Let me tell you, it's not the best of ideas to try and comfort a friend who's crying when you're half out of your senses yourself.

Work's been merciless for a while now, so i went out last night for some long-pending retail therapy and bonding session with girlfriends.

Wearhouse rocks, always has. Some of my best clothes have been from there. So i went last evening, not just for that reason but also because they had 50% off on all merchandise. Picked up loads for Goa and Dandeli - shorts, a skirt, capris, tees and a couple of winter jackets in electric colours. All of this for 1,500 bucks.

Headed out to Retro after, where i met R, K, B and L. We were bOHnding after a long time, and i was happy because i desperately needed to spend some time with them.

That's when i got the call. She was weeping, telling me that she had tried for so long and that now, she didn't want to stay in the marriage any longer. At first i thought it was triggered off by her in laws coming and living with them for a while; evidently i was wrong. It's been festering in her since the time of her marriage and this was just the icing on the cake. Besides, she had never spoken to me about this before, so i knew this was some serious shit.

She needed help. And i was pasted.

I did nothing except mumble a 'Hmm' between sentences because that's all i could do - i was buzzing, beginning to get incoherent and just basically not there. She was in pain, she was crying hard and i couldn't find the right words to comfort her. For everything i said, she told me that i wasn't understanding the problem, she had tried everything and so on, till at one point i could hear myself chanting in my head, Babe you're losing her, Babe you're losing her. Definitely a first for me.

I guess i did manage to give her some peace by the end of it, though - she sounded better by the end of it. And because i was happy that she was comforted, i just went back to putting and sending some more.

Me feels a tad insensitive right now.

Game Rhyme.

Oh mama, she told me a fifty years ago,
There came a lady knocking at the door
With an Ooh, Aah
I want some bar
The bar is full
I want to go by bull
The bull is fat
I want to go by cart
The cart is neat
I want some meat
The meat is tough
I want it softened
We don't have that request often
Then, bloody hell, do it now
I would, only i don't know how
Oh you bloody stupid cow
This is more ignorance than i can allow
I want to go by bus
The bus is rough
Oh, that was off the cuff
So, does that mean you're staying?
What do i look like, a lay in?
Well, i thought we could roll in the hay
Ah, but i'm too old for that, nay
Oh well, then come back tomorrow
Oh my dear Lords, Oh my heart's sorrow
I'll keep space for you in the bar
But you said the bar was full?
Oh, i was just giving you a load of bull.

I got my Duplicate Marks Card!

After months of pondering and waiting and watching and finally, applying for it, i got my duplicate marks card yesterday! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! Passport office, here i come!

And no, this time it won't take me months to apply for my passport. Now things will just roll. Happy happy!

Updates on Red.

- He completed 20,000 kilometres last month.
- He made a trip to Coimbatore for a couple of days.
- He's developed a wheezing problem. Perhaps his kilometre age is showing.
- He had a new driver. Had, because i'm firing him - he doesn't treat Red right. Besides, Mom suspects the driver might be party to a murder in our locality. Shudder.
- He's been accident-free for a while.
- The most i have gotten to do is reverse. No balls to drive him around town. But i will, pretty soon.
- He doesn't play music any more. Something to do with battery charge. Sigh.
- Maybe he IS growing old.
- Maybe he's lonely and in need of a companion. Should i make it a two-wheeler or a four?

Keep the faith.

When i was in the Tenth Standard, a certain psychologist lady had come to school and given us a talk on sex education, marriage, the works. In the process of talking about the second, she'd asked each of us what we thought we wanted in a guy.

Some said, he should be fun, some that he should be good-looking and all. I remember telling her that he should be understanding. She seemed pretty impressed by my answer - who sees such wisdom in one so young? (Pat pat Nabila). I was pretty impressed as well, and my answer still stays the same. But there's something else that's gained as much importance in my Guide To Finding The Right Man - faithfulness. Not the kind that's shown by a dog, but the kind that shows through when one person loves another.

Think about it, why was it that in our parents' days, loyalty to a partner was never a problem? Why is it that more than 95% of the marriages, arranged or otherwise, worked without a third person to hold it together? What is it about our generation, and more specifically, our society, that sees so many indiscretions?

I watched 'Breaking and Entering' the other day. As an aside, i don't particularly like Jude Law but there was something about him in this movie that really got me. Was it the fact that he was an infidel? Maybe. What really got me, though, is that maybe sometimes for marriages to work, an extra-marital affair is a necessity. Almost like you love someone, you get married, life takes over the romance which starts being taken for granted, and then you have an affair because it brings back the excitement and love and lust. Come decision time, you have to choose between the new-found love and the taken-for-granted love. Except that it's no longer taken for granted. Somewhere in the middle of the affair you realise that you're so comfortable with the person you already have, that that person is somehow so much better, you've already given it the best years of your life; and so you give up your affair, reinvesting all your energy in making the relationship you already have work. What's left is a big question mark in the form of a love-lorn woman/man. Is it worth all the heartache?

In the movie, it is. Because Jude Law and his wife get back into their married life with renewed vigour and love, the way it was (by implication) before they were married. And it's not all sad for Juliet Binoche, the other woman: there is a bond, an understanding between them, a strong dose of love as well, but not one that's strong enough to overcome their respective priorities - in his case the marriage and in hers, her son who gets convicted for felony.

The movie, to me, in so many ways summarised the story of most of our lives in this day and age - the marriage reaching a stagnant point with no joy for either party involved, pent-up feelings that need a vent and find it in somebody else's embrace and bed; the difficulty of making the decision to choose what you already have over what you could have had; the half-ease, half-pain with which the lovers walk away from each other to pick up their lives where they had left them off; the heartbreak, the truths, the sacrifices; the residual love, or what resembles it anyway. An act of faithlessness that only brings back the faith with full force, all quite peachy-keen actually.

So yes, i do understand this side of the coin (or should i say, bed?). But am i ready for faithlessness in my relationships or my marriage?

No. I'm not. My heart's not big enough for that.