Crappy Birthday To Me

It’s my birthday today. Big deal. I feel just like I do any other day. I am doing the same things I do everyday. I feel nothing special about today or about myself. I am not one of those people who likes to celebrate birthdays, probably for the same reasons I prefer to lie on my bed on new year’s eve while all my friends are out partying. Maybe it has something to do with the years passing, time slipping away, opportunities bungled or lost completely. What worries me especially on this day is that I may never be able to fulfill my promises, that my dreams would remain just that, and that I may never be successful at the things that matter most to me. My paranoia is fueled by the fact that I actually have had to abandon some of my dreams as the years passed by. And no matter how much I accomplish or where I am in life, when my birthday approaches, I feel the same way. I feel like I didn't do enough, or loved enough, or wrote enough. I am clearly a the-glass-is-half-empty type of person. Sad, I know.

I don’t usually let people know when my birthday is. Only my immediate family knows and a few close friends. I just don’t like people making a big fuss out of it. Nevertheless, I have deliberately kept it public on my Facebook. I am doing a little experiment on human hypocritical behaviour. I love to see some of my Facebook “friends” leave a message on my wall on my birthday asking for a ‘treat’ or where the party is. Yeah sure! You haven’t been in touch with me the whole year but since you left a message, I would gladly give you a treat and invite you to the party. Pathetic. It makes me feel good about myself that I am not like that. I will not wish someone on their birthday if I haven’t kept in touch the rest of the year. That’s that. I don’t care if they feel offended.

I cringe every year as my birthday looms around the corner, knowing that it will be just like every other birthday, filled with disappointment. I realise that expectations have a huge part to play in my hatred for birthdays, and maybe a tad bit of loneliness. However, I genuinely enjoyed my birthday in 2009 because I had some very close friends and loved ones who made it special. But as I look back now, I can't help but regret having had a good time because it wasn't long after that that we drifted apart. I am not even in touch with some of them now. And so, I really hate birthdays. 

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate YOUR birthday, just mine. Neither do I detest celebrating someone else's birthday. In fact, even though I don’t exactly enjoy it, I do make it a point to remember and wish people close to me on their birthday or buy them presents if I am not broke, partly because I value my relationships and I know how much they look forward to it.  However, I just don’t like celebrating mine because I don’t feel like it is worth celebrating. I hate getting presents now, and I hate people wishing me a happy birthday. There is nothing happy about it. It kills me when someone buys me a present on my birthday. I hate it that they feel obligated to buy me something. Of course, I would love it if someone told me how glad they were that I am alive on a random day, or if someone bought me something randomly that they thought I would like. But that hardly happens now. Of course, it wasn't always this way. In my younger days, I actually looked forward to my birthday and the presents and celebration that followed. I thoroughly enjoyed my sixteenth birthday, reveled in my freedom at eighteen, got drunk at twenty-one, but now I am almost appalled at the thought of it all. It feels so suffocating now. In fact, other people seem to be far more happier about my birthday than I am. My flatmates and a few of my friends are throwing me a small party tonight. I don't blame them. They probably think I am going to love it. I really want to, but I probably wouldn't. Yet, like every year someone throws a party for me, I will pretend or at least try to love what they did for me. I really hope none of them reads this.

Crappy Birthday to me.

Rain - 6 Word Story

The rain washed away the tears.

Rain - 6 Word Story

It rained, the day you left.

A Tainted Love

For a very long time, I believed that there was nothing that I would get to know about her that would surprise me. That no matter what I learned of her, from her or someone else, however expected or unexpected, would hurt me or upset me. I was absolutely sure that I knew her inside out, everything that she was capable of, her every thought, every fear, every dream. This was one of the reasons that I kept going back to her again and again, knowing that she was the only person in the world whom I was sure I was not mistaken about. Of course, there were times when I wished she was not like the way she was, that she was better than the person that she was becoming. One mistake I made was to think that I was responsible for protecting her just because of the fact that I was in love with her; that I was supposed to shelter her from the evils of the world. Alas, the more I tried to hold her, the more she seemed to fight back and slip away. Maybe I was too protective of her or maybe it was in her nature to trod a self-destructive path. I really do not know. Maybe if I had continued to let her mar me, she would still have been here by my side today. Then again, I know now that I was blindly worshipping a fallen goddess, believing in a false religion.

