Finding Myself

I am not someone who updates her status messages on facebook to highlight the different moods of her life. I am not someone who can voice what she feels from within, my tears, my pain, my anguish are mine alone. That’s how it has always been and that’s how I thought it should stay for the rest of my life.  But not today, right now as I wake up to a glorious post by Athira Nair, I realize that perhaps writing it all down may liberate me and bring back that much needed smile as I look at myself in the mirror next.

Before you think I am suffering from a case of wife beating or am being cheated upon by my husband, I’d like to add….no I am happy. Perhaps not in the way that I’d like to be, but in a manner which I never thought I could be.  I let myself depend on a man the moment I got married, I quit my job, left my city and followed him here to Vizag in the search of love. Love I found, but I lost myself in the process.

I allowed myself to be content in the confines of my home, in his arms, in his talks and his love. From a fish in the sea I was soon becoming a frog in the well. I cut myself from the world, stopped responding to messages from friends who had been the most important part of my life and allowed myself to just bask in the glory of my newly found love. From vying from my husband’s attention, to letting my anger out on him when he is least suspecting it, to torturing him, only in ways that he can explain :-)

I had become a shadow of the independent Neeta Nair who never could let her guard down. All along I felt it was wrong, I had to stop being this pathetic version of myself but there was no escape. To my credit I was constantly searching for a job during my stay in Vizag, but a good offer eluded me till yesterday. I didn’t want to share my worries with anyone because I wasn’t sure people would consider what I had as a big problem and honestly I didn’t know whom to talk to. All I knew was that there is something wrong with me.

People asked me to enjoy married life, but honestly waiting for your husband to return from work the whole day and the occasional outings were not my idea of fun. When I woke up in the morning I felt like I was wasting myself, no mission and no light to take me through the day. I seriously lacked a job, I wasn’t used to being unemployed even if it is for 4 months after marriage in a city like Vizag where searching for jobs is a nightmare. The process of getting selected and managing an offer letter from my employer has taken me 2 months. It was a long, frustrating wait. And if there is anything I hate in life, then it is ambiguity.

I am not sure I did the right thing by abandoning my well settled life in Bombay, I am not sure if love is the answer to all problems, I am not sure if I am happy that my life revolved around one man for all this while…. I am not someone who can lead the way; I am more like someone who takes the path trodden by a select few. I need an example to give myself hope. I found one today, thus this post. It may not be the most interesting read, because today I am not writing for an audience, I write for myself and that’s how I believe it should be with life too… live for yourself and no other. …rest is irrelevant.

BORROWED ENTHUSIASM

Liveliness, madness, energy…..few words that I had stopped associating with myself, ever since I quit Times Now. No, I am not going to tell you a life changing experience which helped me escape from the clutches of a mundane life throwing me into a world of high spiritedness… Yet it can be described as a condition where one realizes the need to feel alive, to say in the least 

All the 4 years while I worked for a constantly buzzing news channel, I kept postponing everything that I believed I enjoyed. Be it learning a newer dance form or reading enough books, watching more films, learning a new language or hanging out more with friends. Blame it on TIMES NOW and the crazy schedule, I said in my head over and over again.  ‘I don’t have the time after a 12 hour long working day’ I reasoned to myself categorically. Yet I never once forgot to carry a book in my hand bag. Despite a tiring day, I almost religiously cursed the train for forcing me to alight at my station before I could finish reading that gripping chapter.

At home it was a different challenge, snatching the remote from my father who would put any film buff to shame. Or perhaps reaching home to witness the joy of seeing the remote unguarded with my father blissfully snoozing, while our demigods Mammooty and Mohanlal fought for his attention from across the TV screens.

I admit I didn’t have time to dance, but the spirit of Prabhu Deva’s brother from the video ‘Kya Soorat Hai’ made me do some crazy moves on the road even if half of them were happening in my head. En route home, I had a wonderful time imagining the scandalized expressions of the pedestrians if I played out my dream of dancing in the middle of the road. I am also guilty of adding my friends in annoying Whatsapp groups just to co-ordinate on post work dinner plans. So much so that on one occasion we had three parallel groups co-ordinating on three different dinner plans for the week with almost the same set of people.(I hope Himani is reading)

And now I am supposedly in that ideal situation which I fantasized for years, where I can do everything I want to at my pace, at my leisure…. Deciding to pamper myself before the wedding, I have quit my job, taking a month long break before I relocate to another city and begin a full-fledged job hunt. But all I have done for the past few days is sleep, eat & walk from the living room to my room depending on whether I want to watch TV or access Facebook when I get tired of cursing Sajid Khan after all music channels fire the intolerable Humshakals’ songs at me from all directions. 

