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Narcissa
I had a pseudo-date, recently. What’s a pseudo-date? Oh, that’s something that looks like a date but isn’t. Why? Because I bought him an ice-cream cone (and was ordered and reminded to blog about it, so here you are, Mr.Pseudo-Date). And yeah, because a conversation such as this was possible…
That girl is hot!
No, she is not.
And you would know, would you? You don’t check out women.
Says who? I check out women all the time. I checked this one out even before you did and found that she isn’t the kind of woman I call hot.
So what kind of women do you find hot?
Umm…tall….energetic….short hair…
Crap. You’re just describing yourself.
So? I find myself hot!
But the thought struck home. What if it is true?
My vision of women is limited by my own body! I have no concept of how to be attracted to a woman. Now at long last, after the trauma of the teens, having learnt to love myself, I don’t know how to go beyond that. I like me, I love me and it stops right there. It isn’t rocket science, being attracted to your complement, a human being who looks and feels different from you. The opposite sex is easily attractive because they are so different from us. But how about the same sex? I have tremendous admiration now for gays and lesbians because it seems like they’ve gone past their own bodies and see beauty in their own sex.
How exactly does one expand one’s horizons beyond self and the obvious? I’m stuck with my own reflection and pretty as it is, it still is just a play of light in a bowl of water.
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A version is posted to Yahoo! Real Beauty.
Xena was a princess too
Conversation with a colleague:
Him:
I think women (at work) come in two types. There are women like you – independent, strong-natured type…you know they aren’t going to burst into tears because you tell them you don’t like their work. Then there’s this other type you have to be careful around because you never know how they’ll react.
Just as an aside, I stayed in late at work last week and was travelling back after midnight when mum called to check where I was. The same person, with me, looked a trifle surprised and then remarked,
It’s just that, with girls like you, one gets the sense that you can take care of yourself and don’t need protection. Whereas with X, Y, Z…they’re like little kids, you know?
I suppose that in a world of princessess, some of us are Xena. But everybody has feelings and no one is completely invincible, you know?
Like this:
Single-itis
Mayank Shekhar bemoans the plight of the single urban male in Mumbai today in an article that’s interestingly titled ‘Suffering single-it is!’
Everybody loves a single woman: The world donates her affection, attention, drinks, dinner, coffee, Orkut scraps….she gifts them hope. Nobody loves a single man, not even the single man himself, and least of all the bouncer outside the bar!
While his dig at the ‘donations’ my ilk get makes me fume, I guess by my own logic, I can afford to be generous. His species really does appear to be getting a rough deal. Tch, tch, poor things. And I don’t imagine views like the ones on this blog make it any easier for the critters. No, it is true, I ain’t being sarcastic for a change.
When I break up with one of my late20s/30ish boyfriends, amidst the agony and anger is the realization that heck, I have a lot more options than the guy does! We’re both young (well young enough), smart, fun, friendly, attractive and freshly single. But unlike the unlucky protagonists of SATC, I live in Mumbai not New York. And the ratio of single members of the opposite sex is skewed in my favour. 
Besides I can afford to savour the delights of being that much-debated personality – a single Modern Woman. While a man can be a convenience, an amusement and even a sex object, he isn’t anymore a vital necessity to my existence or even my happiness. I can well have a social life, fun with a lot of men (if I so choose!) than misery with one (okay, fun with a single one). Heck, I can have as many girls’ nights outs as I want, even if I claim to be homosexual, I’ll still not lose out on male attention (isn’t it a fact that lesbianism is one of the greatest male fantasies?)
When I decide a boyfriend is starting to cramp my style, I can very well decide to ‘go underground’ for a while, can choose to ‘concentrate on my career’ and if all else fails, can beg off from the social circuit citing ‘family pressures’. Oh and I don’t even need to go out actively searching for the opposite sex. My family will do it for me, well-meaning friends will match-make and the men themselves will present themselves for inspection. Ha! The mountain will come to Mohemad so to speak so IdeaSmith can afford to be lazy.
Hmm, I’m smug, aren’t I? I ‘gift the world hope’ after all, so I can afford to be more than hopeful!!!!! If I had had a choice in the matter I would never have chosen to be born a woman. After all, who would willingly want to live as a second-class citizen all their lives….but you’ve heard that rant already here. If I had to be born a woman, there was never a better time or place to do so. Amen to that.
Mother Goose
I saw this ‘Make your own teddy bear workshop’ and my first thought was “I wish I had someone to bring here…a little someone” and not “I wish they had those when I was a kid”.
See here’s where you go in (irresistible kid-magnet, isn’t it?).
Then you get to pick the skin of the toy you’ll create.
You can record your own voice or your favorite song and insert it into your toy.
Walk on to the stuffing machine. I don’t think this is really necessary from what I remember of my toy-making lessons but it makes for some damn fun watching…ask me, I walked into the workshop when I spotted this thing!
Oh and you can also give your freshly born toy a bath and get a birth certificate issued!
For a change, I looked and listened without my cynical marketer’s thinking cap. And I imagined a toothless grin somewhere.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
I don’t audition for potential husbands anymore the way I used to long, long ago. Actually I don’t even audition prospective fathers because in my mind, no man is ever going to be a good enough parent for my little one.
The only people who can make me smile instantly, unthinkingly are under the age of 8.
And yet, when I was 21, fresh from the madness of adolescence and full of determination, I decided that I would never have a child. Because I didn’t want to an over-crowded planet full of unhappy people. Because I didn’t want to be made responsible for yet another human being’s emotions. And most of all, because I was scared. Of labour, of someone else’s adolescence. Of being torn physically and emotionally.
Then one night I had a dream and this really did happen. I was pregnant, bloated tummy almost full term. I remember my mother and grandmother’s faces around me (isn’t that odd, way back then, several other family members were part of my circle but I didn’t see the grandfather and uncle who died, the aunt who left, the cousins who parted after a rift..I saw the two people who are here). There was a husband somewhere but I couldn’t see his face even then.
Then I went into labour right at a staircase landing and passed out. And when I woke up, they were all standing around me. Then someone laid a baby in my lap. That’s when I woke up. My life changed forever by that nocturnal flight of imagination.
I’ve never been able to pass a child since then without turning back and smiling or just looking, looking, looking.
Does that make sense? No, biology never did, even in school.
If it is about biological urges, the compulsion to bind with and settle down seems to have passed me by. Even if I display classic mating behavior with my many boyfriends, I suspect those are more the following of patterns I’ve learnt and see around me. I’ve never met anyone with whom I felt that deep soul connection that they talk about. Absolutely no one I can even imagine as being important enough to call a soul mate. My life, the world and the universe is seen alone through my eyes, explored and experiences solo.
But when I see a child, something else, alien and yet unfamiliar rears its head inside me. And I want, want, want. Of all the things that life throws at you….I never thought I’d care about being a mother more than I could care about being a wife. But perhaps this too shall pass.
I finally define myself independent of what any man wants me to be, when I can see myself as much more than a daughter, sister or girlfriend and men have become accessorial rather than vital to my happiness. I have the life I wanted ten years back. And when I look further….what next? Something that will give it meaning, something more, something beyond.
A child shall lead the way….
IdeaSmith
thesinglemarriedman
The Armchair Philospher
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