From a Friend-zoned Lover

Dear love,

I write to you today in extreme pain-an unnamed ache, a recurring twinge that dreads breaking out in tears, an excruciating spasm running through my body for my insides have been jolted by the throbbing of the heart. Ah, heart! How condescending I have been towards you-mocking all those who allow you to rule the rest of the systems. And now you are all whose presence I feel inside as my blood rushes in frenzy.

Nobody notices but when with you, you are all I notice. It’s like the world relegates to a backdrop as a mumbling sound, emanating from miles away where the traffic honks in the by lanes and men and women of everyday life, yank their way into some bargain.

I see you and I see me. I feel you and I feel life. Every giggle that erupts from your beautiful mouth goes straight to find an echo in my head. Every twinkle in your eyes sparkles through my mind’s vision, when in my own solitude I rest. I can tell even without looking at you how each curve of your body bends. I have watched you from years going in and out of relationships with men who think you are an object of love. I wait for you to see how I deem you as love itself.

How many hours I spend looking at you telling me animatedly about the way your day went while in my psyche-I play with your twirling tresses as you in blissful oblivion vent out the mundane, lying your petite head on my chest; or run my eager fingers over your smooth, unblemished skin hoping to see your lips quiver and hands tremble in nervous excitement! 


How many times when you casually hold my arm as we edge our way through a buzzing market place and suddenly a veil of silence falls all around and hushes! Do you notice me freeze by your mere touch or the goose bumps that reveal what I have perhaps managed to conceal?

I have loved you from years now-from the day I met you and when we were seeing different people. From the day we broke up with them and each other were the first ones we saw again. I have desired you every time you called to cry those deep eyes out because foolish boys cause them to blur when they deserve to open up like blooms in spring time. I have hungered for you even when you kept falling in love again and again and I sat there a cruel witness to your enthusiasm, wishing with every atom in my body that it were me that had you so stirred.

Silly girl, can’t you see these men love you for your body? Don’t you get immune to the same kind of tricks of the smooth talkers who walk into your heart with base praise to walk all over you eventually? How random can a woman’s heart be to flutter with such inconsistency? I gave you time for that’s all you wanted from me perhaps. I gazed with bated breath for any signs that would tell I would be next and also may be the last one. I yearned for you to see how unconditional came the love I bottled in my frame and corked it up with permanence so that every drop can quench your insatiable thirst to be cherished with unrivalled passion.

You know how I feel. You know we are not joking when we indulge in mock pretending to be a couple for we are weary of finding the perfect ones. Yet you turn an indifferent eye every time we are so close that I can hear you breathe and feel you take my breath away. You don't want me to go like it pleases you...you don't allow me to stay like it pleases me. And when you embrace my body with such casualty, it cuts across whatever of me is left after being in your arms even so momentarily.

I want you now, not for a while, not to come and go but to stay. You leave me like the parched land that sees the sight of a frothy black, rain cloud but some wanton wind drives it away. I don’t want to be the shoulder you cry on but the chest that feels your heartbeat when you press into it with wild abandon. I am no longer going to be your daddy that you run to with your problems. 

And since you feel you can’t see me THAT way, I guess you should not see me in any way at all. Let me walk away while there is still hope for salvaging of whatever’s left of me. Let me go, while I still have to capacity to love again, someone who would have the audacity to love me back like I deserve to. This is the last good bye. I hope you find the love that your heart aspires for and I hope I find the strength to never turn back again.

In love with you always though not in you anymore,

The Friend-zoned Me.   

P.S. I have kinda lost it for writing and a little weary of the blogosphere. Forget reading you wonderful people, I haven't even been able to reply back to comments. I guess, I would drop in here whenever and if I have something really worthwhile to say or vent. I would understand if you do not comment. This post is also dedicated to a special friend who has been lovingly, generously poking me to write ever since I stopped. Thank you (.)

Unisex to One Sex.

