One Year Already?

Feels like yesterday when we first met – I still wish I’d worn better clothes and higher heels. 

I often giggle as I remember the formal ‘Hey! Ssup..’ texts we sent each other for a week after meeting – and shiver remembering the first time we used the L word, months later. 

I still think of you as my secret boyfriend – I doubt anyone would have believed me if I told them anyway. 

I almost faint every time I see you in your super HOT combat uniform, which is, well, everyday – it’s something that hasn’t yet ceased to have this effect on me. 

No matter how much you try to tell me that ‘Eight days a Week’ is OUR song because you played it for me numersously - I still think my song for you is ‘I’m Gonna Getcha Good’ 

You still hate chick flicks and I still cannot stand all-action movies, You hate 'Sex and The City' and I don't find '30 Rock' all that interesting - but we find peace in 'Modern Family' and love sharing butter popcorn . 

 

Our long-drive-in-the-middle-of-the-night ritual is still followed – and many times I feel a rush inside on realizing that we’ll go together in the same house even after the drive is over. 

I throw a fit if you use my towel – but I secretly use yours when you are away for weeks, and tell myself its only this once. 

I am still getting used to being addressed by your name – I write it down a hundred times and stare at it with a smile. 

I still resent the non-stop cricket and/or football on TV – but I cannot watch the Hollywood gossip without you by my side to discuss it. 

I still frown when you interrupt my kitchen-humming with your own version of the song - But I love your innovative lyrics and I sing not the original, but your version most of the times. 

I still get nervous and shut up for a moment every time your mom calls when we are together – And then I realize, she knows I’m there, we’re married. (heehee) 

Sometimes I think we’ve been together for ages – but most of the times it feels like we are just getting started. 

Last September seemed an happy ending to a dream, this September it is still like living a dream. 

I love you more and more, each day – for all the moments, hours and days spent in love – and I can’t yet believe it is one year already!

Plight of a Constant Traveler

“I think the constant traveling is getting to me.” I grudgingly admit to my husband, who gives me his charming whatever-you-say smile and returns to unpacking our books. We are in our new house in a small town on the borders of Arunanchal and Assam. The view from the windows is breathtaking – It is raining and there’s a tree plantation right next to my house. I sigh as I look at it from the window.

I was always the Travel Addict, romancing the idea of nomadic life. When I was single, I traveled a lot more than the ‘regular’ people around me. The fact that my frequent flier miles were sometimes more than the balance in my bank account, proves my point. I’ve traveled alone a lot of times and I enjoyed the rush it gave me – single-girl-with-a-backpack image was something I loved. I’ve spent weeks wandering around Singapore all on my own. I’ve partied hard in Malaysia and have developed allergies eating street food with a couple of girl friends who share the urge to explore the world, the freedom to just pack and leave on an impulse. I’ve traveled for fun, for vacationing, for even escaping. Always on the run, and it has been exhilarating. There were times when I used to go through a few months of work and daily hum drum of life just to gather enough funds to fly to the next destination. Plane journeys, train tickets, new culture, exotic food and far away beaches used to engulf my mind all the time.

Recently thing changed. Both of us travel a lot because of our work. Initially it was super exciting because both of us are complete travel junkies. He took me to Andaman Islands for honeymoon and to several not-quite-well-known hill stations and beaches suddenly, blaming it on his travelust. I wasn’t complaining at all! When we got married, the perpetual long term travel was always at the back of my mind, as an extra perk to marrying the man I love.

Travel is still amazing and it has all its excitements and joys, but what I realize now is that earlier we were two single people – living out of a suitcase was fancy and more importantly, easy. Post wedding traveling is a lot different, especially when it is a long term travel. This is the fourth time we’ve shifted houses in two years – four entirely different places in opposite corners of the country. And I hate to admit it, but I wish the travel was a little less, that life was a little more stable – home wise and people wise.

Every time we go to a new place, settle down in a new house, I throw myself into the decoration, interiors, exploring the new place, meeting new people and buying goldfish as an attempt to embrace the stability while it lasts. And before I know it, it’s time to move.

It’s amazing how no one ever tells us about the potential down sides of constant traveling. I recently came across Bernard Shaw’s quote – “I hate to feel at home when I’m abroad” and I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. The fact that there is no permanent home to go back to and ‘feel at home’ is quite disconcerting. Sure, the houses we take up at each destination are quickly stacked with old photographs, decorated with souvenirs from our various travel destinations and filled with the friendly fragrance of warm coffee – but we know that all of this will be soon moving to a different place, a different house and the feeling is just not ‘homely’.

