Nothing makes you regret being single like the rain does.

It's pouring here in Bangalore. Almost like the clouds have been holding a full bladder for a decade and finally decided to let go.

And i'm single.

I mean, really. This is pure long-drive-out-of-town, get-wet-in-the-rain-with-someone, get-cosy-and-lovey dovey kind of weather. And i'm single. Great.

So i went. And i downed my sorrows. At a place called, get this, Couch.

Nope, this is not a good day for single me. Not at all.

Coming up: A new post series...

... called Weapons of Destruction.

Much as i would have liked to post my first in the series right now, i have way too much work to let this distract me. Will be here in the next couple of days, for sure. Here's something to keep you looking forward to it, though:

Anjali was travelling with her boyfriend on his bike, long straight hair flying in the wind, arms around his waist - maybe even a little lower, when it came and struck her like a whiplash. "Yow!", screamed Anjali, as her insensitive boyfriend kept riding on, mistaking her howl of dismay and pain as pleasure. (But then, isn't that what men usually think anyway?)

To be continued...

Free Radical.

It entered within, i know not how.
It wiggles here and there, then and now.
Bites into my flesh, sets my cells on fire.
Unleashes its dissatisfaction, makes it my need, my desire.
Possessed become I, infested by an unquenchable pain.
Here I am, restless for something rebellious again.

"Kill Me" for the day.

Q:
What do military men grow on their farms?
A:
Grain aids.

UNO? Oh, i didn't know!

Facebook has this new application right. I mean, it might be new to me because i've seen it just like, a week ago. It's online UNO, and it's darn fascinating because the invisible powers that be randomly choose three people from random places on the map who happen to be on FB and put them together to play UNO with you. There's a chat window on the side for the players to communicate with each other if they like. So one minute you're in your chair and the next, you're globetrotting, exchanging hellos with perfect strangers from obscure (and not so obscure) places. I find the whole thing extremely cool.

So the first time i played, i had an Egyptian (a very good looking one at that) as one of the players. I don't know, maybe he thought it was a good forum to get chummy with a stranger and ask them their age as icebreaker. My instinctive response was to chat back saying "Shove it". Then good sense prevailed and i gave him a smart one: "Old enough to play UNO." That got a few laughs from the others.

Then i met another guy from Jordan. And this conversation, i have to, have to paste here. (The names have been changed, just in case. Everything else is just the way it happened.)
Mister Jordan: hi everybody
Miss Vietnam: hey
Lousy Mary, i have no idea from where: hi gl :)
Mister Jordan: nice to meet u both
Mister Jordan: ;)
Me: hello
Mister Jordan: and u too OK
Mister Jordan: where u all live
Miss Vietnam: vietnam. and u?
Me: i'm an indian
Mister Jordan: JORDON
Mister Jordan: nabila so u are hindu
Me: nope
Mister Jordan: muslim
Me: yep
Mister Jordan: i live in jordon but it doesnt matter whetter i am a muslim
Mister Jordan: nabila
Me: yeah, so why the assumption that i was a hindu? just because i'm from india?
Me: :)
Mister Jordan: yes
Mister Jordan: ;)
Me: ah.
Mister Jordan: u live in bombay or in calctta
Me: no
Me: there are other places apart from that
Me: like bangalore
Mister Jordan: nabila
Me: or chennai
Miss Vietnam: or trivandrum
Me: absolutely! thank you!
Me: :)
Mister Jordan: so where do u live
Me: bangalore
Mister Jordan: oh

And that was that, he didn't chat after the "Oh". It was amusing, but irritating at the same time. I mean, what rationale did he use to come up with my religious identity? How does it even matter when you're playing a game of UNO? Dork.

Some day i'm going to make all of you stand in a line...

... under enormous spotlights, and ask you the questions you would have dreaded all your life:
Why did you do it to me? Why was it so easy for you? Why did it have to be me that you got selfish with and decided to forsake? Was i not worth any effort at all?

And then i'm going to cry. Like a banshee. Just to show you how terribly you broke my heart, and carried parts of it when you all went away, leaving me incomplete.

Gibberish.

Blah blah urk ick eeyugh mwah sssss meow wooff woof aaaarrrrrr ah ah ah khaak ptuii urp ugh hic hic hic hic hic hic hic hic eenhaaw eenhaaw.

Bleagh burrr bvak feeeeeeee blink blink blink blink flip flop hmm mmm mmm hmmm mmmm la la la la la la.

Sip sip slurp slurp gluglugluglugluglugluggggg! Aaaaah! Shake shake ha ha ha ha, mmmf pffffft prrrrrrr!

Ummm....drrrr drrrrr zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Everything that could go wrong yesterday, went wrong.

I got back from my shoot last morning and landed straight into deep shit.

Got into a civil skirmish with one of my writers.

Got into TVCs directly, something i'm still trying to get a hang of.

Pending work just came crashing in, and i realised that a lot of stuff has been going out without my seeing it.

Went for dance class, and as is usual these days, was a disaster at it. Missing the previous two classes didn't help at all. Besides, all the women were grooving and shaking so well that i felt extremely intimidated. And i was wearing uncomfortable clothes for the dance.

My weight reads 75. 75!!! That just got me extremely, extremely depressed.

