“Why is he still single?” asked she with the decrepit wisdom of someone who believes that there is such a thing as ‘marriageable age.’
I was trying to set her up with a friend of mine, and it is not going too well.
Somehow, this question has always evoked a response even if it is not directed to me. It boggles me, it angers me at times, but these days, it largely amuses me. It sounds as though marriage is the default state to be in, else one has to live under the constant scrutiny of someone who has a manufacturing defect. Someone waiting to be redeemed. A work in progress of sorts…
I find it annoying. Do you remember ever asking someone, “Why are you married?”
A friend of mine while trying to assuage another on her recent divorce said, “At least you got there once…”
Eh? What sort of convoluted logic is that? And the disturbing fact was, he was single. Is that how little he thought of himself?
My family has an average of two weddings a year, and this year they seem to have outdone themselves. There’s one more in the offing.
From being the ‘poor thing’ at these shindigs, I seem to have now acquired the status of an item number. Not that I get an opportunity to shake a leg—you know how singularly uninspiring and bland south Indian weddings are… but basically, people want to hang out with you, and find out ‘what’s happening in your exciting life?’
So everyone from the geriatrics to the CLBs (cute little butts) want to strike a point of conversation, whether it is laughter clubs or a radio station in Texas.
At the last one, my idli-faced cousin, while trying to shove chips down her four year old’s throat (apparently, he is an on a chips and coke diet) and trying to pick out an ironed shirt for her husband asks me, “So when are you going to settle down?” She is six months younger to me, looks 10 years older, and feels older than my mom. Plus her avuncular husband and she never seem to have a conversation or make any real eye contact except to discuss who will mind the brat. I try and imagine their moments of intimacy and a chill runs down my spine.
If that is settling, I am so glad to be unsettled, I think. Or may be single is the new married.
So there you are—single because you held out, single because you know what you are and what will work for you, and what will not work for you, single because you are not living someone else’s paradigm, single because you chose to say no to opportunities when saying yes was clearly the easier option, single because you took the long road, and found yourself in the process.
So, after a long stint at being the best girl at friend’s weddings, shopping for maternity clothes with them, holding their hand post-partum, watching them nurse their babies, watching the babies blow their candles, watching their husbands making eyes at other women, I have finally made my peace with the situation.
It’s about choice. I chose to wait. And I am glad I did.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Stumped!
I am amused at the way cricket changes the climate of this country and its people, no matter who or where they are.
My normally chirpy maid walks in looking like a thundercloud. When I enquire if something’s wrong, perhaps a domestic crisis? (there usually is—a thief walks into her house and sleeps over the night, her husband disappears with alarming regularity, and such like). She says, “India haar gaya, didi,” and looks melancholic for the rest of the morning as she potters around doing her thing.
My watchman goes missing, and I catch him leaning over a ground floor window.
My natural-born-killer gym instructor goes wide-mouthed staring at the television in the middle of an intense workout, leaving me entangled in a complicated piece of machinery.
My designer buddy at work is suitably distracted.
My normally communicative and prolific beau gets cryptic, with messages like, “Am in mourning..”
It’s that time of the year, I think.
In my childhood— the era of residual test matches; my super enthusiastic dad would engineer a few days of ‘casual leave’ or ‘sick leave’ as the case may be, to catch the game at home.
I remember it pat. My mother would walk in after work in the afternoon, day after day to find a house laden with testosterone, as my dad and his beer buddies sprawled all over our not-so-ample house and produced sound effects that left my super-disciplined-teacher-mom baffled.
It was an early induction into male bonding— I rushed home from school on my lunch break to hang out with dad and his boys, bursting into the house with “What’s the score?” and being greeted with stoned silence or extreme sound, depending on which way the match was going.
It was also a time when domestic tension was writ large. The kitchen would be a mess, dishes would pile up (Shankar, the hired help also joined the cricket revelry), beds would be unmade, clothes unwashed, showers abandoned, the air would be saturated with smoke and masculine aggression, and my mother would curse the game and the TV.
It all came back to me when recently, I was trying to grab some sleep at normal human hours with some intense PS2 sound effects in the background. I almost turned into my mother, when I suddenly realised— boys will be boys. And thank god for that.
