My head still feels quite heavy. Lack of sleep mostly. A tough couple of days where a lot was demanded and a lot was delivered. The political tamaasha we witnessed didn't make things any easier. Dropping everything and rushing home in the middle of a workday hoping you won't have a misaimed stone landing on your bludy head is not the most pleasant of experiences.

But this is India. Like I wrote back when I was in Switzerland - we Indians need this. The lack of shit like this would suck the excitement out of living here. In Switzerland everything moves like clockwork. Out here we like the clocks to stop sometime.

This one for Rupa ... my latest blog addiction. Good weekend.

Taare Zameen Par. It didn't make me cry, but it did make me a little teary-eyed recollecting the years I was growing up. Where I never felt I fit in. I was a good student but I never wanted to study. I wanted something else ... something I could never quite put my finger on. I scoffed at the nerds, many of whom have attained great heights in their careers. I see them on Orkut and I do not want to say hello. I want nothing at all to do with them. Because theirs is not the life I want or wish I had ... happy with their wives and their babies in some small town in some faraway cold country. Perhaps in the eyes of the world they have achieved it all, but in my eyes they are just- another brick in the wall.

I always had a lot to say to but never wanted to say it to anyone. That changed when I happened to be checking out the cricket score on Rediff one afternoon in May of 2003 and spotted a link that said 'Publish your thoughts'. Suddenly I was presented with a canvas that I could do anything with, a canvas I was missing all along. And now nearly 5 years later that canvas still hasn't run out.

But people who have met me would surely have been disappointed. Because somehow they expect to find someone who talks a lot and is funny all the time, but I am just the opposite. I am still that loner kid who wanted nothing more than to be left alone with his Legos .. where he would turn out one beautiful creation after another that his father would show off proudly to anyone who came over. And they would always ask him -- So, you will be an engineer when you grow up, or an architect, or a designer. And he never had an answer.

It was just one scene from the movie that left me teary actually - the one right at the end where the kid wins the drawing competition. Because it brought back memories of that day in Class 5 when I walked up to collect the first prize in the secondary-school singing contest, to the thunderous applause of everyone present. I guess one reason the applause was so loud was because I was the only boy in the competition. And nobody ever thought I'd win ... least of all me.

I never won anything after that.

Love is...

not looking to the next table