Stuff that wouldn't fit in anywhere else so I made one rather disconnected post about it all before I forget

> People I love now include the little kid at the Khel Gaon-Panscheel red light who wiped my windows for me, all the time doing a little balle-balle type jig. I didn't give him money--coz I don't do that--but I usually keep a supply of toffees and chewing gum in my glove compartment for these kids, so I gave him two airline mints, and he sprung up and did the same ecstatic dance all the way down the road. I love the street kids who smile and wheedle, as opposed to the ones that look at me blankly from mucus crusted eyes. Both get toffees, biscuits when I remember to carry the Parle G, sometimes half a plate of sweet potato chaat, but the jokers with their antics get it with my love and gratitude for brightening up a traffic jam. The ones I hate are the ones who ask questions like, "Didi, cigarette?" when I'm smoking and then crowd around giggling, going, "Cigarette-cigarette." They don't get one little thing. Not even love.




> My all time favourite text message on my phone right now is the one Priya sent me. We were talking about wierd Hindi words, and how no one could possibly be speaking pure non-slang type Hindi all the time without giggling and then I had forgotten about this conversation till two days later I got a message going: "By the way the hindi for sex is yawn sambandh...focus on the sound not the spelling... :-)" I love friends who remember messages in context. This made me giggle for many minutes. My favourite text message exchange on the other hand, happened yesterday when Ananya smsed going, "who is hans raj?!?" "A punjabi singer" I messaged back, a little startled. "Are you dating him???" was the next one and I cracked up for so long, I swear my colleagues thought I was a little bit insane. (I had mentioned to Ananya that I had interviewed Hans Raj Hans the other day, but I have noooooo idea why she thinks we're having a scene. Hmmm. Clearly my friends think my job description involves interviewing people in my underwear) Anyway, so I smsed back, going "Absolutely" and she said "Ooh, my parents are going out for dinner, will call and get all the details then." And now she hasn't called, and I'm getting a little worried. I wish there was a sarcasm indicator for text messages.



> House hunting appears to be harder than I thought it would be and I'm most depressed about that so I'm not going to talk about it.



> I'm also happy today because I found an old pair of jeans that I had been looking for forever, my Levi's 567s which are a super fit and I'm wearing them to work and people said they were nice :) Also I found my Milly-Molly-Mandy book which I hadn't read in centuries, so I read that over breakfast. Actually, in my room, under the windows are two built in cabinets with all my kids books in them, so I've been reading all my Five Find Outers and Dog and Mallory Towers books and having an excellent time regressing into childhood. But isn't Darrell a boy's name?



> Speaking of books, I used to have this book, (which also I rediscovered the other day thanks to my wonderful Magic Cabinet and its Time Travelling Portal) called Minou. It's about this little French girl who loses her white cat called Minou and she walks up and down Paris, going, "Has anyone seen Minou? My little Minou?" and it's really, really sad and I swear I cry every time I think of that poor child. And my mom used to do the voice really well also when she read it aloud to me. Anyway, so at the end of the book, that heartless cat has hopped on to a barge and left poor weeping Nanette waiting for her to come back. This is why I'm a dog person.

> Psst, I'm probably heading this-a-way on Sunday. You should also.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream

Wow, the last post was pretty chaotic wasn't it? Your comments were fantastic by the way, and so nice and long, I can see the article really touched a chord! But as much as I would like to leave it up there forever and ever and watch the comment count amass, I realise, sadly, that it's time to move on.



Meanwhile, things have been happening to me. Firstly, last Monday, I met Priya and another acquaintance of mine for drinks at Flames. I was a leetle apprehensive because I had had a long day (no, wait, I had the day off--okay, change that to, I wasn't really in the mood to meet new people on my day off since I do it on my day ons all the time. Common job hazard. Which is why I have so few new friends, because when I'm free I like to be with people who know me and who I can be quiet around and just not say anything, or say something and not give a back story), but anyway Small (as I will call her now, it was a toss up between this and Tina, which she objected to) is a fun person, very chirpy, but very chilled out, the sort of person you can uncurl your toes around. And we got to talking and laughing and she mentioned she was living all by herself and wanted a flatmate and instantly I said, "Ooooh, so do I!" and Priya, not wanting to be left out, said, "Me too!"


Priya and I have been having chats about shifting out all the time. But the thing is I need someone else to be motivated as well, and Priya is very like me, very shanti all the time, and "Yaaa, dude, we'll do it next week." And Small is gung ho and with her being gung ho so was I and the three of us quickly chalked out house rules (no chemicals, no drunken men we don't like in living room, no exes, clean your own space and buy your own shampoo) and planned a housewarming party rapidly.



But what amazed me, because you know, you're drinking, you're chatting, you plan, is that Small followed it up the next day, calling me, calling brokers and we met again, the three of us and fixed a proper working budget and areas we want to live and so tomorrow we go look at places! Yay! We've actually got five brokers on the job, sorta five timing them all and I think that was a good plan, because only two have delivered. And one is former "dealer" now Dealer-we-can-talk-about so I'm not sure what his idea of a great house will be. But what we're looking at is basically three bedrooms and two bathrooms (come on, can you imagine three girls sharing one bathroom? It's madness! I went to boarding school, so I know these things) and perhaps a nice living space where we can put one of the two TVs and one of the three music systems. We have things, we do. Except a fridge.


And I've done this before, before you say, "Oh it's not always about parties and it's very hard work and all." I know. I used to live alone last year, but I had to move out for whatever reasons. And I'm looking forward to doing it again. Absolutely! Check me out with a bachelorette pad!


It should happen in October.


