DON'T TELL ME YOUR SECRETS....

I hate so many things, so many that the things I like can be numbered while my hatred has an infinite expansion. There is one particular thing that I find respectable about men, which being a woman comes hard to me. Men might go around discussing sex and scanning you down and drowning in their own drool, but it when it comes to the whole issue of dealing with a relationship problem, they keep it to themselves. Now why can’t women be like that? Why do women at a drop of a tear go around telling all her so called close friends whom she bitches about day and night, about the troubles she has been facing with her guy?

Now women love back stabbing, some do it after a lot of planning while the others do it innocently without even meaning to. You just can’t blame us! There is no way that your issues which you secretly spilled into my ears will ever remain a secret for it is statistically proven that an average woman can keep a secret for 48hours. Well we don’t have to keep a secret because within those 48 hours, the woman who told the secret in the first place has gone around spreading it herself and is expecting no one to spill it. Yes we are full of complexity. The only way of trusting me with a secret is if that secret has me involved in it in a way which makes it too ugly to be shared.

This is why I loathe it when the girls I know but actually don’t give a hoot about, come to me and start discussing their boyfriend troubles with me. I hate it more when they actually ask me for my views regarding the issue. For ex- ‘A’ approaches me and tells me that her guy ‘B’ has been roaming around with his best buds the whole day and has just messaged her thrice accompanied by three calls which lasted 15 min each. She feels ignored and wants my opinion regarding the whole attitude of her boyfriend. Now is it wrong for me for wanting to beg her to give the guy a break and let the poor boy have some fun with his homies rather than being tied to her the whole day? The fact that I can’t say this to her but have to take her side, kills me and If by any chance I actually tell her the truth, she will weep and run away or will deem me incapable of understanding.

Also women like making a mountain out of a molehill. Sharing your love problems with another woman only makes it worse, because when two women come together, their brains combine to make a master plan which is directed towards making a man pay for the actions he did but is truly not aware of. This normally leads to devastation, followed by a cat fight and end of friendship between the two women.

Men keep their issues to themselves. Love is like a religion to them especially when they are blinded by it. Men might take time to fall nose deep in love but when they do, they treat it like its divine. If a guy truly loves a woman, he never discusses the intricacies of the relationship with another soul. During a hard time, he controls his boiling rage by drinking it down instead of running around sharing his stories. He slowly finds the solution to patch up things while his woman with her designed plans and strategies, kills his love slowly but steadily. If a man actually wants to tell his close friends that his heart is broken, he simply approaches his gang and says ‘I am broken’. The next thing he knows is his friends dragging him to a bar and together getting sloshed. Now even if he actually shared the problem during his drunken yapping, none of his friends will remember it the next day anyway.

Now not every woman is like this. Some like me no more share their relationship hurdles with other women. Experience finally got the best of us! But trust me it took a lot of back stabbing to turn me into the woman I am now.

P.S- I know that the image doesn't exactly suit the basic concept of the post. But you got to admit, it is funny!!

Image Courtesy- newsofdelhi.com

Mommy or Daddy the greatest??

Since childhood I have wriggled out of complex situations. Complex situations where a kid doesn’t like to get caught in especially in front of his/her parents, because how much ever mature they seem to be, parents are an insecure bunch. As I grew up, there have been numerous instances where my parents would force nerve jittering questions down my ears.

My Amma would alarm me in the most relaxed manner and would shoot the most venomous question ever. She would ask me “Mole, you like Papa more or Amma? Be honest to me Mole”. Now since I know that the answer decides what she would cook for dinner and whether she will polish my school shoes for tomorrow, I would innocently look into her eyes and say “Amma, you and Papa are like my eyes. I can’t like one eye more than the other.” This answer always awarded me with an extra scoop of dessert serving after dinner. I always stick to this answer, but for the sake of not appearing to be a trained parrot, I would change the body parts from ‘eyes’ to ‘limbs’ or ‘ears’.

