AND I WAIT, WITHOUT YOU

Remember this brilliant scene in 'notting hill' when theyre all sitting together n discussing whos the biggest loser among them all..?world famous hollywood actress winning the 'loser's brownie' thanks to the loneliness at the top and dietary constraints was pushing it a bit but the concept was fantastic coz its sooo late 1990s..its so identifiable with..its what we do when we're drinking wt our best friends..we dont really discuss sex or careers, bcoz we dont hav glorious sex-capades or shining career prospects..we're all losers n we've all lost out on one thing or the other so we bitch n whine n cry abt our sorry lives...

hav to mention how in awe of british literature, theatre, movies i am simply bcoz theyve managed to convert understatement into un art form..theyre bloody brilliant! i love how its almost going to rain in england, how evrybdys so boring at first appearance n how evrythings so gloomy n hopeless..i think those dark evenings of my childhood must hav sort of set the tone for the rest of my life..i hav no qualms in saying this n i dont care if i sound like johny levr in kuch kuch hota hain...id love to go back to england to study or work or wtvr..i miss that place so bloody much..there atleast u could b lonely n not be the only one..

so its a perfectly pissed off day like alwys n its arnd aftrnoon, so ive just manged to muster enough strenthg n shake off enough sleep to start hating myself agen, wen i find to myself that suddenly i cant. suddenly i hate evrything n evrybdy else more than myself, i find myself blaming the rest of the world for my unfortunate existence. im also a little surprised..so what is my stand now? i hate myself? i dont hate myself? but i hate the world? much like a rockstar who has woken up one morning n found out the bad childhood thing is out, he has to find a new thing, n an albums out in 2 days. haha. fuck u rockstars too. v're all posers. anyway, so here i am in the throes of a rather serious existential crisis, and my friend messages me saying, "im reading this book n i just love this line in it:'in india evrything is recycled. even dreams'" that was just the limit. i mean here i am trying to solve the most important problem in the world, namely mine, and she wants to wax eloquent on a piece of rhettoric trash, the origins or meaning of which im sure mr. tharoor himself has no idea. i mean seriosuly, it doesnt evn make sense.

first of all, nothing is recycled in india, certainly not enuff stuff for breezy generalizations like that. secondly, if its supposed to be metaphorical-and almost anything can be twisted into shape to sound meaningful 'metaphorically'-it still doesnt make sense. what is the metaphor here? thirdly, if what hes trying to say is that our even our dreams are the products of previous dreams or somebody elses dreams, well bit too late for that isnt it? i mean rolling stone magazine said that in the 70's in an article titled "pop will eat itself", a phrase later immortalised by one of the coolest indie bands of all time, of the same name, PWEI. so, yeah culture, art, fiction, evrythng pop, is recycled and made over, yes, mr. tharoor, we get it, very smart, but next time, spare us both the crappy intellectualisation and abstarction of a recycled idea...

later in the evening, when i could take being at home nomore,(tv on at full blast, grand mom lecturing on the lack of spirituality in my life, maid seated happily on the floor in the middle of the lviing room, guffawing at mohanlals antics, phone ringing incessantly somewhere, sis messaging merrily from my mobile, clearly not understanding the concept of 'one-time-favour', a pressure cooker farting in the back ground, somebodys dog chasing the watchman around the lane, an exhibitionist on my coconut tree, showing more than he was plucking) off i went to the british library. how do i describe the pleasure of reading in silence? sheer joy. but all good things r really bad things in disguise so abt an hour later, just as i stretched out n settled comfortably into my now homely chair for another two hours of reading "life isnt all heeheehaha"(not a bad book, i might add, not the same british-indian crap, funny n nice n i nevr like women authors, meera sayyal i think her name was, same woman that wrote 'anita and i' wch i dint read and dont intend to) this couple, a woman and a man, a mole and moustache respectively their most noticeable features, wall me into a human testament to social inadequacy. i have no idea who these people r, where theyre from, but of course i say, 'yes' dutifully to 'u remebr us?" question 2 : "well tell us our names then."

what the hell? what r the chances of that happening really? who in the world asks u what their names r aftr uve just told them with obvious difficulty and blatant dishonesty(im a very unconvincing liar). apparently, these people do. so v play the awkward stare game for like an eternity, and i say, we're not really allowed to talk here, its a library. the end. byebye wierd couple who hang out in libraries together. haha. but wait. theyve got a hand each behind my elbows. before i can scream 'kidnap' im forced thru the glass doors n into the great wide open. noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo i scream silently, why me?! to follow was thirty minutes of conversation about the most interesting of topics, moi. i fended questions abt my future, my past, my present, what i do in my spare time, my skin care regime, why my pants r so loose, are these ur fathers pants, why r ur pants so friggin loose wierd kid, are these ur dads pants, would i like to hav dinner wt them. i spun on my heels n ran..

on the bus random strangers took turns using the ends of my favourite (and only) (and brand new)(theyre off-white and corduroy-material and two sizes too big, a 36)pair of cargos as a foot-mat. poor common people, what wt the rain and all, their slippers mustve been uncomfy wt the dirt n all. i didnt even wince. i just thanked god for the torrential rain(temprture went upto 36 yestrday) threatening to torpedo the bus over and mourned inwardly the rape of my virginal whites. those cargos will nevr be the same again.

mom not home yet(she's here for the weekend, couple of meetings to inaugrate, few meet-the-presses and oh yeah, couple of minutes wit me. yay!!) so i light up a furtive smoke, and her car honks in the background. i chuck the ciggie n attack the loo with my depleted resources of deo, somebody give me a gun. do u know how hard it is to chuck a much-wanted smoke after one solitary drag? its what little george bush must have felt like when he was eight and the aliens that abducted him surgically removed left ball. but seriously, all this crap about bush coming down? personal like or dislike aside, how would we react if a visit of manmohan singhji to any country for that matter was greeted so distastefully by its citizens? we r a country that professes impractical doctrines like 'adhithi devobhava' (a guest is like god) and since nonsensical hindi doctrines and a bunch of assorted sexual positions r our lasting contributions to world history, maybe we should stick by them. seriouly, manners, people!

its 230 am sunday. god, church at nine. mom, grandmom, sis, grumpy driver n me , all of us cramped in bloody lancer. a lorry wouldnt have enough air for all of us to breathe. and obviosuly grandmom will need more air than usual coz my smoking in her loo(my loo, but shes using it now, i pee under the coconut tree, earlier climbed by coconut-tree-climber of exhibitionist tendencies, rembr i mentioned?) has stroked her asthma into full-blown erection agen, plus all the shouting for being late will require lots of excess oxygen. not cribbing but i dont get why its so important that we make it to mass exactly on time. ive been waiting twenty-one years-and -ounting for Him to make his presence felt.