Diamonds and Rust

Very Important Theory

2010-01-07T01:32:00.002+05:30

Sooo...Times when I miss having a man in my life.

1. Standing in some godforsaken part of Delhi, not knowing directions, having sent the driver home, eternal school buddy being busy and with every other girl getting dropped home by her boyfriend. Hmmm. Yes I do take the cab but still ok.

2. At some crowded party when everyone is holding hands just to show they are together.

3. In this dreaded cold Delhi weather.

4. When I plan of my vacations alone, and ponder on some decent person to take along, which usually excludes people I already know. No not because they aren't decent, we are too different!

5. Girlfriends telling me sappy boyfriend stories, which happens like once in a blue moon because no one I know has the type of man I want.

6. Sometimes

Okaaayyy...since we are done with that. It looks even better than I thought, only 6 points. So why is it so damn important to BE WITH SOMEONE? I'm sick of people giving me tripe of how there's some serious flaw in my life because I don't get my panties in a twist over my single status, or try the available avenues to get laid. Over here we most definitely should insert my theory of how everyone keeps jumping on about wanting and needing sex mostly because society pushes them to think so. What man? You don't think of getting laid all the time! How come.

I realize that anything half logical/matured from a woman's mouth classifies her as a bra-burning feminist, but I don't recall a time when I've been more relaxed with my place in the world. This is not some lameass oh how cool it is to be single I hate relationships type of point. But lately, it gets on my nerves.. everyone's preoccupation and concern with my 'colourless' life. But since this phase started, I don't waste my time talking on the phone, or meeting someone who stays so far away that I spend half my time traveling, I don't have to force my friends to get along with someone or worse make separate plans, I have a real hobby now and am sticking to it, I only think of myself and am super happy even though I pretty much know how the next year is going to space out. Maybe predictability is what I needed after all the madness in life.
Actually I'm not happy, I'm calm. Very calm. And nowadays I never think about anything, It's like I'm driving with no directions. It would be confusing to actually drive that way, but living like this kicks ass.
Uh I want to say a lot more man, but now it's 2 am and I will wake up at 7. Shit shit.

Relief smells like the sea

2009-10-24T20:54:00.001+05:30

Bhagwaan tera lakh lakh shukar hai! Just to remember this date that should teach me to be nice and understanding towards every struggler in every field. Amen.

Ditcher

2009-08-20T16:30:00.002+05:30

I've lost count of the number of people I've ditched in my life. It's not something that I do on purpose, but most times, the fact that I won't be able to show up dawns on me late. And I ditched Shantanu a lott. Before he left Delhi, while he was in Delhi, after I reached Bombay. It just happened. Or maybe I didn't put in enough effort, as always. We just joked about it all the time. My shopping, his alcohol dependency. That's what really took him in the end.

Everyone used to tell me how I'll have a certain stillness in my life after my needless rebellion. Which obviously made no sense to any of us, so we stayed awake for 40 hours straight, drank even bong water (once!), experimented, because we are here now, and we won't be at the same place again. Many of us have come out of the madness and made normal lives out of it, but some of them had to pay. Just for the carelessness and not loving our bodies enough. It's not that his death has taught me these things, but knowing someone who dies because of sheer carelessness and of how immature we all really are, is cementing all that I've come to understand lately.

Do I love life more now? No idea. Do I love my friends more? Well I always did, but this surely made me call my namesake brother who also drinks like a fish. He does it because he's bored, and for a girl who left him. It's funny. Maybe tomorrow he'll meet someone he loves even more, and he'd want to live for that. But his immunity will shortchange him. It scares me.

All that we do to ourselves in a million impulses, are we really equipped to handle it when it matures into something else. So many things to be sure of in life...it's madness. I don't know which idiot called it a journey of discovery.

I also don't get people who hoard hospitals in times like these to show solidarity. Sure man. But did you even know this person? What's the point of calling all and sundry announcing things in a singalong voice and then taking space from people who really need to heal, because you want to stand up to your idea of being a good person. God, so many years, and basic things are so rare.

All about kites

2009-07-22T05:05:00.006+05:30

I just posted something quite insulting about The Kite Runner on Facebook. Apparently it hurt someone so deeply that he started screaming about how I should read the novel properly and how my pain is my pain?

I didn't get the Kite Runner, mostly because I can't understand or connect with characters that are morally weak, in other words, have no balls. No one thinks of how most books, movies revolve around repulsive people who I would ordinarily loathe to hang out with in real life. Most of these retards are self-obsessed, insensitive, completely moronic and usually, authors will waste 500 pages on their journey of becoming a normal person. In Kite Runner's case, a normal person who starts to stand up for his friends and his honor, do things for his family etc. I don't get it. You waste your entire friggin life being an asshole, even watching your friend/servant/whatever getting raped, making fun of people with less fortunate backgrounds..basically be a prized prick.

Suddenly at the age of 40, you are forced into redeeming circumstances by another man's scheming outlines, whereby you do something that speaks integrity even though you never wanted to get into that scene from the first place, and I'm supposed to weep for you and clap about what a wonderful man you are now? How you have FINALLY lived up to your purpose in life, be a good person. Such bullshit!

Sad part of life is that mostly, these kind of people are the ones who occupy prime roles everywhere. And the ones who do the right thing and don't make a big drama of it are relegated to the confines of minor roles in the bigger picture. I'm not some crazy extremist who talks of moral standards, but basic things, customs that religion doesn't teach you. If you don't follow your instincts in a situation, then you suck as a person.

Obviously I'm quite a girl and emotional at that too, so when I read this book years back, it made me cry. Mostly because of the way Hosseini captured the thawing of the distance between the father and son. Anyway, the moment you can relate a book or movie to your life, it gets you too mush to view it objectively. But now that I read it years later, have no idea how I didn't grasp how pathetic the main character was before. And we are supposed to appreciate this journey of a man with no balls.

I read/watch these kind of inept characters and wonder where is the justice in this world!
I saw some episode of that lameass Salman Khan show where Katrina Kaif was a guest, and is about to gamble playing some question in which she can lose money if she gets it wrong. When she's asked to play safe since the money will be for charity, she's like oh I need to call my director and ask him if he'll send in the money in case I lose here so that I can pay for the charity. Because I'm promoting his movie and no I won't pay from my own pocket. WTF!
I don't know what kind of a fucked up world this is that you can say something so bitchy on national tv and men who haven't sex in weeks will still make you the most searched name on Google.

I remember these friends of mine went on a road trip from Pune to Jaipur and ran out of money on the way. They asked this coconut seller to help them with drink or food, getting all embarrassed about relating their story and were shocked to see when the man didn't hear another word and started slashing coconuts, giving it to them, waving off any more money talks and even shoving some in their hand. And that man had a cart with coconuts and an income of probably 100 bucks per day. And there are millions like him in this world, following their instincts, their gut so that they can sleep easy at night after doing things the best way they know. There are no movies made on them.

This is not to say that Katrina Kaif's braindead movies and slutty touch-me-touch-me dancing show money is more valued success than the assets of a coconut seller in Gujarat, but it makes my pet theory more believable for me.
It's a no brainer as to why I don't pray. If there really was someone up there, he/she has been consistently bad with keeping his part of the bargain. Hell they are worshiping me anyway, so why bother with actually doing something? The permutations & combinations, fairness, equity, financial distribution, simply everything in this world is screwed up like some malfunctioning sarkari office. It's amazing how everyone goes ballistic over an entity that hasn't been doing his job properly for as long as I can remember.

....

Just saw this ad where this man in a car with cufflinks and fancy shirt gets disgusted at the sight of a sweating young boy on a bicycle at a traffic signal. Yech yech don't get your sweat from the sun near my air-conditioned cocoon. The kid sees the disgust, gets embarrassed, straightens his clothes, looks neater, and smiles to rich uncle. Proclaims gaily that's its just a difference of 2 wheels that he'll make up in a few years. Who is making this bullcrap!

2009 Fuck you

2009-06-25T09:36:00.003+05:30

You know what I really really hate. Whiners. I fucking hate whiners. And you know what I hate more than whiners, whiners who have nothing to whine about. And I also hate self-involved super sensitive people who love to discuss their problems, and whatever you tell them they always have a bigger and a more depressing incident to recount. Maybe it pisses me off more because I only crib to myself, or to the mirror and don't see the point of boring people with all that is wrong with my life. If you have any degree of common sense, you would know that no one really gives a shit and most people really want you to hurry up so that they can purge their sad events later. And I'm not talking of bad people, these are traits of nice normal healthy people who all of us know and meet everyday. So let's say that I've taken a lot of shit from my friends. And of every kind. Because even though I've had perennial issues with getting along with most, once I warm up to you, I feel guilty if I don't listen to you recount stories about heart-break over a guy you've met twice, or about how you've been partying four days straight but life is so complicated and difficult for you since you wanted to be a fashion designer after all. Now I may smirk inwards, or mentally pull my hair out, or hold back tears from my voice or my eyes from the phone because something way more serious and crushing happened to me 2 minutes back, I will still hear everything you say and try to cheer you up. There isn't even any reason for me not to tell you my shit, But I just can't! So I will proceed to hear your drone, give you advice, support, fake some smiley sound, and throw around pillows in frustration after that. Why do I do all this lame stuff. I'm so used to it that now the whole 'venting out' process makes me feel naked in front of someone else. I just can't open up like that. But this year has been particularly bad. No wait this year has stank and I know that it's going to get worse. But breaking my self-imposed silence is not going to happen, because few people have guilt issues like I do, or have the ability to make out when your friends need help. I don't know if I'm with the wrong people, I don't know what it is. But now I feel like making a check-list of all that has already gone wrong this year so that I earn the right to whine. Yes, in my world, you need to back up your misery as well.

1. Hmm. Something's that's never happened before which is best not mentioned here.
2. 17 years of education, and I flunked a paper for the first time
3. It's halfway down the year, and I'm still not gainfully employed.
4. I'm living at home. Everyone I know has extended life to cities with no parents.
5. I get constant calls from people I want to avoid who insist on recounting how much fun they all are having. It makes me sick
6. I've lost my camera. Have had it for 4 years now. Not just that, have been losing something or other that's vitally important every other week. Which is bizarre since I have photographic memory and this kind of stuff never happens with me.
7. Final semester, and all the fools in college have scored more than me. Even though I busted my ass and never cheated. I know it fucking makes me sound like a baby who never cheats in exams but I'm so fucking pissed right now that I don't give a shit about how I sound. All that stupid shit about hard work paying off is all bullshit, other things do the job very nicely. And it's crazy how this type who never worked to deserve those grades will proudly or modestly announce them to you. Either way, I have no respect you and it makes me want to curl up in bed for a week.
8. I'm secretly and slowly realizing that maybe I'm not as smart as I thought. THAT IS SCARY SHIT.

Hm. That's all I can remember right now. I hate this year, I hope it gets lost fast. Hopefully with less assholes who feel sorry for themselves calling me up as well. Man this year, if I can survive and help myself without going incognito, it'll be a miracle.

2009-06-15T16:46:00.002+05:30

Do watch Revolutionary Road if you want to swim in the unhappiness that is life. Apart from the fact that leonardo dicaprio has to be the most endearing thing when he's crying, you just feel like dumping all your craziness and try being a good woman again, the movie really is about Kate Winslet. Or it's not about both of them at all, it's about the story, and the original book that I hope to catch on to soon.
It is definitely not cinematic brilliance, but I don't see how any young person stuck in the corporate mess cannot sink lower while watching this one. It's got everything we all talk about, Paris is the place to be, we will not be the ones to settle down in urban suburbia, planning for a house and kids, then a bigger house and kids. No we will travel and see the world, kids won't tie us down. Because of course, we tried alternate careers when we were younger, she even tried to be an actress. There were things we did to genuinely feel alive, and laughed at that guy who'll go to work at 8 am every morning and so complains of the noise we can't hear.
We all think endlessly of this dream because we all consider ourselves special. Different. Other than the rest, who will not lose themselves in the larger scheme of the world and keep idealism within touching distance. We had progressive political thought, had an opinion on everything, we will surely do something other than just be.
It's all fine till you have time. Because yes, it's on the cards we are going to break away and do something else. We will 'feel' what we are doing all over again. But it's all a lie, isn't it? Because most of us were born simply to forget that phase at one point. Or to really put it at the back-burner and refer to it in drunken conversations with college friends. Because none of us are fucking special. We all are alike, except with some minor changes, the Constitution drafters were not writing it all for nothing. Most accept it and move on, money is the best balm. But there are some who never stopped dreaming or planning for the big escape, it's so real that they can see it. And they can't make peace with the alternate reality. That's when you lose your mind. And those are ones who are freaky, psychotic, insane. That movie is fucking scary.

Boards Bored

2009-05-27T17:14:00.003+05:30

Delhi is so boring in the summer. There's not much you can do. I've been quite vella trying to keep myself,e trying to join things I always wanted to but never could because I was stuck in th city of people with no cool interests Pune, so I call the Delhi Blue Pottery Trust thinking that it'll be quite a breeze because only repressed maniacs like me are into pottering around anyway and the usual Delhi junta will obviously have no patience with such a slow art, but that place has an unbelievable waiting of 6 months for weekend batch. So all of them must be working folks. That's so crazy that I started laughing and told the guy that maybe I should drop in and pay the entire fee and hopefully there'll be place in a week or so, he gave me some artistic speech of how money is not an issue because people are very serious about this anyway and so they'll call me. But if this is so popular, when I tell people about the pottery dream, they just laugh hysterically. I'm obviously in the company of extremely uncultured Punjabi people.

These days there's major renovation at my place so me and brother are sharing a room. up.I've come back after so long, it's quite weird to see his gigantic build (bad because I can't beat him to pulp anymore, a memory he doesn't recall at all now. ha ha) and how he's all grown up, keeps banging his drum sticks in the air to practice his music,listens to Sepulchra, is surgically attached to his phone, and thinks he can do IIT. Wow. Who are these new age kids?

I remember when I was his age, I was already cool because girls mature faster and all that. I was so busy thinking of that cute Bong senior in school and styling my hair and buying new clothes that I completely forgot about exams and anything serious. It didn't help that I took Commerce which I hated. But that time my mom's constant drill about study study, you'll ruin your life, all we have is education, what will you do after school irritated me enough to pick up books for an hour at max, after which I again chilled out in my head and started bouncing to Velvet Underground. And I always hated her for not seeing the point of my life, that I wanted to do much bigger things, that I didn't want my guitar and dance classes cancelled, that I can't function staring at books all day holed up in a room, and that I didn't want to live out the middle class dream of SRCC MBA and then flat by 25 at all.

Somehow I controlled my freespirit in time especially after I had no one to hang out with because simply everyone was studying for the Boards. Which was really good because you never know what a big deal Boards are in this country till you actually give them and screw them up. The day results were about to get out, everyone I knew was hopping mad, with me imagining getting stuck at some horrible college in Delhi where people won't know who Nirvana is and where I won't be able to live out my teenage dream of walking down college in tiny purple shorts, because hey that's how they do it in Sweet Valley High in California.

So miraculously, I didn't fail math and got through LSR and even though I didn't get through Stephens Eng because I didn't get that ridiculously high cut-off, which got me so pissed because no random kid from Modern or whatever could have read more books or wanted to do Eng lit more than I did, but then Indian education system is so fucking warped up that even to study Emma you have to be a nerd who topped in every subject. Though I was Scared shitless at being surrounded by girls all day but I still died in happiness at getting through the college and course I wanted, and then the college ranking made sure that mom didn't have any reason to scream or complain so I was happy that again I can read books, hang out with people of my type, smoke all day, waste time, get away from home etc etc.

Funny thing is even though I rebelled against the typical idea of education, now that I see my younger brother wasting his time all day, not studying, not taking 12th seriously at all since he's too busy planning his birthday bash and how to ask out this girl or that, I see myself turning into my mother! Nagging him to study and tell him jokingly of how he'll completely fuck up his chances in college. Bleh.How I hate being in this country sometimes. Why can't we guys just be the sort of civilization that rejoices at someone actually graduating?
But I know how depressed he's going to be when everyone around him is going to call excitedly with 90 percent and above, when relatives, aunties and everyone you haven't spoken to you in years will call you and stop you on the street to ask your marks, when parents will never let you forget how you did, how your dreams of having fun in a cool college will burst open. So I guess being in India, no matter what these bloody counselors, newspapers, school principals say about changing the education pattern and how something's got to be wrong if people are killing themselves over marks, literally too, but it's all bullshit because nothing will ever change because we'll never figure out a better way. Because these same people will step out and judge you on your marks and that will affect your job, college, everything. It sucks. But that' s life.

So I hope chota bhai kicks real ass. So that he can totally spoil himself for the next 3 years without anyone grudging him his happiness and the supreme right to waste time.

Indian elections: Be friends with terrorists = Get votes

2009-04-22T00:53:00.007+05:30

I'm amazed by the Tamilian ego. More than that, the way everyone ignores all that is happening in the name of national integrity and protection of 'suffering' communities is nothing short of ridiculous.

How would anyone in the right mind think that Tamilians in Sri Lanka ought to be protected in the current scenario? Are they not themselves responsible for the situation they've brought in. It's all fine and dandy when you effectively put hold on a country's development and deny it global respect just because you chose to pack your bags and move to a foreign land and now you want a separate country out of it. Amongst politicial causes, the LTTE cause has been the most bizarre. If their logic is meant to be taken in spirit, then why just Sri Lanka, heaven knows that Tamilians, or rather South Indians have imprinted their presence on every place on the globe. So there should be separate Tamilian/Andhra/Keralite/Punjabi/Whatever country within the countries these people choose to settle in. No wonder these days you need to pause your normal existence to get a visa to countries like UK. Places like Britain, Australia, US are too strong to let these people get away with such absurdities. But Sri Lanka is nothing. A pacifist nation, with the nicest people imaginable, who have been harassed for decades in their own country by these fanatics.

People deny a sociological interpretation to such demands since it cuts into being racist or judgmental, but that is an important way of interpreting and understanding the course of such ridiculous political theories and demands. No one is unaware of the regional pride and attachment most people from the South attach to their respective States. Of course it's great that you think that North India has been denying your right to 'determine yourself' for so long that the only way you know how to fight out this discrimination is by wearing your origin on your sleeve, head, psyche, simply everywhere. You have a problem with Bollywood, hate 'India' and US is the place to be, hate North Indians and their ignorance of your culture, talk in local dialects when you are in the midst of people who don't understand a word of hat you say, and follow your State parties and politics like maniacs. Of course it's alright that you too don;t have any idea about the rest of the country, North East or West, or that Indian politics as a whole holds no meaning for you. Forget all that. We are so smart, and we have been ignored. It's ok if we hate you because you're judgmental of us, regardless of how we are judgmental of everyone else. These may seem like extremely racist observations, but 500 bucks for someone who can show me a majority that doesn't fit into this analysis. I think I ought to have the right to know as I've known way more South Indians than most people in the North, some of whom are great, wonderful, interesting individuals and friends. This is not about singling them out, but the way the larger behaviour points out to what Karunandhi said yesterday. There are demonstration in London that support the LTTE cause. People in TN are bursting crackers, that's how excited they are that Karunanidhi considers the biggest terrorist of them all, Prabhakaran, a personal friend. Yes, of course, our people are suffering. That's our land. You said it, you get my vote.

For all those who respect Sonia Gandhi, there should be questions in the event the Congress validates or supports what Karunanidhi has said. Which it has already done so in a vague manner so far by Kapil Sibal. Anything for power huh.

For all those who sympathize with the Tamil cause, they should start believing in the Taliban vision of Muslim domination as well as it's the same thing. How come Muslims who believe in that are terrorists and madmen and no one thinks of how Tamils have been getting away with murder just because one fine day they decided to mark out a plot of land in a foreign country as their own, and now they call it a struggle for freedom. Communities do NOT get their own space in sovereign territories, that is not the way this world has developed and I hope it won't do so in the future. There'll be nothing left of this world except bits and pieces if such things are propagated.

