The Farewell Fuck

A farewell fuck is when you say goodbye,

A farewell fuck is trying to not cry.

A farewell fuck is no messages on your phone,

A farewell fuck is worse than being alone.

A farewell fuck is with an old flame

A farewell fuck is no one to blame.

A farewell fuck is asserting your sexuality,

A farewell fuck rids you of morality.

A farewell fuck is minus the linger,

A farewell fuck is a fuck without clinger.

A farewell fuck is no cuddling after,

A farewell fuck feels very much like disaster.

A farewell fuck is not a stairwell fuck,

It’s an ere-well fuck, a way to say good luck.

A farewell fuck is how I’ll say adieu,

A farewell fuck keeps me reminded of you.

(something I wrote sometime last year, but rediscovered today, so thought I'd share. Not relevant, but still, good poetry, right? :))

Before I get way old and forget this stuff

So, when I was eleven, brand new to a schooling system designed to suck every last bit of creativity out of you, from a Montessori school, where we got to draw little pictures to go with our homework and didn't have to do anything that we weren't excellent at (which explains why I did miserably at maths for the rest of my life), I developed my first ever crush on a boy.

Only, I didn't know it was a crush, I mean, how does one distinguish thinking someone is the shit to actually realizing you want to go home and have their babies? I should explain also here—my reading material was Judy Blume and Louisa May Alcott. And even the Judy Blume I read was pretty tame—Superfudge and Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing, none of the preteen angst of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. And everyone knows Lousia May Alcott, who liked little girls to be little girls. I was a quiet sort of child, sat in the front row with round spectacles, read my books behind textbooks, and he was the loud sporty kind, who always returned from Games or Lunch smelling of sweat, and sat in the back row and laughed really loudly. But, even though all my better instincts told me that he was so not my type (well, not in those words of course. I didn't even realise I had a type. I didn't know what this type was. I still wore an undershirt for god's sake), the sight of him sauntering into class, usually late, usually with his hair carefully parted in the middle, all messed up, would cause my heart to start pounding wildly. Keep in mind, this was also before I was a smoker, so this was all biological.

Then, I got pneumonia. And, stay with me, this is important. I was very, very ill for quite a few months, I don't even remember much of it, except endless doctors visits and blood tests and then, as I was recovering, I got pneumonia again and bronchitis to go with it (and here is also what my mother tosses at me whenever she suspects I've been smoking: I have this weak lung, apparently. It feels pretty strong to me, so I think she's making it up). They thought I had AIDS, even, because it took me so long to get well. And after one of my many doctors visits and so on, my mother took me to a bookstore to cheer me up and the bookstore lady said, "Here's a new series that has become very popular these days," and pointed me to a rack filled with these shiny books all called The Sweet Valley Twins And Friends.

Those twins epitomize my preteen years. They told me how to tell if I had a crush on a boy, how you should prefer to be like Elizabeth, the smarter, more level headed twin, but how it seemed like Jessica was having so much more fun. I think I even remember the standard opening line, something about how they both had ocean blue eyes and long blond hair and dimples in their right cheeks, but Elizabeth was the older by four minutes and this seemed like four years. Anyway, so through my reading of the Sweet Valley Twins, I realized I did indeed have a crush. And according to Jessica and Elizabeth (well, not so much Elizabeth because she had this steady boyfriend called Todd Wilkins) the only way to deal with a crush was to do something about it.

But I wasn't a California blonde with ocean blue eyes and so on. I didn't even have a super cool club I could belong to. And forget wearing purple every day, school uniforms were designed to make you look as unattractive as possible. And besides, when I returned to school, the object of my affection had taken up with this other girl, a sporty type herself, tall and slender and with a way of sucking on her Orange bar that made you realise you could never be like her.

