Tailor Made Love

You must know that I am hard to please when it comes to love. I wont be happy with a one-size-fits all kind of love, I seek a tailor-made exclusive outfit for myself. I am a piece of velvet, which when you stroke the right way is smooth to touch, but if you brush the other way, you would only find me rough. I come in not one colour, but a myriad of colours- bits of hyperactive jumpy orange, disproportionate reds of uncontrollable love and passion, spread across a massive purple of dreams and ambitions, greens of laziness and self doubt, lovely pinks of innocent candid memories, blues of brokenness and even browns of being aloof and heartless at times. When you choose the fabric print, I wont go with the polka dots of compliments regularly spaced in a background of fancy dinners, or the typical stripes of small talks about day to day life, or even the checkered confinement of your taking charge of my well-being and safety, I want the pattern to be haphazard and random, where you let me experiment with different designs of experiences, relationships and emotions. Dont make it too well-fitting, because it may jut out the flab of insecurities I want to hide and might also suffocate me- let it have enough room to accommodate my need to be alone at times. Remember to keep it padded to cover my fears, give it deep pockets on both sides, where I could stuff all my secrets, dreams and desires and also run a zip on one side of the dress, which would take time and effort to open my bare skin of incessant talks. You would also need to finely darn some holes from the tattered past. If you choose to keep the sleeves, remember that I tend to carry my heart out there. Stitch it all together with the thread of your love and involvement and carefully embroider the word love right in the centre for the world to see, but again, not in the mechanized font type but in your own handwriting of care. Add little shiny sequins of happy-sad moments of your life and embellish me with your thoughts and memories. And in the end, tuck it all with a practical belt which has enough holes to keep space for uncertainties. I promise to you, I wont keep it locked up in my wardrobe only to wear for a special occasion, I would wear it every day, day in and day out, so much that it would become my second skin and it will be next to impossible to strip me off from the layer of you and the comfort you clothe me in.

Roots of Desire

He says she ruined him and broke his heart But his heart was already cracked when they met She only planted her passion in those crevices, And he gave it sunlight and watered it wet. This was enough for her to grow even in barren land, She flourished and grew all over him like wild grass, Her roots clutched his heart and spread all over like veins and nerves Invading his farms of rationality, cordoned territories she trespassed Who could you blame if she didn’t flower in spring, For what else could grow on stony land, but wild creepers, The harsh seasons only made the wilderness drier, Taking everything with her, she left with a wildfire. Now the land has been cemented and sealed, Getting huge investments for business deals from real-estate, The same heart which bled from the pricks of the shoot-thorns, Now is hammered down with blunt nails, holding picture frames. He waits for it to turn into a graveyard soon, Where bolted caskets, trapping death, will be buried beneath, It will still house more emotions, by the grieving visitors, Who would bring back to him the wild creepers, in decorated wreaths.

