My Trooper

Cute little trooper.

He comes running in from the yard, tiny feet pattering across the stones and sand without a care. His chubby face is pink with the exertion yet the rose-bud mouth is pulled out into a great big grin, two little pearls of teeth making their appearance right in the front – the kind of grin that makes you inadvertently break into a smile of your own at the innocent optimism and quick contentment that life seems to take away as we grow older.

I think we lose a lot when we forget how, as a child, we could go from zero to elation in the time it takes to say ‘toffee’.

Anyway…. he comes running in, voice garbled with words that he does not know yet and eyes shining with excitement – he found a butterfly, his first. He reaches the entrance only to trip on the door step; hardly noticeable to the rest of us but to this two-feet-something ball of sheer joy, I’m sure it seemed like a high jump hurdle. He trips and fall onto the floor, the only teeth he has making contact with a soft little bottom lip – the sight of blood twists my insides into painful knots.

He bursts instantaneously into loud heart-rending cries as I scoop him up and check how deep the cut is. Not that deep, I sigh with relief. Then I go into damage-control mode, I coo soft nothings in his ear while cuddling him close as his wails die down to whimpers and then quiet sniffles.

I hoist him onto my hip as I reach for the jar on top of the fridge and pull out a bright red piece of candy. He looks at it and shakes his head, the sniffles growing a wee bit louder. I put the red one back, pull out a yellow one and hand it out. He closes his pudgy, pink fingers around it and chews one end – by now the sniffles have died down completely. I set him down on his blue kiddie chair and search the cabinet for oral ointment, it takes me a good five minutes to locate the tube of Zytee.

I turn around only to hear receding pitter-patter of feet heading off towards the yard again, accompanied by slurping sounds and the occasional word that he cooks up when he’s talking to himself. He’s off looking for the butterfly again.

Brave little trooper.

If only we learn from them, children. If only.

P.S: Dramatized real incident, my brother has grown up so much since this happened, both literally and figuratively, that I cherish the memory of this phase of his so so much. If it weren't for memories.

Love Unbounded

She laughs heartily at my jokes - jokes designed, exaggerated and enacted to get that precise reaction out of her and when she laughs, crinkles appear at the corners of her beautiful brown eyes while she absently brushes away the bangs that are her trademark.

She believes in me with a will – I doubt if anyone else will ever believe in me and my abilities and the person I am like she does – and she thinks I’m the best ever, which in itself makes me want to be better, do better, just for her.

She loves me so much that it almost hurts, hurts to think that I might fail that love.

She is so very cool – she thinks that a live-in relationship will help two people understand enough about each other to ensure that the subsequent marriage works.

She’s who I call Momsuey, the only person in the world I love unconditionally.  

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.
 

Aggrandize With Gold

I found this quote on Facebook and I have one Mr. Rohith Ramdas to thank for it. It's surprising how you can find these little nuggets of pure, unadulterated perfection when you sift through the wasteland that Facebook has become.

Anyhoo, isn't the quote just perfect? Makes you think about all the flaws you have, all the things that you hate about your past in a better way.

Everyone suffers in life - some more, some less. For some it is the wrath of their Fate or, if you so choose to believe, the repercussions of their actions, Karma. While for others, suffering becomes what they will upon themselves, either creating sadness for sympathy and martyrdom or refusing to acknowledge all that is perfect in their life for the sake of one tiny thing that they don't have.

Either way the suffering is real.
But it goes away. It will go away.

What truly matters is who you become after it.

You can either be that person who is pitied by all, languishing in the throes of sadness or you can choose to become more beautiful for the suffering which has made you better and your history is what defines who you are today.

Which one do you choose?

Trippy

 

It's amazing what you can do with an 8 MP phone camera, fairy lights, patience and timing. No? 

P.S: No edits, whatsoever.

 

Of Putting Yourself Out There

You know when Meredith Grey said, ‘Pick me, choose me, love me’ I said ‘Good for you! You go girl... standing up for yourself and all’ but I also heard another mean little voice in me saying, ‘ahem, needy much?’