As luck would have it, both became my friends later on. And though the two of them "broke up" (when dating is just about saying you're dating, or sitting together at a movie theatre, it's not such a big deal) I found that my friends had more Sweet Valleys. Only, Jessica and Elizabeth were now in high school and way beyond our comprehension. They did everything in high school. I remember a couple of years ago, actually freaking out when I saw some people doing lines because I remembered the Sweet Valley High where Regina Morrow, poor deaf Regina Morrow, who was still very beautiful and dating the reformed "player" of the school, died because she did Coke. Her heartbeat skipped apparently. The subtle don't-do-drugs-kids worked on me, for sure.

When they moved to University (although it's always puzzled me, if Elizabeth was so smart and so ambitious, why would she choose a state university like Sweet Valley? Why not Harvard or Yale or some such?) we pretty much grew out of them. Who were they targeting now anyway? If they were planning on roping in the twelve year olds who loved Sweet Valley Twins, they should have also realized that the former twelve year olds were only fifteen, and not quite inclined to read something that read like an adult soap opera. Plus Sweet Dreams came
out around then too, and suddenly it was about Romance and candlelight and not someone marrying someone else. Teenage romance. Stuff we wanted and never got from the boys we knew.

Therefore, at the end of this fairly meaningless post, I'd like to say two things:

a) we read a lot of junk. But I'm curious, was there a boy's equivalent? Did you have a series, more mature than Hardy Boys, full of love and intrigue?

&

b) One day, when I was in class nine and walking back with two of the girls who had dated former Object Of Affection, one of them said, "Ya, he's a damn sloppy kisser." This did not make me feel better then, because I wanted to be able to say that myself, but in retrospect, I'm glad my first kiss was non-sloppy and rather fun.

Fin

The Cat And I

There's an orange kitten yowling underneath my bed. For something so tiny, she makes a lot of noise. Did you know kittens howl? Because this one does, howls and whimpers and makes her disapproval at being taken away from her mother quite vocal. Did you get any sleep last night? Because I certainly didn't. Not even when I woke up and begged her—on my knees—that tomorrow one of us would be pissed off and the other exhausted and did she really want to deal with the pissed offedness and the exhaustion at the same time? Couldn't she leave off the yowling till, say, eleven am, which is a reasonable hour to yowl, I would say. She looked at me balefully (cats are excellent with these baleful looks I realise) and said, opening her tiny mouth as far as it would go "YOU'RE THE REASON I'M HERE YOU WHORE OF SATAN." Right. So not a good beginning.

So, yeah, I got a cat. While 40,000 other people lined up to watch Roger Waters, I went armed with a pink plastic picnic basket and a bottle of wine to pick up the kitten. (And as gesture of gratitude, I should mention the cat is formerly her property, but I went with this
guy to pick her up. Much appreciated, btw.) Anyway. The Cat was not happy about being bundled into a picnic basket. She was caught, not without quite a fight I might add, as she scampered away and hid under beds and couches and everything and her mother appeared looking so sad and so accusing, that I nearly cried. Finally, the cat was caught, and we took her back home, where she hid under a cupboard, yowling every now and then and we finished the bottle of wine, that had been sent back with us. Good wine.

This morning, there were two favourable accomplishments. One, is that the litter box had been used after just one gentle reminder. Another was that she finally deigned to eat something, and when I went down on my stomach and yanked her out from underneath the cupboard she looked happy to see me and we spent the next hour getting acquainted, with her butting her head on my legs and entwining herself around me and general cat affection. Then she explored the house, letting out experimental yowls, waited for me to lift her onto the windowsill where she stayed for some time, and then the construction noises started and all my good work was undone because she rolled her eyes at me, thinking surely, I can't trust this woman for an instant and then took off to yowl under the cupboard. Now she's stopped. I think (hope) she's fallen asleep.

So, after much debating last night, her name finally came to me around 3.30 in the morning, I think, as I was stuffing a pillow over my head to block out her sounds. Her name is tc (note the lower case, this is a cummings type cat) tc for the cat and, duh, for turquoise cottage. I think it's a pretty cool name in a double-meaningy sort of way. tc could mean so many things—tangerine coloured, total chaos, tummy crawler, you get the picture. And it's a nice sort of name for a cat.

