LOOK WHAT HAPPENED

Hello! Been quite a while since I visited this page. It took a pandemic to make me write again. Briefly? Highly possible! As I sit in front of this laptop accompanied by a chocolate cake, which I baked, I am worried because there is a lot that happened since I last wrote here.

This chocolate cake deserves better. Barely tasting of chocolate and more like mortar, because of a number of reasons, starting from the batter not being whisked enough, usage of olive oil instead of butter, whole wheat flour instead of all purpose, one egg instead of two and brown sugar instead of white. In the process of seeking gluten free perfection, I almost mistreated it. 

Now I don’t want you to think that tragedy has touched me! What I want you to know is that I am going through something that I have never ever dreamt of. I am experiencing something that I have neither worked towards nor craved for. So it’s natural that I fail some days. Fine, most days.

Basically, I am now a mother of a little girl. She is 18 months. 

I can say that she is 1.5 years old but 18 months makes it sounds like I have been counting every day and logging every inch of her growth. To be honest, I have been doing that! She is bloody awesome!!!

See, I didn’t plan this. Having a child was never in the list of natural progression of things in life for me. It was going to me, my guy, my career, his career, a grey hound, good food, cholesterol and a gym membership. A kid didn’t fit in. But stuff happens! Notice how I didn’t use the word shit? Because honestly it isn’t a shit situation (diaper changing and butt wiping excluded). I remember the exact moment I found out I was pregnant. Fear in its purest form! My throat instantly went dry, my limbs were non-existent, the hair at the back of my neck stood up and I couldn’t breathe. After an unexplainable amount of time I came out of the washroom and told my partner in bow-chicka-wow-wow, my husband, the situation we were at. I could see his pupils dilate and he seemed to have instantly lost weight. But we knew what we wanted to do. Not instantly but we knew. Fast forward, we have a daughter! She is the cutest button there is. Her first proper word was ‘Star’ and she is the brightest one of that!

To summarize, I have produced a human being and now I resemble a cupboard made of oakwood. I am trying to be a good parent and that’s no joke! Its hard work guys! But tomorrow I will be better! I am also sure that the next time I bake this chocolate cake, it will taste just like it is supposed to taste! Pure delight!!

P.S- Why did I not mention about my husband trying hard to be a good parent? Because this is my blog. But he is depressingly great at it!!!!!!!!

Image Courtesy- cheltenhamdailyphoto

EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED SO FAR

I don’t think I need to give an explanation, but then again, I think this blog deserves to know why I went missing. My posts if you scroll down, would give you a highlight of the kind of person I am and if you were to notice, most of the posts had something to do with marriage and how I was constantly trying to evade it. I am not a huge supporter of the institution of marriage.

I started this blog when I entered a relationship and I kept this blog alive to kind of pen down what my reality is. I wanted this blog to in some way remind me of what my principles are and what I should stay as. I have always been a middle class kind of soul- middle class thoughts, middle class beliefs and middle class expectations. As a teen, I somewhat had a road-map all set in my mind about my life. I will grow up, get into an average college, get average marks, get an average job and marry the first man my parents point me to. But as I wrote the shoddy things that this blog is plastered with, I realized that I crave for better things and to be honest, I wasn’t aware of these things until I wrote it out.

So I entered a relationship at the same time this blog started and I had no notions of taking the relationship or this blog till the very end. Basically, I wasn’t serious with either of those and I kept both of them a secret from almost everyone I knew. I gave up on my relationship quite a lot of times because I knew that the average living was secure and socially acceptable. I also frequently left blogging because I didn’t want to write like someone else and live like someone just the opposite. But I allowed myself the luxury of going with the flow.

So one fine day, over 8 years into the relationship, my mother asked me why I wasn’t keen to marry. It took me two hours to finally tell my parents over the call that it wasn’t any medical condition or lesbianism that kept me from marrying, but was a Christian boy who has been on my mind since a long long time. They didn’t take things well as was honestly expected. I wasn’t a person who believed in eloping nor was I someone who was looking for a quick fix. I wasn’t dying to marry anyway. They gave me a year to revisit my decision, while a few astrologers were visited side by side. The astrologers didn’t like me and my Christian boy. So I broke up and patched again. Then I broke up five more times and patched again. But yes I kept wanting to get back again. The Christian boy just should there knowing I am too stubborn to let go of him. 

