Ever heard of an uneventful life going by at the speed of lightening? Heed mine. Doing hardly anything all day, but finding the days to head back to Singapore ticking off like that! (I clicked my finger to demonstrate - just so you know.)
Two (and a 1/2) books, two unfinished-hanging-at-the-point-of-action long short stories, random online final year project meetings, and recently accompanying mom on her craft class trips and dirtying my hand with ceramic and fevicol, all just describe these two weeks. Ahmedabad is thankfully back to its sweltering, stickily hot self - it's better than its dreary, always-raining form! And hot means ice creams! :D (which I have had only twice, sadly :( no time - I just described the paradox!)
And now there's Worldspace at home - it's a blessing, man! Shruti, the carnatic music channel is quite good, until the violin accompanists get so awful that the violin seems to be screeching into your ears and to quote a F.R.I.E.N.D.S-ism 'Makes me want to put my finger into my eye, through to my brain, and twirl it around!' Ok, that's taking it to an extreme, but I just want to change the channel, and that happens depending on my mom's mood :P. KL radio is decent too, playing either really-good songs, or awful-to-hear ones. Farishta plays old hindi songs, and is good at times too. Jhankaar, the new-Bollywood-Indipop channel, simply sucks. There are some good English stations too, like Voyager, UPOP, Orbit Rock and Top 40 (which I think plays the week's top 40 - just that, over and over again!) But considering that of ten songs they play, it's a surprise if I know 4, and also that the music will probably get on my mom's nerves, they're hardly played. But good, nevertheless.
We get two newspapers here, Indian Express and Times of India and both are pathetic. Indian Express is ridden with typos, and these buggers can't seem to differentiate between its and it's. Give me a break - it irritates me to see this error in some blogs, and on bloody newspapers, man, it's the last straw. And this, my friends, is the newspaper that has 'Journalism of Courage'!! Nothing but sensationalism, I say. But TOI beats I.Express on sensationalism hands down. Placement of news is awful, and less said about the way news is written, the better. Looks like these buggers don't know anything called the 'Pyramid of News Values' or they forgot their bloody Journalism 101 class stuff when they joined this awful newspaper. Even the quality of the physical paper is so bad that I don't even want to touch them when I flip through them. Ugh! I miss The Hindu badly.
I'm in the mood for more cursing - the wonderful people ruling our country and their petty politics, stripping a most deserving man of his post. Can any of the candidates plan India for 2020? Or have students thronging to meet the President? Answer questions intelligently? Walk over to the dias of a journalistic debate and bounce off questions and answers? Or visit my university and give a meaningful talk? We'll miss you, Dr Kalam. It was an honour to have you on our campus and personally, to take pictures of you from an arm's length away and write a news story on you.
What more.. it's been rather fun going with my mom to these craft classes and watching all the women talk away to glory in chatteringly-nonsensical hindi. There were even college-going and young girls who for some reason seemed to be preparing themselves to get married and stay at home to do all this - so I felt a little absurd to be in such company, but yeah since I won't be all that, I decided it doesn't matter :P
That's about it - I'm supposed to be doing research for my final year project, but I can't find relevant studies and so I have gotten bored. Guilt is tugging me to open the other window showing the results of my search on 'Social Presence Theory' .. yeah, I'll get there..

Archana shivered with delight. There, in her hand, was a little, outrageously expensive glass of Tequila. Her very first. She grinned with uncontrolled excitement.

‘It doesn’t look much different from water,’ she thought, ‘or maybe lime juice?’ She seriously wondered why it was this expensive. But she pushed those thoughts away. It was her 19^th birthday, and she would try this, no matter what.

She stared at the glass. Visions of men blabbering away in drunken glory loomed into view. Of men stumbling, unable to walk, as she had seen in movies. Of her classmates puking, like she had seen once in the hostel. And finally, of her parents, especially her mother’s horrified expression if only she came to know. But of course, she wouldn’t.

All the guys in the table had got what they wanted, and they all looked around. Kar looked at her, rubbing his hands in glee, and then picked up his glass, and said ‘To Archana’s health!’

‘Yo!’ screamed some.

‘Cheers,’ screamed others.

Archana smiled and put her glass down.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t do this?’ she asked herself.

‘Naah, go on,’ she told herself again.

She gingerly looked at the glass again.

‘To me,’ she told herself silently.

It was then she noticed the tiny thing in the glass. Something like the capillary tube in the chemistry lab. She picked it up and casually threw it out.

She then lifted the glass and saw how much of Tequila it held. Very, very less.

She put the glass to her mouth and gulped in one go.

She coughed and spat it out. Her friends looked at her.

‘Dear, dear, go slow!’ said Kar. The other guys bellowed with laughter.Archana, visibly shaken, managed a weak smile.

She looked at the glass again. It was almost empty. And she didn’t even know how it tasted!

Only a few drops left.

She opened her mouth again and shook the last few drops into her mouth, like she had just drunk something she absolutely relished.

She then licked her lips. No, not because it was tasty. It just didn’t really taste like anything to her. Almost tasteless, maybe slightly flavoured. Nothing special. But it burned her throat. Or maybe her mind was just making it up? Well, she really didn’t know why millions of people in the world went crazy over such a thing, tasteless, burning.

She stared blankly around as the guys finished up theirs. Buggers, most of them were ordering for more and more.

Suddenly, a fear gripped her. What if she were to puke too? And blabber incoherent things? Let out deep secrets? She shuddered, and announced ‘Let’s go, guys.’

The guys jeered. As expected. But they agreed. The nice guys, who wouldn’t want to offend her. In reality, nice guys who secretly feared Archana might just suddenly burst into tears in a fit of drunken crying if they didn’t leave immediately.

They got up, and Vik crashed to the ground. The other guys cheered as he staggered to his feet and got up.

Archana’s fears hit their peak (again). She started to walk, wanting to get to her room and to bed at the earliest.

‘Kar,’ she mumbled weakly, ‘what if I faint on the way?’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll take you to your room,’ he replied. The ever-steady Kar. ‘He isn’t even high,’ Archana thought, ‘and he had six drinks!’ And tripped.

Two guys rushed and pulled her up. Kar and Ray held her two arms and walked.

Archana, though ashamed, just limped on.

After what seemed an eternity, the guys opened her hostel room, and dropped her on the bed and left, throwing her purse on the chair. Archana curled up in bed, and pulled her covers over herself.

‘Get up, Aa-arch, you’re in the way!’ said some voice.

Archana looked up, dazed. It was Christie, the Mexican girl living in the next room. Archana was sleeping in the corridor, and three other people were watching her from two doors away.

She didn’t bother to ask how she got there. She quickly got up and rushed into her room.

All for a teeny, tiny glass of some tasteless, burning drink. Not worth it, she thought.

She went to the canteen after a shower. The guys were there.

‘Arch, all right?’ asked Kar cheerily.

‘Of course,’ Archana replied, not a bit of the embarrassment she had faced some time back apparent in her face or tone.

‘Well, now that you’re into it too, we were just thinking,’ he said, taking a bottle out of a DFS Galleria bag. Absolut. It looked like a bottle filled with clear, sparkling water.

He handed over the bottle to her. She opened it gingerly and sniffed.

She sneezed and threw the lid over. Kar got tensed and grabbed the bottle from her.

‘I, err, got to go,’ she said and awkwardly rushed out.

No more, she promised herself, and sneezed again. No more.