750 words: Day 4 – Chapter 1

The hybrid

I am what they call a “hybrid”. It is the least crude of the terms used for young men like me. For the sake of brevity, I’ll have to use less polite terms to describe my origins – my father, a leech and my mother, a fleshling. That I have offended both factions in just one sentence is a testament to my merit as a scribe. Objective and succinct. My editor and those who claim the media is “bought” by the Bloodless would be proud. Although I don’t know how many of these accusers are truly fleshlings with beating hearts and human brains. There are rumours and spurious investigations that assert the Mortals have been infiltrated by artificial intelligence; a swarm of mindless bots, programmed to replicate what’s fed to them by the Authority.

Unions between the Bloodless and the Mortals are rare. Conceptions from such marriages, rarer still, because the Bloodless turn their mates for the “happily ever after” all the way to eternity. My mother remained a Mortal but only until she gave birth to me. As I turn 24 this year, both my parents remain frozen as their 30-something selves. It’s been three years since my age of consent and I still haven’t decided if I want to turn. Every birthday I sit down and weigh the pros and cons of dwelling at the edge of both the worlds. I inherit frailties from both sides of my family – my flesh decays every year, while it sears in contact with silver. That I can never be completely human makes me lean more towards turning. At least that way, I’d belong somewhere. The culture of fleshlings feeling prosecuted by the blood-suckers doesn’t make my life any easier. Every week, I read and report stories of missing nightwalkers, picked up by the Authority for “looking suspicious”. My skin, a blanched, pale grey like my father’s, makes me susceptible too. They dislike half-blood boys even more, because we’re born of “unholy” consummations and are being “groomed to ensnare” human women into turning, just like our fathers allegedly did.

If the consequences of these perceptions weren’t so grim, I’d have laughed at these allegations. My father, a staid bookish man, who’s been practising law for over a century now, is hardly the “ensnaring” kind. It was my mother who discovered him at a night recital of her favourite singer. She took it for romantic happenstance when she ran into him at every performance, thinking they shared a passion for the same music. Turns out, my father was just waiting for meetings with his client from his days (nights) as an entertainment lawyer. By the time she realised this, it was too late for my mother. Perhaps she just associated the dopamine from the melodies with my father’s presence and confused it for love. It was deception of a different kind that magically worked out well for them both. Back then, there was no law against such unions. A stickler for protocol, my father carried out all the formalities and paperwork it took to get legal permits for her turning too, when she made up her mind about it. Considering the penalties placed on mixed marriages now, it was a wise decision.

There are many advantages of turning for me too. But I know Papa isn’t one to force it upon me. Just like he didn’t force his vocation on me. Although he does express chagrin over not being able to bequeath his 100-year legal expertise to his only offspring. I suppose having my own law practice would be a more sensible lifestyle if I chose to be a nightwalker. Being able to operate only after dusk is inconvenient for a reporter. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

As for now, I am soaking up as much sun as I can. If and when I cross over, it will be this that I miss the most – glorious, burning, radiant sunshine that my parents long for. I’ve seen my mother fondly “smell” the sunlight that faintly lingers on the laundry she puts out to dry just before sunrise when she brings it back up after dusk. I am glad I made the most of this, the most precious of human pleasures, for a large part of my childhood. I played cricket with my daywalking friends after school every single day, until a new kid “warned” them about me. I stopped the day they all started wearing silver-studded shoes to protect themselves.

750 words: Day 3 – So why Fawad Khan

The short answer is that I saw Fawad Khan for the first time on TV when I came of age in a girls’ school – I did not know that’s not what regular boys looked like. My next two years in a co-ed highschool were a rude shock (olive branch to boys – we too had hoped we’d grow up to look like ethnically ambiguous Megan Fox. Such is life). The next 8 years were spent navigating IIT coaching class, engineering school and a core company – the least glamourous of campus placements comprising manufacturing jobs. Our youth, as a group, is no Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or Student of The Year. Every movie about life as an engineer has a minimum of one suicide. As B.Tech students, our collective priority in the 2010s was to get into Georgia Tech or Microsoft – whatever was closer to the resumes dotted with MUN stints and IEEE memberships (I was in SAE).

