RUNNING BACK TO MY MOM.

My obsession with clothes isn't fairly new. As a child, my fascination for shopping and clothes knew no end. Even when I was barely two. I vividly remember the moments when I'd come home with a glee largely visible on my face after shopping with my parents. Or the moments when I would ask for frocks with more frills. But my joy never ended with just that, because every day I would plead (often emotionally manipulate) my mother into showing me my new clothes till I'd wear them for a festival or an occasion.

I had tons of disagreements with my father about clothes. Just like today. I always liked something fancy. He always liked something delicate. As I grew older, my fascination for clothes increased along with my arguments with my parents about them. Soon, we arrived at a conclusion that we cannot do shopping together, and I took to shopping alone or with friends.

When I started earning, I imagined I could just buy everything I liked. Like I would walk into Vero Moda and walk out with at least five white bags or that I would simply step into Steve Madden and quickly swipe my card for a pair of glittery shoes that were carefully packed in one of their purple boxes. It would all be that simple, that's what I thought. Unfortunately, it was not. It was far, miles away from it. I would walk into a store and find everything so drab that I just walk out sad and dejected. I would walk into all my favourite stores in a mall and curse each of them for having things that don't excite me. And this isn't how I imagined things would be when I was a little girl. When I was a little girl, everything was beautiful. Everything seemed rosy. Everything looked like it belonged in my closet. You know what I mean? The little girl definitely did not sign up for this sort of disappointment.

Maybe you don't understand, but having a closet brimming with the choicest of clothes always meant something amazing to me. So, my fascination for clothes gradually turned into a serious compulsion to find anything half decent. Sometimes, finding half decent too became a daunting task.

My friend is engaged to be married soon, and I wanted to get a stunning outfit for her big day. Call it lack of choices or helplessness, I implored my mother to accompany me for shopping. This time, I did not use my half-baked brain or ideas, but only followed her and walked out with a little more than what I asked for. With a glee on my face  that the little girl would have approved.

I reckon there are some things in life that our parents know better. Be it the clothes that look great on us, or the life advice they constantly dole out on us. While it's not mandatory for us to follow it all, we lose absolutely nothing to pay attention, right?

P.S. Now, I got to go and adore my new dress all over again.

The Little Joys of Life!

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.” 

― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

I have been counting my highs and lows this week.

Yes, that's what free time does to you. I  haven't had time to think about the trivial things for quite a time now. Needless to mention, I pay a lot of attention to the inconsequential things.

The tiniest of things that do not matter to you, they matter to me. So the next time you cringe at my Instagram profile, I urge you to think twice.

Tell me, have you ever wondered what are the little joys of life?

Cannot think of any? Let me explain.

Do you remember that moment when you first saw your younger sibling? A newborn looking all pink and staring at you with big black eyes.

Or that night when you sat with your best friend watching 'Yeh Jawaani Hain Deewani' over cake and cups of coffee, talking about love and its enigma?

For instance, do you still think of those days when you find the man you love walk towards you? Have you ever tried figuring out why that person can make your day better by just walking towards you? 

The little joys of life, I tell you!

While talking about the little joys of life, have you ever wondered how the smile on your mother's face can make you forget all your woes after a long day at work?

For that matter, do you love that moment when you find your cup of coffee still warm and strong?

Do you still feel the flutters and butterflies that your first love gave you? Or that period when you loved going to lectures because your English teacher was absolutely amazing?

Have you ever had a moment when your father read something you wrote or painted and appreciate you for the good work?

Or that incident when you gave your unused clothes to a person with limited means. The joy on that person's face illuminated the joy within you. 

I am sure we have moped around in pursuit of healing our broken hearts. Can you still remember the smile on your friend's face after she has gotten herself through a terrible heartbreak? 

Of all the joys, we try and remember, we never forget the happiness that our first salary gives us.

Or that day when you go out on a long drive and a sudden rush of rain surprises you. Sometimes, you find an old shoebox full of photographs and polaroids that takes you on a trip of nostalgia.

Your childhood home, the room that once belonged to you, your window and the raindrop dripping on its sill.

Your grandmother and the giggles you share with her; your grandfather and the stories he tells you; the stream near your grandparents' place and the memories it evokes.

The aroma of old books, and the poems you have written in your first journal.

The playful Summers and the solitary Monsoons!

The little joys of life, I tell you!

They are so tiny and almost ignored. 

