KINDNESS IN A FOREIGN LAND FT. LIVING OUTSIDE YOUR STATE

It has been roughly four years with few blobs in between of homestay that I have been living away from home in different states. What started as a quest for freedom from the shackles of a typical orthodox Odia family I landed up first in the bright, shiny city of Hyderabad; to coursing my way through a shackling preparation period in Chennai and landing in my current pseudo-home city of Belgaum. Three states, three different feelings yet something essentially remains the same – superficially it seems as if you are being welcomed, yet if you dig down, deep deep down – you understand that the loneliness that comes from people being too rigid to let go of their racial identities, stays.

I come from Rourkela, basically – it is a so-called smart city in the northern part of Odisha which still lives and breathes its old small industrial town charm of 90s. With planned layout of sectors, its hills, its winters, its ring roads, its green lush vibes – you almost wonder what will make you ever leave it – the fact that nothing has changed since the last 27 years perhaps? The fact that the once smart shiny industrial town designed by German architects which surpassed the capital decades ago in development and modernness has now been reduced to a reckless ruckus with potholes and pollution which Bhubaneswar has been pumped with all the exchequer to make it the poster boy of Odisha’s development. That brain drain has happened with such ferocity that every kid I knew from school has either moved abroad or living in metros working in the Big fours or bigger IT firms. That all our preparation for medical and IIT; cracking all the entrances never really showed up on the landscape since no one really returned – so did I.

I remember how I fell in love with Hyderabad – it was my first night in that big, burgeoning new home to the IT wave, when my brother took me on a drive to show me around the place and his IT workplace – there was a long stretch of road which slid down the hill, as we went down the entire IT landscape, the shiny glittering buildings came up with a million lights – and there in a foreign land, I fell in love with a city.

I fell in love with the promises that the city offered, the nooks and cranny of Madhapur and Gachibowli – I studied, I travelled, I roamed across Charminar and Qutb Shahi tombs alone, I rummaged through all the biryani places till I found myself licking my fingers in Bawarchi, attended my first photo festival, had a minor stalking incident following it, felt energised by the IT crowd who seemed in a rush to get somewhere and get ahead in life, lapped up the culture heritage and tried to learn the local tongue too. It was the best three months of my life. My Maa thinks I was crazy the way I woke up everyday and roamed around the city armed with a bag and google map – but people backpack across Europe, I just did the same for a city I fell the first time in love with. I remember the last day in Hyderabad like all last days when you know things will never be the same again even though people promise you that it will – I sat down on the floor, all of my 24-year-old-self and folded my arms across the chest pouting my face at my brother and Maa, tears streaming, I am not going back. I won’t go back. I did anyway.

Move forward to one year later when my sojourn started in Chennai – juggling mental sanity and a new state seems overburdening – yet my resolve made through with filter kaapi and the love of new people and friends I made in the city – with my fondest memory being of my Paati. My beautiful, kind, warm Paati who saved me on the third day of being in Chennai in a horrible Oliver Twist worthy PG crying in the small room I was holed up in till NEET. The kind face overlooking mine from her balcony opposite mine, her kind word, her life and resolve motivated to make it till NEET. It was the hardest goodbye when I left that hellhole after NEET.

OMR is the shiniest part of Chennai according to me. It is what was a vestige of life in Hyderabad to me – the long wide lanes, the IT firms, the IT crowd, the 5 min access to beach yet with all promises of perks of metro life was everything to me. Plus, bagging a job in a top corporate hospital and earning my own money and spending it as I please was sweet life for me.

When COVID struck and so did my NEET results – it was only with a heavy heart that I left my independent life behind to start a new journey to a new degree with a new form of slavery in a new city.

Belgaum at first look reminded me of the bustling college town of Manipal, on a second and wider look after I got my car and could afford to roam again (thanks to the previously exorbitant rates of autowallahs of the city) it struck me like my own city. Rourkela with its roads and hills. Just with addition of metro food chain outlets and a better pub culture. The green campus of the university beckoned with its ever-lasting monsoon and cool climate. Somehow it felt like it could be promising again. But this time I wasn’t in a different state for three or six months, I have been here for two years and there has been a growing discord inside me. The batch is a mixture of people from different states – yet if you ask them what they are they immediately label themselves as south Indians or north Indians. They group themselves likewise. They find comfort in dating likewise. Their lives are so wrapped around their regional identities they never take the pains to know a person beyond their regional labels, not to their fault, since the person on the other end does likewise. Ganging up as Tamils or Telugus or Northies, at the end of the day I wonder if this is the idea of one India that had been fed to me throughout my convent life. Those cultural programs with a mandatory unity dance in the end representing every region of India coexisting harmoniously seems fake when in adulthood no one really practiced it right. But then what is the point of being a bigger person if the person you are dealing with doesn’t do you right?

