We’re back! Erm. Eeeps. Sorry. No really. We are not going to make any excuses this time. (Mostly cos we have none.) Instead we’ll just start talking furiously, distract you with words and hope that you will not notice that we were gone. So yes, we came back from our trip (it wasn’t THAT long to begin with, you know) and a few weeks after that, came down with a mysterious tummy-ache. We say mysterious cos three doctors of different shapes, sizes and specializations couldn’t figure out what was wrong with us over three different days. (Not one doctor per day, mind you.) Led to conversations like —

Doc: <poke in side of tummy, lets call it spot A> Does it hurt?
Me: Ow. Yes.
Doc: <poke in a spot two inches away from first spot, call it B> Does it hurt here?
Me: Ow. Yes.
Doc: <poke in spot A and spot B in quick succession> Which of the two hurts more?
Me: @#$^&!!
Doc: Okay, so it hurts equally, I guess?

Anyhoo, tests had to be done and unpleasant body fluids had to be collected —

Doc: I will need a urine sample.
Me: I’m sorry, I don’t pee on demand. I have already stripped on demand, but pee on demand, that is something I cannot manage. I have morals and all that.
<backup doc giggling in background>
Doc: Er, okay. I’ll just leave this cup here then.

<exit main doc>

Backup doc: <more giggles> That was funny! You should come here more often!
Me: Er, no?
She: No?
Me: This is a hospital?
She: Oh. Right.

Tsk. After all that, we were sent home with antibiotics for a sinus infection. Huh. All in our head. Literally.

And oh yes, the trip was incredible and we have a lot to say and show for it. We must thank you all for not giving up on us while we were languishing in pain. We weren’t in pain as much as discomfort, but if pain is what will stop you from being hard on us, pain it shall be. Your pokes (unlike the doctor’s), prods, reminders, cajoling, taunts and polite enquiries are all very appreciated.

Particular credit must be given to our judwa-behen (who we affectionately call JB. No we are not very creative when we are affectionate, I suppose) who provided us with sympathetic pat-pats while we whined. And the Dog for that reprimand we got in our commentspace. As our maatashri always says, sticks and stones have never broken our bones but a ‘What have you got to say for yourself, young lady!’ in a stern voice, always gets results. And to the Lou-puddle who was convinced that we never went to Europe, and that we made it up just to avoid posting. Such unshakeable faith, I tell ya. And the self-confessed crotchety geriatric who optimistically asked us if we died or something. Warmed the cockles of our heart, it did. With love like this, we’d even come back from the dead, all Om Shanti Om types. Ah yes, that is what we are going to write about next.

Did we mention it is good to be back?

You know how you sometimes have good friends you fall out of touch with? The longer you go without calling them, the more you think about how awkward it will be when you do call, and so you put it off some more? Eventually you wake up one morning to realize that its been months/years/copious-quantities- of-time and now you’re too lazy to change things? Yes, me and my blog have lately been like that only, although drawing parallels between my blog and a close friend probably alludes to a cuckoo-ness and lack-of-life that I shall cleverly not get into.

A regular reader gently brought it to my notice that this is the first time that a whole month has gone by and I have not written anything. Big whoop, I said. Then another reader not-so-kindly pointed out that I am supposed to be a bunny rabbit, not a bear, so could I please stop hibernating? Oh, oops, I said, slowly starting to see the point. I guess I haven’t written. And I guess a blog is a blog only if the blogger actually blogs on it. So .. um .. er .. *gulp*

But to be fair, I *have* noticed. Every day I tell myself, that I shall snap out of this, write something spectacular and the darn block will be gone. Poof! Like that! Except for one minor matter. I can’t think of anything spectacular. Or non-spectacular even. Gah. I look around to see how people do it. Some write about things on their mind but I checked and there’s not much going on there. (Ah, the price of shallowness.) A silly verse about my inability to write might work. But that’s already been done. And there’s the kind that write pseudo-intellectual stuff using the season as a metaphor .. Oh wait, that was me. Never mind.

So anyway, I’ve decided to do something different and place my faith in my dear readers. (Yes, those handful of you who still read this blog.) - Pliss to suggest something to write about? Anything, anything at all. Ooh-aah-ing about music, cheesy movie reviews, ways to cause bodily harm to Mika Singh, ten things that annoy me, photoblogs with pretty fall pictures that I promised once upon a time, the importance of ichhadhari nagins in Hindi movies .. any earth-shattering issue of global importance that you think I ought to have an opinion on. You tell and I’ll write.

