A Short Guide To Being Pathetic

Caveat: Writing this at odd 2:30 am, expect a lot of ranting.

*****
It's funny how you can still feel lonely even with a house full of people.

*****
All right, if I am going to rant, let me get straight to it: I am not happy right now. Nothing more to say there. I don't know why things have to be so complicated, always, why can't for once there be no drama and life went on without any hiccups?

I hate fights. I am not like A, who can fight and then not speak for days with someone. I always had issues with not talking with loved ones. It just makes me feel...not complete. Not right. So while I sit in the living room, staring at the ceiling, I realised I am unhappy and bored of life. And I am hoping to spot a ghost or two today. That's the only way I can add some excitement back in my life.

What with the movie Talassh (which I found a huge letdown), I am hoping my unhappiness levels are high enough for a few good souls to drop by for a cuppa.

And then again, I have not felt this wrong or dissatisfied with my body ever. Not only have I gained considerable weight, just bordering on "fat", but also, I have been falling ill every week, without fail. Sometimes, it's your everyday flu, something it's Vertigo, sometimes it's gastroenteritis sometimes it's something else. It's like everything is crashing on my head and my body is crumbling under it.

*****

Matrimony, a topic that has never gone down well with me, is looming larger these days. A little comfort that some of best friends are also unmarried yet, helps, but still, I need to take that step, what with the 28th approaching in 9 days and all that.

******

Sigh, so what do I need right now? A ghost or two maybe, but also some discipline in life. For a person like me who needs to have everything orderly around her, my life's in most disorderly state right now and I am not very pleased with myself. There are things that give me happiness and help me keep going, but still, I am tired of your same old.

I want to have experiences now. The other day we played Jenga at a friend's place and you know, after a long time I enjoyed something. I screamed and laughed and got excited about something, even if it was just removing a piece of wooden block from a stack, and a bit drunk too. But I did.

That made me realise that we, as a generation, have forgotten the good old ways of having fun. These days all people do is either go to malls and spend the entire day there, with kids and all. Or then go to same old clubs and drink and dance to vacuous music and get wasted. How else can we have fun? Why has life become suck a fucking bore? Or is it just me?

The other day the bored me was on the way to work and I passed a garden, shabbily kept garden, but anyone in Mumbai would appreciate that there is open space in the first place! Anyway, there were 13-14 year old kids playing blindman's  bluff(?), a sight I hadn't seen in years! Maybe as I am growing older I am regressing, but I want to have plain old fun. I used to be such a happy kid. What happened to that happy girl?

*****
So, I want to have fun again, I want to feel alive again, I want to have experiences. I want to explore, I want to experiment, I want to learn and grow and laugh and discover, exhilarate and be thrilled and be amazed, hear sounds again and feel the colours pop. I want to listen and not just hear and I want to notice the details. And I want to look forward to living. I almost felt the old temptation of playing with knife and your wrist. Call me a coward, but sometimes you just don't want a break from life.


But no, I am not giving up, I am going to have goals and not just spend day after day doing nothing. I am going to paint again. And cook. I used to take pride in my cooking and it used to bring me such joy, I realise I have not cooked in months, in fact, I have not cooked since I shifted to Mumbai. And I am going to go out and meet new people and be sassy and fun and not a wimp or a needy little girl. And I am going to put things in the right box, cause that makes me happy, that brings peace to my mind, knowing there's order in my life. It makes me, perhaps, feel like I have some control on the way things are in my life and right now, it feels like I am just flowing with where the current takes me.


Everyday I look in the mirror, I am saddened, this person I have become, this is not me. I was never like this. I was so proud of myself, now I am full of excuses. I am tired of begging for scraps. I am tired of chasing and wanting. And I am tired of being disappointed. Of myself.

So it's December, my favourite month of the year and I have a plan. And I am going to make sure this plan does not remain just a plan. And so, if not ghosts, will Santa please show up?

An Octopus And A Pony...

I don't know how to put this, but I think I just realized my biggest flaw. And for your sake, I won't panic as much.

I Never Feel Earthquakes...

Do you remember back in the 90's the biggest problem men had when it came to dating was that talking to women scared the daylights out of them men? I remembering coming across a dozen articles everyday where someone had a brilliant advice how to break the ice-which usually was go-fucking-TALK-to-them. These days those articles have disappeared. We don't need them anymore, we now have the Internet.

