(Short Story) They are called clichés for a reason ©

A bruised eye. Cliché. It seems that this is all my life is these days, a series of perfect clichés. Damn, this is going to take a pound of make up to cover and there is no way I can make it totally un-noticeable in the day light. No way I could go to college, this is going to invite a million questions from my friends and I guess they are kind of getting tired of the me clumsy idiot reasoning. Plus Mehak would know what is going on inside me. She is my best friend and she knows everything even when I don’t tell her. I just can’t deal with all that right now. I can’t even afford to miss any more classes. I am already short on attendance. Why must all the bad things happen together? Atleast I should be glad that I don’t stay with mom dad because if I had to face them now I think I would probably have a heart attack. I let them down. I knew it. I knew they felt it in the last one year. But to see it in their eyes, it would kill me. I don’t even remember the last time I spoke to Ma. 

Life is something. It can change, do a complete 360 in a matter of seconds and sometimes you wait a whole lifetime, try as hard as you can and nothing changes. I have gone from the sweet, full attendance, friends are most important, mom is my best friend, dad is my knight, feminist girl into this. This person who just can’t care about anything except Raj. Raj is my boyfriend and he is responsible for this change. Since he came into my life, I just found myself. Atleast that is what I thought then. Now I feel, when he came I lost myself along the way in trying to become one with him. I think love does that to you. The crap about you fall in love or the latest, you rise in love is so false. The truth is you lose yourself in love and when you emerge with love flowing all through your soul you are a different person. Sometimes it’s for the better, sometimes for the worse. For me it is..I don’t know. I am sure if right now I say it’s for the worse, in a few hours or tomorrow I would say I was wrong and it is for the better. Raj does that to me. Raj..Sometimes I curse the day I met him. Sometimes I thank my stars for that day. 

Our story? Getting drunk with our respective group of friends in a club, he approached me and his approach was too cool for me to turn him down, we exchanged numbers and then it started off from there. First Texting, then the calls, then meeting, then wooing..you know the jazz. Finally giving in and then the works. I know it’s neither magical nor romantic but it’s raw, real and passionate. That is us- raw, real and passionate. I feel if you could rip my heart open and feel the love I have for him it would blow you apart. Your body could not deal with such emotion. Sometimes I wonder how mine does. I love him, truly, deeply, madly. But is it enough? Does it make him be good to me? Are we perfect? Are we happy most of our time? Have I never regretted it? Negative is how I answer all those questions. We have too many lows. More than our fair share. Too many bad times. Why do I stick it out? For me, when there is a high, it is so high; I feel I am on drugs. When it’s a good time, it is so good that it gets me tripping. And then I forget the bad memories. They seem too small and negligible. Like I know how I am feeling today, how much my eye is paining, how I feel I am in such a fix and I feel so down. Knowing Raj he would do something and by tomorrow, this would seem like ancient history. Love works in weird ways.

So why are we so bad at times? I try my best to not be but I think Raj can’t control himself at times. He has the worst temper. It’s not his fault, he has had a bad childhood (read cliché). Mehak says I should not make excuses for his behaviour and I guess that is what they say in all those women magazines but why doesn’t anyone realise that it is not an excuse. His bad childhood makes him who he is so how can he help himself if he has a bad temper? Shaista, my classmate, changes men as often as I change my clothes. No one calls her a bad person, everyone just says it’s because her parents are divorced so she is a little unstable. Isn’t that using an excuse too? So yes, Raj is a nice guy with a bad temper for which there are reasons.

Last night, we were going out for a movie with his friends. I got five minutes late and it was whole shouting about how I was so tardy and had no respect for his honour infront of his friends. Yes even I laughed out when he said this, which meant another shouting about how irresponsible I am and how lightly I take things. It went on for quite a bit and we ended up missing the movie. His friends are so used to our fights that they went on along without us. Finally the shouting stopped. We made up in a child friendly manner. We joined them for dinner.

Notice how I used shouting and not argument? It’s my term for when he fights and I just listen. It happens a lot. There is no point arguing with him so I have given up. Dinner was good. One of the good times I talked about. He was the perfect boyfriend then. Had I been angry at him for embarrassing me infront of his friends, which I wasn’t because it was a routine now- him shouting at me infront of the world, well if I was I would have forgiven him.

