The Monsoon Hungama

It's finally raining here, and what do rains bring with them? Raincoats, umbrellas, chai pakoras, rainy day etc. But being a responsible adult I have gotten over most of these things except one. Yes, Discount sales. This is the time of the year when all the brands I have been eying for past summer season are available for some discount, provided there are some pieces still left in my size. ( Is this only me or does everyone feel that they never get the size of a particular outfit they desire most?)

Speaking of shopping, it always makes me feel good, however short natured my happiness may be post that binge. It's for nothing that they call it retail therapy. There is another thing that takes over me everytime I enter a mall. I feel like a man possesed. I feel like there is a greater calling for me there. I feel I am here for a mission and I have to salvage the earth from these hoardes of shoppers who have come to find precisely those same things which could make my life so better. I have to be quicker, faster and better in findings those items than these lesser mortals and save humanity. I try hard. I scan every one around. Every one else is suspicious of every one else's intention. We are all competing in the same pool, one better be. Resources are scarce, and there is too high a demand ( trust me, you will feel the same way when you see the que outside Benetton showroom in CP. And yes, the que was for billing ).

Well, you win some and you lose some. Not always I grab the best stuff. ( most of the times you can't really wear it till next season. So one has to be Patient.) But I do have reputation for haveing the eye for the best stuff. Stuff which people overlook. Stuff I know will look on a a body than a clothes rack.

So, this year, or rather this sales season, I am holding myself a bit. Reason is the great economic situation. I had a negligible salary raise which can't even compesate for the inflation, let alone for my fashion needs.

But I am happy. There is always a next sale season to stuff on the gooddies.

hmm...I am sleepy and tired

Yes, that's what you do when you surf till late night and wait for things to happen to you. On top of it, when I woke up this morning, picking up my daily dose of newspaper I saw the headline say " Did you see the longest solar eclipse of the centuary?". Ahh, now they are making us feel guilty for sleeping late. Or rather waking late.

I can be least bothered. I am not gonna give any 'daan' becuase of the eclipse, that's so Pagan. I wish we indians had some more objectivity and we could start questioning the expected beliefs. And I bet any one who has experienced the nuisance caused by 'Kaanwariyas' will surely be put off by this brand of religion.

Now, this reminds me to declare that I am not religious at all. I am not proud of it, nor I am concerned. It's something fact of the matter. Chris: if you read this, I'd like to know what you think. Btw, I know that you sleep with your Blue book beside your bed table.

In which I get really Happy Happy

So it has finally rained in Delhi. Like I once prophesized, my mood is closely linked to Delhi Weather, and it was getting fouler by each passing day. The only reason kept me going to workplace was excellent cooling they provided in the premises, and the power cuts at home. Yes, all the reports of power cuts that you see on TV are not, for once, fabricated. ( Most of the time, all the nuisance makers start pelting stones etc on their object of scorn- Police station, Power station, Buses – only when they see a TV camera close by). Coming back to all things cool, it has become much cooler and humid. I don’t mind humidity as much as that searing heat which has tanned me in not a good way. I am thinking of de-tanning solutions. Any suggestions?

Since I last blogged almost a month back there is so much to post.

But before that let me just announce to the world that I feel happy.

Happy and content after a long time. And it’s just not the rains that have made me happy.

I like things sorted out. All the rationales, explanations each neatly applied into their right respective problem areas. I get my answers mostly from what I read, what I observe, who I meet etc.

This time I know there have been lots of triggers but it’s mostly the realization of how good life has been, or rather there are far more positives in life than negatives in my life.

Like I mentioned before, I have taken reading Marian Keys with a vengeance. I am on my second book ‘Last Chance Saloon’, though this is one guilty read, I enjoy her enormously. The book deals with friendships, love and cancer. Yes, chick lit is the least place one would expect Cancer to be written about.

I have never written about it earlier but reading about the disease and the various tests, chemo, radiotherapy affected me deeply since I have had a close encounter with the ghastly disease myself.

Three years back my mother succumbed to the disease. It was not the best time for any of us in our family. I know how it sounds when you say it was not best, but cancer was not the only thing that was going against our family. In the book, when I read about how the patient goes for bone marrow test, and how actually despite being given local anesthetic the needle has to prick the actual bone marrow which can’t be numbed for the sample. I remembered the day my mother went into that tiny room after a wait of two hours in the intolerable heat of that dingy hospital. She never told us back how painful it was. At that time, our only concern was to pray for test results to come negative.

But do things ever turn out the way we want? We got the bad news soon that cancer had spread to bone marrow too. In other words, she was on the last stage of cancer.

Before all this happened, cancer was a deadly word. It was something that happened to others. Something that only a few really unfortunate ones get. As is the human tendency, our first response was “why me?”.

Our visits to the hospital answered that question. There were young three year olds kids being treated for cancer and one has to have some nerves to speak to his mother asking his conditions.

There was a pretty young teenager girl who was not just tonsured because of chemo she had stitches on her head. Yes, her brain was operated for removing tumors.

