My Bed of Roses

I give you the roses from my bed
and the laughter from my eyes.
To u i give my happiness
sweet pain and longing sighs

And you... i forgive
you, who, I can't forget.
I give you this too and that
To you, all I have, I give.

Go now....

As you leave... I love...
irrevocably, unchangeably
Forever....

And when an errant thorn pricks
as it most certainly will,
someday maybe, if not now
may you remember my roses
and your first love.

Wish I was... 'a-teen' again

Ah! and then you come
traipsing la la 'long
on your two high notes
and yes, an uppity bow.

Eighteen and then some
that was oh so long,
have burned my boats
in my efforts to grow.

Trapped in my walls,
but then I don't care.
Though you'd have fought,
but I lied to you so.

These days nothing calls
or tears at my hair,
though you'd have not
been lying so low.

Well, but you're gone
and now i so miss
those days when you sought
star gold n' moonglow.

Eight years I've known
that something's amiss...
how I wish i'd not
wished for you to go!

Oh eighteen and then some
that was so... so long.
Have I burned my boats
in my efforts to grow?

The Law is blind and incredibly dumb!

Have been despairing over how women marry the men who raped them. And can't understand why the law does not punish the rapists no matter what? Come on, the crime of having raped a women doesn't nullify if you then marry her. The rape should not be allowed to go unpunished and having to marry your rapist is hardly what anyone in their sane mind could call justice.

This is such a dangerously casual attitude that the courts are increasingly displaying and that too towards a crime as heinous as rape. It seems like an encouragement to rape a woman... after all what could be the worst that could happen... you might have to marry her!!! Do the courts expect the couple to then live happily ever after? Don't they realise what hell they are pushing the poor victim into... having to live as the wife of her rapist... can't imagine a greater indignation. What kind of law punishes the victim?

Anyways after endless news clips of rape victims marrying the rapists this news item is a welcome change. Imrana seems to be one gutsy lady. I wish her luck and persistence. The stand she has taken demands a lot of courage from her and also a lot of determination. But sadly most other women in India seem to be devoid of the circumstances which allow such a courageous decision. Our wise society would prononce them insane if they didn't joyously jump at the chance to marry their rapist and save their and their family's 'honor'.

But wait there is hope, though only if you are a foreigner raped on Indian soil... here is why! Am quite happy about the speed in which the legal system pronounced justice but Hey... don't you think Indian women deserve the same? Now look at this article... 10 years is how long the girl has waited simply for her case to come to court and you know what... yep... she is still waiting!! Meanwhile she and her family are being punished and threatened every day for the past 10 years.

And these village panchayats don't seem to be such a good idea after all, with their moronic rulings... some of them going way beyond beastly. Take a look at this and this and this and this. There are endless cases of the panchayats ordering woman to be humiliated/raped/paraded naked and all such bizarre rulings which ridicule any law process India has.

When are we going to stop being the origin of such unbelievable news items?!?

While we are at it... did you know that according to section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, "sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, not being under 15 years of age, is not rape."... and methought that legal marriageable age in India was 18 for the girl. So much for the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929, which prescribes the minimum age of 18 years for girls and 21 years for boys for contracting marriage. And Indian law makes no provisions to protect a woman from marital rape, in fact, Indian rape legislation (Penal Code 375) specifically exempts marital rape. So much for Indian legal system as well then! Now you can rape a woman, then marry her to escape the law and after marriage you can rape her everyday... and this time the rape is legally acceptable!

And a hero dies in you...

When I was a kid my favorite heroes were Amitabh Bachchan and Kapil Dev. And when I say heroes I don't mean the 'bollywoodized' version of the word but in a pure sense of the word hero (as in idol). And if I ask any of my cousins this, they would name a new set of names albeit coming from the same sections of society maybe... films and sports.

But our heroes are drug abusers, bribe takers, match fixers, mafia supporters in their real life and it is their reel life avatars which we seem to be taking to. And what if the line between the two avatars gets thinner and finally is effaced? Will we still look up to our heroes? Isn't there a real danger that the youngsters will imbibe the values of these recipients of their misplaced hero worship?