"So, the cat," I said to her this morning as she attacked my toes, "It's not such a bad world after all, now is it?"
"Aieou," said the cat, "aieou, aieou."

Hey, at least she knows her vowels.

A profile update is forever

Most people I know now have switched over accounts from Orkut to Facebook. Why? Because, well, Orkut started out as being more "exclusive" and everything, but in the end, the hundred different people wanting to do "fraandship" with you, with names like hotboy4u or sachinsexysmile just got annoying. On an average (in a random poll taken by two of my friends and me) if you're a girl and/or you have a photograph up, you'll get at least four friendship requests a week.

Moving on then to Facebook. Even though it's open to everyone, and you have photographs liberally scattered everywhere, most people leave you alone unless they know you. Or you know them. The format is slightly harder than Orkut, less wheee-cyber-sex and more minimalist, and the best part? You can't read other people's "walls" unless you know them. Which means you can snoop on your immediate circle, but can't, say, stalk your exgirlfriend. (or exboyfriend, in my case, as I see from my home page that he is now "friends" with many of my friends. It's like we're playing the staring game, I'm not adding him first, and I'm sure he's not going to extend an invitation for me, so it's basically about who caves first.)

The thing about Facebook, and about Orkut as well, I suppose, is the relationship status indicator. With Facebook, once you log in, you get a screen telling you what all your contacts have been up to, uploading pictures, changing their status messages and so on. And every now and then, you get a little indicator saying So-and-so is no longer listed as single, with a little red heart next to it. It's such a big deal, changing your profile indicators, almost like getting a joint bank account or moving in together. It's a mini-announcement, after which there is no turning back, and you need to think about your relationship status carefully, because if you change it again, bingo, up on the homepage comes an icon of a broken heart saying So-and-so is now single. It's a binding commitment, and enough to make you want to shoot yourself.

Orkut doesn't make it so painfully obvious. But, right up there on your profile page is a little space marked for your relationship status. You could be either single or committed or in an open marriage or married with kids and so on. Single screams out from the profile page, leading to more "fraandship" requests, but the smug committeds are left alone.

There is, of course, the choice not to show your relationship status at all. But that's like saying, "No comment" to a loaded question, everyone knows the real answer.

My mother calls Orkut my "dating website", as in, "Are you on your dating website again?" Even though I try to explain the concept behind a social networking site, the sociological implications, the six degrees of separation, the finding old friends again, the next time we have the conversation, usually in front of someone else, she'll say, "Oh, yes, eM was telling me about this dating website she met an old friend on." Leading to embarrasement and explainations from me, and the other person's raised eyebrows as they back away sloooooowly from the socially retarded girl. (Can I say retarded? No, right? Okay, socially challenged.)

When would I change my profile from SINGLE! SINGLE! SINGLE! to a quiet "in a relationship"? It would probably take some doing. A year or two of dating perhaps, before I was ready to make that kind of commitment.


EDIT: You might have missed the little box on my left sidebar directing you to vote for me. I've been nominated for my first ever Indiblog! Woo hoo! The only thing that confuses me is that I've been put in the category "Best Topical Indiblog", which is odd, because as far as I can remember, the only topic I write about is, um, me. So unless everyone else is waking up to the fact that the universe does in fact revolve around me, I'm at sea for an explaination. But dude! Seriously! Little ol' me with an Indiblog nomination! This is so exciting. If you enjoy this blog, (or if you're a troll, and think of how much trolling pleasure you could get if I actually won) then go on over here and vote. If you'd like *sigh* a view of who else is nominated so you can make a fair chance, blah blah blah, then the list of nominees is here. Vote for meeeeeeeeeeee. You know you want to.

Won't Somebody Please Think Of The Children?