While, we were not actually very lucky either.

There were many rounds of chemotherapy. Her low hemoglobin level before each chemo session required us to find blood donors for every round, and soon we exhausted our friends and acquaintances as potential blood donors because you need three months break before you can donate blood again. We got friends of friends and people who just heard about it and came to donate the blood in the hospital.

Before one session, her blood platelets count dropped abysmally low. If I remember correctly, 5-6 blood samples would make up for one platelet bag. I was too busy arranging for blood that I never had time to mourn her disease.

As I am writing these, I am reliving those horrors. I had read one of tendulkar’s interviews where he said a visit to a cancer ward in a hospital gave him new perspective on life.

My perspective changing moment came too. Perhaps all too soon.

I still remember the deafening cries at the time of one of our earlier chemo sessions when a patient died in the next room. Though, the wife was crying at least hundred meters away from our ward, there was nothing else you could hear in that ward. All other patients and their families had a look which spelt despair and death. Though we all knew that anyone among our loved ones can be the next one to go, we tried hard to look normal. I smiled and tried some normal banter to make it look like an ordinary thing, but I knew in my heart that it was our worst fears coming true.

There were so many moments when I actually thought if it was happening to me. One thing, I took from that experience and which I had forgotten about was the fact that “ why make all the fuss”. I know it’s a very fatalistic approach but perhaps I don’t push myself that hard for things which I know are very trivial when you compare them to cancer.

What if I don’t conoodle with my boss and impress him so he gives a big raise and sends me to an exotic locale for work (Yes, that happens in our company for some ‘lucky’ people). I don’t try that hard. I do my work and let my work speak.

I may not be going to Colombia (despite learning Spanish) or Greece, I have a well paying job. I am quite healthy, though I still have some way before I can de-lard myself completely; people still compliment me on my physique ( in a non sexual way)

I may not be the most intelligent guy on planet, but my colleagues respect me for my knowledge and opinion, and frankly I am trying to give a damn to what people think of me.

I mean if I start counting the things which are in my favor, they will far outnumber my whining list. So I have decided to do one thing. Throw that list to some corner of my head and tell everyone that life is really good.

My Notting Hill moment

My last post was going nowhere. It was erratic, incoherent and befuddled. I think I had not even read it before publishing  ( small mercies that push button publishing offers you); but in retrospect I think it was something I had to do. Something that I had to get out of my system so that I could live peacefully. Since, I still have not told the name of the person to anyone except for my ex-best friend, I carry a huge baggage. It’s not everyday that I have news of me dating a bigshot 

Let’s rewind to a month back.

In the tradition of TV news channel who are hell bent on recapitulating news breaking stories, let me tell all those readers who have tuned in to this post now.

Recap: I had a chance encounter with a very big name in Indian fashion scene. That encounter which started on virtual world transitioned to audio world ( read: phone) and I felt ecstatic to say the least. Here I am- someone who was ( still is ) afraid of getting old alone, who is surly and bad tempered because he doesn’t find people who are capable of  matching anything other than body stats—sitting and idling time since he has nothing better to do on weekends and he gets approached by someone who is not only rich, famous, young, good looking but most importantly intelligent.

How often does that happen? ( Twice in my case. I was ostensibly proffered by a Grasim Mr India who really got into me after a converation, but since I could never verify if he was the person he claimed to be, I made little fuss about it and moved on. May be I should post about it too)

I have already written in my last post that how this person messaged me, called me at odd hours and we really connected on phone.

 I had no doubt if he was the real one. He was the real one. I asked him a few question too from what I read from delhi times etc, and he was quite surprised that I tracked such info.

He told me about his business plans as to how he wanted to set up a fashion empire on the lines of western fashion houses and even asked me if I would like to work for him. I was completely taken away by his business proposal. No doubt this guy is going to make it big. He is a force to recon with in Indian fashion and according to media reports he also has good business acumen. It was too good an offer to be refused. I being my usual cynical self played it down focusing on the lesser more baser aspects of life.

Though, after that conversation I did all the research and envisaged myself doing something which I always secretly wanted to do. (People who might get carried away at this moment thinking of me as some fashion queen must be told that I had such weird career aspirations since I was a kid. I still want to be Foreign Service officer, a chef, a journalist, a published author, not to mention, being connected to glamorous industry was also on top of that list.)

But I was in for a shock.

Suddenly there were no messages, there were no calls. And he got completely inaccessible. He never picked his phone though all my messages got duly received.

To put it mildly, I was heartbroken. It was not just any other fling that I had. There are times when you feel there is something great destiny has in store for you and your moment will come. Being a complete cynic, I still have that six year old girl like streak in me who feels that everything is going to be alright at the end. We all feel special. We all feel—at least at some point in time, that life has not been fair to us, that we deserve better. We rationalize, we give examples other people who are far less talented or hardworking but who have made big in life; and we make a list of things that could have been better in our life. If only so…

Despite all this optimism, we chug along the dreary life hoping that our moment is coming. We will have our place on this earth; we will mean something to someone. We will not be just another number in billon other people.

