Imperfect Is Perfect...

How does Raymonds manage it always? Stay relevant and true to their product, and also touch that part of you that commercial ads never manage to?


On a different note, a man who does not love his mother, will probably never love anyone else. 

How To Hunt For A Flat In A New City...

Warning: Disjointed incoherent post that's full of inane rants and cribs written under medication follows. If I were you, I'd skip.


Back home, I have been the queen of the castle from time to time. And every time dad-mum went away for extended periods of time, I'd plan a vacation myself too(What a queen eh? :P) And although it's a record that I never finish all the food on my plate, I do hate wasting food. And so every time I had to leave the house locked, I'd make sure I was not leaving any perishable food items behind. Fruits, snacks, fresh vegetables...I'd make sure the fridge would be empty before I left for my vacation.


I got up on the morning I was moving out and went into the kitchen to make tea, there was banana-chocolate cake on the table, ripe (glorious) red tomatoes, there was one whole packet of mushrooms in the fridge, ofcourse there was a mountain of leftover food, vegetables, fruits, I saw three lovely sweetcorns and for a minute I panicked. Wait a minute, I thought, all this food is going to rot? And that's when it sunk in, that I was not going for a vacation, that I was the one leaving...that I was not coming back.


It's funny, of all things, it should be food.


Though I still feel like I have come on a business trip, and that I will be going back "home" in 2 weeks time. And specially today, when am all ill, I so want to be back home :( And then I spoke to dad on the phone and then I cried (Oh whatever, you're just heartless). And then I spoke to my sister and she made me talk to my nephew who well can't talk yet, but says "maachi" and laughed(nautanki) for 10 minutes on the phone, and then I wanted to be there and play peek-a-boo with him and hear him laugh and not be all alone in this soulless hotel room! Growing up sucks! What the hell was wrong with me when I decided I wanted to be all independent and live by myself?? I suck at this "independent" thing! I am even looking forward to my never-met-before, fresh-out-of-college, backstreetboys-britneyspears-loving-girl-who-has-only-read-Chetan-bhagat, could-be-spoilt "dally" girl (that should actually scare me) roommate!


And what's making it worse is that I don't have a kitchen to myself. I am already missing home cooked food. I ordered ginger tea today, since I was badly craving it, and good lord, these stupid hotel people can't even make decent adrak walli chai? And I am not even in China for pete's sake!


I remember when I was in China, I used to travel by the tube trains there and one night, I was coming back to the hotel and I stumbled and fell down on the bridge, and people stopped, looked and started walking again as if nothing happened. I came home and cried in the hotel room cause there was no one to pick me up, I am sure Indian men would have been nicer :) It was a silly thing to cry over. I mean, I fall all the time, not a big thing, I never expect anyone to pick me up in India here, in fact I get embarrassed if anyone comes rushing to help. But in a new country...my aloneness was so amplified I realise I could cry even if I saw an Indian ad. I need a lot of "me" time, but I have realised I can't stay away from my people (whoever they are and however they are) and be happy. At home, I hardly spoke to parents, or spent time with them, I'd be always locked up in my room, doing my things, which is what I am doing here, locked up in my hotel room, with internet access, TV and books and food, but even if I was locked up in my room at home, I could always open the door and hear my mom speak to her friends on the phone or hear her cook in the kitchen or hear the blaring sound of TV and know that dad was watching news. I miss those sounds. Those were sounds of safety and family.




And what it making it more worse is this hot freaking weather. I am 100% sure I must have sweat atleast 3 buckets of sweat in the last 3 days. No kidding. I am surprised people even wear clothes here.




And the cherry on the cake? I move in and I all the people I know here have either left the city for good, or are away till god-knows-when. It's like I am cursed or something. Why god why? The only solace in my life right now is my (good-looking) broker, who's is in love with me, and who does his best to make me feel less lonely (Stop laughing Apeksha). But unfortunately, he found out that I am also talking to other brokers (Eh well, I am new to the broker-relationship thing), and he was quite heart-broken. So he calls me up at 10 in the night and after a lot of throat-clearing says,"madam, don't feel bad, but please don't talk to other brokers, I am putting so much heart and effort in looking for a flat for you, why do you need to talk to other brokers? I am there no, I'll find every available flat for you!"


