THE BRIDAL DIARIES - PART 1

So day after is my engagement. And the word 'engagement' does some weird thing to people. I can actually do a case study on the multiple reactions of people to that particular word. For starters when you get hitched and you start inviting people for your engagement , people by and large can be classified into 3 categories : 1)the supremely indifferent single friends who will look at you as though you have sprouted antlers just because you are not so single any more and make their derision quite quite clear. 2)the obscenely excited friends who will throw thousands of questions of what you will be wearing , which parlour you will be going and what hairstyle you will donning leaving you wondering why you don't share even 10% of their  excitement making you firmly believe that something is definitely wrong with you. 3)These ones are my favourite.They will quietly be happy for you knowing this is one landmark in your life but will sympathize with you for all the circus hoopla you are being put through because they know exactly how it would feel. So the all time favourite question people keep asking you "how do you feel?' How do I feel??? I ask myself. Apart from the main event of the engagement I have thousands of irrelevant things buzzing in my head like my beautician has not yet turned up to discuss stuff with me , what if I am left in a lurch on the engagement morning or that I have a tiny red stone in my jewellery which is not exactly matching with my dress and I am also mortified with the fact if people asking me to sing and dance on my engagement. No sir !!! it's bad enough to stand in the scrutiny of 150 odd people who will be judging you from head to toe without me tripping over my own dress during my engagement or exerting my vocal cords because they have never been used before. So I decide firmly. No I will concentrate on myself ad my fiance completely without having to worry about who will turn up or not turn up for the engagement. So I go to the parlour . people keep talking about some weird glow for a potential bride. Now I do not understand that word. Am i supposed to glow like a 1000 watt bulb like in case there is a powercut is my face supposed to shine and reflect light for other people to see me or should I have a halo around my head like Gautham Buddha. But atleast he was enlightened. I am from that. So here I am at the parlour and after discussing the various services they get to the job. Now this is an interesting fact which I have observed and a major tip to all my lady friends. just mention that it is your engagement and throw in a coy smileto the parlour girls or the tailor and see the effect it has. You are waited on hand and foot , and you can even ask for an extra something and you will be happily obliged for. You have  the right to turn into bridezilla and NOBODY will say anything. Make sure you do this AFTER discussing the prices or they will rob you of your last penny at the mention of engagement.So coming back to the 'glow' after she scrubs my face for an hour and a half , she gives me a hair spa. While washing my hair I squint at my nose and see that it is extra shiny. Is this the 'glow' they are talking about? But I can get that by walking in the sun for an hour and get a shiny nose without spending that whopping amount. Anyway with chaos going on I start slipping into what I call my 'Zen Mode'. Just not getting bothered by anything and feeling satisfied with little things may be the key to a happy engagement mood. Who knows with my zen mode I may even achieve a halo like Gautham Buddha on the day of my engagement.

ANGER !!!

 
Now this is one of the strangest emotions for me. Probably because every other emotion has its predictability and this does not. You don’t know how you would react or how you are supposed to react. Probably the most attractive route which would sound to you is escapism. Just get out of that place which is annoying you or snub the person royally who is annoying you. The sensible side within you wags her finger smiling indulgently at your belligerent side. Na-ah , that is not how you handle things. The crux of the matter is how do you deal with it? I mean if it is repeatedly the same source which is bothering you then give that person a big telling off. But it’s those uncomfortable feelings within you which you have to deal with. Sometimes I feel some kind of a physical activity would do a world of good. Like dancing your ass off. Or  I sometimes dreamily think of kick boxing , imagining the person’s face which you’re boxing. But we need to detox mentally because all said and done anger is toxic. Not good for your health. I feel that in such times this advice is universal , spend time with yourself , probably the only way to detox , because no other company better than your own. I believe in destiny , karma and a weird belief that things sort themselves out. Probably all the logical idiots will tell me dialogue and discussion are means to end any conflict. True. But sometimes we are not always fighting an Indo- pak war where the discussion over a conflict becomes more tedious and annoying than the supposed conflict itself. So at the end of the day I sit back with my chocolate bars and let go because a quote from one of my favourite books little women says ‘don’t let the sun go down with your anger’ and another quote from of my all time favourites ‘gone with the wind’ says “tomorrow is another day” . so I tell my fuming weary glaring soul…. Tomorrow is another day J

