Excuse me, I need to see a man about a horse.

Boys and the girls, ladies and my gentleman, I’ve been trying to cut the chord since october, wanting to shut down this little corner of the internet down, sayonara blog buddies etc. I want to withdraw the pieces of my life from the world. Do you get those feelings too? I want to delete my facebook account, and my email id, I want to fall out of touch with people. I don't give a fuck how many pictures you can take holding the camera out with your arm, it doesn’t make me jealous, or envious, I just. don't care, and I don't want it to be an option, I want out. I hate people knowing things about me. But me? I want to know everything about them. I ask the most personal, the most intrusive questions, I want to know everything that's not my business. Point in case, when I know two people are dating, I go read their wall-to-wall.

Since I can't think of much to write in way of a blog post, going to give you some of the what’s spinning right now type of things -

I have a new obsession, a very bourgeoisie one, of cans. I love them, especially the thumbs up, nescafe and other weird juice ones, which have Air/Water listed as one of their ingredients. And straws. Constant sippage.

I is listening to When Life Gives You Lemons You Paint That Shit Gold - Atmosphere, I is rock as true as the rock rolls, but experimenting none the less, little by little, on recommendations mostly. We are moving house again, and yet again my dusty cassette collection has no home, being shuffled from my car to the store room, and I decided today that I’m never going to give it up. Too many teenage type memories. I gave away all my MAD magazines the last time we moved and that shite didn't go down with me. It really depends on what you want in your home, and maybe flimsy black reel is my vinyl.

Been watching Californication. First I loved it, then I hated it - because

• it was nowhere as smart as they made it out to be,
• way to many titties on display,
• increasingly fanciful, ladies just present themselves to Hank boy and he never seeks any of em out
• and making writing out to be so glamourous and shite, all bullshit

It is misogynistic, and the fact that David Duchonvy is in therapy for Sex Addiction makes all the very graphic sex on the show seem a bit more perverse than it would normally, and the jokes are on the women, like entourage (which is unwatchable now) and no man who calls himself a gentleman is one, that should give you a clue but the cast is way too damn good, and they have some insane dialogue inbetween that rockstar fluff.

I love how they talk, like add 'the' before everyone’s name, and ‘itude’ where it doesn't belong..


Anywho, I'm enjoying my post exam couple of days of freedom, though I'm doing pretty much the same shite.

Reading On Beauty - Zadie Smith, long long time coming..and I was honestly surprised by the beginning, was expecting something much much more. Just 100 pages in though, and the author picture is soo hauntingly beautiful and sad and v neck black top with collar bones, what’s not to love? Don't stay tuned, I never follow up.

And now I is off to watch that Benjamin Button bonanza, please go watch Slumdog in a theatre and FORM YOUR OWN OPINION. That will help you get through the fucking press machine flipping out and as always totally losing it’s head.

Word,
That's all for tonight.

Another Chapter in the book of Cell phone Drafts.

(This is not writing, it’s learning how to write but mostly I just want to tell you these things)


To go above and beyond what he could ever expect, to make a grand gesture, to dramatise the surroundings, to make a point of it. The gravity of the thought stayed with her, and excited her so much that she stopped her work and sat down to explore its depth, Where would she stay? How would be look? What would she say? When will he ask her? and so on. It takes off then, this galloping, all encompassing, deliriously colourful and hopeful world, it fills up her day, and when she pauses to trace back the cause of this vague contentedness, it’s only too obvious. Dreams tend to be that way. Cause she has already done so much and had been so many people, how’s she ever going to top it? The feeling that nothing will be the same again, in a lucky, positive flourish that changes the realities of existence, the practicalities of a routine, and builds in its place a fondness, a nostalgia for what is lost.

On a unimaginable scale, that’ll require numbers not yet discovered to tabulate it, lens powerful enough to capture it lie yet undiscovered, hidden in chemical codes of silver evaporating, aluminium, bromide and we haven’t made it just yet - a canvas big enough, to hold that pulsating growing hideous mass of thoughts continuously extracted that make up the parallel worlds in our heads.

