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.