Are we a generation which lacks heroes and which has no true idea of heroism, then? Agreed, in our modern day context we can't identify with the heroes of yore maybe. But they could still teach us a lot more than our present day idols. We could still learn from our Subhash Chandra Boses, Bhagat Singhs and Shivajis. Instead, our pedestals seem to be occupied by chain smoking Sharukh Khans, drug abusing Fardeen Khans and gun toting Sanjay Dutts. We seem to think it is cool to mouth 'bhai' lingo. Well no harm there but I hope we also remember the real life don is not the Ajay Devgan of Company or the Aamir Khan of Rangeela, but a ruthless, heartless monster who makes his money and derives his respect from killing people, exploiting them, extorting, kidnapping and threatening.

Indeed we seem to be a generation which are devoid of true heroes. On one hand, the world seems to be spewing out poisoned versions instead and the youth seem to be enamoured by extremisms and senseless violence while on the other hand the true heroes are being ignored or worse still misunderstood and judged as having selfish motives. At times I feel maybe I have lost the ability to admire the goodness in people... I am too cycnical, too suspicious of their motives. Even my heroes are routinely put up in the courtroom and tried by my cynicism... guilty unless proven innocent!

Meanwhile what happened to true heroism? What happened to idealism? What happened to selfless, noble causes not colored by race, creed and religion? Are they being looked down upon and laughed at as impractical and unprofitable? But were they ever otherwise? Wasn't it always one individual against the system, who fought alone but never gave up simply because he believed and had the integrity to stick by it. And yet haven't mountains been moved and the impossible achieved... not once but time and again!

Amazing Antarctica

Current Read: Antarctica on a Plate by Alexa Thompson

Overview: The author was a successful web designer at an investment bank in Sydney with a snazzy office and snazzier clothes. But then the princess got fed up of all the luxury surrounding her and gave it all up to be a cook in a camp at the Antarctic. This book describes the adventures she had there.

What I think of the book: Alexa has a great story to tell. It is spell-binding and compelling. But her narration style could be better though it is honest and easy flowing.

Current thought: Huge sigh! Wish I could be in her shoes. Antarctica sounds straight out of a fairy tale, an entirely different planet altogether. The landscape is mesmerising and evokes awe-inspiring emotions. The 24 hour summer sunlight, endless ice fields, yawning crevasses, forbidding snow mountain ranges... the blinding, endless white canvas... just reading it and imagining how it would look, is enough to hurt one's eyes and fill one's heart with the yearning to explore this intriguing, unpeopled, virgin land where each day survival is a miracle and time is immeasurable.

SIGH! Wish I could go to Antarctica, but the cost of Antarctic tourism makes it out of reach, unless one is spouting dollar bills. I don't think I can accomplish what Alexa did... I can't cook to save my life. But hey, maybe they need someone as a lowly, unpaid cleaner and helper. Hmmm... now there's an idea!!

Obituary to Jimmy

Jimmy Roach... persistent nuisance and visitor from hell is no more. He was killed in a fierce battle between him and AG on Jun 09, 2005.

What started as a perfectly normal evening for me and for Jimmy too, I guess, ended up as the last evening in his short but fear-inspiring life. Jimmy Roach was a brave bug to the very end. He had lived his entire life in my kitchen and in the very same kitchen he met his sad end.

That evening I happened to come early from the gym, hoping to cook a big dinner. As I walked into the kitchen to get me some water, I saw him, not at his usual haunt in the cabinet but on the door. In his glossy black-brown suit, he looked creepier than ever. And there he sat mocking me, hoping to scare me witless... I obliged, yelled, tucked my tail between my legs and fled!

In my room I waited, thirsty and hungry and cursing. And then AG came home... my knight errant and brave warrior. Have never seen a more unwilling saviour though! But I have exceptional cajoling skills and off I send Sir Knight on his mission. Jimmy, was still around, unlike his usual cunning self... maybe lost in the thoughts of his beloved.

Pots clanged, broom struck the door, dust rose, Pans crashed against each other and then there was a lull. As the dust settled, one could see Jimmy sprawled on the floor. With a last wriggle, he died... poor soul!

Since the wake would most likely be attended by unsavory characters(read ants), the idea was dropped and Jimmy was given a fitting funeral with the dustpan.

Jimmy is survived by no one (hopefully).

Jimmy Roach
R.I.P.

Ek Aam Post

At last found good Alphonso mangoes in Singapore. Last year all I could find were Pakistani and Thai mangoes. The Indian mangoes sold at Mustafa were not worth the effort I would put in, to lug them home!!

