It’s been a really long time since I blogged. And again, so much has been happening around me, which does mean I have less time than before to talk/write about it. But here’s something that has been bothering me for a while, Creativity.

I’ve been told me whole life that I’m creative. Must say I believed that I am what one would call a creative person. But if I think about it, in the last few years, I can’t recall doing anything I would call particularly creative. The day to day tasks of waking up in the morning, getting to office, working, getting home, having dinner and sleeping., and of course a little bit of socialising on the side is just about all I do. Nothing creative there. So where did the creativity go?

Today I watched this fantastic video on TEDTalks about creativity titled Schools Kill Creativity. It’s an easy going, light hearted take on a very serious issue

“We are educating people out of their creative capacities”

I must say to a large part, I was lucky when I was in school. My parents were the sort of people who believed in bringing up well formed individuals and allowed my brother and me to dabble in any artistic activity we were interested in. I experimented with dancing, painting, playing the piano, debating, public speaking, quizzes, singing, sports...What my education system missed out on, my parents more than made up for by being indulging. Hats off to them for having the foresight! By the time I got to college though, the opportunities reduced but did not totally disappear. After college, it just plummeted. As an adult I was suddenly expected to go to work, work, come home and repeat the routine. In my free time, I could hang out with friends, watch movies, eat out or go clubbing. Where did the creativity go!

The video really got me thinking. It’s probably just the way the system is built. It’s quite unlikely that you will be encouraged to be different or to explore your uniqueness. I got a few job offers because my ‘uniqueness’ was identified as a fascinating factor but I’ve been quite clueless as to how to take it from there. It feels as though there is no wide open room for creative adventures at the work place. But for mundane day to day tasks there is indeed a lot of room and definitely no barriers.

"All children are born artists; the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up"

I loathe believing that the creative edge is lost! When I write this blog, I feel like I’m finally expressing myself again. But even then, I wouldn’t call it a truly creative act. It’s more a comment on something I‘ve seen or experienced rather than a brain process that constructs something shiny bright and new. More Reactive than Proactive. Then again perhaps this is actually me being creative and I’m just too hard on myself.

I few days I was using an app to scribble on my smart phone with my finger (isn’t it awesome that you can use your mobile as a digital tablet?) I must say it wasn’t as easy as I had expected A few years ago when I saw my college class notes , overrun with all the sketches I had done, I was amazed at how much I had done and how little I remembered of them. Not just doodles, real sketches. I couldn’t stop sketching. But sitting there, with a cool app at my disposal, I was having Sketcher’s Block. I couldn’t think of anything to sketch. I finally started looking into the comic book my hubby was reading and drawing characters I saw in it. It turned out pretty ok actually, for a finger sketch ;) Here they are


And here’s one out of the blue. That just appeared, out of nowhere. My creative juices expressing themselves on e-paper

And maybe that’s just the key. Do what you used to do, back when you were a kid! Pick up a pencil, crayon, chalk or a smart phone and just draw! Or think of something random, a fictional character you wish existed and just write about him/her/it. Pick up that old guitar or piano or flute and play the songs you used to play. Maybe at first you will wonder why the quality of your work is so childish, but I think if you just keep going, your brain will find a way to rewire itself and before you know it, you will be a Creator par excellence! Just imagine how fantastic it would be if you could just make that breakthrough. Good luck and let me know how you are faring; in the meantime I plan to re –invent the genius in me!

I wish I had words to express the torment angst and frustration within, but I doubt if I can even manage to do justice to how torn up I feel. But as always I’m going to try. If anything can help me, it’s putting my feelings into words

I got a call for a job interview. It’s tomorrow. I know I should be beside myself with delight but what I know is that I can’t have this job. I don’t doubt my ability to talk my way through an interview. I think the job profile is something that really fits my experience too. But the fact remains; I don’t have a job permit. And God alone knows how long it will take before it is finally processed and handed over to me. Till then, even if Donald Trump wants to hire me I still can’t work. As far as I know the interview is for a position that needs to be filled as soon as possible and from the info I have, my permit will take at least 3 more freaking months before it will be done. Not because the papers aren’t in order, not because I’m a criminal in my country of origin, not because I’m an illegal immigrant, but just because that’s just the way the system works.

