Bra, brazen and bolti-bandh

What is fashion? Is it what we see on the ramps? Is it what we wear? If we say that Western clothes show off a woman's body, what about the sari: Does it not show more than it conceals? Do we stop being Indian if we prefer wearing western clothes? And if that's the case, how come no one says anything about men wearing dhotis? "Indian women don't smoke," is something bloody autorickshaw drivers have said to me. My response has always been the same: "What about the village women who smoke hookas and beedi?" So far no one has given me a fitting response to that. Smoking is a bad habit and clothing is a personal choice, why is 'Indianness' threatened by all this?

Mishraji’s Musings: Chapter 7
Brazen and bolti-bandh

(bolti bandh = speechless)

After the last debacle in the Mishra family where 33-year-old Catrina Kohli and Mishraji’s 22-year-old son, Tinkuji eloped and left Mishraji fuming, everyone seemed to lay low, yours truly included. The direct result of the Mishraji-yours truly face off was to stop blogging on ibnlive.com; one wasn’t too sure if he was reading that blog or not.

However, one has received news from Reliable Sources – read Colony Maids Grapevine since they trash everybody unlike your daily newspapers that have hidden political agendas and capital allegiances – that put off by the alleged media influence on his family affairs, Mishraji has sworn to NEVER get on to the Internet. “Too much unfiltered information, without any responsibility,” is what he thinks of the Net. Truth be told, it suits one fine. Since one’s last encounter with the Parivar (family), one had secretly missed the constant drama and had been waiting for something to give way.

As one completed the quick crossword over the second cup of coffee and took in the early morning background soundtrack – various scooters and motorcycles being kick-started, the swoosh of the brooms on the colony roads, dogs barking at waking cars and an assortment of vendors hawking their fares as they wheel-barrowed through the colony lanes – there was a distinctly alien sound emanating from the Mishra household. Even as one tried to put a name to the indistinct but familiar tune, someone turned up the volume and DON’T YOU WISH YOUR GIRLFRIEND WAS HOT LIKE ME blasted through the neighbourhood. Even the dogs stopped barking.

There had been no sound of music from the walls beyond ever since Mishraji had thrown Pinkiji’s tape-recorder out the window and thus it was with much justified curiosity – yours truly is a trained journalist after all – that one peeped into their courtyard to see who had dared let the music play. The vision was… a fashion disaster and reminded one of thunder thighs specialist, south-Indian actress Rambha (her fans lovingly call her ‘Rambo’).

Pinkiji was wearing tights, a noodle-strap top, had blonde streaks in her hair and was cat-walking on her verandah in five-inch heels at 8 am in the morning. She had a remote of some sort in her hand, was sipping from a bright red mug and her nail polish was a screaming red. Before one could duck behind the wall Pinkiji spotted yours truly. As one quickly schooled one’s expressions – rule of a good investigative journalist is to never show apparent shock – and blurted a hasty greeting, Pinkiji shouted over the music, “Hello-ji sex writer, what is the latest in your world of orgasm?”

All attempts at nonchalance went out the window and as one stood with an open mouth wondering what had happened to the salwar-kameez-clad Pinkiji, Mishraji walked in the gate carrying bananas, bread and milk in a packet.

“I was just saying hello,” Pinkiji and yours truly screamed out the same words, in chorus.
“Can you shut that awful song?” demanded Mishraji, his eyes fixated on yours truly. As Pinkiji turned the volume down and there was an eerie silence. Mishraji was still glaring at yours truly when Pinkiji started walking towards her father… CLACKETY CLACK CLACKETY CLACK. As Pinkiji’s heels clattered on the verandah floor, Mishraji turned to look at his daughter; she froze on the spot.

“WHAT are you wearing Pinki?” asked Mishraji with evident disproval.
“Tights Papaji, I…”
“I can see they are TIGHT. WHY are you wearing these hideous clothes and…” Mishraji would have continued if Mrs Mishraji had not stepped out of the house at that moment.

“Arre, you’ve come back, good now I can make some breakfast, would you like some p…” her voice trailed off noticing the scowl on her husband’s face. Mrs Mishraji looked from her husband, to her daughter and unsure of what to say, turned to yours truly and said, “Hello madam. Pinki and I came back from Bom… Mumbai, this morning only. Hope you are keeping well.”

