...and they say marriage is bliss. I am not married yet and I feel like …never mind….let's not get there...but ya…I will I will I will write…
Just the way I'll meet my friends
Just the way I'll go to my library more often..."You won't be the 'runaway bride', no?"
A random conversation, with an ex-classmate-cum-ex-colleague
Most of the things these people say, if you are in the habit of reading between the letters, say a lot about you. Each comment, each opinion, each gesture, each expression carries with it an entire baggage of all the time spent together, of all the lessons learnt the hard way, of all the caveats rendered subtlely .
So when one such friend, rather carefully asked, "D, you won't be a runaway bride, no?", I was slightly taken aback. I smiled, ia half-hearted manner, spoke about the weather, the new pain-in-the-wrong-place colleague and tehn when I thought enough time had passed by to make it look like just another casual question, I asked, "Oye, how come you said that?"
T: said what?
D (also, me): …that thing about not beinga runaway bride…
T: Oh that….well, it's nothing…
I didn't insist. But I'm sure she must have just thought that how come a wayward brat, (pampered goose is one of the many endearements showered on me by T) like D, somebody so to the point, somebody so reckless, so crass, settle down? Let's say this is one of D's hasty decisions, still what when she finally realises the baggage that she's agreed to be a aprt of is just more messy than her messed up self? MAybe she'll be the runaway bride.
Maybe not!!
What ifs and what if nots...
So what will happen to the backpacking to China and Ladakh and Leh and Italy and Andaman and Lakshadweep and some island or the other…?
What about learning Spanish and Italian?
What about learning Salsa?
What about learning to drive a four-wheel (OK, now that might be possible…)?
What about traveling far and wide… writing for Outlook-Traveller / India Today –Travel Plus?
What about making some exotic dishes from the exotic locales visited?
What about watching all those foreign films… trying to make sense of it…appreciating good sense / taste…swearing at the bad ones?
What about just staring into the oblivion without a possible purpose and not being labeled a 'pseudo' like some of those modern artistes?
What about waking up in the middle of the night just to make a cup of ginger tea, pick up a book, watch a movie and just not worry about who will think what?
What about just falling sick on a Friday / Monday and just going for a small trek to some obscure village in Maharshtra?
What about going to work in my pyjamas?
What about being at home in my pyjamas?
What about just chopping off the chopped of tresses?
What about not getting hurt when someone else gets hurt?
What about staying unaffected?
What about not affecting any one else?
What about not being responsible for anything?
What about late night conversations?
What about falling asleep during the late night conversations?
What about deep, profound discussions on threading being good for the skin as compared to waxing ( I still am not sure what's better…waxing for sure is less painful, relatively speaking) ?
What about all the 'What about's'?
P says it's not the end of life; it is just another life.
And I nodded, like I always do… almost always…!
…and probably never having a Moturam.
And probably always wanting to have one
And probably never having the nerves to do a Gucci-bucci
Considering how I refused to step down from the case swing chair, since the chotu Moturam, yet, couldn’t jump as high up, considering how I shrieked in fear when the li’l bndle of mischief and cheekiness came bouncing towards me, considering how my best friend’s boy friend got The glare and much more, there might be a reason I don’t have a Moturam.
That’s why I keep saying give me a Moturam just as it is born, just before it opens it’s eyes, so the first thing he lays his eyes on is me. And then he’ll thin k I’m his mum. Any which ways I’m called ‘bitch’ more often than Divya. So…
The truth about sparrows and dogs!
Finally the sparrow got engaged to be married to the dog. And before they could live happily ever after, they fought like cats and dogs sparrows and dogs. After every fight the dog would say, “I promise not to repeat THIS mistake again.” As if that was supposed to make the fidgety, restless, nervous, flighty, perpetually flustered sparrow feel l better…but again, like a nice, peace loving sparrow, she would give in every time….let him do something stupid again, just so she can chirp non-stop and drive him mad! Fortunately fro the sparrow, this dog wasn’t the barking types…he would just sit there like a nice, well-behaved, dog, wagging his tail at regular intervals, just to divert the sparrows fleeting attention. And dumb, that the sparrow is, she would invariably fall for the wagging and the yelping. Tch tch tch….the sparrows of the world need to grow up!
She said she wanted to be a sparrow in her next life.
He said he wanted to be a dog in his next. She was hurt. She thought to herself, probably he didn’t really want to spend the rest of his seven lives with her. Probably he was already bored of her. Probably he had someone else in mind. Probably he didn’t have someone else in mind, but he just wanted to keep his options open.
“Why L, why do you want to be a dog?”
“Because, you love your toy dog so much…since I can’t wish to be a dog, in this life, I’d be one in my next.”
Fuming!
Extremely angry!
