bits and pieces

Most people tend to have a stock supply of stories, the tales they tell when they invite you over to their house for dinner; the ones every person in your family knows because each of them have been told the story at least once, and some more.

People have begun to bore me. People I used to know; whose company gave me pleasure, or, at the very least, entertainment. I wonder exactly how snobbish I will grow to be, with this new-discovered disgust of repetitions. I will move out of the house because I cannot stand to be around my mothers complaints of the world at large (because I can quote them in my sleep) and I will stop talking to most of the engineers I know (because if you have heard one of them talk you have heard them all) and I will


I have always had a problem letting things (oh, and people) go.

I have been searching for people.
The old ones who would stop by and pretend to be interested in my witty recollections of mundane events. I beg your pardon, they probably did enjoy them - I know I did.

The T's life has been unusually full of adventure lately. She wishes she could stop and tell everyone, but she's been having trouble with her words of late.

However, in other news, she's feeling much better about other miseries of her tumultuous life. Part of this is because she is certain sombody else will come along who will understand who carroll and kent are, and

truth-telling, secret-keeping

For the longest time, the T has been an endless reservoir of things I could not tell the neighbours. She keeps secrets better than most people we know, except perhaps the dead, and those in the profession of keeping secrets. The T is my way out of madness. The T and all my friends.
Or has been.

I will make my first-ever appointment with a psychologist some time today.
Friends I've told have asked if I'm sure of this decision, and I wonder about it myself. I feel as one might feel who can no longer say, "I never stole.", "I never lied.", "I never cheated.". I feel as someone might who has by a single action crossed an invisible line into being a lesser person. I feel as though I've let myself down; I don't like that feeling. Part of me is afraid of being judged, I think: as though the admission that there are things that bother me that are beyond my control makes me less worthy than I was the instant before I admitted to it. And that is odd, because I have never had a problem with admitting to anything before...

I wonder what the difference is between someone who talks to friends about their issues and someone who pays to talk to a stranger about it. I wonder now, but I won't wonder for very much longer. In all my little life not one of the million events that put me into bed crying ever made me seriously consider therapy as a solution. Not one.
But now I do.
This amuses and terrifies me.

I could talk to friends again. I could call my friends and say, I need you. Please help me. and they would come. I did it, and they came. I couldn't do that now, though. I can't do that again. This is too big, and too painful, and has been festering for far too long for a single two-hour crying-jag over coffee to fix, as much as I wish it could.
Isn't it odd how one single solitary situation has affected everything else about my life?

I could validate this decision. I could break it down into constituent reasons and discover it makes perfect sense.
The simple truth is this, though. I have talked to everybody, and nobody made the pain go away. I tried very hard to will it, push it, pretend it away - to talk, pray, cry, meditate, exercise, work it away - and I failed. And it didn't go away. Well, a person who doesn't know her limitations is a fool.
At some point to solve a problem one must call in a professional.
Preferably before the house falls down.

incompleteds

Once in a while I have a thought that begs to be shared so pitifully that I force myself to sit in front of this here box and attempt to pull it bodily out of my brain. Alas, often my skill will not allow it to be done, and at other times it is my laziness at fault, and so I'm stuck with tens of drafts that I will never complete as long as they're sitting there unpublished.
Here they are, then. With dates attached. I think I might just keep adding to them as I go along.


My city has become a menagerie of shouting people.
3/14/07

wts txt spk? is dat whn u tlk lik dis? i cant do it 2 wel........its tuff to think of ways to shrtn the wrds apart 4m removing vowels dammit a relapse.
But that's text speak, and I want to talk about the postrophe. Lynn Truss wrote an entire book about it, but I don't care. How do perfectly intelligent, erudite, well-read persons end up confusing its and it's?

What's the likelihood that there'll be an entire book on text-speak soon? Very high, I'd say. People talk about it all the time. Mostly the ones talking are the ones bemoaning the loss of sensible spelling, and I've read at least four newspaper editorials on the subject.

I'm not doing

What I can't get around is the staggering amount of apostrophe abuse around. I don't think I'll be able to say it any better than Lynn Truss, so I shan't try. I will just choose one certain little annoying trend I've noticed in

I can't understand its and it's, though. Some of the smartest and best read people I know make that error. It's horrendous. Its horrendous.

