The Way Forward

 I wish to be like the sea,

formidable without intention.

I shall come and I shall go

and with me I will bring happiness

so crackpot simple, it cannot be second-guessed.

So too abiding loss to drown the heart.

A thousand times I will promise intoxication

without as much as a word.

When I roar, I will be heard -

colossus without mercy, watery impasse.

And all the time,

I shall not have once thought about it. 

 Loveliest thing I've seen and heard in a while. Thanks KK.

Happy to Board This Bandwagon

The first time I heard Adele, I pooh-pooh'ed her out of my natural instinct to pooh-pooh anything and anyone labelled 'the latest sensation'. The second time, well, Jaysus. My head began to bob and my insides started to gloriagaynor of their own accord. Pre-empting "events", I walked silently to the door and securely locked it. Then I brought out my highest pair of heels, belted my nightie, dabbed on every item of makeup I own and... un. leashed.


I am writing this from a very happy, tranquil place.

Oh, reckless abandon

Lullaby these nights, this.

Keeping it elementary

Have you noticed how songs today are just clusters of obscure words strung together? I wonder why that is. We don't think in clever puns, far fetched analogies and turns of phrases, no? Or say 'tree' when we mean boy and 'boy' when we mean chair. I don't. It's why I think no matter how much great new music I listen to, I'll never stop going back to the old simple stuff. Seems like back then words were used to express, not hide behind. It's why I like Colin Hay so much. Because it feels like he's conversing honestly and just happened to be strumming his guitar at the time. So here, this is my song.

I like you
I like you
I hear every word that you say
I know every pause that you take
I like it when you fumble
I like it when you stumble
I like it when you pretend I didn't see it.
I like you

Your hair is so nice
I can't help but think about your shampoo
And grey is your colour,
oh how it is your colour!
When you smile at me
Even my intestines feel special
When you forget about me
I stop existing a little.

I sound like a twat
but I like it
And I like you.
You know what the scariest word in love is?
It's not 'over'
It's 'technically'
You'll be happy soon,
light sabres and ice blondes.
I'll be happy soon,
my guitar and a burger.

But right now I like you
And not just technically.




*Okay, yeah so maybe I see why obscure lyrics are preferred :D

I'm unravelling!

My closest friends are divided down the middle. There's the Meryl Streeps and the Steven Seagals.

The former lot is always experiencing some manner of dramatic upheaval on any given day. Life is all deep emotions and obscure lyrics. There will be drunk-calling exes, initiating internet flame wars, identifying with Julia Roberts in every role she's ever played and working up phone bills that hurt to even say out loud. Not ones to shy away from a good solid controversy, their currency is tears and pointed Tweets. This faction abides by a more...elastic..code and is all heart because "let's face it, the other way is dead boring."

For the latter, any heightened form of expression is just being unnecessary and they have practically no use for interjections. They believe in emotional decorum and underplaying everything. To them, life would be no less lived, if pointless hugging were to be removed once and for all. Hard to ruffle and harder to please, this is not the lot you want to call when you've done something incredibly stupid. Not because they'll judge you even though they probably will, but because they remain maddeningly even. Something that really makes the Meryl Streep camp lose their shit.

Organically, I'm a Steven Seagal. I'm awful at discussing issues, I'd rather let them ferment until one day someone goes "Hey you!" and I take a knife to their jugular. I loathe confrontations because they feel incredibly stupid and defensive and if there's one thing more uncomfortable than getting defensive, it's watching someone else squirm defensively.
In recent years though, due to prolonged exposure to some of my friends, I've found I can sometimes out-emote Meryl Streep. In The Hours. I get all wimpy and my nose twitches and moderate length impassioned speeches just, you know, ebb from me. On occasion I've had to physically stop myself from seeking out James Blunt on my iTunes.

It's really very confusing. It makes my inner Steven Seagal want to, without a single facial expression, place some lead between my eyes. But I'm afraid this will make Meryl Streep-me go into overdrive analysing my childhood and then it all gets very Wind Beneath My Wings.



Somehow I'd imagined I'd be having more complicated and important thoughts by the time I turned 24. Just goes to show, age is very distantly related to maturity.


* Ten meeelion dollahs to anyone who can tell me where the title of this post is from. Don't pretend you don't care!

I'm hideous. Confirmed.

It has happened folks. I know what the worst haircut in the world looks like. I've been staring in the mirror for some time.