*****
When I think about AB, I always remember the curt reply he gave me when I asked him if the Microprocessor lecture was cancelled; "apparently", was all he said and walked away like I was some lowly creature and he some God. He acted like one. At least that is what we all thought and hated him for it. He was one of those college topper boys and had an air about him that made people feel awe or hatred about him. As for me, I found him weird. And when Apeksha lost a bet, I asked her to go ask AB out for some Pineapple Milk**. She did and he said a "No" that sounded more like "In your dreams woman". (Appppuu! I am gonna meet you soon!!!!Yay! :) Baby! And we'll dance to the Pungi song! Fun times await.  Unless I die in a plane crash first :| )

Okay back to AB, I ran to the classroom, the ever late me, and true enough, the lecture was cancelled. And that's all the interaction I ever had with AB back in engineering college. Apart from throwing paper planes at him in the class when we got really bored and mean.

We graduated and went our different ways. Then one day Orkut came with the chat feature. Everyone on your Orkut list was added to your chat list on Gtalk. And suddenly, AB and I were chatting.

Today, not only do we chat regularly(I know, sorry for being tardy lately) and I must feature in his very small "girl friends" list, but also, I have come to understand him for the person he is and AB, sorry for throwing paper plans at you back in college :( You've been a darling of a friend, and one who's been always so, so practical! He's my "give-practical-unbiased" advice guy.


The whole point of this exercise was to tell you that the WWW has been really awesome, in bringing people together. I know so many awesome people, people I have never met, but yet who feature daily in my life, thanks to the WWW.

When I told my friends I was travelling alone all the way to Mysore to attend a friend's wedding, a friend I had known only on the Internet, every one of my friends thought I was crazy. But anyone who's been on the blogger and twitter has such friends and knows it's anything but crazy.


**We had the Aarey milk factory close to college which used to be one of our usual hangouts and the pineapple milk....simply yum!

*****
But as always, we have taken a good thing and turned it into a bad thing. In spite of having 1000 friends on FB, a thousand followers on Twitter, we are lonely and bored.


Boredom and loneliness is a problem today cause we choose to hide. And the WWW has given us that too. We choose to be lazy. We have lowered our standards and we are happy with it, cause not hiding and actually going and talking to people in person takes efforts, it means you can't be something you're not, you stand a chance of exposing your true self and you have to be vulnerable. It means we can go on pretending to be super humans in the online world and the real world doesn't matter anymore, cause look how many friends I have on FB! You can tweet about having a good time on twitter and post pictures you clicked last night with Katrina Kaif, but how many know that you're lonely? The WWW has given us that, a chance to be what we're not.


But why should we want to be something that we're not? Why are we so afraid? What do we have to hide? We have our BB busy status and we have the notorious invisible status on Gtalk. We have learnt to hide behind our FB walls and code life in our sly tweets. In a country of 1.2 billion people if you're lonely and bored, then the problem should be in you, no?


All you have to do is look up from your screen and at the people around you. So many interesting people, so many wonderful conversations await you. So many wonderful memories wilt and die, tired of waiting. I have a friend who's always busy on his BB, while I sit playing with my soup. I wonder if he'll miss these times when I waited for him and he was busy talking to people on his BB. And I see that happening everywhere. People enter clubs and restaurant in packs and then spread out in corners busy on their BB's. What's the POINT people? Retards.


When there's a person in flesh sitting from across you and you choose to talk to a machine instead, what times sweet lord! This is how these machines will take over us and this will be written as the beginning of the end of the human race. No, wait, I am not being dramatic here. You'll see! If you survive the talking-robot attack, that is.


*****
I am so exhausted that even the thought that today is the first day of my vacation doesn't excite me. Well, I still have to finish loads of work and pack!

But sigh, first travel of the year. God! I want more of these!!! I want more friends! I want to travel MORE! Argghh.

And God, if I don't get it in this life, I'll die and crib so much to you in heaven that you'll be forced to send me back to earth with the most awesome bunch of friends and loads and loads of awesome travel! Choose!

*****
And I am tired, I give up. Once I meet her, I am going to prostrate in front of her and tell her it's all in her hands now. She has to decide whether to revive or kill it. I am, tired.

*****
I want you to come and fold me into you arms and just let me be. Hold me tight and make me forget everything else. I am waiting, waiting, waiting :| Dude!

