Hot. Hotter. It's Here!

The tee-shirts and shorts are back in vogue, people strutting down the street in skimpy outfits.
There are gigantic glossy billboards advertising for air conditioners and outlet sales.
The ice cream man has sky-rocketed with his business and the money in his pocket is tinkling as much as his irksome jingle.
The community pool is crowded with swimmers and sun-bathers of all ages and sizes.
The litter at the beach is mounting in piles.
Little children sit on the sidewalk, licking their stubby fingers and Popsicles, trying in vain to ebb the growing patter of coloured drops, splattering the heated tar.
Televisions with cable are finally playing new movies instead of their exasperating re-runs of Herbie and The Little Elf who Saved Christmas.
Parasols have been set up and umbrellas have been tucked in.
Neighbours have finally taken down their Christmas lights.
Flip-flops have replaced Uggs.
The sun seems to wake you up before your alarm.
You find your curfew of sunset has become longer.
School Reports are soon due. You've been buying expensive Dolce & Gabbana perfumes for your teachers.
You can feel the glorious sunlight tingling your skin, toasting it Mediterranean brown.
Your days are carefree and you seem to have more time for your friends.
Your dog is going hyperactive.
Like the sun, the days are just Brilliant!
It's official-- It's Summer!

The Tall and Short of it

First there was denial.
Then there was panic.
Then there was plain hopelessness and resignation.
And so it was, as I stared frustrated, at the height chart.
A quarter of an inch.
That's all I've seemed to have elongated in 2 months.
So instead of looking at my glass half empty in my usual cynical downtrodden way, I decided to compile the sunny side of being *ahem* vertically challenged.

Be Happy, Be short! (Or just be foolishly pleased with the lack of photo tropic growth)

By being not tall, you can indulge in a myriad of pleasures that the taller race is deprived of. Par example:

1.Entrances and Exits:
Face it, there is no door too small for you. You can ease past any doorway while others have to bend and crouch, and duck uncomfortably.

2.Discounts and Half-Fares:
Be it museums, art galleries, aquariums, theme parks, the movies, you're all set. You can pass up for a child under 12 by putting on the squeakiest voice possible and pretend to tip-toe reach to the counter(with much neck straining) before slapping down money for a ticket- half-price. Your wallet is happy. You get your amusement. No one's the wiser. And as for the icing, you get a free blueberry lollipop that turns your tongue a deep aqua for a week. How cool is that?

3.Shoe it to me!:
Shoes? Full steam ahead. Pumps? Sneakers? Loafers? High tops? High heels? Uggs? They're 'all go' for you. There's NO way you would look awkwardly tall, a foot above the crowd, walking moderately tall in your stiletto heels.

4.No Bed bye-byes!:
After a while, it is inevitable that really tall people cannot curl and squeeze into the confines of their bed. What's worse than an early winter morning with your feet sticking out from the end of your exasperatingly short blanket that doesn't seem to cover all of you at the same time, letting the biting cold, buffeting air and chills in your toasty cocoon? Short people just don't have to worry about their legs sticking out of their bed or tiny blankets. A bed for a lifetime is all we need.

5.Wardrobe Malfunction:
Tall people tend to shoot up without warning and it is quite irksome to find that the jeans that fit you so well last week, suddenly barely reach your ankles. And what about that amazing blue shimmering tee-shirt you bought just a fortnight ago? They look like the relics of your fifth grade pajamas. Your feet seem to have expanded as well. Size 10? The shopkeeper first blinks stupidly and asks you if he heard right and then goes and rummages through the stock. He then comes and declares he hasn't ever seen that size in the store and recommends you to go online and customise your own Converse All-Star sneakers. Whoo-pie. Short people just don't wake up to snug shirts and ill-fitting leggings. They always tend to hunt down their sizes in stores and have an easier task getting just the right clothes. Besides since we don't grow out of clothes, we end up with a smorgasbord of outfits to pick, mix, match and choose from.

6.Sign reads: 'Warning! Beware of this Sign!':
Tall people face daily perils as their menial chores and monotonous lives are fraught with perils. Just tell me the number of short people that have bumped their heads against the Exit signs hanging from ceilings or against branches of tall trees? Advantage. And can you imagine the number of tall people that get there hair caught in a ceiling fan? Ghastly.

