Midday epiphany

Its surprising because I have most of my epiphanies in the middle of the night, not just because nights do something to me, but also because there is more likelihood of me being awake at night than this time of the day. But I was cribbing to a friend about how some annoying guy and he told me something I should have realized a long time back. About how since I was just so open with everything, guys think they can talk to me and treat me anyway they like. And how their interactions with me are so much different from their interactions with other people. And how it was wrong that they can never say a nice word to me in public, that the only comments they can leave on my wall are lets-pull-her-leg sorta comments, how they'd ping me in private to say I look good on a picture or how my status in nice, but they wouldn’t be caught dead saying that in public, how they wouldn’t even acknowledge the fact that we are friends when we are in a group but would tell me their life secrets and text me every morning in private … how its just so so wrong that guys who are actually nice get laughed at. Also how it is wrong that all this and most social inappropriateness is considered acceptable guy behavior 'coz you know guys will be guys. And it seems to be exclusive to certain groups or communities of guys (thank God for that!). Since it is all I've ever seen back home in Chennai and since it is something that sticks out in particular groups now that I am here in LA, I tend to generalize and say that’s how Tamil guys are. I try to tell myself I am exhibiting the same narrowmindedness and prejudice that I laughed at my family for but statistically my prejudice is justified.

I was reading this article about how in this economy, people are scared to be rude but sometimes you have to be rude. (I tried hunting for the article, I cant find it now). Its true, you know? Its not ok to stew over a misguided comment or an ugly joke for a whole day and take it out on your friends and let it upset you but smile and act cool to the person responsible so that he/she can do it again. Sometimes people have to be put in their place. And if they are anywhere as nice as you deserve your friends to be, they'd understand and not hold it to you.

Building Character

That weird slightly off, slightly lonely feeling you get from being a single person person by people in relationships.

That slightly dumb, slightly sleepy feeling you get when you are the new guy sitting through a presentation you understand nothing about.

That slightly yearning, slightly nostalgic feeling you get when you look at pictures of South Indian thalis in the facebook albums of aspiring photographers.

That slightly annoyed, slightly helpless feeling you get when your roof starts leaking just as you are working against an assignment deadline.

That slightly sad, slightly angry feeling you get when you wait hours for a friend to return a call.

That slightly teary, slightly breaky feeling you get when you come home to an empty fridge and dirty dishes.




I'd choose being characterless any day.

I hate it when my laundry doesn’t dry

Isnt it funny how the mood of your entire day can be determined by the efficiency of your dryer? The elation you feel when you open the dryer to drag your laundry out and touch warm dry clothes is indescribable. On the flipside, this is what you get when your drying cycle doesn’t go well- an angry irritable me. Today has been an exceptionally bad day. I am trying to not crib on my blog too much and lock all this negative zen for all of internet’s posterity but today has been one of those ‘Adam Sandler comic loser movie’ kind of days. It all started with cramps and an uh-oh moment in the bathroom right at the beginning of work. Then came 8 hours of nothingness, staring blankly into my laptop and the 3 and a half walls of my cubicle, with nothing, absolutely nothing to do except drink bad vending machine coffee every 2 hours. Then came the bad dryer incident. Then came trying to fix the bad dryer incident by blow drying my moist tshirt (yeah i had to wear those clothes. I didn’t have anything else to wear after my shower) with a hair dryer and accidently shorting some fuse in some cynical universe’s plan and plunging half the room into darkness. So am sitting here in my wet bra with my wet hair trying to think warm thoughts and lull myself into a sleep before i do any more swearing. And oh yeah all of us have to use the bathroom facilities in darkness, save for the torchlight we have set up to compensate for the lack of electric lighting, thanks to me.

Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!

*Happy thoughts. Warm thoughts. Happy thoughts*

My resolutions for the month are going fine. They are: a) smile and make eye contact and/or nod my head and say hello when I pass a random stranger in the corridor as opposed to staring awkwardly at some spot on the ceiling or take an immediate interest in my phone and b) not be cynical and to be more supportive of my friends plans for the future. My dominating cynical subconscious half would like to interject that fine might be too optimistic a word to use to describe the progress of my resolutions but lets just ignore it for now.

