When life gives you a 2020 –

I have finally found out the cure to my writer’s block or if I could put in in a more appropriate way the cure to my long lulls of writing inactivity even though my 2020 resolution was to write frequently, and I have ended up making it the resolution for the upcoming, right at the door 2021.

So, the cure to it is free time and a mind at rest. After a whirlwind year that has changed my life completely – I am finally bidding it a goodbye right where I started it – the city of my aspirations and inspiration – Hyderabad; with the people I love the most and I couldn’t be more motivated to come back to the greatest love of my life – writing. So, here we go, the blogpost wrapping it all up.

Admit it or not 2020 was the answer to everyone’s deepest adulting wishes – to relieve childhood once more.

2020 shuttled every grown up, self sustainable, independent, hard working, frustratingly mechanically living 20+ adult back from their stereotypical weekday pe kaam-weekend pe aaram locked down in their hometowns. A huge flush of all my IT friends “making it” in their metro lives came back to my sleepy town. My own brother left for Odisha for what was to be the longest stay after thinking that the day they left for their engineering college was the last day they got to spend time at home. I was also a recipient of the new normal for a few months then, after being shuttled out of Chennai from my carefully curated life back into my hometown – short-lived until I started my residency. It was a twist of fate for everyone. The lockdown opened our eyes to all the words that came after the “what if’s we had been keeping in our minds. It gave us all the time to be kids with pastimes that didn’t just involve chugging the maximum number of beers again. From Dalgona coffee to playing Ludo King, from jamming on my guitar on Zoom call to picking up those unread novels again; the lockdown gave us life beyond careers – making us realize what we had been missing. Making me realize what I had been missing. It gave me all the time in the world to get over the things I thought I could never get over. 2020 helped me heal.

Yet, 2020 also shuttled me to a space I had only been planning for since 2012. This was the year I got to live all my dreams. I always wanted to live and work independently in a metro city – I got to do that at the beginning of the year itself when I got a job in one of the leading corporate hospitals in Chennai and got to experience the corporate life. The sheer joy from getting a salary off my hard work, paying my own bills, getting to live a life beyond work, getting to spend and splurge on myself was a high of another kind. If that wasn’t enough, I also cleared my NEET-PG entrances surprisingly on the first attempt; convincing me of the fact that sometimes you get things when you are actively not wishing for it, so maybe the concept of destiny exists. Not only did I get a PG seat but I got that in Karnataka – a longstanding dream since a decade. I can’t explain the moments of sheer disbelief I have that I am in Karnataka doing residency! And in the college whose photos I had since and mildly wished to be in 2012. Everyday I get to don the one attire I really love – my scrubs and go off to work. Every day is a new challenge to grow better than the day before. Every day reminds me of al the milestones I have yet to reach and achieve.

I was a small town girl once who wanted to live and grow old in the same town once, within the boundaries my father had set for me – not until one day I had the courage to scale it all. Now that I have seen everything that I can have, I realize the wish list never ends. Yet you might end your peace, happiness and real joys of life in trying to achieve them.

By giving me everything I dreamt of, 2020 has also taught me how when dreams turn to reality, they might not be as dreamy as they seemed.

Life has turned for better, but it’s the adulting version of better. Everyday I wake up exhausted and tired from the day before. My sleep deprivation hits an all time high trying to juggle being a junior resident with a normal functioning human being who needs a break. Now that I am at home and can reflect on my life in Belgaum, I realize I’m far off the mark I have gone from when I started it. I was dropped off at my hostel gate with three bags and wonder-eyed; so much that I didn’t even look at my mother leaving in the cab. I made all efforts to come away from my past, not realizing that’s what kept me, me. Every day in the hospital I run around thinking everything I do is changing the world, yet now that I sit on this chair overlooking the balcony with flowers and vegetables planted by my brother, my Maa cutting up vegetables, my mom and sister trying to fit into 15″ of a phone screen because I was not granted enough leaves to be able to go all the way to Odisha and ended up coming to Hyderabad – I realized that the life of peace and love I had been searching was already here. Glamour, glitz, fame – everything attracts me since childhood – I am the kid who has always been and always loved the spotlight. Yet, the fact that I forgot the ones who put me there is dawning on me now. What’s the use of being the spotlight if you don’t have someone cheering you. What’s the use of having good days I can’t celebrate with my family? What do I do on the bad days I feel so lost wanting to run away and sleep in my mother’s lap – the safest place in the world?! I realized my folly when a patient boycotted me for not knowing his mother tongue! All the things I had left for all the things I could have not realizing I didn’t need them.

