Prose before hos

Eleven years ago, in the same neighbourhood as where I'm plonked at the moment, I wrote my first blog post. Snobster Dot Blogspot Dot Come was live on this date in 2007. On a rush to head to the tuition centre manned by a she-dragon, I was shitting bricks about the homework I should have done the night before. Today, I'm at work. Clearly, not doing the best job whilst being at it.

In these eleven years, I have jumped from red bricks to red salute, gained weight and lost some, contracted a few never heard of diseases for my age bracket (chickenpox at 26 was diggity bomb) and having done things no civil person should have indulged in, in public.

What I am saying is, there's no stopping. There's no growing up. There's only fucking things up royally and learning from there (no making out in public view- for one).

Last year, I promised myself to give my body and lifestyle the same amount of attention as I did to reading and writing for the ten years that elapsed. After dropping a few kilos (17, betch) and finding out that I possess a collarbone after all, I am here. Stuffing my face with sugar and celebrating this day.

Here's to another year of fucking this shit up and hoping there's one person who reads all about it and never brings it up to my face.

My mother, who is a self confessed ice cream lover, announced the demise of her favourite treat- the decadent Triple Sundae.

I don't know a lot of traditional sit-down restaurants who have an extensive ice-cream menu in the "Desserts" section of their deconstructed menu card/iPad. These joints tend to start and end with a Brownie and Ice Cream or maybe extend it to Gourmet ice cream (the uppercase "g" to appease to the sentiments of food writers around the country). North Indian restaurants will offer you from a variety of kheer, gulab jamun, even ras malai and end with ice cream scoop listing. No effort whatsoever to scoop in the classics, in their existing dog-eared menus.

However, could my mother's declaration be a forewarning into the dying art of doing ice cream right?

Mother describes her perfect All American Banana Split, a second to Triple Sundae as, "...a long, serving bowl with three scoops of ice cream in the centre, surrounded by two bananas split in half on either side. The scoop of ice cream to be adorned with whipped cream and cherry on the top (in the centre) and a careful, delicate drizzle of chocolate sauce... The other two scoops of ice cream to have a wafer on the top..."



Knowing mother, I'm assuming, the ice cream scooped out should not be chocolate (always a fruit flavour) and the bananas should not be too ripe.

To be completely honest, I don't share her love or passion for ice cream. The closest I come to sharing that sentiment is with my understanding of fries, even that is very critical.

Mother's love is pure, unadulterated.

Last couple of times when she was at Nirula's, she returned her dessert and wrote a nasty feedback. Not one fuck was given by the restaurant. Which is a pity, because what she says about people serving this dessert is entirely true. Everyone's doing this as a programmed task, not out of love. You can't cook a storm with programmed code. Mechanical fingers don't do justice to assembling a Sundae or a Split.

Much like the bleak future of time tested desserts. In a city full of cake jars and sweet waffles, we have forgotten the humble ice cream, and the potential it holds.

Last Sunday, I found myself at a popular South Indian restaurant for Drunch. On their Specials menu, they'd listed her favourite. Triple Sundae in all its glory in the middle of Pesarattu and Guava Juice.

I stuck to my Fresh Orange Juice and a Tiffin Thali.

Shamelessly, I told her about it. In response, she nodded her head in disapproval. "Can anyone hate ice creams? That too my child?", her inner monologue conveyed.

Maybe, it's people like me who are the reason why Triple Sundae is dead.

All of last fortnight, I flirted with death.

For the uninitiated, I had Malaria.





Of all things in New Delhi, Malaria.
I could have been raped, molested, killed on the road for high beam while driving, killed for eating beef, killed for eating mutton but people thinking beef, killed for voicing my opinion, killed for showing my legs in public but no.

Fucking mosquitoes.


For the longest time, it was misdiagnosed as viral and chest infection. Two different things.

The thing with Malaria is that nobody tells you or acknowledges in public is that it hits you mentally. Naturally, nobody took it seriously in my case, because-

1) I am always considered angry, lunatic and over the top in public.
2) People assume my natural state of being is prissy, prickly and difficult.

