... and then I dream-kissed Someone Else.

Yep. Barely two months into my romantic fugue of stability and honesty and all that crap, I'm dreaming of kissing someone else. And not telling that someone else that I'm seeing HIM. So basically, I have bounced from being this domesticated goddess to cheating on TWO people (yes, in my dream but if my brain is coming up with this shit, then it means something, right?).

So, I wake up. And I ask HIM, who's sleeping next to me, if we did go to an oceanside town (we had) on the bike (we had) where I made him walk with me in the warm rain (we hadn't). He grunted something and held me closer and I realised that my all-too-possible cheating scenario had just been a dream.

Whew! Only a dream. It didn't happen. I hadn't been a terrible cheating cow breaking two peoples' hearts and disappointing myself all over again. Yes!

But wait... It hadn't happened, but did I want it to? My brain seemed to think so. So.. what did it mean? Should I not be attempting this whole monogamous relationship thing? Am I not ready? Do I miss being single and thus free to kiss other people? Is that really what I want? And if so, should I set HIM free from all obligations and imagined commitments, while I figure out my own meandering path?

So while I lay there with HIM gently snoring into my neck, I sent out frantic SOS messages to my few people - asking them what it means. All of them are in the reluctantly-hitched category with marriages that have crossed seven years. They're also my exes and now best friends. Yes, it's all complicated, and very interesting and someday I'll write a book about it. But for now, they were my best bet for telling me "it doesn't count."

And that's the fun part. I wanted them to tell me that it didn't count, that it was okay, that I hadn't screwed up yet. Because I don't want this to end. Because if losing him scares me, if hurting him makes me feel like crap, then I'm already further ahead in the game than I thought.

And maybe that's worth fighting for despite all the strangers I'm not kissing these days.

PS: Also, online dream analysis tells me that if I'm dreaming of cheating on a significant other, it's because I'm bored. Not of the relationship, but of everything else in my life. And that is so true. Gah! Another post, another day. But I like that the Internet is rooting for me.

So.... *ahem*

I'm seeing someone.

I typed these words and then I stared at them for a while, marvelling at the fact that these words are true for me. Again.

It's not the "let's see where it goes" kind or the "we're just hanging out" kind of seeing someone either. This is the "I'm in love with you" kind of seeing someone. The kind where someone calls me his girlfriend and I don't flinch. The type where I kiss him in public and it doesn't matter to me at all who's watching or what they would think or what he would think or if this is going too fast or 'oh god, let's do damage control preparation'. And I find myself not nervous at all.

I keep waiting for the creepy feeling of deja vu, the sense of already having been here, of trusting someone so completely that betrayal is just inevitable. But.... nothing. I feel safe. I feel centred. I feel ready.

I'm seeing someone.

Wow.

Enough with the Self-Help Bullshit - A slightly incoherent post-modern treatise

The next time someone tells me how something builds character, or what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, or any of those zillion bullshit things that we keep saying because we’ve heard it from so many self-help sources, I’m gonna really lose it. Why? Because the facts don’t add up. 

Seriously, what am I building so much character and inner moral strength for? To write another email?? Or so that someday in some imaginary apocalyptic future, when there are just a thousand of us survivors, maybe it’ll help me live for a few extra months than all those sorry billion plus losers who built all that character and strength just to die as cannon fodder for the first extinction-sized event? No thanks. 

And why do we have so many people (becoming rich) telling us to self-help? Animals don’t do that. They thrive in communities and build a sustainable eco-system and keep a planet running for billions of years. But no, we’re reading productivity manuals and learning ‘manifestation’ and other motivational crap being spewed out by the same community (humans) that destroyed half of the planet’s assets in a tiny little fraction of the time it was here. 

And if someone tells me that this is why we’re the dominant species, I’m gonna tell you to fuck yourself. An unchecked cancer cell growth will also be the dominant species in an unhealthy body. And just like we zap those cells to extinction, our planet’s trying to zap us out. And no amount of positive thinking, manifestation or tantric anything is going to change that. With this kind of thinking taking over the fucking planet, it’s no wonder we’re hurtling towards environmental heart-attacks all around. 

And if someone calls me negative one more time, I’m gonna zombie attack you and see how your positive thinking turns into mulch in another undead asshole’s mouth.

Because I'm sick and tired of meeting the clueless. Really.

