Sometimes when I get tired of switching tabs on my chrome browser between GMail, Facebook and Yahoo, I think back a year and wonder what I was doing then. It's times like these that make me feel glad for having a blog, coz now I have a permanent (well, almost) record of exactly what I was doing or feeling at any given time. So here I am sitting at work, reading old blog posts from a year back and grinning to myself. And thinking 2 thoughts. a) I was much funnier-sounding a year back than I am now and b) (brace yourself, this one's a biggy) I was probably at Anjana's house a year back listening to her mom on important documents to pack and making a mental list of stuff to buy, after which I would probably have spoken to Maya and exchanged notes on the progress of our packing, after which I would have proceeded to drive around the city looking important and in a hurry after which I would have gone shopping/visiting relatives with my mom, after which I would have come back to the privacy of my room to fume and kick myself for making stupid decisions in relationships and wish I could go out with Niru and Maya and get drunk and bitch about guys. The month before you leave to the US, in my opinion, is the best part of the process that starts when you write your GRE. And since its going to be a year since I came here, I take it as a license to be even more obnoxiously nostalgic than usual. 1 big year and I wonder if things have changed much. For one, I still kick myself over my relationship choices and I still lick wounds of said relationship choices in private. You would think Time would take over already and I can move on but I guess moving on doesnt work without you taking an effort to NOT mope around, doing flash backs in you head and thinking of all the could-have-beens. For all the relationship advice I dole out to my friends ("You're 22. You have a whole lifetime of bad decisions and relationship mistakes ahead of you. Get over this one already."), and get yelled at for being insensitive might I add, it would help me to follow some, but then where's fun in not being a hypocrite?
But I guess a lot has changed in a year. I have become even more boring than realistically possible. Even the jokes I crack are nerdy pjs that very few can understand and almost none can laugh for. I have become more cynical as is obvious. I have also become more prejudiced and more inclined to fit people into undeserved slots based on where they come from and how they look. "Oh you are a Bihari, that slot right there. Oh, you are from Delhi. Sit here. Oh you are a Brahmin. Go there." So now my mind runs a pattern matching and clustering algorithm in the background every time I meet a new person, built on all the well-meaning advice of over-protective loved ones. In direct contrast to this, I have also become more open minded in some ways, more willing to try new things, finding it easier to blur some rules and forget there existed others.There has been a dramatic drop in the annual average of the number of times I have been felt up as there has been in the number of times I have fallen sick. My hair is thicker, away from the pollution of Chennai public transportation. Perhaps having a non-existent public transportation helps to that account. I have also survived a year glued to my laptop living life more as a virtual persona than a social being. I have discovered my inner girl in pink wedges, poufy sleeves and bright red lipstick and kicked off the last vestiges of my teenage awkwardness (more on that later). And due credit must be given to the absence of feel-uppers, snide-remarkers and the moral-policers that the regressive Chennai men can be.
On that thread, I went to the Slut Walk in SF last Saturday. It was nice, smaller than I expected it to be and considering it was SF, the Slut walk merged with a Gay Pride walk and snowballed into a Minorities United. I went expecting to be moved and came back feeling a little sad and a little empty and a little hopeless. As a means to band up people and offer hope and conviction and a sense of purpose to victims of violence, the walk probably succeeded. But all the while I walked I had to wonder how many perpetrators and bystanders of violence would be weaned away by a few people marching and carrying signboards. And if the walk was ever more than breaking a butterfly upon a wheel.
