Convalescence

She thought about the proximities of love. About abstinence and role play. Her addiction to cold coffee. His addiction to her. Her to his smell. His to her breasts, her smile, her feet, her thighs. Separation, distances both virtual and real. Could she make his realise that she was a person first, an object of desire later? Could he understand that she loved him, deeply, but the expanse of land which separated them, across miles, railway tracks and highways may be separating them in their minds too?

Of course it was preposterous to think of separating. It takes courage, hardwork and a lot of strength to make relationships work. His stubble gliding down the broad of her neck, she could do without it. But his smile, his smile and the angst on his face when she missed a meal or was out too late, could that be replaced? Or the letters he wrote and the words he used? 

There were times she shut her eyes too tight trying to sleep or was simply wide awake because love wasn't supposed to be as convoluted and far from reach. She wrote about it too, feebly, making attempts to recuperate. She thought about the times they spent together, that one time when he was sick, the only time he was sick around her; she couldn't do anything to ease his pain. She didn't know how to. She didn't take care of herself when she fell sick but merely tossed on the bed, had soup and coffee and drown in a pile of tissues. In that sense, she was really low maintenance. 

Maybe she is used to giving up too easily. Maybe tangible relationships isn't her thing. Maybe she was a cynic first and a lover later. Could she be consumed by love but not feel it at all? She had this crazy thought of cutting her hair really short, because he loved her hair and maybe metaphorically if she could rid of the things he loved about her, she could dispense off her feelings for him as well?

Love defiles life and strangely it defines it too. Oh. Yes. The glide of her head on his heaving chest, the affirmation that attraction is never sedentary, that it either consumes you fully or doesn't affect you at all. 

Miss Dash turns 22!

It is mildly difficult to chronicle the life and times of a spirited girl, who knows of sadness but never speaks of any. And the fact that while most ramble about morals, rights and principles, she gets her point across, quietly. You'd think she never tries, but she does. She always does. Not to excel but to strive. She is a 'food fairy' to some, an empathetic soul who always has time to hear you out, even when she is dead tired or not particularly up for a conversation or both.

But Miss Dash, even on her bad hair and bad clothes day is super fun. What I like best about her is that she never imposes anything. Not even chicken drumsticks, which she is so fond of. Instead she'll settle for my terribly spicy Chicken 65, with a gallon of water at her disposal and also a cute red nose.

Her calmness and positiveness is a sight for sore eyes, especially in times when people tell you can't, she will not tell you to screw them and be as you are. She will brilliantly (read: cunningly) coax you to be better for yourself first, and if you like your version of you, then discouragement, if it were a Harry Potter character, would apparate into thin air. 

Sanchita is perennially excited about shoes, clothes and offers on online shopping websites but she is also aware about the mining conflict in Niamgiri Hills. She is a romantic, but is aware of the repercussions of falling out with someone. 

So on the birthday of someone I call home in Hyderabad, what could I possibly say?

At the risk of sounding cliched, I will ask you to remain as you are. Not everyone takes friendships or friends too seriously. But I am glad you do. I am glad that you are a whiff of fresh air and that you are awesome at reading minds and reaching out to people selflessly. 

I am overwhelmed that for someone's (READ MY) birthday you can manage to scout all book stores in town to get the last copy of a book she really wants to read. And that, you'd do for any friend of yours, whom you care for dutifully. 

And that's why there needs to be more Miss Dash's in the world, who can spoil you rotten and snap you back to your senses when life has almost got the better of you. That way, the world could be a better and a more habitable place, when love and affection greets you like cold nimbu paani at the end of a humid day. You could do without it, but you'd rather not.

Happy 22 Sanchita. Here's to you :)

You...

Love for me was never about forever after. It meant, living in the moment, enjoying each day as it comes and goes. But then you came along, with a sense of incorrigible despair and distance. Miles and miles of distance. But not loneliness...never loneliness. 

Being the quintessential romantic I was, I had pursued love at various times earlier. And as a firm endorser of serendipity (the movie and the ALSO the word), I fell on my face too. Things changed then, when you came along. 

I started smiling more often, not the silent preachy laughter, but the loud boisterous one. Mostly on you though, but you merely reciprocated with the worst jokes on the planet and it scared me, just a little, to imagine life without you. The bespectacled lawyer, who thought that being sarcastic was his birthright and sneering made the world just a better place to live in.

