I'm totally pissed with a few people. I hate having to say it here, but there you have it. I'll try not to let it burn a hole in my enormous reserve of humour.*

Got my hair cut yesterday. So, in The Addams Family terms, I've gone from looking like Cousin Itt to Uncle Fester before Morticia ran a lawnmower over his head by accident. Too bad. But I suppose I can take solace in the fact that I did my bit in helping India add to its foreign exchange reserves. Thats me, ever the patriot. By the way, India's human hair-trade is now a multi-million dollar industry.

With every passing moment, I'm beginning to feel maybe its a good thing all that hair is gone. I find that I can now see better without hair falling over my eyes. Similarly, I can hear better, speak more easily, soap my legs without trouble. Long hair can be such a pain.

In fact, its amazing to what extent long hair can impair your hearing. All the countless times over the last one month when I heard my mom screaming to me to "study hard!", she wasn't screaming "study hard!" at all. Turns out she was screaming "Bloody nerd!". I nearly passed out in shock when she told me yesterday. Don't think I'll ever grow my hair long again.

Now I'm beginning to suspect I might have misheard some other things also. I have a strong feeling Shreyas didn't say "ignore off man" quite as many times as I thought he did. Maybe he was saying "bad cough man". Or maybe "don't scoff man". Or "Darren Gough man". And all the times I felt like stuffing his mouth with Devika for apologising unnecessarily, he might not have been saying "sorry" at all. Could have been "bihari". Or "ferrari". Or even "bihari ferrari". Wonder what that would look like.

Ajay might have been saying "M.G.Road" every time I heard him say "download". And when I thought he said "book", it could have been "Kinshuk". All very probable. Damn! I hate myself for growing my hair long!

* for those of you who don't know me too well, that line is dripping with sarcasm.

I'm still pissed.

Didn't get much sleep last night. So, this morning, I was walking around sleepily with eyes half shut, bearing a striking resemblance to the zombies in the trailer of George E Romero's Land of the Dead. I stumbled into the shower with a strong premonition of disaster which unfortunately proved right. I banged my head against a wall. Thankfully the wall didn't break :) .

My skull must be extremely thick. By that I'm not admitting to being dumb. The impervious nature of my crown extends only to tangible objects. My head has made forceful contact with every wall in my house (floor included, but not the ceilings) atleast once but I'm yet to suffer a skull fracture.

In fact, today's unfortunate incident resulted in the worst head injury I've ever suffered. It left me completely disoriented, the kind of thing some people fake to avoid talking to me when we meet. I think I also came perilously close to falling into the familiar hindi movie "Main kaun hoon? Main kahan hoon?" ritual. Close, but not quite close enough. Govinda must be disappointed.

I bunked only 4 out of 27 classes in college last week. Thats a new record for me. And today I think I missed college. I must be growing attached to the place. Now I find it hard to go through the morning without marvadis around. No maadu paan chewers, no maadu smokers trading cigarettes, no maadu punks swearing in maadu, no maadus watching maadu porn, none of the hooting and catcalling that I've grown so accustomed to seeing everyday in class. The morning was so drab.

The rest of the day took my boredom to an unsurmountable level. I was so bored, I wrote a nonsense rhyme..

The river was flowing, flowing, flowing
I was rowing, rowing, rowing
A breeze was blowing, blowing, blowing
It was snowing, snowing, snowing
The crows were crowing, crowing, crowing
A farmer was hoeing, hoeing, hoeing
Another was sowing, sowing, sowing
Kids were throwing, throwing, throwing
Stones and showing, showing, showing
Me a Boeing, Boeing, Boeing
That was going, going, going
Where? I'm not knowing, knowing, knowing
The darkness was growing, growing, growing
The moon was glowing, glowing, glowing
My boat was slowing, slowing, slowing
The river was flowing, flowing, flowing...


Money talks and bullshit walks.
-Danny deVito as Vincent, 'Twins'

Mondays generally suck. A stupid alarm wakes you up on a gloriously sleepy morning so you can get to college on time. Its awfully hard to get into college mode when you know there are a whole bunch of better things you can do with that time. What a gigantic waste! And it only becomes harder when you've spent the whole of Sunday watching tv, watching tv and watching tv.

Lets face it. Sunday isn't as great as it is made out to be. I know its the only weekly holiday and all, but its hard to enjoy it when thoughts of a whole new week of classes are incessantly gnawing away at your mind. The only good thing that came out of my Sunday was that my computer got fixed. Thats a huge relief.

