Prose before hos

I grew up when she eye rolled, snapped back at me for asking a question and then another, at a meeting.

When I replied with the name of the destination, and she chided by saying, "that's not what I mean by 'where we're going!'" (I was told a rose by any other name would smell just as crap as your behaviour but here we are.)

With another eye roll, I was old enough to understand that money doesn't grow on trees. It comes from taking shit from people who consider themselves superior. Just because they're born in a certain class, in a certain family and you're not. Fuck everything they told you at the Value Education class on hard work and loyalty and other virtues.

That a part of growing up involves working under someone who checks the list for being bad to the waiter, the equivalent of those in other spaces you encounter together. (I still don't understand, that man's not on your payroll to take your shit and yet you'll insist on giving it to him so mercilessly.) The Ethics lectures are coming live as I tell myself, "Ethics won't feed me my luxury or the lifestyle I'm used to." The money will. And babe, that money's gotta come if you adult well.

With every incorrect name she called me by, insisted I give up my private number to a team of corporate hos on my behalf, without letting me speak for myself, I grew up. I aged when I saw her use me to extract stuff on her behalf, on maintaining bad blood with people she couldn't afford to with her name.

I became old infront of me when I allowed them to treat me like crap. Time after time. To yell at me when it wasn't called for, to blame me for not taking complete orders when I was supposed to be an equal stakeholder. To abuse me, to tell me that I'm illiterate.

Or when they rolled their eyes after they missed giving out the instruction and put the blame on me, "I told you so."

No you didn't. Nobody did, you twat.

You are stronger than what you believe for yourself to be.
Every minute of the day, I question myself if that's true.


Then I think it is. I see the reflection of the same in my ageing, my crowfeet and my candour around you.

And then I see myself reacting with nothing at all. To nothing at all. Except maybe I hope the worst for you, but only until I realize it will backfire.

I prefer responding in silence, to your jabs, eye rolls, sarcasm and unnecessary garbage which deserves a book of rants, edited by me ofcourse (because it can be done in 2 minutes only and I should take that kind of time out). Because, I wasn't as priviliged as you. Because I wasn't given the good fortune of taking my priviliges and rubbing it in the face of someone with a brain of its own. Grapes might be sour but I would never, ever do that. Maybe that's why I'd not make a successful entrepreneur.

And I hope to all things in the universe that I never become you. Despite the uncanny similarities I see in the two of us, I hope with all my heart and might, that I never quite become an obnoxious individual like you.

Someday, you'll know you've been a real dolt. And it'll probably be too late. I can't wait for that day.


Hope it arrives at your doorstep real soon.

There are few things in life which are as therapeutic as walking down an aisle full of products in a well-stocked store.

Disclaimer- I love burning money. I love to shop. If I have it, I've gotta spend it.

Which makes me for an interesting case study. Here I am, I love to spend. However, when I do go to 24/7, literally every day, and come back without buying anything, I sound like one of those pathological liars on Facebook- you know the kind with the fake boyfriend's fake account writing them sonnets in the forms of memes. That, in itself, is quite an amazing blog entry.

Anyway, where was I? That I love to shop.

My absolute favourite is alcohol shopping. Possibly Delhi's best-stocked liquor shop is at 5 minutes distance from my place and there's nothing ever that they don't have. The queues are insanely long and the assistants helping inside are as kind as Mirra Alfassa.

It's inside the alcohol store that I come alive. Which is strange because I wasn't exactly conditioned into buying alcohol as a child or anything. My closest association with buying alcohol is at the airport. Usually left with a decent wad of cash, I burn all my money (not leaving enough for the cab home) at the Duty-Free. It helps when it's my scholarship funds and not what I earn. If you're the agency that gives me the scholarship money then please stop, look at the pigeon coming right at your face from the East. Look!

Something bothers me about putting things online- say for example on this blog. Here am I, telling you something about myself. To what extent do you believe this something?

My alcohol story is kinda farcical. I love to shop, sure. I love burning money, yes. I also spend all the remaining cash at the Duty-Free but does that mean it's my favourite kind of shopping? Perhaps not.

I've trivialised a really simple thing which has been bugging me for a long, long time. How far do you, as audience/reader/consumer of the content on social media believe what goes online?



Let me simplify this.
There's this person on my list, who has my renewed interest. For maturity sake, let's call her "X". Miss "X" happens to have a thriving life, her social media appearances are very dramatic and touched up, almost as if it's a framed painting by Goya. She keeps a record of where ever she goes by doing a "check-in", which are interspersed with places where she "actually" goes and you know, hangs with her two and a half friends. Look, I'm not the one to have a problem with having few friends and no life. I advocate that shit. However, I will, never, for the life of me understand what makes people create fictitious Facebook accounts for fictitious characters in their lives. How do I know this? Well, the boyfriend has no appearance and none whatsoever for at least eight years.

Yeah, sure, he's not a Facebooker. But then, he's always the one person showing "love" react to all her posts, all her nonsense and continues to post things on her wall, all day, every day. He lives abroad and conveniently has no friends, no internet self and definitely yields no search results if you look him up. Why does that bother me? I think the girl needs therapy. But that's my opinion. As a concerned flanéur, I need her to understand it's not okay to have a fictitious life.

In the Summer of 2011, my friend KneePee and I had stumbled upon another one. This was amazing because she'd not only created a fake boyfriend but a whole fake family. There were family members, each with the profile picture of a different flower from a generic garden. There were 17 people in total that this particular woman, let's call her "Y", was interacting with. Why would "Y" do that? I wouldn't know. But our friend "Y" was amazing. Pure genius. At this point, I wasn't even trained in identifying scams and fake profiles (yeah, there's such a thing and yeah, I'm trained for it- whatever you may say).

So, coming back.

There's this man I was crushing on at 19-20, and sometime then, I remember a picture of him which popped up on my feed. It had a familiar face with a different name. That was "Y"'s supposed boyfriend standing next to my crush, with a name I wasn't familiar with. Now, as curious as I was, I clicked on his profile and what I saw next blew my mind.

"Y" had lifted images off from this guy's account, since all those pictures existed and as did the comments, but only given by people with same names and different surnames. After having given generic flower photographs to the family and the man, she'd proceeded to post his family and personal pictures on his account, in the various album(s). Incidentally, they were stolen from that man, who shared the same name but different surname as "Y"'s fictitious boyfriend.

Guess who was the mutual friend between that man and me?

Turns out, "Y" was absolutely obsessed with the guy, to the point she had claimed it was her in the pictures, next to the man (wherein it was actually his real girlfriend, a journalist/fashion enthusiast). Her face, completely different than the girlfriend's (you know, round, curly hair and stout whereas the girlfriend has poker straight hair on a long, oval face and was skinny and tall) and yet she went with the version, "Yaar this is me only I look different now" under the picture as a friend had proceeded to ask that it doesn't look like her.

Soon after we learnt about the real guy and his existence, KneePee and I weren't exactly mature about the whole thing. We put up a troll birthday album and a troll birthday video and proceeded to celebrate a whole day of celebrating their love (a video still exists somewhere on Facebook). We never got around to doing the same with "X", since it's rather tedious and more so, we have both lost interest in having 'fun' or whatever version we think it is that we are trying out.

This afternoon, Mumjane asked me if I thought X had a boyfriend she was faking. It was right then I knew I wouldn't be able to control this "cheap thrill". If only, I could have the balls to put out a front and a Facebook check in such as "feeling great while indulging in cheap thrills".


For all you know I might just.