How come Tom Thumb and Thumbelina never hooked up? It seemed sorta logical, no? Perhaps she was a Manglik

> I love the "silent" button on my cellphone. I really, really love it. Increasingly I have taken to shutting up people when they call me. Don't recognise a number at 10 am? SILENT! Don't feel like filling in an acquaintance about whatever's happened to you since 2002? SILENT! PR people bothering you when you just want them to go away? SILENT!
Though in a way I think it's spoiling me a little. I wish people in real life came with a mute option. That way their mouths would still move but no sound would come out. How cool would that be? Situations also should have a cancel button. Like if you don't want the cop to see you smoking in a public place, all you have to do is press the red phone on your panel and he'll go away. Situation cancelled. *sigh*



> Lots have been drawn for the New House. I'm afraid I got rather the short end of the stick--the balcony room went to Priya, the bathtub loo room went to Small and I am left with the room with the cupboards. Which is not so bad really--an entire wall is lined with cupboards which means I only need to carry one small bookshelf. Plus I have a window that looks out over the city. A great view too, since I'm on the fourth floor and there are no houses behind us. I've already decorated in my mind, lamp there, table there, futon next to table and my laptop next to it. The mattresses can go in a pile on the floor with a red rug to brighten up the place a little. There--sounds pretty good already, doesn't it? I'll take lots of pictures :)


>Luke has reentered my life--sort of tiptoed in and is now lurking around near the umbrella stand, trying to figure out whether he should stay or leave. I'm tempted to say, "Stay." But then, there are so many problems with that relationship--he's younger, we'll probably bore each other soon and I suspect besides wild animal attraction, we really have nothing in common. But still, he's single now and who knows what can happen in the future?


> The weird part is every time I have prospects of romance, my arms are always hairy since I've been too lazy to go to the parlour and get waxed. And then, anticipating that my hairiness will be scrutinised, I always go and get waxed in great excitement only to find no one's hitting on me any more. Now I'm just NOT getting waxed till like five minutes before I hook up with someone. Hairy arms are a great contraceptive, I always find. Plus my jeans will stay firmly on since my toes have reached Hobbit status. The new celibacy is nothing but a bunch of woman who are too lazy to remove hair.




POSTSCRIPT PLUG: Almost forgot, and I'd been meaning to for a while. My very cool cousin's very cool blog is here. I've been through all the archives and though it's a little weird now knowing WAY more about his life than I suppose I ever would have (I'm seven years younger, so we have a Big Brother type relationship going on) it's also nice. Yay for blogging and family ties reconstructed in the twentyfirst century! :)

Dating Life Episode Two: You've Got Mail

(The first episode here)


We were meeting the "old fashioned way". That meant no cellphone number exchanges and just a short email to say when and where. I was busy finalising the house (which is beautiful by the way, even if it is four floors up and I'm wheezing like a bitch by the time I get there. We move in on October 2, if the moving guys haven't taken a holiday for Gandhi's birthday) so I was very, very late. Almost fifty minutes after our stipulated 9 pm time. So I go to Flame's and look around and I do see two guys sitting alone, only they look very strange--with mustaches and kinda old looking (Not a discrimination here, I'm sure guys with mustaches are very nice and all, but I can't see myself with one). So I go downstairs to the Cafe Coffee Day right next door and there's a guy with curly hair, kinda tall and yay, no mustache, only he's waiting outside and doesn't look like he's waiting for someone he's never met.


I go into CCD and look around. Nope, no guy waiting there, there's a couple of girls chattering over cappuccino, there's another boy with a girl, gazing into each others' eyes. I call Priya. "Dude, he hasn't showed." "Awwww," she says, "But I can't come meet you, coz I'm having dinner with my mom." So I go back outside and the guy there is looking up and looking quizzical. I grow balls rapidly and march up to him and say, "Um... Zayed?" "eM?" he asks, looking delighted, and I'm really happy he's pronounced it "M" like the letter and not the separate "e" "M" that some people do.


