New Girl in the City

Two years. Two continents. Two flights. And I become the new girl in the city. Paris. The city of lights, the city of love. I once wrote down the 101 things I wanted to do before I die, and one of them was to live in Paris. Little did I know then, that wish would finally come true.

Like all new things which happen to me, moving to Paris brought a mixed emotion. I was nervous, anxious, excited—all at the same time. On one hand, I was sad to leave Bangalore, the city which was like my second home, where I started my professional career, where I dreamt dreams of the future, where I planned to settle down and start my family. On the other hand, I was bored being at the same place, going to the same office, and living at the same house. Kind of like running on a treadmill—you run and run but go nowhere. I wanted a change of place, a change of context. And Paris happened.

After wrapping up my life in Bangalore in six suitcases and four cartons, I landed in Paris with a clean slate—not expecting anything (since nothing goes as per my expectations anyway), ready to delve into work and enjoy the city to the fullest. After my last one month stint here, I was sure at least the city won’t let me down.

Then started the process of “settling down”. The legalities, the financials, bank accounts, and the biggest monster of them all—house hunting. By now I am used to the fact that I don’t get anything easily in life, and obviously what I want will not be what I get. So I was ready to slug it out all over again. And then, something changed. I don’t know if it was just a random case of luck or it was the city, but everything started falling into place. Contrary to my expectations, I found a lovely house in a beautiful part of the city. The agent was a gem and she helped me set up almost everything. And then, lo and behold, I got a friend. A friend who was there every single time I needed someone, even when I did not say it out aloud. And before I knew it, I was home. Weekends were packed with activities—pubs, movies, visiting beautiful places. I didn’t even know movies were released here in English, although with French subtitles. I was planning trips, I was going shopping with friends, I even figured out the French sizes for clothing and shoes. Life couldn’t have been better.

But life is full of surprises and for the first time, my life didn’t stop at being better.

I fell in love…something which I thought would never happen to me again. Falling in love in the city of love? Too dramatic? It doesn’t end there. It’s a love story Bollywood would fall in love with. Two people completely different, yet feeling a heart-felt bond. Two people from completely different backgrounds, yet sharing the same beliefs. Two people who don’t speak the same language, but understand each other without a word being spoken. And the entire world against them. Stuff dreams, and Bollywood movies, are made of.

Two cities. Two worlds. Two months. I am no more the new girl in the city. But a lot of new things are happening in my life. I am not thinking about the future, I am not planning anymore. But its as if all the things I ever dreamt of are coming true one by one. That’ll do for now. I have now realized how futile the expression “the pursuit of happiness” is. If the turn of events is anything to go by, happiness follows when you stop chasing it. I don’t know what the future will bring. But today, right now, as I write down these words, I am happy.

Friendship=X

We all grew up learning “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” There are a lot of people who will be with you when you are happy, or celebrating; but the real friends are those who you can count on in the darkest hours. Someone who will be there with you when you are sad and lonely, when nothing in the world is going right, when you are sick, when you are caught in an emergency, or even if there is a sudden rodent attack in your house. These same people are also the ones who would smile with you in your happy times, make you feel special on your birthday, celebrate when you get a raise, or just ‘do nothing’ with you on a lazy Sunday. This is my idea of friendship, and books, newspapers, the television, movies, people around, everyone seem to agree with it, at least in principle.

But when we come to the practical world, how many of us know even one person who lives up to the definition of a friend? It is true that idealism doesn’t have a place in the real world, and like there is no ideal person, there can be no ideal friend? Given all that, is it still so difficult to be 20% of the ideal?

