ALMOST 21 AND A CAREER OPTION DOWN THE DRAIN

Putting up another post so soon is so out of character for me but I really had no choice, I had to write this. If you  have read the previous one then by end of this one you will totally understand the sentiment.

I am back from a surprise pre-21st birthday party my friends gave me at 'Candies', Bandra. I have just taken out all my gifts and gushed over them in front of everyone at home and the stupid, happy smile that I can feel on my face must be wide enough to give the Cheshire cat and inferiority complex, I am purely, blissfully happy.

I should actually be a little sad because today I realised that one of my childhood ambitions is totally out of the window. I maybe somewhat of a local authority on detective fiction and flicks, but a sleuth I am not. I am not only absent minded but also practically dumb at deciphering little clues. It is no wonder that when B crept up behind me and closed my eyes, my brain told the little voice in my heart to shut-up and be reasonable, "How can B be here?"

Instead it doesn't matter. Ok, I am not James Bond or Sherlock Holmes or Dalgliesh or even one of the Famous Five but I am so much more. I am ME. The one whose friends planned a surprise for her 20 days before the exams, whose friends remembered  that what she loves more than books is buying them whimsically, whose friends were (or pretended to be) not embarrassed when she did Hawaian dance in the middle of a restaurant and who only remembers hearing someone scream "Take a pic, Take a pic" while she stared open mouthed at a voucher for Landmark.

International spies may have a lot of cool gadgets but they they won't have friends like Ariel who get lost trying to reach the party venue and still come. Definitely not memories of telling Nemo that she needs a wildlife photographer to take a flattering snap of a jittery one like her. No one makes them humongous cards telling them 21 reasons for loving them and tries to make it smell like lavender even if all they get get for their trouble be "I smell only glue."

So I say "Mr. detective, up yours!!"

MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS

I am mad at you by the way. Really, really mad. You missed my 18^th birthday, and the 19^th and the 20^th. I don’t suppose you could do much about the 21^st? Seems trivial doesn’t it, to think that I used to get mad if you were not home by 7 on my birthdays.

This would have been the time around which I would have started dropping you hints that you ought to get me something for my birthday, no demands, but it would be very nice if you did. I was surprisingly non whiny for a teenager, wasn’t I? Well what was I supposed to do? Someone had to be firm and responsible. You are not supposed to give young girls everything they ask for, someone needed to make sure that I didn’t turn into a greedy and bratty person. Left to your discretion I would have been totally undone.

Still, there is only so much I could do. Maybe I did get a little spoilt because I miss… it. Do you remember that time when you came back really late, maybe 9 or something, and dinner was very boring and I had not eaten? I told you I wanted to eat wedding food…huh. How we went through all the invitations to find one for that night, and failing at that, how we just drove around town to find a wedding party we could gate-crash. Now I think that you were not really planning to gate-crash, you just wanted to make me hungry enough so that I would settle for a pizza at ‘Hot Stuff’, but I guess I will never know, after all we never really found that wedding party, did we ?

Oh and the red pants? The one and the only time I did my diwali clothes shopping with you and we went to that new shop. You just went along with all my choices and let me buy those funny red trousers. You-know-who would have fought tooth and nail against them. Maybe they didn’t appear so horrible to you too, but if they did, you really should have given some constructive criticism.
I loved them. Love them. They just don’t fit me anymore.

It is possible to take indulgence to the level of stupidity you know. There are better ways of apologizing for leaving work late and making me wait than letting me drive the car. Okay, so what if I was a good driver, it was still very irresponsible, especially since you couldn’t have done anything about it if I had lost control.

I have a piece of good advice for you, I have learnt it firsthand.  It is not good to have only one person at the center of your life. It is certainly not healthy. You should not love a lot, just a little bit, just enough, but not a lot. Never. But if you are stupid enough to do it then you should not love just one person. There should be a number of people who know you who you can love with the same fervor. For there is nothing emptier than the space left by that one person. How can you claim that this is who you are, if you do not have corroboration from that one person who did know you? You are not sure enough yourself to make such a claim. I don’t just preach, I am trying it myself, but it is easier said than done. Instead, I settle for keeping that space filled with rubbish and stuff. It beats being perforated, beats it everyday of the week and twice on Sundays. But if you don’t even remember the old stuff, this new stuff doesn’t even have a prayer.

