Metro Diaries #2

Men watching exercise videos.. Women holding bags from "Joylukkas Jewellers", (apparently world's favourite jewellers as their tagline proudly proclaims), college girls sitting on the metro floor in all their trendy glory, young men discretely checking out women, women subtly encouraging with a glance and a half smile here and there.. Do you observe all this, or do you continue reading your same old boring law book?

Metro Diaries

In all my (limited) years of working, I have never really seen much of office politics in my workspace, in either of the two firms I have been with. Or maybe, I was just not am active  participant, considering nobody considered me to be their sharing partner. But right now, as I'm on my way to work, I can actually see it and understand it. Two girls, probably early twenties and hardly out of college, seem to enjoy nothing more than discussing a coworker at length.. Why is she how she is, why she isn't as comfortable (if not more) with them as she is with a certain Sunny from their office team, and if she is that close to him, then there must be something up between them, and no she's apparently not interested in him really but just using him for her office space convenience. Nice. I think work life is going to be even more interesting outside of work than in it. Welcome back to metro diaries as recorded by a certain KMG!

The Way I Feel

I feel pain when they try to bring me down
But as long as this world keeps turning round
I know it won't last forever
Ok ok my life is moving
But demons are fighting
Ok ok tears are dry now
But demons are fighting

I feel like I'm floating through existence
I feel like I'm living after time
I feel like I'm forced to break the silence
Is that a crime? Is that a crime?
I feel like we're all following shadows
And shadows they don't know where to go
I feel like I'm waiting for tomorrow
While today wastes away

It's not that I don't know
It's not that I can't see
It's not that I haven't noticed
It's driving me insane
It's not that I don't know
It's not that I can't see
It's just the way I feel
It's just the way I feel

I feel like a child without a father
And mama tries oh lord knows mama tries
I feel like the world is on my shoulder
I wonder why, wonder why
I feel like I'm not the only one who's frustrated
I feel like something's going wrong
I can't escape it
I feel like the destinies of those meant
To be the best
Are in the hands of liars now the world is on fire

I feel like we're not angry enough
That while we wait, time's ticking away
I feel there's gonna be an explosion!

It's not that I don't know
It's not that I can't see
It's not that I haven't noticed
It's driving me insane
It's not that I don't know
It's not that I can't see
It's just the way I feel
It's just the way I feel

-Asa

For the last four months (almost), my focus and efforts have been concentrated upon being a good wife, daughter in law, sister in law, and a daughter who's now living away from her parents, and learning to juggle all these new hats. It IS a considerable effort, let me say. It is a slow, tedious process, of acquainting and adjusting to new people, environment, relations and expectations. Managing the house, ensuring that it's a comfortable home to all those living in it, including me.

The first phase required me to adjust to the new ways your new relations live, how they like to have things done. Heh, even things which were once as simple as making a mug of tea have now had to be undone and redone. The second phase started when a month after our marriage, the in laws, who were pretty much in charge of things so far, had to leave for a couple of months and go to their hometown to settle some pending work. That suddenly put me in the driver's seat. A little bit of drama and incline was added to the whole process when the maid went on leave for a month, and i was in charge of everything, from cleaning up to cooking to maintaining stocks to managing the finances and interacting with various persons who are usually on the periphery, associated with running of the house. This phase was obviously also full of some other interesting happenings, like the two of us getting to spend some lone time (of course, subject to my husband's availability from his work, which is his first love i feel!), and the freedom that comes with the responsibility of doing things on your own, and the empowerment it gives you, being the one who runs the show. The third phase kicked in after two months, when we got the news that in laws were coming back. Good as that news was, because we had all missed them, it also filled me with some concern and very justified apprehension.. after having been the primary decision maker for two out of three months of married life, just when i felt i had begun to get used to running things my way, i would have to re align and re adjust. And not just that, the other concern was, what if the in laws didn't like the way i had been running things, the little tiny subtle changes i had made in and around the house? Well, as luck would have it, they arrived, and saw the changes, but didn't have any objections to them. Nor have they really had any problem with my way of doing things, at least so far! We are back to how things were before they left, and hopefully things have settled down now, with a few differences here and there, a major one being my increased role in the way things are done around the house.

And now that all that has been done with, i think it's time for the fourth phase to kick in: focus on myself again. I need to start focusing on things that i want now, things that are important to me. Enough of idling around, of simply running around to have things in order and keep them that way. I now need to prioritize myself, and not because someone else might expect me to do it, but for my own sake. Because sooner than later, the usual restlessness at the monotony of things will kick in, and i won't have anyone to blame but myself for having missed opportunities that were willing to knock on my door had i allowed them to. And i don't wish for any more regrets in life than the ones i have already done. So yeah, phase four kicking in NOW. 

A search for an old mail brought me across some of my oldest gmail chats with a very dear friend who has now become distant for the last 2-3 years. A natural process, i am sure. Especially in our case, where i came across him at the age of 16, and have never met him once. Strange, nay? Stranger still, (now that i think about it), was the fact that he is 11 years older than me, but for the longest time i was more comfortable talking to him about almost anything in this world, than any of my other supposedly closer friends. I suppose that's why they used to be fond of having pen friends in the past. Creepy as it might be, it's freeing.

i sat for the last 30 minutes, reading our old conversations.. conversations about our daily lives, our trivial daily problems, issues. The college, job stress. Boy-cant-find-girl and girl-kind-find-a-boy problems, heartaches. Silly jokes, stupid sarcasm. And this complete lack of inhibition.. I mean, what could be a bigger testimony to our friendship but the fact that he knew/remembered my various friends from school, college, CA and beyond, and so did i? In my case, i actually became friends with (and still occasionally catch up with) some of them. It's bizarre how somebody becomes a part of your life, attached to you, without making any demands on you. And i guess those are the ones you remember long after, even when those people's importance in your lives doesn't remain the same any longer..

i miss him. I miss our pointless, random conversations, wherein we could have been colleagues sitting across each other at the workstation, and sharing small tidbits of the things as usual. I miss not having to always make a point, to be answerable to somoene when i wish to walk away from a pointless conversation, to always sit and think and analyze the impact of my spoken words on the person across me. i miss that freedom where i connected with someone on almost a daily basis for around 7-8 years, even when we didn't have much to say to each other.

But more than that, more than anything else, i miss myself from that time, where i was self contained, practical, level headed and unperturbed by what the world expected of me. Or, to be fair, where i felt that living upto those expectations was the easiest thing in the world to do. Where distractions, social and societal obligations meant shit to me. I miss the me who never felt obligated to put an '!' after every sentence written, or using emoticons in the hope they might convey an emotion that i may or may not even feel. i miss small things about me.. being a doer instead of a yawner, being driven and ambitious, being on top of my game.. and not giving a flying fuck about the rest of the world..