I don't feel like writing anymore. I feel like talking. In fact, at times I am overwhelmed by the need to listen to the sound of my voice, relentlessly.
There are times when I try to shove all my fears under compulsive bouts of day dreaming. I know it doesn't work, it's not like me, it's futile.
I have never been this scared. Of being left with myself.

Why is it that all the men I have liked/like still, have to be reminded that I exist?

Do I look like I can scream? Bring the roof, fan, moths - precisely whatever is holding itself against gravity - down on my ruffled little head? You, who try to make me out from the don't-you-wish-your-girlfriend-was-hot-like-me snaps I put up on Facebook (secretly hoping some Indian cousin of Tom Cruise would take notice) would probably tch tch and say, nyaaaah. This is exactly what I hate about myself. With due respect to cool, interesting people, I like stereotypes. Now, I could be the sweet-vain-popular type. Easily figured out, easily likeable.
Back to screaming. When I scream, I think, it's not shrill, or voluptuous. It's almost boyish, and strangely reassuring. Like when people shut up from pure disgust, I tell myself that I am a strong strong girl.
But the day I stop telling myself stories, I'll be a very nasty girl.

Deep down in my heart I am a charming vagabond. Or a really sexy item dancer with a navel stud and all. And I lust a Bengali spoof of Fitzwilliam Darcy.

At times I fancy my life as a swish, melt-in-your mouth blueberry cheesecake – so tempting, so classy, that it’s not funny. And try denying what a diet beguni it actually is – almost impossible by any sane standard.

My stomach needs Amir Khan. It cannot tell between poison and food. As an afterthought, it could be a second-hand junk inherited from a certain Jacques. I wouldn’t know if God paid me much attention ever. And behind the safely-secured doors of my closet, I am a female-chauvinist-basher. So there.

I must have been a Romantic poet last life. I am still eating from his leftovers. It's just that the nightingales chose to be reborn as sparrows. Or crows, in my case. And I still have Queen Anne's ghost hovering around the tip of my tongue.

So, I am unreasonably snappy. Obnoxious. Snooty beyond the understanding of the sane - the collected, compromising type, you know. Too hot to be single. Wicked. Unpretentious. Confident. Manipulative.
Each morning as I pull my favourite yellow bedspread over my head wishing Maa would appear from nowhere with a cup of sugary Horlicks, I probably don't wish away the adjectives I collected in my school slam book some years back.
Hours after, as I settle down in my corner of the madhouse, a lemon tea in the shack and a couple of crude jokes later, I like the look of me on the comp screen blinking back to life. Distant and at times, vaguely disturbed.
I usually have my days figured out. For the rest, I have found myself antidotes. Like an unwillingly sweet gum - that makes you feel cool, sorted out and in control, despite the most demonic soup you're in. Or songs, that ripple over your skin like coarse silk, and shut out the world no matter what, no matter when. Or the best friend, and her crazy men.
Cold. I am starting to like the sound of it...

N, I say, is supremely unbelievable. If I was a man, I would have married him.

Someday, maybe, I'll not want shoulders. Over a phone call. A chat window. A short incoherent SMS.
I'll stop telling myself that I suffice. I'll probably know I do.
I'll feel all smart, swish and important watching a movie alone.
I'll not be curious about friends' boyfriends.
I'll treat myself to a chocolate brownie with icecream, in a bright, cool corner of Park Street Barista.
I'll finally wear the red satin skirt.
It's just that S and I, have this neat little cushion of time, caught before it walked over us, making up for some hundred thousand miles. After my corner of the bed, it's the most precious.
It's just that U and I remember the same three French words from four ambitious wannabe years of French classes.
It's just that P and I could swap bits of our past, and still have the same lives.
It's just that I'll not find another man, this life at least, who wouldn't mind his obnoxiously expensive and overwhelmingly favourite orange jocks being ridiculed mercilessly.
It's just that I like random fights over random sniggers, I love people who lust anything that moves, I like women who make lingerie sound like lollipop, I like how some sweet bumbling boys vow not to grow up.
Someday, when I don't need shoulders, I'll get sleep. Just that.