Here’s wishing you all a warm and wonderful new year. Now give me ideas.

This started out as a response to Vivek’s comment on my previous post. So you should go read his comment first. It is nicely written, plus this post will make a whole lot more sense to you, if you do. Of course, this response began as a quick walk to the corner store, but seeing as it has has quickly assumed Dandi march proportions, it has become a post.

So here’s the thing. I am not much of a ranter on my blog. In the one-hundred-thirty odd posts that I have on this blog, about four of them qualify as rants. But every time I rant, I don’t think it is necessary that I be subjected to the ‘Why did you react to them? You shouldn’t let them affect you so much’ response. I know it is well-intentioned and I agree that one shouldn’t get worked up over trivial things. I also understand that hate commenters do what they do because they believe that negative attention is better than no attention. What is also known as the Mika Singh school of public relations.

But the truth is, I am really not worked up. I rant, because ranting is fun. I am not deeply affected by the nasty comments people leave me. I’m far too shallow for that. I spent about five minutes of my life writing the previous post. Now perhaps, the vitriol in that post made you believe I was very angry? That my blood pressure shot up a couple of points cos someone asked me the color of my lingerie? If that is the impression you got, then it is a wrong one. I mock the people that annoy me, not out of anger, but for amusement. It is a cathartic experience, to say the least, so pliss to let me have my fun?

Also, my rant was not against comment SPAM, as has been mistakenly assumed. These are not comments with helpful suggestions on where I can buy sleeping pills and Viagra. (I do wonder though, why anyone would need both of those at the same time. But I digress.) These are not penis enlargement offers, nor are these comments selling me videos of zebra sex. (Don’t even ask.) These are actual people, with blogs of their own, who leave hate comments. So why don’t I link to them when I rant against them? That would be a very good question to ask, if you were to ask it. But I have an answer. (Of course I do. Nobody calls a question a good question, unless they have a ready answer to it. Duh!) The reasons are two — a) I am reacting to what these people say to me and not who they are b) I am not going to link to them and give them more traffic. So phooey.

You talk about technology on your blog, because YOU believe it is what you do best. Not because your reader Joe Mama believes so. (Joe Mama, son of Vasco Da Gama, who went to the drama, without a pajama .. No? None of you ever learnt that rhyme as a kid? Deprived childhood, tsk tsk.) You write what you write, because YOU would like your blog to be technology-centric. But I call my blog a personal blog. Not a humor blog or a movie blog or a PJ blog. Just a personal blog. I crack a silly joke. I get sentimental about a song. I get excited about a cheesy movie. And I get annoyed by a hate commenter. It is all me. And my annoyance, much like my silliness or my humor, rightfully belongs on my blog. My priority for my blog, if I were to ever come up with one — is to be myself and try to write decently. As long as that’s achieved, there’s no other priorities that I need to change.

You’ve read my ‘light-hearted’ posts for a while now, but have never commented. But this time, I wrote something you did not like, and you made an exception to your no-comment habit. You delurked and reacted. You also realized that your comment isn’t going to change what I write on my blog, but you still felt it necessary to say how you felt about it. You spoke up because you didn’t like what you read. Then why is it so hard to accept when I do the same thing? And on my own blog, at that?

There. The customary post for the week is done. Now I shall go back to my rabbit-hole where, staying in the spirit of the post, I shall watch the K C Bokadia classic Kab Tak Chup Rahoongi (1988), starring stud-boy-of-the-80s Aditya Pancholi and Amala. Sigh. Silence sometimes has such a terrible price to pay.