I've also been meeting interesting people. Mangs, for one, who I met at TC and who very kindly gave me her broker's number. We didn't get much chance to chat, and the music was very loud and the drink was very spilling over but it was fun. I also met another blogger--Codey-- at (*cue drumroll*) Cafe Morrison, which I actually really, really liked. It's nowhere close to taking over TC, but it might be a good "new Mezz". I don't know if any of you ever went to the Mezz, but it was awesome. You could sit there for hours and hours (there was no dance floor, so you actually just sat) and you'd invariably bump into people you knew and the waiters were really nice about letting you nurse one drink all evening, or even sit and not order anything at all and just eat free peanuts. I loved the Mezz. I lived there when I was in college and my last two years at school. So yeah, Cafe Morrison has promise and I'm going to take many people there now so I can claim it. (Insert World Domination Type Laughter).


I met Codey with Anita, no blog, so no link, who is writing a book and wanted to talk to me and we girl bonded like to the nth degree. Such fun. Why would anyone want to be a boy when you can have a vagina! Ooh and always look sexy when you dance!


Anyway, speaking of vaginas (and I'm hoping this will lead to a whole new Google search trend rather than the "having sex while on my period" that has now cropped up at least once each time I checked my stats over the last two weeks. And I NEVER wrote about that. God promise. Sigh) So I got this email the other day, which I don't really know how to respond to, so I thought I'd ask you, O Wise and All-Knowing Reader, to answer it for me. Please?


hey hi!
i just read your blog and thought that since you appear to be a nice person with a feel of today's women's pulse..so you might beable to help me...
i want to know "how can a man seduce the woman he loves?"
i am indian..
waiting for your reply..
bye and keep smiling.



He sent it from some strange email address, so I thought it was spam and then I realised it couldn't be and then my eyes were agleam and I was all atwitter with the blogging possibilities it held. So hello, whoever you are and I suggest you just throw yourself at the mercy of these kind people who will answer your question, coz I can't! I swear, I attempted to reply many times and I couldn't think of a thing! I've never actually seduced a woman you know.

Rebuttal

Okay since everyone has asked, here is the article, courtesy of Bonatellis.

Bimbodom's new Bridgets


Chick-blogs are rapidly gaining in popularity Stephanie Klein (right) writes an alarmingly explicit blog about her life and sexual escapades


KANIKA Gahlaut Mumbai


Chick flick. Chick lit. Now, it's chick-click. WithStephanie Klein, 29, an art director in New York whowrites an alarmingly explicit blog (http://www.stephanieklein.blogs.com/) about her life and sexual escapades, now having got herself a much talkedabout publishing deal, the www woman is finally claiming her status as bimbodom's new Bridget. Blogging, the daily dairy format, has lent itself to musings on chocolate, calories and other neurotic ramblings ever since the advent of the Net.


However,the faithful readers chick-blogs are attracting ­Technarati, which tracks hits on blogs, puts Klein in the top one percent of all bloggers ­ has to do with a twist they offer to ya ya sister hood.A recent entry on Klein's blog reads: "So even thoughI sometimes wear a tiny black shirt that claimsotherwise, it's really not all about me. There's Abdul of course, who gave me a hand job in the cab, and thenthere's the crush I have on Kim and her tarot cards. When I'm near her, it's all about her."

Chick-clicks worldwide have all the qualities of their predecessors. She suffers from an acute attention-seeking disorder. She is perennially singleand single-mindedly self-indulgent. She is grammatically challenged and confuses similes with punctuation.Yet, her candour is seen as "fresh". Her directness has a lot to do with the medium she writes in. She's the Internet's answer to reality TV, with a lot more sex thrown in. Desperate Housewives can rev up the raunchiness quotient. Bridget Jones will put on extra calories just thinkingabout it. The chick-click scores because she's real, not made up.


In India, where a dress code for college-going girls still calls for heated national debate, blogs are as much a form of catharsis as theyare an outlet for attention deficient females. The mouse, with the anonymity it allows, has them describing one-night stands, vomiting out intimate details with married men in the office. The compulsive confessor (thecompulsiveconfessor.blogspot.com), a blogger from Delhi, uses Torquoise Cottage as a hunting ground for hot men and comes home to daal chawal. On her blog, which gets about 200-300 hits per day,she types out memories of her first kiss, "when there's a pause in the conversation that can only be filled by his lips on yours" (it sucked apparently) and an ex-boyfriend pops up in her entries consistently like an Alkaiser pill ("Off to TC again..Even if He Who Shall Not Be Named will be there in allprobability and now we are "friends", K and I whichmeans he has the license to weep to me about his NewGirl, who is tall and fair and has Lisa Loeb spectacles"). Balaji's Tulsi would throw a fit in her Kanjiwaram pallu.


Consider the profile of Bridalbeer(bridalbeer.blogspot.com), a blogger from Calcutta:"Single, 20s, was briefly in love. I was in New York long enough to miss it. Now I am in India, training tobe a wife-for-life to a relative stranger (not a stranger who is a relative, we don't do those)." Onediary entry states: "Every week, like an accountant'sclerk's secretary's intern, I take stock of myWould-Bes."The inventory is stagnating. The most recent Would-Be was a Good Guy. But I knew if I marry him, he willidealise another's wife, a lucky another's maybe unlucky wife, who cooks Home Food for her husbandeveryday."In the sweat of watching the curry cook, shetestifies her love, devotion. I dislike competitionwhen it is so inferior."Political blogs get the highest hits, but niche blogs,such of the chick-click genre, have their own following for the voyeuristic pleasure they offertrackers. Indian chick-click blogs are ­ if you look beyond the grammar and skip over the purple prose ­ a case study on the schizophrenic nature of being young and working in India. It is about being a Sex in the City girl in a Kyunki Sas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi world.



