Aaj Banda tere liye nachega

 This song is probably the cleverest part of the entire movie that i just came back from watching... Happy Patel is so strange and frankly cringey full of cliches that it gets hilariously funny in parts... or maybe my laugh filter is broken..

I would say that this film has some lovely moments-- the "item song" where the GUY for a change is doing all the dancing and making fun of the titillating dances that our films are usually full of-- AWESOME!

plus Vir apparently CAN dance... 

identifying the "instinctive" response of most Indian women to random male touching-- we all WANT to respond with that tight slap instinctively.. unfortunately most of us suppress that anger for fear of what else may happen... thankfully Happy Patel accepts the slap and the reason behind it. and does a marvellous job giving Rupa the chance to initiate any physical contact.. kudos for that

also.. the Mama -- she starts out at as sociopathic little girl who takes the ring of power from her dad.. kills her brothers.. takes the throne.. but stays in this very traditional feminine role of cooking and poisoning people to death... hell she even seeks validation from a male chef-- Sanjeev Kapoor in a very very cringey parody of some of his own shows and the greater world of reality cooking shows

absolutely every woman - feminine role is powerful in the movie-- even the tech genius is a girl- Roxy

the dead mother Sukhubai -- also this great sacrificing strong mama-- mixed in with the "kaamwali bai can do anything while doing jhaadu" joke

but when you have creative geniuses like Vir, Sumukhi and Amir khan working together.. WTF is with the very strange very cringey story?? 

I mean you repeatedly use random gaalis as "mispronounced" words and phrases.. the "tom" gag is just too silly for words.. and I am hard pressed to actually say what the point was-- except to make a parody of spy movies, "main apne baap ki maut ka badla loongi" trope and the "entire village comes together" trope.. all at the same time

like you took a whole bunch of tropes and stereotypes.. put them all together and made something silly

I usually LOVE Vir Das's stand up shows.. he is clever and witty and sharp as a needle and can make very intelligent jokes.. 

but this movie felt like it was meant to just do slapstick bollywood cliches and give Vir Das and Amir Khan a chance to repeatedly say-- "Main Hindustani hoon" after all the damage that has come their way for criticising the current political dispensation

It's been years and I need a release

 I feel like my brain.. my self is being erased slowly... Question by question.. comment by comment.. and thanks to a large part by my own creeping depression... 

It's been six years since I last wrote here.. why? Because someone said something.. parents decided to push the "why are you writing personal things in public"... someone said something weird about something I wrote.. 

And i stopped.. 

Over the years I've lost places to vent... Diaries have been torn, blogs have been questioned.. and WHY? 

Because writing down what is in my head apparently is "washing dirty linen in public".. 

And then I was reluctant to put things on a blog.. because I didn't want to start another argument with the person i loved.... 

Slowly my desire to write eroded because each sentence was being read and discussed and commented on by someone who felt "hurt" by what I felt in my head.. 

Even when this was part creative outlet, part venting space.. 

In today's world when everyone is chronically online and insta and threads and twitter are virtually used as daily diaries.. i can't remember the last time I actually wrote in my diary.. 

I went through Cancer last year.. diagnosis February 2024- stage 3C. 

Put a photo on insta with my shaved head after the chemo started.

 Immediate backlash-- why the hell would you put it online? We hadn't told extended family yet... 

It's MY body.. my social media.. and hello? I just told everyone who cared to look.. WHY do I need to "break the news carefully"? 

I genuinely can't remember the last time I wrote a story.. or poem, or even listened to music in peace.. it's like the cancer and the sadness has taken every creative instict away.. though I'm not sure which one actually came first.. 

i'm back to working.. going to office.. 

Officially Cancer free but on maintenance meds so it doesn't relapse.. 

But it's like the light has gone out in my head.. 

It doesn't make me happy or excited or even satisfied anymore.

 It's just a job.. 

Journalism used to MEAN something.. to highlight what's wrong and how it can be resolved.. 

But 13 odd years of writing the same articles over and over again while things keep getting worse is making me wonder why anything survives at all.. 

Literally every few days we are doing the same story of violence and depravity and apathy of those in power and those watching 

Even in office there are times when I wonder if everyone has shut off their humanity to cope with the awfulness we see or am I being over sensitive..

And through it all i feel a sense of aloneness that screams even though I know there are like minded people put there.. there are people who see things, write things, create things in this fucked up world.. 

I used to be able to disappear into a book and forget about everything.. reboot my brain a bit.. now nothing works.. maybe it's because "adult world" means reading books about reality and darkness and politics.. even a fantasy book these days a LOT darker and politically nuanced... I lost my taste for reading happily ever after romances a while ago when things crashed and burned in my love life.. 

That's another set of scars.. from feeling insane and questioning something as basic as morals and cheating and allowing someone to drag me through thoughts and feelings and situations that I seriously don't know WHY I went through.. 

