I am told or given to believe that the next best thing since sliced bread is the “hip and happening” ubiquitous lounge bar syndrome. I swear to God they are mushrooming all around here – rubbing their exclusively donned shoulders with a pan-beedi corner shop. Sure enough – I look around me and everywhere where there used to be a McDonald’s or a Papa Pancho’s derivative (you guys, anybody who has not lived in Bandra cannot know what or why Papa Pancho’s is such a huge phenomenon), all such remains of “down-market” places have been wiped out and in their place, stands a lounge bar with a fancy High Street designer name such as Ogan or Shalom. Yeah yeah, we are all climbing the social ladder, and these days, it helps if you are more in touch with the politics of Rwanda or Israel, and can wax eloquent on the economics of a strong euro and and throw around “esoteric” names to boot, such as Ogan or Shalom, as opposed to the good ole wannabe American names such as Bill’s Pizza Parlour. We are all heading towards the “famished road” here (don’t bother if you don’t know why that was enclosed in quotes, I am prepared to go to my grave with nobody but me getting my in-quotes statements and email song headers). Ben Okri anyone?? Naaah, never mind.

That said, I have an evening out at Shalom tonight. Finally, one Friday night in eons that might actually turn out right, thanks to G in B’lore. As always, I don’t believe in restricting my cribbing to just my virtual friends, so as I was talking to G, he suggested that he might have been able to do something about my friend-less state of being in India if it were Bombay or B’lore, hell, yeah. I could have managed pretty well myself in Bombay and/or B’lore – without much “help” – good set of friends in either place. Now, who would have thought that I’d be stuck in tractor-land up north? Nice transition this – straight from farmland cowtown Ohio to yet another tractorland cowtown in India. Great. They say life is all about patterns – in that case, I am setting some wunnerful trends for myself going forward. I like where I am headed.

Anyway, so yesterday, I find my mailbox spammed by the sweet guy (G), who has been pimping me around to his “eclectic” set of friends in this city (where he himself lived until a few months back, after returning from Boston), as this really “cool” girl who has lived all over the place, and has recently come down from the US to live in India and is having a really hard time with this city up in the north, and if they would, could they all write to me and invite me into their world? I swear I survive because of friends like him. “I get by with a little help from my friends…” (yeah yeah I am a Beatles fan too). He took the mantle of my “finding and making” friends upon himself straight on. I could have done without a little bit of the pimping, but, oh well….So his friends did his bidding, in particular, a sweet Aussie girl (let’s call her C) called me over for an evening of hanging loose at Shalom, so that’s where I am headed tonight. To meet her and the rest of her Aussie crowd, down a few martinis and chill. Yeah yeah, “eclectic” all right. I can see you smirking. All of them working for a Commonwealth NGO headquartered here. Should be good. Even if it involves “pretentious” conversation re the Middle East crisis and the Fed interest rate policy and the likes thereof. At least better than doing the routine with loud brash rap-bhangra loving northies, right? Fuck, I am prejudiced. Gimme the southies anyday.

“…what else can I say, what else could I do….” Shalom and thanks for the music.

I am getting a little angsty about this whole blogging thing. I have no thoughts whatsoever, zero, zilch. And this whole shpiel of putting all my two-pence thoughts out there and having people come back and tell me how fucking brilliant and “original” my thoughts are, and what a perfectly perfect and complex neural workshop my brain is, and all that jazz, is nothing other than a feel-good factor of a self-designed ego boosting plot. Well, as we all know, my ego needs no boost, I was born snooty and arrogant, I plan to stay that way. With or without your assistance.

So lets all agree upon this fact. Why do we blog? Why the fuck can’t we be writing journals for our own selves for our own consumption, like it used to be in the good old days? Yeah yeah, some of you will come back and say that it is because a singular thought gets more refined when others get to add their inputs into it and it invites “multiple” points of view and “animated discussions”. Blah blah blah…..yeah right. You my friends are all wrong. We do it because we are all full of gas and we need to occasionally have the world come back to us and tell us in an exaggerated act of bending-over obsequiousness what a brilliant piece of shit we are. That’s why. We, vain little God’s creatures, we, need constant self-assurance that we are all there is, that I am IT, that YOU are IT, that we, each one of us are singularly unique with a set of talents really uncommon. So, come into my cranium and watch your step please as the nuts and bolts grind themselves away  into happy oblivion, and please don’t forget to appreciate what a fine piece of work I am! My brain tour is done, folks, the exhibits will now be packed up for the day, so deposit your passes in the drop-box outside and don’t forget to stop by at the souvenir shop on your way out. Thank you mucho.