(And he said it which such sincerity that I almost felt ashamed for a minute.)

And I feel loved.

And shame on you if you judged me just now, sitting there in your cozy homes with home cooked meals and cuddly doggies drooling at your feet and furry cats meowing at you.


But being the sweet soul that I am, I could forgive you if you come visit me and bring some hot potato-leek soup along (beer would also do).


And so here I am, supposedly my second day at the new workplace and I am instead sitting all wrapped up in the hotel room, talking to myself, and oh, ofcourse, waiting for my broker to call. What? He promised he'll call in an hour!


P.S: G, darling, I would eternally hate you now if you now ditched me.

P.P.S: I don't know anything about how to hunt for a place in a new city and you clearly didn't read the warning, your fault! 

Hair That Smells Like Berries...

It should be against the law of nature for one person to have beauty, brains and such a voice. Really god, itni na insafi? Kyun? Kyun? 


Mujhe jawab chahiye!

They've Been My Fiction...

I was talking to D sometime back and she asked me what I loved, like a physical feature, about the guys I have loved in the past. And I couldn't tell her a single thing about a single guy. I remember the long agonizing nights I spent crying over them, I could tell you the number of stars that twinkled every night or how the sea-green walls offered comfort, but I don't remember if I loved their eyes or hair or mouth or hands or what else.

I don't think I could paint them from memory if I had to. I found that weird in retrospect.

And the more I thought about it, the clearer it became that I never took much notice of the physical form. I always loved the idea of them. The wondrous and magical place that existed between their ears kept me engrossed and busy enough for me to notice anything else.

And when they left, their dusty faces were easily washed away by the rain, but the idea of them stayed back for a long time.

The Future Is Full Of Fingertips...

“The broken part heals even stronger than

the rest,”

they say. But that takes awhile.

And, “Hurry up,” the whole world says.

They tap their feet. And it still hurts on rainy

afternoons when the same absent sun

gives no sign it will ever come back.

“What difference in a hundred years?”

The barn where Agnes hanged her child

will fall by then, and the scrawled words

erase themselves on the floor where rats’ feet

run. Boards curl up. Whole new trees

drink what the rivers bring. Things die.

“No good thing is easy.” They told us that,

while we dug our fingers into the stones

and looked beseechingly into their eyes.

They say the hurt is good for you. It makes

what comes later a gift all the more

precious in your bleeding hands.

- WILLIAM STAFFORD

Limitless...

If you're bored this week, watch Limitless.

Broken Women...

Is buying sex a better way to help Cambodian women than buying a T-shirt?

Read the comments too.

What's the way out?

And So It Is...

Opium...

You know you're are truly addicted to something, when you can't sleep without having/doing it.

In my case it's tea. I was busy the entire day today and didn't get time to have my evening chai. I come home tired and exhausted and collapse in bed, then toss and turn in bed for 1 hour and finally, give up. At 12 am, I go make myself tea.

I don't know if I can be saved, and further, if I want to be saved, which is scarier. 

The Girl With Smiles...

Divya,

I can't write beautiful poems like you do, but I just wanted to say this: You always wanted to help people, save someone, and you should know that you have already, atleast one, by way of your friendship. Thank you for being there for me, thank you for always being so strong and courageous and kind and in turn being an inspiration for me. Thank you, for just being.

Wish you love, happiness, success, good friendships, health, wealth and peace.

Happy birthday :)


Love,
A

Clipped Wings...

I am scared of being caught. Scared of being put in a pigeon-hole. Scared of someone telling me, you can't do this. I hate that. I can do anything. I want to believe that.


Friends often make fun of me when I tell them I am claustrophobic. I don't like small cramped places. Small rooms. The first time I heard about Vaishno-devi, I was scared and amazed. There's a small hole you need to pass through to enter the innermost chamber, and that to me seemed impossible. Every time someone talked about it, I saw myself stuck in it, always. As a kid, and this is funny, I believed, ardently so, that I was some sort of an angel (well, not like a nice person, but someone who could fly) and that I had come to earth for some reason and having done my job, one day, I would fly back to wherever I came from (Yep, stories, stories, I always loved listening to them and making up my own). I once dreamt in college that I could fly. I rose above the ground, very ethereal, and flew away from the living room window, like I was a light bird and my dad was trying to hold me back, like a kid who is trying to save a balloon that has escaped from its grasp. I told this to my family once, and we all laughed at how silly it was. Why am I so scared of being caught? What is all this struggle about?