I won't lie to myself. I still miss her sometimes. To be truthful, I am not even sure anymore if I still love her, but I know that I still care for her and probably will for the rest of my days. Believe me, I have tried to forget her. I destroyed every piece of memory, physical or otherwise, that would remind me of our better days. I am still learning to try to live without her in my life. Actually, the credit goes to her alone for my endeavour to do so. If she hadn't done the things that she did or said the things that she said, I would probably have been wallowing in pools of self-pity, and destruction. However, even if I was or still am, I'd never let it show, neither to her, nor to anyone else. I had always been soothed by the presence of my protective shell. Whenever I felt fear, or lonesomeness, I would curl up inside my shell until the feelings subsided. On one such occasion, she expressed her desire to know her way in through my shell. Being the blind love-struck fool that I was, I found nothing wrong in letting her in. I even went to the extent of letting her take the shell away. I no longer had something to protect me with and I felt I didn't need any because I trusted her to never lead me back to those dark corners, not when all I saw in her was light. She then went on to tell me that she wanted me to tell her everything that I felt inside and I faithfully did. Every time I was hurt, or sad because of something she said or did, I would tell her. But for her, it was only an opportunity to make me realize that she was still going to do what she wished even if it meant hurting me in the process. I soon started feeling as if I lay naked on the cold floor as she slowly and painfully peeled the skin off my body. And yet, I kept going on, despite the many new wounds everyday. Some healed with time, some left their scars forever etched on my soul, and some are fresh to this day. And then I had the revelation that she wasn't the only one to blame for them. I was letting her do this to me and I was convinced that if I took even more step, I would surely die. It was then that I decided to let myself loose of the appalling fantasy that she had trapped me for so long. I came out a stronger man, yet forever weakened in the deepest trenches of my being. Since then, I've become too afraid to show emotion. I'm scared of even the thought of getting close to a stranger, for after her, everyone is a stranger.


Despite all that, how pitiful is that the only person I confided in when I was struggling with suicidal thoughts for a long time, was her? How sad is it that the only person in the world whom I could trust to understand what I was going through was the one who had driven me to that point? Then again, as I said, I didn't blame her completely for what I had become. She had every right to live her life the way she wanted to. I should have realized it when she showed the first signs of wanting to be a free bird. I should have let her go, and at one point I really thought I had. Her presence in me was so strong, her power over me so intense, that it actually took infidelity for me to try to break away the strongholds that she had on my heart and mind. And when she found out, I expected and really wanted her to never want to see my face again. Of course, I whispered my apologies because I did not want her to hate me for what I had done. I must say, I was surprised when she forgave me. I tortured myself for a long time with pangs of guilt and self-loathing because of that. I considered myself to be the bad one, not deserving of her love. And so I quietly walked away from her life, leaving her with remnants of my vague reasons for doing so. At first I hated myself for it but eventually found peace in knowing that I had done the right thing. I wanted her to find a love far greater than the one I had for her. She soon felt she found it in a person I had never expected, or wanted her to. I wondered then if fate was yanking at my strings like an evil puppeteer, not knowing that it was just the beginning of sorrows yet to come.

I had promised myself a while back that I would not write about her anymore. And when I kept that promise, I found that my blog lay vacant. Even the people who reveled, and sometimes mourned in my sadness, had slowly stopped dropping by. I realised that if I kept my promise, I would never be able to write again. I struggled for months to write something that didn't have undertones of her influence on me but I was fighting a lost battle. Just like everything else in my life, she had possessed even this. No matter how hard I tried, my every poem, my every word, became about her even when I didn't want them to. She often used to complain that I never wrote her a 'happy' poem. She felt that my sad and dark poems made her look bad. I, of course, knew it was not true. She just could never see the meaning behind them. I'm sure that if she somehow was to read this, she would feel the same way she always felt, that this too is about her. She would feel that I want people to see her as some kind of soulless monster who fed on my emotions. If I could, I would then tell her that like the many others I wrote before, I didn't intend to make this one about her either. All I wanted was to write about how I felt, what I was going through. It was supposed to be about me, and me alone. And yet, as I read it back, I see that it's going to be hard to believe that. If she had ever known me, she would have figured it out a long time ago that to write about me was to write about her. Of course, I'm certain now that she would never come to that realization. She has moved on, to better places and better people than my heart and me.

