People always fit into moulds, we wouldn't have typecasting otherwise, but I saw a man today who looked exactly like a rat. Which is to say he looked ratty. And rodent-like. I'm sure he's a perfectly nice man and definitely more human than rodent but he definitely scurried across the road. I wish I could be more descriptive about this, witty even, but that's all there is to it. He looked exactly like a rat.

I've found out I look like a Staffordshire bull terrier. Not that this proves a point or is accurate in any way as far as comparison goes. Just mentioning it to keep with the spirit, gather?

I am always oddly touched by enthusiasm at plainly wrong moments, by eagerness in the midst of desultory conversation, by that absorbed look in some eyes, absolute unwavering concentration, things like that. Maybe it's because I'm a vacillator; my love for the world is almost always a selfish two-way affair where I love everything intensely in short bursts and then put it aside and move on to something else. Which is why these few people I know, they constantly astonish me with their ability to love and commit and sustain and rekindle, and they're doing such a damn fine job it breaks my heart. I know it's far too uncool to care hereabouts and I know we're all nonchalants looking for new ways to prove we're freaks but you guys, you know who you are, you guys will always make my heart light up because of these little blinding beams of intensity, for returning smiles and whoops and for breaking all the walls I put up around me. You're all A-class lovers and you know it, there's no need for me to write this except to slowly wrap my head around the idea that I too might in little shaky motions be able to zoom in and focus and stay, always stay.   

पसंदीदा आदमी है वह जो सूट पहन कर भी रॉकस्टार लगे।
(Oh wait)

Way in, then way out. I like doing this for fun sometimes, reduce saturation to zero. Then new things pop out, clothes look interesting.

All of these photographs look terrible in colour.

The other thing I do for fun is add watermarks to photos and feel important.

A roof at night is a roof at night only if you consider climbing up to sit on it and watch the city blink around you. I propose that we clamber up a creeper and loosen a few tiles and go sit on the roof of an unknown house because our terrace is out of bounds. Let us hope there is no dog, and let us hope that there is no watchman around, and let us exclude from our company that one guy who is destined to whirr around people like a noisy fly; he will worry about everything and worry us into knocking things over or cutting our hands against broken glass. And when we are finally on the roof we may clasp the cold necks of our beer bottles and ignore every sound the house beneath us makes. Slowly we will become a line of silhouettes against a lit-up city, and if we aren't found out we may do it again with another house: this I propose to you today and at this moment. Wear chappals.

I have next to no recollection of Chennai but plenty of my relatives. Which goes to say I'll probably have a nice time but be bored to tears. I shall look at people as a mute version of myself, nodding and laughing and helping out when needed and everyone will think I'm the poor silent sort who will trouble her parents later in life. I shall eat a large quantity of chips with meals and get used to rasam and be asked if I want Aarlicks at night. It's all good though. Some people I want to see because they figured so prominently for the first seven years of my life. The others, I don't know. I'd like to meet the family drunkard but he won't stop talking if he senses you might listen. It'll be like rehab but its ok, as long as I get to go somewhere I'll be awesome every moment. Maybe I'll be so awesome I'll go around asking for the recipe of chettinaad chicken again. Little extreme, but it should freak everyone out enough: the last time I did I was asked, in the most conspiratorial tone, if I ate mutta-dosai at home. Tamil for omelette, it struck me later.

Was going through Rolling Stone India's inaugural issue and there's this interview with Ringo Starr where he's asked what the worst track he had to record was, and he says Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and then he's asked about what albums he's listened to, yada yada, he says he couldn't play Johnny Cash's last album because he sounded so frail, then the interviewer says, That record can get you down.

Then Ringo says, Yeah. If I was ever down, though, I'd put on Leonard Cohen. Then you know you aren't that down.

I laughed so much. Whaddya know, Ringo, Summer Finn's not the only one who loves you.

Raju has the kind of eyes I've always wanted, he has the smiling urchin's face I've always wanted, he has the kind of dusty skin I've always wanted. He takes us past Rishikulya to the beach and points out little specks in the distance and flaps his hands, then helps me collect rainbow-coloured shells that now lie in a plastic bag on my table, they might be mother-of-pearl but I don't want to find out they aren't.