“You don’t have to ask about her well-being. As long as people are suffering, the media will do well. LOOK at your daughter,” said Mishraji, wincing at his daughter’s tights-clad vision and before anyone could respond, “Did YOU buy her these clothes?” he demanded of his wife.

“Diya mausi gave me,” replied Pinki, in a small voice, “She said I would look good and that I should stop hiding behind a bedcover.”
“What nonsense is your aunt feeding you, what bedcover?” asked Mishraji, quickly losing his patience.
“Diya mausi calls a dupatta a bedcover and says salwar-kameez does not flatter an Indian woman’s body. Today’s modern woman does not wear bedcovers. Look at Lara Croft,” responded Pinkiji.

“Clothes are not meant for flattering, they are meant to cover your modesty; and who is Lara Croft?,” asked an irritated Mishraji.
“Lara Croft is a comic book superheroine…” responded Pinkiji.
“Comic book? ‘Comic’ means funny and you want to copy someone who..” Mishraji looked confused.
“Indian clothes aways try to make a woman look fat and feel as if she has to hide something… says Diya mausi and…” replied Pinkiji.
“Your Diya mausi thinks she is a Bollywood actress and…” said Mishraji.
“…and I think she is right. I am not naked,” replied Pinkiji and both Mrs Mishraji and yours truly gasped. She was answering back to her father! .

“You are not naked? Are you answering me back? What do you mean by THAT? Go change your clothes,” Mishraji asked and ordered in the same breath, with a sudden chill to his voice.

“I am not naked. I like these clothes. They make me feel free. Freedom of expression is my constitutional right. Ask Media Madam,” defied Pinkiji and one’s heart sank.

“ASK MEDIA MADAM? FINE. Madam, tell her these clothes are bad, tell her she looks fat in them,” demanded Mishraji. One was stuck and didn’t know what to say or how to get out of the situation when Mishraji turned on his daughter.

“And what do you mean freedom of expression? I have let you do whatever you feel like, have not been like other fathers. Maybe I should have been stricter. Just because I have never laid hands on you, you have…”

“You dare not,” said Pinkiji softly and everything went hush.
“PINKI,” said Mrs Mishraji.
“What?” asked Mishraji.
“Let it be, she doesn’t know what she is saying,” cajoled Mrs Mishraji.
“No, you dare not. You cannot hit me. I am an adult. You dare not touch me,” declared an unrelenting Pinkiji. Diya mausi had obviously had a strange influence on the girl.

“Dare not touch you? What are you saying? What is she saying Meenal?” Mishraji asked his wife and it was the first time one had heard her name. “She says I can’t touch her? This is the child who sat on my lap as a one-year-old. This is the girl, I… I taught her to walk. What does she mean I cannot touch her?” He was looking at his daughter askance.

Even as Pinkiji stared back at her father defiantly, Mrs Mishraji looked torn between her husband and her daughter and Mishraji looked as if someone had punched him in the gut, the cellphone in Mishraji’s pocket started ringing…


To be continued.

The tequila tramp

There are some things in life that can completely devastate a human being, bring her down to the knees (usually looking into the watery insides of a shit pot), make her head pound in a manner that suggests the brain wants to leapfrog out of the cranial cavity and make her insides scream for mercy. And no, it is not a case of good, old you-stand-behind-me-bend. We don’t talk about such dirty things anymore.


So Sunday morning I woke up with this out-of-body feeling. A feeling that suggested something had happened the previous night and I was not quite sure what. The evidence was worrying: There was a huge cigarette burn on my left middle finger, the base of my neck felt as if someone had been hammering it all night, my tongue felt as if I had tried to put it in places it shouldn’t have been and my mouth smelt like the room Golu Dawg magnanimously poos in when he has not been taken out for a walk… One look at Partner confirmed something was amiss: His jaw sported a cigarette burn as well, his elbows were scraped and there were scratch marks on his cheek. WHAT the hell had happened (and the why the hell were HIS elbows scraped?)


We had had a perfectly docile Saturday morning doing homely things like searching for new furniture and eventually turning up at our local watering hole. And that’s when things turned nasty. From the hazy, headachy recollection I had of the previous night the culprit was six shots of tequila. While that still did not explain the mysterious cigarette burns, it made the need for an urgent Drinking Resolution very clear. Here goes.


