it's the night before a test......sigh......is it just me or is this some kind of CON--SPI--RA--CY........first they put us through fourteen years of school where after the first few years of playing around with sand pits and alphabets they bombard you with objective tests, subjective tests, surprise tests, mental tests........and they were enough to send one mental, whatever my mom may claim about maths being my favorite subject..........then for three whole years at college, exam time comes around approximately once a year.....and never mind tutorials, as if we ever dreamt of studying for them!!! And then they spring this!!! This endless stream of cigarettes and exams.........all apologies to S&G...........honestly!!!

I can't for the life of me figure out how much I must have sinned in the last life........or if these be the sins of the last several lives catching up on me I don't wanna live anymore..........why can't I just die! die!! DIE!!! Of course keeping in mind the seventeenth century meaning of die, I would simply be sinning some more......erm, for those who haven't had the privilege of attending our hot new Head's classes, in the seventeenth century or thereabouts dying was an euphemism for........ummm this be the censored bit, if you're below eighteen or happen to be Rupanjali Mortmain please skip the next bit..........orgasm.........which reminds me........I have been accused of being obsessive about sex........never mind the who and when and why, all I got to say is W! T!! F!!!

Of course as cass can confirm, I have also, in the not too distant past, been accused of never ever ever being sighted in the company of females (please note, my dearest buddy Rupanjali, be one of the hottest babes in JU) and of indulging in nefarious activities with men within a week of meeting them for the firstest time ever!!! sigh......there was a time when I would find all this terribly traumatic, but with age and experience and maturity (me be old crone by now) I can lean back quite comfortably and actually enjoy being called a nymphomaniac.........besides I don't hold with repressing desires..........and I quite think the ancient Greeks put it best..........

"If the parts of love-pleasure be counted as ten,

Thrice three go to women, one only to men."

this morning began rather late in the day, more like half an hour before afternoon.........so there I am nibbling away at my toast and fantasizing about bacon and eggs and all those things ma refuses to cook for me if I get up later than eleven thirty, and there in the background is playing Black Eyed Peas' Shut Up.........and some barely noticed movement on the border of my peripheral vision made me look up and horror of all horrors there was my mom, my very own mommy pie indulging in some punk teenager style head banging!!!!!!!! I stared, uncertain whether she was having a fit, at which point she realized my eyes were popping into my coffee mug and promptly stopped shaking her head and looking semi-embarrassed bustled away leaving me to retrieve my jaw from the butter dish........what a way, to begin the day!!!!!

aaaaargh!!! I'm gonna fail, I'm gonna fail, I'm gonna fail..........for four hours I have been staring and staring and staring some more at my nowhere-near-good-looking computer screen........net result, tomorrow morning I shall be all bleary-red-puffy-eyed but will I be prepared for the test? No. No. and needless to say NO. I want my mommy.......i could go, wake her up, she be in next room......but then again she might go all crankywanky and yell at me for leaving all studies for the night before.......but i still want my moommy........and mistah (yes you, i'm talking to you alright!), i want a huggy.....glub glub......

hmmm.........I'm too happy to crib......this despite the fact that I have tons of things to crib about.....like the fact that I have a test tomorrow (again) and I am unprepared (erm ,again) and instead of studying I'm merrily squandering away all my precious time (needless to say, again) and also just about every bit of my body is groaning away to glory be if I so much as move to breathe!!! This be inevitable outcome of
a) going up and down a ricketty step ladder eighty times
b)dropping to my knees at the sound of a gun, or to be more precise about five hundred times
c)slapping a young man twenty times ( if you're wondering how he is, he's fine. At least he said he's fine, but my palm hurts so badly!!!)
This also be the inevitable outcome of being grossly out of shape and over-weight....glump glump (that be sound of plump person going glub glub)

Unfortunately I just realized this getting to sound increasingling like cribbing......good grief, have I become such an inveterate veteran cribber that even when I'm happy I sound like I'm cribbing.....naheeee!!!!!!!!

but happy i am........

there were no monsters under the bed last night.....nor in the closet.......though the closet did contain spirits.....in the form of a bottle of my Dad's long forgotten sasky looking bottle of whisky, which he'd stowed in the corner behind my sharees when we were moving into this place six months back.....the other bottle of course was a remainder or a reminder of saturday evening at Ruapnjali's house, a rather innocuous bottle of breezer which I still haven't found the time to throw away..........sigh.....so what did keep me up last night? Not fear of the dark but was it really just fear of loneliness.....being alone can cut both ways....either it's a feeling of exhilerating freedom or it's like starting to cry and then realizing you haven't a handkerchief..........

