Delirium.

It has been 18 days since I left Bombay and as eager as I have always been to jump wagons between Bombay and Delhi, I suddenly miss that annoying city. I have never really identified Bombay as home nor do I think I ever will but as is the case with blood relations, despite hating them, you grow up and realise that they actually were tolerable after all. In fact, you might even feel that you liked them at some point. This is exactly what is happening with me, vis-à-vis Bombay.

I don’t miss it, but something strange happened today while my uncle was driving me from his home to my workplace.
I was reading a book and my head had stooped over, almost making me look like a crane dipping its head into water for food, my water being the book. As the car moved onto the main road by crossing this huge intersection beneath a flyover and my head continued to stay bent over, I had this strange sensation that I was actually in Bombay, at this certain part of the highway, that I traverse by almost everyday. I didn’t raise my head for the fear of loosing this sensation. It was like balancing a soap bubble on your fingertip, you know if you move, it will pop.
As the car moved straight along the way, I began smiling to myself, not looking up from my book because how real it felt was proportional to how unreal it actually was.  I kept my head down and continued reeling in this happy sense of delirium in this sensory feast, where my brain despite knowing my real location, was letting me enjoy a moment of some strange satisfaction.  And then we hit a speed bump and my reflexes made me look up and everything vanished.

Was this a hallucination? I don’t know.

What I do know, is that it was beautiful, getting to live in one city, mentally when you are physically in another.

LSF

I have this unbelievably queasy feeling in my gut. The existence of this feeling has been brought about by the fact that I have not written in over a month. Every attempt at writing has been as successful as a drunkards’ attempt at walking on the straight divider line. Absolutely wasteful and disastrous.

I write a document and then I discard the document, it is becoming a visible loop of sorts.

So I decided to write about what has been troubling me.

1.     I have noticed a huge flurry of “amateur writers” using a certain typewriter application (curses upon you, oh social media!), stringing words together and pretending that this string of misused words, conveys some greater meaning and a higher sense of depth which can not be interpreted by people who do, actually possess some literary sense. These quotes, one-liners or whatever we might call them next sonnets, love poems, intriguing write-ups, or as I like to call them, lessons in sentence formation (LSF)  are ruining my life. Instagram poets are great! They are wondrous and they can transport anyone sitting behind a screen to a world of anguish and misery brought on by real, romantic love or by the pain and struggle of retaining your individuality but these LSFs are not the same.

Can we please take a moment and serve them a healthy dose of criticism?
No! Your attempt at romanticizing the darkness of my soul, is not working! You use the word misandry to try and explain her hate for men because one of them hurt her. Open a dictionary and see the letter in the parenthesis next to the word, does it say v? If it doesn’t then explain to me why would you use it as a verb? Now lets come to the part where plagiarizing concepts, is not an admirable thing either. Can you stop throwing a pity party, each time you write a new post?

I am certainly not against throwing one but can you not copy that famous party’s theme if you do decide to throw one, anyway?

The part that exasperates me the most, the part that feels like an attempt at someone acupuncturing the part of my mind that holds my menial writing capacities is the appreciation.

Either people are not exactly mindful about how writing prowess manifests itself or they are being supportive out of pity or admiration for the valor associated with posting such ginormous amounts of ridiculousness; whichever the case, it is wrong, it is incorrect.

Whatever little I have learnt in writing, is because of the blunt criticism I have received not because of the sugar candies of compliments. If you indeed want to be supportive, criticize these LSF creators if you know any.

Let us, please rid the world of these pusedo-philosphers who wish to convert us all to mediocre standards of literature appreciation by dulling our brains with their work.

How to save a life.