If only things were that easy, to break them up into seasons, into terms and when one is desperate before exams, sick with worry, with guilt and self loathing, our writers disappoint us, glossing over, pushing all that tension into one flippant sentence. For as long as I can remember I’ve been reading novel after novel before the most crucial, supposedly paramount, exams of my life. I want long in-depth discourses into this distraction, this preoccupation, this inability to focus, yet they all seem to have just a page or two on it, I want to read a whole book about just the last twenty four hours before a test, so that I can viscously, sickeningly, put my teeth into in, and hold on desperately while my own deadline approaches closer.

As for those people that authors thank on the first and last pages of their books - my heart wells up with jealousy; possessiveness creeps in as the tale gets going, I want to be there, by his side, for him to consider me beautiful, to inspire the writing, the greatness, the most wonderful literary-ness, which so many have rediscovered time and again, and it forms an exclusiveness which is far from elite, it is the very pulse of our temples, of our language, or the vast filing cabinets in our heads. To be there while she writes, talking things out, dreaming things up, sorting out erased memories and engineered ones; and it overtakes me, this urge to know them, to be near them, and I think, how can they not know? How can they not feel this power, that seems to have consumed every facility of my being? And I can’t bear it anymore.

If the voice is not given any air, no gentle flap to encourage the cinder, it dies suffocating on its insecurity, on its unsteady beginnings, and I find myself utterly unable to write. Let that never happen, let there always be an avalanche of words - however unworthy, however cringe worthy, and may I never settle, never fully understand, but always try and try and try. If only you spare five minutes, to make a genuine recommendation, or a heartfelt critique, dismiss with style my inaptitude, with significance; I could travel far, very far. For the people I want most to be read by, I can’t let them, because they’re all over these pages. It would come glaring into light how much under my skin they are, exposing the very stitches that hold together my tacky faux velvet costume dress, and it would be a betrayal of sorts, but a wonderful coming out as well, and I wish nothing more, little darling, sugar chicken, blue honey bun for you to have your eyes on me, right now, quite like this.

A Country Bar Named Johnny B Goode

Places, Food and Books

Lame title aside, some books have a very strong sense of place or food (since it's me we're talking about) associated with them and will forever be locked with each other in ones memory.

All my Enid Blyton memories are very strong, because when I read them I was a) Hugely unpopular in school, I had NO friends, and I mean none, like I used to roam around alone during break and everything and b) We lived in this massive old bungalow with like miles of wilderness on either side (ok not miles but really dense undergrowth type things, and people used to spot snakes on an hourly basis.) All those Fatty mysteries were so real because we had a garage/shed kinda thing just like in the book and I had very strong visuals for the place. This is the same time I used to play Xena with colony friends and set out with laser killer pieces of stick and fight demons and witches that lived around our house.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - I got a day before my chemistry exam in the 7th, think mum or someone had just returned from Delhi and had got that book and a big box of melted choclates for me. Needless to say the book was devoured and I was eating that stciky choclate alongside and you can bet I was too lazy to go wash my icky fingers before turning a page and so my copy was brown finger marks all over, which makes me love it even more.

I remember reading A Suitable Boy after the second term exams in the 10th which I had worked super hard for and before the preboards (which I totally blew.) The parts when Pran is falling for Saeeda Bai and he's hanging around her place is very descriptive and well written. She entertains all these people and they have Shammi kababs and hookahs and there's always music and a singing (rather annoying) parrot remember? So I was reading this part and I was getting major cravings for kababs. As luck would have it, we'd had a big party in our house and there were these kababs in the fridge and omg its bliss when you're reading about something and your mouth is watering and you can satisfy it instantly! Zap it in the microwave and get back into bed..and no one bothers you because you can lock your door and say you're 'studying.' Good times I tell you.

English, August is one of my all time favourite books, I read it when we were living in a place so so like Madna it freaked me out a bit, and I got everything he was sayng. I was Agastya man, ofcourse I wasn't stoning back then, it was simple sitting on the fence and liking a book sorta thing.

