When loss is gain and gain is loss…

Once upon a time due to certain turn of events I had ended up in a certain city which shall remain unnamed in this post. More than the city itself due to certain other inexplicable factors I had sunk into depression and had enveloped myself in a wave of negativity that spread out like menacing tentacles trying to entangle whoever had tried to come in close proximity to me…

Repercussions? Too many…way too many…

For today I shall take up just one.

I had started overeating.

I am very specific about food. ( used to be would be more apt…now you can take out the “very”) My food spectrum includes a chosen few dishes and if I don’t get them I would rather starve to death. Well...easy to say…not really a viable proposition.

So when I did not find the food of a certain place palatable I started filling up on cheese rolls, chocolate, chips and cookies…for a month. After a point of time your body starts craving well-cooked meals…and if you are on the verge of losing sanity such pangs do not help much.

It’s a vicious cycle…you eat…you still don’t feel satiated…you eat more trashy food…you feel sadder…it goes on.

Result? I gained 8 Kg.

Ah…stop imagining me as a blob of flab. I used to be severely underweight and had a 10 Kg buffer. So after this significant weight gain when I returned home…every body seemed extremely happy about it…except me.

I was extremely sad to lose the size zero me…and I no longer had 10Kg buffer which meant I could not binge as and when I wanted to. Every well meant comment of “It’s good that you have gained some weight” meant 2 hours of sitting by the window wondering how could I have let it happen. It took me some time (several months actually) to accept the new weight…I still have a old weight ticket tucked away somewhere in the memory of those size zero days.

Why am I talking about something that happened a year ago?

Because I have been pushed out of my comfort zone again…far from there...

Anyway…this time with no weight buffer to cushion the "depression weight" I have made a new decision…to not be depressed.

Easy decision…easier to stick to…easiest on my health (mental and otherwise).

PS: Are you by any chance wondering what my present weight is? It’s 48Kg.

Conquered!!!

Things a man has to do to qualify as your crush:

1. Must be able to give you at least one sleepless night thinking all about him…even if you have some emergency to attend to. (like preparing for an engineering exam scheduled the next day on a subject whose title even is alien to you...)

2. Must be able to make a guest appearance in at least 90% of your dreams.

3. Must be present in all your daydreams.

4. Must be able to switch on the song “Tum aaye to haawao mein ek nasha sa hai…” on the back of your mind when he enters the room. (If he is a celebrity then his entrance would mean entrance into the television screen space with you in the same room as the television is located.)

5. Must be able to make you sit for hours doing nothing…with a stupid complacent smile on your face and a whistle blowing blush on your cheeks.

6. Must be able to make you interested in Honolulu if that is where he hails from.

7. Must be able to make you choose magenta over midnight blue because he told you (personally or in a newspaper interview) that he has a fetish for that colour.

8. Must be able to make you wonder about his relationship status. (If he is a celebrity like Ian Thorpe then this step would mean looking him up in the internet and breaking your heart when certain reports identify him as gay.)

9. And most importantly…must be able to take your interest off the other available hunks.

PS: Crush was level 1. Level 2 is love. So how does a man promote himself from level 1 to level 2? Or is there a cheat code for direct entry?

We will talk about that some other day...

Toxic high

Mad am I,
Mad are you...
Mad is the world...
Why? No clue.

Mad is the world,
Let it be.
Mad are you...
Just about me???


PS: Question from a friend: Who is the post for?

Answer (from me) :

1. Experience shows that throwing such questions at me is futile.
2. If you are in heaven you need not conclude that you have died.
3. I would not vouch for the veracity of the above two lines.
;)

What an idea…bapuji!

Sealdah station.
It’s a Saturday…and hence a holiday for many.
The time is midday.
I was travelling upstream…which meant the rush should be in the opposite direction
(I just read it again and got how it sounds. I’m not that abominable that me travelling in one direction compels people to choose the other direction. I meant that during that particular hour on a Saturday most people travel downstream to return home from work.)

So the platform should be relatively deserted.
And yet…what did I find?
People (spreading objectionable odours) in multitudes jostling every where…crowding into your breathing space. It was getting scary…I’m no Geet from Jab We Met and crowds make me feel very claustrophobic and stir my instincts to run. (...that I feel like running away from every single thing that doesn’t conform to the dogmatic whims designed by me is an entirely different issue.) On hindsight I should have wanted to fly…since there wasn’t any space to allow me a sprint…(see how I can’t think properly even in purported emergencies…pitiful and disgusting.)