Didn’t read a single book, didn’t watch a single film that was on my list, wanted to learn Telugu, got myself a CD (FYI I am moving to the Telugu land of Visakhapatnam), but even that’s lying untouched. Even taking a train or riding my rocketi (my scooty) seemed like too much trouble, so didn’t bother to get out of my bed and make plans with my friends either. 

In ‘How I met your mother’ style, I faced an INTERVENTION, my fiancé indirectly sent across a message hinting that I was acting wasted without smoking up.  Well well…That’s when I realized that being busy in fact kept me happy and not just useful. There are so many activities you squeezed in so little time. On the contrary having an abundance of time makes one delay things so much that you end up embracing them ‘Never’

Lastly, I would like to add that it were the wise words of my fiancé that inspired me to pen down this painfully long post. This is just to let you know whose inbox to spam if you want to kill yourself for stumbling across this particular blog.  His email id shall be provided on request to needy bloggers.

The day I felt like Jaswinder Kaur ….

Three people… three minutes …and the same question…. Don’t you blog anymore? My blogger mind had got the much needed attention… so here it goes again… 

6am: Saturday morning…. It had been a while since I had woken up so early on a holiday. Strolled into the kitchen to catch two surprised pair of eyes staring at me… I knew a sarcastic comment which goes something like this ‘Are we dreaming’ was to follow, so I quickly made my exit. But it was too late. The comment was fired at me with the expertise which only Rima Lagu from the sitcom ‘Tu tu main main’ possessed….what followed was even more shocking…..dad said that his daughter had woken up to help mom with the chapathis….Dad had thrown a googly at me ….half expecting me to be stumped.

But I braved it… I said I didn’t mind volunteering. My mom looked at me as though she was just about to cry…. Still can’t figure out if it was the joy of seeing her daughter helping her with the chores or the thought of having to digest the chapathis cooked by me that was the cause of the emotion.

It had been exactly 10 years since I had tried to master the roti making art…. Back in my childhood I think I had proved my worth at making sri lanka, chile and even china. Anyway I was surprised that this time the near perfect circles were not difficult to make…but still mom was hard to please. Comments like ‘too fat’, ‘too thin’ were thrown at me from every corner of the kitchen…of course till the time I threatened to leave…. Eerie silence followed, mom was quiet for once, it was bliss.

I realized where my cribbing qualities come from, looking at the source of it at that moment was quite fun. .. she was trying not to look at the rotis, it was as if she was dying to comment, criticize….but couldn’t….haha, what sadistic pleasure 

Anyway….it was time to cook my priced possessions…had seen my sister’s rotis inflate like food prices. ..so I knew who my idol was. First one didn’t make the cut…neither did second or third. It was like seeing India lose the match. Sadness filled the room. Worse still…mom’s roving eye saw the sad state of my rotis….I could even visualize her doing the victory dance. The demoralized me tried looking elsewhere. ..but it was as if God didn’t want mommy dearest to win. The fourth one bloated up by around 75 %....yoohoo…I was back in the game. …the trend thankfully continued till our domestic help arrived. My mom asked her if she would like to try some….

I hated the disclaimer that followed: She never makes rotis you know, so don’t mind

That was it…. Now it was an all out war Mom. Like my life was dependent on my domestic help’s critique…. everything that followed seemed to happen in slow motion.
Finally Laxmi said… ‘aunty aapse accha banaya hai’

I did a miniature version of the ganpati dance in my kitchen then… Laxmi looked like she was contemplating taking back her words to stop what she was seeing. .. Anyway with one last look at my mother I left the kitchen feeling victorious.

But …looking back at the scene unwind I realize, that there was indeed a glint in my mom’s eye… a happy.. no a proud glint…. I guess it makes a mother equally proud if her daughter wins an Oscar or outdoes her at cooking…. Guess that was the explanation for that non-defeated look on my mom’s face.

But the episode has its flip side… either my mom has taken laxmi too seriously or is simply doing chance pe dance… she has very graciously made an offer to wake me up each morning to make the rotis …. Damn it mom, I am sure Laxmi was only lying ;-)

THE CRAPPIEST POST OF MY LIFE

One moment you think you are in love….the other moment you are out….