I used to be all about sunshine and finding the silver lining and seeing the happy and hopeful bits.. but now I just can't seem to find it in any part of my life.. 

And i don't know what to do about it.. 

He walks.. I watch

I watched him walk towards me today

Feet splayed

Arms akimbo

Balancing carefully on the bricks of the lane leading home

Slow but sure

Not needing a hand to hold him steady

Watching each brick under his feet

And then watching me watch him walk

The slight frown on my face as I watch each careful shuffling step

The stubborn look in his eyes that says

I don’t need a mommy to hold my hand as I walk

Looking up and to the side as a bird flips past

As I wait

Hoping that the uneven bricks and the slush left behind by the rain doesn’t trip him up

Making sure that he sees the little bit of mud right outside the door

so he doesn’t get his shoes muddy

I watch,

worried but proud

Much as he must have watched me take my first steps as a toddler

My grandpa

The 95 year old who still won’t carry a stick

Labels are a BITCH

Labels are an odd thing..

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose…

Sure

But what happens when a Rose is told that it is nothing special but simply a member of a large family of the genus rosacea?

Does that not detract from THE thing that is a Red Rose in Full Bloom and reduce it to a “just a rose”?

I had a shitty relationship.. I was a fool in love with an ass who didn’t respect me.. I took everything he dished out for years and still loved him, fought with him, stayed with him... till I finally had enough and told him to fuck off…

That was my reality. I was an idiot in love as a teenager who let that idiocy define years of her adulthood too..

That was me. ME. As the actor who chose to behave in a certain manner and CHOSE to be  a certain way..

But now the label has been changed

Ironically by the same Ass who I told to fuck off from my life

The AB’s back in town for a flying visit.. and has recently been sitting through some seminars on domestic violence and abuse..

So he decided to assuage his guilty conscience and come to me to APOLOGISE for the emotional, mental and sexual abuse he put me through during our relationship....

A relationship that ended 7 years ago.. one that scarred me so badly that I’ve only recently  begun healing..

He came to APOLOGISE… 

and in the process took away my agency, my choice, MY decisions..

I was an Idiot in love with an ass

I’m now a Victim... a survivor of domestic violence whose abuser came back to apologise for his behaviour..

I’m no longer the person who made the wrong choices.. I’m a victim who  “suffered through abuse”

Who was this apology for anyway??

I was okay with my original label.. I was okay being the idiot who made bad relationship choices.. I was OKAY

Now I’m not

Now I find myself reliving everything about the years of our relationship.. wondering which part was my choice, where was it that I had the agency to do something but chose not to, and where were the parts where I could have done nothing…

isn't there some rule when it comes to shit like this that it should be the so called Victim who should ask for and lead the confrontation with the abuser and then walk away after receiving an apology feeling bolstered and vindicated???

i now feel more violated than i ever felt during the worst parts of our relationship... back then i was Choosing whether or not to pick a fight.. i was choosing to react or not react.. or maybe overreact if i felt emotionally wrought enough.. it was MY CHOICE

or so i believed..

now the apology has been given to me.. has been thrust at me really.. and i'm writing about it days after the fact, still dazed at what happened.. 

i didn't really react in front of him.. just gave him a polite hearing and said Okay.....and i let him go.. 

i wrote to him the next day.. with a long list of things that i REMEMBER hurting me.. asking whether he acknowledges and apologises for all of them..

got a reply saying. i apologise for all the things you've listed and things you've not...

and now i'm spiralling in my own head wondering what other abuse have I suffered that i didn't even KNOW was abusive behaviour??

labels are a BITCH i tell you

Soul Fury- Rumi- Coleman Barks

I ask the reed flute, why are you crying

How can there be such tears,

When nothing has been lost

The reed flute says, Not so

They took me from the lips

that once made sugar throughout my whole and silent body

Now I live letting others

Make crying sounds

With my emptiness

The trope of loss and emptiness is a strange one.

Even when the world sees you as an art form, making beautiful music that touches souls, the beauty may be coming from the depths of emptiness and deadening inside.. we believe that the music is divine, but it is ultimately the expression of the emptiness through the various holes torn through the reed’s body

The purpose of a story is not to hold your attention
but to put you back doing your work, inner and outer......

there's no shame in being crazy....