Saturday wasn't bad though. Met some people I hadn't seen in sometime - Deepak, Atul, Taran, Anoop, Nikhil, Arjun, Deepash, Ajay. Only PESIT and RV guys, so I tried (ineffectually) to shed the aura that comes with being a Jain college student. A Jain student in the outside world is like Hercules in the midst of midgets. I seem to appear intimidating without meaning to. Haha, thats obviously bullshit. I am one colossal loser.

So, back to Monday. Today turned out okay in the end. Missed the first period in college, as usual. With nothing better to do, I decided to pay a visit to a place I'd never set foot in. The librarian looks nothing like Josephine. Thank God for that.

Sweety (our very very very effeminate English teacher) was not in his elements today. Which worked out very well for me. I spent the entire period trying to correct him(with help from the ever helpful Gaurav). Think I put on quite an impressive show, because in the end he gave me attendance even though I didn't have my work book.

The icing on the cake, however, was that I PASSED ACCOUNTS!! In fact, I scored 150% of the pass mark(18*1.5=27!) which isn't much, but its still no mean achievement. Gaurav scored a more respectable 33.

The Cottonian magazines are out of stock. Thats a shame. We managed to get our hands on one stray copy though, Nishanth, Shreyas, Jang and I, when we met in school today. Its pretty good. Should get my copy soon. Ran into Pa, PD, Shukla and voluntarily walked into Mercy's room. Good ole Pa. Had the honour of shaking hands with him. My hand still smells of hydrogen sulphide.

I'm feeling so sleepy now. *yawn*

Nishanth Appaiah Mittu - friend, philosopher, guide. Happy Birthday.

I have a stomach-ache. A direct consequence of last night's excesses. I don't normally binge on food, but somehow, I couldn't hold myself back yesterday.
Its nothing serious, just bad enough to convince me that Wednesday is as good a day as any other to bunk college.

Knowing that I ought to be in college puts pressure on me to do something constructive with my time. Returning to bed for an added hour of sleep didn't exactly help the cause. So, I spent some more time reading the newspapers today. I even read the Eco Times. Its actually pretty good.

And it even had a sports article crammed into a 2x2 inch space, which included a 1.75x1.75 inch picture of Roger Federer. The media can't seem to get enough of him. But he deserves every bit of the attention and adulation he's getting. He's a consummate sportsman - skillful, artistic, ruthless, modest. Agassi's assessment was spot on. Federer's even better than Sampras. The man's a genius. Thats very very high praise, coming from me.

In fact, I reserve that kind of extolment for when I'm face to face with what Dictionary.com defines as "A surface capable of reflecting sufficient undiffused light to form an image of an object placed in front of it."

As I've already said, constructive is the word of the day for me today. So, I spent a few minutes (37, give or take 5) wondering how a movie like Sin City can be completely devoid of f-words. Amazing huh? But its true!

Not going to college allows me roughly half and hour more on every routine morning activity. Being the opportunist that I am, I grabbed the chance to hone my vocal talents. U2 can be awfully hard to sing in the shower, so I belted out Coldplay and Green Day at full volume, interspersed with some hit Kannada film music (including the perennial favourite - Taliban Alla Alla. Thank you Arpan and Vaibhav!). Now my throat is a little sore. But I have no regrets whatsoever.

My electric shaver broke, so I had to throw it away. I can't get rid of this stubble. I don't trust myself with razors. Electric shavers are far more convenient and a lot safer. And mine worked like a charm. I feel sad. Separation pangs I guess. I'll get over it. Looking down, I see that I have hairy feet. Like hobbits. LOTR rules!

Here's something we're studying in college. Its a poem by a Hebrew poet called Yehuda Amichai. If you ask me, our college English book sucks, but this one poem stands out. Its an anti-war poem. So simple, so short, but it still says a lot. A link - http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1448.html

I'm happy.
The way I see it, you're happy when you're feeling good about yourself.
That can be done in two ways. The first (and I might add, better) way is to find something good in yourself. The second is to find something not-so-good in someone else that you can't find in yourself.
My happiness, at present, is a mixture of both.

