HONESTLY HONEST & PRIVATE & PERSONAL

Some people applaud what they think is my brutal honesty, but others tell me that my blog is way too personal. Yes, the blog is personal, but I don’t know how honest it really is. I write a lot of emotional stuff that doesn’t go up. It’s only the funny stuff that makes it. I want to save face and I choose what side of me I want to reveal.

 I do not claim to understand the scope of a blog. I don’t really read other blogs and I was quite shocked to find that people read mine. 1500 views really!!! Who are you people? Why do you read this?

I am not sure what motivated me to start writing this blog. I have had it for years and never bothered to put anything on it. Honestly I write it because I had so much stuff I wanted to say. And the person I used to say it all to was no longer there to say it to. Maybe the bunch of you, who read it, are just collectively filling the hole that person left. I guess this blog is my coping mechanism.

So I decided to try to make this post HONEST. Warning: this one is not funny. In fact, pull out the tissue boxes biatches.

I watched Queen last night. And the movie hit closer to home than I care to admit. I went with the best friend and her husband (newly weds). They sat through the movie and got excited every time they recognized the parts shot in Paris from their honeymoon there. I sat through the movie relating very much with Kangana's character's pain. I cried silently, so no one could see me being pathetic.

When the grandmother in the film tells Kangana that a better man is waiting, I recalled the many times my mother, the best friend and countless other people had said the same thing to me. I was not left standing at the altar. I wasn’t even engaged. My relationship had just gotten to a point where people presumed that marriage was an eventuality, and I didn’t tell them any different. In fact in my head I was totally planning my wedding, in my head and on Pinterest.

I sent him a telegram, one of the last few telegrams to be sent, I asked him to marry me. Tragically he only received it after we had broken up. All it took was one fight that led to another. One escalated argument, one mistake. And that was it, how quickly it all changed course. Sometimes I feel like I don’t get to be sad, but there it is anyway.

I assumed I would be able to fix what I broke. I thought I'd fly down, make my puppy face, give him a hug and it would be fixed. I was unprepared for the cold unforgiving person on the other end. This was not the man who loved me, not the man I had loved. I flew back the next morning, with the sun rising, the clouds parting, my heart sinking.  When I got back to Bombay, it was raining and I felt like this city I had refused to leave for a man, was comforting me with its own tears.

How do I even begin to explain the feeling of heartbreak? The air feels like it has escaped you, breathing becomes hard, you want to scream and cry all at the same time. You can distract your self with work and movies and friends and men. But then all the work is done, the movie gets over, the friends go home. You can try to drown it all out with booze but hung over or not, it still fucking hurts.

As destroyed as I was from that flight to Delhi, there was some inkling that somehow time would help. So I didn’t tell everyone for a little longer. Hoping that not saying it would make it not true. I was at a family party and an excited aunt was making these beautiful roses out of tissue. She came up to me and told me she was going to make these as decorations for my wedding. It was time to tell people that the relationship had ended. And when I did my aunt cried, she barely knew him, but she was sobbing and needed to be consoled. I had broken their hearts, their dream of this perfect white wedding. I had broken my own.

From Alfred Lord Tennyson's

I hold it true, whate'er befall;


I feel it, when I sorrow most;


Tis better to have loved and lost


Than never to have loved at all.

To all the people who helped me cope. To the friends that got me smashed, plied me with sugar or just gave me a hug when I needed it. To the friends that flew in to keep my weekends occupied. To the man that stayed with me till I fell asleep cause I couldn’t bear to be alone. To my family, for dealing with the insufferable drama queen I had become and for always taking my side. To all the people responsible for that birthday stunt on face book. – I am so lucky to have you guys be a part of my life. Thank you.

SHELL SHOCKED AND HEART BROKEN

Everything in my life was returning to a happy place. The legal battle over the tenancy of my south Bombay residence was partly laid to rest when the supreme court issued a judgment in a similar case that protected my towny ass from being evicted.

My long time friend, colleague and now partner and I finally settled on a name for a company. We are calling it Talking Heads. We finished all the paper work and business was ready to roll. It seemed that the turmoil and anguish of life from just a few months ago was all finally a thing of the past. But life has a way of knocking you off your high horse. Ironically life also picked Valentines Day as the day to come a’ knocking.

I was determined not to be a hater, so what if I was single I still loved lots of people. I called and wished them. I bought some candy but that’s as far as my Valentines Day spirit would go. I was going to keep my head out of the clouds and my nose out of trouble. Today was going to be uneventful; I would go home and chill with my parents. Like the boring 26 year old I can sometimes be.

But it’s a Friday night and of course someone somewhere is throwing a party and I got invited to one of them. Of course getting drunk with the buddies beats being boring at home with the parents. So very quickly my plan to keep my nose out of trouble was altered. Many hours later and a few drinks down I left the party a little wobbly. I got on a friends bike (a friend who wasn’t drinking). We rode on his magnificent Enfield the chill of the Mumbai air in my hair. I was pleased with myself I had survived the night head held high heart intact. In fact I had fun, lots of mad, loud fun, with some of my favouritest people.

But that was not the end of the night. Why would it be that easy!!

We were riding, me with my many bags one hanging from each side. When I felt the weight on my shoulders lighten. One of the straps of my many bags had snapped. I turn around to see my bag is now on the road a few feet away. I stop the bike get off and run to it but before I reach it a giant SUV runs over it and I feel like someone pulled my heart out and then stepped on it. The bag that just fell off a speeding bike and then got run over was the bag holding my laptop, my very expensive mac book pro laptop. The laptop I saved for many months to buy. The laptop that was only a few months old I might add. 