Alright, once upon a time I used to go to a gymnasium-a regular not much shoo-sha, sasta-tikau affair kinda space and daybreak was the best time to do so before my body could fully awaken and dawned on with what was happening to it and revolt. Since mornings it were, I was glad to have the much appreciated company of fellow sex-no, we were not having sex here per se simply referring to the presence of the ‘superior’ gender-the men, the boys and even those somewhere in between these two horizons.

And it would be fun to go there with playful, shampooed hair and hook them up in a semi messy but sexy and ruffled butterfly clipped look and let them cascade down post the work out, giving the head a shake as though you just de-boarded in leather skimpies after a long bike ride on a Harley Davidson and removed the helmet to sway the released tresses from left to right in slow motion. Girls, by the way, this NEVER fails and guys, please continue to fall for this one and save us from racking our brains with actual opening lines to draw your attention.

So, that unisex gym was fun. There would be men of all shapes and sizes strictly speaking in physiques, dressed in all colours and clothing, also wearing the weirdest of expressions and mouthing the horniest of moans though just made to dumbbells and also stopping after each set for almost a five minutes gap to “catch a breather”. I often had to physically stop myself from announcing to them that we as a species are called ‘women’ and not ‘breather’ sought to be caught.

It would be fun to gaze at someone eyeing you from some corner that got unwittingly reflected in the mirrors or watching how sometimes men would herd around the area where women were doing the jumps too often so that they could get an up close look of how it feels to go up and down. Fun to notice how often some cute ones attempted to pick up more weights on their rods than their poor frames could handle just because there was a hot chick there to impress non metaphorically speaking.

Fun how some very middle aged man would try to strike a conversation by asking, “Aapka kaisa chal raha hain?” and you reply, “Chal raha hain” and watch the million dollar expression of his face as though I didn’t say it to him but threw it on his face. And also super entertaining if by chance some sexy-smoking hot kitten would get lost in that desi gym and what a stir she would cause as I have enumerated before in a post: The Ultimate Seductress or the Ultimate Bitch?

But then putting on 4 kgs in the six months in this gym was like a shock jolting my senses and screeching in my ears that perhaps I was having way too much fun for my bloody body’s good. Tried as much as I could with the toughest of routines, I was just not sweating-I justified it by saying that I may have an IDDM-Inbuilt Default Defence Mechanism that prevents me from looking grimy in front of hot bloodied men but then how long can you hold a candle in the wind. The tightening jeans finally ripped the truth.

It was time to change. So I looked into the track record of some other gyms flourishing sadistically on the malfunctioning of food loving lazy bums like me and hand-picked one. The only drawback-it was an ‘Only for women’ workout space. What? Are there still places like that except Convent schools, which served the purpose but dished out to the society specimens like me? And there wasn’t even a male instructor? Crap! Who would give me those, divine back and leg stretches after the workout that sent some of the eyebrows up and some jaws to drop?  

Happiest at the prospect was dearly beloved who had mocked and queried if I really went to the gym in those early hours every day for I had inches on my sides to prove an otherwise story. I would pout and talk in a deeply husky, breathing whisper to fan some insecurity that would get my leg pulled even more.

Anyway, so came my first day at this new so-called gym for I’d rather call it 'one giant step back for mykind' and a development of a new sort of claustrophobia, may be. So many women under one roof-I can’t breathe....OH MYYY GAAAWD yes, in Janice style from F.R.I.E.N.D.S my friends. I can barely bear my girlfriends at social get-togethers and find myself magnetically inching towards the male corners and here I was almost tethered in a room full of in-the-heat women: some jabbering, making it an extended kitty party circuit, some exercising as though how far they came in life depended on how far they had panted on the treadmill and some admiring themselves only in the mirrors with god knows what tendencies surfacing along with their curves.

Don’t get me wrong-there were women in my earlier gym too, but they were either so busy in trying to appear presentable while doing their jobs, or too old to bother about how their flab dangled from under their arms how else do you think I got so much attention there? Besides, most women in small towns generally still chicken out from appearing at the male timings for obvious reasons and that would explain the near population explosion at this new one.

