13 February, 2008

Notes After a Journey

Yes, yes, I haven’t posted for more than 36 hours—so sue me, dawgs. I’ve been travelling, escaping to Chandigarh for reasons unrelated to Raj Thackeray’s warning to North Indians to clear out of Mumbai. Such a darling he is.

And hell, seeing how cold it is up North, I’d say Raj picked the wrong season to ask North-Indian migrants to return home. In this winter, no thank you. What’s a lathi or two?

*

I’m known to get up to comical misadventures when it gets too cold, and the first thing I did on arriving here was jump in front of the heater in the mom’s room. I extended my hands next to the radiator, and a blissful expression covered my face. Such warmth!

Then my father told me that the electricity had gone, and the heater was off. The heat was psychological. Pah.

*

One of the worst things about the cold is taking a bath. How to be naked? This is not the developed world, where homes are centrally heated, and the upstairs of my house here can get rather freezing. Also, I’ve got a bout of loosies, and my switch has been going toggle on/off/on/off. (Dependol should be renamed Undependol.) That means many encounters with cold water.

A hundred years later, my great-great-grand nephews will sit on my knee and listen to such stories with incredulity. ”Cold water?” they’ll remark. “Now that’s a tall story. We all know there’s no such thing. Tell us about Santa Claus again.”

*

Speaking of golden ages, I was surfing TV, and hit upon NDTV Imagine. There was a mythological serial going on, and some dude with long white hair and beard was spouting wisdom. And I thought to myself: Wait, it couldn’t have been quite as good as they show it. They didn’t have shampoo!

*

Actually, I could have put this post up yesterday, but the internet was acting funny. Every site I went to opened easily except my own. At one point, MadMan, who built this website and otherwise runs the universe, told me that perhaps the government has blocked it. We were running traceroutes and all.

I looked up at the sky where no higher being exists and promised: Please FSM, if my site comes back, I will only blog about arty things. No politics, no economics. Nothing to piss governments off.

But now the site is back, and I’ve forgotten my promise. May I choke on pasta.