Someone Like You

I just had this uncontrollable urge to write about the special someone in my life. Not that anyone would be interested, seeing as this blog here had two hits last month, one when I checked to see if it had undergone disuse atrophy, and another when my niece hit the keyboard when I was not looking. OK, back to the topic. This post is about the nicest human being I know, the person I love the most in this world, myself*.

1. I cannot stand black umbrellas. In fact, I find all single colour umbrellas unappealing, but black is particularly disliked.



2. My umbrella features a skinny girl with long braided hair and a messenger bag slung across her body cycling to Marseilles.

3. This often leads to speculation that the girl on my umbrella is me. It is not. My hair is much longer, mine is an excursion bag, I have never been to France (although I would love to someday) and I cannot ride.

4. Yes, I cannot ride a bicycle. Or any other two-wheeler, for that matter.

5. Speaking of bags, I am not much of a handbag person.

6. I love rice.

7. I hate the great big ball of fire in the sky.

8. I think geckos are kinda cute.

9. Despite being a Hindu, I relish the cooked flesh of dead cows.

10. I cannot pose for a picture properly.


11. I often cannot recall what I have said just seconds earlier.

12. I am sorely tempted to poke people who say 'OMG, don't you eat anything at all?' in the eye with a 16 gauge needle. No, I just stand outside and inhale the scents during mealtimes. Retards.

13. I am not entirely sure if I am superstitious about the rahukaalam. But I strongly believe in putting off everything that can be put off for as long as possible.

14. My least favourite dress style is the one that I am forced to wear most often.

15. I read an abridged comic book version of Dracula when I was eleven, and I still have nightmares about the Count. And now I really wish I hadn't performed a Google image search for 'Dracula'.

16. In general, I don't care for clothes or jewellery much. When my friends talk about 'that blue dress with tiny yellow flowers' they wore 'that day' with 'the silver and blue earrings', I will smile and nod, but I will have no idea what they are talking about.


17. Shoes are my Achilles heel.

18. Either there is something significantly wrong with me, or I am a hypochondriac.

19. I am a borderline misanthrope.

20. I have never seen Sholay.

21. I don't like the colour pink.

22. I don't own any nail polish, but there is always a bottle of nail polish remover on my dresser.

23. There is a mole on my left forearm that was not there last year.

24. I am the proverbial 'will not hurt a fly' kind of person, and will go to a lot of trouble to save an ant from a watery grave in the sink, but I can dig up no compassion for mosquitoes.

25. I love to play with words and numbers in my head.

*Not quite who you were expecting, eh?

Hakuna Matata!

I realise I have not posted anything on this blog, even though I promised I would after my exams ended. It's been over a month since that wonderful event, and my promise has not been kept. So unlike me to not post, don't you think? Don't believe me? Look at the archives.

I have been watching lots of movies on DVD, sleeping, reading, sleeping, eating, sleeping, lazing around, and in my free time, I sleep. This problem-free life made think of two of my favourite people, and look, here they are!


I saw this picture, and all I could think was, the guy in the car is standing downwind.

The Friday Five: Totally Wasted

After stuffing myself to the gills during Christmas, I went back to college and promptly resumed doing nothing. As always, nothing happens, and this is why you, beloved reader, are being treated to a monologue on how I waste my time, courtesy Friday Five. You can thank me later. And read carefully, I will ask questions at the end. (This is how our teachers start a class.)

1. What is your biggest waste of time in your home?

My textbooks*. I hit the books the minute I get home, and keep at it until I take a shower. I get back to the books before my hair dries, and stay with them until dinnertime. I check my email (you have no new messages), and return to wrestling with the textbooks, until I need toothpicks to keep my eyes open. The trouble with this is, the bigger ones hit me back, and all of them weigh more than I do. And yesterday I found out I was actually supposed to open them and read, not keep bashing them. Ah, woe is me!

2. When at work, what is the activity that you find wastes the most time?

Classes. They just want to protect the lecture halls from becoming termite food, and we provide the perfect solution.

3. When getting busy with a date or significant other, what ritual could you do without?

The 'date' or the 'significant other' not showing up. Never have either of them presented themselves before me. *sigh*

4. What is the biggest waste of time on the Internet?

The Internet is not a waste of time. And StumbleUpon is not addictive.


