It is very important, if you’d like to survive a full-sized life on earth, to have a sense of humour about yourself. It’s easy to laugh at other people, but are you secure enough to laugh at yourself? More often than not it’s, “that person is a failure, the other person is ugly; but my neighbour’s sister-in-law said that her cousin’s friend thought I was attractive. I was looking lovely in that sari that day. Blue is my color. Of course so is every other color. I’m talented too. Did I mention I can sing and dance? At the same time? With a pot balanced on my head as I hop on one leg?” Brrr…get a life, you desperate Loser.
If you don’t take yourself too seriously the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune won’t cut you as deep. How pitiable is the above person when someone finally tells her to her face that blue, and every other color besides, is definitely not her color. And had she stubbed her toe on something? She sounded like she was in a lot of pain, too.
However, I would like to warn my younger and ergo, less experienced readers, that self deprecation has its own pitfalls. If you get too carried away, you might end up with low self esteem, with you and the people around you believing every horrible thing you say about yourself.
I guess what I’m saying is one should be self respectful, but not delusional. Be prepared to laugh at the embarrassing things that happen to you. But never run yourself down to such an extent that people think it’s OK to join in. (“She’s always carrying on about her weight! How would I know she didn’t want ‘Happy Birthday You Big Fatty!’ written on her birthday cake?”)
Same goes for laughing at your own community, country, gender. It doesn't mean you aren't proud of your identity. It just means you're alive to the foibles and flaws of your group; and thus that much closer to improving those things.
I have often been accused of not being patriotic enough because I’ve had the balls to discuss some common flaw all of us have.
Please remember, Boys and Girls -- Denial does not equal Self Respect.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
30 things I’ve learnt in as many years and if you don’t agree you can piss off
Lesson # 1:
Your height is the only thing about your appearance which doesn’t go to hell if you let things slide for a while. For everything else, unless you don’t wax it thread it put cream on it take vitamin tablets for it take regular exercise, drink water for it everyday or in extreme cases go to the doctor for it, it’ll get worse every time you check in the mirror.
Can you imagine going home every time and having people comment on your weight AND your height? You have got SO MUCH shorter! You should do headstands at 4 in the morning like your Auntie, look how tall she’s got.
(Coming up...Lesson # 2)
Your height is the only thing about your appearance which doesn’t go to hell if you let things slide for a while. For everything else, unless you don’t wax it thread it put cream on it take vitamin tablets for it take regular exercise, drink water for it everyday or in extreme cases go to the doctor for it, it’ll get worse every time you check in the mirror.
Can you imagine going home every time and having people comment on your weight AND your height? You have got SO MUCH shorter! You should do headstands at 4 in the morning like your Auntie, look how tall she’s got.
(Coming up...Lesson # 2)
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Big Three O.
In two days I won't be in my 20s anymore.
It's a powerful thought.
I'm not particularly sad because it isn't like a whooped it up in my 20s, so there's not much to miss. (Three negatives in a sentence! I wonder what Freud would say to that if he were alive. It is well known, of course, that Freud in his free time hung around blogs; analysing each word of little-known, middle-aged Bengali women.)
But what hits me like a brick in the head is that this means another decade gone and a few more doors closing. I probably never will be an ice skater like I wanted to be. Unless I can turn something around in the next two days. (Can anyone loan me a frilly little pink number in size L? And a magic wand, if you see any lying around.)
I know 30 isn't old at all, even if it was (I hasten to add to all those youngsters rolling their bored eyes with a 'yuop dawg right, aigh' expression) : age is but a number.
Not to mention that the line of work I'm in (i.e. writing documents noone ever reads) there's no sell-by date. If I had had a more exciting life as an actress, or an ice skater, or an er...lady of the night -- I would've been thrown over by an 18 year old smug bitch by now.
To list a few other pros (no, I'm not talking about ladies of the night anymore)-- now that our life expectancy is around 90, I've only covered one-third of my life. I just hope all my body parts last the rest of the way, they already show plenty of wear and tear. (Call me if you'd like further details on my health.)
I, jokes aside, really do believe I've learnt a LOT in these 30 years. About life and love and the world. I intend to save the pearls I've gathered for a later blog tentatively titled "30 Things I've Learnt in as Many Years -- If You Don't Agree With Me, PISS Off".
My sister tells me not to worry; she feels much better at 35 than she felt in her 20s. And she's not just saying that, if you knew her you'd see for yourself.
