Sidney's Legs

I teleported home one night

With Ron and Sid and Meg.

Ron stole Meggie's heart away

And I got Sidney's leg.

Mysterious things happen when you shift houses. The fourth dimension is widely believed to be involved – and it is said that the trucks used by packers and movers are actually disguised teleportation devices that save diesel by zipping your furniture through hyperspace rather than along the road. You’ve seen it on Star Trek – de-materialise into atoms, beam atoms to destination, and rematerialise at destination. Like re-constituting powdered milk.

Words You Should Know

I thought 'Facebook limbo' was a lovely term (and an even better quiz question). For those of you who've just crawled out from under a rock, Facebook limbo refers to the state when you've received a request for friendship but haven't yet decided whether to accept or decline. You can keep people in limbo forever if you privately think they're a bit icky but don't want to take the drastic step of actually pressing the button that will tell them to take a long walk off a short pier. All this, summed up in just two pithy words. Fantastic.

The Road Less Troubled

Ever since my centre of operations has shifted southwards, I’ve been doing more driving in Gurgaon than ever before. And I can now expertly reveal to you the most telling difference between how people drive in Delhi and in Gurgaon.

In Gurgaon, there is no road rage.

Holi Mesquite Drum

Taking your eyes off the road while driving in Delhi is a dangerous thing, but if you did take the chance and looked around a bit, the odds are you would see a mesquite tree somewhere close by. (For those of us not from Delhi, mesquite trees are the ones with the twisted branches and long thorns. For those of us from Mumbai, trees are tall wooden things with green leaves.)

Small, common Walter

I grew up in a time when the CD hadn’t been invented yet. We listened to music by playing cassettes on portable little 2-in-1s with tinny little speakers. And because of the finite nature of pocket money, a lot of the tapes weren’t even ‘original’; they were recorded off a friend who had the original album and a double-deck cassette player. With tinny little speakers.

The Cheque Is In The Mail

These days a very prominent magazine, which we don’t subscribe to, is sending us a tree. This would be fine, since we like trees, but for the awkward fact that they’re sending it in installments – one mailer at a time.

The story began a year ago, with the arrival of the First Fat Envelope. It was an invitation to win multiple lakhs of rupees in a sweepstake for which we had already been preferentially shortlisted! What luck!

Arctic Survival

If a market researcher were to suddenly spring out of the shrubbery and ask me to name a creature that really has life figured out, I will name the bear. Not only are bears fat and hairy and equipped with four-inch claws, which makes them almost completely immune from Delhi’s eve teasers, they also have the good sense to hibernate all the way through winter.

The Next Ten Years

Happy new year, and welcome to a new decade.

The 'Noughties' are over, and the race is on to invent the catchiest buzzword to describe the next ten years. I'm predicting they'll be called the 'Twenteens'.

When it catches on, and all the smart people are talking about the Twenteens, remember you read it here first.