CONFESSIONS OF A MILLS AND BOON HOARDER

The entire book reading community was till recently talking....well at least in hushed tones, about the fifty shades of grey. Everywhere i went it was being discussed and i was feeling a little left out so i decided to read it too. Suffice to say that single-handedly Miss E.L.James has hacked at the roots of romantic literature and used it for firewood. For someone, who grew up in a world where Mr.Darcy was the ultimate dream man, it came as nothing less than a shock to realise that well the world and its women have moved on and how!! Call it what you will but fifty shades made me wish i was colour blind and reminded me of another genre of books that saw us through teenage and later. Mills and boon.

This world is kind of divided into two kinds of women. Those who read mills and boon, and the ones who hate the ones who read them. Oh no there is a third kind too....the closet readers. They have read it but what with their new found intellectual snobbery they like to believe it was a bad dream and that it never happened!

Well I have read these books and still like to and I have no qualms admitting that though they went a long way in screwing up my idea of a perfect man, i read them voraciously and hoard them still. I mean how was i to know that drop dead gorgeous looking Greek tycoons are a myth?? That these ruthless magnates with hearts of little boys were a figment of some warped woman’s mind?? Not only did they not exist Greek men by the time they amassed their fortunes were wrinkled and married half a dozen times already. Or that no man, Greek or otherwise, likes ordinary looking plain Janes? That’s exactly what the heroines in these books were....besides also being weak-willed, emotionally distraught, and clumsy as hell.....but hey guess what the hero loved all these qualities too. With a startling lack of self respect they willingly submit to the high handed attitude of the hero...I guess the fact that he is ruggedly handsome, powerful, stinking rich wouldn’t have something to do with it. Obviously not!!!....it’s true love that makes her so willingly subservient and how dare you suggest otherwise’

Anyway as always its rich man meets girl next door and after many trials and tribulations they live happily ever after. Ok fine I admit there is no story line here....if it’s there at all ... (agreed agreed it’s rare but known to happen)...it’s pretty flimsy and been repeated like a million times already. But there was something about these books that made us all believe in true love and happy-ever- afters....until of course the real world came crashing in and put paid to all the efforts!!!

ONCE IS A MISTAKE......

Once is a mistake...twice is your choice

We all have regrets and as we grow older we often look back and wish we had done things differently. Taken a different decision...had more gumption and spine...been more assertive...maybe even selfish? When we all know that life is fleeting and our time here short why do we get hedged in by pressures on us by family society and friends? Is it because we are brought up being taught that our only aim is to please others? Isn’t it equally important that we make ourselves happy too? What is our purpose here...is it to simply fall in line with what’s expected of us or is it something bigger?

What do you think is harder?  Undoing a wrong? Asking for forgiveness? I feel it’s neither. The hardest part is admitting that what you are doing or did was wrong, that it was a mistake. The hardest part is stopping oneself from doing the same thing over and over again. Stopping the barely there justifications. The oh-it-feels-right feeling which lulls you into complacency. The hardest thing is accepting that when you repeat a so called mistake it becomes your choice....your decision.

It’s so easy to always put the blame elsewhere when things go wrong. It’s easy to play the victim and treat the world as a big bad place. What’s not easy is telling yourself that irrespective of the circumstances the ultimate decision is always yours and by the same yardstick the end result good or bad is your responsibility.  

 

in a poets state of mind

well the dreamer has been dreaming for way too long....and as always there are half written drafts cluttering up my computer screen...yes i have never learnt to make a folder and file them away. so there they are constant reminders that yet again the procrastinator in me has overtaken the writer. well i have been writing but its been more poetry than prose and that's when it occurred to me that maybe i shouldn't be waiting for a prose to happen....whatever i write...here it comes!!!


Tell me more
Tell me of the times we will have
The laughs we will share
The lives we will live
Tell me of tomorrow
Of the wishes that will come true
Of the beautiful days
Of the limitless love
Why won’t you say?
Say it’s not the end
Say that it’s right
Say that its forever
Why is it that when I turn
You are never there
And I’m talking to myself
Yet again?




