Humans

Humans.

Millions of two-eyed, one nosed humans. All so similar, yet so different.  And that day when she watched a funeral procession passing by from atop the building where she stays, she could have sworn they looked all the same.

But they came in different shades, different sizes and with different haircuts, she found. But what she didn’t know yet, was that they came with different minds. Different:  one from another, another from another. Some beautiful, some twisted and distorted by hate.

All imperfect, and all desperately searching for perfection. Perfection in their looks, in the way they speak, in their bank balances, in the size of their houses, in this and in that.

She was so confused. Why were they concerned about everybody and everything else apart from themselves? Where will they go, she wondered, all these souls? They could tell what time it was on the other side of the globe, but couldn’t answer when it came to describing what they really were inside.  What was she? Who was she?

A soul, a human.  Luckily yet unluckily, a human.

 They assigned roles to everybody in the society, they labelled everybody and she hated it. She hated the fact that a girl is supposed to behave like a ‘girl’, only because they thought girls behave in a certain way. She hated it.

You can count how many people there are in this world, but you will never be able to tell how many individuals there really are. A person is made of so many layers, wears so many masks, feels so many emotions.  She swore she could never trust anybody ever in her life. And when the days were gloomy she couldn’t help but wonder what she really was made of, how many demons and how many angels she held inside her. She sometimes even dared to think about the impossible aspect of one day maybe finding love, of knowing what it means to love another soul, to care about someone else for once. What did life hold in its clutches? Will she be just another mortal who will wither away into nothing? That’ll be sad, she thought. She wanted people to remember her name, to remember what she was as a person and as a human being.

Oh the complications of being a human!

‘You become what you really want to become’, her father once looked her in the eye and told her.

And she knew that the days will never be the same again. Suddenly she understood and it was all so clear.  She could become anything, she could do whatever she wanted. She just had to decide.

And she wished everybody else knew this too, that they could become anything.

Because they were humans and they were alive. 

December thoughts on love

After endless episode after episode of How I met your mother, fighting the urge to throw a brick on the people I share a room with, too much of ignoring my books and my exams just around the block, I’m still trying to figure out my life.

I was drunk on the idea that living life alone would be so much more fun, so much more exciting. Hell I can do things alone, go shopping alone, fight alone, cry alone. But after a while it all started to seem a little, well, boring. 

I knew I was denying love, every time it popped up with its pretty little head and looked at me through those eyes. God, those eyes. But as much as I thought I’ll never have feelings for another being of our kind, I couldn’t help but fall.

So Cupid is still playing his little hide and seek games with me. I keep fighting this urge to completely give myself in, yet every time I end up slowly and deliciously and painfully finding myself getting attached.

I’m at a loss for words when it comes to speaking, or making small talks. Most people find me boring, or maybe they think I’m moody. I am moody, in fact, but it doesn’t mean I hate people’s company. Well, I’ll give anything  not to be alone. I love company, I love people. And though I’ll keep denying it for as long as I can, deep down, whenever I say, ‘I don’t need anyone!’, that’s when I’m the most vulnerable.

I’m a girl, that too a Piscean girl. I’m moody, difficult to manage, vulnerable and dreamy.

 I’m a mess.

And at this point in my life, I’ve come to realise, all we need is love. And all we ever needed was love.

Cold December nights will be just an excuse to cuddle up if we are together. Rainy days will be just an excuse to get drenched. Love makes difficult things seem prettier, if not easier.

So maybe now I understand why humans are social animals. What use is money if we need someone to hold? 

In the end, love will keep us alive.

LOVE

Love.

‘ I was walking on a windy day across a park

and wondering what love was.

Then I saw the sun,
and felt its warmth.

Each day it rose,

and woke up the entire world.

Unconditional, without any terms,

Lighting up each day

Across the world.

And  as I leaned to pluck a daisy,

Fresh and fragrant,

There love was,

With all its magnificence.’ 

Photographs

Life doesn’t wait for anybody. It is a flowing river, gurgling and bubbling. Sometimes its blue and lazy, sometimes it’s fast and dark and scary. 