I wonder how I will remember this place, the way I remember those other two – will I remember the kindness of my friends or let the bitterness of being put back by my lack of Kannada speaking skills in the department or the lack of enough South-Indianness or North-Indianness to fit into someone’s life seep in. Will I remember the memories of beautiful climate and the long drives or the reason went for solo drives in the night to try to dissuade the burnout of residency imprint on it. Will I remember how the girl from a small city who never left the environs of home and was a day scholar throughout MBBS travel 1800 miles to another state and stay in the hostel for the first time for three years of residency with a bludgeoning hope in her heart and spark in her eyes for a new life quenched or give up and live through the rest of my days here as an outsider who miscalculated an in?

Lost in the city

The password to my phone is still my best friend’s birthday
Who still won’t call me up when she knows I’m in town
Just like the whole past year

The place on the parapet where i used to sit is filled with new plants
(More plants)
Maybe my mother found foliage as an adequate replacement to an absent daughter

Everything looks picture perfect
Yet everything feels hollow
The town that gave me birth now tells me I don’t belong here

The aunties pick on the new colors in my hair
While I shade card the green in their eyes
I feel bare even with the extra clothes I have donned to fit into their small town minds

Some ask me what I did there
Some ask me what I’m doing here (matchmaking, perhaps?!)
A year seems a unit of distance and not time, when the people you held dear don’t know how to welcome you anymore.

The roads are filled with dirt and gravel
I call it indignation
The dwellers call it slow progress to a “smart city” as the city chokes me with forgetfulness and dust

I have forgotten all the ways I lost my heart in
I’m scared to leave my house
(To lose the last resemblance to what feels like home)


When did it become like this?
When did I lose all traces of me in me?
Or is it blessed amnesia
Keeping me from the pain of the past
(Sigh)
Guess I would never know
For I tried finding myself so much in foreign cities
That I got lost in the very city I grew up in.

• 

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.

The Sunday Blog – #mymusings

Most of what I write goes into drafts these days – it’s hard for me to publish things when I am overthinking them through. Is it writer’s block or loss of the freedom from the pen, I will never know.

Moving here has felt like a dream – Belgaum is a paradise for creative people, especially writers like me. The clouds hover in the sky artistically – if you visit the windmills situated at the city outskirts you will know exactly what I am talking about when with a short drive on the beautiful highway, then the road snaking up the hills you find yourself amidst the clouds that hover low enough kissing the turbines with fervor. It rains here so much, I have never seen a place like this – the umbrella has become an asset of equal importance to me like my phone. You can not leave your hostel room without it for it might start raining anywhere, at any time. The breeze hits you perfectly, exactly the ones you crave in romantic settings – but romance for me is far-off. When it rains too much you feel like Bella in Forks, minus the Edward to cheer you up.

I don’t talk to people back at home too much. There is a strange sense of missing that envelops me if I do – they won’t get it – I don’t talk to them not because I don’t miss them but because I do.

I try avoiding talking about residency, mostly because there’s not a lot happening due to the higher authorities restricting us to keep the COVID exposure low – but also because I am taking time to absorb and adjust. ‘Taking it slow’ is a phrase I use too much these days, but learning the meaning of it gradually. It can be applied to all arenas isn’t it? Take it slow to understand the pressure of academics so it doesn’t overwhelm and break you. Take it slow with all the new friends you are now surrounded with so that they don’t turn back in future and back-stab you. Take it slow with the guy you met, because he might hurt you in the same bloody motherfucking way every one else did before me. Deep breath. Take it slow.

I have seen with increasing age humans have become less and less dependable. They are controlled by their whims and fancies. Their own moods and their own situations. I understand them, I feel for them, but I will not entertain them anymore. My father always egged me – “communicate, Sanu, communicate”. I resisted him so much then, but now I realise how his teachings have seeped into me more than his words could consciously then. I hate a man who can’t communicate now. I am short tempered with someone who’s flaky. I have realized how I am more my father’s daughter with each passing day when I up my barriers before someone takes advantage of me since I lowered them. 26 years are a long time to develop guards and instincts from previous hurtful experiences. It will take a person of real grit to lower them again. Though before judging someone I need to incorporate such lessons inside me as well. I am so grateful to have found a bunch of friends here who keep checking on me. Life really does get better if you have people to share it with. For you can go only faster if you are alone, but farther together.

