Why the fuck are you not wearing leotards?

As I sit in the green room sipping Darjeeling tea(Yuck!) and nursing my legs that have really reached another place today, I'm thinking of the one thing that I'll never do again. Not the way it used to be anyways. I keep myself busy with the law thing and travel and cook( ya righhht!)and meeting people and loads of other superficial stuff. Maybe it was the car ride in the rain at 8 in the evening... or another one of those rotating times. Back to remind you that you ought to stop faking it for a bit and cry out loud once more.
Some time back I met this girl who was off to Columbia to study dance. My fangs were starting to show before my friend detected trouble and diverted the topic. But whose fault is it? The fact that she could fight against her folks and I could not? And that now I think I'm stronger than steel but in reality, am fucked up because of the classiest of the issues..parent screwing up your 'dream'. I never dreamt to be a dancer because I just knew there was nothing else I COULD do that well. And if you get trained in it 5 years short of your actual life span, then it just seems like the natural thing to do. Even today, there's never a moment when I've felt happier. And more in my element than when I'm dancing.
But if you're weak once about asserting yourself then it doesn't come back to ask you if you're ready now. Am I ready now? Ha. I'm probably not even as good as I used to be. And it's too late now to pick it professionally again. So I'll just be yet another girl who cries in a corner after the lights are put away..

But today is Sunday and depressing posts are reserved for the rest of the week so I'm heading on to the most worthless realm ever..The only list that'll ever matter.
Muzak for the perfect night..

1. Becoming Insane,Juice,Deepy Disturbed,Out of Space - I'm not going to write about these songs because it's pointless. When he starts to go insane..insane...va va vrroooom!

2. Ghost song - Everyone finds it weird that I start hooting when this track starts. I just love the beat, it's perfect for the hip roll.

3.I miss you, Bjork - Fuck. I swear I'll marry the DJ who plays this song. Ever. Even if he's a Paki or something. It makes you feel like a diva.

4.Bossa Per Due ( Nicola Conte) - I heard this album in Amsterdam just at the right time. The sort of joint where no one goes to 'parteeeee' their balls off. It's the kind of stuff people ordinarily wouldn't imagine dancing to, but the same people dance to Salaam E Ishq so.. Bossa Nova is my favorite style right now, it's beautiful.

5. Haute Couture(Paris) - Awesome stuff. Like house infused bossa nova. And the bass...Jesus!

Earlier, I only used to love dancing to rock and roll but there's way too much of that to write here. Rock is like my comfort music, even though now I'm too experimental and am branching out in so many places, if I ever have another break-up, I'll still see it off dancing to Born to be Wild. Just like last time with my homies. Hee hee.

***


I do realize that I'm a bit late to get the drift. It's was so expected to see all these Mushroom fans to go like' Where's the psy man?' But the best artists are the ones who don't shy away from moving on from their genre, even at the cost of their money-yielding audience who just want them to roll out collected hits every year so that they die happy. But Infected Mushrooms have really done it with this. Rap..way too much guitar. Down with closet minds. It's fuckin beautiful.

Kremlin Masala

One of the most wonderful things in life is to have something fitting into your expectations as if it was truly made for them. Most of us love to proclaim our no-expectation stance in life quite often, but I've always considered that to be absolute drivel. The reason people can't stand each other, quit jobs, fuck behind each other's backs is because you expect. Make up these stories in your head of what you think you deserve. And conveniently forget that nothing happens if you simply park your ass over it. And that's why Russia's been swimming in my head all day.
That is the only country I've been to which conforms to your expectations to the hilt. Yes, you expect the chain-smoking, not-talking, doubtful-if-even-breathing taxi driver to take you somewhere in a forest full of snow and bury you in the ground after a painless death. Just like that.
Or expect to get picked up and taken onto red velvet embossed secret rooms of the Kremlin. To pour out your secrets. And then promptly be shot in the head. Surrounded by men smoking cigars and drinking vodka, looking flushed pink against the weirdest chairs you've ever seen in your life. The streets are big enough for a war to be fought there. And absolutely nothing is small. It's all fucking big baby. The perfect embodiment of a fucked up Socialist Union.
It's beauty lies in it's unpretentiousness. I mean, hell, we are stressed out so we'll drink from 9 in the morning out of the bottle. And if by some freaky chance we invite you to our home,where you dared to refuse alcohol, then you're thrown out. And we'll smoke too and won't talk to dumb frikkin tourists calling them mate and all that jack, asking them the weather. These people are real.And so is their country.

