Catharsis is Nirvana.
Cave drawings. Parchments heavy with emotion. Journals soaked in pale ink and vivid memories. An envelope braving the world in search of another. Splashes of paint rebelling against grey walls.
Black letters on a white screen spilling from my fingertips.
It was all over the internet yesterday, a short sequel to a movie that had taken the box office by storm a decade back. A portrayal of the protagonists as quarantined souls in the current world, a slice of life wrapped in a five-minute phone call. She is married with two kids, happy and content, and he still loves her. She is all he needs, always. Her voice is what would bring him solace, clear his mind, and he harbors the desperate fantasy of a day when they would unite. And she accommodates his alternate reality, like a parent letting her child hold on to Santa, knowing well that it was all just a lie.
All I could think of at the end was, does love have to be this hard and horrible? Or selfless, so to speak. The kind of love where you are helpless and smitten and would die for the other person. The kind that people write ballads about, the kind that makes us yearn. Where you just don’t move on, because she is simply THE ONE. Why is love as a concept so beautiful only when it is elusive and all-encompassing and tragic? Could it be that the magic of lost love is so cherished only because it was never attained in the first place? Do we really need someone who adores us to death, who would put their life down in an instant for your happiness?
I have known that kind, been at the receiving end of it. He has perhaps taken care of me better than anyone in the world, looked out for my health when I didn’t and made me feel like the most special person in the world. He would lie – he was a compulsive liar – just so I would hear what he thought I wanted to hear, just so that even the slightest truths shouldn’t hurt me. It was always about my wishes, what I wanted to do, what I wanted to listen to, what my hobbies were. He would recommend random books to me after consulting other friends who read, because he knew I loved books. But the choices would be so off, because he had no idea about genres. He tried hard, too hard. He would put his life down for me; I know it. And all he desperately wanted was for me to be with him. I appreciated it and accommodated it, but it always felt too wrong, like I was living the wrong dream. Being with him was like walking on a bed of rose petals, except that you don’t really like roses.
You see, that’s the thing. Love is a paradox. Things get difficult when it is too easy. You need friction to hold two people together, to keep you firm on the ground. Without friction, you fall all too often, all too soon. The hopeless romantic gestures and happy endings we see in movies make us believe in a love that is too pure for human existence. Everyone needs to be their own individual, be able to put forth their own true selves for a relationship to work. Having a partner who caters to your every demand might be more of dystopia than utopia, because no one wants to live in a place that offers no excitement. We want to be challenged, and accepted, and respected all at once, as counter-intuitive as it may seem.
In the end, what kind of love do we need really.. one that sweeps us off our feet, or one that plants us firmly on the ground…?
He was busy comparing the numbers when the call came. He ignored the rings. The numbers.. those were more important. He would show them, of course. His wife and his daughter who thought that they could make him look like a fool and get away with it.
“So what if I liked buying lottery tickets?”, he muttered to himself.. “They smirk and laugh behind my back as if I’m an idiot. ‘Look at the statistics..’ ‘look at the odds..’ well, I say the odds are pretty damn great if I buy enough tickets!”
The odd win altered his confidence in a way that the thousand fails did not. He would obsess over the numbers, absolutely sure that he would one day win that million. Oh yes, he was sure. Perhaps it was the straw that he grasped at, knowing that nothing else he did could bring back everything he plundered and ruined; that he did not have the skills or the heart to work his way up the ladder like the common man, not toil from rags to riches.. oh no, of course not. He was nothing short of royalty, and that is what he would be again, once he won his million, and reclaimed all that he lost.
Once he won. It would be the miracle he needed to show the world. He knew that he would, and so he picked at the numbers again.. ticket after ticket, staring at the numbers that never matched anywhere. The miracle was still at bay.
The phone rang again, and he picked it up furiously, irritated at the bunch of paper that refused to turn into gold in his hands.., and then went still.
What was that.. his daughter? What about his daughter?
Dead?
Dea..