I love windows, big windows; they represent freedom, an escape. As long as there's a window in the room, nothing can keep you tied down and helpless and locked. You can always flee.


I think I am running away from me. I think I am struggling to be free from my own grip.


There are so many things I want to do, and the only thing that's stopping me is, perhaps, me.  

Unbuttoned & Attentive Red Lips...

Throughout history, women have been depicted in great works of art. There’s the Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, Virgin Mary and even the Statue of Liberty. One thing they had in common: They were all the vision of perfection through the eyes of a man. “Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not . . . ”—Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear—“. . . when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing.”

(Source)

True enough, womanly beauty has always been depicted and painted and poetised and talked about in terms that would appeal to men. You'll argue that beauty's whole purpose is to appeal to and attract the opposite sex, for a whole lot of evolutionary reasons. And fine, I understand the whole science behind "attraction". But we have been so brainwashed by what "men" find attractive in women, that we, women, have forgotten what we find attractive in us. We have come to see woman's beauty only through the male perspective. We don't understand beauty any way else. And everything from hair shampoo to foot crack cream is sold with a promise that it would make us women beautiful to men.


Ask me and I would talk about a woman's slender neck. Those delicate shoulders, those striking collarbones, the hollows at the base of her throat, the foot arch. I love curvy feet or then shapely calves or even a beautiful navel.


Why aren't there any women artists, women poets, women writers, women sculptors showing us what feminine beauty means to them? Has no one ever found it necessary to find out what women find beautiful about themselves?


Is a woman beautiful only if men find her beautiful?

We Are All Going Forward. None Of Us Are Going Back...

Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently

we have had our difficulties and there are many things

I want to ask you.

I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,

years later, in the chlorinated pool.

I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have

these luxuries.

I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together.

I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.

Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.

Quit milling around the yard and come inside."

— Richard Siken

*****

"I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterious under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them."

— Richard Siken

*****

"All night I streched my arms across

him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing

with all my skin and bone ''Please keep him safe.

Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be

like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed

to pieces.'' Makes a cathedral, him pressing against

me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe

his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me like stars."

— Richard Siken

Just Like A Woman...

Nobody feels any pain
Tonight as I stand inside the rain
Ev'rybody knows
That Baby's got new clothes
But lately I see her ribbons and her bows
Have fallen from her curls.

She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl.

Queen Mary, she's my friend
Yes, I believe I'll go see her again
Nobody has to guess
That Baby can't be blessed
Till she sees finally that she's like all the rest
With her fog, her amphetamine and her pearls.

She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl.

It was raining from the first
And I was dying there of thirst
So I came in here
And your long-time curse hurts
But what's worse
Is this pain in here
I can't stay in here
Ain't it clear that --

I just can't fit

Yes, I believe it's time for us to quit
When we meet again
Introduced as friends
Please don't let on that you knew me when
I was hungry and it was your world.

Ah, you fake just like a woman, yes, you do
You make love just like a woman, yes, you do
Then you ache just like a woman
But you break just like a little girl.

Cupcakes...

Wicked Bookmarks...

Oooh I love this! So want!

A bookmark with the Wicked Witch of the East's legs and the ruby slippers...

Totally delish!

From Oops, I craft my pants. Lovely blog. Do check it out. 

Rooms With A View...

Now that I think back, I realise, every room/house I have stayed in, has always had a big window. Even my hostel room had a lovely window that stretched across the whole wall and offered a delightful view of trees and the college building. And I have always had trees outside my windows.

I love windows. And I wish I was in New York in July. You would have found me here.

Chicken Wings and Pig's Feet...

My five top most regrets right now.

1) I wish I could sing. I even recorded my own voice once, and I was confident I mustn't sound THAT bad, ofcourse people were exaggerating and teasing me for fun, but I heard myself sing for 30 seconds and I knew I had many apologies to make.


2) I wish I could write. I want to write, like really write. I want to produce something beautiful, with words. Why? Cause what else is there to living? You need to make something beautiful(and no, babies are not allowed), that'll be the only way you can redeem yourself.