Zayed has mailed me off of the blog id a couple of weeks ago and we have struck up an interesting email conversation. I've already Googled him, so I know the basics--where he went to college and what he does now. He, on the other hand, has no clue about me. We talk about Bob Dylan and J.D Salinger and the weather these days and where we like to go out and memories from our childhood and pretty soon, we decide to move the conversation to real time. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also a little apprehensive. This is so not me, meeting someone I've met online? I haven't done that since I was in school or something. We depend on our friends to introduce us to people, to say, "Oh this guy's okay." Net rendezvous is for the lonely people and my friends look at me with barely contained laughter when I tell them about my "blind date."

As it turns out, we have a fabulous time. We share stories and I like the way he digresses rapidly from one story to another and we're having real animated discussions and a real conversation. "I'd rather not read your blog now that I know you," he says and I smile and nod. We talk about cricket (yechh) and the Beatles Anthology (mmmm) and the movies and how we grew up and past lives and past loves. It's a little surreal, to be having this intimate discussion with someone you've only known for a couple of hours, but it's also a little liberating.

And so then we run out of smokes and by the time we get back into the market the cigarette stalls are all shut. So he takes me to this place called Twentyfourseven in Lajpat Nagar. "It's like a whole new world!" he says. And we go in and it really is like a whole new world. It's midnight and the place is bustling and there's frozen pizza and slush machines and medicine and DVDs and racks and racks of blessed smokes. I'm enchanted already.


And then I drop him off and we're listening to Bittersweet Symphony and singing along at the top of our voices. And we agree that we're going to be friends. And it was nice--taking that chance on a random email id. And while I'm still not an advocate of Shaadi.com or anything, I do know now, that you never know. When connecting over cable wires is going to lead to connecting in real life.

And that's the beginning, I suspect, of a longer story.

in which we realise that poetry is really not a viable career option

life updates in verse, angst-y style:

i meet boys
one thirty, photographer
with a peter pan smile
he asks me if i'm taken
with boyfriend, am i married?
i shake my head
trying not to laugh
we're having drinks soon.




one's my age,
little older, maybe younger
i flirt through our common friends
and sometimes he flirts back
it's nothing though
it's going nowhere
he likes the high maintainence girls
and i couldn't be arsed.




the house is pretty
the bathtub's blue
the kitchen too
and the floors are new
woo-hoo!


seema's gone and we wish
she could have stayed longer, surely
england has nothing to offer that
we can't, right here, i mean
hello, what about mb's? and buzz?
and all those places where we drank and
were so cool and so unbearably witty and
friendships were made and characters
assasinated and you really
should have stayed.

Karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon...

I know some chameleons. Girls who rapidly morph from personality to personality to suit the guy they're with. Boys who become from fun loving creatures of the night to looking slightly hunted as they jump to do their girlfriends commands. Both people suddenly take on each other's tasts--from music to food to clothes. I'll find them completing each other's sentences, listening to AC/DC or something they used to hate, and being just togetherallthetime24/7noroomforanyoneelse.


I confess, I used to be a chameleon. I used to change personalities faster than my outfits. With Golfer Ex, I was a socialite, I went to all the parties he went to, I hung prettily off his arm, sometimes I'd chat with the other girls there while the guys went to get us drinks from the bar. Sometimes, (and this embarrasses me) I'd hold his beer while he played snooker or whatever, the perfect image of the socialite girlfriend, with the long ironed hair.


With K, he was the chameleon. He started smoking because I smoked, beginning with lighting my cigarettes then finally buying his own packs. My friends were his friends, the books I loved were the books he loved. Did I get annoyed? No, because I thought it was sweet and beautiful that he had the same interests, that he liked my friends and they liked him, that we were such a postcard couple.

The postcard ripped as you know and now, like some sort of haggle-toothed old soothsayer I hobble after my friends, going, "Oh you don't need him to fill your voids." And, "Don't you two ever do anything without each other?" But they scoff and ignore me, or sometimes say, "Wait till you're dating someone." And they bask so gloriously in each other that even I feel bad for saying anything at all. Let them enjoy it while they can.

I will never be a chameleon again though. I almost lost my identity once and I'm scared if I let someone else swallow it up again I'll never know who I am. Singlehood is self discovery is knowing that one and one make TWO goddammit, not two halves of one whole or any of that. Do the math. So I'm prepared. Fully. I'll stay catlike, independent, and perhaps, I'll meet another cat.

