Losing faith in people

...is very uncharacteristic of me. I get upset with them, fight with or yell at them but I never lose faith in people I know and if they are strangers, I just grumble about them but I eventually get over it.

I recently got a gift certificate for a massage and when I reached the parlour, I was surprised that it was actually a house in a quiet residential area away from the main road and not a commercial establishment. Before I went in for my appointment, I called Ashok, gave him the address of the place and told him that if I didn’t call him back in an hour, he should call back and check with me. I went in and met an extremely friendly and professional masseuse. When I saw her I felt guilty because I hadn’t trusted her enough to not have a back-up plan. Maybe this is good practice, but to me the distrust I had about an innocent stranger made me think (and what better place to do it than a massage table!)….

I don't know if this is a part of growing up and finally facing reality but lately a lot of people are letting me down. I am inclined to blame the news (Syrian Genocide, Iran Nuclear plans, Greek debt situation and the list goes on) and the biography of Steve Jobs (there are things about him in the book that I need'nt have known) but I know its more personal than that.

I always believed in the adage that good things happen to good people. It does not mean that life is always a bed of roses but it only means that every problem that occurs paves the way for something better and in the end, everything ends well. But in the situations I have been seeing, try as hard as I might, I cannot see a silver lining. I only see people bullying those who cannot stand up for themselves or for their loved ones, I only see the good hearted ones getting hurt and being helpless. I would love to be nosy, step in and fight their battles or rather give the bullies a piece of my mind but that would only make things worse.

This is a good part to insert a disclaimer - There is nothing wrong with my life or me, nobody died but I am seeing so many problems happening to people around me that I am afraid that I am letting go of my optimism and my inherent faith in the goodness of people, albeit slowly !

One simple way would be to tune myself out for a while and not get involved in others' problems but when is running away the answer to anything ? If I cannot do what I do best i.e. talk to them, when people are in trouble, then the guilt of not being there when they need me would be overwhelming.

Oh...well...this too shall pass....until then I have to bear with myself, replace books with comics, news with funny sitcoms and look harder for ways to still cling on to the optimism and faith I have left !

An ode to Sowmya....

....was written on a paper that I came across today. Well, let me rewind to 15 minutes ago......

I was turning the house upside down to find an important paper for filing our 2010 taxes. The paper was related to Ashok's work and although he insisted that he gave it to me, I couldn't find it with the rest of the paperwork and I had already spent 2 hours going through everything I had. So as a final resort, I went for the ''document bag''. The so-called document bag belongs to Ashok, where he meticulously saves everything from credit card bills to receipts to tax documents year-wise and I have strict instructions not to mess with it.

I figured (like all women...rolling eyes) that as long as I was careful in placing everything like it was stored, there is no harm in checking if the paper was in it. After a few minutes, I came across a bunch of train tickets (thanks to our long distance relationship) and I was just about to move to the next section when I noticed the word ''ode'' and ''mya'' in Ashok's calligraphic handwriting. I pondered just for a few seconds before curiousity overwhelmed me and I was rapidly drawing it out of the bunch.

A quick detour - I am not a fan of poetry, especially those that compare a girl to a flower or a moon. I am not against romance, its just that I like it with a pinch of reality. I find coming home to a warm meal (surprise dinner) after a long day at work more romantic than getting a bunch of roses while at work. I would consider the former comforting, caring and thoughtful and the latter, a nice thought but an unnecessary public display and a waste of money.

Back to the ode - It was on the back of a used train ticket (which is usually an A4 print-out) and it looked like he started writing it to while away the time during the journey. Although I started reading it with a mischievous grin (while I was mentally planning on how to make fun of him!), I had tears streaming down my cheeks when I finished it, with a rush of affection for him (while I was mentally cursing the project deadline that kept him away this weekend).

The ode was simple, cute, extremely well-written with a reminder of how well he knows me and has noticed all my little quirks - some of them lovable, some of them annoying and yet funny. It wasn't blatant flattery but it was like seeing our whole life together on a piece of paper.....I loved it and will treasure it for as long as I live.

We have known each other for 10 years and have been married for 4.5 years and if after all this time, and amidst his hectic schedule, he still finds to write something like this (and feels shy enough to hide it in his ''document bag'') I should consider myself truly blessed :) !

PS: Now one of 2 things is going to happen - he is going to see my blog or someone who sees it is going to tell him. Either way, I am going to get an earful for touching the ''document bag''...well, I deserve it :D !

PPS: I had second thoughts about writing this blog but I told myself - The ode is personal, I wouldn't dream of sharing it with anyone else but the happiness and fierce pride that comes with it is meant to be shared :) !

PPPS: Oh..my, I still haven't found the paper that started it all....