Two of my closest friends, one after the other pissed me off, on different issues.
One, out of the blue, says, “Orkut should be banned.”
“A, that’s too big a statement. Please explain yourself.”
“Well, it’s just one of those things Divya…you know the Koushumbi case , right? I’m sure they met on Orkut. This bloody networking site is just too much. I’m sure they must have met here… moreover; there is no sense of privacy at all.”
Now this friend of mine has no Orkut account. I’m not very surprised and neither am I bothered. She obviously chose to not make her very private life, public in any sense.
So, I tell my friend, “A, to begin with, if we are talking about this particular case then it’s quite clear that Orkut is NOT the culprit. Secondly, if we are talking about privacy, then you CHOSE to not be a part of this very public an affair. Isn’t banning too farfetched a proposition?”
She retorts with a, “Oh don’t give me the democracy BS. It just should be banned. I don’t like it.”
Now, ironic it might seem, but I seemed to like the last statement of hers. It should be banned, for I don’t like it. That is quite deep a line, self-explanatory, as well.
The righteous me, who is a die hard propagandist of democracy, in my own way, got miffed.
After a 70 seconds long version of mumbling pleasantries, we hung up.
Soo, as I login to gmail, I see K, another person I cannot live without. At least, I haven’t tried.
“K, I’m mad. A said this (a brief non-convoluted version of the above mentioned conversation follows). You must know, I, myself am not a die hard fan of Orkut / Yaari / Dostpost and other inane social networking portals. But, there are people who like it….so let them be.”
“Divvy, how does it affect you?”
“What do you mean by how does it affect me? It was not a random line she made in a crowded room. It was a one-to-one conversation. She was talking to ME. What was I to say? ‘Hmm. Ok.’. That’s it?”
Now, this person K, is one of those who’ll totally ignore anything and everything. It doesn’t make a difference if he agrees with something or not. He’ll just ignore it. Worse is, he’ll expect me to ‘take it light’ as well.
So, I decide to get a little too sarcastic.
“Of course, I keep forgetting, I should have said, whatever. So what else?’ Hmph. Why don’t you just go and sleep K? (He is in the States. It was night time for him.)
Then he throws the clincher of sorts.
“Why Divya, you cannot take another point of view, is it?”
OUCH.
I cannot take a point of view? Just because I question yours, means I cannot take one??? Is that what it’s all about when people act all grown-up and decide to just evade issues they do not agree with? When I ended my argument with K, all I was trying to do was get acerbic by acting the way he does. But of course, the point was all lost in trying to make me look like a kid. I know, that’s not his focus in life, but in that moment of annoyance and frustration, it seemed like that.
Tch!
Read a post on a oft visited blog. *Oft visited* must say something about the content of the blog, the sensibility of the blogger and the place of the blogspot in my mind. And then I come across this post. An anti-'anti-valentines day’ post, written on The Valentines Day.
What I do not understand is, how does it make a fuck’s difference to anyone if some boi / gurl decide to spend his /her/ well –earned dough on Hallmark /Archies cards and gifts? Let them. Why are you losing hair over it? Of course, I don’t have the balls to stand and confront the tigers and other cats of the world. I hate confrontations. Mostly because they do not drive home any point. And if the person is so dense so as to sweat over red roses and pink cards, then it’s anyway pointless confronting him/her/them.
Then comes the part wherein the morning newspapers to the evening tabloids waste good news space by sensationalizing something that makes absolutely no sense. The over-the-top views of the so-called-forward lot, will be exaggerated even more. Then the ‘educated’ and the ‘broadminded’ people focus on how the different variety of cats should mind their business, if they have any, and how we should pave way for globalization and westernization and what nots. Bah!
Of not being in the safety zone
I want to believe in God. Yes, I wrote that with a capital G. I want to. I read something a while back, that made my heart wring in pain. Of course, it was pure fiction. But that tiny mass, pumping blood here, there and all over the place, seemed to just stop for some picoseconds and I was left wondering.
I believe in doing everything to the fullest. If I want to hurt the fuck out of some one, trust me to do a good job of it. Sooo good that after a point I get hurt, for all the hurt caused. Again, I assure myself that he/she deserved it. God would have taken a long time to get back to him/her, so I took over the reigns.
I’m my God.
All these lines suddenly seem so blasphemous. I remember when daddy wasn’t well. I’d prayed hard. No, I didn’t go to a temple or for that matter even chant prayers and sit with my hands folded in front of The Idol. But I prayed. Daddy recovered. I thanked the doctor profusely. Suddenly I refused to see anything beyond science. It was science that saved daddy. It was only science. The intention of this post was to be cynical at myself, my faith based on convenience. But as I type this, I wonder if it is really convenience?
