This is my last year at college, and the number of directions that I can take are making my head spin. Next year, this time, I would have already made all the decisions I need to make. The very thought is scary. And exciting.

I find myself getting more focused. The fact that my answer to the question “What do you want to do?” is not “Start a tea kadai” says a lot. My three weeks at summer school at LSE were incredible. I learnt introductory macroeconomics and fell in love with the subject. Now the question is, is it a fickle love, or something that I want to pursue. Ah so many questions.

Here then, is to the beginning of change.

This man practices an age old form of discrete torture. The sinister people of his kind meet and discuss various forms of causing the human body intense pain. They also arrived at the conclusion that Man, in general, is a pretty dumb species. The kind that can be tricked into believing that flab is bad, that sushi is fish, and that Yoga is good for you.

Perhaps I should take you through a daily routine to disenchant you from the belief that it makes you fit and flexible. It doesn’t. The term “a pain in the butt” was solely invented for this purpose. Speaking of soles, they can hurt too, by the time he is done with you.

To begin with, he insists that we should begin at an unearthly hour, when the cock is still snoring away. In some parts of the world, you could be beaten to death with a salmon for waking people up at that time of the day. I am currently applying for a visa to that part of the world. It is a mild disadvantage that they also occasionally eat you up, but that is a price I am willing to pay for an extra hour of sleep.

I’ve never been particularly flexible. Fit, yes, but if someone asked me to swing from a bar during the gym period at school, I’d just hang there and wait for someone to let me down again. I was also quite bad at biology since you had to remember complicated names that had too many k’s in them. It is a testimony to my terrible decision making ability that I managed to choose the one form of exercise that requires extreme levels of flexibility as well as a good memory. It takes about fifteen seconds to say the name of a position, and it takes thirty for me since I have to scratch my head and smile benignly till he says it for me.

He then proceeds to make you kick your legs and twist your hips so that you end up in a position that I am quite positive God never meant for you to achieve when he created you. He also smirks several times, and the smirk turns into an obvious grin when your face twitches in pain. Then he asks you to raise your legs and raise your arms and generally resemble such non living items such as a dining table, a chair, a pair of tweezers and the like. He enjoys demonstrating how hopelessly inflexible you are by tucking his legs beneath his arms and rolling around on the carpet, though why someone would consciously want to resemble a bowling ball is beyond me.

The classes are useful in a way. I have realized that even if the exercise isn’t helping me, the sheer threat of blinding pain keeps me away from that plate of fries and that extra helping of rice. Because trust me, nothing is worth the table position.

Their thoughts follow no thread of reason
They know not their cause, and neither do we
They charge ahead, burning with vengeance
Injustice, a vehicle for brutality

History, not learnt from but used instead
As seeds to sow irrepressible pain
In the young and restless minds that will
Repeat mankind’s mistakes once again

Of what use is religion, or the path of God
If they head in the opposite route, steadfast
In their belief that the world must be cleansed
His name on their lips, murder in their hearts

The nimble needle deftly moves
Seamlessly, through satin sheen
When within a fold, she stops
In or out or in between?

Two colours gently intertwine
Hues if a song are melody
Merrily they spiral around
Taut, in balanced harmony

They move through thick and thin by turns
A lilting echo in their wake
Enticing steps, a charming tune
I hope the thread will never break

Do come and watch the show!

I still love a heart shaped black forest cake on my birthday. I’m not old enough to be embarrassed by the number of candles on the cake. I still have friends who think that spraying someone purple and dumping cake on their head, while making them wear a ridiculous(and secretly loved) blue party hat on the aforementioned head is an important birthday ritual. I still enjoy being fussed over, and being asked “Who is the birthday girrrrrl?” so that I can answer “ME” with a big grin on my face. And I still refer to people who are on the other side of 20 as “grown ups”.

I wish Peter Pan would appear right about now at my windowsill and offer to take me away to Neverland. I wonder if I’m going to still retain that part of me that loves calling people “a monkeys’ backside” five years from now. I think I will, I think I will.

Here is to everyone who wished me, and everyone who didn’t (hint), and everyone who made my day so special. It was the best birthday ever!

Men. They trudge around with crew cuts and baggy jeans, shirts that should be worn by someone half their size, or double, wearing enough perfume for eight horses and three cows, or smelling like eight horses and three cows.

They either know something about fashion but just can’t remember what the capital of India is, or they’re incredibly smart and wear pants that show off their underwear.

Why am i allowed to cut my hair and you’re not? Let me tell you.

1. Women hardly cut their hair so that it is above their ears.

2. Our haircuts normally cost more that fifty rupees(including the head massage).

3. The person who cuts our hair is not a fifty five year old man who has just been yelled at by his perpetually nagging wife for forgetting to buy the groceries, and has a gigantic pair of scissors in his hand.

4. We never fall asleep in the beauty parlour.

5. We don’t think brylcream is the solution to all our problems.

6. We don’t try looking like prison inmates.

7. We dont think bald is cool.

8. We wash our hair more than once a month.

Of course, there our some exceptions to that last rule in the race of men. The ones who love green apple shampoo and loreal conditioner. But then, you, my friend, have much more to worry about than just fashion.

I was talking to someone who I spent most of my childhood with. We drifted apart in what were probably our most defining years, and when I look at us now, it seems almost impossible that we started out from the same place.

I’ve been through a constant process of assimilation, discarding, defending. I know she has too. It is simply that we took different turns. At a lot of points apparently.

That’s not a bad thing. Or good. It is just different. Just that.

It is difficult to walk away from something without classifying it as right or wrong. Good or bad. Black or white. I have a tough time doing that.

And yet, those movies with the good cops, the bad thugs, and that damsel in distress don’t work for us anymore do they? Whatever happened to the traitor? The damsel learning kung fu? The villain winning because he was smarter?

Isn’t that what makes it so much more interesting?

And that is what I want. Plenty of shades of grey in between. And perhaps that streak of red running right through it all. I’m not talking about throwing caution to the wind. But allowing the wind to turn me in different directions, so that I can see all around.

I hope to never come out of that process. I hope to constantly meet people who will shatter my convictions, or turn me in new directions, or strengthen my belief in my own. I don’t ever want to be so blinded by enlightenment, that I lose my ability to grasp any other idea.

A black poodle yelps

Like the nude emperor
You o foolish courtier
Will think this makes sense

A white picket fence

And now because I’ve stated
So blatantly, you shall rate it
Ridiculous beyond compare

Is a unicorn a mare?

Your hope for my redemption
Depends on the assumption
Marbles are still inside

A merry yuletide!

So shake your head and walk
Or perhaps stay and mock
While I dance my little jig

Oh and figue is french for fig!