I killed the love of my life.

T.
That's what i used to call him.
He was invariably the first person on my mind when i woke up, and the last before i went to bed.
He changed my life in ways i can't begin to recount, and he made me what i am.

He was the one person i could do anything for, live and die for.
He gave me hope, made me feel secure. The one person who i thought truly cared, and always would.

We had our issues, we used to fight. Everyone does. Perhaps we did that a little more than was healthy.
But then we had our good times too. We stay in different cities, but i would go to him or he would come over and for a few days, he would define my existence, be my world.
When we were together, i would have eyes only for him. The smallest of things would bring a smile to my face.

Just looking at him and knowing how much we loved each other seemed to be enough. He was the reason i lived, warding off the plague of existentialism.

His love was enough. That was all i really wanted.
His love, the knowledge that he was mine. Only mine.
And then he took it all away.

I got a call from him the night before, apparently a mistake, and i heard him make out and then have sex with this girl. Heard every word that was once said to me being repeated for a different girl.
He said he did it because of things i had done a year and half ago.
He told me that now i'd know what he has been feeling for so long.

He said he was sorry that i heard all that and told me that it'll hurt a lot when it does finally sink in.
He said he knows what it'd feel like from first hand experience and said he'd be there, standing by my side, through this.
He said that while he went through the same, i was too self absorbed to look beyond myself, to his pain and anguish but now i would know. Because now i'd go through the same. He ensured it'd happen.

He was right.
I have been heartless, even as i love him to death.
I have never been able to understand him, even as he was the core of my life.

I was wrong, but that, somehow, doesn't right his wrong. I can't bring myself to look at him, to believe that the man i heard making love to that girl is really the man who has held me through thick and thin for so long.
I refuse to believe he's the same man. He can't be. After all, that man loved me too much to see me in pain, least of all be the one causing the pain.

I asked him what happened to my T.
He said T is dead. For good.

But only i know i killed him.

Sand on the Shore

I put pen to paper,

words flee from me

With you not around,

Nothing is how it used to be.

The days are longer,

gloomy and dull.

Sobs and silent prayers,

break the midnight lull.

I stand alone, wondering

If we could be one still

If I could see you sleep

And be around when you’re up

I lay awake, yearning

Wishing for your face by my pillow

I spend the night praying

Hoping for a happier tomorrow

Yet I know it is not to be

How will we one be?

For you are an ocean, I am sand on the shore

We meet but aren’t meant to be.

Back

I want to go back,
back to a happier past.

A past where smiles outnumbered tears,
and each day had something to look forward to.

A past where future was a mystery still,
But none that was with tears filled.

I want to go back,
back to a happier past,

Only, i cant remember one.

Loss and other miseries.

This last trimester will go down as the worst of my life of 20 years. Even as it's hard to believe that i haven't written about it anywhere, it's appalling that so much has happened. Recounting it takes me back to the little personal hell that has been my home for an uncomfortably long time now. I am not complaining though, i deserve it; i asked for it.

I lost my dadi very unexpectedly in the last week of January. This was the first time i experienced "real", irrevocable loss. I remember being okay and in control during most rituals. There was grief but it was tempered with rationality and sanity. Ironically, i have been worse when it isn't half as much pain- or at least it shouldn't be. A fight with my boyfriend has given me more pain, elicited more tears and howls from me than my grandmother passing away just like that.

That, obviously, speaks volumes about the kind of person i am and my priorities in life. I give precedence to a man i love over the person who brought me up when my parents went to work. I worry and care more about having this man in my life -- who i can't seem to stop fighting with -- than the only one person who loved me unconditionally, in spite of me, all my life. Thinking of her, i'm amazed at her patience, her resilience. Her love for every one. Her faith in the God she went back to, and the husband she devoted her life to. It is sick how when i came to Delhi, she was the first one forgotten.

I must be a horrible horrible person for having done that, for having not given her the importance and attention she commanded. I loved and respected her with all my heart but hardly ever expressed my emotions. I cried with her in her pain, when she lost her eyesight temporarily, but i also didn't meet her for days at a stretch even after going home. I wish i could take it all back. I wish i could tell her that i loved her, and that i'm sorry.

It's no surprise that i couldn't see her when everyone else in the family and even people who couldn't care less got to see her one last time. I couldn't see her because i didn't deserve it. I have done horrible things, things that i'm sure would have disappointed her alive, and did in death. All my misery is but a logical and justified punishment.

I just wish i could have a day with her. To just talk to her and sleep with my head in her lap while she moved her hand rhythmically through my hair. I miss her and it's weird that it didn't sink in until now. I have, for the first time in three years, stayed away from home for two months without wanting to go back except once. I don't want to go back to a home without her.

My nani would, of course, say that i'm over reacting. That we mustn't cry irrationally for people who we gave hell in life by not speaking up for them. All of us did give her hell in her last years. For most people, she died a gracious, painless, quick death and lived a fulfilled, happy, prosperous, ideal life but i know better. My family knows exactly what we put her through, even as none of us wanted to pain her, we put her through immense misery. I know that howmuchever i look to shirk away from responsibility, i had a small role to play in it too. I added to her agony by not trying enough to decrease it.

I miss her, and i feel wretched. I'll miss her on my birthday... My first birthday away from her. The first one without the 100 bucks she invariably gave me-my first gift on most birthdays. This year, i don't want to do anything for my birthday. I only pray and hope my life will sort itself out.
I'll have my last exam a day before, and would be fresh out of college, awaiting a degree, but a part of me will still be that little girl who made her proud once, and then lost her way somewhere along the line.

Shitness.

I'm trying to not be negative in life so instead of saying "i have had a pathetic day today", let me just say "i had an ambiguously interesting day today."

