The Unforgettable Desire

You write or share a post about depression. A couple of people ask, Are you alright? Yes, you say. You add a few more lines just to assure them. You find it difficult to lie even to a stranger until they ask, How are you? The answer is a lie you’ve excelled at. It often makes you wonder that you certainly need help but you cannot accept it from most people. You need to have a history with them, a history free of hurt, a history full of belief and faith. You need to know that they understand what it is that you’re going through, you need to know that they have done their research before providing help. Many people, family and friends, have offered help. You are grateful. But you have no patience to explain them what you’re going through. You perform a one hour stand up act, making them laugh at your experiences, lessons and inability to move on. You say it in a way that they are dumbstruck. All they ask in the end is, Are you sure you aren’t feeling this because you have read too...

Six year old girl: Aunty, will you see my colouring book? I: Yes! I’d love to! Female acquaintance (also, mother to the girl): I was actually telling her to call you didi, instead of aunty. I: Oh, don’t bother. She sees me as a friend of yours, I’ll be aunty to her. I am absolutely fine with it. Male acquaintance: We should tell her to call you ‘young’ aunty. I: What does 'young' aunty even mean? I am fine being her aunty. I grew up calling everyone in my mother’s age group aunty. She is doing the same. I was at a seminar in Hyderabad when I met the girl. As much as I like well behaved kids, I tend to stay away from them because I find it difficult to go beyond, 'What's your name?' This kid I met had all my attention for a simple reason: colouring. I cannot recall the last time I held a crayon. She was adamant about making me colour in her colouring book. In fact, she went on to review my work as better than hers in good spirit. I think I liked list...

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...

It’s a Saturday morning. I sit at home and exist on all days of the week. For the most part, I forget to keep a track of the days that pass by. It’s only Saturday that I check up on. I was once told that I shouldn’t start anything new on a Saturday. It’s inauspicious, the work would never be complete. Given I have been said what (not) to do, I look forward to begin everything on Saturday. I do not plan it, but find myself motivated. Perhaps the sinking realization that yet another week had passed by doing nothing did the trick. So, if it hasn’t settled in your head – It’s a Saturday morning. My alarm went off at 5 o’ clock in the morning. I woke up at 5.30am. I decided that I should restart my morning walks, but not till another 30 minutes. I woke up an hour later. Light was peeping inside my dark room from the corner of the curtains. I looked up at the soothing light that would pierce my eyes in a few hours. I looked up and thought, “I have always taken pride in being alone bu...

I have no idea what has become of me. When I was eight years old, I had heard the news of Sushmita Sen adopting a baby girl. I was pretty sure that when I’d be twenty-five, and definitely single, I’d adopt a baby girl too. That was perhaps the very first dream of my life, the very first goal before the idea of being an astronaut or every other fleeting career goal occurred to me. Motherhood wasn’t the goal. The goal was to be successful enough by twenty-five to be responsible for another life single-handedly; and maybe, be an inspiration to some eight-year-old girl who hears about you. Today, I am a twenty-four year-old who is one day old at resigning from a short term job that she took up to feel financially independent in a field related to the only two hardcore relationships in her life – writing and literature. As much as the fear of commitment drives me away from dating people on a long term basis, it also drove me away from jobs that included actual writing and literature ...

Luck. My oldest memory of the word goes to the casual use of ‘Bad luck’. Then, there’s the memory in which my parents say, ‘Best of Luck’, before exams. Many a times, luck seemed to be the word that filled gaps, in conversations, that people wanted to avoid. There were times when it was used according to the need but those times were rare. Luck has been perhaps one of the most used, if not exploited, word. After a point of time in school, I told my parents to wish me All the Best instead of Good luck or Best of luck. I was uncomfortable with the idea that my performance depends on my luck. I was willing to take the burden of failure on my shoulders or success for that matter. But, to give my power to an unknown third party simply didn’t seem right. Growing up, I began using the word privilege instead of luck. A few years ago, I would have said, “I am really lucky to have such parents.” Now, I choose to say, “I am privileged to have such parents.” The difference is simple. Wh...