The monster within me

So I didn't know I was secretly rearing a monster in me. Infact I had no clue of it's existance until one fine day it decided to show up when I least expected it. I was taken aback and could not explain it to myself or people around me. It decided to make it's presence felt every single minute of the day , when I walk , talk , bend , carry heavy things. It brought me such inexplicable pain that there was no other way of venting out other than crying. I confided into friends and family. Friends showed concern and suggested remedies. family rushed me to the doctor and apart from a few nuts who suggested things like surgery , most said that this can be tamed by regular exercise. I also found out that this monster's activities were directly proportional to the amount of stress I take. All was well after taking medication and doing regular exercise. A couple of months passed and things became more hectic in my work life. With time barely to eat and sleep I neglected my exercise. Completely my fault. And the monster came back. Again. The difference however this time was that friends , family , colleagues did not show that kind of concern. It was my fault after neglecting my exercise but I did not need to hear their yellings or false pity or the standard dialogue "oh it's back is it?why so" . Yeah that's a question I would love the answer to. My point is I am the one living with the pain , aware of it every single minute of the day it occurs and my life only becomes tougher when I have to deal with dialogues such as "at such a young age , it shouldn't come" . Thank you for the gyaan. I wasn't aware of it !!! So save me the pity and save me the rantings , I can do without them , Thank you very much !!!! The question remains as to where do i get the strength to deal with this monster , because I have no option but to deal with it. I learn to tame it. Be more sincere towards myself and my health. Not neglect myself , and inspite of all this if it still tends to recur , distract myself with the things that give me happiness. I have a strong belief that this monster will leave me. Why do I think that? My good sense , the same good sense which reassures me when I'm lost or in low spirits , lifts me up tells me that all will be  well and I will be rid of this in no time.

IT'S A VIRGO THING !!!

So I have noticed that I am peculiar like really peculiar !! Certain traits of mine are so inexplicable that I am at a loss to understand the way I am that I am. I have finally come to the conclusion that it's a virgo thing. I know Linda Goodman gives a rather flattering account of how virgos are and flattered as I am I don't quite agree with her. She says we are rather orderly people. I look around my room and it's a mess. She says we are stickler for cleanliness , uh huh....! We may not be orderly literally but our lives scream of order and method. Our maniacal brain keeps working overtime in categorizing work , friends and family. We DO NOT like random , casual stuff. Everything which happens has to happen for a reason and has to have a definite logic behind it. If it doesn't we do not sleep in the night. We do not like loud people , we do not understand them so we stay away from them , we LOVE crazy people because underneath every serious virgo there is a crazy person and we HATE twisted people because we do not know any other way than being straightforward. We love funny people because we literally thrive on wit and humour . Believe me if we virgos weren't humorous we probably would have died out of nervous breakdowns(So I am getting to sound a bit like Linda Goodman here) The entire point of this blog was to show off my peculiarity. SO I will recount a story here. The other day I was to return to college after a 3 day spell at home and my clothes were sent to the laundry. That day being a holiday the laundry was closed. Now a normal person's reaction would have been 'Oh the laundry's closed , too bad , I will collect my clothes the next time I come home.' My reaction was ' I will threaten , shout do anything and everything in my power to get my clothes back TODAY ITSELF' !! And believe me that's what I did. I got hold of the laundry man's number and kept stalking him like calling him every 5 minutes till he had to cut down his stay at his relative's house to come back and give my clothes. I was prepared to even go to his house to get hold of my clothes. Yes I was that paranoid. And the sane me recognizes this as an abnormal trait but my virgo brain has an answer to it.... It's a virgo thing after all , we are the way we are :) :)

IN MY TIME....

