tl;dr

I do not mean this to be a maudlin or heart wrenching account of anything. Writing makes me feel better is all. The month before I was due to move to b’lore for 6 months, it was all dreamy. When I think of that I feel a little repulsed by the innocent naïveté of a freshly done with college 21 year old. The first day I came was marred a little, but only a little because of the dull morning that followed and ambiguity in one very important sphere of being here. The next day began and it was still just alright, nothing too great or too bad. That ambiguity that I ambiguously pointed out persisted and bothered my neatly organized mind. It was a thorn in my side and it annoyed me so. Still I seemingly held out, for that’s what “held out” meant to me then. Another day at office, I started accepting things and well, took them in my stride and tried to move on. Make new friends, talk to new people, you know, the supposed usual. Turns out lots of subtle and minor conniving went on, perhaps conniving is overstating it. It was a little twisted but well, isn’t everything, I guess. A little bit of hope arose only to be smashed down in a billion gazillion pieces, repeat, repeat the repeat. This went on for a lot of days and one of the major things I could feel was utter and complete loneliness. At that time, it seemed like a pitch black abyss where you’re scared of the monster but deep down inside you know even the monster has taken a hike and would not like to grace you with its fearful and terrible company. Little things reminded me of home; my mother’s ringtone suddenly playing on someone’s phone in my office (still chokes me up a little), switching on the light when you come back to an empty house. I didn’t even try to eat at the dining table the first few days because sitting there alone felt horrible. The worst part ironically was talking to friends and family over phone because I had to relate the weary details of the day, of misguided ambulatory trips and cheating landlords. This will probably, no definitely, make me look like a porcelain doll, but the one routine that held was having breakdowns (mental, emotional, take your pick) every day after coming back home for different reasons. Then there was the matter of physical fitness which I was absolutely lacking. Talking of lack of things, suddenly I found myself constantly on the ola app which continued to burn holes in my pocket very lavishly. Commute, the bitch. I began looking for alternative bus routes, which proved to be as hard as looking for flats for some reason. I didn’t know the way back to my house although I ACTIVELY tried to understand the routes. There were so many and so confusing that I often mixed up a couple and ended up at roadblocks. And oh the traffic and this weird dust that never failed to get my throat all scratchy when I already had a major persisting cold. Maybe I should jot down the things that I didn’t like about this city. IT WAS NOT MUMBAI would be topping my list. The weather was horribly cold, the commute even worse. My mood wasn’t improving and one day I ended up yelling at a taxiwalla over phone who refused to pick me up at silk board. Yesterday, 2 autowallas and 2 taxiwallas rejected me and I didn’t flinch. A tip for those forlorn lovers, if you want to understand true rejection, call an ola cab when you are stranded in a strange city completely out of your wits and hungry and cold as a food-and-heat-loving lady on karvachauth day. People finally made a plan the coming weekend to go out and “chill”. I was skeptical but, well, what the hell, I went. Was horrible. We ‘bar hopped’, I had a blaring headache was hungry and it had gotten excessively cold. It was absolutely horrible. My father had come here for the weekend and was going to help me sort my stuff out. The original plan was to just chill around because my stuff was SUPPOSED to be sorted out by the time he came. We had fun times. Went around the place and he showed me places we used to go when I was a kid. He cleaned my living space and basically started my kitchen, so to speak. Basically made my life easier by a ton. He left. Then came the crushing weight of homesickness and loneliness crashing down like a billion-gallon ice-cold waterfall right on my head. I think I had become more or less immune to any possible emotion by then so I didn’t react to another piece of news which would’ve been horribly disappointing otherwise. Apparently I “Pushed through”, or something on those lines, because these are just minor, stupid problems compared to the ones people face every day of their entire lives. I had friends getting annoyed with me for whining too much, much like I was. Throughout this period, what was a little too overwhelming was the utter loneliness that I dealt with everyday. Family comfort was there but that was it, they couldn’t do much more than talk to me. It still rattles me how bad I felt, I was supposed to be strong. Let’s be clear, this is not something I hold against Bangalore at all, I spent the first 6 years of my life here, one of my very close friends comes from the city. How can I not like it? It’s just that what happened was maybe just my luck, or bad timing, or whatever. The bottom line is that I think I understand what happened. None of the situations were as bad as they seemed that time, I had imposed my inner chaos onto the world and said that the world is fucked up, I am completely fine. It’s a miracle how much 2 days of getting your life back in order and do for your mental state. So anyway, things seem alright, decent too. Things are falling back into place. Things are happening. Things are nice. Things are alright.