3) I wish I could paint. I know I try my hands at colours at times, and I doodle and stuff, but that's on the same level as a little boy pretending to shave his baby non-hair because he's so fascinated with his dad shaving every morning, and wants to be all manly and cool himself.


4) I wish I could bake. I want to bake. I want to bake. I want to bake. I want to eat cakes and feed people cakes. People who can bake, I kiss your feet. Teach me how to bake now. Thank you.


5) I wish I could stop thinking. No really. It's true. I think too much.

"There were silences in my head. I could abandon myself completely to the pleasure of multiple relationships, to the beauty of the day, to the joys of the day. It was as if a cancer in me had ceased gnawing me. The cancer of introspection."
— Anaïs Nin

How does it feel not to constantly think? Tell me.

Right, and I wish I could not regret at all. I think that is the answer to all my problems. Don't you agree?

The Unkindly Ones...

I have read and heard about the hijra community before. The book Beautiful Thing talks about it in quite a detail. But today I read this, and I wondered about the human struggle to be something else...

It seems that, most of us, are fighting to be something else. Struggling to be someone else. There are people like Mona, born male, but wanting to be female. There are females, who don manly clothes, walk with a swagger and expect the world to look at them with fear. And then there are people like you and me, comfortable in our maleness and femaleness, but still struggling to free ourselves. Still fighting with ourselves, with our families, with the society.

And while the hijras need a sex-change to be what they want to be, it's never too late for us to drop the past baggage and be what we want to be.

Everyone has a chance to be what they wish to be.

I need to remember that often. 

Viva La Vida...

10 Things...

"I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it."
— Joan Didion



"Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare."
— James Baldwin

I Fought For A Long Time Now...

"It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

*****
Much like that, one morning I woke up and realised I had changed. I still wore clips in my hair, much like a school girl, and still measured 26 at the waist, and I have it from a 19 year old guy that I can easily pass off as a 23 year old, if not 22(of course I am vain, darling); but my inner landscape had completely changed. So much so, that I now felt nothing like I did just 2 days back. When I told this to AP, he gave me that you're-crazy smile, ignoring my admission as some female whim, but inside I was struggling even as I said those words, I wish it was some whim. I feel like a woman these days. I don't feel like a girl anymore. How does that feel you ask me, the skeptical you, the curious you, and I say, I don't know, except that I know I am different now. Age is now a tangible thing. I can feel it between my fingers, heavy, I can smell it, like burning rubber, I can see it snaking through my life cutting my dreams short, and I can hear it constantly talking to me, telling me to calm the fuck down. It is driving me mad.


For the first time in my life, I sat down and sketched my future. For a person like me, who lives life as it comes, impulsive, I planned. I wrote down on a piece of paper- 2011, 2012, 2015....


That broke my heart. You'll argue that planning ahead is a good thing, but to me that was cheating. That was compromising. That was...dare I say...choosing what to dream?


All these years, I realise I was stuck at 22, blithely unconcerned about the hours ticking by...and then I suddenly realise I am 26 now.


It's safe to say I am freaking out like a pig that knows it is going to be butchered.


I remember waking up at an odd hour in the morn to loud cries one day. I was late in enrolling, and so my college had put me in a hotel outside the college premises. It was almost a dump, the hostel, and to add to that, there was an open field next to the hostel building where many pigs made home. My room window opened to dirty pigs for the whole one week I stayed there. And I remember waking up to loud unfamiliar cries, on the first day itself. I opened the window and I saw some two men trying to drag a pig into a tempo sort of a vehicle, the sun was just rising behind them. I almost wanted to cry for the pig, it desperately struggling to get away and run away and not die, its cries painful.


I feel pretty much like that pig now.


I can not be a free spirit anymore. I will be tied down. I just pray I have the fortitude to go through with what will come next.


But god, I am miserable. 

Enough Rope...

And then the day came,

when the risk

to remain tight

in a bud

was more painful

than the risk

it took

to Blossom.

-Anaïs Nin

A French Mistress...

What I thought was a bold move, I realise in the morning, was infact extreme cowardice.

I complain that destiny does not give me a choices. Now I do. And now I must choose.

And now I hate it.