1. Try and stay as far away as possible from tequila shots or anyone offering them.
2. If someone does offer you tequila shots, shoot them. If you are paying for your own tequila shots, you are an idiot (will always be proven so the next day).

3. If after three shots you feel “nothing is happening,” don’t be a fool. Something will happen and you are most likely not to remember it.
4. If at all you do have more than one shot, quickly get home before whatever-happens-that-you-won’t-remember happens. In all probability, memories of it will be embarrassing.

5. If you have tequila and lots of it, head banging is a very bad idea. No, it’s not a sex position, it means serially banging your head to music that comprises lot of screaming, swearing and jarring guitars. Since your head hangs low while head banging and there’s vigorous shaking, the tequila rushes from your stomach to your head. And stays there. I think.
6. Never go searching for cigarettes when drunk on tequila.

7. In fact, QUIT smoking.
8. Never wear flip-flops on a night you might be near tequila. They can go missing and the next day you might find dirty stains on your legs. In such moments it is perhaps better that you don’t remember much about the previous night.

9. Never go and ask your neighbour for cigarettes after tequilas. The fact that he gave you the whole packet will make you suspicious of HOW you asked him. It’s better to completely forget about it anyway.
10. Never light a cigarette in bed when drunk on tequilas. Something will always burn. If it’s not the sheet, try and find burn marks on your body.

11. Never try and have sex after tequilas. You will only find yourself waking up naked but won't remember anything. (No, that did not happen, but heard it happened to someone on a TV show
12. Never think tequila shots and vodka shots are the same. They are not and mixing the two is illegal. Or should be.

13. Never throw your clothes around when you come back home trashed. Next day you won’t find them. They vanish.
14. If you feel pukey at home, don’t try and stick your finger in your throat to “get the shit out of my system”. The finger can get stuck in your throat and you can’t scream out for help either.

15. Never discuss international politics after a tequila night, when still drunk. You will only end up saying bad things about other countries and realize you are not just drunk, you are a racist.
16. If your parents had called earlier in the evening and you had promised to call back, after tequilas is NOT a good time.

17. If you are a small person, never compete with a bigger person on how much you can drink. Of course you can drink as much, it’s the after that you won’t be able to handle.
18. Never give your credit card for payment when drinking tequilas. You won’t be able to get your signature right.

19. Try and stay as far away as possible from tequila shots or anyone offering them.
20. Never keep a camera around when drunk on tequilas... you will click pictures doing stupid things and think they are cute.
Like trying to make horse faces--->

PS: And then Partner woke up and grunted groggily, “Didjuhimmeonmahead?”

Seen that life jacket anyone?

So I vanished for a bit. Actually I don't know if I am back even as I type this. Bluurrggggh would pretty much summarise what's happening here and what's happening in this old head of mine. There is much to write but a) not much time for it and b) not the right frame of mind either. This seems to be the season of life lessons. Rather whatever you did NOT learn in the last 10 years will be forced down your throat in two days kinda thing...

1. Humility: No matter how much of a cannon you think you are, keep your mouth shut and your attitude to yourself. It really does not matter if you WERE right, when it comes to getting reference letters, you never know who you will have to contact after ages. Ditto for that boss you really do not like. You don't have to suck arse, but you don't always have to call a spade a spade. In fact it's better if you don't call the spade anything at all!

2. Patience: I hate that word. You cannot, I repeat, cannot have the world responding to your whims and fancies. Even if said whims and fancies are based on assurances from others - that they will deliver - be prepared that just when things seem to sort themselves out, you might have to really grit your teeth and wait.

3. Waiting: Someone said that the sweetest fruit comes to those who wait. Well, they either lied or they didn't know what they were saying. What if you are not waiting for fruit?

4. Constipation: Will get you when you least expect it to and it has no correlation to hitherto perfect bowel movements.

5. Xerox: Will save the day. Documents have a strange way of disappearing when you most need to find them. Or if mailed, some documents can mysteriously never reach an organisation. Missing documents are second after mysteriously disappearing socks, both pairs were in the washing machine but when take them out for drying, there's one gone missing. You cannot xerox socks, you can xerox documents. Do it.

6. Marriages: Never promise that you will attend a friend's wedding, till as such time you are there holding her hand. There will always be strange things happening that you will have to attend to that will make you miss the wedding. It's also harder attending weddings in the same town as you live in, somehow something always comes up...