So although used to of being scrutinized, this is a new ball game altogether, like I have said somewhere before-women dress less for men than for other women-as in not less in quantity but as an act in its number.

Competition has been taken to a new level as brands galore and ‘how did she get on the treadmill before me?’ look with the envious twinge gets rampant. Good old days, when I would stand next to the cross trainer and some nice guy who’d almost stepped on it, would get down and say “Pehle aap kar leejeye” as though I’d become happy and agree to a twosome someday-on the cross trainer of course.   

Also when my t-shirt gets a little inched up while doing the bending stretch, I perceive more vixen vibes here than foxy ones as of the erstwhile space. Good old days again when conversations occurred aankhon he aankhon mein- He: *you look hot* Me: *you do not*. Cut to now-the polite conversations on treadmills and mother-in-law and the television serial recitals would definitely kill me some day, if the trainer madam ji does not. She is women’s answer to Sunny by the way-not Sunny Leone, stupid-Sunny Deol. I know lame and over-abused joke, but could not resist. She almost makes it a sophisticated akhhada.

And worst of all are their diet plans-eat 8 rasugullas along with milk in a day and nothing else??????? What, balls to you-I feel like saying. They are worse than horny nuns in the school I went to-although they do say no to bananas. Or just a bowlful of papaya in dinner-really? Do they know how hyper active I get at night and thereby the need for more energy and food? Bah! Let’s just hope I knock down some 20 kgs and be such a head turner soon that the pain of being sandwiched without men gets replaced by being flocked by them-the desirable ones though of course. Till then I keep telling myself I am more important than a bloody number on the weighing scale and the number of grey cells and niceness within count too as I keep waiting for my stupid fat to cry and release in the form of sweat.

But just to vent out my frustration, here’s my parting letter to:

Dear Diet,

It’s not me, it is you. Let me tell you, no matter how much important you feel by coming into my life every now and then, you suck, literally and otherwise and I care a flying fuck about you. You are the bitch who laughs when I fail although you tempt me in the first place even when I decide not to cheat on you. Please be gentle with me this time and let me complete the drill so that you get rid of me once and for all.

Thank you,

Not yours sincerely ever,

Pleasantly Plump Me.

P.S. Someday soon I would be looking like this-more clothed though of course:

Some dreams are worth living in!

One of my biggest dreams is to have a house of my own someday, a living space with me as the mistress-a house that I could look at with my eyes and feel with my heart and every nook and corner would speak of a little bit of me-well, may be even yack...

Let me take you on a tour of a dream world that lives in me from eternity yet I manage to stumble upon it every now and then through some pictures I see...

Would you like to know where I would spend my lazy days?

Can anything be better than this?

Surrounded by books personifying writers and their eternal thoughts, fringed with French windows, overlooking a beautiful serene river sparkling outside as the criss cross of sunshine plays on the quivering surface-I can so see myself lost in here till someone would come and shake me from my trance. I reckon inhaling the muffled smell of books and exhaling peace with every breathe I take...

Shake me but only to take me to a living room like this, that I could adorn with pictures of all I have loved-people and moments. Let creativity leave its nimble footsteps on every wall. Let it be my vision of blessings to count on. Can you feel the warmth disseminating? Can you see a glow that does not exude from the exotic light bulbs but my beaming countenance when I watch this tree bloom with the promise of everlasting spring in life? 

And then take me out into the world but let me brace myself to face it with the panache of a lady and zest of a girl. Let me indulge here every once in a while so that I am more of a woman in all her shades. Come, let’s walk into my closet and watch in impeccable alignment all that I have tenderly gathered here, hand-picked with love, often just gazed at dotingly like a loved one. Yes, at times I need my celebrity moments.

