Are you raining Praise today?

Strange is human nature-if someone praises us, they are sensible and a good judge of character. If they acclaim our contemporaries-what flattery and hogwash! One person saying nice things about my posts, I deem it as truthful, judicious awareness and the same person commenting generously on someone else’s mediocre blog is what I see as motivation by reader’s pressure. Yes, glints of narcissism are not always apparent.

It is as natural as breathing to believe nice things being said about us. We can be lulled into almost anything while listening to those earnest words which our mind signals to us as a craving we deserve. We want the world to borrow our eyes to see us like we do and borrow our mind to think the same too. We don’t want perspectives, we want garbed approvals.

It would be almost impossible to find someone who totally hates himself. Self love is the first love and like they say, the first love is the hardest to give up. So when someone fans this fire, it spreads faster than blood does in the veins. It takes us to a whole new echelon of enthusiasm within the frame of our skin and delicate layers of deliberation within.

Praise is not beyond us even if we are not one of those who are beyond praise. An act of appreciation affirms our connection to each other-validates us, expands who we are in this world. Even a little bit of a positive reception goes a long way to ensure action that may otherwise be postponed or crushed under the farce of monotony or disinclination.

It is a universally occurring phenomenon. Even those who profess to be above it are really somewhere lingering around its fringes waiting to be enticed by potent and believable enough bait. It is the marijuana of success, a vicious circle wherein enough is never enough and more leads to a wish for an encore.

The intellectuals to the retards, the artistic to the vulgar, the man on the chair to the man on the street, everyone’s looking to be considered special-every ordinary human motivated to be derived as inspiringly extraordinary or at least rare, whether they admit it or not, to a greater degree or less. And when someone gives that to us-we raise them to a pedestal just as they raise us to some altar in our minds.

Praise is often intoxicating. Watch someone who has left footprints on some soil, worth his mettle. See him bask in his own glory, drench in public adulation and tread only in hunger for greater applause. It is then that a dip in appeal occurs-for he alters to live now to please others who loved him in the first place for loving himself as he was.

Praise can balance you just as much as it has the potent power of turning you giddy. It is often misleading-it plays games of hallucination and you begin to imagine materialization of thoughts that were hitherto latent. It evokes desire and the drive. Whether it is positive or negative depends on its provocation and how much you allow it to go to your head and eventually the rest of the systems follow suit. 

The only weapon safeguarding us against this lethal attack would be the armour of discretion-being able to realize when and who is genuine and what is being said merely to ensure a reservation in the good books. Someone somewhere is always trying to get into your books-whether or not you happen to be sitting with an open or inviting one, it does not matter.

We live not for ourselves but for the redemption of how we should be. We want praise for we want to know we are not being discarded like the chaff at the flour mill of life that is grinding us mercilessly. So let's accept what we subconsciously plea to the world-as you rotate the blades of this machine, by kind to grind me to a fine powder that satiates not just your hunger but also makes me feel fulfilled in a life well lived.

Why She?

You say that you love her but have you wondered why?

She’s the little girl that pretends to be big, for you need her wise head over her delicate frame.

She also alternates in being the poised woman who lets the child out, to fill the grim air with mirth like nature drenched in rain.

She’s the one who makes you laugh even if it means at her own expense. 

She likes to pull your leg for she says that’s one of the ways she pulls you to herself.

She cooks stories to make up for the food that she may not. 

She agrees to let you sniff her instead.

She drives you around, when she’s done with driving you crazy. 

She leaves you with her scent when she goes, she fills you with herself when she comes and leaves you all hazy.

She’s a saintly angel one moment and at the other a mischievous elf. 

She touches you deeply even when she keeps her fingers to herself.

She manages to create words that the dictionary is yet to fathom. 

She passes statements that make a mountain of your head and let them reverberate.

She words that “hello” over the phone that makes you skip a heartbeat. 

And then her voice soothes all wrinkles of your mind like draped in a silken sheet.

She knows when to talk and when to listen and manages both with equal ease. 

She knows how to handle her senses to sense how you feel.

She lets you breathe and then also can takes your breath away. 

She gives you space and sews the spaces in between when they come along the way.

She would want to be your world and broaden her horizons when you fit in too tight. And convinces herself that there is nothing wrong when the man is right.

She is fiercely independent and her confidence and chatter is magnetic. 

She is loyally home bound and her calm and even her silence is hypnotic.

She dances on her feet just as well as she dances on your fingers. 

She taps your mind without you being aware just as well as she pats your back in the times of care.

She makes you ebb, she takes you to the brink, she lets her hair down and joins you for a drink. She is the one who makes you swell with pride, she taught you to express what you always hide.

She knows the repartee to keep you on your toes- her conversations are never short of engaging. And just when you conclude how deep she is, she makes you go back to further gauging.

  

She does not always crib, she does not always expect. She might question but she also respects. She may wander but she isn’t lost. She might splurge her emotions but knows when to meet the costs.

She’s one of a kind, a kind that she invented....

And still you wonder why she?

How anyone else except her could be?  

Dear Mothers-in-law

Epilogue: I sometimes wonder what happens to girls when they become women. I mean I am yet to discover how the metamorphosis materializes for I still yearn to feel like a complete woman and give up on the crazy girl in me. But then I can’t even begin to fathom what transpires within the entire female specie when they turn into monsters-in-law...er...mothers-in-law. Damn you Hollywood movie titles playing on my mind and mouth/fingers.

Dear Mothers-in-law (yes, all of you all over, unsparingly),

Really, what genetic alteration occurs during the seven rounds of the holy fire taken by your doting sons that upshots your ghastly malfunction? You have to explain me that. It can’t be insecurities-for how can anyone even deem to stand in any competition with someone who beds a man every day at least initially and often several times in the same day. Maybe she is prettier and younger than thou, but then your aren’t a sex object for anyone anyways now and least of all for your own khoon-your son? So quit making life difficult for all of us and let your pseudo-beauty ego go for a hike.

