There are all types of loss

Sometimes it takes a great tragedy for one to see what reality looks like. Because, in the aftermath of unhappiness and despair and tears, the rubble starts clearing slowly, and truths emerge. Suddenly you realise that people have changed, friendships have matured, and some folks have just moved away. Sometimes you realise that some haven't been around for the longest time but that in our constant need to maintain normalcy, we have been consciously overlooking the fact.

This is a loss of innocence and childhood. It's disturbing and unsettling and it's not the kind of thing that you want to think about. But the truth is, as the cliche goes, we live and we learn. And the less we cling on to willful self-delusion, the better it is for our mental well-being and the truer we are being to ourselves.

For the lies we tell ourselves are often the most involved and are well crafted to protect us, but they won't save us when the crap hits the fan. Instead, they beget expectations, which, as we all know, bring pain. More than that, they beget unhealthy, half-baked relationships based on old truths and private jokes, little vignettes that have now faded away into memory. Some friendships, it seems, die a natural death -- it's sad, but that doesn't mean that what was was not true, nor does it mean that the same friends are now terrible people. It just means that things have changed. And it would be wise and enlightened to remember that without bitterness or regret,

On being shape eke good with yourself

Life sure is a funny thing. It speeds by, you speed with it, and you don't realise how much it changes inside of you with its passing.

Today an old friend Whatsapped me about her wedding -- excitedly, we discussed plans, places, outfits, dance routines. I remembered that it was just a little over 365*3 days ago that we sat on our hostel-room beds in the college hostel, discussing boys, marriage, and life. We were young, literally jobless, and in that beautiful bubble that is university life. The world and we were yet to meet. I meet girls that I went to school with, on the streets of the city. Some are wearing splashy new rings on their fingers, others are sporting kids, like, multiple kids. After the requisite cooing, it always strikes me hard, how they have a life that is completely different to my relatively unencumbered existence. This feeling magnifies when I see their photos of kids' birthdays. Kids' birthdays. A few years ago, those existed only in photo albums of ourselves that our parents had preserved with careful love.

Assessing life is always mildly frightening -- you see your achievements, but you also can't help but see the many, many, many things you still have to struggle through. Higher studies, marriage, other adult-life-related bothersome details that don't bear thinking about on this gloomy Saturday in Colombo. But most of all, if I ever actually sit down and think about my life, I see how I have grown. And it's kind of surprising. I never used to do that before. I never read that particular author before. When did I start caring about Syria? When did I suddenly develop an interest in the Kuiper Belt that holds that icy dwarf planets in our solar system? What the frick.

It's weird. But then, I guess that's just life. Have come to realise that the thing that matters the most is if you like the person you've become/are becoming. Sometimes that takes a little more digging deep into the stuff souls are made of, but if you can actually do that, if you take the time off social media and growing up and being cool to actually do that, and you realise that, yes, I'm cool with this strange but pretty freaking wonderful individual occupying skinny limbs and female balding well-hidden by a fringe, then you're shape eke good.

The happiness space

"You need to be happy with yourself to be happy with other people", a smart and wonderful person said today. This was amid a relatively philosophical discussion, and it stopped me in my ruminative tracks, as it were. Happy with yourself. I have always been happy with myself, at least, for as long as I remember -- those days, when I was asked if I was content, I would immediately say yes, much to everyone else's surprise. Not many people seemed happy with their lot in Life.

To say that has changed seems to signal a shift in the planes of my existence. Perhaps this discontent signifies that we have started challenging ourselves unnecessarily, creating discontent. Or that we have become older, with more responsibilities and more reasons to realise how much life sucks, and how unfair this whole damn thing is to all but a lucky few.

But mostly I think it's because we rob ourselves of our simplicity -- we pack on other things. We strap on expectations of others, societal norms, "personal improvement", work "goals", career "aspirations", and we lose sight of important things, like our inner peace. And the ability to have a quiet moment.

And worse, we make lacklustre decisions that we are verree likely to regret later. They are not bad or foolish decisions, just awfully boring, seemingly "necessary" ones. These often leave us muddling through to "finish up", even if we just want to say screw it, I'm not doing this crap.

But to give our sad selves some credit, it seems that as we grow older, the world around us, the way our attachments change in their own spheres, the awareness of aging and the terrible bloody banality of have-to-do-no social engagements (peppered with inane questions and ridiculous small-talk) slowly attack our IP. Or perhaps it is our lack of IP that causes us to be that affected by this agglomerated melancholy.

