Five Preposterously Fun Ways to Say No To A Guy Who Asks You Out

For a blogger whose nom de plume is "Funny Gypsy" I've been blogging an awful lot of serious things lately! :)
In order to lighten up the mood a bit, I thought I should mention some of the funny (or not-so-funny) ideas I have in my head every now and then. Hopefully some part of this can be considered 'funny' (or 'morbidly funny')...
So here goes...

Five (+ bonus) Preposterously Fun Ways to Say No To A Guy Who Asks You Out

So here's the key: You don't want the guy to feel like you're rejecting him. You want him to think that you don't mind him at all (so he doesn't take it personally), but instead you're the one with a problem. Hence, you should say things like...

1) "If I had feelings for guys, I would have said yes. But at the moment I'm bisexual, veering towards lesbian, and I don't see myself feeling romantically inclined towards you or any other male. Maybe if you had a sex-change operation I would reconsider..."

2) "I'm a Manglik of the highest order (or perhaps you should say disorder?!). I'm such a serious Manglik that the family astrologers and priests have told my parents that my first boyfriend or husband will die a gruesome, terrible death and I will necessarily have to get a second boyfriend (or remarry). My parents are in a conundrum as to how to avoid unnecessary gore and also get me married to their preferred suitor (the son of a family friend) at the same time. However, since you've asked, I'm sure they'll quite happily agree to allow me to date you for a few months...till the deed is done with..."

3) "My family believes in marrying the guy you date and we have ancestral lands in a village in XYZ state and my husband shall be gifted on my wedding (although, being a modern woman, I will most definitely seek joint ownership). Nonetheless the village tradition requires that the husband of the eldest daughter (and that's what I am) be the caretaker of those lands and till the soil every summer for the first three days with the help of only the village oxen. This apparently ensures a good harvest season. Since I don't like villages in summer, I'd much rather stay in Delhi during this period, but you'd have to go do this, unless you want to face the wrath of the village goddess (not to mention the entire devout village).

4) "I'm an undercover Martian (I know they say women are from Venus but that's a popular myth; distorted by pop fiction). I don't mind breeding with humans, but I can't vouch for the quality (or abilities) of our offspring."

5) "I work for the secret service - can't even name the agency, that's how secret it is...if you're okay with being assassinated if my cover is blown, I'm okay with dating you. I know rival agents will never get to me, but I can't be certain of your safety.

BONUS:

6) The usual...."You're like a brother to me". Even better, if he's met your parents, "You're like the son they never had...they trust you and know I'll be safe with my brother!"

What part of my heart bleeds?

I don't know if the periods of melancholy that I undergo are necessarily driven by world poverty. But I do know that I go through these painful periods of sadness when my head gets cloudy and my heart hurts and my mind races, unable to think of anything practical or useful other than world poverty.

In those periods, all I want to do is leave everything behind and alleviate world poverty. I'm serious.

All I can think is how unjust the world is. How unfair it is that millions of people live without enough money to get home from work, even after earning minimum wage (according to this article). Or how difficult it is for people across the world to find jobs, even if they are willing to work hard, because their jobs are being outsourced or replaced by robots. (Don't ask me how I find these articles - all I know is that they are attracted to me like bees to honey.)

I believe I have always been an exceptionally sensitive, "bleeding heart" since I was a child. But I only recently realised my "bleeding heart" may be a symptom of a very visceral belief, after a series of confounding feelings at a first date that left me certain of only one thing - I need help!

Long story short - a date was trying to impress by getting a special reservation at one of the most exclusive (4 Michelin star) restaurants in the city. Unfortunately for him, not only did I look unpleasantly taken aback by the opulence of the venue when I arrived, but I also sat through the entire 4-course meal looking like the spitting image of a glum, disappointed and deeply dehydrated fish out of water.

At the time, I didn't understand my behaviour and thought it was because I couldn't stand the guy. After some reflection, I realise I liked the guy's personality but didn't understand the need to splurge on a $400 meal when there was so much world poverty. World poverty. There it was again.

My mind has been obsessed with world poverty since I was a child. I carry the burden around like Jesus or Atlas, but without doing any of the hard labour they did. All I can do is mope, weep, get extremely depressed, accomplish nothing and feel deeply guilty again, in a repetitive cycle. I don't know why my heart bleeds the way it does. I don't know why it bleeds more than others (after all, I'm not the only one eating out at a fancy place.) All I know is that it bleeds and it is painful.