I think the onset of wrinkles occurs in women post their promotion to this unenviable position. So much constraining of nerves to show ‘Who’s the boss!’ naturally could lead to some lines forming somewhere! And as if those obnoxious pressing of lips and scrunching of eyes and inflating of an already fat nose are not enough, you soon discover-why there’s even a tongue that can wag with unending zeal to utter some of the choicest of taunts, to put even sarcasm to shame. Aww....nobody allowed you to participate in the school debates and so in the second childhood read that as your darn old age you decided to refresh the latent skills. How charming!

But really, you need a refresher’s course in reality check. These stupid soaps you watch all day on the idiot box yes, even the damn re-runs for apparently one sob/crap watch ain’t enough for your sadistic tendencies show techniques that are long given up even by Ekta Kapoor. I mean the idea of tampering with my door closer, just so that the door remains ajar and you can overhear when I bitch about you is so lame; I have decided to do it in bed when we are tugged in a blanket together and just before sex. It ensures not only you being in your bed too by that time but also I would get an attentive hearing because of His anticipation for what may follow thereafter.

And please, please stop asking him if he wants water when you see me getting him a glass on a tray or suggest he should measure his temperature after you sly watch me washing the thermometer. Ah, the genuine concern just prior to the wife’s is so touching, it makes me weep. Please don’t force on me that he would eat the bitter gourd in dinner when I insist he won’t, just because he did when you eyed him in his days of virginity. He has better taste now, metaphorically speaking. And when he refuses like I anticipated, please shorten the always ready-to-brim-over sermon of how children these days don’t listen to their parents-yours grew up along with his manhood.

And also explain to me dearie, how on earth can he be spoilt if we go out three times a week and not spoilt if you serve him the third bowl of halwa just because it was made by you? It is so amazing that you remember to ask me such concerned questions about my health and well being only when I sit with him on the dining table or do all sort of cootchie-cooing with our baby just as his daddy returns home and ensures he gets a private viewing of this trailer that never materializes into an actual movie otherwise.

And so enlightening are your discourses on responsibility-aah, talk about how the daughter-in-law ignores the house, after you stay out of it for most of your waking hours. Talk about how you don’t get enough money to spend after you ordered a brand new pair of fat diamond studded bangles. Talk about how “we” waste money, when the clothes you got stitched in the year’s beginning are adorning the frame of the maid’s by new years. And before you find fault with the way in which I am raising my child, please don’t even let me start with the faults so glaringly apparent in the ones you did. ‘Appreciation’ I know is the toughest word to grasp in your dictionary just as ‘expectations’ is the easiest.

So now that we are sailing in the same boat, let’s stop rocking it before we both fall. Please come to terms with it that it is not YOUR age to dress up and gallivant around town and instead give us, the lesser mortals a chance too. And also let me bring to light that there are more gadgets in the house which you can use like dishwasher, washing machine and iron so that you think beyond the television and mobile phones!

How amazingly nice it would be if you would just stop staring at my “Pepsi” glass at social dos and not wonder why that glass or its refills were in my hand all night long! And when we get you gifts, kindly don’t judge them by the price but by the sentiment behind it before we lose all our sentiments to do so. While I know I suck at cooking, you aren’t doing a good job of it either by the drama you churn out instead*sniff, sniff*

I guess this is enough “bonding” for this time. Until next time then...please be good and if you can’t be, please be human!

Yours almost lovingly,

Daughters-in-law the world (India) over.

Disclaimer: This is based on a one hour chat I just had with a suffering female friend who painted a picture of her mom-in-law thus, after breaking her monologue with sobs and expletives simultaneously yes, we are weird in our sources of getting inspired. So much she cribbed and moaned that I almost felt for her poor hubby-not in THAT way of course. Any similarities to my own mother-in-law are coincidental and purely unintentional. She’s a darling-of her husband of course. Please take this in good humour or else if I get burnt with kerosene in my kitchen soon hereafter, you’ll be blamed for lightening the fire. 

The Ghats of the Only World

All girls wait for their happily ever after-grow up with dreams of watching themselves walk the aisle on their wedding date, or so do most girls I come across make me believe.

I never dreamt of marriage. I never imagined myself living in a big mansion where I would be sitting on a plush lounge with two doting kids and a mantle-place behind us portraying a huge frame of my husband and me. Yes, I am technically faulty by default.

But as far as I can remember-I think I have often dreamt even with waking eyes, of someone coming on a white horse from out of a haze, looking stately and handsome and smiling at me as his stead paces closer in slow motion. Yes, I am technically a douche bag too. I believe I was responsible for all those Yash Chopra movies doing well in the 90’s because I stepped on the threshold of my youth then with such buffoonery in my head. Filmy I know, sue me.

What if such dreams do come true? Do we have the sensibility to realize it or the sense to accept it? Do we have the strength to contain it and the guts to declare it, even to ourselves? What if our happily ever after is ever with us but we continue to search? What if these dreams are nothing but dreams or what if the actuality is a dream that is waiting for you to awaken from?

Dreams are fascinating-it is god’s way of saying sorry for the reality he created. But an apology is often not what we desire. We desire the healing of wounds that mostly are self inflicted. If I go out to search love, I would find it waiting on every corner I turn. But am I ready to take chances to turn on a crossroad that would take me perhaps windingly to the road less travelled. But then all roads less travelled must be so for a reason. One man’s adventure can be another man’s trauma.

I wonder why love comes constituted with pain. And then a love without pain-is really love or just a sense or whiff of it? Love is the epicentre of all that’s in motion-be it the earth, be it the beating heart. If love is all we need, why do we rush after money and things it can buy? I want to give love a chance but am I ready to take a chance? What if I find it outside the constraints of my wedlock? Blasphemy? What if I rediscover it with my partner? Herculean? What if I actually just need to fall in love with myself again? Seamless?

Love needs to be given a chance just as life gives us one. Cliché as it sounds but can’t seem to remember anything else more apt here-We can’t stand at the edge of a pond and try to gauge its depth. We have to take our feet out. It may be cold and then comes the decisive juncture. Should I still venture forward? Should I just dip my feet and come out dry? Should I move in and allow myself to be soaked for I am tired of being parched? And in case I do get sodden, would I smear the Ghats I turn back to with dripping droplets that spill with every step I take? I am at the Ghats of the only world and standing here, wondering if the water’s too deep or my step too steep!

