Observations while Spring Cleaning

• If I am sent to prison in the near future for past crimes, be sure that it will be for unreturned library books.
• After resigning, my psychology teacher in school (who is now a rabble rousing comrade, but I digress) gave each of us a personalised good-bye card (even though it should have been the other way round). She seems to think I was a nerd.
• When I hunted for my photo in the school magazine, it didn’t appear in the sections where my friends were listed for having some kind of talent-singing, dancing, writing, public speaking, social service, membership of Africa/ Palestine/ UNESCO/ Elocution/ Environment etc. clubs but for being a top scorer. Which is sad because if you went to school, you were supposed to be studying anyway.
• In spite of the above I don’t think I was a nerd. In a diary entry, I had written that the Unit tests were beginning in two days from the day of the diary entry and that I hadn’t studied anything. My present self panicked a little at that but assumed that the kid-me was also feeling pangs of guilt and would presently start studying. Turns out she had to stop the entry after two lines because DDLJ was coming on Sony and she had to watch that. My present self prayed that the first Unit test was English.
• Did the fact that I was writing about Unit Tests at all, make me a nerd?
• I addressed my diary as ‘Cordelia’ (or ‘Cord’ or ‘Li’, as my mood permitted) since…I don’t know…’Kitty’ was too childish? I also seemed to think that the diary was a person. At the end of a very long entry, I wrote, “I will stop writing now. You must be tired.”
• During the post-Board exam break I took to writing an illustrated description of the IPL’s first edition. After giving out the basic facts of each team, I put in “My View”, possibly inspired by the Times of India’s then-new editorial practice. Under that section, for Rajasthan Royals, I wrote that I didn’t want them to win, because, and I quote, “I don’t like Shane Warne”. Yes, sounds like me.
• When anybody asked me who my favourite cricketer was, I always said Dhoni. But secretly, I had given my heart to Robin Uthappa.
• A card my colony friends had given me for my birthday described me as “Moti, Moti, Tu hai moti, fuvvare jaisi hai teri choti”. If you had known me as a child, you would know how accurate the second part was.
• My college friends gave me a ‘Welcome Back’ card when I joined them after skipping classes for more than a week during my sister’s wedding. Besides being the funniest and sweetest thing I have ever received, it is also proof that capitalism can make us happy.