The Mirror Side! (5)

In the humble memory of “J’ s Dad” and my ability to sympathize!

I practically suck at lending a shoulder! I do, and of course, it’s not rocket science, it has got quite a lot to do with emotions and being there when one needs you etc. but then I don’t believe we are all good at it, I’m not at least, especially to people who I hold close to my heart, my sympathetic functionality nerve is more doomed than the international economic situation right now.  

A super close friend of mine – ‘J’ (sticking to his initial because you don’t know him, so take the liberty of picking whatever name you like) lost his father to a long battle of multiple organs giving up on him one after another. I mean, and this is one of the major roadblocks in his life he’s trying to overcome among a million others, but that’s a story for another time. He broke the story to me middle of the night, and I was sleeping like it was my last one (all my periods of sleep are like that, I cut off from the universe when I sleep, no beep-bloop, nothing).

I woke up to his text notification, and believe you me, if it was anyone else, I would have dropped a text of how I’m sorry about it and how they should stay strong and kept my phone to charge and continued my day normally. But no, this was not some random person, this was ‘J’, the person who has been with me in times I gave up on myself. He has been the strongest pillar of support cementing or thrashing (as and when needed) every right or wrong decision I took, with no judgmental passes, nada!

How do I tell this man that it’s okay, it’s not, I know it’s not… I know how many plans he had made to try each day to ensure that his father stands next to him when he marries the love of his life (which was supposed to be last month, but did not happen, because COVID-19) (remember when I said a million other problems, yeah). I know his world must have fallen apart, and I couldn’t make it because we are in lock-down and I suck at telling my people how I would want to fix everything for them but no I just cannot. It took me hours to text him ‘what’, just this word, and another ten minutes of writing and deleting and then finally sending an ‘I’m here’, and I cannot even begin to tell you what happened on the call.

I mean do you know those people who will crack a very wrong timing joke to avoid the awkwardness of not knowing what to say? That’d be me! I actually did that and felt so fucking stupid about technology not introducing a time machine to go back and fix the mess you make (not that this would be the only one I would fix, but whatever). But the good thing about having people who know you so well is that they know even if you say the shittiest thing to them, they’ll get it, and to put it into a perspective, it has been 15 years, he’ll get it.

I would be lying if I say I would work on this part of me and try to make it better, I know I will not. I will not change anything in me unless it is a decision, I take for myself. I have managed to earn the people around me being this person and I don’t believe I need to add anyone who feels I need fixing. If I do not demand you to fix, I will not deliver it either. For now, ‘J’ is doing better, and hope things work out well for him, he is still registering what happened but I’m sure in time he’ll come around.

If I should die and leave you here a while,

be not like others sore undone,

who keep long vigil by the silent dust.

For my sake turn again to life and smile,

nerving thy heart and trembling hand

to do something to comfort other hearts than mine.

Complete these dear unfinished tasks of mine and

I perchance may therein comfort you.

–Mary Lee Hall

• 

The Mirror Side! (4)

“Ever thine – Ever mine – Ever ours. ” – Beethoven…

There is a very sketchy difference in want and need, and this I have learnt over the years I have practically chosen to be delusional about my inhibitions. That, believe you me, are quite out in the open, and never, literally never in control.

I mean it works on very basic rules, my need for green vegetables can be fulfilled literally by any vendor out there, I get the right veggies, I’ll make my salad. But the sauce, the one that I absolutely love the taste of, no, not any walking brand can just replace my existing one, you cannot match the taste, and if I can’t find it around, I’ll make an effort to find it, I will! I am cheeky that way.

But suppose I don’t, and I am okay with whatever I get, I probably never liked that sauce enough, or it was replaceable, either way, the sauce will find its way to a different shelf in a kitchen where it belongs. While I will keep replacing the sauce, one after another, then another, then another… so on. Sad, very adjusting, but sad, coz adjusting!

See, I have always felt life itself is so small that if I spent it worrying about filtering everything, I would have wasted too many moments by the time I reach my pyre (or electrocution, whatever is environment friendly). My life has juggled between a very extreme set of parents, one ridiculously melodramatic mother who cried when Bambi’s mother died, and the other – my father, who was last moved, when 9/11 happened, that’s what it takes to move him.

