Although im given constant reminders of what a lazy person i am, its strange because i realise that i have grown in up in enviroments of extreme discipline. Its a strange, familiar, fertile soil. One that i occasionally return to.

I'll start from the earliest known example. My primary school was particularly notorious for its "excellence" shall we say. It was an Islamic faith school, and at the same time, one of the top private schools of its type. Money can sometimes buy you the prettiest of things.

One thing i remember very clearly is the use of smacking and hitting. This was all perfectly legal because parents had agreed to subject their children to such discipline. If you behaved out of line, the teacher would ask you to stretch out your hand, and smack it with a ruler. This sounds pretty rudimentary to those of you reading who might not be from the west, but in a western society, this type of approach is so rare.

There was one almost legendary "danda" as they would say in urdu. Which means stick. It sat in the corner of the headmasters office. I remember it very clearly, it was about the size of your arm, it was made from hard plastic, and it was a bright, red colour. Like the devil. But the headmasters danda wasnt as legendary as the headmaster.

He was a pretty short guy, but was nearly going bald, and had very penetrating beady eyes. He was never known to smile, and had an absolutely terrifying presence. The classes are all lined up in one narrow hallway you see, and so all the students line up outside their doors, waiting for the teacher. I remember this one time, (and it sticks so significantly in my head) where we were all chatting and making noise as usual, and all we see is the headmaster at the end of the hall.

Absolute.

Dead.

Silence.

It was like someone was playing a music cd and suddenly switched the power off. He walks down that hall, giving everyone scary looks.

Being in that school gave me a solid foundation of what was to come later. Having being taken out of that school in my 4th year, and then subsequently transferred into a state school, i got a taste of what reality felt like. Reality felt free, boundless, limitless. I experienced a life with no discipline. My school gave no homework, no uniform, no punishments. It was a very liberal state school.

Fast forward a few years to brondesbury high school for boys. Another return to form, yet with the punishments taking interesting twists. It was yet another islamic faith school, and also a private school, and i must take this time to point out the .....exceptional ....undescribable effort my parents put into my education. They gave me such a solid foundation.

Brondesbury college for boys (not a college, but a high school, i suspect the founders had english impairments, but from now i'll refer to it as "Bcb") was a strange place. It was one of the elite schools of its area, and yet it was almost brand new. One thing that seemed to work incredibly well was its form of discipline.

This time, the red danda and the beady-eyed headmaster were nobody to be seen. Nope, the new enemy (or ally, if you want a more optimistic perspective on life) came in two flavours. Physical punishment in the form of our karate teacher, Sensei. (Sensei means "teacher" in japanese, its more of a status/title respect than a definition, nevertheless this was how he was addressed, simply as "teacher" ....even by the headteacher) ...and psychological torture by Sheikh Hasan Ali and Omar Dukes.

If you didnt have your karate kit, you were embarressed in front of the others. If one person made a mistake, then the whole class has to pay. It was like this so we would learn to police each other. Once a few people kept making persistent mistakes in karate class ....Sensei took us outside barefoot in the cold, screamed in our faces, made us run around the school, and if your feet got cut, it was a nice bonus for him. He'd make fun out of you, threaten you, almost hit you. And you would feel ...absolutely terrified to cross his wrath. And yet at the same time, physical training was so intense. We would jog out in the pouring rain, and he'd shout if you didnt keep up. We'd do push ups for so long, and all of this amounted to an incredible amount of fitness and stamina, but it slowly built up over time. This time of my life was the most disciplined. We used to dread P.E lessons and karate .....and yet....at least for me, i would feel strangely satisfied at the end of each session.

Psychological torture on the other hand, was a lot more subtle. Sheikh Hasan Ali would find ways to worm inside your head, find out what makes you tick, what makes you afraid, what makes you weak, and then he'd pounce on it, as soon as you didnt carry out his class tasks. At the same time, his teaching was incredibly rigorous, and he demanded almost college-levels of quality and study in his classes. What is odd is that, on the scaryness factor, Sheikh Hasan Ali was considered to be more formidable than Sensei ever was, and thats simply because of his ability to bring out the worst parts of yourself and make them flaringly obvious.

Omar Dukes was more of the same, but with a violent streak. He would note down little things about you ....and sarcastically say "MashaAllah" or "Alhamdulliah" (words of praise to god) everytime you pissed him off. And the weird part is, you would never be able to tell if he was being truly sarcastic or not. And then .....all of a sudden, if you crossed him, he would explode. Omar Dukes, when in his rage, is considered to be the scariest person alive in that school. And yet he rarely loses his cool because he seems to have limitless amounts of patience. But when he loses it.....there will be no mercy. He knows everything about your family background, your upbringing, your habits, your mental capacity and how much you're worth in the real world. Omar Dukes was keyword : harsh when he wanted to be.

All of this discipline in my life has taken such a toll on me. My english, if anything, is strict, and disciplined. Not perfect, but im a bit of a perfectionist and i take extraordinary care in order to make sure what i write or say matches what i think perfectly (though i always seem to miss the perfect mark - everytime). And books? Give me anything. Give me chaucer, eliot, shakespeare, i'll plough through it if i have to. Other people cant even read a chapter because they dont have the patience.

Although i dont exercise as rigorously as i used to, i consider myself physically fit. And that is only because of what my Sensei instilled into me. An appreciation for what god gave you, taking care of it, and reaping the benefits.

But at the same time, im the laziest person i know. My room is a mess, i let the dishes and the laundry pile up, i wake up late, i dont make my own bed - the list is quite frankly, endless.