Mango... the absolute monarch among fruits. I love mangoes with the passion of a connoisseur. But then I descend from a line of great mango lovers. As a kid, every single summer vacation was spent in Kerala, in the company of a Grandfather who is a mango enthusiast and had planted several varieties of them in his orchard. Our morning walks were peppered with him pointing at various mango trees and rattling off their names... Neelam, Jehangir, Mundappa, Malgova,... their taste (sweet, bitter, very sweet...), uses(cooking, pickles, to be eaten ripe...) and so on. My Grandma would salt away prodigious amounts of small, raw mangoes in giant earthen pots (excellent for a five year old to play-act Aladdin and 40 thieves in!) and my mom makes the best mango based dishes in the whole world.

The yearly summer trips to Kerala were filled with episodes of heat boil breakouts due to the unchecked, unlimited consumption of mangoes. Every afternoon Sis and Kanchana akka and I would go tramping around the mango orchard, knife and a potent mixture of salt and red chilli powder in hand, in search of that perfect, half-ripe mango that would then be plucked, given a cursory wash in the nearby pond, cut up, dipped in the spicy mixture we had brought along and then eaten under the cool shade of the mango tree as we sat and argued or told long tales. My favorite was the humble Mundappa which is also the preferred choice for cooking mango dishes, pickling and salting away. There is also the Neelam which yields some of the sweetest mangoes but usually harbors beetles inside, so a mango that looks perfect from the outside is black on the inside. The Malgova or Jehangir are best eaten ripe. And then there are my mom's favorite, the red bottomed mangoes, their name escapes me but not the taste and the fun we used to have... first stealing them from the neighbour's courtyard and then pressing them in our hands till they were soft. We would then bite off the top and suck out the pulp... the golden juice would flow down our chins and hands onto our feet and clothes and our faces would be the picture of ultimate delight.

Every year, dad would order huge wooden crates filled with the divine Ratnagiri Hapus (Alphonso Mangoes). They would arrive littering our kitchen with hay and filling it up with the overpowering aroma so typical of a good Hapus. Sis and I would sit and dip our hands in the rustling hay to find the warm mangoes nestling in between. And for days to follow we would gorge ourselves on ripe mangoes and all kinds of mango dishes... mango milkshakes, aamras, aamrakhand... Throughout the day I would keep slipping into the kitchen to pick out a ripe Hapus, judging it by its wrinkled yellow skin. I would then pare off the skin and dig my teeth greedily into the succulent flesh to savour the indescribable taste of the Hapus. A trip to the fruit and vegetable market during mango season meant getting lost among yellow, fragrant mounds of all kinds of mangoes from all corners of India... Langda, Pairi, Totapuri, Banganapalli, Rajapuri, Dashehari, Chuasa...

After I left Bombay and my childhood home, there have been numerous difficult mornings, when I have woken up with the dull ache of homesickness in my heart and the taste of hot rice kanji (rice porridge) and salted mangoes on my tongue. I can still smell the pungent aroma of mango aviyal (coconut based preparation with myraid vegetables and mangoes) and distinctly remember the taste of mango chutney, the various mango pickles (mango thokku, kannimanga, simple home made mango pickles...), mango umman (which is a fiery hot mango dish my mom makes and which tastes heavenly with dosas) and uppumanga (salted raw mangoes). As I write this my mouth is filled with the sharp ache of longing and my mind is awash with precious childhood memories.

There really is nothing 'aam' about the mangoes... the most ordinary among them is capable of providing a royal treat!

Writer's Block

Mediocrity
wri-g-g-ling
like a triumphant worm
in the throat of
my inspiration.

As you leave

As you leave...

turn around
and look at me one last time
as I stand before you
and as I stand behind
innocence lost,
adulthood gained.

You desert me
teary faced child
looking grown up
feeling lost.

Don't go please... I won't grow
I want you still
though I can no longer cry
Wait mamma! and scream
or do what you say
to keep you.

Turn around and look
you might find the courage to stay,
you might lose the courage to leave,
but don't go.
Please.

Sunset Therapy

There is a picture on my desk of a sunset over a river flowing at the edge of some woods.

And I look at it when I am upset or sad.

