Force

I have decided to take on the most trying of all challenges I have faced in my few (long enough) years of being around. I think it will be harder than getting over men I have loved. I do not want to imagine that in detail yet 'coz it is a highly discouraging thought. But this, is for life. A good life. A not-so-exciting life. But a healthy life.

I am giving up wheat flour. Wish me luck!

Good-bye, Maggi, pastas, pizzas, cakes, and the rest of the family. I had a good time.

New Rule Adopted*

I think I would have had a breakdown if this evening had come before this job did; I would thus not have been able to write about faith in the previous post. The fourth fracture that evens out the plaster balance of both feet.

*Never ever to take stairs again. Anywhere in the world. Even if my heart stops beating in a rickety elevator.

The painful knee

So I am officially fucked out of my mind with doctors whose opinions about one thing vary like that of politicians. I folded my leg after one light year yesterday and it hurt like a bitch. But what am I to do about it anyway! 21st century is to be blamed! Nobody did me any favours for being a brahmin, but I do get life gyaan in sanskrit for being a brahmin! I could growl and bite right now!

I think a good option would be to take a poll here on the blog itself. If you think the knee needs surgery, say so. And if you think it is nothing but a fuckin' figment of my imagination which needs a workout in the gym, let me hear you out too.

And in case you work at Google, tell the damn people that Chrome does not let me publish my posts in small fonts!

Grrrrr!

The Peepli Weekend

This was a long weekend. Mostly nice. On Thursday, I got the mind-numbingly expensive knee support that the latest doctor prescribed. It is my last hope to save the surgery. It helps me walk. Almost as much as I want to. So, on Friday afternoon I set out for a shopping bonanza to test it. Not only could I walk, I could walk fast (just the way I like to), and I was on my feet for close to two hours. This injury has been one of the many humbling experiences of the recent past.

I bought things that excite me most after silver jewellery. Bags!! Yes, plural. You can consider it a lottery. Moreover, the peace that doing such things alone gives evens out the madness. Therefore the word 'bonanza'. :D

The evening had a Teej-related dinner at someone's place. Highlight of the rather annoying gathering was the fact that an absolutely unrelated oldie located far, far away from here sent me personalised blessings. Felt good.

On Saturday morning I spotted a hot-looking guy at the hospital. Perks of an injury which takes you to places visited by fit people who play sports and get injured too. :P

I got home to learn that family had booked tickets for Peepli Live. What a movie! Beautifully made, edited with precision, awesome details, and a wonderful take on the horrible situation in the country. And of course, God bless Indian Ocean! Never thought Des Mera could also take such a filmi turn.

Saturday also saw my hair looking so killer(!) that I fell in love with it all over again.

On Sunday, Independence Day, I decided to hear what that prime minister had to say to us. It had been several years since I either watched the Red Fort programme or heard anyone give speeches the way it happened in school. It was so unfortunate to listen to the uninspiring Dr. Manmohan Singh use words that were literally used by Hindi teachers back in standard 5th. I say this because the nation is also in not too different a state since 1995 (on several levels). His speech was defensive for crying out loud! It was politics, not nation-building. Previous night's Peepli was flashing in my head as I heard him go on about one yojna after the other. Nonetheless, I still celebrated independence with extended family through rest of the day. Good food, long drive, bowling, camera flashes, and some smiles. :-)

I had followed the first three seasons of Indian Idol and always thought that a singer better than the winner got left out. But justice happened in Indian Idol 5. I am glad. :)

I expect the next one to be The Freedom Weekend. Hope to tell you why.

I Want New Clothes

I have lost count of the number of movies I have watched alone at a theatre. While it is no big deal for a lot of people who do the same, it sounds odd to those who have never thought of it as an option. The reason why I am writing about it here is that I 'inspired' two people to do this routine over the past ten days. :D Yes, we must applaud for Ranjan Atreya and Nidhi Bhardwaj. *whistles*

The irony though is that Inception and Aisha - the movies they watched - are still on my to-watch list. Before you judge me for mentioning the two movies in the same breath, I want to tell you... I know. I do. So, don't bother. :)

And I will assure you right here that I won't go for that 'We are Family' shit. I won't ruin my birthday.

I watched Wake up Sid on television today. I like Konkana Sen Sharma. And I like Ranbir Kapoor. And I oh-so-like Rahul Khanna. When the movie released people told me not to waste money on it and I listened to them. But I kinda liked the movie. Maybe because I did not pay for it, but it was a decent evening spent. Especially liked the bit where Aisha is made to realise that the real her deviates from the perception she had of herself. Nothing ground-breaking, but the fact that it was so real a feeling had a genuine connect.

