of souls

Okay, I think it’s time I cleared out the cobwebs on this blog. How long has it been? Two? Three weeks?

I’ve been suffering from a bout of the crazies (which is when I turn into Crankenstein and snap at everything that moves and knock over everything that doesn’t) and thought it would be best to stay away, until I got an email a few days ago with the subject: “Anawnimiss” has been Selected as one of the top 15 Love and Relationship blogs in India.

I was obviously elated – but when the write-up finally appeared, I was underwhelmed to say the least. The post was very carelessly written, in an attempt to quickly summarize the last few posts I’ve written. See for yourself.

This anonymous female tries to explain a mother’s unconditional love for her daughter which looks like a rude behaviour to others, horrifying experience of driving on roads, unwanted advices of people to a pregnant girl, and the happiness spread in the home on the birth of a baby boy. If you want to read her experiences please come over to this blog.

Needless to say, the review doesn’t even begin to capture the essence of this blog, its soul.

And that brings me to the question that has been plaguing me for three days, bothering me enough to step out of the shadows – what is the essence of this blog? Where does its soul lie?

This moment, we own it!

Okay, I have some more news.

Last week, I was interviewed by Smart Indian Women. They asked me all sorts of questions, and to be honest, I was a teensy bit jittery. My palms were sweaty and my heart was beating really fast. I went blank for a couple of seconds. It was like my first interview all over again. Except that this one was via Google docs. I’m lousy at this stuff you know!

But now that it has been published, I’m feeling pretty darned good about myself. I almost sound intelligent! 😉

Of course you can read the interview where it was published, but if you’re just as lazy as me, maybe you want to just stay and read right here.

Tell me what you think!

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Thanks for taking the time to chat with SIW. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your blog.     

Well, let’s see. I’m a 32 year-old twice-married-once-divorced Indian woman who writes anonymously. You might cross paths with me on the streets of Delhi; you may even know me personally, but you’ll never know who I really am, and that’s the point of my blog.

My story could be any woman’s story. My name is really not important, so I choose to stay Anawnimiss.

What makes your blog so unique and why should people read it?          

I’ve been told on several occasions that I write well, and that my stories are very relatable – that my struggles are experiences that other people have had but were afraid to talk about. People always say that the fact that I stepped up to the challenges life threw at me gives them some kind of hope.

But I think I also give them something to laugh about – I can be really funny sometimes. I take a serious topic based on my experiences, and then twist the written word in a way that is melodramatic and comic at the same time.

I think that may be the reason why people keep coming back and that’s why my blog works for them.

How often do you blog?              

I’m an obsessive-compulsive blogger. I have a funny experience, I blog about it. Something goes wrong, I have to write. I read something I like or dislike, and I have to put my thoughts out there in the blogging universe.

I’m pretty regular. There are variations in frequency, of course – sometimes you’ll see posts on a daily basis, and sometimes I write one post a week.

But I do check in every day and respond to every single comment.

What has been your most successful blog post to date and what was it about?

The most popular blog post I’ve written so far is called “of nasty things, like sex and masturbation”, where I write about how people need to stop being shy of talking about sex and masturbation.

A close second is “of religion”, which touches upon two really sore topics – Hindu-Muslim marriages and gender bias.

What do you find most challenging about blogging?     

While being anonymous gives me the benefit of being able to write what I want, I sometimes find myself wondering if I’m giving too much away or being too obvious. Will someone be able to tell it’s me is a question that I have to ask every single time I interact with people.

That is the biggest challenge for me, personally.

Other than that, I also feel that there’s never enough time to interact. There are so many interesting bloggers out there with stories to tell, I can never find enough time to get to know them personally.

What are some of your favorite author blogs and why?               

I have over 60 blogs on my blogroll and I love them all. It’s a mix of personal blogs, travelogues, fashion, and creative writing blogs.

What are your favorite books that you would recommend SIW family?               

