It's Saturday Night and I can't feel it getting hot. After making and re-making several plans with my friends for regular weekend getting drunk I still find myself on my chair looking at the computer for something exciting to happen.
Oh, but something exciting DID happen. 

My house has that automatic lock system-the kind of door that locks as soon as you shut it. So at least twice a month, me, my sister or my mom- whom I inherit my absent mindedness from-get locked out of the house. Mostly it happens because my dog makes a run for it as soon as he gets the chance and all three of us-after much screaming and blaming each other-run after him. Three women and a mad dog locked out of the house waiting for rescue.
In case of this very frequent occurrence, we leave a duplicate key in our neighbor's house. TWO pairs of keys actually. 
It happened again today. I was talking on my phone to some damned insurance policy caller when I walked out with my dog slamming my door behind me. Realizing immediately what I had done I called my mom telling her to return NOW because I was in a fix. 
My mother and my sister decided to let me 'learn a lesson' so it was me and my beagle-hand in paw-all alone against the world.
This isnt the exciting part.


We had to go look for a key dude but we only found a number. A total sport, keydude decided to abandon dinner( unlike my OWN mother) and come save me. He got along with him- UNIMAGINABLY HOT son plus assistant.  I don't even remember for how long I sat in the lobby of my house waiting for him to make a new key. But what I did know, is that I had fallen in love.
People tell me that I don't know real love, because it happens to me around in around ten minutes, almost every day. Goes as quickly too. The REAL lovers, the ones I've been with-were epic failures, the ten minute ones are the ones worth remembering. 
I had felt it before. It was the same sudden happiness and swooping in the stomach and non-existence of time. Ek pal mein zindagi sorts.
My sister immediately knew what I was doing and was rather indignant and said 'OMG man sharanya. you're totally G' 
G would be gross. Like J is jealous and R is radical/remarkable/raunchy. anything you like.
For some time no one said anything but then my mom decided to do her school teacher routine. She asked him if he was training to become a key maker and he told her confidently that he had mastered the art when he was ten and was now studying and working. My mom, a little embarrassed at realizing he had probably understood all the smart-ass comments she was making in English said 'very good beta.padhai tho karni chahiye'. He then told her a story of how he landed his job (He repairs printers. A printer-mechanic) which I KNEW was meant for me-listening keenly from the corner. My mother listened, polite and bored. She doesn't understand too much hindi and screams things that 'thok doongi!' on the road when anyone is pissing her off. She doesn't like to go with my usual 'chutiya' or 'kya hai'. She says it is inappropriate and not ladylike. 
He just sat there smiling at our strange happiness of being locked out of the house and my mad mother and my mad dog playing a mad game. And I sat there being rather obvious in my infatuation and hoping the door NEVER opens because when it does, his door will be shut forever. I asked them if they wanted water, tea even and pretended to not understand how to unlock the door so he taught me but stopped when his father-the key dude-gave me a murderous look that said 'stop pretending to be stupid bitch, i'm hungry.'
It sucks. Almost all the guys I meet are idiots. The usual recitation of philosophy, politics and drunk stories from here and there was NOTHING in comparison to the silent smiling of key dude's son. I mean sure, all the knowledge of Nietzsche, Shakespeare, and girls and drugs in Thailand is great but they just don't got it like he do.
Social stigma works in a lot of pissing-off ways.
Now he is gone back to his humble abode and I am still thinking about him in mine. I don't know how to explain it. WHICH is why I know it was true. 




I used to think fish were peaceful but after I got them I knew I was wrong. There is continuous war in my tank. Big fish does literally eat small fish.
I have three- a parrot, a jewel and a blue peacock. 
The peacock is about one a half times the size of the other two and spends all it's time chasing them. My parrot's tail now looks like a mowhawk and the jewel only stays in one corner avoiding him. He has also moved the plants around and dug himself a house in the gravel under the rock I have put in the fish tank, marking his territory but not letting anyone mark theirs.
And as I saw the parrot shivering with fear, and the jewel-fierce but small-shrouded in a corner looking most annoyed I realized something needed to do be done about this godforsaken big blue peacock.
There is no place for a tyrant even in a 3 feet by 2 feet world. 
And no, fish aren't boring or stupid. If you think that yours are, you probably have goldfish or some such or don't spend enough time with them.


