The Perfect Drug

I have decided today to talk about my drinking patterns.

DISCLAIMER: I am a social drinker and not someone in need of an AA course, so save your sympathies for where they are actually required.

So me and a few friends experimented a little with alcohol when we were in college, but we were social retards considering the knowledge and expertise of the college-going population today and for that matter quite a few of my fellow collegians. So in college it essentially started in my 3rd year with a 60 ml (me thinks) bottle of white mischief which was shared between at least four to five people with tonnes of sprite. The first time I seriously got drunk (at least I thought so) was on I think 2 sips of the above mentioned drink on my birthday and I kept on crying after that. However I had to bunk the night at a relative's place, so when a friend echoed the concern I immediately became un-drunk. I am pretty sure I imagined getting drunk. The next time was a day before my college placements where I SERIOUSLY got drunk and came back to the hostel with a blasting headache and severe scolding from one of my best friends. On the day of the interview, the hangover had disappeared, but it didn't take away with it the fact that I had not prepared one BIT for the interview. Praise be the Lord, I was the last one to be interviewed and the interviewers were pretty bored and tired, so they didn't torture me all that much, and lo-behold, I got through and landed a job!! Finally I landed in Bombay, and gave my body and soul to everything that was alcohol. C'mon I had abstained for long enough and now I had the job and everything and best was I had the bloody money to buy whichever kind I wanted. So I started with Rum, which I dint like one bit. Then for a while it was Tequila Shots. But I was in no mood to be labelled a skank, so I switched to pretending to like Vodka. But Vodka made me do bad things, BAD THINGS. So I decided it was time to leave the wild ways behind and turned over to demurely sipping wine. Wine, I stuck to for a long long time. I think 2 years almost. But I was bored of it and hated the fact that bottoms-up with wine was not the COOL thing to do. So I searched and wandered waiting for the perfect thing to come my way. Then it happened. I was reading the reviews for the recently re-opened ESCOBAR in Bandra and I chanced upon someone saying that they had the best Whiskey Sours. So I went there with the girlfriends one Saturday evening and ordered one Whiskey Sour....and that was it. I haven't looked back ever since. I actually found something with alcohol, that was yummy and tasty. I had something that I could drink just for the taste of it and not for the purpose of getting high. But it is not a very very common cocktail like a Bloody Mary or an LIT, so because and ONLY BECAUSE, at a few places my beloved cocktail is unavailable, I have developed a casual affair with the Cosmopolitan. Of course the Whiskey Sour and I have a passionate and committed relationship, and it does not mind my occasional rendezvous with the Cosmopolitan. So thats my history.

Statutory Warning: Consumption of alcohol can be injurious to your health.

Happiness is a Warm Blanket

So here I am. Living as a "housewife" in an absolutely new city. "Absolutely" here refers to the absolutely absolute. I literally had no friends (okay, okay, perhaps one) when I moved here and I had not given this whole shift a moment's thought, till I landed here, when I went "O'Oh".

Your old city is always like a warm blanket, cozy with the familiarity of friends, places, food, activities. So even though you may feel an odd chill or two, with the old city you are always wrapped in a soft warm blanket feeling all balmy and lovely. Then a day comes when you intentionally trash the blanket and try to be adventurous and decide to sleep somewhere cold with nothing but a few threadbare sheets. The result, dear reader, is hypothermia!

So you get it right, my symbolism? Hypothermia being homesickness?

Err...the point of this post was to familiarize you all with my state for the first couple of weeks after moving here, I was MISERABLE. But CC has been very nice to me, even when I lost it completely, he most often than not, let me rave around and feel really sad.

But then I started meeting new people and realized Hey! I am in this new place, meeting new people, doing new things (food remains a sore point though), so I better start treating this as the adventure it was supposed to be.

So yea, I will be fine and you needn't worry (if were not worried after reading this post, you just have a stone cold heart! ).

That's all for now and I sincerely hope that I will be writing much more than the current sorry state of affairs.

