The verb ‘miss’ OR Wired weird

I do not take the verb ‘miss’ lightly. Believe me, when I text you, “Missing you”, I seriously am missing you, like my atoms and the intramolecular space between the molecules made up of those atoms are filled with thoughts of you. I am that deep. (Double ha with a hyphen in between)

I miss people much too soon, way too often and often like a blind person groping for eyes to see the world with. The blind person, if he finds those eyes which fit in his sockets without any medical technicalities involved, could have basically two alternate worlds in his newly acquired sight. One of those worlds would be what he’d be viewing if he had rose coloured spectacles. By the term ‘rose coloured spectacles’ I mean a rosy view on life. Which is definitely not : the word ‘life’ floating on air with a rose hovering atop it. (But wouldn’t it be cool if words existed like that? But then: UH-OH, laws of gravity.)  Rather an optimistic view on life. A world where there would be rainbows after every rainfall. Where strangers genuinely smiled back at you if you smiled at them. And where people missed you back with the same(or slightly lesser) intensity as you missed them. And you’d feel rewarded with love for thoughts of missing them so much. And they cared about your thoughts in return. 

But the blind person with the magical eye sockets could also faced with the possibility of facing another world. A more grimy view of the world (though this grimy view is not due to the grime on the surface of the eyeballs he’d just found after a lot of frantic groping). A world where rainbows are only created if the sunlight disperses through prisms made up of invisible water droplets hanging in the air blanketed from the ordinary eye by humidity. Where strangers give you odd looks and sometimes even stare at you suspiciously if you gave them a smile or two. And where people simply assume you to be over clingy if you texted them ‘I miss you’ and created a rhyme for them about how much you miss them. 

So the results of my thought experiment have led to this : that I am better off not missing people much. (I have now written a sentence containing this and that separated by a colon.) Do move on to the next paragraph and let me demonstrate to you the inner workings of my logically illogical mind. 

People usually start missing something/someone/someplace after the thing/person/place is in the past. After it has occurred. Usually. But me, I am wired to miss things as they are happening. Wired weird, right? (Weird and wired are anagrams. Cool right?) 

For instance, I started missing the university I studied in (2010-2014) during my third semester.(We had a total of 8 semesters.) I begin to miss good times as they are happening. 

I think that is good because I kind of enjoy moments more. “Hey, these are my memorable moments.” I smile wider, laugh more maniacally and feel more happiness coursing through me. Somehow, I appreciate now more. Me missing the present as it unfolds makes the present somehow more precious. Somehow more richer. 

(Let me leave you on this optimistic note. Though the blind man with magical sockets might or might not look upon our dreary world (where scientific phenomenon such as dispersion is responsible for rainbows and not unicorn farts), it is good to have a kindling of hope in our hearts that he might see the other world. As me myself have done with kindred spirits.)

The Crush Rush

Dear crush,

I wrote this letter to try to help me shorten the unhealthy amount of time I spend crushing on you. Sometimes, it is as if the sole purpose of my creation is to crush on you. When in reality it is anything but that. You are just one among the innumerable hurricanes that come into my life, uproot everything and go past. This time, I am NOT going to let that happen. No, not on my watch. 

Maybe I can’t help not talking to you, Can’t help going through your messages for the umpteenth time. Can’t help looking at your pictures and grinning like an idiot at my phone screen. Can’t help as my decision to not talk to you crumbles to dust the next time I see you online. Can’t help but disintegrate into quarks every time you glance my way. Can’t help feeling as though I’m star dazed when I’m in your presence. Because for me, you are a star, something light years far away which I will never even get to touch with my own limbs. Me and you, we are multiverses apart, with galaxies unfurling in between us at the very moment. Galaxies that have long hair, tall hind limbs, hourglass figures, drop dead gorgeous faces, whom you are likely to find ‘cool’. As for me, I never really got the hang of ‘cool’. 

See, how hopeless it is? Why is it then that I act so hopeful when you are around? No. Not act, I actually feel hopeful when deep down I know it is just a projection of hope. See, how you warp my feelings so?

The logical part of me thinks “I hope you die bitch.” every time it comes across one of the evidences that you are alive. But that kind of gets drowned in the gushing roar that follows, “OMG! look at that photo!” “OMG! look at that!” Life is full of rainbows again. Pink clouds. Unicorns darting around. You know,that stuff. And once the crush rush is over, it is the logical part of me who has to delicately try to fix the pieces that have become of me. Sometimes, there’s incessant downpour. At times, there’s just an echo of “why oh why”. Sometimes there’s this sigh that repeats “Oh not again, man. Not again.”