Why am I so cynical? I don’t know. Cynicism is a safer state of being and I thrive on that belief.
I wish I had blind faith in something that made me less of a skeptic. It’s more convenient that way; having some one to solve your problems, blame when lost, cry to when alone and forget when safe.
With every single day I can feel the enormity of my jinxing capacity.
I can take care of you, love you like a hopeless maniac, pamper you rotten, take all your temper tantrums with a calm smile, be there for you even before you need me, walk away the second I sense you tossing and turning for space, I can be a mother, daughter, lover and friend; all till I know that you are not in any ways related to me.
It's like, the moment we get tied up as a pair, I’ll start affecting you. My jinxed existence will start affecting you. The blighted luck that I have, will show it effects on you as well. And that is The Last thing I want to happen.
I wonder what made me pray, cry and hope in despair so that you could be mine. I'm glad you aren't. I'm glad we'll never cross that line and reach that point of proximity. I 'm glad you didn't give in to my temper tantrums, my very own sweet custard.
I would have felt so helpless and I would have been so sore with myself for being a part of your life. I like it this way. I'm there....just close enough to get a daily inventory of what's happening in your life...if your leg is giving you problems, if you've finally stopped fasting on Saturday ( yes, that bothers me...anything that makes you uncomfortable for 2 seconds at a stretch bothers me. I haven't told you this to avoid another 2 seconds of discomfort). I'm there, and the daily inventory, abuses, mollycoddling, helps me survive through each day.
I hope my stars are screwed up enough to not let any one come close... we don't want the responsibility of ruining someone else's life, do we!
View from the loo
My office is located in one of those decaying mills, which have been turned into huge commercial complexes. However hard they might try to obliterate the face of this decadent, once-flourishing textile mills, somewhere remains a bit of it that speak about the life it lived, once upon a time.
Now and then you can spot a bat or two flying aimlessly away from their herd, closely huddled together on the trees around. Now and then a crow or a pigeon would go skinny dipping. Very normal, considering they have not much of an option but go Skinny dipping. Unless of course they are the pets of the Barbie’s in flesh and blood. Then, clearly the birds will have their own wardrobe too.
Neon blue bags, best friends, water-bottles and shades of pista green
Last night when I lay on my bed, in between all the unwarranted tossing and turning, I thought of the many firsts of my life.
They accuse me of an exceptional memory. I just bend my knees and do a lady-like bow, honoured by the accusation. Although, I must admit, my memory mostly sticks to things of irrefutable triviality. That’s, obviously*, besides the point.
I remember the colour of my first bag, a neon blue with black piping. They’ve stopped making fun colours like that, any more. All you find is a dull grey or a boring beige. No wonder, kids detest going to school these days. If I was made to go to school in beige/black/brown/grey, I would have surely put up a fight. Of course, parents always have the upper hand, at least till you believe in Santa Claus and tooth fairies.
I remember the first time my mom had solid proof of my anti-social behaviour to show to my dad, who thought I was his, very own chubby, bundle of innocence. I remember throwing the bags and water bottles of all my classmates out of the second floor window, only because my first best friend didn’t share a secret with me. How did I know it was a secret? Well, I saw her whispering something into some other not-so-best-friend’s ears. Hell hath no fury like a four year old scorned. But I guess, the other four-year-olds were not to know this and they went ahead and in their ignorance of the gravity defying fact, chose to piss me, me, a co-four-year-old, off (melodramatic nodding of the head).
I remember the long list of best friends I’ve had since.
I remember the first day in all the four-schools I went to. No, I wasn’t thrown out. I had to move owing to my mother’s transferable job don’t you go around raising your brows missy, I am not lying. It’s a weekday, don’t ya see?
I remember pouring the glass of milk into a big steel container and then calling my brother with an astonished look on my 7-year old face, “Cheta, see see…the water turned white….like that only…. :O”. The first thing he did was tell me how my happiness is royally screwed for the day, for as soon as mum came, he was going to tell her. I thought he knew magic, else how would he know what’ I’d done to my glass of milk.
Nowadays, what irritates my close ones is the painful detailing I get into while describing a shade of green, that particular shade of green, not grass green, but frosted pista green. Most of the times, I pretend to ignore the rolling pair of eyes. Divya, child / woman/ monster**, it’s ok if you do not remember the exact height of the pup you saw, now that we know the exact shade of it’s eyes and the number of times it wags it’s tail in 1 minute.
I’m sure they are just jealous. I’m sure they secretly wish that they’d also remember stuff….utterly worthless load of scrap (er, it wouldn’t be called scrap otherwise, eh?!), still!
*For the simple reason that, being the protagonist, nothing I do/did can be trivial.
