Where have you been?

I was listening to Mirza Ghalib while driving home from work a few days ago and I was reminded of that version of me who could empathize so deeply with someone's confusion, anguish and even joy. And then I was thinking about where that person might be hiding inside me, that person who did not constantly feel burdened by the nothings of everyday, tired and hungry, forever pining for that cup of cardamom tea and some silent contemplation. The person who liked herself best while savoring words, sentences, paragraphs - woven from thoughts old and new - thoughts she could call her own or thoughts of someone else that spoke to her like they could be her own. 

Sometime ago, I spoke to a dear one who asked when I expect to finish up writing the book that I should start writing - perhaps it was a nudge for acknowledging the me that used words for a soul cleanse. I have not embarked on such an exercise (here, in this space) in such a long time now that I was awestruck by the question itself and surprised by its impact on me. Quite suddenly felt an urgent need to fish that person out from wherever she might be. I read some things I had written several years ago. It is unlikely that I am exactly the same person, unaffected by life and its learnings. But, it was reassuring to find similarities between what I had written and what I am now. 

Recently, finally, I earned my Doctorate. After being unable to be done the first time, I had enrolled in a different program at a different university, solely relying on the confidence of everyone around me. This time around, there was more honesty in my purpose for wanting to do research - it was not just as an escape from what I did not want to do. Also this time, it was not the only thing I was doing - there were additional and entirely new aspects of marriage, motherhood, work and money-related realities holding me close. 

Among all the things that make life beautiful is the fact that everything is on a sliding scale - meaning the calibration for what is happening in the present moment is informed by all the moments previous to this one. One cannot help but feel grateful for this superpower. 

My PhD is being celebrated in different parts of the world! ("We always knew...", "..coming your way sooner or later..", "... what an accomplishment..."). Someone asked if I feel vindicated now. I thought about it and finally arrived at my answer - no. "why?" ... because the two attempts are separate events for me - I am not the same person, my expectations were not the same, my approach was not the same. I was (am) more humble, more aware, more certain. 

To the universe and my friends: ( I wrote this as part of my acknowledgement) "thank you for lending me your strength when you found me lacking"

Letting my fingers type this one...

.... I will not let my brain come in the way.

Once, I lent my ears and attention to a civil services aspirant's life snippet. It involved the abandonment of an unfinished examination to take a friend and fellow examinee to medical attention that was suddenly needed. The protagonist later found that his qualification for the coveted spot was left wanting of the paper left behind. I have often, quite often, too often in-fact,  tried to evaluate the heroics and the foolhardy of what had transpired. Also, I have wondered how the situation would play now, and with different actors.

Someone mentioned that her memory of me was that of a person always surrounded with people.    "...in which life?" I asked.

While I grow older and collect more life lessons, I find that my person is in an awkward dance of sometimes an outward unfolding and of others where I crease and tuck away an aspect of myself that does not surface again if I can help it.

In another conversation from the past, I remember mentioning to someone (this is verbatim) "...my honesty is my way of respecting the person that you are..." to which she said (not verbatim) "... not everyone you meet will be ready or able to receive the gift of your sincerity...". I was too young to know fully what that meant.

A few months ago, I confessed to a friend of having forgotten an important piece of news shared with me. While cowering under the fierce lashes of her vitriol, I forgot to provide an appropriate explanation:  that of being overwhelmed with new parent fatigue or of being unable to guess (as I interpret it) that her recent gregariousness was simply an escape.

If you know me well (or know me at all) perhaps you are aware that for me a raised voice is death-by-asphyxiation of a relationship. And that I go to great lengths to protect myself from the possibility of such accidents. So, after about a decade of clean, verbal-conflict-free living, I was trapped and crucified again. The experience was as disorienting as the last one.

In my desperation to recover, I comb through my list of acquaintances, some of whom were perhaps friend once, to find another friend, spreading little electronic notes like spores. It is quite comical - the disconnect between my eagerness and the polite sleepy replies, if at all.

It must be the unnavigable grief of losing a friend that brought me here. I will get better (let me get back to being busy with motherhood.)

Vanilla ice-cream with strawberry sauce.

I am conflicted about writing, it requires focused soul searching, it leaves me out of breath, panting for air like immediately after a long intense run. Everything/everyone requires nurturing and affection - even your sub aspects - like your ability at sentence formation.

It's almost the end of another new year - moments get woven into hours that get twined into days that become yarn-ball of years in a mix of colors - red green yellow white grey blue - often blending into new colors when thought about retrospectively. Sometimes though, incidents are able to keep their original color even in the light of perceptions altered with the burden of life experiences.

