Chalo, boys, it’s…

…World No Tobacco Day (or something) today.

I’m going to give it a real go. I had a couple of rum-and-litchi-juices with my mom (they tasted as bad as they sound!) last night and afterwards I was dying for a smoke, but I didn’t have one. And of course when you know you can’t possibly smoke, there’s nothing else you can think of. But I haven’t bought any more, yet.

Since I’ve started announcing my re-quitting plans to all and sundry, I’ve actually had a couple of people ask me, “Why? [Do you want to quit?]” Er… because it’s bad for you?

I’m also becoming something of a (temporary) health nut. On the plane from Bombay I read that commercially available bread is quite bad for you– quite a shock to me! I thought bread was wholesome and nutritious. But it’s basically processed wheat, with various additives to keep it soft and fresh. Empty calories, the article called it– just like soft drinks! Since then I’ve started to question everything I eat. Unfortunately, maida is so prevalent that it’s quite hard to avoid it. Oh well.

Given the amount I smoke and drink, what’s the point of trying to eat healthy, you ask? True, but perhaps it all counts. And if I do manage to cut back on the cigarettes– perhaps only when I drink, perhaps not at all– then that’s 2 out of 3 done. And I’m getting quite a bit of exercise at home– jogging, basketball, swimming, cycling… by the time I leave, at the end of June, I hope to be cycling, swimming, gymming, and playing basketball (and then dropping dead) every evening.

Rambleon

Hey y’all!

 

Sorry about the leave of absence. Many of my college friends—pretty much the entire Bombay gang, actually—are blissfully unaware that I’m so geeky as to have a blog that I care about and update regularly. It is pretty darn geeky, by their our their our some standards, I suppose. None of them care that they don’t have internet at home, as long as the bar’s well-stocked!

 

I spent the train journey there with my nose in a book, listening with one ear to the inane chit-chat that was going on in my compartment. I am so not the type to start random conversations with strangers, and I find this train bonding utterly useless. People spew all sorts of simplistic twaddle about this and that, with a couple of prophecies thrown in for good measure—and the response is always a sage nod of the head: haan, haan. Following which, the speaker will repeat exactly what he just said, a little louder this time, and there’s more general agreement and head-nodding all around—although this time the noddys make it a point to look away after they’re done. The blasted fool may then repeat it one more time, at which point I can’t help looking up from my book and rolling my eyes in the general direction of the person in the compartment who speaks the most English. Bharat log!

 

This was only my 3rd visit to Bombay (although the first of those visits lasted for a month). For the first time, I didn’t stray below the No-Auto Line and go to the parts of the city I’m most familiar with: Colaba and Parel. I stayed in Bandra almost the entire trip, for a very good reason: I did vaguely want to visit the Nariman Point firm I interned with last year, but OH MY GOD the climate in Bombay is SO bad. Being a proud South Indian, I’m no stranger to heat and humidity, but the weather this trip was quite unbearable. Sweat, heat, sweat… yuck. If I ever live there the first thing I’ll buy is a heavy-duty airconditioner.

 

It was a little boring sitting at home all day while my hosts went to work. I learnt how to play their PlayStation… not one for the video games, really, me. The weekend was better though, culminating in a 5-hour, 7-player poker session on Saturday night where I initially lost 100 bucks, made back 300, and then ended the night down by 200. Much, much, fun, and the reason I went to see those guys in the first place. Companionship.

 

I got to see Toto’s… or is it Tito’s? Not the Goan club, the Mumbaikar bar. Toto’s, I think. I also had a very reasonably-priced and tasty brunch at the SEZ-sized Candie’s, and a superb Thai-Ban dinner that was worth every rupee. We were supposed to go to Zenzi, which is apparently a with-it lounge bar, but we scrapped it for the poker game. I later read that eM was at Zenzi that night with someone who does look a thing like Jesus, like she remembers when she was young.

 

Speaking of looking like Jesus, I finally gave in and have shorn my lovely locks. (Pubes, Ebby called them when he saw me.) I asked the barber to take it all off with that head-shaving machine they have. “Jaise Akshay Kumar lagtha hain?” And Aamir Khan too, I told him.

