Posted on by Zarine Mohideen · 15 Comments

Crocaholics Anonymous.

I have big feet. At least by Indian standards I do, and it’s always been hard for me to find my size in shoes I liked. Comfortable shoes were even harder to find, thanks to my gorgeous flat feet. I would tear apart every shoe store in Madras from top to bottom in search of the perfect shoes in the perfect size. Shoe salesmen would give me dirty looks. One guy even told me my size wasn’t the “normal” size. The nerve of him! Safe to say, I stomped out of the store.

During college I went through a lot of shoes – sandals, ballet shoes, cheap sandals from Fountain Plaza, pretty ones from Lifestyle, polka dotted ballet shoes from Shoppers Stop, tough boy sandals from Nike, you name it. But none of them lasted long enough. I would see the wear and tear in a few months, and the fourth toe of my left foot would inevitable scrape against the base of the shoe.So the left pair of all my shoes would have a distinct mark. I know, I’m special.

Wedding shoes shopping was another tiring journey but at then end of it I managed to find a gorgeous pair that hurt as good as they looked.

Over the weekend while doing some much needed, therapeutic shopping I saw a Crocs store beckoning me in all its neon glory. I told Jay I’ve never tried on Crocs and I thought that the comfort factor of those shoes was just a myth. I had to find out for myself if it was true. So we entered the store, and I was in shoe heaven. I know all you “fashionistas” out there are like, “Omg, Crocs are soooo fugly”. But honey, you haven’t lived until you’ve lived in my shoes.

Crocs are generally expensive but I got my hands on the most beautiful pair for half the price! Yay for sales and retail and stuff! I think my new shoes perfectly encapsulate the weather right now. They are summery, yellow and so cheerful! I think I’m going to live in Crocs for the rest of my life ’cause these shoes are so comfy! It’s like walking on a baby’s bottom (sorry, baby)! They are made out of some rubbery material so no awful, skin peeling shoe bites and I must say, they look really, really good. So Crocs taught me one lesson : never brush of anything based on what others say, find it out for yourself.

Let’s all raise our glasses to Life, and the lessons she teaches us in the most unpredictable ways.

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Posted on by Zarine Mohideen · 2 Comments

Safe House

Imagination. That’s what enveloped the better part of my life. When I was a little girl the only ‘play time’ I ever had was in my head. Hence, I was a bit of loner although I grew up in an apartment full of kids playing around every chance they got. I was perfectly happy reading and living in my imaginary world. I visited beautiful places in my head and the adventures I had, well, I couldn’t explain them to anyone. My mother would always coerce me to go play with the other kids but I was more interested in wearing a beaded dupatta over my head pretending I was a princess locked in a castle from which I had to fight my way out.I was a part of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five solving mysteries, I sneaked out of boarding school like the girls in St. Claires and Mallory Towers, I was Jasmine from Aladdin, I was everything and I was happy. I could spend hours by myself and company distracted me. Playing with the other kids didn’t excite me. I was also the youngest and the other kids wouldn’t include me in their games. I was always considered uppu chappa. The only kid who wanted to play with me was a boy who was much older than me and he was more interested in my Barbie dolls than I was.

So my imagination was all I had, all I needed. It made me feel happier knowing that there was a place I could go to escape and all I had to was just push a switch in my head and I’m there. My imagination was what helped me get through some of the most darkest phases of my life. When the going got tough I would zone out and perpetually live in another place, a much happier place. This led me to avoid dealing with my present.

Consciously extracting myself from my head to live in the now is something I have to deal with every day. Is it a sickness? Or am I over thinking this? I don’t know. But what I do know that the safest place to be is in my head. When I don’t have the energy to deal with my life I’m glad to know that I have a safe house.

So tell me, what is your safe house? Where do you go to escape reality?

Posted on by Zarine Mohideen · 7 Comments

“Don’t be talking to a stranger. Stranger means danger.”

There are are some days that are perfect. It’s a bright sunny day out. There is a heat wave(!) and you are sitting in a perfectly cooled cafe with a perfectly cooled mint iced coffee, reading a book you are completely engrossed in. You are one with character and you can actually feel the..

“Are you Palestinian Mozlim?”

“Umm, no. I’m Indian Muslim.”

Puzzled look. “Ohhh. Indian?!”

“Yea.”

“Are you from the part of India that is near Pakistan?”

“No. I’m from the south, Chennai.”

“I know many Braaahmins from there. So what do I see when I visit India?”

Yeah, I just want to get back to my book. It’s very hard for me to get “in the zone” when I read a book. Although I love to read, I am constantly distracted (thanks again to technology for my short attention span). I need to be comfortable enough, have a good reading snack, the light should be just right, etc. And it annoys me to no end when people want to make conversation thereby interrupting me.