How about a dip before we venture out? Let’s peer at the horizon as we bathe in its beauty. Let’s merge with nature in our most natural of forms. Let me be one with water and more water around and beyond....Do I see myself spending hours with arms crossed over my bosom heaving at the breathtaking spectacle lavishly laid out for my hungry eyes? Yes, I do.

But then who wants to go outdoors when the house becomes a home-your very own Utopia brought to life and the man you love becomes the one who clasps his fingers in between yours and sits with you on a little bench like here below or tries to catch you while you run like a mischievous imp over an enchanting red bridge or hop over the stones to amass pebbles and hurl them in the little pond to make a wish-the wish: Let me live in this dream forever! 

The dusk sets in and it’s time to wait for the stars to appear and adorn the beautiful shaded sky. It is time to gaze at the sun slowly sinking and telling you to hang in there-the darkness is commencing but he would rise again. It is time to watch the heat gradually give way to a soothing coolness. Let’s lounge up here with little candles around as we sip a little wine, have loved ones to dine and for dirty minds to go 69....

Somewhere here only in the laps of luscious and gracious trees, would also be the time when we’ll sit with the little ones to be like them. A cosy tree house where I think my baby would go less and me more. Always wanted to have one-a world of my own in the world of the world! Little lanterns would bring in just about enough light that would guide and not blind and little wind chimes would play a rhythm of their own. Bliss? Well not really, till the gentle flaps of a cool breeze blows-scattering the little perfection. Let me sleep in here for bedrooms are so not me.

And when we wake up, of course there would be some place to lounge again-an old fan overboard and the grace of pale or white curtains, I can so see myself loving yet another corner that could soak me in like an embrace, whether I sprawl with the newspaper or call you for a rendezvous or just fold my legs and rest my thinking head over a soft cushion, allowing the next blog post to filter in. 

And like this my fairy tale would be one that culminates in a happily ever after. I don't need the riches that are aspired by bitches. Give me love that seems sent from the heaven above. Give me peace and conversations that make me smile-yes, that's all I seek. And while I have realized it is high time I come out of my fairy tales, please let this one magical dream be.

P.S. I have been struggling with a blank mind that does not know what to write, every time I open my poor Microsoft Word. And yet I manage to churn out something that has lesser and lesser meaning for me with each post. I yearn to find my funny bone and write stuff that I truly love and am proud of. A weird weariness has set in whereby I not only don't want to write anything here but also I almost push myself to read the thoroughfares of bloggers I have loved. I think it is time for hibernation...a little disappearing to beckon an eventual appearing that makes more sense to me. I hope to come back soon....

Dear Girl nursing a Broken Heart

Dear Girl nursing a broken heart,

“Sometimes you just have to erase the messages, delete the numbers and move on. You don’t have to forget who that person was to you; only accept that they aren’t that person anymore.”

You know world over, genders alike, there is one disease that is slyly killing vulnerable souls even of the strongest of exteriors-heart breaks. The higher brains need to develop some vaccinations or immunity from heartaches instead of spending time, resources and intelligence on things like bacteria and atoms. Meh! The world is equipped to handle itself-we collapse miserably when it comes to managing the inner void, desires and unrequited love.

Everyone may smugly think they are above it-no sir, you are not and definitely not you ma’am. You mistake tumbling for love and you've just not fallen still how you should. We all are likely to get enslaved, with or without our knowledge or permission. The higher you fall in fantasy of someone, the lower you sink in depths of despair after having lost him or her. Love in the extremes is really what and how love should be and hence the most difficult to bear by your insides whichever side the see-saw dips. Even when at its brightest and most passionate, it burns you yet with restlessness!

It is not the moving on part which is difficult-it is the fact that you keep turning back to see if there are any remnants of what you sowed or has the harvest been burnt beyond recognition. You can close your eyes to the things you don’t want to see but how does one close the heart to stop it from feeling what you don’t want to? Yes, it is that tough and you are not alone my pretty one in feeling thus.

