BWAHAHAHA!

I've had half a dozen friends texting to remind me that the big day is now not far off.

Here's what is causing (mock) distress at the other end of the world ;)

MESS WITH 'EM, AND IT SHALL GET MESSY.

The creatures in my life have always found a mention here. Today's not-quite-escapade deserves an entire writeup, considering it is the lord and master of all things disgusting. Brrrr.

I was at my regular bus stop, waiting for one of the Express buses to come along. I was late and hopping mad cause I'd probably missed the 8.30. I found myself a shady spot to wait and avoided the queue.

A while later, I thought I felt something drop on me. Not spotting anything unusual on me or around, I ignored it. Within a minute, I saw a twig drop on my shoulder and brushed it off. Then another one fell. Considering there was no breeze, it puzzled me. I looked hard at the last one, lying next to my foot. It appeared to be a little reddish, and had some stuff on it. Weird.

I squinted at the branches of the tree above me and spotted a crow, fidgeting. I looked for a nest and didn't spot one. As I looked harder at the crow, it dawned on me. It was fidgeting with what looked like a carcass. What had fallen on me were bones. With little bits of meat and blood on them. From a carcass badly mangled.

I'm taking a zillion showers and skipping lunch. I'm never taking panga with the crows again. They may be pointy-beaked, noisy and you may want to throw a big fat shoe at them when they wake you at 7 am on a Sunday.. but remember, they always get back at you. And believe you me, there shall be blood.
(And if you look carefully, a triumphant smirk in those beady eyes.)

A YEAR'S DISAPPEARANCE.. AND A YEAR OLDER. YOICKS!

I've kinda fallen off the face of my blog for a while now.. so much so, that I do not even remember the fonts, sizes and colour that I'd decided upon when I last wrote.

Is it because I do not have proper access to the internet? Tch tch, I'd probably get slaughtered by most people at work if I said that out loud, considering it is my desk that that world plonks itself at if they want to access Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail.. and any other site that the company would consider to be a distraction from work :) (Fairly) Unrestricted internet access comes with my job, but it pretty much strips the joy from Facebook and the rest. Sigh.

So what else have I been up to in the past year?

1. I've moved back to Bombay (Yayy!), and half-died travelling from one end to the other each day (fine, I'll say it.. I'm old and my bones creak! There!)
2. I've taken over another profile at work and I want more out of it now. The attention span of the aged is a teeny tiny little microsecond, I'm telling ya.
3. I've put on weight. I'm told it comes with age. I climb stairs to be healthy and lose some of the chub. The bones from Point no. 1 protest.
4. I've travelled. A passport that was earlier used only for identification now proudly carries two stamps. It feels all grown up :)
5. I've grown cranky and crotchety.. and am apparently now a scary old dame :D
6. I'm now a TV Show freak. House, Castle, Bones, HIMYM, Coupling.. and I'm still open to suggestions. The Couch Potato and her Creakies (from Point no. 1) need to climb more stairs.

I've done more. But for the life of me, I can't jot it down cause my memory fails me!

IT'S ICK BEING SICK

A million, tiny, evil li'l creatures hammer at the inside of my head. With each step I take, they object to motion by hammering even harder. They seem to be spreading throughout my body, which feels like it's a thousand years old and creaks with every breath.

I haven't had a fever in 5 years now. I was beginning to compare myself to Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, so it thwacked me hard and then took on a jeering note by playing hide-and-seek every few hours.

What irritates the most is that I'm bored. B.O.R.E.D. It's bad enough having had to cancel all weekend plans to be tied to your bed, but having no life whatsoever makes me wish some things could go my way.

• People should log on to Facebook more often and keep changing their status messages for my entertainment. It's not fair that they've got better things to do. Bah.
• I want to be sick enough to have to consume more Benadryl. It's tasty, and the alcohol content could make me happily silly in the head.
• A peg on my leaky nose. I hate having to roam around with a handkerchief.
• My sense of humour has gone a-missing. No amount of looking for it has borne fruit. Apparently, it has an aversion to the aforementioned kerchief.
  
• I'm offered cheesy food just so that I eat something. I discover I have no interest. What is up with that?! :O
  
• As I type this out, the pounding in my head begins again.The impish creatures have sensed that the kerchief is around. Methinks they're having a secret love affair, considering how they always attack me together.

For all those that read this, help a sick friend- get more active on Facebook and Orkut. In the meanwhile, I shall go look for my sense of humour under the bed.

TWINKLE TOES

As I watched them twirl gracefully on the dance floor, I sighed. The chemistry was great. It was wholly impersonal- they were just two members from the same team who had style, grace, and a love for the dance floor. They looked like they were having fun.