So yes, I am the extracted perfume version of them both! Which I like by the way. Also, on that note, have you watched the movie, perfume, it’s amazing. What’s ironic is that, even while I’m a mixed breed, I’m a mixed breed of extremists, just imagine (Imagine, I’ll wait). It’s insane how I’d choose to be a want, over being a need, I mean I need my doormat, but I want my study lamp – You see the difference? I know you do. And in all the moments I have felt my space is being compromised, I have walked away, and left behind destruction that tends to seep in with time, never immediately. And believe you me, I never intend it, I don’t. I would rather opt for eating raw tomatoes (which I hate btw to death) than want someone to face that. Because I have seen it once, and it gets ugly.

Not that it doesn’t for me, it does but I have aced the art of ignorance towards anything overpowering. I’m a human driven by extreme emotions, if I was a graph on a Richter scale, I’d never touch a low, my mental earthquakes could tear the earth’s core. Well that’s what I am made of, extreme highs, definitely hard to handle, even harder to let go. And I’m not bragging, I am only stating theories derived out of years of incidences.

I recently was reading Beethoven’s letter (again, in the book – Love Letters of Great Men) to his immortal beloved in the times when she was leaving the city (the story behind it is quite beautiful) and I’m again dammed with a feeling, I am born in the wrong era! Legit!

“Ever thine – Ever mine – Ever ours. ” – Beethoven 

(PART-4) (END).

In Sickness, In Health, & In Pandemic

What if we thought of it as the childhood abstinence?

Or like we know our sacred space, the one we save for the most sacred of an instance?

Cease from travel, from healing, touch or talk

Cease from the known, learning anew even a mere walk

On the orders from the unknown, less liked, the pseudo optimists

Even if so, it has to be alright!

Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different than it is.

Make a call, sing, write, read, or even maybe pray,

Be selfish, touch only yourself, for life’s sake, please stay

And when your body has become still, reach out with your heart

Understand that I and you will be here, in one way or the other, not apart

We have done things to the planet, both terrifying and beautiful,

The actions have had a reaction, finally, please don’t try to deny

The world doesn’t need your hands, save them for later, sigh!

Maybe your heart, your vibe, your words,

spread your shoots of compassion, invisibly, not your touch

Write your vows for the idea of a better tomorrow

Save your home from the collapse, with your love, my heart

for better or for worse, in sickness and in health,

& maybe in a pandemic, ‘until death do us part’.

Quarantine, or an ambiverts’ paradise!!

In my case, for anything to be permanent, it must be consistent, you’ll know why I said this,

I identify as an ambivert, or that’s what the article from cosmopolitan says about my personality. I am not even surprised, not because I identify as one, but, I’m sure quite a few million other women too would. This is India, darling (world), we are trained like that!

Personality lying in the basket of the continuum is an idea so intensely shuddered away, if my German Shepherd (Tipsy) was alive, she would die again of a complex, and she was damn good at shuddering, no-really, no kidding. But, that’s not what we are here to talk about, we are here to talk about literally anything, because I mean we are in quarantine, it’s not like any of us has much at hand apart from Netflix, and clapping hands at some point in time of the day to feel nice about existing.

Uhhh… I lost my point here… Ya, so I was talking to my very socially active (when I say very, read it as VERY) father about this whole royal rumble of recent health atrocities and realized how much and on how many levels is he misinformed, not ill-informed, but misinformed, yes. I mean he is somebody who would dissect, operate the entire news bit by bit, from the most trusted sources and then come to me with his crux of information, but oh my god, he has confused himself this time so much. And while at it, he put me in the spotlight saying, how I must be enjoying this time-off my usual very busy life between work and home. NO DADDY, I’M NOT!

For that matter it feels like, everything has amplified on its own whim and fancy, my bull in-fact has no horn to be taken anymore. This is not a holiday, work from home is, oh how do I put it, it’s like asking a woman to keep wearing the same LBD, because she rocked it at some evening party. Of-course she rocked it because it was one night, and if you ask her to do it every day, one it will ruin the LBD, second you and her both will get used to it (I mean bored). Did you actually believe that Eiffel Tower was equally enticing to a couple kissing there on a moonlit night & the respected caretaker, oh c’mon?

This is a quarantine (not isolation, or social distancing, for god sake, know the difference) for me as much as it for anyone else out there, it’s not my paradise, I do not enjoy this time, for no reason at all I would choose this over my regular hustling life between work and home and I believe no one out there would want to. This is keeping me with too much of what I am not used to & away from what I love, my work, even when I can do it from my bedroom, that’s not its designated place. A lot of people can’t relate to my demands of working from the designated place, people like bedroom comforts, I don’t, just get around it. Du-uhh, I mean I work on a table, even at home.

