Dear Boy-I-Was-Sort-Of-Hitting-On,

I really really like you. Like you in a 'love is' cartoons, line drawings of walking into sunsets hand-in-hand, make me go ridiculously girlie giggly mushy, moon over your Facebook picture, consider doodling your name at random times but not actually doing it since I am too grown up to, way. I like you and the only reason I find this so easy to say is because there is very little chance of you stumbling into this blog. Sigh. As someone very wise recently pointed out I apparently always fall for those who are outside the realm of immediate possibility.

But anyway, even if you'll never read this, I write this to just get this off my chest. And to serve as a warning to all other dimwits like me.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being so dense. I'm sorry for replying to you in a flurry of excited typos every one and half month you pinged to say hello. I'm sorry for doing all that natak of hitting on you and pretending I wasn't. And I'm sorry for not realising that the interest wasn't actually mutual. Which is where epiphany number two comes in. I think my arrogance stops me from registering that someone I am so obviously interested in, isn't interested back. So I keep pushing and pushing despite all sorts non-encouragement (not active discouragement, mind you) until the boy is forced to act like a jerk. Which is when I register "he's not that into me" and go crying to friends who rally around saying 'there there, he's a jerk'.

But you! You are so totally sweet. Thank you for not being a jerk. Thank you for asking me to what I now see wasn't a date but just an arrangement for us to be at the same place at the same time. Thanks for not getting sleazy. Thanks a thousand times for not taking advantage of my adolescent type crush and giving me your room number (yes, this has happened to me before). Thanks for hugging me goodbye and kissing my hair, in a way that made me close my eyes and feel a little squishy inside. I realise now of course that your oh-so-sweet gesture wasn't an exclusive move but an applicable to all girl friends thing. Am sorry for being a small-town type who didn't see a PR type move for what it was.

And what I'm really sorry for putting you in a spot where you couldn't say "back off!" This will teach me not to hit on professional contacts. Gah, what can I say, I'm really sorry for being a stupid cow.

Swooning still,

M

P.S. But you're still so cute!

On hold

Sometimes it feels like my whole life is on whole hold. I don't know how many stories that I've filed are on hold. That's work. There are three blog posts which are still on hold cause what I have written on I have no clue how to finish. That is, or so I kid myself into believing, my writing. And all my plans of working outside the city, doing my own thing, making ends meet on a higher salary that is still far too little to survive on (God, why does that sound good?) will probably come to naught. That's life

Somebody hang up and let me go.

So there's Free Fallin' by Tom Petty and a beautiful beautiful cover of the song by John Mayer. I'm listening to the song on loop again and you know what really pisses me off about the song (other than the thought that listening to one song on loop over 20 hours is, well, a little nutty) ? It's when he says "And Im a bad boy cause I dont even miss her". I mean, really, is it just me or is it always, al-bleddy-ways that a boy gets to say this?
Please can a woman cover the song in a really kick ass manner and change that to And I'm a bad girl cause I dont even miss him ? I'd really prefer to sing along to that version.

Through The Filters

With him everything seemed to have that tinted glow. Not rose tinted. But as if viewed through muted yellow filters. The colours were richer, her laughter louder, her hair shinier and her skin glowed. Like the old Dove ad. There was something about that time made it seem as if everything was tinted with that slightly fuzzy happiness that made everything ok. It felt like a time shot in Vaseline shots.

And now the filters have changed. Everything now was a dull boring brown. Nothing was funny anymore. Not even her. How unfair that that glow went away with him. How unfair that he left and the brown came back.

In My Place

Out of all things that she could have remembered from that book, what she did was a paragraph that didn't matter. A young truck driver drops everything to accompany a strange 60-year-old man who talks to cats. Another falls in love with a girl in a picture. World War II soldiers lost in a forest have remained the same ever since. But what she remembers are half forgotten lines about a girl the truck driver could have visited. The truck driver wonders why he is going along with a strange 60-year-old on a strange excursion. He could have visited that girl in Tokyo "who always made time for him whenever he wanted to meet her," he thinks. Which is when it hits her.

She is that girl, she realises. There is no mention of that girl in the book again. Just that one line. It's easy to identify with that protagonist in a book who conquers all kinds of odds to get to his goal. Easier still to identify with the best friend or the sidekick, and like Kate Winslet in Holiday, feel like a side character in your own life. But nothing... nothing quite puts you in your place like the realisation that you aren't the best friend. You aren't even the best friend's other option. Yours is not the situation that could have happened. You were never an option.

You are those twenty words that people won't even remember.

Unidentified Coloured Object


So my very obliging girlfriends gather at my place to welcome me back after my three week hiatus. One of them has suddenly developed something of a social life in my absence. And has had an obvious pedicure and is wearing nail polish. Her pedicures would always come sans nail polish before so I obviously take note. Toe flirting, I accuse. And well, if a girl is dating anything she does is attributed to the sudden appearance of guy. Hair serum? Aha date with boy huh? Eyebrows done? Oooh date night. Dieting? When is date? Shopping? Going anywhere fancy with boy? Of course all of these things are stuff we'd do irrespective of boys but it's generally fun to watch them squirm and blush and deny start a general banter. It's like small talk. But better than talking about the weather. I mean with the weather all you can say is "Oof it's so hot" and it ends there. This on the other hand offers us endless possibilities for a conversation.

So yes nail polish. She demurs. "Yeah I finally went for it, because they got me a white nail polish," she says.
Girlfriend 2: "That's not white. That's more peach."
Me: "Yeah, a very light diluted with white sort of peach."
The one with a social life: "Han? I thought it was white."
Girlfriend 3, arrives later and the topic comes up again. "That's white," she agrees.
Girlfriend 2: "No actually it's sort of coral."

A day later, we're walking down the street to grab a bite when it finally hits me. "Aha! I know. This is shell pink."
Her: " Han? I thought it was white"
Me: No... think sea-shells. It's that sort of pink.

(We are very good at that stating the obvious. What's OCD? It's this compulsive need to do something obsessively, she wrote. What's shell pink? It's the shade of pink often spotted in sea shells!)

So now the matter is resolved. Shell pink. So there.

[663 finds his apartment is flooded]
Cop663: Did I leave the tap running, or is the apartment getting more tearful? I always thought it would cope okay. Didn't expect it to cry so much. When people cry, they can dry their eyes with tissues. But when an apartment cries, it takes a lot to mop it up.

Chungking Express, 1994


My house thinks it's in this Wong Kar Wai movie. It figures it is allowed to act up now that mom's in Bombay. The AC refuses to work. Got it fixed by the maintenance people and it still switches off in the middle of the night and only starts working when I wake up suffocating and panicky. The floor of my box bed also just gave way. It sort of caved in the middle and the durries and stuff is poking outside. Like it's saying, "Dude I refuse to take all this load, without your mom around." And the AC remote walks about the house alone. Here it was on the bed... sometime later I will find it on the window sill. Wonder what kind of shenanigans it will get into once I leave as well. Spooky this.