I find second dates the hardest to do. First dates are full of possibilities, the two of you are wooing each other with gesture and conversation, you're at your witty best, eyes bright, never in a bad mood. First dates are when you dress carefully, perfumed just the right amount, dab dab in cleavage and behind your ears and the hollows of your collarbone. Third dates are established dates, you know you want to see the person again, you know this might lead somewhere, it is a third date after all. Third dates are for wearing the nice underwear, for turning up your face for the the first kiss, and yet, being comfortable enough to curl up your legs on the chair, to not laugh at jokes you don't think are funny. Second dates however, are tough dates. Second dates lack the glitzy excitement of the first date and the we're-probably-going-to-see-each-other-again comfort of the third.

Recently, I went out on my first second date since I moved to this city. It was my first second date in some time too, maybe it's the being alone for so long that makes me so picky, but usually, I don't see most people past our first star-struck evening. I find myself picking faults with them on the first date, are they vegetarian? Or non-drinkers? My friends and I spend hours dissecting why people are wrong for us, but when we find someone who just might be right, we guard the information, keep the man close to our hearts and bodies, worrying that if we speak too soon, it'll all be over, just like that. Being scattered like we are, the friends I discuss romance with at any rate--two in Delhi, two in Bombay, one in London--it's hard to keep track of everyone's love lifes. There are boyfriends I haven't ever met, although I could tell you what kind of cologne they use, and what their favourite movie is, and how they like to cuddle as soon as they wake up in the morning. And there are the men I've been with, who my friends have never met, though they know the names, and how I agonise right before I go to bed about whether it'll ever work out. And virtually, we hand-hold, across kilometres and oceans, spewing vitriol on the men and soothing our sister companion. But I miss being able to introduce my lover to my friends, saying, "Look, this is the man I've chosen, isn't he perfect for me, don't we set each other off, doesn't it seem like he likes me very much?" Or have an "objective" viewpoint, about whether he is worthy.

My own second date was something that was much dissected. Where was it going, did I see myself with this person? When did dating get so much about pressure? If you're going out with a person of the opposite sex, when does it move from dinner and drinks with a boy to a "date"? Why are we still using the word 'date', it has such 1990 connotations? Anyway, all went smoothly on date two, the two of us, though tired from a long day's commute, managed to meet up for Chinese food and a drink, and talk about our respective chosen careers. Although in my case, not being an emergency room doctor or a hypnotherapist, there's not much to tell. "So, I go out and I get stories." Fascinating. The date went, well, well. After the build up in my head about a romance filled, buckets of roses type date, I suppose it was somewhat a let down. But that wasn't his fault, he wasn't to know that I had planned stories about how we met to admit blushingly to other friends, how I had planned the way he would make me coffee in the morning, and how we would do the crossword together and why am I admitting this to the internet?

The next day, in admitting it to the other ladies, I didn't know what to say. I had infused him with possibilities, "tell us about your love life" they asked, "Is there anyone new in the picture?" And coyly I had admitted how cute he was, how kind, how fun, and they yay-ed from their scattered corners, and now, by admitting failure, defeat even, I didn't know what else I was admitting to. I wanted to have a happy love story for them, because they, like me, are mostly jaded, mostly cynical, but still, so optimistic that in the end everything would be For The Best. So, I didn't tell them. And I know they read my blog, and I know they'll probably wonder why I chose not to say anything on the subject. Because, well, because, I want you to think I am capable of finding love and not always a let-down, because I want you to think of me as smart and successful and making the right choices, because I want you to think of me as happy, because I am happy, despite hiccups.

As for my second date, we've sort of committed to date three, only not on a day or a location. "I'll call you," he says, and I nod, not agonising about it. Which in the end, is okay, I suppose. It's not him making me coffee in the morning, but it's not I-never-want-to-see-you-again either.