I saw this encounter as my moment. This was my chance to redeem my lost pride which I had for myself.

But what all we wish for does not materialize too often.

It feels bad if one never gets that feeling that one is going to get one’s chance, one’s life changing moment, and one’s ticket to redeem one’s destiny.

But it’s far worse feeling when you realize that you had your chance, you had a life changing moment and your ticket to destiny was not for real. 

I have been having existential crisis sort of thing  for a long time now; but somehow I made peace with myself. Telling myself that life is too long, and I will have my moment when the right times come. But this incident left me questioning those beliefs again.

 What is it from life that I am seeking?There is nothing permanent in this world. Fame, money, power or beauty: These all entrapments.

 What if I have this person rolling at my feet in love, what will that accomplish?

 Why am I so disturbed?

 Why I felt cheated? He never said he loved me or I would be his new boy friend.

 What am I in this world for?

 Am I here for falling in love, making money, making love and then dying?

 I asked these questions again and again. I couldn’t eat, sleep or concentrate on work. I didn’t get any answers. I felt perhaps we make too much of these small incidents in life.

 This fellow—however rich, famous, intelligent he may be-- called a random guy and had fun chat for a brief period. I should have been smart enough to understand it. Though, it doesn’t happen very often in life. But it does happen.

 Big Deal??

 Khair, if you are still reading now, you must got an impression that I am over it.

 On a different note, I caught ‘Notting Hill’ a few nights back on cable. Even the die hard cynics of this world would not be failed to be charmed by this movie. Whatever is happening in the movie: It’s all unbelievable; and that perhaps makes it more believable. We want to believe in goodness of Julia Roeberts and charming goofiness of Hugh Grant. We believe in the movie by the end of the movie.

 “It was nice meeting you. Surreal but nice” Hugh Grant’s character tells Julia Roberts’s character after their first meeting.

 Immediately, I could see the parallel between the film and my story.

 I felt exactly the same. Surreal but nice.

 The bitterness that I had accumulated over the fortnight had dissipated. Not many people get the chance to even have their ‘surreal but nice’ moment. Life is too long, may be I will have many more such moments. And even if I don’t have those moments. I will have many other ways to make my life complete.

 It’s not end of my life.

 P.S. It turned out that my friend is globe trotting to meet buyers and stuff, which he explained me a few days back when he called, and was not able to return calls because he was either too busy or tired. So, all said and done, we are still in touch, though I have given up any hopes of leaving my well paying and secure job to join his fashion house.

 

 

 

 

It's totally Random

Though, I had gone through the existential crisis a few years back, I had not imagined that it would come to haunt me again and I will be caught unawares. Afterall, I was sad, lonely and depressed. How worse it could have got? 

Worse it did get.

 A few weeks back, I received a message, on one of the social networking site I am present, from a person whose picture looked all too familiar. Fake pics are in no shortage on such sites. Everyone knows how an Indian girl conned a dutch man making him believe she was Aishwarya Roy. 

Networking sites, such as the one I was present on has a few popular choices. The message I got had none of the usual suspects. The pic- instantly identifiable by any one who follows the Indian fashion industry even remotely-- had me taken completly by surprise. I hardly have the looks to receive messages from decent looking men, let alone this man. Therefore, I decided this is a fake pic and needs to go to deleted messages. Boredom and curiosity got better of me after I deliberated on it and sent a reply hoping against hope I will receive any reply.

A week later, I get a sms on my phone saying that it was HIM. ( Yes, I sent him my number, I am that desperate. Get over it!) I am all too excited to find that not only is he replying back but he is also real. Real? Do I actually know for sure he is for real, not some fake guy like ipl player. Being the pathological cynic, I demand to speak to him and he smses back saying he is in a meeting.

Ahh, I thought I had caught him.

After an hour, I got a call. The voice was all too familiar, it cannot not be him. I am very good with voices and was sure about him. We chatted briefly and I couldn’t contain my excitement.

From then one, we regularly started messaging each other and talking whenever HE got time ( He is the busy guy, not me).

He had asked me to send him my clear pics, which I did. And suddenly the messages stopped coming.

Hehe.

Big Deal?

Before I go any further, let me write something about the mystery man. Though, it will not be ethical to reveal his name, I can give some general hints.

He is a fashion designer who has made a name for himself in India and abroad within a very short span. He is Young – important for me coz I don’t date above a certain age when I told this to my ex best friend he thought I was referring to Vijay Arora—intelligent, well read with a middle class background.

He offered me a job on our very first call. He asked me to become his business advisor since I was the MBA type who knew his finance and fashion. Though, I didn’t commit anything to him as I was overwhelmed by the fact that I was speaking to this GUY, I was secretly hoping that perhaps this was the chance I could switch career

He was the Indian YSL and I was his business partner.

The fantasy was too short lived.

There is more to it, will write in the part ii