Raju has a husky voice and a red shawl and says things I don't understand, it sounds like a mixture of Telugu and Oriya but it could be something else altogether. I say things he doesn't seem to understand either, we get by with what I've now learnt are International Gestures. IGs for what is that? And no, not there. And wait, wait, there's something in my shoe. He says he's in class three, he understands the word school, also cyclone. Because he's brought us through the cashew trees and mangroves and lots of sand right to the water I'm inclined to want to bring him along into the boat we hire to take us out to sea. But he disappears, and when we come back he's scrabbling around on the sand waiting for us, bringing out two more shells and a dead crab from his pockets.

He wants a toffee but he wants my camera more. He looks at it like it's a weapon at first and then he likes the attention, by the end of it he's making faces but don't be fooled, Raju's a gentleman. He drags us to see a freshly-caught swordfish and leads us back to his village, kicking stray objects in the sand out of his way, pausing now and then to pick up a dried fish or dig his nose or point at a solitary torn chappal lying around, and then he disappears again. Just like that. We pull out in the van and I'm still looking, only he isn't there.

When the reels are developed he looks quite different. The amber of his eyes and the shininess of his hair don't come through. But there's something quieter and more subliminal going on here, I look closer and there it is, Raju's a star.

This comes a day late but I've had it with hiding the secret romanticism.

The absence of school.

The absence of eyebrows.

Making special Sunday lunch, butter chicken included. Dadu's always been a stud.

Working class heroes, mid-eighties.

Spawn tries to be Camel.

The stud should've taught me to make butter chicken much earlier and the working class heroes should've kept the Rajasthan trip for much later but that's the thing, blood never flows the way it should. Also, now that I think of it it doesn't coagulate properly either.

So maybe I should ditch the whining.

The unthinkable has happened. I have been suspected of being drunk at a dinner where the parents're drunk themselves, that's two unthinkables in one, so of course it's all in vain as I try to explain that I didn't know the bathroom switch was outside instead of inside, because I've been to the neighbours' only once and (miraculously) didn't have to use the bathroom then.

Everyone's still sniggering when I come out and talking about how twenty year olds are expected to be hapless and hopeless and things like that, and the parents have somewhat forced smiles on but then Deep uncle brings out the iPod and starts playing ghazals on it. Two minutes later everyone is swaying from side to side and slurring along to Itna na mujhse pyaar karo, main nashe mein hoon. I'm sitting upright, so is Pooploo (but that is only his daaknaam, although he already looks like he suffers plenty because of it), the only two people who're being hit by all the layers of wrongness the song brings with it. I've grown up listening to it. So has he, I guess. Then everyone starts talking about nasha And Its Various Forms, and what they did when they were young, and they all have funny stories except I can't laugh too much for fear of looking precocious or tipsy or both. Then we have dinner. I take three helpings of kaali dal and people are still assuming I'm drunk, I really don't know why, then they ask me why daal over mutton and I make the mistake of telling them I judge the daal before I judge the mutton because meat's meat, it'll taste good as long as it has oil and salt on it, but daal takes an expert hand to make, and everyone stares.

And there's silence.

Then I chuck caution to the wind and accept drambuie and knock it down, then someone says that the dessert's so good aisa lag raha hai ki munh me madhuri dixit ko le liya humne, I want to die precisely half a second later. But it's fun all the same and everyone's still discussing nasha And Its Various Forms. Somewhere between bhaang and dhatura I decide to leave and Deep uncle sees me to the door and tells me, yaad rakhna, jo pet mein jaaye theek hai, jo lungs mein jaaye theek nahin, isko maankar jiyoge toh mast rahoge. And I don't have the heart to tell him that I turned up qwertied, which is why I emptied the daal handi.

