Kashmir, Bloody (n) Paradise!

Or as we call it Kasheer!

I have not seen heaven (given that there is any) and honestly have never understood your comparison with it. I’m sold on the idea that chances are you are better and your value is largely inconspicuous and understated among humans.

Either way, you are beautiful. I have traveled with (and to) you so much, that you almost feel like a person now. Over the years you and I have only gotten better, ferociously co-dependent of course, but better. You make me happy, you are awfully erratic, addictively gorgeous, sometimes distressed, and a lot demanding. You are like the ex I know is toxic, but what the hell? I mean, you know if you know!

Your quiet has the right amount of noise!

Anyway, the more I talk about this city, the more I want to go back and never leave. And one may feel it is because I feel like home there, No. It is exactly what I do not feel. If I wanted to feel at home I’d stay home. It is more like living in a Time Warp (or in hyperlapse). You can hear yourself breathe, your heart pounding, the sound of your steps on dry Chinar leaves, the wind steering through mountains, the rocks and pebbles in Jhelum, you can hear it all loud and clear.

There is a lot of white space in that city!

It hasn’t still surrendered to the 60:40 revenue model. If you are a reader living in India but serving people outside the homeland you know what I mean.

It may seem like it is the perfect city for romantics, but it is not, or maybe it is and I am just not a very romantic human (not complaining), more of a doer than a dreamer. For me, it is a perfect place to channel your thoughts. Align your chakras! Come down to a point zero in your head if you have been waking up bewildered lately. Works like magic. This also was Nia’s (my first born) first trip to native, the first flight ever, comparatively long travel, etc. It was overwhelming. This girl is astoundingly calm for her firsts, her calm often scares me.

Does she get excited or impressed by anything or is there a bit too much of me in her? Well, I’ll figure that out in time, until then I hope she keeps the bars high! Always!

My Little Wild Girl!

Stay wild, Stay free

Let no one tell what to be or not to be!  

Be made of fire, be enchanted

Let yourself be the magic that exists, never taken for granted!

Be a myth, a legend, maybe a story untold

Let no one tell you what you may or may not behold!

Be the star and the stargazer, be your own light

Let every ungodly mouth be another reason for all your might!

– Mum (Yashasvi K.)

Sinful Black!

I cannot begin to tell you…
How much I knew
That he & I had allied souls,
Allied in terms of wrath and warmth.
The kind that would come around once,
Once in a gazillion years.
And it dazzled me,
The way we were synced,
Synced without trying.
It was implausible to see,
That every sunset spent together,
The universe would witness two souls,
Turning to the color – sinful black!

TOO FULL OF ME!

It’s a pity you aren’t here with me at this moment

Or you weren’t there in those,

That I am surer than you would be for yourself,

You would want to be in with me more than you want anything else,

In all my travel stories, or cafes I went by, or the roads I traveled, or the oceans I drowned in,

Across countries and borders, warzones and conflicted lanes, woods and skyscrapers,

Everything, anything, and nothing!

There is a part of me that has stopped trying,

Stopped forcing myself to believe it was just another passing wave,

Like a million others I have tamed!

No.

Not really, it isn’t ‘love’ either, I don’t do love.

It was something else, something I’m yet to name,

But when I do think of a fitting word for it,

I’ll write.

I’ll write around, and about it.

I am less consumed by the absence of you and more by what I was when I was with you,

It overwhelms me.

I don’t have the time to stomp my feet through the vacancy, there is none.

I’m too full of the moves I made at every swirl of those fingers around my curves and lines,

Too full of my aggravated blood that pumped through each inch of me at the sudden push and pulls.

Too full of the music I heard and the books I read, through the days and nights of burning one day at a time.

I’m too full of me, seamlessly screwed,

But then, aren’t we all.

The Disposition Paradox & GAD!

If or If not, you know me,

I may come across confusing. My disposition is fiddly, one that does not agree with me. I have concluded I am my best debate, my love for being logically argumentative has brought me here.

You either convince me with a very strong argument coupled with logical reasoning or let it go. Don’t sound like the butcher who tries to convince you that there is a better life after death, so let me kill you. Just tell me I taste good and hence; you’d like to cook me. Easy!