P.S. Been in a weird mood lately, don't know if I make sense. My internet's mummy's been fucked, so not being able to read posts. Hopefully, soon and thank god for pen drives.

I read and I live...

How do you satiate hungry eyes searching to quench a thirst?

How does one fill a void when one does not know what is needed for its redemption?

Such is life that it necessitates the delving into an escape route-to mingle into mindless relations derived out of so-called friendships or love, to drift into the unrealistic madness of cinema or devour the coming to life of words in books.

Reading, yes, I admit-I miss you. Let me confess today how I went wanton by turning to the blogosphere single-mindedly that it would make up for my erstwhile fixation of holding an actual book running into pages in my clasp. I haven’t returned to embrace you in many-a-years now. Would that explain my tossing restlessly in bed some days?

Should I blame the gradually reclining attention span or the steadily ebbing drama in my own life? A one page blog post reading of someone I admire, has been serving as a capsule perhaps to screen the symptoms though provides no cure. Or the witty one-liners on twitter that impress me no end perhaps ignite enough to ignore the larger picture! It gives me the hallucination of having “read”. Reading thus now doles out to fill some empty specks of my mind with a momentary realization of having travelled to some far-off domain, lived a reckless or meticulous life and sauntered back to my reality.

Reading is still serving me although I look not at it with the same eye.

I get magnetically pulled to any iota I see of the Victorian Ages or Romanticism symbolized by those peacefully resting in their graves now-any contemporary voices strong enough to stand at par with the Byrons, Wordsworths and Keats. Imagine the exquisiteness of ageless expressions like wandering lonely as a cloud or walking in beauty....

For such was the web they spun that getting entangled was the mind’s way of showing what a true orgasm is to the rest of the body. Such were the unadulterated emotions and expressions, as though the writers stood blind to all voices around and were enslaved to the voices in their heads.

Picking up classics or true Literature can at times have a therapeutic effect (just as much as a regular pacey best-seller). You walk down the wondering lane-what constitutes such a frame that manages to give you lines holding the grain of the ultimate truth, hand-picked from a solitary life but withstanding the test of times to reach the eternity? What immortal fountains they create and how? What triggers the unstoppable breeze that cools even the most burning of surfaces with their tender flap? Goes to prove that you can often create magic without movement or sound-magic by the gentle tap of your fingers and mind!

I read and I lived....in the days gone by when I would curl up on a sofa in a corner with a book. An illicit relation perhaps for I cared a damn how anyone looked at us-my transfixed gaze, my coy smiles, the scrunching of anxious eyes, the pleasure of reading love being made on page-me and my book, palming each other and then looking at the walls for a while, in reflection of letting sink in what the books showed me. I would move my body rarely and only when it fringed on getting numb while the mind travelled in frenzy and sometimes even that would be stationary, performing the arduous task of creating mind pictures for me-moving, pulsating images or just giving me the goose bumps with vividness painted there.

Did I become the protagonist in all I read? Yes, I experienced the greed for money, the lust for sex, the spine chilling edging in a mystery, the ache of soul for love, the crushing of entrails by a heart break, the malicious scheming for murder, the infinite search for truth. Did I come out unscarred from all I read? No, remnants of these got transfixed to me like second skin, shaping my mind, preferences and beliefs. They unwittingly went and formed a layer in my subconscious that made me think, opine and pine.

I carried the weight of whom I read for a while till fresh love began to reverberate within and another pristine crispness came between my nimble fingers, too eager to grasp the new.

Yes, Mark Twain, I agree with you when you say, "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." But perhaps reading became too taxing for me-the way I wear my heart on my sleeves, I found it difficult to stop it from becoming a bookmark trapped permanently within some sheets of a book closed and done with. The pain of returning to a life less ordinary began to be weighed against the pleasure of dipping into ecstasy. Or perhaps I have just become too lazy using the garbs of responsibilities to disguise the change in me, looking for books in faces of people? I need to find myself again and I need to find a book that can find me? -A voice that sounds like the voices in my head and calms them down. 

P.S. Sorry a severe writer's block in progress here...hopefully would find my funny bone soon!

Does the Sun shining on me make me Sunny?

Yesterday my dear beloved returned from a five days ka tour and very tired. We both unwind around midnight with a little time spent on the web on our respective phones before we curl each other instead and last night I finally got a peek at some sacred parts...of his phone that is, before you begin to question me about wtf was I doing with him for twelve years of our marriage then.

Now I am not a ‘Big Boss’ person or a television person per se but then Sunny Leone is as much a household name in India today as is perhaps Sonia Gandhi, for different reasons of course. Twitter went barmy with her entry and I felt compelled to watch the idiot box for an entire five minutes just to see who is firing the imagination faster than AK47 can ever dream of. But thankfully I soon lost interest in their loony tunes.

It has been ages since I watched porn yes, despite it, I am normal and not frustrated in life and she wasn’t going to make me do it, never mind her 'doing' reputation and whatever of mine too after my open declaration for my fixation with Vidya Balan in a previous post because I had opined she was drenching in hotness.

I see you raising an eyebrow at the “ages” and muttering under your breath, eh-‘Tch, tch, yes, of course, what would old people do with porn anyways?’ Phew! Narrow mindedness and prejudice would bring an end to this country faster than the upcoming elections could. Baby, why would I need outside help when I have a more than eager and flourishing help desk right here on the bed? We don’t help ourselves, we get helped all the time #perksofbeingmarried

So, yes, we are talking porn again!

At the risk of sounding old sacrifices I make for your enlightenment, I belong to the generation when porn was not downloadable my god, the auto correct did not check me, you mean to say that really is a word? We had to manually go up to a stupid CD shop and rent it out. My escapades with a group of friends to go out and rent porn have already been enumerated on some post before but then a quick recap does not harm once a teacher, always a teacher.

