Monday, January 29, 2007

And teddy bears with red bows......

Celebrating festivals seems to have become the new obsession of the country. Apart from festivals , we've also taken to celebrating the Days of Occasions. So now you have Mother's Day, Father's Day, Mother's Father's Day, Father's Mother's Day, Uncle Tom's Day, Uncle Tom's Cabin's Day, Little Miss Muffet's Day and so on.......


The BIG new occasion in town, big enough to make you f-u-r-g-e-t that you're practically edging past 33.33(recurring)% is.....*hold ya breath* VALENTINE'S DAY!!!.

Now, normal Valentine's Day parlance is something like this:

You wake up groggily, switch on the TV.What hits you first? A news anchor wearing an obnoxious-looking red suit, looking as if he's just won KBC (with SRK, mind you :D), cheerily trying to get you as infused with the "spirit" of the Day.The news set is done up in red (but of course, they need to show they know what the colour of the day is)

Sample news on one the Hindi ones:
Aur aaj desh ke kone kone main Valentine's Day manaya ja rahaa hai. Deepak, hamen bataaiye ki Dilli main kya ho raha hai...
And Deepak, wearing a red tee himself, rants off about how he got his girlfriend a spanking new greeting card (hmph.what else?) and how everyone is going to attend such spiffing do's and have such a sporadicly "fun" time.

Sorry, but leave me out of this.
I don't want a white coloured teddy-bear (of all things) witha red bow.
I don't want red coloured heart-shaped balloons.
I don't want those "The Ultimate Valentine's Day Collection" CDs that materialize out of thin air around Feb the fourteenth.

If I sound like a Shiv Sena loyalist going on about the 'Americanization' of the youth, lemme clarify.
I do appreciate that you'd like to take time out for someone you love, but please, does it have to involve Valentines Day special edition newspapers?
You love someone, go tell them, but for goodness' sake, don't thrust your I Love You messages on my face.

And finally,
Celebrate all you want, but frankly, this isn't celebration.


And don't expect me to join in.




(written in a rare anti-social mood, frequently seen after exam results)

Thursday, January 18, 2007

But what IS normal?

She knew what normal meant. But did her life?
Normal was having a perfectly....uh.....normal day.But her life said normal was being ticked off by the teachers at school everyday, hearing them make snide remarks about her and watching them smirk in the bubble of quiet satisfaction.
She knew she couldn't change all that.

But then, she knew of the things she could change.
Let that badgering tweet of a teacher drone on about how extremely appalled she was by her long nails.Let her rant on about her dirty uniform.Did she know how much time it had taken her to get it dirty in that exact way?But she wouldn't care would she?She was no human after all.The twittering idiot was a teacher.

She knew she could get everyone against her.Sure, they'd mutiny.
They'd bunk all her classes.They'd throw stuff at her.They'd do whatever she said.
And a slow, curling smirk spread its cunning claws on her face.

The shouting in the background stopped and jolted her to reality.Aww.She'd forgive the poor creature one last time.She still had the fracture on from last time's rendezvous.

So she thought she'd give her life a rest from screwing up everything for her, and thought about how considerate she'd become for a change.Life had a weird way of making her everything she didn't want to be.Wouldn't last long, she thought to herself.Let those zarking Boards get over and she'd show them.She'd show them all.

The recess bell rang and broke her out of her reverie.Those chit-chattering prissies hurried out of the prison they called 'class'.
So what else was new.
She took in the scene she was now accustomed to.

She'd go to school.
Go to the last seat in the row next to the wall.
The single one.
The teacher would come.
The teacher shout at her.
She'd put up a suitably remorseful face.
The teacher would go.
And so it would happen in the next 8 periods.
And her un-needed existence would go on.

She looked up.They were coming back in again.Rushing, more like.Suckers they were, to be so afraid of the class teacher, that they were shifting to their assigned places.Gawrdie.Such wimps.

One of their tribe came and sat in front of her.As if she cared.
The gal shouted halfway across the classroom for another girl to throw her bag over.
She was way too unconcerned to see what was happening.She didn't care, remember?

THWACK!!!!
The bag hit her squarely (or whatever shape the bag was) in the face.
She thought a person who was pretty good at throwball in PE would be able to throw a bag on target, at least.But no, this was HER life.
She brushed away the broken shards of her spectacle-lenses.The optician had assured her that the new-and-advanced (an oxymoron, she had noted at the time) plastic lenses would be completely fall-proof.She should've asked about their being High School-proof.
Curse Murphy.

[No, her life didn't suddenly turn all bright and rosy. She wasn't born off Hans Christian Anderson's pen.This is the twenty-first century.You can either have blogs or Anderson.Take your pick.Can't decide? Mwahaha.I get to choose.I choose blogs.]

And so she trudged back home.

While walking to the Optician's, she realised it wasn't such a curse after all.The less she saw her unnecessary existence, the better.But then, she had long become comfy in her coerced life.

*


Drat.It was a Monday.The market was closed.She should've known.

*


She walked ahead, the only speck of dismalness in the road caressed by the azure sky.
The bus came.
She got on, after fumbling a bit on the steps.

*


The same routine.
She reached school.
Walked up to her class.
Went and plonked her bag on the last seat in the row next to the wall, the single one.
Somehow, she felt, in an inexplicable way, her life might just turn out to be normal.The real normal.Not the way she thought.The way everyone else thought.

A girl came and sat in front of her.Someone she'd never noticed.
The girl turned around.
"You....you've got.........Your eyes are actually brown", the girl said.

She felt a wry smile creeping up her face.She looked down, certain that her life had missed out on some vital English classes.


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