WTF??!!!

Yesterday I sat next to a girl in class.

She was blonde, had blue eyes and for all intents and purposes looked.... well, white.

Then she turned to me and spoke;

In Hindi.

Not just Hindi, DELHI Hindi (for the uninitiated, that's the really good kind of Hindi).

It had been a very long time since I was that dumbstruck.

There's just no accounting for predictability any more.

I spent last year watching the seconds, the minutes, the hours... waiting for stubborn time.

Wanting every day to pass quicker than the one before, taking the past with it into unknown oblivion.

Now an hour in the kitchen, two over tea endlessly stirred.

I blinked, a month went by.

The blessing - the human body has no memory for pain.

The curse - happiness cannot freeze time.

Fillers

When I was in my second year of college, a friend and I found ourselves sitting in the canteen foyer, chatting aimlessly about the various things that constitute nothing at all. Amongst these was the frequency with which the word 'like' was used as a filler in everyday conversation.

E.g. He said he was going to the pub, and I was like, 'How could you possibly stand it?', and then he was like, 'But it's fun', and then I was like...etc.

We both agreed it was overused and annoying.

So we challenged ourselves to give up using 'like' unnecessarily for a week; and would you believe, we managed it. We noticed that our conversation was much improved and we had managed to reach within our vocabulary to substitute 'like' with actual words that had more relevance and meaning.

So today as I waited at a bus stop, I listened to three young girls (when I say young, I mean younger than I am) have a conversation that featured 'like' 26 times in ten minutes.

I know this because I counted.

In my defence, it was cold, I didn't have a book, and I needed something to take my mind off the fact that I couldn't feel my fingers any more.

After listening/eavesdropping on this fascinating discussion, my bus thankfully arrived.

I left with the regret that my one week challenge of dropping-the-word-'like'-from-all-conversation-where-it-is-not-necessary could not be shared with all those who are so clearly in desperate need of it.

Home

I'm almost convinced of it - I was born to be a city girl.

Any place that has people walking with some sense of urgency, lots of lights and bustling activity, reassuring traffic noises, a shop around every corner and I feel instantly at home.

So while I may love the eye-candy, the fact that I live with people from over 10 different countries, the convenience of the Tube and the acres of beautiful parks, the reason I really love living in London is because it feels like I never left Bombay.

What was I thinking?

Every morning, when I see the Italian coffee-maker on the stove-ring sending off aromatic smells throughout the corridors, I seriously consider decking the owner, stealing his coffee and making a run for it.

I do this, because in a moment of sheer stupidity (and ambitiousness?) I made the decision to give up coffee. New beginnings and all that.

It was a bad idea.

Giving up coffee makes you a grumpy person. Or in my case, an even more grumpy person.

And as lovely as ginger and lemon tea is, it just doesn't quite do the job.

Coffee was my wake-up call. It was the seven minute walk from VT Station to St. Xavier's College with my face buried in the Nescafe cup, it was timeless mornings spent in the kitchen, it was French Tuitions, it was quick dates that I didn't want to last too long, it was chats with my sister at 3 a.m., it was my favourite mug that no one else could touch... and now it's thoughts of murder just for one more sip.

I have an inkling this abstinence is not going to last. Just a hunch.

Come to me, all ye...

I am a freak magnet.

I am convinced of this. If there is a weirdo/creep/socially maladjusted person within 10 kilometres of me, they will find themselves drawn to me for some inexplicable reason.

And then stay there.

This isn't to say that I don't meet normal people, because I do. I know tons of them. But it seems that none of them have the freak-shows lining up in their lives.

It's just me.

So while I'm cruising along trying to figure out the 'purpose' of my life etc etc, I'm desperately avoiding even considering the fact that this could be it.

Maybe I'm the supposed to be the one that saves them from themselves, stays friends with them despite all their innumerable and oh-so-obvious problems, tell people that they're really not as strange as they appear to be (even though I know better)... you get the picture.

I want to be the one that has the normal people... so this run of luck had better take a turn for the better. To think that this will continue for the rest of my life... I shudder at the thought.