After a long day of doing mostly nothing, I trotted out of office to go meet an artist in a gallery not so far away from work. Actually, just down the road. I wasn't terribly excited about the assignment, it was one of those last minute things that happen and art is not something I'm majorly into, unless it's either a) someone famous, b) photography or even c) installation. Other stuff I like, I admire, but I'd rather not do the story.
The guy I had spoken to on the phone sounded all bubbly and excited when I called him though. "Oh you're coming? Oh, marvellous!" And when I got there, this tall firang guy greeted me, again excitedly, saying, "eM? It's so nice to meet you!"
There were a couple of other people in the gallery as well, two girls and a guy, all huddled over a laptop. I had noticed them in my initial room scan, but I didn't really pay much attention to them. Firnang Guy and I walked around the gallery, looking at stuff, me asking questions, him answering them. Doing an interview is really pretty easy once you know the basics. The journalism Old School teaches the five w's and h (who, what, where, which, why and how), but I prefer to start off with a few easy questions, talk a bit about their past, do follow up questions and then move on to what next. The key is to get good quotes. With that your story is made in the shade and you can do all your little artistic touches in the middle. And you make friends with them, which is super important, because then they keep talking and talking and telling you more and more stuff. I'm getting pretty good at making friends with my interviewees, so much so that now, no matter who I'm interviewing I wind up staying an hour or more at least. Sometimes with big talkers, close to three hours, by which time my hand is exhausted from writing so much and I'm wondering how I can condense 15 pages of notes into 500 words.
Anyway, interview over, Firang Guy promised to burn some pictures for me off his laptop and I waited. The other dude, who I noticed had a very neatly trimmed french beard started looking at the pictures Firang Guy was loading. He had a nice voice, Mr. French Beard, very soft spoken, yet deep and with an interesting accent that I couldn't place. "Do you know X at your paper?" he asked me, and I shook my head, "Well, I've seen his byline but I don't know who he is." "We were in the same batch," he told me then, with the same measured smile he had given me earlier.
"Are you an artist too?" I asked, still debating on whether I thought he was attractive or not. His voice was already causing pelvic pinwheels, and little sparks were shooting out of my fingertips. "The yellow one over there, on the right," he said and I went and looked. He had used a flame colour, one of my absolute favourites, but more than that, I squinted at the name on the bottom right side, because we hadn't been introduced. Right, so now Mr. French Beard could be Googled at will.
I returned and Firang Guy goes, "This guy's a writer too." "Oh, yeah?" I said, inwardly going, woo-hoo! "What do you write?" He sorta blushed and waved Firang Guy away, "I don't really think you could call us writers."
"He raps," said Firang Guy and I smiled, "That's pretty cool."
Oh, and then he smiled at me and my stomach collapsed and appeared at my toes somewhere. He had this glorious slow smile, that began at the corners of his lips and spread widely and generously across his face. One of the few people in the world that can smile like that with their lips closed.
I'm probably never going to see this guy again, but still I dwell on our fifteen minute conversation. He made me feel... warm. Not lust filled, not attraction, okay, perhaps attraction, but of a different kind. Like being in school. I can't think beyond hand-holding, waist arming. It's been so long since I felt like this, this puppy dog, carnation, helium balloon, candy floss kind of feeling, that it's hard to shake. I want to put smileys on everything, I even walked out of the gallery smiling to myself.
And for that, I'll always be grateful to the stranger in the art gallery. Hallelujah, I can still feel!
Tales from urban India
29 November 2005
26 November 2005
If you could read my mind, love, what a tale my thoughts would tell. Just like a paperback novel, the kind that drugstores sell
On the whole, I find I quite enjoy being an anonymous blogger. Not that I'm still completely, one hundred per cent anonymous though. Quite a few people know who I "really" am. But, on the whole, as long as you can't get to my blog by Googling my name, I'm okay with it.
People often ask me why I choose to be anonymous. Why don't I just like tell the internet what my name is and what I do and all that and stop being so goddamn mysterious about it? It started off as simply a way to protect myself. I never meant this blog to be somewhere I put down erudite theories on life and politics and all. That's for the real world. The Compulsive Confessor was about ME, essentially, my tiny social circle, my little life, what I do for fun, all that. My personal life.
Sure, it leads people to all sorts of conclusions. Clearly, I must be a very frivolous person, seeing how obsessed I am with living a good life, and good god, why must I obssess about boys so much? To which I say, okay. Ya, so that's the way you see me, that I suppose is the price I have to pay for writing about my personal life online anyway. Sometimes people even ask me in real life, how I handle being so "candid". That's the politer ones. The more frank ones just go, "Uh.. so you have your entire life on display for like the whole world to see?"
Baby dolls, I've said this before, and *sigh* I expect I must say it again. This blog, especially since more and more people know who I am, is barely even ten per cent of what is REALLY going on with me. No really. There's shitloads of stuff actually happening to me, which I don't write about. Why? Because there are some things I can't share, because there are some people I'd rather not write about, because by blogging about something, I'm making it open forum for other people to have opinions about it. And there are some times when I don't want another opinion. I'm good to go with my own.
But enough about me. Let's talk instead about the other breed of anonybloggers who exist in cyberspace. Before, there was just us, us Dear Diary-types, we who spilled all gently and delicately to the www. Now, everywhere I look, for all of the people shyly confessing, there's about a hundred anonymous bloggers saying some very rude things. Nasty things, if it comes down to that. And hiding behind their non-identities.