But now I realise that she wanted Derek to pick her, not because she wasn’t a strong, independent girl who was perfectly capable of becoming as great as or even bigger a legend than her mother but because Derek was the only one who seemed capable of dissipating the ‘dark and twisty’ that her life was at that point.

Derek made her happy in more ways than one, like no one could before.

And not wanting to let that go, wanting him to know what a big difference he made to her life, wanting to return the same love, to give him the life he deserves - the life with the babies, the family-thing and the works - I understand that. That’s not needy. That's just you having the courage to put yourself out there for the sake of a chance at happiness.  

"If I lay here, if I just lay here, will you lie with me and forget the world"

It takes courage to ask that of someone. And that is not needy. Not even a little bit.

P.S: Grey's Anatomy might be a chickflick for a lot of people but I swear I have learnt more about real life from it than anything else. It's all about what you take away from something.

Silent Night - III

Part II

24th December 2013

I brushed away the annoying wisps of hair from my face as I squinted in concentration - the tails of the white shirt that I was wearing fluttered in the wind as my pale legs shivered in the cold and my fingers flew over the keyboard as I churned out another scene for my protagonists.

I was sitting on the white patio, overlooking the solid-looking mountain on the backdrop of the clear blue skies. Wispy looking clouds scuttled by and the occasional eagle soared high – peaceful and silent, the place fostered the writing bug in me and stoked the fire high, to fill pages and pages with scribbled words, beautiful words.

It had been a year since I sat on the floor of the bridal suite, a year which had seen me change completely as a person – so much so, nobody from my past even recognized the person I was now.

That random girl you see in the café with messy hair, book in hand, absently sipping on hot chocolate? That is me. That is the me who took a long hard look at the life she was living and was shocked to realize that she had been making the very same mistakes that she had once vowed not to. 

I had relegated loved ones to a prison in my heart, not allowing myself to love, not letting myself feel their love. I had blamed the walls I had built around myself on my past but as I read Justin’s letter, I realized that I had become the opposite of who I really was – a dour businesswoman who cared more about what I did than who I did it with.

When realization dawned, I made an instant decision, I called my manager and transferred power of attorney of my company to him. He was shocked, he called it a whim, a result of the recent heart-break I had faced, but I managed to talk him into it – I still thank God mentally for giving me the sense to hire Sohail for today, I’d be truly lost without him.

As to what I wanted to do after relinquishing the power that had gone to my head and changed me, I sat back in my bean bag and let the tiny flicker of a lost childhood dream play hide and seek with my thoughts – I wanted to write.

As a child, I’d spent hours stitching together the right words to frame the perfect sentences that told stories that came to me as I wrote. I’d won every competition in sight because what I wrote was far beyond my age and that was what made people take notice and scared me at the same time.

One day, my stepfather found and read one of my stories and whispered in my ear, “You want to write, eh? I can’t wait to see you try and fail so hard that you will forget every word you know. You'll always be a failure, I hope you know that” sniggered and walked away. The child in me was so traumatized by such a small incident; the fragile self-esteem broke once again in his hands and I never tried to write again.

And that is exactly what I decided to do to show the ghosts of my past that I was still the same person. After I amended the mistakes I’d made, found a quiet cottage in Siliguri that was picture perfect and settled down, I wrote again.

Now, I was telling my own story. I was penning down my first book and what started as yet another romance novel, found me drawing deeply from my own story, catharsis in a way, brilliant semi-fiction material in another way – it was all I could do to not rub my palms in glee when I realized my own life was so dramatic, it would make a great story.

I was almost done, all I needed was a fitting climax to the fine filigree of emotions that I’d managed to weave into the black words that showed up in contrast on the stark white Word doc.

With the annoying wisps of hair out of my face, I tapped a finger absently on the mousepad as my mind worked furiously – where was I going, how did my story end?

