Where have all the cowboys gone?

You guys, I am SOOOOOOOOO BORED. You know why I'm bored? I'll just come right out and admit it, I'm bored because I have no romance to speak of. Is this unfeminist and terribly 1950s of me? I don't give a shit. I like the not-being-able-to-eat-because-your-stomach-is-always-in-a-knot and the everytime-this-song-comes-on-I'll-zone-out-because-it-reminds-me-of-that-moment-you-cupped-my-chin-and-kissed-my-mouth. It has been ever so long since that last happened to me. Okay, yes, I've been having encounters, because Delhi is a city rife with tempation, even when, at almost thirty, you're all sitting on your hands and biting your tongue so you don't make a move on the delectable man who will be so wrong for you tomorrow but in that five red wines down moment, is just what you need. Yeah, I did sorta make a pact with myself, I was all, "No! I want a boyfriend! No more casual sex!" But see, that might be the thing. Boyfriend Material is in short supply. But! I've been good-er than I thought I would be! Bright side!

My new text message ringtone goes HA-LLE-LU-JAH! in a shiny way each time it pings, and this is very amusing to me, because I can almost see the clouds parting and this one giant finger reach down and touch my cellphone, but more often than not it's someone offering me this absolutely incredible plot down near the Noida golf links, and not what I want to see, which is very simply, "Hey, dinner on Saturday? I'll pick you up at 8." The good old fashioned date. The date where you perfume the back of your knees, and wear your nice underwear, even though you shouldn't, because wearing nice underwear will undo any chance you have of playing hard to get and leaving with a cheek kiss. I'm terrible at the hard to get thing. I'm trying though. I haven't texted any one (and I mean boy anyones) first in the longest time. In many ways, the yoga I've been doing for the last two months is sort of helping me be all calmcalmcalm and zenzenzen but then since this is still me, who should really change the title of her blog to The Compulsive Obsessor, I lay my phone next to my laptop and gaze at it, like they teach you in yoga, to concentrate on one thing and I whisper to it, "Message."
I don't think this is what my instructor had in mind. Clearly, my amazing mind control powers still have some way to go before they develop.

(OH MY GOD, JUST AS I TYPED THAT, MY PHONE WENT HALLELUJAH.)

(I will now Live Blog about checking it.)

(Don't get too excited though.)

(Stupid smart phones are so fucking sloooooooooooow.)

Argh. This from Mother's Pride, a school that has been sending me spam for the longest time, and that I will now NEVER send my children to. They've opened their 41st branch. Yay. Rah-rah. Hmph.

ANYway. As I was saying. The good old fashioned date. The one that begins with a phone call asking you out in a civilised fashion (meaning: two days from the day it was sent, for an acceptable time--because anyone who asks you out post-11 pm is really just looking for a booty call) I'm not too fussed about where we would go, because I just like there to be drinks, and then after, if he was dropping me home, there'd be a text waiting for me when I woke up the next morning, just to say hello, and he had a nice time, and we should meet again that coming week. Does this not happen anymore? Do you really have to specify what you'd call an acceptable date? I mean, before you jump to conclusions, boys, it's not about how much money you spend or where you go, or what kind of car you drive. It'd be okay if you arrived in an auto rickshaw, and we went and picked up some kebabs from your favourite place and a cheap but good bottle of wine and we chilled somewhere. The point is, showing some respect. I'm not saying we should get married tomorrow (or ever) but it would be nice to think that you saw me as having a little bit more to offer than just a body. Like, I play too casual, I know, I'm very undemanding, my girlfriends tell me this is a bad thing, but I'm not going to be one of those women who is all, "Why didn't you call me at 2, when you said you were going to?" which is okay, but it also means a lot of people you date or try to date wind up taking you a bit for granted. Maybe some amount of high maintanence-ness is a necessary evil. I may not say anything to any of these men, so they think I'm just as casual about our rendezvous as they are, but when you get to your eleventy billion no-text-the-next-day it gets so tedious, that you're willing to give up dating forever. Which I did. And then you get bored. Which is where I am. Vi.Ci.Ous. Cy.Cle. It makes you unhappy. It makes you bitter. It makes you choke out dry little caustic jokes, attempts at self deprecatory humour, you smile, but it doesn't really reach your eyes. But then, having the memory of a goldfish, my heart leaps at the next "nice guy" I go on a date with, this might be the one to actually go beyond date three, and then, almost too quickly, out come the red flags, out goes the dude. And here we are again.

