Its been a long time since I wrote a love letter - this ones an improumtu sitting in boring meeting scribble. For more love letters feel free to browse here :-)
The drift won’t be in words but in minds and fingers
Tiptoeing towards one another, in magnitudes of darkness
There will be whiskey before and after soul opening conversations
There will times when eyes that will speak during Chinese takeout in plastic tins
Curtains will be drawn to pretend no one else can see
Minutes will turn into hours and hours will be too less
Mornings will be empty with a sense on loneliness
The one which comes with the sick feeling of completion
I have never entered a writing contest, I never thought I was good enough. Thanks K, for sending me this link and believing that I can write for a contest. So here goes, my entry for the Blogadda and Pringoo contest.
My first crush ....
Your first crush is like the first time you try a new flavour of ice cream. Once it’s over you don’t really remember why you choose that one anyways, was it the colour or the name or it was just an easy choice. What you do remember is the feeling – the heady little brain freeze, the spinning, the fuzzy feeling and contentment.
He did that to me.
Like the first kiss when you are so excited and can hardly believe that it is actually happening. The weakness in your knees and the sinking feeling in your tummy are mixed with the random, mundane thoughts running through your head. You want to remember that moment so much that you end up forgetting most of it. Years later you think about that moment and you remember bits and pieces of that random thought, the unnecessary details like the song that played in the background and the way the perfume on his shirt smelt.
When I was asked to write about my first crush the first thing I obviously did was Facebook stalk him.
I was not sure it was him, till I checked out our common friend list. And well guess what, He is now a man! Like a man with a belly and a moustache. YUCK.
It totally burst my bubble and I wish I hadn’t done the Facebook stalking thing. In my mind he still was the perfect fourteen year old school hero until this moment.
Back in dreamland, School, life and everything I knew back then had changed after the first time I spoke with him.
Life would never be the same. I had discovered this other species in a whole new light. Very different from how I thought of them earlier, suddenly hitting them and punching them wasn’t cool, running around with them in the school corridors became a no - no. All at once being shy and being a girl was cool and so unlike the person I used to be.
I would now wait hours to see him at drama practice at the end of the day. Plan for hours of how I would react when he would speak to me and when he would – the few lines in the play we were performing and practicing for, something always got stuck in my gut, like someone stuffed cotton right in the middle and I could neither swallow or spurt but just be speechless with a constipated expression on my face.
He, totally unaware of my plight owned the room and all the people in it.
He would walk with this swagger as if he ruled the world. He was tall and funny and charming. His tie was never in place and when he smiled, oh when he smiled I could blush standing a million miles away.
But he would never know.
He would never know that every song I heard back then made me feel that it was written for him and me. That when I saw jo jeeta wahi sikandar, heard the song phela nasha and saw Ayesha Jhulka fall on a bed of saw I pictured myself in that frame singing for him.
He would never know how embarrassed I felt when I met him at a social gathering and I had been made to wear a frock by my mother (yes, during that era in 1980’s ten/eleven year old girls usually dressed in frocks!) while all the other girls were dressed in skirts and trousers.
I felt like a child. I felt confused and angry at my mother for making me wear that frock because he never looked at me. That, he would never know.
He would never know that I struggled to delay getting braces because I didn’t want him to see me with metal teeth.
He would never know awesomely and amazingly he changed my life in more ways than one.
And one day, he left school and moved away. Just like that.
He would never know he broke my heart and that was just a beginning to so many more to come.
If I could I would go back in time and tell him how I felt and just leave it at that. Stop and freeze time with that boy I knew. The cool, carefree fourteen year old.
I go back now to his Facebook page and wonder if I should add him as a friend.
Would he remember me? The girl in the green and red frock? The girl with the bug teeth and the pony tail? I wonder if he would remember the girl whose cheeks turned purple and who also cried in front of him when someone stole her crackle chocolate.
Something’s never change! There is the familiar cotton ball in my gut and my fingers can’t move the mouse to click on ‘add as a friend’, will he remember me?
Before posting this I made a friend read it and she said - ' I hope the person who marries you doesnt read these blogs because your'e just not this person' ... to who ever I might marry and you will someday read this - I am this and much more, I am grey and I am shades of pink and blue.... :)
I often ask myself, ‘Did I want to be this person I am today?’
I am not perfect even if I choose to believe so for my self confidence. I know there is more of grey in me than any other person I know.
I know I have told lies, cheated and at times hurt people for the pure pleasure of hurting them.
But I am not a bad person either.
I have forgiven, apologized, been kind and given myself while expecting nothing in return.
We don’t choose to be the people we become; it’s the paths we take that eventually mould us to be what we are.
