Bucketed!!

Oh, I might as well admit two things right at the beginning.



(i) Idea NOT original. Only the list is.



(ii) I have not seen the actual movie. And my inspiration is Ashwin Ramachandran, fellow blogger.




I was going through this (in-ter-est-ing-!!!) and I realised I had my list too. The difference is that mine has some crazy stuff that can/will never ever happen. Anyway, here goes….



1) Own a farm in Welsh like the ones in Enid Blyton stories, complete with big mooing Jersey cows and chickens and strawberries and whatnot. I want my entire family there, with me baking fresh bread every day and bottling my own pickles and jams. For those wiseasses who might say ‘strawberries don’t grow in Welsh’ or something, please move over and let me dream. And now you know what I meant when I said ‘crazy’.



2) Own one item of every single huge brand in the world. The list starts from Armani, Gucci, Prada, Jimmy Choo’s, Bvlgari, Victoria’s Secrets and goes on. I’m not greedy; one item from each would be more than enough.



3) Go backpacking across the world. When I say back packing, it doesn’t mean that I will pitch tents and endure mosquitoes; ‘back-packing’ just sounds exotic. If at all I get to go, it will be first class all the way, baby!



p.s: Erm, well, you get to go round only once (pun intended), you might as well do it in style.



4) Make sure all the orphans within a ten mile radius of wherever I am are taken care of. ‘Care’ also includes education. At least, a-ten-mile-radius will be better people. Oh, and old people too; those ones whose families I will exterminate for abandoning them.



5) Learn all the traditions of the different cultures of the world. I don’t know why, it fascinates me.



6) Learn Arabic and read the Koran. I’m fascinated with Islam as well.



7) Buy a zoo and treat the animals so very, very well, that my zoo becomes an example to the rest of the zoos and all of them want to emulate me.



8) Shoot/ curse/hex everybody who eats rabbits.



9) Build a house with a pool and a hot tub and the works and decorate it myself (that includes the painting too. Yeah, yeah, I know it won’t turn out as abstractly pretty as it does in movies but I still want to try).



10) Invent a clothes-folder. As in it folds clothes after they dry. Is there something like that already? (Note: I DETEST folding clothes, but as the good- lil-house-keeper-person I’m supposed to be, that is/will be one of my main duties…*throws up hands in despair*).



11) Shake all those of my classmates who are getting married and tell them “WTFTW??, You are ONLY frikking 20!! WHAT, in the name of all that is holy, is your hurry? (For the record, I don’t have anything against marriage or any commitment issues. I’m freaked out by the idea of people I ran around in pigtails and pinafores with ‘settling’ down).



12) Be a guy for a day. It’ll help me SO much in dealing with them.



13) Own a chocolate factory that caters only to people with names starting with a P, ending with an A, and has R, I,Y, A, N, and K in between. They also should be Malayalee, 5’ 2(.5)”, 49.5 kgs, shoulder-length black hair and worship chocolates.



14) Play Blur all night and complete all the demands at one go. Also, be allowed to use Shannon’s F1 Renault in and for all levels.



15) Unleash bugs on all men who think that women belong in the kitchen, barefeet and pregnant. If the woman herself wants to be barefeet and pregnant in the kitchen, that’s fine; please, oh please, don’t force her. Not by brute strength OR emotional blackmail.



16) Ask Ekta Kapoor how her serial actors sleep eight hours and wake up without smudging their liner or mascara. Would be of GREAT use to me in changing my cat-just-took-a-swipe look. While I’m at it, I might as well ask her how her characters can be as stupidly slow-brained as to take three weeks’ worth of episodes to find out that their spouse has something to say/cheating on them/pregnant/dying.



17) Walk the red carpet to the Oscars in something that an Indian designer made which actually looks Indian.



18) Meet Sharukh, Hrithik’s kids, Shahid and the Bacchan family. Oh, and when I meet SRK I want to scream that girly way that just pierces the eardrums and come out through the other side leaving your brain fuzzy and you thinking if she’s lost it.



19) Find software that automatically downloads all the songs from songs.pk, bollywood section. And iTunes and all the rest.



20) Oh, one of the most important. Make fast, free internet connectivity available EVERYWHERE. By everywhere, I MEAN everywhere including Leh, loo etc.



21) Make sure my brother and sister have exactly the same (or more) choices and opportunities that I did.