The Long Mushy Delhi Ode, Also The Post She Wrote For Herself, So You're Better Off Skipping The Self-Indulgence

Because it seems so surreal now, like everything's on pause just because I've left it. What do I miss about Delhi, people keep asking me, what do you have there that you don't have here? This post is mainly for me, to recreate a little bit, the universe that I used to live in. I can never go back the same way, and this makes me both sad and strangely, oddly serene. Maybe I needed jolting out of it, maybe I needed to grow, but for now, these are some of the things I miss, only some, because they come to me at odd moments, and I find myself thinking of a particular crossing, or a favourite coffee shop, and then, in the middle of Bombay, I am undone, a little bit, taken back, forgetting where I am or why I came here in the first place.

…

The sweeping arching trees once planted neatly all over Lutyen's design, now shutting off the sun almost on roads named Curzon (now Kasturba Gandhi Marg) and Barakhamba and Aurangzeb. The jamun-wallahs who sit underneath it, and in the winter, the peanut sellers and the shakarkandhi chaat sellers who clutter the sidewalks, so you have to walk around them and when you do walk around them, and it's cold, then you have to buy a paper packet of warm peanuts, some slightly burnt and have the pleasure of cracking open the shell just right with your front four teeth, and because you don't want to litter, you put the shells back in the bag and stuff it deep into your coat pocket and then you only discover it next winter, or when you're mothballing clothes for the summer and you're taken back to that day, that hour, that walk in winter sunshine. Perhaps you were with your friend, and she was telling you a funny story, or with your lover and you were walking to the nearest auto or to where your car was parked or perhaps you were alone and just walking, because it seemed too beautiful a day to drive. Or maybe this was summer time, and sticky and sweat soaked, you were driving down the same roundabouts, concentrating fiercely, because if you let go of your concentration for one moment, you'd take the wrong identical road and wind up somewhere else entirely. The summer heat would radiate off the grass and the roads and you couldn't put on the air conditioning in your car because you had very little fuel left in it. And you were going to the Mexican ambassador's house for a story and as you drove your car up, you felt very grubby and alone, but as soon as you entered you found a good friend, and it was all okay, because the two of you would scoff maragaritas and exchange industry gossip.

…

The screaming chaos that is some bits of South Delhi, trying to battle your way to GK-I M-Block Market on a Sunday, because you have to go to Mocha or Inc 5 or buy lingerie at Kunchal's. Being seventeen and on Tuesdays and Thursdays taking jazz dancing classes from Ashley Lobo's centre at Bluebells School, right across the road from what would be your college, and then making your way to the same market with two friends in your workout shorts and t-shirt, and eating a salad burger at McDonald's (Rs 21) and then one of you buying Blue Bunny Cookie Dough ice cream and sharing the waffle cone, even when the ice cream ran down your palms and they stuck stickily to the auto seats. Eating chuski at Prince Paan, when you ran out of shopping energy, getting your nose and later, your bellybutton pierced at Silofer, always packed with young, teenage girls. Getting knock off jeans at the annual jeans sale, which always looked better than the Levi's and fit better too, only they ripped after two seasons, all across your bottom. The memories associated with Defence Colony, learning how to drive on the scary roads, that always had cars rushing out at great speed and without warning from one of the bylanes, naming the parks that you sat in with your friends, drinking surreptitiously, vanilla vodka in 200 ml Coke bottles, walking through Defence Colony market and always, always, always meeting people you knew. Making your way to Sarojini Nagar, armed with a thousand rupees and a hundred different ways to spend it. Using all your textbook and street cred Hindi to bargain down shopkeepers, so you walked away with five skirts for four hundred. Stopping to eat aloo chaat (now, sadly, destroyed in the bomb blasts of the year before last) and finally, mouth bursting with spices, arms laden with cheap plastic packets, going home and modeling all your clothes in front of the mirror. Zipping down newly made flyovers and knowing where to eat at three in the morning, wet and tired after a pool party, when the paratha wallah at AIIMS (also gone now) would come up to your car with choices of potato or egg or paneer and you would always pick the egg one and the steel plate would burn your knees. Five star hotels, that later, thanks to your job, became places you were so familiar with, people would greet you as you walked in, and you always felt like a star when way after midnight you were able to get friends into Aqua or Agni, because the PR knew you. The Lodi, which became so nice, only in your last year in the city, and which was one of your favourite places ever, because of the mist fans, the ambient music and the mattresses and cheap alcohol everywhere. The Habitat Centre which was your favourite place to interview people—at the American Diner—because they let you sit for hours over a cup of coffee and several cigarettes and because it lent itself so well to being photographed.

