Well Toto, I guess we're not anonymous anymore

UPDATED TO ADD: The reading is on Saturday, August 23rd at 6.30 pm. It will be at Full Circle, Shop No. 13, 1st Floor, MGF Metropolitan Mall, Saket. Come and say hello. :)

In Delhi and madness promptly descends. Being met by the parents at the airport, and had picture clicked by mother's brand new camera phone as a) I wheeled my trolley out of the airport b) I walked to the car c) I stood with my dad and grinned my tired hungover up till three in the morning Old Monk tequila smile d) as my dad and I both signed copies of our books for a family friend (who gave me a lovely new pen. I'm dying to do some signing! Someone please ask me!) My parents have fully submitted to the media hoopla. They might even be more excited than I am. I'm actually supernaturally calm, all like, "Oh, it's not a big deal" or "Book? What book? Oh, thaaaaaaaaaat book. Right." Yes, I am aware that I sound like an idiot.

Although I think I might've OD'd on all this book talk. I've been asked the same questions so many times, I have to keep remembering what I said before so everyone gets different quotes. And OH MY GOD BOOK DOES NOT EQUAL BLOG I'M VERY FLATTERED YOU READ THE BLOG BUT THIS IS ABOUT MY BOOK. BOOK. B.O.O.K I know, though, that it's the obvious question. Everyone wants to know about how you turn a blog into something that gets published and read in bookstores. There's one simple answer: you don't. Writers are writers. Before the blog, we journal. I still carry around a notebook for commutes and things, so I can get things down when I think of them.

Okay, final word, final whisper about Delhi book related things, I promise. There is a party at Agni on the 22nd, but that has very limited space, soooooooo, there's another reading at Full Circle at some new mall in Saket. (Which means the piles of cement and scaffolding has actually turned into something, which makes me feel all Odysseus and oh, I've been away forever.) I'll confirm the time later. It's on the 23rd, which is Saturday. Come. The Bombay launch is the weekend after next, on the 29th at lalalalala Blue Frog! Aren't we all poash darling? I think we'll have a similar bookshop reading there also, so we can fit everyone in.

Leela is here! She stayed back for the launch and for Bani and Maya's berfday, and we did din-din yesterday, her and me and Bani and Ishan. We went to Ego, at New Friends Colony (I didn't realise it was still going strong!) and had a fabulous time despite the fact that it was a dry day. Then Ishan went home and we piled into their new fancy car (We're talking serious fancy here, the kind of car you'd never even sneeze in, let alone eat or drink or smoke) and went for a pahtay thrown by a new friend (and someone who's been helping with the online stuff of the book). There was alco, and Jenga and coaching in Hindi swear words and it was all very fun. Bani and I now have plans to go watch Jaane Tu and Bachna Ae Haseeno and then go eat chicken wings at Bennigans. Sometimes, in Bombay, in the middle of the night I lie awake listening to the sounds of crows and traffic and dream of those chicken wings. They're really good.

Ooh! Foreign-returned relatives were met brieflyfor lunch last week and I got a brand new iPod nano! The 8 GB one! And it's blue! And it has my initials on the back! I love it. Shiny, iPod babies will happen.

Anyhoo. Sorry about the infrequent posting, but it has been madness (MADNESS!) around here. Regular programming should resume shortly though.

Goodbye, 2007, who could hang a name on you?

Oh, come on. You didn't think I was going to leave you without a year-end recap, did you? Even if it DOES mean posting more than once a week, it's a special time of the year and it's been one hell of a year, actually.

If you're just tuning in, the links to the other three year-end posts are here, here and here. This year, we're shaking it up a little and doing proper accounts, so the year isn't just events, it's how those events have affected my life. (Ooooooooooooooh, fancy, right?)

LIFE CHANGING TYPE THINGS:

Well, duh, I moved to Bombay.

And then there was tc--the only steady male in my life. (And in tc's life, the discovery that he is a boy)


I got my hair coloured. (Hey, it was a big deal at the time)

The blog turned three.

