Also love?

She went into the shower the first thing. A hot, hot bath would do her good, yes. As soon as the slightly steaming water touched her tense shoulders, she relaxed. Almost loosened up. It couldn’t be that bad, she started to tell herself. So he was being unreasonable. He wasn’t liking her hanging out with so many of her guy friends, especially one of them, and that made her angry. It was fine really, weren’t they engaged? Was he really supposed to be upset?

No, he wasn’t upset, he was just being very monosyllablic about it. Yes, okay, you could do that, or you could just laze at home…were his exact words..

Why? Why should she laze at home? She had a tough week, fighting it out with mad bosses, shitty deadlines and work, well, never mind the work. Out of all this, which part was entertainment? And why couldn’t it be the way she wanted it to be..a stroll, a drive, a smoke, a movie, thoughtful conversations with a friend, all this was fine…should have been fine..to him as well..why was he being difficult?

The water made her sleepy, her bones were definitely tired. She wondered how undone would she be by her forties…sigh..

Drying herself and wearing her sweats and a jacket, she decided to call him up and ask anyway. But the phone beeped before she could reach it. The message read, ‘shona je t’aime’


And she was undone again. It wasn’t fair. Suddenly she forgot her resolve. Maybe she was being unreasonable as well. He lived far away and the fact that she was making new friends obviously unsettled him. So she could take it easy. Atleast for him.
Sigh. Of all things in the world, it was love that startled her the most. And beckoned to her the most.

She curled up in her blanket and began a long and warm conversation with him...

Sab chalta hai!

Since morning, I was low as both he and baba had trains to catch. While his train was on schedule, baba’s kept getting late and soon, the delay got hilarious. It became 1am at night. Anyway, first Anjali came and we spent a lovely hour making fun of weird facebook albums of even weirder people. Soon she left and Mr.Forever came. He knew both my people were gone and hence decided to drop in for some ‘adda’. I had nothing to share so asked him to watch ‘How I met your mother’ with me. Gave him a little background ( though he would even watch astha tv with me) first.

Unfortunately for me, we watched the episode where all the characters discuss how they lost their virginities. So here I was, stunned into silence, watching all these American people doing it with enthu on a computer screen with my biggest admirer next to me. Sigh.

Soon, another friend dropped by. This friend recently called off her wedding with her boyfriend of ten years. It is a sad situation since then and we friends don’t know who to blame, it just gets nastier, the name calling etc. I was quiet and realized she had something to say and so smsed Mr.Forever ‘she has come to talk about the split. Wont say it with u around. Would u leave?’ the guy read it and yet stayed for tea and then left. I swear I could kill him.

Later, my girlfriend began with asking me how her ex was doing. I told her that his family was now looking for a girl to get him married asap, as they had been ruffled enough. She said she would probably die if that happened. (Funny, as she had called it off in the first place.) Then she went on to tell me how very unfair he had gotten in the end, and a little tear trickled from one of her eyes. I was a little taken by surprise as I associate the single-trickling-tear a sign of art cinema. I was impressed.

Then she went on to say how she would always hate him for making such a mess of the whole thing. I wondered if the poor guy going to a shrink to recover from the crisis wasn’t sad enough.

Another friend joined in. This smart ass is always copying his cooler friends. Being invited by two of his girlfriends to get suttas was an honor for him. So he got us some suttas and together, we stood in the super chilly verandah discussing life. He is soon going to New Zealand to study, and he urged our friend to also join him if she wanted to get out of the whole circuit for a couple of years. She said she was already in talks with a visa agency and was wondering about the course, when he said, ‘sab chalta hai! In new Zealand, you can go to study anything.’ I was shocked. This is what education had come to. One was using it to just go abroad and hit on poor firangi girls who didn’t know what they were going to be hit by, while the other simply wanted to escape. It saddened me a bit.

My girlfriend also kept talking to someone on the phone in a very soft voice that made us joke that after the whole fiasco, she should just become a serial dater. She laughed and joined in. I couldn’t understand how could someone be so okay with all that had happened just a little while back?

