When the writing comes out lousy, it’s called Writer’s Blah.

Note: Grab the Bombay Times. Turn to the comics section. It’s Jughead’s line. Me, I’m just a borrower.

I have a new toothbrush. It’s all pink and shiny with a plastic cover on top. And a tongue cleaner behind. Ooh.
My favourite one was purple with bristles that moved. I pressed a button and they went ‘whrrrr!’ and left my teeth all white and sparkly. Boy, brushing was fun.
The big brushes have no imagination. They’re tall and straight and boring. Note: Just because I'm grown up doesn’t mean I like brushing. I need something cheery in the bathroom to convince me that white teeth are important. After all, they’re going to fall anyway once I'm 70, is it really worth the trouble? And I can chew with yellow teeth. Really.
Besides, my dad got it from the US of A. When you’re eight with a tiny eight year old brain, all phoren things are cool.

It’s not raining. Sure, you get a few smattering of raindrops, and delightful gusts of wind, but they’re not Mumbai rains. They aren’t roaring and crashing down and announcing, we’re here now, girl and we’re gonna flood the place so bad, them school idiots will give you days off. Many days off.
Sigh. I miss them.
And the splashing and paper boat sailing. Yes. I used to sail paper boats. In the puddles. By the road. It was fun.

Names matter. Such a lot. L.M. Montgomery is stern. She’s tall and thin with grey hair and glasses. The principal of a convent. Would decidedly disapprove of a certain redhead in a skimpy yellow wincey.

Lucy is a dreamer. She is slender and petite with enormous brown eyes. She isn’t a beauty, but in dreamland, it doesn’t matter. She’s shy and wistful and the girl who is kind and good, but never catches anybody’s attention. She wants to, obviously, but boys and adults, I’ve noticed, never seem to have much sense.

Maud is tomboyish. She’s pretty and untidy and her long, black hair is always ruffled. She’s blunt and honest and stubborn. She always gets all the attention and man, she loves it. Anything remotely girly is scorned. She’s the one who hangs out with the boys. Others may say whatever they like, they’re batty old cats and our girl doesn’t give a damn.

Note: I think so. All mine. Kindly make up your own Lucys and Mauds.

Mumbai is pretty. The way to college is smelly to smell and nice to look at.
When it rains on mud, there’s a muddy smell. Scratch that. Fragrance. When it rains on Trash By The Roadside, there’s a Trash By The Roadside-y smell. Which is bad. Stuff-both-fists-in-your-nostrils bad.
It’s bang by the sea with an amazing view of the Mumbai skyline and at night, the whole thing lights up. And there’s a breeze. And tiny boats with the tricolour fluttering on them. And tinier men fishing. Umm. I love trains.

I hated the last post. No compliment fishing. I swear. But I won't delete it. A bit of bad writing will make the nice bits look nicer. I hope. And yes, this bit of philosophy is borrowed as well. From Captain Jim. From Anne's House of Dreams.

Maybe I should scratch out the Chocoholic and put The Plagarizer. Ooh. Sounds cool.

Life's so so. Hence, I blog.

• It’s raining. Yay! When it pours, I go to the window, throw it open (okay, slide), flop down beside it, grab the mp3 and listen to all the sad songs I can lay my hands on. It. Is. So. Romantic. I’m the gal with the oh-so-difficult life who’s singing Innocence and Lips of an Angel. Okay, it needs a li'l imagination. Sob stuff.

• The trees look so green. They’re a li’l yellow and grumpy in the summer but in the rain they look so wonderfully calm and green-y. If you’ve got eyes in your head, you’ll know.

• I’m in love with L. M. Montgomery. I sniffed through Rilla of Ingleside. It’s a giving book and makes even stuff like honesty and hard work look cool. The heroine is still beautiful though. Sigh. I need a book with an ugly heroine who gets the handsome guy. I mean, it’s a bloody book. It doesn’t have to be true.

I have a new crush.


It’s the hormones, baby. In the movies, you never fall in love till you’re twenty-something, pretty and thin. I’m not twenty and I’m not pretty. I’m damn sure I’ll get to twenty, but pretty, uh, let’s just hope.
He’s gorgeous of course. No, he doesn’t know I exist. No, I haven’t talked to him yet. Yeah, he dresses pretty well. Naw, haven’t discovered if he’s funny yet. Yes, seen all his pictures on Orkut. Stalked him online. Watched him covertly in class. All the signs of good ol’ girly love, dahlings, and boy, I’m loving it!


