Illusion

By Nishita | Saturday, 31 January 2015 6 Comments



"People don’t like love, they like that flittery flirty feeling. They don’t love love - love is sacrificial, love is ferocious, it’s not emotive. Our culture doesn’t love love, it loves the idea of love. It wants the emotion without paying anything for it. It’s ridiculous." —Matt Chandler
Shah Rukh Khan made all the 90s kids believe in the magic of love and damaged their brains for eternity. But now, as an adult, I know better. I know that Raj was an optical illusion. I know that love is this undefined, bizarre, complex emotion that no one can put into words.


We have all been conditioned to believe in the comfortable concept of love. But with each passing day, I see its significance fade away piece by piece. I used to be a firm believer of love and other drugs. This very belief of mine is now just a fictional entity.
Hoping for a soulmate in our world is like a mirage of the oasis. Virtues like loyalty, integrity, honesty have lost its meaning and all we are left with is treachery, dishonesty and greed.
With more options comes more difficulties. Everyone around is viable and available, so why would anyone go and do the right thing.  
In the past, things were simpler. Get a twig and brush your teeth. Now, there’s a host of complexities involved. Go to a supermarket. Choose between a colgate, a pepsodent, a sensodyne, a close up or a cibaca. Each, a viable option. Each would solve your purpose. So, would you ever stick to a particular brand for years at a stretch ?
We don’t. We yearn for a change. We need variety. We desire more options. We feel inquisitive. We want to ‘explore’.


When we cannot stick to a particular toothpaste for the rest of our lives, is it even possible to pin down a soulmate and stick to them for eternity inspite of the viable options out there ? Is it possible for a person to be content with a single person for the rest of their lives ?


Human needs are satiable but human greed is insatiable. I always thought that every person deep down yearns for stability and when you have that one person, it’s good enough. But the stories I witness, the people I meet have different tales to tell. Everyone’s interested in having their share of ‘fun’ while they are at it and get back to their routine lives. Human wants vary. You want someone for companionship. You want someone as a friend. You want someone to be intimate with. You want someone to be a shoulder to cry on. You want someone for the conversations. And all these someones might be different people altogether.

True love happens only in the Nicholas Sparks novels while we mortals need to deal with the real thing. Love, even as a concept, has lost its meaning. And in these dark times, if you do find someone to love and be loved back, preserve them. It’s not the happy ending that counts, what happens after that is the more pertinent question.

Mere ramblings. No apologies :)

And we're back !!

By Nishita | Thursday, 13 February 2014 2 Comments

Every nauseating Valentine season, I am forced to retrospect the very concept of love and the authenticity of it.
Whatever 'love' I have experienced has always ended up in practically nothing. Even the journey was not worthwhile to say the least. I emotionally invest a lot and in the end all I feel is 'emotionally wasted'. It just enlightens me and makes me believe that men are that species of dogs that can never be trained :P
For example, when I say 'Don't call me', it implies that 'Call me till your fingers bleed', but the guy never gets it. Not every person can be pleased with roses, chocolates and money. Value addition is also a pre requisite. But a very few guys get it.
We know how expectation can be a bitch. What we don’t know is that expectation is not always a result of our own vivid imagination. Sometimes people create room for expectation in your life by overdoing things. Initially it is always a fairy-tale simply because you are delusional, blinded by this phenomenon called love. Eventually the expectation feeds on you and becomes a monstrous entity that gets the better of you. All you can think of is how things are not the way they are supposed to be. Heartache, misery, frustration and the whole fraternity befriend you.
Maybe good people make bad romances. Maybe fairy-tales don’t exist. Maybe ‘happily ever after’ is an illusion after all. At this point, it dawns on you that the minute you create dependency on a person, everything else goes for a toss.
Guys show you gestures only when you’re a conquest they are pursuing. Once the purpose is solved, it’s just a static pond of nothingness that you deal with on a daily basis. Sometimes, you don’t even deserve a phone call in the whole day. Such callousness is combated by self doubt and self pity and self loathing and you still know that you love your ‘Bloody Valentine’.
Nothing lasts forever and love is no exception to that. Two people meet and like each other. Sometimes priorities change, sometimes people. The key lies in moving beyond all of this and finding happiness with yourself and within yourself. Lingering in the past just adds more crap to your plate. Maybe in the past you were happy but now you’re not and there’s a very good reason for that which you fail to see. It is important to get out of things that pull you down and do not add value to your way of living.
That is what I take back from my experiences with the hope of finding a better tomorrow. As they say, if it's not good, it's not the end.
And for what it's worth, Happy Valentine's Day :)