Summer in general is going great. Which is why summers are and always have been my favourite time of year (Christmas is second). 2 of my friends left India for the green shores of USA yesterday and I’ve been nostalgia tripping back to my own journey last year ever since. 1 other friend is doing the opposite route, leaving behind the American continent to go back to mother India. 3 friends in the air. God speed to them.

I will start shopping for my India trip soon, as soon as i get my next salary. In the meantime, i make lists, amend them, change them, make new ones every day on the people who deserve my US returnee gifts. Sometimes i am in a lenient mood and i add everyone who has ever called me or texted me since i have come to the US to my list (which, dear readers, is a very small group of people). Other times, i strike out whole subclasses of people from my list. This usually happens after i have checked my bank balance for the umpteenth time. Ah, the feeling of playing God!

I think i am getting a headache.

All ye fellow faithful Castle fans

Now doesnt this look like the climax from Vettaiyadu Villaiyadu?

What the fricking frick was that??? Am I the only person in la-la land who thinks Castle is devolving into a predictable tamil movie. Seriously? Castle single handedly saves all of New York City from becoming the sweet spot for a mushroom cloud, he almost dies in a freezer and then miraculously lives again, saves Ryan and Esposito with Beckett's help and then saves Beckett with no one's help, solves cases that the NSA and some other hidden supersecret unheard of cogs in America's paranoid wheel couldnt, helps Beckett in her quest to lay her personal ghosts (which she has too many of) to rest AND manages to be the sensitive sweet chivalrous rich gentleman that every teenaged girl and elderly woman dreams off???? What were the writers thinking? What next? He wears tight red underwear and saves the world from a meteorite shower and gets back to the precint in time to cook dinner for Beckett??? And dont get me started on the part where the last letter a guy on the run would write to his ex-partner is that she should follow her heart to her true love. And the season finale!! Dude what was that??? Holy crap. All of season 3 was 1 big crap fest. Honestly, seasons 1 and 2 were much much MUCH better and much funnier and much more believable! What do I say now to the people who tease me for watching Castle. What can I answer. What reasonable reason can I give. Must not let it be known in public that I see Castle. Must not.

A moment to ponder and eat our words

I’ll go first.

In 11^th grade, i had a frenemy whom everyone loved to hate. I think our problem was that she was this exotic creature, so different from all of us, and so much more difficult to understand. So what we couldn’t understand, we termed as dangerous, bad, ‘unculturely’, thus following the footsteps of so many before us who name the unfamiliar as opposed to culture. Her family was one of the cool ones. Her dad would let her drink a little if he and his friends were having a party and she was around. She would wear the real hot dresses we could only dream about what with our awkwardly teenage bodies. She would hang out with guys, she would do a lot of stuff that we weren’t allowed to. So in our jealousy and narrow mindedness, we thought being one of the familiar majority gave us the right to sit on our high chairs and declare that she was not really a nice person. Maybe she really was not nice. Or maybe that had a lot to do with the way we treated her. But a few years hence, when i was on the other side of the pub door and i was making my choices and discovering the ones i wanted to keep and the ones i felt not so comfortable with, and while this adventure of novelty was going on, people decided it would be in the best utility of their time to judge me, i realized i didn’t like it so much. I realized i was doing the same things that i had dissed a couple of years back. The same and more, maybe. Atleast i was old enough to know my way around people. But that only made me feel more guilty for the cruelty we indicted when we were school kids.

