Two peas in a pod

Good god! She’s at it again! My sis…twin sis to be specific….identical twin sis to be accurate! Identical…in looks. That’s where it begins and ends….the identicalness I mean. She’s crying right now (Not to worry, she does that at the drop of a hat!) because I let her down! I have been patting her arm from the past God-Knows-How-Long! Please! Make this female stop sniveling! I had been getting a feeble urge to pee from the past 20 mins and the urge’s shifted gears from being feeble to extremely persistent…. Right then God heard my plea for help and her phone rang! As she picked up her phone, her whole disposition changed faster than you can say Duh?! It was one of her friends who had called up to share her expedition to the latest mall.


I grabbed the god sent opportunity and was rushing to the Loo as I heard the “Ohhh”s and “Ahhh”s and “Really”s and “You’re Kiddin”s! Huh! Typical sis! Crying her heart out this minute and yakking off animatedly the very next! A few minutes of a biological activity and a flush later, I was back to patting her arm. Sigh! The things I am forced to do as a Twin sis!

You know, am not much of a shopper... Hey! Stop giving me that knowing smile! Am not kidding! I seriously don’t like shopping! I said stop it! OK that does it! I REALLY DO NOT LIKE #@$@#%@#%@ SHOPPING! Good! That shut you up.
Where was I? Oh! Yeah…The things I end up doing for my sweet sis! I have to tag along every shopping trip because a) She might want me to pool in my pocket money if need be B) She needs somebody to hold her ten ton shopping bags C) I am her Twin sis. Period.

What’s with this conception of twins! We are individuals. Not “Two halves of the same whole” God! I hate that phrase! What I’m trying to say is, me and my sister are as different as can be. Unfortunately for me, my sis belongs to the Group that thinks “Twins! Two beings and almost 1 soul! “

Just the other day she was yapping on and on about this supercalifragilistic Bag of what’s-the-name…? yeah! Louis Vuitton! She had gushed, “what wouldn’t you give to own a bag like that!!?” I was already in a foul mood coz she had dragged me to this mall when I’d rather be catching the latest play at RS! So I just couldn’t resist replying “eh…not even a rat’s fart???” Madam was extremely miffed! She didn’t speak to me for 2 days flat!

What I’m trying to say is we are poles apart! I do not believe in this “Special bond” between twins shit! No sir! But sis…..Is someone who thinks there is some unseen, unexplainable bond between twins! Something that can only be felt and not explained! Oh! Come on!

Now that I’ve been pointing, underlying and literally screaming out my opinions, you would feel that I have very definite ideas that I truly believe in and vehemently defend them if anybody would dare contradict …Sigh! just when I thought I had the whole world figured out, The world comes back to me and says “U have so not figured me out yet honey” and knocks me flat!
What I’m about to recall now, this incident (catastrophe?) changed me as a person (and also made me a pauper for a month!). Confused? Let me enlighten you…
Let’s rewind back 2 weeks…..
Time: 8:30:27 PM
Date: 1.03.2009
Location: Earth…Er….to be a bit more specific… Bangalore (at a Friends place)
Me n Sweet sis are at a get-together (that’s what we told mum!) /party(which is the truth) We are having a great time catching up with some friends and gorging on good food , when the conversation steers towards a certain fellow and before you can say “here-goes” , he’s the butt of all jokes and the poor guy is down to the “Grin-and-bear-it” routine. Lemme tell you, If the victim is pushed till the limit, then this routine would usually lead to a “Siphon–The–Filth” routine. For those of you who dint get it: Shift the focus on a less fortunate soul so that all filth is now redirected towards the innocent by stander.
And in this case it was none other than my sweet sis. All sis had done was laugh @ the jokes aimed towards him and this guy so unfairly calls her an A**hole! She Froze …I was really annoyed and had a peek at sis and was horrified to see her nose was turning red… (Always a danger sign coz with sis its like: Step 1: Nose turns tomato red, Step 2: start shedding tears). Suddenly my eyes and her’s meet and still can’t say what exactly happened. . I just thought of a wonderful retaliation I would have given him back, and I could hear the same words coming out of my sis’s mouth as I was thinking them! It was as if I was dictating it to her! Her mouth had stopped moving… She had finished the sentence but I could still hear it ringing in my ears “Oh yeah? So what does that make you? An unwashed A**hole??” I was flabbergasted!! Everybody was laughing coz they found it extremely funny that my timid Sis was capable of cussing like this! .The only people not joining in the laughter were ourselves and the fellow at whom she had cussed. We were stunned! What HAD just happened here?! It was as if we could read each others thought for a minute there!