Don’t ask me to smile
Don’t tell me its fine
Tear me up
Wear me down
Just don’t say
A better day
Is coming around
Let me swim
Against the tide
Let me tire
Let me drown
Don’t hold me up
High in the sky
Let me falter
Let me fail
From here I look at heaven
From up there
I see only the ground

she was asking for it??

another rape in the capital. a five year old brutalized and i think about how when the nirbhaya rape shook the nation i heard educated people sympathize but with always a shadow of doubt concerning the victim. they wondered what she was doing out on a bus with a male for company....was she wearing society defined "decent" clothes....and a whole lot of such absurd assumptions. wonder what they have to say now....this one is a child...she is five....an age at which she did not deserve to even know about the acts that she was ruthlessly subjected to. girls her age play with dolls, chase butterflies, dream about fairies and elves....and she was exposed to such savageness. her body may heal...i doubt her mind ever will.

posting something i wrote earlier.....disillusioned yet again....

she was asking for it' some of them said....if she was alone out at night she was asking for it....if she was wearing clothes she liked she was asking for it....if she smiled or god forbid laughed she was asking for it....if she fought she was asking for it....there’s no way that she couldn't have been....could she?

Days go by and people are back to their humdrum existence. me.....im back to writing this note which i started writing a month back and again im reminded of the fact that i had stopped. i had stopped writing it because the anguish inside me threatened to erupt in words which would have probably made no sense to anyone, i stopped because i wanted a clearer perspective. i stopped because i wanted to be less angry when i wrote this.i also stopped because i wanted to see if i would forget too.....like so many others do.

i have not forgotten and i dont think i ever will. people have discussed rape, slammed the protests and the protesters, mocked the media and the laws but in my mind the horror i felt on reading about the inhumanity is fresh...like a wound that refuses to heal.

i cannot forget because i am a woman and i have given birth to two. to think that there are men out there who can treat women as a commodity...something they can use and destroy makes me question everything i used to be proud of....my country...its society...its laws and above all its people.

its a blot on our collective consciense and so it should be. it should stay there too,to remind us that we are wrong when we say its about the women. its not.... its about the concept of maleness in our society....the concept of men being men. so as we grow up we are instilled with the belief that men by the very virtue of being male... are stronger.....have less restraint and are conditioned to treat women apart from the ones they hold sacred....as commodified anatomies. so where mothers will teach girls to behave in a certain manner acceptable to the society the boys will not be taught anything because they will be themselves.accept it. case closed.

and we have never ever questioned this. why treat the boys as if each of them has no character, no self control, no respect towards others?

i blame myself for living in a society that teaches me to put myself before others, i blame myself for buckling under every rule that it lays out. for refusing to question when we were told to mind our business. for looking the other way when  i saw someone in trouble. for convincing myself that if i laughed out, smiled or exhibited any amount of carefree spirit i would be attracting attention and that it would all be my fault. i blame myself for teaching my girls the same....for making them weak and selfish instead of the proud strong women they should be.

dreamer forever and ever

              “Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions”

We are practical creatures….well most of the time we are. We have seen life …its twists and turns… and plodded on regardless of where we are headed. There is no clear answer to where we are going and yet each day we strive towards unaccomplished goals. It’s a pretty routine scenario and rarely do we come across someone who has been driven by passion to take a different road….very rarely! We walk the beaten track because well firstly…its there…it’s been tried and because we hate risks.Our life you see is very precise,very clear and its how we have always believed it should be!

 The mind however is a different matter all together it dwells on all that could have been….could still be….its not practical at all. It takes our hand and walks us through the beautiful landscape of our innermost wishes. In our dream it meanders through paths not taken without fear. It heeds not the frantic voice telling it to stop a while. It answers not to any attempt to hold it down….break it up…it just stays there …as pure and innocent as we were when we were born. It lights up with joy….it makes the heart skip a beat…it lulls us into believing in a life we have yet to live…..places we have yet to go…..things we have yet to do.

In our humdrum existence our dreams are like an anchor holding us steady while we get buffeted by the waves. they are our inner calm….our inner peace….a little corner of our soul which the outside world cannot touch ….cannot tarnish!

You ask me why I dream. I dream because it makes my life worth living…it gives me hope….it gives me a million reasons to smile …it tells me that tomorrow will dawn with all my cherished desires coming true. Even if tomorrow my dreams don’t come true they will still have given me happiness….and isn’t that everything? 

whats love got to do with it???

