Prose before hos

How do you not take them seriously?

So, in anticipation of regularly filling crap on this page and being a better person. With a big heart. Or not. 

Something like that. So long 2016. See you nevz.

I think, this sabbatical calls for a much awaited part-II of Then & Now.

Then (Circa 2014):

Snobster is an erstwhile drinker with a writing problem. At some point, she went to a film school, where she studied everything, except how to make a 100 crore blockbuster film. This is the pegging point of all the problems in her life ever.

Since then, she discontinued playing the bass guitar and, dabbled between directing film and television screenplay(s), submitting assignments on Balter Wenjamin, producing ‘aww’ brand of birthday videos for family and friends, editing (now) defunct magazine. She moved to hustle in the diabolic world of startups. There, she couldn’t fathom how they wouldn’t wear shorts to work. It is then she called it quits and has been gracefully wearing her work shorts to graduate school.

She now moonlights as a research scholar during the night, and proudly tells everyone her story- "From riches to rags”, during the day. She’s known to be a stickler for detail and highly irritable when her demands for oral hygiene are not met post midnight. It’s possible you looked her up on one of the aforementioned detail and that has brought you down to reading this. In case it hasn’t, then shame on you for stalking her. Get a real job or something.


Now (Circa 2016)

Snobster is an erstwhile drinker with a writing problem. Started writing 'the' blog at 16, Snobster gave this page and various universities enough fucks for nine years and three months. At some point during that period she went to a film school and studied everything, except how to make a 100 crore blockbuster film. This is the pegging point of all the problems in her life, ever.

Neither with writing, nor her relationship with cinema was working out. She then took a break from both the loves of her life; only to realize she’s lost three precious months in the process. While she doesn’t fully regret the decision yet, she misses wearing shorts every day. She is also very aware that she can do much better. For example, a PhD.

Currently, she is employed as a researcher, albeit on ‘probation’. She sincerely hopes she fails to make that into a permanent position so she can rekindle her old comfy relationships immediately. It’s possible you looked her up on one of the aforementioned detail and that has brought you down to reading this. In case it hasn’t, then shame on you for stalking her. Get a real job or something.

60 days of no writing and a real, adult job.

I miss 2012 and my MacBook Pro and my people. I miss college too.

I need to get back to this page and a lot of other things.

Tomorrow onwards. 

I hope your joys never deplete. 

I really hope you're thrilled.

Psyched, even, for this part.

Cause I sure as hell, am not. 

I remember the year my grandmother passed away. I remember it in odd bits and pieces. I recall her demise in the music I bought two months after her she had breathed her last. It was a cassette that I heard the entire Summer on repeat, on her tape recorder, that was left behind in the room my sibling, my grandmom and I shared. That Summer was all about new beginnings. We had painted our house that year and it was as if, a part of me was covered in a coat of paint- beige with sorrow. I don't remember speaking a lot to anyone that year. Maybe, I am wrong. For all I know, I did speak a lot in comparison to others. However, in my head, I remember the year as trying to experience things all over again. Everything. However, without her. Everything was done in order to cover her absence from all our lives, especially mine.

I vividly remember my birthday. I was turning 14, and as the rituals go, we were not supposed to celebrate any occasion in the family for a year. This was going to be the first birthday without her being the first one to wish me. No handmade card sprayed with my favourite perfume of hers. No Tweety sticker on the card, and definitely, no new outfits and gifts. My birthday had become the annual writing retreat for her, there'd be Hindi poetry, some beautiful words and a card. All with a whole bunch of gifts, hidden from me. Without trying to be melodramatic, it was also the age and time when greeting cards were big. However much the things may have changed since, I don't remember anyone from my family going all out, as much as she did on all my birthdays.

It's so weird that I remember what I wore that day, exact outfit, the first birthday without her. It was a layered blue top with round neck, which had a tiny skull, made out of glitter. It was the nascent beginning to my Punk phase, which was to come in another six months. I was wearing this beaded chain, something Mischa Barton sported during those years.

A year before that, I got my first period, on my birthday. That's right, on the morning of my 13th birthday, I was 'gifted' by the universe. I ran to my grandmother with my stained bloomers, when it happened that morning. She dismissed me in utter disbelief that it could happen. The second time I went to her, she and my mother had another reason to celebrate the day. A year later, I recall, there was no cake.
My 14th birthday is a day that I'd never like to go back to, but somehow, always end up at that. I recall my aunt had come over and brought me a checkered pouch with some jewellery. I used that pouch until a couple of months ago when I gave it away. I could no longer stand to look at it without being reminded of the birthday where my aunt was called over so that I could have a 'happy' birthday despite the grieving. So much for trying to not celebrate and only grieve.

The only thing I carry with myself physically from that day is a pair of earrings, which my cousin had gifted me. It came inside the pouch and that was the only thing which wasn't sickening about the day. They pair is a set of Teddy Bears carved out on blue stone with a silver plasticky border. I didn't think of them until very recently when I stumbled upon them. This is around the time, I'd parted with the pouch I received that birthday. Surprisingly, I didn't abhor at the sight of that and been wearing it on days when I felt, I needed the courage to face the reality and the world. So far, it's been four times in the last six months or so.

That birthday seemed like the first turning point of my life. It was rudely reminded to me, in the absence of the paraphernalia which followed each year that nobody cares. People are transient, things are transitory. Nothing will last forever, and state of being will most definitely change. I don't think I've been 'happy' at any birthday, since the last one where my grandmother was around, mostly bed-ridden, but still around. I think it's an odd way to remember my grandmother, but I'm ever so excited and cheerful about my birthday because she used to be. It's just an odd sort of thing that stuck around. As much as I avoid thinking or talking about her, blocking her out of my life and mind with a layer of new stupidity I indulge in on a weekly basis, I become the same person I used to be, during the first 13 years of my life- unreasonably excited and cheerful about turning old.

I'm turning 25 in under a week. Everyone around me seems to think that I haven't grown up. Nobody knows that the girl inside me grew up the year her grandmother wasn't around for her birthday.

Relax by Ellen Bass

Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
and your cat will get run over.
Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
melting in the car and throw
your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
Your husband will sleep
with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she’s a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat–
the one you never really liked–will contract a disease
that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
every four hours. Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory. If your daughter
doesn’t plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up–drug money.
There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.
And two mice–one white, one black–scurry out
and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry.
So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.

So.


How do you return to a page to acknowledge and update you *forgot* about for over a month?


With this scene.



This golden piece is what my highlight of the month is. Aishwarya Rai's character believes she will be pregnant because Salman Khan's character is in love with her and it's a 'sin'.


Easily, the highlight of the month where I finished a MPhil thesis and managed to score a date.

More on all these, when my MacBook is charged and I don't have to figure out my sleeping arrangements. I feel like this year's all about displacement.

In other news, if you're reading this and wondering why you're here, please be useful and suggest me the best place for Chicken Lasagna/Lasagne in Delhi. I can't lose this challenge.