“Hey look at her…come on at least look at her, she is indeed beautiful” … I stupidly looked back to see a girl who was standing on the corridor.
“Isn’t she beautiful” she said expecting me to jump up with excitement. Now what sort dull question that can be? Obviously the girl in the corridor was beautiful but so what. And why is that boys are expected to drool at all the second girl they see?
The fact is that when a girl is very persistent in showing you girls who are beautiful, it is a new way to let you know that she is not interested in you and you better look somewhere else.
Today is supposed to be my heart-break day. I had been admiring a girl since a year now. I fell for her out of confusion but that was in fact a beautiful thing to happen. Like a good guy I never enforced my feelings on her. I even gathered all the courage to tell her how I feel for her; made sure that I keep her smiling whenever she is in my company. I had been extra care full as in not to hurry up with anything in this relationship. But as I said, today is my heart-break day; she very sweetly made it clear that I must retreat in whatever I am doing and restrict myself to a good friend. This is almost after a year.
Pyar Ke Side effect
Now here is one more stupid thing that’s happening in my mind. I have somehow lost interest in girls. I even don’t intend to develop interest in boys. But on a serious note I feel like what-the-hell-just-happened. I also sense a feeling of hatred for girls and also for this word ‘friend’.
I have always believed a good relationship starts with good friendship. Just forgot about the multiple exceptions to that rule. The biggest one is, a good friendship ends up only being a good friendship. Oh… how much irritated I feel!
The paradigm shift
Now it is time to give a jolt to emotions and have an intro with the facts.
Fact 1 - Girls have some sort of secret equation with variables like, Dad, Mom, Bro, Sis, pets, society, close friends etc. etc. and it is quite hard that you simplify to be the logical answer which corresponds to affirmation to all the used variables. Don’t ever bother to understand the logical stand of the equation if you are rejected. Fact 2 – Hope is a random variable and mostly turns out to be negative Fact 3 – Being good is nothing to do with developing a good relationship. Being bit mean may work out better. Fact 4 – Every ‘single’ looks at a happy ‘couple’ and every ‘couple’ finds a ‘single’ happy. Life is just an illusion. If you get bored with yourself, it is highly probable that you will get bored even if you have a partner. Fact 5 – Better have some dignity when you break-up.
That’s all I have to give to the society on this memorable day.
I was quite sure that I won’t hold a pen to write down stories but maybe this will not look like a story to some of the real person involved. In case you got an invite to read this story from me be sure you are in this story or may be some character in this story knows you. Yes you thought it right, you may be not knowing the character.
I would start with a fact; I murdered someone. There is a police case; I read it on newspapers every day. My phobia with paper has been so much that I am scared of any large piece of paper or the sound of the page. There had been days when I would madly look for the specific news in the in the newspapers. Almost all the prominent newspaper covered the news. All of them declared it to be an accident except one newspaper. No, I won’t tell you the name of the particular newspaper. But I had to make sure that that newspaper must not reach to any room in my hostel. I had been flushing the papers into the loo; hours together. It was just one thing that the reporters of that newspaper found, and put a picture of it; all my friends here know that it belongs to me. I won’t tell you that thing too.
It is such a pity that the most prominent news of a day soon decays on the subsequent days. And this so called public is so much forgetful. During my hunt for that news the other days, I found that that news was given just a square inch of page somewhere in between. It took me hours to find. Internet was not an issue for me; it is simple enough to hack wireless routers and block a site.
Today it was a nice weather in the evening and thought of a long ride. The news of the murder had totally disappeared from the newspaper and did not find any linking blogs to that news too. I had also un-hacked the wireless routers of my hostel. I felt free. As I reached the main gate to make the entry (that is required when one gets out of campus) I saw the gatekeepers shouting at two people on a bike. It was strange one was holding a camera and was recording anyone entering or exiting the campus. All I got to know is that these two, relatively young guys have been doing this since 4 days. Now that was annoying to me too.
