Shitness.

I'm trying to not be negative in life so instead of saying "i have had a pathetic day today", let me just say "i had an ambiguously interesting day today."

Anyhoo, I met three ladies from office over coffee. It was as i had expected it to be; and my later reactions were also pretty damn predictable. However, i don't want to think/write/talk about that - partly because i'm gonna be doing just that for a long long time after some time but mostly because i've had enough of recounting it--first for my dear dear friend and then for my dearest boyfriend. I need a break so have decided to talk about other things. Random things that are bothering me more than this prospective job that's leaving no stone unturned to become the sole center of my life.

Something annoying to the point of sickening happened in class today. It was, of course, my own undoing as is everything else that affects me this profoundly. This teacher was talking about Indian culture, and what defines, forms it. Now, this is one class i usually focus all my energies on not hearing a word the teacher says, because when i do listen to her, it makes me angry.

Our mutual dislike is not hidden from anyone, though i've not done anything concrete to make it obvious and bring it out in the open, yet. That is, of course, if you don't count my not adding her on facebook, sleeping through her class, never carrying a textbook or taking notes(i'm practically a steno in some classes, so unusual behaviour for the nerd that's me), having a standard insouciant expression on my face and hiding behind someone, anyone to avoid seeing her face, which by the way, bugs me no end.

Anyway, I make sure i don't participate in her classes but it's only human to err, right? I did open my gob today and said i think it's unfair to exclude the upper middle class and high-brow, elite culture when one talks of "Indian culture". It's at best, buying into into the Oriental philosophy to posit the country on rickshaws and the people below poverty line as the "real India".

If i am rich, have a BMW, go to IHC, drink, smoke, work and be promiscuous, I do not cease to be Indian or become any "less Indian" than a tribal woman whom she called "closer to indian soil, quite literally." I get where that's coming from...because the tribe's experience is unadulterated and "untarnished" by global exposure, she's arguably "more" Indian; a representative of the true, Incredible India.

Even as this makes some sense, there is one slightly different position, which i know will find few takers (or none, except yours truly!) within the red walls of this college. I think culture, in general, and Indian culture, specifically, is about integration and assimilation of other cultures. Just because it's a new trend or a minority, there's no reason why it should be discredited  orcriticised for being "foreign" to Indian soil and culture. Call me unconventional, but i think being rich and flaunting it is a manifestation of one's attitude to life and money... Owning an audi, loving ballet and preferring Jeffery Dean Morgan to SRK won't make me any less Indian or my practices any alien to the culture. Last i checked, we were about accepting and learning and i'm sorry but i refuse to be a hardheaded prick.

P.S. Talked to Wasim Akram yesterday and wrote his piece for him, that has found its way to the first sports page of TOI. In an unrelated story, HT screwed my column real bad. The grammar has gone for a six and the editing makes it look like a paragraph made out of five bullet points, minus the bullets. It's essentially a barrage of just, well, points. Most irritating. Besides, i didn't get my copy, again! I'm almost glad i'm bidding farewell to Journalism in no time. I just lied. O:)

Rocks and Pebbles,
Hobbes!

Girlfriends.

There was a time i thought girls make for horrible friends because they just. can't. keep. a. secret. That was nine years ago and then i met my best friend. The rest, as they say, is history. I started rethinking my judgement of my own sex and gave them a second chance. Only to wind up thinking what i knew nine years back as a tween.

I'm not going to go into how this renewed realisation makes me feel about myself and my judging skills. I've instead been thinking, what is it that makes for a good friend? Here's my check list, or what used to be one:

1. You're comfortable with each other.
2. They stand by you, always. No matter what.
3. They tell you what's wrong with you, in a way that won't hurt you too much. Constructive criticism peppered with a lot of praises, because it's heartbreaking to have a friend, who knows you inside out, think you're a lost case.
4. They can deal woth your mood swings, and you can deal with theirs.
5. They're trustworthy.
6. They can keep a secret.

I've been discovering the dynamics that go behind the last bit and it has not been a pleasant experience. Is she still my friend if she told her friend my secret, because she, perhaps, felt closer to her? If she let the cat out of the bag because she sucks at keeping her gob shut, and that's just how she is, take it or leave it?
It doesn't mean she (they) likes me any less, or doesn't care for me...i know she does, i know all of them do. I have my only good memories of college with them and it's inconceivable that we could have had such great times together if there was no mutual love and happy feelings.

Clearly, i have a lot to figure out and learn even in matters of friendship.

Of life and death

I’ve been thinking, is there a fixed number of smiles and tears that are spread and shed in this world? Or is there such a fixed number for each life? Is it that for every hour that you spend smiling and being truly happy, there’s another hour in the offing that has to be spent being angry or perhaps regretting, even crying?

P.B. Shelley did write “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” His purpose may have been to give heart and hope to those who needed it but I have come to know from experience, that the opposite is equally true. After every bright, sunny day, the cold, dark night is but moments away. Happiness and melancholy seem to be alternating… Even as many like to believe that leading a happy life has a lot to do with destiny and one’s karma , I can’t shrug off the feeling that maybe, just maybe, there’s a pattern to this randomness. It is not simply about luck, people’s behaviour and outlook towards life but something more. Something none of us have been able to put a finger on.

