Farewell Fabulous Fog

The morning was enrobed in this ethereal mist – white and translucent, gauzy and delicate, gloomy and gorgeous. Like a bride’s veil, the city seemed to be hidden away from the view of the rest of the world. No flights could land. No, they couldn’t spot the city. Everything was delayed. There were traffic jams on the road. Yet, fog is so beautiful that every inconvenience can be excused.

I like a foggy morning. It makes me like my tea better. I can’t see the tall building in front of my house. A semblance of idyllic isolation surrounds my balcony. Suddenly I am not living in a big city. Suddenly I am not surrounded by high rising condominiums. Suddenly peace seems to replace all hurried, human activity. I am suspended in a self-deceptive solitariness and I love it.

Winter went by too soon. Suddenly its warm and my coats are whining in the cupboard. They will again be subject to months of suffocation with the unbearable smell of naphthalene. My heart goes out to them. Hot milk won’t be so much fun anymore. Walking in the chilly evening will not be a secluded activity anymore. The walking tracks will be thronged with multitudes of people every evening. The charm of the cold, the biting wind in the middle of the night and the dead of the morning will disappear. Everything will become warm, hot, burn and char. Yes I hate summer. It makes me sluggish, least inspired and most cranky.

Bye bye cool morning breeze, colorful socks, velvet blankets and hot chocolate.

Hello sweaty, sticky days, skin breakouts and tissue paper overdose. I so did not miss you.

Dying and Dipping

I know what death must feel like. It feels like getting into the swimming pool on a cold winter day in Delhi. Thousands and millions of tiny little daggers were suddenly stabbing me from all ends. When I dipped my head in, my ears revolted in disgust and the ringing didn’t go for an hour after. My stubborn as hell self didn’t give up. So I tried to drag myself to the other end convincing myself that all I need is a warm up lap. All I needed was a brain – which by the way, also was frozen with my throbbing forehead. “No this isn’t happening”, I gasped in my head, “I can’t breathe”, and quickly, before the world closed itself around my eyes, I shut myself out and managed to swim back to the edge and get out. Yes I know what that chicken in my freezer must feel like. And yes, I know how it feels to be physically numbed till you can’t feel your own pinch.

Winter comes with long vacations. Home is where the paunch is. Even I couldn’t escape from Mom’s ghee-bhare paranthe and my favourite halwas. Indulge – I thought – and back in Delhi, all will be okay. That is a myth. The holiday weight isn’t. How does one lose the new year’s new layer of adipose tissue? I hate the treadmill. I hate the monotony of walking in one spot. It is depressing, to keep walking and yet stay in the exact same spot – almost like how we sometimes live our days, our weeks – we think we are walking, and yet the routine of the daily life sucks you right back and nothing has changed. So with that depressing piece of contraption out, I wanted to start taking real walks. But Delhi is cold and I like walking in the dark. Yes, I have issues. Like I don’t like the redundancy of the treadmill, I don’t like the visibility of the early evening. I like going for a walk when the sky is dark and no one really sees me. I like the invisibility of the night, when they can see you walk yet can’t see your face. I also don’t like walking with a phone or music. I like to just walk. And the dark of the winter is too cold for my warped activities.

So what do I love the most? Ah. I love to swim. But it is cold. Just how cold, I didn’t anticipate. Why haven’t they shut the pool down? Do they like inviting people to have just a little peep into numbing, icy death? And I hear people have been coming for a swim. They must not be human. They cannot be human. It is impossible to dip oneself in that chilled water and step out as if nothing happened – as if nothing evil struck your face, as if nothing icy smothered you and as if nothing menacing grabbed your lower back. And so, following really bad examples, I bravely and enthusiastically got into my swimsuit and stepped into that sinister body of coldness. I died. My short lived death lasted half an hour. Really. I am still reeling from that numbness. And sheer stupidity. I don’t think I can even look at that pool until April. And that too, is worth a second consideration.

A Tale of a Tampon

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.

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.

The Warmest Winter

There is nothing that takes my time these days more than Salman Rushdie. In my overarching, over ambitious, Icarus like project to do a term paper on the post colonial issues of his novels, I have doomed myself to constant reading and re-reading, mugs of coffee, hours of nerve wracking research and multiple moments of sheer desperation. This is the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of the current state of my life.

What comes a close second is the change of weather that seems to whisper to me each evening, urging me to step out of the house, take a lazy walk, sit and stare at the line of mirchi lights all over the lawns, smell the newly sprouted blooms whose fragrance has invaded every open space in the city, buy some neroli and jasmine moisturizer, sit at my balcony and watch the moody rays of the sun come and go.

This is my favourite season of the year. When the monsoon has been chased away to give way to the cold breeze that hits you with a surprise one fine evening, when the fan makes you shiver in the early hours of the morning, when the day ends early and the dusk demands a sweatshirt, when you start to dig into the deep recesses of your lofts and trunk to bring out those naphthalene smelling woolens.

This winter is special. Like that long lost lover you meet after years. Like the nostalgia that hits you when you put on that age old over coat. Like the friends you made in the open air of the concert. Like the smell of the barbecue chicken that mom made on cold nights.

My tweed coat calls out to me. The heaters and the gloves beckon me. I can’t wait for it to be November. The coldest season of the year is the warmest to me.

Lady D, A-Melle and Me

I would have really liked to go for a swim today. Swimming just takes every bit of shoulder ache away and every scrap of worry away – even though it’s only for a while. But here I am, sitting in my yet another new house in Gurgaon, having cutting chai that reminds me of Mumbai, leisurely inhaling a dangly stick of Marlboro Ultra Lite and not finding much to really complain about. Except the fact that I miss Mumbai like I once missed Delhi when I moved to Pune years ago.