I suppose the bottom line is that we have to build our own happiness. I feel lists might help, and organization. Smiling at yourself and telling yourself that no, you are prettier than them, and that no, you started this, now you'll finish it. It means beating down the negative sentiments that dog us about our incompetence, unacceptability, unloveability, undesirability, etc. And I really think it entails a whole lot of not taking yourself too seriously, and not taking all but a very few very seriously.

 It's a bit of an effort, but if we can achieve (or re-achieve) that happiness with who we are, mad flaws and all, we might find that our reactions to those nasty little curve balls Life seems to throw at us are better, more positive, and definitely simpler. We might find that we no longer walk around with bright smile and a slightly cloudy heart (note the clever weather analogy).

If you still can't find that happinness, though, looks like the helpful folk at freaking wikipedia are willing to lend a happy hand:

http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Happy-Being-Yourself

Move over, all existential philosophers who ever wrote tomes on how to be happy with oneself. Wikhow will put all you fellows to shame.

Thoughts over tea

Have been meeting some different types recently, due to some new developments in life. Quite a few of them work in NGOs and research organizations -- the horrors that well-heeled corporates shudder at. Low pay! Humanitarian aid! Run! :)

One of these is a tiny young woman who's currently involved in community rehabilitation in Jaffna. She sat across us at the table in that ragged canteen as we, a motley group of 20-somethings from weird and wonderful walks of life, discussed life, love and, well, boys, over hot tea and helapa. I freaking love helapa. She told us about her work in the North and about how words can barely express how beautiful the land is, and how interesting and open the people are. She's wiry and energetic and as she spoke with her hands flying and her eyes glittering (seriously), you could see how excited she was about it, how enthralled by the sheer awesomeness of the life she's living.

While a part of me was truly envious that you could be so in love with what you do, a part of me was fascinated -- what is it like to be so passionate about something? 

I am cuckoo alone.

These few days...I have been feeling mildly psychotic. Psychotic not in terms of actual psychosis but in the sense that I feel my being is being slowly pulled in two dozen different directions at the same time, each requiring a specific, measured, and urgent amount of energy and success to be achieved. This feels like some noxious by-product of growing up and turning adult, and doing all the things "you're supposed to do."

Through it all, however, I have come to the happy conclusion that not only can you please everybody, including, very much, yourself, you also cannot count on everyone being as understanding about your not meeting expectations as YOU would be, were they in the same circumstances. All that 'be kind because everyone is fighting a harder plan' biz seems to be a bunkum in real life. I suppose it's more difficult to acclimatize to the fact when you generally make an effort to be "the understanding friend."

Also, success has suddenly become an internally-measured factor. Yes, let's just all open up about it -- for the greater part of our lives, success is as how the world sees you --parents, teachers, peers. If they are successful enough in inculcating their well-meaning ideas of how successful you should be, soon you absorb it in to your world view..and voila! Le stress!

Sometimes I wonder how some people balance. Especially those super mom types with irritating husbands and crying children and nagging in-laws and let's-meet-up-for-high-tea-at-Galle-Face-Hotel lady friends. I suppose they have learned the lesson of how to achieve enough inner peace and calm to manage life and all its madness. To think I used to laugh at folk who used that cliched phrase, "24 hours in not enough." Now I don't know if I wish there were more than 24 hours or if I'm glad because the requisite hours of rest allow everyone to shut their traps, including my inner psycho goddess. Who I'm sure is gorgeous and well-educated, but can turn in to a raving lunatic in constant PMS mood sometimes.

"My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect, and I, too, speak with with thee wisely and cautiously. And yet I am mad. But I mask my madness. I would be mad alone."

The Madman, Khalil Gibran.

Ispot on, old chap.

Making it count

I just stumbled across a blog post by a friend -- a good friend, in fact, someone I haven't had a nice. long jaw with in a long time. She says that she "stumled upon" her life's passion, and goes on to say how nice that is, given that so many search for what they want to do for so long. This kind of reassured me.

Because I logged on because I was feeling decidedly maudlin, the sort of gigantic rain-cloud-suddenly-above-my-head feeling that I don't usually allow to settle on me for too long. Any number of reasons are behind this, I know; new work hours, change, and overall, a general feeling of being chronically unable to make good decisions and get my shit together in a constructive way.

My editor at work has the most interesting desk--she travels extensively and has a miniature totem pole-like thing sitting next to a colurful creamic bowl that looks like something Machu Pichu would have in abundance. Around her desk are little inspirational quotes, printed out neatly and pinned to the spongy fabric of her workstation. One says, "If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right." This has, for some reason, been haunting me over the past few days.