…

The PVR Saket complex. The fancy cheeses at Modern Bazaar in Vasant Kunj. Lodhi Gardens. Janpath. Pahargunj. The Mezz. Olive, next to the Qutab Minar. The Nizamuddin bridge, uncrowded. The Noida tollbridge, always. Turquoise Cottage, forever in my heart. And more than all that—the memories that you seem to trip over with each turn you take. Do you remember when you went on your first date in Khan Market? Or went for your orthodontist appointments in Def Col, and stopped off for a hot dog at Kent's? Or saw your first flasher at a Palika Bazaar subway?

Bombay is lovely, but Delhi was home.

(On an entirely different note, I've been asked to contribute to the Kala Ghoda festival blog, so that's where I'll be all this week.)

Late Sunday Afternoon, Under Quilt Pontifications

* I swear, I need a weekend to recover from my weekend. Grah. Iggy was in town and she called me bright and early Saturday morning to say we should go out that night. I had only just stumbled home at 4 am from a birthday party so I was all, "Ya, okay, good night." Finally, when I did emerge, we went to Hard Rock around midnight, after which she wanted to go to a very swish club, which her cousins promised her she could get all of us into. Only, by the time we got there, no amount of name dropping and phone calling could get us anywhere, so we turned around and went home. Stopping off at a hotel so I could pee, and as I emerged from the loo, I heard a bright voice say, "eM? What are you doing here?" And there was a TC stalwart, whose name for the life of me I can't remember, but still, it was so nice to see someone, especially at the state of drunkeness I was in, with one strap of my heel broken off, so I was hobbling all over the place.

* And now this morning, afternoon rather, languidly, I'm lying around in bed in my boxers and a t-shirt, wondering how my hands smell of some very nice male cologne. What's odd about guys colognes is though, that they seem to be so much stronger than yours. So my own scent has completely rubbed off and vanished, but this one is so distinct, I swear I can identify it even. Let's see (here I pause to sniff my palms) Davidoff Echo, if I'm not very much mistaken. Mmm. I do like Echo, that and Isseymiyaki are right up there on my list of favourite smells off boys.

* Thanks to living with Shark Tooth, I've rediscovered biscuits. I never used to do biscuits before, they never seemed like proper snack type things, but he has all these fancy glass jars, with lids with clasps, and he usually has a supply of biscuits in them. I've taken to ordering the biscuits these days, so I'm all flashing back to my childhood. Especially with stuff like Bourbon (pronounced Boor-bon all over India) and Marie and right now, Nice (plain coconut biscuits with a sprinkling of hard sugar). When I was in boarding school, a favourite snack at tea or to round off dinner was the delectable bread (they had their own bakery, so the bread was always fresh) with a layer of butter and sprinkled liberally with sugar. No wonder I got fat.

* It seems every time I speak to someone from Delhi--well, two right this morning--they tell me about someone or the other getting engaged. Jesus. It all seems to be happening so fast too, like the end of an era. Was chatting with my friend Vir, hoster of most of our New Year's Eve parties and he was like, "Yeah, in a couple of years there will be kids running around at our New Year's dos." "I'm so not coming for this party," I told him. My grandmother actually called me, very bright and early in the morning, when I am at my most vulnerable, to ask me when I was getting married. I swear, one minute I was blinking bemusedly at the phone, the next I was hearing how I was getting too old to hold it off much longer and she knew some nice men and did I want...? No, I most certainly didn't, but really what is this world coming to, when you can't sleep off a hangover in peace without being reminded of your age and status on the marriage m arket?