She may be right.
It's a Friday night at home; I loll on my bed tapping out this post from my husband's laptop (our PC died half a year ago and the laptop took her place in our affections); and he plays along to Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" a few feet away from me. I've had a full and not unpleasant (despite all my posts to the contrary) day at work, I've visited a friend and played with her little son, and spent a pleasant couple of minutes (every now and then) conversing with friends; both at work and at home by email. I've just been handed two birthday cards from my thoughtful in-laws and have spoken to most of my family members in the last 24 hours. My birhday weekend promises to be a full one: with cousins, nephews, poorly done waxworks ("Louis Tussauds"; some wild oat of Madame's, I presume), a Mr. Big concert with husband and friends.
There's no getting away from it: life's good. 20 wasn't too bad, but the life I've made for myself at 30 is pretty damn good as well.
'Nuff said. Happy Birthday to ME! :)
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Love thy neighbour
Every evening at around 8 pm, I get off my cab at the main road, and walk the half kilometer to my apartment building. (My concession to everyone’s view that I’m too fat and should do all sorts of fancy exercises so that people don’t lose their lunches looking at me. Protestations that I don’t have time to exercise is met with a “If you really wanted to, you would’ve found the time.” Which is patronizing yet unfortunately true.)
So I start the rather enjoyable walk homewards by the lake, and occasionally look over my shoulder because the lights don’t work half the time and a dead man had been fished out of the lake 2 years ago; so slightly shiver-making. I walk for a vigorous 3 minutes or so, occasionally passed by a whooshing car or a rotund neighbor in evening-walk gear. I think of this and that: about the day at the office, how pretty my building looks twinkling across the lake, whether I’m stepping in poo in the dark and whether I ought to leave my shoes on the doormat because of it. I listen to the frogs croaking and the lake lapping and it’s always nice to be outside for those fleeting 5 minutes in the entire day.
Then casting a last glance over my shoulder, I gain the building compound full of more neighbours out for a stroll. (My neighbours are very big on strolling; one particular couple is there when I come in and is sometimes seen by my husband when he leaves for work the next day. I have my suspicions if they’re a new breed of bums posing as walkers; they might actually live on the front lawn: jumping up and strutting about vigorously the moment they see anyone coming, so as not to be evicted from the vicinity. Dunno where they change their clothes though; they're always fully clad when we see them.)
This is where things become trying because – I’m a terribly un-neighbourly person. I’ve lived in this building for 2 and a half years now and don’t know a single neighbour’s name. (I believe there are some 60 families in our complex.) My neighbours for their part (especially the housewives; poor things, they don’t need much to interest them.) find me endlessly fascinating, and appraise me through the corner of their eyes which slide away the minute I turn to make eye contact.
It’s my fault as well; if I had been smiling and approachable from the first I’m sure they would’ve been telling me their secret idli recipes (handed down for generations) by now. Sometimes I try to undo the damage by smiling broadly at them but most of them give me the hard-eyed up-and-down look typical of certain kind of people. Expected in a small town in a backwater somewhere, but startling when you face it in an upper middle class housing complex.
I dare say, if that decomposing man had been fished out any later my husband and I would’ve been the prime suspects.
Everyday in the papers they write about serial killers: “Police apprehended the suspects and have released an official statement. The couple had been murdering morning walkers and storing them in their closet for the last 20 years. They are still investigating how one ended up in the lake. Neighbours have stated that they kept aloof, except for cooking gas or plumbing emergencies.” More than the 19 bodies in the closet, it’s that last line which is most damning.
I often wonder why we are this way.
I don’t think we’re particularly unfriendly as people in general. I mean, we’re not gregarious party butterflies either, but I don’t think people who mix with us socially think we’re serial killer-ish at all (Do you? You can tell us the truth, we won’t hurt you…we have a nice roomy closet you’d die for...) Even at work, I seem to be on smiling and talking terms with a surprising number of people. And I know for a fact that my husband is much more of a people-person than I.
But when it comes to our building: it’s awkward silences in the lifts, questions whether we’ve just moved in at the store, and on good days weird do-I-smile-don’t-I-smile-do-I-look-don’t-I-look moments. And it’s entirely our fault for not being neighbourly, because everyone else, as far as I can tell, get along like a house on fire.
I can honestly say we’re improving because in the first home we moved into together we’d left the faucet on by mistake and went out for an entire evening. We returned with guests to a building in an uproar and the family in the adjoining house desperately trying to save their carpets and furniture from the water flooding into their house from under the connecting door.