Gurgaon is alright. I am quite enjoying where I live. But more than anything, it’s the fact that I am back to academics is what keeps me happy and content. Delhi isn’t what it used to be. The roads aren’t the same, nor are the people. Everything has changed and the little time capsule that I had preserved in my head is now split. I am not complaining really. I am more comfortable with the idea of change now than I ever was. And in a way its making me experience the city with a whole new perspective. Friends who have matured, acquaintances who are now close, new family, new street food stalls, new metro lines, new flyovers and new ways to kill and use time.

Lady D is my new friend in college. Oh for the record I am back to my unreal, impractical yet joyous world of literature. I am friends with Kafka and Freud again. I am finding a new found love in Moliere and Rabelais. I am in a constant love-hate relationship with Plato and Coleridge. Amidst all this, Lady D (who was at Mumbai for the last 3 years too) and I, find moments to reminisce about the city, to miss the rushed streets of Colaba, the drunken nights at Mondys, the sound of the locals, the chaat at bandstand, the midnight gigs at Blue Frog and the sheer freedom of being who and where you wanted to be. I’ve come a long way since I first moved to Mumbai. I’ve fallen hard for the city with a fishy smell, the musty air and the mad energy. Honestly, I can’t wait to get back and continue what I left incomplete – my long and rocky affair with the city.

A-Melle is another new friend. She usually doesn’t know what Lady D and I are going on and on about Mumbai. I can’t wait to take her there and make her another victim of that overcrowded city’s charm. College is nice. I go everyday like a geek who needs her dose of lecture to survive. Not really though. I also take great pleasure in bunking when the professor sucks, almost as much as I love scribbling notes like a maniac when I love the text. It’s nice to have lunch that costs Rs 25 and cold coffee that isn’t a buck over 20! I can push A-Melle around and get shoved in return when we are dragging ourselves to the library, or sit under the hot sun while Lady D fills me in on the latest dope in class. Being back to college has given me the joy that was essentially missing in the last 5 years.

And even though I miss Mumbai like a dog misses his favorite bone, I am happy to be doing what I like doing. I feel stable, I feel like I can have a decent conversation again, I feel like all that rust is off my brain. After years of scattered mindlessness, confused existence, meaningless jobs, ridiculously pendulous interests, being everywhere and yet nowhere, I finally feel like I am home.

From the Journal of a Gypsy Girl

So many things have happened in the last few weeks. I have had a whirlwind trip to Gurgaon and back. I have spent at least 35 hours in 5 days on house hunting and seen at least 30-40 houses. Some have been indulgently beautiful hence overpriced, some have been passable but with miserable blackish mosaic flooring, some have let me down by its badly planned kitchen, some have had black chart paper pasted onto the windows to save curtain money and some have had landlords vain enough to detest. Week 2 of June 2010 will be marked as the most frustrating week of the year for me. Day after day, hour after hour, unhealthy burgers after burgers, heat and muck, annoying brokers and liking flats which were not in my budget finally got to me. Saturday night was my desperate attempt at throw some positive light at this location move, so I stood at the balcony of my guest house and watched the glittering gurgaon roads and phase 5, and thought of what I may like about this place versus Mumbai. Honestly, not many points came to mind except that the roads would be better, the winter would be glorious and people won’t ramble in Marathi expecting me to know it just because I live there. Hindi will be the new language – even if its interspersed with some gaalis and a haryaanvi accent. But apart from that, I couldn’t think of any more reasons.

I am the newest lover to Mumbai. I am suddenly appreciating the people, the ethics, the warmth, the respect for some semblance of lane driving. Yes I haven’t gone on the Metro in Delhi yet and I don’t particularly like the locals of Mumbai, but at least I have the option of taking an auto or a taxi in the middle of the night, without holding a pepper spray to my heart. I like the monsoon even though it’s a mess on the roads. I like my house, it’s gorgeous. I have fewer friends, but eventually it doesn’t matter. Everyone gets wrapped in a life of their own and socializing isn’t top priority. I like the weekends here. I love the strictness of the drinking and driving rule. I like Party Hard Drivers! I like that my ex driver is an ex underworld goon who is super fond of me and would take me out of any pickle that I may slip into. I like that getting a gas connection is simple and a replacement comes promptly.

But then again, I also like the India Habitat Centre, I enjoy plays at the IIC, I like American diners, I love winter evenings in Dilli Haat having a hot plate of momos, I like scouting for funky chappals in Janpath and I like trying really hard to find something that fits me in Sarojini nagar! I like the fact that some of my girlfriends are still close and here. I like it that I will be staying very close to the fancy ambience mall and walking distance from the DLF city club. There could be quite a few positives to Gurgaon/Delhi. Because it’s been more than 5 years since I left, I think it takes really hard thinking to fish out what I used to like about the city. True that I detest the public transport. I plan to be a metro regular if it turns out to be bearable. I don’t particularly like being armed with my pepper spray at all times but does give me a sense of self defense. Also, it’s a big plus that my parents will be a 9 hour drive away. I can run home any weekend I want.

It’s an age old debate – Mumbai versus Delhi, Delhi versus Gurgaon, etc etc. But one has to learn to detach oneself from the four walls of a house when moving is going to become a two yearly event. One has to learn to adapt, adjust and find joy in life. I have finally found a pretty house in Gurgaon that I intend to make a gorgeous home. Meanwhile, I am sorting out the other aspects of my life and submerging myself in the essence of Mumbai in my last 2 weeks here. Mumbai has given me a lot – a job, an opportunity to grow as a person, it’s given me M and the happiness of moving in our first 2 homes, it’s given me few thick friends and now I hope to find something more in a new city. I am a gypsy girl. I move every 2 years and I will love each place I go to. To new cities and new plumbing work! Cheers!

Of Resignations and Dancing in the Rain

Today has been quite a day. Well, for starters it was my last day at work. You know how it is. Everyone is saying they will miss you and will stay in touch with you. Random people who you have met just twice in the cafeteria, women whose names you don’t remember, men who have given you the polite nod and let you take your cappuccino before them, the receptionist who is probably a bit sick of receiving your lunch sandwiches and the boss you may not love so much. It could be an excruciatingly fake exercise except today, it was not.