Those who’ve been around would recall my telling how I found video porn in my parents’ cupboard, securely tucked under a pile of clothes. That was like sher ke mooh mein khoon lagna. Nopes, that does not mean I developed a compulsive disorder for watching porn else I would succumb to forces unknown; it just fuelled the curious cat in me to want more-get to the bottom of it no puns intended. I went out like on an invisible Noah’s ark to ascertain whether the absurd things done on that video cassette were done on a regular basis in all of them or were my janam-dattas just plain lucky to have found some unique stuff. Needless to say, I now know how easy it was and maybe still is to please my simple set of parents.

Anyway, we digress!

So last night after five nights of almost lambi judai, beloved was extra kind with me and on his own, without me having to plead and trade-bargain for it, decided to show me Sunny Leone on his phone. And obviously we are not talking about her strutting around, looking all innocent and cute like two big fat buttons on Big Boss.

“Aha, she is hot and looks less dumb without clothes” is what I said before he nodded his head in agreement. I am sure he just heard the hot part and nodded too soon and didn’t bother about the dumb bit. Hot and dumb are two adjectives that men don’t mind as long as they come in combination. There were just still pictures, though I know somewhere well concealed in some stupid passwords would be the moving ones too-not those moving you to actual tears but those moving you to wetness for sure.

So I eyed some shots with my gaping mouth till beloved had to manually close it with a push of his fore-finger from under my jaw and then we judge how men cheaply open their gaps at the sight of sexy women. “Please don’t tell me you are turned on again” is what his tired face managed to mouth for now. Isshhh thank god no one heard that or saw those harrowed expressions or else they’d think what a torture the poor guy goes through in bed.

“Don’t worry, I don’t find her thaaaaat hot to give up on men altogether or emotionally blackmail you into creeping into my blanket” is what I said to console. I looked back in slow motion at beloved, whose handsome visage was marked with some concern. “I am not worried about that, though doubtful of it....but then see how unfair, such a sweet and nice and pretty girl na, I wonder why she came in this business....” Had he used any more adjectives of the ‘nicer’ kinds, I would have really done something horrible to him under that blanket. Ya, right, the next you would say that she’s so homely and I would inform you that homely does not mean one whom you want to bring home to your bed.

Poor dear beloved, sometimes I wonder why God clubbed me with such a noble, innocent soul while he was at his pairing trip. Perhaps to show the beauty of equilibrium in action! “Really! She’s too pretty for porn? Would you want to watch ugly girls in the act instead? Please don’t tell me that you would for it would make me doubt myself at having turned you on for all these years like I do?”

During the first few years of my marriage we used to rent porn at every blue moon. There was a fat, middle-aged man in our vicinity who ran a grocery store and lent pirated CDs for a side income. Needless to say with a boys hostel just outside his shop, there was more business out of “woh waale CDs hain?” than any yeh ya koi aur waale. Dear beloved also got a whiff of it post his matrimonial status. I am sure that fat ass must have thrown not-so-subtle suggestions as he was grossly suggestive even without the slightest of provocation on a general basis.

So on some Sundays a CD would be rented for a puny Rs 10 and returned back on Mondays. And on some days if beloved left in a hurry and forgot to do so or I needed some general items from his store and reached his door step, I would be greeted with a horrendous grin from the bastard as though he was running in his mind a re-run of “I know what you did last summer” with a different allusion to summer here. But then thankfully came the era of the downloadable and his unbearable grins rested in peace happily ever after.

God, I digress once more.

What were we talking again...ah, Sunny Leone!

Haven’t I spoken enough today already?

Okay, 'she’s hot' is what I muttered to some of my friends today too but apparently not or at least not so much as some Priya Rai-and here I thought my education days were done. All those really dumb jokes of Leone Vs Dharam paaji’s son Sunny had barely done a rest than the ones on Jism-2 starring madam have started doing the rounds. I guess won’t be able to resist her entry in my bedroom for long, will I?

Pardon me but it is midnight once again. Let me see if I could lure beloved into showing me some video clips and lemme play some music in the backdrop to set the mood....#Nowplaying: I’ve got a feeling-that tonight’s gonna be a good night, that tonight’s gonna be a BIG good night!

P.S. Imagine my torture now to have to go through Google images to search for a suitable picture of her to upload with this post #lifeisabitch

To The Girl at 27!

My Dearest,

Ah the pleasure of writing on a paper again, almost matching with the pleasure of having you. ‘Having’ yes, I did but to say I “have” you though would be a blasphemy. And before you allow that frown saying there I go again and bring tiny anxious lines on your lustrous visage, let me just ask you-Who can have the rays of sunshine trapped in his fingers no matter how strong be his grip? Who can box the fragrance one senses standing in the midst of sandal trees?

For such are you-flowing like the river, warming like the rays, enticing like the scent of a rose, mysterious like the dark night, glorious like the white moon and out of reach like the stars that shine beyond. You sprinkled some of your sheen on me and made me bask in its sensation forgetting that I am trying to own the fabric of the infinite galaxy. The galaxy that I am going to fade into with my end and the galaxy that you have to tread on, leaving your nimble footsteps on everything untouched yet!

I want to tell you how much I love you, but for that I would have to assume that you are a separable part of me although so infused are you now that if I say, loving you is like self-love, it would not be digressing from the established truth I live with every day.

You know what debates ran in my mind between the good and the evil voices: “She is only 27, so what...he was also, once upon a time! He is 59, so what...won’t she be too someday? And he would love her the same. Ah, they would grimace....won’t he be tumbling in his grave by then?” But my time to go has come sooner than I wanted, sooner than I cared and sooner than allowing me to dare. I realize now that being with me would take too much from you and selfish that I am for you, I would hate to see you hate me ever.

My dearest, I want to remain an exultant reminiscence for you, not a dilapidated, old man shrivelling to ruins eventually too soon, wiping all joyous memories-of bearing you with all my strength, of making you shed your over-mature thoughts more than shedding what you wore, of turning many a sighs into heaving, of mingling two bodies in such an intoxicating fusion that it turns me giddy by just imagining the taste of it. It was not only a flight of fantasy, it was like the developing of wings of a young twittering brood that jumps off the cliff and realises soon that it can fly...high!

