When was the last we were so easily happy?

My life has been so uneventful; even I would fall asleep if someone else was narrating it to me.

I was not a troublesome kid.
That title would go to my brother, he was The one who squirted Farex back to my mother’s face every time she tried to feed him, The one who made my parents suspect he had some hitherto unknown strain of unmanifestable rabies because of acute hydrophobia displayed during baby baths, The one who fell back to the road when my father tried to make him sit on the back seat of his scooter instead of planting him on the foot stand, hell even The one who looked so cute as a kid random old ladies on the street would come unbidden and tell person carrying him that he closely matched their mental image of Lord Krishna.
But me, you ask?
I was the will keep Farex in mouth before ingesting, baby bath liking, clutching father while on scooter and never matching old woman fantasies kind of kid.
Yeah, the uneventfulness cycle started very early on.

School was not much better.
I was a good student, my teachers liked me.
I was too scared of the reputation aspersions missing homework would cast, so homework was never missed.
Our Kannada (which was my first language in school) teacher used to make us write the much hated copy book which had to be submitted to him every Monday. The idea was to write 1 page each day in a two lined book which was supposed to make your handwriting round and symmetrical and also make you learn your lessons better because we would mostly write the textbook chapters in the copy book.
But I at least had to bend the rules, if not break them, right?
So in Gandhigiri-type protest, I would write all 6 pages on Sunday afternoons (not one every day as stipulated. Delinquency starts off in such small ways only!) And further, I would even venture so far as to pick something else every week to be the content and never write from the text book. Stories from Dinakkondu Kathe (‘A story for each day’, popular Kannada comic book), Sudha (a Kannada magazine), Byrappa’s novels my mother liked to read or if I was in a hurry to complete, my own story about something.
So you can imagine how much on the wild side I walked.

English copy writing was decided in a pretty progressive manner. You had to write only if your handwriting was deemed untidy and needing improvement. Those having decent handwritings were exempt. And I, you guessed it, fell into the latter category. (Our teachers never made us learn cursive. We were supposedly in an exclusive, experimental school – 1 of only 4 of its kind in India. I can mentally already see fellow school mates clutching belly and laughing at this!)

I think I have set the background enough to make you appreciate what constituted our idea of fun. We were a co-ed school. But boys barely existed - in lunch time gossip, inside jokes - till class 6. They were taken note of only when they got really good marks or did something outrageously naughty, to you of course. Say squirt ink all over your cream shirt or ruin your ‘Surface of moon’ science project by stamping on it or such like. Conversation was pretty non-existent between the sexes till around class 6. Class 7 onwards it was a different story; we were late bloomers even there.

The air changed pretty drastically when we came back from the summer holidays for Class 6. We collectively decided it was high time we be 'old' and hence, people were assumed to be in ‘love’ with each other all the time, crushes were discussed in great detail among ourselves, compatibilities were furiously tested using the then very famous ‘Flames’ method (where you write the 2 names in question and start striking off common letters and somehow arrive at a percentage which was the ‘love success’ rate. I am hazy about the details, anyone know what I am talking about? What was the calculation?!)

“Hey, he asked her for rubber (eraser). Yesterday he asked her for her scale also. He’s got to have a crush on her”
“God, that guy keeps staring at me all the time”
(This was a very common grouse and our class teacher then had a really innovative answer to that. She would ask in return, “To know he keeps staring at you always, you need to be looking at him always too. You do that?”)

And pairing up people was the most favorite past time.
There always used to be lesser number of girls than boys in the class, so all girls were assured of a ‘pair’. Not much ever happened in real life to substantiate the pairings, but we never tired of working out the various permutations and combinations.
We used a fairly logical formula to arrive at the guy most suited for you:
1. If there had been more than 2-3 lines of voluntary conversation, it had to be love.
Routine talk like asking for way, fighting for more bench space when you sat next to each other in some periods, minor shoves during morning assembly rush were discounted.

