Eat! Play! Love!

So I've been reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. [The title is twisted to make it more customized to me - Eat (which I love), Play (the piano) and Love (which I eat)] I had been avoiding it for the longest time (thinking its chic-lit) till it literally landed in my hands one day and I said "Alright you, let's get you over with" FYI, it's not chic-lit. Not in the derogatory sense at least.

And, as luck would have it, I lost my copy at the Delhi airport on my way to Malaysia. After having made a couple of international calls to the Lost and Found department at T3, the man on the other line sounded almost guilty informing me in the most subtle way "It's gone, get over it!" Then you start to romance the loss by seeing metaphors in the situation like "It wasn't meant to be" or "It's a sign" Troubled by the fact that I actually sat through 50 odd pages of a book, and couldn't just let my efforts go to waste, I bought another copy of it and continued to read with Starbucks and Caramel Macchiato as my caffeinated companions.

Now let me get right down to the point. One line (and there are many statements like that) really struck a chord with me. She writes "When you're learning something new, be very patient", talking of her escapades with trying to grasp the Italian language. I had been struggling with one particular song for a month. I played it day and night but I didn't seem to be making any progress and that was no short of terminally frustrating. The day I read this I thought of applying it, calmed myself down and voila! the very next day I played it correctly from start to finish for the very first time. [Oh if you want to see my play and sing, go here! It ain't great by any measure but I hear it's not too shabby after 8 classes. In fact, the piano playing is better than the vocals :( ]

The one thing that I can't seem to have patience with though are men. It's like you have to climb this huge wall and you're told you can't 'cause, you know, it has been cemented well, smoothed out and whitewashed over and so you bang your head against it to get attention or scream out "Hey, somebody there?" or "Is there a hidden window/door here so I can get to the other side?"

However, the guys say that they are incredibly easy to understand. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. The examples they give you: "'Yes' means 'Yes'", "'No' means 'No'", "'I'm hungry' means 'I'm hungry'", "'You're hot' means 'You're hot'", "'You don't look fat in that dress' could either mean 'You don't look fat in that dress' or "Yeah yeah you look fine. Now don't block the TV, can't you see I'm watching the cricket match (read India lose)?'" What the girl is really looking for is anything but monosyllabic answers. If I were a math teacher and you were to write "Final Answer=91" right after the question, I would ask you to be so kind to show me how you got to that conclusion. So yes, a 'Yes' means 'Yes' (thanks for the honesty) but please tell me why, and so on and so forth.

Somehow when I write something that excites me and I scribble a couple of hundred words out here, I can't manage to close the post without sounding like a total retard. So why go against basic nature, I say. Till next time.

Showers are awesome

I've been leading a rather plateaued existence the past couple of months. As much as I like not being plagued by intense emotions, I like being plagued by intense emotions. Hey, I ain't complaining, but the writing has taken a major hit.

I was in the shower this morning and my mind wandered to 2009 when I started this blog to half use this medium to purge and half to communicate some (or a lot) left unsaid to a particular person. It took me close to 2 years of frantic writing to finally get everything out. My personal long term shrink!

One poem in particular did the rounds in my brain as the water poured down. No specific reason, it's not even a huge personal favorite. A lot of people were misled by the title (which I still feel is quite appropriate) Though I distinctly remember having fun writing it.

Encore? Here you go.

I'm such a bad bad boy 

I stereotype you like I stereotype everyone
They all say I’m cold; you, pretty little thing, have just begun!
Since your actions refuted all that I predicted to hear
I conveniently assume Things are not always as they appear

See how ingeniously I put words in your mouth?
I reassure you of the opposite when you are in doubt
You certainly take non-reciprocation in bad taste!
My feelings that were but only temporarily misplaced

There is too much hurt here and I don’t care for more
Do you realize you sound like a broken record of a repeated folklore?
Why squander away precious time on me when you have so much to look forward to
Ok, try to sing with more heart ‘cause of what I did to you

But your melody swore it would waste no more notes on me
Seriously, did you think I was going to let you off that easily?
I will let you in on a secret - I use people to grow as a writer
And you are important because I will always be your humble debtor

So...how was it?

