Prose before hos

If you think Football boys are annoying (I'm sorry Taylor) try Football kids. If there weren't enough reasons to not have them, getting kicked by their serves at the track twice every week makes for a solid reason to add to my theory- football boys are the worst and kids are truly the worst. 

McDonald's in India hasn't McDonal'd in a while. The food lately has been insipid and the one decent thing that they do (Pizza McPuff), they've plastered Kartik Aaryan's face on the packaging. I don't know which marketing genius ensured that McDonald's started giving out books in lieu of toys and put KA on the cover of what is pao bhaji puff pastry but please, for the love of the lord, bring old McDonald's back. I'm one step away from denouncing my favourite brand in the world. 

Speaking of denouncing, I'm pleased to announce Diet Coke is on its way out of my life. Not because it's cancerous but because it hasn't hit me in a while, the way it used to (before you say, "Maybe it's you," it's not me; I had Lays Magic Masala yesterday to test the theory and I finished a family sized pack after lunch and dessert in one go and it banged as per usual). 

Two litres of water in a day isn't enough, and two slices of pizza are lethal for dinner. I was gasping for breath (gluttony is a sin) after fresh burrata and pesto pizza last night. 

I have fallen out of affection and fondness for four guys this month but got my eyes on three guys this month so it's been net zero, so to say. Feral during ovulation continues. If you are looking to point the incorrect formula then just know this is Girl Math. 

My favourite character at the local park is a little girl who makes sand castles out of mud, a beautiful white indie who follows me every time we cross each other till it gets distracted, and a geriatric who makes me wish I had half his energy and strength. 

 Does spending 4 nights in a different city count as relocation? If so, I have notes. 

Then there are tall buildings. I'm constantly floating between elevators running from the fifth, tenth and twelfth floors; there are views and there are views. If Delhi has trees then Gurgaon has skyscrapers. Trees don't do much at night but the buildings, they look fucking gorgeous especially if you catch a view from the twelfth floor, which is somehow incrementally better than catching the same view from the tenth floor. 

There are plenty of opportunities for mirror selfies in and around the elevator; so much so that I actually let a day pass without taking any, that's how spoilt I've been for elevator selfie opportunities in days. 

I can't say I miss my friends cause all my friends are about 20 minutes away from me at any given point in time. The service and support staff in and around buildings look a tad happier than their counterparts in Delhi. Maybe they're secretly celebrating the lack of micro-management. That's the one thing about Gurgaon I've come to appreciate—few people micro-manage and it feels like a weight being lifted off your back because fuck ups are welcomed with open arms, more often than not. Delhi version of these fuck ups would mean temper flares, anger, reactionary emails and texts—but Gurgaon? It's fucking chill, almost too chill. 

A few years ago an ex-colleague (then friend, now stranger) lashed out at me for writing. This email response reminded me of that chat; of how everything I write is so personal that unless and until someone knows anything about me, people won't care. I don't see how that's such a bad thing. Maybe the whole point is to drive the unspeakable to those who need to know? Maybe there's intentionality for re-doing things that once take place in life and once in my head and pour out as words. Maybe my version of stressing, anxiety and overthinking comes out here and you don't have to be an audience member or subscriber—god knows I have never brought anyone here out of the will. 

I've had people around me who have been curious about my life, and what I do and they willingly follow this and other spaces. It's an acquired taste and sure, you don't have to do this. I don't expect anyone in my life to do any of this and yet people do. I don't think I ever expected a man I date/am in a relationship with to read this page or coerce my friends to repost from here. I think I am allowed my space to express and the way I want to express myself—maybe with typos, convoluted random titbits from my life, ranting about the lack of water supply. I want to be able to express myself and make sense of this world because god knows I have spent most of my teens bottling things without pouring outwards.  

I'm sorry if you confused my well-being for self-pity. That's how I write and it'll happen again. This is not a eulogy about Gurgaon and neither is this is a love story, It is a deeply personal piece of shuttling between fifth, tenth and twelfth floor and how I am beginning to give in to this city I once I detested. 

