Women

I have seen that some women (sadly all Indian, I need variety!) have a tendency to play the victim. This would usually happen even if the situation has no need for a victim and a tormentor. It might just need a set of adults behaving their age. But no, how can we let that happen? I mean where is the melodrama that we so crave for in our everyday life. Most of it inspired by the decade long weepy serial tradition in India. We women have to make an issue about things. We refuse to rationalise and take levelheaded decisions. We absolutely have to take the story to absolute depths of emotional breakdowns or go to the peaks of euphoria. What happened to plain old ‘normal’? I sometimes feel that some people have lost the meaning of the word ‘normal’ somewhere far back in the past. The point when they started emotionally ‘immaturing’ themselves... most probably.

Take for example a simple case of girly gossiping. Person A tells person B something and requests her with all sincerity not to tell person C. Person B, the moron she is goes and does exactly the what she is told not to do. C makes an issue of not being told by A and throws a fit. Then A confronts B, who in turn confronts C. This whole muddle leads to some high drama fights, fit for everyday sitcom. In the end somehow in a strange turn of events A apologise to B. Now don’t ask me how and why it happened. But if you follow the story with the same piety as some follow a soap opera, there is a very high probability that you will understand how this happened.

It is not that women do not have the brains to behave like an adult. Chances are that if you are a woman and reading this blog, you probably have the minimum brain capacity to respond to a situation like a ‘normal’ person. But why do we women choose to over-dramatise a situation. Do we like to be sad? Do we feel that if we do not have one emotional outburst every three days we have not proved ourselves fit to be female of our species?

What is it that compels us to waste time and energy on melodrama? Is it that guys like women who look weak? Is this what it has boiled down to? Maybe so. I know quite a few guys who pride themselves to be “the guy” their girlfriends go to when they feel overwhelmed by whichever emotion it is…. But what is the end result of this? I do not feel that clinging to your partner for emotional support makes you or your relationship any better. If anything you are just giving the guy enough gun power to riddle you with wounds when he leaves you. If on the other hand you can handle your own mood swings, it makes you a more amiable person and you have much healthier relationship with everyone. Most importantly you will not attract the typical drama queen/king. I feel life would be a much better place to be in with a little less of screaming, crying and name-calling. Don’t you think?

Its moments like these that I remember Rex Harrison and Prof. Higgins saying "why can't a woman be like a man?" Sure most men are emotionally challenged, but having seen too many Hindi movie like dramas played out live..... I could use some change of atmosphere.

Rain

Rain has always been associated with happy memories for me. The monsoon were the high point of my years spent in India. We would have just finished off with the first installment of exams. I could afford not to pay much attention to the classes till the work piled up to a point where I could no longer ignore it. It used to be so hard to contain myself to my seat when I could hear the rumbling sky outside my classroom. As if the rains were teasing me for being stuck in the class while it could frolic and play with everyone she met on its way. my eyes would drift to the windows in the classroom form where I could see the houses next to the school. I would feel jealous of all the people in these house who could play outside in the rains while I sat through boring lectures. I would be too distracted to pay any attention to the class. I would be thinking about all the earthworm and beetles coming out of their subterranean hiding place to greet the rains like old friends. They would turn the earth around into teeny balls which me and my friends would then spend hours demolishing.

The first rains would always be the best. After months of seeing dust, sand and grime covering everything, it’s refreshing to be reminded of how green the park in front of my house was. After the first rains the air would smell clean (a luxury in my city). I can still sometimes recall the heady smell of wet earth. Whenever I get a whiff of the smell, I realise that my memory never does justice to it. When at home I would spend hours watching the rain fall. I would drift to my dreams of distant lands. People whom I lost in some distant past. But rains back home were not as frequent enough.