It is sad when the people you know become the people you knew. It is not so impossible to comprehend the bafflement of how you spend hours with someone discussing life as though he was a fabric of it and suddenly he gets covered in a veil that you find difficult to pierce through or reach out to, however you squint your eyes and fuck your brains for it. With every deep breath you take to puff yourself up with courage, you know something inside always crumbles. You wait for him to realize what he gave up on and repent while the wait slowly withers you within.

Love is like that-sweetest when it is lifting you up and cruellest when it throws you with a thud. You wish he chokes on the words when he says “I love you” to another girl. What makes you most generous, can very well turn you most heartless-for it robs you of all emotions. And when someone leaves without a reason, it becomes a sore point and pull for life, a point of no return.

People say that the most painful thing in love is losing someone whom you loved; not really-the painful part begins when you realize that you lost yourself in the process. The ache culminates into anger, frustration, regret and hopelessness borne out of the doubt and that tormenting, looming question-why did you allow yourself and your happiness to be dependent on one person?

Love stories that do not wrap up in a “happily ever after” are the strongest. It is perhaps because they leave us with many ‘what-ifs’ that you turn and toss over despite being on the most comfortable of beds that life may offer. We crave to hear the truth...Was that the truth when you said you loved me as if there was no other human filling up the earth or is this the truth when you choose to look through me like I am unwanted or non-existent?

Girl, do you hear Beyonce play in the backdrop while I talk to you? “You are the only one I wish I could forget and the only one I love to not forgive. You’re everything I thought you never were and nothing like I thought you could have been....” Beyonce is a wise girl. Love can make or break, give or take, mourn and elate. Such an oxymoron!

So now that you are ruined, how do you help you? Talking does the trick-not to someone else per se but to yourself. The brain may be the smartest of all organs but silliest when it comes to being convinced and especially of an argument born in itself. Cry a river-build a bridge-get over it. Tears perhaps were watery by default for a reason-they cleanse as they drain. Don't fight them, don't resist the closure for therein might lie the key. Let him know how you feel now-for if he wanted to hear how you felt when he tingled your body with mere words, he ought to know how he makes it shudder too.

You have to remind yourself that he may continue to live in your heart but there was no way, he could have lived in your life. And until you are broken, you don’t know what you are made of. Collect the pieces and start as a whole again. Try not to remember half the things you will never forget.  The best way to ensure you don’t go treading back on his path again, is to erase the footprints you walked along with and uproot the milestones that lure you to digress again.

It is often seen that people jump into one relationship from another. It is not because they are fickle-it is the best way to nurse the wound of the organ which was meant to just pump blood but does everything unspecified instead. A new muse for the broken heart is as necessary as new strings for a guitar that loses its rhythm. It helps you to not keep running back to the one person you need to walk away from. 

So keep the mind alert and heart open to allow the one who suits your fancy again but be patient for comparisons would set in and it would be a while before you find someone interesting again. But then you will-that’s how we are conceptualized. You tend to find things that attract you and the things that attract you tend to somehow reach to you.

Also vomit the anger and pain on someone who is ready to take that shit from you-there always is. Be proud of every blow made at your heart for it left you with lessons that made you stronger and wiser for future. And remember you can never make the same mistake twice, the next time it will show a choice. You can never be “just good friends” with someone you loved once-the feelings fade with time or injury, but they never die if they truly lived when they did. So don’t look to be friends, accept the anonymity.

Realize that what is dead must be buried before it deforms to something ghastly. Realize that you can live without him-his first mistake was leaving you and then now, allowing you to bring to fruition that you can live without him. The very people who said they would never hurt you are the very those who take your heart to task. Guard yourself and your self respect. Don’t dismiss it in the name of pride-respect it in the name of your individuality. Anything that does not make us happy has no right to live even in the periphery of our existence.

It will hurt for a first few weeks, maybe even months but then life moves on, love learns to unlearn and heart aspires to mend and fend for itself again.

