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.