Someone observed (and was harmlessly envious) of my life-pattern having very few, if any, soft turns - mostly I am seen navigating around and about acute-angled maneuvers in the 3-dimensional space. Things are not offered the luxury to become comfortable before they are flipped over and you have to start from (0,0,0) again. It is unsurprising that the (0,0,0) point is also a variable. One can argue that it keeps one agile, nimble on the feet, like a ballet dancer forever posed for her next pirouette. And then, also, a sapling trying to bloom into a tree in trans-planting pots. Where next? What next?

I forget what I started to write - I find myself being extra-contemplative lately, perhaps as a foolish escape from the urgency of work that I am running behind with or that I feel ill equipped to handle.

We lived in a small snooty island of Type5 officer's flats in Gol Market in midst of Type2 flats. Apartment2 had an open door policy for students linked to an adult in the family for upto n-degrees of separation. There was lots of room and little furniture, and therefore plenty of space for people. If you needed to be in Delhi for any reason (education-related reasons were priority), for any length of time (days-weeks-years) you could find food and board here.Very few questions asked, and parental supervision provided without asking.

The bustle was often that of a railway platform moments after the arrival of a train. People getting in or getting out at the same time, frayed nerves and a strong smell of urgent hanging in the breathing air. Having temporary family members was the norm. Perhaps it is the reason why I have not had trouble trusting and liking strangers till faced with a compelling reason to not. My current physical setting is in such contrast to my positively skewed comprehension of life that it makes me quite uncomfortable when cornered into providing reasons for being trusted. I don't do well in those situations.

The household operated on a threadbare budget of an honest government employee salary supplemented with that of another working adult employed in a government-owned company. I was too young to calculate, comprehend or care about the economics of running a household. The mothers of our big family seamlessly led us from one financial year to next. This involved a weekly trip to the local vegetable wholesale market at daybreak, around the time when street dogs chose to huddle around rags to keep warm instead of investing energy to intimidate passers-by. The blue scooter would come home laden with sacs of fresh vegetables that would be washed, dried and put away for use during the week. There was also a time when none of us in the family were averse to eating meat - which was expensive and unaffordable, however. When Ma's younger brother worked in Delhi and was naturally living under the shade of freely provided parental supervision, and would sometimes happily splurge to pamper the collective palate of us kids.

For a few years, my school had a policy of sending report cards through postal mail prior to meeting with the parents. So the weeks between the end of exams and declaration of results were full of worry for us students. Unsurprisingly, my sixth grade results were stellar without a lot of hard work on my part as I had had the advantage of ICSE schooling up-until class 5th before being suddenly transported to Delhi over a weekend. That year, a local ice-cream parlor ran a promotion that entitled students to two scoops of ice-cream for good grades.

On the weekend just after having received my result, Papa took me to Cafe 100% in Connaught Place. I  stood next to a very proud father and fished out my report card to show it to the person behind the counter for the (anticipated) yummy prize. As I write this, I can taste that particular bowl of vanilla ice-cream with strawberry sauce. It was my first time eating ice-cream with any topping and I remember how beautiful it looked to me. It was an experience of complete happiness and contentment. So real and so precious.

Thank you, universe.

did you write something yet? --3

It is getting really easy to name these posts (hehe!)

The 'hehe' in the end is a complete lie. Not sure if I am the only one who has to trudge through the slush of serious birthday/newyear/some-arbitrary-point-on-the-calendar related blues wearing cotton socks. My cerebral cortex activity takes me on these exhausting treks and I am an unwilling puppy tugging on the leash in my attempts to release free.

I write this to snuggle in the warmth of a life excerpt (I discovered my fascination for stories dating back to when Siddharth and I would hold our badi dadi (everybody calls her Didi) hostage for them while lying width-wise on a khatiya. The dimensions on the jute-rope cot were such that while us little people fit just fine, our badi-dadi was forced to curl her legs awkwardly while keeping mosquitoes at bay with the back and forth of her palm leaf fan. We would be all-ears-aboard shrouded in the octopus-ink darkness and far-far away glow-worms of the sky. It was fantastic. Sometimes, I can still manage to haggle out stories from her.)

And suddenly, academic noose became tight enough to be noticeable when we stepped into the Board exam year. Up-to that point, I was a decent student who coasted along with less hard word and ambition than her peers; and had fuzzy life plans based on meaningless data from Hindi movies (Only now, much later, I realize why TV curfews were implemented with such rigor at home.) My pre-Board math scores didn't quite match up to the expected and I remember being pinned down by Tr. Chari's unhappy-accusing-eyes and later bawling myself inside out in shame. I had no training in working hard for doing well at tests (!) and was often careless in my hurry to complete answering an exam (!!)