The little joys of life are everywhere. They lie in your memories. They lie here and there. They lie in you.

You just need to take a break and look for them.

Is Love Losing Its Grandeur?

“I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things.”

-John Green 

  

After a long day of work, my friend and I found some free time at the end of the day when we had a brief conversation on how the essence of love, the most overrated yet underrated emotion, has been changing over the past few years. It is quite astonishing that the only emotion that makes anything possible is losing its immortality.

How? Let me tell you how.

Let us not talk about the fairy tales, the romantic comedies, or the fictional stories that promise you the happy endings. Let us not talk about fantasies or the fragments of imagination. Let us talk about the real stuff. The profound stuff, as an intellect might want to say. Let us talk about how love has shamefully transformed from whoa to ugh.

To be precise, let us talk about how people have transformed from being beautiful to being vile in the name of changing times. No, do not talk about being practical. No, don't just get me started. Shhh, just listen to me. 

Let us, for a moment, forget all the fables and talk about our parents. Our parents lived in the era-the early 90s, when everything was limited, luxuries were expensive, communication was finite. Of course, they lead a far splendid lives than ours and it makes me shudder to actually say that relationships were everlasting in their era. How many sorts of communication did they even have? They did not have Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. No social media at all. Nada!

I vividly remember all the days when my father would stay months away from home, and my mother would wait for one phone call that would come at 8 P.M. and the days when my mother would go to her native place, my father would look at the clock anticipating a similar phone call.

Do you remember the days people wrote letters to their lovers, stayed away from each other for months yet were together? Do you know of the times when every problem had a solution? The days when lack of communication hardly mattered; the days when people had to put up a tough fight to attain something they really needed.

These days, luxury is affordable, communication is forever happening, and lovers stay in touch all the time. Like, seriously! In spite of having everything together, why are people of our generation failing in loving people? Why are we falling flat in putting someone else's interests above our's? 

When you fall in love with a person, you will have to accept the fact that you will face severe adversities. Love is melancholic too. Would you let go of someone just because it is painful? How do you think our parents survived the distance without any mode of communication? Don't you think the people in the archaic times fell in love? If it wasn't worth it, trust me, nothing would have existed. Nothing!

In a world where it is possible to find the most distant star in the Universe, is it too much to ask for true love unabashedly?

And before you go back to whatever you were doing, I would like you to ask yourself one thing.

Is love losing its grandeur?

This Is How You Raise Your Son!

This post is inspired from Thought Catalog's "10 Controversial Ways I Plan On Raising My Daughter." The moment I read it, I knew I had to write something similar.

People, or to be more precise, Indians are very concerned about how a girl child should be raised. You know there are a set of restrictions, and some really weird godforsaken rules that are passed on from the ancestors. Some rules are just beyond our comprehension. But I wonder why boys do not have to go through this major structure in their childhood. They are a little lucky. 

I know I am an amateur at this subject, and oh, I have no knowledge at all in this section but I really think it would be great if boys are raised up like this. (Some of the rules apply to girls too.)

1. Teach him. Teach him to respect people, and their ideas irrespective of the age. He must be able to respect people younger than him. Teach him to respect the right things. It does not really matter if the person who commits a mistake is older than him, he should be able to respect the right things only.

2. Art should be a major part of his childhood. Men who take interest in art tend to be smarter than the men who don't. They tend to be more considerate too.

Read to him in the night. Make him paint. Send him to music classes. 

Make a note that art and education should go together. 

3. Have you noticed that most of the men look for the qualities of their mother in a girl they like? It is impossible. Teach them that it is stupid. Your mother and the girl you like are two different people. No one can replace your mother. Teach them that from a very tender age.

This way they will not have any expectations.

4. Raise him without a religion, or a faith. You have been a religious chauvinist, and you know it. Do not let it get to him too. 

Give him the freedom to make his choices right from the childhood. 

5. It is okay if he fails and makes mistakes. Do not admonish him for that. 

It is alright if he scores 80%. Not everyone is meant to score 90%. In the process of abusing him for his performance at school, you are letting a 'Mozart in the making' slip away.

6. There is more to a girl than her looks, and her body. Teach him to respect women. 

This world has enough sexists already. We do not need more of them.

7. Do you find it strange that an individual changes massively after he turns into a parent? Of course, he takes up more responsibilities, and all that. But do you also realize that he turns into a selfish human being? He expects his child (boys and girls) to do everything as he wants. 

