Spongy people and such like.....

So I read this article in O magazine , it dealt with the concept of ‘Sponge People’

Here’s the introduction ?!!

You’re talking to someone and suddenly feel tense , angry sad. Why is that ? You wonder. You’re spongy.
– Martha Beck

The article basically deals with “contagious psychological phenomena”, another indicator of how people who give out bad vibes ( and not necessarily by action, this article says by thought even !!) can negatively affect you , and vice versa how encouraging thoughts help you perform better .

All this information just added more dimension to what I already know of as ‘Toxic Relationships’( check out the link if you want to reacquaint yourself with the term), ideally I wouldn’t get into one, but if I did; as soon as I realize that maintaining the relationship was far more trouble than the relationship was worth I would probably end it ( does this sound selfish ? Maybe the sentence comes off sounding like that but this is what most experts suggest we ought to do) .

What really gets to me about the above mentioned relationships is that apart from the obvious emotional, spiritual and mental toll, I’ve noticed that when I interact with people who test my patience , I take sadistic pleasure in trying as much as possible ( given my nature) to get back at them, you know being obnoxious or doing things I would not do to anyone else; but just because of the way the person was behaving that was so totally asking for it , I some times have to stoop to their level , I know that by doing so I only bring myself down, and become a lesser person ,so that’s why I don’t like the effect such people have on me , basically got sponged into doing so!!!

Conversely when I meet people who are genuinely nice , or cheery or plain genuine!!! I probably would be on my best behavior and reciprocate their niceness ,or you know even if lacking any positive qualities they don’t posses negative ones I’ll still be rather civil,
I just wish there was a way I could be civil with all those negative people, whom I now realize I probably have to encounter at every stage of life!!! I swear sometimes they just drive me up the wall!!!!

Does this entry seem personal?? It isn’t!!! It’s just about a phenomenon I know truly exists!!!!!

Wanted...

Avid listener …
Has to listen to a boring, long winded story (it’s so long it’s an epic probably consisting of three to four separate books!!!)….
Has to provide direction….
Has to empathise and totally understand what advertiser is talking about
Based on long ,boring story has to confirm with advertiser that she is absolutely right …
Needs to indulge in catty conversations with placer of ad… advertiser misses being a B!T$H…

Promises not to leak out placer of ad’s skeletons in the closet ….
Needs to dispense sensible advice ….
Should not have any problems of their own, so that they can worry totally about my “problems”…

Just sending my ad out to the Universe … yeah I know… I know ..I’m not lacking for friends … but for the last few weeks I've just been bursting with things to say…. Soul mate/ kindred spirit … Where are you ..when I need you ??!!! ???

Drifter..

I don’t know..... I guess that to succeed in life you need some drive; a dose of killer instinct, at least give a fig about what people think about you and at least make an effort to keep up with the Joneses ….“unfortunately” I’m past all that …I think I’ve been like that for a long time, I would go as far as to say that I’ve been born like that!!!


I don’t know if I’m a drifter , but I know when I don’t like the particular place in life I’m in…. past experience shows that I usually catch the next bus out… maybe I was passionate about a few things in my life. I’ve however moved on to a stage where right now , at this present moment …I don’t really know what drives me to keep going… it’s a bit sad really ….

Maybe getting a degree or finding a job should be my passion right now , I have a vague idea about what job I’d like to be doing in the future, but in the meanwhile I wouldn’t mind washing dishes or flipping burgers, okay maybe I would mind..(Only because I’d get bored with it soon enough)…. Believe it or not all that has happened in my life so far has been pretty much luck, go with your gut kind of stuff….. I have a lot of faith in my gut instinct!!! Right now my intuition isn’t telling me much … I wish it would. I need some direction right about now, but when what you want from life is different from most people you know, sometimes you end up getting confused …

I don’t value material possessions much , yeah I like shopping ,it serves as therapy for me , I usually buy stuff I like ,if it’s good I don’t mind paying extra for it , I like the independence and freedom money would give to satisfy my immediate desires i.e. food, clothing, shelter, books and music( not in that order). But I don’t need a swanky car or a swanky home ….those are things I don’t aspire for…That’s one thing I know for sure … I really don’t get along well with people who place a premium on material possessions , maybe because I’m such a hermit myself …. So that’s one thing I know I don’t want …

… Power doesn’t excite me at all … what’s with power!! I don’t want to assume responsibility for or over other people, I have a hard time looking after myself as it is!!!

