked for me, me, me.

And the friends. I can't wait to see Aditya and Varun and Siddharth and Shourjo and Jahnavi and Diya and Tanu and Jayatri and Kimi and Arjun and Prateik and Rohini and the list just goes on and on and on and on. And more than anyone else, Minnie. I'm going to hug her until her face turns blue and her eyeballs fall out. Sort of.

I know I'll have to study for exams. That's fine. Despite what Mawii thinks, I am going to wake up at five - or, at a stretch, seven - every morning and study till lunch time and then gallivant till the wee hours of the morning. It's cool. I've got it sorted. I'm going to have a brilliant time and ace the exams in the process. They're just exams. Big deal. So what if Chaucer is still a foreign language to me. I'm good with languages. Alright, I'm not. Like I said before, big deal.

I'm rambling now. I'm getting more and more excited as I type, because I'm picturing all these lovely things in my head and they're getting jumbled up together to form a big ball of light that's making happy noises, and I should stop (I can imagine Friend shaking head condescendingly at my blither-blathering) but I won't stop because this is my fucking blog and I'm fucking happy and it's a cold and wonderful Saturday afternoon and I really like the word fuck.

I feel like jumping on my bed.

I will jump on my bed.

I'm back. I jumped on my bed. Unfortunately I didn't know my glasses were on it and I heard an ominous sort of crunch and I just put them on and they're crooked and if I bend my head even slightly they slip off my nose. Whatever. They were already broken anyway. I'm still happy. My mother won't be if she reads this, but she doesn't read my blog because I won't let her so it's all good.

Ok, I was going to write something else but I got distracted. What was I going to say? Something ridiculous and pointless so maybe that's why I can't remember. How annoying. I want to remember.

It just occurred to me that I must be really annoying right now. Like, if I read this and I was in a ho-hum sort of mood, I'd think to myself, man, this girl's annoying. So in a way I'm glad Mawii isn't here because if she was I'd be jumping on her and talking incessantly and making her cut even more of my hair off. I annoy the poor girl enough anyway.

But that's okay. She loves me. I'm annoying, but I am also adorable. Yes, I am. I am adorable. I can feel my adorableness bouncing off the walls of my room. I'm overcome by my own adorability. I'm going to go and recover now.

PS I sent Minnie a text, telling her how adorable I was. The reply I got? "Yuck".

The Soldier.

2010-12-05T18:30:00.003+05:30

He sits on the floor, at the feet of his father, looking up at the feared, beloved face. The fire flickers gently, bathing both faces - one lined by time and conviction, and the other, full of naked longing - in a dance between flame and shadow.

His father speaks, and his voice is deep and slow and measured. The things he speaks of are familiar, he has spoken of them before and he will speak of them again, but the boy listens, entranced, as if hearing them for the first and last time.

It is an education that grounds itself into his mind at school, in the park, but most of all, here, at home, with his head only a few inches from his father's all knowing knee. The words wash over him, and a few float lazily in through his ear, rooting themselves firmly in the darkness he sees when he closes his eyes.

And so, when the boy grows up to be a bigger boy, he discards his black sweater and blue jeans and puts on a uniform of khaki instead. He cuts his hair short, watching with no regret as soft, dark curls fall to his feet. He puts his arm stiffly around his crying mother and shakes his father's hand, seeing only the pride in his eyes. Not the fear, not the doubt.

He leaves his home, along with boys who look just like him and think just like him, to go to a different country that is both hotter and colder than the one he left.

Some of the other soldiers cry at night - he can hear them, as he sits on his hard cot, alone, watching the smoke from his dying cigarette curl its way lazily to the ash cloud that hovers above him. His mouth curls in contempt: he never cries. How can he? He is anchored, he is secure. He knows, he has always known. His father - his fathers - have taught him well.

It really isn't difficult to shoot the enemy. He handles a gun with grace and his fellow soldiers, torn and shattered, envy him his calmness and strength. They don't notice that he never looks into the eyes of the people he kills.

Certainty is a safe umbrella, especially when it comes under words like honour and patriotism and courage, but human eyes...human eyes are something else.

2010-11-29T21:09:00.001+05:30

I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand and the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep and there are no words for that. - Brian Andreas, StoryPeople.