The Mysterious Caller

I know what you are thinking with a smug expression-this lady thinks no end of herself. First it was that stalker at the walk story, then getting a lift from a handsome stranger, to all the crushes on her and now a mysterious caller. But by the end of this all, you would be sympathising with me again dear friend, instead of envying...trust me, even though I don’t do so myself.

I absolutely wait for the ridiculous to happen with me which is rarely a disappointment so that I could splash it across here for my readers to float along with big monkey grins on their blessed faces over my misery yes, I know I am weird. And anyways, the last two serious posts had got me unbelievably itchy you don’t wanna know where to find my funny bone. After giving up searching in lards and yards and what not of me, I think I finally found it or at least hoping here that I did, thanks to a relative stranger again god bless them all in their species.

Since the evening of 3^rd June, the Friday, I had been receiving messages on my mobile from an unknown number-the usual philosophies of life moving on to love notes and hard-to-fathom shayyari. I delete numbers on my contact list after a while if there is no exchange or need of the person’s details on that space. What can I say, I just hate clutter. So on the 4^th morning, after the “good night’s” and the “good morning’s” became a little obnoxious and a tad bit curious for curiosity might not kill the cat here but it could definitely send her in a mini coma of sorts I messaged back asking, “Who’s this?”

Pat came the reply: “Ur friend”

Wow, wasn’t that unexpected!

Me: Say who you are or stop messaging.

After this the shayyari continued, getting much to my nerves for it was of the variety that shows like Comedy Circus boast of, dashed with romance to render it the most outlandish spectacle on the face of mobile phones. I mean who creates that kind of crap and worse still, who betrays humanity and his duties towards being a responsible citizen by circulating the preposterous!

Anyways, an hour later or so I received a call from this number and absent-mindedly I picked up. I do receive calls from unknown numbers I am not a celebrity yet.

He (in an amazingly squeaky tone): Hellooo Surucee!

Me (in an amazingly aghast tone, put there by just those two words): Kaun bol rahe hain?

MC (Mysterious Caller that is-any resemblance to any other anagram is purely coincidental and the author takes no responsibility): Mein Sameer!

Me: Sameer who?

MC: Arre, tum nahi jaante?

Me (wondering if someone called Sameer was just crowned the President or married the Prince of Wales that I am expected to know of this name even in sleep): Ji nahi. Politeness in the face of the absurd is the true quality of a lady my dear...what crap, I didn’t know how to blast him at such short notice.

MC: Acha I am a Second year student, kya hum dost ban sakte hain?

Me (losing it now): Whaaaaaaaaat? Please don’t call up again!

MC (with unmatched confidence, Dhoni should learn from him actually): Arre kal se messages kar rahe ho, thode der baat to kar lo.

Me (lost it now): *disconnects and does not pick up thereafter from Mr.  Persistence Personified*

Omgggggggggg! I was flabbergasted!

MEIN messages kar rahe hoon...MEEIIIIIIIIIINNNNN????

I didn’t know what to get more angry on this guy for:

1. He presupposes after badgering me with about 50 messages, to which I innocently and eventually just asked “Who’s this?” to MEEEEEEEE messaging him...sweet mother of lord, the guy needs help!

2. He was in Second year of college-I am hoping he didn’t mean second year school for that would mean class 12 and take my omg to the Himalayas. I mean agreed, age is no bar, but it is not an éclair either-Okay poor joke, but the guy must be twenty for crying out loud! When I was in my flaming teens, he was in his wetting nappies...such thoughts flashed my mind, which was in no way flattered by the attention.

3. Never mind that....story does not end there...picture abhi baaki hain!

The whole day thereafter the messages continued and also the hourly calls. He was instantly saved on my contact list as “DON’T PICK” to avoid making any blunders again. So DON’T PICK now said, “Mere se koi galti ho gaye kya?”

“Somebody sounding so sweet, how can she be so sour”-YEEEEEEEEEES...these were the exact words, followed by crueller massacre of the English language that almost prompted me to check his messages, edit with a big red pen and send him back with a big F that’s Failed by the way!

When the saga went on way into the night, G was informed and he seemed grim. I thought he would get angry. He seemed sad...I wanted to console him saying I belong only to him, my body, heart and soul saat janam tak, with a whole lot of drama that would put the entire Bollywood to shame, but then he uttered those words...Na bachche ‘DIVORCE, DIVORCE, DIVORCE’ nahi, re!

“You still get calls from admirers and are in demand but I don’t. Tum abhi bhi jawan ho aur mein buddha ho gaya kya?”

Omg...would the men orbiting my horizon please act as sensible men?

This is not about you baby, it is about me and I shake him up like a nice cough syrup ka bottle, after reminding him of the saat vachans to guard my izzat, taken round the holy fire eleven years ago during our wedding day!

So the next morning is encounter time*playing background music of some cowboy theme where the two opponents wear squeaky shoes and walk up to each other in painfully slow motion, reverberating with thak, thak, thak...you can also imagine close up shots of the silly faces in the crowd and bemused faces of the horses, for absolute imagery there*

At the first “good morning” G calls the bugger from his cell.

G: Kaun hain bhai aap?

BC (that stands for Badtameez Caller now, situation ke saath thoda adapt karna padta hain na): Aap kaun hain?

G: Aaj kal bade messages and phones kar rahe ho kisse ko? Kya baat hain?

BC: Haan kar raha hoon...to? Kya kar loge?

G: Beta, yeh sab jo kar rahe ho, lagta hain tumhe maar khaane hain?