Today my father asked me the same question and I like a Ninja answered him and made his chest rise from 40 to 44. But today as I lay on my bed for an afternoon nap, I couldn’t stop myself from actually questioning myself regarding my allegiance. Did this Mole, love her Amma more or her Papa? Who was my inclination towards? I had to find an answer once and for all.

CALL IN DISTRESS- As a child I was my Daddy’s pet, still am. I was treated like a boy and I disclosed the torments of my childish mind openly to him. As a kid, I never liked Amma giving me a bath because she never told me stories of her childhood adventures while foaming me up. She had a boring childhood anyway. My Papa was the man I wanted to become when I grew up, though I turned out to be a woman. But as I grew up, I stopped opening up to Dad and he never probed me into revealing my problems too, for he knew that it was not his field of expertise. Mom was the one I approached and she became my therapist, though she was a bad one. She became my call in times of distress.

Dad-0 Mom-1

FREEDOM- Now I am boasting when I say this but I really do have the ultimate man as my Papa. During my tenth boards he caught me reading Cosmopolitan. I was busy staring at the picture of topless and hairless Hrithik Roshan in the magazine by keeping it inside my Chemistry book. He didn’t scold me at all, but forced me to keep my Chemistry book down and read the magazine for 2 hours straight. That was my punishment, though I never understood how. My mother on the other side was a pain in the bum during my teenage years. She would run and enter my room faster than a coyote just to inspect what exactly I was doing online. She never trusted me and I can’t blame her for I knew that the curious me couldn’t be trusted. My mother always brings the whole concept of being a woman into everything and anything I do or did, while my Papa like a gentleman that he is shuts my mother off and listens to the apple of his eye i.e his Mole.

Dad- 1 Mom-1

SPOILING ME- Amma, Papa and my Acchamma (Dadi) all have a fair hand in this.  My Amma used to go around scolding my nursery teachers for not treating me well because they complained to her regarding my biting problem. Now I have to confess, I used to bite my teachers as a kid if I they ever scolded me or tried to make me answer the questions I didn’t want to. But my mother conveniently blamed them and never pointed a finger at me. My Father would buy me balloons and Samosas at 12 midnight because I cried out loud for it. For this he had to walk half a kilometre into the neighbouring slum and safe himself from probable thieves. You don’t want to know about my craze of bursting balloons and then crying till I got another one. If I was my Papa, I would have disowned me. He once made six omelettes for me before making the perfect one, because I do not like even a fragment of the existence of whiteness in my omelette. He made 4 omelettes, slapped me, said sorry and made another 2.

Dad-2 Mom-1

MONEY BANK- My parents provide me with money without any interrogation whenever I want. Me giving them false reasons for the money is a totally different aspect and I know for sure that my parents are not dumb enough to actually believe every word of what I utter. But they know for the fact that their Mole spends most of the money in her cute little purse, hogging at every restaurant standing in the town. She can lie for food and they know it. My Papa never opens the message I send him, for her knows that the message contains just two words ‘PUT MONEY’. The guilty me never calls for money and when I do, I always report to my mother directly who takes care of the situation. So I believe both share an equal stand in this aspect.

Dad-2 Mom-2

CRY ME A RIVER- The only way to deal with the situation is to ask myself this- ‘ If I ever do anything wrong, something which makes me feel guilty, something I am truly not supposed to do, whose face comes in my mind? Who is it that I don’t want to see hurt or disappointed? Whose judgement on my character matters more?’.  Now when I review my life till date, I notice that I have always tried hiding unwelcoming facts about myself from my parents. If I tell my mother, she will pass it on to my father which I don’t want. My Papa has provided me with everything I have asked for and didn’t ask for or dreamt about and this comes in my mind whenever I fall into a messy situation. I can tolerate my mother’s indifference, but never the disappointment in my father’s eyes. I have never seen him cry, not even when he lost his father and I never want to be a reason behind his eyes brimming over with tears. I don’t know from where this special soft corner towards Daddy came from, but I have to agree that it has always been there and how much ever my mother tries to win the position by feeding me Gulab Jamuns, she can’t win. We don’t need to tell her that, do we?

