Those Missed Conversations

‘Aarti, dinner is ready. We are all waiting at the table’, Anita called out for the fourth time. ‘Yes mom, I am almost there’, Aarti shouted back. Ten minutes for that episode of Game of Thrones to end. Aarti could not possibly leave it at the climax; Joffrey was dying. It was the most satisfying moment that television has ever given her. How could she leave the show for anything in this world; food was way below in her priority list anyway. The show ended and with happy tears, she left for the dining room. Much like every day, everyone was done with their food by the time she arrived.

‘How’re you feeling now, Daddy’, she asked throwing a cursory glance at him and started nibbling away on her food. ‘I am fine, dear’, Ashok replied, just the way he replied everyday no matter how excrutiating the pain was. He knew that the questions were a formal exchange of words that her daughter found time to utter in the midst of her board examinations, friends and Facebook. He knew that his health was far behind in her list of priorities. He did not blame her, it was a hectic schedule she had; school, then coaching classes, then self-study. Where was the time? His sickness was nothing new to them after all. Over the years of prolonged illness, the family had gotten used to it. However, they were not completely immune to the grief. Tears were still shed every time they held the medical report with trembling hands in which at least one vital health parameter was shot way above the normal range. However, somehow the grief had become an ordinary affair for them, especially for Aarti. She could not recall the last time he was healthy. She grew up seeing her dad take some ten different coloured pills during lunch every day. From the age when they seemed amusing to her to the age when she could understand the graveness of the situation; somewhere in between she learnt how to feel pain most deeply and to let it go of as easily.

‘Aarti, Aarti’, Ashok shouted on one of the usual days. She was in the middle of her novel. She hated it when somebody interrupted her when she was reading. ‘Why can he not call mom or the helper for that matter? Why me? I’m sure it’s some trivial work which anyone could have done’, she thought to her herself as she stormed out of her room in utter frustration.

‘What happened dad, why did you call?’ she asked trying to moderate her voice so that it doesn’t come out as rude. ‘Honey, I want to watch the Television, can you please get the remote for me? I feel too tired to get up.’ She handed him the remote and was about to leave when he stopped her, ‘Can you not sit here by me. You’re always engrossed in your own world. I feel lonely sitting in the room all by myself. You never have time for me’, he managed to let it out. ‘Yeah…okay, I’ll just get my book and come’, Aarti said. She sat there next to him for the next one hour, lost in her book smiling away at the adventures that the protagonist of the story went through, oblivious to the fact that someone sitting next to her was yearning for a conversation with her. She kept flipping the pages and at 4 PM, she got her dad his medicines and kissed him goodbye as she left for her coaching classes.

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Sometimes in the middle of the night when she would be working on her Mathematics problems or browsing through Facebook and liking all the pictures of this insanely cute guy she had given away her sixteen year old heart to, her dad would come with his coffee mug and sit by her table. She would hate those interruptions at that time, she had to change the tabs and pretend to be going through some educational websites. It was one of those days.

‘Why do you stay up till so late, dad? It’s not good for your health. You should be sleeping by now’, Aarti said in an emotional mix of concern and botheration.

‘I don’t get enough sleep these days. I feel there is no purpose of my life. I am just surviving each day’, Ashok said.

Aarti- ‘Please stop worrying about the purpose of your life. You’ve lived the majority of your life giving back to the society, now is the time to sit back and enjoy. You have played your role brilliantly till now. The school which you started is well established now. It will provide education to millions of students and positively impact thousands of lives each year.Travel the world, enjoy great food, read books and help me in discovering the purpose of my life maybe; stop being too hard on yourself dad.’

Ashok- ‘Yeah dear…I just feel empty sometimes, like I’m not needed anymore.’

‘Coz no-one told you it’s gonna be this way...’, Aarti ‘s phone started ringing. ‘Anjali calling’, it said.

Aarti- ‘Dad will you excuse me for some time. I’ll just take this call and come.’

Ashok- ‘Yeah, sure honey’

The conversation started with how Sameer has been acting strange since the past few days and was giving disinterested, curt replies to Anjali’s messages. It grew with how there were only three months left for the Board examinations and whether Aarti could solve problem fifteen of circle geometry. Apparently, Aarti could and then she started explaining the details of the tangents and radii to her. They ended on a note that they must finish the syllabus in the coming week and start with their revisions as soon as possible.

The phone call consumed some thirty minutes of her time. She realized that she was having a conversation with her dad and rushed to her room to check if he was still there. To her surprise, he was there perfunctorily scanning the pages of ‘An Argumentative Indian’.

Aarti- ‘Hey dad, how are you feeling now?’

Ashok- ‘I feel okay. I think you should sleep. It’s 2:30. I think I will go and make myself a cup of tea.’

Aarti- ‘You should sleep too. It is 2:30 for you too, you know.’

Ashok- ‘I will sleep in a while. I feel like staying up for some reading.’

Having said that Ashok left for the kitchen staggering painfully with each step that he took. The operation for the pelvic fracture was clearly not undertaken properly. The tea took a few minutes to boil; the water gradually swelled up and reached a peak only to crash down when the gas was turned off. He saw the essence of his entire life in that; rising up with passion, reaching the maxima and gradually falling down only to crash down completely when Lord would choose to turn off the gas. He could that feel the end was near, waiting for him to wrap up his roles before he could bid a goodbye. It was probably waiting for him to finish some conversations, conversations he yearned to have.

Aarti did sense some unsaid words that her dad probably wanted to say. Something told her that he was not really interested in reading that book, he probably wanted to have a conversation with her. However, too fatigued with the day’s work, she pushed the thought away and chose sleep over walking over to the living room and engaging in a conversation.

She curled up in her quilt and dozed off. Five minutes later, the phone beeped rather loudly. ‘There? :) ’, the WhatsApp message read. The name on the screen sent a chill down her spine and trashed sleep out of her system altogether. She took no time to respond, ‘Hey, yes. What’s up?’ and the exchange of messages continued till she no longer had the strength to keep her eyes open.

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The pre-board results were out. She topped the class again. Ashok could not attend the parent teacher meeting as usual because his health did not allow him.  Anita exchanged the usual pleasantries with the class teacher who told her how brilliant a student Aarti was and how she must be a proud mother. Anita was certainly a proud mother. She treated Aarti at one of her favourite restaurants that afternoon and told her that she was an amazing daughter.