The Greens of Long-Distance Relationships

Ashok and I have had a long-distance relationship for many years and I think that qualifies me to write about it. Since everyone knows the blues of long-distance relationships – travel, double household expenses and above all, staying away from each other, I decided to throw some light on the greens.

Respect for each other’s career choices: Long-distance relationships are 99% of the time the result of career choices. When both of them are employed and the decision is not simply about the money, it calls for an understanding and respect for one’s career from the other partner. In many cases, the girl inevitably has to make the career change and while it may be practical because of a number of reasons in some cases, in most others, she simply does not have a choice. So any partner, who is willing to try a long-distance relationship for the sake of the other, immediately takes a Vishwarupam in the other’s heart.

Keeps passion alive: A relationship always survives on love but the zsa zsa zu is needed to keep the spark alive. Many of us can easily spot people who are newly weds or couples who have just started dating. This is mainly because they have too little time and too much to say/do and hence have eyes only for each other. This precisely works for a long-distance relationship where weekends are exclusively reserved for the other partner and everyone/everything else ceases to exist. Ashok amma used to make fun of me for calling her on Friday evening saying that I was saving my time over the weekend for Ashok and getting the phone calls to families out of the way! Well…guilty as charged!

More consideration and compassion: Well, its hard to fight with someone on the phone and in the age of cordless and mobile phones, its even harder to bang the phone down and create the appropriate effect. When one comes home tired after traveling, the other, however angry, will push the anger aside and choose a warm welcome instead. So its more or less abusing the absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder logic ! In addition to that, it teaches a partner (especially a man) the value of housekeeping. Being alone and fending for himself makes him more open to helping with household chores (although I have to say that nowadays most men I know do this).

Allows more traveling: Long-distance relationships mean travel…duh! So it makes taking vacations and traveling for pleasure even easier. I can’t keep count of the weekends Ashok and I spent in another European city like Madrid or Hamburg or Verona. We figured “Why meet in Munich? Why not meet elsewhere if it means traveling the same distance?”. Not to mention all the additional flying miles one accrues and that ends up as a free ticket later ! In the last week of 2010, we had just come back from a trip and we spent 4 days at home without doing anything – no travel, no restaurants, no outings, nothing (except of course grocery shopping). At the end of the 4th day, on New Year’s Eve, when we were going out to watch the fireworks, we suddenly realized that it was the first time that year we had spent 4 days at home without any plans!

Avoids the ‘we’ syndrome: We love that restaurant, we hate that movie, well, there is nothing wrong in being “we” but many couples very often lose perspective of the “I”. I personally feel that its very important to retain one’s individuality. While one learns new things for the sake of a partner and makes changes w.r.t a few other things, a relationship should not mean losing one’s identity. Ashok takes part in chess games and tournaments, I blog. He plays squash, I like table tennis. He started dancing since I like dance and I started showing interest in history since he loves it. So while we do things in common during the weekend, we also keep our separate interests alive during the week.

Time for friends: For many people (unfortunately here people means girls), a marriage (or even a relationship) means hardly any time for friends. Somehow even in this social networking age, some people never find or rather take the time to keep in touch with friends and the first excuse they give is “busy with partner” (I say excuse because the partner may still have time to keep in touch with his friends). The excuse ceases to exist, when the partner is not in town during the week.

Of course this may not work for everyone but when it works, it fosters trust and builds a foundation that makes one say “evalavo pannitom, idha panna mudiyadha” !

Well, as always, I need a disclaimer to safeguard myself. This article is in no way intended to recommend couples to have long-distance relationships. It should only serve to enlighten those who are in one such relationship and cannot see the silver lining. Any decisions you make are wholly yours and neither the author, nor the examples given can be cited to suggest otherwise :D !

Some things change....

Happy New Year Readers ! Don't worry it is not one of these new-year-resolution posts. I actually planned to write one last week in a pathetic attempt to bring the number of posts in 2010 to 100 but I decided that I liked '99' (read couldn't come up with any new year resolutions!)

Now think of concentric circles……(Time for a Flashback)

I first met him at a Hindi class. Remember those Rashtra basha, praveshika classes?? God I hated those! Is that anyway to learn Hindi? I attribute all my knowledge in Hindi to Shahrukh and his romantic (or what I thought was romantic as a stupid teenager) movies. Anyway I am digressing. He was a quiet guy always minding his own business and uttering only a few words. I liked him instantly but I was puzzled by his aloofness…until then I had never met an introvert. I slowly started talking to him and even then he would only answer questions and never say anything on his own. He was so shy that even if he saw me somewhere outside he would keep on walking without as much as a smile acknowledging my presence. At first I thought he was rude but then I realized he simply did not interact with anyone unless the other person approached him first.

