In Between

I wrote my last post in December 2015 and now it is July 2016. Have I been too busy to write something? No. Have I had inspiration to write something? No. Am I inspired right now? No. Do I wanna write something, right now, anyway? Yes. I did write something in between but saved it in drafts and that is where it quietly sits.

Last two years of my life have passed at a dizzying pace. So many new memories and so many new neural nets have formed in my brain that all the years before that have become fuzzy. I would like to believe that I am growing up for better but I cannot claim that confidently. There is definitely a shift in the total sum of my personality. I have made the mistake of believing that personality is fixed, experiences and situations change. But nothing is fixed including my personality. Including the fiber of who I believe I am, I was or will be. I am on the cusp of adding a new chapter to my life. I am entertaining the idea of bringing some seismic changes in my life which may change the course of my personality development for good or bad but I cannot claim that confidently.

From depression to anxiety to hormonal changes to social phobia to social anxiety to social rebellion to social cowering to chaotic confusions in my mind to succumbing to the world that changes every second and with which I change too, I have experienced everything to a varying degree. Have I kept my sanity, have I kept my friends, have I kept my relationships, have I kept my core, have I kept my ideas and thoughts? I cannot claim that confidently.

I have felt dizzying hatred towards things, people and ideas. And I say dizzying because the intensity has been frightening. I have felt tremendous love for things and people, which did not feel right either. I have read about impostor syndrome, lists of how to be happy, how to be confident, how to spot true friends, how to be a true friend, how to save money, how to get rid of cyctic acne, how to stop hair from graying, how to love your family, how to keep in touch, how to switch off, how to lose weight, how to dominate the world in 5 simple steps, how to train a dog, how to train your mind, how to be a monk, how to learn from history, how to predict future, how to live in the present, why my zodiac sign rules and how to revive the inner Beyonce. Have I done what I have read? Have I done what I felt? Have I felt what I have done? Cannot claim that confidently.

I live abstractly in between my ideas and my thoughts and ideas and thoughts shoved in my brain by others around me or the environment, social media, cataclysmic events and puppy videos. That is where I live and thrive and exist, alternatively. That is all I can claim confidently.

Stuff at home that makes me go apeshit and turns me into a raging gorilla monster

Yes, the title is big and self explanatory and you would ask why do we even need to read the rest of it when we already know you are bat shit crazy! To that, my friend, I would say, "Exactly! That is why you need to read it because I am crazy! Read motherfucker read! Or I will go ape shit all over you".

Now that we have the disclaimer out of our way, let us proceed.

Shower- This device was especially made in hell by Mr. Devil himself so that I could get scalded for my sins and frozen for my hubris as and when he pleased. If you are regular reader (pat yourself on the back first), you would know I have changed houses like I change light bulbs in my super pms-ing lamp( will get to it later). I have been given the worst possible shower deals in every one of those emfucking houses. The types range from:
a. Very little water- that my soap once told me 'fuck it, please don't use me, I don't wanna be stuck to your filthy body due to lack of WATERRRRRRR' Yes it roared in pain like that.
b. Too much water- that the force of it can make holes in my face.
c. Horrible drainage- that I can take 50 laps in my own filth until the water slowly, painfully decides to drain away.
d. Settings that are just plain dumb-They don't know if they should be hot or cold even if I beat the shit out of them! I beat the crap out of the settings whenever the following two things happen:  I turn it to hot and icebergs form on my head instantly or when I turn it to cold and the devil pees hot lava out of the shower holes all over me.

Microwave- Do not ever use my microwave when I gift it to you as your wedding present ( Of course I will tell you its brand new) because you WILL die like I do! Every. Day. That pile of shit will beep and cry until you move your ass and remove that year old, excuse of a curry you kept in it to thaw. It will beep like a 1000 puppies are burning in a gas leak fire! Just when you had decided to place your tired rear on an inviting couch as it takes 3 minutes to heat the 10 day old pasta (at the very least) the microwave will start beeping! And. keep. beeping. Oh it beeps so that your head starts ringing and you get filled up with an inexplicable  rage to punch 10 pandas for no reason , in the face, right on the nose.

Lamp: This horrible horrible crapfest of a lamp which I had referred to as 'super pms-ing' earlier (justifiably), is the bane of my life! Every few days it kills a light bulb which then goes to the light bulb heaven. This lamp is the opposite of light! It is a menacing black hole that devours its own lifeline! You could ask me - hey why don't you just get a new lamp! And I would say 'die and don't open your mouth'. Buy me a new one, come and put it in my house and shut it ; otherwise do not utter a single word.