Unlike my dad, who was at best, a trivia king or a walking encyclopedia, my brother actually played the game when he came of age. He still maintains he would have made it somewhere in the team, had he not been of Tam-Bram be-a-doctor-or-engineer-or-your-life-is-doomed upbringing.
So it was school or college by day, and matches by night—the sad part is, he still became an engineer, although he has found a way to pursue his passion by playing in an LA County team now. When I visited him last, he asked me to get him a cricket kit— I had never been in close quarters with bats, thigh guards, elbow guards, crotch pads and helmets ever in my life, and sort of got a kick out of it.
The fact is, I never got anywhere in any physical sport, and usually wound up in the reserve team in volley ball at school, praying fervently that no one gets hurt and I don’t actually end up playing. So I was surprised when I found myself in a bowling alley recently and discovered that I was as good as the boys (if not better).
I think I know what works about men and cricket, or men and any game. It’s about not having to talk.
My normally chirpy maid walks in looking like a thundercloud. When I enquire if something’s wrong, perhaps a domestic crisis? (there usually is—a thief walks into her house and sleeps over the night, her husband disappears with alarming regularity, and such like). She says, “India haar gaya, didi,” and looks melancholic for the rest of the morning as she potters around doing her thing.
My watchman goes missing, and I catch him leaning over a ground floor window.
My natural-born-killer gym instructor goes wide-mouthed staring at the television in the middle of an intense workout, leaving me entangled in a complicated piece of machinery.
My designer buddy at work is suitably distracted.
My normally communicative and prolific beau gets cryptic, with messages like, “Am in mourning..”
It’s that time of the year, I think.
In my childhood— the era of residual test matches; my super enthusiastic dad would engineer a few days of ‘casual leave’ or ‘sick leave’ as the case may be, to catch the game at home.
I remember it pat. My mother would walk in after work in the afternoon, day after day to find a house laden with testosterone, as my dad and his beer buddies sprawled all over our not-so-ample house and produced sound effects that left my super-disciplined-teacher-mom baffled.
It was an early induction into male bonding— I rushed home from school on my lunch break to hang out with dad and his boys, bursting into the house with “What’s the score?” and being greeted with stoned silence or extreme sound, depending on which way the match was going.
It was also a time when domestic tension was writ large. The kitchen would be a mess, dishes would pile up (Shankar, the hired help also joined the cricket revelry), beds would be unmade, clothes unwashed, showers abandoned, the air would be saturated with smoke and masculine aggression, and my mother would curse the game and the TV.
It all came back to me when recently, I was trying to grab some sleep at normal human hours with some intense PS2 sound effects in the background. I almost turned into my mother, when I suddenly realised— boys will be boys. And thank god for that.
Unlike my dad, who was at best, a trivia king or a walking encyclopedia, my brother actually played the game when he came of age. He still maintains he would have made it somewhere in the team, had he not been of Tam-Bram be-a-doctor-or-engineer-or-your-life-is-doomed upbringing.
So it was school or college by day, and matches by night—the sad part is, he still became an engineer, although he has found a way to pursue his passion by playing in an LA County team now. When I visited him last, he asked me to get him a cricket kit— I had never been in close quarters with bats, thigh guards, elbow guards, crotch pads and helmets ever in my life, and sort of got a kick out of it.
The fact is, I never got anywhere in any physical sport, and usually wound up in the reserve team in volley ball at school, praying fervently that no one gets hurt and I don’t actually end up playing. So I was surprised when I found myself in a bowling alley recently and discovered that I was as good as the boys (if not better).
I think I know what works about men and cricket, or men and any game. It’s about not having to talk.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
One of the boys
Scene 1
I am eight years old, and get punished in class by being made to sit in the boys’ row. The teacher doesn’t know that I love it. I poke a chubby-cheeked boy next to me to show him my pencil is sharper than his. He gets a clot in his eye and has to be taken to the hospital and my mother thinks I have had enough of ‘being with the boys’. She soon relegates me to an all girls' school, and endless death by estrogen. I never forgive her for that.
