Of disappearances and other occurences

Thought I died ah? My god, it’s been ages. Not only haven’t I posted. I actually haven’t typed anything longer than a short sentence. There have been a combination of factors of course. From too much choice in topics (which is never a good thing in life itself I’ve realized), to actually completely forgetting I had a blog, to realizing that its damn fucking tough to write anything remotely read worthy when you’re happy. Damn you happiness. Where is my beloved pathos? Nothing wakes the writer faster than a good hot cup of angst.

Why am I so happy; you might ask next. Well on a blog that has whined about singledom and sexlessness, or better yet, ‘sex pining’ as the boyfriends some random friend wonderfully described it. What do you think? So yes, singledom has been banished. Hopefully forever, provided boyfriends kindly grandmother accedes to the wedding after I failed her ‘Kya aap Tyagarajan music festival ke bare main sune hain?’

“Umm sorry nahin”

“Accha?Par.. Par aap toh south se hain…kaise sune nahin?” she said rather disappointed while someone else gratefully changed the topic.

While most of my time has evidently passed in what can only be described as a whirlwind romance, on the work front I’ve started to feel that old familiar blood boil of complacency. The multiplex strike did more than just transform our world into a financial cul de sac, it’s made everyone rather lack luster. Most of us turned to American television for a fix though and came up with some real quality entertainment. The last two months have been a blur of insomnia ridden half hour after half hour nonstop, don’t touch the remote, just press Play All, watching sprees. State of Play, Firefly, Serenity, Californication, The Wire, The Fringe and How I Met your Mother of course. If it wasn’t for a bunch of truly awesome colleagues, I would have moved/quit ages ago. But we all kinda bonded in our empty corporacy and common love for U-Torrent and life hasn’t seemed quite so bad after all. 

Read more...

This is the End. My only friend, the End.

I was home last week and it was the end of a lot of things.

Firstly, the end of Singledom. Before you get excited or err.. maybe not excited, it wasn’t the end of my singledom but of my dearest Jemima’s, who got married on the 23rd of April. I marked that it was Dev Patel’s birthday as I was carrying her trail down the stairs of her house and everyone glared at me disapprovingly. Oh well.

So Jemima, who when we were four years old, used to carry me on her hip after school while I cried for my mum to pick me up, Jemima, who has always been the constant in my life all these 23-24 years, carrying all my secrets (and my neurosis) and well, more pleasurably for her, my bollywood gossip as well, was carried away into the proverbial sunset by a man who loves her. Sigh.

It was also the end of childhood memorabilia, as the house that I grew up in was torn down. I walked through every empty room and noticed every crack and every nook and wondered a hundred times if we were doing the right thing. Of course, we are rebuilding, but it will never be quite the same. Not to mention how we’ve thrown away practically everything in the house because we didn’t know what to do with it. No books, no music, no portraits, no same furniture even the next time round. The past is lost I say. Sob.

Finally, it was apparently the end of what one might call casual sex. I went to Bangalore realizing I could very well put to an end a rather er…long period of celibacy. There were not one, but two options. A) Assholic Ex and B) Undefined Ex. Both men were a phone call and no explanations away, but I simply didn’t pick up the phone. And funnily, I don’t regret it. Maybe it was all the coupling happening around me, maybe it was Jemima’s awesome wedding, or maybe it was simply something I’d told myself not to ever do again a long time ago.

In other news, people’s pliss be seeing new templates, courtesy the very enterprising and dashing Crowley. (who I had to again ask how to link his name etc), so this honorable blog menshun is a little wasted. But what the hey, Thanks Pirate! I louses it.

Read more...

This time, that year

While watching Stephen Daldry’s ‘The Reader’ a few days ago, apart from absolutely loving the movie I had a strong sense of déjà vu. A lover that cannot read and likes being read to you ask? Umm yes actually. Same to same.

We sat next to each other on the train to Amritsar. Me being the loner pedant that I was at the time was writing poetry in the little hand-made book I’d bought a few hours ago at People Tree in Delhi. He was intrigued and wanted to see what I was writing. ‘Read it’ I offered. “No, will you read it aloud to me?” he almost begged. “it loses its soul when it’s read aloud” I said educationally, I’d always preferred that anything be read inside the head than out loud where decibel distractions bastardised words, feelings..

He took the little book from me and started to read. He was on the poem I had just written, all four lines of it for over 10 minutes, after which I was forced to ask him if he liked it.

