Endure and Shut Up

I am at times astounded at the lives that women lead. If you're a woman, of any shape, size or colour, then you have been both verbally and physically assaulted at some point since the time you magically sprouted breasts. A truly unlucky percentage have had the displeasure since even before that blessed event. If you live in a major Indian city, then you will have experienced these joys a few times over.

The first time any of this happens, you are invariably still rather young, and therefore rather upset. However, as time goes on, and you realize that you are not alone, that this has happened to all the women that came before, and all of those that stand beside you, then you start to get inured. You don't feel the pain as much, you almost start to believe that this is what your body is meant to inspire.

How are girls supposed to make it? From every angle, life tells you that things aren't going to work out. You're too skinny, too fat, too tall, too short, you eat too much, you don't eat enough, you're clothes are too conservative, you're clothes are too slutty, you act too much like a guy, you act too much like a girl. Every part of you is analyzed and out loud at that. Every message in the world, from the television to the newspapers tells that you need to live up to this impossible standard. You need to be stunningly beautiful, but act like you're not, so that men don't feel intimidated by you. You need to be Mother Teresa, so they can feel okay enough to take you home to mom, but dirty enough to go down on them whenever their dear little hearts might desire. You need to love them and be devoted to them with all of your heart, but not be too clingy. And you need to forgive them each time they cheat on you, or lie to you or disappoint you. Of course, you should be able to cook, clean, throw parties and also have a full time job, so they can show you off.

All the movies made are about men, how they are being forced to grow up by nagging women and take care of their responsibilities, anyone who has seen Knocked Up and the countless other movies like it will know what I am talking about. The world teaches women to endure and shut up. Our problems are not big enough, our lives not difficult enough.

So, here's the thing about being a woman, there are a few joys attached to it, and they are far between. You live the best way you know how, but, know this, it is not easy.

Read, yon wee bastards

Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting Between Obama and Bartlet:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21dowd-sorkin.html

Read, read, read, yon wee bastards.

Guilty pleasures, or just plain guilt

Fun, as a concept, is fairly straightforward. I get it. Enjoyment, merriment, laughter, and other such comparables. Except, the having of this fun provides a unique challenge. What if your brain is just wired differently from others? What if, the translation from the concept to actual actions has always eluded you? Then?

Why

I feel like I should get these things off my chest. Only, I don't know how. And there really isn't anybody I can tell, except maybe perfect strangers. Anybody volunteering? It's really not anything, it's the stupidest thing ever, and it is absolutely not a big deal, but the fact that it hasn't been said out loud, and then dismissed as perfectly ludicrous, is just weighing down on me and multiplying the effect. And on that note, I should retire.

So here's the thing. Here's the fucking thing, it needs to be said, and then thrown out. I just need this to not be a thing, you know?

Music for the soul, and a book.

The thing that I keep thinking of when I watch good television is the soundtrack. It gets me thinking about all those moments in my life that I remember because of a song, the soundtrack of my life, as it were, although, less cliche, I hope.

Because I can remember the song from the first time I liked a boy, one from when he said no, one from a rainy day, one from when I nearly ran someone over with my cycle (!), from a slow London night, one from when I couldn't stop crying or get out of bed, one from when I felt like couldn't breathe because I was in love, or something. All this and I can't even remember the names of the people I went to college with. But these songs I remember, they act like triggers, transporting me back to the very moment that I felt what I did, I can taste, and smell and feel the same as that moment. So, the sound track of my life, not so cliche, after all.

And a book, because what else am I going to do, right?

Aimless

I'm feeling.... aimless. I wish I wasn't. I wish that I bounded out of bed every day with single-minded purpose. But for now, aimless, directionless, rudderless, and so on, and so on. There's someone I need to tell something to, (bad sentence construction, I know) but I haven't, or is that two someones, and the same something, or maybe one someone, and two somethings? Like I said at the beginning, aimless man, aimless. I think this might all feel better if I was smoking a joint on the side of the road, or on a beach somewhere. I definitely think it would sound better. Ha!