But then I cannot be that ungrateful and dissuade everything over a toxic workplace and workload that takes a toll on everyone’s mental health – when I also have few things to be thankful for. Starting off with my friends – when people said you won’t be making friends in residency they were so far off about my lot. I might not have them on the days they are also busy and broken from the department – yet I have them tugging me on food cravings, Sunday brunches and spontaneous Goa trips. When I fall sick I have someone getting food to my hostel room door and through the scary dark room ultrasound finding. Life has found a small address in hurriedly drunk coffee before morning OPD and after evening round blasting. The picturesque residency images have been replaced with barking seniors, unreasonable demands and a department that is bent on sucking your peace and blood. Yet every single day that I see my naivety slip away I also know that all of it is preparing me for a future I never had the courage to dream of. I know that when I became a part of a glorious institute I should have been prepared for the yin and yang that came with it. I know exactly who I am and how too much of goodness is also an invite for the world to feed on you like vultures – and all of this is toughening me up for the greater battle that lies after residency.

So, here’s wrapping it up – my 2020 with all it’s highlights and lessons – knowing that this year has given me the time, space and opportunity to rise ahead in life and emotion exponentially! I started this year off with red wine, long drive and UNO with the fam – and my entire 2020 has a slow melt of it. Hoping that 2021 gets us out of the lull with all the essential teachings from 2020 and adapting it to a hopefully COVID-free world.

So, when life gives you a 2020, you learn from it to make all your years better! Cause admit it, we’re never gonna be this chill ever again. So, enjoy while it lasts – exactly three more days of it.

Happy new year (in advance) folks!

Dear 16 year old me,

Dear 16 year old me who wanted to grow up desperately,

There’s nothing new when you grow up. I rephrase – the settings change, your dreams come true, you are sitting in a single room with a window overlooking the enormous green university campus that you can call your own with plateaus topped by windmills in the distance and having chai is a long drive at midnight on the highway with a bunch of friends you only hoped you’ll have but that’s it – nothing has changed.

Remember standard 4? Vartika Chabbra? Remember how you recieved your science paper with 97 on it and on reaching home found an answer paper stashed into your bag with your name scribbled wrongly on a paper which had only been graded 12? Remember how your mother made frantic calls to the teacher and said how you clued in it was Vartika who forged the name, as for the first your name being unpronounceable and your answers unnecessarily lengthy was a boon as she misspelt your name and didn’t bother to change her name to yours after page 4? Remember how she threatened you the next day for calling her out.

I would say Vartikas are only primary school miscreants who want to prank you, but it’s not. You keep meeting them throughout your life. Even as a Junior Resident who tried to stay low, do her work before time and yet someone tried to butcher her for his power play.

The truth is sweetheart, you grow up. Eventually. You have the freedom you yearn for, eventually. You have all the hangouts and male adulation you dream of yet life, life is a bitch; it doesn’t pan out the way you want it to. You grow up and realise that fantasy and reality are two worlds placed so far apart you spend all your early twenties trying to search for it.

My love, you learn to keep yourself happy. Something that you, I know did but kind of lost it while trying to grow up. Your books, hold on to it. Your music, sings to your soul. Your company, cherish it. You start dancing again. Because as you grow up you see everyone fighting a battle that only they can win. You learnt to fight all of yours. You learnt to be your own savior, and to stay happy through it – you cling to whatever rope you can find. It’s usually is like this. Writing to vent it out. Don’t forget your talents, they were god gifted to you for a reason. They keep you alive through all the mess.

Anyway, that’s enough of the morose. Remember all the dreams we saw? I am living them now. I believed in the rubber band theory – if life takes you behind, it’s only doing that to jet set you higher. Not to burst your bubble but life wasn’t rosy after school, but you find your groove a decade later. The tiny hallowed library of Carmel? My college library has three floors and thousands and thousands of books I can’t even dare to finish now. The college and faculty consists of stalwarts you only dream of reaching close to; they create for you milestones that you never knew existed to want to achieve. You finally get to learn to play basketball on a court you used to yearn at while growing up. Bhai used to call you lemon for always crying at the slightest teasing yet you have the tolerance level of a stork and an enviable pain threshold now.

