TRIADS OF AN IN BETWEENER

It's been close to three weeks now...or so I would like to think. I am trying to pile on fictitious days since the last conversation. So much for cliches. They say time heals everything. I wonder if time can take care of yet another,yet again.... And while some say 'it's no big deal. Just give yourself 6 months. After all it was just 3 months". 6, 3.....how do weeks, months or years count as less significant for what you've felt for someone you shared your weekends with, the lows of your life back in a city that barely let you be, down pitchers of beer at your favourite pub, listen to the soft gurgling of the waves at PDP while the moon came up and shone down upon you two...mumbling on a port wine high.....or your best New Year first day..not the eve...the first day

I smile at people as much as I can. I always have and it's my defense mechanism to remind myself there are things to be happy about. Mom always has something very profound to say when she suspects something is amiss, even all these miles apart. "Happiness is a state of mind". But these days, I am barely concerned with being happy. I just want to be hopeful, believe that yet another 'let's end it and move on' is not something I will hear again. I seem to have adapted to a robotic like survival mechanism. Hear it all out, calmly ask reasons, ignore the brain which is screaming out all the things you really want to say before it's too late, before the other person begins the process of forgetting you, in bits and pieces, until you are a specter of an idea.

You on the other end, you are looking out at everything new and delightful, wishing to share all of it with someone half way across the globe and you take your steps further, a little by little, wondering why it could not be closer to what it could have been.....

Peremptory

Someone I know just came up with a nickname for me 'Ranjana Peremptory Mitra'

I realised of all the adjectives someone could come up with to describe one unique facet of my personality....this is it!

Immediacy, impulse...im......emmmmm...

It's difficult to tame your brain into rationale decision making when your heart insists you do the contrary.

Right now I could fly back to......and turn up at.....

SATURDAY NIGHT OF A VERY DIFF KIND AT NYC

My first Saturday at New York.... New york!!!!.......where do I begin?

So I'll do it in small chunks and musings here and there until I get a hold of what i really want to say (remember the guy who really liked you but was just too confused or didn't have the b!@#$ to say so?) and then of course the fact that this was my first and only a two day trip, I will not do justice to my blog if I attempt to recapitulate all that I have to say at one go.

For starters, I saw them everywhere. Couples. No really in hundreds! Swarming around in hordes. Whoever said "Live the amazing single life in NYC!" obviously was suffering from epileptic hallucinations. So yes....there they were: in the museum, at cafes, at Central Park, at the subway, in the pubs and almost every corner I mapped in NYC last weekend had this mutant glued to each other humanoids making me wonder if the universe was sending me a sign or just telling me "you dufus moping broken hearted weirdo, there's love in the world and cynical b!@#$&^ like you can well........ jump off the Brooklyn bridge".

And so I sighed and I looked away in vain as they seemed to multiply. Couples in love and holding hands at the intersection; couples kissing while their train stood patiently with its doors wide open; married couples as they rode their cycles with their babies in little baskets, like addendums to a four legged species; gay couples (and there were a lot thank God for this country!) this time even teenage girls groping each other as I pretended to focus on French paintings at the 'Met'; athletic beautiful men and women playing games (and I mean the literal sport variants people! unlike us boring 20 year old Indians who only socialise with the opposite sex at parties and over drinks shuddering at the potential of what a day out in the park or over sport will do to our limbs) and OF COURSE couples known to my friend - who was kind enough to provide me shelter - dancing on Saturday night to the song on the radio in the living room..... just because they wanted to. I swore at the universe and the zipper of my red cocktail dress which refused to let me in (ME!!!???) while the girls looked excited about my wardrobe and my first night out in NYC.

I embarked solo that Saturday night, my first Saturday night, hailing a cab to meet.....wait for it.....four women for dinner at a French bistro. And as I ate my salmon and asparagus, I tried really hard to be enthusiastic about the fact that we were HERE at this famous prized French bistro.... doing a wholesome happy dinner. It was a Syracuse batch-mate's ritualistic celebratory birthday dinner (she's from Montreal and well almost French even though she's Haitian by origin) so don't get me wrong, it was a new experience and not a bad one. So here we are single (oh sorry! one girl is being dodged by a boyfriend back in Athens to marry him), possessing a sense of humour to cope with the ironies the world has doled out to us in terms of queer sorts of men we have encountered. Logic for women like us therefore would be, given it was a Saturday night in NYC: 'Let's grab drinks after this, dance!!!' .

What would you know? They all seemed tired and so was I. Somewhere along the last year, the 'Saturday night! Let's party it out spirit' died. I think the overkill in Mumbai with a group I presumed would be my family for forever did it. Or more recently, the fact that the Saturday nights I was planning in NYC - with someone who assured me like no has ever before- now only seems like a fantasy driven construct of my memory.....

I went home that night after dinner at 11 pm, feeling like a complacent lonely 37 year old. My 'dost' from Mumbai - who was kind enough to offer me shelter - accompanied me. We talked all the way back despite the fact that he was jet lagged from his trip across Vietnam and had just stood through 3 hours of Chemical Brothers. He put on his enthu cutlet look and introduced me to the best coffee ice cream I have ever eaten. At the diner we spoke more ....of life, long distance relationships, heart breaks, what we thought of marriage and our desire to return to India to be happy with our decisions and hopefully find love. For someone who pursued his childhood sweetheart for 2 whole years from NY while she was in Mumbai and went through a break up he never expected, flunking school (under-grad) for a year, this guy has picked up the rope and climbed up pretty well. Today he is happy, although unsure of whether he will find someone back in India where he wishes to settle. He chuckles as he explains that his new all shaved look is not the pursuit of Buddhism which I suspect but an attempt to cheer up his uncle who is dealing with cancer. I play around with the ice cream and my spoon, look down at my boots and almost feel too small to even be noticed.