“I really think you should read it aloud to me, I’d like to hear it in your voice” he said pleadingly.

That day I read aloud to him, thinking it was simply a personal quirk. Or maybe it was an excuse for him to spend more time with me I thought as we slowly became lovers. It was after we’d spent many nights and afternoons together holding each other in bed, with me reading to him from his favourite collection of poems by Robert Burns that he suddenly confided to me. “I can’t read" he said quietly, his head listening to the sounds in my chest.

“What do you mean?” I asked (rather idiotically). “I mean I’m severely dyslexic. What you read in 5 seconds will take me over 2-3 minutes, first to string together and then another minute to comprehend ” he said matter of factly. “You’re joking right, you’re pulling my leg? How on earth did you finish school?”

“Special school, with tapes and oral exams” he replied.
“But … but.. you seem to have read so much, you quote Shakespeare at the drop of a hat” I said unbelieving.
“Tapes. We have tapes of everything in the UK” he said smiling.

I was flummoxed and took a moment to have my very own Tisca Chopra comprehending Darsheel Safary’s dyslexia in TZP moment.

We drifted as lovers eventually. I felt used (bah, just like the film), he felt he was growing too attached to someone he couldn’t possibly have a relationship with as she lived many thousand miles away. But we became the closest of friends. A friendship our mutual love for literature fostered. I continued to read to him though, but this time on set, in between breaks, at lunch, or when travelling back from shoot.
After he went back, he sent me his first, self written email. It was catastrophic. But to me, just the effort he must have put into those 5-6 lines was laudable and I felt hot in the face with pride.
As the years went by his emails, though very few and far between, seem to have gotten almost perfect. He’d always had a way with words and now they finally made sense. I only wonder though if it’s him writing them anymore…

Read more...

My experiments with truth. Actually with many things. Some of them not really experiments. Or findings. Or truth.

Ok my blog template is officially fuc-ked. I can’t seem to do anything with it apart from choosing a standard template and changing background colours. It doesn’t let me do anything else. Can’t add links, can’t change font, can’t use customized template, can’t upload pics, can’t change header. Just a load of cants (say that last line in your head in a 7Eleven FOB American accent really fast to hear the hidden slur)

Bah.

********************************************************************************************************************************************

My mum left yesterday. In her time here I got 5 marriage proposals. All of them called Krishna. Is that a sign. And if it is, Of what pray? Should I become Mirabai and marry idol and sing bhajans? Which the universe is driving me to rather surely.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************

Over the past 6 years in Bombay there has been a definitive shift in the way the city behaves. Maybe 7/11 and consequently the 26/11 events made us cautious, insular even. Maybe the politically instigated feuds between the indigenous population and the ever immigrant influx have people trust each other a little less. Hate each other a little more.

Look at Bangalore. All it took was a ridiculous incident on Rest House road, to instigate more such random acts of misogynistic glee and leave the entire female populi in morbid fear, not just of being safe after dark, but of being safe alone, of actually not throwing on a pair of jeans and a sleeveless top lest she be unjustly arrested on Museum Inn Road. Imagine that. Imagine how a cosmopolitan, pub loving, hard rock loving, get drunk in the afternoon at Pecos and stroll down to Corner House for Death by chocolate like chillax Bangalore can transform into this talibanised monster overnight. So when Jemima calls me about my Bangalore itinerary for her wedding later this month and says – don’t pack any party wear man, or pack full sleeved tops and pants, I’m totally miffed. All that unjust anger we should have felt but laughed off in college when that loser sod Father Verghese took all us girls aside in class one day and said in his thick horny accent “if you wear sleeveless it is like you are selling yuwar body” came back with the right emotion of rage this time.

******************************************************************************************************************************************

I’ve gone through most of my life being pretty happy with what god gave me. Apart from my iyengar nose maybe…. And I wish I was taller…. And of course he was stupid to make me a dusky Indian girl born in India instead of say in the Uk where the men would’ve loved me. But I digress. I’m talking of course of my Breasts. Knockers, Rack, Boobs, Tits, yes that’s about the breast lingo I know. So, I’ve been rather indifferent about ‘my rack’ for most of my life, they were never too small or too big or too perky or too umm not perky. Men seemed to like them enough. They didn’t look god-awfully huge in tight tops and make me squirm. In short they were practically invisible. Until now.