Perhaps the greatest fear we have is that, through our sheer inability to make use of it, our much-touted potential will go waste. Because everybody obviously has greatness, that much you have to believe...we may not all be created "equal" but we surely all have potential...even the child with Down's Syndrome or the torso-only beggar who drags himself through the streets of dirty Colombo. It's always just a case of tapping that potential, which in turn would depend on the tools one has to do so.

Some of us have hardly any tools, but strive and find more. Some have, and make maximum use of. Others, just are. They don't seek, they don't maximize, they "go with the flow" (ye grand excuse) and "hope for the best" (ye second grand excuse) and watch while Life takes them wherever she wills. At the end of the day, these people, who are really cowards in pretty clothes, can always say that things happen for a reason and that if they didn't make up to all they could have been, well that must be Karma, no?


 

People

Contrary to popular belief, there are a few people I don't like! I go through life trying to keep and open mind, but there are a few, treasured human beings who REALLY challenge my attempts to give them a fair chance in life.

However, considering them, I feel bad. Pity may be an overly magnanimous emotion but, you have to feel something for people who don't have people. Because they are out there. They don't have friends, because they can't. Because they can't open up to difference, because they can't embrace the fact that people can be strange, but still good. Because they lack that essential ability to love someone other than yourself.

How much they miss out on.

Because they achieve; great things, even. They "succeed" in life, out-classing, out-running, striving for "perfection" (which to me will always be bloody elusive as hell), improving always, seeking the perfect degree, the perfect job. But they never...bond. Or they bond, with "the agenda", that all-purpose manifesto of requirements that an individual must have to qualify to be part of the circle. '

I have been thinking, on the brink as I am of a Big Step, about people, friends and achievement, the dreaded "What do I do with life?"-type internal monologues.
 Come to a few hazy conclusions, I have; primary among which is that being happy is very, very important. Being positive towards people is important. Not holding grudges helps a lot in life. Looking for the best in people aids in reducing manic anger-related episodes. Hatred should be, well, dropped. And you should do the best for yourself, remembering always that there are people around you for a reason, to live with, to help, to share a joke or a drink or a joint or a kiss or a hug or a smile. It's not about being a peachy, peace-loving hippie, it's about being able to talk to that hippie and be a friend to him.

Because in the end, success is necessary, money is essential and Life is serious, but if you can't find love and friendship among the 7 billion people who share your life-space, you really must question yourself about whether you have lived at all.

Atlas Mode

I love talking to my friends. Everyone has so much perspective to bring to life, to ideas, to stick-in-the-mind opinions. Today, one nudged opened the door of my mind a little bit more.

My strong feminist ideologies have never been a secret, ahem, and I think I like to go through life advocating women's rights and be-moaning a woman's manifold burdens, but also very blissfully ignoring the very real pressures and burdens men have to bear. Like for instance, the Hunter-Gatherer/Caveman/Provider ideal.

Especially in our very South Asian context, the "man of the family" has the Atlas-like burden of "supporting" everyone-the poor unmarried sister, the kids, the distant relative from the South, the painter who used to work for his father, the errant son, the aging mother etc. It is expected of him to perform, provide, put aside all other personal aspirations and internalize this role. Because if you fail, then, aiyo, he didn't do right by the family no. The wife. The mother-in-law.

"It's  a fucking burden" says my friend grimly, just turned 30, graphic designer, 1 year old son, plagued by familial problems.

But, like women have internalized the roles of home and hearth, men have internalized the caveman role. And I can't help but think that not only does this seem  to create a certain balance in the gender role universe but also that it is a facet of South Asian femininity taken for granted by women. Women are expected to run households, slave over them even but not to uphold them. The economic downturn of a family is generally never really pegged on a woman, but rather the man's inability to do his duties.

Seems to me there are all kinds of problems, all kind of  burdens and that the Greek philosopher got it spot on in advice that is very hard to follow :


"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle." - Plato 

For a special friend

Creepy though that may sound, this is for a special friend who turns an year older today. You know who you are, bitch :)

I decided against a Facebook post because it seems like personal wishes should stay that way, personal. And I have become progressively bad with mailing cards, with age.

I think I have always been blessed when it comes to people. Almost a quarter down my life (holy CRAP) I can safely say that I have met a wide variety of people whom I have loved, liked, avidly disliked and just been plain amused by. This post is dedicated to, however, someone who I consider to be a a bit of a twin soul. I must say we're quite different, and that often the world is viewed in a very different way by the both of us. But, there is something uncanny and yet, comforting in having someone who knows exactly WHAT you mean, without requiring the footnotes. Complete understanding is highly under-rated.

Time has fled and it's been more than an year since we last met, and much has changed. People, places, circumstances once familiar are now basically shelved under "Hey remember when...?". And yet, a sister of the heart remains that, regardless of the time and space that comes between.