For the fortnight that preceded, I could sense in me some kind of unaddressed rage. I was losing my mind with anger, at people for small, trivial things.

At one point I wrote to a friend at 2 am, crying, "I think I need a shrink."
He launched in a long, sympathetic explanation of how I should see a doctor. We discussed another friend who had been seeing a therapist. A lot of well wishers have advised me to see one but at the end of the day, it's not like a fucking peppermint tablet that you get because you think you need it. You need to feel the fucking need to see one, alright and this time, I could feel something going wrong.

I even wondered if this was PMS. My period was over a week away.

Physically, this state was exhausting. Malaria drains you of energy; it brings you down, it puts you in a frame of being which is as good as a corpse.

I would tell the guy I was seeing at the time, "I feel dead on the inside." and he would joke back asking me to come to life.

It would further infuriate me, how can everyone take this as a joke? When you're sick and you see the world healthy, laughing and enjoying - it pisses you more than it should on an average day. Here's someone attempting to tell me to feel normal. How the fuck do you feel normal and try to kick energy when you're bleeding (at this point, I got my period), your haemoglobin is as low as 6.4 gm and you're coughing your liver out with high fever.

It took an hour long outing for my body to give up and I landed up with in the ER with a whole bunch of tubes infusing all kinds of medication intra veinous and in through my mouth. A few hours in, the doctors on duty ignored Malaria positive.

The tests confirmed next afternoon, Malaria positive.

What followed was a week of pure, unadulterated hell. I thought living through adult chickenpox was it but clearly, things are not as innocent as they seem. I have pulled out of hell and back.

I'm on a week long sabbatical from everything. My folks are visibly shaken, insofar as my everything is forbidden. Stay at home, and rest.

To be honest, I don't have much strength to pull anything except for lounging on the bed. Even that's taking effort at this point. Today's the first day since my last day at work when I stared at the laptop for over two hours. My vision is blurred, hands shaking and I'm tired beyond measure.

I told someone in the state of total loss of consciousness last week, "It would be a miracle at this point if do get a chance to live my life back in a way it was prior to this."

As of today, I'm hoping against all odds. I'll get back to the life I was living prior to Malaria and be the ho the world thinks I am.

Spring.

On leaving behind winter cuffs and blankets where they belong- in the year past. Not the blanket, maybe. Yeah, we kinda need that starting Fall. If you're me, you'd need that blanket before you feel the need to celebrate Christmas. I have no tolerance for the cold.

I've seen Spring in myriad forms; notably remember it with a heavy heart of leaving things behind, of embarking on a start that I have had no clue on dealing with it. Of having written exams and hoping that I'd clear mathematics, of prepping for farewell of department seniors to playing the bass (albeit badly) and owning the last of last performances on the stage at my alma mater - there's always a sense of change, mostly physically. The seasonal change is a painful reminder year after year about my deteriorating immunity and how, the older I seem to be getting, the worse I am doing despite having cut on my vices tremendously.

Yet, Spring seems to bring this sense of hope. Never ending days, unsettling heat pushing people to leave the city and making way for those of us who have no place to go.

You know, the ones who truly belong to this city, and maybe you, are the ones who stay behind during the Summer.

That way, Spring brings out those who'd stick around and those who are ready to leave. Almost like the chosen few who land up at an after party. They move in packs, cliques and they come and go together.

What would I know about after parties, I'm too old for those. Even if I am not, I ensure I pass out well within three hours of appearance. That way, I become a full blown liability to those who have brought me there in some manner. It's also good to know that there are people who look out for you when you're throwing up or passing out. This maybe a mechanism to escape the actual farewell of migratory birds of Spring/Summer or just a way to cope up with having too much fun. I wouldn't know.

That's the thing with Spring/Summer fling. One night you go to bed and it's still Spring, and the next morning you wake up to a rude awakening, a slap if you must, from brutal Summer. Kinda like the after party, where you wake up at a location completely new to you, despite having owned it the night before. There's nobody and you're by yourself struggling to figure what went wrong.

It's the ones who last the Summer that truly deserve to be here. Not the ones who claim the comfort of other spaces.