It's Hate, And It's Us.

We imagine that hate and love have equal and opposite effects on the people’s imagination. 

We imagine that the sight of a black person being killed can be neutralized by cute videos of dogs and cats getting along. 

We imagine that for every debilitating thing a government does to keep its people down can be erased by uplifting stories of disabled people surmounting all obstacles to achieve amazing feats. 

We imagine that the effect of even one rape can be erased by the “Happy Friendship Day” greetings peppering our newsfeeds. 

We imagine wrong.

We are born expecting love. But we live to learn that we are mistaken. Indeed, we’re vilified if we don’t learn it quickly. Every such lesson we learn is a laceration on our collective psyche, shredding our blanket of love into rip torn shreds of vestigial humanity. And all of us feel it. 

And we see it around us, the effects of this feeling. 

We see it in the numbness we try to evoke through sex, drugs, alcohol. We see it in the way we erupt in rage over some semi-stranger’s social media post about breakfast. We see it in the litany of complaints we make about everything from the state of the roads to the state of humanity. Sarcasm, cynicism and rapier wit stand as defense mechanisms against the torrential flood of tears barely being choked back. We see it everywhere, and we lash out everywhere, leaving tiny explosive scars on anyone within earshot. And they do the same until each one of us becomes a carrier of tiny dynamite sticks, together capable of leveling a city, individually capable of destroying ourselves.

If we acknowledge there is real hate in the world, instead of reflexively jumping to the defense of “But there’s good as well”, then maybe, just maybe we’ll be able to acknowledge our part in contributing to the hate, in the words that we use, in the actions we undertake. And then, maybe, just maybe we will be able to change things around.

Unless of course things have gotten so fucked up that we can’t even imagine what that will look like. 

On the Flip Side...

I was chatting with a male friend the other day where I, in normal sarcastic manner, was chiding him about the entire male species' inability to understand that if we're going out with you, we really like you. There's not a single woman on this planet who wakes up in the morning and thinks, "Today, I won't like to fall in love." So if she's going out with you - and dresses up even a little - it's because she's incredibly hopeful that you're reasonably nice.

But then why do most guys screw up on the date?

My friend said, 'Because if that's what women want, then why don't they just show it?" Before I dismissed this childish attempt to blame the other party, I stopped. I asked him what he meant and he  asked me that if I was a guy looking the way I did - only more masculine - then what would I do to charm a lady. And I was stumped.

The first thing I thought of was - "Jeez! At 5'3, I'm too short." Can you imagine? If I had to date me, I won't be able to get past the height??! How fucked up is that? Then there were other things. Like... I have to remember to be charming and funny. Self-depracatory humor but not so much that it sounds insecure. Ok, I can do that. Would compliment the girl's perspective on something. Ask her about her family - not in an interview way. And when she asks me questions, come up with a story that allows me to innocuously touch her / hold her hand briefly.

I started thinking that I had this whole thing kinda sorted until we decided to role-play. He was going to be the cumulative average girl who's decided to go out with him, and I'll be smart funny charming. I'd like to say it went well for me, but then I'd be a liar. While it did become farcical, what emerged was a much more sobering truth.

As a woman, I'm so used to being wooed that I've never considered the insecurities that the Man comes with to the table. If he looks confident, then he must be, yes? Not necessarily. Sometimes it just means that he's spent a long while in front of the mirror saying, "I can do this." It's likely that almost everything he does is wrong with someone. Should he offer to pay? Did she get offended by him holding her hand? Or NOT holding it long enough? Or ordering the wrong thing? Or not saying a funny enough joke? Or was it so funny that now he's the joker at the table doing knock-knock entertaining? Does she think that people wearing check shirts are a certain way? Should he say he's #goldandwhite or #blueandblack? And all those multiple things that change depending on the woman you're going out with.

My friend continued. "If a guy shows up, it usually means that given half a chance, he'd like to do sexy things with you. And continue doing them over a period of time. But with women, it's like the test begins now and you're already late and we're constantly playing catch-up." The conversation veered to what a guy finds attractive and he said, "You know what guys want? To chill the fuck out. We want the girl to be happy, and smiling and to leave us alone."

