When Darkness finds me

I can feel you. 

You don't have to shout any louder, run any faster, be any heavier or any more anything, not even lesser. I can see you from the corner of my eye and sense you with every beat of my heart, creeping towards me. 

Your grey vapours only chase me harder when I run so I chose, this time, to brave your wrath, to cross my fingers and wait for you to pass me by. 

I chose to believe the false promises I made myself and I chose to believe the false comfort every disconnected whisper offered me because I was hiding from you in plain sight. I was hiding from the person you are conjured up by the recesses in my mind not deep enough to keep me safe.

I hate that you caught up. I hate that you chose the brightest day, in a room most filled with love in a voice I cherish deeply to wrap your vapourous trail around me and inch your way up to my mind while I stood paralysed- without even a whimper in self defense.

You know your own ugliness. 

You know I will succumb to the power you have over me. You enjoy the chase and it was longer this time than ever before. I didn't miss you. Not one bit. If I could wish you away I would. I let myself believe that is all it would take but you have proved me wrong. I will congratulate you on your victory, ever the graceful loser. You have taught me from practice, I will even thank you, gratitude flowing out of the wounds you stab into me. 

I wonder if this will be my last memory of these months in the rainbow. I stand here immobilized by the crushing weight of the knowledge you bring. 

You call it the truth and I want to believe you but it is difficult to have my mind reconstruct reality to suit a whim while you are twisting your knife deeper into my heart making sure I can see you through the haze of tears I won't shed from pride.

After all that I have sacrificed- laughing little floaty bubbles and flitting through reality, my pride is all I have and if you asked nicely I'm sure I would give you that too, but not while you suffocate me and watch me bleed out so clinically. 

It won't do. I won't give you that satisfaction, not because I don't want to- for you I would give anything, but because my pride is the only oxygen I will find in the dark lonely grave you have dug for me.

I will dream of flight and wine and dancing and sleep through the worst of this. I will wake up in another season having befriended my nightmares again. Companionship more reliable than your promised smiles in the dark- I am blind.

Of things jagged and Beautiful

I like broken things. I like laying out every piece, feeling the bite of every jagged end and wondering whether I should let it slip into oblivion at the bottom of a trash can, fixed back with glue and love to a measure of it's former glory, or find an artist to transform the broken jagged ends into art that is as stunning and under-appreciated as every broken piece is. I can spend years sitting on the floor of my room cross legged as the jewel tones of my curtains drift in and out of the periphery of my vision making up stories for every piece, drawing parallels to my life that don't really exist, convincing myself of the missed opportunity of that broken thing, the newer opportunities that await it, in my home or of somebody more deserving. I can spend lifetimes, as many as the strands of hair I have on my head. Because broken things don't make me cry. Broken people do, but oh how they appeal to me anyway.

I can't explain it. I love imperfection. I am obsessed with it, especially in people. I'm suspicious of people as clear as fiction- as good and neat- or not, as a character I could read about or easier yet write about. What hooks me is reams and reams of flaws tucked into a beautiful package of disdain. I like the complexity of broken people who are convinced of their perfection.  I'm obsessed with unraveling the flaws and chewing on them, turning each flaw to catch the light and observe as it bursts into the dazzling human brilliance that it each is.

It starts with a conversation. A simple hello, I find intrigue in that warm confidence. And then it begins, rapid exchanges of a humor I don't possess, of a confidence I can't be bothered working on. New cities, new experiences, questions- lots of questions that I hold my breath waiting for the answer to. It's a volley really, I like answering questions more than asking them. The things people are curious about say so much more than what any other conversation reveals.
One word builds one castle, one card over another, one idea over another, a simple exchange, a thoughtful gesture, a brutally honest- indifferently delivered truth seen as harsh but oh so endearing. A display of anger, a measure of comfort, the intensity of a plan, the casual comfort of knowing safety, of finding a smile everyday. Slowly the pieces come together- a reward for patience that I work at.

