Sometimes, your last life catches up to you. Most times, it doesn't hurt, it doesn't sting, it just makes you wistful. It makes you miss the stuff you left behind. The people you left behind. The friendships that got eroded.
It reminds you of the crazy crazy times you had then. And you wish you had someone to remember them with. Someone to say to, "Remember how we were crushing on this song that time?" Or someone who shared the joy of an experience and won't mind revisiting it with you.
You miss the feeling of discovery. The feeling of newness. The feeling of exhilaration that you shared together. It doesn't mean you don't have most of it in your new life, but it would just be nice to be able to remember those times again.
Some of us sit around trying to define the depth of a relationship, some flirt with definitions and some are waiting. Waiting for the relationship as you know it to start.
We each course at a different speed through these confusing relationships, but what speed is it that we want? Why are we always dissatisfied at the pace we are at? The fast want to go slower, the slow, faster. The one's at the red light just want the damn speed to pick up and the traffic to start.
I feel like I am on slow mode right now. Waiting for the full throttle to burst. For the rush of speed to take my life by surprise. I am waiting for my life to start. I am done with laying the foundation for my life ahead, hell maybe I am not done with it, but i am done doing it, you know.
I just want life to start. I am tired of waiting for things to fall in place.. just so I know where my place is in this Universe. I know a few basic facts, and I am ready to take on the world on them. No more brick laying for me. Bring on the cars, and let's crank up the gears.
It's irritating when you realize that you have no control over your life right? very irritating. But what can we do, we are all victim's. Of the race that Life has set up. Some like it fast, they get it fast, some don't, so they switch to double lane driving. Now is now right?
One chapter closes in my life. Another starts in a few days. I take over the residual wide-eyed excitement I brought to my first chapter with me.
But I also take renewed hope. Hope that this time, I will fit. Although deep in my heart, I know I am not the fitting types. I never fit in through my college years, or through school. I did not fit in in my completely firang department in University. Not because I was an Indian, but at that time, because I chose to not fit in.
Maybe I need to stop trying to fit? Create my space and be comfortable in that? Hmm.
Space. It's a weird concept. Space was my personal bubble when I was in the US. Here, in India, it is invaded constantly. The woman who uses my thigh as a support to get up in the train, the man who places a fist on my shoulder to push me ahead in the bus, the colleague who peers over my shoulder to look into my monitor, to get a glimpse of whoever I am shooting an email off to.
Space. It exists where it shouldn't too. The one-time best friend who I don't hug anymore. The awkwardness in reaching out and grasping the hand of someone who has been making me feel much more comfortable in the last few days. The weirdness of not being able to sleep off mid-conversation anymore. The by-chanceness of missing out on different timezones.
What's a fit between all these? When I make my exotic dinner-for-one? Or when I bite into my mother's shoulder, over her giggles and protests? Yes. These are my fits.
I rush through the day, run for the bus
late for class, quickly take notes
No time for a bit of chat later yaar
I’ll have more research done on this later, sir
Bite sized love, bite sized lives
A little hurried hi, a little hurried good bye
Got to finish this life, get out of U of I
Masters is enough man, there’s a life outside
Two jobs to fund one life, two jobs to fund the calls to home
but there’s always money for the shots and beer
Nostalgic when we hear a song, miracle, we know the words all
festivals we did not celebrate have meanings now
Bite sized love, bite sized lives
A little hurried hi, a little hurried good bye
Got to finish this life, get out of U of I
Damn this PhD man, there’s a life outside
Second hand Honda, the pool of our savings
time to live alone now, dude sharing isn’t working
Profs are over-rated, so is research
that’s when I turn to singing, that’s when I turn to writing
Bite sized love, bite sized lives
a little hurried hi, a little hurried goodbye
Got to move aheada this life, get out of U of I
Fuck Post doc man, there’s a life outside
Bite sized love, bite sized lives
a little hurried hi, a little hurried goodbye
Got to finish this life, get out of U of I
what the hell is happening, there’s a life outside
Bite sized love, bite sized lives
a little hurried hi, a little hurried goodbye..
Can I wrap you up in a song and make you the song itself? Can you hum to me, that song?
Can I look behind one more time, because I am sure you will be there? Can you see the sunshine within me?
Can I scold you to my heart's content, because you know I am just doing it to irritate you? Can you keep making that frustrated face everytime I say something completely irrational?
Can I whine to my heart's content to you, because I know you wont judge me for it? Can you keep trying to fill that void that has just opened up inside me? Some day it will fill..
Can I keep shopping for those little things that you don't even know you will need around your house? Can you keep surprising me in all those little and small things that you do?
Can we keep forming these little traditions of ours? These little things which is always what you do, and these other things that are always my doing...
