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Friday, 30 December 2016
New Year's Eve
Tuesday, 20 December 2016
The Thing About Unrequited Love
I read a lot of the classics as a child. One of my favourites was Little Women. I was heartbroken when Jo didn't reciprocate Laurie's affections. Back then, I believed that if you loved someone, they were obligated to love you back. It was almost like a contract. Come to think of it, my thoughts closely mirrored Shahrukh Khan's character in Darr. But, it was the done thing, wasn't it? That the girl eventually fell for the guy or vice versa? It was a foolproof formula, guaranteed to be a hit with its audience. It wasn't until much later that I realised that you don't love someone on the condition that they love you back. You love them because you chose to. They didn't ask you to do anything of the sort. You can't resent them for not feeling the same way. Its easier said than done though. And, as someone who has never experienced romantic reciprocity (I'm told I'm a little frightening when I like someone-and you've all read about my legendary flirting technique), its really hard to deal with the rejection. So, what do you do? How do you deal with it? You could be melodramatic like me and say, "I'm not meant for love" or you could be philosophical and say, "When it's meant to be, it will be". I'm like a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to the other. But one thing no one should ever do is be like Ranbir Kapoor's character in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil-he just can't take no for an answer. Even K-k-k-kiran was less annoying and creepy than he was. He gives a bad name to lovers everywhere. He wants her because he can't have her. He's that one guy trying so desperately to get out of the friendzone, but keeps getting sucked back in. You should know when to cut your losses and leave. Because I believe that we were rejected for the sole reason that we were meant for someone else. And the sooner we understand that, the sooner we find our happy ending. And well, heartbreak is one of the biggest inspirations (after reciprocal love :P). At least something good came out of it, right?
(P.S. I've been asked why I write about love so much. I do think about it more than anyone with any common sense should. I think it's all the love stories I've read. They've filled my head with unrealistic notions. My writings are my way of coming to terms with it)
Monday, 17 October 2016
Why Every Girl Should Have a Girlfriend
Every girl should have a girlfriend. At least one. Because while boys are great fun to be with, they don't quite compare to a girlfriend. It's only with your girlfriends that you can sit looking like a homeless person and still behave like you're Miss Universe. A girlfriend will always tell you how nice you look when you're at a party because she knows the effort that has gone into your outfit and well, everyone likes a compliment, don't they? Also, who better to sit and gossip with? Having a girlfriend is almost as necessary as breathing. With your girlfriends, you can sing off-key, dance like absolute fools, exchange beauty tips and drool on celebrities and the cute boys in your class. Girlfriends are also there during all the issues. The heartbreak, the fights, the loss of a sense of purpose. They understand. They empathize. They also hold a way bigger grudge than you possibly could for the ones who hurt you. What makes a girlfriend special is the fact that she doesn't have to be like you, doesn't even have to have the same interests as you and yet, she manages to understand you on a level that no one else possibly can. Sure, there is the passive aggressive fighting which can implode once in a while, but true girlfriends will always be there for each other in anyway possible-to comfort, to bitch, to gossip, to lift each other's spirits, to be brutally honest even when it hurts, to stick up for each other and also to stop each other from becoming high maintenance divas. Girlfriends are your friends till the very end. And also, us girls have got to stick together!
Wednesday, 28 September 2016
Notebooks
I have a notebook. A beautiful notebook. Filled with pages made of handmade paper and covered with handlooms from Jaipur. When I see a beautiful notebook, I feel compelled to buy it. I have no idea what I'm ever going to use it for..not for college notes definitely, it's much too gorgeous and precious for that. Beautiful notebooks make me think of poetry. Of Keats, Dickinson, Neruda and Rumi. Beautiful notebooks-leather bound and filled with not just yellowing pages but also a promise of a story. The slightly musty but nevertheless irresistible smell of the pages are like sirens. Calling you to them, asking you, begging you to write in them; to confide your deepest, darkest secrets. Notebooks, to most people, are just inanimate objects- you write in them and throw them away when you don't need them anymore. For me, they're stories waiting to be written. Maybe not heard, but written.
