So I just read this article by [Redacted] Guy (yes, that’s what he calls himself) about the ten things he wishes his dates wouldn’t do while out with him. He asks for suggestions, so here are mine. Considering it’s a long list (List! List! My favorite word again!), I put it up as a post. [...]

Maybe you aren’t a violent would-be sex offender.
Maybe you are a nice guy with a libido.
Maybe you actually do respect women.
Maybe you can see my brains and my spirit in addition to my body too.
Maybe you can be a real friend.
Maybe you’ll stand by me longer than a night or two.
But consider this,
I live in [...]

A conversation with a wise girlfriend you’re seeing after awhile can be food for thought. As you exchange titbits of information about news and the then and the now, there’s realization and growing up that happens in those very moments.
I mentioned a name, quite unconsciously with reference to something else. She picked it up and [...]

I hate it when writers pull stunts like that, making a book sound like something else in its title. I only bought it because the blurb described it as the male ‘Sex And The City’.

This is one of the most important lessons I’ve learnt about people and relationships and for it, I owe a big debt of gratitude to E Vestigio. She said,
Closure is your own problem. Nobody, whoever they are, wherever they are, no matter what they mean to you is obliged to give you closure. And it [...]

Being the woman taking charge means one is playing an unusual role and there’s ample scope to be misunderstood

I wasn’t a pretty child. Oily skin, stringy hair, gangly long limbs. Then puberty came along, and like a fairy godmother, bestowed me with a complete makeover. Suddenly I had the passport into BabeLand.
That was an eon ago, long enough anyway to make me wonder whether the fairy godmother was really a wicked witch in [...]

I think I’ve forgotten how to fall in love. When I was a kid, I took Judo lessons where they taught us to fall correctly so that we wouldn’t hurt ourselves. Tossing and throwing were a part of Judo and hence also being tossed and falling. I learnt to yank a guy forward and [...]

A friend asked me yesterday how I would feel if my boyfriend took off on a trip with my best friend. I thought for a bit and said,
I trust my best friend implicitly so I think I’d feel a lot safer if my boyfriend went with her rather than with some other woman.
The question [...]

Some months ago, I received an email from one of my readers. She was a lesbian lady who had come across one of my posts on Gaysi and wanted to tell me that she appreciated my support for the gay community. I wrote back thanking her and telling her how some of my close friends [...]

I was watching ‘Wake Up Sid’ yesterday (ah, the joys of being master of your own time…a Monday afternoon movie with a friend!) when this thought occurred to me. I’ve complained long and hard about the Indian man being a perpetual mama’s boy. I also believe that this ingrained emasculated dependency comes from scores and [...]

Hell, I feel like ‘It’s complicated’ applies even to my career. We are after all, a generation of options and I am nothing, if not a hard-nosed seeker of the best there available to me.

Let’s be honest. Given a choice, I would never pick a long distance relationship. I mean, what’s the point? Like DeePad says in Love Aaj Kal,
Kya fayda? Relationship ke jo achche things hai woh nahin.
(What’s the point? The benefits of a relationship aren’t present.)
And yet, I guess long distance relationships do happen. No one gets [...]

For the first time ever,
in my conscious memory,
none of my dreams
or things that I look forward to
in the future with anticipation
have anything to do with a man.
Isn’t that something? Even if it did take me three decades to get to it.
It was so worth it.

I am really liking this. There is a new kind of man up and about and he makes me re-think all my notions about men and relationships. There was of course the spectacular younger man that I had the good fortune to be with for a brief while. And there are my other friends and acquaintances. [...]

What lies behind protectiveness?
Would you beat up someone for me? If I got hurt, would you want revenge? And why?
Nothing you do or say can change what has happened.
There is a certain helplessness about not being able to change the past. I can feel it and I imagine you feel it too. Is it because [...]

In my 10-year-dating life, I’ve seen a number of different kinds of relationships and dates, which have given rise to the Character Sketches. Now I come up against yet another one – The Married Man.
First and foremost, I’d like to say that I have a lot of respect for the institution of marriage, and indeed, [...]

Yesterday I went out with a friend whom I haven’t seen or spoken to in eight years. This is one of my memorable Facebook moments since that’s how I found him after all these years. It was an odd, intense friendship back then and for various reasons, we just lost touch. How wonderful it was [...]

So I’ve done the ‘date a younger guy’ thing too. Don’t I sound deliciously cold about it?
A once young nineteen-year-old me, on hearing about a friend’s new boyfriend exclaimed,
But he’s younger than you!
to which I got a succint, if somewhat stiff, “So?”
Well, I don’t know. I guess I was just one of those people who [...]

I love this song. Unabashedly. I wish I could dance outside in the rain singing this very song. In fact, maybe I will.
I was talking to a friend about (what else?) a guy we both knew. Nothing much to tell except that he was cute and thought I was too. Attraction is a good thing, [...]