Landfill

I'm twenty five. Single. Recently started graduate school. Someone asked me 'So what next?'. Frankly I dont know. As far as I'm concerned I have a lot on my plate right now. I'm two months away from completing an entire year abroad and a lot has changed since I moved here in August last year. A lot of time was invested in settling down, getting to know more people, picking up the common parlance, the accent, the way of life, in brief, carving out my own little niche. Now I have a weekly time table, the confines of which make me feel comfortable and at peace. The roads don't seem new anymore; I know what to expect round the bend up ahead. I know what to bring to a 'barbeque' and what makes for an evening of healthy 'American' small talk. Time is no longer my biggest enemy. I almost always have something to do around the house, and my phonebook does not stare blankly at me anymore. Books, movies and Skype take up the few hours of leisure. Reassuring monotony of everyday life. 

Someone said, 'But don't you feel incomplete?'. Not Really. What more would I want? 'You need a girl. A relationship.' Oh right. I almost forgot that I need a relationship to feel complete. Someone who knows me will say I'm being sarcastic. Truth be told, a little. But just for the sake of humour. I'm not opposed to the idea. Absolutely not. But how do you 'get hold' of a relationship? Do you go to a relationship doctor and 'get fixed'? Maybe you go to the nearest store where they sell 'relationships' for two dollars a piece. The nearest store is probably miles away from my apartment. Forgive me. I'm lazy. But that's what you need to do to get into a relationship in the quest of completing your life, I'm told. You need to go scouting for the perfect girl/boy in your spare time, cos what you have is definitely not enough. Even if you feel it is, you're either in denial or there's something severely wrong with you. 

Some of what I just said might be gross exaggerations, a product of my constant need to be over-the-top, but there is more than a grain of truth beneath it all. Everywhere I look, all I can see is a bunch of unhappy people (not the ones worried about the incessant gurgling hunger cries rising from their stomach, mind you) trying to fill that 'void' in their lives, struggling to reach for the stars in the search for happiness. Their friends, family, career; nothing seem to be enough any more. They want more. They want life to get better. And this 'relationship' is supposed to hold the key to all doors of happiness. So they set out in search of their perfect complement. This search ends up in a series of dates, random hook ups, facebook stalking, friends patching friends up with their friends' friends, until the world looks like an endless blurred stretch. Meeting people of the opposite sex (or same, whatever the preference) is no longer about discovery, about marvel, about developing new perspectives. Its merely a route to quench this undying and constant need to feel whole. For the more 'forward' people, it almost always involves a lot of mindless sex with people they often fail to remember names of, the next morning. For the less outgoing, it involves fancy dinners and hours in the mall staring at the same shops selling the same designer clothes and eating ice-cream off of the same cone (for my aversion towards unnecessary, bordering on corny displays of affection in public places I reserve a later post). I don't judge people for doing these things if it is for the right reasons or for no reason at all. But to do them with the often obvious agenda of finding the 'right person' makes me more than a little queasy. Call me archaic, but my idea of a relationship is appealing only till its spontaneous, not engineered. And the constant awareness of the ticking clock racing against the arduously worked out school-college-job-marriage-bachhe     timeline makes it even worse. The 'best-selling' authors (aren't they all?!) who write 'self-help' books about 'How to meet your perfect partner in 7 days' should be thrown in a ring and fed to starving lions and a pack of hyenas to clean up the ribs. They're obvious target audience is the space-age ATM-addicted time-deprived (rapidly aging) youth of today who are spoilt for choice but don't have the brains or the patience to make the right one. In the quest of not being alone, they're inching towards isolation every single step of the way. I'm not sure where we're headed with this. Not to a world of healthy 'relationships' I'm certain. 'You'll end up alone this way', is what I'm told. Well Newsflash. So will you! And since I am an infinitely more interesting person than you, I'm sure I'll have a blast. Alone, happy and complete.