Anyhoo, I met three ladies from office over coffee. It was as i had expected it to be; and my later reactions were also pretty damn predictable. However, i don't want to think/write/talk about that - partly because i'm gonna be doing just that for a long long time after some time but mostly because i've had enough of recounting it--first for my dear dear friend and then for my dearest boyfriend. I need a break so have decided to talk about other things. Random things that are bothering me more than this prospective job that's leaving no stone unturned to become the sole center of my life.

Something annoying to the point of sickening happened in class today. It was, of course, my own undoing as is everything else that affects me this profoundly. This teacher was talking about Indian culture, and what defines, forms it. Now, this is one class i usually focus all my energies on not hearing a word the teacher says, because when i do listen to her, it makes me angry.

Our mutual dislike is not hidden from anyone, though i've not done anything concrete to make it obvious and bring it out in the open, yet. That is, of course, if you don't count my not adding her on facebook, sleeping through her class, never carrying a textbook or taking notes(i'm practically a steno in some classes, so unusual behaviour for the nerd that's me), having a standard insouciant expression on my face and hiding behind someone, anyone to avoid seeing her face, which by the way, bugs me no end.

Anyway, I make sure i don't participate in her classes but it's only human to err, right? I did open my gob today and said i think it's unfair to exclude the upper middle class and high-brow, elite culture when one talks of "Indian culture". It's at best, buying into into the Oriental philosophy to posit the country on rickshaws and the people below poverty line as the "real India".

If i am rich, have a BMW, go to IHC, drink, smoke, work and be promiscuous, I do not cease to be Indian or become any "less Indian" than a tribal woman whom she called "closer to indian soil, quite literally." I get where that's coming from...because the tribe's experience is unadulterated and "untarnished" by global exposure, she's arguably "more" Indian; a representative of the true, Incredible India.

Even as this makes some sense, there is one slightly different position, which i know will find few takers (or none, except yours truly!) within the red walls of this college. I think culture, in general, and Indian culture, specifically, is about integration and assimilation of other cultures. Just because it's a new trend or a minority, there's no reason why it should be discredited  orcriticised for being "foreign" to Indian soil and culture. Call me unconventional, but i think being rich and flaunting it is a manifestation of one's attitude to life and money... Owning an audi, loving ballet and preferring Jeffery Dean Morgan to SRK won't make me any less Indian or my practices any alien to the culture. Last i checked, we were about accepting and learning and i'm sorry but i refuse to be a hardheaded prick.

P.S. Talked to Wasim Akram yesterday and wrote his piece for him, that has found its way to the first sports page of TOI. In an unrelated story, HT screwed my column real bad. The grammar has gone for a six and the editing makes it look like a paragraph made out of five bullet points, minus the bullets. It's essentially a barrage of just, well, points. Most irritating. Besides, i didn't get my copy, again! I'm almost glad i'm bidding farewell to Journalism in no time. I just lied. O:)

Rocks and Pebbles,
Hobbes!

Girlfriends.

There was a time i thought girls make for horrible friends because they just. can't. keep. a. secret. That was nine years ago and then i met my best friend. The rest, as they say, is history. I started rethinking my judgement of my own sex and gave them a second chance. Only to wind up thinking what i knew nine years back as a tween.

I'm not going to go into how this renewed realisation makes me feel about myself and my judging skills. I've instead been thinking, what is it that makes for a good friend? Here's my check list, or what used to be one:

1. You're comfortable with each other.
2. They stand by you, always. No matter what.
3. They tell you what's wrong with you, in a way that won't hurt you too much. Constructive criticism peppered with a lot of praises, because it's heartbreaking to have a friend, who knows you inside out, think you're a lost case.
4. They can deal woth your mood swings, and you can deal with theirs.
5. They're trustworthy.
6. They can keep a secret.

I've been discovering the dynamics that go behind the last bit and it has not been a pleasant experience. Is she still my friend if she told her friend my secret, because she, perhaps, felt closer to her? If she let the cat out of the bag because she sucks at keeping her gob shut, and that's just how she is, take it or leave it?
It doesn't mean she (they) likes me any less, or doesn't care for me...i know she does, i know all of them do. I have my only good memories of college with them and it's inconceivable that we could have had such great times together if there was no mutual love and happy feelings.

Clearly, i have a lot to figure out and learn even in matters of friendship.

Of life and death

I’ve been thinking, is there a fixed number of smiles and tears that are spread and shed in this world? Or is there such a fixed number for each life? Is it that for every hour that you spend smiling and being truly happy, there’s another hour in the offing that has to be spent being angry or perhaps regretting, even crying?

P.B. Shelley did write “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” His purpose may have been to give heart and hope to those who needed it but I have come to know from experience, that the opposite is equally true. After every bright, sunny day, the cold, dark night is but moments away. Happiness and melancholy seem to be alternating… Even as many like to believe that leading a happy life has a lot to do with destiny and one’s karma , I can’t shrug off the feeling that maybe, just maybe, there’s a pattern to this randomness. It is not simply about luck, people’s behaviour and outlook towards life but something more. Something none of us have been able to put a finger on.

I know it’s a pretty surreal, almost obscure thought, but it seems to be leading somewhere…I don’t know where. It seems to be one of those life’s unsolvable mysteries, another one of which is what happens after death. Is there life on the other side? Is it a better life? Philosophers, religious leaders, saints and sadhus all have their own version but how does one know the real one? One can’t.

I guess that’s what life is: inscrutable, indecipherable and ever-changing. And I believe it’s best left that way. The more one prods, broods, questions things that clearly aren’t meant to be known, and not even that important, the unhappier one is. Ignorance is bliss after all, and some knowledge/power is just not worth it. Yes, I’m thinking of Dr. Faustus too.