This woman she reads the newspapers back to front because by the time she gets past the sports page she feels like there can't possibly be anything worse further on. The ads are the most interesting because of their sincerity, she reads the ads more closely than she does the Business page and thinks often of people who would appreciate this habit. They're real people, industrious people, but the one thing even they wouldn't understand is the way she makes up words just to get the crossword finished. Mornings are always happier without empty boxes, besides she never checks the results. To go back and find out what you already knew was wrong seems such a waste.

He sits and sings with a crack in his voice so it seems like there are two of him, a deep rumbly man and a hoarse falsetto man, but really there is a third too, the brisk official kind who makes sure there is a person impressed enough to offer him a gig. Sometimes a fourth shines through, a slow slurred man sitting at home talking to his dog, which can't tell notes apart anyway but likes the cracks in its own manner.

Besides coming across as always tipsy and saying something borderline hilarious every time I meet him, he looks like an owl. His son looks like a sparrow, and a really nervous one at that, so I'm guessing it doesn't run in the family. This man, my neighbour, he once had to face Puja's wrath in my balcony. She was yelling at some random guy for indeterminate reasons, and it was really late at night so she thought no one was around. Somewhere in the midst of all the profanity she was letting loose he popped up from behind his living room's curtains (it adjoins our balcony) and calmly said, whiskey glass in hand, thoda dheere se, beta.

He's always in unbuttoned shirts or open-necked garments, no tie, even with a blazer. That's how I noticed this funny scar-like thing on his chest just below his neck. It's brown and leathery and very intriguing because it's like a splotchy upside-down pentagon; almost makes him look like a middle-aged owlish superhero in disguise. I went the longest time without asking about it because it was nicer to come up with theories on my own, but after a year or so the tell-me-why tendency took over and I asked. This was right after the day in the elevator when he told me that Raymond Chandler was too fancy a name for someone who wrote badass detective novels. He always says things like that. So this time I waited for another epiphany, only he said, oh, it's a keloid.

A what?

A keloid, he said. It started out as a scar or something, and then he couldn't stop scratching it, and it grew and it spread...

Like a tumour? I was pretty excited by now.

Almost. But it's benign (Exit excitement, stage left). And it itches if it comes in contact with skin (Exit open shirt mystery, should have thought of this earlier).

Interesting enough?

Yes, I said, but I was just being polite. And that, to summarise, is why I don't like talking too much. Things of epic proportion are shaved down till they become keloids. What a term.

Mostly I miss school lunch breaks. I miss Debhuti's muri and Bapi chanachur and I miss Sil's chilli chicken and I miss Sonali's pink gobi (now that was a work of art) and I miss Soeta's aloo stuff with the mayo stuff. Mostly I miss how everyone just came alive for those thirty minutes. Then we went back to class as figures in uniform, inanity and empty lunch boxes chuck into bag please thank you. Outside of that half an hour we were all so different I think we wouldn't have been friends at all without the prospect of having that lunch period to fool around in. Mostly I miss that, it's the only thing I miss about school.

The family doesn't like passion. Everything is sniggered over, everything is loved. Declarations and confessions are made after much throat clearing, but catch anyone letting go of the source of discomfort. The family has no attachments but is loath to let go of things it obsesses about. It's weird. Take the father, for instance, the things he loves to do are pursued in the most covert ways possible. He plans silently for ages and then announces and takes off, like on his yearly trek. Now the mother in her own way loves to take off (all kinds of baggage in tow) but chooses to be a sport. It doesn't matter much to me, but then there's no escaping the passion. It's always silent, so there are offhand light remarks about us not having had a family vacation since Kerala early last year, which didn't really count as a vacation because it's home, isn't it, even though we're hard put to not feel like aliens when on Mallu soil. There are these foamy frothy statements about men having to do what they have to do. There is laughter even. And then, all of a sudden, there's a phone call to meet at Elgin, oh so dispassionate, nothing much, just lunch.

