25 °C

Why don’t you have Indian breakfast? I don’t know what Indian breakfast is. Does it have a stamp? The cereal crunches in the bowl like dried leaves underfoot. Milk is not cold enough, not hot enough. Room temperature, we say. What is room temperature? It changes everyday. Brown and white mix together. No racism here. A blonde stares at me. She is on television. I imagine she is on TV right then because the TV is switched off. How ludicrous to imagine a telly on, to even imagine a telly. Tried doing some work. Tried. So? Trying is also work because you are sitting there with something and poking and prying and looking and beating it to pulp because you want it to become something. The newspapers wait for me to give them news. I refused to touch them. They look rather nice as they are folded, half headlines visible, half faces, half people. Quarters, too. Quartered. 2010 will become the buzzword. Funny. No one talks about just another year; it is the goddamn decade. Decadence tempts in the form of chocolates. I give in. I always do. I am an establishment dog where chocolates are concerned. Tea. Ginger and clove spiked. It is not tea anymore, but who cares. The tongue lolls in the steam and evaporates. Words speak silence. The stomach churns. Text messages wish you great things. Fingers stay silent. One message wishes a hundred orgasms, lots of sex and stuff. Not funny if you have to wish for it. Nice people. They don’t deserve me. Lie down and eyes fall asleep; the mind whirrs and wants to be on high alert. Smoke lifts off the brain as coals simmer within. Wake up to water. Room temperature. Write, write, write…still writing, writhing. Fingers ache with noise. They ache with their own voice. Open-close hands. Open-close feet. Open-close mind. Watch TV. Eik Brahman ka ladka aur Kayasth ki ladki are soon going to fall in love – one vegetarian, the other eggs fried in refined oil. Next will appear Nakusha, a girl who frightens everyone because she is unattractive. But she has a story. Everyone does. Why is her story important? Because she is unappealing physically? It is sick. I watch it. Sick. Follows Uttaran…the one who lived with discarded clothes discards her love for her benefactor. Good idea gone wrong. Good ideas are useless. Room temperature. Changes. Yet, we call it by one name. How about Nakusha – the ugly one, the one who has a story for being what she is?