Prose before hos

It helps to know that crying at a point in time when I'm surrounded by deadlines is not conducive, which makes emotions very straightforward- eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired- and yet it pushes you into an overdrive of sucking your creative juices out. Can I write anything when I'm flushing my emotions down a gutter and sitting atop it? I can't. I feel all my words are forced, ideas are rotten and I hate how the most crucial things in my life have aligned together at the same time, and I don't even have the space and time to cry about not having my grandfather around on my birthday or that I don't know what to hope from my future, that which is in the darkness of a sort, nothing can help. 

The way the world is opening up 'round me, I can safely conclude that the pandemic is over until people start dying and yet my status quo remains the same- rotting in one corner of the room. 

Time to work, that's it for crying and flushing emotions down this toilet of a blog. The idea of turning old without people I love and those who love me back scares the living daylights out of me and here I am, facing that alone. I don't want to turn old, I don't want to be here. I want to be back with everyone who loves me and this isn't it. 

Also, if you're my loser cousin based in the Netherlands, could you please leave me the fuck alone? Get a job or focus on your son. Please stop stalking me for the love of the lord. Get a hobby, friends, whatever. It's disturbing how you find yourself here routinely, especially when you and I have no relationship of any kind. You, your family; all of you suck balls and I'd rather you leave us all alone, including my fucking blog. Seriously, get a job. 

For the rest, the wishlist is on. Hit me up if you want.  

The only time I felt like turning to this page was when I was reading a summarization of Foucaultian event, and now's just as good a time as any to discuss events.

Events pertaining to the ongoing Venus retrograde (who are you and what have you done to the person writing this page?), the deadline that I've been talking about for a month (and doing nothing about), the post-human condition of men (being apologetic about who they are inherently but not making any amends to that behaviour), and the weighing scale (which has been tipping on the wrong side for over a month).

Most of these go right back to when I decided to take a fucking break and call it an academic event. Aka Snobster goes to Europe.

What is it about an event that marks its uniqueness? Is it the stand it takes from being away from the regular, where all you do is repeat your actions until something interrupts? Is it the intervention by external force or agency that changes the regular, the banal into something else and transforms the normal into extraordinary? Does that qualify as an event or retrograde or even testing times?

Also, why the negative connotation, you'd ask.

Unfortunately, you'll not receive upon asking here. Just now or just ever. You'd have to do more than asking. A Cuban sandwich is a good starting point. As is a massage.

But of course the technology in my life doesn't think so.

The Medium is the motherfucking Massage

If this is an indication of the state of affairs then this is just as good as any cry for help. I'm not sure what I should be doing but I do know what I shouldn't be doing.

Putting things off.

Last time I put practicing bass off, it took over five years, and one inch long nails to respond to that. I picked bass when I returned from London, determined to play again. And so I did.

I did for a week until I realized I had an academic deadline and put that off. Then I proceeded to put that academic deadline off, in pursuit to get over the jet lag. I also put off complaining to the airlines who fucked my luggage over despite paying a bomb and getting my arse flown in and out of the country through premiere airlines. So much for solo travel and wanderfuck.

As I sat down to hammer out a few words (as few as 200 to meet the deadline), I stopped at 9 and proceeded to call four different people. I dug out three old cinema readers, lamented why I decided to pursue television when I clearly am not well versed with it, felt like cheating on my diet with chowmein but stopped short because I took a bite of the chocolate muffin. Who am I kidding, it was half a muffin and I had rajma chawal for dinner which meant I ate dinner for four people. 2300 calories at best and this has been minimum for a week. What will the weighing scale even do?

What I'm trying to say is, this academia is hard. Losing weight is hard. Keeping up with people and taking their shit is hard.

We know what happens when things get hard. I abandon them.

Ask the last guy who found himself hard around me. He'll tell you all about it.

I'm kidding.

But no, I did stop short of giving him a head. Because hard.

This didn't happen if you're my mom. Or dad. Does my dad read this page? I don't know.

Anyway, I'm on to entertaining friends who have decided to involve me in post-karwachauth hang despite the absence of any significant being in my life. If that isn't an event to write about, then I don't know what is.

This paper can go write itself. As can this page. The bass will also play itself. The PhD will do itself. The man with a hard on? Well, he had to handle it himself.

A PhD synopsis defended successfully.

Two complete cycles around the Sun whilst being gainfully employed.

Two new cookbooks enroute.

17 kilos of body weight down.

 Life's on the fifth gear, in the fifth month of the year. I'm not complaining.

