The Unforgettable Desire

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...

Last Monday five people asked me, “How was your (first/solo) trip?” I found it terribly difficult to answer them. The more I tried to answer, the more it felt wrong. I told every single one of them, “I need time to process the weekend, let me put the experience in words before I talk about it.” It wasn’t acceptable, beyond doubt. They wanted the excitement, the stories of adventure, the amaze-feels of going alone to another place and also, the mishaps, if any. I felt none of that, precisely because I wasn’t on a soul-searching-through-bungee-jumping-trip. I managed to say, “it was perhaps a much needed break to realize that I am not stuck, I am subconsciously choosing to remain stuck.” They responded that that’s the charm of travelling. I wondered if I could call it travelling at all. Going to another place to sleep in all day – does that really count as travelling? The most common emotion that I felt in the four nights-three days’ trip was anger. I felt that I was divided in...

The clock struck three. She hadn’t slept all night; the pain had spread in her limbs. Starting from her right hand wrist, she could feel a physical presence of the pain within her bones that seemed to travel to her shoulders to left hand and then to her legs. She was lying, facing towards her left squeezing her left limbs as much as possible for a little relief, at the edge of her double bed. It was the same bed that had felt her body circling in her sleep, covering every inch of the mattress every night when she had began sleeping alone five years ago in a room that she called hers. If someone asked for proof, she’d point to a wall in the room where her name was angrily scribbled in blocks with a pencil as opposed to her brother’s personalized creative decorations for his room. She was swaying her body, back and forth, lying in the same position.    The speed of swaying depended on her fluctuating belief that it can make the pain go away, as if swaying her body were witchc...

Of course this kindergarten like colouring isn't anything like the charming book cover we sneaked at! When I saw a book named World’s Greatest Love Stories in my house library, I giggled mischievously. It was a hard bound book, with an elegant purple jacket on which ‘Love Stories’ was written in bright pink italics. I giggled because I thought, “Haww! Papa bought love stories.” Not only did he buy it, he placed it in a shelf where I could access it. I wanted to read it because I was not supposed to read it. When I picked up Romeo and Juliet in school library, the librarian took it away. She stared at me before smiling and saying, “Choose another book, this one’s not for you.” Disheartened, I thought, “It’s not for me because it is about love.” Somehow in the collective consciousness of my friends and me, Romeo and Juliet had settled itself as the greatest love story. You see, I did not want to read love stories because I knew what they were. Rather, I wanted to read them...

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 ...

There was this professor by the name Dr GR Taneja. He did not teach me. He retired from my college, in Delhi University, a year before my admission. I met him once, in the beginning of the second year of my graduation. I was waiting outside the principal’s chamber with a friend to get the permission for conducting the auditions for our theatre group. I did not know Professor Taneja then. I had heard a lot about him from my seniors. On that uneventful day, he was just a man who cracked jokes about the principal we mutually disliked. It was an awkward, yet funny moment. The moment passed, so did years. Four years later, during the final semester of M.A., I came across his name. I was working on a project report on a couple of Salman Rushdie’s works. As my mind boggled with a hundred articles/newspaper reviews/literary papers and their bibliographies, I saw a book by the name – The Novels of Salman Rushdie . It had GR Taneja as one of its authors. It was an exciting moment. Among a...

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 ...