The Death of LOL :D :) :( ;(

I feel like replacing my instant coffee with filter coffee, sit back Mami style and read long copy advertisements (Idea Courtesy: Joseph Thomas). I might even pick up some paper and write a letter to a friend. A five-rupee stamp would indeed be a lot cheaper than making a phone call, because as chick protocol goes, call duration can not be lesser than 40 minutes.

But what about SMSs?

Well, there is a 15-day ban on texting. We are only allowed to send up to 5 text messages a day until September 1st, 2012. I am absolutely not complaining. If matters were left to me, I'd even extend the ban. But hear me out before you come after me with your chappals-

We frustrated, pro-tunnel syndrome text addicts are yanking our hair out, drumming and tapping random things, and even biting nails to keep our fingers occupied. We keep checking our phone for a new message, only to find that our dearest BFFs have deserted us. We feel special if someone sends us a message, and if the same person sends all five of his messages to us in a day, we consider him worth marrying. We live in a strange world, to be measuring 'True Love' in terms of text messages!

I see several advantages of not being able to text:

1. 'To Text'- which is wrong grammar, by the way, can no longer be used as a verb.

2. Since you MUST call, I'd like to see if you talk like you text:
"see-en you see-em?" formerly known as "cn u cm?"
"LOL LOL smiley smiley" formerly known as "LOL LOL. :) :)"

3. Flirt, if you must, but don't reduce it to "sexting". No one, I'm sure, would call up someone and bombard them with phone sex. Therefore, it is safe to predict that any love birds that find each other in the next couple of weeks will have a really nice, clean and possibly long lasting love story.

4. No time pass, no time waste. We all have the opportunity to learn the meaning of 'Emergency' and we'll reserve our SMSs for REAL emergencies.

5. You'll realize you have a lot of free time on your hands and you will become more productive (Third blog post in three days, ladies and gentlemen). I'd recommend de-activating your Facebook account to become even more productive (Inactive between January and June 2011 and COMPLETELY worth it). If you decide to do so, let me know so I can mail the links of my future blog posts to you (or follow my blog!).

6. Calling up people will ensure sufficiently meaningful conversations and will also improve the average attention span.

7. Most of all, we'll lose the LOL, the inability to end a conversation without awkwardness, and shed all our meaningless smileys and replace them with real words.

So, the Death of LOL is a pretty good thing, if you ask me. May LOL rest in peace- as static and as dead as it was when it was alive. 

Why I Need an Early Menopause: The Rant

Maybe it's the hormone spill-over or something but in between sending hate mails to people I don't really hate and resenting my actions in general, there comes a time when I see my blood shed. A break within the break from normality when I'm reminded that- oopsie, we've got a bloody problem here.

I've gone over this for exactly one hundred months as of today. Ever since it started for the first time. The very bloody menarche. I'm no great with the biology of it but I really do try to rationalize the foul mood and the bad behaviour that stems out of it due to all this hormone curdling during one's menstrual cycle.

After every little girl's initial shock towards the blood, she learns to de-sensitize herself to it. She's conditioned to think of it all as "a natural process" and "it must happen" and "that's how it is". This mute acceptance and the ability to ignore the constant discomfort and pain is a skill that she must acquire. I was "gifted" with the ability to nurture a baby within me a little before the age of 12. Little girls these days receive this "gift" as early as when they are 8 years old (due to various factors and that's another story).

Have you ever stepped back from it and looked at it as something that is other than a necessary evil? Why the hormones? Why the blood-shedding? Why the foul mood?

What is it like for a woman to discover that her body worked for an entire month, gathering every particle of extra energy, consuming her nutrition to create a bed of blood in her womb for a life that never happened?
What is it like for a woman to know that it will happen again in another month's time?

What is it like for a woman to stand in her bathroom and look at the body she lives in and suddenly hate the ugliness of it?
How disorienting it must be for her- especially since it was the same body she admired just two weeks ago when she ovulated?

What is it like for a woman to lean against her bathroom wall, blacking out? What is it like for her to see her blood flow out uselessly? Her BLOOD.

I saw the tissue lining of my uterus leave me today- a soft blob with a semi-solid consistency on the bathroom floor. It was a part of me that was dead. It was a part of a prospective somebody that was dead. It had to go because it had hit a certain expiration date and my body could not afford to keep something stale inside me.

I know for a fact that my body made that blood bed with love. Biology textbooks call it the "placenta" but today, it looked like the neglected earth that was meant for the seeds of the future. And as I write this, my eyes foolishly fill up with tears.

It is in my nature to want to be a mother. No wonder my hormones protest when body isn't given what it wants. I am reminded of an entry from the Journals of Sylvia Plath. It goes like this:

There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me, as if something is there, beneath the surface of my understanding, waiting for me to grasp it. It is the same tantalizing sensation when you almost remember a name, but don't quite reach it. I can feel it when I think of human beings, of the hints of evolution suggested by the removal of wisdom teeth, the narrowing of the jaw no longer needed to chew such roughage as it was accustomed to; the gradual disappearance of hair from the human body; the adjustment of the human eye to the fine print, the swift, coloured motion of the twentieth century. The feeling comes, vague and nebulous, when I consider the prolonged adolescence of our species; the rites of birth, marriage and death; all the primitive, barbaric ceremonies streamlined to modern times. Almost, I think, the unreasoning , bestial purity was best. Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is. 

