Streak of Madness

I have a confession to make. I have been suffering from chronic Temporaryinsanitis for a few years now.

If you are a woman past 35, or have ever googled 'perimenopause', the chances are that you are familiar with this condition. It starts with sudden low, weepy, self-questioning phases that come over us from time to time, when we set up a Spanish Inquisition in our own head to give the self a thorough grilling...  'Where is my life going?' 'Does anybody really love me?' 'Will my friends stand by me in bad times?' 'Is there life after menopause?' and so on and on...

There are only a few known remediations that are found to ameliorate the condition - an intensive shopping session,  a makeover, and an eating-drinking binge are top three in my list. Sometimes, a good howling session works too, though not as well as the others!

So, as I was saying, last week I was struck by a bout of the disease. The preferred remedy I usually adopt is shopping. But having truckloads of clothes and bags from previous episodes of Temporaryinsanitis in my cupboard, and a mindload of guilt to match, I decided to change the line of treatment this time.

The remedial measure I opted for was a makeover. I went and got my hair streaked. After a 3-hour long session at the parlour (my hair put up a spirited resistance to the invasion by alien forces), I looked at the mirror. And my heart sank... it was clearly a disaster. But the Disaster-Management team at the parlour got into action - they gathered around, put on their best beaming faces at me, and informed me that it was looking wonderful, and I was sure to get many compliments.

I had my doubts, for obvious reasons. I reached home and tried to slink in unnoticed, but my daughter and ma-in-law spotted me at once... and gasped. 'Bilkul bekaar!' was my daughter's verdict. Worse was to follow. My teenaged son (who we think fell into a cauldron of caustic soda when he was a baby) gave me ONE stony stare, and said, "Why exactly have you smeared your hair with shit?"

Subtle!

That was not the end either. He inspected me a bit more and quipped, 'You look like a Wannabe Socialite." Unfortunately, this hit the nail right on the head (quite literally)... the shade I had selected from the shade card was supposed to say 'Funky, and yet Elegant' - a kind of grey-blonde. But on my hair, it turned out a sort of orangish gold. Most DEFINITELY 'Wannabe Socialite'! 

Since then I have been bestowed with other epithets - 'Punju Aunty' being one of the more polite ones I can bring myself to share in public. My ma-in-law, being the genteel lady that she is, desisted from making caustic comments. She only contented herself by making remarks like, "Tch tch, you look just terrible!' - roughly every 20 minutes or so.

Sudarshan was the only exception.  "You look pretty. You really do!" he said. But that is just 28 years of conditioning. Why, now he even believes what he is saying to me... sometimes, at least! ;)

And now you understand why I call the condition Temporaryinsanitis. The so-called 'remedy' too is in reality a part of the disease! Just think. All that shopping, bingeing and makeovers business is supposed to make you feel good,  and fortify you to answer those tough existential questions. But what do they actually do? I mean, come on! The answer to 'Where is my life going?' is probably 'Down the drain!' - if you insist on wasting hard-earned money on useless articles of clothing or footwear. And let's face it - if you really are a middle-aged hag whom nobody loves, being a middle-aged hag with orange streaked hair is SURELY not going to change things!

And yet, I know the next time 'the feeling' creeps up on me again, I'll again go and buy myself a huge red crocodile embossed bag, or stuff my face with half a dozen gooey chocolate doughnuts, or try a new facial that would probably cause a reaction and make my face look like it was attacked by an army of exceptionally hungry mosquitoes with poisoned probosces...

For such is life, dearie, being a peri-menopausal woman. An elderly Homeopathic practitioner I used to visit had once remarked, "You see, it is very easy to treat men. But women are different. They have HORMONES!" 

So we do... and on goes life. And as if the havoc wruck by overzealous hormones wasn't enough, there's the stress of the urban lifestyle and the pressures of an increasingly consumeristic society to boot. Temporaryinsanitis is here to stay.

And I don't see a vaccine anywhere on the horizon...