Randomvenom. Blackmood. Discontent. So Sue Me.

I made myself a promise a long time ago.

Okay, cut the pompousness. It wasn’t long ago, and it wasn’t exactly a promise. It’s just that I didn’t want my blog to be an online diary where I posted everyday and went “I went and watched irrelevantmovie today, do go watch it, it has flatulentactorA and flatulentactorB who are doingthesamethingalloveragain.” I didn’t really know what I wanted from this web page – I’m not even sure it exists (I mean, I can’t feel it like I can touch solid paper, can I?). But I had a few things settled. No diaryness. No mention of friends and what they did and what I did. No gushing. No poetry. Perfectly simple rules, I thought.

All of which, of course, I have conveniently broken.

So I am here, here at the juncture where I have finished sticking my tongue out at the screen and started on another promise – I’m not going to make any more stupid rules. I am going to do pretty much what I like, and if I want to tell the world how many glasses of juice I had in the morning and how many pebbles I own in my collection, so be it. Juice and pebbles are, in their own sad little ways, extraordinary.

I’m in a proper temper today, typing out nothing in particular because I am well and truly annoyed. At everything. At the carpenters in each and every flat of my building who are slowly and insistently hammering a headache into my head, at my father who’s nagging at me to do something about my mess (on occasion it’s called a room) and at my mother who’s frying fish in the kitchen and coming in every two minutes to ask me, in a hopeful voice, whether I’ll eat it. No I won’t, dammit. I hate fish, and I don’t care if I die young with glazed marble-like eyes and bald patches all over my head. It seems to me a very stupid reason to eat fish because it makes your eyes and hair and skin and possibly even your earlobe stronger.

I’d rather eat chicken because it makes me feel good. But no, now that Aishwarya Rai’s married and Shah Rukh’s looking haggard and the whole Indianteam-Australianteam-acting-like-sissies catfight has blown over, the hens have to act pricey. When did it come to this? And to top it all, the washing machine’s rattling away like some blasted high-range machine gun, and my grandfather’s watching shrill Malayali videos on Asianet – the kind that have heroines running coyly away from the hero. Who, by the way, has a handlebar moustache and sunglasses. Very cool, I know, but he's also dancing around in a lungi and sandals.

And now I’m reminded of this time when I spent an entire afternoon watching He-Man on Alpha Telugu for no reason other than to hear “By the powers of Greyskull!! (thundersound)” being distorted into something quite unpronounceable. And I’m feeling even more annoyed because it was the most hilarious thing I've ever watched, and I’ve never been able to catch it again, try as I might. And the last time I checked the channel wasn’t even there.

I would have thrown up my hands in despair and done something drastic by now, maybe written some deepdarkmorbidpoetry even, but I can’t because it’s deliciously cold and I can’t feel morbid when my one regular wish – that Kolkata would be cold enough to wear a pullover all day – has come true. I hope it gets colder, and I hope I have to resort to wearing socks all day next. And now I’m annoyed because I’ve stopped feeling annoyed, because ranting sometimes is so easy and so gratifying, because I’m so fickle that I can’t even brood. Where does that get me as a romantic heroine? Gah.

Sunday mornings, I tell you. Very overrated. No matter how cheerful you are, one Sunday morning always comes along and throws you into a feeling of niggling exasperation, like an itch that you get sometimes - you know it's there, but you don't know what part of your body it's on because at that moment almost all your body is tingling with some sort of vague distaste. For itches, for fish, for bloody Sundays everywhere.

The only thing I have working in my favour today is that Djokovic will be playing Tsonga in another two hours or so, in what should be an engaging match, and tennis is always a balm for all ruffled feelings. And now that the washing machine’s stopped making my house sound like a minefield, I think I shall venture out of my mess. And tell my mother, very firmly, that I will not eat the fish, even though I know she’ll surreptitiously try to slide it onto my plate when she thinks I’m not noticing. I don’t blame her; I’m usually shoveling food down my throat with my nose in a book. Oh yes, book. Must finish book, must start other book.

Good. And maybe I’ll stop wondering why you are still reading this, and go for a walk now. Which reminds me, you are now witness to the fact that after I have publicly declared to do whatever I want and gush about anything if I feel like it, my next post will most likely be about nothing all over again, which makes the whole point of this post so superfluous that I’m ashamed of writing so much for nothing, but I’m going to post it anyway to prove that I am now going to write about anything. I am like that only.