7.The Cruisers and The Losers:
Low, snug, beautifully crafted with superior dynamics, sleek with a shiny metallic body, chrome spinners, turbo power- the works. A sports car. Might I add- with little overhead space? Average drivers are masters behind the wheel while the tall ones are doubled, crammed in for lack of space like Hagrid on a baby tricycle. Their shorter road compatriots are revved up to quench their thirst for speed. Open 'er up... Yea Baby Yea!

8.Hopping Mad:
What fun is hitting your head on the ceiling repeatedly? Pogo sticks are great fun when you're short with the space to bounce up and down for hours on end. And as for jump ropes and tall people, they were frankly never meant to exist on the same planet.

9.Shorty and Sporty:
Not all sports are dominated by super tall people. That gives us short people some scope for achievement. You look at this post quizzically challenging the authenticity of that statement? I'll prove to you tallness is just an added advantage when it comes to sports. There are a vast number of sports for the short population. Like...? Well. Umm. FOOSBALL IS A SPORT, OKAY?

So there you have it. Short people seem to have a heckavu time despite being length-lacking. Goes to show how positive thinking can bring a farrago of possibilities.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to take my insane optimism and go and write the glorious advantages of bendy straws that don't bend and pencil erasers that just pop right off once you use them.

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior":

"sic erit;
haeserunt tenues in corde sagittae, et possessa ferus pectora versat Amor.
Cedimus, an subitum luctando accendimus ignem?"
(Thus it will be; slender arrows are lodged in my heart,and Love vexes the chest that it has seizedShall I surrender or stir up the sudden flame by fighting it?)

And thus began my love/hate relationship with that glorious yet diabolic embodiment of English. Pure, unadulterated English.
His teasing chestnut macho-sultry locks and lightly toasted pleasing complexion seemed seductive, yet his eyes, deep, brilliant green eyes were cold, metallic and harsh.
Why are you doing this to me? I yell in desperation, torn apart by vividly contradicting emotions.
My unstable hormone-raging adolescence makes me more perplexed, bewildered, flummoxed.
He grins, his teeth glimmering in magnificent pearly radiance. Yet each teeth, though carved beautiful seems dangerous; sharpened to razor points- poised to kill.
His finely toned, lithe yet muscle-bound body though attractive to the eye holds concealed abilities. He is a master of deception. His life is a masquerade. He is a double agent, a winner both ways.
My lust and my loathe intermingle and fog my sense of discretion, blinding and ensnaring my senses. My heart? My head? Which to chose? Which to let go?
He smiles. And I melt into a puddle of ecstasy. In his arms, fear has no mantle.
Yet, against his beating heart, head against chest, I can sense the silver dagger that lurks inches away from my own.

To love or to leave. That is the question.

And yet despite the disappointing low grade etched on my English exam paper, I cannot help fall in love with that charming, lucid, chivalrous and engrossing man- English.



Blog Bubble: "Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior":
I hate and I love. How can I do that, you might ask me perhaps?I do not know. But that's what I feel and this is torture. ---Catullus LXXXV

The Scribbler Kid strikes!

When the moon is full and the night is pitch dark, a cloak is thrown on and the music gets pumped up with stealth...
The Scribbler Kid strikes!
Henceforth, shedding the pseudonym 'Padfoot' taken from, undoubtedly, the Harry Potter Series, I have donned another more unique pen name... The Scribbler Kid!
From now on, posts will be signed in said name, pictures will be captured under the same name and I will be, the one, the only 'The Scribbler Kid' , scribbling notes and sketches, comics and caricatures, slapping on some photographs and videos and bringing you controversial opinions!

The Scribbler Kid--- Out!

Unlimited Words

Word Limits have always frustrated me.
My English Answer Script would total to less than expected for the sole reason of crossing that parameter.
I have never been able to control the amount I write because for me, writing is synonymous to thinking; I write the thoughts that flood my brain. And this often ends in a catastrophe.
Most of my posts till now have indeed been long which by the look of it may seem wary to any reader. I understand.
So from now on, I shall try to curtail my posts and other snippets of writing to a reasonable length. Well... I said TRY!
Hmm... not bad. I think this post is pretty short. Getting there!

Twitter for Help!