The truth is when you stop letting things get to you, they eventually do. Though most of all, you realise who are truly your own. The parents you are fighting to get away from – you’ll be jumping a decade later when they make sudden plans to visit you in your PG college. All that Papa is saying now? You will find it more and more practical over the years and regret at some points for not adhering to it. I wish I could tell you I realized it soon, but I didn’t. You will realize that the list of friends undergoes a lot of addition, subtraction over the years – and you can’t mourn someone leaving but just be grateful that at a point when things were going downhill you had a friend handing over a cup of tea to make your day better. You will be grateful that there are friends to bug you over and over again to know if you’re okay – because life gets more and more busier as we grow up and no one can make time for another human which is why it becomes a miracle to have even few people true to you. You had such fantasies about love and having a lover; but it gets broken over the decade in multiple heartbreaks and mistakes. You realize that love should be found within before trying to find it another person.

Life is a patient teacher though. You go through similar episodes at different points of life, over and over, until you learn to react to it properly. You find your triggers and your loopholes, someday you even learn to stop blaming others and start with yourself at making your life better. It gets better. It really does. No matter how bleak it seems momentarily.

So that’s that. As my current motto neither do I live in the past for too long nor do I entertain sweet daydreams of a future. Living in the present is something you don’t know yet, as I know you have drawn one year worth of routine with each day planned to accommodate the portion you want to cover. Your brain filled with theorems and thoughts of more reference books you can quote in your answers to score more in terminals. A holier than thou attitude that irks people and perfectly oiled hair plaited and tucked to keep in with the persona a school prefect demands – but a decade later you will be writing this in shorts and T shirt with quirky slogan your 16 year old brain abhors – getting mentally and deadline wise ready to go for COVID duties (we are in the midst of a pandemic now with a new world order your books don’t teach you. Boo!) as a frickin post graduate student in a medical college (yes, we got our career timeline right) and still making time to chill with friends while battling deadlines.

Love,

Your older and still getting wiser self.

The Sunday Blog ft #thefamiliarconcept

Routine keeps you going. Any routine that blocks your day, keeps you mentally and physically occupied to prevent you from going off track is a welcome change. My father used to say I look the most beautiful when my exams are around, that’s because I am single minded focused on getting good grades then with a damn care for the world. When I was young the old adage, “An idle mind is a devil’s workshop” never made sense to me – but these days I have finally grasped the meaning of it. When I am caught up in my work and do not have time for anything and anyone else I do not get this nostalgia in waves. I do not miss my home. I do not miss my little sister. I do not miss my Maa’s lap. Else everything goes haywire.

Yesterday was Ganesh Puja and they didn’t celebrate it because I wasn’t there at home. I was in KLE and due to COVID the usual celebrations had been toned down to min pujas – which by luck I got to see three of; yet I missed my home’s Ganesh Puja. I missed staying up all night decorating the room with my siblings, waking up early and taking my bath, going to get dooba-patra from my neighbour’s house, arranging the fruits, raasi-laddu on the plate, keeping my books infront of the god, becoming the mini nana for the day and doing the puja. Getting to break the fast after pushpanjali with my Maa’s haata randha Puri Aloodum. I missed the smell wafting from the kitchen of the typical Odia-style Aloo dum which people sell here as an abomination terming it bhajji. The style of Pooris only made at my home. I missed the movie ritual post that where we took up any family movie and by any it would always be a KJo mega family movie (psst… Kabhi khushi kabhi gham) and devoured it to bits. One day we were set free from the obligations of studying. One day we were kids all over.

They say as you grow up, you become more set in your ways – yet it’s strange that as we grow up we are made to break away from who we are with each passing day.

My Maa told me I should focus only on being a good human being, yet the more I grow up people ask me to be more shrewd. My Maa asked me to be more kind, but as I grow up people use this kindness to exploit it and sell you to the vultures. My Maa asked me to be more soft but people mistake this as submissiveness and dominate me to the point I have to turn into a aggressive version of myself I do not recognize.

Who am I, and who I will be after I grow up are two starkly different beings I doubt I know of.

It is only because of this that we keep on seeking people that are more and more familiar to what we know. Somebody who makes you laugh like your brother does, somebody with a smile as honest as yours, somebody who will make you an egg sandwich going out of the way just like your Maa does to pamper you on the days you don’t feel like moving out of the bed, somebody whose embrace feels like home – love, care, kindness, humility, honesty, familiarity – I crave all of that in batches of people that life keeps throwing at me with each consecutive stage of life. The same values, the same ideals – which my Maa sat down and taught me over the years.

