The Mother of All Tags.

I can't help cursing Ad Libber, just a little, for tagging me with this. I'm terrible at introspection, and about as deep as a pencil-shaving, but I'll take a shot at this anyway. And I also don't know whom to tag, so if you want to rise from your seat after one trying hour, pale-faced and quivering-lipped, try this. You might want to supply yourself with a stimulant first.

Life Ten Years Ago:

Consisted of parents who went to work and grandparents who brought me up and teachers who made us colour things in class. Winters were the best part of the year, spent in cold grey Jamshedpur with the other set of grandparents, the paternal ones, in a sunny house with a kitchen garden and a jackfruit tree.

In school my friends and I spent much time trying to gain control of the merry-go-round, which was usually occupied by very mean seniors. We came up with a rulebook for merry-go-round occupation, which didn’t get us onto it anyway, so we moved to the big tree at the center of the playground. We pretended it was an ancient murder site and wove wonderful whodunnits around it. Chewed-up chicken bones appeared regularly near the tree-roots, which we of course held to be the grisly remains of some long-dead soul. Neither forensic science nor our understanding of the universe was much advanced then, with the result that murders were more exciting.

Life Five Years Ago:

My mother decided to retire and become a homemaker, which was a disaster. I could no longer get away with a lot of things because suddenly she was all-pervasive, like God. Maybe that is when I started going off religion. I also had to deal with two very good friends moving away, which of course contributed more to my misery. If emo bands had existed then I would have used up half the city’s supply of kohl and black nail enamel.

Life Tomorrow:

Is life tomorrow. I may laze around all day, or discover a parallel universe, or clean my room finally, or set something on fire. The possibilities are what make it fun.

Five Locations I Would Love To Run Away To:

Oh no. Oh no. You do not ask me questions like this. All I've ever wanted to do is travel. But my top five more or less remains the same:

1) Iceland, with the geysers and the moon-landscape.

2) The Amazon, with the macaws and the spider monkeys.

3) Ladakh, because it’s Ladakh. Also Kailash-Mansarovar. Also the North-East. Anywhere in the Himalayas, basically.

4) The Silk Route: Samarkand. Istanbul. Merv. Zaytun. The Levant. What names.

5) Prince Edward Island. One can’t read Montgomery without hungering to see it.

Five Bad Habits I Have:

1) I procrastinate. More about this later.

2) I am very contradictory. I cannot possibly explain this, but I am.

3) I tend to stare at people a lot. I also laugh at inappropriate situations. Which is a roundabout way of saying I do not have very good manners.

4) I am also very distractible. I tend to get interested in too many different things at the same time, and always forget to do essential things like pack a bag or carry a wallet. I have also been known to get onto the wrong buses and end up in strange parts of the city, all because I was dreaming about something irrelevant.

5) I talk to myself. In public. All the time.

Five Things I Will Never Wear:

1) Nighties/Maxies/those things that look like maternity gowns.

2) Anything pink. Baby pink especially. Also fakely floral things.

3) Plastic hair clips.

4) Any garment that requires me to show off a bright bra strap. I find it a terrible turn-off and it’s very pointless anyway, you might as well not wear the top. Fashionable things are very ridiculous sometimes.

5) Roman tie-up sandals.

Five Biggest Joys At This Moment:

Nothing specific, I’m just in a phase where I’m feeling at peace with the universe because I don’t have another exam till the 25^th, and there are some good movies and good books lying around, and dinner due in some time.

Something to Achieve By Next Year:

Must decide on whether tea or coffee is to be my major addiction. Since I do not live in Benaras I have ruled out paan.

Something that Impacted Me Last Year:

Getting my camera, my lovely sexy camera that makes the world look fabulous and glossy, after two years of cursing my earlier camera for conking out prematurely.

What I Will Miss About 2007

The last year of craziness with a bunch of idiots who have given me more than anyone else could. These guys got me through school and a lot of other things, and I will miss them without end and reason.

Five Things I Want To Do Before I Die

If I had my way, a company would employ me to travel and take photographs and write about the places I saw. It would pay me so much that I would retire at forty and write a book. It wouldn’t be a bestseller but would give me enough to build a tiny house in the mountains with an old-fashioned library. I’d then live there in peace with a great shaggy dog and listen to all the good music in the world. Also, somewhere along the way I’d fall in love. With a male human being, I mean. And then I’d die. I am very unambitious that way.