Content with her results, Aarti returned home. Back home it was rather gloomy, her dad’s medical reports had been consistently poor. Funny thing how circumstances make you capable of feeling ten different emotions in a single day and surprisingly you do justice to those emotions. From being elated to being melancholic, she sometimes wondered how it was possible for one person to feel such divergent emotions all at the same time.

‘Congratulations love, you’re my darling. Like father, like daughter. You always make me proud’, Ashok was beaming with happiness

Aarti- ‘How is your health now, dad?’   

Ashok- ‘It gets better the moment I see you, love. I’ll cook the best butter chicken in the world for my darling today.’

Aarti- ‘No, I think you should rest. The cook will take care of the food. Also, I have dinner plans with my friends tonight. This is our last get-together before Boards. I have to go.’

Ashok- ‘Oh, okay dear.’

Aarti- ‘Bye dad, take care. I’ll go and get ready. I love you.’

Ashok did not say bye. He probably did not want her to go. Those conversations were still lying within him, waiting to unfurl someday. That day was taking too long to come. He was not sure if he had that much time.

Days passed by and Aarti got busier with her preparations. The little time that she got now and then was spent over the phone discussing either Sameer or Aditya and asking/answering, ‘How much done?’ questions. Results came out and she scored outstandingly in all her papers. Life had been rewarding on the academic side.

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Class eleventh happened and seventeen is the kind of age when friends become family. Somehow our world starts revolving around them. Yes, Aarti did blame the age sometimes. ‘Teenage knocks all senses out of you’, she sometimes consoles herself with that statement. With the board pressure out of her shoulders, the starting months of class eleventh were all about partying, get-togethers and dating. Somewhere amidst all the fun, family took a back-seat for her. No, she was not one of those spoiled girls; she just was not a great daughter, not even a good daughter. A good person maybe, but not a good daughter.

She was in the movie hall, lost intently in the movie when her phone started ringing. She put it on silent mode and kept it away. When she got out of the hall, much to her shock the phone read, ’Ma - 45 missed calls.’  A small part of her knew what those missed calls meant, but every other part refused to accept it. With trembling hands, she called back her mother. ‘Aarti, come home; just come home right now. Please come home’, Anita managed to speak amidst the wailing. Aarti did not ask her what happened. She knew what had happened. 

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‘Girls aren’t allowed to go to the funeral pyre’, they said. She turned a deaf ear to them and kept walking ahead. With every tear that fell, she remembered those missed conversations and wondered what they could have been about. Every scene flashed in front of her eyes. Every day when she could have had those conversations which he was taking back with him kept coming back to her. It was pinching her conscience every second and screaming out loud to her about how she failed to be there for him.

She did not cry. ‘Such a strong girl’, they said. She knew that she was not strong. She did not cry because she wanted to keep the pain within her. Crying might have relieved the pain. She wanted to go through it each day and remind herself about how terrible a daughter she was. It was her idea of penance. Some actions are not worth forgetting and forgiving. She did not forgive herself. The regret and pain was for a lifetime and deservedly so. 

Breaking out of the cocoon!

I feel old. No, there isn’t just a truckload of negativity around it. There’s wisdom too, a lot of it that all these years have brought along. Wisdom that I feel proud to have earned by making mistakes, falling down and doing utterly wrong things at the utterly right time. Wisdom that tears and smiles brought along with them. I’m certainly unnerved about what lies ahead, unnerved about breaking out of the cocoon and learning how to live all on my own. I don’t know if I’m ready to be on my own, I don’t know if I’m ready to trash all the innocence and gullibility out of my system and turn myself into a sterner and shrewder self, who is ready to face the big bad world(I know, too dramatic). I don’t know if I’m ready to pass fake smiles to my innumerable colleagues and make bonds that would sometimes be as superficial as ‘you-might-gain-from-me-and-I-might-gain-from-you’ and give it a pretty name called networking. I am painting a very cynical picture of the world that is going to lie ahead, let us just say I’m not in one of my best moods. Without digging any deeper into tomorrow, I feel like reflecting on the lessons all these years brought along, lessons that have shaped me into who I am…the good, the bad and the ugly.

I have learnt about people and about love. No matter how much I learn about love or try to understand it, it will never be enough. Love is an abyss…infinite, indefinite and inexplicable. There are bits that my twenty two year old self could fathom, though. I would share those bits with you. I have learnt that sometimes the magical stumbling upon and falling in love doesn’t happen. Yes, it does happen to some people who just come across the right person on a rainy afternoon, waiting for them with an umbrella. However, those people are lucky, not everybody is. Most of us have to make efforts to come across the right person. We must talk, explore, get to know people; then maybe we’d hit it off with one of them.

As far as friends are concerned however, I understood that we don’t choose the people who are going to enter our lives, that it is often random stumbling upon that brings them to us but we definitely choose who we will allow to stay there forever. This is a choice we must make with utmost discretion because the wrong choices hurt, hurt real bad.

We will always value some people more than they value us. We try to convince ourselves that it is not true, that they probably are just not as expressive as we are but deep within we know that we lie somewhere on the lower half of their priority list while we put them out there on the top. Now, there are two things we can do about it – pluck them out of the top of our priority list and push them back in the same position as they’ve put us or make peace with the fact that we will never be as important to them as they are to us. Making peace means no cribbing, no cribbing after that at all. Sometimes it gives us enough happiness to give in whole heartedly into a relationship without expectations of equal reciprocation and it is great if we can do that but we should be honest with ourselves about what gives us happiness. We must understand, however, the difference between not being on top of their priority list and being an option. We must understand the difference between somebody hurting our ego and hurting our self-esteem. The latter is something we must never make peace with, ever. 

I have always belonged to the people and hence my deepest source of pleasure and pain have most often been people. I learnt along the years that I cannot continue doing this. People are important and sometimes if you’re lucky, the way I have been for most part of my life, we come across some amazing people and we fall in love with them, we always want to be there for them and sometimes we make the mistake of making them the center of our life.  Some of them change, some betray and then it hurts. I have learnt to keep my goals above people unless my goal is some person, in which case there’s nothing much I can do about it. I understood that investing all my energy in goals is always wiser than investing it in people. If I fail to achieve my goals, it’s almost always because my efforts weren’t good enough but with people it’s never the same. Goals are loyal, people aren’t. People change, priorities change. Sometimes you can blame them for it, sometimes you cannot. Change is inevitable; things that held importance for one when they were 17 need not and in most cases will not hold the same amount of importance for them when they are 22. The sooner we make peace with this fact, the sooner we will be able to understand people better and expect lesser.

