Prose before hos

How are you? 

I don't get it. 

What do you mean? 

I'm sick of this lockdown. 

This lockdown needs to end. 

How are you feeling? 

Did you book an appointment with a therapist yet? 

You should book an appointment with a therapist. 

Please see this video. 

You have to see this video. 

It's a must-watch video. 

Want to play Ludo? 

Why don't you play Ludo?

Join my game of Ludo? 

You never play Ludo with me. 

You have to watch *insert name of the show*

Did you watch *insert name of the show*

PLEASE WATCH *insert name of the show*

Hahaha

I hate this person/that influencer/hate that ingredient/hate that food/hate this community/hate that comedian/hate this joke/this meme? 

Can you not hate on that person/that influencer/that ingredient/that food/that community/that comedian/that joke/that meme?

Are we on for a date? 

Do you think you can meet me for a date? 

Do you think we can meet? 

I saw you going out in your car. Let's meet? 

Can I come over? 

Can I come over and we can sit far away and I can see you? 

Can you come outside? I'm coming for five minutes. 

What are you having for dinner? 

(Title reference; track of the day)

1) May left Delhi and she cursed us all before leaving. However, like a solid game of Mortal Kombat where the attacks are reflected in 100%, her relocation backfired just as much. Turns out staying in an apartment and flirting with a cat is a lifestyle she can get behind. I'd write some more about how she infected the last person by their drive to the airport but I'd not. Cause Pollen Allergy is now being blamed. 

2) My employers decided to let me go and I cursed the world to stay at home in solidarity with me. The kids to be homeschooled, people to pretend work from pyjamas and then for a lot others to lose their jobs. Nobody puts Snobster in a corner. 

Please leave other conspiracy theories as comments. This limited broadcasting is brought to you courtesy anti-histamines and a hives attack. 

(Title reference; track of the day)

As I write this, we have entered the fourth phase of lockdown. In 2007, if someone had told us that we'd be nabbed at home at a gunpoint of a virus scare, I'd have told them to get off the internet chain mail spam.

But, here we are.

A friend and I both agree on the instance that there are multiple hot takes on the lockdown. There's a whole Anne Frank vibe with people in art, outside of art practicing hobbies and art forms and marking a day each. There are business entrepreneurs using infantile art to raise money. Confession: I placed a bid on a few and won myself a whole piece (it's not bad looking, thank you).

My point being, just as much as there is this entire sitch, there are those many hot takes, a sort of background noise to it.

Terms being added to our conversations including apps and software that help us perform better remotely. I don't mean food or grocery delivery but things like being recited bedtime stories in the absence of inspiration as you otherwise had for your child among others.

There is the personal end of things. Dealing with the lockdown. Reeling under the lockdown. I'm yet to meet one person who's not personally burnt atleast half a dozen bridges during this time.

If Dolphins returned to Italy then closer home, fuckbois are trying to score brownie points with women they'd never hoped to talk to.

There is an acute sense of disenchantment with existing relationships, inability to form new relationships, and then the audacity to curate new situations and budding relationships to walk into this lockdown with. I've been guilty of all. I've forged seemingly surreal new connections, been called out one too many times on being negligent and hurtful with people in my life and then seemingly been told to shut my face by people close to me, not one, many.

In a way, it brought up a huge void here, on this page.

What do I write about when people close to me tell me I'm effectively a ball of a make-believe world, with a little sense of understanding, and I have a problem understanding communication, authority, and boundary.

With the number of allegations I've come to live with, I've had to effectively take time off from taking my time off. I've been asked to be empathic and give people leeway when I haven't been on the receiving end of it, from those who I expected to love and kindness from.

The real pandemic has been on communication and our ability to express with gestures, actions, and words. Somehow, with the absence of our ability to do the former, the latter can't withstand the burden of carrying our lives with other people. I've found myself getting short with people I adore to bits knowingly and otherwise. I've also felt a total lockdown in people expressing their true emotions in this.

Effectively, I've found myself locked in a room of sarcasm, pity, unsolicited advice, and then reality checks all at once. There have been days when these revelations happened all at once and then on the other where they took time to simmer and come as backhanded insults.

Effectively, I've learned what a terrible excuse of a human being I am. I've also in turn given it to people. Neither of the situations has been helpful, to say the least. I'm also not proud of not having taken the higher road of silence, taking it in.