Or perhaps I am just really pissed off today because I couldn’t get into a really pretty little turquoise colored short kurta (or a frock that suffered from a case of mistaken identity and thought itself to be a short kurta) that came back from the seamstress’ last evening. When I eventually did manage it (and guys, I am NOT fat, FAAAAAAAR from it!!), I couldn’t breathe and looked like a fucking freak! It looked like a fucking ballet frock for a five-year old, I am NOT kidding you on this – all scrunched up at my bosom and then flaring out stupidly, and ending at my upper thighs! There was no way in hell I’d be seen dead in it!! Then, with the clock ticking past eight (and my morning commute is at least 45 mins and I am usually at work by 8:30), Miss Frazzled couldn’t make her way out of it, so she went scissor-happy, snipping her way out of the dress! That broke my heart – the pretty turquoise thing and I didn’t even get one day’s worth of anything out of it, forget one day, not even five minutes’ worth of anything. I mean, I haven’t even worn those kind of frocks even when I was five, for Pete’s sake and I ain’t about to start now! Then I get into the car and the radio is telling me that the lucky color for Aquarius for the week is turquoise, yeah, fuck you.

Okay, perhaps my seamstress was trying to flatter me subtly by suggesting that I have a body like Elle Macpherson or Kate Moss, but sorry guys, not there yet! Two more months of running and tennis and I could be pushing it.

Add to that my weekend story. Aaaaah, yes, my weekend. Sorry-assed city this. Almost drove myself straight to the airport from work on Friday evening so that I could get into Mumbai for the weekend and come back feeling good about my life, even marginally better would be nice.

But didn’t, for whatever reason. I was expecting to catch up with a couple of people who were in town. Biiiig mistake that.

I have this thing in life, having lived alone for considerable periods of time in my life, I tell myself that I’ll be darned if I let something as inconsequential as the lack of company stop me from enjoying the things I like to do. So Saturday saw me trudging off to go see the Jazz Yatra all by myself, only to be told at the gate that it was an invite-only event. Yeah all those Gucci and Armani flaunting baby boomers and even those Benetton-clad and whatever-trimmed teenagers whose vocab doesn’t go beyond “And I’m like, you know?....” with not a clue in the world about what an arpeggio or an overture is, standing there in their fake pashminas yapping and mouthing ten thousand three hundred and ninety nine “likes” every five minutes on their “latest Nokia” mobiles get to go!! And I don’t?? Fuck you. Just because I don’t have a fucking pass?? Just because this is a goddamn city of diplomats and political big-wigs and the “have-it-will-flaunt-it” crowd where genuine music enthusiasts are given the Passover?

Oh well, not to be disappointed, I checked myself into a movie theatre on my way back and watched Jogger’s Park all by myself and went home. The ONLY thing I cannot do alone is have a sit-down dinner alone or drink alone, that’s all. I can have an occasional glass of wine alone at home as well as beer, I can also manage a sit-down Sunday morning brunch/breakfast alone but that’s about it. Sunday was marginally better – met up with an old friend from Bombay who was in town, went home and cooked Thai chicken in green curry (which came out fantastic by the way) and read some trash and went to bed. What can I say – one more month in this city and my cup wunneth over. That was intentional.

Preamble is a nice word, very elegant, found she-who-could-be-me-in-another-life use it in some context. And it stirred something in me. I don’t have much to offer by way of preambles, so instead here goes, I believe in epitaphs, and hence one of these days, I shall get down to writing the 100 things about me, before I die. That’s a promise, and then parts of it can be cut-pasted and read out to me on my funeral, I am not being a necrophile here or anything, I believe in being prepared for every eventuality in life and be gracious about everything that comes my way, and death (which is a great leveler by the way) should also receive the same (dis?)respect that life does. I am quite a purist, I do everything to the best of my capability or I don’t do it at all, no halfway houses for me, no dwelling in “in-between” places, it is always either end of the spectrum for me. In that sense, I’d like to see my dying being conducted with as much quiet grace and “being in the flow” as my living. So I am preparing my funeral speech in my head even as I write this, as in what would I say to/about myself if I were dead? Would I say bad things, nice things, spice up some things, add a dash of humor, or just lay it like it is? Hard, cold truths about the person I am. Then again, if I am dead, who else would be better qualified to talk about me than I, myself? For nobody, nobody knows me as well as I do! Now, there, we’ve run into a circular reference here, ain’t it (that is my excel modeling speaking)?