I really want to cry....but I don't know why......this be very shad.....and I just had such a love-r-ly lunch.....all ileesh maachh bhaja and tel and yummetty yumm......the only time anyone can get me to confess to my one quarter bangaal lineage is after a sunday lunch of ileesh......so yes for the moment I am bangaal and very very fissy......but I am also bhery bhery shad.......gloob gloob......

It was a beautiful evening....that sounds so so so cliched but it's just true and sometimes you run out of words to describe beauty....if only I were able to sit back and communicate what I'm feeling instead of having to put it into words....it was just something which when I think about it brings a smile to my lips.......
I floated through the evening.....floated through the music......through the words......even through the momentary embarrassment of having to make conversation because the Musical Genius was being polite to me when I actually wanted to run away and hide because he is one of those rare human beings who excude enough brilliance to make me feel ashamed of my insignificant existence......
I'm sitting here and smiling....just smiling.....maybe I was flying so high yesterday because of that jay the size of a smallish pen but then again maybe it was the dimples of a sphinx....call it cellulite/adiposity/whatever rubbishy words you use to fish for compliments.....but they were deliciously delightful dimples....adorable little pinpricks of joy......
I think you will read this post...and I know other people will too.....I know anonymity is limited.....but I don't care......this is just my publicly private way of saying.....friend or acquaintance, whatever you are....I don't take you for granted......all I'm trying to say is thank you, for being you.....

Why oh why are people continupusly wanting me to go dashing off to red-light areas?!!! Do I look the dashing type?!!! And while I agree on the importance of field work et al there is a time and place for everything and this evening is just not the time for it............glub glub...........and I wanted to get sloshed or stoned or into any possible state of mental paralysis....

How were the tests? How were the tests? How were the tests?

hmm.......at the distance of more then 24 hours, the pain is still there....this not good.....at all......

Going through my fragmentary Foucault notes...the handwriting's mine but the words remain incomprehensible...in nervous reaction I find myself doing all the things I shouldn't be doing, a couple of hours before exams, especially when I don't know a word of what was taught in class.....still if Winston Churchill could get away with a blank paper bearing only his name, the number of the first question '1' followed, after much thought, by a punctuation mark '.' and a few artistic ink splotches for his first Latin examination; so can I!! Brave words, but after three years of writing an inordinate amount of bhaat, surely I can manage some aatlami? Then again maybe not.......I shall resign myself to fate and bad marks, for once.......sniff sniff......
hmm....matters of course are not helped by the fact that the only legible and clearly comprehensible sentence I could find in my entire collection of notes taken over the past one month or so is as follows :
The Fallen Woman is a creature of unrestricted sexual desire...........
hurrumph!!! Whereas men I suppose irrespective of their standing or falling are always creatures of unrestricted sexual desire........hmm......

Reading Chaucer desperately for tomorrow's test and I came across this....

We women have, if I am not to lie,
In this love matter, a quaint fantasy;
Look out a thing we may not lightly have,
And after that we'll cry all day and crave.

The man hath a way with words......and he seems to have phrased a universal lament very succinctly, I quote.....

Alas, alas, that ever love was sin!

alas indeed.......

