1. Write a book
2. Love him more every day
3. Live in New York City
4. Be debt-free
5. Have an apartment of my own, and not have anything from IKEA in it
6. Lose enough weight to fit into the skirt from 2002
7. Get more than 5 real emails a day
8. Learn to tell when I move from high to drunk
9. Finish reading Satanic Verses
10. Learn Arabic
11. Have flawless skin
12. Travel through Eastern Europe with a backpack and not a suitcase
14. Try food journalism
15. Have some sort of savings plan
16. And have enough money to actually afford anything I want in a store
17. Cook on a daily basis. Master french food
18. Not cut my hair at all
19. Camp out for at least a month
20. Take mom to ladakh
21. Write a screenplay. Or two.
22. At least once, go into a club with a prepared dance routine. Push the people aside on the dance floor, signal to the DJ to play “the song” and proceed. Might need to open a club myself, for that sorta thing.
23. Learn to hate french fries
24. Write a blog entry every day
25. Travel through India as if I’m not a native

Every once in a while, I feel the incomprehensible urge to watch desi movies. And not the run of the mill Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan (though he is such a hunk of burnin’ yum) Priety Zinta stuff. There’s certain Indian films, or rather, films about Indians that I absolutely love.

Bend it like Beckham is one of them. I want to watch it right now. Right now. Its a pity that I have these urges in office! So instead I’m listening to the soundtrack. Bally Sagoo and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. It doesn’t remind me of home, not in the least, but something about it appeals to the “NRI personality” of me.

On the other hand, Monsoon Wedding is for when I’m missing Delhi and our loud, raucous lives. The house in the movie looks like its in South-Delhi. The parents are so much like mine, especially Naseeruddin Shah. The relatives, even the loud aunty from Muscat are exactly like mine. The weddings are the same, with the same music, the food, the colours, the beggars, the chuski, the Hinglish, the vibe… god, how I miss Delhi when I watch it.

While we’re talking about Bally Sagoo… (read on, I just want to go on and kill my reputation as having decent taste in music)… I love all his old remixes. When remixes were new. You know, mid-90s? Chandni Raatein has to be my favorite insomnia music.

And does anyone remember Boom Boom? With that Anupama Verma chick in the video? Oh, and, Shibani and Aslam? Ho Gayi Hai Mohabbat.. or something to that effect? And yes, Bikram Saluja looking uber-hot in that ‘Tere bin jeena nahin’ video? God, I miss indipop. And Apache Indian. And really, Baba Sehgal… and Pooja Bedi in that video… I forget what it was called.

And oh, I used to love Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander. I was like 10 when I watched it and it left a huge impact on me. I looooooved Pooja Bedi and when we moved classes, I almost thought that Ill go around telling all my new friends that I was called Devika…But I stopped the weirdness in time!

Do you remember that Karishma Kapoor song ‘Sexy sexy sexy mujhe log bolein’? Yeah, well, I was a sulky kid. And whenever I’d sulk my mum would start singing, “sulky sulky sulky mujhe log bolein, hi sulky, hello sulky, kyun bolein.” It wasn’t funny.

Ok, I think I’m done digressing. So, erm, back to the point - I feel like watching Bend it like Beckham.

I really worry about what I am doing in a 9 to 5 job. I mean, I’m hardly the type. I’m the “positively overflowing with potential, yet stupendously lazy” type. Or rather, I’m the type that does nothing for two days and then wakes up at the crack of dawn churning out a tome of words on a sunlight induced high. But it’s always good work. Never too little, rarely too much. It is always inspired, always a bit hysterical, always thorough.

But the problem with this loser-like attitude towards work (though it works, ha, a pun) is that I can’t really get inspired at 7 in the morning. I can’t be dragged out of bed and then expected to perform miracles. And truth be told, my job doesn’t ask me to do anything except analyze numbers to make us look pretty. But the analysis… Oh, the analysis. I could die. Even when interspersed with coffee breaks, lunch breaks, facebook breaks, gtalk breaks, and whatnot it is still depressing as hell.

So Kanika, what did you do today? Oh gee, I wore my short black skirt and went in to work and added up the right numbers so I could show my boss that, indeed, we are winning the fight against blindness in China. And oh, I totally bitched out this partner for this terrible data management system, I mean, can’t they even put some energy into collecting oh so interesting (!) statistics?

And then I had a latte worth six dollars. I can’t wait for tomorrow!

It is easy to laugh it off and continue doing what I am doing, to even do well at it, but my heart is not in it. I’m not like my bosses - they love it, they thrive on it. I’m just passively doing what I’ve been politely asked to do. I love how they ask me about it, “Would you mind handling this?” As if I’ll ever say, “Erm, you know, I don’t think so.” But the point is that I can’t see what they see. It’s been a few months, and I can see what happens, how it evolves and comes out. But I don’t love it.

