exquisitely_moi

Where do I begin? Too much has happened in the past two years. So much of it so very good. I fear that talking about them in details might even jinx them, make it all go away. So let me just drop a few hints and words, will elaborate if and when I feel like it.

Bloomsbury, Launch48, ProtectedCC, The Kerala Standard, Standard Chartered, more money, more time, lots of theatre, lots of entrepreneurship, lots of interesting people, amazing food, fall hopelessly in love with London, TRAVEL A FUCK LOT, be happy (for real, like really), changed attitude towards money, learned to stop feeling guilty about making money, realised FINALLY that I'm not an ultra-leftist or an artist despite the pretence and that I do not need to apologise for being/wanting to be a capitalist, hate hypocrisy & people who use words like 'corporate wage slavery', laugh at the useless jobs people hold just to NOT be a banker/consultant/lawyer and to feel superior about it, house-hunting with Ritwik for our future together, become a home-owner in freakin' LONDON, remain conscious of health, fitness & diet for sustained periods of time & slowly turn into a bit of a fitness freak (best personal transformation yet), politics, voting for general elections in the UK, Ritwik's MBA graduation, surprised when Ritwik proposes, I accept, no more long distance (happy happy happy :D), set up home together, spend ages on handpicking every piece of furniture in the house, agonise over everything, buy, live like civilized human beings, COOK a lot, clean, be more organised, CHUCK stuff, socialize, host dinners, host parties, host awesome kick-ass impromptu gatherings, host overnight and long stay guests at home when they're in town, feel grown up, do my hair up, get massages, indulge in some vanity, manicure, pedicure, dressing up, ironing my hair, looking good and loving it, pass CFA2, near run in with law for silliness, trouble averted, slog for CFA3, take GMAT in 3.5days, apply for b school in 3 days, make it, get voted into the Board of Directors of a charity org, realise what they really mean by 'tough times' and how I can pitch in, do something truly meaningful, realise I'm more a strategy person than on-the-grounds volunteering type but continue to keep up stints of volunteering, wedding preparations, shopping, and even more SHOPPING, TONS of family time, making up for so many years of neglect, realise truly the importance of family (even extended), forced to acknowledge the casual nature of so many of my 'friendships' and learn to value friendships that last test of time and distance, learn with difficulty to say no (not good at it yet), juggle and multitask like never before, learn Spanish, learn to drop people from my life if they are energy-suckers, learn to stop being such a social pushover (not there yet), so many trips to India, spending 2 months in India now, getting to know Ritwik's family more, turning into more of a feminist but more interested in career opportunities and power broking for women in corporate world, QUITTING job in style, LOTS of LOVE in my life, LOTS of Ritwik too but not nearly enough ever, feeling lucky, feeling grateful, trying to not look back on years wasted on stupid ultra-leftist/hippie crap, trying to build up confidence for taking certain leaps of faith, still living like I am going to die at 30 but realising that if I do survive longer than that, I want to be in excellent health and not looking too bad either. Also want to maintain the many friends I do have, even if it seems like gargantuan amounts of effort. For now, just happy to have Ritwik in my life and have a life of great possibilities ahead. Touchwood, nazar na lage.

Details later. Maybe.

I needed to look up some long forgotten details of a university friend I'd lost touch with, and happened to come across some chatlogs from days of yore - some pointless discussion with some self-proclaimed ultra-leftist, angsty, "artsy", "anti-establishmentarian" friend. Of course, I'm being mean here, considering I belonged to this same camp of people who strove so hard to "be different". To wallow in self-pity and be self-destructive, in the name of "poetry" and "being real".

I lost precious years to feeling angry, remaining unhappy at some vague non-entity, because I foolishly believed this would lead me to some truth not revealed to those who stuck to the mainstream. Aka, I was so full of shit.

Looking through some of those incriminating, meandering chats, rehashing inanities and platitudes, interpreting non-events and non-meanings, I am glad I woke up and switched camps when I did, even at the risk of being accused of "selling out". Indeed, qutie a few of my abovementioned friends continue in their own versions of "personal hell".

Perhaps this is what is called growing up. To realise that "being different" or feeling superior alone does not bring about unique perspectives. Authenticity is about being true to oneself and one's own values, even if it means abandoning the "cooler choices" your bohemian friends might fully endorse. It is also about cutting out the bullshit; obfuscation leads to nothing useful.

 Somewhere between an Indian summer and an Indian monsoon. The sultry air but moderate temperature of Mumbai.

Two leisurely months in India, a rare luxury. I normally would have packed my bags and headed to South America. Or Africa. Or even back to South-east Asia for a few cheap destinations I am yet to discover. But the wedding is coming up. And I have been exhausted from my fun but hectic months on end in London. I need to learn to relax, slow down and find an inner calm, even against my own resistance.