That was when I heard him sneak up behind me before he could say ‘boo’, spoiling his plans to startle me. I looked up at his smiling face, a good morning if there ever was one, I thought. 

To be continued...

A Clean Slate To Scribble On

2013 - a year that saw me through some of the toughest times of my life. And yet, when I look back I fondly recall memories, incidents that have played a huge part in making me the person I am today - resilient, willing to take on change by the horns, someone who is finally comfortable with her own company as much as others'. I made the choice to fall out of touch with almost 90% of people I knew, almost everybody became somebody that I used to know. But a select few stuck on, despite my best efforts, and now I know how important those few are to me.

The year has been one where I have completely let go of discipline - no fixed schedules, no planning, no control over what goes into my mouth from the plate, no budgets, no nothing. And I have learnt that discipline is the only thing I need to get to my goals, everything else I already have.

I recovered from failure. And I learnt that all it takes to not let it get to you is to have the right people around.

I broke almost every rule I had for myself one time or the other and today, I have become better for the experience than worse. I won't bore you with details, we all walk similar paths strewn with similar roadblocks, so you know what I'm talking about. Which is why....

....2014 - I know it is going to be a great year, not because I went to two temples and prayed my heart out (a redundant belief but one that gives me peace of mind and makes me guilty for my sins at the same time) but because I am going to make it so. A great year where I'll read more books, write more meaningful words, learn my lessons. I'll achieve the goals I have set for myself and I'll have fun doing it. I'll smile a lot more and relish each moment instead of being the procrastinating prat that I was last year. I'll go easy on the sarcasm and the temper. I'll make the people I love happy.

This year, I have no resolutions. This year I only have the will. The will to reach out for what I want and get it.

May 2014 bring to you all that your hearts desire, folks. Coz that's all you really need.

Silent Night - II

Part 1

25th December, 2012

Twenty hours that came very close to being the worst of my life.

After the initial shock, the survivor in me put herself back in control – I cancelled the church bookings, divided the food between a couple of orphanages, applied for refunds on all the travel bookings that we’d made for both the guests and for our honeymoon, talked to the realtor about the down payment we’d put down on the duplex we were going to live in – I took care of all the details pat down to the last ‘T’ because ‘organized’ is my middle name... it was easy. Or rather, mechanical.

But that feeling. That feeling of having to explain to everyone why they weren’t going to be dancing at my wedding, why they weren’t going to see I and he become man and wife had me at a loss for words, loss for reasons to explain why it ended before I became his in their eyes.

I allowed myself to hate him for one thing and one thing only – that he threw me at the mercy of all at sundry to be pitied upon. He knew how much I loathed that and yet.

I needed no one’s pity, no one’s support. I didn’t get this far in life with expectations of someone else coming through for me.
I knew that the rock solid calm that was now awash over me was just a farcical element that would recede once the crisis is sorted out and life goes back to normal. I knew that it would take everything I had and then some to not break this time. But I swore to myself every time I caught myself teetering to the edge that I was better than this.

That this was what I had been expecting to happen in my heart of hearts and that I shouldn’t be surprised that it had come to a pass.

As I cut the call on the last of the guests who had insisted upon knowing where he was, I let my shoulders sag – with relief that the ordeal was finally over? Or surrender to the forces that were trying their best to get me down on my knees? I know not.

It would just be a matter of time, anyway.

I slipped into the car and gunned the engine, stepping down hard on the accelerator and my beautiful baby, my Audi, took off at speeds normal people would cringe at – this was my poison, the only luxury I had granted myself over the years.

I made my way back to my nest thanking myself, once again, for having enough sense not to let him take over my life - my house was still mine, my haven.... untouched by the clutches of the relationship.

No memories to block out whatsoever.

Making a couple of calculations, I decided to afford myself five days to grieve... five days till the new year came around after which I would barricade the past and move forward.

Like I always do.

I kicked off my pumps and stepped onto the plush carpet, divesting myself of every article of clothing on the way to my bed. I reached for mom’s old tee and a favorite pair of shorts that I had bought with my first salary and made my way into the kitchen feeling instinctively for the Nutella bottle and a spoon. 

