Government-sponsored Debauchery.

Ya, ya. I know there are roads and mohallas and cute lil dead-ends in your city glorifying washermen and cobblers and goldsmiths and silversmiths. But in my city, you have -

Text loosely translated as - "The street of the dude with the beer".

Next to Beerkaran Street No.1, we have -

Text loosely translated as - "The SECOND street of the dude with the beer."

So I am trying to say this in a sophisticated, indirect and non-confrontational manner:

Beat THAT, suckers. :D :

My Friends are Retarded.

No wonder I like them so much. Also, they sometimes buy me lunch. And say the following:

"I hate the idea of male gynaecologists. The very idea that I am showing off everything I have to a man and he is STILL not going to fall madly in love with me, is too depressing. I want a female gynaecologist."

"Divya, talk to me. Don't be silent but violent."

"Same sex couples confuse me. As an engineering student you learn several things... here is a nut...and there is a bolt... and you can't do jack with two nuts or two bolts."

"Divya you have a blog?" (yes) "Am I in it?" (no) "Why the hell not?!"

"Pakistanis are just Indians with bad judgment and hot sisters."

"You study in Jodhpur! Awesome, I love Gujarati food."

"Divya's like Gujarat in peace time. No alcohol and constant yammering."

"Let's get married and have lots of babies. I'll even have some of mine with you."

----

Good times, good times.

I don't want to go back to college. :(

If only I could work a Milk Cooker.

I hate my shoes.

Thisis the primary aftertaste of my internship days. I was curious to see what it would be after the first week of interning, and this is it. I hate my shoes with a degree of loathing I normally reserve for overweight Iyers with control issues and South East Asian tastes (I wonder if I have been vague enough), Vodafone and jackfruit. 

These shoes are, quite objectively speaking, a fantasyland of ugliness.  The salesman told me it 

was bought by office-going women, which is unarguably an accurate description of the kind of shoe I was looking for. But these shoes, please note, are black pleather with metallic rivets in straight lines. Observe:

No? Not disgusted quite yet? Observe again:

Grim , what? They aspire to be worn, presumably, by the Tamil housewife who goes to work in Andhra Bank from 8 to 5 and secretly aspires to Vengeful Gothdom. (However said Vengeful Goth activities must cease by 4.30am, because then it is time to put on the milk cooker.) 

That reminds me of the time I expressed my desire to know the ideology of Goths, to a Goth. She told me "We do not support society and we protest." Protest what, I said. ""We protest society" she said. Yes, but which bit, I said. "We just protest" she said, and left. I am very sure that she is wrong. I opened the Wikipedia page on Goth subculture and Ctrl+F 'd "protest". No result. 

I took a day off from work. I feel delightful and slightly dangerous. This could be because of one of two reasons - 

1. I am reading Chuck Palahniuk, which always arouses in me feelings of deliciousness subversiveness, or

2. I successfully faked a (resounding and rather impressive, if I may say so myself) hacking cough on the why-I'm-absent phone call to the office today,  and immediately afterward gave my reason of absence as a back-ache. (Sing with me... What the Fuck?! I know. I spend a large quotient of my time wondering why I do the things I do in the remaining part of my time.)

I got a tee shirt with a lovely print on it, for my birthday. However the neckline of the tee shirt is humongous and strangely amoeboid, and therefore I am flummoxed as to the correct way to wear said tee shirt.  If I wear it so that I am modestly covered in front, A good third of my back is aired. If I protect the modesty of my back, there remains much nakedness to be addressed in front . My mother is of the opinion that I should let her take a sewing machine to the tee shirt. I am tempted to let her. 

And to everyone who this concerns - they know who they are - I am not buying skinny jeans. I tried them on. Without exception, they cling annoyingly to my leg instead of flopping around comfortably and shapelessly. Absolutely unacceptable, what.

Ta.

--

Edit: I bought the shoes for 140 rupees from a hole in the wall near where I work, because I'd gone to work with my bathroom slippers on and the partner of my firm is anal about formal dress code. I insert this back-story because, after she saw the travesty that are my shoes, a friend said I should include the reason I would possibly buy them. I agree. My shoes scared her dog. Her dog is an abominably large and scary German Shepherd.