When it is all over, you leave me feeling so hopeless. So worthless. So helpless. So useless. So unprecious. So unespecial. So invisible. So unbeautiful. So matterless.

Sincerely,
Someone who gets crushed by crushes instead of the other way round. 

Why can’t we be blobs?

 4^th Feb 2015

I love how dreams transcend the barriers of gender, religion, time, nationalities, race, structure and distance. I can be anyone/anything in a dream. This morning, I was an eight-year old Pakistani boy amid a ground full of other boys, all of us clad in a same kind of uniform. The chief colours surrounding us were white and green, the colours I associate with Islam. I was just sitting at my bench, gazing wistfully above at the sky. Almost all of us were conversing in Hindi. I had a lace-like cap on my head and big eyes, round with wonder and full of curiosity.

And I vividly remember thinking: Why can't we be blobs?

I believe that we are more than the differences that nature has created in us. We may have different sexualities. But I refuse to let the fact stand in my quest of finding me and finding you . . . and perhaps finding us. The real you isn't one that gets a boner everytime you watch porn. Heck, the real you doesn't even watch porn. The same way the real me doesn't rant about my menstruation cramps and PMS. I believe the real blobs that reside in us wouldn't care about trivial matters as such. 
I believe that we all are blobs. Blobs that can be anything and everything at once. Anyone and everyone at once. But the difference is in our perception. We limit ourselves to a single woman or a single man. We let others(who have already limited themselves) limit us, when in fact we all are limitless.

And the best of friendships, they happen when we treat each other as blobs.

I easily make friends with a 48 year old woman who pronounces ‘Dolpa’ as ‘Dolpo’. I see the blob in her almost instantly as we exchange warm smiles : I give her my all teeth smile and she gives me her gum revealing smile.  ( I so love it when people ‘give’ me their smiles. Not the cheese smile they do for photographs. But they actually give me their smiles for memory keeping.) We talk about the most mundane of things for an hour or so. Then a golden silence follows. I bask in the glory of having met another blob.

I can’t bring myself to talk to that sleek haired girl wearing a 8-inch heel and a sequined saree. Like the saree draped over her frame, I feel as if the blob within her is veiled from sight. I try to meet her mascara laden eyes and gaze into the blob within. But the scornful look that meets my gaze startles me. The blob in me tries another smile, a nervous lips only smile. She sweeps me with another of her haughty gazes. The blob in her is trapped inside all those layers of makeup, narcissistic sentiments and the need to be a hottie sensation. The blob in me looks away. I feel my shoulders drooping as I try to console my blob. 

I can find the blob within a woman more than twice my age. But with most people my age, the task seems almost impossible. I feel as if I would have to excavate for a long long time just to get a glimpse of the blob’s frail body. 

And somedays it feels as if my soul is being crushed by the realization that I am in a country where we still are bickering over equality. And I dream of a day when we will transcend equality and embrace blobness. A world where people have to fight for being treated as people. And I hope we treat each other as blobs. Ahh! There is no rehab for Hope.

P.S. The title is a reference to a piece of music in Bridge to Terabithia.

Black and White

Watching Moomin in a black and white TV :  vivid memories of my childhood. Maybe that was when I first analyzed that white(Moomin) was good. Black(Stinky) = bad. I always fought with my brother over playing chess with white figurines.

But in Class 5, we read about Rosa Parks. I thought that illuminated me. I shunned ‘Fair and Lovely’ ads. (not for the right reasons though, which I realize a bit later) I used to categorize everyone I met, listened to and talked with under two distinct categories : Good and Evil.(Confession: I judged a lot back then. But now my mantra = ‘Destereotype’ ) The notion must have come from fairy tales, Enid Blyton books, Super Commando Dhruba and Nagraj comics I so used to adore.

I believed in that notion so much so that I actually tussled up my classmate’s hair in Class 5 after school one day. I was convinced that she’d traded her soul to Satan, the evidence being traces of lipstick on her lips and gaajal on her eyes. I don’t even remember what the argument had been about in the first place. But I still do thank Archana K.C. for not telling on me. Had anyone questioned me concerning that incident, s/he would surely have called a psychiatrist then and there, who would in turn have isolated me in a white room under strict surveillance and tried to de-brain-wash me. Or s/he would have given me a resounding slap on my cheek and called my parents to school.

That would have perhaps led to a ripple effect of me donning a disguise every time I punished for good… and so on. Thank the Gods that never happened.

So convinced I was about me: I was a warrior of light. The world needed me. I would sacrifice my life for this cause.

