Pyrexia of Unknown Origin

Woke up yesterday morning in a daze. Had a terrible backache, upset stomach and a sizzling brownie of a fever. Boka, my wonderful bong dorm mate came to the rescue. After a day of much paracetamol, fit full sleep and bread and jam, I was up today fresh as a fiddle, and all set to take the world of frantic daily blogging, ruthless commenting and business education head on.

I receive a lot of email everyday. So much so I never get enough time to write back to all three of them. So I prioritize and reply to all the women. (Sometimes this backfires though. I rather mushily mailed a nice bong thing called soumya, and it turned out that big bong men with hairy chests and gym memberships have names ending in A's too.)

One mail wanted to know how long I take to write a post, and how I do it. Convalescing from a fever is rather unexciting. Theres little to write about except how you never noticed all those stains on the ceiling, and that lying on the same side for a long time wearing a lungi makes your skin look like that crepe taffetta whatever thing they use to package women's clothes in. So I guess I will yet again shamelessly dip into reader emails for inspiration.

A post starts off in one of two ways: Something I see or read makes me think of something, which leads to something else... and as soon as it all accumulates into more than 800 words I drop everything and write a post. Or, its one in the morning, my brain is as empty as the Trophy rack in the Spanish Football Association office, and I panic...

When I do have an idea or a thought or something, then writing a post is pretty peaceful. Take a harmless sentence, stretch it, put in a couple of analogies, use a thesaurus, and voila!!! the hit counter zips away. For example:

I read: "Now dogs can do yoga too."

After processing for blog: "I have a pet dog at home. A german shepherd. We call him Raju. We have this thing at home. Every dog we own we call Raju. Male or female. Now Raju has a problem. He is as brave and fierce as a Squirrel who is signatory to the Geneva Convention...."

And then I go on to somehow link it to yoga and finally yoga for dogs. This is not as tough as you would think...

"... Raju finally ran into the living room after running around the entire house 34 million times and hid under the sofa. We quickly removed the intruder that had scared Raju so and burried it in the kitchen storerooom. That was one small, plastic, peppermint-shitting chicken that my baby cousin will never play with again..."

You see the faint elements of a satire blog post coming through? Now I have so many possibilities. I give the chicken yellow and orange wings. And make green peppermints come out of the orifice at the bottom. With such a indigestible mix of colours, the puke jokes are but a line away.

"... seeing the dumb mutt gasping for its life under the sofa, you would think "Man that dog could do mean Pranayama session..." that reminds me, I once did a yoga thing a few years ago..."

See the seamless transition from topic to topic, and the audience is soft putty in your hands. Now that you have connected dogs to yoga you then find a nice appropriate little snap on the net... like this...

Now how can someone not come up with a funny caption for that one. But I must say hot little cutie isn't she? Now if only I could get the owner out of the way...

Of course all this happens on a day when I have something to write about. Then I just have to end the entire piece with a witty reference to something I said in the beginning. All columnists who get published, and aspire to, do it. (Especially Dave Barry.) So I look through the first few paragraphs, find something and sign off in full flourish. Something like...

"Now I must go and reply to an email from a hot sounding punju babe called Reetinder Singh who had mailed in yesterday..."

When I am absolutely devoid of things to write about, like today, I just hold my breath and write down paragraph after paragraph of stuff, hoping it all sticks. And then I end it using a totally contrived premise...

"Dear guy who comented my last post, yes I do take criticism constructively, but my one-eyed bosom buddy from Madurai, who is an escaped death-row convict, and likes using machettes does not. He will trace your IP and find you. Please don't scream when you see him. He does not like loud noises. He tried yoga to take care of it. Didnt happen... nice hearing from you though..."