The warnings are clear, from me. I can hear myself shut down conversation with myself and not inspect the many pieces I've collected, a warning echoed repeatedly but gently, another piece of the puzzle collected. It's a cruel test of myself to feel every jagged end, but not find out just how deep every cut could be- I repeat to myself every lesson learnt the hard way from the past; of the parade of beautiful, good people too perfect in their imperfections to wait while I take a hammer to my life. I know beautiful people, broken, mysterious, beautiful people and I know what I let them do to me. After years I have given up trying to change my preference. I can't help but be fascinated by every deformity; discoloration is my oxygen.

And so I wait for confirmation, to be told the jagged ends won't cut bone- not mine, I wait to set out the pieces until I have a hypothesis I'm fairly certain of. I hold myself back because the only way to inspect the perfect symphony of this pristine imperfection is to take a hammer to it and see what happens. My most dangerous imperfection is self destruction with a wide minefield of every person who matters. The battle scarred but surviving are the keepers.  But here's the thing about people who take their time with people, a little secret we're ashamed of. People who wait for people hold the could-bes dear, we don;t know how to give up while doors are slammed in our faces.

Calculations and possibilities are laid out from one constellation all the way back, the hopes mulled and debated and paced out until an unshakable truth presents itself- to continue enjoying the space or dive, head first, life in hand trusting unconditionally in the power of that hope questionably. And this is when the jagged broken ends emerge and do exactly the opposite of all those calculation. You see, they're beautiful. Radiantly beautiful, the kind that is blinding and brilliant and magnetic and so we race in a white darkness into the harshest of the impervious jagged ends being cut in a heartbeat like paper ribbons; at once amusing and exasperating in our giddy obtuseness.

And so, like unwanted paper ribbons we fall away as waves crash, slowly to gather again, quicker this time because of a knowledge learnt over and over again from many years, shutting out the questions and berating our weakness to hope.
Until the next parcel arrives and this dance begins all over again.

Some days

Some days I wake up convinced I will be fine.

I'm woken up by the ring of my alarm instead of another dream of you. I'm chained to no memories- not good nor bad. My clothes- washed over and over again since you last saw them, bare no smell of you on this morning. I don't feel the phantom of your touch every time I feel the wind on my skin nor hear your sigh in every rustle of leaves.

I know for certain on days like this that I will be fine; that it will get better. I have reason to believe that with time I will find every shard of my crushed soul and glue it together transforming into somebody more breathtaking and complete than you ever knew.

On days like these I'm told there's a skip in my step and a tune to my laugh.Nobody asks about the colour of my eyes or why I won't smile. They ask instead of my childhood- whether I climbed trees and pulled pranks. I laugh in response, my love for the universe bursting out of every pore of my being- gratitude for the many gifts I have received that I haven't earned, the many opportunities that seemed gift wrapped with my name on the label. The world is perfect under the bandage I've plastered on and I feel the mile deep gashes in my soul begin the slow process of healing.

Just as I settle into my peace, a corner of my mind unlocks- I see an image of the inevitable future. A future I want with all my heart for you to have of happiness, success, joy and most of all, of peace. I see that future without me and that isn't what reminds me I will never heal, it is seeing somebody else in every dream we shared. And so I begin again, from the very bottom, tying again to forget, not hope, not believe and to stop praying to Gods who won't listen anyway.
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I'm listening to Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

To be ugly

When I was a child, I was a professional dancer. I don't think anybody who has seen my stiff response to music in the last few years would believe me but it's true. I was a professional jazz dancer, or something like that anyway.

I was part of a group called the <insert famous dancer whom I will not embarrass'name>'s Junior Dance Company. Stage shows, music videos and dancing with South India celebrities was part of my everyday as a 10-11 year old. We wore shiny sequinned clothes, spent endless hours every week perfecting choreography and even left school early every once in a while.