I was surprised. I asked, "Don't you want someone to challenge you, make you be better?" He laughed and said, "Yes of course because we get bored with all the incredible amount of support and cooperation we get from our colleagues and competitors, right?" Hmm. I asked myself if I want someone who challenges me all the time and the answer is no. Life is hard enough, there are immense challenges in-built in my world already... Do I want to come back home to someone who challenges me further instead of just saying, "It's not your fault. You're awesome."?

While we sat there listening to music and sipping our beers, I looked at my friend who was gazing at a particularly beautiful girl standing a few feet away. I asked him why he didn't go and talk to her and he said something really sad. He said, "I don't want to deal with the baggage of her exes today." Is that what we are - a walking unhealed wound of Betrayals Past, looking for someone to come and fix us? And then I have to ask myself if I'm capable of offering the same services I'm demanding. I mean, am I in a position to heal their battle wounds as well?

Because then THAT would be a useful partnership

Unfollow.

Don’t believe what the others say 

About how life should be lived

How games shouldn't be played

The rules have been written

By those who think they know

Perpetuating their sole viewpoint, 

Thanks to followers galore

7 billion people, and the opinion of a few

Claiming definitions for others

Using perspectives of the minuscule

7 billion hearts, there are 7 billion truths

And no size fits all

Not even one or two

One man’s meat could be another’s vodka tonic

Consuming his truth could leave you hungry or alcoholic

So next time you read

A List of Top Ten Things You Need

to marry, get a job, be loved or breed

Toss out that list because it’s futile

A stranger used his or her life

As the template for your demise

Too Good At Being Single?

Is there such a thing as being too good at being single? Like, "she’s too good at it for it to be good for her”. Or even, she’s too good at it for her to ever need a long-lasting relationship of any kind.

And I don’t just mean relationships of the romantic kind. Recently, I wrote about the changing faces of people I call friends. It wasn’t a happy post, but I ended on a note of it being a workable life. Maybe some people don’t get to have long-term witnesses to their lives. In my case, the ones who do show some kind of promise tend to move to a different country or die or break my heart just when things are getting interesting. And then when you flip through the life updates of mostly acquaintances on the ubiquitous social networking sites, you see that somehow people tend to manage to have those friends and families around them.. the repeat faces at important days of the year, the birthday cakes and the nightclub dancing and at funerals holding your hand. These are the faces that become your family, your support system and your life. 

Except in the case of people who’re too good at being single. Recently I was scrolling through the updates of various people on my FB page and I asked myself, “Who are these people?” I started “unfollowing” people, putting them under the “acquaintance” label and soon I realized that there were maybe 10 people whose access to me I would consider NOT restricting and about 25 more whom I wouldn’t mind knowing about. The remaining 480-something (98% of people on my site are people I actually know and have interacted with) I would put under the label of “Couldn’t care less if I tried.”

And when I looked at that list of 35 I realized what being too good at being single meant. Among those closest 35 people in my life, I realize I haven’t seen them and they haven’t seen me in months (months!) and the only time I thought of them was at 4 am on a Tue morning when I was irritated at my overfilled newsfeed. It means I’m really good at spending hours by myself at home, not necessarily in verbal communication with anyone, and my ‘feelings’ are explored and 'therapized' online in a blog. And when something bad happens and I find myself in bed for months, unable to reach out to anyone, unable to articulate my inner hell, I reach for my cat, a bottle of wine and marathon sessions of sitcoms. 

Because in those moments of silence you realize that you’re in the list of “couldn’t care less if I tried” for most of the people in your life. And for a very select (and probably changing) few, you fall in the 10. And you become good at coming to terms with that.

Maybe just a little too good at it.

Hello, Mid-Life Crisis.. I'm Searcher!

I was watching this movie called "Laggies" - a super fun coming of age kinda film and one thing stood out for me. The lawyer, played by Sam Rockwell (who knew Sam Rockwell could be sexy??) says this really desolate thing. He says that - I'm paraphrasing - that you think that you'll get to belong somewhere once you have the job and the kids and the family and the house and whatever... and then you realize that you're still just doing it alone.

It was heart-breaking. And sad. That there are so many out there just seeking the sense of belonging somewhere - no, wait - with SOMEONE that any part of the world would feel like home.