Computer: MY LAPTOP HANGS. And I wish it would just hang itself one day and call it a suicide, otherwise I will kill it anyway. I will give it a merciless death that no computer has ever received before. I will take a rock and knock the wind out of it, then I will take the broken pieces and bury them. Then I will dig that little grave and exhume the body parts and burn them and bury them again. I will do this until every part of this laptop turns into ash and then I will bury that ash too. I promise.

Thermostat: This is one blazing, royal craphole of crapholes. Why don't they make the thermostats with ONE setting and one only- "COZY AMAZE". Right when I am ready to slip my hairy leg out of the comforter, the temperature drops and all hell freezes over. Literally. Fuck you thermostat industry. You should be sent to Antarctica, naked and made to be tickled by penguins there. Naked.

Frying pan: If there is a mirror to hell, it is one of my frying pans. I have some others but occasionally I need to use this particular hell mirror and nothing drives me crazier than when the frozen bread gets stuck to this garbage and takes me one light year to clean it. During one of those cleaning times, I just bang it on the counter repeatedly, continuously so that I could feel what it would be like to kill a frying pan in cold blood, if it were alive. It feels pretty good. I will not lie.

Keys: These jingly bastards are assholes. Period.

There is a never ending, inexhaustible list of things that frustrate me. So do not worry, there will be more. Until then, may all of your stuff annoy the fuck out of  you as much as mine does to me.

A Renaissance Woman

She dances, paints, sings and plays instruments 

She reads, cooks, talks and loves

She has learnt how to be alone with her thoughts

She deals with life like an iron willed warrior

She knows how powerful a yes and a no can be

She still believes in honesty, loyalty , vulnerability and affection

She comes in different sizes and shapes and colors and hues

She works long hours and sleeps long hours

She no longer strives to achieve the illusive balance

The balance within her comes from her strength of character

She is as masculine as you are feminine

She cares, dares

She is decadent, she is delirious with happiness, she writhes in pain

She cries, she sighs, she melts your heart

She owns her mind, her body, her choices

She seduces, she is an illusionist

She is high - on life

She is a feminist

And a renaissance woman.

To be or not to be

Do you think Shakespeare would have ever thought that someone centuries away would be sitting  and defiling one of his quintessential quotes in her blog? If you think so, you should slap yourself! Because the first-est thing he would have asked would be "what is this 'blog' thing, thy speaketh of "? The reason I am even mentioning Shakesy here is because apart from him, no one has ever encapsulated the conundrum of life so successfully before, right? So let me channel some of my inner tribulations about my existence and pour forth the lessons learnt.

What have I learnt in the past quarter century that I have inhabited this already over burdened sad little planet with? Okay let me first confess, I am listening to a playlist of Lana Del Rey's songs and I am distracted. She is singing whatever I am thinking. Born to die. Also her haunting voice does not help either! Anyway, snatching myself away from music and applying here, I have learnt a thing or two in these years. If I am lucky, I may get 3 more quarter centuries but I am not sure if that's the longevity I am looking for. Longevity in terms of meaning, legacy, work, family, memories would be good enough I guess. So do I know if I am right now, this very second, making good memories? Does my life have any meaning or has had meaning so far? I don't know. The neat thing is I will never know.

Even though I am a true believer of instincts, gut feeling whatever it is commonly known as, I find it neat to not know because what's the fun when you know everything? So I mentioned that we will never know if what we are doing has any meaning or not but we always have a vague feeling when we go astray. We always have a feeling gnawing at the back of our heads, telling us we might be meandering and to get back to something that makes sense. And I just try to hold on to it, dearly. What will become of me if I don't own my own instincts? If I blindly follow someone else's voice? All these years I have tried to listen to the sound of that voice in my head. I have worked hard to make sure that voice is mine and no one else's.

Alas, to disappoint my regular -2 readers, who have been reading in anticipation of pearls of Buddha wisdom, I have only learnt this; that the day my voice sounds like a friend's voice, or my father's or my mother's or someone else's then that would be the day I will cease. I will cease to be. I will cease to not to be.

There are days when I am mentally exhausted and I need it to be shown to me. to be told, to be instructed by anyone but me , but the beaten up voice comes fighting back telling me that I can be. All by myself if I wake up and just listen. 

Keep your instinct intact, safe and ever active. Just as active as your body and mind. The best way to hone instincts is to listen to them often even if they appear difficult to follow or make sense of. Develop them by practicing listening to them . I know and I know and I understand how difficult it is to listen to your own voice when life sometimes consists of emulating, imitating, fitting in, loving, caring, listening, doling out advice. Still, find time for it. Give it your presence and acceptance. 