On that day, the day of the exam, I was yoked to my anxiety and my disquiet while I attempted to recollect everything I had studied at a per second frequency. On the first page of my Math question paper was a 'prove:' problem whose solution did not jump out at me and I decided to save it for (as advised by Math practice books) when I was done with the rest of the questions.

My panic had started cutting the oxygen supply to my brain as the allotted time drew to a close and I could not get back to the skipped questions (a total of 8 marks of the maximum 100) before my answer sheet was taken away. My world became viscous and I waded out of the classroom alone with the reverberation of having done badly.

My comprehension returned to focus on my father's face in the crowd. He was there, standing at the gate("wait, why isn't he at work?"), sparkling with ("but how did he know?") and actually radiating confidence and pride ("perhaps our umbilical cord attachment tugged at him to come and see me at the exam venue") . My countenance, a tightened grip at not giving away how mulched up I was peeled away to show the crumpled, defeated and lost me. Papa wrapped me in a giant hug and I let myself be the little girl I actually was. Together we walked back, with my school bag slung over his arm. We stood under the big tree near home to discuss the question paper, and assessed that I would score a 91. By the time we arrived, I felt less dispersed and the world took on her hues again.

Later, Soumya mentioned to me that she couldn't imagine the possibility of being hugged amidst people if she dared cry in public.

My brother and I have had the fortune of sharing our parents with a lot of people and have grown up thinking that it was the way. I have kept this story (and a few others) within several memory folds lest I am tempted to share the bits that I am fiercely possessive of.

Perhaps I have grown up. Oh well.

For the sake of your curiosity, it was 79 for my math exam. I spent the first few months of 11th grade skirting around Tr. Chari, afraid of having let her down too. One Friday, she smiled her compassionate smile at me in the second floor corridor. I could not walk up-to her, thinking I would on Monday. But that was too late.

Did you write something yet? -- 2

I sit down to write, here, because (CachinnatingCockatoo!) Ma told me that she read one of my posts. [For those who cannot tell, that is Captain-Haddockism {for those who cannot tell- from Tintin (for those who cannot tell - really?)}]

Talking about the glorious fantasticity of mother (mine or yours, actually all mothers) is, well, several minutes of clacking keyboard keys and then clacking at the delete button for another almost attempt. It brings me to where I am aware that I should just get up and get a snack because that is easier to do.

Together, we lived the confusion of the reverse-gearing of the violet-color-pencil incident and the consequent terror-induced numbness for a six year old; and her voice held me in a warm embrace for some beautiful moments over an inexpensive VoIP call.

Such magic.

Once, we decided to take a bus to the city for a girls' day out. We lived at the end of Noida where all you could do to do anything was to take a bus to Delhi where you could actually do something - like the famous eat-shop-eat routine of Dilli Haat, or the Connaught Place ramblings. While we waited for a state-run GL32, a local-goon-owned private bus came zipping by and tempted us with the possibility of a shorter trip time (a combination of reckless driving and the strategic shortcuts) - it wouldn't have taken us as close to our destination, but our wait time under our umbrella under the hot sun would end and we'd be on our way! As soon as we had boarded and before we could get comfortable, I happened to see that GL32 was not far behind, and I was ready to supergirl to it. Only Ma refused to cooperate - that is, deprive the goony driver and conductor of the ticket earnings from us.

(sound of reason and resolution) "It will not be fair to them (pointing at the bus operator), we have already boarded this bus"

(whiny) "BUT Ma, we will NOT have to wait for ANOTHER bus"

We were having this conversation in English (our go-to exchange medium for serious conversations). The bus-operators were able to catch-up soon enough and realized that if the sickly-looking girl got her way, they'd be out of twenty rupees. An altercation followed, where they said that we could de-board provided we pay the full fare. Before I could counter-argue, Ma handed the bus-fare and took a seat. Their menacing demeanor had rattled me and I sat beside her navigating through the maze of my red emotions.

We sat there, together, silent and exasperated with our unwillingness to see the other's viewpoint till we arrived at the stop that required a change of transport. Soon however, we were distracted and happy about being back in civilization - the general color and sounds of the city squeezed us out of our overcast moods.

Her incredible ability to empathize with anyone and anything is the content of moral science books (Chapter 1: "How Suniti taught pigeons to share food" Chapter 2: "How Suniti helped a poor salesman make a living" Chapter 3: "...")   Once, she insisted that I purchase a mix of good-looking and less than perfect looking pea pods so that the vegetable and fruit seller person could sell his stock. As kids, we could never get away with wasting food (though I was on the far spectrum when came to fussing about food) because she would gently remind us how important it is to respect food.

I don't know how to conclude this post. She is awesome, what more can I say.

Did you write something yet?

