Ek "AAM" Ladki ke "AAM" Kisso ki "AAM" Kahaani

"Hockey is India's National Sport.

Cricket is India's religion.

I am an atheist with a strict "no-stick-on-field" policy."

-Anonymous

March is a month that begins with the dreaded board exams, stress, anxiety, electric bills, chewed-up fingernails, "Emotional Atyachaar" mania, and the end of a non-existent winter.

March is a month that ends in relief, payrolls, stressing on marks, farewell parties, convocations, tears, silent promises to stay in touch and, of course, Summer.

Think "Summer".

Think "Yellow". "Think "sunshine".

Think "The Delhi Fashion Week", "Swimsuit season", "New openings at pretti slim", "Price hikes on Sunscreen", "Fat women top-naked on public beaches", "Fat women in tight see-though white kurtis", and "Mindless Ogling".

Think "Dollops of sunscreen", "Summer clearance sales", "Cute guys top-naked on public beaches", "Sweating on the wrong places", "Long drives", "Avoiding public transport", "Avoiding your neighbor", "Avoiding the sun", "Avoiding men who smell like dead rats or kitty-litters", "Excessive deo", "Long working hours", "Sweat-soaked clothes". Think "another excuse to shorten the length of that dress"

Think "Mating season", "holiday migrations", "another dollop of sunscreen", "minimal make-up","sunburns", "aloevera".

And, then think the BAAP of a fruits---

THINK MANGOES!

A summer delight in India during the scorching summer months, they are the only reason people in India still believe that God exists. The coming in of Summer brings with it new items to menus of large urban indian food outlets. "Mango-chaas", "Mango icecream" "Aam ras" "mango milkshakes, mangoes, mangoes, and plenty more mangoes that are sold in every alley, every shop, every busy street of the City that never sleeps. Why, summer is the only season of the year when Mumbaikars look at a glass of "Maazaa" and say, "Know what? I think I'll pass..."

Here I sit, my precious, ripe, juicy, yellow mango in the very palm of my hands. My first bite, first lick, first slurp, and every other first that i left out is finally happening today. Gluttony takes over and I begin to devour my prized mango with animalistic vigor. Call me what you like, but I'm a sucker for mangoes.

I remember the tree outside my aunts appartment which always had ripe alphonsos five days after the Ides of March. Nice, ripe, juicy yellow mangoes always hung on the dainty branches elusively. My brother used to go up the tree and pluck them, and I used to hold the ladder up. He fell on me one day. We never plucked mangoes together after that.
I always hated that bastard...
Oh, well.

This month, I've decided to go to city Z in the Middle East from here for a holiday with my mum and sister. After a lot of negotiation, mum has agreed to travel to Z, which is two hours and 2,560km (approx.) away from Mumbai.
My birth city is the most beautiful, clean, lush, peaceful and excruciatingly BORING city in the entire world.

Yes, no cursing on the highway, no public tantrums, no mooning, no picketing, no harrassment, no NOTHING.

My only sources of enterntainment are 1) the frequent number of accidents on the streets right next to the 2)cemetry just a few yards outside of my house.
Well, shit.
But fretting I shalln't do, for throwing expats off an abra is what i shall do if the city gets too boring.
As someone had said, "When the going gets tough, the tough haul people into the sea for the heck of it".

Mangoes, anyone?

My Bill at our Local Pizzeria

This was the bill I received at our local Pizzeria this afternoon:

I think that's just Gods way of saying, "Sangeeta, you damnable creature, the creation of Absolute Evil! 

You have maliciously disregarded the Dieties of the Heavens, for which you shall face our wrath!"

Or maybe just, "Fuck yourself, asshole." 

Well, he does get his revenge: that pizza's going straight to my thighs...

*Sigh*

Stranger things have happened...

