Sometime last weekend,I remember looking at my newly turned 21 years old friend passed out and signalling to me for water, and feeling crazy happy like everything in the world is right.

My heart is wrenching with sadness because my summer is over.

I can't believe I have to go back to college and sobriety (NOT). Now my friends will leave and the others will go to work and we'll all pretend to be ambitious and reformed for about a week till we can't take it anymore.

What scares me is that this year is my supposed year of achievement. It's the year I make up for all the others of slumbering and scraping through exams. It's the year I aim to put fancy schools on my Facebook profile.

But the truth is that I don't know the first thing about being an achiever. I don't understand how to be competitive or driven. I don't get how to worry about results(mine is out today), and I don't feel the urge to ask everyone else how they're doing or have done so I can place myself on the graph of success.

It's not like I don't care about doing well. I always have in-fact, but I can never seem to dedicate myself to endless swallowing of text books and other people's notes so I can get the marks that I need, more than want.

Maybe I'll learn, or maybe I won't and wade through life like I have till right now, relying on moments when I can watch my friends pass out under my feet and know that this is where life's at.

Yesterday I went to my frat friend KD's party and played beer pong and drank vodka pineapple punch and yelled 'krayzee motherfuckaaa' several times. V the playa got boob sightings from a really drunk chick at the beer pong table who was more than happy to distract her with some bending and pressing. There was gay boys singing Madonna, bassists playing Incubus while V gleefully sung along 'Oh YEAH i LOVE this song', drunk fighting, cosmic stoned epiphanies and immediate making up. I spent all night wandering from group to group, getting sucked in into circles and situations and then arbidly deciding to travel to another. 

At this party, I met a friend who I hadn't thought about in a while. Because of unfortunate social occurrences, we had stopped talking, but it had no relevant impact. Yesterday after a first ten minutes of akwardness, SickBoy, V and I progressed into the night with a sudden fresh bond, and I realized that I'd missed him. SickBoy and I had shared the same extreme,childish,self important/destructive impulses when we had first met at the age of sixteen. While I was being judged at school by my 'group' for drinking a beer on my roof with a boy(who SMOKED!!! AND wasn't part of the group), I used to climb over the wall and race to KD's house to drink some more. SickBoy and him were always welcoming, happy to initiate more adolescents into their 'too cool for school' regime.

Last night, we drank till dawn, planning drug escapades but not being able to execute any, searched for food but found scotch, talked at the top of our voices and did sleazy Noida(FTW)dances, and for some reason, this nostalgic getting high with a little help from my long lost friend, reassured me about what I'd been fearing all day. That connections don't get lost between cities, breakups, or time.

That was trivial lesson number 1. 

Trivial lesson number 2 is that People's lives look better on Facebook than they actually are. This one I've been learning since I was a teenager.

Trivial lesson number 3 is that Do not let your drunk friend drive at night even though it seems exciting to passenger in his death-cab of a golden esteem.

There was one guy at the party who was so stoned and spacey and loose-limbed, it made V and me ecstatic in our hobby of 'people we meet at parties who we decide we love'. All I wanted to do was fist bump with him and say-righteoussss.

The fact that I know I'm talking crap makes me want to do it even more. This is one of those times.

Look what I bought for ONE FIFTY RUPEES in Bangalore, and it's totally new and everything.

It's always good to be back to good old crass, unapologetic Delhi. 

The last Harry Potter movie comes out tomorrow and I can't help but not care. 
Thirteen year old me is going to be so pissed.

My friend just sent me a message inviting me to her party on the sixteenth of this month and I responded in about two seconds saying 'OH YES!'. She was nice enough to reply with a courteous 'ha ha'.
My aunt is shopping and my miniature cousins are at school followed by football class so the Penthouse is ALL MINE muahaha. I have been lounging on the computer and in the bathtub(my first time ever in one) drinking my uncle's expensive beer and pretending like I'm Kanye West. The bathroom in the place is bigger than my room.
Yesterday I met my friend Kavya after months. Kavya is the Samantha to my Carrie. More beer, less Blahniks of course.
Me: 'Okay dude I have something weird to tell you'
Kavya: 'Umm wait...You're in love with your cousin?'


I'm going to do a Big Daddy beef burger challenge in three hours and have my Man vs Food moment. Give it up for gluttony. 

love.these guys.

