Distortion

The dress I bought for the office holiday party is pretty, but has the minor problem of starting halfway down my front. In order to maintain my demure Indian girl image I need to have the straps shortened and find a place nearby that proclaims ALTERATIONS in bright neon lights.

The store's run by Koreans and a small pudgy lady appears at the counter when I ding the bell for the fourth time. She listens to my request, examines the dress and names the same amount I paid for the dress. It's times like these when I feel most homesick.

Reluctantly, I acquiesce - the party's two days away and I don't trust my sartorial skills. She ushers me into a changing room and tells me to put on the dress. Once I have it on she bustles around me with a mouthful of pins and soon begins to make annoyed clicking sounds. I assume she's having trouble with the pins and wait for the clicks to abate. They don't. I notice then that she is not in fact messing with the pins but standing about a foot away from me, looking me up and down, still clicking.

Tentatively, I ask her if anything is wrong.

Yes, she says exasperatedly, your body! Your right shoulder, much beeger than left!

I look into the mirror I'm facing and search for signs of lopsidedness. My left eye is definitely smaller than the right, but apart from that everything else looks evenly distributed.

You play tennis? she asks me. I shake my head, no. What you do? she persists. I'm an analyst, I tell her, and when that doesn't register, I mime typing on a computer. That's about as strenuous as my physical activity gets.

Her eyes cloud over, she's slightly puzzled. A few seconds of thought later, they light up. But you use right hand more than left, no?

Doubtfully, I nod. I am right handed, but surely... That ees why! she crows triumphantly. And happy now that she has identified the cause of my asymmetry, she gathers up her pins and sends me back to change.

Across the Universe

At the beginning of our last semester in college, Plum and I hatched a plan. Ok, hatched is probably the wrong word because there was nothing nefarious about our plan. (Isn't that the only context in which hatched can be used?) We decided, and I'm sure we were neither the first nor will be the last, to watch a movie every single day of our last semester in college.

We didn't manage that of course, but we didn't do too badly either. I'd estimate I watched over a 100 movies that sem. Plum watched a whole lot more of course. She was the real plan driver. She produced the movies and the best movie watching atmosphere: an overpillowed bed and gooey chocolate bars. More than half of the movies I've seen in my life have been with Plum.

In our final sem, we only had classes in the morning and so every afternoon, we'd cycle back, grab lunch and enter the movie zone. Curtains drawn, pillows arranged, chocolate produced, we'd switch on the laptop and lean back. In the dim coolness of Plum's room, we'd forget we had three more months in the sweaty armpit of the world.

Plum was the one who carefully read reviews and downloaded movies. I never knew what to expect, so one day when the movie started, I was pleasantly surprised to hear Girl. Minutes later, it segued into Helter Skelter and I said wow, they have a Beatles soundtrack - this is going to be fun! I thought it would be something like I Am Sam, so it was another 15 minutes into the movie when I realized that it wasn't just a Beatles themed soundtrack, it was a Beatles themed movie.

Wow.

By the time we hit the crazy colours and suspended gravity of the bowling alley, Plum and I were tripping. You know what? I said, this is when we should smoke up. There was the briefest pause, and then Plum said, I actually have some right now.

I have tried several times to describe that afternoon and failed.

I have tried several times to replicate that afternoon and also failed.

Let me just say that it was the most phenomenally mind expandingly outrageously trippiest trip I've ever had. When Plum and I flew across the universe.

Why relationships fail...

Here's a graph of affection vs time.

T0 is when two people meet. T1 is sometime into the future when the relationship begins (this varies from couple to couple - it's known to coincide with T0 on occasion). T2 is when things are at their relative best. And T3? We'll get to T3.

Most relationships, not just the romantic, follow this curve. Acquaintance, followed by friendship peaking at T2. Then you notice some stuff you don't really like about a person. They can't take jokes on certain topics. Or they occasionally pretend to have read a book they haven't (annoys the shit out of me). Or their (surprisingly well disguised) tummies are bulgy. It could be anything.

And so your affection dips a little. It drops from Y2 to Y3. From there it remains relatively constant. There are minor ups and downs, but it stays pretty much at Y3. Friends can stay at Y3 for years, decades even.

Lovers can't. And so T3 is the beginning of the end.

The difference between Y2 and Y3 (for you engineers complaining about the lack of a scale on the graph) is close to negligible. On a long enough timeline, it would be imperceptible. The problem isn't how much smaller Y3 is than Y2. The problem is simply that it is smaller.

People expect love to be a constantly increasing function stretching out to infinity. Or at the most pessimistic, they expect it to peak and stay at that peak. The magnitude of Y3 ceases to matter. Y2 sloping down to Y3 tells them that they do not love as much as they once did and that scares them. Television, books and movies bombard us with those images of a constant, enduring love.

And so that little dip, that comparison to what once was, prompts us to end something warm and real and propels us back into the world in search of that illusive, elusive infinity.