The Dark Knight Rises

Despite my love for all comic books, and their onscreen adaptations, the Holy Grail, for my generation at least, is the Batman series by Christopher Nolan. I was too young to have caught the Tim Burton's seminal Batman Returns, and the following adaptations, well, sucked. (Sorry, Clooney.)

My opinion, for what it's worth is that Christopher Nolan's Batman has changed the way comic book movies are made. Their impact will be felt for decades to come, and I feel nothing but pity for the person who has to eventually 'reboot' the series at the behest of a money-hungry studio. (Given that Spiderman is being 'rebooted' a mere 4 years after Spiderman-3 as The Amazing Spiderman, we may not have to wait that long for some idiot to try) The Dark Knight is THE Batman movie, no question. 

That long prologue was a lead up to my thoughts on the trailer of the next and supposedly final instalment of the trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, which was released yesterday. If rumours and conjecture are to be believed, then this movie is said to be loosely based on Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Lending credence to this theory are the bits of the trailer that suggest that this movie is set several years after The Dark Knight (a cursory internet search tells me that Nolan has said 8 years later) and Commissioner Gordon is about to retire. In the graphic novel, Batman has vanished (and presumably gone into retirement). I believe it's likely that this is true in the movie as well, that after the events at the end of The Dark Knight, a despondent Batman hung up his cape and cowl. Hence the title of the third movie. (or is the correct term threequel?)

The trailer, while not as mind-blowing as the first looks of the previous movie, have me excited all over again. I'm never as happy as when I'm looking forward to a summer blockbuster, especially when that blockbuster happens to involve a certain caped crusader. The appearance of Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle and Marion Cotillard as Talia Al Ghul (although the latter appears very briefly in the new trailer) should be enough to keep all the fanboys excited. Other high points include Michael Caine's emotional entreaty to Bruce at the beginning, the already impressive action sequences, and the reference to Commissioner Gordon as a 'war hero in peace time'.

While The Joker is the most vital of all of Batman's enemies, Heath Ledger's definitive performance and his subsequent death mean that this particular role will not be revived, at least in Nolan's Batworld.And this is the aspect that concerns me the most. The footage of Bane, played by Tom Hardy, that I have seen so far, has not managed to convince me otherwise. Whether it is unintelligible mumblings in the 6-minute prologue (that I, admittedly, saw online, even though it was meant for the IMAX) or his appearance in the trailer, so far, I'm not entirely sure how Bane will stack up against other cinematic Batman villains, most importantly, The Joker played by Ledger. 

So here's the thing, I'm super excited, but my excitement is tempered with doubt. Therefore, to get myself through the next 5-6 months, I am going to trust the genius of Christopher Nolan and his team, who have, for the most part, been on point through the course of this series.

Oh, and I CAN'T WAIT!

Number 11

59.

The Wall

I feel that I have not spoken about my love of cricket adequately on this platform. It has been lost amongst the myriad depressing posts about all the great (insert eye-roll) sorrows in life. However, i feel it is important for you, my reader, to know that I unreservedly love the game, and I have since I was a teenager. 

Perhaps another time, I will discuss why I love this game, and exactly how I love it. Today, I want to bring attention to one of the great champions of the game, Rahul Dravid, who also happens to be my all time favourite cricketer. Normally, most people reserve that special spot for Sachin Tendulkar, and rightfully so. Tendulkar's genius is the kind that is seen once in a century, perhaps just once ever. However Dravid is the consummate cricketer in my opinion. He is thoughtful, classy, seasoned, and above all, he is a gentleman. On the field and off, he has shown his complete dedication to the team. All of these great qualities were on display in Australia on 14th December 2011, when he delivered the Don Bradman Oration. 

If you have time and are so inclined, please do go through the full text of the speech here. What struck me most, and what I would like to emphasize here is his belief that the core values of the game need to be retained going forward, and that it was vital that Test cricket not relegated to the sidelines in the coming years. While I enjoy the spectacle of the T-20 format, and actually actively love the ODI form of the game, my heart belongs to Test cricket, as I suspect the exemplary Rahul Dravid's does. It is the purest form of the game, where strategy is as important as technique. The long form of the game, Dravid claims, is the 'gold standard'. I agree.

Ripped Open

I did something today. I blurted out something deeply private in a public forum, where I was surrounded by people I see, more or less, very regularly. I did it out of anger, while responding to someone's truly insufferable comments. Still, that seems like a poor excuse. Truthfully, I'm not a deeply private person, at all. At all. Many people know a lot of things about me that most would consider private. However, this felt a bit different. As soon as I opened my mouth, I regretted it deeply. I could see momentary shock, and then pity, and then discomfort in the eyes of those around me. The shock and discomfort, I'm okay with; those I have dealt with my whole life. It's the pity I can't stand. It's the pity that kills me, destroys me, finishes me. 