Dad-3 Mom-2

So, it turns out that I am my Daddy’s little grown up girl and always will be. Amma might hate this revelation but she wouldn’t mind losing to him for she knows he is worth it. And if my younger brother happens to read this, I just want him to know that no matter what I do, wherever I go, I was their first baby and they love me more. I know they might use the arm/limb/eyes story which dealing with your queries, but you know who stands tall and first. THE SILLY OLD MOLE, ME!

P.S- Sorry about the extra long blog post! This just had to be done!

WORLD PEACE PLEASE....

Now every girl, be their size be XS/S/M/L/X/XXL/XXXL, be their color be black/brown/yellow/red/white, be their bra’s be trainer/seamless/push up/padded/strapless, be their looks be Ugly Betty style/ Penelope Cruz touch, be they be of any kind you can possibly imagine, they have  atleast once in their lives imagined themselves as models walking down the ramp or in many cases day dreamed about being beauty pageant winners. Atleast I had as a little girl. 

I used to sit by my mom, who would accompany me to rate the Miss World contestants out of 10, commenting on the way they catwalk and the change that is needed in those barbies. My mother would be usually in her Maxi with her uncombed hair tied into a bun, while her hands chopped vegetables as her eyes stayed glued to the TV screen. I was almost always dressed like a boy, a tomboy with a BOB cut whom boys mistook for being a bully. Imagining me as a beauty contestant was the closest I got to behaving like a girl.

While slogging my ass out in the gym, the small TV attached to the treadmill happened to show the movie Miss Congeniality. There was a part in it where every contestant wants to bring world peace. Now I have to agree that it definitely was funny but it made me wonder as to how these thin sticks actually work towards world peace and for the betterment of humanity or act like ambassadors of righteousness. Blame it on my General Knowledge or call me ignorant when I tell you that I don’t remember a single beauty pageant winner who has stood up to what she said on stage and actually did her bit for the poor and the downtrodden. Offcourse, bribe in the form of Media coverage can be reason enough to set her pedicured foot inside a slum and click pictures with the dirtiest looking kids of the lot. 

I understand that world peace is something one can only desire or pray for. But saying that as a Miss World or Miss Universe you will work towards the empowerment of those who have been subjugated for long, and then using it as a source to become an actress or just keeping the crown for a year, is absolute bullshit. How exactly did Aishwarya Rai work towards World Peace? Is Priyanka Chopra spending nights awake thinking of means to bring world peace? I guess not. All they do is go to shows organised by NGO’s and then place their fragile hands on surprised kids and go ‘Awwwww’ while the Media goes haywire clicking pictures from every angle possible. Miss World title brings with it the chance to travel the globe, meet royalty, world leaders and party with the famous. This is occasionally hindered by opening ceremony of supermarkets and NGO visits.

Actually we are at fault here since we wouldn’t crown a girl who gets on the stage and blurts out that she wouldn’t­­ work for the betterment of the society but wants to win the crown because it has been her childhood girly dream and that she could use it as a step towards the movie industry. The blame rests on us for being hypocrites. Beauty Pageants should only be about beauty and nothing more. I hope the realization comes quick.

The Blame Is On Her...

She opens her eyes to loneliness. The room is dark except for the faint light which creeps in through the blinds, letting shadows of vehicles passing by adorn the ceiling. She shifts her gaze to the man she was sharing her bed with, only to find him in a deep and comforting slumber. He was what society defined a perfect man and if perfection was requisite to be happy, then she would have been happy. It has been 11 years since she realized she wasn’t anywhere close to that happiness, to that peace of living life the way it should be. 

She crawls out of the bed before the alarm could fill the air with its harsh titter, and makes her way to the adjacent room. A child snuggled under a blanket with a gentle smile on his lips, makes her heart melt in ways she had felt only for one man. A man she had let go off when she should have hold on to. 

