We're all mad here

I am a freelancer and I live in Hyderabad. Owing to the lack of rains, we have 4 hours of power cut every single day. Apparently, when I called the EB today, they told me that the power cuts have been extended to 5 hours everyday. And then there are these random line and transformer problems that happen. To top all this, the scheduled power cuts are really unscheduled since we are NEVER informed when the real schedule is. So, when I am in the middle of making a really interesting infographic, bam, goes the power and I am left seething at the lack of internet.

So, my rant would not be complete if I don’t tell you my internet story. Just recently, I moved away from an old, bulky, borrowed laptop, to a brand new shiny Mac. So, it is sleek, thin, light and really really fast. But, it lacks the one thing that an Indian freelancer needs the most - a slot for the LAN cable! You see, my Beam Cable connection has a backup in its line, however, my home does not have power backup. So, earlier, I could just pull out the cable and fix it on my system, however, now I cannot do that. 

I also have a Tata Photon connection. However, Tata Photon has an ongoing problem with the Mac OS and so, the dialer shuts down the moment it opens. 

Despite the convenience of working in my pajamas, scheduling work around my life and the apparent flexibility to fit travel & volunteering in my work schedule, the one thing that I hate as a freelancer are the power cuts. I spent 6 months in Dharamshala & 3 months in Santiniketan and I could still manage to fit work and internet quite easily. However, the cities are just not meant to support people working from home. 

My solutions to my ilk of Indian freelancers are as follows: (Please fix this before you decide to work from home regularly)

Get Tata Photon or Reliance 3G or any of those data cards. Always of use!

If it might work for you, setup a home office. With a work table & chair and a power backup at least for your internet & laptop charger point.

Try co-working spaces. Cities have started warming up to the concept of co-working spaces and there are few options to choose from.

Embrace the power cuts - This is my one chance to work without any distractions and I genuinely manage to get a lot of work done faster than I usually do with several articles being fed into my news feed. 

So I watched this movie called Bridesmaids last night. Honestly, I did not expect much from the movie, but, it completely surprised me. And in such a good way!

For a movie focused on 6 women and a wedding, it does not show us the prettiest of the clothes or the most "beautiful" wedding or prince charming. It moves away from cliches with absolute ease. The lead character is a complete loser and not in a I-am-not-pretty kind of way. She is a loser because she has no job, or money and pities herself. The "bitch" is not really a bitch. She is plain stupid and hilarious. The climax is a non-climax and the jerk does not really come around and fall in love with the lead. He remains an asshole like he is referred to in the beginning of the movie. With 6 women, the movie also has toilet humour! In fact the biggest joke of the movie is the final wedding itself.

I am generally not a big fan of wedding movies because they make it appear like the wedding is the biggest deal in a woman's life. Over here, they call it a party. And the movie laughs out loud at all the "parties" leading up to the wedding.

Five men arrested in gang rape of Swiss woman in India

This news riled me up. Annoyed me so much I cried. It is such a crime to actually have the nerve to go on a bike trip in India, right? It is a crime. We don't do it. We never do it. Our girls are asked to use saree-guards on bicycles. In fact we sell purple coloured bicycles and charge extra for saree guards. We dont wear padded shorts and don't have the nerve to sleep a night inside a sleeping bag.

No, we are not brought up like that. Because to do it, we have to inform the police in advance. We could be raped, or assaulted or at least hooted at. You know because our legs are shown. We will be looked at wide-eyed at the thought of camping and will be asked to do something worthwhile instead. 

We never have travel plans. We go on "trips" to "safe" places with family or with a group of friends with permission from family and have to call home everyday to inform them of our well being. We don't play sports unless we belong to the rich households who can get off cars in their tennis skirts and walk into exclusive clubs made for the rich. We don't wear sleeveless clothes in the night buses and never ask for a bathroom stop. All this so that we don't get raped.

And by chance we do get raped, it is our fault. Because we had the nerve to sit on the bicycle in a pair of shorts.

Am tired of this. Very very tired. I spent an entire year meeting people who rode bicycles across countries. I met a guy who went all the way from London to New Zealand on a bicycle. I know of people who go camping every weekend. I met people who just carried a backpack with 4 sets of clothes and a sleeping bag. Why am I telling you all this, because in certain parts of the world it is common to take your bicycle out for a trip across towns. It is common to go hiking or camping or kayaking. It is common to get out alone for a weekend. It is usual to camp at an unknown place. And they don't need to carry their own personal body guards or inform the police. They just do it.

Everybody has a travel story that is deep, intense and life changing. Sometimes it is a person he/ she meets and sometimes it is an incident which is exhilarating. Let my break all myths. Not all trips are fun and not all travel is life changing. Sometimes regular life feels a hundred times better than a vacation.

This happened sometime last year. I was traveling across Cambodia alone. Life was really as romantic as it could be. I had a boyfriend back home who would wait for me to call him every day. I was traveling alone and I could manage my expenses well within the budget I had planned. As romance might blur certain functions, I decided to travel from Battambang to Siem Riep on a boat. Please note that a bus ride between these places would take 2 hours, but I CHOSE a boat ride because it was supposed to be the most beautiful boat ride in Cambodia. 

The boat ride was perfect – there was a big group of locals packed along with just 4 of us travelers and the boat was a non-stop 10 hour ride. We crossed 3 floating villages and people who got in or off the boats always went into another boat, basically we did not step foot on land for 10 straight hours. There were trees when we looked at the horizon; it was romantic, amazing, the water was clear and the people were happy, but it was as imperfect as imperfect could be for me.