No point regretting a momentary lapse in judgement, I suppose. It's just that I feel deeply vulnerable now, like my flesh has been ripped open.

A Broken Heart

Note: This blog post was written on the 16th of November 2011 and published for a brief hour before I decided to take it down as it felt too raw and personal. I felt like the person who is addressed here might read this and be disdainful of how I am feeling. Upon further consideration, I think it needs to go up because censoring myself seems so antithetical to everything I believe in. And so it's going up again.I hope the 2.5 of you that read on a regular basis will understand and be kind.

There's an awfully cheesy song from the 70s. I think it's by the Beegees. It goes, 'How can you mend a broken heart?' and then on from there on to more cheese. And as much as I hate the cheese, that one phrase has been stuck in my head these past few days. 

Do I even need to explain further? Isn't is obvious then, that my heart is broken? 

I had the most excellent October. And an excellent first half of November as well. It's so unusual for me to let go and not worry about the other shoe that is about to drop, and that is exactly what I did. I let go. I had so much pure, unadulterated fun. And of course, on Monday, the 14th of November, at 1 AM, the other shoe dropped. I feel punished. I feel like I allowed myself to be too happy, and that is why the broken heart is all the more devastating. I feel like I invited the dropping shoe by being happy. Since I allowed myself to stop worrying, and become hopeful, and happy and relaxed, I let my guard down. Now I am paying the price for this stupidity. 

How is this one shitty and stupid thing that I did when I was just a child coming back to hurt me so badly and so often now? I invested myself in one bad friendship and it has not stopped hurting me ever since. And I did it to myself. As much as I would like to blame other people, I did this. I did this to myself, I allowed this to happen. I invited this trouble and heartbreak into my life.

We all grow up. None of us is, at the age of 27, the same as we were at the age of 12 or 17 or 22. Gooseberrie and I, when were rather young, had a very close friend. She liked all the same things as us. We did everything together. We all spent all our waking hours joined at the hip. And over the years, slowly but surely, it became apparent that this girl no longer enjoyed all the same things that we did. So, we grew apart, like millions of friends all over the world, all through the ages have done. There was no anger, no animosity, no acrimony, just a growing acknowledgement that this is what happens, people grow apart.

This latest growing apart, the one that has caused all the heartbreak, was not like that. I feel all those things that I didn't feel at the age of 16. I feel the anger, animosity and acrimony. I feel blinding, scalding hatred. I feel such unmitigable rage that there are days when I literally cannot breathe. In the past, when I felt like a relationship was souring or no longer worked, I tended towards cold rather than hot. I would become formal, distant, clipped. I would become cool and indifferent. This experience is wildly diverse from that one. 

Now, this person has gone and done an unforgivable thing. This person has reduced me to a stranger. And all my anger and hatred has multiplied a millionfold to become a deep and abiding sorrow that runs so deep, I cannot cry. I am unsettled all day. I feel outside myself, detached from my life. And unhappy. All day long, I feel unhappy, bereft. Something inside me is actually broken. I can feel it piercing through my skin and heart and kidneys. I can feel it tearing its way through my stomach. I can feel its sharp insistent gnawing in my lungs. I can feel it blinding my eyes.

I still can't understand what I did to deserve all this. That is the part I am having the most trouble with. So, here's the thing, there isn't really a thing here. There's just a sadness that is deep and pervasive and just will not go away.

Happy Birthday

It's that special time of the year again. I think, as per tradition, I will try and put something up the day of. In the meanwhile, I want to address a very specific quirk of mine. I've been constantly asked since the age of 17 why I don't celebrate my birthday. Before that, I knew very few people, and they had all known me since I was a child. It never occurred to anyone to question what had always been.

When I joined college was the first round of questioning. When you attend college with 3000 screaming, tittering, butterfly-loving, pink-wearing teenage girls, it's hard enough to explain to them why you swear profusely or talk like a man. If you add in weird birthday issues, you have a bunch of young women all staring back at you with the accompanying soundtrack of crickets, when all they asked you was a simple question, "So what shall we do for your birthday?"

Let's start at the very beginning, I've heard it's a very good place to start. (Shame on you if you don't recognize that allusion) The beginning in this case is my family. My family as in my mother, my brother and I. We were never the happy birthday-rah-rah-rah family. Till date, none of us has a very big hoopla on our birthdays. We don't really even do presents. This is just horrifying to most of the social circle we travel in now, all of whom are middle to upper middle class to outright rich. I mean we acknowledge each other's birthdays. We've had a few stray celebrations here and there, but much like family vacations, this one tradition has simply never been a part of our family's DNA.