However, there would always be this one person whom we can keep above our goals, above everything, who will be worth all the suffering and hurt. If we’re lucky we’ll come across that one person and if we’re luckier they’ll never leverage the importance they have in our lives. Everybody else should be at a safe distance where the expectations are kept too low to be a cause of hurt.

Hurt and betrayal bring along with them the chance to forgive. I have learnt to forgive, to forgive someone is the best thing we can do to ourselves. Yes, to ourselves not to them. There is an unmatchable sense of freedom and relief that we get when we truly forgive. Life is too short to live it being mad at someone.

I have learnt that there will always be people smarter, more accomplished and wiser than me. There is so much that I can learn from them rather than being boggled down by their wisdom. These people keep the curious little child in us alive, the child who wants to question, learn and grow. We must take care of this child within us, nurture it and make sure that it never dies because the day this child dies we turn into a human vegetable. We are no good anymore, we’re just surviving.

I am learning how to shoulder responsibilities. Being so used to being pampered and loved, I seldom understood what it is to be on the giving end. Even though responsibilities might sound like a really heavy burden cast on our shoulders, we have to learn to shoulder them. All this while somebody has been there for us, probably the time for role reversal has come and we have to learn to be there for people and make ourselves worthy of being look up to.   

Ever since I have been trusted with the responsibility of taking a decision, I have been a major disappointment to myself. Worrying too much about whether I am making the right choice, I have never been able to take a firm decision. I learnt along the way, though, that sometimes there is no right or wrong choice. There is something to lose either way. The best we can do is to go with our instinct and let the dots connect backwards when we look back in retrospect. That time, it makes sense, it always does.

Mistakes and rash decisions make our life a really interesting story, if nothing else. We’re all stories in the end after all and we are the protagonists of our stories. One day the story is going to be complete. The lesser mistakes, the more the perfection, the more boring the story will be.

I think that it a lot of musing for the day. I feel wise, already J. 

Love -To be or not to be!

This is not for you if you have just given away your heart to someone and are letting yourself soak in the beauty of love, convinced that this is the tiny fragment of your life that was missing and now you’re complete in the purest sense of the word. This is not for you if you’re among the lucky few who have found the perfect partner and want to spend the remainder of their life (and if there is a beyond, then even that) with them.  This is for the broken hearts, the one-sided lovers and those who have been to a major extent broken down by the magnanimity of love. People happily in love are discouraged to read any further. This Valentine’s Day, I am going to sit and talk about every possible reason why it’s terrible to be in love.

Love makes you a slave of itself, corrupts the ability of the smartest of people to see through things logically and make wise decisions. You keep denying it all the while and tell yourself that you know how to balance it out right, but you know it all along that although you know how to balance it right, you cannot. Love, arrogantly and defiantly sits invisibly on the top of your priority list lying to you about its non-existence. Gradually, without you realizing, it starts engulfing your work, your decisions, your people and your free time - the  time you once spent having conversations with yourself, getting lost in the creativity of your thoughts is now spent talking to them and if you manage to get some time off that, you spend it musing about them.

Your choices, your beliefs, your ideologies, your opinions- all of them start getting majorly influenced by them. You start moulding yourself into a person they would want to love and without even knowing it, you start losing yourself, huge parts of yourself to them. You want to do anything and everything for that smile of theirs and before you realize it, they become the center of your world and one by one you start throwing people and things out of your life because nothing and nobody else seems to matter. You want to make up more and more space for them, you want your life to be more and more occupied by them and in the process you have knowingly or unknowingly pushed everything else into tiny insignificant corners. Before you know it, it has become about them and just about them.

You valued your self-esteem more than anything else until you fell for this person who was capable of changing it all for you. You realize one day that with everything else that you pushed away, you pushed away your self-esteem too. You start doing things you felt are too crazy to be done by anyone, you start caring for someone more than you ever thought you were capable of and you start experiencing emotions you never knew existed. The chill down your spine at the sound of their voice, the smile that refuses to leave your face long after they are gone, the happiness that simple conversations with them provide and the pangs of jealousy that burn parts of you-  you experience it all for the first time. Love makes you experience the extremes of emotions. Although, the happiness that it gives is incomparable to any other happiness that you have felt before, what you don’t realize is that the pain which the fights and the separation might cause you will also be more devastating than anything that you have ever felt before. But still, you fall prey to all these emotions and you want to keep feeling them for as long as you can. It’s addictive, and once you have got yourself into the habit of it, it’s very hard to get yourself out.

Then, there is this whole thing about owning people we love. Now, your partner may be the most broadminded person ever and how much ever he/she doesn't want to restrain you; mere mortals that we are, we fall prey to insecurities and jealousy and we want our partner to be ours before they can be anybody else’s and our obsession with it touches an extent where we want them to prove it to us sometimes. How much ever romantic it might seem initially to be told by your partner, “You’re mine baby”, it becomes stifling and suffocating when the hormones have taken a back seat and there isn't enough estrogen and testosterone being secreted to make you hyperventilate as your partner utters it. Whether you want to accept it or not, you lose a huge part of your independence and you actually become somebody else’s before you are yours. You've got yourself so deep into it all that there is no easy escape because you've reached this point where you cannot do without your partner and at the same time you cannot be comfortable with the fact that you are so much theirs.

However, gradually you get used to it and consciously or unconsciously you start liking all the good and bad aspects of love; you weigh them against each other and the fact that you have somebody you may call your own seems to outweigh all the negatives.  And, over an extended period of time when you learn to balance things right, when you learn to appreciate love, one by one bring back all the pieces of your life that you pushed aside in the pursuit of love and start leading a fairly stabilized happy life, exactly then my friend, they leave!

Then, you’re devastated like you have never been devastated before. You’re broken into a thousand pieces like you have never been broken before and realize that you had actually become somebody else’s and you’re incapable of independent existence anymore. There’s a void they leave behind, and you try, try every day to fill it back but you fail miserably every time. You try every day to convince yourself that you’re more than their presence in your life and your friends, family, work and all those parts of your life which you pushed away try to bring back your broken pieces together. And, after a long, long time which seems like forever you become alright and embrace life with all its beauty and ugliness once again but although you never say it out loud, that void remains unfilled forever.