5. What do you do at a restaurant to waste time when waiting for your meal?
That is what cell phones are for, if friends are unavailable. At the college canteen (eating there is the easiest way to poison yourself), a commentary about the varying expressions of pain on the other patrons' faces is called for, until our meal arrives and we make our own faces. If we are at some swanky place (at the expense of some individual unlucky enough to be born, and thus, have a birthday) and we don't get a table, a graphic description of the vaginal hysterectomy we saw that day (or many years previously) in a loud voice does the trick. After we have ordered our meal (an hour long process, involving much name calling and arguing), we consider it our duty to remind the sponsor about the complex process known as ageing, and the diseases associated with it. It is soon followed by someone (there is always somebody who does this) remarking that if we went around to the back, we would see our waiter energetically pursuing a chicken, which is the prompt for the others to make similar imbecile comments about the waiter venturing out to sea with a fishing line or sacrificing goats. We continue in this line, until the smells from the next table reach us, and all of us practise breathing exercises. Pictures of the 'Birthday Grandpa/Grandma' and their 'friends' in different crazy poses are snapped, and then, having nothing else to do, we start telling jokes, with punchlines like, 'he wanted to see the butter fly'. In the ensuing uproar, the rest of the patrons walk out giving us dirty looks, and the waiters ask us to leave the premises. We refuse to leave on empty stomachs, and we are served our food in record time.

Ooh, Arch has a birthday in a couple of weeks. Yay! On second thoughts, I think we may have run out of restaurants where we don't have a lifetime ban.

Those of you who did not die of sleep apnoea, answer this: Why did the boy throw his toast out the window?

God, I am SO funny.

*Lucky for me my Mom does not read my blog. Neither does the rest of the world, but that is beside the point.

When Darkness Falls

Midnight hour.
The clock struck twelve.

Twelve (who was the Empire in disguise) struck back, and the fight that ensued is still talked about by the hallway. Unsurprisingly, neither The Clock nor Twelve noticed a being stealthily sneaking into the house through the window.

The dog (the bitch!) exhibited very curious behaviour that night. It ran away with the hot dog next door, never to be heard of again.

Adorable Pancreas (AP) woke up clutching her chest. She had had Garlic Chicken (GC) for dinner, and it was now burning her heart. AP wanted to sleep. GC did not like her plans. And her heart was becoming crisper. AP decided to throw cold water on GC's plans, and got up. Suddenly, a shadow detached itself from the wall and fell upon AP. Before she could scream, the shadow had clamped her mouth shut. And screamed and withdrew its hand.

AP's burning heart broke speed records. She reached for the trusty torch which lived under her pillow, and managed to turn its bright beam onto her assailant's face. AP screamed. Dracula screamed louder. The torch fell to the ground and died an untimely death. AP switched on the light.

It was all a GC-induced dream.

I am scared of vampires. And things that go bump in the night. But vampires, most of all. I can deny their existence in the daytime. But sometimes, I believe in as many as six impossible things once the lights are out.

Thus, I find myself thinking about Vlad a lot. Especially at night. And then it hit me. The Impaler is Pale!

This should be impossible, but then, the lights were switched off. I turned it over in my mind, and when it was done to a golden brown colour, the solution came to me. AIDS!

The virus is transmitted through infected blood, but it has to be transfused. Undead physiology is probably very different from ours, so drinking blood probably could transmit the infection.

To be honest, it could be cancer, but I'm placing my bets on AIDS, and I shall now tell you why.

*He is pale. But his diet consists exclusively of blood. So his being anaemic is a little hard to digest. If anything, he should have a ruddy complexion. Iron overload, haemochromatomosis, bronze diabetes, yes. Anaemia? Hell, no. Phir kyon?

*He looks emaciated and cachexic. But he doesn't have that dying look in his eye. If anything, he has a wicked gleam in his eye. Of course, that is one of the occupational hazards of becoming a vampire.

*He has definitely had exposure. Contrary to popular belief, Rock Hudson *drool* required blood transfusions after a close enounter of the blood kind with good ol' Dracs. Vlad liked his taste so much he flew down to Pennsylvania all the way from Transylvania three times a week to drink Hudson. And you know the rest. May his soul rest in peace, although I doubt it.

*Unprotected blood meals. As far as I know, he does not screenthe blood for HIV, syphilis, malaria and the others. The technical problems would be enough to discourage him, even if he were to consider ruling out infections. Would you give him a sample so he could test your blood before attacking you?