BC: Kha lenge...ho sakta hain ulta ho jaaye.

G: Acha to milo tum abhi mereko station ke paas, mein batata hoon!

BC: Theek hain...arre nahi abhi nahi, 3 baje milte hain!

And he disconnects the line.

OHHH MYY GOOOD GOD!

One would think two people were asking each other out on a date! I didn’t know about the BC’s sexual preferences, but mere aapne maathe ka sindoor and yeh sab! Ghor Kalyug! I gave a stern look to G, that said, "Kar kya rahe ho aap? Usse time pass nahi karna hain...hadkana hain!" And what on earth would you derive on meeting the bugger anyways? 3 baje to aise bola jaise facial, manicure, pedicure ka time mind mein set kar ke aayega, mera haath maangne- @#$%%#$@##@!

A minute later I get another message, “Tumne apne boyfriend ko bata ke acha nahi kiya”. Omg please don’t keep the omg count here, some situations demand repetition!

Nahiinnnnnnnnn! Yeh meine kya kiya*one hand on the forehead with the 'mein lut gaye, barbaad ho gaye 'expression* I almost imagined a group of bikers in high boots, growling engines, leather jackets-oops, okay it is summers-costume change-in white shinning vest with muscles-shuscles rippling, circling my poor G in the nukkad near the station. And as soon as G got up with a very determined look that said ‘do or die’, I also thought of maaro-ing the favourite line, “Station tak pahunchne se pehle tumhe mere laash par se guzar ke jaana padega!” Thankfully or not, G had only got up to go to the loo!

Half an hour later he emerged from the washroom looking all victorious, which is generally anyways his look after every such trip and generally the IST-Indian Standard Time taken by the men in this family inside there I have often seriously thought of putting cameras in there but that for some other time.

G: The matter is solved. He won’t bug you any further.

Me: Huh? What did you do? (I was thinking he had contacted Pappu Bhai, whom I have overheard him saying umpteenth times on the phone, “Is baar bhai mera kaam theek se karvana, koi gadbad na ho!”)

Well, to cut the long story short, G had asked the bugger point blank if he knew whom he was calling and that the woman in question was married and ek bachche ki ma! G said I should have heard his tone for it seemed someone pulled the earth off his feet. He obviously didn’t know. The bugger had bought a mobile phone from a friend ka friend, found a girl’s name on the contact list and randomly sent messages hoping someone would get hooked.

Five minutes later I get the last message on the phone,

“Sorry yaar, chal bye.” G has not been able to wipe the smug grin off his face uptil now and I am still recovering from the disappointment of not being able to render my drama lines.

Morals of this story:

1. I may not be as jawaan as G thinks after all and G may not be all that useless in handling my izzat ke questions as I thought.

2. Though I truly believe we should not disclose marital status and baby issues in such sensitive matters to ensure a complete closure...where is tact, people?

3. Pappu Bhai is the garage owner where our cars go for servicing and repairs.
4. For heaven’s sake, people-delete the contact list before selling your mobile phones. It can bring someone’s home/ego crashing down!

5. That picture up there is not mine- just mentioning, in case I still have some market value that may not come staggering down to below zero thanks to that lady!

I hear, I watch, I wait

I hear, I watch, I wait...

It is the story of my life heralding to its dusk but perhaps I am now getting weary of the same old chronicle as my pent up body feels drained of supporting my equally tardy soul. It has been seventy seven years of a life less ordinary and hence I can’t really blame my bones for giving up on me. How do I admonish these wrinkles that line up my once flawless face? They tried to stay at bay for the longest of times on the human calendar but couldn’t really hold up against Mother Nature’s. And when one came even though peeping out a little hesitantly, the others lined up earnestly, as if to party! My smiles and frowns and ups and downs, perhaps made their resistance even tougher. They say fairer and softer skin is more prone to visibility of age’s vengeance. Now do I thank god for them or call Him in court on charges of un‘fair’ness? I laugh at the irony, which like everything else, is evident to me alone.

Sometimes I wonder, had I led a common life of drudgery, would this decline into oblivion been less painful? Or should I be indebted instead that at least I had my share of envious gaiety even on the run? Lady luck had been kind to me although many others of my own gender could barely bear me; but even she has rules about availing her allotted quota. Mine extinguished due to mindless gorging. I managed to eat my cake and have it and even lick the plate clean! And whatever if any remained on my lips, others made sure to do the honours...if you know what I mean.

I have loved and been loved umpteenth of times in ways that could create epics, seen the world, been there and done that, raised many an eyebrows and then many a good children!

However, today the world seems to have moved on beyond my grasp. Love is just another four letter word that is still not slang. At my age you don’t ‘fall’ in love, for the vision is anyways impaired and the ‘falling’ is anyways an everyday affair. My good children are now struggling to be good parents and hence priorities have shifted. Wherever I have been and whatever I have done is something that can’t be done again. No matter how much the optimists proclaim that history repeats itself, I know it won’t, or at least mine won’t.

I watch how the grandchildren enter my room and bow their head in obeisance before filtering away in the blink of an eye to merrier milieus. I am not the traditional granny telling on her beads and watching freshly hair spa-ed and face lifted ‘saints’ on the idiot box. But I am a granny still...who forgets things, seldom walks and that too with a limp and the only thing hard about her is her hearing. I have a television set for company although everything there is either too soapy for my taste or too loud even for my partially deaf ears.

How I wish they would sit with me so I could relate to them the stories of my past! That’s all I have got with me-a hard disk of memories embedded in my brain that the virus of monotony and vagaries of life could not erase.

