A Blog Well Waited

Week 2 in Deutschland. Sitting in the international library and wildly ecstatic for overhearing English being spoken by two elderly British gentlemen discussing politics. English, ja, since most of the time my ears have been feasting on the mighty German.

Yes, I finally made the move. To Germany. Why? Because the opportunity came and it didn't sound half bad and frankly I've been in a anywhere-but-here kinda mode since a few months.

So last month, while everyone soaked in the Christmas cheer, Him and I packed up our tiny Mumbai apartment, bid farewells to the family and moved to Deutschland.

Nothing prepares for Germany. Not even learning German on Duolingo. Nope. The small expat community online looks lively enough, sure, but no, you ain't seen Germany yet till you're stranded on a U-Bahn stop with three fat old ladies who make absurd hand gestures at you saying "Nien Englischhhhxyz xytjefjfhhfj". What? Who's being racist? I'm being accurate yo, phonetically of course.

Leaving is hard they say. But this is the super power I discovered about myself last month. I left quite happily. And not just the people, I was completely okay leaving behind things, home, infinite boxes full of stuff that at one time I absolutely had to have for my life to go on. Fantastic. But it's the arriving, the landing that I'm struggling with. Usual expat blues, I'm being told. English speakers are less, and English speaking jobs lesser still. So, the bad news is - I'm unemployed. Also, the good news is - I'm unemployed. If I told my past self that I'm right in the middle of Europe with no presentations due today, tomorrow or the next few months. I'd be shooting rainbows out of my ass. So, I'm conditioning myself to being free so much and then to utilize this free time effectively.

Conflict 2: Cold. I've got to conquer this devil. I'm a summer child, yeah.Winters make me melancholic, winters make me sad, uncomfortable, oh and immobile. I had this discussion with myself and Him when we took this decision. And it struck me then, if I keep chasing the summer suns forever, I'm cordoning off half the planet for myself already. Just like that. And that made me terribly sad. So, I packed my ear muffs and jumped right in. Also a sack full inners, leg warmers, woolen sockies, hats and gloves. In other news, they're forecasting a snow storm next week. Yes, FML. My ears ring, my toes and fingers feel like icicles and with my five foot frame, I look like a stuffed baby bear walking the streets. A cute and cuddly bear but a bear alright.

I made a huge to-do list sometime in 2008, that I stumbled upon today and I thought, hell, there will never be a better time than this. I don't have a job, I know a total of zero people (except Him) and a big to-do will be such a blessing.

So, that's all the updates from my part of the world, check back later and thank you listening to my chatter.

And to feel you're alive>Bombay my lover, my whore

I finally felt something today. As in, I feel love everyday and I feel pretty every other day, but something beyond just those scrawny everyday me and something originally and uniquely me. I couldn't stop smiling. And hear you me, it happened twice in this week. So amazing how it all just comes staring back at you one day, from nowhere.

It's all a big wad of mashed up paint inside my head still, but I want to write. I want to fucking write. And you know why? Cause I felt like it twice this week. Like this whole sea of stories inside me that I want to scream out to the world. That if I could just sit down with a quiet empty house and just write it all out today. Not get up, just bring it all out. Just keep feeding me the sun.

Just saw Dhobhi Ghat, I was so moved. Such that I could still cry for her. It was so beautifully sad. So magnificently sad. I couldn't believe it. I was clenching my teeth and my nails kept digging into my partner's arms, I couldn't take the sadness. And it doesn't have an end, such is life. It was all these people coming together and then get separated. Just like that. We think too much. We like results. We definitely likes our "Whys?" As in, to that, why? Some things just are. Not good, not bad, they are what they are. And then its gone. Just like that, such is life. Chaotic, meaningless, beyond reason and logic. I loved the feature film. I could just cry now. Like I said Beauty. And I thought I'd just lost it. I thought ever since I moved this city I had stopped finding beauty in things and today I did. And it inspired me. One.

I also just finished "A Million Little Pieces". After very long, a tad too long, I read a book the way I read books. I couldn't keep it down. I couldn't stop stop thinking about the story. It was about a man who was alcoholic and is in a treatment center trying to quit. It was about addiction. It was about weakness. About being human. But also it was about taking responsibility. It was about putting yourself to test. It was everyone's story. I've seen "The Elegent Universe" but really this is the theory of everything. Tao te Ching. You should read, or this post will forever be a puzzle to you. Or life. I dont know. I really dont. But I need to write. Two.

Experiment 1: On Changing Your Story

This is not an experiment, well sorta. This is optimism put to test. This is every part of me swearing that I'll try and every part of me wishing it works.

Sometimes love rips you apart. Sometimes love is the only thing hurting. Sometimes you want love so bad, you scare away love. Sometimes love changes you. Sometimes love makes you want more. It makes you cruel. It makes you nauseatingly faithful. Sometimes its more bitter than sweet, but always what you really want.

Sometimes your whole being becomes a paradox. Sometimes you want things, you don't realize you already have. You have the smartest lines and you know you're being foolish. You can own him and then end up doing miserably pathetic things to have him touch your hand when you reach out.