The absolute high point of the monsoons would be when we were allowed to get out and play in the rain. We would go crazy about it. My parents didn’t own a house back then. As a result we used to move around a lot. So I never really had friends in the locality. As I became a teenager the only friend I had was my brother. It was always fun to hang out with him. We guys used to run up to the balcony to get wet in the rain. But it was different from the rains I remember as an eight year old. There was no frenzy about the whole thing. It was more about being quite and content and soak in the ambiance. That was fun too in its own way.

But that was long ago. Now most of my rain memories are time I spent with myself. Its all nice and warm…. well almost. I remember days when I would indulge in reading a nice book with a cup of tea, coffee, cocoa or anything that caught my fancy at that moment. Some days I would indulge in making fancy meals. Like making pasta or biriyani from a scratch with shitty hostel utensils. But the most recent and by far the best memory I have of rain is when I run. I love running in the rain. We have a nice little forest next to the place where I live now. I like going there a once in a while. It’s an absolute delight to feel the rain falling on my face. I love jumping into those small puddles that form even when there is a slight drizzle. It interesting how it never stops raining in the forest. When it is raining you get wet because of the rain itself. When it stops, you feel the drops falling off the leaves of those lush green trees. The best part is that it is very quiet when it rains. I don’t carry my iPod when it rains. The quite of the forest hits me like a cold splash of water on a warm day. There are very few people around. But once in a while I do come across people who have come running just like me, although their incentives may differ. And during these rare occasions we smile at each other. Its like we are all in on the same joke. It’s funny though. The most bizarre bit is when I finish and come across them again; they would actually stop to talk. Most of the times we do not speak the same language and the conversations would comprise of wild hand gestures. But how does that matter. Both of us are so happy that we don’t care much. I rarely see most of these people again. But some of them I do. In some cases we realise that we have been living in the same building for almost half a year yet we never came across each other.

Its amazing how the word rains brings in such an assortment of emotions. All of them memorable in some way....... all special......

Why am I doing this?

It’s official. I am going to write a blog. At least I will make a feeble attempt to maintain one. I must confess its an attempt more out of peer pressure rather than a decision to put my thoughts to a place I can come back to. I don’t think I am comfortable with that thought. I am overly critical of my writing. Which prevents me from agonising people with my writing. The real reason of doing this post is that I am procrastinating at work. I am writing this on a word to appear working – on my proposal. Yes I have to write a proposal for my PhD project by the end of this week. So no pressures really!

Who am I kidding!! I detest writing. I detest it so much that I usually keep it for doing exams and getting grades. In short I keep it to just the absolute essentials. Sometimes I make of for not writing by reading a lot and reading indiscriminately. The last thing I read was an interesting fantasy novel. You know, the Lord Of The Rings genre of literature with the right amount of shit and romance mixed into it to make it a nice readable trash novel (I am a sucker for trash novels). I will not name the book as my lab mate really likes it and it’s just rude to pan the novel while she is sitting right next to me. At this point I wish that no one stumbles across my blog. I want it to sit like this for a while. If I still feel comfortable enough to put it out for open criticism I would probably tell the whole world about it. Well at least a few.

In school we have to choose our stream in 11th class. That is like the last two years of High School or Senior Secondary as we called it. I chose science mainly because
1. I hated commerce subjects other than economics, in which I could never get good grades.
2. I hated social studies, which comprised of History, Geography and Civics. Don’t get me wrong I like reading history and I do that whenever I find the opportunity but its just annoying to remember when did the Battle of Palasi happened. Just too much for me. Sixth and tenth standards were probably the most fun I had with history. We had India in the medieval period and world wars in these two years.
3. I didn’t want to do Hindi, Bengali or Sanskrit for another year.
4. I am hopeless with essay writing. A problem I had to deal with in English too. But in English exams I usually got away by writing a load of crap that was acceptable at that age.

So there you are, my multiple reasons for not having written for so long. Although I did create the page a month back, its just sitting there. Existing. Also having to write a proposal brings out the kind of writing skills that are completely useless for it. This class of writing is great for doodling but with proposals, you don’t get that far. I think I will look at fun fonts to put this entry online now…..