I forgot to mention that the man with the key to my heart had arms like Achilles.

Who da man?

Last week I was in my popular fiction class and we were studying Gone with the Wind.
The book is awful, but my professor is awesome, so it makes it bearable. She asked me what she thinks of the Rhett Butler-Scarlett O Hara relationship and I was like Rhett's the shit, come on. Ashley Wilkes, in the novel is Scarlett's other lover. He is a pianist, philosopher, and a 'fine' man while Rhett is rich, 'broad shouldered', and better in bed.
Immediately I hated Ashley and was like Rhett's the shit man, come on. 
She told us that all women— smart or stupid,independent or suppressed , are schooled from the beginning to like a protoype of man.
We all wait to BE taken. It explains a bad-boy fetish that many of us have. 


Are they Pussycat Dolls lying when they say- I don't need a man to make it happen?


If a woman is more attractive if she wears high heels, wants to be told random rubbish about the world, needs the man to hold her hand through everything then
does a man need to have a fast car, know how to stand up for himself and his chick,  fight the bad-guys from time to time.
Are we constantly fighting parts of ourselves to be more man or more woman?
Why is there a rule book that defines us as either and where did it come to exist.


I started watching Mad Men yesterday- recommended to me by a friend and neighbour- and love it. All the women are fantastic, but I hate mostly all the men- with the exception of Don Draper. Like many times already, the superficialist in me was confirmed.
Why was Don D allowed to cheat on his wife, behave like a narrow minded jerkoff , assume that a woman's dream is making a family, and still get away with it. 
Because he's sexy. He's strapping, nonchalant and mends things from time to time. I noticed everything wrong with him, but I was not angry. Only disappointed. Don to me was some sort of tragic hero, a great man fallen because of his own flaw. Essentially wrong, but attractive.


My friend Sid one day, over beer and pointless conversation said to me-
'you're really confusing man. you're pissed off because that guy keeps checking you out. (that guy being nerdy frustrated engineer from i dont know where) but if a cute guy walks in right now and does the SAME thing then you'll think it's awesome. really Shanno... WHAT do you want'


Peggy Olsen, Don's new girl secretary immediately starts sleeping with the asshole young dude in the office.  As a single woman, she is seen as controllable and vulnerable, and proves theories right. 
There's many times when I've let a dude do damage and sacrificed feminine pride, disappointing girl friends immensely.
'I can't BELIEVE HIM dude. why did you even let him!'
But only on instances when I have been madly in love, or madly drunk.


I was left wondering about what Sid- not really a man of wisdom- said. What DO we want?
Sometimes we want to be dropped home, looked out for, feel pretty, feel small, but at the same time we don't want to be undermined and overprotected. 


Being a chick is no easy job (especially in THIS city). Men believe that it is a basic human right to examine you from head to toe like you were a creature from outer space, you are ALWAYS expected to be the 'bigger person', your watchman never looks you in the eye when I have a complaint but says 'aapke papa kahan hai'.
I am yelling, arguing, swearing- trying everything that makes the people of the world take me more seriously. At the same time that I was trying to fight my way through into a man's space, I was working out because I didn't want to get fat, freaking out about having no clothes, TRYING to be the bigger person, crying and making big eyes when I was caught by cops.
There were two struggles- to break out of being just a woman, and being MORE of one.
I also realized that we cross our gender restrictions from time to time but mostly are we comfortable in these places that we are in - man or woman, boy or girl, girlfriend or boyfriend?
Is there realism in our feminism....or we still getting there?

Shakespeare says that the ideal lover is not man OR woman, not both, but NONE.
I have more questions than answers.
Mad Men is fantastic.

For more gender based confusion derived from Madmen, check out my friend what my friend Chunni has to say.

My friend M very excitedly told me about two 21 year old American girls who came to stay at her house. These girls back-packed from the north to the south, travelling in trains, eating in dhabas, and did it all the 'real way'. After seeking savage solace in the third world, they  returned to their NYC apartments and BrownBerkeley whatever. M and her dad were deeply enamored by the boundless courage of these American voyagers. 
I just don't get it.
We need to stop pissing our pants with excitement each time a gora does anything outside their bloody bubble.  
I remember having read this one day and being very pleased. 