Were people taking things for granted or was I going too deep into the heart of things? One discussed education like it was a bloody tool to get to other things, while the other’s reaction towards her ten year old relationship moved from regret to excitement about the coming future with just a cigarette and a single tear.

Human beings confuse me.

Birthday Blues!

It was his birthday and I decided to go a little out of my way. Only a little. There are reasons to that. Mainly because its long distance and there is a big chance things might lose their way in between. And secondly, he is a guy, and only these many things appeal to him, my options were less. So I did what I did best. I wrote him a letter. A brilliant hand written one. I told him he is perfect (overdid that part) and how things are totally different from what you expect them to be mostly. Like when I found him. Never had thought a vegetarian Jain boy with a very religious family fit into my scheme of things. And they somehow do, and very happily so. I astonish myself when I catch myself thinking fondly of the trip to his place, with all the love from his family, all the movie watching, greeting relatives, even wearing sarees! Phew! And it just fits. Wow!

I also took out a very old card I had bought from Hallmark, almost a decade back. Those were the days when I was a loner, mostly growing up and getting to know the world on my own. Had seen a card with a wrinkled newspaper with a crossword on its front that said ‘A friend is someone who is with you in your ups, downs and across!’ had absolutely loved the old charm it had and ever since, kept waiting to give it to someone. No one really fit the bill. But then he did and I wrote his name on the card and put it with the letter.

Next I went looking for a gift, in the more conventional way. Shirts, perfumes and I was done. I am trying really hard but I just cant get to like shopping. It bugs me and there are too many expectations! Why is silk in and khadi out? Why are baggy clothes never in? what is wrong with a big dial watch for me? I will never have the wisdom fashionable girls have, I guess.

Anyway, coming back to the gift hunting, I headed to Om book shop like it was my second nature and looked over books. Got my final Twilight book and then rummaged some more. I know he likes biographies, especially of really successful people, he read the speech of the Apple guy like a few fifty times and looked as inspired as a fresh orange does. And at the biography section, I saw a smiling Obama from the book called ‘Dreams of My Father’. Bingo!
Now that was my story.



He got the gift three days late, thanks to the fog and the sleet and ofcourse the distance. And once he opened it, he rejoiced. And umm, that’s all. On the phone he went, ‘Wow! Thanks so much, it was a beautiful thing to do. I promise I will read it. It reached today though…hehehe..really, I had no idea…you are too cute, you know I don’t read much and I think you will make sure I become a reader like you! Thanks!!’

Now, I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. I mean some of it, I wanted to hear, but I am kind of unsure. I thought he will be surprised, and he was. But it was like he was very happy only, like it was a sort of a thing that was obvious to him, almost expected from me. Surprise wasn’t it. Since when did I get so predictable?

I hate waiting another year.

Happy 'Hope'y Year!

Its almost time for a brand new year. But I guess a little flashback is going to be good for the system.

A lot has happened some good, some very good and well, some just about the regular fare that life dishes out. My elder sister gave birth to a beautiful baby girl and I don’t think I can thank God enough. Also, my mom is getting steadily and slowly better from her illness and it’s a strange feeling to be able to hope again, for her I mean.

Amongst other happy things, ahem, a friend, after remaining a pretty single for 24 years has finally decided to give love a shot, and while she says its still not love, what she means is, she is going with the flow and is enjoying whatever it is. I, of course have predicted greater things…

Nandu left for UK and that was like a punch in the stomach. But trust Nandu to do things differently. There is a mail almost every week from her and the pretty lass even sent a beautiful postcard from Falmouth. It is impossible to outdo her in caring for someone. Miss her and somehow, don’t miss her at all.
Love wise, things were like a river, flowing just that much. Comfortable and a breeze. Mature I am getting, is it?
Traveled a lot and even left the country in one of my trips. Wowie!!