 

Now across the hall from the Old Monks live two hot girls. The hotter one has a boyfriend who also lives there. The other one has a boyfriend who doesn’t live there, but she does have… a cat! From the moment I heard this I was dying to meet them. We did eventually go over to play poker (such card sharps we are, na?) and I soon abandoned the game to devote my attention to the pursuit of one thing: giving the cat as much pleasure as I could. Among other things, this involved playing with it and letting it bite and scratch my hand and arm. It doesn’t hurt much, and I quite enjoy seeing cats gnaw on my knuckles while they hold my arm in place with their claws.

 

Quite sadly though, I turned out to be allergic to this particular cat. Or perhaps I was just allergic to its saliva in my bloodstream! I broke out into rashes all over my arms and face, my left eye reddened and closed up, my nose began to run and at the same time the skin right under my nose and eyes became dry as hell. On my way back from a trip to the bathroom to check on myself I finally caught the attention of the poker players, who asked what was wrong. Never people to pass up a trip-taking opportunity, all sympathy disappeared when I informed them that: “No no, I like it when the cat scratches and bites me.. I like the nibbles.” A string of double entendres followed, and the fact that I kept playing with the cat and then going to the bathroom for a few minutes was duly noted. Going back to ask if anyone had any Vaseline (for my nose!) was probably a mistake, in retrospect.

 

Ooh, name-dropping! I saw Vinod Kambli sitting in a car outside our apartment building. He lives there too, apparently. And Shenaz Treasurywala came into a juice bar while we were there. I didn’t see her though, because I was watching the damn IPL match and nobody told me it was her– they just began a debate on whether ’her’ butt was cute or not, and I didn’t bother to turn around and gawk.

 

And now I’m back in the Tamilnad. Basketball, gym, smokes under the stars. A very silent phone: Airtel here is very well-behaved and doesn’t send me the non-stop VAS offers that Idea does in Delhi. Internet access from my mom’s laptop, not mine. For my birthday mother dearest gave me an album with old pictures of me from ages 4 to 20. Surprisingly sweet of her: our family isn’t big on sentimentality that way.

 

I’ve discovered that brother dearest, despite having turned 18, shows no interest in alcohol! At lunch today he didn’t have any of the delicious chicken either. A teetotalling vegetarian brother? I’d better sort him out, don’t you think?

Horn Ok Please Tata

I’m off to Bombay until the weekend… there may be internet, but I doubt very much I’ll have time to post anything. So have fun miss me don’t look back in anger …bye.

Thae-ees

Just a castaway, an island lost at sea
Another lonely day, with noone here but me
More loneliness than any man could bear
Rescue me before I fall into despair (1)

Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner
Sometimes I feel like my only friend
Is the city I live in, the city of angels
Lonely as I am, together we cry (2)

Once I was a young man
And I thought all I had to was smile (3)

I’ve had enough of this charade
I’m thinking of the words to say
Keep waking up without you here
Another day, another year (4)

I never thought that I could carry on with this life
But I can’t resist myself, no matter how hard I try
The city– it calls to me
Decadent scenes from my memory
Living this charade is getting me nowhere
I can’t shake this charade
The city’s cold blood calls me home (5)

I don’t think you trust in my self-righteous suicide
I cry when angels deserve to die
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit (6)

Hmmm.

I noticed tonight that the world has been changing
While I’ve been stuck here, dithering around
Though I know I said I’d wait around till you need me
I have to go, I hate to let you down (7)

BUT I can’t stop now…

There’s a place I like to hide
A doorway that I run to in the night
It’s a place where you will learn
To face your fears, retrace the tears
And ride the whims of your mind (8)

There’s a place I go when I’m alone
Do anything I want, be anyone I want to be
And it is us I see (9)

This here is the place I will be staying
There isn’t a number, you can call the payphone
Let it ring a long, long, long, long time
If I don’t pick up, hang up, call back, let it ring some more (10)

 

My first real blog post was about the crazy loneliness I felt living alone in a small room on the third floor of a busy main road and coping with my standard girl troubles (viz., there was another boy involved).

As I was telling another girl tonight, I still live alone, I still miss her… but I’m fine.

I do get lonely sometimes, but I’ve learnt to live with it. I’m far from depressed. (Well not that far, but far enough.) I try not to whine more than I have to– in fact this blog is where I do most of my whining. (And swearing. Tu bhehnchod, thappad maarunga!)