I pick up the bag, dust the tire tracks off. My hands a little shaky, I’m shocked it is not 2 separate pieces. I open it and the screen display is perfect except for a couple of cracks and some shards of glass that are now in my hand. Besides that the laptop works perfectly. I bow to thee oh great ‘Apple’ how durable art thou!

Anyway long story short, mac doesn’t cover laptops getting run over by cars. SHOCKER!! Getting the screen repaired is going to cost me close to 50 grand, which for a self-employed sap like me, is heartbreaking not to mention bankrupting. But we live in the land of jugaad and someone; somewhere will do it for less. So I got it done for 15. What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger and more broke. 

Disclaimer: This blog post was written on a mac book pro that got run over by an SUV.  GO APPLE !!

FRIDAY THE 14th

Sometime last year I broke up from what was a pretty long and serious relationship. I forgot how dreadful and lonely the holidays were as a single person. Christmas went by relatively smoothly, with lots of food and family. But the New Year would not be as easy. To compound my horror, of bringing in the new years in as a single person was the guest list of the party I had chosen to go to. It consisted of the couple that had been married two years, the couple married a month ago and a couple that would be married in a month. YEAY FOR ME!!!

Married people are horrible, they are all happy and blissful setting up their homes, planning their lives, optimistic, and dripping with mushy goodness and love lets not forget the oozing love. YUCK. For their part the couples tried their best not to ooze their super sweet happiness around me, I got lots of consoling hugs and conciliatory and reassuring ‘there is a perfect guy for you out there’ comments. The night passed and I survived only to be alive and kicking for the next holiday extraordinaire.

The holiday most dreaded by all single people is almost here. There is no running, no hiding and no Shiv Sena to help counter what will happen. I thought I was going to ignore it but facebook (that bitch) wont let me. 6 different online valentine day sales, I better hurry! Maybe they mean I should hurry and find my self a man. Best of luck with that I say to myself.

My loathing for holidays and married people is not a common factor in single people. Some single people are far more, well adjusted to being single than me; maybe they’ve had more practice. I haven’t quiet figured out how to be ‘okay’ alone. I don’t mean in isolation, though I find that hard as well. I mean single alone. Hopefully I will survive Friday the 14^th with head held high and heart intact.

FLASH BACKS & RETROSPECTIVES

I am a romantic. Growing up, my mom would wake me up to watch wedding sequences in movies. In fact my mom and I watched all sort of age inappropriate rubbish together “The bold and the beautiful” and “Santa Barbara”.  All the impassioned lovemaking, the fights, the kissing, I wanted it all. So at the tender age of six, hiding under a makeshift tent, I decided I couldn’t wait. I planted a kiss on an unsuspecting neighbor. It would have remained a secret, been forgotten in time, had my brother not caught me in the act and then gone on to tell every single living person.

The point being that I started early and haven’t stopped to take a breath. From the age of 16 I haven’t spent more than 6months single. I jumped, hopped and crashed from one relationship into another, a few of them serious most of them casual. I fall in love faster than it takes most people to get high. And it doesn’t take much for me to fall in love. A few days of long nights of texting or calling and I’ll be gushing about how great this new boy is, how perfect he is.

Anyway this time around I am consciously trying not to make any hasty decisions. I’m trying to play it cool and play the field before I settle down. Though I must admit finding the boy is harder than ever before. The seemingly perfect boys are very quickly turning into deal breakers. And these aren’t “oh I was being picky” deal breakers, these are “what the fuck are these boys doing in the single dating world” kind of deal breakers.

So far there has been..

The boy from my past, the one who is getting a divorce; turns out he still hangs with the not so ex-wife way too much, in fact they moved back in together. So even though he is as beautiful as beautiful men get, I’m bowing out of that race graciously.

Then there was the candy man, this man who was so seemingly perfect it hurt. He was beautiful, liked dogs, liked cooking and plants. He was just the right amount of weird. We got along really well and we talked till the wee hours of the morning. I flirted with him for weeks. It was getting really cute till someone told me had a girl friend. Dreams crash.

Anyway all these disastrous calamities made me think it’s time to widen the net a little. My mom is dying to pitch in and help with the boy hunt, except she wants to find me a man husband. So I can join the rest of the bandwagon that have gotten hitched in the not so recent past. But I’m so not ready for that kind of plunge. Besides the old school romantic in me wants to be swept off my feet. So I did it, I joined a dating web site. More, on the adventures of online dating soon. 

GAME CHANGER

So since I was last out and about in the dating world. A LOT HAS CHANGED.

Game changer no.1- WHATS APP

Video killed the radio star and what’s app killed the phone conversation.

Now, talking on the phone indicates that some new level of intimacy has been reached. If you have graduated from texting to talking then you either found a keeper OR the many hours of laborious texting finally bore fruit.

Game changer no. 2 – FACEBOOK

Now I know your thinking facebook has been around for a while. But it really hasn’t we had Orkut and some other nonsense. But nothing was or shall ever be as all encompassing as fb.

Just to put it into some context, my 13year old cousin is on fb and she said to me weren’t you on fb when you were my age. And I realized that there was no fb when I was her age. In that instant, I felt really old. 

Anyway the point is that these days you can find out everything you need to know about a person on fb. (or so I used to think) I used to live under the lofty assumption that everyone like me is as open about their lives on fb as I am.

This means three things

1>  If I am in a relationship – its on fb -just so that people know

2>  If I am not in a relationship – its on fb - just so that people know

3>  If I went somewhere, did something or ate anything that was even half interesting then – its on fb - just so that people know

So yeah my life is really an open book on facebook and I presumed that everyone else was just like me but so horribly wrong was I. And how terribly my little bubble was about to burst.