People never cease to amuse me.
Humans are the most wondersome and mind-bloggling creatures there ever were. How is it that one will easily believe someone who says that there are more there a billion stars in the sky, and yet question one when they tell them that the paint on a park-bench is wet?
Human nature is odd to the Zenith.
People see no harm in someone with an exorbitant libido, but if a person has a dimished one, conflicts and allegations are thrown around at the asexuality of the esteemed. A Belgian Priest such as Georges Lemaître saying that the Big Bang exists isn't good enough for us. But Newton, Einstein, Hawking, and Friedman saying it made all the difference to the world.
So what is it that makes people choose such odd decisions? Does a mere degree signify that everything a person states is politically or diametrically correct? Or is it power? Or a homogenous mix of both?
Well, i'm not too sure of that, myself.
Taking an example into account, I'd once walked into Dr. Irani's clinic on a wintry morning with a copy of "The Economic Times" under my arm. I was in a Mickey Mouse jersey and blue faded jeans, coughing and wheezing like a dying chimpanzee. Then, i took the paper and started to read, occasionally telling the woman next to me about price hikes and an overall sensex review. Do you know what i learnt?
The Economic Times is quite the accessory for anyone who wants to be taken seriously. You'd bitch and gossip about the receptionist, complain about the coffee, even crack lame jokes about sex, and people would see you as an intellectual "with broader interests".
What? It's the Economic times, for chrissake! You need to be a "learned intellectual" to read AND understand those.
Sames for anything Franz Kafka wrote. This was the conversation between me and a cute guy in the BEST today:

"Um..." he squints at the book in my hand. "Is that a book by --"
"--Franz Kafka? Of course, yes! It's a compilation, actually. The individual novels are rather pricey..." I trail off, and then smile brilliantly.
"Oh!" Cute-Guy smiles. "So, you read the stuff he writes?"

Nope.

"Why, yes! In my opinion," I clear my throat. "The Metamorphosis was a splendid novella... It's such a shame to see people being so critical about it. I think it was immensely entertaining in a rather wise way."
"Wow, you have some enticing views." the smile on his face widens.

I've never read "The Metamorphosis". I don't even know what the fuck it's all about. And i'm pretty sure is a novelette, and not a novella.

"...So, do you find him good enough to read?" He asks, turning his entire body toward me.

Please, I'd rather watch "Glen or Glenda" instead of read the crap he writes...
But, since you're cute, I'm not going to tell you the truth.
I'm going to lie!

"Absolutely!" I widen my eyes at him. "His books are extremely high-IQ, like, so it can stump the layman. But these," I point at my green 'Compilations of the Great Works of Franz Kafka'. "Are mere translations, you know..."

I sure hoped he did, cuz i had no idea what i was getting myself into.

"Oh yeah?" He cocks an eyebrow at me in curiosity. "From what language?"

Fuck.
What language...?!
Ok. Ok. He's from Hungary, so....

"GERMAN! G-German. He's Hungarian. He was born in Prague, which was earlier a part of Austria. But, now, Prague is in Czech Republic." I nod my head intelligently at him, watching him stare in amused ineterest. Suddenly, i find myself cringing at my semi-british accent.
"Whoa! How do you know all of this?" he asks, a reporter in the charming disguise of the Cutest guy to ever sit next to me on a crowded bus.

From skimming the back of the book when you weren't looking?

"Oh, hes a reknown writer. Who wouldn't know?" I cock my head to the right.
"Right. Say, what are you reading right now?"

Fashion catalogues in Cosmo?

"The Novella 'America'."
"Oh?" He asks me to continue, and bends slightly toward me. And now, he's so close, i can practically smell his aftershave.

That's a really nice smell...

"Yes, its first chapter is 'The Stoker'. It was his greatest piece work even before being included in 'America'."
"Say, what's it all about?"

...Uh?

"The story begins as a sixteen-year-old boy named Karl Rossmann arrives at the New York harbor on a slow-moving ship. We are told that Karl has been sent to America "because a servant girl had seduced him and got herself with child by him." As he's about to come ashore, he remembers that he has left his umbrella. He asks a young man with whom he had been briefly acquainted during his voyage to watch over his trunk as he runs to get his umbrella, and the boy---"
"---Is the Stoker?"