Now you know. All I can tell you is, protect yourself. With garlic. And wolfsbane.

Coming soon, If pink is the new black, should I do a Tonks?

Eh?

Rain

I wrote this nearly 2 years ago, one rainy March evening. I forced a lot of friends to read this *ahem* 'literary masterpiece', and most of them have refused to acknowledge my existence ever since. Now you know why I don’t write fiction.

I dream of rain.

The heavens opening and crying out its heart, carrying with it the grief of untold generations. The rain mingling with the tears on her face, flowing down her cheeks as one, to gaze apprehensively at the world below, only to get pushed down over the curve by their successors. The sweet liquid merging with the salt, to wash away the evidence of her broken heart.

The lightning, mirroring those moments when her wrath could destroy worlds. A blast of pure energy that reflects the heat in her eyes when the pain that threatened to overwhelm her transformed into rage. Lightning, blasting him into a million tiny pieces, each one glowing bright as the sun before fading to ash, to dust, fading to the black of oblivion.

And the thunder as loud as only thunder can be, yet, too soft to be heard over her screams. Thunder, shaking the earth, moving continents by its sheer intensity, while her anguish burnt a hole inside her, with no hope of escape.

She looked up at the sky. Black clouds had blotted out the sunshine from her life, hid from her the silvery moonbeams of hope, and shrouded the stars in her eyes. The very Universe was darkened by the shadows in her heart.

And it began to rain. Just a drizzle, and then harder, and harder, until each drop was a boulder. They pelted her face, washing away the signs of her emotion with a vengeance. She stood there, while the tears from heaven cleansed her soul of sorrow. She could feel it, each drop absorbing her grief, washing it away, leaving hopes of a better tomorrow in its place. Soon, joy began to make itself at home, for now her heart was healing, with scars that time would heal.

And a bolt of lightning came forth from the skies.

They found her the next day, a burn mark running down her body, and a smile on her face.

Moral of the story: Seek shelter during thunderstorms.

Purple Dreamer

A few million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth. After a while, birds and some pterodactyls flew about in the sky. Then somehow the dinosaurs and the pterodactyls died out, but the avians survived on fish. The fish became creatures who fed on milk, but couldn't fly. The birds wanted milk, and couldn't get any, so they took to swearing at the cows. Some of the abused took to the trees, in an attempt to intimidate the birds, but they (the birds, that is, and not the yay-I-can-climb-a-tree types) merely took to the skies and pooped on them. The tree-dwellers immediately (give or take a million years) evolved into the Wright brothers, and thumbed their noses at the foul-mouthed fowls. This just goes onto show you that in the vast and important scheme of things, time is irrelevant. Angel-Doc, remember tagging me? Although this post has nothing to do with it, let me emphasise that any resemblance to the meme is purely coincidental. As would have been obvious by now, it's all about how I'm slowly going off my rocker.

I baptise:
1. Tys on Ice
2. Spunky Monkey
3. Ziah
4. The Monk
5. Bullshee
6. Tangled :)
These worthy souls shall carry on the torch of enlightenment. Please don't set fire to the furniture, and keep an extinguisher handy.

People I'd like to execute:
1. My way or the highway:
Commands like 'You should do Gynaecology for your PG', or 'You should not wear high heels.'
The last I checked, this was a free country. I'll walk on stilts if I choose to. If my back hurts later, dammit, it's my back.

2. Insufferable know-it-alls:
I have an aversion to individuals who try to teach me hitherto unknown medical facts. I will not die if I eat curd and fish together. And hanging my cell phone round my neck will not give me a heart attack. There is a very good chance that I might die from a temporal glioma, but not a heart attack. Really. And the sex education perverts who get their kicks from expounding upon 'the union of the male and the female is achieved by the...'? Finish that sentence, and you'll be missing vital parts of your anatomy.

3. You're only a girl:
I understand that men have different qualities, and that women are far superior, so what hell do you mean when you say 'women' with as much venom as you can muster? If you are so contemptuous of what you perceive as feminine weakness, let's see you bleed for a week every month. And thanks to modern technology, now you can become pregnant too. Good luck with getting rid of the placenta.

