Three years with the weird me ;)

"How do you do that??" asked Y, I don't know I just know .....when it comes to Y I know exactly what goes on in his mind given a point of time. He says he couldn't ever figure me, that I'm unpredictable and full of surprises (yes even after 3 yrs :P). I looked at his PoV, and thought let me see if I can dig deeper. 


* I like quiet. I like to be left alone, I would be cranky and ready to snap if I hear noise as soon as I wake up. Especially when the alarm buzzes ( Y has "mein hoon DON" song as his alarm tone can you believe it)


* I like very hot food (hot refers to the taste and not the temperature). I can't eat food that is bland  I don't like much oil and dislike fried snacks. I love cheesy, buttery concoctions though.


* Y loves the colour pink on me, but I dislike it to the core, yet I ended up with the colour in wardrobe.I usually avoid wearing it because of the stereotypes associated with it....you know girls and the pink connection.


*I hate if someone makes a mess after I clean. People who throw/spill stuff and make a mess and expect others to clean annoy me.


*I flare up very easily. But I usually have the self-control not to show it. If you come across people who call me short-tempered you should just dismiss it and wonder/understand how long I've been putting up with it.


*I am not overall very quick, I'm an extremist when it comes to emotions, unlike the composed picture of myself I like to present to the world. I might have one interesting conversation with someone and end up thinking about it for a few days. I might have one disturbing conversation and rant about it for hours. I stay up at nights worrying when something goes slightly wrong, and flushed with excitement when something is more right than usual. All that makes me a "volatile" person to live with, and it is to the Y's credit that he doesn't complain. 

Tress Mess

As a kid and in my teens, having been endowed with thick long tresses , it was always my secret passion to have short bobbed hair which was just becoming a fashion then. Now there were two problems with cutting my hair - will my family agree to it??and what if my hair doesn't grow to be long again?? - a girl putting scissors to her hair was surely an inauspicious sign(which i secretly did.....twice). Anyway having entered high school in 1994 I had to do something to prove that I was a rebel too and in tune with the times. But not having the means to afford a parlour, I cut my hair  myself (not the length but a few strands on either sides of the forehead. And for many days, no one took notice of it, until one day when my mom was plaiting my hair she couldn't get a hold on those tiny strands (which started to grow). She asked if I experimented on my hair (well an indirect way of asking if I tried to cut it :P). I got nervous, yet I bluntly replied that I did not. She already knew I was lying. Days passed I started to feel I made a mistake, the growing strands became a huge distraction, they kept falling in my eyes. At one point I started to look like a bull with twisted horns. Finally the day came when even my parents felt I should get my hair cut...I was excited,. My first hair cut was a deep "U" cut. The next day my friends bemoaned the loss of such "beautiful" hair which they would have given an arm and a leg to have and of course my grandmother  thought that it was a sure sign of Kaliyuga and all the bad things that were to mark the end of the world.

Have you noticed that people tell you how beautiful your hair was only after it is lost - as if they never noticed it all the time it was on your head?

Once I was married to a man who didnt notice if I was totally bald or had my hair matted like a sadhu in Kailash, my adventures with the hairdressers began. The thing about most of these people in the parlours is that they never suggest what will look good on you but will ask you what you want. After several attempts at imitating the hair styles of almost all the happening ones from bollywood with totally disastrous results, one day I acquired the Gyan (under a hairdresser's shears) that to look like them the hair style wasnt enough, you needed a beautiful face to go along! So now I needed someone who would tell me what would go with my face - so that was when I came across  this fancy hairdresser  who  supposedly  had magic hands. So I put my hair in his hands literally and came out looking like a famous personality :D. Finally just as I had found the right cut that looked dignified 


I decided I would grow my hair again,  now I let it grow anyway it liked and loved the freedom. Just like many other realisations that occur to you when you are almost 30, I realised that I should have let my hair as it was in my teens and that life would have been more peaceful. Oh, but what is life without youthful follies! So slowly the problems started with hair receding on the forehead, and my "rich" experience was beginning to show in a sudden acquisition of a silver crown. People started saying "you looked younger with short hair". In stead of telling them and myself, " I was actually younger then remember?!"I started believing them. So like an addict reverting to her old habit, I went back to the parlour the other day hoping things would have changed.