One of the guests we'd brought with us ("Come and check out our new place! It's nice and DRY") sprang into activity and after shutting the tap off, starting sweeping the water into every available drain; while I stood in a corner, ashen faced, and babbled about always checking taps and doors and switches 42 times before I left the house, how could this happen?
Our neighbours were nice people (maybe we should’ve asked them what their names were, now that I think of it.) and grudgingly forgave us after we nagged them silly with apologies.
We can't say the same about the watchman, who had a proprietary air about the building. Till the day we left several months later, he would watch and listen to us through windows and ‘alert’ us if we’d left taps on even if it was only to wash our dishes or brush our teeth.
I sometimes toy with the idea of introducing myself to our neighbours and telling them this story, just so they know how lucky they are that we’ve improved over the years.
On the other hand, maybe somebody’s TOLD them already. It would explain a lot.
So I start the rather enjoyable walk homewards by the lake, and occasionally look over my shoulder because the lights don’t work half the time and a dead man had been fished out of the lake 2 years ago; so slightly shiver-making. I walk for a vigorous 3 minutes or so, occasionally passed by a whooshing car or a rotund neighbor in evening-walk gear. I think of this and that: about the day at the office, how pretty my building looks twinkling across the lake, whether I’m stepping in poo in the dark and whether I ought to leave my shoes on the doormat because of it. I listen to the frogs croaking and the lake lapping and it’s always nice to be outside for those fleeting 5 minutes in the entire day.
Then casting a last glance over my shoulder, I gain the building compound full of more neighbours out for a stroll. (My neighbours are very big on strolling; one particular couple is there when I come in and is sometimes seen by my husband when he leaves for work the next day. I have my suspicions if they’re a new breed of bums posing as walkers; they might actually live on the front lawn: jumping up and strutting about vigorously the moment they see anyone coming, so as not to be evicted from the vicinity. Dunno where they change their clothes though; they're always fully clad when we see them.)
This is where things become trying because – I’m a terribly un-neighbourly person. I’ve lived in this building for 2 and a half years now and don’t know a single neighbour’s name. (I believe there are some 60 families in our complex.) My neighbours for their part (especially the housewives; poor things, they don’t need much to interest them.) find me endlessly fascinating, and appraise me through the corner of their eyes which slide away the minute I turn to make eye contact.
It’s my fault as well; if I had been smiling and approachable from the first I’m sure they would’ve been telling me their secret idli recipes (handed down for generations) by now. Sometimes I try to undo the damage by smiling broadly at them but most of them give me the hard-eyed up-and-down look typical of certain kind of people. Expected in a small town in a backwater somewhere, but startling when you face it in an upper middle class housing complex.
I dare say, if that decomposing man had been fished out any later my husband and I would’ve been the prime suspects.
Everyday in the papers they write about serial killers: “Police apprehended the suspects and have released an official statement. The couple had been murdering morning walkers and storing them in their closet for the last 20 years. They are still investigating how one ended up in the lake. Neighbours have stated that they kept aloof, except for cooking gas or plumbing emergencies.” More than the 19 bodies in the closet, it’s that last line which is most damning.
I often wonder why we are this way.
I don’t think we’re particularly unfriendly as people in general. I mean, we’re not gregarious party butterflies either, but I don’t think people who mix with us socially think we’re serial killer-ish at all (Do you? You can tell us the truth, we won’t hurt you…we have a nice roomy closet you’d die for...) Even at work, I seem to be on smiling and talking terms with a surprising number of people. And I know for a fact that my husband is much more of a people-person than I.
But when it comes to our building: it’s awkward silences in the lifts, questions whether we’ve just moved in at the store, and on good days weird do-I-smile-don’t-I-smile-do-I-look-don’t-I-look moments. And it’s entirely our fault for not being neighbourly, because everyone else, as far as I can tell, get along like a house on fire.
I can honestly say we’re improving because in the first home we moved into together we’d left the faucet on by mistake and went out for an entire evening. We returned with guests to a building in an uproar and the family in the adjoining house desperately trying to save their carpets and furniture from the water flooding into their house from under the connecting door.
One of the guests we'd brought with us ("Come and check out our new place! It's nice and DRY") sprang into activity and after shutting the tap off, starting sweeping the water into every available drain; while I stood in a corner, ashen faced, and babbled about always checking taps and doors and switches 42 times before I left the house, how could this happen?