I should just.. what? Lean back and let whatever happens happen? I'm trying that now, and let me tell you, not being proactive is equally painful for all those evenings when you count the couples you know and then you just want to go home and read and watch Entourage and grumble to yourself about everything. Being proactive means you leave yourself open a little bit to hurt and dismay, so it's a choice between that and this boredom + loneliness. Boreliness. Lonedom. Whatever way you spell it, this is where I am, and something had better change soon.

I'm looking for a Sunday Morning Person, someone to wake up with the next day, and make coffee and read the Sunday papers with and potter about with music on, and then say, lazily, "Brunch?" and then maybe you'll go out, but more likely, you'll stay in and draw the curtains and leave the world out of your Club For Two.

My fingernails are caked with dirt

I've never been a person with much of a green thumb. Once, a former flatmate gave me a cactus. She had quite the collection herself, loads of plants all set out on her windowbox, growing green and beautiful and wild, and TC was unceremoniously kicked out of her room each time he went in, because, man, I love my cat, but he is a PAIN when it comes to plants. Or cut flowers. Or anything that is green that is not meant for him. Once, I gave him some greens, placed them by his bowl so he could have at it whenever he wanted, but he wasn't interested. Instead, he made a beeline for some roses someone had given me and spent the whole evening his face stuffed in the flowers, gnawing at the leaves. Even now, my houseplants bear the distinct Mark Of TC, the leaves are browning in bits where he's taken an experimental chew. It's good for him though, to have some roughage, since he's a housecat, so I don't stop him, but then, if they're other people's plants, it gets a bit much. ANYway, she gave me a cactus, which I liked very much and placed on my own windowsill, and you know cacti are hard to kill, right? But I killed it. It sprouted a couple of green things hopefully for the first month or two, but then decided to die, no doubt out of depression, and each time I went near it, it spat out thorns in my direction. That was a neurotic cactus. No kidding, once at a good five inches, nowhere NEAR the damn thing, I wound up with little thorns all over my fingers.

Anyway, that was the last time I aspired to keep plants for a long time. Then, one monsoon, my mother visited Bombay and bought me one of those sticks of bamboo you see everywhere, tall and twisty, and I put this in an empty vodka bottle with some water and waited. And waited. Nothing. The bamboo got a bit chewed by my cat, but once it stopped doing anything and just sat there pathetically, he lost interest. I was ready to give up on Mr Bamboo. I wasn't winning any Miss Green Thumb awards any time soon, but then I remembered an old trick of my mother's, to revive flagging flowers and popped it into the bathroom for a bit. I don't know whether it was the humidity or the fun of getting to see us naked, but the bamboo revived with great speed and even started to get new leaves and twists in its stem. (Trunk?) It grew so well, I even popped it into a plastic bag and carried it with me and cat to Delhi and now it sits, in an empty wine bottle on my windowsill, growing madly. MADLY.

Ennobled by my success, I bought a few more bamboo plants, but none of them did as well as the first, apart from drinking water rapidly, so much so that I have to top them up every couple of days. So they have roots and everything, but as for new leaves, they seem to be shy about it, putting out one a month and then waiting with this tiny, tender new leaf and nothing happening. Stupid plants.

Once I moved to the new place though, I decided I was going to be the girl with lots of plants. A CONSERVATORY even. I imagined loads of little plants everywhere, the air thick and green with them, sprouting little flowers, I even imagined fondly, snipping some flowers off and putting them in a vase for my table and everyone being all, "Oh, wow, where'd you get those flowers?" and I'd say, modestly, "I grew them." It was all very English countryside in my brain for a moment. My mother, like my previous flatmate, is a great plant lover, so most of the plants lined up on my study windowsill are courtesy her, and well, it's hit or miss. Some are dying really really rapidly, like the two succulents my parents brought me back from Ranikhet, which are in hanging pots and which, no matter how much I water and sunshine, don't seem to be going anywhere. Some are doing okay, like one green leafy shrub (TC's favourite for its chewy leaves) which, despite abuse, is putting out new leaves and being all twisty and obliging. Some just sit there, like a cactus like plant, which promised me a new shoot about three weeks ago and is still holding on to it. One, the gorgeous bonsai-esque tree thing that someone gave me for a housewarming present, is doing SO well, that I hold my breath each time I pass it, new flowers and everything.