It was how you held me for hours and how I held you in those moments. It was how just a look of you gave me the adrenalin rush that I haven’t felt with one from your gender before, although my age justifies my calling me experienced. In all your vulnerable innocence, you have no realization how insane your after-effects can be! I would burn with desire just watching you move around the kitchen counter...seeing you untie the cascading hair and then brush them free with your slender fingers...how you ran your own palms over your arms when cold winds played truant or how your eyes lighted with fire and the edge of the lower lip was bitten with the teeth on the thought of new mischief contriving within. I would wonder how something so strongly physical could be just as enduringly emotional? See how you became the wonder woman for me.

But I leave you deserted now for such must be your eventual fate. I won’t be able to face you facing me as I would have to face or see you justifying to one and all that age is just a number. But I do want you to play against the world, face them as my dear girl who would fight all her battles and seek happiness even without me. Let me go while there is still redemption for you.

There would be many who would come your way. Your aura would ensure that a discerning eye would not let you flash past. Be careful my little one, but don’t build walls to protect yourself. Be on a watch but let not the watches watch you. There is no right time to fall in love and no right person-there is only the right feeling. Let not your ignorance or arrogance come in the way of testing those who might be your test. Love is worth a few adjustments, love is worth a few pains....but spending alone the rains, crumbling every time the cold breeze harshly jolts you, with no arms to wrap you snug in guard, is definitely not.

Let your heart be open and the mind not closed. Let the comparing eye be shut with force. Lower expectations but not your standards! Let doubts surface but also allow the soft waves of emotions to calm them down. Men are not perfect but that does not qualify them to be jerks either. Just don’t weigh too much like you do, before feelings also begin to take the pendulum way.

Be not afraid to express how you feel, it is always better to know where exactly you stand than to wriggle within in a hypothetical see-saw. You are very fragile my love and like the hesitant bud that knows not how splendid it looks when blooms. Allow yourself to take chances. It took me years to come close to you like I did, don’t try the patience of any other man. All are not me and with you just about any can’t be.

Laugh more and like there’s no tomorrow, let those little lines of sorrow evaporate in your mirth or the semblance of it. Be open to experiments for they eventually culminate into experiences. Allow men of mettle to first see your soul and then your body for it would pain me to see someone handle you without care. Let those who touch you, touch you! And make sure when you close the eye for his first kiss, you leave my moist imprints in some far away allay, never to be trudged there again.

No man can bear his woman closing on him for someone else. So don’t try to share me, bear me in your mind if you must, for even if you don’t, I won’t rust.

I leave now, to go I don’t know where. Our paths wouldn’t cross and even if they do, please pretend that you don’t know me, no matter how you see my pining in my mute appearance. Only you are blessed enough to look through me. Show me that this would all be worthwhile eventually. Walk away showing pity, for I was not man enough to say I would take care of you even if life took me away.

They say love stories are best which are left unended...some feelings-unattended...some gestures-unreturned...some laughters-unreciprocated...some tears-unvalued...and some couples-unbonded! We were not the usual love story, were we? So how could we have a usual end? Sometimes the lack of “happily ever after” is how ever after not so happily begins.

Not expecting you to understand, but accepting nevertheless,

Yours only.

Grow up People, I am two now!

I often wonder what must be going on inside a child’s impressionable mind...my child's  mind rather. Here I try to unravel what I think that my two years old Seeya could possibly be thinking in that little brain of hers, hell bent on mischief:

~On Sheila ki Jawani:

Alright, I am supposed to ask people ‘What’s my name?’ ‘What’s my name?’ ‘What’s my name?’ if I want them dancing around me like that and perhaps also being dumb would help.

~Hearing adults asking her to sing a song/poem:

Will you please cut the cowshit? And then they wonder why some girls grow up to be item numbers!

~When I and G hush-hush if she walks into the room suddenly:

It’s a good thing we are not expected to knock and enter-education should start early;-)

~Watching her papa put only coins in her piggy bank and spending a big, red crisp note on dinner:

My parents’ financial investment really sucks!

~Watching an on-screen kiss:

In an innocent moment: I think this uncle and aunty do not have napkins and don’t want to dirty their hands so they are licking off the Cerelac from each other’s lips.

In a mischievous moment: Mommy, will I be able to do THIS also when I turn eighteen as you say I’ll then be big enough to put lipstick and nail polish?

~Seeing me undress sometimes*yes, necessity is also the mother of changing*:

Why do I have to wear such long drab papa jaise vests while mommy’s is lacy and short and colourful?

~Watching dogs indulge in doggie style*you can’t avoid those when you go for evening walks every day*:

Mom, so this is what you mean when you say, ‘don’t fight like dogs’? My god that back dog has defeated the under-dog and look how he’s kicking it now!

~When I point at the television set and tell her ‘Baby, this is Ranbir Uncle’:

I sit and fancy mommy getting a little stroke when someday I will bring Ranbir Kapoor home as the rockstar who would have given me THE rock...

~When she bears people who pull her cheeks:

Can I do the same thing with your pants?

~When she hears me talking on the phone:

“Kisse baat kar rahe ho? Kaun hain? Kya keh rahe hain?” I better follow religiously what papa said-Mumma ka dhyan rakhna...

~When she hears me mutter about growing fat and gyming:

Mommy, will you please stop trying to look like my elder sister...you are thirty years older for crying out loud?

~When I make her read books while she graces the shit pot:

And someday if the world blames me for my shitty ideas, I’ll know who to blame.

~When I hold her very tight and kiss her like a crazy woman:

Oh god, please send someone else for mommy to do this with before she crushes me with her overflowing affection!

~When I introduce her to older boys in the friends’ circle as 'XYZ Bhaiyya':

Mommy, just because your mommy screwed up your chances with half the eligible boys that you met as a teen, it does not mean you have to make it a family tradition...

Yes, she is my little bomb and just turned two this month...if you doubt my madam would be this volatile and dhamakedar, please watch this video to ascertain it for yourself:

And now Dirty is IN!