A sister of the heart remains a sister of the heart.

So happy birthdays jangi :)

Eating bad fruit

I think that giving someone you don’t particularly like, a chance, is very difficult to do. It’s an expense of emotional energy the point of which you always doubt because at the back of your mind the questions linger and pop out at your consciousness;

“Would she do the same for me?”

“Is he just using me, like always?”

“Is this just going to be another time when I bang my head and mutter ‘Should have seen that coming, again!’?”

It’s like eating bad fruit; you have to have a certain degree of rare courage to eat a bad fruit, spit it out, and then calmly pick up another one and proceed to peel it. I want to check the fruit, re-check it, poke at it with my knife, hold it up under the harsh glare of the fluorescent light in the kitchen. I don’t want to eat the bad fruit again, and feel that bad taste in my mouth again. I don’t want to feel like a fool who gets had, over and over again. The fool who the not-so-foolish and the hopelessly cynical turn to and gloat at, “I told you not to trust her again”.

But I always think, life is so short and so full of mistakes. I am so full of mistakes. My soul is contaminated as it is with my personal failings and embarrassing little un-Christian habits. Why darken another corner of my soul with a grudge? Because that’s what holding things against someone does. It discolours your heart a little. It taps in to your being’s well of negative energy, and draws forth.

So much easier on the breathing then, to let in. Not trust, maybe, not even get too close to. But to let in. To not just be civil to on a superficial level but find it in your heart to stop clutching at a dislike and to genuinely allow that person in to your space. I won’t be best friends, I won’t even let you be best friends, but I won’t hesitate to talk honestly, to help willingly and to genuinely take joy in the good that comes your way.

I will always doubt but I will not let that doubt get the better of me

. I, in fact, am trying to be better than that.

Smile like you mean it

It's very easy to appear happy. You just have to make up your mind and decide to wallow no longer. The thing is that sometimes people would rather you carried on this pretence of "all izz well", rather that crying and howling and generally being tetchy with the rest of the universe.

Isn't it a little sad that people who matter to you would rather be comfortable around the carefully controlled You rather than the genuinely troubled, moody but authentic nonetheless You?

Shouldn't the important people, at least, want you to be tetchy is the world is giving you a bit of a hard time?

Premonition

Something tells me next week is going to be shitty.Foe one thing, this entry sounds stupid enough but I'm making so many irritating tyops it's like I never got past 6the Grade English in school.

I mucked up a friend issue, something I manage to avoid doing usually...and I didn't realise that it would have the far-reaching consequences it would have. I, very nicely and as I so often tend to do, thought only of my self.

it also sucks because I can't tell the person I want to tell about it because of the "need-to-know" nature of the damned thing...now I finally understand the meaning of that phrase in all those CIA-related movies and books I used to watch and read.

Plus I managed to let the Aqua Guard run over, spilling precious water and yeah that's it. So basically, our end conclusion here is that the whole thing, including this bloody entry, is stupid.

let'see how the week turns out.

Durga Puja-Bengali Style

Went for a Durga Puja today. The 10-day-long puja is part of the Dussera celebrations of the Bengali community. The whole festival culminates in the immersion of the statue of the Goddess Durga in water. The Bengalis apparently give more importance to Parvati-considered by some to be the Mother Goddess-as compared to the South Indian Tamils in whose festivals Parvati (and her other form Durga and Kali the Goddess of destruction) hardly feature. Durga is said to be the wife of Lord Shiva, and mother of Ganesha (The Remover of Obstacle and God of wisdom), Karthik, Lakshmi and Saraswathi .The family-tree of the Hindu Pantheon is complicating and varies a lot depending on who from WHERE is telling the tale. Various communities differ in the importance given to each God and Goddess.

This Durga Puja in Bangalore was organized by the Bengal Association here. Almost 4-5 lakh Bengalis live in Bangalore which is a startlingly large number for me the small-islander! Ha ha J The vast ground near Ul-Soor lake where the puja is held is full of non-Kannadiga-looking, fair, aquiline-nose people speaking with a lot of o’s and sho’s in their speech in an accent I personally find rather cute.

The main marquee has a big stage set up at the front where the 5 statues of Durga and her children set in a Gold painted frame worked with frieze-like designs. The statues are made of mud from the banks of the Ganga delta…now that is a lot of mud. HOWEVER as D points out, it goes back to where it came through the immersion of the statue in the lake J Smart hai na?