I'm not the one who broke you I'm not the one you should fear We got to move you darlin I thought I lost you somewhere But you were never really ever there at all



there are days when i stumble across a song whose lyrics are like a fist to the gut...



when does this end really???

fuck Patriarchy.. I'm gonna have a drink....

so i don't know if it's just my parents who refuse to simply have my back and make simple excuses like "oh she has work" or even a "she's just gone to the loo/she's around somewhere"... or people in general are really THAT nosy bout my whereabouts coz i'm between 30-31, reasonably decent looking , educated and working... and ON this fucking "Marriage market"

i don't understand how this bloody patriarchy works.....
so today was a cousin's wedding...a second cousin on my mother's side who I hadn't seen  for close to a decade... and i decided to go participate in the ritual of a "Car-o- bar" with my male cousins because the only two female cousins on this side of the family were the bride and her sister who was basically obliged to be right next to the bride...
i decided, that given the lack of ANYONE my age and gender, i will just hang out with the boys.. because lets face it.. i've always found it easier to hang out with the boys.. but according to my parents,, EVERYONE asked about where i was... and "they're trying to get me married ad i've gone missing with the boys.. which apparently goves the worng impression.. and because the boys were drinking in the parking lot.. "who knows if one girl surrounded by 5 boys is their sister or some 'other woman"... like WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!
i honestly don't know if these ridiculous retsrictions are because my parents are a pair of repressed conservatives or the " society" really asks that many questions...
i was having a drink at a freaking wedding venue in full shiny attire with my cousins...because when i said i don't feel like attending the bloody wedding.. it was a "family event" that i was not gonna get out of..
i faithfully get home from work early and get dressed in a sari and fucking attend the wedding of the daughter of my mother's cousin.. who i have not seen, and am not likely to see for YEARS... i even participate in the "joota chupai" and go do the social sounds and say hello to everyone because that's what is expected of me... but going off AFTERT having done the social obligations is apparently damaging...
WHEN does this end?????????????????????????????
My mother actually told me that "everyone asked where i am" because i went  to have a drink with my male cousins.. and apparently.. when your parents have you on the Marriage mart,... going for a drink with the boys is a No No...becaase the entire community of close to 500 people present at the wedding have nothing better to do than note that i'm not demurely sitting by my mother;s side available for people to ask me inane things like where i work...

WHY THE hell is anyone interested in why i'm not sitting with my mother????? i'm over 30, and i've already done the social rounds for the night...for all anyone knows... i could be checking out the dessert section, or just lost in the crowded wedding... WHY do my parents subscribe to the patriarchial idea of how "society" expects a "good girl" to behave?\

i have no role to play in the wedding.. its just the patriarchal hallmark of a "good girl" who would participate in every family ritual and conveniently melt into the shadows when society expects her to be seen and not heard... I DID THAT ALERADY damnit!!!!!
how is it ANYONE's concern if i'm not at the dinner table with my parents at a social function?
:
or it it that my parent's suffer a particularly virulent form of "what will people say- itis" that makes their idea incomprehensible to me...

if the boys are "distant cousins who are not 'real' siblings... then WHY the hell am i expected to change work and after work plans to hang out with them?? if they are "like brothers.." then why does society have issues if i'm having a drink with them...
what exactly IS the point of having a horde of cousins if "society" Still has issues with me hanging out with my cousins.. i would rather have the option of saying "no thanks.. i;m not going"...

Loving Pinocchio

the boy I knew was not a real boy.... he was what he believed others expected him to be and what he wanted others to see him as having been... I wonder now if i went wrong in my encouragement of "you can be whatever you want" instead of having asked the question "who are you really"... maybe i should've demanded a sensible answer to that one while i was at it...

it seems to be a failing of mine in a way.. a character flaw that i am a poor judge of character and try to be accepting of the face one shows to me... i hate having to put on a mask so most of the time i assume the person before me is pretense-less as well.. even though i'm quite old enough to know that most people have layers of masks enough that their real face is never seen...

it struck me recently that i've done this for all my life, taken people at face value and assumed that if they claim to be something there must be some truth in it.. rather daft ideals to live by for a journalist i'd say...


Its recently become rather apparent to me that I've failed miserably at reading the truth even when it was very very necessary for me to have done so.. both for my own sake and for the sake of those I Loved..

here's some words of wisdom from Comicstaan's Prashasti Singh

Not In My Name

There were protests across India this evening against the repeated incidents of Mob violence and lynchings in the name of religion. Students, activists, lawyers, artists, politicians all came out to stand on the streets and campaign against violence with posters bearing the words Not In My Name.
Hundreds turned out at Jantar Mantra in Delhi. despite the oppressingly humid evening, people stood there with their placards and sang along to songs about unity, peace, God and Humanity. It was a heartening moment to be a part of, to see how many had turned out to say that they would NOT approve of religion being used as an excuse for violence.

BUT

I came back rather disappointed at what I saw.

What I had gone to the #NotInMyName protest for was this....

Unfortunately what i ALSO got there was a very pointed attempt at focusing on Hindu Muslim polarisation and a narrative that seems to have forgotten all the instances of mob violence against Dalits, women, Police personnel-- all of which were also in the name of religion and by religious fanatics. 