Things I managed to achieve in the last seven days. Also known as my first week of productivity in 2018.

1) Blocked three people on Whatsapp and Facebook combined.
2) Ate a whole pack of chips. 123 gms of processed carbs.
3) Spent 3.9 k on books, which I have no space to store or hoard.
4) Met people every day after work.
5) Ate three different kinds of goat meat in one night.
6) Wrote nothing. Edited enough content to make me shoot myself in the head.
7) Worked out on 4 days out of 7. Out of breath on 2 days out of 4.
8) Drank 3 litres water on 4 days out of 7.
9) Cancelled vacation and sulked about it.
10) Cancelled another vacation scheduled for March and sulked some more.
11) Wrote shit on social media.
12) Acted like shit to people I like.
13) Made my bed 6 days out of 7.

All in all, a very normal week.

"Now that you've had a trim, I can't wait for your life to change."

I had hoped my mother would stumble upon Tom Hiddleston who would take her first born as his lawfully, soon-to-be bedded wife. That's quite a life changing deal in exchange of a hair cut, alright. However, her life did change. Six hours after the wretched hair cut, she landed up in the ER.

I, in my bed, stared at the ceiling all night long. In my head, one question. "Is this the life changing moment I was awaiting?"

Everyone has a bag of ridiculous supestitions. There's a varying degree to pick from, from people who wouldn't cross the road after a black cat walks over, to people who consider, hair cuts are life changing. There's a measure for superstitions. Mine, ofcourse, is all in my head. Garbage pile.

Thus, everything connects to hair on the head. The pile of garbage to life changing luck.

I was 13 years old when I had a life changing haircut. Wanting to be one of the cool kids, I decided against the advice of my mother and late grandmother and opted for what's strangely named, "Razor Cut".

That was everything except the fucking haircut I wanted. It's also another reason I don't trust barbers one bit.

The next haircut that I visibly remember is at 21. I was struggling to get admitted into a post graduate course here, in India. Despite having made it in the UK, I didn't want to take a loan and spend the better part of my 20s paying that.

I had hit the point of frustrating dead end, after having appeared in eight odd entrances and had cleared one, which I had no intention of going through with. Raging poverty with a Masters in Philosophy was not an alternative to paying the loan.

Back in the day, I had obnoxious Orangutan red hair colour that was left with a residue of ugly golden tail. Sitting with utter frustration, one morning before heading out of the house, I handed my mother a pair of scissors and asked her to chop it off.

Four hours later, the college I was not nearly eyeing but had my last shot at gave my mother a call. "Please deposit the fee. She's made it past the wait list."

By the time this could sink in, I got another news. I had topped my college in the final year examinations. Undergraduate in Philosophy, shining with the best of grades.

Man, I remember being thrilled. Followed by passing out in the washroom. A story for another day.

The next hair cut happened at 24. I was struggling with the Grad School. To be precise, struggling to exit. The tails needed to come undone and breathe life into my hair, a tactic I believed could ressurect my life.

Four inches short, I felt light in the head, not to forget how much of a change it added to my face. In under a month of that almost too dramatic a change for me, I was seeing someone and had snagged a job in publishing. I was elated.

Naturally, last week when I went for the coveted tail cutting, I knew life would bypass a certain change. An entry of sorts and exit for another. A job change? Two sizes for clothes? I don't know.

However, what I didn't anticipate at all was sleeping on the bench in the hospital within 24 hours of that wretched hair trim.

I joked to my mother on the second day, "See, I told you life would change."

Her expression translated to "Fuck you."

Sixth day in, she was home. I was convinced that's all for a change and surprise this time. And by my standard, I had done okay at all the change. I had flipped out only twice in those five days and managed to keep a nearly straight face at most people, situations and things at work- something I was doing for the first time since a family member landed at the hospital.

This was ofcourse until I got a Whatsapp text from my academic advisor.

"...you have to defend your proposal by the end of this winter semester. That is around May. Please let us start work on it if you are interested in your PhD."

Fuck. My. Life.

Three words that put the fear of god in me aren't "I Love You." They're something even scarier, a question full of hope.

If you can't feign a guess let me give that one right up (because it's 12:50 am on a Friday and I am feeling sick after all the Pork Bulgogi I'm not used to eating anymore).

Let's schedule meeting?





No. Never. 

Incase you didn't get that, I hate meetings. More than I hate Coldplay and F.R.I.E.N.D.S or Butter Chicken. I still think a band like Coldplay offers something. A meeting, on the other hand, doesn't offer crap. It is a construct to eat into your time and make you feel real silly by the end of it. A meeting is as useless as eating bad momos, or using toilet paper over health faucet. Nobody cares about toilet paper. It hurts, okay?

