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?

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.

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.

DEAR VIKRAM FROM #THAPPAD – WHAT YOU AND I BOTH NEEDED TO LEARN FROM AMU

Vikram, tumhari galti nahi thi. I needed to start with this. You know, few days back in my locality a neighbor filed a domestic violence against her husband; when her husband hit her she filed an FIR, she stood in the dead of night in the rain not going inside the house – it surprised me in the most surprising way. I thought it was brave of her, not that it was logical – why didn’t I think a man hitting his wife is something that can be resolved, Vikram? Maybe because I have seen a drunken uncle beat his wife and watched her never walk away and people hail it as the ultimate sacrifice for keeping the family reputation intact. Maybe because I have seen the women in my family being taught their place too. Maybe because my mother defends that and tells me I should obey when my husband will ask me to do too. Maybe because my mother tells me stories of how when a man cheats on his wife it’s always because the wife never kept him happy; not that he cheated. Maybe because my father would tell a woman who speaks creates family problems. Maybe because the guy I dated in college told me he didn’t consider me wife material as I have a lot of opinions. Maybe I did tone down for him – removing myself from social sphere, wearing only ethnic, lowering my voice and self to find his place under him. Why did I want to be under him, Vikram? Do we come from the same conditioning? Do we think everything can be compromised as long as we seem perfect to the world with having a relationship than working out a relationship?

How can it be your fault when even my mother, my Maa, my aunts, my conditioning of years and years has taught me to compromise. How can it be your fault when I see what you did and I found Amu’s response unreasonable too. How can it be your fault when I saw those one or two kisses or a hug you gave here and there to the efforts Amu made and thought it was enough too. How can it be your fault when in my family men decided what women wear, how they talk, how they behave, their pitch for years and my mothers never chose to protest; sometimes not even me. How can it be your fault when a family’s reputation is always greater than a woman’s needs. How can it be your fault for doing everything a middle class man has been taught to do?

Vikram tumhari galti toh bilkul bhi nahi thi. You went to office, you worked, you tried to best in your work – it was great, I cheered for you. I am a career minded woman – I know how difficult it is. The pressure of having to perform, the office politics, the deadlines, the meetings, the appraisals… you know. It’s perfectly reasonable to burst out – I do myself – on my Maa, my mother, my best friend, my sister – but I wonder why never on the guy in my life. I thought I was a feminist, I am the equal in the relationship – but I never make it hard on the literal “man” in the relationship. Maybe, a part of me has accepted the conditioning and compromised. Maybe a part of me feels, it has to bend to a man and massage his ego always. How can it be your fault when the woman never knew how she deserved to be treated? When Amu admits that “hum dono mein sab baraabar ka tha.. woh office sambhalega aur mein ghar”, it sounded so simple – hogayi hai emancipation – but home is not only about household work; it has relationships and emotions too; she never distributed that load with you – how is it your fault?

When you went to Amu’s house after she leaves your home after you hit her and offered her a hug, a simple apology and an ornament as a gift to ask her to come back – I was floored. If I was in her place I would’ve come back – why are my expectations so low, Vikram? My father always taught me how I should be ruthless in my career, i followed it; he taught me to be ruthless in the world and reign over it, I try to do it; but that night when he and I were discussing he said how Sita should have towed the Lakshman Rekha and she faced all she did as she didn’t listen to the advice of her elder. I asked him who is the elder – he said Ram – I asked innocently, “By age?” – he replied, “No, by being her husband.” “How being someone’s husband makes you their elder?”, I told this to my father and he said I will have a lot of problems in my marriage in future. Even my aunt tells me this every time I tell her a guy treated me poorly – she tells it’s something I have done. She never sees how the guy mistreated me in the first place for me to burst out on him. In the end you said you hit her because you thought you had a right on her; is this what my father and aunt meant too, Vikram? Is making a guy my husband or my partner allowing him to draw the lines for me? Is it letting him treat me whatever way he wants and me having to be the one that compromises and massages his ego each time? Don’t I need to be taken care of emotionally too?

