August 27, 2006: whoa!!!! Even I dont believe this!!

With a good score and 5 years after me, I've been asked to consider holy matrimony by a few concerned crew in the family boat. And i am thinking Holy shit!! Matrimony??!! you gotta be kidding me man! I couldnt even eat the same ice-cream more than 4 times in a year and these guys want me to stay put with one guy until (his, I hope) death do us apart!! With the initial retaliation behind me, I've begun to give this whole settling down some thought, not the actuall settling down, but whats it abt me that I think is important for him to know before he decides to either strike me off the list or underline my name...a bit of thought also went into what i thought i looked for in a mate...

Its quite amusing, having to sit and write about myself with an objective to successfully impress a member of the opposite sex and his mother in the least J . But I am sucker for challenges n I am gonna give this a go. If you’d ask my friends, they’d have lots to tell you. But since you cant ask them without first going through me, I’ll save us all some trouble and let you in on what they mite say. (While I am not an incessant talker, I talk a lot in my writing, if you know what I mean). Key words in no particular order:

Funny (hmmm… somebody tickle me)
Loving/Caring
Weird (oh and don’t miss the expressions on their faces when they say this one!!)
Pleasantly plump (even modified my weighing machine to say that for anything above 137lbs).
Great with kids (oh yeah! I am even a God Mother to a an angelic 7 month old)
Great with seniors (ask ammamma, I live with her)
One of my friends actually said, ‘Ah Div, shes got the soul of an alpha wolf’. (I cant quite deny this one coz theres a pack of dogs outside my place that Lassie (my 9 year old retriever) and I go hunting with everynight (on our luckiest ever day we managed to snap 2 frogs and an old shoe)
Precarious (okay, now do I put this one in on the list or not…??)
Protective (I watch over my people like an ostrich)
Not a very experienced cook (Due to space constraints, I shall leave this for another day)
A quick learner (This one HAD to follow the previous one just in case there are Moms patient enough to have reached this far into reading what I have to say, Thank you, Mam!)
A tad short-tempered (not anymore than the next soul is, Bangalore traffic does this to you)
Loves her books (Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, its too dark to read- Groucho Marx)
Absent minded (they’re sayin this just coz mom found my watch in the freezer a week after it went missing)
Androgynous (Guys at work call me ‘Brother’ at times- I am not known to demonstrate finer feminine characteristics)
Principled (If I think so, its coz I have my own reasons, and nothing changes that. Some people prefer to term that inexorable, I’ll stick to principled)

And with that I think its time I ask my friends to leave and let me speak for myself. I am just going to split most of me into ‘what I love’ and ‘What I don’t’.

What I love:

Mom
Family and friends (includes Lassie and her platoon)
Smell of wet earth just before the rains
Old books
History section in a library
Fur on animals
Primroses- spring is never far behind once you spot your first primrose
Rudyard Kipling’s IF
Tennis as it was until the late 1990’s
The colour Black
Treks in the woods
Sunset on a Friday
Long drives n my car
Sunrise on a Saturday
Walks and talks with lassie
Caffeine with friends
Crisp cotton clothes that smell of sunlight and surf J
Dancing the night away
Dad’s bedtime stories (yes!)
Wild Lillies and plush wet grass
Old Country music
Francis Healy of Travis’ fame
Long walks and Gol Gappas in the rain
Dew drops on my lashes
Conversations with God (Must add that I am more of a spiritual person rather than a religious one- A pagan at heart)
Thinking- I can do that for light years at a stretch and yet find newer things to think about.
Bear hugs
Vishu Kani and Paruppu Pradhaman
P.G. Woodhouse
My neighbour’s kids
Concept of Yin and Yang
My great grand dad’s revolving chair

What I Don’t:

Lies and people who tell them
Non-punctuality
Kyon Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi
Hole in the ozone layer
Oil spills
What happened at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Chernobyl, Bhopal…
Culling of Animals
Cartoons on Nickelodeon
High heels
Our foreign policies
Sunset on a Sunday
Sunrise on a Monday
Red lights at traffic signals
The equation: Modernisation=Westernisation
Hospitals
Deseeding watermelons
Nehru and the Congress
Roads in monsoon
Fine print
Pretentious folks
12.2% service tax on mobile services
Concrete and glass
V.S Naipaul
The term corporate social responsibility (I think it’s an oxymoron by itself. You either are corporate or you have some social responsibility)

A bit more you ask? Alright! Listen up I say…I also do love writing, although I must admit, I have been afflicted by the worst form of the Writer’s Block for the last year and a half. It’s been a gruelling and a long drawn battle to say the least. I also think a lot. While I couldn’t chew gum and walk straight at the same time, multitasking in terms of thoughts comes easy and at all times too! If you saw the number of brackets within sentences in my journal (I am just making a point here- no one gets to read my diary!), you’d know what I am talking about. Folks say I am being a scatterbrain, but personally I’d like to think of the phenomenon as synaptic short circuits that occur due to high-intensity, high-velocity transmission of neurons as a response to persistent stimuli and an incessant involuntary urge to comprehend and react. That’s most of what I am. Largely independent, I am quite happy on my own. At times I do feel a strong urge to share my life with another soul (especially when there are more than 2 bills to be paid on the same day). Not looking for much I’d like to think. Key words of my search would include (the way I go around using ‘key words’, Google might want to hire me as their official mascot!!) :

Integrity
Respect for life, individuality and personal space
Independence
Education (no I don’t mean triple letter degrees- I am referring to constant refinement of ideas and concepts)

Someone who would potter around with my dad with a spanner in hand on a lazy sunday afternoon
And Elvis Costello would definitely agree when I say Peace, Love and Understanding… and conversations over caffeine. When we are 80 and the car porch doubles up as our Sunday picnic spot, you’ll find this is what it takes. Wouldn’t you agree?

If you’ve reached this far with no thoughts of inflicting irreversible damages to your PC/laptop/notebook and (excuse me for being blatantly optimistic) actually find yourself wanting to know more about me (if you are a psychoanalyst please excuse)…Meet me half way across the skies…