Mere ramblings, no apologies.



Pre-mid life crisis

By Nishita | Friday, 18 October 2013 20 Comments

“A Twin Flame (also Twin Soul) is a spiritual (New Age) concept describing a special soul connection between two halves of the same soul. According to the mythology of Twin Flames, in the beginning of time we were created as a perfect soul, that was split into two soul halves, one male, one female, that would then be cast upon Earth to be forever looking for one-another. They would reincarnate over lifetimes with this longing for each other, and once they finally meet, they would reunite and be blissfully in love and then leave this physical plane as one whole individual.” - Wikipedia

I believe in the concept of twin soul and for me marriage would mean marrying that one person who gets me, gets my jokes, gets my cynicism, intimidates me, completes my sentences and most importantly accepts my flab !!
So when the aunties and uncles search for a candidate within the same community and caste, the concept of twin soul goes for a toss and the end result is a business arrangement with maximum risk mitigation benefiting both the parties involved .  A typical girl family perspective would be :
1. NRI is a delectable entity but Indians with a 6 figure salary would also suffice.
2. The guy should have a house in a gated community and a sedan.
3. Good family. (The ‘good’ here is subject to discretion)

A typical guy family perspective would be :
1. Fair-skinned beauty, the skinnier the better. (But we Odias prefer the non skinny versions)
2. Should have a job to share the guy’s expenses. But in some cases, females are required to quit.
3. Good character.  No alcohol. No weed. (If your profile is in any matrimonial site, please remove your pub pictures ASAP, this is India, you cannot be the pub going loose woman !!)

So what we do is narrow down our options to a limited strata of the society when actually the world should be our oyster.
When you are in that tricky age of 24-25 and you are a female, marriage suddenly becomes more of a compliance than a choice. You should ideally have a candidate to get married to for your sake or else the family intervention will hit you just below the belt :P  If for some reason or the other, you fail to find your ‘soulmate’, people around you will think it’s their moral duty to hunt down that special someone for you. Nobody’s interested to know if you’re interested for such a commitment or not. People around you start getting married and having kids, so even you should bite the bait. And so, owing to the circumstances around us, one fine day, we all settle. And most of us settle with any feasible option that comes our way. We settle because we’re scared. Scared of being alone, which is why that quest for mad, passionate, extraordinary love dies a martyr’s death.

The very sound of arranged marriage is thus creepy. Unless your arranged marriage guy gifts you a destination wedding with a Sabyasachi outfit and The Wedding Planners and Tarun Chawla,  I am going to keep thinking it’s weird and illogical. Arranging a marriage typically means seeing what you get, interacting with a few hand picked and maybe hen pecked candidates, narrowing down to a lucky few, talking for a few months or worse days and finally giving in with prospects of hope, excitement and expectations.

Nobody will ever divulge what happens after the happily married part cuz in the Facebook era, we all feel obligated to act happy in our profiles (‘Best day ever’, ‘Best husband ever’ etc. )  and market ourselves in a certain way. What actually happens to you is your destiny. Thou shalt get screwed if that is your destiny.

I don’t have the statistics to claim what is better, love marriage or arranged marriage but all the candyfloss movies that I have seen makes me believe that liking > dating > loving > marrying sounds more natural to me.

But then sometimes we have to bend backwards for the greater good.