I don’t suppose you remember that poem I told you that night in the car when you were extremely late, as usual? Maybe you do, you always had a head for poetry. I still don’t have all the words down, just like I didn’t know that day, but I do know the part that was essential to my brilliant argument about you being 

worse than birds.

"...Bachche abhilasha mein honge

    Nido se jhank rahe honge

              Yeh soch thaka din ka panchi

              Bhi jaldi jaldi udta hai.

              Din jaldi jaldi dhalta hai..."


Yes, I am sure you don’t remember anything. Or I hope you don’t , because it doesn’t work like that anymore…the day does not fly away that quickly…not now.

ON CRYSTAL BALLS AND PSYCHICS

If someone asked me the best part about the ‘future’, with my usual indecision I would be able to come up with a list of pros and cons and be stumped when it comes to picking one of them. That is until yesterday. Today, I know my answer. The best part is that it is the future, you don’t know anything about it and neither have to deal with it until it comes.

The scamming industry (or the mystic art if you prefer) of gypsies and psychics thrives on the hordes of people swamped in apprehension. The poor shmucks who are and have been sad are scared that the future will disappoint them similarly and the lucky and content are scared of their luck running out in the future. Desperate, desolate, nervous they all turn to tea-leaves, talons and crystal balls to relieve that squirmy feeling in the pit of their stomachs which seems to incite every other muscle in their bodies into erratic inexplicable movement.

I am not blessed with some Abhimanyu like pre natal experience which would make me the master of such pearls of wisdom. It is the crazy process of taking life-changing entrance examinations that has lead me to wrestle this information out of one-on-one combat with mind numbing uncertainty of results.

If I had not been at the end of my wits waiting for the 12^th of January to just magically arrive and my results, I probably would not have fallen for getting my ‘aura’ read by my psychic friend (we will just call her Mystique. I am an X-men fan obviously). One more month and I would have escaped college a Mystique virgin, but it was not to be. I had resisted the temptation for the better part of my three years of college despite testimonials of her talent from all my other friends, but sitting only a table apart from her I broke down.

I think now I know how a pendulum feels. I too have been swinging between utter dejection at gloomy visions of my cheerless future and carefully faked nonchalance at the idea. In one such attempt at bravado I said it. “Tell me”.

The butterflies then had a field day in my stomach when Mystique told me to take off my glasses. She asked me the maximum marks and then with a smile as indecipherable as the ever-present twinkle in her eyes she said, “maybe 55 to 60 percentile”. I am sure some of those butterflies died when my heart plummeted into my stomach. Though every fiber of my very tiny rational self screamed that this couldn’t be true, my flustered deprecatory laugh was not effortless.

In all fairness, maybe this proclamation was nothing more than her failure to translate the colour codes of my aura into the ineffable percentile system (she never claimed to be good at math), but I had learnt my lesson. Before she could adjust her estimate or worse make more precise (and potentially damaging) predictions about calls from colleges, I begged “No more. Please do not say anything. Don’t tell me.” And judging by the effect her predictions had on my ever happy and imperturbable friend sitting beside me, it was the wisest thing I ever did.

I had tasted blood though and like moth to flame I was drawn back to the topic. This time I told her to give me the general works, but on no condition was she to utter the word ‘college’. Only after listening to her general deductions about me could I really appreciate the close shave I had had with potentially devastating news 5 days earlier than absolutely necessary.

The conclusion of this cardiac rollercoaster: “Don’t tell me” are the smartest three words I ever said. Beware of Mystique.

FRESH START

I have decided (yes, once again) that I will be happy. After all isn't it one of my bedrock beliefs that I possess a manual override button for my own happiness? Still the failure of all my past such resolutions defies explanation.


Anyways, despite the bad track record this one seems to be working fine (without any particular reason). May be this is just a good year. given that I have an average life span it is a statistical impossibility that I wouldn't come across one of those. Touchwood. No need to jinx it now.


If I really had to give an explanation then, maybe I grew up a little more and got better at the smart course of action : being childlike. Call me an escapist if you will but if not thinking about stuff, being naive and unconditionally forgiving allows me to be happy then is it not the best? Okay, so it does let other people get away with a lot with no effort what-so-ever but I could just file it as (in my eco lingo) an externality and fuh-get about it. One might argue that it is not a new theory and it is unfair to give it the credit for this newfound success. Well, dear Mr. devil's advocate, you are missing the point. Sure, the theory is the same , but I just got better at execution (maybe. It is still too early to be cocky.)


Here's to a fresh start.