After some thought, I've come to the conclusion that the movie character who resembles me most (and I'm not talking about physical resemblance), is..
.. Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

However, depending on my mood (and I'm not a very moody person), I may change into one of the following -
Ricky Fitts (??) - American Beauty
Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) - Casablanca
Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) - The Shawshank Redemption
(These three resemble parts of me. I suppose it would be fair to say I'm a mixture of all four, predominantly the first. Don't know if I sound vain, saying that).

Since my mind's been working below par all day today, I'm forced to return to my favourite blog topic - my regal self. Believe me, I would love to write about something more interesting, such as a day in the life of a Jain college bully (the paan chewing marvadi variety, obviously) or the 63 shades of pink in Ajay's Livestrong band collection or a full-blown review of Ramji Londonwaley. Or even my sudoku struggle on Gaurav's phone (Sudoku, for people who've just returned from a looong vacation to Mars, is the second most perplexing game invented by man, the first, of course, being hopscotch).
But my mind being in the state it is, I can't trust myself to do justice to these complex topics.
That being the case, I will be writing... about moi!!! Isn't that exciting??
There are a hundred thousand myths that exist about me that are nothing but MYTHS! So, today, I'll be dealing a whack to the faces of all the people who believe these myths and then give them the true picture.

Myth no.1: My barber is blind in one eye and that is what gives my hair its distinct one-half-spiked look.
Reality: My funky hairstyle (yeah, a lot of people think its real cool. hah!), though it isn't quite the same anymore, was a result of my mom's first hairstyling experiment, when I was a cute little less-than-3 year old.

Myth no.2: I was poisoned and then guillotined when I was 7 and a half days old by a vengeful old neighbour who had lost to my grandad in a game of hopscotch and then my reincarnated self entered this world exactly 4 months later, which is why I have 2 birthdays.
Reality: November borns born in 1987 were supposedly too young to join school in 1991. So, in a desperate attempt to get rid of naughty (but cute) little me, my dad got a fake birth certificate in an illegal procedure that could have landed 3 year old (cute) me in jail (isn't that shocking?!?). Only much later, I realised that I might have been joined in prison by 3 year old Amogh, Kaushik and a lot of others.

Myth nos.3 through 99994 are in some way or the other connected to my brush with Satanism or the character Estella from Great Expectations. Those myths I have satisfactorily tried to dispel in my earlier posts. Scroll down to convince yourselves. The rest will be discussed at a later time. They deal with darker stuff.



Ole King Cole
Was a merry ole soul
And a merry ole soul was he
He called for his crown
And he called for his pipe
And he called for his fiddlers three

(How can I get more sober?)

I don't watch much tv anymore.. I don't study.. I don't sleep.. I think.. too much..
I feel so isolated.. its a feeling I enjoy sometimes.. a little too much I think.. I'm a very private person..
I find it so easy to while away my time.. doing nothing.. discovering myself..
Nobody knows me that well.. I don't know myself very well.. I'm intrigued by myself.. is that normal?
I feel so comfortable sometimes.. sometimes I have spells of extreme uneasiness.. not physical..
I love movies.. movies are beautiful.. not all, but many..
I love myself.. the love diminishes.. I love myself again..
I hate this mood.. I start getting cranky.. irritable.. I want to scream.. I want to sleep..

Generally, I am
Cynical
Pessimistic
Boring
Tactless
Indifferent
Indecisive
Immodest
Selfish
.
.
.
.
.


But sometimes, I am the nicest guy you'll ever see. Try catching me during one of those times.

My first three commerce exams went better than I had expected. Well, the last two atleast. The first was a little tricky. I was informed, albeit after writing half my paper, that Jain college students are expected to write their exams in English and not Marvadi. So, that meant that I had to rewrite everything. In English!!

A month or two ago, exchanging emails with an IITian would have been a humbling experience. Not anymore. Its amazing what studying in Jain college for two months can do to you. In my mind's eye, I could see an overawed Vaibhav nervously typing out a reply to my message. If the IITs are the Mammootys of the world of education, Jain college is the Rajni. Which makes me wonder what PESIT might be. Maybe Shakila.

Technology these days is tremendously advanced. The best inventions of the last decade, in increasing order of importance:
The Apple iPod (20 GB)
The Apple iPod (40 GB)
The Apple iPod (60 GB)
The LG-Reliance cellphones with the Sufi ringtone
Deepak's Lydia series of cellphones.

Why the hell did I get started on all this? I'm eating an 'apple'. Duh!