On forgetting

"You get to an age where the stories don't matter anymore, and the stories once told so passionately become a tide that never quite reaches the point of being said. And there is no such thing as fate, but there are no accidents either." -Simon van Booy

They don't matter anymore. The teacher who left you out of the annual day dance at the last minute, the people who hurt a 12-year old you, the friends who betrayed you to hang out with each other on friendship day, the boy who broke your 16-year old heart and the constant jibes over the years about your chubbiness. The stories you told endlessly to each new best friend you made. Now, except for the heart break one, none are repeated. And the heart-break story is repeated only for effect. Only to let others know your emotional range does not exclude unrequited love. The big sympathy (or psycho) card.

Time has moved on.

You are used to being on your own and immersing yourself in television mythology. And enjoying it more than actual human interaction. It's easier feeling someone else's pain, easy to get jealous of someone's steamy romance and easy to rack your brains figuring out the plot twist. You know your guesses won't affect the outcome. They are someone else's business. Your feeling the pain of a crying matriarch and envy of the budding office romance of a TV hunk, can be forgotten after the the 20-45 minutes run time. It should be forgotten. It is mandatory. Rules outside this mythos are not clear. Should you remember? Should you forget?

You see, you don't intend to, but you forget. You forget names, faces, feelings. You forget what your dead uncle looked like. And grandma becomes a hazy memory from some other lifetime. Old photos point to days and people you vaguely remember. And you realise you remember them more from the repeated viewings of the photo album than from the actual memory. Your face suffers the same fate. You know you are looking at the 2-year old you because you are told so. Scientists have proven this. Sometimes what you think happened never happened and memories are not foolproof. The brain changes constantly, and so do memories. The plasticity of memory, long term potentiation, neuroregeneration in hippocampus. But now I am digressing into the realm of neuroscience. Terms from another distant lifetime.

Remembering is not easy.

You repeat your experience over and over again to various friends, various family members till it turns into an anecdote, a story. Enough repetitions, and you start spouting stock phrases to tell it. Even more repetitions, it becomes fiction. It becomes something you narrate. Something you spent time creating and polishing. A story you perform. With the right emphasis, right sighs, right pauses. Meaning belongs to a previous universe.

You have to constantly create new ones.

A reflection on hate

I was walking down a crowded road the other evening. Groups of boys on bikes, or on feet kept passing by-busy chatting, laughing on their inside jokes and maybe scouting passing girls as potential girlfriends/wives. They were harmless. But the kind of hatred that sprung in my heart was not something I am used to. It was not harmless. "I will kill them even if they as much dared to pass a comment on any girl here." I fumed. My brain stewed in agonising details of the Delhi case. I was plotting how I would hit these boys who were, of course, going to molest someone. I shuddered after some 15 minutes of these thoughts. Not at how unsafe I felt, but what kind of an untrusting, violent being I had become.  
Punishment is essential for a crime, but extreme anger can turn us into beasts ourselves. Wishing death on anyone is never a healthy thought. Heinous crimes deserve no mercy but I wish there was some way in which we could protect ourselves as we meted out a death sentence. Or has the veil of civilization lifted and we no longer can expect that? Or has crime exposed a flaw within all of us, that as we punish, we must suffer. 

Grip

The land forced to yield to water for jungles of skyscrapers

with anodized windows and welded greed

minions of directionless forces slathering on cement

the minions dying for food and killing in the process

a hundred other dreams.

To breathe sometimes i run away from this land piled under concrete

i run to hide further, farther from the city

i run and find the brick kilns there

and the benzyl smell of cheap plastic

i run back into my town

The city finds me there

and builds buildings, flyovers and bridges

flooding sodium lights in my room.

my curtains recede leaving me bare

to the prying eyes of a window 3 inches away

i long for my childhood pastures

now under a million hungry feet. 

A rant

There is a switch which goes on in everyone's mind as soon as a single girl crosses 25. The light which the switching on of this switch generates, manages to pale every other finer feeling in comparison. You know what I mean, much like the sun's light obliterating every star's. So, I, who was once a "smart girl", "slightly obese girl", "the-one-who's-studying-neurobiology girl", "really funny girl", "a short tempered girl", "oh-so-ambitious girl", "the-one-who-writes-well girl" (ahem) is now reduced to only "not-yet-married-girl". This light, which this God-forsaken switch casts, manages to make sure all my other epithets are wiped off. Although, the negative ones pop out at times when they discuss why I am "not-married-yet".

