Good God there is a shortage of tampons in Delhi. Not exactly the best thing to blog about but I am so furious. I am furious at the lack of supply, I am furious at this very idiotic monopoly that Johnson and Johnson has in India, I am furious at the chemist who suggested I buy pads instead “ek hee toh baat hai madam” – little will he know how similar they are when I stuff one up his nose! Why won’t more brands retail them? And how are all the women managing without it? In a fit of total panic I called multiple stores around my house, around my area, even in Khan market which caters to all the expats of the world who are tampon-only users, I texted a friend, I even called my mother to check the availability in my hometown and courier it to me. Meanwhile I am trying to figure out who is travelling abroad in the next month so I can ask them to pick it up at a duty free store. This is ridiculous. How can something so essential go missing from the market? Another woman in the same predicament as me gave me the most sympathetic look and a nod of mutual grief in the pharmacy store. “I’ve been trying to get them for a month” she said with such sadness in her voice. My panic only aggravated, my despair deepened, my pharmacy store-hopping got faster.
This happened in the evening.
Cut to night time 10 PM.
A call from a random unknown number. It’s a chemist. Apparently the idiots at Just Dial have been circulating my number as “Tampons waali”. A chemist from North Delhi. North delhi? Really? I am desperate enough to go there. He says he doesn’t have it now but he knows I am looking so he will try and arrange. He assumes, in a smug voice, that since I am looking for it so badly, I would obviously be willing to buy more than just a few boxes. “Ten”, I say in a state of total last minute anxiety. Tiny pause. My heart is beating. Tiny pause continues. “Fifteen?”, I say encouragingly. He promises to try and arrange and asks me to calls back tomorrow. But North Delhi. Really? It’s SO far, I think in my head, willing to take on the task at hand, take metro, run and go, etc etc.
But I have exams in 5 days and I haven’t prepared shit. I am neck, head, all of me down into a bit fat puddle of obscure crap. Taking this course lightly isn’t treating me very well. The books suddenly seem really big. The reference readings are piling on and now a mountain of A4 sheets sit ominously in the corner of my study room. Basically, I am struggling to read up and how.
Back to the topic at hand. So yes, it is far. At least an hour and a half by metro, if I am lucky. So I gather the courage to ask him if he will home deliver. Tiny pause repeats. I offer to pay for transport. I offer to buy 20 boxes if he manages to scrape them from the corners of the earth. He agrees. I thank him profusely, send a little prayer to the female gods above and see a glimmer of hope at the end of the dark dark empty shelves.
And now I wait, I put 2 reminders on my phone to call him tomorrow, lest some other tampon deprived girl bribes him with a larger order. I wait for an unknown man sitting in Soni Chemists in some obscure corner of north Delhi to save my soul.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
One of Those Days
Literature has been killing me. No, not with joy, but with its inescapable vastness and weight. This was supposed to be fun – this returning to academics. It is fun – till the exams came looming on my head like an unavoidable omen. Will I or will I not? I don’t know.
Meanwhile issues of the future continue to haunt me. What after this? Surely not the corporate rigmarole anymore. Surely not the brainless routine of the television life. Writing? Editing? More studying? I don’t know. I am the constant worry wart who seems to need something to fret about to add meaning to her life. It is not a good thing to do.
Yoga is supposed to help relax. But that also stresses me. When will the instructor come? Will I be home on time? Will I do justice to the 45 minutes? Will she train me well? Is she over paid? Am I being a spoilt brat by not going to classes? Etc. Etc. Etc.
Weight gain. Ah. But of course. How can one even forget the internal trauma of standing on the scales after a month and seeing a considerable shift. Give up sweets, eat salad, don’t eat after 8 PM, they say. I just want to sleep in bed all day and not wake up. Hibernate and escape all the worries of the world. Not want to look at myself on some days.
I have the moodiest hair in the world. My good hair days are almost as extreme as my bad hair days. I swing between the uncontained messiness of Medusa and the shimmery tresses of Apollo. On most days when I do have a thing to attend, a party to go to, a person to impress, I will most surely be blessed with the Medusan mood. It is inevitable. And adds to my rotten mood of the day.
Let me also get back to my first semester and say that the books truly suck. I can’t wait to get onto next semester. That is if I pass this one. Paradise Lost. Really? Isn’t this talk of Satan and Eden really quite overdone? Chaucer? Do I need to know of the worries, issues, debauchery, codes of honor of the medieval ages? Eh. I don’t think so. Donne? And his metaphysical conceit. Fine – it is slightly better than the rest. But who can even get started on Plato? Why is imitation so complicated for you? And pray Mr Sidney, do you need to defend poetry in such ridiculously complicated language? I am getting a little sick of their intellectual masturbation. I wish they’d just disappear.
