All I want for Christmas

Dear M,

Stop. Just effing stop. Stop messaging me. Stop wishing me a very happy birthday. Stop sending me occasion-specific greetings and STOP calling me ‘girl’ (I am not a girl, I am most certainly not YOUR girl). Just stop.

I suppose it is partly my fault. I shouldn’t avoid confrontation. I should’ve told you a long time ago that I did not want to be in touch. I should’ve told you to just please, please leave me alone. See the thing is, I kind of assumed that if I didn’t reply to your texts or take your calls, you would, eventually, get the message (it’s been, what, two years?). Now I know you’re not *dumb* (you may be a slimy bastard occasionally, but you’re not dumb) and it can’t be that you don’t get it. So you know I don’t want to stay in touch, you know that I‘d rather have a root-canal without anaesthesia than meet you, but for reasons known only to you, you persist.

By the way, what kind of reply are you expecting to yesterday’s “Hey whassup” message? (On an aside, have you heard of this sweet little thing called punctuation?) What’s up? I’m avoiding you like the plague, is what’s up. And have been doing so for the past two years is what’s up. And stop effing acting like you’re catching up with a buddy with whom you haven’t spoken in ‘absolutely *ages*’. We are not buddies, we never were. We were two people filling in for two other people. We were the two-month equivalent of a one-night stand for each other and for the love of god, M, who keeps in touch with one-night-standers??

And now that I’m done with foaming in the mouth, M, here’s what’s really up. We met when I was at possibly the lowest phase of my life (Maybe I should add a ‘so far’ to that phrase. Not tempt fate and all). Think about it, I was willing to *sleep* my way to a higher sense of self esteem. *Head-lice* do better than that. And you remind me of that time. Is that fair? No, I’ll be the first to admit it isn’t. But come on M, since when have we done fair?

So you can understand why I’m completely baffled by this strange let’s-get-in-touch-with-CS mission.

I don’t resent you, I don’t. Most times, I forget you exist. In the few times that I have heard about you from friends, my reactions can be largely described as lukewarm. Except maybe when S told me about your wedding. She showed me your wedding card, in fact. It’s odd, possibly a sign of my advancing years, that my first thought when I saw it was almost disgustingly maternal. “Awww…M’s getting married!” I believe, was the phrase that flashed in my head.

Excuse me while I throw up.

I’d be lying if I said I wished you happiness. The truth is, I don’t wish you anything. It’s hard to wish someone well (or ill) when you’re actively avoiding thinking about them. So, apart from the occasional bout of nausea (at my behaviour, not yours), all I really really want, is for you to leave me the hell alone.

Do you think you could do that? For old times’ (as they were) sake?

Best,

C.S.

Jab bhagwaan deta hai...

...chhappar phaad ke deta hai.

I was, I think, about 7 years old when I first heard this phrase. The mental images which came with it were fascinating because I hadn't a clue what a chhappar was and had promptly mentally substituted it with the similar sounding chappal. The picture in my head therefore, was that of a benevolent (if slightly batty) god, who stored a goonie-esque stash of loot in the soles of his giant Kolhapuris (they were thick-ish soles). On days when he was pleased, he'd rip the insole (upsole? what do you call the upper half of a Kolhapuri chappal?) in two and tip a cascade of treasure into your house from his giant slipper in the sky.

I remember finding this system a little odd, but who was I to argue? He was god, he moved in mysterious ways.

And that phrase (with the chappaR as opposed to the chappaL) pretty much sums up what all of October has been about.

So first, there was the Series of Mysterious Ailments in which a bunch of dastardly viruses decided to make my body their own personal island of fun. My temperature would zip from one end of the thermometer to another, leaving me struggling to either pull on three blankets, or weakly kick them off. Most annoying it was (although for a couple of delirious minutes, just before the shivering set in I'd think, "Ooh...winter! In Delhi!" and get all happy).

Then the fever came down and the deafness happened, only it wasn't real deafness* - just a sort of internal deafness which blanketed all outside sounds but magnified the inside-your-head noises ONE HUNDREDFOLD. To get an idea what I'm talking about, plug your ears with your fingers and chew on a piece of toast. I swear to you, you will never see toast in the same light again. I spent a good three days listening in wide-eyed wonder, to the sounds of my mastication (which, I know, sounds terribly dirty but isn't).

THEN there is employment. Full time, five days a week, with a pretty paycheck at the end of the month thank you very much. It is with a division of the Big Bawa Company (henceforth referred to as the BBC) and so far, after eight days of being an employee, I can say that it's been good. Day 1 went by mostly figuring out the most essential things: where the loos were, what kinda food the canteen served and how many cups of coffee I could drink before people would start looking worried and back away slowly when I started to talk to them (for the record, it's four), and the subsequent days have just been packed.

Employment has come with it's own bunch of insights which have, more or less, nothing to do with the job itself.

