Remember Me? The Girl In The Grey T-Shirt?

Am I the only one left in the world who still wants to dress comfortably? Am I the only one who still thinks it's okay to repeat a dress, or to borrow one from your roommate? Am I the only one who has financial constraints, the stubborn blindness to "50% off" advertisements, the miserable feeling of wanting to be an adult and failing so tremendously?

Am I still the only one who is resistant to raised eyebrows, remarks about my "grunge" sense of fashion, men who want to buy me clothes because "Don't you have a short dress?".

I do. But I will not dress up in any way that you specifically take the time to ask me to. And I will not "wear what I want" because you finally gave me approval. I heard that sigh. I saw that scrunched forehead.

I am neither that girl, nor that kind of a girl, or that "type" of a girl. I am a girl, but of my own merit. Anything that ever adorns my body is of my own making- dark circles, hairy flab, wobbly thighs included.

Am I the only one who wants to slip into a baggy grey T-shirt just to look like I feel-
able, hard-working, unafraid of a little sunlight or dirt, unconcerned about broken nails, not feeling less capable than a man on the same job, like a self-made woman who doesn't need a cleavage to be better than him?

Am I the only person fighting to be myself in a roomful of unblemished, glittering, aesthetically attention-seeking perfection? Should I even need to fight?

And then you'll call me proud. And then you'll say, "She's that kind of a girl". 

"BABOI"

A new word that I'm trying to accustom myself to. I don't think there's a substitute for it even in my mother tongue, though Kannada and Telugu are sister languages. But there's something about the word that does not just indicate surprise. And today, I found out what it was.

There I was, huffing and puffing, marching my way to office (late, as usual). I was wearing something "nice", but it was hidden beneath my blue jacket. Despite slow-roasting beneath the layers of garment, I was kinda assured that no one would say "She was asking for it".

But it happened regardless (surprise, surprise!). I walked past a parked auto. Two drivers having an animated conversation with each other stop to look at me. The second I pass by, there they go "BABOI".

I had ample opportunity to have a middle-finger moment, but what do I do? Throw my head back and chuckle. Also, blush slightly. Strange as it might seem, I came across to myself as "That kind of girl". But then again, it wasn't much of a shock.

In personal evolution terms, I seem to have gained the ability to both accept my body and detach from it. I am no stranger to sexual harassment- groping, "offers", advancements, violations, what not. But these have served to turn my mind into a pretty sharp weapon. I can smell a creep from across town, I can anticipate harm even when the violins are playing. I give no benefit of doubt and quickly avoid undesirable situations.

I guess it's because I feel so safe within my head that even without pepper spray, I no longer care who cat-calls at me, or what they might do. The auto drivers in question were actually quite harmless. Had I approached them for a ride, they'd have quoted about thirty rupees extra at the most (so says my intuition).

So, yeah. They said "BABOI". No, no. They sang it-- "Baaboooiiiyyy!". And I smiled. It's okay to live in the spirit of "I'm sexy and I know it". Right?

Notes on Artificially Supported Social Lives (1)

Online dating is rad and everything but for obvious reasons, we begin with the assumption that the other person will go out with you. Ergo, we miss asking the question. "Will you go out with me?"

Even though the question seems fairly straightforward, it's not. Really. The circumstances make it so very, very difficult for guys. I believe that's the case especially in India. So guys just go round and round and round the bush, beating it till all the leaves fall out and still don't pop the question. 

"Will you go out with me?"

And ever since I can remember, I've always been the one to manipulate the guy into asking. Except for R*, but then again, he has a "girlfriend". I miss being asked out properly. I understand that guys on OKC will never get around to it. But when am I going to meet a man in real life who would stop and ask 

"Hey, will you go out with me?"

[Watch the Short Film "Signs". Do lives like this only exist in fiction? Boo-hoo.]

The Deepest Love is:

You. You know who you are. I know for a fact that you'll never put this on a public forum. Maybe you're unsure of the way you write. I really don't know, re. 

But what you've written deserves to be read. Poor me, I don't have enough conviction to write about Love, if left to my own devices. But I'm telling you, if this isn't poetry, I don't know what is!

So, ladies and gentlemen- presenting these few rare lines that might never see the face of paper. I urge you to ponder over them and reconcile your thoughts with your personal truth:

The deepest love is creating Beauty out of passion, in your Solitude;

Carving out your imagination, Setting your soul on slow fire;

Building the path between your beautiful mind and your Undying Soul. 

Let the rivers go wild and flood the caves,

But centuries hence it will be found by someone brave.

Then they will look up, mesmerized. 

Then they will remark- "Oh! They made it... Out of Love!

Intro.spectrum.