We made it to six months.

Leela gets hitched!

I have new flatmates.

I turn 26.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNT

How to commute.

How to get to Daman.

How to get rid of weird men who try to pick you up at bars.

How to fall sick several times a year.

How to use Craigslist on a slow blogging day.

How to fight loneliness.

How to write posts about blow jobs and realise that Indian men might, in fact, be better lovers than Indian women.

How to check your American flatmate into a hospital.

How to survive a gynaecological exam. (My cervix still cringes)

How to write to anon trolls.

I've learnt also other not so concrete things, like how to make new close friends and how to dance without caring about what other people think and how to *ahem* make what I call the eMpolitan, a pink concoction I devised last night at Kalyan's party. I was trying to amuse myself by putting lots of alcohol and various juices into the blender and ta-dah, a drink was born. I even had requests for second and third servings.

ZE LOVE (I USE THE TERM LOOSELY) LIFE

I had a second date.

There were moments where I considered changing my sexuality.

I had a nonboyfriend, in a committed fling. (Sighhhhhhhh. That memory still makes me wistful)

I tryst with exboyfriends in my dreams.

Almost, I meet someone new.

I discover dating, with a capital D. ATING.

I meet Volt.

We finish.

I developed many random crushes on and off during this year, which were great fun, just for the heart flutters and the putting on perfume for someone else. Sadly, none of them actually went anywhere. I'm still too chicken, even at this grand old age to make the first move. But they were fun while they lasted. Right now? I'm footloose and fancy free, which means if I decide to have a torrid beach romance in Goa for the four days I am there, it should be completely stress free. Keep your fingers crossed for me!


FAME AND FORTUNE (HAH!)

THE Telegraph UK article. (I don't have links to the rest of the stories, but this is the one that sparked the rest off.)

Over the next couple of months, since it came out there have been a bunch of other articles and blog posts, some nice, some not so much. It's been an interesting experience though. I won't say entirely fun, but interesting.


AND SHAKTI

Who I miss most when I'm in Delhi. I have to keep reminding myself not to call, that there's no point in calling, that there will never be the hanging out, the chilling, the intimacies. God, 2007 was a random year. So random, so senseless. If this is character building, these heartaches, I'd rather stay characterless.



NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

This year I will be good. (Well, not SO good that I'm boring, but I will try and avoid being bad.)

This year I will keep account of my finances.

This year I will learn at least three new things--like politics and French and playing the guitar. Something.

This year I will join a gym and get in shape.

This year I will save up and go on at least one foreign holiday.



Off I go now, to more festivities. I'll see you next year.

Okay, universe, I'm crying 'uncle'. STOP

A little hope is more dangerous than a big hope. Big hopes are easily quenchable, you know somewhere in the back of your head that it could all blow up and you’ll be left back at square one. A little hope on the other hand, never quite leaves you, and niggles and niggles away at the back of your mind, leaving you exhilarated and butterfly-tummied at the oddest moments. It’s not easy to push away a little hope. It’s like a mosquito versus a snake. It stays under your skin, itching and you have to keep scratching at it. There is no anti-venom.

A little hope is not worth wallowing over when it’s proven to not exist, no one—least of all yourself—will get the sort of misery the abandonment of a little hope causes. The vanishing of a little hope annoys you more than makes you sad, it makes you dislike the world and get cross and snarly inside. A little hope gives you pleasure—not the same sort of pleasure a big hope does—not a rainbows and puppy dogs pleasure, but a muted sort of feeling that life is not quite as bad at it seemed after all. It’s not toe curling or sunshine on a cloudy day inspiring, but it is hope. Killing the little hope often makes you shrug your shoulders and go, ‘Oh well, what’re you going to do?’ and yet, and yet you feel as though there will be no big hopes, no hopes of any kind at all, because the little hope can very easily feel like a big hope under the right circumstances.

