Do-gooder???

Just yesterday, I did the “check your seduction style” test that a website offered. After answering 40 inane questions (no where were they remotely related to seduction,) my seduction style was declared as Midas Touch- good at heart, do-gooder, selfless…blah blah blah.

I know it sounds boring and I need strong seduction lessons. But just while I was figuring out the site’s analysis of my intimate styles, I began to wonder if I was really what I was analysed. Yeah I want to world to be a better place, want peace to prevail, want the best even for the poor and goodness shine bright on every soul. I do things at times that, well, all right, point to the fact that I mean well.

But there are some ethereal questions that return to haunt me each time I find myself being called a do-gooder.

- Why do I feel helpless every time I see that crippled beggar in the local train? Why do I cringe when he approaches me for a penny and I am too hapless to give him any?

- The other day an old woman was sitting next to me. Her clothes were falling apart, and while crossing the Mahim creek I couldn’t distinguish between the deplorable odour of the creek and her body. Soon she lay naked and I still sat mum next to her. My mind asked me to get up and cover her up, but I couldn’t lift my hands to do it. Was I insensitive or did I not bother about the women?

- Why can’t I quit my job (there is nothing constructive I do by the way) and help people that I know need help?

- Why do I waste my Sundays, instead of volunteering in the NGO that I have been promising to help?

- Is money so important to me that I can’t give up watching expensive movies, expensive dinners, pubs and shopping?

- I have dreams to realise; not for myself but for the society I owe it to. Then why don’t I just realise them?

The problem is that I haven’t found an answer to any. Am I really a do-gooder?

As You Like It

“He likes really skinny girls,” my friend told me referring to the kind of girls her ‘would-be-boyfriend’ fancies. It’s a statement often heard; only that it changes parameters. If not being skinny, then it’s about being beautiful, having long hair, straight hair, sexy legs, short clothes, long clothes, good clothes, expensive perfumes, make up…….blah blah blah.

As for me, I was no alien to such paranoid obsession about being able to give it all to please that one person I fancy. Changing several skirts to match the new blouse that I had purchased would be a daily event, much to the amusement of my own self. But I had been “instructed” to improve my dressing sense, and I would do all that was in my capacity to help myself transform into the most important person in his life: and my attire of course would help me do just that.

This mad fixation continued for quite some time, a couple of months, maybe. Each time we went out, I would be dressed in my Sunday best and the man would be attired in a care-a-damn torn jeans and t-shirt with hair flowing around his shoulders, forehead and ears. I was trying to be this idiotic prim and propah girl while the boyfriend was just being himself. The self respecting feminist that I claimed to be, I cribbed to myself all the time.

And then, we gradually started knowing each other better. Months flew and we knew each other beyond our clothes. We were more comfortable in our old clothes than the new ones. You know how small babies are made to wear old clothes, for the new ones may cause itching? Our new found relationship was now bundled in those cosy old clothes that could be washed and worn every second day. Maybe even him, with all his instructions about dressing up well, after a point didn’t care about how I looked. Maybe he began loving me beyond that.

So now when my friend talked about pleasing the boy, I know its not going to be the same always. There will be times when you wake up looking like orang-utans next to each other, kiss on an un-brushed mouth and lie watching TV on a Sunday with hair oiled to the tip. For all those times and more, there is no question of always looking the Sunday best. If my boyfriend loves me then he will love me always.
As far as I am concerned, finery is passé.