I’m thinking of doing my room up. I can’t chuck the furniture out or paint the walls (I want them all black and goth), but it doesn’t reflect my personality at all. Sniff.

1. It’s too clean. Courtsey the woman who makes me eat lunch and irons my clothes. Mum. If you’ve watched Another Cinderella Story or High School Musical or a cute-girl-wins-over-sexy-girl movie with a couple of philosophical mums thrown in, you’ll know that the room is always dirty.
2. No posters (Okay, so there’s a periodic table on one wall and mums painting on the other. Meh. I. Am. Such. A. Nerd. Besides, mum doesn’t paint hot guys without a shirt. Sigh. I totally want hot guys without a shirt.). My friend has Kurt Cobain on her um, bathroom door. Damn. Bathroom door taken. That leaves cupboard door, peach wall and huge window. Damn. People don’t stick posters on windows.
3. No ‘do not enter’ sign on the door. There was a Tweety saying ‘welcome’ in second grade (Yes. The. Bird. With. An. Orange. Beak. And. Stop. Smirking). This is most sophisticated interior designing I’ve done. Ever.
4. Random thought: I drew today. It’s a girl in a blue and white dress (very short) with unfinished legs and no face, but she’s turned out pretty well. Mom thinks she’s okay and after winning mum’s approval if anyone dares to criticize, your opinion will be banished into The Land of Stupid Opinions, and will never, ever be paid heed to in the future. Doomed. To. Ignorance.
5. Another Random thought: I feel happy. I’ve eaten a lot and watched a lot of The Simpsons and I feel cool. And, I travel by train. Every day. So, I’m grown up. If you travel by bus or car, I will give you a withering oh-my-god-you’re-such-a-baby look. Train travel is in, man.
6. I’m so addicted to So What. I have no husband, but I put in the name of Random Guy I’m Annoyed With whenever ‘husband’ pops up and it works. I get all pepped up and lalala, guys are such jerks. Na Na Na Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na Na Na…

Like I said, not much going on.
R.I.P Micheal Jackson.


PS. I discovered R.I.P. means rest in peace. So, I’m showing off.

I learnt a new word. Scram!

Warning: Long post. Be careful. Not recommended for people with short attention spans.

A memory of Something Interesting: (I think so anyway, and honestly, since it’s not your blog, your opinion isn’t all that important, innit?)

Location: At the operation theatre of a nice, white hospital

People Involved: A couple of doctors, a screaming patient and me.

Stuff Which Definitely Doesn’t Happen:

1. No one says ‘Oh! She’s gone into cardiac arrest!’, ‘Scalpel!’ or ‘She’s stopped breathing!’ In fact, no one speaks English at all.
2. The patient doesn’t scream/thrash about/bare teeth when an injection is brought suspiciously close. Superhuman? I wonder…
3. There are no beeping machines. There’s a table, horrible looking restraints, a few chemicals and a rusty cylinder of oxygen. No. No, we definitely haven’t made any progress in medicine since the sixteenth century.
4. The patients don’t sleep quietly and let the doctors do their stuff. They either a) snore, b) grunt or c) scream that their _______ (substitute suitable part of the human anatomy and kindly don’t be pervert-ish, I’m watching!) is hurting, that doctors are idiots, and honestly, they did come here to mend, not feel like they’re being grinded in a grinder! (Unimaginative, but I couldn’t think of anything else and besides, being grinded in a grinder does sound painful.).
5. Incidentally, doctors are idiots, so agree with long-suffering-and-wearing something-blue-and-long-and-flowy patient entirely.

Note: My mum is a doctor, but she is not an idiot. If your mum/dad is a doctor as well, they are not idiots either as long as they do not come near me with the intention of a) poking a needle into my arm or b) messing around with my teeth.