I guess I was living the dream. There was a purpose to my life, however trivial, before most people discovered there was even need for one. I didn't grow up with social media, I wonder if it even existed then, but there are pictures in a trunk somewhere of a group of 15 awkward adolescents, our faces full of make up posing with confidence that only comes from being a child.

It wasn't such a happy run though. In a world that demands perfection- manufactured or otherwise, it doesn't matter how young or innocent you are. I knew I was ugly before I even knew that was the word to describe me.
I loved dancing. Every bones in my body would thrill at the sound of music and I would dance because it was my natural reaction to music but when you're a professional dancer, that is not enough. The popular girls, the pretty ones would always get to dance in the center where they weren't tripping over cables or breathing in smoke from "smoke machines". Us uglie-s tuned out of the world, tuned into the music and filled space.

I didn't hate it. I don't remember ever realizing I was being slightest despite family and friends asking all the time why I wasn't dancing in front. Truth be told, I was glad to dance in the second row. I didn't have to remember any of the steps really.
But it was upsetting when people would walk into rehearsal asking to "audition" for something or the other and the instructors would only point to a few people. It isn't nice, knowing as a child, that you're ugly. That you- because you are too skinny, too dark, have weird hair and buck teeth, don't deserve every opportunity to shine.

I stopped dancing in the eighth standard. I can't remember if I missed it, I was too busy sailing to notice. I can't remember if I felt different for being seen for more than my scrawny adolescent body.

I wish I could still dance. I wish I could forget I'm ugly but more than anything I wish I could erase my ability to see people as ugly and pretty.    

Sadness

When my heart is cracked and bleeding, a rainbow forms in the sky. You look at it and smile not knowing the pain that painted the sky.
When I cry, big drops of rain quench the thirsty, baked red mud and little children run out from under tin shades to dance with smiles.

I will be happy again and the sun will shine again. It will happen but not soon.

Fear

I wonder what it is like to live in fear, to bind yourself  to that devil and make it you. How do you cope with every day knowing no decision you make fearlessly is even worthy of discussion? How do you cope with being so scared of your own thoughts that you won;t say them out loud?

I want to pity you. 

I want to teach you to be brave. I want you to love every thought of yours like I do. To be brave for the person you are. To encourage your honesty. To teach you the exhilaration in fighting a battle you believe in. The independence in believing in your decisions.

I loaned you my wings to fly but you lost them in your paralyzing fear. Now I don’t fly either and you’re sorry.

You sacrificed me to your fears and in my mind I’m now dead. In yours my throat is slit a million times with every apology you don’t mean. 

I want to wish you unhappiness but I can’t. I don’t know what is more foolish, your fear of everything or my all consuming love for a weakling. Your fears have shattered my world as much as my bravery has alienated me from everybody. I spent my whole life waiting and now I don't have wings. 

I wish I could live without hope, it would be less painful if I didn't hope you would gather your courage and find my wings.

Magic bus

In a comforting world there would be a midnight bus; A bus for the broken, lonely and dispirited. The bus would have no destination it would invite neither conversation nor silence. Nobody would compete, not for the happiest nor saddest, nor bravest stories. We would drive around and around knowing we are united among strangers; That heart break and sadness are not lonely, inescapable little cages.

I would like to think that it would be a magic bus. An open top bust that will let you see the stars through your tears, magical because no matter where you are it will always feel 12 degrees Celsius  You could wear a sweater , hold yourself, maybe cry into your sleeve and believe what you will.

I would wear my hair down, find the darkest spot and wrap my oldest shawl around me. I'd snuggle into my shoes and cry as though it were raining. I'd carry some music, the kind of music I'm too scared to listen to on a regular day because of the truth in the writer's sadness. Maybe I'd whisper along. I would love my sadness on this magic bus, I would know it's a part of who I am. I wouldn't need to find excuses then and we would all drive round and around for hours until we stopped counting. I wouldn't carry a phone, or maybe the magic bus would jam all signals.

Airports are much like my magic bus. Everything is temporary- A collection of strangers who don't belong, so much left incomplete.