- If I had not left a small town at the age of sixteen I would have been a different person, I would be married and probably taking care of two children at the moment
- If I had not chosen what I did choose to study I would be a Biology professor or maybe an actor
- If I didn’t break up with him, I would be cursing myself all my life for making a wrong decision
- If I didn’t choose to live alone, I would not be a loner today. I would not be selfish (or maybe it’s a wrong word) I would not be so independent, I would not be outspoken and hence a lot of times misunderstood
Living by myself, not being answerable to anyone has made me selfish, complacent or for the lack of a better word, a loner. Being blessed with parents to whom I have never needed to be answerable too even in the two years I recently spent living with them, I have forgotten how it is to be around people and to live and work according to their schedules. I don’t think twice before planning my life as it only involves me and no one else.
I remember a conversation with my mother a few years ago about how rigid people become when they live alone for a long time. How their ways and being becomes set in a particular way which is difficult to change. Therefore I decided to keep changing cities, I would build a new life every couple of years, make new friends and change myself according to what the city and the place demanded.
I sit here today, wondering if I have become the one my mother dreaded. If that is selfish, if not being used to being answerable is a bad thing or being a self centered person. I wonder.
I look back at the events that shaped my life, the decisions I took and the twists and turns of it all. The decisions we solely mine at every age, again that’s because of being blessed with parents who never took decisions for me. The events that took place were results of the decisions I took of which I am living the twists and turns.
Every day when I take the bus to work I plan I will sit on a different seat and that I will get into a different coach of the train and that I will walk on the other side of the road.
It is so easy to change and switch situations while it is so difficult to change the repercussions those switches bring into your heart and soul.
The funny thing being each one of us can only change our self but what we keep wanting a change in others.
But I also don’t know if I want to change myself. I don’t know what is wrong or what is right, it is at the end of the day all grey.
This one's for all the single, almost thirty women out there. Though the post is in first person, it speaks for everyone. Happy reading!
And there it is in front of me, staring at me yet again in big bold letters, the question I no longer have an answer to.
I have given up now on counting the number of times I am asked this question – “so how come YOU (read emphasis on YOU) aren’t married yet?” I politely reply, “well, hmmm... I don’t know!” Then pops up the next one, “How come you didn’t find anyone, there are so many nice boys around!”
Something inside me wants to shake the person asking me the question, rattle their heads and open their eyes wide by maybe sticking my fingers into them and politely request them to shut the fuck up.
For starters, if I had found someone, I would be married. Secondly, just because I didn’t doesn’t mean I’m desperate, so – you don’t need to be kind enough to hook me up with someone. When I was twenty no one wanted to hook me up with anyone, and well Sherlock, that’s when I wanted to be ‘hooked up’. On the downhill ride to fast approaching thirty, I don’t want to be ‘hooked up’ by all you generous people. I might be enjoying my life - (or is it so hard to believe) ...(with occasional bouts of loneliness - but then who said married couples aren’t lonely as well) so, why is it that hard to imagine that it is ok to be single? Or that single women don’t have a life!
When I am asked this question now, I have no answer. I simply smile and wonder about the weather and humidity and how flat my hair becomes because of it and that maybe I should colour my hair, I always wanted to colour a strand blue so maybe I should just do it. All this while there is on the other end a rant going on about – “so tell me your story, you didn’t even find ONE boy in all these years?” (Read underline – ‘but she’s not that bad looking hmmm, poor thing, must be expecting too much hmmm, women today... hmmmm..)
To all those very concerned people out there, to those who would like to know the story...
I did.
I found, I loved, I lost, I found again, I loved again and I lost again. ... and again....
I found out what I wanted and what I didn’t; yes it took some time and well, some people... but what I wanted at twenty was just not what I wanted at twenty two, certainly not what I thought I wanted at twenty five and just not what I need at twenty eight.
My road to discovery has not been about another person but about myself. Others have just played characters in realisation of the bigger plot but I have been and continue to be the hero of my story.
I have not needed a man to tell me how I should change a light bulb or how I need to fix the leakage in the bathroom, these are things I have figured in my own sweet time, on my own.
I have not needed a man to take decisions for me, the ones that altered my life – when and how I should change my career path, which city I would like to live in..
I have been hurt, I have broken my heart and I have cried nights, simply to realize after a couple of weeks that I do heal, my heart repairs itself and time sorts out everything. And I don’t need a man to sort it out for me.
I am fiercely independent and I might sound like a stuck up bitch but it just isn’t so...
When I meet someone who is fiercely comfortable with me being a stuck up bitch, I will love him till eternity.
I will be the girl who loves lilies and walks in the rain, who plans surprises and loves them as well. I will be the girl who will want her man to sweat it out, fix the furniture and find the directions. I will be the girl who will be very strong inside but will just want that shoulder to lean on, just because it feels so good.
I will be that girl, when I find the boy who doesn’t ‘need’ me be one.
And until then, stop asking me, “how come I didn’t find anyone”?
Because darling, I have been just been busy finding myself!
When the writers block emerges - Paint.
Always works for me :) This ones untitled - finished it in 30 minutes today morning after staring at a blank word document for an hour.
I dont know whether to adore or abhor my writer blocks.
Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the
perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands;
how did your lips feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks,
the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.
I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten
your eyes.
Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of
you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
do me irreparable harm.
Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because
of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting
stars, falling objects.
- Pablo Neruda