I'm glad the Sri Lankan army is finally not paying heed to these psuedo human rights proponents and going ahead with what they should have done years back. Maybe then less lives would have been lost today. I know that in the real scenario, it's only the hapless who gets harmed in these major political theories. Whether its a poor Sri Lankan farmer, An Army officer who dies away from his family, or a Tamil who lives his life peacefully, by chance in a territory that debates his presence in Sri Lanka.But these Tamil farmers and locals who are being used as human shields by LTTE men are the ones who protected these terrorists from the army for years. Their communication network and sympathy for the LTTE cause led to so many deaths in the local Sri Lankans as well as their armies. Why wasn't any Tamil or human rights activist concerned about the rising deaths caused due to their 'war of determination'. Excusing such crap by saying that human nature forces one to only fend for oneself and it's own people is not going to work anymore. If it's them today, it'll be you tomorrow. How I wish that these spurts of national identity that Tamils regularly suffer from had been dealt with by Sri Lanka the same way that Malaysia had done some time back. Encouraging frivolity has brought them here...but it looks like it's finally over.

More power to the people of Sri Lanka. I hope they progress the way they've always wanted once this nightmare is over.

How Dilli is only Khan Market

2009-04-19T20:11:00.004+05:30

Correct me if I'm wrong but there seems to be no cool things happening in Delhi anymore.The invites I get on Facebook are so lame..masakalli parties at Ai, Gold Bazaar at F Bar. Wtf?! And then sods express shock over my disinterest in the whole clubbing culture. The majority still get tripped out over dolling up their female escorts and themselves in white shiny shoes and fancy dinner jackets, spend 1500 on a peg oF white rum and spend the entire evening pooh poohing over other's lifestyles and checking out the competition. How can this be fun? How can people 'unwind' in this way after what they term a 'hard day's work'? And please, for all those who have affinity towards these dingy rock type of places, I find these joints quite pathetic. It's only meant for people who never quite overgrew their college personalities. Like Toto's ...uff How I hate that place. There's no place to fucking move, they have the same playlist since forever, You have to keep standing on someone's head to get a table, it smells weird, and you see the same faces everytime you go there. And some new gora faces. It sucks.

....

Has anyone read this blog www.thedelhiwalla.blogspot.com? Oh god what a load of bullcrap it is. This guy thinks himself to be a traveling journalist and someone who has a world view on everything. Er yes... the only things I see on that blog are stories of his jaunts into Paharganj and Khan Market. And the way he describes Paharganj is quite hilarious.. as if that's the last remains of hippie culture this side of the country. The same people who would talk of wine and Sunday brunch as if they were born from the womb knowing these things have no peeves with having breakfast at some shady joint in that area, eating food made in clearly unhygienic conditions just because Lonely Planet and a lot of firangs tell them so. People talk about India's development and all that jazz, the goal will never be attainable until Indians develop a balanced view of themselves and their place in their world and shed their bloody white man complex.
I still have incidents where a shop owner will completely ignore me or Indians once a bunch of firangs enter the arena. Atithi devo bhavo my ass. I don't want to cheapen this argument by judging human value by how much they are economically worth, but let's just say that I will spend more in that store than those 2 dollar attired goras.

I veered towards another tangent altogether, but maybe some of you should check out this blog which is clearly written by a complicated individual who goes to Khan Market every week and thinks that having anything less than a Pajero is like a no-admit to that conclave of the rich. He also breaks down a person's look in terms of what costs how much, down to your boxers if you're only out to buy biscuits for your dog.

..........

Why doesn't anyone on my Phonebook use Twitter? I find it seriously cool!

The end

2009-04-13T18:57:00.004+05:30

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh. What can I say at a time like this? Where exactly is this Khooni Darwaza in delhi? Is it true that you can scream your lungs out there and no one will be around to witness it. I need something like that right now. Place to scream it out, no one to ask questions. There is reason as to why I don't discuss my predicament with anyone else. Most people must be like, big deal dude, college got over. Why can't she get over it. But they didn't live life like I did. They didn't have a vision in front of them before they practically ran away from home, and met people and situations that helped me live that vision. You think that you could do so much, if only those barricades disappear. And I did all that. Lived life the way I imagined it 4 years back, from my room in Delhi blasting NIN. Now is a completely different situation.

Like before, the new plans haven't exactly worked out. I find myself in Delhi once again. No offense, I really love this city but it's so difficult for me to live here. There are so many reasons behind it and I always knew that it would be a challenge, now I'm living it out. The job scene is so horribly slow and non-productive, nothing in Bombay seems possible as of now. Looks like I'll have to make do with whatever I get over the next few months and slug it out for a year in this city. Of course graduating during recession should give me enough common sense to do away with long-term plans altogether, but so much shit still didn't stop from visualizing a way out of this in another year. Another year.

I think of the people I've left behind, and then I see how disattached I feel from my current life. To meet someone for an hour, you need to work out 2 hours around it. Everyone needs a concrete plan. Everyone just drinks. My mom tells me that Delhi life is different, forget your Pune freedom, here you have to watch out. My dad gets pissed if I get uncommunicative. He thinks I'm only concerned about my friends..he doesn't know the times when I vegged in my room for days and didn't speak to anyone. That was normal, I had made peace with my anti-social personality...now how will I undo all my work? Delhi is still the same....disconnected, chaotic, claustrophobic. My new-found low confidence doesn't let me appreciate anything or anyone. I deliberately exist without a number because I want to avoid 'are you back in town' calls. Anyways the only people worth knowing in this city have already left town.

It's hard to say good-bye. I always used to pride myself on never being home-sick, Now I get what it means. Though it's not a place I'm attached to, or the people...a part of both figure into the larger picture. It's who I become when I step onto a place. The energy and the optimism that makes sense, but no other place can invoke that spirit. How it feels to be me. And it doesn't matter if there aren't enough people to accept that.

Maybe things will change and Delhi will surprise me. For now, an era has ended. When I see pictures, I look so grown up. I can finally talk in terms of 'oh that happened 4 years back'. Haha. I was the only one who didn't cry when everyone was bawling their eyes out. Now that I'm home, I get misty-eyed eating dinner. The finality still evades me, that's why I cut my hair. I heard that women do that in defining moments in their life. Never had the balls to do that before, so I guess now I'm so comfortable in my skin that it makes perfect sense to ignore everyone's advice and go ahead with it. Slowly and subtly, things around me are undergoing change. My initial acceptance is mechanical, I do wait for the time when it wouldn't feel I stepped in someone else's house and look for gates to get out of it...

nu year

2009-01-10T04:22:00.003+05:30

i really don't get this hoo-haa over new year's eve. what exacty is the big deal about a stupid year getting over, why does everyone has to fal over oneself to decide on the best possible plan to bring it in? I really got fried this time thinking of a paln sinmply because I wanted to curl up in bed on the 31st and no one would let me do that! so i did something entirely low-key...after 4 years, i actually went to delhi. Was in such a daze in the flight..since when have i started doing such things. but it was pretty much what i wanted..eat mummys food, order my brother around, talk to my dad about clothes and not venture out of the house. I'm fucking glad this bitch of a year is over, absolutely nothing good came out of it. i started to think of depressing, life-altering things a lot more, did a lot more drugs, my best friends moved out, didn't meet anyone interesting and had horrible money management. Also i stayed put in pune kidding myself that i gotta be there to attend college, which i never did due to which i didn't travel anywhere. discounting hampi that is. And i also had to send my dog away...it sucked ass.

so it was obvious that I was hoping that 2009 will sweep me off my feet with lots of cool ground-breaking stuff. when things start to get fucked, you get superstitious. You're human. and so far, it's getting worse. I still haven't got a job, every cheesedick i meet, even the ones who never read a newspaper in their life is giving me worthless gyaan on how the 'markets' are so bad that i should just quit the chase. today i got my marksheet and flunked a paper for the FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE. fucking unbelievable. then this another horrible thing has happened which i cannot put on to this stupid blog. i'm so disillusioned that i've started drinking. So still haven't got out of my drunken haze to start working and planning on all the things I need to take care of, like studying for my interviews and blanking out on unnecessary people I anyways never needed in my life. Maybe I should also get less egoistical about relationships and not want things simply when they get out of my reach. People talk about men getting involved in the chase and the losing interest, I've been doing that forever now. And not it's finally started to affect me. And it's all happening together. Aaaaaaaaaahhhh. And some more

Even though I haven't met a half decent man since I was 14, I have finally hit across a best girlfriend and I really thank god for that. There's really nothing better than getting drunk with your best friend and going over and over about the same thing and nit-picking on the same points hoping to get a fresher perspective on it by 4 am. Since the loser doesn't smoke, I have to drink to converse with her on the same level. The things I do for her hmm...

Now am in bombay taking a break from the hell that is pune, but am already thinking of going back on monday when i have to stop thinking of all that is going wrong, get focussed, get totally clean, and handle it all till I get placed. Then I shall sleep on a beach, thank god, pinch myself that it's finally over and I've come through it, get stoned ot of my mind, not remember these last 6 months, not think about the next 4 years, not think of how my life will completely change, and remind myself that I was always a strong girl. This is all so tough. But I'll fucking do it.

Amma

2008-10-29T00:49:00.004+05:30

I just came back from meeting my extended family for Diwali. We really have such a clean scene, no one drinking or playing cards. If I compare these people to everyone I know in Delhi, they seem like from another planet. It's become intrinsic to lose a lot of money on Diwali via gambling, apparently the more you lose, the more you gain back by Lakshmi luck. Yeah. Right. But festivals are for everyone I guess. I know of plenty of people who'll get deathly bored at my house. Playing cards on Diwali is so 'required' of everyone, I see ashen faces everytime I confess ignorance and deep disinterest in the whole activity. What?? You won't play? WHY Come we'll teach you. I figure I have enough vices to last me for some time, no need to add to the package.
My grandmom has become unrecognizable. She used to be fat like all old women and be so embarrassed of it. Now the skin on her arms is stretched out and hangs, as if there's nothing inside her to support that many layers. I held them up and saw deep scratches on them, from mosquitoes or boredom I don't know, but she knew she was hurting herself and she didn't remember the reason. It's so lifeless to feel her arms, her face. Is there even a person inside that shapeless clothing? She's not aware of anything around her, and everyone pretends as if she doesn't exist. The basic things that are required to make her live through the day are taken care of, but no one really knows what to do beyond that. I don't blame anyone, I know my chacha has done things few sons could even think of. Even if he complains all day over it, he'd be inhuman if he didn't. What can you do with someone who talks in her voice from childhood from the last 4 years. She wails all day, she forgets what I told her 2 minutes back. She once didn't remember her sons. But if you sit with her, you won't feel it. It's close to going back to when I was 3, she tells me fabricated stories about people and places, confusing incidents and histories along the way. She'll make up conversations that never took place and give dialogues befitting her opinion of that person. So if I hear that she met someone yesterday who asked her about my marriage plans or how long will I rot in Pune, I know she thinks it's high time I come back. Patience is easy when you meet someone for five hours. I would be a different person if I had to live in that house. Old age is the most horrible disease. There are many who enjoy and live through it peacefully, and most of them have the perfect partners. Amma had the all the right things in life, if only she had a man who loved her enough through all this, she would be fine one day. I really think all it takes is something sweet in the morning, and before you sleep at night. After so many years, that's all it takes to keep your faith in living through it all. If that doesn't happen, then why would someone not cry all day if it's anyways expected of you by doctors and family alike. I've told my mom that it would be alright if it all is over. I think I'm old enough to know when someone really wants to go through all this. Anyways I'm not the one taking care of her, so it's not a question of burden. But why would I want that woman, who had green sparkling eyes and a luminous face, who used to listen to me bitch about my parents and chuckle, who had an interest in every person in the family and wanted to be a part of every small festivity; be turned into this stranger who impersonates her and breaks out into desperation so that someone will notice how unhappy she is. Everything is so crazy, sometimes your freedom and your life feels so close and real to you that it's euphoric, and there are times when it pulls you down to the worst corners. For all you know, this could be the best place I'll be at.
I hope she sleeps easy for the rest of her nights.

I don't want to grow up

2008-10-17T12:51:00.003+05:30

I've been vegetating. Even when I take a break these days, I'm still thinking of all the running around in store for the next 6 months. Maybe I just cannot work too hard, been out of touch with it for too long. And the thought of all that effort really scares me. So I'm deluding myself thinking that all I need right now is lots of relaxation and minimum activity, but ho hum, I'm bored of lying in bed all day. Have been in Delhi for 3 days now but haven't let anyone know. What's the point. I don't feel like going out or socializing. Lately, everyone I know in Delhi are just lost connections. I can't relate to most of them, call it late realization or whatever. Except some, every person seems not worth the effort.
It frustrates me to not be satisfied with any city, or any person. I'm going to be in Bombay soon, and will crib about that as well. I just hope it doesn't come to me taking the local. I swear it takes unrealistic drive to take that option. So all I'm thinking of is where all I need to go before I graduate, after all this work is over, after I get a job otherwise I'll be too guilt ridden to go anywhere. Hmm. You never know, maybe I'll be so dejected that I'll just run off for a bit.

mm. Goa. In January. NOT in December
Jaisalmer
Kodaikanal
Gokarna
Maybe Hampi once more. Want to see what it's like season time. Although I get the feeling that I won't be able to squeeze it in this time.
Pondicherry
Ladakh in April
And Krabi

Will definitely cross check this in June. How much will I accomplish in so less time? It almost hurts now. That I won't have so much time to waste ever, or to travel so much more. I can stay awake to watch sunrise and go back to sleep. To know people in their best phases of their life, before money jobs and life takes the joy out of them. No matter what they say, we all will get painted the same way. I miss my dog... he'll always take me to a happier place.

Smoking in Public R.I.P.

2008-10-09T03:30:00.004+05:30

I understand that there are bigger issues that are to be dealt with in this country. But we should discuss this smoking ban in great detail. Because banning something as intrinsic as smoking a cigarette, in a country like India, is nothing short of monstrous. I never thought it would happen. I don't know if others around me have been viewing India from a different prism, but I've felt immense freedom in this place. Forget about the bigger picture and all those depressing things you read in the newspapers, but living a normal life in cities here gives you the freedom to do anything you want. And if you need dedication towards any vice, you can depend on India for that. You can pretty much drink anywhere, anytime. Anyone can manage to score anything from any city, why, it only takes a taxi driver to find out these details in 20 minutes. I don't need to give details on the historical presence of smoking in India, all our gods had these swirls around them. Maybe its extra sinful now because of the health drive, but I personally do not know of any man in my home village who doesn't smoke a hookah every evening, and these guys outlast 100 years quite easily. And so do the people around them. Of course I
m not being naive enough to discount the cancer argument altogether. But how much available data remain on origins of cancerous cells anyway? We just have random statement on how the non-existence of this chemical increases your chances of contracting this cancer or that. What about those people who contract stomach cancer at the age of 22? They didn't even live enough to warrant that kind of body desecration.
I think I smoke responsibly. I wouldn't light up when children are around, or when old men are around. Or when someone is really unwell. And most of the people I know follow these basic rules. Because smokers are not unidentified aliens. They are just in possession of a habit that is more socially criminal than yours. I will never understand as to why drinking is so much more accepted by every generation. My dad took me out for my first drink with him when I was 13 or something, and we end up drinking everytime we meet or go out. But even he gives me an endless lecture whenever he smells smoke on me. I can't tell him that like other kids have veered towards getting drunk, I've veered towards this. He won't get it. Apparently my liver is less important than my lungs. I've seen more people die from alcohol abuse, but I'm still encouraged to leave cigarettes by my well-meaning friends, because that's what they have chosen as the safer option. But why should any place set up these unbelievable rules that are clearly infringing my rights? The argument is that my harmful habit affects other people too, so it should be done away with. And drinking does not do that? How many people run over 12 people while overspeeding after smoking cigarettes? Alcohol is what gets you to work late, because of your hangover. Not cigarettes, they actually keep you awake. Too much alcohol also makes you violent, emotional, lecherous, loud and generally too much of an inconvenience. How are these factors not affecting other people?
India has the second highest standing in world malnutrition index. The State doesn't have funds to feed all the children here, inspite of booming production and useless imports because some Minister wants a cut in that deal. The Delhi Police has already stated they are much too busy to waste time on imposing fine on random smokers, what with bombs exploding all over the country with clockwork schedule. How can Ramadoss logically explain the application of this law that clearly does not suit the Indian budget? Does it make any sense to impose another burden on the taxpayer only because this guy wants to get his not-so popular portfolio in the limelight too. Those hungry kids be damned. I'd rather hit against smokers and Bollywood. The media covers that. If he's so concerned about the health of this country's youth, then his ideal mode of action should be to exterminate cigarettes from this country. Ban the manufacturing. Delete them from the system. But they won't do that. As it gives them unimaginable money. So they'll keep on making cigarettes more expensive, and also make it more difficult for people to smoke them. While industries based on this product as well as the people dependent on them for survival will suffer losses, the government can act like the righteous big daddy and also pocket big change in the process.
There are an equal amount of smokers in this country, isn't it a bit too harsh to expect them to climb down floors to smoke while at work? To not allow smoking sections at all in restaurants and clubs? To make them step outside in the sun or bad weather from places that expect you to pay 300 bucks for a coffee plus tax plus VAT? Why the hell should I be so inconvenienced? Can no one see that this whole thing is more than just a plea for a frivolous privilege. The other day some random woman patted me on the shoulder while I was walking on the road, telling me that smoking is now banned. Great. So now all these faceless strangers who always nursed hatred against this 'filthy' habit will collect the balls to give worthless gyaan to other strangers just on the security of this dumb law? Of course I told her to read up the law in detail to know of the exclusion of streets. Thankfully. But how many more? The coffee place close to my house has this bench kind of sitting area that overlooks the traffic on the road wherein you can smoke, from there all the rickshaw wallahs, paan tapri guys, random people in passing cars, people walking, men with ideas about women who smoke can take part in my smoking experience. It leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. It's so insane, it's like an era has come to an end. Maybe we all will get time to get used to it. And then, as it so happens in India, there'll be a jugaad to get around this as well.

.........

Please don't listen to psychedelic music. It can get you arrested. And that is just the good part. See what I mean, no freedom. I'm waiting for the day when India will be like Russia, when psy will be so goddamn common that it'll give competition to dandiya nights. Yay!

..........

After all that is happening around me, it's no wonder I hate going out. It's like your home has become the trippiest and safest place to hang out. That's why I'm moving again in search of something different.

...........

It's really funny to see all these Bongs crying now. Earlier it was oh Mamta didi is such a socialist hero, yes we definitely will hold on to this land and let no one enter. And now it's hogwash like how Durga Pujo celebrations have hit a lull because of the exit of the king of small cars. Modi has again proved his smarts. This just shows that a normal human being will nowadays not even accept something he readily wants without nakhras. And when it's taken away, he'll waste some more newsprint on how unfair it is that his wishes have been answered.

2008-09-25T03:50:00.003+05:30

One leg of the placements is over. I still can't believe I actually got in, No, I have no ill-disguised ideas about my genius, but I spoke like such a rabid feminist to a panel of 3 men that it wasn't funny. Yes, Punjabi men kill little girls. Yes, you men are doing all these horrible things. We had it so tough man. There are various ways of female infanticide, strangling underwater being the most popular. I admire Medha Padkar. Really now. That last one is embarrassing, I was also asked about the woman I admire, the answer to that question will NOT be revealed on this blog. It makes me sound like a Miss India finalist. But originality doesn't come easily when you forget how to frame normal sentences out of nervousness.
Hmmm. I never thought I'd be looking out for a job. Not so soon at least. And not to boring as being a lawyer in some firm working 8 to 11. I secretly hoped that I'd give in to my psychotic tendencies and leave my 5 year course midway to do something bizarre. But it never happened. I'm too chicken for an alternative career. The problem is when you don't really know what else you can do? I'm picking out my city of choice like a raffle ticket, it doesn't help that I'll probably have 1 best friend and 4-5 people I steadfastly ignore living there. But when I started this wild chase before coming to Pune, looking at these 5 years now...it all seems well spent. I pretty much got everything that I wanted out of this time in my life. So hopefully things to come won't disappoint.