The promise of today

The promise of today

She woke up that morning knowing it was going to be a beautiful day; determined that her day would be beautiful. Today would reflect the image of the rising sun she saw.

No not today, not today for the endless dreary depression of the dead being tossed in a heap with other unidentified bodies. Not today for children dying without seeing the life they were promised, and most certainly not today to watch bloated bodies with organs ripped off by the sea float to the shore.

Dr. Nita Shankar was on holiday for a week. She may be alone but that didn’t change the fact that she was on a holiday to forget the harrowing days she lived through. Dealing with the victims of Tsunami was most certainly not on her list of things to do today, in fact, never again would it be on her itinerary of the day.

Today she would get a massage or, maybe, read the book that had been lying in her bag for months now; She could finally go on a much needed shopping spree and eat in the new restaurant, not so new anymore of course, but new to her. She could splurge today. You’re a rich woman when you have done nothing but tend to the dead or dying for 3 months on a regular income that you didn’t have the time or heart to spend. Who could eat a sizzler after holding a child’s intestine in her hands?

The dead or dying... When would Nina learn to switch her brain off and stop thinking! It was just a job wasn’t it? To hell with that stupid oath she took. It was meant to be just a job. Tending to the sick is just a job! So what if they were dying? So what if they struck by a tragedy of unimaginable proportion? It was high time to stop. People did not land up on hospital stretchers to die, Not in Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital anyway, she decided with a violent mental shake up.

After this holiday she would be paid lots and lots of money to tend to people who, she decided, would live long. There would be medicines for everybody. There would be no fight with politicians over where the funds are going. People would live. One in thousands would die every year instead of one in thousands surviving everyday. Oh no, not in those swanky, disinfected Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital beds with their clean white sheets that smell of the sun and Dettol.

It was a new beginning and oh yes, the sun had set on those dying people who would cry. Who were they to cry anyway? They only had to see one person die, see one house washed away, one child die slowly of starvation while watching helplessly. No it was she who deserved the right to cry! She saw the endless lives wasted away. She saw how only the drunks and no goods were safe from harm. She saw the endless bottomless sea spit out disfigured bodies. She saw money for antiseptic and glucose being spent on a flashy BMW for the mayor. What did everybody else have to cry about?

Of course, who cared about the silly graduate from some medical school who decided to spend half a year tending to the hopeless dying? What was the purpose of her job anyway? Make the dying see truth? Help their family (if they found any that is) deal with the grief?

To hell with all that! Not ever again!  It was high time all the melodrama ended. She was looking at a new life now- one of great riches. The dying poor could do just that-die! If it wasn’t the Tsunami it would be poverty or something else, entirely, that killed them. Why waste her life on them? Something had to kill them anyway right? All better now, praise the Lord for natural calamities, they proved to be the fastest way to get rid of the nation’s parasites didn’t they!

Oh she would never have to deal with that in Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital. No siree, she would see people pay happily in Rupees and Dollars and Pounds. She would watch as people got better every single day. She would help and be helped and she would never ever have to perform three surgeries at the same time ever again. It was time for change and it was going to come soon.

Oh but dear Dr. Nita Shankar. When world she grow up and take off her rose tinted glasses? She never asked, so the interviewers never told that if a patient who suffered an accident was wheeled in she couldn’t touch him with a barge pole till the police came in. So what if he died?

What the people at Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital didn’t tell the silly, idealistic Dr. Nita Shankar MBBS, was that even the poverty stricken landed up in Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital. She forgot to ask, so didn’t tell her that if a poor woman walked in with her child who could be rescued she couldn’t a thing till the deposit was paid for. Oh no, the thalli that the weeping mother would violently yank off her neck simply wouldn’t do. She must, yes she must, with a grim face, tell the woman, watching her child die, to pawn her oh so precious thalli for her little munchkin and come back with the money because till then, well until then, Kasturi Bhai Private Hospital would not recognize the child as its patient.