22) Write a children’s best-seller. Like J.K.R.



23) Stop having dreams about falling off a chair.



24) Make Chocolava cakes the official breakfast of India.



25) Pray hard every night that 2012 happens, so that humans can take some time off to think about their priorities.



26) Make money less important in our lives.



27) Hope that people who are cruel to animals die a slow, excruciatingly painful, prolonged death. If I can help in the process, that’d be awesome.



28) Erase, rewind and re-record life and put a genuinely happy, carefree smile on my mother’s face.



29) Take one small, tiny little peek into the future to make sure things will go as I have planned them.



30) Grow bananas in my backyard.



31) Start a playschool and spend all day, every day with babies and toddlers.



32) Get drenched in every single rain from now till eternity and come back to my mother’s pakodi.



33) Never disappoint Nandu.



34) Meet a vampire. Nope, not because of Edward Cullen (I don’t find him THAT handsome, thank you very much). But because I want to know if an alternate world exists. Oh, even a Hippogriff would do.



35) Tell Swami Vivekananda to make his speech less complicated to understand because he actually has a point. And a very relevant, good one.



36) Never ever have writers’ block or any trouble putting into words the EXACT same thing that’s running in my head.



37) Do shots in a pub/ get a drink sent over.



38) Buy the coffee machine from my night canteen. Nope, I don’t want another one LIKE it, I want the EXACT same one.



39) Touch a snake (and not have it bite me, du-h).



40) Start a stray pound for all strays in the world and make sure they are treated right.



41) Meet the cast of Grey’s Anatomy with the (vain!) hope that they are the same people they portray.



42) Be able to one: freeze time, two: read other people’s minds (comics-overload).



43) Immortalize F.R.I.E.N.D.S with a museum.



44) Be able to look out of my window every morning and see vast fields of flowers and grass and be able to look forward to each day.



45) Own a library.



46) Visit Disneyland with my brother and sister while they are still children.



47) Hope other people see the small, happy things in life.



48) Honor A.R.Rahman, Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Kalam, Suu Kyi, Steve Irwin, J.K.R, Danielle Steele, Vellupalli Prabhakaran, Mark Zuckerberg, Amitabh Bacchhan and Jyothi Victor. Contact me for more details on why.



49) Be able make the people I love happy all the time, all my life.



50) Be able to call somebody a dash when I need to.




This has turned out more like a wishlist rather than a bucket list. Ah well, like Phoebe says, potato, potahto.

Random Question

Why are almost all the swear words in almost all languages female-centric??

It's exactly 12.54 IST.


I miss my mother.


She's always been there.


To fight. To disagree. To console. To talk sense. To yell. To have fun. To listen to me relate absolutely nonsensical incidents.


Ma =C

The "Brahman"

Scene: Person I know says ‘randomly’ during a study session.
“The house we have in Dubai is being renovated so I can’t really visit the Gucci store these hols. Oh ya, btw I found out today that I’m a Kanauji Brahman. Ain’t that kewl??=)”


Uh, why are you telling ME that, O all-knowing-ultra-rich-flaunt-in-my-face-female-who-takes-herself-WAY-too-seriously?? You could be a Kanauji Brahman or an Australian Cockatoo or even a Ugandan Flea Bird for all I care. Seriously. I don’t, D-O-N-T, give a rat’s wrong side.
Two things that I realized from this statement of hers.


Number 1: Human beings are SO VERY self-obsessed. Too much so. (Don’t get me wrong, I am not making judgments and I very much include myself in that statement) I get updates (and make them) about how bored so- n- so is and how obsessed so- n- so is with his/her love life and how they miss something/someone etc etc. Most of them start with an ‘i’ implication. But has anybody EVER taken a moment to stop and think WHY that piece of info about your life would be even remotely interesting to anyone else?


Obsessive Compulsive Immersed-in-Oneself Disorder. o_O


Note: Saby, however- whatever he is, is the only person whose updates are actually even remotely interesting (he has his own way of putting things).*kowtow*


p.s: when I get too obsessed with a bad hair day or a pimple or what so-n-so thinks of me, thinking about how much it’ll matter same time next month helps.


