Free People.

Indians like free stuff.  We get a high when we acquire something that we didn’t have to pay for.  If we see the word FREE we get in line – we may not need it, want it, or even know what the fuck it is but if it is free we will take it and add it to our collection of free gizmos, gadgets, thingamabobs and other junk. All of us have little treasure troves of crap that we examine on a yearly basis and 9 out of 10 times hang on to ‘just in case’.

 This basic instinct that lies deep within my people is why I believe the marketing concept of ‘free sampling’ that works efficiently in other countries takes a little longer at home. Millions of years ago when I was in college a maxi-pad company brought us their wonderfully dry, perfumed product. In an effort to get us to switch from our favored brand of heavily padded protection they embarked on a sampling campaign. They wisely set up little distribution stations at the main gates of women’s college campuses so that every student would get her free maxi-pad. The distribution stations were administered by young women who enthusiastically handed out the samples.

 Free sample, free sample. They chirped.

 Within ten minutes they were out of their free samples because unsurprisingly every citizen of the city who happened to be going by – men, women of every age and children had demanded their free sample.  On hearing the word ‘free’ they had materialized like bees to the honey pot.  The Maxi-pad company had to pack up and come back the next day with a lot more free samples. 

 Free samples is why we all love living in America.  And no one loves them more than my husband.  He is a marathon runner and his favorite part of the race is not the end, it is pre-race registration.  The Whities go in register, BUY a few things and leave.  He goes in to the tent empty handed and emerges several hours later with every imaginable free sample.  We have sachets of washing powder we don’t use, vials of Vaseline we don’t need, magazines we don’t read.  Protein in every form – protein bars, protein powders, protein liquids, protein gels, and countless other items that will remain in our care well past their expiry date. The man cannot enter a grocery store without having a full meal. He will ingest anything free including a variety of food items he hates.

 Beyond samples there is other free stuff.  My dad likes the free stuff you get on aircrafts.  He will take the free ear plugs with him because you never know when they’ll come in handy. My mother houses countless eye masks, mini-toiletry bags and mini-toiletries that are being saved ‘for when guests come’. And father-in-law and son-in-law are united in their enthusiastic distaste for American airlines.

The cheap bastards they don’t give you anything, can you believe it? Even Air-India, AIR- INDIA is better than that!

It’s the same with hotel rooms.  The house-keeping staff probably thinks that we do nothing but bathe, shampoo and moisturize all day long.  You see Indians have a really big problem with hotel rooms.  We do not believe in them the way most people do not believe in Santa Claus and so we go out of our way to avoid them by taking holidays in cities where we have a relative or friend who can’t say no. But every now and then we are forced by circumstance to stay in a hotel and in those rare situations we attempt to get our money’s worth by cleaning the place out as many times a day as they will let us.

Our love for all things free extends itself to corporate ‘gifts’.  If you work for a company that gives out free T-shirts with the company logo emblazoned across it your Indian colleague’s entire family is probably draped in them.  We try and get hold of as many as we can and then generously gift them to our near and dear.  You see with corporate gifts the benefit is two-fold.  It’s free and it’s a matter of pride that a loved one works for a company that can afford these extravagances. Any Indian worth his or her salt will own several of these things.

On that note I am off to brew myself a cup of tea that I will then drink out of my free mug courtesy of Citibank’s Sixteenth Annual Latin America Conference March 26-28, 2008.  Cheers!

Snow Angel.

Dear God, please don’t let me die.

These words went through my mind as I nervously examined The Lost Boy – a slope that my skiing instructor Mike was sure I would be able to navigate unharmed.

Let me start from the beginning.  A week ago my husband booked us a skiing vacation in Vail, Colorado, home to the best skiing conditions known to man. Because we were both novices we signed up for a 3 day instruction program. Our instructor Mike was a big man with the long-suffering expression of an experienced teacher.  I felt immediately at ease.

To say I had low expectations of this holiday would have been putting it mildly. I hate the cold and have never displayed an aptitude for athletic activity of any kind. I was on this trip because I am married to a maniacal tri-athlete.  That and the fact that all my life I aspired to be one of those girls who looked good doing out-doorsy stuff.  And so in an ongoing quest to find my inner sports diva I committed to this holiday. 