Marvelling at the joy of hot home-made chai at all odd hours of the day, sleeping in, hitting the gym regularly and working up a real sweat in the non-AC, swivelling floor fanned settings, shopping in India, relishing the breeze from ceiling fans, being driven around while I nurse a book in the back seat. Getting myself checked out any bodily ailments at the Army hospital and their outstanding specialists. Bonding with family and trying to make up for not being in touch enough while I am away.

I expect these two months in India to be restorative to the body and the spirit in times when my fast pace of life in London was starting to affect even me, who is used to a dangerously busy lifestyle. I am training myself to be a little bit lazy and live life at a more languid pace, just for this once.

So I figured that if I tried to tackle the monster that is the past 15months of my life in one post, I would be overwhelmed and unsatisfied with my output, because nothing could succinctly capture how tumultous things have been. Therefore, prepare for some isolated fragments of this and that, of here and there. And yet, may I disclaim, before I commence... nothing phenomenal has taken place, it's just that I have re-discovered happiness after trudging through what seemed like an endless gray... and so here are some of the pieces which helped me along the way.

To start from the beginning, if you may...things started looking up for me in London when I moved jobs and went from being underpaid-overworked to somewhat underworked-decently paid and simultaneously moved houses from the dump that Docklands was to Bloomsbury, the very heart of Central London. This decision to locate myself so centrally paid off handsomely for the rest of what came to be one of the best years of my life :) I still ponder upon what might have been if I had gone for the other tempting option - a place off Wardour Street in Soho, yes, SOHO, and I'm yet convinced I made a good choice when I did.

Bloomsbury - home to so many cultural icons in London's history, from Darwin to Dickens to Woolf, the neighbourhood lends its name to the Bloomsbury Publishing Group too. Being a neighbour to the British Museum, the British Library, LSE, UCL, Conway Hall and innumerable other places of interest was the best way for me to irrevocably fall in love with London. In my backyard, I had on offer delectable food, a proud history, an intellectual air of global repute, youthful energy and so many hidden parks to luxuriate in. Located between Russell Square and Kings Cross, I found myself able to walk in and out of home without ever having to worry about public transport options, for even a cab ride from central areas cost peanuts (by London standards, i.e.). THIS was all that I had moved to London for, and no wonder then, that my first year in this city was tinged with some disappointment, seeing as how I located myself so far from historical London.

I have always been deeply affected by the place I situate myself in and by everything that encompasses the nature of that location. Bloomsbury will always be my happy place, for inspiring a positive energy and goading me to expore, dream and extrapolate while putting me in touch with some of the most random and interesting characters in town. And for this reason, I attribute much of the events in my life over the past year and a bit to my location in Bloomsbury. And even so, consider it not a joyless existence now that I have moved away from my beloved Bloomsbury...and as for why, well, that would have to be a another post now, wouldn't it?

..at the seams with all that I want to tell, to write and to show. A lot, seriously, a lot has happened in the past 15months or so, in the most haphazard manner that my life is wont to assume, and yet I do not know where to start. So help me some, and pray tell, how have you been? :)

This evening, I realised, that in the past couple of years, since graduation onwards actually, so more like three, I have grown up a little too quickly. I am more impatient with people, I don't remember the last time I properly celebrated Christmas/Easter/Holi/Diwali/Halloween/costume party. I get frustrated with myself and others for wasting precious time drinking/partying/having a good time... perhaps it is an over-compensation for my uni days when I just went with the flow all the time, had no tab on where time came and went, drifted in my own bubble of directionlessness. Lately, I have been constantly measuring the time in my life with the number of things I've ticked off the list, 'time is money' is the only mantra I have been living by.

This constant heady rush is a bit scary, looking at it from the outside. But I can't afford to sit around and luxuriate in such pointless melancholy. There are things to be done, stuff to be written, books to be studied thoroughly, people to be met, places to be visited and the world to be conquered.

Yes, some six months after my last post, despite several attempts at describing the giddy joy of my life in the past year, I finally come back here in my rare moment of melancholy.

Good to be back :)

I am quite sure nobody visits here anymore, but FYI for those old friends who might stumble past, I intend to maintain two blogs hereon. This one here on LJ will continue to be a private/public diary of sorts - allowing for some private ruminations which might never be published and public posts on just me, me and me. Expect much inanity and self-indulgence but if you are a friend who wants to know how I have been 'feeling', this is the place.

The other blog I hope to be more regular on, than I have been so far, is this one here - it was inevitable that I moved to Wordpress, I love the UI to death and really appreciate how much easier they make it to analyse meta data about readership. This is where I hope to record my opinions/thoughts on ideas/concepts/the world at large in a slightly more sane, grown-up manner - less of the 'oh why is the world so mean to me' angst  and more of the stuff that might constitute an intelligent discussion. This blog is also where I plan to start putting up stuff on travels, reviews, etc.