I loved school. I loved being one of the popular girls. I loved people loving me and knowing my name and teachers showing me off and generally being nice to people. I really was nice. And i tried a lot to be nice because before i became one of the popular girls, i was this super shy, super sensitive girls who always ended up getting hurt. I swore i’d never do that to another person. But then despite my best intentions, i did ended up hurting a lot of people. Sometimes just by standing by. To my defense though, there were times when people a lot older than me and who should have a lot more sense but didn’t were the ones inflicting the cruelty. And there wasn’t much i could do in cases like that. Like the time 4 girls got caught cheating on an exam (i think it was a second time offense for one of the girls) and after giving up on advising them, my class teacher decided it would be best to make sure their evil spread no further. So she made the 4 of them sit in the very last row and moved everybody else’s benches away from them so they formed a little island to themselves. Soon 3 of the girls jumped ship and it was just this one girl, the 2 time offender all alone. None of us knew anything about her. We’ve seen her talk to boys (the one cardinal evil in a girls school), mostly friends of her elder brother but a sin never the less. We knew the teachers hated her because she always was this firebrand they never could get to. She wasn’t particularly friendly so none of us ever felt the compulsion to stand up for her. Atleast i didn’t. I didn’t even know her so i wasn’t going to go out of my way to vouch for her/ give her a makeover/turn her into a new leaf shit they show on movies. So i just stood aside and watched the drama. The girl left school. I have no idea where she is now. And i don’t know what prompted me to remember her after so many years. I hope what my very Catholic school did, left no scars behind.

People who know me know i hated the 2 years of DAV and loved my high school. But while my high school was great, they weren’t above this judgementalism, if that is even a word. All these years later i wonder if there was ever a point to moral science classes, if not a lot of non-practical bull shitting. I still remember being taught how a girl should be modest, how you should never show off and if your work is good enough you will be recognized for it. No good has ever come to me from being modest. In fact it is one moral that has been nothing but harmful to me all these years. But that deserves a post by itself. Anyway, to cut a long story short, all these years later i wish we’d been taught an entirely different set of values and not judged so much on how we dressed or who we spoke to. Those were probably dangerous lessons to teach to kids in high school- that you had the right to decide how people should behave and the right to punish them if they weren’t to your liking.

Over the years, i’ve done my share of criticizing the things i didn’t understand- NRIs, my classmates who want to get married early, Vijay's acting skills, Indian education system... You only have to read my old posts  to realize how much ranting I've done on this blog. And yeah you can go ahead and call me a hypocrite. Even my mom, who is the one person i admire the most and who is probably the most tolerant person i’ve ever seen, isn’t above her share of prejudices. And while i don’t begrudge you your prejudices, most of which probably arise from gross generalizations of painful personal experiences, i will hate you if you try to enforce them on me. Life has this tendency of making you eat your own words and i don’t think any of us ‘are in a position to diss anything without having tried it first.’ (courtesy: The Mad Momma)

What got me started on this post? I was reading this awesome note on FB by a friend of a friend on why he hates V-day. And everything was great until he said something along the lines of V-day is a western phenomenon and it is only the west that needs days to honor relationships because they really don’t respect and value relationships otherwise. Since it is not part of rich culture, we must refrain from making a big deal out of mother’s day, father’s day and various other assorted commercialized days. Culture talk again! And this time from a guy closer to my age than the orange toting, badly dressed, Shiv Sena members. (Yeah I do not understand the values Shiv Sena stand for and so i diss them. This can be counted as hypocricy. But I would love to sit down and have a debate with you if you agree with their ideals and maybe you could convince/convert me.) Anyway, ever since I started talking about going to the US, I have been hearing shit about the wild ‘wests’ dangerous ways and their lack of culture, not so much from my family since half my family is actually here, but from other random people who are by no means authorities in the field of culture. One person, a person i really liked and still like, told me i should be careful late at night (very good advice indeed) and i should not try and emulate the Americans because they have no culture and so they really wont care what happens to them but i will. That was the stupidest thing i have ever heard in my life and trust me i have heard a lot of stupid stuff. America has been one of the most ‘culture-ful’ places I have ever seen especially from my vantage point inside a university in California. No other place can be such a melting pot of cultures. And trust me, they value their relationships, sometimes a lot more than i value mine. Solitude does not equal loneliness.