The first day went swimmingly. I graduated from the ‘bunny slope’ with the rest of the group, I learnt how to get on and off a ski lift without falling on my face, and I even learnt that you never say ‘good luck’ to a fellow skier instead you say ‘happy trails’.  I was delighted with myself and at the end of the day I was busy high five-ing my fellow students – maybe skiing would be my thing!

On Day Two Mike told us that based on our previous days’ performance and gung-ho attitude we would attempt a green slope. A green slope is technically the easiest level, followed by blues and blacks.  I was in a pretty cavalier mood.  I had spent the morning on the practice runs, slopes designed and groomed for beginners to build confidence and learn basic skiing maneuvers.  I had mastered these runs and was feeling like Xenia Onatopp – the sexy villain from the James Bond movie Golden Eye – fearless and in control.

Let’s do this. I heard myself yell, holding one ski pole aloft.

And it was five minutes later that I found myself praying fervently to be delivered, in one piece off of that damn mountain.  The Lost Boy is a misleadingly benign name for a slope that should have been christened What The Fuck. (I later found out why it wasn’t– there already is a black slope named WTF and one named OS as well).  Confronted with The Lost Boy I was feeling less like Xenia Onatopp and more like myself – inadequate and petrified. 

If I were a casual tourist driving past The Lost Boy I would have stopped the car, leapt out and taken a multitude of photos later to be posted on Facebook.  I would have oohed and aahed at the sheer drop, at the miles of snow, at the majestic firs and at the ice-capped Rocky Mountains that surrounded me and intoxicated the air with their sheer grandeur and beauty.  But I was not a casual tourist. I was a brand new skier, as green as the slope she was faced with.  From my vantage point I did not see a photo opportunity; I saw 100 ways to kill myself. 

One by one my group began their descent.  Finally it was just me. The last time I felt fear this intense was when I missed a period (not the grammatical kind) in college. My only consolation was that I had eaten a light lunch because I was pretty damn sure it was going to make an appearance soon. 

Breathe! I heard Mike yell.  I took a tentative breath afraid that any movement on my part, however minimal, would cause me to go flying forward in to the bowels of the mountain never to be heard from again. 

Michael!

I squeaked.

Is there any other route I could take to get down?

Unfortunately – no.

I was infuriated with myself, with Mike, with my husband and with the whole world. Why had I agreed to this? I’m a yoga girl. I like being on a flat, stable surface chanting Om and knowing I will complete the job alive. And now here I was praying to a God I didn’t even really believe in because if there was a God wouldn’t there be an alternative, safer way to get to the bottom of this wretched slope?

Mike was now huffing and puffing up the slope towards me. 

Rad – I think we can do this. But first I need you to stand up.

I am standing up!

OK – just straighten up a little then.

But I couldn’t. Every muscle in my body from my scalp to the soles of my feet had contracted with terror.  It was like my body wanted to get as close to the ground as possible.

OK – OK don’t worry about all that then – let’s just go down one step at a time OK?

OK!!

I started down the slope, inching along as if in a minefield.  Mike cajoling and encouraging me every painful step of the way.  Every time I was forced to take a turn I would gain what I considered an unnecessary amount of speed and in my panic over it I would collapse in the snow, all limbs flailing wildly, my hands clutching at the mountain hoping to grab something that would break my fall, something substantial like a rope ladder perhaps.  On my 5^th or 6^th tumble as Mike gingerly dug me out of the snow I received a large dose of insult to my injuries.  A group of children no older than 4 went gliding past me laughing and chattering amongst themselves.

Don’t worry about them.  Shouted Mike the mind-reader.

I kept thinking if I were Mike I would have given me one great shove down the slope– but that is what separates the likes of him from the likes of me.  I finally made it down relatively unscathed.  The next day, as my husband and several of my class mates were promoted to a Level 4 group, I remained in Mike’s care and on slopes that would hopefully restore my skiing mojo. 

I am happy to say I am back to my yoga mat. Next time we’ll try snow shoeing.

Am I making mountains out of my mole hills?