It was the time of my menstrual period and the boat had no bathrooms and obviously there were no stops either, and I could not speak Khmer – the Cambodian language. Anything I said would be met with a series of stares and giggles. What was actually claimed to be a bathroom was a 3 feet high cubical box made of thermocol, which was open from the top and had a little Indian pot shaped cut out in the bottom. I still do not know where this cut out led to. This box was strategically placed against the sun light, so that everyone outside the box (which was everyone in the boat - roughly 30 people) could see a clear shadow of my ass.

In the midst of my concern about how to explain period or request for a stop to a bunch of complete strangers and worrying about whether I was staining my clothes of not, I had a very ‘friendly’ fellow traveler who talked non-stop about his 3 grandchildren. He showed me their pictures and also gave me in-depth details of the jobs he held in his life. And to add to my annoyance, I was flanked by a 1-yr old kid and a 2-yr old kid, both of whom were continuously eating. And they would freely pee right into the river by standing on the ledge of the boat.

That day I dreamed of today, I swear I really did. I dreamt of a regular corporate job with a bathroom well within a 15 feet distance. With people that understood the language(s) I spoke and whom I could ask to shut up.

It has become a norm. Where women have to be labeled.

Aggressive. Submissive. Too thin. Too fat. Too corporate. Bitch. Pushover. Sensitive. Petite. Cute. Pretty. Scary. 

My internet-inspired long weekend upcycling project seems to have gone well. I am happy with the end products. In fact I plan to make this a group activity and let anyone that comes home paint a bottle. I will keep an updated stock of bottles and colours. So, now you know whom to call if you have had a party the previous day. I will pick up your bottles.

These guys are no more original. They can cease to exist:

1. "Different" tour planners

2. Adventure tour companies

My 2 cents of advice. Don't visit the 10 best places you MUST see. Why, you ask? Because no one knows you well enough except you, that's why! No one knows what you love and what you don't. A likes to sleep inside her comforter on vacations. Cousin K does not even wake up on vacations. VJ loves to play wherever he is. K and I love to talk and talk and talk in secluded spots.

Today, I dug deep into my inbox to find old offer letters and relieving letters. I went through the offer letter for my second job and was briefly reminded of the mildly excited feeling I had when I received this letter. It was a world of possibilities then. Now, an offer letter is just an offer letter and works as a window to the world of opportunities outside of work. This is what growing older feels like. And no one really told you it is a good feeling. A happy and more settled feeling.

In other news, I joined Bharatnatyam classes, which means I went for one class. I learned namaskaram in the midst of little girls who wore pyjamas that did not touch the ankle - they had grown out of it. In contrast I had folded my readymade pyjama 3 times just so that I would not slip in my first class. It was fun though. 

Basically as I am growing older, I am increasingly doing things that I do not necessarily have to do a good job of. There are virtually no expectations out of any class or activity I take up. It is purely for the fun of it.

So, if you have any Telugu friends on Facebook, you would have seen a picture similar to this. This is jeelakarra bellam. Basically it is a sticky mix of ginger and jaggery on a leaf that the to-be wife and husband stick on each others' heads. This is the pinnacle of the wedding proceedings at Telugu weddings. Right after this, the elders give the couple their blessings. Apparently it signifies that marriages are a mix of sweet and sour and you don't have no option but to live with it. 

So, the story is not about the brilliance or otherwise of rituals, instead it is about how photographers cheat. So, just after this ritual is when the bride and the groom raise their heads and look at each other for the first time(!). But, in the picture you see that the couple is really looking in the side.

This is because photographers are really the most enthusiastic people at any wedding ceremony. So, they keep prompting the bride and the groom to look at the camera at this time, in order to "candidly" capture the moment. I thought this was a special extra our photographer was offering us, but after seeing roughly 28 more pictures of 28 other weddings (of course on Facebook), I realised that all of them know the trick!

After going through a wedding ceremony with a super excited photographer I understood how the photographer really has more say in the proceedings than the pandit actually does. So, the next time you decide to talk to the pandit about a shorter ceremony, go with my tip - talk to the photographer instead. 

But, we K and I rebelled. We refused to look into the camera during Talamuralu*. Huh, we did it!

*The ritual where the bride and the groom pour rice over each other. 

Last year at this time, I was staying at a cozy little place at Bagsu, cleaning trash bins and flirting with random travelers. My staple food was banana-nutella sandwich and I hiked alone. I worked out of a chai shop for a week and was caretaker to a dog. I also got hit on by an SI at the said chai shop. 

Social Media gave room to the misfits, rebels and the imperfects. Yes, it was a realization that dawned on me suddenly when I was looking at Pinterest today. Growing up, I remember being pounded with images of the perfect women - the coy, demure, understanding, working, earning, achieving, fair, thin superwoman. And I genuinely thought there was something wrong with me. I thought freckles made me look ugly, I thought no one would ever fall in love with me because I was not thin and  I believed I needed to make up for all my flaws by over achieving. 

There was no room for the loud and random person that I really am. I never saw or heard of anyone like me. But here I am as a grown up and I see a lot more people like me. People who want to do random things, people who cannot stick to jobs or buy houses, people who see heartbreaks and people who talk about troubles with family. These are people who want to jump and dance at will and celebrate imperfections in their bodies, people who want to talk and be listened to.