What is the state of my mind now? I often ask myself that. I wonder if I would ever be as close to a person as I was to her. I ask myself over and over again if I would ever be able to trust another woman with my heart and soul. Of one thing I am sure. I know that I was once a part of a tainted love that could have been pure and sacred under different circumstances or by making different choices. Whatever the reason may be for the way I am today, whether it be fate, or God, or just chance, nothing and no one will ever be able to erase that taint on my soul.

- The Lover @ Soul Intoxicated

Rebirth

Sometimes life brings you to a certain point where you don't know what to do. You can't even find the reasons behind your confusion and sometimes you feel like crying for nothing and yet you can't cry, or shout out loud but you can't. It is really irritating when this happens because even if you are around people, or hanging out with your friends, your mind seems to drift away, trying to search and pinpoint the reasons behind this restlessness.

I was restless that day. I made some tea and went to the rooftop along with my radio. It was dusk and the lights from the vast cityscape shimmered like stars. I slowly sipped my tea, smoked a cigarette while listening to the random songs playing on the radio. Something had been bothering me all day. I couldn't put a finger on what exactly it was. I really needed to get high, to keep my mind off of this for a while. I decided to call her. I remembered the last time we smoked pot, we ended up getting philosophical. Maybe this time too, I might be able to find an answer.

"Hey..."

"Hey..."

"I need to talk to you...come to the rooftop...and bring some."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing...just some shit I need to figure out...I'm already there.."

"Okay...see you in five."

I was lying on my side on the cool cement floor staring into oblivion when I heard her footsteps. She promptly came and sat next to me. None of us spoke for a while. She took out a joint, lit it up and passed it to me. I took a deep drag and felt relief as I felt the smoke in the back of my throat. I then passed it back to her. We had our silent conversation for a while while passing it back and forth. We sat there listening to random people calling up the RJ and talking to him about their problems. I wondered why they did that.

"These people share their shit with the RJ because they don't have many people they can trust." She looked at me. Could she read my thoughts? Maybe she said it randomly. She passed me the last bit of the joint but I refused.

"Now...tell me what happened?" she asked putting her right hand over my shoulders.

"I've been getting restless about a lot of things but I can't figure out what those things are...you know what I mean?" I looked at her to see if it made any sense to her. She was staring at her feet. I continued anyway. "And it is eating up my head. That is why I thought of smoking weed because then we talk and it clears my head."

"So did it?" she asked.

"No."

"Well it's simple..." she said suddenly shifting her position, now facing me, a weird glow on her face. I knew answers were coming, the weed was having it's effect.

"....do you believe in rebirth?"

"What has that got to do with what I am feeling? No, I don't. I think it is all crap."

"Hmm. You feel as if there is no fun in life anymore and you just can't figure out what to do next?"

It was more of an answer than a question but she was right. I felt exactly like that.

"But why? I mean...I've had fun, I've done amazing crazy things, I've had good friends...though most of them are not there anymore...but.."

"You're dead."

It felt like a punch on my chest and my heart almost stopped for a moment. There was so much conviction in her voice that for a second I really thought I was dead.

"What do you mean I am dead? Can't you see me sitting here? Now don't tell me I am a ghost." I lit up the second joint she had brought.

"You have finished a life...see, a lifetime is divided into parts called life. You've finished one."

I passed the joint to her. "You don't make any sense."

"Well...since you have finished a life, you're dead...and it's time to take a rebirth and start a new life. Throw away the leftovers of your past life...live this new life in a different way. Stop thinking about why you can't get back your old days and start thinking about what to do next."

And then it struck me.  I realized I was irritated by the fact that I was stuck in the past for too long. I didn't want to move on in life. I had to die and be born again, start a new life in a new way. She was right. She always is.  Somehow she managed to hit me hard with facts every time in her own weird way and I loved it. Maybe I should never have left her, but it's too late, and we are better off like this.

"You're right." I said, and she smiled at me. She got up and pointed to the front of her T-shirt. It said "I Am Always Right".

"But what if I don't want to die? Maybe just fall asleep for a while? Won't that work too?" I felt like a fool asking her this after everything she explained but I wasn't ready to die just yet. This time she laughed and turned around. The back of her T-shirt said, "You Are Right Too."