I was always scared that life will pass me by and I’ll still be at one place. The other day when I climbed up to the terrace of the building that I stay, I could see the entire city. It was dark, and lights were twinkling everywhere, in the planes and on the faraway hills. They say we are busy these days, working, studying, reading, and laughing. But in these exact moments, life passes us by.  It slips away stealthily and we mortals can do nothing but live. 

And that is the exact reason why I click photos of everything. 

Every laughter, every sorrow. So that later, I don’t forget that what a ride my life has been. Later when I’m old and my hairs are greying and when I no longer can run up a flight of stairs without thinking twice about my knees.  

I remember when I was younger, I used to scourge my granny’s house every time I visited her, looking for a photo of my grandfather. He was tall, they used to tell me. He was calm, calmer than my father, they said.
But I never saw him and that thought made me sad.
He must have led an incredible life, must have seen incredible places, and must have been an incredible man. But he’s gone now. Entirely and completely. And that makes me sad. If only there were photographs. If only.

 
I’ve realised that birthdays aren’t too much of a happy thing, maybe even a bit ironic. But what the hell.

 I want to live every moment, cherish every rainy day, fall in love with every day that the sun rises with its happy face. I’ve realised that love is of so many different kinds and so many different colours.

 And I want photographs of each shade. 

Life lessons in general

She had always wondered what it’d be to live life on the edge. To let life take your breath away for a minute, and then give it back to you again. And what it’d be like to be numb, to not feel anything at all. So sometimes she’d walk up to the top of the small hill near her house and scream till her lungs felt limp. She’d dip her hand in a bucket of freezing cold water on a December morning till it felt numb. Her parents weren’t worried. They never were. And when her friends used to complain that their mothers would spend too much time deciding on the flavour of their birthday cakes, she’d laugh at them. She never had birthday parties, her parents never bought her a cake with stupid, silly stuff written on it with pink frosting. It was a waste of time, they said.

She found her refuse in books. Travelogues, fiction, autobiographies, poetries and an atlas her father gifted her. They were better than the friends she had at school, they never told her she wasn’t good enough. They never demanded things off her. They told her of places she’d never seen, of people she’d never met.

And as she grew up, life happened. She found out that everything in this world runs on trust.
Trust that tomorrow when we wake up, the sun will be up again. Trust that when we walk by the side of the road, the cars won’t run us over.  Trust that when a friend says he’ll be there for you, he will be. 

And then she met people. People who she believed couldn’t exist. Friends she thought she could never make. Friends who’d dance in the middle of a crowded road just for the sake of it. Friends who didn’t question her, didn’t need answers, didn’t come with terms and conditions. Friends who didn’t judge her, didn’t make her feel like less of a human being, who put friendship before anything else.
Life is a cocktail of emotions, bitter, sweet, spicy and bland at times. Though there was nobody who held her when she needed to be held, though all her life she’d never known what the fuck love was,  she didn’t care now. 

All she knew, all she ever knew was that she was alive. 

And hell, it felt awesome.

A girl

‘It’s a co-ed college’, she justified.
‘So girls, you must dress decently. You can’t even imagine how bad these days are for girls’, our head of the department told us today. The sad part is that she’s a woman too.

Time and again we’ve had discussions about what rape actually is and how and why our society is responsible, if not for the act, but at least for the aftermaths.

But how can a literate, educated woman point a finger on the girls and how it’s their fault that they get raped?! I was literally fighting back tears and not screaming and shouting back. Does she know? Does she know what rape is? What a heinous and barbarous act it is and that the persons committing rape are not humans but absolute devils. Does she know how many girls don’t even confess about being victims of rape because of the fear of being labelled and judged and tagged? Because we have been instilling this feeling of superiority in every boy’s mind ever since they can remember.

‘You can’t walk home alone, beta’, ‘you can’t go shopping alone’, you can’t do this, can’t do that because God was generous enough to provide you with that precious Y chromosome which makes your brother so much more greater. 

Because you are a girl.

Because its your fault. Because you wear short clothes. Because you don’t dress ‘decently’. Because you were walking home alone late at night. Because i am a girl.
Sorry, I am a girl.

But sorry, I won’t follow your rules. I will wear whatever I want, because its my body. I will walk home alone, any time of the day, any time of the night, because this is my country too.  I will go partying to my heart’s content, because I am young too.