Time for one of those I-am-thankful and I-will-remember lists. Here goes:


•Awesome friends, I didn’t fight the whole year!
•Stepping into a more serious relationship than ever. The funniest part is, the more serious it is getting, the lighter am feeling.
•Eating to my heart’s delight, knowing the coming year maybe a very different one.
•Music, movies and theatre, I love them all.
•Traveling too much, may the streak never break.
•Things stopped hurting that much. Infact, I could even smile about some of them.
•The job still sucks, but am doing quite fine, thank you.
•MJ died, and Lisa Ray is sick. I remember spending umpteen afternoons dancing to Beat It and Afreen, couldn’t have enough of these guys. Sigh.
•Gucci and my fight for his survival. Almost like one of those dog-human movies, we beat the odds again and again. Couldn’t do it without a few people though. To them!
•Too much merry making + too much being yourself = trouble. Point noted.
•Exes make for difficult friends. Especially if they are still not over it. Point noted again.
•Twilight happened and I realized out of all the scary creatures, vampires manage to make my knees go weak. Though werewolves are my type. Period.
•Experiencing a long distance relationship. Comments reserved. All I will say, however, is that I am getting there.

So in a nutshell or a coconut shell, that was my life this year. Probably a more tame one since the last few years, but I aint complaining. Life should be wild, tame and all things nice. Here is to wishing that 2010 will be a joyride!

What's age gotta do with it?!

There was a time when I was super young. Like, really, literally young. If I ever fell in love with a sitcom actor (which I repeatedly did) I would imdb about him and wow I could see his date of birth and it was almost always four to seven years older than I was. And there on, I could dream about him. Happily.

Cut to now. Everytime I now try to imdb a new actor I like (for instance, the Twilight actors) they are always two to three years younger! And I lose my fantasy filled frenzy just like a glass of not-had Pepsi. The worst happened when this very cute actor I looked for turned out to be a 1992 born!!!! I mean, come on, who is born in the 90s?! sigh.

I have come to the conclusion that I will not imdb anymore. I didn’t realize at what point of time in life did I leave the cute cradle behind and became the cradle snatcher instead . Tcha!

A revelation

I have since long been looking at ways to be free. It has been a long long time now. Every year, I decide, now I am this many years old. Surely, I can be free now? Or atleast freer than what I am now? And well, the kind of freedom I ache for evades me.
Now is the time though. Suddenly, its not only at sight, its very very easy even. I can see the ways to be free. I have found not one, but two such glorious ways to be so, to be content in the ‘now’, to be able to realize the bigger picture, like one would say.
I am hoping I am not lazy in its wake. I am hoping I take the best of it and become very powerful in my reality, the master of moi thoughts. It seems just around the corner now. It feels too good to be true.
But then, unlike other times, it is really, actually, true.

Dil, sad titli

Feeling extremely melancholic. Its got nothing to do with affairs outside of myself, but something going on within. Have I said it enough times that I don’t like winters? Yes I am getting better at liking it and coping with it, but on days when it gets to me, I become really hopeless. People shouldn’t be such extremes. It seems like the end of the world on days like these.

The dark grey gloom that is everywhere in the sky absolutely kills the happy oxygen in my blood. Instead, something weird takes over. A longing, an unnamed thing which I want but don’t know how to get…Maybe I believe in tragedy too much. I believe in unrequited love and I totally believe that one is never the same after love has touched you.

Of course, there are different kinds of love. And you never love a different person in the same way. There is a new love, a new kind of emotion attached with a new person. But it is always different. And it’s a good thing that it is different, otherwise the comparisons would be too many to count and too difficult to overlook. It is a good thing that nothing is the same.

Everything is beautiful in its own special way. The love, the separation, the time alone, the tragedy that overwhelms you, the feeling of being on your own, and then the happiness. Each phase is beautiful, unique in itself. And it is good to know that books reflect you so totally sometimes. It makes you believe that somewhere in the world, each person is feeling one of these things, and imagining themselves to be the only one going through that. When I was lonely and sad, I thought I would die. And I thought the numbness would claim the whole of me. And now when I am happy, nothing really touches me, it’s a fleeting emotion, this everyday life. Things hurt on and off, but they don’t mess me up. But when am vulnerable, everything can attack, everything can hurt.

People around me have nothing to do with it. Not even things, situations, emotions. Its just something within, playing havoc.