And if Smugbug, a marketing executive from Chennai,fantasises of "meeting a studly Mallu type" on flights ( "sigh, I need to become a frequent flyer to findromance"), another advertising professional fromMadras ( thatonly.blogspot.com), tells her readers, abit needlessly, that "Alcohol is such a strange thing." She continues: "What is it about it that makespeople behave differently? People say what soberness conceals, drunkenness reveals. I'm not so sure... WhenI get drunk I sometimes talk to people I would not even bother saying Hi to otherwise. I bond and laughwithand hug people whose phone numbers I don't know.It makes people I hardly know shove a piece of Lime down my throat. At the same when I get drunk I thinkabout all the people I love and wish they were with me. I think about the men that have broken my heartand feel the pain so intensely and wish they couldfeel how they made me feel."Of course the ranting invites attack.


Killthewomen.blogspot.com is the hawk who swoops in to offer his perspective on the Indian chick click."Westernised women," he says, "have always been thecause of all problems. They make for bad daughters...wives... mothers. Just because they earn some money and are able to snap their fingers at a certain typeof man they tend to assume too much of a misplaced sense of superiority." Compulsive confessor has patented a brand of "semidressed status and high drunkenness."

Smugbug, he speculates, "must be one of those dark-skinned south Indian chicks who uses Fair andLovely on the sly." Bridal beer is "an attention seeking loser."He sums up: "I am just saying that these are a few examples of popular women who need to be publicly lynched as opposed to being indulgent to." You know why, unlike Klein, the Indian chick clicks have not outed themselves yet.



End article, begin me talking


I find it unbelievable that someone could write something like this. I know the journalist, in fact she called me for the story to get a larger perspective on women bloggers. (K, if you're reading this, I'm sorry, but this is what I feel) and I think that she misused it. Completely.



For instance, the whole grammar thing. I don't think I'm Eliza Dolittle. I think my grammar is actually pretty damn sharp. Sharper than saying Turqoise Cottage for instance. And that's just one of the many typos in this article. If you're going to use my name at least use capital letters, let's try it together, shall we? The (capital C) Compulsive (capital C) Confessor. Very good!



And it's all very well writing about first kisses and all. What about the times when I, when all these other fabulous women that have been mentioned write about work? About what stress we face, about being a woman in a country that battles tradition with modernity? About people who hate us for being "modern"? And you're so pandering to that. (Oh it's okay for Stephanie Klein, but as for us Indian women bloggers, oh no, what's that you said, yeah, we haven't outed ourselves yet. Whatever that means) As a journalist, I can't understand the need to prop up a guy who makes a blog out of hating women who are independant and who have a good time.



And hello, this Bridget Jones thing? Has got to stop. I'm so not like Ms. Jones. Do I write about my weight? I do not. Do I write about self help books? I do not. Am I thirty something? I am not. Is my only concern finding a guy or die trying? It is not.



Granted, my blog is frivolous, I'll give her that. I know it is myself. But I thought someone, especially someone who is a fashion correspondant, would get the deeper layers behind the frivolity. Would get that when I write about K., I'm really purging, I'm laying a part of myself on the line. And especially someone who wrote an entire book about a reporter like me.



That's all I'm saying. Anonymous comments are open for this post, it'll be interesting to see if any come in, apart from the usual vitriol that I expect.



UPDATE FROM THE COMMENTS SECTION


Dear CC, My two cents:1. Badly written and largely boring article.2. Your blog does read very much like Bridget Jones.3. You ARE largely attention deficit. Embrace that and deal with it. Denial is not going to help you.4. Whatever she said is (I assume) based on your blogging and not on your writing. It is based on "The Compulsive Confessor" and not on you as a person. Therefore, do not take is so personally.5. Those instances/quotes from your blog are very real. It is something you typed out. You hardly ever blog about work. To a reader, it would seem completely valid. K. is someone you mention ALL THE TIME. You may not trawl TC for hot men, but the blog clearly puts up there for everyone to see, the number of casual intimacies that you've had, lots of them with people you've met AT TC! Lighten up and don't take your blogself so seriously. That is the boon of anonymity.love,An Avid reAder.


Dear Anonymous, Thanks for your comment and much of what you have said is valid and makes sense. It's refreshing to see different points of view on the subject which is why I posted it. Not because I particularly cared for the story, but because I disagreed with what she said and I felt like writing about that.
Seriously, even the rest of you, I re-read this morning and what they say about not writing when you're pissed off is so true because it sounds like I care a lot more than I do, when really the tone I was looking for was cool and cynical and detached. Zen master, I am.
There is another comment I want an answer to though, Annie's take on the whole thing:
Hmmm. Maybe Ms Kanika G would like to answer this - if a 'chick' blogger were to write of other stuff - 'serious' stuff - would their writing still qualify as chick-click? For instance, I'm a young woman writing about work and opinions and my reactions to the world etc. Why do I not qualify as chick blogger? Not chick enough, if I'm not kissing and telling, eh? And if that is your sole criteria for defining 'chick' art (be it movies or literature), why complain?

What IS a chick blog? Any thoughts?

Let's get it started, in heee-eee-ee-re

(Blogger's Image Tools are acting up on my computer. I have lovely pictures to share, but will try posting them later.)


The dance floor at Elevate is usually pretty packed. It's a really large dance floor, perhaps bigger than anywhere else in the city, but come Saturday night and the hordes descend. Saturday night is hip hop/Bollywood night, both of which are pretty popular genres. Friday night is a lot calmer--psy-trance and house music, and all you get is assorted groups of people, perhaps lurking in the darker corners with some chemical or the other, or the ones who have already visited the dark corner and who now buzz with energy on the dance floor. Nothing is as exciting as being in the middle of a dance floor, not too packed, but not too empty and feeling the energy of the crowd take over you as you jump and shake your arms and feel your feet vibrate with all the other stomping feet near you.