Number 2: India is supposed to be the prime example of Unity in Diversity and Ethnicity and whatnot. But still, most Indians, read: 95% of the population (and that too mainly the ‘educated’ classes), are so fiercely clannish, it’s disturbing. There are clear lines of division between people on so many bases’ that after a point it seems almost juvenile and villager-ish. ‘Mallus’, ‘Pandys’, ‘Madrasis’- active usages in the student community that I live in. I say: GROW UP and smell the shit you are cultivating. You people suck if you think being a Yadav or a Rai or a Menon or a Chettiar or whatever increases your value as a person, not to mention that you are making utter fools of yourselves.


As for me, ‘mallu’ by birth, with a Dad born in Trivandrum and brought up in Bangalore, Chennai, Bombay, South Africa and Singapore and a Mom born in Ernakulam and brought up in Bhubaneswar, Hissar, Chandigarh, Kolkata and Delhi, with aunts and uncles spread all over from Canada to New Zealand and Kashmir to Kanyakumari (literally) and brought up bang in the middle of TN (I was always an outsider, but that’s another story), it would be safer if I said- ‘world citizen’.
Scratch that. INDIAN citizen. A proud one at that. \m/


Mujhe is ‘state-ness’ ke jhamele main ni padna yaar, jaisi hoon, teekh hoon.


To Varun Nanda: India might suck in a lot of ways. Agreed and accepted. No opportunities, bad politics, horrible technology, irrelevant policies, weird psyche… generally sucks. But it’s the only country in the WORLD where you’ll ever be a first-class citizen. It’s your identity. Agree and accept.*hugsie*


P.S: There are four of you (who’d never prolly read this-_-) I’d dearly love to say ‘shut your trap, get over yourselves and get a real life’ but I doubt that would be diplomatic. To avoid ugly showdowns, I’ll shuddup and keep my opinions to myself.
P.P.S: The ‘Kanauji Brahman’ told me a month earlier that she was a ‘Tamil Iyengar ponnu’.
P.P.S.S:No offence meant =D


Edit: Sreyas Shankar's FB updates are weirdly interesting too =D

NOTES TO PEOPLE

MA, zindagi do pal ki, intezaar kab tak hum karenge bhala. Move on. You deserve some happiness. Live for yourself for once. At least start now. (p.s: glad ur making progress)


NANDU, you are a wonderful person (and I’m not just saying this). So stop hiding behind the word ‘introvert’.


AMMU, you are the coolest Gran I’ve ever seen. Please stop being afraid of needles and take care of yourself more.


GAYA, do what your heart says and don’t give shit about what other people think. U are the one who’s gonna have to live with your choices, not anybody else.


PUNCH, you have a LOT to learn in life and the world is a much bigger place. Be open to it.


INDUECHI, chill, relax, live a bit. It’s ok to be bad and wild sometimes.


MAMMA, stop avoiding fights and take things head on. Fight for your right; nobody else can or will.


PHOOD, prioritize. Don’t take things/people at face value.


STICKY, hold onto that innocence of yours. It’ll take you a long way.


SELF, control your temper & tongue and stop eating chocolates like a factory.
=)

1)The smell of rain, the chill that ice-cream leaves on your tongue.


2)The taste of Grandma/ Ma’s cooking, hanging out in the kitchen talking to them while stealing random bits of food without them knowing.


3)The way he holds my hand when we cross a busy road, the way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not looking.


4)The thankfulness of knowing when your results are better than you ever expected.


5)The way Ma’s eyes fill when she says she misses me.


NOTHING equals these.

sHaDoW

His name was Shadow. First puppy EVER to be born in our house. All the rest of them were either bought or brought. He was our own baby.


He was black when he was born…. looked like a little rat. The servant said he was going to be unlucky for the family, what with being black and all. Pffff.
His mum, Sheaba, was fiercely protective of him; all mothers are, aren’t they? Grandma was the only one who was allowed near the baby.


Grandma treated Shadow like her own baby… piece of her heart. The last thing I saw before I left for college is him sitting on his haunches in the best chair of the house and her feeding him cerelac from a La Opala bowl with a spoon. And he had a napkin too=) U get the point.


