You and I

I get scared to tell you that I love you so much. It scares me so much that the moment I say it out loud that I cant live without you, you will be taken away from me. Almost as if, so much love is bad for us. So much love is bad for anybody.

I feel like a broken piece of glass. Poetic, still, fragile but only a hurting little somebody, noone wants to touch.

A Journey that Changed Lives

I had never stepped out of my house alone, and was raised in a constraining and non compromising big Indian family. I was 24 years old and devoid of any story I could call my own. I was tired of being sheltered. Of being told what to do, where to go, and especially so, where not to go. In India women don’t tread in their lives alone. They need to be taken care of and the time had come where my care-takers needed to change hands. So my overtly ‘caring’ family had decided that I needed to be married off.

More often than not, you travel to escape and that’s what I did. I escaped. I pooled together some savings and got a plane ticket to Bombay. And with a backpack of two books, tooth brush, a change of clothes and a notepad, left the only city I knew all my life. I shut my cell phone down and the aircraft window. I had never felt so immensely alone and so alive at the same time. It’s like a world full of endless possibilities and the excitement of carving a whole new identity on a blank slate. I was 24 and this day forth, I could be whoever I choose to be. That plane ride changed my life. What it means to travel, to leave something behind you and move away. You don’t touch the brim and leave.

Two hours later, I emerged in this city. No lover, no family, just self and a lot of dreams, I set out to find my destination. I like to believe I’m still traveling and all that I see, I must see before I get to where I need to be. Bombay opened its arms to me immediately. I travel from the most insane clubs in Bombay to the most dreadful slums of the world, with the same fervour, the same excitement in my eyes and no vision. After all, if we always know what our destination will look like, I reckon, we stop living each passing moment and sleep through it looking for that one perfect tick of the clock. So I look, with the same raw appeal to each block of the road, to each sign on a rickshaw, to every bite I take of the road-side food in Bombay and I smile at every new face. Bombay is the place to be if you’re not pacing to and fro and can come to terms with the reality that life, just like this breathtaking city, is messy and is chaotic, and that’s just where it finds its beauty.

On a map, I’ve traveled less than 500 kilometers, but its one full life away, and it made me the finest and the most spirited version of me, and I will forever look back to the courage it took for that 2-hour journey and overcoming the fear of stepping out alone and just be.

Unlearn

When I was little, my mother once told me that crows grab your eye balls and eat, just to make me duck when near them and not go feeding them on our terrace. Till date, when I see a crow flying towards my direction (and by god bombay has its more than fair share of crows) I think its coming after my eyeballs. I dont think that's true anymore. And it irritates me that I believed it and was scared of it happening all my life. Maybe there are more things that I'm scared of, who arent meant to being scared of. Like being alone. My family made me believe that if you dont get married you have a loserly life. You're incomplete and mostly that is the worst thing that can happen to anybody. That they dont get married.

But maybe not. Maybe its okay. And I dont have to feel terrible inside being scared of it coming true. Its probably not half as bad as they told me. The relationships and marriages I've seen, only add to my suspicion for this weird notion. Maybe its not so bad at all to be alone. Not so bad at all.

Life Befuddles Me

Yes, it does. And in ways that I seldom understand. The past two weeks have probably been the toughest since I moved to Bombay. For some reason I find it difficult to be honest today and yet, I'd like to talk it out. I feel depressed. My health is all over the place, my family is not at its best and well, I just don't feel at rest now. You know, its not the best time in the world when every day, at least once, you ask out aloud, when will all this stop?

You know I'm going around minding my own business, why cant I just be left alone.

Yes, Twitter and non-believer in the same sentence - sue me! And the ultimate reason for our ADD.

What in the world is Twitter anyway? Every morning I come to work and as a reflex sign into my Gmail, work email, facebook and well, twitter. Once done with the rest, I stare at Twitter. and I dont know what the fuck to write. I mean seriously, what could be happening? At every moment?

I'm completely missing the point. The stuff people write on Twitter, is meant for who? Themselves? Followers? Is it soliloquy? Who's reading my shouts anyway. And it's an ongoing stream of links and disjointed and disconnected conversations one after the other, after the other.

Like imagine this, you're sitting in your living room and there's the Ninja Blogger, the Ms. I'm from LSR-you idiots dont know literature, there's the local rockstar who thinks he's made it big with 700 followers, there's me - the I dont know I have nothing really to share person, the insane vagina lover blogger I follow like a maniac, there's the Indian TV reporter whose name rhymes with Marka Mut.

Wokay, so great y'all, glad to have you all in my conversation streams.