Foolish,foolish Nita Shankar. What could she possibly know of the business health care is? At 25 straight out of medical school and Tsunami relief work Nina Shankar didn’t realize that every rising sun was followed by a setting sun and that the dark doesn’t get any prettier with money. 

An afternoon learning

I like to think that there is goodness in this world, that unlike the movies, even bad people have their reasons, reasons grounded in goodness. I blame my parents for this silly belief despite trying to take owness for my delusions.
My parents are a good middle class Indian couple who worked very hard to instill in us the best of the values their parents and life's learnings gave them. They worked very hard to give my brother and me the many privileged we have had, one of them being a safe environment to grow up in where people look out for each other.

I, only recently, started exploring the world outside my bubble and what a horrifying journey it has been.

Our cities are not very kind to pedestrians. Between the exposure to heat/humidity/rain, broken pavements, angry bikers and hawkers, I have discovered it takes a special kind of strength to walk down Chennai's road. I have made it a game, every thing worthy of disapproval, and the list is very long, gets a special face, there is even one for the not-so-occasional flasher. My game keeps me occupied most days and protects me from everything that I don't want to be affected by and yet some things still make it through the armor.

Through the famed Kathri Masam I have walked under an umbrella shielding myself not only from Agni's obvious anger, but also the many sights that are hard to walk past otherwise. Perhaps I should have turned on the music that day but I didn't and I heard instead an old, weak cry for help.

I seemed powerless to do anything but turn around looking for the origin of that voice and found an old bandaged man. He told me in his failing voice about being a construction worker from Trichy who fell off the second floor. He said he had no money to go home and had nobody to care for him in Chennai. His story took time to tell and in that time my pedestrian armor had re-built itself. When he finished I politely told him that I couldn't help and scurried across the road to ensure he couldn't ask me again.

While crossing the road and walking away I could only think of this man who was so alone in a city unfriendly to people who can't afford it's luxuries.I thought about the ice candy I was craving and the clothes I bought the previous day. I thought of my father who isn't young anymore and works away from home. I thought of myself being lost and being turned away by a skeptical pedestrian. I picked up the pace and my thoughts seemed to follow on cue.

I'm not sure what did it, perhaps it was a sudden breeze I didn't notice but I felt such a deep shame in myself and my scuttling figure on tat hot afternoon. Instead of shrugging off my thoughts as I had taught myself to, I felt compelled to cross back and look for this man, still shuffling down the same road, well behind me looking forlorn.

I walked up to him and apologised for walking away earlier and offered him my phone to call somebody he knew. He turned down explaining to me that he had lost his son's phone number midway between the second floor scaffolding his slipped on and the ground that caught him. I then decided, while patting myself on the back for my goodness, to ensure he gets home. I checked my wallet found a little less than Rs.200. With my experience now I know that a ticket to Trichy can cost about as much and started guiding him towards a local bus stand from where we would travel to the inter-city bus stand from where I would buy him a ticket to get home safe. I explained to him that I would take him till CMBT and buy him a ticket on the next bus to Trichy.

I know I have taken long but this is where the story gets interesting.
This old frail man suddenly looked at me quite intently and explained to me that it was hot and that I had no business making him walk or even walking with him wasting my time. He explained to me in a tone that sounded much like an order, that I must give him the money to get to Trichy and leave him alone. He accused me of being the worst kind of help because I didn't believe him and accused me of being a cheat. While making his speech, he turned around quite suddenly and stomped off in the opposite direction.

I know I have no business being shocked. I have spent a large majority of my life in cities and I have been warned of this scam a number of time. I know as well as you probably do that it was silly of me to agonise over this episode for almost two weeks and yet I can't help myself. I can't help but think, with much bitterness, that people like him should be locked and punished severely. I can't bring myself to forgive him for that betrayal, of proving to me that I truly shouldn't stop and help a stranger, that the human race deserves no kindness. I hate him for having taught me this lesson, of the many many he could have. My mother and many friends have hinted that I should thank him for teaching me a worthy lesson and be grateful it didn't get worse, and yet, I cannot help feeling that he stole a part of me that was good, a part of me that I am unlikely to ever find again
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The man in the picture most certainly is not the man this story is about.   