Of course, if you’re a cynic like me, you’ve made provisions for the end of a little hope too. I’m having a shitty week. Completely, one hundred per cent shitty. It started, to be fair, with only a sixty per cent shittiness—with this nasty flu, but then as all other areas of my life began to roller coaster downhill with the same alarming rapidity—I sit here Friday evening and wonder if it could possibly get any worse. Seriously, in the history of bad luck weeks, I think mine deserves to be up there in the hall of fame. They should have halls of fame for bad weeks. It might make us feel a little better about ourselves. Two days for this week to end, and the only thing not affected—yet—is my social life. Watch that also go now. I’m betting by Sunday, I will officially be inching towards the D-Cold Total in my purse and thinking of ending it all. (Although, I don’t think D Cold Total can kill you with an overdose, only seriously fuck with your liver). No, none of these downward spiraling things are anything I can talk about here, but I’m sure you can marginally guess, excluding my social life, what the other aspects of my life are. Yeah. Just about everything I’m afraid. And the only thing I can whine about online is that I did a really hot salt water gargle and scalded my tongue. This sucks. There are days when I’m proud of having so many people reading this thing and other days when I wish no one did. Then I could whine to complete strangers and tell them EXACTLY how terrible my week has been, blow by blow, point by point, maybe get some good advice, and instead? I’m reduced to being fucking diplomatic and not stepping on any toes or anything. AAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

To top it all off, troll blogs and comments are back, just when you thought they went out with 2003. Nope, there are still people who love to hate you, just because you’re a woman, just because you write about going out and having fun because OH MY GOD GOD FORBID AN INDIAN WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ANY FUN OR TURN DOWN ANYONE ELSE AND SHE’S SO FUCKING UGLY DUDES HOW DARE SHE SPURN ANY ADVANCES SHE SHOULD BE HAPPY WITH WHAT SHE IS GETTING. Chootiyas.

I’m tired. I’m tired of coughing and having to blow my nose every five seconds and breathing through my mouth. I’m tired of trying. I’m tired of being upbeat and optimistic and assuming everything’s going to be all right (rockabye) when it never is, really, is it? I’m tired of fighting to make my case, I’m tired of selling myself to people, I’m just generally tired. I want comfort, a backrub, an evening of not talking with people who won’t expect me to talk, I want compliments, I want to be nineteen again, I want to go home and yet I don’t want to sell out, I want my mummy.

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.

In which my deformities are brought into light (and the reason why this blog doesn't have any pictures of me)

(You know where this post has been.)

On an anon blog, the rule of thumb, the rule of forefinger actually, is never to post anything that can be too easily traced back to you. Nevertheless, seeing as this picture is all blurry and hard to make out features from, I think it might be safe to let it go out there. Yup, that's me. Age two, I think, up in the Himalayas, wearing a sweater that belonged to my mum, looking cross at having to pose for one more picture. The reason this picture is important, the reason it's being posted at all, is because I think this was the last decent picture ever taken of me.

I was a rather good looking child, even if I do say so myself, she said completely modestly. Well, not good looking, so much as photogenic. I'm telling you, whenever I'm overcome with a nostalgia trip, I'm all wonderstruck with my beauty. I mean really, the smile, the hair, the eyes? I should've been a child model, at least when I could, so that I would have some money to spend in my old age. Once (and this is a high point so pay close attention), I was even the kid in the Life Insurance ad. Sure, they pixellated my face, and sure, you could barely make out it was me. But still. I was the face of Life Insurance, dude, were you? were you? I didn't think so.

Anyway. Then I grew older and my face got bonier, and my teeth came out, and I just wasn't good looking anymore. I had too many teeth and too small a face, but still, I photographed okay. I wasn't the Vision of Splendour I used to be, but I was okay. And then things just spiralled downwards from there.

See, I hate my nose. Absolutely hate it. In profile, I look like a duck. Really, no kidding. It's sort of bumpy at the edges and flattens out over the tip and any picture you take of me sideways makes me look like a cross between a rat and a duck. Oh, and a hermaphrodite. I make sure most people take only full frontal pictures, and even those are touch and go. Sometimes, my eyes disappear if I'm laughing. In others, I look vaguely constipated. The worse ones are where I look like a boy, because I'm not wearing any earrings, and the picture taker has only taken neck up. Oh, and let's not even go near passport pictures. One of my eyes is smaller than the other, so if I'm smiling I look something like a serial killer. The kind with a twitch.