I think the biggest contributing factor was the very specific situation my family found itself in. We were poor, and were traumatized almost on a daily basis, both physically and emotionally. So for the formative years in our childhood, there was no question of celebrating or enjoying something. We tried to live life as quietly and unobtrusively as possible so that no one could possibly get upset or angry with us. Like I said, my mother, as and when she could, would really try hard to give us a 'normal' birthday experience, but these were few and far between, and often ended in disaster. During the early years, we did try and do presents. My mother would always try and get us clothes for birthdays, something that continued till we finished school. Our financial situation meant that she couldn't always afford to buy us nice things, but twice a year, on each of our birthdays, we would both get the nicest clothes she could buy us. Really, she took so much care and effort on this particular issue. 

Other than the clothes, we would try and do dinner, in as nice a place as we could afford at that particular time. At certain times, when there was decent income, it would be a nice 3 star restaurant and at others, when there was just very little, it would be one of the many small roadside diners that litter Madras. The clothes and dinner tradition continued till we could manage and till we all lived in the same city.

As a result of this, my brother and I never grew up with the idea that birthdays were special, that for some reason everybody should put on a party hat and parade around singing odes to the birthday boy/girl. We don't think that cake and soda and chips and samosas are essential to the birthday experience. We simply acknowledge wishes. As we are now respectable (HAH!) and contributing adults in society, we might indulge in a slightly expensive item of clothing or electronics. Beyond that, we don't really do the extravaganza. The same goes for my mother, who does manage to be a bit more festive than her two children, but not much more.

And then there is the fact that I hate my birthday. I loathe it with a vengeance. I have spent many a birthday curled up in bed, weeping. And I don’t even cry at funerals. This particular fact is hard for people to fully comprehend.

The hardest time is had by the friends I have made in the past 5-6 years. I have some friends now, that I see almost every day, that JUST DO NOT GET IT. I have no way to explain this to anyone without revealing deeply personal details of my history. I don't like my birthday. I don't like being wished. I don't like celebrating it. I don't like people remembering it. I don't like people singing to me. I don't like being reminded of my age. I don't like being berated because people believe that they have some special rights to pretend that their happiness for me should be the same as my own happiness on the day. I. DON"T. LIKE. IT. I don't want it. It's a personal choice, one I wish people would just respect rather than question incessantly. My birthday is not meant for your pleasure, it's meant for mine. And as I can not experience pleasure on my birthday, my solution is to hide from the world and pretend it's not happening. 

 

So, here's the thing, could you maybe, just not ask questions and leave me alone? It's what I wished for. 

An Oft-repeated Song

If you are even a casual peruser of my blog, then you know how often my best friend is mentioned. This blog is practically a love letter to her. And I'm sure that this must all seem weird/borderline creepy to you. Why on earth would a straight woman in her late (ugh!) twenties have such a seeming fixation on her best girlfriend from childhood? I'm not sure I have an answer for you that will assuage all your discomfort. At best, I can point you towards Grey's Anatomy, as I'm sure I've done elsewhere on this blog. Exhibit A, Meredith and Christina, which leads us directly to Exhibit B, Gooseberrie and Chelsea Dagger.Yes, my relationship with her is odd and dysfunctional, as has been noted often and at length by our other friends. I think the reason I value this relationship so much is that it is, apart from my relationship with my mother, the most fulfilling and complete one in my life. If that's a sad comment on my life, well then so be it. 

What inspired this next stanza in my titular oft-repeated song about our friendship is the recently released excerpt of Mindy Kaling's new book. In one of the many mini-chapters, she writes about best friend responsibilities, including being gentle about how a person looks in an outfit, putting up with their sad break up stories for the millionth time and raising their kid if they die. You can read the excerpt of the book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me, here. First, a quick note on my girl crush on Mindy Kaling. She's awesome, and being a fellow brown girl who writes, I love, I love, I love! Second, her hilarious note on all the things that come with being a best friend really cracked me up, and also set me thinking about what I do/will do for my best friend. So here goes:

1. I will, on all occasions, tell you the absolute truth. Even if that truth is that you look fat, ugly, and you will likely die alone, I will say it out loud. I might couch it in niceness and compare you with Natalie Portman (only she will get this joke) while I am doing it, but it shall be done, eventually.