I gradually learnt that he was a very diligent student at school and was also a good shuttle player. His amma always proudly showed off all the trophies he had won in the various matches. In spite of all this I learnt he hardly had any close friends and very soon it was obvious that I was probably the only one. I realized it was only because of his lack of people skills. So I started bugging him about interacting with people and asked him to follow what I was doing when I met someone. I could see that I was slowly arousing his interest since he was impressed with my network of friends and all the fun we had (well, I didn’t exactly tell him about all the trouble we got into, I figured that information was for later :D).

I was always very fond of him (I still am). He was very innocent and naïve and I always worried that people would take advantage of him. I coaxed him to be more street-smart and although he tried, it never really worked. He was 2 years younger than me, so he pretty much started following me as a mentor and we had lots of good times until I went to college. Hostel life and then coming to Germany made me lose touch with him though I would occasionally get some updates about what he was doing.

I recently found him in one of the social networks and was overjoyed. I learnt that he is not in India anymore and works for a MNC. The first few emails I got from him made me really happy. He asked me to chat with him during one of the weekends and I gladly agreed. There is one thing about catching-up with someone that you haven’t really interacted with for years, it can go both ways and unfortunately this chat went the way I hoped it wouldn’t.

During the first few minutes, he kept talking all the time that I was inordinately pleased that he is not the same introvert he was years ago. But after a while, I realized, he was consciously making himself talk, so it ends up being mind numbingly boring. He was saying the same things again or things that totally were unimportant and he was an extremely poor listener. Very soon, we had run out of things to talk and I realized I was getting both angry and annoyed. I thought to myself that I would have preferred the silent guy to the boring chatter box and it was probably because of me that he has turned into one. Its true that its been years and we have somehow drifted apart and have landed in different wavelengths. The pangs of guilt and my fondness for him made me chat with him a little longer but I knew I was stretching my patience limits and very soon I would snap. Well, that was that...it was the last time I had a chat with him. Since then, I have restricted our contact to occasional emails. I still like him and wish him well but its just not the same !

I have read somewhere that women always assume that they can influence and change a man by caring, the operative word being ‘assume’. I have often seen rogues turning into respectable gentlemen for their women or duds turning into geniuses in movies but have never come across something like that in real life. I understand that it’s not the same situation here but I can’t help but wonder if this is another delusion....

Does the girl know ?

Yesterday I was talking with someone who is a huge fan of Vijay and for some reason the conversation came around to the last scene in “Poove unakkaga” when Vijay tells the girl he loves (and whose wedding he helped arrange) a number of dialogues comparing Love to roses, thorns, bushes, exams and what not (imagine typical lalalala Vikraman music in the background)! And the girl innocently asks him “who is it that you love?”…at this point I always wonder if the guy is so naïve or if both of them are being diplomatic….because here is something you all should know: when a guy likes a girl, the girl always knows (this should be in bold, capital and a huge font size) and I mean always ! Except maybe one exception: when the girl does not know that the guy exists and he is doing long-distance sight adichufying via a telescope !

In all other cases, the girl knows. She may not accept she knows for whatever reasons (guilt, denial, prefers not to deal with it, does not want to spoil the friendship etc.) but the basic fact is she knows. I mean, how dumb can she be? If a guy goes out of his way to convince her parents to get her married to the person she loves, it shows he cares and cares really deeply. How can such care translate into anything but love?? In this case, the girl cannot ask him to stop helping her because she then would have to explain herself and deal with the fact that he is in love with her and there is nothing she can do about it. All that would accomplish is make things awkward for all of them. That’s why she vainly hopes that she is mistaken and he is indeed in love with someone else and in one last attempt of redeeming herself, she tries to hook him up with another girl.

This brings me to the concept of platonic relationships. In one phrase: Easier said than done. I don’t believe that there can be a platonic relationship between a girl and a guy if one or both of them are not already committed to someone else. Here I do not refer to friends that you meet or talk to once a month or when you bump into him/her, am only talking about people who take up a lot of your time and thoughts. When you admire someone platonically and love spending time with him/her, it is really easy to drop the “platonically” if you realize (sometimes surprisingly suddenly) you find him/her attractive as well. I am not saying its right or wrong but I am saying that it is inevitable. Take ‘Friends’ for instance – the 6 of them change relationships with each other so often that many times I have had to explain it to my frustrated and utterly shocked amma with her “ivan avaloda dhane irundhan?” questions !

So all I am saying is don’t kid yourself, have fun but tread carefully !

Disclaimer: If someone reading this post thinks “already kozhambi irukara kuttaila iva kuchiya vittu attara” then you should know that I am just a vetti blogger (who I may add is happily married :D) in her vacation mood. So I can’t be held responsible for your actions/inactions.

