The Hangover

Yes, yes, this article is inspired by a hangover quite rightly as the name suggests. And I never saw it coming. Now like all people I am of the opinion that I am some sort of a superhero who can take any amount of stress, strain or alcohol.

Believe you me, though most people shall not consider it important to mention or even acknowledge, this is the case. But I am more upfront about the entire thing. This is a weakness all human beings are born with.

So there I was on a fun evening with two very special friends at Xrong Place, Calcutta. No, do not give me a spell-check on that dear, it is pronounced "wrong" but spelling begins with an "x" denoting a cross or quite simply one of the last letters of the alphabet.It is a metaphor for wrong, a simple and pretty metaphor. Anyway this was my first time there so I was amused.

Now I do not know how it came to be, was it the totally wacky sense of humour on the table that night or the almost dark lights, or the oh-so-to-die for sausages, or something else that led me to take a couple of strong drinks( Ok I am not mentioning how many, because the number is apparently demeaning, but I should get the edge of not being a very seasoned drinker!). At this point I was perfectly fine, I was clicking photographs, making merry jokes and laughing at jokes as well.

It was when I stood up to visit the washroom that suddenly the guy at the other table with the beer bottle seemed to be doing a somersault. Now, given a normal situation people do not perform somersaults in restaurants. So I concluded, this guy must not be doing this, but I am seeing him do it. The entire bloody room seemed to be swimming. There were waves, and the tables and chairs and people were all swimming. At this point I just sat down and declared "Guys, I don't think I am feeling great" ; to which my jolly friends replied something, I do not know what.

I remember some talk of a drive which I refused. Then I was home. I remember I talked excessively. Definitely by my standards. There were too many things going inside my head.

Do not talk so much, Ma will get it that you are drunk.

Talk, at least it's making you feel better.

Why on earth is the TV not on the table?

Ok, I am not feeling good.

May be I should have some water...

Man, this is not happening to me, this can't be.

Anyway so I went to sleep, thinking this shall be the end. However this was not the end. I woke up, perspiring at 3 in the morning, thirsty. If I have to point out one day when I have really understood what feeling thirsty meant it was this day. I must have drank an entire bottle of water and yet I could feel a desert right from my navel to my throat, one long arid road which could do with a monsoon.And a nauseating stench from my mouth. Yuck! Went and caught a sandwich at 4. Thank God my mother was asleep at this time, fast asleep.

Next day, office, I wake up with a bad bad headache. So this is the stuff hangovers are made of! I needed one good bath in cold water on a winter morning to at least feel human again.

crescent in the sky

I saw the solar eclipse. I was told not to. But I donned my sunglass and looked at that brilliant diamond ring, prettier that any mortal rock can ever be.

The excitement all round was palpable. Be it a man of science or an illiterate brute, every soul was caught up in the sheer joy of looking upon the marvelous drama being enacted in the high skies.

I remember in 1996, when I was in school, Calcutta viewed a total solar eclipse. Oh! that excitement, that adrenaline rush, that almost orgasmic beating of the heart when I held up a photograph negative against my eye and in the middle of the day the sun was nowhere to be seen. There were mixed reactions ranging from gasps of enthusiasm to heaving of terror among the numerous neighbours of mine all of who had gathered on their terraces to witness the phenomenon like us.


The only other time I have perhaps felt close to something like that would be while snorkeling in the Andamans. Swimming among the corals and actually touching the colourful schools of fish was a huge high.


What is it about that crescent in the morning sky? Is it our habit of seeing a circle in it's place or is it our God-fearing hearts or something greater than this universe which strikes such awe?

Rocket

Stray dogs are not necessarily my favorite animals. Actually I am quite uncomfortable around any sort of animal, wild or domesticated. Like, I absolutely detest cats. I think they are wily, crafty and sly beings who are always up to some tantrum or the other.

There is this sad looking black dog in front of my office which had a pup a couple of months back. As is true with the little ones of all species, the puppy was excruciatingly cute. A small bundle of black and white, a tiny snout with a brilliant pink nose, a pointy tail wagging all the time and a milky paunch. My office colleagues readily adopted the tiny vermin feeding it tit-bits at all times. Sometimes it was a biscuit or a loaf or something else. And as is true with all adopted creatures, the dog was also given a name: Rocket.