I smiled.

- The Lover@SoulIntoxicated

Once Again...

Once again, I feel that emptiness

raging intensely,

filling up my soul.

It reminds me of the promises

never made to be fulfilled.

Once again, the man in the mirror 

looks sad.

A fading shadow of a happiness.

I turn off the light to let that face

dissolve in the darkness of the night.

Once again, pour a million drops

of the rain of reasons to cry.

The earth swells with tears

falling from my eyes,

perhaps to touch her.

Once again, December comes,

colder than before,

sending shivers down.

I did not love the cold,

but it was winter in my heart.

Once again, a star fell,

as I wished 'let me forget'.

So many stars have broken since.

My sky is almost void

but her thoughts return.

Once again, I hear that note,

of the perfect music.

I stopped and listened,

to my favorite song.

Someone had called out her name again.

- The Lover @ SoulIntoxicated

The Grass Is Always Greener On The Other Side...Or Is It?

It does not matter how beautiful the fence is, or how wide the space it encloses in is, the colors outside of the fence are always brighter. The paths and the places the paths lead to, enshrouded in the cloak of optimistic expectations and imagination beckon us to walk on, past the carefully posted pickets and come closer. I suppose it could be because ignorance leaves a lot of room for imagination. Perfection may be impossible to achieve but it is easy to dream about. All that is prohibited acquires a silver fantastical sheath merely because it is forbidden, because it's put up on a shelf and cannot be had. It is safe to imagine the extent of its beauty, the magnitude of its splendor. It's so much fun to play around with the delicious thoughts of breaking the rules, the thrill of crossing barriers and jumping fences.

I have such a short attention span and even if I am surrounded by shiny objects, my eyes eventually fall on those that aren't mine, can't be mine. Then there is the element of curiosity. The satanic question 'why' zooms around in the mind in all kinds of prodding pricking phrases, accompanied by 'what's and 'how come's. If it is lying there in my way I might step over it, but if it is wrapped in brown paper and shoved under the bed, my neurons will ignite with unbearable curiosity which would be very, very hard to subdue.

The grass may be greener on the other side, or it might not be. The important thing is it looks like it's greener and if you've walked for too long on your own patch of grass, it appears to be rather old and yellow - merely because you've been pacing across it for quite a while. It can be because you are an egotist and you just cannot stand the thought of there being something, or someone you're not permitted to have. When it's all about you and it's not so much about the enticing attributes of the forbidden object but the maddening thought that it is you who cannot have it.

Man's existence is so much more exciting because of his instinct to reject that which is offered to him and want that which is kept away.

- The Lover @ SoulIntoxicated

The Other Woman

I lay there in the bathtub staring in oblivion. The pain in my chest was too much tonight. I wanted it all to go away. I wished I could just tell him I knew and get it all over with. But I held back the urge for the millionth time. I wished I could scrub the skin off my body. I didn’t feel like myself in it anymore. I felt dirty and impure hiding all the filth inside me. And then the bathroom door opened and he peeped in.

“Honey, are you done yet?”

I didn’t know what to say. I looked at him and just smiled. That is all I had strength enough to do. Was I done yet? I guess I was done a long time ago, the day I had first found out. He came home late like he had done many times before. But this time it was different. I could sense it in the way he was acting and talking. I asked him as usual what made him so late and unlike before, his answers had a tone of uneasiness. I knew then that he was lying but my love was too blind to see it. It has been almost three years now and it still is. I know he is still seeing her, sleeping with her.

I came out of the bathroom wearing a robe. He was waiting for me on the bed. We were going to make love. Maybe he enjoyed having sex with her but we; we made love, and making love was not an easy thing to do especially when one of us was faking it. Knowing that what we did was exactly what he did with her made it that much harder on me. I felt intimidated. I still wasn’t able to understand what made him seek intimacy in someone else. Was it because of me or was it just him? Was I too flawed? Was I not exciting enough? Did I not satisfy him completely? These were questions I wanted to scream out to him every time we made love. Rather, I just moaned out his name. He thought it was in pleasure but he had no idea how much pain was hidden in it. He was in me but I never really felt it.

“Oh! I love you…” he groaned.

I wanted to say, “I know you do but not enough. You love me but you love her body.”

