Just Being and other News

This is my 209th post I think. Wow! Posts have flown! Anyway.

Yesterday I did something Ive never really done before - snuck out of work an hour early, at about 4 for a pseudo-secret rendezvous at Worli seaface. I did all these random things I missed out on in college - bought Energee, sat by the sea on blazing hot concrete, with my sandals off, squinted into the horizon for answers to life, giggled, played I-spy with all the ridiculous and fascinating rubbish strewn among the rocks - Kurkure packets, sandals, shoes, thermocol, a gang (whats the collective noun? pack?) of adventurous young dogs, hunted for used condoms but couldnt find any, bought nariyal pani (coconut water) and giggled off my date's attempts at bargaining, (the vendor totally thought we were tourists and I was like "Aap hindi main bata kijiye bhaisahab hum samajh sakte hain!), and just had fun! He offered me his malai (wow, that has a weird connotation to it!), and I think I must have just let loose and eaten that fatty stuff after years! It was a pretty crispy coconut though, not mushy like I remember it... we probably got cheated but oh well. We flirted and we laughed and it was amazing to just let go of my silly inhibitions and fears. It helped that it had a slight forbidden tinge to it (probably self-imposed though, because I tend to be such a stickler for rules and routine and discipline).

I cleansed my soul a little bit yesterday. Did a timepass sample tarot reading online (it was free, so I could only pick 3 cards instead of the full 12), and all my cards came out reversed, which meant that I wasnt using my energies and powers well, and that I needed to make a decision soon and had to be careful not to behave with dishonour, and that I was afraid and restrained and needd to trust my instincts. This shit is ON man! Pooh pooh it or call it coincidence or whatever, but it was just what I needed to hear, and helped me gain the courage to start doing the right thing. Now all that I need is for the right thing and the make-me-happy thing to be the same thing.

Ive started attending an Art of Living Course. I'm not sure what I'm going to get out of it, but the teacher asks us questions about our life and makes us write out our answers. Its good because it helped me think about what I really wanted, helped me be honest with myself too. Just having the courage to come to terms with your true needs or desires, however base they may be, creates a path to let you respect and accept yourself, and is the first step towards achieving your aims. Now my homework for today is to think about what makes me happy and when I will be happy. We just did some breathing exercises. I'm not sure Ive actually got the methods down, but I had GREAT sleep last night.

My best friend Ruchi, of the sudden January wedding fame, left for Australia on Friday. I still dont know what to think. When she was supposed to leave 2 weeks earlier, we had gone over to her place, where she was in the process of clearing out her room. She suddenly turned to me and said "Here, I have something for you", and she gave me a a couple of books she had borrowed years ago from me, and so considerately wrapped in newspaper to prevent the covers from getting dog-eared. My editions of Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, of The Romantics, of some other book also. I had comepletely forgotten about them. I felt something tug at my insides... the fact that my best friend could even think of returning something like this, so paltry, that she probably wouldnt even have noticed or remembered them had she not been cleaning out and packing up her room! For me, the situation in which she gave them back to me seemed to imply that she didn't have room for these in her life - OK I know they're not even the most memorable books, and she had TONNES of luggage, but now she was packing up and moving on. She was moving ahead into a world that may not necessarily include books, and our precious memories so deeply intertwined with them - our first exposure to sex through that Judith Krantz novel Till we Meet Again, to romance and candles and moonlight and the temptation of the forbidden, to Shakespeare and society and womanhood and its thrills and travails. To literature, to learning, to good grammar, to the power of the imagination and of the pen goddammit! To delicious, sensual, pleasure-inducing WORDS! All to be exchanged for perfectly rounded rotis and subtle hints to the hubby. For the kingmaking/breaking power of the words NOT spoken.

The inevitability of our collective fate struck me then I guess.

More surprises were in store as the get-together turned into a walk down memory lane. She opened a carton she called her magic box - and out spilled postcards and cards we had all written to her individually and collectively... on Friendship Day, on her birthday, even a postcard I had written to her in French from Florida from March 2001 - I was so excited to realise that I could still read it, except for a phrase Ive forgotten - talking alll about the hot guys and what we'd been up to! I'd send her one from every place Id go to, in fact her and my other two school friends as well, because i LOVE receiving them as well! There was one Friendship Day card I had made her in SYJC, handmade with felt-tip pens on an artsheet, writing in pink ink (OH GOD!!!), waxing away like a pretentious valleygirl who thought she was India's literary star-on-the-horizon - I was amazed at my complacent, snooty, pretentious over-confidence, and thoroughly ashamed that I could write something like that! I had the sauciness and self-assuredness that comes out of complete and utter naivete at 17, in an academic environment far removed from the teen dramas we devoured. In fact, I could imagine Hejin writing stuff like the kind I wrote, though I must declare that I love her writing and she reminds me of who I once was, in a GOOD way! Before time and experience hurt and humbled me that is.

Yes indeed ladies,

The days go by

as you realise,

If the glove fits, wear it,

Soon you'll watch the birds fly

High in the night sky,

And know Home is where the heart is.

Decidedly I am still relatively naive and have much to learn. Those hard knocks have made me a cynic and my romantic streak refuses to buckle down without a fight to the finish, which a large part of even the cynic sincerely hopes wont happen. So I vacillate wildly between the two as I learn and thus remain yours,

consistently,

Princess Joya.