Ever since my visit to KL, I've been inundated with the same "How was it?" question. So let me start with the concert.

During the first half of the Incubus concert I was just trying to not get killed in the moshpit by the mob, getting pushed and shoved and hit and me coming up from the crowd to breathe in some oxygen that some considerate people spared and then diving back in. I wasn't mentally present for the first FOUR songs! Also, I deliberately chose to wear six inch stilettos so my height wouldn't be to my disadvantage. (Which eventually turned out to be the correct decision) The second half had me finally getting into the groove of the mosh and all I remember is that I was hitting people with my elbow to get a clearer view of Brandon Boyd and singing at the top of my lungs. And those 1-2 seconds when Brandon was looking straight at me and we were mouthing the same words, all I was thinking was "My friends will never believe this when I tell them!"

At the end of the night my T shirt was drenched in sweat - mine and the hundred other people's who I was squeezed in with. My entire body gave up and I collapsed on the floor of the stadium for a good 15 minutes before I could even fathom moving a muscle. After being shooed away, I was walking barefoot on the main road at 11PM, my pumps and Incubus poster in hand, having stepped on some freshly discarded chewing gum, sitting at the bus stop trying to hail a taxi and telling my friend "Who would've thought that we'd be in a foreign country on a Saturday night, terminally exhausted and barefoot after a concert, sitting at a bus stop?" It wasn't fun running a high fever later that night for the next 2 days. The adrenalin rush almost ruined my vacation.

I promised never to attend another concert again unless in a more intimate environment. I hope I forget such a promise made to self.

This obviously was the actual purpose and the highlight of the trip.

Hah! Yeah so one day I went to Petaling Street and there was a guy selling DVDs on the road, he goes "You Indian? You want DVD for DDLJ, Hum Aapke Hain Koun, Kabi Khushi Kabi Nai Khushi." I laughed my butt off (in my head) and responded with a smile. Then he goes "You British or Indian?" Of course this was highly amusing so I had to clear out the confusion regarding my nationality and to let him know that every Indian has seen those movies. He was kinda slick, I felt like I was in Italy being wooed by a local!

I don't consider myself a regular tourist. My aim is never to cover all the tourist locations in the city and have pictures to prove it. I like to get to a place and relax and explore the place at no given pace. Petronas didn't mean as much to me as the cutest little Chinese kid who was furious with his mom and kept screaming right next to me at Starbucks. Or the metro ride where this girl sat on the floor acting like a beggar while her friends laughed, asking her to get up.

But the best part was receiving zero phone calls from the office and that I could finally hear the voices in my head. They were telling me I have a pretty good life and I don't justify it by the amount I crib. You want to know why?

I had written this post last year Jan called "Resolution for the decade"

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Eh I don't think my plan will fit in a year so I thought a decade should be enough. Here goes the multi-step process.

a) Get a job in Mumbai
b) Take up music seriously
c) Work hard, get some gigs and get famous (Hopefully a few years from now when you search my name on Google, it won't throw up results such as 'architect trial')
d) Land an international gig (or just enough money to travel to an Incubus concert)
e) Sleep around with a few backstage people to get me to meet Brandon Boyd
f) Really click it with him in the first meeting so he invites me to some party
g) Go to the party
h) Date rape him
i) Get pregnant
j) Extract child care support
k) Have his babies who would sing, write, read Carl Jung, play the didjeridoo and paint, and of course have killer looks

OK let's do the math. If I get done each process in a year, but of course combining steps e, f, g, h and i, I could get this done in about 7 years. Yeah, sounds about right.
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I've more or less accomplished points b and d. We all know e to k ain't happening :) So I'm patting myself on the back.

I have another travel post coming up - that one's a little morbid. Or maybe not.