#FordVFerrari, A review. #imdb IMDb

#FordVFerrari
A review. #imdb IMDb

For some people, like me, going to the movies is usually for reasons that are rather personal. And for me this weekend “Needed” urgent redemption. And so I went alone.

I am a decently huge #christianbale and #Mattdamon follower. Exceptional men with an eclectic career chequered with high points and lows. Added to the mix was the fact that I was a Motörhead for a while before domestic life and breadwinning won my days.

So. #Ford. Not a name we have ever drunk to for speed or sheer love of the machine. Crafted for numbers and sold for those who need to go from point a to point b in one single attempt at the wheel. And Eventually get there.

Pit that against the mad genius that was Enzo. His work, his life, his search for perfection never really ended. His hunt went beyond the wheel and the seat covers lined in fine leather. He wanted his babies to talk to the winds. And god knows the #Ferraris...they did! And yes I am and shall always be a #Schumacher and #AyrtonSenna fan, that being said... let’s race you through this season on what made the life of #kenmiles played by an understated and very delightfully American Christian Bale so unique and eloquent as a story.

Note: At some point it almost hurt when they made the Italian car maker feel almost like the “big bad daddy of car racing”... before you are allowed to identify and admire quietly, his one true love, as his goggled eyes trace his red beasts along the track, even as you watched a margin loving Ford Jr II take off in a fancy chopper for a fancy dinner bang in the middle of #lemans ... now Enzo, this guy owned the sport. It was a touching and deeply historic moment watching Ken and the Italian papa doff their hats to each other in acknowledgment.

Luckily, the film stays true to what history will only underline... without Enzo the race track would have been so so boring, so slow, so lifeless and so lacking in Adrenaline! Becos He be da man.

Bale, I marvel at his choices. His oeuvre is so unpretentious and yet so versatile. He never hesitates to let you know what lies under that Batman suit and those incredibly Dracula teeth. He makes you smile and weep in turns. It’s a story lined by many stories...simple life stories. When fate robs you, redeems you, loves you back and then destroys you. He gets every single turn on this gruelling lap of life perfectly and brings it home. A gentle soul with a very gentle touch with machines. You will fall in love with his #kenmiles.

#JoshLucas take a bow for the mealymouth you managed to be without losing that charming smile that had us all weakkneed back in your prime. You did Leo Beebe to perfection. Without you the bad guy would have stayed so typically monied and blah. You made it personal and that’s what this sport has always been! Too damn personal.

For Matt Damon who lives out the life of one #CarollShelby - best known for his involvement with the AC Cobra and Mustang for Ford Motor Company, he makes this role look easy but it couldn’t have been. To be the man to give up his own passion only to stand by a very difficult friend for life ... battling the Ford way to try and find meaning in the machine. Slow clap. It was done with class and old school style. You can feel his pain. And that’s not the only good thing about this narrative.

The one scene where the movie takes you out of your seat and right behind the wheel, is the spin Matty does for Ford Jr at a speed that only a racer can secure without shitting his pants. That weeping of joy and terror mixed on #TracyLetts face, makes it all too real.

The endurance of the sport tested timelessly at #lemans. The sheer courage it takes to remain on the road when the world fades away, when at 7000 rpm you ask yourself the only question that matters, and this film does. Over and over.

Who are we and what are we here for? One does find this film answering that in layers. Your friendships, your bonds, your affections and your soul. Every single time Ken shares a moment with his son, played by a very UnAmerican unspoilt and adorable #NoahJupe or clangs a beer with his devoted wife the gorgeous #CatrionaBalfe playing Mollie Miles, the point is made. Emphatically.

You are here for redemption and this film is all about finding that through pure love for something you are lucky enough to be good at. Finding purpose in what you do. Because like all things beautiful and trippy this too must come to an end, after 2.5 hours of hard motoring and gear shifting. It ends well. Too Painfully well.

One thanks #JamesMangold and Motörheads like him for loving the skills and the brilliance of Ken Miles enough to honour his dream, his skills, and love for the car, because, left to the industry and it’s two faced middlemen - the man behind the wheel would have met a nameless end, way before his time.

Joker the Movie

A Review. No spoilers.
Posted 2nd October 2019
#imdb IMDb

It is one of those movies you cannot begin dissecting without going back in time. #HeathLedger made sure of that. The character, its ashen whiteness, the dark coal of burning eyelids, the unblurred version of pure evil flicking like pupils in it and the idea of why would someone be that person, may have left all of us at some point wondering ... how did the Joker get this far out?

The latest from the timeline of the Batman saga ... unfair to say that it was anything less than what I expected... but then I am an unfair sort of reviewer. So bear with me.

For me, just me, the joker (articulately and deftly handled by a maniacal and tragicomic #joachinphoenix) was everything and more. It has pain like you haven’t felt in a while. A stab, a gangrenous wound a burning bullet hole.

But then came the preaching, the soothing sad telling, the narrative makes you weep for the good guy talking, the uncelebrated idea of “feel bad for me because god knows I was wronged”. That just didn’t sit well with me.

Call me cynical but for me the joker was best unapologetic for trying to be the divine artistic balance to the insanely plotted goodness of the Batman ilk. I do not for a moment feel that his character needed to be justified.

I wanted to know that for once evil was unprecedented. Mad. Pure. Thorough. That god sends a measure of everything to this godforsaken planet because that’s the way I wanted it. The menace the extended red grin that spread across ledger’s face was not of a man from a history of sorrow. It was a man who did not believe in any system at all. It was his system and no other. And yes, he did like to watch the world burn.

