Debacle that helped me recuperate from my initial setback

Try this. If you are not able to deal with some intense agony, try 

inflicting a different kind of pain on yourself, you'd completely forget about your fundamental anguish. Like for instance, three weeks back I wasn't able to deal with the loss of a three year old relationship, then I started talking to a friend who initially showed a great deal of interest on me but when I did not seem like a difficult catch, he severed all his ties with me in a jiffy. I can't explain this but I started having feelings for this guy right after my breakup, is that strange? Well I don't understand myself, how am I supposed to understand the world. And now that this one is gone I feel a sharp sense of rejection. I have felt this before and it never felt good. Funnily enough, this time it feels good to get jilted the second time. This time getting vetoed wasn't bad at all. I won't say I wasn't disappointed, I was extremely disappointed. Nonetheless, since I'm focusing on this debacle so much the previous setback is slowly phasing out.

Reboundish relationships are extremely bad! Well Bill was a friend and then we got a little tender-hearted over time this was also during the time when I was utterly frustrated with Carrick. Bill said all the flirtatious things I couldn't utter 'cause I had moral obligations towards Carrick but I never stopped him from flirting 'cause I enjoyed being praised and fussed over a little. Somehow I couldn't sink low enough to reciprocate to his flirty moves even though I wanted to.

After Carrick and I broke up, Bill and I started talking more and I got extremely flirty. Why? Because I could, right? Don’t get me wrong. I wasn't looking for a rebound, I just wanted to have some innocuous fun. However this time, although Bill loves talking to me but he changes the subject when I get coquettish. And if at any point of time I start getting frisky which I think is pretty normal he starts talking about religious cults (he is not religious at all, just curious to know about different things) and veganism (He is strictly preaches veganism, so much so, that he wants the world to follow a vegan diet). 

The situation seems a bit complicated. There isn't just one possibility of what he might be thinking.

1. He may be playing "hard to get", because I didn't reciprocate his 

"advances" in the beginning, he might be doing the same to me now that I'm taking some initiative.

2. He may not be interested in me romantically at all. He may have had an infatuation over me in the past, but now he is over it.

The other night I felt that his words both in spoken and written forms may have been made florid and cater to what I wanted to hear. But I seriously don’t know if there is any other interpretation to “I really love you, I have never met anyone like you”, especially when it is said with full sincerity and without any equivocation.

Last night when I got teeny bit kittenish on phone, he said I made him feel unsexy and perhaps blocking his sexual receptacles. I was terrified beyond explicable terms. How come this guy who claimed  to be in love with me got turned off by my advances? Am I not alluring anymore?

Although I completely understand the ephemera of this relationship- it is an open relationship and I seriously cannot see my future with him but I want to be happy for the time being. I really like Bill. Yes I do! 

Let me explain the extent of openness in this relationship. He is allowed to have sex 'cause he has the avenues and more importantly the desire to have sex. I neither have the avenues nor the slightest desire to have sex with a guy I don’t have feelings for. I don’t have problems with him having sex with another chick not because I don't love him. I do love him but at the same time I want him to be happy and all I demand from him is some affection. I just want some freaking affection and kindness.

I am just confused with all the dichotomy on Bills's part that's all. 

On one hands he keep insisting that he loves me and on the other hand he doesn't wanna get into profound romantic talks. He insists on talking about a plethora of things like sports cars, spaceships , aliens, freemasonry, veganism and so forth. Now the only problem is that I don't know much about the aforementioned things. 

I am not immensely upset with his wishy-washy reaction, just a little confused about the human race in general.  No matter what, I’d still talk to him about generic things, I shall not talk about love, kindness, expectations, sexpectations etc . There has to be an end to my neediness.

I have decided not to make any moves from my side if at all we talk again and it is not difficult 'cause I don't have a strong sense of attachment to him (Perhaps I do love him but maybe it is a different kind of love and I can't put a finger on it). The only good outcome out of all this is the lessening of the sense of loss since Carrick left.

Oh by the way I unwittingly called him Carrick last night and he is such a cool kid, he didn't have the slightest problem with that. In fact he started laughing, perhaps he doesn't care enough to take the thing seriously. 

I am not exactly sure what Bill and I expect from each other. With me and Carrick, it was different. I had an idea I was not happy. I had a specific problem to remind myself constantly. With Bill  it is just a speculation. 

But if I am  enjoying our lukewarm amor I must go ahead and grab the extra attention I am getting. As with Carrick, I am giving myself the option of acting according to my own volition. If I could snap out of a 3 year old relationship appox) I can certainly come out of an hour long telephonic monologue.