Notebooks give you a chance to be unapologetically yourself, no judgements. You can be mean, sappy, lovesick or euphoric, a notebook is always willing to listen. While novels and storybooks are good friends in their own right, they are always telling you their own story. A notebook lets you tell your own.
Thursday, 30 June 2016
Flirting 101
Today, I exclaimed to my mom about how I cannot flirt to save my life. Literally, even if there was a gun to my head, I would not be able to flirt with anyone. I just cannot imagine batting my eyelashes and twirling a lock of my hair. I'm one of those people who goes red in the face and starts talking absolute bullsh*t when I like someone. I cannot flirt. It is physically impossible. Like a lot of conversations with my mom which start out innocently enough, this one turned into a monologue about how I can improve myself. My mom says that the reason for my ineptness at flirting is because I'm never myself around the opposite sex. She says and I quote, I'm in a constant state of hyperactivity around boys which turns them off. I don't ever relax and show them the "real me". I can't even fathom how lame I am that I'm actually taking flirting tips from mother dearest. Anyway, she continued by saying that I let out this force of negative energy around most people, which also isn't very attractive. Because who really wants more negativity in their lives? I must clarify, I'm not a bundle of negativity all the time. In college, I'm a ray of sunshine (which my mom says, is the reason I have so many friends). With most people, I close myself off, putting up an invisible wall because I'm afraid they won't like me for me. I start to pretend to be someone else and it all becomes a vicious circle. I'm afraid they will mock me for being a nerd and a dork and I cease to be comfortable in my own skin. My mom says that there's only one rule in flirting- be authentic. Any fool can spot a phoney from a mile away. So let's see, I'll give my flirting skills a shot the next time I spot a cute guy. And who knows, maybe he will be unable to resist my goofy charms!
Tuesday, 7 June 2016
Faith
Sometimes I wonder what is more important-faith or love? By faith, I dont mean faith in God. I mean faith in a person. It's easy to love someone but have no faith in them. But if you don't love someone, you can never have faith in them. Faith, to me, is an irrevocable belief that you can do it. No matter what anyone says. I have faith in a lot of things. I have faith in my mother, in my sister. I have faith that somewhere out there, my soul mate is waiting for me. I have faith that I will find my way. I have faith that everyone has good in them. I have faith in the idea of faith. Having someone have faith in you is frightening and exhilarating. You don't want to let them down, but it somehow propels you to work harder. When someone doesn't have faith in you, or you don't have faith in yourself, what's going to push you to succeed? I think faith is even more important than love. Because you rarely choose whom you love. But you can choose to have faith in that person. Faith is something that you have to earn. You can love your dog with all your heart, but you needn't have faith that it's not going to eat up the trash when you're not looking.
I'm still working on having faith in myself. Its not as easy as it looks. It's only when I believe that I can do it that others can take a leap of faith when it comes to me.
Wednesday, 18 May 2016
Trying before buying
I don't understand the concept of an arranged marriage. I mean, you meet the guy once or twice and decide that you want to spend the rest of your life with him? Look at it this way, when you go shopping for a dress, you don't just buy the first thing you see, right? You check how it fits, whether it is comfortable, whether you have accessories that go with it, how many occasions you can wear it for. You parade around in it to see if you make a statement, whether the outfit is 'YOU'. So much fuss for a dress and just one encounter is enough to make one of the most important decisions of your life? You have to try before you buy, right? You could argue that the parents have probably checked out his background, but they can't really check out his personality can they? Just because you seem compatible on paper doesn't mean that you're compatible in real life. I mean, the parents can introduce the guy to you, and you can date him for a while. Get comfortable with each other and decide whether you are right for each other. Honestly, this is a person you expect to spend the rest of your life with, it's not a spontaneous, spur of the moment decision you just jump into. It may sound insanely romantic, but it's just insane.
Saturday, 7 May 2016
The Dying Breed of Gentlemen
Gentlemen are a dying breed. I know I'm a feminist, but that does not mean I want men to stop being gentlemen. My grandfather is a gentleman. He waits at the door until we are backed out of the driveway, he stands up when someone walks into the room, he holds the door open. And it's not that he does it just with the ladies, he does it with everyone. Because that's what a gentleman is. He, who treats everyone with respect and honour. Not because it's the right thing to do, but because he believes that everyone deserves it. He, who calls the waiter by his name and not by clicking his fingers. He, who listens to whatever the other person says with complete concentration, without looking bored, because he is genuinely interested.