I stopped blogging last year at the same time when everyone I knew found out that I was trying to make a decision that wasn’t least bit average. I don’t like my secrets disclosed. I like my privacy and when suddenly everyone started questioning, I did lose my shit mind.  Things weren’t all nice and glossy, but you soon realize that your parents when given some time, start to understand you in ways that you never thought they could. Exactly a year later, my Christian boy was accepted into the family.

We planned our wedding, got married before the registrar of marriages under the Special marriage Act, had a reception in a nice hotel where we exchanged rings and smiled till the cameraman gave up. All this happened on July 5^th. Both of us don’t believe in the institution of marriage but both of us do like being together. I don’t exactly remember a past without him. Cliché eh? 

I owe a lot to this blog. It has been a mirror to me. Never have I before given an in-depth analysis of my life in any of my posts, but every time I wrote anything here, it kind of instilled confidence.

I am not much of a writer and like I have always maintained, this is just a blog and I am just a blogger.

P.S- How have you guys been, that is, if you guys are still around. 

P.P.S- Do you like the new blog header? A gorgeous illustrator Tasneem Amiruddin made it for me

Image Courtesy- tenor.com. 

MRI Scan For Enlightenment.....

From within the confines of my office cubicle, I have dreamt of a secret escape. An escape to a place so edifying that it forces me to seek answers to the glorious mysteries of life. A place that makes me realize my deepest fears and understand my core beliefs. And then I entered a magnetic resonance imaging scanner.

A doctor recently recommended that I get an MRI scan of my spine done, so that he could point at a picture and declare that I have a slip disc. At the risk of sounding like a vegetable, I have to accept that I was excited. Something about experiencing something I never have, excited me. The doctor suggested that I change into a hospital robe. That excited me too because hospital robes are generally loose and airy, giving you the privilege of feeling thin and frail. I needed to feel so.

I removed every little metal that was on me, including the all-encompassing bra because the male nurse reminded me that the hooks might be of metal and metal isn’t treated well by the scanner. I could have told him that the hooks in mine were plastic but then decided to just go with his assumption. I was made to lie down on a motorized bed while the nurse gave me the necessary directions which included ‘Do not move for the next 15 minutes’, ‘Here, press this is you feel uneasy’ and ‘No, your eyes wont dissolve if you keep them open’. My ears were plugged and my legs were comfortably tucked inside a blanket. Then he left the scanning room.

Gently, the bed started to move into the cylindrical scanner, head first. I lay on the bed staring at the entrance of the scanning room that led to the world outside. There was a sense of calm and a privileged form of loneliness, the kind a baby might feel inside its mother’s womb, i.e, if the baby could feel and think at that time. And then the bed started moving again, taking me well inside the cylindrical dome.

All was well until the machine started to make a deafening noise. I froze inside, betting that what I was hearing was the emergency alarm, screaming that there was something insidiously wrong with the machine. By then I was fully inside the dome, with no light visible at the end of the tunnel. Just me, a remote in my hand and the machine screaming from all sides. My mind decided to make it even worse.

My Hippocampus started playing ‘Final Destination’ and all its sequels. The scene where two women die inside their tanning booths was particularly urging my bladder to burst. May be this is how Deadpool felt inside that glass box. May be I would wake up to be an Avatar. My heart begged me to press the big red button proudly sitting on the remote, but my intuition asked me to have a little faith.

Slowly my body adapted to the chaos around me and my mind started to tune it into a psychedelic trance track. My heart swayed with it and then right in between my artistic endeavour, a sudden realization hit me. I AM BLOODY ALONE IN THIS.

Life has been a little tumultuous of late, especially since I am expected to make decisions that are in the best interest of everybody who matter to me. Lying inside this plastic dome made me realize that through our struggles, we would be alone. No one can get an MRI scan for me. No one will suffer my decisions but me. People will love you, press their opinions on you and pray for you. But what they cannot do is live your life for you and suffer for you. So why take a life altering decision pressurized by the world when in the end, it would be you alone living through it all.