Stuff which does happen:

1. You don’t feel queasy at all.
2. The patient looks at you weirdly, you try to smile, discover that your muscles have stopped working and give up the attempt. Later your mum demands why you were making funny faces at poor patient.
3. You don’t wear normal shoes in the theatre. You have to change into terrible rubber slippers, so, if you a) haven’t trimmed your toenails or b) have particularly ugly feet, it shows.
4. You do wear normal clothes in the theatre. So, if you’re wearing your most horrible grey shirt and black-and-white checked skirt, it shows up as well, especially since the walls are white and you are um…not-so-white.
5. Ooh…the doctors are pretty. So, if you a) have had an overdose of Scrubs or b) are male, worry not, angelic doctors do exist.
6. Doctors tend to wander from the topic and talk about a) how their daughter just finished a particularly painful session with the dentist, b) how she’s a spoilt brat, c) how they had a party besides a dissected corpse in college (Okay, the corpse of a frog, but so what?) and d) how they wish their kid would finally turn eighteen so that they could gift her a studio apartment with a dog, take her to pubs, get her punch drunk and ensure that she’s never broke. (Okay, I made the last one up, but what’s wrong with dreaming?)
7. You realize that the painkiller which the dentist gave you isn’t permanent and that having a root canal does hurt – a lot.

From the above moment, you stop noticing things and start making random noises. (Ooh, aah and ouch were pretty dominant, though I think shit, crap and f&*k might have slipped in a few times, which make your mother, the other doctors and the nurses shake their heads sadly and wonder how such words got into your vocabulary at the tender age of fifteen.)

End of memory.


I have a nice new ‘buzz off’ line that goes “If I throw a stick, will you run?’ which serves the dual purpose of a) implying that the receiver is a Rottweiler and b) that I want him to run away.
Genius, I know. I think that the world just got itself a new Einstein.


I keep touching my mutilated tooth quite often because a) it doesn’t feel like a tooth anymore; b) I don’t think that my other teeth are too fond of it and c) it feels very itchy.

I’m reading a very long (and very boring) novel by a Russian guy called Boris Pasternak. It claims to be a love story, but I’ve finished reading the first 100 pages and love hasn’t made an appearance. Sex has though, which is strange because don’t people usually fall in love before they jump into bed?


I could be wrong, which makes me feel, a) dreadfully old, b) dreadfully prudish and c) quite dreadful generally.

Hugs and kisses,

Chocoholic.

P.S. Yes. I do have a grey shirt and black-and-white check skirt. Happy?

Random scribbles. Nothing revolutionary.

The past year was the most awful I’ve ever had. Period.
In case anyone is grabbed by the sudden desire to be insanely miserable, I’d definitely recommend spending a year in tenth. Though emerging alive through the whole thing is kind of doubtful, everyone who does emerge unscathed at least knows what real horror is.
**looks severe**
Now that the one month torment’s up, everyone’s hopping away to places, and doing loads of cool things, being generally happy and feeling horribly hot.

I’ve been stalking Tom Felton online, watching his videos on You Tube a million times and drooling over his beautiful blue-grey eyes. He has a really skinny girlfriend and plays the guitar really well but duh! a girl’s gotta have some romance!
No one around here really shares my Tom Felton addiction but they don’t really have eyes in their head, he’s the only one in the Harry Potter cast who a) doesn’t drown his face in war paint and b) really looks and acts like the character he’s supposed to play. Poor li’l unappreciated guy!

P.S. I don’t mind, its nice having him all to myself!

Now that exams are over and everyone’s heaving a huge sigh of relief and happiness and whatever, I’ve discovered that I’ve got nothing to do!
Three months is an enormous time to do nothing in. I’ve been having plenty of these suspiciously similar conversations:
Person: Any plans for the vacations?
Me: You now, just hang out with friends…party…go bowling…visit people…
Person: Oh…
Me: Um…What about you?
Person: Oh…the same thing you know…
Me: Cool…
Person: Yeah…
It sounds totally lame and there’s only so many times that you can a) hang out at malls and b) go live with your kiddie cousin who’s taste in movies has never gone beyond Batman and Spiderman.
I also suck at bowling – the ball’s way too heavy and always manages to wind up in the gutter but as long as I avoid talking about my strikes (stuck at the unenviable number zero), I should be in no danger of being though of as uncool.

I’m also wondering, how long is it that dropped food becomes officially uneatable? There’s half a delicious cookie which looks quite tantalizing, but it’s on the floor, and it seems such a waste to let the dustbin swallow it.