I know people say you shouldn't be guilty and you should unashamedly chase money and prestige and your career and some day that will give you the ability to write a check and donate to a foundation (or better still, create your own tax-exempt charity). I guess my heart doubts if that amount of success can ever really occur and questions why I can't just donate to my time and my life right now. Perhaps I feel guilty because I feel that the selfish, corporate way isn't the only way forward. Perhaps I feel guilty because I realise that the people for whom my heart bleeds are those the system has failed, and those that have been left behind in our competitive, unjust world. Perhaps my heart bleeds because I realise that my hard work, my time, my life, my colleagues and my income are all going into that system that perpetuates the inequity. Perhaps it bleeds because I realise that in a Rawlsian world, I could easily have been one of those left behind.

Perhaps it bleeds because it is trying to tell me that I will never be happy with more wealth and expensive meals - instead I will be happy by doing good and making a difference to the strata of society that I care about. Just writing that last line was so relieving :)

The only problem, oh heart, is who will pay the bills?

Loving a Strange Stranger: My entry for the Get Published contest

Please vote for my idea and help me get published, at: Indiblogger's Get Published Forum!

This idea is about the forming of a relationship between two recluses. The people in question are myself and a man who was a complete stranger when I first saw him. We soon figured out we were in the same college but had never seen each other before our final years as we’d both been in different classes and had kept ourselves to our small social circles. It was intriguing for me to gradually discover his personality through my exhaustive research, peeling away layer by layer. Though friends around me were dating and chasing bold, successful alpha males, I was fascinated by the archetype of the opposite. This is a story of how this ‘quiet’ kind of love began, and what happened next.

What Makes This Story ‘Real’:

In the vast majority of romantic movies and novels, guys do all the chasing and wooing and girls are just lucky if they have a choice in who to say yes to. But that doesn’t work in real life, and it is impractical for women to give up on a guy just because he lacks the courage to ask them out (yes, forget The Rules!). This story shows how a shy but determined girl took matters into her own hand.

Source: 4.bp

Extract:

Our love began innocuously, on a day I least expected. I was in my final year of undergrad, it was a Monday, and I went to give the CAT exam (the first computer-based CAT) at my centre. Since this was Delhi’s December, a sweater was required. A day earlier, I had researched in the Sunday paper that my lucky color was red and I was duly unpreparedly wearing the only red sweater I had – an old rag my grandma had once knitted with great passion, and which was still the brightest, most eye-numbing shade of red. I would never have dreamt of wearing this in public had it not been for its lucky properties on the day of my exam. I was certain that I would not meet anyone of consequence since all my friends had given the exam over the weekend.

As I stood outside the exam centre, looking awfully tired and poorly dressed (and confidently not giving a damn too), along came a long-nosed, popular guy from my college wearing what resembled a traffic policeman’s fluorescent orange jacket. With him was an incredibly handsome stranger. The minute I saw Mr. Longnose, I shrank in fear and realised the grave sin I had committed by coming in my ragged state. It was to no avail – he saw me and whispered something to his handsome friend. The handsome guy didn’t move much, just stood straight and kept staring at me. Longnose kept darting his face between me and Handsome, quite clearly gossiping about me, my outfit, and perhaps everything nasty he knew about me.

This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs from Yashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India.

Love in The Time of My First Year Of College: My entry for the Get Published contest

Please vote for my idea and help me get published, at: Indiblogger's Get Published Forum!  

I'd like to write about a short (one-year), undefinable pseudo-relationship that I had with a boy right after entering college. I was confused about life, unsure of my career direction and unwilling to give into love so soon after joining college (but hopelessly infatuated!). The guy I was in love with was all too willing to be my 'best friend' (which I requested him to be until I was ready to be in a relationship) but it got messy when he insisted on calling it something more, and I couldn't. What added to my dilemma was the influence of the stars (!), my family being many, many miles away (and consequent homesickness), and my unhappiness with my college degree.

The year I was in love with him, and the years afterwards that I spent erasing memories, resulted in huge changes in my life and outlook. As my body and mind quibbled with the gamut of emotions flitting through my heart, I discovered that my 'strong' rational side could be broken down into smithereens. Past performance is never any guarantee of future results.