It’s really killing me. The whole idea of being able and willing to work and instead being forced to sit at home and do nothing! I have been told to think of this as a vacation of sorts, write a book, watch TV, explore, experiment in the kitchen. I tried all of it the last three months, and I’m tired of it. I feel useless, can’t find a reason to justify my existence! For someone who has spent the whole of her adult life earning a steady paycheck, this state of being is really intolerable. I understand if you think I’m egoistic or proud but I really hope you understand how gutted I feel. I really wasn’t mentally prepared for such a long wait.

I can’t spend a single buck without feeling gut wrenchingly guilty about it. I just had a haircut that cost 5 times more than my last haircut in Bangalore. I’m not kidding. I don’t feel I have the right to spend that sort of money. I needed a haircut for at least a month now. I’ve an interview tomorrow and didn’t know any hairdresser I could go to. So I went to the first one in the neighbourhood I could find which looked ok. I have no clue if the cut was worthwhile, because I can hardly stand to look myself in the mirror.

This was followed by yet another attempt to look presentable. Since I spent the last three years following my office’s informal wear dress code, all I have is a collection of jeans, T shirts and party wear. I really needed to get formal wear. So I went to the city, shopping. Probably the biggest mistake I made was to underestimate the cost of everything. Living in Bangalore has really spoiled me. I used to think that things were quite expensive in namma city, but its dirt cheap compared to what I see here. All I needed was a formal shirt. I wandered from shop to shop searching. I couldn’t find anything! Most things within budget looked cheap and translucent, and the few I could probably wear were for people much taller than me. So I ended up with sore blistered feet and no shirt. Really don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow. Then again, why bother, it’s a job I can’t have!

I regret every moment that I took my old job for granted. Every minute that I complained about having to go to office. Every moment that I said I didn’t earn enough. In office, I had friends I could talk to, people to share my thoughts with, to have a cup of coffee with, to brainstorm over ideas with. My job ensured that I would have some money in my bank account. Also it meant that I was counted.

I regret every moment that I thought my friends weren’t good enough. They held my hand when I was down, laughed at my crappy jokes, went with me to the hospital when I melodramatically told them that I was dying, went shopping with me and told me that my boobs are not too big. And always always always were delighted to have coffee and a chat with me whenever I needed them. I miss them more and more each passing day and chatting doesn’t help ease the distance.

Whenever anyone told me that they had moved countries or continents after getting married and it was pretty tough, I always thought that when the time came, I could do it. How hard could it be? It is hard, very very hard. No amount of reassurance from your partner can make you feel any better. If you ever have to make a decision I’d honestly tell you, you would need an extremely high level of maturity and self acceptance than I do to get through this. Well, you can also make it, if you close your eyes, pretend that this is all a bad dream, life isn’t all that serious anyway, and sleep walk through it.

Right now, I would give anything if I could pick up the phone, ask one of my friends to come over and give me a hug, and actually have them come.

If any of you out there are going through the same thing, please let me know that I’m not alone. For the rest, I don’t want advice. Please don’t tell me what to do. Just tell me that you understand me, if you do. 

I tried to get the video on BBC, but it wasn’t viewable. Here's a link to a trailer of the movie on youtube

Video source:Youtube

The basic mindset of most Indian women in an Indian household is so different from her western counterpart that for an outsider looking in, everything would seem like a regular dosages of unimaginable atrocities. But when one understands that for these women, they have convinced themselves that this is life, their life and have much less value for it as compared to that of a man’s, it may make sense eventually. I still feel like an outsider looking in and I’m struggling with what I see.