4. Religious fanatics:
There are all kinds of people out there, and twice that many Gods. Those getting totally obsessed about God or religion have my contempt. I know this girl who is so orthodox she's never been inside any place of worship other than her own, because her Big Guy won't like it.
And the heathen. Don't get me started on that.

5. Bimbos:
Anyone whose head is more for ornament than for its circuitry. I'm not very tolerant of stupidity, even when the packaging is pretty.

6. Hypocrites:
I believe the followers of some faiths do not visit doctors when they are ill. There was one such person in my (please not the point) medical entrance coaching class. She had an acute asthmatic attack one night, and the warden of her hostel called an ambulance. She refused to get into the ambulance saying Satan gave her asthma and that it would go away if she prayed. Why on earth did she want to become a doctor? She didn't get through the entrance, if you were wondering.

7. Arrogant snobs:
'I can't sleep without an AC' types. I can arrange for it to be converted to DC, Your Lowness.

People I'd award the AP Nobel to:
1. Surgeons:
I have a rather complex relationship with surgery. I don't like the subject much, but I surgeons rarely fail to amaze me. All that confidence. 'Bleeder! Cautery.' Just how do they manage to stay on their feet for hours? How do they know one structure from another? How can they do it with such precision? How can they be unaffected by the things they see? How much control does that take? No wonder they think they are Gods. I do, too.

2. Param Vir Chakra:
Ordinary people with the courage to face the daily grind. Or if you prefer corny flakes, the unsung soldiers in the battle of life. I find it easier to deal with big emergencies than the little ups and downs. Q. E. D.

3. Well rounded brainiacs:
No, no. no. That's not what I mean.
I'm talking about people like my friend Scar. He is brilliant, well-read, athletic, and to top it all, he is a nice guy. And I've never found him with his nose buried in a textbook. The latest gossip, or the newest medical breakthrough, I hear it from him. I hope he gets the real Nobel someday. He sure deserves it.

4. Artists :
Whether it's a paintbrush or a scalpel, an artist is an artist.
Was it Mark Twain who said, "If it falls your lot to sweep streets, sweep them like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music." Somehow I can't imagine Mark Twain saying that.

5. B, 65:
I knew him only as B, 65 years. He was a patient in one of the Medicine wards. He had aplastic anaemia, and needed frequent blood transfusions, and that meant regular blood tests. He was the first person I ever drew blood from, and he liked us students. One of the first things we did in the morning was to go talk to him. He used to tell us to work hard, care for our patients, and would never crib about us pricking him for blood everyday. He never complained about his illness, no 'why me'. He always had a smile for me, even on a bad day. He never yelled at us, unlike many of the patients. He had the bed at the end of the ward for the 3 months I was posted in Medicine, and we used to go back and visit him even after our posting ended. One day, he wasn't there, and I heard he'd been shifted to the ICU. He died 2 days later.

6. Smilers:
People with a wonderful sense of humour. I can't find a better example for this than my mom. I was 11, and with the idiots on the Municipal Council blocking the major drains in our area, our house flooded with water during the rains. It was cold, we were knee deep in water, most of our things were on the road on ruin, and the stench was awful. We decided to go away for a couple of days, and were packing everything that could be salvaged. Suddenly, Amma laughed and showed me my foam slippers floating around in the water. It was funny seeing it getting stuck on bits of furniture. I've never met many women her age who is amused by the little absurdities in life. Most of them are very grim and prim.

Having successfully established myself as the epitome of frivolity, here's my Postal Joke. It's an old one, and one of my favourites.
Q: For every 90 sins you commit, you get caught 45 times. Wonder why?
.
.
.
.
.
A: Because sin 90⁰ = cot 45⁰.

P.S: As of today, I have an official fans association at college. What else can I ask for?

Monkey Brains

Guess what I saw here.

And this was very interesting. What do you say?

Real posts takes time, and I don't have any right now. The postman is on leave. A new post when he comes back on duty.

Of Blogs and Rats and Me

Why do I blog?
This is as good an answer as any.

At this point, I'd like to inform everyone that Stephan Pastis (may he live forever and continue to draw Pearls) owns Pearls Before Swine. I don't. Copyright and all that, everything, belongs to Pastis & Co.

