AAAAAAAAAARRRGHGHGHHHHHHHHH!!!

I am told very often that I am screwed up in the head. Every second day I see that clichéd shake of head and hear the same fucking words that are so unbelievably stupid I can do nothing but laugh in return- not the loud booming laugh, but that twisted sound somewhere between insanity and desperation - “Brilliant brains, had she applied them somewhere worthwhile, she could have been anything today.”

I beg to draw your attention to that one word that makes all the fucking difference- COULD. I could have. But I did not. I am dubbed so many things- at times a wannabe, at times a dreamer, at times an idiot. One moment I am an angel from up there somewhere, and the next I am a pain in the arse. The scrutiny is so intense, and the observations so fucking minute that it has made me sit here at 2 a.m. in the fucking cold to write this shit, to wonder who I am.

Your snide glances and sniggers splutter out what you have been thinking- here’s this fucked up, addle-brained, disillusioned 21 year old who thinks we want to sit here while she pukes her gut out. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you any where near me because it is you who have made me what I have become today. This is what you always do.
You, with your ambitions and visions of creating a world so updated and modern that you don’t have to move a muscle again, and have all luxuries, and find a cure to all diseases, which ironically, are a result of your ambition and vision. So you are running around in a spiral that will never end. It’s like holding your pee in when there is a bathroom, right in front of you. That is stupid.

Me, I like simplicity. I like innocence. But your diagnosis of me is similar to that of a patient’s diagnosis by a not-so-qualified doctor. He knows fever, cold, and malaria so his diagnosis will be one of the three. But your real disease could be typhoid, which he doesn’t know about. And so you are always fucking sick.

I don’t care about this world you have created. I don’t care about the society, its systems, its governance. Because it makes no sense to me. You keep stalling your dreams and keep walking all your life, like a thirsty traveller would, towards a mirage. And so you are never happy, never content. But if I do not want to jump in this mad hole, I am termed a dreamer… I am told that I don’t know what I want, if I say I do not want the world. But the one thing that amazes the fucking daylights out of me is that you, with all your intellect fail to see what I, a frigging butt head can see so clearly.

Whoa… I sound angry don’t I? That’s because I am angry. I am angry because in screwing your lives, you have screwed mine as well. And that is a grudge I will always hold against you.

Home

Clear sky on a hill side, the vast expanse of fields before you.. The air is cold after the november rain... but there is solace in it... and the full moon completes your heaven... you have come here to run away... from what you do not know... maybe from familiar places that now seem strange and cold, maybe from people you don't fit in with... maybe from yourself...
Someone once said- The pain is in the past, and i am moving forward to give it a slip and visit life...
But can you run away from it when it is a part of you?
Like a cancerous growth it troubles you constantly yet when you try to confront it, it eludes you...
You have searched far and wide for a place you can call home... where you can be happy...
And here, in this isolation, you find, not happiness but something even better... PEACE ... a melancholy calm amidst the void that is now a part of you...
You can't get everything, and you know you can never be complete again...
But you are thankful for this...

And so you live on... the frustration buried in the ground, the chaos simmered down, the pain hidden but not gone... living as a subtle part of a greater design, as a part of the elements...

More at home among the trees and the birds and the hills and the rain than you ever were among your kind...

Yes, you have found home...

On Dadi's death...

I've been asked to stay at home and wait,
Until someone comes over and tells me she is dead.
I've seen her fade away for almost a year,
Seen death creep over her slowly...

Seems lke it sweeped in at her feet first,
Not sure of how it would be treated.
But gaining strength and courage,
On her precios body, for so long it feasted.

I go over to where they havelaid her,
She looks not dead, just asleep.
"I am all right", she seems to say,
"No more pain, only my fond memories you must keep."

Amongst the multitude of people I feel lost,
'MOURN' - my head screams, though i feel not inclined to cry,
My body stands mechanical, my fet numb.
Everybody aound me wails, and I don't know why.

I look at her- she soundly sleeps,
And on her forehead no worries crease.
Hush all... don't stir her... don't mar her peace.
Don't you see your shrieks and wails don't reach her numb ears.
She is gone- far, far away, where
there is no sadness, no darkness, no fear.

They take her away and the cries grow loud,
I still feel nothing except a strong urge to move away from the crowd.

I go into her room and as soon as I open her cupboard,
I feel a void, an emptiness- there where her voice was constantly heard.
And I realize she'll never sit on that bed again,
And I realize she'll never watch that TV again,
And I realize she is gone forever.
A flash of pain crumples me as if from my body my heart's been severed.

Now I feel inclined to cry,
And now I know why.

Isolated souls in a social illusion..

Standing on the rooftop of an enormous building, you can see below at the city lights. You can hear the horn from cars bustling up and down the highway. So many people around, some might say its claustrophobic down there. But you know its a lone world- you are as alienated down there among the traffic and the crowd as you are up here among the pigeons. They don't understand you, they just might take notice of you - only for a moment.
However, in that fleeting nanosecond, you feel an elation rise in your chest to take the form of hope- maybe there will be someone who will understand, who will like to spend some time with you without challenging your ways. In front of whom you can be yourself.
But you have to snap out of your illusion, even though it almost gives a purpose to your living- it is not to be.

Heck, they are all pigeons, after all.