I can almost see a pattern here, I make boyfriends from the new world, they promises to come with extreme sincerity and they never show up. It’s my opinion that a relation won't last if there is no scope for physical proximity (don't confuse that with intimacy).

I have too many fiascoes to count, I don't wanna go on adding to that list and last night was just another addition. I think if a person says he loves you with all his mind and heart he should  be able to show it. Bill's stupid explanation to his insipidity was that he never had such conversations on phone before. I am not at all disputing the fact that he might have had some problems when I started acting skittish all of a sudden over phone but it wasn't like I was making him do something he didn't want to do. 

He might have gotten intimidated. In fact I think both of us intimidated each other. So before delving into this any further, I should make sure what he wants from me. From what I gather, he is not sure what he feels/wants. Be that as it may, but he shouldn't have led me on during the earlier phases of our friendship.

I would lay low from now on, but if he still wants to talk without making it weird I wouldn't stop him. And if I’m  absolutely sure I don't have feelings for him, then I’d just  just sit back and enjoy and let him do the work while I can control the flow. The power of a relationship lies with whoever cares less. Perhaps the less you care the happier you are in a relationship, although there is no scientific proof to corroborate it. 

Seven days have past since we fought, now we are more friends than any anything else. I have immense respect for Bill. He  has an unendurable desire to spread knowledge about things he is so passionate about. He wants people he meets to know that they are taken seriously. I admire that quality in him. He says he sees himself just as I see him. I guess that's what makes us special. 

According to me romanticism is an obvious truism but romance is an absolute fallacy. According to Bill friendships were falsely propagated as being characterized by non-sensual attraction so basically ours is one with sensual attraction. 

Have a good good day guys, See you on the flipside (Dawww he uses this cutsie little expression a lot). 

© [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge], [2014]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The whole idea of my existence

I am sore, wounded, ruptured, damaged, cut, ripped and bruised several times by several people. And I feel the pain. When I feel the pain I know I exist and when I don’t, well, I just get suspended in some other volatile dimension. This dimension gives me copious amount of relief, as everything passes by right before my eyes and yet I don't feel them just like they don't feel me. My receptacles stop working, my brain  gets blocked and yet sadly enough my heart doesn't stop beating. My heart, that bastard that made me choose the wrong people all my life. Well there are certain people I didn't get to choose like my family for instance, millions of years of genetic shuffling made them who they are. I know that is true for everybody, it is true for you, for her and him, for the tiniest to the mightiest living being on this planet. None of us get to choose our family or our childhood or most things things in life, I guess. Don't agree with me? 

You are product of your choices not a victim of your circumstances, is that what you think? Is that what you really think? 

I don't remember the exact time when my anguish lost it's tactility and stopped making a difference to people. Like a man in his death bed I can see vignettes of my vapid life flash before my eyes and all I see is betrayal.

Wallowing in self-pity never helps. I have read that in many motivational books, blogs, audio tapes etc but never quite understood it. Here are a few things that people have advised me to do when I have hit the low points in my life-

1. Exercise- I spend an hour and a half exercising - DOESN'T HELP.
2. Be with positive people/ people who care about you- I don't know any.
3. Learn to forgive yourself- This is really the funniest of all. What's there to beg self-forgiveness for when I haven't done anything wrong?
4. Engage in an activity you are really passionate about- Suppose I am passionate about being sad? 
5. Get a puppy- I'd love to. Will my family allow? NOPE. 

My gift/ curse is that I always use the Socratic school of thought to evaluate my milieu. This dialectical device helps me question myself, the people around me and my circumambient in general. I get down to the brass tacks and start questioning them mentally. Even though I never seem to find a concrete answer, I really enjoy putting myself through the wringer (you could call it my hobby).

Why did it happen to me? Why am I suffering so much? Why did he/she have to leave me when I needed him/her the most? Why don't I have a more balanced environment at home? 

Anyway these questions are devoid of answers so let's move on, shall we? 

So what next? I will continue to do what I came here to do. I would help people when I can, I would allow myself to trust people if I can, I would let myself breathe, I would walk until my legs hurt, I would always endeavor to find the true meaning and purpose of life, I would do everything that everybody does, except I'd always feel the same agony burning inside me. 

And right now I am going to listen to Carmina Burana. I find the words do powerful and ferocious, I feel chills of dark romanticism resonating all over my body. 

