Wordside Woman

    I didn’t know if I was his friend or just somebody he talked to over the phone when he did not have anything better to do with his time. Whatever the case might be, I had gotten a good and patient listener to my rantings and whining in him. Most adults will agree to the pricelessness of such an acquisition in life. Also, he never seemed to judge me, mostly on account of the fact that he simply didn’t care. His aloofness was comforting to me for some reason. In his words, he lived in a bubble of his own making through which he did see the world, but chose to observe only what he felt was worth his while. It’s been ten years since that message I sent him on a particularly depressing day, during the first year of my bachelors. Now, years later, I was beginning to read Truman Capote’s novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s when his descriptions jogged my memory, and that day when we met for the first time as acquaintances after spending eight years in the same school as ...

It was my first week in my third college. An institution that welcomed only girls( not that I am complaining) and which for some reason abhorred all types of stripes, checks, polka dots, etc in favour of plain fabrics. I was sitting in my college bus, staring at the empty driver's seat, waiting for the bus to finally move to escape the scorching heat when a bubbly girl with curly hair and spectacles came towards me and asked if I was there in FB. Eager not to come across as a dud, I said "of course I am", somewhat unconvincingly.On reaching home I googled to find out what these two alphabets stood for, and thus, I was introduced to the world of Face Book. I created an account and felt proud of myself and sent friend requests to my schoolmates who still crowded my friend circle. The initiation ceremony would have been incomplete without sending a message to someone. So I chose a friend of mine to be the receiver with the intention of surprising him. I opened the chat box a...

I was in the courtyard at about 12:45 at night over the phone talking with my friend after a particularly   satisfying day, the details of which are irrelevant to what I am going to write about. At that point of time, I was inadvertently making an attempt to identify with an image of a person I was trying to construct for myself, since a lack of routine and productive engagements with people had left me feeling confused about who I was. The conversation veered towards me trying to find out what kind of people I tend to attract for friends and what that says about me. The listener caught the drift of where I was going and promptly stopped me while pointing out the problem with my attempt. The motivations behind why we keep company is often dictated by our immediate needs, circumstances and exigencies, among other things, which mostly have nothing much to do with the person we are. Having said that, the real problem that was pointed out was with the very process of trying to def...