How good is the acting you ask. Don’t. It’s superlative. It’s an ode to a man who died too soon ... his craft unfulfilled by drugs and depression. And Phoenix rises to the calling, to this role like a bird risen from the ashes. He reenchants it, he recrafts it, he reboots it, to suit the script with such unaffected crystal perfection.

There are moments when you feel the editing, especially the ending, could have ended 3 edits sooner, but then I edit for a living and chopping is what I like best.

Extra pounds didn’t add meat to this story: but what a story. It reminds you of the graphic novel “the killing joke” at every turn of the camera and yet I longed for more, for more sin, more insanity, more lust for the wrong - yes it is true, I found the film falling short of making me feel horrible about the joker, because that’s what I wanted to feel. I didn’t want to feel bad for him. He has been the one connoisseur of darkness i found unparalleled in any depiction on celluloid and I wanted to keep it that way.

What the movie has managed is that tiny tiny slit between the lids, the difference that marks a brilliant film from a good film. This one is somewhere in between. It’s brilliant in its performances and good in its storytelling. I wish I could say more, but then I can’t expect you to feel what I feel, given I secured the first day first show. Buy that ticket and celebrate these two greats - Heath Ledge will forever rule this kingdom but Joachin Phoenix is for sure the only other man he would have liked to take his throne.

Because.
This joker is moulded in pure love. Pure unrequited love. In horrors that only bring laughter that is but a “medical condition”. Because we are all Jokers at the end of the day... and one must ask at the end of every such screening... “why so serious?”

From #Greymatter to #GreyPride

Blog posted: 15th September 2019

Yes I greyed before my time. And please do not ask me what that time was supposed to be.
At 40 I earnestly believe it’s still not my time.

Having said that, these urgent unrestrained declarations of maturity made their presence felt in ways that intersected with social ideas of youth much sooner than I had anticipated or desired.
Sincerely speaking I have always accused the first splash of L’Oréal in my youth for this cranial disaster.

The story goes, as is usually quoted to my loved ones, “had I not coloured my hair so early, for reasons of fashion and profession, I would not be stranded with so many white strands today”.
Clear and precise bullshit. Which is where this take comes from.

Some people grey so exquisitely, esp some men that it hurts. They even have a moniker for it “the salt and pepper look”... well let’s just say I am partial to salt on my platter.

But undeniably, it is traumatic for us, the womenfolk, predestined to bear the brunt of such an unruly mob that rules the tête so impartially and brutally. Murder by keratin loss. Most Definitively.

You go from girl to woman, didi to aunty in 3 seconds flat. And that’s not how you planned on being a Ferrari at 40. You wanted that drive to be a long slow one, gazing at the Amalfi coast, wind blowing your dark luscious brown tresses at the Mediterranean. Sigh.

So how do you cope with these self proclaimed displays of intellectual pride and joy before their time?
How do you handle these stray comments that go...
-“ hey you have a lot of greys...how come?” (Let me google that one)
- “Wow you really do take a lot of stress huh?” (Yes, it’s a thing you know)
-“you really like your whites, no?” (She must be referring to my kurta)
-“Was it the divorce?” (Mm let’s see, that’s plausible, but no)
-“How old are you..? No, really?” (He meant that in a nice way... surely)
-“They look nice but have you tried the latest Schwarzkopf line of soft browns?” (No actually. I am more the electric blue sort of girl)

Do you:
- blink and stare into eternity like a lost puppy who just swallowed his master’s philosophy paper?
- you stare them down with a superior, wisened narrowing of eyes and come back with a cool repartee about fine wine?
- you go full battle mode and vomit the feminist spiel you prepped for this moment?
- you underline how you have come to adore theselittle streaks of defiance and can’t bear to undo the look?
- you tell them how the love of your life loves your greys with a passion?
- you call up Bridgette Jones and book the Monday 3pm slot for an additional spa and colour!

...You can add to that list.

For me, it has been the last option for a fairly long time. Frankly I could never really manage to come up with a smart one liner to breach that pertinent youth-loss status barrage of queries with total domination: until recently.

My own son isn’t very comfortable either with the idea of me looking my age or older as is often the case with such a mane. But then he is figuring out this time, she isn’t too keen to look any younger.
I, for my own person have lingered on this thought for a while now...since July to be precise, whence came the momentous turn of turning 40.

It changes you, these trips around the sun: they make you come to terms with your body and what it’s trying to tell you. You learn to accept who you are. In that little tête. Physically. Emotionally, Socially. And most significantly, personally.

I am learning to love these lines that mark my face with laughter. Loving the long tired looks I give people after a long day. I don’t mind telling friends I want to just hang at home over a coffee and music and not at a pub where the dj spins music I can’t connect with. I am feeling refreshed with the idea of a carrom evening with the son and a loser film at inox with friends which end in politically correct bed time rituals.

But right now what I am loving the most are my greys.
They give me great hope. They are indomitable. They make a comeback every single time I try to convince them with a monthly shot of ammonia, beseeching them to hide or disappear. They are determined and bold: strong and resilient. They are my constant; they are my favourite on the shade card....but most importantly they are mine.

And. It is time to be who I am.
40, Grey and happy.

‘When Comfy ate Libido for dinner’

Post: 14th August

Do married couples have these conversations in their heads or just the divorced ones? I mean I talk a lot to myself these days. I sound very calm, composed and collected in my head, especially dealing with subjects I don’t have to deal in any more.