One moment you think love is lurking somewhere at the next corner…..the other moment you feel you are never getting there

One moment you think you have found your perfect guy… .the other moment you understand what imperfections stand for

Or worse still

One moment you think you have found your perfect guy and the next moment you realize he is not yours anymore

Even worse

You write crappy lines like this and post them on your blog
………….
Coming back ….There are times when I hate sitting at home alone…. Dreading the idea of being too friendly with these thoughts….

Don’t think years of waiting for the perfect guy helps anyone…. Don’t think guys who really care about you care forever….don’t think love is forever….

A wise man once told me….there is nothing called love, just perfect timing…..you marry a person because he appeals to you at that time…give it a few years and you might not want to risk marriage with him anymore

But then a wise woman told me that the wise man is a sadist ….IGNORE HIM

.....guess it was too late as I had already become a convert

Confessions of a frustrated mind

As my mother goes off to sleep today, I am sure she is wondering how she will cope with yet another alien language….no no she doesn’t intend to take any foreign language classes post retirement, I am just talking abt her worry on accommodating yet another inter-caste marriage in the family...

Well, this worry keeps surfacing each time she sees me talking on the phone for more than an hour…It starts with a harmless question ….’aara’ (who’s it)…then lovely uncalled for interruptions in the form of entering my room to ask me if I need tea, coffee or anything that I don’t obviously want at that time…..and then moves on to non-verbal communication in the form of glares, glares and more glares….

My head hangs in shame when I think of what she will go through when she finds out….that I am so definitely single. All her anxieties, preparedness for the ultimate doom in the form of a non-mallu guy, and the trauma of not being able to interact with her second son-in-law in Malayalam will be in vain. Don’t hate me for this mom…but your daughter isn’t dating anyone.

My sister’s inter-caste marriage has put so much pressure on me (I am sure Smites will sympathize with me on this) hers was unexpected but everyone has been expecting rebellion from me for ages now. My extended family is super confident that Neetu is gonna have a love marriage….sorry to disappoint u folks, but you need a guy for that…L(Prits and Leena- I know there are many years left for my shaadi but you know I plan well in advance)

Bottom line – no guy to make romantic songs meaningful while I am travelling in the train….no crushes to discuss with similar ‘loser’ friends and to top it all no cute guys in office as well….God, don’t do this to my mom please.

Random Realization

For the last few days I have been getting up with a big smile on my face… Life somehow doesn’t seem meaningless anymore. Ideally this should be the most boring and tension filled phase of my life…I am on the brink of graduation and should be busy searching for a real job. But something told me that I am not ready. So I have granted myself this little break of two months to decide what I want to do in life and to do all that which perhaps I may not be able to do after this stage.

I call myself a steady worrier who just loves to create the unnecessary horrors in her life every moment. My mind is never at rest, and very occasionally content. But much to my own surprise I have managed to take life lightly and positively these past few days, a feat which I never considered myself capable of.

So what changed, let’s just say….I have started trusting people more now….have become more open about what I feel, have started accepting people the way they are without constantly judging them on their flaws and most importantly; have started appreciating everything that I have.

I remember the time when I was online 24/7 without giving a damn about the real world around me. My breakfast, lunch and dinner was served in front of the computer table. My parents had given up on persuading me to have those much awaited family dinners together. G-talk became my personalized world. Of course it had its pluses too, as I stumbled upon some real gems who managed to bring a lot into my life as also polished my bond with the older lot with whom staying in touch had almost been ruled out.

But somehow, something was drastically missing in that little world.... Slowly I became conscious of the fact that the small things which brought out the child in me before I had transformed into an internet addict, vanished into the horizon. I had forgotten the last occasion when I watched TV unhindered. There was a time when I practically knew the character names of each artist that appeared on television, lyrics and dialogues of a whole range of songs and movies that I was constantly glued on to during my free time, danced like crazy to all the Bollywood songs that were played during the countdown shows on TV. Everything had become a thing of the past.

Can’t recollect the last novel that I read with the same amount of eagerness and passion that I exuded during my junior college days when a book would accompany me to every destination I left for, be it minutes away or days away. Those boundless conversations with my sister which I looked forward to every evening after coming back from school or college became restricted to once a week when either of us visited each other, after she got married.

Miss all that...I am surprised why I never noticed this cavity in my life earlier. Perhaps this was the right time for the realization. So that I could circumspectly modify and alter everything I wanted, to what it was always supposed to be...