I was jobless today and I thought of following those two guys.
I was supposed to be back within an hour; but it took me 4 hours; still I must say I did it more smoothly this time. Also I thank the timely rain and the dark shirt I was wearing; the stains were not visible easily; the blood stains.
I am not fascinated by this status line but it has been lingering since many days now. I am getting nothing new to write there or may be nothing new that would successfully replace it. Right now I have left all the attempts to withdraw it forcefully and quite satisfied by my decision.
I remember a person with whom I don't remember when I met him first, and he said something that hit me so much on the face that whenever I am in trouble I ask that to myself and surprisingly till date it had never disappointed me to look at things clearly - He said - "Ask yourself if you are RUTHLESSLY honest to yourself while taking any decision or action".
Before I go ahead I would tell, it is bit scary to ask this all the time as personally speaking the answer to that question is so revealing that I at times would like to skip it.
It starts right form getting up in the morning when I bash my alarm to silent and give up to my darling mattress for an extra five minutes sleep. I tell myself how much I have slogged at the night and I deserve that extra minute. My mind is so conditioned now that it springs up with that same "ruthless" question and I leave it unanswered. I know if I answer it I may not be able to be lazy which seems to be my birth right at that moment. I even have had days when I chose to answer it and I know how tough it gets to cheat oneself.
Right now the matter is different. The choice has been taken and the road is being walked. I know I am truly ruthless to myself but the question is till how long. It is not the laziness that bothers me but the consistency of the activeness that I possess. I have no clue how long I can be enthusiastic as it is no more about the road less traveled but the length of the journey that scares me. The extent to which I need to go to find a milestone that can tell me that I can continue my journey on the same path. It is not the emptiness of the road that is disheartening but the crowd there.
Motivation to me is outdated; passion is too much fantasized and being different is blatantly artificial. What matters to me right now that I can believe what I believe in long enough, so that I can derive a meaning out of it. That meaning is worth while to strive the journey that I have put myself into. In fact I need my coach to give me a question. This time I am not looking out for an answer, just a relief that he is watching me.
The coffee today is bitter. I usually mix some sugar when that happens but I do not feel like doing it right now. Just thinking how tough it is to accept the fact that it is different.
Outside my room I meet a world where there is a race of people who believe being different is the key; I too belong to that race. I compete with myself to stand out of the crowd day in and day out; it is a kind of motivation. Being different rules so vehemently that I follow it blindly. And now when I open my eyes and look at the entire tribe then I find I am in a crowd of differently-ordinary people.
It seemed like a long time when I was listening to someone and could relate it so well. I could relate to the words the feelings and the expressions. I have surely had them once; if not exactly then astonishingly similar. I was listening to an ordinary person who without actually speaking asked me - "If being an ordinary is about being oneself, is it bad?"
"Definitely not" - I would have answered it if I was to but that question was never asked.
After the conversation there was an emptiness in my mind. Somewhere I felt I have been suppressing the part of myself which is naturally different and enforcing the difference that the world ought to see. How could I miss seeing that.
Well I did not realize that I finished my coffee. Oh wait there is a single sip left.......
I have realized that though keeping an expectation in a relationship can be heart-breaking at times; but what shatters the most is when I get to know that there is no expectation from me from the person I care. That may not be justified but this is exactly what I feel at times.
I do understand a nurturing relationship but I will be truthful, I do not understand the extent to which it has nurtured at a given point of time. Instances have been there when a free-flowing comment of mine had hurt the person to the extent of wetting their eyes with tears. As I said I care about that person and I feel bad (and stupid) of being so senseless to pass such a comment. I try to ease the person but I cannot take back my comment and relief the person of the pain that I caused. Yes I do feel bad and helpless.
But contrary to it I also feel good; obviously not because of hurting the person; but because of the realization that my comment matters and this clearly indicates that (may be not much) but I do matter to the person I care. I am satisfied of my presence in that person’s life and that sort of responsibility gives an immense pleasure.