He was slowly growing into the cutest puppy EVER. He started growing a lot of fur (his papa is a Lhasa Apso, the kind with fur all over the face) and he started getting white patches on his face and all four, little, puppy pads. He slept with on ear open and started baby-yelping (which he thought was barking) at people he didn’t know. He took over my sister’s doll, a little yellow raggedy thing she named Manju, and ran around dissecting it. He learnt to climb the stairs to my Grandma’s room in a week; a feat which took his father more that three months. And all this with a tummy touching the floor when he walked=D Affectionate as only dogs can be, he followed both of us, me and Grandma around like there was no tomorrow.


He was a month old when his mamma taught him to uproot plants. Then uprooting the garden plants became his aim and goal of life. He decided that the summer was too hot and jumped into the fish-tank and not knowing how to swim, sat there in neck-deep water whimpering, till the gardener rescued him. He yelped the house down if he didn’t see Grandma for more than half an hour and ate all his mamma’s chicken pieces. Spoilt brat he was. Our little baby spoilt brat.


Then, Grandma went to visit Ma for fifteen days. She came back and got the shock of her life. Shadow, the fat cuddly healthy clean puppy had gone and a thin haggard looking dirty parapatti-like thing had taken its place. He had a horrible cough too. The only thing that was left of Shadow was his affection for us; he wagged his little tail and scarpered around delighted to have her back, his valathamma. He’d missed her and she’d missed him more than she would admit. She took it upon herself to make him better and restore his health; he was our baby after all.


He jus became worse, developed a bad cold and his limbs started twitching. It was a sad Vishu spent at the Vet’s place. The Vet was a self-assured bastard who considered himself beyond explanations and just went on sticking needles into the weak little body. The next day, on asking him repeatedly, he rudely said that Shadow had contracted distemper and that the twitching was going to be there till what was left of his life. He recommended euthanizing him.


My heart broke clean into two halves. He looked at me, his puppy eyes’ asking me what was happening. I couldn’t bear to look at him.


I asked God the usual question, why? We had three other healthy, adult dogs, none of whom were even de-wormed and never had, touchwood, any problems and here was my precious little puppy suffering.


I went to my hostel early and sat in my room alone crying and praying till I fell asleep.


I came home for my semester holidays and nobody was there to greet me. Manju lay abandoned. The La Opala bowl and spoon put away. The napkin was burned. I didn’t need to be told.




My baby’s gone.

Appu

Ever heard of a HEP teacher? I have.


Aparna Nair. Or Appu as she'd rather be called.


Best thing that ever happened to ASCOM. Outspoken, strong, passionate and fun.


Hates to be called Ma'm. LOLs.


The first teacher ever to say 'All the best to you both'... Damn, she's cool.


The fire with which she speaks about things close to her heart. Gives me goosebumps in her lectures. I don't think she even realised I was listening. She's one person, apart from my mother, who i badly wanna be like. To emulate. For me, she's the ultimate journalist. A face n a passion I can relate to, I can try to be like.


I so very badly wanted to prove myself to her. Starting trouble. Ridiculous considering the kinda person she is but stil. She was close to other people n I just couldn't open my mouth around her. Then she left. And I lost out on a world of wisdom n fun.


Amrita's given her lots of pain. Pain, she doesn't deserve. Frustrating, annoying, insulting, brainless people. I will not tell her 'i wish u wer here' just to satisfy my need for a mentor.


Wish you all the happiness in the world. All the success.


God bless.

The 'Scooter'

I can feel the wind in my hair.
You say, “I like this…. I like zooming around the city on your scooter”


“It’s not a scooter, it’s a two-wheeler”.


He never used to sit behind me on any kind of vehicle. His explanation was that I was a girl. And girls are supposed to sit quietly, daintily behind and hold on tight.


You have no stupid notions. U don’t mind.


I’m glad I can show you my city as I love it. It might be pathetic but it IS my city. I’m glad to ‘scooter’ around the city with you.


I can’t stop comparing you both I know u’d hate it if u knew but I can’t. Every single thing that you do makes me think wat he wud’ve done.


And wake up to the realization how ‘unright’ dat was. How miserable I was. It was not his fault. It was me. I was too blind.


Now, here I am. With you. And its almost my perfect story. No compromises. No making myself believe that this is right.


Best of all, I can SEE a future. And in the future I can c myself. Being ME.


U hold me tighter.


But u lemme free.

Chocolated!!!