Vikram tumhari galti thi aur meri bhi. You know I love fairy tales. I was even obsessed with Twilight. Now that I am 26, my best friend tries to convince me of even liking Christian Grey. But you see the pattern right? Emotionally unavailable men, with supernatural skills or unnatural wealth as their only saving grace. Unhealthy romances with the guy being so unsure of his feelings he decided to fuck up the girl’s brain too; the love is in the chase – not the man. The love is in the outer covering, not the insides – when millennial girls are raised on these, will they demand healthy guys who know how to treat a woman right ever? They won’t. I have seen the media of our parental generation – if it taught them unhealthy marriages; my generation media and movies has taught unhealthy romance. Arjun Reddy and Kabir Singh is famous – psycho guys who control the woman of their life and are toxic to every other girl calling it love. I think just like Amu and you took a break from each other finally to understand how you both can grow as healthy individuals to begin again with or without each other in the future – our generation needs to revaluate what’s love and needs to grow too.

I hope you and Amu find each other again at a later point of your life when you have figured out your shortcomings. Yes, I don’t denounce you as bad – how can you bad when you were conditioned to behave that way. We can’t decide where we came from – but we can definitely decide where we to go. I hope you find your place, even if it’s not next to Amu as her husband again – I hope you both are great parents to your child.

Love,

A girl who will try to be Amu from now on.

***

PS : I am glad to be living in times when a movie like #Thappad is being made. It has taught me how to demand not only a financially secure future with a man but an emotionally secure future too. It has laid out roles for everyone in this. If you are a girl’s father you get to look at Amu’s dad who was rock solid support for Amu from start till end – and even didn’t hesitate chiding his son from misbehaving with his girlfriend trying to save him from being another Vikram. If you are a mother-in- law it teaches you to be like Amu’s mother-in-law in the end letting her go and be happy. If you are a neighbor it’s being like Dia Mirza in this movie refusing to give false witness to save Vikram’s ass and tell that she had a wonderful husband who respected her and treated her the right way – he shouldn’t try to obliterate the respect she has for men-kind. If you are stuck in a bad love marriage like Nethra looking for escape outside marriage, trying to find your lost lover in another guy, maybe you need an escape from the marriage itself; not try to honor lost love by sticking to an unhappy marriage and fuck up the guy’s life outside your marriage too. I thought the housemaid’s ignorance and acceptance of her poverty and living will always let her accept that her husband bashed her up to show that he is a man every night. If she could rise above that to stand up against her man – can’t we? We can. If you are the man who I build my future with reading this, I hope you know now what we both need to bring to the table. I won’t compromise and I won’t let you too. Let’s be equals, for real.

“Just a slap?”

“Just a slap par nahi maar sakta.”

School Days and a dead friend – Final Part.

Sikha and I had got into a pretty bad fight in school in the morning.

In those days, since she couldn’t drive a scooty, she went along with me to tuitions. I had our driver take a by lane to her home and pick her up for tuitions – like we needed even more time together – as we sat in school together, were cracking jokes in break together. Even when school ended, we were on call together. Hundreds of rupees were wasted to support our highly important, couldn’t wait till next conversations about what my crush did or what our classmates did. Now we have free talk time, Jio, what not – yet I do not have my friend whom I desperately want to talk to.

She got into the car silently. I didn’t even greet her hi. Even the driver must have sensed the air in the car. When we reached Baburam Sir’s tuition we sat even on the bench together silently. So much commotion, so much joking all around us, yet for the first time the two epic best friends were not talking to each other. The class started. It progressed through a few concepts; there were so many potential jokes I could scratch my eyeballs from not telling her; but I was me, I had the patience of a stork, you can’t move me – she had to make the first move.

“Sanu.”

Ah yes, truce was near.

“Han…”, I suppressed my excitement.

“I am not able to stay without talking”

Oh yes, finally!

“ME TOO!”

We laughed, and caught up all the jokes we had been meaning to crack through the entire day. The ice was broken. While going back in the car to home though little vestiges of the fight could be seen; and I wondered were marks, entrances more important than friendship?!