We dint talk to each other till we were back home and in our room. When we did talk about it, I had to admit to her stupid theory of The Special connection between twins! And yes…had to forgo an entire month’s worth pocket money to her since I had bet that there IS no Special Connection between Twins and she could never prove it otherwise! Sigh….The only other option I had to get my money back was this nightmare: We had to wear identical outfits for an entire month! Needless to say, I gladly gave up my money. And when I said this, she was aghast and cried “Why can’t you just agree this one time! It’s a twin thing!” ….am still patting her arm!

Wings on my Shoulders

Look! Just look at that! Isn't it pretty? Mother earth sure is a lovely thing. Sigh...The oceans look so lovely from space don't you think? I think you are wondering who can this be who’s talking about a point of view only astronauts or ET s have experienced. Ha! Ha! FYI...I'm neither...oh! Wait.... before the thought comes to your mind, I'm neither a couch potato watching the world through the idiot box! Any more guesses? Give up? ... am an angel.

Yup! The real thing with a halo and wings! It’s not such a big deal you know. When I first got my wings I was so excited as wings are something absolutely new to flightless humans. My initial reaction was...Yahoo! I have wings! I can fly! I was on the 9^th cloud (In my case literally because I bunk in cloud #009!) But after a while you just get used to the whole thing! You know...It's just like having an arm or a leg...they are very important for you to function but you never realize it, right? The halo? Well....I couldn’t sleep for a few days because I can't switch off the halo! It’s always bright and I need total darkness when I go to bed. After the third day of sleepless night, one of my fellow angels, an older and a much wiser one suggested that I use one of the night masks, you know a black mask for your eyes... worked like a charm! You know what, I died a month back. Yeah! You heard me right! Was later deemed a good soul by a committee of “Fate churners” and went through some formalities and then...boom! Am an apprentice angel! I am still getting used to being one! The other day, I was painting something (Am an artist) and because of my carelessness, spilled the entire bottle of paint on Annie's wings!! Boy! Was she mad! I had a tough time washing her wings you know and it didn't help that she was grumbling and muttering all the while. I am flying properly nowadays...It’s not the flying but the landing that’s extremely difficult. I say this because I've done some pretty disastrous ones myself! I'm getting the hang of it now but am no where near the graceful landings of others but am learning.

Life up here is pretty good! Excellent food, Exquisite lifestyle and I don't mean living like the filthy rich! What I mean is that we live as a colony, there's no personal gain in anything, everything is free! There's nothing called money here. People just do their work and are waiting for others to take their wares or use their services. I display my paintings in the market every other week. If someone likes them, they just pick it up. George the baker bakes some of the finest pastries and anyone can just walk in and gobble whatever they want! Its the same with everything, be it clothes, Hotels, parlors, cabs, you name it. Everyone works and they get satisfaction in return. We all live in harmony. There's no one who’s rich or poor, beautiful or ugly...all are equal. Once you enter these gates as an angel, you will have a heart of gold that knows no evil, no jealousy, no sorrow. Anger? Yes. A bit. We do get angry when the ones for whom we're the guardians are up to no good. We sometimes get angry with each other but nothing ever goes out of hand, after bickering for a while, things are back to normal but it is not the same with teen angles(TAs)...Sigh! They have a long way to go and a lot to learn. They take a lot more time to get adjusted here. By the time they do get adjusted, they are no longer teens! The other day, I saw two TAs being dragged along by one of the older lot. It was quite apparent that the two of them were fighting! You should have seen the halo of one of them! It looked kinda like a amoeba! The half of the other's wing had no feathers! I pity the guys working in the amendment department. They are called the 'Set Righters'. The TAs see to that these guys work round the clock!

Once our lives as humans come to an end on mother earth, many of us serve the Lord as Angels. We angels act as guardians to many human lives. Once our role as an angel ends, we join the lord himself. I still have a long way to go before I attain the ultimate salvation.

Am I upside down or is the world?!