The One who Swam with the Fishes , Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, India, HarperCollins Publishers India, 2017, 1st edition, 152 pages, ₹250. Add caption Satyavati has long been seen as a fisherwoman who manipulated her way to the Kuru throne. A selfish unashamed woman who wasn’t satisfied merely by being the queen but made her to-be-born sons the heirs to the throne of Hastinapur instead of crown Prince Devavrata. Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, in her The Girl who Swam with Fishes from the series  Girls of The Mahabharata weaves the story of how a fish-smelling girl of divine birth, raised in a fisher community, finds her way to her Destiny. It shows the story of Matsyagandhi evolving into Satyavati of The Mahabharata . The contemporary storytelling makes the book distinct from the poetic language of an epic. At the same time, the Vedic setting and time period isn't forgotten as the modern storytelling describes a span of year in terms of rain and that of a month in terms o...

One January evening in a small mining town, Pralav decided to meet his old friend. His friend had returned to town after five years. They had known each other since their first day in an engineering college. For the most part of their job, they had been colleagues. At the age of 57, Pralav, feeling quite right in his head after a few months of dullness, wanted to visit his friend in his new house. Or, so he made it seem to his friend. Over the 32 years of his occupation, he had gotten used to whispers that surrounded him. “Mad, he is crazy.” “He is not in his right mind.” “Oh, what was he talking? Is he active these days?” “Just listen to him.” “Poor man.” “It’s a pity.” “His life isn’t even worth living.” PTSD has a strange way of unfolding. Two near death mining accidents later, Pralav was admitted for psyche consult which perhaps would have helped him had mental disorders been an open talk in the town. People assumed him to be a mad man because he needed the consult. The whisp...

Source: www.financialsamurai.com A couple of days after Diwali, a friend called me to talk about his life which included quitting his job and not knowing what to do next. He needed help. And I said, tell me one person who doesn’t these days! The thing is what used to be known as a mid-life crisis has turned into an early life crisis. You do not need to have a steady job you dislike, and that may or may not pay well to feel in your mid-thirties, what's the point of this? You do not need experience to ask yourself, what am I doing with my life, or where is this all going? You do not need to be a grown up thirty something to realise that life doesn’t make any sense and the struggle to go on is way more difficult than imagined. The thing with my generation, the 90’s kids, is that we are a generation of in-betweens. Not surprisingly, we are stuck between the generations that are divided between ‘do what you should do’ and ‘do whatever you want to do’. We are the generation tha...

One day in my M.A. classroom, a professor was teaching Emily Dickinson’s “She Sweeped with Many-Colored Brooms”, and I was scribbling a poem of my own in the last page of my notebook. I stared up, not looking at anything in particular, unaware that my gaze was in direct contact with that of the professor. He asked me, “Do you sweep at home?” “Yes”, I replied. “Girls usually sweep”, was his response. Unable to control the rising adrenaline and noradrenaline within me, I replied without being asked, “I sweep because I live alone, I cannot afford a maid (irrespective of my issues with cheap labour), and I like a clean room. I don’t think it has got anything to do with me being a girl. I am sure, any responsible human would do so.” I do not remember what happened next as my response was ignored. I went back to writing my poem. Do you realise what happened in those few minutes? My developing sense of responsibility was overshadowed by my social sex, my gender, and its role in this societ...

[The following post is a personal and subjective take on the issue. Any offence is deeply regretted, or maybe not. Read it till the end and you might understand why. Forgive me for the irony and paradox used.] We belong to the Indian culture where we respect our elders and love the ones younger than us in our family, by default. I am simply stating a fact, without raising this culture to greatness or demeaning or comparing it to any other culture. If you are born into a conventional (Hindu, as I cannot speak for other religions) Indian family, you know you are supposed to touch the feet of the older members of the (extended) family, join your hands on the road if you meet the neighbouring uncle or aunty, share your personal belongings with your siblings and so on and so forth as gestures of respect and love. If you don’t, then either your parents are blamed for not giving you the correct upbringing or you simply become ‘that’ kid whose lack of such gestures is taken as naughtines...

SRK movie| "Love You Zindagi"|  Alia Bhatt| Gauri Shinde. Don’t do overacting| Some romanticised concept/ optimistic way of looking at life| Don’t disappoint me after Udta Punjab | Oh, she will make it look so good. That’s how I reacted to the first trailer of Dear Zindagi . I was pretty sure that the story won’t be new. I was surer that Gauri Shinde will not disappoint me. I have watched English Vinglish a number of times. It’s in fact my go-to movie, if one may say so, when I am low. It is a movie, but it also reminds me that my understanding of the politics of a house is a general understanding, only unacknowledged by most. With that in mind, I wanted to watch Dear Zindagi , to have the feel of a Gauri Shinde film; a film which is unconventional at the most conventional points and somehow doesn’t go haywire.

