1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?
Been an extra for a movie, bathed an elephant, baked them brownies, pulled a blog through for seventeen months (and counting).

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
No, to both.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What places did you visit?
Chilika, Gokharkuda-Rishikulya.
Sankarpur.
Trichy, Gunaseelam, Thanjavur, Tiruvanakaaval, Tiruvannamalai, Gingee.
Santiniketan.
Bangalore.
Coorg.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
A new city to call home.

7. What date from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Memory's malfunctioning, can't pick a winner.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Keeping up.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Keeping back.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Flu, flu, always the cursed flu.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Biciclette! That stuffed lizard from the haat at Santiniketan, but it was technically bought by Sambit.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
I don't know. I don't go in for monitoring.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and/or depressed?
Mothers fathers sisters brothers lovers babies whatever.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Travel, books, cycle, furniture, clothes. I had money of my own this year and I spent it all over the place.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
All the travel. I also learnt to cook some fancy shit this year, so that got me excited.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
Paradise Circus - Massive Attack
My Roots - Shaa'ir + Func
Tighten Up - The Black Keys
How Can I Get Your Groove - TAAQ
Banshee Beat - Animal Collective (this was on the 2007 list too, I think)
Telephone - Pomplamoose

17. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
About the same.

18. Thinner or fatter?
Same only.

19. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Studying.

20. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Being lazy.

21. How will you be spending Christmas?
Christmas eve, went to Denzong's with Sujaan, then to college where I met Senjuti, then Shweta's. Everything was all Just Baked types. There was a bonfire that turned noxious occasionally. Then we watched The Powerpuff Girls and some horrible movie called The Punisher till everyone passed out. On Christmas day I slept through the afternoon and had dinner with momma and poppa.

22. Did you fall in love in 2010?
No.

23. How many one-night stands?
None.

24. What was your favourite TV programme?
30 Rock.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No. All is full of love.

26. What was the best book you read?
All the NaM stuff: Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Lampedusa's The Leopard. Apart from that, le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. But my absolute favourite was The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Black Keys, Little Joy, Vashti Bunyan.

28. What did you want and get?
Job, monies.

29. What did you want and not get?
LOVE! ABSOLUTION! SELF-ACTUALISATION! MORE TIME!

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
Ishqiya sans the last twenty minutes. Most of the films I watched this year weren't really from 2010. But to stay true to the question, I last watched Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and The Kids Are All Right and loved both, so those.

Edit: I forgot Robot. Deserves top place, hands down.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Two-One. Was woken up at midnight and handed cheesecake. Walked around in the rain all morning. Can't recall what I did afterwards. Eat-drink-read something.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More excitement on a day-to-day basis.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
Indifferent.
(Ha, that's actually an answer.)

34. What kept you sane?
Lots of things. 2010's been the sanest year of college so far.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
My attention span (or lack thereof) and TV-watching habits (or lack thereof) make answers to questions like this painful.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The only one I can recall everyone following uniformly is Ayodhya. The Commonwealth Games phase was overkill without being overkill, if you get my drift.

37. Who did you miss?
One needs distance to facilitate missing.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Dunno.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.
The best is yet to come.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
There isn't one that I can think of right now.

Traditions, I've been thinking. Once every year these guys make me go clubbing. They get me into a dress and high heels and I put a sock in my claustrophobia and jump through it all. I enjoy it because it's one night and it's just my girls around me. We've been eating the same things at each others' places for ages and we've been drinking the same things at Fillers since we started going there. Yesterday I baked some hash brownies and we sat and ate them and just sat around some more. There's always this pattern. Go sit at each other's places, smoke eat talk eat eat eat watch TV eat. It's incredible that I'm in a place where I can do this, three long years after school, and have conversations that don't go the remember-when-we way. The reason it's a downright miracle is because it goes against my expectations circa 2008, I thought I was leaving school behind forever and to hell with it but this, I've realised, is as good a remnant as any. In many ways it's better. I have a lot of difficulty placing events within a larger timeframe sometimes - I'm shockingly bad at figuring out whether a year's been good or bad, or if I was happy when I was fourteen, things like that. I don't remember fourteen and it doesn't bother me much, I was probably going through my creature phase. But this, as the most beautiful chunk from a larger mass that has now faded, this is good. We've all been creatures together, I think that pushes our street cred through the ceiling. This might be the last winter we spend in the city talking about making ads and manufacturing "brain drugs" and opening an eatery and becoming assassins and going everywhere and doing everything so you know where this is coming from.