That's all folks. Now, like the road runner in Hanna Barbera-esque world, I will swiftly sign off having handed over only thing I have ever learnt , to y'all! Until later, see ya, don't wanna be ya.

Just saying

12 moves in 5 years, from one house to another cannot be normal right? I did not think so either. Prior to these 5 years, I took 3-4 years on an average to move from one place to another and 2-3 houses in 4 years. But 12 abodes in 5 years has left all the old averages in the dust. How so many moves may have taken a toll on my psyche, you may ask. I ask it too.

Only a seasoned, well earning, well meaning psych could give me a sound analysis. But psychiatrists are not affordable just like the business class tickets or an apartment in a high rise building. They can be accessed by the ones who make enough to hire a fleet of psychs who can help them earn more, stay happy and not be bothered by such trifles as counting pennies to seek help.

I could use the cheaper option of doing an outpouring to a close friend but I imagine the friend would be as bewildered as a hare stopped in mid sprint. I may be extrapolating hard here because there might be some who could genuinely address your issues and hand out intelligent sounding advice but who has the time to tell and then who has the time to receive advice, right?

Staring out the window of my new place, I am in awe of the resilience of my never dying spirit which reasons out that change is good for me and helps me go through the moving nightmare every single time. Nothing but a zany spirit would only help me accomplish this feat. I seem to be living in a constant change-of -address mode. No one can keep a track of the zip codes I have used and thrown. Not even the collection agencies who fancy themselves as the blood hounds who can find you anywhere on this planet and extract every single penny you may or may not owe em!

So the existing situation is such as that I absolutely have stopped belonging anywhere. Every time an innocent soul, innocently inquires of me- ' Where are you from?'. I imagine that I am tearing all my graying hair out and screaming at their face with enough vivacity that they could see far down at my lungs if they dared looked inside.

20's are for travel and 30's are for thriving, 40's are for fun and 50's are for frying. I just made that up and according to my made up verse, I should be traveling in the 20's and I am. From one house to another. Is this the travel 'they' speak of? Have I followed the dictum correctly or have colossally failed to understand what traveling means. Judging from my verse making capabilities, it is pretty clear that I would have done the latter.

So for now I will just let out a quiet sigh. And hope that the twilight of my twenties would bring me some wisdom that is much needed and oft requested by my decaying grey matter. And also fun and affection and friendships and food and satisfying work and amazing sex life (whats that?) and love and world peace.

The pondering pond

It is one of those days
You want everything to be still
Calm like the little undisturbed pond
You fear a ripple may injure it
Two would destroy.

Motionless on the periphery
Moving molecularly maybe
Reflecting the sky
Reflecting on its existence.

Relaying back the face to you that you'd rather not see
But the one that is probably real
You gaze into it, it stares back
Where have all these lines and frowns come from
They did not exist a life ago.

One of these days
You expect the pond to talk back
It does not
It is just as still as you wanted it to be.

Some more stories?

Mary Mary, quite contrary : My grandmother would light up a Bidi ( Indian version of cigarette albeit cheaper) like any badass would do in a Western. She could give cowboys, bandits, soldiers, anyone who smoked badass-ly, a run for their money. My grandparents on both sides smoked but my parents don't and that is a testimony to my parents' sanity and insanity of my grandparents. But among all of them , I found my Naani (maternal grandmother) the most fascinating whenever she smoked. May be because she was the most carefree of all. Women in villages are banned from doing almost anything that men do. Except my naani who broke every rule in the village. Well most of them. She cursed, she never cooked, she covered her face only up to her forehead, walked around the village fearlessly and smoked with abandon. Let this not paint a picture of a masculine women, please no. She was as feminine as feminines come. She would paint her nails bright red and apply kohl in her eyes and say all 'matter-of-factly'  that eyes should never be naked. Sassy I tell you. But she smoked dexterously. I could never ask her if smoking is injurious to health because I was too busy observing the flick of the matchstick on the matchbox, the bidi hanging loose between her lips and then the bidi being lit. It never took her two matchsticks. One was enough. Simultaneously, she would be preparing a Paan (a betel leaf preparation which is mildly stimulating and colors your tongue, look it up) and handing it out to her audience. She had great many stories and anecdotes to share and people would assemble around her to hear them and enjoy some paan. Even though kids should not partake in 'paan chewing' activity she would still ask me if I wanted one. And I would say 'give me a small one but dont tell mom/dad'. Her smoking habit never influenced me in anyway to smoke but it did subconsciously make me look up to women who did not care for the archaic, ridiculous rules and did as they pleased. The free spirits.