2. I will share in your morbid sense of humour. Yes, I know you think the absolute worst thing is always about to happen, and oftentimes find it funny, but here's the lucky thing, I feel the EXACT same way! Isn't it hilarious that we're both overweight, broke and single, while our asshole ex-best friend is swanning around America with his many millions?? (falls off the chair laughing)

3. I am ALWAYS on your side. It doesn't matter what happened/will happen. It does not matter that you accidentally killed that guy who didn't pay you on time, or ran over that chick who married that guy you liked for 15 minutes that one summer, I am on your side. I will show up, help you bury the body, and hide you in my basement when the cops come looking. In the less extreme case, I will throw down with the ugly bitch that hurt your feelings over something perfectly trivial like a silly boy. Even if you are wrong, I am on your side. 

4. Since I hate children, I may not raise yours as my own when you are dead, but I promise I will pay for them to be raised as someone else's own. 

5. I will never steal a guy away from you. How many guys have we both been interested in? 1 or 2 thousand. Ah well, never you mind, I will never go for a guy that you are into or dating. There are 3 billion men in the world, but only one you. And I mean that in a not-gay way. 

All these things I will do for my friend is what I expect and believe she will do for me. Which brings me back to my original point, that this is amongst the most fulfilling and complete relationships in my world. I trust her, implicitly, and the number of people I trust can be counted on one hand. Thus the love letter. And while I have stressed the not-gay aspect of this relationship repeatedly, it's likely that when gay marriage is finally legal in India, we will probably end up pulling the metaphorical trigger with each other, mostly because no one else will have us.

At the Bottom of the Bottom

Last week, I hit rock bottom. It was the culmination of months of physical, intellectual and emotional exhaustion. Everything that could go wrong in my life did, and how. Even after a weekend of complete rest and no human contact, I still feel perilously close to a total meltdown. Like maybe just one more stressful event will lead to me being handcuffed and led away in full public view to the loony bin. Even my upcoming holiday has become a source of worry and tension. No matter. This too shall pass.

I Can't Explain This

I'm suffering from the weirdest kind of writer's block. I can't write one paper, just that one. Otherwise, the writing seems to be working perfectly fine. I'm churning out article after article, page after page on demand on topics as wide-ranging as you can imagine. Hell, I'm even helping several others do their writing.

And yet, this one paper, only meant to be a few pages long (maybe 10) is the bane of me. I have notes, links, research, and quotes all lined up to go, but every time I open the document, nothing comes out. This paper could be the most important thing I've ever written in my life, it's what you call a big fucking deal. And still, nothing. Zip. Nada.

By Nature

In a discussion with some people a couple of days ago, I tried to explain that if the situation called for it, I would find it in myself to be part of an open relationship/marriage. The concept was, unsurprisingly, unpopular, especially amongst the married/committed members of the discussion. They repeatedly attempted to tell me that I would feel differently if I had ever been in or was currently in a serious relationship.

Let me start with the fact that I strongly loathe people telling me how I would feel. I am an expert on me, I have a PhD/black belt in Me. I do not like to be told by people who have known me for mere minutes how exactly I would feel in a hypothetical situation.

The larger point here, though, is that I tried (and I think failed) to explain that I do not 'do' jealousy. By nature, I am not a very jealous person. A significant chunk of this, I can attribute to the hippie-dippy, granola crunching school I went to. The school put little stock in things like ranks, marks, grades and exams. Logically extending that myself, as a preternaturally mature child, I extrapolated the general sentiment into most parts of my life. I believed, from a young age, that it made little sense to compare myself with others. What did it matter that the person sitting next to me got 95% on a math test? It only matters to me what I got.

This philosophy is by now so ingrained in me that I can't ever be motivated by comparison. The same philosophy also leads me to be uncaring of people who I like, also like others. When I was in school, I was part of a small group of 3 friends. It was two girls and one boy. My two best friends spent much of middle school, high school and college being on and off in love with each other. While in middle school, I too (foolishly, now that I have an accurate measure of what a truly spectacular asshole this person really is) had an enormous crush on the guy. And even then, it didn't matter to me that he liked my best friend, it only mattered that he didn't like me that way. Does that make sense?

I have entirely stopped questioning why people don't like me, or love me, or find me attractive and so on. It matters so very little that they do feel all of those things for someone else. How can I possibly control what someone else inspires? Logically, therefore, I can not possibly be disheartened by that same person's attributes, right?

I can hear the chorus of 'wiser' emotional beings yelling at me about logic having little to do with feeling. To that, I counter with this: Logic has led me to temper emotion to suit practicality. I have spent a quarter century in the pursuit of practicality, of the matter at hand. Given this, am I not then the perfect person to figure out how best to root out a useless emotion like jealousy...in me? Jealousy has no practical purpose. It will not solve the problem, only cause more.

