Safe, Says Who?

It was back in time when while strolling down a busy market street, a man half-drunk snatched her gold chain, the one she had bought right after she’d started to earn. While crying far too loud for everyone to notice, she realized how she had contemplated this can ‘never’ happen with her – the news, the incidents friends recalled, the headlines in the newspapers – all of it seemed to be pronouncing another planet’s situation, until that one day.

Precisely this. On one of the evenings while coming back from a party which ended a little late, but not that late to call it ‘really late’, she had to wait tad too long for an Uber. She had friends accompanying her. Yet, a bunch of men stopped their Eeco right in front of the footpath where they were standing, dragged her in, did all the misdeeds and threw her out right around the next turn. This might be another planet’s horror, another girl’s sorry story – hers was a way better luck, she thought. She was wrong, she realized.

And another. There were thousands of companies being set up every day, thousands getting shut. This game of companies was a part of primetime every alternate day – some stepping up their game in hiring fresh employees while other casting off manpower to feed money up the top management’s arse. 10,000 fired by Cisco, 5,000 by Ericsson, 2,500 by Dell – all of this sounded like some shitty melodrama news channels were playing to set the heartbeat of every person employed out there high, but not her. She was doing fine and her boss was too cool to be true. The work life was going strong and there was no effing reason why she should update her resume on the job portals. Only till that day. 

The last feed. She had a feeling she’s carrying money with her. She thought it will be a good idea to take an auto to reach the venue of her interview on time. She gets lucky to have found one just when she thought she should hurry up. She reaches there just five minutes before the time requested when she took her wallet out to pay the driver. To her surprise, she wasn’t carrying any money; how could she forget buying ice creams from Gyaani’s late the yester night and that she had thought she would take out money from the ATM the next day. There was none in sight right now. All the contemplation of the next act had wasted the precious five minutes. Did she have thousands in her account, yes! Did she have any now when she needed it – this cannot be happening with her!

It’s safe to take all the stories of the mishaps with a pinch of salt, just because our arses were saved from the fire – there wasn’t any close in the first place. But, assuming it will never happen with us is what we call a cocksure attitude. We all are living in a world too fragile to be called safe and the fact that we bear the brunt of each of the forces’ wrath, the destiny being our favorite, is a certificate sufficient enough to ring the bells for us. This girl, a lot like her, always thought she deserved better after all, she’d always been a safe player. Safe, says who?

The Birthday Dilemma

I safely landed in my late twenties last Wednesday and I must say the wisdom coming with ageing is nowhere close to what I had imagined it would be when I was far too young to look at this age with awe. This moment, this very second while I breathe and type this out, I have realized how time is tricking me into ageing while my brain is not budging from the status quo. It’s all in the mind, as they say, I realize how people take ages to grow up, while their body timeclock happily ticks away their minutes left to live.

I see people getting overtly crazy by the idea of celebrating the weekends, but I am also amazed thinking how living life by the weekends is leaving them with only four chances to ‘actually live’ every month. The rest of the time, they were just striking days off the calendar doing the stuff they call their routine. This was dark!

Never mind, while I'm still trying to fit in to the world of ‘grownups’ now, there are a few shocking acceptances that I have made, that I never thought I would but never did I know that I would be given options to choose from. Growing up is, indeed, funny and it gets sexier with age!

Aunty: You have got to make friends with this salutation, if you’re like me, a still-young girl in her late twenties. Kids do not know what to call you, because their moms, who you hang out with, are already planning their second. You cannot be the kids’ ‘rakhi sister’ because you just don’t fit in; hence, aunty.

Hola books!: They will be the sanest, safest, most interesting piece of wisdom you will ever come across. Besides, they don’t judge you and, yes, they don’t care.

Learn to earn: For a girl like me who belongs to the digital media space, learning never really stops – the sooner you accept this, the better. You’ll grow stale in the industry if you let your knowledge stay buried in your closet.

Tyaag-balidaan: Sometimes you would stop and wonder if it's really you, but trust me, having reached at this stage and this point in life, I DO think about my parents and spouse before I actively think about myself, be it in any front. I wouldn’t call it tyaag-balidaan per se, but hell yeah, it does feel like it and it silently engulfs your way of thinking in entirety. Now you know why your mom is the way she is.

Kids, yes I want to PLAN: I remember talking with my girlies, while still in my teenage, on how we would be able to put this to our parents that ‘yes we did it, and yay, we have been successful’; it would just get so effing apparent. This concept kind of feels nauseating in early twenties, but I am amazed how things change. While you’re still riding double happily after initial years of marriage, you feel the need of the third. Gradually, you start feeling being a part of this universe, you might just have a darn serious role to play in Darwin’s theory of evolution!

Money is the lube: No love, no trust, no other bullshit can replace the power of this five-letter word. It could actually engulf all merry, madness and magic; yes, money matters.

There’s more to you: Why not keep surprising yourself with things you never knew you could do, talents you never knew you could acquire and skills you never knew you could master – there’s no age barrier to learning, after all.

An open heart: In the era where we live, nobody really cares what others think of his personal life, but trust me, he would silently want to seek support from people around him. Carrying an open heart and increased degree of acceptance would lead to way simpler lives of people around you and, of course, to you commanding great respect for yourself.

Some more ME time: I love the girls who love themselves, who take care of themselves – what they wear, how they look, how they carry themselves, the style, the attitude – the girls who actually give time to themselves. I love this section of the community. They do not know how they become an inspiration for millions, who want to become like them. Some time is all it takes!

Nobody cares: Yes! So, at the end of the day, the only person who needs to be happy, satisfied and content is the person I’m gonna be looking at every day in the mirror! Trust me, rest everyone is totally busy to even think about us. So, I would rather do the things which make me want to embrace myself and love myself a little more.

This concept of birthdays, the time passing and its sudden reminders look all too amusing; you know when the last second passed, but do not know how the last year did. Why not we all might as well be our happiest in these years tiptoeing by us?