I'm feeling so sick watching my friend. She's all starry eyed and is just melting off like an ice cream! I turn to my right and my other two friends are no better and all because it's their favorite hero on screen whose doing a stupid song-n-dance routine right now! Me? No way! This guy? Ugh! I keep seeing the real guy he is and not who he is trying to be. I keep seeing a birdbrain who smokes worse than a steam engine, a pompous ass with an inflated head so big that you wouldn't find a cap that’s large enough and this fellow is supposed to be an youth icon! Man! The kinda message this guy delivers to the young crowd.
Anyway... am supposed to be enjoying this movie right now. Mission impossible. Just tell me why would anyone want to know how a loser of a guy (aka the hero) gets over his jealousy on his wife's hot boyfriend?! Some story! Sometimes I think I don't belong here, with my three 'friends' I mean....three Barbie doll wannabes and a bohemian chick....it doesn't need a rocket scientist to figure the odd-one-out, right?!
The torture ends after 2 and half-hours. I am in a pensive mood as I get out of the torture cell, where? Oh where was my bloody brain when I had actually paid 50% of my month's pocket money and got myself an undisturbed 2 hrs of pure and unfiltered boredom! And on top of that, there was an offer too....free headache with every ticket! We got onto our bikes (their bikes actually which were all a sickly shade of baby boo pink! yuck!) and got out of the torture grounds, which was a very challenging task given the fact that a weenie mosquito couldn't have found any space to park its butt.
Once on the road, my friend started off about the movie. This is what I dread after going through a mundane movie, its the “Lets-analyze-each-and-every-shot” discussion. Me being the pillion rider, couldn't get away and had to drop monosyllables like “Yup” “Right” “Nope” every now and then think you got the picture.
We stopped over at one of the over priced ice cream parlors (the kind I feel do a job no different than highway robbers) I would have loved a cup of hot SLV coffee instead. Anyway, paid up with what was left in my jute purse and gorged on some frozen blob of ultra sweet fat. By the time I was out of the place, my poor purse had decided to file for bankruptcy. That’s when it hit me, I could save myself from being declared a pauper right now!
One of my friends, an 'always-borrow-never-return' type, had borrowed 500 bucks from me some(a long)time ago. I think this is the right time to give her a gentle reminder about it. What's wrong in asking back YOUR own money?! I got the 'how can you be so cheap?' and "what's money in friendship" looks when I brought it up. I mean, c'mon! It's mine for heavens sake and YOU should be the one feeling like a heel for not returning it! After they had gotten over the initial shock that their friend was so petty, the girl in question brushed it off with a 'Oh! Right.....'. I reacted with 'I kinda want it now'. More horrified looks followed and as she was fishing out the dough from her purse, she had the look on her face that equated to a poor girl being forced to give her hard earned savings to a bandit!
As I pocketed the loot, something told me I would never be a part of this group anymore. Thinking about the kinda movies I was forced to watch and the kinda mindless conversations I had to tolerate, I felt liberated! but if they decide to forgive me, I'm gonna inquire about my shoes the other one had borrowed a week back.

The unusual journey of a foundling

I am trying to unlock the door...THE door, not my home's door or MY door...I say 'THE' because I don’t feel a sense of belonging with it....the apartment I mean. Hi, I am Vibha. Working, Single, Struggling.

Working...to make ends meet, to have a better life than the one I have, to survive.
Single....in every sense..no friends, no soul mate, no family.
Struggling.....to understand the Purpose of my life on this planet at this particular time period where people are mundane enough to follow “Reality” shows and never ending soaps.

I am an Orphan. I was told that I had been brought to the Orphanage’s doorstep when I was a month old. I grew up with the nuns who took care of the place. I did well at school, went through college and landed with a job. A boring 9 to 5 job with work so monotonous, it could drive anyone crazy but hey! That’s not important as long as you got money, right? Money to live in a world that runs on this special paper. Now that I had a source of income, was deemed independent enough to be on my own…in other words, was kicked out of the only place in the whole wide world that I was familiar with. That I had mistaken to be my permanent abode.

Three months later….

Vibha here. I have news for you…Shantanu. Yes, that’s his name. He is one of my colleagues. A wonderful man whom I am currently dating. I am feeling a bit strange. I don’t know how to express that feeling. What is this that I feel so strongly towards this man? Love? Care? Whatever it is, it does feel good! It feels good to have a cup of coffee with a pinch of laughter, to have a meal spiced up with conversation, to feel so alive with a touch, a hug, a kiss. I am certainly thankful for having such a wonderful man to share my life with…but I still don’t get that sense of belonging. There is something missing and I am unable to find that missing piece in the Jigsaw puzzle of my life.

Three Years Later…

My name is Vibha. Vibha Shantanu. I got married to my sweetheart after a courtship of a year. Married life was a piece of heaven. Never could have asked for more, but I did get something more than I had asked or even hoped for.  It had been two years of martial bliss when I got to experience the journey to motherhood... I  was being rushed to the Hospital. I was about to deliver my baby.

A Painful Miracle later....

I felt so strange the moment my tiny, ‘just delivered’ daughter was placed in my arms. This was something I had never experienced in my entire life...Seeing another soul sharing my blood. I had never seen that before! No parents, no siblings, no cousins, no aunts or uncles in my life. Even my husband, my soul mate, the one I love, the one who has brought joy to my life does not share my blood but this tiny life in my hand does. I finally felt it.The sense of belonging.