Attendance in meetings is just as painful as living with a butthole after exposing it to the coarse texture of the toilet paper. Meetings that go on anything more than twenty minutes hurt more than toilet paper on arse, after three days, if you have used water all your life.

Toilet papers are the worst. I digress but I hate the idea of meetings just as much as I hate using toilet paper.

Meetings are the curse of mankind. In a hierarchy pyramid of the worst kind of urban torture imposed on healthy, sane adults, meetings are parallel to the idea of self actualization. The parties involved in the success of a meeting know everything, the case, its symptoms and the diagnosis but yet are reticent. They will insist upon wasting your time and their time on company's time and take you through some real banal shit while you dream on about the cruise vacation you could afford if you picked up a shit, mindless writing job in some obnoxious corner of Delhi NCR. Sure, you'd lose your clients and your residence's proximity to work, but you'd gain in money and money can buy you a trip to Lake Como.

Wait, we are still at the meeting.

Successful meetings have a thing in common. The parties involved never digress. They come together, find solutions and keep the negative away (haha, suck it Maya Angelou). However, most meetings like real people have flaws and they always fucking digress. Nice dress, where's it from to Haha can you please not use images of kids, maybe it will prevent a known sexual predator from Croatia to not show up in India to find that kid to sexually molest, everything comes in together, in betwene work and camaraderie.

All in good spirit. Just as how meetings are.

Off late, I realized I considered the attendance of meeting as highly successful adults brainstorming to change the world and make it a better place.

However, as someone who gets regular emails from people to have a meeting, let me break your bubble and say no. Meetings are the biggest professional lie that HR initiated for people to feel welcome and loved in the organizational setup. Nobody cares for you and certainly wants you, especially the youngest employee forced to be sitting there, who could really be online shopping feverishly, just as much as her neighbour on probation does.

Where was I? Meetings, yes.

Meetings are also painful when they're set without your consent and you're just expected to be there.

You can't be kidding me Srishti? You'd like me to meet your clients and your hotel and your boyfriend all on the same day which happens to be the weekend? Who are you and why should I even do this for you? 

In my limited tenure of professional bullshit, there's not been a single meeting where we discussed stuff which came in handy. Sure, I have initiated meetings and yes, hypocrite of me to request to be a part of some of them. However, they made up since there was emotional compensation such as food involved or there's some person whose presence made up for it- a boss who was supportive, a colleague who scribbled on my notebook, "you've lost weight. You look skinnier than ever" or even facts that made me say, "HA! IN YOUR FACE ASSHOLE".

Largely, it's been the last point.

Meetings are vindictive in nature. Since there's no font for Sarcasm yet, we have meetings to make up for being snarky.

I think that's more than enough rant and a mental preparation for me prepare myself for a Meh-ting Monday which involves two back to back meetings. No amount of good/bad weather walk or Tequila shots can help ease the pain. Talking about the problem, however, does a lot of good.

Me-ting me soon, are you?

If there's anything I hate more than being "Hmm"-ed at, it's being acknowledged for kindness. Especially when there's no way out but to be kind and being a fucking human for once.

You could say, I (I being Snobster) hate humanizing myself. You could also say, "There, there. It's okay to be a human once." But let me tell you, it's not.

To be human, is to be fucking weak. Put on a show where you wear your heart and take it out and display it to everyone. Look ma, I got a heart that works just as good as anyone else's. It's brand new, shiny and definitely in mint condition.

That's where the problem begins. When you're kind and show your heart on regular basis, it's prone to wear and tear. When you're me (by that I mean, heartless slab of stone), displaying signs of being human can be a setback to oneself.

The opposite of corporate clients are NGOs. My new, favourite topic, that I'm beginning to realize is literally poles apart from working for a corporate ho. These NGOs are the new bone of contention in my life, they are responsible for my employers paying for my weekend special white bread slice slathered with salted butter. I've been working on a new project which involves me liasing with these organizations and quite literally, touching the radioactive material ie emotions, kindness, reality and grassroot level problems that people deal with, to make lives better for those who are less than #blessed.

Imagine this, you're sitting at work. Hating everyone and everyone hating you back, while you dabble sending cold email after the other.

"Please send the content."

"Please send the content." x25870

Until the moment the phone next you to rings, a man very politely requests for you. Once you claim that it's indeed you, he proceeds in the most empathetic manner to request for an extension of two hours for submission of the said content.