Most Russian politics is thread-bare. They've hated and liked the same people. They don't love anyone and that's brilliant.Lol. We'll make the weapons, kill dissenters, get public money accumulated and hire the craziest architects to make every structure look wonderfully bizarre. And we'll screw our own people because that's what every country does anyways so please let's not be two-faced about it.

Although it's very sad that Litvinenko got killed. But his death interests me more.It's exactly like those crime novels you used to read as a kid, except that no one died from radioactive isotopes back then. Although it's perfectly cool to crib about something like the KGB after you've joined it, and talk about how you were ordered to kill influential Russians. It's also a bit funny because the world knows that already. This information is as ground-breaking as the fact that Bush can't place Iraq on a map. Which he can't, he just bombs it, with no mistake.
What really got me amused was Russia refusing extradition rights to the British Government for Andrei Lugovoi, the man who's apparently behind the murder.
Ok, first, he's way too hot to kill someone. Or, at least to let people know he did it. And also, Britain with it's policy of giving asylum to anyone and everyone who screws around in any country. Pakistanis, German,Indian,American and British corporate and political offenders are wrapped up like babies in the UK.
And only the Russians had the gall to tell these hypocrites to go fuck themselves good.
What's truly classic is the statement that murder proceedings on Andrei are a 'possibility.' Har har.

How do they say kickass in Russian??

Not long enough for me

Is it not something
with jagged similarities

Of disjointed dreams
And foolish revelry

Of all that we thought
Would soon happen

Perhaps return back to brace
Your thoughts before

Or lather on to brothers
Of common stock

Not enough to waiver
Away from insistent latches

Distant for years now
From the maple breeze

Isn’t it time for another
Glorious mistake

So am I missing something here? Why would a man who likes John Lee Hooker reject Janis because she’s a woman with issues? Perhaps it’s not manly enough to like a woman crooning about depression or being left lonely by her man. Of course, I’m not the one who’s classifying her career into that one line, but apparently, a lot of people do exactly that.
I’ve met so many guys with a brilliant taste in music who just disregard female musicians with this weird bias. And this happens when no one is singing of menstruation, or child birth, or all those boring things men don’t identify with.
But the male artists never had their body of music dissected in such a ridiculous way. So Dylan can sing of disillusion and politics and have the world empathize with him. Maybe it’s the advertising or the hype, but I find it really hard to understand how every bloody person likes him. And Cohen… women like him because they wish the men in their lives thought like him. But Joni Mitchell with her relationship advice could never have this freedom. And nor did Janis, who’s best known by these chuts as a manic depressive woman who shrieked more than she sang. About women stuff.
I swear I have a point. But unfortunately, it’s only abusive right now.

****


I met this auto driver today who gave me economics of owning an auto in Delhi all on paper. Apparently it costs 5 lacs by the time it comes down to them through the red tape. And if they don’t buy one, they have to pay some money as rent everyday. So they earn roughly Rs 150 per day. And that too after haggling with people all day about how much they need to pay. If they follow the meter, then they wouldn’t even earn that. Hmmm.
I can’t believe that I would willingly convince myself as to why buying a bag worth 5 grand makes sense, and still tell this man how 50 bucks from South Ex to Gk is too much to pay. I feel sick. Why do we have such terrible double standards? Guess doesn’t need my bloody money, they have way too much of that anyway. All they do is manufacture clothing in air conditioned sweat shops. And this man has to tolerate people like me weighing the worth of him riding an auto in this ghastly heat for 15 hours a day. It’s just 50 bucks. While I get off to drink rum 5 times that price tag.
This is the real democracy of our country. The fact that he won't hate me for what I represent and still laugh with me. Equality is the most nonsensical idea ever, what matters is how the unequals let the gifted ones be.