Pearls is my favourite strip. Not that kind of strip, perv. Comic strips. The kind they put in newspapers. Like, say, Dilbert. Anyway, about Pearls. It's my favourite strip (I love repeating myself). Not Calvin & Hobbes (it's a close second), not Garfield (third, like Ender), not Dilbert (it's nowhere on the list), not {insert name of comic strip here}, it's Pearls Before Swine that's my favourite. The title is taken from a line in the Bible, that goes something like, thou shalt cast no pearls before swine. The strip is about a bunch of anthropomorphic animals that live in a city, alongside humans. Humans don't appear in the strip very often, and when they do, they don't find talking animals unusual at all.

The humour is dark, it often comes across as insensitive, there are plenty of people lobbying for the un-syndication of Pearls, it pokes fun at many serious issues, but, bottom line is, I find it funny. Funny as in 'hahahaha if I laugh any more I'll die' funny.
Pearls, for the lack of better words, is me. I can identify with all of the main characters in the strip, except one. God, not that one, please.

The hero, Rat, is the personification of our greatest vices. And I don't count greatness as a vice. I think, when things get really really sticky, we think about our own skins alone. I don't mean that we are all always uncaring monsters, we do give lots of damns about our loved ones, it's just that we love our own selves a little more. Take unrequited love, for instance. X (yeah, took me an hour think up the name) loves Y (it was easier this time, only 45 minutes). But Y does not love X (big surprise, huh?). X is sad (understatement of the year) because (duh!) Y does not love X. What I'm trying to say is, although X loves Y, all X is wants is another person to love X. There is no such thing as an unselfish act. No, that's too general. I have never come across a completely unselfish act. Think about it.
Rat is the personification, or more accurately, the rodentification, of the worst of many of my faults, magnified into something enormous that fits into the body of a rat. He is a self-centred, cynical, cruel, sarcastic, insensitive, totally hateful megalomaniac. I know myself well enough to realise that I have a nasty streak in me. I don't kick small children, but I'm tempted to, if they bug me. I need to use a lot of restraint when it comes to not pulling their hair out by the roots when they do that to me, the force of temptation being directly proportional to the age of the child. Rat is multi-talented, he writes children's books and romance novels, owns a tabloid (The National Enquirat), and is also a highly successful (what else?) lawyer.

Pig, Rat's roomie, is, well, a little dumb. He says and does a lot of things that are misunderstood, because he did not know they could be taken the wrong way. He is innocent, not very worldly-wise, shy, insecure, a little slow, a misfit among his peers (he likes bacon). I wish I could say I'm nothing like him, but the truth is that I'm too much like him for comfort. But he's also very sweet, a description that, sadly, does not apply to me.
Rat: If you could have a conversation with one person, living or dead, who would it be?
Pig: The living one.
[pause]
Pig: You must really think I'm stupid.

Goat is quite intelligent, a loner, prefers books to people, is always the butt of Rat's ridicule, and easily exasperated by stupidity and apathy. He can't stand Rat, either, but it's always Rat who gets the last word. Goat keeps a blog that no one reads. Yes, I know, the resemblance is uncanny.

Zebra is a very ordinary sort of guy, but unfortunately, prey. There are all kinds of predators waiting to eat him, or one of his herd members back home in Africa. He's an idealist, trying to make the predators more understanding about the plight of becoming eaten. Not a particularly easy task, when staying alive is hard enough. He also has a lot of principles that he lives by, and he finds it frustrating when they are paid no heed. I could write entire books on the subject.

Most people have guard dogs, but Pig has a Guard Duck. His solution to every problem, small or big, is his rocket launcher. Not a bad idea, that. Nothing like a rocket launcher to stop others from being annoying.

Da Brudderhood of Zeeba Zeeba Eata. The dumbest Crocs on earth live next door to Zebra, and are such incompetent predators that they have to subsist on take out from KFC. Da only seemilareety between da Crocs and me ees dat me sometimes talk like dem. But that could be because I'm addicted to Pearls.


The jokes in the strip are my favourite kind- horrible puns that would leave my victims writhing in agony.
Rat: I saw my cousin Gene today.
Pig: Is he the guy that runs marathons?
Rat: Yeah, but he's a real jerk ... nobody in my family likes him.
Pig: It must be tough to have a bad Gene that runs in the family.

I hope everyone liked the new display picture. And do check out Pearls here. You can read the Wikipedia entry on Pearls here. Enjoy.