Who knew an MRI scan could be enlightening. May be there is a personal Buddha inside each one of us. Bodh Gaya might be too far, but an MRI scanner isn’t.

Book a scan now!


Image Courtesy- Somewhere in Pinterest.

MARRY FOR SECURITY....

Marry for security. The guy you love shouldn’t be the one you marry.

Be practical when it comes to marriage. Never gamble. Instead settle for a safe bet because love wanes off and there is so much more to marriage than just love. ‘The Notebook’ is just a stupid book and an even more stupid movie that forces you to believe that two people can just have a synchronized death  on a single hospital bed because of some eternal love that mysteriously outlived Alzheimer's. Be realistic please! In life what really matters is security. Money is important. Social acceptance is even more important. And please, do not beat the drums declaring ‘‘He is the one!’’ because it makes you sound like an irrational fool.

You know that you are part of a society that looks at love as a game that should be played after marriage. You cannot just uproot yourself from that society and live life on your own terms with someone you think you are crazy about. You should marry somebody who the society accepts is right for you. Marry the money, the education and the religion of the man. Love might drop in later and even if it doesn’t, really its ok!

Marry for stability. You cannot wait for some man who begs you to believe in his dreams, the way he does and pleads for some time to prove that he can pay for your wardrobe. You are not a kid anymore and time is clicking.

So you settle for a stable, established man. Good job! Its ok to have days when you lie awake staring at this man’s face wondering why you never feel like nuzzling him while he sleeps. You used to feel it with someone from your past. But the past is dead and the past was filled with stupid dreams. So you sleep off. Some nights he gets on top of you and you have sex. You forget to make love.

In the morning while you clean the house and dust that expensive couch, you feel pleased at the secure life that you are in. Your husband brought such stability into your life. During breakfast you discuss the credit card limit, the pending bills and the carpentry work that needs to be done in the bedroom. Those deep philosophical talks, those stupid jokes and those random book reviews are all part of a past with someone else. You don’t expect that now. Now you are practical with no time to reflect.

Your parents like him and your temple allows him to enter. You are not sure if you like him but its ok, because one day you will get so used to him that you will think that this habit is love. You will be fine with it. Get a job and try to climb up the ladder. Helps you forget the vacuum in your heart.

Have a kid with him and then another kid. Your kids look beautiful they say and they are true. Start investing on lands, pay those insurance premiums and keep buying things. Make your house resemble a contemporary museum. Put your children in expensive schools and discuss the expense with your husband. Go for a movie and stare at the screen while your mind drifts into a secret chapter from your past. Eat that popcorn and then smile at your child. Watch your husband smile at them with the same distance in his eyes. Your life is secure.

Attend weddings and flaunt your family. Show everyone that you have made it. Keep giving importance to impressing the people around you because when you stop doing that, the pangs of regret hit you and you hate that. Soon you enter a midlife crisis.

You did a great job by not taking a risk and going for the man you love. It was a wise decision to not choose the person who made you happy in this short life that you live. You were right in running away instead of trying to work things out. You chose reality over some fantasy of yours.

After all, you knew that life is about everyday tasks and ignoring the mountain of regrets. You did well. You chose fear.

P.S- Hello Hello!!!!
P.P.S- Please don't leave a comment relying solely on the POST TOPIC. Read!

Image Courtesy-sodahead.com

It's a frown. It's an itch. It's a slap from hell. It's Summertime!!!

The fashion magazines are all pasted with the latest summer trends; models clad in bikini with prints that scream about the wild flowers of Africa. The cover photo has a promising picture of a cellulite repellent lady sipping Pinacolada on a beach that looks pristine, bohemian curls flirting with the summer wind, her skin kissed by a gentle tan. You stare at the magazine until a sweat develops on your scalp and lands noisily on it. So much for a dreamy summer in India.

That drop of sweat brings you back to reality. A reality that consists of your head that seems to have been licked by the holy Indian cow, the patches of makeup that managed to hold on to your face, the collar of your shirt as dirty as your thoughts and sweat glands that are working overtime like Santa’s little elves on the last day of Christmas. There is nothing I enjoy about summer, except mangoes. Yes Mangoes!