Then just now, my twin soul, whom I ran from ages ago in the midst of sexual and contextual confusion, sent me a FB message with a link of "Why you should fuck a writer. The twin soul happens to be married now, and we happen to be good friends, who seem to have left behind all the murky stuff of "what if" in favor of the more doable "this is it" (No, I haven't. I think about it a lot sometimes. Usually when I'm bored and lonely), but when he sends me stuff like this, right after I've watched a rom-com of someone getting their potentially happy ever after, while drinking two glasses of wine (and a beer and some flat non-fizzy breezers), I want to cry. And kiss him. And be held by him.

And then I start to imagine what it would be like if I ever dated a writer. Oh, wait... I did. In fact, a lot  - hmm, almost everyone I've ever dated has been a writer-director-photographer. And I have their pictures and their handwritten love letters to me, and books with inscriptions still stashed away somewhere... and I miss it. I miss the abandon with which I just went for it. I remember the things I wrote for them, this whole blog in fact being about them in one form or the other...

A couple of days ago, this guy I've been seeing  a lot of lately, asked me to ride with him to Bangalore. On his new Harley. The fact that he hasn't made it to even a post on this blog tells me more about our relationship than any therapist could (cheaper too!) but my first thought wasn't about him but about how much my butt would ache on that trip. He said that I wouldn't know until I tried it - and I realized that I've done it. Years ago, Delhi to Dehradun, on a bike, followed by an ice cold wade through a brook that flowed across a road while HE took pictures of me and wrote a piece of poetry for me that he later read while he held my shivering body in his arms and told me that he would love me forever.

A couple of months ago, a drummer in a band decided to ask me out. It was probably a date. It felt like a date. I didn't get dressed up or anything but I had looked forward to hanging out with him. And we did. And then we went to his place, where we ended up talking about our exes. Yikes! Total lady-wood maker because who doesn't want to to rehash your non-finest hours with an almost-stranger, am I right? Nope. And then, once the evening went to the proverbial hell in a hand basket, he made this last ditch-effort move on me. That kiss was inappropriate, hasty and the last nail in the coffin of what could have been. The reason I tell this little story is because he offered to write me a song. I think that  is his move - the song for the girl. And you know what? I've been there too! On the top of a terrace, strumming an acoustic guitar, while we both shivered in too-thin T-shirts but neither of us wanted to leave that terrace even in the frozen chill of a hill-station, HE sang me a song that was filled with love and yearning and I kissed him after that. We both stood there and shivered not knowing if it was the frozen temperature or that strange feeling of being in something big...

Maybe it's the shivering that really gets me. Which would explain why I'm feeling like this right now. It's cold... well, colder than normal, and I find myself shivering alone. If you don't count my cat.

And then I wish that I'd just dated stockbrokers instead. Boring, alpha personalities who have no time for life, happy to carry anyone along for their ride. Nobody would then have ever "got" me and my heart would still be intact and maybe I'd still be able to trick myself into believing that the most fun is still to come. Instead, I'm here, staring at an empty glass of wine, having a drinking-and-writing moment on my blog that a bunch of strangers will read while I wonder which writer I'd like to fuck up with next.

These are very dangerous times.

New Year Resolutions

The last year has been sort of a scorched-Earth experience for me. As an example, of the last two months that have gone by - also the time when my writing here recommenced - I've spent about 40-45 of those days at home, in bed with my computer, drowning myself in whatever media I could find. I'm not proud of this. But try as I might, I couldn't get myself to move. The closest I can come to comparing this experience is the time when I went through a bad break-up. Atleast then I had friends and a legit reason to mope. This time, no legit reason, and hence nothing to say, even to friends.

But this enforced solitude has also given me pause. It's given me time to think, time to examine what it is that I could have done differently. The truth is, I'll never know. Hindsight is stellar, but it doesn't prepare you for anything. The singular truth is that things change, whether we want them to or not. And the only thing we can do is make ourselves more damage-resistant by creating more life support systems.

On that note, I have compiled a list of resolutions that I want to keep for this year.

1. I shall be better at how I love and what I write.
2. I shall be healthier.
3. I shall earn more, invest more and spend more.
4. I shall dip my feet in an ocean I haven’t felt before.
5. I shall not feel very sorry for myself.
6. I shall finish what I start.
7. I shall redo my place even if it’s a giant pain in my ass. It’s my place.
8. I shall listen to more music. Maybe even take lessons.
9. I shall actively work on my relationships with friends and family.
10. I shall forgive more easily.

