Obsessive Compulsive, but why Disorder?

A pattern is all I ask for!!

Monica (during yet another bout of her signature competitiveness): Look, you knew this about me when you married me! You agreed to take me in sickness and in health. Well, this is my sickness!

Chandler: What about the obsessive cleaning?

Monica: That's just good sense!!

Okay, there are some unexplained and horrendously weird things that I do. Or rather, I love doing. The above excerpt from Friends featuring Monica and Chandler (could there be a more funny guy!!) illustrates the maddening obsession of the wife with cleaning and control, and the husband's bewilderment because he fails to understand why his wife is the way she is. To start with, this is a regular scene at our home. The poor husband is driven to his wits end by my persistent beautification of our place, more so when it hardly needs any. Writing, reading, baking - all good and nerve calming, but just scratch the surface and out pops my crazy Virgo woman avatar. The story of the 'imperfect perfectionist'. Howsoever embarrassing this confession is, I must do it and do it here, out in the open. So here are some insanely stupid obsessions I harbour:

1. After vacuuming, I so much love the soft and dry-cleaned feel of the carpet that I avoid walking flat on it. It feels as if I am trampling on something beautiful, thereby mercilessly destroying a pattern. So, I just tiptoe, at least for a couple of hours till my feet are all twisted and achy, and I realise I might actually be on the threshold of acute mental disturbance. Remember Melvin Udall's funny walk in As Good as it Gets?

2. Everything in the living and dining area, including the kitchen has to be the way it is, that is perfect, before I finally retire to the bedroom at night. The sofa cushions have to be plumped and propped, the coffee table exactly in the center and there should be nothing sitting on the kitchen counter tops. The same applies for the times when we leave home for grocery shopping, or a walk or wherever else it is. So when I enter the apartment, it must resemble a page from Better Homes and Gardens.

3. When I take a shower, I must do the same for the bathtub and the walls. After all, they too need a bath! Ditto with the kitchen sink. After all the pots and pans are done away with, its time to scrub its stainless steel surface till I can see the reflection of my own face on it.

Again, while I cook, there should be no splattering of oil or masala on the spotless white stove surface. If there is (which cannot be avoided with Indian food), there I am with a spoon in one hand and a damp paper towel in another, stirring and wiping away to glory, all at the same time. That's some multitasking, I tell you!

4. I love bed sheets that have flowers on them, with a fresh meadow-like feel. But then there is a pattern in which they are to be spread - the heads of the flowers must face the headboard of the bed with their stalks looking downwards. After all, that is how we all stand, isn't it?! Reverse the pattern and someone would be up all night wondering about upside down flowers, hanging with all their might from their droopy little heads.

5. Straightening the rugs - I could do this all day and still never get it right. There are always angles and edges from where it looks uneven. The same goes for books and DVDs. May be Sam is right. It isn't the angles but my brains that are uneven and therefore run a huge risk of falling out from my head one fine day.

Of course, living up to my own crazy expectations becomes difficult at times. Sometimes this me flusters me to no end when all the days work boils down to arranging and rearranging objects. Believe me dear friends, how much ever I have tried to be indifferent and trudge on making my way through the already clean and organized apartment, I just can't. There's always some straightening and unruffling to do. Always.

Confessions of a pukka Virgo

This is me. Well, almost!

Her 'Lateness'!