Oh, the internet is a wonderful thing indeed. It allows you to become from fat chick to swimsuit model, from air hostess to rocket scientist, from someone not very popular to someone with a huge online following.But I fear we may have created something which is just burbling under our fingers, ready to explode in our faces at any second and take over the world. There are no hard and fast internet laws. Therefore, I can have my own little blogspot space and someone who thinks I deserve to die, just for being a woman, can have his own. And we're both allowed to say whatever we want to say. Our only censors are ourselves. And while my conscience or inner wisdom may stop me from telling you exactly what happened to me two Saturdays ago (but, oh, it is a good story), other anonybloggers may feel that commenting on someone's site asking them whether they had sex with anyone besides their husbands was clearly the way to go.
I love being anonymous--even partly so. I love the fact that eM is someone else, someone recognised in her own right, someone who isn't connected at first go, with the real life me. eM has her own scene going on, she can say stuff that Real Me would probably find hard to do in person. eM has some semblance of control, she can even fix what other people are saying to her. And at the risk of sounding schizophrenic, eM certainly seems to have less baggage than Real Me.
And I'm sure the flamers enjoy being anonymous too. Why wouldn't they? Here's a perfect opportunity to bitch slap someone who you probably wouldn't have the balls to say anything to in real life.
Small has been telling me how I don't assert myself enough. How I seem to be lacking in self respect. That, internet, is a from-the-heart confession. Which have been somewhat lacking on this blog lately. What exactly am I scared of? That people will connect the stuff I'm saying here and somehow use it to judge me? Well, there's one thing I've come to realise. People are going to judge you, even if you do nothing and say nothing. It's inevitable. So perhaps I should stop hiding and just own up to being me and be upright about it.
Um.. perhaps not today.
23 November 2005
Return To Sender
Whatever happened to the post office?
This is the theme of my new post. I shall cover letter writing and stationary extensively. If that's not something you're interested in, well, check back in a couple of days, I may have something you like then.
Right, so my one reader who is interested in stationary, (or is it stationery?) hello. And I ask you again, whatever happened to the post office?
I rediscovered letter writing in boarding school. Before that, my letters were limited to my Filipino pen pal. She was my mom's colleague's daughter, and we had never met, but we knew a lot about each other's lives. I remember the first letter she sent me was about, among other things, puff paint, which sticks out of the page when you write with it. Now, of course, you can buy puff paint, but then she had sent me a recipe for making it, which, alas, I have forgotten.We used to have great fun with our letters to each other. I'm afraid I was a little less creative than she was and I didn't have the exciting stationary or the cool stickers she used to enclose with her letters. Still, I was a prolific letter writer and writing "Metro Manila" on the envelope always made me feel most important.
We lived then, in a house with a green letter box on the door and I'd check it every day when I returned from school. Not that there was ever anything for me, but still it was fun looking. Our house number was 69, which made people snigger when they dropped me off, especially when I was older, but I was a young and innocent age and I never really got it.
For boarding school, I went prepared with pretty stationary, a girl staring off into the distance, Pumba and Timon on bright yellow paper, hugging teddy bears and bright orange and hot pink envelopes. I bought stickers even, choosing them very carefully, sparkly ones, where the glitter came off on my fingers and embossed ones that you could stroke. Sunday was letter writing day and everyone had to write home then. Someone would go around collecting all your letters and it was one of your Sunday chores, like finishing off whatever prep you had, and for some, going to church. I usually wrote my letters in bed--Sunday was the only day we were allowed music and all the dorms blasted whatever was fashionable then. So we had weeks of Macarena and My Heart Will Go On and the Backstreet Boys. Sometimes, I took my letters out to the lawn outside our hostel, sitting against a pine tree or on a bench, poetically and wrote brief letters home. "I'm okay, the food's okay, I'm taking my iron tablets, house play rehearsals start soon" and so on.
I had left a life behind me in Delhi, a thriving ecosystem that accepted my going without much of a ripple. Occasionally, my old school friends would write me, gossip about school, asking me how I liked boarding school, but that was pretty much how they ended. My `colony friends'--a concept unique to India, or perhaps Delhi, I think--would write me longer letters, about the Channel V Music Awards and the new gym that had opened, about parties with boys and stuffy parents. My own parents thrived on the communication and I'd get about three or four letters from them each week-- my father's typed out in some fancy font from the new computer, my mother's on inland letters in their blue wrapping. Leela wrote sporadically, like she does now from London, but her letters were long and juicy and made me more homesick than any of the other communication I recieved. I had this one friend in Doon School, who wrote long and often, and pretty soon, I was show-offing about him to my friends who had me add little post scripts to my letters. And then he was writing them, who thought he was cute, much to my amazement, because I had never thought he was cute myself. He had terrible handwriting, I remember, and he wrote to me on onion paper, which is all crinkly, so usually, it took me a while to figure out what he was actually saying.
Letters were given to our house mistress at the beginning of tea, or lunch, and we'd see the stack my her plate and die inwardly with excitement. Sometimes, some lucky person would get a parcel and they'd have to go to the housemistresses room, to make sure they weren't being sent food. My own housemistress collected stamps, and I'd often find letters from my father, who was travelling in Europe at the time, mutilated, because she took off the stamp before she gave it to me.
