Let's take the good times as they go, and I'll meet you further on up the road...

Of late I have developed a strange fascination for flowers. Flowers from hotels. Be it from the loo or the lobby, I love collecting a bunch and bringing it back to office. If you think I am bad then there's colleague N from another newspaper who picks up an entire bouquet. But yesterday I felt like doing the invisible man act. I had gone for an interview with the Pak band Strings. Since it had gone well, I felt happy and relaxed. There was M (who is N's colleague) with me. After all the journos had gone trailing after Faisal and Bilal to the poolside, M and I had the room to ourselves.

So while sipping on coffee, we started gathering a few carnations. After leaving the room, we tried our hands at a few orchid blooms. To our consternation, this waiter came up and stopped us. I put on a blank expression but held on to the two blooms that I had already plucked. M was busy sticking them back. "There are flowers inside if you want," he offered without thinking for a second that I might just take him up on the offer. And I did ask him. Seeing the expression (quite a bewildered one, I must confess) on his face, I stopped short and decided to scoot. With the blooms.

It was embarrassing. But what the hell, think I will do it again.

Sometimes is it not better to do what you want and not give two hoots to what the world thinks? Why not just grab the good times...In my alley, there was this fresh litter of fat little puppies of which somehow only one was left for me to pet. The other day I found it lying on the road and I started scratching it on its neck. When I realised it was weirdly quiet. In fact deadly quiet. Suddenly, a man on a scooter appeared and said, "He's been dead for some time now". I snatched my hands away. The next morning I saw him lying in a heap of garbage. The body was slowly starting to look distorted. Though I had not been overwhelmingly attached to it, I felt sad. For a life that was there. For a life that could have been. Everything is so transitory. You don't even know when you are gonna get snuffed.

So come tell me how many times have you actually done what you felt like without giving a damn about others...