“I love you too…”

I’ll never let him know that I know. It’s a secret I’ll take with me to the grave. And maybe in the afterlife, when everything is revealed, he’ll know that all this while I knew and then the way he’ll feel will be my revenge. Till then, I’ll keep on loving, and moaning and pretending. I just wish I had the kind of power over him that she had that made him risk everything just to be in her. I wanted to mean that much to him. For once, even for just a moment, I wanted to be the other woman.

The Lover @ SoulIntoxicated

Your Smell

I love the way I smell of you when I'm on my way back. The metro is almost empty at this time of night and the few people there seem to be lost in their own thoughts; slowly moving, almost dancing with the train as it moves on the rail. The air outside is warm; it's cool in here. I'm smelling my hands, my shoulders. I smell of you.

A smile on my face seems to bother a girl sitting in front of me. 'No lady, I'm not hitting on you. I'm just lost in my thoughts. I'm missing someone I saw just fourteen minutes ago. Why don't you let me smile and miss her? Why don't you find something or someone to think about as well and get lost in your thoughts like everyone else?'

I walked the rest of the way home and took a shower. Then I closed my eyes and I could still smell you in my head and I smiled. I wanted to meet you again. But then you call me up and say things I don't want to hear. When will you understand that I cannot give you those things? I'm not like that. Suddenly your smell becomes too much to bear and I can't breathe. I'm choking, I'll die.

Then I leave you, I put the phone down and I walk away. You blame me and I blame you back. We try to get back again and I try to get used to your smell again. I can't. And soon, I find a new smell and I start loving that smell like I loved yours once.

I'm sitting alone waiting for my train, smiling.

I'm walking home alone, smiling.

It's been so many years since you, your smell. There have been so many smells now and today, I can't smell anymore. Maybe I shouldn't have let your smell go. Today I don't even remember how you smelled like.

- The Lover @ SoulIntoxicated

The YOU That Pain Built

Brick by brick a pain builds,

nurtured by tears

nourished by the hurt.

A pain so sweet,

a precious treasure.

Fragrant like yesterday,

hopeful as tomorrow.

Pain nevertheless.

Sometimes just a whispering wind

or as gentle as a pinprick.

Often as thunderous as hailing stars

or an aching smile.

Sometimes like the grey in your hair,

or a bosom friend in despair.

Often like sand in your fist

seeping through the gaps.

Sometimes a relief

or unlearnt faith and belief.

In a small tiny prayer,

when you’re hurt and have some pain to spare,

thank your stars that you hurt,

You cried,

You rose.

Pain has built YOU,

brick by brick,

tear by tear.

As you stand on your grave,

never forget what you’ve buried.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Life is painful. Some people break apart and some people stand stronger. What kind are you? Will you bury the pain or let it bury you? Of course, never forget what you've buried.

- The Lover @ Soul Intoxicated

Wo(w)men!

Continued from here.