… May be knowledge , yes that’s a good driving force , but honestly I don’t harbor Nobel prize intelligence or aspirations….


… people … well when it comes down to it , I really consider everyone my equal , irrespective of age , religion, color, caste ,class , nationality, date of birth, region of India , America, China or Germany they hail from,sexual orientation, dietary preference,..( what other ways of classifying people do we have??).. How do I know this??.. well one thing that has been right with my life has been the opportunity to really interact with people from different walks of life… and what I’ve learnt from that is people are really all the same.. and not to look up to; or look down on anyone … the folks who get their hands dirty so that you don’t have to, folks you meet when you travel by bus … KSRTC in India , greyhound in America , my Hindi movie star “uncle” if you ask I’ll tell you who it is ( no I haven’t met him or spoken to him , but my mom and aunt talk to his elder sister ..She’s how I’m related to him) and I’ll give you a hint his surname is Khan and he recently had a hit movie!! (I know I’ve always been a bit of a showoff this way!!!! gottto stop!!!)) ,Teachers, the Hindus, Muslims , Christians , Jews , Parsis , Sikhs, Buddhists ,Atheists , pagans and Goths and members of their myriad sub sects I’ve gotten to meet in this journey ; some albeit for a short while …you know how it goes… just get out of your comfort zone.. of people just like you .. to find out that outside guess what???
The rest of the world ain’t that much different from the other people in your life..

Now you might think that’s easy for me to say , but to everyone out there the only reason you haven’t had the opportunity to explore is because you haven’t let yourself! You don’t need to get on a plane to broaden your world view , just think about all the things around your world right now that you’ve closed out, it could be anything from blocking a particular type of music , or a particular type of dress, or food or a particular “type” of people…

You know at times like this I wish I had a master plan ,something to work toward, may be do something so that in the end I could tell people “Look at me , look what I’ve done!!!” but I don’t want to do that , what’s the point of living your life to prove something to other people , I’m sure that would drive me into depression… well I guess I’m not too stressed out with life the way it is now .. I guess I have got something down right …. But I just wish I knew where I was heading!!!!!!

full circle

Life goes on …. Just when you think you’ve wiped the slate clean along comes something or someone to remind you of the past … And what happens then? Do you revert back to the person, people thought “you were”???

...life happens, things change, people change, I’ve changed!!! But not really ……the person I am truly inside..the absent minded , but kind hearted?? Goofy gal with the long hair , bad handwriting, et al …. that’s the true me , and those who saw me like that and continue to see me like that I love you and always will (to people who really know you , nothing you do or become should come as a surprise)

Yes life has come full circle… I’ve moved on and I’m back where I belong!!!

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
-Richard Bach

about a girl.....

In today’s New York Times “ Doctor In India Jailed for telling Sex of a Fetus”… “In 1991 ,there were about 945 girls born per 1,000 boys ,but this dropped to 927 by 2001, according to a national census”

Anyway the article got me thinking ….In spite of being born in a country where the “cultural preference for sons has distorted the sex ratio“ ..amazingly I haven’t felt much by way of discrimination..

