The Unforgettable Desire

I say, ‘I have survived a lot on my own, I can do it alone for the rest of my life.’ I wait for, ‘I know you can do it alone. I am saying, you don’t have to. I am staying right here.’ No, not just the words. I wonder, is it too much to ask? I know the answer, 'You haven't asked.' I heard Jerry Pinto tell an aspiring writer, ‘Make a pact with the universe, nobody needs to know about it.’ He advised another, ‘Read one hour every day and start writing today. I’ll see you in ten years in a literary fest.’ I smiled standing on the side. I spoke to him after everyone got their books signed. I didn’t tell him about writing. I said, ‘I have been through cancer, sexual abuses, and mostly, emotional abuse. I look at them as facts. I wrote about them, I tried to, I keep trying. It’s like I am the performer and narrator at once. I have always been that, just more aware and conscious about it since a couple of years.’ He nodded in affirmation. I didn’t hear, ‘You should get y...

My friend and I were walking towards The Arena when I told her, " You know... I get it that Hyderabad Public School is beautiful in terms of historical monument and it’s spacious... But, I am kind of glad that this is the location. Everything is clustered together so beautifully, this is perhaps the first time that I have been to everything or at least am aware what’s happening where. This school... it just feels so...” I trailed off, unable to find the word I was looking for. My friend smiled at me, “It just feels so warm, I know what you mean. I was a bit hesitant on the first day but everything feels so warm this time. It had never felt this way before.” “Yes, warm... Everywhere I look, there’s something hanging or built, there’s not a single wall that’s empty or even a tree. I am just so surprised every time I turn my head. Yeah... it’s just so warm, it...” This time I trailed off not wanting to say the words that were at the tip of my tongue. She completed it nonetheless, ...

In November-December 2017, I was doing an internship at Orient BlackSwan, Hyderabad. As much as I loved the work-environment, I hated the idea of being there from 9.15am to 5.30pm. I hated the idea of restraint. I felt caged although I was completely free within the walls of the office and had unlimited access to coffee. While doing my rounds in all the departments, I got a chance to interview a marketing executive who was in charge of briefing me one afternoon. He seemed friendly, so I asked him about how he ended up at OBS. Earlier I had interviewed one of their cartographers who was kind enough to tell me his journey from civil engineering to cartography. When the marketing executive completed his story, I asked him, ‘if not this job then what would you have done?’ He laughed at my question. He said, ‘I am a Tamil Brahmin. I should want to start my own business, but I am content with this nine to five job, the company takes care of my family, I would never trade this job for anyt...

A man sitting on my seat offered to get up when he saw me undecided - should I ask him to get up or simply climb up the side upper berth?   I took the book that I was reading out of my backpack as he began to get up. As we stood side by side for a few seconds, he asked me, "What are you reading?" I showed him my copy of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah . He tried to read the author's name and perhaps, failed. He returned the book with a look that made his friend chuckle. I wanted to tell him, it's a Nigerian name. I wanted to tell him that the title of the book is what Nigerians tend to call people who move to America, something like Amriki or Amrika-wale as we Indians might say in Hindi. I didn't want to explain without being asked, which was quite unusual for my ever-explaining self. Later in the evening, as I climbed up to the upper berth, allowing my co-passenger to have the lower berth all to himself, I wondered about the former moment. I bega...

In the last couple of years, a lot has changed within me -be it the perks of having a plenty of alone time or the downside of a mind that’s never without a thought. I am a person who jumped off a cliff at Rishikesh. Between the moment when I was off the rock-solid ground and hadn’t hit the water, I thought, “Did I jump, or was I pushed, or did both happen at the same time!” When I was out of the water all I could think was, “What’s the big deal about the experience? It was so tiny a moment to feel anything at all?” When I asked so to my already-experienced-cliff-jumping brother, he said, “That’s just how it is.” All I am saying is that I had a thought even in that tiniest of a second and I am unashamedly okay with it. It has been recently remarked by a dear friend of mine that I think so much that I do not let myself feel anything. I am working on those lines whose roots are as deep as the hive in S tranger Things , believe me . Having firmly established that, the one thing that...