It irritates me, how you have an opinion about everything on the planet but when time deems fit, you are eerily quiet. And it amazes me, how in spite of our ideological differences (which are far too many by now) we always reconcile. Also the fact that every time, you look at me, I ease into a protective vacuum where criticism doesn't matter, only love does. 

That's why Mr Bhattacharya, you are my best friend, my confidante, who judges me right in front of my nose, who reprimands me often either for being to loud in public or at times for gulping too much alcohol. 

It makes me wonder, wasn't it so utterly serendipitous that I had bumped into you at a tuition class, six years earlier, as an awkward teenager,in her cobalt blue school uniform and two pony tails? After which we had to struggle to build a friendship which is so special and meaningful.

You taught me how to love, with respect, consideration and immense honesty which is so difficult to master. And although thinking about the future makes me a little nauseous with anxiety, in those rare times I get to walk beside you, I have the feeling that love mustn't be judged by it's longevity but in those fleeting moments which makes life worth living.

Happy Valentine's day.  

Of Pain and its side effects

It was just another day, when a friend told me, "Hey you haven't updated your blog for a long time." I sneered thinking, in this gigantic community of internet based readers and writers, how does it matter what I write?

But I told him, "I don't have the time."

He asked, "Why don't you make the time?"

For a couple of days I have been thinking, what could I write about. And a single word comes to my mind. Pain. Not the seething, unbearable physical pain. But the quiet, docile, heartbreaking pain, which stifles you from the inside. Why should such a pain exist? What are it's symptoms and what is a possible cure?

Last Sunday, a colleague of mine lost her dearest companion, her beautiful dog, Jacqueline. The news of it shattered me, because I love dogs and I couldn't imagine what I could have done, if I was in her place. Possibly shut myself down, without speaking to anyone for a month or as long as it took.

Around the same time, I was reprimanded at work, in the most ostensible fashion. I lost my weekly off and I scraped through the week somehow, with frequent visits to the washroom where the humiliation of a breakdown would thankfully escape the public eye.

The week was difficult for both of us in different ways. While I made a joke about it, bracing myself every now and then, my colleague recovered a little, each day. She didn't skip a single day at work. And her smile slowly grew bigger and brighter.

We were fighting different battles, both of us, but we were also battling the pain inside us. And we tried to tuck it in, to hide it, discreetly but indefintely. And at least for me, it didn't help. What I realised is that we get over a sense of affliction, only by embracing it first. Because our lives will forever remain punctuated by moments of discomfort and agony. But there will be times, which will dissolute the unpleasant moments and we'll somehow learn to move on.

And letting go is far more difficult than simply leading an unhappy life. It's harder because it needs great resilience, courage, and a silent hope and prayer that like a gush of wind, the pain will also ease away.

Ultimately it does. What lives on, is a childlike excitement, which is vulnerable but equally innocent. It allows us to love, and be loved, try new things, make mistakes, admit those mistakes and to move forth in life.

The pain is not less painful now, but somehow we are okay to let it consume us temporarily, before finally setting us free.

Hoping for hope ...

At times, you genuinely feel that life couldn't possibly get any worse. An endless tirade of letting down people and no matter how much you try, you screw up. With tears in your eyes, you imagine those times when you fought with your parents to let you take up humanities because chemistry, physics and biology couldn't make you happy. Even as a child contentment mattered more you, much more than grades or an occasional praise from a school teacher.

"You don't understand," you said, "I want to write because that is the only thing I can do. The only thing I can ever be good at." Such blatant disregard of parental authority was of no use. Their willingness to make you multitask and attend two tuition for each subject since you clearly no good at it, didn't help either. But in one of those unimaginably boring classes you did manage to meet an amazingly stupid guy, who still believes in you, especially when you don't.

It is futile to be stuck up in past, but when you have fought for your way for half a decade, it is a worthless feeling to even
consider that you might not be meant for what you have forever aspired towards. That you are indeed, mediocre, and to let go, is for the best.

But then life has its ways. This particular week, when I have been the most uninspired, the most wonderful things have happened to me.

1. A book - As always, your moment of redemption is when you read. It's thrilling to vicariously experience a multitude of feelings and travel across years, generations, places. This week it was Antony Shadid's House of Stone. A two time Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist's determination to re-build the house of his forefathers house in Marjayoun, Lebanon.

