the first few days went by with a stinging cochin hangover, still talking to my workmates, unpacking, telling my folks stories from my time at work… i even asked one of the Assistant Directors from trivandrum if he would like to shorten the 10 day break and come early to cochin so i didn’t have to sit in Chennai being so obviously pained by boredom the city can offer oh-so effortlessly. the funny thing was, he was bored too. OK!!! i agree, its not Chennai i could blame, it was me. As always, its ME. i’m so uncomfortable being relaxed. Before joining work, not liking the free time made sense, coz that was the only kinda time i had, what now? what is it about relaxation that makes me so wrestles? maybe it was the sudden jump from working long shifts to being idle.

Then it struck me, it could possibly be the cut down in nicotine when i’m in my parents house. Did the morning coffee and cigarette routine decide how my day went? possibly, coz i’ve hated being here ever since i moved here and that’s the only activity that seems to be a constant no matter where i go except here. Its a shame.

After those initial few days of Chennai hating, i was right back on track, i made sure i was out most part of the day, met my peeps, gave myself enough opportunities to smoke and finally i was having fun!!! it was not the nicotine i was missing, i just wanted to know i could have my smoke when i felt like it, and being outside of my parents house gave me exactly that.

The next big thing that happened was IPL, i dunno much about cricket, well, at least within India my knowledge of is nothing to boast about. Chennai, my dear hometown, had made it to the semi’s. not that i was still greatly interested in the match, but yea, i knew about it and that’s all it was. That thursday when the match was about to happen, i had already made my plans with the ladies to do a night of Ilayaraja, at what is the only pub in town which plays the legend. off course we knew IPL will be playing on the screens, but that wasn’t the plan really!!! Towards the later half of the evening i saw my cousins loyalty shift slowly but obviously from Raja to IPL. We still went to the only pub that plays Raja and found it to be filled with middle aged men guzzling down beer and waiting for the IPL semi’s to start. What happened to our Raja night? “sorry, its been canceled due to IPL” “sorry, your flight wont be taking off coz of the volcano”. My cousin off course was not too offended by this and actually seemed suspiciously ready with plan B, watching the IPL at another pub, i didn’t wanna waste the night sulking so i decided i would go, but how on earth was i gonna tune my head to listen to anything but Raja? my head was already buzzing with “Inivarum munivarum…. thadumarum kanimaram….”.

To my surprise,i walked in and saw what looked like an english pub filled with football fans, so when did this whole drink and cheer your team thing catch up in a city’s otherwise, turn the “pubs into clubs” culture??? was i the the one out of loop considering i was going to this pub after 2 years or more??? i was pleasantly shocked nevertheless. The place was filled with bright yellow CSK tee’s, known faces and the air was smelling of cricket… and just like that, in a moment, my head (and lips) was screaming GO CSK!!! it was the most excited i had been in a long time… i felt like i was back in college, yelling my guts out for the inter-department cultural. suddenly i was transformed into a fanatic, i was driving myself mental for a city that i just few days back hated so passionately (guilty as charged). we won!!! we won!!! we won!!!

I went back home feeling this weird sorta satisfaction, like i had done the right thing, like i ran a marathon for gay rights, like i pelted stones at KFC, like i gave a speech on the effects of cell phone signals on the lil sparrows. All of these for a sports event that was more about money, less about cricket, more about the after party gossip than sportsmanship… more about the team owners than the team itself.  Did i just need something to obsess about??? did i just need something to fight for???

The finals. we were gonna play Mumbai Indians, the best team in IPL2010! now i was at my fanatic best (worst). the bunch that watched the semi’s was gonna watch the finals together, we felt like it was our togetherness that drove our team to victory in the semi’s.  we went all charged, this time more fanatic than the semi’s- after all i was a pro at it this time around.  i had practiced my want for victory in my head a zillion times… i had imagined the in sync orgasms we would have when CSK hit a six. i was thrilled. this time we decided we would reserve our seats to watch the match comfortably. we sat down with our orders and watched it like a dignified bunch of 20 somethings. we played badly!!! VERy BADLY!!!