I read a lot, as much as three books a week sometimes, but at the very core I’m a Virginia Woolf fan. And I don’t mean just her books. I have read her diaries – all six volumes – three times.

What advice would you give to young women readers of SIW who want to follow a similar career path as you?              

Being an independent thinking individual is important for men and women alike, so my advice to young women would be the same as my advice to young men – focus on who you are right now. Be who you want to be and stop trying to become what everyone else wants you to become.

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of the curious case of the missing toast

You know how much I love mysteries. I woke up to one this morning. Better yet, I solved one!
Here’s what happened.

I lay snoring on our bed this morning when I heard some strange noises from the dining area. Mister and mom were talking loudly, which isn’t really a common occurrence. I was obviously worried and was finding it difficult to ignore the ruckus, so I dragged Mister’s pillow and dropped it over my head.

It didn’t help. I had to get up.

I hate getting up. Especially in the middle of the morning. It turns me into Crankenstein.

I dragged my lifeless body out of bed and crawled toward the dining area. Mister was holding a toaster – yes, a fucking toaster – in his hands. He looked bewildered.

No, not because I was up so “early”.

He was making toast for himself and had put a slice of bread in the toaster and turned it on. Two minutes later, he returned to the toaster, and voila, there was no toast.

Mom and Mister had been speculating the following theories when I woke up:

• Mister forgot to put the slice of bread in the toaster. He just thought he did.
• Mister did not really want to eat toast and was just trying to mess with her (which I kinda was leaning a little bit toward, seeing as Mister does not eat carbs and always tries to mess with mom’s head).
• This could be the beginning of his Alzheimer’s or some such serious disease that will take his life if we don’t take it seriously.

They were driving me nuts so I had to take charge and play detective.

Did I tell you that as a kid I wanted to be a detective like Vyomkesh and Sherlock? I knew the rules – no matter what the crime is, you start by interviewing witnesses and surveying the crime scene.

So that’s what I did.

Step 1: Interview the Victim. Ask the same questions again and again. See if he sticks to his version.

Me: Tell me exactly what happened. Start at the beginning.

Mister: You remember how Luthria (his doctor) told me not to have tea empty stomach?

Me: Skip to this morning dude, I don’t have all day to investigate a missing slice of bread.

 

Mister: I opened the fridge, took out the packet of bread, took out a slice, put it in the toaster, set the clock to 1.5 minutes, switched it on, and went on to go read the newspaper.

Me: How many times do I have to tell you 1.5 minutes is not enough! Are you absolutely sure you put the bread in the toaster?

Mister: Of course I am. There’s crumbs all over it. See? 

 

Step 2: Survey the Crime Scene

I picked up the toaster and indeed. Breadcrumbs, and no bread. Nothing. Nada.

I checked around the toaster. Nothing there.

Then I decided to take a closer look, and there it was, lying on the floor, waiting to be discovered by my unsuspecting foot.

 

 

 

Me: Told you 1.5 minutes wasn’t enough time!

Mister: Clearly it was enough time for this thing to jump off the toaster and hide before I got back!

 

What about you? Have you ever played detective? What did you want to be when you grew up?

of laurels

Okay, so this is a post that has been lying in my drafts for a few months now, and I haven’t really had the courage to post it.

But today, I’m finally putting an end to the laurels category on this blog. Not because I value your appreciation any less, but because I feel that there are so many amazing blogs out there with fewer readers and they deserve these awards a lot more than I do.

I want to thank Zainab, Aleni (who I suspect has stopped blogging), Dave, Stacy, Karen, Sharu, and Rob very much for nominating me for the various blog awards. I really really appreciate the gesture!

With a lump in my throat, I give you the last installment of the customary seven things about me.