Scene 2
I am on my fourth cup of tea at the university campus, hanging out with the boys (again) trying to get that terribly important degree I didn't much care for, when a tall gaunt frame walks into my frame of reference. He looks like a cadaverous poet—gaunt, stubble, thick glasses. "Remember me?" he says. It takes me less than an instant to squeal, "Shit! Nikhil….You are the guy that got poked in the eye.” He tells me he recognized me for being the only girl in an all boys adda. We spend the next four hours discussing the past twelve years, and a crush is born. He writes me notes, poems, songs; he reads me notes, poems, songs…He brings out the girl in me. I stop hanging out with the boys.
Scene 3
Third job. Highlight of my day is lunch from Bhavnaben, a local caterer who doles out piping hot, gujju food day after day, which pretty much gets me ready for the dumbest brief from the client servicing team in the agency. Only that I share my dabba with a boy, and we are constantly in a race for who makes it first. Because there's no loyalty to the co-eater, only to the food. And since I eat like a man, it makes it all the more challenging to Amit, who comes huffing and panting from wherever he is at the dot of one p.m, only to find that I am already on my third phulka. It annoys him endless. When I quit, he is thrilled. Now he can share the dabba with a real woman, he says.
Scene 4
Suitable boy says he loves being with me because I am like one of the boys…..What? This is not going well, I think. He explains that it is because I am a straight talker and I don't speak in riddles like women do, and don't talk when not required; that makes him less stressed around me. This gets me curiouser and curiouser. Oh! We are getting into buddy zone, I think. Who are these women, I wonder. I want to be the mysterious one, I resolve.
Scene 5
I still haven't acquired that aura of mystery. But I am definitely getting closer to being a woman. Even though I love to drive, do my taxes, and I don't dig blow-drying, or being fetched and dropped. But then, neither do I dig pool, play station or soccer— things that the object of my affection would love me to.
Scene 6
Before I move into my new apartment, my architect-interior designer landlord looks at me approvingly and says I look the type who will keep a good house. And the type who will not have wild parties. I am stumped by his stereotyping.
Scene 7
I am in a open-air restaurant in Jodhpur, trying to get a voyeuristic view of the big fat wedding. I am being served by a two-earringed waiter who asks me if I want a beer. I am stumped by his non-stereotyping.
P.S….I have finally decided that I don’t need to choose. That I can be both women, and they both can be me.
I am eight years old, and get punished in class by being made to sit in the boys’ row. The teacher doesn’t know that I love it. I poke a chubby-cheeked boy next to me to show him my pencil is sharper than his. He gets a clot in his eye and has to be taken to the hospital and my mother thinks I have had enough of ‘being with the boys’. She soon relegates me to an all girls' school, and endless death by estrogen. I never forgive her for that.
Scene 2
I am on my fourth cup of tea at the university campus, hanging out with the boys (again) trying to get that terribly important degree I didn't much care for, when a tall gaunt frame walks into my frame of reference. He looks like a cadaverous poet—gaunt, stubble, thick glasses. "Remember me?" he says. It takes me less than an instant to squeal, "Shit! Nikhil….You are the guy that got poked in the eye.” He tells me he recognized me for being the only girl in an all boys adda. We spend the next four hours discussing the past twelve years, and a crush is born. He writes me notes, poems, songs; he reads me notes, poems, songs…He brings out the girl in me. I stop hanging out with the boys.
Scene 3
Third job. Highlight of my day is lunch from Bhavnaben, a local caterer who doles out piping hot, gujju food day after day, which pretty much gets me ready for the dumbest brief from the client servicing team in the agency. Only that I share my dabba with a boy, and we are constantly in a race for who makes it first. Because there's no loyalty to the co-eater, only to the food. And since I eat like a man, it makes it all the more challenging to Amit, who comes huffing and panting from wherever he is at the dot of one p.m, only to find that I am already on my third phulka. It annoys him endless. When I quit, he is thrilled. Now he can share the dabba with a real woman, he says.
Scene 4
Suitable boy says he loves being with me because I am like one of the boys…..What? This is not going well, I think. He explains that it is because I am a straight talker and I don't speak in riddles like women do, and don't talk when not required; that makes him less stressed around me. This gets me curiouser and curiouser. Oh! We are getting into buddy zone, I think. Who are these women, I wonder. I want to be the mysterious one, I resolve.