* For some reason I woke up today singing Ace Of Base. And not just any Ace Of Base song either, I've been doing little booty shakes around the house to The Sign. "I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, and I am happy now living without you, I've left you, oh-oh-oh." I used to love Ace Of Base, I remember. I think one of the first videos I saw was All That She Wants (is another baby, she's gone tomorrow, but alllllll that she wants, is another baby, yeah-yeah.). Oh, and Meatloaf's Anything For Love. MTV had just come into India and we, the thirteen year olds, fed off the music videos with such passion. Me and my friends used to even act out music videos at home, with some appropriate song or the other in the background. Let's see, what else do I remember? Go West by the Pet Shop Boys, Wet Wet Wet by Erasure (fuck, I can't believe I remember that song! Open your eyes, I see, your eyes are open) ooh, and Runaway by Real McCoy. The songs in the early 90s were complete crap, but we loved them. And all of us developed identical matching crushes on Jpey Lawrence. Aw, he was adorable, with that middle parting that everyone in those days seemed to have. I wonder what happened to him.

I never promised you a rose garden

Since the new Blogger is being a bitch, I'm emailing this post in the hopes that something will happen. First off, I'd like to acknowledge and thank from the bottom of my heart, the lovely Beks, for this template. We decided on the images for the header together, and she still wants me to do a little tweaking, which I will, I promise, but I've just been so lazy.

The funny thing is, ever since I've moved here, and begun posting out of Bombay, the number of trolls my site has attracted is beginning to alarm me a little. I get comments ranging from "Go home, we don't want you" to the very, very rude (which I just deleted and I'm not even going to bother to replicate--but seriously, people have too much time on their hands). Which means, for the time being, comment moderation is on. I find it a little alarming how unfriendly people can be, and these are like people who are NOT obligated to be nice to me, but perhaps other citizens of this city feel the same way? Yesterday, I was going to meet a couple of friends, and since I was already running a little late, I jumped on the first train I saw, and the first empty compartment. It was something like 9 pm, and the seats were empty, except for two men sitting near the back and another two standing by the door. I was happily chatting to someone on the phone when the dude near the door starts yelling at me in Marathi. I must've blinked or looked confused because then he asked me scornfully in Hindi, "Don't you know any Marathi or Hindi?" Panic stricken thoughts of rightwing Maharashtrians started to run through my head and my friend on the phone started to sound alarmed as well. Finally, after much lipcurling, he told me I was on a handicapped compartment, and that I had to get off at the next station and switch. "Can't you read?" he said, then and meekly, I got off and got on again. I suppose someone had to do that, maybe he was like a train monitor type person or something, but I couldn't help thinking that at 9.30, which is what the time was now, the odds of a flock of handicapped people entering and being short of one seat were slightly slim. Still, he was most imposing, and I did what he said.

But, today's like a big day for me, though. Ladies and gentlemen, ta-dah, ta-DAH, I have successfully made it through a month! It's my first month anniversary, and to celebrate tonight I'm going for the Alan Parsons Project, followed by a birthday party for the tiny but still lovely Five Feet Zero. Although, I realise a little sadly, I can no longer use my "I'm new in the city" excuse--because I think that pretty much expires after you've been here a month. Or three? I could totally milk it for the next three months no? At least till March. And to people who don't know me. Yes, think that is exactly what I will do.

I have shitloads to do all through February though, so I can't return to the city of my birth for at least another month, which SUCKS. I want to go home, I want to put my feet up, and know people on the street and understand what people are saying to me and have no one say,"Go back to where you came from" because I will be LEGITIMATELY from there.

Aargh. Terribly whiny post I know, but I've been feeling a little down.