Similarly, I see how evolution has streamlined us to modern times. I feel that the bestial purity was best. A nature versus nurture struggle happens between my head and my womb. I sit here, pajamas stretched taut against my cushioning stomach and curving hips. I don't feel fat. I merely feel domestic. There is some innate compulsion to reproduce that I cannot deny myself.

On the other hand, I know I cannot sit around wanting to be a mommy. I know I have an internship report to hand in. I know I have some assignments to do right away. I cannot want to be domestic when I have to complete my B.A, M.A, M.Phil and several Ph.Ds.
'What non-sense! Mother, it seems', snaps Rationality at me.
I cannot escape the holy trinity of Achievement-Fame-Fortune. I cannot plant my bum at home and be a woman.

An early menopause is required. Let's be practical, here. Nobody needs babies in this day and age. Nobody needs a man, either. And there are plenty of babies lying around to be picked up, already, right? Menstruation is SO three generations ago. Why hasn't evolution made it redundant, yet?

'Who are you kidding?'. the motherly womb clucks back. I think of my Prince-Charming-In-Shining-Armour-Holding-The-Door-For-Me. Of course, I need to menstruate! How else will I have Prince Charming's babies? A boy, a boy and a little baby girl.

But in one colossal blow, reality sets on my menopause. Dreams are shattered. Deadlines are set. I prepare for college and life in general. 

Why I Need an Early Menopause

For someone who is missing the gene of Sports and physical activity in general, fun things should be made taboo. Not that I'm unwilling to square dance or do the limbo dance. I simply should not be allowed to because I'm generally kinesthetically challenged, and for 48-hours post physical activity, I can feel every tendon, muscle, ligament and bone joint in my body. Little wonder, then, that it hurts even when I yawn and laugh, after ALL that limbo dancing I did during the Literature Fest "Jabberwocky" in college.

I tend to be slightly attention seeking at all times but I didn't know that I could limbo dance quite like that. I didn't, in my wildest dreams, guess that I'd go so low (literally) to get someone's attention! Not to mention I received certain un-subtle comments about my "flexibility". For all those who took the liberty to ask me, or rather TELL me how I achieved my "flexibility", at least pray that the right guy noticed!

I digress.
*ahem*

As I was saying, physical activity is not for me, no matter how much fun it tends to be, because the biggest and most annoying consequence of it is that it tends to advance my period. Body pain, foul mood, cramps and wanting to curl up in fetal position is a highly undesirable combination. The realization of an empty uterus and a soft placenta that MY BLOOD made, ripping away from my insides and "that-womanly-feeling" further adds to the frustration. I may sound slightly dramatic here but it tends to put a lot of things in perspective:

(A)

Not only do you know FOR SURE that you're not pregnant, which reminds you that indeed you got no action this past month, you have to deal with the excess of (un-catered to) hormones, worry about the resultant pimples on your face and mull over the "Baby-name-of-the-season" that your mind has taken a fancy to (This time, it's 'Rainer', a nice sounding German name for my non-existent baby boy. God save my soul).

(B)

You have to curl up in bed and face the fact that even your beady eyed teddy bear is an annoying mass of nothing and have an imaginary conversation with the man it stands for.

(C)

You have to let some memories dawn on you, sickeningly- "Ooooh! Let's do lunch tomorrow! You tell me where, I'll be there. Blah, blah, blah, blah". (Why won't I keep my big mouth shut? Why? WHY?).

And then you have to tell that nice boy you like that you can't do lunch because of excessive limbo dancing and "woman problems".

I don't think I need to explain why I need an early menopause but I must tell you how many advantages it has got!

1. No reproduction issues: It's good for the planet! With the kind of population explosion there is, I might as well adopt a baby girl if I fancy (thus permanently putting an end to the argument with my mother about why my horoscope says that I can only have boys). I'll probably obsess less about stupid German baby names and by the time I'm ready to have kids, they'll probably come up with some stem cell solution if I want "my own biological" baby. If you ask me, the menstrual cycle should become an evolutionary redundance. I think we have enough people to last quite a few generations. And then we can deal with the stem cell mumbo-jumbo. 

2. I can limbo dance all I like and not get my period early and therefore not want to curl up and die. 

3. Menopause does not diminish sex drive, apparently (and unfortunately). Which is good in a way. But if it doesn't work out for me, I can pretend not to know this little fun fact, give up hopes on men and boyfriends in general and FINALLY do my CIAs on time!

4. I won't have to take medication for pain relief and I won't have to risk being addicted to them.

5. I won't have to run to the loo one thousand times and wake up all night no matter how XXXL the wings may be. 

6. I can buy a nice pair of shoes with the amount of money I save on sanitary pads. Fuck it. IMAGINE THE NUMBER OF BOOKS I CAN BUY! :

My Flipkart Wishlist!

If one of my aunties read this post (and I sincerely hope they don't! Mami needs no other Mami, thank you!), they may come back and tell me "What kandraavi is this? You are only twenty years old, no? You will not get menopause and all right now only. When will you have children then? And if you have any problem why not use Stayfree? It is very good, I am telling you! Non-sense and all don't write, ammadi. The black bra post is funny, but. We are also modern and open minded only"

As a Mami in the making, I'd like to add that it is I who can do full justice to the definition of "modern and open minded" (I think. I am still not well adjusted to eight year olds talking about their "boyfriends". In plural, yes.) and I do have a problem which is why I'd like to STAY FREE. Thank you!

And in case y'all think I can't hit an early menopause because I'm only 20, I'd like to let you know that I'm not worried. I come in close contact with a certain iron-willed post menopausal woman every week who will surely lead me in the right direction to it.