The History of 'I'

I am not about the men who chose not to be with me. I am not about the loneliness that threatens to engulf me every now and then. I am not about my nightmares that petrify me in my weakest moments. I am not about the hideous thoughts inside my head that don’t always wish other people well. I am not about those 12 glasses of mojitos that overpowered my senses that evening. I am not about that therapist I visited one summer afternoon so unsure of everything I was. I am not about my old failures that kept me from following my dreams. I am not about the job I hated, loved and lost all at the same time. I am not, definitely not about my stammering speech anymore. I never was just about all of this. I am so often about cheerfulness and glee. I am about mindless humour and laughter till your sides split. I am about picking and choosing my own battles and only those that are worth fighting for. I am also about newly discovered irrational anger that I am learning to tame. I am about following my oldest dreams a tad bit late. I am about the phoenix tattooed on the back of my shoulder that rises from the ashes. I am about wearing the bright, brighter, brightest colours when I am at my lowest. I am about red, gold, electric blue, shocking purple, neon green and the effervescent fuchsia. I am about running every day till my feet ache and my lungs are gasping for breath. I am about giving advice on life and love which is mostly spot-on and legal advice that is not always fool proof. I am the peace, the calm inside your head and your strength. I am the one you belong to. There are times when I am nothing yet I am everything.

The other day at night I dreamt of Baba. I dreamt he died all over again from all that pain. In my dream itself I tried to rationalise the feeling by telling myself it is alright. He cannot suffer all over again. It shall be exactly three years next week from the day he died. It seems years ago but it didn’t happen so far back. Sometimes I remember that day so clearly, I remember every feeling I underwent, the fact that I was probably on the phone with Shivi at that exact moment when he passed away. I remember living in denial for months and how I convinced myself life was going to go on just fine without him. It didn’t go on just fine. It went on definitely but no I miss the man every single day. I miss him when S talks about chilling with her Dad over drinks and dinner and having fun, I miss him when T exclaims how her Dad is so kind and would give her the world. I often wonder how we deal with grief. How we have to, so have to put on this brave face in front of the world and and how people always empathise with you or say you are so strong. I have heard that I am so strong statements or how magnificently I am doing statements so many times after Dad’s death. I wasn’t even doing that well, hell I went through such strange phases in my head and the cracks appeared so much later. How that insecurity of him not being around manifested in ways that I am not too proud of. Yes I realise grieving and healing is a long process. You don’t get up one day in the morning and it is gone like whoooshhhh. Naaaa it is long and tiresome. For some people it is an intense period and for some like me it took time to even for me to realise that he wasn’t around. Death has this debilitating effect. It can make zombies out of us. Besides sometimes you are expected to justify every single emotion you go through and the world only likes happy, sane people in control of every emotion, every action. Besides nobody likes sad people. I don’t and nor would you. I think I did a such bad job with my love life last three years or so. Some of the men I have been with in the past actually give me the creeps now that I look back. Why would I even give them a shot? I was running behind that elusive fantasy of happily ever after. The only predominant male figure of my life had ceased to exist. I tried to see bits of him in all these men and my God they were as farther away from him as they could be. I think I turned promiscuous for some time. I tried too many of these men. I was wrong about most of them. This realisation has crept in very very slowly. Must’ve been after my engagement broke up. That one month after my engagement I actually introspected only to jump into some needless emotional relationship all over again to realise once more this was a sham. I was wrong but this time I did not bend backwards, this time I did not beg or plead. I let go silently. Slowly and steadily I have realised that being in love and being in something which is excessively emotionally dependent is different. Love for me shouldn’t be this constantly craving feeling, it should be something which is just there, silent, stoic but there. Yes that is the love I am in search for. That “just there” and “it is understood” feeling.

My Wish List

1) Pursue that Master’s Degree in University of Melbourne on a scholarship. 2) Go to Europe with Ma and Bonu. 3) Have a big bank balance, more savings, more investments. 4) Marry Rajat and live with him happily ever after.

