Why I Loved New York - 1

Okay, it's not like I am diabetic. Neither am I working on this "toilets - the worldover" paper. It's just a shuttling between airports/cities thing.

Peoria Airport - very clean loo
Chicago (O'Hare) Airport - very clean loo
Detroit Airport - very clean loo

And I told myself this is the US, first world and what-not.

Next stop JFK. Avishek was meeting me in 20 minutes. I'd been told Harlem was not too close to the airport. So I decided to pay the loo a visit. I mean, why not?

For a minute I thought I'd stepped on a portkey that had transported me straight to the Howrah Station. Apparently not.

That's when I fell in love with New York.

Ma's back. And she's got me DVDs. She had handed over my wish list to the guy at the DVD store; proceeded to shop for everyone else at home; got back to collect the booty and pay the chap. She's a nice soul and had full faith in him. Here are the DVDs he'd kept aside for her:

1. Breathless
2. Pierrot le Fou
3. Jules et Jim
4. La Dolce Vita
5. Three Colours: Red
6. Three Colours: Blue
7. Three Colours: White
8. Goodbye Lenin (yippee!!)

The ninth one is Oliver Stone's "Alexander". Now I know that both Colin Farrell and Angelina Jolie are super hot but I was looking forward to meeting Fanny along with Alexander.

If suddenly
You forget me
Do not look for me,
For I shall already have forgotten you.

“But how can someone look for you if the person has already forgotten you?” my friend asked. And I immediately felt insanely superior.

And this is how g-talk handles have come to be my Simone de Beauvoir and Karan Johar – statements all and feel-good too!

Is happy! rarely elicits a response. Unless it’s my ex-boss P, who will want to know why and how this happened. You’re happy? But how? Kaise?

Try some Alanis Morisette and everyone is all agog. What happened? Who’s this for? (As if it can’t be just for you.) Are you okay? (Of course not!) And there’s P, of course. But why? Tell me all dear.

Back in Peoria, when I was visited by existential angst – big time – I sported Needs a new job! followed by Needs a new job. Desperately. People back home laughed (hollow laugh, I bet) and P asked: but why?

There are handles. And then there are handles.
Here’s what.

There are handles that tell the other person where you are, what you are doing: Chillin in Accra (Shite! You lucky bitch!), Fuel bombed at Crobar and they think they can ask you out for a date.

Amy Winehouse and Pablo Neruda – you are obviously depressed out of your wits, ready to kill yourself, who’s the bastard who hurt you dear… Aaargh! Do these people really think I’m unable to appreciate good lines?

And good old Macavity is always ignored. There’s P, though. Who sniggers at monster of depravity. S-i-g-h!

And then there’s bathos. For over two weeks I sported these “deep” lines for someone who, I later discovered, had blocked me on g-talk. Duh! He’s on again though, with “frequently asked questions” about the new ones. Heh heh heh!

But here’s the last straw. Someone’s witnessing this great tableau being played out in g-talk world — my g-talk handles and Mr X’s. “Different pieces, tantalizingly belonging to each other, my dear” she says. “God help”, I say. “But I can see” she insists. No points for guessing who she is.

“When the hell did I start believing that I need a man to make me feel complete?” (Aaaaaargh!!!)

Feb 14. Never a special date for me. Those years when I was “with” someone (different someone everytime, of course), I was too busy trying to prove to myself (and others) that I am not the bandwagon types — don’t believe in red roses and chocolates wrapped in pink foil. And I made sure that “someone” refrained from the usual Feb 14 excesses too.

Those years (more of these than those above) when I was not with “anyone”, well, I was too busy telling myself that I am glad I don’t have to join the bandwagon. Sour grapes, said some. I said, “Yippee!”

Cut to Feb 14, 2008. A bunch of single men and women meet up for dinner at Sigdi. Most of them are meeting for the first time (“friend’s friends”, as the phrase goes). Good food, average conversation, a few laughs, couple of “uncomfortable silences”, cigarettes to the rescue — over!

Now these single men and women are no longer your 20-somethings. They’ve all been there and done that. So they spent the better part of the evening wondering why the hell they were there in the first place. What went right? What went terribly wrong? More desperate than cynical. Cynicism works when you’re 20. At 30 you know better. Theories don’t hold water anymore. You’ve already shown the middle finger to liberation and emancipation. Your copy of The Second Sex is just good paper weight material. You want to tell Germaine Greer that you’ve started painting your nails at 31. And it’s okay, it really is – makes them look nice.

And you start admitting (only to yourself): “Ma was right!”