I would love to write more but my crazy neighbours are blasting music through the wooden walls. I have to go now. Damn Americans and their love for bad music. This country has no real taste!

Why Life really sucks sometime....

To be given the power to dream when you're not gonna be given the dream; to see it so clearly, that you can reach out and touch it, almost, and then to watch it dissolve. Why the sadistic joke, God?

Reasons why life really sucks sometimes...part 3

Some people have never heard of Guns And Roses let alone heard them. And there are people who think November Rain is not the best song of all time!

Reasons why life really sucks sometimes...part 2

You never get what you wanted to get or you get what you wanted but didn’t realize that was what you wanted or you get what you wanted and realized you wanted but didn’t think that it would be what it is when you actually got it. Or you get what you wanted at a time and place you didn’t want it. Or you get what you wanted along with what you didn’t want and wish getting what you wanted didn’t entail getting what you didn’t want. Ultimately getting what you wanted sometimes makes you want to never have wanted it in the first place.

Maybe never getting what you wanted is better than that. Marginally.

How not to try and attract a girl

I shall be upfront. I am a creep magnet. if there is a creep/jerk/asshole within a 100 yards of me, he will be attracted to me. I never get the good guys. It is like the good Lord has purposefully cursed me with this horrible attraction after giving me more than my fair portion of super intelligence, good looks and kind and loving heart (kidding). So I am in a position where I have experienced a lotta dumb ways to try and attract a girl and I draw upon these experiences to outline a few ways which will definitely NOT work.

Exhibit A:

I am riding home in a share auto. Unfortunately for me, I am the only customer. It is the middle of the day in Chennai and I am already dead tired or I'd have caught a bus. SAD (Share Auto Driver) decides to engage in friendly conversation. SAD asks me if I am working. I smile (thinking of my proffessional looks) and explain that no, I am a student. Then he asks me where I am studying. I give my usual vague answer especially reserved for distantly-related uncles and aunts in weddings and funerals, "Engineering".

"Where?", he presses.

I give my 'my-mommy-told-me-not-to-talk-to-strangers' look. Wonder whether I shoud lie but then decide that no way is he gonna come all the way to OMR to kidnap me and hold me for ransom, and tell him the truth.

"Which year?" he asks.

"Final"

"Oh!", he exclaims. "What are you planning to do after studying?"

By then sick of making small talk, I take out my mobile phone and start texting, replying to him in monosyllables. Note:This usually dissuades most over-friendly cases who then leave me alone but this socially-challenged SAD obviously didnt get the point.

"What will you do after studying?" he persists.

Not wanting to explain to him the complicated process of 'GRE-tension-TOEFL-tension-applying-tension-waiting for admits-tension-VISA-tension-shopping-MS' (not to mention, all that cannot possibly be fit into a single syllable), I reply "Work".

"When will you get married then?"

This momentarily stuns me enough to lift my head from my texting haze and give him the blank stare I usually give my class girls when this topic comes up (I hate to compare my class girls with sleazy SAD, but circumstances force me). "After working a few years," I say.

"Will you invite me for you wedding?"

"How? I wont even know where you will be," I say, conveniently falling into his trap.

"Ok then. Give me your phone no. You can call me and speak. I can call you and speak. We can be friends."

He then proceeds to convince me that he has only the best intentions in mind and that he never usually asks phone numbers from girls (Yeah right!). Meanwhile, I am giving running updates to my very helpful friend. "He s asking my phone no now," I text.

"4 wat?," comes the reply.

"Yen kalyanathuku invite pannanumaam."

"Avaniye kalyanam panniko;-)" comes the very helpful reply from my very helpful friend. Did I mention that apart from being a creep-magnet, I also attract highly helpful friends?

The SAD's voice cuts into my mental search for a suitable expletive. "So?," he prompts.

I look up to see my stop has almost come. Making more vague non-committal sounds for a few more minutes, I get down as close to my stop as possible, give him his 7 rs, try to communicate 'un dabba auto ku 7 rs ae athikum, yen phone number vera kekutha' through a grimace and walk back home.