Give a break, people. They join the school, college, and an organization of your choice. You choose their friends and the person they are supposed to spend an eternity with. You choose their car, their house, its interiors and basically, everything. Why, just why do that? What is the point in raising a child when you intend to snatch their freedom from their hands when they turn 22-23? Don't you realize that you are turning your child into your replica? 

Seriously, it is not a cool thing. It is high time parents realize this.

Apart from this, we love our parents for all that they do for us. No offence.

8. It is too much for us to handle the male ego. 

Parents should raise a kid with the right amount of self esteem. Not ego.

You have male zeta ego? Good for you! Do not thrust it on others. 

9. Ask him to document his life. Give him a camera and a journal. Ask him to make memories and maintain a note of every tiny detail. Even the bad ones.

10. Travel a lot. Take him to different places. Meet different people. Introduce him to different cultures. Let him know the world. Just let him experience different things.

What's with the Wedding Bug?

“People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.” 

― Thomas Hardy

Okay, so be it! How much ever you might want to disagree with me (Actually, Thomas Hardy) on this, you know somewhere deep down, it is true. Not in all cases, but in many cases. Marriage is not a gamble and it is funny how people gamble with their lives in the name of marriage. Well, not everyone, but there a few exceptions.

I am astonished! I open Facebook and scroll through my news-feed and see people getting married/engaged, school-mates inviting me to their weddings and all and it actually made me wonder, "Are we like SO old?" And I knocked myself out with a hammer and started pondering over this thingy. Is it like so darn easy for them to get hitched to a stranger? God! It is so creepy. 

On a serious note, I would want to shake you and drag you into senses. Hey, would you just want to be yoked to some stranger without even knowing him? What if he listens to Taylor Swift? What if she is an alien to cleanliness? What if he wears yellow socks? What if she acts indifferent in the later part of your marital life? What if he is so incompatible with you that you dread when he comes home from work? What if she makes fun of your dreams? What if he does not stand by your side in times of dire need? What if she is not the woman of your dreams? What if you have conflicting opinions all the time? What if? No, really, what if? Scary, right? And if you belong to the category who thinks these things are not the exact deal-breakers, then, let me just suggest you something, you know, you might just do yourself a favour and refrain yourself from reading any further. Mark my words, dear!

Practically, your wedding day, the D day is supposed to be the most important day in your life and if you are truly lucky enough, you don't have to go through this ordeal twice or more, or whatever. We all need to ask ourselves some major questions, and hey, it is a serious thing, you know, it ain't funny.

Do you want to be married just because your long lost cousin's mother wants you to be a married man? Do you want to wear those silk sarees and heavy jewelry just because your community (Haha!) demands it? Do you want to spend the rest of your life, fifty years, to be precise, with someone just because your freaking family wants you to? Frankly, your family just pays fat cash for your wedding. They obviously won't spend fifty years of their life with your life partner.

I digress.

Back to the story. So, yes, do you really want to sit on those red thrones and look like fools who'd be doomed for an eternity? Do you realize that they are so old school? Do you want to be with someone who is as incompatible as Billy Joe Armstrong and Miley Cyrus would be? Do you, for a moment, give it a serious thought and realize the gravity of the situation? Oh girl, you do know that this is like a once in a lifetime thingy, right? Why marry someone who does not care for you? Why marry someone just for the heck of settling down? Do you want to sigh every-time you look at that big rock on your finger? Twenty years down the line, do you want to regret that you have plainly wasted your life on a person who never deserved you? 

Goodness gracious! I know, I am freaking out but I need to let this out. It is your day, wear what you really want to wear. Yes, the diamonds. Yes, that dress by Sabyasachi Mukherji. Yes, get your hair done like a rock star. Yes, you are listening! You want a beach wedding? Just freaking have a beach wedding under the stars. No, don't listen to that aunt who does not give two cents about your life. Yes, get that photographer and go for fancy photo-shoots. Aren't you like really bored of the oh-so-yesterday poses? Trust me, this is your day! Your parents, your friends, your confidantes will suggest and advice a lot. Be wise and act sane. IT IS YOUR FREAKING DAY.

Be with someone who is ready to stand by your side no matter what, who holds your arm and assures you (Okay, you might find this so Jane Austenish or Sophie Kinsellish but would you just care to shut up? Yes, thank you!)  and someone who is perfect with all the above listed imperfections. They might not be such deal-breakers after all. You never know! ;-)