In some weird way

I can hear noises, people talking. Everything is spoken in a language not heard often by me. When I hear myself speak, the language sounds alien, the person feels like another. This is a part of my heritage, and I perhaps I should feel more of a kinship with it, and all I can think is when is my train? I am playing the part of an observer more than ever in my life. All these people, here assembled, for this day, for this person, no longer among us. Each of them made up of different ambitions, different agendas, but also real sorrow. It’s hard to reconcile the almost cartoonish versions of them that have presented to me in stories, with the real people, who seem so much more. Not to say that I have new found affection for them, or love or respect. These are people I did not think I would ever have to know in my life. And yet, here I am, wondering what it must be like to them, and to live their lives.

Secret Secrets

Ok, let me preface this by saying, my friend is a jackass! Alright, moving on.

I am not a secret person really, very few things about myself embarass me. Still, here goes...

1) When I am all by myself, I like to daydream. I make up situations in my head and let my mind play them out. A therapist might call it an escape mechanism, I call it a good way to spend the time I am on the tube.

2) I can't sleep alone in the dark. I am 23 and I still need a light on somewhere in the house if I am alone at night. Sad, I know.

3) Up until recently, I have had a crush on every single boy that my best friend has.

4) I hate radishes, absolutely loathe them. I can eat any other vegetable but them.

5) I've read the first 20 pages of Great Expectations over 10 times, I've never ever read the whole book.

6) I've never been in love. Except for once, almost.

7) Sometimes, I DON'T think marriage is a meaningless institution created to perpetuate the myths of monogamy and happy families.

8) I am actually a very kind person. I never refuse a request for help.

9) Girls find me very attractive, which is truly unhelpful.

10) Till I was 15 or so, when I cried, there would be no tears. Seriously.

Ok, now I am supposed to tag somebody, so I tag Asher Jay.

The Nature of Loss

To those of you that know me, the title is not really a mystery. I recently lost somebody that I have loved my whole entire life, and she isn't the only one that is lost. I find that I am some how stuck mid-river without a paddle, and life seems to make even less sense than usual. I feel like crying is futile, and agonizing over the what ifs and if onlys is of no avail. And yet, my mind is flooded with questions and memories and anger, and even guilt, and many times, it is all I can do to keep it together. Because, as much as this hurts me, it hurts some people even more, and these are people that I love.

I wish I had more profound realizations about death, some epiphany that has come in the middle of the night, causing me to leap out of my bed to furiously pound away at my keyboard, in hopes of getting it all down before it vanishes. Alas, that is not to be so. I have no answers, only more questions. And those, it would seem are endless.

The magic of unrequited love

I know, the title seems improbable, but let this come from one who has been on the losing end of the above many a time, there is some magic to it. What is the magic, you ask? Well, it is eternal, that's what.

Unrequited love is never returned, and therefore unfulfilled. It remains in our minds, long after it has left our hearts, as a shining promise of what could have been but never was. It was never reciprocated, if indeed it was even spoken out loud. And so, it remains eternal, perfect as the day it struck you out of the blue, and perfectly painful as the day you knew that it would never be realised.

What is my "so, here's the thing" point here? I'm not even sure, that is the point.

For Mims

My world is a little smaller. There are fewer experiences than there were before, but to complain incessantly is complacence and ingratitude that even I can not muster. Where I am and how I am are a product of who I am and what I have done thus far. So, the conclusion may be drawn, that perhaps, all this is my own fault.

Philosophical musings aside, I find that when I can not look beyond my own problems, I lost sight of a much larger truth. Life basically sucks. No one ever told me that life would be this endless array of lilies in a garden surrounded by butterflies and candy. If anything, I have been warned about how unexpected things always end up being. You have to work at anything that is even vaguely worthwhile.

So here's the thing about complaining, and being a malcontent, the unhappiest at the end of that particular road, is you.