I always knew who a letter was from by the address written on it. Handwriting is such a torch into someone's personality and state of mind at the time. Mine is all scrawly, neat in patches, i's high-dotted, s's stylishly curved. But the wierd thing is, when my handwriting was being formed, way back, I hung out with this group of girls and even now, our handwriting is practically indistinguishable. My m's however, are my own. Masterpieces in their own right, the Walt Disney style m, with the loop and the long tail.
Would you know me, you who know me best, if you saw my handwriting? Would you be able to pick me out of a crowd? I didn't think so, and it makes me sad. Not knowing my handwriting is not knowing the way my fingers move across a page, not knowing where I began, not knowing the way I see letters in my head. Not knowing my handwriting, in some small way, means not really knowing me.
psst: midweek link slug: just discovered this blog and i LOVE it. Go read.
This is the theme of my new post. I shall cover letter writing and stationary extensively. If that's not something you're interested in, well, check back in a couple of days, I may have something you like then.
Right, so my one reader who is interested in stationary, (or is it stationery?) hello. And I ask you again, whatever happened to the post office?
I rediscovered letter writing in boarding school. Before that, my letters were limited to my Filipino pen pal. She was my mom's colleague's daughter, and we had never met, but we knew a lot about each other's lives. I remember the first letter she sent me was about, among other things, puff paint, which sticks out of the page when you write with it. Now, of course, you can buy puff paint, but then she had sent me a recipe for making it, which, alas, I have forgotten.We used to have great fun with our letters to each other. I'm afraid I was a little less creative than she was and I didn't have the exciting stationary or the cool stickers she used to enclose with her letters. Still, I was a prolific letter writer and writing "Metro Manila" on the envelope always made me feel most important.
We lived then, in a house with a green letter box on the door and I'd check it every day when I returned from school. Not that there was ever anything for me, but still it was fun looking. Our house number was 69, which made people snigger when they dropped me off, especially when I was older, but I was a young and innocent age and I never really got it.
For boarding school, I went prepared with pretty stationary, a girl staring off into the distance, Pumba and Timon on bright yellow paper, hugging teddy bears and bright orange and hot pink envelopes. I bought stickers even, choosing them very carefully, sparkly ones, where the glitter came off on my fingers and embossed ones that you could stroke. Sunday was letter writing day and everyone had to write home then. Someone would go around collecting all your letters and it was one of your Sunday chores, like finishing off whatever prep you had, and for some, going to church. I usually wrote my letters in bed--Sunday was the only day we were allowed music and all the dorms blasted whatever was fashionable then. So we had weeks of Macarena and My Heart Will Go On and the Backstreet Boys. Sometimes, I took my letters out to the lawn outside our hostel, sitting against a pine tree or on a bench, poetically and wrote brief letters home. "I'm okay, the food's okay, I'm taking my iron tablets, house play rehearsals start soon" and so on.
I had left a life behind me in Delhi, a thriving ecosystem that accepted my going without much of a ripple. Occasionally, my old school friends would write me, gossip about school, asking me how I liked boarding school, but that was pretty much how they ended. My `colony friends'--a concept unique to India, or perhaps Delhi, I think--would write me longer letters, about the Channel V Music Awards and the new gym that had opened, about parties with boys and stuffy parents. My own parents thrived on the communication and I'd get about three or four letters from them each week-- my father's typed out in some fancy font from the new computer, my mother's on inland letters in their blue wrapping. Leela wrote sporadically, like she does now from London, but her letters were long and juicy and made me more homesick than any of the other communication I recieved. I had this one friend in Doon School, who wrote long and often, and pretty soon, I was show-offing about him to my friends who had me add little post scripts to my letters. And then he was writing them, who thought he was cute, much to my amazement, because I had never thought he was cute myself. He had terrible handwriting, I remember, and he wrote to me on onion paper, which is all crinkly, so usually, it took me a while to figure out what he was actually saying.
Letters were given to our house mistress at the beginning of tea, or lunch, and we'd see the stack my her plate and die inwardly with excitement. Sometimes, some lucky person would get a parcel and they'd have to go to the housemistresses room, to make sure they weren't being sent food. My own housemistress collected stamps, and I'd often find letters from my father, who was travelling in Europe at the time, mutilated, because she took off the stamp before she gave it to me.
I always knew who a letter was from by the address written on it. Handwriting is such a torch into someone's personality and state of mind at the time. Mine is all scrawly, neat in patches, i's high-dotted, s's stylishly curved. But the wierd thing is, when my handwriting was being formed, way back, I hung out with this group of girls and even now, our handwriting is practically indistinguishable. My m's however, are my own. Masterpieces in their own right, the Walt Disney style m, with the loop and the long tail.
Would you know me, you who know me best, if you saw my handwriting? Would you be able to pick me out of a crowd? I didn't think so, and it makes me sad. Not knowing my handwriting is not knowing the way my fingers move across a page, not knowing where I began, not knowing the way I see letters in my head. Not knowing my handwriting, in some small way, means not really knowing me.
psst: midweek link slug: just discovered this blog and i LOVE it. Go read.
20 November 2005
I like big butts and I cannot lie...