Every day as she watches her husband read bed time stories to their child, she hates herself a bit more for wanting a different man in his place. Every night as he slides next to her and runs his hands on her body, she shuts her eyes and imagines another man touching her. She can’t help but loath herself for she knows, the present could have been different, if only…

She has a past she relives in her mind every day, a past she wishes every moment that she could alter. A woman in love she once was, in love with a man who returned her sentiments, maybe bountifully more. She was proud to be the one who loved less for she knew that he would never let go of her. The man loved her and fulfilled her desires, irrespective of his material constrictions and his struggling life. Everything he wanted to be was more for her and less for him, more for being able to keep her forever and less for living his dream. But he knew her too well to know that one day, she will let go of him for what she called, a practical life beyond compromises. He had warned her earlier.

And she did exactly what he predicted. She let go of him for a wealthy man, a better man which her father pointed out to her. He was perfect in her eyes and all she had to do next was to fall in love with him. A good house, a husband with a benevolent character and she believed that with time, she will fall in love with him. She left her lover for a life on a plate readily served to her. He loved her too much to hold her back. 

A faint touch on her chin brings her back to where she was. She smiles at her son with her lips while her eyes mirror the pain her heart was going through. Why couldn’t she love the man she was married to? Her life was perfect society said, but why wasn’t she smiling? Why did she let go of him when all he asked was her to believe in him and in the love they shared? 

Sometimes, she drives by his home on her way back after dropping her child to school. Where there was once a tiny studio apartment, now stood a mansion with a gold address plate on the gate screaming his name. He became everything he said he will, but he now shared it all with a woman who believed in him.

Now, her existence is haunted by questions, the answers to which she cannot ignore. If only she had believed in him. If only she had realized that he was the diamond which time could polish. If only she had stood by his side. 

Life was now just pretence and she knew the blame was on her.

WOMEN CAN'T DRIVE....

 It’s not that I have anything against women, especially since I belong to that particular field of chromosomes, but I adhere to the general notion that women folks can’t drive. There are certain things which women can do and men cant. For example, blame everything on PMS. Similarly, there are certain things which men can do which women can’t and that is drive a vehicle the way it should be. 

Now since exceptions are a part of life, there can be women like Danica Patrick or Desiré Wilson who is the only woman to win a Formula One race of any kind till date. But that was back in the 1980’s! Now illustrated below are the few of the many reasons why women can’t drive.

1) Heel Tragedy- Women prefer to present their very best form, wherever they go and an essential part of this feel good about yourself factor, is the shoes you adorn your feet with. High Heels might look super sexy, but when it comes to its relationship with car brakes or accelerator, it screams anarchy. But my Amma has a solution for this and that is to remove those heels before you start the ignition. Almost feels like it’s a holy ritual to drive!

2) Rear-View Mirror dysfunction- The rear view mirror which is normally installed in the car so as to be able to keep a check on the cars following, assumes the role of a make-up mirror. The woman slides into the driving seat, adjusts the rear-view mirror in a way that her face or her pouty lips are visible and drives the car with more than half of her concentration on her smudged eyeliner. 

3) Multitasking- Women are generally called the multitasking connoisseurs, but sometimes, they abuse the privilege a bit too much and in areas they shouldn’t be. Women care too much about not returning a text or ignoring a call because rudeness even if you are driving is not acceptable. Even if the reply is as stupid as ‘OMG’, ‘SRSLY?’, ‘LOL’, there just has to be a reply to every message that comes our way. 

4) Just Cant Park- Women may be able to drive far safely than men on an open highway, but when it comes to parking, the chances of them hitting a dormant car, or a wall is beyond the normal probability level. Reversing is just not our forte. There is a scientific reason backing me up, which Google pointed out. 

5) Dolls Over Cars- Car servicing is the last thing a woman will consider, even is the vehicle reacts with a smoking engine, unusual blare etc. Men get an adrenaline rush when it comes to cars and long drives, but for women, they rather enjoy the view or drive just for the sake of reaching the destination. Women are built that way. Blame it on the genes. 