I spent the rest of the evening trying to escape getting dragged to dance. It was not just my innate dislike of flashing lights, crowds and loud music.. I simply cannot dance. And when friends glare at me in disbelief, I can do all to convince except actually shake a leg.

All evening, I dodged and skirted probable Pullers, and even thus, I ended up waggling two fingers in the air before picking up a pretend phone call-- 5 times over the evening. Why did I waggle two fingers? Because I would assuredly fall over if I tried using my feet.

It is very difficult to appear graceful whilst struggling to keep upright with multiple left feet. I'm clumsy on a normal day-- I walk into chairs, bang my head unfailingly on the corners of shelves, drop my phone one zillion times each day. Put me and music together and there will be a spectacle. It is not possible to attain my level of dance-floor malfunction with just two clumsy feet.. there must be at least a couple more invisible ones down there which decide to spring into oaf-like action at the very beat of a drumstick.

Sigh. I wish I could twirl. I am not even in kiddie school anymore to be able to swivel in front of the mirror in a frilled frock without feeling sheepish. Any twirling I do will have to be in a room full of pillows to prevent serious damage. As for the dance floor, twirling will not just be a spectacle, it will most definitely be a swinging-shinging debacle.

TAGGED

Tagged by G, I’d thought I would write.. but it was a book-tag, and I hadn’t read a new author in years. I tried to go about it as the tag instructed: "Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag up to 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose."

I realised 15 was five too many. It took me a good half hour to come up with these ten, and that’s after showing remarkable restraint, because all I really wanted to put down were Georgette Heyers.

1. Regency Buck- Georgette Heyer: Lord Worth, my all-time favourite hero. Dashing, suave, and a veritable dish. Correction: Fictional hero, damn.
2. Arabella- Georgette Heyer: Mr. Beaumaris.. much smoother, just as dashing, and equally rich.. but missing Worth’s Je ne sais quoi.. and I’m not dangling after a title :)
3. Pride & Prejudice-Jane Austen: Not for Darcy, definitely not. But my first old-world romance, thanks to an English teacher we called Gonlu :)
4. And Then There Were None- Agatha Christie: The first book that sent a chill down my spine and made me peer from behind the curtains into the darkness outside with every expectation of being murdered. And while there are those who would love to remind me that I fell asleep whilst reading the climax, I maintain that I was scared unconscious.
5. A book on Versace which was a gift from across the seven seas: Remarkably special. And not just because it tapped into my interests.
6. Right ho, Jeeves- P.G.Wodehouse: "the stars are God's daisy chain", and "every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born" hehe :)
7. Bombay Deco- Sharda Dwivedi & Rahul Mehrotra: A book on Art Deco in Bombay from the 1930s, with glimpses of an old-world Bombay that held me spellbound.
8. Enid Blyton: and I can’t pick just one book.
9. Archie comics: To which my dad attributes all my knowledge, or lack thereof. It’s meant to put me to the blush :)
10. Timeline- Michael Crichton: The only science fiction which I didn’t fall asleep in the middle of.
    

While some of these popped into my head because they thrilled me, there are those that occupy memories, even though I haven’t read them in years.

I’m tagging people who I know read, who read my blog, and those with particular connections to the above. G, you get tagged for.. well, timepass :D Here you go, and people, please write, I could do with the Entertainment!

Deepbluesea & daviejones, thefirstidiot & kookygoblin (may this make you get back to blogging!), DSK, Monika (enough incentive to start?), Shaunak, Dinesh, Ritesh- A second tag in case you’d like to write about Asterix!

A special dedication: To Ma, who introduced me to Georgette Heyer—who makes me less cynical, even if only for a while :)

BEE ATTACK

Curled up on a dining chair,
Unable to sleep
She was ending up counting a mountain of bees
Instead of numbering her sheep.

They'd attacked her on her comfy bed,
Under her cozy blanket..
She killed 7 within 15 minutes
So antagonized she felt.

They'd taken over her bedrooms
They fancied her lights and lamp..
Shunned to the bare living room,
She dreamt fitfully of the Bee base camp.

"Look at the small pile of dead bees
How much bigger it could become.."
The hunted woman felt a spark of evil
Thinking of how Hit affected bees like Rum.

The tipsy pile she picked up
And bore it outside the balcony door.
She'd fought frogs, lizards, monkeys and mice
But bees, never before.

The animal kingdom, she ruefully thought,
Who knew what next it would bring..
Attacking thus far with creepy-crawlies and varmint
It had never before deployed The Sting :(

Banishing thought and bad rhyme,
Determined: the battleground she would not flee!
The morrow's light, she felt, would bring answers
To bee or not to bee.