…
It was all very blurry. The funeral, the crowd, the nods, the sighs. Perhaps it rained a little. Perhaps it didn’t. Perhaps it was too sunny. He couldn’t say. It was too bright and too dark to tell.
And somehow it was still darker a few days later when another call came through.
“What was that.. a million..??”
“Yes, sir. Your daughter had named you as the sole nominee for the term insurance cover, hence the lump sum amount goes to you. There are some formalities of course. If you could please come over to our office, we could start… hello??”
This is related to my previous post, although it does not strictly follow the other. These two together capture the tumultuous emotions that swirled within me after listening to conversations surrounding a molestation allegation. Why not earlier? Why anonymous? Why not a formal complaint? Perhaps this is why. She replies.
How could I? She replies
How could I come out with tales
Of rough hands and sharp nails
That grazed places it shouldn’t.,
Of hungry glances
That licked the smile off my lips
Drank the sway off my hips
Till I lay cold and motionless.,
How could I name
When I knew that shame
Was an inheritance
Meant to adorn my body alone.
How could I, when I know
That I can remember.
That I can remember
The time when I stayed out past midnight
The day my shirt hugged my bosom
And the skirt my thighs.
That I can remember
The one time I sipped on a cocktail
Of laughter and merriment
And spewed dirty secrets.
That I can remember
The rare ride I accepted
The white lie I once told
The kiss I once stole in high school.
How could I speak out,
When I know that if I can remember all this,
So can you.
How could I, when I’d rather
Build a tattered facade
Than dare see my vices on display.
How could I,
When I’d rather make myself forget
Than make you remember.
It was quite sudden, the uproar of WhatsApp status updates from my contacts yesterday. Repetitive screen shots of four words and a hashtag – we stand with you; #respecther. Soon the matter came to light, anonymous messages on a group page had led to the unravelling of a cascade of molestation charges against a senior. I mentioned it to two friends. Both of them reverted with the same question.. why now? With the world neck-deep in the Corona virus crisis, is this a good time? And in that moment I realized, questions are all that the world ever really offers someone who comes out with an ugly truth.
.
Why now? They ask;
Why now
When the air is clear
And bright is dawn
Why now when the world
Has bigger problems of its own
Why now??
Don’t you know? They ask;
Don’t you know
That scandals are to be
Dispersed like hot pakoras,
Crispy and spicy
For all to relish,
Not moist and mouldy,
Seeped with the sweat
Of nightmares
And bloodied, having
Lain for so long
At the bottom of your heart..?
Don’t you see? They ask
Don’t you see
Our extravagant empathy
Turn to smirks in cosy corners
That the pat on your back
Was but a social stint
At being politically right;
Did you think? They ask,
Did you really think
My dear naïve child
That we have answers?
“Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time..”
I do not remember when it was that I came across Peter Pan for the first time; perhaps my vivid memory of being shown the 2003 movie at my school in the 7th grade was the first. I obsessed over it for months or perhaps years; enchanted by the concept of Neverland and never growing up. And when I read somewhere that Sagittarians are known to have ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’, I was elated at the discovery. I divulged to every passer-by my noble intention to never grow up or be an adult. The concepts high-schoolers attach to coolness are strange indeed.
At 29 years old, looking back and recollecting some incidents, I am glad that I grew up. This is going to be a difficult write up, more cathartic than usual, because I am going to talk about things that I had blocked out from my childhood – perhaps because it was inconsequential, and perhaps because I knew that all said and done, I was just being a horrible person. We want childhood to be all about magic and innocence and rarely acknowledge Barrie for his realistic reflections in Peter Pan.
.
Her name was Maari. I remember it distinctly because I was taught the word first by my Malayalam teacher. I remember noting it down, in that little ruled notebook covered neatly in brown paper and with a colourful sticker in front that announced the details of its owner.
‘Naanarthangal (synonyms)”, she wrote on the board.