Scene 5
I still haven't acquired that aura of mystery. But I am definitely getting closer to being a woman. Even though I love to drive, do my taxes, and I don't dig blow-drying, or being fetched and dropped. But then, neither do I dig pool, play station or soccer— things that the object of my affection would love me to.
Scene 6
Before I move into my new apartment, my architect-interior designer landlord looks at me approvingly and says I look the type who will keep a good house. And the type who will not have wild parties. I am stumped by his stereotyping.
Scene 7
I am in a open-air restaurant in Jodhpur, trying to get a voyeuristic view of the big fat wedding. I am being served by a two-earringed waiter who asks me if I want a beer. I am stumped by his non-stereotyping.
P.S….I have finally decided that I don’t need to choose. That I can be both women, and they both can be me.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Some daughters do ’ve ’em
Yippee! My mother finally knows what I do for a living.
Okay, correction. She thinks she does. I mean she always had a vague sense…She is one of those people who thought I was finally redeemed when I got a byline associated with me, after years of what she considered anonymity in advertising. Well, something’s gotta give, she must have thought, especially after I murdered my PhD prospects in pharmacognosy.
But somehow, she was in a strange haze about what I did for many years. She never got it. I spent years pointing out ads or hoardings I had written, displaying mailers and brochures I had done, but all I got was a wall. She would stump me with, “How will people know you have done it?”
I secretly wished I worked at a bank, or some job where people can actually see what you do. Somehow, being a teacher or a lawyer, or even a dancer or a singer seemed more straightforward.
Things have changed. Now, I get a call every week, almost saying, “I know what you’re doing, girl, and I am happy for you.” Yes, she is my biggest critic and my biggest fan. She actually reads the paper because I am in it!
For my newspapers-are-only-good-for-sieving-flour-and-lining-dustbins mother, that’s a leap!
My father, on he other hand is interested in what I am writing for a different reason. He loves proof-reading it and telling me that I had a comma where I shouldn’t have, or that there was a spelling mistake in para five, line four in my copy, or that I cannot start a sentence with 'because'.
So, currently I am at a point where my family is watching over me…and suddenly, I am craving for anonymity….
Sure, I know why my job works for my mother. It makes it easier for her to explain to Mrs Ranganathan what her daughter does. I am not too sure she was comfortable telling people I worked for a Men’s magazine (I am sure, till I bombarded her with enough copies of the fine material we produced, she was quite sure it was some kind of semi-porn). But now, it’s easy and above board. “She writes articles for Hindustan Times,” says my mother. And her photo also appears in the paper,” I overhear her say. In my mother’s head, I have attained stardom. (Thank god, she doesn’t have to be a witness of the circus I go through every day..)
But there is a thing about mothers. Just at that point when you think they are happy with you, they raise the bar. Mine casually remarked the last time I met her… “You know, Mrs. Shankaran’s daughter is doing a talk-show on TV. You can also do that, no?
Gawd! Just when I thought I had got it right!
Okay, correction. She thinks she does. I mean she always had a vague sense…She is one of those people who thought I was finally redeemed when I got a byline associated with me, after years of what she considered anonymity in advertising. Well, something’s gotta give, she must have thought, especially after I murdered my PhD prospects in pharmacognosy.
But somehow, she was in a strange haze about what I did for many years. She never got it. I spent years pointing out ads or hoardings I had written, displaying mailers and brochures I had done, but all I got was a wall. She would stump me with, “How will people know you have done it?”
I secretly wished I worked at a bank, or some job where people can actually see what you do. Somehow, being a teacher or a lawyer, or even a dancer or a singer seemed more straightforward.
Things have changed. Now, I get a call every week, almost saying, “I know what you’re doing, girl, and I am happy for you.” Yes, she is my biggest critic and my biggest fan. She actually reads the paper because I am in it!
For my newspapers-are-only-good-for-sieving-flour-and-lining-dustbins mother, that’s a leap!
My father, on he other hand is interested in what I am writing for a different reason. He loves proof-reading it and telling me that I had a comma where I shouldn’t have, or that there was a spelling mistake in para five, line four in my copy, or that I cannot start a sentence with 'because'.
So, currently I am at a point where my family is watching over me…and suddenly, I am craving for anonymity….