Now Rocket played with my friends all the time. Any chance that the guys would get to escape to the smoking zone; they would sneak out and play with Rocket. Rocket could be seen rolling on the road at the direction of someone’s shoe, or run up to another if he whistled. Soon he acquired different skills and my friends were more than eager to show off which trick was taught to Rocket by whom, and how well he had learnt it.

It is quite amusing to watch this entire teacher-student role play taking place in front of you as the guys take pride in each trick Rocket can master as their personal achievement.

Rocket has grown up now. He is not a bundle of fat but a teeth-baring, rib-displaying gangly thing. It is still up to the tricks but now it has to fend for himself. The sad looking black mother of his does not find food for him any longer. Rocket has fallen in the Darwinian cycle of survival wherein he needs to beat five other dogs on the road for everything.

My colleagues still patronize him with scraps and leftovers but the grown-up dog’s tummy is not satisfied by such paltry offerings.

Today Rocket killed a pigeon. A thriving, cheerful pigeon was thrashed and life squashed out of him within a matter of minutes. Rocket thereafter cunningly moved the lifeless being from the road to a sidewalk with the feathers strewn all over the road. The sensibilities of most of the erstwhile patronizers of Rocket were deeply hurt. One felt nauseous and threatened a reprimand and another said he can’t play with the little bugger any longer.

Has there ever been a time when you have felt completely helpless? Like nothing seems to be going right, nothing at all. Everything is a mess, your work, your life , you .. everything seems to be out of sync?

And worse still, you cannot share it with anyone. No one. You are made to feel like that naked child who is abandoned at the pavement. The bitch who has a litter and one pup is forgotten to the ravages of nature.

You come into this world alone, and you shall have to leave alone. Some snatches from our Holy Book come to my mind. How true it is. Times like these are the ones which make you understand how many people are really there for you.

Grr...

I am angry. I am not sure if I am angry with someone but I am angry, as angry as one can get. But I am unsure how exactly I should vent out my anger. It is a situation where there is no one in particular that i can blame. It is really nobody's fault. In situations like these what I do is very detrimental.

I cry or I shout at people. And more often than not I shout at people who i know will keep on loving me just as they have always done in spite of this sudden fit of vicious temper. Losing one's temper really is one of the greatest vices of all, has it made to the seven sins? I am not sure.

From my childhood I have been protected and loved by everyone , I guess that is what has given me this amazing comfort zone about losing my temper at the drop of a hat. I am an only daughter. I guess the only person who has had a more or less rational and balanced approach towards me has been my mother. She spoils me completely though. She never really has been pampering me. My father pampers me still. And he is the shield I can take refuge behind if my mother is angry with me for any reason. But there have been times when I have had furious rows with either of them. And have said God-knows-what in my rage.

It is only in hindsight that I sit and think how wrong I have been and I should not have done this or that. But the word is really like a bullet, once shot it's gone. It's said and nothing absolutely nothing can undo that. However saying bitter stuff to people who are unrelated is a bit dicey. i cannot really expect them to understand.

I am the only girl among all my cousins. So even there I have been quite sheltered. If the bigger brothers were bad to me their parents would come to my rescue, if the younger ones were disturbing me the older ones would shoo them away. So what an only child does among his/her cousins, i.e. cry , shout, make a point and get his/her point across and taken was never really done by me.

Even in school I was among an elite group who nobody picked on. SO the natural defense mechanism which every geekish student has to protect him/herself is lacking in me.

Suddenly I am left to fend for myself. No amount of shouting or stony silences are being understood by people. How exactly do I get across the fact that I am angry, furious, totally ballistic. The thing is I am expecting too much. I am expecting that everyone will treat me like family. Everyone is going to think like my family. everyone is going to come with an icecream or a pastry to tell me it is fine.

My problem is I expect too much. I am too high-maintenance as a dear friend pointed out. I have been trying to deal with the situation and I guess this time around I am going to have to do it alone. I cannot expect so much.

Now that that is identified I need to figure out a way to control the absolute explosion that is to ensue. Generally in such situations I do some crazy shouting at someone. I had tried to cope with it once earlier and had resorted to obsessive eating to level of bingeing. But I don't think that is such a good idea after all. The thing is when I sit down later and try to think what it is that has angered me soooo much the issue seems so trivial that I wonder why am I so angry after all . I mean this is not such a big deal. It is not the event in itself and it's brevity or giganticity which invokes such moods in me but the reaction that people have.