Image source:blog

Sample this.  A mother living in poverty decides to dedicate her young 3 year old daughter to a temple as a Devadasi because she gets money in return. The girl grows up not knowing that she will never be able to marry and have a family. Her sister’s husband takes a shine to her and offers money to her family to ‘have’ her every weekend. She’s still a child. Her mother accepts and every weekend he forces himself on her. If she refuses, her mother and sister abuse her. He is their source of income, if she doesn’t go, they will starve. In the mother’s words, it was the only way to keep him. The girl is now a woman and does not blame her mother for what became of her life. She understands it. I do not!


Image source:thesprout

Another woman who is a Devadasi, sits beside her boyfriend and says this is the life she chose for herself. She doesn’t have to marry and be a slave to some man and play to the whims of her mother in law. She says she’s a free bird.

Imagine a world where being a prostitute is better than conventional domesticity.

In an interview with the filmmaker, Beeban Kidron, she explains the paradoxical situation in place. She says that if you think of it as a mother selling her child, you will go nowhere. It’s much deeper and even honour-bound. She is selling her daughter for a god. And that’s what complicates it all. She also says that former Devadasi who work as  prostitutes in the city, earn more than the villagers and insist on sending their daughters to school and educating them. They know the freedom an education gives.


Image source:southasia

People here in the West think that Indians are not sympathetic to suffering and poverty. That things like the riots and deaths in Egypt and Libya have no effect on us. I think we are sorely misunderstood. If you think about what the average Indian knows about the issues in our country and the helplessness we feel, you can understand how we can appear so cold. There is just so much injustice out there, almost all of us face it in some form or the other. To go on living, it is necessary to pretend that we don't see most of it. For us, I think, it is just a way of life.

My eyes popped when I saw him on TV, snow lightly dusting his coat and cap, his face calm and serene as he walked down the road, a little smile playing on his face. It was so strange because I was seeing him on TV and in my head I was thinking ‘Oh God! He’s so cute and he’s mine!’ A split second later I was looking at my own face contorted with pure joy and emotion as he went down on his knees asking me to be his. And then there we were in the airport, tired, exhausted but so freaking happy to finally reach our last destination as a married couple. Although the entire clip was over in mere seconds, I was looking at a short tableau of how our lives played out over the last year. And it was actually aired on Dutch national Television.


Sam and Yvonne
 

And here’s how it all began…

Sometime in November 2010, my then fiancé wrote in to the producers of a new TV show ‘Liefs uit...’ (Love from...). The show would be centered around Dutch people who fell in love with a foreigner residing outside the Netherlands. Within a few days they told us that they wanted us on the show.

We were unanimous in our decision to be on the show. The idea of being in the public eye is not something either of us really looked forward to but there was so much we wanted to tell the world and the show seemed to be the best platform for it. It took us almost no time to fall in love and decide to get married. But the whole process of bureaucratic paperwork, enormous fees, tricky tests, arduous waiting, debilitating stress that ensued, and still continues as I type this, felt like a construct of hell itself! It just doesn't make any sense to us. But that’s what you get when you come from two different countries on different continents and think that your Love makes the world flat and border-less. Sadly it isn't as easy as that.

If two people decide that they love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together being partners and contributing positively to society, the government, in our opinion, should not treat them like potential criminals or human traffickers but instead do whatever it takes to help the couple. Call us naïve but that’s how we truly feel. And that’s the message we wanted to get out there.

The show was on its way and we were going to be on it. My fiancé and some of his family members had a few interviews with the TV crew in Holland. And then I was told that they would like to come to India and cover the wedding ceremony in December. All I could think was “no way mom and dad are going to swallow this with ease”. But they were way more sporting than I gave them credit for. And when the crew came down, they not only had shots of my love and I romancing in beautiful Kerala but also my parent’s house, interviews with my folks, the whole hullaballoo of the wedding, and of course became our friends in the process.