As I said I may not be good at understanding the extent of my existence in someone’s life but these incidents obviously helps me to understand it.
During my college I considered that I am out in this world to enjoy my life; my life as a single person. And soon, the people like me, who must have had some kind of similar planning like mine ended up with girl friends. With due respect to all the girls reading my write-up, I am a guy and talk very much like that so please pardon my language or rather use of language if it offends you any time. So where was I? – Yeah girl friends. Did you people notice that ‘s’ at the end of ‘girlfriends’? If you have not, please notice it because I mean many girl friends not one. Now time for respect to all the boys reading my blog, when I say having girl friends, I do not mean to have many girlfriends simultaneously (purse does not allow it right?); what I meant was the many girl friends that we encountered in your college life. Well even I was one of them. Girl-friend part was totally out of my agenda but frankly speaking I enjoyed those days too when I was associated with someone. Days went by and my count of having established girl friends got a full stop right there.
Right above was the life that I mistook as bachelor hood. College got over and I got a job. In the induction training we were bossed by the HR department people like we were some kind of stupid and they were epitome of professionalism. Going few steps ahead in my professional career I realised that every morning I go to a place where I have to spend 10 hours of my day doing something for which at the end of the month I get salary. After the 10th hour I get back to a place that has a bed and I can sleep and watch movies and then the next morning I am back to the same routine. I screwed up my body in this process too. Thanks to the excuses I came up with for not going to gym and also to my mom to whom it seems like I never have food and growing thin day by day(last time when I returned back from home I gained 10kgs and I am yet to lose them). Messages and calls to my mobile decreased. Some may take it very positively but I do not because in the 23 years of mine I have spent more than half of it far away from my family and my friends matter a lot to me. One by one very good friends of mine were diving into their life which brought for them so much of commitments that it seemed to me that someday we all become a by-product in our friend’s life and all of it is fully justified. Somewhere when I look back I know they must have the same thing to tell me. Now I have developed a customized sentiment which says nothing is permanent; and the best thing about it is that it works!
There are even days I miss being at home and lately that feeling gives me a regular visit. In absence of my mom the person who takes care of my food is the dabba wala. He gives me a dabba full of food two times a day which I don’t actually cherish eating but considering my budget and the door-to-door service he provides, which turns out to be the best choice for me. Weekends are considered to be the best time in any software engineer’s full week but for me the only time I am not bore in the weekends are when I am washing my cloths; it is just that I don’t remember to be bore at that time. Lately I have kept a maid and so I have uninterrupted boredom in my weekends. Sometimes I am reminded to clean my room but I don’t know why people don’t understand cleaning the room is never in the constitution of a bachelor. Cleaning only happens when someone from the family comes for a visit and the intensity of the cleaning depends on who is coming to visit.
The one thing that is closest to me is my mobile phone. I sometimes keep staring at my mobile expecting it to ring, and at the end of the day I take my mobile, not to call anyone but set my alarm to wake up so that I reach office on time. I sometimes wonder if it is THE AWESOME bachelorhood people talk about. Or is it like over rated and is just about feel good factor? At my new apartment I have a nice mirror in the wardrobe room. It was three weeks back; I looked at myself in that good big mirror and one big question hit my mind for which I just had no answer – “What will be the story of my bachelorhood?” May be it is the high time to create one.
My first mission towards bachelorhood – Look like a bachelor.