We all marry for reasons that make sense and sometimes for reasons we force fit to make sense. Usually love bears the brunt of this choice. Some are honest enough to admit it was the hormones, for many it’s the persuasive whining of family or an innate need to procreate. Others need to find someone sober to settle down with, because alone and lonely start disconcertingly merging together, too often.

But deep into these relationships, what precisely is it that becomes of this *reason*, this Choice?
It starts on a high, a very high *high*, some would agree. A high which some would again agree, becomes unsustainable. The usual courtship and mating rituals follow and keeping hands off each other becomes practically impossible. (You can see Lothario strut the street style every time the couple enters the room).

The indiscreet pleasure of being able to just hold, touch, caress, feel, is a wonder of wonders. No one seems to have a problem any longer how often you are caught kissing on the sly. The simple thrill of being able to get away with the naughty stuff so often and so easily keeps the couple grinning like imps in the early years, and that secret pleasure is what maketh many a sardonic proverb on this rather erotic yet pious scheme of things.

You hang around each other, you hang on to each other’s words, hang on to those clandestine urges, you hang on to your mobile phones, your senses soaked in pheromones jumping all over, thanks to an unchecked and fire at will libido. How much better can it get. She makes the tea and he tosses the eggs. You can almost hear the harp playing in the background.

But then again, there is a damn good reason why they anointed this phase *honeymoon*. I love the energy with which young couples talk about weddings. Honestly, it’s so fetching, so Karanjohar in your living room.

It starts very small. Tiny adorable arguments. Small stolen moments of freedom between urgent emergent lists of to dos. Quick romantic dinners sliced between school fees and EMIs. Holidays in between year ends and budgets. It goes on for a while.

Time passes. The lacy stuff goes to the back of the drawer. The Jockeys come out in full freedom and flourish. Time brings home a new friend from work one day. He's cute, chubby, smiles a lot, loves your Jockey collection and an untimely snooze. Enter Comfy.

Now this fellow, he has a very persuasive voice. And it makes sure he befriends you. He also is the sibling Abel to your Libidinous Cain.

Some find a sense of purpose in explaining why Comfy is always welcome everywhere, even in the bedroom, where Libido marked his territory with random ease, once, in a galaxy far far away. Some make it their life’s mission and some have children to explain his intrusion. He is so, you know...comfy. This pattern is not unhealthy, nor unusual. It’s what makes the first few years seem memorable in hindsight. Circa 20 something B.C (Before Comfy).
.
Creepeth the hour, cometh the boredom. And one fine morning, you start feeling it in your bones. The slow and drugged walk of the everyday. The silent march of routine. The monotony of shopping. Deciding what to make for Dinner. How the weekend could be, should be something more. Movies, endless chatter about the hottest series downloading impatiently on your #Netflix. The unending spinning cycles of this and that. Books, music, friends, Facebook, family, alcohol and food. They add up the equation beautifully.

So the partner has downloaded stuff for you. It’s a movie night. No wait, what the hell, it’s a documentary. Damn, it’s 10.30pm. You are eating, slowly, very slowly, masticating every morsel...sneakily watching the hands tick past...you are observing your food ingredients with great intent. Naturally, you have missed 3 big end-of-the-world punch lines by Sir #DavidAttenborough in the meantime. You swear under your breath. This wouldn’t happen if it was #BenedictCumberbatch now would it, but no, let’s do wild life nights. You have ideas of a certain kind of wild life of your own, which your mate simply won’t comprehend anymore. He sits fuming under the kebab rolls. You settle the dishes and plonk on the warm little hole you dug for yourself earlier. The silence of the TV is matched evenly by the two souls trying to pretend how urgent tomorrow morning is going to be.
You know it’s disconcerting how No one ever ever ever ever talks about which partner farted or burped first and openly in the bedroom. Now that’s a huge Mount Sinai right there!! And who do you think got you past that? Eh? Eh? (*notice the smug look on Comfy’s face?).

Maybe this chubby happy go lucky fellow eats conversation for appetizers. Big appetite the bloke has. You feel no great need to speak of the irrelevant stuff anymore. I mean, seriously, what would she care about the moron at office who simply won’t fix the printer or the moron for that matter you have to call Boss every day...In any case one prefers the sports channel or NGC, or maybe she is on that episode of #Suits where Mike gets arrested. (Now I would love to tell you about Sasural Simran Ka here, but I haven’t the foggiest, so I am guessing it has its moments). And all these episodes, sans interruption, it just sums up the day so perfectly. Like that neatly tied bun on her head. So tidy, so effortless, so er...not sexy.

Thing is she just served dinner. Everyone looks fed and peaceful. The house smells of contentment and roasted cardamom. Sounds have petered out. Even the In laws look stoned, the curry was that good. You deserve this hour with your book and your music and your TV. But you are not out of the woods yet. One partner for sure will give the horny look. Some people just don’t believe in that childhood *early to bed* axiom. You still have that presentation to wrap. Sir Libido flexes his muscles in full abandon. It’s going to be a long night.

You don’t wake up very fresh. You make a mental note to tell the other how this exercise must commence sooner and definitely before dinner! What do they know of deadlines??!!
Gone is the need to be stupid, to indulge in the banter, the teasing, the touching… feels meaningless somehow to repeat the obvious with someone you know will respond in a particular way to a particular stimuli. The once shiny New has left and with her walked out her petulant child, Libido. Comfy owns you now. You are comfy. Your pyjamas are divinity itself. Believe me it is damn inoffensive and deeply comforting to be in bed with your life partner. In bed, and to be fair not always trying to adapt the latest paperback of ‘’Kamasutra for the uninitiated’’.
You see, it is after all, school night.