Che told me that I just need him, and habit is never enough. I don't know how to make him understand. The whole idea of love has been cheapened now, god knows how many people I've been in love with at different points of time. There is no way to know if I value someone for their presence or for who they are. Momentary comfort has always worked for me. But this is permanent. And most of the times, there's nothing comfortable about it. Maybe he'll get it one day. Love is okay, but need is better.

No Smoking

2008-09-05T20:06:00.002+05:30

I've been talking a lot about this new health directive from October 2 with a feeling of impending doom. My faith in my country has been certifiably smashed to bits. Why aren't there any mass protests over this? Is India really made up of so many non - smokers that no one really gives a damn. Or maybe everyone thinks that this will sink in too like the numerous other rulings. But this wouldn't. This is going to become like how Mumbai cops have so diligently decided to bring every case of drunken driving to book. That makes sense. Blowing smoke in the air and harming others (apparently) is a lot less scandalous than being a bad driver and then heightening your chances of killing people by downing some.
I remember how the clinical feel of Singapore drove me up the wall. And then stupid Dubai. Never would have thought that ANY government would achieve the unbelievable feat of instituting a ban on public smoking in an Arab country. But they did. I think it's all a case of talking too much about a good thing. Never would this happen in India. We respect our people and their brains. Fine, you cannot smoke at airports and railway stations. But this is revolting. Imagine going to Blues, my growing up drinking haunt, and now some cute waiter is going to tell me not to smoke there. Imagine having a great dinner and then you can't light up there. There will be nothing as a smoking section. If I go to yet another cramped club because some commercial friends of mine force me to, I won't be able to chain smoke to ward off my boredom, or frustration or whatever. Now when I meet some new group of people in a new place, I wouldn't be able to smoke to keep myself from feeling awkward. Fuck. Where is the love. And about it being harmful, of course it is. So is alcohol. And a dozen other things. This hypocrisy doesn't sit too well with me. I had a lot of stuff on how smoking (marijuana) is actually less harmful than drinking alcohol, but um, it's not there on this computer and I should really study for my placements. Also, India is such a wonderful country where women are still not allowed to smoke a cigarette in peace without being given the oh god you're an immoral bitch stare. Wonder how much I'll step out on the street to smoke one. I'm so disappointed. I thought we were free. To harm ourselves in whatever way we want.

Doob Gai

2008-08-18T02:26:00.002+05:30

I finally went to Dubai. Hmmmmm. Obviously the little cultured me had absolutely no interest in going to this industrial nightmare in the middle of an Arabian desert, but my dad planned it so I gave in. Of course I had a great time with family but the place is quite weird. Apart from the fact that I didn't think that the celsius grade scale went above 40, well apparently it does. Because the temperature oscillated between 52 to 56 the whole time I was there. Of course the great thing about being in an oil producing country is that such things will never bother you. The only people you are likely to see on the roads are immigrants anyway, the Filipinos, Indians and Pakistanis. And does anyone know that you get a gallon of petrol for 60 bucks there. Yes, eat that. The obscene number of Landcruisers made more sense to me after knowing this. But its funny how such places never make an impact on you in any possible way. I've never been the staying in the hotel and shopping all day kind of tourist, but that's exactly what I did for 5 days. And shamelessly at that. Yeah, they have some indigenous things like the shisha and deserts. Wow. I'm real sad about not experiencing that.
You meet all these kids from UAE who come to do university in India and the common thread amongst them is the need for filtered water. Of course bastards, you guys don't have ANY water being produced from your country's resources, hence the confusion about bad and good water. And paying for water is so nouveau riche. Only you are not aware of it. But this post is not about mineral water. It's really about nothing in particular but I just feel I should feel up some space.

The women are quite pretty though. That is what I could make out from whatever I could see of them. Ha ha. I don't like going to such places because they seem to expose the hypocrite in me. Like how I held back my smirks whenever I caught a whiff of an Hermes scarp underneath the burqa, or saw the Balenciaga shoes clinking noisily, golden shiny ones at that. But then I told myself that my entire problem with the hijab is that it constricts women and relegates them to a clinical place, then why should I balk at these women prettying themselves so excessively beneath all those black layers. They have high - end designer stores that only make hijab. And you can really look at one of these and know who's more loaded. What's the point of this hypocrisy. Either you decide to live life hiding your power to attract men in any way possible and wear the hijab everywhere, or you just don't wear it altogether. My dad was impressed that most of these women have Anglican accents and have come for vacation after studying in Eton or something. That is even more depressing actually. Because it proves that even high end education and world experience cannot take these people away from this Islamic disease. Of course the only good thing is that their men really do not look at any women. Ever. Funnily, I felt relieved at reaching Bombay airport when some guys offered me a lift in classic romeo fashion, because I really thought I had become ugly almost overnight in Dubai since no one was looking at me!
I know its a different culture and I would probably never understand it. And that's what I'm thankful about. You have to know freedom to realize all that you're missing out. And no amount of Dior and LV bags can fucking top my life. Maybe it's like a balancing act by God. Since they can't wear it, they can afford it. And since I can wear it, I can't afford it. Hmmmm. Must be so much fun to spend 2 lakhs on a Lanvin dress and experience the secret thrill of wearing it under a hijab.
It seems like I hate these women. But I really don't. I wish great things for them. Even if Arab women prefer this life, then I pray for some revolution that'll open their minds that life is much more than just being pretty and using no contraception.

******

I have the most embarrassing secret. It takes 3 hours by cab to reach Pune from Bombay. And I spent the better part of that ride listening to that Aditi song from the Jaane Tu on repeat. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME. It's only because I can imagine Imran Khan singing that song in front of me. God. A celebrity crush. Me. Don't tell anyone. But he's so cute. If someone knows someone who looks like him and ahem, if he also resembles his character in the movie. Please let me know. Hee hee.

2008-06-04T19:01:00.002+05:30

I never wanted to put personal pictures here. But this is only so that I never forget the day and every detail about it. So it looks like I can give a lot. And I also can't love enough :)

Cheese is healthy if carbs are low

2008-05-12T14:35:00.003+05:30

Er. Why is everyone on this insane health trip? It disgusts me. This friend of mine wants to be a model so he's given up wheat completely for the next 2 months! That means he doesn't eat bread, roti anything. Of course he claims that he's giving it up only for the next 2 months so that he achieves the perfect drool-worthy stomach, but judging from his past record of obsessiveness, there's no telling how far he'll continue this madness. I like to describe my sinfully unhealthy meals to him in detail so that life becomes unbearable for him. But he's got such ridiculous self control, he likes it if I exaggerate the taste so that he can make his mind stronger. God, that sounds as dumb as Gandhi sleeping with nubile teenagers to check his will power.
But I'm impressed by this incredible stupidity. And I seem to know a lot many of these freaks. Like best friend's brother who came to Pune and wanted the customary darshan. I took him to German Bakery because um..I don't go anywhere else. I know I know it's supposed to be some fruity health place .. they have pita and 'fresh' fruit juice ( balls! )cold coffee with no added sugar..everything made in brown bread. Basically anything you eat there feels like it's just been uprooted from some farm. It sucks. That's why the only thing I've ever had there are croissants and coffee. But that freak, who I thought would certifiably hate that place because of the white trash plus college smack addicts of Pune frequenting that place, he shockingly couldn't stop salivating. He went on to bore my eyeballs out by going on about the health benefits and calorie count of this and that. And then giving added gyaan on my unhealthy diet and why I shouldn't smoke if I ever want to hit the gym. Apparently it cancels out the benefits. Who cares. Who says I want to live till I'm 80. No one wants to be an 80 year old who wasn't 'adventurous' enough to eat butter chicken all her life.

I like people who work out. I like people who do anything I'm incapable of doing. So whenever I'm going for breakfast in the morning after staying awake the whole night, I always smile with guilt watching the purposeful joggers and gymmers. But anything upto a certain limit is good. But not when you don't eat aloo ka paranthas because it's unhealthy. WHAT THE FUCK. Are you Indian or what you goddamn pansy. These people are satisfied with eating bird food all through the day, stuff like cucumber slices and sprouts blah blah. I wonder how much of human working hours get wasted because these retards spend them on preparing meals that take more time and effort owing to them being uber healthy. Like the kind of salads these freaks eat, the effort that takes in procuring these ingredients depresses me. Are you trying to tell me tofu is easily available? These people clearly have a lot of faaltu time to decide on what has minimum damages and then set out to find that and then make an unappetizing meal out of that. I was stuck at that guy's house in Bombay and was starving for lunch. He was happily eating a bowl of sprouts with carrot juice. As if that's food. As if that will give you enough energy to do anything productive. Ya, sweetheart, I eat this only. *insert gay I wanna be a model momeeeee smile* I knew you wouldn't eat this. You're so unhealthy. You'll regret it sweetheart. Er, hell yes I won't eat that you fruitcake. Where is my risotto.
Also this whole thing of how I'll regret it. What exactly will I regret? That I'm having 3 square meals a day. That I'm fighting against urban stress, exams, stupid people, bad weather and am giving myself the required energy to do all that by having proper food. It makes me sad to see this. We all see people everyday who would be thankful for any nutrition, any food. Why are things so twisted that the ones who have the means are just not interested.If you're so health conscious, why don't you donate your wasted food to someone else? But no, they'd rather spend it on personal trainers and one membership because that gym is good and another one because that one has a better pool.Whatever. I guess everyone's entitled to spend their money in whichever way but some things are just too unfair.
Maybe I would think differently if my body required me to work out? I know if I get fat, it'll send me on a religious trip to the gym.
Still, I'm never going to a gym. Only after I'm 30.
My discovery for today is that cheese is very healthy. So I was being a good girl and I didn't even know it. But it doesn't matter if you have bread with it. Hmmm. There goes my dream of living on bread cheese and wine and still look fabulous.

Cyrus

2008-05-03T09:09:00.004+05:30

My dad actually wanted me to go to that flower market with him. Somewhere in CP it was, it's like a phool mandi. Am I mad? At 5 in the morning. Nowadays I have to wake up at 6 every morning because OD starts prancing around the room in anticipation. The morbid fear of him crapping in the house, which I know he'll never do, forces me out of bed. I'm amazed. Never in my life have I woken up at 6 for anything.
Um. I realize that I'm not saying anything of importance but I just have to document my life. Hahahaha. So that I remember I woke up for my dog at least, if not for anyone else.
I met my school friends some days back. Mr D is so cute, he actually picked me up and then later dropped me back. I think he sought inspiration from Mr V who used to do this all the time in school because after 8 pm all my driver used to start whining to go back to their wives. But bechara. I sit at home and twiddle my thumbs while he's driving around Delhi after work so that we can hang out for 3 hours. Some of my friends are so brilliant it makes me misty. Other than that, real boring men are hitting on me. But I also haven't seen any interesting men in this city. All of them look like mamma's boys, or metrosexual nightmares, or pinker than me, or boarding school relics. There's no other category. But I think Delhi women have really become much better. Like all of them are so well dressed and pretty and all. I think I should switch.

**

Albert Hoffman passed away. Some dickheads on my Facebook have posted stuff like Albert baba I'll miss you. Yes you dickhead, yehin kasar baaki reh gayi thi. Aur thoda wannabe ho jao. You fucking knew him personally that you so badly miss him? Such bullshit all over, I feel bad that a great scientist passed away. He's given a lot of people a third perspective, even if it happened accidentally.

***

Have been listening to such music lately, hmmm, I need a break from the darkness. I downloaded this because I like the name Ananda for a man, and of course he's Uday Shankar's son. What an album. Usually I don't rely on best of compilations but since I don't know anything about him thought this would be a good place to start. Wanted to listen to something on the lines of a sitar, but already have most of the Ravi Shankar albums. This is horribly underrated. Bhaiyo aur beheno, please check it out.
And yes, if you've already heard this and like it. Please. Meet me. Let's go for a drink.

Sax Hotel

2008-04-21T23:03:00.003+05:30

The whole idea of people taking up a hotel room to just do it revolts me. Of course the things that make me want to barf, are the things I've shamelessly indulged in. Maybe I was too stupid then. Or maybe I didn't have a spine to say no, I find it conclusively loser-ish.
Met my friends who are planning to get something fancy since both of them are not from Delhi and hence the idea seems romantic. Now these guys are the most wonderful people alive so I'm going to exclude them from my bias. But lots of people seem to do it. I'm not concerned with people who pay for it and so need an arrangement like that. But these lovey dovey I'm-so-into-you couples. How do they manage? Maybe deep down I have the sexual independence of some Pooja type character. I for one know that it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. It also made me feel whore-ish( is that a word? um) Since the guy is paying for something ridiculously expensive, the agenda for the night weighs down on you. And the stress...usually at moments like these, I clam up. Those are the precise nights when my body gets cold. Maybe I haven't grown up enough to treat sex like shopping. You need shoes and you step out with the purpose of buying them. If you do step out with that intention, there is no love lost if you fail to like something worth buying. But of course the man would consider it imperative to let you know that the night or rather time till check out is wasted on a girl like you. Hmmm. This reads so ugly. Maybe I've been with the wrong men. But that's my experience. I haven't been lucky enough to be with a man who spends 16 grand for Hyatt just for the lavender sheets and bathroom big enough to play golf in, and order fondue and watch tv. Why don't people ever want to do that? Or perhaps they do and I don't know it because I attract animals. They do that when you're at home. Or on ordinary days. But hotel rooms are calendar days.
Is it that people step on duvets and feel instantly horny. What kind of a sex life is that. The vision I get is of people who read stuff like how to make your relationship more alive by unraveling your bedroom vixen. All women magazines have this crap. Haven't read any men stuff other than Maxim, ONLY because they are sometimes so rude that it's brilliant. But I never stuff like that for women. How to be a tiger in bed and make her forget PMS or something. Why is the responsibility of being randy enforced on women? Nowadays all these metrosexual I feel-for-you-baby sort of men are deeply committed to their theory of women being ghastly at giving blowjobs. Ok, point taken. But how many of these bed wonders admit to their unskilled attempts at pleasing women? Most women crib about the man not knowing the point between it's working good and it's plain hurting. Most men think a woman is slutty or easy when she screams too much. Most men think that it's an unthinkable idea if he goes down on you and you don't feel like returning it just for a change. It's a barter. Now it's about equality. But earlier we got shortchanged and no one was keeping count then. All this sexual politics. No wonder I've been off sex since dinosaur years. Who exactly is good enough for me to forget this conditioning?

Yuck. Now I'm a female blogger who's writing about sex. Maybe now finally I'll reach the annals of blogosphere Page 3. Wow. Maybe I should make a habit of this and then some one will ask me to write a book as well.

Doggie trail

2008-04-13T23:48:00.002+05:30

Why are Indians so horribly uncivilized on airports? They seem to be bearable in buses, even trains..maybe I'm biased towards trains because you sort of expect it to be a battle so any kind of behaviour fails to match up to your exaggerated expectations. But airports is another thing altogether. I'm so royally ticked off that I might just give up traveling by air altogether. Till the time I can afford to fly business class and consequently, won't have to bother with the sabzi mandi bullshit. Now Delhi crowd can't get better than the kind that's on business hours Jet or Kingfisher flights. So all these crew cut yuppies carry bulky laptop bags, always have a carefully cultivated look of being busy, and wear ugly shirts with ugly shoes. We know that all of them are probably flying on business with the company footing the bill and so, financially comfortable. Or there are huge gay Delhi families, aunties with daughters and chachas to take care of the women folk. Now why do people like me so wary of traveling with families? I'm not some gift from above, have a family too. And we travel too. But we aren't lucky or gay enough to have 15 assorted members on a same flight. How can that be possible? How can 15 people be required for anything at one point of time? Except perhaps marriages.
So my point is that all these people are literate good family type earning well people. But5 there are some traits that won't escape them...

1. So maybe the check in desk is going to shut but it doesn't matter because you have your boarding pass anyway. So you pass through security check and are so flustered by the fact that you'll miss your flight that you bang into the woman in front of you, hand over your ticket and run towards the aircraft. In the course of which that bitch had no time to apologize...of course not sirreee, because she's so busy. Busy enough to make another phone call before actually getting on to the flight.

2. Indians and phones. sigh...the way they fit together. Now as soon as the plane lands, everyone is going to remove their seat belt and switch on their phones. While the seat belt sign is on. While the plane is still moving. The whole problem with these retards is this urgent need for being important. Like we have people waiting for us outside and they are illiterate sods who can't possible inquire flight details from airport crew...no no. We PERSONALLY have to call mummy, wife, driver, associate that yes I have landed and the plane is going to halt now and I just have to collect my baggage now. WTF!!!! It's a small thing but it burns my blood. Everyone has an emotional fear of being faaltu in India. What's the big deal if no one calls you? What is the whole idea of talking to someone on the phone as soon as you land even if no one is actually picking you up and you'll hail a cab anyway. Are these people fused with burnt brain nerves...

3. As soon as the plane halts, everyone will get up. EveryFUCKINGone. They'll stand in the aisles and take out their top baggage. If you're sitting in between someone, the chut on your right would want to give you an incredulous look because you refuse to conform to this ridiculous herd mentality, and then hurriedly ask you to give him way. So that he can take his bag from top and then stand on your near, very near left. Towards the aisle...right on top of your fucking head. And everyone is going to stand like that, sometimes for 15 minutes because everyone knows that it usually takes that much time for the runway to get installed. But they'll stand anyway.

4. If 5 people are traveling together, all of them will hog the baggage claim. So you have thousands of people hovering over the line, with their fucking servants and trolleys in tow. Why can't you put your trolley at the back of the line, take your goddamn bags and then put it on? What is the idea behind blocking the way for everyone else. And if you see your bag from the back of all these 6ft3 chuts, you can shout to be excused, which they'll comprehend after 5 minutes. By then the bag has moved on..then you run with it. Spot some 2 inch space in the front and scream aloud to be given way. While you're lugging your 20 kilo ka bag on your own because c'monnn how can you claim women equality and all that and then expect people to pick your bags after you, then some man comes right behind you to look at his luggage. While he can fucking see that I'm taking my stuff out, he still DOES IT. And then you scream...and declare him to be a motherfucker. Aaaah....Welcome to Delhi no.

Um. Why is this post called so? There's nothing like walking away from your dog's sad brown eyes while leaving...he knows, you know he knows. It kills me.

Where next..

2008-02-21T10:14:00.004+05:30

Have been awake all night and like a fool, am now thinking all the wrong things. Like how exams are getting quite close and how I'll have to hunt around for an internship in about 2 months. And again I'll have to battle Delhi roads morning and evening, actually driving a car, something that seems like such a chore when I'm in Pune... and this ride being supplemented amply in misery quotient due to self not knowing which road leads where. Fuck. And will my new boss like me. You know, have noticed this disturbing trend wherein none of the places I've worked at have really liked me. Sure there was this one office where lots of people liked but that was only because we tanked up a lot after work. And another place where this guy liked me but only because he was looking for a gurrrlfriend. Why he thought I'll even deign to look at him beats me. But really, like the cream of the corporate culture doesn't like me. Apparently I seem too casual or aggressive, both unwanted qualities. And I also take too many cigarette breaks. And not having a dick and all that, the more you smoke, the sluttier you are.
Man. Not like these revelations don't give me unnecessary tension. But earlier I would be so charged up with the idea of interning now it's all like zilch. I'm just hating the idea of work because it's conflicting with my manali plans. And Manali I will so do this time as it's getting real embarrassing to tell people that I've never been there. It's really too far from Pune. And when I have money, it makes sense to get somewhere faster, like Goa. Not like I'm bored of Goa but I've just got to go north. Will be fun.. getting lost, not where how to score, where it's safe to smoke...nice.
So bottomline is that I just don't feel like interning this time. But cribbing also makes zero sense as I will just not go on some trip without doing any work. I'll have such massive guilt trips...hmmm...can only imagine how terrifying they'll be..

....