I had a ridiculous Winter, where I mostly saw people close to me live at the hospital and be sick. On other days, I smoked a lot, got sick a lot, drank a lot and passed out a lot. Did I have fun? I'm not sure.

If that was fun, I wouldn't want it anymore.

I want a brutal Summer. The kind that burns me to outdo myself, where I have little to nobody to surround me. It's time to bring back the hustle outside of the blanket.

"Lord Hanuman is the best god. I am a big follower."

"Do you follow him on Instagram?"

I came across a post a friend had shared on my Facebook Wall- back when Wall was still a thing.

Four years ago today-

"26 has happened, someone was supposed to meet me!"
"Can't la, *insert author's name* has discontinued his column in the newspaper and I need time to get over this trauma."

I remember that too well. It hit me enough that I called Man Friday to rant- back when talking to Man Friday (MF) was still a thing.

"I promise you, one day we'll have breakfast in his house. Bacon, eggs, sausages...he's going to make it all for us. I'll make it happen."
Broken hearted, I believed. I lapped at every word MF had to say. To be honest, his words were all I had in times of sadness. When sadness truly meant no column by my favourite author in the newspaper.

2018, I'm working on a book which will be co-authored by him. Hoping I wouldn't have to do it. It's not the easiest book to work on, he's not the easiest guy to deal with. Thankfully, I don't have to deal with him or my fifteen-year-old self would die of anxiety thinking about it.

If only, I could go back in time and tell the little girl who started reading his work back in the early noughties, hang in there, you wouldn't want it one bit in time to come.

“Are we over Cold yet?”

Unexpected text lit up my phone screen and made me vomit just a little bit in my stomach. My infatuation towards Cold (a name just as apt as his response to most of my advances) was taking a toll on all my friends and family. The fact is, Cold and I have been having a bit of a hot-cold time ourselves in the last couple of months. For a fortnight now, I had been really thinking of shaking things up and moving forward. There was nothing more left to pursue in this push and pull for me. I have been emotionally drained, after having invested in a slab of stone for what seemed like eternity.

“Why, do you have someone to distract me?”

“What happened to *****?”

I was half hoping for the individual to answer in, "Yeah man, met someone great at this party last night and I really think you should meet him."

Instead, I was evading a conversation that would be headlined as something like this- Serial dater gets conned into snogging by a professional PUA

"Yeah well, he was a pick up artist so nothing is happening there."

"What, how do you know? :O"

I asked the said person to reconvene after dinner so I could fill her in.

When I flew to Thailand in September, I carried along a book instead of my staple magazine. Been on my reading list for long, Dave Besseling's Laid In India was perfect in my mind, for a breezy beach read and it ended up being everything I didn't anticipate for it to be. The book is an observational telling of Sid Malhotra (name changed, naturally), who claims to be India's number 1 pick up artist (PUA). I was expecting a list of tricks up the sleeve of the pick up artist and read more on the author's personal pick up stories and what became of them, a la fiction. Instead, missing on the AI sheet information cost me a bit. I read 3/4 of the book and promised myself to return to it before the year ends. That book deserved my bedroom way more than the carry forward hotel room reading.

The book did return, albeit in a manner I did not anticipate. My view to remembering it was IIT gate through a haze of fog. SDA market never fails to make less than an impression. My beau, arm in arm, a yummy 30 something who was more into me than I've ever been into anyone, including Cold.

Let me just take a minute and address this man. He was a total 10/10. The kind I never swipe right to, and least of all go out with. I settle for an easy 7 because they put in some effort in the conversation, they're usually funny/cocky and make up for the perfect 10 by being witty, if not perfectly alright to take that forward to date 2.

However, this man, ***** was everything I'm not used to. He was an easy six feet something, toothpaste advertisement smile and outfit straight out of Karl's notebook on how to be effortlessly chic for a date. When I complimented him on the same, he just brushed his shoulder and said,

"I like to be comfortable. This was really comfortable. I didn't quite put it together."