I live in a world where roads are made of diary milk, trees trunks are made of perk with FerreroRochers hanging from the branches. I have Twix bars for breakfast, Mars bars for lunch and mum makes either chocolate cake or brownies for dinner. In the hostel, we get only Toblerones for dinner. Sometimes we have to make do with Milkybars. Sundays are Kitkat days.


The Bounty-cars are faster than the Hershey ones. I joined the melted chocolate swimming pool last week; so much more fun. I got so hungry today morning that I knocked over a bowl of chocolate syrup and bit off the edge of the cheesecake dining table and mum called me Butterfingers n grounded me to my Cadbury room for three days.


I love getting wet in the Snickers rain and I can’t sleep without my Gummibear. Godiva, my best friend, hasa Reese’s pieceswalkway and Twizzlers umbrellas by her liquorice pool.


I completed my assignment on M&M’s and started dreaming about my guy taking me toHershey’s chocolate world.
Kaash…….


(p.s: I am not mentally deranged, just have a permanent chocolate craving…a girl can dream, can’t she?
p.p.s: My roomie lives in a ‘pringles’ world.
p.p.s.s:I still have the writing-post-script-for-everything disease)

Exams.... :(

They come. Slowly sneaking up on you, when you are least expecting it.

Like an epidemic..

They have this eerie quality about them...

A quality which renders whole campuses silent.... canteens empty...

Everywhere you look, you see the ones that are affected;

Books in hand,

Feverishly repeating "one bla plus three bla is equal to four and a half bla..." (or some such poop; commerce student, don't mind:P)

Mess halls have lights on throughout the nights,

Coffee is in great demand.

Ten A.M is greatly detested and feared,

Invigilators are treated with a mixture of disdain and false respect.

Some come out with smug faces, trying not to look too smug,

Some have 'flunk' written all over their faces,

While some like me know that they haven't written what they were supposed too but pray really hard for the examiner to have a bad case of cold or a heart of gold (depending on how bad the paper is),

Pens bought and papers read,

No time for the usual leisurely walks around campus amidst the scenery, (4 u Gaya)

Relief at long last!!!

Dancing out the damned hall.... Free at last.

Ah..the sweet smell of the last day of exams;

Sweet indeed.

(p.s: i wish we could just skip to the sweet part directly...sob, sob)

(p.p.s: incase you haven't already guessed, my exams are almost on top of me, ensuring a constant stream of paranoid writing)

For a lifetime...

“Baby…. Like you had Vipul… I had someone one else too…. Aditi”

She kept reading the text again and again like she couldn’t understand English. Everything stopped in time and space. Her nightmare had come true.

“Baby, u der?”…. “V were goin out 4 lik two months, v realized v wer not ryt 4 each other and spilt up.”….”Baby, I’m sry, I shud’ve told u dis b4”…. He kept on sending texts, she couldn’t bring herself to type.

Weirdly, all that was going on in her head was that he had pinky-promised when she asked him if he had had someone back in Dubai.

She knew the actual part of him having an ex- didn’t matter, well, she had one herself, didn’t she…

But it kept rankling with her that he hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her, hadn’t trusted her love for him enough to tell her earlier.

She knew he was freaking out without being able to call her… he’d jus finished all his balance on her.

“Jus go 2 sleep, v’ll tok abt it tom”….. she knew he wouldn’t listen. She lay down looking out of the window hearing the storm that wasn’t there. She thought about why it mattered to her. He had made it clear that it was over, proved again and again that he loved her to bits but it still mattered that her chakkara had said ‘I love you’ to an Aditi before.

Aditi.

The girl who had given her a FB request three days ago.

She probably would know about me and him… our pictures were all over our profiles.

I wondered if she cared. If it mattered.

The rational side told her it didn’t matter. But there was an imaginary hole where her stomach had been.

“I luv u”….. she didn’t reply. She realized she wasn’t being fair. But it would never be the same.

Her phone rang, ‘the stars are holding you, holding you, tonight’…their song…. Seemed like an eon back.

Unknown number. It was him.

She picked it up. “Baby, please….”, “I know I should have told you, I made a mistake”

“I asked you…. Gazillion times”

“Baby, I’m sorry, I thought I’d lose you….. I love you… U know that”

Silence.

“Baby, say something” His voice broke.

“What do you want me to say”. He hated that sentence and she knew it. She still said it.

She knew he would never hurt her on purpose… he was too giving for that. He loved her too much. But the trust. She cut the call.