I asked my sister to read the blog and tell me what she thinks and this is what she said- 
'It's like nice...but why do you LIKE sounding like a loser? Because you're totally not one'. It doesn't take powerful rhetoric and fancy vocab to preach wisdom.

I am going to stop trying to make myself look bad to make myself look good. 

Myeh

I hate non smoking sections. Always so frikkin quiet and fidgety and pissing off. It makes me want to stand up,scream, throw my hands in the air and run into free smoky world.


Reasons why I feel like a dumbfuck-

I believe that if I looked like this my life would be better.

Sometimes, I cannot get myself to click the 'logout' on my facebook.

Despite promising myself that I WOULD NOT check out bizarre random human beings on fb I still proceed to do it everytime.

I can't help but like this song. 

After much self examination I am still unable to see the bloody bigger picture.

I still don't read the paper everyday. or watch the news.

VH1,MTV, Zee Cafe and Star World are the only channels I watch on TV.

I cannot stop eating. Even if  I hate it,I still eat it. 

thesaurus.com is on my most used websites.

I have two hundred films on my computer but I only want to watch Mean Girls/Superbad/500 days/10 things I hate about you.

I am living without a cause,motivation or ambition. 

I don't, know anything.

In my life I have lost two ipods, a gazillion phones, a school bag, some wallets and a passport.

I am still waiting for the man of my dreams to appear at my saamne vaali khidki.

I drink too much and read too little.

I feel like I'm smarter than all stupid people but stupider than all smart ones.

My friends are the greatest people in the world but I still complain about not having a social life.

I need to switch on the AC but I cannot get up from my bed. (wireless keyboard and mouse-oh yeah)

I wish I was in a band.

My mother read my blog so I had to tell her that I lie on it about being a smoker because I want people to think I'm cool.

Then she found my gun-shaped lighter.I told her I bought it in Bombay so people in HardRock would think I was cool.

Wake me up when September ends is playing on itunes and I am doing nothing to stop it.

It's only alright to be losin your direction when you're Crispian Mills,man.

Daddy cool

 There has not been a day that I have not fought with my father. His obsessive compulsive fatherly madness drives me crazy. Every morning he'd come in to DUST my pillow for his own peace of mind. Like all delhi-fathers before I went out he'd say ' 'kya pehna hai?har ghante ek sms kariyo'

He exercised polite constraint at boys who i was seeing,shaking their hands but dreaming of breaking their legs. 
Dads are weird. Unlike my mom, he understood my constant restlessness, but he just didn't want to let me go out into the big bad world, which had given him so much shit. When I wanted to 'take a walk' at 1 am with my dog he'd remind me that I was a jawaan ladki and if i was out of my mind strolling on the streets in shorts in the dead of the night.

Everyday I'd storm out of the house telling him 'YOU CAN'T CONTROL MY LIFE I'M AN ADULT NOW FOR FUCKSSAKE' but end up getting lost on the road/caught driving without my license/get drunk and stranded somewhere and he would have to come rescue me.

My dad stopped drinking and smoking when I was ten. From a relatively chilled out,long haired, bearded human being he became starkly clean shaven and restricted his social life only to us and my grandparents. When I asked him why we never had any parties at home, and why he wasn't all the other 'cool dads' who gave their kids sips from their whiskey- he told me it wasn't his scene. 

As I grew into a more irrational, know it all, teenager I was convinced that my parents just would never get it and as soon as I could, I'd leave to become the great person they were stopping me from being.

We moved from Delhi to Gurgaon. I was estranged from all my friends and boyfriend that I thought was the first and last love of my life.

All the morons I thought were my friends today are people I walk on the street and cringe to the fact that I ever knew them. loveofmylife cheated on me, left me for someone else, and has on me the same cringing effect.

Recently, my father moved to Bombay for work. My mother went insane but my sister and I went on with our comfortable lives, missing him at times but not realizing his complete absence.

Last week I entered his crumbling, pink-walled, one room apartment with one fan and the bed the size of my dog, all I could do was go into a stunned sadness. He had neatly hung all his boring corporate clothes neatly on the window, and the house was as clean as it could possibly be.

For the first time it struck me, that my father- the man whose life ran on the three uncontrollable women in his life, was taken far away from his sole purpose. He was living away and doing his dumb job that he hated only so I could continue to have drunken nights in Khan market and buy a new pair of Zara shoes.
I wonder how that when people have kids, they go from being normal human beings to just...parents.