> Went and saw Harry Potter with Small last night. It was a totally last minute thing-- we were supposed to go see the LSR concert at the Habitat Centre, where the talented Annette Phillips led Artists Unlimited through gospel and qawwali, but we got damn late, what with grocery shopping and all. Annette has this magical voice--totally untrained but beautiful. People used to stop and listen to her whenever she was practicing even, in the common room.
But it was eight and the concert had already started and we were close to PVR and so we decided to catch the movie instead. We got tickets as well, for the eight o'clock show and with much excitement went in. I don't know why I persist in watching the Potter movies, they suck. (teeny tiny spoiler follows, so stop reading here if you haven't seen the movie)
They don't follow the book at all, and dude, man, what's happened to Hermione? She's become such a girl, even bawling in Mad Eye Moody's class and all. Where was the Impedimenta spell? Why were all the Beauxbatons girls Veelas? Where was Winky? Ron and Harry clearly have much sexual tension, Ginny barely features at all, Dumbledore is super aggressive and the only saving grace of the movie, I think, is the absolutely delectable Cedric Diggory. Mmmm.. Cedric Diggory. I want to dribble chocolate sauce on his wholesome pink and white face and lick it off. As for Rita Skeeter, even she was a disappointment. She didn't turn into a beetle! All she did was potter (heh) around, really annoyingingly. Gah. That's the last Potter movie I'm watching, that's for sure. But the dragon was most dragonlike. And so was Voldemort. Ralph Fiennes makes a very sexy Dark Lord indeed,even with no nose. But I guess Krum had enough of a nose for both of them.
*stops complaining about the movie, which by the way, even with all the omissions, lasts three hours*
> Also, this week, one of my former colleagues got married. It's the first time someone I knew, someone my age, was getting married and I was feeling all old and ancient. Especially when we went to see her and she was all decked up and looking beautiful and radiant and she had this gold things tied to her bangles and she said, "All you unmarried girls come here" and clinked her bangles over our heads. Apparently, if one of the gold things fell off and landed on us, whoever it landed on would be the next one to tie the knot. But it didn't fall, so I'm guessing no wedding for me, any time soon. I felt a little shy around her too, which is silly, because there was a time when I saw person every day at work and we spoke bout ad positions and what stories were going on the page and there she was suddenly transformed into this stranger, who looked at us happily and with such assurance on her face that I felt at once, terribly young.
> I'm sick of people calling me. No really, I think I'm suffering from cellphone overload. The bloody thing just rings and rings and rings and I'm tired of taking calls at all hours and talking to people and having to be available for everyone. It's like I'm on an electronic leash or something. You know what I'm going to do? Tomorrow is Sunday and I'm going to make it no-cellphone day and switch my phone off for the entire day. It sounds liberating also, coz that way I can leave my phone at home, I don't have to keep checking it and perhaps it'll bloody stop ringing also. You should try it too and tell me how it goes.
Of course, I'm also shit scared of the prospect of a day without my cellphone. What if I get an important call? What if something goes wrong? No, eM, put your phone off. Considering how excited I was when I first got my cell, I think this is quite ironic. It's like rai-ia-ian on your wedding day etc.
But it was eight and the concert had already started and we were close to PVR and so we decided to catch the movie instead. We got tickets as well, for the eight o'clock show and with much excitement went in. I don't know why I persist in watching the Potter movies, they suck. (teeny tiny spoiler follows, so stop reading here if you haven't seen the movie)
They don't follow the book at all, and dude, man, what's happened to Hermione? She's become such a girl, even bawling in Mad Eye Moody's class and all. Where was the Impedimenta spell? Why were all the Beauxbatons girls Veelas? Where was Winky? Ron and Harry clearly have much sexual tension, Ginny barely features at all, Dumbledore is super aggressive and the only saving grace of the movie, I think, is the absolutely delectable Cedric Diggory. Mmmm.. Cedric Diggory. I want to dribble chocolate sauce on his wholesome pink and white face and lick it off. As for Rita Skeeter, even she was a disappointment. She didn't turn into a beetle! All she did was potter (heh) around, really annoyingingly. Gah. That's the last Potter movie I'm watching, that's for sure. But the dragon was most dragonlike. And so was Voldemort. Ralph Fiennes makes a very sexy Dark Lord indeed,even with no nose. But I guess Krum had enough of a nose for both of them.
*stops complaining about the movie, which by the way, even with all the omissions, lasts three hours*
> Also, this week, one of my former colleagues got married. It's the first time someone I knew, someone my age, was getting married and I was feeling all old and ancient. Especially when we went to see her and she was all decked up and looking beautiful and radiant and she had this gold things tied to her bangles and she said, "All you unmarried girls come here" and clinked her bangles over our heads. Apparently, if one of the gold things fell off and landed on us, whoever it landed on would be the next one to tie the knot. But it didn't fall, so I'm guessing no wedding for me, any time soon. I felt a little shy around her too, which is silly, because there was a time when I saw person every day at work and we spoke bout ad positions and what stories were going on the page and there she was suddenly transformed into this stranger, who looked at us happily and with such assurance on her face that I felt at once, terribly young.