But till I find that one thing that I can do that will allow me to be, what was it, stupendously lazy and maniacally inspired in turn, I’ll clock in my hours and I’ll drink my coffee and I’ll blog at work. Heh.

I wonder if looking at the world through the lenses of identity does more damage than good. Feminism has been in my bloodstream since LSR opened its arms to me. Interestingly, the institution threw myriad definitions of ‘feminism’ at me, and thankfully, also gave me the freedom to accept or discard in accordance with my sensibilities.

When I look back, two main themes stand out in stark contrast. The overarching definition concentrated on the “gender” part of gender equality; and the other, focused on the “equality” part of gender equality. While the former defined women as opposed to men, the latter looked at women as human beings who are already treated as an equal in society and whose only competition is with oneself. Though I found fervid protagonists on both sides of the theoretical playing ground, like many I believed that the complexity of human life made it indispensable for one to co-exist without another.

Assailed by these seemingly distinct arguments, how do I find my own peace? At the crux of it lies the belief that discrimination faced by a woman may not always be gender-based. But when it is, I think it’s important that it is recognized and that we don’t dilute that aspect of it.

Personally, I have my own brand of feminism. Yes, I wear wear tiny skirts and yes, I’ve definitely let boys know I’m vulnerable to them. But somehow, I maintain that I respect myself more than other girls who don’t have the courage to stand up for themselves. I may not be a Brinda Karat but I’m definitely not a damsel in distress meets dumb girl on tv.

The other day, my co-workers and I discussed marriage and work and the like. And I said that I’ll never marry someone until I have the money to run a household. I will never be dependent on a man for food or clothes or rent. I don’t want to be the bread-winner, but I want to be in a position to support myself and my kids if he decides to chuck me out one night. Not that I expect him to; but I don’t ever want to feel powerless.

So I’m not going to bash all the men who treat women wrong. I’m not going to extoll the virtues of good men I know. I’m not going to talk about the incredible women I’ve met who’ve shaped how I think and act. I’m not even going to promise I’ll start that NGO I’ve always wanted. But instead, I’ll reaffirm my stand on my life.

Men and women may come and go. They’ll all leave indelible marks on my life and my stories and will always be an important part of me. But that’s where they end. Because whatever you say, at the end of the day, it’s all about me and how I feel about myself. Not about how they make me feel about myself.

What was it really about? Did it convey one over powering uniform message? Or a confluence of integrated themes that splashed upon each other competing for superiority?

Was the movie a commentary on sexism? Or was it about 2 kinds of games –one played by ‘non-cricket’ players (who have lost the love for playing for their country) and the other played by the Indian Hockey Federation in its politics? And then there is that theme that unites Telgu and Tamil despite their Punjabi-Bihari differences! Maybe this ‘Lagaan meets Bend it Like Beckham’ saga was really about the spirit of the underdog. Of course, with one important difference—the absence of a common ‘enemy’; the arrogant East India Company in the former case and orthodox Punjabi parents struggling with an identity crisis in the latter!

If anything, this film was not about SRK. And that’s enough to raise eyebrows of even the softest of film critics. The absence of an Abhishek or Saif made such a restrained performance even more creditable. No unnecessary quivering of lips, no love interest, no overshadowing anyone, period. In fact, my last recollection of SRK sharing cinematic frames with a bunch of ‘plebeians’ goes as far back as the popular 90s TV show, Circus. And that was a long time ago!

The smell is familiar and unchanging. It doesn’t matter if she puts on her trusted Pleasures or, when no one is watching, my sister’s newly acquired Cool Waters. Her embrace is always drenched in that sterile hospital fragrance. Yet, that’s what makes her the most beautiful person I know. That’s what makes it feel like home. And, that’s what made 5:45 PM worth waiting for every single day. Well, mostly…

An awkwardness of sorts has always persisted. I remember the winter of class seven when I had taken to writing ‘seriously’. Seriously AKA writing diaries. I got a green one with a picture of two kittens upfront. There, I wrote about how I hated my name and how much I wanted to change it to Priya, about how different and how similar grandparents from both sides could be, about how people who took tuitions were somehow inferior, about how I wished my younger sister could banish in hell for the rest of her living existence…and of course, I wrote about boys. So, one day after a sunny afternoon spent frolicking in the sun, I came home to an extremely stolid face. The face that drips of: “You fool; you have no idea what you are in for.” She literally pulled me into her bedroom and quizzed me about 3 boys. How in the world could she have ever known! Of course, no surprises - she had read my diary.