Because I am a human being too, and I refuse to be treated like the weaker, or the so called ‘fairer’, section of the society.

How ironic is our worship of Goddess Durga, while millions of girls are being denied the basic rights.

Friday thoughts on happiness and other stuff

Happiness is an illusion, yes. And we are all drunk on it. 

You know you are heading in the right direction with this life when people come and thank you in a language you don’t understand.  We might write a thousand essays, might deliver a hundred speeches on how to help our country develop, but until you know what and who needs this development, nothing is of use.

As we drove hundreds of kilometres into the middle of nowhere, I started to wonder if there were people living there at all. Two tiny rivers had uprooted entire villages, and people were in need of clothes, food, housing and most importantly, of hope.  We couldn’t bring back the ones they lost, couldn’t built everybody, or anybody for the matter, a house.

People ran up to us, greeted us, some with tears in their eyes. We distributed food and other essentials. I could even see some toddlers eating biscuits that we just gave them. Nothing, nothing in this world can give you as much joy as seeing someone happy after you know you helped them in whatever way you can.

I had, at times, given up faith in God. I had wondered why He was so unfair, so unkind to me. I had been depressed; thought nothing in this world is worth living for.  I thought only I knew what depression was, what it feels like when you don’t even know when it is day, or when it is night. I tried everything, pretended to be happy, and tried to get high, tried to scream, tried to keep quiet. For months, I succeeded. I succeeded in running away from people, hating people, not trusting people. I closed up and made walls around me.

But, when a wrinkled old lady who could barely walk came up to me and shook my hands with all the energy she had and said ’thank you’ in an almost inaudible utter, I knew that I was truly happy and that we only rise by lifting others. There are uncountable people out there about whom nobody knows or cares and who need help.  They are suffering from illnesses that can be easily cured, they are craving things some of us take for granted.

I used to think I’m broken and I’m hurt.  But, boy was I wrong.

Fiction #2

The ugly duckling; she read that story when she was young and ugly. The people around her, they were perfect. They were and she wasn’t. Her neighbourhood girls would squirm with delight when she and her younger brother would go out for a walk. They would gape at his perfect hair, perfect eyes, and perfect skin. They were all a big blob of perfect. They would always unconsciously compare her, put her on a scale and measure her height, weight, skin, face. Always with the comparing. She grew up confused, confused whether to believe her eyes that saw a tiny human with all the parts intact, or to believe the people around her who always found someone who was better than her.

She grew up confused, always believing she’s not good enough, not strong enough. Because nobody ever told her. Nobody looked her in the eye and told her she was fine, that the world doesn’t judge, that in the end individuality matters. So, she grew up underestimating herself, always hiding, always running, just in case someone found out that she wasn’t good enough, before someone judged her and laughed and made fun of her.

She remembered one particular incident when one day her mother bought her brother a new tee-shirt and how she wanted that same tee-shirt for her too. Her mother refused and she cried. The neighbours laughed. She sat there crying while her neighbours laughed about how she cried. What hurt her the most was that her mother laughed along too. They were a big blob of perfect and everybody was a part of it, except her. They didn’t accept her like they accepted her brother.

And thus she underperformed at everything, scared of coming in the limelight.

Then, she met him. He walked into her life and picked her up, swept her off her feet. He looked into her eyes and told her that she was good enough, that she never needed anyone’s opinion to be just her, just the perfect her. She was living in a cage and he freed her. He taught her to be the beautiful girl she always had been. Her life was ecstatic! It was oh-so-brilliant! Suddenly she found herself floating in his sea of love. She could never sink, she was so sure of it.

‘I got drunk’, she told him once.

‘The drink got you-d!’, he replied.

‘You are amazing’, he told her and she hated her neighbours right there, right then. She didn’t need anyone to tell her she was imperfect. It wasnt their life. It was hers.

He left. From the same door that he entered, at the same pace. But he gave her a life to live and reasons to live it. He gave her reasons to be happy and why not to be sad.

Love is a miracle, even in cases where it never lasts. 