All the coaching didn’t help and I didn’t make it to IIT. Instead I ended up in a college called AIT. The worst part was that for some reason, almost every girl there was a fat midget with pimples all over their face. I felt I was being punished by God for my sins. I tried concentrating on studies for a change but talking about what I was majoring or minoring in or about pulling all-nighters put very different thoughts in my head. I somehow scraped through each semester with a little help from my friends. A year went by and life had lost all meaning. I was in bad shape. I had never spent so much time without the touch of a woman. And then, one day at the canteen, she bumped into me, literally. Unfortunately, actually fortunately, she had a plate full of food in her hands and it splattered all over my jeans. She hastily grabbed a bunch of napkins and started rubbing my jeans mumbling sorrys in between. The rubbing felt so good that a part of me never wanted her to stop but I was reaching my threshold. I stopped her and said that it’s alright. We ended up having lunch together.  She was like an oasis in a desert. We started meeting after classes and I enjoyed her company. All was good with the world again. I liked her and the way she wanted to be with me made me feel that she felt the same way. One day I asked her out for a date, just a stroll in the mall, maybe lunch, some quality time together. I waited outside the mall. She was an hour late. I was looking up and down the street searching for her when a huge armoured car came and stopped right in front of me. Five Arnold Schwarzennegers came out of it holding sawed-off shotguns. Then a posh lady came out holding a purse which looked as if it was made of diamonds, followed by her. My heart was in my mouth. I fumbled to say hello and all that came out from my mouth was an idiotic moan. I coughed to ease the pain in my chest. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity with my mouth open until she finally spoke and introduced me to her mother. I just nodded and her mother left us with three of the Arnies and went shopping. One of them strip searched me and made sure I wasn’t carrying any weapons. Unfortunately, I was never really a big fan of wearing any underwear because I would feel suffocated...you know what I mean? So, when Arnie dropped my pants, everyone in the mall let out a collective gasp. My twisted head had got me in an embarrassing situation yet again. I decided never to date a girl again without knowing her family background first. After I put my clothes back on, we went for a stroll, one Arnie on each side of us and one following us. She wanted to window shop. I used to think that window shopping meant looking at things and moving on. Instead she bought whatever was on display. After seventeen straight hours of window shopping, she suggested we go eat. I had lost almost half my body weight by now and really needed something to eat.  She walked straight into a five star restaurant. I had 400 bucks in my pocket and just a glass of water there cost 700. I tripped a waiter passing by and let all the food on his tray fall on me. I pretended I was really angry and left the restaurant. I took her to a cafe where I knew I could atleast afford a meal for two. Two of the Arnolds guarded the entrance while the third one checked everyone’s pockets and bags for guns and bombs and tasted everything we ordered just in case someone was trying to poison us. We sat there for a few minutes, I somehow managed to eat a burger and then I left saying I had a test to study for. I never saw her again. We were finished with our course and I flew off to Canada to chase the Canadian Dream (free healthcare baby!). Two more things had changed in my life: 1. I never watched an Arnold movie ever again. 2. I started wearing underwear.

After that I decided to stay single for a while. Although I was surrounded by blondes and brunettes and redheads, I controlled myself by thinking that if Indian women had been so stressful on me, I couldn’t even imagine what these women could do. After all, it seemed I wasn’t that lucky when it came to being with a woman. I found a good job, some guy friends to go out and have beer with once in a while, and all of this kept me busy. Two years passed. One day, a beautiful Indian girl walked into my office. She said she was here for her internship and she was told to report to me. I almost pissed in my pants. Not again, I thought. Anyway, I somehow controlled myself and just made up some work for her to do. I wasn’t going to get in trouble again. However, as each day passed, I slowly kept forgetting the various traumas I had been through. We started talking and I felt myself getting more and more smitten by her. We used to have long conversations and she was very sweet because she used to agree with whatever I said. Just the kind of woman every man wants to be with.

“I think shopping shouldn’t take more than an hour. Don’t you think?”

“Yea. I agree.”

“Why do women take so much time to take a bath?”

“Yeah...even I wonder...some of them do take a lot of time.”

“Oh yeah! The wrestling match is going to be awesome!!”

“Wow! I can’t wait to see it!”

She was made for me. I just knew it. I was ready to forget everything that had happened in the past. I soon proposed and we moved in together. My dreams were soon shattered. The wrestling match turned out to be a women’s debate on casual sex. Shopping for a while meant me sleeping in the car till she came back after four hours with burger and soda for me, and a lot of bags, and then she’d say “I’ll be back in a while.” One day I got frustrated and asked her why she had lied to me that she didn’t take too long to take a bath. “I don’t” she said. She had just taken a two hour long bath. Anyway, I tolerated everything because I loved her. One evening, we were having dinner at a restaurant when I noticed a girl walking towards me. She seemed familiar and as she came closer, I realised it was the safe sex psycho. I panicked and ducked under the table. Unfortunately she had seen me and came and sat at our table. My girlfriend was taken aback. The psycho started blabbering about everything bad that I had apparently done to her...the three years...the cheating. My girlfriend retaliated and said that I wasn’t like that. I don’t even know when and how the catfight started. Now, one thing that every man loves to see even more than two girls making out is a catfight. Men love catfights in reality, in dreams, in buses, in trains, in bed, on TV, catfights between girls they don’t even know. It was a rare opportunity but I controlled my manly instincts and tried to stop them. NEVER, I repeat, NEVER try to stop a catfight. That is the only time when you will find women physically stronger than men. Try to stop it and end up with a scratched face and a hurt ego from a wild slap. Male ego is an unusual thing. It can be hurt by any reason like a slap from a girl, a girl riding a bike, a girl taller than a man, richer, another man having a better looking wife/girlfriend, bigger car, bigger house, bigger anything, in short male ego can be easily hurt. Mine was hurt by that slap. It didn’t matter from whom it had come from. I decided never to try and stop a catfight again. I was angry at both the women, and at myself. How could I have been so stupid? I should have known that something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. We came home and she kept asking me if what the psycho was saying was true. I was angry and upset and I lied that it was. It was then that she told me that she was pregnant and she didn’t want me to have a bad influence on the baby. Knowing that she was pregnant had changed things. It was too much for me to be able to handle her, let alone a baby. On top of that, she didn’t want me to be there anyway. So I left, changed cities, my email, my number, everything. I don’t know if it helped or not, but I later felt that it was a bad thing I did, hurt a woman who really loved me. I felt guilty and called her up a few days later and told her that I was sorry for what I did and that I wanted to be there for the child. “I wasn’t pregnant!” she shouted on the phone. “I just wanted to see if you would stay or leave. Now I know, you dog! Don’t you dare show your face again!” and slammed down the receiver. I don’t understand the fact why men are always termed as dogs. Dogs can roam around nude, peeing wherever they want. They hump the hottest bitch and leave them when they are pregnant...umm...never mind. I agree. All men are dogs. Two things changed in my life that day. 1. I bought a dog and named him after myself. 2. I stopped keeping an ego.