Saturday night is a little different though. For one thing, the crowd here doesn't do drugs, but they drink like fish. And alcohol makes you rowdier. For another, it's a little harder to dance to Dus Bahane when the Sardar near you insists on raising his arms and one leg and hopping around, right on your toe. The dark corners on Saturday are taken over by couples, all shapes and sizes. Where we stand--upstairs on the second level, looking down at the moving mass of people on the dance floor--there is a couple behind us, the guy old and fat and balding, the girl, very young and in a tight red dress, sharing a bean bag. The guy pulls at her face, looks like he's murmuring pleadingly into her ear, but the girl's entire body language faces away from him, her knees are tightly pressed together, her face cringes away from his caresses and every now and then she looks around her, for an escape route. I see them everywhere, these balding guys with young pretty girls, one sits on a red velvet chair with the girl sitting on his lap, giggling into his eyes. I think I prefer to be single, yes, most definitely.



I am out with Iggy and Urvashi, and I am, unfortunately, the designated driver for the evening. We've had quite a day. Before heading to Elevate we were at Buzz, in Saket, with a bunch of my other college friends. We took advantage of their happy hours by ordering three pitchers of Electric Lemonade (that's vodka, triple sec and blue curacao, for the uninitiated), which made it six in all. By the time we got through those, it was ten o' clock. We had been drinking for three hours.




A good friend of mine, Ananya, who I haven't seen since May, was there as well. Ananya and I were pretty close in college but then over the years and circumstances we happened to drift apart. But I think out of my entire college gang, she reminds me the most of me, at least in her relationships with everyone else. Like me, she doesn't live in the central South Delhi, which is where we convene. That makes a lot of difference, where you live. It used to be worse before I started working and before I drove. I was excluded from a lot of the after-college socialising because I didn’t live there. Even now, if Iggy just wants someone to hang with briefly, say half an hour or something, she’ll call someone else, because it makes no sense for me to go out of my way for just half an hour. Same with Ananya. You bond a lot more with a person you see casually every day than with someone who is only available on the weekends, or weekdays after eight pm sometimes. And I think Ananya, like me, cares a lot more about whether her friends like her than the others. The others assume everyone does anyway, but we have to put in more effort. Ananya is loud about it though, she gets her approval through constantly telling stories, laughing the hardest, teasing the rest of us and I am quiet and I listen. Oh, I tell stories too, but my stories involve laughing at myself and getting everyone else to as well. I'm comfortable with that, who are we to argue with the roles the universe gives us, right?



It surprises me how different I am with different groups of friends. It’s not something I can explain, that my role here is this and that my role there is that, but the fact of the matter is, that I have a lot of friends. And I hang out with all of them separately. Which means keeping track of who doesn't like whom, of going from places as different as cheap Flames to ultraexpensive Aura, switching personalities from Sarah Jessica Parker-type, to boho chick to Woman Of The World. (Sadly the last one is not something many people buy. Oh well.) My college gang has had its share of politics, I can sense that even as we sit and smoke each other’s cigarettes and talk about how all men are assholes, there are delicate invisible lines joining each of us over the table. And how we all put on our masks, no, not masks, that has negative connotations, we put on our nametags which will define us for the evening. And we play our roles.




I get tired at around one thirty. It's been a long night. Urvashi and Iggy are contemplating brushing past a bitchy girl with a lit cigarette, I am lazily making eye contact with random cute guys, enjoying dropping my eyelids after they look twice and then a third time to see if I am Just For One Night Girl. “Let's go,” I tell the girls. I've been working like a dog the past week and perhaps this just wasn't Elevate Saturday. I need to be a little more energised. They finish their drinks and we stagger into the mall, to the all-night Barista, getting scalding cappuccino with other clubbers, the girls in off-shoulder tops and the boys getting them their coffee and fooling around with each other, turning chairs backwards to sit on them. They will be kissed, the boys and girls who sit under the white light of the insect killer and armed with that knowledge, they are sitting very straight. No tired, end-of-the-evening silences for them. At our table, my mouth tastes of Bacardi and cigarettes and coffee and my throat is beginning to hurt and the drink someone spilt down my top now is getting annoyingly sticky.



It is raining when we leave and we make desultory conversation. I am thinking only of sleep, as we zip down the beautiful toll bridge, and up a few others. I am thinking only of sleep as we drop off Urvashi, park the car and stumble into Iggy’s house. We attempt to dissect the evening as we always do but then the murmur of the A/C and the television (which she likes to watch just before she goes to bed) are too much for me and Saturday is over for another week. We've already made next Saturday's plans.

I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink, I'm sooooo tired, my mind is on the blink, I wonder should I get up and get myself a drink?

Since I am exhausted and very mindfucked and have been indulging in game-playing to a massive extent this past week, I can't put together a coherent post so instead I'm going to post about what I've been up to this past week, that has run me ragged so I have no creative energy left. Which is probably a good thing, because then, all that energy is going into my job, but also a bad thing, coz I don't have any extra. Think of this as the footnote, only in the beginning. (Yes, I know it has it's own term, I just don't remember what it is. I'm very, very zoned.)

So here's what has happened to me this week:

Monday, I made pages again at work, put the finishing touches on my blogging story and sent it off. Thank you, thank you to all the wonderful women who told me their stories. I wanted to put each email and conversation in, whole and unedited, but sadly, I couldn't. Space constraints and all. But after my story is printed (and no, I can't tell you when and I can't tell you where) I'll post all the emails here, if that's okay with the people who sent them in.


Tuesday, finally the longest week on desk ended. Each time I have to do it (we take it by turns) I think of it as the week that never ends. But this time I had even done one extra day and had begun desk week on a Saturday and ended it two weeks later, technically. I met Iggy for drinks at MBs and told her that she was famous on my blog. The rest of my college gang had met up on Monday, coz it was Independance Day and all, and had had long bitching sessions about this other chick--the "friend" who slept with K. like a month after we broke up. So I was brought up-to-date about what was happening and I listened with utmost glee. I always defend my sex staunchly when people say, "Oh you women just gossip" because we really, really don't do it more or less than men do. I've seen guys bitching like MAD and then being really sweet to the person they were bitching about.