From all this, you must have gathered that I'm not terribly photogenic. The picture I like most of myself hangs in my old room, where I'm doing this model thing at 19 and scooping my hair away from my face. People have seen this picture. People have laughed at this picture. People have said I look like a Malayali porn star in this picture. So when even my sexy pictures fail, you know, I'm really a lot better looking in real life. I have to be. There's no way someone could be that unattractive. Sometimes, the rare times when the camera decides to take pity on me, I get photographs where I can actually look at me and not flinch and those pictures are safely in a vault somewhere in Geneva. Even my own mother prefers to hang up pictures of me as a baby, all Unicef-y, rather than put out the more recent ones. I offered her the sexy one? The one I like so much? And she looked at it and looked at me and said, "I think this would look better in your room! Go hang it up there!" And I did just that.

Anyhoo. Maybe there was something about being a kid that just made me a better subject. Even now, it's so much easier to take a nice picture of a child, even a really ugly child, than it is to take of a good looking grown up. We dissect our smiles, do our picture faces, stop sitting in profile, make sure our hair is not sticking up at strange angles and when we finally get the picture, we're always disappointed. Surely that's not me, we say, surely that's not how the world sees me? Do I really look like that?

No, actually, you don't.

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.

Rebuttal

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

Bimbodom's new Bridgets


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


KANIKA Gahlaut Mumbai


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


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

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


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


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



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


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

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



End article, begin me talking


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



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



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



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



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



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



UPDATE FROM THE COMMENTS SECTION


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


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

What IS a chick blog? Any thoughts?

Video killed the radio star

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


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




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



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



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


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


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


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Yeah, I'm done.

Her name is Tiffany Twisted, she got the Mercedes Benz, she got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, she calls friends

> Will you forgive me, dear reader, for posting every day? I suppose posting every day wouldn't be that bad, if only I had something to say. (Hey that rhymed!) But I really do have nothing to do, Sims 2 has lost its enchantment from having been played till 2 or 3 in the morning, I watched a lovely show on Star World called Adventure Divas--a travel show all about these chicks who go everywhere and meet interesting women. Today's episode was on Cuba and my favourite part was where the anchor, a tall blonde American in a white t-shirt and blue jeans, said, "Cuban women own their ass." There was such poetry in that line and it got me thinking about women who don't own their asses or for that matter any other part of their body. You see them everywhere, beautiful women, tall women, shapely women, regarding their breasts or bottoms as detached objects, not really part of them at all. Though I have this friend, Sumitra, who's not exactly pretty in the conventional sense, but she's an athlete, or at least she used to be and she has a lovely toned body and she works it. You can tell, even when the rest of us are all dressed up and eye shadowed, she'll prance in in shorts or a denim skirt and the way she throws her shoulders back and stands very very straight usually makes her the centre of attention.

> You may wonder why I've chosen to disable anonymous comments. It wasn't just that last cyber-debate type post that got me to do that. It's something I've been toying with for a while. Before, the offensive comments were just deleted and then I decided I didn't want to do that anymore. I mean, after all, though this is an interactive space and though this blog would not be the same if it weren't for the comments, I feel a little bad when I spend time and energy typing up something only to have it completely negated by people who say, "Oh you're so self-centred" or oh, "You'd sleep with anyone", y'know? I used to have a tag-board, and then when people started using that as advertisement space, I took that down too. Now, instead of anonymous comments, I get email, which I like far, far better, because people don't generally send hate mail, they send thoughtful responses, things they have thought about. Not that that means you should stop commenting, of course! I loves the comments!