** Depends on the heights of irritability that they’ve reached.
Of sour grapes and sweet limes…
Mum is desperately trying to get me married. The more desperate she gets, the more reasons I find to remain single. It's not an illogical effort on staying single. It's a genuine concern on my end, as to not seeing a point in the institution, per se. Show me a valid, logical reason and I might give it a thought.She says I was hard to please since childhood and I've just grown up to be a difficult person, always demanding for the extraordinary.
Hard to please? Well, show me someone who was pleased by something / someone, above or below his/her capabilities. Show me someone who didn't mind settling for a nincompoop? Show me someone who didn't mind attitude issues in people, didn't mind people who thought they were His/Her gift to mankind?
Demanding? Well, I do demand that the person be down to earth, humane, independent and ambitious. Asking for a good sense of irony and sarcasm might be pulling it too far. That demands a level of intelligence, and sue me but I want my guy to be intelligent, who understands my sarcasms…who understands me…or at least tries to understand me and on failing doesn't just throw his hands up in the air, calling ME 'difficult'.
And to top it all up, you hear awful stories of infidelity (not claiming that it is a-sex-specific), physical/mental harassment, dowry demands and tales with other hackneyed but depressingly true and astonishingly possible themes.
If one still needs reasons to be ‘difficult’ and ‘demanding’, just to be that wee bit careful*, then I’d say that YOU are being difficult and demanding.
If that means I’ll remain single, so be it. As long as I don't get married to a narcissistic, conservative fashionista, who thinks that ten people wearing a suffocating hideous pink choker makes it trendy, who thinks my life is his business, who wants me to do things because it is in vogue, not because it makes me happy, I'd rather be single.
And it's not about sour grapes being out of reach. It's about waiting for the sweet lime.
*Again, haven’t we heard of the utmost careful people, in spite of their cautious approach, being a part of a messy, marriage? At least, he/she tried his/her best to avoid a mishap. Now if the mishap was fascinated by him/her, tough luck!
Being weird is the latest style statement...or so said my weird pal
"You are an odd girl", said my colleague. I didn't react to it. Mostly because I didn't know what to say. Normally, a person would have shrugged in that unaffected manner, waiting to rush to the wash room, and blush all shades of red. Isn't it cool to be odd? Just the other day, I came across a person, a friend to be precise, not just any other person I bumped into without choice in the first class compartment of a local train, but a friend who, I assumed, had a better, less flashy view of things. Now this person was talking about one of her acquaintances who behaved in a rather 'weird' manner. "D, she was soooo weird. And once upon a time I used to like the fact that I was weird…sigh!" I was walking besides her till a second before she said that. I was slightly disheartened, slightly miffed, slightly shocked to hear that from somebody who claimed to be non-judgmental. Anyways, that is not what irked the Queen of England (me, me….look at me), is this fascination of people towards being labeled ‘weird’?
What irritates me is the double standards people sub-consciously garner in them.
If you stare into the void, it is being lost in deep thought. If you find someone else looking blank, he is just trying to look detached and thereby feign self-importance.
If you put on an accent, it comes naturally to you…all the angrezi television I watch, you say (mostly you won’t say it, for that is admitting the presence of an accent). If somebody else slurs more than necessary on an ‘r’, he is ‘such a fake, baba’.
If somebody else makes a blunt statement, he is being rude and obviously, ‘it’s not his business'. Ofcourse, it’s your official business to speak your minds. It falls under your moral, social responsibility area in the KBA chart.
If somebody copies a particular style of dressing/talking/ thinking/…, it’s downright infringement of somebody else's originality. It goes without saying that you were just ‘learning’ from the best.
Wonder, why we underestimate others intelligence.
And then they ask me why I am so cynical in life…because I am the only intelligent being on earth, after my dog of course.
Untitled
She sat with him, just besides the 7 foot tall hour glass, looking at nothing in specific. There is that feeling of familiarity; that feeling of comfort. Nobody is in a hurry for the time to pass by. Neither of us want anything to happen that wouldn’t have happened without a magic wand. She loved that level of comfort. There were times when she was not so much in peace with her closest friend. And there she was with him and everything seemed just perfect. There was nothing more or less she would have asked for. He seemed to understand her as nobody ever did. He nodded at the right pauses; he agreed to the agreeable and disagreed fervently at anything that seemed to ruffle her ruffled, wet, feathers. She would break into a laughing fit at his antics…go all jelly kneed at the way he pouted and acted hurt. No matter what they ordered he wouldn’t budge till he had a bite of her dish.
They said she’d pampered him a lot. She thought otherwise. Their three month old relationship had reached such heights where in she could trust him with her life. And so would he.
Just now and then she would wish for him to talk as well… she wouldn’t mind learning dog-language either. Well, she was in love with him and love makes you wish for crazy things
