Kismet

Atu told me a story the other day of a couple who met because the woman dialled a wrong number. His number. I don’t know the details but surely, that’s some high grade Universe interference, no?

Fate.

Now I don’t trust destiny at all. I find I look at it with a healthy dose of scepticism. I tend to think of it, in Whovian language, as a tool the Master would use, and not the Doctor. For the uninitiated, this simply means I squint my eyes at Kismet and question its intents.

Take this couple. Of all the random numbers in the world, what possessed her to dial his number? Who moved the pieces? Who rolled the dice? Who threw the stones? 

Cherry on top – they did get married, but then divorced bitterly.

I find it worrying. It would appear that the Universe really wanted them to meet. My question is why. Why did the Universe want them to meet that badly? What nefarious intentions did it have with them?

Because it is one thing if the couple had stuck together. But they didn’t. So what was so important that they needed to meet? What would have happened if they didn’t? What got prevented because they met? All the whats and whys bother me a lot.

Sometimes I think the Universe gets bored and finds torturing us amusing. So I remain wary of kismet.

All of this is not to say that I don’t appreciate kismet. Things happen. Sometimes things work, even when everything seems against it. Sometimes even when it seems like everything is working out, things fall flat. I whole-heartedly believe in invisible hands enabling us. I believe in Fate and things happening for reasons, even reasons we don’t understand. I even believe in Karma.

So yes. I do believe in Kismet. I just don’t trust it as far as I can throw it. And who has ever heard of anyone throwing kismet?

An Intro to the Mariah Carey Season

Atu has been MIA the past fortnight because of Manipur and its restrictions on the internet. This sucks because she is my emotional support friend and I run most things past her. And these past two weeks have been, to put it mildly, busy. For her part, the first text I received once she got her internet back was a curse on the universe for having inflicted this shit on us. And a query as to why the asteroid that doomsday scientists keep warning us about never reach us and obliterate life on earth as we know it.

A few years back, the pair of us with my sister and the boy who would one day be her husband decided to team up and have a Shimla Christmas. Moshil was already a friend at that point but that trip was supposed to be the hard launch of their relationship to me. He passed the test. Aside from the fact one day we were walking around, the four of us, and Atu and I got worked up over wine, and he shoved us. 

There was so much choice in terms of local fruit wines in Shimla. But about 80% of the wine we’d tasted the day before had been dry and not at all tasty. If you wanted to get knocked out, they probably were fine. But in terms of taste, they sucked. Which irritated the pair of us when we passed the wine shop again and we started ranting.

I have a shrill, annoying voice. Atu is the same. And we get very nasal and high-pitched the angrier we get. And the wine selection got us properly stimulated to the point that maybe only squirrels could hear us. We did not drink a drop that day but we were standing near a wine shop, facing each other, arms flailing (we’d learned this as we were learning to be Delhites) and talking so shrilly dogs started getting agitated around us (I’m kidding), and Momo was embarrassed. We looked and sounded properly high. My sister was already pretending she did not know who we were. Which was a joke on her because we look very similar and often could pass for twins. 

So, in his mortification, Momo shoved us and herded us away like cattle to a more convenient location. We were highly offended (again, I kid). I forgive Momo, but mostly because he shared his glass momo with the three of us that evening. In Shimla, you should try this; it’s quite tasty.

I forced my garden to listen to Christmas Songs this evening and the fact Atu is back online took me back to the Shimla Christmas, is why I decided to blog about the Mariah Carey season. It is a good time of the year!

Cat-holic

Atu once laughed at me and accused me of having this parasocial relationship with Taylor Swift.

I was thinking about it this morning and realised that yes, she’s right, no arguments, but this is very me coded. Because when I thought about it, I already had one with almost everything else I like. My obsession with pop culture elements I am fond of should already have indicated this. Potterverse, Whoniverse, Guide-verse... I am always that obsessed fanatic. Even with food although that's perhaps a topic for another day.

Also cats. Which was why I’d started thinking about this. I was just watching my cat bathe herself and said: Nix is such a nice wonderful person. And my family is just as bad. Feli was like: she can even travel and shift homes. Then Lee chimed in with: yes, she's shifted homes thrice, yet she knows where to go home to, she's so wise and capable of change. And Nix was just sitting there, bathing herself.

Which reminded me of the other night, again Nix was just sleeping and most of my family was just looking at her and going: Nix is super bitchy, she doesn't tolerate others, she doesn't make friends. And it's just the funniest thing because literally all the cat was doing was sleeping.

Meanwhile, the humans around her are just creating this whole delulu life where she is sometimes wise beyond her cat-abilities, yet sometimes she is dumb as a rock, sometimes she is kind and gentle and sweet, sometimes she is mean and jugdmental... and all the cat does is live her life!!! She sleeps, eats her body weight in food, bathes, demands random un-understandable shit in cat language and sleeps. We've created this entire world we share with her and the cat is just... a cat! This realisation has got me laughing.

The fact that I have a parasocial cultic relationship with Taylor should therefore not be surprising because I do that shit even with my cat, fecking.

Atu has always said the both of us are easy prey for cults. She’d say: I don’t know why one of them hasn't recruited us yet since we are easy pickins. She’s right, too. We’d be easy to recruit. Even in Christian denominations, my sisters and I have always said that we'd have made such great Catholics – all those rites and rituals and burning candles, we'd have been so into that whole thing. It’s just a pity we weren’t born into one. In fact, us sisters and Atu included could have been open to some witchcraft religion too, had the opportunity presented itself to us. I don't think we'd be in those satanic deity cults because you know, born into Presbyterian/Baptist church and all that. To say the least, we’d be too self-conscious. But ya, witchcraft like mix the herbs, make moonwater, light the incense sticks, dance in the moonlight, read tarot cards, observe summer solstice... whoo, I'd be into that! 

As it is, even when I only attend Sunday Schools while close to everyone else in Mizoram seems to attend church at least 4x a week, I am truly concerned about attending certain services with extra rituals in it such as Maundy Thursday Communion, Christmas and Good Friday/Easter services, Year-End service with Commemoration for the dead… I hardly ever miss those.

Also with Nix, she is very close to us, her humans. But she’s also fiercely independent. And she hates water so I’ve bathed her exactly once in her life; she was so angry none of us have ever dared to again. Unlike our other cats who take water baths about once a fortnight. Nix has also been put in a box three times in her life to change homes. All three times, Eli was the one who put her there and carried her. So she associates boxes and being trapped with Eli; she never lets Eli touch her. And we think this is why she bullies Eli’s dog, the honorary cat Snowy. See how easy I venture into my world of delulu world-building where Nix is almost human, the way we talk about her.

Like I said, Cat-holic.