So here's the thing. Instead of telling me how all this will change once I truly grow up (or whatever the fuck it is that these people think when they deign to lecture me about anything and everything), why not accept that this is what it is? Jealousy is not really a factor in my life, it has never been until this point, and given my nature, it is unlikely to be in the coming years.

My Wasted Heart

To me, you are perfect. And my wasted heart will love you...

10+1

Ten years has turned into eleven. It's not a landmark anniversary, for sure. It's not ten or fifteen or twenty or twenty five. It's just eleven. Still, I hope if he were here today, he wouldn't think we, I have forgotten. I'm going by later to an orphanage to give some money, buy some food, maybe clothes and books too, plus anything else they might require. I feel like if he were here, he might like that I did that. That's all.

And I'm glad my 'bestie' is who she is. Everyday, I am glad for her. She remembered and called me today, it means more than I can say. All the terrible things over the past 26 years, I'm glad she and I survived it. I think he would have liked that too.

Try a Little Tenderness

In the hustle of the day, we're all inclined to miss... Or so sings Frank (as in Sinatra) in my favoured version of the song 'Try a Little Tenderness'. Such has been the case, with my poor blog receiving the stepchild treatment at my hands. I feel bad, I genuinely do. That's all. Back to my other, better-loved children.

Adulthood

I often worry about growing up. I worry about paying bills, and completing my education. I worry about not being able to snap back into shape once I start putting on some weight. And yet, it struck me today, that maybe there are two versions of adulthood. There is actual adulthood, replete with ailments, debt and responsibility. And then there is 'adulthood' as viewed through the prism of childhood and adolescence, what kids and teenagers believe adulthood to be.

While I did not have a conventional childhood, I did have friends who did. And when we sat around to discuss how our lives would be as adults, we always spoke about being independent, having our own money, coming and going as we pleased, dating who we wanted. I find today, I have all those things. Obviously, that is not the sum total of adulthood. Commitment certainly is important, whether it is to a career path or another human being. A vision for the long term also is. Thinking beyond just tomorrow's lunch, next week's movie plan and next month's vacation. Real adulthood means making plans for the long term; where do you want to live for the next 20 years? At what age do you want to be married? Do you plan to have children, how many? The questions are endless. And as children of a traditional Eastern culture, we don't just have to think about ourselves, our spouses and our children, we also have to worry about our parents.

I haven't committed to a person. Other than that, somewhere along the two years, I have become a full-fledged adult. I haggle over prices now. It's all very.......boring, mundane, quotidian. Very adult.

I don't have a giant point here, no 'so here's the thing' moment. Just observing. That's all.

My Kingdom

My kingdom. My kingdom for a chance to cry into a pillow for just five minutes. But for now, chin up. Things need doing, and only weak people cry.

Summer Means Summer Movies

I hate arty movies. Long, meandering, thoughtful mood pieces that contemplate the humanity around us...and blah blah blah. I loathe those. Give me an old fashioned romantic comedy or a nice buddy cop action movie I'm a happy camper. So I look forward to summer every year as Hollywood, ever so reliably, brings out the big guns, the Iron Mans, the Hangovers and the Proposals. There are a bunch of other movies I am likely to really enjoy releasing this summer: romantic comedies, capers and animated flicks. I can't wait to see the second Hangover, Kung Fu Panda-2 or Fast Five.

I'm also a huge comic book fan. Not in the same way as someone who, say, hangs out all day in a comic book store and can name every secondary and tertiary character in every obscure comic book ever. But as someone who grew up reading a lot of Batman and X-Men, not to mention a whole bunch of other comics that don't exactly qualify as 'graphic novels', I love the worlds that this art form has managed to conjure up.

And a good comic book to movie adaptation will unfailingly get me to the theatre within the first weekend of release every time. This summer, I have Green Lantern, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger and X-Men: First Class to look forward to. Not to mention Priest and Cowboys and Aliens (although the latter isn't a comic book movie, it very much feels like one, non?)

I'm super excited about Green Lantern, Captain America and X-Men: First Class. Green Lantern is one of the first on-screen adaptations of a comic book hero, in the last few years, that spends a lot of time in outer space. (not counting Superman here, I hate Superman. Plus the 2006 version didn't actually spend any time in space, it was about Superman returning to Earth.) The second trailer, in particular, did an exceptional job of giving us a good idea of the exact scope we can expect the picture to take. And since the Green Lantern Corps has some 7000+ members, we can hope sequels and prequels will include more of them, perhaps even centering on some of them.