I hate the way it pulls you up right in the middle of whatever you're reading. Inexcusable, in my opinion, especially when they spend their time poking fun at people with poor grammar and then turn around and say "whatever" when you point the error out to them yourself....

I mean, don't you read whatever you've just written before you post it???

Damn, some people are stubborn and stupid.

3/18/07 9:07 PM


Something that was brought home to me the other day was the fact that far too much depends on appearances. How much do we change by walking down the street proclaiming we can do as we want, wear what we want, say what we want? Perhaps not as much as we aim for.
The truth is that the way you walk says so much more about you than the clothes you wear. Unless, of course, you're wearing something designed to be so eye-catching that it detracts from everything else!

Is there a line that "decent" girls should not cross? Yes. There is. But it isn't the same line for everyone. My idea of clothes I will not step out of the house wearing are different from those of my sister, for example.
Just the other day, I watched a young man at a traffic signal pull out a comb and style his hair into something closely resembling a bush of some sort, but he seemed exrtremely pleased with the result. So that's my line. Wear something that makes you look good.
Something in colours that complement. A cut that accentuates. Be pretty.
3/29/07 7:04 AM

My boss thinks women should protect themselves from male eyes.
He asked me about Blank Noise. "Why do you think men do those things? It's because of the way women dress! Between a woman wearing a miniskirt and a woman wearing a sari, who do you think is more likely to be molested? If you don't respect yourself how can a man respect you?"
"Men and women are made to attract each other", he says. He thinks women can prevent harassment by covering themselves up. "If you wear a burkha", he says, "then you're completely protected."
There was something so entirely disturbing about the way he told me this; the manner in which he posed it as a self-evident truth shocked me so much; that I found myself unable to defend my position at all.

Is it a male conspiracy, this celebrating a woman's freedom to deck her body? I do not know. Perhaps men do go along with women's rights because they think that they will get a chance to see more skin. But then again, women should be able to show their skin even if they know men will look.

What do we ask for, with the clothes we wear? Respect? Attention? Flattery?
Does it make a difference?
What we wear should reflect where we're going, what we're doing, what season it is. I think the question of poorly dressed does not arise as long as you are dressed to fit the occasion. Isn't it rude to attend a wedding in shorts, for example? It isn't about covering yourself, or being decent. It is about fitting the profile, about looking as though you belong. And as long as we are part of society, it is necessary to make sure we respect the boundaries that circumstances demand.
The only thing that's changing is the idea of everyday wear. What is it appropriate to wear, if you're not doing anything special? One wears shorts or jogging tracks to walk in the morning, to go to the gym, to play tennis. One wears a sari to a wedding, one wears formal clothes to interviews. One wears jeans to construction sites. We dress sensibly as long as we know the boundaries created by societal norms or dictated by comfort and common sense.
What happens with a regular outfit, though? What are you "allowed" to wear when you're out on the street on an ordinary day? Things that send the wrong message? Who decides that? I think each of us do. What I think every woman must do, in my opinion, is to look at herself once before she leaves the house. Stand in front of the mirror. Lift your arms, bend over. If your clothes stay where they're supposed to, and you don't expose any more skin, any fat, any hidden parts that were covered when you were standing still, then you're okay to go.
If you do expose those things, well, then, you're just not well dressed.
The women on the street I find badly dressed are the ones wearing things that don't suit their figures. Tight shirts showing tires of fat. Low pants that fit so poorly you can see underwear when they sit down. The beautiful thing about a salwar kameez is the fact that it suits anyone if cut properly, and the main reason we wear clothes is to be comfortable, isn't it?

I have rules about things I would not wear in public. I will not wear something that reveals my nipples, because of the fear of titillating the man on the street. I will not wear clothes that display cleavage, because of the same reason. I will not wear clothes that show my thighs above the knee, because I believe shorts or short skirts absolutely do not flatter my figure.

The mental thumb rule for me, then, is this: do not draw attention to any one part of your body as a part belonging to a woman. Not unless your objective is to do so. People attach to all outfits a purpose for wearing them. Why would you wear shorts? Or display cleavage? Why would you? If you have a reason, and one can see that reason, then i think no one can question or comment on your choice of dress.

