A Woman...

I immediately took to her. We met at the airport. She had come along with the bride's brother to pick me up. We said our hellos and me, like always, the curious cat, asked her a 100 questions. But she had me at the first one itself. There was just something so calming about her. Confidence and self-assuredness almost radiated from her. She was my exact opposite. While I am perpetually confused, she seemed calm and composed. Like she knew where she was heading and she was prepared. She didn't have an identity crisis like I do. She knew herself, and that self-awareness reflected in everything she did.


She was beautiful, not in the classical sense, but to me she was beautiful. Wholesome. She looked best in a Saree. When you look at me, you don't think woman, maybe the word girl comes to your mind. But there was something so womanly about her. Graceful. Her thick arms, you could cry in the circle of her arms and she would build a warm wall of love around you. She could envelope you in her bosom and you'd feel safe. You could imagine a kid straddled on her ample hips playing with her hair. You could imagine her with a brood of 6, calmly feeding them and then happily playing with them. She wasn't dainty, fragile, easily breakable. She was strong, wall-like, you could depend on her. While even a slight breeze could blow me away, she looked like the anchor you could hold onto. Flustered. Yes, that's the word. While I am, often, flustered, she was the kind who could stare in the face of a storm and then turn and look at you and tell you in a very sober voice to run, run for your life.


There was an openness about her that I so envied. I might walk like I was going to a war, armed, my face closed, betraying any emotion, but she? She looked like she was walking in her own garden, maybe out to fetch some fresh tomatoes. Always so uninhibited. Like she had a protective shield around her that would prevent any harm from coming near her. I would seek her out in crowds, wanting to be close to that protective shield. She told me she was getting married in two months time, and I envied the guy who would have her as his life partner.


If I was a guy, I thought, this is the kind of woman I would want to spend the rest of my life with. 

Men, Oh Lousy Nasty Men!

"Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy baby easy. He is probably strutting the backs among crocuses now with seven Scandinavian mistresses. And I sit, spiderlike, waiting, here, home; Penelope weaving webs of Webster, turning spindles of Tourneur. Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry. I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love: I am here; I wait; and he plays on the banks of the river Cam like a casual faun. " — Sylvia Plath

Why are we so stubbornly staying apart when we have so little time together?

Mango And A Jackfruit...

What do you say of a girl whose worst fear is that she would turn out to be like her mother?

Icy Kisses...

I want to pluck out my heart and give it to you. I know you'd keep it safe. Protect it better than I ever could. Keep it, won't you? 

Thank You...

The wonderful thing about writing is that someone, somewhere, at one point in their life felt the same as you do, and had the better sense to put it in words. And did it better than you ever could. And you read those words and suddenly you don't feel lonely anymore. It's like they suddenly appear next to you, sit by your side, and gently press your hand and smile at you, a smile that says, it's alright, and all that through words. Such power. Really, such life saving power. Thank you Sylvia Plath. Thank you so very much.

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

*****

"Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn."

*****

"I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy."

*****

"I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time..."

*****

"God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering."

*****

"Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night..."

*****

"I want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same."

*****

"But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get."

Reason Not To Kill Yourself...

This must sound mean, but heck! Kate Moss has got cellulite! That gives me the license to be imperfect.

To Wish Or Not To Wish...

Dear God/Destiny/Universe,

It's fun getting things you want when you want them, not 1 year later, 2 years later or like in my case, 4 years later. Or is it my mistake? Should I be more specific in my prayers? Right. I'll remember to mention what I want and more importantly, when I want it, since you clearly dole out stuff as and when it pleases you:| Thank you nevertheless. I shall try to be happy.

Yours Grumpily