I'm after all a fucking human. I am prone to mistakes. I do things. I am responsible for the faltering. I do them again. Falter again. There are times I walk into a puddle of quicksand unknowingly and then on other occasions, I feel I'm pushed into it.

It's not a conducive or healthy environment to be in. What's more worrying is the aftermath of if and when this is over.

In the last week, my biggest learning is not about relationships but friendships. Apparently, you can read into years of knowing someone incorrectly, as something which is only seemingly in your head. God save us from daydreaming anything then.

Maybe this is a conspiracy theorists' job on how we should imagine our lives to be. There's a fine line between living and dreaming. If I have imagined a whole friendship, who is to say if I'm being gaslight or should I be allowed the privilege of free-thinking ever again?

If the last time, I wrote about my father and our complexities, this time it's my closest friends calling me out on my crap.

Admittedly, there's a lot. This is why friendships exist (among other things). We live through each other's idiosyncracies and we lighten those up and we hold them tight when they need us.

I feel I have overburdened people and they have underwhelmed me. It's a two way street of non-consensual activity. If they found my actions abhorring, I found their reactions appalling.

No one is to say that I'm not at fault. Perhaps, the whole fault is mine that I have constructed these notions of friendships in my head. Maybe, it's all me, as I'm being gaslight.

But god forbid, it's not me, the irreversible damage of second-guessing the one thing I know well, has been done.

In between questioning what's sacred and the bonds we all believed are unbreakable, the virus has questioned not only the world but also the way we think. It's accelerated and amplified our thoughts and reactions into effective results.

I could live with a bad friendship for years without making a fuss. Today, I find myself incapable of doing that. If I do as much as a point in the direction of a problem, I get a sharply worded response, which is, to be fair, an activity of equal action and reaction. Empathy is a construct of the world we inhabited in pre-COVID times.

I've been a strong believer in friends being support systems and especially true for me. I value my friendships close to my heart, I go all out for it. Until well, now, that the virus has left me questioning my own set of beliefs and principles.

Between media capital restructuring, changing world and societal interactions, layoffs, deaths, disasters, and the inability to cope up with our solitary self, our friendships are at stake.

I fucking hate COVID, motherfucking reality checker.

I think I met more people in the last month than I have met in the last fucking decade. The list doesn't include obvious suspects like the people I work with, my immediate family or the people I see on daily basis.
I would give all these people listed below a miss in a heartbeat just to be able to see my cat again (who has been absconding for over a month, thank you very much). Okay, not all but most. The things I've done in the last 35-40 days since Uggles left me, is beyond comprehension. At a point now where people who barely know me are walking up to me or texting to check if I'm alive and/or well (number of times I've received that in the last fortnight- 4).

For this list, though I've excluded people who I met just once. Which would have effectively meant the list would be longer. These are the people I met through the month, more than once, and we don't stay under the same roof. You can imagine this amount of socializing and meeting taking a toll on anyone. Mind you, this doesn't include some of my other close friends or people I'd much rather hang with. Very few here, make the cut to the people I'd much rather be with.