"We haven't had electricity in two days, our devices are not charged. It will be very kind of you if you could please give us the liberty to submit it late by a couple of hours. We would be more than grateful."

"Please take 48 hours, my kidney and liver and all the stuff I bought from Thailand."

I shouldn't cut onions when I'm at work, or infront of my Mac, or even when I'm planning to write.

The 48 hour deadline came to an end this evening, and even before I could react (and believe me, I'm on acid when it comes to chasing deadlines), the man shared three emails with content. The landline rang for the 67th time today and it was him again,

"Hello Ma'am, I wanted to thank you for giving us two extra days. It was very kind of you. You see because of Diwali, our village gets less supply of electricity than usual and we do not have ample time to charge our devices and finish our chores that require electricity. This extension helped us immensely. I wanted to thank you again for this, and also I hope you've received the content. We shared it 10 minutes back."

Drat, onion chopping again.

Here's pretending that I'm unaffected by emotions, that Twitter is dead (according to a colleague who was popular on Twitter when Twitter was popular) and that I'm spending my weekend far away from emotions at a virgin beach with a Piña Colada and a plate of curly fries.

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.

Couple of years ago, I got into a whim of getting a line tattooed on my body. It seemed harmlessly personal, insofar as the longevity of the design/idea was concerned.

I truly thought that I'd live by the words and in good faith, they'd live back with me. I can't quite pin the circumstances that lead to this whimsical thought but it had something to do with a bit of a mix, personal upheavle with some manchild and professional inability to sustain a job.

Those were the days when I'd fail no job interview and kick all jobs in a fortnight. The days prior to getting the wretched research degree which makes everyone question, "Sorry, you're overqualified (On paper, bitch). Why do you want this job again?"

x

Where were we? Skin.

I suppose what prevented that tattoo was costing. An odd similarity I share with my workplace (where I've been at for close to a year now). All life decisions boil down to whether or not it's "worth" the money. I used to think my parents are strange for drilling that idea in me, and probably because their parents were strange for drilling that idea in their head.

It took me one year at a massive Art and Design firm in the country to realize, it's all our parents and probably a very Punjabi thing in practice. "Is it worth it to skip office and stay at home for your mental health?", "Is it worth it to pay INR 23000 for an image when you can send someone from your organization with a camera, who's on a monthly pay roll of INR 20000. Imagine the number of images he can click while making the sale pitch at the bookstore?". Everything is always equated in contrast with a commodity, service or even a situation which will be created, just to be able to satisfy your question, "Can I?", "May I?", "Shall I?"

The answer is always no.

x

There's this urge to get a tattoo again. This time, I'm clear I want no text, and probably hold that for life. While I love words and only ever know what to do with them, I wouldn't want to get that on my body. I used to be very blasé about the tattoo idea/design and would want to go with the first instinct but never reached that far (which monetary factor prevented- a thing I can be thankful to my parents and work place for). On the other hand, I was extremely protective of how my skin is, whether it has marks or lines or wounds or vestiges of scars so deep, which I no longer am.

I recently read something which boiled down to the idea of why would you want to take the same body back to Earth after you die? Wouldn't you rather show it the years it's lived with their marks, their signs and their strokes? You should, if you didn't already. Stop with the facials and the creams and fussing. It's great to get down and dirty and wounded and carry them proudly because they're all yours to claim. Every inch is yours to proudly own and customize, so to say.

That thing hit home. I knew two things instantly-

1) My body physically no longer belonged in the set up of "it has to be the same, au naturel, no marks, wounds or tan". Since then, my body is multiple shades of Sun, crow feet, faded and smudged tattoo and many, many wounds deep. I wear it all proudly, hoping to take the most last updated version to the grave whenever the day comes.

2) I no longer wanted words on my body.

I live words. I breathe them. I know them inside out. Do I want a blue print on my body or do I want them to go with them? The latter, cause I can't discriminate. I want every word I know on my body, I want every inch to be covered in statements I stand for. Can I physically get it tattooed and trivialize them? Probably not.

When today, another one of the groundbreaking things went down, the line played in my head. I knew why that tattoo wasn't meant to go on my skin.

It's been a year of minor falls and I'd rather wait to live them than to take them skin deep with me to my death bed. Maybe, it's a life time of minor falls and major lifts are only in comparison, a contrasting value to how minor the incident is. Yet, it's not worth it to mark the skin with words. Not on me. Not for me.

At a Safal outlet, 18:08 hours.