> I'm sick of people calling me. No really, I think I'm suffering from cellphone overload. The bloody thing just rings and rings and rings and I'm tired of taking calls at all hours and talking to people and having to be available for everyone. It's like I'm on an electronic leash or something. You know what I'm going to do? Tomorrow is Sunday and I'm going to make it no-cellphone day and switch my phone off for the entire day. It sounds liberating also, coz that way I can leave my phone at home, I don't have to keep checking it and perhaps it'll bloody stop ringing also. You should try it too and tell me how it goes.
Of course, I'm also shit scared of the prospect of a day without my cellphone. What if I get an important call? What if something goes wrong? No, eM, put your phone off. Considering how excited I was when I first got my cell, I think this is quite ironic. It's like rai-ia-ian on your wedding day etc.
16 November 2005
This one, says he wants to buy you rockets, ain't in his head now
If I wasn't a journalist, I'd be a DJ. I'd have this really cool DJ name also, like Lotus Blossom and have pink and blue streaks in my hair. I'd only play rock and alternative stuff and no requests. I'm not a jukebox. You want Dus Bahane, go to a shaadi.
I'd have this bunch of groupies-- young, stoned men and idealistic young women. They'd sit as close to the DJ console as they could and grip their beer and bop their heads along to the music. Other people would listen to me also, but only the really brave would attempt to dance to my music, because the beats just wouldn' be typical. And from all over the place people would want to come to the club.
The owner of the club would be my best friend. At the end of the night, she'd bring me a drink and we'd play the winding down song-- usually something like Iris or Deep Inside Of You. Every July through September we'd take off and go to Argentina. Or Moscow. Or Kanyakumari. Wherever we hadn't been before. We'd bead our hair and draw mehendi tattoos spiralling out of our navels. And we'd always be near a beach, so that a man named Jojo would make us cheese omelettes and mojitos every day.
If I wasn't a DJ, I'd run a general store in a small hill station. Like Manali, or Dharamsala or perhaps even remoter--Lovedale. It'd be the kind of store that smelt of fresh bread and brown paper wrapping. I'd be the cool city girl, that no one knew much about, but everyone respected, coz I had made a niche for myself, on my own. And I'd have this farm, which I ran myself and a cocker spaniel, a beagle and an English sheepdog who were always at the store.
I'd have these huge homemade candies in these glass jars and kids would like be in and out every day to buy some. And I'd know about what everyone was up to, because the women, who came to stock up on bread and cheese and pickle and all (all of which I made myself) would tell me about their lives, and I'd listen and give advice.
At the back of the store, I'd have a small room, with a roaring fire and a sheepskin rug and a comfortable armchair and I'd curl up in that to read at tea time. Sometimes, the village vet, a young man who would be passionately in love with me, would join me for tea. But I'd be better off alone and I'd tell him that gently, with my eyes.
If I wasn't a general store owner, I'd be a Romanian movie star. The kind who is very, very pale and wears huge sunglasses and has a vampire accent. I'd be cast in all these 20s remake movies, because I'd totally look like a flapper, or any of the teen movies, because I'd be the foreign exchange student.
My big break would finally come when they made a movie called Chocolate Frosting For Ethel and cast me as Ethel. Ethel would be this chick, raised in foster families all her life who landed up living on a commune and falling in love with a bearded poet. I'd win my first Oscar for that movie and people would start calling me the Ravishing Romanian.
After kickstarting my career like that, I'd start working on a drama for television all about this family in a small town where the girl is a deaf mute. Deaf mutes everywhere would love me and sign that to me when I went to visit them--all over the world. I'd be like their poster girl and one of Time Magazine's "Moments Of The Year" would be a shot of me crying at a press con, going, "I can't feel your pain, but I can try."
I'd have this bunch of groupies-- young, stoned men and idealistic young women. They'd sit as close to the DJ console as they could and grip their beer and bop their heads along to the music. Other people would listen to me also, but only the really brave would attempt to dance to my music, because the beats just wouldn' be typical. And from all over the place people would want to come to the club.
The owner of the club would be my best friend. At the end of the night, she'd bring me a drink and we'd play the winding down song-- usually something like Iris or Deep Inside Of You. Every July through September we'd take off and go to Argentina. Or Moscow. Or Kanyakumari. Wherever we hadn't been before. We'd bead our hair and draw mehendi tattoos spiralling out of our navels. And we'd always be near a beach, so that a man named Jojo would make us cheese omelettes and mojitos every day.
If I wasn't a DJ, I'd run a general store in a small hill station. Like Manali, or Dharamsala or perhaps even remoter--Lovedale. It'd be the kind of store that smelt of fresh bread and brown paper wrapping. I'd be the cool city girl, that no one knew much about, but everyone respected, coz I had made a niche for myself, on my own. And I'd have this farm, which I ran myself and a cocker spaniel, a beagle and an English sheepdog who were always at the store.
I'd have these huge homemade candies in these glass jars and kids would like be in and out every day to buy some. And I'd know about what everyone was up to, because the women, who came to stock up on bread and cheese and pickle and all (all of which I made myself) would tell me about their lives, and I'd listen and give advice.
At the back of the store, I'd have a small room, with a roaring fire and a sheepskin rug and a comfortable armchair and I'd curl up in that to read at tea time. Sometimes, the village vet, a young man who would be passionately in love with me, would join me for tea. But I'd be better off alone and I'd tell him that gently, with my eyes.