Constant moving has affected our appetite for travel adversely and ‘taking a break’ now stands for anything but packing. Don’t get me wrong, we still take vacations to exotic places, but the frequency has reduced a lot. So how did our travels lost excitement, I often ask myself. The main reason I think is that we have managed to somehow, turn pleasure into business. This long term travel is now a part of the Job Description and this is what kills the excitement . None of my friends seem to understand my plight – being able to cover the entire world for work seems like a brilliant idea from the outside. Yet it has its side effects. The first thing I hate about long term travel is the constant good byes. You strike a friendship, build relationships and then you leave. It is heartbreaking how I have to start over again and again with everything from knowing the neighbors, familiarizing myself with the book-shops, giving tips to the lady at the beauty salon and even in finding a house-help. These seemingly tiny relationships are the most important ones that give you a sense of belonging – and I have to leave before I can really belong.

Old friends and people who are important to me have learned to live their lives without me most of the times, they adapt. It really sucks. And I can’t even begin on the exercise of packing and unpacking your entire life in boxes. I’ve ODed on emotions every time I wrap things up to go to a new home. A permanent gym membership and a lot of potted plants don’t seem like a bad idea anymore.

Before I wrap this up, please understand that I am not trying to downplay traveling – I still love to travel, its wonderful. My point is how can you appreciate travel if you don’t take a break from it every once in a while. Some might say that the key is not to get too emotionally involved with places and people, but I wonder if that is possible. Tolkien’s words are doing rounds in my mind right now – “Not all who wander are lost” and I believe it. I know I’m not lost even if I feel lost a lot of times. Maybe I’m not done with the road yet, maybe this restlessness is just a phase and I’ll start to love it eventually.

Meanwhile, the unpacking continues.

Is Being Too Nice Making You Sick?

Being too nice is so not me. I’m someone who is always herself and who is best at misbehaving. I have admitted a lot of times that there are times when I not only enjoy being bitchy, but I feel healthy. Seriously, you have to trust me on this – being a little bitchy really does wonder to your health. And I totally love my health, ha! I’d rather make fun and giggle and gossip, than make an effort at begin too nice to please people. But adult life has quite a many glitches (I hate adult life!) and there are a lot of times when one HAS to put up a face and BEHAVE. Lately the same has been happening to me.

People sharing my dessert on the pretext of ‘just tasting’ , sipping from my drink because they want to ‘try’ it, requesting me to step down the treadmill in between my run because they have ‘kids waiting at home’ and people telling me very fake-polite way how they find it strange that I am always giggling. For a long time, I just smiled, nodded or and said something lame lie ‘Sure’ or ‘why not’ or ‘Lucky Me!’ – but now I’m growing tired of all this feign congeniality.

So I’ve started substituting all the over nice-ness with the real reaction that comes to my mind. Of course I’m not advocating out right rudeness – I’m just reminding myself and you that it isn’t mandatory to be nice all the time.

So, is being nice making you sick too?

Bitch it up a bit.

Here’s what I did.

When someone at the gym asked me – for the fifth time in row - to step down the tread mill because she is ‘only waiting to finish her run here and leave urgently for home’ – I told her with a mock polite tone that I have a home too and it tends to get lonely when I don’t get there in time. And then I shoved the iPod ear plug in my ears and continued to run. Sure, she gave me a weird look but she went away. ‘Went away’ is the key point here. I can forget about her worrying me in the gym again because for her, I’m the ‘Rude Bitch’ now. Whatever.

At the showroom where I was the first in the line for a changing room and a girl came up saying she has ‘just one item’ to try on and can she have a go before me, I blinked twice and said “I’m sorry honey! But why don’t you go ahead and pick some more items while I ‘have a go at it’?” She got the point and stood in the line after rolling her eyes a lot of times.

At a party, when an acquaintance asked if it was okay if she took a sip from my drink because she was an out and out ‘Vodka with Orange Juice’ girl but wanted to taste my Cosmopolitan – I took a deep breath and said, “Oh honey, I’d love to but I think I’m coming done with something.” I paused and coughed a little, “Is Swine Flu still a big thing?” She left me alone for the rest of the evening, thankfully.

And last but the most-important-to-me thing is when someone has the balls to tell me that I giggle too much. I giggle too much, damn right! But how dare some creep say that like its a bad thing? In such situations I suggest you just say the meanest thing that comes to your mind. Really. I mean, last I checked, being happy was a good thing and it’s your bloody business anyway. Here’s what happened to me during my Business School years -A guy who I knew as a pathetic someone who was dating a classmate who already had a 7 year long boyfriend who once came to the college to bash him up (yes, things like this happen!) was looking at me in the class. “What?” I asked. “Why are you always giggling?” He asked me point blank with an annoyed expression. After like a split second of shock, I threw my hair back, smiled brightly and said – “Really? I wonder why? Maybe because I’m not scared of my girlfriend’s REAL boyfriend beating me up every time I step out of the college? Hmph?” Everyone in the class cracked up and he got back to paying attention to the wall in front of him. Served him right, right?

So there you go, just stop being too nice-y nice. It ain’t worth it. Once again, BITCH IT UP!