Being a gentleman is not an art. A gentleman is just a man who's gentle and kind and caring and considerate. And when did we lose sight of this?
As for me, the man I fall in love with will have some very large shoes to fill. I have had the exceptional example of my grandfather, haven't I?
Friday, 22 April 2016
A Childhood Memory
Tuesday, 8 March 2016
One Year Later
The Redundancy of the Arts
Thursday, 11 February 2016
Where Do We Begin?
I was sitting in my political science class the other day and my teacher was talking about women and politics. She stated that no female politician in India had risen to the top without some connection to an influential man. Sonia Gandhi would not have entered the political arena had there not been so many deaths in her family. Mayawati wouldn't be a political force had it not been for Kanshi Ram. Also, the women haven't done much for women's rights. Another observation my teacher made is that, they haven't come to power out of a struggle or a movement. It wasn't like the suffragette movement in England. Women in India have never really gotten up and fought for anything as a United front. The Nirbhaya case brought us together and yet, we haven't achieved much.
The problem is, where do we even start? Do we fight for equal pay? Do we fight for safer streets? Do we fight so that future generations do not have to listen to,"Tum wahan gayi kyun?"(why did you go there?), when groped in public? Do we fight for the simple reason that we deserve to be treated as equals? Not metaphorically, not opportunistically, but truly. Where do we start?
Wednesday, 3 February 2016
Bidding Adieu and Saying Hello
It's officially my last day on earth as a teenager. Tomorrow I shall become an adult. A real life, walking, talking adult. Huh. That doesn't sound as frightening and ominous as I thought it would. So what did I do to commemorate this very sacred day? I studied. Quite mature of me, no? Perhaps premonitive of the years to come. It's been nice being a teenager. Tantrums were considered rebellion, identity began to take shape, opinions were formed, friends were made, friends were lost, pimples were a constant enemy, so was a widening waistline. And as all good things come to an end, I bid my teenage years goodbye and say hello to my twenties. Here's to a whole new decade of establishing who I am; here's to a decade of actually acting my age; here's to a decade of falling in love (fingers crossed), here's to a decade of no childish temper tantrums (I will try my best), and finally, here's to the decade that I've been looking forward to since before I knew what it was like to grow up. Hello new friend, I hope we are good to each other. We are grown ups, are we not?
Wednesday, 20 January 2016
The Infinite Possibilities
I'm turning twenty in less than a month. Twenty! That feels so... Old, as a friend put it so eloquently! And yet I feel like I've barely lived. I've not even made a dent in my mental bucket list. At my age, James and Lily Potter were married, Harry was just around the corner and they were fighting the Dark Lord. Bella Swan (idiot that she is) married Edward Cullen at 18. Percy Jackson saved the world at 16; and again at 17. All I'm fighting, albeit half-heartedly, are pimples and an expanding waistline. I've done a decent job with the pimples though.
Twenty feels final. There's no turning back now. It's like an initiation into the adult world. You can't use the excuse of being a kid every time you make a mistake. The mistakes you make now could very well be permanent. But sadly, this is probably the decade you'll make most of your mistakes as well. I'll just comfort myself with the thought that everything happens for a reason. But honestly. Me, an adult? Really? Isn't an adult supposed to have, like, survival skills? And yet, here I am at the doorstep of the official club of adulthood, attending my first potluck and I've forgotten to bring what was asked of me. Can I get kicked out? How are we supposed to have it all figured out by now? Or at least, how do we appear to have it all figured out?
I feel like I'm standing at a crossroads. Conflicted, confused. Much like the poem 'The Road Not Taken'. Can't life be like maths or science? Where there's only one right answer? Why does it have to be like a subject of humanities-one with infinite answers?
And yet, I feel a sense of excitement that maybe now my life will truly begin. I will finally grow up (I don't have much of a choice, do I? :P). And, eventually, I will figure out how to deal with the Sun not shining on my life all the time. It shall be a beautiful adventure
Oh well, leaving you just as confused as I feel, yours truly,
Pallavi