People..again

The “again” in the subject line is delivered in a tone of mild irritation. Though I appear to have opinions on practically every subject under the sun (a disease that I have successfully fought in recent years), I realize that most of my recorded “outpourings” (diary/cassette/blog) barely touch upon topics or issues and are mostly about people.

That said, its with pleasure that I recount this highly “people oriented” week (this sentence also firmly settles my doubts over whether my writing has been corporatised…it has).

First, thanks are due to M for introducing me to friendster. I had absolutely no inclination of taking this seriously ever and had thought this too would die a quiet death like so many others before it. However, my irritation with my environment (more on that later…I hope) drove me to log on daily. For a few days, I got some messages from people I didn’t really want to know. Especially since they were younger to me….cant imagine what conversation I would have with a 24 year old girl from Bombay who was “into fashion designing” (suitably vague)…I guess we could have compared notes on our impressions of the recent wave of sequins permeating every class of fashion, but I doubt that would have been sustainable, even for my shallow half (that of course assumes I have a deeper half…an assumption I am unwilling to back up with fact!). Anyway, after exchanging mails with 2 people who bored me on the second interaction, I decided to see if there were actually people out there who I could connect with. Why I would do that considering that I don’t interact enough with the people I already know I connect with is probably to do with a particular moment when I was bored post lunch/felt the need to connect/there was no friend online/phone calling would have been inconvenient/etc etc. In a movie, this would have been one of those “cataclysmic” scenes (I LOVE this word) pictured in a under rated manner with an over done music score.

The point was – how DOES one find people one can connect with? Went through the search options. Whether someone was man/woman….wanted relationships with man/woman didn’t matter. Being in India was important….didn’t really want to start a connection where establishing contexts itself would take time. What else? The natural choice was obvious, but it took me to time to get to it (the movie scene would probably answer why, if it’s a bad Hollywood movie….I don’t see the relevance and hence will not go into it) – books and movies. Started with books….did any one in India (age between 25 and 35) list Gone with the Wind or Stephen King or Maughaum as a favorite?? A few did…unfortunately their profiles were hardly interesting (which of course reaffirms my belief that I am a literary philistine). Movies, then. Did a check on Dangerous Liaisons…no records found…tried a few others….records aplenty, but again uninteresting ones….finally a fluke….Red/White/Blue….and bingo! There it was ….A (from saadi Dilli)….a list on movies that read like a connoisseur’s selection and a profile that debunked the notion that this could be just a pretence to get attention. Messaged him. I had now tasted blood. Wanted more. But how?? Went down the list of search options again…..what about TV? What did I like most on TV? Other than the new American comedy series, of which I am sure there were plenty of fans, I liked nothing more than British sitcoms. Did anyone else? Yes! And the profile wasn’t fuddy-duddy at all, which means it was as unlike mine as it could get. Crazy snaps, eclectic lists and a introduction that screamed bravado and yet hinted at vulnerability. Again, I messaged.

Got responses from both in a few days….got added on to the yahoo lists…and had chats. Brief summary –

A – hesitant start…exploratory…until we reached the subject of movies. Found a common love and dug in with relish…scattered chats over few days were primarily on this…also realized that we may not have THAT much in common otherwise, but the connection had been established. It was cemented when he gave me the contact details of the person through whom I could source international titles in Bangalore….combined with the sheer joy of this discovery, I was also infected with a sense of wonder at this instinctive generosity that prompted him to search for the details at that very moment and share them with me. Like so many simple gestures, this touched me.

V – no hesitant starts here. Not that I remember every twist and turn, but the 1 or 2 hours spent on this conversation have been the pleasantest I have had for a very very long time. Despite the highly intimidating reading list I found on his blog, I quickly realized that he and I had more in common than just a love for Harry Potter and British sitcoms. The chat reminded of my first meeting with Shalini at the British council eons ago, when we sat in the lobby and systematically discovered ALL that we had in common, despite being very very different people. V is as different from me as the profile suggested and yet I seem to have found a connection that I hope to continue. There is also a curious matter of one of the common links being M, but I hope that that is more a case of a dispassionate interesting footnote (French movie style) than an emotional hinge with potential to derail (Sudeep Ralhan style). However this turns out, I know that I there is at least one thing that’s going to be long term about this – I am going to be a permanent reader of his blog…a piece of writing that provoked laughter and thought in a very Tom Robbins meets Anthony Lane kind of way.

I would like to imagine that both these people being gay is incidental, but that would be stretching it! In fact I had an interesting chat with Shk today on this aspect. Hence, there are 3 more conversations I would like to capture – Shk, D and LC – but as usual, I have to rush for dinner now. Maybe later in the night, if I am alert enough.

Despite the rush, I want to place on record the cringe I suffered as I read through my post above. The bracketed statements and the quote-unquote words are both afflictions I suffer heavily from and refuse to discard. This, along with the steady corporatisation of my writing style, make my blog one of the most irritating and boring I have ever come across.