Sunday, July 17, 2011

On fire

Charming, that I’m sitting on a train from New York to Boston, happily drunk amongst a sober lot! Sophisticated, that I’m wearing floral bloomer-esque shorts from Forever 21. Good enough, that I’m listening to Break on through. Trite, that the white guy sitting on the seat across looks at me occasionally, smiles, as he reads his copy of Shantaram.

New York met expectations. It was exactly half awesome and half depressing. Awesome because I met old friends, watched the architectural marvel the city is, got myself a couple of cute outfits and fit both, Guinness and Prosecco in to the weekend. At the same time, half the time I spent was depressing because of a small, dark and disappointing W on Lexington, a severe bout of anxiety this morning and that I’m running out of tampons. The wine makes up for a lot of the woes.

I was in New York the first time, a few years back when I came here to intern at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street. I was 21, impressionable and not ready but still cute enough to get by. I was living at 92nd Lex, at the Y, without a phone or a laptop. That was 2.5 months, spent working hard, eating (and sleeping) alone, reading magazines as entertainment and carefully shopping to make sure I didn't blow up the generous stipend! The last point is important as my love for money only went down since the first time I made some. The wall street giant paid me enough to cover for my education of 17 years, twice over. Yet, that's when I realized how over-rated money was. I was lonely in New York then. More timid here than I typically was. But it's a time gone, and I look back and smile.

This time, after 6 or 7 visits to the city, I finally decided to stay on Lexington Aevnue again. Of course, not the Y. This time it was the W (hotels following the alphabet!). It was disappointing but not enough for me to crib about it the 2nd time in one post.


I met Asha and Anurag for drinks. I barely knew them in school but it was still much fun. There’s so much similarly in all of us now, though not apparent on the face of it. A ton of fun. This morning was not much to write about. I woke up late, strangely anxious and it took half a day to wipe the feeling out. I stepped out finally in the evening a few hours before my train. I worked from Starbucks at 34th West, and it made me feel much better. What followed was a typical show of awesomeness- a cute cut-out back outfit, a mad run to the station to make it in time for the train, a few charming conversations with strangers and now the wine.

I’m alone. I was anxious today. Peepu isn’t here. But I’m writing. I’m tremendously attractive. Cheap Merlot. The Doors doing what they do well. A shit load of work tomorrow. Life is far from perfect but its good enough. And just given the events through the day, good enough is much better than perfect.

After thought- these were the 250 best calories I ever got

1 comment:

SGB said...

beautiful post :) - almost made me feel as i was with you all this while.. even the time when you were there the first time - how i wish I was there with you then

come back quickly!