There are dozens of recurring characters, like Danny Donkey, Farina, Stromoski, and Angry Bob, who is the hero of the romance novels Rat writes, but none of them are, well, me. The day I become Angry Bob is the day I die (pun intended). Plus the strip is really complex, with cross overs, pop culture references, running gags, and all. In short, just like life. But taken in in its entirety, the strip is totally me.

I'd like to remind everyone that all of the pictures I have used here, and the characters, are the property of Stephan Pastis, the creator of Pearls, and that the copyright and things belong to him.

There are very few things for which I have strong feelings, humour is one of them. My tastes are another. There are a few more, but Medicine tops the list. I also love stating the obvious. I don't know how boring this has been, I talk seriously only about issues that are very close to my heart.

From now on, I'll be ending all my posts on this blog with a joke that I find funny. I'm going to call it *drumroll* Postal Joke.
Pig: What are you reading?
Goat (holding book): It's a mystery.
Pig: Have you checked the title page?

18 and Above

No explicit content, peepals, it's the 18 things you've all been dying to know about me. Oh, someone already died? Thou hast not died in vain, O William of Avon, thy sacrifice has been rewarded. You can read this if you can access the net from your grave. You can all thank Sreejith for this literary masterpiece.

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it.
Healed scar, 0.5 * 0.1 cm, on the dorsum of the right hand, 1 cm below and lateral to the 2nd metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joint. I had my viva exam in Forensic Medicine yesterday, so please forgive me for not speaking English. Translated, it's a small scar on the back of my right hand, below my index finger. Don't be misled by the size, I bled like a stuck pig. As is true of all of women's problems, this too was due to an MCP. Looks can be deceiving. That's him on the right.

2. What does your phone look like?
You don't know what an iPhone looks like? Tsk-tsk.* I was just dying to say that. My phone is a combination of dirty silver and a particularly ugly shade of blue, thanks to some idiot at Sony Ericsson who thought he was a designer.

3. What is on the walls of your bedroom?
Blood, and other less colourful things that splatter when people die under torture. Makes for a very unique design. I could tell you why they were tortured, but then I'd have to kill you.

4. What is your current desktop picture?
This one, from my favourite comic strip, Pearls Before Swine, by Stephan Pastis. Zeeba Zeeba Eata!

5. Do you believe in gay marriage?
Weddings are serious affairs, sometimes a little too serious, so I think a little more liveliness would do no harm. And if the bride(groom) and (bride)groom add to the gaiety, I have no objections.

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
I want mosquitoes to practice birth control.

7 . What time were you born?
My mom went to work as usual, thinking about her maternity leave which began the next day, and how her little Arjun would be born after a month. She was wrong on all counts. I came along a few hours later, and turned out to be this 2.4 kg Amazon any football team would be proud of! Everyone was expecting a boy, because of how I used to kick. Amma's sari would be lifted into the air and slowly come to rest against her tummy, waiting for me to start again. And I was a month early, the doctor said I was as developed as a baby at full term, so I didn't have to be incubated.

8. Are your parents still together?
My dad is watching TV, and my mom is in the kitchen. So technically, they're not. No mean feat, considering the Bush-heart-Osama moments, (flashback to the time Sun Tzu visited them to get tips on waging wars), but it's been 32 years. Are you listening, Nobel Peace Prize guys? I need one!

9. Last person who made you cry?
It wasn't a person, it was a weighing machine. *sob*

10. What is your favorite perfume / cologne?
I never go out and buy perfume because all my relatives in the Gelf insist on gifting perfumes, and I don't get a choice in the matter. My favourite so far was Red Door.

11. What kind of hair/eye color do you like in the opposite sex?
I can't stand guys with straightened long hair and tinted contacts, a fad that is hugely popular here. Somebody shoot me!

12. What are you listening to?
Moody Blues- Nights in White Satin.

13. Do you get scared of the dark?
I go to sleep clutching a torch and another one under my pillow so that if there's a power failure in the middle of the night and my night lamp goes off, I can scare Count Dracula away. He attacks only in total darkness. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and shine my torch around the room, to ensure that he isn't hiding behind the bookshelf. No exaggeration, this.

14. Do you like painkillers?
They go well with my migraine.

15. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
I think I would be. Anyone who could make me want to ask him out would be capable of making me tongue-tied.

16. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?
Grapes. I'm crazy about grapes. I can eat grapes morning, noon and night, and even while I sleep.