Because fairy tales are for the poor too...

This is a story about one of those life-changing experiences. It does not have an impressive beginning, nor does it contain language that is so gripping it wins me accolades from all corners. I am angry with you. I want to accuse you something that has been on my mind. I don’t know how to say it, and so I will build a story that conveys what is on my mind. It did not happen to me but I am pretending it did. Because that is the way my mind works.

I go to visit my younger sister at her school during their annual day celebrations. It is a nice, little place with an impressive academic record. The function is almost over and my sister is showing me around. I feel a wave of nostalgia sweep over me as I recall my school days, when my sister nudges and points at a boy sitting near the main gate of the school. “That’s Manoj”, she declares in a tone that explorers would use while displaying a previously unknown species of something. I look at a lanky boy whom I would have passed as a helper at school, had he not been wearing the school uniform. ”He is in my class. He is almost seventeen and he is an orphan. He lives at the orphanage nearby and nobody’s friends with him. He does not know what an I-pod is”, she informs me in the same ‘thou-art-beholding-an-unusual-phenomenon’ tone, and scuttles off to talk to her friends.My sister is in the seventh standard, and at 14, the teenage hormones and the cruelties associated with it are beginning to show.

If I have to pin point the exact life-changing moment I spoke of earlier, this would be it.

I keep looking at the boy for a while and then call him over.

Now I’m not the kind of person who feels compassion for the under-privileged, or fights for their cause. That does not mean that I am cruel- I am selfish, just like you are. Before you boil yourself into a rage, let me move on with my story. The explanations and arguments can come later.

I have never spoken with any stranger before, but somehow at that moment I am sure of myself and know I will be able to talk to him, although I have no clue why I have called him. I introduce myself when he comes over and ask about him. He repeats what my sister had said about him- that he is an orphan and stays at a child relief center. He had been taken from the streets by a social activist when he was seven, and has stayed at the orphanage ever since. The activist taught him how to read and write and he could speak English fairly well. He worked hard at studies, and so this year he was granted admission in the 7th standard.

This is highly improbable, and I realize that. There is no mention of who paid the fees, and I realize that too.But this is my story, and I choose to endow Manoj with extra-ordinary brains and extra-extra-ordinary luck. Hell, fairy tales are for the poor too. I will mention the brains later as well- as a part of my story- because that’s how they write it in stories.

I only speak with him for a little while but towards the end of our dialogue, feel as protective of him as I did for my naïve, spoilt sister. I promise him I will visit at the orphanage, for the schools are closing down for the month long winter vacations. And visit him I do, more than once. Over the month long winter break; I get to know him better. He speaks of his interests and I help him with his lessons. He has good brains. He is bad at computers but that was because he could not practice the things mentioned in the textbooks, so I take my laptop and he learns quickly.

Now will begin the serious part so read carefully because most of it will be directed at you.

Towards the end of the vacation, I notice something is bothering Manoj. On my probing he reveals that he does not wish to go to back to school because he feels left out, which of course is true. Most students treat him like they are so much better than him. Those who did talk to him, do so only out of sympathy- the way you would pet a stray dog.
He is angry then and his eyes reflect the pinch of injustice that he feels in his heart. “I will not go back to school”, he declares in a tone that suggests that I will risk my life if I dare contradict him. “I will live on the streets for the rest of my life but I will not go back.”

But of course I contradict him and make him go back. And not because I am an angel from up above, no. But because fairy tales are for the poor too.And what I will say to him is not just for him; it’s for you too.

“You have to go back to school. Not because you have had this opportunity but because this is your right. The fact you don’t belong to a wealthy family, and don’t have parents does not make you inferior to them. They did not do anything to deserve the luxury, and you did nothing to deserve the hardships. It could easily have been the other way round. They have been gifted a good life. You haven’t. And so you will fight for it. Everybody likes to believe they are the most unfortunate in this world of ill fated. They will cry because they can’t go to the late night party with their friends, or because the one they loved ditched them. They feel they are the incarnation of tragedy because they don’t get along with their parents, or because they are fat. They keep looking over the other side, wishing they weren’t so miserable, wishing they weren’t so unlucky. They don’t see real sadness, real pain, real struggle. They don’t see people who don’t have parents to fight with, or who cannot afford the luxury of putting on weight because you need food for that. Even you, who are cribbing about how bad it has been, don’t you see it could be so much worse? You have this chance that nobody in their wildest dreams would get. Yet you worry about what others think of you? People don’t have time for you or anybody else- they are too busy feeling sorry for them. They are all selfish, always wanting more; never realizing what they already have is more than they need. And so expecting them to share and take what is enough for them is as crazy as suggesting this to them.So you stop feeling sorry for yourself. You life is tough, face it, don’t cry rivers over it. They are stupid, not you...”

That is the end of my story. You can extend it and talk about how I meet him 10years hence and he is working in an MNC and living happily. You can have him married, even to my sister, I wouldn’t care- partly because I don’t have a sister. As I said, what is important is you understand what I am trying to tell you. You could have been someone in an orphanage, and chances are you would have not been given the chance I gave Manoj.
Because the fact remains that you have done nothing for people who aren’t as lucky. And everybody is like you. Fairy tales don’t happen, you have to make them happen.