7. Hair cuts: It's not just humans who look weird after a new hair cut. Dogs look bloody funny. Golu Dawg had his first hair cut and looks like a cross between Milo from The Mask, a shortish Grey Hound and that neighbourhood mongrel.

8. Plans: Are the single most scary thing we humans could do to destabilise ourselves. We never know if those will work out, but we still make plans. To deal with it, have a contingency plan ready and be prepared that it might not work out either.

9. Introductions: It's far easier writing an introduction for a blog or an opening para for an article than it is when formally introducing yourself.

10. Time: Flies REALLY fast when you REALLY want more of it... You wake up on Sunday and realise that it is Friday for the next week, two months later.

Bluuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

PS: 18-21 April, three days without cigarettes, didn't smoke any. For those who asked, I did say I was going to quit, I did not say when. I am trying, ok? How about giving me some credit for TRYING? No one bloody appreciates me.

The will to won’t

A ‘habit’ is a peculiar thing; you never realize when you start on it and yet soon enough it becomes a thing-you-always-do. Then there’s the bit about how it’s much harder to keep up/ start on a ‘good’ habit and how it’s tougher to let go of a bad habit. WHY is it so difficult giving up a habit we picked up in the first place? It’s not as if we were born with it or would die if we don’t do it. Why is it so tough to have the will power to decide and stick by “I won’t”?

Have you ever realized that the more self-destructive a habit, the easier it is to pick it up? Whether it’s smoking 20 cigarettes a day or constant self-analysis that only leaves you with guilt for being a certain way or not being another… I do both: Smoke like a shit-brained maniac and analyse to a point where I begin to bore myself (and then worry as to why I am so boring…). Self-analysis only shows you what you lack or what you are doing wrong, with no solutions on how to stop it. Of course you could let another analyze you; it usually involves paying big bucks. You analyze day in and day out, even when you are asleep (they call it the subconscious) and only end up realizing that you are on a suicide mission of self-destruction.

“I am not a man, I am dynamite,” wrote Nietzsche. I would agree. Human beings are genetically wired to self-destruct in 60-70 years and medical science at best manages to push that limit or delay the inevitable for some decades. Don’t quote the number of humans who touch their 90s or beyond, like every other program, they are an anomaly. If left to our own devices, most of us would kill ourselves much earlier in life. Why do you think kids need watching all the time?

Infants will willingly crawl off their beds/cots, toddlers will happily run on roads and get under cars, or stand under windows and other pointed stuff that can pierce their skulls (have done both as a kid), five-year-olds are adept at throwing things at each other meant to seriously injure… I know of a three-year-old who managed to climb atop the kitchen slab, SIT on the hot plate and turn it on and was saved from toasting his balls by the timely appearance of his mother. Please notice that babies have to be TAUGHT how to kiss, but slapping comes naturally to them. “Give Aunty JB a kitchie, not like THAT, that’s slobbering over her cheek, be a good baby, give her a chweet kitchie now…” And THWACK. Have you ever been slapped by a baby? They slap REAL hard and it hurts real bad. Who taught them?

Post infancy and er, toddler-hood, we become adolescents; if you survive that unscathed, you reach adulthood… Growing up is NOT fun. For one you have to start paying taxes. Two, you cannot get away with half the things you did as a child (try slapping someone). The whole point of being ‘an individual’ is lost because you are supposed to behave in a prescribed manner, which is basically like everyone else. And you realize you have to unlearn every goddamn thing you were taught as a child. Like perhaps the fact that love is not enough, love is never enough. “The idea that love is not enough is a particularly painful one”.

Of course you can make this entire Journey of Realization a fun one, but you usually need a lot of money to make it fun. Depending on varying degrees of individual resistance to all these disturbing truths, we all end up being ticking time bombs; some go off early, some voluntarily, some are forced into it but eventually, we all meet the same fate. Some of us expedite the process by smoking out our lungs, or snorting coke, poking needles into us. Some do it indirectly through constant poisoning of the mind with negative thoughts, comparisons, refusal to give up the past and constant self-analysis that just makes matters worse... “I am not a man, I am dynamite.”

