25 things about me

I've been tagged with this particular meme several times, and today, finally decided to respond. While I'm hardly reserved about myself on this blog, here's a list of things I might not have mentioned about myself in the past three years. By the end of the exercise I realised, it's hard to come up with 25 remotely interesting things about oneself. While I'm not tagging anyone in particular with this meme, if you're reading this, do feel free to consider yourself tagged.1. I dislike stuffed toys. I find them pointless. I'd much rather have a real pup warm and wriggling in my hands, instead of felt ones with cotton insides and plastic eyes.
2. I don't really like listening to much music. I find it distracting. I obsess over a few songs and listen to just them over and over again, driving everyone around me nuts. I add only about 15 new songs a year to my playlist.
3. I'm never bored if I have pen and paper in hand.
4. I used to read prodigiously. Since coming to IIT though, I don't anymore.
5. I've trained for several years in classical dance and I thoroughly enjoy dancing. Sometimes I tap my feet under the table, because I can't keep them still.
6. I absolutely love baking and plan to study pastry sometime in my life.
7. I get into my own head far too often for my own liking. I try to observe myself from different points of view and find myself an endlessly fascinating subject.
8. I'm rather self-obsessed.
9. I publicly declared my hatred for poetry, but I can still cry over a good poem.
10. I sometimes cry over poetry, songs and books, but only very rarely and in private.
11. I'm a closet drama queen. I love drama, but constantly suppress that side of myself, although it sometimes sneaks out.
12. I dislike children and don't intend to have any of my own.
13. I will however make a smashing aunt.
14. I'm a master procrastinator. If any job can be postponed, I will postpone it. I'm not proud of this habit of mine and intend to make a push to break it, someday soon.
15. I very rarely get into arguments with people. I'm not quite sure why.
16. I find it hard to not smile at people- even perfect strangers- when I pass them on the street.
17. As a child I wanted my hair so long that I would trip on it as I walked. Now, I only crave hair so short that I'd never have to comb it.
18. I've recently discovered that I really like shopping.
19. I love blogging, but constantly wonder if I'm crossing the line between honest and too personal.
20. I love making caramel and spinning shapes with sugar. I can play with burning, boiling sugar for hours on end.
21. I used to be a rather mean kid- always looking down her nose at people. I really hope I've changed.
22. I dislike puns. I've met very few puns that I thought funny. I think them pretentious.
23. I used to have the disagreeable habit of humming to myself under my breath all the time. I only stopped when one day on the bus, a lady asked me why I was crying.
24. I'm usually attracted to older men.
25. I have a horror of settling down.Maybe my views will change as I grow older but permanence or commitment of any sort frightens me.

image from cuteoverload.com

Ten smells I love

I’ve only recently rediscovered my sense of smell. Earlier there were only good smells and bad smells, but of late I find perfumes, scents, aromas, flavours… there’s a whole new world out there. You just have to breathe in deeply and take it all in.

1 ) Blooming jasmine buds threaded together. There is something quite intoxicating about their powerful scent. In the olden days, kings used to wrap these garlands about their wrists while courtesans danced for them.

2) A dog’s fur, a day after a bath. I don’t much care for the smell immediately after the bath; it smells too much like the dog shampoo I’ve been applying. But a day or two after the bath, the hair’s still gloriously fresh and it has a smell so, well… doggy!

3) A warm mango freshly picked from a tree. This is a pleasure I recently discovered. The house we’re living in actually has a mango tree on the premises which this season yielded a grand total of twelve mangoes! I picked one of them myself and I couldn’t be prouder.

4) Old old books. They should be so old, the pages have yellowed. They have a delightfully musty odor, it’s full of things you vaguely remember, that you can discover all over again.

5) New books. I love the smell of ink and plastic and print that they all carry. They smell delightfully new, totally untouched, waiting to be explored.

6) The kitchen when my mother’s making Halwa. It’s a delicious smell, of flour cooking in ghee and unfailingly sets my taste buds tingling.

7) Talcum powder just after a bath. The smell mingled with that of soap and the feel of water droplets all contribute to such a glorious feeling of freshness.

8) Raat ki Rani. These tiny green star-like flowers bloom only for one brief night. By morning they are faded, their perfume blown away by the wind. But that one night of revelry is enough, to walk past this bush and to inhale their heady perfume is enough to transport me headway into the Arabian nights.

9) A mint bed freshly trampled on. At the risk of sounding like an aroma therapist, I’ve never smelled anything fresher. I get a milder feeling of the same sort from toothpaste; it’s the only thing that can wake me up in the morning.

10 The steam that rises when cold rain comes in contact with the boiling earth. I wish I could make a perfume out of it to carry around on scorching summer days.