Happy woman?

Very cluttered. Skip if not in the mood to decipher the labyrinth of my brain.

What makes women happy? Fay Weldon, my most favourite author tried to answer the question in her book with the same title as the question. I think her list went, sex, chocolate, shopping, friends, etc. Not necessary in that order though. She says that women feel happiness in small moments. For example, when the sun rises on a perfect day and she stands in her blooming garden, she feels happy, for about 5 minutes. But unadulteratedly happy. Then the moment passes. According to her, a woman's 'Happiness' is the sum total of these very short-lived happy moments. I just hope I am able to be peaceful. Happiness is so fleeting that it scares me. I can get addicted to happiness and its scary how sad sadness feels after a bout of happiness. But one cant escape the race for happiness. One mortal can't. My quest for peace of mind sounds phoney and pretentious even to me sometimes. Fay Weldon says, 'Be Good.' And 'Good will happen to you.' Karma- I believe is a a just bitch. Back to finding happiness. Love. It's scary how that seems to be the answer everywhere I look. The concept of another human being fulfilling a need in me seems unfair to me. If our goal of finding meaning/happiness in our lives ended with our finding love with another, I am sure we would have been born in pairs. However, we are born alone. Left alone to make sense of everything we see/hear/feel around us. Our parents aren't gods, we realise sometime soon. Our siblings not our best friends. Our friends not our soulmates. We are back to square one. Of course, we can spend our lives trying to analyse/figure out/make sense of the human condition. It's futile of course. For we are bound by our human limitations. And accepting the futility of our fragile human condition doesn't seem to be easy. Oh How we strive. For we are the only species that can. We form memories, we retain, we have a thumb. So we build, we make, we invent. Isn't it funny! We invented a currency. I think human civilisation(?) peaked when we gave intrinsic value to paper. But I digress. I was looking for meaning of life. The question Why? Isn't really answerable. So we do the next best thing. We live. We try pretending that we are doing more than just existing. We write novels, poems, make movies, music, so much to validate our human birth. There is beauty in it I suppose. In this effort. That there is strife and we still live is beautiful I suppose. That we created language, that we gave credence to art, I suppose in a way is a victory of our human birth. And we created religion and we went back to square one. But I digress. What makes me happy? Food, alcohol, sex. Easy answers these. But what sucks is that happiness doesn't make me happy anymore. I still feel joy. Yes. I try to hold onto that. So. Yes am still living. I still have an unnameable hope. But I suffer. For nothing seems to help any more. Not food, alcohol or sex either. Prozac might, sleep may. And then I wake up and am back to square one. The trick is to be normal. To belong to your community no matter what. To hold on to your roots/caste/religion/morals/what your parents taught, etc. If you are a freak and you begin to question any of that...that's it for you then. Back to square one.

Waiting @ Mocha

The wait is always the same. Don't get me wrong. For an impatient girl, I enjoy waiting. The nothing-to-do ness of the wait has a very calming effect on me. My mind rushes on with images of what can be. I practise imaginary conversations which in a few minutes or so may come to fruit. The drama at the end of the wait, especially if of a romantic nature, always fulfills its prophecy. The one waiting, the Waiter, is a step ahead of course. She has come on time and encountered stray gazes. She can now set the stage. The legs are perfectly folded, the hair tucked behind her ear, the half-finished cigarette between her pink-tipped fingers perfectly poised over the fresh ash-tray. If the wait is longer than a few minutes, her fingers now entwine the crook of a tea cup. The moment's arrived for the waitee has too. Is she facing the doorway or did she have it in her to expose her back to the door and win at the game of not caring. If she has seen him come in, catching his gaze and holding it, with or without a smile, is a good way to begin an episode. However, waiting for him to approach her from behind has its perks. To keep her neck open to prey, albeit, the romantic kinds, takes courage and shows her lack of fear of the future, of the unknown and her non-chalance.

The uninnitiated to the wait, resort to a book. The feiging hasn't been mastered yet. Pitying glances from fellow revelleres worry them still. The mind has not been honed to accept the fatality of a wait.

The wait. An oasis of me-time of nothingness in between a day filled with moments of purposefulness for others. Next time you are awaiting, treat yourself to the glorious drama of it. Spectate yourself. Order a cup of tea, light that cigarette, take a deep breath and wait with me.

The Insomniac's Pillowcase.

I write about you tonight,

dear cotton god.

Of how you suffer the indignities

of my 'toss and turn's.

Begining at my neck,

often in between my legs,

finally on the floor you rest.

Sleepless creases shape

your otherwise benign form.

Moist patches from desperate

douses wet you cold.

Dear cotton god,

how you help me bear the night.

It's stillness.

The nothing-to-do ness.

And how in the afternoon,

i toss you,

like the ineffectual day

tossed the potent night away.