And tonight, I shall kiss someone who makes me laugh and wonder why I ever worried. 

Here's to a year with lesser carnage and more laughter.

Aliens Aboard!

The party season is on. And I haven’t felt more isolated than this, right here, right now. 

Over the last two years or so, I’ve spent a lot of time examining people. My friends, family, total strangers - no one has been free of this scrutiny. And simultaneously, I’ve held myself under a microscope - my motivations, desires, needs, etc. I have done this because I believed in an ideology - the possibility of freedom - and in its achievability. At the end of this year, I find myself up against a wall that has come up between me and that vision, a wall that just doesn’t show any indication of moving. As a result, I find myself stuck inside this rather large but pretty solo existence, cut off from the people out there, unable to really connect. An alien in a land I used to inhabit.

It’s quite lonely. What’s worse is that I see the people around me and I find myself not really WANTING to connect with them. The terrible part is that while normally, I'm the one who decides when I get to switch off and switch on, this time I feel helpless and out of my depth. Truthfully, I’d like nothing better than to be able to have a few laughs, to dance like no one’s watching, to use the sassy turn of phrase that’s my “move” at parties - but that Alien in my head just won’t shut up. It’s constantly saying things like “Really? You really want to know who he is? Do his torn denim pants intrigue you, or is it the fact that the 1990s seem to be back and making a home in his wardrobe?” That alien is also mean! 

Then I yo-yo to the “meaningful" ideological side of the conversation - the kind of stuff that has been my jam lately - and even there, the minute I hear someone utter the words like “You must follow your dreams”, I want to projectile vomit into an expensive dinner bowl being carried by someone wearing an expensive Vera Wang dress in an expensive home filled with expensive curios. 

When I look for comfort in the arms of an ex-lover, I can almost feel my skin peeling off my bones as the Alien says, “Really? Him? All these years of living and it’s him??” While one ex says, “Come over, let me cook you dinner” and the other says, “I’ve always wanted to find out what it would have been like if we had actually gotten together for real”, all I want to say, while desperately trying to keep my skin in place, is “Not you."

It’s like I’m going through a phase of checking the Not Applicable box in a survey that asks impossible questions like “What do you really want?” and “What are you good at?” and “Who are your people?” Somedays, as I stare at the wall in front of my bed, covered with drawings I’ve done in crayon, and I feel that if I could just lie there forever, not answer the phone or the door and just dissolve into air, a little at a time, until at the end of the day, there's nothing left of me, wouldn’t that be a good thing.

My friend told me that I'm being too maudlin these days. But I can't seem to shake off this feeling. I go to a party, or to a quiet dinner and I see the people around me and they all look like they’re pretending. Pretending to be happy or satisfied or interested or creative or chirpy or important or happy… like everyone is wearing a mask that allows just the most superficial interactions before alarm bells go off. And the thing is, I’m almost grateful for the masks. It means then that I don’t have to deal with the really scary stuff the masks are hiding.

Because if the masks slip, we’ll see that we are in truth, total and utter savages, with no real love or affection for anything else except ourselves. Or that we’re just non-existent grey limbo and all this introspection and navel gazing and life-examining is pure shit. Maybe that will be a relief. 

Because right now, I’m just exhausted being me.

A Letter to the Future Love of My Life

Dear You, 

I say this with the utmost affection and love and respect, but you’re going to have a few very confusing months ahead of you. But you’ll get through them like a champion. You know how I know this? Because the others didn’t.

I started this note with the intention of giving you a few pointers about how to navigate the hot mess that is me. And I just realized something - almost all my pointers are about what the “other guys” said and did or didn’t do and how to avoid the nastiness that followed. I was going to tell you about how I’m a disaster and have trust issues and will mostly need a lot of patience and understanding and how my standards are too high etc - and then i realized that I was only repeating those things that the others have said about me - the others who are NOT the love of my life.

So why try and fit you into a box vacated by people who are just not good enough to be compared with you? This is not to say that you won’t have your set of problems with me, but I’m guessing they will be problems I haven’t thought about or tried to fix already. They will be new, and unique to your set of deal-breakers and nothing I do or say will prepare me for them. What will happen is that when you come into my life, I’ll finally know what it is that everyone has been going on about - love? Pfuitt! What is that? And you will show me and I will be speechless and terrified and awestruck and so grateful that you found me. 