Oh and for Wodehouse there was this wonderful obscure Gymkhana in some shanty town where them Britsh Bozos used to once live, and the loo/Ladies rest room was HUGE, I mean like the size of a persons house with sofas and reclining chairs, and dim yellow bulbs and mottled mirrors and I loved it. Discovered it really late, when it was about time to leave but I pictured the whole English thing. (argh, we've been studying colonialism and when we take notes instead of writing the British I write BB - British Bastards, oh the latent anger)

Delhi by Khushwant Singh was another book that had a huge impact on me but more than that people remember me reading it. It was the beginning of 11th, when the board results weren't out and everyone's sorta strung out, didn't really feel like studying etc, and our temporary classroom was in some basement type part of the school and I'd sit at the back and read this book, and I didn't really know anyone in my new class expect Puri who ofcourse would be off all over bunking, making new friends, doing his imitations which I'd seen a gazillion times before, and I remember Yadu coming over, reading the blurb and laughing his ass off, because it said, 'back from his whoring days' and guys can never stop finding stuff like that funny. When he sees me today, he usually mentions that book, still reading books about whores? he'll say and I'll laugh like it's really funny because it's sweet no?

Though I don't like to admit it, I've also read all the Shopaholic books(Fly take a bow) and this was the summer before college started and all of a sudden you have to go shopping for a whole bunch of new clothes, and you really need them right, no more uniform to put on sleepily every day. So I would just buy without thinking, oh heady days and then when I became a poor college student who refused to spend more than 15 bucks on lunch I was reading Shopaholic and Sister which had her super frugal sister who hates shopping and kept saving up or was broke and she was totally in sync with my new self!

Zorba the Greek is ofcourse for my fututre travels which I've mentioned earlier in this post.


PS - Is anyone else television blissed as well? New seasons of The Office, How I Met Your Mother, Entourage AND Greys Anatomy. Sigh, life can hardly get better..

Whatever Sam Beam is mumbling

The thing is, I'm in a very whatever~Brandi Carlile(Fall Apart Again)~Iron and Wine(The Trapeze Swinger) mood. No no don't get alarmed just yet, this is what happens when you schedule every hour of your life and everything's on track - you're studying, swimming, reading, watching the US Open(yaay) etc. and then one afternoon you oversleep and your body doesn't feel like yours anymore - it's being tired and moody and doesn't want to work, so you say ok, just waste your time on the internet instead.

Have several half written blogposts lying in drafts, but just not been upto it, it's a moon thing yea?

Bookwise, finished My Secret History by Paul Theroux(did I mention this before?) which was so wonderfully good and made writing seem so easy that I'm thinking about it more and more somehow. His whole life has been to take the next train out, travel, sleep with women and write about it. That's the dream and it IS that easy. People might think I'm all focused and stuff, but anyone who REALLY knows me, knows that it's simply not true...and it's mostly a good thing.

Also (finally) reading Midnights Children which is till now everything it's het up to be. Since it's the only book he wrote without being super famous, the tone and language is much less silvery/flowery and more conversational. It's so cleverly ironic in bits, not a laugh out loud kinda thing, more like smirking through entire passages. Does this happen to you too that if you're reading a book and sorta doze off after it, your dreams end up being about the characters, and somehow the story continues in this weird way in your head and you wake up and feel - Oh, that was strange and can't read for awhile because so much has happened in your dream? I've written so many Estha-Rahel stories this way, it's not funny.

Also went to Majnu Ka Tilla today, an impromptu thing with Kasha and two people I dearly like. Omg, the beef and pork they put away was a bit scary. But you know I felt I was in a hill station, minus the heat ofcourse. It was all enclosed and on undulating (dulating?) land with those Mcleodganj bead bracelet type things, and usually Tibetans have the best albeit over priced silver and they NEVER bargain, but this time they totally did and while I bought earrings I really shouldn't have(but you can never be too rich or too thin or have too many earrings right?) The guys happily played the male role and rolled their eyes and said hurry up, you have five minutes then we're leaving bla bla bla. It's fun to do real time things once in awhile.

Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me & My Monk

On some days, it might seem like I have nothing. Depends on how you’re measuring really, because I have all kinds of bolted vaults and secret trunks stored away.

My trust fund is in smiles given and taken and every pair of eyes that look at me first when they enter a room. In books borrowed and lent, in sharing a blessed umbrella in the pouring rain with my left side and his right getting drenched. In phrases like bruising guitar and music that makes you ~feel. It’s in meeting someone and knowing within the hour that you’re going to become friends. It’s in someone saying - you should come, you’ll like it.