I'm tired of being a fuck up on the regular.

If my 28 year old saw me today she'd jump off a building. Sure, I have all these cool bylines and a fancy new life that treats me to being broke more than usual but fuck up? I don't think I ever found that cool and now that I am one, I don't know how to bounce back. 

I think I'd cope better today if I was fucking up shit when I was younger, I told ziggy earlier today. He came back with a wholly rational explanation to that and we went in a loop. My point being the same, if I'd experienced being a failure say in grade 8, I wouldn't be breaking down about my professional life blowing apart today*. 

This today* has lasted two years, and we'll be entering the third in under a week. Come February and I'm reminded of how all the grand plans ended and I thought it'd be a temporary funk that I'd crawl out of shortly. To be fair, everyone around me thought the same. Until a month passed, then two, then six and all of a sudden it's been two fucking years of the same shit. 

Sometimes I think would it be easier to start again. Imagine being born as a child in an orphanage with no access to healthcare or education and trying to figure out life from scratch. The burden of expectations and failure rate would be different, I'd probably turn out to be more of burnout and less of an overthinker like I am. Or maybe, I need a day out in the Sun. A day in a park with sunlight would do me good if I managed to get out in time. 

Maybe 9 months ago, the struggles were making my body work. A month ago struggle was making things with a man work. Today the struggles are questioning if being alive as a whole is worth an exercise and somehow I'm struggling to find any reason in support of that. 

I was not cut out to be a failure and yet every step of the way I am being called out as one. I am at a point where hanging out with friends is a constant reminder that everyone has their shit together and me? I'm just touching the grass. They have sorry faces on when they hear me talk. "It'll change, things will get better." follows silence. Their personal stories are radically different. Someone's getting a spouse, a baby, a house and I know they have worked very hard and invested a lot of their life and time and this is a reminder to me. A call out that sometimes it's okay to follow the beaten road and get results handed than going down the road less taken and encountering a dead end and stopping there and crying after kicking the wall and breaking your foot. That's where i'm at. I've kicked the dead end, cried alone and my friends can hear my sobs from the other side of the road. They're sorry for me. Thank you for hearing me out, I tell them, knowing fully well their sorry can't change my life and my gratitude serves nobody. I serve nobody. 

I think failure kicks in when you realize you're out of people to blame. Where do I trace this? My family's lack of initiative in putting me through paid hobby classes to cultivate things other than what I know? Being a failure with numbers? Being introverted to a large extent? Opting degrees that are one worse than the other? That's not true cause friends with the same degrees are doing well and being introverted has nothing to do with being a failure and hobbies that I cultivated without any external stimuli are the only ones that are somehow saving my ass. Do I complete that degree? No. 

Even for simpler things- I can trace back. Wordle, you know that word game everyone's wanking to? Yeah, so, suppose the word is "light", my first five guesses will be "adieu", "right", "might", "sight", "tight" until the sixth is "light" and by then it's too fucking late. Everyone on my feed is talking smack. "oh my god, I got in the first guess!!!!" You can all shove it up yours. I even suck at the fucking word game now, even when the word is simple. Then people think I know words. 

I think CBSE adjudged me fine when they did. Maybe I am not all that bright or sharp and I don't actually shine. I have no interest in being mediocre at anything and that explains why I abandoned everything that requires practice, maybe except the bass. That's still a part I blame on my family. If they'd invested any money on my hobby there, maybe today I'd be a hit bass player act somewhere in the MENA or something. That wasn't on me that I had outgrown my bass and for years I was asked to work with the same one. 

That's another thing with my family and my fucking growth as a professional. They'll invest in skills or resources if the "family can use it". Oh, a professional camera? Let's get you, so we can have birthday shots. Do you need an iPad? Next time your mom wants to play music on the go maybe we can use it. There's never been an approach towards working on "you" as a person. The goal was always "us" and never the children. Most Indian families go all out on their kids. Everything common between most success stories today is ruthlessness from Indian parents in making their kids shine through. Oh, you need a partner? Here's our sanction, go marry. Okay, you need a house to work from? Here, take these keys and start. I've had my share of things granted to me- most of them were edible and lasted less than 20 minutes on the dining table. The focus of providing for things worked differently, perhaps cause of the family background. You can't fight your roots, you have to accept them. 