I was not hip and happening like they are now, but I had managed to create ripples in many tranquil surfaces. Suddenly the stories that I struggled to hide through my youth are now getting restless to see the daylight, hammering upon my insides ravenously, fearing that their lively exuberance would be embedded with an old body in its sepulchre.

 

If only someone could lend me their ears!  Would they believe me or would they be aghast to hear that old granny could be anything other than a dignified and antiquated epitome? I ache now to strip off the garbs of pretence, to breathe free in the element that is me-no longer so and so’s wife or so and so’s mother but such and such person, as I have always wanted non-judgemental people to know, admire and reckon which many did, who dared to knock repeatedly at my closely guarded portals.

I sit here and concentrate on the merry din that falls upon my eager ears like soft but happy mumblings coming from behind the doors of the other rooms of my house. I sometimes watch the empty bed beside me, run my fingers on its surface and then sigh. The empty bed has been my closest companion since the time its incumbent decided to quit the show while it was at the height of its glory. The empty bed seems to cruelly reinforce to me every day that it would never leave my side. It has loyally taken up the shape of my contours or whatever is left of them.

My materialistic accomplishments lie mockingly tugged into drawers. I sometimes rummage through them and take them out to adorn myself and relive in some iota my past glories. But these that once looked heavenly, pronto throw ghastly shadows on the looking glass, almost beyond redemption. No amount of even the latest accruements can adorn an edifice in its fading glory. My so-loved little black dress looks more of a little black mess at this point.

I wonder should I write a book on myself now, after all, I no longer bother about scandals and appraisals, with one leg in the grave. You can yack how much shit about me in the aftermath, how would it bother me when I can’t care or do a shit about it? Maybe I could disclose the hidden murky side to my perfection, which is instilled in every human, though very rarely acknowledged, let alone flaunted. I can relate how and where these legs travelled before reaching this space. Perhaps my shaking fingers would allow me this last consolation or maybe it is too much to ask of these petite things that allowed me every discretion, when they could enable others to dance on them.

And I hear again, the laughter coming from the adjacent room. What could they be discussing? Why can’t they come in here and talk for if there is anyone who needs to laugh most now, it is me. It is almost like a dying wish now-give me a moment to laugh like no one’s watching, to laugh like I did earlier that set the hearts fluttering, to laugh like it’s the only natural thing meant for me to do in this world.

I hear, I watch, I wait!

Oh my mute lips have spoken too much today!

Perhaps now I should go off to sleep and not get up ever.

Let my youthful soul be free of the dilapidated body that I was once so proud of, to find a new home and begin new glories!

Looking for my Parallel Universe!

The Quantum Theory is something that technical, scientific and any-big-term-phobic ‘me’ would generally stay miles away from. Heck, I don’t even know if it is more concerned with science or technology or both. But I’ll tell you what my modest ‘big-on-advice-n-little-on-information’ brain has understood of it through a lesson I teach in Class 11^th, through the mind-blastingly awesome flick ‘Source Code’ and through my discussions about it with a dear friend.

It is an amazing theory that implies parallel universes could exist simultaneously along with our own, having their own history, events and often a completely poles apart turn of reality as compared to the one that has materialised in the otherwise normal world, as we know it. The ever eternal debate between reality and what we deem as real!

What is reality? Something that we are experiencing as of now or is this, the big, fat dream that would burst someday like a bubble and we would wake up to a different scenario?

I’ll first share with you the gist of this chapter I teach to Class 11^th students and that evokes the maximum number of yawns and protests from most of the slackers. So if you yawn in between don’t you dare open your mouth for anything besides a mesmerized gape, we’ll know where you stand!

It is the story of a History professor/writer/lecturer who one day wakes up to find himself in a train that is heading from Pune to Bombay. There are some Anglo-Indians on board and the train bears the symbol of the East India Company. Flabbergasted, he first presupposes that he has somehow travelled back in time, but it is not so. He is in the same time zone and era but in a world that is unfamiliar to him. Upon a little investigative stunt, he finds out that this is a different India, in contrast to the one as we know. Here we have not been ruled by the Britishers for a hundred years and are instead self reliant and extremely progressive. Whatever pocketful of English influence is there on the Bombay soil, it is in way of trading and entrepreneurship.

He goes to the central library to search for the turning point of the events and from where had history become different in this world to our own. Upon digging his self written history books, he finally converges it all to The Battle of Plassey where Vishwas Rao, the Maratha ruler missed the English bullet by a fraction of a hair, leading to the subsequent morale boost of his army and victory against the English in the 1800’s. The British influence thereafter was reduced and Indian Marathas ruled the nation for half a century before it became democratic.

While OUR History reveals that Vishwas Rao was killed by the British army that eventually led to an irreversible expansion of the English empire, whereby they ruled us for the next century! The professor absent-mindedly keeps the note of the information in his pocket, moves out and gets embroiled in an argument with an angry crowd, beaten up to the point of becoming subconscious and wakes up again to find himself on his bed in the world that he calls his own.

He is then explained to that since the last two days he was in coma, after a collision with a truck and the near death experience-which he realizes may have somehow made it possible for him to make that transition. However, the professor has evidence of that note in his pocket to prove to the detractors that they are wrong and what he was relating was not his insane imagination or wishful thinking.

 

The movie ‘Source Code’ also revolves around a similar web whereby one person travels through time and space to find himself in a body unknown to him, to save the world from a potential bomb threat and thereby able to create different realities by going back and forth in time for eight minutes on each round. Sounds complicated? Read the story here.