Well , my parents have two kids- my sister and me …. I’ve led a pretty sheltered life as long as I was in school and stayed with my parents .My mom and dad; especially my dad, mom too but if you know my dad you know he pretty much rules the homestead !! made sure that my sister and I weren’t cut any slack especially in the area of education
(thank fully my parents don’t say things like you’re girls; we cant spend on your education lets save for your dowry!!! My relatives might say such things ..but I don’t stay with my relatives. )..And it wasn’t just too keep up with the Joneses that my parents sent us to school or something..(if you know my immediate family , you must already know that we’re a rather hippie type family…)

Well my dad’s older sister is a PhD, arguably the first lady PhD in our community (incidentally my aunt worked in the Indian institute for reproductive sciences , carrying out research in the same field the Indian doctor was sent to jail for ‘mis’ using…. ), my first cousin from dad’s side has graced the cover of national magazines and has appeared in many print and television ad’s,( mind you this was in the late eighties- early nineties, when modeling was cool but not the fad it is now (yes, yes she’s modeled with Milind Soman!! :) ), and for a community that’s got a lot of people in the industry now ,she was one of the first ones . So needless to say my dad’s side of the family consists of progressive ladies ….

Really if my dad wasn’t my dad , my life would have been slightly if not drastically different, so you can imagine that coming from an environment where my immediate family hasn’t made me or my sister feel as if we ought to deserve less from life because we are female.
… I get really ticked of when random people make me aware of the fact.. don’t get me wrong ..I’m not a trailblazing Amazon.. but I don’t take kindly to the comment “You’re like a boy..” or something to that effect (and they don’t mean it as a compliment !!, I’ve only heard that once in New Zealand by a desi guy… in America the desi guys have some brains ..ok ok NZ desi’s, pretty much all of them were amazing ,but there were a couple of keeda’s from the motherland!!!! ) especially when its said by some guy my age. I mean just because at the age of 24 I don’t want to ask my parents for spending money and therefore work part time while going to school ? Because I don’t need a guy to drop me in his car when I need to do shopping?? Because I can cross the road without holding a guys hand??? … THAT makes me less of your concept of what a girl should be like!!!!

News flash buster…. Each and every girl would like to do the above things ..its just because people like you exist that they cant…

Well back to the story so till school and even undergrad in India I don’t think I suffered much!!??!! Apart from weird dress codes and suchlike… but even guys couldn’t come to college in shorts and pajamas so fine!! Well thankfully most guys I’ve met are great , apart from a occasional keedas, who were just acquaintances and not friends anyway.

In the US ,the situation is good, all the girls here have overcome certain obstacles (or not ) ,but are certainly living their dream of coming out here ..my hats off to the sisters, I know gals who’ve worked at mid night as night watchmen, washed dishes in restaurants,worked as parking lot attendants and worked thier way through school, girls who lived in the superdome in New Orleans when Katrina struck(what you thought an Indian girl couldn’t survive that ??) people who marry their soul mate irrespective of creed ,caste or community, people who earn more than their partners , yes all are desi, all are my friends and I’m proud of them and proud of the guys they are with!!

But I’ve had certain sources tell me that certain guys here don’t want to get married to girls who are studying here .. prefer girls in India …hmmm I wonder why????? ( actually not :P)

Well I pity the poor Indian girls who pay bucket loads of dowry to eventually get married to such a person ..poor gals will be dreaming of their cool American prince charming and life in the land of opportunity … Well gals here…. I break the illusion ( or at least part of it ) .. I held on to this idea as well before I came here….. Here it is…. JUST BECAUSE A GUY LIVES ABROAD ,DOESN'T MEAN HE'S COOL!!!

Sure there are great, cool guys out here , and the concept of an American Prince Charming isn’t a fairy tale ….but you have equally cool guys in India …and those psycho types you thought could exist in India only ..yupppp they’re here a s well!!!!!

Well , I’m sure all the gals would have read most of this . Hope it wasn’t too long!! But I just got on a roll with this topic ....

As for the guys ..Well if I’ve scared you off ……Thank goodness !!!!..That was the aim!!!..
For those guys who did read…. Thanks .. I hope it wasn’t too long and I hope it was enlightening to read how some one from the other side views things …

As I was writing this I had the newspaper with the article open next to me.. an American guy sitting next to me saw the bold headline of the article and said CRAZY!!! Well that’s what I said when I first saw it too!!!!