I hope you have yourselves the happiest New Year so far. I hope 2005 is filled with joy and prosperity, and I sure hope you each get all you've wanted in the year to come.
Plenty of love, and a Happy New Year hug,
Reveur.
posted by La Eposa @ 6:28 PM
I know that people have to get on with their lives even in the wake of Sunday's tsunami. Even I have been getting on with my own life, in a manner of speaking, doing what I need to, not letting it affect the rest of my life, etc.
However, I don't understand moving on to the point of neglect. Of callousness. Of ignorance. Which, I'm ashamed to say, I've noticed in several people in my friends circle, and in my family.
Excerpts:
~ I'm so glad I'm getting out of this miserable city. I can't understand how you live here.
~ Gawd! So dangerous. Your city's so dangerous. (From a person who lives in a city where every tenth word sets off stone-throwing at lorries, and tyre-burning and the like. I mean, was this damn thing man-made??)
~ I hope at least this contains India's burgeoning population.
I mean. Hello. These people could have been you and me. In fact, it really could have been me. When the tidal wave struck, I was driving on the beach road. I was just plain lucky - I missed being washed over, with every revolution my tyres made.
Which brings me to something that I hate to have thought of, but that is undeniably true. If I had been washed away, no one would have cared. I have not had one single call or mail from my so-called friends either here, or in other cities. Not an offer of help even. They assume I'm ok. Which is (very thankfully) true for now. But if things had been unfortunate, they would never have known (or perhaps cared). I have, incidentally, received tons of mail with excited descriptions of New Year party plans and swollen budgets.
I've spent every spare minute I've had the past few days (before and after work), providing whatever support I could in the relief operations. I've joined hands with corporation workers to cart dead, decomposing bodies from the shores to waiting vans. I've bathed and bandaged children hurt and even orphaned by the waves. And all I've got for that are stinky sms-es that tell me I'm ignoring my friends. That they're hurt because when they call me, I cannot take their calls. That they think I'm a time-serving, fair-weather friend, who uses them. All because I couldn't go out pubbing with them.
For someone who bases her successes by the relationships she maintains, I think I've been an appalling failure. I obviously need to rework my priorities, and I obviously need to run a personal audit.
Note to self: Reveur, just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to love you, doesn't mean they don't love you with all they've got.
That's what's kept me going.
posted by La Eposa @ 4:38 PM
Another wave is due along the east coast of Tamil Nadu in the next hour or so. Cuddalore has already seen their second tsunami, but a few minutes ago, and Chennai's beaches are now on high alert.
Please... send out warnings. And prayers.
posted by La Eposa @ 11:48 AM
Does a dreaming dreamer make for a realist?
As in, is dreaming like a positive, which, with another of it's kind, gets reinforced? Or is it like a negative, which converts to a positive with another of its kind?
Just curious.
posted by La Eposa @ 7:43 PM
And then of course, there was the time I got into theatre. As in, the first time I got into theatre. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the number of nubile, young men that hadn't been introduced to me yet. And since this was but two men after my relationship with my riding instructor, the ability to hold a conversation with me was still a huge bonus.
My first production was filled with everything a young, impressionable girl should not be exposed to - blood, gore, violence, foul language, sex, and the like. It was also filled with men that quite took my breath away. I was like a kid in a candy store, wide-eyed with all the wonder I saw around me. Articulation! Intelligence! Good looks! C O N V E R S A T I O N !!! Mommy!! I waaaaaant!!!
And from in between all that despicable spillage of fake blood, there he emerged. Dimpled, curly hair, boyish, dignified, and oh-so-good-looking.
It took me three days to pick up my jaw, and even when I finally fixed it back in place, it kept tripping us up while we jived together. Yes - him and me.
He was the funnest man I've been with. We'd laugh, read, discuss books, watch movies, go out dancing a HELLUVA lot, and generally do many crazy things. I've even sat astride behind him on his bike WEARING A SARI!! And oh yea, we could talk.