I reckon this of anyone 10 -15 years into their wedlock and the answer will likely correspond with,
- that’s not fair, it was just one match... Manchester United Vs Chelsea, I mean c’mon!!
- of course she is still hot, but, I mean it’s her, what’s the big deal? We still do it once a week anyway
- it’s the kids, you know, ever since the second one...
- yes he looks fit but you know, I get so tired by the end of the day
- but we just had dinner and I get all gassy you know right after…

Let’s not get judgmental. It is effing unfair to poke horny fingers at people who see each other dressed like delinquent inmates, intermittently released on parole, desperate for a bunker, on a self-styled prison life term.

The morning after, you start with a whimper. It’s a toothbrush and loo chatter that coalesces at a table of bread and #Kellogg and usually ends with speed marching to an #uber or a car. Sometimes a metro or even a brisk run. Now sexy couples and some determined souls don’t give in so easily... they keep on trying. So amend that stuff above and add this. A quick peck or sometimes even a friendly hug followed by a fussed over lunchbox usually kicks off this delightful routine of *I still love you*.

This pattern is sometimes broken by a sudden and recurring urge. She is wearing this beautiful dress and looks terrific in it. He smells good. Some old things get rekindled. You both smile at each other a lot. You both walk home from a movie. You dump the kid at the grandparents and sneak off for the weekend. This happens. A lot. It keeps the oxygen supply to the ”bleary which” project going. It’s that charming god particle I think that has been observed as the single biggest religious cause for content grey haired mildly out of shape fifty somethings looking at their spouses with deep affection at weddings and other collective gatherings.

But the following day pattern, by now so ingrained in the life of, sets in. One doesn’t even realize how efficiently the banal has overpowered the adorable, the cute small stuff that made this adventure all so exciting in the first place. The office hours and the chores of the day take up the big half, the rest of the space gets Venn-diagrammed between the kids while the remaining quarter, earlier saved sacredly to risqué chats and hush-hush giggly plans of *let’s do that right after…* gets gently swallowed by silences.

The way home is an unusual space for the employed. It varies between a dreary walk back to a house which has too little and nothing new to offer or an exhausted march to get a cup of tea with the family and some much needed R&R. Some lucky people love this trudge home. Home. Where the other waits. Smiling. But it’s rare.

Chop chop to the majority. This walk home can get really long if your partner doesn’t share your interests or looks down on those tiny windows of all that inanity that made you whole once, but now seem unbearable or plain juvenile. Your space, that box of *today I want to do this* gets slowly corrupted with ideas of what suits your partner. You seek your space to simply be. You start making check boxes of things. You work at it. Relentless to please. Or you simply take a detour for that drink or a cup of coffee with someone, someone who likes talking about the latest gaming console or some such.

For those who miss the attraction the most...the drift settles in rather rapidly. They usually find excitement elsewhere. Some look for love in people while others sort trinkets and expensive baubles when the partner seems too distant to bother. And some just walk a lonely path back and forth from the kitchen to the bedroom each night.

Marriage is beautiful for millions, make no mistake. And I for one, have always wondered what is it that makes these two divergent worlds of almost perfect and utterly boring, spin differently from the other. And it has forever escaped me, while I was happily married, what was it that couples forgot to do. What is it that one could do different? Was it just the loss of attraction? Was it important to keep saying those things that were so casual and yet pleasant to the ear? Is it that important to seduce or be seduced from time to time? How important are looks, is it key to stay in shape these days? Do children bring in a whole new dimension that makes sure the partner starts looking at you differently? Is it the whole family thing?

Surely, it must be wonderful to come home to something as welcoming as a family. But why does Libido keep walking off in such a huff? What’s his problem anyway?
Or did you just grow up? You now understand and appreciate what’s really at stake? Does reality bring in a status check on what’s truly important? Education, health, celebrating the small stuff ...forgetting yourself for the larger audience? The smile that lights up his face when you bring home that lemon tart which he loves to eat...now that smile right there, how do you beat that?

For some this comfy chap brought in a much larger slice of life...he simply taught you to fall in love with the teddy bears on the pyjamas. For some this gap between pyjamas and passion only split the two siblings, into parallel universes. Do some of you now exist in your own separate solar systems? I don’t know. I am not on that trajectory anymore. But it would be an interesting and rather liberating evening, to have an uninhibited chat with my muchly married friends on what they feel, sometime soon.

The unbearable lightness of being, on Facebook

Posted on 22nd August 2019

This one’s going to be a tough one. Not because I am short on words, but that I have to constantly remind myself that I am just as guilty as anyone and everyone I refer to herein, of the hypocrisy we commit unto our walls. The virtual world in general and deny the pleasure it gives us surreptitiously. Guilty as hell I say.

At the time I was born and for a significant period thereafter, the biggest joy I shared, offline naturally, was when the black and white Dyanora TV got replaced by a Panasonic set. When a 3 tonne #MTNL landline made way for a blacker and sleeker and definitely lighter, Sony cordless handset. A #Philips stereo was beaten by its Bengali cousin #Bose and when someone’s #Maruti 800 got upgraded to a Maruti 1000. What total madness.