But look at the brighter side of life. When it comes to driving, being a woman has its own perk. A smile accompanied by some eyelid fluttering is enough to ward off the cops. People will always hold a soft corner towards you if you happen to be the woman in a road accident, even if it was your fault. You will be rushed towards by a crowd to be helped because you just got your knee scratched, while the man you hit might be having a haemorrhage. Also, women might be bad with maps, but they aren’t stubborn bulldogs like the men when it comes to asking for directions. When men try to listen to their nonexistent sixth sense, women merely roll the glass down and ask for directions.

P.S- Don’t hate me for writing this. I am out of topics so thought of writing something just to back up the men folk with the stereotype they hold against women. It’s absurd for sure!

P.P.S- I have a driving licence which enables me to drive a four wheeler. The fact that I have never driven a car on road didn’t matter when I was given the licence. The only time I have driven a car was after I got the licence and that too a Maruti 800 belonging to the driving school which I drove on an open ground during which a tree surprised me by coming in my way!

Image Courtesy- dyn.quickmeme.com

YOURS FAITHFULLY, A BROWN PERSON....

Dear Rest of the World,

I am enraged yet amazed by your imprudence. The variety of stereotypes you hold against my brown face is laudable, considering the fact that you absentmindedly pigeonholed us without attesting the credibility of the same. 

I am a proud Indian woman, who according to credible sources, doesn’t smell of curry, isn’t hairy, does not live to get hitched with some random guy her parents find and procreate a minimum of 3 kids with him. I can also read and write English, which even a bozo would have realised by now. 

Please do not categorize people according to the level of body odour, solely based on their nationality. We stink as much as you do and we are aware of the usage of deodorant as much as you are. Our homes might smell of curry, but we don’t, unless obviously if we are covered with it.  If you believe in categorizing people based on what they eat the most, then the Koreans would smell of Garlic, the Italians of Pasta or Pizza. Inside India, the Bengalis would smell of fish, Keralites of coconut, punjabis of Butter Chicken and the people of Tamil Nadu might end up smelling of let's say Masala Dosa. Regardless of their nationality, people around the globe will stink, if proper hygiene is not taken care of. 

We are a hairy bunch of people I agree, but that does not send across a message that ours is a land of unibrows, unshaved armpits, chest carpets and bushy legs. Unless offcourse, if we stop running to the salon twice a month or prohibit ourselves from using waxing stripes or hair removing cream, then the case might be a bit different. Our hairiness depends on our lifestyle. While some don’t find it socially awkward to hang like monkeys inside the local transport bus, flaunting their inch long armpit fur, others cover it up or wax it off. Again, we are not the ones who complain, for we don’t believe in looking like chickens with their feathers plucked off. We are happy the way we are. The Armenians support us!

Woman in our land have the same anatomy like the women in yours. We are not merely a child producing machine. Yes, a considerable amount of marriages that happen in here are arranged by the parents, but that does not mean that we do not have a say in the matter. It is not like we meet a man today and stretch our neck to him the very next day. If you are talking about getting married to a total stranger or someone you don’t know too well, let me introduce you to the fact that you can never fully know a person in a matter of a few years anyway. What do you have to say about the massive divorce rate in your country? Yes, we do have people who have more than 3 children, but I believe the same situation is there in your country. Atleast, we do not have a never ending line of teen moms. God Bless us!

I understand our English accent is not our forte, but we have an accent which can be understood globally. Our vocal chords don’t send across lines, which a common man wouldn’t understand. I know you find the Jamaican or Italian accent cool and rather sexy, but I know that your brain blinks when it comes to deciphering what they actually meant. 

If in case, you have any stigma attached to us, enlighten me as to why you spend bundles of green papers at tanning salons or act dead on the beach? Leave the job of being Indian, to the Indians. Our Bollywood movies might be filled with songs starring dancing actors, but you shouldn’t be the one complaining especially when you love the ‘GLEE’ series.

It’s high time you quit labelling us as dwelling from the land of snake charmers or as illiterate, poor and corrupt people. OK, we might be corrupt, but didn’t you hear that we are working on it? Ours might be a crowded, heavily overpopulated and sometimes suffocating country but through all of that, the system still works and it works pretty damn well! 

Faithfully,

Just another Brown person.