I still believe that no amount of books, movies or otherwise-gathered knowledge can teach you the lessons that a real-life relationship does. But I still want to narrate mine.

This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs from Yashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India.

Shedding My "Blogging Self-Respect"

I began blogging in order to express myself freely, hoping for feedback and comments on whatever (and I seriously mean anything) I post. I never thought what I posted in my blog could be subject to self-censorship as it is in real life. (Unfortunately, I can't be freely expressive in my everyday life, as reputations last a lifetime and I don't want a random comment to be misinterpreted by an acquaintance as being "batty" or "weird"...) I hate restrictions and I hate having to be politically correct in real life, hence this blog began. Yet I've realised that within a few months of having started this blog, I've made a few followers (thank you if you're reading this!) and now I don't want to lose them by talking too radically... I've formed and changed my opinion on many things since I first started blogging, yet I don't want to let down those that might have expected a 'certain kind' of writing from me.
Strange dichotomous position I find myself in... kinda like an indie musician who's faced with the choice of remaining authentic or selling out i.e. making mainstream music for money and profits... ;)

Image credit

<Looooonnng, pensive think.>


I can't do this. I've decided I can't be unfaithful with the express purpose of setting up this blog. If you dislike what I blog about, you are free to unfollow me and stop reading further. (I'm tempted to write: "The followers be damned!" in the spirit of "The money be damned!", but don't want this to be misunderstood as arrogance. It's not. It means I don't want to live up to anyone's expectations, and that includes followers/readers.)

<Finally feel freeeeeee!>

So here goes, some not-so-interesting-to-anyone-other-than-myself issues I really feel like writing about (longer posts will follow later, when I'm free!):

1) Being a nerd in high school and how I think it was a difficult time, in many ways. Love this essay by Paul Graham, here. There's a good debate (and critique) of the same essay in the comments of this blog post here.
2) Discovering that the guy I had a crush on is a 90%-confirmed a**hole and the only thing he suffers from is a superiority complex and a bloated ego (despite looking like he was a misunderstood loner). Instead of my sympathy, he is far more well-deserving of my cold shoulder, if not outright contempt. Simultaneous heartbreak and heartburn (and anger and fury and wrath and...)...!!! (Better let my temper cool before I write about this one!)
3) I support LGBT rights (and I'm neither lesbian nor bisexual myself so please don't assume that's why). I've been dying to blog about the rights of LGBT people but couldn't come around to writing a post...And why I support them is simply because I've read enough and watched enough movies to realize that love and meaningful relationships are scarce and if people find what they're looking for with someone from the same sex (like they did in Brokeback Mountain, or The Kids Are All Right or Beginners) then it's unfair to keep them apart to conform to 'social expectations' (that really are a set of stupid rules that don't amount to anything in the long run in anyone's life). I know many people in India disagree, and the social stigma remains, but I've decided I'm on the side of the LGBT rights activists.
4) I hate the current crop of politicians in India. I think this country suffers from terrible leadership. Mamta Banerjee is clearly the biggest bane at the moment. Why Time gives prestigious coverage to belligerent ministers like Mamta and Narendra Modi instead of Nitish Kumar baffles me! I don't know what will save us. Looking forward to fleshing out my case on this point SOON!
5) I hate marriage. If I ever get married, it will be for money/security alone. It will be an auction where the highest bidder wins. It can't be for love. Only kids and rich people should believe in love. For me at least, it can't sustain a relationship. Case to be explained soon.
6) I want to write something on the strangeness of my life and the broadness of human experiences. Will care to explain later.
7) Something on my grandparents. Before you go running for the box of tissues...let me clarify that they're about as loving as Sleeping Beauty's Stepmom or the what Evil Queen was to Snow White. So no sympathies. This is going to be one complicated real-life story on family politics and how Old is NOT Gold. Sometimes old people are just cruel, as my grandparents have demonstrated.

Wanted: A Reality Show on "Social" Issues Like Rural Poverty

Photo credit: Google

Okay - so we have the IPL, we have Bigg Boss, and we have MTV Roadies which have all been huge successes on Indian television (unfortunately!).