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road, time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

It seems as though my life has reached some sort of plateau. I can't explain it, it's almost like the magic gone. Days stretch into weeks and months, I watched August go by, rapidly, like it didn't want to overstay its welcome and September now barely touches me. Life goes on outside my door, outside my car window, in other people's lives, but it's like I've been forgotten by the powers that be. Number 14536783, the obsolete model that no one can upgrade because they would rather just buy a brand new one. The one that sits in the storeroom, still in its shiny new box, now covered with dust and cobwebs and perhaps someday when the People are cleaning up they'll say, "Oh how did that get in here. I was looking for that." But that'll be my epitaph.


And it's not even like I'm depressed or angry. I just feel.. well.. vacant. Unoccupied. Like if you asked me what I was doing last month, I wouldn't be able to tell you, because I'm always doing the same thing. Nothing has excitement and sometimes I feel these, "the best days of my life" are just disappearing into some sort of black hole or vaccuum, just getting sucked up or inhaled and I have no account of them.


Relationships? Don't make me laugh. The sameness, the yellowy mustard tinge that everything has taken on moves to men as well. Everyone is the same, I hear the same lines, I occasionally feel a heart flutter but that too is momentary. An old habit, if you will. I don't feel like flirting or batting my eyelashes, because really what is the point? Another kiss? Another failed two day thing? Another bout of getting excited with his first sms and then wanting to just run away from it all at his seventh?


I need a break I suppose. I need a break from waking up at eight, in work by eleven, interviewing people who are all, at the end of the day, going to say the same thing. I need to get away from the barcoded mass produced days. I need to stop being the Journalist Barbie and be, well, be the rag doll my grandmother made me.


I need someone to be happy that I was born. I need me to be happy that I was born.

You just call, out my name, and you know, whereever I am, I'll come run-run-run-running, to be by your side

> I was at Jeevashram, this animal shelter, today and the vet was kinda busy with this poor stray dog that had (okay, be prepared to wince) maggots in his testicles. Luckily, the dog was being fed and taken care of by this woman and she brought him in and he was really sweet and got sedated and swayed around like a drunken man before collapsing on her feet and she picked him and took him inside. (I also learnt that some people in this city have FIVE dogs. FIVE. Big ones too. I suddenly feel sorry for poor Cookie growing up as an apartment pet instead of in a large family of dogs where she could roam free in the garden). Anyway so I wandered around exploring a little and I saw this sign pointing to a shed that said "The Cattery". And there were all these cats inside this huge cat run (they can't be let free coz of all the dogs and all) and I whistled to them and made general beckoning noises and they came to the ledge near the wire mesh and walked back and forth over my stroking fingers going rrrr..rrr..rrrr. Loud purrs also. One of them, who I've taken a picture of, and hopefully it will load so you can see it, was particularly beautiful with this long twitchy tail and he pressed his face against the mesh and I rubbed his ears and told him how pretty he was. Which he knew, but it never hurts to tell people. Of course, him and this other beautiful black and white cat were like the dadas there, some skinnier cats miaowed hopefully from the corner but wouldn't come towards me no matter how much I called, because these big guys were giving them dirty looks. Of course, now Cookie at home is not speaking to me because my jeans smell of cats and dogs and Pieces' dashchund who made me play throw the bone while we converged at her house for a drinking session this evening.



> Because yay-yay (as people from my college would say) Pieces is in town! For a good two weeks this time, and so five of us from college gathered with a bottle of White Mischief vodka and some biryani and drank to our hearts content. Old boyfriends were raked over the coals, and whatever-happened-to's were also discussed. We got to a point where we started comparing bras and how long we had all been celibate. Then I left. Good times.



> I noticed when I was trying on my poncho the other day, the label says "One size fits most". I thought that was so sweet.



> Which instantly reminds me of when Leela and I both read Ex Libris at the same time and we loved the part where Anne Fadiman has just read Treasure Island and the dude there goes, "I want a bit of cheese. Toasted mostly." So Anne, who is really really pregnant at this point potters around her house going, "Toasted mostly. Mostly toasted." And Leela and I thought that was the funniest. So I'd call her and go, "Toasted mostly" (in a Brit accent) and she'd go, "Mo-astly toasted." It got so that she would sms me going "Toasted." and I'd say, "Moastly."




