Watch her go as she sings...

Settled comfortably in V’s cushy pillow, I stare with the slightest of smiles as he playfully strums that famous guitar intro from Romeo and Juliet. After Shakespeare and Mark Knopfler, I speculate on the magnitude of the disgrace it is that someone with the song-writing abilities of Taylor Swift gets to put her ignominious pen to this blessed title. Disregarding such eventualities of terrible anomalies, I applaud fulsomely when he’s done, and he brushes it off with a blushing wave and moves on to play it on his iTunes. A minute into the song, I, as always discussed with an Arbit Prat, mentioned how my idea of a perfect proposal was “You and me, babe- how about it?”. V notices the longing of immaculate romances in my eyes, and quickly catches the geek in me off guard with a quip on his acquisition of a book called “The origins of words with their romantic stories”. I laugh at his smart diversion, and quickly delve into the yarns of how I learnt the word decoy when playing a computer game called Commandos... I wonder what brought us together- laughter, pain or just a mutual friend, but our chats remain outlined with the common desire for that which we cannot have, an uncontrollable fancy for things that aren’t, weren’t meant to be. Knopfler brings his voice down to almost a whisper, in those lines that kill me each and every time; we talk about how songs we like are very different, on the contrasting planes of acoustic likeability, and emotional connections. He plays Julia Dream from a Pink Floyd album I hadn’t heard of before as we dissected Wish You Were Here, making the conversation itself the perfect example of what we were talking about.

Over three hours later, after negotiating the minefields of dogs in front of the E&C department crossroad and Ravindra Bhawan, I return to the conversation, and despite my best efforts to control the habit, I revisit the events of the night gone past, and start my playlist with Lady Writer once again, knowing only too well it’ll end with The Hardest Part.

P.S. - If the Arbit Prat and the Delanged One are reading, I couldn’t help myself when typing this post, and listened to Piper To The End more times than good for me.

P.P.S. - The title is from the chorus of this song I’ve been listening a lot to lately: She’s Got A Reason, by The Coral. Yeah, of that Scrubs song Dreaming Of You fame.

(Originally posted on 21st August, 2010 at 6:11 a.m.)

...and, we're back!

Continuing the trend set in the past two years, the first month of the new academic year has once again flown by at a speed that would frighten an already threatened Usain Bolt. The wounds from the champion's loss to Soderling at Wimbledon seemed long-healed when Murray upset him again last night. India were playing Sri Lanka yet again as the rest of the cricketing world- the Twenty20 World Champions in particular- got down to some actual work. For example, Afghanistan is now not just playing an insane amount of cricket, but regularly beating other Associate countries, too. I figure it won't be as long as some predict before we have another subcontinental Test-playing nation.

Most significantly, though, the mostly-horrible advertisement for football that was the World Cup ended without too many memorable incidents, and the Premier League returned to my relief. The transfer window was typically Fergie-ish once again, but the slight frustration of not picking up any stars was more than wiped off by the impressive pre-season showing. Chicharito looks like one hell of a find, and even 10 million pounds for a 22-year-old now seems like a bargain. Even then, my instinct tells me Bebe will be another one to join Kleberson, Eric Djemba-Djemba and Juan Sebastian Veron on that infamous list of terrible, expensive buys.

The late Monday night kick-off meant the Azad TV room would be where I watched United's season opener for the fourth year in a row, although it's zilch when compared to the fact that this was the 15th season in succession that Paul Scholes started in a season opener, or that Ryan Giggs continues to be the only player to have scored in every Premier League season. At the stroke of Chris Foy's whistle, there were just four people in the room, and me the only United fan, with the others following the fortunes of their Fantasy League selections or there to wind me up in case we drew like two years ago. And despite their joy at seeing their rivals misfire, the opening half an hour had them all disappointed as Wazza didn't even look close to getting a shot on target, leave alone scoring- their captain was failing them.

When the ever-improving Valencia charged back to win the ball from behind, and a disappointing yet spirited O'Shea passed it to the Ginger Ninja, I, like most of the Stretford End, screamed "SHOOOT!". Yet, he calmly found Berba at the edge of the box, and the Bulgarian's finish was met by my yell of delight and relief. As the celebrations for United's opening goal of the season died down, the fact that I had no fellow fan to high-five began to prick me, though I knew that be it Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai or Gurgaon, Dela, Sushi, Gulati, Manki and Kaka would probably be jumping out of their chairs and yelling, too. The rest of the game, thankfully, was a breeze, with Scholes especially in imperious form. It would have been a perfect night had Berbatov put an end to that lovely one-touch move involving Scholesy and Rooney. 3-0 was still an auspicious start to the season, and definitely the boost we need before that ever-tricky visit to Craven Cottage.

Let's hope, in the year that marks two decades since Liverpool last won the League, we decisively knock them off their fucking perch. Glory, glory, Man United!