4 Point Something

Warning- Slightly sarcastic, partly true, here is the most demotivating, yet slightly liberating post for you. Usually you would come across posts listing the things you should do before turning so and so age. This post may or may not (because I am not too confident about my influence on people) make you excessively laid back- I shall not take any responsibility for your dysfunctional behaviour. Frankly, you should not get influenced by me, if I were among the first humans to evolve, while all others would have been busy discovering fire, making solid shelter and weapons/tools, I would have been that Neanderthal who slept on a tree not bothering if a tiger hunted me down. I would have gone extinct long back, with my resistance to evolve refusing the idea of Darwinism. So it is all an idea- I have not conducted any tests on its practicality- quack quack (see image below- after reading the post) One of my closest friends once told me, “We live in an illusion of hurry” and frankly it was the revelation of the ultimate truth for me! We humans, first invent the concept of time and then continuously chase/race it all our lives. Since I am turning 26 in a couple of weeks, here is my tiny list of things you needn’t necessarily have done before turning my age. 1. Get married and have kids- Yes, the regular, the usual. I know the biological clocks are ticking and probably getting married and having kids is the right thing to do. To suggest not doing so, may be as wrong an advice as a 15year old me would give for not needing to study further and have a college degree. But at this point, I feel there’s no hurry, I cant desperately rush into falling in love with someone (and I cant imagine spending the rest of my life with a person otherwise) just because my baby-carrying capacity might be reducing with age. My mom had me when she was 39 and I turned out to be fine (well, almost). And there is no shortage of people in the world. I think the world can do pretty well if some of us don’t reproduce. 2. Have your financial life sorted and save 1/3rd of your salary- At 25, you have lived just 1/3rd of your life and worked for 1/10th of your work-life. Unless you plan to retire by 40, why waste the prime age of your life saving for a tired exhausted self, 15years from now. And if you have it all by 30, what will you do with all the earnings post-30? 3. Know your passion, have an active hobby- If you are as distracted as me, you would do well in short term projects but suck at things which require persistence and dedication. And to be a master at something, you really need persistence. If you are really good at something- Kudos to you. I don’t mind being the average jill of all trades, or even jill of few trades. They look really good in a matrimonial profile or if you pursue alternative careers but if you are stuck in a corporate life, making “serious” money, your skills will fade with time and you will be the same as the boring guy who didn’t dance/sing/write/create/read and probably he will be better than you because he focussed all his boring energies in his serious career while you were distracted by your “hobbies”. 4. Make your time memorable with small moments- I know friends who continuously seek to make small gatherings memorable but frankly that gets me more restless- to be chasing memories. It is okay to have no interesting response to “whats up”/”how was your weekend” if you are content and at peace “wasting” your time doing nothing, locked up alone in your room. As long as it doesn’t ride you up with guilt, you are fine doing nothing at all. It is so relaxing to not be taxed up about not doing anything- you have attained nirvana. You have attained the highest level in Maslow’s hierarchy! So stay in your blanket, don’t do anything productive while the world rushes into it. Once they are done with it, they will probably end up comforting their tired selves in a warm cozy blanket- and guess what, you are already there! PS- On a serious note, the only two advice a to-be 26year old has for you is: 1. Stay healthy, you have got only your body and mind that would remain with you- make them last. Because if you live like there is no tomorrow, you will love it so much, you would want to have two more tomorrows. So keep that in account when you live today and let your body sustain it. And a happy body and mind does help a lot in keeping one at peace. 2. You can do whatever you want with your life as long as it doesnt hurt someone else. A clear conscience= happy mind! Even your judgements about how someone else is living their life isnt required, it is in the end, their life, they can choose to waste it.