The Hand That Feeds...

Today Apeksha pinged and asked me if I was okay with her talking to S.


Apeksha and I were talking about my moving and then we were laughing about the movie KKKG, and about my role as "pooh" in final year play, and out of the blue, this. For a moment, I felt dizzy.


I know it was not very mature on my part to forbid my best friends from talking to S. But I did it anyway.


Here's the thing. If I love you, I would not hesitate to even wash your feet and drink that water, but when you're out of my life, I take everything away. If it was possible, I would even want to erase every single memory of me from the minds of people I oust from my life. I am extreme in my love and hate.


My friends are my family. And I was hurt and I was not okay with them talking to someone who has hurt me.


And, yes, I knew by asking Apeksha not to keep in touch with S, I was in a way hurting him. I knew it would affect him.


I knew it was a wrong thing to do. And my sweet girlfriends, except G of course(Who is also a sweetheart, but just more practical to give into something like this), agreed without a single why. They understood they said. I do have sweet friends, no?


So Apeksha, I am okay. He was your friend too. He's been a good friend to you. Yes, I still want to keep you with me and not have you talk to S. But I don't have that right, even as your best friend, I do not.



Things happen, fuck ups happen, people you love don't always love you back, you get hurt and you don't always do the right thing.


But it's not too late for me to do the right thing. I am sorry I kept you away from a friend.

Soup For the Chicken...

I am chickening out already. Now that it has sunk in, I can see myself cracking.

It's like, I have just learnt to walk and I am already endeavouring to climb the Everest.

What will become of me? I truly do not know!

And yes, a magic wand someone? Please?

The 7-Year Itch...

A friend recently broke up with his 7 year old gf, who's also my good friend. Two of my best friends are unsure about marriage, after being together for 7 years (You know who you are :)). Another couple I know split up after 7 years. I am sure there are many more such couples, who have decided not to tie the knot with their long term partners. I am trying hard not to be judgmental here, cause in all cases, the people involved are dear friends and I know they are smart and good-hearted people.


And yet, I don't understand the math here. If I was with a guy for 7 years, I'd be damn sure about wanting to spend the rest of my life with him. 7 years is just too much time wasted in deciding, too much invested with no returns. Let's accept it, a relationship demands a lot of you, emotionally, mentally, financially and physically. Quitting after 7 years, is like bad math to me.


I know H is assailed with guilt and remorse, he knows he has betrayed N, the girl who's now coping with no job and no love, but he still took the decision he did. Same with all of them.


I wanted to slap H and put some sense in his head. What has N not done for him? It was for anyone to see how much that girl loved him, and he is a fool to let go of someone who has put up with so much for him for the last 7 years. What's wrong with him I asked him. He said he's confused. That was like a joke to me. How can anyone be confused after 7 years of dating is beyond me. I don't understand it. I really don't.


It's not like they found someone else, it's not like they have suddenly changed, it's not even that they don't like each other any more...but still...baffles me.



At 27, our parents had built a fortune already, had a family with two kids, and were already saving up for their retirement.


What are we doing today?


Somewhere I think it is the "Hey, I can do better than this. I can get a better girl/guy", thinking that's causing these people to split up.


With the world becoming smaller each day, with easy access to grooming, with easy money, it is easy to find a mate. Or that's what these people think. I have done that and I can tell you that it is a very potent argument and it's not so easy to brush it off.


It's easy to imagine that perhaps your soul-mate is somewhere else, maybe sitting at that cafe, maybe you'll bump into him at your friend's birthday party, maybe you'll meet her in MBA school, or maybe just maybe, you think, your parents will be able to find you a better one. Perhaps a hotter girl or perhaps a richer guy. The unknown will always be desirable. After 7 years, the temptation to explore will be strong.


I don't know who is right and who is not. But all I have to say is this: You might find a hotter girl, you might find a richer guy, but finding good, honest-to-god love? It comes rarely. Don't let people who love you walk out of your life.

A Mourning...

I wait for the sun to reappear
but I fear
these black clouds have become a reality now
the bats a constant unhappy reminder.

The Argumentative...

"So, my darling Fred, I have tonight made a very serious decision."

(Pic courtesy)

Strange...

I am strangely in love with the word strange. Strange.