I love sunsets... the day melting in so many colors and the sky stained by the fiery sun in hues I have not seen outside nature and in contrasts I thought wouldn't look good together but suddenly I discover they do. And then the day dies... slowly, calmly, inevitably... it calms me down too. I let myself go... let my anger and frustration dissolve with the sun. It is a slow process but very cathartic and therapeutic.

Sunsets are glorious things... like a long letter from home. They fill me with happiness and hope. The streaks of color slowly fading into the night... I could melt into their liquid iridescence. Many an evening have I spent watching the sun slip into the sea and it has never failed to touch me. I love the calm feeling of an endless sea, an endless beach and endless sky... dwarfing my worries. The salty wind and cool sand, the returning birds and the insistent, gentle waves, the red sun drowning itself into the infinite sea and the huge castles of the nimbus clouds towering in the sky. I emerge from it lighter and smiling with a secret that I hold in my heart. I feel peacefully drowsy and unburdened. But I have confided in no one. Somewhere my soul has communed with the spirits of beauty and wisdom and has drawn from them the strength to let go. There had been a fist in my heart squeezing the happiness out of it and now that hand has loosened its grip. It is a caress now, that lulls me to smile and sigh. And somewhere my soul has found peace.

Attack of the Book Meme Virus

This tag sneaked up on me via Neel's blog. Had no idea this meme exists but now that we have been introduced, it sounds like such a great idea. So here goes...

Number of books I own: Never counted but in view of the fact that have been collecting since I was five (or lesser) maybe somewhere between 1500 to 2000 (not counting the collection of Chandamamas, Tinkles, Champaks (Champak!! what was i thinking?!!) and Gokulams). Most of my collection is at home in Bombay adding to my mom's chores. And back here in Singapore, I currently have around 30-40 of them. But then I also own a library card which affords me access to the National Library of Singapore with its numerous branches and their excellent collections.

Last Book I bought: Now how do you go to a bookshop and buy just 1 book... and this impossibility is compounded if you go to a book fair as I did last weekend.
Had to be dragged home by AG, but managed to bring along:
* Mrs Dalloway: Have read it but never owned a copy. And some books, you simply have to own copies of. When it comes to Woolf, all her books are eminently ownable. She is to prose what Plath is to poetry... sensitive, brilliant, stunning, vivid, revolutionary... her writing makes you gasp and wonder.

* The Ambassadors
* The Awkward Age
Both by Henry James. Have read Daisy Miller but that was a long time ago. The Ambassadors, he considered his best work. And I was persuaded (not that I needed any!) to buy it because of this extract I read in Azar Nafisi's 'Reading Lolita in Teheran' (which btw is a real masterpiece and compellingly must-read).

* Antarctica on a Plate (She came, She saw, She burnt the toast)
-- by Alexa Thomson
Alexa gave up a successful career in web designing to go to Antarctica and cook! This book is a memoir of her adventures in the coldest place on earth.

* The Ripening Sun
-- by Patricia Atkinson
This is the story of another brave woman who gave up a steady job and life to go and live off her vineyards in France, of which by the way, she knew nothing to start with!!

The last 2 buys are inspired by the delight I got out of reading 'Extra Virgin: Among the olive groves of Liguria' by Annie Hawes. Like a lot of people I dream of being able to give up my cushy living of a software consultant and go backpacking or adventure seeking in some exotic lands. The glamour of such a life beckons me and I am still short on the courage it takes to chuck it all up and follow. But at least I can live these lives vicariously through the stories of these fellow women who found the courage that I lack.

Last Book I read:
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Was recommended to me by SM. Have always enjoyed Gladwell. His subjects are so original and his research so exhaustive. In addition he writes well. No gobbledygook which a layman (like me) would be hard put to understand. Blink is a book about the adaptive unconscious and what follows as a result of it... rapid cognition. It tries to explain those split second decisions that we make and how these decisions can be controlled and made more reliable. It debates against the school of thought which says that such snap decisions and judgements which are made, apparently without supporting information and data, are unreliable and can prove to be disastrous. Blink is thought provoking and forces one to sit up and take notice of those quick conclusions or decisions we make and then usually push aside since years of conditioning has taught us to 'Think twice before we leap'.