But it made me sit up and wonder…Indians need to look into this serious problem of over flowing population…admitted that India is the 7th largest country but does it really mean that we need to occupy every square femtometre of space available?

PS: When the father of the nation promotes “Do or die” could we really blame the Indians for choosing the much easier first option???

Heirloom

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel. Mrittika looked intently…she could discern the figure of a lone girl dressed in wet rags.

A month ago Mrittika was browsing the television aimlessly. She had tumbled upon channel 666 which she had not known to exist. The channel was showing a stormy night at an abandoned port. A lonely, rusty boat was anchored that swayed to the tunes of the gale. And standing among some tinged pebbles the silhouette of a young girl could be seen. Every day Mrittika tuned to that channel hoping to steal a glance at the girl’s face. Each day the picture grew fainter, one day the boat took the colour of a dead channel, the next day the moor and so it went on for thirteen days. And on the fourteenth day which happened to be a full moon day the vision disappeared completely and channel looked completely dead.

As the moon began to wane the port started reappearing. In a startling moment of revelation Mrittika realised where the port was. Once, shipwrecked, Mrittika’s parents had taken refuge in a desolate island for a night. On that fateful night Mrittika was born. And she would turn 18 in a few days. The island was calling out to her. She had to visit.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Lined by palm trees quivering in the mild breeze, floating amidst rippling waters the island looked like a wisp of dream under the enchanting stars. Mrittika felt a strange feeling of serenity flooding her senses as she stepped on the island. The scene looked exactly same. Her boat anchored at a corner, shiny pebbles strewn around, a chilling wind wafting through her hair…

Mrittika saw a girl lying supine…she was unconscious. Mrittika tried to rouse her. The girl opened her eyes. Mrittika braced. The countenance of the girl was in no way threatening yet the suddenness alarmed Mrittika. The girl spoke in a low whisper as if she was afraid of someone. “You finally came,” she smiled. “It’s the right time. In a few minutes there would be an annular eclipse and you must stare into my eyes without breaking contact.” Mrittika wanted to ask why…but the moon was about to hide from the sun and the urgency in the girl’s tone possessed her. Mrittika looked into her eyes. Her body started feeling numb…she was drifting into nothingnesss…

Mrittika opened her eyes…she was lying on the island dressed in wet rags. The girl was standing in front of her. When she turned Mrittika got the shock of her life. It was Mrittika’s body. The girl was in her body. She smiled. “You are the new owner of this island. Bye…” Saying this, the girl stepped out of the television into Mrittika’s bed room. Mrittika could see her through the television screen, smiling smugly. Mrittika was suddenly seized by a spasm of helplessness as she saw the dead channel haze engulfing her from all sides. “Let me out...”, Mrittika shrieked. “Shhhh!”, the girl hissed. “Everyone’s asleep. You don’t want to wake them up. Wait for the next baby to be born on the island. You must pass on the island to the next rightful heir.” Mrittika had a thousand other questions to ask…but she was on the wrong side of the television and the girl had switched the television off.

PS: Why the deviation in the nature of the article posted? Well...actually this had won me a prize from The Times of India and some friends who had missed out on reading the published version wanted to take a look.

Of carpals, metacarpals and phalanges...

The little one and grand old one:
The very popular "aari" and "bhaab" respectively. [If you are not a bengali...read along...I am about to explain the concept...and do let me know if such a concept is prevalent in your state as well.] Whenever we had a slight tiff we touched our errant friend's pinky with our own and announced "Aari". The solemn declaration meant we would not talk to each other and would not be seen in each other's company in the playground. Within minutes we did make up if we felt the need to gang up on a third friend...translates to touching of thumbs and announcing "Bhaab". This happened more than 10 times with more than 20 people in the course of a day. And I went to the largest school in Asia...so imagine how difficult it was for me to maintain the balance sheet every day. [Man...childhood was tough.]

