A highly offensive post on the subject of being (Part 1)

1. You know how all articles or advertisements about women say ‘She’s a mother, a sister, a friend…’? It makes me want to wipe out a few worlds.
It took me 20 minutes to steel myself to even type it out. I had to frame the sentence, take a walk, insult some callers, do a few minutes of Kapal bhaati and then do what the shoe brand urges me to.
Because? We don’t live our lives within labels. Those words up there? Those are names for relationships. A series of which, along with experiences and consciousness, is called living. Life is a bildungsroman.
You are not being a mother, a daughter, a sister, you are living relationships and performing duties as a course of existence. At what point do you stop being a daughter? When your parents die or you are not in their presence?
Men, they are suggesting, exist without forming relationships. Not even with their loving hand.
I am a harried mobile-user, juggling my rickshaw usage and with my ATM withdrawal duties. I need to escape and just be myself.

2. Those are not the only labels that rile me up, would you believe? I save aside an ampoule of potent venom for branded crutches. Such as Star Sign-endorsed excuses. ‘I’ll never learn to swim; I have an irrational fear of water. I’m an Earth sign, yaar. I need my feet firmly on the ground”.
There’s a nice choice of debilitation. Self-survival and the story of the Titanic makes us fear water. Youth is the best time to get over such fears before your mind is set on the path of certain death. Any fear is harder to overcome when older. That’s why I can’t use the mixer.
You fear something because you haven’t done it before or have had a bad experience. Don’t blame the constellation. They want nothing to do with us.

Here’s a cute doggie to distract those I’ve offended:

He is not allowed to go outside the gate. So he bends the rules to say hello to you.

FAQ:
How does he get back in?
Those ears are retractable.

Currently pissing me off

1. People who misspell my name in the mail addressed to my firstname.lastname@gmail.

2. Slang or verbs contorted into nouns. E.g. Join my finger to get plugged into my nose. Why not: Join my finger to plug into my nose?

3. Every blog idea already executed by better bloggers.

Not yet at terms

I’m expecting two friends over today… well two of Tushar’s friends really. Our lives have merged together so much over the past seven years that they’re all Tushar’s friends now and all I have is a merlin.
As I was saying… we’re having two friends over today and I hope to spend the weekend mimicking my earlier life, which was avoiding reality using mild intoxication.
Which is hard now. I went to a friend’s house yesterday, for work. And after I was done, he urged me to hang about. This was the hardest hanging about I’ve done in a while.
I kept thinking: For what? What do we do now? Do you have an itinerary? HOW ARE WE GOING TO HANG AROUND DOING NOTHING? WE HAVE TO HAVE A LIST OF THINGS TO DO WHILE HANGING ABOUT.
The tension rose with every minute and he finally had to order his big dog to sit on me stop the struggling as he forced a nervine tonic down my throat and then we were all right.
Except that the dog started talking to me. Which is not the problem because I’m good with languages. He started speaking in konkani, which reminded me of my dead grandmother, and all the wonderfully violent things she would say. E.g. Say you’re ill. Really ill. And insist on going to work/school/college. To that my grandma would say: Baghte kashe zaate. Tangdach todun thevin. (We’ll see how you go. I’ll just break your legs so you can’t move).
Or if you misbehaved, she’d threaten to hang you upside down from the fan and smoke red chillies under you.
My favourite was when you’d get hurt, she’s light a ghee lamp, singe a cotton ball and press it to the wound.
I think the problem is this: I don’t have a plan for the afterlife.
We didn’t have a very religious upbringing and just made stuff along as we went. The broad concept was that when you died, you went to God. I don’t know what you did with God and how you’d even talk to a guy you’d spent a lifetime worrying about looking over your shoulder. It wasn’t unlike being called to the principal’s office. You’d sit there, across a large desk on chair from where your feet couldn’t reach the ground, while he went around his business of seeing what everyone was up to.
Maybe he’d look up and ask me the tables beyond 5 and then in my afterlife, I would actually have to learn all of them instead of just adding together like I did in exams.
At some point they told me about going through the entire cycle of births for even the slightest fuck up and I realised I could not win. If I’m going to have to go through the entire evolutionary cycle (from single cell organism to the wonder that is man) for blaming the mess on my brother, nirvana was a long long long time ahead.
I spent the last two years of school in a convent and got interested in Christianity, mainly because they had more fun. They had society sanctioned ball which allowed close interaction with boys, *hip names like Rita and Rosie, did the jive and wore frocks all the time. I started going to church and talking to the priest, who gave me a copy of the Bible. I skipped past all the confusing chapters to the Revelations, because everyone knows the Revelations are the important bit? That’s what the movies say.
So the sinners go to hell and the god fearing go to heaven, which are clearly different in landscaping and entertainment.
But they specified parameters for sinners and I was in the clear, except that they didn’t mention anything about non-paos. I asked my friend, who pointed downwards and waved bye-bye. There was not much choice there. Even though the Revelations freaked the hell out of me to the point that I started praying fervently to Mary mid-reading, there was no way my parents were going to allow me to convert. I was 14 and parental approval was crucial seeing how they could just change my school and freedom of reading.
Then there were some inputs from Theosophists and Buddhists about the different planes and how the soul advances through these levels by shedding negative baggage.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven says each of us creates a heaven for ourselves to wait out eternity or the time till the next shuffle. That is probably the least convincing version of the afterlife
In adulthood, I settled for generic cynicism. You die, don’t pass Go, head for the white light and if you have strong feelings about afterlife, you’ll see St Peter, or a few virgins (or at least technically virgins), or the bare desert you have to cross with only your own faith. If you are low on belief, you’ll see painted backdrops, pulleys and ropes and some giggly girls in long dresses that must be a bitch to keep clean.
You may not meet your friends, your dogs, your relatives.
My grandmother was a Tuesdays-Thursdays-Shravan vegetarian, fasting-on-the-right-days kind of Hindu. According to a more graphic description, she’s hanging-upside down over a canyon, waiting for her descendants to hurry up and bear children so that she can be reborn.
So in my case, she’s upside-down, ranting and threatening to break my legs if I don’t get knocked up. Not very different from what she did here. At least the view is different.