Ok so it’s that time of the year again folks when suddenly you are engulfed in a pink shimmery haze of mass love driven hysteria. You cannot escape it…..the movie cinemas are full of mushy new releases, the newspapers talk of broken hearts, relationships and little else. Something that was once confined to a single day of madness now extends to a week replete with days like chocolate day, propose day etc. yes really!!!! If you have the same perplexed expression that I do then welcome to the fold my friend for we just do not understand the circus surrounding this st.valentine whosoever it was!! As it is I think the poor guy must be turning in his grave seeing the catastrophe he has wrought by his innocuous actions. What did he do?? Well apparently….and yes even this is unsubstantiated he was a priest who just got some star crossed lovers married and got thrown into jail for his efforts if you please!!

So now as this day looms you cannot walk two steps without being bombarded visually with one or many heart shapes. They jump out from magazines, newspapers, television and shops. Big hearts, small hearts, quirky and scrawny hearts…all different colors assail your senses. There are the absolutely horrendous over stuffed ones which proclaim ‘I love you’…..ummm I definitely do not! Let’s not forget the color scheme….it has to be either pink or red…..yes no other color will do!  Barbara Cartland would have had a field day she with her pink fetish which extended to her candy floss pink hair!!

This is just one miniscule part of an industry thriving on the testosterone driven feelings of the youth. There are mammoth cards over flowing with sentimental blabber….stuffed teddy bears (somebody stop me!!)…chocolates….and roses... yes bunches of roses... long stemmed and red….because its love right?? Ok do not get me wrong here and think I’m some crabby woman who hates all the lovers out there I’m not and I do not!! I think it’s wonderful if you are in love and it’s beautiful if you can express it in words and gestures however small. But I do not understand the growing need people have for being over effusive and denting their bank balance in the process just to prove the strength of their feelings. If its there you don’t have to prove it!!

So yes call me a cynic if you will but I feel that the hype has done more to take away from the emotions than give it anything. When all you can think of is how expensive a gift you can buy…..and are under immense pressure to live up to expectations….where’s the time to actually say what you feel? And even if you do the words will be lost in the glitzy shine of the valentine hoopla!

To give the romantic ones their due it probably gives them a chance to express things that they do not get to the whole year round…..but will someone explain why this one day? Am still waiting for some answers here…..anyone?

tryst with a new age guru...well almost!

That time of the year has gone by, when we drunk on the good fortune of making it past another doomsday prediction promised to make some worthwhile changes in our lives. The resolutions have been made and I’m sure by now broken! So I think it’s a great time to actually make some new ones. A few commandments which are the need of the hour, even though we do not take to being commanded kindly!!! Here’s how I think it should go……………

Thou shalt not judge people

If God wanted us to be same in thought and ideas I really don’t think He would have taken so many pains to shape our personalities. It would have been so much more convenient and time saving to let us be clones of each other! Imagine the scenario we all look the same, think like automatons, agree on everything…..heck it would be perfect right?? Naah I think we’d all die of boredom…. So this year lets try not to judge people by either the choices they make in life, what ideologies they have, what they choose to do and how they go about doing it. We all our entitled to our opinions and may we be given sense to let others be….for better or for worse!!

Thou shalt not be a cynic

Life is beautiful….. it’s precious…..and one day we shall realize its all too fleeting!! We spend half of it learning from our failings and the rest being cynical because we feel it’s such a big bad world out there. Cynicism is just a way of hiding from all that we feel is wrong, our insecurities, our fears…..but I don’t think they are going to go anywhere. Let’s try and face things rather than tip toe around them….. try to give it all we can…. try to treat each year as our last….the Mayans be damned!!!!

Thou shalt not put relationships into slots

On life’s journey we are destined to meet people who change our lives…..we usually walk a while with them, laugh with them and move on. we with our over sized egos and a truckload of expectations put an enormous burden on our relationships. we second guess,over analyze and treat each such relationship as if its an amoeba on a petri dish.Let’s try to not slot each of these relationships under specific pre conceived terms and ruin the beauty.

Thou shalt not regret

Each and every incident in our lives…..good or bad has eventually made us the person that we are. That sounds heavy……aah anyway to continue with that thought…. Regretting things is like doubting the very credibility of all that makes you….YOU!!so lets not waste any more time on regrets....

so here i am sounding more and more like a new age guru......i think i should have another commandment for myself.: Thou shalt not dish out platitudes!!!so long folks!!!