1. I have a sister and a brother. I’m older than both of them. My sister and I have a love-hate relationship, but I absolutely adore my brother.
2. My mom’s into theater and I was always in awe of that. I always wanted to be a film star. That’s something I never told anyone. I also wanted to be a housewife. I told people that but nobody believed me. Go figure.
3. I’ve only been in four real relationships so far. In two of them I was pretty much a doormat. I thought that the only way to keep a man hooked to you was to do that – be a doormat. Then I grew a brain and found myself a husband that my family thought was a “keeper”. I fell out of love with him just as easily as I had fallen in love. Our marriage didn’t survive. Now I’m in love with a different man, and I say different because he is exactly that, different. It took a long time for me to figure out if I wanted to marry him, but eventually I did. I’m happy I did.
4. This one’s not technically about me, but my new husband, Mister, has been clinically depressed and suffering from depersonalization and derealization for over a decade, and I am amazed at how he handles it. You can never tell he’s having an attack. Well, you can’t. I can. But he does a pretty good job of coping with it.
5. I am guilty of cluttering people’s Facebook feeds with cliched photographs of my feet in new places. I also rant a lot without context.
6. I hate office celebrations. They make us decorate bays every year on Christmas. Every Diwali, they make a huge fuss about handing out sweets and gifts. Holi is a mess. There’s color all over my workstation. The gujiyas they serve are stupid. And I wear saffron-white-green every bloody independence day. Really, every year, the exact same routine. Christmas and Independence day are the worst of the lot! There. I said it.
7. What? only six so far? I hate lists.

And my nominations? Every single blog on my blog roll. Seriously, I can’t pick a few. They’re all beautiful people with beautiful stories, and I love them all.

Again, thanks for all the love!

 

 

 

of there being another Liebster Award

Yoo hoo! Another Liebster nomination, my second, from Just Be V.

To be honest, I’ve mostly just been lurking in the shadows on her blog, but I love how beautifully she captures moments in her photographs. She asked me (and her other nominees) to answer some questions for her:

1.  What was the first book you remember reading?

Mill on the Floss. I read this first when I was in class 4. I was too young to really understand it, but I remembered feeling like I was Maggie. Always seeking and constantly denied her brother’s approval and acceptance, which I could completely relate with!

2. What was the first thing you can remember writing?

A short poem in Hindi about how we should save  trees so little children can hang tyres on them and swing! I remember carrying it to school, and then I lost it. No, that’s not true. Someone in my class stole it and submitted it to the school magazine, claiming it was hers. We had a nasty cold war involving chewing gum and hair, and red ink and white skirts. Eventually it got published in her name. The bitch.

3. Who is your soul model?

Not sure if I have any, but I really like Howard Roark. He looks like he has a soul. I’d love to be someone who always does the right thing. But being Roark is clearly no fun, so I’m happy being me!

4. What do you do to inspire you?

I read books and other people’s blogs. If I find anything I think will attract traffic, I perform plastic surgery on the post/article, and voila! A fancy new blog post emerges! Okay. None of that is true. Except the first sentence. And introspection.

5. Where do you write?

At my desk. Always at my desk, hunched over the laptop and typing like a madman. Sometime I scream when my head gets all full and noisy, and then the boyfriend fiance husband gives me a massage. Then I go back to my desk. Always.

6. What is at the top of your current bucket list?

Spend a year traveling the world, alone. Have conversations with strangers. Eat street food. Get fat. Die in a different country doing something exciting.

7.  Where is the most beautiful place you have visited?

Sangla Valley in India.It’s spectacular! I’ve never felt lighter or more free as I did there.

8. What are you most afraid of?

My stalker has been missing in action for a while, and I’m worried sick! I’m afraid he’s never coming back! Does that count?

9.  What movie most inspires you?

The Pursuit of Happyness. It’s inspiring in a very obvious way, I think. 

10.  What do you think would make the world a better place?

Prayer, honesty, forgiveness, and masala chai. 

11.  What do you believe in?

I believe in truth and honesty and full disclosure. As long as I’m anonymous. Outside of this blog, I’m a pretty shameless liar!