17. Who was the last person you made you mad?
An ad for spectacle lenses with brand mark. Brand nahi to style nahi. What the bloody effing nonsense? I'd like to throw my Lacoste shoes at them.

18. Who was the last person who made you smile?
My cousin, when he rang up and asked for Dr. AP. :)

Anyone who has cats can take up this tag.

PS: Bill from Avon, stop turning over in your grave.
PPS: The guy who gave me the scar is actually a girl. He's pregnant now.

The Indestructible Salmonella

It was one of those cold winter evenings. Or as cold as winter evenings get in the tropics. Whatever. This isn’t a weather report.

Our heroine was in depths of despair. She paced the room, looking for a way out. There were none. She was trapped. She suppressed a groan. On thinking it over, she decided to groan louder. Several loud ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ later, her mother heard her. Mission success.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“I think I’m coming down with something. I’m feeling really tired. And there’s this weird ache all over.”

“Don’t you have an exam tomorrow?”

Damn! She had to remember that. Switch to plan B.

“That’s what, Mama. I can’t concentrate. Probably because of this fever.”

“Hmmm... No temperature. Are you shamming?”

What an idiotic question.

“Would I do that?”

There goes her brow. Now why didn’t I inherit that?

“I can’t understand any of this nonsense, Mama. I’m sure I’m coming down with something. I don’t feel good. (Groans.) Besides Microbiology is pure nonsense.”

“Nonsense? Don’t talk about your studies that way.”

“But Micro is nonsense, Mama. It’s really tough.”

“I’ve heard it’s really interesting.”

“You listen to Manu too much.”

“A brilliant young doctor doesn’t throw away a lucrative career in surgery for one in Microbiology if he didn’t feel strongly about it.”

Yeah, whatever.

“Hey, why don’t I ask him to come over and teach me something? Maybe some of that enthusiasm will rub off on me. Now, why didn’t I think of that earlier?”

“I hope he gets something into that thick skull of yours.”

“I’m not thick skulled. I got into medical school.”

“But you’re having hard time staying in. Ring him up, then. Do you need a tablet for the ‘fever’?”

Man, is she sarcastic.

“Yeah. (Groans.) I’d like some hot coffee too. Sore throat. (Coughs.) ”

Acetaminophen never killed anybody. Or did it? Gulp!

* * *

“Hi, Manu. I have a test on bacteriology tomorrow. Can you come over and teach me something? I don’t know anything. Please?”

“Come on, don’t be so pessimistic. I’m sure you know the basics.”

Yeah, right.

“Please, coz. You’ve got to help me.”

“Sure. Be there in an hour.”

“Thanks a million. You’re a lifesaver.”

* * *

“Teach me something, coz. I really need to pass this one.”

“Did you flunk the previous one?”

Uh-oh...

“Errr... Barely scraped through.”

“Let’s see. Bacteriology, right? Hmmm… Ok. Let’s start with Salmonella. What do you know about Salmonella?”

“It’s a bacteria.”

“And I was thinking it's a virus. Thank you for enlightening me on that point. And bacterium is singular, wiseass. What disease does Salmonella cause?”

“Ooh, serious diseases. Pretty bad ones, you know, where you can even lose the patient. Severe disease. Salmonella is a bad bacteria. Bacterium. It causes horrible diseases. You know, a really severe-”

“Typhoid.”

“Typhoid, yeah. I know that. I was just going to say typhoid. Now typhoid is a bad disease, you know. It’s a really serious disease. You-”

“Stop. Please. What organ does it primarily affect?”

“Salmonella? Typhoid? It's a very bad disease, you know. Pretty serious. You can even lose the patient. Really bad when it affects the... The brain.”

“Your brain is definitely affected, assuming that you have one, of course.”

Sarcasm certainly runs in the family.

“ Shut up. Lungs, then. Respiratory infection. It causes a necrotising haemorrhage into the-.”

Oh, man. How can such anyone outside the Mafia look so murderous?

“Enteric fever. FYI, that means the GIT. I hope you know what the GIT is.”

“Gastro-intestinal tract. I’m not an idiot.”

“Really?”

He can do the single brow lift too?

“Very well. Salmonella causes typhoid, an enteric fever.”

“What is the diagnostic test for typhoid?”

“Err… A blood test?”