Both of them didn’t sleep that night.

She got ready fast in the morning, skipped breakfast and went to the class fast. She didn’t text him.

He came sat next to her. “I’m sorry”. She kept getting visions of him with another girl. She couldn’t look him in the eye.

It was killing him. He was regretting it. She could see it. For the first time since they got together, things were awkward between them.

He said ‘I love you’…. She said it back in her head, he waited.

He was still her chakkara. He didn’t deserve to be punished or hurt like this. Hadn’t he accepted her with open arms with her issues and emo baggage? He didn’t deserve anger or hurt for being honest. She was lucky to get him…. Her other half… almost literally. Few people were that lucky.

“I love you too, honey….”

Both of them were in tears. They knew nothing had changed. Nothing ever would.

Dedicated to Ducky.

U mean the world, baby.

A Mixed Bag

An attempt to profile the typecast ‘roomies’….




The Warrior:
This is the ‘it’ girl…..full of confidence and a burning desire to be in the centre. Achieving is in her blood. Eternally lazy (and no apologies about it) and on the ‘quakative’ side, she’ll do anything for those who she believes are her true friends. With opinions on almost everything, she believes in ‘work hard, party much… much harder’. Also one of the few ones to attract trouble from a mile away and mature beyond her years, this is the kind guys call their ‘best bud’. It takes a LOT to please her.


The Indigenous Indian:
The good one, picking up clothes, books and what-not after the others, is very family-oriented. Runs off home the first chance she gets and has no problem spending ALL her time with the family. The ‘mother-hen’ of the brood and she’s the reason the rest of them make it on time to class in the morning. Anything to be done has to be done IMMEDIATELY. She’s the one you automatically go to for a hug. But don’t you underestimate her; with a tongue razor-sharp, she doesn’t take flak from anybody…. Rub her the wrong way and she’ll reduce you to tears of frustration in seconds.


The Whining Star:
Spoilt rotten by the parents and still living in the 3 century BCE, this one is innocent to the point of irritating. Very methodical but harum-scarum and very clean but untidy, this one gets depressed that the others don’t like her but doesn’t realize it’s her own behavior that’s makes them run for their lives. At some point, you start feeling sorry for her and try to include her in the melee but most of the time the effort ends up blowing up in your own face.


Last, but definitely not the least by ANY means


The Pinksy-Winksy:
The happy-go-lucky one gets into scrapes ALL the time with her spit-fire temper, and trusts easily. The emotional fool has ‘good intentioned’ plans for everyday but rarely do things work out according to the plan. Likes an order to things, likes to be in control…. ‘unexpected’ is her least favorite word. Dreams big, easily pleased and never compromises with core values. Immature and impulsive, she learns things the hard way.


The world is their niche……

The ‘right’ thing to do

In life, how will we know that the decisions that we taken (the ones that matter anyway) are the right ones?


For example, we decide to move to a foreign land with our family on a permanent visa after 15 years of dreaming of it (and quitting a perfectly stable, well-paying and permanent post) though we know that there is no job waiting for us there and nobody even remotely close to family or friends. How do we know if it is the right decision to actually live the dream?


Or we take a decision to pursue something that’s opposite to what we planned for, dreamt of. Change our whole lives based on a hunch that plan A might be better than plan B; how do we know that plan B is what we are supposed to be doing in the first place?


Or fall in love. How do we know that this is the person we are supposed to spend the rest of our lives with? How do we know that we’ll have the same romance, beautiful and lasting beyond death, which our grandparents have? How do we know that it is not the biggest miscalculation that we ever made?


How do we decide to leave behind family and friends when they need us the most, just because we think we can do more for them by leaving than staying and know that is what we are meant to do, rather than be with them?
How can we make sure that we are doing what God wants us to; what he has written for us??


The thing is, we CAN’T know. We just have to take a deep breath, just do it and get it over with…. More importantly, live with it afterward. If we are lucky and have been true to our conscience, the happiness comes. Otherwise, rot in personal hell...


:D Ok…maybe not hell, but certainly with the knowledge of what could have been and what made the difference were the decisions we made.

Uh....oh kay...

Not custard. Not a honey-comb. Not the inside of a mango. Not sepia-tinted or photoshoped.

My neighbor decided to repaint his house.

What, in the name of all that’s holy, was he thinking!!!