Gargle With Hot Water And Salt

For those of you who don't know that I hate having a cold, I suggest reading one of my older posts explaining my feelings towards the common cold in what you might call detail. Here it is.

What I'm currently suffering from is a fever which was started by a sore throat which I caught from god-knows-where. And I hate it. Yesterday my throat was miserably sratchy and it hurt when I swallowed. It was horrible. Saliva was painful to swallow so I had to keep spitting and/or letting the saliva remain in my mouth which made me look like a retarded kid. Alright, I'm sorry; that was graphic and you'll be pleased to know that I'm exaggerating.

But I decided it was no big deal. In fact, I decided to go ahead and buy some art supplies and make an oil painting. I finished it in around an hour. It looks like a retarded monkey or a 7 year old tripping on LSD might have painted it. I attribute that to the delusional state my throat put me in. Who am I kidding? Here, I'll give you a picture of it.

For those of you who are concerned, you'll be happy to know that my throats much better. On the negative, it's been exchanged for a fever, a headache, sleeplessness and a disinterest in everything. I'm actually writing this blog piece by piece because if I go on for more than one para, my headache kicks in and the multi-coloured dancing squirrels start playing monopoly on my dresser again.

You want to know how I feel? I feel like I've been hit by a train. Not just any train, the Shatabdi Express at its peak velocity. After that, Lady Gaga kicked me onto a pile of mud, where a bunch of pigs pointed and laughed at me. After that, a Backstreet Boy came around and blew a vuvuzela in my ear. That's how I feel. Oh, and after that, Dick Cheney came by to rob me of my will to live.

I've been trying to sleep for hours. Et tu, Sleep?

Yes, I have personified Sleep because I consider him one of my dearest friends who takes me to wonderful lands where I am happily 4-timing Zach Braff, Lee DeWyze, Edward Maya and Jesse Metcalfe. Also, my relationship with Kunal Kapoor is on the pipeline.

But no, none of that drowsy goodness. I can't read, I can't watch the moving people on the television, I don't feel like cooking, my house is a mess and I'm walking around looking like one of those watchmen (No, not the cool ones like Rorschach or Silk Specter) who wears their blanket as a garment.

I'm not happy.

Love Thy Neighbour

I generally love my neighbours. Actually, I barely interact with them. I live in an apartment. It has a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a balcony and one or two people at max can easily live in it. That's what I thought until I saw the people upstairs. Six, yes six people live in the apartment above mine that adjoins the terrace. I don't know how they even fit in there without covering all the walking room with mattresses. But that's none of my business. I never had anything to give or take form them until that one fateful day.

I did my laundry and went up to the terrace to dry it off. While I was drying it off, the family's resident "Chucky" who happens to be a 5-6 year old permanently naked boy was staring at me in this evil way. Like he was trying to glare into my soul. Like he was going to kill me in my sleep. Like he knew something and I didn't. Anyway, he kept following me around and glaring at me the way he does as I hung my clothes up on the lines. I didn't think anything of it.

I came back the next day to pick up my fresh, dry clothes and there they were, lying in a pile on the floor. I was horrified. I took them downstairs nonetheless, noticing that my colourful clothes clips had been stolen. I then began to fold them. That's when I noticed the strange smell.

I picked up a white t-shirt and there it was; a yellow, liquidy, translucent looking patch. The smell was that of urine. I was horrified. I was disgusted. I was livid.

I talked to everyone I could get in touch with. I fumed and vented and paced. I probably even puffed steam put of my nostrils. I then decided that I was going to confront him. I considered taking a knife along with me.

I marched up the stairs with a purpose; and there they were, the patriarch of the family and his wife. He was large, lethargic and shirtless; with the largest male-breasts I've ever seen (my apologies for the disgusting nature of that description). The man had hair pouring out of every orifice of his body. It grew form his shoulders. I didn't even know that hair grew on shoulders. He was like some mythical beast.

His wife was well suited. Large and lard-like. She had glorious facial hair which surpassed a lot of my male friends'. I decided not to confront them because even if I was wielding a meat cleaver, I doubt I could've gotten past the first layer of adipose. All my attempts at self defense would've been futile. I didn't want to take that chance. Despite how brave I am. But the evil peeing kid still taunts me.

I need my revenge. Any suggestions?

P.S.: They can never know it's me. If they know it's me, I'll die. So give me good suggestions. I'm serious. I don't want to die,

All I Want Is A 'Centum'

It's that time of the year again; when all your classmates turn into sleep deprived zombies, when you don't know what it's like to sleep at 11:00 pm, when you watch the sun rise every morning and thing "Holy Sh*t, I need to get some sleep", when you read avidly out of pure necessity till saturation, till your palms sweat, till you can't take it anymore. We all love examinations.

I'll spare you the rant on the correction pattern and the fact that the exams of the main University are just papers in which you need to memorise material, regurgitate it and then erase it from your mind. No, I'm not going to talk about how I believe that a Law student should never have to memorise entire Acts because it's not like we're gonna work on cases out of pure awesomeness and radical memory. Books do exist.