Familiar actions. Comforting ones.

When the house was being constructed, I’d made sure that the picture window that I had always dreamed of as a child became reality. Now, I climbed onto that cozy nook with a rug, nibbled on the peanuts that my Nutella was peppered with and looked out of the window, finally allowing the dams of thought, feeling, question and most of all hurt to break and flood my person – a deep sigh escaped out of my lips as I felt pain coursing through my veins.

Not even fairylights by the Christmas tree could distract me as my blurred eyes stared unseeingly at the beautiful lights that became bokeh in the cold winter night.

As I put the bottle down, I saw a bit of paper flutter under one of the cushions and I reached for it, more out of habit than curiosity. The familiar handwriting finally caught my attention as I opened it up.

My Bebe,
 
I fell in love with you. I don’t know when the exact moment was but I did. It feels nothing like anything I have ever known before – I questioned myself as to my motives and came up with nothing and I can only assume that this is what the real thing feels like.
 
It’s Christmas and you think I broke your heart. I would say sorry if I really did believe it but I don’t. Coz I know you would never let anyone close enough to actually break anything of yours. Not even me.
 
And that is why I left this morning – before I forced you into something you are not ready for.
 
My dearest bebe, you are such a strong woman, so independent, so intelligent…. But in love, you have to be ready to lose yourself, give up control. And you never let us get there. You always thought about how it would not work out and how you should protect yourself from me. Plotting solutions to when I would fail your expectations.
 
Even now I'm sure you are congratulating yourself on predicting that I would walk out on you. 

I’m sure you have refused help with everything from everyone and didn’t ask Mark where I am. Did you? I’d be very surprised if you have. What will happen now is that you will give yourself a few days to grieve over the lost companionship and then block everything related to me to relegate it to a past that you will never think about again.
 
Therein, again, lies the problem. I don’t want ‘companionship’. I want love that is as tangible and fiery as your lust is. I want love that drives you crazy and me, with you. I want to be your everything, I want to be that one rock that you want to lean on at the end of the day and on stormy nights.
 
I want you to realize that I’m not going to hurt you and let me in completely.
 
You know my darkest secret, you know my deepest fear and I don’t even know whether you prefer Coke to Pepsi. I expected that with time, you’d thaw, with time, we’d grow closer and with time, you’d let me know the scared child who went through hell, a price she paid for being the strong, successful woman she is today.
 
Because the scared child is the real you. And its glimpses of the child that I fell for. I can’t live the rest of my life with this woman who treats me and the rest of the world the very same – with respect, care and admiration.
 
I want you to love me. Love me like your life depended on it. I want you to give me your hundred per cent and then hope to God that I won’t break your heart. I’d cherish that vulnerability for all the lifetimes to come and then some more. 
 
I know you are capable of it. But the question is, will you let yourself love me like that?
 
If you think you will, if you think you can, come find me.
 
I love you.
And I suspect I will love you for a very long time to come regardless of which way you decide to go.
 
Yours,
Justin.

I read the letter three times. And then once more till I couldn’t cry any more.
Am I really that cold? Did I really not love him?

(To be continued...)

Silent Night

24th December, 2012

I sat on the floor heaving - my breath came out in gasps like I was stuck under water and the corset that I’d struggled to lose weight to fit into, felt like it was growing tighter by the minute. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I thanked the stars that I’d had the sense not to gorge down all those pancakes for breakfast like I usually do, for I was sure I’d have brought every last morsel out now.

I caught my reflection in a large shard of glass, a remnant of the mirror I had knocked over just a few seconds ago – a wild nymph stared back at me, an imperfect beauty wrapped in yards and yards of lace and silk, a wedding dress made for an angel by angels. A pretty rose bud mouth, the lower lip bled a little from having been bitten too hard, a tiny droplet of blood marring the pristine white of the dress. The makeup was starting to wear off, I vaguely registered that the lady from the parlor had probably scammed me with cheap products. Or it could be that I was sweating bullets.

