Word count

Google search terms "Twitter, overload"

Or Why I Cannot Be Reduced to a Tweet.

This is what I’ve done over the past 48 hours (in chronological order), put succinctly and briefly:

Began Sunday with a Mocha Caramelatte and a fight with a little beggar boy who, while begging piteously, was also casually defacing the café. Climax: Me, saying in Bollywood Hindi and with oodles of gravitas, “You think you can behave as badly as you like and still expect me to feel sorry enough for you to give you money?” Anti-climax: The beggar boy looking at me for a moment, taking in my Rs. 90 cup of coffee and his dirty fingernails (which had not ceased to scratch and peel off the rexine cushion cover of one of the kerbside café seats) and saying, “Yes.” It ended with me saying with absurd flourish, “You do what you want and I’ll do what I want!” No, actually it ended with the kid running up to me like a battering ram and shoving me off what passes for a pavement in Bandra.

Did a great job of pretending to write and a terrible job of writing.

Watched CSI:Miami (how does anyone keep a straight face with David Caruso’s character being called Horatio?) and CSI: New York (why is it that whenever I try to remember the theme song of the show, I hear David Hasselhoff singing the Baywatch song?) back to back. I now know pigeon beaks have magnetite in them.

Pole vaulted past writer’s block and wrote 2,000 words. Closer inspection or re-reading might reveal these words to be an entirely godawful selection of words but what the heck? At least now I have only about 30, 000 more words to write. I think.

Spent two hours walking along the sea. I still don’t know whether the base notes of rot and garbage in the fragrant air of Mumbai’s Carter Road are a result of wind direction or tides or both. Anyway, point is I walked and while I walked, I advised a friend on what to ask an intuit. Because that’s what you do on a Sunday night.

Today, I reached work early and instead of working, I counted how many avatars I’d seen in Dashavatar (in which actor-screenwriter-director Kamal Hassan plays, among other things, a 12th century Vaishnav priest, a 21st century Japanese sensei and George Bush). Then embarked on a prolonged conversation about Twitter, Attention Deficit Disorder, Wireless Application Protocol and decided if Clint Eastwood had a Twitter, I wouldn’t follow it but I would subscribe to Woody Allen‘s.

Dabbled in some calculation and realised one-third of the hits to this blog come from those desirous of knowing how tall Ezra Koenig is (I don’t know) and whether he has a girlfriend (yes and her name is Sara Davis, last I knew). Felt far less loserish when friend bounced up to me to tell me that when she types “rostam” in Google search, one of the prompts is “rostam girlfriend”. Decided to act my age and listen to some Paul Simon while attempting to work.

Bought 12 doughnuts. Note: mint does not belong in a doughnut. Discovered travelling across the city with an impractically large, rectangle box of doughnuts is not easy, particularly if you’re reading a book about a female knight with massive biceps while doing the above. It is also a bit galling to realise that at one point, the woman you’re reading about is carrying chain mail, a halberd-like weapon, a shield, a sword and a baby griffin with ease while you’re breathless because you have to walk seven minutes carrying 12 doughnuts.

Discovered Harper Hindi, whose prized author is Clive Staples Lewis. I’m not sure what I’m more distraught by – the fact that C.S. Lewis had Staples for a middle name, that the Narnia books cost Rs. 95 in Hindi and Rs. 595 in English, or that “The Horse and His Boy” becomes “Archenland Mein Shasta” and “The Magician’s Nephew” is “Aslan ke Geet”.

Returned home at quarter to 11. The auto driver looked at the tenner I gave him and scolded me for not having Rs. 8 in coins. I pointed out that, technically, it should be easier for him to give me Rs. 2 than for me to give him Rs. 8. He told me to not be so generous with my tenners because once the Rs. 10 coin are everywhere, these notes will be collector’s items.

At 12.53am, realised I’ve written 570 absolutely unnecessary words on a blog post while the day’s quota of 2,000 words remain untyped and unconceived.