Tagged

Brilliant. My first tag and the vaguest one at that..
5 truths about me:
1. I detest the whole idea of 'God'. My issues are more expansive than He's-never-done-anything-for-me stance. And as much as I try to keep an open mind towards ultra-religious people, more often than not, my look of disgust gives me away. Like how I recently fought with my flat mate over not keeping the goddamn Puja table in the hall or anywhere else in the house as it didn't go with my my envisioned 'look'. Of course he sat with head in his hands, muttering about my atheism and how I'll come around and how it's so sinful and blah blah blah. But I had just about had it with 'Saturdays are not good for haircut' kind of nonsense from these morons.

2. I'm extremely judgmental about everyone. I immediately slot people into categories they closely resemble once I meet them, and rarely have they broken out of it. I once read of how there are some 9 types of personalities in this world and everyone fits into one kind. I know it sucks to do this so I try not to admit it. But when I meet some girl who's just come to Delhi freed from 6 pm deadlines back home in Ludhiana pick up smoking within one week of arrival, I feel I'm getting somewhere with people in general.

3. If I'm quiet, that means I'm thinking more than what I could possibly say. I'm almost never blank and am constantly over - analyzing situations and people. This kind of nihilist thinking results in one taking long walks on busy roads, chain smoking, trying to devise ways to do something... about the beggar who's cut his daughter's legs to invoke sympathy, or the kids I teach, or anyone else I'm incapable of helping beyond one day. Then self does really dumb things like switching off the air conditioning for the whole day or cancel my shopping for a week, and later feel quite stupid over the pointlessness of it all.

4. I hate being in a relationship because they demand so much out of you, in every way conceivable. Ultimately, there are too many questions and so much insecurity and you hate yourself for being so helpless as to force one to be with people who are so wrong for you that can't breathe. Now, I'm too commitment phobic to bother with all this, and anyone encroaching into my space either unravels my rebel-without-a-cause persona or the plain nervous as hell one.

5. I can't tolerate stupidity of any color, sex, creed, shape or size. Stupid ignorant people, stupid books, stupid music. The kind of 'I have never read a newspaper in my life and I don't really know jackshit about this but I still want to give my gyaan to you because I heard someone say the exact same thing on tv' ..Or the sorts who say Dubai is in fucking Africa and think its perfectly okay not to kill yourself when other people KNOW that you actually said that...or people who read Da Vinci Code and treat it like the fucking Wasteland. Or when really dumb people hear you out and say the same thing to others, without giving you credit for it. I just feel there's no point in your existence if you don't even try to make yourself aware of all that is happening...and eternally keep on kidding yourself on the basis of your parents equally dumb opinion of your fictitious IQ level.

And this I can't resist... Why do people bother smoking Ultra Milds? I mean, if you're going to smoke that shyte that actually feels like breathing air in and out, then you might as well not insult smokers and quit your 'smoking' altogether. This is so 'I can't really take it in but I think smoking makes one look really cool so I'll still make a prized ass out of myself but smoke these gay cigarettes.'

Er...I just realized that 5 truths about me roughly translate into 5 things I hate. Maybe Monday, maybe everyday. Ha ha.

Our man Jasbeer

Suddenly Jasbeer got out of the car and started beating up the 'gantleman' in striped blue shirt with ball point pen tucked in the pocket. Self got quite excited thinking... Yeah! THIS is what I miss whenever I'm away from Delhi..people hitting each other on the roads, traffic on halt because of sheer bumbling rage, and everyone bathing in the sheer ordinariness of the ensuing event, some stopping to ruminate on the fight logic, especially if a woman is involved. Bang bang! ... While I merrily messaged my friend that the plan shall be delayed owing to unavoidable circumstances.