Okay, finally The Dirty Picture is done and although I am not a review person but this seems to be the third of its kind on popular demand if I may add. It is not about what I liked or disliked in the movie technically per se, as other and better reviewers already put it out there-much like a man, it is what the movie leaves you with, should be of paramount consequence to wish to reproduce it.

~While returning from the theatre, I was suddenly down a very horrible memory lane, hitherto buried in my heart. But like it is with volcanoes, things don’t come to the surface till their time is ripe. I was very young, barely into my teens I think when I was walking towards home by myself and a man on a cycle stopped me and asked for an address on a paper. Before I could read or explain, he unzipped himself and asked me in a half mocking way “Madam, pen chahiye kya?” and he guffawed and cycled off. I was shaken beyond belief, threw the paper and ran into my home, shivering and mute for the entire evening, going numb with fear. Years have passed and I still regret not having pulled his shirt and slapped him across his face or raised an alarm and someone would have come along to teach the bastard a lesson, never mind that he was twice my size. Such dirt-bags have ego balloons that need to be pierced lest they burst on someone.

I wish I had the spunk that Silk had!

It’s a dirty world and sometimes the only way to deal with it is to raise up your sleeves, dip into the muck and splash it across the face of him who wants to tarnish you instead.

~Having made that point, picture abhi baaki hain. My first encounter with ‘The Dirty Picture’ came about while I was generally shutting down my yahoo mail one late night and the yahoo news feed spoke about the just out first look of Vidya Balan’s bold shots. I checked out six of those pictures and some comments on them and suddenly felt the very urgent need to wake up my sleeping husband so that he could tease me for the rest of my life about my dubious tendencies. Phew!

~We are digressing...oh wtf-Balan is hot! I always found her so-elegance personified in a sari and what an amazing cross-over this is. She’s a gutsy girl to pull off something as bold as this and do it with such panache. She also proved that you could be fat and yet sexy alright you need boobs too but at least the tummy and thunder thighs were ignored I have hope! I have hope! She has such an amazing vulnerable confidence that catches you even in a guarded moment. Okay, to cut a long story short-I am just blabbering and justifying in case she becomes the target of my phantasy in dreams tonight, giving competition to the dudes already there vying for their turns. “Mujhe to chadhe aise zeher ki tarah ki paani bhi peeya to aag lag gaye!”

~So the movie brought me face to face rather jism to jism more aptly with my own dirty side-not that it was hitherto latent or anything, just draped a little modestly with the veil of sweetness and sophistication “It’s a curse really!” My god, I regretted not having coins to throw towards the screen and wish I knew how to put my fingers in my mouth...for that seete of course. I so wanted to laugh out loud at all the innuendos which is so me and clap like a rickshaw-waala at the scene where she takes out orgasmic sounds when the neighbour and his wife were hitting the sack. Of course I didn’t-stupid, silly couple sitting next to me and a horny group of guys in the rows in front deterred my chutzpah and also a husband who laughs the loudest on stupid Akshay Kumar humour but found me laughing here a little too voluble. Nobody loves me!

Man, she was rocking-also made me realize that there should be categories of orgasmic sounds too just as there are of positions and stuff. Sex is so underrated when it comes to being explored-so ironically that. And the scene where she practically makes love to herself in that red lingerie-I so wished I could sneak around carrying a torch and focus on what the guys were “up” to. Why should all the fun be on-screen?

Vidya is unapologetically brazen, Naseer-the man I so adore for his refinement that I wrote a post reeking of masked lust for  him a couple of years back after I had watched him enthral a vast audience in a theatre play; he does such a fine job in being disgusting here. And 500, really??????? I am still wondering if I should raise an eyebrow at it for underestimation or overestimation. Makes you speculate if you should keep a count too, you know for reference sake, even if it is with the same man for crying out loud and God help that man. “Har admi ki liye ek aurat bane hain, agar usse bach gaye to samjho zindagi bach gaye” Thank god they were less biased against women in such numbers by remaining mum about it.

Even Imraan Hashmi, whom I otherwise loathe, managed to look appealing or perhaps I was really on an overdrive of hormones.

So I liked Delhi Belly more than Zindagi Na milege Doobara and The Dirty Picture more than Rockstar-doesn’t sound too good as an announcement being made but then wtf! I am Desi sometimes and I like my “entertainment” that’s more in the face now than of the dreamy clouds.

It also brings to light what I always believe of life-Don’t judge and of women-Don’t make them go hush-hush about their sensuality and physical desires. Why can’t we be horny and yet not slutty like most of the guys anyways are? Women who use their charms to get things done are dubbed as “loose” but then those who have the brains, use them instead of their balls to carve their niche. What you have, you use it-is a good salesman’s rule!

I have always liked Mallika Sherawat too, despite her weird dumb-assness sometimes. She does not mince words. She does not pretend to be holier than thou-this is me, take it or leave it and don’t you dare try to take by force. She’s also a slap on women who change their colours like the weather- “film ke tarah jo interval ke baad badal jaayen!”

It is important to let the woman breathe, feel free and not handcuffed by the older mindset. Let her laugh the way she wants to and run around in pace with the wind-give her the head instead to stand tall in the face of it. Don’t make her cross the limits by insisting to mark them for her. Watch not how her bosom heaves outside, watch how her heart beats within. Men are meant to be analyzed, women just adored. We are meant to be loved and not understood. Just give us that minus the criss-cross of trickery to avoid the fuckry.

“Jab zindagi ek baar milte hain to doosre baar kyon soche!”

Something that should stay with us for a long time.... 

And also this was the closest I could get to watch a 'Junglee Jawani' type flick in the theatre...so yiy, yiy, yiy!

How bad can a little bit of Porn be?

I have a very dear friend who has shifted now to the States. When here he was a perennial source of my mirth and jollity for such was his life that epic blunders and wonders kept following him everywhere yes, kind of a carbon copy of me-I often joked that we are like twins separated by wombs. It is sad that he does not blog for his narration is exceptional and engrossing. Here is one of the leaves from his life that forms a memorable anecdote for me to always tease him with.