I had a crush on Nagesh Kukunoor once. And not just because he makes good movies. But I am wondering why he has made this wannabe-looking movie with John Abraham in it. Do you know why?

House arrest for multiple reasons is worse than house arrest for a single reason. I feel I am losing out on too much in life these days. So much so that I might just fail at making that year-end list of new things I do every year. I used to joke that among all the firsts, 'my first surgery' would be for the back. Guess I was wrong. This is naaaauuut fun.

On another note, I wonder what is it with men exposing their vulnerability and me getting attracted instantly. From experience I say that it is a very dangerous zone to play in. But what fun are insensitive, closed guys? The funny thing though is that these insensitive guys have a way of exposing their vulnerability. And that one's even more attractive. Gah!

The last few years made me feel that it was okay to be a bitch. I was wrong. I now know because life is being a bitch and I am not liking it. However, since it is hard to change now, I can put it differently. It is more fun when you have another bitch to share things with. Life's a good friend. *pukes*

Randomised

In these days of bearing a dead mind, I recently spared a thought for the zillions thoughts I have expressed on this blog. How with each passing year they have probably matured. At least in my head they did. And how with each passing year, the devils started sticking closer to me and my mind.

I think it was the initial days of grad college when I pondered over the seven sins and thought to myself that I do not indulge in any of them. No, I was not arrogant back then. Today, what, 5-6 years down the line, I have experienced them all. To top it, I am cynical too. But what is troubling me tonight is the constant conflict that the mind has to fight because of the situations life throws at you. Here's a petty one for instance. Earlier I was more open about expressing myself here. Even the not-so-happy thoughts made it here. Some people say it isn't good to register unpleasant thoughts because not only does it invite unwanted sympathy, it also gives you the opportunity to go back to those thoughts on a later date when you don't need them. But my take on doing so in a public space is that while you do pen those thoughts, you word them carefully enough to even look at them positively on that later date that people are concerned about. My private blog is a good comparative study for me, personally. It is so dark that sometimes I dread re-reading any of the stuff there. At the same time, there are probably five times more depressing events/thoughts that I have written about here, and they are so much easier to handle today. Only because I have maintained enough caution to know that I am penning history publicly here. :)

However, from being a naive and trusting, silly girl, I have grown to be a cynical woman with twisted thoughts that I have no control over. These thoughts also let me be indifferent towards a lot of unbelievable crap that people often get me involved in. Involved in a way that they do not even care to realise. Or explain. And if not indifference, at least I do not let me lose my mind over people who should not matter. I used to say, 'it's all about people'. Maybe it is not. Told you, cynical.

These days I do not listen to music, I do not click pictures, I do not call friends, I don't really meet any of them either. Maybe it is because of employment blues. Or an overlap of those blues with a phase that begun the day I left Pune. I am yet to find out. Even whether that is a phase or a turn that goes one-way.

I feel I am more at peace today than I was in the past one year. Certainly doing better than the blunt knife of this past February. But I am worried this peace could be silence that is killing things inside me.

The knee! I saw a different doctor and the problem finally got diagnosed. Now the wait for it to heal begins. I don't know why they just don't put a cast instead of asking me to not use it 'much'. Pff!

Anyway. I need to go for physiotherapy tomorrow morning, so I shall wrap this here and go to sleep. I don't know if this post will make sense to me tomorrow, but what the heck, the point was to not refrain from writing this time. :-)

Good night.

Muft muft muft!

X-rays and MRIs. Serrriously!

*fuming*

Add ultrasounds and other stupid scans too.

Gaah!!

Today I reached the next level of health-related crap. My dentist made me a case study for his resident students. Must tell you it does not feel funny to lie in the dentist's chair and have more than one people looking into your mouth! :-|

Apparently I have teeth of a 40-year-old. Yet again, for no fault of mine. Apparently my stress/anxiety makes me grind my teeth at night and all the grinding over the years has resulted in me having a now useless set of canines with a fair bit of damage to other teeth too. Ugh!

I personally know that it is not just my teeth that have reached the 40-year point. Maybe I should speed up life and do all that I plan to real quick 'coz my body seems to be aging a lot faster.

Come on baby, now don't just give me a job, make me your CEO! And then soon I would like to become a supermom CEO who travels the world for leisure for six months in a year. Who's listening? *puppy face*

Potty Takes Priority

I'll make this quick, have two most scary papers tomorrow.