Rosh Posh

Pearls (‘o wisdom)

Drop

From your palms (rough)

From your lips (strangely white)

Your skin smell of melons (bodyshop)

Your hair smooth and curling (dove)

Pearls (aforementioned)

You drop carelessly (as careless s you are with money and..tax)

I pretend not to notice (cos you loved more those who loved you less)

I have a wooden box (mahogany)

Filled with your mouth, your brain, your heart and soul (as for your body.....)

Along with your pearls.

My wooden box is heavy and aches with posthumous love ( you know I am just kidding myself)

Your pearls (of love, caresses and unconditional affection)

Pink and grey (like the salt water ones you loved)

Rest within my melancholic box.

Meeting @ Mocha.

She waited. She'd arrived a minute early. He would be 17 late. She doesn't know that yet, and she doesn't mind. Arriving early is noble and she does it with a practised ease. She pities the late arriver, of course, for he starts with a disadvantage, but she never admonishes them. She has always graciously brushed aside apologies for lateness. It's tough to be punctual, she knows. No, she didn't mind. She wasn't bored. Nobody is bored around her, least of all, herself.

She waits still. Quaint blue tea-cups on mis-matched orange saucers arrive. Earl gray at 8. She takes a deep breath, exhales and takes a sip of the tea. All's right with the world. She lights a cigarette. Stray glances, at a woman smoking in public, hit her face and slide off at her non-chalance. Lookers-oners look away. It hurts them to try and penetrate her private bubble. Her oasis of solitude affects the cheerful mood at the next table and the converstaion dies down a bit.

She waits still, now contemplating her next move. Should she smoke her last cigarette? She let's it be. Play SuDoKu? She doesn't feel like rummaging through her vast green bag to look for her phone. Instead she gazes ahead and tries to concentrate on the noise around her. The collective hum of the conversation of the 17 tables around her gathers her in and soothes her with its benignity. She looks for a rhythm in the voice of the crowd and smiles to herself. It is so easy to feel alone, to experience solitude amidst a crowd. The urbanity of the in-comprehensible hum lulls her to comfort like it always has. It reminds her of her childhood mornings when she would wake up to her mother's chants. The noise of the chants spelt Morning, God, Clean Room, Incense and a Mother Smelling of Sandalwood. She had never known the individual meaning of the sanskrit words. Suddenly, she catches a few words from the table closest to her. She frowns. She turns the other way and starts humming to herslf as if to shut her ears. The table laughs in unison. She smiles and her palms unclench. She lights the last cigarette in the pack and awaits.

'What does it even matter what he has to say, really,' she thinks, 'I know why he wants out of this....' She stops to look for an appropriate word. She looks around to stare at the Jackfruit tree. Her friends would have provided 'Relationship,' she settles for 'Entanglement.' 'He is scared of course.' She continues to talk to herself, her tongue actually moving behind her clenched teeth. Her jaws tighten with the effort of not speaking aloud. She laughs at herself.

'I need to keep a blank mind. I can't let him know what all I presume for all my presumptions are right and he will get more scared at being so transparent to me and run faster. I'll keep the topics neutral. I'll talk about my sister or the Weather.' She decides and pulls the scarf closer around her neck.

She looks around now for him. 18 minutes have passed by.'Where is he?' She spots him entering through the door, with a phone in one hand at his ear, calling her and a book in the other. Her phone rings in the vast green bag. She ignores it and instead looks at him frantically searching for her. She smiles. He looks so young. So vulnerable, So his age. She waves at him and beckons him over, relieving him of his fear of having to wait for her alone.

There are certain un-explainable (not inexplicable) things about me. (Am not saying they make me unique) These I realise at weird times and I amaze at my belief in magic-of-sorts (and other cutesie things)

I think that 27 is a magical age. In films and books, the most amazing characters will be 27. They stand at the edge of the rest of their life at this age.

I think 28 is the coolest age. There is something very rounded and stable about this Age. It's as if, Now You Are Wise.

I am currently 27 and my favourite age is 23. I find this age irresistible. Of course, it's not the age per se but people of this age...but the co-incidences are amazing! All these amazingly yummy people I meet, whose brain I wanna lick (ewww, I know!) or who I just wanna gulp up whole are all 23.

When 2 people kiss for the first time (and mean it..not drunken/friendly kisses) their souls get a bit exchanged. Their thoughts and desires and goals (not of life, but or that moment or the person changes...interchanges)

If you laugh a lot, you will cry soon. (I think it's a neurotic thing..happens to me all the time!)

I like words like Inexplicable, Astonishing, Inadmissible, Admonishing. I think thats cos they are pronounced like they are spelt. (This thing wants me to believe that the spelling of spelt is wrong..but I wont give in)

I wish to be recognised as the cute thing that I am. Despite my size, heft, intuition, IQ, sense of humour, vocabulary, education, sex, I want to be CUTE!!!

I like it when I am treated like am fragile or weak just cos am a girl (believe me it dont happen often... ) for because of my size, heft, intuition, IQ, sense of humour, vocabulary, education, I am usually treated with asexual respect or like one of the guys. (It sucks if the guys doing this are cute!)