Why can't some enterprising TV producer come up with a mix of the three and have rich "team-owners" be responsible for transforming ONE destitute village each into paragons of good rural infrastructure, great support systems and help the villagers achieve self-sufficient employment? I'm sure the impoverished members of any village would be glad to participate in this social experiment if it helps them get food in their stomachs. The TV producers would be well off as the competitive game format would compel viewers to watch and vote for their favourite transformation. The team-owners (well-known public figures, who can have team members who are not as famous but have good domain-specific knowledge) would get chance to do something good with their popularity, as well as earn the goodwill of the public. I also hope that viewers of this show would have interesting out-of-the-box suggestions to offer their favourite team-owner, hence harnessing the power of ideas from all over India.

But the best part, for me, would be finally seeing the 'reality' in a reality show. 200 million people in India are still starving, yet no TV channel acknowledges or beams any show around alleviating this problem.

Even if we have just 10 teams, we'll have 10 fewer hungry villages.

This post was inspired by Wall Street Journal's six-part series, "Starving in India: The Forgotten Problem". Funny Gypsy is in no way connected to the authors of that article; was merely saddened and spurred into writing.

Why Do You Smoke? - My Dating Dealbreaker

(Ok, I have busy times ahead and had promised myself I wouldn't blog again until May-end, but am so upset with a recent piece of news I think I'll keep brooding on it endlessly unless I get it out of my system.)

I just discovered that My Crush (the one I've written about in earlier posts, The Pain of Having a Secret Crush and My Never-Ending Crush) is a SMOKER!!!

The horror, the pain, the torture of having this piece of information is too much for my delicate constitution. I've never, NEVER liked a guy who smoked. In fact, the minute I learned a guy smoked (which was always in the early stages of meeting him, as smokers usually do so publicly), I'd never think about him romantically in the remotest sense. Of course, I have many friends who smoke, and I'm not prejudiced in that fundamentalist kind of way. It's just that when it comes to relationships, I think too "healthily" (call it neurotic if you want) and the last thing I want is to find true love and then have the love of my life die of lung cancer 10 years from now. I suppose you can partly blame Lurlene McDaniel for this phobia...I read too many of her books at the tender age of 11-14 years (For the vast majority of you who may not know Lurlene McDaniel - she always writes incredibly romantic stories in which one person is affected with a terminal illness. Needless to say, the last few chapters are teary messes for the average female reader. However, I think she deserves a Nobel for encouraging romantic young ladies to become medical researchers albeit motivated by the good of their future love lives.)

Anyway, this guy SMOKES, and I'm discovering this after two years of having a crush on him. I think the delay in getting this vital piece of information was partly caused by him being such a horrid recluse that it's impossible to catch a glimpse of him for months at a time, despite us being in the same class. Most of what I know about him, is from his friend's wall posts on Facebook (Note: He's not even my friend on Facebook, his friend is!), and when I saw this tragic post by his friend encouraging him not to smoke, I was shell-shocked. (Well, the post was tragic in the literal sense too - one of those 'lame joke' viral images in which a dead body was being compared to a cigarette - and his friend had tagged him in it, saying "You should stop smoking.")

I'm heartbroken and yet wondering if this painful piece of information has arrived suddenly to show me the way out of this one-sided attraction. Maybe the time has come to say goodbye to this crush.

Or my rigid values.

(Awkward pause, thinks for a while.)

Naaaah...I can't date/marry/live with a smoker. Farewell My Crush! (Easier said than done.)

Why am I single when I would like to be in a relationship?

[Disclaimer: Though what I write on this blog, being titled "Funny Gypsy (in India!)" is clearly intended to be light-hearted, I am sometimes quite embarrassed by how trivial the 'issues' and 'personal problems' I am writing about sound to anyone who is following the news these days. I know there are a million things wrong in this world - war, extreme poverty, financial crisis, unemployment, terrorism, corruption, etc... I follow the news too, and I plan to be a fulltime activist someday. Hence, please don't get influenced by the frivolous content of this post and believe that this is all there is to life. Do something REAL with your life, something that makes a REAL difference to the world around you. At the same time, it is important to unwind and if this helps you relax or help you understand yourself better, that's well and good. This blog is just my temporary, lighthearted escapism and public brainstorming. Hope that for you too it is just temporary fun. God help you if you live like this 24/7. You'd be the shallowest person on earth...]


