Venturing Into The Unknown: Chronicles

One fine day, my colleague comes and tells me there is a dance class/aerobics thingy right next to the office for reasonable monthly costs. Point to be noted, she stressed more on the ‘dance’ bit and I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. To cut a long story of me slowly heading towards obesity short, I ended up joining.

*Just to give you some background, I wake up at 7.30, work a 9-6 sedentary job, go back home, have dinner and sleep and that is the extent of my ‘physical activity’; the most exercise I get is when I lift my hand from my plate and put food in my mouth. I’m guessing jumping around in the shower doesn’t count as part of it.*

PC

So on a fine Thursday evening, fighting my OCD about starting on Mondays or the 1sts of a month, I slip on my sporty shoes, haul on a pair of borrowed pink pants, find the largest tee I can find (to hide all the loving handles) and ambled off to the studio. I discovered several things, one of which is that I have the stamina of half a peanut, that also one of those blackened, ugh ones. Half a jump and I'm already huffing.

Some other random things/observations/whatchamacallit:

1)    We have a different instructor for each day of the week. None of who believe in warm-ups or cool-downs. Which invariably results in me getting a very painful stitch on one side and spending 80% of the class bent over double, grunting through the pain. While seemingly everyone else, including the 50-something-year-old, keeps up.

2)    This is the first time in my life that I’m not the teacher’s pet (yes, I am/was a nerd, we all have pasts, okay?) but the uncoordinated buffoon in the background who gets everything wrong, turns left when everyone is turning right and basically is the bull in the La Opala shop. The knowledge hurts.

PC

3)    There is no graceful or feminine way of exercising/doing aerobics. You will look like a grandma doing her own version of zulsa™ (Zumba+salsa) to the music in her head, but you will have to deal with it, accept the fact that you will never look like Deepika Padukone when SHE works out.

4)    Hot instructors are NOT a myth. My Wednesday Woman has a butt that is just.perfect., hair that has just the right amount of curl, big, beautiful eyes and dance moves which would make Travolta proud. And she wears the cutest exercise-pants-thingies and racerbacks. Oh my, my. I don’t think I have to spell it out that I have a HUGE girl crush on her. Smitten, I am.

PC

I kid you not, she looks like this, except for the dark eye makeup and the blonde hair.

5)    I have robots in my class (who are skinny, little skanks who are snooty and uppity [but this might just be my jealousy talking], so I don’t know what they are doing there in the first place). Why ‘robots’, you ask? (Even if you didn't ask, I'll tell you) Because they pick up steps in less than a second and keep going for 55 minutes without even stopping. Every twist is rightly done, every kick is perfectly executed. Just to give you comparison, I pick up steps only in the last rep and keep going for all of 5 minutes before I stop, panting like an excited Labrador. Makes me wonder if they ARE actually robots.

6)    This is the worst part - I sweat like it’s nobody’s business. And it IS nobody business. Hardly two minutes into the class and my tee is soaked through and through. I kid you not. By the time I leave I look like someone played the bucket-on-the-door prank on me. While people tell me this is a good thing and fat is burning and crow is cawing and all, I look like I lifted some fifty weights and did some major workout, when all I did was jump uncoordinatedly around, pointing my toe at the wrong times. Also, the robots? They don't break a sweat... they are just... dewy. WTF?

PC

Bonus point: All the ‘next days’ of the first week? Anything I moved, except probably my eyes and teeth, hurt like a muthaphakin’ muthaphaccer, making me aware of muscles and parts of the body that I didn’t know I had.

All in all, I be in a dilemma. I love food. I can't stress that enough. And exercise is a bitch. I can't stress that enough either. But still, I have hope that someday… someday I might be as stamin-ous (like I have said before, I reserve the right to make up my own words on my blog) as my Wednesday Woman.

But that day is definitely not today. Sigh.

P.S: And I have people like her on my feed who are so hot and live such healthy lives that I feel guilty drinking even water. P.P.S: Gah.. don't laugh.
P.P.S.S: God created food. For people to eat. Man created exercise. It is unnatural. (Just some excuses that I make up to feel better about skipping class on Tuesdays when there is a MONSTER instructor who makes me pick up 2.5 kgs in each hand and squat-walk all the way across the room. Six times. Like I said, MONSTER.)
P.P.P.S.S: HAPPY HALLOWEEN, y'all. Go watch Annabelle.
 

Star Gazer

Nothing about my life is clichéd so I never thought that my future would start in as clichéd a moment as when our eyes met across the tables. He had smiling eyes – you know the kind... the ones that are permanently crinkled on the sides, seemingly under the influence of some private moment of suppressed hilarity. I had come to trust myself to read men’s eyes well, experience had taught me that he who has intentions, none of which were good, always came with sweet talk but smiles that never quite reached the eyes – which is precisely why I liked this one, brown-eyed and long-lashed and laughter-filled.

