75 quips and quotes from 7.5 years of writing

Over the last few years, I’ve accumulated a series of Moleskii notebooks (affectionately titled “A Labour of Moles”) filled with an assortment of journal entries, anecdotes, tales, fables and scattered todo lists. I thought it might be an interesting exercise in introspection highlight a few sentences out of context and in no particular order into a frivolous and futile list. Because, you know, lists are cool.

1. As part of a large Indian family, babies tend to be made at a fairly constant pace. This makes dealing with the problem quite intuitive. The solution is simply to ignore baby n until baby n+1 is born!
2. But how were my efforts repaid? Shit. On my hand.
3. And there I was, floundering about in my tucked in, canary yellow, short sleeved shirt.
4. Now we had a fairly extensive collection of Audio cassettes, which we still have to this day. But it was a collection that was entirely Bollywood. We were not prepared for the demands of an ethnically diverse audience.
5. If you have not had any likes or feedback within 13.7 minutes of posting the status, delete promptly and without fuss.
6. But, like the infamous Mufti Days of yore, the lack of uniformity adds a heap of pressure.
7. Whilst asserting one’s individuality is almost compulsory during school and university, it tends to be frowned upon in the office.
8. Now, it is commonly known that most Asian families maintain closer ties to relations that other cultures may deem to be irrelevant. This effect is even further amplified when foreign countries are involved…I ended up vomiting all over the house of an aunt who I’m pretty sure didn’t even know who we were.
9. It was a short lived hobby. One that I can only assume I followed in a feeble attempt to make a new friend.
10. This one time, I kind of exaggerated the truth about reading all of the Narnia series of books, just so I could get a certificate. I still feel guilty about that.
11. In hindsight, I probably should have stopped going there when he was replaced by the moustached man fresh off the boat from India who thought my mobile phone ringtone was an “alien attack”.
12. There are many factors that can affect the shape of these curves. The main factors can be memorised with the mnemonic CHIPS.
13. In this case, the potential of the hair is so low (regardless of the length), that you will always succeed in having rubbish hair. This phenomenon is known in academic circles as ‘The Limbani Vacuum’.
14. In an age where profanities and negativity rule the roost, words like ‘swell’ and ‘shucks’ are a dime a dozen.
15. One of the other benefits of having a constant stream of babies is that you get to witness the gradual mutations of generations.
16. Always use alone. Periods are optional, but recommended.
17. Communal toilets are a source of much awkwardness.
18. I found sanctuary on the deserted sixth floor.
19. Our hangout of choice was…the library. Specifically the second floor. Floor One was the Facebook floor. Floor Two was the socialising floor. And then three to five were for the rare person who actually wanted to work.
20. Rule #1 of flirting: do not call the girl ‘Hot Library Girl’ to her face.
21. So the point I was making is that Pinocchio is creepy.
22. Like many before her, proximity has proven her most potent nemesis.
23. One thing is for sure — if my children get the same affection that my laptop and phone do, then they will be the luckiest kids in the hemisphere.
24. Nash Equilibrium: Both put in headphones simultaneously, or neither put in headphones.
25. Indeed, I see a pigeon on the Metropolitan line almost as often as I see my train stalker.
26. Sometimes the greatest expression of Love is sacrifice. And that’s why I choose to sacrifice my love. For Peyton. She’ll understand.
27. There are only two topics that can be discussed in this scenario. The first is what you are doing with your life. The second is if you’ve spoken to anyone from your old school. After that: a deafening silence that can be filled only with the sanctuary of earphones.
28. Well, wit is no longer immeasurable, thanks to the wonders of Social Networking.
29. It was the last day of Year 7. I was at the height of my cool.
30. I learnt a vital lesson that day: Sarcasm is a serious art form not to be messed around with by amateurs.
31. Or maybe I should convince the rest of the world to dye their hair ginger and write in their own Moleskii.
32. Queuey (adj): a loosely formed gathering of people which somewhat resembles a queue, but has no real structure.
33. This shyness remained until the infamous Biscuit Night.
34. The culprit was the fallacious phrase — “Hence, or otherwise…”
35. People may mock it, but the PDF format conveys a message of finality and clarity that other means of communication do not offer.
36. That show was like the Hindu version of Power Rangers.
37. I believe that there are 6,470,818,071 active religions in the world.
38. Similarly, is an eternal fluctuation between happiness and sorrow necessarily a bad thing?
39. The most important lesson about leadership is that things don’t always work out.
40. Then I decided to fulfil my life long ambition to own a wooden spoon.
41. There’s never been an appropriate situation to do this. It’s something a really cool person would do.
42. The final straw was when he started massaging my shoulders.
43. On such an occasion, Baas’ are an infinite fountain of knowledge.
44. It is all very surreal — almost as if they reside in a parallel universe that I’m not supposed to know about and we accidentally cross paths.
45. One of my cupboard door handles is held together with blu-tack.
46. For example, one time in Food Technology, we were baking cakes, and I used 8 tablespoons of water instead of teaspoons. If I kept doing that, I probably wouldn’t be here today.
47. The time…dusk. Everything monumental happens at dusk.
48. However, for reasons that I dare not think about, he happened to have a towel and some weird lotion strategically placed on his bed.
49. Garba is a traditional Gujarati dance that, simply put, involves walking around and clapping.
50. There are many reasons why 13.7 is my lucky number. I shall highlight a few.
51. I actually kind of feel sorry for my hypothetical wife.
52. Years ago, in the dark ages between the hippy years and the advent of the internet, there was an old King named King Hubert III.
53. Socks are, in my humble opinion, one of the most underrated and important inventions ever made by man.
54. The moral of this story: don’t shoot a baby unicorn.
55. Moral: Be more like the tree, but even more like the Aardvark.
56. Is it actually a cow? To test this, try to communicate with it. If the sound it makes is “mooooo”, then it probably is a cow.
57. Rather unusually, the lecturer said “Yayyy,” waving his hands animatedly.
58. Life is like a bad metaphor — it makes no sense, will one day die and has chocolate icing.
59. Set children on wild goose chase for hidden Gadhia treasure.
60. Why? How much of our lives revolve around this question? More importantly — why much of our lives revolve around this question?
61. So I’m unappreciated in my time. Shoot me.
62. Gadhia’s are like buses — you wait ages for one to turn up and then two come along at once.
63. I don’t think I prayed correctly.
64. The Akshardam in Delhi was a bit like the Disneyland of places of worship.
65. Imagine a world where ‘Likes’ were the currency. I’d be so middle-class it’s unreal.
66. When I came up with the idea of writing about my gestation, it sounded a lot funnier in my head than it turned out.
67. There are many reasons for this. First and foremost is my general disdain for people.
68. It remains to be seen whether there is any merit in extending this hypothesis to all human interactions.
69. I wonder if it would ever rain in a hypothetical paradise…
70. It ended up neither here nor there — an unfinished dream, desperately seeking a purpose and approval, but unable to escape beyond the incarceration of social expectancy.
71. I got my beard shaped. It was the weirdest thing. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t even know I had a beard. But he insisted, and my passive protest didn’t prove deterrent enough.
72. In what has traditionally been a Valentines Day ritual, I took some time out to Youtube Hilarie Burton.
73. AJAX allowed for websites to communicate with servers without having to do a full page reload, which allowed for all the whizzbang stuff you see on the likes of The Facebook now.
74. So you do what any rational person would do in that situation, and end the conversation as humanely as possible.
75. And then you wait for the ravages of time to erode her from your memories. Until the next rock comes. This one will be different…