All said and done about love, I ask myself if I would refrain from it. ‘Of course, I will’, my mind replies in an instant but my heart hesitates a little and with its eyes cast down and cheeks blushing a Valentine’s day red whispers, ‘It cannot be all that bad, can it?”  

Mirror, Mirror On the Wall!

 Zaara's encounters with the mirror were pretty frequent. She loved to spend hours twirling her hair with the roller, trying different shades of her mother's lipstick and draping one of her dupattas as a sari when no one was watching. She loved the way the girls danced in the rain in the movies. She tried it out too; on some days when nobody was at home, she'd rush to the terrace and run in dramatic fashion with the dupatta in her hand, holding it high and letting the wind form tiny waves in it as it flew.

'Oh, I am beautiful', she thought to herself. When she used to study at her table, she was often distracted. If she turned slightly to the right, she could catch her reflection in the tall mirror and no matter how hard she tried, she could not resist the temptation to admire herself. Zaara was ten and her understanding of beauty was as innocent as her age; a little bit of rouge, a pair of pretty earrings, a flowing dupatta and a sparkling smile could do it all for her.

She was a cheerful young girl. She scored all A’s in her classes, played basketball in the evenings, had a lovely group of friends, loving parents and a beautiful elder sister. And, sometimes when she finished her homework earlier, she would rush to the mirror and play 'dress-up'. There is this strong connection between beauty and femininity which develops at a very young age. In Zaara’s case, she grew up believing that she was beautiful.

As the years passed along, the girls around her became more conscious of the way they looked. The length of the skirts became shorter and the blouses tighter. The hairstyle was suddenly so much important; combs, lip balms and creams were sneaked into the school bag and long queues were made in front of the washroom mirrors during the lunch breaks. Every time she looked into the mirror, a beautiful young lady stared back (at least Zaara thought so). Her mother also told her she was beautiful and she chose to believe it. You don’t really know that you don’t look conventionally beautiful or have the set of physical attributes that determine beauty, unless someone points out in you the lack thereof.

She was told one day by one of her friends that Faraz would never like her back because she’s not pretty enough for him. She learnt that day that sparkling big eyes, chiseled nose, beautifully defined slender lips and high cheek bones are the main parameters of a magnificent face and that she lacked not one, but all of them! She cried to herself all night in a long, long time. She kept wondering about all the possible ways she could make herself worthy of Faraz.

She would apply thick kohl around her eyes to make them appear more prominent and every day when nobody was watching, she would try to squeeze her nose a little with the hope that it would pick a better shape with the continued pressure. Maybe then, Faraz would not mind liking her back, she fondly hoped.

She was in the ninth standard now and the obsession with beauty steeply grew for most of her peers. The queues in front of the washroom mirror became longer and the cosmetics sneaked into school grew in number. There was a certain kind of attention that all her ‘beautiful’ friends started getting which the unusually talented Zaara was used to a few years back. Faraz would be surrounded by all the pretty girls who would flirtatiously talk with him the whole time in the recess and gradually, unnoticeably Zaara was pushed out of the scene. She started ignoring Faraz over the days that followed; she thought it’s better to let go of him herself rather than going through the pain of being shrugged off by him.

She could hear the girls raving about Faraz, about how irresistible he looked with his new ear piercing and the crew cut hair style. It would crush her heart and burn it to a charcoal black every time she would hear them talk about about Faraz. There is strong feeling; a strange mix of envy, admiration, covetousness and hatred that ordinary looking girls feel for gorgeous girls; and Zaara felt it every time, every time for all of them. How the world seemed to just revolve around them and all they had to do was to just pass one of their smiles which were capable of killing with the magnanimity of their beauty to get things done! She would question it sometimes, the unfairness of this treatment, only to realize the futility of her questions. The world was not a fair place; life is unfair and she knew it all along. The only difference was that now the unfairness started hitting her in the face; as long as it was favouring her, she did not mind the unfairness at all. How fair it was after all that she was just born brainier than the rest of them, had an athletic built which made her stand out in sports and a melodious voice which won her so many admirers. Had she ever questioned their admiration for her intellect or her talents? No, she hadn’t, she just felt she deserved it. “I have worked hard to polish that intellect and voice, worked out every day from 5 in the morning to grow my athletic abilities; I did not just magically wake up one day being all smart, athletic and melodious”, she would try and reason out with herself. She could not convince herself entirely though.

She started living indifferently and started hanging out with people whose behaviour and interests did not dramatically change with the onset of puberty. She would look with disdain at those pretty girls, somewhere inside secretly wishing to be one of them. Her own hypocrisy would make her look down upon herself sometimes. She was failing to admire herself like before and she had no idea about dealing with it. She just cut herself off from the Faraz in the hope that the lesser she sees of him, the lesser it might hurt. And, how she failed miserably; every time, every time!

Faraz cornered her one fine day, held her hand and pinned her to the wall in utmost fury contrary to his usual calm and composed demeanour. “Why are you doing this to me, what have I done to deserve your coldness. You shouldn’t have come this close to me, if you just had to leave one day without reason or explanation.” He realized as his breath calmed down that he was holding her hand way too tight. He let go of her and apologized. Never had his fury and grief been a cause of her happiness. This time it was; she felt so elated that she did not even feel the pain of his hand gripping hers so tight. The rage in his eyes never pleased her so much. “I need to know Zaara, I need to know. Tell me what happened”, he exclaimed. “I though you don’t like me anymore Faraz. I am not beautiful like those girls you hang out with. And you’re beautiful Faraz, you are way too handsome. I know I am not good enough for you. You started hanging out with those girls; they were beautiful, all of them and I knew I didn’t stand a chance so I just went away”, Zaara let her emotions out. Faraz looked at her in disbelief. “You’re not good enough for me, did you say? Are you crazy? You’re the most beautiful girl I have ever come across and I could write an entire book about how smitten I am with everything from the way you play with the tiny strand of hair that falls over forehead to the way your smile arrests my breath every time you stretch it all the way to your eyes. Yes, I don’t like you Zaara because I insanely, passionately and deeply love you”, Faraz said out loud in the outburst of love and fury. Both of them stood silent in the heat of the moment, consuming the gravity of the emotions that just overflowed. Breathing hard and with tears rolling down their eyes, there under the school staircase, spellbound, they kissed for the first time.