Fiction #1

Okay. Aviators, check. Messed up hairs, check. Smile that makes me go ‘Oh my effing Gawd!’, check. And we spread newspapers in the railway station platform and sat right there. He blabbered on about how I could do this, do that, study this and become that, study that and become this. But in reality, I wanted to be exactly who I was at that time, because he flew all the way to see me, just the way I was : thin, tanned, petite and hard headed.  As much as I tried to understand him and our relationship over these months, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t give a name to him, couldn’t put a tag on us. I couldn’t call it love, definitely.  How could I be sure of him if I wasn’t even sure of myself? Loving him was impossible. Even if I did, it was impossible.

Though I prayed with whatever heart I had left for his train to never arrive, it did arrive and all I can remember now is me fighting the urge to cry and fighting the urge to hug him tight. Scream my lungs out, ‘I love you! Are you blind? I am fuckingly in love and I fucking cant do a thing about it. Stay, because I’m in love with you!’

But all I could do was sheepishly wave goodbye and watch him disappear into the fog, left with a overwhelming sense of sadness, love, guilt, pain and longings I can’t describe.  All the memories I have of him always ends with me left behind in an airport, in a railway station, in a metro station. He never stays.  Sometimes I feel like an old petrol pump in the middle of nowhere, and about whom nobody cares until they run out of fuel. And even after that they always leave. Always.
And I know I’m trying to put together a map, the map that leads to him. Trace his footsteps and follow, until we meet at a place where he never leaves.  But the map has jagged ends, torn parts and incomplete ladders. Damn!

I wish I could go back and never know what the fuck in this world love and its complications are.   

            Teeto-taller from today!

"Okay", she thought. No more getting drunk. This is it, no more. She had no control and all she wanted was to not have control anymore. But it felt so good that it started feeling bad. Being tipsy was like  a guilty pleasure she could afford only at times. Well, most of the times. Most of the damn times.

That's it! she thought. That's just it.
Its a new life now. A new place, new people and new friends. Also some other new people.
'Hey!' she waved enthusiastically at the girl who lives in the room next to hers. She did not even blink once. Let alone wave back.
'I'm going to make some great friends then', she thought and turned away to lock her door.
The next couple of days were just college, hostel and college again. And the discoveries, oh!
She found out that college can be fun, that country music can heal almost anything, that Tim McGraw has a hot voice and also sadly a hot wife, that the lunch-dinner thing everyday was almost incomplete till she found one or the other kind of stones, pebbles, rubber or elastic bands in her boiled rice. Damn it she thought. Damn it damn it damn it.

Meanwhile her dreams were getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. They weren't letting her sleep, letting her eat.
''And I keep wondering and wondering and wondering, just when will my life begin?'', Mandy Moore sang into her earphones.
But maybe life wasn't that bad like she had expected it to be. Her life was a mixture of hot and cold, of sweet and bitter, her life was Cafe Coffee Day's Devil's own, Well, atleast in her mind. She had slowly started to adore it and love it.

We just had to ignore a few things, memories and people in some cases. And life is all set!
Time usually does the trick. Music helps.

''Hey'', the girl next door said.
Finally, she thought and replied back.
"Do you drink? I was thinking we could get maybe some beer or something to drink?'', the girl asked.

GOD! Why?!
Life it is, babay!

The beginning

We have to begin at some point, right?
I had a lot on my mind. My mother said i had to talk. So basically I couldn't keep quiet and expect things to solve themselves on their own. Or my mind to solve the mess it was in on its own.
My mind was a teenage boy's room. It was a mess. I had to write it out, i had no other way.


Love. I thought I had seen it all, felt it all. But what really is love? The lack of it made me realize that actually there was never really any lack of it in the first place. I always had love. The day I left my hostel, seeing the hostel guard weep made me realize that love exists even when I thought it had ceased to. Break ups can be quiet messy and weepy. If you are a teenage girl and if someone recently left you in a pool of your own tears, you might want to stop believing in love. But love never really stops believing in you.

I'm no love guru, but my mother said I had to talk, remember?
So. love. Four letter word but cant be explained that easily. Well, not without some serious heartbreaks and tear-pools.

So we cant really define love, cant bind it with boundaries and dictionary meanings, cant explain it with a thousand love songs. And I'm too lazy to even write one. So I'll let love be love and love till love becomes too old to be loved. Get it? I'm talking too much mumbo jumbo. Maybe I'm in love.