Its watching him without him noticing; the way his left hand twists and his elbow sticks out as he writes away furiously. His handwriting that I’ll recognise anywhere. In the inevitably, that you realise in retrospect, of a little crush becoming a friendship, all gained with no personal questions. I probably know every book that’s influenced him but not who he kissed and how many times. I wonder if I got the hard end of the bargain.

It’s when the sea is grey and frightening and I sit in a circle of cigarettes crushed in the sand as my sarong dances in the wind and he shouts to come back under the roof. It’s the times I’ve looked in the mirror and smiled at the person who looks at me secretly, and those times I’ve sat in a changing room and cried, that counts too. It’s the click click click that goes on in my head continuously, and to say it out loud would be to forget it, so I keep writing. The wallpaper of my cerebrum is textured funny with old cds and the black flimsy reels of cassettes, its lined with the doodles at the back of maths registers.

I’m not a big expert on love, you’ve realised that, they all have. Love can mean anything, it doesn’t have to do with anybody. Because I think if I was to love someone, or be loved by someone, it would be Agastya Sen. It would mean something to him, it would matter, he’d think about it, and I’d like to be thought about by him. In Madna or wherever. And if I was to be friends with someone, I’d be friends with Ammu because if anyone ever needed someone to talk to, it was her.

So I might not know a lot about real life, but I am an expert when it comes to my life. Right now though, I’m unavailable for comment.

Because you see it might not be much in kilometres but it sure is a lot of millimetres.

Suitcase of memories

I believe familiarity is a sign of wealth. Wealth when it comes to life, to living.

A fine lady, would have a regular tailor who knows the exact shape of her body, her trickiest measurements, and doesn’t need to take them over and over. Who notices she shrinks as she grows older, and makes the blouses smaller. To whom she brings her daughter for her first sari blouse.

And a jeweller, from where they make their big buys, once every year or so. Through the latest trends they keep pieces waiting for her but when her son wants to pick out an engagement ring for his girlfriend; she takes him there for the classic diamond knock out.

A man then, will have a banker, who does all the tedious paper work, efficiently, happily. A mechanic, who knocks a couple hundred off the bill after the regular servicing. When his daughter has her first bang-up learning how to drive, he gets angry with her, but they have a little chortle, the mechanic and him, there were many jokes on that one oh there were.

And the other family who's been with them for years and who knows when to get the hot water bottle and the right temperature of tea, who are well looked after and their children seen through school and onto bigger better things. Who’ll mow the garden and plant the flower seeds and take care of the dogs when they go out of town.

As they grow older, this fine lady and gentleman, they’ll need their old doctor of course. Who’ll listen with gentle patience to them, who’s delivered their kids and is now old himself. So he refers them to better, younger doctors but they go back to him for a last and final opinion.

They walk into Blue Diamond. He nods at the tabla player, a namastey; the next song is his favourite ghazal. Somewhere else in the city, at a nightclub, their son nods at the DJ and shakes hands with the bartender. A bartender who knows his drink and in the thickest crowd will get to him first.

A bookstore then for me, a perfect one which I’ll love with all my heart. Placed somewhere to bring in minimum of tourist traffic, a place where you can sit and read and not pay. I know there’s a store out there that’s just waiting for me to walk into it.

You can say familiarity is a step away from boredom, from the same old same old, but I’ll take it any day.

There are other things to experiment with, newer things to try out - like brand of cigarettes, and shampoos maybe but not hairstyles. Everything art related. Every place in the world. For that I have my muddy travelling boots under the armchair, but everything else I like in its own place.

Just because I'm losing...

Doesn't mean I'm lost.
Doesn't mean I'll stop.

What is it with the blogosphere these past couple of weeks? It seems like one person lost their nerve and so did everyone else simultaneously. It's a chain reaction with blog-blahness, and suddenly things are either too trivial or too huge to put in here. However abandoned readers fear not, for I am back with..err, vengeance?