Rain, rain go away: The first time I became aware of class system or of the divide between the haves and the haves not was in 4th grade. It was pouring hard that day and the last bell rang which signified the school being done for the day. All of us kids were waiting for our parents to take us home. Well I was waiting for my father to pick me up on that day only because I was told by the teacher to wait. Otherwise I usually walked home on my own ever since I was in upper kg. My parents never thought of sexual predators lurking in the bushes as any danger to their little daughter. So I waited. And then I noticed a few cars coming and picking up kids one by one. My dad did not own a car at that time or any fuel driven vehicle. He owned a cycle which is you know mechanical in nature. And then I realized that even if my dad did come, I would get wet on a cycle. I saw all my friends being whisked away in cars that were nice and dry and so I told my teacher that I can walk, my house is not that far. Now I own an Accord at 25 and every time I drive it , I look back at my 8 year old self and wink at her. Owning a car is a symbol of independence and that is how I have always looked at it. Never a status symbol or a symbol of luxury or other myriad things that advertisements tell you. Its a 'thing' that keeps an 8 year old dry. Similarly, I never owned many toys. Either my parents did not have enough money to buy toys or they considered toys frivolous and I suspect both. I had one random doll that sometimes became a barbie in my stories told to others or became ten barbies in other stories. That doll inspired me to learn how to draw, with a pen, all over her face. I repented and recognized my mistake the very next second when I could not erase the make believe 'earrings' and 'nose-ring' and 'necklace', I drew on her ! With a pen! The doll was subsequently subjected to more such tortures like baths which ruined its hair, or twisting of legs and arms to see how far they can be twisted. Whenever I saw a beautiful collection of barbie dolls owned by any friend, I would pledge to buy a set for myself as soon as I 'grew up'. I have grown up now and fortunately do not feel the desire to own barbies anymore.

Smells like teenspirit:
Naani also 'taught' me about 'being self aware'. Now this conversation happened in my native dialect so I can only translate it so much. Please note how my naani spoke to me like I am an adult when I was ten. I have always found it respectful when elders speak to kids like adults as opposed to speaking to them like they are underdeveloped little dumb people.

Naani: Have you seen Soni, she has grown up.

Me: Oh is she 11?

Naani: No she is ten just like you. She is very 'self aware'.

Me: Ahaan?

Naani: When she walks, she looks down at herself and smiles.

Me: Do we all have to walk and smile at ourselves?

Naani: She has breasts so she does that.

Me: What is breasts?

Naani: It is something that we all have and need.

Me: Do my parents have?

Naani: One of them does.

Girls and boys from 6th to 12th grade were taken to a social science exhibition in an another city when I was in 6th grade. Our teachers herded the girls together and strictly told that girls from 9th to 12th grade would not take younger girls with them if and when they tried to sneak out and speak to the boys from other schools. Other such instructions given to us were:

Older girls have to wear bras at all times.

Shower everyday even if there is no water

Bring pads for something called a 'period'

Not to jump and dance and sing

Bring food to the teachers if there are any buffets

Report if any girl is found missing, dead or seen with guys.

Johny Johny yes papa: Sometimes I have found myself oddly lying or being stingy when there is no need for it. 

I have more than once said the milk is okay when the milk has gone bad.

I try to use only one kitchen tissue to wipe a surface clean when more than 5 are required just to challenge myself. The only thing I like to conserve is paper towels/tissues may be because they come from trees and I like to save trees. I do my own bit for the environment. 

This is not new. In 1st grade, I told my teacher that my father is very poor and I would like to hence use only 1 notebook for all the courses.

My fair lady: My mother is strong like crazy strong. She is not scared of darkness, ghosts, spiders, frogs, scorpions. I wish I had inherited this quality instead of her height from her. She also used to goof around a lot when we were younger which kinda gives me my silliness. She would hug us (brother and I)  until we could not breathe anymore. Or wake us up at 6am saying it is 8am for school that started at 8 am. She would tickle us when we would be very seriously trying to study. She would play April fool pranks on us. She is scared of snakes. 

I make lists: I make lists, a lot of lists. My lists act as my Pensieve (for all the HP fans in the house, give it up for the HP reference!)  I think a lot, over and over about the same thing so when it becomes unbearable to do it anymore, I barf everything up in the form of lists. The latest list:

Things to keep in my big bag

Things to keep in my small bag

Things to keep in my hand bag

Things to keep in the pockets of all the bags

I once made a list of 'things to pack' and one of the subgroups was 'things to do' which contained an item 'should pack'.