Baby Banana - (observing a rack full of Granny Smith) "Listen, how many calories are there in one green apple? Are those like carbs? Like I know there are 80 calories in a medium normal apple."

Mia Khalifa - "Ah, those (pointing at Granny Smith) are called pear in English and बब्बूगोशा in Hindi. You might want to learn fruits first before you learn about calories."

I returned from Pune, last week, to hear that Delhi was anticipating "Wettest July" in what seems (?) like a decade. Predicted by the met guys and having that conveyed by my mother only means alteration of some facts so if this seems dodgy to you, I'm passing the blame to my parental unit.

What's a fact checker and why does my blog need one?

Moving on, the misleading title is quite an opener to the problem of lack of getting any. In other words, 'Cobwebs on my Vagina', 'Drought in my Pussy', both contested and lost to the current opening title. I really need to look for a solution to problems such as, "Dude, we discussed weather so does that mean he's friend-zoned me?" but really, I am just so full of negativity, I thought let me pep up with some weather talk and what better than Monsoon to get the juices (gunk) flowing. (yuck)

I used to get dating. Much like I got the idea of taking a bus to school. There's a reason you indulge in camaraderie. You apparently save the environment from pollution by contributing to the noise when you shove 50 or more hyper kids in a bus and release 20 such buses in all directions to and from school every morning. If you care, I believe in home-schooling (also cause wow the fee structure is insane and I can possibly never afford to send my hypothetical child to school).

Now, I don't get that anymore. Or dating. Have the rules changed? Why do the kids travel in cars now? Why did my school stop sending buses to pick kids? Why do parents pay upward of a fucking lakh for their kids to learn colours and numbers? Somethings I will never understand. For everything else, there are rich fuckers paying their kids fee and making the rest of us question our subsidized convent education.

I digress, but my dear frenemy Mia Khalifa answers. Her version is almost rude.

"Darling, they all want your ass and you give them your hand. You're getting none back."

Bitch is probably PMSing and taking it out on me. I took the answer back home, as she drove me in her new shiny car, only to repeat that to SSA.

He had a better explanation (or maybe, I was just well fed), "You don't get a call back for second ones because you give out the complete package in the first."

"You know that makes total sense...the ones where I did follow up or like met the guy again are like the ones where there was so much awkward silence. Yeah, you're right...they weren't the kind of dates...you know...on acid.", I said while standing under the shade of a Peepal tree which did us no good in protecting from torrential downpour earlier today. In the last 48 hours, it's been humid and dry and no sign of the clouds. I step out of the house for an hour to meet SSA over a walk, and it rains on my parade.



When they said Wettest July, they certainly did mean having for it to rain on my actual fucking parade.

Is there a problem with placing your chips on the lopsided end? If so, then I missed the announcement cause I don't get this behaviour. If I put myself out on a date, I'm slutty and obviously "too into" the guy that I want "it" instantly with. If I don't, then I'm "prude" and how dare I have a "taste" for men. Have I not learnt enough from the idea of Tinder? Swipe, Sleep and Repeat.

But no. I want the wine, and for us to dine and the sixty-nine. So what if it takes awfully long time?

However, the rules have changed and clearly my manual was lost in the mail. To get some, you've to be aggressive, like a fighter. Destiny's Child didn't sing Survivor years ago for nothing. They forecasted a situation such as this to avoid dry spells of July.

I mean, it's half a fucking year and I've gotten NONE.

If you, like me, are having questions about me, may I publically announce that Mia Khalifa isn't getting any either. Despite a name like hers, she doesn't manage to go beyond cuddle.

"He says it's done and I'm like, 'Oh? Already? I didn't even feel it.' and then I never hear from him again...You know I should start like these classes on how to train people to have good sex. Like a whole school, how to initiate, how to take it forward and obviously how to have good sex. You should be my first customer."

Because yeah, the problem is me. To my face, I don't get any cause I have it tattooed on my forehead.

Which brings me to my fucking point, which I have been trying to find ways and means to convey. Men, women, everyone- BUCKLE THE FUCK UP!

You will climb mountains, trek to the fucking Himalayas, run a 20k marathon but when it comes to asking a person out, what the actual fuck happens? Does anyone ask you to give up your first born in exchange of sleeping with someone or going down on them? If so, please feel free to share. I'd be happy to empathise with your choices.

If not, then I don't understand. You'd do everything except for asking for some.

Because let's face it, dating as I know has become this- you text, you plan to meet, you ditch, you text some more, you forget, you text again, you feign excitement, you try to cancel, you meet, you have a good/great time, you never speak to them again.