Hmm.

Suddenly I like these shoes.

Fueled by Frustration.

The same circle of faintly pretentious faintly good blogs, the same breakfasts, the same wet, salty, heavy air, the same face in the mirror. (Not same, exactly, though. I believe I see the precursor of a zit on my forehead. Definitely absent yesterday.)

I tried to drive it away with books, so many books, and I ate them all with the desperate sort of grabbing hunger that you see in middle class people for upperclass-hood and therefore for plasticsheet-protected sofas and dustjacket-bound English books that nobody reads. I met people and drank oversweet tepid coffee and warm masala pepsi  and took buses home that surprisingly went nowhere close to home and walked beach promenades and lost a slipper to the Bay of Bengal and made a sand angel halfway to Pondicherry (if you see it, it's the one wearing a tipsy crown) and ate furiously off roadsides, which were all good enough experiences in themselves I guess, but now I'm out of things to do (bad) and out of people to meet (good) and the very sight of books is annoying me, which only annoys me further, and that halfheartedly albino man who was in Johnny Gaddaar is singing incessantly on the bloody TV and my idiot sister is singing with him and one of these days there is going to be a hole in the TV screen the shape of my sister's head.

Jagdish Bhagwati should be compulsory reading at undergrad level at least... the whole concept of a pointwise defence of globalisation is very appealing. There are some issues with what I believe are patches of unwarranted optimism, but it's a very nicely laid out argument overall. Order and method, order and method. 

Which reminds me... how hot is Bips? Really. Phew. (Observe how I say 'Bips' like I've been living next door to her and lending her one cup dahi everyday all my life.)

Also on hot-list was Obama, though his sex appeal quotient fell rapidly from greek-god to snotface-perv when the US tripled aid to Pakistan. What the feckin fish, what? Sorry Obama-man. You're going to have to settle for Michelle. Who is not a bad bargain actually, except that she:

1. Doesn't have my sparkling personality, and

2. Has too many double-toned fluorescent dresses. 

Point two should be sufficient to draw sharp and flattering (to self) contrast to self.

If I have to face one more morning with nothing to look forward to but breakfast, and then nothing to anticipate but lunch, I will murder a cat for the sheer activity of it. I swear I will. 

If you live in a different city, invite me home. Now. 

Keeping Up with the Cojones-es.

They say when your life is in imminent danger, it flashes before your eyes. I only swallowed much muddy Sutlej and energetically kicked a rock. I have the beautifully purpling bruises to show for it. My life did not flash before my eyes, unfortunately. If I had only remembered at the time that this was supposed to happen, I would have concentrated more on it. The idea is definitely interesting... I would finally find out if that boy I lusted after in class eight was indeed more important to me than my winning the math proficiency prize that term.

I have sometimes been called a nerd. I don't mind... always been attracted to nerds anyway.

What is almost as interesting as the rafting itself is to watch the other Gujarati family in the raft fiercely compete with your own in rafting prowess. Who gets to sit up in front, right in the Mouth of Danger? Jethalal or dad? Who can make more ineffectual-splashes-per-minute with an oar? Savitaben or mom? Family-group expeditions are always such wholesome, family-friendly episodes of do you have the Cojones, losers? So very Yum, no? :)

If you're Gujarati, these are all pseudonyms. What? What was that? Yes, I rather do enjoy regionalist-stereotyping actually. 

Now that I have river-rafted, I only have paragliding, bungee jumping, rock climbing and doing several, mostly illegal things to Gael Garcia Bernaz, left on my bucket list. To all of you sceptics: I am perfectly aware of the possibility that some of these ambitions may not reach fruition. I have doubts about my capabilities as a rock climber. See? I am firmly in touch with reality.

I watched craploads of television on that darling big tv in that lovely big chain-hotel in Shimla. It has been five months since I last watched TV. Why, you idiots, did none of you tell me about Coupling? What a very excellent show... in my more spazzed out moments, I simply watch it to hear them say 'bottoms' in that BBC accent.  Is it only me, or does the word 'bottoms' immediately bring to mind my (or generic, really) great-aunt's admittedly respectable but sadly unexciting posterior? It just cannot describe a young and pretty bum, can it.