We had a lil huddle in the smoking zone and concluded that we had to re create the semi’s positions on the field in order to drive the team to a win, the field being the pub and the players being US (the bunch that watched the semi’s together) we relocated ourselves to space outside the DJ’s pit instead of our seats, we stood exactly in the same positions trying to match our facial expressions and zest to the semi’s… we stepped out for a smoke and what happens? the untimely outing of a CSK boy… “who on earth gave you the permission to leave this spot???” after being threatened to be killed if we budge, we decided we would smoke only in commercial breaks and we would share cigarettes in order to  save time.  we won!!! we won!!! we won!!!

Damn it… now we’ve won, what now? ok!!! lemme obsess over it on facebook…. fanatic Fb status messages were flooding in and a string of  online fights were being sparked off… lovely!!!

A few days left for me to leave… and yes… i do feel like staying back… i feel like i need a lil more time in the city… i barely just warmed up to it…

I wonder why i always wanna come back to Chennai if i need silly excuses to like it… its a strange relationship i share with this city… its like living with parents, after you’ve crossed a certain age, you know its impossible to live with them… if you do muster up the courage to venture out on your won, you’d know what this feels like…  when you say you miss home, you don’t really mean you wanna be back with your folks… its just the knowing that there’ll always be this place that’ll always welcome you…

knowing that is good enough!!!

what state am i in now? well, Tamil Nadu, yes… i have a sense of humour you see. I’m in a state of change, i’m always quite there. so how hard can a change in geography be? I’m back in Chennai, in India and i complete a month of being back. i shouldn’t really keep track of it, should i? i had to come back, i had decided i would even brfore i left. yes… i had my moments of wanting to stay back but home was a much stronger call. i thought i’d have a lot to say, about my friends there, how i miss each one of them, how i wake up in my bed and forget where i am, how i’ve forgotten my routes in Chennai and how home feels… but honestly, i don’t feel the urge to, if i had tried hard enough to continue one of my other drafts that’s exactly what my post would be about, but no… hmmm…

there is one strong feeling though… fear of some sort… fear of this city, the people… i can’t really express it too well coz i don’t think i understand this feeling myself. what do i have to fear? i mean… i’ve just walked back into familiarity, to a place where i know half the city, to a place where i can never get lost and i’ll always be taken care of, but there is a strange discomfort that has been haunting me. not the kind of discomfort that comes out of hating a place, it more like  loud silence, you know this irony of too much familiarity making me gag. i feel claustrophobic sometimes; although i know i would complain more in anyother city but my own. Then what is that i’m looking for? maybe its not the city, its just me… how i’ve defined the space around me in my head.

I find myself craving for the anonymity i enjoyed in London. it was beautiful… just walking down the streets un- noticed, sitting at a cafe and watching people and being alone… i think i had become so comfortable being alone that I was the only familiar space i wanted to be at, I was the only thing that could coz me to choke… Chennai affects me too much, it makes me feel vulnerable… London made me feel vulnerable too, but in a different way, in a way that i felt empowered, but here i’m afraid of standing bare…

i am too harsh on the city, i know… i don’t hate the people, although it might appear asthough i believe they are a bunch of jobless, judgemental people who are sitting with a writing pad, pen and a microscope, assessing me. i assume too much importance. reminds me of someone who recently asked me not to take myself so seriously… true… very true… i live in a different world, where i am the princess, i know you all live in similar worlds, where all eyes are on you, but you are smart, you know how to hide it, don’t you? i admire you, you can look so chilled out so effortlessly, that’s why i  don’t try, so what if i look like an idiot? that’s what i am… an idiot!!!