Birds have taken over parts of my balcony and the AC area. To sit, chirp, shit and mate. Little dried blobs of black, brown and whitish stuff are found every day. It isn’t pleasant to scrape of someone’s dried crap. I used to hate rodents. Now I also dislike birds. I chase squirrels in campus. Scare them out of their tiny little wits. This, after one entered my house and threatened to eat at my sofa, stared at me in the eye fearlessly till I had to make the guard chase the hyperactive piece of furriness out with a danda.
I also have unfulfilled desires to be a writer. It’s the great new Indian dream. So many publishers, so many books. Doesn’t everyone get published anyway? One just needs the plot and the other elements Aristotle so elaborately puts down as a prerequisite for writing fiction, which is actually quite simple and one doesn't need to know him to know those.
Masterchef Australia has become my new found addiction. I cannot wait for the clock to strike 9 PM. I can’t get enough of the fact that food isn’t food, its art for them. Then I wonder – would I have been a great chef if I followed my cooking passion? It’s one of those questions one asks when they are on the other side of 25 and inching closer towards the big 3-0. It is all part of the great dream unrealized and a mid life crisis of ambition and purpose.
So what it is exactly that I want? Money, fame, intellectual satisfaction, professional acceptance? I just want to stop being the wary lamb that got lost somewhere along the way. I just hope this path is leading to the right destination. Otherwise, one will start on a new direction again. After all, there is always Google maps. And this, one of those vaguely lost days.
Meanwhile issues of the future continue to haunt me. What after this? Surely not the corporate rigmarole anymore. Surely not the brainless routine of the television life. Writing? Editing? More studying? I don’t know. I am the constant worry wart who seems to need something to fret about to add meaning to her life. It is not a good thing to do.
Yoga is supposed to help relax. But that also stresses me. When will the instructor come? Will I be home on time? Will I do justice to the 45 minutes? Will she train me well? Is she over paid? Am I being a spoilt brat by not going to classes? Etc. Etc. Etc.
Weight gain. Ah. But of course. How can one even forget the internal trauma of standing on the scales after a month and seeing a considerable shift. Give up sweets, eat salad, don’t eat after 8 PM, they say. I just want to sleep in bed all day and not wake up. Hibernate and escape all the worries of the world. Not want to look at myself on some days.
I have the moodiest hair in the world. My good hair days are almost as extreme as my bad hair days. I swing between the uncontained messiness of Medusa and the shimmery tresses of Apollo. On most days when I do have a thing to attend, a party to go to, a person to impress, I will most surely be blessed with the Medusan mood. It is inevitable. And adds to my rotten mood of the day.
Let me also get back to my first semester and say that the books truly suck. I can’t wait to get onto next semester. That is if I pass this one. Paradise Lost. Really? Isn’t this talk of Satan and Eden really quite overdone? Chaucer? Do I need to know of the worries, issues, debauchery, codes of honor of the medieval ages? Eh. I don’t think so. Donne? And his metaphysical conceit. Fine – it is slightly better than the rest. But who can even get started on Plato? Why is imitation so complicated for you? And pray Mr Sidney, do you need to defend poetry in such ridiculously complicated language? I am getting a little sick of their intellectual masturbation. I wish they’d just disappear.
Birds have taken over parts of my balcony and the AC area. To sit, chirp, shit and mate. Little dried blobs of black, brown and whitish stuff are found every day. It isn’t pleasant to scrape of someone’s dried crap. I used to hate rodents. Now I also dislike birds. I chase squirrels in campus. Scare them out of their tiny little wits. This, after one entered my house and threatened to eat at my sofa, stared at me in the eye fearlessly till I had to make the guard chase the hyperactive piece of furriness out with a danda.
I also have unfulfilled desires to be a writer. It’s the great new Indian dream. So many publishers, so many books. Doesn’t everyone get published anyway? One just needs the plot and the other elements Aristotle so elaborately puts down as a prerequisite for writing fiction, which is actually quite simple and one doesn't need to know him to know those.
Masterchef Australia has become my new found addiction. I cannot wait for the clock to strike 9 PM. I can’t get enough of the fact that food isn’t food, its art for them. Then I wonder – would I have been a great chef if I followed my cooking passion? It’s one of those questions one asks when they are on the other side of 25 and inching closer towards the big 3-0. It is all part of the great dream unrealized and a mid life crisis of ambition and purpose.
So what it is exactly that I want? Money, fame, intellectual satisfaction, professional acceptance? I just want to stop being the wary lamb that got lost somewhere along the way. I just hope this path is leading to the right destination. Otherwise, one will start on a new direction again. After all, there is always Google maps. And this, one of those vaguely lost days.
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