New worlds to conquer

They say that experiencing the good things in life translates into utopia on earth, but without the propaganda. So this is my self-indulgent and extravagant list of good things in my life.

1. karate classes start again next week. considering i'm in the best shape of my life since i was fourteen, go kiyah!
2. my exams went not half as disastrously as the maternal ancestor foretold. ergo:- when you leave your textbook near your pillow at night, you can actually study by osmosis! hence proved. in your face, mom.
3. the pujas are coming up. translation-i have a budget for shopping, new clothes, classy accessories and shoes, and of course with so many librans' birthdays coming up, TONS of parties and fun.
4. since i briefly disconnected myself from the internet, i rediscovered my creative streak for writing. i have been making massive inroads into both of my writing commitments as well as blogging.
5. i reconnected with three of my closest friends just today. boy does that make me contented.
props to ani, tito and fido.
6. pal is prolly coming coming back to kol for the vacation. good times seem to beckon.
7. have finished downloading casino royale. just watching daniel craig walk down a street gives one an education in spotting the raw power of prima alpha males. wowza!
8. i have rediscovered my liking for certain types of music. thank god for coldplay, the verve, and the script. also downloaded a certain dreamy manilow cover on mp3. sigh........
9. a new relationship is in the offing. tentative optimism....
10. i also anchored a debate on "computer games are a waste of time" for a cnbc edu channel today. boy am i exhausted. cameramen never seem to be ready on time. that or they lose their fresh batteries five minutes before when you want to go home.
11. we seem set to organize a programme in school for teacher's day, and perhaps even the prefectorial ceremony soon. throwing a party AND giving up responsibility.......hallelujah!
12. checking my passwords folder today, i discovered that i am on no less than seven networking sites. considering that some people can go up to the early twenties, i'm still pretty damn exclusive + relatively carefree. (smug smirk)
13. over a year and both my PC and cellphone are currently in good order. to all the sufferers worldwide-pray with me, brothers and sisters!
14. am on fairly good terms with my immediate family due to most of the above. translation - i can stay out all night at least one time this pujas.
15. i have become optimistic and mature enough to appreciate the good in my life and still take advice to work on the things i can change (or want to). this is the biggest point. i think it's called approaching adulthood.

responsibly yours,
trisha

[*_*]

Master, all is well in the state of Denmark

My exams are over. I am free.




(blubbers with joy and runs laughing hysterically around the outer wall seven sacred times)


now that that's over and done with, here is a short eulogy on freedom from oppression



food
how nourishing you are
healthier than exams you are by far
water
how cool you are
more refreshing than exams you are by far
sleep
how stupefying you are
more restful than exams you are by far
laughter
how stirring you are
more charismatic than exams you are by far
time
how short you are
speedier and crankier than an old car by far
life
how forgotten you are
lively and creative and happy no more
love
how ignored you are
more desperate and needier than ever before
exams
how despised you are
the most wearying, dreaded and hated by far

Happy Independence Day

WAKING UP

my sole attempt at facing my ant-paranoia head-on and making something creatively productive out of it. first time i've had the courage to actually make it public. hope you like it.


[disclaimer-if you actually do enjoy what follows, we recommend you get professional help, because man you got problems............]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


WAKING UP




There is a line of red ants climbing up the kitchen wall. They are tiny, each of them, but with a venomous intensity in the way they stay close to each other, each pair of sharp pincers reinforcing every other one, that makes her come to a standstill and watch their progress with a fascinated revulsion that curiously enough precludes her from wreaking havoc with a pesticide spray and wiping the tiny dead, red little bodies of the wall and into oblivion, or at least the dustbin.

She is not really that scared. Neither does she have an insect fetish. She is a very normal, cheerful, teenage girl, extroverted, lots of friends, hardworking but not too bright, firmly convinced that she is pretty, very optimistic most of the time. That’s why she never told anyone about the dreams.

During the day she is very – what’s the word – lively. As night draws nearer, gradually she becomes unhappily restless and starts to fidget. Her parents could never understand, why, even as a child, she had an inexplicable fear of going to sleep. Sometimes she can’t remember herself, why the little voices in the hidden, dusty corners of her mind start rustling frantically whenever her eyelids droop. That is because they fear the dreams almost as much as she does.

The dreams are very strange by anyone’s standards, but even more so from a bubbly seventeen-year-old’s point of view. In these dreams, she is lying on her bed, in the same position when she went to sleep, and now she can hear a surge of rustling from the floor of her room, and then the red ants rise in a tidal wave of tiny torture on every side of the bed, and she squeezes her eyes shut but she can still feel a rapidly thickening stream of ants scurrying up her arms, scrabbling around on her skin until they give a final little twist of their bodies before sinking their pincers into her flesh. It is a unbearably frightening pain, like a million tiny live needles piercing her, burrowing beneath the skin, trying to tunnel into her blood.

In these dreams, she tries to scream for help, but as soon she opens her mouth, the ants move towards her face and pour inside her mouth, biting at the insides of her cheeks, anchoring themselves on her tongue, piercing savagely until her head almost explodes with the pain, even advancing to the trachea, surging into her lungs, nibbling at her veins and arteries, mixing with her bloodstream, setting her insides on needles of fire.