I am a devoted viewer of Bravo TVs Real Housewives series. It’s a reality show that focuses on the lives and loves of a group of spoilt, rich, self-centered lunatics who SO do not give a shit about what anyone thinks that they go out of their way to be even more themselves. It’s too generous and too much fun to pass up.  Each week as I watch these ladies shop, party and malign each other behind each others’ backs I feel an occasional pang of jealousy.  You see all of them have big boobs and I have a major case of boob envy.

I am a straight woman who is obsessed with breasts.  If there is a boob in the vicinity I will stare at it although I am partial to a D+ cup size. If I am in a conversation with a woman I find myself examining her bosom constantly. It is an awful affliction that I have to live with and the reason I am so fixated with boobage is because I wasn’t raised in a nice flat chested country like Japan or China. I was raised in India where it felt like ALL the women had big, bountiful boobs. 

When my parents bought me my first Barbie doll – ‘Ballerina Barbie’ – I immediately locked myself in the bathroom, ripped her tutu off and subjected her to a mammogram.  I would stare at my boney chest in the mirror and hope that one day I too would have what she had.  Now I know that this may seem like an early age to worry about breasts but I had already spent a lot of my time locked in bathrooms trying on my mother’s bras which is what got me worried about my future in the first place. She wasn’t that well endowed herself. I saw the other mothers marching about showing off their cleavages and I felt bad because as a family we were thoroughly unimpressive. 

I entered my teens and then proceeded in to my late-teens flat as a board.  I went to a boarding school where I shared a dorm with 14 other girls.  With the exception of a few other unfortunates they all had boobs, and bras in to which they would put these boobs each day. Back then we didn’t have trainer bras in India, we didn’t have anything that could help a flat chested girl feel like one of the crowd.  I had to wear  – I hate having to even think about it – a child sized wife beater like the boys.  And to make sure I never lost these valuable items my mother had helpfully embroidered R. VAZ in caps, in red on the right chest area. 

It wasn’t like I was miserable about this all day everyday but now and then something would happen to showcase my inadequacies.  We all wore white shirts for sporting activities and one day as we were playing hockey, and all the girls bouncing about in their bras except for me, it began to rain. It was a full on downpour and in minutes it was like a wet t-shirt contest.  Everyone ran to take cover in the gym.  Where ALL the boys were.  My top was soaked and the R.VAZ was glowing through like a neon sign. I was mortified – now the whole school would know that I did not wear a bra. They had probably guessed this but now it would be confirmed.

I begged with a friend to give me her sweater – she had huge boobs and surely would not mind showing them off.  She looked at me like I was insane.

If I take it off you can see can see everything! My shirt is wet and there are guys in the gym!

What?! Wasn’t the whole point of having boobs for boys to look at? We were 14 years old what else were we going to do with our boobs anyway? I never understood it and I never forgave her.

I still don’t get women who complain about having boobs that are ‘too big’. 

Oh Radhika you are so lucky you can wear anything – you don’t even need a bra.

Or girls who complain about the ‘wrong kind of attention’.

I can’t believe that guy! He was staring at my chest the whole time – I was like excuse me my eyes are up here.

You know what – stop whinging and be grateful.  Be grateful you have boobs and be grateful that someone is staring at them. Eye contact is over rated – trust me.

Who are these two weirdos?

This is a question I have been asking myself ever since I became acquainted with Surya and Bertie Vaz  – my mother and father.  I was about 4 years old when I began to really notice how strange they were and because I was an only child I had to grapple with their weirdness on my own.  I couldn’t very well ask my friends – hey who do you suppose those two weirdos are? No I couldn’t because they would have thought that I was crazy.  And I didn’t want them to think I was crazy because I already knew that they thought I was a freak. That is how you feel if you are an only child growing up in a small town in Northern India.  

I was the only ‘Only’ for miles. All the others had at least one sibling and in some cases one to spare.  Every time I made a new friend I had to answer the age old question.

Do you have a brother or sister?

No. 

Why?