What TRULY disappointed me about the protest was the fact that the "Lynch map" of India that mentions the deaths by frenzied mob had such few and pointed examples ONLY of killing of Muslim men. WHY was this Lynch map not full of the incidents of violence against Dalits? why did the women killed for "being a witch" not find mention in a protest against Religion as excuse for violence? why did the speeches not mention the Kashmiri policemen who live in fear of the stonepelters targeting their families? what about the poor young men killed for "stealing" from somewhere???? don't they deserve the attention that a made for media blitz event like the ANto Violence protest commands??

YES we need to talk about the issue of rampant anti Muslim sentiment being added to in this country, heaven knows many of our towns are one pointless argument away from a full communal riot situation. but that is NOT limited to Hindu vs Muslim riots. We seem to have forgotten an entire spectrum of violence that our society is suffering under

SO yes, while I am proud to say that I attended the protest, on my own time as a private citizen of this country, I came back worried more about the fact that so many victims of mob violence have been consigned to the backburner.. It feel rather that in a bid to challenge the monster of "comunalism" by a particular community

so

to all those who attended, planned, sweated and felt involved in this protest, I would ask one thing..

WHY are we turning a legitimate 'crowdsourced" protest demanding a stop to violence in to a left vs Right, HIndu vs Muslim debate?
because if all that it was meant to be was a public attack against the BJP, the Modi Govt and its allies, while ignoring all other issues of violece atht plague our ocuntry, them i think  then I'm sorry, it ios NOTINMYNAME

six degrees of separation

I have always been a bit unobservant and allowed the sharp edges of the world to blur out a bit when I care to look at it... rather daft for someone in my profession but it is what it is...
one of the ways it has manifested, and it was a part unconscious and part conscious decision at some point in my life.. was to not ask about a person's background.. Now one reason was that being in the college that I was at with the people I was surrounded by, it was just easier to consciously stop considering my friends' backgrounds because it would have made things rather uncomfortable for me had I focused more on WHO they were instead of who THEY were..
today however I realised that the malaise goes deeper.. not that it affects my friendships one whit, but I found out today that someone I've known for a very very long time is connected to circles that I with my family background would not have easily gained access to, or for that matter, felt comfortable, in a social situation, had I known what I was getting into..
a schoolfriend who I have known since before puberty set in got married over the weekend.. Now when we were kids, it never mattered what someone's parents did for a living because we were friends from school who rarely if ever met the parents of other schoolfriends... the people who made up the "family" guest list at the wedding were a surprise to me.. though i suppose I could have asked questions a lot earlier considering the wedding venue and other things... It had just never occurred to me to ask him "bhai what do your parents do?"

mind you, knowing the answer to "do you know who my father is" in today's context has no bearing whatsoever on my relationship with my friend.. but it was rather disconcerting to walk into the gathering, specially as I knew no one except the groom.
whats even stranger is that KS who has been one of my best friends for years now, has connections in this group that made me feel even more of an "outsider"..

I've never really bothered to be conscious of the "social structures" and my place in it vis a vis my background.. Its just the first time in a very very long time that I am acutely conscious of it all..

to cite Jane Austen's world, being a Gentleman's daughter doesn't automatically mean you're ready to mingle with the "Ton"

you can cry all you want but you won't ever get back what's gone...

It hasn’t been “home” since amma died four years ago... But now the old flat my grandmother bought, where i grew up, has been sold and is being packed up.. My aunts and mother arguing over who gets what furniture and keepsakes and measuring what furniture will fit where in our own separate homes..

Last night my grandmother’s children gathered in her house for the last time to sign all documents and hand over the house to the buyer.. Chacha chachi and the kids shift out within this week... And i skipped out of going there because i was too tired and not in the mood to change into clothes suitable to go outside in....

As the eldest, I’ve spent the most time in that house... Have spent years running from room to room.. Had a new bed made for me to fit in the corner of amma’s room when i got too big to sleep in the same bed as my grandparents, had the balcony covered to make a “Separate room” for me.. Which i never slept in ultimately but became my study room... So many times when i got tired of the silence that pervades the house we live in now.. I would go there to see amma and babaji and feel like i’m actually “home”... 

I can’t remember the last time i was there.. Isn’t that strange...? I used to find the smallest excuse to go there, even if to just grab a bite and get a hug from amma when i had to to go Karkardooma court and could take a half hour out to go home...

All the friends and extended ‘family’ i had as a child growing up in that society.. 

Saying I’m leaving home and taking my minnie mouse blackboard over to Taiji’s house so i could “stay” in her daughter’s room.. Jiji’s kids are now years older than i Was when i pulled that stunt... It has been more than 20 years since it happened... Taiji left us weeks after Amma did.. A double blow that took my “home” from me.. Leaving no one there whose lap i’ve cuddled into as a child and as an adult... I think i stopped visiting after the two died.. I consciously stopped going even when Mom and dad visited chacha chachi.. It didn’t feel like “my house” any longer.. It was theirs now.. The room where i grew up listening to stories from amma wasn’t amma’s room any longer.. It was my sister’s bedroom.. Amma’s saris and babaji’s whiskey bottles didn’t stay there any longer.. I didn’t have the right to go and curl up in that bed or rifle through those almirahs looking for new pens and hidden treasures... 