In the end she can’t breathe, because the red ants have now moved up her nostrils and mouth, she can’t hear anything except the endless scurrying in her earlobes, she can’t see because they are swarming over her eyelids and pupils. She lies there on her bed, a human feasting-ground for the red ants that live inside our walls, under our carpets, in our gardens, and she cannot fight them, she is too weak, too frightened.

Eventually the sunlight wakes her up, and sometimes she cannot believe that her organs were not devoured in muted rustling in the night. This is why she is always so happy during the day, because she understands the value of reclaiming life and normality. She is only seventeen but inside her head is the knowledge of a thousand torturous deaths, each of which she has survived. She was frightened, but she lived. She was tortured, but she endured. She was eaten, but she is alive. She knows that life exists outside of stifled terror of the ravages of a million tiny flesh-eating red ants. When she grows up, she wants to be a lawyer.

The ants are a part of her now. The pain they inflict validates her happiness. She has never been able to bring herself to kill a single red ant, however. Possibly she has the instinctual knowledge that the day she does kill one of those red ants that infest her sleep, she will go to sleep that night and never wake up from her dream of being trapped in endless terror.



Trisha Ray
6/4/2008

Birthday Blues

17 years ago today, my mother saw me for the first time, screamed, and fainted. subsequently she warned me that i had better be worth the trouble. i wasn't.

today, i'm running a mild but weakening temperature, not helped by the thought of an economics test tomorrow (aaarrgghh) and no party until the weekend.

the good part? tons of messages and birthday wishes from all the right people, starting from midnight yesterday.

am missing one day of school (read piles of mind-numbing notes) and falling back on certain Assignments. bleh.

this stupid fever started on saturday. since then i've been having horrific half-waking dreams where killer scarab beetles eat bugs bunny.

note to self :- WHY ME?

i spent sunday night wrapped in two bedsheets and wearing one grey sock in bed (the other one is now my cousin's sock-puppet, apparently) dreaming about achieving normalcy. sobbed myself to sleep, convinced that i was going to die. woke up and resolved to start believing in divinity from Monday.

today is wednesday. i am still an atheist. so much for deathbed promises. i miss lollipops. and pal

seriously, though, why? did i commit a heinous murder in some previous reincarnation? is that why i must spend my birthday with a sniffle, a headache, stuck at home, alone except for some friendly cake in the fridge?

and i've spent so much time convincing myself i'm not sick, i almost passed out in school yesterday. today, for a change, i passed out at home instead. my mouth tastes of mint toothpaste in particular and sour bitterness towards my life in general.

to anyone who's had the patience to read this far - i haven't always been so crazy, i'm just woozy today, that's all. please leave a comment, just to make me feel better about dying. thank you.

trisha

16 minutes later

my father just called to check up on me, and 5 minutes later jayanti aunty from flat number seven turned up with quiet sympathy and noodles. i sense the beginnings of a warm fuzzy feeling in the general location of my left ribs. i wonder if this is what groveling gratitude is supposed to feel like.


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Turning 17 Tomorrow

YOUR BIRTHDAY: 9 July (CANCER)


Your personal ruling planets are Moon and Mars.

The power of Mars and sensitivity of Moon combine to create a somewhat contradictory nature. On one hand the sensitive, caring and emotional elements will be expressed. At other times however, your strong willed sometimes aggressive nature will create head-on confrontations. In the house you are master. You need to control your immediate surroundings.

In work too, you like to take the lead, but domestically your urge to dominate, especially where children are concerned, will create continual conflict requiring a serious look at issues of power and control on your part.

Your lucky colours are red, maroon and scarlet and autumn tones.

Your lucky gems are red coral and garnet.

Your lucky days of the week are Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

Your lucky numbers and years of important change are 9, 18, 27, 36. 45, 54, 63, 72.

Famous people born on your birthday include Edward Heath, Tom Hanks, Kevin Nash, Courtney Love and Kelly McGillis.

The Rising Of The Cake - Part-II

For everyone who hasn't read the first chapter of this, here it is all over again, followed by chapter two.

