On Turning 28

It’s a badly concealed secret that I go semi-hysterical every year on the days leading up to July 19. I know that the world and its grandmother hope that some day I will finally get that doze of maturity which will prevent the following accidents from happening every year without fail:
1. Friends being reminded from a month in advance that my “happy birthday to me” is coming and so they should abandon everything else to just hold their breath and stare at the calendar and
2. The dilution of the twin feelings of impatience and loathsomeness towards July 18 and 20 that I undergo persistently and without remorse.

But trust me, there is a reason behind even this madness. You see, I have a list. As I am sure a lot of you do. Of “Things to Do in this Lifetime”. And I ponder over my list only at this time of the year. Somehow new year’s eve does not have that effect on me… my life didn’t start from 31st December, did it? It started six months ago! So every year as I manage to strike off things that are done, things that still need to be done, or things that should be added to the list because like a fool I didn’t think of them before…there is a sense of purpose and satisfaction. Although I must confess that there is also a parallel sense of frustration and loss…maybe over relationships weakened or lost forever or the job that I eyed and pursued and did not get or something totally different. But since I am “the cup is more full than empty” sort of a person, that sense almost always gets subjugated.

I remind myself nearly once every day that I have always been exceptionally lucky when it comes to friends. And that good fortune has tagged me from India to the US as well. So I have had three different birthday parties on three different evenings. And I am told there is one more in the pipeline. One of the parties was thrown by my friends Annie and Brittney. The venue was Annie’s house and she went berserk decorating the house, baking me a German chocolate cake, making an elaborate dinner, taking me out for a movie, getting me thoughtful gifts, and planting surprises in which she was helped by her three extremely good-looking and incredibly well-mannered sons of ages 12, 10, and 8. Another friend, Parul ,slaved a night away because she baked a gigantic chocolate cake and the world’s most sinful and delicious baklava and was the real in- charge of the party that took place in my house. A third set of friends made even July 20th appear beautiful and gorgeous and not merely “the day that comes after my birthday is over!” Some others took time out from their exceptionally busy schedules to sit and write conventional letters just because I love receiving them so much. Another friend, Andres, employed himself and his sister to bake a tall order of a cake, a traditional one from their native place Oaxaca, Mexico. Dan came, saw, and single handedly took over the entertainment factor for one of the parties. Jeff brought crates of iced tea and of a kind of beer called India Ale in order to “get into the mood of the birthday”. My closest friend for the last twenty-three years, Sas, called and we had a long chat except that this was the first time in our joint lives when I couldn’t tell her, “Achha total kitne gifts bhej rahi hain?” Even I couldn’t be that cruel. The funniest call I received was from Richa because for the first time I was struck by our role reversal...by the fact that it was she who was in the office and I who was at home, enjoying my summer vacations. But what made all these celebrations even more perfect was the work of three people who are physically far away from me right now yet their words boosted my spirit in a way that I cannot describe. My fellow bloggers Rohit, Aritro, and Sinjini, all wrote beautiful, exquisite and enormously personal posts on me or on our relationship and I cannot explain how much that meant.

To all of them and everyone else who wished -- through Orkut, Facebook, email, ecards, phone calls etc., a very big thank you. And who knows, I might just learn how to behave myself from next year.

Death. By Torture.

That’s it. I have had it up to my existence for the next several lives. I am frustrated, angry, embittered. And needless to say, I am ashamed of myself. Because I have a face and a profile that attracts by the dozens the most unique on the social networking site called Orkut.

Sample the first paragraph of my current “About Me”. It is nasty, rude, aggressive, and meant to put-off. It was written to ensure that my sanity remained where it should and that the moronic friendship requests that I was getting every day would lessen in number. So I wrote this:

“*Caution: I am extremely irritated by the fact that friendship requests from ultra dumb people are still reaching me for no fault of mine. So I am joining my hands and begging...DO NOT send me a friendship request without an introductory scrap or email. And if your profile is dull, insipid, inundated with grammatical errors, or it's just downright stupid, spare me and move along. I REALLY have better things to do with my time.*”

But to no avail. Because I still attract, rather I pull towards myself thanks to my devastating charm, samples such as the gentleman who sent a friendship request this morning and whose profile name is “Your Dream Boy”. Yes, of course! He would be my dream boy because his profile not only has a display photo of Emran Hashmi with a particularly jack-assish smile in place and who is SO the man I lust after, but his “About Me”, which I have copied and pasted to the last letter reads like this. “I am a Simple Boy. I Like make a good friends. and want to share all problum's with my friend's. i m allways happy. i think friendship is a Best relationship in the world.”