It was the beginning of the longest weekend that I was going to have, 3 days of raw holidays. I put a new blade on my mach-3 and gave myself a nice shave; I won’t call it a 100% shave because at the end of it my shave looked something mid way to a French beard and goatee. I shampooed my hair keeping the hair back with my forehead popping right out. Next days on I made sure I hit the gym and get into the process of shedding that extra pounds I gained and toning my muscle back to shape. I got the face cream (that now had a layer of dust over it and once suggested by a very sweet friend of mine) and applied it all over my face before bed. Now was the time for the outcome. After the three long days I went to office, and before the end of the day three girls complimented me on my new looks. Then the next day few more compliments followed and the entire week someone or the other had something good to say about my transformation (that included guys too…well not in the GAY sense of course). By the end of the week I was thinking what should I add to my style quotient? I could come up with two more things; first, I should have a bike and second I must have a dog. Office and gym are the only two places that I go regularly and both of them are within a kilometre of radius, and I have no girl friends to roam on weekends so I dropped the plane of getting a bike; and I dropped the plan of getting a dog because it would make it obvious that I do not have a girl friend. End of that week, after a real long time I had a satisfied sleep.
My second mission towards Bachelorhood – Cook like a bachelor.
I started with a question in mind – What should a bachelor know to prepare? After a good research I came with an answer – a bachelor must know to prepare an awesome bowl of Maggie and a creamy cup of coffee any time in a day. Retrospection on my current strata of knowledge, I concluded that the two things I know the best are:
1) How to boil water.
2) How to prepare boiled eggs.
Obviously I needed to work on this mission. Criterion for good Maggie for me was, it must have vegetables, must be soupy and above all must be edible. I bought carrot, capsicum, onion, tomato and French beans for vegetables; to literally make my Maggie soupy I bought the “sweet and sour vegetable” powdered soup packet; and for the edible part, I thought I must call my friend home to help me prepare it. This friend of mine, whom I called that night is a true bachelor, he knows to prepare Maggie and he also to prepare coffee. He suggested that I must get butter to fry the vegetables and to have eggs in the Maggie. But to have blobs of boiled white eggs right in between the Maggie seemed to me stupid. Then he clarified that he was not talking about boiled eggs but about scrambled eggs. He fried the vegetable in butter and also taught me how to scramble the eggs. For the Maggie part, he put the soup powder into the water and then the Maggie. After the Maggie was done he garnished the Maggie with the vegetables he prepared. In the full bachelor style, without even bothering to pour the Maggie on two separate plates, we helped ourselves with two spoons and started eating it from the utensil we prepared it and let me tell you, at that moment I felt heaven can’t be better than this.
For the ignorant guys and girls like me, do you know that coffee changes colour from dark brown to cream when you stir it well with little water; believe me it does. I saw it that night myself. We thought of ending our dinner with a hot mug of coffee. We moved around 3 kilometres walking that night to search for Nescafe classic. Why Nescafe classic? It is because it is the only coffee that meets the bachelorhood requirements and standards. If you ask me what the standards are, believe me, no bachelor knows it but it is something universal and no one questions it. I felt preparing coffee was comparatively simple. The coming days of the week I had Maggie almost all the day and a mug of hot coffee after that. By the end of the week I was confident that I have achieved my second mission. I am almost mid way to my ultimate bachelorhood.
Mission three towards Bachelorhood: Flirting!
This is one critical mission. Even though I was confident that I can flirt, I had no benchmark to determine its success. Any bachelor, no matter how lonely or immune to girls, they must know how to flirt keeping decency intact. Now to clarify, flirting is not stalking or a derogatory remark. Flirting is adulating someone for no apparent reasons (not even to impress). You praise a person to such an extent that though he/she knows that he/she is being over praised and yet enjoys it.
I was clueless how to go about it. It was around 11 PM at night when my usually dead mobile sprang to life. You remember I mentioned about a very sweet friend of mine who gave me a face cream? Yes it was her call. She is currently in US. When we both finished our common phone etiquette I flatly said – “Seems someone is looking gorgeous today” and that was enough to start. I continued adulating her and she chirpily giggled. I was grateful to my presence of mind and sense of humour without which it was almost impossible to spice up my banter for entire two hours. The end of the chat I was really happy. My happiness was not because that I successfully flirted, it was because though it was night in India and I was dead sleepy I gave a smiling start for a day to someone (It was day time in US). Though I knew I do not have any bench mark to measure it, I surely knew that I have royally completed my mission.