And then she buys me a jacket. Like it's all part of a plan. Like we're planning to take off too, pretty soon. Like it's women having to do what they have to do. The family's this tight, well-organised hangar and everyone runs out of fuel sooner or later, but what will really do me good, I think, is to stomach the jacket without saying a word (thanking people is an English concept, we merely accept what elders drop onto our heads) and wait for a really cold night when the runway's all dark and then fly off like there's a plague. The family doesn't ask for love, it assumes it, which is all very good, but then I hadn't counted on PPR being such an epic failure. We learn everyday. Tomorrow I abandon hope and start studying.

I love it that my room has a large window, but it's supremely annoying that there are large windows all over the house, and what is infinitely worse is if you've parents who are morning people. If I crawl out of bed feeling like the world's just been born, everything cool and dim and dewy, I only have to walk out of my room to be assailed by brightness, you've no idea what degrees of brightness. It's like some paparazzi attack, every curtain in the house drawn back and all the world woken up and staring in. Here comes the Sun. I'll follow the Sun. Good day sunshine. Bumboils, all of it. Not one song helps. I hate mid-mornings with a hate reserved for very few things in my life, more so because I wake up to them nowadays.

I've spent the entire day feeling crabby and violated because Neighbour's Daughter waved at me and went all Hii and Wassup at nine in the morning when I was still half-asleep and muttering to myself. Bloody annoying kid, everyday she's at the table eating breakfast and waving her spoon at me when I'm trying to breathe in the aroma of tea. I'm gently willing myself to wake up, trying to ignore the light, moving towards zen, and then she says Wassup. Bumboils. I've no idea what she's seen me doing every morning, by the time I've woken up after two gulps of tea I generally have no recollection of whether I was yawning or making faces or scratching my bum in the kitchen, and all the while she's been staring. Pest. And she has such strange friends too, turned up in college one day and went all Hii and Wassup again and I nearly died. I was on the ledge but it was like I was back in my kitchen pajamaed and crusty-eyed all over again, surrounded by steel and morning breath, last night's anti-acne cream still on day-before-yesterday's zit. And I'm chewing absent-mindedly on a strand of hair while the water boils, oh god, and just at the wrong moment I get the Hii didiiii thing, and it's too far off to fling anything, besides you don't do it to your neighbours. And definitely not at uni, so I recovered and Wassupped her back, but bumboils all the same.

Lack of incentive is going to be the death of me. I'd like to carefully observe her and wait for the time when she's doing something personal and rip her privacy by yelling through a loudspeaker or something, but no. It's sad all right, but I usually tend to let go of hard feelings in the loo right after the tea, so nothing much remains. What a sentence.

In spite of all my grumbling about Loss of Private Space, I'm glad Paati's here. She's got this catty sense of humour that definitely wasn't handed down to the Mater, as is evident from all the frowns I get every time I keep Paati up late asking her for more stories, more stories, more stories. But then it isn't Ma's fault that she walks in every time her office romance is being recounted. It may be all Amol Palekar types but I don't think you'd want to watch your mother and your daughter giggling over it, which is perhaps why we do it only when she's around.

Having tried and failed splendidly at studying Middle English Literature from seven to eight thirty, I've spent the larger part of the evening watching Zee Cinema. Television must be brought back into my life, what was I thinking. Sunday Superstar has always been Amitabh Bacchan since God knows when, but will do, the songs are tops and I know most of them by heart. So I sing along and all the while Paati keeps reading out tips from the Tamil magazines she brings folded neatly between the saris in her suitcase. How to have feet as soft as lotus flowers. How to make your wedding sari's zari last. How to treat burns with aloe vera. How to (snide smile) get rid of acne. And then she looks at me and says, it's not bad the way you've turned out, although you keep getting thinner (I gasp on cue), but the marks, tchah, the marks.

And I turn to her and say, yeah, it's like Anthony Gonsalves would say. Pukka eediyatt dikhta hai.

And then we laugh, and she says, you're turning out better than I thought. It's just your Tamil that's ghastly.

And since I cannot explain how much of writing this down has gone the lost-in-translation way, and since she'll always have the last word anyway, I'll stop and haiku some more. It's turning into an addiction all right, mostly because I get to count syllables on my fingers. No laughter please.