Now, the closest I’ve got to breast enhancements has been the ubiquitous underwire bra. Which of course I had to buy secretly aside from the cotton comfort ones my mother insisted I wear. But very recently I decided to buy the heavily padded bra. You know the ones with real silicone stitched into the cup. And voila!

Suddenly I am getting second about turn type glances, suddenly my guy friends are not bossing me around or slapping my back but looking at me rather reverentially, suddenly my boss is being very nice to me, suddenly finance department isn’t holding onto my payments and bills, suddenly everything is moving like clockwork, I snap my finger and its done. I’m not joking.

And I feel like a total idiot for not having known this glaring secret to a successful life. Every big boobed woman rules a little universe around her. No kidding. Implants, here I come.

Read more...

Glee dripped out of Natasha like pre-cum

Now what do you do with a line like that? Found by the way in Siddharth Sanghvi's 'Lost Flamingoes of Bombay' here born for bestseller notoriety. I spent most of yesterday wondering if I liked the book or positively hated it. I did love his last book though despite its mad verbosity and ridiculously bad sex with panther’s descriptions. I had just moved to north Bombay and lived very close to Dariya Mahal (which I completely imagine it was set in) and the book made me all dreamy and wistful every time I pictured it set in that beautiful yellow bungalow by the sea.

Anyway moving on, my mother is visiting. Now when you’re 26 and unmarried and unattached and rather uncaring (read : tired) about the aforementioned and you’re mothers visiting, it can only mean one thing. So all this hysteria about “awww home cooked food”, “oh so sweet, how long is aunty staying for”, “call us home for dinner yaa”, are the just the sort of reactions that will make me give you one of my classic scowls and wish you a very quick death.

But let me explain my trauma to you. So my mother got married at 20. My sister at 21 and therefore by vague arithmetic progression my mother was pretty goddamn sure I would too at 22. But when at 22 I brought home a 32 year old lover she wasn’t very happy and decided to give me more time. More time lead to seeming forgetfulness as she jet setted between India and whichever country my sister considered home for that year, then to worrying about my sister not having a baby, then to taking care of pregnant sister, then to blissful grandmother hood. The familial linear progression being perfect at one end and suddenly horror of horrors, severely procrastinated at the other end..

Of course it gets particularly emotionally stressful when you realize that the ordeal is not what you pegged it to be. You always thought the trauma would stem from your rebellion to be single and wild and your need for space and freedom. Instead it stems from looking at the genuinely worried disappointment on your parents face when they realize you might soon be in your 30’s and really lonely and regret that you didn’t settle down earlier. When they are even open to you marrying anybody for love, even if he’s white or black or muslim (the 3 no’s you were so sure she would throw at you). And you slowly albeit surely realize that all they really really want is your true happiness and that they are wise, sure and right enough to know that that can come only with the right kind of companionship and love, and no one’s saying ‘no’ to anything and everyone’s asking ‘how’?

Some of my friends are saying that this is how they start you off. Slowly sow the seed of looming despair and then when you give up, drained and fed – up, they actually start the mad rush of getting you married off before you can say “umm mom I don’t really want to live in Tennessee with Varadharajuperumal”.

Now back to the Lost Flamingos of Bombay.

Read more...

Its Official!

I am officially happy I did not work on Delhi 6. I would have died if I was party to anything with that 'ending'.

I (and P) are officially crying that we did not work on Slumdog.

But how were we to know! How were we to know!

*Sob*

P.S - though I'm sure for our rotten luck, if we'd worked on it, it would have been with Warner and would have gone straight to DVD release...

Read more...

Long Post with many unconnected snippets.

Ok so I cheated last time and put poem instead of post. I’ll do that sometimes. I have this big bank of poems that I randomly pick from when I have nothing to say. Trouble is when, some 3 - 4 weeks later, I still have nothing to report. Sad this.

***********************************************************************
Blogging is fully dying. Infact have you noticed that most bloggers have slowed down in general. None of the blogs that I regularly read have updated regularly in the past 6 odd months. Maybe the world is slowing getting bored of itself. Getting bored of hearing the voice in its head. Getting bored of its own damn neurosis.

Even my thoughts are seemingly incoherent as I write this. Nothing is topical suddenly. There are just snippets. Little cut away’s. Little moments of clarity before you get washed over with your life drugged haze.

************************************************************************************

In a recent conversation with a friend I realized that I would make the ultimate power lesbian.. Remember that phrase, made rather famous by one Candace Bushnell? I could very well be your in-command, much wanted lesbian playgirl. It was a well arrived at deduction and probably a move that I should give much thought to considering how my heterosexual love life seems to be faring.