So what has changed? Surely not the people who promise to call but don’t have my number, or colleagues who immediately add you on facebook but may never drop a note. I think it was me. I think some of my cynicism about people in general seems to have reduced. My smile has become more genuine, my laugh less sarcastic and my one liners less personal. I find it easier to have a chat with a new acquaintance and I actually notice a subtle haircut and remind myself to drop a compliment. I don’t shut myself out anymore and it is so refreshing. My last day wasn’t spent running around with the clearance form, frantic to get out of the office. It wasn’t spent counting hours and minutes. It was a peaceful routine and in the pool of multiple goodbyes, the genuine ones that I could spot made me happy.

With that done with and the relieving letter tucked under my arms, I gallivanted around the city in an auto rickshaw and remembered my initial days in Mumbai. The weather right now is hot and sultry, but there is that weight in the air and that smell in the evening breeze that whispers in your ears about the impending rains. The promise of thick droplets of water crashing at my balcony doesn’t scare me. I know the roads will flood, the autos will refuse to budge, the pot holes will disappear into menacing little marshes waiting to swallow you in. But the rain will also do what it does each year – wash away all the sadness, the resentment and grudges of the year gone by and give me a fresh start, a happy beginning to another phase.

I will only witness the first few weeks or maybe even days of monsoon in Mumbai. A series of snapshots in my head show me the slushy train ride to andheri, the gorgeous evening walk at carter road, the folded jeans, the squeaky flip flops, the broken umbrella at worli, the drenched me witnessing my first violent downpour and the room I once lived in at my aunt’s house. There is something about the water, the puddles, the frogs in the pool, the lush green weeds, the noise of the splashes, the fear of the flooding, that completely fascinates me.

If there is something about Mumbai that I have loved more than the city itself, it’s the monsoon. The most inconvenient season of the city has been my favourite and will continue to be. Till I return again, I will always remember Mumbai for the joy the monsoon has given me. Like someone once said, “Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness, has never danced in the rain”.

Counting Stars

There is something beautifully wasteful about counting stars. The futility of the counting doesn’t deter me from finding excuses to stare at the shimmer splattered sky. So there could be a million sparkles up there, but why must I not count? Must I spend my time doing something less wasteful, less pointless? But the stars in the sky were put above us, to count and to stare at. What else could be the reason? Except it being god’s little gesture of prettifying the world.

When I think of stars I don’t think of them as what Wikipedia defines them – a massive, luminous ball of plasma held together by gravity. How does the dictionary define them? – Star [noun]: any of the heavenly bodies, except the moon, appearing as fixed luminous points in the sky at night. The only redeeming word in these definitions is ’luminous’. Luminous – radiating light, shining, bright – now that’s a bit of poetry in itself. Just as a star is.

For me, every inch of the sky holds something - A wish, a longing, a prayer. Dead people become stars. Hopeful moments become stars. A dream is like the star – revealing itself only at night, showing itself to you the way only you can see it. Every artist sees the stars as they like it. Van Gogh sees it as a shocking whirlpool of light. “That does not keep me from having a terrible need of -- shall I say the word -- religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars”, he says. Anne sexton says in her poem, that like a star she wants to die. Don McLean sang of the stars as the “Flaming flowers that brightly blaze”.

Though I don’t remember when was the last time I stared at a clear sky filled with stars. Cities are not pretty. No time to sit and stare. And even if you do, it ensures the pollution and the smog doesn’t leave you with much to stare at. I was brought up in a hill station, closer to the sky, away from the rush, where an old, green painted bench still perches invitingly outside my house, where lovers meet and gaze at the sky, where children gather and spot constellations, where I sat at the age of 12 and got inspired to write my first poem. There is something so magical about stars that I refuse to let the science enter my head. I would like to still tilt my head and marvel at the miracle of creation. I would still stick fluorescent, glowing stars on the ceiling of a room. I would still like to lay flat, in complete abandon, and stare at the sky for hours. One doesn’t see that in the city. And that is why I love returning to my small hometown every once in a while – so I can stretch my arms and feel like to can touch the stars again and count them endlessly. I like to revisit true beauty every once in a while. And there is nothing as gorgeous, as eternal and as pure, as a sky clustered with stars and dreams and joy.

Things I would like to do when I don’t make excuses

To write like the wind is caressing the paper is what I want to do. Free flowing and refreshing. Word after word after word -like a row of soldiers, dancing across the sheet in perfect synchrony. The pen is light and the words, effortless. No thesaurus by my side and no list of things-to-do hanging over my head distracting me.

The sky above me is so blue and the air has a reassuring smell of familiarity – of the sea and the fish. Life is rushing by me like everyone is in a hurry to get older, richer, busier. But that isn’t how I like my life to be. I hate to run. I would rather take a lazy stroll in a garden while there is still daylight, eat a cucumber-cheese-tomato sandwich, peel an orange and luxuriously pop each piece in and just stare at the grass, the flowers, the children.

I like cooking non-hurried food. The pressure cooker isn’t the answer to life. I like roasting and sniffing the spices turn from a sandy shade to a golden brown. Sit at a restaurant and taste the prawn masala fry slowly to decipher what went in it. Take a bite, speak, talk, discuss, savor the flavor and digest the moment leisurely.

Must we buy a house in the hills? Where the life is slow and moments come more easily. Memories are made at a barbecue in my backyard. The cold wind turns your nose blue yet you are perfectly warm on the inside. Cities can make you cold, routinely, mechanical.