Mere Ramblings, No Apologies :)

Team Ranbir

By Nishita | Sunday, 9 June 2013 Leave a comment

Before watching, Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani, thanks to the spoiler alerts on FB, I concluded the movie is another Student Of The Year kinda crap. But when I actually saw the movie, I completely loved it. Ranbir Kapoor can be partly blamed for it though.
People who were expecting an Iron Man experience from a Dharma production will obviously be disappointed. But the fact is there cannot be much substance in a Rom Com. It's supposed to be all dreamy and unrealistic. That's the beauty of fiction.
'If only I could date Bunny'
'If only I could have an exotic destination wedding'
'If only I could have the yellow fuchsia coral wardrobe'
'If only my husband could drive a BMW'
'If only all my travel bags were LV'
'If only I could quit my job and become a Fox traveller tv person instead'
'If only I could take random trekking trips and meet a Ranbir doppelganger'
The list is endless. Isn't it ?
 The only drawback with the movie was the length. Hindi movies have a bad reputation of loose scripts anyway.
What I loved about the movie was the many moments that the director created throughout the movie which made the experience beautiful.
The part where the father asks him to follow his dreams inspite of being sad about it shows the selfless love our folks have for us. 
The part where Aditya is let down by his friend cuz he never calls. It explores how friends drift and how priorities change with time and all you are left with are the insatiable expectations.
The part where Deepika tells him 'we can't have it all. Something will miss out. Instead we should enjoy what we have right now'
The way he suddenly blurts out 'I love you'
When she asks why he wants to marry her, he says cuz there's a right time for everything in life.  He makes her a part of his dreams and wants to see the world with her.
The proposal happens only with 2 balloons and a cake. Minimal, simple and sugary sweet.

It's not about being pompous when the best things in life are supposed to be simple. 

The movie experience for an IT person with crazy work was epic. I got involved in a story and got my share of happiness from it. Ranbir just eats all the screen space and even manages to overshadow Madam Madhuri !! He takes Badtameez Dil to a whole different level with his quirky expressions. He is the best visual treat in B-Town and I am completely charmed.

Team Ranbir <3

The tall tale of our beloved men

By Nishita | Saturday, 21 July 2012 1 Comment


“The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough"  
 ~Germaine Geer


We have heard and seen enough cases of the oppressive man in the progressive society. The latest story  The Guwahati incident. Enough has been said and shown about it already. The videos are viral. So whatever opinion I would state won't be anything new. Whenever there's an issue, there'll be a heated discussion about it and a lot of people will have a lot to say and your Facebook newsfeed would be flooded.
Educate men. Respect women. Women's rights. Stringent laws. And more blah.

Oddly enough those ideas can never be incorporated. Ever heard of anti-rape each one teach one ?
Enumerating some pretty basic facts ::
1. As long as there's white and black, yin and yang, men will objectify women and there's absolutely nothing one can do about it. 
2. People package and brand this very concept and sell it in the movies. So people emulate it all the more. Changing the word 'rape' to 'sexual assault' won't change a thing.
News channels are the only entities that get benefitted in the form of ‘breaking news’. 
All of the women have been subjected to a certain degree of harassment at some or the other point of their lives be it in a bus, a train, on the road or even in a temple !!  You always have to be alert and suspicious at all times, you have to avoid deserted roads, you have to dress according to a certain sensibility unless you want the Rowdy Rapists to pounce on you, you need to do a double check at every step to check if someone’s following you, every car that slows down beside you, you need to be careful to retract.
In spite of being super careful, things will happen. A man will scan you from  the tip of your head to the tip of your toe, a man will give you his set of lewd looks, a man will come up to you and ask you what's a dildo, a man will turn into Pee Wee Herman if there’s an opportunity on a lonely road, a man will grope you in the darkness of the bus, a man will grope you in the brightness of a crowded temple for that matter, a man will pass obscene comments, a man will corner you and go around you with his motorcycle and I can go on and on. 
A friend suggests pepper spray. Trust me friend, there’s never the time to rummage through your big bag, find that bottle and spray, spray, spray. All you can possibly think of at the time is to run, run, run and never look back.
Depending on your degree of luck, you either come out of the situation physically unscathed or you don’t. Either ways the damage is more on the psychological front.  Every time a certain incident happens you start questioning the integrity of your creation. Gradually you become this epitome of stoicism and learn to be comfortably numb with these encounters accepting it as a way of life. You cannot fight the thought process, you cannot fight the man with all his physical strength, you can only succumb. Such is the sorry state of females. There's no such thing as equality of men and women and can never be. The male species have their vested interests in every aspect of the equality banter so please don't take it seriously. Workplace diversity is a farce to keep the men engaged. Office would be such a bummer with no femme fatales in it !!
At the end of the day, women are physically weak, emotionally creeper-like and subject to objectification.
Now the feminists might think I am crazy but I am in fact a hardcore feminist myself. It’s just that I am not delusional. I am just being practical here. Rape or sexual assault or anything in between will keep happening. All that the fairer sex can possibly do is stay vigilant and careful at all times.
As they say, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Disclaimer: Certain keywords hurt the Oriya sensibility and I know the quintessential Oriya girl is not supposed to say them out loud, more so publish it online :P

