Why I Hate Being Single

I just have to write this. Last straw. Enough’s enough. Work will be pushed aside for an hour or so while I rant and rave.

First point to note: I don’t. That is, when people keep their mouths shut or when I can close my ears to the mean supposed-to-be-funny but nowhere even close and 'not even really meant to be funny anyway in the first place' comments from wide-trapped people.

If there's anything I hate about it, it's smartass comments about singledom.

As I've admitted before, I have nothing against men. I like them, they smell good and they have nice arms and hands. It feels good to have one around. It is good to be held and kissed. It is good to know that there's someone who's gonna take you to the movies and hold your hand over the dinner table. It's especially good when that person holding your hand is someone you like so much that it doesn't matter what's on your plate. He has the power to turn every food into ambrosia. It's good to have someone for all that. But that is not everything in life.

Sometimes you’ll fall in love, relationships go bad, and sometimes you’ll be single and sometimes not. It’s not a necessity to constantly have someone just for the sake of not being single, to have someone to prove to other people that you’re wanted. I guess when I grow older and I get lonely and needy, I might possibly get that way. But not now. I’m not that lonely or needy just yet.

What is it about being single that is so revolting that that fact alone should automatically render you as ‘hopeless’ in other people’s eyes. Why am I ‘hopeless’ just because I don’t have a boyfriend currently? I'm pretty good with some things. Hey, I just got a promotion, my second one in two years! Doesn't that count for something? No? I'm still hopeless because I don't have a boyfriend right? NO! Not right. I give a rat's ass. And I will have a boyfriend when someone right comes along again. I won’t have one just because you think I’m hopeless because I’m without one.

Whether, why, why not, when, who, and how and why we chose to date/marry is a personal, private issue, and in the same way that the inadequate size of your private parts is a private matter and I don’t and won’t joke about it, I would be very happy if you stop asking me why I am not married, tell me that my boyfriend (er..'ex-boyfriend) looks like he should be my dad, or that I am a ‘helpless’ single female.

I certainly don’t see myself as helpless – in any way.

Forget single women. It takes courage to be single :D. What about people who can never seem to be happy on their own? To complete their image, to complete their incomplete selves, they will constantly be hanging on the arms of other people, and one lover gone means find another one fast before your lungs burst because you can't breathe on your own. It’s pathetic that how pretty your girlfriend is should determine how confident you’re going to be around people. But is it because you can’t help it since you have none of your own?

And people who make rude jokes about poor little lost helpless girls should also know that yes, it is possible that we don’t have the same priorities as you do. At this point in my life, I’d be happier with a year or two of being single and a couple of juicy projects awarded to me at work. Maybe that way I’ll work out a promotion or two while you go work out several dozen girlfriends. And wouldn’t it be nice if we can just say ‘To each his own’ and leave out our biting remarks about each other.

Some people’s only saving grace is the pretty boy/girl they’re with. I guess it’d be understandable for those kinds to always need to have a pretty someone around.

But I'm shamelessly proud. And I believe I'm complete on my own. I don't need anyone to complete my image. I don't think I need a pretty boy to boost a low self-confidence or morale.

…And Why I Like Being Single:

I had many insecurities growing up. And as much as the prospect of facing the world on my own excited me, it scared me. It’s so good to know that I was scared for nothing. Now that I’ve finally outgrown my insecurity, life has never been easier.

I can eat in any restaurant in town and not worry about my boyfriend's wallet.

If I like/want something, I can buy it without having to consult anyone first. Of course, it also helps when one doesn’t have exorbitant tastes:-).

It’s good to be able to sit and plan my own vacation and not have to ask anyone for funds. Also, single rooms are cheaper.

It’s good to be able to walk into a place and be remembered. Funnily, when I go with a date, I’m not as well-remembered. Only when I'm my single, charming self! :P

You can get away with not shaving if you're feeling lazy.

You can go to bed wearing unpretty but verree comfortable underwear.

It’s good to walk into a room and see a cute guy and know that it's possible that he may end up with you or your number or your cold.

If you swear by TLC and you can't live without the attention, be assured that being single doesn't mean you're not going to get any!

So you see, my friends, all in all, it’s not a terribly bad thing to be single. You won't die because of it. Sure, it’s not for everyone. But it is good for people like me.

I like the word ‘Independent.’ I love what it stands for. I like the way it sounds, the way it feels on my tongue. And it doesn't mean I want to be single forever, but being independent means I can chose who, how, when and where. And I understand full well that this is not a lasting phase. I won’t love it this way forever. But I want to enjoy it while I do.

So spare me the drama. I don't see any great tragedy happening yet.

All Things Bright & Beautiful

Just pictures in the air today...

'My brother can sic your brother any day!'