Then some months later, he wanted to progress past the kissing and cuddling. And you know what he said??? "I hope you're ok with moving from being just buddies to fuck buddies"
Ohhhh-kaaaaaaaaay. Now,
1. Friends don't spend every waking minute of five months with each other.
2. Friends certainly don't kiss a LOT of the time.
3. And fuck buddies??? Who says that?? You're supposed to only think that term!
So, bastion of Brahminism that I am, I politely declined his oh-so-irresistible offer. In any case, he had terribly smelly armpits even through his clothes - I'd have hated to experience those with no barrier.
Yea we're still buddies, and hell, he's still one of my best dancing partners. Incidentally, he's just engaged to be married. On his wedding day, I'm going armed with a gift of cologne and deo. That is considered a wedding gift, because I'm doing it for his wife as much as I am for him.
My friends and I still refer to him as my 'Play'boy.
posted by La Eposa @ 6:40 PM
My bestest, estest, estest friend has found herself a man! Not just any man, mindja... she's found herself a man she wants to marry. This is very, very exciting news for me, as the two of us have literally seen each other through everything.
Her grandpa died, I was there; my dog died, she was there; we got university gold medals, we were there. Her family is the kind that sleeps early and wakes up deathly early, so everytime she goes out partying, she stays over at my house. This is quite a judge of closeness, considering EVEN I DON'T LIVE IN MY HOUSE ANYMORE!!
Oh, did I forget to mention we live in different cities?
So anyway, this friend (let's call her BF for Best Friend, shall we? Or would you think of BF as BoyFriend? Too bad, anyway. BF it is.) So BF met her fiancee through her band - she's a bassist in a rock band, and her fiancee is the band manager. He fell in love with her immediately, and asked her to marry him TWO DAYS AFTER THEY MET!!
She turned him down immediately, scoffed at him and the idea of marriage, and then laughed about it to me. We spent many a pleasant hour bitching about him. However, to be fair to me (who had never met him and still hasn't) I once asked her if she'd even consider it. To which I believe her exact response was an indignant "Even if you pay me, I won't marry him."
Well, well, well... how the mighty fell. They kept in touch, she realised what kind of person he was, and last week, asked him if the offer was still open.
But this guy is stupendously right for her, and does wonders to and for her. I have spoken to him several times after the happy announcement last week, and we get along famously. Truth be told, I think I scare him a little, but since I get that reaction from most people, I'll let it pass.
So anyway, joy and cheer and happiness and excitement and enthusiasm and even ecstasy are in the air. Goes with the season, donnit?
(Clapping my hands in glee and jumping around the place) Yayyy!!!
posted by La Eposa @ 1:24 PM
I also went around with my riding instructor. An extremely good-looking descendant of a royal family, he had one of the best bodies I have ever seen in my life. He was tall, muscular, perfect weight-wise, very VERY strong, and generally sexy. And he had dignity and bearing - two things that really turn me on in a man.
He would also absolutely shower me with attention, in a very flippant manner. Meaning to say that treating people like princesses literally came naturally to him. As did charm, courtesy, chivalry and all those things that women crave for in a man. It wasn't like he had to try to impress me - all the things that impressed me were ingrained in him.
But nothing can be perfect, no? Hell, if he were in any case, I'd still be with him now. No, he just didn't understand English very well. Oh he spoke it fluently et al, but he would use the bare minimum vocabulary, and get by brilliantly.
I love the English language, and all its little nuances. I love playing on words and frequently pepper my conversations with sarcasm and (what I like to think are) witticisms. And yea, we used to kiss a helluva lot, but man... you've got to take a break to talk sometime, don't you? And we would never be able to talk. Coz he didn't get most of what I said, and I constantly had to dumb meself down.
His most frequently-used word around me was "Mins?"
We went out seven months. Seven extremely exciting months with a person who enjoyed doing most of what I did too. Seven months of riding horseback into greenery and jungle, and doing "what young couples in love do". Seven months of pampering, and seven months of sharing everything.
