Looking for 'Me'

The four of us were talking, silences falling faster. One shed silent tears, the other two stern and firm had already taken the decision, and there was one for whom it was hard to let go. Can you actually taste it in the air, the defeat before the battle's done? The intention before a breath is exhaled? The thought before the blink of an eye? It was all the end result of an evening when the tongue spoke before the mind, and perhaps the misfortune of misjudging the men of a stagnant society.

That afternoon in 2008 when I accepted 'A' as more than a good friend, I had laid down all my conditions neatly over the carpet. His patience, ever-beaming countenance, quiet support had all won me over. He didn't have a problem with any of my 'conditions'. Surprising, I should say, since the very first was that I wouldn't stay with his mother after marriage. Shocking to most in a culture where girls accept their in-laws without a stray thought strand. Here I was, putting that most forbidden and blasphemous of conditions and, here he was, acquiescing. Needless to say, I was giddy with that drug called love. But, like all good, dependable drugs, it had started charting out it's path of destruction.

Four months sailed past and we prided ourselves on getting by without so much as a harsh word. During our fifth, a ring followed and I knew that this was the person I wanted to be with. That's when the world decided to turn and with it, mine too. A family holiday and with each breathtaking eyeful, I missed taking in the sights with him. That was the night I asked him to marry me and everything changed in an instant. According to him, I was not ready for marriage, and vague answers met confused hurt. His doubts, confusion, and the wait dragged on for over two years, over which I tried breaking the bond that severs more than just hands held. And then it dawned. He would never take anything forward until I agreed to stay with his mother. Hurt, betrayal, shock, bitterness - they are a terrible concoction to the head. Simply because to get out of them, we end up making all the wrong choices.

I convinced myself that I'd try staying with the lady who wedged her hostile presence between us. Everything - from the engagement to the living arrangement depended on one nod, a single smile, an unspoken silence. It made me think hard - Why do women in India take it for granted that we have to move to the man's place after marriage? Don't we earn? Don't we get tired managing the house as well as the office? And, most importantly, don't we have parents to look after? Why then do we take for granted the imminent movement when we know that staying together entails a lifetime of adjustment and fault-finding? Why do we agree to leave those two people who have loved, looked after, sacrificed almost everything for us, to look after two others who have virtually done nothing of the sort? Simply because they have come together to bring to the world the person who we're married to? Is that reason enough? What happened to equality and fairness here? What happened to the presence of intellect? Are we so gullible as to be swayed by two words of love and a flower that will wither away? I refused. My happiness could not be weighed with another's. It was my own.

There is no right or wrong in this world when it comes to matters like these. It is simply perception. For me, I don't believe in leaving the ones who, by giving up so many opportunities in their life, have made me the person I am today, and living with a man's mother just because she is his mother or she has lost her significant other. Sometime in future, I cannot discount the fact that my mother or father could be alone too. Who looks after them then when they need company? Who fills that void in their life? Or, is that also taken for granted?

I made my decision. A man who cannot understand my beliefs and principles, views them as trivial, and goes back on his word just to have someone in his life is not a person I can be happy with. Probably this is what all Indian men do. They see a girl who supports them, keeps them happy, refuses to cook and adjust. Love is the cure. Give her months of your love, convince her that there can be no other more wonderful option, and then when she is ripe to spoil, drop the axe. Mother is old, mother is ill, mother is lonely, and when that doesn't work, I am lonely, I have no friends, I'll love you till I die, and my condition has just gotten worse. It works like a charm. That independent, individualistic streak fades with each coating of 'love'. Someday, when the flush of first love passes and reality seeps in, you have compromised and don't recognise yourself. Like all good Indian women, convince yourself that you've done it for love. Only, was it worth it?

Just a year..

Feb 11. It's been a year. One whole year to the day since Sam went away. One year since Toms forgot how many times she's cried. One year since I cried openly in a public bus depot. One year since I read the words 'Sam no more'. One year since I blocked out the memories of those days when I needed to be strong for my friend. One year since my emotional state declared 'heart dead'. One year since I've loved someone and felt fear. Fear of waking up someday alone. Fear that I won't be able to see again because of the curtain of tears. Fear of not knowing what to do anymore with life. Fear of finding it meaningless despite having all the ambition in the world. Fear of not being able to share the joy of success, sorrow, pain, confusion. Fear of not being able to experience pure unadulterated happiness. 