It’s what happened after dinner that got me where I am right now. I am making Raj sound to be the most horrible person right? He is one of the best people I know minus the temper. So after dinner, as usual we came over to my place. We decided to curl up watching Lost. We were sitting on the sofa, me sipping on Cosmo and him on scotch, engrossed in the happenings on the island, we looked like a picture of bliss harmony, should have seen that as a sign as something bad will happen- a fight was brewing. He did what most guys do, he made his move and I did what any girl engrossed in a sitcom would- I shrugged his move off. It happened, precisely three more times and each time I shrugged it off. That was it, after the fourth time, he just lost it. It started with shouting but soon turned into a full blown out argument the details of which I will spare you guys from. Just that there was a lot of shouting from both sides. The end was that he stormed off. Soon after he left and I started to get ready to go to bed, I felt pukish and stormed off to the loo where I tripped on the mat and hit my face on the door handle with the knob poking my eye and the next thing I knew I was in the emergency ward in the hospital. Apparently Raj had come back to sort things out with me, that is what he says, I think he came back either to shout on me some more or see if there was a scope of him getting to make up in x rated fashion, if you know what I mean. He saw me passed out and called the emergency service.

Now it’s the time to hear the biggest cliché that happened to me. Drum rolls please? Yes so they ran some tests on me while I was there, to check for injuries and guess what they discovered?

I was pregnant.

                                                                                                                    

So here I am the morning after, sitting with a bruised eye that make up won’t cover, still in college and probably going to be kicked out of it due to short attendance, have a boyfriend who makes me love and hate him at the same time and so totally pregnant. By the way I haven’t told Raj, I don’t know how to or whether I should also or not. The thought of keeping “it” has not even crossed my mind once. I can’t. It’s not even possible to think of it, imagine how impossible it would be to keep “it.” I have already decided what I am going to do. There is no other option or possibility of anything else. I am sure of what I want. 

Does that make me a bad person?

None the Wiser? ©

24 going on 25, none the wiser?

A quarter of a century, a quarter of the being a kid to an adult, a quarter of pain misery & love, sadness & happiness, tears & joys, heartbreaks & heartjoins (??), depression & ecstasy, stupid stupid decisions to the smart choices (usually the former), dull moments to life changing situations, the friends lost to the best friends forever, the TV to the laptops, the hi5s to the facebooks, the hotmails to the gmails, the playgrounds to the social network, the velaness to the waiting for a non working weekend...STOP..okay so this really can go on and on and on..and on..

Being almost 25 is not a very nice age to be. It’s like you are sitting on the middle of the seesaw: the un-adulthood part of adulthood pulling you to one side and the mature part of adulthood with its marriage, growing up, having kids and having your own family pulling you the other side. Not a good place to be in being pulled by two, one does feel very “tear”able. The see-saw is there for everyone to see!

The thing that I often discuss with my best friend is that facebook for us has now transformed from a site with information about who is dating who and hitting which parties to who is marrying who, who is getting engaged to who and who had a kid! We often cry to each other in shock about how many people we know who are getting married or engaged. We are still holding on to our idea (since 18) of being too young for marriage..like I said we are almost 25 now, so yes we are very delusional and would like to continue believing we are too young and babies for things like marriage. There are many like us, around us. I am sure if facebook did a survey on the most common status posted by people in our age group, it would be the now immortalized quote by Barney Stinson on growing up- “Everyone I know is getting married or pregnant. I’m just getting more awesome”..which by the way is a big lie both on-screen & off-screen. Even in the show while everyone is moving on Barney’s character is becoming stale! So yes while everyone is getting married, pregnant or engaged are those like us sitting in the middle of the see-saw just getting older and stagnant? 

The good thing that is supposed to happen with age is that we are supposed to become wiser(?!). I often wonder, how wiser are we than the 15 year old us? Smarter and shrewder..maybe, learnt our  way around..somewhat in process, got good at doing something and pretending we never did it..definitely, learnt a few tricks of the trade liking acting we are okay when we are not, lying that we are fine when we are hurting, saying things we really do not mean, making promises we know we shall never keep, being diplomatic..ofcourse that is how we are surviving. So have we really become any wiser or have we just become more cynical?