The man could tell me he's Charles Sobhraj's cousin and I would buy it off his perfectly symmetrical face. This is why, ladies and gentlemen, I skip the 10 and head towards the 6 and the 7. They don't have this effect on anyone. His stubble was well maintained and saying anything more would mean an awkward family conversation in 48 hours.

If Nicolas Simoes and Milind Soman ever get to make a baby, that man would grow up and look like my date from the evening. Yes.

Blame me, for I couldn't resist the company of ***** and all his lies that he conveyed staring deep in my eyes.

We had met for the first time after a brief conversation. Yet the entire evening in his company had been poetic in every verse of time. Minus a few misplaced rhyme schemes (more on this, later), this man seemed to be hitting every note right and placing every punctuation just as delicately as he had wrapped his arms around me.

Wait, what?

First dates are either awkward or cocky and hilarious. Never the one to have had a cosy evening with intertwined arms (let's say you're my mother and you're reading this- stop right here) that ends with heavy petting in public sight.

What the actual fuck happened?

Believe me when I say this, it had the making of this man not getting a response from me but within 20 minutes of brief interaction, I parted with my number pretty willingly. That's standard now, since you can block them later. I didn't realize that in 2017, this is still referred to as "closing interaction-1".

We spoke briefly on the phone, for what was half an hour. It was like how a conversation with an old friend rolls, very comfortable, nothing out of place yet every bit intimate. "Closing interaction-2" check.

"I think sex is a very serious thing. I'd like to think of myself in a pensive relationship before I can get out there and sleep with someone." to "You know Amour? The manager cornered me when I left the ladies washroom after a quickie. He knew what we were upto. It was so thrilling!"

Not sure, if that was the re-telling of a pick up artist or my very serious, mature and hot af date.

To be honest, there are times you let your thinking capacity die despite it working overtime. That evening was one of those from the calendar. While I was very sure about something being off, my head couldn't pin point to what exactly. It especially stopped working after we hit "escalation ladder of kino-closing" me into this man's arms. That's as much juice you're going to get from this year end drama.

It was in that moment, I cursed myself while staring into the abyss and thought, I wish I had finished that book. This man is just as smooth as that pick up artist I read about.



"So while I was telling Anid about him, I said that all his transitions were seamless. He was so confident and so smooth, it didn't seem out of place. Not inappropriate and certainly not forced."

"Yeah, just goes on to prove that you're as human as anyone and no matter how hard you try, you can't resist."

"No, it doesn't. It could have ended up in the washroom like the Amour tell tale but that didn't happen because I wasn't human enough." something I could only think of and not muster the courage to say, as I realized the person I was speaking to, is also a pick up artist.

"Wait a minute, you have the same MO. Are you...?"

"Haha what do you think I was doing all this while. You're a tough nut to crack."

Shit.

The said friend didn't manage to nail me down for a bunch of logistical and other reasons, including wanting to have me as a friend.

"The number one rule of pick up game is, you fuck off right after. There's no contact to be established and I obviously didn't want that to happen between us."

Suck my dick, everyone whoever said "dick is everything. Chemistry, nothing".

It was after this conversation last night that I learned a few things about myself including, and not limited to-

1) I'm just as gullible as the newbie who just joined work at 22 is lucky enough to have never experienced a "heartbreak".
2) Pick up artists exist in 2017 regardless of Tinder being a commonplace to find love or lust and anything in between.
3) Your friends could be "negging", "peacocking", "kino-closing" women/men right under your nose and you'd have no idea. I also suggest looking these terms up.
4) When they say, "you've no game" they don't necessarily mean board game or online game. They mean the Game by Neil Strauss.
5) My brain works 9/10 times. The 1 time it didn't work, I felt just as foolish as Khurana at the end of Khosla ka Ghosla.

While I'd love to clinically describe the making of a pick up artist, the Game, the signs that you're being played successfully by a pick up artist etc, I don't want to give you ideas to try this out. I've been told it makes people feel good but if you're anything like me, you'd feel like shit at the end knowing you're a temporary mark up in a game, and nothing more.

As for my hot date, grapes might totally be sour but the man could do with learning about conjunctions. His perfect teeth won't take him very far in the Delhi circuit.