I have my four or five closest friends and the rest, are, well, incidental. I like them all very much, that's why they're my friends in the first place, but, yeah, four or five people tops, know every nuance of my life, down to how I'm going to react in a situation. This one time, I remember, Iggy and I had gone out with one of her friends and I was showing him my lighter, where the flame turns from blue to green. He examined it for a while and said, "There's a copper wire here and when that burns it turns green." (Or something. I forget the exact scientific thing he said). So I grinned at him and said, "Oooh, dude, you're so scientific." and he said, "Okay, cut the sarcasm." And Iggy goes, "Um... she actually means it." And that made me quiet for a while, because, I had said it quite flippantly, even though I was seriously impressed that he knew that and I was amazed that she could tell. Friends are like the best invention, ever.


Wednesday, I met Anoushka Shankar and she's very nice and very pretty. She was wearing loads of blush-on and she's just released an album and dude, fuck, she's twenty four. My age. I also want to have released an album or two or three. *sulk* I have my Grammy speech all ready also. (I practice in the bathroom mirror with shower gel and sorta scoop my hair back with shampoo so it looks like I have a pompadour. Then I do a Britney Spears performance, usually Hit Me Baby, One More Time. Stop laughing.) Anyway, so we were packing up and the photographer tells me, "It's really cool that she's like so into classical music and stuff." "Yeah?" I said, coz, really, duh? "No, I mean, considering she used to be a hard core raver. I used to see her at all these parties." My jaw dropped and he grinned happily at me. Anyway, that's my Anoushka Shankar story.

That evening I went for a photography exhibition, but nothing really exciting happened there. Then I went to Priya's where we both moaned about how tired we were and she had just returned from Manali so she got me this really cool purple and white knit hairband. It looks odd now though, coz the ends of my hair stick out like some porcupine or something, but now that winter's coming, I'm thinking of growing my hair again. Which means that it's in the in-between stage now and every day is a bad hair day.

Then we went to TC where we also met Nitya, Hot Nineteen from last week, and a bunch of other people. We're frankly getting a little bored of TC now, *collective gasp* so next Wednesday we're going to Cafe Morrisson which has retro nights and free jive lessons every week. It sounds like fun, no? :)

Phew, finally, today I went to this new place for lunch, very hungover I might add. I was being slightly short with the lisping, very gay PR guy who latches on so I felt intense guilt when he said, "You know, you're such a warm person. And you're so nice. I feel like I can talk to you, not like other journos." I felt so bad, I was instantly very nice to him battling all my feelings of annoyance. I'm a terrible person. Food was good though.

After that, just when I thought I could go home and go to bed, I was sent for a book launch, Aitzaz Ahsan's, and the chief guest they got just wouldn't shut up. I don't know what it is with these people. It's like he didn't want to relinquish the limelight. He talked for like one hour and by the time the poor author got up again to ask if there were any questions, everyone was in a state of somnolence. And this old guy behind me kept belching. Why do old people think they can let go of gas wherever they want without a word of apology? These were long, loud belches too, the kind that sound like just before you're going to vomit.

Okay, that was my week so far. No wonder I'm tired.

eM's Quick Guide To Delhi Nightlife

It's Sunday, late afternoon and unlike the rest of you lucky sods I have work tomorrow morning. (Actually, I'm guessing whoever's abroad has to work too, but still). This sucks. This is totally UNFAIR. The world's not going to stop because the paper didn't come in Tuesday morning. Hmph.



A lot of people call/email/sms me to ask where a good place to go that night is. Trust me, I get that a lot. Work people will casually stop or ask me on the balcony, other people will say, "Ooh I have a friend in from out of town, where shall we go?" and people even call and say, "Hey I'm in Saket, what's a good place to go for dinner?" Therefore I thought to make it easier for people who don't have access to my phone number, or do and don't feel like calling, a general look at all the places in this city that I enjoy.



Now, in order to fully recommend a place, I ask people a) what sort of music they like b) what their budget is c) are they planning on doing hardcore clubbing or just sitting and chilling with a drink. And yeah, everyone knows I like Turquiose Cottage, so we won't even go there.

Cheap Booze Places

Even though Delhi's like one of the most expensive places in the world practically (It's true, I read it in one of those survey type magazines which also shows you the world's poshest loos and who the richest men are) there are still several places that give you reasonable rates on their alcohol. Also practically every restaurant has happy hours, which is very cool. We personally like the places in Defence Colony best, but we're willing to experiment.


> MB's which I've mentioned before for its awesome Dyna Bites is where I go a lot, but usually with just one other friend. It's not a crowd kind of place.


> 4 S (and that's not fours, that's Four. Ess.) is a Chinese/Thai place K and I discovered, also in the Def. Col. Market. We were poverty stricken college students then, K didn't have the car that day so we couldn't go to the Supper Factory like we always did and so we sauntered into 4 S and made it our own. Pretty soon, we started bringing other people there and they claimed it too and for a while back there, we could find people tanking up at 4 S all the time. In fact, I even went two Sundays ago and bumped into an old school friend and her (very cute) brother. Anyway. It's damn cheap and they have this thing called chilli potatos which is bloody excellent.


> Flames, also I've mentioned before, in GKII M-Block Market, which incidentally is where I might be going tonight. Cheap alcohol, music in the background and non-shady. In fact, all of these places are certified Non-Shady by me, because I know how wierd it is to be the only women in a bar and have all these lechy guys looking at you. Stay clear of Bacchus in Priya Complex for precisely that reason.

For The Music

And then there are the places you visit when you have a little money in your pocket, for the ambience and the music and the dressing up beforehand. It depends on your mood I agree, and since I love rock and roll (so put another dime in the jukebox, baby) I love TC. But there are times I want to shake my booty a little, get a little more dressed up and all that.

