'How like,' says Lister, 'the death wish is the life-urge! How urgently does an overwhelming obsession with life lead to suicide! Really, it's best to be half-awake and half-aware. That is the happiest stage.'

Half-awake and half-aware. When applied to me I don't suppose it's very flattering but it's certainly very accurate.

It's past midnight so this will be dated incorrectly but this evening I was privy to two intriguing pieces of information. First, that the egg chow I get outside college is rendered possible due to a steady supply from Jesus Egg Hatcheries. Secondly, the auto guy on the Garia-Golpark route who always wears a Tshirt that says Enter The Dragon in archaic yellow letters on the back really likes the 3 Idiots soundtrack because that's all that plays on his stereo. A lady told him to shut it today and he went almost tearful with indignation or sorrow, I know not which.

Placing everything in the midst of a risingsun. A real risingsun! A cherry-topped drink, a paanbox, a suitcase, a monkeytupi. Accessories for the subject. Then rays of light emerging from one's head in wide yellow and blue bars. It's de-lovely. Coming next, clutching what is to be clutched, wearing what is to be worn, taking a delicate sip and bounding across a dusty plain, then right off the edge of a waterfall in a whipstitched canoe. All that will remain is a chappal suspended in mid-air, accumulating dew in the cold, startling vivid overfeathered birds. Tinkly chimey music. What a nice SFX expert I'd make if I had the skills.

What what what is happening to my city? At seven today there was the thickest blanket of white outside my window, so much whiteness you couldn't see three feet from where I was. And I like a fool went back to sleep, assuming it was bad vision or addled brain or both. Eight AM now and I'm awake and kicking and it still won't go away, this feeling that my building's floating in mid-air. It is the winter of my smiles.

"Have you stepped outside?"

"Outside, or the lack thereof?"

Hahahaha. Delirium. I have half an hour to get ready and step into the white.

For my last meal I want a lump of red rice with mango-shrimp curry and appam with Malabari chicken and parotta with green mutton curry. Before this I want a Bloody Mary. Finally elayada, then shorbhaja and kachagolla. Then death. Probably as an aftermath, but if I can sit through this I'll be more than happy with death. Death over indigestion, folks.

If I weren't this lazy I'd give this a try. Maybe I will anyway. Also, What?

Google I love you. I'm trampling all over you but I still love you.

If it isn't tiring enough when people are being paternal, consider the world being paternal. The nutters I have for relatives, I recently discovered, told their adopted kid that since she was bestowed on them them by a higher power, Lord Krishna's effectively her brother. And whaddya know, she believes it. The chubby blue boy on the wall, that's him. Bhagyam.

I was late to dinner with la celeste
and that shunts me back to why
it was a mela and I watched Paban Das Baul
and had a little heartbreak at the calmness of it
Then things got funnier.


This year's turning out funny in ways I didn't think funny touched. I'm a jester at an ancient court? And I have three f-l-fs in my throat? It's a good thing because if it weren't this funny I'd be YouTubing things all the bloody time and that could never be anything but both damaging and detrimental. Speaking of YouTube, I have to retrieve password.

Flat U Lens.

(having a huge problem around about the other end)

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.