Harming, not charming

How do you deal with someone who, you thought, was an integral part of your life, and is now turning out to be vicious and unbearable?

I have a confession to make: I love watching psychos-laden films where the heroine is stalking the hero - or the other way around, hero stalking heroine - in the name of love. She loves him so much that she will do anything, anything (get the drift?), for him. Like in Play Misty For Me, where he (Clint Eastwood) is a weather-beaten RJ at a local station in a sleepy town somewhere on the West Coast, and she (Jessica Walter) is a listener who keeps requesting him to play the jazz standard Misty. Then they meet, fall in love (at least she does - in fact, she's fallen for him ever since she'd heard his voice, which was why she kept calling in, asking him to play Misty) and have the classic 'toxic' relationship: she's so possessive she's almost psycho (of course, by the end of the film, she's full-blown psycho), and he and she have this crazy volatile thing going that gets spookier and spookier. At times, in real life, you encounter strange people - they may be from your own family even (a parent, a sibling) or your circle of friends - they don't have to be a romantic partner (despite Play Misty For Me) - and forge ties; you don't quite get attuned with the toxicity element till it's too far gone. What happens then? How do you deal with someone who, you thought, was an integral part of your life, and is now turning out to be vicious and unbearable? Find out what some real-life people dealt with "toxic relationships" in our feature 'Are you in a toxic relationship?'
Hypnotherapy is one of the most popular therapies in the West for combating stress and reinforcing validation. It speaks to the subconscious, and paves a way for a calmer you. We speak to a Dubai-based therapist for a 101 on what exactly goes on during a session. On a different note, a truckload of food trucks will be rolling into Dubai in a few months' time. This means that grabbing food on the go will have an entirely new connotation soon. Confused? Read up. And who knows, you could be the owner of a foodie truck in the not-too-distant future!
In Travel, we take you to Laos, where, apparently, you have the best flea markets in the world, and robust coffee served with condensed milk and powder milk. Bollywood looks at the first-time cast of Student of the Year and dissects how the three survived to call it a day - despite the odds. A tryst with Bob Dylan. All this and much more.
Enjoy reading wknd. and have a great weekend!
Sushmita Bose
Editor