Back to Fawad Khan. In 2004, our military engineering campus cable operator “stole” a Pakistani TV channel called ‘The Musik’. It was also the year Strings released their third album Dhaani with a track that was featured in the Asian edition of Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 2 soundtrack. They ruled. Revisits to Duur and Sar Kiye worked as a vehicle for Jal and Jilawatan, Fakir and Fuzon, Call and Coke Studio to make it to the airwaves here. Ali Azmat was already a thing here and I am surprised that in spite of his relatively “extreme” (he rules) sound, he was a permanent fixture in Bollywood. And yet, Entity Paradigm (EP), who shared their guitars and vocals with the very popular Call did not make it here. I was thankful to ‘THE’ Musik for introducing me to them by playing Hamesha every single hour. I am not a music journalist so I will not dwell on the sound and vibe of EP, but I will have you know that their lead vocalist Fawad Khan insisted that you don’t call them “NU Metal”. This, I know, from the interviews and profiles my 14-year-old self pored over. All that it took to spur this curiosity was the red-filter goth music video that failed to do justice to every member of a band that was the size of half a nation. But you can see enough of Fawad Khan. India took 10 years more to wake up to him. 14-year-old me was ahead of her time. You people even missed this stunning man in the breakthrough Indo-Pak collaboration called Khuda Ke Liye too. You can’t blame me for laying claim to him now.

The details that a fandom has on its fingertips feel embarrassingly intimate. But then, we also insist we know God after one reading of an ancient text of dubious origin. So I’ll take the liberty to say that the Bollywood-ised Fawad Khan is different from the 2000s. The software engineering-grad metalhead seemed a lot more angsty than the soft-spoken version I’ve been seeing in the Film Companion-like interviews. I guess we all grow out of the rebellion. In my case, though, I grew into it. With 95% in my boards and on my way to engineering school, I found the path of least resistance when it came to family expectations. I stuck to that path for 8 years more. Listening to Strings and Jal, and loving Fawad Khan was the only rebellion I knew. Dad served for 23 years and he didn’t mind listening to Ghulam Ali, but I know me replacing Arjun Rampal with Fawad Khan made him a little mad. That was payback for subtly nudging me towards engineering, Government service and structure – none of which I commanded natural gifts for. My resistance and politics have been Fawad Khan, long before 2016 when the incel-panic led to chants of “Go back, Fawad.” I know it’s incel-panic because it’s never “Go back, Adnan Sami.” No disrespect but nobody is afraid their teen daughters will desecrate their scholastic softboards with pictures of the Lift Karade singer.

In July 2020, when the thing that happened happened, I took refuge in Fawad Khan. I came online everyday only to post his pictures. That my name is synonymous with his is no accident. I made it happen. Because I learnt from Mad Men (I learn everything from TV) that “if you don’t like what they’re saying, change the conversation.” Fawad Khan is the leading theme of everything I broadcast and that’s fine with me. May he live long and prosper. In his own words, “Main rahunga hamesha.”

750 words: Day 2 – It takes audacity to write fiction

For the second day of this mindfulness exercise (wherein I have to commit to writing 750 words every day or else I lose my mind), I was planning to get ambitious. Ambition and grand vision are the greatest enemies of writing. I thought I could easily slip back into writing fiction like I used to, regularly. Unfortunately, I no longer command the arrogance of a 21-year-old with yet another unique take on the “it-was-all-a-dream” premise. Ideas weigh you down once you learn that you can monetise them. And you start to dethrone the ones that don’t put food on the table. In 2017, I took up a job where the merit of each of my thoughts was measured by “Yeh viral jaayega kya?”. I lasted all of four months there. That’s the baggage I carry as a writer now.