Final Mission: Attain the ultimate purpose of every moment in a bachelor’s life.
I always wondered if for one day I can be no one; for one day I belong to a place where I know no-body and no-body knows me; for one day I do not have to follow the society norms and just for one day I be just ‘me’ without a vale of pretence. I got a chance pretty soon.
We planned for adventure sports for a day with the office team. At the time when I got into the bus I wanted to forget everything about myself and allow myself to vibe along with the trance of that moment. To every song that was played along the journey and to every event that was organized by the adventure guru, I made sure to live every moment bit by bit. The heights of the rocks scared me and the lyrics of the songs made me emotional and I let myself be so.
The next morning at the office I came across an email that read –“If given a chance what do you want to steal from me?” I thought of asking the same thing from one good friend of mine and the reply that she gave me put a smile on my face for the entire day. She said – “I wish I could steal the way you live the moments of your life to the fullest”. I knew I have accomplished the final mission of my bachelorhood.
That day I came back a bit early from office. Obviously I was happy. Bachelorhood was no longer an over rated thing for me. This is the time which is one of the best and the prime time of anyone’s life. We tend to develop some uniqueness which is very much common in the community of bachelors. But at the same time when I look at one of my colleague who is married, and has a cute little daughter; he is all ready for some unadulterated fun. I wonder if bachelorhood is all about a mind-set or a way of life. Then he comes to me and says that he could not join us in the adventure-trip due to family commitments then I feel a bit different; as if he knows how much he may have that mind-set, he is bachelor no more. Someday I will be out of this community too, everyone does some day. I call it as a promotion in life but right now I am not in a mood to be promoted. But someday when I get married, I would write about my awesome marriage life too. But right now I am in a mood to enjoy my new looks, my bowl of Maggie with a mug of coffee, a little bit of flirting and every moment of my bachelorhood.
I do discover myself every day but some days I discover myself more, and today is one of those days. Today I discovered that I lose when I fight with myself. No matter which ‘I’ wins, the loss is always mine. I am not being derogative. In fact I believe everyone must stop for a moment and think out loud if they have been manipulating their way out all the while not paying any attention to the actual-self one is. I can respect others when I am polite to them, but I can respect myself if I stop trying being myself and be myself.
The person just next to me has no idea that I am writing about him; and I have no idea about the person I am writing, but when I look at that person I do wish someday I will have the same charisma as he has. Though I have no idea what does life mean to him but right now I am being the architect of my life with something that he possess (and I have no knowledge about that possession). Cool isn’t it! You know what I had been doing since I was a child! I felt the same way when I saw ’Superman’. When I graduated from college, I saw the movie ‘Spiderman’ and I so badly wished if I were him. Lately when one day when I woke up I discovered it does not work that way.
I have also known for sure that people never tell the complete truth when they talk about the person they are talking to. That includes me too. They may say a lot of things but that still remains incomplete. But same time I have also discovered a little secret – I have discovered that there are two instances when they say us the truth, and complete truth and nothing else. Firstly, when they have good amount of alcohol flowing in their blood, and secondly when they are angry or pissed off with you. The reason is simple, these two instances never lets a person be in his/her control. I have developed a habit of listening to people really well when they are drunk or pissed off, because I know those words won’t be repeated anytime sooner. It had helped to know a lot about them and also about me. But like everything comes with a price, so does these kind of truths too. These truths are so right on the face that may put a question to you and create a void within for some time. But hey don’t worry about that; you remember the day when I said that I discovered that being like a Spiderman does not work, well the same day I made new discovery too – A bitter truth of a moment can be wiped off if one is adamant to make it sweet. That day, like today was one of the day when I discovered a lot about myself.