As author Richard Flanagan says in The Unknown Terrorist, “Everyday now somebody somewhere is a dynamite. They are not an image. They are the walking dead, and so are the people who are standing round them. Reality was never made by realists, but by dreamers…” Flanagan then goes on to define realism as, “the embrace of disappointment, in order no longer to be disappointed.” IF reality disappoints, what do humans live for? Why do they teach good things, why do they tell fairy tales to children? If reality disappoints, what makes us go forward without hanging from the ceiling the moment the first pimple appears? That's the reason I don't read Virginia Woolf and nor have I ever read Nietzsche: I don’t know how I will react to what they say. The Nietzsche quote is from the book I am supposedly reading except that I’m stuck on Page 86 because of a BAD HABIT.

I don’t even remember when I started on it or why. What I do know is that it’s completely taking away the satisfaction of reading books. Earlier I could go without food, water or conversation and finish a 500-pager in three hours straight. Now if I like the book, I tend to sit and mull over a line or a paragraph until I come to my own conclusion regarding whatever’s caught my attention and I just cannot read further. So a ‘good’ book now takes days to finish or hangs in the middle, unread, because there’s something I don’t agree with. Or consider the second habit: If it’s a thriller, I being trying to outguess the author and HAVE to turn to the last page to see if I was right… I do the same if it’s a particularly bad book and I can’t be bothered reading the whole thing.

So despite really liking the way Flanagan writes, I am stuck on certain lines and a particular chapter. Am typing out those for you all… Let me know what you think. Meanwhile, I will try and break some habits that are threatening to destroy some very precious, beautiful things I have and need to nurture.

PS: Perhaps the only answer to read peacefully and perhaps live peacefully too (till the Eventual) lies in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Lobotomy. No brain, no pain, hmm?

Choosing some bits of this excerpt from The Unknown Terrorist... these 'spoke' to me, am nicknaming this passage, The Death Of A Lie… And it’s the closest I’ve come to reading anything that describes the end of togetherness so perfectly, so sadly…

Nick Loukakis had had an affair. Maybe he meant something by it, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he’d wanted a way out of his marriage. Or maybe he just wasn’t thinking. Maybe the affair ended the marriage. Or maybe the marriage was over when the affair began. His wife never found out. She always knew, but her knowing grew from a vague awareness easily put away, to a bitter knowledge she could still deny, to an enraged desolation when she one day told him she knew, that she had always known, did he think she was such a fool? And he felt his world collapse into a terrifying white hole into which he fell and into which he was still falling.

They stayed together and watched each other slowly become strangers, watched their love die as you watch a great old gum tree succumb to dieback. The affair was over for him but it was just the beginning for her. She never found out then, but it was as if each day now she lived another day of those years of lies and deceit; and his punishment was to witness her suffering. First just the leaf tips in the distant crown brown a little at the edges, then whole leaves, then a branch here and there. Still the tree lives, and everyone says it will be fine… But when his marriage began dying back, Nick Loukakis discovered nothing is fine,

Each day some small thing – a joke, a shared intimacy, a sweet memory – he found to have withered and died. Caresses fell like dead leaves. Conversations cracked and then broke. And in the end what remained, Nick Loukakis discovered, was nothing; nothing to keep it going, just a large thing still standing erect and proud, only everything about it had withered and died.

Nick Loukakis realized that for a long time there had been something about his life that he now saw as innocence… But then this thing happened – something broke and he came to realize he had broken it and that it could not be put back together, not his family nor his life.

And yet he knew his wife loved him and he lover her. But something had happened, something had broken and he knew neither how to fix it nor end it. The sex was absurd, pointless; an affirmation only of what they didn’t have – the affection, tenderness, hope and dreams that had once been theirs. It was a dismal affair of penetration and her body moving only where it was shoved by his thrusts… But the absence of sex he could adjust to as a price, a penance, perhaps. It was the absence of touch, of warmth, of animal connection… And yet he knew she loved him and would always love him.

How was it possible to live with another human being so closely, to eat with them, sleep with them, smell their breath, and yet be so unspeakably alone?

A Smoker’s Diary: The first rush… to getting hooked

Or, so you think you want to quit smoking?

So I had announced in the ‘Do only bad girls smoke post?’ that I was meeting a doctor who’d help me quit smoking. I did go and spend two hours sitting and talking with her. The first thing I learnt? That I don’t have any oxygen in me and the carbon monoxide levels in me are 20 + ppm. For heavy smokers. Also, she asked me if there was any phlegm with my ‘smoker’s cough’. No, there isn’t, which apparently is really bad news because it means the ‘cilia’ in my lungs (little hair that work as filters) are either dead or defunct. Basically, of all the 500 poisons we intake each time we take a puff, ALL are in me.

