French Roast

It's been a year of big changes. There was the job, of course - huge change. Imagine waking up and feeling like shit - because you never were much of a ray of sunshine, now, were you? - and not being able to go awl, "Fuckit, I couldn't give a damn about a lecture on Samuel Pepys when my life is falling apart." Which is pretty much the theatre that played all 4 shows right through my college life. Now I go to work because that is what one does. It's been a year or doing what one ought - since July, at least. I'm not complaining, but funny though, how there still isn't much by way of order or discipline. Must be the exuberant company I keep.
Perhaps, it's all the growing up (and out) that I've been doing. Despite all the tumult there's been a certain numbness of thought. Things have happened, as they are wont to. But I find I take things in my stride more easily now. Something that would affect me deeply some months ago, ceases to now. Maybe it's the kind of training my job gives me. In the face of despair, file a copy.
I'd call it cynicism, but it isn't. Because I feel so liberated by it. It is a very unforced detachment from things. I would be worried if I'd stopped being able to love. That hasn't happened. Sometimes though, I wish it would. It must be the growing older that makes one appreciate beautiful paradoxes.
Around me, people wager their hearts this holiday season while mine beats just like yesterday, hole n all. An ordinary miracle, I don't ask for much.

I've had an eventful year. Gimme another one of those, please. With a dash of lime and some dancing. Have a great year ahead, all of you.

Posted by rainbeau_peep at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments

Leave the past in its permanent home. Do not make that reality so strong that it tears down this one.

- Jeanette Winterson

It's amazing how you'll remember things that you hadn't held so very dear to you when they were in the present. I finished school a few months before I turned 18. Seven years down the line, when I think of school, the first two images that come to mind are of Kanchi didi, the Nepalese ayah at kindergarten, with her "lal dawai" - a mysterious bloodred concoction of Lord knows what devilspawn that worked wonders on cuts and sores - and Johnny, the ice cream man. Kanchi didi never tended to me, I spent most of nursery and KG being bitten by my friend T, who was quite the bully then, and has since metamorphosed into the picture of grace and comeliness. 20 years ago she was running riot, making boys and nursery teachers alike howl in pain. Now she frowns upon my decadent lifestyle and is often to be found shaking her head in disapproval at the world at large. She's getting married soon, to Gullu Mian, who adores her and looks suspiciously like her ex-crush/my ex-boyfriend. It's complicated. On the upside, he's nicer than ex-crush. By far.
Johnny had a white cart and sold Kwality ice cream. I'm sure he must've switched to Walls, but that's not worth a memory. I reckon his name wasn't really Johnny. In all the time I was at school, which is all the time one can possibly be at school, I hadn't once spoken to Johnny. T used to climb up one of the wheels of the cart and peep inside the freezer. There was something other-worldly, positively magical about the way the brown, skinny man in shorts would let screaming children harangue him, would chide them good-naturedly and sell his ices all the while - with artful precision. Like a juggler, really.
It could be that I remember more of him than was. The past will do that to you, because when you know it isn't coming back, you'd like to remember the best parts. What amazes me, though, is that I would ever consider Johnny and Kanchi didi to be so much a part of that past that makes up my childhood.

Not that any of this discounts the severe sense of loss I'm feeling at having donated my favourite bookmark to one of those spoilt little mutts I frequently travel with on the Metro. They're the same lot that picks on smaller kids and thinks passengers are waterbeds, all the better to headbutt, jump and stamp their feet on. Bloody kids, with bloody puppy eyes. But there's only so much you can do when you're trying to catch up on a good book and this tiny little thing keeps poking her head in and playing with your bookmark. It's kind of sweet, all said and done. I just wished this bunch had more manners. But my poor pretty bookmark with lemony cats and cat's ear edges. It was a gift from my UK mashi too and had silly puns made with cats and literature - like "Cats 22". Crazy cute. I heart pretty bookmarks. It's the only one I had too. :-[ It's not even like I gave the thing to her. I only handed it over to her to keep her busy while I got on with my reading. But then she started showing off to the others that I'd given her this "thing". And then she showed her mother, who said, "Uff, abar koththeke ekta aborjona tuley enechhe!" and everyone else laughed, and I glared at the mum and asked the kid with as much dignity as I could muster, "Nebey?" She nodded vigorously, the little demon.
You think I may have got bullied into parting with a favourite possession by a 6-yar-old who has no use for it?
I'm never having a screaming kid, I promise. I'm never having anything that isn't well-behaved.

Posted by rainbeau_peep at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments

Dudes, sleep. It is the luxury of those who keep sane company. What with one lot of people with real relationships that are in shambles, and the other lot who keep having relationships that are all in their heads – my life is pretty full right now.

Excuse me, large women of the world. Please come together in a round table meet where we discuss the prospects of my ever walking into a shop all tralala and walking out of it, still tralala, but with a pair of ossum jeans that make my ass look nice and my thighs look notgross. Because what is the point of being large if you can’t tell the whole world about it, and discuss and analyse it yet never once consider going to the gym for it. Correct. So anyway, I’ve needed a pair of jeans ever since this blog was born. Children, that is not good. On Saturday then, I shall set out, sagging belly in one hand, and brand new plastic card in the other, and shop for jeans. I cannot even begin to explain how momentous this event is.
The trouble with winter is, what with all the moisturising, you can’t quite ignore issues like surface area. Ok wotever. Seriously, I want recommendations for jeans that look nice on fat people. I need brands, and don't say Levi's. Levi's jeans are too thick. Me no like. You wouldn’t either if you kept scraping the skin off your fingers every time you had to pull your thick jeans on, which, even though you bought them 3 months ago, are now so tight you have to lie on your back and do a complicated wiggle, because your ass? It grows exponentially. So Levi’s is out. Don’t say Guess, because I have seen those mannequins, and they could do with some fried chicken. I am ethically against entering a shop that has irrationally skinny mannequins. Tell me other brands. Quick now.

In other news, I will never get a tattoo. Or go bungee jumping. And there is absolutely no way for you to prove that I’ve been blogging from work.

Posted by rainbeau_peep at 3:26 AM | Permalink | Comments