1. Su
2. Aashish
3. Madhuri
4. Udisha
5. Udisha's mom
6. Udisha's dad
7. Udisha's brother
8. Ritika
9. Roshni
10. Dr A (not me, haha)
11. Jolly
12. Yuvraj
13. AJ
14. Aashish's sister
15. Aashish's bff
16. Yuvraj's girlfriend/laash (can't remember her name- she's extremely sweet though)
17. Anuj
18. Abhishek
19. Ritambhara
20. Nilambhari
21. Akshita
22. Man Friday
23. Ananya (the friend)
24. Neelam
25. Sneha
26. Umang
27. Meghna
28. Ashmita
29. Deepika's mom
30. Deepika's dad
31. Deepika's brother
32. Kanika
33. Abhijeet
34. Dr PNS
35. Plastic Surgeon Dude
36. All of the first PR's staff (3 shifts, I'm guessing?)
37. Dietitian -1 
38. Dietitian - 2
39. Tailor
40. Tailor 2
41. Tailor 3
42. Tamanna
43. Tamanna's husband (aka brother in law)
44. Tanishq
45. Sampada
46. Anmol
47. Tamanna's mom
48. Tamanna's dad
49. Sampada's mom
50. Sampada's dad
51. Sampada's cat 1
52. Sampada's cat 2
53. Sampada's cat 3
54. Sampada's cat 4
55. Sheo
56. Shreejee (was most curious, apparently a woman)
57. Mini
58. Mini's mom
59. Mini's dad
60. Mini's brother
61. Sanjay uncle
62. Rekha aunty
63. Hitler Mamiji 
64. Timo
65. Timo's girlfriend
66. Timo's girlfriend's sister
67. Timo's mom
68. Timo's dad
69. 19-year-old Chinese dude whose name I can't remember
70. 19-year-old Chinese dude's mom
71. 19-year-old Chinese dude's mom's sister
72. Hitler mamiji's grandson
73. Random Meerut uncle who told me, "Chinese ke saath itna dance kara hai, humaare saath bhi dance karlo"
74. Random Meerut uncle who shared the table with me for breakfast
75. Random Meerut aunty (lost count)
76. Random West Delhi relatives
77. Mum's nephew who definitely has visible herpes (and he's on my friend list- shit)
78. Mum's nephew's wife (who I dragged to the dance floor and danced with- have never met her before)
79. all of Tamanna's in-laws (lost count)
80. Some 100 odd family friends (don't know who's who)
81. Khursheed
82. Arun
83. Khursheed's grandmom
84. Khursheed's sir
85. Khursheed's friend at the IAF
86. Khursheed's friend's mom at the IAF
87. Neharika
88. Neharika's mom
89. Aastha
90. Rajan
91. Rajan's wife
92. Rajan's kid with his wife
93. Neville
94. Matru
95. Salim
96. The dude from Accounts whose name I don't remember
97. Vijay
98. Vijay's son (Sagar, I think)
99. Veer 
100. Client in Delhi
101. Client's colleague
102. Another client
103. Client's senior colleague
104. Client's head of the department
105. Client's Director
106. Client's artist
107. Client's colleague
108. Client's colleague 2
109. Client at the JLF
110. Client's boss at the JLF
111. Client's Director at the JLF
112. Client's still photographer at the JLF
113. Client's colleague at the JLF
114. Client's Director's husband at the JLF
115. Vinayak
116. Sud
117. Another one of their friend
118. Yet another one of their friend
119. The angry dude who was their friend
120. The dude who brought the doob also their friend
121. Ankur 
122. Mohini
123. Pritish
124. Prityasha (I think that was her name, could be wrong)
125. Mr fucking Fox (fuck me)
126. Ag's sibling (I think)
127. White journalist
128. White dancer
129. White gallery owner
130. Arjun 
131. Translator
132. Famous environmentalist/filmmaker
133. Famous poet
134. Famous author/critic
135. Famous sculptor
136. Famous author
137. Priya
138. PK 
139. KK 
140. Kapil
141. Karam
142. Ritu Masi
143. Tanvi
144. Rachna Masi
145. Rachna Masi's husband
146. Old boss from my 2012 internship
147. Shaleen
148. The artist whose name I missed
149. Anna (whose name I first confused with Maria)
150. Navendu
151. Neha
152. eM
153. Ty
154. Anton
155. Amanat
156. Nirja
157. Sahaj
158. Another client's photographer
159. Same client's second photographer
160. Christie
161. SUSB
162. PP
163. KK 
164. The dude who I intensely dislike (hugged him, yuck)
165. The client's other team member
166. Udita
167. Udita, Vidhaat and Ashmita's friend
168. This big gallery owner's granddaughter
169. Akanksha
170. Dhananjaya 
171. Giriraj
172. Neeti

Growing up around an agnostic parent meant there were no consistent rituals or customs when it comes to the celebration of "festivals". It has always been a moment of intrigue when I'm demanded accountability by acquaintances, "what are your plans for XXX?" with XXX being any important festival.

It does not help the cause that my other parent who practices some skewered version of religion decided that a convent school was best for me. Maybe they predicted my serial dating habit years ago or maybe they were just lazy. I have other theories but I'll keep them to myself.
My background into mythology and understanding of religion largely comes from the practice of storytelling; a hobby that advanced into writing and reading, I was obsessed with listening to stories as a kid. Most people don't know this about me, but I would bully my grandmother into telling me ten different stories each night as she put me to bed. Storytelling as an endeavour did one thing right- I imbibed to make my own narrative. In this case, come with my set of rituals for every important occasion.