“How will a doctor help?” someone had asked me, “Quitting smoking is about will power, if you don’t have it, no one can help you quit.” While it is true that the first and most important step in quitting cigarettes is a WILL to quit and the determination to back it… HOW do you quit? Some of us need help with WHAT to do when the urge hits and that’s where Dr Sajeela Maini, PhD in tobacco cessation, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital comes in… Soon enough I would be undergoing a four-day intensive programme with her to get my lungs back. Before that…
--------------------------------------------------------

I had my first cigarette on 24th June, 1999. I was standing in the kitchen, the exhaust was on, the windows open, there was no home, but I wasn’t taking the risk. It was a stick of Charms (formerly Charminar, a Hyderabad brand), one of my father’s.

I was interning at a newspaper office and there were many women who smoked there. Two were girls from my college, my seniors by a year. I was curious: What did people like about cigarettes? Since I had seen umpteen movies where people coughed after their first drag and looked like imbeciles, I had decided that my first attempt would be in the privacy of my home. I’ve never been one for making a fool of me in public (unless it’s eyebrows on a TV show!) The cigarette was blackened as I had simply held it between my lips and put a match to it, not knowing that one needed to ‘pull’ in to light a cig properly… It was not a candle.

I thought I was a natural since I didn’t cough. It was only the next day – armed with my first self-bought cigarette – that I learnt that I hadn’t coughed because I was smoking it wrong. All I was doing was taking in the smoke and blowing it right out. There had been no taste and I had wondered, people surely didn’t indulge in it just to exercise just to blow smoke at each other’s faces. Wasn’t there more?

The next day one of the senior girls – as I sat amidst them all ears while they discussed the editor – pointed out that I was smoking ‘wrong’. She taught me how to pull the smoke in, then inhale with my teeth slightly parted. I watched her carefully and emulated. I didn’t cough… My head felt funny, slightly dizzy. Like I had just gotten off a fast spinning merry-go-round. I used as many words to describe what I felt when the senior asked me, “So what do you think?” As I finished my recounting she laughed and said, “Stupid, that’s called a rush.” Her name was Chitra.

I have never felt that rush again, no matter how many cigarettes I smoke in a day. They say the first cigarette after a day’s break from smoking will give you that rush. It’s a blatant lie. Once you get hooked to the habit, you don’t get that rush because habitual smokers will always ensure they never run out of cigarettes, not for a couple of hours and a day’s abstinence will give most smokers palpitations. And that’s the funny thing, I had never expected to get hooked, had never stopped to think I would become an addict.

“No smoker starts out thinking s/he will become addicted,” says Dr Maini. It’s the same pattern for everyone: you start out as a ‘social smoker’, or as an only-lunchtime smoker, or someone who only ‘smokes with alcohol’ or even a ‘weekend smoker’ and sooner or later – unless you stop altogether – you will get hooked. “You are either a smoker or a non-smoker, there are no grey areas, nothing called an occasional smoker,” says Dr Maini, “Even reduced-smoking is a myth.” By ‘reduced smoking’ she refers to people who ‘cut down’ on their cigarettes and think they are doing a brilliant job by going from 20 to two a day. However – and let no one fool you – they are still smokers and they will go back to an increased intake.

That was the first shock for me… I was hoping – like many a chicken-shit quitter – that I would do the gradual reduction. “You cannot reduce and quit, reduction is self-pacifying. Something or the other will get you back to smoking full time. The ONLY way to quit is going cold turkey,” says Dr Maini. And very honestly, it is a bloody scary idea. Not the trying, but the thought of not being able to. What if I fail?

Even as Dr Maini looked me in the eye to gauge the seriousness of my intentions, stories of those who have quit ran through my head. My father, two of his coursemates (one a Major General now) and one of our family friends. All of them quit in a day, they simply threw out the cigarette packets. “The first step is deciding to quit and knowing that you want to stop. I can show you the ways, but the determination is all yours.”

I could not assure her immediately as I started coughing, dry, lung-racking, body-shaking coughs that hurt my larynx. Earlier, my smoker’s cough would hurt my tonsils – right under my jaw – and I would comfortably blame it on season change. Now the pain has shifted and my entire throat, particularly the larynx and chest hurt. It scares me. What if I have… Hmm.