He had just looked up from the book he was reading – I was and am a subscriber of the Darwinian theory and the fact that the book was Kafka on the Shore was what clinched the deal for my subconscious. Impeccably shabby, his pale blue shirt was far from pristine but very becoming of him and the denims were worn well enough to warrant the “favorite pair” tag. Add to that a day’s worth of scruff, he hardly made the cut to qualify as the 'regular gentleman', but those eyes. Those laughing eyes.

I don’t know what he saw though.

***

He looked at me with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. The first time we met, he took my hands in his clammy ones, bent down to my eye level and told my daddy that he had a very pretty daughter. Looking back, that was the moment that my life changed forever. And looking forward, that was the moment I will keep willing away into oblivion.

***

The next time we met, we sat at the same table. Life had taught me to reach out for what I wanted to make myself happy and I had asked him out within five minutes of small talk and his laughing eyes twinkled with mischief as he accepted. What started as assertions on Murakami’s excellence ended up being a conversation that trailed through everything from shoe laces to the Universe to fishes in the local pond - I was very surprised that he knew where it was, further solidifying my very favorable first impression. I blushed when he said the brilliance of star dust would have trouble competing with me.

But I never blush.

***

On my 12th birthday, my parents had deemed me old enough to stay home by myself and I was very proud to have been given the responsibility, not realizing that, for them, it was just a matter of having their freedom back, being able to live like before, before the time the unplanned, unwanted child had arrived. He came knocking one day when they were out shopping – I wonder why I opened, I never usually opened the door for strangers. But then again, he wasn’t a stranger. A clichéd tale in the making, perhaps?

Looking back, I realize that I never stood a chance – his depravity never left me with one. He had picked his prey well for he had read me like an open book and understood that whatever happened, whatever he subjected me to, I wouldn’t break, my pride wouldn’t let me. Nor would I tattle, my courage wouldn’t let me.  

Once that was established, slowly, he proceeded to shred my soul.

*** 

It wasn’t a wonder that we, he and me, ended up under my fluffy duvet covers, desperate for breath and each other. Clothes had become an irritation as I gave my virginity up, at age twenty two, to someone who valued the bubbling feeling that virginity really is, the hope and the trust, that comes with spread legs. At least I hoped he valued it. My heart appreciated the fact that my insides were turning to mush, not from fear and pain like it has always been, but from those gooey feelings that I’d always hoped to feel. My head exploded, not from the inability to contain everything from the seventh circle of hell and shame, but from love, love exploding from the deep recesses of a heart that knew not the meaning of such words. 

***

He always slept over – he made sure he came only when no one was around. I had always lain away from his side, the putrid smell of dank sweat mingled with the metallic aftertaste of pain filling my senses while he snored precious minutes of my life away. I couldn’t leave the bed, he was a light sleeper and he would be even more brutal if I did or said anything that he did not like. So I lay by his side, suffocating any and all emotions, strangling sobs before they arose and battling demons who had stolen away my sleep.

***

Spent, he slept through my epiphanies and my hallelujahs. The crook of his arm held my buzzing head to his chest while the other hand held my warm body close to him, pinning it there. Strong that he was, fear was far from my mind for it was busy drowning in the feeling of finally belonging to someone who wanted me for me. His fingers that were splayed at the side of my face channeled my tears of ecstasy on to the duvet – the pillow that had been, till then, witness to nightmares and keening sobs, full of doubt, self-pity and lack of will to live, was finally spared.

***

He was extremely displeased when I left for college. He tried his best to get me to stay, to enroll in a college near home but there was nothing, not hell or highwater, he could do to make me stay, not even in the same country as him. As the landing gears of my plane retracted into the huge body, a shudder of relief went through my soul, though the lady in the aisle seat was too posh to notice and I had thanked my stars for that – I’d learnt to fight my own battles. He had made me stronger than I ever could have been.   

I haven’t seen my parents in a decade. They never came to see me either.

***

I woke up to an empty bed but the crackle of sizzling bacon in my pan quelled the tiny bubble of panic (some things never really fade from the mind, do they). I smiled as I allowed myself one more cliché – I pulled on his shirt, oversized as it was, and tiptoed into the kitchen. He smiled that scruffy smile at me, swung me up on to the kitchen counter and handed me a plate full of scrumptious food and the conversation continued from star dust to his long lashes to Orhan Pamuk and his ways.

Once, he brought up Lolita but the look on my face stopped him from going further; but him being him, he dispelled the minuscule black cloud with a wave and moved on to Pavlov Stellar, surprising me once again with his impeccable tastes - after all, all of these, and him, were my choice. My own.
And it had taken me five years of agony to get there. I deserve it.   

***

I am a woman, I look past my past to embrace my present. The battering I took, mind and body, is for no fault of mine and I refuse to blame myself for it. I choose to ignore the swampy mess and the unpleasant creatures floating in it which are waiting to drag me down. Instead, I look to the stars and see gleaming hope for a life yet to be lived in them.

I am a star gazer. 

PC

- Inspiration derived from the very, very, very inspirational Dominique Christina.

Obligatory Transition Post - Confessions of the Chocolate Obsessed to Cookie Crumbs Inc.