Today when I stood smoking outside bars that blared Pink Floyd shamelessly I knew I was in Bangalore. I have been on the road for about two weeks now, in four trains, two buses, and countless moods.
On the twenty first of last month I left for a badly planned trip with my friends to Goa. There was a lot of initital hesitance about the rain, akward social mixing, and general mishaps that might occur because of this chronic non-planning. But we were to discover that mishaps are more fun that they are not. Chunni and me along with five of our friends left for Bombay on the twenty first. Katty and Tanya refused to join us- 'AYE HAYE, TRAIN!', and flew straight in style to goa, waiting for us with a rolled joint and affectionate curses.
After a beautiful breakfast at Theobroma(dude if heaven had a cuisine this would be it), and reckless drinking at Gokul we somehow landed in our train to Goa, all passed out before the TT could say ticket.
Sid had forgotten to get two of my friends tickets, making a sheepish face and throwing his hands up in the air when questioned about the matter, but the two ticketless were more than thrilled with their first act of holiday rebellion. 'DUDE we can tell people this is the craziest thing we did in Goa.Wikkedddd!!'.
Trains are fun anyway, but when you can get high with a little help from your friends, they become stories. We have an official roller, his name is DJ. Now DJ has to make sure that everyone is high all the time. That's his job.So as soon we got into the train, DJ got to work. 'Tum log baitho, main scene dekh ke aata hoon'. After Deejay's sneaky but slow rolling we managed to smoke outside the window. Now the problem with DJ is that though his job is to get everyone high, he gets mindfuck stoned all the time, and forgets his job.
So we had to pass the night watching him get stoned and grin at random people, while C and I swigged from a bottle of rum doing the usual 'humaari zindagi BARBAAD hai yaar' sequences.
We reached Goa in the morning and rented bikes and a car, which we realized were eventually fucked up, and drove to Palolem where our friend from the flight was waiting. After deciding on rooms and swimming in the sea, I knew this was all Goa was going to be about. For the next five days we swam, drank, smoked, laughed, rode, cursed, joked, loved, and knew, like my friends always say, that this was forever.
We took buses to Gokarna, complained about by the boys because there wasn't enough party. Mo decided it was lame because 'I need loud music in my ears man!', and Katty because 'Kya jagah hai yeh bar 11 baje kaun band karta hai'. He has a point though. We still managed to get happy and high and talk till the morning when it was time for us to leave.
I didn't write anything on the trip, mostly because I was deliriously happy the whole time, and I can never write when I'm high, or tired. Which are the only two things I was throughout. I've scribbled things like 'If you try sometimes, you will find, you get what you need!". 'We rule'. 'Jealousy might be my largest(wtf??) flaw'. 'My friends might be the best people in the world'. 'Kaisa Karobaar?Aisa Karobaar!' and 'Lund lele muh mein'. I remember getting crazy drunk on the last day (first time I drank vodka in three years) and running on the beach, feeling a bunch of things I couldn't process or admit. I remember sitting with a few dogs and calling my own's name to the sea, hoping I could see a glimpse of his face in the sky like Mufasa's. I remember looking back and seeing shadows on the beach and not knowing if it was my friends or not, but knowing that if it was, I had nothing to worry about. I remember looking at the sea and letting myself flow like the calm storm of the waves. Aristotle was right. To be a good man, one needs good men to live by, and I know that I have found mine.

(Photo credit supercool supersavvy Tanya Bhandari)

No one tells a story like Queerfish, who scribbled relentlessly even when everyone around her was dying.


I love Bombay. I love it's calm madness, and it's tall Parisian buildings. I love that the city runs in rain or in riot. I love the nice cab guys who I trusted to doze off drunk at the back after telling him my address. I love that the city looks like it's going to break down any second but it never does. Bombay is one of those cities that movies are made about, books are written about. It's a city with soul(shola hai ya hai bijuriya and all). It's like Delhi, it's a person. That's why they have a problem getting along. Because both Bombay and Delhi are distinct, but strong soulful people. I love how you can suddenly see the sea, and feel and smell it as you come close. I love hoping to see someone famous at every bend.
My favorite places in Bombay are Gokul, Indigo, and walking around Colaba. Everything is so beautiful and alive and hindi cinema. Yesterday when I was on my way to VT station, I drove along a railway line and a cab full of kids going to a madrassa and I decided this was my second favorite city in the world. With vada pav and badass streets, what's not to love man.
First favorite (don't ask why cause you'd know if you know) was, is, and always will be, sadi Dilli. More than all of you who visit and complain, I, as an inhabitant, KNOW that the city is vile. I sense it's ruthlessness everyday, but it's got into me. I am a pure bred angry mutton dilli vaala.
I felt different in Bombay. I hadn't fought with anyone in a while, and my father and I had managed to survive in the same space for a week without wanting bringing the walls down. I felt really good in Bombay, but Delhi had taught me how it felt not to feel good. It had taught me to be jealous, angry, sad, drunk, self important, and still be a human being, and not necessarily a bad one.
When I drank out of a broken heart and wept, Delhi told me that pyaar mein kabhi kabhi aisa hota hai. When I fucked up exams and misused medications it told me that zindagi barbaad hai, and eventually it taught me to accept myself and grow. It taught me that it was okay to be ridiculous, hysterical, absolutely wrong, and absolutely crazy. It absorbed me into its madness and taught me to be like itself. Not ideal, but real.
What I was saying before all this bakwaas was that I love Bombay, with all of my Dilli ka Dil.


When I drove away from my father this time, I could see him in the rear view mirror, wagging his finger furiously. 'Sharanya DON'T GET DOWN at any stations and don't talk to ANYONE'. It kills me to leave him alone. Every time I drive away from his apartment in Bombay, I develop a familiar lump in the throat and the waterworks begin.
I can see my parents miss each other everyday. I can see my dad's determination combined with discontent at living this single life in a city that doesn't belong to him. Unlike me, he has vowed never to love Bombay but only it's people. It's absurd that as we focus on getting away from our homes, our families, and everything we know, all our parents want to do is come back to it.


Today I visited my grandmother and was a self confessed pukka South Indian because I realized all I need to live is rasam sadam and mangoes. I noticed that some bastards are cutting down trees that I climbed as a kid to build a McDonalds or Pizza Corner or some such.
I am at least five kilos heavier, but also five times happier than I was a month back. 
I am also half drunk, lazy and sleepy, and there is a Penthouse at my disposal to sleep in. True story.
Excuse me while I dive into a Parking Lounger and maybe never return again.

Best song ever. Is dard ki hai na dawai.