There are so many different types of friends these days.
1)Lets Meet Up friends: There are friends who you just go out with—to parties, to movies, and just to hang out . They guarantee a great fun time, but never ever ever try to get serious or sentimental/emotional with them. They only want to see the happy-smiley side of you.
2)Hi-Hello friends: There are the “hi-hello” friends, who you just keep face with as you might bump into them in a common friend’s party. Conversations rarely ever get beyond “Whats up?” or “How are you?”
3)Frenemies: There are friends who are really enemies disguised as friends. I read a newspaper article which terms them “frenemies”. These frenemies will be absolutely sweet to you, will show you that they care, but in truth, all they are doing is ruining some part of your life behind your back. The “stabbed-in-the-back” feeling is most associated with them.
4)FBs: These days you also have fuck buddies. These are people with whom you have a “no strings attached”, purely physical relationship. I feel horrible even saying the term. What can be more derogatory than treating someone like an object and then calling him/her a “buddy”?
5)2 am friends: These are people whom you probably know for a long long time, but don’t meet often. Yet, when at odd hours when you can’t sleep and need to talk to someone, you can always give them a call, without any fear of rebuke.
6)IM friends: These are people with whom you have an excellent conversation over Instant Messaging/internet chat, but whenever there is a face-to-face meeting, the conversation runs dry. Infact, you do not even want to meet them in person. They are very good to pass away that idle evening when you have no plans to go out anywhere.
7)Facebook friends: This is the funniest. People who have never met you and probably don’t even know your last name, can be added to your “friends” list. A list which runs longer than your annual grocery bill maybe. The more names you have in your list, the more popular you are supposed to be. One of my friends has 514, and still keeps saying he is very lonely. Hard to imagine why!!
8)Chuddy buddies: They are your childhood friends. People you grew up with, your first best friend from nursery who managed to keep in touch with you. Even when you meet them after ages, you can strike up a conversation as if you had just met yesterday. That’s the special quality of chuddy buddies; and they’ll always wish you well. Rare and lucky are those who have such friends.
9)Best friend: I am still trying to figure out who a “best friend” is. When we were kids, it was so easy to define. The kid who sat next to you in class, with whom you shared your tiffin, and probably went back home in the same bus. The one for whom you would make a birthday card, and save your special chocolates for. But now, with our lives so complex, how do we know who is a best friend? Is he the person who’ll be with you all your life? Is he going to be super-critical of your wrongdoings, yet provide a shoulder to lean on when you cry? What is the ONE quality that would separate him from everyone else and make him special—“best”? I still don’t know…

I have long given up my search for a true friend. Like most of my other pursuits in life, this also seemed to be really idealistic and hence futile. We do have to live with all these kinds of friends, whether we like it or not. Everything changes, and so does people in our lives…they also come and go. So there’s no point fretting over who will last and who won’t. Its good enough to have a friend who’ll drop you to the airport at 4 am; or someone who’ll just loan you 50K in a blink so that you can buy something you really wanted; or someone who’ll write funny emails to you just to brighten up your day; or someone who’ll agree to spend a whole day in a govt. office to get your work done. Its better to see the silver lining. Friendship is that special ‘x’ factor that makes your life at least tolerable. I am lucky enough.

Love—In Memoriam

February is here. The month I was born, the month of love and romance. No wonder I am a hopeless romantic. Blame February.

Our generation is fixated with love. As one of my friends had said, we were a generation who grew up watching these sappy romantic love stories, and I couldn’t agree with her more. We somehow got this ingrained into our belief system, that “someone, somewhere, was made for everyone” and one day we shall find that someone, in spite of all the adversities, and we’ll live happily ever after. I will be officially old in a fortnight, and I still haven’t found that someone. I doubt I ever will.

The first guy who had the balls to declare his love for me did not really get the answer he had hoped for. We were in high school then. These so-called “proposals” were a big thing back in those days. Amidst a lot of fanfare and evident preparation the guy said those three magic words to me, “I love you”. A normal fourteen year old girl would’ve swooned, or been ecstatic, or nervous, or would’ve at least had a blushing smile on her face. But my reaction to this innocent declaration of love was, “Dude, do you even know what love means?” The poor guy was so flabbergasted he didn’t know what to say and promptly fled the scene.

Although my friends still laugh, when we look back at that day, I sometimes wonder, was I right in saying those things to him? Did I know then what love meant? Do I know even today, what love is? Maybe that day, that guy cursed me so bad, that I am still figuring out this crappy mess called ‘love’, with no luck, I might add.

I have never freely used the word ‘love’, in the verb form at least; when I can make do with so many other words like ‘like’, ‘admire’, ‘respect’, ‘emotional connect’ etcetera. It feels as if love, the word, was like a beautiful dress gifted to me. It was so beautiful and precious to me that I nicely wrapped it up and stored it in the upper-most shelf of my cupboard, which I rarely look into. And its been lying there for years. Now, when I finally took it out to wear it, its all ragged and moth-eaten. I ruined it. Did I reserve it for so long, that now I might never get to use it again?