The heat’s killing me! I don’t even feel like dressing up (don’t be fooled, the heats only an excuse, the real reason is that I’ve become quite fat since January, I’m terrified that I won’t fit into my jeans! **looks mournful**) and I’ve been taking two showers a day, which is something huge because my mum has a tough time persuading me that a bath a day is essential to keep me clean.
I’ve also got myself saddled with a dentist whom I’m going to visit today and who (obviously!) terrifies me out of my wits. The ordeal’s f^&*%#g painful and my mouth feels like its been maimed for life, but it feels nice to look in the mirror at teeth which a) are reasonably white and b) look like they’d be able to carry off a half-decent smile.

So, I’ve been awe-inspiringly brave, screamed only a little, stayed stuck in the house, eaten loads of chocolate and switched off my lights for the Earth Hour. **long sacrificing sigh**
Being human and loving it.


Cheers!
Chocoholic

DENTIST UPDATE:
Dentist poked a hole through my tongue. Well, not really, but its nice and swollen and painful…am having plenty of difficulty in eating. **sigh** He’s also refusing to put braces, says that when I grow older, my teeth will shape themselves. Looking at my mouth now, I’m not particularly impressed with the way they’ve been going on about the shaping thing…and what hope of improvement do they have in three years? **even larger sigh**

CONCLUSION: Dentists suck.

Shakira and her hips. They definitely don't lie.

Belly dancing was something that I’d always associated with frizzy haired Shakira. She was the delectable goddess and I - her devout-est disciple. She could contort her hips into impossibly seductive postures and I – umm…never mind. * Embarrassed grin * So, when I witnessed my FRIEND (why, oh why?) move exactly (oops, did I say exactly? I meant minutely, completely, insanely!) like the hippy (pun intended), lithe and petite singer, I (quite predictably) turned a particularly dark shade of green. Jealousy, my dear Mr and Ms Watsons!
I’ve been jumping, twisting and straining (ouch!) to shake my hips but they seem to be attached quite firmly to my legs and refuse to move of their own accord. (Are you listening God? Future humans need more elastic pelvises!)
Having suitably blamed my genes for my lack of hip shaking abilities, I’m quite content to watch Beyonce struggle to match Shakira’s capers in the Beautiful Liar video. Hang on, maybe she hasn’t heard of genes yet?

***

Uh uh. Ever since all the scruffily clad blue-and-grey midgets (read boys) have started assembling testosterone in their bodies, they seem to be deeply interested in weird words like ‘kiss’ and ‘hug’ and whatever. *blush* Now, boys have always been interested in words like ‘kiss’ and ‘hug’. But they always sniggered suitably and appeared duly amused whenever the words were mentioned. Now, they seem to have grown drastically more serious. Now, dear readers, they actually want to do the damn things!
Blame the testosterone.
Usually, I’m pretty boy-tolerant but this freaks me out. Maybe I’m weird. No, I am definitely straight. Or maybe, you doubting moron, you’ve been watching too many cheesy romantic flicks. Yeah, that must be it!

***

I really don’t understand the bizarre concept of love. You can like someone, kiss (hopefully!) the same someone and hook up with loads of someones. But, puhlease spare poor little someone from the embarrassment of your undying, eternal love. Dude, it doesn’t exist.

There’s a cute little story of how a 70 year old Chinese man lived with his 80 year old wife in the jungles of China. The couple was chucked outta the village because their relationship wasn’t acceptable to society (yeah…sounds like our awful movie melodrama huh?). It is rumored that the man carved more than 6000 steps (yeah right…three whole zeros!), over three decades (that’s thirty years!), from the cave he used to live in, to make it easier for his wife to climb down to the forest. Now, that is true love.
So, if all you six pack endowed wannabes can do that for your fluttering-today-dumped-tomorrow lady loves, I’ll admit, it’s real love (or as close as you can get!).
But since you can’t - dear god, where are the real hunks? * wails loudly *
I’m seriously considering going the lesbian route. Uh uh. Now that’s as true as chocolate mice or a two-headed pig. After all, what will Nadal do without me?