There is a typical unyielding, old womanish thing about me. I have this unusual tendency to remain quite indifferent to certain cult things during their peak and then get completely obsessed with them after their prime is long over. I have never had much of a chance to join in the carnival and celebrate being a fan at that hysterical moment. Quite Virgo like actually, and the word here my dear friends is 'anal-retentive'.
My love for the Harry Potter books, that have so rightly entranced me at last and from where most of the fodder for my imaginary kingdom comes, can best explain this. When the whole human populace, from kids to grandparents was wandering in the charmed world of Hogwarts, I would remain aloof and complacent in my mask of a serious seeker of literature. After all, Jo Rowling was a children's writer and I certainly had had my share of Cinderellas and lost treasures. My tirade against Pottermania was such that I would confiscate hidden Harry Potters from my bewildered students, who would otherwise never care to flip a page of any book. I still remember the time when they had given me nasty stares for ruining their winter break with To Kill a Mocking Bird. One of them had even had the galls to ask this outrageous question - "How can you ask us to read a book about rape?!" Anyway, so all this while I was a great admirer of the movies, but then who isn't with the cute kids, the lovely British accent and most of all the ever bewitching Alan Rickman. But it wasn't before the dreariness of a humdrum life had swallowed me up that I decided to humour myself with a little juvenilia. And lo! Another Pottermaniac was born.
Friends is perhaps the second most horrifying embarrassment of my life. Often my friends would give me that wide eyed, frightening look that almost blared, "You must be the only creature on planet Earth who doesn't care for a bit of Friends". The old woman in me found history's one of the most popular sitcoms 'too American' for her tastes. But nothing lasts for ever. And hence my swallowing of my own words. Today I can barely live through a day without watching one episode or a clip, even though I must have watched it countless number of times. It has become my panacea for all sorts of trouble, be it certain difficult people or just a bad hair day.
I shall wait for the day when, for once at least, I shall be less judgmental and be one with the crowd. Sometimes it pays to be a pukka Virgo. Thank God I had started my Austen when I was 13. Or was I late?

Pre-holiday jitters

This morning I woke up with a throbbing migraine which is normally accompanied by an irritable temper. Although painful, I am quite used to such depressing days at least once in every fortnight. So here I am, sitting with a cold compress balanced on my head and typing away my frustration. And ginger tea isn't much of a help always. I need to vent it on somebody and who better than my mute, eternally tolerant blog. I wish I could fix these tormenting headaches with the 'swish and flick' of a magic wand. But unfortunately this is a real world that I live in, where mortals have to deal with pain that could be anything from a skinned knee to a broken heart. The cause of my ordeals are mostly my nerves, a bundle of gnawing raw nerves. Therefore losing my calm and being perfectly obsessive-compulsive comes naturally to me. With only two days left for the journey home, I should be thrilled, which I am. But what actually rules my hours now is my fretting and peeving over inessential trifles. It is quite a raging battle of the dos and don'ts, the will happens and won't happens inside me. Surely our apartment will not perish to the lakeside spiders who just crawl up and love making their tiny webs in our living room. I know my blooming geraniums won't die of Sam's friend's neglect, who actually is a very nice person. Why on earth should anyone, who breaks into our apartment, steal my cute decorative mug that says 'cat lover' out of all things! Also it isn't all that complicated to be a daughter-in-law, or is it? Whooop!!!
Before I come across as a complete raving lunatic, I must stop my worry marathon here. I wish I could borrow some steely nerves from somebody. I also wish 'obsession' didn't always have to come with its annoying twin 'compulsion'. Sigh!!