The multiplex strike confused me. Then I read Filmfare on the Kalka-Shimla narrow gauge, and everything was immediately Light. Now I am only annoyed at the multiplex strike. I am growing very suspicious at the Tamil film industry. The same songs that were playing on the radio when I left for college two years ago, are still being played. Everyone I confront regarding this abomination gets all shifty eyed and mumbles something about a multiplex strike. I have decided to frequent that antiquity, the single-screen theatre, to check whether tamil films are still being made. I very much Doubt It. I am a Doubting Divya. I am a Deadly Dastardly Doubting Divya. 

I bought four very decent and very large gravy-stuffed bun thingies and one disgusting but large chocolate pastry for sixty rupees from a posh baker on Shimla's Mall Road. If that's what posh costs in Shimla, I will grow two more chins and grey stubbly chin-hair and live like an Angrezi Mem in one of those delicious cake-like cottages. I would also wear brown tweeds, but they are remarkably unsexy. I am not talking about the New Styles in tweeds. An Angrezi Mem would not wear pink silk bustiers with tweed miniskirts. That's Just Not Cricket, luv.

One more year of law school down; I am no closer to knowing what I want to do at the end of it. Sometimes I shrug and think I may as well become a lawyer. That would be such an anticlimax though, no?

Ah well.

PS: I now have six followers. Such cheap thrills I am having I tell you. 

Light reading this Summer.

I have no patience with people who want to kill themselves, and even less patience with people who talk extensively and lyrically about wanting to kill themselves, yet, poor unfortunates, never really manage to get it right. Try, try until you succeed, like my mother said, but as with all courses of study, half the battle is arming yourself with the correct textbook.

The author is one Mister Geo Stone, and the book, 'Suicide and Attempted Suicide'. This delightfully organised work begins with a 'Background' and proceeds to 'Methods' where it systematicaly summarises common methods used to kill oneself and proceeds to evaluate them on a pros versus cons basis. The major arteries are detailed, along with the bones they lie alongside, for easy identification. The angle of slashing is explained. If you're still in practice, he helpfully suggests locations to cut that will result in least social attention. And if you'd rather slash-and-tell, more prominent places as well.

The book is full of these gems:

"..You may prefer to use an ankle vein in order to avoid wrist scars, and subsequent tedious cocktail-party conversation."

"As methods of suicide, cutting and stabbing have little to recommend them: compared to lower-trauma asphyxias (see "Hanging" and "Asphyxia" chapters) they are, generally, more painful, and no faster or more reliable. Their major advantage is that (depending on site and method) you may, after the injury, have some time to change your mind."

Apart from the excellent and commendably detailed instructions, also very entertaining glossary section (H: Hanging (suicide, attempt to; see also Method (impractical), Method (slow), Method (unsuccessful) ), I find it supremely refreshing that there is no moralising.

A short and precisely worded Background chapter makes a classification of the persons who are likely to attempt suicide and some speculation as to their reasons. There is no Bible thumping, none of the usually inevitable and wholly tedious Right to Die argument, no sympathy, no justification. Just no emotion at all.

I loved it.

Dude the Obscure.

The urge to cut and run just when things have cautiously indicated that they are going to go well, is an urge that is tiringly familiar. It's annoying, but it's there. Like a puppy that insists on following you everywhere and humps your leg when you stop moving.

I'm not an animal lover. Kittens frighten me. Puppies, of course, hump my leg.

Anyway.


I've spent most of my life being invisible, being a part of the walls; beginning to blog was the decision to walk out of them and put myself 'out there' in some limited and (limitedly) controlled manner, to make a change. But this has become less about the posting and more about the reactions. It has become less new, less sexy, less fun. I'm bored.

I'm going back into happy obscurity.

Until I'm back - if you've any good taste, you'll miss me. ;) For everyone else, there's always the one-fingered salute.

Love y'all. Some more than others. Most, not really.

Ta.