I’d like to believe there is hope. Plenty of inspiration to be found in accounts of how men like Vishal Bhardwaj decided to tell their weird stories anyway. We’ve been taught that in order to get a project green-lit, we have to make it sound like something that’s been done before. For instance, Nic Pizzolatto would have had to pitch True Detective as a mundane “procedural with two buddy cops hunting down a serial killer.” Only those who’ve watched the series can know what poor justice that logline does to the story. I’ve always wondered what Vishal Bhardwaj’s pitch for his debut, Makdee sounded like – “Blood-sucking witch. Missing children. Indian village. Also, twins.” Anurag Kashyap’s Last Train To Mahakali (1999) was another strange tale that would raise eyebrows at OTT headquarters today. “Doctor on death row claims to have discovered a cure for virus-based disease but actually uses it to kill people painlessly.” I can feel Netflix executives sweating in the palms (“Can we just do a second season for Bollywood Wives?”)

My favourite from this era, though, was Aks. It’s definitely not a fair addition to the list, because it’s not original. The plot is lifted from Fallen and Face Off. But I still wake up every other day picturing how they convinced very mainstream, very staid Amitabh Bachchan and Raveena Tandon to star in a “supernatural action thriller” (I don’t imagine Manoj Bajpayee dithering) back in 2001. Hollywood inspired plots were not uncommon. But Baazigar (A Kiss Before Dying), Murder (Unfaithful), Aitraaz (Disclosure) and others Indianised the setting and the characters, and inserted the morally correct ending to season the fare for audience back home. Aks stood out like a sore thumb in this sea of pirated adaptations. It was heavily stylised, carrying this neo-noir Dark City aesthetic that seemed out of place in the Indian context – it was nothing like we’d seen before. They didn’t cut corners with the music either. They went overboard, actually. And I loved every bit of it. Every frame from Aks looked like it was straight out of a graphic novel, long before graphic novels were a thing for us Ambala kids in the early 2000s.

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra made Rang De Basanti later in his career. But it’s Aks that feels like the film that took audacity to make. I am all for making political statements through art. But I have a soft corner for people who insist on seeing the final product of their craziest ideas all the way to their execution and release. It takes a special kind of courage. I know this because today, at exactly 10:30pm, I sat down to write a short story and it frightened me so much, I stalled for about three hours. I’ll hold back on this space for a few more weeks. Every once in a while, I’ll listen to Yeh Raat from Aks and take solace in the fact that, at some point in his life, Rakeysh Omprakash went over to Raveena Tandon and said, “Look, this is some kind of post-apocalyptic nightclub and you, Miss Tip-Tip-Barsa-Pani, will be playing vamp to this serial killer-black magic dabbler we call Raghavan.” And then I convince myself that asking an influencer to smile into the camera for “Happy Branded Content Mubarak” is practice for a day like that. Until I find the audacity to write the stories I want to tell.

It’s not a stretch to say that Aks paved the way for the shortlived era of very stylish action thrillers. Musafir, Kaante (Desi Reservoir Dogs), Zinda (a shameless retelling of Old Boy). But without the supernatural element that makes Aks the delightfully, audacious bit of cult-y cinema it is.

750 words: Day 1 – Melancholia

I am supposed to write 750 words everyday. Over the last one year, I tried to explore what I must do to keep myself afloat and it seems, the secret to happiness is an endless cycle of very pointless activities one must repeat, day after day. Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel your feet touching the ground. Spend time outdoors, only to come back inside again. Travel, only to come back home. Express gratitude to a cold, listless universe.

I wouldn’t dive into the details of what’s “wrong” with me but I have a certificate and a formal diagnosis ready to explain why I sometimes disappear, switch off or disengage entirely. I am going to refer to this as the perpetual, Infinite Sadness that hangs over my head, and of all the subjects I speak, write and joke about, this Infinite Sadness is the one that makes me most uncomfortable. I deferred this “mindfulness” writing exercise because, as with most pointless activities to unlock happiness, my mind shuts down, and I decided I’d watch Melancholia until inspiration strikes. I am only 63 minutes into the film and I’ve paused it just so I can pen down my first 750-word piece and kickstart this exercise with why I need to carry it out in the first place. If you want to know more about Lars Von Trier’s cinema, there are plenty of places to read about it. This, over here, is not it.