This is just so much patriarchal rubbish. :( I'm a brainwash.
5/8/07

I once promised a friend I would write a post about the misuse of punctuation
5/9/07

I've been wondering lately about how limited all forms of expression are when compared to the real thing.
How do you describe in words the exact tilt of someone's head and the lilt in their voice and the way you feel when they smile to punctuate?
6/3/07 6:05 AM

My sister has a friend who used to call home and ask to speak to her.
She would say, "Hello, is MySister'sName there?"
My mother would later rail and rant over the loss of politeness in the young, and I? I would agree with her.
Lately, though, T has been wondering about boundaries and the way people follow rules in different places. T has been wondering this as she works in an office on the grounds of a traditional Muslim house. How true that it is only
6/11/07
Do we treat other people the way we hope, in our heart of hearts, to be treated? I submit that it is a more than distinct possibility in my own case. After all, do I not give every new and old friend the benefit of the doubt, and their space, and hugs whenever I feel like they need some? Butyes!
It's not really a solution to anything, though. If everyone went around treating everyone else the way they wished to be treated, no one would get treated the way they wanted to be treated.
7/26/07

There is a microphone in the house now.

I don't like it so much.
7/30/07

meta-letter
I think the real problem with writing with Squid Piss™ on Dead Trees™ is that
8/2/07

Brad Bird's The Incredibles has a line that might have struck me more if it hadn't been as oft-quoted as it was - "Everyone can be super. And when everyone's super, no one will be."
And again: "They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional..."

I have watched performances by people who are disabled or autistic or children, and I never until recently questioned that a chance had to be given to those less privileged. Do we really value quality so little that we celebrate effort more than achievement?
Does all achievement have to be weighted against opportunity and upbringing and situation? When put like that, of course, it sounds a stupid question: the very basis for academic equality in the best institutions is based on that weightage.

It strikes me, however, that it is only in the field of education that merit speaks for itself - the concrete proofs of your excellence are valued as they ought to be. It is in the fields of the performing arts that the distinction has become blurred - where the mediocre gets more recognition than the
8/15/07
I had an adventure today. It was only a small adventure; minuscule, really; but I've been stuck indoors so long that anything out of the ordinary excites me...
I went for a walk today. I wore my brand new pink reebok sneakers (I know, I know. Pink sneakers. But they're new.)
And I sat there on the stone wall and wrote a letter. With a little lizard in it.
10/10/07 6:16 PM (this is a special day.)

the so-strangest thought
i have had one of those, i have.

Bear with me. My theories are often based on little more than random burblings of my mind when tired or hungry or travelling or some such, but they are usually interesting theories and this one...has promise.
I feel as though I have been...putty. Malleable,
12/18/07 11:38 PM (this is when the heart broke)

P.S. It is very nice to have three adventures in two days and then stay awake until five a.m. reading. :)

covert operations

Perhaps a week ago, I read in a newspaper an article that advised its readers to find new ways to make friends. The suggestion was that the readers go out and strike up conversations with people they met on their city's public transport. Accompanying this charming article (that included such tips as "try smiling pleasantly" and "comment on the book the person is reading") was a tiny picture of some commuters on a shiny metal subway train.
Now, I do realize that the people who put together the Lifestyle sections of daily newspapers often do not have enough celebrity gossip to go around, but I do wish Indian tabloids would stop printing such articles lifted directly from the non-Indian papers where they were originally featured without even checking that the content is relevant.

Not that I have a problem with making new friends, mind you. I'm all for it; I do it all the time. The problem with this charming suggestion, however, is that the writers have conveniently forgotten to actually imagine the type of public transport that their average reader might take.

It is not very hard to think of the problems that might accompany an attempt to chat up the person nearest to you on an average BMTC vehicle. The very first obstacle to finding a person to develop a lifelong friendship with is the fact that it is very unusual to actually find someone who speaks the same language you do, let alone speaks it well enough to carry on an entire conversation. The other obstacle lies in the way uninvited overtures of friendship are viewed by most people: the women think you want their money, and the men think you want their goods.
(haha, I made teh jokes)

The best way to travel, therefore; and in such a manner that you avoid stares from greasy men and fat old ladies alike; is to pretend you have absolutely no interest whatsoever in your fellow human beings. If you can cultivate a great interest in something no one else can see, so much the better. Develop a laugh you can use: be amused at your surroundings; intrigue everybody!
It is, after all, preferable to be stared at in curiosity and envy than in disapproval and lust lechery.