                         

Is that not an amazing leeway?

The assumption that varied realities exist in the universe where different histories I never thought I could use this term in plurals are being made based on a turn of events or diverse decisions that might have been taken. If I put my own life at this parameter it makes me dizzy to just imagine the possibilities.

Forgetting the global potential, it makes me wonder if there is another world, where I may be living a different life based on some road less travelled that I decided to sojourn on. There could be a world where I may not be married but running my own media channel, as was craved by me some fifteen years ago when I stepped out of the threshold of school. Selfish na, you think....But that was the first crossroad that I had stood on, debating and churning within till I finally gave in to family pressures. And many a times I am confounded by the 'what if?' that could have transpired there.

 

How amazing if we could peer into these different worlds as though into crystal balls and then pick and choose which alternative best suits our disposition and perhaps live there happily ever after. It is even more awesome than the supposition of visiting our future through some time machine because that cannot be altered while here we get options. And I have yet to find a human being who dislikes the idea of options for anything and everything!

“There is no one reality. Each of us lives in a separate universe. That's not speaking metaphorically. This is the hypothesis of the stark nature of reality suggested by recent developments in quantum physics. Reality in a dynamic universe is non-objective. Consciousness is the only reality.”-says M.R. Frank, from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

I find myself wondering at the concept of multiple realities. How do parallel universes connect? What are the exact processes by which mind interacts with matter at the quantum level? Would we ever be able to travel through time, space and realities like this? And would a technically-duh me ever be able to comprehend fully, leave alone use this scientific break-through, if ever achieved in our history? The universe that we live in has such a fascinating nature and there is after all something more complex than the brain...or is it really the brain’s complexity again, after all?

My Understanding of Women and Men!

•    A woman will not expect a man to impress her, but she expects him to try.

•  Women fantasize more than men.

• A woman does not relate to why his palm sized techy gadget should cost a world but expects him to understand that one single pea sized diamond is worth it.

•  A woman wants you to tell the truth whenever she says, “Tell me honestly” and later wishes she had not asked you in the first place.

• She may spend her better years professing how she wants X-Y-Z qualities in her man and also proudly declare in the same breath how she always falls for the opposite.

• She knows there is no ‘happily ever after’ but she pines forever for the Prince Charming to come along.

• A woman expects a man to share all his work tensions with her but does not expect him to expect her to remember about it when questioned later.

•  Most women are more in love with the idea of being in love than a person.

• A woman may speak for hours and then end by saying, “I somehow find it difficult to express what I really feel.”

• You would hear this more often coming from a woman’s mouth than a man’s, “Something is missing in my life/I don’t feel good inside today but don’t ask me why” when she would bloody well know what and why.

•  Women would like you to open doors of restaurants for her and pull the chair before they rest their cute butts on it; but they may throw a tantrum of equality and accusations of biases when you say, “It is not a woman’s job.”

• When they say “I am in a bad mood and want to be left alone”, they actually want your company the most.

• Most women can handle alcohol, men and women better than most men.

• A woman knows that her man may not have the best of voices but she loves to have him use it to sing for her.

• The speed with which a woman says "Nothing" when asked "What's wrong?" is inversely proportional to the shitstorm that's coming. 

• She dresses less for herself and more for others.

• Women use their smiles to get away with ANYthing.

• When she is in her teens the older men are always more appealing and when she is not, the youngsters are suddenly so bloody hot.

• Women are of three kinds: high maintenance, low maintenance and those who think they are low maintenance but are actually high maintenance*thank you Billy Crytsal for this superbly quotable quote*

• Women may age in their bodies but never in their minds.

Now the man’s point of view:

• A man knows his wife would never agree to a threesome; but he believes that miracles do happen.

• He would expect the woman to understand if he had a fling; but he wants her to understand not to expect the same from him.

• Men always like options.

• Men have better traffic sense but poorer sixth sense.

•  A man may want to bed a woman but not wed her and the one he weds is not always the one he beds.

• Watching television is the greatest stress buster and porn is god's gift to mankind.

• A man may crib about all those woman’s magazines that crowd the washroom space; but in his private enthroning on the pot, these become his philosophers, friends and guides .

•   Men are better flirts than women.

• A man may grin big time when he elucidates about his skills in bed to his guy friends; but he would frown big time about his woman doing the same to her guy friends.

• A man would not mind ogling at other women but gets all ‘saala, kutta-kamina’ when someone eyes his.

• He would mock at gatherings about how women love to gossip; but after the party, he would corner his woman like in an interrogation about who rules the gossip-vines and how.

• A man would not really talk to his woman on the phone while in the work space; but when she stops calling on him there, he would wonder what is wrong.  

•  For a man, some sex is good, more is better and too much is just about right.

• A man would crave for a woman till she is a chase and when she ceases to be one, he goes in a haze. Hard to get are always harder to forget.

• Men get better with age*don't ask me in what*.

• A man loves compliments just as much as a woman does, if not more.

• For a man, the relationship is on the rocks only when the sex decreases.

• Most men actually talk more than women, contrary to the popular myth and listen lesser, as is an established age-old fact.

• Men use alcohol as a reason and justification for making passes. They always test the waters before wadding in.

That’s about it from three decades of dealing with both the sexes, in different measures of course! Happy Gender Dealing!:-)

Crushing Crushes!

A dear friend of mine just got me down the memory lane to where I began my journey of handling crushes and being crushed!