What was I doing last night? I was sleeping. What was I doing the night before last night? Sleeping again. And the night before?....Well, you get the drift. I have been clocking about ten hours of sleep every night!!! So......(you raise a discreet eyebrow)........imbeciles and eight year olds are after all permitted ten hours of sleep a night.....except I have a test tomorrow, correction I have two tests tomorrow. Not one but two...and I haven't studied a word!! Well, no that's an exaggeration, I did read the first one and a half lines of the Wife of Bath's Tale and I did count the number of pages of the various essays I'm supposed to know backwards and forwards by tomorrow....please note, these being essays which my esteemed brilliant prof took three weeks to explain, her explanations flying tangentially over my head all the while. What'm I gonna do, what'm I gonna do, what'm I gonna do?!!! Breathe....slow....calm.....right. Aaaaaaargh!!!!!!!!!!
I figure I have twenty hours till my tests.....hmm...that's not a lot of time is it? Especially considering even if I forego all sleep for tonight (sniff sniiff) I will need to get out of this house for an hour this evening, if only for a breather and some impure nicotinated oxygen....never fear, no grass this evening. Yesterday Rupanjali (hehe, she's gonna blow a fuse when she sees her name on my blog) and I met.....Ostensibly to xerox material for the tests. Well, we did our work and then we packed in some beer and before I knew what was what I was on a nice dopey trip with her kid cousin whom she accused me of corrupting....hah!! The upshot of the story was my plans to stay up all night and study got shot rather badly....sigh......and now I am seriously panicking.....this is where I go away and try to study some.......pray for me, somebody/anybody/everybody....pleeeease........

I will go away and feel sad....on one of those green trips when the world is spinning round but I don't just feel giddy and good, definitely not good....a bit like the elevator, really, I'm going up but there's this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach....and there's a little voice at the back of my head saying....."this is not a good trip, you're just getting taken for a ride....again"......if I listened to these little voices, which are actually echoed remembrances of things that happened a long time ago in the past........."Which is a different country. And besides, the bitch......is older."........I'd probably lead a life less interesting.......and I'd probably feel a lot less unhappy right at this moment......sigh.......

There's an ancient saying....it doesn't rain, it pours.....well guess what, it's pouring men.........and it's rather like being caught in a downpour, a week after you totter back from pneumonia and the brink of the grave....sniff..... Why? Oh why?? Oh why do all the wrong, wrong, wrong men find me unaccountably fascinating ?!!
If I met Sir Sean Connery, walking past the jheel, do you think he'd stop and ask for my name and number?!!! If certain men who fascinate me and who continue to remain unattainable because they're too busy (and the plural is used like the royal 'we'...... I refer to one unique man out here...of course whether he be man or sphinx is beyond my mortal, feminine powers of judgement)....if such men happened to be whizzing past me would they stop and offer me a lift home?!!! I'm feeling rather like a snake, who excels in the art of hypnotizing hapless victims (wishful thinking) but who would much, much rather feast on grass then the sort of birds fluttering around longing to get entranced in my gaze.....and of course, inevitably some of these undesirable (in every sense of the word) elements will have amours and paramours and then it's back to that mesh of accusations and counter-accusations, where before you know it some freaky woman accuses you of all manners of nefarious activities with her 'man' a week after you've barely noticed his unprepossessing existence.......
Sigh....and all the good men are going away....one albeit temporarily.....but for an immature twenty-something (that's me) a week is one day short of forever......sneeef......and me will miss most terribly another fascinating, unattainable almost thirty year old who went away yesterday leaving the university campus rather desolate.....some people irrespective of levels of personal interaction just leave an imprint on the world around you.....and suddenly the fact that they're not there for the fairly infrequent nod and smile makes a veritable difference.....and.....I don't know....I don't think I shall ever be able to tell.......heaven from hell.......

I am schizophrenic, well no I'm probably quadrophenic or better still heptophrenic (?) is there any such word....yes....no....maybe....whatever, I'm utilizing my creative license and since I'm not a poet shall we just call it my bloggetic license....there another new word (!!)....

The point is I am completely unable to reconcile all the varying emotions that are right now conducting a World (within)-of-Wrestling championship.......on the one hand I desperately want something Right Now...on the other hand a part of me is declaring some things will be Worth the Wait.....I want to be Demanding....and at the same time I feel like I should be Understanding (and I realize italics are painfully adoloscent but I'm not feeling particularly self-contained at this moment)......but this is the worst....get this.....I want what I want but I'm not sure if I really want what I think I want because if I get what I think I want I might not want to want what I think I want anymore.....and the worst of these sentences which make perfect sense when I'm writing them down is when I look at them again, not only do I have no clue what I'm talking about, I suddenly have doubts about what the spelling of 'want' is anyway!!!
Oh Lord....somebody tell me what I want anyway!!!