So the easiest, let's talk about books. Have several to read at the same time, which is no fun but the most memorable one is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's - My Melancholy Whores. It's a nice, small compact book and fits in your hand nicely, besides it's hardcover which is a plus. I can bet you a huge load of cash that Marquez himself kept a diary where he counted the women he slept with. I mean first Florentino and then this guy. Or if he didn't, he thought about it alot.


Anyway, over the past couple of days I've had long long chats with old friends, and you know what they say, all birds come home to roost. Guess we leave bits of our selves scattered in the past that comes a full circle. They recount all their escpades, sexual and boy related, over the past couple of months, like getting sorta drunk and holding hands with Goan boys who jive. And then, after half an hour of them, it's like what about you? Man oh man am I glad I have no news.

Among friends then, there is that reassurance that yes, we have the same life for tomorrow and the day after and the year after that, and I'm really happy about that - someone has your back you know, who'll give your proxy attendence if you're not in class or pick up your fee form when they get theirs, or order two cups of chai without asking. It sure is nice to have a friend.

Steady Hands Take The Wheel

It was my market than our market. I like how some things that were mine, we now share, including friends. Baristas and neighbourhood store owners who earlier recognised me, not recognise him as well. Even the guy who checks the air in the tyres at the petrol pump.

We drive by that market, everyday now, becasue to get to any arterial place really, crossing that choked road is the only way out.

There’s a dressed up crowd that hangs around the pubs and outside the theatre. Girls with their hair in sheets below their shoulders, with outfits to match their bags, who wear pin pointy boots no matter what the season. Guys wearing those t-shirts you get, you know? the ones that have a skin coloured extension of cloth under the noraml t-shirt to give the impression that the entire arm is tattooed? Flashing 10 rupee diamond studs in their ears and caked hair on their head.

Further back, beneath the tree and the circular cemented area, next to the cigarette stalls where I go to get polo, is a different sort of crowd. The girls have backpacks and is it just me or is their hair curlier? Tied up carelessly or the tangles let loose, glinting nose pins, dangling silver earrings, wearing washed out cotton kurtas, or maybe a black band t-shirt with a matching belt. They chat placidly, smoke comfortably and laugh occasionally.

Me, I don’t dress up, am a books and chai kinda girl, sure I’d love a bar with loud music as much as the next person, but tis just not my thing...yet. I will have shots and give in and dance to Usher and wear a Penny Lane faux-fur coat with a hoodie and pub hop. Someday, those times will come for me.

What a granny, he says, but he’s not much better.

At the front of the market, near the car park, boys and girls get out of big cars, their school bags stuffed with their uniforms and they're so self conscious of their outfit; it's not fair, to make them choose that one t-shirt that represents them the most, to wear on the day their exams get over and they hangout.

And African men, lots and lots of young African men, are they sons of diplomats then or sons of housekeepers? Does it matter? Which countries are they from, I wonder as I lock eyes with every one of them, Mozambique?(Maputo, my brain automatically says) Somalia? (Mogadishu) Niger?( Niamey) Guinea Bissau or The Guinea? Mali or Mauritania or indeed Malawi? Congo or the Democratic Republic of Congo? The Gold Coast or the Ivory Coast? Zambia or Zaire, now the infamous Central African Republic. Tunisisa or Tanzania? Maybe Morocco, though I doubt it.

I’m sure I’ll have tonnes of things to say to them, if we get past the accent, that mammoth effort of a simple smile and hello. It doesn't matter that we're on the same sidewalk, because their continent travels with them. That's the size of the distance between us.

The odds that one of them has just finished reading Franny and Zooey like I have, and listed down the family tree – Seymour, Buddy, Boo Boo, the twins (Walt and Waker), Zachary (Zooey) and Franny in their notebooks..How high is that possibility?

We shall never know, because we can cross each other several times, but I'm just driving past, sitting passenger to steady hands on the wheel.

Take it, take another little piece of my heart.

My sister's birthday is coming and it's as terrific an opportunity as any other to buy books which I want to read and gift wrap for her. Lucky we more or less read the same stuff or rather I bulldoze her into reading what I recommend. Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, fantastic people, nice little book I stumbled on thanks to fly and I think there's something in its awkwardness that exists in all of us, especially if we dish out a blog post every week or so.