my parents sometimes ask me why i came back, they can sense my discomfort, there was no pressure whatsoever from their side. it was my choice to come back so i can’t really blame anyone else, sigh!!! not that i want to go back, i know when i’m there i was thinking of here. you know where i want to be? in the air, in the 10 hour flight… why couldn’t those ten hours be endless, i’d be filled with hope… with curiosity… with anticipation…. with want… my flight back home… hmmm… that’s where i want to be… i want to go home… where ever it is… it is where no one else shares it with me… it is where i would never search for it… it is in the journey that i believe takes me home… yes… that’s where home is… that’s where i live… a post code that exits and doesn’t… and whether it does or not… its only mine…

“When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, its not reasonale to grieve when it comes to an end” – Twilight

mine is an endless dream… i have no time to grieve… its a little bit magic and a lot of me…

Agreed, we all bitch. no debate there. but its an art… not everyone can carry it off with panache. i mean… c’mon… how hard can it be to perfect this? after all its something that is done day in and day out. for some its like oxygen, having to bitch about everything and everyone just to feel like there is nothing in this world that can be bitched about them. coz the moment i start bitching there is this lil creature that jumps up within me, questioning me of the number of opportunities i’ve given people to bitch about me. that doesn’t stop me of course, but it makes me guilty, and you know what, i like this guilt, someday it might just reduce my bitching to a reasonable level. what concerns me, actually not concerns… more like… makes me feel sad and funny at the same time is how much it becomes a part of some lives that its routine… absolute guilt free everyday activity. 

i do have the habit of sounding too proper sometimes, you know the way i write about things that bother me, in a sort of putting people down way, and then it strikes me, thats exactly what bitching is. talking about someone or something that bothers you without examining why it bothers you, just putting them down coz they bothered you. empathy has absolutely no place in the bitch mind. coz if there was any, you’d be wondering why instead of why “to” me? or why “around” me? or the likes.

why does any one deserve empathy? ironically its coz you can never see it from their point of view unless you’re them. that’s probably why empathy is important. not to understand what the other person feels but to accept, because you don’t understand. who is deserving of this generosity of yours is of course upto to you. you may feel someone is unworthy of your empathy and thats acceptable. if you don’t at any point feel anyone worthy, maybe its time for you to look inwards. what about you makes everyone else around you so unworthy of your goodness? 

the disturbing part for me is interacting with people i have bitched about. i feel really awkward. i mean, as per bitching rules, the other person doesn’t know what you have spoken of them, so are you supposed to act all normal around them? like they never bothered you at all? i find this almost excruciating. it takes the joy away from bitching, to go through all that acting, to choose words carefully, not to let the venom escape as subtext. and as if it wasn’t enough that you’re going through all this confusion in your head, this person is unbelievably normal around you. worse if they are sweet. so should you just fucking not bother about the bitch bites and sting them left right and center? but then… that isn’t bitching right? its supposed to be done discretely, it doesn’t qualify otherwise. 

so whatever your trigger might be, calculate your risks, remind yourself of the losses and see if at least that is worth your precious self that is “oh so likable” “oh so good” “oh so flawless” and “oh so bitchy” . 

yes… i’m sadistic, i want you to stop having fun bitching about me!!!

This is a bitch post!!! if you didn’t get it by now.

Of what i have noticed, men seem to have a certain selectivity in their perception of what is right and wrong. This is not to say that women do not have this, just the degree to which men seem to have it in is a cause of amusement. let us take for granted that we all make our judgments based on 2 important factors:

experience

morals/ ethics and everything that fits into the societal blanket

but somehow in men i feel the presence of this third mysterious element, after a long period of trying to figure out what this element is, the one thing i’ve concluded upon is the implication of this mysterious third element, which off course i’m yet to define. the implication of this comes in the form of men being a lot less flexible than women about issues or acts that require to be judged and placed into a category of right and wrong.