> So yeah, nothing, and I mean underlined, bold, itals nothing in this city beats Elevate. It's in Noida, in the Centre Stage Mall, it's massive and I love it. The cover can be a little steep, 500 a couple on Fridays and 1,000 on Saturdays, but worth. every. single. rupee. Saturday is Bollywood/hip-hop night which is when we usually go, coz c'mon grinding to Kajra Re is such fun. And we can get all dressed up, or not, depending on our moods and the best part is that it stays open till sunrise unlike the rest of this town so we leave for there around 11.30, 12 and come back, on aching feet, yawning at four or five.

> There's a bunch of other places that I club together when we're not in an Elevate mood. Agni at the Park has killer Christmas parties. We went there last Christmas Eve, straight from TC, Iggy and I both wearing Santa hats. She got to dance on the bar though and I was left babysitting her sister and her friends. Oh well. Then there's Nasha, where you should go only if the very hot DJ Iggy is playing. Oh, he's hot. Let's take a moment to appreciate his hotness. And then there's Fabric, but I think that's pretty sad now. They play hip-hop and trance and we went for their launch party and there was such a gignormous crowd that we waited in our finery in a line in the heat for like an hour before they let us in. But then we consumed many free vodka shots and each of us got lost and it was drunken. Ooh and there's Aura, which also I've spoken of before, the vodka bar at the Claridges? It plays great house music and has good drinks except they're letting it flood with teeny boppers and I'm talking fifteen year olds. The party crowd in this city gets younger and younger, I tell you.

> I also really like Buzz in Saket. DJ Keri who plays there is the only woman DJ in town and she spins some excellent hip-hop and oldies and Bollywood. This American intern I once worked with claimed to have a scene with her, so I'm reminded of that every time I go there. Their cocktails are great, by the way and they have happy hours till 7.30, so get a Bloody Mary, coz you get two and they're soooooooooo good. And they give you free peanuts!

> There's this one place I've been meaning to check out called Cafe Morrison in South Ex. Does anyone have any views on that?

Phew. This is quite a list. I'll update if I can think of more. Feel free to suggest whatever, and I'll add that to the list!

ps. Have you been to Overheard In New York? It's such fun and people are always saying stuff that I wish I had thought of first. Like this conversation:

Girl: You staring at me?

Guy: Yeah, but only 'cause you look so fine.

Girl: True. But you can stop checking me out now. These aren't public titties, they're private titties. For select audiences only, and you're not a member.
--A train

We should totally design a Members Only t-shirt. White, tight with red letters. And I'm totally going to track down this girl and make her my new best friend.

ps2: Found this lying on the floor of my office the other day. It's a press release which someone had obviously recieved and thrown away. It announces a solo singing competition held at St. Mark's Senior Secondary Public School.

Inter Section Solo singing Competition for classes V and VI was held on 9th May 2005.

The students filled the atmosphere with their soulful scintillating numbers such as "All That She Wants", "Omit Playing Games", "O Blady O Blada." The judges on this ocassion were Ms. Seema and Mr. Berganza, who gave away prizes and certificates to the students.

The students talent was well nurtured and everybody appreciated the efforts made by tiny ones under the guidance of their music - teacher.

I ask you, how, how could someone throw this away?

I don't want a fly guy, I just want a shy guy, coz a shy guy, is the kinda guy that can only be mine

It's time for a new post, I tell my PC.
Yeah. I don't think so, it replies.
Please? It's been really, really long. People are going to think I'm dead.
Um.. yeah. Still no.
What do I have to do? Beg? We never communicate anymore.
Look, I'm tired of working okay? I need a break. And so I'm taking one.
Fine then. No, fine. I'm just going to have to take other measures.
Oooh, I'm SO scared.
You'll be sorry. I'm going to cheat on you at work.
Oh, who're you kidding? The work slut will never give you the magic that I do.What magic? All you're showing me is cannot find server.
Yeah, well, it's sorta magical that I can't find the server.
I'm going. Goodbye. When you decide to stop faffing around, let me know.




And so reader, I write to you in snatches from the PC at work. Between work. So this post might be slightly rambly, because I keep getting up to do a hundred different things and then come back.


I woke up this morning in a strange empty house. Okay, well, not that strange, coz I was spending the night at Urvashi's, but you know when you're really really hungover and you've been having strange drunken dreams all night and THEN you wake up and your friend has already left for work and little people are playing tom-toms in your head and your mouth feels like you've inhaled the stuffing of a pillow, you'd probably feel a little disoriented, right? Luckily, Urvashi The Kind had fed me some very nice pasta the night before, so I wasn't hungry on top of everything else AND she explained the complicated tap/shower mechanism and she has all these cool Body Shop shower gels (Except for the Tea something which wasn't so nice) so I felt a little better then.We went to TC last night, which was why I was crashing at her house in the first place, figuring it would be nice to leave TC at the end, rather than leave at eleven like some sort of Cinderella, because my house is pretty far off. TC was FABULOUS yesterday by the way and I was wearing this top I bought myself in Sarojini Nagar (80 rupees, baby. I love Sarojini) and it was all low and cleavagy so I was most happy. Plus almost everyone I knew was there, including *tan-tara-tara* Luke! Looking most delectable I must say, damn that boy gets hotter each time I see him. And he's all slipping his arm around my waist and murmuring throatily into my ear and I'm so distracted by all this throaty murmuring and the scent of his cologne and the fact that my HAND is on his (very flat) stomach that I'm not paying attention to what he's saying.


And then I do. "So yeah, I love my girlfriend and she loves me and it's just WRONG if anything happens between us," he says. He's now running his hand up my arm and I look at him. "So we're JUST friends?" "I don't think we could ever be 'just friends' eM," he smiles and did I mention he's superhot?


