An educated mind has nothing to do with a broken heart

I read an article the other day. It confused me and then it got me thinking and now I find myself writing about it.

I live in India, a country I am both proud and ashamed of just as I am about myself. In this democratic nation where free-will has as much meaning as your neighbor will allow, the courts make decisions that seem like a page out of literature. I wish I were joking, or maybe my lack of  proficiency in legaleese allows me to believe that verdicts that unfold across multiple pages longer than the standard A4 , in language with more literary devices than Blake would remember- including rhyme and rhythm, are a mockery of a system we can do little to alter.

This particular verdict had something about a woman who was living with a married man and appealed to the courts for support after he left her to go back to his family (after 18 years might I add). The courts denied her request for multiple reasons and activist groups are up in arms about what this verdict means for the future. A future that they promised is what every illiterate (or was it uneducated) woman who didn't know better would face.
I read the news on an app on my phone, I do it because pretending to know whatever the app will tell me that Facebook won't makes me feel sane- my sanity is defined by the knowledge important or otherwise, that I acquire. That ritual of unwrapping the morning newspaper and folding down specific corners and hearing the paper crinkle just right does not exist to me. The news therefore is not a prediction of my day ahead, it doesn't mean enough to me. This piece though, the implications the reaction of it won't leave my mind.

I think back over and over again to groups of men and women who believe literacy or education somehow teaches you not to listen to the sound of your heart- not to believe a man you know is lying and build dreams in thin air. It has to be a joke. It must because otherwise the reality I know is.

I don't hold illusions about education- it does its job, for better or for worse one walks away with bundles of papers that proclaim everything from intelligence to capability. What it fails to do however is teach you just how vulnerable you are. I think, and shoot me if I have this wrong, that the sense of accomplishment that earning respected degrees lets you feel, closes you off to the reality that to another person you mean as much as their happiness will accommodate. With an education we are blind to our inner weaknesses masked by the endless layers of self assurance and confidence an education will create. We keep telling ourselves, because we must in this rat race that we are too smart, too accomplished to be treated with anything but respect and awe.

A broken heart though, is a broken heart. Love makes us do foolish things, things we will ourselves to believe and a wounded heart has nothing to do with an educated mind because life teaches the true lessons and she isn't kind to people whose sight from within their soul is lost.  

For my Faultmate

As I speed down slopes on my bicycle with the cold wind biting into my skin I am transported to dark alleys in a different part of the country. We didn't have a bike then and we certainly weren't in any hurry. I remember then that my mind wasn't filled with questions, a to-do list or a mental inventory of what is in the fridge to fix a meal with, it was filled with the sound of your chatter as we walked down lanes like tributaries off a road that was mistakenly called loafers lane. I still hold the opinion that it should be called rat lane to warn every other 17 year old about what on first sight looks like an earthquake but is actually a rat pack on the same prowl as us.

I haven't forgotten any of it, or maybe my mind reconstructs the portions that I have forgotten. However you see it I will always have a memory of us silly 17 year olds heading out as often as we were hungry looking for the latest to eat in the little shops that dotted Vasanth Nagar. How brave we were setting out into cold, dirty, often dark streets,  looking for meaning on the pretext of finding a good meal. By the end of our year I could navigate the streets better than any auto driver, a habit we carried into the discovery of lanes behind RT Nagar filled with the mouth-watering goodness of fresh kebabs (that come to think of it I never ate!). I wonder if they would be surprised, our 17 year old-full-of-faith-in-the-future selves, that though our lives turned out nothing like we expected, so did our friendship, across geographies that span continents and multiple oceans.

Oh we were silly weren't we, forsaking the surety of a meal every night for our adventures on that little strip of networking hopes. I wouldn't change a thing. Not from that year at least.

We have come a long way from that simpler time where our greatest worries were managing a princely rent of Rs. 3,000 and waking up in time for class, or in your case convincing people that I really wasn't addicted to drugs- that sleep was my poison of choice. They wouldn't believe the horrors we now tell each other of or the depth of anger we can feel for other people who caused those stories to be each others' truth.

I still have our book of meticulously kept accounts. They remind me of a happier if frugal time, times that neither of us would have sought to add a descriptor to, consider a benchmark.

We're so pretty I couldn't pick just one picture :P

I can still hear your voice when you sent me that message- "His loss. He has
nothing. No spine, no you". It was the first time I had laughed since that great tragedy that we let seep into our lives then. I remember you telling me later about you, my all consuming worry that you laughed at and even got mad at me about. I worry because I can't confuse you with the anger I feel on your behalf, I worry because you will walk into structures with your heart on your sleeve making friends with people whom you love more than yourself- with people who love themselves more than they appreciate you and your distinct brand of care. I wonder if you remember that time on the terrace. I had just walked in and saw you crying about somebody who wasn't fair to you and took off in a range about just what would be done to that person. What I remember most bout that night, other than the biting cold, is your confusion at my anger and how that night turned into you calming me down instead of the other way around.

We have our memories don't we, that nobody else would understand; The very best and the very worst. So here's to you dear flatmate/faultmate and our plan of retiring at 30 to explore Africa as we did once Karnataka.
You bloody well make it that far if I will, we have vineyards to explore and men to heap hate on.

Because mornings are clearer

This was an e-mail I received. Yes he is fine (I checked) but I wanted to share this here because I can't find my own words today.

i wanted to write this on a public blog (or facebook notes or whatever) but i decided not to, though i am drunk. in fact, i was too ashamed so i am writing to you in person

it's so tempting for me to write '[FADE IN]' here but i will not because i like to believe this is serious. AND resist my film-maker's instinct or wanna-be filmmaker's instinct rather.

i see her online right now and i wanna ping but i decide not to. there was a time when she wanted me to be something that i refused to be. it was more material than emotional - like having a job, making money et al. hence i refused. OR may be that was just an excuse. i did not do what she wanted me to because i was too lazy. or because i wasn't good enough.

looking back, after a few years, i think she was right. or at least her advice was. i feel like a loser right now because i DID NOT listen to her. i should have been what she wanted me to be. i would have been happily married with kids and money and whatever if only i did listen.

i always thought my life was gonna be perfect - like since i was a kid. with a dream job, love of my life, a super awesome home with remote-controlled electronic appliances, lots of money to throw away, people to look up to me etc. i do have the maturity to accept that not everything we wish for happens. but not even one single wish? seriously? how the fuck am i supposed to believe in god then? or screw god, how am i supposed to go on with life?

I DO NOT KNOW.

that makes me feel like an immature IDIOT and i don't like it. but in the end it doesn't even matter, does it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTXPUF4Oz4

yes, i was a fan of LP in my early years. still am, secretly

doesn't make sense, does it? that how nights are. mornings are better & clearer.

GOOD NIGHT!