Later that day, an old friend of mine who I divulged this epiphany to seemed to be grudgingly in agreement. He didn’t want me to turn Lesbian he said, but I had what it takes is what he realized, and nodded rather sagely. With men I had always groveled. Elevated them to divinity and prayed by their feet. But, with women, I had always, always had a female fan following. At any given point in my life there was always a doting female friend attached to my hip. These female friends changed rather often. Mostly because I would grow tired of them, wanting variety and slowly but surely push them away.

And then again in the last year or so, three women have hit on me, which far exceeds the number of men who have which is erm… none.

**************************************************************************************

Ok, maybe this is happening to a few of us late in the day, or we’re plain dumb, but what is with the incidence of ONLY MARRIED men hitting on us mid twenty year olds? Of course we are also stupid, because we tend to assume that ‘oh he’s married, its ok if he drops me home’ or ‘Hmmm he’s being little over-friendly, but he’s married no, maybe I’m imagining it’, and so our bullshit detecting radars never go up, till its too late and the ‘married’ man in question has made his ugly move. Usually by saying lame things like ‘My wife and I … we don’t have any chemistry anymore’ or ‘I’m so lonely, Sheela’s so busy with the kids all the time, I wish I had someone special… like you’ or then most stupidly, after dropping you home saying ‘can I kiss you’. Wtf?!! No you can’t fucker.

( * All true incidents by the way)

****************************************************************************************

I finally saw Kubricks ‘Shining’. Now this movie has always been one of those Joey moments for me, where I stand aside and nod very vigorously about how amazing the movie is and sometimes I’ve even very smartly substantiated my vigorous head bobbing with ‘oh my god, that scene where the blood flows out of the elevator…fuck, cinematic brilliance dude’. And the recipient of my articulate reply would very contently head bob along with me.

Of course, that had been the only visual of the film I’d ever seen. Till now. Will people kill me now if I review the movie by saying ‘Yaaa, it’s ok yaa, I don’t see the fuss’. I’m ducking.

***************************************************************************************

A survey in the Uk has shown that in the year 2008, the male urge to have sex has decreased by 15%. This means an overall average decrease of 40% since the last decade. Imagine that. ‘Men are refusing sex more than usual’ the surveyor quotes. I had predicted this in a post sometime last year. I’d even called it ‘An inconvenient truth’. It’s now ratified women! Ratified. We are officially in trouble.

Suddenly adopting sexual preference mentioned in snippet number two is seeming like harsh reality. Sigh.

****************************************************************************************

I’d always wanted a male gay friend. In fact, I think almost all women want this. We have female like company for all our shopping, movie going, gossiping, honest opinion (read lying) about how we really look, taking out to functions when we don’t have a date needs and visually we see a man! Not unlike a vibrator. It does it’s job, but it’s not the real thing.

But now I think I’ve collected too many. And such queens. I mean I love them, but it gets ridiculously pitchy sometimes.

Then while only 2 of them are completely open and I can bug them about boys they like or we can lech at men together, with most of them I simply haven’t managed to have the ‘I like boys and so do you' conversation. It’s sort of assumed, but its very big pink elephant in the roomish. Only one confessed to me when he was very drunk and then I haven’t had the courage or the opportunity to bring up the subject again.

****************************************************************************************

It has come to my notice that almost all men have very good erotica storytelling and phone sex skills. No matter how bad their vocabulary or how vernac they are or how otherwise the only conversation they can hold is about the stock market. They are good at this. It is in-built mechanism. Not unlike instinctual stalking and killing skill most predators have.

***************************************************************************************

I went for celebrity pahtey few days ago and saw John Abraham and when I was introduced to him, instead of saying my name I said ‘Hi, I’m _(insert company name)__’.
Then I realized my mistake and started mumbling some shit to cover up, but luckily music was very loud and I slinked away. I am so clearly not meant for this business.

***************************************************************************************

More updates as subjects warrant interest. Till then. Dhanyavaad. Shabba khair.

Read more...

Low Expectations

It doesn’t ever disappear.
The memory of that feeling.
That all consuming feeling of being desired.
The in - exorcisable tactility.
The weighed lightness
My heart heavy with desire and light with love.

Maybe you will come back.
You don’t have to be You…
I hope you know that?!

