My life is an open blog

My earliest memory of crushing on a guy was as a 5 yr old in Baghdad. This cute Arab shepherd probably the same age, wearing his black and white checked keffiyeh, used to pass my house with his goats. I used to religiously sit next to the window and wait for him to come every morning. (Pause for awwws) Then we had to flee the country. Gulf war started. Ah, simple times!

My first real crush was later the same year, but back in India. He was my classmate in school. 

The year was 1990. It was the Annual Day function. All the primary school students were participating in whatever capacity they could. It was quite interesting actually, all of us were accommodated in various fairy tales, where they were not only enacted by us but the costumes were our personal ones, so it was multiple plays as well as a fancy dress competition.

I was playing the part of ‘Mirror’ in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. (Pause for laughs) And ‘he’ was coincidently the Prince. Oh how I hated the girl playing Snow White! And she was a year younger! There wasn't a day I didn’t wish she’d be unable to justify the enigmatic character and was compelled to switch places with me. And when he went up to her and kissed her hand to bring her back to life, it was like a thousand knives strategically stabbed in my heart. To add fuel to fire, he was also participating in ballroom dancing and was partnered with the prettiest girl in my class (we discovered 10 years later that they were crushing on each other then and had recently started dating, which managed to shatter me for a day!)

Anyhoo I tried to contact him through fb back in 2007 with a “Hey! I was in your class in DPS, remember?” He replied “Sorry, but it would really help if you’d put up a picture” (If I show my DP now baby, it would kill you that you don’t remember me!)

How could he not remember the time when we magically happened to be alone once in class in the 5^th grade and to kill time he was teaching me how to make chalk back from the chalk powder by mixing water in it and molding them into cylinders? I even remember the anticipation on his face, as he waited for it to dry in the sun. He didn’t remember the time I complained to the teacher about him bringing syringes to class after he had recovered from a critical brain hemorrhage, ‘cause he didn’t know how worried I was and how much I missed him the 15 days he didn’t come to school. Or when he ran around class laughing with my I-card in his hand, making fun of my picture.  

He left for another school after 6^th grade and I was heartbroken. I swore I’d never “love” again. (*sniff*  tissues please) However, what followed was a string of crushes. I tried counting a few years back, I realized I just didn’t have enough fingers and toes combined. Did we even think in our time that school crushes could be reciprocated?

My first heartbreak came even before I knew how to subtract by borrowing. It’s funny, though over the years heartbreaks have come in all shapes and sizes, with little or huge complications, the plot pretty much remains the same.

It’s like how Brandon Boyd sings in Smile Lines:

I want you bad!
I want you bad!
I understand why they say 
high school never ends

Play-Oh!

After watching 15 episodes of Glee in 5 days that the Americans did in 8 months (ha hah!), I seem to have gone through a life altering experience, quite like the time when Star World started airing American Idol with its Season-3, when I used to get all charged up to sing in my room after every episode and my mom used to shout from the kitchen “Don’t play the stereo so loud!” (Ok, so I self-praise. Sue me.)

Now what’s so good about this show? It’s like a broadway musical, just in 40 min weekly episodes! Sometimes it’s too heavily auto-tuned, you just want them to be a little organic and I’ve often wondered why their music teacher never seems to be actually shown teaching them, BUT that is one fine bunch of performers! Quite similar to that movie I have seen a gazillion + 1 times – Sister Act-II, except the cast members are the singers themselves! But for all the people who aren’t very ‘high-schooly’ like me, I’d advise you stay away :)

Why can’t you break out in a song during a conversation, like they do? Why can’t we just sing instead of talking? When angry with a guy for breaking your heart, why can’t you belt out your rendition of “Gives you hell” while pointing fingers in his face ‘cause the guy’s beyond corrigible? It’s more fun! (Except when encountering the melodically challenged) And boy, it feels good! Personally I’m extremely uncomfortable expressing my feelings and completely agree with Neil Diamond when he says “It’s very difficult for me to say ‘I love you’ but to sing ‘I love you’ is easier” You try saying sentimental things to a guy and he starts looking constipated; same thing in a song and he’s eating out of your hands! (Maybe the guy's thinking “If she can sing well, she probably moans well too”) I digress (and stereotype)

The one movie that just knocks my socks off every time I watch it is this wonderful, most unpretentious musical called Once. What the main protagonists could not express to each other or their respective lovers in words, they wrote in songs. Replacement of run-of-the-mill dialogues with stirring songs thus became a natural extension to scenes, filling the gaps between the story, sometimes depicting anger at the hands of betrayal (“Lies”, “Leave”) or sadness of being bereft (“If You Want Me”, “When You’re Mind’s Made Up”) Please don’t miss its soundtrack for the world.

You get where I’m going with this?

I would like to see Glee pick a page from Once's book but it’s all good. There is so much beautiful music out there. I just want people to stop fighting over what music is better and judging each other because of it. Music is after all emotions, whether they are Pantera’s or Justin Bieber’s. 

Happy Birthday!

Here’s wishing the self-professed well-endowed Mallu

A great birthday filled with much awaited hullabaloo!

Do write a funny post

While I tweet about it and give a toast

To the twenty three years that have made you a man

Of cryptics and puns and devious Bangalorean plans

So party like you don’t give a damn

‘cause I still won’t be turning on my webcam :)