I’m twenty-three today! To be precise, at 11:33 p.m., according to the Children’s Bible that still sits in my Godrej at home; and at 11:30 p.m., according to my birth certificate, which I have right here.

Saale Bhehnchod and all its readers mean a lot to me. You’re all little anchors to the seabed of sanity. Thank you for reading through the convoluted sentences (and innumerable parentheses). Thank you for commenting, when you do. Here’s looking at you, kid. I’m not going anywhere.

 

Hey– I got a bloggy budday gift! Apparently we talk about nice matters here in this temple of profanity.

I’m going to let this one die with me for now because I don’t have time to pick taggees to pass it to. Packing is a big deal for me and I have to be out of the house in two hours. So I’ll just leave y’all with my birthday message to the world:

 

 

 

(1) The Police – Message In A Bottle

(2) Red Hot Chili Peppers – Under The Bridge

(3) Big George – Handbags and Gladrags (The Office UK theme song)

(4) Travis – Closer

(5) Dream Theater – Home

(6) System of A Lego – Chop Suey

(7) Keane – Can’t Stop Now

(8) Queensryche – Silent Lucidity

(9) Newton Faulkner – Dream Catch Me

(10) REM – The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight

 

I’m coming out of my cage, and I’ve been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down, because I want it all
I just can’t look, it’s killing me

Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies, choking on your alibis

But it’s just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes

I’m Mr Brightside :D

TooSuspiciousByHaf

Well, that was a pretty decent Saturday.

Things are far too calm in PerakathLand. There are no clouds hanging over my head. Well, there are a couple, but one can be remedied by a phone call and one is here for quite a while. It’s settled in and all.

Something has to go wrong pretty soon.

The Worst Movies Perakath Ever Saw

1. Gigli

It really is every bit as bad as the reviews said it was. It’ll take a helluva lot to dislodge this one from the top spot. Don’t you ever watch it.

 

2. The Recruit

I can’t believe I chose this shit over Casablanca to watch tonight. Jeeee-sus.

 

3. Tie: Jism and 2001: A Space Odyssey

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I saw the first trailers and ads for Jism. A movie called ‘cum’? It released at the height of my Bipasha Basu infatuation, but even that couldn’t save it. I dragged two of my friends to watch a night show at Amba. It and the Scooby-Doo movie remain the only movies which made me want to walk out of the theater halfway. (And I’ve always had a thing for Sarah Michelle Gellar; that couldn’t save Scooby-Doo either.) No, hang on, there was a Hindi movie I watched in Vellore that I actually did walk out of. But I can’t remember its name.

I know 2001: is critically acclaimed, but for the life of me I can’t understand why. I thought the book was half-decent, even if I’m not the biggest fan of Arthur C Clarke’s style. But that absolutely rubbish scene in the movie with the monkeys and the revolving bone and the stupid fucking theme music put me off the rest of the movie for life.

 

Anyway, the point is, I just wasted three hours being irritated by Al Pacino’s voice. He’s like John Malkovich: try as he might, he can’t rid himself of his accent. And people think he’s a great actor. Compare with Eric Bana’s performance in Munich: I had to check the CD cover to make sure it was really him.

There must be a name for this phenomenon: a technical name for following the herd. From infancy you hear that The Beatles are a great band; oh, right, they must be great. Perakath’s just seeking attention by trying to say they’re not. The papers are full of global warming stories; Perakath’s just being contrary and refusing to accept the evidence. The Godfather is one of the best movies ever; what does Perakath know, all the polls put it right up there.

How can the majority be wrong, right?

I think The Beatles’ music is extremely low-grade. If they were to release their music today, it wouldn’t even chart. I think a BIG reason people think they were the best band ever is because it’s cool to think The Beatles were cool. Their haircuts, their fan following, their aura– there must have been something about them, right? Heck, even Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy thinks Sergeant Pepper was the beginning of progressive music. That doesn’t mean they were good musicians. The two main arguments against this are (a) technical proficiency in instrument-playing isn’t all there is to being a musician, and (b) The Beatles were a climactic event in pop music: they changed the face of modern music forever. I rebut by saying (a) perhaps, but it goes a helluva long way. And (b), unless you were around when The Beatles broke new ground, unless you were a music fan before and after The Beatles, you can’t make an informed opinion. And, at the end of the day, the touchstone for whether music is ‘good’ or not has to be the quality of the music; not the cover art, not the social mileu of the day, and certainly not the band’s hairstyles.

