Yesterday I got flowers! I don't remember the last time someone brought me flowers! And this bouquet has yellow roses, which are my favourite. I also got a tin of my favourite Danish butter cookies along with the roses. Could a girl be any more pampered? Thank you K&K!

So I'm going back to school now and it's fun. A far cry from my early years, when I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to kindergarten. I always hated school, especially the beginning of the academic year. It meant going to school in the dreary wet Bombay monsoons. Even now the first sign of dark clouds and my mind races back to the trauma of the first day of school!

This time is different though. I am going willingly, out of my own choice, to study something that I love. The last time I went to an educational institution was in 1995. The only things I learned were how to survive on cigarettes, tiny cups of sugary tea, and cheap booze. Most of my classes were spent sitting on the steps outside college where my friends and I devised different ways of torturing men (and some women) we didn't like.

Since it was a professional course, we all had to further degrade ourselves and work as interns for long hours with zero pay. If you were lucky you landed a job at the end of the month, if not you had to go back and pretend that you were studying for a better future. I guess I was lucky. I was the first person in my class to get a job, that too on the 3rd day of my internship! So I started working and it wasn't very different from college - I was still surviving on cigarettes, endless cups of sweet tea, and sometimes cheap booze. But the difference was that here I also had to work, work, work, non-stop for the first three months without a single day off. I still wonder how I did it!

So 14 years later, I am going back to school and this time, hopefully, to actually LEARN. I'm excited as hell and looking forward to every single day of the next three months. Except for one thing - I just found out that I have to wear a uniform! That's one thing I've never been able to do well - conform! If you happen to see a freakishly over-sized penguin waddling around Bombay, don't mistake it for an errant member of the cast of Happy Feet running amok. It's only me :-)



Since I'm talking about school - here's a good place as any to talk about something that actually matters.

The School = Lunch Project.

It's run by a bunch of angels who feed 6,60,000 underprivileged children one hot meal every day. This meal is served at the municipal school they study in, and is very often the only way to convince their parents to send their kids to school.

One hot meal. For which the parent sacrifices sending the child to wash your car or sell flowers at the signal. One hot meal. Which is probably the only nutritious meal the child has in a day. One hot meal. That brings a child to school every day.

And all it takes is Rs 700 for a whole school year.

To donate, you could use the internet payment gateway at www.middaymeal.com or call 022 40366866. Or Draw cheque in favour of 'ISKCON Food Relief Foundation' and drop it at Nanha Munna Rahi Hoon, ISKCON Food Relief Foundation, 19 Jaywant Industrial Premises, 63 Tardeo Road, Mumbai 400 034.

Please contribute now. I just did.