> I'm having a parteee today. My mum's out of town, my toe is broken and I thought those two were good enough reasons to have a party in the first place. I've invited tons of people, from the journos to the just-barely-out-of-college types and I think it should make for an interesting evening. Plus, since my Saturday night plans, thanks to cast and all, involved sitting at home, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to bring my Saturday night to me (If Mohammed cannot go to the mountain etc). I've been having these sort of get-together type parties for as long as I can remember. My mom's been travelling and leaving me to hold the fort since I was in first year college and then everyone welcomed the idea of a house with no parents, where they borught their own alcohol and where they could do their own thing. Now of course, as we grow older, the get together have changed from the drunken I-don't-know-who-that-person-is to quieter affairs. But still, very fun. And no doubt, plenty of fodder for post-hangover blog.

> And ooh, most exciting. It has recently been revealed to me that I have readers in MIT and Harvard. Hello, hello! And of course, hello, hello to reader in Oxford. Look at me appealing to all these supersmart people :)

>One more thing, I think before I go. Shivam asked me in the post with a gazillion comments, why I chose to stay anonymous. (I'm not really super anonymous anymore, but why fight over small details). The reason I choose to cling to my last shards of anonymity is because, well, very simply, it's fun!

> And absolutely the last thing now, this has kept me entertained for a while, if you think you know your 80s music, give it a shot.

Th..th.. that's all folks! (I suddenly miss Looney Toons. Not the new Cartoon Network avatar they've gotten but the really old ones. My favourite was the one in which Bugs gets nominated for an Oscar and they show flashbacks from some older toons. Too funny. And my favourite Tom And Jerry one was when Jerry gets his big muscular cousin to beat up Tom. Ooh, and the one where Tuffy, that adorable grey mouse in the diaper and Jerry fight with Tom over the Thanksgiving dinner) *We're tiny, we're tooney, we're all a little looney, and in this cartoony, we're invading your tv!" (A prize for anyone who can identify that. Promise!)

EDIT 1: Funny on a day when I really thought I'd barely manage to scrape together enough material for one teeny-tiny post, I keep remembering new things I meant to post. When I first read this I thought, hey cool, another blogger writing about TC. THEN I read on, and *sigh* very wicked, but still very funny. Go look.

EDIT 2: It's been pointed out to me by Kalyan (thanks!) that the "real" lyrics for the title of this post should go "Her MIND was Tiffany twisted, she got the Mercedes BENDS." Is that true? In which case I've been singing the wrong lyrics all my life. Ooh, you guys should totally tell me what lyrics you've always gotten wrong, I think it'll make for a fun follow up post, don't you?

Aruba, Jamaica, Ooh I'm Gonna Take Ya, To Bahama, C'mon Pretty Mama

The four tequila shots in my empty stomach are now sending gentle tendrils of warmth up and down my system. And I'm sooooooooooooooo buzzed. I'm so buzzed in fact, that I'm having to backspace all of this and rewrite just so it looks legible.

Where was I, gentle reader? I was at the launch of a new tequila brand ("So smooth, you don't need salt madam"). It looks like my beats now include books, embassies and alcohol! And I'm not complaining either. Nothing says contentment more than man with a tray full of tequila shots pausing discreetely at your table and proferring it to you. It would be rude to say no, even. So I didn't.

I love my job, some days.

Met Rana Dasgupta and his girlfriend at the launch too. No doubt I babbled at him. I've been doing that quite frequently lately. At the Namita Gokhale launch I went to yesterday, I met her daughter and asked her vigourously, whether Jay Panda was divorced. "No, him and Jagi are very much together," she said, raising an eyebrow, because this is really not the kind of conversation you expect to be having in the polite environs of the ladies room. (Yes, we socialise in there. Yes, that's what takes us so long). So I went on at length, noticing that my foot was being inserted further and further into my mouth till finally she said, "This has been an interesting conversation. here's my card."

I spent the rest of the book launch skulking behind pillars. Once I caught her eye and she winked at me, but besides that there were no further incidents.