Am I the only one who while in a fight, silently inside the head, thinks about the points another person can make to give me a rebuttal and feel, oh my god if I was at your place this is what I would have said to me? I mean, c’mon, notch up.

When you are dealing with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder – for the one’s who don’t know it), one of the biggest changes that would come your way is the loss of will. Loss of will to try and convince anyone for anything, even the opinions they might have of you, that are completely irrational. Like in my case, I don’t care anymore what you or anyone else would think of me, you understand and respect my space, you are more than welcome. If you do not get it, you know the way to the door, show yourself out. Don’t bother waking me up, I wouldn’t even see you off, I’ll probably not even notice you are gone.
It is okay, you are okay, there is no need to burden yourself with the responsibility of changing the frog into a prince, he probably deserves it.

My disposition is paradoxical,
I love being alone, I am very outgoing.
I am incessantly loud, also very noiseless.
My mood is dictated by the people and environment around me, or none of it at all.
And I am now okay with being this human,
Acceptance has made life easy, very easy.

I know you relate to it, or maybe someday you will!

Living With GAD – Generalized Anxiety Disorder!

Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Yeah, that’s what they call it!

Well, I had to first acknowledge the glitch and then accept that the highly driven me is not just restricted to being driven, it’s more than that.

Hi, I am a fully functional grown woman at 30, and welcome to my life with 16 symptoms of anxiety and depression, collectively. And as much as I write this for you to read, I write it more for myself to make sure I vent it out and I’m not losing my mind. The idea of ending this life seems more familiar or rather high on value lately (about 3 months) than my history of being excessively controlling of my life.

But then, it’s a battle to remind me every day, woman, you got a lot of Netflix series to watch before you go. So, keep telling yourself,

“What do we say to the god of death?”

“Not Today”

-Game of Thrones.

I cannot even begin to put in words, how much it took out of me to accept that there is a problem mentally that I have to address in me because I have lived my life in so much drive that it was nearly impossible for me to buy that my drive is slowly killing me. I need to slow down and breathe. I have been running, running so fast, away… away from everything and everyone. The feeling of not wanting to talk to anyone, not be around humans, was something I always believed is a part of me.

I completely ignored the fact that I come from a past of being a social bug, when did this feeling crawl into me of staying away from everyone? It happened without realization, and over the years, slowly hollowing me from inside while I was busy thinking I am growing up and that’s how growing up feels like.

No, it doesn’t.

This is what isolation feels like, and you can’t be in love with isolation, it’s not healthy. But, to be fair, I love it right now. The fewer people I have around me, the more I appreciate it. However, I am trying to fix myself one day at a time. Sometimes I want to shut myself inside a room and not come out for days and somewhere inside I also want to run away and take a solo trip, just to see if I am still that decade-old crazy me who would just do things at her whims and fancy. Maybe not, or am I? I’ll know in time!

The last few months have been a roller coaster ride in my life of breaking stereotypes, going against my parents (which to be honest I always believed would only happen in a different lifetime, regardless of how temperamental I am/was/would be), addressing my mental health, psychiatric help, learning ukulele, Insomnia, appetite loss, dangerous levels of caffeine, writing my diary, overdosing on sleeping pills, loss of oxygen or say feeling choked, paranoia, high fluctuation suicidal tendencies, mood calming pills, reasonless crying, aggressively standing up for myself and losing my mind in the process, smashing the patriarchy, meeting an accident, panic attacks, avoiding the infectiously strong will to end it all, learning to be okay with giving second chances to life and myself… Ahh, I can go on and I still wouldn’t have listed it all.

A normal day in my life looks like waking up to puking, or crying which I do not know the reason for and it is very difficult for me to explain it to someone who doesn’t know how GAD works. The brain is just wired to make you feel like you want to cry like there is nothing left in life to live for, and that feeling is hard to fight, each day. But, I’m trying, and medically my psychiatrist has started with CBT – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which honestly is sometimes helpful and sometimes it seems like it’s burdening me to perform well – when I absolutely do not wish to.

No matter how many things I list, I know I would miss out on many. Nevertheless, I will try to write it all down in the following posts. So, if you are one of me somewhere out there, hang in there. I know exactly what you are going through.

I am listening!

X End X

The Last Breath!

I can hear you, love, from the contour of that dusk

Do your pretty mental laces still arrest you in the social typecast,

Or have you now tricked your mind into believing, what you must?