Captain America's first trailer has me really pumped. I love the vintage-y, earnest feel of the movie. I was worried about Chris Evans fitting into the role of Steve Rogers, aka the titular hero. And since he's the leader of the Avengers, I was worried the usually smart-alecky Evans would not be able to pull off the sincerity and gravitas of Captain America. As of now, I'm at least convinced of the sincerity.

Finally, X-Men: FC looks just fantastic. Matthew Vaughn was a really unusual choice to direct the movie, and I love what he's done with it. The trailer makes the movie look really 60's, very hedonistic, almost European in its sensibility. And I love, love, love Michael Fassbender. The movie's got a whole bunch of acting pedigree, so it really remains to see how it pans out.

The one movie I'm not excited for is Thor, despite the fact Kenneth Branagh is the director. First of all, unlike Ryan Reynolds, Chris Evans, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, I don't think Chris Hemsworth has the ability carry off a movie of this scale. He seems to have the brawn part of it down, he's bulked up to an unimaginable size for this movie. But the charm, the wit, the humour and intelligence that the other four guys are capable of displaying seems to be missing from him. He just looks like a beefy gigantor. Not convinced by the trailer or the presence of Anthony Hopkins and Natalie Portman either. It remains to be seen if this gamble will pay off. Since the Avengers movie is a lock, the studio needs both Captain America and Thor to do really well.

Those are my summer movie plans as of now. If you are reading this blog, please leave me a note about what films will be getting your butts into theatre seats this summer.

Fingertips

Gooseberrie's lovely new blog: Fingertips

Someone Like You

I have spent the last 2 days listening to Adele's new album 21 on loop. When I like something, and this applies in particular to food and music, I have to eat/listen to it repeatedly.

I'm struck by how beautifully this young musician has managed to condense the end of a relationship into an album. I mention the word young because it is truly remarkable how lived-in and wistful the songs are, by turns angry and sorrowful.

Three songs stick with me, and I want to bring them up. The first is Lovesong. For The Cure fans out there, you should skip the next few sentences. I am not a huge Cure fan, I find their music too emo. Which is why I was surprised to have been so captivated by Adele's cover of their song. The chorus, where she repeats the phrase 'I will always love you' will remove any traces of the emo rendition from your head.

The second song is called I Found a Boy. It begins a little like an old jazz standard from the 1930s or 40s, and then progresses into a song that could fit into any decade. Delightful, like something out of an old movie. I must warn you that its likely that I have the previous thought because I watched The Philadelphia Story again, around the same time I started listening to the song.

While I Found a Boy is my favourite song on the album, undoubtedly the most moving song on the album is Someone Like You. In the song, the protagonist has dropped in on a former lover unannounced, and then attempts to rationalize the fact that he has moved on to another woman, and is happy now, by singing, "Never mind, I'll find someone like you". The lyrics, the melody, the soaring vocals provided by Adele, all combine to make the song something that will stay in your head long after you've stopped listening, not unlike an old love.

Burning Out

Looking through the archives of this blog, I have recently realized that 2010 was my least productive year on the blog. This isn't because I was suddenly the busiest I have ever been, although this is the busiest I have ever been in my life. I work a full time job, I live alone, so I cook, I clean, I buy groceries, I pay bills, I do laundry and I wash my own vessels. I also work 2 separate part time jobs from home. I have a few friends who I am close with in this city, so I usually make at least one outing per weekend. I have taken on extra work in order to save up for an enormously expensive trip that my best friend, Gooseberrie and I are planning to take. And of course there are all the phone calls home to my mum, my brother, all of the grandparents, with at least one set of aunt + uncle thrown in each week. Honestly, I have no time for absolutely anything else in my life right now. And yet, this is not the reason I write only sparingly on my blog of late.

The reason is that I think I've started to burn out. Even just writing this blog post, I have no literary eloquence in me, no playful re-arrangement of the English language, no whimsy. Just plain boring text, words arranged in the same patterns as they have been for years. I write hundreds of pages of content every month. All of my jobs, full time and part time, are essentially writing jobs. I research, I analyze, and then I articulate or opine. That's the basic definition of all my work. At the end of all that, there seems to be no creative juice left in me to come onto my blog and rant.

A close friend called recently to bemoan the lack of activity on the blog, and more importantly to her, the lack of angry, inspired ranting, my supposed trademark. Looking back, that seems to be true. The only heartfelt, unfiltered blog post I have written recently was You, and that was born of a deep sorrow and pain. I don't want to have to feel that in order write well, or uninhibitedly.

