Beauty

In one of its many forms :)

All Time Low Behaviours

I imagine everyone has a way they deal with or behave during those (hopefully) rare moments in life when one feels defeated, left out and generally fucked by universal energy.

My least favourite of these behaviours, from what I've observed at least, is the tendency to lash out at others, bang doors, curse violently and inventively and generally become a fat worm up everyone's asses.

Some, I know, listen to hard, thrashing music, hoping to beat out the misery, or at least if God is merciful, block it out for a little.

Some eat. Gorge. Feel sick, gorge some more.

Some bawl. Noses dripping, undignified, ruined tissues all around them, generally a hot mess with no one to see them.

Some update their Facebook status and damn but if that's not good gossip for the rest of us!

And then some of us, put on Adele, take out the tub of ice cream, sit in a corner and scare the cats in the neighbourhood with a heartfelt, from-the-gut, caterwauling version of "Someone like you".

Favourite bit being, " Never mind I'll find someone li-ike youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhoooooooo, I wish nothing but the best for youuuuuuuuuuhooooooooooooooooooo...." etc. Really,it's too much for the written word.

Hafoi. Pathetic only.  

Life and her friend Irony

Life is a funny lady as she is, but it's her friends that make her really interesting. Like Irony, for example, always popping up from out of thin air. Full of little surprises that make you want to

a. Bang your head against a wall
b. Laugh uncontrollably, until you fall into hysteria and start crying and then banging your head against the wall
c. Just cry, and then bang your head against the wall for good measure.

I had a lot of things to say yesterday about irony and how damnably ironic life can be at times, especially when set at a tangent with expectations, "should-have"s and other aspect of probability, but today has dawned and I have come more to terms with the fact that Life will always remain BFFs with her girlfriend Irony, who -like Life's other friend Karma- HAS to be a female entity.

Atlas Mode

I love talking to my friends. Everyone has so much perspective to bring to life, to ideas, to stick-in-the-mind opinions. Today, one nudged opened the door of my mind a little bit more.

My strong feminist ideologies have never been a secret, ahem, and I think I like to go through life advocating women's rights and be-moaning a woman's manifold burdens, but also very blissfully ignoring the very real pressures and burdens men have to bear. Like for instance, the Hunter-Gatherer/Caveman/Provider ideal.

Especially in our very South Asian context, the "man of the family" has the Atlas-like burden of "supporting" everyone-the poor unmarried sister, the kids, the distant relative from the South, the painter who used to work for his father, the errant son, the aging mother etc. It is expected of him to perform, provide, put aside all other personal aspirations and internalize this role. Because if you fail, then, aiyo, he didn't do right by the family no. The wife. The mother-in-law.

"It's  a fucking burden" says my friend grimly, just turned 30, graphic designer, 1 year old son, plagued by familial problems.

But, like women have internalized the roles of home and hearth, men have internalized the caveman role. And I can't help but think that not only does this seem  to create a certain balance in the gender role universe but also that it is a facet of South Asian femininity taken for granted by women. Women are expected to run households, slave over them even but not to uphold them. The economic downturn of a family is generally never really pegged on a woman, but rather the man's inability to do his duties.

Seems to me there are all kinds of problems, all kind of  burdens and that the Greek philosopher got it spot on in advice that is very hard to follow :


"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle." - Plato 

I am woman, hear me roar weakly.

Women are fascinating creatures, I find the obsession that artists- poets, sculptors, painters, dramatists, cynics, philosophers, psychologists-have with them to be completely understandable. We are a strange lot, especially us "modern and empowered women". Because, sometimes, despite the strongest bloody feminist morals and the most militant feminist ideologies, women end up being just that, women, in every sense of the word in its worst, most stereotyped form.

So I think it would be very safe to say that while I love the vagaries associated with womanhood, and deplore the bullshit (Read as stomach cramps, mood swings, periods, painful childbirth, mood swings, body image issues) associated with being one, the thing I hate most are the basic traits of my type that are sadly unavoidable.

Like pining, and feeling less than special, and being burdened with the expectations of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour and having to cover up for the lack of perception of others. All of that and more.

But what is most insulting to a carefully built up feminist ego is that after years of empowerment, the woman's spirit is still so very much at the mercy of its twin soul's, and still so very easily quashed.

True

Oh Florence you beautiful woman. You're right. You really can't dance with the devil on your back!

Comfort...and other things :)

I started writing about comfort a while back, but had to stop; because there were things to do, and people who "needed me" and important stuff like work, and money to be minted. I wasn't really comfortable, but I think that at that point, I wanted to explore the concept of what it means to be comfortable, with self and others. Because I had recently had, unsurprisingly, a revelation!

Now, there's been rain outside and it's a Sunday, and the only pressing things in life are the cooking baking in the oven and the 8pm appointment for a hair cut, for my sister. I feel comfortable, at ease with myself. Which has increasingly become a very rare occurrence, in the past few months. Sometime I seek these moments SO MUCH that it in itself becomes a damned discomfort, like trying to "find yourself" or "discover you"(epic fails on both counts) :)

However, as I am comfortable now, I'd like to say for the record that to find even a few people with whom one can be completely at ease, is a real gift. Family, yes, always, thank God. Good friends, if you're lucky. Room-mates, I have found, by sheer necessity...and sometimes they even like you for it! Ha. Yourself, whoopie if you find it, I'm still on that quest.

But others, other. One more person. Who you don't feel like pretending with, trying too hard for, being mature for, that now that, comes only if you're rather blessed, I think.