‘Mazha (rain) – maari, varsham
I knew her name must mean something else in Tamil, for she was from an obscure village in Tamil Nadu (I never bothered to find out the name), but it always reminded me of what was taught in class. Rain. And although I would love for someone to be named Rain, surely even myself, I did not want to be called that, as my cousin did at times. He would call me Maari to spite me, and I would be indignant. How could he call me by her name?! Sure, she was all of 10 years like me, and perhaps even the same height and weight, but she was darker, she was illiterate, she was the household help. I did not want to be her namesake.
Looking back, I wonder where my innocence lay. Why I could not accept a girl my age and play with her as I would with a classmate. Why I found it weird that she would be reluctant to approach my cousins and I, and would stick to her mother in the kitchen as far as she could. Why I found it hilarious when my cousin would threaten her with a knife or a pair of scissors or a dummy spider and she would retreat to a corner or squeal like a mouse; why, he was only playing around, wasn’t he? Why was she so scared every time when he really meant no harm at all…!
Perhaps I did not realise that anything can be scary for a 10-year-old living with strangers who speak a different language, because I never had to. Perhaps my entitlement did not allow me to see beyond her skin colour and notice the same fears in her, the same insecurities and the same dreams in her heart as were in mine. Perhaps I was so conditioned to there being two classes of people, masters and servants, that I did not feel the need to question anyone why I went to school and she did not.
I wonder whether I would have been nicer to her if my cousin were not around. Perhaps. Maybe children learn heartlessness from each other, and maybe it is cooler to be cruel than to be nice. And every act of spite eventually gets washed away by our colourful daydreams, and the reality of our childhood becomes that of wonders and laughter and sweet nostalgia.
It has taken me 19 years to come to terms with what I did. I do not know where she is now. All I can do is send my apologies out into the universe, wishing that they would reach another 29 year old woman existing somewhere, a happy place hopefully.
Whenever I come across the question of what I would go back and change, I would always say nothing,. But today, I realise it isn’t true. I wish I could go back and talk to her, be her friend and make her feel welcome. I wish I could go back and have the courage to stand up to my cousin, to tell him to leave her alone. I wish I could go back and tell myself how she and I are the same.
I wish I could go back and make sure that I do not have to write this post with blurry eyes.
You sense a dream
Rising out of the smokescreen
An idea, a word
A thought unripe;
But before you can take a close look
You let go
And it melts away from view –
An icicle in the summer
A child on a railway platform
Drowning in the rush of voices in your head
Pushed and pulled by fast paced deadlines
The clamor of a red signal
The cacophony of necessities.
Till one night,
When you find yourself awake
Cradling the corpse
Of a half-forgotten dream,
A forsaken word,
A drop of sanity.
I never went to the mountains, since they were right there.
Just an hour away.
All through my childhood, through sun and rain, humid days and thundering nights, through summers of hot afternoons where I roamed in my backyard or played in the stream that ran right behind my home – oh yes, just a dozen feet; so close I could predict a warning about an emergency school closure just by gazing out of my window on a morning of incessant rains and gauging how deep the water ran that day. I would hear from friends of how beautifil the hills were, how people came from all over the country to climb and gape at the marvellous view, but I felt no compulsion to go and do the same; it was right there, was it not? I could go anytime.
And then I moved away, and craved for a glimpse of green leaves, cool showers and the misty tops that stood steadfast in all directions. I would never climb the mountain that was always right there, because it was always right there.
I walk up to the terrace of my home of two years – oh wait, did I say home? I meant a sanctuary, a temporary space where I live, hibernate, thrive, till the next city calls. I walk up to the terrace, for the first time in two years, and am greeted by the coolest breeze and the warmest sunset, a glaze of yellow in a sea of lavender, spreading across the square white housetops, some stained brown with algae and age, and forlorn isles of green. I cannot spot the sea in the horizon.
The sea that I never visit, since it is right there.
It is, isn’t it?
Yes, it is.
The mountain is still there, and so is the sea.
It was I that never was.