What hits homes about the Infinite Sadness portrayed in Melancholia is the sheer selfishness of it all. There are too many dishonest depictions of very hot, very tragic people, being gaunt, selfless and heroic in their melancholy. That these people are poorly socialised, is a grand lie lesser movies usually sell to you. My friends and I, from the Great Infinite Sad, comics and non-comics, are all very gracious, gregarious people on the surface and you’ll want us at your parties. Kirsten Dunst’s Justine in Melancholia nails that part. But she takes breaks. Plenty of them. Those moments she steals away from what is supposed to be the happiest day of her life feel very personal. They reminded me of all the times I’ve walked out immediately after seemingly successful shows and parties. I don’t draw energy from large groups and that’s inconvenient if both your professions depend on commanding the attention of people – during a show or a pitch. And that need to be alone immediately after feels like you are being thankless. God knows there are countless people not as lucky as me to have jobs they actually like doing. And I have two. One that pays occasionally, but it matters to me because I love it. And yet, at its most high points, I am far from ecstatic. The high of a good night is short-lived because the Sad rushes to the surface and then there is the vicious circle of berating oneself for not feeling as happy as one is expected to be.

The brief scenes between Justine and her brand-new husband Michael brought back memories that I have been ashamed to admit – and such thoughts are few and far between for people like me who’re usually mining trauma for “content”. It’s just a lot easier to maintain the funny narrative of being the toxic ex in a relationship. Comedy doesn’t allow me the luxury of detailing as to why I am the toxic ex. I lie awake at night – after the meditation, the gratitude affirmations, the hot baths, the sound baths, the Tibetan singing bowls. I’ll drop off the face of the Earth and zone out for ages and you won’t know what you did wrong. The whole time, there is guilt that washes over me, about not being “grown-up” enough to carry out the duties of a significant other. There are good days too, sure, and that’s exciting to look forward to, but it’s exhausting. And you’re never sure of why I won’t feel joy and you get tired of blaming yourself for it, while I feel like I am being criminally ungrateful.

It’s been 9 years. It’s ironically a twisted form of indulgence where indulging parties don’t really enjoy themselves. They mope about in bed. They cancel plans. They cut off good friends. I’ve got a set of rules that I try my best to adhere to – I don’t cancel shows, I honour commitments and I’m honest with friends and colleagues. It helps. Just like this seemingly pointless exercise of hitting the magical 750-word count.

The Obsoletes

The writers are the worst. They continue to do it even when we strip them of their instruments for the customary month of reformation, until they face the firing squad. Literally all of them spend that month carving words on to their walls with shards of concrete that chips off the ceilings of their decrepit cells. And it is always an uninspired variation of a “fuck you” addressed to The Authority – and they all unanimously think they’re each so original and special.

The Authority came out with The Decree of Elimination about 3 years ago. We tried the wind mills and the solar powered cars but then the Sun gave way. So now the only choice we were left with was the Elimination of the Obsoletes – If your vocation is obsolete in this new world where survival is all we do, you no longer belong here. There is some hope for these artists, writers, comedians and business graduates if they qualify for the Rehabilitation Programme during their reformation period. The flautists make for great carpenters. I suppose they try to learn the craft to build their own flutes. Because we broke all the flutes. The world is out of food, water and oxygen – flutes are not a priority. The business graduates have no marketable skills so they’re usually eliminated.

Interestingly, the origin of the Decree of Elimination did not originally occur to The Authority. The thought, neatly summarised in one line, was part of a comedian’s set titled Population Control.

We had to kill him anyway. He was a lousy mechanic.

How to quit smoking

Over these last 16 months, I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with menthols. You keep trying to quit but you’re so anchored to the habit that you forget the exact circumstances that compelled you to start in the first place.

I didn’t begin in college like everyone else – my peers were mild, genial people who remained dispassionate about the vices I did or didn’t subscribe to. My pretty new fling with them menthols began when I decided to make a habit of swinging by the tea stall outside my office building in Bombay, roundabout 5pm, everyday. The agenda for those olen ten minutes was simple – to watch Him triumphantly ride out of the office garage on his Duke, to forget for a while that all the things I aspired for were not really within my circle of control, influence and concern.

