When pants hang low, pull

What do you do when you see a guy with his trousers hitched so low on his non-existent hips, that one tug would have them on the floor? You tug. That's what you do. Or you do what I did. Tug mentally, smile impishly. And find the trousers on the floor. :)

Last weekend found me with two friends walking down this scenic beach-front road in Mumbai. One just-turned-20 guy was at a corner shop buying what guys buy from corner shops normally. And his pants were riding low, way low on his skinny body. Low enough to display a thick line of muddy blue underwear on brown skin. Yes, that low.

Low enough to make me want to pull it down just so I could tell him,

" There. Mission accomplished." 

 And while I looked at him straight in the face and contemplated the mental tug, the pants slid off his hips. Slid. Right. Off. His. Hips.

The boy caught them mid-slide, almost near his knees and looked accusingly at me. I was a safe 50 yards away from him. My friend and I were laughing quite unabashedly at him and he then had the good sense to look sheepish.

We continued walking, not letting the laughter break our stride, but I couldn't resist a 'pallat moment'. I looked back, and his pants were again riding dangerously low.

Sigh. This generation I tell you!!!

Finding my fit.

One chapter closes in my life. Another starts in a few days. I take over the residual wide-eyed excitement I brought to my first chapter with me.

But I also take renewed hope. Hope that this time, I will fit. Although deep in my heart, I know I am not the fitting types. I never fit in through my college years, or through school. I did not fit in in my completely firang department in University. Not because I was an Indian, but at that time, because I chose to not fit in.

Maybe I need to stop trying to fit? Create my space and be comfortable in that? Hmm.

Space. It's a weird concept. Space was my personal bubble when I was in the US. Here, in India, it is invaded constantly. The woman who uses my thigh as a support to get up in the train, the man who places a fist on my shoulder to push me ahead in the bus, the colleague who peers over my shoulder to look into my monitor, to get a glimpse of whoever I am shooting an email off to.

Space. It exists where it shouldn't too. The one-time best friend who I don't hug anymore. The awkwardness in reaching out and grasping the hand of someone who has been making me feel much more comfortable in the last few days. The weirdness of not being able to sleep off mid-conversation anymore. The by-chanceness of missing out on different timezones.

What's a fit between all these? When I make my exotic dinner-for-one? Or when I bite into my mother's shoulder, over her giggles and protests? Yes. These are my fits.

Vicious

Her laptop pings in the background while she furiously types away at a word doc. She looks up, a bit disoriented at the ping, identifies the source as a new mail in gmail, and ignores it.

He doesnt deserve my time.  He does not deserve my patience, or my worry.

She goes back to her word doc. Clicks and clacks at the keyboard for a while and then grunts in disappointment. She is distracted. Her words dont come back to her, that fine silvery line of thought in her head has faded to the white blankness of nothing. The shimmer of words, pulsing with meaning, erased from their emboss on the white.

She sighs, and moves the mouse over to her inbox, angry with herself for having no discipline. Of course the email is from him. She does not need to check to know that. But it's not meant for her. It's meant for another, come to her because she was subscribed in the list.

More words, more charm, more sentences that clearly say I'm available now, do you want to hook up? Or maybe that's just her imagination. What it really says is, I'm available now, let's talk. Get to know each other.

The later was more scary than the former. Though the former gave her chills too. She had always seen that charm directed only to her, meant only for her. Just her's. No sharing.

She compose a new email, copied his message to her in the body and in the subject wrote three simple words, I hate you and then clicks on the send button.

 She understand the heights of viciousness she has reached today. But she also understands that there are levels higher up when she gets no response to her email.

He has moved on, she, on the other hand, hasn't.