Similarly, I think a big reason The Godfather regularly makes it to the top of ‘Best Movie’ polls is because The Godfather regularly makes it to the top of ‘Best Movie’ polls… know what I mean?

As for my views on humanity’s effect on climate change, I’m in the minority and I always will be. I now believe that although climate change is a natural process that was around long before global warming became a buzzword, perhaps it’s true that human activities are accelerating the process. But I still believe that it’s over-hyped. I think once we discover a viable alternative to oil to fuel our power stations and our cars, the threat of global warming will recede to neglible levels within half a century.

I’d just like to clarify what my point is. My point is not that The Beatles suck: that’s subjective. I don’t like them; millions do. My point is not that I know better than movie critics. My point is not that my views on climate change are right.

My point is that, IMHO, people too often tend to accept what they hear at face value. They tend to fall in line with the majority opinion because the majority opinion is likely to be right. In certain situations, this is true: countless are the times I’ve agonised over what I thought were fatal flaws in derivations of physics formulae, wondered how the book could have printed something that’s so obviously wrong… only to later learn that the fault lay with my ability to follow the mathematical steps. But it’s not always the case. The crowd isn’t always right. Al Pacino isn’t necessarily a great actor simply because everyone says he is.

You know what I can’t help worrying about though? Whether in truth I do say these things and think this way simply to be different. Teen angst spilled over into my twenties. A desire to differentiate myself. And I worry about this because it’s a sign of immaturity. Truth be told, I don’t give a fuck whether I’m right or wrong about The Beatles, what makes a good movie, and goddamned global warming. I do, however, care what people think about me. Friends it was, Phoebe versus Rachel, Phoebe saying, “Why do you care what people think?” And Rachel saying, “Because, they’re people!”

Case in point: I think I can foresee Han’s reactions to this post. He was my senior in college, another Tamilian studying Physics. A relative of his who knows me had told him I was joining Stephen’s, and, I suspect, had asked him to look out for me. He was always kind to me, never ragged me, and although I never did, it was good to know that there was someone in college I could go to if things got very bad. He writes extremely well and it was his blog that inspired me to begin and keep blogging. In short, I have a lot of respect for the fellow. However, I often worry about him, that he’s becoming–there’s no other word for it–jaded. I think he’s changed since he moved to his new blog. And I also think he sometimes tires of mine. Han loves The Beatles, and I’ve probably annoyed him a teensy bit with my diatribe against them. But more than that, Han has adopted a there’s no point arguing when people have fundamental differences philosophy. One of his favourite sayings is that one man’s meat is another man’s poison.

I think Han’s interest in what I have to say has dropped. And that bothers me a bit.

Another case in point is Nimpipi. She’s a very smart girl; one of the wittiest (and best text messagers, and best writers, and most gorgeous :) I’ve ever met. Earlier this year my interest in blogging was at an all-time low and I was seriously considering abandoning Saale Bhehnchod to the internet prairie dogs. One line of praise from her was all it took for me to reconsider. And then, a few weeks ago, she stopped reading. And even declared her intent to remove me from her blogroll. There may have been a few extraneous reasons there, but she said that I was too detailed, too boring, and I don’t think she was lying. I know what she meant, too– I often think I go into too much detail in my posts. Look at the size of this one– 1300 words already.

Such external confirmation strengthens latent insecurities. I turn 23 in five days, and by now I should be well on my way to becoming an adult, right? Twenty-fucking-three! I remember like it was yesterday the 16-year-old me wondering what it would be like to be 18. And even older. Wow, 7 years from now you’ll be 23… I wonder what you’ll be like then! My mom keeps reminding me that she was only a year older than I am now when she got married, and two years older when she had me. Snide hints that the pressure to settle down will soon be on. Ouch! I’m nowhere near ready, ya. I can’t even grow a connected fucking French beard, for God’s sake, the onset of male pattern baldness notwithstanding. I’m still a student. I still can’t speak fluent Hindi. I’m completely comfortable on a bike, but I’m still learning how to handle a car in a city full-time. I still lie to my folks, I still make stupid mistakes, I still let down friends. I still try to be different from the crowd, instead of actually being different from the crowd. Sometimes I still feel like a 16-year-old studying for his board exams and wondering what life holds for him ahead. Shouldn’t I have grown beyond the self-doubt by now?