Sikha calmly replied, “Of course. If I get in a medical college, would I give you my seat?”

That sentence seemed innocuous when I heard it, but it got deeply embedded to ruin our friendship for good. I wonder if she knew this.

***

When we entered the latter half of class 12, you could see only one thing written on everyone’s face – ENTRANCES.

Nobody was anyone’s friend anymore. Everybody lied – about the number of hours they were putting in to study, the number of hours they wasted, the place they were roaming; when they were just sitting at home and studying. You could see an MCQ book in everyone’s hand. When normal school classes went on you could find an Aakash Institute Botany module hidden carefully under my desk while a Mathematics class went on.

“Sum no 23, Differentiation, answer please?”, Ma’am droned.

I looked over at my NCERT mathematics book, calculated in my head – “2cos

(2x)”

“Correct! Very good, Parnini”

“0.5 seconds”, Sid congratulated me from the opposite bench. I smiled and went back to the real book which would help me for my entrances. Sikha knuckled me from my side. I looked up annoyed. She made desperate eyeball movements to tease me about a guy’s sudden interest in me. I made a face to show my helplessness.

When classes got over, we dragged ourselves from the schoolroom slower than the slowest snails.

“Everything is ending”, she said.

“No, we are just moving on, to another phase of our lives”, I replied.

“I feel you have changed”, she probed.

I thought about how my father had brainwashed me once again to consider marks above people. How he had scared me that I was too naïve to believe in friendship; that these so-called friends would progress with their careers and leave me behind. How I was wasting time playing best friend in the most important year of my career. How I had been ignoring Sikha’s calls lately.

“No, you have changed. I text you, you see it but you never reply”, I countered defensively.

“You know I use my mother’s phone for texting. Your messages go to hidden folder, and I miss out on them. Also, Boards are near and now she sleeps with me, when can I text back?”

Lies, I thought in my mind. She was preparing for medical entrances as well. I was sure, she was trying to outsmart me.

Dear kids who read me, here’s a tip for you: In life there are bigger things than ruining your friendship for exams. Trust me. You’ll have even bigger exams and the people who’ll actually help you sail through them will be your friends. They are not your enemies – that’s just an unhealthy culture created by our parental generation thanks to media celebrating rankers more than caring about failures who commit suicide under pressure; but when you screw your viva, you’ll need your friends to hug you and get you ready for the next one.

I didn’t know this then. We grew further and further apart. Small things about her irked me. Her disapproval of my crush irked me. Her disapproval of my Carmel friends who had treated me like shit earlier but now were warming up thanks to new found popularity irked me. Even on farewell you couldn’t see us sitting together – it’s the biggest regret of my life.

Boards started and then talking to anyone wasn’t even an option. When boards ended, two days later we had AIPMT. I had spent so much energy for boards that I had none for entrances – and very expectedly I couldn’t even clear the prelims, Sikha did, my father created a scene over it – whatever warmth and missing I had towards her ended. Days were passing by in haze and tears for OJEE. I cleared OJEE Engineering with a rank of 154 and AIEEE as well; OJEE medical was a far shot – I only qualified for a newly built college in my home city. I told at home I’ll take in engineering college; they didn’t agree, it was their dream to see me as a doctor. They decided to send me away to Aakash, Delhi. I packed my bags.

We were in Cuttack station.

I saw a figure close to me which I knew like the back of my hands, standing with a man. It was Sikha and her father. I was leaving the state for a year. Drop years required hard work – I was not supposed to be in touch with anyone. All social media accounts were deactivated. This was supposed to be our last meet.

“Hi”, she said. What a far cry from our old days!

‘Hey”, I said.

“How are you?”

“Okay.”

“What was your percentage in boards? 80?”

“89.7% overall, 94% in science”

“Where did your marks go? Physics?”

“Nah. I got 96 in that. English. . .”