No.

"Yes." I nod.
"Wow," He says. "You've read alot."

What?! Dooood, that's, like, only the first two pages of the entire deep-shit novel! For all your cuteness, not so much with the listening.

"Yes, it's quite long. And stretched."
"Like a rubberband?" He grins, and i burst into peals of laughter.

Your sense of humor sucks. It's a good thing you're cute.

"Like a rubberband." I stare up at him, and he moves closer.
"Well," his voice grows throaty. "What else has he written? Something," He curls a lock of my hair. "Interesting?"

Yeah. His will.

I shift away, nervously. "Th-the Castle?"

Wh-which is b-b-boring!!

"Mmmm..." he stops twirling my hair, but shifts in closer again.

Please don't ask me what it's about. Please, don't. Please don't. Please, Please, Please----

"---What's it all about?"

Fuck.

"Politics..." ....I hope?
"Sorry, my Stop's here. G'bye!" he smiles at me as he gets up to leave.
"Bye!" Phew!

So, after all this adult brainstorming session, too, i do not know how and why people decide that one persons opinion is more superior to the other. People believe all that they are told, but they question the most obvious of facts.
Why that's the case, i'll never know. Because this world is a haven of mad people. After all, stranger things have happened...

A note to the Idiot who drank my last Cuppa Joe

Since I knew I'd be too drained to type this down, I just took a picture of it while it was still hung on the bulletin board. Click to enlarge...

This is why I should never be allowed to go more than 27 hours without coffee.

I hate to burst the Indian Bubble.

Indians are very schizoidal. We have a knack from coming up with an array of neologisms, half of which are merely words that have a condemned pronunciation.
And that's not it.
We also conveniently MAKE up the spellings of the words we pronounce differently. Sic today, i have sought to officially calling it BUBBLEBURSTIN' Day, where i shall cast aforth light on the various words most of us make up without having the slightest clue of it.

• Presumptious (Obsolete!): Today, this word is officially known as presumptuous, the pronunciation being presump-choo-us. This word is a hybrid from the verb 'presume', which, in Latin, is Janus-faced in a way the it not only means "to suppose", but also, "to take liberties". An anecdote about Sir James M. Barrie aptly illustrates; One day, he opened the door on a reporter he didn't want to see.
"Mr, Barrie, i presume," the reporter says.

"Yes!" The, usually calm, Mr. Barrie snapped back and slammed the door shut.
• Prophesize (sic): The word is prophesy(the last syllable pronounced as sigh) and the noun is prophecy(the last syllable being pronounced as see).
• Portentious: The word is portentuous, which comes from the noun portent (strange signs or omens)
• Unctious: Though this word is found on Webster's Second and Third, this word doesn't exist. The word is actually unctuous, again, the choo sound quite audible. It means to be oily in a suave, insincere manner. The words unctuous, annoint, and ointment come from the same Latin verb.
• Unequivocably(which, by the way, is Unequivocally Wrong!: The word is unequivocally,meaning without any qualifications, absolutely, clearly, and unambiguously.
• Undoubtably(again, undoubtedly wrong.): This word, without any doubt, is undoubtedly, and not undoubtably. Both this and the former words have common mistakes.

So, that's all for today!

P.S. I wrote all this not because i am a purist, but merely because i am preoccupied with the purity of a language and its protection from the use of foreign or altered forms.
P.P.S. I do not know if that was tautology, or a juxtapose. I'd appreciate if someone could help me with that.

Weddings, In-Laws, and Politics, Oh My!

One of the main reasons most bachelors and spinsters dread the entire alliance of marriage is the in-laws. According to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus, an “In-law” is “a relative via wedlock”. According to Sangeeta, an “In-Law” is “a fucking idiot with no sense of fashion who is just hell-bent upon making you look fat and ugly on your wedding day and, then, stealing all your jewelry and passing them off as their own”. In-laws are people who are ‘all “the” talk and no “the” do’, meaning, they are people who blow things way out of proportion, and then buy things from the Camel market while saying they are branded. Most in-laws have an uncanny habit of wanting to act like they are ravishing their D-I-L, while all the time they are merely being penny pinchers and being complete assholes to the same. But, In India, we do not dread just the In-Laws. We dread much else...