Fear that in one year someone can become so close and go so far. 

Have you ever felt the need to reiterate yourself? the feeling that every pore needs to unclog, to release all the tiny shards embedded in so that you can feel the air breathe 'you' through every pore? That there are times when you forget yourself. There's a tight wrap around you, a cocoon that you weave around yourself, when you start to reek of another and realise it but don't know how you could get it off..scrub it free..parachute your mind, thoughts, and soul out..find a way to find yourself, take the logical route that walks straight..the one you thought you had all chalked out..therein lies the difficulty..what part of you has changed by the time you've clawed your way through? Who are 'you' then? Which part of 'you' do you associate with and which part do you not? Hard to reconcile or comprehend..

The multi-faceted Perception

It's always perception..I never thought in all my years of being unreasonable, emotinally fraught, hopelessly caught in the tangle of relationships that this would be the feeder main for all those innumerable emotions. I always thought i was complex. Well, i still think so..No denying it..ACJ was the beginning where i realised that however you look at things or want to look at them, there is always a difference and will always be because my perception couldn't be picked off anyone..It could only be my own however hard i tried to be or look at something. Its like my friend says..that the way we vegetarians look at plant life as food and not living creatures, non-vegetarians don't think of chicken, pigs, deer, and almost all other living creatures other than themselves, as food (i think the raven has been spared or has China found a 'delectable' solution to that too??)

One of those wonderfully juvenile perceptions is when you are under the extremely gullible impression that you are the sole saviour of a person's life and the main force behind the vicious alteration of their decisions (which we think are pathetic). So, we very vociferously and to great effect, advocate our opinion about their life, their choices, their thinking....Maybe at one point, we seriously doubt whether they can even think for themselves because we automatically assume that stature in their lives where they hand that authority to us on a platter..And we more than gleefully invite them into the cavern that we have caved for them..Well, in the outstanding moments of basking in the honour of our own skewed sense of brilliance, we don't anticipate the workings of the other person's mind which we have conveniently pushed to the background..Thankfully, it's voice refuses to be quelled by the tirade of our unfailing sense of self-importance and there comes a point when there is a violent need to sever a bond built on trust and mutual thoughtfulness. Since that premise has ceased to exist, maybe the bond should too or has it really become a bond??

While this arises more out of a fiercely blind sense of possessiveness, there is another twisted side to the complete and unbridled possession of another's life. It springs from a deep sense of disdain for another's set of values, principles, their way of living, working, speaking, thinking..Quite subtly, perception finds it own niche here as my perception of someone's life and their mannerisms may generate deep dislike while for that person, it may merely be just another facet to them or a casual daily. But for some others, it may strongly intrude in their frame of thinking as something thoroughly scandalous. This I understood when a close friend swore while he called people which, according to me, was a serious lapse. Then I relooked at my perspective and grudgingly admitted that while it was shocking to me and disgusted me every bit, the other person was just either following a habit acquired through years of hearing it from the company he kept.

But at the end of it all, it just makes me deeply ponder as to what really is acceptable and what cannot be tolerated. Is it a line I draw only for myself from my own experiences and perceive my side of the table or something that I could impose on others for a cause, for a positive change? I still don't know for, where there are limits, there is thought and a need to understand and be, and where there are none, well everything stays as just another perception...

23 years and I couldn't have thought there were so many types of headaches...Amen!

