Today my sister turned eighteen years old.
All I want to do is eat her cake from a box and watch Reality Bites, but my sixteen year old cousin is parading around my room with his shirt off and a pair of pyjamas over his head and saying 'mere back ke muscles toh dekh yaar'.
Now he's telling me his Sudoko score on his blackberry while two others prepare munchies that my dog is lusting after. 
Life is absurd. I NEEDS to watch some senti cinema alone, though. 
The feeling that I can't share my space with probably the only people I like in the world, and the guilt that comes with it sucks.
I know that when I wake up in the morning feeling like P Diddy, everything will be fine. 

I now know that god has finally punished me for my gluttony after I bit into a piece of emseal that was lying on my table.

Since the sixteenth of may I have not had a silent moment in the house. Today for the first time in almost twenty days or more, I walked into my room to find it empty. Not wasting another moment I locked the doors and buried myself in my bed.

I am one of those unlucky people who have the luxury of coming from an absolutely normal family. I have no bizarre trauma to trace madness back to. I grew up in times of boring but fortunate normalcy. Till I was sixteen, I used to live with seven other people. My mother,father,grandparents,aunt,uncle and sister. We ate all meals together, watched KBC every night, and every morning before I left for school I collected canteen funds from every adult in the house. All my neighbors were very involved in our lives. I always had friends over for dinner and Swat Cats. It was a time full of unnecessary celebration and unrequited absurd love for family and others we believed were tied to us by bonds that were based on time, not blood. The past month has been like that. There have been several plates laid out for meals, an unreal number of teenagers around, and clouds of blaring noise.

All I want to do is lie in my room and stare at the ceiling and never hear the doorbell ring again.

Immensely surprised at myself at not wanting to get drunk, I am finally at the place I have dreaming about for almost a week. Leaning in an obtuse angle on my computer chair and listening to the music from Shaitan, which I watched today. Call me young and easy to please, which is what I am, but I loved it.

Articulate writers from across the country are already trashing the film, but it's youth Bollywood dudes, it's supposed to be fast paced, transmitted in slow motion technicolor, and a little bit in-your-face.

I wish I could get those snazzy templates with psychedelic Elvis faces flashing at you, and political boom boxes in black and white, but I just don't got it to pull it off. 

This year was my aunt's fiftieth birthday. My sister, along with enthusiastic family members, had planned a get-away with the whole gang. During my years of brash teenage bullshit, I used to pretend I was 'off' family. I bunked weddings, pretended to be interested in nothing, and turned up late/drunk/or didn't at gatherings. I refuse to change this policy for my dad's side of the kinship, but my maternal relatives rule. They are creative, crazy, and all look exactly like me. It is interesting to see parts of yourself in people sitting around a room and know you have come from them. My uncle is a mountaineer cum software engineer, full of contempt for the capitalist urban world and almost sickened at the idea of existing in it. After years of what he describes as a war with the world, he decided to live in the mountains. He owns exactly one pair of pants, two shirts, and one suit for meetings at his son's school. His home, that he and his wife converted to one from a cow shed, was inhabited for two weeks by sixteen spoilt people created and consumed by the city. After complaining about the lack of fans, and the inadequacy of bathrooms, everyone decided to settle down. I was more than happy with the absence of a cellphone signal and the internet, spending all my time with my cousin lurking in the trees and finding routes to the river.

Since I was little I was sent to live with this uncle for at least a month wherever he was. Many times it was in the south, in a small hill station near Madanapalli in Tamil Nadu, or Koorg. I need to see the mountains, I need to breathe that air once in a while. I need to know that there is a life outside the city, outside who's dating who and she's so much skinnier than me and what will I do with my life and ohmygod I want to kill everyone in college,on the road,in the bar,and in the other bar.

I admit that my attitude is a little escapist,romantic,and every other label that is put on things that give people joy. 
I wanted to write a Queerfish style 'Mountain diaries' post, but things, and experiences become less relevant as they pass. 

We got driven up to the hills in a huge van called a Winger by a Punjab da stud, complete with long hair and kudis calling on his phone from time to time. The whole family was letching at his wide Punjabi smile, and his delightful taste in music.

