Wannabe.

Famous. Not on page 3. Followed. Not copied. Loved. Not taken for granted. Important. Not fake. Heard. Not for the sake of it. Kissed. Not distracted. Happy. Just like that. Respected. Not feared. ‘Liked’. Not clicked. Free. Not judged. Remembered. Not saved. Lost. Not found. Furious. Not stupid. Silly. Not dumb. Patted. Not Pitied. Envied. Not ignored. Hurt. Not forgotten. The one. Not the other one. Held. Not owned. Pampered. Not possessed. Bad. Not hated. Good. Not easy. Asked. Not assumed. Noticed. Not scanned. Funny. Not foolish. Thought of. Not regretted. Alive. Not the usual. Special. Not another word. Understood. Not defined. The answer. Not an option. Sure. Not stubborn. Wrong. Not questioned. Right. Not confused. This. Not that. There. Not here. Me. Not she. Read. Not between the lines

Scrap!

A silent whisper,

I continue to be.

A shadow missed,

on the deserted street.

A speck of dust,

that nobody sees.

In ancient trunks,

and cobwebbed locks.

I lie inside,

a forgotten sigh.

Through dirty nights,

and foreseen dawns.

Im nothing new,

but a shade of grey.

Warm and calm,

I’ll always be.

A secret I am

I continue to be.

My funny bone.

I’m not the funny types. I’m not the one who can hold a straight face, crack a joke and have the whole room rolling on the floor laughing. That’s just not me. But yeah, I can laugh at your jokes. Each and every one of them. If your joke’s not funny, you still have no reason to worry. I’ll find them funny.

Probably, when God gave the funny ones a funny bone; he kept one last piece aside. One that had a problem. And to make sure it goes to the right person, he first tried it on himself. To his surprise, he noticed that, he just couldn’t crack a good joke anymore. People stopped looking up and going, “God, are you always this funny?” And instead, they went, “Hey you, up there! That was a bad one.”

However he noticed that often, very often, he looked down and cracked up at the silliest things man would do. Like when he planned his future or he worried about his past or cried over a lost opportunity. God would burst into the loudest, funniest, squeakiest laugh ever. Tears rolled down his cheeks, his stomach ached and he gasped for breath.

This went on for a while; until one day God decided that it’s time he parted with the funny bone and passed it on to somebody more deserving. Sitting on his mammoth throne, he looked around. And! He spotted me!

There she is!

I was in the car with a friend, having a very very heated argument. My friend, in his defense, addressed me in the loudest tone ever. “But Saritha!” And turned around, to find my eyes crinkle, nose cringe and lips widen. I burst into the most hysterical laugh ever. And that was just the beginning.

Honestly, the funny bone’s been quite a boon to me. And to some of my friends too. Today, I manage to laugh at almost everything around me. Nothing seems to be too serious or too boring. God’s been good to me. God ought to make more such mistakes. Give everybody a funny bone like mine.

Then there won’t be grumpy bosses anymore. They’ll be too funny, for you to notice their grumpiness. All that once made you sulk, will now make you laugh. Short deadlines will make the client look funny. That wannabe colleague, who stole your idea and got a raise, will look pathetically funny. That college sweetheart, who dumped you for Miss Fresh Face, will give you cramps in your tummy, as you laugh hard pointing your finger at him. The auto driver’s expression, when he charges extra, will look insanely funny. You’ll laugh at the weighing machine, you’ll laugh at those dark circles, and you’ll laugh every Monday morning. The “out of order” board on the lift will look funny and your boss’s mail, that says “not working”, will look funnier. When your bike stops half way, for the hundredth time in the past two months, you’ll kick it hard and then laugh at yourself.

You’ll realize that there’s so much to laugh at, than to cry for. There’s so much to brush aside than crib over. And then one day, God, from his mammoth throne, will look down with pride, and smile, as you laugh at your own mistakes.

Cool?

It’s so cool no? What’s so cool? Whatever. Everything. We live in a cool world. Yeah. And we do cool stuff. Aha! We find this cool and that cool. Cool is so the in thing. Cool is so hot! One fine day, you wake up to find out that everything, that was once hardly even noticed, has now become cool. So many cool things around us. So many cool people around us. Wearing bathroom slippers to office is cool! He who uses the “F” word in place of every second word is oh so cool! And she who uses the “F” word is oh so cooler! Fighting with the auto waala and winning is aah cool! The reply to a “I’m sick today” SMS is “cool! Ugh! What’s so cool about using cool? There ought to be a cooler word than cool? But look around and you’ll see how cool, cool is. Falling in love with a man twenty years older to you is cool. A woman conceiving a kid in her seventies is cool. A kid who calls her mother by her name is cool. How uncool! A forty year old man with salt and pepper hair is cool. Oh yeah! ;) Knowing that it’s “my” life at 18 is cool. Doing my own thing at 20 is cool. Ignoring questions is cool. Cool comebacks are cool! Doing what the world doesn’t do is cool. Doing what’s not so cool, is cool! “Ok” is so out “cool” is so in. I’ll be late. Cool. So let’s do that. Cool. Get lost, you! Cool. If the question’s cool. The answer’s cool.

Maybe cool should become a religion. So everyone who belongs to cool, will be cool. A cool guy can get married to a cool girl. There’ll be cool temples or cool churches. Cool festivals. Cool rituals. Everything about cool will be cool. Cool Gods. Cool prayers. Oh wow! Now that’ll be soo cool! I’ll convert to cool-ism! And make my kids cool. I’ll be a cool mom! They’ll go to cool institutions. And learn cool stuff! Cool will be the coolest thing!

So here’s to a cool world. A world full of cool people! ;)

Lazy we!

The world’s filled with lazy people. Including me. Blame it on technology, and the stuff it brings along. I mean, how else do you explain the LOLs and the Hmmms and the WTFs?

Take a normal chat conversation, for instance.

Reena: And then I said this..and then he wus like whoa..oh god it was so funn! you shud have been there and damn I don’t believe it happened.

Me: LOL.

(Hand on chin, droopy eyes, breathing through my mouth.)

Now that’s definitely not how I LOL. I’m just too lazy to even laugh and too lazy to even type out anything more that I feel, about my friend’s funny experience. So I LOL. How convenient.

Here’s another one.

Tina: So babe, you know what I mean right? It’s like serious. You know I’d say it coz there’s a reason. Right?

Me: Hmmmm.

(Minimising windows, replying to Mary who just popped up from another window and trying hard to get some Maggie twisted on to a fork.)

“Hmm” just means, go on, whatever!

Hey now don’t give me that look. It’s not just me, right? It’s what you, Reena, Tina and Mary would do too! We’re lazy. Let’s just face the truth. Too lazy to even express. Forget the online conversations. When was the last time you told somebody how much you love them? Or even worse, when was the last time you actually LOL?

While on one hand, we spend half our time romancing with technology and expressing half heartedly with fake emotions, we’ve forgotten how a warm bear “hug” feels or what the joy of receiving a tight, passionate “mmuah” is! ;) Lucky are those, who haven’t.

Like now, as I type this, I’ve keyed in a lot of “hmms” and “lols” and “ohhs” and “hehehes” across various chat windows. Sorry you, on the other side, you still have all my attention. Swear to God. And I promise, that when I LOL to your last ping, mom walked in to my room and went “What the hell was that?” See? I did laugh out loud!

So I hereby make an oath. That no matter how stuck to my chair my ass is, I shall express more. I may not “roll on the floor laughing my ass out”, but I will, for sure, smile when I click on a smiley, listen carefully and ponder when I “hmmm”, and will not stop at a “hehehe.”

;) (I just winked, really.)