Don’t bother googling it if you weren’t born in the 70’s or the 80‘s my friend.
These joys, of buying a TTK blank cassette and ensuring it said R & RW on it made a world of difference, because this was recycling at another level. You could rerecord and overwrite the bloody songs when the Grammies went past that year and #MCHammer wasn’t the flavour anymore and #VanillaIce strutted his stuff instead. The fridge, oh the superb joy of feeling all that captured, frozen air, wisp onto your face after a hot day at school, because the AC was strictly for the night-times.
Now imagine me sharing all this intense joy onto a wall. Just wouldn’t cut it really. Thing is, I needed to tell... no, Show my friends what miracles I had worked discovering how to rewind, pause, record and play the same song, onto the spool in a single take, without winding out the silken brown tape into a loop of mangled disaster. It was an achievement when I was 10. At 15. Even at 18 to be fair!
Facebook, dear darling #Facebook, you simply wouldn’t have been enough. Or so I think.

Holidays. That’s a biggie, because you had to be terribly rich to do an international holiday in your summers. It usually ended up being hearty visits to grandparents, within a few thousand mile radii in the motherland and back, lugging suitcases on over-bridges towards a glistening Rajdhani or a beat up Kalka or a gasping Deluxe Express. And I am not even getting into the fun of securing your own bunk-bed on that journey. Shatabdi wasn’t a thing quite yet.

This is 80’s India and #AirIndia was still the cat’s whiskers on rates per seat. You needed to narrate every single whoosh in your belly every single time the plane taxied onto the runway. That ... how do I post that chuckle, that flutter, that terror?? And then there was the whole feeling of walking past all those lovely fancy people, smiling at them through the aisle, silently proclaiming to yourself that you were actually cool enough to be on their plane by the sheer virtue of the fact that even your daddy could buy those tickets. Frickkin’ rich is what it felt like!!

Your family camera, #Nikon or maybe an heirloom #Yashika was usually a very reliable, grey, heavy, unusually thick strapped firmly to your neck, instrument. It didn’t always work or load the film correctly. Angry instances of coming back with a dark empty roll as proof of a fabulous vacation have been known to abound. But when they did click right, you knew the images would make everyone look disarmingly happy or just plain charmingly stupid.
Not hot. Never hot.

Always a smile though, it managed to bring to the face. These holiday photos from childhood were so trapped in time, in that time when clothes, brands and figures didn’t matter. When the backdrop was usually a very dark part of the hotel. Because you weren’t thinking lens exposure or brilliance or contrast on an image manicuring Iphone. Because only one person in the whole band of family members bothered to click anything at all... that guy wearing the strap-on camera, he had one bloody job...and the rest couldn’t care less. At any given point some moronic cousin’s eyelid was discovered squeezed shut in a sun inflicted wince or mouth too widely open, munching something utterly impossible to digest visually. But just perfect.
Middle class I know, but what the hell.

And then. You got your first #walkman. How many times did you wear it like a neon sign on your chest I wonder... how loud could you possibly listen to a song? I don’t know. It was never damaging to any ear drum that I can recall. #MJ was god back then and #Madonna was, well, Madonna. Music and lyrics were religion. You had to know your music. All of it. Because your friends knew it, jobless b@#%$%ds. You never got to Google this shit. You just had to know. Because you, in your haloed moment of glory had claimed you ‘like’ this music. Screw you if you didn’t nuance the third paragraph where #BryanAdams went into a Cloud no. 9 encore with no extra words. These were landmines. Real ones. And you stepped on them gleefully, delighted when you got the parts right. Snigger et al.

I find every single image on Facebook absolutely stunning. Crafted with great care and love. Capturing endlessly, moments of beauty and pure designer essence. Trying to relive, displaying live at times just how special that moment truly was ...how much it meant to stand outside the Duomo at Milan and watch the lights dim as the streets came alive with roasted chestnut smells and gelato stores. How much in love you were when the Seine flowed silently under your Bateaux cruising by the glittering Eiffel. How exotic the food was when the waves lapped at your feet gently near some resort in Bali. How much you shrieked when the instructor pushed your sorry arse out of the helicopter you paid for with your liver, lung and perhaps a kidney.

Yes, captivating all of it. Surreal sometimes too, on Instagram when the Clarendon version or the Rise version of the same image gets it just right... the light in the original was fading, but here on XPro II, it looks like the real deal.
Then why is it that I don’t feel what it felt like when I was a child, a teenager even? What is it that I hunt for in this trillion byte infested data street of life and its immaculately capsuled moments? I have connected with so much of my past thanks to this absolute genius of an App and here I sit in judgement, demanding it bring back something so intangible from my childhood which I know doesn’t exist anymore.
Spoilt of me? Yes, Indeed.

Truth is, I am the child of endless summers, listening to romantic songs on train rides, changing batteries, staring intently into dark empty windows, waiting for that one single glimmer of light hung in a hut far, far away in a village I have never been to and never will. A child of late night radio shows on #AIR and Wonder Years episodes on picture-tube TV sets. Here I sit, gizmo and tech in hand, waiting for time to unravel and take me back repeatedly to simplicity. It is painful, this yearning for the impossible. And so wrong in its own way.

Because, I am also shameless enough to use this very forum to capture every living breathing detail of my everyday and write it down at exceptional lengths, on the same tech infested forum and find it insufficient. Shame on me.

So, what is it that I need from this virtual universe, what do I miss? The sensory? The touch and feel of the real? The people and their homes that never ever locked its’ doors on me? Where I never knocked nor checked the time to enter or leave? Friends I could visit? Sit with? Waste away with? And not with alcohol, but with incredibly bad humour or worse... their thoughts on the opposite sex? My son tells me it’s all in my head. VR is the new thing and you can touch and feel everything, like it was real. He would know. He can feel it.