Hence, logically speaking, since nobody knows me as well as I do, stands to reason that on my passing, I should technically provide the brief to whoever would be reading out their eulogies to me, or insults as the case maybe! (Oh yes, I have a few people who are not overtly fond of me and judge me with a lot of vengeance too!). Hence, the preparing of the funeral speech in my head. Now, do I make sense? Ahh, I hear the exhaling, logic has come full circle, and circular reasoning resolved (all you engineers can rest easy now).

When the dust settles

and I lay in the bed

you build for me

garnished with

fistfuls of faithless sand,

fake tears and holy water

Throw me a few laughs

as you stand there

for I am told

Mirth resides but voices don’t

And I might get hungry

For laughter echoing

Six feet under…

>"...and here we stand
the desolate red desert sky
folded across a woman's bosom
and I with my unchorded evensong,
boiling mud pools in my coffee cup
cracked earth streaked with a river
that runs like a half-dry tear
down its wrinkled face.
Tired and tireless
Still together, still apart,
still yearning,
the sky and I..."

Today I learnt that a very good friend is getting married in January, and it was long coming and he had been single for a very very long time. Technically, I should be happy for him, technically I am happy for him, but some part of me was a little wistful. Perhaps it is the knowledge that nothing lasts forever, perhaps it is the knowledge that one day when the early morning mist has been steam-cooked and dried out by the humid sea-salt heavy midday noon sun that more mundane things will replace the sheer joy of discovering that your partner likes her eggs fried on both sides with the edges overdone to burnt, and the adventure that comes from knowing that she goes to bed with her legwarmers on, scrunched up in the foetal position and buries her face under two gigantic pillows, and smiles to herself in her sleep will all be replaced by the irritable urgency of waking her up in the morning so you can get a steaming cup of tea or coffee as you please, or that the things you so adored about her in the beginning, the things that were radically and magically different, the things that held you spellbound in the beginning, the things you couldn’t quite trace a pulse to, the things that left her a little “undefinable”, a little “non-compartmentalisable” are starting to grate on your nerves now, making you wish for some “sameness, like-mindedness”, some commonalities, some “definableness”. That the differences are simply piling up like a mountain of unwashed laundry, wanting to be heard and making you scream inside at times, and that the poetry is getting lost in the drive to work and the grocery shopping and the vacuuming and the cooking of quick meals on the go. Or maybe I am just an incorrigible cynical bitch, who sees no glimmer of hope in human relationships, just a hopeless loser who sees the end before the beginning has begun, a jaded woman who cannot find it in herself to be happy in someone else’s discovery of paradise. Yeah that’s me alright. I deserve to be shot. Somebody do the honors. I am a sorry scum-bag, for believing that “nothing lasts forever and we all know hearts can change…”

Perhaps it is also possible that there are two warring factions if you will, in life – the mob of the married people on the one hand and the mob of the single people on the other, and each hates the other’s single or married status (as the case maybe) with equal vehemence.  And both want to be a sworn member of the other squad, and that the singles club would secretly wish to be a part of the other club (which involves burnt breakfast eggs, and dirty laundry threatening to spill out of the washer, and quick pasta dinners leaving sticky residue on the flame burner, and your favorite iced tea bottle emptied out to be mixed in some godforsaken unheard of cocktail, shmocktail (ok so I am not that much of a spoilsport, but humor me, here, will ya?), and also involves a warm human being to cuddle, share TV dinners with, share the dresser mirror with in the morning rush-to-work, jostle with for make-up space and shaving space all at a few minutes after seven in the morning, and laugh with at totally inane email forwards, and go to the movies and dinners and coffeeshops and book-readings with, at the end of every long workweek that is done), but there’s a need to convince oneself that my way of life works for me. Does it, now, does it - really?? I heard loneliness takes more lives annually than cardiac arrests, and you thought I was just paranoid for no reason at all? Could it also be that all ye who read me are in your early or mid 20s, still the age where magic stands a fair shot, where razor-sharp mirror edges can cut across jaded views of life, and you are still “wanted/eligible” or any of those words by young nubile sweet somethings. As for me? I am all of 32 and going on 94. Is there hope for me, I hear you giggling.