Vacation Diaries

I’ve been missing from here rather long, but for once I have a very very good reason for it! No, I wasn’t being plain lazy, or obsessive depressive, or coming close to panic attacks. For once.

I was off on a vacation, a much badly needed one. One that I was excited and shit scared about, all at the same time. You see, I love to travel, I love writing about it, I love having the perfect partner to travel with. And as it turned out, I found myself without any of the above for various reasons. So it was decided, travel alone, I must.

Of course the destination chosen had to be one of the safest places on the planet, to ensure the parents don’t have a mini heart attack at the mention of the trip. And affordable, given the pittance I’m putting monthly into my bank account in the name of a salary.

And so it was chosen, Singapore it had to be.

And thanks to a friend who decided to join for a certain leg of the trip, Langkawi was added to the itinerary.

So here it is…

Vacation Diaries – Part 1

It took a week to pack. Literally. There were just too many questions. Did I want to keep all my hot sexy heels? Or my comfy sports shoes? Would I be roaming around in skimpy clothes? Or shut in the house reading a book in my pyjamas? For once, I just could not make up my mind. I didn’t know what I wanted from this trip. Was I running away? Was I going to mope in some strange house for ten days? Would I actually manage to get out? Talk to new people? Explore another country, alone?

There was one simple thought in my head. For once, I was going so far away, to a place where no one knew me, where I could finally just be, without a past, without a future, just be. Me.

Except I was no longer sure who that was.

Was I going to be the serious introspective anti-social girl who wouldn’t really talk to anyone new, and discourage those who actually dared?

Or would I be the sweet highly social girl who would talk to anyone and everyone and just want to know a little more, about everything?

Or a party animal?

Or an early to bed…early to rise types?

I could be…anyone.

The thought was exciting.

And scary.

P.S. I eventually packed anything and everything. I figured the decision of who I was going to be could wait for a more spontaneous moment. Yes, I decided a spontaneous moment. Oxymoronic, much?

The further you run...

Sometimes, you just need to run away

Far far away

But there’s only so far you can go

Till you’re dragged back to reality

And made to realize

That all that you ran away from

Was still right there

Compounded

Angered

Worse

Waiting

For you to get back

So all hell can break loose.

Life in a Metro

That’s what it feels like when you stay in Dwarka and take the metro to work, literally. You end up spending half your life in the metro. So love it or hate it, you’re stuck in it. For a good 3-4 hours of your day.

And SO much happens in a metro.

For example, if you’re not very fat, and don’t have an extremely menacing look on your face, chances are you’ll be an easy target for the thoda-adjust syndrome. It doesn’t matter that the seats are made for a fixed number of people, with indents marking the same. It doesn’t matter if there are already more than that many people on the bench to begin with. There is always room for +1. And you’re likely to be the one who has to thoda-adjust, namely, have the indent of the seat ride up your bum while someone literally sits on you. Literally.

Having said that, the fact that now there’s a ladies coach makes the metro journey much more bearable, given that you’re not worried about random men sticking to you anymore. It’s just random women now.

The fact that the ladies coach is NOT sponsored by Stayfree Secure came as a bit of a shock to me. Like, really?! Then why the hell do you have all those pink and white flowers all over the platform?!?!

And apparently, now that there's a ladies coach means that if I travel in a general coach, I end up the subject of taunts and annoyed looks. “They have an entire coach to themselves, still they come here!” Thanks guys. We wouldn’t need that separate coach to begin with if you could learn to behave yourselves. But now that we have it, apparently we need to remain jailed within it. Like, seriously?

Women sometimes make rather daunting co-passengers as well. Especially the demanding unassuming ones. And for some weird reason, there are a LOT of them. So the other day, I was sitting in the metro reading a book, and this aunty stood in front of me, and dumped an exceptionally huge purse on top of the laptop bag lying on my lap. Now don’t get me wrong, I really don’t mind carrying her bag for her, given how annoyingly crowded the metro gets, but I’d rather not be treated as a piece of furniture by her. I mean, we have men to do that to us, right?

Not only did she dump her bag on me without a please or a thanks, she then proceeded to open it on my lap, so that the handle and the flaps now covered my novel, and went on to luxuriously finish her make-up, completely oblivious to my exasperated look. I did consider objecting, or shifting my position a bit so that her bag drops, or at least to make her realize that there is a live human being in front of her. Instead I kept staring at her. And she kept ignoring me. Till I smiled at her and gave her my seat. Mission accomplished. Hers.

On a completely different note, I have a HUGE amount of respect for people who manage to catch a few winks in the metro. Really. It’s happened to me a few times during college years, when I’d manage to catch a corner seat, so I could rest my head on the oily glass pane and drift off to sleep…only to be jarred out of my sleep two minutes later with the announcement of the next station. And then the next. And next. For 32 stations. Yes, I counted.

But worse than the being woken up, is the fact that every time you wake up, you look up at the hundreds of squashed people standing in front of you smiling at the little trickle of drool that you were unaware of until that moment…

Aah...memories.

All in all, the Dwarka metro just stops short of being a Mumbai local simply because you can’t hang out from the doors, and are stuck without fresh air from the windows to take care of the numerous body odours you’re subjected to.

But that said and done, it probably never hurts to remember, that no one is in that metro because that’s where they would love to be at that moment, stuck between someone’s exceptionally huge…err…bag and someone else’s arm pit. They’re there just like you, because they have to be. So instead of frowning and fighting with that aunty and that bossy girl, next time, maybe try an understanding smile instead?

Hmmm....

Okay, who am I kidding. Some of those women are plain bitches. Use your elbows mercilessly. Period.