For Mims

To be seen

The thing about returning to familiarity, is that it isn't all that you imagined in your head. In your head, the colours of 'old' world are bright, and shiny. And everybody loves you. The truth, however, is a different animal. The trouble with going back, is that you regress into all those things that made you run out in an attempt to change your life in the first place.

I can't decide what I hate more, missing how things used to be, or returning to that place and time, where you are unimportant, where you are never seen. Everybody looks through you. You are simply the means to a more attractive end.

I have touched the sun, even if only for an all too brief moment, and I can not go back. I can not go back to being an ordinary creature that lays in wait, in the vain hope that others will see me, finally. Again now, I find myself desperate to escape. I am searching for exit signs. And, rest assured, when I do find one, I will be gone again. To a land where I am seen.

This Year's Love-Part Trois

Yes, I continue on in what must seem like an interminable rant to the half a person out there who is reading my blog. My life can not possibly be so interesting so as to inspire three whole posts on my year, and yet here we are, part three.

I thought the third of the series should be little less intense and personal than the first two, so here's a series of highlights and firsts I experienced this year.

My first international flight, well my first and second.

My first pub discussion on politics, and my second, and third, and fourth...

My first and only sip of Red Bull.

My first and last cup of Turkish Coffee.

My numerous walks along the river Thames.

The British Library.

My brief visit to Leeds.

The Smoke.

The Maybe-Lesbian Triplets of CAC.

Oxford Circus, which is both a gift and a curse.

Virgin Radio.

CAMDEN!

I know there are more, but that's all for now. My brain seems to be slowly falling asleep. If only I could drink caffeine without staying awake for weeks on end...sigh.

This Year's Love - Part Deux

Ok, so I decided to make this a two-parter. Maybe it'll evolve into more, I don't know, all I do know is that I have more to say about this year.

So, here's the thing about change. Sometimes, you just don't want it. If you were somehow comfortable with the status quo, then you have to be dragged, kicking and screaming into what is new. Without giving away too much, let me just say, I was comfortable, I mean really, really comfortable, to the point, that I was also completely oblivious. If you get used to being miserable, then misery, can start to seem like fun. It's your shtick. Your life sucks. You base all your conversations on that, you base all your decisions on that, and you base all your relationships on that. This, to the point that normal people just can't be around you, and don't know how to be friends with you. And before you know it, you turn around one day, to find yourself crying on your own shoulder, because everybody else has just left. And then, maybe change isn't such a bad idea.

And it can happen fast too, a couple of steps in the right direction, and then suddenly, your phone rings. That is how change entered my life, over the phone. And even though I jumped eagerly at the chance to make my life different, I didn't always enjoy what had to be done. Sitting here on my bed at the end of this year though, I have to promise you, it's worth it. That first time you truly enjoy your new self, that first little feeling in the pit of your stomach that let's you know that this is completely new, that feeling is worth all the agony, and the kicking and the screaming.

My life isn't completely figured out yet, there are still aspirations that need to be reconciled with pragmatism, and responsibilities. One thing, however, is for certain, change isn't my enemy. There is no point in finding comfort is the old and familiar if it makes you unhappy. And there is always a chance that your decision to change your life could end up, well, sucking. But there is always a chance that it could turn out absolutely fantastic. That, my friends, is a chance worth taking.

This Year's Love

The year is almost over. And I can barely believe that I made it through intact. I can honestly say that this has been one of the very best years of my life. It's strange how you wake up one morning and realise you are not the same person you were just a year ago. In fact I am almost entirely another person. Well, almost. The best thing about moving away, is that suddenly, your old life has a bright shiny spotlight on it. You spend the first few weeks romanticising the life, and the people in it. And you miss them terribly. And then, if you are smart, and motivated, you find that feeling disappearing ever so slowly. You make new friends, you see things you have never seen before, and you find out things about yourself that you didn't even know existed.

The worst thing about the spotlight is that you start to see exactly how inadequate your old life was, and the true colours of the people you left behind. There isn't a protective buffer between you and reality, it is what it is. And while this is painful at first, to realise your friends aren't your friends, it is also refreshing to receive that push forward to start changing the way you live your life.