We are shifting into a new place hence crunched for money as Pune brokers are confirmed chuts. So there's a real scarcity of maal. Like we are actually discouraging each other not to score. Also the little thing of exams getting closer. I can smoke and go for an exam but not hit the books while smoking. It makes you too sleepy to give a flying fuck about Evidence.
But we are still smoking. From friends and small scoring from shady bad maal places. But it's just not enough for me to abuse it.
Recent trip to Boombay has confirmed my allaying suspicions that all Bombay smokers are fucking twats. They always have maal when you are not in their vicinity, very suspicious behaviour. And whenever you land up in their city, it's apparently dry season ( fuck, when is it ever wet. Been 1995 since I heard of some good stuff in that shithole), or they've lost touch with the peddler who just happens to put out anything under the sun in other good days. Balls I say!
If you don't smoke enough, why can't you just fucking say it. Now fuckwits have been showing off about every shit possible, this will get added to the list too?
Totally believe that these chuts have totally fucked the vibes by doing their oh-I-just-got-this-nice-cream and c'mon guys let's get together with bees hazaar ka dj kit and send Skazi crying back to Israel. Why don't they just shut up!
Are Bombay people ever smoking anything other than Manali? And they have some crazy story of someone scoring some crazy shit from a narco, or someone else taking thirty acid or something and really tripping their balls out. If you had the fucking mental strength to handle that much acid you motherfucker, you wouldn't be sitting in front of me pissing me off like few other people have. Why can't you just shut up and pass the smoke and listen to the music? Like really, you're the next Goa Gil and fucking naga sadhus are seeking appointments to smoke a chillum with you, but just shut up ok. So bad man. This whole competition mentality. I wish all of them just disappear.

......

Have a lot of things planned for this year. Man hope everything works out well, apparently my best years are getting over so I hereby declare to go out with a bang.

.....

These cops are making me nervous. I think all of us look suspicious. Then how the hell will we manage to get out stuff from the hills. It really baffles me, just heard of this trick, will probably try that. But just the planning and everything, makes me nervous. I guess trains don't get checked at all hmmmm..how can they check so many people? And so much luggage? Cops have so much free time man. What are these gentlemen doing when women are getting raped hailing a cab or something. Money makes the world go round my friend.

......

I really wanted to write a scathing analysis on this whole Raj Thackeray episode. But it's gotten old now and I forgot a lot of the points and am also not that pissed anymore. Met this UP taxi guy in Boombay and when he can look at the situation logically being the one getting hammered on the streets, I suppose I can too stop resorting to extremist political ideas formulated in the comfortable cocoon of my bed. Why are urban people like us so full of it? So many theories, so many political bracket. Why, the paan waala next door is smarter than us. Smarter than you that is. Not me. Hahahaha

Goa goa goa goa..shut up!

2008-01-17T21:43:00.000+05:30

So I'm trying to meander through the grassy pathways that makes my favorite place. Although no one can convince me to walk through a leafy doubtfully snake-infected way like this usually, but for some spots I try to make my brain think otherwise. Even though in my altered state of consciousness, looming visions of snakes griping at my bare legs through the gaps are frequent, I still push it away. I'm thinking Oh I'm so happy, no one irritating is with me right now and I have something planned. Those lamps are pretty, should ask where to buy them. Why do these people sell EVERYWHERE? Who buys anything here? It's the same shit everywhere...this stuff looks especially old. She's standing in some muddy tatters..her hair is stringy. Do you want this? No. My eyes are saying it. But they are fixed the other side. Do you want this? You know how cheap it is? Now it's just the lamps and lost eyes. It's cheaper than us. I walk on. Gotta do something stronger. Something like this follows you. To remind you of something. I wonder what

How Daft is that

2007-11-17T18:51:00.000+05:30

I downloaded Untrue by Burial today. What a mind-blowing album. This recent discovery just reinforces my long-held belief that Whitelight should really be my best friend.I feel like making a huge banner scribed with GET IT and flagging it outside my house. And then get t shirts printed with the logo. You know, word of mouth advertising. And someone so brilliant wants to be anonymous? It's a crazy world. If I was that guy, I would have bought myself a house in Bristol and make journalists scamper around for my radical sound bytes. Anyways, so I also got Shocking Pinks which is another indie wonder. And Between Voices by Anti Atlas. The fact that Chris Hufford, manager of Radiohead and Supergrass, is the man behind this outfit might have something to do with the the kind of music it generates. Although if someone downloads this album based on the kind of bands he manages, then please don't come back here to swear at me. It's not as phenomenal as I expected it to be. Now trip hop is probably my favorite genre, so maybe I'm not impressed by yet another hotch-potch of Icelandic totand Japanese vocalists to make the album sound suitably global and inversely, exotic. It's nice, but I might not put it on after a month.

Daft Punk is downloading right now. Been searching Alive, live set for 2 hours now. Everything has been already deleted, now let's hope this is not another empty file. This is one band I'm dying to watch live.

You look at something like this and I get this sinking feeling. Because I'm here. And forced to make do with events like the Sunburn festival where a target of 10,000 people showing up is considered ambitious by most. Now the line-up is good, but there aren't enough funds to have systems that'll reach up the sea. So you're going to have something like this, and then force people to get jostled like ants with no dancing space because the music can't reach wide enough. Last I heard they are going to have sniffer dogs to detect drugs. WTF? And this is at an electronic gig! But how can I blame them, that's how things work here. You first have to suck up to State officials who want free tickets as well as their own sweet conditions on how exactly people should party. If this issue wasn't frivolous, maybe more people would be concerned. I feel like guffawing when people like Nikhil Chinappa proclaim that guys, you don't need drugs to enjoy music. Man, people were fried listening to Velvet Underground. And you're trying to tell me that you're brilliant enough for me to dance on your tunes for 3 hours sober? Seriously? Hahahahahaha

Wake up for pancakes...

2007-11-15T03:29:00.000+05:30

This is probably the most testing aspect of my personality, my inability to sleep. Or rather, the propensity to sleep at odd timings. Sometimes it strikes me as really unfair, as I miss out on so much bright cheerio sunshine part of the day. Also, day time is better because things get busy and it makes you distracted enough to fret on mundane things. Nights are something else. It's just you, there are people I can call and yak my night through, but sometimes there's no balance and most of the times no one seems engaging enough. There are certain limits to which you can have mindless conversations with people on Messenger, and not too many awake at 4 am anyway except firang idiots who have yet another question pertaining to their ever-increasing plans for Goa. Really, I don't get this hyper-ventilation over South Asian travel. If you're already so chicken shit, don't bother coming here anyway. Don't fucking stand with me at Khan Market and gobble 3 malaria pills before downing your kebabs. Really, how gay is that. How come you didn't get your mommy too.
I spent some time trying to make my blog look different. But I found nothing that made me interested enough to discard familiarity. Blogger is so predictable. Only for Oh I've been doing Photoshop since I was 6 kind of people. Everybody I know is crazy about Photoshop, and they use it generously to make themselves look marginally attractive or more intriguing on Facebook. Actually, it's pretty dumb for me to crib because if I was an Adobe expert, I would do that too!
So night time is my time. I stay awake most nights on the computer making Google my best friend. So now I know enough about the Boom Festival to book my tickets for 2008. And I also know that Neil Armstrong saw alien spaceships on the moon, owing to which there have been no further excursions to the moon. Then I try to watch television which is always a bad idea that lasts for exactly 5 minutes. Tv is something that I just need in my house, in case I'm dying to watch something live. Like the news. But once it's there, I end up watching it twice a month. And I vowed to myself that I'll only commence my viewership once Shahrukh Khan is done with the promotion of his movie. Because if I'm subjected to yet another sight of him on any channel now, I swear I'll cut my hair, put on red lipstick and run naked on the streets. Why, I don't know. Right now, that really seems crazy.
This is something I do when I'm not trying to convince myself that there are chances that self will fall asleep. So I try to bury myself in blankets so that the warmth makes me drowsy, sometimes read Ramachandra Guha to make me sleepier. Nothing happens, I stay wide awake thinking of how I have nothing planned for the next day and it will truly suck if my mom sees me first thing in the morning yet another time. And then she'll make her ancient call center joke. Then I'll bug my maid to make breakfast. I'll read the newspaper, crib on how there's nothing else to read, not pick up my phone, in case I do, make excuses to people wanting to meet, like how I'm too unwell or too busy with nothing in particular. The thought of staying awake and interacting with someone in a bar in Delhi, thinking of the old times makes me nervous. Mostly because I remember nothing. And if I do recall snippets, those are not enough to last 3 hours with someone. There are others who I meet once a year, and hence not important enough. I wonder, am I turning into a sociopath? Or it's just that I suffer from abominably high standards.

Have been listening to the Thaw Sessions lately. A lot. Why do most people like to diss Verve? Yes, they sucked after Urban Hymns, but that's what happens when retards deviate musicians from the main purpose by treating them like God. And when they start to think that they are indeed God, You just act pish tosh about it, labeling it too commercial for your taste. Hahaha. Actually, I've never been a huge Verve listener, but if these 14 minutes are a true sampler of what the rest of the album is going to sound like, I may just become one.

Drama Queen

2007-11-08T22:18:00.000+05:30

Hmmmm. So what should I say? That posts written at 3 in the morning ought not to be trusted. That it's too much of a hassle to make another blog. That writing all this longhand will be a chore and will need to buy newer journals every month. That although I wasn't 'forced' to continue, it's still nice. And that it'll be frustrating if I have to say all this to someone who feels obliged to respond, when he's clearly ill-quipped to come up with anything remotely helpful.And that I can see the point of posterity. So tadaaaaaa...I love faceless people.

*******

Saw Mighty Heart yesterday. Is it a deliberate attempt to shoot it in that documentary frame so that people take it more seriously? Good to see Hollywood producers having the sense to do at least that. After watching a real story, I went on my usual business of searching on every little detail about the movie. Now this man was your average Stanford graduate out to change the world with the power of the mighty pen. I'm tempted to dismiss such personalities as being too yuppie for their own good, in a South Asian country that is clearly dangerous and unreceptive to Americans in general where he was out interviewing a jehadi. What did he expect? Rogan josh and tid-bits on recruitment procedures? How can these firangs be so goddamn naive. And how can journalists in general be so goddamn naive. You don't really earn the right to delve into anything you bloody well please just because you have a press card. I think journalism makes the average rookie think that he's infallible. That he isn't the common man anymore because he can expose all the dirty details. But who the hell is listening? Like this recent Tehelka thing about Modi. Does it affect the Gujarati businessmen who are going to vote for Modi anyway. Or does it affect the riot victims who saw Kar Sevaks bursting open wombs. Or the plethora of journalists who believe Modi to be the criminal irrespective of anything else. Mere validation should not make you feel so great about all that you're doing. And judging by the methods employed to sensationalize something that needs a bit more drama, who is going to believe them anyway. It's terrible, but why do the wrong people have to be touchy about the right things whenever they feel like.
The media wasn't so gung-ho about caste riots when the Sikhs were burnt in Delhi. Tytler's dismissal was enough for them. And no one talks about it today because Sikhs didn't wail about it too much and went on with their lives, and the Godhra riots are anyway more recent so let's fuck Modi over it. If Godhra is so bad, then why is Congress still an Indian intellectual's favorite party? Of course it's politics and shit happens, but it makes no sense to build up something which you were complicit with some years back.
So Daniel Pearl was that kind of journalist. But whenever you hasten to dismiss someone like him, I read something that makes me cringe. This man refused sedation before his beheading. What sort of a person does that? Where do you get the courage to do that. And for what purpose. Is this the sort of world wherein you can romanticize the idea of a revolution. He rebelled against discrimination for his identity. I'm Jewish and if you're going to cut my head over it then so be it. You hear that and you feel that he was a hero. It's only the average joe who would think that. And make Hanukkah videos for Pearl's son so that he knows how brave his father was. But the problem with authority persists. Apparently his wife had to withdraw her case in Pakistan against the perpetrators because she had a tussle over legal fees with the Wall Street Journal. This is how being a revolutionary makes no damning sense. These people are going to make you believe that you have the power to do something different, that there were hundreds before you but you are going to be the one. So go ahead and prove that US bombed a civilian factory instead of weapons of mass destruction as they falsely claimed. Go ahead and bust your ass somewhere in Pakistan with your pregnant wife because the answers you'll get are going to make the world a better place. And these are the people who are going to endanger their own people by handing over information to the CIA and then warm their hands away from it calling it routine procedure in the general interests of the country. Who the fuck is crazy then. The jehadis who are not beating around the bush of what they want, or these fake fuckers who are driving more and more people on to a path that doesn't exist.
I once worked on the US sponsored torture all over the world and the stuff out there is really something else. You can't exhibit such outrage when you are doing worse to Arabs in Cuban prisons. Such hysteria over the beheading of a white Jew looks laughable when under trials who are 'merely' suspected of being jehadis are being shipped to Uzbekistan torture centers so that confessions can be forced out of them. You have a nexus that circulates all over West and Central Asia on the ridiculous pretexts of self-defense, and then you blame this community for being paranoid of your intentions? That's fucking great, that someone can do an Iraq in this world and still have the balls to condemn emergency in Pakistan. What in the hell are they so worried about? Wasn't Musharraf's presidency supported by the American agencies since forever. And anyone with a functioning brain could foretell these course of events from him. It's getting more sinister.. this blaming business centered over where you come from. And the presence of American and British powers is just making it murkier.
If they consider themselves a paramount authority on world peace and the country that has the responsibility to restore democracies and propagate dummy governments, then why is there such silence over the events in Myanmar. Is the American manpower not enough to topple the militia? I feel that even a large part of this Arab and Jewish animosity is being fueled for American self-interest. If they hate each other more, then there's less time to hurt the Americans. Such a wonderful country, then is it surprising that I have never been there on principle. Missing out on airport check-ins regulated by the colour of my skin. And of geographically challenged Americans opinionating on the dismal state of democratic choices in South Asian countries. Sometimes it's best to be a soft power, you have to be too ugly to retain number one. And I'm good with that.

Bye bye capsule

2007-11-05T01:36:00.000+05:30

So this is it. I was hoping to do this for some time and tonight has been a decent catalyst. This blog is over. And it makes sense to me too, what do I write about lately anyway? A lot of people here can translate what they feel in better words. But no matter how bottomless I feel, it still looks less sinister on paper. That bothers me. I started to blog thinking that there's no one I can actually talk to. So maybe I ought to try this. You have so many terrible secrets, spill it out anonymously and no one will know. But it wasn't so simple. Even something as simple as this has been page 3-ised by too many people. Some ar apparently publishing books over their fictitious online personalities and people are buying it. What does that have to do with me? Nothing much, except that it riles me up. The hesitant thought before you think of telling someone that you feel they are full of crap riles me up. You as it is can't do it for real, now is it so difficult to do it with masks on too? That bothers me.
I did it because no one knew me here. Especially a certain someone. Now if I count, 5 people reading this blog know about my identity. Not that I'm writing of my bedroom escapades with assorted strangers, but it still bothers me. It's because when you write something as random as this, I really do not need the wrong people to read half of it and fill up the other half with what they judge. That in itself should have stopped me long time back. But I didn't, and I poured some more and now the shit is flying off the wall.
Maybe there's nothing wrong with anyone at all and it's just me. It's probably just me. How come I develop newer issues with every medium? How come my randomness gets me into trouble everytime?
It's just predictable. The moment something starts to make sense, it's taken away from you. Not that I'm being honest here anyway, so fuck it. It's too late to call anyone, and there's no one to call. Now that's an honest admission. I wouldn't tell anyone that. Would I tell anyone that I can feel something creeping from behind? And that nothing feels good anymore. And that after loving my body for some time, I feel like damaging it again.
Have read some interesting people here. Will miss someone else going like oh, I so know what you're talking about. So it's back to capsule.

Waiting and wishing

2007-11-03T03:29:00.000+05:30

It's really pathetic that I'm actually contemplating if I should write another 'I'm so sick of marriages I could kill someone' kind of post in here again, but that's what I want to write about, in addition to other things sooo.. My mother is tripping around the house and calling 7 people every minute, and then exchanging details of those talks with me. Strange, if a relative of mine got married every month, me and mom would be in the Hall of Fame for best buds till we die. Now my mom is usually finicky about money, I think it's more to do with her upbringing than anything else. Or maybe the exorbitant amounts I seem to be expending on useless material pursuits. So I was obviously shocked when my mother suggested that why don't you get your make-up done from some fancy salon because you're a silly girl who can't put liner the right way, and anyway, all the other girls are doing it. Hmmmmm.I was silent as I swallowed the insult. None of the men I've been with have had the balls to say something like that to me. Is it possible that my mother thinks I'm ugly? Poooof...channeling mind not to veer in this direction. No, I don't want to get dolled up with blush and liner because I aim to be au naturale. And also to be the only girl over there who seems to be sane enough not to want to look like an aging geisha in the environs of a Delhi farmhouse. I know my mother is worried that I should look the best so that she can beam over everyone else, that look, even though my daughter smokes cigarettes and is living alone in another city and is suspect by all of you of being an overtly bigda hua type, she's still better looking than all your daughters put together, so who's eating the pie now eh. Hee hee. Looks like she's equally trivial-minded. Ah. Mother and daughter.

*******

My father was in a strangely introspective mood today. I think something happened with him on his way here and he refuses to tell me about it. He remembered his college bike brought from his own money and how my mother was so happy to have a fiance who had a bike of his own. So you don't need money to have happiness. That's what he concluded. I'm giving you too much too soon, maybe if you waited for things in your life, you would appreciate them more. What do I tell him? That I did wait, for him to talk to me like this. For him to think of how he treats me. For him to dispense time from his whole day on how he's giving me too many 'things' and not anything else. Just yesterday I was having a similar conversation with a guy who got uncomfortable when I talked of all the things I would like to own one day. I don't understand why people get so fidgety whenever you discuss money. As if it's a crime to want things for yourself. It's the second biggest taboo after Indians not having sex like bunnies. What makes me happy? I don't know anymore, but I'm happy when I buy shoes that look too pretty to wear on my feet, and I don't care if it makes me Paris Hilton to think like that. Anything you want, in any which way, costs money. The sooner these people see that, the better it would be for my state of mind.
But he said something so warm. The girls waiting on bus stands, on Delhi roads. They are usually attired on office clothes and must be working in jobs that fetch them 3-5000 bucks a month. Now they don't work for ambition, but it's for need. To satisfy the financial gap in the family. They look uncomfortable waiting for the bus for so long. Because you never know who could touch you. And you've been on your feet all day and want to reach home without having to encounter yet another man on the bus. Any time. They wait for the bus at 9 in the evening. At 10 at night. My father talked of this scene with so much pain, and how he wished he could give a car to each one of them. With drivers. Ha ha.
He seems so different to me some times.

At least he's sorry about the Muslims

2007-10-30T20:51:00.000+05:30

Bomb, he shouted as he was led from court to a prison van yesterday.

I feel cold.