Wishing on a black hole

There are some days you most force yourself to smile and learn to believe the lie you tell yourself. When you will dance and tell yourself a happy story while inside you feel as broken as a chewed rag doll;
On others days, like today, you do better taking a hammer to your heart, shattering yourself into a million, scattered, pieces that can never be joined again.
On days like today you cry yourself to sleep and wake up knowing nothing but a vast emptiness that will never be filled. A void so great, it will eat into what is left of the facade that is your life. You wish on a star for a numbness that will stop the pain.
You will tell yourself that the happy memories, so vivid, were never real. That it wasn't you walking on the clouds and singing with the birds; that it never happened, that every memory with a smile is only as true as fairy tales and make believe knights, from when you were young.
On some days, like today, you wish you were never happy and never found music and literature that reflected your happiness, had never known what it was like to feel happiness. You wish to erase, as neatly as words on paper, every shared secret, every shared laugh. You wish it never existed and that your only true friend, sorrow, was never left unattended, was seen with less scorn.

What is funny though, is that the more you wish it, the less likely it is that your wish will be fulfilled.

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Song of the moment: Silence and Dante's quote  (I'm paraphrasing): There is no greater sorrow than remembering, in misery, when you were happy.

Monologue of a disillusioned cynic

Growing up is the process of shedding, layer by layer, every dream you have ever had.

I wish I had said it but I'm only as original as B grade film directors are known to be.  

I watch re-runs of old shows, perhaps, obsessively. This nugget of wisdom is from Wonder Years. 

Despite the many episodes, of many television shows, that I have watched I seem to remember no episode with as much clarity as this one. I will be the first to admit that I have little in common with a child in sub-urban America from the 60s and yet, my disillusionment with my self seemed less solitary when this episode played. I remember feeling betrayed by the writers for displaying, on international television, my shame for all to see and yet feeling at one with the universe in realising (finally) that it wasn't only my burden to carry. 

I have wondered since how true that is. I remember wanting to be a singing-dancing-acting-sailing-smiling-guitar playing-hippy-doctor-lady-princess-war reporter-movie maker-teacher person. Layer by layer I lost every dream. To say it like that, makes it sound comfortable, like the thread-work of fate and perhaps the truth is that I was destined to make the choices I did. I have this uncomfortable itch in my shoe that makes it clear that, with every year, I learned to believe what everybody else told me I could do, more than I believed my own voice- the good one, that is. I let the world be my doctor and sat with my heart open for every pearl of joy to be extracted- for well-being. Always for that. 

I'm beginning to find myself again. After so many years I don't recognise that good voice as mine anymore.
I found that voice in an echoing chorus of so many.

I have the rare privileged of meeting children who share nothing in common with me. These children, for whom to recognise the alphabet is a blessing, have taught me to believe again. The funny thing is, they have taught me that the dreams I regret not breathing life into were intelligent choices. Choices, that in desperation, I allowed myself to believe, other people were making for me but in truth (I'm beginning to remember again) I fought to make. I may not play the guitar but I make my own music. I may not be a doctor but I save lives. I  may not be smile but I know happiness. All of this I simply do by being alive.

It is a not so rare gift- life; One that I don't often find reason to rejoice in.
I'm beginning to realise that growing up could well be stripping away every dream I have ever had to discover reality, often more wondrous than the dream. There is a pain in reality that is rewarding in its sweetness.
Yes, it could well be true that I'm a disillusioned cynic now but I like that better than being a deluded dreamer, despite the ring in the latter. Of course,I don't expect my contentment to last over a few hours. It is the effect of a drug I haven't found. 

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The song that is playing is Joe Cocker's version of 'With a little help from my friends' (but of course!)