Interruption, whether I’m reading, writing or even thinking, muddles up my line of thought. I’m sure most people feel that way so why would you interrupt some one who is completely smitten by her book. Okay fine, I interrupt my husband every now and then when he is reading but I married him. I have every right to demand his attention. You, however, are a stranger. The one my mother warned me about when she said “Don’t talk to strangers”. You have no right to drag me away from my book and force me in to having a conversation.

I wanted to tell him thanks for the attempt at conversation, good sir but I need to get back to my book. How can I say that without sounding rude? What is the polite way of telling someone, especially a stranger, to leave you the heck alone when you are in the midst of doing something?

Posted on by Zarine Mohideen · 5 Comments

Dear Madras,

I hope you remember me. I miss you. It’s going to be six months since we’ve been separated and not a day goes by where I don’t think of you. Every time I walk out it’s silent and beautiful but I can’t help comparing my surroundings to you. I miss the crows cawing. I miss the sound of autos and the blazing heat on my forehead.

Please know it was never my intention to leave you. You know how fiercely I love. And loving you was inevitable. I breathed your air for twenty two years. We might have had a love/hate relationship but love always triumphs. I can’t seem to recollect a time when you’ve wronged me.

You remember the first proper article I ever wrote in college was about you. You play such a big role in my life even though we are miles apart. Remember all those long summer days when I cursed you for being so hot? Well, I could use some warmth right now. Living in a new country with no friends during the dreary winter is the perfect formula for depression to resurface. I’m using all my energy to keep from falling in to the dark pit.

If anyone knows my love for my clothes, it’s you. But here I have to wear a giant coat under my nice clothes and all that black is making me color blind. I miss leaving the house with just a layer of clothing and flip flops.

I miss your sunshine. I miss how happy you made me feel. I miss how I spent the best times of my life with you. You made me feel so carefree. You put me down, you picked me up and gave me the pat on the back that I so needed. You’ve seen my absolute worst and were a part of my best days.

I miss the beach so much it hurts. I want to roll on the sand and jump in the water. Remember that day in Fisherman’s Cove when the water just perfect? That was one of the happiest days of my life. I can’t count the number of times we used to bunk college with my friends and end up going to the beach. The beach played such a big part in my life. I used to drive there with my friends as and when we pleased and we would just have the best time. I haven’t gone to a beach yet here. I can’t wait to see if it matches up to yours. Even if it does, yours is always my number one favorite.

I can’t wait to come back to you again. But I am scared that when I do come around in a few years you would have changed and you wouldn’t be the same Madras that I left back. I want to say, “Please, baby, don’t change.”. But that is selfish of me. But I can say, please don’t become unrecognizable. I don’t want to land there one day and not recognize anything. That is my biggest fear. Please know that no matter where I go in life I will always love you with all my heart. Reminiscing about you will always bring tears to my eyes.

I don’t care if India Today finally decided to rate you as the number one city in India. You will always and forever be my number one city. New York was an amazing weekend. San Francisco always surprises me. You always make me happy. And that is all I ever want from life.

I love you and miss you.

Your girl,

Z

Posted on by Zarine Mohideen · 4 Comments

Fantastic Five

Today is the five year birthday of my blog. I started off on the 16th of February  2008, writing my first post about Valentine’s Day and how I was against it. This year on Valentines Day I ate chocolates from a heart shaped box, dressed up and went out to dinner. In five years I didn’t accomplish too much on my blog or write fascinating posts. The only accomplishments and stories I had were personal. Over the past five years I’ve grown to be a much wiser person. The lessons I’ve learnt were imprinted in my soul. This blog has been my one portal that has seen me through everything. When I had nobody to talk to, I would write out seemingly ambiguous posts and would feel like I have a shoulder to lean on. I may not have been very faithful but I always did manage to find my way back. That’s a relationship that stands the test of time.So to commemorate this relationship I celebrated by eating cupcakes – salted caramel and pineapple upside down.

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Here’s to another year filled with cupcakes and happiness.

Happy birthday, you. You know I love you.

Posted on by Zarine Mohideen · 2 Comments

Day 29

I spent the better part of my morning searching for my house keys which happened to be in the first place I looked. I then went for a run and got some strange looks and a half smile ’cause I was the crazy girl with a red turban on my head. I saw a homeless man and a lady with a gorgeous Gucci bag. I managed to turn away from getting my hot chocolate fix at Starbucks which wasn’t too difficult ’cause the new barista there doesn’t make it the way I like it.

I then came home and spent a couple of hours making a fabulous lunch/dinner (linner? dunch?), which I then proceeded to eat while watching Friends. Now I got coffee from the apartment lobby and started typing out this blog post forcefully. I will continue to wait for Jay to come home so that we can eat my fabulous dinner, watch Pretty Little Liars and sail away to a happy oblivion.

Posted on by Zarine Mohideen · 2 Comments

Two for one.