Can This Be Happening?

It’s not even two days into my holidays, and I’m growing slightly bored. It’s not pure boredom; I haven’t been lazing around in my pyjama shorts and obscenely tight ‘I Climbed The Great Wall!’ tee all day: I’ve been remarkably productive, flitting from place to place, tying up loose ends, chilling with law fac people a bit even (!). This morning I woke up early (9:30), hoofed it to the DU administrative block that I’m all too familiar with, and finally managed to get corrected the error in my marksheet that I’ve been trying to get done for months. I kept bleating ‘atthara March ko application diya hua tha‘, and it seems to have worked, even if the Hindi was just a little off.

But the hours spent watching movies*, The OC**, and sleeping are in general telescoping into each other. I’m not going to the gym because I didn’t want to pay a month’s membership for only a week’s use. And this morning I found myself wondering whether it’s such a good idea to just sit on my ass all of June. Perhaps I should work a couple of weeks with that Madras law firm that I heard still refers to me as ‘the ideal intern’ (ahem!).

This is not me! I am a certifiable lazy-ass son of a *beep*, and here I am worrying about how I’m not going to be doing anything for a month? Workaholics feel dismay at the thought of leisure time, not a law student whose current idea of fun is standing in front of the mirror and brushing his hair behind his ears, then pulling it out and over them to see how long it is, then pushing it behind his ears again. (I’m doing it right now too, without the mirror. It’s going curly again, damn those Coorgi genes.)

Oh, WOE the day!***

 

 

* Munich yesterday, The Recruit today, and Casablanca tomorrow.

** I’m nearing the end of Season 3, and thanks to internet spoilers I’m waiting for Marissa to die in the season finale. I bet Ryan will carry her limp body in his arms like he does once in every season, and the camera will show him from behind looking all broad-shouldered and manly, and yet there’ll be tragic music playing, and I’ll take off my glasses and sob like a freaking earthquake victim. I just know it. The last two episodes of Season 2 were heart-wrenching.

*** See, I’m well-read, I can quote poetry on my blog too! Even if this is the 2nd time in the recent past I’m alluding to Walt Whitman. And it’s not even a different poem.

I’m A Little Embarrassed To Post This

I found Law and Other Things on Mr Crowley’s blogroll a few weeks ago, and was quite taken by it. I’ve never heard of any of the contributors, but they all seem to be quite senior and know what they’re talking about. The blog serves up regular opinions on important cases being argued before the Supreme Court and Delhi High Court these days, such as the reinstatement of P Venugopal as AIIMS director and the challenge to the Centre’s proposal to break down a bit of the ‘Ram Setu’ *rolls eyes* (1). P Venugopal v. Union of India will be included in Law Fac’s Consti Law – II syllabus next year, I can guarantee, just like I R Coelho’s case was included in our syllabus this year. Last year we were actually learning about Article 368 and the 9th Schedule (2) at the time that the Coelho judgment was passed, and we heard a brilliant lecture on it the day after it was delivered.

A post that particularly caught my attention was this one by a foreign grad student attempting to analyse bias among judges, if any, in large Benches of the Supreme Court. When the Supreme Court of India commenced functioning two days after India became a republic, it had only 8 judges and it was natural for them to all sit as a full Bench to hear the few cases coming their way. The SC currently has 26 justices (and there are more on the way), and for decades it’s been the practice for judges to hear the ‘usual’ cases in Benches of two and three. Larger Benches of 5 or more are constituted when required to hear important cases. Now, which judges sit on these Benches? In India, the Chief Justice picks and chooses from among his brethren. The Benches are not randomly generated. This guy’s paper gives pros and cons of both approaches, and adopts as a test of bias the percentage of judgments of 5-or-more judge Benches in which the Chief Justice is in the minority. In other words, how often does the Chief Justice pick a large Bench in which most of the judges’ views differ from his? As it turns out, not very often. The majority opinion of the Court tends to follow the opinion of the Chief Justice. Now this isn’t necessarily indicative of anything other than the fact that the majority opinion of the Court tends to follow the opinion of the Chief Justice. Perhaps it’s simply because the Chief Justice usually takes the ‘correct’ interpretation of the law that the majority of the judges also do. But there’s a small chance that the Chief Justice tends to pick judges whose views are broadly similar to his, and that a randomly-generated Bench of justices might have given a different result in a particular case. In any case, the idea behind the study is (to me) a very clever one, and certainly better than nothing. And it’s empirical, so one can talk in terms of numbers.

