Things That Bang

"Dee, shit! you've got me into massive trouble!"

"Bhav, sorry yaar, ma decided to clean my cupboard. She never touches my stuff usually."

I still remember the hoopla caused in my house over a Mills & Boon. The book was called Counterfeit Bride.

I still have the book.

Ma had discovered the book wedged between my jumbled up clothes. I was eleven at the time and the book had been given to me by my best friend. Bhav had got it free with some shampoo.

She didn't like to read; I did and so the book was given to me.

Ma confiscated the book. I continued to have counterfeit reading habits; Classics in front of ma and romantic novels in the loo. My reading habits remained clandestine till I turned 15 and one day I gathered courage and told Ma point blank "Everyone reads them at school"

She gave me a disapproving frown and gave a reluctant nod.

I promptly asked for my confiscated book.

"You remembered it after all these years?" She was surprised.

"I remember all my books, ma. And its called Counterfeit Bride. Want to know the storyline? I remember that too." I replied cheekily, flipped through the book and walked off to my room.

Whatever be Ma's reasons for not letting me read romance novels I outgrew them by the end of college years. Some of my 'intellectual khadi' wearing friends found romance novels to be beneath their feminist dignity.

One of them had raised an eyebrow and remarked "You till read Mills & Boon? How quaint!"

What was quaint about it I could never understand but I did respond with that it was a 'time pass' habit. More like a mental chewing gum to deaden the mind.

Why did I defend my reading tastes back then?

Of course now I have more 'adult' tastes. I stopped reading romantic novels back when I was in my twenties. Reading sex never interested me. It was all the same kind of shit- bells ringing, blood surging, penetration, gasping, trembling and all very unbelievable.

Even the virgin in me recognized the shit that was printed pages after pages. I knew I could write better sex scenes even without much practice and post marriage I did.

I wrote erotica and unfortunately I found myself suffering a similar predicament for writing sex instead of reading it.

The reactions were the same except instead of 'do you have to read it'? the words were- do you have to write it? Can you not write something more productive, more intellectual type? Can you not write something that will not embarrass us?

I tried my best to explain- They are just words. Reading or writing them doesn't make me an immoral person.

"Rape scenes? How could you?"

"It was fan fiction and the criminals did suffer for their actions."

"I didn't finish it. It was too gruesome."

I sighed

 "The criminals did suffer-"

"I don't want to know. You have to stop writing such drivel."

"I have written more stuff-"

"No! this must stop immediately!"

I gently banged my head against the wall as the long distance call came to end. I was a kid again facing ultimatums.

Weaving stories had become an addiction for me. I could write other stuff; well, I was writing other stuff - book reviews, memories from past, movie reviews blah blah blah but I was also playing naughty on my site and got rapped on my knuckles for it.

There was no more clandestine writing for a while. In fact after all the exasperation and my prema donna reactions I came to realize my fight for freedom of speech in the jack off section was not all that worthwhile.

I could still write erotica but more along the lines of Mills & Boon; boy meets girl, boy has soft porn sex with girl, they fight, they make up and live happily ever after- Yuck! I flipped through the tattered pages of Counterfeit Bride and bid that part of my life a quiet adieu, at least not under my real name;)

Posted by Deepti Lamba at 09:28 PM Stumble It! digg this del.icio.us Fark It | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Habeas Corpus: A writ by which a man may be taken out of jail and asked how he likes it.
-Devil's dictionary

Posted by Deepti Lamba at 11:58 AM Stumble It! digg this del.icio.us Fark It | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"I want to be thin. I want to lose weight fast. Put me on a diet."

My dietitian frowned at me and replied "No diet. Eat fruits, vegetables, salads. Lots of water, no sugar, no bakery stuff and you will naturally lose if you exercise regularly."

I was exasperated "But its gradual."

She smiled "That's good. You want to glow not look like a starved mannequin. No diet. Don't your clothes fit you better? Haven't you already lost 5 kilos with exercise and regular eating habits? Diets don't last. You will fall off the wagon, feel disappointed and one day you will stop exercising as well. This has to be a life long habit not a hardship."