Thinking about jotting down things I learnt or misinterpreted as learnings (:P) over the years (ofcourse keeping it as light as possible). Things which I am sure most of my friends would agree with me on. So is this a guide to being 24 on 25? Umm, no. Me guide? Ha. Have a read. Be amused.

Have a dog, they are adorable and the cutest little big pooches in this world. If nothing, a dog can teach you all about unconditional love and the art of the never ending want for something (food in their case)

Your work if not your life, is a big part of your life. It is humanely impossible disconnect yourself from something you do 12 hours a day 5-6 times a week, so *obscene rude  gesture* to those who say anything else!

Have a boyfriend but have a best friend forever aka bff. A bf will occasionally let you down, a bff will hardly ever. It is probably the best fun relationship you will have. Oh you will fight, never for one second think you won’t, you will, probably more horrible than fighting with your bf..but it is more than worth it.

Have your group of girls or gang of lifelines as I like to call them (I am pretty sure they do not know this and will probably kill me if they read it so I suggest scratch that :P). They are the best support system you need in your life. Venting to them is the best feeling ever- it does not necessarily have to be over a couple of cosmopolitans as the girls in sex and the city taught us, it could just be over coffee! And for your own sake please stop calling your female friends “Bithces” post your 21st birthday.

Please do not write please as “puh-lease” post your 18th birthday or rather ever.

Being in a relationship will not always be like a gala time. You do have to work on it sometimes, but if it’s too much work then it’s honestly not worth it because love & being with someone has to come naturally.

Love your boyfriend. Forgive him easily when he does those stupid things and forgets easily, he is man remember?

There is a cave-man in every man. No I do not speak about the metro sexual varity. They are beyond my understanding. I go "blank blank not able to process, super confusion over sex of person" like a robot when I meet one. 

Love is immortal.

Tired of having some people constantly letting you down? Let them down and out of your life! Do not waste time on people who will never really waste that much time on you.

Love your family. We can’t choose our family yet it is the best we will get in our life. Spend as much time as you can with them.

The mother..is always right. No arguments & no explanations. So if she tells you to carry an umbrella on a not so cloudy day or wear an extra sweater because she thinks you might fall sick- just do it. Chances are even if the sun is shining with all its glory that day, the clouds will find a way to rain and if you choose not to wear that sweater you will catch a cold. It is the power of mother. Respect it!

When we were 17-18 years old they used to tell us about how rich people with their own companies like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had dropped out of college, making us feel cool that we were rebellious, hated authority and education and believe we could still get awesome in life. What they never told us then was that these people were geniuses who already acquired more knowledge on their own than school could ever teach them and they dropped out because they wanted to build their dreams not because they were laid back people who wanted to wail away their time. Lesson? Do not believe everything that is said to motivate you!

Please do not write “cum” when you mean “come”..everyone above the age of 16 knows the difference (given the way the younger generation is growing up I should just make that 8). So it is amusing to most of us when you write- “I will cum soon”. Please don’t. My friend Anusha & I actually judged the direction of how our friendship would go depending on how we wrote the word come in the smses. After getting along well over a few days in college while smsing each other she was checking if I would write come or cum and I was checking the same about her!! And when we shared this we admitted had the word “cum” been written it would have been bye bye tata friendship.

Photoshop just might be the best invention of all time followed by the wheel. Don’t believe me? Ask any girl around you.

Learn sarcasm. If it does not come naturally, buy a book or google it. But learn sarcasm.

We love our slangs. But please do not end up writing lol in your answer sheet in an exam or some interview.

Never judge a book by its cover, judge it by the number of pages it has & the photo of the author. Haha. Okay not really. Read. I could never really convince my boyfriend to do it so I encourage the rest of you. Help “man”-kind.

You are too young to get married, always. Remember this. No matter what your parents say.

Love vampires (and love Stefan more than Damon, really don’t try to be a bad girl in love with bad boys :P)

Now before this list goes from okayish random to totally random I need to put a stop to the writing. Just one last thing- Believe in the power of true love &  in the power of friendship- “some friendships are like coke, they fizz away if they are open for too long..others are like juice, they were always natural and never needed any fizz to fake start it.. “

"Too sentimental..Can't process, feel like a man" :P ..Over & Out.

Why do you love to hate Rockstar? ©

Why do you love to hate Rockstar????????