Running up and down the stairs to see how fast i could climb up to the 7th floor and back.. The ‘nani’ who had given that dare to me is long dead... I was maybe 10 or 11 when i did it... Run up to your house and come back with 5 rupees in less than 1 minute and you can get two chocolates instead of just one... I don’t think even she expected me to actually clilmb six floors, wheedle money out of babaji and be back in less than 60 seconds... Have distinct memories of jumping down five or six stairs with my hand on teh banister while running pell mell to beat the deadline.. I have no idea what I would do if i ever caught a kid doing that.. 

The park where i learnt as a 12 year old to hit headers on a football... Stupidly while having a plastic hairband on which felt like it would go through my skull when the football hit it.. The open green area where we played football and cricket has been a parking lot for nearly 10 years now... It stopped being a free space for children even before i left my teens... The roof where we played hide and seek.. And talked late into the evening.. Had dance practices and “dates”.. Where cousin once threatened to enact the “suiciiiide” scene from Sholay because the boys got into a horrible fight and the entire group of friends took sides...

Amma is long gone.. And now the house is gone too.. 

I’m sitting in my bed writing about my lost childhood.. Tears in my eyes.. They will shift out by the 25th... I’m leaving on holiday tomorrow morning.. There is still today for me to go there and reminisce and cry.. But i KNOW i wont go there today... Even though my heart feels heavy and my stomach eels hollow and every stupid thing i did growing up is running through my head and telling me to go see that house one last time.. I won’t go see the house.. My home is no longer there.. It’s being stripped and packed away and i don’t want to see that..

My parents came home at 2 am last night.. With cardboard boxes full of pretty dinner sets and a bone china tea set that has remained displayed on the top shelf of the side board in the dining room since Mom bought it when i was four.. Amma always used to say that she would take out that tea set and serve tea only when some “ladke walle” came to the house to see me... 24 years after that tea set came to my home.. It is now packed into a cardboard box to be stored away in a different glass cabinet.. Amma is long gone.. My family is split into three separate families that don't have a common "home" any longer....

I’m gonna convince mom to let me drink tea in those china cups tonight... And maybe cry a little more...

When will the Doomsday strike?

A few years ago, i got addicted to this TV show called Supernatural. The first two seasons scared me enough to start not looking at the window and the shadows at night and gave me nightmares for weeks.. its about two brothers who basically fight demons, angels, Gods and all manner of other creatures and beings to survive and "save humanity"...

Season 5 of the show was all about the buildup to the biblical Apocalypse- complete with the four horsemen of the apocalypse- War, famine, Pestilence and Death.. personified and rampaging around on earth...

since this morning, after reading the newspapers, I can't stop thinking about two of the episodes from season 5-- the one where the Winchesters fight against the horseman War, and the one where Dean goes back in time and confronts Lucifer himself...

War, who tells the boys some ugly truths about life and humanity, makes a very simple yet profound statement- "there is already evil in humans, all they need is a little push.."
The entire season is about the degeneration of the world because of the impending doom.. the War episode is full of people attacking and killing each other for no reason at all.. an entire town at war with itself..., Pestilence has the rise of incurable mutated diseases that can cut swathes through an entire city's population at a go.. Famine has so much greed that people will eat each other just to get at what they want... while Death has terrifying natural disasters that can erase everything in their path..

and all through this.. God is gone and doesn't care about the survival of humanity.. or as Lucifer puts it.. the "world" isn't just the humans. The earth was there before the humans were made and will continue to be when humans are wiped off its face..

the bluntness of these episodes is something that echoes eerily in the world around me these days..


the madness around this world has predictions in every religion.. Hinduism and Buddhism say that we are now living through the 'Kalyug'-- where humans will lose their humanity and society its structure slowly, till the Pralaya comes and ends us all...

Doomsday predictions seem almost welcome when the alternative is waking up to news reports like these..


http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/next-door-to-delhi-mob-kills-50-year-old-injures-son-over-rumours-they-ate-beef/

http://theweek.com/speedreads/580344/study-children-disproportionally-killed-by-syria-bombs-airstrikes

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/sringara-3-year-old-succumbs-to-bullet-injuries/

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/water-wives-of-maharashtra/1/480898.html

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/5-km-from-vvip-zone-i-am-afraid-i-will-also-be-killed-over-water/

the staircase

maybe i got too high a dosage of Disney as a kid.. or something..

because the idea of having a bedroom with a spiral staircase that opens out onto a terrace which is essentially the highest accessible point of a tower makes me feel ludicrously excited... 

