The Perfect Marriage

She inhaled sharply, remembering the feel of his touch, their last few fleeting moments of togetherness. A sad smile played on her lips, imagining him on his train at this moment. Instinctively, she reached out and patted her husband comfortingly, who grunted in his sleep and turned over on the bed, next to her.

That Awkward Moment...

You know something isn’t quite right, when your life is made up of a few too many of these!

That awkward moment…

When you realize your pink shirt is identical to that of your male senior’s.

When you feel uncomfortable with someone staring at you, and realize it’s probably because you were staring at them.

When your colleagues are making fun of blogs, and you’re left wondering if they know you have one too.

When you laughingly call someone you dislike baldie, and then notice the receding hairline of your audience.

When your drunk friend tells your CA boss, just how much you detest CAs.

When you send a bitchy text mistakenly to the person you were bitching about.

When you realize all you dislike are currently in your dream company and job.

When you wear heels to an office without carpeting, and sound like a carpenter went to town on the floors.

When the two people your parents find on marriage portals are people you knew already.

When your glass of unfinished and leaking Pepsi gets wedged between a stranger’s back and seat, while emptying your food tray at McDonalds.

When you realize you have no truly satisfactory answer to “Why did you join this company?!”

When someone you constantly ignore, asks you why you won’t accept their FB request.

When you realize you grew up without a pimple on your face, and suddenly now, at the time of your quarter life crisis, can play connect the dots on your cheeks.

When you realize you’re the only one who has no clue what the songs and dialogues of Janasheen were.

When autocorrect turns ‘Prem Aggan’ to ‘Premium Aggan’

When you tell a musician you’re indifferent to music.

When you’re constantly kicking the table leg while thinking, and realize it’s not the table.

When you realize, that life itself seems to be turning into one big awkward moment.

6 Feet Under

The calm breeze slightly brushed against her black dress, as she pulled the lever, slowly lowering his casket into the ground. A final tear escaped the corner of her eye, as she saw him look up at her from his grave, accusation writ in his eyes, the pulse on his neck beating a steady rhythm.

The Drop

With a final sob, she stepped back from the ledge, shaking her head. This wasn’t the solution to her problems. Running to the elevator, she somehow managed to find the button through her teary vision, and pressing it, stepped in. Her last memory was the blurred 'Under Construction' sign just before she fell thirteen floors.

Bleh.

So there are good days. And bad days.

And then there are days like these, where shit just blows all over the place.

When you realize you’re short tempered, but you just don’t know why.

When you have the longest to-do list of your life, and never get past the first tick.

When you wait for your mood to get better, so you can come back to your blog with a happy or funny post. And then you realize it’s been 2 months since your last post, and your mood seems nowhere close to a bloggable mood.

When you realize everyone you’ve ever made fun of in your life for being brainless, is at a better place than you today.

When you take a phone call all excited, only to end up feeling like someone reached inside and wrenched your guts out.

When you realize you were stupid enough to delete 9 years worth of blog pics and realize it only weeks later, while randomly opening your blog. Did you know your picasa album is linked to your blog, and not just a backup of it? Did you also know your picasa web album has no bloody backup?! Oh, you did? So I’m the only idiot who didn’t? Wow. Awesome.

And surprisingly, none of this has to do with my current place of work. Isn’t it funny, how you haven’t heard me really cribbing about it much on this forum. The truth is, I love my work and colleagues, it truly is one of the happiest places to work.

Heh. Right. Like you believed that.

My office has an extremely strict social media policy, and any details would actually render me jobless.

Duh.

P.S. Yes, this is a pessimistic annoying post, I can actually imagine some of you (and you know who you are!!) rolling your eyes and shaking your heads. But before you pick up your phone to message me, that you disapprove of my whole cynical pessimistic outlook on life, read the next line carefully. I DON’T CARE!

P.P.S. I figured even a bad post is good enough to get out of the mind freeze that has happened lately. I do promise to come back with some 55-fiction (gruesome ones of course), and maybe something funny. Hopefully.

The Awww-topsy

You know, there are some awww-inducing things in this world… those things guaranteed to make all women go awww and melt right there in their seats like a vanilla softy on a bright April day in Delhi. And this latest life insurance TVC is an amazingly classic example of that.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved that ad. And I went awwww just about every five seconds in it. And that in a one and a half minute ad, is well, a lot of awwwws.

But what that really made me think about is why did it make me react that way? Why did I go all dreamy eyed looking at that ad? Why is it, that the thought of a chivalrous protective man is something that turned me into a gooey mess of lovey-dovey-ness?

That, when I’d like to believe I live in a growing world of feminists, when life is all about being a strong and independent woman, and scorning at anyone who dares to imply otherwise. There’s a weird pressure on all girls today. In a world where oppression is something to revolt against, girls are taught early on in life they’re equal to men, and then spend the rest of their lives making sure the world knows it.