TTD

Taking cue from a fellow blogger’s post (and due to lack of anything better to write about), here’s a list of the things that I can tick off the "150 THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU TURN 30" list:

03. Climbed a mountain

08. Said “I love you” and meant it

10. Bungee jumped (does reverse bungee jumping count?)

13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise

23. Gotten drunk on champagne

36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking

38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment

41. Taken care of someone who was drunk

42. Had amazing friends

43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country

47. Taken a road-trip

48. Gone rock climbing

49. Taken a midnight walk on the beach

58. Sung karaoke

59. Lounged around in bed all day

62. Kissed in the rain

63. Played in the mud

64. Played in the rain

65. Gone to a drive-in theatre (open air theater with picnic basket and rugs, without any cars…counts?)

68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken

69. Toured ancient sites

70. Taken a martial arts class

72. Gotten married

74. Crashed a party

80. Gotten a tattoo

83. Gotten flowers for no reason

84. Performed on stage

86. Recorded music (songs in my own voice)

88. Kissed on the first date

89. Gone to Thailand

94. Spoken more than one language fluently

98. Passed out cold

100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over (will be doing that soon)

102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking with the windows open

110. Broken someone’s heart

115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears

118. Ridden a horse (juhu beach rides count?)

122. Slept for 30 hours in a 48 hour period

127. Eaten sushi (and major yukkk!!)

128. Had your picture in the newspaper

132. Touched a cockroach

146. Dyed your hair

147. Been a DJ (at house parties…yeah sure!)

148. Shaved your head

One hundred and six (106) tasks to finish in 2.5 years….what a laugh!

Kutte main tera khoon pee jaoonga!

Often, while watching a hindi television serial, I find myself wondering “puhleese! Who talks like that in real life”. Then I have to remind my self that its only a serial and obviously no one talks like that in real life.

So this post is dedicated to certain words/phrases/dialogues that I have repeatedly come across in movies and serials and that I am pretty sure only a half-wit/drama queen will use in real life:

- ma-babuji, humaare liye to aapka ashirwad hi kaafi hai (mom-dad, your blessings are enough for us)

This line is preceded usually by the parents’ effort to gift something material to the children. C’mon now, which one of us will actually NOT take the gift on offer and that too from our parents and instead blurt out the above stupidity!

- iska to main wo hasher karoongi, ki iski saat pushte yaad karengi (I will do so much harm to him/her that his/her next seven generations will remember)

I know we have all had murderous thoughts about somebody or the other atleast once in our lives and we want to do exactly what is written above to the intended target…but have we ever EVER used the lines above aloud to express what we intend to do..EVER

- shaadi aise dhoom dhaam se karenge ki saara shahar dekhta rah jaayega, aakhir “add surname” ke khaandaan ki shaadi hai (we will arrange the marriage with such pomp and show that the entire city will remember, afterall its “add surname” family’s wedding)

The number of times these dialogues are used in the movies/serials, the poor population of the intended cities would have a hard time remembering the numerous weddings that they are supposed to remember for their lifetimes

- us gaadi ka peecha karo (follow that vehicle)

Infact I recently used the line above (asking our driver to follow a friend in another car who was supposed to show us the direction to some place), but only because I have wanted to use this line for almost all my life and never ever got the opportunity

.- dosti ki hai, nibhani to padegi (since we are friends, we will have to work on this friendship)

Or not! Alternatively, you can drop the above-referred friend like a hot potato, rather than living your life with such a “friend” being a pain in the backside, just because you made an error in judgment in the past and decided to befriend him/her

- tumhaare liye ye keval kale moti honge, par mere liye ye mera suhaag hai, meri taakat hai (for you these must be just black pearls, but for me these are my married woman’s marks (??), my strength)

“!!!!!”

The following two phrases are probably not that cheesy, but I find them irresistibly funny

- tumhari itni jurrat (How dare you)

Ofcourse, that’s why I did what I did and what led you to blow your top off and use these lines!

- machuaaro ki basti ( colony of fishermen)

This is seriously funny and I am pretty damn sure that no one in the past decade in a real life conversation would have tried to describe any piece of geography the above words

Hope you survive the week!