I can’t.

Instead I feel this enormous handicap that is surrounding me every time I am online. Like I am a visitor from another planet, trying desperately to breathe this new chemical called air and like the smell of oxygen in it. Why am I not at home with it? Is it an age thing? Trying to fit in too hard? Keen to be counted as young and with it? Unaware of what truly is the purpose of that all-captivating #Hashtag?

Mesmerised I am at the million likes and followers who trace the lives of the sensible and the senseless, full of a seamless string of opinions and some would say, wisdom. Am I less wise? Is what I write or say not worthy of all this time spent online, trying to be liked? Why is it so urgent to get past that 1000 like mark each time I post something ...Is it very significant to be counted among the online people of this planet? Do I care what goes on, on #twitter? Should I care what people have to say about everything, from cats to catastrophes involving cats?

Is it so essential to be followed? Do we all need to be ratified? To be rated. To be ranked? Is it some childhood insecurity, to belong to a gang? To be a part of something bigger than ourselves and fear of not being counted among the millions? Is it a mob urge? Is it possible that I still need only those friends who I for one know will find the time to read what I write and I hope that here at least they will find the time to connect with me? Does Facebook really know how much I miss them? How badly I miss my growing up years? Do people at Facebook feel this way too? Is that why this App works so seamlessly?

Yes. I think it does and I think they do. It does plug a hole somewhere too deep to be seen with the naked eye or the naked reality of how desperately lonely we are, how much a few friends coming over matters, how much family gatherings at a wedding makes up for the lost time spent over accounts of smiling faces at soirees over sips of the best Bordeaux a million miles from home. I know I need to fill that gap. I can’t, not admit, that for this time, this need, I feel an unbearable lightness of being counted as family, on #Facebook and its giant family tree... to be remembered as one of you.

Collecting people. Since 1979

Image Link: https://www.facebook.com/pg/merideewaar/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2312613798959117&__tn__=-UC-R

I was once accused, rather pointedly, by a very dear friend of *Collecting People*. It stung for a while and then the truth of it stayed undeniable and indelible in my mind. For at this very instant, that knowledge, that I have, with me, today, a list of people with secret superpowers... diplomats and doctors, spies and spirits, filmmakers and freedom fighters, pundits and poets, rugby coaches and rock stars... that insane list that includes you dear reader in all likelihood ...that just takes this feeling of having done that one thing right, to a whole new level.

Perhaps some of you reading this would agree, that having this connection, this bond of super glue with people from everywhere, this glue that gives its very lease of life to friendly giants like Facebook and #Twitter, just that teeny-tiny blip of a word in your everyday life, can make you so frikkin’ all-powerful. It places you on a unique, unilateral, user-friendly path of deciding whether, this morning, when you wake up, you will or you won't, bring joy or wreak havoc in the lives around you, simply by harnessing the power of these exceptionally beloved and endowed with goodwill *collection of people*.

People. No. Not that abysmal word surely. We are talking of friends. Of You, sitting on my wall, my collected gilded list of cherished people. 

But let's not forget just why and what precisely did this damsel, in no distress whatsoever, and French no less, meant, when she indicted me of harboring said fascination of building a seemingly harmless collection, of People.

I have been, from the very start, an urchin. Not a care for fine talk, cloth nor culture. Girls and boys in all such categories found in me a kindred spirit. I did not deny the many wonders as much as the coloured pieces of broken but beautiful glass they brought to me in this rapport building exercise. My friendships saw me run wild through strange buildings, lives, kitchens and their households, learning from intuitive but determined steps of this impossible journey.

School was special. Middle class values, middle class aspirations and middle class friendships. Rich dividends of the *mutual fund* kind. The best investment plan there is in the market, I assure you. And, we shared our treasures over books and punishments, sports and tiffin boxes, periods and periodic tables. We grew up, wiser to each other and sharper to each other's needs. Here I met the most formidable and persistent woman of the whole bunch. And she remains, much married in a far away land, tall, omnipresent, ensuring I stand my ground and stick to my path.

 Meanwhile. My list grew, one name at a time, one phone call, one letter (yes letter - not email, we didn't have all the fancy E- stuff back then) and I kept getting stronger, fiercer, ebullient in my endeavor to have what people only build legends of. People.

 
Time passed, schools became colleges, Colleges turned into Universities and friends became lovers.

These men and women, their building pillars of trust and my myriad dreams built from those pillars, helped me grow into this strange mustang-like element. Feeding off of their adolescent energy, pheromone driven lust for life and sharing with them, this never ending mad hunt for the *new*.


These partnerships also let me feast on my growing fascination with the world at large and how it is usually divided between people with friends and people without. This theory, as you will conjecture, still holds, right down in the very strategic universe of Geopolitics. And let me add, to no less degree of seriousness, extremely packed Stadiums and rock concerts, where only a true friend will share his (rarely her) seat with you. Because it is Strings and you have been in love with Bilal Maqsood since eve took the fall from grace.

Now, one must note, every single heart break shouldn't and didn't bring with, in its wake, a passing of a friendship. That stuff, Important. Still is. For my heart still breaks. Frequently. But Friends, they stay.