At 22, I have realised that people have underestimated the power/fun/peace of being alone. The state of being Alone is often confused with loneliness and hence met with pity or sympathetic remarks. Four years ago when I moved to Delhi, away from my family, I went to shop alone and got myself dinner. Upon my return to the hostel room, my roommate was shocked to know that I spent the day alone. She failed to understand why a person would choose to walk around alone when s/he can have company easily. In fact, if I remember correctly then she often said that she had never known people like me before.

When I visit my parents, I often hear the neighbours saying to my mother, ab to beti aa gayi hai, aapko help mil jaegi. Probably it is a proud moment for the entire ‘Women’ community, but personally it pisses me off. No, I do not mind helping my mother in her chores. I mind when people believe it is the duty of the daughter to do so. When asked, why not the son’s? The most common answer is, Arre wo to nalayak hai, ladke thodi samajhte hain. Personally, I believe not only this statement is offensive to men but also comments about the speaker’s failure in parenting. But then it is the socially accepted characteristics for men to be careless and women to be responsible. Yes. And if it does not offend you, then you are another deluded toy in the game of patriarchy .

Dear family, friends, boyfriend, girlfriend, Padosi, Dur Baithe Rishtedaar etc. If you want to be scared for my life, then please be. If you think there are more rapists than bad drivers on the road, then maybe you’re right. If you think living alone has a greater chance of me being harassed, then maybe you’re right. If you think my partying in a bar is signaling guys for sex, then maybe you’re right.

To all those deleted names and contacts, I deleted you from my phonebook, facebook or any other book About six months ago, for no fault of yours. Someday in the past, you had probably meant a lot I had shared more than just a small talk with you But slowly you were just a name in my phonebook And that suffocated me.

When a book written by an Indian having British English, American slang, Urdu, Hindustani etc. in one narration without a glossary in the end goes on to become an international best seller, one asks why are we still so focused on using the ‘correct English’? When I completed my graduation in English Literature, I asked myself why as Indians we are still so concerned with the British pronunciation and make fun of the Indian English i.e. the Mother Tongue Influence on English. Probably I was a bit too late in thinking about the issue, given my mind is still a victim of colonization, but I asked it nonetheless.

Situation 1, Friend 1: I have not have sex yet but my friends think I have. That makes me manly.  Me: Why does your ‘manliness’ needs to be defined by sexual intercourse? You are just twenty. Friend 1: I don’t define it. They do. A twenty year old virgin girl is cute; a twenty year old virgin boy is gay. Situation 2, Friend 2: I love dressing up as a woman. I want to feel like a woman. But people judge. Me: There are many cross dressers out there. I am sure your confidence will build up eventually and someday you won’t have to hide anymore. Friend 2: No, I do not want to reveal my true identity. After all, I am born a man who loves dressing up as a woman. It’s not very manly you see.

As far as my childhood memory supports me, the two major incidents that made me stick to the television were the September Attacks (9/11) and the Mumbai Attack (26/11). I was terrified, horrified, scared in fact. But then I got used to minor attacks every now and then, only to realize somewhere some kind of a riot, lynch etc is killing people every day. But speaking of the earlier mentioned incidents, where was my support for the suffering people back then? I am in doubt if I supported them at all, because I didn’t take out the family album and colour the photographs.

She knew not how to move the G. I. Joe in the field. She knew not how to sound while pretending to drive the Hotwheels cars. She knew not what it was to play as Superman. She knew not if FIFA would ever install itself in her brain. She was given a Barbie doll. She was given a kitchen set. She was given the role of a mother to play. She was given the role of a homemaker to play. She learned to indulge in kitchen unaware of the tricks to kick a ball. She learned to feed the child and teach the morals and manners. She was alienated from the Trump cards and the army-like scenarios. She knew not how to play a robot car. She knew though that her boy needs one. Source- Google The Barbie dolls, the Hotwheels cars lay in one store in different stacks, Unaware of the stereotypes they helped to form and encourage. The girl wanted pink, the boy wanted blue. If only the toys had any clue.