I Do Love Home

I do love home. Yes I do…inspite of all the arguments and the fights and all the tans of anger and the verbal splats…I still love home.
I leave dayafter – not for college, not for comfortable cash inflow from dad…but for work, new life and my own money. Wow… I might as well say goodbye to all my big chill indulgences, the Loreals and the Benettons… I will be amongst the “less-fortunate” ones. *looooooong dramatic sigh*

What a silly song is on…It must’ve been love by Roxette. Ah…and I am being silly and relating to it. “But it’s over now…..” – I wonder, is it? I mean I am not that emotional anymore when it comes to him…that weak or stupid for that matter. So much thinking seems to, for a change, do me some good. What use is the term “moving on” if you cant apply it? Distance makes the heart grow fonder? Or out of sight, out of mind? Pix says it is the second syndrome where he is concerned. I wonder now, is it true? Yesterday a mail from him hit my inbox and I was taken aback… I think that’s because I have truly stopped expecting anything from him. He is married to work, he says. Then how can I even expect him to stray with me? *grin*

Oh and I was thinking of that corny movie “My best friends wedding” yesterday. I admit, sheepishly though, that I like that film very much. It’s such good time pass. The karaoke segment is my favourite…I think that’s when I started liking that song by Nicky Holland, “I just don’t know what to do with myself”…oh wait, let me just find it on my winamp.
Ah yes, it’s playing now…and I am swaying happily. And voila…I switch to Moby and feel all swingy and floaty… I miss the weed-ed wonders of life… ah college life and other such sinful nights…!
Music is so amazing. It makes me feel better about almost anything.

-Phone call-

Ah it was my 2nd brother from college, the lovesick heartbroken C.J. Just finished giving him a whole lecture about moving on and staying away from what and who makes you upset. Felt so mature. Made me think about my own personal problems… have I applied it in my life…can I really?
I haven’t been upset where the man in question is concerned in a long time now. No more am I harping on the fact that I want to wait and be with him. His commitment phobia has finally put me off so much that I’d rather also just be friends now than keep trying to make him realise what we had. I mean if he can’t see it, he must be blind and I am tired of trying. Such hopelessness makes me resign myself to hopelessness. But I am really proud of myself and that I am capable of getting okay! Yay delhi here I come…!!

-Loo break-

Ya okay…I don’t feel like typing anymore. I am bored and I don’t feel like rambling on anymore. I will try sneak out the car for a drive now. I will grab some fruits for lunch. I will send my clothes for ironing. I will go for a walk. I will miss home. Oh yes I will. I do love home.

The Tan of Anger

What happens when you wake up with the same ol’ same ol’ raving and ranting of motherhood, the silent but subconsciously concerned silence of fatherhood and no appetite for the otherwise very appetizing Sunday morning breakfast? It leads to a tan.

So u see my arm…its double shaded…a patch of skin with such a straight line splits the uniformity of my arm – its such a funny sight – as if it belongs to two different mannequins and is clubbed together by mistake! This is a result of going for an hour long drive in anger in the very strong sunlight of my hometown – the sun rays that are hardly blocked by pollution or smog, clouds or fog – it’s a clear day…sunny and warm…bordering at hot even – and I, so sick of my mother’s constant pestering on the issue of marriage and the love interest I had and which led to nowhere, chose to bathe after waking up with another range of arguments and in an attempt to dodge more such accusations, took the very manageable beige Maruti which is my only means to peace and distraction, and left home.

So many thoughts, so little time…so many cars, so little space. Now Shimla has narrow roads that snakes itself around the hillsides – sometimes being comfortably inviting, sometimes betraying that sharp bend where a truck comes zooming in like nobody’s business. Nevertheless, I go on… I still hate to reverse… and I don’t like to take anything but U –turns to return to some place…but these are the hills with the never ending valleys on one side and the intimidating towering mound on the other – and yet I keep driving… take a round of the whole town…watch some guys on roads and some male drivers give me the dirts (of but ofcourse – it’s a small sexist town and there are not many lady drivers you see)!! ‘Blinking Lights’ by The Eels run in my head – I was listening to them just before I took off…

“Blinking lights on the airplane wings up above the trees
Blinking down a morse code signal specially for me
In a rainbow, in the sky, in the middle of the night
But the signal’s coming through
One day I will be all right again…

Blinking lights on the highway cars
Stopping one by one
Get a look at the accident
Didn’t see that one coming

And the doctor in the sky
Going to bring his chopper down
Going to bring me out alive
Set me on the ground once more again

Blinking lights on the airplane wings up above the trees…..”



With the song replaying in my head again and again…I keep the tyres rolling… “But the signal’s coming through …One day I will be all right again…” …the sun shines and streams stealthily in my car…on my right arm… I don’t notice… I only wince once in a while trying to hush it away when it tries to creep into my eyes… and I keep manoeuvring the steering wheel with the course of my thoughts… it all seems to be in tandem…there is harmony in the world again.
Until I reach home and park the car...glance and my ‘ebony and ivory’ endorsing arm and rush in to rub it with the old and reliable recipe of lemon, besan and haldi… but well, the hour has baked it enough… I now have the tan of anger and an inability to wear short sleeves for atleast a week! But tomorrow the drive will happen again – and the tan of anger shall be shielded by sunscreen!