While planning her party, we decided on Chinese food which somehow brought back a memory of this store in Pune from where we'd get Chinese take away frood. I used to be fascinated by this place, it wasn't a restaurant in a market, it was just a take away shop literally in the middle of nowhere. It was so noisy and steamy and small and they'd take your order and pin it up on a rope and it would be ready robotically in minutes. So numbskullsister and me would play 'takeaway' with our puzzle pieces and mix them around in a tokri. The only plausible explanation for a tokri in our house I think could be because we were living in Maharashtra after all. (egad, images of kim sharma as a fisherwoman are coming to me after those 5 horrifying minutes of some random movie which permanently and irrevocably burned some of my brain cells.)

Also donated blood today! Yee haw, did it for the cool red tshirt we all know, and while I was lying there pumping my fist tiredly instead of feeling righteous as I should have, I was like dude, I just have a needle in my arm, someone who needs this is going to have all their bones smashed in . Count your blessings, name them one by one, thank the Lord for what he has done, kept playing in my head.

On a crankier note though, I am being forced to go out to my mothers friends house for dinner. She has this daughter whose a couple of years older than me, looks and dresses like a model, and has had sex several times with several different boys and was caught in school with her bra undone, which is public knowledge to everyone except apparently our mothers and mum dearest insists she's such a nice girl, I should try and be friends with her. Fuck, glad they're all so in sync. I'm sorry, not that there's anything wrong with her but some people I just can't take seriosuly, and she's one of them.

Something I'm really beginning to believe in though is All In Good Time, truly, life eventually calms itself down and things happen in their own time. When I was in middle school, in Bangalore, I always always wanted to become a senior prefect, not head girl becasue that was so passe but house captain, because that meant something, and I loved my house captain, she was so cool man, she'd run the captains relay on sports day, and march with the house flag. She'd sit on the steps of the canteen (for seniors only) with all these boys and I'd always wonder which one she liked. She'd come to my class and ask for me and badger me into taking part in elocution or something which I gladly did for her. It was so cool the way they'd stay back after shcool, and make those charts and practice for house competitions and stuff, and the 11th and 12thies were allowed to come on their bikes and so casually afterwards they'd zip off to some place to eat.

I left though, and I had no idea untill I was away how fucking impressionable I'd been. I got to be house captain of another school though and it meant shite, really it meant nada to me, which is not as awful as it sounds, it just was that way.

*Remember those shiny coloured Add-Gel pens in 1999? They were such a rage and I had a purple one and wrote LP in big bold letters on my arm and walked all over school one day. At band practice after school, Music Captain comes in and after he does his 'duty' and yells at us for not practising hard or long enough, he hangs around to chat and he says, so you're all into heavy rock and metal and all? and I'm like no ya, just Linkin Park, he's like what's the name of their album. FUck! I didnt know, lol, but anyway, Dad took me on a sunday, to music world I think, not the (then) new Planet M on Brigade Road, and I bought Just Push Play (Aerosmith) and Hybrid Theory and on the way back in the car, dad suggested that I play the tapes, and I slowly, delaying it as much as possible, unwrap the flimsy plastic wrapping and Papercut starts up..the sun goes down, I feel the light betray me, I hastily ejected and put aerosmith in which was no better, but thankfully we reached back because then you could actaully drive around in Bangalore and reach places in minutes not hours. Atleast it wasn't Public Service Announcement on the Marshall Mathers LP.

So into Jaded was I that when we came to Delhi on our summer holiday, on the customary annual visit to Dilli Haat, instead of yet another name necklace, I had jaded written with those alphabet beads, and Dad says do you even know what it means? I didn't.

Man, I was quite the emo kid. Today though, I'm somehow very happy to be me.

This years love had better last

Sometimes you get goosebumps about just being alive, and I want to love you, Nothing Man.~Caught a bolt of lightning, cursed the day he let it go.~ Isn't it something? It is Eddie. How can it not be..

Hmm, exhausted is the word I'm looking for. So much work, so many things to do, usually life is happiest when I'm busy but I haven't got 8 hours of sleep in a row in about a month now. At the risk of sounding like a CPM politburo member, the "honeymoon" period with my blog is definitely over.