“What is beauty”, Zaara asked herself many times after that day, and how much ever hard ever she tried, she could never get a definite answer.

Men Don't Cry

They can. They do. They may. And you know what you and I ought to do, we should let them. We as a society have been so engrossed in taking up the cause of women, of their oppression and their neglected rights that we became oblivious to the problems faced by men. 

As a kid, the fairy tales that were narrated to me painted two very distinct pictures of men and women in my head. The stories more or less circled around “A strong macho man sweeping the pretty princess off her feet, wiping her tears, making her smile, solving her problems and being a constant support system for her. The princess never did that for him; she never needed to, because the prince was never low, distressed or in pain. Even if he was, he kept it to himself and dealt with it like a man and never, ever did he cry because apparently ‘men don’t cry’.”

I grew up with this picture of men and women. It didn’t seem flawed to me in the initial growing years of my life; the only thing that was within my understanding back then was that I get to wear the beautiful princess gowns, and oh, I liked that! However, as I grew up it started to seem slightly odd to me when my parents and teachers would exclaim, ’Oh, she’s a boy’ every time I acted slightly violent, athletic, bold or brave. I did not completely understand it when my friend was asked to not act like a little girl when he came back misty eyed and bruised one day from school and narrated the incident of being beaten up by the senior boys. I saw his hands and face severely bruised another day; this time on being asked what happened, he told his parents that he had scraped his hands and face while playing football. I knew he was lying. He knew it too. He just learnt that day that it was not manly enough to succumb to tears and no matter how much it pains him he was supposed to keep it to himself and never vent it out or else he would be less of a man. I, on the other hand learnt that everything that has got to do with strength and valour fell in the category of men, and everything that has got to do with weakness, sympathy and fear fell in the category of women. Did I like the definition that the world was giving me? Oh! I abhorred it; but did I start accepting it, yes, bit by bit huge parts of me started accepting it.

As I grew up with this mentality, often in flashes of immaturity I have remarked and mocked many of my guy friends rather unapologetically ‘to not act like a whiny little girl’, when they have expressed emotions over trivial issues which they were ideally supposed to act all macho about. I did not know back then about the severity of damage that my words were capable of causing. Only when I grew up I realized what I did back then and what we as a society have been doing to men, not just to men, but also to little boys with our rigid ideas of machismo and masculinity.

I remember having a conversation with a friend notorious for his stoicism when I asked him if he has ever cried in the recent past. He took a deep breath and warned me that he might sound like a male chauvinist in his reply. He said, “When a girl cries, you can sense genuine concern in people’s eyes who feel like going to her and comforting her. When a guy cries on the other hand, people feel like mocking him. It’s disgraceful and shameful for a guy to cry, to express his emotions out loud. I am human, I have emotions and I do break down at times, but I keep it to myself because I cannot take it out.” I was quiet for a long time. I felt deeply, almost painfully sympathetic towards men. While we’re out there demanding women’s rights and liberation, I wonder how independent men are when they do not have the freedom to feel as strongly as a woman, when they are denied the freedom to express their emotions, when they are denied to expose their vulnerabilities for once and cry without being labelled as effeminate and weak! Oh, it saddens me, almost pinches me!

One of the major reasons why sexual and physical offenses against men and young boys go unreported is because we as a society refuse to see men as being vulnerable, victimized or weak. The victims of such violence suffer silently because we never gave them the outlet to express their susceptibility. A young kid bullied in school could not complain to his teacher because it was not manly enough to do so. A twelve year could not walk up to his mother and speak out about being sexually abused by his servant because it was shameful for a guy to go through sexual abuse. They chose to suffer in silence because they had to keep up the ideals of their gender above themselves. Yes, these are extreme cases that I mentioned, but it reached this stage because they were not for once allowed to be weak by the society.

We need to view and perceive gender as a spectrum and not just two distinct shades. We need to understand that the distinction in our physicality is the only definite difference, let us not impose restrictions on our soul. Our souls are free and liberated, they probably do not understand the specifics of gender and let us not force them to. We all have a soft side, a cruel side, an indifferent side, a strong side, a vulnerable side and a brave side; a few of these sides may be more marked in some of us as compared to others but it doesn't have everything to do, in fact it might have nothing to do with our gender. We need to accept that it is perfectly alright for a man to rest his head on a shoulder which could be a woman’s (pardon me for the blasphemy), shed a few tears and expose his weaknesses. At the same time, we need to understand that it does not make a woman any less feminine if she does not feel or express emotions as strongly as women are naturally expected to. A man cannot and need not be firm, strong, courageous and unwavering at all times, a woman cannot and need not be emotional, fragile, gentle and coy at all times or at any time, for that matter. Let us give each other the freedom to be ourselves and not be burdened by gender.

You might ask me how I plan to achieve it, I do have a certain idea in mind. I wrote about it, to start with. I hope it resonates with the thoughts of a couple of you and I hope you will imbibe some of it and carry it forward with you. I will make sure that the men and women I come across are not burdened by gender and do not have to be too aggressive or too meek to fulfill their conventional gender demands and will hope that you’d do the same. I will make sure that when I have a child and strongly hope that when you have one, we don’t teach him/ her what it means to be a guy or a girl, let us not impose gender upon them. Let us give them the freedom to choose the qualities they wish to develop and choices they wish to make. That way, we could move towards a more progressive and liberated society. I may be painting too rosy a picture, but then, it all starts with one stroke. It’s stifling to be restrained by gender, I want to be liberated, I’m sure you want to be too.

That Cat

I hate cats. I've always hated them. No, not always. I loved this one particular cat once. White and brown fur. She was beautiful. Not just beautiful, she was enchanting! Hazel green eyes, stunning yet frightening and claws so sharp that it could rip you off. She would come every day to our little cottage house in Nainital. I would give her milk and chapattis regularly. I know it is not the best food for a cat; but staunch vegetarian that my grandmother was, we did not have much choice. She did not seem to mind the vegetarian diet anyway. The bowl would be licked clean by her, not the tiniest bit of chapatti or smallest drop of milk sticking around anywhere.