I wanted to make Samuel pose with the cows but he was afraid of them and wouldn't get near them no matter how much I coaxed or how many candies I offered. He moved closer only when his brother moved closer. And that too without expecting any candy reward.

They're so beautiful it's difficult to look at their pictures and not want to be home, I miss all those soft little hands and feet and baby smells...

Yeah, I'm just fascinated with itty bitty bundles - little baby fingers and toes. This particularly cute feet belongs to Kim. We have lots of cute kids in the family, and I just can't refrain from taking their pictures when I'm with them, they are all over-photographed. There are tons of pictures of them, whole and lots of them not so whole, like this one.
The day the tables turned on me!

So it's not always me who does the clicking. I kind of like this picture of me because I was caught so totally unawares and I thought *I* was the one who was going to take a candid picture. I was up early and went for a walk while my friends slept. When I got back, I saw P on the balcony, just out of bed, sleepy-eyed, hair messy, and very obviously (or so I thought) still half-asleep. He didn't see me (or so I thought) and was stretching and yawning the widest yawn I'd ever seen. I thought I'd take some good candid shots of him yawning in all his glory, aimed and zoomed and then all of a sudden, out popped a camera in his hands and then 'c-l-i-c-k'! And it was all over. I lost my candid shot and ended up with this picture of myself instead.


This picture was taken from one of my most favorite spots on earth. You can click on the pictures to view them in their original sizes. [That's really a nice way of saying I want you to please click on the pictures and take a closer look to see how beautiful those hills and mountains and trees are :0)].

This is the only place where I can sit ALL day, watch the sun rise, then watch it go down, without any company, without any form of 'entertainment' whatsoever (except my iPod) and never be bored.

It's got a pretty steep drop...

And a perfect bird's eye view!
Also an amazing view of the city...Aizawl, Mizoram, not Hyderabad. Hyderabad thankfully is not visible from here :-)Perched on top of that, it's very easy to feel like you own the world. It's easy to see the little things that bother you as they are - 'little' things. It's very difficult to not be happy when you have the sun and the blue skies and hills and mountains and get to watch the stars come out...

I get to watch only a few stars come out because whoever's supposed to come pick me up would arrive and come and pick me up and I'd have to head back home, satisfied and relaxed. Spending a day up here is one good way of ensuring you get good dreams that night.
Can you see the first star of the night?

'He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars;
Winds take a pensive tone and stars a tender fire
And visions rise and change which kill me with desire —

But first a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends;
The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends
Mute music sooths my breast — unuttered harmony
That I could never dream till earth was lost to me..'


- Emily Bronte

Is there a Russian connection here?

Have you ever seen those cheap DVD movies with the totally messed up subtitles? I'm just wondering if those are common because I keep on running into them.

I never got to see Brokeback Mountain. The reason: incomprehensible subtitles. Banned in the theatres because it was not considered appropriate for the good, decent Hyderabad folks, a friend and I got the DVD and sat down to watch it when I saw that the English language movie had English subtitles. It was one of those cheap, pirated stuffs. I didn't mind, being fonder of words in its written form than the less substantious oral form. However, a few minutes into the movie, it was clear that whoever was responsible for those subtitles was on something while doing it. They were just the regular dialogues minus all the right and every form of grammar abuse thrown in. We tried to ignore the subtitles but it was impossible. We found our attention being constantly drawn to the incoherent subtitles so we gave up and ended up never even really understanding much of the little that we saw.

Well, some time ago, I was given this 6-movies-in-1 DVD collection of horror flicks. Now, I'm a horror movie lover, and I was just dying to see it. I sat down one night with a friend, we turned down the lights, armed ourselves with a full-night's supply of snacks and sat back to enjoy hours of non-stop fright.

Then it happened again.

One guy in the process of raping a young woman, swearing and cursing -
Subtitle: I don't do criminal law, I do civil law.

Girl: *screams and sobs gibberish*
Subtitle: Three family wake up tomorrow without a father.

Guy: Turn that bitch over!
Girl's subtitle: KGB?

Girl: Screaming and crying and wailing, let me go, help, oh god, somebody help, all that jazz.
Subtitle: The Russian letter for Z looks like a three.

Guy: Catch them fatass!
Subtitle: The have what relation.

Girl enters room, guy on phone -
Guy: Just a sec.
Subtitle: Sit wherever you want.

Guy: Where are you going baby?
Subtitle: Cuban sounds Russian.

Guy: You fucking bozo!
Subtitle: You fucked IBM.

Girl: I was looking for Sarah.
Subtitle: Typical Americans!

Girl: You got helicopters, you got men...
Subtitle: "Do Svidanya Asshole?" (yep, with the punctuations.)

Girl: No no, trust me!
Subtitle: Good morning!

Guy: Damn you almost killed me!
Subtitle: He knows of the Russian connection.