Did I dare to be an even bigger fool and tell her a word or two about invading privacy? Not on your life! As far as she was concerned, it was a serious breach of faith. Before I could say anything, she was furious. She told me that she was ashamed of me and if this was what she had sent me to school for. That she couldn’t believe HER daughter would do such things. Then it was my time to howl and make promises (most of which I didn’t keep :) and thank God for that). So I promised that I would never have a crush on anyone anymore. I promised to think of nothing but NCERT…

From then on, every single time I got a special look, I didn’t tell her, didn’t write no diary entries, just sang songs in the bathroom! But, now I wonder, how great would it be to confide every little detail to her. Like to be able to tell her how it feels to hold hands under the table, to describe the look on *his* face when he opened the door for me, to spin reels about how he cooks the world’s best mushrooms in heavy cream—and especially how he needs no help in making them just right…I wish I could tell her in explicit detail the warmth of his hug, the tingling when his fingers push tousled hair strands out of my eyes, how i can watch him from a distance for hours at end…

I hope she is listening…and I hope she is happy

Would you believe it, one of Govinda’s songs led its way to a serious (intellectual, to say the very least) discussion on syntax.

The term in question was ’sexy’. No, it wasn’t about the actor’s sexiness quotient (!) or the serious lack of it– it hovered around the origins of the word itself.

I think I was 8 when I heard the word sexy for the first time. Comprehension was easy, thanks to my robust vocabulary bank, intensely overactive neurons and extremely well developed spying skills on “after 11PM TV content” (and also on the viewers of that content!).

Those were some days, when one scourged the dictionary of all things for a detailed description on the parts of human anatomy (and their functions!). At 8, pornographic literature is still a “human feat” that’s left to be discovered. Then there are other things that pique your little ears and eyes (and umm if you are evolving at a phenomenal rate, maybe some other things too) – like those bizarre advertisements on TV where women drop blue ink on cotton diaper type things! Truly, the learning curve for an 8 year old has a slope made for pure adult envy.

Anyway, I understood the word ‘sexy’ to mean any person (presumably) one wanted to have sex with. Of course, the dictionary gave rather pruned connotations to the lines of “desirable” etc. (I should add that I turned the ‘S’ section of my large-printed picture dictionary multiple times only to be left utterly disappointed at the strange and confusing absence of a discussion on ’sexy’. I then had to resort to what ‘older people’ used: The Webster’s dictionary. Some drive!) But then, never doubt an 8 year old’s trenchant faculty to connect dots. What would you desire someone for? Not to watch cartoon network with! But to indulge in - what seemed at that time pure debauchery - an intercourse!

Life was all simplified then and I thought I had gotten it all. My comfort zone was shattered when I heard Govinda croon: Meri pant bhi sexy! How in the world could you explain that??? Given my definition of ’sexy,’ it was hard for my cranium to understand what he meant. Then I started hearing the word everywhere. ‘My exam was sexy’, ‘My future is sexy’, and would you believe it, even ‘The food was sexy’.

Is it simply the deterioration of the English language? Or is it time again for my annual shrink appointment?

It took a month for the “altruistic eyes” to consume my existence. Consequent to a rather competitive mud-slinging battle, they replaced the previous hold of “unholy cigarettes.” Ironically enough, the beedis were too addicted to me to hop on to a homeward bound flight. But their might couldn’t stand one bit in front yours truly’s new found interest in charitable flying eye hospitals. The beedis had to be thus packed away and sent to rehab (lest they fall into a familiar downward spiral of withdrawal symptoms).

Such drastic changes serve as a comfortable assurance that I can continue to equate my life with high drama. Only, no one is paying the three-figure Broadway price to experience it all. Not even if I offer premium seating.

It would be fitting to say that the lenses have changed. The scenery is different. The wardrobe has been subsumed by a full fledged revolution – the kind I like. The bank balance reflects more zeros before the decimal. To cap it all, I rest my head - in sublime surrender to Morpheus, the Greek God of sleep – on red sheets between two towering red book cases selected in complete satisfaction from many of IKEAS’s other gifts to humankind. Just 365*2 days ago, my entire subsistence could snugly fit in 2 suitcases, the only ones my family owned. Now, I can probably pack my entire family, almost equally snugly, in the nouveau habitat. Did I ever tell you that I like growing up?

With that, I announce my presence on chai-garam. Why? I need to confess because I can never tell a straight lie. And I never tell the truth.

PS: How I would love to imagine myself as a seedy ‘young’ thing hooked to domestic tobacco (very much like you are imagining right now-I know, I have x-ray vision). Unfortunately, the addiction and the love affair with beedis never went beyond a Master’s Thesis on tobacco taxation, now all bound in black with my name printed in gold letters upfront! However, if I graduated from Cornell with just that black book in hand, life wouldn’t look half as good (to me or to others is a different question altogether). So I went and got myself a job. In real time currently, I spend the majority of my waking hours trying to improve an international blindness prevention NGO’s programmatic strategies. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, eh?