Today, while scouring the internet for names of Indians in the field of public health, is when I came across the name Binayak Sen.
He is 69 years old. He is an Indian, a doctor, a public health activist. He worked for 25 years among rural and tribal populations. He was awarded a prestigious award by his alma mater for his selfless service of the poor. He worked with the government to bring forth remarkable changes in the public healthcare system.
Before he was jailed, 10 years ago.
He is a convict; charged with sedition against the state, for sympathizing with the Maoist rebellion in a state ridden with poverty, inequity and malnutrition.
I stare at the Wikipedia page, unable to comprehend the magnitude of what I had just read. He was jailed… and for what? For visiting a jailed Maoist, for possessing a few of his letters and an odd book or two. Is that enough to decide that someone can be wrenched away from his life’s work among the poor? Who would replace him to look after the many children who die in infancy without access to care? How many of those who frown and scrunch their noses at people harboring alternative ideals are willing in venture into those jungles and work for the people there and not oneself?
I am alarmed at my ignorance, at my oblivious nature that has missed this person till today; one whose arrest made international news remains unknown to people of his own country?! How could I not have known? An Indian, a doctor, like myself. A sympathizer of the downtrodden, like myself.
A part of me is stricken by terror. Would they find me too? Are blog posts and status updates on Whats App enough to land you in jail? Is it uncanny to be rambling about my opinions of the government? I clutch myself instinctively.
Are they watching me?
The dystopia that I have grown up reading about… is that also what I have grown up in??
The first time I came across the Bengali tongue was in 2009, while watching the Malayalam movie Calcutta News, which was set in the titular city of Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta) in West Bengal. The language spoken by the actor caught my attention – all the ‘ch’ and ‘sh’ sounds in particular, and I immediately decided that I would learn it one day. I dreamt of reading the original version of Geetanjali, by Rabindranath Tagore, one of the greatest Bengali personalities of all times, writer of the Indian national anthem and Nobel Laureate in Literature. But I put it off for a later date, to be taken up after conquering the three South Indian languages I had already set my heart on. (Two are still pending!)
The next time my love for Bengali was rekindled was in 2015, while I was preparing for my entry into post graduation. I had chanced upon the Bengali alphabet, and fell in love with it immediately. It looks similar to the various other scripts based in Devanagari, the ancient Sanskrit root which mothered most of the newer languages of North India, and yet there was something utterly distinct about it. The bold strokes, the clean way it gleamed off the signboards – as if only an artist would be capable of writing it in all its splendour. My heart was set on it again. This time, I did start learning the alphabet, but did not progress more than a few letters before other commitments and distractions drew me away.
My third stint with the language happened as I joined my college in Pondicherry – a town masquerading as a city, and culturally distinct from anything I’ve ever known. An erstwhile French colony in India, it is a love-child of the two. The one distinctive cultural identity of the place is Auroville, a secular fraternity devised by spiritual gurus Mirra Alfassa, aka Mother, from Paris and Aurobindo Ghose from West Bengal. Hence the place is atypically filled with the Bengali diaspora, who followed Sri Aurobindo to settle down in this Southern town.
In addition, as luck could have it, I even got a colleague who is from West Bengal.
But obviously, luck doesn’t often translate into an outcome. I spent the last three years confused on whether to embark on learning French, Bengali or something else, and as I now stand with less than a month on my hands, I realise where my heart really lies. But it might be too late.
As I listen to my friend chatting with his friends from home, I realise how sweet it really sounds. Bengali is a language that puts you at ease, at home.. there are no squeaky doors or rough edges there. The vowels float in like soft music from an old record, and the consonants rain not onto a tin roof but as light thuds of bare feet on furry carpet. The words play on one’s eardrums as on a trampoline, gentle recurring swishes of sound.
I’ve decided to put in more efforts this time, single minded too. And definitely not with a timeline. I’ll take my time. Let me walk slowly, syllable by syllable, and who knows, perhaps one day I’ll find myself thumbing through Geetanjali.