Maybe this may come across as a bit juvenile but I nevertheless feel the need to write about it. My generation , the 20 something crowd were born at a particularly wrong period of time. We were born at the brink of the IT explosion and the end of an era where basic needs were difficult to come by. We did not experience the Indira Gandhi emergency , nor any weird superstitious beliefs and customs followed by our parents in their generation.We experienced say a bit of both the worlds , a time when telephone connections took literally years to come by and the cell phone explosion. The evolution of the desk top to the lap top. We've seen it all. From waiting for our relatives settled abroad to get us 'foreign gifts' to just hopping to the nearest shopping mall and getting any foreign brand of our choice. The awe which a 'foreign returned' held about 10 years ago is now laughable. Our parents and those of that generation are also seeing these transitions but see it with different eyes. They do not feel the urge or the necessity to adapt to them. 'We have gone through all this.' they say patronizingly , 'been there and done that'. Try explaining them the coolness of a smart phone and the possibilities which an android phone opens up to you and they stare at you blankly. "Nokia phones are the best' they say stoutly , looking fondly at their million year old basic nokia phones with the exasperatingly hard key buttons. Now the real question is , are we a soft generation? Have we really had things coming easy for us? I agree that most of us have not seen the struggle of the basic ‘roti , kapda aur makaan’ but can our struggles and battles be compared to theirs? ‘Your cousin is earning Rs 30,000 per month and wears new shirts everyday’ my grandmother tells me with a wide eyed look. I look at her and sigh. Earning a living is really not one of our struggles today. A graduate an engineering , commerce or an arts graduate in their mid 20s will be earning a decent pay packet( I am not including our medicos and denticos , we all know that earning starts quite late for them considering their never ending studies.) The struggle for us is to keep up with the competition , to not disappear in a sea of faceless graduates but to stand out amongst them. To be different(however cliché that sounds) , for being different amongst our peers is not a possibility but a must for us. How else will we attract the thousands of companies and other establishments to pick us instead of our peers. While our parents discuss about the escalating prices of rice and groan at the time when 1kg of rice was Re 1 , we happily go about splashing Rs 1000 per movie or any other outing (this includes travel , food , ticket prices , etc.) Do we have a choice? We choose to live any cheaper , we practically will have a non existant social life. WE have to keep pace with everything happening around us, cannot afford to sit back and dwell. WE see some of our classmates losing their lives due to drunken driving , committing suicides for the silliest of reasons and living recklessly without a care for their lives. They last in our minds for 2 days and we move on. WE have no choice, cannot really dwell on them. Share it with your parents and they say ‘how silly , imagine committing suicide for something like that.’ Sure these kids did not die of any heart attack or any other bodily dysfunction but don’t they merit the same compassion which some 50 something somebody gets when they die? For God’s sake our lives are just starting. We live in an era when a tweet can make you famous and a facebook comment can get you arrested. We are connected to 500 virtual friends on facebook and chat with 20 odd people on whatsapp and YET feel lonesome at times. So the real question is Are we a soft generation? My answer is NO. We are bloody tough !! Yeah ok we do not struggle for roti kapda and makaan(though I do not know so much about makaan considering the ever escalating real estate prices.) But we have every day battles. Our foes are not some unknown faces in some cabin in the office but our peers , even our so called friends. We walk out of our houses everyday fully aware of the fact that there can be a blast at any time in any place in OUR city and we can be ripped to shreds. We come home late at night fully aware of the thousands of potential rapists lurking on the streets , in the buses even your auto rickshaw driver. We endure the daily struggles of being a woman by being scanned up and down on the streets. We have learnt to live with it , ignore it. We have no choice but to be adaptable because that’s what we have been doing since we were born. WE are the generation which can thrive successfully in both Bagalkot and Bangkok , in Surat and in San Francisco. WE can cope with whatever life brings on to us head on because we have been trained that way through our environment. WE do not give up and do not let go , as that was never an option for us. And last but not the least WE are the only generation which has seen the best and worst of both the worlds !!!!!