If I wasn't a general store owner, I'd be a Romanian movie star. The kind who is very, very pale and wears huge sunglasses and has a vampire accent. I'd be cast in all these 20s remake movies, because I'd totally look like a flapper, or any of the teen movies, because I'd be the foreign exchange student.
My big break would finally come when they made a movie called Chocolate Frosting For Ethel and cast me as Ethel. Ethel would be this chick, raised in foster families all her life who landed up living on a commune and falling in love with a bearded poet. I'd win my first Oscar for that movie and people would start calling me the Ravishing Romanian.
After kickstarting my career like that, I'd start working on a drama for television all about this family in a small town where the girl is a deaf mute. Deaf mutes everywhere would love me and sign that to me when I went to visit them--all over the world. I'd be like their poster girl and one of Time Magazine's "Moments Of The Year" would be a shot of me crying at a press con, going, "I can't feel your pain, but I can try."
12 November 2005
The suckers lose themselves in the games they learn to play, children love to sing but then their voices slowly fade away
Oooooooooooooooh, whee! Lookit what I got! Thank you Vulturo, for including my 'umble blog in your list. I think it's totally my week to be flattered :)
Ironically, in spite of all this blog petting I've hit a blog slump. A blump, if you will. My life just doesn't seem exciting anymore. I mean, dudes, I hit 24 years next month and I'm looking around me at my life and going "This is it?" 24 seemed so old when you were like 16 or 17 no? Back then I was sure by the time I hit 24, I would have everything sorted. I would be a very serious person, I vowed, with a brilliant career. And my frizzy hair would have magically straightened and would hang shinily and blackly to my shoulders (minor digression, but I want the new Garnier multilights thing they've been advertising. I'm such a sucker for ads and every time this one comes on I drop everything and stare open mouthed at the screen. I also want perfect streaked hair. Ooh, bright red! I think I'll buy that today, anyone know how much it costs?) I always imagined myself in a lab coat, for whatever reason, no matter what my profession and at least six inches taller than I am.
Before that, when I was like 12 or 13, 19 was all I could dream about. Again, the hair was long and straight (I cannot explain my love for straight hair. I love the shininess, the way it falls, I love tossing it from cheek to shoulder, I love the way people look at me, I'm like a different person with straight hair. A more together person, with a perfect nose) At 19, I vowed, I would have a bike riding boyfriend, who drove a Harley. And we'd both wear leather pants and jackets. And amidst people staring at us, I'd hop off his bike, take off my helmet and shake out my lovely, waist length, STRAIGHT hair.
Oh and K called me the other day. Among other things, he wanted me to meet his girlfriend. Like I would be any kind of value add with Little Miss Perfect and my ex boyfriend. Grah. But of course I said sensibly and maturely that I would love to meet her and that my life would not be complete without making friends with her. He wants her to meet EVERYONE. I never got to meet everyone. In fact, he just abandoned his friends and appropriated mine. I never got all this special treatment also. Hmph. Now I have to plan an outfit that will totally indimidate her. Ooh, no, better, I will be all world weary and talk about my job and the people I meet and just throw in all the big words I know and she'll be totally intimidated by my absolute intelligence. Note to self: meet for coffee, NOT alcohol so that this purpose can be achieved. Anyone got any tips on how to make your ex's present totally shit scared of you while your ex still thinks you're great? Anyone?
Hopefully this weekend will pan out more interesting than the last week has been. More "together". More like heading to my ideal 24 than this limbo type person. Week One of Project Ideal 24 begins now.
10 November 2005
The paradigms of power
Two things have inspired this post.
One is, of course, this post, which you've probably already seen. I'm most flattered that someone would go to all that trouble to respond to essentially my nitpicking. And pretty funny too :)
The second is the conversation I had with Priya the other day. I was telling her essentially in person about the six reasons I'm still single, that I posted about the other day blah di blah blah. And she goes, "Um.. dude, it's not any of those reasons." I was mid-flow by this time going on about how there was no one perfect and I was going to turn into an ice maiden type person and so I was a little taken aback, "It's not?" I asked in tones guaranteed to freeze a polar bear. "No, actually I think you should've said just two reasons: one, everytime someone likes you you stop liking them and two, you're so scared of commitment you lose interest as soon as the chase ends."
"Wibble," is all I managed for a bit and then there was long silence while she finished pottering around the flat doing whatever it was she was doing and I continued to lie on my bed, Jane Austen in hand.
It's true though. I admit it now. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a power junkie.
Power games are always delicate, always with fine lines and not very visible rules. You could do one thing wrong and have the whole house of cards topple down on you despite months of careful planning. Actually I should've said weeks. I don't have the attention span to let the "you blink first" game go on for that long. It's all very dicey, he calls twice and then you call, you message once in drunken state and agonise about it forever.
Not everyone loves the thrill of the games. Actually, I don't love it either, but I am strangely addicted to the knot in my stomach, to the rushing every two second to my cell phone, to the eyebrows raised in a crowded bar as you teeter slowly towards him so that someone can pass from behind you. It's ridiculous and old fashioned and I know I should just like make interest known if I have any. But the thing is, I WAS doing that, I was being one hundred per cent honest and laying out all my cards and it just wasn't working. Not once. The rejectors piled up and the more I confessed, compulsively, that I liked them a whole lot, the more they rejected me and the more I confessed and so on. Like a vicious circle.
