endorphines

A friend told me that most of my posts freak him out about how mentally imbalanced I can sound with my thoughts coming from depths deeper than the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean. (This is not verbatim really, but I guess you get the idea). I must be crazy to be thrilled at such an observation. =) So the yellow me is writing today!

Everytime I chance at a happy interaction that gets added to my "People are unbelievably nice to me (I wonder why)" list, I relive moments that are already on that list, and my faith in all the good that dwells in the heart of people becomes good as new again. The faith has always been (I am convent educated), but moves into the corners of my mind if I don't keep a tab on it. So I wanted to list them out for me.

This one time, when I was in the 11th grade and struggling with the 'what next' questions about my career, I was walking to my tutorial classes for Chemistry ( I still don't understand organic chemistry) and I had to go cross a very busy street to get there.

The Indian Democracy has made it a free for all. On the roads (as almost everywhere else) you can pretty much do as you please. As a driver, its totally up to you if you want to wait for pedestrians to get across a road or you want to scare them out of their wits by not slowing down at all. Not that the pedestrians feel the need to use a crossing even if they see one; its always the shortest distance across to get to the other side, irrespective of the volume of traffic. *This is only my humble opinion.* (I would like to see someone trying this in firang-land).

Coming back to what I was saying, there was this busy road that I needed to cross to reach my destination, and quite unlike anyone around me, I was waiting for the traffic to lighten before I attempted it. A white maruti car stopped (it took me a while to comprehend that someone behind the wheels had actually stopped to let me go). I did, and when I was on the other side of the road, I turned around to thank him. He was still there (many people had jumped at the chance of safely crossing that road). I thanked him with a little smile, and he smiled and nodded back.

I don't remember the face of this man, but I remember exactly the smile he returned. It was a smiled smile.

That was a moment of euphoria right there. It was like the colors of the universe had washed themselves afresh. A bag of endorphines had burst itself free in my head and I was at peace with my existence again. For a while.

That is a lot of word to use for such a small incident. But, I could write more about it!

I cannot live like this.

I have been gifted with a brain that I have lofty expectations from. For starters, I expect it to hold far more than what is fair, really.

I tend to lock things up into little boxes and chuck them into what I would have ideally liked to be a black hole in my mind. But, to my utter disappointment and dismay, the black hole in actually a malfunctioning blender, it keeps throwing things into my face from time to time.

Back in 1999, I took my first Art of Living course (completely my father's idea) (Like everyone else, I was also trying to get the answers to life's mysteries single handedly). I was perhaps the youngest in that bunch of really old, consistently-unhappy-with-life people, and therefore not exactly one of them. But I was there anyway.

For one of the group exercises, we were required to narrate our life stories for the benefit of our immediate audience. Poor me had all but only 17 years of experience at living life (and would therefore be expected to have the shortest life story)

BUT it was I who spoke for the longest, poured my heart out, and cried profusely.

My narration was totally about the fears I faced after my Nana's demise. I was in 8th grade when we lost him. I started believing fervently that I had to pray every night before going off to sleep to keep everyone I knew away from any kind of harm. I also distinctly remember that the days when I would miss out on this, I would be paralyzed with fear, expecting to hear bad news.

This insanity did not stay with me for long (Several other kinds on insanity have creeped in since, but this one in particular soon ended)

What was totally surprising to me about this incident was that I had no idea I had this in me, it was only after I had talked about it (and it wasn't a conscious decision to do so) that I could acknowledge its existence.

The malfunctioning blender spilled its guts again today. And made a fine mess.

I am afraid I cant live like this. I also pray for better confrontation skills. And a break from me.

a brand new year

Another year.

When I was a very little girl and still in the process of grasping the concept of time (I just knew my numbers till ten and I couldn't wrap my head around the idea that sixty seconds make a minute and sixty minutes make an hour. Therefore, when my mother would tell me to wait for a minute before she could attend to my tantrum and I was to wait for counts to ten done six times before I could call for her again) ( I still didn't get it then, but at least I was distracted enough by all the math my brain was required to do without a pencil)

I lost the original intention of writing this. (Funny how consistently I am prone to distraction, and have been so for as long as I can remember, maybe I should put it in my list of new year resolutions to get some improvement done in this aspect of my being)

Continuing the little girl story, when I was a little girl, years seemed so far apart, there was a WHOLE year of school to go to, two term exams, one final exam, one summer break, one pooja break, one winter break and several weekends. Time was a mammoth, a giant that was so proportioned that it could only move slowly, very slowly, from one day to the next, till three hundred and sixty five significant days had been counted before the next one arrived.

