A day to remember..

Today has been a mixed day, not good, not bad. Just mixed. Last night i did the unthinkable and i got the result for the act this morning. It was exactly what i expected, a red signal. But i accepted the rejection, with a smile on my face.

I was not happy, but i wasn't sad either. I felt relieved to finally close a chapter in my life and move on. No more questions, no more what ifs and buts. There was a surety to the situation now, I had all the answers i needed.

Nextly, i chatted up with an established Indian writer, who is, at present compiling Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul for Indian readers. She appreciated my writing skills, called me a teenage rebel and asked me to send her more articles, for her yet to be published book.

Call me an arrogant pig or an overconfident buffoon, but i decided not to send her anything more than what i already had, because i fear that she'll flick my ideas and elaborate on the same. She wanted me to add on 2-3 lines more to everything i had sent her. And that i realized is NOT me. I don't want to write for HER, however established she may be. I want to write for MYSELF. I refuse to give a solid conclusion to any of my articles, I want them all to be open ended, left to the readers imagination, vague, unpredictable et al.

I learnt two things today. Firstly, when it comes to matters of the heart, don't hold back, just spit it out and face the music head on. Rejection is a very over hyped thing, it's sad yes, but not 'i cant live anymore' sad. The circle of life shall continue to revolve and rotate.

Secondly, be yourself. Don't change your identity for anyone and someday the world just might appreciate you, just the way you are, irrespective of how deranged and mad you might be. Period.

Heartbreak..

Disclaimer Note : This is a cheesy post, so non die hard romantics look away!

A boy becomes a man and a girl becomes a woman, the day he/she flips for a person who he/she can't have. I became a woman, when i was 10 years old. I saw Titanic and fell hopelessly head over heals in love with Leo Di Cap. I cried through the nights, chewing my sister's head off, asking her a million times why the ugly red headed broad hadn't died instead of my very first love.

She laughed!! Hearing her squeals of laughter, I cried harder and my heart, i could actually feel it breaking. The pain in my chest was so acute, i couldn't breathe.

Food lost it's taste, sleep was a forgotten best friend. And then, a nerdy looking 11 year old moved in next door. He was my "get back on the horse of love" boy. We spent time pulling off silly pranks and eating. I moved on with life and the pain of loosing Leo wasn't so bad anymore.

Meeting this 11 year old, was a turning point in my life. I realised right then, that i will someday flip for and marry an intellectual nerd.

Sadly, the flipside of intellectual nerds are, they're eternally busy. They have no time for women, in fact i suspect they don't give women a priority at all. So even if a woman hints subtly or screams on his face "I like you" he'll just walk away.

Online Fraainships and Louships..

Before i begin, let me clarify that the title of this post has been mis-spelt on purpose. The world of Internet socialising is not new to me. I've been a voracious YAHOOer, MSNer, GTALKer, ORKUTter and now add to that list FACEBOOK! I'm still figuring out how to use that last one by the way.

It all began when i was in class 8 and daddykins took fancy to a huge white box that looked a little bit like our old Television set. According to one of the girly fashion magazines i was hooked on to back then, this huge white contraption was what people called a "Computer" and you could "chat" with it. I didn't hesitate for a nanosecond. I spun out a yahoo chat id and a yahoo e-mail id, logged on to the yahoo chat rooms and voila, the metamorphosis from book-lover to useless Internet junkie was complete.

I just could NOT get offline! My fingers were glued to the keyboard and i was talking non-stop with my mouth tightly shut. Sometimes I'd forget to pee, eat, sleep etc whilst chatting. Finally, i had to go to Internet rehab to cure the disease. And Internet rehab for me was class 12. The books called out to me, rather screamed out to me and chatting was forgotten temporarily.

Right now, almost 3 years of college done and 8 years of chatting later, i would call myself a semi Internet socializer. I still love meeting people and talking for long hours (because some habits are hard to kill), but now i know, nothing beats offline socialising. The flesh and blood people we meet in our day to day life are pretty much the only folks we can sort of trust. (Read again : SORT OF trust)

Onliners are scary with a capital S-C-A-R-Y, trust me blindly on that folks!

My Family..

Family gives us an identity - both personally and in social circles. This was one of the characteristics of the term 'Family' i learnt in class 7 or was it class 3 now? School was not my happy place, so i don't remember the nitigrities too well.