Happily...uhhhh

2007-10-27T17:23:00.001+05:30

I hate weddings. I really really do. And people willing to get married are retards. I bet everyone finds the whole idea of settling down with 'someone special' really comforting and that's why so many people are ready to sacrifice their dignity and peace of mind just to get married to someone. It's all so fairy tale like and I'm going to spend a bomb on an outfit that'll be worn only for a day and will ship flowers from Slovakia or something. Blehh. All that is okay I guess, it's the dreamy part so everyone buys it. But you just have to get into this marriage system and it gets dirtier and dirtier. And mostly if it's arranged by people in the family, all evening chai conversations in every bludy house revolves around this huge event. I always thought that even if I go fruity enough to think of getting married, the moment these plans and arrangements take their course, I'm really going to call it all off. And run away to Poland.
So these days I see my mom and this mysterious pain swarms my body. She waits for me to wake up and then recounts the entire conversation to me. Not just once, but twice, thrice. I wake up to the sounds of, god these guys are meeting so many times before getting married. Do you think it makes sense? I mean, so and so did this and got bored and called it off.
So it's good no mommy, they'll realize they hate each other sooner and I'll save the 20 grand that you're forcing me to expend on the sari.
Tch, how can you talk such crap? So did I tell you he gave her Dior for her birthday?
Fuckkkkk. Yes, yes, you told me. Yesterday, and the day before that.And on the phone before I came to Delhi. Why did I come here?
And my cousin, the dumbfuck behind this whole hoopla, had called me in a state of shock. Dooood, she wears such terrible jeans. Huh? That's your opinion of her, in entirety? Who are you, gay Manav Gangwani?
But now he's so happy. He's unemployed so doesn't have to think twice before decking himself up like a chick, demanding that shirt and that tie for this event and that. Ooooh, I have got to wear purple because she's wearing that. And he's already dreaming of taking the girl with the ill-fitting denims with him to MOS every night. lol. I think his whole ambition in life is to end up as the sort of couple who have dinner together at the Ivy and then have wine after dinner. And if you want to make it a wee bit more page 3, dahhhling, we just went to Hilton for dessert. It's revolting.
And everybody is talking about money. And who's spending how much and who's giving what to whom. And what are you wearing and blah blah blah. Although I am wearing something totally divine, but that's besides the point. There are apparently billions of pre-functions which constitute a wholesome Indian wedding. I used to naively think that it's just an engagement and then the wedding and then sex in Europe. Or in the Caribbean if you're pretentious enough. Or more traveled, whatever. But apparently there's some roka, then some ring ceremony where no one actually wears a ring it's just a tika kind of thing. And then they wear a ring which is the engagement. Hmmmm.I think I again got it wrong. I'm so going to disappear after this engagement and then resurface a day before the wedding. I owe this to myself. Otherwise they'll break my spirit and make me dance on Salaam E Ishq. With aunties clapping and my cousin's shady friends leering. Aaaaah.
How can anyone just get married because it's 'time' to get married? You haven't really met anyone worth marrying yet,so pass it on to your parents to find someone suitable. And then you have a screwed up dating sort of scene before the weddings, and behold, you're having sex with a stranger in your parent's house and their blessings. And then you have kids and think of quitting your job because he's too busy to bring them up. And then you get fatter because all you do it stay at home because you have post-pregnancy depression. And you connect with friends who also have babies so that you can exchange newer traits of baby behavior. Then you also get fatter and also marginally happier because by then your husband is earning more money. So you trot in gk 1 in Dior sunglasses with your toddler in tow, thinking you're looking like Kate Moss. And then he cheats on you. You're shattered and then you cheat on him. Provided you're still easy on the eye, because everyone knows it's easier for men to get some as they get older. And you haven't read a book since the last 5 years. And the only music you listen to is on the radio. Or what your kid blares out of his computer. No wonder I'm terrified. Maybe it's better for some, but this is the likely scenario for most.
And for the beauty of motherhood, you only have to see a pregnancy documentary once to vow never to let out a baby out of your body. There are enough people already paying serious attention to the cause of reproduction. Not me. Not me.

Bluesy

2007-10-25T17:59:00.000+05:30

THIS is why Delhi is all wrong for me. The moment I step in here, all that I had planned against, starts happening mysteriously. It's been 3 years that I've changed my number 6 times. I can give you long sermons on which connection is really the best. In which city. And all this to avoid some person who is definitely not the kind to barrage my privacy with incessant phone calls. Then why do I do it? Just like other idiots who are kidding themselves in this 'modern' world with our ideas of self-imposed private sanctums, I also think that I have the right to disappear from everyone's eyes. And no matter how you delude yourself, switching off your phone is the closest you come to it. Earlier I used to get a thrill after switching it off. It's so pathetic to belong to this generation, where this goddamn gadget is like a fucking albatross around your neck. Oooh look no one can call me so now I'm roaming around naked in maroon robe type. Anyways, so if he doesn't fit into the classic 'stalker' category, it still keeps me sane to be away from him. If I can't hear his voice, and he can't hear mine in any possible way, then everything goes well. Of course I'm bored and everyone seems daft but I'm calm.
And here I am..stupidly staring at this 2 kilo ka phone and that message. How can people just write some tripe after 2 years of seeing you last, in extremely testing circumstances, and make you feel as if you never left off? Nooo, actually it's just him who's capable of such Bollywoodism. The familiarity of this whole exchange with this man makes me hurl. But what's worse is how I lack any semblance of a spine in asking him to fuck off. Did I just agree to meet him? In a week I think. What am I thinking! At least I managed to lay off the 'let's take a holiday together to sort out what we want' plan. It's so sad. Usually I think I'm pretty smart with men, but here, I'm like a fucking Barbie. I KNOW it's all bullshit. I had this shrink who told me that I'm attracted to him because of the lack of a father figure in my life. I knew that long ago. Before that 1000 bucks an hour shrink.
So I'm not going to do it. It'll be interesting to watch how I will manage to NOT sleep with him. And how I will manage to meet him without flashbacks at the trillionth speed. And no, I will not think of interesting places to do it. And no, I will not dwell on a no-strings attached arrangement, because that only works when you're not the one who's Barbie. Watch watch watch.
Just want to watch as to when I'll swim over this chapter in my life. 4 years back I gave it 2 years. Jesus. Maybe people are drawn to particular ex relationships because no one has been able to top them, yet. Yes, it's the only theory that makes sense. So maybe I should not be wary of relationships and actually look for someone, and then walk with him to this ex and then slap him for not being good enough. Because I've found what's good enough. Hmmmmmm. The sheer idiocy...
It's funny how I want to slap so many assorted people. Not all of them have been bad to me. Sometimes I just do. It's such a nice way to end things. Because of the shock value, you are not forced to tolerate those people for too long. Just today I slapped someone for touching me. After a long time. Phataaak.

Dear Diary..

2007-09-30T21:19:00.000+05:30

So me and Stud boy and Hyderabadi are in a perpetual state of fluidity. It's like I'm going from this to that but it's not touching me you know. Bah. So finally now the maal is over so I thought I'll see how the world has changed in the last 4 days. Next time I see the world again will be after 4 more days because Hyderabadi will not disappoint me tonight. Of course the powercut laid on us since 8 in the morning contributes to this sojourn. I've been screaming out loud to Stud boy that this is a fucking village because they have long-drawn powercuts man. I mean where does that happen anyway? Didn't this ridiculous place admonish a friend that he can't possibly hang his boxers in the balcony because this is not a fucking chawl you people. What would you know, you illiterate village buffoon. Well guess what, it IS a fucking chawl. There's no fucking water, and now the electricity is giving away too. The guard tells me that I ought to stop paying rent because there's no way in hell I'm getting my obscenely priced deposit back because the broker is a madarchod. The point of all that is that it is a fucking chawl. So then Stud boy reminded me that I ought to stop being hi-brow since Delhi has maximum powercuts on a country level.
So we have back-up man. We can't feel it.

Yeah, so you can get back-up here.

Yeah, just like I can get an AC.

Jokes. Why doesn't Bombay have any powercuts anyway? What's so great about Bombay?
Anyways so me and Stud Boy was talking of how we've been smoking together since the Stone Age and isn't it fucking brilliant. It is actually, if you don't look at it from a perspective that gives me a head-ache. This Nepali guy came over and asked me if I'm really enjoying myself. While I was rolling. So I'm like yes I get what you are saying but I'm not ashamed. You're sitting here feeling up this girl because you finally got a stranger's pad to feel her up. And you both are cheating on your respective partners. And YOU are judging ME? Sweet.
So there was this guy, let's call him Politico. He used to come over and finish everything everytime he had a break-up. It used to annoy some of us because he never used to score. But then you think that it's good that everyone is not scoring and getting wasted because that would be insane. So you let him rip you off. Now this guy has alternate spells of smoking and not smoking, depending on the girl he's dating. Now he's in some fucked up scene with this girl who drives me up the wall. She sounds like a squirrel and tries to be a smart-ass when I'm around. And then tells him not to hang out with me behind my back. And that is because I told him to get done with her for good after she cheated on him and then treated him like a wuss in front of everyone he knew by dangling that pathetic fuck buddy of hers. But now she's got back to her senses because Politico has got a great place and a car and other pretty stuff Bihari girls lust after. It's so funny to see him womble and get embarrassed over nothing. I know he's a loser in love. It's okay. It would be funnier if that bitch could open her mouth in front of me because she's so mentally weak that I can fuck her while I'm fixing a lighter. But no such drama. Sigh.
Then there was this other guy me and Stud boy knew, and he was a darling. He used to score once a month and come back with 2 huge bags. And you never had to step out. He just used to lech, um, in an acceptable way, which I eventually got used to. Stud boy was then my boyfriend and used to get hassled over the whole situation.And it was hilarious because I knew he'll do nothing except fuck my head over it. Now this guy makes launch-pads for missiles and eats butter chicken every night and smokes twice a month. I met him last week, him wearing a blue shirt and beige trousers. Oh man. It was a sight, as if he can't believe that his boxers are tightening up on their own.
Then there were others but I don't remember them. Most of them are classified as cheapskates or easy going. There was this idiot who used to throw up after 3 drags and then blame it on a Gold Flake he smoked in the after noon that messed up his throat. Ya right. Sardars can sometimes be so creative with bullshit. And this other guy who started smoking after I dumped him. Before that he used to hold his stomach complaining that he's drinking too much because I'm harming myself and he'll die because of me so can I please stop killing myself. I smoked up once with him after we broke up, and I don't know if he was trying to convey his allegiance to the 'cause' or something, but he kept breaking the circle and reaching for the stick as if it was candy. For a little kid. It drove me crazy enough to humiliate him a bit more by not giving him any until he heard out a list of rules by me. And he also made the worst joints. They were always too weak, or burning one way or too loose. Which is cool because if you suck at something then you just do right. But this retard had to insist on rolling everything and ask me stupid questions like have you had datura? So want to do coke with me blah blah blah. I wouldn't smoke a cigarette with that asshole. That's so pathetic. These people who claim to HATE something and then use it to suck up to you.
So now there's this Hyderabadi guy who is real funny. He apparently hasn't called his girlfriend in two months because he's trying to get something here. But he knows that he's going to get married to her because she wears salwar kameez. Ah. Some things never change. But he's nice. And also thinks that he's the best looking South Indian boy around. Ha ha ha ha.

2007-09-17T21:40:00.000+05:30

Just what is it that is so darn annoying about Ganesh Chaturthi? Is it the generous splattering of the pandals after every kilometer? Or perhaps the sight of half-naked, drunk men dancing on Himesh songs on most of these pandals? Or the pink water that is splashed on exactly the same men from a system of sprinklers fastened on top of poles? I just have no idea. It’s like it’s impossible to pick the best one. I’ve seen Diwali in most North and West Indian states and it’s nothing like this. Even Durga Puja in Calcutta is civil, Bengalis being themselves. Is this some sort of a phenomena that only happens here? The matter being in question the obscenely exaggerated method of celebrating festivals. Even those that have absolutely nothing to do with one’s own religion. I’ve seen this crap on Durga Puja and Christmas too. I understand that the Shiv Sainiks need a booze party in close intervals but why must it have a religious connotation that makes anyone who has a problem with it look like a racist and secessionist prick?
So you can’t say anything in Maharashtra because oh look this State contributes so much tax and the people are generally intolerant about their Gods and warriors so you better not mess with them. Cool, so if I have an insane desire to discuss Shivaji and his conquests in an auto-rickshaw, then I would do so in English. And Muslims shouldn’t really be blamed for their intolerance because oh look the whole fucking world is scheming against them and there are a few chosen people who have to save the day from infidels. So if they paralyze machinery across countries because someone made a Prophet cartoon in some Danish newspaper, then it ought to be totally understood on grounds of secularism, the number of Muslims reading Danish newspapers being what it is. And if M.F. Hussain desires to paint Hindu goddesses in the nude, then for humanity’s sake let him because he’s the most successful artist we’ve ever had and he can’t possibly be expected to explain himself as those Gods belong to India as a whole and we are just the sort of community that likes to be made a joke of. And why do you ask him if he would dare to paint a similar portrait of the Prophet, considering the artist in question has been a devout Muslim his entire life and it would certainly seem more reasonable for him to think of him as a religious figure at times of artistic inspiration? But don’t you know that Muslims are intolerant of that as they can’t make an image of their God and c’mon..we ought to respect that.
So if everyone’s feelings and faith are so widely acknowledged, then why do Hindus get the raw deal? Now I haven’t been to a temple in years, do not know the Gayatri Mantra and am generally agnostic. This is not a question of ‘my people’ and ‘my side’ being treated badly. But even a person like me is incensed at this whole Ram Sethu controversy. Something like this can only happen if the Congress is in power. Why do you have keep hitting against a section of the population just to see how long it’ll take before they get pissed off? The Ramayana may not mean much to me and I would be doubtful of its entire existence. Just like I don’t believe that Muhammad recited the entire Quran in someone’s ear. But the story is so entrenched in my childhood that I always stop and watch if I pass a Ram Lila during Dusshera because it reminds me of my Grandmother. It reminds me of even when she was close to losing all her sensory abilities, her face would still light up in the morning on the way to the temple. And she would sit with us on Dusshera and recount of all that Ram did, and how Sita was the most perfect wife ever. And how Hanuman actually tore his heart out …. And she would be excited. And that was because she was passing on something to me. This was right up with putting mehndi and oil in my hair. And for an illiterate woman who felt confused with my life beyond the house, it was satisfying to pass on heritage. It doesn’t matter to her if, hypothetically, I do believe the Ramayana, then I would surely be disgusted with Sita’s subservience. And declare Ram to be a chauvinist who took so much out of the poor woman, much less a man worthy of worship.
But this is what religion gives to most people. You cannot question the existence for people who believe in what it does for them. It’s like you cannot imagine life without computers, faith is exactly that for more people than you can ever imagine, and it wasn’t even invented in the near past. And if we are mature enough to give it to most religions, then why not Hinduism? Inviting an American agency like NASA to comment on the veracity of the story that is intrinsic to the faith of so many people? Why the hell should they be allowed to decide if the bridge was actually built or not? Are Indian scientists called to comment on the existence of Christ? Or, are navigators called to comment on that? Now it’s just a sleet of corals and let’s not be agitated over that. This is not about the point of having a huge maritime project on a site like that. Technology and money has altered our perception enough for the project to make a lot of sense and even be accepted. But not when all that you believe in is debunked because it’s convenient to do it.

I’ve started watching cricket again. And it’s so much fun to just sit at home and scream like an idiot and have such a wonderful feeling of oneness with everyone around me. Yeah man, the new team is all killer stuff and all Pakis suck. You just say that and life is all bright again. Am I the only one who thinks bowl outs are friggin stupid? Although it was a lot of fun to scream out loud everytime Pakistan missed it, or alternately when India hit it. Now I know why Sehwag was laughing so much. Oooh, look at these dumb fucks, they have all fast paced bowlers, we got spinners, we know how it works so they are suckers. But its fun in an Indo-Pak match, pretty soon it’s going to get so boring because everyone will figure out tricks and it’ll be pointless. And really, it’s like gulley cricket. At least they should have a batsman there. Don’t make it look like a bad copy of football. But oh wait, I’m a woman commenting on cricket. Aaaaah.

Cosmo says..

2007-08-17T05:20:00.000+05:30

Cosmo says that single women in prime years of their youth are usually depressed and working too hard, hence they feel an emotional void in their bodies. This they compensate by having way too much food. Now I believe Cosmo. Cosmo's my Bible. Because it's finally happening! Life lately is just about food. I need something when I wake up, then I storm around the house making appropriate noises so that the cook gets the 'be quick' message clearly, then for dinner I eat more than what the 2 men in my house eat, and then I fix another dinner, not a 'snack' darlings, while I'm awake at night. And then at times like these, I wait for the Bakery to open which is at 6 30. Fuck. I have never ever eaten so much. Do I have an emotional void??? Barrrrfff. There could be some truth in this argument. No matter how much I try to convince myself that this is all because I don't eat lunch and do so much running around the whole day, such as sitting on my ass and watching sit coms on the laptop, it still feels weird.
Now I can proudly say that I have never asked a man if I look fat in this or that. But I think it's time. Because very soon, I'm going to get very fat. I can see it happening. This girl I knew used to make fun of fat people and then she just bloated up. Now I don't exactly make fun of fat people, but if someone has pissed me off and they are fat, then I won't let him/her forget their body proportions for the next 2 months. Oh god I'm cursed.
Or maybe I just feel hungry because there's usually no food in the house. Now flat mate No 2 drinks every night and hence needs company. So he calls some dumb bakra types to entertain him and those chuts finish off the food. And I wake up to see nothing in the fridge. I do admit it pisses me off but flat mate No 2 is such an easy going guy that it almost feels criminal to lay down my wrath on his simple forms of after dusk pleasures. Now earlier I had it real good because my ex used to rush to the Station freezing his balls off on the trusted Enfield. Now even he's useless because honey, since we aren't doing it anymore, what's the point of all these slave-like errand jobs right? Yes right!
Hmmmmm. Now it doesn't worry me that I'll get fat because it's genetic. I'll be thin forever. But hypothetically, if the laws of genetics tilt against my favour, I'll get fat and ugly by the time I'm 30. And Cosmo also says that women reach their sexual prime when they hit 30. So that means that I won't be my usual aloof I-don't-need-men-and-sex-to-invade-my-space person. So all the people and situations at my rejection table right now will com back to bite me in the ass. Because no one likes a fat and frustrated 30 year old woman unless you're legally supposed to by the laws of matrimony. This sucks. And my personal life experience has taught me if you reject something once, you always want it later and then you don't get it. Always. So this is so going to happen and my life is doomed. But look at the bright side. By that time I'll be rich enough to have waffles and cones everyday for breakfast and can be fat in style.

So cool. The Bakery opens in another 45 minutes....

2007-08-13T19:51:00.001+05:30

I'm bored and bored and BORED. Everything is just another level of boredom.And the men are just so darned stupid. We had nothing to do today.. so funny flatmate called up 4 different car brands and asked them for a test drive. He started quoting budget of 20 lakh or something while the other flatmate pretended to be his secretary. So the whole day was spent in driving Corolla and then the Civic and how he just wants black because all his cars are black. Man. He's so stupid. Last I checked he had 4 grand in the bank and doesn't he realize that these guys are going to drive him crazy starting tomorrow with incessant sales talk. But that is planned as well. He's going to tell them both that he decided to buy the other one. But I admit it all sounded funny after the weed. And the Civic is a goodie car. God I thank the brilliant guy who loaded That 70's show on the computer. At least I don't have to grind my head to such crap. And Ashton Kutcher is so cute. That's one!! Or not..

******
Well this is really sad. I've been thinking about the whole men thing lately. All these idiots start treating you differently after you end something. But it's so tiring. To listen to them trying to get into my pants by pretending to be emotionally sensitive or something equally ridiculous. I have decided never to end my dry spell. There's just no point because I'll just hate them after some time. Like the ones before. After I realize that they are messy and expect me to feed them. Or after they get stupidly possessive at parties because there are other men around. Or whatever. It just sucks. Now I'm only going to get into something after torturing them for at least 1 year. Just to make sure. Yeah..that sounds like a plan.

Jai Maharashtra

2007-07-30T03:43:00.000+05:30

So Pratibha Patil is the President!! That is just brilliant because now we can finally claim to be better than the Yankees as we've managed to grab the trophy for a better democracy. A better 'accepting' democracy. And now we can just forget about women being killed and raped and smothered at birth...because we have a woman as the fucking President you see, so the path to progressive development has already started. What is all this bullshit? Obviously journalists are paid to write crap but this recent thing of building a lot out of nothing pisses me off. The most fitting tribute all these retards could give to Kalam was to relay the ten different ways by which he made the Mughal Gardens look better. And how he loved kids. And how was so tech savvy that he pioneered Powerpoint presentations in Rashtrapati Bhawan. If the past workfolio is so 'extensive', then why the hell is everyone jumping about their seats over this Election. They can't even vote for this one for fuck's sake!
Evidently a lot of people are getting fooled into thinking that it is indeed a pretty big deal. So I've been forced to have 'female empowerment' flashing on my face from newspapers every day. And on the television everyday. And from people everyday.
There are national messages from Rina in Bhilai who thinks that 'now finally we women feel that we can do something for the country.' Fuck. If THIS was going to make you feel empowered, then we ought to have done this long back!
Anyone can see this Election and proclaim how easy it was to have a woman as the President of our country. That is because gender discrimination is not an issue for a hardened Marathi politician who has the right amount of subservience for Sonia Gandhi. But it's hilarious that people in this country will not send their girls to school and discriminate against women all their life... but a rubber stamp political post will make them empathize with a woman's right to 'do anything she wants.'And I shudder to imagine the sheer bedlam unleashed upon these 'gender sensitive' souls if Najma becomes the Vice President( which will probably never happen). Then we can have women on both positions and be the most advanced fucking country.
There is no point in ruminating on how dirty politics has become. But I still think of how fucked up Maharashtra politico is. In Delhi, I never gave a damn about this part of the picture and I could recall a time when the Shiv Sena didn't exist for me. But now I have no choice but to acquaint myself about where I stay. There was endless stress on the qualifications of Madam President. Of course she was the Governor of Rajasthan and had brothers committing criminal frauds. That is okay because politicians as a community do not take these charges seriously as everyone is doing it anyway so it's better to save her ass now so that you can save yours later. Wowie. These unspoken rules. So Godfather-like.
Her biggest qualification is that she's a Marathi. That in itself was enough to have 2 supposed rivals come together and support her candidature in political First Class. If some North Indian woman would have stood for this post, Bal Thackeray would have a billion issues with her 'character' but a Marathi woman can do no harm and hypocrisy is a way of life so....
And Sharad Pawar is laying base. He's currently killing farmers by dumping their produce in the Indian Ocean, something more ambitious will follow once there are enough of his brethren at the Centre.
She probably won't keep the garden that pretty. She'll be too busy paying back.

