At the airport

If you are not a man of a certain age (and hence don't feel entitled to being served by uncomfortably dressed young women), it's rather easy to love the idea of Air India. They have flights to everywhere - from Lilabari (which I recently found out was in Assam, and till a few weeks back was the nearest airport to Itanagar) to Pantnagar (which I'm guessing is a dusty little town in Uttar Pradesh).

For some years now, I have thought of doctors as having the best jobs, but now I'm thinking pilots don't have it bad either. The entry barriers are high, and only people with lots of prior privilege get through, but if you can break in, it's a rather cushy job. Especially because you can never ever take your work back home.

The Terminal 3 airport is extremely impractical, though I will never admit this to non Delhiites who unanimously like to compare Terminal 1 to a bus stand (which is ridiculous, especially from people whose most frequently used airport is Chennai). The terminal must have been designed by a Delhi person, who lived in the suburbs and had to cross 50 km everyday to reach anywhere. Also must have been Punjabi, given the wall to wall carpeting and garish patterns and the gigantic brass statues used as decoration.

There are people at airports who will reach unearthly early and then be pissed off when people who come in time for their flights want to cut ahead in queue. And then express this pissiness loudly. I mean do they consider that assholes like them are crowding the check in and security counters unnecessarily? And if they weren't there, the people who are on time or slightly late, would be able to pass through more easily?
And this isn't even coming from a place of anger. I'm actually always early.

A crowded airport where you have no option but to queue up is fertile ground for introspection and self flagellation. But I have now decided to treat myself like I would treat a friend. Which is a rather daunting task if you are your worst enemy. In every way.

The pointlessness continues

Though it's not completely edit-proof today. I admit I deleted an entire paragraph I started with, which talked of the hopelessness in my life - the dreary work situation, the frustrating family situation, and the absolutely friendless-ness (in person) situation. And there, I have practically written all of it anyway. But I don't have the heart to delete this again, so I will continue to write like the existence of this paragraph can be ignored. Do you feel like a stupid fucker for having read this paragraph?

Talking of stupid fuckers, guess whose day started with her feeling like one?

Not me. I started my day by making a Whatsapp group with some ex and current female colleagues, who while together in Chennai, were part of a closely knit women's support group. So I whined and gossiped for a little while in the morning, which is really as perfect as a morning can get.

I did feel like a stupid fucker a little later though, when I read the newspaper. Rajiv Kumar, the Deputy Chairman of the NITI Aayog had tried to claim that demonetisation had not caused the slowdown, which is a predictable stand for a bureaucrat. In his view, the large NPAs (which had begun to be identified better under Raghuram Rajan's term as the RBI Governor) of banks may have been the reason. This, as a partial reason, is not incorrect. Yet - and I realise I'm providing context too late - I had spent a good 10 minutes bristling yesterday, when some news portals put out clickbait-y articles with headlines such as 'NITI Aayog bureaucrat blames Rajan for growth slowdown'.

How can a person with as much cynicism about the media as me, be taken in? Maybe because this time the clickbait appealed to my biases?

There is still no point to this post

I have a shorthand for whining. It's where I thrust my wrist out at people, in a silent but over-dramatic plea for them to slit it. Fortunately or unfortunately, no one takes it seriously, so it's still possible for me to procrastinate on stuff I really need to get done, and sit here, writing pointless blog-posts instead. I haven't done this, this thrusting of wrist at people, in a few months though. For some time, I was sequestered with only two senior male colleagues, who would never take this behaviour in the right spirit. (If you are my friend, you probably know that the right spirit involves miming a brutal slitting. If you are my best friend, you know that it involves thrusting your wrist at me in return). After that, I got company of people belonging to the same generation, but who seem to derive some kind of pleasure from life, and work (shorthand for people I can get along reasonably well with, but who I can never fully come to love as my own). Essentially, they are not the right audience for my whining either. Instead, I have to resort to verbalising my disgust in the form of furious Whatsapp messages to people, who, if physically present would have been the perfect audience. But all this verbalising just makes me angrier and angrier, and then sadder and sadder, and then more and more hopeless about the future.

No, I'm not trying to say I miss anybody. Shut up.

There is no point to this post

Really, there isn't. I just realized I am out of writing practice, my sentences are not flowing naturally, like they had a tendency to do, a few months back, when I was working on the worst thing in the world. (There was a project post that, which shattered my mental stability and continues to lead me to question my faith in everything and everyone, but imagine, this is still something I hate more). Basically, I had taken on the mantle of telling overpaid development sector professionals, having tax-free incomes in a global donor agency that women are people too, and deserve to be targeted, when designing development oriented projects. And how else to tell them, except through a 300 page, well-referenced document crawling with laboriously placed hyperlinks (placed by yours truly, over the course of the most traumatic 36 hours of my life), that is guaranteed to be read by no one. Not that I think anyone should read that garbage, even though it is, well-written garbage, where the words went shooting out.

Anyway, the point of this post is to write, write without censorship, and write without editing, and write without a plan or an agenda, to get back into the groove of just writing. Mainly because I need to remind myself that Plan A was to write, and that it is still possible to activate Plan A, while trying to salvage the Plan B I'm currently stuck in. No writing about the frustrations of Plan B though. Plan B is currently open on the same laptop, on a window that is definitely not incognito.