Normally her demons arose in the night. They turned the normally flippant, brilliantly blunt and straight answering girl into a blubbering, confused and sobbing girl. The world knew her as a very arrogant and collected person. She bounced back from all her problems and issues didn't she? She did, but at night, when she was alone, sitting in the dumpyard behind her apartment complex, she wasn't all that brave. She could not even introduce herself to her demons. That part of her which she was unaware about. Which she had not been introduced to. Which she had not met. That part of her she dint know about.
She needed to see a shrink. She was sure of that. There could not be two parts to her. A demon that made her eyes tear up randomly. That made her begin every night with hours of crying. The part of her she knew, would not, could not let the world see her crying. Would not accept to the world that it was her weakness, her sign of indignity. Her fall.
Except, now, that demon had become so powerful that it came out in the day too. When she was around people, in front of them. She tried to supress it with silences, with blankly staring away into nothingness just so that her eyes would not well up with tears. Because one roll down her cheeks was never enough, it was a saga. Sometimes it would start in the class, sometimes while having dinner, sometimes while doing her laundry and sometimes when she was stretched out on the couch witnessing a happy moment. And she was slipping away into being powerless.
Her skin was behaving like it was over-exposed, her eyes looked like she was drugged. Her body frequently burned up to a fever. Was everything alwasy never good enough? or was it just that she wanted too damn much. That there were two parts to her, the demon and her. Together, they wanted a lot. Needed a lot. Expected to get a lot.
Which is why she started on back-to-back episodes of Scrubs.
Friends Forever. Turned into blossoming infatuation. Forever couple. Is it love? Maybe not yet..
Distance, misunderstandings, arguments, fights and lies. A couple broken before love could happen. Friends again. Happy for each other's happiness.
He falls for someone again. She is happy with someone else again. They are happy in their own worlds. What could be, is a question and a doubt that will forever remain unexplored. A chance meeting, a stolen kiss. Nothing more, back to their happy worlds.
Kids turn into adults. Turn of maturity. Time for permanency. He is thinking of marrying his girl, she is still looking for love, although just happy with someone else.
A sudden encounter. It tears her up that his intense feelings for her are now for someone else. It tears him up that she was never this happy with him. A stolen night.
A few days, stolen from the world. Guilt. Knowledge that this could work. All it needs is effort.
But its too late now. Back into the worlds they built. The doubt, the question will forever remain incomplete. Because just a few days are not enough. They were forever friends. The forever part had magnanimous implications. Torn souls, forced into being friends.
Not happy as more than that, unhappy at less than that.
The first time I was told I was ugly, it was my 11th birthday. I had worn what my mother had picked out for me, checkered shorts with a silver belt, and a black tee-shirt with something silver on it- I was quite skinny that time. You know you dress well in school for your birthdays, distribute chocolates? When I was doing that, my so-called brother Amey, pulled me closer and said
"I know I shouldn't say this to you today, but you look ugly. Why are you wearing that?"
I never wore that outfit again. I steadily gained weight that year on. Sometime when I was 13, I had my first crush, and the guy told me I was beautiful, and I did not believe him.
When I was 16, I was in a theatre group. I was one of the youngest there. The two other sixteen year olds were reed thin, I was, by now, plump and chubby, as everyone would call me. Obviously I never got the main part, until in the end I was given one as charity. One guy who was dating one of the reed thin girls, once remarked out loud,
"Girls just look so breath-takingly beautiful with wet hair."
The three of us had just come in from the pouring rain. We all had wet hair. We all looked at each other at this statement. The guy smiled and then after a pause said,
"But not you Pragni, your hair is horrible, how can you ever look good"
I have been out with models, a dangerous looking guy, an ok-looking guy, a gayish-looking guy, intelligent guys, rich guys, one player or casanova and one semi-celebrity too. But I have never believed myself to be worth them, physically or looks-wise.
I hate it, and I hate admitting it, but everytime one of the guys here tell me I look beautiful, I pause for a moment. That pause is to convince myself that even if I don't think so, maybe they do. They are not saying it to please me. They are not saying it out of any obligation. They mean it.
Till a really long time, everytime someone told me I looked good, my instant reaction would be "yea, right" or "Stop kidding around?", until one day, R got really angry with me and told me that he wouldn't say it if he dint mean it, and I d better start believing him or saying it out right that I did not trust him.
I said, "I don't know what other reaction to give!"
Said he, "Try thank you. It normally works."
I did not believe my thank you's after that for a long time too.
It's just recently that I have admitted to my being very very conscious about my body. About my self image. And admitted it in front of friends and now publicly. I know this is not going to liberate me. But maybe, somewhere along the line, I will be re-introduced to my self-esteem. Ironically, I do not lack in the department of self-confidence. Funny how I have made that thin line so thick for me.
P.S - Last two days of the pills. I promise this confess all mode will stop then and so will the sappiness.