I stared some more at the reflection. She had made imperfect features, perfect – small but expressive eyes, ones which always held a twinkle, now brimmed with panic and realization. A small button nose, the only thing I had from my father and no amount of hating it would stop people from calling it cute. My short, fluffy tresses which I kept short with a vengeance had been teased into soft waves to frame my long face. The small tiara which I had sullenly agreed to wear glittered in the evening sun light while my veil fluttered; the slight breeze whipping through the large tear right in the middle. Its fault had been to flutter into my eyes gently right when I was going into an emotional shutdown.

What I saw was a mask that was slowly breaking apart. Just like the unexpected fairytale that I had thought my life to be. This was reality. The kind of reality that I was used to. It was almost like I was waiting for it to happen.

What struck me suddenly was that he had let me get completely ready, fully dressed before walking out – he could have saved me all those hours of torture if only he had had his grand realization earlier in the day. I laughed out loud, the voice that came out didn’t sound anything like mine, the one with rough edges, and then I choked on my own laugh.

He was the one who talked me into it, in the first place. 

After a father who professed undying affection and never bothered showing up ever, a step-father who was borderline sex maniac, a first love who abused me enough to plummet my self-esteem levels right into the ground and yet another relationship which almost brought me to my knees, I had pretty much given up on men – I wasn’t the raging feminist, I just wanted nothing to do with them for I had let enough men treat me like a doormat to make the same mistake again.

And yet, yet, I had let him talk me into it.

I found comfort in him, I found peace. I wanted nothing else but companionship so it was a bonus that the chemistry between us was off the charts, enough to steam up cars. And we did.

Then I said I wasn’t ready for marriage. I asked him to guarantee that our relationship will never fall apart – an assurance that I knew wasn’t giveable but I asked him for it anyway because I knew I didn’t want to wake up next to someone I hated in ten years. I didn’t want to add to the number of broken, messed up families and children, there already are in the world.

And yet, yet, I had let him talk me into it.

He had patiently chipped away at my armor and eaten into my solid reasoning ultimately leading me to believe that love just might conquer all. He did the whole will-you-marry-me hoopla too. I had stopped being cheesy after my first relationship, yet I felt like a girl, like a teenager seeing stars and wanting the moon, when he sank down onto a knee in front of the whole restaurant and asked me to walk down the aisle with him.

Everyone cheered when I said yes and completely ignored the hiccup moment I had right in the middle of it, dork that I am. While I was questioning all sorts of motives, futures and possibilities, I watched him smile into the night with unrepressed glee and happiness that I’d previously seen only in a three year-old who found his favorite RC car under his Christmas tree.

And now, I was sitting on the marble floor of my ridiculously expensive bridal suite which I’d sunken onto while still wrapped up uncomfortably tight in a ridiculously expensive white dress from an amazingly famous and equally shallow designer; this was right after he came into the room and told me that he couldn’t do it and that he was really very sorry. He also said that I deserved better and then walked out. 

Not once did he meet my eye.

(to be continued....) 

Sparkling Waters

It was as simple as that.

To read the texts that flowed in, one after the other, like a leaky faucet trying to fill a broken bucket and realize that the bucket is just that. Broken. There is no glue, no tape in the world to fix the bucket to make it go back in time and be what it used to be.

Of course, here, you have to realize I’m talking metaphors. If you haven’t already.  I really wouldn’t be writing about a real broken bucket, would I? Not that interesting.

In those few moments that it took to send about fifty messages, the past slipped out of my fingers that I have been clutching so tightly and the best part was, I realized that all I needed to do to get rid of the animosity and hatred - basically all the negativity that was getting me down into the depths of darkness - was to just open my palm, just open my heart and let it all recede like the ebbing tide on a beautiful summer’s day.