My childhood in two words:  black and white. That was how I saw the world. When you place a child like her in a world pulsating with varying degrees of grey, guess what happens? Mayhem = Puberty

Also, during the onset of puberty, a color TV made its way into our home. Stinky was not pitch black, but dark brown, the color of Cadbury. Turmoil. Confusion. But not for long. I had new aims in life: to be a Cardcaptor; also my first crush was going to be a Pokémon master. I was to accompany him on his journey every weekday for half an hour. Being a warrior of light could wait. Also, I had to figure out the answer to how people hid their black and white selves in them.

It was long before I found out for myself: people can be good and bad at the same time. And it is okay. I can’t get rid of evil by pulling people’s hair. Fighting is never the solution. Even though you might be fighting for good. But my concept of good and bad was deeply flawed. I myself was good and bad. It is not okay to judge people like that.

Here I am, sometimes a shade too dark; at times a shade too light, but never quite achieving the perfect balance. I always slip and fall when I try to tip the scales. But I sure do miss being a warrior of light. Pure white light. 

#IWroteThisForYou

This blog is for Mummy who expects so much from me, yet fails to see what I am capable of…or so I think.
It is for people with whom I want to chat with all eternity, but I never have the right words to keep the conversation going.
It is for the gems of friendship I have stumbled across in Twitter.
It is for people who talk to me in photos and captions.
It is for people who make me radiate love just at the thought of them.
It is for Anupey who converses with me in books, movies, good music and articles from internet. And it is the best conversation I have ever had.

Talking about conversations, this blog is also for those conversations that get lost in time, those connections eaten up by distance, the dialogues broken by negligence and for those relationships which we give up fighting for. 

This blog is for Nanu, whom I love for simply existing. I love you, like I am too afraid it will show on my face when you are around, like my voice will break if I ever have to profess my love for you, like I could not bear it if you are ever embarrassed of me. 

It is for Hajurama for being Hajurama.

And this blog is especially for the cloud muses, the people who love minutiae, the grammar Nazis, the cry-babies, the people who will bend space and time, who have virtual crushes, the wanna-be superheroes, the weirdos, the ones that ooze awkwardness like it is in their blood, who feel like no one wants to talk to them anyway, who overthink, overanalyze and repeat conversations in their minds, who have a kewl British accented mind voice but suck at actual English-speak, who make new words, the people with sparkly eyes,  who want to be especial, the ones whose crushes fell for their pretty best friends, whose best friends ceased becoming best friends, who are confused, depressed, the ones with suicidal tendencies, with a sense of judiciousness instilled in them, whom people look at differently, who are starved of friendship, who get judged, who have been discriminated, who have been trying to defy stereotypes and the ones who are trying not to drown in feels.

Some days

Some days, you don’t want to be cheered up. You wallow in pits of self pity and regret. When despair clutches at your heart, you let it. Some days you get tired of struggling to keep your face normal in public. Some days you let the avalanches fall on your heart and stream down your cheeks. 

Some days you let the lumps at your throat cry out and live to their hearts’ desire, while your own heart beat gets drowned in the guttural sounds. Some days you can’t love even yourself. Some days when the world threatens to swim before your eyes, you surrender to those threats.

Some days your mistakes hang tangibly like the mist in air. The mist envelopes you and you let yourself dissolve. Some days you shun the sun. Some days you can’t write anything that could be possibly meaningful but you feel compelled to write. So you write.

Some days you let the migraines take over. Some days it hurts to be reminded of the persons you loved, the conversations you had with them, the happiness you shared with them and the unkept promises. You sag under the weight of those promises.  Some days every remedy you try only serves to further trigger memories you’d rather leave forgotten. 

Some days the dams in your eyelids are inundated and rivulets surge down your cheeks. You feel like drowning in your tears. Some days the feelings don’t shut up. Some days you feel tired of feeling feelings. Some days you pine for yourself. Some days you don’t feel like life anymore. 

Why I “hate” it when they make movies out of my favorite books?

I know I am stereotyping every movie made from books here. That is forthright wrong. Because a few of such movies are exceptionally good. Some movies I wouldn’t have known there were books preceding before it had they not shown the ‘Adapted from_ _ _’ in the rolling credits. Also, some movies have such wonderful cinematography that you almost equally love the book and movie. . . blah blah . .

And the biggest BUT of them all(which my brother pointed out to me quite pointedly one day when I made the grave mistake of saying out aloud, “But the movie ain’t even half good as the book” in my grumbling tone) is “Books and movies should not be compared simply because they are different genres.”