I know dear girl, it seems the end of the world for you fear you won’t find anyone this perfect again. His perfection was an illusion-a pedestal where YOU raised him to for nobody is perfect and that’s what he should become-a nobody. Learn to unlearn, grieve to rejoice, rise again to stamp down-chin up and smile to scare the doubts away and drag yourself out of the bottomless pit. There are many who deserve you in all your glory so gather it before you lose the sunshine.

And then keep the faith-Love does not hurt, lovers do.

Take care and heal fast,

Yours lovingly,

Been there, seen that.

My "Other" Woman!

(Warning: Sexual innuendos ahead...frisk at your risk!)

Now before I tell you about the “other” woman in my life, we need to walk down our history first. Yes, it is flashback time folks. Let’s call her X kyonki naam loongi to badnaam ho jaayege na aur mein to general knowledge mein shareef hoon he. X and I are both kick-arse Punjaban kudis and we met post our weddings god was merciful on our husbands and nopes it does not mean that we’ve had multiple marriages. There were instant sparks (yes, an actual short circuit occurred at the venue) and roses smooched each other (we happened to be wearing floral print kurtas when we hugged). See, I might exaggerate but I neeeeever lie.

We were magnetic and bonded almost like Siamese twins-she is pretty, witty, oozing with oomph, flirty and fun okay, I stop complimenting myself here now. We got clicked while giving flying kisses that happened to hit our cheeks, she declared to the world how soft my arms were, which she refused to get her fingers off and whenever I wore a top that rose too up, she always HAD TO manually bring it a little down saying-have it, flaunt it.

Soon hugs became longer and lingering much to no one’s discomfort. Of course the women became bitchy, but then they do they ever need a reason to transform into being one? “How cheap can some people be!” was crooned a couple of times coming out of mouths with noses above them raised to the sky. While the men watching us weren’t complaining-in fact we were often encouraged to drink and get “more comfortable”. Tch, tch, how dumb can the horny man’s mind be for sure, imagining/praying that it might lead to us making out on the couch....sigh!

Soon gossip mongers began to set up their little ventures around our vicinity and at one late night get-together, we could actually see them flourish every time we whispered insane things in each other’s ears followed by teens-like giggles. Little did the guys realise that we were sizing them up all this while giving them blasphemous and mad ratings of their skills in bed based on their physical bearings and our assumptions of their interior possessions yes, we have self-proclaimed and publically defamed degrees in that...sign up for evaluation? We were just 23 years old then by the way just stating before you decide I am a wild child still. We even marked our territories to avoid conflict of interests as some were ticked in both our lists-fetishes were being redefined. Although the next morning of course we realized it was not a wise idea to drink as though it were 21^st December, 2012. Often we would let people think whatever they wanted just to enjoy their half amused, half aghast and half tongue lolling faces and please, there can be three halves in a hypothetical world just as there are threesomes for many of you in your imagination. 

Cut to the more placid present now: A little while back as an anniversary special week, a multiplex played movies of diverse genres for varied tastes. For women there was ‘Sex and the City-2’. Now I am a die-hard Carrie Bradshaw fan although the lesser mortal who missed it when it came the first time around sacrificing motherhood, thy name is Suruchi. Since dearly beloved thought it was too ‘womanly’ for his otherwise very woman-preferring tastes, I had to grab another of my species to take me to this paradise. Who else but X and just to clear the air I did not actually “grab” anything to lure her into this! Often I just need to ask and I get it.

We decided to go by ourselves trying to popularize the “Two is company and three is crowd” theory. However, mischief bound, we decided to upload it as a twisted status on our Facebook and BBMs just to create a little flutter. And boy, there was more action off-screen than on-screen since many of our close friends tease us about what's cooking between us, even after they know we suck at cooking-no puns intended.

In the home front with my beloved:

G: Really, why do you girls need to go alone? And that too for a movie that’s about SEX?

Me (in convincingly put-on anguish): Oh sweet lord...just because it has the word SEX in the title that does not mean there is going to be sex in it? (although I was secretly hoping there would be some sensuous stuff at least)

G: There won’t? Strange then, why would people want to go for it anyway?