A bird's eye view

A beautiful, idyllic sunday..one where you can just sit in your garden and breathe in the air and look at the teeming sub-prime life and marvel that they all reside in the crooks and crevices, in the tiny breathing spaces. It was hot though which made me turn anxiously towards my thirsty plants silently exuding their plea to me, with a slight bend in their backs. Water pouring ensued with more on me than them. This happens when you want to stay in one place and yet somehow hope the water will reach every corner of the garden, bounteosuly to all the plants. After spraying the tops of the shrubs (simultaneously with the neighbour's wall and the good thing, their rose plant), I finally stopped to breathe in the scent of hot, baked earth soaking in the cold water, absorbing and seeping it in with all its pores like a mighty earthworm and then letting out a fresh, crisp scent into the air. I happily munched on roasted dal and let some fall to the ground so that the ants could munch on them. That's when I was really truly amazed because I didnt know ants could affect me that way. They called invisible others to come help them out and soon a horde of them were carrying one small grain into their hole. When they arrived at their den, the grain wasn't fitting in as the hole was too small to hold the entire grain in flat position. Without further thought, the ants turned it onto it's side and triumphantly marched with their dinner, right into the hole. Such simple creatures..and such a simple solution. Why can't we human beings be as intelligent and simple? Our ego immediately has to flex its muscles and we refuse to take even a simple suggestion and instead vouch for our vociferously advocated opinion just to prove our point.

Then came the tailorbird. It was the smallest and the sweetest thing i'd ever seen (i've not seen the hummingbird so this is stands me in good stead). My mum says it is a regular visitor to our garden. The poor thing was obviously, by birdie standards, feeling hot (by human, it was unbearable). It realised that the garden had just been watered and just swooped down onto a giant (by its standards) money plant leaf. And then, it had me looking at it with adoration and laughter in my eyes. It was using the leaf like an aqua slide! Its wings were spread in a wide angle, horizontal to the ground and it was relieving its body heat by sliding over the water-laden leaves. Just then, a light breeze shook the leaves of one of the trees which shed a few droplets from its leaves. The bird immediately shot like a bullet into the tree, leading to a heavy spray on its body. Then, after it had exhausted all the drops of water from the leaves, it happily hopped away.
I wonder why all my desires don't make me as happy as i was that day watching that little bird....bone-deep happy.....

Of air pollution and happy endings

I just realised i hate idealists. Not all though cos i'm a self-confessed idealist although i'm not too sure of its meaning now. Last thursday, i was really excited cos i thought i would get to meet journalists from other papers at a conference arranged by the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) on how Greenhouse gases from vehicles are contributing to the increasing air pollution in the city. I had done my research before i left for the conference so i would know what areas had already been covered with respect to air pollution studies in the city. I had read what journalists from other papers had written and those from my own too. When i actually got to the KSPCB office, i saw all those people there and was quite excited frankly. Here were my bretheren. It felt good. I saw many smile at those they were familiar with and give a passing, haughty glance to "those newbies". It’s easy to guess the category into which i was slotted.

I dislike and detest those self-styled, stereotypical, generalising sorts who don't know who YOU are but smirk when they hear where you work or they come to, clairvoyantly, realise that you are a newcomer to the field and they are "veterans" (and it applies even if they have worked for 2 years..come on! its more than your lousy 3 months atleast!!). There were some from the Indian Express, more reputed for their text-heavy opinion columns, one from the Deccan Herald, which is really good with city news but whose journo decided that she had best be professional (here professional doesnt correspond with talking amicably and exchanging information..it is a self-generated version of deliberate snobbishness) and of course, my sister paper Bangalore Mirror who are more concerned with how many places are left for couples to "coochie coo". Well, all inclination to be nice and smile flew away into the air (i guess they musn't have come up with a special mechanism even in KSPCB to keep it clean of this sort of pollution!)
Finally, when the conference was over and the questions asked, tea and snacks was served to everyone. As i was the last to go, only two or three who were there till the end asking questions. I awaited my turn and thought i would talk to those already there. Oops! Wrong thing to do! Just one haughty glance and me, my smile, my ego, and my idealism - all died a lightning-fast death. As is usual with me, i asked my questions first, casually interrupting the shy slow 2-year old's (in the profession i mean!). I was met with "oh-sure-i-allowed-you-to-ask-first-out-of-my-generosity" look. Not that i cared! I was all upbeat and itching to sniff out an exclusive.

I anyway asked to meet the Chairman who looked utterly bored and lost as if asking "Shucks! what the hell am i doing in this chair???" Accidentally, he let slip some info that caught my ears and the rest as they say, is history! (oh how i love this line!!) So in the end, all they got was a press release and i got a scoop!! *chuckle*
I guess all's well that ends well and that applies to idealism too...