But what Priya said had a grain of truth in it. There were some boys who responded to my eager "Let's do this again soon" with equal enthusiasms. And then *ping* something vanished in my head coz really, if they liked me, there had to be something wrong with them. Like ol' Groucho Marx said about not belonging to any club that would have him as a member. Instantly my defences would shoot up and you know my list of reasons? That's just like an excuse to get rid of them.
Commitment phobe? I don't think so. In my very heart of hearts, I want to be cuddled and loved and hand held. But then also, battling with that is sheer repulsion at the idea of a steady Saturday night date. At never feeling the thrill of the chase again. Of becoming all boring and all.
So power games versus stability. I'm masochist enough to subconciously choose the former, but oh, how I wish I could be in the latter.
One is, of course, this post, which you've probably already seen. I'm most flattered that someone would go to all that trouble to respond to essentially my nitpicking. And pretty funny too :)
The second is the conversation I had with Priya the other day. I was telling her essentially in person about the six reasons I'm still single, that I posted about the other day blah di blah blah. And she goes, "Um.. dude, it's not any of those reasons." I was mid-flow by this time going on about how there was no one perfect and I was going to turn into an ice maiden type person and so I was a little taken aback, "It's not?" I asked in tones guaranteed to freeze a polar bear. "No, actually I think you should've said just two reasons: one, everytime someone likes you you stop liking them and two, you're so scared of commitment you lose interest as soon as the chase ends."
"Wibble," is all I managed for a bit and then there was long silence while she finished pottering around the flat doing whatever it was she was doing and I continued to lie on my bed, Jane Austen in hand.
It's true though. I admit it now. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a power junkie.
Power games are always delicate, always with fine lines and not very visible rules. You could do one thing wrong and have the whole house of cards topple down on you despite months of careful planning. Actually I should've said weeks. I don't have the attention span to let the "you blink first" game go on for that long. It's all very dicey, he calls twice and then you call, you message once in drunken state and agonise about it forever.
Not everyone loves the thrill of the games. Actually, I don't love it either, but I am strangely addicted to the knot in my stomach, to the rushing every two second to my cell phone, to the eyebrows raised in a crowded bar as you teeter slowly towards him so that someone can pass from behind you. It's ridiculous and old fashioned and I know I should just like make interest known if I have any. But the thing is, I WAS doing that, I was being one hundred per cent honest and laying out all my cards and it just wasn't working. Not once. The rejectors piled up and the more I confessed, compulsively, that I liked them a whole lot, the more they rejected me and the more I confessed and so on. Like a vicious circle.
But what Priya said had a grain of truth in it. There were some boys who responded to my eager "Let's do this again soon" with equal enthusiasms. And then *ping* something vanished in my head coz really, if they liked me, there had to be something wrong with them. Like ol' Groucho Marx said about not belonging to any club that would have him as a member. Instantly my defences would shoot up and you know my list of reasons? That's just like an excuse to get rid of them.
Commitment phobe? I don't think so. In my very heart of hearts, I want to be cuddled and loved and hand held. But then also, battling with that is sheer repulsion at the idea of a steady Saturday night date. At never feeling the thrill of the chase again. Of becoming all boring and all.
So power games versus stability. I'm masochist enough to subconciously choose the former, but oh, how I wish I could be in the latter.
5 November 2005
Question: Prove In Six Steps Why eM Is Still Single. Give Reasons To Support Your Answer. (40 marks)
I am particularly unattractive these days. I have a terrible cold--thanks to going for a Diwali party with no adequate covering except for a thin crepe chunni--so my nose is all red and raw around the edges. My ears are blocked, my hair has said ta-ta goodbye and fucked off. And to top it all off, I feel fat.
Grah. (Pronounced Graaa-ah).
It is no wonder then, that I'm single. And I'm probably going to wind up alone, and die alone eaten by Alsations.
There are other reasons I'm single too:
I can't stand words being mispronounced. I mean really, v is veee, w is when you round your lips together. No clasping of the lower lip with your teeth, just round your mouth. Therefore it is "Way" and not "Vay". This pisses me off so much that many potential boys have been banished to the Kingdom Of Bad Pronounciation for it. (Ruled by the clan of people who say "My hair are..". Hello? Hair is SINGULAR, how often do we have to go over that?) There was this boy once, a pretty young lad who I was quite warming up to. And then he mispronounced five words in the same sentence. Gently I pointed it out, but he didn't react too well to that. If people just DON'T want to learn, what are you to do, right?
Call me Ally McBeal, but getting food on your face is a distinct no-no in my world. Ketchup on fries, not on your face. I hate ketchup anyway. I can't stand the smell and the taste. This does not go down very well with some boys who like to mix up the ketchup and the mustard into one pus type puddle. Ewwwwwww. I do make some exceptions to the food on face rule though. Chocolate is good. A latte foam mustache is very cute--but not if you do it on purpose.
Tight jeans, worn up to your waist, with your shirt tucked in. Good Lord, boy, it's 2005, not 1981 as you seem to imagine. And your tush isn't that cute, and even it were that cute, it would probably look better in like loose jeans. Not baggy, mind you. Baggy jeans are for teenagers with spiked hair with the tops of their Calvin Klein chaddis showing. That's just trying too hard.
People who don't read. Or who say the only book they have ever read is a) Love Story b) The Da Vinci Code or c) Anything by Michael Chricton (I don't think I spelt that right) or Robert Ludlum or whatshisface, the chap who writes a lot about hunting in Africa.