When you really think about it-

You know the days that make you blue, you know the red days, the dead days, the bright yellow sunshine days, and the pale green sickie days. You know you're a different person every day and every minute, but you also know you're the same. There is no explaining the you-ness of you. Nobody will ever get it (sometimes not even you). So, you're happy to let the world think that you're a certain set of characteristics and you can live up to that projected image.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to hold with everybody. The people who love you tend to love you excessively and the people who hate you tend to trample you more than necessary. To many, you are only "dear", "sweetest", and "darling"; and to the blessed few, you are "bitch", "pussy" and "chicken". I can close my eyes and easily recall a long list of people and put them under the following labels: Uptight, Gossip-monger, Compulsive stoner, Hyper-masochist a**-hole, Simpleton... For all my preaching, I DO have a big bunch of people with one-term labels.

This, I can easily justify for myself and for everybody- we need to sort things out inside our head and keep them categorized at some level. You aren't pre-loaded with Excel, extendable memory storage and a huge RAM. You have to keep the mess of information as simple as possible to avoid lunacy.
Life is too short for us to understand ourselves, let alone other people. And we NEVER remember that everybody else is fighting the same battle. We're too egocentric in our need to be understood and hence, we become vulnerable to offence.

We are never going to understand the nature of our existence completely. So, as long as no real harm is being done to you, build yourself some objectivity and allow space for other people to use their one-term labels. It's an absolutely necessary evil for sane survival. I guess if we understood this enough, we would attack people lesser and we would even perceive lesser attacks upon ourselves. Acknowledge, kindly, that other people are spectra within themselves. If you can't find the time or make the effort to get to know them better than their label, at least don't hold it up against them. Keep it to yourself as a matter of fact, without malice. Find it in yourself to be tolerant, if not loving.

Lately, there has been a little something going around in lieu of Teachers' Day. People are naming the ten people who made an impact on their lives. I don't think it's any different from picking out your favourite colours. I mean no offence to the people or this practice. It's a very good thing to remember the ones who have changed you for the better. But the point I'm trying to make is, EVERYBODY changes you for the better. Every person has a certain impact upon you. You may not like the presence of some of them in your life, but you've got to see this much- people are either inspiring you to be something better or motivating you to not become worse (thus enabling you to stay better). Unless you don't want to be better (which of course, you don't), you can perceive people's presence in your life as a good thing in every little way.

"Being", in itself, can be infinitely more easier if you could just discount the by-products of the human condition. Zooming out a little, you can see that there is little point to being any "-ist". No point to being Racist or Feminist or Idealist. You have enough trouble just being yourself. Kindly concentrate on that first. Be not insecure that someone at the other end of the spectrum is bad-mouthing you. You are not isolated. You are always surrounded by the colourful people of the same wavelength. As for the others, allow them their bandwidth.

Like my friend Vivek says, "Men should stop being masochists, women should stop being feminists, and everyone should just write code!". To paraphrase, let go of your impositions of the ideal world. Kindle your passion and work on something that you care about. Make the world a special place in your own way. We cannot change colour at the moment, but we can hope to hit another prism in the evolutionary timeline and become, even if for a moment, united to colourlessness again.



[Also read Vivek's own brand of gyaan. Common sense these days needs to be put back in perspective:
Vivek's note]

The Destiny of Now

Dear Dani,

I'm going to have to remind you of the days when I had to call you "Daniel sir" because I was the student and you are the teacher. The days when I lost my head inside a pile of books and instant coffee every evening in the cafeteria, with no one to speak to but the ghosts inside my hollow ribs. The days when you finished back-to-back evening classes and came around to feed your hungry self and bought my last cup of coffee for the day. You sat and patiently listened to my pointless ramblings about the world, my rookie opinions on postcolonial theory and what novels I was currently reading. Our conversations mostly revolved around your classes, my exams, my future plans and then books. A smattering of other things too, until one day in November, you gave me a small red copy of The Bible in which I find my peace every time life drags me down. I can't thank you enough for introducing me to a God who lives in paper that's as thin as a dream in winter.

It wasn't until the very end of my final semester when your heart stepped out of your formal shirt and said "I wish we had met earlier." Indeed, two semesters were too short a time to have known each other, but by then we knew enough about ourselves to securely say that we were friends. When things were bleak for me, you were my rock. My absolute rock. 

A few days later, you said to me again "I really wish we had known each other earlier." I told you something then, and I'm going to tell you the same thing again- not because you need to hear it, but because I need to remind myself of my own half-a-rupee philosophy.

I don't think we should have met any earlier than we did. No. Life is well versed in drama and the timing it has is spot on. If you had met me any earlier, I wouldn't have been that zombie eyed piece of tragedy; if you had met me any later, you'd have been put off by the apathetic sharp tongued cynic I had turned into. 