WHY? Why would you waste good effort to do this nonsense? You're defying the laws of science because you're destroying energy...mmm good energy in this nonsense that you're putting the other person up for.

If you want to meet for "a" drink, say so. Tell the other person, "Hey, you know what, I have no intentions of following up cause I don't quite care. You still up for that one drink?"

Half the fucking time, I meet people out of politeness. At least, we can be politely honest with each other and say, "Hey, you know what I'm going to flake on you so let's end it right here. Let's save each other the energy and the process. Why don't we spend our respective time reading Camus and never talk to each other again?"

Trust me, that'd be romantic af.

But no, here I am, and here are your rules. I will be 'cool' and 'chill' and wait for the next person to nudge me to death to have some drinks, make conversation, waste energy and never hear from them again.

I wish I could eat and spend my energy digesting refined calories than writing this crap. If I tried, maybe even I could run for some 50k and do well, because dating for sure is harder than running a marathon.

I spent the last weekend reconnecting with my double chin in the beautiful city of Pune. Over many a toasted slice of white bread and bun slathered with butter, I grinned and fawned over every little thing. Namely, the terrible two-wheelers, who without a care in the world would drive like the Pearly Gates are shutting for the night, and mannerless cab drivers, who needed an excuse to cancel the ride. In the midst of such stunning imagery, I found myself being oh so angry at male folks. Bless their excretion organ. The world is nothing but a large toilet for all the men folk.

Years ago, I had a meeting scheduled with one of my professors to discuss a photography assignment I was due to present later that month. Each of us had to pitch an idea and I went ahead with this photo story, of how men can take a piss in public. The idea, ofcourse, was to see this culture proliferated across caste, background, colour- nearly everything- a unifying factor for menfolk. The idea that unites the gender- take a piss anywhere.

In a total anti-climax, the professor shot the idea down. He claimed this was a normal phenomenon across the world and wasn't specific to 'Delhi' and 'India'.

Well, nobody had said it had to be India/Delhi specific.

"You're into music and gig photography. Why don't you cover the jazz fest? Besides, men across the world do that. You know, in Europe- Germany, London, everywhere. It's not unique.", he had said, as though in response to me having accused him of doing something totally unacceptable, say snorting coke off a Japanese prostitute's navel.

Years later, (to be precise, yesterday) I was reading Mia Khalifa's book- Special Lassi. She spins the most beautiful words together to describe her backbreaking misadventures across the Himalayas. I don't easily endorse things, but when I do, I go all out. Her book is all kinds of wonderful- complete with astute observations about the things around us- especially in India- which we take for granted. One of them, as she lists, is the ability of men to take a piss anywhere they want. That marked a befitting end to my trip. As I was trapped in a godforsaken city with little to no public urinals access to women, it seemed Mia Khalifa's words were mine.

Through the course of the bastard trip, my host and I would exit the house in the morning, only to return in the wee hours of next morning- absolutely constipated. With sharing a washroom between us two, the details were exchanged and intimately so.

"Are you constipated as well? Shit man. I've not crapped in a day and a half."

"I wanted to take a dump but I can't in public toilets."

"Wait, there's no health faucet?"

"No man, you have to use the mug and water."

"Shit. Shit."

"I can't take a dump with full satisfaction. You know what I mean? It's like I've done it but I'm not satisfied."

"Dude, I'm eating too many carbs for me to be able to take a satisfying dump. If I don't, I'll want to shit at the drop of the hat."

"Yeah don't, there's no place where you can."

These were some of the stray sentences exchanged repeatedly over the weekend. The issue with us both? Privileged, women of colour on a vacation not being able to pee/poop as they pleased.

Which essentially made me look inwards and realised, we still have it easy. We can always come back to our respective place, comfortable spot to take a satisfying dump or a piss. Whereas, for a significant number of people, this privilege can never be realized or attained simply because they don't have the means of affording it.

Which makes me go back to question, what is it about this being so 'global'? Do women globally suffer from UTIs or whatever it is, constipation, because they do not have means to provide them with sanitation and hygiene? Or does it have to be only us where, after over seventy years of the country's independence we are still battling eyelids on who ate what part of cow meat or goat meat and how dare a musical outfit call themselves "Bhangi jumping"?

I guess, I'll never know. At the end of the day, if not a jazz fest, I'll be asked to shoot or commission something equally banal and distracting and I'll go back home, holding my piss and poop to only relieve myself eight hours after a day's work.