Met aforementioned friend, such a riot I tell you, some people are just funny, and I got lots and lots of american frat movies with naked boobies and lewd jokes off him, Superbad(ha-HA-Ha-ha), Oldschool, Van Wilder, Eurotrip, Girl Next Door, Blow...you get the gist.

Yes, Andy is engaged. Joy, normally I'd be happy but do you know how he met her? He saw her picture in a Sports Illustrated isssue and had his agent track her down. What a fucking cliche, its like boning your secretary. Gah. As fly says, it's like he picked her out of a catalogue. I mean imagine the call she must've got, hi, erm, there's this guy, who's sorta famous and a little rich and he wants to be in your pants. Sure, that's my twenties taken care of.

Also have become friends with that new boy at work place, even though he's a kid and all, we're pals now. Ha, dropped him to his hindi class today, these firangis types I tell you. Laughed about superbad stuff, and duh, Celtics won(heehaw) and he was all Lakers, na huh, there time had come, it was going to be Celtics, everyone knew that all along.

Read Wild Sheep Chase (Haruki Murakami,) and can definitely see why he's so popular. The story is literally about sheep and you're reading along thinking, man, a whole book about sheep, this should be weird, but it so isn't.

Something I've been meaning to put up here, I can't stress the importance of Zeitgeist enough, seriously folks, go watch it. Tis this really radical left wing documentary type thing, and even if you're skeptical and don't believe everything, STILL, it's stuff that we just have to know, and think about.

Hey Andy, did you hear about this one?

*Blogging about Blogging ~ Right, so dunno how the whole thing started but do know that it's going mighty fine. I was expecting long months of a lonely 0 comments at the bottom of the post, but pipi and zorro were sweet enough to spread some love and left a comment on the first post itself. So if you're forced to read this it's their fault really; I would happily have given up after 4 posts (like one in every 2 bloggers did you know?) It's fun and oddly exhilirating being anonymous though lately I've begun mentioning this little corner of the internet to people I actually know, as in friends and stuff, the response is either - What do you blog about, or else What do you blog about? Search me.

*I'm tired of driving folks. I'm tired of traffic and and having the tank empty every three days and that bloody Sarthak on 95 f.m. in the mornings(don't even bother plugging my ipod in) and being at the beck and call of everyone concerned and I've had it. I'm going to sit at home for one whole week and not go anywhere my legs can't take me.

*Oh oh, I came up with my very own joke! ready?
#1 Darn, I'd give my left leg for an automatic car...haHA(geddit?)


*Finished Something To Tell You, which is every bit as good as expected though it dragged a bit towards the end but it saved it in time, and Charlie Hero and Karim make a comeback in this one, was most excited so see them again.

*Anyway, the best time of the year in descending order July (Wimbledon) September (US Open) January(Aussie Open) and May-June(French Open). Dude the parisian crowd is so droll. They're all suited up and don't clap for anything. The semi final matches are turning out to be fantastic though. Safina, ole ole ole! Except I'm not saying anything because I jinx these things.

It is time then to reveal to you fair folk, my One Great Love. Now this guy is sexy. I know, I know, he's American and boy-bandish and not even close to winning a slam ever again. Infact read this, it'll give ya more fodder. But I can't tell you, just how much I love him without reason. So much so, that people get embarassed when they're watching a match he's playing with me, apparently I can't contain myself. Infact, when this boy, was kinda trying to flirt with me and it was a big maybe between us, he'd watch Andy's matches and then call up after to discuss them and he' keep dissing him to rankle me up, which I happily obliged because we both saw right through it.



There is little that gives one greater joy than having him win a game 40-love with back to back aces and that swagger when he walks back. :grins: He's also very very funny, he's just naturally a charming guy, like when he was runner-up to fedDUHrer in wimbeldon a couple of years back, the interviewer at the presentation said - Andy, you wouldn't be in the mood to talk right now and he says "ya, I'm actually in the mood for a beer," and the crowd claps and cheered wildly and goes all, good fella that one.

Just look at him.