On our return to Holland I finally met the show host, Yvonne,  a perky, friendly, adorable lady who is a celebrity in her own right here but has absolutely no airs whatsoever. It’s been fun so far, we have been able to more or less express how we felt about the red tape involved, we’ve promoted love in our own way and managed to be ourselves 100% throughout.


Image: Yvonne courtesy hardvoorjou

The number of meetings with the crew died down eventually and we were beginning to wonder if they lost interest in us, when we got to know from the producer that our show host was going to introduce the show on a talk show she was attending as a guest and that they may show a short clip of us. I was ecstatic! I had never seen any footage of what they had shot and was dying of curiosity! So here’s a rough translation of relevant parts of what went down on the talk show (by me myself so please pardon any unintentional and intentional slips hehe)


Yvonne on the talkshow

Host: So Yvonne what are we here to talk about

Yvonne: I would like to talk about the show Liefs uit. It’s a new show and it is going to be very good. It’s about Dutch people who find love in foreign country and then want to live with their partner in The Netherlands

Host: Are they doing it for you or…?

Yvonne: No no no, they are doing it for love!

Host: Is it like your previous show Boer zoekt vrouw (Farmer finds wife, which is hugely popular and has almost 5 million viewers here) where you bring couples together or…?

Yvonne: The love is already there and we follow these people from Gambia, from Kazakhstan, India and Nicaragua here in The Netherlands

Host: How long have you been doing this?

Yvonne: For months!

Host: And did you go to the foreign country as well?

Yvonne: No I couldn’t because of the Boers show (She couldn’t come to India for the wedding, really sad) but maybe in time I will. But we are looking for more couples

Host: You are looking for more people?

Yvonne: Yes we are looking for more people who are deeply in love and …[interrupted]

Host: Say it to the camera

Yvonne: Where is the camera? Oh there! I am looking for people who are trying to get their big love to the Netherlands right now and I will come to you, whether you want it or not.

Host: Do you have a video?

Yvonne: Oh yes I have it.

[Video starts and ends in seconds. A shot of Yvonne and my lovely hubby, Sam, walking down a snowy road

Yvonne: So now you are going to India in 30 degrees of heat

Sam: Yes in the sun

Yvonne: And then you have a plan?

Sam: Yes I do


Sam putting the engagement ring on my finger

A shot of hubby dearest on his knees proposing to me on a beautiful waterfront at the Bolgatty Palace which was incidentally built by the Dutch. A shot of him putting our engagement ring on my finger. A shot of a random plane in the sky which we have never seen. Us arriving at the airport and met by Yvonne. Oh and she brought a bouquet of lovely white tulips for us! ]

Host: Ok so the show is about couples falling in love and when they come to The Netherlands, you go to Schiphol (airport) and pick them up?

Yvonne: No no no, that is Chinchu, from India and she’s coming to live here. She’s a girl who had it going really good in India, rich family, lots of things, lots of colour and now she is in a flat in Rotterdam

Host: But with her love?

Yvonne: Yes yes, and I’m really curious to know how it will go with them

THE END

And that was our TV debut. The actual show will air only by September. We are not sure about the exact format yet but it looks like it will be fun!

I don’t know for sure if the show will change anything like we hoped it would. Fact is it’s not like no one out there knows how difficult the procedures are, but perhaps people don’t know how hard it really is to actually go through it. And we just hope that through the footage of us and the other couples who are also struggling to make it, there will at least be an open discussion about the laws currently in place.  There would be a reason to question if they need to be as stringent as they are now, or if an alternative way to let the good guys through the security tape, so to speak, can be devised.

Fingers crossed that in the end, all the hassle we went through would be worthwhile and we can indeed make a difference! Hope you had fun reading this, I certainly did enjoy writing it for you. So till we meet again, adios!

1. Open google maps
2. Find your house
3. Locate any nice looking place at a reasonable distance like a cafe, a bookstore, a park, a museum, or a shopping district
4. Figure out how to get there
5. Just go!