For those who want to give up on my far and few in between posts, I am much more visible and regular on Twitter.

I would like to maintain my LJ as a less public space and if I feel like too many people are googling it up and visiting here, I might consider making it password protected, with access granted to people I know.

Ok, I know this is completely out of the blue, considering I have not updated my blog in God-knows-how-long and much, seriously, MUCH has transpired between then and now - thankfully, all in a good way :)

But here's what has irked me a fair bit over the past couple of days:

I get in touch with someone or the other I haven't met in a few weeks and tell them over email/text - dude, we should meet up sometime, I have updates, interesting things to come, very excited!

And, invariably, the reply would be - 'Oh, are you getting married?' or 'Are you pregnant?' (Remember I live in a society where the two can come in either order and it's still considered good news :P).

No, seriously, a girl at this age cannot have any either aspirations right? Given that she is defined only by her uterus and her marital status, how on earth could anything else be good news? What else could possibly qualify as 'exciting, interesting and something to talk about'?

Morons. All those who know me closely know that I am not a militant feminist - I do not rail on and on about how men and women should be seen as exactly the same, because they are not, in my opinion. I am a humanist - I ask only that each individual, whether a man or a woman, be respected and accorded his or her rights. I am certainly not a fan of the 'All men are bastards' brigade. But this is something else.

Excuse me, dear friends (male & female), who reduce the worth of a woman to her marital status and please take note that I do have a functioning brain, apart from my other bits of anatomy which define feminity, and I do like to use it on a regular basis - which is more than what can be said for most of you.

As for what the good news is, that is coming up in a separate post, only because I do not want the unbridled mirth defiled by this infuriating and recurring incident.

My moodswings are now legendary among those who know me very well. I swing from extremes of loving the whole wide world unto death to utter depths of despise for all and sundry, particularly (and unfairly) those who dare to extend a positive thought to me, which I could very well twist into some diabolical interpretation. After a long time of feeling either very negative about everything or just plain numb, the past few weeks from early June have been oozing with such gooey positivity and high-buzz energy; so much so that the negative-me would find the positive-me very grating on the nerves :D

But I shit you not, my summer-induced joy is now reaching levels of deliriium - I walk with a dreamy, glassy look while relishing the warmth of the sun and a definite spring in my step. My stamina levels have been super-human. When this phase of hyperactive joy started, I wished I could record every moment of it, journal it, photograph it and preserve this lightness of being so that when I go back into the blackness of hopeless despair, as I am bound to, I can look back at such memoirs and souvenirs and remind myself that I am not a fundamentally unhappy person.

But days passed and then weeks and it was hard to sit down and capture the various shades of happy, the kind of 'happy' which is not Disneyland-ish, alcohol-induced or layered on to hide a deeper unhappiness. Always a fan of serendipity, moving to Central London allowed for a lot more of it. Always seeking to do more, feel more and discover more, I found respite in my new job which allows for more decent hours (Job continues to suck, same shit, different company, but it bothers me less right now, for there are plans brewing * wink *). The number of people I have met and befriended over the past two months has surpassed those in the past two years combined.

A happy Sherene is also an attractive Sherene, apparently, as the past couple of months have shown - pity I can't do anything about it though ;) But what I can do safely is make friends. I have made friends in lifts going down four storeys, met people off Twitter, gotten back into startup and entrepreneurship circles, watched lovely theatre, reconnected with old friends visiting town, caught up with my closest friends and family in India & Singapore, laughed a lot, learnt a lot, ran the London 10k & the Great City Race of 5k, got highlights in my hair, shopped (!), ate lovely food, danced, watched an Oasis concert while they were still Oasis, invested an IMMENSE amount of emotional energy into a LOT of people without feeling drained and taken some bad news without feeling very bogged down by it. Most importantly, I have fallen in love with London irrevocably. So truly, madly and deeply in love that the thought of leaving someday fills me with the kind of dread my heart can't accommodate right now.

The net result of it is that I have been doing less of needless fretting about where my life is headed and letting things be. And  you know how sometimes just relaxing can open up new doors of thought. And, just like that, I am starting to see some possibilities. No, scratch that. My problem has never been with seeing possibilities. My problem has been with implementing them. And I can see some concrete steps to implementation and hoping that they work out. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, I might come back and type up about individual events and people, because heart-warming moments are well worth talking about. And this blog does not only have to be a chronicle of my misery :) It is a rare place I am in, where I am very happy with where I am, not looking to travel just to go away and take a break, and, yet, seeing wonderful plans in places anew and afar - touchwood.