Chinna pasanga neenga

There are certain songs that are dear to one’s heart. Of course a lot depends on the music but there is another important factor – the phase in your life that you associate with the song. For example, you will never forget the songs you liked when you fell in love. These songs always bring a smile, irrespective of how the love affair ended, for they trigger those fond memories buried deep inside. Even if it is a passing crush, every song you hear about a beautiful girl will remind you of the girl you have a crush on, any duet will have you as a hero/heroine in it.

I had all these thoughts when an acquaintance mentioned the problems he was having with his 14 year old daughter. He was frustrated with how she was listening to the same song over and over again, and how she kept texting/emailing all day long. Finally he confessed saying it was a nightmare having to deal with a teenage girl and that he would easily raise three boys in place of one girl! I have to say I agree with him. Boys generally are or at least seem uncomplicated. Young boys get into trouble too but usually the kind of mischief is foreseeable and they will come around in their own pace. On the other hand, girls go around assuming they know what is right, so there is no hope of them coming around unless they have a revelation; a lesson learnt the hard way and sometimes even that wouldn’t help! They are confused, sneaky, subject to mood swings and the worst part is one should always expect the unexpected with them.

When I saw ‘Vinnai thandi varuvaya’ the first thought that occurred to me was ‘paavam pasanga’ (poor men!), I really pity them for having to deal with such confused girls. And in the movie, Trisha was supposed to be an intelligent working woman. If a girl like her does not have some clarity about what she wants from life, then one can imagine what teenage girls will be like.

Mind you, just because I supported men in the last few sentences does not mean I am going to let my kind down! It drives me nuts when I hear filmy dialogues like “naanga ponna partha udane decide panniduvom, ungala madhri payyan kitta panam irukku velai irukanu pakka maatom’ (Man cares only about the girl, girl cares about his job and money) because it simply makes no sense. Men are, in most of the cases, superficial. If a girl is good looking, half the work is done. Then they just look for other reasons to complete the rest of the work. For women, its much more than good looks, it’s the ability to be able to count on him for everything and to inspire this kind of trust, it either takes time or at least a few gestures. Irrespective of how career oriented a woman is, there are certain times when she wants to be dependent on her partner financially (for eg: when she is in the family way or when she takes a break from her career to raise the kids).…so no wonder she wants to know about how he makes money and how much. A princess marrying a pauper happens only in the movies.

I am digressing…..I was listening to Satrangi re today, a song that touches a key in my heart anytime I hear it and there were times when I used to listen to this over and over again and drive appa crazy :D! This time it spurred on the rest of the thoughts too (and hence this post). I think youngsters today have a lot to contend with. Needless to say, there is the school/college/career pressure. Besides that there are numerous temptations right from facebook to easily accessible porn and the technology gives them a loophole to sneak around more easily since most parents are nowhere close to being tech-savvy. I don’t see any problem with some kadalai (harmless flirting) on one of the online forums or sms but many of them get carried away unnecessarily and make decisions that they would probably end up regretting for the rest of their lives. The sad part is there is no use in pointing it out to them because they will never understand it before its too late.

Girls are becoming more and more vulnerable – an arrear or even a gain in weight depresses them and they fall for the next guy who is nice to them and swears that she is the most beautiful/talented girl on the planet. I can understand how such compliments at the right time are ego boosting, well, enjoy those compliments, revive your spirits and move on! What is the hurry in making a decision to marry that guy then and there?! Well that seems like the most natural thing to do according to the recent blockbuster they saw!

Boys (am not sure they are men!) are becoming more and more pathetic – fall in love, yes, but please hold on to your self-respect! I am getting sick of these orkut invites I get from unknown guys and when I check out their profiles to make sure I really don’t know them, more than half of them claim to die if they don’t get the girl to agree! Sure, some of them are just words but the very attitude behind them liking and displaying these words is disturbing. Guys, please, take a stand, have some ego.

What they both don’t understand is that they haven’t seen enough of life yet, once they go out of their ‘world’ for studying or working, they are likely to meet many interesting people and many of them then realize with a sigh that they are already committed leading to nasty break-ups (I am seeing far too many news items right from stabbing to acid throwing!).

It is completely natural to have a crush, have a soft corner for someone or to like someone. But why make a drama out of it and petrify the parents (who probably met for the first time on their engagement or even wedding day), why blow it all out of proportion and make the front page?!

Girls/guys, enjoy being young, make friends, have fun, flirt, but keep your head and don’t worry about the ‘right’ one now…..

This is all most likely going to fall on deaf ears but I am considering it my good deed for the day....