Me: Grrrr...

G: Okay fine, at least tell me what all happened then and if possible, message me in between?

Me: You want to know what happens in the movie???????

G: No silly, what happened between YOU TWO-I mean there would be darkness, your winter shawls giving the right camouflage, not many in the audience and knowing how tharki both of you are....give me minute by minute detail, okay? Then I won’t feel too bad that I didn’t get to watch.....the movie that is! (And he actually did a holding-his-stomach-and-laugh).

Me (rolling my tongue over the upper lip, followed by a cute pout that muaahs, like I do when I see a KFC burger-this was like having the breast piece): If you want we can take the camera...live action? (a lusty wink)

G: Besharam, tum dono ka koi bharosa nahi waise-go and have fun!

On the social networking status front, here are some of the updates and inbox messages that kept pouring in through the two hours of the movie:

Mr As: Lucky you, I wish I could see ‘Sex and the City’ too in the same hall as you both and since I’ve seen the movie, I won’t need to make an excuse of watching you both instead.

Mr Fu: Wow, two hot women alone in a dark hall...I hope the men in the audience don’t come? Non-metaphorically speaking...

Mr Chu: You could have created less noise about it...now look what you’ve done to ordinary mortals who don’t get to watch “Sex...” and yet think about it!

Mr Ku: Did you get your hands on it finally-the tickets that is?

Mr Bc: I hope you haven’t been lured by those horny behind-the-counter guys to take straws-I hate it when people suck the drinks out in the middle of a quiet moment...

Beloved G: Mere Ganga maile to nahi ho gaye? Mooh kaala kar liya ki abhi naak baaki hain?

Mr Mc: There may be some biting moments in the movie...please keep your fingers and teeth to yourselves or at least don’t leave scratches.

X’s Husband: To kahan tak pahunche? Ache hain? Arre movie yaar!

Phew! Such wise brains all racking whatever little they have to make us rock the sack or rather the seats in this case. While we two seedhe saade Bharatiya pativrata pavitra naaris just had a ball-watching a fun film, hooting a little, taking a couple of cosy clicks for the kicks, sighing at the only proper single kiss on screen, discussing the men in our lives and making a promise that we’d go for an all girls trip too very soon...probably to Bangkok. As for some action between us-naah, we are too busy in being fixated with the male anatomy and attitude to get distracted just by a pair of good boobs-at least for now!

But then seriously, what is with you men and the craving to watch women together? Really! And just checked the newspaper-there is a new comedy flick up that goes by the name “A good old-fashioned orgy”. Hmmm, time to make X come again! ;-)

To the Voice, To THE Woman

Dear Love,

After talking my insides out with you over the past many months, I don’t really know what to articulate here. But I know I want to and I have to say what you must know.

It is strange how I always knew someone like you would come along. How I discerned I would be finished even before I was introduced to your mesmeric though decidedly anonymous persona on the internet. Like they say “I knew I loved you before I met you, I think I dreamed you into life...”

When I first came across your chitter-chatter in the web world, I smiled even perhaps as my heart naively ached. I made a little holler, you coyly and graciously reciprocated and the rolling of inconceivable conversations took me to the utopia that I didn’t think exists in the mundane. You made my mind come alive and my being gyrate to an unknown rhythm and accord. It was as though you stirred me into mind orgasms that left me hankering for more.

Was I lucky that you spotted me in your milieu of ardent admirers or was fate finally beginning to compensate for keeping me in yearning for all of my twenty seven years?


My most beloved, if most people are like visitors to my heart, carefully scrutinized and allowed access and shown to their separate chambers, you were like a tidal wave of passion which crashed and sank my castle, occupying every single room and every individual speck and dragging and drowning me in every facet of your emotion. Your eagerness in contacting me, your unsurpassable wit and your openly frolicking teases in plain sight of everyone, made me go red in the cheeks. Yes, only you can make me this adolescent that I never was, even when I was in those years to prove it and with those girls to show it. 


