There's power in being vulnerable? What?

Its one of those days today that I needed some saving. I felt so vulnerable. It feels like, everything has a profound effect on me. I'm an easy person to hurt. An easy person to be made to feel insecure. An easy person to humiliate. An easy (very easy) person to move. And I'm not fooling you with the scale of this.

Since an year or two, I've noticed that I get more and more vulnerable each day. And to myself,  this is how I describe it  - I get more and more weak each day.

An year back, when I was in advertising, this happened. At the end of the month, we would all be emailed our salary slips by the HR before the salary gets credited. One day, I accidentally got the salary slip of another person. This man was a peon in our office. I was 25 and he is 45. 20 years older than I am. He has two children who go to school and a wife who works at other people's home helping in cleaning. cooking etc. At that time, I was getting close to thirty eight thousand rupees every month. Out of shameless curiosity, I opened his salary receipt.  His salary was fifty six hundred rupees. Fifty six hundred. I felt like something just ruptured my heart from within. My eyes welled up and I was unable to think. I instantly felt ashamed, guilty.. lets just say shitty altogether. My husband (then boyfriend) and I constantly think of business plans and things to do, constantly complaining of how this is not even close to being enough, how ours is a mediocre life. All of these conversations were racing in my mind, while I kept thinking of this man's two children who go to school, these little children who have actual needs. It took me a few weeks to get this out of my mind. Anyone that I shared this incident with, laughed it out, telling me how I need to have thicker skin, how I'm such a weak person to cry over everything.

And that is one line I get a lot in my life. How I'm too sensitive. How I'm too weak. How I need to be stronger so that nothing affects me. How I can never get ahead in life cause I'm just a very emotional person. How I'm foolish. How the world is not a trust fund that helps out everyone. How you only get what you deserve. How I'm ruining their moods and evenings by talking about such things. How unless "you can do something about it, there's no reason to talk about it". How everything hurts me. How everything worries me. How everything scares me. And somehow I've internalized it, that, I'm a vulnerable person. And yes, what a terrible thing to be it is.

So today, one of those days that I'm feeling terribly vulnerable, I came across this video. And what a wonderful revelation its been.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o

So, alright, this post is making no sense, maybe I just needed to write it down. So, done then.

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.

Experiment 1: On Changing Your Story

This is not an experiment, well sorta. This is optimism put to test. This is every part of me swearing that I'll try and every part of me wishing it works.

Sometimes love rips you apart. Sometimes love is the only thing hurting. Sometimes you want love so bad, you scare away love. Sometimes love changes you. Sometimes love makes you want more. It makes you cruel. It makes you nauseatingly faithful. Sometimes its more bitter than sweet, but always what you really want.

Sometimes your whole being becomes a paradox. Sometimes you want things, you don't realize you already have. You have the smartest lines and you know you're being foolish. You can own him and then end up doing miserably pathetic things to have him touch your hand when you reach out.

Real love never feels it's going to break, and for that reason, real love will go to any means to make each other suffer. Real love is bad for you. Its so sinful and so self absorbing, you become a void in yourself. Real love defines who you are then, and then on the afternoons your real love hurts, you don't know who you are and what you are around people without it.

Real passionate love is very overconfident. It will play your mind and your heart. Love is like the ghastly drill machine which goes straight to your core and messes you up. Its like a slap across your face and shows you what an extreme person you can become, you self praising kind soul you. Real love terrorizes your mind. When you love so bad, your mind refuses to believe it can end and thats why you're never really scared. You'd be frustrated, you'd be so mad you'll start attacking walls with your fists, but you'll never be scared.

And thats why real love never compromises. Two people in mad passionate love never really make up. You be an ass to him and he'd be just as big an ass to you. That's what happens when you've made up your mind on 'this is the guy I want to annoy the fuck out for the rest of my life'. It's ongoing and its tiring but its never done.

Real love is an entity in itself. Two people in love are like mutually dependent parasites who feed off of each others happiness, energy, aura and sadly, sadness. Real love is a helpless spiral. Upwards and downwards.

Love is funny and love is unreasonable. You have lived twenty five years of your life, not knowing that this one person exists. And then one fine day, from nowhere, one crazy dreamer walks into your life, no different than any other crazy dreamer you've met before. And something about them messes you up. You enter a no exit trance of a one point agenda - of having this person. This one person, who you know in your heart had a one in billion chance of ever meeting you in this life, that one person will start owning you. And you're helpless. You can think you're in control, but you're not, at least not in your own. Not his either, just some strange vision you weave together.

Love hurts. Oh my god, love hurts. Its not a hurt of toppling from the stairs which hurts only physically, scabs and vanishes, leaving behind a funny bar story. Love hurts from inside, its a soul hurt. It aches and its the suffering of not having your senses to work. It makes you mad.

Love also distorts your understanding of language and generally accepted semantics. Few words which are just like any other million words in the world that you've read and spoken and even joked about in the past, those same words turn into monstrous glass splinters who crawl up your eyes and refuse to be ignored. They're the sly vision itching insects which remind you of their presence at all hours. Words hurt. I wish words were more tangible and physical in their appearance. Like a glass vase, on which if I was mad and couldn't stop thinking about, I could break it, throw it out of my house and have my satisfaction of destroying the evidence of its existence. But not words, nope.

Love is not a choice. Love is over powering, over whelming and once you've loved, you wont rest until it feels the exact way it felt that one beautiful taxi ride.

So here I am. Having my love own me and trying to own my love. It needs work and it needs nourishment and its needs a lot of love. And if anything I know about myself, I know I'm full of love. I love love.