To the dear readers of this blog who wish that I did not exist —

• I know how much you like to use the commentspace of my blog as your personal stage to demonstrate how very full of crap you are. But let me break your heart and tell you about that clever little thing called comment moderation. It exists in the general blogosphere, and it certainly exists on this blog. So you can leave me comments about what you think about my various body-parts and what you believe is a better function for them, but those comments won’t see the light of day. So boo hoo for you.
• If you have to ask a girl in the commentspace of her blog, about the color of her lingerie and whether she will have sex with you, there is a 137% chance that you will be be spending the rest of your life alone. Then again, you manage to question Darwinism with your existence, so it is only understandable that you try to shake the foundations of probability while you’re at it.
• When you want to tell me how pathetic you think I am, please get your basic grammar and spelling right. The purpose of insulting someone, is to insult them, not amuse them. If I am pointing at the screen, holding my tummy, and cackling, it would be reasonably fair to say that the purpose of your insult is lost. A recent example — Have anyonee ever told you that you sucks? Rod Stewart should perhaps compose a song about that.

Seeing as it is so easy to click away from a website that you don’t like, there are only two theories as to why people take the time to visit someone’s blog over and over, just to tell them how much they hate them — a) They were not spanked enough as a child b) They were spanked plenty as a child and have grown to crave it in their adulthood as well. Ooh, such a tough choice that.

Hello, howdy, hola and other assorted greetings. Having abandoned this blog for a month, I know it is a bit much to expect that any of you are around, reading it. But since when have I let reality come in the way of what I do here? Plus what is the point of having imaginary friends in one’s kidhood if one cannot parlay the skill into conversations with my non-existent readers? So I shall continue.

Yes, the me is back. And the me is sick. Of course, my disappearance had nothing to do with being sick, but I am naturally going to milk it for its worth. So instead of giving me grief for vanishing, please to be all sweet and sympathetic. Thankoo.

So, about being sick. No I don’t have a nice cough and cold that allows me to speak funkily. I was looking forward to the I god a gold, snibble, thangoo routine, but nopes, no ah-choos for me. I also haven’t broken an arm or a leg so I can proudly show off my cast and elicit sympathy and perhaps some celebrity autographs. Instead I am stuck with something that hurts like hell but has no grandeur associated with it. An ear infection. Now, the last two people I mentioned that to, have reacted with a Really? I thought only kids got ear infections? Aww, that explains how you got one, snigger snigger. Not funny the first time. Not funny the fortieth time. So stuff it.

And then there was the doctor’s visit. First, the nurse who moonlights as a jackhammer operator —

Nurse: *cheerily* Hello!
Me: *gloomily* Hi..
Nurse: So how are we doing today?
Me: Not too well .. *holding left ear in pain* .. my ear hurts like hell.
Nurse: Aww, do you have a fever too?
Me: Yep.
Nurse: Let me see your temperature ..

*pulls out an ear thermometer and *wham* into my left ear*

Me: Owwwww! (okay, so there were a few unprintables too.)
Nurse: Aww, that’s the painful ear, isn’t it?
Me: Duh?
Nurse: Aww, did that hurt a lot?
Me: Um .. er .. well .. now that you mention it .. HELL YEAH!
Nurse: Aww, you must think I’m some sort of an idiot, eh?
Me: *weak smile and stifling my urge to be honest* Er .. heh.

After the idiot nurse, came the medical resident who couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, who called the senior resident who then called the attending doc who called the senior attending, who finally called the chief of medicine. Well okay, maybe not the last part, but the rest pretty much happened. (I was meanwhile trying to figure out which actors on ER play each of those roles. Is a fun exercise, if one if ever stuck in a hoppital.) Soon a bunch of identical looking docs in identical looking coats were tugging at my ear and shining a light into it, while I furiously made shadow puppets against the wall on the other side.

Doc: What do you think you are doing?
Me: Making shadow puppets with my fingers? See? *making a dog to demonstrate*
Doc: *looking at me wondering just how extensive this infection is* Huh?
Me: You’re shining a light here? Head empty? Light emerges at other end, yes?
Doc: *weak smile* Could you please put your hand down?

Tchah. No sense of humor only, these boring lab coats have.

Anyway after some conversation that involved highfalutin lines like ‘that is indeed an unusual manifestation of a <insert fancy medical term here>, but I concur with your initial diagnosis that this is an inflammation of the <insert fancy medical term for some part of my ear>’, several test-tubes of blood were drawn and I was sent home to live in a drug-induced haze for the next ten days. And the worst of it all — with a warning to not be around loud noises and music. So, if I murjhaofy like a phulwa that has been denied water, because of the lack of music in my life, you know whom to blame. Dr Song, that’s who. Yep, that’s my doc. Talk about cosmic irony.