One of the biggest perks of parents having a government job is that they get government accommodation.. and the house dad has been offered now is a monstrosity built 80 years ago which is need of a few serious repairs.. but it has a bedroom/spare room whatchamacallit room on the first floor that is accessed through the terrace, that also has an internal staircase which takes you to yet another higher floor, with a small sheltered terrace that makes you feel like you're on top of the world looking regally down at all the gorgeous verdant green of the lawns... with the bright blue sky open above... its like something out of a dream.. and i know for a fact that there is no way in hell i will ever be able to find a room like that anywhere in Delhi and even if such a room exists and may be available for rent, they would charge the sun and moon for it because it is BY FAR the most beautiful thing i have ever seen.. even though its currently covered in cobwebs and maybe termites.. and i have to get a safety check done on that spiral staircase because that place hasn't bee lived in for years and years..

but i can just picture the pretty lights i'll wind around the banisters and the bookshelves and photographs that will go on the walls and the cushions I will put to create a reading nook right where the landing of the staircase opens onto the terrace...

if we actually move into that gorgeous house and the said gorgeous house doesn't fall down around our head.. it is an OOOOLD house after all... 

but GOD the staircase makes me feel like a little kid watching a princess movie... maybe i'll wear a pretty gown and walk down that staircase randomly one day... just to be able to say that i did it... 

my dad, who has been trying all my life to stamp the fairy princess ideas out of my head, has however pointed out that the pretty room doesn't have a window big enough to put a cooler or AC in, and being as clumsy as i am, a spiral staircase isn't exactly the safest thing for me to be mucking about with... to him i say.. bah humbug.. 

standing still while the world moves means the ground slips out from beneath your feet

it is the strangest feeling when you feel truly happy and at the same time feel like there's a piece of your heart thats cracking into itty bitty little chunks...
My favorite couple got "roka'd" tonight.. a small ceremony, not inviting anyone.. RS called and sent me pictures about an hour ago.. and i got SOO excited i jumped around all over my room... and then called SN to tell her she looked so gorgeous i wanted to put a kaala tika on her...
at the same time i feel emptied out inside.. everyone is sorting out their lives, settling down, figuring out where they stand and who with..and I have no clue... i;m driftng most days.. just floating the the river of time, letting things pass by..

i finished school in 2005.. its 2015 now.. what do I have to show for the 10 years??????

so this is strange..

I spent 6 hours straight today talking to a boy my entire family is super excited about as a "perfect" arranged match.. the first real "topical" topic of conversation he brought up was incidentally this blog.. and the fact that he managed to read the last 10 years worth of posts and is rather weirded out by how much of my personal life i've put up in the public domain..
more importantly, how it will be weird if anyone else in  the family reads the rants iv'e put up about the Ab and my relationship drama over the years...
AND he asked whether i would continue to put up this much about my life after marriage and whether any potential drama in our lives would get in teh public domain..
and after i got done feeling completely outraged at teh sheer cheek of the guy for asking me how to live MY life, i started thinking.. and reading from 2005 onwards.. how much of me ive poured into these pages over the years.. how much about me, my thought process and my history can someone find out just by taking a couple of hours out to read this thing...

i've never hidden who i am.. but using this as practically a personal diary when my work contacts, hell family can read this, specially when the things i've written about are not really anybody's business but mine...
i dont know..
i will never delete what ive written here.. this blog contains my best writing, my thoughts, my LIFE... so there is o way i'm hiding it away...

but how much do I let some random stranger see my life? judge me and make assumpions about me..??
if this guy could make the statements he did,.. who is to say what any random stangers may do with the data thats there about my life...

ENS-1, Annie -0

I've been living in the world of books for a long long time... taking my cues and inspirations from the characters i read.. wishing my life could get magically sorted with the stroke of  a pen... but whose life do we really know about anyway??

at the end Marianne does give in to the pressures of her sister and "everyone else" around... does that mean she settles or does she actually be happy..?
Elinor finds her love, as do Elizabeth and Jane... its the not quite the heroine sisters who you are left wondering about... does Lydia ever be happy or is she forced to live the rest of her life regretting the bad decisions she made at 15? is it enough that Brandon fancies himself in love?


I have always wanted the fireworks.. the impossible love that makes you feel giddy like you're soaring into the sky and nothing else matters.. I always said that i stayed because it was the only place where i felt like home.. like that is where i was meant to be...


Marianne had the good fortune to have been 18 years old.. I am much older and was regretfully not born in the 1800s.. I am supposedly an intelligent grown up..

so do I let go of the rainbows and butterflies and agree to the compromise of "maybes" and cynical realities where the teenage fantasy of love does not exist and what you really want is someone who cares about you and you understand and share values with and have the society's blessings to be with....?