Sometimes there are those things in your life which are precious but redundant. You carry them along on your journeys but your steps become slower, for the weight of the past keep pulling you down. Every once in a while, you need to shake yourself free and start afresh, even only if it is to ensure that you are walking in the right direction.…

.......Blahblahdoodlespapoodleladeedaa...

....

....... I could bore you with more speeches about what Confessions of the Chocolate Obsessed meant to me and my reasons for wanting a whole new place to write at or I could just throw the figurative door wide open and say “Welcome, have a cookie, won’t you?”

PC: Here

Poke around, see if you like anything, let me know if something doesn’t work, drop a line. Or two.
As for me, I start again from scratch. This time, the writer is going to be an adult (so to speak) who has spent a decent amount of time making lemonade in life, paid her own bills and fought with herself and everything she stands for to invest in a Kindle.

In a nutshell, welcome to the next phase of my life. 
Cookie Crumbs Inc.

PC: Here

P.S: I’d also suggest you invest in a bag of Chips Ahoy! and grab a glass of milk to go with it. They really should start paying me for the amount of good PR I do for them, no?
P.P.S: I was serious about the ‘lemme know if something doesn’t work’ bit.
P.P.S.S: I hate Wordpress -_- Justsaying.
P.P.P.S.S: Blogging when you’re supposed to be working be the shitza :P And I’m sure you’ll agree. 

Bards of the Blogosphere: Chapter 4 (Week 3) - The Perfect Crime? #CelebrateBlogging

Note: This is the fourth chapter in the "Game of Blogs" by BlogAdda for the team "Bards of the Blogosphere" 

Read the previous part here.

***

He was always just out of reach…. the happiness he radiated brushing against her fingers but skipping away just before she could catch hold of it. Finally, she catches up and stands by him, she holds out her hand and takes his but that is when he collapses, her horror-stricken eyes reflecting the growing pool of blood by his side and the last breath leaving his body in a whoosh before she could even start reacting… She stood there, helpless, not understanding how her world had fallen apart when it had only just come together… 

Jenny awoke with a start. She was drenched in sweat and the dregs of the same damn nightmare were clouding her senses. She ran a careless hand through her hair and shook her head clear of the cobwebs, which was when she heard the creak of a key in the front door – she immediately knew that it wasn’t her nightmare which had woken her up.

PC: Here

Considering the circumstances and being the person she was, she didn’t wait for an excuse to dismiss the strange sound – she slipped out of her bed like a cat on prowl and tiptoed to her door. She made her way into the dimly lit passageway, cautiously, and peeked out into the sitting room. All her senses on red alert, she became very aware of another set of shallow breaths which were not her own.

She almost jumped out of her skin when a hand clutched hers tightly! It was only habit that kept her from screaming out loud but her heart was still in her mouth when Shekar’s familiar form came up by her side; the expression on her face prevented Shekar from asking her what was up but he’d heard the creak too. Little more than a sliver of dim light at the Duttas’ bedroom door, which was opposite hers, showed Tara’s face framed against it - half worried, half scared and fully alert. Apparently, Jen wasn’t the only light sleeper in the house.

Jen’s eyes got accustomed to the dark by then and a slight rustle of cloth against metal drew her attention. For the second time that night, her heart made its way to her mouth - a creeping figure was making its way upstairs towards Roohi’s room, this was no regular break-in for the intruder seemed to know exactly what he wanted and where he could find it. The figure had just turned the pillar and was getting to the stairs.

PC: Here

 Her body went to autopilot: fear and training lent wings to her actions and the adrenaline start pumping through her veins. She, swiftly but quietly, strode to her room with Shekar following at her heels, without a clue as to what was going on. Seeing them both go into Jen’s room, Tara slunk in as well, just in time to see Jen retrieving her Glock. The Dattas’ eyes widened in shock – Jen had hardly seemed to come across as the gun-toting type. They opened their mouths to give voice to the million questions that were turning their brains to mush but a steely glance and the sense of purpose on her face stopped them. The seriousness of the matter hadn’t made itself apparent to them yet.

Jen went back out into the hallway and crept up to her previous vantage point, the intruder was making his way up the stairs and the dim light on the side of the top step cast a weak beam of light across his face.

Him!!!

The adrenaline made her feet fly - she half-ran, half-sprinted towards him. Her movement caused him to turn but before he could find out what was causing the flurry, Roohi opened her bedroom door, walked out groggily and called out to Tara.

Perfect, thought Ahuja, and leveled his gun at the child, he had fitted the silencer beforehand.

Put that thing down before you do something that you’ll regret for the rest of your life, Jen’s voice rang through the house from the bottom of the stairs. The tone of her voice made Roohi snap out of her groggy state and she looked up to the see the murderer pointing a gun at her.

It was a standoff, one that didn’t look like it would have anything even remotely close to a happy ending.

PC: Here

 ***

• Me and my team are participating in ‘Game Of Blogs’ at BlogAdda.com. #CelebrateBlogging with us.

Read the next chapter here.

The team Bards of the Blogosphere comprises of Divsi, PRB, PeeVee, Arpita, Datta, Neeraj, Nupur, Sulekha, Maria and Roshan.