A random list of things we can live without

Throughout history mankind has engaged in oodles and oodles of diatribes pertaining to magic, religion, science, atheism, paganism, pantheism, agnosticism shamanism, secularism, spiritualism. I for one have participated in many such erudite discussions. But do we really need to diversify so much?  What difference does it make if it is his God, your God, our God, my God or no God at all? Can’t we forget all that and carry on with our lives without fighting? Maybe I am being overly optimistic here, but I still believe that one day we would decompartmentalize ourselves and focus more on humanity than religion.

Can’t we go back into the past, kill a few people like Ted Bundy, Albert DeSalvo, Jack the Ripper and many many more (I’m aware of the fact that they are all dead, but my point is they transcended to the netherworld in a much more dignified way than they deserved) and eliminate all the atrocities and start from the scratch, give this world a whole new beginning. Just a pipe dream I guess. 

Sometime life sucks, it just does okay. And no human being, no God, no relative, no friend, no spiritual Guru, no help book can stop you from plummeting into that abyss of nothingness. Remember that movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Here were a group of people sucking the hind tit for no apparent reason when I could hardly distinguish between the sane and the insane, the good and the evil in the movie. Meh! I can’t even tell the difference in real life. Maybe those people wanted to stay there, remember the line Morgan Freeman used in The Shawshank Redemption after one of his friend was released from the prison on parole, he said “Brooks got institutionalized.” Brooks never made it outside the penitentiary. Why? Because the world is not devoid of misery whether in or out.

What I need is a great guy friend to have esoteric conversations with. Like every time we see each other we'd slip into profound discussions about diverse ideas such as morality, essentialism, nihilism, existentialism, phenomenology etc. 

Can I ask you to read Dr Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning? Dr Frankl’s Logotherapy is mega awesome. Existentialism emphatically explains the causes of inner angst, the pitfalls of objectivity, the sense of apathy in jarring conditions and the sense of provisional existence of unknown limit that Dr Frankl and his fellow prisoners endured in the concentration camp, notwithstanding, Dr Frankl doesn't condone all the ideas of existentialism because somehow he cannot see individualism as a binary opposite to collectivism (or at least that is my interpretation of his text). My favorite part of the book is towards the end where Dr Frankl quite assuredly says "life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones." Finally concluding this book with the case for tragic optimism- argumenta ad hominem, giving us hope to live life to the fullest despite all the sufferings.

Why is the world inundated with didactic bullshit. Do we really need to consult the book of “normalcy and righteousness” before choosing our pursuit of happiness?

Funnily enough I want the world to frown upon my morbid intellect and at the same time be jealous of it. 


© [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge], [2014]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Rant on Social Networking

And for heaven's sakes what is this IBC, huh?

People have gotta find other ways of grabbing attention. If you wanna help the world just go do it, drenching yourself in cold water won't change a thing. And whilst we are at it, tell the crazy enthusiasts that this preposterous IBC could get them sick. And to the adherents, no offense, but please don't desecrate our home page with your bucket pics and videos. 

Yes you can do it baba! Don't you wanna save the whole world by doing this daring thing? 

Here is my daughter Sofia taking the IBC! In't she brave?

I have absolutely no respect for those who drench themselves in ice water and call it social work. It is merely a cry for attention under the garb of charity or whatever. I really feel sorry for the celebs who have started validating themselves by posting their IBC video(s) and/or pic(s). Doesn't mean I don't appreciate their work or think any less of them. I just consider this challenge a downright sham.

Sorry if I'm hurting someone's beliefs but I believe in reaching out for people by being with them in person, talking to them, rendering help if I can. If someone really wants to find a cure and/or help people, then they should do what Lorenzo Odone's parents did. The oil not only helped their own child but thousands of other boys suffering from an insidious genetic disorder called adrenoleukodystrophy.

And what about the game requests I have been getting on facebook since time immemorial.  I have told these candy crush fanatics to stop sending me request a gazillion times. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but you and I would keep getting these requests till the end of time. I learnt it the hard way.

And Oh there is more to it, like 60% of my computer screen in occupied by stupid advertisements ranging from matrimony ads to colorful tops, garish baby doll lingerie, purses, bracelets, furniture etc with soft core porno flashing back and forth every time I try to download something. Is this the price I have to pay for using the internet?

My favorite passtime on FB is quite unusual, contrary to other people I stalk myself on facebook. There is something about stalking yourself on FB it is so much fun when you have nothing else to do.