An interesting corollary here relates to the case of Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973), the most celebrated constitutional law case in Indian jurisprudence, in which the SC first laid down the doctrine that the amending powers of Parliament do not extend to anything that alters the ‘basic structure’ of the Constitution. Kesavananda Bharti was heard by a Bench of 13 judges, the entire coram of the Supreme Court at the time. The judgments together ran for over 500 pages. The main point, on the nature of the amending powers of Parliament, was decided by a 7-6 ratio. One of the reasons the case is so celebrated is that it is highly unlikely that so many judges of the SC will sit together on a Bench again to determine the same questions of law, and thus the chances of it being overruled in the future are slim. Had Kesavananda Bharati been heard post-1986, when the coram of the SC was increased to 26 judges, the Chief Justice would have been obliged to select the judges to sit on the 13-judge Bench. (A 26-judge Bench is quite absurd!) What would the decision have looked like then? The landscape of Indian constitutional law might have looked completely different today. 

You might have read about the recent landmark judgment of the SC in Ashok Kumar Thakur v. Union of India (another sure candidate for inclusion in Law Fac’s curriculum next year– thank God I won’t be examined on it) delivered on April 10 this year. It is by far the most important pronouncement of the SC this year, and its implications are still being culled out. Very simply put, the case relates to the permissibility of the government’s (and Parliament’s) move to allow reservation for OBC candidates in higher education. But there are many sides to the issue, and as with all cases relating to the permissibility of caste- and class-based reservation under the Constitution (3), the ruling is terribly complicated and, at times, completely opaque to me. There are just so many things to consider– Articles 15 (4), 15 (5), and 16 (4) of the Constitution, the Mandal Commission report and associated case (Indira Sawhney v. UoI), the plethora of other judgments on the issue, each more complicated than the next, the proper quantum of quota permissible, the applicability to aided, unaided, and minority institutions… things aren’t made easier by the fact that, like in Kesavananda Bharati, there is no single ‘judgment’ in Ashok Kumar Thakur either: there are 4 separate opinions pronounced by the Court, all on an equal footing. Just read this post on a case being heard before the Delhi High Court to get an idea of the complexity of the issues involved.

What seems certain, though, is that although the higher judiciary is making efforts to ensure that reservation in education is (a) not solely caste-based, and (b) not applicable to persons who are not in truth ‘backward’ (that horrible phrase, creamy layer), the permissibility of reservation quotas themselves as a means of achieving social justice is no longer seriously contested in law. Reservation as a policy, and caste as any sort of factor, isn’t going anywhere for another century at the very least. Instead of ridding itself of the burden of caste, India is concerning itself with ever-more complicated formulas and tying itself up in knots trying to decide the extent to which reservations are permissible. Those motherfucking politicians.

 

 

(1) Although it was cleverly argued before the Court that what matters is not whether or not the Ram Setu was actually built by Lord Rama, but whether the belief that it was so built forms a tenet of faith of the Hindu people.

(2) Article 368 is what gives Parliament its power to amend the Constitution, and laws placed in the 9th Schedule are immune from judicial review– or were, rather. Coelho makes them amenable to judicial review in certain situations. The State of Tamil Nadu very cleverly shunted its reservation laws into the 9th Schedule in 1994 to put them beyond the reach of the Supreme Court after it blatantly disobeyed the apex court’s 50 % cap on reservations.

(3) There’s a difference– ‘SC’ refers to Scheduled Castes, i.e. castes listed in the  Schedule to the Constituion, but ‘BC’ and ‘OBC’ stand for Backward Classes, not Backward Castes. The question of whether caste can be made the primary criterion for terming a community as a ‘backward class’ has multi-faceted answers and is beyond the scope of this post. Ha, I’ve always wanted to say that.

It’s Official

North campus tekas have simply stopped stocking (dark) rum. I don’t get it… what is this nonsense theory that rum warms you in the winter and it’s not a ’summer’ drink? The sort of alcohol we/I drink is simply generic ethanol flavoured to taste like rum, vodka, gin, or what have you, anyway. It’s not ‘real’ vodka or rum, for God’s sake.