Sure, I know why my job works for my mother. It makes it easier for her to explain to Mrs Ranganathan what her daughter does. I am not too sure she was comfortable telling people I worked for a Men’s magazine (I am sure, till I bombarded her with enough copies of the fine material we produced, she was quite sure it was some kind of semi-porn). But now, it’s easy and above board. “She writes articles for Hindustan Times,” says my mother. And her photo also appears in the paper,” I overhear her say. In my mother’s head, I have attained stardom. (Thank god, she doesn’t have to be a witness of the circus I go through every day..)
But there is a thing about mothers. Just at that point when you think they are happy with you, they raise the bar. Mine casually remarked the last time I met her… “You know, Mrs. Shankaran’s daughter is doing a talk-show on TV. You can also do that, no?
Gawd! Just when I thought I had got it right!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Guilty!
I succumbed.
To good looks, sex appeal, and personality.
The object of my affection goes by the name of Nokia 6300. Okay, I know that a couple of weeks ago I wrote about being the proud owner (rather retainer or brand custodian of a Nokia 1100 of truck driver fame), but I have been feeling strangely renewed in the past few weeks and may be this is a part of that phase.
Two days prior, I also bought new glares, but that was only in response to my old ones breaking in the struggle to get out of my hair.
Of course the seduction took a while. Almost everyone surrounding me was constantly flashing their beauties with their mega pixels…and their N series and chocolates and razrs (me, the gizmo bumpkin wouldn’t even know what they meant, had I not done time at a Men’s magazine which had an enviable gadget section).
Anyway, they all passed on like random strangers trying to hit on you, and I remained unfazed by their charm.
Till I overheard a female colleague gushing about her latest acquisition, proclaiming it as the best phone in the market. Now this woman has taste, so I will trust her to pick something elegant. She also has something that means business about her, something very alpha, so I would trust her rational mind and discount sentimentality.
Plus she clearly gave me three good reasons to acquire it—looks, dependability and sensibility. Off I went shopping the same evening.
A new phone is like a new relationship—you are so sensitive to its texture, its secrets, how it responds to you, and how sensitized you are to its every move; it’s like discovering something new everyday. And not about devouring all of it in one day, which ideally, one can do if one reads the manual (ha!).
But there is something nice about being surprised. When it doesn’t do what you think it will do—like refusing to go into redial mode like my earlier model with just one move would do, or saying “message saved for sending” and actually sending it!
Now, someone from Nokia better take note of this –exactly what does this statement mean—what is my phone trying to tell me? That ‘I will consider whether this message will be sent or otherwise,’ or that ‘I will save now to send later, or just that ‘You are in queue,’ or ‘Wait, let me do a reference check on your recipients’ …It’s one thing to hold a sleek, sexy thing in hand. It’s quite another to not know what it is up to.
The fact remains that three days later, I am still suitably intrigued by my tech-toy. For someone with the attention span of a fruit-fly, that says a lot. And it still hasn’t hit me that 2 mega pixels is a big deal. Or that a full-screen camera is a desirable thing.
I must say that I am less nervous about using it, even though my heart still skips a beat when it rings, so much so that I have permanently put it on silent mode—it was one of the earliest things I figured out, and wouldn’t it be nice if we could figure out a silent mode for everyone around us?
Ok, there I go again, complaining about information overdose and sounding like a mendicant or some art-of-giving-or-living-or-whatever-it-is-practitioner.
I am neither of the above, and I can never be, unless someone figures how to get me into silent mode
To good looks, sex appeal, and personality.
The object of my affection goes by the name of Nokia 6300. Okay, I know that a couple of weeks ago I wrote about being the proud owner (rather retainer or brand custodian of a Nokia 1100 of truck driver fame), but I have been feeling strangely renewed in the past few weeks and may be this is a part of that phase.
Two days prior, I also bought new glares, but that was only in response to my old ones breaking in the struggle to get out of my hair.
Of course the seduction took a while. Almost everyone surrounding me was constantly flashing their beauties with their mega pixels…and their N series and chocolates and razrs (me, the gizmo bumpkin wouldn’t even know what they meant, had I not done time at a Men’s magazine which had an enviable gadget section).
Anyway, they all passed on like random strangers trying to hit on you, and I remained unfazed by their charm.