Your literal dragging me to the secret messaging chambers and whining light-heartedly how you want my words to be only yours....I have never seen or even heard of anyone like you. Here finally is someone who ignites a young mind in the day while her alter ego ignites passions in hearts. Not ignites as much as chains and drags them to the town hall and sets fire to them in full view of the rest-peasants and nobles alike.

Remember when you childishly asked, “Why don’t you add me on Facebook now?” and I instantly retorted, “Because if I did see any more of you, I would fall for you.” I meant it with all my heart as you laughed filling my voids with its tinkling, considering it just another fancy.

And then I saw you and I could see what no one else could. Pictures after pictures of a smiling beautiful face but searching eyes! I saw you wrapped in the arms of a child who basked in the affection you bestowed and beside a man gloating with the pride of owning you.

If there is another thing that cannot be explained, besides the fatal lure I feel for you, is how could this man leave you for another woman? How clogged would his mind and senses be to let go of nature’s own special child-bountiful in life like a tree blossoming in springtime and bequeathing love everywhere she treads as the eagerly cascading waterfall, sparkling with freshness and affable even in the apparent din.

How I could sell my body and soul just to trade places with him-to feel you in proximity, to watch you open those lovely fish eyes every morning, waking up to me! To know the curves under the sheet by my bedside are yours and the soft palm that reaches out from it to clasp my fingers will be mine. To feel that the exquisite mind that weaves magic with its every manifestation, ponders about me!

You think I just know you through your pictures, I just know you though your voice...wish you could realize I know you through my soul that feels tugged by every iota I get of you! You tell me that nothing can transpire between us when I have ambled way too ahead towards you to even remember where I came from or how I was, without you in my head. And don’t make a mistake my love, had you told me this even when I took the first step, I would have doubtlessly said the same. There is no other way that does not lead to you. 


I have my own enticing vision of you. In your home, in your kitchen quarters, you would be wearing a sari well tucked at the edge, those long tresses wrapped and bondaged sketchily on your perfectly symmetrical forehead. You would be there caught day dreaming, leaning against the refrigerator with one leg bent and both hands supporting your behind on the door and your eyes forlorn into the ceiling. If even I appear in that situation just once, I for one would feel truly blessed.


I go about thinking how you would be teaching your adorable son with a pencil rolled between your full lips and sighing at the mathematical complications. I picture him looking at you with the familiar to me awe-filled eyes, as your expressions see-saw between the baffled and despair. How I want to reach out to you, to smoothen the cresses that mar your glowing countenance and put my palms on your shoulders to gently press them and unlock the knots forming within.

You say you can’t love or trust any more. How then do I feel a blind trust you place in me as you relate how unfair life has been with you? Why do I feel your heart throbbing when I whisper sweet nothings as though I had you pressing against my chest? Why do I feel even when I’ll meet you, it would be like you were never away?

I know no fancy words....I promise no unfathomable oaths....I just want you, to love forever and more. I don’t care about your body or how you fear it might fail to meet my expectations. I don’t have any. All I have is love that is prevailing in my insides and too formidable to contain anymore. All I have is me telling you that your son and you would never be alone or know another tear again. It is never too soon or never too late when it feels this right.

I do not bring roses or champagne glasses....I have no fancy tuxedos to wear or a band playing a romantic tune in the backdrop but if you can hear which I am sure you would if you try-hear my soul pining for you, my blood rushing through my body wanting to protect you and my breaths coming and going just to hear you say “Yes” when I ask you this-

MARRY ME?

Yours-in every life coming my way, whether you do or not,

Me.   

P.S.1 I wanted to end this letter on a sad and dejected note conflicting with even a foretaste of the 'happily ever after' but it is Valentine's Day and what the heck, you can't say Santa does not exist at Christmas.
P.S. 2. This is another attempt at the Open love letters and hopefully there would be more after everyone liked the first one- To The Girl at 27. 

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!