U-Turns

My life was a smooth highway and I often complained, “so boring, will there ever be a turn in this long route, why is it so straight?” Little did I know then, that the Almighty was listening with a whole lot of intent. Even before I could realize, life took a whole new U-turn and ever since I am going in circles. My head spins with surprises but I can’t complain. After all I asked for it.
It began with my physical transformation, first. From a fatso I became the sexy babe, people had no hesitation in labeling me as “hot”. Oops, too much to handle for a girl who couldn’t manage to make even a head turn in her prime. To a thirty plus woman flooded with compliments who don’t look her age. Come on, I exercised and followed strict diet schedule. Nobody noticed the hard work?
Second, came a jolt in my relationship status. I became single, sooner. And I would have enjoyed the singledom, only if I was available. I just didn’t know how to be available, call me what you may but all the attention was not my cup of tea. I succumbed to the pressure and made a wrong choice. This turning point became the steepest and I am back to square. I have no regrets though because I tried. So what if I failed, but it is my life and I am allowed to make mistakes. Can’t I?
Age hasn’t mellowed down my spirits. I would still like to dance, hang out with friends, be in a relationship and everything that the younger lot eyes for. Aren’t failures allowed to live life? Do I have to perish like the rest; lonely, sad, depressed and suicidal. So what if I am not someone’s wife, someone’s mother, someone’s daughter-in-law blah blah. I am still that daddy’s girl who loves pink, loves Cadbury’s, mushy romantic movies and dying to get a bouquet of red roses. Being on the wrong side of age can’t change my gender, can it?
I never started with the intention of breaking the standards but life just bumped into series of accidents which broke set patterns. I tried and failed. So be it. Does it mean I lead a dream-less life?

Easy ain't EASY

‘Easy’ never came easy to me. In life, at work, wherever I went. What people get on a platter, I had to starve myself to get some share. My fate or the force above just ensured that I have a hard time.
I was trouble the moment I stepped into this world. I gave my mom quite a difficult time, when she conceived me. I gave her an even difficult time on the labour room. And later, my dad spent many sleepless nights, just to put me to sleep.
The growing up years weren’t easy either. Every year was a new school for me and by the end of the session when I had just managed to make few friends; another new school would be waiting for me. The result being that I remained friendless most of my schooling years. College remained constant but the everyday travel was another saga better untold.
Job did happen and I managed to keep up the jobs too. But whenever an appraisal was expected, the company would do badly and although not my fault, I never managed to get my share of the extra work and night-outs.
Love life was even more agonizing. It always ended up in one disaster after the other. My failures could inspire a movie dedicated on love lost. The impact has been so legendary that my own people have acknowledged that I am incapable of being loved.
To top it all, I was born very average with no-killing looks to melt million hearts. Hence, no Samaritan comes my way to take my fall or make life a little easy for me. The only way it has been is to work hard, harder. And I know complaining will solve nothing at all. As if God is saying, “this is the way for you, take it or leave it.” Even leaving is not in my hands, so ‘taking all’ is the only option.
Yet, one thing that keeps me going is my undying spirit to get up and move on. The ability to dream and believe that good things will come to me, even if it is taking a long while than usual. The tenacity to tell myself that my time will come.
It hasn’t come by now and don’t know whether it’ll come at all.

The Grand Fall

While the rupee falls, values all around us have already fallen to unrecoverable lows. Atleast there is some hope for the economy to recover, if not now then sometime later. But will we recover, ever?
The holy men caught in unholy acts. In the name of who, I wonder! When caught in the act, these spiritually uplifted men have no qualms in victimizing the victim. In this world, when the traffic makes it so difficult to be on time, how can we expect God to find us on time?
Rape seems to be a favourite sport of the nation with no age limit. From the old to the young, it seems whoever is bored and wants some media glare, goes ahead and commits a gang-rape. Guess the Dark Ages where less dark for the fairer sex than this!
Relationships don’t last and we seem to move on too fast, faster than our city’s metro. The funniest thing, is those in a relationship are looking for opportunities to be free. And the singles are desperate to tie themselves down. What we fail to understand is that nothing comes for free. From the effort to pursue, to depreciating bank balance-first to impress, later to depress leaves most frequenting the counseling sessions.
Cuts in every form rules our days. Job-cuts, cost-cuts, budget-cuts, power-cuts, water-cuts, road-cuts…but what about the morality cuts? The feeling of deriving pleasure from the cuts of others and being oblivious to their pains, so much so that we drive away seeing the bleeding wounds of a fellow traveler just because our time is too precious than their survival time.
It is time we at least give a thought to the value-fall, maybe not as much as the rupee-fall but some thought to begin.