I believe you meet the most curious people at work. These are charming, simple, complicated, regular, extraordinary folk with brilliant minds, banal stories and basic routines that usually mirror yours. And yet, they wield the mighty sword of making you feel wanted or not. They do very little, to be fair, in isolation. Unless they are as drunk as you are. It is in these rare moments, of spirit glossed bravado, do you see their raw superpowers - unleashed onto the muggle world. But usually, it stays concealed, cloaked, for the greater good of the magical world…right until that moment when you look sad. For a rather undebatable stretch of time. They then, get down on their knees, or whichever posture is likely to be held longer, given its linen they are wearing… and they listen to you. For hours, days, weeks. They call you. They spend time with you in the smelly cafeteria and they slowly put you back one tiny piece at a time, until you are ready to go back to battle.

My relationship with “people”, has seen you pick fights for me, flex your imperceptible bulge of a muscle and even bend (not over) for me. You let me know that it is ok to be abjectly unable to be anything more than I could. You just strolled along, shrugged and walked a little walk with me, through the dirt-road of my head, filling it with your incessant and interesting chatter, your collectibles, your craft and your wondrous imagination of what could be…leading me gently on into your world, where fishes fly and turtles live on trees. Or were you talking about the latest on the Jimmy Choo collection? Frankly, it’s all the same.

 And then you meet your other half. A friend unique enough to marry and I did. And even after you handle legal paperwork between the two of you, after a decade of playing smarty pants dance, life pulling you in opposite directions, he hangs around, with a bottle of stinging brown iodine, band aid and sterile cotton balls, still on alert mode (that’s default with the man I think 😕) for every time you look set on getting hurt, when you are likely to trip over your own silly mistakes… he emerges, tincture in hand smiling ... at your imagined pain for the iodine, like a friend.

 

Thing is, you all stuck around. You all lingered and sang and danced me through the hardest moments, life had in store for me. And this one goes out to all of you, for your time and you know who you are.

It is precisely a few hours from now, when this spinning third rock from the sun will finish its’ 40th tango in my lifetime. Feels rather grand and old at the same time. Diverse reference sets now refer to me as “hey, how’s it going” while some, definitely shorter people, stick to “hello aunty”.

But, here I stand, 40, single, measurably fit, relatively pretty, unquestioningly divorced, systemically employed, play acting mom to my boy, lost in thought and translation.

This page is my ode to all you enchanting men and women who have gone to great lengths to allow me to remain this creature of my own imagination. I, thanks to all of you, now firmly believe that I live inside a movie, you are all my costars and this, these words on my wall, is my background score. For it is here that I will live once more, and I invite you, in all humility, to read and share, write with me of times spent, sing of places visited, roads taken and not, images blurred of people met and unmet, movies watched and forgotten, books stolen and re-read and encounters that are indeed of the strangest kind.

Allow me to share with you, reader mine, my *big small universe* and within it my magic box of make believe stories...because that is what it is and all that you will make of it.

I remain, until the end,

A Friend.

*TINDERELLA*

You know, there was this one day, after my recent divorce when I sat back on my futon-esque chair, poured myself a mug of unpretentious coffee, lit up a milds and congratulated myself on being free to... er... you know, do what you do when you can do what you think you can do because you should do it anyway because you are after all, single once more. 

I smiled a Cheshire cat like smile to myself, imagining the slim washboard ab old me, now at the prime age of 39, not yet 40, mind you... being desperately hunted, by the most desirable of the male species, across my list of possibles and probables. The smile was resplendent.

That, my friend, was 6 months ago.

Cut to last evening. Same chair, same mug, same cigarette in hand and this evolutionary enterprise has faltered desperately. And not for the lack of options.

Now don’t get me wrong. The world of Tinder is beautiful. It allows you to look pretty, in 12 different ways, drop a witty punchline, swipe your likes, even specify your height, if you are so inclined to mention whether you need wear heels on dates and precisely how high those heels need be.

I skipped that part meticulously of course. For the rest, I solemnly did the needful. After a rigorously spent week whining about a ridiculous oestrogen build up and how uncompensated single life can be. A Friend, a true friend, simply downloaded the bloody app and added the first 3 images he had of me onto the page and Lo! I was available to the world of free men again. Easy-Peasy.

Now when you turn 40, and you turn to the internet to provide you with bed time stories, chances of them turning into the Grimms Fairy tale turn significantly higher. I don’t know how many of you have or ever needed to explore the site but it is a fairly rational, algorithm based app, selecting the kind of men/women you swipe right and adding them seamlessly to your collection of six pack wonders. But then, tech challenged as I am, I managed quite the opposite with disarming effect, swiping right with exceptional ease, and summarily landed with, much to my dismay, a collection of eligibles, who ranged from unhappy married men, unreal 20 somethings with 12 pack abs and 50 year old desperados. And that was just day 1.

But never for a minute think, that the bespectacled IT Guy who designed this ingenious programme doesn't know what mushrooms you smoke. He knows your buttons and he keeps pushing them, that freak on a leash. He insists on sending you these profiles, which by the time you figure out which side you need to swipe, leaves you staring at all prototypes created for the next sequel of *Thor: are you efffing kidding me?!!*

For those of us who arrive on this haloed portal for a gentle stroll in the park, beware, this place is not for the feeble hearted. So, giddyup for the almost instant download of:

''sssssssssssssssssuppp hotnessssss''.

''Yo sssssssexyyyy''.

“hello babeeeeeeeesss”.

Let me emphasise, it takes you approximately 40 good seconds to come to terms with the extra S's in there and then comes the part where you process why these unusual suspects think you are a hot piglet. But you carry on, determined, armed with a 15 year hiatus from such endearments. You blunder on with a feeble hello, telling yourself silently that this is how it goes, and a “good ol’hello'' looks something like this now.