The scene went on for some time, that's when self started to ponder on the driving point. Everything happened in such a flash that self couldn't possibly inquire from our man Jasbeer. He finishes his business and sits back on the wheel in a huff.

Me:Tumhe itna paagal hone ki kya zaroorat thi?

j: Madam, Aap samajhti nahin hai. Voh aapko dekh raha tha. ( With noticeable discomfort) Buri tarah se.

Me: ( Shocked beyond belief) Kya??? Abe, Yeh Dilli hai. Yahan sab dekhte hai. Police aa jaati toh?

j: Toh dekh lete madam. In Bihariyon ki maa ki. Aap meri behen jaisi hai.

Me: Waah! Issi baat par tumhe Milds ka pura packet free. Ab gaadi bhagao.

Aw. I'm so touched. How is it that most men in my life would not have risen to such daredevilry? That makes self despair if self has indeed dated wussies on a priority basis. Apparently yes.
All I ever got was those intellectual types who just want to make lurrve and discuss Neruda in al fresco restaurants. They talk of a woman's right to enjoy sex and how she ought to be given all the pleasure. Self lets this sink in and wonders how sexual equality is the single most freedom these metro types seem to understand. And then it's 4 in the morning and we are at Bandstand where a group of men are evidently, feasting on my legs.

Dumbfuck:Let's go from here baby. I would clobber these motherfuckers to death but there are cops here right now.

This classic excuse from poetic man does not surprise me at all. Its, in fact, expected. And then self thanks Delhi for making her acquainted
with the best-of-swears-North-India has to offer from an early age, and proceeds to handle the situation in a characteristically unladylike manner. The persistence of eve teasers being what it is, they dissipated in an instant to look out for alternate objects to peruse.

Dumbfuck:Why did you have to do that baby? There's no point in messing with these creeps.

Me:I absolutely had to sweetheart. Because your mommy didn't feed you any Farex.

Dumbfuck:What??

Me:Nothing.Go Fuck yourself.


So Jasbeer is special for being my knight for today.
Some people think that I say all this because a woman need protection from a man and can't look out for herself. No, my dearies, we don't need any of that bullcrap.
But I, for one, could do without having to deal with so much hypocrisy.

My father's eyes

It’s my parent’s anniversary today. Some unbelievable number of years. So far, my mother has surprised me by taking the liberty to drown my room in sunshine at some ungodly hour .. just to drink tea together. The sheer sentimentality of the request did not sit too well with me, and as I proceeded to let her know AGAIN of the crazy hours I’m keeping these days and how I never get any sleep and haven’t I told her a million times already about how I detest sunlight on my damned face, she told me. Hmmmmm. So since my mother doesn’t drink, I can’t even take her out to a bar, and kiss the evening goodbye with the choicest of single woman epithets ranging from …’fuck him, who needs a man anyway,we have girl power’, or something equally cathartic.
But my mother is not 25 so we need something drastic to make her think that life indeed rocks. But she’s making it incredibly difficult by crying all day and asking me repeatedly of where exactly she went wrong. And relaying the events of all that happened in our assorted households over the past years. Again and again and again.
The best part of having parents who hate each other is not about being a witness to the ground-breaking events unfolding in front you which put you off the concept of ‘any’ 2 people living together in any circumstance. No sirrreee. What really tops it up is the continuous reminder of those same events for the rest of your adult life, the fact that you’ve been trying to block out images of people being dragged out in the living room with your younger brother’s horrified eyes transfixed on the scene be damned.
I stopped screaming at my mother 2 years back, because I realized that she can’t help but be herself. And that she repeats it so that she can come to terms with it. And that her life is not enough for things to sink in for her, let alone be concerned about me. So even though we last agreed on something ages back, we still stay together and live through days such as these.
My father just called me up to fix up some ‘family dinner’ today. I think this whole compassion quality is certifiably taking over me. I didn’t say what I so badly wanted to say.