Real love never feels it's going to break, and for that reason, real love will go to any means to make each other suffer. Real love is bad for you. Its so sinful and so self absorbing, you become a void in yourself. Real love defines who you are then, and then on the afternoons your real love hurts, you don't know who you are and what you are around people without it.

Real passionate love is very overconfident. It will play your mind and your heart. Love is like the ghastly drill machine which goes straight to your core and messes you up. Its like a slap across your face and shows you what an extreme person you can become, you self praising kind soul you. Real love terrorizes your mind. When you love so bad, your mind refuses to believe it can end and thats why you're never really scared. You'd be frustrated, you'd be so mad you'll start attacking walls with your fists, but you'll never be scared.

And thats why real love never compromises. Two people in mad passionate love never really make up. You be an ass to him and he'd be just as big an ass to you. That's what happens when you've made up your mind on 'this is the guy I want to annoy the fuck out for the rest of my life'. It's ongoing and its tiring but its never done.

Real love is an entity in itself. Two people in love are like mutually dependent parasites who feed off of each others happiness, energy, aura and sadly, sadness. Real love is a helpless spiral. Upwards and downwards.

Love is funny and love is unreasonable. You have lived twenty five years of your life, not knowing that this one person exists. And then one fine day, from nowhere, one crazy dreamer walks into your life, no different than any other crazy dreamer you've met before. And something about them messes you up. You enter a no exit trance of a one point agenda - of having this person. This one person, who you know in your heart had a one in billion chance of ever meeting you in this life, that one person will start owning you. And you're helpless. You can think you're in control, but you're not, at least not in your own. Not his either, just some strange vision you weave together.

Love hurts. Oh my god, love hurts. Its not a hurt of toppling from the stairs which hurts only physically, scabs and vanishes, leaving behind a funny bar story. Love hurts from inside, its a soul hurt. It aches and its the suffering of not having your senses to work. It makes you mad.

Love also distorts your understanding of language and generally accepted semantics. Few words which are just like any other million words in the world that you've read and spoken and even joked about in the past, those same words turn into monstrous glass splinters who crawl up your eyes and refuse to be ignored. They're the sly vision itching insects which remind you of their presence at all hours. Words hurt. I wish words were more tangible and physical in their appearance. Like a glass vase, on which if I was mad and couldn't stop thinking about, I could break it, throw it out of my house and have my satisfaction of destroying the evidence of its existence. But not words, nope.

Love is not a choice. Love is over powering, over whelming and once you've loved, you wont rest until it feels the exact way it felt that one beautiful taxi ride.

So here I am. Having my love own me and trying to own my love. It needs work and it needs nourishment and its needs a lot of love. And if anything I know about myself, I know I'm full of love. I love love.

I have always believed that only a truly happy person can make another person happy. And "I'm not happy" uh, that's my story. And that is right. It's a story. It's just a story. I've made myself believe it and act it and live it. I reckon, I can make another story preferably more fun, more happy, more beautiful and make myself believe that, live that and act that.

It's really simple actually and I can explain how I got to this. A while back when I used to meditate regularly I used to read a lot (double past tense). Meditation is a lot about breathing and how it dominates your being, right in the centre of your body with just a coming and going of a whiff of a air. Breath overpowers how you feel. And whenever you feel something emotionally or physically, your breath is the first thing to get affected. For example when you're cold, you breath becomes short and narrow and you take lesser air in, and your body wants to occupy as less a space as possible. The theory goes, it can be reversed. When you're in a really cold environment, you must stop yourself, and breathe as calmly as possible, long breaths with enough pauses and your body starts relaxing by yourself. That is how the old Sadhus in the Himalayas can be covered in snow and be as calm as the southern lakes.

And so that is my plan. I'm going to make Happiness come to me. When I'm happy, I eat a lot, I smile a lot, I love interesting facts on TV, I make fun of things and not judge them, I keep in touch with my family, I talk to my friends a lot, I meet my girls, I gossip, I write, I read, I crave tandoori chicken, I dance and sing at the top of my voice, regardless of which house it is and whose party it is, I listen to my music, I watch my movies and I love my theater, I laugh louder and with shameless lustful spite at times, I think less, I'm more easy going, I dress better, I complain lesser, I feel warmer, I'm bitchier (yes, I like it that way) and again, I eat all three meals, sometimes even four.

So now we're working backwards people. I will do everything I do when I am happy and it will come to me. Of course. Cause you know what? There is nothing to be so sad about. Shed. Shed. Shed. Shed. Surrender.

And since none of my best friends live in this city.. are you listening chinky, priya, nidhi, ishaan, shivangi? Damn you all! I'm going to be my own best friend and give one tight slap to myself, and be the sexy bitch that I am and shed this righteous, sacrificing, cutesy girl get up, who likes things clean. I don't give a shit about cleanliness dude.

So back to be the default me, this typified custom model is just not working dude. Not working. Love can be maddening, crazy, tiring, come one, come all, I can take this. Cool as cucumber. Calm. And patient. And happy.

Donning my hippy socks and tune out the world earphones now. Hare Krishna everyone.

