I put the Nut in Nutella

If you're human, you'd know that we all go through great lengths to protect our chocolate. Bought chocolate, shared chocolate, gifted chocolate, a hamper of chocolates, chocolate spread...it needs to be guarded with our lives. If you're eating a fruit, no one will ask you for a bite, but if you're having a chocolate, people shamelessly make puppy faces, hungry faces, you're-so-mean-you-won't-share-your-chocolate faces and I'm-so-low-on-blood-sugar faces. If you do share willingly, people love you instantly and if you don't...well, there will be consequences.

A thousand general questions make chocolate protection/attainment a highly exhausting activity:

• How many people saw me with the chocolate?
• If I share with those few people, will others see it too and demand some?
• Is it alright to not share with the people who spotted me but I don't like?
• Do I give the chocolate in public or should I call them, in whispers, to the conference room? Or do I drop an email?
• Can I pretend that I bought a much smaller chocolate than I have so I'd have to share lesser?
• Should I buy a Dairy Milk to my Lindt so they'd think that I'm being magnanimous, giving away my precious chocolate (but they don't actually know it was a failsafe/contingent chocolate)?
• If a person gifted me a chocolate, do I need to share it with them? And how much?
• In how many ways can I hide the chocolate from my chocolate-monster of a brother? (And how does he manage to stay so skinny?)
• What will I say in my defense when he says "You should be watching your weight. Come on, hand over that chocolate. This is for your own good. I'm saying this only because I care about you so much"? 
• Can I devise a way to protect my chocolates so he doesn't eat mine after he's done with his?/How can I emotionally blackmail him into not eating my share of the chocolate? (It's my birthday, can you please not take what's mine on this one day in a year? *crocodile tears*)
• WHERE EXACTLY HAS MY MOM HID THE DIWALI CHOCOLATE GIFT HAMPER?!?! (I already checked the freezer, the freezer of fridge 2, the snack drawer in the kitchen, her closet, her purse and her locker!)

You get the drift.

Back in 1997, we stayed at our relatives for a month in Indonesia. Suddenly a whole new world of products opened up for us - Flavored chips (chicken, fish, etc), exotic fried snacks, Sprite (!) and so many various brands and flavors of chocolate. (For the record, I gained 5kgs in that one month)

My masi ensured her fridge was stocked with chocolates at all time. And my brother, even at 5, made my chocolate consumption a living hell. He'd eat all of the ones I wanted to have. So I devised a plan. I had only recently studied about a certain Pyroligneous Acid in my 8th grade Science class. Since it sounded fancy enough and something he wouldn't be able to figure out at all, I told him that chocolates have Pyroligneous Acid and if you eat more than 1 a day, your stomach would burn and you'd die. It worked. I was ecstatic to get the ones I wanted and he was just happy to survive another day.

Don't worry, I did reveal the truth a couple of years later.

Then there are people who claim to not like chocolates. I have only one thing to say to y'all - I LOVE YOU!

Hope is cruel and has no conscience

Rose colored flesh is now a yellow pale
Her smile, a stencil
that once spread like ink in water
is no more ivory than Monalisa's
The eyes, oh! the eyes, with the warmth of a freshly baked cookie
are empty, gazing her feet
His fingers linger no more
they've turned to icicle spears
And her blood slushies
the burning of her heart leaves a stench of rotten muscle
Words leave her brain and escape from the mouth
but only in whispers that sound like the feeble late night breeze
or an old man's wheeze
in a frequency only dogs understand.

She quietly dissolves her faith in a couple of rosary beads
and a bottle that renews its contents every few hours
that consume her more than she consumes it
it's the only place where she can float
in the liquid visions of his face in her memories
and in an ocean of his choicest pheromones.

The very foundation of love is shook and hammered
and on the verge of extinction
and all she does is hope
that one day the spell is reversed
as it did for a second
when lisps were mistaken to be words.

Hope is cruel and has no conscience, someone said.
So she will hope against hope
that her walk on part in this sitcom extends
and a ghost is reborn.

27 and never felt better

As I turn 27 in 3 days, I thought I'd look back at some of my most memorable birthdays.

1995
I can't remember much that happened on my birthday but I do remember the days leading up to it. I have mentioned my first crush in this post and how by sheer good luck he was my class partner that entire year.

You recall how as kids we could, for one day, dump our uniforms and don some jazzy clothes to school on our birthday? Yeah, so tragedy struck and about the same day as today, 17 years ago, my class teacher announced that the casual clothes were not allowed on birthdays from that day onwards. My entire world came crashing down (that happens rather often, doesn't it?). Only a day prior to that I had asked my crush what he thought I should wear - a pink frock or something else I fail to recall. I do remember asking him but not what he replied 'cause I'm sure it was something as inconsequential and very guy-like such as "I don't know" or "Whatever you like". However, the funniest part is that I was a 10 year old girl, asking a 10 year old boy, what I should wear to impress him (sounds like that dialogue from Notting Hill no? I LOVE that movie.) The year prior to that I made my parents buy me a dress for 500 bucks (and 500 bucks was big money back in '94) so maybe he would notice this white blob. Man, that guy was something. He drove me nuts. For 6 whole years.

But hold on, the worst part was, apparently the news had not yet been communicated to the entire school, as it turned out, the kids who shared their birthdays with me were wearing casual clothes while I stood there in the school assembly beating myself up for following the goddamn rules. 

2005
As luck would have it, I met with an accident two days prior to my birthday. Let me elucidate. I was riding pillion with a friend on a motorcycle when my right leg felt rather stiff on that foot pedal. So I decided to stretch my leg. When I was to keep my foot back on the pedal, I miscalculated and ended up putting my foot right between the spokes of the in-motion rear wheel. (Yeah, I know) Thankfully, no bones were broken but there was a massive soft tissue injury that left me invalid for 2 weeks and that would take 6 months to heal completely.

My bf tried to make it better by singing me happy birthday robot style at midnight but it could only do so much. During the day I fell asleep out of sheer depression/boredom. I was woken up by my mom only to see my room filled with my best friends! They got me a cake and gifts and no sympathies, only joy. That day is unforgettable. I'm sure my eyes welled up, and if they didn't they really should've.

2010
My MICA friends are quite possibly the closest people to my heart. Above my family and past friends (Don't judge me) They perhaps know me more than I know myself. So I wasn't surprised (but I was!) that at midnight my room was filled with chicken tikka, tandoori chicken, jello shots and as my gift, a carton filled with my favorite things to eat.

Unfortunately, my friends were tanking up on bhaang while I attended some other people who came to wish me and so some were in such a bad shape, they had to retire early. That was better than Ms Aditi clicking pics with a fictitious camera and asking us to pose for it. And after battling the wild cats in our hostel who were attacking all my chicken, we finally gobbled up all the food and hit the sack. But not before I wrote this.

2011
Last year's birthday was unexpectedly quite awesome. I have partially described it here. Besides that my family was surprisingly calm and everyone got along famously without any annoyance or fights. Quite possibly the perfect day, like packaged with care by a higher power.

This year is going to be regular thoroughfare from where I see it. But that ain't bad either. I meet a school friend after years and then there's the customary family dinner. Though I don't like to make my birthday a big deal, there's always a part of me that wants to be made feel special and if that doesn't happen I get pissed :P Here's to happy times. Cheers! (There'd better be alcohol involved)