Pictures of lung cancer patients and those who wear a voice-box (cancer of the larynx basically removes the vocal chords and it’s replaced by a mechanical device) suddenly seem far more personal to me…

PS: Tuesday is when I visit the doc and start the programme. Nervous. And yet sickeningly enough, it’s Sunday night and I am smoking as I type this out…

Smoking is injurious to your character

Statutory Warning: Cigarette smoking IS injurious to your health, irrespective of whether you are man, woman or child. This article does NOT promote smoking, but it will not shy away from talking about what a “cigarette” signifies in the Indian context.

“No pictures of me smoking please,” announced the actress as she lit up her Marlboro Lights. She was known to be rather forthright about everything from virginity to single motherhood to how she upgraded the diamonds she wore each time she upgraded her man. She continued pulling on the nicotine when her mother entered the room. If the presence of her mother didn’t stop her smoking – a whole lot of Indians don’t smoke “before elders” – why did she have objections to being clicked smoking? Maybe because she was not Shah Rukh Khan? Or because she was a woman?

On another occasion, a celebrity blogger announces on national TV that she has quit smoking. Five minutes before the show was to be recorded, the girl was taking a “few drags” off an acquaintance’s cigarette. She blogs about smoking, she smoked before the recording of the show, why did she conceal the fact on TV then? Her parents were watching, or because the nation was watching?

Another instance, a couple sitting in the smoking section of a restaurant were enjoying what looked like a scrumptious meal. After the meal, both of them lit their respective cigarettes. Three boys sitting on the table adjacent to them nudged each other, one whispered, “Dekh, dekh, cigarette pee rahi hai,” and proceeded to nonchalantly check out the girl. It didn’t matter there was a man with her. (Look, she’s smoking a cigarette) The smoking girl did not look up from her empty plate after that and crushed her cigarette midway. Why?

Read complete story: Do only bad girls smoke?

Monday morning boos....

Goodmorning! It's 8.20 am on a Monday and between finishing my coffee-cigarette-crossword and going for my bath, I am sitting and scribbling in my favourite spiral notebook. Sometimes I wonder if I would write/blog as much if I had someone to discuss all this with. And then maybe perhaps not. There is writing about random things that bounce around your head and there's catching someone to talk to... not the same. While I can write what I want to, talking to another about most things on my mind might not be that conducive an idea.

Imagine a phone conversation that follows thus:

"Hello darling," me on the phone, "Just wanted to talk to you. What do you think of helping an old lady catch an auto on the street? All because you suddenly get a vision of your old parents standing with loaded bags and bent backs in the scorching heat while the autodrivers sat around, cleaning their teeth or their ears or scratching their lice-infected balls? And no one bothers a fuck that those old people -- your parents -- could most definitely pass out in the heat? Have you ever wondered, darling, that Life is so funny: you have children, bring them up and when you need them the most -- like when standing in the heat waiting for an auto - your children are busy with their own lives..maybe even blogging about relationship problems. And partying every night while you lose sleep over them?"

Nope, I don't think I can 'talk' about what I think and write about to anyone. And that is perhaps why the idea of waking up with anyone beside me is making me extremely nauseous... Firstly, what is the whole point? And secondly, while I want to feel all the nice things of being with someone, but I dont want to at the same time as it seriously defocusses me. I am not one born with a silver spoon but I've had a very comfortable life. And yet, things and Life and money are frivolous companions. So I cannot lose focus -- ever again or for a very, very long time -- because I cannot leave my parents alone and helpless. They are proud, self-made people...and now it is my turn.

I am not smart enough for quick schemes and am painfully perfectionist to use someone else's work to grow or for that matter use short cuts. And since I would always be thinking of ulterior motives if someone tried to godfather/mother me...that is out as well. So hard work is the only option left for me;and am not scared. I so want to, too. And let no one stand in the way. 2006 made me realise that I can have a really mean, vicious streak to me... just that I need to develop it further. And I am quite looking forward to using it as well, for better or for someone else's worse. No one thinks/takes me as a 'sweet' girl. I am not a sweet girl: so fucking try? The blog is meant to provoke, irritate, make you barf, curse me, even start a campaign against me. But you will not ignore me.
Post scrap: And the Princess said, "Fuck You, I enjoy it too."