All I can hope for is that I won’t bolt before the words have even settled into their meanings and I hope that I won’t see the actions and the intentions of all the Boyfriends Past in the words that you say. Because you will be the love of my life, and that makes you a pretty unique person. 

So as  favor to myself, I’m going to try and write down my end of the deal, my part of what I think would be an immensely awesome relationship deal. When times are tough - and they will be - I want you to let us take a breather and remind me to read these words again:

1. I promise to trust that you are the love of my life and as such, you have my best interests at heart.
2. I promise to remember that you are what I have been waiting for my whole life, the one who gets me in ways that are scary and fun and nightmare-inducing and joyous.
3. I promise to try and fight fair. Try. In case I don’t, please know that I already know I did something wrong and you can bet I shall apologize very quickly if I haven’t already.
4. I promise that all my apologies will be sincere.
5. I promise that I will improve my cooking. Cooking for someone is one of the ways I express my love for them… and I’d like what I cook to be good for that reason.
6. I promise to always try and tell my truth at any given moment. This is honestly the best I can do because I’m also someone who takes time to process my feelings and to arrive at a concrete truth. But the minute I do, you will know that too.
7. I promise to remember that you’re not perfect and that it’s not a bad thing. The important thing is that you’re just perfect for me - even on those days when you’re trampling every nerve in my body to breaking point. Particularly then.
8. I promise to remind myself that you're not a mind-reader and you deserve to know what I'm thinking and how I'm reaching life-altering conclusions about my.. our life. I promise to try and include you in my mental life.
9. I promise to remember what I loved about you in the early days and what I love about you today and that agreeing with me all the time probably wasn't on that list ever. 
10. I promise to remember to kiss you - like, really kiss you - at least once a day. No carry forwards. Even on days I don't feel like it.
11. I promise to pay you at least one heartfelt compliment everyday. Because sometimes I tend to keep it in my head. I say, "Wow, he is really bright..." and tend to forget that I didn't say it out loud.
12. I promise to be flexible about this list, and keep adding and.. adding.. because I really do want you, and am willing to work at keeping you.

Almost every second day, I’m with some friend or the other at my neighborhood watering hole. And most days, the conversation flows around work, and who's doing whom how well and for how long… And it’s so boring. Like… pointless. And I realized something. I’m so bored with ‘doing’ and being ‘done’. For now, I’m in the mood for romance, for whispered stories in bed, for full body kisses - you know, the kind where your whole body is held and the kiss is deep and all-consuming - and for that feeling of fearlessness…

And I want you to know. You’re it. You’ve given me all these things. And if I'm the love of your life, then we're on the verge of The. Best. Romance. Ever.

It’s just that sometimes, I may need to be reminded. 

Forever, 

Me.

How An #FBCHAT Changed The Face Of Indian Daily Soaps - for 45 seconds

It all started when I posted a normal, run of the mill update on FB. My friend Shorey, a lover of all things TV and now into crowd funding for worthy creative projects, pinged me. What follows is a tiny look into how free-wheeling 21st Century Indian daily soaps could look like - if WE had any say in it :D

(Warning: Some colloquial Hindi)

SHOREY:
Naalaayak! Kaam waam nahi hai……. FB pe timepass ho raha hai
(You worthless piece of poo-poo.... wasting time on FB)

SEARCHER:
Haan, true hai ji
(Yep, that's true)

SHOREY:
uff!!!! yeh aaj kal ki ladkiyan….
(Gosh! This generation's kids......)

SEARCHER:
haan! Yeh sach hai!! Main aaj kal ki ladki hi hoon!
*sounds of chudiyaan breaking*
(Yes! It's true.. I AM a kid of this generation!
*sound of shattering glass bangles)

SHOREY:
*close up of shocked faces in slow motion, repeat with color change*

SEARCHER:
*Cue heroine running out of room in tears*

SHOREY:
*... Hero crying in one corner so no-one sees him… So metrosexual macho *ugh*

SEARCHER:
Mother in law immediately updates Facebook with #familydrama

SHOREY:
Sister in Law calls Heroine LS and tweets #whatabitch

And says "my poor bro is trapped #blindlyinlove"

SEARCHER:
Heroine's family immediately deletes the whatsapp family group and starts another one

SHOREY:
Meanwhile the heroine's sis secretly looks for guys for the Heroine on Tinder

SEARCHER:
And discovers the Hero's Tinder Profile!! *Cue more tears and horror

SHOREY:
The heroine's brother BBm's all his bros to go and beat the crap out of the Hero….. After all GPS tracking is easy.. His best friend is a techie

SEARCHER:
But his friends say "Dude, you're still using BB?!" And immediately unfriend him

SHOREY:
Sub Plot starts….. The bro starts stalking his BFF's GF on her secret MY Space page….…...