Guy: Hey, come back here you asshole!
Subtitle: Pig shit's going to hit the fan.

Guy: You want a piece of that?
Subtitle: Trailer over there is hauling hogs.

Woman: That officer is a racist son of a bitch!
Subtitle: Just fiddling with my joystick!

Non-scary movies. Scary subtitles. It was worse than Brokeback Mountain and even though it was a little disappointing, we couldn't help but roll around on the floor laughing. I somehow managed to scribble some down on paper. Very strong Russian 'connection' here. Kind of funny, there I was joking about the price of half-boiled Russian eggs and now this...

I don't know what went wrong here but whatever it was, it was colossal. If it was deliberately done, I would love to hang out with the guy who did it.

Pocahontas Killed The Bacterium Star :P

I had a little run-in with some bacteria and, therefore, have been seeing a lot of doctors and hospitals and needles. I'm generally a very healthy person, have always been, with not much experience with any form of illness except for the common cold. So, what is a mild fever to someone else would feel like a terminal illness to me. And I'm very proud of myself for the way I held up during these last few days while I was burning with fever, being prodded and poked with needles. And for not crying on the phone. Nothing of consequence, but I like patting myself on my back.

But here I am now, minus the pain and the fever, just terribly glad to be feeling they way I felt every day before I got sick and never thought twice about it. It was not a fun experience but as always, there are positives:

1. Stomach now very flat. I so love this part of the bacteria incident!

2. One much-needed lesson in empathy. I will henceforth treat any sick friend/stranger with definitely more compassion now.

3. My hair's just suddenly become very well-behaved and straighter than normal - probably all the meds I'm consuming or maybe even the unnatural amount of time spent resting head on pillows. Will probably go back to regular waves and curls on my next wash but I will enjoy my new hair till that time comes.

4. Being spoiled, having people fuss over me. For example, I was lying in bed one night and Dimps came in to check on me and ask me how I feel, if there's anything I wanted (Good. No.) **and** she actually asked me if I would like her to plug in my iPod headsets to my ears for me. No again but how cool is that huh? :)

It was also time for Soul dinner again, a costume party of sorts...


And there I was, playing a tomahawk-wielding
Pocahontas, just a day after lying helplessly in a hospital bed with bottles of intravenous drips dangling by my side the night before.

I amaze myself sometimes! :D

(Don't tell my doctor though..He thinks I'm still in bed.)

So being sick forced me to do the one thing I can never do otherwise. Be still. And contemplate. And who'd have thought such wise and insightful thoughts would come to one's head when you can lie still in the dark for several hours! I'd lie there, thinking, trying to avoid some subjects, trying to stay on some pleasant ones and all of a sudden - 'Hey, whatever happened to the Crash Test Dummies??!' or 'Hey, what was that TV commercial when we were kids that had Linda Ronstadt's Blue Bayou track??' :-)

I also listened to only two music tracks the whole time I was in bed - Stratovarius' 'Forever' and Avantasia's 'Farewell'. Kind of weird, I'm usually a shuffler, not a repeater. Maybe it's like the way some people crave food items like chocolate, I just craved for these two songs. So I listened to them like a thousand times. (And for the record, I still am not sick of them.)

Okay, I'm rambling. Time to shut down computer and go gurgle. I'm just not very happy with the idea of staying home while my friends are out having fun tonight. They'll be sipping Pina Coladas and Bloody Marys while I sit at home and sip tomato and basil soup.

Babes in the Woods

Risking the wrath of certain feminist friends of mine, I'm typing this with my tail between my legs and pulse quivering. But the thing is, I'm chuckling just thinking about what's on the tip of my fingers, and anything worth a chuckle is always worth a post.

Coincidences, a mass case of bad luck, or just a bad year - a large number of us (us = me and my girlfriends) over the course of the first few months of this year have suddenly found ourselves 'bitterly' single. I hate to admit to being bitter over a break-up, but I'll admit for me and my other girls that yes, we are very bitter. The rancor easily arises when there's another woman involved. And a lot of us have been cheated on, so there are broken prides and bitter hearts all around.

And in the midst of all this, we try to be there for each other and comfort each other. 'My boyfriend was rottener,' 'But mine was gayer' ... downplaying each other's sense of loss and at the same time, adding to (screwing up?) our vocabularies. Us girls are good that way, being there for each other and passing the tissues around and creating new, no-worder words.

And when you get a lot of free, bored, single women together, you get a lot of those things called 'Girls' Night Out.' Because we balk, yes, us brave girls who fearlessly tackle merciless deadlines and tantrum-throwing clients, actually balk at the prospect of going home and stepping foot inside empty apartments. And we turn up at a lot of places we never would've turned up otherwise if empty apartments didn't intimidate us so much...