India is, indeed, a strange country. In every other country, marriages are categorized in five simple steps:

1. Boy and Girl meet.
2. Boy likes Girl.
3. Girl likes Boy.
4. They get married.
5. They live happily ever after.

For us Indians, of course, the steps are... welll, longer:

1. Boy and Girl meet.
2. Boy likes Girl.
3. Girl likes Boy.
4. Girl’s family must like Boy.
5. Boy’s family must like Girl.
6. Girl’s family must like Boy’s family.
7. Boy’s family must like Girl’s family.
8. A thousand rituals and political mudslinging later, Boy and Girl get engaged.
9. After another thousand rituals, they FINALLY get married.
10. Then, they live in a house together where they spend the rest of their sorry lives eating pizza from the carton and fighting for the remote all day.

This pretty much sums up a typical Indian marriage. Today, I went to my sister’s In-Laws’ place.
Why? Because I have no life. And because my sister is ill, but whatever…
The rendezvous was supposed to last an hour, us discussing the timing, the venue and apparels that would be involved in the marriage. Our heated debate lasted four hours, over which we discussed politics, the weather, how nice Aloe Vera is for the skin and how wonderful it would be if we could all just get along. There WAS no mention of the marriage in the entire tryst with the dreaded “In-Laws”. That’s just how marriages in India are: We always sought to do one thing, but instead end up doing another. It’s very common in India for a girl to fall in love with a boy, and get so attached to his family, that she ends up eloping with his brother.

“Mrs. Khanna, have you heard? Lara’s daughter ran away with the groom’s brother!”


“Oh, that’s nothing! Have you seen the amount of jewelry they ran with? Only worth a million rupees! How’s my diamond encrusted crown? Could give the Queen a run for her money, couldn’t I?”

Yeah. Sure you could.
You see, I have nothing against marriages – Nothing at all! It’s just the PEOPLE getting married that put me up in the spot. Really, why buy the album, when you can download plenty bloody albums for free? No commitment, no issues, no hassle, and they would never flirt with your best friend to make you jealous.
Trust me.
So, I was in a fix when I heard that Mother and I shall go meet the beloved parents of my brother-in-law who –in completely UNrelated news – looks like a seven-month pregnant Dick Dastardly.

“How about we keep the wedding from ten-thirty to twelve and the reception from one to five?” Sister’s father-in-law says. Sure, uncle –if that’s humanly possible. Yes, and then, there is this other thing; Indian marriages are slow. Slow? That’s like saying, “Hitler was a tad aggressive.”

There’s a lot to an Indian wedding. Firstly, we start with the HALDI rasam, where the groom is made to sit on a stool with white shorts and a white shirt. To all those who don’t know, HALDI is a Hindi word meaning “Indian saffron” or "Turmeric", which is ground with water into a paste, used to give the esteemed a fairer glow. In the HALDI rasam, loads of fat women with no dressing sense and cleavages that could hold the Everest sing songs in death-defying tones similar to that of a desiccated gorilla dying at the gates of hell. In the midst of this crass cacophony, the sisters of the bride sought to tear the shirt of the groom from his body and then smear the paste on his torso. If that’s not bad enough, the mother of the bride gets to pull the groom by the nose and bring him to the staging of the marriage.
Then, the bride is to be dressed up. Now –and its customary –the weight of the bride must always be a quarter of the weight of her dressing gowns and her jewelry put together. Meaning, if she can walk, she isn’t completely dressed. And if she can't, she’s pure evil. Why, and the mudslinging after that? Goodness, it’s so freaky; I don’t even need to be funny about it.