Meanwhile, if you're into dating, or are a single woman/man lurking around and stumbled upon this piece, I highly recommend doing some reading on the pick up artists, on the terms listed above and definitely reading a book or two on it. I've re-read my copy of Laid in India cover to cover, twice since, and possibly read every possible link on the internet on the subject. While my resistance to believe that, "This CAN'T happen to me" remains just as strong as it did when I was in Thailand, I would like for you to be adequately prepared before you meet one or more of these people out there.

They might have no ill intentions but I am not the one who likes being played. That said, I'd like to leave my date from last night a little more than the lingering fragrance of No. 5 on him. An impression of my knucles on his face, perhaps. 

Meghna Talwar edition

"What day is Christmas?"

"Monday."

"No, no. I mean like the date?"

"It's Jesus' birthday. WHY DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT?"

"Haan, I don't know. When is it? Shame on my Catholic School Upbringing."


Mr Malik edition

"You know, Justice League was basically Sallu and friends."

"(laughs) What?"

"Yeah, Superman is Sallu and the rest are his friends."

"Ohh (laughs)."

"Yeah, and Batman is Punjabi."

"(laughs) WHAT?"

"Yeah haven't you seen Batman Begins?"

"Ofcourse I have. When does it say..."

"Yeah so like Bruce Wayne's dad gives him lots of money, he has lots of money and then he gets slapped by that girl, arey that journalist slaps him, and he drives that expensive car at night and beats up all the  men. He's so totally Punjabi rich kid from Punjabi Bagh, or even Paschim Vihar."


Mia K edition

"OMG I didn't recognize you. You've lost so much weight and that ass, I was looking at it like shit is that Baby Banana's ass? It looks so small."

"Dude my ass was always small. Like there was nothing."

"Please, your ass was a nice shape. Hourglass round and all."

"And now you don't recognize it one bit. That's what your boyfriend has done. All his fault."

"My boyfriend is an ass man, you know. It's really sad... (NSFW)."

"Shove some basil up your ass and serve him a nice, hot plate of Pesto Pasta for Christmas. I'm sure both of you will enjoy that Italian meal you've been calling me for since eternity."



Anid edition

"Your view to the sizing up of each other was the crushed dreams and hopes of all these young people who went to IIT. Very nice. How do you ever plan to take your shameless face there again? You've been there while growing up, with us, with your dates and now this. Very nice."

"Tinder has ruined this generation", piped Xenia as she changed her car gear. She says that with empathy, knowing very well that it's all that I am doing in the eternal pursuit of finding a distraction worthy enough to blend in comfortably with my hobbies.

We're on a road that I've possibly never seen, and sure as hell never been sober while traveling on it, that she insists on calling "home".

"Ghar aa gaye yaar ab to", she says and switches her hand from the gear to her phone and turns off the GPS. "I know the way from here". I'd be lying if I said I had any idea where we were at. Apparently, it was just off Khan Market.

I am tempted to ask her, how's she so clairvoyant about life, things and certainly the direction in which that car (and our lives) are headed but I focus on the road and try to think if I've been there before.

"How did you meet him?"

She's on her way to meet the man she's dating. It's been five months since they first got together, a quickie after a family dinner that resulted into this. Truth be told, she timed the stint for no longer than a month.

It's a little after 6 pm and she's been kind enough to offer to me to drop home. Strike that, I requested her to drop me midway. I could do with a familiar face and some conversation, my cooling off period from a wild weekend that involved meeting over hundred odd people.

Xenia went to an acquaintance's house party with one of her party friends. Party friends are the kind of people you take with you to parties because they're fun as hell and know how to have a great time, In the people Pyramid, they are the opposite of awkward friends who you chill with on a Saturday night in the guise of playing Scrabble.

He happened to be there and knew a few odd people, exactly like Xenia. Both of them had nobody in common, yet they caught each other's eye. They talked for fifteen minutes, exchanged numbers and got around talking on the phone later. He tried meeting her for date but she was a bit too skeptical about seeing a guy who she had no idea about.

"He showed up for fifteen minutes and..."

"The rest as they say is history?"

"Exactly."

