Daily life?

Yesterday I asked for suggestions on what to write about next. I'm bored of Mumbai's sexual proclivities, like I get bored of everything these days; I'm blissfully unaware of politics and the economy, though I should do paisa vasooli of my right to vote and status as a citizen and all that. It's not like people are asking me what I want; I would probably come up with all these 'feminine' communitarian idealistic plans about sharing and caring and socialism, besides banging their heads together and not allowing them to spew any more gas and pollute my poor country further, and these men would laugh in my face. So no point.

Anyway, Kush suggested that I write about 'simple things' like the travails of a working girl in Mumbai. Damn, I tried to think about what to me initially seemed a really mundane topic, and it turned out to be really hard! I mean, what do I do? I work at a job I'm slowly growing into, literally like an arranged marriage, except that marriage would not include my secret delightful cathartic daily rendezvous with my blog :)

I have no travails as such - such as sexual harassment in trains, or buses or whatever. I could complain about the potholes and granular streets that make me feel I'm some out-of-place electron in a rumbling and zipping about in a boiler in a high school chemistry experiment (There was some formula for hydrogen or oxygen using granulated zinc right? What was it? Grrr. How much mugging we had to do! It was after much mental twisting that my long-suffering mother got me to use my brains about balancing chemical equations - not to mention simultaneous, but she gave up by then and hired a tutor), but then Jaggu and Tarana do it often enough on Go 92.5FM. Tarana is our watchdog. I love early morning vivacity. Nothing like it from someone you don't know. Malishka is also quite good. She's on 93.5FM.

I could complain about not having enough time or stamina to manage my activities (dance/gym) with meeting friends for coffee. (Hopefully that problem will be solved soon now that I'm finally getting the nerve to drive about alone at night. I still have completely nonexistent road sense. BUT BUT BUT I did my first successful parallel parking last night! Not 10/10, but definitely passable! AND I didn't hit the car behind me yay yay yay!) Not to mention not being able to read enough at a time to keep pace with the plot. Love in the time of Cholera is STILL going on, Ive been too tired to read for a couple of days, and only get about 30 minutes in.

(This entry is a reward for doing a particularly gruelling piece of annoying time-consuming boring mathwork by the way!)

My day - hmmm... the significant bits are really the people bits, as they should often be. Deciding what to wear is also a a big, albeit quick decision, based on temperature in office, time of month, what I'm going to do after, and degree of wetness of the disgusting bathroom in which I have to change into dance clothes when I reach class. (yes what a gross consideration). Well I wake up, eat breakfast, HAVE to read my horoscopes and cartoons in the assorted papers and glance through the city's news (which usually makes me late because i have a tight morning schedule and decline to awake through 3 snoozes on my cellphone), and hence get annoyed when mom wants to have a morning chat. I get to work, wait for my noontime coffee, wait for lunch where I chat in easy camaraderie with my coworkers, and wait to leave. Then there's whatever has to happen in the evening, and dinner at home and chit-chat with parents and then bed or maybe a few phone calls.

I normally don't get hit on, because I'm too much of a touch-me-not, frigid type of person at work. BUT Oh my god, yesterday when I was wearing that white salwar and bandhini dupatta and jhumkas, these random watchmen and stupid people whistled and said stupid things! And I was super covered up! Then when I went to dad's office building, I got whistled at again! What freaks! I was looking super untidy and my hair was all over the place (I guess I looked thin and artsy - and I think the untidy look suits me, I've never been one of those perfect not-a-hair-out-of-place types of people). Oh I have to talk about that disgusting office building. Harassment for a woman just to walk in it.

I used to work there, and my GOD! First of all it's one of the most crowded buildings in Mumbai; must be tens of thousands of people in it at any given point. The women all enter at around 9 and are esconced in their workplaces till closing time at 6. The men are always walking around, trading, carrying things to deliver, whatever. Either they walk like they're in a garden, strolling, or they occupy the entire bloody half corridor with their size and rolling gait (a quarter is taken up by serpentine queues for the many lifts going to the many floors, with men standing still, GAWKING! So there's only a quarter left to walk in. And you're talking about a 5 foot wide corridor here) There's a separate line for bosses and employees at opposite sides of the lift. Being a coolio woman, I get to stand in the bosses line, which is quite bad. Because not only do I have to develop extreme motor adriotness to be able to sucessfully dodge these garden strollers (who I'm sure swing their arms in the hope of contact with a random boob or butt) and fatsos, I also have to stand and pretend to not notice being stared at by the entire line of employees! What freaks! I'm a woman, not a sex object you dork! (Hahahahahahahahha! What superb irony!) So my gaze is always directed upwards or glazed. Then I have to enter the lift and stand in one corner or where I cant be touched or brushed (big files and bags and standing with arms crossed and a forbidding expression helps). But the good thing is that the liftmen are quite protective and also these guys don't really have the guts to touch. I would throw a fit! So I'm always careful about what I wear. My dad would yell at my sister when she wore low-wasited torn jeans there. Sometimes there are poor fat Americans who break into a sweat seeing the populace that enters the lifts! It's usually beyond the allowed numbers because of the crowd and the skinniness of these boys. And then the chicks where my dad works sometimes check out my outfits. Hehehe. Oh but his office has YUM tea and coffee.

Then I have to go down again. The situation comprises peons banging at various lift doors and pressing the buttons irrespective of whether the lifts are going up or down. I get damn embarassed to enter these lifts in full view of the gazing dudes. Eek. Then I get out of the lift when it reaches the ground and walk as fast as I can to the exit. Even my hips are afraid to sway in this male bastion (besides, the swaying would take up the extra inches of space that are NOT available in this confined suffocating building consisting of labyrinthine tunnels).

That's about all the trauma I have to endure. When I'd go with my dad, I once mentioned feeling like I was being undressed by the gazes, and raped everytime I was touched, so then I was made to walk behind him and he'd swing his briefcase about, creating a path, and unwittingly whacking my knee. OWW! Poor daddy.

Poor mommy. (What a para continuation no? Remember composition teachers telling us that the paragraphs should continue in a meaningful manner?) She feels bad that I'm so tired everyday. (How will I be a wonderwoman if I get tired? Women aren't allowed to be remember? Shit, I'm dreading marrying and babies. I shan't have the stamina!) She is worried about my blog and the fact that I write about 'sex'. "What will people think?" I assured her that I'm stating facts, and that my views (while I like to believe are educated) are also somewhat conservative. She is sorrowed that nothing suprises me - about sex, drugs, mafia, politics. I have a terribly fatalistic view towards everything. While I'm worried it's numbing me, it's also a pretty good defence mechanism. Freud would be proud. Also that my real name is not on my blog. She believes that a guy would not marry me if he came across my blog and was alarmed at the content and his prospective mate's views. What can I say? I agree, her reasoning is justified. Men are still conservative, and parents of her generation far more conservative than her. My wonderful mother has managed to change with time and become a friend to us. I don't know how many parents who are like that, especially boys' parents, who never have to change their views since they know a girl's parents will be pandering to their wishes anyway. That's such bull. In as much as it's a marriage between two human beings, they're equal. Of course you want someone with values and character and all, but there's ALWAYS more than there is on the surface.

And this blog is just the surface, baby!

Yes yes, take that any way you want. If you choose to leave, good; I don't want to be with an eternal pessimist anyway!