So we spend a pleasant evening flirting madly and I notice cute younger brother of an acquaintance getting all chatty. But, dude, he's like NINETEEN and I'm practically TWENTY FOUR and this is wrong, which is what I tell him when he comes with me to the bathroom and then kisses me. I kiss back, sure, but despite being very, very drunk, I'm sober enough to be a little taken aback. And a little surprised at what I'm doing. This is so not me. I'm usually pretty reserved about this sorta thing and hello, eM, he's half your age, at least very much younger and he so only wants to sleep with you despite the fact that his eyes are all earnest as he talks of a "connection" and how "age is just a number." I pat him kindly on the cheek and leave. Really, what is WRONG with me? Am I turning into one of those women who's not happy unless she's with someone, anyone at all? I hope not.


And then Urvashi and I collected ourselves, drank a glass of water each and went home.


How was your Wednesday?

Video killed the radio star

I really don't get why the media in India has just woken up to blogging. I mean, hello, it's been around for ages, my own is a fairly new blog and it's been inhabiting cyberspace for a year now. We all know blogs exist, even the most techphobic people. I know several people who don't know a blog as a "blog" but still have an MSN Spaces page where they write about their days and upload their pictures. (They call them their "spaces" though, to be fair, and not their weblogs). I don't know about you, but in a funny way I feel validated, recognised now, like all those schools you used to see "Happy Rabbit's Day School, Govt. Recg.", which helped me learn at a very early age that if something had to say government recognised outside, then it probably wasn't worth going to at all.


Perhaps I should hang a little signboard here too. Perhaps all of who have been quoted or mentioned in the newspapers should. `Media Recognised'. We count. We've made it. We're spreading the word of the blog. But do I really believe that? I'm not so sure.




Yesterday, I was interviewed by NDTV (*happy TV announcer voice* catch me and a bunch of other bloggers, including some really famous ones on Sunday at 9!) If you do decide to watch it, please, pretty please, remember that I was really nervous and I've never done this sort of thing before, and if I sound slightly arrogant or full of myself, I'm really, really not! But doing the interview was pretty fun, once I got used to the fact that I had to stay still so that my silhouette wouldn't get screwed up (I don't care how many people know who I am! I'm still anonymous!) And they had this whole Oprah-style microphone which I had to slip in under my clothes. (Terrible moment, when I was taking it off and it got stuck in my bra and everyone waited patiently while I tugged and grew progressively more blushy.) I felt like some spy giving information and all. Anyway, the interview went pretty well---and it gave me a chance to talk ON CAMERA, BABY about blogging for a long time without anyone shutting me up. Now I just hope you can't see too much of my face! :)



By the way, I have it on good information (read: I asked the interviewer) who the other bloggers are. So *drum roll* you'll be able to see Hurree Babu, the Duck and the Jabberwock. All on prime time TV! You lucky, lucky souls :)



And here's where the real reason for this post happens, and I need a big favour. I'm doing an *ahem* blog story (hypocrisy, thy name is eM) on women bloggers who get propositioned or asked vague stuff, just because they're girls and are available online. (No, I can't quote myself, or I would've). If you know someone, or this has ever happened to you, please email me. (Email is right over there on the sidebar, baby). Please? If you're a boy and you've been propositioned that'll work too. I have emailed some people already, so if it's you and you haven't replied to your email yet, hurry up! *END BLOG PIMPING*


And K called me last night. I had called him the other day, to shoot the breeze, generally fuck around, because this was the day of Heap Big Rain and Traffic Lights Not Working and so there was a terrible jam. So jokingly I said, "Dude, man, we should totally get back together. Think of the convinience! It'll be like a business proposition--and we'll always have company on Saturday night." Usually, one or the other of us does this and we laugh and it's all very funny only this time he goes, "Heh. Yeah. Listen I'll call you back." So maybe he's just in an off mood I think, and go back to negotitiating my way around the Qualis that has decided to break down in my lane.


Anyway, I was at TC last night, to get a quick drink after the interview, with Nitya and K calls and I have to run up near the loo to take his call because I can't hear him anywhere else. And we're saying hello and everything and suddenly he blurts out, "eM you know I'm dating Wannabe Lisa Loeb, right?"
"I know you're having a scene," I say cheerily. That's me, the repository of information. Always on top of things.
"Um... no, I'm dating her. We're.... dating," he says warily.
I take a moment. And then say, "Oh, that's fabulous, K! I'm so happy for you! Congratulations! You must tell me all about it, later."
He's grinning over the phone lines I can tell, "Yeah, it all happened so fast and it's so great and I didn't have a chance to tell you earlier."
"No, no, that's cool," I say. My face is beginning to ache from smiling so much. "I can tell you've been busy--ha, ha, ha--I can't wait to meet Wonder Woman. We should talk soon."
"Yeah," he's all happy now. He hates scenes, K does. That's why it took him so long to dump me. "I'll call you eM. Have a good time."


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Yeah, I'm done.

Random things that make me happy (subtitled: Wake me up, before you go-go)

> It's been a good couple of days. First of all, not to blow my own trumpet too much (oooh, I so wish I had a trumpet. I'd love to have a trumpet. Sounds a little like a promiscous woman, doesn't it? "Oh her, she's such a trumpet". Does anyone have a trumpet? I have a tabla, but I don't think that counts) Guess who was photographed for the paper the other day? Me, baby, zats who. Only, I didn't want my face to be shown, seeing as we're anonymous and all that, so you can probably just see like a little bit of my profile (Which sucks, because my nose totally looks like a ducks. I'm telling you). Still it's most exciting, and I'm all kicked that I finally got to give that ultimate p3p line, "No pictures please".



> And ooh, I've discovered that I can now totally show you my superhot Yahoo avatar that I spent so long working on. I love her. No, we don't look alike, but dude. She's so hot and so supercool that I want to be her. I want to be my Yahoo avatar. Say that a couple more times and you're close to being the second saddest person in the world. The saddest is me, of course, but everyone here already knows I'm an internet nerd.