Very important part of life.
Especially when you are on antibiotics.
Especially when the stomach automatically finds out that you are tensed.
Especially when the general state of being of the stomach is anyway effed up.
Also when you eat wrong stuff because the last thing you want to do is be hungry while studying.
And when the campus mess feeds you wrong stuff too. :-/

I forgot: when you have an effed up lower back, potty anyway is a daily problem.

Blah! This is why I am potty-obsessed. My visit to the museum is still due.

Live with it

It was the April of 1993. Thursday of the third or fourth week, Dekh Bhai Dekh was on. That was when I first got an asthma attack. Been a long association. A lot of midnight visits to hospitals, innumerable days off school, special treatment from March to May, sacrifices, loads of prescriptions, immunotherapy, unwanted sympathy, and a lot more.
Allergy to wheat dust always made me hate April. Used to get too exposed during school days, so every morning a decision had to be made - whether I am fit enough to spend half a day outside. I could never participate in any Annual Day functions of the school 'coz it used to be in the first week of May and I could never go for rehearsals on Saturdays or stay back after school. While teachers got to know the new students in the new academic year, I used to be the one with the maximum holidays and a medical certificate. Could never come to terms with it then. Just hated everything that made me miss school!
Around '99 it got real bad. I'd almost started taking it as a given that I'll be rushed to the emergency once a season. And it did happen for four consecutive years. Inhalers just didn't seem to work.
I was 14 when somebody suggested that I take a treatment from the Patel Chest Institute. So we tried that as well. The doctors there made many claims, increased the number of doses of medicines, and that year was one of the worst of all time. So it carried on...
The pollution levels weren't getting any better, and neither were the global weather conditions. Delhi's March became what April used to be, and on the day of my last 12th standard board exam, I was just glad I could reach back home. It was March and so I wasn't carrying my inhaler.
In first year of college, I met Dr Jaggi, and so started a long ordeal of about 65 injections over a period of six months. Immunotherapy it was this time. My family likes to believe it helped a lot and that I am much better post the treatment. Well, I am much better, but I get a feeling it is because over the past four years, I have mostly been indoors during these months. But whatever the reason may be, things have been much peaceful lately. And that led to complacency. There still are a whole lot of precautions that I need to take. But when you feel fit, you tend to not care much. So I did not stop my ice-creams, cold drinks, chocolates, etc. this season, and I got a taste of the past today. It was horrible, and I hate myself for having acted so stupid.

The state of things is quite bad all around. Every second person I meet now has asthma. It was still a unique thing that people listened about in awe 15 years ago. Allergies is one thing, but pollution and global warming another. I wonder what tomorrow holds.

Back Off!

It does not necessarily have to be true that I'm the only confused person around. Some doctors are too. No offense, they're well qualified and all of that, but how am I to lose weight if I am telling you that I cannot even walk? I'm asking for a cure for the problem that's causing me trouble walking, and you're saying that you lose weight and your problem will be taken care of. Also, you can take this medicine which might probably increase your weight. Phew!

Ok, let's calm down. We need to take more medicineS for the next one month. Physiotherapy did not help after all. Landed me up in that creepy machine that does the MRI scan too. It was a funny experience! It had three basic phases - one where everything is quiet, and you just feel cold air floating around you. The second is when there are all kinds of sounds being produced - I noticed that some of them went like zoing zoing zoing, and yippee yippee yippee. Please don't mistake them for something funny...their intensity was quite creepy and these were only the underlying sounds. All was fine until this phase. Then came the one where everything started vibrating. Whoa! Vibrations PLUS the noise. For a moment I felt like pressing the emergency alarm because the gear that was around my head and ears was closing in on me. And the man there had warned me of every experience I might have inside, but not that. But it's official, I am a brave girl. I did not interrupt the process. Also, I was only slightly claustrophobic, and I hear that that much is normal for anyone who gets that test done. So I'm fine. Yay.

Went back to the doc after getting the test done yesterday. One thing's for sure...I am completely sick and tired of WAITING! Bloody! For every goddamn thing I'm being made to wait so much nowadays. Anyway. So I got lots of tablets and capsules prescribed for the next one month. And it got decided that I will commit a random murder (of the first non-nice person that comes in front of me) if things don't get better.
Came back home to generally read up about my symptoms and the medicines on Google. Found a website with a forum only for people who have back pain. It was kinda amusing to see such a thing online even though I know that one can find absolutely anything under the sun on the internet. And people's signatures had their symptoms listed. Real funny stuff! :-)

Anyway. Got one exam left to go. Really hoping for it to go well. So wish me luck. And I'll see you soon. Tada!! :-)