Picnic. A good old fashioned word. And exciting. And 29th September.
OK, so we’re all tenthies headed to Karjat on 29th September. For a picnic.
And (obviously!) I can’t STOP raving about it. All right, so I admit it. The water will bear astonishing resemblance to something gooey sprinkled with a generous helping of dead leaves. And the water slide will suspiciously look like a plastic pipe propped on a bundle of sticks. And the food will probably taste like minuscule specks of paneer have been dumped into a load of oil. But then, frankly my dears, we don’t give a damn!
Picnics have NEVER been about swanky resorts or gourmet dining (uh...until now at least!). They’ve always been about a bunch of people tunelessly shrieking their lungs out and grooving to the latest Bollywood numbers. They’ve always been about a guzzling your umpteenth bottle of Coke and begging a few bucks off someone to buy some more. They’ve always been about dunking people in the aforementioned pool. Picnics are –there’s no other word for it – cool.
The water thingy doesn’t EXACTLY fill my mind with ecstasy though. Because I wear ridiculously thick spectacles, and their removal causes everyone to resemble a bit of
brown fluff floating in space. Not alluring at all. Our teacher very solemnly warned us against dressing in ‘improper clothes’ (well, for a lady of umm…voluptuous proportions who wears old, patchy saris in the 21st century…that took loads of nerve!). And yeah…these improper clothes come in various shapes and forms. They are too short. And too tight. And too transparent. “Why don’t we just wear gunny sacks instead? So eco-friendly!” a snide voice quipped from behind the class. A few measly moments later, Snide Voice was languishing outside the class. Uh uh. The snide voice belonged to me.

I’m currently thumbing through a much-thumbed copy of the Eldest. Yup. The sequel to Christopher Paolini’s much touted Eragon. No. it cannot hold a flimsy candle to Harry Potter. Yes. You do start yawning after a few seconds. Yes. It does top my list of “you wasted oodles of trees by printing this book, you evil publisher, and should probably be dunked head first into the Artic when global warming begins to ravage our earth.” Phew!

The bit where Murtagh battles it out with Eragon is awesome though…with the dragons spewing fire and blades slashing, it should look incredible onscreen. But remembering the catastrophe which was a layered-with-oodles-of-makeup-and-constantly-changing-eye-color-which-merely-sugested-that-the-director-was-a-moron Daniel Radcliffe playing a wannabe Harry Potter, that’s not very likely to happen!
Ciao till next time!
Waiting damn eagerly for the picnic,
Chocoholic

Grr...Exams!

Today was MISERABLE day - the kind when even your usually cheerful horoscope comes with mumblings of dark happenings. (“You will be betrayed by a friend today” or “your partner will be moody and depressed”) I should have gotten the hint when I woke up with a humongous cold that threatened to flood by nostrils with mucus and other unmentionables. Or when my geyser suddenly abandoned its attempt to spout scalding hot water and emitted a stream of cold liquid that seemed like, a million degrees (no, billion. Heck, make that trillion. That’s not enough. HELP!) below freezing point. Then my red shirt (oh, the agonies of school uniform!) was triumphantly extracted from the debris under my bed, (uhh…my mom stores onions in there) adorned with creases that would have daunted a less haggard iron than mine.
That day I gave the most disastrous social paper ever written by yours truly in my fourteen year history. I crammed every clichéd mistake inside a paltry 20 mark paper. The process went something like this:
“What is federalism? How is federalism practiced?” glared the question from the Xeroxed paper.
“Hang on, I know this answer” said my cerebrum confidently. “I read it today morning.”
“No you don’t” said another (much hated) tiny portion smugly. “You read it yesterday morning.”
Uh. Uh.
How can I remember something stuffed inside my overcrowded brain when I was hogging cereal a day ago? Not fair.
So I peeked into my partner’s blank paper, moaned a little and started scribbling. The wrong answers.
Then I came home and howled at my mom, the creator of social studies, the tribe of history teachers and Napoleon for having lived in 1804 and not existing a century later, as my answer confidently assured my teacher, he did.
So my brain told me fiercely, I deserve compensation. So, I’m banging away on my keyboard now, on the eve of my science exam, having shoved every edible molecule within sight into my stomach’s capacious depths. At the moment, even a moody and depressed partner would be a welcome interruption. Or the arrival of the traitorous friend happily promised by my morning horoscope.
But then, *small sigh* horoscopes always have an alarming tendency to be mistaken.