Today I was Spellbound. There’s no other word to describe the feeling. Just mesmerized…

The last time I made a Eurotrip, I didn’t get very far on a tourist scale but on a personal level it kick started a wonderful journey, beginning with meeting the perfect man, continuing with a whirlwind romance across continents, rising to a peak with a nuptial bond and now having plateaued to a stable consistent state of bliss. More about that another day another time, but this blog will detail another journey.

I have decided to recommence my tour through Europe, starting with the multicultural hub of the Netherlands, Rotterdam. The last couple of weeks I had taken baby steps, walking through my neighbourhood, looking at classic old buildings, pretty waterfronts with an amazing array of waterfowl, little kiddies having sandwiches on makeshift picnic settings their moms laid out for them in front of their doorstep. Just breathing in a sense and feel of chilled out, non chaotic Europe.

I had decided to visit a museum which was highly recommended by my personal guide, The Lonely Planet called Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. After the initial trepidation of figuring out the route, the trams to take to get there and the trams back home, almost giving up in frustration, I decided to hell with it, its free entry on Wednesdays, I’m just going to go. I can’t begin to say how grateful I am that I did

The tram stopped at Museumpark, and the Museum itself was a minute away. I walked in not knowing to expect. The first thing I was faced with was a pulley operated coat/jacket hanger with a keylock system. You unlock a pulley system for yourself, lower a coat hanger by tugging a rope, drape your jacket on it and then use the rope again to suspend your jacket out of reach and lock it again. Pretty cool!

The first exhibition I walked into was called the Hella Jongerius – Misfit. And misfit it was. A muddling up of your senses as you walk through a huge exhibition room filled with life size sofas displayed vertically on the wall, pottery with embroidery sewn through it, rubber washbasins, sneakers with craftwork on them, lots of drapes and you wonder if you somehow ended up at a housewife art sale. And then you notice this

IMAGE Courtesy Flickr

A human size frog climbing onto a table and you realise that it is much more. Designer Hella Jongerius is a very well known name in the area of industrial design. Her ideas are about how to give factory produced objects a little uniqueness so that they are not random copies of each other. The frog on the table is a reflection of how people like to decorate their tables with artifacts but the decoration itself can have more importance than the artifact. Hence a super huge frog instead of a tiny 2 inchpaperweight.

The next exhibition was the works of Johan Thorn Prikker. I walked in expecting paintings as usual, but I was actually stumped. The sheer diversity and vastness of his expertise was a humbling experience. It started off with stained glass mosaics commissioned to him by the church in the early 1920s. Johan had non conventional religious views and it reflected on his works. Apart from the wall displays there was a darkroom with light shining through individual glass art work. Sample this one

          
IMAGE courtesy Flickr

IMAGE Courtesy Flickr

Christ bearing the cross. You simply have to be in that dark room staring into Christ’s mad raving eyes, it gave me goosebumps. Even the art work was fantastic. Earthy tones dominated many pieces, like this one

IMAGE Courtesy Flickr

The sower. At a height of almost three times my height it’s a huge imposing piece of pure genius. If you look closely, you will notice that the sower from the parables in the Bible has the face of Christ. But the piece below really got me thinking

IMAGE Courtesy Flickr

The Bride with her long veil adorned with flowers that look like skulls and her tiara intertwined with the crown of thorns on Christ’s head. Johan was trying to say something out loud and clear, but I wonder if the Church even understood. He stopped painting for a long time after this work.

I thought I had seen all there was to see but then I was directed to what was named the Exit collection and then had the surprise of my life. Hall after hall filled with the finest works of art through the centuries! From Surrealist works of Salvadore Dali, René Magritte (I’m a huge fan!), Impressionist artists, Italian Baroque artists, works of Paul Reubens, Monet, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Toorop and so much more! I literally sank down onto the sofa staring stupefied at the perfection of a piece of work which was portraiture of a cloth merchant and his wife. Her robe was made of silver silk and I cannot begin to tell you how like a photograph it looked. Here are some of the pieces I saw today