A lot of people I know have frustration and regrets. About not having enough fun in college, of having too much fun in college, of never learning an extra-curricular in school, or not taking enough initiative in class. I have all of those regrets, and more. My biggest regret is my ruined teen years - which I lived through like a hermit. I wasn't a docile kid by any stretch of imagination, who bottled up her unhappiness and lived under the thumb of tyrannical parents. Instead, I was an over-mature prude, who had a more severe moral outlook towards life, than people thrice her age. Hell I was such a prude, I never so much had a hormone addled crush.

Ok no, that's a lie, I did. For as long as I remember, I was sweet on the class topper. He wasn't a friend, just my occasional desk-partner who I got along reasonably well with, always a head shorter than me (we stopped interacting completely in high school - so I don't know whether that persisted), and always a few marks ahead. When we were little, all of my classmates had a crush on him - I swear all, even the boys. I think I remember people fighting to have him on their cricket team during long break. And sure, you might say, that maybe he was really good at cricket, and I'm not stereotyping - nerds could have athletic abilities too. Except, I'm talking about book-cricket, which, along with long break, maybe terms you don't understand. I don't have the patience to explain the intricacies of the game (long break was a 30 minute break to eat 'lunch' at 10:30 am, as opposed to short break, which was at 9, to eat a snack), but take my word for it, it requires neither smarts  nor athletic ability. Hence the only possible explanation is that the little boys of II-A (and then III-A and IV-A and V-A) had the hots for their longstanding class topper.

The point is that as we grew up, people moved away from the good, wholesome class toppers, and started crushing on boys who were far more stupid, and who would grow up to be far more conventionally attractive. I, on the other hand, continued my devout admiration-from-a-distance, till we graduated (I recently added him on Linked-in, which is apparently how I keep in touch with people now).

I liked no one in college. All five years, not one boy.

And since then I have had a grand total of two crushes (three if you count a passing fancy for a good-looking colleague that was a mostly pleasant distraction), both of which were again on the nice wholesome class topper types, and both of which have crashed and burned. I look at the first of these with some degree of fondness though - it would have never worked anyway. The second of these, is one of the only two men I have ever described as a cunt. And judged myself for pining over. And pined, I have.

Hence my regret of not living it up in my teen years - if I had exhausted my teen years with immature, ill-advised crushes, this nonsense would not have carried over to my almost-thirties. An age, where everyone else seems to be ready to get married and settle down while I agonise over Plan As and Bs and long for a completely terrible man, being near whom, basically necessitates that I surrender my mental stability and faith in everything and everyone.

Yes I know this is a waste of time, you reading this. See the heading - it's practically a disclaimer. 

Starting new project.

#willnottalkbeforeitbecomessomethingconcrete

Dida

Grief can affect people in different ways.

You can be all practical, deciding to prioritise an official visit over rushing to Kolkata on hearing the news of Dida’s passing away, knowing that she is gone already. Knowing that all there will be to see, is her bloated, dead body, surrounded by aging relatives and neighbours, some talking about how they had just come to see her the other day, others, about how she had suffered greatly, and would now finally be at peace. Some others attributing their usual Bengali affliction of heartburns and acid reflux to premonitions of ill-tidings, yet others, talking about the steps that should have been taken to prevent her untimely death.

You can be all practical, knowing that you have been grieving for the last five years already – that death is only a culmination of a long period of wasting away. When every next photo, showed her progressive emaciation; when every next conversation with her meant more lost threads, and longer spells of hallucinatory observations; when the phone conversations stopped; when every next visit meant lower chances of her recognizing you, responding to your coaxing or your touch.

But then, what is this impulse to weep, this inopportune onslaught of tears? When browsing books, but not being able to read a preface by a behavioural economist, because he wants to discuss Tversky’s period of illness and death. When sitting alone at the airport, sipping coffee, and thinking of the last office trip, when you made a detour to Kolkata, and saw Dida for the last time. When travelling long distances in rural UP, in a dark car, with a government employee talking about being over-looked for a promotion by a corrupt boss and imagining Dida’s indignation at this injustice. Or when a friend sends you a photo reminding you of the life you used to have (even though that life had nothing to do with Dida), and days which have deserted you forever. Or even when sitting for the pujo, at her kaaj, resolutely refusing to repeat the Sanskrit prayers being spoken aloud by the priest, because Dida didn’t like us to say things we didn’t understand – not because she was irreligious (she wasn’t), but because she didn’t want us to inadvertently ask the Gods for something wrong (sons, for instance).

Or when writing a blog-post about her but finding a single post to be inadequate to explain what she meant for you.

#Everyday Sexism

I heard on the radio yesterday, that in a study on mixed-gender workplaces, women exhibited higher stress than men. The RJs then went on to opine that women couldn't possibly be stressed about work - it must be to do with how their female colleague's lipstick was better than theirs. I hope these men don't have to deal with younger female colleagues or girlfriends/ wives ever.