Wedding Bells Toll – Let the Cameras Roll

What a waste of time! What a waste of good news time! What a waste of tapes! What a waste of broadcast value! What a super waste of sensibility! But definitely not a waste of TRP’s or money or the amazing amounts the ads must have put in each channel from the very masala-driven Aaj Tak to the apparently sensible CNN-IBN (that I am going to join in just a weeks time)…boy, am I glad the wedding aka tamasha business finished before that, or I could almost visualise myself banging my head on the sparkly walls of the office and wanting to walk out.

A child in Kailash Colony got killed. Some fiasco happened at a hospital. Some political stuff must have also happened (and I am being vague purely because I, at this moment, have the right to be vague about it) – blame it on the news channels where hours of a “LIVE” baraat procession is on…for lord god’s sake – what has the world come to? And if not that, then there is the repetitive footage of the other woman who claims to be heartbroken and has cut her wrist at the perfect time (I mean really, what could give the media more pleasure than getting such a scandal out on the big D-day…or should I say small B-day!)

Now I wonder, who needs to know who is on the guest list and what colour is the brides wedding attire…and why only concentrate on Whatever Lulla’s detailed designs, if there was any scope, then I am undoubtedly sure that they would want to talk about the colour of her thong too!! (But oooh the thong would be an issue for the RSS and the Bajrang Dal right…I mean, according to them, doesn’t that also go against our so very sanctified Hindu ethics and blah blah who choose to ignore the ancient erotica and the ajanta-ellora’s) – So that would make another headline “Party shows protest against bride defying Indian culture by setting thongs on fire publicly (and maybe its enlarged versions too) and pelting stones on all lingerie stores”...never mind that they all want their wives to be a sati in the kitchen and a slut in bed! And more than that never mind if another criminal mind is working his twisted head on another victim – he is almost sure that, amongst the band-bajaas and the shehnais his crime will hardly be heard!

Double standards apart, I really wonder if TRP’s all that drives today’s channels. Everything is commercial, isn’t it? And being idealistic so passé…so ngo-type? Isn’t it?... lets all indulge in spending hours of our days watching the details of one wedding – something that is so personal made into public entertainment and why only news/ entertainment channels…lets also give reality a new face by putting cams on their post-wedding activities…hah they wish now, don’t they! I’m most sure they do…and why not…anything for money…when have we ever learnt where to draw the line?

Writer’s Block

I am suffering from a writer’s block. And that’s why instead of letting a thought compel me towards the keyboard, I am trying to get the blank screen compel some thoughts out of my head. And still – no feelings, no statements, nothing even remotely profound or for that matter flippantly shallow even. I don’t remember the last time I had a writer’s block – words usually trickle out of my head very easily and seamlessly.

I remember the last time I was writing regularly was the time I was hurt and terribly let down by someone. It was anger that made me write – anger and vehement questioning. And this time, when that someone very easily washed his hands off the entire affair, nothing is coming to me – no passion that makes me write in fury, no feelings that I have to necessarily manifest through words. That’s why I am even more surprised at my writer’s block.

Sometimes random thoughts do come to me – I mean, yes I still “think” and all that – I haven’t been mentally retarded so to say – but they are so fleeting and momentary that I either don’t want to pen them down or don’t think its worth the effort. Or do I not think anymore that what happens to me in my personal life, worth the effort to be recorded?... I don’t know – I am feeling terribly blank right now and don’t even know what my next sentence is going to be.
Ah yes – I remember the last time I drew and analogy of sorts – between my hair and his feelings. Its rather simple – there was a phase in my undergrad days when for some strange inexplicable reason, my otherwise curly hair had suddenly turned poker straight – ideally I should have been delighted – I think initially I was too, but in a while I started to miss my curly hair. Come season change and it went back to their curled state – and the straight phase was over. Now I own a hair straightener – I wish I had straight hair, I try sometimes to tame the mop of curls I usually wake up with – cute nevertheless, but unruly and unsatisfactory. And now I think of the straight hair phase and wonder why I wanted my curls back to badly that I tried atleast 10 different shampoos to restore it to its natural state. Its simple human psychology at the end of the day, isn’t it? We always want what is difficult to get – straight hair that came for a month wasn’t appreciated and rather cursed while I had it, and now that it is gone, I possess an artificial hair straightener – and sometimes think about the guest appearance of the straight hair that was.

Is he like that too? Want something once its gone? Appreciate the one who’s not easily his? And why just him – I think of my straight hair tale – I think I am like that too – we are all humans, and we are terribly stupid at times – take for granted what is there – not know the importance of it until its gone – its like water, I didn’t realise how much we take it for granted until one night there wasn’t a drop to drink at home and we had to sleep thirsty.

Have you realised that the most indispensable thing is what we take for granted the most? – air, water, food, home, family, best friend? And what if one of these go – how difficult or impossible is mere survival? Its problematic, isn’t it?...that the one we need the most is the one we don’t appreciate at all – unless its gone ofcourse. Absence makes the heart grow fonder? But why do we have to wait till the absence takes place anyway – why don’t we realise the importance of that person/thing/support when its right there – how stupid are we as human beings? How retarded is human psychology?

I learnt my lesson once. I don’t think I want to learn it again – I don’t like to take for granted anything – I want to feel every moment, every instance, every element that makes me the person I am and appreciate it while its here. But I also want to record all of that – every sentiment, realisation, appreciation – and how do I do that now…now that I have a writer’s block?