He (let’s call him Bhola, for this would get to his nerves for sure) was pursuing his further studies outside his quaint, little city and once was home during long vacations. His very small town had meagre sources of entertainment and his friends too had moved on to other parts of the country in search of greener pastures. So he decided to stack some actually a huge amount of porn in between his notes and bring along just in case the forlorn nights made him too lonely and the lovely simple damsels around got him too horny.

Now stashing them in the remote corners of his cupboard in the room, he went out one day to check on the developments in the city happening behind his back which basically means to check out the chicks for he cared a flying fig about the infrastructure-female structure is where his eyes stop for good. Little did he know his mommy dearest had decided to give him a surprise by introducing his chaotic room to some order. He returned home whistling in the evening struck by the smell of something alien-ish in the air. *Sniff, sniff* OHH MYY GOOD GAAAWD! Who the fuck unmessed the mess?

And immediately his popping out eyes went to the closed doors of the cupboard. In slow motion you can imagine him running now towards it with his head moving from side to side as sweat particles splattered around from the panic socked expressions of his countenance actually imagine a constipation stricken tensing of facial nerves here instead for a better understanding of the situation.

Gasping for breath, he flung open the doors in one jerky action and then picture the three times made close-up of his face with thrum-thrum-thrum imaginary backdrop thumping of the drum as happens in stupid Hindi serials. The underwear were washed, the posters of half naked women stuck on the insides were removed and worst-the notebooks were arranged in neat layers and despite moving the pages of all, there was not one CD falling out of any of them.

His first thought:

OMG-I paid half my month’s pocket money on them!

OMG-Some of them had the latest lesbian action!

OMG-How will I spend the rest of the fifteen nights here at home without them?

OMG-(never mind, too many FIRST thoughts there)

OMG-Mom!!!!????????!!!

He darted back to his mother like I do when I go to receive a phone call and end up chit chatting forgetting about milk kept on the stove for boiling not realizing that he had not thought over in his mind about what and how was he going to ask his sari clad, bindi adorning, haath mein puja ki thaali liye hue mom about it. He first took the thali from her hand lest it fell to the ground in the dramatic way shown in the movies, scattering the puja ka sindoor everywhere and extinguishing the diya because the “ghar ka chiraag” is too busy in such “mooh-kaala” activities.

He- Ma, er...did you find anything in my cupboard?

(Forget the “thank-you for cleaning my earthquake stricken zone” –ungrateful kids of this generation, I tell you)

Ma- You mean this? *And she took out the bundle of CDs from god knows where, arranged between her fingers like a neat stack of playing cards with just the right amount of cleavage popping out from each cover*

He- Ma...er...aaaa...mmmm?

Ma-So these are the sounds that I would get from you now? Quite expected! 
He- Maaaaa???? *Raising the tone in disbelief as though she’s the one doing the blasphemy here*

Ma- Yeh kya hain? *Now bringing in view a clothes-free Pamela Anderson look alike in terms of you-know-what for nobody cares two hoots about what is over them*

He- (thinking in his mind- These are the latest inventions of positions and intersections without conception but made for interjections) CDs hain ma...

Ma- I can see that...but what are they doing in your cupboard?

He- (thinking again- They should be "doing it" in the laptop and damn I should have used the laptop cover to stack them there instead) Ma, yeh notes hain!

Ma- Jhoot bol rahe ho ab?

He- Na ma na...These are Suraj’s CDs. I told him to send me the biology practicals ke CDs and by mistake he must have sent me these. I kept them away so that I could go back and return these for the originals *feeling super smug at his presence of mind*

Ma- Chee...beta, mein tumhare ma hoon!

He- Mujhe pata hain ma, meine kab DNA test maanga?

Ma- To yeh sab kar rahe ho Bombaye jaake?

He-  (Karne ka mauka he kahan mila-yeh to practise sessions hain) Ma, aap galat samajh rahe ho....

Ma- To dikha do kya hain is mein-theek se samajh lete hoon?

He- *Now raising an eyebrow at his ma’s intention in tension* Acha ab de do....aage se nahi karonga  (Me-Huh, matlab self service ki dukaan band aaj se?) and papa ko nahi bataana....

Ma- Ofcourse nahi bataana...woh TUMHAARE papa hain! Aur inko bhool jao...

She stomped off now leaving Bhola with the puja ki thaali and almost a KLPD!

And my teasing began at where she left him-

So mast na? Haaaw Bhola, imagine what and how she would have viewed you post this traumatic experience-

~Beta, bahut kamzoor ho gaya hain! (He must be overdoing THAT-I must ask Bhola ke papa to speak to him about IT)

~Itne garmi mein shorts ke jagah pajama pehna hain? (He must have just watched a CD and come...arre woh waala come nahi-Ram, Ram)

~Why is he taking so long in the bathroom? Why has he locked his room from inside? (Let me put my ears to the door to hear some moaning)

~Why is he moaning? (No he can’t have possibly slipped on the soap water left in his washroom-it has to be those karam jali kudiyan)

~Why is he refusing to get married? (Oh god, he’s having an affair with one of “those” girls...)

~Why is he insisting on twice cleaning of his room? (I must ask Shaarda bai to stop sending her daughter for cleaning and she should come instead-is ladke ka to kuch pata nahi)

Tch, tch...needless to say he never got the CDs back and whenever he grieved about them, I told him to chill, probably his mom and dad, alone in that drab town are having fun now thanks to him-aaj tak unhone sab sikhaya, kuch aap bhi unke knowledge expansion mein assistance karo! Or be positive, maybe someday when he gets married, his mom instead of handing the house keys on the first night to his bride would make her cup those CDs and say “Aaj se yeh tumhare haath mein hain-uske haath mein mat dena...” And stop looking for innuendos I am sure the poor mother won’t mean THAT what you are thinking!

And so poor Bhola, he never knew porn could land him in the Neverland-the land where he would never be seen without doubtful eyes by his ma or without mad leg pull by me!

Guts out!

I wish I could rant my guts out...

~Like I could write this space as a ‘Dear Diary’ and yet be entertaining.

~Crib about my mother-in-law and make it sound more heart-wrenching than the stupid soap on television no, not that Lux bar kept on the console

~Declare I am horny and not sound desperate.