They sit tight, lackadaisical, as if nothing at all has happened and do not even make an effort to correct the situation. I mean I know it's done , I am not asking anyone to undo it, at least try to compensate. There, there I go again.

Take a deep breath. I shall be fine. Lets find something to eat.

Ash face-powder

I would rather read a book or sleep than go to a party. Any party is but a glamour war for wannabe aunties. I may come out as a procrastinating lazy bum, because any number of times anyone would urge me to accompany them to a party I would put it of for that elusive “next time”.

I really pity this class of less educated women who were pretty faces in their heyday and had been married of to well educated, fat salaried men, the metaphorical “good catch”. These women feel horribly out of place when they are first exposed to this drink guzzling, beauty parlor frequenting, well groomed designer wear flashing breed. Soon however they are taken up in this dream torrent and they transform into beings they are not.

They watch BBC when their husbands are at work to perfect their English accents, they visit grooming classes to know the table manners and they dab on make-up when their husband casually asks them to accompany them praying they would stop to give an approving nod to the arm-candy they have dolled themselves into.

When they return to their parents, mostly in small towns they cannot be comfortable any longer without the AC neither can they understand what is the huge attraction their children have in the Playstation. They have left back the Rabindrasangeet and they pretend to enjoy the Bach their husband’s enjoy and cannot understand what Iron Maiden is all about. They cannot get their hands on a piece by Jibananda and they’d rather not read the Keats on the shelf.

So many families live their lives in such pretensions. And at night when the lights go off and she wipes off her make-up looking into the mirror in the dark as the tired husband sleeps on the bed she might hum a song and have her own moment, but just that and no more.

Falling out of love

Sometimes things happen in the lives of other people and you realize how effervescent the nature of life essentially is.

Like a friend moving out of the city. She has to go into an alien land. She has meet new people, make new friends, and learn a new language. Like my friend moved to Bangalore and my cousin moved to Paris. I keep wondering how they will cope with these new challenges.

Perhaps it is my fear of the disturbance in status-quo. Perhaps.

Life was going on just fine. Everyone was happy but, like a drop on the face of the mirror still pond, things change. And it is the inherent quality of life to change. The question is whether this change is desirable.

Like break-ups. I have noticed this, whenever someone close to me, or even someone I know has to go through a broken relationship it shatters me at some level. This is not an exercise in baring wounds but a self-reflexive discourse. Why do I have to let things which happen in other people’s lives affect me? Why do I have to identify myself in a similar position?

Boy meets girl, girl meets boy. And then they are simply hooked on to each other. So much so that being around each other becomes more of a habit than anything else. So when do you know you are in love? Not making this into an Yash Chopra inspired gimmick it is a serious question. Are two people just sticking to each other because they are simply used to it or because of their love. Do they miss each other because it is a habit to be around or because of love? And what is this concept of falling out of love?

Then there are these various romances and break-up types.

There is the school-time hook up-break up. Here the two meet during school. Perhaps in the sixth-seventh standard, when you are just exploring the concept of getting attracted to the opposite sex. You are curious, and you want some first hand experience. Friendship is taken for love, and by the time they have grown from children to adults they have had enough of each other and they fall out of love, ideally when you are in the tenth –eleventh standard.

Then comes the high school hook up-break up. You meet people from different schools during school fests or during common tuitions and you fall for that elusive girl who wears short skirts and ties her hair in the cutest ponytail or that sweet boy who is as good on the sports field as with the guitar. You fall for an image, not the person per se, but an image in your head. Then you meet the person, go out on a couple of dates. Most probably you find out she is the dumbest chick or he is the most boring lout and you fall out of love.

Then is the hook up in school-break up in college story. You were friends when you were in school, and you were together for a while. Then you went to different colleges. This is more complicated, because as we grow up things do tend to get more complicated. We change as people. Our personalities are defined. And often we realize that the person we were with during school has grown up to be a different person altogether. Their interests are different, their friends are different and you simply dissociate from each other and you fall out of love.

Then of course the most famous the college hook up-break up. You meet someone in college, he/she is enchanting and different from anyone you have ever seen and you simply cannot be without him/her. You are with that person day in day out. You discuss movies, music, sports, life , politics, food and everything on the planet and beyond and as with all the other types one day you suddenly fall out of love. Perhaps someone more enchanting captures your sight or you are bogged down by silly socio-economic pressures.

So why do people fall out of love? Only to fall in love again? Or is it the destiny of every individual to fall out of love at some time. How do you know it is the real deal?