Why haven't I recorded this important milestone: the second time I got published in this country. It's on a broadsheet's online version, from which a tabloid of the same family picked it up, after ASKING permission! Hey, I own copyright! Does that make it the third? The online publishing doesn t count, does it..So let's maintain that it's the second.

This woman in a tight grey tshirt and jeans asks: How do u stay so thin? And I wriggle out, I think, but not really, with: I eat. No, seriously, she says. And I look past her spectacles and see the determined look that shows she doesn't believe me, that she wants to know how I stop myself from eating, that she thinks she eats more than me. Me, the glutton. Who ate a quarter of the chocolate cake that everyone else avoided, two green(mint) murukkus and fried potato shreds for breakfast and banana chips for tea, three quarters of the bottle.
Genes? Jeans? I am wearing a tailored forgiving sunny salwar kameez. She is wearing a tight grey tshirt. She has bigger boobs: what I wouldnt give for a handful more. And a bigger paunch, if possible. Mine is large enough, even if it doesnt show in my carefully flowing kameez. She has a larger surface area, definitely. And she is wearing JEANS. I do too. But even at 47kg, I do not wear tight grey tshirts; at her circa 65kg, I'd wear a kaftan or a pretty poncho. I am proud to have issues of forearm underhang and bra seepage. Without those, I would be a pariah during bodygossip sessions.

The American Connection

Two long sleepless nights of compensating for a week of separation! 3 cheers to licensed sex and killing the ghosts of the last Princeton trip!