Why indeed? Hadn’t my parents thought about this? Clearly they were aware that this was very, very odd.  But they seemed oblivious to the shame and embarrassment that being a freak was causing me. They had been around, they had seen stuff. My dad was one of 5, obviously he knew first hand it could be done. My mother, herself an only child, must have had to deal with the same awkward line of questioning I was being subjected to. Surely she didn’t do this on purpose. Or did she? Was she just getting back at the next generation for the crimes committed by the generation before? It was a possibility. 

As an Only I felt ganged up on.  My parents out-numbered me. It was two against one; I was a minority in my own home.  They had nothing and no one to distract them from keeping an eye on me.  Living with them was like living with 2 detectives on my back at all times.  I was screwed! Like all my peers I was constantly doing stuff around the house that I wasn’t supposed to be doing. But unlike them I had no one to blame any of my crimes and misdemeanors on.  For example: The case of the wax candle – age 5.5). 

One day as I was idly looking for something to destroy I came upon a wax candle.  After fidgeting with it for a while, and dropping little slivers of wax all over the floor I discovered it was kind of like a colorless crayon so I searched the house for an appropriate canvas.  My parent’s wooden closet doors seemed like the perfect place – dark wood, smooth, glossy and unmarred.  I drew what I thought resembled a pair of cowboy boots, a tree, and several other works of art.  I took hours over it and was pleased with the final effect. 

Later the same day – when I had completely forgotten about all this – my mother found my handiwork.

Radhika.

Yes.

Come here please.

Whenever my mother was polite to me I knew something was wrong.  As I walked in to her room and saw her standing in front of the closet I remembered.

Did you do this?

Why couldn’t these two people have had just one more kid? Just one more, then I could have immediately blamed it on someone else.  I had seen this work for my other playmates. One of them would do something and blame it on a sibling and the parent was so sick and tired of trying to figure out which one to believe that they would just yell at both of them and then let it go.  I was positive she was going to smack me.  

Ahem. Did you do this?

No.

My mother was frighteningly cool.

Really?  I wonder who did.

Because I had the under-developed mind of a child I actually thought that she believed me. Maybe she was actually wondering who did it.  And thinking I was in the clear I decided to draw her attention to a few of the works that I quite frankly thought were ahead of their time.

I wonder what this drawing is.  I pondered aloud as I drew her attention to one of the still lifes.

Ah it’s a pair of cowboy boots.  I declared, thus answering my own question.

See it has a star on the side and spurs – these are the spurs.  Oh and look at this one.

My mother stepped aside so I could proceed with the art lecture, and taking her silence for encouragement I would dig my grave even deeper.

This is a 3-D cube.  See it looks like it’s sticking out because of the 3-D effect.

I was very into 3-D at the time and was dying to tell her exactly how she too could become a 3-D artist, it was a simple little trick but I thought that would be going too far and might let the cat out of the bag.

So you have absolutely no idea who did this?

I was brimming with confidence now.

None!

Go get me some soap and water please.

I couldn’t believe it! She didn’t even ask me to clean it, she just did it herself. I got out of there before she changed her mind and went with the usual ticking off and smacking about that followed my petty indiscretions. 

I could never understand this beautiful woman. Sometimes she looked like she was thinking ‘Somebody please take this pest off my hands’, and sometimes she was a patient, loving, maternal figure.  I like to think she was just trying to even out the odds for me.  She knew that if she had more than one child to look after, it was likely I would have gotten away more often, and so every now and then she let me.  Either that or I grew up with a schizophrenic mother.  I have no idea – like I said I had no one to help me understand it.

Warm blooded Indian.

I hate the cold.  I hate the icy wind.  I hate the late sunrises, and early sunsets.  I hate skiing, ice-skating, and making snow men.  I hate winter.

So it is unfortunate that I live in New York City where we have winter six months of the year.  This is my ninth winter – you would think I would be used to it by now but I’m not.  As the temperatures plunge I think thoughts that I am deeply ashamed of – like when is Global warming going to kick in properly? Or I glare at little children whose parents wheel them about in strollers that appear to be vacuum sealed against the chill.  What do they know about suffering the little shits? Every year my suffering is as intense as the year before and I always think back to my very first winter on the east coast.

