I solemnly swear to become a more regular blogger. For two reasons (and I really hope that you will take this as ‘refreshingly honest’ rather than as ‘extemely lame’):

1) One of my friends said that his only reading – the absolute limit of his reading – is my blog. So if I don’t blog more often, I’ll be causing his brain to atrophy. And I wouldn’t want that, would I? So I literally blog to save lives (alright, ‘life’, but that doesn’t sound nearly as impressive).

2) Readership statistics. I am used to higher statistics than I’m getting right now, and I have pinpointed the reason – the decreasing frequency of blogging. Pinpointing any other reason would just be painful. Actually, this does not really apply, because the number of comments I am getting remains more-or-less the same. So people are reading, but they’re coming around after longer intervals, because I blog less often. But still, numbers, people!

But I’m going to try not to trivialise my blogging just to increase frequency. Therefore, I will begin with this extremely trivial post:

By public demand (one whole request) – the Softy episode. I don’t think it’ll read as funny as it actually happened, because, as sometimes happens, you had to be there. Still.

Picture this – Salil, Chetan and good old Bidi have gone to Mumbai for the express purpose of buying truckloads of books. We are in Churchgate, and have spent about four hours on the street haggling with vendors trying to get them to lower their prices. Every vendor we meet drives a hard bargain, and with each vendor, the conversation goes thus:

Me: How much is this one for?
Him: Rs. 80.
Me: How about giving it for Rs. 40?
Him: No.
Me: How about these three for Rs. 100?

After four hours, we’re kind of washed out. We sit at a corner, wondering what to do.

One of us sees a Softy shop behind us, and suggests we have one.

I dutifully go there, and ask, “How much are the softies for?”

“Rs. 10,” he says. That’s very expensive, obviously, as I expected Rs. 5.

I return to the other two. I tell them what happened. And I add, “I was about to say, ‘How about three for Rs. 15?’”

And that’s basically it. Heh.