Edit: This is not a suggestion on how to make friends. This a suggestion that will help you get through your evening without unpleasant incident.

In my opinion, anyway.
:)

platitudes

How does one measure exactly how much of a failure one is?

Does one look at every one of the people one studied with and see where all the others are? Does one compare jobs and relationships and the number of extracurricular activities they are all involved in? Does one take a long hard look at ones (one's? ones?) existence and realize that one has, for the price of being a pleasant and likeable and easy-going human being, given up every talent and every aptitude to settle for an obscure unquantifiable useless resource?

One is a failure.

One can no longer sing, write, speak or act worth anything. One is no longer better than anyone at anything. One is, in fact, a talentless and unskilled muffin who is content to spend her life marvelling at mundaneness like a fat retard.

One has no job, no dream and no future. One has no ego.

One wants to die.

One wishes to fade away.
Oh, wait. One has done that already.

:(

Pfft.

I feel...
expectant. As though something wonderful is about to happen. Sparkly.

Oh, I lie. That is how I felt two hours ago. As I headed home from the office. Now, however, there is a wedding reception that I will not be attending because of traffic and other animals, and I feel an extreme sense of bitterness at the world and all inhabitants.
Boss B was married today. I missed his engagement ceremony, and now I missed his wedding. Very tragic and shameful and rather unforgivable, no?

(all happy post-thoughts later)
>:(

weekend guests

There is a code of conduct that parents expect from their children, isn't there? there is certainly a pattern of behaviour that my mother expects from me unconsciously, or subconsciously; and it seems as though I rarely seem to live up to that code. It is not a conscious neglect on my part, rather it is my determination to always behave the same way in all circumstances. Is that so wrong?
As long as I am within the four walls of the house, and as long as I am outside the house with sufficient distance between me and my parent, I am a terribly model child. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't have a boyfriend. I don't spend too much money, I rarely come out late without a call home first, I don't stay out at all hours of the night.
The problem arises, of course, when my mother and I occupy the same pace and time with anyone not in the nuclear family, and incidentally, always someone who happens to be extended family or close to that. Why this should be, I have no idea. And then there are fights and recriminations and I end up crying about what a weird inhuman non-person I am.

not in the refrigerator

The most addictive thing about the internet is the fact that at some point, being online becomes as automatic and as natural as breathing. I don't really have to talk to anyone, or message anyone, or email anyone. I don't even need to do anything online, see. No need to read blogs, or browse sites, or search for information, or do the wiki.
The only thing I need is to be there. I sign into gmail as soon as I switch on the computer, not because I'm desperately wanting conversations (well, at least, not all the time) but rather because I want to be available for any that happen by. I want to stay connected.

I once decided to go a week without signing in, because I felt there was too much time being wasted merely in the exchanging of platitudes with people who lived in the same city that I was in, and conversing for hours with people whom I'd never met and was likely never to meet, either. I went almost six days before I broke down, but I did manage to stay away, see. The difference was that it was my decision, yes? Not some faulty electronic modulator-demodulator that decided to die on me and leave me stranded high and dry with a game leg and no internet connection.
The last three days have been hard.
Hard enough to get me calling people on STD numbers from the landline because of how much I missed talking to them. Hard enough to have me watching television to drown out the whining voices in my head - especially the ones cursing international time zones. Hard enough to send me out of the house and hobbling towards a neighbourhood internet parlour and one glorious hour of internet.
Yes, I'm addicted, yes I am.
I just missed being able to reach out and touch someone.
It's just that... once you've been connected, how can you possibly bear not to be?

brief interlude of bewilderment

SO the submission's on Saturday, and I'm working very very hard to finish things on time.
All this post is for, is to wonder about the wonder that is the internet.
"I DNT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE OR ELSE"

All hail people who post so that others can find solutions.
I love help forums. I love the internet. I love Google. All hail the internet. All hail Google.

And I was only online to send some files to a person.


Sigh. :(
SATURDAY!
I have the heartburns.

update

The cast, dears, is off.

The ordeal involved hobbling, a saw on fibreglass, incompetence, and pain.
But there was nothing a band-aid couldn't fix; and the cast is off, yay.