Life went on, I found women who wanted to do what I had been doing all my life...fuck around. I found women drunk at parties, ready to go home with me, have one night stands, no strings attached sex. I had women cheating on me, double timing, and sometimes triple, sometimes more. I got hurt by women who lied to me. One day I got up from the nightmare and realised that I had been getting a payback from life for all the time I had used the beauty of a woman for fun and personal satisfaction. It wasn’t them. It was me. I wanted to be with the kinds that would be easy to get in my life and get them out too. I realised that it didn’t matter whether the ones I had been with were good or bad, but I wasn’t going to give life another chance to teach me any lessons anymore. And so, that day, only one thing changed in my life, me. I moved on to be a better man and learnt from my mistakes and the lessons life had taught me through the means of a woman.

Today I know that women are exactly like they have been portrayed in nearly every song, the poems, and the movies. Every day always was, is, and will be about a woman. So I salute the women in this world because without them, love, life, shopping, gossip, affection, letters, food, long drives, bike rides, daily soaps, school, sex, basically everything would have been no fun.


***

Dedicated to Mansi Sharma, the best woman, and friend I know. 

Wo(e)men!!!

Some people who read my blog complain that I write too much sad and dark stuff. And so I decided to write a funny post for change. It's a work of faction i.e. some facts, mostly fiction. Here goes...

About a month ago, on March 8^th, the whole world was celebrating International Women’s Day. Everywhere I looked, on TV, in magazines and newspapers, women were smiling back at me. I was going crazy. No man and I really mean it; no man can handle so many women at the same time. And then I wondered, what was the point of having a women’s day? Isn’t every day about women anyway? We men didn’t even have a day dedicated to us until 1999! Wiki says men whined for years till we were finally given a day out of sympathy to call our own. And then, I started to think about what’s so special about women anyway? I mean apart from the taking care and understanding shit, mom, sister, girlfriend, and wife thingy, what was so special that a woman had done in my life except for what would have happened anyway? So I sat down, started working my brain to see where and how a woman had made a difference in my life.

My first girlfriend (puppy love) left me one day saying I stink. I tried to ask her many times what I had done. I later realised she literally meant that I STINK. Well it wasn’t really my fault. Everyone goes through a stage when your feet stink when you take off your shoes and your underarms are stink heaven. She never realised that she lived so far away from my place that I had to jog 6 kilometres to her place to see her. And she left me because I used to stink! I decided that I would never again make a girlfriend who lived more than a few blocks away from my house. After that two things in my life changed: 1. I started collecting perfumes. 2. All the jogging helped my lungs expand and I could smoke more simultaneous cigarettes than anybody else I knew.

