I feel very weird living in this body. It feels like so many people occupy it one after the other, at the same time. Like when you walk into a new house and look at the old tenants’ stuff. You try the pants on, try to play 1-2 cassettes, and mostly judge their taste in curtains. Like a house that gets rented and re-rented to people, so different, yet so alike to have chosen and nourished the same house, who sit and judge, feel what the old tenants have left behind. Clothes, books, favorite songs, sounds made with earphones on, that make no sense to the outside world.
Actually, forget that, my friend puts it much better. He says we are like a book of short stories. So many, such quirky, improbable, mundane things happen. If I were to write it in an essay, my teacher would cut marks for the writing won’t flow. There will be no thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis. There will be too many things, happening too fast and making no sense. But still connected, by a thin thread, if you take the pain to map them.
The girl in the story at the beginning of the book was 16 read Twilight, read five point someone and liked it, liked biology, and wanted to be an engineer, from IIT of course. She was not all bad, she also dearly loved Three Men in a boat, Enid Blyton, and old Hindi songs. This girl next, quit fancy engineering college and told her professors that she is getting married to an orthodox family, who was followed by a girl who nerd-ed in Anthropology and drank too much wine. About this new lady who moved in recently, we are lukewarm. We are not comfortable with each other yet, but I have a good feeling about her. I had a few startling moments that made me realize how different from an Edward appreciator she is:
- She tried a ‘Young and Wild’ t-shirt that fit her well. But she did not buy, not owing to her youngness or wild-less-ness but the fact that some things need not be endorsed, especially on lime-yellow t-shirts.
- She was recommended some underwear with batman, superman, Wonderwoman logos on the bums. They were not bought. I am sticking to my usual plain and on wild days, florescent ones.
- I, she, one morning, saw a message from a college-going younger sister that read ‘Forgive me, sister, for I have sinned. I fucked up real bad’ at 5:30 am, not because my sister woke up too early but because wild nights tend to go on that long. I noticed my mind thinking thoughts that flowed on the lines of ‘God, please, let this just be about some boy or alcohol or boy and alcohol’. This made me aware of so differently, maybe adultly, set priorities of a lady.
- I have decided where I draw the adulthood line – at dealing with maids. You can be earning your own money, eating breakfast, having a problem with your boss, dealing with health, struggling with homework balance. But you are an adult only if you have accepted and are dealing with a maid successfully.
- I am hearing too much of ‘in love with your body’ in malls, cabs, stray hums, bathroom singing, just everywhere basically. And then there is So baby pull me closer in the back seat of your rover. I don’t relate to them anymore. I’ll probably preferably just worry about traffic jams your rover will get its ass stuck in on the way to therapists’ appointments. While people are at ‘boy, let’s not talk too much, grab on my waist and put that body on me’, I am at making myself a traffic jam playlist.
- To cut a long-ish list short. I have been reading a lot of Shayari. Have visited one more state, am reading a mesmerizing book, deciding never to buy underwear from teenagey shops like H&M after being wedgied more than I have been during ragging. Bought a t-shirt that reads ‘girls bite back’ that I am sure tenant no. next will regret having spent money on, have become excited about turning 25, might also be thinking that it is a big deal. But, honestly, mostly I am just secretly flattered that Arundhati Roy’s book will be releasing in June and I am super secretly hoping that it happens on 12th/13th.
And if I must ‘synthesis’: I was stuck in a house, the other half of which was partying – listening to Honey Sing kinda, laughing at sexist jokes kinda party. The last time I heard Honey Singh was in a taxi in Gujrat. Try telling me that is a compliment to Honey boy or Gujarat. I am also a recipient of the ‘if the music is too loud, you are too old’ quote that wild Prachi had decided to save on her laptop.
Conclusion: Music is definitely too loud. Let me read my book and drink my hot chocolate.