The ice was broken. We started laughing. An ex-ICSE student had performed shittily in English in CBSE Boards exam and ruined her aggregate. We talked comfortably after the. She didn’t let me apologize for my behavior over the past few months.

The breeze was odd or the lighting. It felt eerie, like something was ending. It felt like our last meet.

She was advising me in her characteristic Sikha way who needed to baby sit me.

“See, Sanu, you are very gullible. Don’t let people take advantage of you. I can’t take care of you from now on. No one else will.”

“Okay.”

“Be careful when you fall for a guy, you know your taste is pathetic.” Ha-ha! This one’s so relevant even now!

“Study hard and get through medical entrances. Don’t get diverted.”

“Yeah. You too. Take care.”

My train arrived. I bade her goodbye.

That was our last meet. The last time I saw her.

 

***

Dear Sikha,

Sanu here. 7 years have passed since you are gone. You would have been 27 this year. The world has changed a lot. We have free calls and WhatsApp now – imagine the amount of money we wasted to talk to each other? Such luck kids these days. Do you know we are under lockdown for Corona? Apparently, some virus has hijacked the entire world and my life.

My life you ask? It’s very different from the way you left me. I can talk now. I can be angry now. I can express to some extent now. Can you believe that? I used to write in the back of notebooks poems which you read and now I write on blog and leave it for the world to see.

I am still a drama queen; just that instead of you my best friend Ani gets to see it. You would have liked her – she was just like me when you adopted me as your Sanu. I am the Sikha to her. I protect her the way you protected me, but now she doesn’t even need that; just the way I didn’t need towards the end and left you – which is a good thing, I guess. She has matured to take care of herself. Sometimes when she doesn’t talk to me, I feel as if history is repeating, and I think of the way I treated you. You must have been so alone. I am so sorry. You told me how all your friends had treated you and I became the same. I am sorry. I hope you have found peace. I hope you have found love.

I did. I never told him. You said I should beware of guys, I did just that and let a lot of moments slip into silence and tomorrows. I am regretting now. He has genuine eyes and a silent demeanor. You would approve of him too. I wish you could advise me what to do about him. I really need a Sikha right now. No one has taken care of me the way you did after you are gone. You were right, I couldn’t have another you. I didn’t even want a best friend for years – Ani practically forced herself into my life. She has that quality. Irritatingly lovable git. Maybe love will force his way into my life too. I hope so; but then, both of never had any luck with love, no?!

I am happy now. Happier than I ever was then. I am done with MBBS. That was a dream stronger for you than mine. Did I tell you I dreamt about you once after your death? You were wearing a completely white salwar suit with a flowy white chunni – YOU! IN A SALWAR SUIT! I literally rolled out of my bed laughing. It wasn’t you, was it?

After you died, I wanted to go to your funeral – papa, mama never let me as I am too sensitive – I wish they had, I would have got closure. For two days I sat in shock on the swing, crying, not studying for entrance exam which was 7 days away, not meeting any one until Ronak called me and talked to me for hours. He died too, one year after you were gone. I lost the closest semblance to best friends I had ever had in a short span of time. People used to come back in holidays to meet their friends and post stuff and my true friends were dead. No one from DPS stayed in touch. Our batch and our group felt so cursed – three dead. Whenever I went to Sector 5, I would look at your house but never dared to enter – entering meant accepting you are dead. I can’t . . . couldn’t accept you are dead.

Not talking to you was my biggest regret – which is why I started giving more than required of me to people. Now that is my biggest regret. They don’t understand why I live my life like it’s the last day– because they haven’t felt the pain of how abruptly, how shockingly, how without any notice life can be snatched away. They don’t understand how your favorite person in the world can be snatched from you; and all you are left is with regrets, silence and writing in a blog which everyone can read but not you. They don’t understand why I am nice to them or overly emotional or loving – that’s just penance for not being that to you. They don’t deserve it. Most don’t.

Sometimes I feel you’re looking over me, seeing what I am doing, seeing how your Sanu is living life after you’re gone – is that why I am unable to forget you? I admit, the intensity has decreased, now you’re just a blip in the back of my mind; but then – “Do the ones we truly love ever leave us?”