Guess what? Somethings never change.

That day my usual hairdresser wasn't available, so the lady with the scissors asked me what I wanted!
The dumb fool that I am, I showed the picture of Bipasha Basu in a magazine advertisement for diamonds.

Was that a suppressed smile on the hairdresser's face or did I imagine it?

The Princess and the FROG(S)

I was scanning through the newspaper the other day and came across an article about the present day love and how that people now-a-days do not look for the typical fairytale romance. After reading the article I felt like that was exactly what I've been hearing from my friends. Coming to the issue that I have heard from the constant outpourings from friends here is a feeling of extreme emotional vulnerability. This state of mind is particularly confusing to  women and is prominent in those who view themselves as liberated, open-minded and a person doing as they please without being held back by the expectations of the society they live in.


Some twenty years ago in India, it was rare for women to be in a physically intimate relationship before marriage, guess that has since changed. Women going out with colleagues, spending more time with friends than with spouses (I still wonder if they really have to....or simply because they want to)   and in the due course of time develop a kind of bond (be it physical / emotional). I call it the "KANK" effect. Those who moved to the west at the time were able to bring such change into their lives. "Empowerment" to live freely came to both (west and east), but only at different times in their lives. Well, well  all sounds good.  Girls/women today no longer feel that their net worth in the marriage market is dependent entirely on the possession of their “V”.  Strangely, other problems have taken their place.....in the brave new world, Indian women are willing and able to enter into a physically intimate relationship without having a wedding date calendared. However, to avoid the feelings of guilt associated with being in such a state, they allow (umm well I feel require) love to lead them there.


So when men are simply not prepared to take on the responsibility of marriage, but want to continue in a friends plus benefits arrangement, women start to become progressively unhappy and unsure, if what they got in to is what they really want. The happiness of uncontrolled or unquestionable freedom is scarred by a troubling sense of doubt and hopelessness. It doesn’t stop there, to make the matters worse, the man suddenly turns into Mama's boy who allows his family to find him a bride and pretends the relationship did not even exist. Often, that's where a girlfriend (like me huh!!)  is called and gets to be the much needed shoulder to cry


As much as I want to be helpful to my friends in times of distress, I can't  help but point out the terrible flaws in their ways. I don’t say I’m a saint or have any kind of moral high ground. I have told several of them that they need to attune a little and things will improve dramatically. They should get their heads in place and there is absolutely no need to perpetuate a very temporary thing into an unnecessary relationship in order to feel less immoral about it (life would be much simpler and happier if we can undo things we regret about). To get on to your feet, in a situation like this it is not enough to merely shed physical inhibition (which clearly they have already done), when you have made your choice, it is far more important to rise above and shed the moral ones  as it poses a subtle but dangerous obstacle in the process of the so-called “being –free/ independent”.


When a woman senses the need for intimacy and does not bother to go out of the way, It's fair to tell a man that's what it's going to be - a short duration liaison with no strings attached and they can go their separate ways after that, rather than forcing him in to something that he’s not ready for. In a way she opens the door for emotional entanglement herself - something I notice girls/woman cannot handle too well. One woman said "That's like making me “Use & throw". I completely agree, it’s just a point of view, in such a case the rules of engagement should be made clear from the start. Men generally like women to be emotionally involved while in a "relationship". To them intimacy without that connection is often quite meaningless. Many will never agree to be part of such an arrangement. Having enjoyed the dominance of being the gender that decides when and how to end things, it may be quite painful not being able to do so.

I hear from my girlfriends about what they go through in the process of trying to find (and keep) love. Life is no fairy tale girls...its more like a quick sand, the more you panic/worry,in situations like this, the deeper you sink.....so stop thinking, pick up the pieces and get a hold on your life. These modern day Cinderellas do not/cannot wait for their prince with the glass slipper to show up and are willing to kiss as many frogs along the way to finding their “Prince”. Somewhere in that confused  mixture  of fairy tale references of life, the frogs  remain frogs and the glass slipper goes missing and  the prince who was supposed to find them...never shows up!!