Till I overheard a female colleague gushing about her latest acquisition, proclaiming it as the best phone in the market. Now this woman has taste, so I will trust her to pick something elegant. She also has something that means business about her, something very alpha, so I would trust her rational mind and discount sentimentality.
Plus she clearly gave me three good reasons to acquire it—looks, dependability and sensibility. Off I went shopping the same evening.
A new phone is like a new relationship—you are so sensitive to its texture, its secrets, how it responds to you, and how sensitized you are to its every move; it’s like discovering something new everyday. And not about devouring all of it in one day, which ideally, one can do if one reads the manual (ha!).
But there is something nice about being surprised. When it doesn’t do what you think it will do—like refusing to go into redial mode like my earlier model with just one move would do, or saying “message saved for sending” and actually sending it!
Now, someone from Nokia better take note of this –exactly what does this statement mean—what is my phone trying to tell me? That ‘I will consider whether this message will be sent or otherwise,’ or that ‘I will save now to send later, or just that ‘You are in queue,’ or ‘Wait, let me do a reference check on your recipients’ …It’s one thing to hold a sleek, sexy thing in hand. It’s quite another to not know what it is up to.
The fact remains that three days later, I am still suitably intrigued by my tech-toy. For someone with the attention span of a fruit-fly, that says a lot. And it still hasn’t hit me that 2 mega pixels is a big deal. Or that a full-screen camera is a desirable thing.
I must say that I am less nervous about using it, even though my heart still skips a beat when it rings, so much so that I have permanently put it on silent mode—it was one of the earliest things I figured out, and wouldn’t it be nice if we could figure out a silent mode for everyone around us?
Ok, there I go again, complaining about information overdose and sounding like a mendicant or some art-of-giving-or-living-or-whatever-it-is-practitioner.
I am neither of the above, and I can never be, unless someone figures how to get me into silent mode
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
The ex-files
A few weeks ago, I got a missed call from an unsuitable boy I once had a crush on. In my fengshui pursuit of clearing the clutter from my life, I had of course deleted his number from my phone book, but my voracious south-indian memory didn’t fail to recognize it. What could he want now, I wondered.
Come morning, I stopped wondering, and moved on with my rituals, radio, work and other things. He had clearly been ctrl_alt-deleted from my life, but I wasn’t from his.
Of all the open windows on the hard-disk of this thing called life, something that keeps popping up are the ex-files. They have an uncanny knack of doing it. Some may creep up during holidays and festivals in the guise of what might be construed as a mass-sms. Non-commitant, neutral, impersonal, but at the same time, encrypted, registering their shadowed presence.
It's like saying, "I know you have moved on, but this is just so that you remember I was once around.” Sometimes, it might be a carefully chosen e-card or greetings for the new year or Valentine’s day or that kind of thing.
Some might go a step further and include you in their listing of forwards. Or worse, send you a link to their photos with totally random strangers at totally random places.
The point is, when you choose not to be with someone, you have really thought it through. People break up much before they actually break-up. And it always has a validation, at least in your head, however shallow that might me. I for one have a problem with men who send forwarded messages. Or wear pleated trousers. Or men who don't stand by their friends, or are indifferent to yours. Or just men who don't smell clean. But once it is in my head, it has to be out there.
Men on the other hand, still want to leave the window of 'we can still be friends' open, which more often than not always ends in disaster.
I do have friends who can’t seem to ax the ex and in some creepy way, I know they are still looming large. The real trouble is, having trouble with closure. When they can't stop calling, or emailing, or smsing or scrapping or orkuting or IMing or whatever their techno happy triggers get them to do.
I remember reading somewhere that all it takes is a sixty day detox program (yes, apparently, it is like being in an alcoholic recovery program or something)
And it is not just about ordinary people. Haven’t we heard of stars being slapped by their exes in public, or someone who dropped a glass of wine on her husband's ex?
So finally, as the halo of cumulative wisdom builds around me, I have learnt that the only way that works is ctrl+alt+delete.
Yes, it is hard to forget their phone number, even though they might be out of your phone book, or forget the caller tune, or forget his birthday or his brand of cigarette. But, when you look at it as one more bit of trivia your super-wonderful brain remembers, it ain't so bad.
Come morning, I stopped wondering, and moved on with my rituals, radio, work and other things. He had clearly been ctrl_alt-deleted from my life, but I wasn’t from his.
