When it's time, remember...

Courage is not the absence of fear.

It is acting in spite of it.

~Mark Twain

'The' talk.

I should have seen it coming...I would sound naive if I said I was completely taken aback, somewhere in the corner of my mind I knew the day I've been dreading, was finally here...Well, what was I thinking going home for my 23rd b'day?!

It all started with the gift..My grand mom who said she could not sit up until midnight, wanted to give me her gift early..A gadget, clothes, money..my mind wandered to the possibilities..If its a phone, I'll just give it to V, I dont need one..But if its an mp3 I'll keep it..What if its a camera? No,wait I already have a camera...If she gives me money, I'll put it in the holiday money account. Wait I need to make a holiday money account..She interrupted my thoughts and handed me a rather heavy plastic bag. No frills no soft tissue wrapping, a plastic bag and a newspaper wrapped around it..So imagine this, hopeful granddaughter already making plans for the new fortune, delighted parents and brother looking on..and a very very happy grand mom passing on something..

..I did not know how to react for a second. I looked at the eeya pathram (a particular vessel in which rasam is to be made), and did not know what to make of it. I didn't even know what it was till mom pointed it out. So i looked around, and said..ermm..thanks?..And then of course I made up for that with oodles of excitement. But the message was clear.

Your 23. You need to be domesticated. (haha, not really, but its funnier this way!)

However, I did dutifully make rasam the next day, which turned out fabulous btw- I'd like to think my natural skill was the key and not so much the paathram. The next big moment came soon enough..

So I'm sure every girl's gone through this..And I find it hilarious...there you are acting silly and climbing walls at home and no body giving you a second look, hell, I spent most of my childhood looking and perhaps even acting like a boy! And then you reach the magical number that society has set that says 'she's ready to be served!', and your seen in a different light! Anyway my folks were sweet enough not to embarrass me further..or so I thought..Until lunch the next day, when the much dreaded conversation happened. It wasn't a conversation, really. More like 2 sentences each. The essence was, dad asking me to give him a time frame and I gave him a very generous number, to which he chuckled and raised his eyebrow and I stood my ground.

At the end of the day however, as always logic prevailed.."I just got out of our home, pops..I just cant walk into another one right now..I need some me time"..Everyone nodded in agreement..Just when I thought I had made such a poignant point my goofy brother says, "Hello! How about me? So no one cares about my time lines here"?!

One’s not half two, two are halves of one..

Unraveling the complexities of the sexes...A multi billion dollar industry.

Movies like When Harry Met Sally attained cult status...Books like Men are from Mars and When are from Venus became every teenagers, young adults, newly married, recently divorced persons bible..I've had friends go "ahh.." and *shaking heads* "no wonder...!" reading it..Hell! even my mom, whose practical most times, swears by lines from that book.

My FUN, SMART but not so intellectual girl gang used to discuss boys - all.the.time. It was exhausting after a while and very very saturating..Imagine my disbelief when a very intellectual and still FUN girl gang meet up, discuss everything from writers to mysticism to feminism, art, travel, people, music, theatre..but always end up discussing men. The ones that just 'attained independence' talk about what the next one should be like, the ones in a relationship gush or complain about their men, while the lonely ones sulk. And I cant help but think..Here we are, independent (ahem), confident women, sounding so floosy over boys!

Countless blogs dedicated to this mysterious thing called love..millions of words spent trying to dress it down and simplify it..and yet there is so much unsaid...Interestingly however the same emotion - beyond creating a greeting card industry and a 'special day to love', has been used to justify crazy actions, destructive behavior, and unflattering tales.

'minds ignorant of stern miraculous
this every truth-beware of heartless them
(given the scalpel,they dissect a kiss;
or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)'

-e.e.cummings

So old in internet years

Its beginning to bother me..the amount of information/pictures/thoughts of mine, often personal often not, that is out there...floating around in this crazy thing called the cyber space...Its all harmless, i'm told, but a click away from doing some serious harm..

Mr. Gut has been acting up, of late..telling me to turn it down a little - presence in the cyber space that is..we all know what that entails - facebook suicide, blog kill and google detonate!

Online activists who don't leave their bean bags and over heated laptops,
researchers who haven't stepped into a real library, but know the maze of virtual libraries like the back of their hands,
a blogger who has not seen a word published in print..

Contradictions, contradictions.

On a certain level there is less to worry about..Some would say, your masks-the one that gets you thorough your normal day, comes off when you write on your blog, or post a tweet or two..That's not the case though..one comes off but the other comes on..

Spec in a spectrum..

I'm perky, chatty and humming a tune, the Grammy's happened, I am still happy, Ahmadinejad finally made it official, I am busy, Whitney Houston died in a bathtub, I'm moody and cranky, the Chinese are helping the Europeans through the debt ridden times, But I want attention, Italians mistake fishermen for pirates, I'm making people laugh...on a roll, I say!, Adele's got her voice back, Serious writing time, I need to get to work mode..Wait, What's happening in Maldives?

There's a world out there and so often it becomes all about you..

The cocoon is a dangerous place I'm told.. Comfy and addictive..and that combination is never good.

100

Why are we afraid of being ordinary? Ordinary is good! Ordinary is okay..Why is there this pressure this constant need to please and excel and be brilliant and be funny and be charming and patient and pretty?

I refuse to be pretty. I walk around in my pajamas or lose shirts, I take with me my naked eyes and clear skin..My crazy hair held together in a bun - not today, i cant handle you today. Stay put.

So many decisions. everyone has opinions and everyyyone has dreams for you. Most important of all, they are all sure that success awaits you.

I don't want to be great. I don't want to be remembered. I want to be ordinary! IS that so wrong?

Books are written, movies are made, plays are enacted about greatness..How about mediocrity/. Why don't we jazz it up?! Why don't we play up the idea of being mediocre.

Listen..Listen to it..Mee--dee--oo--cree..It sounds so loww. It sounds so sad. That's the problem, we need to change the way it sounds.

If only this were true. You cant aim for mediocrity, it finds you. It chases you until you've succumbed. So all your life, you pick yourself up and run away from it.

Run towards success - however you may choose to define it. Run towards greatness. Stop at nothing short of it.

___

I started this blog when I was still in school, its a shame that it took me 5 years to get to the 100th post. Here's the big three - spent the way I like it best.

Random Ramblings of a sober soul.

OCD and Me! ~~2~~

Spent all of last night..wait, this morning..wee hours of the morning sorting out my house..My flat mates have left for their big break and I am home alone. What began as a simple, "I should clean my hairbrush" thought led to a dusting, sorting, arranging, re-arranging, soaking, washing, sweeping, mopping routine that kept me up till 3 am. That was of course followed up by a long bath and I was fresh as a daisy at 4! Sat in the balcony watching the town sleep and pondering..

Reading Milan Kundera, a lovely thoughtful gift from the beautiful Zuzanna,its a moody book and I am the kind who carries on a mood from a movie or a good book straight into my life. Serious problem, that one.

So about the OCD (drifted there for a second!)..I get a call at that crazy hour and while I am talking, my eyes drift to the coffee table..The news papers aren't in order, the magazines are lying about..and WHO in gods name puts 'SRB's manual of surgery'on it! Since when is THAT coffee table reading?..My friend is still talking..I am listening, sure..But then I see the dust..Even before the phone call ends, I am at it, dusting..sorting..The phone call ends and I look at the clock. This is a sickness, it really is. My friend thinks so too.

I call up my mother in the morning and narrate the incident...And I know that its not a sickness and that I'm not alone on this, when she asks "okay..okay...but did you dust 'under' the table?"