I used to be a silly little girl who used to believe in fairy tales. I waited for my Prince Charming and he never came. I think I waited too long. The fairy tale, even if it was only in my mind, is over. Life is not a Cinderella story. It is time to come down from the towered palace and face the practicalities.

I may not be able to define love, but I know it exists, even if in short supply. Love is like a precious metal or a limited resource. So all those who have it or think they have it, please do not squander it away.

As for me, I would say, forget love, I’d rather fall in chocolate.

Happy Valentines’ Month, everyone.

Being Davy Jones

A light-snot-green coloured face full of tentacles, neither living nor dead, cursed to exist forever—that is the devil of the sea, Davy Jones. Those of you who have seen the movie, The Pirates of the Caribbean, would know what I am talking about. But the question is why am I talking about it? What is the relevance of a mythical character from another time, in our world today?

Well, there is. You see, whether it was “Long, long ago”, the Victorian times, or the Stone Age, there was and there always will be the human emotion which people call love. Every fairy-tale that we have read, every story of crime, every war, every epic has the central theme as love. The love could be for various things—material or otherwise; but more often than not, it’s the romantic kind. And that kind is the most dangerous. Davy Jones, like a lot of us, learnt the same. But while lesser mortals like us tried to get over it (only to fall again in its trap later), Davy Jones came up with the most brilliant idea. He cut out his heart, placed the still beating heart in an iron chest, locked it up. And put it in a place far far away, where he could never reach. Now that’s a plan.

I think this is the best way to survive in this world. I am sure all of us, at some point, have been hurt, betrayed, and left alone. If you don’t have a heart, you will never be heart-broken. You needn’t kill yourself. You just need to kill the cause of all sorrows—your heart. Take it out and keep it away from yourself.

(Warning: You are not in a fable, so don’t try to carve out your heart with a knife; you need to do it metaphorically.) Lock your heart away in a heavy iron chest so that even you cannot hear it beating. Forget that there exists something in the world called love or warmth, friendship, care (all are manifestations of the same evil). You need to be cold and unfeeling. Achieve heartlessness. Neither living, nor dead. No wants or desires, no hopes or dreams, no wishes and no fears. That is how you should exist in this world. Because that is the only way you can survive. Just like the immortal Davy Jones.

Constant Change

Change is the only constant in life. Agreed. And more often than not, it is good too. Otherwise life would become too boring and monotonous. But what about constant change? Is that good too?

What if your entire life, you have been moving from place to place, never truly understanding the meaning of the word “hometown” or even “home”, for that matter? What if every 2-3 years, you had to move to a new city, a new home, got to a new school, make new friends, only to move to some other place and do it all over again?

You know how we have this habit of asking a new person we are getting introduced to, “Where are you from?” or “Which place do you belong to?”. I never really knew what to answer when faced with this question. Do I name the place from where I have recently moved? But I was only there for two years. Do I name the place where I have stayed for the longest duration? But that was a long time ago. Then, do I name the place where I was born? All these questions are triggered by that ONE question “Where are you from?”

Movement is good. You get to see different places. You are introduced to different societies, different cultures. And in this new barrier-less world, that’s a huge plus. It helps you get acclimatized very easily and also gives you a more cosmopolitan outlook. It also helps you become more social. Lets face it…a human being CANNOT live alone. He wasn’t meant to; so even if you don’t want, sooner or later you’ll have to talk to people (people you might not even like, to start with)for some query or assistance. This is especially the case when you move to a new city. And this single act of reaching out to people makes you more social.

The flip side—you are not attached to your roots. Hell, what roots? You don’t even know where you belong. Does that affect your sense of identity? You don’t get to have childhood buddies or life-long friends, simply because you did not get to grow up with them. You moved and they didn’t. You may make friends everywhere, but to truly nurture a friendship, or any bond, you need time. Long distance relationships can at most be maintained, not built. So, you leave behind unfinished associations, which given time could have developed into something more meaningful. You end up having lots of friends, but not a single “best friend”.

So, coming back to the original question—is it good? I guess the real question here is: Change is good, but how often and for how long?