Grooming and Feminism

There was this one time in college, when I had put a facepack on and one of my feminist friends ridiculed me for doing it. Other than feeling embarrassed, I considered it anti feminist to be told what I needed to do as a girl to uplift myself. If she were a true feminist, she should have let me indulge in my pleasures, celebrate my femininity without worrying about what the world thinks about it. I still stand by it that one is free to whatever he/she pleases but aren’t some of these thrust down on us by the world as bare necessities? I mean, of this huge world population of 7 billion, isn’t it surprising that one entire gender goes one extra mile beyond looking presentable and removes hair from their hands/legs/eyebrows/armpits/upper lips while it isn’t as popular among males. If it represented basic cleanliness, the entire human kind should have done it and if it not, why is it particularly trending in one specific gender. Yes there is still a personal choice and you are free to exercise it but talk about ratios. It is definitely more trending among girls than boys. Why is nail polish, lipstick and makeup female-specific. I wouldn’t have said why don’t men wear bras, they don’t have boobs, but men have lips and nails yet it is an activity more popular in women. You can even call it a privilege because I know some of my guy friends who really want to apply make up in public but cant do so- why is the privilege only reserved for women? On one side, it is a shameful thing to do by men yet so popular in the other gender that men get repelled by unshaven legs. It may still be your personal choice to not do it, I am not talking about you specifically, I do it, but why do women as an entire lot consider this necessary. Nobody forced me to do it, but I started doing it when I saw all my girl-friends doing it. When I found it too cumbersome to get my hands and legs hairfree, a guy actually commented that it seems like I haven’t shaved in a while. And for some reason, I felt embarrassed, like I was supposed to. I should have just glanced at his legs and said pretty much like you. When was the last time you shaved it? Grooming has been accepted almost like a norm, a sea-wave by girls and guys want it so; they like hairless girls, because it is more common to see hairless girls that a hairy girl stands out. It is more like it is expected out of girls and at the same time, expected from guys to not do it. You may or may not do it but the fact still remains that the ratio of those doing it is way more in women than guys. Guys don’t bikini wax their balls, they might shave, so can we. Why do we bother to go for bikini wax? Again, you can call it privilege but how I see it is that when during evolution, women looked after the offspring and men took over the physical work, we evolved to have lesser strength because it wasn’t needn’t anymore. Like how if you continuously work out, you build your muscles, the males evolved to have more physical strength than women. And since in that age, where there was not much of brainy work required, they gradually got considered the better gender and we the lesser ones had to please them by dolling up fancy for them. But now we are evolving, we are doing the same work guys do, we need to give ourselves an equal chance without having the gender difference as a bias. If you are weak, don’t accept it is because you are a female; you are just a weaker person from others. Only then, generations later we could be equally strong, if the popular belief about our biological setup that males are physically stronger is true. We need to challenge our biological frames to evolve. Giraffes didn’t stop at their limitations of smaller necks when the trees kept growing. If it is true now, challenge it to change the dynamics in future. I am not giving a solution- I don’t have one. In this sea wave, it is very easy to get carried away by the flow and as a drop you can’t expect the sea to follow you just because you think it is the right direction. You cant change the sea waves to change direction but if you want to stay put, you just have to sink in your feet deeper in the sand. You can dress up as much you want, be a doll, be a tsunami- take the world by charge and start a new fashion trend! I, for myself have chosen to not care about shaving or threading if I don’t want to. If a guy can live and manage with unthreaded eyebrows and hairy armpits, so can I. If that’s too unattractive for the world with a majority of gracefully trimmed girls, the world isn’t ready for me yet. If you are a drop like me, join in, we can a make a small puddle of hairy girls at the shore. And yes, that doesn’t mean, I would be betraying myself I do wax or thread. I am just relieving myself from the idea that I have to do it as a societal necessity neither am I obligated to not shave for feminist confirmation.

Misplaced Heart

My heart is the tamed cattle of the farm, Reared and domesticated for ages. Lulled to monotony, while it grazes unarmed, Supposedly free yet bound by invisible cages. It is bred and milked till the time it could, The comfort provided is only a barter for its worth, As long as it reaps, it stays half-alive for good, Until one day it is slaughtered down to dirt. But your memories take my half-dead heart to the wild, Strolling with uncertainty on which its life hangs, Not knowing when you would spring up from behind, Attack and tear it down, as per your moody hunger pangs. I don’t know which is worse and which better, Being unpredictably hunted or being perennially tamed, The fate of heart decided by those, to whom it doesn’t matter, Only because it lies lower to them in the food chain. But if given an option, I would choose the woods that keep the wilderness lush, Where atleast for a while, with no boundaries I could freely stray, For one is most alive, fighting for survival with an adrenaline rush And if my heart is nimble enough, it could escape and run away.