There is a pot hole near my house. On and off, it is filled by some random water. It isn’t monsoon. One day a dog was sitting in it like a king. His head was titled towards the sky. His expression seemed to be that of pride. He looked like a delight in the muck. How often do these sights arrest me? Not often. Very occasionally now I see the clouds turn black or the flower sprout from the bud. It’s my excuse – no time to sit and stare. But it’s hardly an excuse. One makes time.

Happiness finds me. I delude myself with fake misfortunes and shut it out. Truth is I am a lucky one. With love, life, like minded friends. Sit at a coffee shop, do a night in, just talk. Shut out the internet, the wi-fi, the television, the distractions. Soak in the cloud of joy just suspended all around me. Making time is an art, making excuses is easy labor. I would like to be an artist. I’m abandoning excuses. I am going to do things I like to do.

The Final Exit Mode

I am in an exit mode of mind. The new office hasn’t worked for me. Truth be told, no office has ever worked for me though I have been good at my work but never enjoyed it really. And I have sat myself down and racked my head to figure out what exactly will work for me? And the decision happened almost automatically. I want to study. Always have. Always will.

Going back to academics is a tough choice to make. Especially when one is used to the idea of the cheque arriving at your account at the end of each month, especially when one sees all most of their batch mates climbing the corporate ladder in full speed and especially when one comes face to face with your own convoluted idea of self worth.

At 20 I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was passionate about my subject but somehow I got fed in with external opinions about how a professional course is the only way to be. So I followed the herd, did a painful course, sat for placements and bang – I was now a management trainee at an office with a little cubicle. I wasn’t happy when I prepared for the entrance, I wasn’t happy to figure out math problems and who is whose aunt in those god forsaken logical sections! I was miserable doing my 2 year old course and I by the time I started working, I was numbingly indifferent and mechanical about my work. I thought a lot about returning to academics, pursue literature, do what makes me happy and finally be interested in something but then the demon of false-self-worth possessed me.

I think most of us paint our self worth according to how much money we make and what’s our official designation. Even if it isn’t something we love doing, at least its something we like being called. So when I go to a party and ask someone about themselves, 90% of their conversation will be about work. Why not talk about what you like, what you read, what music makes you the person you are, etc etc? Why only talk about the fact that you are so stressed because you are worried about how much your next bonus will be? I am not saying that money isn’t important. Of course it is. But sadly, money is now the only thing that seems to derive our self worth and that’s kind of shitty.

I had also fallen in the same web. Not working in a respectable office and not having something to talk about at these get-togethers would make me feel bad about myself. My parents would reiterate that how I need to work for people to respect me. When I took a break between 2 jobs, I didn’t like telling people that I am not working. I felt small, insignificant and worthless. Though when I wasn’t working, I was freelancing, but somehow I always thought that people will think less of me. And it wasn’t even my parent’s fault that they said it or that I felt this way. I think it was some kind of illogical social conditioning that just seeps into your head after a point of time.

But it’s been 3 years of working and 3 years of hating each morning that I had to go for work. And now I am in the final exit mode. I have realized that my self-worth comes from within me and no corporate snob in a party should make me want to redefine that. My husband makes me proud, he understands my love for studying, he wants me to return to academics, he respects it and that gives me an immeasurable amount of support and confidence. So this session onwards, I am a student again. I hope to make it through to the entrance, I hope to realize true happiness and I hope to reinstate my new definition of self worth. :)

The Hate Club

Of all the people I have known, this girl I knew in college has been by far the worst yet. There are others I haven’t liked. Well, who are we kidding? There have been plenty of additions in the hate list but she is definitely the uncontended president of the hate club.

I went through this very strange phase in life. I was a very well liked person till school and under grad – peaceful, fun person who got along with everyone and never felt the need to really despise anyone. And then post grad happened and something changed. Was it me or the people? I’d like to think it was the latter. I met the most rotten, most annoying and the pettiest bunch of people that I had ever seen, all in one single room. It would make me want to throw up. I had such few friends that I could count them on the fingers of my one hand. And that few also took me a really really long time to make.

I am a very loyal friend so my basics are as in place as is the characteristic of loyalty in a dog. If I love you, I will stand by you even if you have to kill someone. I will defend you to death and only reprimand you in private. I will be the rock solid, illogical wall and ward off any shit that may happen to you. In the process however, I will expect something similar and hence be vulnerable to insurmountable hurt. So I open up these positions to only a few that I am completely sure about. But that doesn’t mean that just because I have very limited stars in my own private sky, that I will hate the rest of the world.

But for some odd reason, in my post grad, I hated people and they hated me. I thought they were idiotic and completely malicious, they thought I was obnoxious and completely unapproachable. Ah well. So anyway, I hated a lot of women and men in my class. The woman who was overly sweet and suddenly flipped sides behind my back, the man who was a devil in disguise, the woman who was so nice it seemed fake –and turned out fake of course, the man who hit on everything with boobs, the woman who was judgmental to the point of me wanting to lunge at her throat every time I saw her, the pseudo intellectual fool who suddenly switched his taste in music, the attention hungry-lycra wearing-love handles bulging dimwit, the man who suddenly thought he was Casanova, the woman who used men to do all her dirty assignment work and the list is endless. But the one who tops the list is a new discovery – a friend who I discovered, used to bitch about me behind my back. That’s the worst category yet. And in my world of loyalty, that’s unforgivable sin.

So I guess she didn’t like me. Fine. Tell me that. I prefer hearing that any day. Why pretend? I didn’t like her much either but because I had no choice, I stood her mood swings and her tantrums and her completely selfish behavior. She certainly made me believe that I was a friend, reached out to me when in trouble, used my stuff, demanded my company and blah blah. And one fine day, convenience struck, and she chose to erase me out of her life and her social network. Am I sad? Upset? Disturbed? Absolutely not. I just gave conferred on her the presidential position of my hate club. After thinking of ways to get rid of her from my life, I guess I found the perfect way really - auto departure - without feeling guilty or mean, without making some random excuse. I’m just glad she chose to leave. We call it the divine intervention of the gods of the hate club. All hail!