Giving credit where it's due

My mom, speaks English (at home) on three occasions -- else we speak Bangla -- when she's highly excited, highly perturbed or proving to Dad that Mrs Pinto (Mamma's kindergarten English teacher) did a good job with the a, e, i, o, u's. When Mamma is excited she says, "Goodness, Gracious, Lord" with such a British accent that it kills us. When its retorting to Dad, her sentence starts with an, "Excuse me please." And then , when Mamma is really perturbed, she'll shock you with a whole sentence in English.
Like when she declared, "I am simple, your father is simple. I don't know how you have been born like this, like some Wild Cat!?" Then Ma proceeded to explain how I should not try and live with anyone as I am difficult to live with. When I argued my case, Ma cursed me saying, "You wait. You will have a daughter JUST LIKE YOU." And that ladies and gentlemen, is bad news. However, I am glad Mamma didn't call me a scarlet woman or something, I was expecting that any minute. Poor things worried that I am going to live by myself again. Ever since I have been on my own (since 2000), I seem to move houses/homes in 6 months. Shrug. I dont know why or how...not ALL situations are my doing!!

Am I tough to live with? Yes. But hey, it's not always me. Sample these: One person found me too clingy and said I had excessive need. Another always had either his tongue sticking down my throat all the time or his crotch hovering in my vicinity always at times when I didn't want it around, like when I was cooking or writing. And no, it's not that he wanted sex in the kitchen either. It was just stupid, unproductive timing with him.

Certain things about me might not be very friendly. Like I like to zone out when I log on. Internet is personal, it's not switching on your TV and watching the daily soap with the family, yeah? And no, I dont enjoy being watched after my bath when I am doing my moisturising etc. It sounds good in girlie magazinse for a How To Seduce Him thing, otherwise it's just intruding on personal space/time on a daily basis. Once in a while though, I'd enjoy giving you a show.
And the fact that I offered a body massage cannot be held against me...not at 3 am when I pooped as well. So I like to cook...but there are days I just dont feel like it. Even if I had priorly announced honey chicken that night! And when I am smoking... and after... either we are on the same trip or basically can manage to reach the same plane... or we stay away, yeah? I really cannot handle people who cannot handle their smoke and start talking too much. And lawrd...I HATE dusting. I just wont do it, so for those who think that I can be reformed, please! Dust yourself.

So well, all that a some more things here and there make me hard to live with. And not quite so literally, I am a pain to be with. I exasperate myself at times. Like I can talk about myself. REALLY talk. Like, take the blog and have someone read it out to you...constantly, blog after blog. Sab josh khatam, I tell you. I can be a brag. I am extremely rude, even offensively so, even at the cost of social niceties and in situations that demand I shutup than open my mouth. I am opinionated and not easily convinced of the other's viewpoint (unless I believe I am in love with the person, then I am the biggest believing ass this side of the hemisphere). I can be extremely bitchy. Stupidly, fucking emotional. Too wrapped up in my own self... Too much thinking... Over analytical, even over self-critical. :)

I have an amazing knack of falling for men who just WON'T like me. There are times, when I can get into self0-doubting because my Current Oject of Affection is not responding the way I want him to. So, I'll think that maybe there's something wrong with me, or it was something that I said, or the way I behaved, blah blah blah. And all this while that I censure myself, there will be those who are around. The people who have picked up calls at random hours; people who have called, eerily at times when I am feeling the lowest. People who make me laugh and want to be with me without any agenda. Men and women who take me the way I am (lol, double entendre) ...who let me space out or rant about my Future Plans and then later about How The Plan Failed, who let me have my temper fits and laugh at me and relax with me. Those who land up at my place in the middle of the night to share a toke, those who let me come into their houses and sit quietly in one corner, those who take out half an hour in their schedules to just meet up and ask me how am doing, people who share their time and space without asking what school I have been to...
People -- so many of them -- who are THERE. Those who love me, overwhelm me, becasue they love me. They also take a lot of shit from me. God, I am really grateful.

Post Scrap: And the Princess counted her special marbles and felt very happy that she had so many and in such different, vibrant colours. She decided she was going to party out tonight and chose to wear her most transparent blouse. "I LOVE my booblets," she thought.

(sab josh khatam = all enthusiasm over)