Monday mornings got better

Even the alarm sounds shriller on a Monday morning. The snooze button is only a depressing reminder that no matter how much you stall, you still have to lift your lazy bones and get to work. Work. The same monotonous work you do endlessly for your employer so that some business thrives. Some people are exceptionally motivated to work for others. I am not one of them, especially not on Mondays or in the mornings. I am the sulky one. Trading off taking a shower for 5more minutes of sleep only helps me in manifesting my gloomy mood outright to the world. The swollen eyes and the dishevelled hair match the frown on my face perfectly. Sigh. The first day of the week already starts with my being late. I grumpily pick my car keys and drag my feet to the car. Even though the distance from my home to office is only 7kms, it takes me 30minutes to reach; 40 on a Monday. It is as if, the Monday monster specially employs people to jam the roads to make your mornings dreadful. And as if jamming the road wasn’t enough to entertain him, he ensures that jockeys in every radio station lose their sense of music on Mondays to play the most dreadfully drab music. I switch through the radio channels only to find three channels playing ads and one playing the song from the times of dinosaurs. I snap and switch off the radio. Anyway, no music could have made my mood any better. Just when I switch off the radio button, the traffic signal also turns from green to red, when I almost reach the junction. “Well played, Monday monster”, I think, “you are on fire! I hope you burn.” The countdown ticker shows another 180 seconds before the signal turns green again. I roll my eyes and at the same time a red Beetle rolls down next to me. It is blaring with loud music and mind you, not the sane kind of music, the girl in the car is pleasing herself to Britney Spears. I almost cough out a smirk as her music system declares that it did it again. I roll my eyes again and try to steal a side glance at her. From the corner of my eyes, I first spot her hands on the steering wheel, sporting a bottle green nail polish. I pronounce her to be a stupid attention seeker right there. More careful glances make me notice that contrary to her funky nail polish, she is actually wearing formals. I then take a deep breath and dare to completely turn my head and have a proper look at her. What I see makes me laugh. The girl not older than 22, in the middle of an absorbing traffic, is lost! Lost in her own world, singing along to the music with a set of 16M colourful expressions. I amused myself to her funny expressions, as she mouthed the words, “I am not that innocent” with the girlish air of importance and then rolled her head around at Oh Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! I almost lost track of the 180 seconds until the car behind me honked to remind me that the signal had turned green. For a while, I was transported to the front most line of audience for a Britney Spears concert. Or maybe, though uninvited, openly welcome into a innocent girls imaginative heart, who was right there fantasising herself to be the mean girl, playing with someone’s heart ‘again’. Maybe, it wasn’t new to her, maybe that’s why she was so comfortably unaware that she had audience. Maybe she was used to stealing peoples heart at traffic signals and the song just perfectly summarising it for her while she enjoyed losing another game. As I drove ahead, I quickly opened my youtube app and searched for the same song. How silly of me, to consider just 5minutes back that there could be no song that could lift my spirits. I find the song and plug in my speakers to my phone. “Oops I did it again!” The rest of my way, I also sing along the song stupidly and visualise my newly found Britney Spears emoting her feelings into it. I did like considering the idea that we were more than just friends! I smile sheepishly as the dreads of the Monday monster lift away from me. Monday morning just got better. “Oops I did it again!”

Subway with Cheese

They say no great story started with a salad. I would disagree, owing to personal experience. It all started with starting a healthy diet and going to subway for my lunch from office. As I stood there in the veggie section, mulling over what I veggies I wanted in my sub, adjacent to me, in the non-veg section stood a guy (in formals, so I inferred he belonged to the same office-going crowd searching for a healthy meal for lunch) with his id-card hanging around his neck. The subway guy came up to me and asked for my preference of bread. Right when I said, honey-oat, the office-going labelled guy pronounced the same preference, honey-oats. I smiled to myself, weighing the odds of choosing the same bread when there were 6options on the table. The sub-guys split one foot into halves for the two of us, while I giggled myself to the idea that we are literally sharing the same loaf (and in my head while I said it, I mispronounced loaf as love!) After the cheese was added and toasted (and chicken slices were put in his), to my astonishment, we responded in same manner for our veggies preferences as well. All veggies- except jalapenos. By then I got a little too wary and waited for him to complete his order to ensure he wasn’t just mimicing my order. Bad decision, I must say, because now it seemed as if I were mimicing his. So after he ordered his sub to have more onions,capsicum and olives, I , to save some grace, didn’t mention to my sub-guy that I also needed more onions and olives and merely pointed at the capsicum to be added more. Since his non-veg sub took more time to prepare, we were back at the same point of choosing our sauces at the same time. Again, almost unbelievably, both of us chorussed “southwest” as if it was scripted. I looked at him with my eyebrows raised as high as I could. Having been amused himself, he gave me a dimpled smirk and asked, “Honey Mustard?” and I nodded and while looking at him told my sub-guy to add sweet onion and he replied saying “lots of it. And also mint mayo.” Perfect! Perfect! The geeky side within me was trying to find the probability of the orders being exactly the same while I looked at him with a squeamish nervous smile. I guess the odds were unnaturally rare, because as soon as our subs were packed and sent for billing, going by the similarity of our orders, the billing person asked if we were together. I just looked at him, smiled and said, “maybe we should be!”. He took the cue positively and responded, “Oh yes! We are!” And that was just the beginning of our full-course meal! P.s. – sorry for the cheesiness, I just like my sub with extra cheese!