Honesty is the best policy (just another rant)

In the bodies writhing amidst ostentatious, smelly, firecrackery smoke;  in the kid clicking a selfie with another bunch of kids in the food court; in this girl on the next table shrieking over  god knows what with the most stupid, attention seeking  expression on her face that I have seen in a while, there is just one thing common. Pretense. Somehow the youth of today can’t seem to get over themselves. Failed a class? Well, who cares. Tripped a handicap lately? Maybe, I wasn’t looking. Put someone down because your ego couldn’t handle it?

This monologue is not just a piece of bigotry, it is also condescending and demeaning in case these people missed it. That is assuming some of them read, you know, the smart ones. It has been a long long time since I wrote anything thinking well, live and let live. Told myself, being cynical all the time ain’t that good for the general outlook towards life. But WOW. I think I can safely say this country is done producing the Tagores and Kalams for a while. The challenge for women these days is seemingly the infamous thigh-gap situation, or this contouring business. I don’t know what is going on in the boy sphere. Is it misunderstanding and smashing  feminism? Or is it having high beauty standards that they need to live up to. I don’t know. Understand this, I am not disrespecting anyone who has had a meaningful conversation or an honest moment lately. Just all the other ones. Gender doesn’t even begin to matter here. It’s about mental capacity and how people are using it. I feel physically sick when I see pretentiousness ; acting like how is socially deemed cool, bragging about the sloppiness in day to day life, being obnoxious, not being conscious of the human presence that is seemingly invisible to your quirks. Again, I don’t mean to impose opinions on people. Just wish that this might hurt/offend someone enough to start thinking. To ACTUALLY start thinking about the things that do matter. This is not a question of personal choice. The argument that ‘things that matter to me might not matter to you’ is fucking redundant because COME ON I am fairly positive uploading a picture on facebook saying ‘#FCFUN’ is the new translation of ‘lookie here, although I think I'm smart, all I want to do is say that I matter because some people agreed to click a demeaning picture with my sorry self’ and it doesn’t matter. AT ALL.

But YOU matter, little kid. You need to understand that your worth is so much more than people, so much more than getting noticed for being loud. Someday you are going to wake up without friends. Someday you will be invisible to that girl/boy you like. Someday you might feel pudgy for having eaten unhealthy. But all that is OK because none of that is going to define your self-worth. None of that will dictate how you will be treated in society. The only person who will do that is YOU. If you disrespect yourself, people (like me) are going to disrespect you and someday feel so nauseous about your pretentiousness that they will have to write about you. Please don’t be that kid, be honest with yourself, do something real. Run, love, get your heart broken, FEEL something, talk about curing diseases, dance, swim, anything. This sounds preachy, but it is just that. We were taught ‘honesty is the best policy’ in moral science for the single reason of it being the statement to live by.

Open your eyes and realise that you are beautiful, man and woman alike.

The Sea

It's the sea,
Oh beautiful, soothing sea
endearing and imploring
Surrenders self to you,
And caresses you like a lover.

It's the sea,
Oh raging sea,
Invites you and repels you.
Takes you with violent love
and sets you free.

It's the sea
It moves like a maiden,
Compells you to inch closer.
A touch, a single touch perhaps..
There. You are doomed.

It's the sea,
That has come to swallow you
To absorb you and all your wins
All your losses and all your loves
All your memories are his' now.

And so are you. 

Wail of the Dying Jay

Azure as sea and white as pearl,

He lay dying on the grass.

Hurt, hunted and near death.

He cried and wailed,

For it was pain,

That shooting pain,

That caged him in his mortal cage.

It trapped his holy soul,

Pierced his heart,

And stole his grace.

He had flown high,

In his time,

Above the wales,

And above the streams.

He had tasted the skies,

And kissed the waters.

He had loved and lain,

With a cerulean maid, vain.

Now lay he, a crumpled mess.

With a broken wing,

And a broken will,

Proud and helpless.

He knew it was time.

Time to give up, and to perish.

One last time he wailed.

It resounded of frayed hope,

And battered senses.

