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

• 

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!