As a part of my Diwali ritual, I finish a book from cover to cover as the world is going ham with their respective festivities. No matter how drunk, busy, tired or crabby I am, I grab a book on Diwali eve and wrap it in a few hours.

This Diwali, I'd been drunk for a week. I started smoking again and essentially, I was in a haze of intoxication. To cut it short, in no mood with keeping up with traditions. I have theories on why that transpired but that's not critical.

Coming back, as a part of my anti-social asshole regime this year, I made faces and threw shade on one and all. That's hardly new by my standard but I have learned to keep that monster tamed. I think largely it had to do with my patience being tested all around, from work to personal life.


I was particularly snappy all of the last week. The highlights of which include calling a friend "Ice Prince".

Don't raise your eyebrow. The term is self explanatory. Ice Prince is a dude who is cold, and inaccessible and only soluble at room temperature at carnivals.

To be fair, I've been using the term in regular conversations for a while now and have not bothered to remember the etymology. It just describes some people rather well and somehow, it stuck around with me as a phrase that I use when I want to remind people to be kind especially when I think they're being obnoxious. On a side note, I should maybe, take a weekend and sort the definitions of these insults in my head to avoid any further embarrassment.

As a good save, I do think of an Ice Prince as a chill guy who slips in and out of his mold and mixes well with a spirit or two.

Anyway, I don't think this went down well. In my defensive mode, I explained that I had read this in a book long ago.

Upon further prodding, I confessed that I didn't remember the name of the book where I'd read this. However, I skipped the details. It took a grand total of 2 minutes, with the help of my nuanced research skills that I employed, to learn the name of the book.

In absolutely no time I had assessed everything there was to the context of the usage. Man, why would I continue using this for years?

Keeping up with the merriment, I decided to read this again as a part of my only Diwali ritual. I dug out the copy of the book and read the whole thing this past weekend. I think I would have been better without this reminder, but no, I had to invoke the ghost of Ice Prince and throw shade. The entire process made me look and feel stupid and how. Let me explain why.

It's hilarious and I'm partly ashamed to admit that an absolutely pathetic book is mirroring my life in godawful ways. I remembered certain portions, well but for the most part, had completely forgotten about the things that went down in the book. This includes the protagonist's job, her friends and their story arcs coming a complete circle, an old friend reconnecting just before her wedding (eerily described to be similar to what went down when I reconnected with my long lost best friend from school after 8-9 years), old crushes losing sheen, new ones being totally hopeless and a general sense of displacement amongst others. At the end of this re-reading, I was embarrassed for myself. Why is my fucking life resembling a godawful chick-lit?

If I add another punctuation up there, even my blog will resemble one, if it doesn't already remind you of that. Not cool at 28. Not cool at 17 either but I'll be kind to my younger self.

What's worst is that I was impressed with the book when I first read it eleven years ago. I recall I was writing this blog and extensively writing about my time around the guy in the neighbourhood who I crushed on. When I read the book and how painstakingly it covered the protagonist's crush and so on, my 17-year-old self felt validated. Not the best role model at the time. It doesn't help one bit that with time, the crush in the book and mine in real life have unfolded to resemble just as lame. That's a parallel I can live with.

Now that I think of it, I don't think I'd have fully understood what the book was trying to do as a 16-17-year-old when I first read this. The entire novel was recreated as a part of the author's blog and was the shite amongst bloggers at the fag end of the noughts. Ofcourse, today, writers do gigs on independent digital publications and nobody reads books or even those pieces. Instead, the ritual demands everyone to Instagram the front cover. There are video book previews, a joke since every serious reader at some point prior to the descent of internet television looked down upon the moving visuals as a medium when compared to the written word on paper.

I don't know what's worse, writing deals scored then basis blogs or the interpretation of books today. Whatever it is, one needs to seriously reflect upon that and action. In my case, cease reading garbage and calling people by those names.

For what it's worth, the back blurb added to the charm of the ice prince "...(he) who thaws at his own convenience".

Move on Annabelle. Some of us have to live with completely eerie book-life situations mirroring real-life, instead of having the luxury to play with cursed toys. Meanwhile, now I truly believe that all rituals should be open to customization. To that end, I now propose burning stupid books instead of crackers on Diwali.