I quit Bombay but I didn’t quit the menthols. It graduated from the 5pm ritual to the now more frequent pauses in my day. Pune allows you to take these liberties. I can’t put a number to it, but I had started to purchase entire packs.

March comes to a close and we’re already past the point where all I can quit is pretending that I am sticking with my New Year’s resolution. I have cut down though. Close, but no cigar.

 

Obligatory Valentine’s Day post

12:14 am When do you get done with work?

12:15 am When it gets over

 

Strike one for tonight. I will have to pay for that one.

No, actually. Not after tonight. I’ll text again and tell him I’ll be done by 1am.

The response is a distant, colourless “OK. Awesome.”

His callousness is easier to deal with than his usual dismissal of me.

How hard can it be? Small baby steps. 12:45, I switch off my system and down my Red Bull. 12:50, I go to the ladies’ room to refresh the lipstick. Okay, no refreshing of lipstick tonight. Also. . . where is my tube of Manic Red? Cotton Candy will have to do for now. Oh right, no lipstick. 12:55, I take the elevator to the basement. 1am, I spot his car. 1:05am, I walk up to the car while replaying the points in my head.

One. The hours – mine, not his.

Two. The travelling – his.

Three. Age.

Mostly, age. Note to self – find suitable euphemism for ‘old’. Three reasons should be enough. Things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers.

On nights like these, he drove a hot red hatch with an apologetic ‘L’ taped to the windshield. “I see The Missus is learning how to drive,” I had joked the first time he came down to pick me up in it. He’d laughed. It was strike one for that day but he had laughed.

“Nah. . . She just drives like a maniac – the sign keeps the road clear of her. I like to drive it once in a while too. It’s a good change from the Fiat.”

With that initial acknowledgment of her, I got inside the dark little cabin for the first time. That cabin laid out in piano black and distracting red luminescence. That cabin steeped in pine and menthol. That cabin I did not belong in. Point number four trumps all. Even the sacred Comedy Rule of Three.

I hadn’t found enough to read about her (she was the last of the untraceables on the Interweb) so I pored over everything ever written about her ride. There were numbers – 150 horses, 136mm, 7 inches. What remained with me though was the way the 150 horses felt from the bucket seat upfront. Seats that were meant to wrap around you to make you feel ‘cosseted’. Except, I didn’t feel ‘cosseted’ as much as swallowed in by them. I thought of the 136mm every time it hit a pot hole that somehow never seemed to dislodge the driver while I felt every inch of the road. And the 7 inches came to mind every time the screen lit up with her name on it – her phone still synced.

But for twenty-one months, I had fought my way through the cold exclusion of the little bug of a ride. I am mulish like that. I made room for myself in there, without disturbing the space around me – I’d never had to adjust the seat because when she was in there, she drove it. I ignored my knowledge of the contents of the glovebox – a zippo lighter, a bottle of Nina Ricci and a tool kit – hers, not his. It was almost as if I held my breath, elbows raised, back frozen stiff to avoid contact with my immediate surrounding until we got out of the car, where I could focus on everything else. On the scar running down his jawline. On the way my shoulder blades shifted under his gaze. And all the stiffness melted away.

But twenty-one months is where we put a cap on all of that melting mush. I wish I could have phased this out and ‘transitioned’ but this will have to be done in one fell swoop. “Hello, I no longer wish to play third wheel and so, will have to withdraw. We will terminate all contact from here on. This has been great and I wish you well for all your future endeavours.” Very brisk and business like.

———————————————————————–

It’s 1am and I can see it already, parked across the street and ready to go with the lights on high beam. I have to look cool and listless as I walk towards the forbidding red thing, so I am just going to browse through my Instagram like my life depends on it. Don’t look up and search for the scar. Not tonight. If he’s watching me, I can’t tell because my shoulder blades aren’t doing their thing.

I get into the seat upfront, my eyes fixed on the phone. Should I say something? No, just wait for the car to start and let the cabin inspire me. I am just about to buckle up when the car lurches into movement – my phone slips into the side of the seat, my head hits glass. I decide that my first words to him tonight are going to be, “Dick move!”