Got me thinking, when was the last time I saw anyone for the first time who I didn't meet off Tinder. Easy enough, it was last night and I harassed him to play Taboo with us. Poor guy, he looked traumatized each time it was his turn to go and perform. By the end of the evening, I could tell he's never showing up as a plus one with anyone for atleast a week.

To make matters worse, I got his name wrong for most part of the evening.

I don't seem to understand why we as a collective generation in this city are sucking at making an impression. This includes me, probably on top of the list. I can blame myself for being out of practice, for resigning myself to meeting the same people (when I do) at a familiar space and never venturing out of it. I'm an old soul and I've made peace with this amount of fun. I don't need more to have a rockingggg timeeeee!

Can I blame Tinder? Maybe.
Do I blame other people. For sure.

There's no space, opportunity or the safety to make these impressions and be at the receiving end of it. Call me a hypochondriac and blame me for pointing my finger out but even if I want to be at the receiving end of this, I'm too terrified to step out and do it. Earlier today, a bunch of us were at this upmarket hotel, attending an upmarket sundowner bazaar of sorts. I had a Bratwurst to tend to while the rest of the girls were down with a drink and a smoke. We had huddled in a corner when one of us looked up at a man who had passed us.

"He groped me" she looked shell shocked.

"Did you see it?" she asked us all. Only one of us had, and that took close to 45 seconds for any one of us to come down to a reaction. Rage.

We were all too stunned to react, to move and to challenge him to asking why or how dare he walk into her space and do that.

At some point, the guy had the nerve to return back to the spot. This time, she confronted him. He had mud all over his face and on his clothes. Xenia speculated, "He's drunk out of his mind", almost as if it's an excuse to let him be. To be honest, I'd have said the same if I hadn't lived this horror with her.

The girl who had been groped wasn't going to step back. She asked him why he did what he did, after calling him out from a distance. He calmly walked to us, started talking, as if we are old friends with the man. Asked us if the bazaar was going to be on tomorrow as well.

"Can you please leave us alone. You're in our space.", Xenia and another friend added assertively.

He continued to stay.

By this time, the girl who had been groped repeated the same and added, "We'll have to call the security".

Unfazed.

In a gathering of over thousands of Delhi and expat elite, this man had the nerve to grope a friend, overstay his welcome when five of us had huddled together right in the center of things, a lawn, with complete security.

I was quiet all throughout. Too stunned to react, almost as if I relived what went down with me a year ago in a supposed friend's car. While this was on, I saw a guard walk by and rushed to him. By the time I alerted him to the situation, the culprit lost his last nerve and ran in the crowd to blend with them and escaped us all.

This, ladies and gentlemen, happened a few hours ago today. Xenia was driving me because I thought it's safe to get the hell out of the place with someone I know, to as far as I can go, without allowing myself to share a space with an unknown man. That's Delhi for you. That's Delhi for me.



I stay in what qualifies as a highbrow neighbourhood with the best of market, pubs, lounges etc just a few meters away. If I truly want, I just need to step out. Dressed well, in clear make up and dewy skin, all I need to bring is my face, to make a long lasting impression. One Green Apple Shisha and a few beers in, I can clack my heels around and eye fuck men who probably can't differentiate between "your" and "you're". They'll be just as receptive and we can possibly exchange numbers and take this forward.

However, there's a reason my standards don't allow me to succumb to drawing the attention of men who use multiple exclamations as a substitute to a question mark. There's a reason my pickup line (100% original) continues to be, "Would you like to punctuate me?"

I digress, but I am a pissant when it comes to men and more often than not, my patience doesn't allow me to go out of my way and allow someone to make an impression. More often than not, it's their demeanour which gets to me. This man could have approached us politely for a conversation, instead, brushing and feeling up a friend's arse is hardly the way to go about it. While I understand, a misplaced punctuation in a post party text is all it takes to get my head out of the person's text window (that's what she said?), this behaviour is not how you take things forward with anyone.