Are women more open minded about changing their opinions with time and growing awareness? or are they simply more easily influenced by views of others? why is it harder to get a man to change his judgment of something once it has been made? does this imply that men put in more thought in judging things and therefore their opinions are stronger and un changeable? or is it their inability to accept  change?

lets take a situation, say a woman does not smoke, she thinks its wrong. then she starts smoking, she alters her judgment to believe its not so wrong after all. a man does not smoke, he thinks its wrong, he starts smoking, he alters his judgment to believe its not so wrong after all. so far they are on an equal plane.

the amusing is part is not the judgment of their own acts. it is their judgment of each other.

woman doesn’t smoke, she thinks its wrong. man doesn’t smoke, he thinks its wrong, man starts smoking, alters his perception. what happens to the woman’s judgment of the man? well, as far as my observation goes, the woman would still judge the act as “wrong” but in most cases she does not extend her judgment of his act to the person having committed the act. To her, his act of smoking is wrong, but as a person himself, she does not label him as “wrong”.

This is where men differ. if the same situation is observed swapping the man and the woman, the man’s judgment of the woman on the whole changes. Men do not see the act as being any different from the person. men believe that sins are committed by sinners. where as women believe that sinners commit sins. there is a thin line of difference. everyman who is a sinner is so because he has committed a sin but everyone that commits a sin is not a sinner. this is the biggest difference in the way men and women judge.

This brings to me the aspect of tolerance. are women more tolerant towards men? would they act the same way if it were another woman in the place of a man? probably not. but in the same situation, a man is more likely to be tolerant to a another man. Men are way way more lenient when it comes to judging men. This strongly reflects the power positions men and women have when it comes to relationships.

This is why probably many woman say that they are far more comfortable having a male best friend, but men still continue to hold on to their good old beer buddy.

Women subconsciously still believe that a man’s threshold of wrong doing is much higher than her own. but with changing times and with the emergence of the so called “liberated” breed of women, the imbalance has been further disrupted by making her judgment of other women harsher to counter her lenient judgment of herself.

At the end of this, its hard to really pinpoint any particular reason why men and women behave this way, but the effect of this has definitely got something to do with the unhealthy sex ratio in many countries, especially because my attention has been solely paid towards men of the Indian subcontinent.

I might sound like a frustrated feminist of a the developing world, but I’m far from that.  if you think otherwise, you’re probably a man. I’m sure that explains why!!!

I wonder if i’m depressed, i asked a friend if he’s ever been depressed, he said, “hasn’t everyone?” if if it happens to all of us then i guess its not so odd, its nothing to get worried about. he also said it was like asking someone if they’ve been happy… if its that inevitable to be depressed, why is it such a dreaded thing? The only reason to fight depression is probably because one is more productive when they are happy, but  in retrospect, the moments i cherished the most have been moments of sadness, wonder how much that is to do with my borderline masochism, but more often than not, i feel like those are the moments i’ve truly lived, i gotten in touch with myself, thought about life.

That makes me feel strange; i speak of “i” getting in touch with “myself” as if the two were different people. If they are one and the same what is there to get in touch with? Who is this mysterious person that i need to get in touch with once in a while to feel alive? Yes, theoretically speaking, id, ego, super ego works, but purely as a concept. Its hard to internalise what you have no proof of. and yet, everything that i strongly believe in is abstract, maybe its the need to understand this abstract that slips me into the wilderness of the soul. As much as i want to believe that we’re intelligent beings who’s psychological mechanisms cannot be explained beyond some theories and concepts, what i actually believe in is quite the contrary, all these complexities i’ve invented for myself, to fill the void i was born with, my entire life i’m gonna spend trying to fill this void. When i say i believe in the contrary, what do i mean? What is the contrary? Literally speaking its the opposite of what i don’t believe in, but then again is it as simple as that? One moment i say its simple, and immediately i question it…

Sitting beside my French window, i’m staring into the sky. Its dark and cloudy, the moon is visible sometimes and then it hides. Actually, it doesn’t hide, it is where it is, (not astronomically off course), the clouds are moving around so quick hiding and revealing the moon. Its drizzling, the air smells fresh and clean, i can hear my neighbours’ television, and distant sounds of police vehicles on the road. But the sky mutes everything else, if there was something like out of focus for sounds, this would be it, ‘there’ but not ‘there’.