Mere ramblings, no apologies ;)

Location: Madhapur, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India

A cynic’s take on all things fun

By Nishita | Monday, 5 March 2012 | 5 Comments


As a kid, life is all about unconditional happiness, school, bicycle, fighting with friends over an eraser, homework, birthday parties, naivety, chocolates, sunshine and butterflies.  There’s no self realization, there's no self pity, there's no self loathing, there's no cynicism, there's no arrogance, there's no heartbreak, there's no resentment, there's no remorse, there's no regret. Life’s one big party and it’s all about spontaneity.
Watching a kid hold her dad’s hand and walking happily down the road, unaware of the vagaries of life that lies ahead of her made me realize how amazing it was to be a kid. As we grow up, all that tends to change and life is all about the ‘pay package’, the ‘branded car’, the ‘luxury apartment’, the ‘trophy husband’ and so on.
The basic question is: Did we all readily sign up for it or is it a forced entity ?
Some like predictable monotonous way of living.
Some seek thrills every single day. Be it cheap or otherwise :P
To each his own.
 Life as a whole is a pretty overrated concept if you come to think of it. We never asked for it. But we still have to live, survive and move ahead.  So why not soak in the sun, lie like a log, eat like a pig, watch the grass grow, admire the sea with its set of unending possibilities, jump around, love someone whole heartedly, sing our guts out and dance  like no one’s watching J
Coming back.
This post is about all things overrated in and around us. A few observations basically.
1.       Happy Birthdays:
We were born on a particular day. What is the big deal about it? If by being alive we are contributing anything for the benefit of others, it’s something worth celebrating. Otherwise it’s not. One fine day, out of the blue, you are obliged to have ‘fun’, smile all day, receive calls from long lost people whom u talk to only on your birthday or their birthday :\ , fake laughs and waste shit loads of cash treating different set of friends (in expectation of a proper gift obviously..barter system you see :D) all because of your birthday..!!
(Mine is on 17th of April btw, in case u want me to have ‘fun’, send me gifts….I love anything for free :P)


2.       Weekends:
Following the league of having ‘fun’ comes yet another hit phenomenon of the contemporary world…Weekends. When you slog the whole week, logically you would want to just sleep and while your time away. But the element of ‘fun’ will haunt you even then because ideally ‘having fun’ is what you are supposed to do on a weekend..!! I wish someone could define ‘fun’ for me. Standing in long queues waiting for food cuz all the good places are crowded is not fun. Drooling over a doughnut all week to find it all sold out by the time you reach the counter is again no fun. Neither is the unavailability of  tickets cuz everyone wants to watch an anticipated movie in its first week of release any fun.
Most people I know booze their weekends out or do some similar random shit. (Cobra venom is the new ecstasy for those who didn’t know..!!)
So I’ll never understand the hype about weekends.