Durga herself is a slightly scary lady with kohl-ed eyes and ten hands holding a number of frightening and unfeminine things like for instance, a spear. She sits atop a lion-her vehicle-and is trampling a hideous, green, grimacing demon. Ganesha her son-supposedly created from the saffron off her own body-is a pink-bellied, elephant-headed God with the rat as his vehicle. Lakshmi is smaller version of Durga with a decidedly Hedwig-esque owl as her transport while Saraswati keeping in tune (haha!) with being the Goddess of Music has a sitar in her hands and a delicate swan at her feet. Karthik’s aight.

We have yummy Bengali food in the lunch tent-kichri, which is a mixture of rice, dhal and spices like Jheera, an Aloo and Gourd curry and a pineapple “chutney” which is such that if I was at home I would have had it for dessert with cream ;) We have rasgollah, a white version of the Gulab Jamun for dessert (which is OF COURSE put right into the plate with the other food) but I still hold out that Gulab Jamuns are the yummiest sweets in India.

The rest of the stalls house everything from books to a Rajasthani home-made pickle stall with MANGOE pickle etc. Yummy stuff which they let us taste with small, wooden spoons. I go all tourist and take a million picture, which calls for hastily-covered snickering by my so-called friends!

The event is quite obviously thee place for the Bengali youth in Bangi to ahem “socialise” and generally check out the market for prospectives. We give a coochy’ing couple their privacy and sit down in the main tent to gossip and exchange myths.

Rosh is a Tamillian and D a Bong (As the Bengalis are called). They have different versions on seemingly every myth. We talk about the hilly regions of Uttaranchal, the pollution that’s set into the picturesque tourist town of Darjeeling and taking cold-water baths from the Ganges at some unearthly damn hour in the morning. It just makes me want to visit these places so badly.

I love my little country with it’s 20 million nut jobs and I know I haven’t seen half of what Sri Lanka offers to the anyone who bothers to look but here, in India, away from stupid restrictions like transport and friends who think where you’re going is duh or people worrying about their other holidays, I seem to have more scope to travel wherever I want to go. And the choices are literally endless.

We then decide to have paan. Paan is basically betel leaf wrapped around well a lot of things including a lot of sweet stuff. That might not be too clear a description I’m afraid. I’ve had it once and although it was an interesting experience it tasted decidedly leafy. This time my God. Yummy. The minute you crung down on the bright green outer covering an explosion of tastes just bursts in your mouth-leaf, sugar, bitter, sour. Paan uncle is thrilled when I ask him if I can take a few pictures of him and the stall. This is the perfect ending to a great afternoon. Chewing on the paan is a companionable, friendly business which leaves more than just the after-taste of betel leaf and sugar on your tongue. Three buddies eating their paan has a simple, almost village-esque feeling to it.

We take off. This has been fun :)

The Mad guy and the Bournvita

There's apparently a mad guy-the politically correct terms I think would be deranged individual or mentally unstable individual- roaming around "Loafer's Lane", the quintessential road opposite college where everyone basically...loafs.

When K was telling us about it today she added that he slapped our friend S in the face yesterday, in front of the college gates. The concept of unholy mirth overtook me and I snorted only to realize that shit! This wasn't supposed to be funny!
But all throughout the harrowing story, my mouth was twitching....even during the part where she told us S started crying, poor thing. No really, poor thing....S is an extremely sweet person, she comes up to me everyday and gives me a BIG bear hug, and she's all of 4 feet :)

I often have these times when something very serious is being said, and I can't stop laughing...needless to say, no one shares in my humour. It's a bit uncomfortable actually!

Now,I'm torn between going down Loafer's and buying that essential bottle of Bournevita OR taking a bath, blaming it on the mad man and just staying in.

The choices of life I tell you.

Phew!

phew! finally on the Blogsphere or whatever the heck it's called. I think I'll dedicate my inaugural post to a number of things. Here goes:

a. new friends.New ideas. New ways to realise what the ef is wrong with you.very supportive.pushes you when required. death threats are delivered and company is offered when you gotta eat lunch alone.

b.love. QUITE complicated BUT life wouldn't be half as fun without it and *heavy corn alert* it does something to you.Quite against your will.

c.Chicken burgers.yummy!

d.Technology. Thank you Thank you GOD for the Internet.

e.Bad jokes. " I'm going to the Loo, coming?".

"No, you go pass Urine, I'll pass". HA HA HA!!

whaa-at?!!!!!!

f. Old friends.They know you and they still wanna hang out with you. AND they're willing to help you drag yourself out of whatever muddle you've landed yourself in.if that isn't a miracle...

g. God. yes I know he's there. I don't know about the eternal kingdom or about the fires of damnation but he's there alright. And right now he's giving me the fish eye.

h.Blueberry Philadelphia Cream Cheesecake. I haven't had thee in along time but Oh! how I miss thee!!