What I'm badly trying to explain is that, as a city, Delhi has failed to give me spots to meet anyone IRL and take things forward organically. The apps that are there can only serve a limited purpose, if you're in for a quickie and have balls the size of King Solomon to allow a stranger to do you and you do back. I admit, I'm a prude. I like things the old fashioned way, where you do meet the person in a setting unfamiliar and both of you are just as out of character as the orange flavoured vodka you're offered. There are things to talk about, there's stuff to look out for.

However, the city we are at offers nothing. It doesn't offer opportunities, it doesn't offer safe space and sure as hell, doesn't offer men who you can trust.

Everytime I am in half a mind to meet a guy off a dating app, my friends closely vet and bring to a no. Their judgement, as harsh as it maybe, keeps things relatively safe.

However, to what extent?

Does one stop stepping out altogether? Grow old in the eternal hope that someone bumps into you while you're buying groceries at the nearest General Store and hopefully doesn't brush their hand up your ass and punctuates their text properly?

I'm onto you.

A little over three weeks since I drank alcohol.

52 days since I smoked a doob.

33 whole days since I went on a first date.

Gained a kilo since after losing eight (and probably more as I type).

Was able to clock in on non-stop high intensity workout for 20 minutes.

Commissioned 31 photo-shoots in remote parts of the country, scheduled to be completed this month.

Consumed no McDonald's.

0 weddings attended all of this month, when my entire social media list was basically living from Mehendi to Reception.

Finished two books and one TV series (first season) in a fortnight.

Missed a handful of people I love and miss, every single day.

Ate 1.5 pack of chips. Took a dump in the office washroom when we had two rolls of toilet paper.

"Every time something like this (situation regarding a work deadline) happens, I look back and check my surname. 'West', is that my second name yet?
No, it's not.
It's 'Malik'.
Then I go back to being myself and re-consider my decision (about launch date of project)."

My friend, who goes by his second name, Malik, aka Mr Malik is moving cities. Although, I did keep the sentiment in mind, he brought up how I didn't write anything about him and yet "tagged" him in a post saying he's leaving and the works.

Look out for Mr Malik's new projects, all lined up to release real soon. I'm not sure if I can talk about them, but I can talk about Mr Malik himself, who happens to be an old friend. As old as when I was 17 and cocky and ever so hyper. Despite his belief that I hated him when I first met him- a myth propagated by Mr Malik himself, I count him as a friend who has my back regardless of where I am and what stupidity I've indulged in. I'd like to think he feels the same since he's participated in eating not once, but twice over vegetarian food when all that we ever discuss is meat.

He and I have come a long way, charting conversations about biryani on different technologies, say from BBM to Telegram, to him promising to be a witness at my wedding whenever it happens, if at all it happens. Mr Malik has fed my unhealthy Diet Coke obsession and been ever so kind so let me fail a work deadline. Let's not forget the time, he allowed me to drive his car, when my own parents did not and I rammed it in the society gates at Westend. The guards promised to never allow Mr Malik's car in, and yet, only last week he offered to let me drive his car again.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is true friendship.

Now that Bombay's taking this friend away, I have a vacancy open in my life. To fill the big Yeezy's that Mr Malik would potentially wear and show up fashionably late. Although, credit where credit is due, from reaching a gig five hours late to only running late for ten minutes, that's a real leap into adulthood.

However, I'm pretty fucking sure, the spot is going to be vacant unless I move to Bombay or Mr Malik decides to move back sometime in the future.

Keeping this one real short. If I know anything about Mr Malik, he doesn't like to mull over words. Short and sweet, just like the last book he read on Soka Buddhism because, you know, it was short.

Delhi's going to be less than cool in your absence, Mr Malik.

I started my weekend with hiring Subhash.

Subhash, a grandfather to two kids, is an auto rickshaw driver in Delhi. He's seen better days, he says. The kind where his grandfather worked as a clerk at some government division, and he too was promised a job. The one which he never picked.

Ambitions are the end of us all. It doesn't matter what caste, creed, colour, sex, or even social strata. If, like Subhash, you have ambitions, be prepared to feel bad about being downtrodden all your life.

Much like me. A research scholar in cinema, people don't understand why I did, what I did. I don't understand their ignorance. They win, because they are all hiring managers, brand managers, business development managers, manager managers.