THE RISING OF THE CAKE-PART-I



The girl paused momentarily, torn by doubts. Already she was a heroine, having saved the day from being a catastrophe of epic proportions - death by fire must be terrible, she thought. Then she took a deep breath, and made up her mind. Closing her eyes, she lifted the ladle and added just the lightest trace of brandy to the baking garnish on the stove before her.
The redolent fragrance of eternally unwashed socks drifted through the kitchen. The syrup must have arrived then, borne by the local delivery boy(? old by now) whose breath must surely be one of the first warning signs of armageddon. Ushering him out, she turned back to her first love, the oven. The cake had risen.
Two hours later, the cake stood, imposing as a behemoth at bay, towering on the dining table. Like all great kings, it was grand and intimidating in its power on the outside. Inside, however, it was just a mushy, gooey, sticky core of blissful indulgence.
The base was a solid yet crusty platter of mocha biscuit. The lower foundations of the cake were made of sweet, crumble-as-you-touch classic brown walnut cake, encrusted with sizeable chunks of milk-and-cherry chocolate. The second layer, tapering to the third on top, was a soft creamy layer of soft coffee chocolate, the lightest and cloudiest of milk white frothy cream, and a dash-just a dash-of freezing cold blackcurrant syrup, running like a vapour trail through the whole layer. This layer was seasoned with a sprinkling of chocolate chips and the faintest whiff of brandy that hovered only at the surface and disappeared as you sank into the heavenly chocolate bliss of it all.
But the topmost layer-that was literally the royal jewel in the crown. Set like a chocolate boat atop this delicious edifice, it was a large-ish shallow cup made of chocolate biscuit wafer, and swimming with chocolate syrup. Gently floating in the middle was a cake island, made up of delicate-looking yet tough petals of black bitter chocolate, which surrounded a cup-sized flower. The gently placed core was a small ball of pure, sweet chocolate rolled around a cherry, and encrusted in a coral shaped layer of a mixture of coffee wafer, chocolate syrup, vanilla frosting, and a single candied rose-leaf. The very slight waves of the pool of chocolate syrup gave it a look of a chocolate island pleased with itself, and at peace with the world.
The heroine looked on proudly, the light of love and joy in her eyes as her creation rested in a magnificient pose on the table. Suddenly, as she looked down to wipe the last of the tasting spoons, still lightly smeared with melted milk chocolate, on her apron, the door burst open with a thud. She wheeled around with a sharp cry of alarm to face three large men wearing balaclavas framed in her doorway. Her glance fell on the foremost of them, whose t-shirt bore the legend MMU. Milkshake Movement Underground. Oh God............
With a slow dawning of horror, she realized the truth. These men-these men must have heard of her cake somehow and come to plunder it. with a faint gasp of terror, she moved bravely in front of the chocolate cake, brandishing her still creamy ladle, ready to risk her all to protect the cake she loved................



FIND OUT THE REST OF THE STORY NEXT WEEK, IN "THE RISING OF THE CHOCOLATE CAKE-PART-II"


On the other side of town, the MMU Don raised his eyebrows and barked the word "Moron!” into the phone.

“It was one woman! One diminutive pastry chef and one masterpiece that was yours to take! How does a cake-crazy midget overpower two MMU assassins and escape? And more importantly, where to?” A deep breath. “Find her. Take the cake. If you have any problems, call me.” A pregnant silence. “And listen, one last thing. Don’t call me.”

The waves of fear seemed to carry over the phone, because after a short silence, the Don hung up.

The man on the other side of the desk smiled. His teeth had gold fillings, every last one of them, even though he was only about thirty. Years of sinking himself into the treacly delights of fudge and marshmallow had left him with permanently rotting teeth, rolls and rolls of sinking, pudgy flab, and a phobia of dentists. His was a benign face, a face that promised cheer and goodwill to all things baked, creamed and frosted on this earth, masking the cunning and greed beneath the ponderously chubby cheeks of an ultrasize Pillsbury Doughboy.

The Don gave his cream-mint flavored cigar an uneasy look.

“The cake seems to still be at large.”

The doughy man kept smiling. Inside, his flabby drooping guts twisted themselves into an agony of apprehension. The pink hands clenched a little.

The Don kept talking, with a shade more confidence.

“It is only a question of time. The woman cannot be trusted, but the cake she will keep intact, if she values her professional integrity. I swear this on my mother’s life.”

The man facing him forbore to point out that the present Don’s mother had died twelve years previously of a surfeit of chocolate éclairs. Instead, he spoke dreamily.

His voice was like him, rolling, ponderous, pleasant, but with undertones of homicidal mania.

“I must have that cake,” he sighed, rocking slightly. “It is my dream, you understand? Started years ago as a child, built up into massive proportions in cordon bleu school, frosted with my hopes and dreams all these years in the safety of my classic dessert lounge, yet everything I have ever achieved is nothing to what that one small woman produced in two days, on her own, in a pitifully antiquated kitchen. And I ask myself, why? Is it her natural talent that surpasses mine? Impossible. It is well known that I am the king of dessert. Is it her undivided time and attention that made that cake what it is today? No. What thirty pastry chefs could not achieve working together is out of her reach. Then – and mark this – it must be the recipe. An heirloom, perhaps, passed on for generations, added to but never changed in its essence. And that is why” – clenching his fists – “I must have it. Already, news of this supercake drifts through the corridors of the Confectionary Kingdom and begins to titillate the tastebuds of leading pastry critics, leaving my recent creations in the dust. My reputation, my career, my life’s work is at stake. I must have this cake. I will taste it, then I will break it down to its base, then I will savour the ingredients until I have captured the soul of each one of them. And then,” – a predatory smile changed the Pillsbury Doughboy face to the awful visage of a plump barracuda – “ I will bake my own Cake.”

The Don shifted in nervous acquiescence, staring at the wall behind his guest.

In the distance, police sirens blared.




STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER, COMING SOON, ONLY ON TRISHA-MYCRIMINALTHOUGHTS@BLOG