It was in the year 2000.  I was a graduate student at Syracuse University.  I had been warned by everyone in India that Syracuse was colder than anything I could dream of.  That it was as cold as a witches tit (my father’s words not mine).  With all of this encouragement I was looking forward to winter the way one looks forward to an anti-rabies shot.

Like all good Indians I managed to find myself more Indians to room with.  Indians like living with Indians. Not because we have anything against other nationalities but because we are like vampires.  We know what our living habits must look like to other people and so we form little nests in which we dwell.  These nests do not stand alone – they are part of a network of nests and each network has a Leader. 

The Leader is the Indian who happens to have been around the longest, and who is consulted by the others on all matters.  Including a matter that one must never take advice from an Indian on: The matter of what winter clothing to purchase, and where to purchase it from.  It is a case of the blind leading the blind. To be fair it’s not the Leader’s fault.  He or she is operating on the assumption that we wish to stay as warm as possible and that we want to do this by spending as little money as possible.  And – let’s be honest – we Indians have no sense of cold weather fashion.

‘It’s not bad weather, it’s bad clothing.’

My Leader said to me, quoting verbatim the Leader before him.  He influenced me to think of winter clothing as merely functional.  Color, cut and fabric were minor details to be ignored completely.  Fashion would let in the cold.  To avoid instant death by hypothermia I should buy a coat a few sizes large and then wear layers of cardigans under it.  I would also need a pair of gloves, a hat and boots. Once again style was not important, being wind proof and water proof was. To acquire all of this at a fair price he directed me to the Mecca for every middle-class Indian – Burlington Coat Factory. I was assured that this store sold whatever I needed at the best possible prices AND that they carried all the brand names – a little out of date of course but you can’t have everything.  

I obtained a hideous, shapeless, beige (goes with everything) skiing jacket.  My hat, gloves and muffler were gleaned from an assortment of discount bins that I found littered about the store.  Like my skiing jacket all these items were noticeably unattractive.  I had also been instructed to buy a set of thermal underwear but I couldn’t bring myself to do this.  I considered long underwear to be unsexy.  It did not occur to me that for anyone to consider me in my underwear (long or otherwise) they would have to first get past the unsightly outer wear I had collected on my shopping spree.

Then winter came.  In October.  I awoke to my first snowfall. I covered every square inch of my body and nervously tip-toed out in to the cold.   I enjoyed the sight of snow and the crunch it made under my new boots.  It wasn’t too bad really. I sent e-mails extolling its beauty to my family and friends back home.  The next day was the same, and the next, and the next.  It would not stop snowing.  It snowed right on until I graduated in May. By the time winter was done I had an acute vitamin D deficiency and was mildly depressed.  All of my Indian warmth and goodwill had been frozen solid.  I knew then what I know now – that I am not a ‘winter person’.

A few years ago I upgraded the skiing jacket and this year I broke down and bought the long-underwear.  When is winter going to end?

A lesson in International Relations from my time in Iraq.

In 1979, my dad – a pilot with the Indian Air Force – was posted to a helicopter base in Iraq. He was to spend the next two years there as a flight instructor training pilots in the Iraqi Air Force. I was barely 6 and it was the very first time I had been to a foreign country.  I liked Iraq a lot mainly because the only schooling available was Arabic medium so yours truly did not attend school during our time there. As if things couldn’t get any more exciting for a 6 year old the war between Iraq and Iran broke out about a year in to our stay.  The Ayatollah was in power in Iran and he had gotten under Saddam’s skin. Now they were going to duke it out and thanks to them all the Indian families were evacuated to Baghdad.

Being a city girl I quite liked Baghdad.  We were housed in a big block of flats and our balcony afforded me an unfettered view of the house next door.  It belonged to an Iraqi family and they had a long walled passageway that lead from the road to the house but it didn’t have a roof and I could see all the passageway activities. I took special interest in them because they had two children, a boy and a girl, who I estimated to be about my size and so I figured we would have plenty in common.  I was particularly drawn to the girl.  Unlike me she went to school, had a uniform and school bag, and along with her other female classmates had to tie a scarf over her head.  I didn’t realize this was a religious requirement – I thought it was cosmetic and I liked it a lot. 