I can barely get the words out when the car bounces off a road bump and my teeth come crashing on my tongue. This isn’t the mild-mannered, precise driving I’m used to. I don’t need to look to my right to know who’s at the wheel tonight. I decide to look anyway and take in the manicured hands at the steering, the shoulder length hair ironed to geometrical perfection, swinging with each sharp swerve of the wheel and sunglasses which she’s pulling off by night. Mind you, it’s all shaky and frantic from where I’m sitting so excuse me if my descriptions are hazy from here on. But I am pretty sure I’m inhaling a lot of menthol and Nina Ricci from here. And it’s not doing any favours to my gut.

I am going to try and buckle up again. Ok, it’s no point, really. We’re snaking across a straight empty road. Oh wait. There it comes – a curve right ahead and yes, she’s flooring the gas as she closes in. Alright, she’s stepped off it. Is she going to pull up here?

Umm. . . no.

Thought as much.

It’s not like I’m expecting a nice and slow climb up the speedo, but this is sudden death. We’re up a slope now. And we’re bottoming out. So is my stomach.

Now we press downhill with short sharp bursts of brake input – hello dashboard, meet chest.

Now instead of hugging the road, we’re skidding off dirt. Have you taken sporty rides off-road? You should try it.

Hello bile, meet mouth.

Just as I my guts are about to give in, we come to a screeching halt. Doors unlock. That’s my cue and I take it. No questions asked.

I don’t as much as descend from the car as I tumble out of it. With the same sudden death-like start, she’s off again. I take a moment to retch as much as I can, hands and knees on the ground. That Red Bull was a bad idea.

I’m barely done when I hear the engine revving again. 150 horses, my mind recalls, pointlessly. As the blinding high-beam hits my eyes, I can hear her circle around me. This time, I can feel my guts. Sinking.

She staggers to a halt for only a moment, rolls down the window, only to throw out what I’d like to call ‘a message’, and she’s off again.

In front of me, lying in a pool of sick of my own making, is my half-empty swivel tube of Manic Red.

 

The Monday Open Mic night distress call

I’ve been staring at a blank screen for the last 45 minutes and I’ve just realised it doesn’t flow as profusely as it used to.

I don’t know why this has happened. Something is jammed in between those little cogs that used to rotate quite freely earlier – with content both good and bad. I’ve produced/created/built nothing of value since the last nine days I’ve stepped back into Bombay.

Monday Open Mic was the usual with the regular hits and misses and nothing I’ve added in the name of new ‘material’ works. You keep trying and trying and trying – until one person in the crowd yields. One laugh, that ‘catches’ across the rows and then turns into a wave – apparently everyone enjoys the irony of the term Protestant Bhaiya – it’s almost an oxymoron to them. I don’t even find it funny. I just say it because it’s a crowd pleaser. There, I said it. And all the thoughts I find honestly hilarious die a natural death on that little stage and you kill the remainder – each one of them individually – during that walk of shame from the stage back to your seat.

My skin is a lot thicker than it used to be. For example, it’s now become easier to admit defeat. The thickness of my skin has even transcended to other spheres of my life – yes I am pathetic and I implore you to approve of me and I am going to keep trying until you look at my work and casually say, “Not bad”. Yes I like you and I know it’s not going to happen and I know about her but can we please be adults and set this aside for the time being because this world, right now, is greater than you, me and her.

Peter Griffin (look him up yourselves) once told me that stage fright keeps you honest. Except it’s not fright anymore. It’s plain resignation. It’s not that I ‘tank’ completely or I ‘kill’ in the Xircus. It’s a lukewarm – oh-we-just-got-that – response, that doesn’t exactly seize the room. Nor does it warm you up from inside. Today I am lying awake wondering why I continue to put myself through this every Monday night. I am also looking at the grainy footage of the trainwreck that my ‘set’ was today and the Instagram images that are less than flattering.