My son would know more about these excessive S’s, I am sure of it. Must be some kind of mating code or something. Maybe I should have asked him. But that conversation …let’s just say is, unthinkable at this point. He is 11.

Your fingers tremble at the thought of what might follow next. For instance, this manchild has more muscles on his back than you have eggs in your fridge and considering your love for the protein, that's one too many. But you plod on. Slowly, very slowly, you make your way to the humble and rather rude-on-mornings-mirror, lift your faded T shirt to expose a very peaceful and content looking midriff. It speaks of great battles, scarred by knives in the field of delivery and deliverance repeatedly. Unimpressed you, this time not very slowly, make your way back to your keypad and delete the profile of the *Excessive sssssssss* men.

You chuckle to yourself, smug at your shrewd understanding of how close you were to being conned and congratulate yourself on this first round victory of defeating the *get hooked by the crooked* system from within.

You make yourself a fresh cup of coffee and leave the blasted machine and its machinations to defraud you for another day. You indulge in some spot jogging, telling yourself it has nothing to do with the musculature of the last man that flashed on your shameless screen.

Regardless. The next morning is ruthless! Your jawline can't be found, but hell, the incessant pings find their way to you. You turn to the blighted screen, and there they sit, your jolly bundles of joyless jesters. Shrieking a frenzied, ‘you have 34 tinder notifications, you are doing great, play it cool, you could find yourself someone you really like today’. Honestly??!! They even know you need to play it cool? How do you do that? One could hide, you know, and never respond, now that seems logical. Yes that must be what they meant.

You let the day slide.

You go online the next morning, it’s a bright sunny day, you feel the liquid courage of coffee coursing through your veins and this time you know you can nail these voices down to a whimper. You login and this time its 72 versions of your worst nightmare, blinking, waiting, alive, like a Venus flytrap on your screen. You look at your Gym mat staring at you in defiance and silent deliberation.

Breathe... That was important. These impossible looking people *super liked* you. See? Slow… deep breaths now. Pause, breathe again, do the bloody anulom vilom wumann! Calm the hell down. Now gently swipe right. See? Easy wasn’t it? Relax. You can do this. Go, er Left. Dang it!

Now you are just cheating the system. A part of you looks ashamed and the other part tells you, it is time to do what needs to be done. It was time to rewind to when this herd had existed on your planet, roaming free like the wild creatures they were, well within the sights and talons of creatures like you, soaring the skies of youth, like birds of prey.

You do a new reality check. You defy the mirror. It’s all good. You are terrific in your last of the 30s. Couldn’t be better. You did not photoshop anything. Plus, they haven’t even met you yet, and that should cover all the bases. Once they see your radiant spirit and its beautiful soul that should seal the deal. I mean that’s what they are really here for right, the inner beauty? So. Growing confident with the solidity of that notion, you proceed to read the texts that sit on your wall.

‘hey gorgeous’.

See? not that bad eh? You can handle it. Gorgeous is good, gorgeous is great. You are gorgeous. You move on emboldened, to the next.

‘Ýou are so pretty, your lips, your smile, the eyes ... oh my goodness. So you are single?’ Hmmm. Right.

‘You are having husband?’ Well, the thought of picking out tiny chunks of my Ex from the gaps in my teeth was interesting but a tad acidic. No. Not having husband today.

This place was a disaster. No. I was a disaster in this place. This inner beauty thing wasn’t going to cut it. So what was? What makes this forum so excruciatingly tantalizing and yet so forbidden for folks like us? Us, bumbling idiots from the 70’s? Stuck in our paper letters and our telephone landlines and our state televised programmed minds that fed our childhood and youth. Why was this garden of Eden so available and yet so unattainable for us platinum card holders?

For me the daunting task was looking beyond the brute honesty of what such forums stood for. The honesty that every person at some point needs someone who desires them in some format. Desire not love. These platforms aren’t looking for love. Some find that too. Most don’t and for those most, this live streaming of desire tagged surreptitiously as *super likes* usually manages to satisfy a deep and urgent need to feel young and wanted.

I managed to wade my way past these potholes and emerge victorious with a very sober list of friends, good looking and not so much, interesting, curious, undeniably lost like me, hunting for that elusive thing we can’t pronounce and inevitably succumbing to the simple idea that not everyone is looking for one night stands. Some are. Which isn't a bad thing at all.

Conversations flow here too, like steady streams and people emerge from shells of faux coolness to be themselves, childlike in their innocence and desperation to please. Eager young men and women, who have had many or no suitors, ample and ambiguous chances at love and love-making and some with very very hot bodies which we shall discuss in another discourse most certainly in the following weeks at length.

Truth is, there is some one for everyone here. You find a measure of intimacy, privacy and eventually a transition to a WhatsApp or an Instagram where you end up sharing more than just a coffee or a bed. These portals have become the new source of finding happiness. It has its own bizarre logic.

But it comes with a very simple disclaimer that it’s only for those who are not in the game to judge the notion of wanting to be wanted.

I, Tinderella do solemnly swear that I am happy that I entered this swarm of lost souls, and have found many curious lives that intersected mine with their own triumphs and losses. At 40 I found a deep respect for their stories, their hopes, their urges, so naked, so honest, so uninhibited by my perception of what ought be and what is.

And it is what it is. It isn’t poetry but it’s not clichéd in some steroid induced debauched idea of rampant sex appeals and little else.

It is a social experiment of mammoth proportions and I am fascinated by it. It helped me realize many things about what I truly desire in my weakest and strongest moments. For me it has been a journey in Affirmation. And I found mine on Tinder.