While growing up and as adolescence set in on my hitherto super seedhi life, I used to have crushes @ of one every day...yes, you read right-almost EVERY DAY on an average. I think it is a little girlie thing don’t you dare single me out now my sisterhood gender on this. We little girls become all ‘awwww-ed’ with and about anyone who is relatively nicer or essentially cuter or gives us a little more than usual attention. For some, this inbuilt defective tendency continues till an unfathomable age, as I am a living proof. So I used to think the world about the new computer teacher-the only male teacher by the way in a convent school, governed by super staunch nuns-are there ever nuns who aren’t those anyways? Also about the friends’ cousins, the aunt’s brother, my elder brother’s friends, the shop keeper’s cute son and heck, much to my embarrassment now, even the boutique owner in those days he was called a tailor but that sounds even more awful and hence these small fonts to escape readers in a rush. There’s a reason why the government does not provide voting rights to adolescents and I just proved them right. But on second thoughts, if they did, at least the leaders representing our country would be good looking...sigh!

So my friends could pretty much count my crushes on their fingers, not the middle ones, please. And for accurate counting here I mean each finger getting into further sub divisions of three and thereby thirty at a time would suffice for reference’s sake. Just so that our moms would not know while eves-dropping, we rechristened the hunks as Anita for say Arun, Sonia for Saurabh, etc*the names have been changed to maintain the privacy of those concerned and also a concerned me* And before you think I was the worst, to keep a count of my friends’ crushes we had to maintain the abacus!

But more of my crushes some other time...this post is not about THAT!

I can almost imagine with sadist pleasure, you watching the screen with a gaping mouth and a disdained look that says, ‘She ranted one page about this crap and says she will “talk” about it some “other” time.’ Yes, sorry, this post was meant to be about people who had crushes on me and the encounters thereby which thankfully did not lead to the ‘happily ever after’.

Cut to my first year in college-the bubbling excitement of being on the threshold of adulthood was barely under control and we attended college for almost a full month as dedicated students. Of course later we realised that in Kanpur, you DON’T attend college, you just appear before the exams to collect your admit cards and then for the exam itself.

There was this College Union Leader. Remember Salman Khan in a flick called ‘Tere Naam’ but minus the atrocious hair flicks? He was the dada of the college-everything, even the teachers seemed to be under his control. He somehow developed a fascination for the plain Jane in me. While I would sit in the class and try to listen to the lectures, he would stand outside and watch me through the French windows. Then like the good Hutch puppy or is it Vodafone now, he would follow me around. This went on for a month till I became the butt of everyone’s jokes, as the moment I entered college and till I left, I had acquired an obnoxious, unpaid, almost pupils dilated for he would just stand and stare, as if in life there was no care body guard. I remember just when I had decided to not come to the college because of him that I got into trouble with not getting an admit card for some stupid reasons. And who else would I have to turn to instead of standing in long queues to wait for irritated professors to hear my plea!

His answer- “You do not worry, the admit card would reach your home.”

Me- “But I can wait here till you get it, sir.”

He- “Girls like you should not wait around here, aap jao, mein hoon na.”

Needless to say the admit card reached my home, without me being asked for my address.

I had not complained about him for he never really tried to approach or talk to me and anyways no one would have listened to me against him. I did not see him again, although till now I can picture precisely his slightly tilted stupid head and fixedly gazing face and all the filmy drama that he created. Maybe that was my preparatory ground of influence for acquiring the title of ‘drama queen’ that I subsequently developed.

There was this another time when a friend’s cousin managed to extract from me, my phone number after badgering me about it for months. After five days of telephonic conversations, he proposed to me I do sound vain here, don’t I? Well, it is a good thing I can’t show you pictures of these samples, so you would then sympathise with me instead. Now, I was in a fix. How do I tell this totally bhaiyya ji type manushya that this was the worst idea ever, even worse than watching shows like Rakhi Sawant or Rahul Mahajan getting hitched on television-my epitome of experiencing hell on earth? So I managed a little argument to confuse his duh-brain-ic abilities. He was thin like a rake and dim like a cake*used the analogy for rhyme’s sake*.

Me- “I don’t think we would have a future. You are soooo thin and I am well, not soooo thin. We would look terribly odd and soon you won’t like me anymore.”

He- “You think I am so shallow to like you for your body. I like your soul”

Me- *Oh my bloody hell-actually thinking that and not saying it aloud...probably because he had rendered me speechless and thank god I did not lose my voice forever out of shock, after hearing such utterances*

Somehow I succeeded to use my weight for the first time in my favour. Sometimes when I still bump into him in public gatherings, after a cold eye, I get a murderous look from him of his late realisation that he was hoodwinked then and how!

There was another episode that is tumbling down the annals of my suddenly revitalised memory. When we gang of school girls would get together at someone’s house, our idea of fun would be to get phone numbers of the hottest, cutest guys in towns and call them up to indulge in anonymous chats over the speaker phone. One would talk and the rest would indulge in mute guffaws. My friends were professionals in the game and we would later sit and do character assassination of too eager boys to spill their beans. With no caller Id’s and cell phones in those good old days, we connived with panache, knowing we’d never be caught.

One fine day at my friend’s house, I was challenged and a new number was put on the platter. I was handed the baton*in this case the telephone receiver* and instructed to get him bewitched. Come to think of it, television shows like “Emotional Atyachaar” where boyfriends/girlfriends get loyalty tests done on their lovers, was actually our brain child, devised years ago but sadly not patented. Anyways, there was a capsule course of voice training given by my batch mate followed by a briefing of what I should or should not do and say yes, the only thing missing was an armour and gun for I felt I was going at the border for a war and the onus of all womankind was on my not-so-little shoulders.