*****
I dreamt about you yesterday. You had written to me and you were telling me you were having some problems but now things are getting back on the track and you seemed happy writing to me, like you were not mad at me anymore. How are you sweetheart? Are you really so mad at me that you won't even talk to me?

You seemed happy in the dream. I hope you're so in real life too. I miss you, my Tarot lady.

*****
Look up from that screen and you'll notice the bare hill in front of your window, the blanket of purple flowers has disappeared and the wild grass has now turned brown, that summer has arrived and that it's time to go out and make new friends.


And while we're at it, I want to dance to this song with my new friends.

And I want to lie on grass under the midnight sky and listen to this song.

Living The Wrong Story...

There has been a battle going on inside me for years and I never realised, till now.


I still remember the summer holidays when mom took me along to her needlework/stitching class cause there was no one to take care of me at home. I played with the lady's daughter who was perhaps two years younger than me. I remember the flowery, dark leafed, perfumed garden and the corner under the guava trees where we sat and played house. We made tea that afternoon in little ceramic teapots and drank from little teacups. And I had never done that before. I never played "ghar-ghar" like all girls did. All sister's toys, dolls, were given away when we moved houses. When I finally met R and girls in 6th standard, I played with dolls for the first time. Being an asthmatic, I was never allowed to play like other kids, so I would end up spending all time alone, with my imaginary friends, talking to myself, reading, playing with trucks and lorries that dad would get, or fiddling in the kitchen and getting yelled at by mom.


I can't dance. And I am always wondering how dancing comes so effortlessly to most Indian women. So many women can dance so beautifully without ever having received any formal instruction. I realised why the other day while I was leading another girl in the Rumba class. I am not comfortable expressing myself. The "aada" that is such an instrinsic part of every Indian woman, it is so alien to me, it's there somewhere, just that I have never let it out. I have never allowed myself to feel womanly. Being the second daughter, I was raised like a boy. So while all girls played with dolls, I played with jeeps and trucks. While sister was flirting with guys in school, dad was teaching me how to repair a broken fuse. While all girlfriends danced on stage, I wasn't allowed to, so I stayed backstage and looked and wished I could dance like them.


Last year when I joined ballroom dance class, I hated it. I didn't realise what I was doing wrong but I was really bad at it. I would come home and write down steps in a notebook, 4-3-2-slow-1. Everytime I faltered, Shelly would say, "A, you dance well, but just feel the music, don't concentrate on the steps." I didn't understand what she meant. How could I not concentrate on steps? Wasn't that how you learnt to dance? But I see now what she meant. I am finally enjoying dance. I am finally letting myself go and feel. And I am loving it :)


Dance is such a direct extension of who you really are, it's an expression of your soul. You can't dance, if you aren't comfortable with yourself.

"Raat ko jab chaand chamake, jal uthhe tan meraa

mai kahoo mat kar o chandaa, is galee kaa feraa

aanaa moraa saiyaa jab aaye..."

I love this song. I love Waheeda Rehman. She has been my idol for so many years. She is my definition of a woman. Ins't she so lovely? So womanly, so graceful and so very beautiful! There are nicer songs featuring her, but I don't know why I love this song. Even when she's sad and yearning for her love, she's so beautiful and womanly, you can't take our eyes off her. You want to love her.


I think heartbreaks are good :) They serve as a good wake up call. Shake you up from my la-la land and force you to introspect and change and for good.


Sigh, I have such a long road ahead of me. 

The Deprived Goat...

And as I sat alone in my empty flat, away from home on a festive day, more to punish myself than anything else, I realised a couple of things about myself that I never knew. Sometimes I wonder if people, normal folks, go through this too. Discovering new things, new facets of their personality, as often as I do.


But anyway, coming back to the topic at hand, I grew up on a healthy dose of romance novels. I saw more romance movies than action movies (though I love action movies too). Come to think of it, I was always lost in the beautiful locales to notice what the heroine was saying to the hero in an oh-so whisper-y voice. And when M, exasperated, said, how can you not know? I was forced to take a good hard look at myself and accept that maybe, I am just not a romantic. That came as a shock to me. All my life I believed myself to be a romantic. Somewhere, I still think I am, but maybe I am a closet(whatever that means) romantic you know? Does that make me sad? It does. (No the closet bit, but not being able to weave poetry all the time and not knowing what to say and  more importantly, how to say it).


