The middle name tag

The intrepid Dotmom has handed me the middle name tag.

The three rules to be followed are:
a) The rules must be mentioned in the beginning of the tag.
(Um, why? They'd work just as well at the end, wouldn't they?)

b) You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
(Well, I don't have an official middle name, although I do have a christian name that exists in no official record but my baptism certificate. Having spent a large portion of my life denying knowledge of that name to my husband and friends, you don't think I'm about to tell you, do you? I thought not. So I'm taking the easy way out and choosing Moppet. Also, I'm in a nostalgic mood today, so I'm going to match off the letters with random details from my past)

c) At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

(Oh dear, I think I'm one of the last people doing this tag. Still, tagging:
MadMomma,
Orchid (whenever she comes out of hibernation),
Parul,
Parul again (just kidding!),
Enigma's Sunita (I know, that's cheating, but I don't know anyone else with an E)
Tharini)

Ok, now that we're done with the rules and stuff, let's get down to business.

M - Maruti 800. Suzi, my first car and first true love, was seven years old when she was given to me on my 18th birthday. She was a very basic model with no air conditioning and no sound system, so on early morning drives, I would just wind down the windows and sing loudly as I drove, feeling the cool breeze on my face and hair. Heaven!

O - Oleander bushes. When I was a kid, my family lived for a few years in a small oasis town in north Africa. In the Sahara. All the buildings in the campus were set around squares lined by Oleander plants in pink and white. Although it was drilled into our heads that they were poisonous, I liked them. They brought colour and life to the dusty grey environment of the campus. It was a happy, carefree time in my life, and seeing Oleander plants always brings back lots of warm childhood memories.

P- Petticoat. What I wore when I went swimming with my granny and cousins in the river (it was more like a large stream, really) near our house in Kerala. Petticoats are thin cotton shifts and are usually white, so once they get wet, they're pretty much useless as body covering. But this was a village, the times more innocent, and it didn't matter to anyone, least of all the bunch of us, splashing, jumping and dunking each other in the stream.

P - Pageant. Yes, I was actually crowned Miss (my school's name) in class X. I got a cheap little crown and a sash and everything! It was at our farewell party, and I had put my name down as a joke, mainly to clown around on stage. I was shocked and hugely embarrassed when I won because I was (and am) under no illusions as far as my looks go. Today, being marginally better groomed, I'd say I'm average looking, but back then as a teenager, I was all bones and teeth and hair, certainly nothing like any beauty queen you've ever seen! Embarrassed as I was, I knew why I had won - they liked me. The judges were a mix of teachers and juniors from school, and I made them laugh with my silly answers to their questions and my refusal to take the whole thing as seriously as the other girls did. I learnt that day that there is such a thing as 'inner beauty', cliched as it may sound, and that there are still plenty of people in the world who can see it.

E - Egg puffs. I've never eaten any as good as the ones made by Real Bakery in Hyderabad. Just thinking about them makes my mouth water. I have searched high and low in every city I've lived in since, and eaten a lot of substandard egg puffs as a consequence, but have never found anything that came close to the Real one.

T - The Mask of Zorro. The first (sort of) movie date I had with a guy. It was pouring that day, and we got drenched just getting from the open car park to the cinema hall. And despite being so wet that any movement in our seats would produce embarrassing squelching sounds, we still enjoyed the movie. And I remember we had hot drinks and snacks at a little cafe nearby afterwards.

Ah, those were the days.