A litany of things that don't exist

I feel a sadness engulf me everyday, a loneliness that I doesn't deserve encouragement for all the wonderful people who fill my life and yet it's a there built brick by brick of every hour of a knowing the dream I allowed myself to dream, was encouraged to can no longer be.

In my mind's eye this wall with it's mossy, desolate perfection- a thing of beauty, is covered up by pretty curtains of embroidered goodness through the laughs I share and the smiles I construct. But it isn't real, I know this as much as the wall does, mocking me for an attempt to create an illusion that I depend so much on.

There are things I hate now. Things I loved and cherished but were built around another illusion that I was then too naive to disbelieve. I can list them from the thoughts that flood my mind every minute and so I will but every person who is me knows that it this isn't all, this isn't any.

1. I hate that I am now less than a number, less than $120,000
2. I hate that I can no longer feel happiness in seeing blue- not the blue of the sky, the blue of the ocean or the blue of a t-shirt I loved
3. I hate that every article of clothing I wear is a memory I want erased
4. I hate that I can't take a holiday without thinking of the many things that would be done differently in that other life
5. I hate that I will forgive so easily to reclaim the life I had
6. I hate that I have no center, that I can crave no longer for one because if I do find it, I will question it's validity
7. I hate that I cannot hate  
8. I hate that I would turn back time and do things differently if given the choice
9. I hate that I didn't know when I was being tested
10. I hate that  I could spot a lie and allowed myself to be convinced I was over-reacting
11. I hate that I overestimate how much I mean to people
12. I hate that I can't turn off my mind 
13. I hate that I can no longer be happy for other people, comparing their happiness to one of mine that was probably only an illiusion
14. I hate that it feels like every happy memory was a construction that was never real
15. I hate that I no longer hope and hate so much more the relief in that hopelessness

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.
---

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.

XIC Valedictorian Speech 2013

Good evening.

I have spent the last week attempting to find the right words to express to each of you how proud I feel in representing the graduates today in the acceptance of this honor, how 8 short months have enriched my life and how I am both intimidated and inspired by the brilliance I have witnessed in each of my classmates.

I attempted to use a metaphor to tell those of you who weren’t lucky enough to be students here about how studying at XIC gives you unexpected highs and lows much like a roller coaster ride- as soon as you think you can’t take anymore of having your heart in your mouth, the ride ends and you want to go back and start all over again.

But as I wondered what each of would be thinking of at this moment I realize for the first time that this is my very last task as a student of XIC, the last time we meet before taking over the world of communications and be written about; And so I start over.

I must, on behalf of every graduating professional today thank our parents who have pretended not to notice our surliness or absence depending on the deadline being chased, the support staff whose happy smiles every morning was the one assurance in this crazy year that the world was not ending, the board for helping us each discover ourselves and the faculty who have made us the confident communicators we are today, set to change the world.

A heartfelt thank you to each of you who graduate with me- I couldn’t have asked for a better set of sparring partners and friends to begin this journey with.

In my address to you today as the valedictorian of the class of 2013 I would like only to say- stay true and stay strong. The future is promised to nobody so go out and stake your claim. We are walking out into an ugly world where 5 year olds are raped but I believe, as should you, that the world is ours to change for the better.

Good luck and congratulations again. I still can’t believe it’s over but then, I'm told it's only just beginning.  

My mother

I sometimes smell that particularly flowery smell of sunshine- I can be in a sweaty compartment of the train, in a restaurant, in the canteen- and I feel like I've been thrown into another world. Time stops, my body is independent of my mind and I can do nothing but let fragments of a memory that I can barely remember take over.

There is a strange comfort in things that don't change. At 24 there is very little that hasn't changed and yet when I smell that mix of sunshine, starch and flowers I'm transported to a warm cocoon. I feel four again. I watch as my beautiful mother wears make up and combs her hair, watch as she stands in the middle of what looks like reams and reams of beautiful silk. I feel the cool breeze of the air cooler and the magic in the air as the puddle of silk on the floor rapidly disappears. Amma was always impatient dressing up, she would click her heals and swear at safety pins. I hardly blame her, there is a bewildering ritual in wearing grown up clothes. The click of heals, the touch of rouge, the right shade of lipstick and the precise fold of every pleat.

I watch as she carefully combs her hair and snaps at me for getting in her way or bringing food into the room- I'm a clumsy child and in my jaw dropping wonder I can't seem to balance my plate. Sometimes, and these were prize days, I would be called on to to be part of the enchanting ceremony. I would sit on the floor and yank on pleats so that Amma could tuck them in just right. She would then spray on that perfume- it was never the same perfume, I could tell by the bottles being of different colours- and yet it would be that same ambrosial bliss.

When I was a child I dreamed of growing up, of dressing to Naval balls just like my mother did, of being as pretty, as perfect. It's amusing how childhood dreams turn out. I don't yearn so much for any of that anymore, we live lives that are of mutual pride and yet so cosmically different; but sometimes, on that rare special evening I'll walk into my mothers room and pretend to watch TV as I take in the unchanged present and revel in the permanence of that smell.

I have "borrowed" a tidy sum of perfumes from Amma in the hope that I can conjure that moment on demand but it's never the same without my mother, her boxes of make up and those magical reams of silk.