The result- I am watching more TV, more song, dance and movies…reconnecting with my old friends and bonding with the new, call up near and dear ones more often, not afraid to show friends that I care, land up at my sister’s place regularly to catch every moment of my little niece’s histrionics and adorable actions, bought a collection of my darling Mills and Boon novels which I intend to finish in a week’s time, trying my hand at cooking much to my papa’s surprise who thought he wont live to see the day when his daughter would enter the kitchen and lastly… wake up feeling happy every morning.

Alive Mumbai

For days we were waiting for some action…some event… some signal to tell the world that we are not a bunch of stupid citizens who take every bit of the dastardly attacks inflicted upon them, lying down….That day came soon enough, exactly a week after every Mumbaikar spent his night glued to the news channels and helplessly seeing his innocent fellowmen succumbing down to the bullets fired by some unknown brutes.

Never in my life have I made a plan with my friends and been hundred percent sure that it will work out as it was planned to the T… This time it simply couldn’t go wrong…there were to be no excuses, no late comers, no absentees…We had to come together because each of us had made an unspoken promise to our beloved city on an unforgivable night.

Calls and messages started flooding in even before the clock struck 6, the stipulated time to start the protest march to Gateway of India. The area outside Regal was ‘crowded’ in the real sense of the term…you could be standing right opposite a person and yet not see him…Maybe that is what must have happened because we were just not able to spot most of our friends in the rush. The networks were jammed so the only option we had was to go ahead with the flow and make new friends on the way. And trust me, it was quite a sight to see complete strangers coming together to make their strong yet bottled opinions heard.

Moving forward, people started screaming out slogans; some very innovative, some funny and some outright silly…definitely didn’t agree with the people who were echoing chants of ‘Ek do Ek do…Pakistan ko Todh do’…because I for one had come to protest against the inefficiency of our own countrymen and not to shift the blame on to some insecure country, which time and again gets jolted back to reality about its inadequacy to bring India’s might down…To hell with those opportunists, guys let’s take care of our wonderful politicians first, Pakistan’s despicable efforts will automatically bite the dust then.

But there was a lot to keep me from pondering on that particular issue…The colourful posters held up by proud Mumbaikars was a welcome distraction…Let me list a few
1. Mr Terrorist – you wanted us in large numbers na….here we are!!!
2. Dear Chief Minister, Instead of taking RGV to Taj…you should have shown the terrorists RGV Ki Aag, they would have definitely killed themselves then.
3. Bring the bar girls back…They might be able to protect us better.
4. RGV made two Sarkars and helped bring down one.

Mannn…if I had an advertising agency, I would have definitely hired these guys…they were just too good. Secondly it kept pumping up the enthusiasm into each individual who was forced to walk at a snail’s pace, thanks to the overwhelming crowd.

For the first time we didn’t see people complaining about how overcrowded Mumbai is... There was a glint in everyone’s eye which came from knowing that they are doing something worthwhile for the city in their own way. Everyone secretly congratulated each other for turning up and being a part of this once in a lifetime event which we would remember even 50 years down the line. I completely agree with my friend who said, “I have never seen so much crowd in my entire life yet I can bet that there won’t be one single case of the crowd getting out of hand or misbehaviour. That’s the power of tonight.”

That’s the moment when the Taj came into sight…a structure which was already a legend but now it shall be remembered with the gory details of the massacre that changed the life of every individual who takes pride in calling himself a Mumbaikar. Anger, frustration and God knows what all welled up inside me at that instant and I could sense that everyone around me felt just the same.

Moving further, we saw a bunch of people, distributing water, snacks to the people in the gathering for free. Wow…that was thoughtful and something I had least expected, somehow. We also passed people whom we had seen on our way to the Taj. They were still screaming aloud slogans, against the politicians and about the unity of Mumbai, with the same enthusiasm that they oozed one hour ago.

Then we lit candles on the pavement, clicked a lot of snaps of everything around us…after all we wanted to take home every inch of this proud moment.

Before ending this post, I would like to add that the significance of the protest march was heightened when all the radio stations came together and without any need to outdo one another jointly played the song ‘Maa Tujhe Salaam’ on all the radio stations, sharp at 8. Talk about a magnificent conclusion to a breathtaking night…Let’s just hope that the conclusion to the cause we came together for will also be equally bright

Jai Hind!!!