**************

Clubs here have a dead line of 11 30. That's really the tops because usually I'm done with my shower by 9 30. So I'm there by 10 something and I get my drink and the waiter is already walking towards me and smiling apologetically. Now I can't claim to be a tech type who works really hard all day and needs to go out at night, but it won't do me too bad if I can reinstate my right to wobble home early morning. Apparently people go to such places and make out and have booze and are largely 'immoral.' So protectors of Maharashtrian morality drop in at 11 30... make a couple of calls, pick up a lot of booze and a lot of money from owners, pick up some kids .. anyone they fancy really, to be let off in the morning, for charges of 'disturbance.'
Then they go park their cars outside the Railway Station or something equally fitting, drink merrily, trade stories about the kind of women at these parties, wearing skirts and what not and they all must be sluts no. After that they eve tease any woman passing on the streets or alternatively sit on the pavements screaming in abandon or zipping through the city in their cars at top speed. Then they go home and fuck their wives.
Really. We ought to learn from them. They can teach me so much. I'm going to stop wearing skirts.
But I don't really mind if I can't go out because it's not as if I'm warming myself in Ibiza or anything, but it would be good if I can manage to get food at night. These bastards roam around the city at night and are shutting hotel coffee shops. And everything else. So too many nights are trailing off with empty cigarette packets and endless fridge checking if something has miraculously turned up. Crap.
So we are just waiting for these good fellas to be paid off sufficiently by the various clubs in the city. And that the alcohol revenue increases by 20%...which is why this revolution against Western morality is happening in the first place. So that I can still wear skirts and watch midnight happen.

Glory box

2007-06-29T13:44:00.000+05:30

I’m heading off to days of unending penury, play lists that don’t change for weeks, bhindi for lunch and big goofy smile, never letting the curtains sway an inch and then step out after a week cursing the rain….but forced to tolerate nature because I have to buy pot yes, or rather force my male friends while I tap my feet like a prized brat, parties with dress codes of halter and jeans where I know everyone and everyone knows me, and we all mingle with enemies and past lovers as if nothing ever happened and we are so gloriously over it, butter chicken at 4 in the morning, and screaming out loud for the hundredth time because he misplaced the bob marley cd AGAIN! And cribbing everytime I have to get out because I’ll be dripping wet when I’m back, muddy feet, stupid people, pepperoni a million fucking times, people refusing to let me put jazz, and when I do, a faint Radio Mirchi hits my ears, should I kill them or not? Should I go to Pondicherry? Can I afford Dupleix right now? Are Chennai cabs safe?

So I’m confused. There’s not too much time left for me to be denied this option altogether so I’m good. Not too much mind numbing psycho sessions on this time. I’m going to be calm and bring it ON. And I’m going to meet my dog… happiness! That’s the only bright light right now, of course, perfectly ignoring the possibility of him refusing to recognize me at all, which is when I kill myself and drive out of this purposeless existence. Hee hee. Never going to happen. He loves me. I think. No, he does. Yes, definitely. But I’ve changed my perfume! You retard, that doesn’t matter! Oh.

**

I have recently met someone very special. In fact, he’s so special that he makes me suspicious. Because I have come to realize that I’ve had way too many ‘special’ men in my life. BUT, we are not going to fuck up things this time with my commitment phobia issues, I mean, surely they are always going to be there … I think he understands all that I mumble. And he is a rock star. What more do I need? Um, let’s see. Him in the same city. But this is good too; I like the freedom of having and yet not having. And how I’m the only one who knows. So I will be the only one when it falls apart. Or alternately, when it gets better
**

Why do people hate dogs? And why is there no Hitler-like character to do away with such chuts? I imagine this huge SS army convoys who do secret round-ups in cities and night, ‘so, you think your neighbor hates dogs?’ ‘Do you have proof?’ ‘What? He doesn’t aww like an imbecile at that hutch ad?’
Ok, off they go. To fuck their happiness. So much more barbaric than killing Jews no? but this is good barbaric, and I’m all for it. This stupid woman keeps on calling me up to whine about me having a dog at my place. I don’t want to show her the picture like it is or anything but she’s pushing me to it. Considering she’s a ‘friend’ and he’s my ‘everything’ for the last 3 years, no Ford Ikon for guessing who I’m going to opt for. Do I tell her to throw her Ipod in a bin when it starts playing Shakira and polluting the environment of my house? Or do I tell her to stop buying everything I buy.. perfume, lingerie, freakin’ lamp-shades! So she’ll have to live with it, he’s so NOT going into my room when she’s around. She can just order her pizza and get fatter and get over her phobia already. Mmmmm. Possessiveness brings out the best in me.

**
Yesterday I met Jat boy. Why I call him Jat boy belies understanding because he’s not a Jat and quite cute looking, but I find it amusing that he makes it a point to explain his entire ancestry everytime I call him that. Ha ha. Cheap thrills.
I don’t pity him. No. He’s much more stronger than that. But I feel so goddamn spoilt and useless whenever I meet him. Where do people get their strength from? And still be so nice, and still be the way men were actually supposed to be. I know Jat boy likes me since forever. But there’s always been someone or the other barring his way. But it was nice that he didn’t try this time. And how he never tries because he knows that never works with me. Just talked about how we hate ‘kids’ and how THIS is going to decide the next ten years of my life. I love the fact that he asks, “ how are things at home” in such an uncharacteristic and non-pitying manner. And when I smile and get vague, he bangs on Led Zep as if nothing happened. Yes, I need more simple people around me. And not “ guess WHATTTTTT!! Dad is buying me a Fiesta. Ab toh full on party!”
Errr, okay!

**
I’ve never written about him. Too much bitterness for a long time now. But it’s over. And now it feels good. Now I can see all that he did. And all those times when I drove him mad, knowing that I’m too difficult for him. And too neurotic, but he tried a lot. Really tried a lot. While I gave up ages ago. I just wish he never gets to know that. He saw something different and it broke my heart. Because we were never there. I taught him too many things he didn’t need to know. He wouldn’t need all this.. because I’ll never let him be with a woman like me. Ha. Even he needs someone simple.
I’m not trying to take myself too seriously here…I just saw the other side of things and was running away from it for almost an year.
Now that I've reached a 'new chapter' as Jat boy puts it, there are too many songs for him… and a box full of paints

2007-06-11T00:30:00.000+05:30

I need to get out of this shit-hole fast. Like on the double pronto run with all you got kind of fast.I should probably have a separate blog just about my parents. Hmmm.I have really thought about it.. there's enough crap to last upwards of about 1000 posts per month. Anyways so mom is again having one of her shitty days and there's no one else around other than her dumb daughter so let's screw up her week right about now. Now I've been unwell for a week and as it is don't bother about her much. That's what the scene at 'home' is like.. we try to stay out of each other's way. Because none of us can communicate on a seemingly affectionate or even civil level to each other anymore, so we just ponder on stuff like UP elections or something more crucial. It's so much better to talk to my dad, he's much better at this superficial stuff. And he always shuts up when I start shouting. So it never gets out of hand. It's just go-fuck-yourself-first silence. But he's not around during the summer so I'm stuck with this bullshit alone.
Like every summer I thought I'll work, socialise, crash late and basically fuck out of this blasted city before too much damage takes place. But nooooooo sirreee....that never happens. So I'm the only one who gets calls from people screaming because they are effing bored. And they want you around so that they can hit you like they did in school. And you come back thinking maybe it'll have cooled down by now.. but there she is, waiting for me. Waiting to fuck my head with all the crap she's been thinking of all day. And interestingly, absolutely nothing she'll say is going to be about 'her'. It's going to be about me. About how I should just get out of her life and stop siding with 'him' and that she's had it with people scheming against her happiness. This drivel used to scare the wits out of me in school. I used to cry and think oh I'm such a bad person, My mother hates me and this doesn't happen to any of my gifting-cards-on-Mother's-Day friends. But this is like a joke now. So obviously I walk out on her and put on my music. While she bangs on it for half an hour and then calls him to abuse him. He doesn't pick up.
And we are so fucking normal. Tomorrow I'll go and research on torture in Uzbekistan. While she's have a bloody kitty party in Gk and talk about some new variety of curtains all the way from Bali. And I'm writing this with Jack Johnson asking some girl to eat his banana pancakes and to pretend that it's the weekend. WTF???!!
It was so much easier when you blamed yourself for all this. When all they say defines your opinion about yourself. But I've grown up now and see myself in seclusion from nights such as these. No I'm not a whore because I was watching a transexual documentary on Discovery. But now it just sucks. But now we know this and it's too much anger. Too much anger at having to tolerate situations because you still want to help people who are too chickenshit to ask for help with love. So I'm in my room trembling because I'm angry enough to kill a dog. And she's crying in her room wishing she was in 1984. And jack johnson is still playing....

2007-06-04T18:36:00.000+05:30

I'm just feeling so stupid. And not even that kind of stupid where I feel like rambling politics just so that I feel as if I'm thinking.Doing something.
Aaaaaaarrrghhh.I started another one of these crappy things today. God. My new office is in some godforsaken part of Safdurjung. It was so unbelievable, I just kept on staring at the car which just kept on going on and on and on in small clustered alleys. I was so pissed!
And I entered to see the place swarming with firangs. Where was I? Some Goan beach shack full of Russians? Err...Australians apparently. This chut who sits very close to me and still talks in such a whispery tones as if all of them are drafting the fucking Constitution of Africa. So I just felt so dumb going like..Errr what? What?
And what's with these firangs and heat tolerance? I would have expected them to rip their hair out and run like banshees. But these guys were so effing ridiculous...just kept on typing furiously while I'm holding my head in my hands, cursing myself for wearing anything at all! Why couldn't I just come here in a bloody sack like the female sitting next to me? She's working with such concentration, as if the AC not working doesn't affect her at all. I could just imagine those fat lawyers in Supreme Court ordering yet another samosa and cribbing about the heat while the AC is blasting in his face like a bloody cooler.
Anyways, I'm just annoyed and have nothing to say. I just want people to serve alcohol in Greek restaurants and do away with people who don't switch on the fucking AC when it's right on top of your head!

Why the fuck are you not wearing leotards?

2007-05-27T19:38:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-25T01:20:00.003+05:30

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

2007-05-22T11:27:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-19T17:48:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-14T11:18:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-09T16:12:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-03T16:27:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-04-30T14:33:00.000+05:30

I have 412 contacts on my phone, and not a single person I can call right now. I just wish I was somehere. And think something else, but it's not happening. It's turning out to be a Joni Mitchell day...How long can this go on?

Muzak

2007-04-29T12:55:00.000+05:30

So…I haven’t been doing anything productive for quite some time now. It’s that time of the year again when the internet becomes my best buddy. Which is the case, um, all through the year.
I’ve heard such great stuff lately, and self just realized self has never blogged about music…
First I’ll set away all the I’m-going-to-kill-this-year-but-have-in-acuality-fucked-up-bigtime-records. I’ll be honest about my expectations with Tiesto’s new release (Just be) this year. There were none. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to listen to it only to bitch about it later when a friend dropped in the cd. It sucks. It’s repetitive and sometimes he’s really going too soft. Looks like the end of the legacy erm?
Bon Sinclar Sound of Freedom has too many people going orgasmic this summer. Somehow, this Sean Paul + Carrribean flavour in Sounds of Freedom single is not really my thing. Needless to say, all consoles from Goa to Bangalore are going to play this song to death and eventually, force many to love it. Like that cheesy Children of the Sky. But do I see myself dancing when ‘give a lil’ love’ is playing in the house? Hell yes.
And I truly love the cover art. So Joplin.

And now over to the Gunners. The 2 best albums so far this year – Sound of Silver and From here we go Sublime. I‘ve never really believed that techno is dead, and artists like Alex Willner prove me right. Everything about this album is perfecto. Every song is taking out a new sound. And it doesn’t veer towards the boring image ambient music is increasingly being accused of, it’ll really make your head spin.
I won’t say anything about Sounds of Silver. It’s hasn't got off the hook on my player since 4 days soo….

And Chromophobia is another superb album. Electronica is going mad!

I love Pocket Symphony. No matter what anyone says about Air, I’m always going to check out their releases and faithfully load it onto my machine. Too many people call it boring, and I find it so ridiculous to classify music like this because NOT everything can be played in a club for you to dance to, and with that dumb logic, I can’t deviate from half of the best music the world has to offer.

Someone put me on to Kings of Leon. I love the whole sound, weirdly; it reminds me of Frank Zappa. The whole brazen vocals, the crazy riffs. ‘Charmer’ is my new drunk song!

And the most bizarrely beautiful female of all times has finally shut them up after the lull. You say it Bjork!

Yet to hear Cassadaga and Neon Bible. They comprise my future week agenda.

I love the heat! It truly gives me wonderful excuses to hibernate.

2007-04-27T09:46:00.000+05:30

Just saw another one of those abominable fairness cream ads on tv. HELL. It had this girl who wants to make her theatre group work but has no audience. So she puts the solution-of-all-measly-female-problems(FAIR & LOVELY) and becomes Ayesha Takia pretty... becomes an actress. and lo behold! everyone wants to see heroine material doing her drama thingy now.
What the fuck? Who believes this shiite anyways? So if someone is not an actress and is then consequently not pretty, What is she supposed to do? Go die? And is this what the measure of success really is? To strut your crotch out to the world and do the shimmy?
I remember once they had another one of these freak-show ads where this young girl is getting married to a man who looks about 60, because she's dark skinned. and then she gets fair and hooks up with some 24 yr old computer engineer.Wowie.
I wanna know how many of these retards who churn out this crap in the name of advertising are actually fair skinned themselves? Or their daughters even?
If they are all fair, then there's no problem because then they are obviously superior human beings so the matters's closed.
But if they are dark, do they recognize their immense dickhead potential? And do they feel the burden of the trauma they make millions of such gullible consumers go through.. Who truly believe that putting some dumb lotion on your face will turn your life around.

Why is it that a man can choose not to shave,live like a slob, have a house with a refrigerator...beer..and music, and still be cool?
And a woman can be smart, witty, well read, and a dozen other things, and still have all these godforsaken typecasts falling on her from all directions?

My dear friend M has to hear constant jabs from her ugly stupid and dumb boyfriend N... only because she's put on 2 kilos.. so she, inspite of looking as great as she always does, is now having paranoia attacks over stepping out in public in a pair of shorts.
Why is everyone so busy with fucking up each other's peace of mind? All these dumb men who go to UASSS to study, come back and tell me their exploits and their own version of life-and-times-of-a-west-coast-hustler..Bah!
But these morons will still get married to a fair,tall, beautiful,homely,cultured,can cook girl ..their mamas will choose for them.
They are too mentally stunted to be capable of accepting and fathoming women of any other category. And even though they can't count the number of continents or remember dating any good looking girl in school... they still want some model-type in bed.
And society is pandering to their right to feel justified over thinking such drivel? By making women some sort of clone tube where you keep on feeding some new data that she just sooo badly needs to aquire into her personality to be palatable to men so that they can be induced to fuck her..and marry her, for those good girls who don't dream of sex.
Now every Indian girl after 21 realizes that you don't need to do jackshit to get a man in this country. But noo. We are not going to limit your role to just that missy.
You need to be beautiful because there is no other way. And after we define beautiful, if you try to exceed your defintions of that.. we'll just term you a slut if you're unavailable.

Whatever. .Like I give a damn. Last I heard someone filed a PIL against these parasites.Wonder what happened to that.

*****

Yesterday I finally went for City of Djiins. Well, I didn't expect anything great from the play considering the book was such a caricatured outlay of Delhi's history...I'm pleasantly surprised. The production was beautiful. It feels really good to see the theatre scene in Delhi coming up so well that it's finanancially viable to put up something this grand.
The only part when I felt sad about watching it in Delhi was when most people sitting around me started smirking uncomfortably when the eunuch depiction came up.
I've never been able to comprehend the ostracization of eunuchs. Their lives do not get documented and no one really gives two hoots about them here. And I see this scenario only in India, as most of the South Asian countries have transgenders and asexuals dictating their laws regarding property,marriages and employment. And having legalised sex change operations.

Maybe because as of now, we can't even admit that Indians do actually fuck. So to reach the point to enable open-mindedness about people who have sexual aberrations will surely take a long time.

****

Bjork's coming out with Volta on May 8. Dum dee dum dum.

India

2007-04-23T13:05:00.000+05:30

An 8 year old girl has been watering our garden since the last 3 years. Her mother irons clothes near our building and doesn’t want to send her to school. The girl’s name is Geeta. She runs around all day doing menial work wearing clothes I wore once. She plays with my toys and can buy chocolates for herself. She always gets bright eyed whenever she sees me coming from the airport. And I see those eyes and the pony tail once more when I’m leaving. Just four times a year.

But her family can’t afford anything for her. No food, no education, no life. She’ll never wear Aldo shoes and discover the wonders of mascara. She’ll never contemplate on the emotional security a man can give you. Sex without condoms for her will never be risqué. She’ll never drink cognac. She’ll never travel out of the country to see the world.

These things have become so important to me that I find lives without them so… unimaginably dull. And bereft of any kind of pleasure?

But there are millions who go and fetch water from a public tanker 3 km from their tin huts every morning, precisely at the time I get up and think of waffles. And there are countless who are suffering malnutrition worse than Africa in my country, at the time I refuse to eat food made at home which is enough for 4 simply because I want to eat dumplings. There are too many instances that make me feel like a prize capitalist slave who doesn’t have two minutes of compassion time in their life other than to buy a flower off a traffic signal.

I never cared about these things 2 years ago. There was too much to think about. Also, modern times have given people like me the luxury to entertain depression and just think about our past until we get over it. But someone is not thinking even after 4 pregnancies and 3 miscarriages simply because the man refuses to stop.

I’ve been reading a lot of stuff on the blogosphere for quite some time now. There’s been so much that feel like déjà vu. And much reminds you of thoughts you once indulged in and then put them away. But recently I’ve read some bloggers declaring their preference for continuance of British rule in India. And how the country is basically one big shit-hole and nothing can be done to change that.

Such juvenile crap burns me up so much that I can’t even write about it. I guess currently, it’s much in vogue to be pro-India after movies like Rang de Basanti and such making such an impression on the popular mind, for better or for worse. So I don’t really talk about this.

How did I suddenly get so patriotic? I can’t think of a better word, although it seems so darn serious, but patriotic it is. It’s there is every thought. Even when I heard about the Virginia shoot-out, all I though about was how terrible it would be to die abroad. I know how delighted I used to be if I came across a sardar in London. It really used to make my day.

And it seemed so surreal, because I never respected anything about my identity when I left. I can’t say that I was a victim to racism but I surely saw it happen and never did anything about it. Gradually, it occurred to me that my cultural identity is perhaps weak?