2. If you had no such love interest, the Group collectively picked one for you.
Things considered ranged from:
a. Parity in height, weight, appearance
b. Parity, to an extent, in marks scored (we girls were pretty discriminating even then!)
c. Flames score – crucial, sometimes could override other arguments
d. X-factor, determined by the Group (which was mostly used to pair up the girls for whom we
couldn’t find a pair by the above criteria)

General wisdom, perpetuated by trusty stereotypes, dictates that the class jock should get the head cheer leader. Of course, in sunny south India kids didn’t play American foot ball and spontaneous cheer leading would have given way to either Bollywood style dancing or Bharatanatyam on the field. But we did match the most popular girl with the cricket star in the class. No girl herself voiced a choice most of the times, for that meant ‘feelings’ from her side and eternal ribbing from our side. So, the Group was essentially God and we perfected a form of socialism in the realm of matchmaking.

Now, I being kind of nerdy but nevertheless kind of popular, at least among girls, got a soft spoken, silent guy as my ‘pair’. The Group decided that we were ideally paired and our Flames score was among the highest in class!

So many afternoons spent doing this, ensuing gossip and laughter when following the ‘pair’s activities – such fun.
We were so easily happy then!
And though handpicked by the Group, I always ended up with a guy, which is much better than my current scene.
Oh, did I mention he was cute? :)

Why should it be an either-or?

I am a huge Sex and the City fan.
It feels so laborious to be a SATC fan these days, especially post the movie.
All my guy friends avoid it like the plague, as if conceding that they like it, even the really witty and funny parts (yes, there are many such) would undermine their MQ (Maleness Quotient) somehow!

Samples heard across my test group:
- “I don’t want to see it, not even 1 episode, only women and gay men can like it. Yes”
- “4 women and only 1 of them hot, sitting perpetually around a table bitching about men, who would want to see that? Only women and gay men can like it”
…. And various combinations of the same logic.

I am tired of having to explain to them that SATC is so much more than just shoes, sex and fashion.
My female friends like it, most of them.
Some find it too far from their realities to connect to; some find parts of it farfetched. I am okay with any reaction you know, as long as you have formed your opinion after seeing at least 2-3 episodes.
Its like guys coaxing women who don’t like video games and find it just Wham - I blast you - Bham - I somersault and kick you – Splurt – your guts fall all over, to at least play Game ABC (super cool animation where you have to not only kill all the mutated zombies with golden bullets that you get by passing BrainDead phase, but the female zombies are also kick ass) or Game XYZ (it’s a strategy game, duh! It needs thinking, planning, cooperation, team spirit blah blah what have you!) I mostly try everything before I dislike them and I quite like the smart games. My opinion about the only blood and gore games is evident, I guess.

Coming back, I always thought I should write a Why everyone should at least see SATC before hating it piece.
I started seeing SATC when it was coming weekly on HBO, when I was in college. I liked everything about it! Starting from the title track with Carrie in her tutu to the premise of the show to the characters to their quirks to everything!
Now, the show is set in Manhattan with 4 women who are 30-something and looking for love. And I was a barely 20 (then!) South Indian girl, not yet quite looking for love (again, then!)
I was not one of them; my mores – sexual or otherwise – were not quite theirs. But I still understood them.

And it was not the fashion and gloss in the show that got me hooked. I am as far from haute couture and Jimmy Choos as can be. I am a decide-what-I need-go-buy-it-kind, not a grazer. I like shopping mostly when I have nice company and can go around various stores window-shopping, talking how you will never need that. The endless cycle (while clothes shopping) of removing what you have on, trying out the new one, seeing if you like it which mostly doesn’t happen, then going out to find some more really tires me. Actually physically tires me.
The Result? I have such a small wardrobe I can pack everything and then some, even for international travel, in 2 suitcases. I never have piles of unwashed stuff, its so little 2-3 machine loads will do! Ironing is never a nightmare. So, all in all, it keeps me pretty happy!

And it was not the sex either that had me hooked.
Sure, you have parts that elicit ‘Oh, sooo you can do that” sometimes!
But though it’s explicit in parts, it’s never vulgar. Its matter of fact, never contrived.

What I liked the most were the questions raised at the end of each episode.
They applied to a 20-something girl just waking up to how difficult it is to find love as well as it applied to been-there-done-that 30-somethings. Always pertinent, always observant.

I always saw how good a writer Carrie was, how go-getting Samantha was at her work, how intelligent Miranda was as a lawyer and how accomplished Charlotte was as a curator.
(Hell, even my mother liked Miranda. She isn’t a follower of the series, but in an academically oriented South Indian family, if someone studies in Harvard Law School and is in the top 3 of their class, like Miranda was, you like them. No questions asked!)