Born and brought up in Okhlahoma, Sahdid was the Foreign Correspondent for Washington Post and then the New York Times, he covered the Middle east for the last fifteen years. A reporter had once asked the father of two, "Why do you keep going back to war zones?" and Shadid had most assiduously replied, "I am covering the middle-east. And war is what's happening in the middle-east." and he went about how it was important for him, to witness the revolution, to somehow believe that, "if you are not there, the story wont be told."

Shadid died in Syria in February 2012 (a couple of weeks before his book's release), while reporting the on-going conflict. A week into the project, he was escaping from the country, returning to his family waiting for him on the other side of the border, in Turkey. He passed away on his way, after an acute asthma attack.

And even though, I am just half way through the book, Shadid's resilience is what keeps me going these days.

2. Search Engines - All hail the internet for magically producing before you the most hopeful things, which you couldn't possibly encounter otherwise. A certain boy with Spinal Muscular Distrophy starts a blog and decides to laugh at his nightmare, of his muscles wasting away over time.

Another boy with a board with the following words inscribed, "Kiss me, I am desperate". It's funny but, an act of kindness has never hurt.

A mother's first meeting with the recipient of her 13 year old daughter's heart, who passed away in a Skiing accident. Miraculously, her heart continues to beat inside a 40-year-old mother of two.

3. Wonderful people at work. Who keep looking out for you. Get you presents, guide you and make you laugh even you are the most miserable.

And then you realise, the biggest let down would be, if you stop trying and stop dreaming. If you stop believing that one day you are going to interview Shahrukh Khan or study at NYU. Life is too beautiful and blessed to be bogged down by thoughts of constant discouragement. If you are unhappy doing something, quit. But if there is an iota of curiosity to just stick around and see what happens, take it up and pursue it will all your heart.

As I have realised, life might be distressful, mundane and frequently depressing. But the question is, what are you going to do about it?

Tomato Tomato

Desolation. Pain. Betrayal. Loneliness. Tomato Tomato. Sometimes a blur, sometimes brighter than the sunlight, searing into my skin.

A conundrum. The perks of being a journalist to being a writer first, ready to converse, share and confide. And then the remnants of love, found and lost. Mostly memories, the guy who grabbed you in the middle of a staircase and kissed you, first scaring you and then making you unimaginably emotional.

An emotional breakdown. The feeling of his skin on mine. Warm and comforting. A difficult day in office. And then a brilliant book. Seeing his forever contemplating face on my computer screen, a subtle sense of reassurance.

A futile attempt to join the gym. His laughter. His words, "I'll love you even when you're fat." Irritation mixed with despair, both of which, never get the better of me.

I want to write a book one day. But stories feel forever evasive. My ten year old brother finishes the fifth Harry potter book in a day. I have tears in my eyes.

My last vacation was a year and a half back. I miss home, a sense of belonging which feels so damn far. And also, of late, a strange boy with a strange name, who is always willing to make amends, "no matter how tumultuous times may be."

"Wo jo ruki si raah baaki hai
Wo jo ruki si chaah baaki hai"

It was one of those moments and one of those days. The concept of love seemed like complex hullabaloo, forever elusive. Moreover I didn't want my life to end up in a commotion where I would be a wreck, my feelings dispensed by how someone else felt about me. Also I was very particular about the kind of person I wanted in my life. Actually I just wanted one thing really - he should be anything, but me.

Not a vulnerable to the least, someone who could bear with me when I cry during videos of puppies falling off the stairs (poor little things!) Actually the idea was a little disfigured considering I grew up reading Danielle Steel and Nicholas Sparks - a world where machismo was limited to petite little things being swooned over by tall hunks, soldiers, doctors, lawyers. You know, the sorts. And I believed. Believed that it was possible that someone would like me even if I was being stupid, rowdy, a downright bully and even unfair at times. But for a long time, a harmful feeling continued to sink in that may be, just may be it's stupid to nourish a thought, where feelings were devoid of consequences.

So just like that, I stopped and became a cynic, weary of emotions, especially my own. And then, like a hitchhiker stranded in a desolate road, someone leaped into my life. Transforming my perpetual need of solitude to someone who craved company, human contact.

And surprisingly, we had similar histories. Just what I didn't want. Both downright introverts, ostensibly stubborn, sensitive and we knew the prayer "our father" by heart.

The only difference though, was that he liked cats and I loved dogs. And he had a better handwriting, was studying to be a lawyer and was somewhat a nerd. He sang like a dream while I danced to Gangnam style better than PSY. We were meant to be, after all.