My cool new phone…

…has lots of features that’ll take me a while to use! It also has/had psychdelic backlighting on the keypad.

But the best thing is that it has a pink schedule! Anyone want to guess what that is? (No, Girlfriend, not you; you wouldn’t be guessing!)

Hint: I could even forgive it the psychdelic backlighting when I discovered the pink schedule

Update: Only two guesses? Only two? Should I offer a prize to the most imaginative guess?

What do you do…

… when you’re in danger of losing something that makes you you? Something that allows you to be who you are? Without which you would lose a large part of every day, a large part of your life?

I’m losing my voice

Is it just me?

Ever have one of those days when seeing a glass of milk on a counter can make you cry? When you’re so tightly stretched that you just need something to breach the dam? The dam that you’ve built up so carefully, the facade that you’ve created so beautifully, so no one knows how strong or weak the foundations are: not even yourself? When seeing a glass of milk on the counter when it should have been in the fridge can push you over the edge?

Do you have someone who, just by talking to you, not even knowing what’s simmering beneath the surface, can calm you on a day like that? By smiling at whom you suddenly feel those foundations grow stronger? Listening to whom you start smiling, and even before you realise it, the milk has boiled and not split?

People like that are your safety ropes, aren’t they? They anchor you to reality. They are the reason you don’t give up climbing.

I’m trying to hook on to a new safety rope. I don’t know if it’s actually tied to anything up there – it’s scary. Suddenly, I find that the old ones aren’t within reach anymore. They will swing back, I know, but right now, they’re at the other end of the arc (or swinging away, or swinging back). And I don’t know how to knot the new rope – I’m clumsy, I’m afraid of making a mistake and losing it, and the rope’s different from any I’ve had before.

And I’m having one of those days.

Tagged!

Updated!

I’ve been tagged! I suppose I should thank Chinmayi, but I think I’ll wait till the end to decide whether to thank or to kill…

The tag: To write a post with six weird facts or habits about yourself. I’m also supposed to name the six people I will tag next and leave them a comment to let them know they’ve been tagged and to read my blog. So…

1. This one you’ll know, if you’ve read my blog before. I’m finicky about spelling and grammar. While I don’t think of every ellipsis as a sin, I hate sloppy spelling and bad grammar and things that make language difficult to read.

2. On the other hand, I love finding language used out of context that makes for puns or just funny imagery.

3. Which brings me to the third thing – I turn words into images in my head. So, if we’re debating K-serials in class, I can see Smriti Irani playing the dutiful bahu, adorned in heavy saree and two tons of jewellery. Big problem sometimes.

4. I suppose this should be number one, but it’s not, because I don’t think it’s weird, but a lot of people do/would – I wear my hair short ‘coz long hair’s a pain to manage, but I wear sarees all the time! (Changed because apparently, it’s not weird) I carry handkerchiefs. In this day and age of use-and-throw, carry everywhere and buy-wherever-you-like tissues, I carry a handkerchief. Admittedly only when I have a cold, but I carry one.

5. I’m scared of falling off. No, not only of heights, of falling off. Anything. Which is why I never learnt to ride a bicycle (meaning I walked everywhere in the English country town where I studied for a whole year – everywhere!) And why I am the last person in the house to get something out of the loft. And other such.

6. I don’t think I know six bloggers to tag…

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I tag Tatonnement, Nemo, Amateur Blogger, and the one anonymous blogger I know (just hoping you haven’t been tagged yet!)

And Chinmayi, thanks!

One of those days

In a city where people say “Haan, main subah subah aajaatoon – dus baje pavunch jaatoon”, I’m staring at my computer screen at 10 a.m. and thinking “What a day!”

It started with the bus ride from home – the woman (she was no lady!) sitting in the first seat, instead of scooting in like normal people, moved one foot daintily aside to let me slide into the window seat. The front of my dress caught impossibly against the route-board and RRIIPP! a nice one-inch-square hole. Covering up with a dupatta, I get off the bus and walk towards the stop where I have to catch the Little Yellow Van (LYV) that we dignify by the name of the ‘college bus’. Between managing two bags and trying to stop the wind from blowing the dupatta off my poor torn dress, I fail to notice the LYV leaving, five minutes before schedule.

Having gotten into an auto to chase the LYV (no, no movie-style histrionics here, the LYV was well out of sight and I couldn’t say “chase that bus!”), ten minutes into the ride, in telephonic contact with someone in the LYV, I realise I haven’t an earthly hope of catching the damn thing. So I pay off the auto and try to find someone to cover my first-hour class. Only to find that the only other person who takes my batch has also missed the LYV. Aha.

I’m waiting for a Rattly Red Bus (RRB) to the middle-of-nowhere and calling the Registrar to tell him that someone needs to cover my class while I cover the hole on my kurta. (Yeah, I made the last bit up) He has other things to do, so tells me he will cover the class till I arrive. 9 a.m., I’m getting off the RRB and waving frantically waving at an auto to take me the last three kilometers to the campus. I tell the auto driver he has to make it fast – I’m late for class, and the poor man makes it in five minutes flat. Screeching to a dramatic halt at the foot of the stairs, I run down one corridor and up a flight of stairs, pick up my books, run down another flight of stairs and then walk sedately into class. Except for my mind, which is still running (or is it because it is sedated that it’s so blank?).

Forty-five minutes of class later, I’m standing in front of my computer screen, saying “What a day!” Wait, I think that’s where I started. Ah.

The sunlight

doesn’t like being called syrup. It’s gone into hiding. Hmm.

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The sunshine felt like syrup today. Warm. Sticky. Heavy.