I haven't bought a new M&B in a while... i gave up on the "no matter what we will sort it out and live happily ever after" tripe years ago... so why does it raise a wall of revulsion in me when everyone around me wants me to come to my senses and do the sensible thing??
in any case, there is no way in hell of finding a spark if you never let yourself go anywhere near fuel...

let us pause a moment and think of what consent means

Before anyone reads the rest of this, let me clarify that that this blogpost is more about the definition of consent used in the judgment and NOT about the age of the woman or the stage of her menstrual cycle, because most of the social media outrage has been on the court commenting that the deceased rape victim was menopausal.

http://www.firstpost.com/living/delhi-hc-didnt-say-menopausal-women-cant-be-raped-heres-what-it-really-said-1786761.html

http://daily.bhaskar.com/news/NAT-TOP-forceful-sex-with-woman-above-60-years-age-not-crime-says-delhi-hc-4795538-NOR.html

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-forceful-sex-on-menopausal-woman-not-rape-says-delhi-high-court-2031918

http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/man-acquitted-of-rape-as-delhi-hc-finds-woman-died-of-intoxication-not-forceful-sex/

so there is currently a heated debate going on among court reporters covering Delhi High court about this judgment and the way all of us have covered this story. because even though this judgment was reported last week in every newspaper, including mine, DNA’s story today is the only one which has raised the issue of the language used by the judge in his judgment as opposed to the legal reasoning we all chose to report, because frankly NO one wanted to take on the judiciary and face a potential contempt charge for pointing out flawed reasoning or injudicious use of certain words in a judgment given out by a very senior and very respected judge of the High court.

at the outset, I would like to apologise to this deceased woman. I as a reporter am also guilty of failing to play up this story as much as it deserved to be. I failed to highlight the story and raise the questions the DNA story and the later Legally India story has.. 

the debate among the reporters weirdly enough, is more about how much trouble the DNA guys are likely to be in as opposed to what the judgment is all about.

lets examine the facts- woman, age 60, died due to asphyxia caused by the food in her stomach going back up… in layman’s terms she choked on her own vomit and died.

fact 2- the death occurred during or very near the act of sexual intercourse

fact 3- there are injuries on her vagina, indicating forceful sex, something that the court itself has recognized and taken note of in the judgment.

fact4- there are no other injuries anywhere on her body, which the court has taken as evidence that she did not resist the sexual intercourse, no matter how forceful it may have been

the problem with the Indian legal system is that we tend to give benefit of the doubt to rapists and murderers because somehow, somewhere we cannot accept the idea that RAPE can happen without the victim fighting tooth and nail to throw off her rapist.. she doesn’t need to be battered half to death to protect her virtue.. and in this case, since she was supposedly drunk, the court has simply said that there is nothing to prove lack of consent.

one particular bright spark among our group of reporters, and may god give him SOME sense at some point in life, started arguing that ofcourse people have sex when they are drunk. “daaru pi ke sex nahi hota kya?” was his argument.

now while his argument as an abstract comment on the stupid decisions people sometimes make while drunk is one thing, in this situation, in this debate, it was probably THE stupidest argument made…. the woman is drunk out of her mind. the guy is also drunk, the woman’s husband goes out of the house coz he wants to go drink with a buddy instead of his wife and their neighbor. and just a few minutes later, she’s found dead with her clothes array and injuries on her vagina..

WHY on earth is this not rape?? how is a drunk, passed out woman presumed to have given consent???

the court has gone by the legal principles of proof beyond reasonable doubt and acquitted the 46 year old man of both rape and murder. that part no one can argue with because benefit of the doubt and presumption of innocence is so inherent a part of our legal reasoning that the judge HAD to have given that decision as far as the murder is concerned.

but RAPE? didn’t we recently amend the entire law on sexual offences to say that if she is incapable of giving consent for whatever reason it will count as a rape? severe intoxication IS under Indian law a legal excuse. if someone is drunk, they could NOT have given consent.

and what about the injuries on the woman?? the court in its judgment has said categorically that there are injuries on her vaginal area indicating forceful penetration. does that not count?? how did the court come out with the reasoning that “forceful” is not the same as “forced” in this particular case??

the woman is NOT capable of giving consent. There are injuries on her genitals. she is SO drunk that the sex forces her to vomit and she chokes to death..

HOW IS THIS NOT RAPE?? sure this is not murder, but this is culpable homicide. unintentionally or not, the act of forced sex killed her. how are we letting the “oh she was drunk” argument cloud the debate so much that the rapist goes free.

what would your reaction be if the woman in question was not a drunk old housemaid from the slums but the 22 year old daughter of a businessman who had tequila shots and was then given rohypnol at an upscale bar?

would you still say she may have given consent so the act was not rape because there is no injury? would you still say that forceful sex is not the same as forced sex??