My uncle's house in a village called Bhadol outside Dharamshala was owned by a man called Thakur. Just Thakur. Like Santana, or Usher. Thakur was a man born and bred on Chandni Chowk ki rotti aur makhan ('jaisi duniya mein koi cheez nahi hai!'), and had served in the Delhi Police till 1975. 'Emergency ke wakat mainne bahoot haramiyon ko peeta, sirf haramiyon ko', he tells us as my father stares at him mesmerized, nodding and signalling the group to nod after. The party from the South couldn't care less about a bad-ass ignorant cop from the capital, but I assisted my dad in the Thakur campaign, nodding along furiously but being ignored completely. Thakur's dog is an Alsation called Jackie, joh unka 'ek lauta dost hai'. 'He's my best friend', he translates for the benefit of the madrasi ladies, who hated him, whispering in Tamil about how he must treat his wife. I used to sit on a hammock and watch Thakur and Jacks dig for hours at end in the morning, not asking for or needing any assistance on their vast tract of land. I saw in Thakur a sense of fairness that I often wished I saw in cops of the city, and contrary to my mum and her sisterhood believed that he was probably an excellent husband. 

My cousin AD and I sneaked off into corners to get the occasional stoned. We climbed on to trees, peering at our mothers and grinning at each other through the leaves. We managed to find many elevated spots, thanks to my decent climbing skills and AD's hoisting and letting me climb on his back so it was easier. He's still in the mountains, camping and behaving like an avatar monkey and I miss him. Once we were spotted by my (other)uncle who glared at us yelling 'Ey tell me when you go da buggers!'. After that it became a trend for him to pretend he was taking me out for a 'talk', so he could give me a fancy cigarette to light.

I went to Mc Leodganj for the first time, and it really is only Paharganj with a better view. I was appaulled at the number of cars, there was a freakin traffic jam one day. And after I'd spotted the ocassional hot phirang and bought pretty turqioise jewellery and Free Tibet merchandise, I was pretty much done. AD and I usually abandoned the screaming group of identical people in the market and ran off above. He looked for pine trees to walk under, and we walked to nowhere. On the way we ate expensive pizza and chatted up locals, my cousin's favorite passtime after chatting up foreigners. 
In a few days we decided we should go trek since it was getting bloody hot where we were. The 'oldies' were offended at our desire to sneak off alone and were all 'We don't even WANT to come you guys are so boring'. My uncle the trekker packed us a backpack of rain-jackets and torches and sleeping surfaces, shouting 'You'll die you fucking chapatti morons PACK PROPERLY!'. 

Because of a 'fuck you man' 'fuck YOU man' argument I'd had with my cousin and the unearthly time of departure(5:15 am) I was hesitant to go on this voyage, but I did anyway.
After eating more expensive pizza in the middle, we started out fully on our trek of the tambis. Initially we lost our way but got shown the way by an enthusiastic monk who decided he liked us after noticing my Free Tibet Tshirt and that we were Indian, and young. He sprinted up a small hill like an elf, signalling for us to follow, and after reaching the top pointed to a direction and said 'aise zaao', smiling and taking photos with us as he left. We decided that this was a test of us by the monk, and we must follow the path of enlightenment been prescribed to us, made our way into the prettiest forest in the world. There was a little path beside sudden streams, and after we sighted a pair of white horses gliding through the bushes, it was established that this was freakin unreal. AD began his Lord of the Rings fantasy and galloped forward like Legolas, while I carved myself an axe and ran behind like small but fearless Gimli, and Suks(my sister) made herself jewellery from flowers like a pretty elf with no name. On the way to our destination Triund, it started hailing on us. Draping shower curtains on our heads we ran out of the forest to a small stall on a cliff that overlooked the valley, called Sunset Cafe. I was doubtful about sheltering in this small settlement. It looked like one blow of wind would send us seedhe khai mein. When we entered, the dude in the shop twinkled his eyes at us, asking us where we were from, and introducing himself as Ajay. He must have been around nineteen years old. He had torn up his jeans, and was wearing a sweatshirt that said 'don't give a f***. When AD in his stumbling Hindi asked Ajay if he could roll, Ajay twinkled at him showing him that he was rolling too. He disapproved of AD's maal telling us it was corrupt, nakli, and that we were his guests and it was his responsibility to get us high. We sat in Ajay's shop for three hours, because just the sight of the thundering skies was murderous. But it only took three minutes of effortless chatter and exchanging stories, that AD, Suks and I had all fallen in love with Ajay. I thought I was the only one till I looked at my siblings looking at him and grinning with glee. In the middle, we were joined by Ajay's bro, also Ajay, and also terribly god looking. (Hills people got the looks always). Ajay and Ajay told us about crazy white people, mad punjabi families, and the groups of boys from Chandigarh- 'ek chaanta maarne ka mann karta hai'. 'Hum sochte hai ki paise jab aa jaata hai insaan admi se chutiya bann jaata hai'. In three hours, we realized we had all been talking the whole time. Suks and I even dancing to Ajay bro's phone music consisting of all our favorite songs. (Ji Karda, Laung da Lashkara etc). I made myself a dream in which Ajay and I get married and I grow vegetables in the garden like a good Himachali girl what fun.