Love,

Sanu

PS: Let this be the last time I ever mention you. RIP.

 

 

 

to be or not to be ft. quarter life crisis

I believe it was the movie 3 Idiots that sparked the national creativity in imagination for the first time. The first time people/kids on the brink of choosing their career paths started debating for the first time if they wanted to fall into the cosy moulds set by their parents or take the plunge into fields of their dreams – fields they genuinely loved and wanted to make a name in. Unfortunately for me, when I was old enough to say T.V. my father decided to turn it 180 degrees – yeah, literally! The cable connection had been cut and the television showed whatever pixels it had to the wall that it faced now – strange house, i know right?! And my father considered going to the theatres a sin anyway, so that’s that, the three idiots revolution reached our hallowed family quite late – so late that I had been brainwashed and well stuck in the sinkhole to be a doctor.

I don’t regret it – trust me, I don’t. There is no other place I feel I could fit in than a hospital is what I feel on most days, but then, there are days when I realise as the great Ranchhoddas Shyamaldas Chanchad of fabled 3 Idiots and so many stalwarts following in his footsteps have said – when you do something you love, even your job wouldn’t feel like a job – that is when I ponder. . because honestly, this doesn’t come to me effortlessly. The motivation to study is something that is effortless because I love reading books, but medical books? that requires effort. The motivation to go to hospital and be there 24×7 working in the wards in effortless, but immersing myself in petty hospital politics? that requires effort. Who said that just because you love something it won’t require effort? Trust me since I was a baby I have always known I will be a doctor someday, but now when I am a doctor, continuing in this path is requiring a hell lot of effort.

People love to see prefixes. People are always people – they will appreciate you for your honey-combed words and everything that you put on as a sweet, sweet garb – but the day you decide to show them the real you? You become too much for them.

I have made my peace though – I have realised that I will have my days – my days of confusion, my days of wanting to take the easy way out of everything, my days of sheer frustration of being a part of the system that is so, so, so bloody mind-numbing, my days of knowing that I have to again face an entrance exam that will decide my future in a day, an exam for which I am having to lock down my skills in a box and hone the rat race creature within me. . . but somehow I feel, you can either try to change it or be a part of it.

I kept my head down and accepted everything for 20 years. I kept my head high and resisted everything and everyone for 5 years. Now that I am 25, I have made my peace. I have learnt to flow with time, space and circumstances. I have learnt a lot – from my mistakes in people and pride – at believing that good things happen to good people. Yes it might be, but not until good people make good efforts for these good things. I have always excelled professionally, whereas I have been a failure in personal. Somehow my grandiose thoughts of how interpersonal relationships should be have marred whatever I have attempted to create or people that had made efforts to be with me. I believed that if it’s meant to be, it will be – WRONG! How can something be without conscious effort on your part? I have been the worst judge of humans, the flawed judgement skills that has been passed down to me accompanied by my rebelliousness created a heady cocktail that downed my early twenties – which I am, to be honest, in retrospective, quite grateful for. For how do you explain becoming something – unless you have been through everything that happened to you? I do feel broken on the inside, but I would not change a bit of it – because somehow my flight for air has rewarded me with pleasure and pain that I had never known in my sheltered life before. Yes, I have cried a lot – but then why shouldn’t I? Like the great Dr. Jehangir in Dear Zindagi said – “Agar aap khul ke ro nahi sakte, toh aap khul ke has bhi nahi paogey” (or something close. Forgive me, I am all filmy but I don’t remember dialogues perfectly)

I have rambled for a quite a long time now. I can’t remember why I started writing this post – but I won’t edit or try to make it look crisp and well-written, because that is what I aspire to be from now on – unedited. Raw, real and rough on the edges. I could live my life trying to fit into social dictum, banging my head on the wall questioning why the world works the way it does – why is life so harsh, people so mean, why do people love certain people, why do I always land into scrapes but nahhh. . . what’s the fun in that? I have learnt to breathe and take life in as it comes. To accept whatever comes my way, learn from it only if it is necessary, experience if it wants to be experienced and let go before it steals a part of me like everyone before. I might sound selfish, but now at quarter life crisis I heck as well deserve the liberty to care about myself. I can’t stumble around wondering why I am too much or too less for people anymore. What is, is and what has to happen, well, will work it out – might as well enjoy the ride.