It is so weird to come to residency and find that most of the girls here are not committed (okay, in a ‘maybe’, only KLE people would get that); such a stark contrast from my UG days when I used to see girls engaged in a battle of whose boyfriend did the most for her. That’s maturity I guess, when you have finally come to differentiate between need and want. When you finally realise it’s not about seeking the unknown, the adrenaline rush or the arm candy anymore – it is only about finding constancy, permanence and familiarity at the end of the day. People are not making plans to just go out and roam anymore – they are cribbing about getting to go to home. Not a boyfriend anymore, but a life partner. Because more than receiving red cut roses a single time, it’s better to be planting them with someone and watching them grow into a hundred roses over the years you spend with them.

I was deeply against the social event of wedding, but I have begun to understand the concept of marriage these days. The sole reason my father kept me away from men all over the years, demonizing them yet now insisting on marriage at times – they want to leave you with familiarity. They want to leave you with someone that takes care of you the way they do. Your festivals aren’t just modaks and decorations – it’s the happy family that went into arranging and executing it – our parents want to leave us with that. Someone who is there for every puja, every occasion, every morning and every meal; bringing a familiarity to the table. One that keeps us safe from any battle in the world. One that gives us strength to face any battle in the world.

I hope you find your familiar and I find mine. Leaving you to spend your Sunday with this thought.

Cheers,

P.

Hesitation

I saw you in the corner

your heart beating harder than the rest

I saw how your eyelids would fall

(and rose)

and you laughed an entire laughter in a single breath.

I felt your hand

it was soft

softer than the every hand I have rested mine in

and when you looked into my eyes

i could see a million sighs evaporating

a million times i had wished

(for a girl like you)

yet you sat there in the corner

your heart beating harder than the rest

and i couldn’t dare to embrace you when you cried

because of the ring i already had

on my finger on the left.

मौसम

He said he can’t tolerate
Shades of me
As varied as the weather of the city we lived in then
He couldn’t tolerate
The way I had an opinion
Loud enough to break the glass his thinking was entrapped in.

He said I wouldn’t be
What they said was “domestic”
I had ways too unbridled
Too free
Too uncharted
For him to a put a finger to

That my unique was a hindrance
My different was a difference
Both could never meet
And he was happy to let go
And shove another on my face

One who knew how to play the cards well
Knowing to push and pull
Knowing not to be everything to him
Knowing how guys like him detest girls like me

Girls who want to be something
Before becoming someone’s
And for a long time I thought
The fault was in me.

He said he couldn’t tolerate
How I was as moody as the city we lived in
But now I am in a city
With a weather moodier than me
And people seem just as eager to love it.

A letter to my 3 day old sister

Dear baby,
I wonder what your world will be!
You’ll outlive me by a whole 26 years
I wonder what all you’ll see!

I have seen a tiny, tiny virus
Outsmart mighty, mighty empires
And our little wicked schemes
Taking down a rat’s race that thought itself bigger than nature’s scheme.

I have seen forests consumed by hell-fires
But nothing more consuming than desire
Of harrowed men trapped,
In a never ending stream of wanting.

I have seen faith,
I have seen love,
I have seen all you can,
And what to do when you cannot.

I have the felt the fresh breeze off mountain ranges
I have dipped my soul in holy Ganges
When I have washed off my sins,
I have added his name afresh.

The one that still makes me feel a million things,
Yet let me tell you
Most boys will break your hearts
Even if  butterflies and unicorns – are what you feel in the beginning.

But you’ll always stand,
Taller than ever,
Your heart will love harder than ever,
And at the end of it all, you’ll fall in true love – the one with yourself.

I have seen friends
I have seen friendship
Sometimes both seem different
I have wondered why it is.

I have had family though,
Mine and ours,
Standing by when noone did.
Cause blood respects blood but water takes the shape of every vessel it’s kept in.

Respect everyone,
Expect from none,
And maybe when you live another year after year,
You’ll thank your sister who lived 26 less, albeit happily.

Define : Love

Love is pure,
Love is kind,
Love doesn’t need you to tone down –
Your waist
Or your mind.

Love is Grace
Love is fine –
Like raindrops on dry soil
Scent wafting inside out
Firing up your senses every time.