I took a shot at relating the Exodus to a Bandra gathering today – I know the comedian community is already filled with Yehowah’s people and I am sure as hell a tonne of them have taken on the books of Moses. But after a reading of the Old Testament at home (Uttar Pradesh is knee-deep in religious fanatics and my mother is no exception – I still love her to bits and I won’t have her any other way), I was starting to wonder if the Jews they speak of in the Bible are painted as (I choose my words very carefully here – take note) a little bit brat-ish. Again, it’s the character portrayal I am looking at, not commenting on the true nature of our Hebrew brethren. I shall continue to explore this thought because even if I can’t get them to yield – the thought is still mine and because it occurred to me, I shall continue to explore it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to watch one hour of a really bad print of Crimson Peak before going off to bed. Tom Hiddlestone is the new Colin Firth and this is the closest thing to Jane Eyre right now.

 

Here’s what your stalker does, every night

If you’re wondering what your stalker does every day at around a quarter past midnight, this little post will perhaps help you understand what’s going on at the other end of the line. And if you’re a post-millennial stalker in denial, then this would be an extremely helpful guide to identify the habit. And do nothing about it.

If you, at any point, find yourself lurking on a particular profile online, more often than the others, then congratulations, you’re one of us. At this time, you have perhaps just made yourself some hot cocoa – because the coffee stimulates your senses and keeps you up all night – wanting, craving, coveting. And now you sit down on your bed and switch on your laptop – because the binoculars are useless from 50 yards away and you’ve evolved past the point of blank calling. What are you, 12?

No, you log in and find that new picture – not that display picture in your newsfeed– that’s for noobs. You dig deeper – you go to ‘photos’ and then, ‘albums’ and discover that ambiguously titled set called ‘Random clicks 2011’ and then click and click and click until you find those two pictures – back to back – that are simply perfect. You don’t discover anything new about a face and form you’ve memorised so well. It just confirms and is proof that what you see in him is real and has been documented. For you to come back to and look at whenever you want to.

Do not react to the several calls to action – you aren’t even moderately tempted to do that – what would be the point of that? Just scroll down to the comments section and let it direct you to her profile. Go and discover whatever you can of her – she’s pretty but you’re convinced that she’s compensating for it somehow. No, great collection of boots, has travelled to Auckland, Berlin and Budapest this year and holds a degree in Astrophysics. You’re starting to feel small now. Let it sink in. Soak yourself in this knowledge and go press the back button – repeat until you find Random Clicks 2011 again. Click-click-click. Right click and save image in a hidden folder titled My Secret Box of Hate. Make sure you’ve saved the one in which he seems to directly stare at you. Allow yourself to feel the butterflies. No, you can’t just summon them at will.

Now get back to rewriting that post from last night – but first, go through his blog one more time. Re-read and memorise some more. The last time he cooked asparagus, or played football in the rain (with pictures), and how many times he’s seen A Street Car Named Desire and his results from the Jung Typology Test. Take the test again and again, until you match his type. Now go back to your post and make a sly reference to it – sure he’ll get it.  He can take it. Can he?

Now get into your car and switch to high beam when you drive past his house – he knows it’s you. He has an inkling but it’s not much to build on. Go home now. It’s 6 am and it’s another night you spent on him. Now pick up your phone. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. Left. Always, left.

The next day when you run into him – walk past and don’t make eye contact. That’ll teach him. Oh, shoot, the butterflies are back.

 

 

Unhooked: Day 10 – Throwback Thursday and a mammorial

Customary click bait: This is Leo with bra

New to the Unhooked series? Click on #NoBraDay and scroll all the way down because that’s where it all begins. Yes, it’s in descending order and detrimental to your trackpad. The elves are fixing it. 

The elves at Santa’s Little Workshop are currently in the mystic Orient, attending some toymakers’ convention knee-deep in rides and robots. So that leaves me with some extra scrubbing and polishing to do back home. Hence the 48-hour gap.

Since I decided to surrender all the underwires, I’ve had to sift through my drawer back home to look for my older, less stinging alternatives. And there they were, tucked right under my ancient size-36 jeans, relics from my pre-underwire/strapless/meshwork days (that complemented the jeans) – the Conical Bras. For the uninitiated, the Conical Bra is the gateway bra for over an estimated 80 per cent of middle class adolescent women in this country. Sure, you’ve heard (or seen) that most of our mothers start us off on the sports bra. Well, those are the fancier ones among us – the ones who take ballet lessons or at least, have someone they’re showing the bra off to, at 13.