Yes. You. You the person who has in the past one week updated his/her facebook status to-  “Tera HAQ..tu hi RAKH..Teri movie..WTF”..or something in the similar lines. I want to talk to you. Outright I am not a Ranbir fan or an Imtiaz Ali fan or for that matter even a fan of A.R Rahman (you can’t believe I said that- well I did!). So this post does not come from a lover of the above mentioned people. It comes from a person who can understand atleast where Rockstar came from and is so disappointed in all of you that you can’t understand the same. It’s right in you. You have probably been Jordan at one point in your life or Heer. I mean you were not really a rockstar ever or the hottest jungali jawani loving chick but I talk from the emotion point of view.

Okay first of all, if you have never been in love. Stop reading. None of my statements are applicable for you. And researchers usually like to say it- you have been terminated because you are not the TA- target audience. This is purposive post and hence should have a purposively recruited audience. Adios Amigoes!!! For the rest read on. I am going to attempt to make you understand the movie called Rockstar.

At the start (it’s one paragraph down so hardly the start but what the hell), I would take this opportunity to point out the 3 main flaws in the movie which might have led to you not understanding the movie-

1)      Yes the editing sucks- it’s bad- it’s more than bad- it’s horrible- it’s like Imitiaz and his team were drunk on tequila when they were sitting down and editing it or smoking up a joint- that can only explain why a  movie so badly edited can hit the screens

2)      The songs- okay honestly if you think about it, they are kind of short & incomplete- good compositions but less verses

3)      And the biggest problem - The chick- yes the female. The guys probably saw the movie for her, but think about it- did she add to the movie in any way (except the hotness)? She made a simple touch and kiss scene seem like she was on the verge of reaching the promised land. Really? There was bloody over acting in every scene. She seems to have been instructed that its a porn movie every time there was a romantic scene. That was not even her own voice! Imitiaz really, whatever weird thing you have going on with foreigners just drop it already. A new Indian girl would have done wonders to the role. Or even someone like Katrina would have set the screen on fire much better.

(Please note, here the point 3 is the most text heavy- women do like to talk about other women, hence proved)

Carrying on forward from these flaws, I will still say the movie was brilliant due to just few factors- the story, to somewhat Ranbir and then the good songs did help jazz things up.

Over the last one week the main criticism I have heard about Rockstar is that Jordan is a rebel without a cause. Let me clarify this- he is NOT a rebel. He is a rockstar. An angry one. Anger does not make a person a rebel. Period.

The other criticism is that the anger in Jordan is clearly unjustified & stupid. Now to clarify this we will get into the emtoions part. After eliminating the non lovers out there we should be having the following category of people with us-

1)      Those who have loved once but not anymore

2)      Those who have loved a million times already

3)      Those who have loved once and are still in love

Love only happens once. Bullshit. When I was 11, heard Rahul (SRK) say in KKHH- “hum ek baar jite hain, ek baar marte hain, shaadi bhi ek baar hoti hai, aur pyar....ek hi baar hota ha.” Then I did believe him. That was till the end of the movie when he went ahead and married Anjali. Did that mean he never loved Tina? She was just an infatuation? Hardly. What if a girl falls in love with a guy madly deeply but he turns out to be an asshole- so it was never love for her? I think the whole love only happens once was made up years ago by uncle aunties who realized how promiscuous the coming generations could be.

While we clarified that love probably happens more than a few times, great love..well great love is all together a different thing. And the topic of another discussion.

So for those who were once in love, think about those times. The ones who have been in love with their current partner for a long time now go back to the time when you were new to falling in love with him/her. Those of us who have just fallen in love well think about now. Idea being think about love. The first rush.

Yes, so do you remember the first time your girlfriend told you she does not want to see your face again in a fight (for those of you who have been in a relationship long enough you have heard that and said that a million times already that it has lost its damn significance). Remember how angry it made you? Remember how foul a mood you were in? How you would not want to talk, or just want to go drink. Or were throwing things around? Well imagine, you had that big fight and you are walking back home and there are a million cameras in your face- what the fuck would you do- GET ANGRIER!!!

Now tell me, how many times does your girlfriend or boyfriend say do not call me or come to pick me up while you are fighting and you still go???!