Dawn Intolerance

It’s a client visit at office today. I can’t open facebook. I mean I can, but it will only attract dirty stares and maybe a snide remark about lack of respect blah blah. I don’t understand why though. I mean as a quasi marketing and an almost corporate communication person, isn’t it supposed to be in our blood to network, network, network till we succeed? But anyway, who can understand these things. So no facebook at work today. That’s new. Another thing that’s new today is the early morning rising. So client visit at 8 am means waking up at 5.30 to switch on the geyser and then re-waking up at 6.15 to get ready and leave at sharp 7.15. Sigh.

So I am not a morning person. No sir. Never have been. Never shall be. Never do I aim to be. When in school, I always woke up at the nth hour and was the last one to get into the car pool. I could study all night but never manage to wake up in early to save my life – and subsequently that day’s exam. In college, I barely made it to class in time, sometimes scrambling halfway in my bathroom chappals and specks. When I joined work, I loved the fact that all my jobs started at 10 AM. And this one starts at 11. So no complaints there.

Though surprisingly it didn’t feel so annoying waking up early in the morning. Usually I get cranky and feel sick, want to even throw up sometimes. I think I have dawn-intolerance.

To explain further, Dawn Intolerance is the inability to raise your eyelids early in the morning. A sense of lead-like heaviness takes over your eyes. Any accidental exposure to sunlight brings out the monster in you. In case of exceptions like meetings, early morning flights or exigencies result in making you feel disoriented and sometimes even unwell. There is obvious lack of appetite but a necessary need to reach out to any form of caffeine for assistance in making your mind alert.

But today things didn’t seem that bad. Is it a sign of becoming older again? My grandma wakes up at 5 for puja and my dad wakes up at 7 for yoga and they say it’s the freshest feeling in the whole world. I liked the morning breeze and the transition from dark to light. The sun seemed pretty and I could take a really deep breath. I even contemplated changing my swimming time from late evening to early morning. But then again, the thought was transitory, as were these subah-subah ki feelings. Someone once told me that dawn is the time of the gods and late night is the time of the devil. And I prefer the hour of evil? Well, I am not complaining. That is the mighty fate of the dawn intolerant.

Work Shirk

I don’t know why I work. As I type this, I’m sitting at my workstation, not too enthusiastic, not too kicked, glancing at my watch every now and then, waiting for Monday to be over so that Friday gets closer. Work is a bitch. Unless you love what you do. Which is a privilege that only a few lucky ones have.

It’s not like I can’t write for a living. Yet I choose to do it in the garb of a corporate veil and try extracting some semblance of work satisfaction from it. Ideally I would want to do features and write about why Blue is the new hue. Or scribble about some place dug from the past or a leader less remembered. I would want to write a book. Only that I don’t know what about. Once in a while an idea does present itself to me in form of a dream or an ephemeral thought. But then I am stuck and I don’t know how to churn words by the hundreds.

Also, it’s all very messed up because I know I can take a break and stay at home, write from home, edit and freelance, try finish that book I once started, go for a swim and get more ideas hidden in the bubbles underwater. But I choose not to. And that is a pity. But there is a story behind that too. On days I want to pursue a management course. Will I be good at it? Yes. But do I want to be good at it? I don’t know.

Like many of us, I have come to associate self worth with work, with money, with jobs that sound important but at the end of the day, are not important to you at all. Like many would, I am also scared of starting from scratch, from going and asking a magazine for internship at this age, afraid that when I see other women my age already have reached where I should have after these many years, I will feel disheartened and return to the corporate ladder and slot myself in the stereotype again. So why leave? And hence, get stuck in this rut all over again.

I get to hear of things like, treat work like work. It’s a job at the end of the day that helps you buy worldly material things. So stop right there and stop getting emotional. I find myself wondering very often how would it have been if it had chosen science instead of arts, economics instead of literature, mba instead of mass communication but then again, would I have been happier then or even more miserable?

It’s a complex maze we weave for ourselves. A web of thoughts where getting stuck is so easy and getting out, so tough. I want to work where I can write and smile when I get published. I want to pursue academics and also teach literature. These are the two things I really want to do. But I am headed in the direction of neither. Either my passion is not strong enough or the corporate lady alter-ego has taken over me. Or maybe its sheer laziness? I don’t know. In either case, it isn’t a happy world.

Growing Up

I realized that I’ve started appreciating beverages when I started rejecting cutting chai for my brewed Darjeeling tea & when I started preferring to go to Indian Coffee House for pure filter coffee than sit amongst teenagers in Barista over a cup of really pointless cappuccino.

Likewise, a lot of things around me & about me started changing. The jholas were replaced by bags. Quieter, simpler earrings replaced noisy, junk jewellery. Cocktails replaced tequila shots. Dinner outs replaced pub hopping. Yoga replaced couch-potatoing in front of the tv in the evenings. And most importantly, infrequent but happiness-inducing conversations with close friends replaced the constant need to be in touch with the whole world.

Of late my world has become smaller, tighter & clearer. Now a quiet evening alone at home is counted as quality time that I really look forward to once in a while instead of what was earlier termed as having no life! Suddenly I have no desire to stay in touch with everyone I know. I count few as friends & get in touch with them sooner or later. I can’t hold a random conversation with an acquaintance for too long. I have lost my tolerance for shallowness & convenience. Family has become a big priority. The well being of my brother has taken a predominant position in my list of daily concerns. Following up with Mom on her diet control & medicines and reminding Dad to consume healthier food is now a voluntarily imposed routine.

The water suddenly seems very calming. Swimming has become a route to escape within myself. Just sitting beside M quietly makes me feel content. I don’t seek for constant approval & reassurance for all my insecurities from the world. Miss P & I have started talking about real life, real problems. With age, like scotch, our bond has matured & become finer than it was.