I spoke to this so termed ‘newest dish on the block’ for half an hour and was quite proud of myself, as everyone looked at me with a new respect for they didn’t expect me to last beyond 5 minutes. I still remember we all used the name “Anamika” ironically and left half of the eligible guys in quaint little Kanpur wondering who the hell for ‘who the fuck’ was not so common then was Anamika, screwing up the happiness of their lives.

The drama began when two days later I got a call from this ‘dish’ at my home number. What the fuck! Yes, I decided to fuck decency even in my thought bubble. This had never happened before with any of us girls that the guys managed to know who we were or get our numbers. They were always left at our mercy, to make the next call at OUR pleasure-that is whenever we got together again.

All hell broke loose. My virginal attempt became the biggest screw up and for a long time I got blank calls and pleading calls when I picked up the phone, till he eventually gave up. We never got to know how he reached me but our little secret enterprise died an untimely death and all Anamikas were wiped off from the face of Mother Kanpur for good.

Another dim wit of the highest order, called at my house and the schmuck flirted with my mother thinking it was me and my mother carried along with the whole idea for a couple of calls, throwing in her defence that she wanted to get to the bottom to know how deep my knees were in it. Years later, now I tease her that she did so then for her own little kicks that she must have got out of it!

Enough revelations for now! Such is life-there have been rarely “crush”ed people advancing towards me whom I did not actually want to crush with a rolling pin.

Does everyone go through these buggers or am I god’s special child?

My God-Where did you buy that accent from?

It is a tough world/life when some of your friends you went to school with and who have spent the better and most parts of their lives in humble abodes of dear old Indian cities, suddenly one day jabber and rant their guts out in the most obnoxious of accent that you know has recently taken an illegitimate birth and not developed naturally! You can’t seem to make up your mind, what is more outrageous- the non-stop bickering about things you don’t care a flying f@#% about or the omg-pronunciations and unnecessary elongation or gulping down of words and syllables that makes you wonder if the Indians should be more ashamed of such an English or the Englishmen!

I mean what is it, people? Where and how do you get an accent after breathing in the same town as I did and never been to a phoren land for enough time at least, that it would/should affect any part of your body, let alone the vocal cords? Agreed perhaps no one can tell whether you are carrying a fake LV bag or not, but you don't have to make us raise an eyebrow even at the actual genuine brands that you may be flaunting just because you opened your mouth and put your feet in it. And when they say "I didn't knew that" or "I did liked this", the teacher in me dies a million death and turns over in her grave at this merciless screwing er...massacre of English and just because I can't take out my red pen and put a big fat cross on their faces that indicates "Tried and tested and injurious to your tolerance powers".

I know Salman Khan and Priyanka Chopra are popular but even they have no excuse for taking away everything appealing about them the moment they open their delicious looking gaps of protruding lips that is and reek of loathsome fake-ness. Priyanka takes the cake with her oh-so-ready-to-giggle-like-an-innocent-girl and get onto my nerves.

I have a set of these amusing friends who would express the suppressed and the most unheard of theth-Hindi gaalis in one breathe and then sound like Princess Diana-reborn-as-a-trashy-rock star in the next. Even the rap singers would be timorous of using such short forms and slangs to evoke tomatoes from the audiences and just because we can’t throw anything better than glowering glances at you, you make us bear it all with a straight face. To give you an example-my becomes ma; now if they were to say ‘oh my god’ like ‘oh ma god’, can you imagine the confusion in my gullible mind in comprehending the implications of that?

People are so diet-conscious these days that along with that, they have become word conscious too or probably so hungry due to it that they eat up syllables and tones of words. So it is sad that while I can understand every word of “How I met your Mother” on the television without the English subtitles required, but to comprehend some of my socialite acquaintances, I just don’t need the subtitles but even the translations.

Wow, I am so tempted to write more and more and more, like my normal habit is...but to see the shock on my readers face on seeing just a one page blog update would be so unusual that I would let go of the excruciatingly painful urge ;-)

Seeeee....don’t tell me again, that I can’t write short blog posts!

When the f@#$ did womanhood happen here?-In search for the Girl in me!

Why aren’t there more women’s night outs and get-aways in India that are so religiously performed and basked in by our fairer sisters abroad, as depicted in soapy soaps and sit-coms from the West? Yes television is spoiling us, admitted...can we now move on? Our very sexier version of forty somethings of ‘The Sex and the City’ in the U.S. of A have a ball meeting up for a drink to discuss and dissect their sex lives or the lack of it and we are still stuck on maids and mothers-in-law? Excuse me, it is just not me, it is a disease of infectious proportions prevalent among the species that have mated and consummated the task of having junior versions of themselves sauntering along the planet.

Why aren’t there more bars/night clubs/lounges where single beauties and even the marginally so ones can go by themselves and get a date? I have a plethora of still single women friends, who have given up hope of ever finding a suitable guy at a night joint for it is flocked by “boys-girls” or couples...whatever happened to those in between? Why do we have to give up on girlhood and adapt to womanhood, just because we cross thirty?

The Desperate Housewives gals/women or even some of our own metro chicas know how to ruffle up smooth surfaces and raise many an eyebrows when they make entries and we are still hung up on who’s watching and thereby how we should appear to be. And those who don’t bother about the onlookers, the onlookers are most bothered about them and brand them as the next slut on the block. Wtf!

