A Small Town Thing

I have been made fun of, more than once, for being someone who, in this day and age, goes to a tailor. Except for the occasional lehenga or maybe a salwar kameez that needs to be stitched because it was gifted as a fabric set, I rarely see people around me visiting a tailor shop. So naturally, someone who needs a tailor everywhere they go appears to be an anomaly.

I get almost everything I wear altered. And then I have ideas. Tons of them. I even bought a sewing machine at one point, only to realise very quickly that I lacked the patience for sewing. So, I buy fabric and look for someone who can create something semi-decent out of it.

And I fail to understand how people do not need a tailor at all. Maybe it's a small-town thing. Or a millennial thing. Or both. We grew up in a culture where things ought to be stitched - from school uniforms to fancy dresses. But online shopping has changed everything, it seems. Now people see clothes on a screen and simply order them. 

The shirt in these pictures was stitched by a tailor in the last city I was in. And it reminds me that I need a new tailor in this new city. Someone who can stitch all kinds of things, help me bring my latest ideas to life. 

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Three offline things I did this month

I recently read on a wall in a cafe that life is whatever we have left after our screen time. The line stayed with me long after. We are losing years to scrolling. So now, to encourage myself to live a little, I have started talking about the offline things I do. Sometimes, I mention my offline activities to friends who may or may not care.  Sometimes, I just take a picture to document the moment. And today, I decided to write a blogpost about it.

I bought flowers for myself for the first time.

I grew up around people who believed flowers were a waste of money. And quite frankly, they are, especially in lower-middle-class households where every expense is carefully calculated, closely monitored, and repeated only if it has real value and doesn't interfere with more important expenses. But now that I can afford to spend just a little money every now and then, I would rather spend it on things like flowers. Once I had them in the house, I realised I looked at them several times a day. And every time, they seem to uplift a part of my spirit.

I stared at a bug for almost half an hour. 

In my defence, the bug looked magnificent. This photo doesn't even do it justice. And it matched the colour of my coffee mug. After staying motionless for a while, the bug appeared to inspect the mug, examining it from three different angles. Almost half an hour later, I think it got bored and decided to leave the mug alone and wandered off.

I read Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea in a month. 

The book is about a theatre director who leaves his dazzling life in London to move to a basic house with no electricity in a coastal town. And he wants to do good, but can a change of scenery change a person?   

For me, the book was almost like a crash course on how to quietly observe a narcissistic, egoistic narrator, never get attached to him, and still enjoy everything around him – the house, the streets, the local market, his friends, and, most importantly, the sea.   

That's all for this month. Will come back with another post next month.

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Living in Reflections

I rarely post in real-time. It's almost as if I can't live a moment and talk about it as well. Till it's late. Weeks, months, sometimes a year late. A conversation with a friend, a good meal, a poignant book, a nervy movie. I rarely am able to talk about it, with all my heart, till I get a chance to sit alone, look back, marinate in the flashbacks just enough to feel something.

I have never really wondered before today why this happens. Why is it so hard to find beauty and meaning in things as they happen? Could it be because of the mobilephone-induced limited attention span? Or the constant distraction of the hundreds of things that happen all at once when I go out? Or is it simply because I am slow to realise everything? 

This outfit is a small example of my inability to appreciate things in real-time. Beige shirt, beige shorts with a white undershirt. A simple outfit that can be worn on repeat. A three-piece set that will never seem out of fashion. The one that screams the opposite of try hard. 

That's all for this month. Will come back with another post next month.

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To see or not to see

To the right of my wardrobe lies a longish oval mirror, placed solely to encourage me to look at myself once or twice a day. The goal is to check, before going out, if everything looks alright. 

All my life, I have seen most men and women looking in mirrors like it is second nature to them. Duck to water. Sunflower to the sun. To me, it has always seemed like a task. If I catch myself looking in the mirror, chances are, mentally, I am somewhere else. I guess I have always associated mirrors with self-adoration.

Lately, however, I have been intrigued by people who confidently look at themselves in the mirror. Do they just notice their facial features? Or do they, sometimes, also get a glimpse of how they feel? 

I want to be able to look in the mirror and see if it helps in any way. If it helps me take a pause and notice what's going on. But I guess the first step is to be able to tolerate my face. No, actually, the first step is to wipe the dust off that mirror. 

BRB.

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Because no one will read this

I want to write for long hours without any distractions. But the birds are chirping, so I close my laptop and look outside. For a change, I hear every little sound outside my balcony - a bike whooshing past, leaves rustling, two women talking indistinctly, the sound of a running hose as someone decides to water their plants in the middle of the day.  

There is no deadline. I just need to write a blog post. And it's my blog, so it can be any topic. But I am stuck. I look at the pictures of the post - navy blue sleeveless shirt and beige shorts with a brown belt. Classic. Italian. Hint of old money. In fact, it could be one of the best quick outfits I have ever put together. 

Do I really need to write another paragraph on the outfit? Who cares? Let me publish this post anyway. Wait, what if someone actually reads this? What if they come to read about fashion and get stuck in the mind of a clueless early millennial who has no idea what she wants to do? I am hungry now. Will write better next month. Bye.

Btw, the birds chirp again.

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Hair is everything

When I first saw Phoebe Waller Bridge's character, Fleabag, saying that "Hair is everything," I didn't think much of it. Only much later did I realise that women around me talked about hair a lot. My cousin, in fact, is obsessed with hair; most of our video calls start with how frustrated she is coz of her hair. I have had colleagues who, during our cab rides to work, shared hair care tips every week. 

Growing up, tiny braids were my thing for the longest time. Even though girls around me were pressurised to grow their hair, I was lucky enough to have the freedom to do whatever I wanted with them. There was one problem, though. Two actually. Firstly, the hairdressers seemed to have sworn off any haircuts that were not layers. Everyone coming out of a hair salon looked the same. When I moved to a bigger city, I tried my best to convince hairdressers to do something different. The process involved many requests, giving examples of how the haircut looks good on certain people, and a verbal oath that I and only I would be responsible for the final outcome. Once I got the haircut, I was excited like a puppy with a new toy. But then people around me looked at me with these sad eyes as if something bad had happened to me. That was the second problem.

I guess most people are pretty uptight when it comes to haircuts. My haircuts were not even radical. But to them, it was. To them it was an inappropriate desire to change, a cry for help even. To me, it was never that serious. I changed my hair every year for one reason alone - because I could. Nothing else.  

The year that was

This year was a mixed bag for me. I went from having a stable routine - morning rush to work, metro, office, back to my place - to an uncertain everything. I stayed at six places in total with no fixed income. My physical health got worse, and my mental health, well, let's not even go there.

But what I truly want to rant about in this blog post is the trips of this year that simply sucked. I was lost when I was in Bir; the place looked uninspiring in June. Dharmshala was even worse - all brown and dry. And then there was Varkala in December - beautiful but so, so hot.

Now that I am done with my first-world cribbing, I am uploading these beautiful pictures from last year's Goa trip with a promise to bring more such pictures next year. 

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