Soup has become good dinner. Crushed ice with Baileys has become a favourite after-dinner indulgence. Investments have become important. Splurging has declined. Hair appointments are crucial and well timed. But buying a French manicure kit to do it at home gives me some satisfaction of being thrifty! Holidays are sensible & so is the spa package one opts for. Taking extra care before getting all the whites washed is also a recent development after heart breaks over them getting ruined & then getting them dyed.

Career is no longer a blind road that I once rushed into. Boredom is now no more an option. Hobbies have resurfaced. Some old books, some tattered diaries have been unearthed from the recesses of my old room in my parent’s house. Toying with the idea of writing a book someday is now a dream that shows itself often at night. Helping the sincere maid escape the egoistic, slightly demented rich neighbor is an important agenda that one must achieve. The idea of having a child in a few years doesn't seem that scary anymore. Knowing the latest property rates & following up on new projects seems like a good time pass.

Some things however, have thankfully remained the same. The nuttiness hasn't changed. The laughter hasn't reduced. The love stays strong. The friends remain as family. The family continues to be the rock. And the silent prayer I send up for letting me have the constants & the changes will still go everyday.

One imagines this is all part of growing up not growing old. :)

In Sickness & in Health

After two & a half years, my slip disc problem recurred. About 2 weeks ago, one morning I could not get up from the bed. Excruciating pain, a feeling of helplessness & a strange anger consumed me as I was raised & made to prop against my pillow like a child who has to be made to sit every time he has to eat, minus the pain of course.

Another stint at the hospital and a reasonably long bed-rest advice later, I thought, it is tragic to have this problem at the age of 26. It is more unpleasant than a facebook friend request from the girl I hated in college. It is more unpleasant than the taste of Safi that I have just begun to have each night. It is more unpleasant than the zit that sits proudly on my left cheek right now. It is almost the most unpleasant thing to have happened to me of late – or so I thought.

Being in bed & confined to home all day makes you depressed, chronically moody & deeply retrospective. In one such day, as I lay in bed, with that contraption of a pulley with 2 kilos attached to my neck, I thought how I seem to have wasted my talents away.

I like to believe I used to have a couple of very-pursue-able skills. I am a good cook & always have been. I wanted to be a chef but was always told that hotel management means being a glorified receptionist. By the time I was old enough to understand, I was too old. I am a good photographer. I take lovely portraits & have had my manual SLR to experiment & discover my interest with but I did not pursue photography professionally. Maybe I never bothered to find out how to. I used to write well & always thought that I would be writing for a magazine some day till I come out with a book of my own. And then when I finally could have had that chance, I completely screwed it up at post graduation by willingly specializing in film making – which by the way, is probably the biggest regret of my life till now – and never did pursue journalism of any kind. So all 3 skills which I had were never pursued & I ended up in a television job that I hated & quit, went onto some semblance of a content writing job which soon turned into me writing pre-sales proposals for clients and after that I started making too much money to go back to a mainstream writing job, knowing that when treated as a fresher, I would probably not even be making one third of it. Was it the money that killed my passion or the lack of time with the house to take care of and another thousand personal commitments? I don't know. Ideally I would like to blame myself on neither and make fate the scapegoat but unfortunately that's not how I perceive my haphazard career graph & seeing my personal participation in my own doom, I get morose & depressed all the same.

So I message Miss P, informing her of my feeling of directionless aimlessness and she tells me things that are, to me, as profound as what any shrink would have said as pearls of wisdom for which I would have paid a thousand bucks an hour.

She told me that I am lucky. And it made sense. And that I am not the only one who didn't get to pursue a career out of something I loved. Many people who are bankers & accountants are actually closet rock stars & artists but they don't make a living out of that. I know my husband, who is a fantastic golf player, would have loved to pursue it professionally but he works 8 to 8 in an FMCG company and tries to put as much passion in that as is humanly possible and that is inspiring. If I set aside my constant complains about my lack of passion in my job, there is actually nothing in my life to complain about (apart from the slip disc surely), but the way I see it today, even that could be a blessing in disguise. For all my cribbing about unhealthy living & weight management issues, my medical prescription after I get better is not a couple of pills a day – its actually this: Compulsory yoga daily & swimming at least 4-5 times a week. How many people get a prescription like that? Its like God's way of telling me to start living more healthy.

So I also have anxiety issues. My doc told me to calm down. My parents told me to get a grip or by 30 I will surely get blood pressure. My best friend told me that I need to soothe my nerves every once in a while & my brother told me to control my spurts of uncontrollable anger. Even M told me to take things easy & stop being so much of a perfectionist because more than anyone, its driving me crazy.

Therapy? I asked.

That would be insanely expensive. Miss P said

Is the work driving me over the edge? I inquired

No, you were worse when you were on a break. M told me gently.

I will control my anger. I reassured my brother.

Hah Di! That cant happen! He assured me in return.

Maybe I am becoming a fanatic for perfection. I discussed with Ma.

Please change yourself before you get old & cranky, she told me frankly.

Why are my reflexes so aggravated? I asked my doctor a week ago after the check up

You need to calm down, stop thinking for the future. Worrying is your bad habit. He said as calmly as a prophet would.

And then the prescription for my slip disc – life long swimming to keep my spine in order and yoga – to improve posture & calm my frazzled nerves. I should really consider myself lucky. Some people get strapped to the bed, some go for surgery, some live with a collar as an extension to themselves forever. None of that scary stuff as happened to me yet & instead of pills, I get Yoga. Really, for once, I should stop complaining and start being positive.

So what if I couldn't become the next big thing in the writing circles, it isn't late yet. And I get to do some really awesome freelance writing once in a while which also gets published & read! So what if I couldn't become the photographer I imagined myself to be, I am soon buying myself a Nikon D90 and getting busy with a serious hobby. And so what if I couldn't be a famous chef and feed the world, I continue to feed my friends and family and make them happy! Not every skill has to turn into a profession and not every profession has to become a passion. Sometimes that's the way things go and as long as I have my bracket of people in my life, to love me and keep me, in sickness and in health, I am incredibly lucky & happier than most people in the world.

