thinking

I’ve constantly been in and out of relationships for the past many years, and every time I reach a stage when I’m giving up myself, I guess it happens at some point of time in every relationship, I freeze and then I pull back. I wonder if people like me exist or am I the only one missing that light? I have this long list of expectations to be fulfilled, which is humanely impossible for any guy to accomplish and though I know that, and I wonder ‘why would somebody do all that for me?’ ,I just cannot cut down that list. I’m not made to be with a man, I’m too selfish and insecure. I guess all gals are to a certain extent, but I’ like at the very peak of it. I’m also very unforgiving, like I can pretend I’m not thinking about your mistakes, but this sick worm inside me keeps eating away my feelings. Being loyal is also extremely difficult, I try really hard at times, I totally give myself away, but then one wrong step from him and I’m like ‘what the f***? He doesn’t deserve it.’ Marriage is like an extreme end for me ‘Kill me. If there’s anything left, wed my body, let the soul die.’ Sometimes it bothers me why I can’t be like other gals, giving and patient and so loving, or is it that everyone is putting up pretence? I have this thick skinned conscience which lets me walk away from people like nothing ever happened. I can cry myself out of love, every time there is a break up, I cry and those tears wash away all my feelings. Maybe I’m hard, but I can’t pretend to be guilty when I’m not. I have hurt many and been hurt many a time too. Every time you move out, you feel so much in control, it’s like you were in maze and struggling to find a way, and you’re suddenly out and free, but a few days like that, and then this ‘being’ inside you yearns for love and you’ re back on the same track. There is so much to do, so much to feel and explore, and the burden of another is too much to bear. And yet, I get up one morning and like every other gal in this universe, long to love and be loved.

lucky

I cried and moaned…
I was lucky to be alive
I wriggled my toes
I was lucky to have feet
I held my fist tight
I was lucky to have hands
I looked around
I was lucky to be welcomed
I was fed and loved
I was lucky to have ma
I was clothed and cared
I was lucky to have pa
I went to the best school
I was lucky we had money
I learnt all I could
I was lucky I could understand
I earn for myself
I was lucky I got a decent job
But still I cry so often and sigh…
’Why does this always happen to me?’
Thank God I can ‘think’…
So as I write this today
I realize how lucky I have been…
Only people with comforts
Have time to ponder and poetize

Mill on the Floss

Since I happen to subsist on books, it will be extremely unlike me to not write about my favorite book on my blog. So this post is dedicated to George Eliot's 'Mill on the Floss'. This isn't a review, its just my understanding of the book and why it has influenced me so much.

Not many people I know, have found this book interesting. They say its dull. But its this simplicity, restrained slow-paced setting of the book that makes it unique. I don't have a penchant for fast paced thrillers, its not that I don't read them , but my first love remains literature. Also maybe because I don't have siblings of my own, I find the adhesion between the siblings in the book very fascinating. Their undying love touches you in ways unexplained. The plot revolves around two central characters, Maggie and Tom Tulliver, siblings. The setting is a picturesque mill on the river Floss near the village of St. Oggs, somewhere in the 1820s after the Napoleonic Wars.

Maggie is a wild young girl who her mother fears will never make an elegant lady nor a good wife. She is everything that a woman shouldn’t be, dark, clever and active. Maggie’s father is quite proud of his daughter's intelligence and buys her ample books to read. Maggie's greatest happiness is Tom's affection. Though Tom is less studious than Maggie , Mr. Tulliver sends Tom to have additional education rather than have him take over the mill. Maggie is heartbroken to be separated from Tom. What follows is a series of events that put to test the family love.

The bond that they share continues to grow through the novel. Tom's reserved , realistic nature clashes continuously with Maggie's idealism and zeal for intellectual experience.Various family crises, bankruptcy, loss of the mill, Mr. Tulliver's sudden death intensify Tom and Maggie's differences and accentuates their love. Tom enters business, leaving school to repay his father's debts and finally finds success and restores the family's estate. Meanwhile Maggie's giftedness is wasted in an impoverished home and social isolation. She enters a period of passionate spirituality in which she renews friendship with Philip Wakem, with whom she had developed acquaintance when he was a fellow student with Tom. Against the wishes of Tom, she secretly meets him and together they go for long solitary walks in the woods. Her thirst for love and a cultured existence is gratified in these visits. Their relationship is partially Maggie's sympathy for broken and abandoned human beings and partly her theoretical romantic desires. When Tom discovers their relationship, he forces Maggie to give up her love and with him all hopes of a beautiful emotionally satisfying life.

After some years, Lucy, her cousin, invites Maggie to stay with her for some time, during which she get close to Lucy's beau Stephen Guest. Stephen and Maggie' fierce attraction, gets them into an awkward situation where they decide to elope, almost accidently. Soon enough, nevertheless too late ,Maggie realizes her folly and pleads Stephen to send her back to her place which he unwillingly does. Tom denounces her and she lives like an outcast with an old family friend for some time. Lucy and Philip though saddened by the turn of events forgive her, and she is relieved from the guilt of doing the unpardonable. Maggie’s exile ends when the river floods, and she sets out in a boat through the horrid waters,looking for Tom, the two meet and embrace, the boat capsizes. Thus the Biblical epigraph 'In death they were not divided.'

The plot though moving and startlingly sad, its the description of pieces of childhood scenes that's most captivating. When she's not allowed to accompany father to pick up Tom from his academy ,as her mother combs her reluctant black crop of hair, Maggie runs out and dips her head in a water of basin, so that there would be no more chance of any curls that day. When one of her aunts happens to make a disapproving comment about her unbrushed hair, she impulsively cuts off her locks much to the dismay of her shocked mother, but something that was done initially to grant her freedom from everyday brushing, immediately brings shame and grief when Tom mocks at her calling her an idiot. Another very interesting scene is where she, upset with Tom for loving Lucy more, runs away from home to become a gypsy. All these small incidents help us to understand her love for freedom , from something she doesn’t know of, and ultimately why she turns into the woman she becomes later in the story.

The book is a relaxing and stimulating read, but then you need patience to grasp the beauty of the moving sketch Eliot brings to the canvas.

why do gals act dumb?

For the information of the supposedly not so dumb boys, we act dumb for our own convenience. Firstly it doesn’t matter to us if you think we are dumb cos as long as we know the truth, there is no necessity of proving it. Secondly, acting dumb makes things easier. We can get away from the worst of situations unscathed. When I had bad luck with my car, I remember how innocent I acted. I actually told the constable that I didn't know driving , I had no interest either and my dad was forcing me to learn it. Also we can pretend ignorance and get our work done by you boys. Like for instance at school I used to pretend to not know how to write silly C++ programs and there was this poor guy who used to help me out every time [help implying entire coding]. I'm sure he thought I was dumb and never complained, but as long as I get my work done, why would I care what he thought? We also pretend to be uneducated about sex[at least lot of girls do]. It saves us from silly queries and uncompromising situations. Feigned unknowingness also somewhat makes us appear sophisticated. Thirdly when we act dumb, it makes you feel safer being with us. An intelligent and independent girl can make you feel very insecure. So we behave like the diffident ones in the relationship, and the silly ones, so you would feel comfortable and once you are in our hands, we know we can make you do anything we please. So who cares if we look dumb? I certainly don't :) Looks are surely deceptive. So next time you say a girl is dumb, think twice. She’s probably twice as intelligent as you are.