She used to come over in the afternoons sometimes, sometimes in the evening. How I’d wait for her every day! I’d look forward to petting her, getting her a bowl of milk and chapatti, hearing her meow as she would walk around the house defiantly and making her sit on my lap (sometimes forcibly, because she disliked bondage even if it came out of love) as I caress my hands on her rich brown and white fur. Before I knew it, I was in love with her! The agile walks, the magnificently fearless jumps she would make and traverse several meters with just one giant leap of hers and those eyes, although I admit they could scare me immensely but I had never come across anything more stunningly beautiful! I would wait longingly, every day for her to come; sometimes I went as far as going to the neighborhood to check on her when she would not turn up until late evening.

I saw her hunt a rat once, a harmless little thing wriggling about playfully near the drains.  She approached it cunningly, not making the slightest noise as it cautiously walked towards it and when she was close enough to grab it, she thumped it with her claws which made it squeak out in pain. As the little thing was trying with all its might to free itself from her grab, she hit it for the second time and when it ceased to breathe, she tore it with her canines and chewed it away with the utmost ferocity. I saw evil in her eyes that day! A soft heart, I had. I was an animal lover too. However, that day for some reason I could feel no remorse for the rat. I almost reveled at the cat’s victory, took pleasure in the satisfaction that she got out of hunting the rat. Love, I tell you, is a tricky thing! It can make beasts out of us humans.

My admiration for the cat grew with every passing day. She continued coming over to play with me each evening. One day after feeding her, I was trying to pull her into my lap to pet her. She wriggled out of my hands one time, I tried harder and pulled her more lovingly towards me for the second time. She turned her head wildly towards me, clawed me sharply on the hands, gave me the fiercest look ever and jumped away. She went far off my cottage in leaps and bounds and was out of sight in a few seconds. I was left in devastating shock! How could she do this to me! I was just trying to hold her for a while to caress her lovingly. How could she claw me and give me that devilish look; I thought it was meant for the enemies, but she met me with the same look. How could she!

‘I would not play with her, I will just give her food and then she can go back from wherever she came’, I thought. It was 5 o’clock. She was supposed to come by now. Maybe, she would come a little late. 6 PM, 7PM , 8PM ,9PM… hours passed by, the cat never came. I was hopeful that she would come the next day. The next day passed by, and the next, and the next. The cat never returned. I went looking for her in the neighborhood where she used to hunt about, but no luck. I gave up the search in a few days, but every time I sighted a cat, I would get reminded of her.

One fine evening, I was playing Hide and Seek at my friends place where I was hiding at the backdoor and there, I saw her! She was there! I was not mistaken. The same brown and white fur, thinning slightly at the skull and how could I forget her eyes!  She was out there for a hunt, I presumed. She was approaching the kitchen door with the same cautiousness I witnessed long back when I saw her hunt for the first time. I was right. She grabbed the rat with its sharp canines and ate it off mercilessly. After having finished her meal, she walked back and then, our eyes met. I could sense an air of recognition. She walked towards me and stroked my legs amiably with her head. A moment later she jumped athletically on a tree and was gone! My friend told me later that the cat recently started coming to her place every day and she feeds it milk and biscuits. ‘Such a beauty, isn't it?’ she remarked!

I felt a sharp pang of betrayal for some reason. I sensed at that moment that she did not hate me, but she did not love me either. She was not bonded by emotions. She belonged to no one. She was wild, free and independent. She was probably capable of love too, but not attached. She was incapable of getting attached to people, things or places. I guess that is why I started hating them, because I got too attached to that cat, only to get to know later that I was replaceable, easily replaceable. It was not hatred, I guess. Probably envy, I envied their free spirit. I envied their independence, the way they are completely on their own, the way they can never truly belong to anyone, the way they refuse to be owned and bonded, even in love. I guess somewhere in a tiny corner of my heart I long to be like them-free, independent and wild!

The Downside of Being 21!

As you gradually approach the first quarter of your life, a whole lot of mixed emotions stir you from within. On the brighter side, you have almost a fourth of your life figured out for you and a lot of life lessons are learned along the way. You laugh over the things which had once made you cry, you realize which people truly matter in life and you learn one very important fact about all the happy and bitter faces of life that this too shall pass. As you’re maturing along the years and gaining a clearer perspective of life, somewhere the kid in you is clinging hard onto you and refusing to let go, making sure that the maturing process is pushed as much ahead in time as possible. When you’re expected to be your smartest, most mature self, exactly then you end up making the worst mistakes of your life and which is more, nobody has any consolation to offer. Some major spoilers of being 21 are:

• You don’t have puberty by your side to save your ass when you’re acting full retard. You simply cannot blame it on the hormones, anymore.
• You cannot go running to your mom sobbing intermittently as you narrate the story of the asshole who cheated on you, because you won’t get any sympathies anymore. You’re no longer the innocent little girl for whom it would have been acceptable to be naive and fall for a jerk. You, my friend are just expected to be a better judge of people and it’s your fault to have fallen for such a guy in the first place.
• You are just expected to have at least the next ten years, if not your entire life, figured out for you. People give you dirty looks if you tell them, ’I am trying to figure out things for myself.’ The figuring out part should have been long completed by now.
• Dating is serious business now. You cannot be unsure about the guy going out with, anymore. You’re suddenly expected to find out the ‘The One’ and be with him.
• On a peaceful Saturday evening, you’re casually browsing through Facebook sipping your hot coffee and suddenly out of the blue your classmate’s wedding pictures pop-up and you get so startled by it that you end up spilling the coffee all over yourself. The next thing you know is that you’re trying to type a congratulating message to her, but you just cannot make yourself write ‘Congratulations’ and instead you feel like sympathizing with her because the whole idea of marriage scares the shit out of you. Then, gradually the feeling sinks in and you realize that you've grown pretty old too, and in years down the line you’d probably be wearing the engagement ring too. There’d be responsibilities to shoulder, there’d a husband to take care of and in a few more years there’d be kids too. ‘I am way too young for all this’; you shriek out in horror and break out of the thought process. ‘I am never going to get married’, you falsely reassure yourself.
• You’re supposed to be responsible, mature and emotionally stable now. Being young, crazy and stupid are not valid excuses anymore. Sometimes, it’s just too much pressure to handle.

Growing old is pretty serious business and sometimes it might freak us out a little because the kid within us refuses to leave so easily and makes us act like twelve year old's once in a while. However, I believe it’s the immaturity, the imperfections and the times we screw up things real bad which make our lives so much more interesting. Moreover, like the years have taught us, this too shall pass!