The first novel that I read was Chetan Bhagat’s One Night @ the Call Centre . The first novel series that I read was Stephenie Meyer's  Twilight Saga . After that, I mostly read Nicholas Sparks and disliked Erich Segal. I read Ann Brashares’ Sisterhood series, Sarah Dessen’s The Truth About Forever , and Cecelia Ahern's books that made my teenage easy to bear. Harry Potter books happened to me only because I did not understand what happened in the movie - Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince . I had read Harry Potter and the   Philosopher’s Stone as a kid. It was an utter pain to read such a thick book with tiny alphabets back then. Eventually, I was embarrassed of the books that marked the beginning of my reading habit. I was embarrassed only because people saw those books in a derogatory light. After a few years of public comments on my book choices, I did begin to ask people if they had read those books. The answer usually was, no. It was then that I stood up for ...

I woke up this fine Sunday morning — sleepy still, I went to get Rohi fish. As the seller aunty weighed it, and uncle cut it, I had quite an unsatisfactory feeling. It's not being cut right, I thought. I saw aunty weighing two snakehead murrels and dropping them near uncle. One of the murrels moved, and I hoped for it to not be alive. I ignored and went back to watching my Rohi being cut. Then, aunty picked up a murrel, and tried to kill it. It slipped. I did not like the sight of it because the fish moved like a snake. I was reminded of the time when I was a class V kid. I had often suggested my father to buy all the freshly-fished fishes and throw them back in the water, so that they can live. We can eat the already-dead ones, but not the ones who are suffering for the lack of water. I went vegetarian for next six years, because my Science teacher had asked my class to make a mass-promise to not eat non-veg. I take the words, "I promise", quite seriously. That...

I have been juggling many life choices in my mind. I took a month off from Hyderabad. I went home. Before I left, I was in an internship that changed my way of looking at things. I realized, either I am not willing to accept ‘reality’ or I am not meant for jobs. I cried many times in my office washroom. I was frustrated that I could not read and write in that period of time. When it was over, I went home - away from the environment I usually live in, away from the people I usually interact with. I went home to discover myself. In the one month I spent at home, I read five books. I did not write anything worth publishing on my blog. I ended up with a few drafts nonetheless. What I liked the most at home was, the way my parents looked at my reading. Every time my mother talked about my reading habits, I could sense pride in her voice. I challenged my father at reading books. I had a good time. Every other day, I used to tell them about a strength or weakness of mine that I discover...

I spent the entire day reading about the once-in-a-lifetime lunar eclipse.  Super Blue Blood moon.  ‘Can the name not be short?’, I thought just like I had thought about my cancer - Pre B Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, ten years ago. I saw people sharing the time of eclipse’s visibility in different places.  ‘Ahh, not in India.’ Cool things never happen in India,  sighed the multiple-times-disappointed-kid in me.  But, then. I saw someone share the time of visibility in the metro cities of India.  I googled immediately, ‘Lunar eclipse visibility in Hyderabad.’ I saw many articles describing the reasons behind this particular eclipse being unique. I gave it a thought, not much. I am not one of those moon-watchers, you see. The idea of moon’s beauty brought the idea of longing lovers.  I tried, I tried really hard, to bring together love, longing, and moon. It never happened. But, for a little while, somewhere in my...

Books, like babies, are adorable. The moment you hold either of them, you feel a kind of happiness you had never felt before. It’s satisfying but also scary. You are grateful for it, but at the same time, there is a constant nagging and fear in your head to take care of it, lest it is harmed. Books and babies have another thing in common apart from being bundles of joy. No one talks of how they come into existence. As far as babies are concerned, talking about their inception is a social taboo. And, even if the procedure that takes place after the inception is explained in details in Biology books of Class VII, Class X, and Class XII, the sterile words hardly make sense in the truest sense to a hopeless uninterested student like me. I am still unsure of what exactly happens once the egg is fertilized, zygotes probably formed, and something with fallopian tubes or maybe not. Like I mentioned, hopelessly uninterested. But, to save my soul, I now know that babies aren’t thrown down ...