Credible careers for all characters established that they were not women whose sole aim in life was to ‘land a man’, a la Bridget Jones. Men were important parts of their lives but never all consuming obsessions.
Carrie many times mused that she may not be the marrying sort, Miranda wasn’t torn while deciding that while she wants Steve’s child she might not want Steve. And then there was Samantha, whose 2 great loves were sex and real estate, the horror - a diamond ring wasn’t in the list! Charlotte was the only one pining for the ‘perfect man, the perfect marriage, the perfect house’.
And the series had great fun in throwing her a curveball at every step.
You want the perfect man – take the seemingly perfect Trey, small hitch, he can’t get it up!
You want the perfect marriage – take the perfect wedding, the marriage itself will end in a quick divorce.
You want the perfect home – fight with monstrous mom in law to get it!
This I think was the only part of the series that I didn’t quite like.
First, heap all ‘conventional’ notions on one character and then systematically destroy each one. (I also don't like it when everything 'conventional' is shown as slightly loser-ish. Each unto his own, I feel.)

Now I morph into CuriousCat Freud – renowned psychologist!
Which character do I resemble the most?
It is not Samantha; I could never have such causal sex!
(Or maybe is it just a case of sour grapes? I know I will never be in positions to have 100,000 steamy flings, so I think I would not want them? No, I am too paranoid about where exactly things are going, what exactly is happening. I know, not too nice a trait to have, but what to do…) It could be parts of the other 3.
I am like Miranda in that I am a realist and mostly don’t have illusions about self/others/stuff in general (yeah, I get it, that could be an illusion itself! But seriously I am pretty ok, except for the bewildering question about how others don’t find me as fantastically fascinating as I find myself :))
I am like Charlotte in that I do want marriage, kids and the works, someday.
How am I like Carrie? Would I date a chronically commitment phobic person for 10 years? Sometimes I think that I should value the journey more. What if the journey is the future?

Coming to the movie, it didn’t measure up to the best episodes, but it was still nice. It had the unenviable task of introducing the characters afresh to the non-series-following audience. It couldn’t be the pithy 25 minute episode where it could afford leaving some details out. And in 2 odd hours it had to reach a logical end. It just couldn’t wander off with Carey asking, “…and that makes me wonder, why….” Given all these restrictions, I think the movie did a decent job of taking the series forward.

The movie too, like its parent episodes, raises some interesting questions.

How far would you go for the man you love, how much would you put up with?
Would you throw it all away for one transgression? Would you have it in you to forgive? Rather, should you forgive?
Would you go back to someone who gets cold feet on the wedding day, after a decade of knowing you? Would that day be more important than all the days you spent together or would you overlook it?
Is it alright if it “was just sex, meant nothing”? Is it still cheating? Should you walk out or should you hang on?
If you forgot your identity along the way, is it still worth it or is it time to walk out and reclaim your life, the way you want it? Or is independence overrated?

So what if while dealing with these questions, our ladies in Big Apple dressed smart and walked the blocks in pretty Manolos?
So what if their mascaras didn’t run when they cried?
So what if the whole film didn’t have a gloomy pall to it though it dealt with real emotions?
So what if she is pretty, can’t she be smart too?

But what if I don't want to forget?

It's the oldest of the clichés, time being the best healer.

But does it actually heal? It dulls the pain, it fades the edges of your memories, it makes past seem not yesterday anymore.
That's not healing, that's almost cheating.
It's saying, "What will you hold onto when you don't remember the touch, the kiss? What will you miss when the hug becomes hazy?"

The intensity with which you miss someone is supposed to lessen with time plainly because you just don't remember enough about them, about how it was and about how you were then. But shouldn't healing mean that you keep the memories intact but they don't haunt you anymore? What if I don't want to only remember the few things time decides to leave untouched, but want to remember each moment, every moment? It's not feasible, it's unwieldy, I know.

But even then, what if I don't want to forget?