Even after this, I am geared to write this article. I clearly discard evident logic. If you agree with this conclusion, then I suggest you stop reading the article and carry on with whatever it is that you do. STOP here.

I see you decided not to stop. I am writing this article in spite of  the evident logic simply because I feel this way. Feelings don’t grasp logic. And no matter, how hard you try, you can’t unfeel a feeling. Believe me, I tried.

There is no other feeling that I so strongly feel other than “hate” and its synonyms when I hear they are making a movie based on another of my favorite books. I still have not forgiven Daniel Radcliffe for destroying my mind image of Harry Potter. I had a crush on HP, not Daniel.  Every time I try to picture my crush, Daniel steps over his crumpled image. That is heinous, not letting a girl picture her crush.

This being the sad story of how I got over my HP crush, I have desperately tried to not let other character crushes evaporate, but in vain. Hermoine lost herself to Emma Watson. Gandalf to Sir Ian McKellen. Willy Woka to Johnny Depp. Katniss to Jennifer Lawrence. … ‘Tis a heart rending massacre.

I tried desperately, but the imposters are everywhere, on every fandom page in Facebook, grinning and leering out of hoarding boards, stickers…anything, you name it.

And what is worse: the movie watchers. They think they know the HP I grew up with. They think they know Gandalf. They think they know Prim. And they think it is okay to say “I think HP is overhyped” or “LOTR is soooo boring.” It is sad to let them think that they know what they are talking about.

Once, actually it was on my convocation day, I was reading “The Book Thief” because I’d just started it and you know how a good book doesn’t let you put it down unless you finish it. So there I was, clad in a saree for the first time in my life, engrossed in yet another book for the umpteenth time in my life. And this girl from my batch sees me. “Whatchya reading?” I wordlessly show her the cover page so that I can keep reading. Then all of a sudden,"Oh, that one." I stop in mid sentence. I swivel my head in her direction in anticipation of a book review. She continues,"I and my friend watched that movie last night. But we couldn’t complete it on account of it being so boring. Nothing happened. It was so slow."

Fury. I wished for a moment not to have been gifted with a human mind full of neurons which are capable of processing information in less than a blink of eye. But the damage had been done, you see. I was about to retaliate with a number of appropriate responses. But the old adage “'Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” chose that moment to dress itself in a shining armor and came to her rescue. A battle enraged within me for few moments. Then the storm clouds cleared. I sighed heavily and went back to reading the book. This is indeed a cruel world we live in. At least, the Beatles have already sung ‘Let It Be’ for moments like these.

P.S. I heard that they are going to make ‘TFIOS’ in Hindi. All I can say is: don’t you understand that Augustus wouldn’t be Augustus without his blue eyes?

P.P.S. My heart goes out to Augustus Waters and Artemis Fowl both of whom are likely to die in the immediate future.  

To two mutually exclusive persons:

To whoever thought that it was a good idea to name 'goodbye'

I know you are an optimist. Because who else has such an icky sense of humor? Lets just focus on the 'I wish good for you' part. And ignore the hearwrenchingly horrible part. Shall we? No. I am not sorry that I differ from your ideals. 

Because I am a realist. <also I have legions of dragons at times> I want to ask you how is it a goodbye when your friend of four years leaves and whenever you think about it, an impending sense of doom throttles you? Remind you, the actual doom hasn't even begun to knock at the door yet, leave the settling in part far behind. Also there are endless unanswered questions booming through the rational part of your mind.  Will we really see each other again? And even if we do miraculously meet, as said after two years, will he be the same? Will he still be my friend that called me up and asked for specific reasons when I texted him "I miss you" and then further explained his theory about "How could I miss him? It is only a semester break." and then at last said "I do not miss you." Further, will I be the same? Will our friendship survive? Will I be able to tell him that "I still love you in my twisted, convoluted sort of way" again and trust him to understand what I mean by that. Yes, there are lots of resounding 'if's in the answers. Yes, it is excruciatingly painful. And obviously I wish good for him. Maybe a better idea would be just "Bye"? But then that does rhyme with "I hope you die" And rhymes are everything. Why else do you think the world moves in a rhythm?

A note to my friend:

Yes, I am terrified of the future, what it will do to you, to me and to us. As you said, "There's Viber,Skype and stuff" But don't you understand that I wouldn't let anyone else tell me in my face that "I have anger management issues" ? <A punch in the face would take care of that> But don't you understand that what we have is doomed to become what we had, only the duration of time is a variable, all other conditions are static and kind of predefined. Don't you understand that I would never let you see me cry in Skype and vice versa? Don't you understand that? But hey, it doesn't mean that I am not going to try.