Sheesh.....people should stop believing that what they see in tamil movies will happen in real life. As of today, I have been pestered by share auto drivers for my phone number twice. It could be the same guy or could be two entirely different creeps. But more often, the creep in question is someone I know. To be fair, I start out liking the guy. There is something about a bad boy so intense that draws you. You start talking. Then you start texting, only for necessities at first and then exchanging random information. Then he starts calling you 'Darling' and 'Sweetypie' which is when you start finding him nauseatingly irritating. Then he starts calling you out for treats, his and yours, and starts playing with your earring and your hair (best case scenario). And if you are still dumb enough to talk to him, he usually corners you in some dark corner and spouts verbal nonsense. It is always the same. I will refrain from posting further examples of my creep-magnetism due to a lot of my family members having access to this sometimes very public blog.

Guys nowadays are desperate. One word of advice. Play it cool (Oh wait, thats three). Also, get a life! (Again three). If you want a girlfriend, you probably have a better chance of landing one if you dont go around with a flashing billboard stuck to your head. Have some class. Atleast have a pretense of class. Chivalry helps too. Girls have different, often conflicting notions of what they look for in a guy (for proof, read previous blogs) but a little chivalry can go a long way whoever the girl is. And practise personal hygiene. Only in movies do girls fall in love with stinking, sweaty males. So, unless you look like Hrithik Roshan after a workout, take a shower. And get a job. And a bank balance. And an American Express credit card. And a Mercedes SLK. And.....ok I'll stop but you get my drift. So until the fine day when you have done all the above, stop bothering us girls. Go juvenile watching Baywatch and of course there is always the proverbial cold shower.

What I'm not saying

No, I haven't got an admit yet. If I do I will let you know. Along with the rest of the world. In like 5 mins after I get to know. So quit bugging me up until then.

Oh great! You got one? That is so fine. Now please release me, I have to go check my mail one more time.

No, I don't have OCD. It is highly possible that someone might have sent me an admit in the 2 hours since I last checked and I do not want to miss out on that.

Yes, I know people with GRE scores lesser than mine have already got admits. Yes, GRE is not everything, which is what I have been trying to tell you for the last few months.

No, I do not want to be reminded of how much money I have spent applying or all the stuff I could have done with it. And no, I do not want to hear your empty promises about how I am sure to get an admit within next week. So if your conversation is going to include any of the above categories, do me a favor and shut up!

No Mr.Salesman, that gift is for my friend for his birthday. No, you don't have to give me that sly smile. Yes that is for another friend for his birthday. Please I can see the cogs turning in your head. No need to let your imagination go into hyperdrive. Yes, I'd like them gift-wrapped. No please not the pink hearts gift wrapper. Oh, never mind....

Yes, two tickets please. Oh no, not again!

No, I do not want to play the guitar for her. So what if she is a guest? I am not a walking jukebox.

Yes mom, I know you told me so.

Yes, I love Sleepless in Seattle. Yes I love Hitch. But not if I have to watch it for the hundredth time. So please, just please with the romance overload. Why isn't there any head banging, metal screeching, high-on-testosterone movie with lotsa fast cars and cool guns? Please can I just watch Tomb Raider for a change now?

Yes, I still love rom-coms though. And I'd watch Ashton Kutcher anywhere anytime. No, there is no need to look at me like I've grown feet from my head.

No, I dont like the anti-V day messages you have been bombarding me for the last one week. Can you quit the hypocrisy when I know very well that you would be committed if you had the choice. And not to mention sending gushing messages about love and romance to everyone on your friend's list if you were on the other side.

No, I haven't forgotten you. I have just been busy. If you'd wanted to see me you should have come over or called me up for a change instead of going on and on about how I am ignoring you.

No, I did not mean to mess up my own birthday party. If I'd known I would have come.

No, I do not want to change my project.

