The Unforgettable Desire

In a world where mental health is being acknowledged, Where people are willing to hear stories, Hoping it will help the storyteller to live that day, Sleep that night, wake up the next morning, Without the thought of killing himself/herself; In a world where people are trying to understand, The beginnings of anxiety or depression, And ways to cope with it, My mind shouts, “Screw you.” For as far as my memory allows, I remember the desire in my 8-year-old heart, I remember the desire to die. It wasn’t a desire that came in the pre-teen years, When I began believing no one understands me in this world. It was a desire that I truly wished to be true, So I asked my then believed ‘god’, To give me end stage brain cancer, On the days that I cried as well as when I laughed. When I was diagnosed with initial stage of cancer, I began believing that there is perhaps someone out there, Who heard my voice and responded wisely, To my unthoughtful, pe...

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...

Cancer. It gives people the scare. Leukemia, not so much because it’s not a common term. It gave my father a scare because he had heard the term in the movie Akhiyon ki Jharakon Se . It gave him the scare because the 1978 movie showed that Leukemia had no cure. Thirty years later, little did he know that his much-loved daughter will be diagnosed with the same. As for my mother, I don’t know how she felt. If I ask her today, I don’t think she will answer my question. She’s probably one of those people, who can keep their emotions in check when the time demands them to act. My brother’s Class 10 board exam results were out. He says that I was the one who called him to declare his results, that he had secured the second position in his class. I do not have the memory. Although I imagine being immensely happy while shouting his results on phone. I do not remember the date when I was told the name of the disease, whose symptoms had made me slowly immovable over the course of six months. ...

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...

“At times like these when life is getting me down And world seems like it’s gonna end-ship There’s atleast one power that we both still have And that’s the power of Friendship." - Duet, The Flash Two and a half years ago I began deconstructing the idea of the friendship that I so strongly believed in while growing up. I had put friendship on the highest pedestal of relationships. With the deconstruction, I am now convinced that I no longer have friends. I have people with whom I bond not as a whole but in pieces. A few days ago, when my brother asked me whether or not I have that one friend who I can tell everything that’s going on within me, I told him, “I have no one. I deal with my problems alone, because that’s how it’s always been for me.” Then I added that I have some people but I don’t really share all my problems, I sort of never have had. I had stopped thinking about friends or the lack thereof till last night when my first roommate, after I moved out of ...

Ray, P. (1995). Yajnaseni (15 ed.). (P. Bhattacharya, Trans.) New Delhi: Rupa Publications India Pvt . Ltd. Pratibha Ray’s Yajnaseni ― an epistolary novel, beginning at the end and ending at the beginning ― tells the tale of the most complex epic of all times by turning the victim into a survivor, by bringing the marginal woman to the centre. Draupadi is perhaps a character who has carried the weight of every single patriarchal injustice towards women. The beautiful dark-skinned princess born from a sacrificial fire with the purpose of establishing dharma on Earth had been a victim of male gaze, lust, arrogance and ego, beginning from the Kauravas to Pandavas. “Despite someone else being the root of all causes, they emptied the entire cup of blame on my head and went away – leaving me thus at death’s door. (2)” Yajnaseni , retells the Mahabharata from the perspective of Krishnaa. It is her story of womanhood, for she follows every act of Dharma - of being a wife divide...

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 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...

I am the woman who breaks families. Sita, Draupadi, Helen of Troy and the likes of them, the ones who are known to have triggered wars so tragic and glorious that poets, singers, storytellers Couldn’t help themselves but keep those women alive ages after their lifetime. No war was their fault. If something has to be blamed, how about the fragile male ego? Those wars, - they were the wars of testosterone. - they were to prove the right over wrong. - they were to show the prince charming from ugly frog. - they were to let men drown in their ego. - they were to pump up the unquestioned pride. - they were to limit women into boundaries. - they had nothing to do with women. - they were about men and their conquests. I am no Sita, no Draupadi, no Helen I am a woman who breaks families, for real. I make married women from generations before feel useless. I ask them, how could they tolerate what was done to them? I ask them, why did they n...

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...