Also reading 'The Diamond as big as the Ritz' by F.Scott.Fitzgerald. It is a novelette which (quoting Fitzgerald)... 'was designed utterly for my own amusement'. It is a very sinister fairytale-ish story about a family who are have discovered the biggest mine of diamonds on earth and have kept the diamonds and themselves hidden from the world for 3 generations, at the same time enjoying a life of unimaginable luxury and riches. Definitely not in the league of 'The Great Gatsby'. But enjoyed the satirical, curled lip attitude adopted towards the obscenely rich with their decadent lifestyles and flexible ethics which can be bend to protect their cushioned lives and their money.

5 books that mean a lot to me:
Hmmm this is the difficult part and also unfair, can't think of just 5 books. Plus the list is always changing. Anyways here goes...

1) Little Women (by Louisa May Alcott): Have to name this book. In my childhood days I used to come home from school and read Little Women at whichever page I happen to turn to that day. Among other childhood favorites are Emily Bronte's stark and raw Wuthering Heights, the wholesome 'Anne of Green Gables' and its various sequels by L.M.Montgomery, Mark Twain's adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, R L Stevenson's 'Treasure Island', the hilarious 'Three Men in a boat' by Jerome K Jerome, the dark humor in the short stories of Saki, the collected works of O.Henry and of Somerset Maugham, Rudyard Kipling, Gerald Durrell, Jean Webster, George Orwell, Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie...

2) Atlas Shrugged (by Ayn Rand): This book had the single most powerful influence on my thinking and at the most impressionable of times in my life.

3) The Little Prince (by Antoine de Saint Exupery): I love this little story and the messages it conveys in its simple way. (Mind you, this book is originally in French and which of the many translated versions you read, makes a huge difference at times regarding your perception about this book)

4) The Prophet (by Kahlil Gibran): How can one have read the Prophet's take on Marriage, Love and Children and not be moved by its powerful truth.

5) Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance (by Robert Pirsig): This is a book to be studied and not just read, or rather a book to be chewed and ruminated over endless times. Having read this book once, its voice and its contents will stay with you forever, surfacing at all those times when you are wondering or debating over the most intrinsic of all things and actions... their quality.

That brings us to the last section... of taking this meme forward. Most people I would like to tag are either not blogging or have discontinued. But here are a few names:
1) NCM
2) Chai
3) Tabs
4) Anupama Viswanathan
5) Rambling Librarian

Kudos to you, Mr.Waterson

Well... we all have fun and then we grow up...

Thankfully I never grew out of C&H. Bill Waterson elevated the humble cartoon strips into an artform with Calvin & Hobbes. With C&H it has been a case of love at 1st sight or should I say love at 1st strip!!??

Here is the 1st C&H strip which appeared on November 18, 1985:


This is my fav strip with Susie Derkins in it:


This is Moe the class bully, who shaves btw (at six!!):


My fav strip featuring Calvin's dad:


And herez how his dad gets even:


And this one featuring his Mom:


And this is how his Mom handles him:


I love the snowman art series. Here are some of them:










Calvin is quite the inventor. He invented the Transmogrifier and also the Duplicator to duplicate himself and get his chores done. But then his duplicates were are bad as him and he got into worse trouble. So he came up with this brilliant idea of the Ethicator, sadly for Calvin, it brought along its own brand of problems:


And how can one forget Calvinball, Calvin's answer to Baseball, where you make the rules as you go along and the only consistent rule is, you can't use the same rule twice!!. Oh! and the G.R.O.S.S (Get Rid of Slimy Girls) club, which Calvin started to irk Susie. These are my favs in the GROSS series




Calvin hates school but he does make it very interesting for his classmates and hellish for his teacher Miss.Wormwood, eventually ending up in the Principal's office on most days:


And like all 6 year olds he loves Dinosaurs:




He has splendid imagination and creates imaginary characters such as Safari Al, Captain Napalm, Spaceman Spiff, Stupendous Man, Tracer Bullet... all played by Calvin:


Herez one which all you guys will identify with:


And herez the reason why I (still) identify with Calvin:






And the last C&H strip which appeared on December 31, 1995:


To top it all here are some random favs:

Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

-- Pablo Neruda

It was in a poetry workshop which I attended during my junior college days that I was introduced to Pablo Neruda. I had never heard of him prior to that, maybe because I believe most poetry once translated loses its essence. But P.N's poems weather translation remarkably well. And what you read manages to impress you inspite of the translation!