Adios.

An old school romantic in a Tinder world.

Last night wasn’t a sort of eye-opener for me. I guess I have opened my eyes for a while now. You might be wondering in which sense? Literal – even my readers possess the IQ to not debate – with the human eye being open for near about 14 hours hours daily considering the number of naps we have to take and 28,800 times we need to blink to keep our eyes lubricated – so, figurative it is. Well, you see, off late I have been keeping my eyes literally open for long hours beyond normal biological clock as my figurative eyes have opened – which is on the fact that love in our generation, literally, sucks.

Our generation’s love sucks in the purest way that strives to show that its impure.

I belong to a fairly conservative family whose level of conservative-ness has gradually receded over the years to beguile me with why they were conservative at the crucial start because by the time I rebelled out of their reigns and they had accepted love as the best way for them to go scot-free from the responsibility of searching a groom for me – I realized that now when I have the liberty to choose a guy of my own liking – Pyaar ka fashion hi aur nahi raha?! Like what?

From Jagjit Singh’s Hosh waaalon ko khabar kya bekhudi kya cheez hai where Aamir Khan gets happy with one glimpse of Sonali Bendre and stores her scarves I landed in a world where the guy says, “Hey babe, send nudes”? Dafuq

Love has become dating. Love letters had become sexts. Guys could waste months of your time and say all the brightest things in the world, just because they had That kind of time. In a world where you could set your settings to the number of kilometres you were willing to travel to meet someone, it was hard to expect commitment from a guy who had left and lived 1534 kms away no matter how sweet the beginnings had been – after-all even if I deny, didn’t we belong to this generation? Our previous generation obsessed over fast food, in our generation we have given up on fast food to stay fit but use these fit bodies to indulge in fast love. Its almost poignant how shabbily we treat our bodies these days and judge others who don’t do it. When I was a kid I thought you meet someone, like him, then love him and eventually marry him someday. When I grew up I realised that you meet a lot of guys, like a few, commit to none and probably marry someone completely different someday. How was it working out for my mental health? Terribly, I would say. Also, not just mine, even the girls I am close to. It’s such a terrible epidemic. I don’t understand – have guys become that desperate? Or have we girls created such a culture where guys took us for easy jerk-offs. Because everytime I log in to Facebook in five messages I receive proposals and desperate demands to be in a “casual” relationship. What is a casual relationship, anyway? How do you set the bar to casual or serious? Do you just click some emotional switch and turn it off so that you would feel enough to be with someone but not to ever want to be with them for long!? like how, how does this really work. I can never decipher.

There are times I wish I could go back. Time travel maybe. To that bygone era where romance still existed. Where you used to be happy with a glimpse of your love. Where you spent hours writing the perfect love letter wanting to expressing your feelings, not send dozen texts to dozen girls between the time your girl who you are “committed” to slept and woke up. Where you felt butterflies with holding hands, not jumped into bed at first sight. Where you got goosebumps at her every hi, her every text; weren’t so numb to casually sext. Where you didn’t reduce people to swipes. Where you didnt tick on a checklist of casual or serious from the beginning to make a person decide if they could be with you. Where you didnt flirt with everyone because love was a feeling you felt spontaneously not an item on a checklist of things you must do in life, like in these days; because in our time people are so afraid of commitment that they glorify one night stands, live in and no strings attached to hide the hollowness they substitute as love while getting into one relationship after the other. I want that old school love.I want the previous. The era that has slipped out of people like me because we are born in the wrong time.

For I feel like a misfit. I feel like a Jagjit Singh song, an AR Rahman musical, an Agnee song in a Neha Kakkar, Shirley Setia or Badshah playlist. I feel like an old school romantic in a Tinder world.

