the little experiment

“I feel like a superman without his powers !!”

“Now you know how I feel like every moment of my life .. The world is my lesbian wedding !!”

I echo the words of chandler while writing this .. hoping to find someone suitable someday.

Ever felt you might not be comfortable talking to a girl from an entirely different background ??

Well .. I surely have .. given that you have never been comfortable talking with any girl. But namma enda ponna love panna porom nu decide panna mudiyuma enna ? Love just happens. It is magical.  Especially when she is from a different background and culture (that’s not true entirely given the fact that almost everyone is an engineer nowadays !!).

 It is all the more exciting. You have never felt like this before ..  this seems like an achievement to you. Not just that you are in an relationship but also with someone whom you thought was never in your range.

Well .. all that aside. It is fun to be in a relationship with someone from a land far far away.

I really hope this doesn’t sound like a prose version of “Kashmir tu .. main kanyakumari !!”

But it is the truth .. just not in the way the forty year old srk portrayed it to be .. but still

She gives you so many dimensions to a relationship. She tells you all about honour killings giving you the nightmare of your life. At the same time, she fantasizes about having a life like the one shown in karan johar movies.  Although you have never watched one .. she just makes you nod along with the sweet way of narration which mesmerizes you.

Not to mention the moments when you try to teach her tamil .. actually tamizh and enjoy the cuteness of her trying to adapt to your tongue. Awesome are those silly fights over why Rajnikanth is the biggest star ever or why Chennai Express sucked. ( sorry for the demeanour but god I hated that movie !! )

A north indian girl adds so much flavour to your life. A kind of flavour which you believe to like when you are tasting lasagne for the first time in your life. Just the missing piece of the puzzle is that you don’t realize that you cannot eat lasagne for the rest of your life and by the time you realize it,  it is too late.

You’re just her little experiment. Her attempt at taking control of things. And yet another act of submission to her culture, her parents and her roots. Its just a matter of time before both of you realize that its not going to work out as well as the final events described in the two states. There is so much more to it.

The religious fallacies, the food majorly, the belief system, the traditions( though you've protested against yours all your life) .. you just cannot let your ego throw all that that you've grown with for a person who belongs to a land far far away .. and the very fact that attracted you doesn't any more. It’s a god damn obstacle.

The point of this entire crap is that .. you are comfortable with what you’re comfortable with .. Nothing like Idli chutney right .. or if you’re a Bengali .. nothing like hilsa curry !!

Cheers !!

What's your worth ??

 

“Pretentious!” he said when I asked my brother about how my newly bought shoes looked. I was not able to figure out what it meant then. I assumed it was some fancy word for “its nice”.

Ten years later, I was in Whitefield, the IT capital of India to visit a friend and she asked “So, What do you think about the place?” and I said... Pretentious!!!

And this time I was pretty sure what it meant.

 “People spend the money they don’t have to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.”

Ever felt ashamed to attend a call on your nokia handset which you had been using comfortably for years just because you might be mocked at.

Tried on dresses you would otherwise not be wearing coz you’d be the only one in a jean in a place crowded with single piece gowns?

Went to those bread and cream serving high class eateries to keep your pride among your peers and paid a bill in thousands when all the while you were thinking about the delicious Hyderabadi biriyani of biriyani zone?

Ever done something and felt that its just not you or out of your comfort zone?

Yes, of course we have. And its not our fault. Most of the times its our pride at stake.

Those 10k blazers, Smartphones, Tablets, iPods, Car off the first salary, Team outings, Saturday night parties, Pizza Days and so on. Don’t even get me started on the list of things women do to keep up with their counterparts, a list of things which are highly valued by the superficial man.

These dream jobs come with a predefined lifestyle and a price tag attached to it.

That’s the price we have to pay to enter this so called corporate world and stay in it. Actually, We are just being dragged into a belief that it’s the latest culture and we tend to move along with the masses.

 But don’t you think we’re losing our identity, our whole belief system that we have developed throughout our life from various experiences and learning?

Of course we are. My decisions are supposed to be based on my need and not what the society demands.

Do I really need that smartphone?

Why an iPod when my phone can play songs?

Am I controlling traffic on internet that I have to just stay online all the time?

Do I have to buy that car on  my first salary which means that I can’t even spend on an emergency?

We are so much into trying to be someone else that we can’t see losing ourselves. But the choice is for a lifetime. Once you wear that mask, it becomes almost impossible to get out of it.

Your worth is not defined by the extras you have and fancy places you go to but by the values you hold onto.

So what’s your worth?

The Mask

It had been very long. It had protected me from doing things which otherwise could've ruined my life. All that, that wanted to get out of me had stuck to it. It helped me stay the very self inside without letting the outside world get to me. Yes ! I'm talking about the second face I put on in front of the world .. My mask !!


Now it was getting heavy. It was beginning to wear off. I didn't know how much longer I could hold onto it.

But I was not the only one wearing it. Everyone wore it and so successfully for so long that it had become a part of their self. Its a shield in fact, which one would get behind to protect that deep corner of one's heart which one would never dare to expose.

The mask was not the same. It took several colours. It gave me the liberty to choose who I wanted to be infront of the world, how I wanted it to look at me. It gave me a second me. I had grown into the mask. With every mistake and every fall, the mask grew bigger. By now, I had sculpted it to perfection.

The irony is that one cannot identify the mask of another so easily. Now I look at someone smiling at me and I cannot make out if its the mask or his genuine self that is smiling at me. Trust hardly makes sense now.

Ever had this constant nagging to throw off that mask and be yourself ??
But everytime you try to do that, you evaluate the consequences, the damage and back off. The stakes are just too big .. reputation, acquaintances, future .. phew !!!

The mask is a saviour indeed !
A saviour you'd never let go for reasons best known to your heart.