… Staring into it as though its the eyes of a loved one i suddenly see a lil twinkle of light in the distance, it can’t be a star, its too big and way too bright to be a star. Its like a little ball of fire. I’m excited, i think its a planet, venus or mars or something.  Wanna call people and ask them to look through their windows if they can see the planet. I’m imagining how i would feel if the news papers tomorrow has it in its headlines, “new planet discovered” ,I look with utmost  concentration to see if i can see clearer? Any signs of life? maybe if i concentrate harder my eyes will turn into a telescope,i stare and stare and stare, through every  grill, i move around to see if through any 2 particular grills the view is different, i turn away for a minute and look back and it has changed positions, oh god!!! This planet must be strange, maybe its trying to make revolutions around the earth instead of the sun. Maybe it feels the heat of the earth is a lot cooler. and then it moves again, in front of my eyes, it jumps into a cloud and comes out flashing, flashes around a bit and then disappears, i feel sad, its probably not gonna make it to the headlines, a planet that existed for 5 minutes earth time, my time. And then i don’t feel so sad, i feel thankful, it filled in 5 minutes of my empty life with hope and happiness. Next time anyone feels sad and wants to do some soul searching, i suggest you try to search the skies instead. You never know, maybe yours might make it to the papers.

“i wanted to talk to u before making the DD. it’s the single most important decision i have made. i wanted to make sure it was for the best. i wanted to ask u one last time if i was doing the right thing… in a way it’s good. i’ve made my decision alone.. it’s a sign am moving on… i need no one”

Its been a long time, home has become a distant dream, there is happiness around me, and within me, it constantly reminds me, I AM ALONE, its not so horrible after all. its given me the courage to make peace with myself, coming here has taught me how to love every change, the ones i made and the ones that happened, because everything is worth it… its happening to me, and I AM WORTH IT…

its a friend’s birthday… like that wasn’t good enough. but there is more… and i’ll never know why suddenly this day is important. its bringing back memories, good ones and its only fair that good memories make us sad. i guess the day has become more important because no one knows… i have no one to think about this day as much i would, atleast not with the same fondness.

a year later… far far away… i’m thinking about june 6th… thats reason enough to smile… for me… and hopefully…

When you’re free and bored at home with nothing to do, you don’t mind an unexpected guest now, do you? its only when you’re having a fucking wedding at home and you have to deal with all that shit and then this unexpected guest pops in to say hello…. makes you wanna tear your self up into pieces and distribute it to everyone who comes to you asking for something.

yes… i still do not have the courage to blog specifically, i can only generalise. but atleast it serves as a vent. i realised i cry a lot less these days, i dunno if its to do with sudden and quick aging or lack of stimuli. whichever it is, i guess its a better way to go about things. sometimes you have to hold back those tears, hold on to what hurts you, so that its with you all the time, guarding you against the same hurt the second time.

sometimes its just better not to get over relationships, its better not to know where you’re going, its better to see only how much you need to and its always always better not to know what you’re gonna do the next moment. yes… i wanna plan… but i don’t wanna feel obliged to follow it, because i don’t have to.not for you, not for anyone who has better plans… not for anyone who is anything…. not even for me…

i’m becoming more random these days, less cohesive. able to think. no feelings really. Stoned (no… without intoxicant) and numb… how can i expect any feelings to remain when i reach out for the keyboard everytime i feel something… pain… happiness… pain mostly… i contradict myself more often than i can ever contradict any of you. it might make some people uncomfortable… yet i think i’m quite predictable. broad smile with all teeth showing… but its still quite dull… small dreamy distant eyes… and yet i can’t hide the way i feel…

yes… i want to admit this time… i’m sad… at this moment… i’m sad… things have made me sad… i’m affected… i feel quite weak… i’m not superwoman… i’m more boring than an average boring person… i wanna cry… let go… but i just can’t… this city has frozen my tears… yet i feel quite passionately in love… with every moment…

simply coz love is the only choice i give myself…

Ayush lost his i-phone, NO, he wasn’t careless, some fuck stole it, i can’t help but want him to rot in hell, but that’s no solution, is it? just the day before he was talking about how much he loves his i-phone. He collects coins, just general change and stuff, we counted it yesterday, it was cathartic in a way. we made different patters with it on canvas and stacked it up and photographed it. i love such activities. its nice to have friends from similar or related educational paths, we’ll always have some fun activity to do.