Insight 1: Andheri = Hell. Allow me to recount a conversation I had with an auto-walla, one rainy day in August. The autowalla, his auto and I were stuck in knee-deep water (this is 2007, mind you. NOT 2005), traffic hadn’t budged an inch in the last half an hour and horns were blaring all over the place.

Autowallah: (In a voice dripping with weariness) Madam, aapko maalum hai yeh jagah kya hai?
Me: Er...Andheri? Aapko nahin maalum kya??
Autowallah: Madam...yeh jagah...jahannum hai, JAHANNUM!!

(Fierce blowing of auto horn)

Insight 2: Your mother (by which I actually mean mine) was right when she told you to be picky about the boys you chose to play tonsil-hockey with. Because many years down the line, when you find yourself working with one such boy, while on the surface you may be discussing things like lesson plans and scripting and enterprise application training, the one thought running around in your head will be OH MY GOD THIS MAN'S TONGUE WAS ONCE IN MY MOUTH. Disconcerting, girls and boys, is the word we're looking for.

Insight 3: I have turned into my father. After making a career of being a directionless drifter, I have turned into one of those people who *thrive* under pressure and boy, is THAT a shock for MY system. In the last week and a half, I've had deadlines that would normally have me curled up on the floor crying, but the newly-employed me? She is calm and collected. She is going in to work early, making lists (the ailments have obviously affected a chromosomal mutation) and positively burning with a quiet efficiency.

You know you fight it. You're rebellious, you drink, you (try to) smoke, you get tattoos, piercings, and a collection of exes that make you cringe and still, one fine day you will wake up and find that you have turned into your parents. That life, she's got a sick sense of humour.

Oh and by the way god / giant slipper in the sky? Since this is officially the end of October (AKA the Month in which It All Happened at Once), you can go easy now. No, really, I wouldn't mind. NO. SERIOUSLY, STOP IT!

* And smartypants family shall refrain from commenting about how ‘You can’t lose what you ain’t got’. You're all deaf anyway. And maybe I'm not deaf, maybe you just all need to be more interesting? Y’ever think of that?

How to make an effective decision-making tool wish it had never been born

She sits on the cold floor, her back against the wall, her knees pulled up close to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. She picks up her pen, her sketch-pad, draws a line down the center of the page and starts writing.

1. "Lies. (in block letters, underlined twice. The second line so fiercely that the paper tears a little). Lies all the time. About everything. His family, his holidays, even his goddamn internships! Why would anyone lie about something like that?! I didn’t even get an internship, did it ever occur to me to lie about it? No! Lies about his mother, for crying out loud. Says she’s suffering from a life-threatening disease of the spine. And (of course!) she used to be a dancer. "

2. "Steals ideas from Creativity editions and passes them off as his own. I can’t believe how much I praised his India Ink idea, how slack-jawed with awe I was, how stupid I felt for not being able to come up with a concept even a fourth as intelligent as that. And how he was all modest and self-effacing about it. “Oh I was just doodling and it came to me. It’s no big deal.” Arrgh! D, you bloody stupid fool!"

3. "Copies down Robert Browning’s poems and claims he’s written them. Apparently, having the same initials as a Victorian poet implies that you are him. Apparently, he also thinks he’s the only one in college with a library card. And like that's not enough, he denies it so vehemently when confronted, that I begin to doubt myself.


And in the right column, in a much less forceful hand, she writes, “Makes me laugh.”

Hot Chocolate and friends

They were together for about two months. Two months of dates in which he'd tell her stories of how he'd been with two women (twins, no less!) at the same time, how he'd been the stripper for his friend's bachelorette party, how he'd been picked up by so many women that he'd almost lost count; that he was a loner and 'not a nice guy'. And there she'd be, lying in his bed, in the dark of his room, thinking about the many faces people put on to hide hurt, and of how well both of them played the couldn't-care-less game.

She almost laughed at the fact that she was playing body-double for a girl whose ex-boyfriend was playing her rebound guy. Almost.

But the thing with body-doubles and ghost-exes, was that you knew they weren't the real thing - they weren't supposed to last. It was what they call 'a willing suspension of belief'. You bought your ticket, watched your movie, lived someone else's life for a few comfortably numb hours and then went back to reality.

Which is why when he started calling her again (a year after that movie ended) she refused to take his calls, deleted his number, then re-saved it as 'Bad Idea'*.

And then she remembered that one night when they'd been something like buddies. When they silly-danced with each other on You Sexy Thing - doing the butt-wiggle, the gospel-hands and the pretend strip-tease. For that one night, she had to admit, they had been friends...good friends. The kind who told you to stop whining and get on with your life. The kind that held your hand and fake-flirted you back to smiling, laughing and realising that life didn't stop just because people moved on.

she never did take his calls, but she smiles every time she hears that song.


*Which probably just goes to show that there's no such thing as a completely bad idea - 99% fucking stupid, yes, but hey, how else would you learn?