I play dodge with anyone who flings this water-balloon at me, including myself. Usually, I sit in-front of my machine, write a couple of sentences, get distracted/overwhelmed and my focus shifts onto something else - a trip to the kitchen, a new tab on my browser for music, another new tab on my browser to read something to accompany the music, a bathroom trip - just about anything. To be fair, I am writing more in my journal (not as much as I would like to, yet - but more than before) and my brain and fingers' protest-screams are getting more feeble with every visit. 

We were at a grocery store this one time and a sign saying that eye-pencils were on sale stared at my face. [Stores offer as much help as one needs in making impulsive decisions and keeping you in the premises for as long as possible - so grocery stores also sell clothes and makeup; clothing stores also sell furniture, and house-hold goods stores also sell grocery (the world is round, after all.)]

So, this 'blackest-black' pencil looked at me like an unhappy puppy desiring my attention, and I puppy-eyed Evan in return. His reaction was that of disbelief ("You want a fourth one?!" "umm, I don't have a black one for when I am not wearing blue, green or brown!") and laughed at me in the same decibel I use on him when we are in the ice-cream aisle. He was still laughing when he said that I was "So (oo) vain!".

(gulp!)

His observation was made on a very light note, meant to be forgotten after an affected reaction of hurt; but the anion of its truth stayed with me and much later led me down the spiral corridors of my mind's catacombs.

Among all the things I take pride in, not being narcissistic is one of them (!) Rigorous convent-schooling has embossed the idea that any emotion greater-than-or-equal-to self-love is inappropriate. As a consequence, more often than not, I find myself trapped in the region of less-than-or-equal-to self-acceptance. ugh.

On occasions that I get a glimpse of my vanity in life's rear view mirror, it shames and disturbs me so much that I have to go into hiding to unravel and re-crochet my disoriented mind-space. The otherwise suspended, mostly harmless fat-drops of conceit coalesce into a colossal cannibal who devours me in one giant gulp and I find myself staring in disbelief at the Tetris pieces that just won't line-up.

I am not quite sure of the point I am trying to make. Perhaps what I am getting at is how everybody is made of good pieces and the less-than flattering bits. So, maybe the narration here should include the not-so-stellar aspects too. That would be far more ground-level than the everyday circus on social media -- proclamations of being the best and the demand for validation. Our fragile sense of self-worth has become so naked under these floodlights. ["All the world's a stage..."]

We'll see what's next.

the schism

original image sourced from the internet
and tinkered with to fit the narrative

I often wonder if the distances between what is said, what is meant, what is heard and what is interpreted are variables for other people too. I start this post on that slightly unclear note because sometimes when I think back on conversations that have a splatter of an unexpected reaction, I wonder if word-strings had been unable to navigate the said-meant-heard-interpreted maze. I also want to believe that I am not the only one occupying the bewildered bandwagon on the matter.

On one occasion, as a student of class 2A at Mount Carmel, I was particularly proud about carrying a brand new dozen color pencil set for art class that day. We were all coloring in our drawing books, and the pencils were being passed about around me to whoever required a particular shade for their work. At the end of the period, the pencils found their way back to me. Just as I was about the close the set and get ready for the next class, I noticed that the box was missing (and I distinctly remember this part) the violet pencil. I was particularly distraught because suddenly my new set was incomplete.

Some of us girls looked around to see if it had rolled into some obscure corner without anyone noticing, but with little luck. Then, on a classmate's suggestion that I should tell the class-teacher, the small-voice, teary-eyed me went up to the big desk and shared my predicament. The teacher was not happy at all and instructed us to look for the missing article accompanied with a warning that if the pencil was not found, each of us would be required to bring a rupee for a new box for me. In the midst of my distress and just outside it; the problem compounded manyfold.

Assisted by a time-portal similar to the one that facilitated its disappearance, the pencil found its way back into the box - it had rolled to the bottom of the box, and its sister pencils were sitting on top of it. So, I dutifully walked up to the big desk again to inform the teacher, armed with good news this time.

Her reaction stunned me and I recoiled in panic. The teacher gave me harsh moral science lesson about how wrong it was to blame others. I was made to stand in front of the class and apologize because (according to her) I had accused them collectively of stealing from me. My little brain and my forever-hyperactive sense of right and wrong wanted to push-back to assert that the idea of theft had not occurred to me at all, but could not muster the courage. Among the ancillaries of a convent-based education is that considerable effort goes into deforming you into your most timid version, blunting your sense of defiance and your ability to question authority.

This was among the earliest instances when I was unable to navigate the chasm between my words and else's comprehension. Self-reflections are polka-dotted with not-too-unfamiliar imbroglio and I cannot be confident about any change for the better either.

I am a conversational-Neanderthal (groan!) Oh well, I guess I will trudge along.