The Unforgettable Desire

Being born in a family of book lovers, I was taught not to judge a book by its cover at an early stage. So I didn’t. Instead I judged the book by how its contents looked. For example, if the book does not have colorful pictures or large font, then it simply wasn’t my type. I held no fascination for novels, I was happy in my little world of Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha Comics, Pinky, Chacha Chaudhury etc. The first novel that I finally dared to read with its small font, at the age of 13, was One Night@ The Call Centre . Since then I have taken pride in saying that I did not have a good start into the world of novels and do not let anyone convince me otherwise. The journey then on must have been good enough because now I wait desperately to lay my hands on the tiny fonts of my Literature books without any prejudices.

What do you do, when your girl friend and you are walking down the street at 10.30PM and are approached by bikers who pretend to need directions? What do you do when an auto-wallah follows you for more than a kilometer despite your announcement of not wanting the ride? What do you do when the men suddenly speed their bike directly at you? What do you do when they shout “hey baby, chalti kya?” as they pass by? What do you do when men in their cars tend to go in the wrong direction while ogling you?

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.

“So you and I share the same city after five years and you feel the need to check the continuously pinging Lumia of yours?” Guiltily, I switched off my internet and put the phone back in my pocket. And together, my high school best friend and I set out to write the new chapter of my life, Hyderabad Diaries.

“When you try your best, but you don’t succeed When you get what you want, but not what you need…” She broke down in the middle of the road, managed to drag her body to the pavement by the side. The passersby saw the tears that streamed down her face. And the voice on the other side of the phone said, why do you always need someone to be there for you? She wanted to shout out loud, because I am failing to pull myself together on my own. I am trying. But I can’t. Instead she stayed mum. People had always tagged her brave and strong. People still do. But even the strongest heart has its secrets.

"When she was just a girl she expected the world..." Lost in the world of her teenage love, the beautiful love that did not last long, she listened to the 'Paradise' that stole her heart. She knew how much she has grown as a person in the last six years, she knew what it is to fall in love. It isn't about hearts and roses. It is about responsibilities, compromises, understanding and a lot more without losing one's own individuality. She never got into a relationship again. At times she did want to, but she couldn't gather the courage to get someone else involved in her life when she was a total disaster. 

As she looked towards her left, she saw him approaching her from the corner of the street. At the sight of him, she smiled. Blushed in fact. Her anger from the previous night was gone. She couldn’t recall a single word from the lecture she had mentally prepared and rehearsed, in an attempt to explain him where the two of them were wrong in their latest argument. But there she was, unable to control the hormones that danced at the sight of him.

The need to move on.. The need to let go.. Ever since I broke down that night, I have been doing a lot of thinking. Not really. I have been avoiding thinking. That was the worst I could have seen of myself. I had never thrown things. Every time I am angry, I remind myself that I can not break things. But that night I did. But I wasn't angry. I wasn't sad. I was broken. He said why am I letting a third person come between us. But wasn't he the one who brought her in? He makes it seem as if I am wrong. But I wasn't. He should have considered how I feel. He did. But he did it the wrong way. He lied.

Even though I long for changes, I am not very good at adapting to them. When I woke up this morning with my usual irate mood, I chose to listen to the songs of the theatre society of my former college. As the songs soothed my mind, I got a sinking realization that nobody around me is going to call me Cadbury here in Hyderabad. Happiness is… being called Cadbury. Sadness is… not having the people around who called me so.

The wave of pseudo feminism has certainly sabotaged half of the relationships known to the humankind. Yes, we live in a patriarchal society. Yes, we need to make our own stands without bending to the rules of patriarchy. But when we stand staunchly in our positions letting the men in the society make their compromises and sacrifices if they want to be with us, we are then giving way to matriarchy. And it is definitely not feminism.

When you do not have anyone’s consent for a physical relationship and still go on with it, it’s a rape. But what do you say it when you have the consent and yet you’re called a rapist. With the frequent news of rapes that are happening every hour in this country, can we believe in a man who has been falsely accused of being a rapist? Who do we choose to believe? Who becomes the victim here? The man or the woman?

‘Back then happiness was a choice because reciprocation wasn’t a necessity.’ It took me a re-reading of a few treasured books from my teenage collection to come to this conclusion. Also the readings made me realize how badly I had misjudged the books when I was 17. I am simply happy about the fact that the one book I had loved the most in those years remains my favorite in its own way even today. Back then I saw it merely as a story of love lost and found and lost again. But today when I finished the book, The Best of Me had a lot more to it than love.  Beyond the love story of the protagonists, it served as a reminder of the importance of human relationships and the purpose of one’s life in reality. In my previous reading, I had not noticed how much importance was given to the surname of the characters which ultimately decided their fate. The struggle in the capitalist world though vaguely mentioned was there nonetheless. Even though love story is what Nicholas Sparks...