Do your mountains still rise in the tragic gloomy nights?

Or your flowers now do not seek that honey-soaked might.

Has your Harley now stopped seeking its Joker?

Or does that wisdom tooth ever tell you, get up and fight!

Oh, tell me the wind still blows in the same direction,

That the lighthouse hasn’t frozen to death!

Let it once again swift pass those shores,

Catch the soul that hasn’t succumbed to its last breath!

The Winter Sun, Jaipur!

Have you ever left a city, turned around, and in your head looked at it and said, I’ll come back?

I have, old habits die hard, they say. And believe you me, the number of places I have looked back at and promised to see again, I have. While I was still growing up cotton balled, steering through the snowball effect of being the only and the youngest girl child in my family, there was love (a hell lot of it) and the superpower of never getting ‘no’ as an answer (Sad, I know!). Whatever!

This was my erstwhile adventure of stories, tales, superstitions, and of course casual mental braiding into the mold of a perfect woman by my mother. So now that you have a reference point, my mom is the predominant reason for most of my beliefs (Even if I do not agree with them, I kind of always end up experiencing them, I do not even know how. Moms, I tell you).

So, my mother used to tell me every time we traveled, do not turn around or you will have to come back, and I would exasperate and say -what are you saying, I am turning around! Is this a superstition I love or what (Very animatedly, I am speaking this out loud while typing, you would believe me if you knew me personally)?

Jaipur! I have strange but soft memories of this place. My reasons to travel have changed but not the love for this dusky, very raw city that tries to add pink to practically everything. I mean what is it! But it’s nice. It was a wedding, for the first time I witnessed a multicultural union of two very different backgrounds, and the fact how beautifully hypocritical and sweet can we be at the same time to people we don’t know but love to judge.

I would want to see it on 70mm maybe with a black coffee and a walnut muffin (I’m not a coke and popcorn person, oh how I hate it). From one fort to another, from one place to another, from Bar Palladio to basic flatbread meals -I don’t know if there is anything I wouldn’t want to see again. I loved the winter sun of this city (and in general ,too), who wouldn’t.

I have witnessed sunsets of several cities, from mountains, palaces, ruins, camps, and the most luxurious hotels around the world, not one has matched what I have experienced here, to date (I’m yet to travel to a lot of places, can’t promise for the future). The sun in this city sets in its hue of quintessential orange and pinks, as stunning as the bride’s face. It is prepossessing!

So, when I left this time, did I turn around? Now that’s a story for another time!

The Summer, 2020!

Lying on the white burning surface of the virtual skin,
There she was scanning the mental unorthodox memories of her mind.
For her enlightenment on self love came
On a sunny summer morning of 2020!
But, it came with a clause of a struggles,
Struggles to accept her,
Like the changing seasons of
indifference and warmth,
To scoop her out of a negotiated hell,
The one she later decided to rein in,
And she did, Oh & How!

Detouring The Achilles’ Heel!

To my surprise, I think for the longest time I have detoured from the idea of entirely prioritizing myself (I do believe in doing that, entirely, yes).

Especially after a few turns of events in my life I have gotten surer about how much I want to put myself first (and I will) and stop thinking about the innumerable ‘what if’s’, not anymore. My brows have turned sore from squinching at the idea of what he/she/others would feel about this decision of mine. Frankly, I am done.

I have started to focus completely on myself, and on how to not hit a break-even point in my life, which I kind of did feel a few times in the last few months. Maybe the lockdown, the pandemic, the constant negative vibe from the universe, whatever, just decided to shut the door on its face and swing away.

The door will remain shut till I gain my sanity and the energy to fight back, again. I want space as much as I need to touch. I want silence as much as I need noise. I want a fair trial as much as I need a bias. I want things and I do not want them too. I mean, honestly, I feel this is normal. I don’t think I’ll be able to ever achieve this complete ‘I am at this side of the grass’ situation. I will always have two different reactions to the same situation, but maybe with different people, and that’s just human (isn’t it?).

I have circled the sun 30 times, and have had about 60 odd equinoxes (hopefully), physically and mentally both. And that’s the only kind of balance I have successfully achieved, thanks to science. For the rest of my days, I’m still balancing my life on my heart-piercing pencil heels avoiding one Achilles’ after another.