I returned to my crunches chastened but unconvinced until I read an article about Oprah falling of the bandwagon:

"I'm mad at myself," Winfrey writes in the article. "I'm embarrassed. I can't believe that after all these years, all the things I know how to do, I'm still talking about my weight. I look at my thinner self and think, 'How did I let this happen again?' "

Oprah's mea culpa comes at a time when a growing number of books, including "Rethinking Thin" by journalist Gina Kolata, argue that diet-induced weight loss is extremely difficult to sustain long-term.

Oprah also confessed that she starved herself on a liquid protein diet back in 2005 to get in shape.

In the end she seems to have come to the grand realization that being thin is not the end goal but to be fit and healthy. Given her thyroid problem its good she realized that size zero may be possible but would make life miserable for her.

At my gym there is a thin girl who works out infrequently. She wants to take part in the Miss India contest. She is about 5 feet 7 inches, she is all teeth and has a rake of a figure. She is less than size zero if that's possible.

She wanted to know if she was imperfect in any way and whether she needed to go on a rigorous diet. My instructor laughed and said she needed food not lack of it.

I looked at her reflection and then mine in the mirror and tried my best not to laugh. The realization that I could never be a size zero didn't seem all that bad all of a sudden. That kind of thinking requires a 'foodless existence.' and a certain kind of zeal that I lack.

I realized I could never be 'thin' and it was alright. I will always be a curvy babe in love with food and life. Right food, healthy self esteem and regular exercise is something I can see myself incorporating as a lifelong habit.

Skinny jeans will never be mine and I can live with that.

Posted by Deepti Lamba at 11:50 AM Stumble It! digg this del.icio.us Fark It | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

She came over to ask for Neem leaves. We started talking about the death of my Neem tree due to the Jamun tree pushing at it. We talked about gardening, snakes crawling into our homes, children and somewhere in between we got talking about religion.

It wasn't a topic I wanted to talk about. It makes me impatient. She told me she was a Muslim and asked about my religion. I replied- Buddhist. She smiled, nodded and said that I was a Hindu.

I didn't get into the semantics and merely shrugged. She became more chatty and continued talking about her Hindu friends and I stared at the bamboo rhizomes that were growing under my cracked cemented walk path.

I wasn't interested in hearing about her secular inclinations, I wasn't interested in her exchange of gifts on Hindu Muslim festivals nor was I interested in hearing about her getting bored to tears in Gulf, her hating the burkha nor was I was interested in her horrified reactions against the Mumbai tragedy.

She was barking up the wrong tree. I was already on her side. I had already faced half her shit post 9/11 in America when people who recognized that I wasn't a Hispanic or 'Native American' decided I was a Muslim.

I had to wear my religion on my chest as if to ward off others 'righteous' anger. I told them at the airport security checks - "No, that lady in burkha isn't my mother in law. I am a Hindu. Are you done checking my six month old? Yes, I know its for safety that you have special checks. But why is it that whenever we travel we always get the special security checks?"

Things did get relatively easier a couple of years down. But there was always that fear in the back of our minds when we traveled. We didn't discuss politics when we stepped out, our phone calls were also censored and we maintained a polite front even when a jackass passed a racist comment or snubbed us in a queue.

We had friends who treated us no different whether they were Republicans or Democrats but fear had nestled deep within my heart. And the sense of insecurity plagued me constantly. We tried to keep a low profile. The attitude that if we kept our heads down and didn't stand out like sore thumbs things would be fine was ingrained in us.

By the end of our five year stint I was eager to return home. Between the yellow, orange, red alerts my poor heart had done enough palpitations wondering what shit would be dished out to us if terrorists did some shit on US soil.

I was ready to return home and feel like a majority upper class Hindu all over again.

After nearly three years of returning home I found myself trying to make a defensive Muslim lady comfortable in my garden. I didn't talk about the apprehensions I suffered while in US being similar to her feelings. There was one big difference between her and me.

To me, my country was a haven I willingly returned to but for her there was no sense of security in her own homeland; not that she said it to me but her loud proclamations of being a moderate secular Muslim made it clear to me.

She took some curry leaves and lemons, grumbled about the death of the Neem tree and politely declined my offer of tea.

I closed the gate behind her and wished we didn't talk about religion and politics. It made both of us pussyfoot around each other and maybe it kept us from becoming good friends.

Posted by Deepti Lamba at 09:14 PM Stumble It! digg this del.icio.us Fark It | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)