On the way back, since it was downhill and we were very high, we were even happier than before. We ran, sang, danced, swam in the river, held hands, jumped from rock to rock humming-much to the amusement of passers by and made arbit resolutions and promises to ourselves and the world. I stood on rocks looking at the Himalayas and wished my friends were there. We were led back home by a dog(I named him Morphius, AD wanted to call him Ikamafoona-wtf!!?). Morphius of course was sent to us by the monk who gave us directions, and abandoned us as soon as he knew we were ready. 

The three of us returned back home dying, but so content that our mothers were all tears and 'I wish we could always see you this happy da'. After that it was two days of random short walking, countless momos, and waking up to my grandmother shouting curses instructions at the entire household, and feeding us like we'd been starved otherwise. 
But when she cooks, it's like every meal is my first. 

I knew that I had sold my soul to Himachal Pradesh and vowed to come back repeatedly to thrive in the beauty of the people and the 'Him-a-layas' like the mad phirangs coming to the hills pretending that India is a place to attain peace. But they're so sweet in all their ignorant bliss. I thought of bro Chunni repeatedly when I saw what we call 'scruffies' and bought postcards to send to my more than friend abroad. :D 

Delhi's it's blazing difficult mad self but it's where I was made, so tis no problem. And in my two hours of driving on the road a couple of days back, I had exhausted all the angry swearing I had missed out on.

Now I am going to go watch endless American television and be lazy cause it's vacation time bitchezzzz! 

Till then you can see my most awesome worst pictures of all time. 

I'm not going to brag, but I suck.

          Thatha praying

        Coolest thukpa lady of all time 

      Ma in the monastery 

  Misty mountain tops 

                       Best shit ever (I was sitting on a rock so the water came down straight on my head)

                          This one, I'm showing everyone as 'dekh yaar maine itni sahi photo li'

The only way to live is to see and the only way to see is to take a bus sometimes and leave, so that like Johnny Cash I can say that I've been everywhere, man. 

I only had one song to listen to the whole time as it was the only one on my phone, but it was perfect. Cause

I never felt magic crazy as this
I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea
I never held emotion in the palm of my hand
Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree

I ran to over the hills and far away and returned and I STILL have exams. I have pictures to show this time! :D 

Was dreading the return to urban heat and discontentment, but despite everything that Delhi lacks and Himachal possesses (peace of mind, beautiful people) it's always good to be back, only to leave, and return once again. 

I realized that the city has taught me to endure, critique and survive, the mountains taught me to believe, and let myself go. (Tibetan 'Boodhism' FTW yo). Till I go back to walk in pine forests and sing to the river, there's always expensive shopping and the temporary refuge in beer and and a permanent one in the company of your mates.

More later. My keyboard and mouse don't work and my seven year old cousin is standing on my head because it's time for his Beyblade Pokemon whatever battle. He is dancing around yelling 'metal fusion wheel!' and 'Rings of fury' so I'm letting him have it for sheer enthusiasm and phrases that sound like Linkin Park lyrics.