Guten tag

"How old should you get before you stop doing tags?" - Old jungle rhetorical question.

I started off being passionately anti-tag, but now my views are slightly more charitable towards them because I keep hitting the dead ends when I realise I have nothing else to write about and these tags give me a good excuse to get self-obsessed once again.

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how yu got it

This is a story from way back when Basketball was our religion. Pups, one of the important apostles, always advised me that I ran towards the basket too fast ; in his words "like an ape with his tail on fire". I took that as a compliment till I got the scar that I'm going to tell you about. It was our usual afternoon game. I had run past two guys, completed a layup and released the ball like everything was scripted. Things went wrong before I could land on the ground. Keermam shoved me hard while i was still in the air, I lost my balance and my landing was screwed up by some other stray foot. I went tumbling several feet beyond where I should have stopped. And then I heard the loud bang and saw the bright light at the same time. A few seconds later I even tasted that mysterious metal taste that appears at the back of the tongue when you injure your head. I could feel blood flowing down from my forehead.

The stitches went right across my left eye brow. Before the wound could heal I was looking forward to a cool scar that would lend me some character. My face at that time could sure use some ruggedization. Unfortunately that mallu nurse at Martha's did a swell job with the stitching because even I can't find the scar anymore. So that's that! and btw, the ball went in!

2. What is on the walls in your room?
Daddy long legs . post-its.

To be contd.

Salim Ali wrote a book. I just sulked.

There was some commotion in the tree under which I stood waiting for my cab to pick me up. Before I could even look up to inspect, a Barbet nestling crashed to the ground. Evidently not having learnt to fly, it hopped about frantically, trying desperately hard to avoid becoming a meal to some crows that had surrounded it. Here's a trivia: a group of crows is called a "murder". For once, it made complete sense. Each of the crows took turns to hop next to the barbet, ceremoniously gave it a peck and then hopped back. The barbet, meanwhile, squealed so horribly that I felt extremely restless. I felt the need to intervene. I instinctively shooed the crows away. It's hard to just say "Let nature take its course" when you see something like this happening in Bhashyam circle. It just doesn't cut it. Just then, one rather enterprising crow picked up the chick by its wing and flew away awkwardly. Here's when something rather bizarre happened. Two mynas started to chase the crow. It gave the whole episode a dream-like incongruence. They kept trying to make the crow drop the nestling. I stood there thinking I should have picked up the barbet. When my cab arrived the bird was dead. I couldn't stop thinking about it for the next half an hour. The experience was eerily disturbing. And not particularly for how well it summed me up. I manage to have all the right intentions but when it comes to doing anything I just don't seem to know where to begin.