Furthermore, I can't say that some of my friends' boisterous flaunt in relation to their jobs don't get under my skin, that's for sure. Why have people started prefixing their job titles on FB? Dr, Prof, CA etc. Human beings have certainly devolved into pretentious pricks. Shame on people who need to validate themselves by showing off her minor scholastic achievement on social networking sites. And then there are those imbeciles who use FB as a platform to "thank their loved ones". Who is giving you an academy award in the first place?

Enough of negativity now let's talk about some positive aspect of tech. I have an ingenious proposition that involves an app that will get all your work done while you are sleeping, taking a leak or a dump or maybe ambling all over the place thinking about pistachio and cherry . It is a $$$$ gazillion idea.

© [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge], [2014]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Movies that have inspired me immensely

I would like to express my views on two very inspirational travel movies both of which are redolent of feminism and self-discovery. 

Just finished watching Vicky Christina Barcelona for the third time. This movie is like visual marijuana! I get high on life when I watch witty travel movies. It is needless to say that Mr Allen's direction is a feather in the hat. 

There are other travel movies that have inspired me a lot, they include but are not limited to, Under The Tuscan Sun, Le Divorce, Letters to Juliet, Midnight in Paris, Top hat (my fave musical), Zorba the Greek, My Life in Ruins, Before Sunrise Trilogy, French Kiss, A Good Year, Holiday, Mamma Mia, Funny Face and many more. 

Here is something I've always wanted to do for society apart from eradicating poverty and bigotry, I want to change the world through movies, in fact I would love to act/ direct a few. I want the world to dance and sing with the actors, laugh with them, shed a few tears, learn from their mistakes, make more mistakes, make novel mistakes and most importantly travel through space and time with them. I have a great rationale behind it- Movies and Sports help you heal ephemerally although sports have a more permanent effect. 

Granting all this, one shouldn't get carried away with the ridiculously pontificating idea of a soul mate (something that is invariably glorified in most films), it is a toxic fallacy, beguiling young vulnerable minds. I try to remember five things that are closely related to one another- Finders, Keepers, Lovers, Weepers. 

Movies have taught me to fall in love with places and people, they have taught me to fall in love with love itself but not with the flawed concept of a "soul mate". I almost found mine and had my heart broken into a trillion pieces. 

Society needs to get rid of all equivocations including "True Love" and "Soul Mate". So to understand all this keep watching Woody Allen films. 
     
Check this out, "The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it." Now, I don't fully agree with Mr. Allen but I can see his point.

"I don't wanna achieve immortality through my work I want to achieve it through not dying" This is my favorite Woody Allen quotation because it is unassuming and sincere. 

There is another movie, that I would like to mention, this one is a Hindi movie called Queen. I was born in India, lived here for 24 years, never set a foot outside the country but I haven't seen more than 3-4 Bollywood films in my entire life. I don't want to sound pretentious at all but I feel most Hindi films depict frivolous romances, big houses garishly festooned with meaningless showpieces, people waltzing all over the place, imbecilic action sequences and they all follow more or less the same story line. I grew up watching classics like Gone with the Wind, Sabrina, The Wizard of Oz, The Maltese Falcon, It Happened One Night, To Catch a Thief, Double Indemnity, Gilda, All about Eve, Jezebel, North by Northwest and so on (this list is interminable as there was a time when I watched four movies per day.)

Let's talk about movies in general. A movie is an escape to the love you don't (and will perhaps never) experience, something your heart craves. 

When it comes to Hollywood classics, I don't know what it is, is it their bib and tucker or their style and urbanity or their eloquence or the monochrome but they totally leave me wonderstruck. 

After a multitudinous relationship fiascoes I have turned against marriage. The quotation by Kay Francis, another gem from the pre-code era has reaffirmed my admiration for Classic Hollywood smartness. 

I feel very adventurous. There are so many doors to open, and I am not afraid to look behind them." - Elizabeth Taylor

BUtterfield 8, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  Suddenly, Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof have convinced me that Liz Taylor wasn't just a pretty face. While being a 'good girl' wasn't her expertise, she invariably ended up being wiser by the end of every movie.