P.S- This blog turns 1 yr old Today!! I cannot thank you enough for being a reader!

Image Courtesy- ribbu.com

Mole! Let's Shop!!!!

I am a big blot in the name of womanhood. I think I should have been born as a boy, but I am sure I would have turned out to be gay then, because I cannot even imagine rubbing myself to a woman. So, anyway I feel sad to acknowledge the fact that I lack the most basic characteristic of a woman, i.e her colossal craziness for shopping. 

Now this is why I love my Dad. We enter a shopping street, we follow him like a herd of buffaloes  while he does a marathon speed walk from Starting point ‘A’ to the end point ‘Z’ and then poignantly declare that the street has nothing good to offer.  This is followed by my mother nagging me to join her on a secret mission of going to the same shopping street the next day without my father. Shopping with her is a more than just terrifying experience.  

The day starts of with her nudging me out of my sleep, just so that I help her make a list of the things to be bought. She stopped making lists herself from the day the shop keeper boisterously laughed and thus embarrassing her just because she wrote ‘PEARS SOAP’ as ‘PIERCE SOAP. If the list includes ‘Saree’ then I know for sure that my day is doomed.

My mother’s shopping can be divided into three parts- The quarter finals, the semi finals and the finals. She enters a Saree shop and asks the man to show her the latest silk sarees. He starts showing her every silk piece of cloth in his shop, only to realize that the woman is now interested in cotton, because it suddenly dawned to her senses that it is summer. As he shows her the collection, which normal people like me would have bought without even thinking twice, she affirms her likeness with a ‘Hmmm’ and rejects a material with a ‘Tch’. These are the only two words that escape her mouth for what seems like 2 hours. Out of the ones selected, she again does the ‘Hmmm’ and ‘Tch’ process two more times, hence the semi finals and the final round. Sometimes, when there is a tie between two equally amazing sarees, she lets me choose and when I do choose, she buys the one I didn’t. Oh she trusts my taste!

I am the kind of person, who loves shopping when it comes to buying gifts. But when it comes to shopping for me, hell breaks loose. I usually end up shopping alone followed by getting back home licking on a generous scoop Chocolate Ice-cream. The best way to spend money is eating. AMEN!

So, why exactly am I writing about this now? Well, I sent letters to each member of my family for this Valentine’s Day, making them my Valentine. I wrote how much I loved them, how I am what I am because of them and I even let them know what I loved the most about each one of them. Since, I am a narcissist I ordered them to reply to me via SMS, telling me what they loved the most about me. 

My father sent me- “Mole, your mother told me you sent me a letter. Haven’t read it because I am stuck in the office, but your Amma read it through phone for me. I love the fact that you are my daughter and even as you grow up, you are the same innocent little girl at heart”

He loves the fact that I am his daughter? What else did he expect!! And about being the innocent girl at heart, I hate to burst his bubble.

My brother sent me through my Dad’s phone- “I know you are trying to impress Mom and Dad by doing this. Anyway, lots of spelling mistakes in the letter. I told you, my school is better than yours! And I love the fact that you are not here to boss over me.”

My mother sent me this- “Mole, Loved the letter. Brought tears in my eyes. What I love the most about you is that you love shopping with me.” 

Sometimes, you just have to hide your real feelings. I am!! I have conspired so many times about burning down the shop she is planning to shop in, just so that I can escape the agony. Mothers! The worst manipulators! And btw, never mess with a woman when she is busy shopping. 

P.S- I have been travelling a lot and hence, the lack of action in this space. This sadly, is going to continue for a few more days.

P.P.S- Well, the considerably less comments on my previous blog post, shows that people actually comment on my posts just because I comment on theirs. I couldn’t read and comment on blogs for some days, and the result can be seen on my blog. People believe in the ‘I SCRATCH YOUR BACK, YOU SCRATCH MINE’ policy. I seriously doubt the credibility of blogging.

P.P.P.S- Happy Valentine’s day to everyone who is stupid enough to actually celebrate this. Me and Prateek did a collaboration and ended up with THIS. He is an amazing writer!