I vaguely harboured thoughts of being a good boy and not drinking tonight… but they soon set sail. Plus I had to make a trip to the dry cleaner’s and the VCD rental place, and I wasn’t about to ride through Hudson Lines and not stop by at the Wine and Beer Shop (L-49 Licence Available Here).

The last exam went well. It went very well, in fact, far better than I expected it to. Three cheers for my short-term memory! Wikipedia tells me that the oft-touted damage to short-term memory from THC is a little overrated, and that the damage to short-term memory from smoking too much pot is unlikely to be permanent. I’ve been more worried about this in the past than any other health issue from all the abuse I put my body through. Some good news there.

Anyway, I wish I could draw you a graph of my tension levels over the past 48 hours. Last night I was pacing up and down my room, lying on my bed staring at the ceiling, and obsessively checking blogs– anything to keep from completing my syllabus. At midnight I wondered whether to go to sleep, wake up at 6, and do the last chapter. I even made my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth before bed. Very luckily, better sense prevailed, and I sat at my table until 3:30 in the morning. This morning, after oversleeping by an hour, I was half mad with worry– I really had a lot to learn. I began to seriously worry that I was going to fail this exam. I studied and studied, and smoked an entire packet of badi Gold Flake in between. (They’re cheap!)

Things weren’t made any better by the fact that I reversed into (i.e. hit) a house’s broken-off raised driveway (I can’t explain it better than that) while making a U-turn on my way to the exam hall, and slightly dislodged my rear bumper. I don’t know what it is with this car. For more than five years I’ve driven with supreme confidence, and now I’m acting as if I’m enjoying a ride on the bumper cars at Kishkinta. Sigh. Another two years in this city and I’ll be a full-on Delhiite.

But, Praise Him All Ye Angels, I remembered everything, and, shockingly, I had about twenty minutes to spare at the end of the paper. Of course, as soon as I realised that I was on course to finish early I slowed down, and I ended up finishing with only 5 minutes remaining, but it’s da thot dat counts and all.

Now I’m all done, and I have a week to chill in Delhi, or a week to kill in Delhi, depending. I made big plans in my head, thought I’d meet all the people I know are here but whom I never meet during the year. No such luck. An unenthusiastic response is worse than none at all. Fine then, I’ll keep my scintillating company to myself, see you, tata. I have to see a lawyer about my internship on Tuesday, and on Wednesday I make my way to Bombay, the city of unbridled sweat and pimples. I’ll be home next Sunday, for 6 weeks. You’ll forgive me for not dancing with joy. I don’t know what I want– could things have come to such a state that I find myself wishing for no summer holidays?

And now I have a date with a half-bottle of Romanov, a packet of Marlboro regulars, and Munich.

Oh yes– from tomorrow I attempt to go back to my no-smoking-except-when-drinking policy. Wish me luck. I managed it from October last year to early January this, so I know it’s possible. Strength, Perakath, strength!

Oh My Gawwwwd

I dreamt that my car was stolen.

And not just any old how, but because I left the engine running while I just popped in to the hospital to get my dad. I mean, what would happen, right?

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It was a bloody vivid dream, and all the more strange because it happened in the 40 minutes that I went back to sleep after turning off the alarm at 10 am. Halfway through I realised that shit, I’ve lost the tapes that were in the car too– except the Phantom of the Opera tape, that’s lying in my cupboard! I saw the Phantom tape as I was putting away my washed clothes yesterday. 

When I remember dreams, I’m usually sad to wake up– the dreams I usually remember are lovely ones where life is just as I want it to be. But today I spent a minute or so after reawakening lying on my bed almost crying with sorrow. Realisation came slowly but steadily, and OH MY GOD was I glad it was just a dream!

I went and checked that the keys were safely tucked away in their place (in the door padlock, under the helmet on the fridge).

Commercial transactions exam tomorrow. I’ve had 4 days to prepare for it, but I still have one and a half topics to go. I’m basically memorising the entire Sale of Goods Act, 1930, all 60+ sections of it. And of course about a hundred cases as well. The Consumer Protection Act (I don’t even know in which year it was enacted– 1986?) can go to hell, I’m not going to touch it. What a course. But I have a date with a nice bottle of whiskey and a superficial teen romantic comedy for tomorrow night. Hooray!