So, I became that girl with the plants. Finally. When I was in Kerala last weekend, we happened to stop by a nursery and seeing the pretty new green things, I decided to pick up two for my flat. (Note: if you're flying a plant, they make you check it in, which means mine emerged a bit battered looking, despite the 'Fragile' tag I made them slap on). I got a jasmine plant, because come on, who doesn't love a jasmine, and I envision it flowering and filling the flat with its sweet, sweet scent and making garlands out of the buds (it only has one so far, and I'm watching hard to make sure it blooms.) And I bought one corresponding to my Malayali birth star, because they had a list of which tree was for which sign (it's a thing in Kerala, apparently) and I thought I'd get a kick out of it. My birth tree is a bit boring, the kumbil or beechwood, but it's nice to have something "lucky" in your house, right? I wish though, that it was the lemon tree, because nothing is cuter than little nimboos growing. In fact, I think I might get a little lemon plant, just for the fun of harvesting my own lime.

It's a nice hobby, gardening, even when a couple of your plants aren't doing spectacularly. I like watering them and pottering about seeing how they're doing, and something about nurturing things that aren't warm and fuzzy (which are the only things I've nurtured so far) is pretty rewarding in its own right. Hey, my cat's thriving, right? How hard can a plant be? (Don't answer that.)

UPDATE: Just got home after a Friday night out and found my jasmine plant abloom. Apologies for poor picture quality, it's off my cellphone.

This and that

Yes, I’ve been entertaining. But not much else really. I notice my posting significantly lowers in the summer time, I think it’s the weather, nothing really happens in the long months of June and July, and for energy levels to rise (thus leading to something worthy of a blog post) it has to be rainy. Oh, Bombay.

 

But! This is to remind you I’m still alive, and while real life trudges along slowly, I’ve been up to, well, not much really. I finally got my at-home yoga instructor, a sweet young man, very earnest, who tells me whatever I do is a “good effort” and talks about “novel” (navel) exercises. I’m really liking the yoga, I feel like it’s helping me already, be a little more settled and all that.

 

In other news, I’m off to IIM Kozhikode to give a TEDx talk this weekend. The flight is SIX HOURS LONG, you guys. That includes a 7 am start time (which means waking up at 5) and two stopovers in Mumbai and Coimbatore. I’m glad I’m going a day early, because I cannot imagine speaking after all that flying. The weekend after that, I’m going to Cochin, for my grandmother’s birthday, so yes, lot of Kerala hopping over the next week. Anything’s better than Delhi’s deliriums at the moment though.

 

Never mind. I’m not wishing the year away, because every month that goes is one step closer to me leaving behind my twenties FOREVER (Dooooooooooooom) There are things people don’t tell you about turning 30, or almost 30 as I am in this gap year. For example, except for very, very rarely, you don’t get drunker, you get quieter. Drunk = asleep. It’s a true fact. By the time I’m on drink number six, I’m all, “Oh bed, I love you so.” Plus, energy levels are directly proportionate to how much you sleep. Gone are the days when I could sleep practically anywhere for a couple of hours and wake up all dewy eyed and bushy tailed. Now, unless it’s a bed bed, with pillows, the perfect temperature, darkness and quiet, I look and feel like a zombie all of the next day. Argh. You try and try to resist ageing, in fact, you might even look like you’re in your mid twenties, but your body will Not Be Fooled.

 

Life’s being life-y. Until more actually happens, posting will, in all likelihood, remain slow over here. But here are some pictures of fun times, to make up for it:

 

Little boy in Nizamuddin Dargah, shot on one of the excellent SRDC heritage walks in the neighbourhood.

 

Shot on the way to buy groceries one hot evening. The glass says: “Keep out” in a shiny way. Love.