I'm a glorified Editor of sorts. Add some prefixes to that, it doesn't mean nothing. At least that's the sense I get. The day I feel satisfied, is the day I'll rest in my grave. To be alive, is to be digging with your fingertips, deeper until you scratch the surface of satisfaction. The deeper you go, the better it feels. Just the idea of being in constant motion. Which is what brought Subhash and me to the level of exchanging phone numbers.

Subhash, a Gujjar, lives in Tughalakabad Extension in Delhi. He's from around here. Born and raised, grew up in the same place. Our similarities baffle me. We're both at strife with peace. He has a son, who he trained in Hotel Management. The son works at a prominent five star hotel. He also received an Alto Car in dowry, which he doesn't drive. Bike will be cheaper, my son tells me, says Subhash. Almost as if, he's embarrassed on his son's behalf. Even less for himself, for driving the auto and ferrying people like me around.

Me? I was carrying two half full bottles of Vodka on me. Half an hour past my dinner time, when Subhash asked me to pay him ten additional bucks over and above the usual fare, I said no. Then I said yes, before he could agree to my price. "It's a Friday night. I look like a million bucks. I'm meeting the people I love to death. I can pay ten extra bucks, sure, make someone's evening." Sulking as I was about the uncredited salary and having no money, I found a friend in Subhash who was even less glum about having made less than five hundred rupees that day.

Subhash, a Congress party supporter, hesitantly told me he voted for Modi. His entire family, all his friends, his neighbours and everybody he knew voted for Modi in 2014. He was asked to do the same by the people he lived with. And so he did.

"Do you regret doing that?" I tried my best to make him talk. His soft spoken candour turned to a loud mouthed Punjabi aunty's as he distrated me by saying how the cops suck monkey balls (in the Haryanvi equivalent of those words) and are the reason why we were stuck at a signal for over an hour. It didn't help our case when he got a call from this Good Guy who he drops on regular basis. It didn't help my case when he pointed at the location where he picks that guy from, daily- outside the house of a guy I dated.

The Good Guy, though from Bihar, is very well educated and a good person at heart, Subhash informed me. He also told me about this professor who is from Rajasthan and around my age (early 30s he speculated) and gets dropped to the university in the morning.

Subhash, a retired gentleman, rents out autos to other individuals and that helps him run the household. His son makes some from the Hotel on the side and together they keep the family afloat. While filled with equal part guilt and equal part regret about not making it big, Subhash wants to continue driving. He doesn't care much about dignity of labour, although he does like his work enough to do the same thing every day from 7 am to 9 pm, all through the year.

Subhash's quite patriarchal while being ever so liberal together. It's a combination enjoyed exclusively by Delhi men and Subhash is no different. He insisted that I should get married. "But who will marry me?" I cried in my defence as the signal hit red and we missed our chance to escape the traffic the fifth time.

"Don't you have friends?"

Subhash hit a nerve. I had half a mind to tell him that all my friends deserted me and have new and fabulous lives in different cities, but I kept mum and nodded in disapproval. In my head, my answer was, "Negative, Subhash". Nobody's marrying me, I'm marrying nobody. That boat was never meant for me, and my committment phobic self anyway. However, like his political act, I didn't really find words to explain myself without making myself sound like a total asshole. Never reveal your asshole self to anyone who's driving you around, rule of thumb.

At this point, he and I had run out of conversation to make. But we had two kilometers of distance to cover in 30 whole minutes. I didn't mind it one bit, except that I was starving and thirsty and upset at the fact that I'd forgotten my Ruby Woo at home. Selfies will have to be done before I hit the dinner and I was an hour late for my dinner at that point.

Subhash too got a call from the Good Guy to have him picked from the same spot (kill me already), after which we only discussed politics and the cops, both of which, if I reveal about won't leave him in a state to drive his auto rickshaw and me, with a well paying job ever.

We parted our ways after spending good hour and a half to cover a four kilometer distance, all thanks to the same set of people Subhash's family forced him to vote for, and the one that my family was never up for.

The decision we make come to haunt us, be it our career choices, or our votes.