I remember the first time my mother decided it was time for me to go bra-shopping. It was at the swimming pool at CME, Pune where Mrs Gill had gone up to my mother and slipped in a little comment about how quickly I’d grown up – put forth elegantly with just a slight hint of sly that only a thouroughbred fauji wife can muster at will (The Army Wife is a strange cross between Julie London and Zora Sehgal). To the growing 12-year old me, this was just a reprise of the old, hackneyed ‘kids-they-grow-up-so-fast’. Apparently not.

The gravity of the statement hung heavily on the way back while I sat in the car and my mother drove on, stern-faced and ominously silent. To this day, I cannot bear a gap in conversation – it’s like this empty space I constantly feel the need of filling up with anything. “So I’ve been prepping for the half-yearlies, but I think I’m already done with most of the portion (that’s St-Mary’s-Speak for syllabus) because of the August unit tests- remember the August unit tests where I aced 8 out of 11 subjects?” Just anything at all. I considered bringing up the July unit test but it wasn’t as sparkling as August. Mother, who prefers silence over a lot of other things, decided to break the retelling of Little Grimy’s Unit Test Adventures with a subtle and sensitively articulated, “I think you should now start wearing a bra.” A life-changing decision, yes – but why did it sound like a sweeping declaration of my betrayal? Again, my radar, sometimes picks up imaginary signals and susceptible to much melodramatic interpretations and rotations. At 13, you take yourself rather seriously.

So off to the store it was. I knew it wasn’t yet time for Chantilly lace and detachable satin straps. But the thinly padded tee-shirt bras held a lot of promise. And they came in vibrant purples, pinks and blues. But mother was going to have none of it. Without so much as a sweeping glance across my shoulders, the store lady determined my band and cup size which mother confirmed with a nod. And mother simply pointed at the rack (the kinds used as storage units in shops. . . sheesh) at the far-end – that’s right gentlemen, a woman with her mind made up at a garment store. And the next thing I knew, I was ushered into the changing stall, with three rectangular boxes – each bearing a model who must have made the cover of Sarita and Saheli every other month in the 90s (the millennial covers have upped the ante).

So what does the conical bra look like? Well, exactly the way it sounds – pointed, contoured and well, conical. The conical bra has all the volcanic sex appeal of a parked Maruti Celerio – the CNG variant, not even the diesel kind. But with safety equipment to rival a Volvo – with cotton shoulder straps as wide as your thumbs and four hooks, it’s a fortress that would make second base as good as Everest Base Camp – you need tools and fortitude to get past that. And from there one, it’s only uphill. The choice of colours, of course, is eclectic – white, black and taupe. And fabric – cotton, cotton and yes, cotton too. Stuff of wet dreams, ain’t it?

And this was my initiation into womanhood where my breasts entered a room before the rest of me. Each held firmly in place but polarised from its twin – like they weren’t on talking terms with each other because each pointed in a different direction. Hello Uniboob, meet your match in awkward teenage brassiere malfunctions.

I wanted to protest. How was one to counter mother’s very rationally put arguments in favour of the offending article, citing comfort, support and shape? “But I don’t want THAT shape, mother. . . and not THAT colour either.”

Of course, mother killed the discussion with the mother of all comebacks – “Who’s going to see it?”

There’s no correct response to this, so you strap on for the next five years until you discover rainbows, sunshine and Bandra.

Special thanks to Leo – who rocks the pink bra a lot better than his bedfellow in this #randomclick. And Avijit Pathak who you must all agree, has great street cred.

Another camera-phone user who posts random clicks on WordPress and Instagram – we need more of those, yes. What will she shoot next? Cups of coffee with floating foam shapes, captioned #cappuccinolove? Silhouettes of her own shadow, editted in black and white, hashtagged #nofilters? Videos of falling rain outside her window #monsoon #rainyday #indoors? Who knows. Follow this spinster to find out more (It’s the grey Follow button on the right hand corner). Scroll down to share it on Facebook and Twitter. Don’t do it. No, please don’t. Enough already.