[Just had an epiphany: Wouldn't it be cool if all gossip magazines had a mandatory disclaimer similar to the one above before each of their articles? Would society improve?]

 

Lately I've been ruminating about my single-hood. To be honest, I'm always ruminating about my single-hood (and other important international issues), but lately I've been obsessing about it to a degree even my normal ruminating self would find deplorable. I'm not sure what triggered this momentum in "Reflections on Being Single", but I suspect it stems from being exposed to two main triggers:

1) Impending graduation (from my postgraduate college) reminding me how old I really am and how long ago it was when I had just turned 18 and thought,

"Wow! I'm an adult! Now I can do anything (and I won't get to go to a Juvenile Court for it)! I am legally entitled to blah, blah and blah. I can do this, this and this on my own now. I feel mature enough to make a boyfriend and am even eligible to marry him!" (Despite the strange optimism I felt on my 18th birthday, I have been unsuccessful at finding a boyfriend, much less marrying him.)

2) Reading Kate Bolick's popular cover article for The Atlantic, titled "All the Single Ladies". I honestly don't remember how I stumbled upon this, I believe I was searching for one of her articles on property that she had written for the Wall Street Journal, and instead the cover page image of The Atlantic flashing "What, Me Marry?" turned up on Google News .

Given that 20% of my brain at any given time is preoccupied with single-hood, hence the title caught my eye (and my imagination). I instinctively assumed this was an omen from the universe to help me learn to relish my situation. Boy, was that was one enormous error of judgement... I started reading the gargantuan piece thinking I was one of a niche crowd of happy single women and ended it with the dreadful feeling that I'm only a small cog in a social revolution that implies that most emancipated single women aren't really choosing their lack of marital status - rather they are left with no choice! What was even worse for insecure li'l me was that all the examples spoke of women who chose not to marry but (at least) had boyfriends! I have never, ever even been in a relationship, so even calling myself a cog is an overstatement! I have to be a nail, a nut or a bolt in this revolution. Probably a nut. Most definitely a nut.

Since then, my brain's resource allocation to "Worrying About Being Single" has been automatically doubled to 40%. (Note that worrying is one of those things that our brains does as a reflex reaction - hence my conscious, thinking side has little say in what my retarded, worrying side chooses to spend time worrying about). I know you must be thinking "Stop Whining Already!" I'm wary of stereotypes and I detest people who ape stereotypes. But I'm NOT aping the Spinster, Bimbo or Boyfriend-Seeking-Control-Freak.

Spinster

Bimbo (mostly for PR and fame though)

Control Freak (Thank you Miranda!)

I AM NOT ANY OF THE ABOVE!

Unfortunately, I'm also not yet the Strong-Independent-Woman-Who-Is-Happy-On-Her-Own (how I wish I could be!).

Strong, Single, Independent, Happy Woman

Though I really value my achievements and career and believe that women are strong and equal to men, I still feel a hole in my soul. I am genuinely concerned as to why I'm not in a relationship and never have been. Why don't I have a partner who cares about me more than my friends and would like to share his life with me (and oh-so-romantically ask me to share my life with him)? I really don't know how things came to be that I've passed a quarter of my life but have never dated anyone.

The (research) question I pose to myself is thus,

"Why am I single when I would like to be in a relationship?"

After much brainstorming and mindlessly writing down whatever comes into my mind, my mind battled itself in the following (uncensored) conversation:

Pessimistic/Critical/Evil Me: You're unattractive. You're quite clearly just not good-looking enough. No wonder no guy wants to be with you.

Slightly optimistic/Realistic/Rational Me: What nonsense! I'm decent-looking...I'm not great-looking or drop-dead gorgeous but with a bit of dressing up I do belong to the 'average or above' category. Besides, guys have asked me out...you remember that guy who peed in his pants in Grade 3? He asked me out in Grade 6.

Pessimistic/Critical/Evil Me: The one you danced with at the prom in Grade 7? (sniggers)


Slightly optimistic/Realistic/Rational Me: You don't have to bring that up! I felt sorry for him so I said yes to the dance...(Aside: He had a boner throughout the dance and it was the grossest, most disgusting dance experience in my teenage entire life.)...though I regret it now.