I understand now what my hosteler batch-mates in UG felt about me as a dayscholar – it’s hard to connect and feel close to someone who you see only for a few hours in the day when you have a bunch of stories happening in the night. Though I am still trying to understand why someone would two time me for that; since I thought I would be absolved from that area in dating since I live in the hostel – but funnily enough we have a curfew of 10 pm.

Dating is hard at this age – people come with a lot of baggage that I have no space to keep. They come with their moods, whims and insecurities and I have mine. I guess that’s what they say about love – it’s a miracle. Because it will be a complete miracle for me to feel love for someone again. Until then, I am happy with this life of my own creation. I wake up each day and I am grateful. Grateful for all the varied experiences every single day that keep overwhelming me. Grateful to have friends who make me chai when I feel low, or go on a scream fest with when we try to find spots to have midnight fresh air but end up getting scared by ghostly singing from some untraceable space. Grateful for a huge campus equipped with all facilities I ever dreamt of. Grateful for stalwarts as my faculty and people who guide and not just chide as my seniors – I can’t tell you what a blessing it is to have seniors who are sweet and supportive – it amplifies your learning in residency! I am grateful for Belgaum having spectacular food (but not the extra kgs it’s adding *Le cries*) and a waterfall or nature’s paradise in every direction. I am even grateful for my swollen sprained finger from playing basketball for I am finally getting to learn to play it after yearning after basketball courts I had no clue to navigate since ages; but most importantly I am grateful for myself – still standing strong after everything I have faced in the past 26 years. Every time I am on the verge of breaking down I realise why I shouldn’t – because I don’t. I am resilient. That’s my greatest asset, apart from my smile and other things – which the boys say 😉

That’s it. A bunch of sentences to leave you with on a Sunday morning. Find what makes you happy, and be grateful for it. It has taken me a long time to come back to writing again. Hope this doesn’t sound like gibberish. If it does, I am sure I will improve in the next post.

Love,

P.

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.

Namma Belagavi

Its the day 4 of quarantine and I am sitting in my hostel room living a life built from scratch – even the laptop I type this in is brand new – a gift I got for getting into residency in one of the most prestigious colleges of Karnataka.

Do I miss my family back home? Honestly, I don’t. I am 26 now. The thing about this age is that – you have progressed in your life through a vast series of trials and tribulations to not get stuck in one moment forever. You have lost enough people to understand that people are not here to stay. You have felt enough emotions to know that be it happiness or sorrow – each is fleeting. You sit in a crowd and yet your emotions can be separated from the rest.

Its a blessing and a curse.

A blessing because moving on and missing is an art almost rusted and lost to me. A curse because – that innocence is long gone.

It’s raining again – not a new thing I suppose for Belgaumites – yahan bin baat ke mausam ko romance soojhta hai – as someone had introduced me to this place and I am seeing that with my own eyes. Every evening, every once in a while, the sky embraces grey and pours a little bit of love on its inmates. I always thought Rourkela was heaven – but I have been transported into a similar one. Just I have a wider selection of hangouts and I don’t have to wait for a vacation to have zinger box from KFC as there’s one right at the campus entrance 😛 The crowd is cool – just like Manipal, and the campus is huge and green – just like NIT, Rourkela. My hostel like IIT Madras’s M.Tech hostel. My hostel room – well its a paradise.

See my point? Once you grow up, everything you do reminds you of something before. The innocence of feeling things for the first time is gone. Just like the people I talk to here. We are not fresh undergraduates who have come here wide eyed in search of experience – we all have baggage that we have put on the floor for awhile, hoping this place will make us forget it or at least make carrying it easier after three years of residency.

But does that mean I am bitter? No, not at all – I am just better and hope that this betterment continues exponentially in this place. I am excited – I am making so many new friends – a compensation for all the friends I lost once I moved from undergraduate to post graduation. I am shit scared – residency is very tough they say, and I am not sure how it will pan out for me; but I am in love – with this life I have created, the friends I have found, and the moments I am living.

Cheers to three years of what I hope are the best years of my life.

Love,

P.

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.