I know it’s a pretty surreal, almost obscure thought, but it seems to be leading somewhere…I don’t know where. It seems to be one of those life’s unsolvable mysteries, another one of which is what happens after death. Is there life on the other side? Is it a better life? Philosophers, religious leaders, saints and sadhus all have their own version but how does one know the real one? One can’t.

I guess that’s what life is: inscrutable, indecipherable and ever-changing. And I believe it’s best left that way. The more one prods, broods, questions things that clearly aren’t meant to be known, and not even that important, the unhappier one is. Ignorance is bliss after all, and some knowledge/power is just not worth it. Yes, I’m thinking of Dr. Faustus too.

A suitable price, please?

He says write only when you have the urge, otherwise don’t waste your and other’s time, and don’t kill trees. He also says there are no rules and that as a writer, you make your own rules. He is one of the best I’ve seen, and one I look forward to reading. Sadly, the last bit isn’t going to happen in a hurry. Firstly because I’ve more or less given up reading; and secondly because his books are way out of my wallet’s reach. It seems almost like a conspiracy to make literature elitist, a domain exclusive to those high-headed, arrogant intellectuals who are too full of themselves to be tolerable.

I concede that it may be an ill-founded accusation but I believe I should be excused for I feel so let down, betrayed. We know it’s not a fair world-there’s unequal distribution of wealth, happiness and just about everything else-but this common piece of knowledge doesn’t make the fact any easier to accept.

It sucks that I can’t buy a book i so want to buy/read/get signed. It sucks that i have to spend my parents' money and don't have enough of my own. Also, it sucks that i can't see things through to their logical conclusion and lose the drive mid-way, much like this post.

Jo bekhauf dooba vahi toh chala aaya paar.

I'm doing this post for no other reason than that this song is playing and i can't hold my tears back.

I believe that a lot of times in life, one has to take a leap of faith and believe that people around you and the Superpower watching over you will see you through everything. Winning is a lot more fun and losing a lot less difficult when you have the right people by your side.

My life is full of such leaps of faith. It's funny how i was taking them without knowing it even in my not so brief atheistic phase. Being in a relationship, i've figured, was one too. I'd rather not trace the trajectory of this one since that has never been a very happy experience with both of us having wildly different memory/view/interpretations of pretty much everything. It's all the more bizarre because sometimes it's like talking about two different, unrelated events altogether.

I was trying to make a point here. Something about how this relationship has been an enriching experience regardless of all the tears and mad, mad fights. Although talking about the positives feels highly imbued with ulterior motives since i've successfully managed to drag my tired boyfriend online and know that he's probably reading it.

I don't know how i feel about that. There goes my next post.

Mann ke matt pe mat chaliyo ye jeete ji marva dega?

I've been thinking. In matters of love, who should one give more importance to : the head or the heart? It's a critical question since they both seem to be saying the exact opposite things in my case, more or less all the time. Since i still have a relationship, clearly, the little, love struck, romantic voice of my heart has been outweighing the rational yet, i must admit, littler voice of my head. Until now, that is.

I've been thinking of going the pros-and-cons-list way but that's always my last option and i'm not sure it's time for that just yet. I don't feel very comfortable with changing my life drastically on the basis of two lists i arbitrarily drew up; partly because life isn't black and white like that, but mostly because it sucks that i always want to do what i shouldn't be doing according to the list. So i decided to write here.

Do i stay because i like to believe that we can still be good together or do i get out because a small part of me knows it won't be the same ever again? Does it make sense to be with a man who's almost expecting me to cheat on or break off with him unsolicitly as soon as i get more exposure, meet more men, translation : come across better options? Do i take it as an insult? Is he saying i don't have options and i'm desperate and promiscuous by nature(which i guess he thinks all women are, by virtue of their two Xs)? Or do i oversee it as a manifestation of his insecurity and empathise?

What are the implications of expecting promiscuity and inevitable break-up in a relationship? I don't know the answer yet, but i know it has more far reaching consequences than i've been able to expect or even understand.

I do know, however, that all's not well when noone trusts noone anymore. At least one of the two has to be the blind fool who believes everything--genuinely and unquestioningly. When this one person takes off the blindfold too, you know you have trouble on your hands and it is perhaps, only a matter of time from hereon.

Move on?

I've been wondering... How do we know what it is that we really want out of a relationship?

How do we figure out if our relationship is really on a decline, or if it's just one of those minor speed bumps that one encounters ever so often in a passionate love relationship?

Perhaps the number of speedbumps encountered per week is a sign, but can emotions be quantified and dealt with mathematically? Could it be that the fights are a sign of increasing closeness, a marker of that uncomfortable period of transition after which you emerge a more mature couple?

How do we know if we should stay because it's fulfilling and makes us happy; or get out because there is no future in sight and any later could be too late? Besides, how can one be so sure that there really is no future? Even if there isn't, is having a future and a marriage really all that important?

Why is it that we are okay with moving on to more "stable" relationships with guys who perhaps earn more or are about our age or are cuter, instead of staying with the man we love and seeing our love through thick and thin? Is finding love really like finding that perfect job, almost unattainable without switching a lot at first? Is love really the stuff of the lost Eden, no more to be found in this fallen world, or can a girl still hope?