Pessimistic/Critical/Evil Me: Yeah, you had to avoid him like the plague after you realised he'd interpreted your consenting to dancing with him as dating.

Slightly optimistic/Realistic/Rational Me: Forget that. Besides, I don't think guys go only for beauty or attractiveness, they like a girl's personality. I've been asked out by many guys since then...

Pessimistic/Critical/Evil Me: Enlighten me, why exactly are you single then?

Slightly optimistic/Realistic/Rational Me: I never said yes...

Pessimistic/Critical/Evil Me: And why didn't you say yes?

Slightly optimistic/Realistic/Rational Me: The guys who ask me out are invariably the weirdest, creepiest and most unattractive (to me) of the bunch. In Grade 10, he was a bratty drug addict and completely disinterested in his studies. He didn't fit my idea of an ideal boyfriend. In college, the first guy who asked me out was a chain-smoker, and the second one was a spoilt-rich-kid sports addict. Neither cared much about their academics, the only difference between the two was that the former cleared his exams while the latter flunked most of them. Then there was the College Creep who maintained his record of asking out a girl a week and invariably receiving negative responses. He tried stalking me on Orkut, thank God I had the guts to reply, "Get lost" before it got any further. Then there was that Oddball from another stream who came to ask for my class notes. Though this one clearly cared about his studies, I didn't find him romantically appealing at all. I thought I should not hurt his feelings though and went for a coffee, which I clearly stated was only to be friends, but after that he started stalking too. I realised then that I had to be mean and told him stay away from me and avoided him, not even replying to his (unsolicited) birthday wishes. I don't want to talk about anymore of my 'encounters'. (Sigh.) Basically, it seems that the guys that ask me out are the ones I don't like. And the guys I do like never ask me out. In fact, most of the time they don't acknowledge my existence, or even if they do it's never anything more than as an acquaintance or a distant friendship.

Pessimistic/Critical/Evil Me: So you're stuck in No-Man's Land? You're not amazing enough to be with the guys you like but you consider yourself far above the level of the guys that like you?

Slightly optimistic/Realistic/Rational Me: No I wouldn't say I'm far above the guys that like me...I'm just very different from them. They might see me as something that I'm not, and I know just by looking at them that I won't get along with them. Similarly, I don't think the guys I like are out of my league...in fact sometimes they appear very similar to me - in background, interests, style and communication. I seriously believe that if they take the first step we'd be able to discover how well we gel together. But I don't know how love works in this world. They never take that step in my case.

Pessimistic/Critical/Evil Me: Aren't you being a hypocrite? If you can judge a guy you don't like before dating him, don't you think the guy you like can judge you too? And thus the endless loop of broken hearts...

Slightly optimistic/Realistic/Rational Me: That's possible. But that also means that I'm the girl they don't like. And they pine away for a girl they like... (Panic sinks in) So I will never be able to date a guy I like! My resolve to wait for the Right Guy will erode, bit by bit, and I'll eventually say yes to a guy I don't like! (Hyperventilating.)


Pessimistic/Critical/Evil Me: I think you're being too pessimistic.

Slightly optimistic/Realistic/Rational Me: I think you're being too optimistic.

Existential Crisis - Why Do I Blog?

Why do I blog? Why must this blog exist when there are millions already out there that are similarly rambling? Why must I anonymously post about myself online when the audience is satiated? Will I really be making a difference to someone's life? I don't think so...I barely have a readership (the thought consumes me so!)
If I continue along the same line of thinking, I could easily end up persuading myself to shut down this blog.
And subsequently, cease to try living...("Huh?" You wonder, "What did she just say?" Go on...read it again...I meant every word.)
After all, by the same logic as above, why must I breathe or eat or sleep when there are millions out there similarly breathing, eating and sleeping? Why must I read, study, work or use the Internet when there are millions out there that can do the same...? With every additional minute I take up on earth, I'm using up the earth's resources and were I to refuse to do so they would be split among the remaining human beings, who are barely distinguishable from me. I do not possess extraordinary ability; my absence from earth would not be noticed and my work could easily be replicated by another person (provided they are given similar education, etc.). The natural question arises...should I even be living?
Alas this analogy between blogging and living has heated up my mind so potently that I now guard my blog like I would my life.
I blog, therefore I exist.
Hence, I must blog.