> And there was this one music video, you know the kind where they play dik-chik-dik-chik in the background and the lyrics are all spoken? So this woman comes on, strapping on her stilettos, walking around her flat and everything and there's this man sitting on a couch. And the video's all very art deco, very white with a black couch and the woman appearing in this little purple and blue boxes. So she says, "I am a very stylish girl." And the music goes dik-chik-dik-chik. Then she dances in front of the guy and says, "How do I look? How do I look?" And he says, "Very nice." (Beat. Dik. Chik. Dik. Chik.) "I MUST say I'm amazed." And we died laughing.

It's sitting by the overcoat, the second shelf, the note she wrote, that I can't bring myself to throw away

(The Cookieness herself, before my post, to mollify you for getting bored of Reader Appreciation Week!)











When I was littler it was a lot easier. I periodically fell in love with characters in books. Remember that fantastic bit in Daddy Long Legs where he goes, "Dear Judy, did you not guess that I was your Daddy Long Legs?" I swooned over that part. I inhaled the essences of Mr. Rochester and Mr. Darcy. I wanted them to love me, ME, not that insipid Jane or that rather stick-up-her-ass Elizabeth. Even younger than that, when I read Little House On The Prarie, I wanted to be friends with Laura. I wanted to call my parents Pa and Ma and have "good" venison and eat sugar straight from maple trees and own a calico dress. Ramona Quimby was my pal, so were the girls in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.



And then, oh, I read The Catcher In The Rye and of course, like every other woman before me, fell madly and irrevocably in love with Holden Caulfield. I wanted to be the one exhaling smoke "not wolfing it like other women" and I wanted to be that stupid chick, what was her name, Sally, who he calls when he's drunk.


But I never thought in terms of authors. Salinger was a name you know, before he was a godhead. They all became eventual godheads, especially Louisa May Alcott. I visited her home in Boston and since I was the youngest person there who had read the books (I was 11) the guide took me took the attic where she wrote and I ran my fingers over the table and felt a shiver go down my spine. In London (and I'm totally not just doing this post so I can show off about where I've travelled, but still, pretty cool aren't I? :)) I visited Chaucer's grave and the same shiver. But to be fair, it also came when I saw James Douglas Morisson's in Paris (aha--just sneaked that one by you!).



Anyway, as I was saying, I worshipped writers. Everyone who had a real live book in real live bookstores. Everyone with a cryptic dedication. I almost pissed in my pants with excitement the first time I met Bulbul Sharma. My Sainted Aunts! Dude, and the author right. there. in. front. of. me!


I learnt in college how to take the magic away from writers by decoding their sentences. Still the writers I decoded were mostly dead. And I could still breathe Adrienne Rich's perfume if I bent low enough over my books. I still spoke stormily of Lysistrata and its relevance in today's world. I was a very Serious Young Person.


Then I started working and then I started to cover booklaunches and the business of being a writer and THEN it all changed. Writers were, well, normal people. They didn't come with halos. Some like Sir Vidia, a man known to me only by green library spines, were rather strange. Some were wonderful. But they weren't idols.


I miss being like that--all worshipful. I miss holding the printed word in such reverence. I miss believing everything I read in newspapers. And most of all I miss my godheads. I bet even if I met Louisa May herself, I'd be like, okay, big deal.


I've ruined everything, haven't I, by growing up?

I should be much too smart for this, you know it gets the better of me, sometimes when you and I collide, I fall into an ocean of you

Happy Reader Appreciation Week! This is all about you, since nothing happens to me anymore, I'm taking requests on stuff to write about this entire week. So post comments or email me already! (Nope, not selling out before I get twenty thousand gazillion comments on that, because d-uh, this blog is FREE baby, free. Which means I can do as I please)


Chamique said Really? Okay eM, write something about a Harley Davidson, pink fluffy marshmallows and a drunken brawl.=)

Um... okay. Story time, clearly, since this has never happened to me.

Once upon a time there was a girl called Isha who lived in a tiny flat with a huge balcony with her sister and her sister's husband and their two kids Brat One and Brat Two. Isha lived in one bedroom, her sister and brother-in-law lived in the other and the kids lived all over the house.