It was one of my most 'where is life taking me' toned Saturday nights. The city of bright neon lights swarming with young men and women gorgeously dressed to make the most of the long weekend sped on. I slowed down. And I am almost glad I could instead of hurtling downwards, for once I think I managed to pull it off.

It stays doesn't it? The sticky sad sense of an epiphany- almost achieved yet one that your heart refuses the brain to register.

LOW EXPECTATIONS OF A FIRST

It's 7 am here at Syracuse and the air is crisp and chilly. All I can hear is the whizzzz of cars passing by on the road below and the one or two birds chirping. Today will be remembered for one of my 'firsts'. New York City. Carmine, Anna, Marie and I are driving down to the Big Apple and will spend our weekend doing our own things but getting together to celebrate Carmine's birthday tonight.

I have no maps or guide books on me. I am prepared to get lost in the city...perhaps that will help me gain some perspective to how I feel now - lost.

And oh I didn't manage to arrange a camera. My first trip to NYC, one that I always fantasised and I go with no preparation no high expectations.

Sometimes it's good to surf along life this way. Makes you less numb to the rapid changes you are thrown into

More updates from NYC to follow

WAXING AND WANING

The most difficult part of letting go is realising that the memory of you in the other person's head will gradually fade out until it resembles a pale aura.. and that all you can do is imagine what it would have been like to still be together in ideal circumstances...until that memory is taken over by something that is more real in the present

TO FISH OR NOT TO FISH

Whoever said and insists on saying, :There's plenty of fish in the sea"...........please consider that we don't just sit around with a bait waiting to hook an 'innocent' fish and there are not many fish that are worth your taste and time.

So what now? I just have to learn how to swim! I really do. Well atleast, I'll swim along with the 'fish' (why don't they have a plural for this!!!!) Time to cross over to the other side and see what fish do to escape being bated. Just a social experiment to test male comrades in the big vast pool of eternal fishing for happiness.

Talking about fishing, I caught 23 of those little silver green ones in the pond in my village. In 45 mins. That's a record...no?

Getting back to my real life situation here and out of the analogy (which I seem to do in plenty) I am not going to drop a 'bait' into the social pool of eligible, non eligible , interesting, intelligent, good looking (such a farce this word) , flirtatious, funny or irresistible 'y' marked species. I'll just have to camouflage myself and disappear for a while, perhaps for a really long time THIS time.

Also, right now 'Hootie and the Blowfish' 's song "I only Want to Be With You' is playing like a loop in my head...Got to listen to it to purge it out of my system.

Then again some fish just swim up to you when you least expect it.....

Sigh!

Melted chocolate....

I barely find any enthusiasm or energy to cook these days. If I manage to crawl out of bed and shower, I give myself 6 points and then convince some super human instinct within a nook of my grey matter to propel me to function for the rest of the day in auto mode.

Coming back home today after a 2 hour meeting over a research proposal I forced myself to enter the kitchen. In saner and happier moods I clean and cook but these days my life feels like my refrigerator on the defrost mode. Yet my survival instinct - which I discovered I do possess about a year back but highly underestimate - was pushing that auto function mode. So I chopped up a large cabbage with my large butcher knife (and discovered that chopping is good therapy when distressed but no , not in the manner you'd imagine I am venting my frustration at the hapless veggie imagining it to be someone's head :P), heated up some olive oil, threw in bay leaves, cumin and the cabbage and proceeded to cook it, standing zombie like of course while I mixed it all up. A little later impatient with the fact that the food was still hot and I couldn't eat it yet, I pulled out my emergency ziploc bag with chocolate biscuits.

Barely had I popped the first biscuit into my mouth the chocolate melted and ran through my fingers...and almost immediately
these two things came to my mind with the cabbage dish which turned out half burnt and the melted chocolate:

You proceed to spice up your life by choosing very ideal and fancy ingredients and you put in your faith (sometimes despite your concerns the 'ingredient' you have chosen is better at a 'later' stage) tossing it all in with the other mundane things that you are committed to like your career, your academic endeavours or things you JUST have to do to stand on your own feet. Your dish gets all to messy all of a sudden without any warning (You didn't expect a mess ...why?! remember the faith? and how attractive spices just never make you think twice of the hierarchy in which they should be tossed into the hot oil) and there you are standing by the stove staring into the stuff you thought would turn out fine if not fantastic.

I just couldn't help but draw the analogy here....well you put aside the messed up ladle onto a clean coaster and make the most of what you are presented with. You don't always throw away a messed up dish..it turns out edible in bits and pieces and that's how life is ...you take the unpleasant, unpredictable elements or turn of events and still hold onto the faith that all is not lost. You savour your sadness, your losses for the wisdom only those moments will teach you and not the happier ones. You eventually grow less cynical and afraid and venture to make the dish again even if takes you many days, months or in some cases a few years.



Chocolate...we all love it, don't we? It gives you a sugar high, it makes your brain smile and if you like dark chocolate like me, you always want to have it when it's nice and solid. But hey...chocolate melts and sometimes when you want it bad....VERY VERY bad. Sometimes you've been waiting for that dark chocolate to come into your hands for a while and can't resist the urge to quickly open the wrapper to sink in your teeth at the very first chance you see it.......only to find a gooey dark liquid running down your hands. Well, I say go ahead, indulge in it even if it gets you looking messy. Clean up after you've had your fill and smile because you atleast got to taste your much 'craved' for chocolate even if it decided to surprise you with a change of form

C'est la vie....non?