Tarun Tejpal in the Alchemy of desire says that there is no such thing as a rational Indian. As we strive towards intellectual liberalism, turn into atheists, cynics and non believers somewhere unreason and emotion creeps in. We track our lives between the paths of rationale and baseless faith.

 So I know that if I do become the great person I am supposed to, and find love, luck and meaning, it will all not matter if I have pissed off my dad and walked out. 
I know that nobody wants to read about this kabhi khushi kabhi ghum type bullshit but but I'm feeling lucky to have the baap of all baaps.

Still feeling like I can’t write and am at a serious loss of intelligent phrasing.

My holidays are ending and I am as always unprepared to take on the world.

Don’twanttogetoutofbed EVER.

Just want to stay inside for good. I'm going to let Brandon say it-then it all makes sense.

Today I read that falling in love is like sex and huger-a primitive, biological drive.
this book is splendid.

Howl

Can't write.
don't know why.


James Franco is Allen Ginsberg.

I am seeing the best minds of my generation being destroyed by madness.

Travelling riverside blues

Everyone's losing their minds about the Common wealth games inaugral ceremony.
I'm still wondering why this wave of patriotism hasn't hit me. A little bit of dancing,singing and shiny things and everything will be forgotten. Tis all you need for a happy ending.
All villainy has been forgiven and overlooked.


This is how my dog looks at me when I leave the house for anything

Actually not really. That's just his face-it's the only photo I have of it. In real life it's more upset and accusing.
It is a face that makes me question what sort of person I am, and the tragic act of betrayal I was going to carry out by going to college/work/drink/smoke/eat- performing the basic functions of life. It is not an easy face to forget.


I have finally gotten over my travel anxiety problem. Till last year, when I had to leave for a holiday I used to feel- nervous about where I'm going and what I'm going to do but mostly freaked out that everything I am leaving behind might change or collapse. Maybe my house will burn, all my friends will make new friends and forget all about me, or somebody will read my diary and reveal my secrets to the world.
Since I have discovered the world-basically around the time when you are losing your minds to teenage angst and drama-I have been afraid of the unfamiliar.
When I was thirteen,I was in class 8C. I couldn't make it for the class trip to Ranthambore, so later my teachers let me make up by going to Jaipur with 8A.
Instead of taking this oppurtunity to make new friends, talk to new people, or maybe just SEE a new city, I chose to feel like shit about the fact that my 8C friends must be partying without me and called them everyday from the hotel. One day I ran off from the hotel to an std booth to seek solace.
Of course, when I got back and sat down with everyone to watch a semi-porn show called Wild-on (remember that shit that came on AXN? it was basically topless people getting it on at beach parties or somesuch)
I also sang at the bonfire and got involved in many issues. 'She likes him, but he likes me. DON'T tell her.she'll feel bad.you SWEAR?'
I was the one being told the secret.A big mistake on someone's part.


But as I came into college and I realized how fucking great it was to travel and just get away for a bit because after a while where you are starts driving you crazy. My wise friend once told me that the best way I could make my life better would be by trying to make more memories, than to clinging to the ones that are familiar.
Finding out that there is so much to see in the world, so many people to meet, so many places to go to, so many insane things to eat,drink, so many guys a million times hotter and smarter than the one asshole you had been thinking was the beginning and end of your existence- is important.
And whenever I've been somewhere new, I always feel happy to come back to what I know and love.
This is one of those times I am stoned when I feel sentimental,insightful but a little akward about what I am saying.


But the sun won't stop getting brighter...and my feet are getting lighter.

People think I'm a crazing 

Lot about how they're-a-lazing 
Sunshine's all day long 
Narcotics far too strong 
Well I stroll 
On down 
On down the highway

All we wanted to do was have a girl's night in. (no, no one has pillow fights in their underwear)

It had been a hard day and my friend and I decided to eat lots of sweet things and watch a chick flick.

Like most women, I need my occasional dose of mush, and airy sentimental crap to keep me going.
Chick flicks are typically films that are heavy with emotion, contain themes that are relationship-based and are made and appreciated only by a woman audience-which of course, is a lie.