WHEN THE BRIDE ISN’T ABLE TO WALK:

“Arre, you saw Rajesh’s bride? Practically dripping gold and diamonds, no?”


“Of course she is. What do you expect from such [a rude Hindi word for OSTENTACIOUS] people? Bloody Ramgharias*!”

AND, WHEN SHE IS:

“Oh, my GOD! Rajesh’s bride is WALKING TO THE MANDAPAM**!”


“Such disgrace! Such disregard to our Hindu customs! Those fucking Ramgharias don’t deserve to live!! Even Lohars*, Jatts* and Rajputs* would give all they can to their only daughter! Rascals!"

If that’s not pudifying enough, the make-up palette comprises of the most hideous of colors in history of the most hideous of colors! The only two things an Indian bride can possibly look like is either a prostitute, or a forlorn fool who walked into the streets of Abu Dhabi in the month of Ramadan. It’s like the stylist has been plotting sweet revenge against the poor bride all his life!

“How’s the bride?” asks the stylist from hell.



“So hideous, I think my eyeballs have started to bleed!” The assistant says.



“I know she is, but…” he thinks for a moment. “I STILL think she could look worse…"

Nobody can be more humiliated in one night than the Indian bride and groom are on their wedding day. That’s why it felt so bad to be sitting in front of the In-Laws (read: Aliens from Pluto) and discussing the wedding.
Why? ‘Cuz I’d have to be the sorry soul who escorts (read: carries) the bride to the Mandapam. In other words, my back is going for a TOSS.

I hate weddings…

P.S. *- These are Sects and Tribes in the Sikh religion.
**- The wedding venue.

An extract

This is just an extract from the novel that i'm thinking of writing. It's still crude, as the end product will be much more superior to this draft, but i will post this, anyway. The ray of hope still shines through, doesn't it?

'I didn't decide to die.
Nobody decides to die. sometimes, its not a choice. Everything else can be chosen. Everything.
but death is a necessary end. It isn't an option. I'm not deciding the end. I'm merely ending the novel before the due page.
So, you see, i haven't DECIDED to die. I'm not one to decide what starts and ends in this world. I only decide to do the things i do.
We are all born with a certain religion, an ethnicity, in a place at a certain time in an era that, as we grow, we call 'yesterday'. I could've changed my religion. But, here, i chose not to.
i chose not to, simply because its the easier option. I could've changed homes, changed ethnicity to an extent, get a sex-change or even try to surgically MAKE myself white. i chose not to. simply because it was an easier option.
So, i haven't decided to die, because death has to happen, as it will. it's not a decision. i cannot choose to do something that is bound to happen, anyway. i have merely increased the speed of time by altering the aspects of my life and of those around me.
It's not that i do not have control over my life. It's mine, after all.
Here i stand, in front of the mirror at seven in the morning. I usually wake up at four thirty. Of course i have total control. i choose my bedtime and the time of my rising. Ordinarilly, i wake up one minute before the alarm rings. i stare at the ceiling till it rings, and then shut it off after that. I then proceed to running toward my bathroom, almost slipping over the rug, and then start brushing my teeth. by four fifty two and seven seconds, i'm in the shower, trying hard to keep the shampoo out of my eyes. it's around five twelve and a second when i pat myself dry, stare at myself in the mirror, and rush toward the wardrobe. by the time it's five thirty and fifteen seconds, i'm in my formal wear, and- briefcase in hand -i am walking toward the sedan. I reach work at six and, ten minutes and forty-eight seconds later, i have already assigned five tasks each to most of my subordinates.
So, not only do i have complete control over my life, i have the same over the lives of others- not to mention the course of time, itself. Now you see? We can choose to do things, but we can't choose to die.
I am not Veronika. My life is not a novel, and Paulo Coelho is not my literary father. I do not have any spiritual awakenings, and neither have i lost the hold of the strings that defy the perfection, that is me.
I still stare at me in the mirror. The only difference is - she isn't me. She is a middle-class low-life with no social life, no friends and bags under her eyes. Her eyes are puffy and red, swollen are their lids and rub-lines are what adorn them dearly. Her hair are a messy tuft on her head, and lines, of what look like effervescent tears, are running down the rouged cheeks. She is a girl who left her home after her parents tried to sell her to her wealthy uncle for two sacks of rice, She is a girl who stole bread from houses, clothes from their lines and made fire from torn paper and broken matchsticks. The only possible similarity between us is our age.

