Who says board games are for vegetarians?

My mosquitos bite less if I think of them as mine. When one flits past and doesn't break journey on my flesh, I think he's grown tired of the flavour of my blood. Like how I've grown tired of stuffing my face with sooji ka halwa - out of necessity, for pleasure, (in small portions, sure) but like the other day, at breakfast even. What good manners we have, the macchar and I, neither exploiting our innate potential to toot pado, to descend upon our respective dining tables, eating instead like human beings who have been taught to blurt no, thank you.

~

I should've seen it on the board. We were playing scrabble. This 6"foot tall cross legged boy in his shorts and his white-tee with a green animal on it and across him this undecided-about-what-to-do-with-her-altogether-lustrous-hair peacock. I, peacock, was too busy flipping through this literal heavyweight -- Playboy's Bedtime Reading that we picked up at Nehru Place for Rs 150, second hand -- to bother paying attention to the start of a scrabble game, which in any case, is deadly similar, excitement wise, to the first few overs of a cricket match.

Nadine Gordimer wrote for it, this Playboy's Bedtime Reading thing. Zapped me. Also John Updike and Ray Bradbury and Saul Bellow. Nadine, I remember My Son's Story - that pink textbook we studied in college. I remember her from Beethoven was 1/16th Black, lying on my friend, P.Singh's bookshelf since her birthday two years ago. The others I don't remember from as long back.

And except for some colourful illustrations, the book's not what you think.

I should've seen it on the board. I should have registered that he made 'mage', as an opening word. I saw it. I know I did because I thought how stupid, make damage, make image...make *begin distracted thought* heh.. "Just image"... I don't know when we started saying just image (/e-maij) as an exaggerated, mocking, all-rounder exclamation for any and all developments, relevant or not. For example:

I haven't had dinner.
Just image!

I found great parking.
Just image!

Auto complete says How to buy a Canadian..
Just image!

This is all Mudita's fault. Mudita was 16 and in school with us. Us. Our royal combined highness. So this Mudita, lacking even the slightest awareness of anything but the swish of her ponytail, would express her genuine, pouty, honest-to-goodness surprise at, again, any and all developments. Except she'd go with the original: haw, just MAGINE! And this magine was said like the/your regular imagine without an I.

Just magine caught on very quickly with my one best, most gossipy friend from school and I. We were 16, too. But even back then we had little baby claws. Meow. Magine!

*end distracted thought*

Scrabble. One alphabet tile slipped through the bed crack. But before packing up the alphabet tiles and outsourcing the retrieval of tile to 6 foot loser, I saw the board, and said, "MAGE? What is MAGE?!" Only to be told, "Ha! You know our 'baulk' type words, I know my words for sorcerers and magicians."

Congratulations to me, I guess. Today's the first day I've seen those giant science fiction books come to any use, assuming that five points on an A4-size scoreboard for 'mage', despite getting thrashed for the first time by vain girl peacock -- as good a chat room name as any -- who you've been a relationship with but not lost to, still counts as use.

Maybe the words on board will get more piquant when at least one of us is done with that book of Hugh.