Quarter life crisis and sexy-sexy (non-existent) boyfriends!

My pumpkin pies!

I think Quarter life crisis has struck me bad! While it's obviously one of the worst things to happen, a teeny tiny part of me, loves how filmy it makes my life sound. Well, Chic-flickish to be precise. So grab a bowl of popcorn and listen to me rant rather dramatically about why the feeling of dumpey-ness has been shamelessly following me around.

Well, I used to think I was the 'girl with the plan'. I'm suddenly not so sure anymore. If I don't spend the rest of my life writing, my soul will die and disintegrate. But if I spend my entire life only writing and nothing else, then my self worth with die and disentegrate. I will wake up every morning, feeling like a useless, worthless, potato of a person who has done nothing. Achieved nothing! So I have a long list of other things that I simply have to do. But the list is so long that I don't know how I'm going to do all of it. If I pay more attention to one, I'll feel like I'm neglecting the other. If I try to do the thing I'm neglecting, there will be some fifty other things biting me slowly at the back of my head leading to a serious cause of mental explosion. And if I try to do justice to all of them, my entire being will die and disintegrate. All that and more before I'm old enough to suffer from mid-life crisis!

Omg! This system! So much pressure! I don't even know what PG program I am going to do next year. Or which Universities I should be looking at. Should I even be doing a PG program next year or should I jump to join the first company that offers me an amazing job? Should I work and then study? Study and then work? Or should I work, study and handle being a bag-wali side by side?

What about money? Will I make enough to live the life of a splurgina? Will I find happiness in whatever I do? Will I be healthy at the same time? Or will I find a desk job that swells me to the size of a char bacho wali ma? Will I find a hot-as-hell boyfriend? Will I move in with him or get married right away? Will I find a sexy-sexy husband or will I have to depend on my folks to hook me up with a rich balding guy who'll throw a lavish wedding in return for pressing his feet for the rest of my life and running towards him with a glass of water everytime he screams Lajo-Lajo(or whatever shady name he'll come up with) ?

So as of now, I basically feel like the dumpey protagonist, who is sitting on an arm chair wearing pink sweatpants, stuffing herself with her 48th bowl of chocolate ice-cream and listening to some very melancholy music, worrying herself sick about how and when and where and if and but , everything will fall into place.

But but but, since it is a chick-flick, everything has to get sorted out no? So let's say the gorgeous actress will wake up to find a swanky pink car in her garage, an appointment letter from Vogue sitting by her bedside and drop dead gorgeous boy, who has climbed in through the window to confess his undying love for her. The two of them will break into song and dance. The heavens will bring forth rain in the hot Summer. Everybody will live happily ever after!


And that my dear friends is the end of my story.
So long!
More wishful thinking later :D

Indian Eccentricities

Things I will never understand about my family and Indian Population in general :

• How Ghee is supposedly the ultimate source of energy.
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• Why the best of way treating a guest is to feed him enough to give him diarrhea.
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• Sarees and short blouses are graceful, but cropped tops are looked down upon.
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• How possesion of gold is the best way of determining how successful a person is.
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• How marriage is supposedly the highlight of an individual's life.
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• The fact that arranged marriages are source of so much pride.
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• So is the boy from 'Amreeka'.
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• Their definition of 'Good Family', 'Khandani Log' and 'Khaata Peeta Ghar'.
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• Sympathies towards, families with no sons and only daughters. They fucking have every reason to celebrate.
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• The need to spend life savings on their children's wedding.
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• Why the most random people have to be invited, just because they're related to you, never mind that you haven't seen them in years! In a lot of cases, never!
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• Why the Bride's dress is costs more than everybody else's dresses combined. Oh wait, that I actually do understand.
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• How fairness defines value in the 'marriage market'.
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• Why it is acceptable for men to have lost their virginity before marriage but not women.
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• And why is virginity so overrated in the first place? How does it define anything about an individual's character.
  

 

Anita's tears

Anita isn't someone who'd easily cry. Infact she's so strong, I draw courage from her most of the time. But that day when she cried on my shoulders, I felt my dreams crumble down with hers. I have always thought of marriage as the ultimate symbol of love. Being in a relationship is easy. You know you can walk out of it anytime. Entering into a marriage needs a lot of commitment. If a man is willing to give that to you, he really loves you.

Unfortunately, Anita belongs to the era of arranged marriages. The era in which a woman's wedding topped the priority list and was planned from the day she was born, while education, though imparted didn't even make it to that list.

Of course, right after a good proposal came in, her father without giving it a second thought gave her away in marriage. Did he ask her if she likes him? If he was the kind of boy she had always dreamed of or if she even wanted to get married then? In that era girls were never asked.

So Anita went away to her new house. On the outside it was all perfect right. Big House. A husband who looks decent and earns pretty well. Promise of a honeymoon to a foreign land. And of course many more luxuries to come. Well even the man she married was pretty nice. May be he spoke a little too much and seemed a little immature at times. But as they say 'he had a good heart'.

But is all of that enough for a happy marriage? Can the luxuries keep you satisfied? Can you truly be happy with a person you can barely connect with, no matter how nice he is?

Marriage calls for a lot of sacrifice. When two people completely different in more ways than one, take an oath to be a part of each other's lives until death does them apart, there are lot of adjustments to be done. There is need of understanding and need of adapting. Anita, of course belonged to the era in which women had no option but to comply. I can't say the same about her husband though. He didn't make an attempt to understand her or her family, or the small things that made a big difference to her.

But I guess it is always the small things that ruin relationships. I don't know what it is that he said or did, but when she cried that day, I knew that he had blown the last straw. She cried like one who had lost all hope in life. And the emptiness in her eyes, broke my heart.

As far as tears go, I classify them as 'tears of sadness' and 'tears of hopelessness'. Sometimes I cry to release the pent up emotions. 'Tears of sadness' as I said. And then there are times that my tears tear me apart. I feel like I'm so down, nothing could get me up. Life suddenly seems so glum that, even the brightest of things fail to bring joy. And those are the tears I classify as 'tears of hopelessness'.  

That was precisely how Anita cried. If Anita lived my life, a few minutes after the heart-wrenching sobs would have taken over her body, her phone would ring, a friend would fill her in with gossip and so many random details of the day that for a while she'd be totally distracted. And then she'd be suddenly reminded of a party she has to attend or an assignment she has to complete and her focus would be shifted almost completely. Even if the one thing that bothered her the most wasn't the solved, the many distractions would have made sure the problem was far away from her.

But Anita was forty something. She didn't have a job. She didn't even have a degree. She was six months away from becoming a lawyer when she became a wife. And Anita belonged to the era in which women didn't complete their degrees once they were married. She had two children. Both of them were too involved in their lives to care about her. She had no dreams that were soon to be materialised, no degrees to be completed, no parties to attend, no assignments to finish. All she had was her husband and a marriage that was based on incompatibility that grew every day. 

She belonged to the era in which women didn't leave their husbands, unless the man was a wife beater or a womaniser. Women didn't attend social social events without their husbands. To think that she'd have the courage to strike out on her own was an impossible thought. To think that may be she'd try to seek true love was pushing it too far.

Everytime the sound of her sobs, rings in my head, I think about all the things she deserves, but never got, All the love that was meant to be hers, but never found her and probably never will and how she will be reminded of that each and everyday for as long as she lives. 

As for me, I wish each and everyday I could do something for her, but the truth is, I am just a nineteen year old girl, who harbours the hope that someday with that perfect marriage, I'll watch my life magically transform. And once again the sound of the sobs rise from my subconcious and I wonder if I'm naive or simply delusional.