> Some PR releases make me so happy, I want to cry. This one, especially that I begged my colleague to forward to me so I could share it with you. Observe: August 7th is Friendship Day! What better way to reinforce the bond you enjoy with your friends than giving them an assurance through gifting flowers - which are around, almost forever... That's the thought and gift option The Next Shop gives you for this occasion. Add that extra bit of delicacy to your living room or an office ambience and the best part is they won't whither away like real flowers. So, you can relish their presence and enhance the sensual relaxation, with the addition of a favourite perfume. Also a wonderful gift option, touch the sweet chord of friendship this August 7th on Friendship Day.
Oh the joy of giving my friends flowers that last forever. Oh, the happiness! And sensual relaxation too! Dude, this isn't just a Friendship Day prezzie, this is the Anthem For People Who Have Not Had Any Sex In Many Months. I'm sure my friends will appreciate it waaaay more than a drink. In fact that's exactly what I'm going to do--give them dry flowers so they can "relish their presence". Right along with those fake Livestrong bands that you get in Saket, in bright pink with Best Friends Forever on them. I've been threatening Priya with one of those for years now. I'm totally going to touch the sweet chord of friendship.






> Have I ever mentioned that I heart drinking games? I rule at drinking games, you should know this. At any party, if someone was to say, "Who knows any drinking games?" I would be the one person to lead them from being bored and drunk to being happy and knowing random facts about strangers. There's this one game that I'm particularly good at. It's called "I have never" and basically there's one person toasting and they go, for instance, "I have never kissed someone and fantasised about Govinda" Now anyone who has kissed someone and fantasised about Govinda (ewwwwwwww... please don't!) has to drink. I'm super good at this game primarily because I don't get drunk very easily, so most of my deepest, darkest secrets stay hidden deep within me while others say stuff like, "I've never flirted with my father." (This actually happened to me on Saturday and I was all like, "Toooooooo much information, baby. Waaaay too much.") There's this other very cool drinking game called Think While You Drink, where one person says, oh. let's say, Simon Cowell and the other has to say something with 'C' like Cameron Diaz. But if you can't think of anyone, you have to keep chugging your drink till you do. You get completely blasted with this game, by the way, so it's great fun especially if you want to make out with someone but are too chicken to make a move while they're still sober. Oh and postscript, you can't say people with no last name like Madonna or Cher or Kajol.





> I went to Olive tonight to meet with young filmmaker Ashvin Kumar, who I thought was goign to be totally hot, considering he's Ritu Kumar's son and all and he went to the Oscars and he met Johnny Depp, who is yummy. But sadly, no. He wore thick spectacles and was short and stocky and reminded me kinda of Drew Carey, except he was thinner, slightly. Only the cool part was that at one point he sang, yes actually sang and the song he picked was La Bamba one of my absolute, favourite get-naked-in-front-of-the-mirror-and-stick-out-your-pelvic-girdle type songs. (The others are I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred, You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate and Superstar by Jamelia)




> One thing I totally adore about my job is that I can call people and say, "Hello, I'm eM from so-and-so publication" and then they have to give me whatever information I want. It's so easy! I wonder whether people who are not from the press do that too--get secret information I mean. But I guess it's not that secret if they're telling journalists about it. I mean, hello, it is going to get printed. So I suppose the secret is just in knowing what kind of questions to ask.



> Also what struck me today, thanks to a friend telling me is how different everyone's interviewing styles are. Some people do it surreptitiously, "Do you have any *whisper* suicidal thoughts?" Others do it with informed flair, "So tell me more about your collection, due out in August, with the sequined work." And still others, like me, do it with a personal touch. Like today meeting this filmmaker chappie, I was like, "Oooh, Johnny Depp! You're so lucky!" And you know what? It worked. He smiled at me and then started talking about it and got more and more friendly, to me. And I can bet you anything that the next time I see him, at a party or wherever, he will remember me and say hello. Some of my closest friends are people I've interviewed, so I must be doing something right.

The Seduction Of Men

Have been re-reading Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats by T.S Eliot and so I decided to attempt a parody, based on recent and not-so-recent experience. :)

By the way, the original poem is The Naming Of Cats, over here, set to music by the marvellous Andrew Lloyd Weber which you should totally download.

Anyway. Ahem.


The seduction of men is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games,
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter,
When I tell you to focus solely on your aim(s).



First of all, there's the make-up, applied slowly, applied well,
Such as Yves St. Laurent, or Revlon, or Maybelline,
Such as Lakme or Gerda Spillman or Chanel,
All of them guaranteed to make your face look clean.



You can use some perfume to make yourself smell divine,
Such as Tommy Girl, or Cool Water or Escada or Isis,
Such as Pleasures or J'Adore or Bvlgari or Calvin Klein,
And all of them available for fixed prices.



But (and this is tricky) a man needs attention,
More than your perfume or your make-up brands,
So be assertive, ex-boyfriends do not mention,
And he'll soon be eating out of your hands.



I may have stretched the truth and the rhyme,
But really, I have nothing further to say,
These days I have very little, sometime no, time,
And blogging simply can't be done every day.



Parodies are not something I do well,
I'm the first to admit it, but don't too heartily agree,
I wish the race of men whom I encounter would burn in hell,
Or at least, think twice, think three times, before they fuck with me.



[Oof. That was harder than I thought it would be. Really. I'll stick with prose, now, thank you very much. Prose is totally the way to go. Oh, and please don't take my advice in this poem, I was experimenting with poetic license. I never wear make-up, except for a little kajal. Be yourself (actually, that's crap because if everyone GOT everyone else just by being themselves, there would be no single women in this world. I hate this whole "be yourself" bullshit.) Let me rephrase: be smart, be sexy and be comfortable. Okay? It should work. Either way, let me know how it goes :)]