The ring finger:
When we stepped into adolescence suddenly the ring finger made its foray into prominence. This is the age when every one falls for some one. I fell for Shahid Afridi and when he broke my heart I redirected my affection and devotion to Ian Thorpe. Then there were others like all (yes, all) the members of Italian soccer team, Alexei Nemov...no, you are not going to get a politically incorrect name in my crush list! Anyway, people kind of believed some stupid stories about the ring finger at this age...however not all people are enamoured by this finger. It's mainly the girls...the ever irritating giggly type of girls who are absolute airheads and laugh all the time in and out of context thinking it to be an alluring trait do this. (I can proudly declare that none of my female friends fall into that category...and neither do the male ones. )

The index finger:
We were all taught that pointing finger at someone else is rude and forbidden. And we know that the best way to get any thing done by a child is by asking the child to refrain from doing it. But this finger lost its significance when I was in fifth grade and the following phrase became popular: "When you point one finger at another person the rest four point back to you" Thereafter I always chose to point at someone using all the five fingers thus absolving myself of any ambiguity whatsoever!
There was another purpose of the index finger. Teachers often announced an authoritative "Finger on your lips." (Why did they have to mention "your"? Had our intentions been doubted at such a tender age? Sick...) We were supposed to place the vigilant index finger on our lips and maintain absolute silence. We obeyed the teachers and became masters of ventriloquism.

The central finger (Am I the first one to refer to it like that?):
What a crushing defeat this finger inflicts on the other finger as we grow up!!! Suddenly, every thing starts to change around us and we curse ourselves for wishing so earnestly to grow up (As if we had grown up in response to those prayers. Proof: I was one wuss who had always wanted to remain under the aegis of my parents...but then...did the sky lords listen? ) And when every single thing in our life goes askew at the end of a long, hard, hopeless day...when we find ourselves at a loss of words to describe the high level of indignation and irritation this dear finger acts as the messiah and puts all our frayed nerves and feelings into proper expression.

PS: People under 18...what are you doing in my blog? Go back to dreaming about pale Pattinson or Emma Watson (Why do their names rhyme? ) placing a ring on your ring finger.

Law of attraction

The time period taken by a subject to fall in love with another subject is exactly equal to the time taken by the former subject to get over them.

Explanation:

1. T=1 second:
You see a person and fall in love. Soon you see that person with their lover. You perform a mental comparison of yourself and the lover, emerge the clear winner and turn away with a complacent sneer. (What? You lost? May be you had been aiming too high.)

2. T=1 week:
You can’t just think of anything else but them. You decide to gift a chocolate then change your decision to a flower and then back to chocolate (since flowers don’t come with the safety valve of ”I think of you as a friend”). You are just about to present the chocolate when she/he starts to babble about her/his boyfriend/girlfriend. You eat the chocolate yourself, bless yourself for the judicious decision taken earlier, eat some more chocolates during the course of the week and move on.


3. T=4months:
You were so in love with this person and now you have to move to another place. You know things can’t work out. You turn to songs for comfort and they croon about your lovelorn self. You take to reading books and find that the stories are woven around your love life. You run to the movies for solace and again find the movies have also been made about you. You curse the world and rush to your friends and become the talking point for one day. Then find that almost every one else has had one or more such experiences. You realize that there is indeed more to life.

4. T=4 years:
Hmm...trust me and give it 4 years...you will get over them. If you don’t you can kill me. (You have to find me first...and I hide well!)

Aberration from the law: Let’s call this aberration the case of swinging interest.

Say there is someone whom you have liked for 5 weeks and then the person makes an appearance in green and scarlet. You immediately get over this person and find a new interest. The trick is that your liking for that fashion disaster returns when you find that the adoring qualities are still existing in that person. Again you like this person for a year and one fine day the person chooses to criticize you about something that you are insecure about. You take the insult bravely, save the tears for the night and again find a new interest the morning after. Basically, this person acts as a buffer. Nature abhors vacuum and so does your heart. So whenever there’s a lull you can fantasize about the buffer. So this continues...until one day you find that the person has turned you off and you are not willing to find a new interest. In fact you are finding the annoying qualities adoring too. The buffer needs to be buffered!!! Or...may be it’s time to take your swinging interest seriously.


Thin ice...buddies...thin ice...tread carefully.

PS: Some real life examples would have made my article more delectable but that would have caused a little inconvenience to some people and a lot of inconvenience to my very existence...so...