After Derek died, Grey’s Anatomy fans, all over the world, hit the roof. They went ballistic over how their beloved creator Shonda Rhimes, so brutally uprooted McDreamy from Meredith’s life leaving fans with little or almost no time to process any of it.
I was one of those people. I cursed the creators over killing off, one of my favorite male protagonists, in a show. But what I had forgotten in the course of the last 11 seasons, was that the only protagonist the show ever had, was Meredith. So Derek or no Derek, Meredith will never cease being front-runner.
After I finished watching the final episode of this season, I felt something unexplainable. I felt this strange sense of calm. Seeing Meredith out there, attempting to get her life back on track after her husband’s untimely death, helped me realize the idea 'Life Moves On.'
I had never imagined myself as a person who would admit that a show saved her life but Grey’s Anatomy did.
Meredith and Derek had me convinced about the idea of true love and forever and all those things and the first thought I had when he died was “Wow! True love definitely doesn’t exist!” and it broke me a little because after all the effort I had taken in making myself reach this destination of less realist and more romantic, this death move was a road in the opposite direction.
The next two episodes changed that. 

So the fear I had when I realised that the person I love, might leave me like that someday, was replaced with this feeling that I will survive it, nevertheless, I will deal with it because my favourite character, has seen worse.

I began watching this show, for the surgeons and before I knew it, in all my relationships, I could see traces of the show. While I had friends criticizing the show for being dramatic, sexual and even annoying I couldn’t care less, because what Grey’s means to me, no person, life coach, counselor can ever be.

“People can be broken, sure,” Meredith says. “But any surgeon knows, what’s broken can be mended.”

These lines brought tears to my eyes because this line summed up the journey that I ended up taking with this show. I learned how to take my time to heal when I was hurt, I realized how I had to put myself out there, ask someone to pick me and choose me, and stay strong even if I wasn’t. It made me realize that being a career woman is just not wrong (Here is looking at you, Dr.Yang). It made me embrace my twistedness. It made me accept my dark side, my sort of emotional-less side, my inability of feeling emotions when people in my family died, but crazy tears when my mother’s friend died. It made me realize that I don’t have to be good, happy, and perfect at all times. I can be less shiny and happy than my college friend and that makes me no less of a person.

On a very personal note, Grey’s has made me feel comfortable in my own skin. Every time I struggle with feeling insecure, disappointed, self-doubt and these terrible feelings of self-loathing, I watch an episode, and it makes me feel less alone. Less scared of the overpowering sense of depression.

Thank you, Grey’s, for bringing me back to life on my dead days.
The 40-second dance party is always nothing short of magic.

Lessons I learned this week.

(Written on 3rd May)

My mother lost one of her college friends this Monday, in an avalanche on the Everest base camp, due to the earthquake in Nepal.

Though I had never met the lady, her death shook me, in ways I had never imagined.

I spent an entire day in an almost dazed state trying to absorb her death. Trying my best to move towards acceptance.

I shall not go into details about things her achievements but she was definitely someone who was living her life. Someone who was squeezing life out of each moment of her life. Maybe that is the reason why her death made such an astonishing impact on me. 

Kashmiris have a phrase ‘shamshan varag gasun’ which literally translated means the lessons you learn about the volatility and vulnerability of life, its nothingness are just more of a momentary realization which fade away as soon as one leaves the crematorium.

My plan, is to not let the lesson, its effect, leave me once I leave this crematorium, where not just her, but the numerous lives lost in the earthquake have been laid to rest.

The volatility of life, is a paradoxical concept, it reminds me that my existence is finite, but the potential for greatness in me, and each human being, is infinite.

Unfortunately, we keep forgetting this, and tend to lose ourselves in the monotony, drudgery of everyday life. I do not mean quit your job and go backpacking around the world, but if that is where your calling lies, do not let anything stop you. Take risks, be thankful for the opportunities, but do not spend one waking minute of your existence, wishing you were someone else or wishing you were somewhere else, If you find yourself doing either of the two, stop not till you find what makes you tick. Squeeze each drop of sensation, the feeling of being alive from your live.

Make the most of your limited time because dying with some vague, tingling sensation of fulfillment will/ must be much better than ending a life that you never lived in the first place.

As Charles Bukowski said, “find what you love and let it kill you.”

Nothingness of life, might seem abstractly, contrary to what I just asked of you (i.e absolute involvement in life) but it is almost in tandem with the same. It is more of the chalk that you use to draw the boundary around how involved you are in life. Perishability, holds true for every animate object.

These are things I never want to forget but as an envelope to this rather long letter of life lessons, what I learnt can be summed up rather concisely by this alteration to Carpe Diem. Seize the day, before it seizes you.