It all started with an innocent enough trim at noon today. Then came the words 'broad forehead' quickly followed by the words 'shorter in the front' and nodding from both me and the stylist. Then I choose that moment to look down at the phone in my lap and text someone and only stop short when I hear a metallic snip. Now picture the next bit in slow-mo except that was the actual speed I was moving at. I look up very very slowly, hoping with EVERYTHING I hold holy, that that snip wasn't as near as I thought it sounded.

I stare into the mirror so intently, it's like I'm seeing myself for the first time. And I am. Where there used to be a broad, but unoffensively so, forehead is now a broad forehead with a tuft of hair curling so maddeningly, it's making me teethe.

"That is... short."

"I'm not done yet."

"No?"

*Two minutes later*

"Now, I'm done."

He moves aside and I see the formerly unruly tuft has been tamed. Except now my hair is looking like the bastard child of The Kate Gosselin and Elaine Benes' hair from early Seinfeld. It is flattened in front and starts running amok as you follow it to the back of my head.



No, seriously.

You know how people always say 'It could've been worse'? THIS haircut is what they're referring to. This is like the worst case scenario of haircuts. It's like the Amy Winehouse of addicted musicians, it is like the Rakhi Sawant of reality TV whores, it is like the Josef Fritzl of bad parents.

I hopped into church on the way back from the parlour to collect my house keys from the mother. This is church right? Place of worship? Communion with Jesus? Solemnity guaranteed? She. Laughs. She looks at me, midway through the Hail Mary, and laughs.

I'm not meeting anyone till next year. And by next year, I mean tomorrow. And by tomorrow I mean drunk.

Some things never change

When we were little, my best friend and I drew up a prototype of what our perfect guy would be like. We were dorks, it goes without saying except I must say it - we were dorks.

There were detailed physical descriptions:
Must be taller than but not tall enough to make you feel short. Must NOT be shorter than at any cost. Same height is frowned upon and will only be excused in exceptional cases.
Must be big built but not muscular in that when he hugs you, you feel safe but not endangered.
Must have Bryan Backstreetboy (for her) and Kevin Backstreetboy (for me) hair, no compromises.
Must not have strange girly voice like those NSync faggots.
Must have more hair than us. (This was before either of us had experienced the sweet pain of waxing and after we'd had a couple of embarrassing incidents with our main crushes.)
Must not sweat. But if he does, he must sweat sexily.
Must dance awkwardly. Super smooth, hectic dancers were not for us.

Behavioural descriptions:
Should not patronise us or let us win. Except, he must. But do it in such a way that we never find out.
Must have a foul temper that only we can dissolve.
MUST.NOT.CRY. Yeah this one was underlined so much, she tore the page and I broke my pencil point. Then we added brackets: (Can well up. Slightly. But if tears leave the eyes, then it's just very over.)
Must be possessive. For example, broodingly nursing his glass of Pepsi while watching other guys make a play for us and then looking appropriately crestfallen is good. Holding hand protectively to let people know we're with him, even. But wear-your-salwar-kameez-in-the-pool possessive and expect some serious laughing and pointing.
Must be take-charge because that's responsible. But more importantly, hot.
Must not be named Prakash, Monty, Leslie or Kiran. Yes, this is a behavioural trait. Think about it. An amazonian, guitar-playing, sexily-sweating Prakash is just not the same as say, an amazonian, guitar-playing, sexily-sweating Nick/Kevin/Bryan/NOT-AJ.

Ability descriptions:
Must be musically inclined. Must play an instrument so he can tour with us when we're on the road. Must carry all the Grammys we win. Must sing like a Backstreet boy with a hint of any of the Code Red dudes and if we're being unrealistic, then the 98 Degrees fellows thrown in for good measure.
Must have a sense of humour. If not, why're we even talking?
Must play a sport. Preferably football because cricketers are unattractive. Uno and carrom don't count. Table tennis totally counts (you had to know the context) for like a hundred meellion points. Especially "doubles".
Must speak perfect English. There are many deep, accepting girls in the world who wouldn't mind 'a-POR-tunity' and 'I propose her and she say me this and that'. We weren't two of them.
Must...(then we got distracted and started practising our Ya Mustafa Ya Mustafa Raveena Tandon moves. I'm fairly certain that somewhere some guy has that on his 'Must Not' list.)



I want to say times have changed and the list is not relevant at all. I really want to say that.

Everybody's somebody's fool

My aunt used to wistfully sing this Connie Francis song to me from a tattered book that had taken her through her loneliest times in the army. I was just about six, or maybe eight, but even I could tell there was a sad story in there somewhere. Over the years we heard murmurs of a certain Captain Y and a Lieutenant X and a whole string of other designations but she took her secret with her when she died an old spinster four years ago.