"I can fall in love with someone because of their intelligence, its one of the three things that can get to me.." "What are the other three things?" Pause I knew there were three things.. I just hadn't really put my mind to it to think what those three things were, you know? And this was not a person who would let me change the topic at this point. "aah.. this might sound shallow but pampering maybe? I guess if someone pampers me a lot, I could fall in love with them." I have had cousins who have pampered me crazy, and I have adored them. So I guess, it could work... "And the way a person treats other people around him. The respect you give other people, the distance you maintain, the way you talk to them." Now that was the correct one of the two. I was sure.
But pampering? I thought about it all night. Can I really fall for someone because they'd pamper me crazy? And then some instances came to my mind. Pilot insisted on me taking the diamond ring he got me. I refused, he actually went up to the sea to throw it. I took it. I love the ring, I had designed it. But I din't fall in love with him.
Pilot always always pampered me. If I saw a toy I liked, it would be sent to my place in a few days, twice in a week, fresh flowers would be delivered to my place, fancy dinners, and coffee every other night. I did not fall in love with him. And then he started hanging out with my parents. He respected them, took advice from them, revered them. That's when I even started thinking of him as someone who I might be able to be with. He wanted to them help out with the summercamp kids. He was beautiful with them, strict, scary but lovable. That's when I realized that he is worth a lot more. If things would have continued a bit, who knows I might have been in love with him (if love is possible). But end of story, I did not fall in love with him. Inspite of all the pampering, and inspite of all the respect I saw him give others.
I think the respect he gave others, made me respect him. And respect is very important for me. To give and receive. But it did not induce love. And pampering just made me feel nice, but I always knew it was a materialistic nice. And I guess seeing me feel nice, he felt nice. He never did it to make me fall in love with him. I hope.
Since intelligence is a must in people around me, I should have been in love with Dhum, Pinki, Petrovski, Veeru, Jats and looking at intelligence from a different angle, Pilot too.
But I am not. Which effectively negates my dialogue above. I cannot fall in love with anyone just because they are intelligent, or they pamper me, or that they are respectful. I can just be a little pleased with them for it.
I guess love just happens right? Without a reason?
** So since you are reading this, I shall retract my statement above that I made to you. And rephrase it. A bit. "I don't know how to fall in love with someone. I don't know what can make me fall in love with someone. I don't even think I can define love. But yes, these three things that I listed? They make me think highly of a person. They make me realize that the person cares, for himself (intelligence), me (pampering) and others (respect). Which matters. I guess."
I have been often told I think too much and too far. This post is a result of that.
Browsing through youtube videos I came across the videos of Chote Ustaad, a singing contest between kids. I started with the grand finale episode, two really pretty girls singing beautifully. One had the most beautiful, sweet and melodious voice. The other had the most grounded, husky and fabulous voice.
One had springy curls all over her face, a clear face and expressive eyes. The other had straight luxurious hair that fell in a cascade around her face, sparkling eyes and an attitude to match.
Both had the public fawning at their feet. Both are less than 13 years old.
What happened to have pimply faces, an unsure attitude, that awkward age when you look your worst for that certain time and not knowing what you want to do with your life because you are not even 13!!
I am scared. Scared for my children when I have them. Because either they will be one of these talented children, or one of the not talented ones. If they are like these, they will be under this constant pressure, which I am sure these children are under. They will have their life decided for them, no matter what it is that they want to do, how it is that they want to live.
If they are not, they will grow up watching these talent shows, wonder what their talent is, why they don't have a voice like that, or a flexible body like this, or a figure like that one. Or they might know someone who is talented like that, and feel inferior to them.
The summercamp where I teach dance, constantly has parents coming up to me asking me to hone the dancing skills of their child because they think that the kid has the ability to "enter and win boogie woogie". Or I have even had one come and boast to me about how her daughter has such an amazing face that she has already featured in 12 ads and won around 2 lakh rupees. The girl was 9 years old.
I have had mothers come and tell me "Look, look at my child dance. She goes to Shaimak Davar's classes every day to train" and when the girl dances, she swings her hips, but not to the rhythm, she looks ahead with her eyes all small and scrunched up, but blankly, and she says, "my favorite dancer is Isha Koppikar and Sameera Reddy".
I once choreographed a dance for one student for a talent contest in her school, and she was pretty good. We did on the song Remix, which is based on school life. We hunted all the markets to get an awesome costume for her, a black corset, with a leather jacket, a leather skirt with knee high boots and a school tie. When we reached the hall, she pointed out her rival to me. She was a girl dressed in a yellow bustier with chiffon strips for sleeves, and a chiffon transparent harem pants and her hair all curled up and heavy orange eye make up and gloss. I had not let my student put anything more than a dusting of powder on her face to block sweat. The girl danced on "Saaki saaki, aa paas reh na jaye koi khwahish baaki", while my student danced on "Na koi tension lena, nahi koi darr ke jeena.."
