I met Paige in Singapore. She was doing an English speaking course at the British Institute, and I met her when she was about to complete her course. Paige is from Taiwan, and her English at the time was … well … let’s say the course was a good idea. ‘I … Paige … sorry … my English … not … nice.’ Was how she had introduced herself.

Paige was very shy. She wouldn’t hug properly until she was completely comfortable with you. Which is why our first couple of hugs were like neck locks. So if Paige gives you a tight warm hug, that’s when you know she’s warmed up to you. For me, it happened the third time I saw her.

Paige would tie the bottom of her t-shirt in a knot with a rubberband, and would leave the knot hanging on her right side. When I asked her why she did that, she said … ‘Too long … I … make it … right height. First idea … mine. You like?’ I like, I told her. ‘Your English … so nice.’ She’d sigh. And I’d lie to her and tell her that her English wasn’t bad either.

One day Paige called me and we decided we’d meet up that evening. (This was the first real hug time.) We were supposed to go for Womad that night with the others, but Paige wanted to watch a movie before. I asked Paige which one she wanted to watch. She looked away shyly. ‘You … not laugh at … me?’ No, I won’t. Paige wasn’t convinced, but I guess she figured that if I had to go watch the movie with her, she’d have to tell me sometime or the other anyway. So she did. ‘We watch … Lilo & Stitch?’

I have never seen a grown woman laugh like Paige laughed at the movie. She was just … uninhibited. She was … God … I have no words. You had to be there to see and hear Paige laugh.

The next day, Paige left for Taipei. And two months later I got an unexpected call.

‘Nish!’

‘Yup.’

‘Guess me!’

‘Ummmmm … Zhang Ziyi?’

‘Nishhhh …. hahahhaaha … ’

And I knew it was her.

She told me how she had taken my advice and enrolled into a management course instead of taking up a job. She told me how she had met a really nice guy and maybe something would happen. And she told me that she wanted to come to Singapore, but couldn’t afford it because of the course fee she was paying. And she told me all this, in her characteristic broken English, which she claimed was better than before, and I lied when I agreed. Then she bitched and moaned about me not sms’ing her, and made me promise that I would, before hanging up.

‘Nish, I … think of … you’.

I’m thinking of you, Paige.

Arrey bilkul nahi yaar badi luchchi hai main toh issey khambe se bhi nahi touch karunga.

Main dekhta hoon kaun gandu isko 500 ke neeche bechta hai.

Bilkul nahi saale bhenchod operator chala rahe hain iss roti raand ko, do mahine pehle koi nahi le raha tha ab saare mar rahe hain iske peechhe.

Madarchodon ko dekho itna overprice kiya hai unke purkhe aake lenge iss kamini ko?!!

Ek mahine mein double ho gayi hai raand kahin ki, itni mehengi kaun lega.

Agle saal tak double ho jayegi, 200 se sasti mile toh le loon?

Kaminon ne 5% ka circuit laga diya haramzaade kahin ke!

Main nahi dalunga is chinaal mein … apne Haryana ke jainon ki hai chor hain saale kutte.

Badi kutti cheez hai yeh bechte hi haath se nikal gayi.

Koi baat nahi yaar … yeh sasti hogi tab lenge pehle doosron ko mazey karne de.

Life would be so boring without my stockbroker.

What a fucking sham. You’re so content to wallow in your own rancid apathy that you’re willing to take down all the people, those very sorry fucks who are supposed to be the support system. What support system are you talking about then? When there’s nothing inside worth holding up, there’s nothing outside that can do the job.

Who’s to say what pride is. Is it self respect? Is it prudence? Is it one up man ship? You don’t know. You don’t want to know. You’re so busy pruning your worthless fucking existence and letting your children’s lives be auctioned by some game show host on your big screen plasma TV that you just don’t give a fuck. No wait, you couldn’t care less to give a fuck. You’re so trapped within your own insecurities that you have ruined your life and are hell bent upon ruining your children’s lives too, because they don’t know better. Because of the severely dependant way that you’ve raised them, they can’t fuck themselves up. You’ll have to screw them up even, in your own personalized pathetic way to ensure that it’s customized to imperfection.

You’re so detached from the big beautiful world around you that’s waiting to be loved that you didn’t realize when you died inside, but you’re the first one to jump on a plane and head to some godforsaken town in the middle of nowhere because someone obscurely related to you died and you must show your face because you’re an obliging integral slave to society. I have a great idea. Why don’t you cremate your own soul first and then go around attending other people’s funerals. Or maybe you want to do the latter first, and then plan your own in grand style, to let the illiterate decapitated fucks who rule your world know that you obeyed till the very end.

You cry over lost love. Over lost opportunity. Over work. Over lack of work. Over lack of money. Over too much money. You whine at every given opportunity without even trying to look inside to find some sort of hope. At the drop of a fuck up your gutless spirit yearns for a comfort zone without even trying to find strength in failure. People are dying of hunger and you’re devastated because you couldn’t eat the best dimsum in town on your birthday. Kids are cleaning dirty sewers for food and you boast that you bribed your ungrateful wretch of a son into the best school in town. A desperate father risks his life day in and day out on a construction site and his wife scrubs 300 dishes a day because they’ve got mouths to feed and bills to pay so that their kids don’t have to study under the streetlight, and you throw a fit because your secretary booked you a window seat and not your usual aisle seat in business class.

Tonight, don’t sleep. Keep your eyes open for the devil’s tail, your ears for his laughter, your nostrils for his stench and your mouth for his dick.

Seven things you plan to do before you die.

1. Have 2 kids
2. Adopt a third
3. Buy a Penthouse (not the magazine, a duplex apartment)
4. Watch Pearl Jam live in concert
5. Love someone enough to con her into helping out with 1 and 2
6. Take six months off to drive around the length and breadth of India in a Willy’s
7. Buy and restore a Willy’s

Seven things you can do.

1. Watch back to back episodes of South Park and Six Feet Under
2. Cook
3. Hold my drink
4. Listen
5. Read ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ over and over
6. Watch ‘Scent of a woman’ over and over
7. Save

Seven things you can't do.

1. Can’t shop
2. Can’t shave
3. Can’t figure out whether Muslim extremists really think that killing people is their prophet’s will, or they just do it coz they’re stupid.
4. Can’t understand why Christians won’t marry other people
5. Can’t listen to Britney Spears
6. Can’t read Salman Rushdie
7. Can’t smoke anymore.

Seven things that attract you to the opposite sex.

1. Common sense
2. Independence
3. Passion for something, anything.
4. Ability to laugh at herself
5. Practicality
6. Ability to abuse freely
7. Similar taste in movies

Seven things you say most.

1. Ek Royal Stag quarter dena
2. Chai pila
3. Maa chod ke haath mein de doonga
4. No.
5. Aaj kuchh khareedna chahiye?
6. Aaj kuchh bechna chahiye?
7. Nahi hai? Theek hai RC chalega.

Seven celebrity crushes.

1. Rekha
2. Steffi Graf
3. Renee Zellwegger

Just had three.