I appropriated one of my mother’s duppata* and after wrapping myself in it I went off to play with her. She spoke no English, I spoke no Arabic but we managed to make ourselves understood.  She taught me a few Arabic words – like counting form one to ten.  And she also taught me a phrase that I used to impress her school friends with.

Saddam Hussein Zain. Khomeini Musain.

(Saddam Hussein is great, Khomeini – not so great.)

She and her brother had been taught this in school and they had to chant it every day while walking to and from school with their other classmates.  Quite often if I had managed to wake up early enough I would wrap my-self in my  duppata and rush off to chant with them. 

Saddam Hussein Zain. Khomeini Musain. Saddam Hussein Zain. Khomeini Musain. Saddam Hussein Zain. Khomeini Musain.

I had to tear myself away at the main street because that was as far as I was allowed to go.  This chant helped me bond with her family as well.  They must have been delighted to see my fanatical appreciation for their great leader and I would bask in the glow of their approval.

No problem, no problem.

They assured my mother when she apologized on some evenings when I may have over-stayed my welcome.

But life wasn’t all a bed of roses. On occasion we would fight.  Maybe one of us inadvertently dissed the other.  Or maybe she hung on to my beloved Ballerina Barbie for longer than the amount of time I had decided was permissible.  On those days she would keep to the street directly in front of her home and I would keep to the street directly in front of our building.  We were 15 feet apart at the most but we refused to acknowledge each other. I would watch her out of the corner of my eye as she enjoyed a game of hop-scotch, clearly not missing me one bit and it would make me mad.  I considered starting a round of fisticuffs but I knew my mother would kill me.  And I mean kill as in murder. In general my mother was a fairly gentle woman, but she had had enough of breaking-up fights I had started. But if I couldn’t push her, pull her hair, or smack her how in the world was I to get her attention.

And then it hit me. I had a brilliant idea.  I turned to her and yelled:

Saddam Hussein Mooooooosain. Khomeini ZAIN.

She stopped what she was doing and spun around to face me.  The gravity of what I had said began to sink in along with the realization that she could definitely give me a much harder ass-kicking that I could possibly give her.  I turned on my cowardly little heel and with Ballerina Barbie clutched tightly to my bosom I fled for my life. I didn’t look back until I had cleared the 20 foot sprint to the foyer of our building. When I turned around she had not only not followed me but she had gone right back to the hop-scotch game I had previously interrupted. I was infuriated.

Saddam Hussein Mooooooosain. Khomeini ZAIN.

I screeched.  No response.

Saddam Hussein Mooooooosain. Khomeini ZAIN.

I trilled. Still no response from her although now I had managed to attract the attention of all the Iraqi adults in the vicinity.  Feeling very foolish and very angry I stomped off upstairs where I kept vigilance on her and her family from our balcony for the rest of the evening. 

The next day I awoke.  It was almost time for her to leave for school; I grabbed my dupatta and rushed downstairs.  It was only when I saw her standing there waiting for her friends that I remembered my idiotic behavior from the previous day. I froze in my tracks as she turned to me – and then she just smiled. We marched to the end of the street joyfully singing Saddam Hussein’s praises. 

At the end of the day little girls don’t give a crap about who’s Zain and who’s Musain – they just want to play.

*Dupatta – A long scarf Indian women wear across their shoulders.

Mind the Gap.

I love the Gap. The Gap is for women who have not completely given up, yet are fully aware that they will never try as hard as they used to. It is a place where someone who is lazy and has little care for individual style can find good basics. A store where the jeans are named ‘curvy’. The Gap is my home.

But on some days I think I can be better than the Gap, on some days I think I can be more than the Gap. And at times like that I forget my station in life and wander in to the Abercrombie and Fitch store on Fifth Ave.

This isn’t even store – it’s an underage night-club. There are half-naked children parading about, supposedly in charge of the place and the music is so loud I can’t hear my brain shouting out to me, warning me “This is a store for thin teenagers, jelly bum – get out now!”, I can’t hear a thing because the half-naked children are kind and friendly and smile at me a lot. They make me forget who I am.