There are times when i return to this form of discipline. Where i wake up at 6 am, brush my teeth, have a breakfast, go out for an hour jog around the block, come back home and go about my day. Healthy amounts of reading, minimal amounts of computer time, some yoga in the afternoon, a healthy lunch. Maybe enjoy myself till the evening, make dinner, have a shower and go to sleep early.

These are the times that i feel like is so full, and so perfect. A good night's sleep, a morning jog, a good breakfast. These are the small things that really, really count. Whenever im disciplined in those rare moments in my life, my mind brings me back to all those things. A red danda. A beady eyed headmaster, A Japanese Sensei, An Islamic Scholar, and a double sided english teacher. Above all these, stands my image - in front of the mirror.

There's nothing i love more than a good shower. I think its just one of those magical things that really makes a difference in your day, one of those things you cant go without.

I really loved what Sylvia Plath said in The Bell Jar about water. She said water has a healing power to it, that there's nothing more she likes than to sit in a hot bath with hot water and soak it up. She feels pure and like a baby when she comes out. Then again, there arent many people who can say it as well as Sylvia can, so she's really taken the words out of my mouth. I exactly feel the same way about it.

For instance, when we went to Doha, we had to stay in a hotel for the first few days because our apartment was just finishing up on refurbishments. It was quite a nice 4 star hotel. I managed to get my own room thankfully. And the shower there was one of those power showers. Where the water comes out with these amazing, fierce pressure. They also had all these lovely aromatherapy bottles. I slept a deep sleep after that. I woke up at around 6 am, and i wandered around the hotel.

Like water, there's just something about hotels that i just love, something that attracts me towards them. Then again, when a hotel is being built, designed, and decorated, i guess the primary focus of everything is to make the guests feel at home. Every angle, every light, tile or smile is geared towards making you feel home. Thats whats special about hotels.

I love the sound the air conditioning makes when you exit your room. In a brightly lit, narrow hallway, you can hear the air conditioning humming silently behind the wall. The vending machine is around the corner. There's maybe some kids pressing their heads at the glass, looking at all the selections. You can hear the ping of the elevator when a group of people come out, their chatter dying away as they walk down the hall. The workers say good morning to me in Tamil (not that you would know what they are saying) and you silently nod and walk by, stepping into the elevator.

Its lined with mirrors, you check your appearance to see if you're looking ok. And you do, you look great. You pick the ground floor and shortly after, the door opens. The hotel lobby is lined with the morning light. The staff are already up, and are buzzing around like bees. You can hear the faint clattering of coffee cups somewhere in the distance, There's a musky smell coming off the furniture. The area is full of buisness men, working on their laptops, kids running around, and the tourists sitting around each other, with their maps spread.

This is what i love about hotels. The places where everything meets in the middle.

I've been described, many many times about how "posh" i am. This gets quite entertaining when im chatting with americans who cant stop swooning over my accent, contrasted with the english self-conscious ghetto hippies who keep telling me to "stop trying to sound clever".

I have my posh moods and my normal moods. My posh moods are defined by extreme modes of hightened excitement and the need to tell everyone about it. Naturally, i try to express what im saying with the "less is more" approach and a more expressive, extravagant style ensues. Everything suddenly becomes like a poem and i feel like i am this actor starring in some big flattering musical, chattering on endlessly. My posh moods are something of a solitary pleasure. Nobody can really enjoy it except me. I love being dreamy, pretentious, extravagant, and extremely chatty in these moods.

Generally, british people are like this anyway. They like being indirectly witty by being overly descriptive and pretentious. That really sums up my style i think. Im in one of those moods now come to think of it :D

So there was a new book arrival in the house. It was Nigella Lawson's "Nigella Express" a nice thick cookery book, showing her technique of making quality food when you're in a hurry. What i love about Nigella Lawson is that she is just a normal person like you or me. She isnt a professional chef trained in some sort of elitist kitchen. She's just a mother of four who started experimenting with her grandmother's recipes.

If you've ever seen her programmes (they're broadcasted on british television quite a lot) you'll instantly know its her. She's known for having quite uh, how shall i say, unique style.

So lets start off. First of all, she's good looking. That always helps. Next, she is incredibly, exuberantly posh. She's an Oxford graduate with a degree in medieval and foreign languages (i can hear tehreem's excited shriek right about now) so she's come from what you would consider a "posh" background. Her accent is actually worse than mine, come to think of it, and she talks the kind of english that we refer to here in england as "The Queen's English" which is a very concise sort of English.

Nigella's really known for having a flirtatious sort of presentation. And the funny thing is, its always about the food. For example, she was describing the peppers in her fridge, and it went something along the lines of this :

"Oh i do absolutely love the colours of these gorgeous peppers. Just look at this lovely aztec-y, flaming red. And that contrasts with the almost spanish yellow of the other peppers. It is simply adorable the way they look like a fire when you take them out of the fridge. This is not only comfort eating, but comfort cooking. Just looking at them makes me feel better!"

Its really funny the way people have misinterpreted her rather eccentric character and presentation as being sexual. She defended herself by saying that she was being intimate with the food, and not nessecarily flirtatious to her audience. I can totally believe her there! Why? Because wow, i can so relate to her.

I mean when you get flared up and passionate about something, sometimes you just want to write on about it, gazing into flat space, writing (or at least thinking) hundreds of dreamy, over the top lines of what's flaming you up at that time. That leads to a lot of people questioning silly, irrelevant things like my sexuality or questioning my sanity. When i see a beautiful tree or a bird, i just go on and on about it (provided im in my posh mood of course) and then my voice kind of naturally elevates itself to this really posh, glossy tone. People of course give me a weird look and think "what a weirdo!"

Yes. Quite.