The bird hobbled onto the court. We blinked, perplexed for a moment- the basketball forgotten and the other team, oblivious to the bird's plight, went on dunking baskets.
Poor little thing, the bird was. A sorry state- feathers ruffled, eyes half closed in the sun's glare and quite visibly traumatised by the injury.
Its gait suggested a broken leg or a fractured wing. Either way, the bird was more or else immobile with a respite of waddling a metre or so. We crowded around it, some in awe, some, like me, in anxiety and yet others simply because the rest were conglomerated at half court.
One of the girls managed to gingerly pick the bird up in cupped hands after the bird's futile attempts to take hasty flight out of fear.
After the game came to an unsavoury end after ten minutes or so, I hurried to the four girls who had decided to take the bird away from the court and harm's way.
They were standing in a ring, looking expectantly at the bird. Watching the bird.
"A little water might do him good," I suggested, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice; for before me, curled in the girl's palm lay a fragile, broken bird, weak and in need of immediate assistance.
They provided the water and the bird drank. It drank; gulped gratefully and opened a bleary eye while vigorously shaking his/her head clear. Hope.
The bell rang a dismal note signalling the end of the class. We had a dilemma.
How were we supposed to explain to our Physics Professor the reason for bringing a bird to class?
That's when it went wrong. I did something utterly stupid.
We left the bird there. In the shade, near a big, bright, lush green plant. If we ever got the chance, we'd come back for the bird, we thought. So we thought. Yet, it never happened.
I went home, muddling what was to come for that poor little bird and what fate had in store for him/her.
The next day, rushing to its hideout, I found the bird missing. It had gone.
Maybe Nature took its course and the bird healed and took flight. Maybe it wandered to a safe haven to nurse itself back to prime health. Maybe it went looking for nourishment and kept safe and secure. Maybe. Hopefully.
My heart goes out to that little, pathetic, poor, battered bird (who I have christened Hedwig/Hermes).
Get Well Soon and Be Safe, Lil Birdie!

The Sum of the Surreal and the Spatial

Numbers swirl
In lateral imagination
They squirm and writhe
My angst, My vexation.

Addition, Subtraction,
Multiplication, Division,
Unreal operations
In an arena beyond vision.

Transposing, confusing
A diabolical play
Of numbers, Of signs
Stewing my brain, crushing it to pâté.

Symbols and units,
Quantities not plausible,
Rearranging into Simultaneous Equations
Solutions are impossible

Figures etched in sand,
Scribbled and Scratched,
Faint with the waves' ebb and flow;
Both sides of the equation don't seem matched.

And in this number void
More hypothetical numbers yet
Irrational, Unreal, Imaginary, Complex;
Mathematical Scrutinization on each set.

This farrago of figures
Jumbled in space
This delving into math vortex
This quest, curiosity and chase

Math, concentrated, calculated and cracked,
The ultimate playtime of a mastermind
Prodding higher thinking order,
Searching for things no one can find.

I do not see, I do not hear,
I do not understand.
The laws, theories and axioms,
That Mathematics does command.

Yet, the human mind looks
Looks for answers with no question
Scavenging for the food
That pains the digestion.

Alas! We must, ironically, surrender
And prop open the vividly unclear
And peer into the vast murky depths,
Of the omnious, foreboding Math
I fear ──Χ

Principals, Assemblies and Other Things That Suck

The title would have irked your curiosity or arched your skeptical eyebrow. Or both.
I'm not a pompous, air headed, fashionista, do-my-nails-match-my-eyes cheerleader nor am I a prehistoric, thick skulled, drooling, guffawing Jock.
I'm a... I'm a... Well, I'm ME. That's it.
(I'll be blogging soon about the status quo)
I don't go complaining about the lack of pink in the hallways, the crunched up lockers or even the population of nerds, dweebs and geeks. (Jocks have probably never evolved after the cavemen stage and still find unexplainable delight in picking on small fry.)
I don't whine in a fake French accent and I definitely don't keep fingering a curl of dumb blond whilst saying in a snotty voice- "This School Sucks."

Then WHY the blasphemous title, you ask?
Well, apart from the 'comic incident' and the face that the CBSE system is warped and the mentality of our teachers is twisted, today's outrageous display puts the cherry on the top.