In a conversation on this topic, a wise man told me that humans comprehend things in relative terms. A six hour journey will seem terribly agonizing to a four year old, while people my age will see it as a relatively short drive. To be more lucid ( at least attempt it), a period of six hours is a bigger fraction of a four year old's age and will seem like a longer time to him than to a grown up. (The math would be thus : 6/[{(4X365)+1}x24] , the same thing , in case of a 28 year old like me would be 6/[{(365*28)+ 7}x24], the results are roughly, 0.00017 and 0.000024) I am not sure if I have been able to exactly explain what I wanted to, but the whole idea is that since it is all relative is appears different. (!)

Gosh! I wish I could put it better!

In a previous mulling on similar lines I imagined life to be a pinwheel, and focus on its rotation speed. From a third person perspective, I pictured it as starting slowly but surely and gaining acceleration with every spin till the life reaches its end. Strangely, I never did give much thought to the pivot in the pinwheel, and now when I am thinking about it as I write this post, I would like to call it, stereotypically, things that bind you to things around you. And having written that, it seems pretty inconsequential in the current argument.

I am not sure what was the original intention of this post. perhaps I wanted to tell myself that time is on the run, it always has been, and I have lived long enough in total apathy to the fact that moments are evanescent. That I should spend more time doing things I love and counting my blessings than I do kicking myself for not being as perfect as I would like to be. I am not talking about acceptance and a consequent complacence, I am talking about acceptance and taking charge and making change. The desire to be a better version of me.

Here's hoping!

Marriage,Middle class and Me

CHAPTER 1

Someone I know read my blog and commented, "I read it through and it gave me the impression of being the object from Harry Potter in which Dumbledore puts all this thoughts to clear his head." (Pensieve, for the uninitiated)

Dumbledore: "I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form."

Harry: "You mean... that stuff's your thoughts?"

Dumbledore: "Certainly."

I was S-U-P-E-R flattered, though I am not sure if it isn't applicable to most people who aren't looking to earn money from their blogs.

CHAPTER 2

Coming back to the original intention of this post, (and this has been up for being extracted out of my head for a long time now), we (the Family minus Pa who was in India then) were spending our Thanksgiving weekend at Santa Monica Pier. Earlier the same day we had driven down to San Diego from Los Angeles to meet relations of my sister-in-law. It had been a day well spent till a call from Pa mentioning, among other things, this boy he is keen that my brother look up for my (prospective) spouse. (Hopefully if things work out his daughter will be married soon.) (yay!)

I felt the bottom of my stomach hit the floor and drag the rest of me down with it. The nightmare was back with a bang!.....(it never misses one single time.) I can't exactly explain why or how, its just the whole shaadi-christmas-tree that gets me down.

CHAPTER 3

references to the artwork (!) above. ( I couldn't figure out how to bring it down to this chapter)

I have been thinking about the situation in graphical terms, I find it easier to explain things to myself using colors and shapes ( Yea, I AM twenty eight!). The biggest circle being the (bah!) THE middle class (a categorization that lends itself to multiple interpretations, but in this case is being employed as is.), on either side are circles representing marriage and me. Size and colors capture stereotypical associations, its not a very successful attempt. The lines that join these circles are representative of the connections. To elaborate, middle class and marriage are like peas and carrots, with almost a gravitational affinity between them. I hail from a family that was always very close to almost making its ends meet, though on the fair side of the equation.

And then there's me. (very-long-pregnant-uncomfortable-pause).

CHAPTER 4

Analysis of the problem

I don't ambition for a life like that. To the question, "like what", my answer would be, " I can't exactly explain". (But heres an attempt). When I try and imagine me in a domestic setting like what has my little cousins delirious with happiness, I draw a complete blank. I don't see myself standing on the fringes, the action in my life should be my own, and not a result of someone else's actions (I am not sure if I have been able to put across my point without coming out looking like a hctib.)

On the flip side, I do not understand the basis of my confidence in having a complete comprehension of the shaadi-christmas-tree. I am not sure if I am missing a whole lot, and then again its perhaps not fair to make a statement like that with so much conviction when I have nothing concrete to back it up with. I am surrounded with proofs of happy marriage (with one exception that almost knocked me out).