I've been quite the social butterfly this week. Met up with some ex-colleagues on Tuesday, two of whom are moving to Mumbai and the other, Urvashi, I met today too, with Jabberwock at the Defence Colony Subway. Both of us tried to convince her to blog, but even though I came up with my FAVOURITE BLOG URL OF ALL TIME (no secrets from you dot blogspot dot com) (which actually turned out to be a real-life blog with this woman bitching about her husband and men who were like "wet noodles" during sex. Sorry, Urvashi, now you can't have it) she didn't seem very interested.

And that combined with drinks with some people and dinner with others, makes this quite a busy week. Blogging has been much discussed, by the way, and I realise really, there's no point keeping my identity a secret any more. At least in Delhi. where everyone knows who I am. I still nourish hopes of anonymity amongst my foreign visitors though.

Oh and ooh, bought this brilliant book the other day at Full Circle. Go read.

People are strange, when you're a stranger

So yeah, a lot of people know who I am in real life. And I know who they are too. It's fun meeting other bloggers at events and gatherings because you can look at them and think, "Hmmm... I so know what they're going to say about this." Of course, with all the fun and excitement, you (and by you, I totally mean me) kinda lose some of your own anonymity, but that's a risk you have to take I guess. Plus, you can see them sorta sizing you up in their heads. I know I can hear the wheels in their heads going, "Ooh, so this is eM. Ooh, she's so not what she's like when she blogs."

Because I'm really not, y'know. In real life (and I don't know whether I should be telling you this, but it's really late and guess where I've just come from) I'm very reticent. I don't like talking about me or my life, unless I'm completely comfortable with the person I'm talking to. And this site is like, what, ten per cent of what actually goes on in my day. So I guess it sorta bothers me when people act like they totally know me, because of my blog. I'm sort of like two different people--eM and whatever-my-real-name-is, one spunky and spirited and the other really rather quiet with not much to say.

Cyber identities are wierd aren't they? I don't know what you, my regular readers, imagine me as, but I know I have a picture of each of the bloggers I read regularly. I can sort of see what they look like, imagine them to be absolutely wonderful people with strong opinions. But are you really? Aren't we just nicer on our blogs, don't we just project the best, most articulate parts of our natures?

Okay, so how many of you have friends who read your blogs? Friends who perhaps live abroad or far away and don't email and think the best way to stay in touch with you is to have your URL on their Favourites links. I know I do. I know many people I know and love read this and I know when I finally email them about something they'll say, "Ya, but I read it in your blog!" Are we losing the art of having conversation already? Perhaps, when my friends return, I'll only be able to converse with them in long monologues, rambling on and on and on about how I think and how I feel till they get totally sick of me.

Why do we read other people's blogs? We certainly don't want to listen to people holding forth on their passions, or on books they've read recently or on their exboyfriends. Then why do most of us, invariably start our day by quickly quickly checking the sites we've read so often that Internet Explorer completes them for us?

I've met some of the bloggers I read in real life and usually, but not always, when we meet, our conversations turn to blogging. Over and over we rehash posts and over and over we try to match the other person to their online identities. I've had blog gossip last me through entire booklaunches, or through drinks after the LIFW, and I'm always fascinated and I always want to know more about the "real" person behind the superstar bloggers.

Nw with articles coming out "revealing real identities" of people who really preferred to stay anonymous, I don't know how much longer this love fest with blogs is going to last. The media is glutting itself with blog stories, all over the fucking place, and pretty soon they will tire of it, just as everyone else will. But till then my hit counter and everyone else's keeps rising and we (the Bloggers) watch our growing numbers with a mixture of pride and dismay because really what do we say to this audience who expects new insights or developments every day?

And soon Blog Burnout, already prevalent in the US will filter down here and youandmeforever dot blogspot dot com will vanish and blogs will be just like personal journals which no one reads and we'll all go back to using pen and paper again. How sad.

Because the mystery, my friends, is the secret of a good blog, the pseudonyms, the personal asides, the feeling that you could know this person from somewhere because you're in the same city or country or planet, but you just don't know who they are.

Maybe I know you all : )