The only good thing in my life at this point of time are the movies of the bygone era. I just feel I was born in the wrong century or maybe the wrong half of the century. Without David Selznick, Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Teresa Wright, Vivien Leigh, Rosalind Russell, Ginger Rodgers, Fred Astaire, Barbara Stanwyck, Shirley MacLaine, Montgomery Clift, Julie Andrews, Deborah Kerr, Joan Fontaine, Olivia de Havilland  (don't know if I should put their name together), Marlene Dietrich, Jean Arthur, Jimmy Stewart, Ava Gardner, Debbie Reynolds, Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida, Doris Day, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Lauren, Gene Kelly, Lauren Becall, Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden (sometimes I wonder if he and Ton Hanks are twin brothers separated in time, although most people won't agree with me), Gregory Peck, Greta Garbo, Claudette Colbert, Shelly Winters, Joan Crawford, Priscilla Lane, Gloria Swanson, Nancy Olson,  Clark Gable, Eva Marie Saint, Rita Hayworth, Vera Miles, Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marlon Brando, Spenser Tracy, Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, Peter O' Toole, Sidney Poitier, Burt Lancaster, James Dean, Donna Reed, Maureen O'Hara, Gary Cooper et al (I wonder if this list can ever come to an end). And I just realized that totally sounds like an academy award 'thank you all' speech. Howbeit without their legacies our generation would be completely deprived of the finest movies ever made. 

"Happiness is good health but bad memory" - Ingrid Bergman

It was Ingrid Bergman's birthday just a few days back. Oh how I love Miss Bergman. Wish I could bring her back to life, hold her hand, kiss her and ride off into the sunset. She must be the brightest star in the sky and sometimes I stare at the night sky and wave at her, I know she waves back at me and acknowledges that I'm her biggest fan. I thank her for all the laughter, tears and fun. A grand lady who has inspired me to be smart, beautiful, happy and fiercely independent. My favorite Ingrid Bergman movie is The Human Voice and as the name suggests the movie is based on vocalization of sentiments, passion and yearnings. I don't remember if Ingrid Bergman had a name in the movie but throughout the movie she was painfully insecure about the way her voice sounded to her former lover. It is unique because it is a monologic one-sided telephonic conversation between Bergman and the man she was in love with who was to marry another woman the next day.

"Mai India se hoon Rajouri. Rajouri suna hai? Apne honeymoon pe akele ayi hoon." - Rani (Queen)

Sorry for the detour before arriving at the main point. Queen is a breath of fresh air, quite antithetical to the patriarchal Hindi movies we get to see which is primarily the reason why I stopped watching them.  

After getting jilted on the day of her wedding this bashful girl from Delhi goes on her honeymoon all by herself. She travels through France and Amsterdam, makes friends, develops a worldview, makes decisions and starts having an opinion of her own for the first time in life. Unlike other movies they did not turn the simpleton into a diva, the transformation was delicate and slow paced which made the movie very sensible and close to reality.

Fiercely feminist with a quaint sense of humor, it is by far my favorite Hindi movie. Having said that I haven't seen many of them so I am not the right person to judge, but this movie has definitely restored my faith on Bollywood. Kangana deserves a Giga-Oscar for this. And I deserve one for making the meme.

Molto Mega Grazie :)

PS- Sorry if I offended some true romantics out there, this wasn't supposed to be a polemic rant.

PPS- I have made a mention of Bette Davis but I'd like to do a separate article on her. 

PPPS- I had made very beautiful memes but wasn't sure if I was allowed to put them. I was tempted to put them all and write a silly line that I get to see on almost all youtube videos "I don't own the pictures/ music. No copyright infringement intended." 

© [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge], [2014]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Uber Feminism

Let’s talk about 'too much of something' 

Well first of all molto grazie you guys I know I did a great job with this sketch or whatever it is called. 

Doesn't it feel wrong when you get something more than what you need? Doesn't that make you feel a little uncomfortable? Lately I feel the same way about feminism . 

Feminism was conceived with sagacious intentions. At that time the world needed it more than food and water. But doesn't it feel a little odd when a magazine or a newspaper article says “XX is the first woman to get this prestigious award.” Personally I feel a little belittled. 

Why does society have to limelight one’s gender rather than one’s work? What if men are treated the same way when they achieve something and we start coming across articles titled “XY is the first man to get this prestigious award.” All I am trying to say is that we don’t need uberwomanization to prove a point. We are all Homo sapiens sapiens with different dosages of X, that’s all. Too much vocalization makes the concept antithetical to the core ideas of feminism proper. 

Women are not out of this world, they don't need to be someone extraordinary, women are woman, just like men are men. That is a very simple concept and can be conveyed without the ostentatious  asseveration. 

© [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge], [2014]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Ankita Mukherjee] and [ankitamukherjee2014newnhamcambridge] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.