My family, like all other Indian families i suppose takes this above mentioned trait to a whole new level. I could call myself, Gayatri Bhadran - almost graduate, fraud mallu, potential field journalist, wannabe Bipasha Basu et al.

But in THIS family, I am the great granddaughter of C. Keshavan - writer, freedom fighter, philosopher, the very first Chief Minister of Kerala state. Or i could call myself Gayatri Bhadran, youngest granddaughter of Captain P Thyagarajan - Deputy Port conservator, a very charming, dashing merchant navy officer who had a tale or two to tell - which would either leave people completely shocked and at a loss for words or it would leave them amused and in splits of laughter.

When i was younger, I LOVED family get togethers, back then Family Gatherings = Loads of good food, mischief and 25-30 equally crazy, mad cousins who'd help me with my pranks.

But the older i got, I began to loathe these family gatherings. There were too many nameless faces who walked up to me and enquired with glee, "Gaayaaatri, do you remember meee?" and right there I'd find myself in a tight spot.

Aunts of all shapes and sizes draped in expensive sarees, looking everyone up and down and commenting on how much weight has been gained or lost, where they got their earrings from, who is the prospective groom X for bride Y - that lucky girl, she has quite a catch, the servant lady ran away with the driver man - and so and on and so forth. Juicy tidbits of gossip always float around these women.

The uncles on the other hand are loud, huge, boisterous and crack dirty jokes like nobody's business. They claim to know all about computers, IT professions, fitness regimes and who Bollywood's sweetheart is at the moment.

Yesterday, after a grueling zillion hour train ride, I stepped foot on God's Own Country - my native town - Trivandrum or Thiruvananthapuram (Phew!) No sooner had i reached home and bear hugged my grandmother, she announced that I must get ready A.S.A.P and rush to a close relatives' house as it was the 16th day function of his late wife and as a passing comment she mentioned that i looked emaciated and food deprived.

15 minutes later, we ( mom, gran and me) squeezed ourselves into a Maruti Wagon R and headed off to the relative's house. All eyes were on us latecomers (a few disapproving glances and head shakes) as we got out of the car.

The widower, one of my grandfathers (i have roughly around 10 grandmothers and grandfathers - its all part of being a malayalee) looked up from his food and teared. We rushed to his side, hugged and kissed him and then seated ourselves for an elaborate, sumptuous Sadhya (a typical south Indian vegetarian meal served on a banana leaf)

Sadhya done, I chatted up one of my favourite uncles ( yes, again i have a million uncles and aunts) said polite hellos to the aunts and then settled down with all my uncles.

The next 2 hours were a blurry haze of nonsensical chatter, huge bellies wobbling with laughter, crude comments and of course dirty jokes (this goes without saying you know)

MY FAMILY - You'll either fall completely hopeless head over heals in love with them OR you'd loathe them at sight. But i assure you, if you stick around a while, they'll grow on you and before you know it, you'll be one of them.

Junk Jewellery..

Junk jewellery is not a style statement. It is a way of life for me. I live for junk jewellery. I have 5 boxes of it and I have been collecting it from road sides, from fancy overpriced malls and from vendors (after bargaining my ass off). My collection is not just confined to the streets of Chennai, I would like to think of it as a global/national collection. Ever since i was 10 years old, I've had an eye for junk trinkets.

So naturally, it goes without saying, wherever i go my junk jewellery follows suit. While packing my bags for a quick 5 day vacation, i don't pack the essentials like toothbrush, kaajal, shoes, underwear etc, i pack my junk. I take them all out of their boxes, re-arrange them, put them back inside their boxes, tie the boxes with 2 strings and then put these boxes overflowing with my neatly arranged jewellery into plastic bags, which i fold and refold and tie with strings again.

Every year, my mother and i have a 2 minute tongue lashing which goes like so :

Mum : Don't take everything, just take a few earrings, chains, bangles and bracelets. You're going for a very short trip, how much are you going to wear anyway? Listen to me, you're coming back alone, you'll have to lug it all back.
Me : Okie mum

Mum : So you wont take them all?
Me : Okie mum, whatever you say.

Mum : So you wont?
Me : Yes, i wont take a few earrings, chains and blah like you said. I'll take them all.

Mum : How foolish can you be?
Me : Okie mum

The joys of being a woman lies in those 5 boxes, i would'nt trade them for anything in the world!