And on top of all this, the girl I could have sworn was my dearest friend in the whole wide university and whom I would have trusted without a breath of suspicion if tomorrow she were to tell me, the world was due to be eaten by a giant greenish purple monster who would confuse it with his favourite marshmellow, has accused me of the unthinkable!!! She insists that in my last examination I wrote something along the lines of...."actors are ethical abstractions of men"............eh?!!! Does anyone know what I might have meant by that, because I certainly cannot recollect having written anything like that in the first place(!!!)......sigh......what's the world coming to........

"They want good sex"......just one of many points in Chaucer's litany of what women want (as narrated by the erstwhile head of the department).....of course as soon as she said these words the majority of the female population in class went into hysterical giggles while the young lads with raging (presumably) hormones sat there and snickered away to glory......which brought back fond memories of Class VI......our rather cranky biology teacher sitting there talking about asexual flowers while the last few benches were giggling away and even the studious first benchers were all blushy blushy.....sigh....to think that there isn't much of a difference between twelve years olds for whom sex was the latest scandalous addition to a limited vocabulary and mature (again, presumably) twenty somethings holding B.A. degrees.......and for all those who talk in hushed tones about four letter words : wake up and smell the sunshine - sex is a three letter word!!!

W! T! F!
What in the name of every unholy being that exists or my imagination can conjure is the matter with this world?!!!!! Do I look like an Agony Aunt?!!!!!! Does anything in my entire demeanor indicate that I'm waiting for the universe or the nearest direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan to come and lay his/her/its head on my shoulder and "tell me all"?!!!!!!!

Me think it was Lord Vetinari......the man with the most impeccable advice in the history of Discworld drama, "Learn your lines" and the habit of throwing mime artists into a scorpion pit (there's a subtle connection, go figure!)........who said, "Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind" (At any rate it's there in Reaper Man, and someone who has the book at hand can correct me.) The point is I have crossed the numerical punctuational limitations of insanity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(and grammar can go figure, I know there's no such word as punctuational but if the good Bard can come up with spaniel'd, so can I, so Hah!) And spaniel'd means 'followed like a spaniel' [Antony and Cleopatra, I, 3, 55......if you disbelieve my words]

But to return to the primary subject of my diatribe, What?! What?!! What?!!! Do I even look sympathetic?!!! A few months back I remember feeling heart-broken because someone had called me 'manipulative' but right now I think I'd give every ounce of my better nature to be called something as simplistically nasty.

For those who are wondering what I'm babbling about, well! and well!! words fail me......I have just been at the receiving end of an unprovoked and to my mind unjustified temper tantrum. Achha thikachhe, so I listen to people. I nod my head and make the appropriate noises. I even offer advice (please note, only if solicited.) But does that really mean I have to drop all my work and let my life, studies, family, friends etc etc etc go to rack and ruin just because someone wants to tell me what is going on in their lives?!!!!!

Stop. Revise. Reverse track. And the contradictions begin. All this is not a general ranting against all those who have accidentally/intentionally or even drunkenly confided in me. Without looking remotely sympathetic or even friendly (and all those who know me can publicly clarify I'm an ugly witch) there are still people who talk to me. And this is not about those people. This is about one specific upstart who took into his head that just because I was friendly and (it galls me to admit this) sympathetic (!) that meant I was willing to forego all commitments and activities to spend time with him. I repeat.........wtf.......

Now I'm all sad-y-wady......... It just struck me that there are probably people out there in the world who find my presence as much of an imposition as I find this person's.

Woke up this morning with a terrible feeling that I'm not a very nice person....and I'm old and ugly and intellectually inferior to all the world and its studious younger second cousin once removed.......and I just looked in the mirror and realized I am all old and well, you know the rest........terribly sniffy mood......though the sniffles originate from my present Rudolphian state (I'm convinced Santa's foggy buddy was suffering from influenza or whatever the North Pole's equivalent of the common cold virus is)......also shniff shniff shneef nobody loves me...

So I shall tuck my tail between my legs and crawl away to a little corner under the table and settle down to feel all shorry for mythelf....glub glub.....goodbye cru-w-el world......