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.