Surely there’s an expiry date on feeling like a loser

Lessons from a day at the mall
(although the real post only starts once you scroll further down)

Posing headless for the blog

Ice Lounge, at Select City Walk, Saket, is a waste of money. The food is extreme – overcooked or undercooked. The music is monotonous. This is the beat: thump, thump, thump. They play channel V on mute the whole day, so all you’re seeing is that idiot VJ Yudi – he who never goes by his full name, Yudhishter -- talking to dunderheads on the show TRUTH LOVE CASH. The contestants wrestle in a pit of grated carrot -- or at least that;s what the orange muck looked like. Girls take on girls, get enraged and yank each other’s boobs.

We’re watching this for entertainment. It’s a new low when reality TV contestants in carrot pits have a better time than you. Blame it all on ice lounge. They don’t even have a loo. As for the ice-bar, the minus five degrees place: there’s nothing to do once your nose turns red and you’ve downed your chilled cranberry drink with seeds in a melting ice glass. Also, if you’re really smart you won’t wear mitts, so when you come back out in the sun, you see purple spots because of the quick change from -5 to + 40 degrees C. But all this can be avoided by never going to ice lounge, ever.

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Next stop: Zara. I didn’t want to spend three grand on every lovely piece of clothing I thought I’d look fabulous in, so alongside feeling sorry for myself, I took out my camera, watched people, zoomed into the queue at the trial room, at the pay-counter, at general asses, and felt pleased with a. my camera setting -- three in a row, see below, and b. the macro voyeur in me.




I told my accompanying friend and colleague (whose shadow I am and whose mug you can also not see in the ice pic on top) that I want to hurry up and get married hopefully to a by then filthy rich boyfriend so I can buy stuff on a credit card and shove my Louis Vuittons in people's faces and go to lunch with my hair blow dried. She rolled her eyes at me, this vicious shadower. I think this is what happens if you hang with people older than you the whole time -- they have this sneaky way of influencing you.

Anyway, so Eyes Roller told me to shut it because if that happens she won't hang with me anymore. Small price to pay, Imagine the fodder for a blog if I became Samantha of Sex and the City! Or well, even if I just remained me but started rolling my rs and putting on an accent when I tell my driver to bring the car up front.

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Much later at night though, post the mall crawl, post the fantasising about being a bimbo in my future married life, post pan flavoured kulfi, post the 2 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, I think I just needed to talk to my best friend, clear the air about our holiday plans.

Yes, that – our holiday plans.

Recently, she, Bombay BFF, was most hurt that I had all the time in the world to blog about Princess Diana, but hadn’t gotten around to writing about anything as grand as a our 3-weeks Europe holiday.

Yesterday, I just realised I wasn’t up to it. I can’t go. I don’t want to go. I called her up expecting to be yelled at. I gave her my reasons. And without intending to, I cried a little. I never cry to her. She’s my best, most open-hearted, close to goodness soul, but I don’t do the ring up for the sole purpose of sobbing. BFF got worried and gave me a long perspective cum pep talk. Essentially: Chill babe. Never mind the holiday. Sort your life. Maybe, come to Bombay. We’ll vegetate here; walk by the sea and drink beer.

I felt better. That seemed so much more do-able than standing in line for visas and rushing through Spain and the south of France and making bizarre itineraries with our friend M, who was supposed to come to Barcelona with weed and boys and a will to party.

None of that will happen just now because I’m a stressed loser with lots of grey hair and no motivation to get off my ass and do something. It wasn’t even about the holiday. To everyone who I had already said, Ta Ta, suckers, see you in July, I’m off to Spain, I’ll have to feel like a heel and admit that my passport expired – it’s true, it did, but I know and she knows that was a technical snag that could’ve been fixed.

It’s a terrible, sinking to KNOW what my problem is and still feel a lingering, all pervasive, sensory atrophy. I’m distracted, supercilious and condescending. In 3 months, I’m going to be 26 – and I realise to everyone whose older, that is a repugnant statement – but it’s just an obnoxious feeling to be convinced of the pettiness of your own life at such a young age and yet feel so old. Hanging at malls isn't helping. I will shoot anyone who breathes a word about a quarter life crisis. And I haven’t even gotten to the nauseousness that comes with feeling like an underachiever. I’m only going to be 26. Why then does it feel, to quote Chief Vitalstatistix, like the sky is going to fall on my head.