Our neighbours were nice people (maybe we should’ve asked them what their names were, now that I think of it.) and grudgingly forgave us after we nagged them silly with apologies.
We can't say the same about the watchman, who had a proprietary air about the building. Till the day we left several months later, he would watch and listen to us through windows and ‘alert’ us if we’d left taps on even if it was only to wash our dishes or brush our teeth.
I sometimes toy with the idea of introducing myself to our neighbours and telling them this story, just so they know how lucky they are that we’ve improved over the years.
On the other hand, maybe somebody’s TOLD them already. It would explain a lot.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Hokum & Hooey.
I was watching a fairly enjoyable movie and something Chris Rock’s character said really echoed what I think. Something to the effect that “living every day like it’s your last” is a bunch of hokum, because you’ll probably live till you're 80 with all your (definitely regrettable, with that attitude) actions till then.
I mean really, it sounds grand when people say it. Like so many other things people are fond of saying but don’t believe a word of themselves. Apply it to your own life and you’ll know what I mean, if you don’t already.
Take my life. (It’s my blog, so don’t expect me to talk about yours.) If I took it into my head to live tomorrow like it was my last day -- this is what I would do, in all honesty:
Shave my head. Call up a lot of people and be ‘honest’; just like they’ve always been with me (You’re not all that good-looking yourself, and you have an ass the size of Madhya Pradesh, man!). Quit my job. Put on a LOT of make- up, something tight; and go out and blow my life savings on something fun.
Problems will arise the next day, when the sad fact that even though I lived the previous day LIKE it was my last day, it actually wasn’t. I’ll look like a chubby Sinhead O Connor. No one will speak to me. I’ll have no money and no means to recover what I’ve blown on a Paris Hilton style party in every city marathon. As well as a faint chance of a night in the lock up.
So the resultant situation may push me towards making the day my last; but that isn’t what they meant, was it?
Similarly -- “Nothing is impossible”.
A lot of things are impossible.
Boys and Girls, PLEASE, puh-leeaaaase don’t listen to sappy children’s movies or books that have the good-looking and sincere ‘Daddy’ character consoling his offspring, who has just spent a day trying to invent a time-machine, but-just-couldn’t. Boo HOO.
“If you WANT something badly enough, and go after it, Nothing is impossible, darling. And remember Daddy loves you very much.”
Excuse me while I shake my head sadly. What’s the matter with the good looking but sincere Daddy? Doesn’t he know that if what he said were true, the world would be full of flying pigs? Messing up children’s heads with all this nonsense is what drives them to alcoholism and crime anyway, because they’re thinking, “If everything is possible and after all my hard work it still didn’t happen… then how big a loser does that make me???”
At the most one could say:
“If you already have the prodigious ability (tested by several doctors) and patience at 5 years old to build a time machine, and a multi- billion dollar corporation financially backing you on the project; nothing is impossible.”
Kinda different, innit?
And so on, really. “Be yourself”; “It’s the thought that counts”; “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose; what matters is that you TRIED”; "We're ALL winners."
It’s all hooey. Someone hand me a shovel.
I mean really, it sounds grand when people say it. Like so many other things people are fond of saying but don’t believe a word of themselves. Apply it to your own life and you’ll know what I mean, if you don’t already.
Take my life. (It’s my blog, so don’t expect me to talk about yours.) If I took it into my head to live tomorrow like it was my last day -- this is what I would do, in all honesty:
Shave my head. Call up a lot of people and be ‘honest’; just like they’ve always been with me (You’re not all that good-looking yourself, and you have an ass the size of Madhya Pradesh, man!). Quit my job. Put on a LOT of make- up, something tight; and go out and blow my life savings on something fun.
Problems will arise the next day, when the sad fact that even though I lived the previous day LIKE it was my last day, it actually wasn’t. I’ll look like a chubby Sinhead O Connor. No one will speak to me. I’ll have no money and no means to recover what I’ve blown on a Paris Hilton style party in every city marathon. As well as a faint chance of a night in the lock up.
So the resultant situation may push me towards making the day my last; but that isn’t what they meant, was it?
Similarly -- “Nothing is impossible”.
A lot of things are impossible.
Boys and Girls, PLEASE, puh-leeaaaase don’t listen to sappy children’s movies or books that have the good-looking and sincere ‘Daddy’ character consoling his offspring, who has just spent a day trying to invent a time-machine, but-just-couldn’t. Boo HOO.