My god, the society-we can neither live with or without it, in or out of it.

There are days when my husband can have one of his many frequent boys’ night outs term it as a stags’ night out, for boyhood would be an illusion now and for me it would remain just a distant dream for many reasons per se:

A. Why do you women need a night out when you can meet over coffee or visit your friend’s home during the day or mall hop? ya right, we meet over soppy coffee and you over wicked vodka-isn’t that a fair world we respire in...sigh!

B. How would you return home baby at late hours, it is not so safe you know? Me: Reallyyy, why don’t we all stack up at one woman’s house then for the night and return home next morning in broad daylight and when we are sober.

He =HUH!!!!!!!!*that sound that emits from your beloved’s now-not-so-beautiful-seeming mouth asserts that you have just committed something short of a terrible blasphemy, even by the mere thought of it*

C. Log kya kahenge oh, crap! Now the only remaining thing to say would be-tum hamare khaandaan ke izzat ho!

Last year while visiting my still single friends in Delhi, we went lounging till the wee-hours, sang songs at the terrace and drove back with blasting music way past midnight enjoying the cool breeze of half deserted and yet alive lanes of Dilli. What a blast it was, making me empathise just for a wee bit of a weak moment with my beloved’s need to do a night out by himself for you realize it is so liberating, when done once in a while. I recommended it to all and sundry in my gender of sisterhood at the cost of being branded as someone whom husbands hushed their wives to listen less to. Needless to say, after many months of trying I could not materialize an encore in my small town and gave up. Maybe it is not so much a matter of small or big town as it is of small minds.

Till three decades of my life, I tried to keep alive the girl in me, so much that I never really felt I had left school so long ago and even unknowingly called some of my age-mates ‘bhabhi’ for along with the fringes of their saris were tagging along toddlers and not so tiny tot brats. I was wild in some sense though always bridled. Heck, last year I was even thinking of joining tennis classes so I could accompany my G when he goes to play squash every morning, learn an instrument/language and lose so much weight with vengeance that Salman Khan signs me up for his next movie session that is, totally besotted.

Things stand at a different shore this year.

Seeya’s bought a change and made me grow up. And needless to say I see-saw between the inferences of whether THAT is a good or a bad thing. You can’t be the girl anymore when the girl in your arms searches for the woman she wants to look up to.

There are days when friends who knew me from then and now turn around to comment how serious I have become or how they miss my puns and double meaning innuendos and banter that would keep them in splits. It makes my heart go split wide open with a strange ache despite the love balm that Seeya’s smile spreads on it each day. I miss writing blog posts that “I” liked and that did not whine. Someone mentioned the other day how I ruled Face book in my hay days with the wittiest of status updates on a daily basis and a string of 60-70 comments on each one. Hay days?????????? My god, what happened since then? Who the donkey, ate up my hay? :(

Somewhere in doing this and that and being here and there, in doing what we must and in being what we ought to, we lose we. And although the men enjoy the pleasure of continuing to be boys all their lives, we women struggle to be more as well as less of a woman yes, that confused is our subsistence.

There were days when I advised these pearls free of cost:

You can’t help getting older but you don’t have to get old!

Growing old in inevitable and growing up is optional!

It is not the years in your life that counts, it is the life in your years!

It is important to have a twinkle in your wrinkle!

Today I look back at these and say what the crap probably the recipients muttered the same under their breath. There are phases in life that very few can obstruct and go past unaffected. You change while shifting from school to college, while transcending from the bachelor state to that of having walked the aisle. Should we then lament and relent or accept and forget? I am now trying to make a mature room for the fun craving girl within me.

Growing up/old is as unavoidable as the sun rise each day no matter how much you like the dark to party. It is important to keep the old girl alive in me but not at the cost of strangulating the young woman also within at each of such attempts. I don’t resist growing up, I resist growing boring. I don’t mind having a wrinkle in days to come, I would mind when that would be all that my face would have to show to the world.

We would always be little girls from inside. We would wish for mothers when we get sick of all that’s happening around and for daughters when we want to see our dreams manifesting through someone else. We would wait for love to happen to us that fairy tales are made of. We would want to be free like men and pampered like women and struggle between realizing ourselves between this to and fro of genders. We would constantly be haggled by “what ifs” and “why nots”. I guess the girl within never gets drowned in the lake of the mirror of time, she just sits by the shore watching the woman tamper with the hitherto silent surface. I guess if I could make this woman happy, she would stop inviting the girl to fill in the gaps.

Romance at Short Notice-Part 2!

Please go to Romance at Short Notice-Part 1 before reading this to get the full import of the story.

Turning her blatant gaze away from his face, Nilu finally managed to fish out words from her slightly quivering and very embarrassed self.
“I am sorry! I thought the house was uninhabited.”

“It is and I am the one who should be apologizing for giving you such a start. Actually I don’t live here as it is quite away from the city. But it is my great grandfather’s house and I don’t want to give it up. Being opened for some famous tourists from Delhi, I thought I might as well come here and pick up some stuff.” He breathed a pause, “I assume you are one amongst the many outside?”

She raised her eyebrows in consent and smiled at the reminder of being a part of the flock, almost a wry one and he returned it back as though empathising. “My god, I couldn’t help but peep outside earlier and with no offence intended, living in that must be like being on a highly dramatic stage always?”

“Not really, we do manage breaks in between when there is lack of audience.” And they both laughed, the ringing mirthful and reverberating through the hitherto silent room, watching it all like an engrossed spectator. “I can’t imagine though how someone can, not-live in a house like this. It is so perfect.”