If you've passed these high tests, there are also the smaller tests. What music you listen to. Whether you have any passions beyond making money. Whether you get on with my friends. Whether you like TC. That sorta thing.
I'm afraid (and this might shock you a little) that leaves me with NO ONE. In this ENTIRE CITY.
I'm so dying alone, no?
Q.E.D
ps: if someone could tell me the full form of Q.E.D, I'd be most grateful. I've always wondered. I know the "e" is "ergo", right?
UPDATE THE SECOND: Thought of some other stuff that drives me crazy in a not-so-good way last night. The way he is on the phone is super important. It all begins with how he says hello. Some people say it nicely "Hel-lo" others stretch it out which I can't stand: Ha-lee-yo? Even worse are the ones who seem to swallow up all the letters in the middle so it comes out like "Hlo?" And oh my god, the Hello Tunes! Those are such an excellent way to tell if the guy's for you or not. I knew a guy who had "Lonely.. I am so lonely.." as his Hello Tune and you're calling him and you're thinking, "Oh-kaay. Let's just hang up and back slowly away from the reciever."
And some guys canNOT conduct a phone conversation. There's an art to it, there are some people I don't mind chatting to for hours on the phone. But some guys just put the burden of the conversation on you, so they'll keep going, "Hey wassup?" and "Sooo, tell me" till you're ready to scream! I can't tell who's worse, them or the chappies who don't let you get a word in edgewise, they'll say, "Hi, how're you?" and you'll go, "Oh I have a.." and they'll go, "Yeah? I've had the worst day!" and you'll go, "Oh, me.." and they'll go, "So I was talking to my friend and he said we should go for a movie" and so on.
Just wanted to say that. Carry on now. :)
Grah. (Pronounced Graaa-ah).
It is no wonder then, that I'm single. And I'm probably going to wind up alone, and die alone eaten by Alsations.
There are other reasons I'm single too:
I can't stand words being mispronounced. I mean really, v is veee, w is when you round your lips together. No clasping of the lower lip with your teeth, just round your mouth. Therefore it is "Way" and not "Vay". This pisses me off so much that many potential boys have been banished to the Kingdom Of Bad Pronounciation for it. (Ruled by the clan of people who say "My hair are..". Hello? Hair is SINGULAR, how often do we have to go over that?) There was this boy once, a pretty young lad who I was quite warming up to. And then he mispronounced five words in the same sentence. Gently I pointed it out, but he didn't react too well to that. If people just DON'T want to learn, what are you to do, right?
Call me Ally McBeal, but getting food on your face is a distinct no-no in my world. Ketchup on fries, not on your face. I hate ketchup anyway. I can't stand the smell and the taste. This does not go down very well with some boys who like to mix up the ketchup and the mustard into one pus type puddle. Ewwwwwww. I do make some exceptions to the food on face rule though. Chocolate is good. A latte foam mustache is very cute--but not if you do it on purpose.
Tight jeans, worn up to your waist, with your shirt tucked in. Good Lord, boy, it's 2005, not 1981 as you seem to imagine. And your tush isn't that cute, and even it were that cute, it would probably look better in like loose jeans. Not baggy, mind you. Baggy jeans are for teenagers with spiked hair with the tops of their Calvin Klein chaddis showing. That's just trying too hard.
People who don't read. Or who say the only book they have ever read is a) Love Story b) The Da Vinci Code or c) Anything by Michael Chricton (I don't think I spelt that right) or Robert Ludlum or whatshisface, the chap who writes a lot about hunting in Africa.
If you've passed these high tests, there are also the smaller tests. What music you listen to. Whether you have any passions beyond making money. Whether you get on with my friends. Whether you like TC. That sorta thing.
I'm afraid (and this might shock you a little) that leaves me with NO ONE. In this ENTIRE CITY.
I'm so dying alone, no?
Q.E.D
ps: if someone could tell me the full form of Q.E.D, I'd be most grateful. I've always wondered. I know the "e" is "ergo", right?
UPDATE THE SECOND: Thought of some other stuff that drives me crazy in a not-so-good way last night. The way he is on the phone is super important. It all begins with how he says hello. Some people say it nicely "Hel-lo" others stretch it out which I can't stand: Ha-lee-yo? Even worse are the ones who seem to swallow up all the letters in the middle so it comes out like "Hlo?" And oh my god, the Hello Tunes! Those are such an excellent way to tell if the guy's for you or not. I knew a guy who had "Lonely.. I am so lonely.." as his Hello Tune and you're calling him and you're thinking, "Oh-kaay. Let's just hang up and back slowly away from the reciever."
And some guys canNOT conduct a phone conversation. There's an art to it, there are some people I don't mind chatting to for hours on the phone. But some guys just put the burden of the conversation on you, so they'll keep going, "Hey wassup?" and "Sooo, tell me" till you're ready to scream! I can't tell who's worse, them or the chappies who don't let you get a word in edgewise, they'll say, "Hi, how're you?" and you'll go, "Oh I have a.." and they'll go, "Yeah? I've had the worst day!" and you'll go, "Oh, me.." and they'll go, "So I was talking to my friend and he said we should go for a movie" and so on.
Just wanted to say that. Carry on now. :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)