And it’s considered low-brow by most societies. It really wasn’t such a big deal to be an Indian. And I used to be so happy on the numerous occasions I was mistaken for some other nationality. Who wants to belong to that ‘brown’ country anyways…

I didn’t end up living that farce for too long. And felt this intense need to protect my country. The name, culture, past, freedom struggle. As I grew up to be more individualistic, it became a more defined part of me. And just as I won’t tolerate someone mocking my family, I would certainly fight for my nation.

And the day I came back to Delhi airport. Saw tube lights. Ugly tube lights all over the airport. Ugly airport. Rude taxi drivers. Beggars. All the stuff that’s become classic India to most movies.

But it didn’t disgust me anymore. It just felt mine. I didn’t care. There was enough I’d read by now much to understand why we were at that economic or development phase. And why it would take us more time. And how congenitally, so many people and their civilizations are dissimilar to us. And how thankfully, we will never become an America.

As long as I’ll have it, I’ll give something towards the future

And it pisses me off to see people like Anil Ambani and Amitabh Bachhan donating 1.5 crore to Tirupati temple…wtf…What do I marvel at? The sheer stupidity.. or the bigotry.. the decadent superstition…

And I see nothing wrong in enforcing compulsory National Anthem because it’ll take a lot of time for Indians to love their country as much as the Americans to sing it without being asked. There’s nothing wrong with banning a bikini having the national flag… because we are different. Just like no one wants to be us, why are we dying to ape others?

All this is sounding so maudlin to me… hmm, especially since I have never devoted much space for beliefs in my life. And even though after this I’ll head out for a cigarette and really forget about it…

But it’ll hit back at me from any street in India. Because it never fails to remind me that it's mine. And that I have to do something for it.

The great Indian Clan

2007-04-15T22:48:00.000+05:30

Lately I’ve been seeing so much of Rahul Gandhi on the news. Future of Uttar Pradesh.Finally (phew!), rahul baba is here to solve all our worries and struggles with this state, as glowingly reported by Congress workers.
It’s difficult for me to exactly corroborate the vastness of my issues with what he represents. It’s pathetic that even after being so educated, the money and power will make a seemingly decent chokhra boy like him to express pride over the dirty clan politics of his family like a blithering idiot. The impassioned ‘speech of the moment’ which would have been cunningly devised by some IAS who would know UP caste frictions all too well to capture the right pulse, while Rahul baba perfects his Hindi in an air-conditioned van. Just like his mother who memorizes her Hindi written in English.

So Ayodhya wouldn’t have happened if the great Gandhis were involved? It never dawned on him to think how his mother could have intervened at that time if she really gave a flying rat’s ass. And not surprisingly, ‘madam’ has picked up Cabinet Ministers who were in power the time Ayodhya happened to comprise her government presently. And the great Congress regime is not helping the farmers, youth, or the middle class, so why would they really bother with a mosque at that time? Or maybe they would, just like the Government didn’t have the money to fund education till 14 years for all children, and now has the finances to support Urdu and regular education for Muslim children across Uttar Pradesh and the rest of the country.
This is because the Congress wants Indian Muslims to believe that they indeed are really poor and downtrodden and need to be spoon fed in whatever they plan to do. We’ll fund your primary and secondary education. And get you seats in colleges you wouldn’t imagine in your wildest dreams on the basis of marks such as yours. Then give you scholarships for the additional years that you would obviously take to pass out of such colleges. And then assure you great jobs in the corporate sectors, for which General category has to kill for… don’t worry, we are working on it. Azim has a problem with that right now, but it’ll surely be taken care of. And then if you wish to do the Hajj, we’ll fund that as well.

Brilliant.

The actual statistics for illiteracy and unemployment amongst Muslims would be out in some time hopefully, giving a picture truer than the one projected by the Sachar panel. I do not have issues with providing help and economic benefits, but just as you want to be convinced that the beggar in Colaba is not going to shoot up heroine with the money you give her and will indeed feed herself, (ok, bad example), it's necessary to understand the various channels such benefits pass through.
If the statistics are different, which they would be, considering these figures are 15 years old , then we can probably concentrate on poverty- based benefits instead of the illogical caste- based ones. If the country is trying to grapple with the passage of casteism for so long, is there any point in harnessing that ghost all over again to continuously remind people of their origin? But what is truly classic is Congress's peeve with administrating such a Census. Apparently they don't want to divide the country on caste lines wherein ordinary citizens are questioned on the basis of their caste and economic conditions related to that..against secularism , Gandhi ideals yada yada yada. Ok. Secular point taken. But expectedly, they would not view reservations from the same prism. That is for betterment.

So now that I have gone completely off the topic.. Hmm, Rahul Gandhi should probably sit at home and read some coffee table books on the rural heartland of his country that was never exposed to him in his student days abroad. But it’s really so hopeless. He’s most likely to get illiterate votes as it often happens in India when a Gandhi scion calls himself the ‘son of the soil.’ Just like Sonia Gandhi is the ‘bahu’ of each and every home of Bharatland. Gawd.

And I don’t even see the foolish idealism of Rajiv Gandhi in him, so maybe he’ll make less fatal mistakes that won’t atleast cost him his life.

2007-04-14T04:43:00.000+05:30

So I talk to this asshole after 4 fucking years and he waits till 5 in the morning to profess his carnal desires for me. I feel like such a slut. Why is it that I let creeps like him get the better of me every bloody time?
I mean, really, what is it with men? Did he forget the time he cried over his dog's death in front of me for 4 straight days. Or when he felt insecure about his writing career and broke that whole i'm-the-man-with-everything-going-for-me-glorious story. And everything else. How we reached a point beyond mindless conversation. How I could do the flamenco in front of him and feel more beauty than what my art could give.

But no. It's really true I guess, that people forget everything that you say and all that you do for them. All that remains is being horny within the sheets.
After 4 fucking years...he cannot even be bothered with maintaining the pretence of having a cup of coffee first. Nooo....I'm the red-blooded Indian male who will eternally conform to my expected levels of female commodification.
Fuck you bastard. I hope someone hangs you by the thumbs till you die. And then I'l make freakin' lampshades out of your sex-starved skin.

Consistent bad luck

2007-04-12T18:33:00.000+05:30

Whenever I experience some passage of time in my life, I get complacent about its whole course. Probably this is the point where it'll fit in nicely. Will reach somewhere stable. But leaving that ridiculously maudlin illusion, it never fails to burst on my face in pieces .. in its prime ugliness.
And that is why I'm still grappling with the venom flung at me by people I shared my mascara with once. Shocked by all that people seem to know about me. Numb that the dreaded thought was repeated once more, this time in front of more people who will chuckle at my analysis over coffee.

So I have a 'black' spirit. I do not leave people without first breaking them apart from others. And no relationship can stay intact if my presence happens to steer close to it: people leave each other for me ( even though it seems too bloody juvenile to state things like this, I just have to go on and bitch), And women start choosing each other. All because of me. And someone has lately discovered this and is stating it with much delight.

Even though it seems preposterous that ANYONE would bother to give me such importance and control over their lives, a part of it still fits a sound description of a 'witch' like character. And of course I've ideally ranted against such attempts before... I wonder if anyone knows of the nights I've spent holed up in my room with drawn curtains , making passing words spin around in my head.

The first time I ever heard this was from a man I was trying not to know too well. And of course it surprised me as it was my little secret. And now it is from a woman. For long I had convinced myself that groups break with my arrival because I end up exposing the farce and circles within them. But that conclusion sounds so self-involved that I've firmly rejected it by now.

One month has been spent predictably. Shaking imperceptibly when I heard it and now just going on with my work. All the time devising ways to cause her enough pain to understand my mind and the time that was. Why is there no dignity left after people exhaust each other's utility values? And then sleep dreamily envisioning many people apologizing to me , and then we all walk ahead towards something different.

I mean, hell, of course, I don't care about people and all that. But its a nice thought to get drunk over.
Obviously I'll get over all this just like things in the past. And then wait for another blast some other day.

Even though I've never felt the dire need to surround myself with voices, the dynamics amongst them really gets me thinking.

I see so many trying to be someone they are not. And too many doing such sick stuff. To their wives. Their daughters. Their 'best' friends. But we still exalt them to a better place. All in the name of what? culture...family.... Why is it that when you don't pretend, no one seems to understand you?
Maybe all personalities are already laid out in pretty boxes and there's no room for dissimilar ones. World is too busy with black and white. On the periphery.
And anyone eating alone in a restaurant is necessarily lonely. And anyone who thinks nothing of gender divide is necessarily a slut. And anyone who doesn't fit into our boxes is fucked up. Even the all-American Brietney Spears.
Maybe that is why I can be nothing else but 'black'.

2006-12-26T15:02:00.000+05:30

..tis' the season to be merry eh?
Humph. I currently have no house and no Internet. all my stuff in suitcases .. so everyday self is running around like madwoman wondering which one has what. days are blissful. since i have no house, so i obviously cannot have Internet in this booming nation of ours. last night had awful nightmares of assorted landlords telling me to be a good girl or else i'l forever be homeless. Whatever that COULD mean.
It was crappy x mas.so drunk that told my friend 1 all that friend 2 bitched about her. so was lying on bed crying for sleep while 2 screaming girls implored for the truth. cannot find my red shoes and so am extremely nervous since they cost me as good shoes usually do, pretty sure someone has stolen them. last night counted 7 items of clothing missing. 2 of them quite precious so couldn't sleep for 2 hours.
homeless vagabonds like me have no option but to end up in goa. Um. of course i hate it during this time of the year so have firmly resolved to refrain from a ghastly holiday. but lots of friends are going and lately, every night ends with me stoned, having 3 people around me talking about the ten types of fun we'll have. so i give in and go to sleep. and next morning is hell when self decides to stick to dumb resolve and go back on word.
Am trying to convince dumb friends that we'll all die if we go there. but its sad that Indians have such a think-headed mentality to bombs. reminds of this family I knew in london, who simpered in their house for a good two weeks after the trains burst. but my brave friends are born to be wild.
and other than that, i have thought of wonderful new resolves.

will get a new house where the landlord loves me nd can speak good English.

will eat breakfast. NOT chocolate doughnut with coke.

will bitch less and do more.

shall not buy any more clothes. And shoes. And bags.

shall manage my money better.

will work out. regularly.

will buy more books.

Um. I cannot guffaw any longer so self shall stop.

2006-11-27T21:19:00.001+05:30

Spoke to school friend today and am going to meet her tomorrow at my usual watering hole. We sighed and rallied on totally pointless details to each other .. and laughed ourselves quite silly. It's weird that most of the blasphemous 'incidents' I was involved seem in quite hazy to me .. lately, I've been experiencing this with loads of my friends. Tallbestfriend in Lancaster was in town in September and we started talking about my weird mood swings. He mentioned how when he saw he crying for first time in 4 years I told him to get out of my house in a crazy banshee-like manner. Now I would NEVER do that to a friend, and vehemently disagreed to such crap. So poor tallbestfriend was as it is so shook up by having to remember that incident, and then got pretty depressed that I didn't even remember that it happened in the first place. Hmm. My tact needs work most of the time. So anyways, recently me been having this nightmare that I'm sitting on an oak table surrounded by pretty italian light fixtures all around me... and I'm hunched up over the table while alphabets are coming out my head and ears ... in swirls .. and getting collected in bowls which lots of faceless people dressed in red clothing are drinking ...
It terrorizes me to think that one day I won't remember all that I've read and all that I went through ... like all of it escaping in swirls .. you're just like the other person .. only dumber .
My dad jokes about how our family doesn't pass around cancer or diabetes to each other, we just get plain loony. everyone as it is expects me to get schizophrenic pretty soon as my grandmom is going to die from it in no time now.
Its disturbing to meet her as she can't recall how to sit. So she lies around all day and screams at anyone whenever pieces in her head tell her that conversation's been lacking for quite some time now .. God, after trying to kill myself so many times, it'l be pretty ridiculous for me to get under something like that instead, so I'm just going to have a nice and peaceful suicide somewhere after 35..or sooner of course.

Anyways, so I'm meeting friend and am very excited about it. I dunno why I'm excited because I never liked school much. I don't even like college and I don't like anything else. But you've got to hang on to some useless details otherwise I'l pretty much lose it.
An ex once ended a heated fight by calling me a mongrel... someone who has no identity .. belongs no place. I always considered that guy naive so was quite shocked that he was making so much sense. Having lived in 4 cities so far and through 5 schools, it's not surprising that there's no nostalgia in my life. Delhi school was more about losing my brit accent in 2 weeks flat because people were labelling me a wannabe. I guess it never dawned on them that not everybody fakes it and there's nothing cool about having a different language anyways.
And then there were hardly any girls. I've always missed the whole thing of girl bonding you know .. the shopping, the make up yada yada yada. But I've always felt that it takes longer to have a decent girlfriend. And getting a guy to hang out with you is pretty easy, because everything starts and ends with sex. So whatever women I have in my life, they are important. And I talk to them over their idea of me once every 4 months and everyone is quite happy.

Fogey love

2006-11-27T21:19:00.000+05:30

They both talk simultaneously because she can’t hear too well. So I’m sitting in between them, with concurrent sermons on how it’s high time I got married, and how he’s going to vote for Modi as PM. He sheepishly apologizes mid-way on behalf of his wife, explains how she hates the hearing-aid. They have a phone call from their grandkids just then and he runs towards the phone. Talks for five minutes, recounting his entire week, and then pulls her towards the phone. Her wired face lights up as he recounts the conversation word by word to her, deciphers her mumbled reaction and then talks on the other end.
After the call is done with, both of us are fiercely fighting over who will eventually make tea. Now he’s too proud. Help is ridiculous as long as he can walk. Off he goes, and his wife starts fussing over me. Relays on about her entire day, and how they sleep after 11 because she likes to watch Star Plus. How she wanted to call her grandkids earlier but he didn’t let her, as they ought to call first. How it really hurts to walk these days but too many maids are turning murderers. Smiles as she remembers her grandson forcing her to the store to buy the hearing-aid. He gets very worried, as he can’t hear me talk. Don’t you ever manage to eat? How will you ever have kids?
And then she falls asleep as she talks. He remarks on how unfair it is that she’s being forced to work in old age. How he manages to do his bit and actually cooks better than her. He trails off as his hands move slowly over her forehead. He excuses himself to cover her with a blanket. And then he makes himself comfortable to talk politics.
He says he loves me because I’m ambitious. And because law and its power fascinates him. He talks and he talks. And I listen, because he makes a lot of sense. Until…
So when are you going to get married? You know all this law shaw is fine but you’ve got to have someone around when you’re ugly and old? Um.

2006-11-22T23:20:00.000+05:30

It happened when I left home for work. Watching Delhi get all busy and worked up for yet another back-breaking day ... as usual, I haven't slept enough and am cussing aloud at anything that moves. I've always felt so out of sync because I don't like coffee. It’s so easy for others... not enough sleep, grab a cuppa and then you're all set. But I guess I do have my cigarettes.. So maybe not losing out on much.. And then I see her. She was standing on my left probably looking out for an auto-rickshaw. She’s talking to her friends and laughing. I stare intently for two minutes and then force my eyes away. Thinking now is not the time. I’m late for work and have a feeling the boss is not going to be amused by my delusion theory. But I can't stop. I look at her ... and notice every move. Few minutes with that image and I’ve already figured her out. And figured out how much I hate her at this moment. Why is she smiling so much? Why the fuck is she so fucking chipper? Can’t she just go ... find her way and stop bothering me. Stop forcing me to look when I got other things to do. Am trying so hard. But it's not happening. And now I can't breathe. The hands start shaking and I stop the car... right in front of her. Am crying out aloud.. imploring her to leave. So delirious with rage now... what if I kill her over? That would too easy no... let's rape her. Out in the fucking open. Stop that glistening laugh once and for all. Let’s grind her on the floor ... let the gravel surge against her skin so hard that her body is incapable of putting the pain together. Let’s tie her hands and make the strings dig in.. leaving marks lasting for exactly 2 weeks. Let’s punch and press against her breasts so hard that she wears a t-shirt with nothing for 2 months because any other clothing hurts. Let’s dig into her vagina so hard and so much that it makes her bleed all over the place. All that you see is red. All the screaming. Let’s freeze everything around the both of us so that no one can feel the rape even though it's right here. Even though she's a virgin.
Oh god. I’m screaming so loud now ... can't believe I said that. Can’t believe I would want that. No. Got to get out of this place. Before I scare her. Before she gauges anyone could be thinking of her like that. Before anyone gets to know about this. I drive back home in a trance. Weeping myself hoarse through it all. Hating myself. Wishing there was someone else around so that I could at least pretend to hold it up. There’s home now and I barge open the door. My room. At last. Shut the door. Before something new enters your head. Before you get more sinister. But c'mon.. She should fuckin go through that right... why was she so fuckin happy. She obviously doesn't get life. She’s obviously not like you. She wasn't fuckin raped like you. She’s different. She’s simple. And that's why she deserves it. Remember when your dad used to shout at you to be normal? Who all did you blame then? You know .. If there was no normal, then you would be normal. There would be nothing amiss about you. And no one would blame.
Yes.. that's why I wish all of them rotted those 2 fuckin hours. When you forget ... and now after everything in the room is thrown around... I’m hunched on the tiled floor... it's very cold.. and strangely comforting.. now I’m puking blood. And I’m strangely happy. Because now it's close to over ... I’ll wake up and it'll be over. All of it will come out. And then I sleep on the tiles... because they're cold.. and hard ... just like before ...just like that day.

.......................
I’ve often had this dream. Too many times to actually remember. But for obvious reasons, never told anyone about it. What would people think? It’s not one of those logical ones ... and considering it was frequent, it had to be concealed. I always tormented myself over my choice of the victim. Am I really that warped inside? When I’m awake... I’m aware that this was not something that would give me peace. Then why something so fuckin disgusting? Why not him ... and why them..
I knew why ... all that I hated and was terrified of was encompassed in that dream. The girls in my teenage years. So carefree . Who never understood why I was so bitter. And why sex was never something I got coy about. Why breaking-virginity conversations always pissed me off. And why I couldn't giggle at anything and everything. Some twisted thought somewhere wanted them to know exactly why. And things at home didn't help much. The pressure of academics ... which was always considered more important than getting raped at 13. The pressure of being a certain way or else people would talk. The times during my counseling when I used to overhear my parents telling the man to get me fixed fast. That time I obviously hated them. But then at that time, I hated everyone. I deviated towards dumb men with no depth; it was much easier to hang out with them. Because they were always too chicken to make a move. And that situation worked out nicely for me.
I guess you grow up and a lot of things fall into perspective. Even though I never forgave my parents, I do understand why they did all that. It feels good to talk to my father for hours today without feeling claustrophobic. Now, thankfully, I don't wish for the whole world to be raped.
And growing up opens other ideas too. It took me years of studying law to know that 'technically', I wasn't really raped. And that pissed me off. What would a bunch of motherfuckers in their 50's know about the act at all? Why don't they get some rape victims and ask them to draft the bill? Maybe then we'll see how much of a difference there really is between penetration and no penetration. Does it really matter if you escaped it because you were too small? It’s not any less traumatic... and I wish someone would think of that....
No matter how much things change for me now, I acknowledge this weird fixation. Whatever creative process i try to formulate for myself in the future, this comes to mind first ... I used to think that there is no scope for catharsis left now ... but your mind surprises you all the time ... even in your sleep.
I recently read about some families in Punjab who have started the practice of the Draupadi system. After the families out there are done with killing female fetuses, now it dawns on them that they still need females for them to get pregnant and put the family forward. So a family buys a girl for each house ... and that 'commodity' is required to be a wife to her husband, his brothers, and even her father-in-law...
This story fascinated me so much .. morbidly so .. But I was too scared to go to the actual place ... too scared to be sucked into the system myself. But no one is learning. Nothing changed when I went through it, and nothing seems to be changing now.
At least today my reaction to sexual abuse is exactly what it deserves. It perhaps pushes me more to fight against it. My past is probably responsible for my zero tolerance for eve teasing on the streets. And that is what makes me have nightmares about infanticide.I just hope that we haven't become the sort of people who need to experience sexual abuse themselves in order to have voices emanating against it .....