Women are supposed to be romantic, you know? They are supposed to be born with all tricks of the trade. Getting men to do their bidding is a cake walk for most women and I am always left with my jaw on the floor. How do they know what to say and how to say it? Like is there some class I missed as a teenager? I can flirt all right, but when it comes to the real thing, I am always left fumbling. I'll either say something entirely stupid and spoil the moment or just not know what to say and keep quiet.


So when someone says you have such beautiful eyes, I'll stare blankly at him and say okay. (I still don't what the correct response should be).


And although it does make me feel less like a woman, that's who I am. I am artless. I am stupid. And I am, most of the time, scared.


So, I give up. Maybe I really should go up in the Himalayas and learn how to chant and stuff.


P.S: Next time you want to get all romantic with me, get a list of responses you'd like in return. I am good at reading.

Love, Again...

The single most cause of unhappiness in my life has been fear.

I don't know how and when I'll get over my fears.

But till such time, happiness is going to be a choice.

The World Itself Is A Bad Dream...

You take something really good and screw it up. Royally. 

There's no one to blame but yourself. What do you do with such things?

You could spend your entire life in self-blame games.

Or then, you could promise yourself.

I Would Like To Go Back To Venus, Please...

At 26, I finally realise that the joke is on us women. And I am not bitter about it. I find it funny instead. Funny and even relived that I am freed from all illusions (Okay, maybe not all, just this one then. And I am sure there will be many more such epiphanies and I hope by then I will have learnt not to hit myself on the head with the "Why" bat but till such time, this is the "Oh My Gut" revelation of my life).

So okay, if this is how it is meant to be, this is how we shall do it. Countless women have made peace with it and so who am I so special to fight it? Nobody. I have to make peace with it too. And I have.


But you know what gets my goat? Why for the love of kittens (lot of expletives) did no one tell us all this? Like seriously dude? You told us not to trim our own bangs and you think this would not be important life-changing information?


But that's how life is, no one tells you the important bit and you have to learn it the hard hard way. Like I always say, it is unfair that they don't hand us some sort of a guide when we land here on this planet. Gross gross injustice.


G, I am finding it all very comical. I know you don't and I just hope you get over all this. I hope one day we can sit in some fancy bar with our fancy cocktails (or plain old beers) and look back at all this and feel nothing but calm and maybe even manage a chuckle, who's to know darling? :) Maybe we will! And I hope it's all soon.

(And I so wish you were here. Miss you so very much and equally hate you for being so goddamn far!)


And yes, I know there are no handbooks and that we have mothers instead, but listen, which daughter listens to her own mother? Right? And I know it's a tad bit too late but I accept: Mothers are right. Every daughter should listen to her mother. Even at 26. Remind me that often now.



P.S: It should be noted that I was not cribbing throughout. I am sure you will agree. I was merely, what do they say? Oh yes! I was merely "stating facts". Okay, doll?

The Wheel Breaks The Butterfly...

I am tired. And hurt.

Very.

But I won't do anything about it. I'll just soak in it for now.

I am angry at myself. I am so angry at myself.

*****
UD asked me why I am not moving out of this place. Almost all things here are broken and to make matters worse, I have one weird flatmate.

I couldn't answer then.

I always liked taking the broken and fixing it. I have never understood this about me. Why? Why this obsessive need to just fix things? I will live with the shittiest things, in the shittiest circumstances, but I will not quit...just so I could make the shitty not-so-shitty. It is a weird kind of pleasure I seek. Transforming things. And I realize what a dangerous habit this is.


But I guess which is why I am still living in this place. It's a nice house, or rather it has so much potential to be a nice house, but so many things are broken here, I guess that is what is keeping me here. I'll leave once I fix this place up. Make it nice.


I wish I could fix things in my life as easily. I wish it was as easy as buying a new wardrobe or buying a new pan and a nice green plant and adding new fixtures and nice gold curtains and spraying some air freshener.


But it's not.


And I am learning how it's not. And I am learning to let it just be. I am learning to live with the broken.


I'll soak in that too for now.

*****

Oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo.
Oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo.

When she was just a girl,
She expected the world,
But it flew away from her reach,
So she ran away in her sleep.

Dreamed of para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Every time she closed her eyes.

Oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo.
Oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo.