He gifted me a horse, and I gifted him a horse. He gifted me perfume, I gifted him a cell phone. He bought me flowers, clothes, lingerie. I bought him clothes, shaving kits (including the then-brand-new Mach III) and boxers. He held my hand while I got my eyebrow pierced and I nursed him back to health when he fell seriously ill.
We were a bloody good couple, I tell you. In the end though, we just had to go our own ways - I studied further and he went away to Australia. From where, I must admit, he has called me several times.
Now we're such good friends, we exchange relationship woes. Tsk tsk... such a pity. Such a pity.
PS: He wouldn't have understood all the words in red.
posted by La Eposa @ 8:06 PM
I have lost two friends and their families in Sunday's tragedy. Two lovely people, with lovely families.
The sad part is not only the fact that they died, but how it all happened. Soup lived in a ground floor flat of a TNHB apartment block. She and two members of her family went missing, two drowned in the next flat. Two others were thrown against the wall of their home, by the force oft he water, and watched the water immerse them, as they lay helpless with broken bones. The one surviving member of the family was her 12-year-old brother, who was also slammed against the wall by the water, but was thrown onto their showcase upboard, instead of on the floor. It's worse for him because he saw his father and grandmother die in front of his eyes.
The last dialled number on Soup's phone was mine, and so the relief workers called me to check if I could come by to identify bodies. I did, and also spent nine hours last night moving bodies from the shores to waiting vans.
My other friend Gaurav, and his family too were washed away by the waves. Their bodies, bloated almost beyond recognition, were found washed ashore five kilometers away, on the Marina Beach road.
These were people who, till a few hours ago, led normal lives. Smiled, laughed, danced, ate, and played cricket on the beaches.
Please, if you read this, pause a minute and if you're the praying kind, send one up for everyone that has been left bereft by Sunday's incidents.
posted by La Eposa @ 10:44 AM
My first boyfriend was ten years older than me. He was Swiss and we never even met. He was, however, my most intense so far, and I have fond recollections of long emails flying to and fro. Reams and reams of it, pages and pages platted out over my uncle's faulty keyboard, and hours and hours of dreaming about the day I'd meet him.
He was absolutely perfect for me (the way I was then) I can tell you that. He'd call me his "Chocolat", and he'd teach me German, and Swiss-German, and the differences between them. We'd compete with each other for the most creative headers to our emails (as in, Dear Doe-Eyed Dancer...) and at sixteen, there was nothing more exciting. Well there was actually - he digitally combined his photo and mine, so we looked like we were together. Brilliant job, and I must admit we made a VERY good-looking couple!!
I spoke to him twice over the phone, once on his birthday, once on mine. And we "broke up" because our computers crashed and our communication gradually petered out. we "went out" for over a year and a half.
He was extremely good looking, was a journalist with a newspaper, and a guest contributor for a science magazine. He also developed a freeware game, which is extremely popular now and yes, available over the internet. (no, I'm not telling ;-) )
Are we still in touch? Well, off and on - his birthday, mine, our "anniversary", and some mails in between. And (parts of) his name form a lot of my passwords(mostly because no one knows about him). I also know that a digital reworking attempt of mine forms his desktop, and has been included as one of the backgrounds on his game.
And when I travelled to Europe on work last year, we met up in Germany.
Very exciting.
posted by La Eposa @ 1:40 PM
Devastation all around me. Injured children, weeping men, homeless families, bereaved mothers - this is destruction at its worst. At its most unexpected.
My heart goes out to everyone that has been affected by the force of the earthquakes and tsunamis. More so because I have seen and experienced most of it along with them. And nothing is worse than being ok when people around you are not.
The waves were certainly a sight to behold. Over twenty feet in height, and nearly concentric in their approach. They were glorious, and one could but stand and stare in awe.
But the fury unleashed...
posted by La Eposa @ 10:58 AM
It struck me as I platted out my previous post, that a good idea would be to put in little snapshots of all my ex-es here. Little quirks, little charateristics, why we hit it on, why we hit it off, maniacs, madnesses... men.