Monday Assemblies is a Code Word. If Susan Fletcher or Artemis Fowl does happen to stumble upon this encrypted word, they'd probably decipher:
Death By Boredom
As usual, the toneless comperes droned on, brainwashing us to be better, greater individuals(to no avail).
The usual stupor wafted through the silent nearly brain dead audience, drugging them into a listless short-lived coma.
These weekly gatherings are usually concluded by a meaningless, incomprehensible speech by our Principal whose 'wise'(read:Cheap magazine ripped words) words echoed through the unresponsive auditorium.
Today, however, he did things a little differently.
No, he did strew out some pointless garbage at the end, so no need to keep your hopes up.
After the awarding of athletic achievements, he shuffled to the microphone and in his gruff, nerve wrecking, lazy voice, he said:
"I would like to call upon two girls to the stage and I would like to award them. Though I have no cups or certificates, they still need the recognition."
At this point, he raised a languid hand and gestured to two unfortunate girls in the row across from ours.
They spilled out of line and made their way,self-consciously to the centre of the stage. There, they stood, blushing in the light of hundreds of eyes watching them intently.
He continued, speaking through clenched teeth as always and through his beard:
"I would like to contribute some fils from my salary to these two girls. How generous of me. I would like to donate some money."
He paused and then grinned, cheap and cruel, his yellow teeth barred in self-appreciation.
"To purchase, for them, a pair of socks."
If the girls on stage were pink with embarrassment, I was brick red with fury and disgust.
Angry little hisses broke out through the auditorium.
We were appalled.
There he was, basking in self-content, clearly believing that he had said something 'amusing, hilarious, drop-dead-funny.'
Sick. That's the only word that swirled around my head. Sick.
Is this how the very idea of school has been distorted? Has school become a place, not where we learn, but where we are criticised for our tiny faults and slip-ups? Does it now preach sarcasm and spite instead of understanding and correcting?

Needless to say, not only were the girls thoroughly humiliated at their 'sock-less' attire, (Our uniform is complete with a pair of navy blue long, not ankle, socks.) we seemed to despise the Principal even more, if that's possible.

If it had been a movie, I would have spit ferociously on the ground with an ugly expression on and I would have rubbed my combat boot hard against the floor with the sole, shaking my fist and yelling a few carefully picked swear words. But Alas, it was not.
Ahh..well.
*Twirls six-barrel-gun on index finger and jabs it back into its artificial leather hilt on my belt with its burnished, glinting buckle. Doffs cowboy head gear in spectacular Old Wild West fashion. Tennessee accent against a growing sunset, perched upon a magnificent chestnut brown horse with a silky, glittering mane:
"There will be another day, my friend." *

Innocent Until Proven Guilty? Damn, No. I'm not American.

It all started that faithful morning. There I was, blissfully ignorant, leaning back in my wooden chair, humming to the creaking of the chair's rickety legs. The mighty ol' sun was beaming out there, little rays of light spilling into the classroom. I sat basking in a shaft of light, gazing out of the window at the dreamy building next door out of repeated fashion than absent-mindedness.
The calm before the storm? Aye.
And as I sat there, mentally absent from the room in which my physical self sat chained, my soul-self cherubically waltzing down the corridors of that fascinating building, a wall away, He strode in.
The effect would have been more dramatic had he been a foot taller with a hair padded head and dark, cold eyes and black attire. No. A more anti-villian.
He came in, snivelling in his worst green and pink striped shirt and sporting his usual half bald hair-do, complete with grey tufts of squiggly hair. His grey, watery eyes scanned the room at his immobile height of five feet. A despicable sight if I ever saw one.
He began his usual lecture. Moles, Molarity, Line Spectrum, Hunn's Basic Principle. Bizzare. Everyone stared back at, with vague expressions, half-concious. Yawning, with some even drooling or catching a quick forty winks, the room was silent as a mortuary.
Then, the girl at the front bench, turned around and asked me if I had done any more comics because she wanted to keep awake or rather alive till the next class.
I obliged. A mistake I will regret for years to come.
Before I move further into the narration of my sad, morbid tale, I must hit the pause button to take a minute to explain the 'comic' bit. You see, I DRAW comics. Not store bought. Not suscribed. HAND-DRAWN. Not very good ones though. But a harmless pasttime nonetheless.
So she sat there, reading it under her table, laughing under her breath at my funnies. Then He comes to focus; a climax approaching. And you all probably can envision what happens next.
He gestured for my comics, took it with him, yelled at the girl, threatened to take her to the principal's office and then stalked out... WITH MY COMICS!
No, don't get me wrong. It's tragic that she got yelled at. It would have stayed that way hadn't she gone back to reading Archies under her table the next day without a damn.
And me. Poor ol' me. Robbed of 6 months of comics. IT WASN'T EVEN MY FAULT!
But no amount of justifying myself or appealing to reason got me back my comics. *Sob*
They're still there; trapped, scared and flummoxed at their plight, caged in a teacher's musty drawer. And I really want them back. I created them, they belong to me, they're part of the family. They got me through Year 10 and I'm not leaving them behind. I'll get them back!
Stay Strong Samurai Peas!