Who I am, is a middle aged woman with hips that are just broad enough to be unfashionable. I am as old as the mothers of some of the customers. I creep around trying not to attract notice when suddenly a half-naked sales girl jumps out at me. In my panic I pretend to look for something for my ‘niece’. I do not have a niece. I am an only child. But I am ashamed because I am being sucked in by the sexiness of a place that is just too hip for me.

The store is shrouded in darkness; I can barely see the clothes. I pick up a pair of ultra low rise, ultra skinny fit, ultra WHITE jeans. The music pulsates through my body. I can see myself smoothly slide in and out of these white jeans.

This self that I see isn’t exactly me – it’s a new and dramatically improved version of me. It’s a me with a long, blond pony tail casually pulled back, loose tendrils flying in front of my face as I dash about athletically playing volley ball and foot-ball and other strenuous sports. My new self is 5 feet and 10 inches tall and she is built like a brick shit house. I see my beautiful new self prancing around a night club, my jeans clinging to me sexily.

I make it to the changing room and as I undress I come face to face with the real me. The old me. The me with cellulite lumps on either thigh. These lumps are in the habit of expanding, contracting or changing location entirely depending on how life is going. Today they are positioned precisely where it is necessary for me to jump up and down in order for my hips to simply clear the waist band. After that I have to do some serious tugging and pulling along with a yoga squat to zip up.

But Katy Perry yells ‘I kissed a girl and I liked it’ so loudly that it blots out this truth. I try on one size after another, and it must be the fault of my granny panties that nothing fits. I try another pair, and another and – ah success at last. If I suck in my stomach, my ass, and my thighs and if I stand side-ways on the very tips of my toes I actually look quite nice. So I collect my new clothes and stalk off to the cashier – another child with abs of steel – I fling my American Express card at him, he swipes it. I grab my shopping bag and swish out of the store and on to the side-walk to light and reality. I know that tomorrow I will be back to return the jeans.

And then I will go back to the Gap.

Victoria Beckham and I have something in common.

Bunions.  I learnt this from Chelsea Lately (the best late night comedy show) and ever since I have had new respect for Posh Spice. Because unlike me even with the bunions she wears high heels, and no one knows what that feels like unless they have a bunion of their own to tend to.

I really love high-heels.  When I put a pair of high heels on it’s like putting on a push-up bra.  Everything about me looks better.  I look taller, thinner, and prettier, my cheek bones are more pronounced and the bags under my eyes look like they may be disappearing.  High heels are so magical they make my bloody hair look better.

So it is very distressing to me that actually wearing them is such a physically debilitating venture.  I spend half my time hopping from one foot to another and the other half standing around bare feet.  And when I walk in high heels I know for a fact that I look like I have a stick wedged high up my back side.  The only time I can safely wear the damn things is if I know I will be sitting down all night and then half the fun is gone anyway.

It’s all the fault of my bunions that I now consider a major disability. Not being able to stand extreme pain is getting in the way of sexiness.  Having to deal with attributes I can blame on nothing but genetic mutation (I would have preferred my father’s legs and my mother’s skin tone) is one thing, but not being able to use all the props available to me – that is too much to bear.

I can’t wear high heels. My life is only half a life.

I’m a girl. Make a fuss over me.

This past week a friend proposed to his lady love.  He proposed in Central Park with a ring and a poem that he wrote himself.  After she said yes he took her back to his place where he busted out the champagne and cup-cakes (from Magnolia Bakery because she loved those).  Instead of being happy for them I was green with envy.  I have been married five years, I have no romantic interest at all in this friend of mine and I will go on record here to say I like his fiancé – BUT I was jealous.  I was jealous because I was forced to recollect how I was proposed to. 

My husband and I already lived together at the time and happened to be in the middle of a major fight.  We had spent two days ignoring each other – a pretty considerable feat given the size of our living quarters.  On the third day of the stand-off he suggested to me (in his usual condescending tone that always makes it sound like I am the crazy one) that we should perhaps talk about what the problem was.  We could not do this at home because we had a close friend of his staying with us and so he suggested we leave the apartment.  We live by Battery Park (good view of Lady Liberty) and so that is where we went to settle the score.  Better to create a scene in front of complete strangers than in front of people you know.