All I am asking for is the confidence that I see myself with someone for a substantial period of time, that I am willing to see things through and that I will be enthusiastic about wanting to make things work with the person.

I am not sure if this is asking for too much.

I have very little confidence in being a snug fit in a setting that all of the middle class setup sees their children in, I want to be a bigger contributor to my life than that. Am I being unreasonable for wanting this for myself? Sometimes I think I am and some other times it seems like the exact right thing to do.

Why do I lack faith! Maybe I am just imagining things to be more monstrous than they actually are. Maybe if I let go of the need to absolutely control everything about everything (or at least be an at-the-moment witness) about my life I will be better off? I don't know. What has perhaps killed it for me is that I have had a taste of living on my own terms and I will need a lot of convincing to revert to my original settings. I have felt so alive, so happy and so fresh that it has made me like me more. Almost as much as I want to like me and I want to like life.

My Christmas wish is to have more Faith, it is also my New Year resolution. Though I run out of my supplies pretty soon!

a little note about today

Its 10/30 in India, and the last day of being at work for my father. He retires as the General Manager (Campus) for Center for Development of Telematics, Chattarpur, Delhi.

I love my Dad, he is my hero, my superman. I am not sure if the Maker will ever be able to create another one like him. He is like time, tireless, always on the move.

Omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient. He is all.

I know several stories of him as a child. I also know how he has been working, constantly working, since his teen, to ease the financial crunch that our family has faced in the past. He took tuitions to earn money, for his education, to run the household and for the education of his siblings. I think the condition of the family hasten adulthood for both him and my Bua, who are credited to have raised their little brothers and sister. My Grandfather had problems with his vision and my Grandma would usually accompany him to his treatments and operations that would sometimes take months.

I cant imagine what life must have been like for everyone then. I am such a protected child, so loved and so cared for. There are times when I forget to thank Goddess Durga for everything I have, I must be the luckiest daughter there ever was and will be.

He has shouldered the responsibility of taking care of three generations, the one preceding his, his own and the one after. I belong to the succeeding generation. We have only known a rosy life and can't handle hardships very well.

Hardship has taken a new meaning for my bunch. For instance, I have just completed my MS ( funded by my father with ALL his life savings) and I am looking for work. And I find it very distressing that I am unable to find anything even after months of search. This is hardship for me! (it sounds comical now when I am writing this). My focus in life is me! I feel so ridiculously selfish!

This post has again gone on a tangent!

last week of being a twenty seven year old...

On Monday next, I will be a 28 year old woman. It sounds strange, calling myself a woman, especially when I think of myself as more of a little girl who can be a girl at best.

I guess I do belong to that age bracket now, and have been here for a couple of years but still think it is inconsequential. When Soumya died in that freak accident/murder last year, all the newspapers mentioned it as the death of a 26 year old 'woman', and I was thinking, (among the million things I was thinking then), that had this been an article about me, I would have been called a woman too. What a sick thought ones mind can trick them into thinking.

This is not at all a happy post! I want to write more but it will have to wait till tomorrow I guess. I can feel the writer's block creeping in on me. Mine in not like the usual writer's block where it is a dead end of ideas. What happens instead is that tonnes of thoughts come tumbling out from a box in my mind I keep tightly shut, for reasons ranging from 'This-is-not-at-all-important' to 'I-lack-the-courage-to-face-the-truth-because-it-might-hurt-and-I-am-not-sure-how-strong-my walls-are-to-save-me-from-it'.

I don't understand the basis of my confidence in my sanity.

how the heart breaks....(over little things)

its a Wednesday, i was up very early for this paper that i had to turn in today, i think i managed ok, (well), AND i was in eager anticipation of what the day would hold for me, (a glance, a smile, a conversation.) it had been four days (and four days seem so long!)

:) 

.... and it held a little heart break. the kind that one goes through so many times a silly starry eyed teenager...its innocent and oh-so-heartwarming in third person, or, in retrospect.

i am 27 years, 6 months, 10 days old... and i am unable to shirk that unhappy feeling. 

i have a million things i need to get done today (who doesn't)... but it all seems dwarfed by the hurt i feel with that little hope of something foolish to come true having been stolen from me, and that foolish expectation was just a glance or a smile or an innocuous little conversation. 

my feelgood-happy-clothes and earrings aren't helping either.

perhaps i need to get busy.