Yes, I often smile to myself. No, I am not crazy.

Yes, I am sick of planning stuff with this class and watching them all bomb. No, I am not gonna do it again. Yes, that is what I said last time.

Yes, I know you dont know a thing and you know I dont know a thing. SO can we please drop this pretense of a class and watch a movie together instead.

Yes, that was me you heard screaming. Yes, Paranormal Activity scared me. No, it's not lame.

No, I just called to check if your phone was still working. Yes, I want to talk to you idiot.

No, I do not want to hear about your boyfriend troubles. He is a jerk, a class A asshole and a rotten human being. You should be happy to be rid of him.

No, I do not want to hear about all your fans and the troubles you have managing them. Yes, I am getting down here. Yes, its two miles from my stop. Thats Ok, I'd rather walk.

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes!

Yes, I liked twilight. Please dont bang your head against the wall on my account.

Yes, he is cute. Yes, he bites. But only when you step on his tail or try to steal his food.

Oh great! Guess what, I dont care.

No, I will not settle down in the US. I will come back. Oh yeah, you dont believe me? Sure, I'll take you on. Easiest 5000 I ever won.

Yes, thats me in the pic. Yes, thats my friend. No, I am not introducing you to her.

Yes dad, I think you are going insane. Must be all those amman serials and Thirumathi Selvam you're watching.

No, I really am bankrupt. No, I am not lying to avoid you. Please, the world does not revolve around you.

No, I am neither Team Macho nor Team Chocolate boy. No, I dont have any idea which type you are.

No, it wasn't me. It was my phone.

If you'd started writing my LOR in all the time you spend farming and baking lasagnas, you would have finished it by now. So dont give me crap about how you dont have time.

No, I haven't seen him yet. Is he really as cute as they say?

Reasons why life really sucks sometimes...

When you decide to oppose the flow, the first people you're forced to fight against are the people whom you love the most and the ones who love you the most and your supposed benefactors. 'Coz we live in a society which has such a desperate (yet unfounded) need to protect its own back, that, its members, including your supposed well-wishers, are concerned less about you being the best you can be than about you being so worse or so different from the rest that fingers get pointed at them in judgement.

That is for the 0.00001% of the society that really cares about you. The rest 99.99999% doesn't really give a shit one way or the other.

Classic case of Ahmed and the camel

First they close down the schools in the area, then they flog teenaged girls for God-knows-what transgression according to their depraved law, then they send sexually-frustrated, brain-washed and deluded young boys (kids who should be in school) to blow themselves and unsuspecting civilians up outside police checkpoints and places of worships, then their ‘patriotic’ leader comes out into the open and declares bravely for the entire world to hear that such attacks would continue twice a week unless US stopped their air-strikes on the NWFP, not to mention attacks on US soil that will ‘amaze the world’ and now they’ve caused the whole of Islamabad to come to a screeching halt following vague threats of attacks. Give them Swat and they ask for Islamabad. Serves you right for making peace deals with terrorists.

Closer home, our very own Mr.Vaiko warns of a bloodbath and the youth of TamilNaidu rising up as a ‘volcano’ and India not remaining one country if anything happens to LTTE chief Prabhakaran. When will our leaders stop cohorting with or supporting terrorist outfits?

Institutionalized marriage

I do not write this coz today is women’s day and I have something to say about it. Nor do I write this coz I want to take a stand on a serious issue, cause people to look up to me as a role model or whatever. I write this coz I’m genuinely confused and this is something that has been plaguing me for a long time.

My classmates and I have never been quite on the same bandwidth. This is one of the first things I noticed when I came to this college and something I’ve never been able to come completely to terms with. Yes, we have agreed to disagree but still there are times when I wonder how we can even belong to the same species. Sometimes it just feels like we’re on two different planets, when it’s just me vs the rest of Them. I took a resolution a few years back to never judge anything or anybody without looking at both sides of the picture. But one case and one long-standing argument where I just cant see the other side, where I am completely blind to Their side is ‘Marriage’.