*To be honest, the attraction to those names was more a part of my pre-10 years.

New project

Adding to the astonishing list of unfinished projects is the new blog Style Per Diem. I didn’t like how the What I’m Wearing page looked on this blog and most importantly, I couldn’t see what you were wearing.
G, whom I met through this blog, has kindly nurtured my enthusiasm. Surprisingly, not all girls on the Internet are ageing bald men.
We’ve got a few posts courtesy my sartorially inspirational sister-in-law, the Foreignchi Patlin and other friends.
We’d all like to see what you’re wearing, so if you have a WordPress account, just drop me or G a line at inopinate at gmail or educatedtatya at gmail and we’ll add you as contributor. The shortcut is to send us a picture with a description, and mentally will us to get around to posting it.

As quick-witted as Haley’s comet

An old friend relocates to India and the gang meets up for drinks and dostana. The conversation turns to the topic we’re all here for — the details of a current divorce.
SV remarks that I’m the only one still married; everyone else is divorced or let-down. “And we always thought you’d be the first one to get divorced.” Laughs. That’s the fifth time she’s said that. And she says it every time we meet.
Oh my dear, dear friend. If I wasn’t: 1. Debating whether that was a personal jab 2. Afraid of ruining a reunion 3. Thinking of an appropriate come-back. 4. Mentally editing and rewording the come-back 5. Practising saying the comeback with the right inflection, I would totally say something cutting.

Or I’ll cut my hair

Does this happen to you? You want to write, but there’s nothing to write about. I have about five “topics” in mind and if you were my editor, I would earnestly spin them into stories, ask a shrink for an opinion and tie it all up with a sweet pirated semi-nude picture.
You know what the problem is? Wait, I know what the problem is.
I am stuck. I’m stuck in life and terribly horribly bored. I’ve been in the same job for the past three years and living in the same suburb for nearly 16.
Please don’t say heartless things like at least you have a job and your health. There is a name for a situation like this — our classical friend calls it the Limbo. The last exciting thing to happen to me was in 2007.
I could really use a change. A change in work, a change in home, a change in city. I’ll even settle for a change in floors.
So this is my ultimatum, universe. I have it on good authority that you spend a lot of time on the internet and take advice from bloggers on how to avoid inter-stellar catastrophes.
I want to move out of this city. I want to move to another country. I’d like a fun-er job. Please.
I want out. I have done my time.

18/7/09

I’m wearing an outfit from what I dub my Perin Aunty wardrobe. If I was going to visit my Parsee grandmother-in-law, I’d wear a red glass bangle and a Farohar pendant in hopes of finding a place in her will. I usually come back with a brun pao.
I also have a Rosie Aunty wardrobe (before anyone is offended, let me confess that I have a long postponed post about my desperate desire to be a paowalla); a Happy Birthday Kevin wardrobe (with delicious outfits that aim to give our 22-year-old trainee Kevin something to think about at home); a Sexy Librarian wardrobe (for formals); and a Abla Naari Social Worker look.

Top: This tank in mustard
Skirt: This one From cotton colours. I plan to learn to stitch this.
Accessories: The Seiko watch, the Tibetan charm, two shell and brass bangles and one turquoise bangle.
Shoes: My sandals for this summer.

17/4/09

I needed to get another wear out of the jeans before I put them for a wash.
Top: The plain white Vero Moda blouse I bought yesterday (Rs 80, outside Vile Parle station).
Pants: Ink blue Levis (L567)
Accessories: A Tibetan talisman on a long silver chain. This is currently my favourite neckpiece (I’m a bit tired of short beads) and it makes every outfit a little special. Two shell bangles, one wax bangle and one with turquoise inlay. Casio watch (in hindsight, should have worn Tushar’s Titan formal watch).
Shoes: I was going to do the Bombay classic of magenta kolhapuris and then remembered my Ochre oxfords from Clarks.
Hair was worn curly (BodyShop curly defining something) with the fringe pinned back with yellow bobby pins.

16/4/09

An assignment in the Western suburbs meant I had to wear something that would look clean, professional and keep me cool.

Top: Slimming tee from Cotton World. I buy them whenever they go on sale.
Pants: The perfect trousers from CW.
Accessories: Red faux patent belt from Westside, TB’s automatic Seiko watch and this statement ring. I’m really into them right now.

Also, used product in my hair and wondered, for the 500th time, why I don’t do that more often. I wanted to wear my hair curly, but tied it up since I was going to spend approximately 3 hours in the train.
Shoes: Chocolate brown loafers from Clarks.

15/4/09

Had a doggie story to do today so I wanted to wear something that would be comfortable for a roll in the pup.

Top: The other colour in the Vero Moda top.
Jeans: Ink blue Levis (L567).
Accessories: Three slim silver bangles, statement right and the Casio watch. This birthday satchel which I only have a grainy picture of.

The ring

Shoes: Chocolate loafers from Clarks. You will soon notice my fetish for men’s shoes.