Ofcourse, the Saaki girl won. My student was heart-broken. And she asked me, "next time can I dance on an item number too?"
I fear the day my child will ask me that. When my child will think that to be liked, she or he needs to expose, be extra-ordinary at something, be supremely talented or have an attitude.
I wish I could explain to you what it feels like when you are actually in a happy mood, but you can feel something clicking somewhere in your brain which brings on a bad mood.
I wish I could explain to you the anguish that tears through your mind, and then the other side, where you know why its happening, you know you really are not that sad, but just the fact that you are not that in reality, but are feeling so right now is a pathetic thing.
I wish I could explain to you how horrible it feels, how alienating.. how much you would just love to give in and cry, because although you know that that wont solve the problem, it sure as hell seems like what you should be doing.
I wish I could explain to you how much it hurts to cry alone, or cry but let no one notice it. Because logically it makes sense to do not cry in front of anyone since its an induced state, but in the mental state you are in.. that's the polar opposite of what you need.
I wish I could explain to you how suddenly you want so much more, you need so much more, you emote so much more, you expect so much more. It's like you just CANT bottle up these things which you know have the capacaity to hurt you.. so are best not wanted, needed, expected, loved.
I wish I could explain to you how much imbalanced you feel, how it completely puts you off your foot, how helpless you feel and how much you need that support from everyone who matters.
I wish I could explain to you how it is so so necessary that in this state you give me every little thing you assumed was given, you say all those things that can assumedly be left unsaid, you give and show every ounce of what you are feeling.
I wish I could explain to you how much you matter at this stage. And I wish you would realize that more than one person, I need all of you. That I am literally dependent on you. Really really do.
I wish i could explain all this to myself. And coach myself enough to get over this.. to learn and to master this too, so I can stop depending on your calm, your faith, your love, your company and you. All of you.
Emotions increase or decrease in intensity, reactions waver and fluctuate, friends come and go, people live or die, opportunities knock, withdraw and knock again, situations, cimcumstances, nature, weather, hell, every bloody thing changes.
But time is the only constant.
That day comes every year, no matter what. That night comes every year, those few hours too, repeat on the cycle of the clock. Its a different surrounding every time, but the thoughts inside me, run on an endless loop.
If only I could go back and change these few hours... And then a pause.
Because I know, no matter what, I would still do things the same way. Because the emotions then were pure and strong. Even if now they are diluted and gone. The reactions then were instant and true, even if on hindsight it all seems stupid and immature. The friends then, I believed them to be the best, even if now I realized they sucked at their job of being my friend. The people then who died a million deaths, resurfaced, survived the blow, and trusted again. Opportunites were lost, but other's came up too. The situations and circumstance, seemed justified then, now.. don't even ask..
But time remains a constant. Through it all. Unfailingly on time, and unfailingly there. Just there always.
Ever wondered at how happy you are, how perfect everything is and how wonderful the weather and the day is.
And then have it jinxed so bad it's not even salvagable. The sky opens up and pours (and you washed your hair today, dammit), the day turns dour and that perfect balance is ruined.
And happiness? It's like a bubble that you keep trying to catch or even just touch. But it either flits further away, or bursts into nothingness the minute you are close.
I dropped a course today because I am not smart enough for it.
Seriously. I thought I was the nerd of advertising. Today I realized that even that is not good enough for this class.
Have you heard about those classes where students and the professor sit around a conference table, stare at a problem set in the center and try to reach a solution which will co-relate with life's problems? That's this class.
The students argue about the epiphanic moment in their lives when the situation they were in was influenced by history, politics and their own biographies. And how that relates with the white and black racial division and the undermining of Native Indians and the poverty they have had to go through because of the Great Civil War of Independence in America and the hegemony of pedagogy.
Lost. I am thoroughly lost in the three hours that the class goes through. While the students around me go through various stages of orgasmic noises because of the great knowledge imparted in the class, or dawn on the real solution to placing wooden blocks in such a way that the bottom blocks do not have to take the burden of the neo capitalist economy.. I sleep.
These are all scholars, who actually learn a lot in the class. Who actually can make a lot of sense of everything that just bounces past my nose. And I can't do that.
So I shall drop this class. And admit to the world and myself that there are several levels of intelligentsia and I am way low on it. Way too low.
Sometimes you wake up in the morning, hug your T-shirt, and realize, how much you miss things.
And then you just wish that you could hug them quick and tight and then carry on with the new routine.
*Hugs Gumbal*
Saturday, August 16, 2008
I know.. that 10 years down the line.. I am going to look at you and wonder why I held back. Why I doubted.. but I know I must doubt now.. I must think and re-think now.. I must hold back..
Because The Crazy in me? It resurrects itself with every doubt I have in me.. regarding me, you or the future..