I searched for a foreign land, for years and years I roamed

So recently I went to Maldives for a vacation. The island nation was chosen as our vacation destination after much consideration, the key factors being- distance (less than 5 hours of travel, check), weather (more than 18°C, check), expense (will not result in us filing for insolvency and allowing us enough to be able to feed ourselves for the next month, check), clean beaches and water sports (hell yeah! check), not falling geographically in southeast Asia (check) and most importantly – number of Indian vacationers statistically (less than 5, check).

The last factor was important to me not because I have some misplaced pseudo inbred sense of superiority and disdain for vacationers from my own country (whatever that means), but because every previous time that I had gone outside India for a vacation, there have been sooooo many Indians all around, that I never truly felt that I was on an international vacation. Secondly on my last vacation which was a beach-y location, I had very very bad experiences with drunk and lecherous fellow Indian vacationers.

So after braving the very cold climates of Rajasthan and enduring the surprisingly chilly temps of Bombay we packed our bags and were looking forward to the balmy Maldives. When we boarded our flight to Colombo I was full of dread since all around us were typical Indian honeymooners (you know the girl with the chooda in hands and funny fitted jeans/ weird length shorts/ midi skirts) and loud Indian families. I prayed hard and thankfully very few of them boarded the connecting flight to Male. However the flight to Male had its own share of obnoxious passengers (count me out). There were these two huge families, presumably from Delhi, where the aunties were so well turned out, I wanted to throw up. They were wearing absolutely too much bling, talons were predictably varnished in blood red/fuchsia pink, cropped pants, silk stoles, lip liner (!! It was an overnight flight), eyeliner, eye-shadow in place and I even suspect that their hair were blow dried! I was feeling absolutely dowdy next to these shiny and not-a-hair-out-of-place-people. I mean after all I was just dressed for traveling- 3/4^th jeggings, over-sized shirt, spectacles, slightly oily hair, knotted in a bun and the only shiny thing about me was my super shiny T-zone. The uncles left me speechless, one of them was wearing a broad vertical striped blazer (blue and white), with silk lapels and a silk rose (huge) stuck onto the lapel, a hat and shiny white shoes, for chrissake! And these uncles and aunties went on and on about “that edition of Vogue”, “At my golf club”, “Taj Exotica” and blah blah and I had to endure them throughout the flight since they were sitting right behind me.

Thankfully they went off to some other island (housing Taj Exotica I presume!) once we landed at Male. The only other fellow Indians on our island was a very quiet honeymooning couple of the type described above. I was happy and frolicked around the beach wearing whatever I felt like wearing without anyone raising so much as an eyebrow and I tried my hands at all the water sports available, without anyone staring or smirking at my pathetically unsuccessful attempts.

But after 2 days I realized that I was strangely missing the bonhomie and laughter of my fellow Indians that I was so desperately running away from. The only other Indian couple had also left by then. It was strange because we were in the middle of firangi population who hardly ever spoke even English, mostly Europeans, who stuck to themselves, who didn’t laugh loudly, who didn’t people watch, who didn’t stare at you, who didn’t participate in the “treasure hunt” organized by the management of our resort (I was soooo excited about the TH but there were only two couples apart from us who participated), who didn’t dance on the DJ night. And finally on new year’s eve, when the dance floor was open, all these bloody-firangs just sat there in groups sipping there stupid drinks and laughing in that infuriatingly cultured manner! I missed my fellow Indians so sorely, I wished there were loads of Indians who would by now have been half drunk and would have been laughing LOUDLY and doing the jhatkas and matkas and demanding the DJ to play “munni” or “sheila”. If that was the scene then I wouldn’t have stuck to a mild form of head bopping feeling shy of being the only few people on the floor. Instead I would have been half drunk and would have been laughing LOUDLY and doing the jhatkas and matkas and demanding the DJ to play “munni” or “sheila”, in other words, I would have behaved exactly the way the people I was terrified of bumping into on this holiday, would have behaved.

Mental note: kick myself for the misplaced pseudo inbred sense of superiority and disdain for vacationers from my own country (whatever that means).