I have hated summer with a conviction as fervent and strong as a mother’s love. The only nostalgia attached to summer was fighting for a spot in front of the air cooler and later escaping the responsibility to quench the exhausted machine’s thirst with buckets of water; the prospect of carving out biceps lost in that process. Summer never brought to me crop tops and hot pants, my family was orthodox like that; my body was obese like that. What it did bring to me was frequent bouts of diarrhea, credit to the dirty ice lollies that Mahesh Thelawala sold and I gulped down like vitamin pills. It also brought out this other version of my mother, the one who was always ready with a bowl of milk with salt in it to rub on my face, every time I returned from an episode under the blazing sun. It removed the tan she said; never did I vouch! A regular sight during summer was my topless, hibernating grandfather stretched out on the diwan and my grandmother sprinkling cold water on him.

While the other kids took up a summer hobby and went to camps, I spent my holidays being a human fan. It was my eternal duty to stand on the kitchen counter and help bring down the temperature by fanning my mother using that day’s Hindustan times. When I was tired, dad took up the spot, lest we wanted to end up sleeping hungry. Bathing never made things better, thanks to the black overhead tank that only supplied boiling water. I have always wondered why people decide to get married during summer. A far off relative who I was particularly fond of, hates me because I once told her “Aapko malum hai ki aap kal apni shaadi mein kitni gandi dikhogi?”. She had chosen the month of May to get married. The bride’s sindoor running down the forehead as she smiles at her new man shaped tote bag who seems to have lost a couple of kilos inside his safari suit, wasn’t exactly a grand way to kick start a lifetime of togetherness. Her wedding video could easily be mistaken as a clip from the movie Shutter Island. In a climate that makes cuddling the last thing in the mind, no wonder they choose Switzerland to initiate honeymoon consummation.

Henry James once said “Summer afternoon- Summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” This makes me want to cry while I attempt to wring myself dry.

P.S- Almost 2mths of not blogging. I am alive and there to stay! 

Image Courtesy- myindiapictures.com

 

THE SECRET ROMANCE...

Back when I was a little girl, my favourite game was called ‘Mr. & Mrs.’ While the Mr. was a magazine cut out of an actor stapled to the face of my one eyed teddy bear, the Mrs. was a blushing me. My relationship with my paper husband could be labelled as romantic, since I spoke to him only in dialogues straight out of the Bollywood movies that I watched when my mother wasn’t around. But something that the little me noticed was that this romance that existed between me and my inanimate husband wasn’t present between my Dad and Mom.

Many nights were spent wondering whether my parents were together only because of the common burden that they shared; the burden being me. But then they made my brother, thereby challenging my hypothesis. But how could a relationship continue with no romance in it? There were no cute glances across the hall and though I knew I would barf if they ever said ‘I love you’ to each other in my presence, I sometimes wondered if they ever said anything that did not involve their problematic children, the grocery list, the different kind of bills, their work or their general loathing towards majority of our relatives. The closest to romance that they got was when they dyed each other’s hair or when they took their weekend afternoon naps, with synchronized snores setting up the mood.  After a certain point of time I simply gave up and declared to myself that my parents were suffering a boring marriage.

My mother for some reason was always very protective of her bedroom almirah. A rusty old Godrej almirah, that she kept locked at all times. It was the only place in the entire house that I wasn’t allowed to raid and this fact used to haunt me like dry cough.  Paulo Coelho rightfully wrote, “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” It was this very want in my part that made my mother forget to lock the cupboard one fine day before leaving for work. I opened the cupboard half expecting Narnia at the back of it, but instead got hold of what seemed like a stack of greeting cards and a few old photographs.  The photographs seemed to have been taken soon after my parents wedding, one showing both of them sitting in a garden, my mother laughing maybe at a joke my dad managed to crack. The next picture showcased my parents in goggles, both staring at opposite directions with a serious look on their face. They looked like idiots; idiots in love. The cards were all gifted during wedding anniversaries and it seemed like my mother hadn’t got one in the past few years. Even though I was a child, I knew I was trespassing into her personal space, but there was a certain joy that I derived by knowing that there was romance present in their relationship at least in those initial few years of marriage.  