Hurt, hunted and near death,

He lay dying on the grass.

Azure as sea and white as pearl.

Anna's Lullaby

There once was a man who lived in the shadows. He wore darkness like a blanket and found solace in being aloof.He had calloused feet and a calloused heart. He then met a little girl by the name of Anna. She was like balm to his pain.

He taught her how to dance, for in his prime, he was a dancer himself. They would dance for hours till the man could no more bear to stand. He then would watch Anna dance. After they called it a day, the girl would sing him to sleep everyday till she could see his eyes flutter in sleep reacting to his colourful dreams.

Days passed, months flew by as they danced together. One day after singing him to sleep, she slept and never woke up. The man's heart broke as his cries would keep the dogs awake at night. He was old, infirm and weak. He counted days on his fingers praying for his suffering to stop along with his broken heart. 

One day when he sat burning his last lamp of oil, he found, in the folds of his sheet, the shoes that anna wore while they danced.For a moment as he held the shoes, he felt like he could feel Anna herself. 

He felt a sense of peace settle over him as he stopped longing for death.He knew it was his time now, he knew who would be there to greet him as he neared The Light. With this realisation, he pressed her shoes to his heart and sang Anna's lullby. That was the last night that he slept in pain. With the song, he plunged into a deep, peaceful slumber never to wake again.

Pieces of Burnt Paper

I write me, my time

On a flimsy sheet with faded ink,

In a dark room by a flicker of the flame.

In hopes of manifesting,

Realizing myself.

In me I see a girl.

A little girl with long hair,

Dancing about like a painter’s stroke,

On a yellowed canvas.

In a blue frock and plaited hair

And a basket of roses

She runs across the field,

Chases a sparkle, a dream.

Winds come and strike her down,

Rain becomes her glory.

Her flowers wither and fall,

And with time, so does she.

This I write, I write in regret.

It weighs me down like a thousand chains.

I committed a crime that cost my life, 

I let the girl go.

In her place I find now,

A hardened speck in a paper town,

A flat town in a disc world.

With linear souls and pointless emotion

And a fire that doesn’t burn.

With contagious insanity and desire.

This world deceives her,

Blinds and pushes her.

A fire starts on one end,

reaches the other.

In its wake, leaves ashes that are her.

Ashes blow around This World,

defeated but free, unwavering.

This world, but, crumbles around her,

Like pieces of burnt paper.

Guess who's back.

Sleepless. Eyes wide open. Nose equally blocked. No luggage. Bah.

Well this was a bummer.

To tell you the truth i had expected a bit more. From myself really. But then hey, im sick. Coming here this time doesn't seem like the woohoo scenario I imagined. Infact its quite the opposite. You're sitting in class going .. nuclear. Fuel. Combustion. Hmm combustion. Human bodies do that. Necrosis fascitis. Ugly pictures. To BAM energy and why? Because everything is clawing at you and constantly whispering in your ear, 'have to have to do good'. It was pretty annoying really. I had expected some sort of raw hungry-for-knowledge enthusiasm which turned out to be more like eh-nose-icantbreathe-mylungsareabouttoexplode-blekhiasm. The only thing that has found perfect space is that absolutely heavenly bookshelf which solves my bedside table problem. Really, my bedside earlier was actually the marble floor.

Whats more, after two years of experience I forget to carry that infernal umbrella around and ended up drenched and cold with some really smart people playing volleyball on the basketball court with a football rather expertly. I realise suddenly that I dont really have a place to eat apart from the greasy and spicy restaurants which, may I point out, I'd usually love. Ah, what's better than a piping hot, overspiced, bread pakoda in the chilling rain. And then there's the ginormous realisation of tomorrow's queue hassle for the satanic ritual of paying the fee.

This day couldn't be better. Ah sweet Manipal.

On a rather forcibly optimistic note, tomorrow is a new day. Full of getting things done and setting agendas.

Oh who am I kidding. Im too bleh to think that way. Things are going to be same. Mundane and dry. Hell I might snatch a couple of fun moments what with the weekend and all. Even if that is a lord of the rings marathon. But there are no sisters here. No gossiping with mom or dad. No watching cwg with family. Cheering the Indians on and secretly checking out hot diver bodies. No wayward imagination of worlds on specks. No hot soup of ugly veggies.

I miss you hot soup of ugly veggies.