Isha had a boyfriend who she didn't know whether she wanted to marry. His name was Vikram. They had been dating on and off for two years. Vikram drove a Harley Davidson, which his dad had had imported especially for his eighteenth birthday all the way from Illinois. Sometimes Isha drove the Harley too, but Vikram told her it was too heavy for her body.

Isha wanted to go away from the small flat and the kids and the noises of her sister having sex. She couldn't afford to live alone just then, and her sister couldn't afford rent without her. The bed went squeak squeak squeak in the night. Isha wanted Vikram to be with her. But Vikram just bought her pink marshamallows from the Noida mall and pretended it was all okay.

The pink marshmallows were fluffy. But Isha felt their sticky sadness around her mouth.

One day Vikram got into a drunken brawl. He was that sort of guy. The type that got into brawls. Isha watched him fighting. She thought of the squeaking beds. She thought of her father and how he used to buy her sharpened pencils. She thought of skipping in the winter sunshine. And she closed her eyes and turned away.

Finis.

Two at a time, I think. J.A.P writes Rant. Memories. Food (other than Dyna Bites which I did try at MB's and they ARE rather good but it's time to move on).

Harley Davidsons, oh yes very much.

But not sex. No sex, we are good devout Indians and we all came into this world by parthenogenesis.

And oh yes, how about tikas and dhotis? On women, as demonstrated in one of your watering holes recently.

J.A.P.

(Also stoopid-ass mile-long verification codes on comments pages)

I'm not really much of a foodie. If you gave me a choice, I was telling a friend the other day, between cigarettes and eating food pills and no smokes and eating three course meals, I'd pick the cigarettes.

That said, I do have my favourites. Biryani from Karims. Nowhere else. Maccer's french fries. Pepperoni pizza with jalapeno and olives. I could live on those.

I used to have this thing where I couldn't eat in front of a boy. Especially not a boy I liked. When Golfer Ex and I were dating, we'd spend whole days together and I would demurely sip a coke and he would eat butter chicken and all. "Are you sure you don't want some?" he'd ask. "No-o-o," I'd answer weakly, all the time feeling my stomach rumble loudly. Then my braces came off and I was free to eat outside my home. Ah liberation.

I love bhutta and Fun Flips. I love the rasam vada at Sagar. I love the Def. Col. momos at the Rara Momo Stand. I love tandoori chicken at Hari Chutney in Saket. I love my mom's curd rice with my grandmom's tamarind pickle. I love my dad's prawn curry with the delectable smelling basmati rice and the sardines fried to a crisp. I love the macaroni I make with olive oil and garlic and dry red chillis. I love bhindi and baingan and vindaloo.

Fuck, now I'm hungry.

All that she wants, is another baby, she's gone tomorrow, allll that she wants, is another baby, yay-ay

I'm bored. Bored. Bored. Bored.

Nothing exciting is happening. I feel such pressure to have exciting things happen so I can write about them. But nothing has happened recently.



I've been reading the Worst Book In The World (subtitle: It's so bad, it's good). I love bad writing. As in, I don't want to marry it or have babies with it, but bad writing is so addictive. It really, really is. You want to keep reading and going, "Oh. My. God. This. Is. So. Bad." And then bitch about it on your blog.




I went for a tequila party yesterday. We drank pink margaritas. I dangled my Nike floater and felt most cosmopolitan and elegant.




Today we look at two more houses. Keep your fingers crossed.



I just pressed Control + S to see what would happen. Right now there is a half published post lurking on my blog. I want to finish this one quickly so I can send it.



Something's happened to my ear. My right ear. It now hurts around the earring hole. The clever thing to do would be take the earrings off till my ear heals, but then I'd look like a boy. That is not fun. So I'm living with the hurt and the possibility that one of my earlobes might turn green and fall off.




Inspired by this blog, I'm starting Reader Appreciation Week. This entire week I will write about what you want me to write about. Anything from pink fluffy bunnies, to the time we got so drunk together we passed out in the Ladies, to my views on cellphone explosions. I'll do it all. Every day. But just till next Friday, because then the blog's my bitch again, not yours. Hopefully by then, something exciting will happen to me. So send in your comments people! :)