With clear waters in sight, the world seemed a little more cheery, the horizon seemed a little brighter, the very people who had brought out the worst in me seemed a little nicer. And with a jolt I realized, it is all in the head…. it is all about who and what I choose to give control to. Control of my life, that is.

Demons are always going to be around, both ones that I can battle and ones that I need someone to help me battle. But for now, I will still munch on cookies, download Grey’s Anatomy, file 130% productivity at work each day, go for long walks, read more Greg Iles, laugh a lot at the most pointless of things and learn to make the perfect cup of hot chocolate. 

***

I wrote this for myself a while ago. And guess what, I have almost perfected the hot chocolate :)

***
P.S: Lioness, Wings of Harmony and Blasphemous Atheste asked me why I disabled comments. I have been doing that for the past few posts because 1) I felt really bad about not replying to previous comments for a really long time - it was my way of atoning for it? By giving up precious comments and 2) I wanted to write for myself, just myself... because that's where I started from.

Fragility

In the time it took for the sparkling rivulet to make its way down from the rim to the stem of the bubbling champagne glass, fluid leaked, brakes disengaged, his car went over the edge and the sparkle went out of her life.

Unsent Texts

You can either choose to take perfection as a state of mind and revel in the perfect present and the awesomesauceness of everything that is happening in the now. 

Or you can take perfection to be a confluence of factors at a place in time and keep waiting for it. 

Either way, it is your choice to make.

Our Trysts w/h The Dark Passenger

Never ask a question you don't want to hear the answer to because most likely, the messenger will bear the brunt of the storm that usually accompanies the truth and you'll end up worse for the knowledge.

This applies not only to the literal asking of any question (like the eternal favorite with the ladies, "Do I look fat?" that will make any man cringe with helplessness) but also to the doing of things that will give you information that you don't necessarily need. Like snooping around your better half's phone/inbox - you might stumble across things that you don't want to know, that you wish you'd never started off on the quest in the first place.

Once you end up with the information/result, thanks to your annoying little feline alter ego with its annoying little curiosity that will get something killed, you will see another side of that person, one that you might not necessarily like. One that might put an end to whatever good thing you have going, for no good reason. Sometimes you get over it and move on, sometimes the scar never really fades away. 

What I'm trying to say is once you get to know something, there is no way of un-knowing it. So pick and choose what you want to find out, especially if it is someone you care about.

Also, everybody has a dark side, a side that they are not proud of but they have it anyway because that is what makes them human and whoever it is, however close you are, you do not have the right to pry into their cupboard of skeletons, unless you have been specifically invited to. While this applies to everyone you know, it specifically applies to people you love and care about the most.

In a lot of places, at a lot of times, ignorance is bliss.

P.S: R.I.P Paul Walker.

Superfluous

Derive:

To obtain from a source -

Nothing like child from mother

Everything like numbers from machine

Something like me from you.

One is love, the other is indifference,

We are the third;

So where does that leave us?

A La Derive by Dorothea Tanning

Of One-Liners That Make You Happy

Today is a bad day. A bad, bad day.  A bad day in the middle of a bad week stuck in the middle of a bad month. You get the idea.

From a surprise interview that did not go as well as expected to the usual tussle with the parent that always drains the senses, nothing really goes right.

A sudden burst of energy at 9.30 p.m brought with it a hyper smile.

He said, "I like it when you smile like this, without any barriers, borders, worries..."

Instantly, the reminder brought with it the weight of the world and the smile wore thin.

"Tell the Universe to give me a reason to smile", I said wearily.

He extended the box of donuts and said, "I can give you six."

YAY. M.O.D.

P.S: I'm the douche that hasn't been replying to comments lately and hence, I didn't publish the ones in my last post till now. Thank you for taking the time out to type out a comment despite my assholery, but I really really really do appreciate it and I'm so very sorry for not replying, I'm in that phase where I think I have lost my juju and I'm questioning my skills as a writer. I might get over it. I'm trying to. My best to. Thank you for understanding, those few who have come back here despite aforementioned assholery. Just. Thanks.