P.N. has this uncanny knack of writing unusual odes to the most commonplace things like a tomato (ode to a tomato!!!), salt, tuna (huh!!), wine, clothes... And some of these odes he wrote are uncommon beings, paying tribute to those ordinary things which we wouldn't stop to think of. His ode to a tomato manages to raise the ordinary red globe to a rare sublimity. Everytime I read this poem, I am tempted to bite into the obscenely luscious flesh of a tomato and somehow I feel that this time the tomato will taste like manna from heaven, that this simple action will trigger a thousand pleasure-filled explosions in my epicurean mind.

And then there is my favorite 'Ode to Clothes'. It starts like this...
(Every morning you wait,/clothes, over a chair,/to fill yourself with/my vanity, my love,/my hope, my body. )
It is a brilliant piece of poetry. P.N. has breathed life into clothes, animated them, granted them character even.
(In the wind/you billow and snap/as if you were my soul)
The clothes and the wearer are thus inextricably entwined, their lives, their identity, their life and their deaths.
(I greet you/with reverence and then/you embrace me and I forget you,/because we are one/and we will go on/facing the wind, in the night,/the streets or the fight,/a single body,/one day, one day, some day, still.)

P.N. has penned numerous love poems. Am not a huge fan of love poems per se. All of them tend to be along the lines of 'the sky is blue and I love you' or something like that. And as a rule I don't read love poems. They are for lovestruck teenagers and people who go all puppy-eyed over boy bands. Have always thought that if anybody ever did serenade or court me with a love poem I will hit him on the head to knock some sense into him. But among all those love poems that P.N. wrote I have always liked this one.

It is written by a guy who lost his lover. She has left him and now he is inconsolable. His love was immense and so is his pain. As you read the poet's agony speaks to you. You can fathom the depths of his love and you realise how great a love it was though the poet protests (or maybe tries to console himself falsely)...'I no longer love her, that's true, but maybe I do love her.'

He concludes that this is the last pain she will be causing him and these the last verses he writes to her. It is evident that his love is too great to end so abruptly (as P.N so aptly put it ... 'Love is so short and forgetting is so long.'). Hence this last couplet always makes me wonder whether the lover kills himself after writing the poem.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
And blue stars shiver in the distance'.
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her over and over again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter if my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied because it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is no longer with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We both of that time are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's true, but how much I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's true, but maybe I do love her.
Love is so short and forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
My soul is not satisfied because it has lost her.
Though this is the last pain that she makes me suffer
And these the last verses I write for her.

Me and Myself

In the bus today I caught a lady staring at me in a rather odd way. She looked ready to jump out of the moving bus if I so much as moved to scratch myself. And then it hit me... I had been talking to myself. Well that's hardly anything new. But today I had committed the blunder of letting my lips move visibly and of nodding and shaking my head to something I was reasoning out! How stupid is that now!! Anyways I saved the situation by giving her my 'MYOB' smile and staring her down.

Well... I talk to myself. Can't remember when I cultivated this habit but for years now I have talked to myself and me... you see there are 2 of us. And I am NOT schizophrenic! Just that the 2 girls (thank god both of me are girls, can't imagine what wud happen otherwise! and what if one of me was a duck?!!) that are in me are different. One is a an aggressive pusher... she admonishes, yells, swears, cusses, orders around and the other is a dreamer, quiet, thinker, pushover.

When I was younger I used to have a whole horde of imaginary friends and pets. My favorite was an elephant called Jimbo. As a kid I used to pester my mom to buy us a pet elephant. I would assure her that she wudn't eat much and anyways mom can feed her my breakfast. (how noble!... additionally I also hated the yucky boiled egg and milk breakfast which was forced down my throat... very healthy for an elephant no doubt!). She stubbornly refused. I sulked, pleaded, threw tantrums, threw stones, wailed, charmed... but no avail. So thatz when I secretly got Jimbo. There were also Chetak, the horse that could run as fast as the wind and Brutus, the loyal German Shepherd. Over the years they have all left for Neverland. And now its only 'us'.

And together we are a good team. We joke, bitch, confer, plot, dream, plan, laugh, cackle, argue, debate...

Btw herez our fav quote...
'I used to be schizophrenic
But now both of us are fine'