So: I am nodding my head vaguely at about ten minutes to two and thinking what the hell to write. I am tired, my throat is sore, I am in dire need of sleep and I have been editing copies for the last eight hours. I have become some kind of grammar machine. Drained and spaced out I may be: but I challenge the reader to spot any spelling or grammar blooper on this post (colloquialisms don't count). I know this is sad. I hope journalism won't turn me into a machine who has dreams filled with headlines and blurbs and straps and spell checks and Quark Express files. Or worse, I may metamorphose into some kind of Lynn Truss acidified and with all the sense of humour removed. The horror of it.

Oh well. The week was quite a week. Yesterday. Scene I: A tiny guy with moroger-jhuti kind of hair (this old friend used to lovingly call it the pseudo-Elvis puff) and carrying two rather large bags stumbles as he tries to descend from a minibus at Dalhousie square, and falls face-down on the street. He sees the grainy tarmac close-up, he sees the black sky above and he sees the huge bus-wheel roll past, a foot away on the side. For three hours later, he nurses this arm pain and a freaky feeling inside that is somewhere between utter awe, utter terror and utter emptiness.

Day before yesterday. Scene II: The tiny guy sits wide-eyed before a comp terminal, typing away furiously and opening random sites on the side. He is speaking to a certain young gentleman who seems light-years away in Bangalore but who (the last time the two of them had talked PROPERLY) had been just inches away. That was five months back, and now the tiny guy feels a weird mix of pain, longing and pragmatic self-assertion which demands a deliberate cultivation of indifference. Oh well... everyone knows ex-s are painful stuff, howevermuch one may say one has got over them and has moved on.

Thankfully, it is not that there has not been ANY progression in terms of emotional growth and maturity. I am much wiser: so I say, and pat myself on my back. Evidence: This passage from a mail I found myself typing out to another old friend of mine. "AND listen, there is exciting news: A girl has a crush on me and I have a crush on a girl. Unfortunately enough, the former and latter girls in the sentence are NOT the same person. Get it? So what happens everyday is that the 1st girl (from my class) makes big letchy eyes at me (she knows all about my flexible sexuality) and I try and catch a glimpse of the 2nd fabulous, VERY intelligent, sincere, nice, and EXTREMELY HOT girl who is from some other class. Oh well. THAT is quite hopeless. the latest I heard is that she (the latter one, of course) is going to some god-forsaken place on vacation with two interfering males. As always, life has not been fair to me. *weep, weep.* "
See how adolescent I can become at will? Now THAT is what I call maturity. I am happy with my (so perfectly apparent to the reader, I'm sure) controlled and planned emotional trajectory. Soon enough, I may become this terribly agonising agony aunt with All the Knowledge You Need about Relationships and their Aftermath, and coupled with the acidified Lynn Truss transformation, will provide perfect material for a new-age Ovidian tract.

But as the night progresses, I am talking more and more shit. So I will sign off. And as and when the dratted office car comes, go home and go to sleep. And dream of straplines and heads and blurbs?

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Godddddddddddddddd..............................