The latter factor has also begun to worry me. As my jobs require me to be an educated analyst, I have stopped writing freestyle. Everything is constructed, planned, structured to deliver the point with supporting evidence. There's no room for bursts of inspiration and wit. I am now mentally exhausted even at the thought of writing.

So, here's the thing, I'm worried. And tired. And worried. And most of all, I'm burning out, fast.

My Homie From the Hood

I love food. In good times and in bad, food has never left my side. Which might explain my larger than genetically appropriate size at present. Which is why my close friends also tend to be foodies, people who enjoy food, cooking it, eating it, experimenting with it, the whole lot. I really quite dislike people, especially women, who delicately peck at green things on a plate. I don't mind working out extra, but I don't think I could completely cut out yummy food from my life.

The latest member of my inner circle, my 'homie from the hood', my fellow food geek is Flavours. She has started her own blog recently, chronicling her love of food, and it has been a joy to begin this journey with her. Here's to a hopefully long and food-filled journey ahead. Check out her blog here. Today's Flavour Is...

You

I have things to say to you. But you are not here. So I've just been left to think them, and not say them. You know me, I can't keep quiet. I have to say, not just think, it's almost compulsive.

There's a You-shaped hole in my life that I can't quite seem to fill. I have tried. I have also never been so hurt in my life before.

I let you in. That was my fault. And I let you become important. That's on me as well.

It galls me.

Almost every other day, I miss you. I think of something, I want to call you and tell you about. I eat a piece of food I think you will just love. I read a book that I want to recommend to you.

How is it possible you don't miss me at all? Why is there no Me-shaped hole in your life? Was I so dispensable? So easily replaced or forgotten or discarded?

She seems hurt as well, I don't know that she has the space in her head to be as hurt as I am. She's always been better at cutting off than I am. But she is hurt, this much I know.

Maybe at the back of my head I'm thinking, you will read this. And then at least you will know how I feel. But then at the back of my head I also know that you've stopped reading, stopped caring. So you won't ever know.

It's been nearly two years since things went rocky. And if I'm being honest, they were bad for quite a while before that. We never came back from the time that you abandoned me when she did. She and I came back. You and I never did.

Somewhere I think, I was just a convenience. I loved her, you loved her, so you took me on because I came with the package. Now that I think about it, there was never anything special about you and me, no timeless bond, not according to you at least.

I don't do this, I'm not this girl. I dislike this vulnerability, this flowery, precious writing in whimsical verses. I am coarse and angry, and always protected by my own paranoia, bulwarked against all manner of emotional pain.

And yet this has pierced through all of that. I can not believe I have allowed this to happen. How could I?

I just told someone that this is my attempt to unburden, this touchy feely letter to the internet, so I that I am not some bitter, jaded shrew somewhere down the line.

I am already that, aren't I?

I felt indifferent before, but now I am a mixture of angry and upset. Deeply angry and deeply upset.

I should be used to people going away by now, 'Life sucks and then you die', right? Everybody else left, why should you be any different.

You are different, you were one of very very few, one of my own, my people.

When I left you, for a little while, I told you why, I let you know how much I loved you. You just stopped responding, stopped calling. Do you even know how long it's been since we've spoken?

You just disappeared as if I wasn't even worthy or deserving of a goodbye and a reason.

I don't know what else to say. I know these feelings will subside, will abate, all in given time. And the You-shaped hole will be papered over with other things, with scabs and daily routine. I know that this will one day just be another fact of my life, like my giant feet and my brown eyes. That in itself is a painful fact.

Honestly, I really did not think that it would all end this way. Or end at all.

Udaipur

NOTE: THIS POST WAS WRITTEN MOSTLY IN DECEMBER AND IS ONLY BEING PUT UP NOW DUE TO REASONS OF IDIOCY. I APOLOGIZE PROFUSELY FOR THE QUALITY OF WRITING.

Normally, I do not enjoy travelling. My idea of a vacation involves room service and a flat screen television. The larger the pool of humanity I have to encounter, the lesser the amount of fun I can be expected to have. For this reason, I avoid tourist destinations, I avoid holidays in which I have to have a detailed itinerary, with lists of things to do and places to go. When out of town, I like to take a relaxed tour of sights and sounds. My must travel places do not include night life and large monuments. The entire time I spent in London, I did not visit the London Eye once, despite living right across the Thames from it. When I went to Geneva, I did not go to a cheese factory or a ski lodge, I visited the UNHCR and ICRC headquarters. In Edinburgh, I spent most of my time in the National Portrait Gallery and the pub right next to my hostel, and maybe 2 hours at the Edinburgh castle.

