The Good, The Bad, The Beautiful

It is officially over. The strike, not the marriage (phew!). During all this time, while I was playing, or pretending to play, good wife and housekeeper, not one incident stirred me enough to write something good. All the time spent in experiments with Italian cooking and makeup (no, not just Italian makeup), movie marathons, shopping sprees, entertaining, and trying to roll a perfectly round chapatti, left no room for the bad girl. The girl who lived her life in small apartments and not to forget quite an expensive hellhole in Bombay, just so she could live alone. The girl whose weekends were a haze of vodka in the evenings and Big Macs the next afternoon. The girl who freaked out enough to plan an entire day at the salon when her best friend announced her engagement, and the girl who used her kitchen for a bar.

OK, maybe it wasn’t all the bad girl. But it wasn’t completely good either. Good girls don’t order takeout everyday. Good girls don’t stay out till morning. Good girls get married at a certain age and then move to wherever their husbands’ careers take them. Good girls cook dinners and keep them warm till the husbands come home. Good girls make friends with their husbands’ friends no matter how infinitely annoying they may be, give up their entire lives, and are nice to the husbands’ bosses. They look nice when out with their man, have impeccable taste while decorating, and oh, good girls don’t smoke. Or drink more than one cocktail, for that matter. But mostly it is wine. White.

All said and done, yes, literally, because both avatars have been tried, they cannot coexist. The bad girl is reckless and rebellious and guilt-free and has no one to think of herself. The good girl is on a perpetual guilt-trip, because every decision affects someone other than her. And as much as I would like to blame it on the husband or the job, these girls have nothing to do with the presence of, or lack of, either element. Being good is considering others, being bad is considering yourself. Or the other way round. Being good is denying most pleasures, being bad is indulging them. Being good is 25 going on 40, being bad is 25 forever. And something I just cannot shake off, I have had more stuff to write about as the bad girl. The good girl comes home from work and reads the newspaper while she starts dinner, because she didn’t read it in the morning because she was making the bed and the breakfast. The bad girl comes home, kicks off her shoes, lights the one cigarette of the day (hey she can be good too, she has almost quit!), fixes herself a drink, and switches on VH1. Dinner can sod itself. (I’m reading too much British chicklit). The good girl lives for everyone’s approval. The bad girl doesn’t care.

But being both is the inner tug-of-war. The good girl knows she can’t give in to her instincts all the time. The bad girl tells her to take a hike. Maybe that is the lifelong challenge. Maybe, that is the beauty of it all, of having choices, of being whoever she wants to be, of being all that she wants to be. The good, the bad, and the beautiful.

The bad girl is up right now, at 3.30 in the morning, because she just had to write this down. The good girl is hopping mad, telling her she so won’t be up in time tomorrow. Bite me, sistah.