Last year they celebrated their 25^th anniversary. Dad bought mom a few sarees using the bonus he earned by working extra, mom didn’t bother to do anything and I ordered a mocha cake to celebrate the occasion and ate most of it. There was no grand celebration and no one gave a speech or popped a bottle of champagne. Frankly it was amusing how boring they were together as a couple. 

But then I saw it, their silent and secretive romance. The romance when dad backs mom up when we raise our tone against her, the romance and comfort in those synchronised snores, the romance in dying each other’s hair using old toothbrushes and the romance in cooking a meal together. The romance when dad irons her saree and she polishes his shoes. The romance when dad cleans the ceiling fan and mom holds the stool. The romance even in those farts. The romance that made their children and the romance that made them raise us together. It wasn’t a boring marriage but a successful one.

Anniversary cards with their printed words cannot express relationships like these. Their years together did that for them. I and my brother did that for them. Their hidden romance did that for them. 

If you ask me, I prefer a secret romance. A relationship as carelessly strong as theirs. 

P.S- Yes, I MUST BLOG REGULARLY.

P.P.S- Still getting used to Bangalore. New place, new job and new people. I take time. 

Image Courtesy- onesmedia.com

TO THE MAN WHO BOUGHT A PAD...

There is nothing interesting that you will read in my blog today. There is nothing funny in here, nor anything thought provoking, just like all the other times. This is simply a gratitude post. A gratitude post to a minor section of men.

It seems like my grandfather did not know that he was married to a woman.  Actually, I think my grandmother thought it was her duty of never letting him find out about it. She also made sure that he did not know that there was a daughter among the three kids that they had together. Funny, but true! Ok, let me come clear and tell you that my grandfather lived in a house where the women pretended to never have periods.

It was fun to watch you know. My mother sneaking in sanitary napkins into the house as if it was a stash of cocaine, just because my grandfather was reading newspaper in the veranda. How one second I would be holding my stomach, whining to my grandmother about the first day of absolute pain (the kind of pain you get when your uterus squeezes out blood) and the next second I would be sweeping the house clean because grandfather spotted some dirt on the window sill. We made sure that he never knew about the monthly issue that came our way. We PMSed in private.

My brother too was kept in the dark. Every time he innocently pointed at the Whisper advertisement and asked what it was for, my mother and I became the most creative people on the face of earth. We just could not muster enough courage to tell him about womanhood. It’s like we were ashamed of what made us, us.

And then something magical happened. I heard my mother on the phone asking my father to buy pads on his way back from office. I looked at her and she simply said to me “He is not like your grandfather.”  And mind you, my father did get sanitary napkins on his way back, that too the right kind.

Last week I went to the medical shop to buy Crocin. Now, it was around 6 pm and the shop was crowded. I was waiting to be attended when a man standing nearby said “Bhaiyya, ek packet Stayfree deejiye”. It was amusing how every other man in the shop stared at him as if he had broken some code of masculinity. It was even more amusing to note that this man wasn’t a tad bit uncomfortable with the attention he was garnering. He spent a while choosing the correct sanitary napkin, paid for it and left the scene. I looked at the men around me, all smiling slyly. I wonder if they felt this uncomfortable while buying condoms.

I think I now know what my mother meant when she said that my father wasn’t like my grandfather. I also think I know how difficult it must be for a man to be different from the rest; to be someone who understands women. It’s embarrassing to be someone who acknowledges the strength that is required to be a woman. But yet, these few men continue to be different from the rest because they know their women matter much more.

Women are to be blamed. We keep menstruation a secret, as if it’s a sin instead of an inevitable biological process. Imagine discussing periods with your father or any male member in your life. Trust me, they would prefer you menstruating than being pregnant and not doing so. So why do we hush it up? Why not give them the opportunity to accept our reality?

So today I want to thank the men who are not like my grandfather. We need more men like you. We need more men like the guy I saw in the medical shop and lesser like the rest who were mocking him silently. Thank you for being real.

Dear men, this women’s day gift the women in your life, a better you.

P.S- Dear women, let us promise ourselves one thing today. That we would stop outsourcing our life. We must start making our own decisions instead of letting someone else do it for us. Promise yourself that you would never outsource your life.