SEARCHER:
Where he finds porn clippings of her and her brother - who, mid scene, discovers he's adopted and loses his libido…

What will Happen now? Will the Heroine’s brother’s best-friend’s girlfriend choose someone else to fill the gaping hole IN HER HEART!

(this is becoming very modern age NSFW)

SHOREY:
Cut! Cut!…. This much is enough to sell it to the producer…..
#WhatAnIdeaSirjee

SEARCHER:
Superb

SHOREY:
This will be our Story….. 'Script of the Year' Written on FB chat
*Cue Awards

SEARCHER:
Chalo, tum funding organise karo, main likhna shuru karti hoon
KISNE kaha ki FB pe timepass hota hai??
(Awrighty then, get the funds organized, I'll start writing the show.
Who said one only wastes time on FB??)

Maybe this is why no one gives me a job on TV.
Sigh

Freestyle Dreaming

I was in England and Prince William and Kate were getting hitched. I was part of the wedding party. It was pouring buckets and the grounds were slushy and horrible. Everyone was out in their wedding finest, but the weather just wasn’t being a sport. Two miles away, there was an inn. There was food and music - well, bangers and mash and lots of ale - and hot fire and room for all, if you counted the barn. Harry was late as usual, grinning his cheeky grin, and you could tell that William was losing his cool. Kate’s minders had their hands full with keeping her gown as white as they possibly could, given the squelchy mess she was walking through. I told Harry about the inn, and the plan was made - Prince William and that Kate girl would be wed at an inn….

… I open my bank statement and am not surprised to find just how much in the red I am. There’s a pile of bills to be paid, I look around my house and count off the repairs needed, and then do a quick math in my head - mostly subtraction - and find that the money in my account is more than enough to do all that. It’s almost like the bills shrunk or the money expanded without changing the numbers in the little boxes. Or maybe I’ve forgotten how to do math…

… The crack of the cricket bat against the ball in the green wide open fields of Surrey comes as a surprise to me. I see two people - teenagers really - playing at one end. An umpire looks on. There is no one else around. The Umpire turns to me and says that it’s a shame that one will kill the other, isn’t it? In the distance, Sean and Phillip laugh and play cricket…

… I’m running and it’s late. I’m late for a meeting…

… I’m running on the treadmill. The counter reads 12 km/hr. It’s fast. I’m planning to push it further. But I’m getting tired. I can feel my legs wanting to stop. But the treadmill is speeding up. I could be the Flash or I could be a hot mess tossed off the treadmill and slammed into the wall behind me…

… The meeting takes place in the outdoors. The director of the film - a new chap - wants to “feel the space” as we discuss the script. I’m wondering how he knows the space, given that he hasn’t yet heard the story. Then he starts telling me a story - predictably, of his childhood. I wonder why everyone thinks that theirs is a story worth subjecting millions of people to. Then I look down at my laptop, and the words printed on the screen and I see my childhood and heartbreak and laughter and loneliness all tied in to the fictions I tell others. I’m privileged to do so. I lean back and hear his story. It’s not tremendous, but it’s worth telling. Like all other stories….

I wake up. It's still dark. My cat is curled up next to me under the blanket, my arm around her soft warm body. I feel her purring. And just before I close my eyes, I see that all is perfect with my world.

Tomorrow is another day.

If I Could Speak

If I could speak, 

I would talk of my soul

Once radiant and blissful

Now withered and old

If I could speak
I would talk of love

How it flowed from my fingers

But now makes tapestries of dust

If I could speak
I would talk of laughter

Of gatherings steeped in music

Now just hollow echoes forever

If I could speak

I would ask for your hand
To pull me away

From the corpse that I am

If I could speak
I would whisper my fears

And know that I was heard

That I wasn’t alone with my tears

If I could speak

My silence would end

And when tomorrow comes

Maybe I’ll finally start to mend.

If I could speak…