“If you WANT something badly enough, and go after it, Nothing is impossible, darling. And remember Daddy loves you very much.”
Excuse me while I shake my head sadly. What’s the matter with the good looking but sincere Daddy? Doesn’t he know that if what he said were true, the world would be full of flying pigs? Messing up children’s heads with all this nonsense is what drives them to alcoholism and crime anyway, because they’re thinking, “If everything is possible and after all my hard work it still didn’t happen… then how big a loser does that make me???”
At the most one could say:
“If you already have the prodigious ability (tested by several doctors) and patience at 5 years old to build a time machine, and a multi- billion dollar corporation financially backing you on the project; nothing is impossible.”
Kinda different, innit?
And so on, really. “Be yourself”; “It’s the thought that counts”; “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose; what matters is that you TRIED”; "We're ALL winners."
It’s all hooey. Someone hand me a shovel.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Of Straw and Silver Bullets
Speaking of monkeys; I know a psychotic monkey talker.
For people who’ve never met the likes of her; let me tell you 9 hours of not being able to finish any of your sentences, 5 days a week, for 2 years can have a detrimental (stress on mental) effect on your mind.
I carry a bag of straw around so that when I finally go round the bend (which’s a few weeks in the offing) I can have the straw handy to stick into my hair.
It also makes you a humongous bore when you DO get people who will hear you out till the end of your sentences. God help you if they’re the sort who leave a bit of a silence hanging in the air even AFTER you’ve indicated that you’ve finished with a particular train of thought. You stop for a moment or so; baffled by this new situation. Is he going to jump in and cut you off just as you begin talking?
You vacillate for the length of a second…and then decide to risk it and dive in, and the feeling of being able to say what’s on your mind and being listened to is such a relief that the words just keep coming, like the gush of water that has been stoppered up in some dark underground place.
Problem is after you’ve talked yourself dry and are sitting there; spent yet satisfied; an awful thought creeps into your head. You’d gabbed on endlessly, you hadn’t let the other person talk, in your gush of words you’d spilt out many ill considered things which perhaps were private or stupid and needn’t have been said.
You’ve been turned, like a victim from a teen vampire novel, into a psychotic monkey talker yourself!
So that’s what’s happened. When I meet blameless, polite people who listen I turn into a monster. Consider yourself warned.
Also, if any of you has a silver bullet; or a cross bow with a silver arrow – you have my permission to put me down the next time you encounter me.
It’ll be a mercy killing.
For people who’ve never met the likes of her; let me tell you 9 hours of not being able to finish any of your sentences, 5 days a week, for 2 years can have a detrimental (stress on mental) effect on your mind.
I carry a bag of straw around so that when I finally go round the bend (which’s a few weeks in the offing) I can have the straw handy to stick into my hair.
It also makes you a humongous bore when you DO get people who will hear you out till the end of your sentences. God help you if they’re the sort who leave a bit of a silence hanging in the air even AFTER you’ve indicated that you’ve finished with a particular train of thought. You stop for a moment or so; baffled by this new situation. Is he going to jump in and cut you off just as you begin talking?
You vacillate for the length of a second…and then decide to risk it and dive in, and the feeling of being able to say what’s on your mind and being listened to is such a relief that the words just keep coming, like the gush of water that has been stoppered up in some dark underground place.
Problem is after you’ve talked yourself dry and are sitting there; spent yet satisfied; an awful thought creeps into your head. You’d gabbed on endlessly, you hadn’t let the other person talk, in your gush of words you’d spilt out many ill considered things which perhaps were private or stupid and needn’t have been said.
You’ve been turned, like a victim from a teen vampire novel, into a psychotic monkey talker yourself!
So that’s what’s happened. When I meet blameless, polite people who listen I turn into a monster. Consider yourself warned.
Also, if any of you has a silver bullet; or a cross bow with a silver arrow – you have my permission to put me down the next time you encounter me.
It’ll be a mercy killing.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Hyderabad Part III: The Final Chapter
And then I went to Hyderabad and had a lot of fun and Hyderabadi Biriyani with my friends Maya and Satish; and my Dad, Prithwiraj.
And then I came back to Bangalore.(Phew, that monkey’s off my back at last!)
And then I came back to Bangalore.(Phew, that monkey’s off my back at last!)
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