Me: Morning! Friday already! I love it!
Marka: Government should set up a collegium. Representatives of govt, opposition and two -three eminent citizens shd be part of it.
Me: Umm, ok.
Ninja: " Behold all is vanity and striving after wind" Ecclesiates
Ninja: Just ordered some of my pics from last year's Boulder Marathon. See all my pics here http://t.co/Bze3iEr via @brPhototweets
Me: Yeah, about that...
Vagina Chick: Each time I remember that Gossip Girl isn't on again until APRIL 18 I feel so much irrational anger. Also filed under: THAT KISS. GAH. HATE.
Vagina Chick: @spitts27 Totally agree, they're awesome! Email me your address and I'll send you one :) nicole(at)coleismuchbetterthanthat(dot)com
Me: What the..
Vagina Chick: YES, THE FIRE ALARM WORKS. STOP TESTING IT. AH. DEAF.
Vagina Chick: Don't keep your email open all day. Don't keep your email open all day. Don't keep your email open all day. #trainingmyself
Me: Dude, seriously calm down!!
Me means LSR: @dramoli I agree though- since data collection in villages thro health/ anganwadi workers is questionable - we may not fully know incidence
Me means LSR: Factual Evidence shows that women who read are way better to cope with life threatening situations than men. (Men? Shit, did anyone say that M word? I hate Men? I'm gay.)
Me means LSR: @MEN you're all sick rapists. Let's fight. Yes, thats why they teach us at our college, how to pick fights with anyone of oppsite sex, at the minutest of your inconvenience, oh that and verbal vomit.
Me: hehe.. I totally made that up. No, they dont "actually" (admittedly) say that.
Rockstar: Life is overrated. I like suicide. Seems the way to go for us all to be dead famous.
Me: Dead.. hehehheee.. you're funny. RT
Rockstar: I'm playing at Blue Frog tonight. come! And check out my pic with seven chicks totally ready to give me all www.twitpic.com/1245
Me: Yeah, you see, I'm at work an..
Rockstar: and here where I was at the beach, shaking my booty..oooohh yeah!!! www.twitpic.com/5677
Rockstar: And here - I had to show you that I "actually" know all these people! bit.ly.667/pic5 arre see to the right, that boxer shorts with "bum main dum" facing backwards, is mine!
Me: SHUT THE FUCK UP

Ok, I'm now tired, but you see, this is a completely frustrating conversation - for anybody! I think people tweeting are running their conversation in mind and just dont give a shit for what is actually going on. And so many links, jeez, link to my blog, link to my eleven thousand photos that I now take since I have an iphone bitches, link to my rest of the post since i dont know how to write in 140 characters, link to my site, link to my contest, link to this post from some totally random guy just cause I think its RAD! NO. NO. NO. NO. You've got it totally wrong. Lets repeat once again - I did NOT sign up for spam. Did. NOT. Did not. And twitter is like spam on acid. And I will not contribute. Will. NOT. Will not.

And what are these hashtags that you randomly create and think the world has thoughts on the same and one fine day they'll all be collated and you'll be the guy who bought it to light. #pukeonmycouch #HoHoHellNo #sickbastardmustdie #kittykitty #myparentsroom #stomachflab #chotachetan #kaminikabmaregi #charliesheensinning (the last one was me, oh! come on! I think it's funny). No but seriously, these are not topics of public interest, or one where we all have a say in.

If one of you smartasses is now reiterating the same old - it's for me! and what I wanna say regardless of anyone hearing. Well, then this is massively confusing. So you wanna write things for yourself and not for others, but you want to say it on a public forum all the same. TIRED AND BORED. Still confused.


PS: If any of you actually clocked on those links for those pictures. Seriously, sympathy, you have a lot of time - get on Twitter. Oh and respect, for your general interest and curiosity in random people and their pictures.

And to feel you're alive>Bombay my lover, my whore

I finally felt something today. As in, I feel love everyday and I feel pretty every other day, but something beyond just those scrawny everyday me and something originally and uniquely me. I couldn't stop smiling. And hear you me, it happened twice in this week. So amazing how it all just comes staring back at you one day, from nowhere.

It's all a big wad of mashed up paint inside my head still, but I want to write. I want to fucking write. And you know why? Cause I felt like it twice this week. Like this whole sea of stories inside me that I want to scream out to the world. That if I could just sit down with a quiet empty house and just write it all out today. Not get up, just bring it all out. Just keep feeding me the sun.

Just saw Dhobhi Ghat, I was so moved. Such that I could still cry for her. It was so beautifully sad. So magnificently sad. I couldn't believe it. I was clenching my teeth and my nails kept digging into my partner's arms, I couldn't take the sadness. And it doesn't have an end, such is life. It was all these people coming together and then get separated. Just like that. We think too much. We like results. We definitely likes our "Whys?" As in, to that, why? Some things just are. Not good, not bad, they are what they are. And then its gone. Just like that, such is life. Chaotic, meaningless, beyond reason and logic. I loved the feature film. I could just cry now. Like I said Beauty. And I thought I'd just lost it. I thought ever since I moved this city I had stopped finding beauty in things and today I did. And it inspired me. One.

I also just finished "A Million Little Pieces". After very long, a tad too long, I read a book the way I read books. I couldn't keep it down. I couldn't stop stop thinking about the story. It was about a man who was alcoholic and is in a treatment center trying to quit. It was about addiction. It was about weakness. About being human. But also it was about taking responsibility. It was about putting yourself to test. It was everyone's story. I've seen "The Elegent Universe" but really this is the theory of everything. Tao te Ching. You should read, or this post will forever be a puzzle to you. Or life. I dont know. I really dont. But I need to write. Two.