Who is she?
What is she? A microbe? a bag of chemicals born of the sin that two people committed, that they still regret?
Just a reminiscent of lust long disintegrated? What??

She makes mistakes, she lies, she cheats, she steals, she cries, then laughs. She loves, she loses, she cries some more. She hurts, she bruises, and the tears cease to stop. Is she made of salt water? or sand? Or just a wandering spirit who found shealter in a random body? Who is she, anyway? A 'nothing-special girl'? A nobody? A random soul in a crowd of a zillion random souls? A spec of dust? A scrap of filth?
She may be all or none of these, but she'll never be me.

I'm the youngest executive to have reached the top of the career ladder in five years of doing the things i do. I have the perfect life, the perfect job, the perfect boyfriend, the perfect social life. I have a great appartment, a splendid pay, my own wine cellar -but then again who doesn't?

Oh. Sure. She doesn't.
And yet we stand at the same level. Yet we see each other when we look in the mirror. Life is strange, is it not?
Out of the blue, green, electric purple, techno burple, and every other shade and tint the common man ha s made acquaintances with, a bony hand moves toward me. Invariably, my hand moves toward. the two hands touch, and burst of light, heat, and electricity begin to reverberate through my entire body. Our hands quiver against each other, both perfectly manicured, both with a slight chip on the left-hands pinkies' nail. I move closer, and the teary-eyed girl copies me to the ump. I begin to feel the hand i have beneath my palm. It's not fleshy and knotty, like mine. It's hard, and cold, and lacks a typical human feel to itself. It had definitive scratches on its surface, too. Time and unfortunate razor accidents had worn out the wall between the Nothing and the Everything of the chimeras of divine imagination. I place my cheek on this wall, and she reciprocates. I melt under this union, as the fire of me and the ice of her meet, and, suddenly, her cheeks aren't so rosy anymore. The known sting gets caught in my eye, as the wall acquires an odd moisture from a source unknown to me.

I didn't decide to die.
Nobody does.

I pull away from the illicit embrace which i wholesomely share with my nemesis. I look into her eyes. There it is, the warmth. The sadness, the humility, the mortification of being alive and being of not use to this world, or the next.

Nobody decides to die. They merely provide sleep to a moribund life, which will end, as like, as not.

I look down at the watch on my hand. Passively, i reach for my cell phone.
"I am one hour twenty minutes and twenty-two seconds late for work," unthinkingly, i reach for the clothes on the rack behind me. Counting the minutes, i plan my perfect life , where my perfect self shall reach work to realize that all the fuckers who work under me are slacking off, like the humans they are.
I could've ended the book here, i could've stopped time.

I chose not to.
Only because its the easier option.'

The First Post

A blog. A real, live journal. No, it's not something i do very often. Such things signify change, and i'm the last get along with anything that dirupts the equivalent balance that is me.
So, why did i make one? I'm not so sure of this, myself. All i know is that someday -maybe not today, or tomorrow - sometime soon enough, i'm going to regret ever making this happen to me. For a start, change is hard.
Change hasn't happened to me ever since puberty. To humor the sorry souls reading this, i wouldn't ever get in the details of THAT. The last time i experienced environmental change was in the shower. And thats not even applicable.
So, what drives me toward such an uncanny furor of emotion? Its just that -emotion. A spur-of-the-moment action -and based solely on impulse and inner intuitive conflict -has made me finally make a blog i've not even bothered to give a good look at.
Now, here i am, writing the first post. A milestone change in my life has finally come.

Its a wonder why i have no social life beyond school, is it not?