Love is patience
Love is pain
The patience to endure through pain
Of time
Of life.

Love is needing
(Not wanting)
Love is divine
You know when you see her
Every time.

Love is knowing there are days
And there will be nights
When mistakes will be made –
Love is accepting
What we have is bigger than mistakes of the human kind.

Love is passion
Love is crazy
It is firing up the skin
While calming down the soul
Two sinners made right.

Love is letting me be the wind to your silent sails
The dream to your fluttering lids
The laugh to your morose days
Love is letting me,
And me letting you
To be any way.

Letting go

A lot of time has passed now,
To make me feel okay
About everything that went wrong
And everything that went our way.

Some days I feel it’s my fault
Some days it’s yours
Some days when the fight won’t resolve
Destiny takes up the blame for what should’ve been just ours.

You see,
I don’t hate you
And now I can’t love you
The wound you gave me was just too deep.
For any healing that might have taken place
That one careless word you said –
Is enough to make me rethink
And re-evaluate what traipsed between us in deeds.

Even fate has put me far away,
To ever take that road back to you.
I wonder if I should accept it as the logical end
And move on from something that I had very well thought through.

They don’t understand why I am hung up,
They don’t understand because they haven’t tried to understand you the way I did,
But knowing how you took one second to unravel it all in your ego
I wonder if I ever understood you at all to play by it?!

So be it,
I let go of you
And I’m not naive anymore
To believe in setting love free and to wait if it’s true to come back to you.
If I let you go, I mean it’s gone
Or will there be some karmic pull of true love to make me run right back to you?
Nevermind,
Anyway,
Another man another day,
For tonight I let go of you.

To my grandfather with love

Dear Jeje,

There’s not a day I don’t miss you.

I haven’t eaten a orange candy since days,
Noone gets it for me while secretly buying paan from the local shop now.
The pan box and the art of paan hiding is lost to me,
There’s no one I have to worry to choke on betel nuts now.

Papa made me cut his hair that day,
While I combed through it,
I could only think of the texture of your hair and the number of greys in them when you said –
“French, Russian, Chinese – which hairstyle will you give me today, Sanu”, and enjoy while I made you look like a clown.

I play songs and mamma sings to them,
I watch movies and mamma watches with me,
But I don’t dare to watch Anand, Padosan and Sahib Bibi ghulam again,
You won’t laugh crazily when “Ek chatur naar” plays.

Some ask me how being a girl I am interested in cricket
They don’t know the number of fours and sixes we have cheered
The number of time I risked the dining table top falling over,
As I danced on it when Sachin beat his six.

When someone tries to tease me I think of your goofy smiled jokes and pinches,
I am still irritated easily,
But I tone it down than I did with you,
I could do anything to you and you would still love me – they won’t.

I remember you sitting on the porch
And call out to me for tenth lemonade as you chat happily with your best friend or welcome me whenever I came back from school,
I don’t see him now,
I don’t even see the porch now.

I remember the midnight I was pressing your feet tired from studying
You woke up from sleep and said my face shines brighter than the moon
It’s still better than the dozen compliments I recieve
From the half-hearted men that half love me everyday.

Emotions aren’t honest once you digitalize them,
Maybe writing this would mean I am showing off
My poetry skills or humane touch
But we don’t have to be sad and still miss someone everyday.

I might not be your favorite grandchild,
But you were my favourite grandparent.
I can make a dozen friends
But none of them can fill the void of a grandfather like you.

A letter to my beautiful self

Hey sweetheart,

You call everyone a sweetheart

You call everyone “mine”

But how long will it take you

To handover that same gratitude

To your very self

And make yourself your “mine”.

Didn’t get it?

I couldn’t at first too.

But that’s how it works

This thing with one and two

Of every one around the world

Who have learnt the trick

To keeping their self loved.

They wake up everyday

Even wash their face

But when they lift their face to the mirror

They keep it there

(Not the way you flinch away)

And tell their horrid selves

I love you,

I love you I love you I love you

Like I’ve never loved anyone else.

Like I’ve never felt for anybody else.

I love you like you are the only thing that can love me

Or make me happy

So I’ll love you and keep you happy.

I know it now,

I am writing on the back of my palms and hands

Getting it tattoed on my skin

I could dream of a hundred men

To come save me

In a hundred ways

Yet a single none of them

Would ever love me

The way I can love myself.

Love,

P.