Now remember those days of love, when you did not know better. When love was all that we lived for and life came second? When we could choose to let life come second. When we did not care about anyone but us. No family, no friends, nothing- only him/her. When we were rash and loved it. Did not study for a test because we were up talking the whole night to our lover or out with him/her. When we sneaked away in the middle of the night to meet them knowing if you get caught you would be screwed- but you still did it anyway? When you could spend the entire day in bed and do nothing but think about the person you love and all the time you shared together.

Well that, think of all these things, put aside the negative points and then watch the movie. It is an out to out love story under unusual circumstances and in Bollywood how many times do we see that? We can go ahead and appreciate movies like slum dog millionaire but when it comes to this we refuse to understand it. Being so angry in love and letting love be the gudiing light in your love while you hurt other people because you are too busy with it..right..or wrong..is not a question to be discussied in this post either.

At the end of this, if you still pretty much hate the movie and think this is all crap, I would like to end via a quote my friend Saiba uses when people tell her they hated Rockstar- “You just do not have deep emotions.” :P ..

A time much simpler-the simple look at life ©

Go back to a time much simpler than this..

I remember this one line from a song whose name I can’t recall. But this line goes around in my mind quite often these days.

Wasn’t it so much easier when we were kids? Life was all about eating, sleeping and playing. The only time we got angry and fought with our parents was when they didn’t let us eat chocolate or let us watch TV or forced us to eat vegetables. The only reason we got angry with our friends was when they picked teams without picking us, didn’t share their tiffin with us or would not give let us ride the swing. The time when we actually never thought of people as bitches and assholes but just as mean and stupid. The time when someone hurt us and we would not either be socially obliged to still pretend they didn’t or have huge arguments over it but would just say ‘katti,’ do the finger thing and walk away. The time when seeing our dad come home would be one of the most exciting moments of the day. The time when happiness would come from discovering that mom gave us maggi for lunch in the tiffin. We would be on cloud 9 if our crush so much as looked as us twice in a day. When the scariest thing in life were exams. When all we would sleep on was an empty mind and our dreams would be of mindless cute things. The time when we would not even understand the term relationship problems. The time when politics was just a government related thing. When sleeping for 8 hours was more of necessity and luxury. When our fantasies were related to the bed time stories we read. The time when we could actually dream and aim to be anything or anyone and actually believe it was possible. The time when all we needed was mom’s hug to make us feel better after a bad day.

Why is it that as we grow up everything becomes difficult? I remember I heard somewhere that adults make everything complicated, now is when I agree with this statement. As we grow up issues just increase with everything in our lives. All our relationships become more complex, our studies become more complex and the great bane of all problems- our expectations become more complex and greater. Even worse, the expectations of the people around you become more complex and greater!

Over the years I have come to realize that there are some people who find it easier to be an adult (read crib less) and some who are constantly acting like a baby towards adulthood (kicking and throwing a tantrum and telling it to go away). I now classify adults as two types-

The Type A is very easy to spot. They will be the ones who will constantly complain about being an adult and how they want to go back to beings kids while when they were kids all they begged from their parents was to take them as a grown up (read me) and now are glad that for their parents they will never grow up (yay). You will find them sitting in lounges and coffee bars talking animatedly with their friends, reminiscing some about childhood years or sitting quietly as they blow their hookah and sip their vodkas/scotch gazing into the smoke and nothingness reminiscing in their head how life was once much simpler. They will always be ready to pull out some childhood story at every get together. Also important to note the type A adult lies in all adults. It isn’t mostly developed that much in some.

The Type B is not very easy to spot. The basic reason being that their tiny Type A sometimes hides their Type B. These are people who have slipped into adulthood with ease. Ofcourse they might occasionally reminisce about the good old days but the present days are just so happening for them that they hardly get time for all the ‘bullshit.’ Adulthood is the best thing that happened to them. They are the people who like being responsible. The only easiest way to spot one- on a Monday morning in office the only person who does NOT crib about Monday! The other way you can use is- talk about the approaching teachers day and the person who does NOT say- “I want to go back to school/college,” and voila you have your Type B.

For all the Type B- you were born old, loser!

For all the Type A, now we find it easy or not, but one day we will have to give up the tantrums and accept adulthood completely. I admit it is already in us now (the fucker got a part of us) but I say we still have time. Just because it is a loosing battle doesn't mean it must not be fought, innit? So bring out your best tantrum and also your best shoe and lets fight this battle till the child in us is finally ready to give up...happy fighting!