THE CONSTANT FEAR

My earliest memories of childhood have been prominently marked with recitals of the list of restrictions. The list which only grew longer as I grew older. The list contained 'preventive measures' for lecherous groping, unasked stares and although it was never spoken openly, the most prominent reason was to make sure that go through my life without being raped. We've lived in constant fear...yes, all of us. Our mothers, our brothers, our sisters, our uncles, our best friends, our teachers...all of them. They have all feared. They gave norms of female behaviour. Rules to follow if you want to continue being un-raped:

•      Do not stay out till late in the night.
•      If at all you have to stay out, stay in large groups. Never stay alone.
•      Avoid travelling alone at all cost.
•      Wear decent dresses.
•      If you are eve-teased, do not respond. Ignore and move on.

I did not question any of them, they all made sense to me. A lot of sense. However, sometimes I do get a little annoyed when my mother would become completely paranoid when my phone went out of reach even for a minute when I was in a different city. How she started reciting the 'Crime Patrol' episodes to me and though she never directly said it, I know she silently feared that something similar happened to me! I remember feeling the need to urgently use the washroom at 1 AM in the train when I was travelling alone and the dilemma that I was caught in for twenty minutes because of a tragic episode of a girl which a friend shared with me a day back.

I remember putting my best friend's number on speed dial on my phone, clutching the umbrella with all my might, rehearsing mentally how I'll handle the situation because the auto driver seemed notorious and was passing obnoxious glances to a fellow on the bike. I was revising all the self-defence techniques I had read, seen or heard about. However, he was going through the right route. In five minutes, I reached my destination. I let out a sigh of relief. Not a rapist! I rebuked myself for over-analysing situations. This is how maniacal fear can turn anyone- it can make us label any man in a thinly populated area, beyond eight in the night as a potential rapist.

We all live with and through this fear every day...every single day. For our daughters, sisters, friends, students and sometimes for ourselves. We have lived in constant fear and we continue to live in it. The most painful part is that we do not find anything wrong about the fear any longer. We have accepted it as an essential part of our lives, an inseparable part!

What am I complaining about and why am I complaining you may ask! Have I had a very hard life? No. Have I been deprived of any opportunities because of my gender? No. Am I not happy with my life? No, I am.  I have a very beautiful life, a great family, wonderful friends and a promising career ahead of me! So, what is wrong? Why I am cribbing. I am cribbing because of some UNNECESSARY(as you may call them) freedoms which I have been deprived of. Little cravings that I have of a solitary walk in the night having the breeze play with my hair. I wonder sometimes how it would be to travel all by myself to say, Pondicherry, to sit by the rocky beach at five in the morning and feel the waves splash over me as I think about the story of my first book. I have musings about dropping to my friend's place anytime of the night riding my bike without having someone to guard me. I wonder sometimes what it is like to be completely unguarded, I wonder what absolute freedom tastes like. I wonder what it's like to not ask my male friends to accompany me when it becomes late and to be completely independent. The thought of it seems very enticing, I visualise it and I fall in love with the idea of it over and over again.

I do not know how to go about making the change that I wish to see in the world around me but I know that I have to do something. I know for a fact that I cannot continue living with this fear forever. I know that I have to take steps, and I am unsure about what the first one will be but I know the solutions will come along. I need your help, of all of you, in stemming out the fear from each one of us.

I know the article sounds incomplete and the thoughts incoherent. This was a swell of emotions which had to come out. Pardon me, because I have no idea about what I have to do to make a difference. I just know that I have to do it and I will do it. I urge you all to help me and join me, we'll figure out a way. Trust me, we will!

Written in blood-debarred

Morning 7 o’clock: ‘tin-tin-tin-tin-tin-tin-tin-tintintintin’, went my alarm-clock, the noise was blaring. I checked the time-7 o’clock.I told myself, ’I can sleep for 5 more minutes.’ I put it on snooze.

5 minutes later: I was in a beautiful orchard, a strawberry orchard, picking ripe strawberries and eating them with fresh cream. Oh, what bliss. When suddenly, a giant fat man came with a huge bell and started ringing it. It went like, ‘tin-tin-tin-tin-tin-tin-tin-tintintintin’. It was my alarm, again-7:05, it said. I made a quick decision-‘No bathing today, it will give me another 20 minutes’. This thing within me kept shouting, ‘remember that red debarred sign next to 4 of your theories…GET UP. If you go on like this, you will bunk this class again. GET UP.’ I made that thing shut up and set the alarm to 7:25.

During those 20 minutes: ‘And, to all you wonderful sleep-deprived students who have to stay up late in the night for important stuff like ‘facebook’,’phone-conversations’, ‘watching-movies’ and ‘absolutely nothing’, I have an announcement to make,”I truly understand the significance of all these useless activities in your college life. They play an important role in shaping you all as NORMAL,non-Chatur (remember, 3 idiots) and socially un-deprived individuals. I understand that after staying up late for all these activities, it is difficult for you to get up early and go for your classes. Knowledge cannot be taught, it has to be caught. Moreover, since our vision is on granting knowledge-not marks, we have arrived on the decision of removing the 75% attendance rule. No student shall hereafter be debarred in any subject”‘. A loud applause followed. My friends and I in the audience went all misty eyed. ‘I am proud to be a VITian’, I exclaimed with joyful tears. Then suddenly, that giant fat man with the bell emerged again, this time with an evil grin,’ tin-tin-tin-tin-tin-tin-tin-tintintintin.’

7:25 AM: The alarm again, ‘I knew it, it was too good to be true. But still, I don’t want to wake up!’ That thing within me again started ganging up against me, ‘DEBARRED DEBARRED DEBARRED…it said in repetitive Bollywood style. ‘Okay fine’, I shouted back, ’I am waking up.’ Then, again, I started negotiating with myself-10 more minutes, if I miss breakfast. I can always have it in SJT canteen during the 10 minute break. ‘Don’t do it’, my mind was shouting again,’you will never get up, you are DEBARRED...if you miss this class, considering all attendance calculations you've made in the past, you will have to attend each and every class in order to make it 75%.Are you ready for it!’
I almost said, ‘Challenge accepted’, I have been watching too much of How I Met Your Mother, seriously! Then, with whatever little sense that was left in me, I told myself, ‘I will get up, promise…in 5 minutes.‘ Snoozed again.