Black Beauty

On one of my morning drive to work, I bumped into the “Dark is beautiful” campaign of Nandita Das. The FM radio presenter started with the phrase “agar rang nahin hain, roop nahin hain…” and went on a sympathetic tone. I felt offensive.
Well, well! I am dark and I don’t belong to the category of crowd-pullers. But does that mean that every person who has dark skin colour is ugly? In other words, if you are dark are you ugly? I know few people who are dark complexioned but extremely beautiful. They are successful and do manage to get admiring glances from people around. And mind you, I am not talking about celebrities. I wonder how they will react to this perception and media-popular image of beauty.
As a kid, I too had an obsession towards fair skinned. I knew I was dark and did many things (under elderly guidance offcourse as they were more worried than me) to lighten my colour. Nothing worked though and with age I began to accept myself. Especially with a sibling who is much fairer and beautiful, I managed to get quite unhealthy comments on my looks. To be honest, it was painful but I learnt to live with it. And now I am even celebrating my difference. But the question remains, why do anybody, for that case, have to go through this phase? Why can’t we keeping feeling good about the colour we are in? Why don’t we grow up to the idea that a beautiful face may not be a fair face? Why do the matrimonial sections in leading newspapers still scream for fair-skinned sometimes even “extremely” fair-skinned candidates?
Why does our society not live without the various fairness cream, in all fairness why do we even need a campaign like “Dark is beautiful” to tell the world, that I am dark, I feel beautiful irrespective of the fact whether the world acknowledges it or not…I do not need celebrities to speak up for me. And if you think I am not, so be it?

I Can

In a body of imperfections
With stretch marks that is more stubborn than I am
Not beautiful, by-your standards
I just know that I am special
Because only I can
Look into the mirror and say, “life must go on”
Despite the setbacks, the heartbreaks, the numerous downfalls
And with every fall, I know I will still stand up
And yet be ready to tell you that “yes, I can”.

Things for forever

It has been a while since I wrote a new entry. It is not that I don’t write anymore, rather, my writing has been put to some serious test over the last few days. Thanks to my profession, now writing will be taking care of my bills (well almost). With a lot of change around me recently, some things I’ve discovered will never change.
Like the concern of my parents when I reach late, or, don’t call my maa immediately after I reach my office
The deadlines which keeps getting shorter day by day
The brief which are too brief at times
The traffic jams every time I hit the road, just because we have a penchant for chaos
The fuss over what to eat and what to wear
The pain you go through when you’re cut or bruised
And, most importantly it does hurt, just the same, with the realization that you are no more wanted
The neighbours who mind your business, because they have nothing more to mind
The love for your one and only car, even if it is second-hand
The joy of reading the SMS alert that your salary traveled to your account safely
Do you also have a list of things that never change for you? Or like me, maybe you don’t want them to change?

The end-less love story

“Met her after 11 years and you know I still love her,” declared the elderly do-all-good colleague of mine. Me, not such a good judge of love, was wordless and thought it better to continue listening. He went on, “we loved each other a lot, but we parted and I promised never to meet her again.”
The very conventional elderly and highly respected colleague of mine was not the types to break the norms. At least that is what I thought. But his confession was a shocker and what followed left me so hopeful in life, in love.
His love story still continues in a very non-norms way. His wife was not somebody he could go home and talk about work. Neither was she indifferent towards her wifely duties. With kids filling up their time, life was as usual and that of happy co-existence.
Then he met a young colleague, good-looking, intelligent and desirable from every aspect. Strong friendship grew first and then love followed, gradually. Both knew he was married and there was no future. But they never could give up on each other and most importantly their friendship.
There was no element of expectation and nothing illegitimate ever happened, yet the bond was stronger than any other partnership. Time flew, she got married. They decided not to meet ever again. They lost touch but not the feeling of being touched.
After 11 years, she called up just to meet him. They met, enjoyed each other’s company and talked about each other’s family and life in general, more so retirement plans.
I don’t know about her but he still looks so much in love with her. The sparkle in his eyes couldn’t hide his emotions.
Such a different love story without any ending, but, he still looks so much complete. Do such stories still exist in today’s time of instant gratification, or is it limited to that generation yesterday? How I wish I could have a similar story like this?