The prologue

There are 2 or more sides to a story but what most don't bother to read is the prologue. Seen as a useless piece attached to the drama that unfolds, it was originally something which helped the audience cross-over- from their lives as shoe-makers, businessmen, authors and doctors to a moment which the play-write wanted them to experience. He did so because he wanted to paint a picture in their mind as close to what he envisioned in his. The background and the setting was to place things in context for the rest of the show to make sense as much to a bored-out-of-her-skull housewife as to a arduous muse of a famous pianist. It's a pity that paying heed to the prologue is out of fashion now because it helped define whatever the weaver wanted to weave; without it his work of art would be abstract even if he didn't intend for it to be so.

This takes me back to a conversation which I'm glad I was a part of very early in my life. I've known quite a few who'd confuse this with a debate over 'socially acceptable rights and wrongs' but I prefer to call it my contempt for believing in an 'eternal truth'.
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There was once a girl who feared defeat, she laughed at others for she was not going to give them a chance to mock her. She fortified for she worried she'd lose ground if she didn't. She was selfish because she decided that is the way es muss sein. A lot of people around her cringed when she opened her shrill mouth or rolled their eyes (claiming to be a bigger self) and passed her off as insecure. She couldn't care less.

Prologue: There was once a girl who lost her father when she was 10. All that remained of him were faint memories of his chatter and toys that he bought for her. She realized soon that now she didn't get the shiny car that she wanted from the shop window no matter how much she wailed. She adapted and soon she stopped asking for it. Seeing her mom work from morn to dusk- what she understood of life was that you've got to put up a long hard battle to get what you want. That's all she was trying for: to not be caught unprepared.

The truth you see is very different from the truth I see. You see a wrecked home and frown at the newness which caused it, but he sees long periods of silence and all the happiness that should've been but was'nt. You see a misfit but his friend's see a bundle of nerves. You see an innocent girl with no issues and hang-ups, but I see someone who strategically refuses to open her mouth to orchestrate what she wants.

Well here's what makes the difference- there is no ONE prologue which helps us cross-over. In that sense all our views are coloured. There is no eternal truth, the great thing about life is we can make it as subjective as we want to (reminds me of marketing and how much grey there is to it) and no you needn't agree with me because otherwise I'd be going against what I believe in :)

P.S: Knowing all the answers is not so much fun as it is to be able imagine questions which break the code.

The Wishing Well

I wish there was one in my backyard. I'd either plan my kitchen garden around it or do it up in stylish minimalism using small marble pebbles and white bricks with ivy creepers. 

If I could use it only once and only for myself I'd be confused between the following questions:

1. What am I born to do 

2. What should I do

3. What will I be happy doing

The determinants for the first two would be different- What am I born to do immediately links it to destiny. What should I do is an incomplete question; it should be followed by- what should I do if I'm looking to ...follow my creative pursuits or earn more money or travel the world etc.

What I'll be happy doing is one question which I may think could mean many things but all of which start with a warm fuzzy feeling in the belly. The scales don't weigh equally for long and a lot of times what upsets this state  is the contradiction of two things that make you happy and together they drive you mad (Not delirious with joy but like a raging bull attempting to run into a wall). You have trouble identifying them because they don't appear seemingly contradictory at all.  Warm baths make me happy and so do pretty dresses which happen to be expensive (lets put a number to that so you can get a clear picture- Rs. 25000 lets say). I never have to choose between them because they appeal to two entirely different need states. However my job which pays me that extra Rs. 25000 for the pretty dress doesn't give me the time to take pleasure in the nice long warm bath and if I decide to chuck it I won't really have that pretty expensive dress to put on. Hence Incomplete happiness is even more upsetting, at least if I had none I'd concentrate my efforts focusing on one. 

My random ramblings won't stop until I chase wholeheartedly and that's possible only if there's one direction to run in.

The wishing well project is my attempt to figure out which direction to head for. I know I want to do 'something', I think I know what puts a smile on my face. I have managed to turn anxious high pitched noises of people embedded in diaphragms into muffled voices. But what I still don't have is a game plan; I don't know if I need one.... all I need is a blur for me to scrape through. 