For the last 2 months, I have waited for December the 8th to arrive, so my friend AV and I could leave town for the wedding of our colleague and close personal friend,....let's say ST. It was to be my first out of town wedding, my first full Hindu wedding experience, and my first time in Rajasthan. As the title suggests, the wedding took place in Udaipur, Rajasthan, widely considered one of the most beautiful tourist spots in the world. Which is also the reason I was filled with a tiny bit of apprehension. December in India is wedding season, particularly in North India. I was warned in advance that the city would be bursting at the seams with wedding revellers, as well as a surplus of the usual tourist crowd, December also being a holiday month.

By the time the 8th had arrived, my friend AV had fallen quite ill, and had to refrain from going on the trip. Which left me, my bags packed, standing at the Bandra Terminus in Mumbai city, ready to board a train that would deposit in Udaipur at the end of nearly 17 hours. I had been prepared for how cold it would be in Udaipur. So there I stood, at 11 AM on a Thursday at the tiny Udaipur station, waiting to be picked up while wrapped in a scarf and my ratty old pullover. From there, it was onto the festivities.

I'm not sure how many of you have been to a traditional Indian wedding, be it Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Sikh or Parsi. I'm sure weddings in every part of the world are elaborate. Indian weddings, however, are long (often lasting days or even weeks) and filled to the brim with rituals. I come from a non-traditional family and had, until this time, not been exposed to the full array of ceremonies that accompany a Hindu wedding. Let me tell you, it is quite the experience. Every single ceremony has hosts of aunts, uncles, neighbours and friends offering what they believe to be the absolute right advice about how things need to be done. In fact, random passers by, staff at the hall where the wedding is taking place, musicians who are being paid to play at the wedding and the cooks that are catering the event will all also feel absolutely free to jump in and lecture the parents of the bride on the right way to perform a ritual. It's a giant free-for-all.

ST's parents and sister spend the entire wedding weekend rushing from one spot to another, performing duty after duty, taking care of the most minute of details and generally doing their best to not resemble chickens with their heads cut off. Her poor sister had so much to do, in fact, that she looked like she hadn't slept in weeks, which to be fair, was probably true. The bride and the groom, in the meanwhile, spent most of their time smiling broadly at everything that was said to them, in a daze. Everyone felt the need to stop and make some bawdy remark or the other, or make at least one comment on babies.

I know I am making this sound like it's some terrible thing I am trying to describe, when it is actually the opposite. I am merely attempting to paint a picture of the chaos that weddings bring. In the midst of it, you also feel the warmth of family, the tears of not only the parents at their children's joy, but also of the assorted relatives, who all believe that happiness in the family is happiness for themselves. That's one thing that I missed while I lived abroad, the sense of extended family. The day I get married, my uncles and aunts will be as moved as my own mother. Family doesn't stop at Mom and Dad in India, cousins, uncles, grandaunts and nieces are all integral to weddings.

My friend, ST meanwhile, was shockingly calm, like an unwavering flame in a raging storm. She sat quietly through all the ceremonies, the heavy clothing and jewellery weighing her down. She smiled and laughed at the jokes and the slightly absurd rituals she had to perform. She strode confidently through the reception, greeting friends and introducing her husband to them. She played with babies and received blessings from all the elders present. She even took time to enjoy some food. If and when my time ever comes, you can fully expect me to lock myself in a room, refusing to leave it, and demanding that plates of food be pushed under the door.

After all the wedding stuff was done, I still had half a day to kill, which led me to doing a touristy thing, after all. I visited the Udaipur City Palace. The Palace belongs to the royal family of Udaipur, the Mewars, who run it as a museum. From the City Palace, the famed Lake Palace of Udaipur is also visible, although us mere mortals are no longer allowed to stroll through it.

I love museums. They are giant repositories of information. And if it weren't for the hundreds of shoving tourists, the dozens of screaming infants and toddlers being dragged places by their annoying parents and the smilingly aggressive tour guides, I would have enjoyed myself much, much more. I did get to learn a ton of interesting stuff about the city and the royal family, and the history that surrounds the utterly lovely Udaipur.

After that, my travelling companion chose to race off the some famous temple or the other, while I begged off to enjoy myself in my own way, strolling through the bazaars at my own leisure, not really buying anything. From then on, it was back to the train station, and another 17 hour journey. As Mumbai came into view from my window seat on the train, my heart jumped just a little bit at the realization that I had begun to consider the city home. The feeling lasted barely a second, as I jumped off the train and disappeared quickly into the beaming, bustling chaos.