So we turn up here and there all over this ferocious jungle and we order our drinks and kiss each other's cheeks and give the meanest stares to any guy who dare to let a straying eye wander our side. And you don't want to see the scorn with which we trample the poor, few intrepid souls who dare to actually approach us and hope to join us - hoping to be included in the table, the conversation or the dance! It's a good thing those poor souls can't hear the volley of expletives and uncomplimentary adjectives and nouns generously thrown after them behind their backs.

And we sit there, the high priestesses of heartbreak, undiluted, unpolluted and talk about the more important stuffs life has to offer because we have no time for petty, stupid, childish stuffs like romance. We talk about important stuffs like -

- how much a half-boiled egg costs in Russia 'in Russian Roubles'...

- or if we'd like to sit on a lemon tree. And if yes, which branch we'd like to sit on, top, middle or bottom branch...

- how much we'd like to have a butler like Jeeves...

- trying to figure out the science behind the disco lights. 'Yes, I think a double convex lens!'

- arguing about who's gayer - Batman or Superman. (My bet's on Batman by the way. What do you think? I think Robin explains it all. Anyway, I'm taking votes. My friends are biased, they are way too fond of the Batsuit and the Batmobile to vote for him over Superman whose costume isn't quite as attractive as Batman's.)

- which divine member of Il Divo we'd most like to spend a night with. (Carlos Marín, Carlos Marín, Carlos Marín!)

- what's cooler - besides the ones in our rooms - the ability to walk through walls or the ability to see through them...

Yeah, deep stuffs.

So we amuse ourselves this way for a couple of hours at the most. And then, we all start to get a little listless and I, being an open speaker of mind, usually am the first to finally blurt out that I am very envious of the couple very obviously in love sitting all draped over, around, above and beyond each other in the corner. A little sickening but still envious. And one XXian tells me to shut up.

'Feel sorry for her. The guy's probably cheating on her and the dumb chick has no inkling of it..' she says.

'We don't need any member of the species called men. We're happy without them. Our lives are complete, we function better, we are rid of one of life's little clutters.' One XXian says. We all join in and chirp about how happy we are without them and how well we sleep and how we don't wake up in the middle of the night anymore - alone and missing those rotten liars.

So back to Russian Roubles and Romanian leus. Back to the history of mankind and the electric bulb and the flat iron. I'll let you in on a little secret - we act confident and proud and touch-me-not-y, I swear if you walk in and see us sitting there, on our high chairs and with high-heeled feet and legs confidently crossed, I'll bet even a poor actress like me would fool you. But our eyes hungrily roam around the room looking for ex-boyfriend, and when in the right mood, even a possible replacer...And no matter how hard-boiled we look, one right word or action and I'd be spilling my heart out and calling you master. And I'm pretty sure my friends are no different.

But we keep up the pretense.

'Men will soon be obsolete. With cloning, we can wipe them off the face of this earth. Haha.' says one XXian.

'Haha. Super. Haha' I say.

'Yay! Let's wipe Y out, we'll have only XX, no more dirty Ys in the Xs. Haha' pipes in the rest.

In girlish enthusiasm, we call a couple of XYs and warn them of their impending doom.

'Your shelf life is almost over. Find a religion, make your peace with God. Haha.' we tell them.

'C'mon ladies, the world won't be half as fun without us' he says.

We 'bleh-eh' him and hang up.

Talk some more about John Wilkes Booth and Nathuram Godse and the coral snake and the Greek Islands and the natural vegetation of Mizoram. Inside, I miss ex and me's nonsense, non-intelligent chatters. And I wonder how long I'm going to be able to fake this. Then, a small voice, whose owner I couldn't identify, says 'You know, he's right.'

'Who? Nathuram Godse?'

'Nah, XY of the recent phone call.'

And here, we usually split - No-more-guys Vs Gimme-them. But they're my friends and I know them well and I know inside, both groups equally miss those bastards. And that XY-of-the-recent-phone-call is right after all. It's just no fun without them. Lousy SOBs though they may be, they make putting on makeup and buying nice dresses and shoes and smelling good so much more funner (er..no worder again?).

So in the end we all agree and we leave the jungle house with a general love for all mankind in our hearts.

We wait for a rick/taxi to wave down and we hear a voice behind us -

'Hey babes, want a lift?' - the geeky looking head to whom the geeky-sounding voice belongs to says, showing us for what reason I can't fathom, the 'rock-on' sign, also called the satanic hand sign, also called the brim.

We have love for mankind now so we politely say 'No thanks :-) *smile*'

'Then how about a nice long drive?'

'No thanks!!'

'Then how about we just chill? How about it babes?'

'Listen we said NO! Why don't you just fuck off jerk??'

**sigh** Vicious love-hate cycle this!

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