Bridget and I

Many a times we get immensely fond of a certain movie without being judgmental of its characters or their situations. We can watch it time and again through the regular mindless channel flipping or by just peeping from the kitchen window. Bridget Jones's Diary is one such movie that has grown on me over the years. Not only I love the humorous plot which cracks me up every time I watch bits and pieces of it, but also the lead actors (Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant) are some of my personal favourites. After being thoroughly charmed by the movies (it has a sequel), I considered digging into the original brains behind them, the books written by Helen Fielding. Upon my reading, I could see a huge part of me in Bridget's disaster girl image and her clumsy, oh-god-why-me mishaps. The books helped me to laugh at myself which is not very ego flattering for a woman. Other than rambling the 'sorrows' of life in a personal diary (read scores!), Bridget and I share many other dilemmas.
1. Procrastination... Err can I not do this post later? Yes, rescheduling things till the point where nothing can be done about them happens to be our tragic flaw. Following a routine religiously is no less scary than anonymous death threats. We plan things well ahead of time, but in a strange, mysterious fashion the minutes just run and it becomes impossible to keep pace with them. People who always reach before time must therefore naturally lead sad and empty lives.
2. Social mishaps seem inevitable. We spill, we stammer and sometimes we even stumble. Innumerable chants of 'inner poise' fail us and eventually we land in a thick soup of public embarrassment. A crowd of unknown faces, more so if they belong to influential people, is often intimidating. Not that we don't know what we are thinking of, but when we utter the same thoughts they turn out to be in an alien tongue, a complete jargon. Be it crowd phobia or stage fright, social dos are surely nightmarish.
3. Weight, that persistent tormentor... Like Bridget, I too suffer from an abnormal obsession of weighty issues, practically starting the day slouched on a weight watcher. We love to crib about that agonising extra flab almost every single moment of the day without actually doing anything about it. Year after year, resolutions keep piling on gathering dust and neglect. We do manage to knock off a few lbs from here and there, but like the universe weight remains a constant in our lives.
4. Friends... Ah, how meaningless the world would be without them. Be it a major costume disaster or heart breaking turns of a wretched love affair, friends are the ultimate support system. Not only they lend you their ears and shoulders when you are down in the dumps, but these adorable angels also work hard solving life's puzzles for you. Whether one is 'Single' or 'Smug Married' (as Bridget categorises the world), whether it is sunny or raining miseries in one's life, friends are absolutely indispensable. Amen!

A singular tale

I often hated being an only child when I was a kid. I secretly wished for a younger sister, so that together we could weave innumerable tales of childhood and growing up. But alas, this was not to be! And to add to the woes of my solitary existence, my parents manipulated me into following a long list of dos and don'ts. They worked hard to inculcate the virtues of sharing and kindness in me so that I grew up with a humble head on my shoulders. Sometimes I grudged them for my so called single syndrome in spite of my mother's countless attempts in making me see the glamour of being the 'special' one. But it was very obvious that she never meant a single word of it even though she tried hard to be sincere and tactful at it. Her sternness would always give her away at the end. And I was to follow the wheel ruts again, and behave. But technically I was a single child and so I would anyhow retain certain single child traits. My juvenile thoughts often turned to how my parents wanted me to suffer alone, especially when my friends had siblings. While I befriended people effortlessly, I also loved cocooning up in a shell of my own. As I grew up, I realised I was a failure when it came to handle comparisons in a positive way. My father, who happens to be my worst critic, discouraged my complacence which was growing in leaps and bounds during my adolescence. I would get lost in an emotional maze and would take aeons to come out of it. Quite often I would get touchy about my 'situation', most often just so because teenage angst was always in vogue! Like any other belligerent teenager, I too loved to bask under a rebellious halo. Now, years later when I look back at my foolhardiness, I can't help laughing at myself!

The world has always been a little prejudiced regarding the only child. We are often stereotyped as spoiled, selfish and bratty. But this is just a twisted truth like the patchy outline of a story. Time and again I have been complimented by my close friends for having a flair for understanding people and their plight. Ah! God bless the friends! Contrary to the universal belief of we being apathetic, I have always been a concerned ear for my friends, no matter what the day or hour is. Strangely, the world loves to operate in contradictions. I have come across certain people who possess the temperament of a single child in spite of having siblings. But the trauma does not end here! When the "oh she's the only child" tag gets carried over to one's matrimonial realm, it results in more than one pair of raised eyebrows. The air swells with questions of adjustment, acceptance and tolerance. At such hapless times I have found it alarmingly difficult to fight these preconceived notions which are mostly groundless.

This eternal urge to make oneself understood and unscrambled sometimes takes away the cream from one's life. But as they say, certain things about the world hardly change. It's an old, stubborn place after all, strewn with age-old customs and dead conventions. And so the battle continues...