Let's start at the beginning

If I am posting my first blog entry today evidently I have been very late to join the blogging bandwagon. Most of my friends blog, I have occasionally read blogs and of late I have been following a few blogs seriously, and by seriously I mean religiously digging through their archives , some dating back to 3-4 years, reading the comments posted against them and navigating to the people who are regular commenters. Since I do all this in my office, I mostly keep getting the ominous black screen ('Access is Denied'. This page belongs to the personal/entertainment category.) But that doesn't deter me from being the voyeur to CompulsiveConfessor's colorful life or listening to SmugBug's long rants.

Often I have wondered why I don't write on the net myself.
I think I kind of fit the bill to be a 'blogger' because I write, not that that is a pre-requisite.
I have many 'Dear Dairy' type documents here and there. And a lot more non-dear diary type writings e-strewn around. (Never on paper anymore after my mother read my whole notebook of heartfelt writings in class 7. Now they are typed and password protected, thank you. Not that I had many, ok any secrets that had to be guarded from the parents, but it felt like an immense betrayal when my mother surreptiously began to talk about the exact same things I had written days back, while plaiting my hair! I still don't know why mother read it when she accidentally found it but I guess she after all is the MotherOfThisIfNotAllCuriousCats! And being a psychologist and all, it would be immensely hard to walk away from an offspring's memoir. Come to think of it now, I realise it was only after this that my mother completely stopped giving me those hidden-value-lessons, you know the sort where mothers see a movie/read a news article/meet someone on the road/any random thing and can always churn out a 'moral of this story is' kind of statement. She by then knew how tame and non-exciting her daughter's life actually was and how even if she tried she wouldn't go astray.)

Coming back to the reasons why I didn't start blogging before today, though I always have something to say about most things, I was never vain enough to think that there would be an audience who would want to read it. My friends were forced to hear me but strangers were under no such obligation. Why post what I think when those who know me would have heard it from the horse’s (maybe cat's from now on!) mouth and those who don’t would not care anyway? Just posting it for the sake of it or because others were doing it seemed like a waste of many kinds of energy that would be better dispensed doing other things.

Also, I am a very closed person. I don't mean the sorts who talk very little, are uncomfortable in groups and best enjoy their time sipping coffee and reading a book alone. No. I love people genuinely, well at least most of the times. I have many friends and a few really close ones. I am by nature curious about what others do/think and why and things like that. And I like being in groups and invariably I am most of the times the topic picker and question asker. I like to understand people. (Or maybe that is just me rationalising my curiosity.) But I do like sipping things (not a coffee lover, sorry) and reading a book alone above most things.
Anyway, what I meant was, while I am the question-asker, debate-beginner I very rarely answer them myself. I might dodge it with a remark or gloss over it, but seldom reveal too much about myself. I of course am not guarded when we are talking about say how handsome Obama is and how probable it is for Palin to become President (McCain being so old and all), I go all out then. But I do ask people very intimate things (I believe that they have the option of not answering!) but I don't like talking about myself too much. About the things that really count, you know. For instance, I don't mind telling you that I will always have an abiding love for Howard Roark, but I will never tell you about the person I am actually in love with (wait wait, that doesn't mean I am in love now, that was purely rhetorical, that also doesn’t mean I am not in love right now. You know nothing, forget about my love life.)
So, you see I was very hesitant to write about myself. And also my life is not exactly something you would fall over yourself to know about!

Thinking that I don't have much to say, knowing that not many who don't know me would want to hear me, not wanting to write exclusively about myself and what I did today and general apathy kept me away from blogging.
So what made me change my mind and start writing?
Two things, actually.
Extra long mails almost daily to various mailing groups among friends which convinced me that I always have something to say and Egypt.
I am going to Egypt, mostly in November. Yippee! (I have always wanted to go there. Childhood fascination + love for mythology and history. I also realised that I write a lot in parenthesis. That is because I like these small meanderings. More on why I write like I write in another post. God, I have already become the regular blogger type, planning about my future posts and all! If my writing style resembles the way The Catcher in the Rye is written, sorry. I am reading it again now and maybe it spills over sub-consciously. I should see how I write when I am reading Emily Dickinson; I can't rhyme for my life!)
Coming back, I wanted to record my Egypt experience in as much detail as possible and share it with some of my friends. A blog seemed the most practical way to do it. And while I was at it, why not start a little early and write some general things!

So, there.