Tort law has nothing on us...

Its not denial.. Iḿ just selective about the reality i accept... Bill Watterson


“I felt I was drawing close to that age, that place in life, where you realize one day what you'd told yourself was a Zen detachment turns out to be naked fear. You'd had one serious love relationship in your life and it had ended in tragedy, and the tragedy had broken something inside you. But instead of trying to repair the broken place, or at least really stop and look at it, you skated and joked. You had friends, you were a decent citizen. You hurt no one. And your life was somehow just about half of what it could be.” 
― Roland Merullo, A Little Love Story


I try to deny that something exists.. i closed my eyes and pretended because I was told that its not there and I believed the lie... why? because i wanted to.. because accepting the truth would mean i lose something precious.. it would mean that i failed yet again..

does that make me a hypocrite?? a liar??

if you made sure put up disclaimers and warning signs everywhere, who do you blame if someone gets hurt anyway..?

how far would absolute liability apply when the "hazardous material" is emotional...

Patriarchy, DDLJ and disappointing brothers...

my brothers have seriously disappointed me.. not the brats, the remaining horde of cousins/best friends that I have, have seriously dashed all my DDLJ fed ideas of how Karva Chauth is supposed to be…

yes I know that is a very very bad line to use if I want to sound like an adult at all and not like a starry eyed tween… but I DID expect better from my big brothers.. I swear I did.. first of all, I will never in my life understand how fasting prolongs someone else’s life.. this is the 21^st century ladies and gentlemen.. WHY are we still following the patriarchal model where the woman has to “sacrifice for the happiness of the family” and somehow starving the poor soul would bring salvation to the family…

secondly.. if you HAVE to believe that this deity with no sense demands fasts in exchange for years on earth, why aren’t the husbands fasting for their wives’ lives? why shouldn’t the husband “show his love and devotion” to the marriage just like the poor starving wife?

in any case.. if we have to go along with this loony idea that the husband’s life has to come at the cost of his wife’s health and sanity, WHY the effing hell is it not reciprocal? specially when the scriptures go on and on about being an “ardhangini” and the married couple being the basis of all life and society??

and (read this as being said in an irate voice with a stomped foot) why did no one out of the dozens of the newly and not so newly married couples of my generation put their foot down and DO something?

sure the previous gen has waaayyyy too many married couples for me to have harboured any remaining hope, but they are all old people, in arranged marriages where ‘the family’ scuttled all attempts at overt mush.. atleast in front of the children..

 but this lot?? my generation! they ALL have married for love and stay far enough away that the entire gamut of aunts and aunts in law and grandmothers and mothers does not descend on them to make them do whatever arcane ritual the lunar cycle demands.. and yet… Karva Chauth remains as boring and old people-ey as ever for my assorted brothers and bhabis…

whatever happened to the “don’t bother babe, religion is stupid, keeping yourself hungry is not prolonging my life”.. or “okay since it’s a required married people ritual, I’m fasting with you (Thanks SRK for that one) or at the very least “ since you’re stuck doing this, let me get up at the crack of dawn and cook you something nice and shower you with presents”…

ANYTHING??? hello?? guys??

Do you HAVE to be all boringly unromantic to my bhabis and be all “what are you getting worked up about” at me??

Go watch DDLJ again … all of you.. if I’m not allowed to question the cultural imperative and must accept that the fast must be kept, I’m gonna continue to be SO disappointed at the lack of reciprocal fasts and dancing and presents and unapologetically unromantic behavior in general... Shahrukh Khan.. you have some serious explaining to do.

hmph…

i fear oblivion.. i fear it like the proverbial blind man who is afraid of the dark....

I just finished reading "The Fault in our Stars' by John Green.. maybe its he inherent selfishness in me, but the words that touched me the most in this beautifully written tale of pain and love is the quote from the "book" Hazel and Augustus fall in love with...'The Imperial Affliction'..

"There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. there was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be a time after. and if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does."

 I too fear oblivion sometimes.. have to wonder if anyone at all will remember me when  i no longer exist, whether my existence in this world has changed anything for anyone anywhere, even if only as the proverbial flutter of the distant butterfly wing, the first, minuscule domino... And then there are times when i wonder if anyone will remember me the "right" way... and not just in the superficial way of people who brush past you in life and yet think they have touched enough of your essence to claim that they KNOW you..
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and after reading this book, i wonder if there has ever been any moment in time, or will ever be such a moment that my existence, or someone's existence in my vicinity, has changed life so indelibly that whatever short time we have left in the world will forever MEAN something simply because you have had some time where you really lived and loved and your life wasn't just the endless flow of days but time paused and you really KNEW that you were on the cusp of having an experience that will change you....
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I will write you a sequel.. finish the unfinished story that means peace to you...