If this aint love then how do we get out?

I came to Bombay in May 2006. 4 years and 6 months have passed since then….and HOW!! When I first arrived, I lived my life very quietly, just going about my work and on weekends visiting Hill Road to shop and then going to Mocha for a cuppa and then retiring as quietly. The enormity of the fact that I had actually rented my own apartment, I had my own unlimited (atleast at that time I thought so) money to spend and that I had no curfew (I had been staying in a hostel during college years) and there were soooooooooooooo many places to go eat/shop/party at, had obviously not sunk in. Few months into this lifestyle, I regained my strength (I had a bout of typhoid just before reaching Bombay) and my mother, after making sure that I had satisfactorily settled down, had left and soon thereafter my closest friend had made a new boyfriend who was from Bombay.

THEN there was no looking back. I plunged into what was about to come so hard, that my head still hurts when I think about that. I am occasionally found wondering “what came over me??”. I suddenly started going out ALMOST EVERY SINGLE NIGHT OF THE WEEK. It was crazy. I was perpetually hung over in office. If I dint end up going out on the then sacred nights of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I underwent depression thinking that my social life is finished. I cant even recall the names of the sooo-many people that I met and befriended in those times and where all we partied. It was possibly the craziest time of my life. But alas…all good things come to an end. I never knew when I stopped enjoying going out every night, when I actually started making excuses for not going out, when I actually started looking forward to just having Chinese food delivered at our place and watching splitsvilla instead of getting plastered and throwing up.

My 2nd year was spent in making and retaining great friends and discovering the best places to eat in and around Bandra.

And ofcourse then I fell in love and the only thing that mattered to me a while after that was waiting and planning life around CC’s visits to Bombay. My 4^th year itch began I think towards the end of my 3^rd year. I started hating my job so vehemently that I cried for hours all together thinking why am I stuck in this city doing this crap work. I seriously started considering relocating to Delhi. But since I am such a sloth and such a wimp, nothing materialized even after my endless hours of raving and ranting. And then by the time I was actually able to build up my resolve, things took a different turn, and everything settled into place.

But when I look back at what I have lost, loved, lived and made in this city, I become almost nostalagic (4 years is not time enough to feel nostalgic)..but that’s that. I am so glad that I lived the way I did, met the people that did, ate where I did and loved the things that I did and I would never want to change anything about these past years (except may be I should I have started exercising a few months earlier J).

P.S: the title of this post has got nothing to do with this post, its just the song that I was listening to while writing this).

Flippity Flippity Flip

I am forced to think at times...do i treat my life too flippantly. I mean I see people all around me planning their lives so meticulously: what stream to pursue after HSC, which job to pick after graduation/post-graduation, which guy to date, where to live, what to eat for dinner, WHAT MOVIE TO WATCH!! (seriously!), how to plan a wedding. Just thinking about all this makes my head whirl. I have never ever ever EVER planned anything in my life. I am, what they call, a drifter. I have just gone along with whatever life presented at that instant. I never struggled against it, never sat back and thought "ok so what options do I have? what will the consequences of this be?" Now when I look back at all the "decisions" I made, I wonder whether I should have held back, whether I should have taken a moment to ponder and not jumped head long into whatever that life had offered. Well, I am not sure if I would be what I am if I would have waited for another opportunity to pop its head up. But then I think nah thats not my style. I mean I joined my college because i thought the college campus (which later turned out to be NOT my college campus) was pretty cool. If I feel like watching a movie, I watch whatever is playing that day. I picked up the first job that came my way. Anyways what is the point of pondering over all that. I, well almost, am always happy with whatever choices I have made. But it does irk me, at times when people think I am flippant. I am not sure why it bothers me, because collective historic data does suggest that I AM flippant. May be I want people to think that I am serious about my life and I am responsible with decision-making. But then what the heck, I will be bored to death if I have to hold myself back. I am a NOW person. If I want something, I want it NOW, this very SECOND. It gets a little annoying for people who have to deal with this quirk of mine...but alas I am who I am.