“Oh, my God! Have you heard of the Widal test?”

Why dal??? Sounds like a culinary disaster.

“Of course I have. I’m not an idiot.”

“Really?”

“Knock it off, coz. Tell me about the Widal test.”

“It's used to measure the level of certain antigens in the blood. Which ones?”

Whoa! Antigens? S for Salmonella, so there’s probably an S antigen. And he said antigens, so there’s more than one. T for typhoid.

“S antigen and T antigen.”

“Where did you get that from?”

This isn’t going well at all.

“The textbook.”

“Which one? The last I checked, it was H and O.”

“I knew that… I confused it with something else. H stands for ‘heavy’, right?”

The book hit her squarely on the head, and the last thing she remembered as she lost consciousness was the sound of frenzied swearing.

NOTE: The characters and incidents in the above account are blah blah blah blah blah. You know the rest. And no, this is not an autobiographical account.

Good Morning?

Beastly way to begin a day, if you ask me, by getting up from bed. Now what real good does it do? You spend the first half of the day wishing you’d stayed in bed, and the remaining half waiting for bedtime. The longing intensifies after lunchtime, when you're gastronomically satisfied, and the lecturer is doing his best imitation of the sandman. You look around and marvel at those souls who can actually lift up a pen and take down notes, instead of using it as a lever to prevent yourself from flopping onto the desk.

So, getting up from bed. You’re in bed, sleeping, and having the best dream of your life, and just before the hero clasps you in his arms and proclaims ‘Muriel, I shall be devoted to thee until…..’, a shrill sound, quite unlike anything usually found in dreams of this kind, interrupts the proceedings. The hero looks around with a bewildered air, and the sound grows louder. Muriel tugs at his sleeve and urges him to complete what he was saying, when the sound grows even louder and Romeo disappears in a puff of smoke. And suddenly, you’re up. Just like that. Swearing vindictively, you spend the next few moments condemning the inventor of the alarm clock and his immediate family to a particularly oppressive hell in which there would only be this shrill beep sound with no apparent source.

After you find the cursed thing, you proceed to switch it off and try to get a few more moments of rest, to recuperate from the violent stress you’ve undergone. Romeo and Muriel decide to give it another try, when the villain arrives, in the shape of The Dad. Not Muriel’s, nor Romeo’s (they are currently taking part in a street protest against alarm clocks), it’s your own old man. Although there is nothing old about the hands that yank the sheets off you and the baritone that screams ‘GET UP!!!!!!!!’, you resort to giving him dirty looks while demurely murmuring ‘Alright, alright, I’m up, Dad, I was just recovering from one of the more terrifying nightmares’ in a tone of voice suggestive of wishing him a place in the afore-mentioned hell.

Having completed your ablutions, your prospects begin to look up after a cup of tea. There’s nothing like tea for perking you up. Everyday, after class, all the people who had barely enough energy to raise their hands to officially register their presence in class would rush off with undiminished enthusiasm for the tea stall next to the office, where you can get a cup (a glass, really; cups are hard to come by) of tea for next to nothing, while they mesmerize each other with tales of how they witnessed the ruthless excision of an ingrown toenail in the OT earlier that day and other such weighty matters. And after the tea, they would immediately rush to their respective homes, and catch up on lost sleep.

There isn't a more depressing breakfast than idli and sambhar to depress the hell out of you. The ability of the culinary misinvention in this department has been a subject of much debate among those employed in government offices, and although the majority rules against the statement, there is a small but strong minority in favour of it. The majority is not always right, as time has revealed time (pardon the pun) and again.

And people have the nerve to wish you a good morning. As if such a thing actually exists! In my personal experience, there had never been a good morning since the last one on 21st December, 1992, when I woke up to find that it was snowing. No, wait. That might have been a dream.

The best thing to be done is to ban alarm clocks, and throwing the inventor into a concentration camp* where they’d torture* him with ringing alarm clocks the moment he falls asleep, and allow him to subsist only on idli and sambhar. He would beg for mercy, but his tormentors, hardened veterans like Eichmann* (resurrected for this very purpose), would scornfully laugh at him, and sleep in a soundproofed room next to him, just to spite him. And we shall all laugh in glee, and go to bed at night more cheerfully, knowing there would be no alarm clocks to interrupt Romeo.

*I am not in any way, endorsing crimes against humanity.