What I'm talking to you about is the normal things in life that get skewed because of the exams. My routine, though you can hardly call it a routine, turns into something diabolically distorted and almost not human. Though normalcy is not the order of the day in my life, it has some form of pattern.

This is my pattern during the exams:

WAKING UP

On the exam day, I wake up at at about 4 in the morning, or 5. That is, if I don't sleep at 4 or 5. The point I'm trying to make is that I don't have a particular time at which I wake up. This is because it ranges between 4:00 am to 10:00 am (on days in between the exams).

But waking up always involves a sense of panic initially, like I'm about to miss a bus, like if I don't look into my books as soon as my eyes open, I'll faint and die or turn to a life of committing crimes!

Well, soon enough I'll distract myself with something or the other which will make waking up almost pointless and then I'll wish I'd remained asleep cause I have this skewed belief that the more I sleep, the more effectively I'll spend my wakey-wakey time, which is very untrue, actually.

SHOWERING

Showering has never been such an eagerly awaited ordeal. During exam days, I've been known to shower 4 times in the span of 10 hours. This is because showers not only make you feel squeaky clean, they also serve as a very effective distraction.

How many of you have ever been in the shower thinking "Wow! This is such a waste of time!"? I bet none of you have (if you're normal). If I watch T.V., I'll be mad at myself for wasting time, but if I take a half hour shower, it feels like I'm doing something worthwhile.

FOOD

Cooking and eating are routine, everyday things. Sure, I enjoy it immensely. But during exam season, I watch the clock intently until 12:30 pm when I can start cooking whatever it is I want for lunch, and 7:58 pm when I can start thinking about dinner. Then there's 5:00 pm in the middle when I start thinking about my evening cold coffee.

I take time to cook, I take tie to eat, telling myself that I'm taking a "well deserved" break. While in reality, the studying I do is merely a break from my distractions.

SLEEP

Exams demand sleep. At all odd hours, places, and scenarios. I have woken up with a book on my face (cheesy, I know. I can't help it). I've even woken up at 5:00 pm, thinking it's 5:00 am the next morning and panicked. But the fat is that I always feel like I haven't had enough sleep, and the more I sleep, the more guilty I feel. Sometimes I wonder how long I can go without sleep.

Actually, I've managed 30 hours, but that I will tell you how when I explain my wonderful experiences with airline travel.

H.P. 'EL DIABLO' PAVILLION

My computer is the devil. I have to keep checking my twitter though nobody tweets @ me (yes, the use of the @ was intentional and symbolic). I check my facebook, even though the notifications are probably about somebody commenting on a picture of something I 'liked' a while ago, not knowing that I somebody would start a never ending comment thread under it.

I check my webcomics, my youtube subscriptions, my blog, your blog (if you have a blog) and my email. I even check fmls, and sometimes, when I'm desperate for a distraction, my old orkut account (sigh).

STUDYING

I furiously mark, underline, make notes on and scribble on the book I'm studying from. It's more like a "Sharanyaa was here" sign. I also stick post-its on the pages and flag off the important chapters in different colours. I feel very purposeful while doing all these things.

Well, I do eventually study, but I take 40 minute breaks in between 20 minute study sessions. I also drink lots of liquids, to feel like I'm replenishing myself and keeping myself going. I drank an entire litre of tang a couple days ago.

Before you opine, just remember that it's a strenuous thing to do; thinking about what your next purposeful distraction will be while pretending to read a book on Banking Law, takes a lot out of you.

P.S.: Do any of you know what reading but not studying is like? It's terrible! You read all this stuff and it just goes over your head, like you don't remember to register it. It upsets me and makes me want to do commit crimes!

It's ALIVE!

Here's letting you know I'm alive:

Here's the thing about blogging. Wait; here's the thing about blogging for me; I have standards. Okay, you might say "DOH! Your blog is not that great anyway it's not like you need a month to write one article!" and you're right. But I bet that at least one of my posts made you LOL, LMAO, or even ROFLMFAO (I pronounce all of them as words, by the way). Getting back to the point, there are certain times in my life that I just blo about something and feel like it isn't good enough. It isn't good enough for you, the good people who actually take or pretend to take some time out of your lives to read my brain-gas. So yes, I am blaming you.

"A bad carpenter always blames his tools", my mother would say. But in my defense, I doubt you would like it if I referred to you as tools. So I can blame you on one hand and also preserve the reputation of my metaphorical carpentry. You see, I'm only trying to please you.

Do you have any idea how many blog posts I've started writing, gotten halfway or more than halfway through and then not posted? If you haven't inferred, quite a few! And this kind of "quality control" is what allows me to let you read this a judge me. Yes I know you're judging me you sly sly people. Don't worry, I love you anyway.

So next time you're upset at me for not posting, remember, you have only yourself to blame. Also, I wrote this for you.

Pssssst, I'll be posting an actual blog-post really quick so look out for that