Every time before I make breakfast I turn up the stove and then decide what to make. I will have egg today, I decided. So I broke the egg in a bowl and what I saw in it scared me. I broke ONE egg. There was ONE portion of white and TWO portions of yolk joined together in the center. It looked like a Venn Diagram! I’m not particularly fond of ingesting a genetically modified egg with two yolks, so I dumped the egg down the garbage disposal. My friend told me that it was a pair of twins. Mommy hen must be pretty pissed.

 

Proof :

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Posted on by Zarine Mohideen

Me and my kuchi ice.

This blogging every day in January gig is proving to be harder every day. I have to wake up each morning and search inside my head to come up with something that’s even passable. It doesn’t help that its cold and dreary outside. No, something has to rain on my usual sunshine-y demeanor  I’ve been informed that the cold weather will end only at the end of February, maybe even March. I am so ready for summer already.

I loved summer holidays as a kid. Endless hours watching tv, playing with the apartment kids and scrumptious food provided my mommy dearest. You could say it was the perfect summer. But the one entity that had to dampen my spirits was the saravana Bhavan ice cream man. He would ring his little bell on his little vandi all the way to my street. I could hear the bell even at the far end of the house and would run as fast as my pudgy legs could carry me. There were times when I’ve even chased him down the street. We have all done things we are not proud of, so let’s not dwell on this?

All this hullabaloo was just to get my hands on the best kuchi ice ever – the grape flavored kuchi ice from Saravana Bhavan. So delicious, so slurpy, I’ve been know to inhale it three at a time. Good for me that my mother had the same interest in kuchi ice that I did.

But after a few years the losers at Saravana Bhavan decided to discontinue grape ice. And that’s where my story had to end. But it’s okay, I found the second best kuchi ice – Sravana Bhavan orange kuchi ice.

photo (2)Orange kuchi ice, outside Saravana Bhavan, with mother as the back drop.

Posted on by Zarine Mohideen

Naan auto kaaaran.

Auto men in Chennai are very famous thanks to the antics they come up with. I have quite a few auto man stories and I was reminded of one that stripped me of my maanam . So during college days my college bus would drop me off at the main road near my house. Walking from bus stop to my house that was inside the streets would take at least ten, fifteen minutes. Some days I would just walk the distance but on lazy days I would take an auto. If I took an auto it would hardly take a couple of minutes to drop me off so I would want to pay ten rupees but some days,  persistent auto guys would ask for fifteen rupees.

So on one of my lazy days I took an auto. When I got down I handed the guy a ten rupee not. He looked at me like I was crazy and said no ten rupees, it’s twenty, lady. I was already on a short fuse that day and I blasted at him, “It hardly took two minutes to get here, indhe route nan daily varuven, twenty rupees too much, blah blah blah”. He listened to me patiently and said, “Ille ma twenty rupees dhan. Government has put new rule that minimum fare is twenty rupees. Nennege inniki paper padiklaya?”. He said that in such a condescending way! Me being the newspaper disciple that I am, that hurt my ego and I was like whoa, is he saying the truth? So I paid him the twenty rupees and ran home to grab The Hindu. I scanned every page for this piece of news. It wasn’t there.

And I was twenty rupees poorer.

Posted on by Zarine Mohideen

I’m doing okay.

People in this country are so friendly, it took me a while to get used to it. I come from Chennai where people are not particularly that friendly. I mean, I never had the experience of walking to my local grocery store (Ayyanar Stores) and have the boy who works there ask me how I’m doing today. I would just go and be like one Maggi packet please . I then pay him the money and leave. But here it’s hard. I have to always think of response to the question “Hey how you guys doing?”. Initially I would just smile and walk away but later I realized the pressure of having something to say in response to that question which seems to be the first thing every store clerk wants to ask. Do I tell them the truth that I’m not doing that great or do I just say oh I’m doing good, how are you and have a conversation that both of us really don’t want to be in? After a while I seemed to have found a response that can’t be deemed as curt or lengthy. I just say fine, thanks and give them a dazzling smile. I thought I worked that out just fine and was out of the danger zone. But then the cashiers at the department store started saying “Have a good night, guys!” when we left. I was stumped. What do I do now? Smile, nod or say “You too”? I settled for smile and nod. I didn’t want to hold up the line.

In Chennai the only person with whom I had to actually converse with outside my immediate circle was the auto man with his permanent request of “meter ku malle anju roova“. Of course I had to say no I cannot part with my anju roova you thief and then we would engage in a little not so friendly banter that would end with me just giving him the anju roova to make him shut up.

I miss the good old days when I could just leave the house without having someone ask me how I’m doing and me having to evaluate my feelings of the day. Some days I don’t want to know how I’m doing, perky Starbucks girl, so please just give me my hazelnut hot chocolate and let me get on with my day.

And no whipped cream, thank you very much.