(P.S - Mom, Dad, Bro, M, Miss P, Adi, Ips, Amby & the recent addition Yesyen – thanks for being the bracket & thanks for being the joy.)

Not So Subtle

I know the season is changing since it started getting darker than usual when I leave work. Other than that Mumbai doesn't really have a palpable sudden shift of weather – like in Delhi one fine day the night seems chilly & the morning seems refreshing, nothing of the kind happens here. The heat slowly wanes – so slowly I don't notice it. I never notice differences too subtle – like the different shades of greens in microsoft excel, like a haircut on a man, like a new plant potted in my society. I notice however if the angle of my vase is changed, or the face that the lampshade faces has been turned, or the tiny pimple bubbling under my eyebrow & the smell of the over-toasted garam masala. I guess I am selectively observant. As are most of us.

So anyway, no blogging has happened because I think my blog has died. Every attempt to resurrect it has been dismal & only triggered by a single post with no following ones. Perhaps because nothing of significant importance has happened that can be written about. I have started work & am in the process of starting my own home-made chocolate business from home. So training, research & plans have taken up weekends, new chilled our work where I churn out content for a start-up company has taken up weekdays, family visits have taken up festival holidays & its been a normal yet joyous phase. Is this what they call settling down? Is this the definition of stability? I don't know. Yet I like whatever this is called.

One post that I make each year on the blog as tradition has been for Diwali – my cathartic festival with significant change of circumstance or heart. Every year since the past few has brought with it a new chapter and closed an old one. Some have memories of quiet, solemn, peaceful diya-filled nights, some are insanely bursting at its seam with energy, dancing through the night & sparkly skies. But all have memories of my entire family together and that has been consistent. This time the family had a brand new member – M, who has magically hypnotized my folks into loving him like a son & struck a camaraderie with my brother into sharing all beer & sutta secrets with him. So the relatively larger family was together for my first diwali at my own house. Diyas, rangolis, kebabs, mirchi lights, laxmi pooja, phuljhadi amongst other things made this diwali quite regular yet not. It was somehow a very special Diwali – maybe one of the most special festivals ever & one of the more memorable nights in this house.

Did I mention we shifted in a spanking new house in a lovely locality where everything is a phone call & a 5 minute drive away and where I actually have 4 big balconies – to sit & have tea, to learn yoga, to lounge with friends and to string with lights & lamps! Did I also mention that we will be leaving Mumbai for newer lands soon? I don't know where though but as my stay in Mumbai is coming to an end, I am falling more & more in love with the city. Do I even want to go to another? I don't know – but change is refreshing, change is what keeps one occupied. Plus lots of my friends seem to be leaving Mumbai together. One left for the US, another sets sail for the UK. These were dear friends – my chick friend cum shopping partner decided to make more money and ran away, my favourite guy friend & easily the longest conversation holder needs to go set up some office in firang lands. Its a sad brain-draining world if you ask me.

I admit today that I would prefer to maybe stay in Mumbai over any other place – stay though, not settle mind you – I'm still very north indian at heart, still very much in love with my mughlai cuisine with non-sweet green chutney & a forever-hater of vada pavs! But for now, Mumbai seems to appeal to me. And then again its the comfort level that I get into I guess. I am used to my house,my househelp, my facilities, my supermarket, the disciplined lane driving, the warm people & the gorgeous monsoons and I have always been resistant to change so I can't say, maybe shifting to another place will be a better experience.

I would like Delhi very much. But I will not pin my hopes on any city this time, especially that one. I seem to invariably jinx it like I have three times in the past – I wanted to intern there & it didn't happen, I took my first job there and within a month I had to move, I was almost going to go there after marriage and M got a stint a Mumbai. So this time I will be open in my head to any city & let fate take its course. Delhi would be nice though – the comfort of familiarity, of localities & friends, of home being 9 hours away, of Miss P's house being a drive away instead of a flight. But anything can happen & I will not hope this time.

Though I will look forward to the not-so-subtle change of weather in Delhi and the lovely transition from autumn to winter that is as obvious as the kitchen that my mother just rearranged!

Here’s to Monsoon. Here’s to Mumbai.

Mumbai is parched again. Dry days and quiet nights. No noise of the rain lashing against my window, no hearing the neighbour abuse because she got splashed by some lunatic auto driver. It’s all quiet again. I should be happy really – it’s a respite from the pot holes in front of my house that get concealed by the water, leaving no scope for escape, it’s a relief from the damp, musty smell of the semi-dry clothes, it’s a definite escape from the super slow traffic on the road and the almost-paralysed days of heavy downpours. But I miss the rain. I miss standing at my balcony and watching gorgeous polka dots form in the puddle below, I miss having my hair made frizzy by the light spray of the drizzle, I miss the giant globular water bodies crash against my arm when I stretch them out of the window, I miss the feel of the steaming cutting chai in the mud kulhads I have bought, I miss getting a call from my paranoid mom telling me to stay at home because the news channels tell her that Mumbai is drowning yet again! This monsoon season is growing on me – and it is, but dangerous.

I mean I hated the rains. I hated Mumbai primarily because of the rains. The dirt and the slush and the muck and the transition from sophisticated footwear to clumsy flip-flops made me want to run away from the damn city. There was a time I would dread this season – pray to the gods of weather to make monsoon pass soon but now, I actually miss it if it doesn’t rain for a few days in this season. I don’t know what it is really – I can’t seem to put my finger to it. Maybe it’s the fact that I have, with rains, some of the most memorable moments in Mumbai with some of my closest people. Or maybe it’s because for me, the rain is like this cathartic force that comes every year and washes away all the crap that has happened since the last monsoon. Or maybe it has become my muse, my inspiration to write. It seems to be the only weather which makes me really calm and makes me want to dig out an old book and re-read it. It seems to be the only time of the year when everything looks beautiful to me. It’s the only time of the year when I get to use my retro style flowery umbrella and roll up my jeans without the fear of looking silly.