7:30 AM: This time there was no,’tin-tin-tin’, the alarm tone magically changed to, ‘debarred-DEBARRED-DEBARRED-DEBARRED.’ Needless to say, it was way more effective. I jumped from my bed right on my feet.
And, in those 30 minutes, I managed it all-the brushing, the bathing, the breakfast and reaching the class (customary-five minute late, of course).

Certainly, the deadly red-debarred sign can work wonders.

The Pseudo Feminism

Most of us have added to this activism, at some point of time or another. Getting aggressive and enraged over unintended harmless remarks on women, digging out a feminist angle in almost everything, looking down on people if God forbid, they ever support men in any situation, the whole sing song about-‘You have no idea about what a woman goes through each day…’ begins. Yes, I know that it’s a hard world out there for the women. Yes, I know most of the time it is the women who are wronged. But, to drown oneself in self pity and present that as an answer to every question raised on women is wrong as well.

Yes, I know you must be thinking that I am a traitor of my own sex, that I am another of those women influenced by patriarchy to a level that she starts believing in their ideologies too. No, I am not one of them. I am a feminist, proud to be a woman and strongly feel for the cause of my gender but unnecessarily sensationalizing every second thing to be an assault on feminism or women rights is something that I find horribly annoying.

The other day I read this piece on how Raksha Bandhan propagates the idea of male superiority over women. I don’t understand why an innocent festival which celebrates sibling love has to be blamed for propagating patriarchy. No, it does not! It’s totally the way you wish to look at it. They might argue that it makes the little children believe that the brother is someone who should be looked up at with high regard (and is probably worthy of more respect) even if he is younger to the sister because according to tradition, the sister ties the ‘Rakhi’ to the brother who pledges to protect her always. May be the little children do start looking at it that way. It is our job to make sure the thought never crosses their mind also. However, if we are hell bent on believing that Raksha Bandhan is another tool of imbibing into every individual that men are above women, then there’s nothing much that we can do from preventing our children to think on similar lines.

 Culture, tradition and value-system have evolved with time. The traditional celebration of festivals also has. I remember when I was little Raksha Bandhan meant selection of the most beautiful Rakhi for my brother, expecting the most beautiful gift ever and flaunting it the next day to my school friends, wearing pretty dresses, having delicious sweets and of course a holiday, that was pretty much all. The idea of it meaning the dominance of my brother over me did not even cross my mind for a split second, because I believe a child’s brain is too pure to even think of such lowly things. In fact, sometimes even my brother used to tie a Rakhi on my wrist, or I tied one on my mother’s wrist, we never quite went by some hard and fast rule. So, if we are so concerned about the male dominance occurring to our children, we may ask the brothers and sisters to tie Rakhi to each other, instead of having it just one way or maybe we can present the ideology behind the festival in a more beautiful way to them but let us not put blame the lovely festival for anything evil, it has given me a lot of sweet memories.

Then, there is this Tarun Tejpal sexual assault case, I have my utmost respect for the victim who came out strongly against the perpetrator. However, I was reading one of the replies to some tweet where someone asked why she went on the elevator with him for the second time. And, then began one after another outpours of comments like, ‘you are a sexist’, ‘it is the same mentality which makes one blame a women’s clothes for rape’, ‘you are a misogynist’, etc. Now, nobody is blaming the women for being assaulted, but it is genuinely shocking that you would consider going again in the elevator with someone who has sexually assaulted you the previous night. Correct me if I am wrong, but if you have been forcibly kissed, attempted at being disrobed and penetrated by fingers by a man on one night, you would not even consider coming close to him, leave apart getting into the lift with him again. I am not saying that this makes Mr Tejpal any less wrong for what he has done, but it does make the women appear a lot stupid, weak and defenseless.

We are getting to a stage where we are ready to believe that every time a woman suffers, she has either been wronged or used or cheated or misled or suppressed. We blame it on the misogynist society, on patriarchal norms and what not! What we completely ignore is that sometimes, it may have nothing to do with it at all. We get all charged up to take the feminist brigade forward every time the word ‘woman’ even pops up in any conversation.

Why is any man who would prefer to marry a girl who could devote most of her time to take care of the children and the house looked upon as a sexist? I mean… it is all a matter of choices, right? There are a lot of women out there who are not ambitious, who would actually look forward to that kind of life. Not every woman is career conscious. A lot of them would actually look forward to being a supportive homemaker. They would actually enjoy it.

Come on, let’s face it- all of us have different ideas of what we want out of life. We have our priorities set differently. Some of us value our career more than anything else, while there is another category for which marriage is more important and they wouldn’t even think twice before leaving their careers to devote all their time to the family. Not always is the second category forced to do it, sometimes they choose to do it. They have no complaints, they enjoy their life that way. To look at all of them with pitiable eyes thinking that they had to make a huge sacrifice would be very wrong on our part. This is what they wanted out of life and they are getting it.

A lot of women openly claim that one of the main parameters of choosing the right guy is definitely his bank balance. We never judge them, do we? We feel that it is important for a woman to be concerned about her financial security. Well, if we talk about equality then why do we have to depend on the guy for our financial needs? This question is often swept under the carpet. I believe if we do not judge women when they tick mark ‘hefty bank balance’ in the must-haves list, we have no right to judge men when they expect a homely girl. Else, it is plain hypocrisy.

Then comes this whole expectation of being respected and what not for just being a woman, what have we done to earn it! If we want respect, let our deeds be worthy of it, not plainly our gender. Feminism means equality and equality has little space for undue respect and honor and we must refuse to accept it as well.

It has all been bothering me of late, hypocrisy dressed as feminism is something that was annoying me. Everything highlighted to be an agent of suppression of womankind is just mere stupidity. We are digging unnecessarily and probably meaninglessly trying to find an element of suppression in every little thing we come across. We have probably started looking for little things to drown ourselves in self pity and exclaim, ’No country for women’. There is a country for women, exactly the one we are living in. Things have been terrible, I know. Life is a lot harder for women, I know. However, frantically linking every possible thing as an attempt to oppress women is not the solution for it, either. It might lead to a stage where feminists are looked upon as a group of hysterical, men-hating lot. Like somebody commented on a similar discussion, ‘Now, it is better to avoid women like you avoid cobras.’ I fear this stage coming, and trust me it will not be a pleasant one. We need to end that war, pretty soon at that!