All in all, by the end of the day yesterday, i wanted to burst into tears. A mixture of self pity and exhaustion and self-recrimination.

I hope it gets better.

Hypocrisy.

March 1998:
Him: "I'm 20 years old, and you're just 14. I can't do this to you."
Me: "Do what?"
Him: "I can't let this happen."
Me: "When has love ever been about age? Think about it this way, when i'm 20, you'll be 26. Only!"

December 2002:
Him 1: "F***. I'm 19 years older. Old enough to be your father. I can't be seeing you."
Me: "But i don't have a problem with it! It isn't about the age, it never is! Stop thinking that way!"

April 2009:
He Who Cannot Be Named: "We intend to get married in a couple of years."
Me: " "
Me (sleuthing sleuthing sleuthing...Aha...Wha?!!!!)
Me: "She's bluddy 23! You bluddy cradle snatcher!"

Tch tch. I'm beyond repair.

I love Instant Messaging.

Being pissed with someone doesn't mean being pissed with someone. Nastiness doesn't seem like nastiness, disappointment doesn't seem like disppointment. On IM, even heartbreaks don't seem like heartbreaks. That's what i like about it. You can just smiley emoticon, grin emoticon, laugh-out-loud emoticon the pain away. Thank God for all the geeky intelligence in the world.

And damn men.

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.

I hereby designate you to be my husband!

I got a link in my mail today for www.designate.com.

The first time i tried it, i thought that in all seriousness i would get some answers to problems of life like "How do i get my writers to move their asses?". All i got was a virtual stuck-out tongue.

The second time round i got the hang of it, i typed in the question "Who should i marry?", with four names i thought could be potential hubbies.

Decided to do best of three. Two out of three times, it was a name that was, well, ironical in the context. Wonder what he'd do if he found out. But i'm not taking chances, no siree. Besides, i can't even blame the Web site. They have happily said that they will take no responsibility for any decisions taken using designate.

Dayem. Just when i thought i could palm the blame off on somebody else.

This day, last year.

This day, last year was Closure Day.
This day, last year i was out with G getting S's jeans altered.
This day, last year i was on the phone trying to figure out if i was going or not going.
This day, last year i was antsy - i needed certainty in my life.
This day, last year i was going to Neverland.
This day, last year i made it through Security Check in one shot and with fingers chewed to apologetic bits of flesh.
This day, last year i didn't want the sun to rise.
This day, last year was the last time.
This day, last year. I want it back.
This day, last year. I don't want it back.
This day, last year i hated him.
This day, last year i loved him.
This day, this year, i still swing between the two extremes.

Nyenhehehehe!

One of the things i love doing is going through other people's FB pages and checking stuff. A tad voyeurish, but hey, if it comes on my News Feed then i'ts worthy of a second look. So anyway, today i was browsing through Up's Notes and came across this link for urbandictionary.com - the place for new-age words with new-age meanings - where you type in your name and the urban meaning for it comes up:
Nabila
A silly, quixotic girl that loves bright colors and laughter. Do not, however, mistake her kindness for weakness because inside, she is a lioness waiting to strike.
Example: I saw this really cute girl fight some broad who was all in her face. She didn't back down or anything. She's so Nabila!
Guess they're talking about me. :)

I see you.

Ever since you've been posted closer home, i've been hoping to catch a glimpse of you. I didn't give any thought to what it would be like to see you again.

Which is why, when i finally caught you saluting somebody and my hand flew to my mouth to stifle the impending gasp that was my reaction, i was surprised. If nothing, this was definitely not i was expecting out of myself when i saw you standing there.

How the last six years have changed you. The last time i saw you, you were up on stage with your new bride, smiling at the cameras, looking at everyone. Everyone except me, that is. Marriage suits you - except for that hint of a paunch, the weight shows that you seem to be experiencing wedded bliss. You're still wearing your glasses. You skin seems to have turned a few shades lighter and rosier. You look happy. And...not spineless. You look like you don't need others to take decisions for you, that you can make decisions on your own and stick by them.

I'm tempted to call you. But maybe that isn't such a great idea. If the changes wrought are so visible physically, i wonder what it could have done to you as a person. And i don't think i'm ready for that, even after all these years. I'm satisfied with the memories i have.

I won i won i won!

Radio One has this CK contest going on for a while now. Today, when i woke up and switched on the radio, the contest was on again. On a whim, i decided to enter it. And even as i was typing the answer to the fill-in-the-blanks "I love my Calvin Klein because...", i instinctively knew i would win. Powerful gut feeling. So anyway, repressing my excitement, i sent the message. I waited out the next five minutes, not moving from where i was sitting on the bed, expecting a phone call any moment from the radio station and afraid that i would miss it if i moved. Sure enough, i got a call: "Hello? Ya hi, this is a call from Radio One. Congratulations, you have won the Calvin Klein Contest. Please hold on while i record your voice to air in five minutes."

Woo hooo! I got a gift voucher of Rs.1,500 from CK! As in, i won it though i still haven't got it in my hands.

Five minutes later, i was on air. I recorded the whole thing, but unfortunately cannot post it here - format issues. A called me up immediately after saying, "Were you on air just now, you cow???" So yeah, i was beaming all day long.

Lesson learnt: Listen to gut feeling more often, it'll only do you good!