Hundred-Plus

The previous post was my hundredth. I was very conscious of it all the time that I was writing the post, but, somehow, after all the hype of Posts 94-97, I just felt like playing it down ...a lot. So I didn't mention it. But I'm proud that my "let's try this" venture has lasted so long. Like pretty much everything else in my life, I did it for me... and I've realized that blogging is a really therapeutic activity. It has helped to calm me in many ways, on several occasions; it has taught me to think differently about the situations in my life; and I've had my quiet fun in my own quiet way, like I love to do. Writing has always been one of my hobbies, and blogging has enabled me to indulge myself. And hopefully, these last hundred posts have also been somewhat of a window into my life for some of the people I've loved to keep in touch with, but for lack of time.

I'm happy I'm here. And I'll repeat, as I did, on my first post, 'Let's see where this takes me.'

'The Girl on the Other Side of the Mirror'

N.B. I promise, this is not to stretch one post out into two... its only because I wanted to name this post after my once-upon-a-time best friend, and at the same time, didn't want to spoil the fun of the previous post. Which you might want to peruse before you dive into this one.

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This was back when I was a shy little girl, hiding behind mamma's sari pallu. (Nothing's changed, except the 'little' part... and the fact that the aforesaid pallu is 7000 miles away.) I wasn't very good at making friends, and preferred to spend most of the day reading, listening to mummy's "Once-upon-a-time" tales, and warbling those stories out to my best friend, who we'll call The Girl. Short for, The Girl on the Other Side of the Mirror. I played with her, talked to her, admired her curls, and spent hours out on the verandah, where The Girl was. The other Girls (real, imaginary or mirrored) just didn't match up.

There was a little drum-stick or something, with a ball-like thing on one end, to help hit the drum harder. One of my most vivid memories involved using this stick as a lollipop and sucking on it incessantly. (Real confectionery was too sticky, this one did just fine.) One day, I was eating my 'lollipop' in front of the mirror, when The Girl appeared. She looked at the lollipop and smiled at me. She had a shy attractive smile, and the appeal in her eyes was unmistakable. She wanted the lollipop.

It wasn't as if I hadn't been faced with this situation before. On previous occasions, I had even attempted to get the lollipop over to her. I had tried banging on the mirror with the lollipop in the hope that it would just go through to the 'Other Side'. But it just wasn't that easy. Come to think of it, I hadn't even been able to shake hands with her. It was almost unresolvable.

Over time, the human mind has the potential to come up with solutions to the most tricky of problems. My four-year-old brain came up with it's solution, too. Some days, when I was out on the verandah licking the lollipop, and would meet my friend, I would offer her the lollipop, but she would decline. She said her mother wanted her to look after her teeth. She would grin and show me her pearly whites, and indeed, they were beautiful. It seemed a shame to spoil them with sweets. On other days, she would express interest in the lollipop (usually when it was real) but I would then remind her she'd just had strawberry jam at breakfast that morning, i.e., sticky and very sweet, much like a semi-liquid lollipop. Then I would promise I'd get her another lollipop when I saw her next, and blow her a kiss across the mirror.

Of course, the lollipop never changed hands. It never had to. I don't hold lollipops any more, but I do hold the hairbrush, the perfume, the moisturising cream. She doesn't ask to have them anymore. The Girl has always been the more passive one in our friendship, but it has helped to know she's there, looking across at me reassuringly, as if her imaginary existence solidifies my real life.

"Tell me a story!"

I got into the shuttle one evening not long ago, and sat down on one of the 'side-facing' seats. On the perpendicular seat I noticed a little child, Indian, sitting with her father. I've seen her before on the shuttle; she's a typical child - all fun and talk and creativity.

Well, anyway, so as not to appear to stare, I started looking straight in front of me. It appeared that the child was regaling her father with a story. She started with "Ruko, main aapko woh story bataa rahi thi na...", and started to talk of something. She had a very conversational style, punctuating her sentences with, 'samjhe na' and things like that. The weird part was, in all of the conversation, not once did I actually hear the man say anything. It was obvious he was responding because the child was responding to him as well. After a while, I turned toward them, just to see how he was conveying his answers. Here's what I saw.

The man was facing straight ahead in my direction, in his own thoughts, oblivious to his daughter. The little girl was facing the window, her back to her father, and talking animatedly --- to my erstwhile best friend, 'The Girl on the Other Side of the Mirror'.

Rowling Zindabad!

My room-mate is nearing the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and she's in that semi-excited very high-strung state that only HP readers can relate to. On asking her where she's at, in the book, she said, "I just finished the chapter in which Dumbledore fought with ...."

I happened to say 'Voldemort' at the same time that she said 'He who must not be named'.

A slight look of surprise in my eyes brought about this rather sheepish admission: "I cannot take his name either."

Rowling, now you've succeeded!

Progress Report

Okay, Ninety-Seven dawns, amidst a harsh winter storm; I think the worst this winter... and hopefully, its last. I've been really really busy with all my classes... I'm hardly paying attention to anything else (which is both good and bad at the same time). So, as a result, I'm battling with lab work and a now not-so-terrible fever-cum-'flu that's been at my throat since the time I got back from India, what, three weeks ago now...? And, sorry, Ananymous and Fiesties, but no time so far to call or write. Methinks, with the course schedule, I bit off a 'byte' more than I could chew. Well, I'm enjoying the tension-filled existence, so that's good. The bad (read, silly) part is what happened this morning, i.e., me having a panic attack over not being able to go to school due to the weather. Well, I called up everyone and made my excuses. Sent off emails with assignment answers to the professor for today's class. And then, walked all around the room all day moping about not being able to go to school and missing work and missing class and all that, till Fi, in exasperation, suggested I take Recofast as a tranquillizer. Then, just about half an hour ago, I connected back online to check mail and found, in my inbox, the official notice saying class for this evening has been cancelled. Whoosh!! Wish I'd known earlier, I could've enjoyed my day better.

Anyhow, so now I'm happy enough to write the 97th. One small step for me. With the frequency at which I'm blogging these days, thank goodness this isn't cricket and we aren't counting runs here.

P.S. It's got to be Fi's influence that cricket's figuring on my blog now. I never thought I'd reach a phase when I could think up a cricket analogy pat like that!