I am not good with changes, at work or even otherwise. You change my place of work & boom my productivity will fall faster than a kid who started learning the bicycle without side paddles today. Like they get used to it in a while, I do too, but the damage, the bruises, the hurt it brings with it, lasts long. My head has a fiddling soul of its own, and I’m sure yours too, aren’t we all looking for permanency in different things… that one favorite café, one favorite book, oh that movie, that person, that corner of my bed, those walnut cakes, we all are, at some point in time for something or the other, trying to quarantine our comfort into things permanently.

& like I said for myself when I started, for anything to be permanent it must be consistent!

The Gold Flame!

It’s been years today to the first time we bro hugged,
First time since we sat across tables freezing and bugged,
First time since I noticed the color of your eyes,
First time since I stole a sigh,
First time since you switched places on the road,
First time since we shared the dense smoke,
First time since our jittery first nudge,
First time since the Italian was a waste buck,
First time since I decided on my cure,
First time since all firsts pure,
Here we are, today, in many of our firsts,
Like the gold flames, at a pinnacle!

The Closure!

The closure
I think comes to you in a million ways,
Sometimes in ways of the world falling apart
And sometimes with a chance to put it all back together,
There will be baggage, of-course,
But then you’ve aced the art of solo travel darling,
Remind yourself of all the fiercer bulls you have leashed
& shoo this little pup away,
Remember,

You’re not the La La Land,
You’re the Oscar for it!

Grandma’s Abode!

There are lives I have lived,
There are lives I haven’t.
There are hopes I have abandoned,
There are dreams I have forgotten,
I’m no superhuman,
Nor do I intend to be,
Like a humming bird
I fly back and forth,
I relive hopes and dreams,
They fear no death,
For none shall have one,
Like grandma’s abode,
We meet each burning fall,
With a promise!

Barcelona Day 2!

The irony of the Catalan architect, Gaudi was such that his art was rammed and dreams crushed under a tram with a day full of perplexing geniuses who declared him an ordinary beggar that could not be nursed back from death till reality struck and alas, Barcelona lost the only man who managed to make this city worth visually reminiscent!
But let’s suppose, he was an ordinary man and not one word more, was he not worth the same effort?
Or maybe among the bohemian vibe and the cosmopolitan street affair, there isn’t enough time for Tomfoolery. Either you manage to imprint your name on the most extraordinary architecture of the city, the Roman Catholic Basilica of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia) as the symbol of faith, love and hope or die an ordinary man, I mean it’s not like you architected historical marvels to deserve any of that, oh cmon!

Wander in Wonder!

Does your heart wander?

Not as much, Maybe a little.

Most of yours too would,

Here and now, when and then,

Oh how I wonder.

A few, me and you,

Wander in wonder,

Laying still,

My mother bought me

Not many laces or gleams,

But dreams,

From each peddler on the street,

Of laying where you will,

And walk out when you please!

The Mirror Side! (3)

Living once in a while,

Forget once in a while, are we living at all. As much as of a cake walk it sounds, it’s one mammoth of a task. I guess mostly because now it is a task. ‘Tasks’ in itself is tag that emits exhaustion! Have you ever heard a group of girls saying we have to finish the task of shopping? No right, you see my point.

I have lived by, what I have grown up listening to, from my supremely (sometimes unnecessarily) optimistic mother. “There’s always something”, if my mom was the knight who was saving the princess, she would leave the castle whispering in the dragon ear, don’t worry, it happened for a reason, drop a bandage and leave.

Well, I, on the contrary, would not say such things but maybe leave a bandage behind (mothers DNA). It has been an insane fude between the two minds that walk parallel in my head. The other being my very strong headed, practical father’s DNA, who’d be like slit the dragon’s throat, we don’t have the time for tears.

While I have been between the battle of the sexes, I have fairly managed to pull through my not so perfect life and believe you me, lived it. Legitimately, lived it. I love the fact that I’m alive, I breathe, I can touch, sense, view, comprehend unfathomable beauty and atrocities, all at once and separately.

And that’s a lot for someone who constantly tries to judge, choose reactions rationally and then react, at least to my capacity. The distress and saddening hypocrisies that I come across each day is so consuming, the stereotypical money making flesh we have turned into, for what?

To pay the bill of food we decided to go eat at the fanciest restaurant in the town, while we look into our mails for the next day? To buy a health insurance for 60’s? To die in the most extravagant house with the most exotic funeral dinners or a 14 day lavish get together in case you’re a Hindu (yes, even death ritual is larger than life for us).

Remember talking? Whatever happened to that!

We don’t anymore, like we used to do!

(Part-3)(END).