Of all the open windows on the hard-disk of this thing called life, something that keeps popping up are the ex-files. They have an uncanny knack of doing it. Some may creep up during holidays and festivals in the guise of what might be construed as a mass-sms. Non-commitant, neutral, impersonal, but at the same time, encrypted, registering their shadowed presence.
It's like saying, "I know you have moved on, but this is just so that you remember I was once around.” Sometimes, it might be a carefully chosen e-card or greetings for the new year or Valentine’s day or that kind of thing.
Some might go a step further and include you in their listing of forwards. Or worse, send you a link to their photos with totally random strangers at totally random places.
The point is, when you choose not to be with someone, you have really thought it through. People break up much before they actually break-up. And it always has a validation, at least in your head, however shallow that might me. I for one have a problem with men who send forwarded messages. Or wear pleated trousers. Or men who don't stand by their friends, or are indifferent to yours. Or just men who don't smell clean. But once it is in my head, it has to be out there.
Men on the other hand, still want to leave the window of 'we can still be friends' open, which more often than not always ends in disaster.
I do have friends who can’t seem to ax the ex and in some creepy way, I know they are still looming large. The real trouble is, having trouble with closure. When they can't stop calling, or emailing, or smsing or scrapping or orkuting or IMing or whatever their techno happy triggers get them to do.
I remember reading somewhere that all it takes is a sixty day detox program (yes, apparently, it is like being in an alcoholic recovery program or something)
And it is not just about ordinary people. Haven’t we heard of stars being slapped by their exes in public, or someone who dropped a glass of wine on her husband's ex?
So finally, as the halo of cumulative wisdom builds around me, I have learnt that the only way that works is ctrl+alt+delete.
Yes, it is hard to forget their phone number, even though they might be out of your phone book, or forget the caller tune, or forget his birthday or his brand of cigarette. But, when you look at it as one more bit of trivia your super-wonderful brain remembers, it ain't so bad.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Hairrrum scarrum
It is strange that I found myself roughly the same time as I found my hair.
Okay, this sounds deep, but I have a point here. If there can be a human mascot for tropical, evergreen, deciduous forests, it is my family. Each one of us has been blessed with manes that will pass down to at least three generations unless we marry extremely bald people. The only difference between the mother’s side and the father’s side is the degree of wiriness, rather twistings per inch in the locks; my mother’s side scores slightly higher for its tighter ringlets. I fall somewhere in between…
I remember feeling like a gawky adolescent, in my thin frame and ample mane, sighing at the girls in my class who tossed their hair from side to side by mere flick of a chin, while mine remained stubbornly unaltered. It took nearly two hundred brush strokes to part it into two, and then a further fifty before it was rendered to a form that a child from a decent family should assume—I am referring to my two long, oily plaits, which ran up to my waist.
Every Sunday, washing the aforementioned hair was some ritual—being soudi, I was doused with gallons of coconut oil and massaged till my neck was dislodged. Post the laborious wash, when my ringlets were at their glorious best, and I felt like some star from the sixties for precisely thirty minutes, my mother would say, “Comb your hair now, or it will be difficult later…” And it would— it would expand to six times its volume thereafter—I never understood why people need volumnisers.
A few years later, I did the same to my baby sister, and often wailed about having to perform motherly duties of such nature—trapping all of her into those damn two plaits and getting her ready before her cantankerous school mates started yelling her name from under our balcony. I had a bad childhood, as you can see…
As I grew older, and the hair wilder, there were jibes at every corner:
Do you use conditioner?
When was the last time you oiled your hair?
Have you thought about straightening?
Have you combed it?
It’s so rough, no?
I silently wished that I would undergo a genetic transformation and wake up one morning with Neetu Singh tresses that one could sleep through and still look like a daisy. I had no role models—there were no Noyonika Chatterjees or Kangana Ranauts or Kamal Sidhus -- films and television were teeming with straight silken tresses… and I felt like an outsider…
Till I realised—my hair was actually me, crying out from being made to conform, being what you are supposed to be, rather than what your heart wants you to—and then it all became crystal clear… to liberate me, I would have to liberate my hair.