He beamed again, spreading the charm on his countenance dwindling between the boyish and the manly, with the delight of one who was enjoying good company after a long dearth. “Yes, but when you live alone it becomes a little waiflike. And when I need to write books or paint, I do come here on a sabbatical of sorts.”

That was like rain wetting a thirsty flaky crust. Women in general have this compelling fascination for writers-men who express the world in words like the stringing of the perfect pearls; for men of the world otherwise always lack the right ones to do so. Nilanjana was doubly hit as she was a voracious reader and literature was her escape route from the accounts and figures bound new family. She couldn’t help but gasp at the prospect of meeting an actual writer.

“O-oh, I have seen that expression often young lady and before you pitch up your expectations, my books are still in publication. So I am miles away from being a celebrity yet.” And then mocking himself he added, “Tch, so the autograph would be of no use now.”

He watched her intently as her face see-sawed between being disappointed in one second to instant flushing again at perhaps the hindsight of what-the-heck-a-writer-nevertheless! “That’s okay, maybe someday I can gloat about this little brush of claim to fame, when you do become famous and proclaim that I stood in that house where history was being written.” Nilu cut short shyly at the realization of how dramatic it sounded- a rub off perhaps of all the bonding that’s been happening of late outside. She added rather dramatically again, “Literature is my first love.”

“And trust me it would be the most faithful one. Destiny has brought you here it seems. I have some original documents, photographs, etc, of writers, even of Wordsworth and some lesser known ones, a sort of a lineage and it would be a pleasure to share them with someone who understands their worth...just a moment, I’ll be back.”

Nilu couldn’t control the butterflies in her stomach and felt her heart would explode at the prospective excitement that was surging and was suddenly glad at not having come up with any excuses for this trip. She looked through his sketches and how immaculately they expressed faces, as though she knew them, as though she would cross them on the way.

Within minutes a box of treasure was opened before her and had God himself told her not to go near it like the proverbial Pandora’s Box, she would have sinned and shown that history repeats itself. She devoured unabashedly the unsullied pleasure derived from wondrous collection of things that were more befitting museums than be found in a house like this. Things spoke volumes to her and she was lost with no sense remaining of time, space or reality. She wished it was a giant ping pong ball and she would never get out.

Women of whatever ages are always similar to little girls yearning for real life fairy tales. Or maybe women from insides really are little girls who grow up on fairy tales but never grow out of them.

They kept conversing, laughing while he wittily recounted backgrounds and she entered the portals of history, passion and emotions, so generously unbolted before her. Unveiled were letters drenched in love so fragile, a locket that stood the test of time, a hand written diary that spoke volumes despite the dilapidated pages, pens of masters that rule eternity and what not. Imagine the fulfilment of a pilgrim upon reaching his destination-such was the unrestrained content ebbing in her little heart.

And just then came a sudden thump of an open window, made by a jealous, strong gust of wind, rudely breaking the trance!
Have you ever been in a dream where you were attaining something tangible after having craved for it from the longest of time and feeling it lovingly between your fingers; but then suddenly awoken, you clasp the palm trying to grasp the illusive, that is gone forever?

Sometime had elapsed as she returned to the present and finally managed to tear herself from the assembly of what had taken her breath away, to look up; and what she saw did not help transport her back either. Right before her eyes was her own sketch that the veritable stranger had made within minutes perhaps while she was lost in ancient manuscripts and she looked more beautiful there than any mirror had ever communicated to her.

Nilu was speechless. She fumbled for words. What words do you use before writers to express what you feel, so eloquently enough that it gets effectively conveyed to reach to the levels of how it is being felt?

But he didn’t want her perhaps to say anything as in the next moment he wanted to take her elsewhere.
“And if you think these are amazing, wait I have something more!”
And he disappeared again into an inner room before Nilu could summon the right words, leaving her with emotions that were not so familiar.

“Nilu, Niluuuuu... ah, here you are. I have looked all over this spooky house. It’s getting dark baby, we are all packed up to leave. It is a three hours journey back you know and we’ve already wasted much in looking for you.”

When Nilanjana had heard Anshul, guided by some weird gut feeling she had folded the sketch sheet and put it in her coat. She would spend years wondering why she did that, but at that time some voice within left her with no choice. With Anshul were the two nosey brats who had startled her earlier and who must have led him to the room. She had not realized how much time she had spent there. She panicked within, 'I don't even know his name...I didn't even express what I felt!' She looked around hurriedly and at the desk she wrote on a sheet kept there,
“I cannot thank you enough for today.
Please call me,
Nilanjana
9922518399”

She kept the note under the same magical paper weight while Anshul was looking around at the sketches.
“Huh! What a waste of time and energy someone is going through in here! Come on let’s go.”

He put a hand around her waist as though it was not a suggestion but a command and she followed silently although her feet seemed to have been planted there. She took one last look at the room to keep a memory etched in the private domains of her mind and continued to be dragged against her emotions. Something had happened today that had shaken up her boring existence for good...something that would continue to stir her for years despite all calm exteriors.

So just like that she left, wondering what he would think when he came out.
And just like that also left the two little brats, but not before one of them looked around sheepishly and pocketed the fascinating paper weight-his very own souvenir to show off to friends back home.
And just like that came another mischievous gust of wind and took Nilu’s little note out of the window with it before it could reach the desired hands.
And just like that ended a love story that could have been a forever romance happening at short notice!