Update: Jai has a wonderful piece on He-man here, and thanks to his international lifestyle clearly had a better collection than I did (I wonder where those toys are now? In some loft in Calcutta…will look for them when I go home next) It’s a shame, really, when I think how much joy those figures that Twisted For Power Punch!!! gave me, they really need to be given a new lease of life.

People who are very nice to me over the next few days will get sent the one of me pole-dancing in drag as George/Georgina

1. in control of bike as owner/rider: well, it wasnt really a bike, it was a scooter, but it was mine, all mine. won it at the channel v music quiz regional finals, in first year of college i think. rode it for a distance of four feet – from the centre of the stage at kala mandir to the front, where ani, on his scooter (grey, i think – mine was a very john abrahamesque black) and i flanked VJ Yudi and posed for the cameras. which reminds me, i saw VJ yudi on star one making sexually suggestive statements about household appliances. the scooter i sold to my mothers office, and bought books. i dontknow what ani did with his

2. as rider of backseat (?) of bike: when i went for a whizz around salt lake as the sexy bike attachment on kuttus spluttering twowheeler. kuttu, who i remember mainly from early morning lectures in the presi canteen (delivered by him) on how bathing in milk and rose petals was good for the skin, turned out, to my complete amazement, to be sarnaths brother. he is now married and makes films. sarnath i think is in paris being intellectual. unless hes in delhi with his phone switched off. anyway, so kuttu and i were going to kuttus place to get his funky boots, which bongo was supposed to wear on stage for our first college play. bongo, of course, decided at the last minute he wouldnt do it, because he was terrible, and so bidisha got roped in at the last moment, a woman playing an effeminate man. or was it a man playing a woman. the audience didnt hear a word she said in either case, so it doesnt really matter.

3. as onlooker at bike-related incident: hands down winner is the time when stoob and i were being too cool outside school, and a giant came up and accused stoob out of the blue of having started his bike. had to save stoob from aforementioned giant, and it turned out in some way that broto was responsible for the whole thing.

in other words, dhoom machale dhoom machale dhoom to you with knobs on. im a hardcore biker at heart, i am. hells angel and all that.

also suddenly remembered stoobs other bike incident: giant biker (he draws them like flies) rides up to stoob on middle of kharagpur road during iit fest, asks him for a fag. stoob politely directs him to a nearby std booth, which has fax facilities. makes himself scarce when we inform him of his mistake, as his experiences with giant bikers (as chronicled in this very post) have not, obviously, been sweet.

1) The Five Elements

2) The Seven-Room Marathon

3) The Bacardi Thieves

4) The Sniffler on Film

5) What Transpired on the Sofa

6) The Mysterious Bearded Man

7) The Lady in Red

8) The Very Secret Secret

….will probably miss the all-out debauchery in Goa. vijay anna is not going, so actual death becomes a possibility. Much better to have 25 year old staid Delhi gathering, and discuss something sensible, such as why I have no life.