*sigh*

A friend in need's a friend indeed, a friend with weed is better

My phrand, Puri's in town and he's leaving soon so we're planning to meet/will meet soon whatever. This guy was my buddy, you know you have those guy friends who are totally and completely just your friend and nothing else? Yup, he was mine, and he had this horrid girlfriend who made his entire school life miserable but he's still stuck on her and these days he hangs around her (all girl) college like one of those road side lafangas - eesh.

He used to sit in front of me and his best friend -Nathan, we shall call him on my left and me next to the window, and I had this tiny crush on Nathan, ok not tiny, but fot the tiniest while. We'd do stupid stupid things like play f.l.a.m.e.s. and other really mature stuff. All the teachers secretly liked Nathan and flirted with him and Puri would constantly get thrown out of class with his "But no M'am why?" and just be a total pain for them and full entertainment for the class.

At any given time I'm the store house for polo/wrigleys/centerfresh etc and in the fifth period before break they'd turn around and say - el, polo? because you know, break time is kissing time and the two of them would go off to their slut(if you're talking to a girl)/hot(if you're talking to a boy)/ girlfriends and I'd sit and read, think I was reading Suitable Boy those days, hang out with Lata and the Chatterjees for awhile. Sometimes, he'd go into the girls loo, yea don't ask, and I had to sit outside and keep guard, and I'd get a clear view of Nathan and his girlfriend mollycodling under the stairs.

O and when he sang Colorful by The Verve Pipe for her, who had to listen to it ten thousand times over the phone the day before? Later after we were all friended up, we realised our mummies were friends and our grandmummies were posted together in some shanty town while their husbands went off to war.

Anyway, around 11th or so they all discovered marlboro and bacardi and what not, and he'd call at random hours saying - oh man, I'm so stoonnnnnned, or I'm so higggggghhh, wasuppppp.. and I really didn't want to talk to him then so yea, maybe I was nerdy that way. We kinda drifted apart, ok that would be wrong, we couldn't stand each other for awhile, but that phase passed and it all got sorted.

But we're all grown up now, and these days we chat once in awhile and since he's in Pune he has crazy stories about taking a bus and going to goa unplanned in 3000 bucks and just smoking weed the whole time and "dude el, man I looked at the sea and there was no water, I swear. "

ho hum, so it goes my friend, so it goes.

It's been such a lovely holiday, there's nothing funny left to say

~Life is a highway, I wanna ride it, all night long~

Everyone knows, a holiday is all about the road, driving through is the best part and stopping for chai on the highway every hour or so.

~ you want it, you got it forever~

People say - mountains or sea? I say anywhere where the waters at. The river is what makes it all happen but I gotta tell ya, the Beas is one tenth of what it used to be. This was the river of my childhood, the first time I saw fast furious water so massive that it was crazy daunting. Now it's a tiny trickle.

~Oh how I long to be, Homeward Bound, Home - where my music's playing~

Man, it is so good to be back home. To know that ok if I put the geyser on for 10 minutes the water will be exactly this hot. To know what your rajma is going to taste like. To have my twice a day glass of milk, which I don't think I'll ever give up no matter how old I get. My homepage and sites signed into, and ofcourse, Buddy who went a bit spastic.

Anyway as far as photography goes, this trip was fail, but since digis make photogos of us all, here's some pics. They're all mostly male, mostly single(hehe) but I swear it wasn't intentional.

Read The Buddha Of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi, jeez watay fantastic book. The cover put me off initially, becasue it's so freaking obvious, black hand, white orchid flower, gah - metaphor or what I dunno. Anyway, its published in 1990 which is ages back and I thought I wouldn't get the humour and references, but it's set in the 70s so in a way it's topical forever. Karim is an awesome person to hang out with, he's funny and very I-am-what-I-am, a drifter and the worst of the lot and everything that happens to him is utterly belivable, you're actually simply travelling with him.


Also finished the famous Bioscope Man..hmm:thoughtful: Didn't really get that one though, have for now put in my must-read-again pile, becasue I'm sure there's something in there..

Tomorrow's Flys birthday so hafta go wrap her gift, plus I'm writing her a story(don't ask) and have been writing this post for ages..and limewire's almost done with a grey's anatomy episode.

Damn, it's good to be back.