Eat. Pray. Love. (with a difference)

I welcome myself back to my own blog for returning after a long hiatus... what remains to be seen is how long before i have to disappear again

Speaking of which, every time people see me - even if it is after a week - they, no wait, "i" seem to give them the impression that i am disappearing into thin air. Needless to say from all i have already ranted about before, i cannot help but roll my eyes out...

Last month was bad. I fell ill. Having undergone the trauma of swallowing fist fulls of antibiotics, i thought the worst was over and behind me.

I was wrong.

My weight took the beating... And while i dont know how much i lost (i have not dared to stand on the scales since...) when my collar bone protrudes i have the truth glaring at me in my face. Literally.
What i do not need is for any kind of confirmation. But people will be people. *sigh*

However somewhere in the middle of all the pesky concerns, 'yours truly' decided it was time to at least try to regain what had once been mine.
And so began the mission with a vengeance... I was hoping for the regain to happen just as quickly as the loss did. My bad!

So here i am trying real hard to get some flesh on to wrap around my bony structure with not much success and i think to myself, 'There are many others on the other end of the spectrum (though many stand right before me) who'd kill to be standing in my shoes...though i still CANNOT fathom why :-S'

My funda for the moment:
Eat -- Autum's setting in and it's doing real wonders to my appetite :D
Pray -- That autumn happens all year through :P
Love -- That people actually envy my being skinny ;)

Identity crisis

Nicknaming people is a real good fun activity. What makes it so is that it's something so much more personalized than one's own name. It's something that comes from people knowing each other at a much more open and intimate level.. and that all of it is meant to be in good jest makes it all the more special...

Nicknames are easiest when it's the shortened version of the persons real name...
But quite often nicknames come about from people's physicality...
So if someone is short, they are conveniently called chottu...but more often dhed phoot, dhaii phoot, tingu
And if you are tall, then lambu, khamba...
One isn't spared for having to wear spectacles. The words battery, dapphnya follow you wherever you go. I still remember the chant of "double battery single power, haath mein roti muh mein chawal". *sigh*
If you are a size larger than the rest...the list tends to be endless...
Ditto when you are a size THINNER...
Most of this stuff happened while at school.

However i have had one such in-my-face experience too. Not so long ago i'd been for a college trip to Sikkim and towards the end we'd all exchanged telephone numbers and email ids [This is the pre-Orkut and pre-FB era]. So once we were back to where we belonged -- and given that college was still a long time away from re-opening, we'd gotten into the mode of emailing one another, exchanging photos and the likes.

Likewise, i followed suit.
One fine day i sat down to check my mail and went through some of the replies i'd received. One such mail has left a lasting impression on me... What had happened was that since we'd been a group of 80 odd people from different streams and batches we weren't quite acquainted with one another even after those 10 days. If we'd remembered a face, we'd forgotten the name and vice-versa.
Given this background, i still continue to be amused by what one of them had to say -- or rather, ask by way of replying to my mail...and i quote:
"Are you the fat one or the stick with specs?"