Rene Magritte: IMAGE Courtesy Museum Reproductions



Rene Magritte: IMAGE Courtesy Blogspot



Giorgio De Chirico: IMAGE Courtesy Boijmans


Cornelis van Haarlem: IMAGE Courtesy Boijmans

Finally when I had almost exhausted myself looking at paintings, there were bronze sculptures by the likes of Rodin and Degas that were so intricately made that I couldn't help going on

Degas Little Ballerina in bronze: IMAGE Courtesy Global Gallery

This was followed by displays of pottery, furniture and artifacts owned by rich Europeans at the turn of the century. I had already spent close to 4 hours moving from one piece to another in fervor that I had forgotten about lunch or the fact that I was really tired.  

I finally gave up trying to see everything (pretty sure a huge portion of the museums permanent collection is still left to be explored by me) and moved to the Expresso Bar only to be faces with more artwork on the walls in the style of disjoint comic books. ‘So there was a green nubile teen regurgitating a live pink fox, the decapitated head of a young girl with flowers adorning her head being manhandled by two bright pink hands and a man on a motorbike tossing aside a voluptuous woman in a man’s shirt. You get the idea right?

The art scene here is a complete different story from anything I have ever seen in India. Its either painfully intricate details on almost lifelike stills or mad irreverent non coherent junk that makes you stop and go “Oh!”

Hope you’ve enjoyed this detailed journey as much as I did writing it for you. There is still so much more to explore and I can feel my head buzzing with the drive to get out there and seek visual and sensory pleasures even as I type this. So till next time Adieu!

                                                                                   
                                                                                
                                                                             Courtesy: Edvard Munch

I’m obsessed with the past. Not just mine, everyone else’s as well. It’s a strange obsession that leaves me feeling miserable and uneasy and yet I often linger on anything that has already happened, cannot be undone and can make me feel helpless.

I often wonder if the female brain is pumped up with toxins that direct it to self destructive routes. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s just mine.

I see the absurdity of it all and I can clearly see the positive side of things, for instance the fact that the negative state of events does not exist anymore but it somehow still matters. I think I’m pretty smart, it shouldn’t be this hard to think clearly about things just the way they are. But some part of me, the part that insists that feeling low is the ideal state of being, lures me back to finding ways to make myself sad. I think it makes sense to talk aloud about it. To maybe know that it isn’t just me, that there are more people out there, who think themselves into self defeat mode.

Everyone has skeletons in their closet. I have many, grinding their jaws and popping their knuckles, but definitely not sufficient to live a life of regret. But I do. There are soooooooooo many things I regret; relationships, friendships, decisions, all of which date back even 2 decades ago.

Sample this. Back in 7^th grade, a close friend of mine told me that the Apocalypse was coming. We were all going to die by the end of the year. She quoted the Bible and a number of other things and well, I believed her. I didn’t know that I really did, but looking back it does make sense. My grades fell and I got into crazy escapades I would never have tried if I didn’t think I was going to die along with everyone else. But I didn’t die, I’m still here. My 7^th grade marks don’t matter a tiny bit but I still regret being so dumb. And worse still, I have a huge grudge against the girl who had mislead me. Even now. See what I mean?

And that’s just a chip off the iceberg. I don’t even want to begin with past relationships and the extent to which I have demonized people. I wouldn’t call myself extremely violent, but I can think of a few people whose eyeballs I would tear out if I ever had to meet them again. I do mean literally not figuratively. Of course there are many people whom I have hurt, knowingly or unknowingly, who would have wanted to tear me apart but haven’t been able to or have gotten over it. Wish I could get over all this stuff

It’s hard to live with so much anger, hatred and rebellion all packed into my little frame. But it’s really hard to let go of the demons of the past and just live in the present. Sometimes I find myself really battling with my mind to stay calm and cheerful. I usually loose. Of course I end up wondering which one the real me is, the loud brat who cracks jokes and yaps endlessly. Or the brooding woman who believes she’s being the object of vicious attacks and lives in regret. Maybe it’s a strange and near impossible intermingling of both.