After much research and rejection, I landed at Mario Miranda’s flat. His son Raul was the man picked for the occasion, and I found myself in a room facing the sea, watching Mario sketching, and new-born boxer pups flitting about with their mother in tow. “Wow, I am really doing this in style,” I thought..
Raul turned out to be the man who re-baptized me. The first thing he said was, “Wow, this is wild—I love your hair. There’s so much you can do with..” The lock-chop resulting in a fido-dido look did great things for me, but most importantly, I felt redeemed.
He also taught me to throw anything resembling a comb out of the window. Forever. I soon learnt the fine art of finger combing and scrunching.
It was also the time my mum was lining up suitable boys for me, and was obviously cross that I had destroyed my biggest asset! But I was beyond caring. Finally, I had found the freedom to be me, and was at a point where I could celebrate my hair, and metaphorically, me. Finally, I found the courage to let my hair down, literally and figuratively.
So now when someone musters the audacity to ask me, “Why don’t you try straightening?”, I look them in the eye and say, “No, because I enjoy being me.”
How times have changed! Now, I get asked, “Are those real curls?”
Okay, this sounds deep, but I have a point here. If there can be a human mascot for tropical, evergreen, deciduous forests, it is my family. Each one of us has been blessed with manes that will pass down to at least three generations unless we marry extremely bald people. The only difference between the mother’s side and the father’s side is the degree of wiriness, rather twistings per inch in the locks; my mother’s side scores slightly higher for its tighter ringlets. I fall somewhere in between…
I remember feeling like a gawky adolescent, in my thin frame and ample mane, sighing at the girls in my class who tossed their hair from side to side by mere flick of a chin, while mine remained stubbornly unaltered. It took nearly two hundred brush strokes to part it into two, and then a further fifty before it was rendered to a form that a child from a decent family should assume—I am referring to my two long, oily plaits, which ran up to my waist.
Every Sunday, washing the aforementioned hair was some ritual—being soudi, I was doused with gallons of coconut oil and massaged till my neck was dislodged. Post the laborious wash, when my ringlets were at their glorious best, and I felt like some star from the sixties for precisely thirty minutes, my mother would say, “Comb your hair now, or it will be difficult later…” And it would— it would expand to six times its volume thereafter—I never understood why people need volumnisers.
A few years later, I did the same to my baby sister, and often wailed about having to perform motherly duties of such nature—trapping all of her into those damn two plaits and getting her ready before her cantankerous school mates started yelling her name from under our balcony. I had a bad childhood, as you can see…
As I grew older, and the hair wilder, there were jibes at every corner:
Do you use conditioner?
When was the last time you oiled your hair?
Have you thought about straightening?
Have you combed it?
It’s so rough, no?
I silently wished that I would undergo a genetic transformation and wake up one morning with Neetu Singh tresses that one could sleep through and still look like a daisy. I had no role models—there were no Noyonika Chatterjees or Kangana Ranauts or Kamal Sidhus -- films and television were teeming with straight silken tresses… and I felt like an outsider…
Till I realised—my hair was actually me, crying out from being made to conform, being what you are supposed to be, rather than what your heart wants you to—and then it all became crystal clear… to liberate me, I would have to liberate my hair.
After much research and rejection, I landed at Mario Miranda’s flat. His son Raul was the man picked for the occasion, and I found myself in a room facing the sea, watching Mario sketching, and new-born boxer pups flitting about with their mother in tow. “Wow, I am really doing this in style,” I thought..
Raul turned out to be the man who re-baptized me. The first thing he said was, “Wow, this is wild—I love your hair. There’s so much you can do with..” The lock-chop resulting in a fido-dido look did great things for me, but most importantly, I felt redeemed.
He also taught me to throw anything resembling a comb out of the window. Forever. I soon learnt the fine art of finger combing and scrunching.
It was also the time my mum was lining up suitable boys for me, and was obviously cross that I had destroyed my biggest asset! But I was beyond caring. Finally, I had found the freedom to be me, and was at a point where I could celebrate my hair, and metaphorically, me. Finally, I found the courage to let my hair down, literally and figuratively.
So now when someone musters the audacity to ask me, “Why don’t you try straightening?”, I look them in the eye and say, “No, because I enjoy being me.”
How times have changed! Now, I get asked, “Are those real curls?”
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