Right, so that's done, I'll go sit in my corner and look stolid now.

The end-of-year tag should soon be doing the rounds but until it does, timeliine! I love timelines, this one makes me feel like I'm living a picaresque. Which, in retrospect, is a little worrisome.

Our revelry will one day be a rule. I've realised that old people know this best, followed by children. My grandfather was once fed alligator meat when he was a kid and therefore knows this bothways. Only we in our innocence with our graffiti and our piercings desire the periphery. The wackiness of this is pure gold: tomato soup will be institutionalised and so will yo mama, oh wait. See what I mean?

This is not a rant. I have resolved to eat no more than ten peanuts today. This resolution concerns peanuts solely.

Raquel Aparicio:

Jillian Tamaki:

From Ape on the Moon.

Hop a fence, leave the street and wet my feet I'll find a swimming pool
Cause when I'm snuffed out I doubt I'll find a swimming pooooooooooooool
Hop a fence, leave the street and wet your feet to find

The Raja of Chhokrapur would've giggled and said, "What does he mean?" Everything is more than a little funny in fractions, which is why it's also really simple. Whatte philosophical momunt.

Why so much phlegm? I could start an industry and get rich. Sell oil off my face and phlegm off my throat, I seem to produce both in excess.

I don't think I'm that hot on getting away any more, you know why because you know what I'm going to say next. Everyone that I have ever loved, everyone is getting old. You go go, and you don't come back. You go go, and you don't come back. Can't get this out of my head now.

Winamp's on rabid shuffle. I've had a holiday without music, my music I mean. Apart from humming absently while doing stupid things like brushing my teeth (a habit I've picked up from my mother, I've realised) the only other song I heard that I can remember is an anthem going Jaya Karnataka Maate that a group of kids at a school in Kakkabe were singing. They'd probably think otherwise, or not think about it at all, but it made me feel cheated anyway, I'd like to be going to school on a mountain. Blame it on the Chalet School, which I loved only because of where it was, and Ranikhet and Rishap and this little building under Tadiyendamol, the things I could do with my life if I had a schooling under the sky.

On the train back from Bangalore I heard a kid declaim about the pubs there - clean ladies loos, smoking sections, ittis really awesome da. I could only concur. This kid, incidentally, was part of an entire panoply of college students who decided to spend most of the 29 hours hogging every charger outlet to either watch movies or transfer them. Walking from berth to loo I catch on glowing laptop screens glimpses of The Lion King, Big Bang Theory, Serendipity, Karthik Calling Karthik, and, inexplicably, Crossroads. Inception jaisa koi action film hai kya? Arre Se7en dekh. Mast hai. Magar woh waisa toh nahin hoga na, matlab gripping types chahiye. Arre Se7en dekh. Bahhhuut dangerous hai.

This is a mostly desultory post because I'm writing desultorily. My keyboard's grown stiffer. What I mean is I need to hit every key forcefully and sometimes vengefully and it's not conducive to gushing. Going elsewhere always does me good if it's not too many people and I can walk around a lot, Coorg's ideal for that if you consider lines like the woodland spring has put the darkness from your thinking, something that just came up now. It's a pretty effective analogy but I really should stop trying to write with music playing, I inevitably end up thinking via lyrics.

Most of the time I'm a quieter person when I'm travelling. I don't speak unless spoken to and I'd much rather not hobnob with other people at the dining room, chewing and watching is pretty much my game. I was rude to this gentleman during teatime because he was annoying the fuck out of me by describing the trek he'd undertaken that morning. I could tell my father was secretly pleased, but then he holds that Bloody Proselytizers deserve all the discomfort that comes their way. That is, by the way, a category. My father does not like missionaries. That is, of course, not why I was rude to him. Another thing that made my trip, reading alone. Having people come up and declare that they've just finished reading x by y then look around hoping to find someone else who's read it and will discuss it, it's taking a toll on my wellbeing. I could attribute it to a lot of other things too but being a literature student, I've realised, has come close to screwing with my happiness most of the time. That's not to say I won't survive it :)

Now for the sea.