Kind of a momentous week, this. Finished Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye", finally. Because I've started and stopped so many times in the past, it felt like a big deal. For about 11 seconds. Then I was like WTF?! T'was not the gripping, empowering, seminal Black novel I was expecting. Plus,/… Read full post »

Today's been a day of discoveries of EPIC proportions. Firstly, I found out that my niblings think I'm a human-sized rodent in a human suit. Secondly, a little less than five minutes ago, I discovered that there's a collective, gender-neutral term for 'the children of one's siblings': yup, it's NIBLI… Read full post »

The summer of ’94, cruel though it was, was a magical one. Our mango tree, which hadn’t borne fruit in five years, was re-acquainted with the thirst for life, for immortality. Our courtyard was thick with the sticky-sweet scent of her yearning, her branches bustling once again with activi… Read full post »

"Why do some authors write literary fiction? Because they can't plot."

-Lee Child, best-selling author of something called the 'Jack Reacher' novels

The words of 'genre' fiction writer Lee Child came back to haunt me this weekend when I was put on the spot by a… Read full post »

Like Newton and the apple, sometimes it takes a thump on the head to make you realize that you are after all -despite all efforts to ensure it does not happen, again -forever falling. Unlike Newton, my own epiphany happened in the aftermath of a bar brawl. The actual sequence of… Read full post »

For a few weeks now, the media has been in a tizzy over a product launched by an Indian company - the Clean and Dry Intimate Wash for women that promises to not only disinfect, but also 'brighten' one's vagina. The feminists and the nationalists and the easily-offended are al/… Read full post »

Icyhighs and Fatboy, back in the day

Two weeks of being back at my parents' house, and I've already fallen down the rabbit hole and straight into my teenage garb somehow. I have to constantly remind myself that I'm now an adult, that I can probably look my Dad… Read full post »

It has now been a little less than a month since I upped and left my Old Life, and re-joined the Fam. This is easily the longest I have spent with them since the Summer of Love & Detox, 2005, which was a recuperative stint post-rehab and probably doesn't count. In… Read full post »

I had to google 'daggering' to find out what it means, but that's only because I'm old. It's what all the kids are doing these days. As with most teenage fads, daggering has been given the "this is EVIL" treatment, most recently by the Office of the Children's Commissioner in the UK. That's/… Read full post »

I wake up and swear. The clock on my wall tells me it's 11am. I'm in breach of the Third Rule of Living With Parents: No breakfast after 9am. I decide I may as well go downstairs and check if it's worth brushing my teeth.

Dad's in his chair, reading… Read full post »

My parents are about as liberal and open-minded as you can reasonably expect Indian parents to be. While this is a blessing in most scenarios, you can't sometimes help wishing they were just a little repressed. Privacy, for instance, is a concept as alien in our household as democracy is… Read full post »

"I start a revolution from my bed..." 

-Don't look back in anger, Oasis

Reality Bites (1994): The poster gang for the Boomerang Generation 

The 1990s -culturally- symbolize a lot of different things to people of my generation. While this may seem easily explained by the fact that te… Read full post »

"Honey, I SWEAR Fannie May is not another woman!"

I spent the major part of this week reading blogs. Strangers' blogs, random blogs, blogs of pretty women. All in a  Sisyphusian effort to find a few like-minded individuals, people who w… Read full post »

The sibling and I have an off-on relationship. Sometimes we don't talk for months at a stretch. Despite which, we are completely in sync whenever we get back in touch, like it was only yesterday that we were chasing each other around our family home.

There is an unwritten understanding… Read full post »

Shit! The little green blob next to my username says I'm still online. She's seen me, I know she's seen me and I can't sign off now without congratulating her. That would break our Ex-lover Pact of Civility A.K.A The Expac. I thought it would be less pathetic if it sounded like/… Read full post »

It's a shame that suicide has such a bad name, that it's considered the cowardly way out. If women and homosexuals and transgender types can all (rightfully) fight for equality and respect, why can't the suicidal? Some people are good at life, some are not. Just like some like their wine re… Read full post »

Singapore has for some time now played host to the Eastern version of the American dream. Immigrants flock here from Vietnam, China, India, the UAE, Europe and even America; some in search of financial freedom, some for sunshine and expat tax-rates, some on the run from the law and personal demons,… Read full post »

Many many years ago, before FWB's and the Sixties and sexting, two young horny cavemen sit around trying to figure out a way to get laid. Something simple and all-consuming, something that will stand the test of time, even old age. After much idle contemplation, Levi -the more streetsmart of the… Read full post »