And if all this sounds just a little too sentimental to you, then let me remind you that the year is almost up, and we are all allowed a little time for self reflection.

Before I sign off, let me just say, to you my reader, thank you for spending a tiny amount of your life here on this crazy, silly, pointless blog of mine.

Grumble, Grumble

I know, it's been long.

I read this thing in the paper today, and I am loosely calling this pitiful excuse for tabloid trash a newspaper, where they were talking about drug use, and they seem to have coined a brand new term to go with what is now increasingly fashionable, functional hedonists. I mean what the fuck is that? These are acceptable members of society because they are rich, and manage to haul their asses out to parties without falling on their faces every time they get out of the cab, and we should accept their drug use as a positive aspect of their lifestyle? These are the people who have pretend jobs, and party with those celeb types, and who only twice a week pop into the loo to snort coke?? Because Britney and Lindsay are the true disasters,as long as you managed to put your knickers on in the morning, and avoid getting photographed "showing the world to them", you are fine! This country is filled with mindless, impossibly stupid teenagers who will read this, if they can in fact read, and believe it to be the gospel truth!! I swear we are going the dinosaur way.

What was the point of that seemingly interminable rant?? Drugs, people, drugs!! They are not acceptable, in any quantity, and yes, Valium for no particular reason counts. You can not claim to be a regular person, if you do drugs, even if only on the side.

Ancient

I am ancient! I am old, so fucking old!! Fuck, fuckety, fuck, fucking old!! And the sharp thrill has been taken from the joy of my achievements. I should curl up and die right now for all the worthlessness that I am. And old, did I mention old??

Starry Starry Night - Don Mclean

For my friend Gooseberry, Palamner, and for Vincent

Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

For they could not love you,
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.

Starry, starry night.
Portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless heads on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget.
Like the strangers that you've met,
The ragged men in the ragged clothes,
The silver thorn, a bloody rose,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they're not listening still.
Perhaps they never will...

The Secret London

I have lived here now for over six months, and I have to finally confess, that I have deeply and irrevocably fallen in love with London. Not the London everybody else talks about, the red bus, the wax museum(which I have yet to visit), the celebrity clubs, the Broadway shows. These are indeed part of what makes London unique and vibrant, but the London that I love, lives in secret.

The London that I love has to be smelled and tasted and experienced to be understood. It lives in the street markets, with the different ethnic foods on sale, Turkish, and Mexican and Chinese. It lives in the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual people, in the little French man who sells you freshly baked bread from a cart, and the Korean lady who sells you sunglasses for five pounds. It lives in the history of the city, from the Globe, to every second building you pass by that you know has been there for a hundred years, to the bridges across the Thames each with a different story and a different name.

But most of all, it lives in the bounce that it lends to my step, every time I think about the fact that I, that little nobody from nowhere and nothing, that I live here now. That everyday, I get to go out and discover a new reason to call London a true love of mine.

The President of We-are-so-badly-fucked.

Let's talk about the new to-be President of India. Much is being said and written about the fact that she is a woman, but the real issues have been swept aside, not only by her supporters, but her detractors as well.

She is a nobody, with minor qualifications, she has never been elected to a position, only appointed, and as has been revealed by the Indian media, and the BJP in the last few days, she has more skeletons in her closet than any person in politics ought to. And of course, she claims to be able to communicate with a dead guru.

My biggest problem is that she is an avid Congress supporter. She has been in the Gandhi family's pocket for well over four decades. The post of the President is not meant to be partisan. While mostly ceremonial, the post of the President in a country like India also carries a lot of power, not the least of which is calling an emergency, and having complete and total constituitional power during that time. Have we also forgotten that the President must sign any new bill into law, and can veto the same? How can we trust a President who has obvious party affiliations to be impartial and subject only to the merit of the bill? And most of all, how on earth can we trust a woman whose first response to being nominated for the highest office in the country is to claim her dead guru possessed the body of another to predict great responsibility for her??

Protest, people!!! Take to the streets!