3.       The Oscars :
Recent event.
Too much hoopla.
Who wore what, who exposed what body part etc. etc. I have seen The Descendents and The Artist. None of which is as big a deal as they claim it to be. The interesting thing about Hollywood is that a lot of interpretation is left for the audience to ponder over, be it the metaphorical representations, the reading between the lines, the storyline or the intricate thought process of the writer. But I still feel it gets an undue share of limelight year after year since Americans are such experts at marketing and branding.

4.       Facebook :
America’s gift to the world, revenue for its own coffers and the power of information at their mercy has been blown out of proportion in such a way that it has become an integral part of almost everyone’s lives except the Chinese. A basic look at a person’s FB profile gives an approximate idea about the person in general, the likes, the dislikes, command over the English language, their party circuit, the clothes in their closet, their friends, their GPS co-ordinates everything..!! A stalker’s delight, Facebook is creepily getting more popular with each passing day. I don’t know whether it’s good, bad, ugly or evil but it’s quite an overrated way of the social and the anti-social mingling on a common platform.  

5.       Kolaveri Di :
Mere mention of the song and my ears start bleeding. It’s just a gimmicky song. Why the fuss ? I was in Kerala when the song started creating ripples first and then waves..!! I was having a mini sabbatical from FB-land but when I returned, all I could see is Kolaveri, Kolaveri and more Kolaveri which left me wondering…Why this why this Kolaveri Di…???!!
I sit in an auto, the auto guy is suddenly singing it out loud, kids when asked to sing a song starting singing Kolaveri when it is not even a song..!! It’s more like a nursery rhyme. Maybe the closet-bathroom-singers finally felt emancipated and the soup song became such a rage.

Anyhoo my cynical eyes will be scanning for more such worldwide spread entities that are overrated, over-hyped and over-the-top. I love Vidya Balan for being crass with such elan. Obscenity was never this hot. But her overdose on tv these days is getting my goat and one fine day she might end up featuring in my overrated list..!!
Or I am just being air-headed :P

Either ways, mere ramblings…no apologies :D

Location: Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India

The Kerala Chronicles

By Nishita | Saturday, 26 November 2011 | , 3 Comments

Thank you Abhishek Das for reminding me how lazy I have become that I stopped doing the one thing I love the most : Rambling. So this post is the result of your phone call. And always remember, I hate you like I love you and vice versa :P
So yeah let's say I am back with da-Bang and bucket loads of coconut oil :P
Confused about the coconut oil ? Don't be. My GPS co-ordinates say I have been living in Trivandrum for almost 2 months now and it's been a super crazy experience.
It all began with my quest for money just like everyone else so I sought shelter in the coconut tree dotted landscape of God's own country cuz that's where work was. All you can see here is green. And more green. And more green. So green. Finally your eyes get accustomed to everything green cuz it's humane to adapt afterall. Moreover according to me 'God's own country' is more of an hyperbolic expression. Just plain marketing strategies to boost income via tourism. But then I am more of a building person so I might be biased.

First Impressions. Lasting Impressions. But not in my case.
I hated this place initially cuz it was more of a parallel universe. No connection with the main land whatsoever.  No familiar faces, no familiar language, no familiar hoarding, no familiar music and the list goes on and on. So even the mere sound of Telegu songs suddenly became an exciting prospect.  Food is another tale in itself. The top 2 ingredients for any recipe here are coconut oil and beef. 
End Result: I was an annoying whiner. Drenched in self pity. Lonely. Love sick. (The weather here does that to you. Don't blame me :\)
But PRATIK, Calvin and Hobbes, The Secret and shit loads of self evaluation made me realize how important it is to find happiness in the happy moments life presents in front of you. Resisting change is a  person's biggest mistake whereas being able to go with the flow of life is a person's biggest strength. 

Current Sentiments :
Regular hamburgers, sausages, butter chicken, gobi parathas and lassi help my cause big time :P Weekends with amazing people just adds onto the euphoria. Work is fun. And now somehow living it up, creating and storing memories made me realize one thing :: Kerala somehow grows onto you and I might have fallen for this place already. Especially when it rains :)

Location: Trivandrum, Kerala, India