I always want to know about everyone’s past. It’s nothing more than curiosity and a basic interest in people. But I usually regret knowing anything once I get close to the person. Somehow I can turn every fact into a reason to be sad. It’s usually not anger towards a person but a hypocritical need to judge someone. I can’t stand this about myself, because the one thing I always wanted was not to be judged and yet that is how I feel.

They say there are many levels to every person’s personality. Even those who don’t seem very interesting on the outside. I know there’s a dark side of me that I can’t banish forever. But I think talking openly about it, actually admitting to being who I am is the first step. So here it is, plain and clear. Things are going well right now. And I’m blessed with so many amazingly kind, loving friends and a man who loves me for who I am. So I probably am on the road to recovery. Anyway feel free to let me know what you think or even better if you feel the same way. Maybe we can find a way out together. Or maybe just talking about it, will make it worthwhile to live in the present for those of us who hide in the dark alleys of the past.

Well, beats me!

Heard the oft repeated tale that it’s impossible for a guy and a gal to have a purely platonic relationship, unless one or both are gay? I want to take this idea a step further and say it’s really hard for two people not interested in each other sexually to have an engrossing intellectual conversation. I dunno if it’s the case for all you folks out there but it certainly is for me. And I’m not talking about friends here. I’m talking about random people you meet at work, while traveling etc. I think for me, the problem lies in the fact that

·         All the men I meet know that I’m committed (coz I tell them :D) and hence automatically out of the ‘available for dating’ pool. And if they still hit on me, I will judge them.

·         Most of them are from the same sector I am, the software industry, so the discussion invariably turns to the projects they work in and how dumb they think their bosses are

·         I’m not much of a conversationalist when it comes to finding mates for singles (refer previous blog) and the committed ones are surprisingly shy to talk to me about the love of their lives

It feels really hard to make friends with guys. I can count the few men I can have a nice conversation with, over a cuppa coffee, on the fingers of my hand, and as luck may have it almost all of them are miles away from me. With my girlfriends, I can have a ball of a time talking about any darn thing under the sun! We talk about clothes, movies, music, boyfriends, other gals, lingerie, food, emotions, stuff that happens in and out of the bedroom, and sometimes matters of national and international interest. If I try international or national news with a guy, I usually end up with cricket. Please understand me when I say this, I have nothing against cricket (well actually I do but that’s a story for a different time) but the next time I hear someone say “Sachin is a GODDDDDDDDD” I’m gonna do something I know I will regret later.

I think I have a million different stories to narrate and a gazillion interests. I’m sure some of our interests will coincide. If you can’t think of anything to chat about, let me come up with topics. But I really can’t hold it together, if you’re gonna veer it back to which of my friends you think is hotter or worse still how much dowry you can get when you finally tie the knot. I kid you not I was stuck arguing with 3 Telugu guys from my office for over an hour, about how demanding dowry was akin to declaring absence of backbone. They won by sheer force of numbers and the argument that ‘who would say no to money if it’s free’. I would be embarrassed if my parents had to pay a guy and his family to marry me like I was a burden to be gotten rid off at any cost : (

Here’s what I would like. I’d like to meet people, who have a personality, who are not trying to impress me, but rather talking about what interests them, asking me questions about my likes and dislikes. I’d like to discuss political and social views. I’m always curious about what people think about topics like homosexuality, religion, gender biases, child rearing, the glass ceiling, dancing, travel, food, cultures... Anything that you feel strongly about is fine by me. I want to know you for who you really are, not the facade you present to the world. And please don’t hit on me, it feels like an insult. I don’t mind compliments because that’s always nice! But if you’re gonna flirt with even the faintest hope that I will respond in kind, I will avoid any contact with you.

So all you guys out there who feel the same way I do, holler back and let me know how you feel. And if you’ve found a viable solution, I would love to know.

Cheers and have a great week!
The Sunday Tango