Now I have to be even more careful, ugh.
:(

Please hope someone is watching out for me.

better letter later

Being stuck in the house all the time does not make for much adventure at all.
It might if I were in Misselthwaite Manor and wandering along lonely passages and finding semi-orphaned relatives on moonlit nights; but it turns out I am in a cast and hence reduced to hopping around the house with a cane à la House. Sure, one could make valid arguments for reading all the books cluttering up the bookshelves that I haven't even taken close second looks at, but let's face it - I no longer read as much as I used to. I have become addicted to real life. And sitcoms. But those are real life, no?
One day last week I wrote a Person™ a Letter. One of those Dead Tree with Squid Piss Thingys™. And then, when I asked my father for stamps, he accidentally unearthed a sheaf of something surprising - twelve blue Inland Letter Cards, bought back in the day when Inland Letter Cards cost only 75 paise.

Sending an Inland Letter Card today costs Rs. 2.50.
I know because I sent some. In fact, I sent four.
I'd have sent more, only there weren't any stamps of denomination below Rs 5 when my sister went to the post office, so I steamed the stamps off postcards instead and wrote as many letters as the stamps could afford. It was a fun project.
So was, in fact, the actual letter writing itself. Sitting at the dining table after midnight with the injured leg propped up and the trusty cane close at hand; with sheets of actual honest-to-goodness postal stationery waiting to be mutilated by hand-wielded writing instruments... Perhaps the excitement of actually writing a letter (an inland letter! on blue stationery!) overshadowed the joy of communication, but not for long. The first letter was all about the letter writing and about the inlandletter and perhaps it used the word "blue" rather often, but by the time the fourth letter was written I was hitting my stride.
I have grown too used to emails, and the instant gratification they afford; the perfect spelling and unambiguous legibility. I have forgotten the wonder of scribbling and scratching and trying to get the words just right without aid of copy and paste and delete.
And I really really enjoyed sending letters with all those little doodles in the margin.

So if you received a letter from me, today, or tomorrow, or yesterday; well, then - write me back, huh? I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. And I promise the post title if you do. :)

curses

Being injured is entirely annoying. For one thing, you're so dependent. I don't like being dependent. Especially for entertainment. I disapprove entirely of entertainment that isn't teaching me things, and spending an entire day trying to sleep and continuously complaining about the pain in the foot and the pain in the head and wishing for company and watching nonsense on the television leaves me feeling limp and useless. Plus it was SATURDAY and people all over the planet were doing fun, constructive and dangerous things in their lives while I lay around wishing for phone calls, yes Marcie, I'm talking about you. And no bus rides, neither. No bus rides!!! And yesterday was pineapple. :'(
So at the end of the day, I spent a couple of moments mentally calculating the amount of time I had effectively wasted through the rest of the day - 24 into 3600 24 threes are 72 so twice that is 144 so add them and that's 864 and two zeroes 86, 400 seconds! And my mental arithmetic is not that bad, after all, I say.
However! Last night I dreamed of coconut trees and there was a mongoose. This is new and interesting, and so I'm telling everyone. Mongoose dreams, I mean to say! Must have some deep psychological meaning, no?
Plus the mongoose ran away.

Okay, I need to get out. GET OUT. And people are sending me useless virtual hugs and kisses. And no one is coming to visit, aargh. AARGH, AARGH.
curses.

fractures

where are we supposed to go from here? emergency? it isn't an emergency? casualty? perhaps, but only of my own clumsiness. and how long do i have to wait here among all these people whose blood is all on the outside instead of where self-respecting blood should be?
wheelchair, downstairs, elevator to the OPD. forms to fill, and cards to fill, down stairs, down stairs, but Father, I am not 23 yet, and who's listening?
doctor, it has been two hours since I got here and an hour since the X-ray and the upstairs downstairs, is there nobody with this girl, and where is the man with the plaster cast? i have eaten my stale idlis in my hot sambhar while Father stood by smelling of smoke and am i surprised? and where? where is my bandage?
i have read all the charts, sister, and i have redesigned the administrative block, and i am dying for a bit of construction paper and a pair of scissors and could you get me some tape with that? and i watch you wrap those instruments in cloth and i ask, sister, are those to be boiled and you nod yes; i doubt you understood me, but you smile prettily, congratulations.
and sister, sister, o Nurse? see, i can see that run in your stocking.

it's up to three hours now, doctor, close to three and a half, and why must i pay an entire month's salary for a cast in fibreglass that will not even give me a canvas on which to get people to spout drivel to show their love for me, no substitutes i bet you get a hefty commission doctor, but so it goes so it goes, and i spend half my Sunday being ignored in a hospital and the other half being ignored at home
(no, i will not apologize.)
and Coventry is not such a bad place to be if you have the internet and a phone.