‘What seems to be the problem?’

‘What seems to be the problem is you are a condescending prick and I am sick of it.’

‘Listen Radhika, this type of abuse is not helpful.’

‘Well it’s helpful to me.’

‘Calm down.’

There are few words in the English language that get a bigger reaction out of me than ‘calm down’, ‘chill out’ and ‘relax’.

 ‘You calm down, you shit head! – And by the way the next time one of your stupid friends has a question about when it is that we plan to get married,  make sure they direct that to you because I am sick of telling them that I am living with a man who has no interest in marrying me.’

Long pause.  

‘Well – that was something I had been thinking about. But I didn’t know exactly how to bring it up.’

I could not believe it was happening. I was being proposed to by someone who had no idea how to and so now it was up to me to drag a proposal out of him.  I felt like a tug-boat bringing the cruise ship in to the Hudson. 

‘Are you asking me to marry you?’

‘Yes.’

Being the desperate, needy female that I am I said ‘Yes please’ and then called all my parents, his parents and my girl-friends before he could change his mind.  This was my proposal. No ring, no poem, no champagne and no bloody cup-cakes.

Can you imagine? I had to show up at work the next day – in a New York advertising agency that was full to the brim with girls whose boy-friends had really put in the work to become fiancés – with this!

In the retelling of the tale I had no choice but to embellish it with elements of romance that I imagined would make an appearance at the most average of proposals.  Plus, being a girl who always looked for a silver lining when it came to the dark clouds of my relationship, I thought that at the very least it was unique.  Until Seal proposed to Heidi Klum in a motherfucking igloo. 

Women like having a story. We want our girl-friends to think that you really thought about marrying us. That you obsessed about it, that all your friends were part of helping you plan, that for once you stopped trying to be cool and instead finally turned in to a pussy with a ring, a poem and cup-cakes (sorry Sanju!). 

If you want us to love you forever then make the proposal special or your wife will write a blog about it.

Good luck Sanju and Monika. I love you guys – it’s just my husband I’m fighting with.

Marriage:Compromise or resignation?

In the last two months I have attended three weddings.  I love weddings they bring out the depravity in us.  I think it has to do with the holier-than-thou air of the ceremony.  The purity of true love being blessed by a Rabbi, Pundit, or Priest that makes abusing alcohol and/or hooking up with the grooms horny pals from high school seem more like a part of the proceedings and less like a crime that you might normally hide from your uptight girl friends. 

Outside of illegal drug use and surreptitious sexual liaisons I also derive great enjoyment from wedding conversations.  These revolve around three main areas of interest: (1) Illegal drug use and surreptitious sexual liaisons, (2) how the bride and groom met and honestly what do we think their chances are, and when we finally run out of gossip and theories (3) what the secret to a successful, long-term relationship is. Numbers two and three are areas where married people have something to offer and we take full advantage of it. Especially three. We have plenty of advice on how to keep a relationship going (sometimes against all odds) and the point that gets the most mileage is ‘compromise’. 

Having been married 5 years I have discovered there is no such thing.  Marriage is not a negotiation, it’s a turf-war where one or the other party must resign themselves to their fate.  If you are looking at a relationship for longevity then look for signs of resignation.

If your man-friend sits there holding his head in both hands while you rant, rave and drill on about his mother, his friends, his clothes, his face, his hair, his ex-girlfriends, and anyone he ever spoke to and he doesn’t rise up and smack you – that is resignation.  If you can nag, nag, nag at him for crap he stepped in ages ago and if he just sits there barely breathing, wishing he were somewhere else, doing something more fun – like getting a blow job – like in the old days when you thought he was soooo cute, but instead he just stays put without talking back, without moving a muscle, mainly because he knows any movement or sound will kill any chance of him getting lucky in the near future – that is resignation. 

When you have loaded enough guilt on to your loved one that he sits there ignoring your high-pitched whinging while envisioning a future with a quieter, nicer person but does not have the physical strength to go anywhere and he knows that you are going nowhere in a hurry either.  That is resignation. 

Compromise would be if you gave him a blow job after you made your point.