Phokat Incoherent Brouhaha

There is a seductive shimmer on the horizon of happiness. It doesn’t let you rest. It’s tempting and worse off, always an option. When you’ve been hurt before, you want to just play the rims. Stay on the covers, smile from far and not involve. Not indulge. But that’s no way to happiness. Stuck in the sham, drudgery and broken dreams, we forget the little nuisance of an honest smile. A dreamy stare. A warm touch. A sign. And to yearn for it, is to almost reach it. That’s the way to be happy. Yearn. Dive. Sink. Surrender. (Goofy Smile- Humungous)

Few advises (for free)

1. Every person must live in student hostel once. Atleast long enough to realize that it’s probably a bad idea to not employ domestic help and act oversmart to claim that we do all our jhaadu and the like ourselves.

2. Some people are just plain lucky, and no matter how much you crib (or stare in disbelief) there’s nothing much you can do about it but sulk.

3. So much reluctance to not dress up is also a sort of vanity.

4. ‘Absolute’ does not exist. Absolute love, Absolute honesty, Absolute happiness, Absolutely stunning, eh. However, Absolut Vodka does :) And Thank God for that. Halle-fucking-lujah.

5. Food is one of the purest forms of pure lust. Pure, pure, sacred. I characterize every activity and phenomenon with food now. Say for example:
Wrapping in my comforter before sleeping: Becoming a Burrito
When the power cuts off: It makes me a Fried Chicken
When people throw attitude: Don’t go Foie gras on me!
To save on the sanity, I’ll leave my racist associations alone. Ask me in private, its good stuff ;)

The fun gossip from College, I didn’t share it here, so here’a cover on the wait-for-it – Cat Fight. We had a HR Services presentation; we presented Southwest Airlines HR Services. And some biaatchh couldn’t take the peace and took up a fight middle of the presentation, contesting our sources (and made us loose 5 marks in the end term presentation). Trouble. We’re a 6 girls group. Repeat – Girls. Six. Grouped. And mad. My dearie gawd, we screwed her happiness. Ofcourse, I had a guilt trip later for doing that. But for that little while that it lasted, it was fun. But on the whole, this was a satisfying week. A 52 page proposal for my world’s favourit-est company fetched me an ‘A’. And I’m max kicked. The company is IKEA if any of you are wondering. On other fronts, I still don’t have a summer Internship in order. But Jo’anna don’t lose no hope.

And No, I’m not yet over on my self confessed obsession to DevD. The damn thing is my wallpaper, and if you must know, I made a collage of my favourite shots from the film in between classes. I love it that much. Dhol Yaara Dhol makes you want to be in love. Butttt.. Delhi-6? What was the objective again? I mean, bhai koi original game laao. Sirf aaina dikhaane se kuch nahi hoga, humen bahut log dikha chuke hain. Hum metaphors aur simile waale sophisticates hain hi nahi dost. Hum nahi samajhte. Mujhe toh aakhir tak ummeed thi ek asli ke kaale bandar ki. Ki koi Makrand Deshpande lookalike maidaan main koodkar dilliwalon se confess karega, sansanikhej khabar banegi, thoda public drama banega, maze aayengi. Sab waste. Poori movie waste hain. 120 Rs bhi waste huye. Genda Phool hi ek layak cheez thi, iske liye itni jaddojahad jheli. Par, Gulaal in just around the corner. Ranaji was delightful, Rekha Bhardwaj’s voice is so captivating and so raw, it has a brittleness which is so original. I love love love her voice.

Also, I was twittering the other day, what the hell is this usage of word Bang? I thought it meant, yeah, that. What are all these new usages springing? Is it just used in Bombay? Someone said yesterday while giving me directions, ‘Bang opposite of ICICI’. Huh!? Oh, and ‘Bang on!’ Hmm, sure. Let me know, if this semantic harakiri is used any other way. I’m interested in all the umm.. banging.

Rest of the world is going by it’s speed. And I wouldn't change a thing. Get it? Get it? Si ;-)

See ya. And so long.

Wide Eyed Smiles

Yes,I figured (with prompt help from my friends and readers) that this post lacks explanation, and some context. So here it is, gladly so.

My friends and I, in the process of volunteering for Rotaract Club (Please look it up, if you're not aware of the initiative, and join!) went to a village in Navi Mumbai under a community health improvement program. The initiative is to reduce the child mortality rate and so one of the measure includes a regular blood check up and advising the women on how to take care of themselves during pregnancy.

Incidentally, in midst of all the running around and chaos, we couldn't ignore the curious faces, shy and yet unnerved with all the activity in their small school compound. So we all took up the chance and went to a few classes. Standard VII, III and I. We played quiz with them, gave chocolates, talked but to tell you the truth noting was enough. There was upsurge of such unsettling guilt, I didn't know how to conduct myself. Probably none of us did,but we tried. I guess we're still trying, trying to see if we can go back and teach couple of hours a week. Likhne ka kya hain, kuch hoga tab aur kahungi. Meanwhile. I'm here.

P.S. Maybe this post has a random stop, but its mostly cause my words are not powerful enough. I feel helpless.