I can’t be Carrie and even if I do want you to be my Mr. Big it shall never be so. I know now that in some inexplicable way I keep coming back to you. These patterns are so disturbing and this not wanting to move on and yet moving on is very unlike me. I always believed in clean cut breaks when I throw a huge tantrum asking the most cliché questions like do you want this or not or my way or the high way, there is drama bordering melodrama and then there is silence and then the agony of waiting and finally I give in and beg and cry again and then there is denial and wooossshhh one fine day after months of denial there is the moving on. No questions happened this time, there was no drama, I didn’t even shed a tear until a week after we said our goodbyes but I do feel empty without you and that void, damn it that void nobody fills up. Phone calls initially seemed too impersonal and left me feeling even more hollow because we had so much and suddenly it was reduced to just these vacant conversations. Slowly I found my contentment in these daily 5 minute phone calls but now even these shall cease to exist. God I wish this was different. I wish you could be there by my side the way I want you to be. I wish my wishes didn't feel this futile.

Am I asking for too much or am I asking for the world.

I have nothing much to say. Most days I am flooded with work and the rare days that I am not I am bored to death. Like there is only so much I can talk to the people around me in office. But then I made peace with this a while back until I actually met a couple of almost like minded people or maybe I just thought that I did. Whatever that was it suited my desire for friendship or companionship for a year and a half and how? Now that all of that is gone there is this big empty void and to tell you the truth when I am the busiest I even forget someone existed when suddenly something or anything will remind me of him but it is never ever that depressing, down in the pits, by no means ending darkness feeling. It is just that okay so that was it and maybe we will never meet again and it is so hard to believe that feeling.
I dream a lot and sometimes I give myself the luxury of thinking of an us but I also know it won’t happen. Then I don’t dream of him. I dream of sunny beaches, clear blue skies, orange sunsets, new friendly faces, a library with lots of books, my could be future cubby hole cum study cum bedroom, a bicycle maybe that I’ll ride around in the campus, the phone calls to Ma, seminars and interactions with funky people from the industry, papers to write and that minor thesis I will submit and then I dream of graduation and possibly that tiny tiny chance that I might land up with a job there and my own teeny meeny studio apartment, working hard, paying off that loan, then visits by Ma and we are happy just travelling around, I am happy so she is happy and once in a million I think off meeting someone new. Sigh! Am I asking for too much or am I asking for the world.

They say I should write more often. Why do they say that? They say so because I love to write, because I have always been fascinated with the written word. I know I should read more, much much more. There are too many dusty unfinished books lying around in my tiny wooden book shelf and some are strewn all around the house. I wonder what happens to me that ever since I have grown up I go through my reading copiously phases and phases when I don’t open a book for weeks. I’ll look at them listlessly but I can’t get myself to pick them up and open a page. Last month I was reading voraciously, on the shit pot in the morning, on my way to work in the Metro, on my way back home, in bed before sleeping. Now I can barely get myself to skim the newspaper. I want to read them all half read, quarter read books.


I am not one of those writers who have had the privilege of having lived in different countries and to be able to be at ease as much as she is in Delhi as she is in New York as well. My wandering soul did not have the good fortune of travelling beyond the borders of this country but I do dream about new cities, unknown sidewalks, mustier bookstores, a different flush of the night sky, curious smells, stranger accents, different colours of hair, the similarity in the dissimilar smiles. Sometimes though I think, who knows, yes who the hell knows when fortune changes and the world opens up, a brand new day and a brand new world to explore, to see, to touch, to feel, to think some more, to write more, so much more. And maybe in my heart of hearts I await that day.

Nothing adds up to anything. All of this will add up to meaninglessness someday. We would have spent our whole lives chasing, running behind these things and even when we do get what we aspire to get it’ll never feel as good as we thought we would. A brand new job, that big bright red bag you’d been eyeing or the pair of silver loafers you thought you’d die for or even the man of your dreams who appeared out of thin air just when you’d given up hope. Well it isn’t going to be like you thought it shall be when it is finally yours. It never is. The happiness is somehow diluted when it finally materializes and you’ll look at the bag and wonder okay it just doesn’t feel that gorgeus anymore and walking around in those shoes you try to admire them but why do they look so lackluster and what can we say about the man? Why hasn’t he changed your life overnight like you thought he would? Why does everything you have still feel like nothing? What is with this barren desert of a life? When did you become so jaded that nothing, absolutely nothing excites you anymore? When did you lose yourself in these roads so much that you’ll never find yourself again? Or maybe this was you all along?