3 years with Them and I still haven’t been able to grasp what They see in marriage or why with Their every action, They seems to gravitate towards it. They look forward 5 years from now and all they can see is a McDonalds happy family. I look forward 5 years and all I can see is a good, satisfying, mentally-stimulating job, a small house of my own, a backpack trip across Europe and if possible a puppy ( gimme a dog any day over a guyJ). Marriage only figures somewhere in the distant future and even then its just a vague, obscure concept. Whereas for Them, it’s the one part which is clearly defined. They may change their ideas on career every 5 seconds but somehow their very vivid picture of a big, noisy wedding, a husband, two kids never changes. That is something which I’ve never been able to understand. Why would anybody ever want to get married immediately after college? Its not like most of them already have a guy in mind and thus since They’ve realized they want to spend the rest of their life with someone, They want the rest of their life to start real soon. No, its not even that. For most of them, Their future husband is just some tall, handsome guy without a face (though how a guy without a face can be handsome is beyond me).

And to top it all, They have all, at one point or the other, tried to convince me that married life is the best part of life for a girl and how I should look forward to it and try to grab it as early as possible. And when I decline or worse still try to make Them see sense, They smile knowingly and mutter something about how ‘people like me’ are the first to get married. *shudder*. Or worse still, They just shake Their heads sadly and tell me that I’ll only get a wheezing, doddering old grandfather for a husband if I decide to get married so late in life (apparently 27 years of age amounts to the autumn of life in Their world. Oh sorry 24 is autumn, 27 is winter without christmas). And sometimes the conversation spills over to how ‘western influences have corrupted my mind, and how, soon, I’ll start supporting live-in relationships (unfortunately for Them I already support live-in relationships) and homosexual relationships (yes, I support that too) and other banes of the bad west world. Seriously, there are times when I don’t know what era I live in. I swear my grandmother is more forward-thinking than They are. Why would anyone want to get married at 21??? I agree I am commitment-phobic and maybe that is coloring my judgement but even otherwise I want to forge an identity of my own before deciding to merge it with another. I don’t mind being one half of a pair, but I cant imagine it being the ‘be all end all’ of my life. I want, no I need time to figure out what I want to do with my life before I rush into marriage. I’ve got places to go, people to see, experiences aplenty. I don’t want to risk being tied down by family or responsibility before doing everything I want to.

I guess it all boils down to this deeply ingrained notion of a woman’s role in a marriage. Most of Them are planning to marry a nice well-established guy (whatever that means) and quit working after marriage (if They think that is the passport to luxury, They’re in for a huge shock). I, for whom financial independence has always equated to a job, will never give it up permanently unless it’s pried from my cold dead fingers. Whatever. And thankfully I don’t have to fight the world for it and I have a mom who’ll kick my butt even if I, in a fit of recklessness, entertain the idea of getting married at 21 and sitting at home full time.

Maybe, as They say, I’ll get jealous when all of Them are married by the time we’re 24 and I’m still single. Maybe I’ll feel lonely and insecure and stigmatized and give in to societal pressure. And maybe tomorrow we’ll clean up our politics and India and Pakistan will become the best of friends. Whatever. They can keep dreamingJ

I know I’m turning this blog into my personal ranting board but I just cant help it.......

Is not our art, dance, temples, palaces, our architecture our true culture? Why then all this moral policing? Why then all this shit about how girls wearing halters and dancing in discos are spoiling our Indian culture??? Isn’t culture then, as they see it, simply the rule of the majority? The beliefs of the mainstream? Do people surely believe that by beating up women in nightclubs, they can restore the greatness of our culture? And this from the country which boasts of its plurality and its so called unity in diversity. Instead of preserving our art forms, our heritage buildings, we go about defying anyone to be the least bit different from us. And then we officiously call it ‘preserving the culture’. And if we can go about beating women for ‘besmirching the rich culture of our country’, we are just this close to setting up execution stages in our stadiums and stoning people to death for not believing what we believe.