Bell Jar

2006-11-15T21:07:00.000+05:30

I think often on how much it would take to understand some people. To be around them and hold their hand through everything while you're losing your mind in secret. To understand all that they say without ever posing your own thoughts. Fighting for their rights until you go hoarse. Explaining...explaining...all that you could have made better. The empathy that was still wanting. The left-overs of your wishful suicide while you're busy mending someone up. And then...you're just in that rut forever...
Now you're built up in his mind, as the protector. As the one who'll take me out of the blaze because it's the usual. The one who'll be scalded because she's strong enough. Because by now she's ceased to exist for herself.
I'm so very tired now...with the voices in my head which are never let out..all the time I lost which could have been for me ... all that could have taken me out of this ... with too many people as strangers .. and watching your mistakes backwards till it blasts you in the face ...and nowhere to fuckin go ... and hide till you see nothing moving ... no one hungry ... and begging ... to cut out your piece to feed it to him...
Imagining no people.. no wanting eyes .. hands ... words ...
Maybe now there will be freedom ... to feed herself.

The illegitimate nation..

2006-11-14T15:00:00.000+05:30

I remember watching the press video of the Lhasa Express sometime back....another industrial leap everyone seemed very proud of... milling faces..all smiling.. and all chinese. I remember my heart sinking and wishing for the camera to lay bare the tibetan face in this as well... but considering all those press releases were monitored by the chinese govt, not much chance of that....

I'm back to that thought again today after reading about the Tibetan activist, Tenzing tsundue being given an order of restraint on movement prior to the arrival of the Chinese President in town... this man is wholly responsible for making me view tibet as a 'nation' ... to be aware of its politics.. the Chinese propaganda... and what it's really like to be revolutionary against the biggest communist country in the world.
It gets you thinking on what it would really be like to be without a country? We all have these avant-garde ideas about democracy and public opinion and equal opportunity and are suitably incensed on any inkling of an infringement... but what if you have no one to fight against?
No government... no policing... up against a country the whole world is shit scared of ... living in a place where you're considered a foreigner after residing for more than 80 years.. and still not freaking out... still no suicide bombers... no violence... because amazingly the millions of tibetans scattered all over the world are still sane enough to listen to the Dalai Lama....

Lhasa ground reality

Nuns raped,illegal to have a buddha figurine or picture,the only way of income for tibetan girls is to become whores for chinese police or to escape to india,no job unless you learn chinese,no tibetan learning in any school in lhasa,immediate imprisonment for uttering the name of the lama,4000 chinese enter lhasa everyday through various means...which is a systematic chinese plan to eventually promulgate the area free of any tibetan influence, industrialisation which is unprecended and which the sensitive tibetan ecology can clearly not handle,police atrocities which make indian 'fake encounters' seem like a joke, no press release of these atrocities is allowed, anyone can be picked up from anywhere anytime on any plausible ground,mental torture where you're forced to curse tibet in order to show your allegiance to china,the trek to india through nepal takes several months and most die in between,most of the tibetan kids come to dharamsala as it's the only place where they're likely to be aware of their nationality in some way when they grow, most of them have their parents and families back in lhasa...mostly with no way of communication, china has already forced google earth to show tibet as a part of chinese territory,and if today anyone searches on lhasa politics on the internet.. there's a systematic cleaning-up happening in china itself before anything can appear on your screens....

Out of sight..out of mind.. it's that simple and it's working.
India will of course do nothing because we have to save our ass first. But what pisses me off is that when the Indian Government was responsible for staving off the fate of the Tibetans in the Tashkent Agreement without consulting anyone... then why the hell are they being chicken now and playing out this drone of Sino-Indian friendship...how can they not get involved now after they were a party in fucking up the tibetans in the first place?
The chinese ambassador has already claimed arunachal as a part of their territory in a recent interview, which is not a new development.. it's obvious that in the upcoming short visit , no one is going to discuss this sensitive issue. But if the chinese stand is so abundantly clear, what the hell is the NDA going to do?
Give it off? Because duh, the rest of 'shining india' doesn't give two hoots about the north east anyways.. how much will it really take for someone to be that scared of china to actually fight back?
Fight for the illegitimate people... of a make-believe politica in 2006.

Sarangi

2006-11-12T01:55:00.000+05:30

Why is it that I go for a seemingly mindless let's-go-to-dilli-haat-because-it's-winter-evening-and-you're-back-in-town-as-well sojourn with family and it ends up being such a disaster? After I completed our ritual with me pretending to get lost once we reach there as my father starts discussing the finer points of 'authentic Bihari tussar bedsheets' with the craftsmen... and off me and my brother, with him royally bored, while I buy junk and bargain gleefully....and I had to see him...
Now I see this man everytime I go to Dilli Haat ... white dhoti and kurta... about 70.. sitting alone... and playing the Sarangi. And everytime I see him... the tears.. and I curse aloud at being such a wuss and dutifully go ahead and buy 5 sarangis off him. Whenever I look at his weather-beaten old and wiry Rajasthani face.... I start relaying out his life in my mind and the reasons that brought him to this city to sell musical toys to people.... and I get depressed.

Why would a man from a village who looks like any other farmer come to Delhi anyway? Maybe his sons are dead, no wife as well maybe... or his land got taken up by someone... maybe he had too much debt.. maybe anything.
Or maybe he's one of the hundreds of craftsmen who come to this mela from their villages to see the 'big city' .... and then go back to tell their families about it. Maybe after we all go to our big homes in our big cars... he watches the people in the mela draw up their shops... and then sleeps in the bitter cold on the ground. Maybe he has no place to go so he stays around in the Haat. Maybe he doesn't even smoke to kill the chill because he can't afford it. Maybe on usual days, he doesn't sell anything because no one wants to buy the dumb things he sells except really dumb firangs. Maybe during the day, he watches television in chai shops from where he picks up the Bollywood tunes to play in the evenings. Maybe he really doesn't give a fuck about the people around him and just likes to play alone. Maybe he just does some ganja and is quite happy.
When I buy it off him... maybe he thinks I'm an idiot or else why would I buy 5? Or he thinks nice girl... so white. Or he thinks.. bad big city girl with no culture, hell why doesn't she cover her face?. Hmmmm.

I don't know which one really applies to him and I would really want to know. And I think incessantly. I think about how he has the power to make me start crying in a public friggin mela. Or to think about a stranger so much. Is it because he's poor? Or because he's old and looks like my grandfather? Or because I really wonder why nobody else would stare at him and just sit around him when they get there.. because what exactly is more beautiful than an old man in white clothes ... a balmy winter evening ... and playing a Guru Dutt on the Sarangi?

Oh sister...

2006-11-10T16:39:00.001+05:30

So anyways the dreaded call of late came again. my brother asking for those special favors. Aaaarrrrghhhhhh.
Why oh why do i do it? I haven't exactly grown up with him, never been close to him...our relationship could be strictly classified into 'legally consenting drinking adults who don't talk things of any depth'. but I do realize that a major reason I take all this rigmarole every bloody time is because a) there's a limit to which I can make excuses about ignoring a relative's incessant calls , and b) helping him through this sex life makes me feel like Mother Superior, and that is obviously because I'm patronizing of his juvenile quotient....

So everytime this dim-witted cousin's sex scene with his equally dim-wiited girlfriends gets screwed..he gives me a call..to negotiate...mediate..promises me the world and things close to it... and basically convince those dumb bitches to get laid with him again...
It all starts with his frantic call, usually on days I got nothing to do, which is quite often in this blasted city..so I foolishly agree...(mind thinking free drinks, free food, and mindless conversation...fluttering wildly) he starts off with the usual" arrey why would she do this?" " do you think I'm wrong in ANY way?" "I can't marry her now no, gotta set up my career and all that" and the most frequent...." gotta buy a mercedes in two years" .... har har har har
Career in question being whatever remained of it after his LLM from london and being scared shitless at the thought of the actual process of 'doing a job' ..blehhhh.... so obviously our darling spoilt brat from 'zeee industrial family like the reliance you know' decided to join one of daddy's numerous businesses, the one having no semblance to law whatsoever of course, him having realized after 4 years of pursuing it that he's not exactly cut out for it.....
And of course after that..usual delhi munda crap...clubbing..scoring girls...booking hotel rooms to fuck coz joint family scene back home...promising dumb punju girls( ok no offense, but its surprising HOW many of them are at the receiving end of such men)the world=marriage....and everyone living happily ever after till the girl clams up....

Enterrrrsssss the worldly cousin with history of fucked up relationships but can still furnish very logical -sounding love advice .... so I call her ...
Even though she's irritating
Even though she shortens my perfectly acceptable long bengali name to a puke-inducing abbreviation
Even though she sings and never talks....like hiiiiiiiiii...howwwww arrre youuuuu

Anyways, a woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do. So here the ..lets call her stupidrichgirl starts talking about how she lovvvvvvves my brother...and detests his family because they are so 'downmarket'..and wouldn't it be cool if after marriage she me and cousin live together like one dysfunctional family? ( gagssss...) ...I add how thats not feasible...what with me and him being first cousins and all...
Then she begins to ramble on about the uncouthness of their character, and how gk is not like that, and if she gets stuck in a joint family scene how the fuck will she smoke..and asks me to tell bro to get a 8 fuckin carat platinum ring for their engagement( this after 2 months fucking!) ... and how she lovvvves the immediate family...and not the rest...and how he's gotta move out..and how she knows he can't live without her...but she still gotta test him no...so that he makes her meet folks and settle scene....
Hmmmmmmm.
NOW if she was a smart woman..I woulda told her what a motherfucker my brother is, even though he's my brother, and urge her to take my wise word for it and scoot!
but smart she's obviously not....so I start babbling about how he loves her and will do as she says and all and so will she please cut with the crap now and start screwing him like before?

Finally it all worked out. They are at The Grand again,fucking. Hmmm.
But it's sort of sad that I have a bastard for a brother, the sort of guy I would take great pleasure in humiliating in public and try to push his buttons...the kind of man I would plot to kill for his decadent and MCP idealogies...the kind of guy I would never visualize myself talking with...

What's sadder is that these women are so fuckin stupid. They don't see jackshit. Now stupidrichgirl is some 12th pass who didnt manage to do college coz she ran away with her then boyfriend and got married in a temple! husband called parents and showed thhaaaaa truuuuuueee collllorsss..if you want to save your reputation and have her safely married, then give me this and this much money to finance this and this business....
Very filmy but true.
Now stupidrichgirl has been fucked up ever since. She knws her mistake all too well...what with her folks making a big deal of trying to hide the previous marriage from all and sundry... and she's now clingy and desperate at 26 having no job no life no ambition other than to get married.
And its sad that she's doing it again. I feel like kicking myself in the gut when my assholecousin instructs me exactly how to lie to her..regarding marriage and all so that he can manage another 2 months of sex...and he shrugs off when I naively ask him if he'll really marry her ..." Yaaaa right, she's good for girlfriend no? Not wifey type. too modern. What with past history and all"

Yes of course. Fuck. Why the FUCK is delhi like THIS? Men talking about how much money with whom and calling non-virgins second-rate..its fucking pissing off.

Bastard

2006-11-10T16:39:00.000+05:30

Why is jethmalani doing this? And its fucking incredible that the morons who call themselves journalists are now debating the finer points of the 'unheard of' theory' of what really happened that night. Well just this afternoon with having nothing to do as usual, I let it dawn on my mom with suitable analysis exactly what I think is now going to come out of this jessica case...
My earth-shattering theory is that some poor sikh guy who needs money for his family so much that he doesn't mind taking capital punishment, or if lucky, life imprisonment is going to resurface in just some time from now...some far-reaching connections are going to be fabricated( like how he's actually tony blair's son and that's why the indian police didn't even dare to include his name in the investigation report, and hence in a brilliant satanic moment decided to opt for a softer target...YAAAAA... an MLA's son from chandigarh...!) and then of course jethmalani being the bastard that he is will tear apart bina ramani's not-any-help-as-it-is witness account and leave the prosecution with nobody else to defend for their case....
The two gun theory has already been shouted across rooftops by him and the investigating cops that everyone now is looking around for the other gun..and since manu had one gun with him...works for him very well...

And of COURSE... she was not a bhartiya nari...serving alcohol...and now developments-i-had-been-waiting-forever-for came to light that she committed the morbid sin of attacking the sikh gentlemen's virility....
I mean , yeah, she shouldn't get killed for it and all that, but considering bad character and all that..she deserves it no?

Actually, I'm really embarrassed to say that jessica's case has bored me to death by now...as pretentious as that sounds to me, but somehow jethmalani impresses me even more...why would he commit this suicide?
god knows he doesn't need the money.. his family apparently doesn't support him in this 'streak of independence' against public opinion...so little thing in my head roots for the lets-die-with-a-bang-theory
that motherfucker has grown so big in his little bubble that he thinks he can turn out the biggest case in indian history and get a judgment that he chooses to furnishe for his client...
and of course he's going to do it.
because he's the biggest lawyer in india. because he can do any fuckin thing. because he's big enough for even lets-fight-for-feminism-and-kick-serious-ass -me to shut up when he's looking down my breasts. and say 'sir' after he's done staring and walk out of the chambers. smoke a cigarette and then justify the diversion of my principles by equating it to the money i'll earn later by this man's name....
See the bright side...atleast I wasn't shot.

The veiled woman

2006-11-08T04:48:00.000+05:30

I feel hot.

I cannot see the person in front of me very clearly.

I have to work in the fields,on the road, in buildings... wearing metres of cloth around my face and body.

My man expects me to wear it. And my clergy. And in an oddly fascinating way, I have started viewing it as an instrument of asserting my 'personality'

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to feel the light of the streets on my face.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to wear clothes like that girl on the street. But it would be too shameful yes.

Many a times people cannot hear what I say very clearly.

Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to show off my make-up. Which now exists beneath my veil.

There are lots of inconveniences. But it is my religion. And it's only right to wear it.

Now this could really be anyone. In the wake of the situation right now, the Muslim woman comes to the picture. I come from Rajasthan and can invoke this picture to encompass thousands of women of the sands who have in most probability shown their faces to even their husbands only during sex. Leave out anyone else of course. Except other women because it's believed that no one is a lesbian out there. Hmmm

But no, even if that argument exists...it's still the Muslim woman. There's no point contesting her discomfort because every woman and some men know the answer to that one. They've taken it in their stride since so long now that the veil has today become a symbol of asserting their Islamic identity. I just read somewhere that Muslim men in the US take it as a symbol of pride if their wife wears the Hijab. It worries me to see such behaviour to be slotted in an attempt of 'assertion'. And that too something as sacrosanct as 'identity'. Do these men even gauge the ethos of having an identity? Stripping their wives of 'their' identity and making them believe in this bizarrely new concept of being another form of a 'trophy'!

Of course everyone has the right to dress the way they want to. Especially women. Because their right to dress is as it is discussed on a global level by men and then thrust upon them. I know that all village-women I know in Udaipur would get close to killing themselves if they're forced to dispel the Ghoonghat. But it's quite wrong to start viewing that reaction as their acceptance of the logic behind wearing that piece of cloth. It's just the time. The amount of years they have worn it...their illiteracy..because they have not grown up watching women without it...and obviously, their men ...all the fathers and brothers and husbands who have reinforced their preference to adorn their women with it. Again and again and again. And the same is with the Muslims. Of course there was a backlash against Jack Straw. He's afterall denying them their identity.

One more time.

All I'm saying is that it's time to stop now. By now all of us know that the Quran does not require women to wear it. By now all of us know that modesty does not necessarily require covering your entire face. We know all that. Then why do we let these women believe that's its somehow 'shameful' not to wear it.
And to stop that...we need the men. To drop their gazes. To stop controlling lives of the other half of the world population. To stop justifying rape because of her clothes. To just STOP IT.

In fact if the men in history and in the present could be less horny..none of this would have ever happened.
Just because it was easier. And just because no one stopped them.

I'm in no instance a male-basher. But I just feel incredibly worried at the state of things sometimes. We have been lucky to educate a certain percentage of women in these times...and a certain percentage from that have managed to be smart as well....there are a few good men...

And all this needs to contribute on doing away with the veil. Because it was never needed and now is the time to understand as well as realize that. The right to the way to dress can change your psyche in more ways than one. Just like Hindu women before used to think nothing amiss from dutifully jumping into a burning fire over their husband's corpse...and thought that was a matter of their 'right'...and spousal 'identity'..

This is a Sati of a different kind.

And there's no Ram Mohan in sight.

Why them?

2006-10-24T01:43:00.001+05:30

Why is Sheila Dixit banning rickshaws? It's beyond me..What could be the warped up Congress logic behind stripping off 1 million honest labourers who wouldn't qualify as agricultural loanees as per Govt diktat,of their only source of livelihood? I heard about the continuing ban in Chandni Chowk and was surprised. Especially at the ludicrous reasoning of them being the harbinger of traffic jams. Then maybe shoppers and shop-keepers being allowed to park their cars in those narrow bylanes is somehow allright.
Don't they realize the lack of better alternatives? These men are the sole source of short -timed traveling within residential colonies and also near hospitals,schools... These places will then obviously have people resorting to their cars or autos , which however bizarre it may seem to me, is preferable to the Delhi Govt.
Where are they going to go? Commit suicide or become a problem of another sort?
And they complain as to why crime is rising in the city.

Just that...

2006-10-24T01:43:00.000+05:30

She heard the music blaring over the phone. His strangely unfamilial voice pervaded through..''yeah..you called? I just entered a night club..it's crazy in here man, everything looks shot out of nowhere.'' She forcibly smiled over the telephone and then reminded herself of the uselessness of her action....he can't see her.

They were silent on the phone for a long time, hearing the resonating rap song between them. He was too hallucinatory to talk sense..and she did not know him anymore.
She silently prayed '' please don't lose out on who you are..it doesn't make sense if it doesn't leave you behind.'' A little more silence.

''How long has it been'' she asked. ''Well, tried it at 10 30...kinda time to wear out now don't you think?''.....yes, she thought, it's time but....'' you do remember the flight we have to catch up in 2 hours do you? My parents are going to be at the airport.'' ''oh yeah babe...just wake me up huh...or remind me in a bit..i remember it allright.''

hmm...nothing to talk about now. ''okay then...will wake you up. see ya'' and they hung up.
She cursed aloud within the darkened walls of her room. She knew it disconnects you...she knew he didn't need people for a while. But she's so stupid really, expecting him to fight the normal reactions. Is this the same man who cries jokingly whenever i have to hang up? Is he the same who would have ordinarily have the decency to step out of the night club to talk?

Well....it's so lonely in here...she hugged herself with her slender arms to induce some placid warmth....and she looked around the room. The alarm clock said 3. Well...so much work to do tomorrow and he probably wouldn't be there. And her parents...

She felt terribly sleepy...and tired..and wasted. but so much of work...and she's lonely. she finally sighed and fished through her wallet for the sheaf...carefully unfolding the creased package...she took out the white powder and started making lines......she methodically took a snort through the folded note and looked up. hmmm.it would start working in a bit...she could finally stay awake in front of her folks and last through the afternoon hopefully.
it's just that she's lonely you know...the last person didn't need her tonight...all because of her familial helpers.

Roman Candles.

2006-10-20T02:41:00.000+05:30

Burning burning'bright'.....the flame will go on forever..from yellow to amber to orange to red...towards her eyes...towards his eyes..showed her the light perhaps..burnt bright..
And happy? Yes, happy.
Seems like it... musing, why so much intensity to inflame themselves like Huxley's 'flaming Roman candles'?
Somehow it expected something different after so much work..
Moments like needles...prick..prick....Remember a time when you wouldn't even understand what I'm saying?

She shuts the door.... so close to the flame..No...You have to see. Were you really expecting an ally? .... The laughter...

She wonders if the tremor was too noticeable today. Did they understand the silence? She wonders incessantly and then she starts weeping. Maybe I could be in there too.
Anyways , life is dragging on like a lie...some good and lots of bad. Snatches of peace and disaster... All for a song. Ha.
She wrenches her eyes and she's back in the car. In the boulevard.
Some hotel room... the candles , again,... And the white poster bed. But something else was happening.
So delusionary to reach there today. Even when he wasn't really there.
She found out that the number doesn't exist. And neither does his name.
And then she remembers all that she did .... with the flames.

.