Saluting the bimbettes

The world of YWAs (young working adults) gets increasingly judgmental with each power band and obviously they transition from YWAs to OWAs during this process. They tend to escape the frivolity of what they fret at, by scrutinizing the people down below, who appear much happier compared their own unhealthy worn-out selves. Of course there are exceptions who might soften when they reach the self-actualization phase or when they reach burn-out.

The one place where their ability to comb and sift is stronger than usual is not in office but at airports. I am guessing it could purely be a function of time at hand and the fact that the silent piercing and probing is projected at strangers and they in turn need not be bothered about the glances scanning them in return. The moment two laptop semi-owners run into each other they notice 1. the models of one another's laptops and handsets 2. The label on the shirt and the leather on the shoes (I'm discounting people who hail from south India here- these are things they won't waste their precious money on (the sole purpose of it being yellow gold or an education abroad).

Well at one such time when I was ambling around a book shop at the airport I noticed a sold-his-soul-to-a-corporate man staring at me and almost sighing as I was getting the latest copy of Vogue billed. The next instant he picked up the Economist. Clearly fashion was not his forte but what right did that give him to condemn it outright. It is funny that his ticket to intellectual superiority was a copy of the Economist (even though he slept midway while navigating through an article). And this is how..exactly how, that people with faces which definitely don't delight brand the fairer/thinner others and penalize them for having something that they themselves don't posses. Now I don't have enough dough but I don't remember ever taking pot-shots at Indra Nooyi's badly-gone-wrong haircut.

I enjoy my bimbotic moments also because this word now encapsulates even the finer feminine things thanks to bespectacled rotund men and women in blazers. And after this post, never again will I write-off a bimbette because at least they do complete justice to what they bring to the table; they never promised to meet deadlines or come up with path-breaking ideas anyway. And EOD they're easy on the eyes-For every ugly CEO there are 3 pretty secretaries who make your day:) Here's saluting each one of them!

Go Play!

I'm a nerd...been one all my life. And I've been driven by a singular motivation all my life- To earn more money. It began with wanting that red, white and blue square label on the sleeve of my top, then wanting that crushed black silk off-shoulder dress to lately dreaming of an Oscar De La Renta.

My mum thankfully instilled lots of self-pride into me to earn things myself than to lean on someone who earns  gold biscuits. But I did go ahead and base my career decisions on it. I could have been a real writer and not an abstract blogger..I could have translated the designs in my head to patterns on cloth rather than hoping that the tailor would deliver to my taste. But instead, here I am a passionate marketer with just a perspective on things that someone else creates.

Words like S.A.F.E, BACKUP and REVISION continue to dictate my life even now. To uproot myself is difficult to fathom. Don't know what it'll feel like to break away from the comfort of shiny paper bags. Then I think a little more and it feels what I fear is answering the larger-than-life question 'Who am I'? which is now synonymous with 'What do I do'. Well why can't it be as simple as- I'm (someone who loves to sing) or (a really great friend to have) or (neck deep in love with my boyfriend).

I have this very strong feeling that I will not regret letting go off a 10 lakh salary jump, neither will I regret not building enough resourceful contacts or being considered flaky. What I will instead have qualms about is:

Not being enough of -an affectionate daughter, a doting wife, a helpful friend, a rock solid sibling
Not being able to walk in the clouds because I was too afraid to trek up that mountain
Not being able to travel far and wide because I needed luxurious stays
Not being able to deal with my finances because I don't understand investments or tax or internet banking
Not reading all the books I've wanted to read because of lack of time
Never being able to sing the same way again as I used to 7 yrs back

....Not having contributed anything significant to the country or to the world ....Now that is mediocre!

And no amount of money will make up for the mediocrity.

So I don't HAVE to fare well in the next appraisal, neither do i NEED to be seen in good light by my boss, I also don't HAVE to echo someone else's thoughts. All I need to do is just LIVE....

For my life won't be defined by designations from now...it'll be defined by doing all the things which I thought I could never do....So I'm going to go Play! :)