Really, it's not.
So. Someone call me, please?

building thoughts

Architecture is perhaps the most unexpectedly rewarding mistake I ever made.
I could imagine a life doing something else, struggling less, worrying less, panicking less. Perhaps I could. I could imagine a life where I entered college fresh from school to do something I actually had a chance of being good at - literature, mathematics, engineering, law, journalism. Perhaps I could.
People who knew T in school always said, architecture? in the tones of people watching chickens swimming. T was talented in school, yes. She was smart, and she loved to learn, and her English was the stuff of legend. But I preen, and I wanted to talk of architecture.

I could imagine some other field where I would learn more about life, and people, and words that sell ideas. I could imagine a field where I talk to a person in Hindi, another in Kannada and a third in English; all within the same four walls; as mediator and arbitrator and umpire. I could imagine some other world where I would be responsible to each and every one of those people, the one held accountable, the one in charge...and still, in all probability, the one who gets the least return for her investment.
Perhaps I could, but I doubt it.
I wonder how many other fields require you to be at once responsible to everybody. And I mean everybody. To the client - to get the job done on time, within budget, as per specification. To the contractor, the carpenter, the plumber, the electrician, the mason - to get them their drawings, their instructions, their money.
To yourself - because that's the point of design, isn't it?
I fear I will never be a great architect. I fear I lack the vision, the skill, the willingness to spend three days on a single room. I have dreams of buildings that I cannot draw and I talk about spaces that I cannot see, and it breaks my heart. I have ideas that I do not put down on paper because I am too lazy, too afraid of the work any design entails.
I see people around me who talk of architecture the way I talk of writing, and I wish for the least fraction of that passion.
If I could design the way I write, I'd be a happier architect. Not better, not necessarily. Just...happier. I'd be happy just to try.

disconnected things

I find it extremely annoying that I am so easily swayed by sob stories. It is just so easy to get me listening to a story of how you had ten kids, out of whom four are dead; and of the remaining none does a thing for their mother; and how your sister, on the other hand, has three daughters, all of whom are successful, and actually refused to get married so they could work and pay for an operation for their mother, who had lung cancer... yes, well. I pay rather more attention when people talk than I should, I think. It's just that it's rude not to give your complete attention to a person's performance, don't you think? And then I feel guilty for having listened to the entire thing and not helping because I'm just too selfish.
I just can't win in this world.

Meanwhile, all Transport is Trauma. Came home in the bus today, and the bag was heavily laden (oh! oh! new books! new! okay tell you later) and very painful to hang on the shoulder while awkwardly positioned in the midst of tired fat ladies. Hence I asked some girl to hold the bag for me. And spent the entire rest of the ride trying to keep an eye on the bag over shoulders and between chunnis and under arms. Sigh, paranoia.
I want to be able to trust strangers. And be justified.

Also managed to Stare a Boy Down while walking home from the bus stop post-paranoia. Was walking along all self-aware and such; keeping a wary corner of the eye out for undesirable elements (such as men) on the dark empty streets. Passed a gang of college-type boys while I was strutting my stuff (^-^), and naturally one of them started humming something at the back of my head all filmi-style. So I stopped and looked at him. That's all I did, just looked. Didn't ask him to shut up, or stop, or what he was doing. I just stopped and looked him in the eye.
Isn't it odd what confrontation does to a person?
One of these days I'm going to get myself into something I can't get out of.

For some reason I seem to get very 'xasperated when I fail at male-type actions. e.g. starting a bike, in front of boys. It irks me to imagine them going, "Oh, a girl". It IRKS ME, I say. I'm not a fan of damsel in distress unless it's emotional, I think. That's just so romantic, I think. Plus it works both ways.