INNOCENCE

“Innocent.”

You say that like a bad thing.

Like the horror unleashed by half-men on a full night’s bed.

You don’t falter, for you know I’m wrapped around your finger.

So mesmerized,

So taken, after your long chase.

 

“Innocent.”

You say it again,

You the words slip by without caring;

for you have judged me in a split second,

and labelled twenty three years of I.

 

Though, how would you know?

What goes in on my mind,

What scars I have,

What lies I spin in my head,

To keep the fire burning in my eyes alive.

 

What efforts do I take to go out and see the world through the same lens, I once used as a child –

trying to believe in the innate goodness of the human heart,

trying so desperately to believe that good things happen to good people,

but lay bleeding on the floor the next day, from the punches of another child who had been told that there was no place in this world for a weakling to grow into.

 

What attires do I choose for my soul,

that betrays the steel armour I would like to wear, every time I see another human

for a broken soul is all I’ve carried since forever

and I could give anyone up in a heartbeat, before they look like they would leave me.

 

How I hear the sniggers behind me, “Too good. Too giving. Too unreal.”

Too much, is all I’ll be.

Too much to take in.

Too much to keep.

And you would have let me go before I would have ended with this –

From sheer frustration of dealing with a girl who bares her heart when she finds someone she could keep,

no complexities,

no mysteries for you to unravel,

no long nights of tease.

 

And believe me, I’ll sigh and just let you pass by,

for I’ve seen the likes of you since I started to see right.

You with an exterior of tough and experienced,

so hollow that you go around trying to have someone in some way,

trying so hard to have a smidgen of something without giving your anything,

and feeling satisfied for that night.

Waking up the next day, spent and shaken;

from a taste of the drug you had the night before;

wanting it again, just not from the same person – for too soon, too long, too much is innocent.

 

And I’ll keep on spinning – poetry and goodness.

And I’ll keep on wanting, more than others have been taught to want.

And I’ll keep on loving, more than people deserve to be loved.

For even if I get hurt at the end of the day,

I won’t go to sleep with regret,

Having done my bit.

For this world needs a bit of saving,

Even if good people take the most beating out of it.

For this world needs a bit more of innocence.

 

– Parnini G.

Dear woman.

Dear woman, 

Do you get tired?

Do you get tired of being peddled as a body,

Just a body?

*

A lump of bone and mass,

A face with cake of snow.

Your mouth zipped shut,

A lock on all that you know.

Smile, smile, smile and blush at the ground,

“Hey, you are an object of our desire. Be feminine. We’ll do the talking, bro”.

*

Your eyes lined,

Your hair made straight;

Your lips plumped up,

Your skin – porcelain ware.

Your body corseted to angles, fit to be savoured by men and men alike.

Never a person in their eyes –

Just a butt,

Just a cleavage,

Just a pile of flesh giving them their high.

*

You strut the 7 inches walk,

with 5 layers of white, 3 tubes of red lip queen and 17 tries of winged eye.

You’re measured from side to side,

“38-36-forty? 3/10, send in the next chick, yo!”

Numbers, numbers, numbers – all that you are.

Reduced, rated and picked apart.

*

You are at war with yourself,

and with others too.

That girl he looked at when he was with you,

“That slutty bitch she tricked my perfect man’s eyes with her large boobs.”

Ha.

You try and try to be more,

while he continues to be less for you.

And in this struggle to be more, you become less too.

*

I wouldn’t mind,

but you have condemned yourself,

and others too –

to believed that it’s the only way a woman deserves love,

That she can’t be fire – just someone’s flame, lusty wants

that she can’t weave poetries, have a faraway glance,

but be moulded to the fancies of a man.

That she isn’t more than relationships,

that she needs to be tied down to someone to feel validated,

that she is beautiful only when a man tells her so

That she needs to have YOU as her parameter of comparison,

a photoshopped reality

and that dear woman, is the tragedy of you.

*

P.G.