Juice

I can see you gasping and scratching your neck. I can see you thirsting. Thirsting for more, and more and more. And how more is never really enough. You want to know. Its like a fountain of joy and intoxication and addiction. You want to discover, uncover, realize, grasp, fathom, and you want to understand. For all of you, for those who couldnt and wouldnt believe there wasn't more.

I'd just finished shaving this morning and was busily ogling at myself in the mirror. Its something I do regularly, as a matter of habit and as a procedure of self-therapy. Its said (by learned rishis of yore) to have curiously excellent healing powers. The self-admiration boosts self-confidence. As I stare and stare, I stand up a little straighter. I grin a little. I smirk a bit. Aaj khush to bahut hoge tum, I ask myself. I act cocky. I begin to get inappropriately self-assured around my reflection. [If my reflection was another actual person, he'd have walked out by now. Not that I would have behaved in such a way around a 'he'. Let us be clear about that. I'm into girls. Actually, and dont you read this if you're one of those kind of people who are not into vulgar jokes and get easily offended by what would otherwise have passed for normal everyday humour around normal everyday open-minded people unlike yourselves, as much as I get to be before their moralities kick in. Score! *self high five*]. After a sufficient number of feigned takes and double-takes at the mirror, I stop, look, and casually flirt a bit. I'm good. It works. I usually get my phone number.

The compliments I so lavishly shower upon myself? They have their noble, practical function too, in case you've already begun snivelling about my self-obsession. I see it as a morning exercise. It gets me going. It gets me thinking. It gets my head working. If I see another soul for the rest of the day, morose, depressed and in need of compliments or lavish false-praising-about, I'm onto him/her in a flash. Within two minutes of said therapy, they emerge gracefully with erect back, a wide smile, and a deep shade of blush. Aww, I'm too nice! My work is about giving. I ask not for payment, no sir. It is the joie de vivre gleaming off their faces that's my prize. They insist on letting their gratitude be known, and I indulge them by letting them buy me a little something at the canteen. It helps them.

Anyway, like I was saying, I have taken to ogling at myself in the mirror. A most unavoidable habit, you will agree. Speaking about today's session, I was randomly chatting with my left-handed self in the mirror, when I said something silly and out of place. It defused the charm I'd been building up. An unfortunate ambience buster. So I stuck my tongue out at myself, to mock myself for embarrassing myself in front of me like this. I wouldnt have that obviously. Its the sort of behaviour I have come to disapprove. Even of myself. So I stuck my tongue out back at me, and I dared me to a fight with a Matrix en garde.

What? Dont understand? Try this. Stick your tongue out, at a mirror or a trusted friend who wont think it too weird of you. Now, in your best fight pose, carefully and slowly pull the tip of your tongue up. Up, down, up, down. Also simultaneously do it with the fingers of your hand. Now think of the fight scene in the first Matrix movie when Keanu Reeves haughtily dusts his clothing in the subway station and invites Agent Smith to have another go at him. Get it? Now measure it to your royal challenge to your mirrored self. Way cooler huh?? I know I know!

Also, in an aside from this rather intellectual, biting-in-the-head conversation, remember the days when Road Rash used to rule the lives of young pre-teens, teenagers and computer geeks everywhere and of all ages? I loved the game. I mention it because recently when I was reminiscing about the good ol' days of carefree childhood, my mind wandered and settled upon an old memory. It was of me lying on the sofa in the living room. Or, so to say, my material earthly form was lying on the sofa in the living room. My thoughts were lifted and airborne, free from the bounds of human existence and the black-holes of impure thought. I was thinking single-mindedly of the Diablo. I had a Perro, and it was good. But the Diablo had a style of its own. It was large and powerful. Nothing could beat it on the straight line tracks at the start and finish of the races. True, I'd have to be traffic-wary in the urban zone, but I could handle that. I mean, just look at the sheer speed of the thing! I'm not sure if I remember all too correctly, but I believe I did buy one at the end. And of course I won the whole game. I remember that. And I remember it being the first place I read the phrase mano a mano, and thinking it sounded so cool. I just recently found out what it means.

P.S: Do you find the first paragraph making really no sense with relation to the ensuing post? Lol. I beg to differ. No, wait. I differ. That will be all.