And so I have decided that I shall put one love-interest blurb in each day. One little fact relating to some previous relationship of mine. (Incidentally, I'm not in a relationship now, and I'm loving every minute of it.)
But I digress. So brace yourselves. Really, I think this is going to be a most interesting addition to this blog.
I can't hardly wait myself! :-)
posted by La Eposa @ 9:19 PM
So how does one deal with a friendly call from an ex boyfriend? I know I constantly advocate the possibility of returning to friendship once you have crossed that thin line between friendship and relationship, but this particular one? I don't think so.
This particular ex (TPE) is someone I classify as an ex for simplification purposes only. TPE is someone I knew for five months only. TPE is someone I only kissed once. TPE is someone who then maniaclally chased me all over town at all times of day. TPE turned stalker.
TPE also went all over town claiming we were married. TPE still claims he and I are wedded. Luckily TPE knew VERY few people that I did, and I introduced him to very, very few people I knew.
TPE is also now in town, and has called me eighteen times since noon, wanting to meet up. Creepy. Slimy. Snot-oozing-out-of-nose disgusting.
I have now turned my phone off.
posted by La Eposa @ 6:54 PM
THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
Reveur
Chiks
Bibsi
THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
Non judgemental
Extremely loyal
Physically : I like my lips
THREE THINGS YOU HATE ABOUT YOURSELF:
Easy to take for granted
Self-loathing
Over-demanding on myself
THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
A rosewood roll-top desk
Legal-eagles for as far back as I can remember
Success through merit and intelligence
THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
Cockroaches
Being unloved
"I love you" / committment
THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
Lip balm
Kajal
Chewing gum
THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
Hot-secretary spectacles
Deep red bra
Ultra-flat slippers with a shell on each
THREE OF YOUR FAVOURITE BANDS:
The Beautiful South
The Beatles
The Police
THREE OF YOUR FAVOURITE SONGS AT PRESENT:
Big Coin - Beautiful South
Pianoman - Billy Joel
Your Body is a Wonderland - John Mayer
(Pls note: Three is just wayyyy too few)
THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
Para-gliding / sailing
Water-sports (rowing, rafting, scuba-diving, etc)
Owning a horse
THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP (besides love):
Honesty
Respect
Passion
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE (SEXUAL):
I have made out with a woman
I have made out on a first date
I have had sex on a beach
THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
Feet
Hands / forearms
Dress sense
THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO:
Express anger
Eat meat or seafood
Focus one one thing for long periods of time
THREE OF YOUR FAVOURITE HOBBIES:
Dance
Horse-riding
Swimming
THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
Pee
Drink beer
Go shopping for gifts
THREE CAREERS YOU ARE CONSIDERING:
TV talk show host
Event Management
Horse management
THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
Sri Lanka/Bali
The Himalayas
Prague
THREE WORDS PEOPLE WOULD NEVER USE TO DESCRIBE YOU:
Insipid
Skinny
Ungrammatical
THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
Scuba-dive with dolphins
Sky-dive
Own a "farm"
posted by La Eposa @ 11:18 PM
I travelled once to Bangalore, thrice to Pondicherry, and five times to Mahabalipuram
I set up a mini bar at home, with cheap booze from Pondicherry
I drank and smoked like smoked salmon
I watched as one of my closest friends got himself a gorgeous wife
I ignored society and everyone around me, and found myself again
I watched at least one movie a day
I cooked and cleaned and kept home. And enjoyed every minute of it
I said no to three very, very promising jobs.
I said yes to another
I got asked out by somebody who I didn't think for the life of him, was interested in me
I said no
I celebrated my ability (finally!) to say no
I developed a very close friendship with somebody, and am so much better for it
I did a drag of grass, and realised why I don't do it
I realised my brains are worth a helluva lot
I underwent a (promising) sea change in my lifestyle, and am bloody thrilled
I had my faith restored in myself and my abilities over and over again
posted by La Eposa @ 11:28 AM
Et tout ce jazz
phantasmagorie (at) gmail (dot) com
This is my blogchalk:
Female, India,
Chennai, English.
