I lost it again today….. my temper I mean. Why do people behave so disgustingly I do not understand…… or is it just me. Maybe partly!!! But it can’t really be fully. Anger and me are something of “choli daman ka saath” if you know what I mean. But of late I never lose my temper….. just very rarely. You really have to instigate me and get under my skin to get me to lose it….. even on my PMS days.

This time it had been simmering for sometime. My tailor….. no wrong…… A tailor…. she will never ever be mine. I had a perfectly good and sane tailor at home in Pune and this time I thought I should experiment with somebody closer to my Mumbai home, so I went to her. I had to get new clothes stitched for Durga Puja…… yeah right !!! the story starts two and half weeks prior to Durga Puja that is way back in September. I went and gave this woman lovely and very expensive materials (mostly silks) to make salwar kurta’s from.

I had travelled all the way back to Dadar to get the materials….. knowing me you should understand that it is truly a great deal of effort. So I choose the best materials and give it to her to stitch. I also have to mention that I have a problem with my weight….. I am fat….. my doctor has been perpetually after me to lose weight and she has put me on a diet allowing only chickpeas (roasted) and popcorn and anything with chickpeas flour as my diet…… basically a no-carb diet….. so I get really depressed when I put on weight (an observation of a very good friend. I always thought that I didn’t care enough to waste any emotion on that).

Anyways coming to the main issue I gave her the dress material way back in the start of September and when she gave it to me…… I could not even put my head inside it…… another dress had no shoulders and would get stuck on the shoulder….. They were almost three to four inches tighter….. and I could not have put on so much weight in the 15 days that she took to make the dresses…….. but she did hint at that. In short…… she had ruined all my four dresses.

For Puja I wore only the dresses that I had brought ready-to-wear and jeans. Come Diwali and my birthday also I could not wear anything new as is customary. I had given the dresses to have them altered (joke….. remade is more like it) and she would not return them to me. Last week after a lot of coaxing she gave me the dresses after three months. I had decided that I will not lose my temper with her and very gently kept going to her to give them to me….. I thought that following Gandhiji’s Ahimsa would help me…… but nah!!! last week I lost it when the lady actually grinned at me and told me that “not yet ready”.

All my training at anger management went out of the door and I gave the lady a look and told her if she did not give me my dresses and walked out!!! Just that much…… and she gave it to me within a day……… no they are not beautiful as I had conceptualised them to be but they are OK !!! they are a disaster actually but OK at least I don’t have to go back to her again. I had promised myself that I would not lose my temper again this year…… but I did it and since then it is as though the anger bottle has just popped and it wont stop…… today again I lost it with the guy I took my bike from. He wouldn’t give me the registration card for the bike. I cant drive the bike without that. Today after again shoving Mahatma Gandhi away I gave the guy good and he immediately gave me my card….. it was very much with him!!!!

Is it that Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of non-violence is not working at all or like Munna Bhai do I have to send flowers to the guys to remind them. Flowers don’t come cheap and the only flowers that I can think of when I think of these people are cactuses with lots and lots and lots of thorns. Guess I am not good at the Gandhi principle after all. My family is renowned for it’s temper….. you should come to my family and see them in action…… beats Ekta Kapoor’s soaps any day…… specially at Kolkatta….. I was so surprised to see all of them…… they were all like pods from the same pea…… I was so much at home there….. satisfied!!! nobody to judge me etc etc…. With normal people they just cant handle the fact that we are different…… One person on one of outbursts tells me “I don’t know you”, man that had hurt sooooo much that day!!! Still hurts when I think about it……. but then that is me!!! I remember Edmund Bertram say the same thing to the vamp in Mansfield Park by Jane Austen…. He said “I don’t know you…… Perhaps the person I know is merely a figment of my imagination”….. when the person was saying the above to me it was like a case of deja vu!!! Most probably when you are confronted with such situations/people the thing that you want to do is RUN/BHAG……. Convincing the likes of these people is impossible who like Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice (another Jane Austen) would say “My good opinion once lost is lost forever”…… OK melodrama apart I am a sucker for these classic novels and have read almost all of Jane Austen’s novels…… Hubby hates it!!!!

Getting angry is no fun. It takes away all the energy that you have. It is very draining. Nobody really wants to get angry and people who do are not sane!!! Mostly when I have a bout of anger it is usually (85%) related to PMS….. that is the time I really cant control the anger and lash out. Anger is a very negative emotion….. it is strong but also very bad. It takes aways your sanity. It is a kind of madness. Anybody is better-off without it. I am not going to start preaching nor am I glorifying anything. All I want to say is that anger is associated with a kind of helplessness and a feeling of being wronged….. I think people should look beyond the facade…… but then if people really care they do look beyond things…… if they don’t….. they don’t care enough and you are better off without them…… and trying to gain acceptability from these people is impossible….. my ma always understood me!!! Rajdeep does too!!! Both protect me….. they understand the helplessness that leads me to lose control….. thank God for that !!! Just one thing people…… be a little tolerant to those who have anger management problems……. unless they are violent…… listen to them…… they will either have misunderstood you or you have misunderstood them….. open dialogue……. your problems will come to naught!!!!

Hate anger……. not the angry!!!!