I have always believed that only a truly happy person can make another person happy. And "I'm not happy" uh, that's my story. And that is right. It's a story. It's just a story. I've made myself believe it and act it and live it. I reckon, I can make another story preferably more fun, more happy, more beautiful and make myself believe that, live that and act that.

It's really simple actually and I can explain how I got to this. A while back when I used to meditate regularly I used to read a lot (double past tense). Meditation is a lot about breathing and how it dominates your being, right in the centre of your body with just a coming and going of a whiff of a air. Breath overpowers how you feel. And whenever you feel something emotionally or physically, your breath is the first thing to get affected. For example when you're cold, you breath becomes short and narrow and you take lesser air in, and your body wants to occupy as less a space as possible. The theory goes, it can be reversed. When you're in a really cold environment, you must stop yourself, and breathe as calmly as possible, long breaths with enough pauses and your body starts relaxing by yourself. That is how the old Sadhus in the Himalayas can be covered in snow and be as calm as the southern lakes.

And so that is my plan. I'm going to make Happiness come to me. When I'm happy, I eat a lot, I smile a lot, I love interesting facts on TV, I make fun of things and not judge them, I keep in touch with my family, I talk to my friends a lot, I meet my girls, I gossip, I write, I read, I crave tandoori chicken, I dance and sing at the top of my voice, regardless of which house it is and whose party it is, I listen to my music, I watch my movies and I love my theater, I laugh louder and with shameless lustful spite at times, I think less, I'm more easy going, I dress better, I complain lesser, I feel warmer, I'm bitchier (yes, I like it that way) and again, I eat all three meals, sometimes even four.

So now we're working backwards people. I will do everything I do when I am happy and it will come to me. Of course. Cause you know what? There is nothing to be so sad about. Shed. Shed. Shed. Shed. Surrender.

And since none of my best friends live in this city.. are you listening chinky, priya, nidhi, ishaan, shivangi? Damn you all! I'm going to be my own best friend and give one tight slap to myself, and be the sexy bitch that I am and shed this righteous, sacrificing, cutesy girl get up, who likes things clean. I don't give a shit about cleanliness dude.

So back to be the default me, this typified custom model is just not working dude. Not working. Love can be maddening, crazy, tiring, come one, come all, I can take this. Cool as cucumber. Calm. And patient. And happy.

Donning my hippy socks and tune out the world earphones now. Hare Krishna everyone.

Daddy's Little Girl

Most people start with ashes and as life turns old, things turn gold. They beckon all the beauty and serene, rise and shine. Leave the old lives behind. And then, just never look back. So heroic their progress seems. So apt, so desirable and so deserving. I envy them. I belong to those ditched cast of people whose past never leaves them alone. Not because of it was dark and dreary, but because it was beautiful. It was flawless. Had I made and drawn my life myself, I still wont have changed a thing. And then one day at a time, it all changed.

I started with everything in my fists, just I never knew how to hold it right. And then I lost it all.

I have this lovely memory of going swimming with my Dad for the first time. I was very little, tiny really. And I had seen a swimming pool before, just never been allowed to get inside one. My mother was there, my little brother. I didn’t have a swimming costume so my dad just made me wear those little boy shorts and told me I’m good to go. Now, I could’ve been a little girl but I had seen TV and had some idea how women dressed. And I was so embarrassed. So the tiny me, shyly came out of the changing room, hiding behind Papa and covering my chest with my hands. It was so hilarious (to everyone else there) that my mom almost slipped in the pool laughing it out. And I had no idea why everyone was laughing. I thought they’re laughing because Papa has such hairy legs. But when I realized they were laughing at me, I bolted right past Mom, covered myself in a towel and never spoke to anyone the whole day. Till in the evening they bought me a new red swim suit and a swimming cap. But they laughed still.

It was so special. When I was little I used to sleep on my Papa’s chest. When I was little I remember how Papa once told me that he wished he had another girl like me and not my little brother. I remember my grand ma telling me that when Mom was pregnant they had only thought of a name for a girl, not a boy at all. I remember how he used to gather all the kids in the family and play games with them. I remember being jealous when Papa paid too much attention to the other grown up kids of the family. I had always wanted to be like my Dad. I used to applaud anything he liked and rejected anything he didn’t. No plain milk for Dad, no plain milk for me. White shirts to bed for Papa, white shirts to bed for me. Since I never had White shirts, I used to just wear Dad’s. It made me feel even more special to wear his clothes. It made me feel how I was his favorite in the world. I used to get my hair cut like his. I even tried to shave my face once, just to be like Papa. I would’ve done anything for him. Pity, I’m the person who took everything away.

We were so happy, my mom and dad were the best parents in the world. They were strict about somethings, for example sleepovers. But for everything else, they were amazing. We had a cozy little place, great dinner conversations, so much to tell each other, we were happy to just be around each other. And then it all went wrong.

My broken relationship broke down everything. Sadly, irreparably. The problem is he loved me too much. So do I, and that’s why it hurts. I cant forgive myself. Papa has a heart of a little girl, and I wish I could take it all away for him. Get him a better world. Woudnt have made so many mistakes. He still wanders in those troubles and I feel helpless when I can’t get him back to be in the present tense. I feel responsible and guilty. He just never was the same man again. And I miss him. I miss him terribly. And I cant see you suffering like that Dad. I wish I could go back to being the same stupid midget I was when I hid behind you for everything, and I swear to god, Dad, this time around I’ll listen to each word that you say.

Just come back to me. Please. Just the way we were. Lets all go back to dining room. Just once more. Come back to yourself. Come back to me. I miss you around me.