No, you met me at just the right time- when you knew me by face but not by name, and despite trying to beat the morning bell yourself, you slowed down and asked me on the staircase "Are you alright?"

It was the drama of the moment. So precise, so magnetic, that it kept drawing us to each other in corridors and coffee counters, and you asked over and over "Are you okay?", until one day I admitted that I was not, after I was finally convinced that someone cared. 

I am recounting all of this because I just realized that there was one more important lesson hidden in the drama of "How Dani and Abhi became friends". Every day was special, every conversation was insightful, and every moment was fruitful because we fully lived in it- We made the best use of Now.

We never spoke of a yesterday and we never thought of a tomorrow. We were always where we were. That time of my life was indeed a gift because the Present was not the most neglected moment. No, we were aware of the onset of each moment and we welcomed it with rationality that had a touch of humanity. I realized moments ago that I ought to do it all the time. I ought to live in the present. 

It is remarkably stupid how much I've been neglecting the present moment. More so, today. 

Today, I've been busy putting myself in the cross-fire of the past and the future. 

Okay, Dani. Time I make a little "life update". I could have called you and told you but because I'm such a Drama Queen, I'll make this a big deal and all. 

Less than 48 hours ago, it was what I would have called a "Happy Anniversary!", had I still been with M*. I had a little bit of a meltdown in the middle of the night. After all, this is the first time in an obscenely long time when the "anniversary" isn't the anniversary. Had I been with M*, I would have probably had three such meltdowns and five screaming contests a month for every month we've been apart. But I did love him until it burnt its way into the manner of my existence. But with the distress so distant, waves of good memories and happy times were drowning my exam-season brain until I was sobbing senseless at a dirty wall in a dark hostel corridor. 

PARADOX

In less than 48 hours from now, I'll be on what I'd shriek with excitement and say "Yay! Date!". By now, you've lost track of the number of guys I talk about. This is someone I haven't told you about yet, mostly because I don't "know" him very well myself. He's one of those guys who looks different from picture to picture. Talks very little, but when he does, he blows my mind. Has the kind of brain and wit and sense of humour that makes me want to keep the contents of his skull all for myself and pickle it to preserve it, just like a creepy person. He's like Spider-man- I think I know him, I don't know how; I think I like him, I don't know what about him that I like. He is such a bloody mystery, it drives me CRAY-ZAY. I think about him when I'm supposed to be studying for my exam (like right now) and I think about him even when I'm writing the exam (like today, yesterday, day before yesterday... you get the drift). It's exciting! I'm dizzy with adrenaline. I day-dream on floaty clouds and I re-read all his messages till the words paint themselves in a haphazard graffiti on my retina and eventually, my REM sleep.

I like it that I don't have to use stupid emoticons while talking to him and he still gets my jokes. Words are enough. Though, if I had to use emoticons, I'd use the one with the big hearts popping out of the eyes. 

And he's so hot *HOT*, that it should be made illegal. 

So Dani, you can imagine in what state my mind was in. On one hand, history had me in a high tide of nostalgia and on the other hand, mystery had me hopping on one foot with extreme impatience. And all the while, it was causing so much tension that I forgot how to be in the NOW.

Look at the drama of this moment, Dani. Life is so perfect at this thing. The difficult things are gone, the good things are probably coming. But I'm still myself right now, my heart firmly in my own possession. The drama of the moment, Dani, is not about what was or what will be. One is beautiful history and the other is a heated mystery. The Destiny of everything belongs in this moment- a drama- the act of turning the page of my ongoing autobiography.

Becky Bloomwood's Guide to Financial Management

This is the book that never happened. Becky was always up to her eyeballs in debt. She could never-ever Cut Back and she kept trying to Make More Money. She spent more, too.

So, here is some real Daily Gyaan. How to save money. Without a bank. All the ideas below have been tried and tested by me and they have WORKED.


#1
Never spend a twenty. 

You don't come across twenty rupee notes often. So you put them away. Eventually, you'll have loads of twenty's and you'll find your stash one day when you need it. A very dear friend of mine used to do this and I have to thank him loads for the idea.


#2
Pretend-spend.

You know you shouldn't be buying that bar of chocolate. And you know you really don't need a pair of black pumps. So, what do you do when you're on the end of the month budget-diet?
You pretend to buy whatever you bought and you put that money away.

#3
I am satisfied. 

You have given into an indulgence. You got yourself a pedicure, or you read a book from the library, or you ate vanilla choco chip ice-cream. Are you happy? Are you satisfied? Is it a 10-rupee worth of satisfaction or can you part with a 100 rupee note?
Put the money away.


Let me know how it works for you. Leave your ideas in the comments below.