Well, that was that and I moved on. High school was fun and like every other guy, I was amused by technology. Carrying a cellphone with an in-built camera at that time was considered the highest level of ‘dudeness’ anyone could reach. Dad wouldn’t let me have one giving me the ‘you are too young’ lecture while mom gave me the ‘MMS scandals’ lecture.  The DPS MMS clip had just become popular and parents all over the country were replacing their kids’ high tech cellphones with MMS functionality with the Nokia 1100. I wondered why I had to suffer because some random girl gave a guy head. After a lot of persuasion and explaining that I would never do such a thing (Big Lie!), I ended up getting one of those cheaper models with the VGA cameras.  I went over to one of those Airtel outlets to get a number. The salesgirl was really hot and I felt familiar feelings in some specific parts of my body. I tried using a cheesy pick-up line (Now that you know my number, can I have yours?). Oddly enough, it worked and within a week, I was in her bedroom, on her bed, cellphone in hand, getting a head. Having my very own MMS clip felt like I had achieved the impossible. I showed it to all my friends and felt really proud. I soon understood what the phrase “pride goes before a fall” meant. It seems, one of my friends’ somebody’s somebody saw the clip and told somebody who told somebody else who told her father. I still haven’t figured out the exact sequence. She eventually buckled under pressure and told her father that the guy in the clip was me. I decided that I would never buy a cellphone with a camera ever again. Her father eventually told mine and as a result, we left the city, my cellphone was confiscated, and my father told me I had a twisted head. I still don’t know which ‘head’ he meant. Two more things changed in my life after that: 3. I acquired an inferiority complex because my head was twisted, didn't matter which one. 4.  I never used a pick-up line again.

After high school, my dad expected me to join IIT and become a great engineer. I had humbler plans and wanted to be a movie star. But I sacrificed being the next Shahrukh Khan for the sake of my father’s happiness hoping he would forgive me for having a twisted head, whichever one he meant. I joined a coaching institute. It was there that I met her. She was preparing for medical exams and we had our mathematics classes together. She told me she was interested in making a documentary on safe sex. I told her it was my favourite topic and we decided to do it together, the documentary, not sex. And so we set out to meet different kinds of doctors. One of them kept playing with the cast replica of a vagina for almost an hour talking about minoras and majoras. Both of us were enjoying the show but for different reasons. Another one gave us the name of twenty different condoms recommended (used?) by doctors. Then there were the nurses who were nice enough to tell us the details of vasectomy and tubectomy. For some reason, I couldn’t sleep for a week and when I did, I kept having dreams about scissors and blocked pipes. It didn't make sense. Anyway, about a month later, we were finally done with the documentary. We decided to watch it at her place as both her parents were doctors and were usually away at work. Halfway through the documentary, I slid my hand into her t-shirt. At first she did her ‘this is not right’ thing that all girls do but soon gave in, like all girls do. Being faithful to the message in the documentary, I had brought one of the recommended condoms with me. We were fifteen minutes into foreplay when I took it out of my wallet. I put it on and was going for the kill when she pushed me away and instead started using a fruit for self-satisfaction. There is no other way to describe it. Any other way would seem too obscene. I had no idea that she was this serious about being safe. I looked down at my man who was by now drooping in sadness, and then at her, eyes closed in delight, and then at the fruit in her hand. I felt incomplete, small. I could’ve handled it if she had told me I was bad in bed, but she hadn’t even tried! When I asked her what was wrong, she said that I had a twisted head. I finally understood which head my dad had meant. Then she said something about a watermelon in her refrigerator but I was too preoccupied with my thoughts.  I decided never to screw around with a girl who screws around with a fruit. Anyway, the next day I told her that we shouldn’t have done what we did and I’d rather be friends. She instantly turned psycho. For a week, she came outside my house and threw stones at the window, abused, destroyed my beautifully kept garden, burst crackers. I finally caught her sober one day and asked her what the heck she was doing. “You bastard! You cheater! You dumped me! Three years of a relationship gone to waste!” She screamed, slapped me in front of everyone and went away. Three years? I had hardly known her for a few months. Relationship? We weren’t even officially together! Cheater? She was the one who had cheated on me with a fruit! I was so ashamed I couldn’t even tell my friends what exactly had happened. They still think I really had cheated on her. After that, two more things changed in my life:  1. I never ate a banana again. 2. I always made sure to install shatterproof windows wherever I lived and kept the garden as messy as possible, just in case.

To be continued...

The Lover @ SoulIntoxicated