Why? Why? Why? Why me? Why in spite of the “Caution”? In spite of the rudeness, the aggression? What made the man think that I want to share all his “problum’s”? That I would be happy to be friends with someone who has to write Simple Boy using capital letters? That we would have profound and mentally-stimulating lengthy discussions on the two communities that he is a member of – “Hutch” and the “United States of Ropar”? How are either of them relevant to where I am right now and to what I am doing with my life?

Another a*hole wrote this the other day in his private message to me:
“Dear Madam, thank you for the opportunity to write to you!”
Yes, of course, I WAS interviewing him for a job after all.
“I am liking your attitude-ful introduction.”
!!!
“I am also liking your attitude.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Therefore I am wanting friendship with you.”
Thank you. I am also wanting friendship with you. And I am also wanting you to die a slow and painful death. Are you not wanting that?

But the finest friendship request in the last few days has been from a person who had the balls to send me an email. He couldn’t be satisfied with mere scraps or messages. He wrote (again I am copying and pasting the exact words):
“How r u?I hope fine.......Anyways this is Vinayak & I am looking forward for friendship with u. Can i think of u as a friend of mine? Can we be friends?”
Yes, yes, please, please, pretty please. Do think of me as your friend, so what if your name means NOTHING to me?
“Your name is really very pretty & hope the same with u.”
Okay, Buddy. That's good to hear. But say it once again now, and this time make it in English please.
“I am waiting for ur reply & plz do feel comfortable.”
I will. I shall run right now like a breathless bird and remove the heavy weight of my brain from my head. Just the way you have in order to be comfortable.
“With Regards & Respect,
Vinayak”
In a semi-suicidal mode,
Sayantani

Wisdomous

On America’s Independence Day, among other decorations, streets are lined with their national flags. I find the American flag very beautiful (and not just because it has red!) but my friends here have admitted that learning to draw it as a child was an uphill task. Let us thank the powers that be for the Tricolor, shall we? Putting together saffron, white and green with a blue circle was one of the easiest things ever, remember?

My roommate is in the land of the Tricolor now. And every now and then, I either miss her or get homesick, particularly because Manasi will be meeting my family before I get a chance to do so myself. In her absence though, she is letting me use her phone, which is making meeting up with friends here incredibly easy. Hallelujah and lots of love to Manasi for her incredible generosity!

Yesterday, I got my first taste of America’s Independence Day and it was memorable. I attended a multi-course, delicious barbecue. (Seriously, where will I get such luscious beef when I return to Delhi?) I went for a fireworks display, which was incredible, but then I dig fireworks anywhere and everywhere. (I remember there was an extensive fireworks display in St. Stephen’s on the night of our graduation because we were the batch of 2000 AD, you know, the millennium batch. And while friends around me clutched handkerchiefs and hugs and I-will-miss-you tears, my life was perfect thanks to the fireworks. But I must hasten to add, lest anyone thinks of me as brave, that I did those things too, although after the fireworks.) Oh, and the American national anthem is really tough to sing. The people I was with started singing it in a fit of patriotism, and that made me nostalgic for Jana Gana Mana. I started humming it and then couldn’t get it out of my system because it kept going round and round in my head. Soon, I was asked to sing “whatever it is that you are humming”. Flush with “I am missing Delhi again” I sang both the national anthem and the national song. That felt appropriately ridiculous given the occasion but incredibly good nevertheless.

I had a house guest for the last two days. My friend, Mike, who got his MFA in Creative Writing this year had left Moscow in May to return to his hometown in North Idaho. He was down in this area for a boating trip at one of the many wild and curvaceous rivers that run through our picture perfect state and stayed at my house. So among several sessions of non-stop laughter and yelling at each other, we managed to avoid cerebral topics completely.

And finally, the reason why this post is titled so. I have heard two very profound sentences in the recent past and they have stuck themselves to my head. Let me share them with you:
“I know there are 10,000 Jewish men in New York City because I have dated every single one of them.”
-- A friend’s aunt
“A day without ice-cream is a day without sunshine.”
--Overheard at yesterday’s barbecue