THE KALEIDOSCOPE

often in our lives we come across a phase/phases which we cant identify leave alone solve it. I'm not talking about a particular situation here but a phase which can last anything from a couple of days to a few weeks or sometimes even stretching to months. During this time all you're drive , you're focus or whatever it is which keeps you going is wiped out and you're left with a garbled assortment of petty conversations , inconsequential comments from other people and a cocktail of extremely unimportant things mixed with you're lack of drive on what IS important leaving you in a complete mess !! The result , you start cribbing like a LOT , become so snappy that you put off people who are actually being  nice to you and have zero tolerance towards anything unpleasant . You become broody , impatient , moody so much so that you start disliking you're own attitude which trust me only worsens the condition. It's a lot like PMS except that you're PMSing for a really long time !!! you're life becomes a kaleidoscope , a mixture of everything , the filter in you're brain stops working and you're left to stare helplessly at a jumbled up mixture of things which you cant make sense off . The worst part about this phase is that the little soothing voice in you're head which keeps calming you down and maturely gives you a level headed solution suddenly becomes dormant so you're brain becomes a volcano ready to explode at the slightest provocation and starts screaming and cursing everytime anything out of the ordinary occurs.You want to run away but you don't know where , so you contain yourself and bottle everything up , you know that if you confide into anyone you'll sound like a raving psychopath so you crush it deep within you and keep smiling primly at everyone as though nothing is wrong.So what is the solution ? buy yourself a self help book? maybe it'll help you to an extent but you'll still be left in the dark. Confide into friends?parents? maybe even counsellers? no , all they'll give you is advice but that's just what they'll be able to do and that's the last thing you want because you're intelligent enough to have deduced and even try implementing the so called advice long before you've confided into them. It's easier said than done . The best solution according to me is give it some time , try not to keep thinking and keep you're brain beautifully blank with a conscious effort. That'll get rid of the noisy buzzing in you're brain which is strong enough to give you a headache ! Try making a pattern of the jumbled up mixture in you're life , you'll find a solution because even a kaleidoscope has a pattern . And even if you cant make any sense or pattern of whats going on , just hang in there because a very great man once said 'this too shall pass' , in no time you'll snap out of this phase and you'll even wonder how you got into it in the first place. And then at that time when you look back to where you are now don't regret or feel ashamed of yourself , because after all we are human and life isn't perfect and rosy always  you're boat is rocking at the moment  it'll stabilize by itself ,  at that time you can look back and pat yourself by saying , 'boy I got through that , I can get through anything' :-)

STRONGER

It was just over a year ago when I would be cribbing over the most inane things , like my mum's cooking ; too less salt , too much asfoetida and so on.I would pick up fights over the most silliest things probably to vent out my frustration and maybe in the process have hurt the people I love the most without really meaning to.In every sense of the word I now realize that I must have been a spoilt brat.More selfish and less understanding.The thing with living with oneself and when you're alone is that you learn to deal with all those emotions , happiness , sadness , frustration , anxiety , fear , restlessness , boredom on my own. Over the 3 months that I've been living on my own I may probably not have changed much but have learnt a lot of things. The first and foremost is to stop complaining. Bad food , cockroaches in my room , doing every tiny thing on you're own which you took for granted when you were at home , all these things I know at the end of the day will just remain how they are no matter much I go on about it , the one and only solution is to deal with it. Because you have no choice , and it's not being a martyr or anything like I realized , its just that you concentrate on more important and pressing issues of you're life. A few months ago I would feel miserable if I had a fight with anybody in college , anybody would comment nastily on my appearance(which I have realized that people would not leave a single opportunity in doing so , call it joblessness or idle mind is devil's workshop !).Now if anything of this sort happens I brush it off and do not remember it the next moment , probably even feel sorry for the poor soul whose brain is keeping so much track on how I look instead of concentrating in whatever they are supposed to be doing.Given that with this hectic schedule that I'm leading that I've never led in my life , I have stopped thinking of others lives being so entrapped in my own.I am reading 'The Prison Diary' by Jeffery Archer at the moment and try putting myself in his shoes.Here I am a 61 year old successful novelist who has published bestsellers and is rolling in millions of pounds is suddenly convicted unjustly to a harsh sentence of 4 years in one of Britain's most strictest prisons.1 year ago if you'd asked me to put myself in his shoes I'd say that I'd definitely be in chronic depression even sometimes ranging to suicidal.But just look at what this guy did , maintaining a detailed manuscript of everything happening in his prison life he not only turned his worst experience into something which he enjoyed i.e writing but also came to terms with every disgusting thing which happened during that period of his life , like facing the pathetic prison food and how he dealt with it during his term. The lesson you take from such things is that sometimes when you feel that all that is happening around you is like the fates conspiring against you , you look ahead and see that one goal or dream which you set out to accomplish. That'll be the driving force which is so strong that it will immediately overpower every negative emotion you've ever had.Then with this as a talisman you can face anything , live in the harshest of the circumstances , deal with the lousiest of the people with the ease you make you're 2 min maggi :).You also realize that the people who stand with you in these circumstances will be with you throughout you're life and the rest are just a passing phase.