Your phantom heart in any body will do.

Read more...

Men(tals)

Firstly, the Ex - Men in my life have been driving me a little mental. Two have sent emails which apparently look like generic ones, you know, they start with ‘Hello All’ and go on to give changed email Id’s and numbers and some pc type bull. BUT, But! Common friends, who should also have got these emails have not received anything. Means what? Means what??!! Especially since there was very vocal mandate to be followed post break ups of no calling, no texting, no mailing, please fuck the hell off between us.

Means so they genuinely want to inform of changed email id? (first of all who changes their email id after like high school??) OR it is ruse to see if I mail them?? What on earth could it mean I wondered all day, till a male friend deduced that ‘Chumma they are sending to mind fuck’. Err. Ya, thanks pa. Very elementary Holmes.

Then yesterday, I find out that this boy that had a crush on me is suddenly seeing someone else. Till like just one week back, the said boy was most flirty and even mushy.
Everyone said “he likes you ya…a lot”
Everyone said I better decide if I liked him back.

Then suddenly yesterday Everyone said “Oh sorry ya, he’s with girlfriend”

Like before I could even change my line of approach, smile back maybe, not wack him on the back of his head maybe, look intensely, look away and look back intensely (that great woman gaze trick) maybe… he’s with Girlfriend!

First of all, aforementioned boy was classified nerd and apparently even they are faster than me, second of all, I never thought I was slow on the uptake on such matters. It has come as rude shock.

The only good thing about all this is the fact that I think I’m finally attracting the right kind of men. Decent, Normal, Full time Employed, Good Family type men.

After spending my early twenties attracting absolute assholes, the more assholic the better, suddenly I am in Sita Central.

But, how do I explain that when you’ve spent most of your twenties being pursued by ridiculously libidinous men who simply did not take no for an answer, and actually were of the ‘no’ means ‘yes’ morse code, where it basically felt like being cave woman and being pulled into yonder bramble bush for a tumble, no questions asked, all this sudden having to say the right thing, having to give very clear ‘I’m interested’ signals, is all very tiresome.

I somehow escaped the whole ‘game-playing’ business that most relationships are heir to, simply by virtue of being in the film – industry, where all it took was a long tired day and some large vodka’s at the end of it to get things going. You lasted till the film lasted. Period. Some are still great friends and some apparently send you confusing emails!

But Corporate life has dulled me. Made me an effectual flirt and simply slow. Men who actually like me, I’m reading as frandships. Men who are only trying to be friends or maybe who dig my female friends and are routing it through me, I am reading as being interested in me. Such 9th standard dilemma’s I haven’t experienced since ummm, lets see… 9th standard.

Read more...

Comfortably Dumb

You know that moment when someone takes you into confidence and says something that makes you feel really special and you feel so good because you feel ‘chosen’, and then a couple of days later you find out that that person has said the exact same thing, and maybe a bit more to someone else and you get that ugly bracken, bile, pit of the stomach churn, that feeling of being utterly let down? I seem to be feeling like that all the time these days. And the culprit isn’t that so called friend or that two timing lover, but the city itself.

I’ve always had great admiration for people who never change, who hold their ground, who will always respond to their inner current, never cheating on it whether in the presence of impressionable company or in solitude. It’s a characteristic that is greatly missing. Especially in Bombay.

Bombay where you become what surrounds you. Merge into the smog and though this sounds cliché – forget who you were. So who were you, you ask yourself? Were you that girl with the thick glasses and unbelievably unmanageable hair that got onto her scooty every evening and rode to Eloor library and spent hours, no, days sitting in one of the aisles buried in a book. Were you the girl who loved watching Saturday morning Lok Sabha sessions and were a 100% sure you would become a politician, or were you the girl that read so much, you wouldn’t leave your room for days on end?

Bombay that has killed the reader in me, the thinker in me, and then most paradoxically the introvert in me as well. So what was better you ask youself, once in a while, like on a balmy Wednesday night like tonight. Was it better to be an intellectual obfuscator with no social skills, but where you still held yourself in extremely high regard, OR a social butterfly with a packed schedule who cant seem to even hold a mildly intelligent conversation anymore, who reaches out for Vogue instead of even Time Out these days because it involves far less reading but, who I dare say is – still happier somehow?

Or is this just the bane of the mid twenties? Of a life past and present that incoherently collide, where from this ugly copulation will birth your true self?

What? Say me.

Read more...