Pearls of wisdom that haunt me till today

My mother- Fall in love with a clean looking guy.

She said so at a wedding.

THAT groom, she said to me, is not ugly. He is clean looking. She took a large sip of vodka and sighed, Beta, fall in love with a clean looking guy.

I didn’t know what she meant by this statement back then anymore than I do now. I think it had something to do with the kind of boys I was falling in love with at that time. My mother’s standards always intimidated me, you see, because they were so much higher than mine. And everyone else’s. They did not just include the predictable disapproval of hippies and crazies.

Moreover, her admirable standards belittled and trifled love. They were MONUMENTAL and could not possibly be bothered by stupid things like that. Fall in love with a clean looking guy, she repeated through all those years. Or better still scout him out, marry him and then fall in love by and by.

I am in love again, but I’m afraid she might see it as a sign of weakness.

My father- Never ride at the back of motorcycles

After some mighty scarring in his teenage years, my father followed the old-age idiom of prevention is better than cure and gave me my life’s most important advice. “Paro”, and I cringe as I quote this verbatim but I’m a fan of authenticity, “you’re a big girl now, going to live alone in Chennai. Sweetheart, you gotta keep your head straight and focus. Eyes on the prize like Arjuna would have said in Mahabharatha. No alcohol and cigarettes. (No drugs, he would have also said but I doubt he thinks I know of their existence).

And please, PLEASE, never sit at the back of motorcycles.”

And so, the thought of doing something as outrageous as THAT, still makes my knees quake.

A friend, “Bitches bite girls in short skirts.”

I know now, that the words were said in jest and possible snootiness. Yes, I am well aware of that NOW. But that does not mean that every time I wear a short skirt I don’t look around at the slightest sound, grabbing my skirt with both hands and yanking it down considerably so that the bitches don’t maul my legs.