spoke to mom now, she seems all excited about moving into a new apartment, i was worried that its smaller, i mean, did they already decide that i wasn’t going back ??? where will i stay when i go back??? they seem to be building a life without me. but she likes the flat, its in the heart of the city and close to all the shopping places, i guess thats all matters to mom.

Told mom about the “conservative” tag that has been given to me off late, she laughed, she said, “but you’re not at all…” and then she said “but its good in a way, i guess you have to be a lil conservative.” lol. i think she feels like since i don’t have my folks around, i’ve built a mini mom and dad with in me… one of our family friend had visited me here in London and he told my parents that i’ve changed a lot, my mum asked me if i’ve become “too western” (thats how she put it), i said, “well… if going to school in track pants and putting on weight is becoming western…  i will more than qualify.”

London for some reason has made me a lot less superficial, off course most of this is to do with unfavorable economics, lol. I need help with money management, can’t have my dad doing it over the phone all the time. it doesn’t help that my friends are all huge spenders… so i don’t learn from example.

Recently, speaking to some friends… talking about relationships, most of them pointed out how its not good that i’m using the word, “alone”, (i said…” no… i prefer being alone at this point in my life”)my friend said, “don’t say alone… sounds depressing, say “single”. now thats some food for thought… never really paid attention to the choice of words until they pointed it out, off course i made it seem like it was a conscious  but now… thinking back, there is some “looking inwards” i need to do.

i wanted to write about the first hen party i taught, i wanted to write about how it went, about how it made me feel, about how i’ve made judgments, very strong ones, after it, but somehow i don’t have the courage to, because somewhere i guess i’m guilty about somethings, i’d usually say, learn out of experience, but off late we’ve discussed this particular statement a lot over our sheesha sessions and i have a changed or should i say, “altered” perspective now. How many mistakes am i gonna make and learn from? when am i gonna stop learning from mistakes and start learning from the right things. why is that doing something wrong should teach me about doing it right? shouldn’t doing it right teach me about doing it right? and then i get into this endless debate about what is right and what is not… but thats a phase really… thinking that everything that makes you happy is right… well… to an extent it still hold good… but then again, with time my understanding of happiness has changed and what makes me happy has also changed…. which means obviously, things that made me  happy then and don’t any more, seem like mistakes, but then again… why should i live life wondering what it would feel like in retrospect? but i don;t think its possible for some of us to refrain from these regular “reflecting” sessions where we dissect every lil detail of things we’ve done. its alright to make mistakes, but its a sin to repeat one. this is the feeling for the moment, how long i hold on to it depends on how long i don’t repeat one i guess. My emotional health center works very well, just cannot stop the defensive mechanism  for a bit and actually feel bad about things. nope… it constantly tells me that i’m wasting time worrying, in the time spent worrying about the mistakes committed, i can make new, wonderful and creative mistakes, well… the emotional health center needs to constantly work, otherwise they feel they wouldn’t be able to help me in times of need, i wonder why they assume so much responsibility over me, i hardly give them credits for having done a good job, anyway… they have a mind of their own, and they always seem to give my own mind an inferiority complex. better to shut up hence.

Miss Bala and Theatre nisha… “Pregnant King” starts today…. i hope it has excellent response, i’m sure its a good play.

studied the difference between jealousy and envy… realized i’m hardly envious, but i’m quite a jealous person. hmmm… maybe i’ll blog about that sometime.