~Exclaim I care a fuck when I fucking care!

~Be round-the-clock the person that blogosphere thinks I am.

  

~Reveal sheepishly how I almost believe in what Mohnish Uncle said in Meine Pyar Kiya, that the ubharta and ubalta Salman took very seriously “Ek ladka aur ladki kabhi dost nahi ho sakte”

~Articulate about how I view God as my shadow and not as an idol.

~Make people believe that NOTHING in the world is right or wrong-the circumstances are!

~Confess I fall in love/crushes sooner than the fall in sensex and not pretend to be joking about it.

~State that I have so many times thought of eloping to some place far away that I almost believe in my mind now that I did. 

~Grieve about my just-out three white hair and yet pompously rejoice about my three times faster beating heart thanks to coming across wittier men.

~Accept my fascination for colour black for it makes me look lean almost just as much as Abhiskek Bachchan’s for his stupid leather jackets that suit him just as much as English does on Lalu Prasad Yadav whatever happened to him btw?

~Disclose that I have experimented so much that I could have been mistaken for a scientist.

~Take to task the anonymous characters in my internet life for how they make me rack my puny brains in trying to solve the mystery behind them-so please STOP and come out clean no puns intended.

~Philosophise and seem like Mr Deepak Chopra but with Ms Priyanka Chopra’s body!

~Express that I find some women just as burningly hot as some men and not sound gay.

~Explain that all relationships forged out of genes, come with a shelf life-if not becoming dormant, in time they do become lukewarm.

~Sulk openly about how some of the blogs amaze me-for how on earth could they have hundreds of comments on their posts with the kind of drab they publish!

~Blabber that I care a flying fuck about keeping abreast with the news/politics, except what Twitter provides me with and haven’t read the paper beyond the entertainment section in years and still not have you do ‘haaaaaaaaaaaaw’ at me.

~Plead guilty to how I was a better daughter till I had a daughter of my own.

~Divulge that if I ever wrote my autobiography, it would shock just too many to redeem. 

~Expose that I like playing with minds more than with people.

~Practise what I preach and give up on what's beyond my reach.

~Indulge in wild parties and slide into being the sati savitri next day with equal conviction...

~Mention I am fat and give a curvy, wholesome image of me in your mind instead.

~Moan about being alone in the blanket right now.

~Manage to churn out a book someday.

~Look at my wardrobe and sulk for everything is too old, too tight or just not right!

~Complain why I can’t have my pie and eat it too.

~Bring about a rule that you aren't being unfaithful, if it is only in the mind.


~Announce that the only thing I cook well...are the stories.

~Try to act dumb some day, just to see how half of the world feels!


Ah, too many skeletons revealed...so until next time!

Love and the Semblance of it!

I love cinema that make me not just look but also think. A very belated watched Rockstar did the same. Nopes, this is not a review-this is the aftermath of some churning and wriggling while watching it not in the way you think though.

I don’t take the motion pictures too seriously but I like to ponder over the food for thought that some of them sneakingly sow in my mind. These are then the movies that stay with me for a longer time. And Rockstar fanned the hitherto latent pang with the astounding love equation between Heer and Jordon-the characterisation that left me bowled over.

The love that is unconditional, that is so strong that it becomes an ache to bear and like an alchemist to all ailments-that directs all your bodily functions into pumping not blood but emotions! A love that defies reason, relations and practicality- like poetry residing in bodies-that makes or breaks, leaving you impervious to any other sensation and oblivious to any other human being!

Does such a love actually exist or it is again a gimmick of the movie makers to keep schmucks like us in the dreamy zone of hope and expectations?

My lucid mind tells me it is all crap. How can you feel so strongly for someone after meeting for a few days or post years of separation? The fast paced, realistic world and the variety it offers, reasserts my conviction that ‘No one and nothing is indispensible or irreplaceable’. But then the bent-on-general-awareness waala mind points to me of the Cupid struck suicide cases that occur where love lost souls prefer death over disjointing. Stupid people, I say-whimsical brood!

Self-love is the only and truest form of love-how can you love someone, if you don’t love yourself enough to stay alive and make true your dreams. How can love be one-sided and yet forever? How can one love another and just one person so much? Although I also feel too much education and the classy flavour debars one from entering this mindless portal as reinstated by the Rockstar. Love is the idol of the idle-to feel it raw, perhaps you need to be raw and open.

Upon deeper introspection, I felt the “what-if” trudge in with its nimble feet on the well attended, sprawling lawns of sanity and leaving its indelible footprints. What if these people have managed to experience what we block ourselves to? What if they are not immature but just more receptive of feeling sans logic, that we so lack? They are not senseless but more sensory. What if they have traversed the thin line and moved over to something greater that we with our nitty gritties of issues cannot even fathom?

Issues like-Am I being used? Does he really like me? Is there a future? What if she wants my money? We are really different people! Why hasn’t he called? and mindless more. What if what we think is love is not really it, but a little semblance that we have found and cling to it fanatically feeling that's the best we can get and thereby shut all doors to the horizon waiting to expand? 

Maybe the souls who experience that kind of pure, unadulterated love are those who never think-just love, who never get-just give and who don’t even want anything in the first place or want anything else. And then maybe again, this entire concept is the conditioning of the mind and is as plausible as the Santa Claus. So we might just as well and please refrain from hanging the hope stockings, yes even the imaginary ones, in the dim vestibules of our lonely-in-crowd minds?

And so thus my tryst with internal struggles continues-I ache to feel that love which becomes a pain to bear and not just a pain in the arse. A love that pounds within me with such throbbing that mutes every other noise of the world! And then I dismiss myself as a hopeless romantic-in love more with the feeling of being in love than persons. Love always makes me an oxymoron-I know the coherent view but I incline towards the fantastical one...I am consistently wary of the fake yet persistently experimental for the real...I pride in all my judiciousness and still secretly pine to be erroneous.

I want to solve this mystery once and for all so that hapless people don’t spend endless hours in sighing or viewing prospective romances with soul-mateish spectacles. If only we could separate the romance from love, perhaps we would define them both.