Cut to 2009, and I am finally seeing that this Connie person was really onto something there. Everybody IS somebody's fool, everybody IS somebody's play-thing! And there are no exceptions to the ru-u-ule. Yes everybody's somebody's foo-ool! It really is a very catchy song.

Anyway.

Like I was saying. I've realised the hard way, that we all have one person who makes self-respect seem like a bell and whistle. It doesn't matter that you can list ten reasons for why this person doesn't deserve even your memory, without batting an eyelid. It matters even less that your friends are wincing at just how many times he/she shuts you down. And should this person make a gesture that only technically, after really having searched for it, qualifies as a nice thing, to you it's the equivalent of a kitten and a puppy baby, a kittuppy! You can't remember why you even considered considering cutting this person out of your life. Until he/she does it again.

Are these people walking genital warts? I don't think so. Are they awesomeness-incarnate? Nope, that they're not. It's what we ascribe to them that makes them so irreplaceable. And when you figure what that is, this person begins to unravel before your eyes. And suddenly it's blindingly clear that this person is just another person. And you were here before him/her and you will continue to be here now that he/she is gone.

That is closure.

Do you think that maybe?

Our biological clocks are bitterly divorced from our psychological clocks?

If English were a brothel, 'I Love You' would be its most hard-working trick? Costs almost nothing, takes instructions and is dead in the eyes.

Euphemistically speaking, we're all assholes?

Life should keep its lemons and hand you a stiff drink instead?

Billy Joel had the right idea?

Panic is a necessary precursor to the best things to happen to us?

That the power of speech would be more apt in reverse? As you grow and your mind gets more sophisticated (baseless claim, I know) you need words to get you by, less and less?

This blog has run its course?

I do.

One of those days

It feels strange when you wake up one day and realise how much you've changed over the years and just how weird you've gotten, or rather how you've swapped past weirdnesses for bright, new, scary ones. Yes, I have lists to illustrate.

Past strangeness
I ate coffee powder
I ate tea powder
I was terrified of flying balls (Every possible joke you could think of making has already been made, rest assured)
When I looked in the mirror, all I saw was fat.
I was cripplingly shy. Most conversations I had were with people's shoulders or with their feet.
Having to speak up in public would reduce me to a cold, sweating, fidgety mass of nervousness. I'd go days without saying much.
I hated the idea of someone looking at my face for more than 40 seconds at a stretch.
I was a creepily good listener. It didn't matter who, even people I didn't know would walk up to me, you know, 'just to talk." I could go through conversations that lasted hours without having spoken more than a few words.
I hated phone conversations.

Present Strangeness
I am completely at ease with strangers, more so those I know I'll never meet again. When it comes to talking to people I know and have known for a while, I'm uncomfortable and want to just run away.
I have no idea what to say to people anymore. They tell me stuff and for some reason, if I feel the need to reply, I invariably end up saying the absolute last thing they wanted to hear.
I want to be listened to all the time. I get annoyed listening myself. In some way, it's as though I'm trying to make up for all the years I never ever talked about myself.
I rarely feel the need to communicate with people. The times that I do, I get sick of it five minutes into the conversation.
I smoke two cigarettes every night before I sleep.
I'm nervous and on edge almost everyday. Before I sleep every morning (4am), I feel a sudden rush of panic.
I eat a cube of cheese everyday at about 4pm.
I have a very strong urge to become an actor. Based on almost nothing at all.
I am obsessed with knowing inane facts about people. Sometimes I''ll stay up nights just looking up random subsidiary characters I've seen in films.


I scare myself.

Current song fixation: Let my love open the door by Sondre Lerche

Current song obsession: I Can't Stay by The Killers. I promise I won't make a habit of posting lyrics.

The emotion it was electric
And the stars, they all aligned
I knew I had to make my decision
But I never made the time
No, I never made the time

In the dark, for a while now
I can't stay, so far
I can't stay much longer
Riding my decision home

Exoneration lost his eraser
But my forgiver found the sun
And there are twisted days
That I take comfort
Cause I'm not the only one
No, I'm not the only one

In the dark, for a while now
I can't stay very far
I can't stay much longer
Riding my decision home

There is a majesty at my doorstep
And there's a little boy in her arms
Now we'll parade around
Without game plans
Obligation or alarm

In the dark, for a while now
I can't stay very far
I can't stay much longer
Riding my decision home

In the dark, for a while now
I can't stay so far
I can't stay much longer
Riding my decision home
In the dark


This is serious gold. Will upload video later.

Thanks A!