This time, as always, I’ve vowed to keep my room clean. Though I wonder how long I’ll be able to keep up with that, I do have experience amassed over the past three years. Every year, I’d bring more stuff from home: clothes, primarily. And things would just pile up. This year, I’ve managed to downsize, by handing over extra clothes to Ma-Baba when they went, and by trashing those which had lived out their years. The extra space thus created made my job easier, and now I proudly look around to see a habitable place. The new curtain (with Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse: talk about being kiddie) and bed cover add to the feel; this is a nice place.

On the wall alongside my study desk (it’s not really a desk, rather a granite-topped concrete slab), I’ve put up a cheetah poster, my favourite among the big cats. Agile and fast, yet graceful. It has one drawback, though: it tires very quickly. That beautiful sprinter breaks down into a gasping and panting feline in a couple of minutes. I somehow identify with it; spirited starts that end prematurely with lethargy taking the place of enthusiasm. But that has got to change, because I have a larger CAT to conquer (or, as they say, to bell). One thing about the poster, though, is that it is a freeze-frame of a cheetah at full speed, and not one of it gasping and panting. Me and my interpretations.

Another way in which I identify with a cheetah is that I’m a carnivore at heart, too. And since I’ve joined a vegetarian mess, I’ve been literally starved of chicken. So today I called up this restaurant and ordered chilly chicken and stuffed kulchas for dinner. It hasn’t arrived yet, so here I sit in my clean room, waiting for my food to arrive. That I skipped lunch doesn’t make the wait any easier, but it’ll surely make the food more delicious.

GROWL!