You know what's awful? Laughing at a cruel joke someone makes just so you don't rock the boat, that's what. Agreeing with someone just so that you aren't put to the trouble of defending your own personal opinion. Where do you draw lines, after all? People's opinions are their own, right? And laughing at someone's accent, or clothing, or hair, or makeup, or height... it's just human nature, right?
sigh.

breaking out

Wish I'd said
Dear Praveen,
Thank you. Thank you for all the hours I spent on you, and all the work I never got done. Thank you for all the promises you never kept, and all the compliments you never meant. Thank you for making me feel unique for that little time in my life, and then dropping out of my life again without warning and without explanation.
Thank you for the closure.
Dear Hari,
Thank you. Thank you for confusing me. Thank you for making me believe there was something in me that I hadn't seen yet, but was worth finding out. Thank you for then turning that thought on its head. Thank you for all the time I spent wondering what I'd done to make you treat me like someone you didn't know.
Thank you for the clarity.
Dear Sanjeev,
No thank you.

Perhaps it helps that I know that none of them stops by here anyway.

monday mindgames

Pardon in advance, please, any bad or not-very-well-written sentences. Also any spelling errors, because I'm writing from work, and I have not much time.

Today is Monday. I'm here at work early because Boss B's in Kerala but the carpenter for the project will be here at nine-thirty to pick up the drawings so that work can begin on site. So I'm here to hand them over.
I'm here early, and fuming.
I took the scooter to work today. Regular (leave me my timid fantasies, dears) readers of the blog may remember the aforementioned as a rather elderly Kinetic Honda, scene to King stories. I'd remembered that there was no petrol in the scooter, so I left extra early to fill some at the petrol pump near home.

And there, at half-past eight in the morning, I was ignominiously cheated.

Well, an attempt was made. I still, at first pass, ended up paying Rs. 102 for something approaching one-third a litre of petrol. Of course it was partly my fault for not instantly screaming about the failure of the attendant to show me the zero mark. But I was in a hurry, I hadn't been paying attention, and I was wary of creating a scene. And this is how these people always end up getting away with this kind of behaviour in the first place!

So I stood there, like a silly little smark, and I decided that, despite my immediate feeling that I had been made gull of (oh, and believe me, it was immediate. the attendant had been pouring the petrol into the tank for no more than a few seconds, and the tank looked startlingly empty, and i thought "fuck, i've been cheated"), I would wait to make sure that I was before I began yelling. (i am rather wary of open-foot-insert-mouth. it makes for too much embarrassment.)

So I drove along and watched the tank indicator. It didn't move past the quarter mark. And then I knew. To confirm, and to gain some more courage, I drove home to check with the father. The father confirmed my fears, but, to my horror, seemed to think I would let the matter slide. Do you want some more money to fill petrol, he said. Go somewhere else and do it, he added. Shock!

I refused to stand for such tame acceptance, so I scorned his kindly attempts at consolation, picked up my jacket from the house (one of T's little life lessons: never pass up an opportunity to pick up things you have forgotten.) and drove back to the petrol pump.

There, I proceeded to throw a right royal tantrum (which T enjoyed very much, the crazy creature that she is.), demanding to know whether they thought I was an idiot, whether they thought they could fool me just because I was a woman, showing them the petrol level in the tank and asking them in what planet that looked like two litres, threatening to call the cops...

It was a short, but powerful, performance. I wish I could have seen it from the outside.

"Put one and a half litres of petrol in this tank right now, or I'm calling the cops!", I screamed. (incidentally, arjun, there was a repeat performance of the spittle-on-visor incident. Alas for you that you missed it again.)

After five sentences, one of the attendants filled the tank with thirty rupees worth of petrol. I drove away feeling distinctly that I had been cheated again.

I'm going back there this evening to get a litre's worth. I have the entire monologue written out in my head, so I should be fine.

The T absolutely refuses to be an easy mark.

Await developments, please. Moral support is welcome. :)


Update at half past five:
The T is disappointed at the anticlimactic end to her tale. She returned to vent the rest of her anger, and found that the morning attendants were off duty.
She then went in and complained, in an exceedingly boring and dignified manner, to the supervisor. He then put a litre of petrol in her vehicle, and gave her a bill for the morning's two litres into the bargain.
Either the T is very persuasive, or this thing happens often enough that a litre makes no earthly difference.

