Warning: This post drifts aimlessly

A couple of days back I stayed awake past midnight to watch Barack Obama’s G20 press conference. Manmohan Singh had just finished a superb press conference when Obama came on. He spoke with panache about the steps the G20 leaders had agreed to take to deal with the monetary crisis. But the highlight of the press meet came when that corresspondent from India was given a chance to question Obama. 

‘Thank you, sir, for choosing me. This is Simrat from the Times of India‘, she started. My heart skipped a beat. ‘Who the hell is this beautiful woman’, I was thinking. I have been watching Times Now ever since it launched but had never seen her before. It reminded me of a statement I had made to a friend a long time ago- ‘It’s tough to find a beautiful journalist‘. I was proved wrong. 

It also reminded me of those several discussions I had had with friends about the right girl to get married to. And after every discussion, I used to conclude that the best girl you can ever marry is a journalist. Why? Because you could talk to her about anything, anything in the world and expect her to know about it and comment on it.

I had this very brief online friendship with a journalist a few years ago. She was born in the same year and month as me and was exceptionally brilliant. In those days, I had developed a mad passion for Latin American history. I used to spend nights on wikipedia and other sites reading the hisory of every Latin American country. One day, I mentioned to her about this mad passion of mine, and she immediately said that she once had the same interest. And so, we began talking about it every night. I remember our discussions going past midnight into the wee hours of the morning. She had read every book of Che Guevera. She knew everything about Eva Peron, Fidel Castro and Pinochet. It was amazing how I had found a girl with whom I could have really interesting conversations.

All my life I had only met girls who always complained about men- how men are so dominating, how men are cheaply behaved etc, but never found any girl having a desire of doing something that could enable them to stand up to men. So this girl was a welcome change. I could talk to her about cricket, about technology and about psychology. I was very interested in Freudian theories at the time and she, being a psychology major, was very obliging to teach me every concept she had learnt in psychology. We discussed politics all the time. She was a big empathizer of the left, and I was then pretty indifferent to them.We had our first fights there- while discussing politics. Fights turned into ego clashes after some time and slowly, it turned to scorn. When I look back at it, it feels really funny how fights could emanate out of nowhere. And one fine day, both of us didn’t want to talk to each other. So there it all ended. I still have her number and we talk even now, but they have become rare. And we now make sure that the conversations are restricted to only what we are doing in our lives right now.   

Moral of the story: Journalists are interesting when you want to sit and talk all day and all night, but when you want to live with them and share your life with them, it can get very uncomfortable. And since most of these journalists are born with ideologies of their own, it can get very tough. 

When I began writing this, I wanted to write about the G20 summit. It then changed to Simrat and then it turned to my story. I am debating if I want to publish this or just put this among the numerous unpublished posts lying in the ‘drafts’ folder. But now, I have decided to post this one, and by doing so open a new avenue to post more such obscure posts. How much more simple can life get!