So, I since I am "oh-so-ambitious", I decided that I needed to "study abroad". I chanced upon a really nice course and popped out to the United Kingdom as soon as I could. I led an extremely interesting year. A backpacking trip to Italy, bad scores on my assignments, night-outs which I don't remember, writer's block, enriching museums and conversations, a sprained ankle, being homeless for a while, staying with wonderful friends and horrible bouts of homesickness. The last few bits and the cold, cold weather made me come back as soon as I could. 

After getting back, I expected a hero's welcome (see that's where I went wrong, I should've expected a heroine's welcome). Anyway, point being, after being back to my native land, the only welcome I received was a standard question "So, when are you getting married now?". Imagine! No parties, no curiosity about my exploits in the First World, no "*wink *wink, how much did you drink?" questions. Just a cold, hard "When's the wedding now?" stare. 

For years, I had seen my cousin brothers returning to India to parties and special sessions where people made them talk for hours about life abroad. I mean, these guys kept going and coming back for years and each year there would be these "Oh my! He's back" parties. Ok, some of these guys did get asked "when's the wedding?", but that was only if he was past 30 and if he seemed effeminate. Otherwise, the "let the party (I am thinking of a bad word here) with the firang babes be on!" 

As I was saying, the singularity of thought of these numerous "aunties, uncles and others" amazes me. A good career, a house purchase, a car purchase, the existence of an enriching life for a single girl over 25 are not to be lauded or spoken about unless accompanied by the mention of a marriage date.

Me and so many of my friends are leading purposeful, productive and happy lives. Some of them are even married. Observing this and reading many other things I have come across so far have lead me to believe that humans strive to be happy. And when we are happy, single or married, we should be satisfied and celebrate that instead of basing our life's happiness on some random incident in the distant future which may or may not happen. 

I understand the importance of a good relationship or a marriage. But what I do not understand is this invalidation of my entire existence without the stamp of a husband. Incidentally, I happily exist. 

Find this reblogged here:

Post by Women's Web.

  

Statistics

I am being watched

By omnipresent eyes

Privacy is not the right of a woman.

Clothing is mentally stripped off by people on the road

Every rift, every curve analysed and objectified and priced

I might don a burkha

a naqab to curtain against stares

But I know, from their experience

It doesn't matter what I wear.

My brain too, is now being watched

By automated bots

Privacy is not in the net bargain I had.

My mind is dissected by advertisers

Every click, the questioning words I type and myriad worlds I enter

I am quizzed and sold products I won't care to buy

a policy stops nothing

Money can be made from voyeurism

I know, I am a statistic.

Mad poem: A traveller

See, I am landlocked in this seaside city.

I pass an airport on my daily commute.

And see the jet-set and the others plying in their fancy rides

Then exchanging them for more sophisticated ones in the air.

I have pictures of ships on my desktop.

And the tv series on a sea voyage I see. It has my current crush.

He's a tv star. In England.

I hang out at home with some tea and stale bread.

And at times, even order in a lot of fancy fare.

I watch movies made halfway across the world.

And the tv series, oh yes, the tv series they make.

The characters colourful enough to fuel any reverie.

I do not miss my friends.

I am living online a lot too.

Connected via my broadband to the information labyrinth.

I paint landscapes of a full life.

My laptop is filled with pictures.

I have travelled alone quite a bit.

There was Munich and Milan, Rome,

London, Edinburgh and more.

I have souvenirs. But no tickets for any further trip.

Title Lost

I am really a hundred years old or maybe young enough to see the world as it is . I am definitely not 26. I don't envision a bright future. I know it does not exist for anyone. The least I can hope for is a future which doesn't put me out of my comfort zone too often. I would just like to exist till it is time to go. I might become successful myself but for some reason I have always thought of success to be a term used for describing progress of, if not only my country, the whole mankind. But I realise, I can be successful in "comparison" to someone who is unsuccessful. My progress should not be the result of some inherent flaw in the social dealings of man. And so, success stops existing.

A deity stopped existing long ago. No one to look up to. We are all wrong if morals exist. Emotions don't exist; they are electromagnetic waves, they tell us. Love, another such wave. What's disturbing me is that I believe them; that is, if belief exists.

In a mostly non-existent world, what remains is some stray smiles, some useless instincts. I maintain, the neo cortex has spoiled much the essence of the animal man is. We are wearing a headgear of extra brain cells and we know what crowns are valued now. The queen is an excrescence. The Arab land is witnessing a spring. I am digressing. All I meant to say is I am tired. And so is the world.