Meanwhile, the T is also more than slightly staggered at being apparently excessively memorable. Strangers are coming up to her at unusual places and saying, "Aren't you <insert T's real name>? Hi! I'm so-and-so from school/your Spanish class/some other vague place."
One lovely person recognised my voice. And I'd only seen her twice in my life!!!

The T knows not what to say. She is flattered.
:)

remembering tempers

A week ago, I drove to work for the first time. I left with no time to spare, which meant that I could not afford any extra stops along the way. Naturally, therefore, I hadn't been driving five minutes before I got stuck behind a garbage truck.
Patience, I told myself. It's a mantra I often find myself repeating. It's a throwback to older times.
Suddenly, I felt a strange pressure on the back of the scooter. I turned back to see what it was, and discovered that the driver in the car behind me had decided to inch forward while looking out of his window at the autorickshaw on his right. Which meant that he was slowly inching into my vehicle, which was now tilted at an alarming angle and practically falling from my hands.
I yelled, Hey, and Hello! (he bellowed help! and let me out! who knows where that's from?) The person in front of me turned back to see what the commotion was about, and kindly added his voice to mine. It was rather reedy and low, but it's the thought that counts, surely?
The car continued to inch forward.
I couldn't move forward, I couldn't move to the side, I couldn't move at all. My bag was falling off the front sideboard, the smell of garbage was in my nose, and all at once I lost my head. I let go the handlebars with my right hand and made a fist, and banged on the hood of that great big smug silver car. I banged and screamed expletives and watched the spittle from my mouth make tiny drops on the visor of my helmet. Naturally, the man noticed the insane woman denting his precious car and he stopped moving.
The light changed, and the vehicles moved ahead, and I went on to the office with an adrenaline rush I hadn't had in a long time.

When I was younger, I was famous for my short temper. Flare and flash, and explosions. Violent tantrums, more often than not. Banging my head on walls, banging my sister's head on walls, slamming doors, throwing things around. Later I progressed to less noisy methods of venting spleen - breaking pencils, tearing sheets of paper into shreds... I remember walking around in moods just begging for someone to trigger an outburst. I had a short fuse, and it was too much work to lengthen it. It was also much more fun being volatile.
Eventually, of course, I grew up, or grew wise, and I found ways around the anger. It still bubbled, one of those little background simmers, but any time the temperature got too hot to handle, I ran.
That day, I felt again the rush that being deliberately cruel gives me. And as I felt it, I missed it. A painful visceral ache. Perhaps the way reformed alcholics feel when they lapse and take a drink again.
I wouldn't know.

I am addicted to the strangest things.


P.S. cat's paw.
Sigh. I'm so witty I slay me.

last moments

My stingy heart rebels.
The only fest from which I walked away with a cartload of prizes was the only one which had no prize money. Irony.

In the last twenty days I have been to three fests. Won and lost and glowered. Cried and laughed and wondered. Inhaled. Exhaled. Dreamed.
Too many little things happened.
I only wish I were actually young enough not to look at it all from the outside.

What is it about winning that makes every problem seem so trivial?

highlights

I had
a cat on my lap
and
a dead lizard in the bathroom

Those were the easiest moments.


Last Saarang. Last Saarang. I like unexpected puns.
What can I say, really? Shall I recount how I walked to IIT from my aunt's house on three days, and still ended up spending close to Rs. 300 on transport alone? Shall I talk about rock shows with pizzas and new friends? Shall I confess to the guilt of being wrong about strangers? Shall I talk of old aches that never really go away? Talk of wounded pride and disappointments and the regret at wasted talent? Talk, once again, of the sting of outsider-ness?
Shall I wax eloquent on walks and talks with old, old friends and spanking new ones? Shall I talk of twinges of nostalgia from my Last Saarang? Aches of regret at this, my Last Saarang?
Hmmm.
Let's not.
I shall talk of adventures instead; café adventures and transport adventures. Holding court and relating old adventures. Leaving behind camera and wallet and phone, wandering around searching on foot and in autos. No losses. Surprising, yes?
Indeed. And that's good, because surprises are the best things.


Meanwhile, resolutions failed miserably. Did I really expect otherwise?