When she was just a girl,
She expected the world,
But it flew away from her reach,
And the bullets catch in her teeth.

Life goes on,
It gets so heavy,
The wheel breaks the butterfly.
Every tear, a waterfall.
In the night,
The stormy night,
She closed her eyes.
In the night,
The stormy night,
Away she flied.

I dream of para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh.
She dreamed of para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh.

La-la
La-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la.

Still lying underneath the stormy skies.
She said oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.
I know the sun's set to rise.

This could be para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh.

This could be para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh.

Oh, oh. Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo.

This could be para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Para-para-paradise,
Whoa-oh-oh oh-oooh oh-oh-oh.

Oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo
Oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo
Oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo
Oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo...

Underpants For Miss Sussie...

I now realise why I have always loved the sea, why I always felt this pull.

'Cause it always listens. You don't need to say a word...all you need to do is just sit there, just be...and the sea takes in all your sorrows, your pain, and worries and drowns them in its vast blueness...it just accepts everything you throw in. No wonder then, every time I am close to the sea, I want to drown.

*****
Thanks to the mid-night conversation with a dear friend, I have decided I won't crib henceforth...a BIG resolution. It's going to be a little difficult sticking to this one...but I'mma gonna try (So many people around me are going to be happy! Heh).

And while I am at it, I am gonna throw in "Don't sweat about smaller stuff" too.

You can tell me how awesome I am already.

*****
I am now singing this.

If you watched the video too, thanks :) I feel much better now.

Jazbaat...

There will be that conversation you’ve been putting off for as long as you’ve known you’ve needed to have it. There will be those words that you’ve rehearsed over and over–in your car, in front of your mirror, in your bed in total darkness while staring at your ceiling–that tumble out of your mouth inelegantly, tripping over each other to make it out just so you can get this over with. There will be that ugly ball of thoughts that hangs in front of you, the thick, opaque cloud of words that formed in between you, through which you cannot breathe. There will be that moment where you try and scoot away, wanting to disown everything you’ve just said, ready to scream at the top of your lungs just to cut the silence.

And there will be that moment, that brutally delayed moment, where they respond with a shrug, a sigh, a casual dismissal of all that you just implied. They will demonstrate with unintentional precision just how uninvolved they are, how little they have emotionally invested, just how very little this has all mattered to them. There will be the moment you struggle to physically scoop up every humiliating statement you made and all their brutal implications and cram them, hurriedly, back in your mouth. You’ll fight back tears as your cheeks fill, blotchy and red, like a veteran alcoholic. You’ll linger on the cusp of wailing, of running in any direction until your lungs ache–but you won’t. You’ll shrug and vaguely shake your head, pitifully mumbling something along the lines of, “Oh, of course…right. No, no, that’s cool.”

But it will pass.

And everything else too...it always does.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower...

"She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time." — Stephen Chbosky

P.S: These were taken on the way to Dunnottar castle, Stonehaven, Scotland. I rarely, if ever, take photographs, but these, I love and treasure.

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! 

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.

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.  

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. 

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. 

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.

A Casualty...

With each passing year, my list of favourite people grows smaller. Sad.

*****
 Is sexiness a lost art to the happily married?

After marriage, the whole equation changes. Sexiness becomes muted. Those navel-baring miniskirts that seemed perfect for the nightclub when you were 20 somehow appear pathetic and desperate when you wear them post 40. Those fishnet stockings that were perfect for your office when you were a rookie, now appear gaudy when you wear them as the boss.
It isn’t just about clothes, though. It is also about morphing equations with the whole notion of sexiness. You want to appear attractive but also want to be perceived as dignified. You want to appear desirable but only to a bandwidth of people that keeps getting narrower with every passing year. You don’t seek catcalls from hunks or come-hither looks from interns. You want—oh, I don’t know—class, maybe? You may enjoy being checked out, but you want their respect and admiration.

And it's not limited to just marriage.

*****
Once you turn a certain number on your age graph, things begin to change; your perspectives, ideas about life. Some gentler, kinder changes take place, some as subtle as Govinda's dressing. But thing to remember is that it's all good. And in time, you'll learn to accept these changes with the grace, and even, one might hope, joy.

*****

“It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.”

Don't beat yourself on the head if you don't know what you want to do with your life just yet. Yep, it's normal. Treasure hunt by Alain De Botton.