I guess it was only a matter of time that monsoon grew on me. It was only a matter of time that Mumbai grew on me. It’s all happening. The unthinkable and the unimaginable. Mumbai taught me to be resilient and be good to strangers. It forced me to be patient and more tolerant. It made me see the whole world’s joy come together on the faces of people who spend their Saturday nights on Chaupati. The city is becoming me and I am becoming the city and though I am sure I won’t stay here forever, I am surer of the fact that I will miss it very very much once I leave. So here’s to Mumbai – the land of ‘anyone who really cares to come here’, the city that will make you fall in love with it no matter how much you resist and the place where dreams are weaved on local trains.

The Shoe-side Story

So I like shoes. Big deal! I also like clothes. I like brands. I like a nice bag. So what?
So a few days ago I met these 2 friends and one of them ended up discussing something about colours and heels with me and the other one said “Please don’t sound like Barbie dolls. Please be normal”. Err… excuse me but being well dressed is abnormal?

I don’t understand this stereotype associated with women who like to shop. No, all of them are not full of fluff. And most of them are, in fact, people who earn well to shop well. I’ve always had a thing for footwear – when I was a student, it was my collection of Oshos and flip flops of all colours and since I started making money, I started collecting gorgeous heels from Aldo and Nine West and Charles & Keith etcetera etcetera! Does that make me any less smart? I don’t think so! I like to write and I love to read. Haruki Murakami sits on my bedside table as I type. Some Atwood is stacked up on the shelf. I just finished The Colour Purple. And there is the latest issue of Cosmo and Vogue that lives in my bathroom too. So why are people always equating fashion talks with lack of real brain? I don’t know!

The other day, my husband’s friend’s wife, who I am just beginning to hang with, dropped in and M mentioned that I show her my massive heel collection. I refused saying that “She needs to know me better or she will instantly judge me as some blonde who only buys shoes”. Why did I say that? I don’t know. But somehow, somewhere, even I am aiding this stereotype to thrive.

People really need to stop being so quick in judging. All coordinated women are not dumb and all messy ones are not geniuses. Just like people need to abandon the stereotype of all feminists being manly, aggressive and short haired, more people also need to stop associating fashion with stupidity and high heels with blondeness.

Everyone has pretty feet. I think its time every woman starts buying herself some really sexy high heels and adopt my mantra – “Have pedicure. Wear Heels.”

Cross Legged Thoughts

I sit at my desk, bring the lazy white-butt cigarette to my lips, inhale, shut my eyes, exhale, open my eyes and pop in a dark chocolate. Ummmm. But I am not completely comfortable yet. So I cross my legs, struggling to fit into the tricky wheeled chair and start typing and thinking and smoking and typing – all at once.
I like sitting cross-legged I realise. I do it when I type, I prefer the sofa side in a restaurant so I can cross my legs and eat, I like to cross my legs while I pray, I don’t mind being the only person in the house-party who volunteers to sit on the floor in the absence of enough seating space, I also like sitting like that in the car, at my office desk, at casual meetings, at a jenga game and anywhere else that it is possible. Give me my comfort position and I am happy.

Anyhow. So I quit my job – walked away a job that allowed me to slot and choose and watch movies and give promo briefs with a very comfortable routine & with weekends off. For many it was a dream job – ‘Wow, you work at Zee Studio. That must be fun. Blah. Blah’. Yes, so it was initially – and then monotony set in and frustration of not being able to do what I like bugged me enough to just leave. Recession, bad economy, rising prices aside, I still feel that I am meant to work somewhere where it allows me to write. I may be wrong you know – I may be really bad, maybe no one wants to give me a chance or a job, maybe if I attempt to write a book I will get dismally rejected by the publishers, maybe if I try my hand at a magazine I will suffer from a writer’s block on a daily basis. OR maybe I am good, maybe practice will make me better, maybe I do start doing what I actually enjoy and not go to office to just do a damn ‘job’. But we won’t know till we try, right?

Parents threw a fit when I decided – and it wasn't an easy decision, mind you – it gets very comfortable to work in a place which gives you such flexibility and such fun colleagues and you get into a comfort zone after 2 years in an office – where you know everyone and everyone knows you (at least by face if not by virtue). The chai wala knew exactly how I take mine, the canteen people were habituated by my sugarless mosambi juice, the ex-boss knew me inside out and became my agony aunt plus mentor plus super friend, the colleagues knew my quirks, the common enemies were identified, the confidants selected– its not easy to think of starting afresh – new desk, new people, new colleagues, new unknown devils, new café menu, new area, new afternoon lunch places, new roads, new bathrooms, new dress codes and more than all that, a new profile altogether. So I think it was a brave, brave step towards at least attempting to find my calling. If I fail there are always more similar jobs, if I don’t then hurrah for the switch. But then again, what else is life if not a series of heartbreakingly tough risks?

I can take this risk because M is with me – here, there or anywhere. I get encouraged to pursue literature because Miss P is there to yell at me and make me see sense. I feel confidant to take this step because my brother who is 19 acts like he is 39 and says he will stand by me come-what-may. I feel incredibly lucky & blessed. Many people have to do a 9-5 job – some like it, some don’t, some do it by choice, some don’t, some need the position, some need the money and some just need to keep themselves occupied. I need neither and if I don’t make the effort now to do what I like, then I would be a complete idiot.

So here’s a toast - to new ventures, new people, new workstations and many many new words.
It’s a new beginning in my life. All good wishes (and maybe some leads) would be appreciated!