He- A terrible storm? She- It passed. He- A special secret place? She- It vanished. He- When I was lost..? She- Couple of weeks later I found my way. He- Something funny that happened to me... She- Is a topic I will write about when it happens. He- What I know about the ocean... She- Is nothing because i did not pay enough attention in my geography class. He- I dont understand why... She- People say love is liberating when all they do is restrict it. He- Creepy, crawly things.. She- are always misunderstood. He- Talk about being scared! She- Take chances and then there's nothing to talk about. He- If only I would have listened! She- Then I would have been society's robot. He- What I have broken or lost that belongs to someone else? She- It was his heart. He- Have I done something no one else has done? She- People keep secrets. I wouldn't know. He- My first encounter with bully She- Never had any. He- Morning madness She- Also known as m...

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.

Did the title to this post seem problematic to you? If not, then think again. It had hardly been a month in Delhi and my friends from school started calling me Dilli-wali. Unaware whether it was a compliment or a comment, I ignored it and tried to fight the depression I was going through in the first month of my college because I couldn’t accept the people I met. I barely knew anyone. I was homesick. And people at home, Odisha, called me Dilli-wali. The Delhites called me south Indian. And there I was lying in the bed of my tiny rented room, sharing it with two strangers who were quite contrary to me in nature, thinking about the tags that I have been given. With my under graduate days coming to an end, I am proud to say that I survived three years in Delhi. Not that it’s a bad city to be in, but it gets quite chaotic in one’s head when one comes from a small town. But then, when is the human mind at peace? In these three years I have wondered more than often, have I changed ...

When you have been in continuous physical pain for 6 months, watched House MD and related to every bit about pain that’s mentioned in it, thought about the meaninglessness and absurdity of your life and lost every hope to be happy again in such a world, then you definitely have stepped into the world of Pessimism. Given my history of blogging, people find me quite optimistic. My cancer and how I fought it had been my basic topic for years, making me seem brave. But well I am not as brave as they thought. I broke down the very moment when I couldn’t take the pain anymore and my optimism lost its way through that pain. So there I was, spending most of the day in my bed, trying to stay away from people as much as possible, avoiding calls and texts from friends. This friend that I am going to write about, he found me in 2011. The journey from being strangers to closest of friends was a short one, with lots of emotional ups and downs. We shared the common interest of writing and o...

In my first year, I was shocked by the attitude of the people in the ‘city of my dreams’. In my second year, I was shattered as my beautiful childhood seemed no more than a big lie. In my third year, I was devastated failing to accept the meaninglessness of life and the sorry state of the country I live in. If I am asked someday about my graduation, then I would speak the aforementioned lines to define it. These lines do not provide the beauty that Literature is assigned with; the beauty that can be seen and appreciated even by the non-literati. But here I am whining about the life literature gave me. More than often I have said to my friends that literature has the ability to ruin one’s life no matter how much s/he romanticizes it; the life in which one is happy obsessing about the self in the tiny bubble that s/he thinks to be the entire world. But am I really upset about it? After the result of my board examination was out, I went to my Dad and said that I wanted to pursu...

I was 14 when I was diagnosed with PRE-B-ACUTE LYMPHOBLASTIC LEUKEMIA at Christian Medical College and Hospital, Vellore. It was a hard time for my parents to manage a household in an unknown city where an unfamiliar tongue was in power where as I enjoyed all the luxuries of a private room in the pediatric ward. But then came my aunt with her one year old daughter, Anusha, to my parent’s rescue. She managed the household chores which mainly included preparing the dishes that I demanded, my Dad took care of the official paper work at the hospital and my Mom somehow managed to handle my tantrums in ward. Becoming a doctor was never my ambition, not even for the essay writing in school. But my stay in Vellore among all the doctors somehow inspired me to become one even though I sucked at biology.  I went back to school, chose biology as my main paper in high school and I am glad that I could at least get a first division in the board exam. By the end of my schooling, I knew very...

I don’t quite remember the days when I suffered from cancer. I ended up romanticizing them as they brought the greater Good to my life. If optimism was my weapon then, I am left weaponless now. In introspection, I have now come to believe that the only reason that I lasted the crucial period of my chemotherapy was because for the most part I had doctors, nurses, sick people and more sick people around me. What I mean to say here is that, I had no or very few Normal people who cared for me enough to give me a list of do(s) and don’t(s) or lectures about self care. When people ask, 'How are you?', they do not really want an answer. Well in my case, they simply seek for an opportunity to let me know how careless I am or have been. I feel bad that they use even an ounce of their energy to say things to me because by now I am skilled in the art of shutting my ears to people I don’t want to hear. People mean good, at the same time they mean nothing at all. The people I meet eve...