I've never been a fan of January or February, well not in the last 18 years at least and that's more than enough to claim "never". I can't wait to cry my eyes out all of this month and to mark the celebration, I'm posting this big announcement of being a fucking failure on 2/2/22. I hope everyone who reads this breaks their arm and crashes their car today. If it's not evidently clear, leave this blog alone.

I'm truly exhausted from feigning any form of interest in catching up and making further plans to meet people. 

People who I once considered friends, thicker than blood (wait, is it thicker than oil?)

You get the drift. 

I can't help myself but roll my eyes when I get a text and find myself accidentally opening it and going all, "SHIT FUCK THIS PERSON IS ONLINE FUCK REPLY NOW." On occasions when I don't, the person usually has the nerve to bring it up 2 days or 3 days later and/or bring it up while responding to another thing, again, uncalled for. 

Although, to be totally fair, if you are able to reach out to me at all between my spurts of switching off my phone and catching up with me in any way, congratulations to you. You have cracked the code and belong to one or more of the categories below:

have a whiskey flavoured dick.

you are a member of the family and live with me. 

i don't actually hate you whatsoever (congratulations cause I can count the number of the people on my left hand who qualify here)

I think the declarations I make here and have previously made here have all happened in the sheer vulnerability of being emotional and not having seen people in so long, that the bare minimum counted as effort. 

It took a serious event in my life to open my eyes to the lack of support I had and thus, I withdrew all of mine. It's only fair, I can't keep giving myself more than I get, and for a while, that had been the case. I stretched myself too thin and well, it wasn't worth it.

If you're not here and for whatever reason now are/will be in the future/have been since and we've been in touch, consider yourself lucky cause you could have very well been out and just lucked out by your physical no-show. You're also on thin ice so if I were you, I'd be sensitive to my situation and either give me all the space in the world to come to you or approach the situation delicately and diffuse it before approaching. Bringing up *this* piece or any other or talking about my writing to me in person IRL does not help and is not akin to diffusing the situation. You'd much rather stay back and not talk. 

I'm physically and mentally exhausted, deep-fried from all the texting and emotionally holding out people going through shit and reaching out to check on them when I've not had anyone—and really—I'm not complaining. I don't want anyone doing my emotional labour or washing my dirty laundry listening to me cry, but also, don't take your pile of shit and dump on me or IDK, reach out with dumb shit to say or dumb stuff to ask/tell and fill me with the information I've not solicited or have the audacity to say, "I was waiting for you to get better to reach out." You weren't. You're a piece of shit who would rather demand gifts and attention than be there for someone. The same applies to those who didn't bother reaching out at all and will feign a, "I care for you deeply and you mean the world to me. I just didn't know what to say." If you are over 18 years of age and are allowed to vote and drink and shag someone and have a baby, I don't know, you're more than capable of talking to someone who's just told you they've lost someone. It's not that fucking hard, you know. It's a fucking statement, you're sorry for their loss (and that applies even when you're not) and offer condolences to their family. It's as simple as "happy birthday" or "happy new year". It's a no-brainer. 

You can't fucking send someone images from shoots or your morning jogs or random "how are you bubs" or a whole essay on how sad you are that your fuckall relationship didn't work when you weren't as much there, on a phone call (fuck physically being there because clearly, they can only be there if it's Sunder Nursery but not otherwise). 

Yeah, I'm fucking angry. 

Also, if you think this post is about you and in any which way you are feeling things are remotely hitting you home, then take it and go. Do not text me an essay or attempt to reach out in any capacity to catch up. It's time you know you fucked up. 

The thing about writing this shit individually is that so many people fucked up so royally that even a WhatsApp broadcast would be annoying and hence this giant turd of a blaster in everyone's face to explode. 

I really hope you step on a piece of stinking elephant shit and break your face for all the shitty things you've said/done/be to me.