Music--food for the soul

After all the introductions, I thought it was high time I actually wrote about something. Enough of this vagueness and nothingness. I kept thinking what should I start with? Generally, its very easy for me to write if I feel very strongly about any particular subject—be it the state of “customer service” in our country, or the so-called democracy, or people in their various masks. And then it hit me, all these are things I dislike. Why is it that we always express our negative feelings more vociferously than the good ones? Well, I won’t want to do that, at least not today. So, customer service can wait. Today I want to write about what makes me happy.

So, what does make me happy? Cozy nights under a warm blanket with a hot cup of coffee; watching the rains from my balcony on cold grey mornings; going on a long drive under clear blue skies—and someone to share all this with. Music. Someone rightly said, “Music gives soul to the universe
Wings to the mind
Flight to the imagination
And life to everything”.

There’s a tune for every occasion, for every feeling, for every mood. Some of the most beautiful songs are the ones which everyone can relate to. I bet all of us have felt at some point or another, “Oh my god! This song was meant for me”. Or “this is exactly how I feel today”.

Nothing better to put me in an upbeat mood than Cliff Richards on a Sunday morning—Bachelor Boy, Dancing Shoes, Summer Holiday, and it goes on. For those long lonely afternoons, there’s Eddie Vedder with Guaranteed, Society or Hard Sun. If you are in love, there are a countless songs you feel like listening to. Same is the story for the heart-broken souls. Music can give you joy, sometimes move you to tears, motivate you and tell you not to give up, make you dance and even make you sleep. Can you think of any other single thing in this world that can do so much for you?

My favourite group, The Beatles—you can always go to them for anything you need, they have a song for every feeling you can imagine. From the romantic Baby Its You, to the dreamy Strawberry Fields, from the sad Yesterday to the chirpy Octupus’s Garden, from the first feelings of love in If I Fell or I’ve Just Seen a Face to the heart-broken While My Guitar Gently Weeps—the list is endless. I can go on about them, maybe I should write a separate post for them.

Generations have been built on music. Revolutions have raged throughout the world based on music. Can anyone forget the Hippies with their slogan of flower power—love, peace, music? Bob Dylan’s songs became the anthems for civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s’ USA. Reggae artist Eddy Grant’s Gimme Hope Jo’anna became the most popular theme for anti-apartheid all over the world. Have we ever thought why we have a national anthem or song? Why not have a national poem, instead? Why is it that we sing “Happy Birthday”, and also have ‘bhajans’ or ‘keertans’ when someone dies?

Then there are memories. You always tend to associate a song with someone or some period or a specific day in your life. Whenever I listen to Cliff or Elvis, it always takes me back to my sunny childhood days when Sundays meant watching TV, no studying, Mom running behind us to go take a bath, and having something special for breakfast and lunch. Ghulam Ali, Jagjit Singh and Kishore Kumar remind me of Dad, every single time I hear them. The first song I learnt to perform was Raindrops on Roses from Sound of Music. Then there are the Bollywood songs which me and my sister were crazy about during our teen-years. Even though we are miles away now, we can still have an hour long chat over the phone interspersed with songs from those days. I still remember the song which my first crush had sung for me. And all the songs which ‘that someone special’ had dedicated to me, at different points in life.

Sometimes I wonder, will a road trip be as enjoyable if you don’t have a Country Roads or Life is a Highway, playing in the background? Won’t those lonely nights be sadder if you didn’t have Frank Sinatra croon to you? Imagine how boring housework will be if there’s no happy beat in the background. Or what about a romantic evening without music—wouldn’t it feel as if something’s missing?

I wake up every morning to music, a song plays on in my head all day, and the last thing I do before I sleep at night is….you guessed it right…music again. I have a theme song which talks about my deepest beliefs, and I have a ‘me’ song which describes me accurately. Am I mad about music? Or are there millions and millions of people in the world who do the same? My guess would be the latter. Are you one of them?

Much to write about nothing

George Eliot once said, “Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving worthy evidence of the fact.” Well…I don’t quite agree.

So here I am, having absolutely no clue what I am going to write about, but giving it a shot anyway. Boredom is the mother of all invention…that’s what I always say. What do you do when you have nothing to do? Have you ever thought about that? Neither did I…until now.

When you have too many things going on in your head, your best friend is the pen (or the keyboard, as is in my case). Just keep writing; who knows what will come out—a solution to your biggest problem, dark secrets about yourself even you did not know, your deepest feelings and desires or maybe a creation fit for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

So, here goes nothing….