And yet, along come the Edward Cullens and Christian Greys, who pull out a chair for their women, and tell them what to do… and BAM!, you have a world full of swooning young girls, waiting to be rescued from this planet full of un-chivalrous mere-men who might actually let you make your own decisions. As Susan from Desperate Housewives (Yes, I watch that show, do you have any clue how screwed up funny it is?!) once put it, “It’s in our genes to fall for men who rescue us.”

When four successful women in Sex and the City spend 99% of their time talking about their perfect man, maybe we really have something to think about.

Because what that really leaves us, is shit confused. Because now, when someone runs forward to help me open a rather heavy door, I find myself smiling like a silly girl, and then reminding myself that I was perfectly capable of opening it myself, even if with some trouble. And yet, when a friend drops me off home late at night, I actually turn around to check if he waited till I reached the lift safely, and feel a tinge of disappointment when I see the departing tail lights of the car instead.

So dear men, I really really feel bad for you sometimes. If even half the girls around you are anything like me, am guessing you’re dealing with a world of mixed signals and emotions that even they themselves don’t fully understand. Because you see, all we really want is the perfect man, who looks like a Greek god, behaves like an English gentleman, talks like a poet, understands us like our best girlfriends, and somehow over and above all of that, appreciates us, loves us, and tolerates us, and makes us go awwww. 

Once every five seconds, apparently.

We-ell...good luck.

How to lose me in 10 ways...

There is a lot I can endure, and a lot I can probably smile and let go of. But simply put, there are some non-negotiables, always. So you could look like Tom Cruise, talk like Johny Depp, sound like Bryan Adams, write like Jug Suraiya, and fulfill all the requirements I had listed earlier, but if you do any of the following, forget packing your bags, you may never unpack to begin with.

1. Tell me you have no interest in food, and it’s simply a necessity to live each day. Cut your food portions in half to watch your health. Think that a romantic meal means a dinner at my favourite restaurant for me, followed by a stop at a vada-pav-dosa stall for you. Order separate dishes and don’t share food. Be a vegetarian.
2. Tell me while I’m fine now, you’d be completely turned off if I gained weight. Don’t get me wrong, I understand gaining weight can never be a good thing. But there’s this lil thing called loving me no matter what, like, ring a bell?!
3. Have bad grammar. Mind my correcting your grammar.
4. Smoke.
5. Drive like a maniac, don’t know how to reverse park.
6. Ask me why I need so many shoes.
7. Pat my head and not consider me worthy of discussing your life and job problems with.
8. Think it’s alright to say things to me and call me names and justify it with your anger. If you can’t keep your head at your worst, don’t bother being sweet to me at your best. And if you can’t accept me for who I am, well, don’t.
9. Tell me I won’t understand.
10. Tell me you love me, but, I don’t fit into your plan right now. I’m sorry, if you don’t love me enough to want to be with me right now, at this moment, or if your plan is worth losing this moment with me, good bye.

Arranged Endings

“I love cricket.”

She smiled. He took a sip of his coffee.

“And music.”

She smiled some more. He took another sip.

“Am looking for a homely yet modern girl, you know, who knows how to balance career and family. And I love dhoklas and khakras. Do you know how to cook?”

The smile grew yet bigger. "Of course not, but I do make a killer coffee."

Slightly uncomfortable, he drained his cup, and tried yet again.

“So what do you like to do?”

The smile disappeared for a second. “Oh, I like to make this world a better place. I’m a prospective annoying groom exterminator.”

Just as he started to laugh, he felt his throat constricting, and looked down in shock at the slightly weird tasting coffee, and the now gleeful smile on her face.

Then it all went black.

Ctrl+Alt+Del

She hit the keys gently, then hard, with growing frustration. The screen stayed adamantly grey and locked.

“Damned office laptop!” she screamed, finally switching off the power, letting go of all the unsaved data. Only then did she look up to see her shocked manager staring down at her, seated, by mistake, at his desk.

Closer

She smiled at her creaking bed as he climbed into it and pulled the blanket over them. He draped an arm around her, knowing, possessive, owning, their skin melting into the other as only one incomplete without the other can. She smelt the lingering remains of smoke on his lips and frowned. Yet, she couldn’t recognize him anymore without it. She snuggled up closer to him and slept, the only way she knew how.

He smiled as he pulled her closer to him, his comfort, his safety blanket, the one assurance in this menacingly sadistic world. He smelt her hair, reminding him of that scent that always lingered around her, constant, yet indistinguishable. He dozed off holding her, into a dreamless sleep, the only way he knew how.

As their alarms rang in the morning, separated by distance, physical and created, they stumbled out of their beds, without once reaching out to the empty space beside them, for they knew, it was as it had been for some time now, and would continue to be…empty.