By The Riverside

In Love

Aarghh Finally ....

I finally got my very own Calvin n Hobbes gadget (not as in I own it ...)on my very own blog (yea..this one I very much own)!Finally!!!What an achievement ... I feel like I cleared SCJP ;YEssss...So what's all the hype about ?I have been trying hard ,not like in the eyes-glued-to-the-monitor style but like in the slumped-on-the-chair-and-typing-with-one-finger hardwork mode ,for over quarter of an hour to get this thingy added but with each gadget in Blogger's gadget link showing up broken ,or worse giving me the ray of hope by adding without content(showing me a bloody red X!).So finally after traversing scores of Calvin links , I got this one to work !All that hardwork definitely needs to show and thats why I have the gadget right on top ,just so nobody misses it .Does 'nobody' even read my blog ?Duh!

Calvin n Hobbes has caught my imagination and totally enslaved me these days ,just the way J.M.Coetzee did with 'Youth' years ago ,and nothing or nobody has been able to do before or afterwards...Yea ,I guess I am growing up backwards ,but that's alright if its gonna be thiss fun!!!My passions have always been the binge variety ,wherein I taste of it a little in the begining,if it appeals to me I take a second helping and then a third and then forget the rest of the world ,leave the fork and spoon behind and climb into the cauldron and lose myself till I am smug in the satisfaction that I have now chomped down enough to hibernate and gloat till my next love finds me .When my eyes go hazy talking about something , you know that it has been one of my loves.My love affairs till date go something like this (Only those which stole my heart and made me love-sick ,so this is just a teensy-weensy subset)

Since I learned to read till class 5 -Baalarama,Amar Chitra Katha.(Tons of others,but these two where my chart topping infatuations)

Class 5,6-Famous Five(I two timed with Secret Seven!)

Calss 7,8-Hardy Boys(Wonder why Nancy Drew got a step-motherly treatment)

Class 9-Agatha Christie(esp the Hercule Poirot ones.My favouritest AG till date is 'The Mysterious Case of Mr.Quinn'.I am torn between my love for several AG titles actually.)& Ofcourse Sherlock Holmes (This I binged till I read all of SH titles back to back)

Class 10-Erle Stanley Gardner(I still rememeber how I trembled in love for this one!)

Class 11,12-NO Nothing ... :( Every Indian kid knows why .. this was the time when for lack of any extra-curricular book to read,I binged on poetry that was in our ISC syllabii.My first baby footsteps into reading poetry,which I promptly forgot as soon as I got the sligtest chance to get back to anything prose.

College (4 loong years )-Year one saw me wine and dine with Ben Okri .Yea ,I was disillusioned and Okri is better than, and a convenient alternative to ,getting high on grass.The arrangement suited me anyways ...On second thoughts ,college was one long year and three fast ones.The fast three had me addicted to J.M.Coetzee!This is when I felt that I may have finally met the love of my life and felt a sense of reassuarance that I need seek no further.It was just JM and me ...*sigh*until I finished off almost all of his acclaimed works of fiction ...and I was forlorn again..Lest I miss out , I also had a fling with Harry Potter those days ,finally succumbing to pressure from all sides and one lazy holiday with not one other grown-up's book available but the HP3!I can't thank Renjitha,my class 12 mate,enough , for she was the one who kept pleading with me to read HP which the arrogant me had then brushed away with ,'I seriously don't enjoy children's literature anymore,please excuse...'.Guess the punishment for my impudence was the years I spent untouched by HP magic!

At Work(till a few days ago)- Paulo Coelho.This is when I moved from depending heavily on libraries for my romantic indulgences ,and started buying books.Though I had got a bitter first taste of Coetzee with 'Eleven Minutes',I lasted and got hooked to PC with my next sip in the form of 'The Alchemist'(Thanx to my cousin bro for persuading me to give PC another chance!)In PC ,I found someone who asked the same questions that I asked and what's more ,he went on to answer/explain some of those exasperating doubts in his own ways which appealed to me in a huge way.Thus began my scour for anything PC which lasted until a while ago till I had then obtained almost all the popular and talked about titles except for one which has eluded me till now ,'By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept'

Now that the pendulum of my love for PC is coming to a faltering halt, I have met Calvin n Hobbes ,both of whom incidentally hate girls !As a sign of how love-struck I am with these two ,Calvin especially (blush..) I let the Calvin gadget adorn my blog's forehead and allow it to sit there staring out at anyone who passes by.I am also attracted to the likes of Dilbert and Garfield,but I guess for now ,Calvin comics is where my heart truly belongs...

For all my pomposity of being single ,this post reveals to the world the secret behind my life long singlehood - I was always in love !Ssshhhh.... "I am single!" .Oh Yeaaaa ;-)

PS to my loves:Forgive if I have missed any one of you.My cobweb of a memory is far insignificant when compared to the true love I have had for you..Rest assured that you are safe in my heart !Cheesy ??? Well,this is just between me and my love ,so please excuse....