The opposite of a chick flick, is a dick flick. Dick flicks are usually about guys sharing their inner feelings with the world- having an erection when a cute girl smiles at you from across the cafe, fantasizing about your best friend's girl, not having a condom when a really hot girl throws herself at you, having an erection (get over that thing already, doods) when a the hot receptionist shakes your hand. Apart from erections and boobs, there are also drugs, usual stock market crashes and fast cars.

There are more good dick-flicks than chick-flicks. And nobody in chick-flicks smokes pot. Which is disappointing, and rather strange.

My friend insisted we watch The Back up Plan plan,starring JLo and hot-guy-who cannot act, recommended to us by her mother who laid its appeal in 'tum log ko achhi lagegi, tum bhi toh aise hi ho'.

Jlo, is a smart single girl in New York (true story) and is sick of being alone, single, smart and independent (shocking). Deciding that all men are scum, and there is no man that will ever accept her for the intimidating intelligent,independant woman that she is-she decides to get inseminated, and have a baby.

On the day she is injected with a strange random man's sperm, -she is walking down the roads of Brooklyn in sunny motherly glory, gets a cab and what does she see! A tall-blue eyed-hot guy who cannot act claiming it is his. After a brief argument with vivid sexual undertones, Jlo decides to be the big guy and give it to him (no, not like that, yet).

Hot guy follows Big (if you know what I mean) J all over town but she blows him off with a smile. The next day J runs into hotguy at a fair (?) and it is revealed that hotguy is infact, a cheese...err... maker. (FREAKIN UNREAL)

In two days, after a disaster date where they shower each other with water pipes and exchange extremely cheesy flirtatious, horrible jokes, they have fallen in love. They then go 'off for the weekend' and J blurts out that she is preggers. Hot guy obviously freaks out (jerk!) and JLo freaks out in return and begins to leave. But hotguy tells her he wants her no matter what. They live happily ever after for four months, as he gets hotter, and she gets fatter and unattractive. She has begun to stuff meat into her mouth like a freaking savage, run around throwing up all over his shoes, eat pretzels in bed, burp while they make out. (A woman DOES NOT turn into Gerard Butler when she's with child, man.) I kept waiting for her to scratch her balls.

BUT hot guy wants her no matter what.

In the middle it is revealed that J is having twins. Hot guy freaks out and makes a black married rapper friend in the playground who tells him how bad it's going to be to never 'feel her ass like that again'. In the middle of the of Big J turning into a tramp, and hot guy shitting his pants, the film brings in a birth scene. Basically, Big J is part of a single mothers support group which consists of loser ladies who are either fat, control freaks, lesbians but not ready to deal or husband killers. Hotguy and J as 'support' are forced to witness a childbirth, which is presented in the style of an African Voodoo ritual. As all these woman chant creepy shit and dance around, Big J falls into holy birth tub because she is dizzy. Hot guy is at the peak of freaking out and Jlo is soaked in birth water.

The next day the hot guy tells somebody that the babies 'aren't his' and J loses her mind. WHAT a jerk, dude. J spends the next month wallowing and being the independent woman she was until she realizes that she needs to start trusting people and 'letting them in'. So, on the day of her grandmother's wedding (AAAAAAA), her water breaks WHICH IS WHEN she decides it's time to find blue-eyed-boy.

Hot guy, though hurt goes back to her because like dude...no matter what, remember?

A famous person, I don't remember which, once said that you must write about your nightmares.

I could not think or breathe or move for about ten minutes after it ended. I had not laughed, or cried, but had just been merely aghast at the 2 hours of monstrosity that this movie had unfolded for me.

Sometimes when I sleep, I can still see the African birth ritual in my head and I wake up and my mind does not rest again.

It should have just been hot guy parading around with his shirt off in a sea of cheese.

And Jenny should really go back to the block.

Today I watched this film. It stars Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra and is easily one of the most predictable hindi films ever made. But I laughed, and cried, and felt a connection of either affection or sympathy or just 'oh he's such a loser but he's so sweet', with almost everyone in the film.

I feel like our cheesy romances are way better than theirs.

At least we don't put in gross crude shit or have weird mid-life crises, and the main dude is actually interested in the woman and not just her ass. And our music is kick-ass.

Now I think I have had my dose of occasional sentimental crap and I am going to go read.

My constant reference to Bollywood in first person is an effect of my deep bond with it.