Eveything Else Is A Bonus

“I know what the fear is.
The fear is not for what is lost.
What is lost is already in the wall.
What is lost is already behind the locked doors.
The fear is for what is still to be lost.”

In Blue Nights, Joan Didion writes about the long and blue twilights, during summer, just before it gets engulfed by the inky blackness of the night as an analogy for how ‘ordinary and expected blessings‘ like good health, finding love, marriage, bringing up a child, travels, new beginnings can be wiped away by sudden and unexpected catastrophes, uprooting the very foundation of a life that one had carefully built over the years. She has a career as a successful novelist and memoirist; a wonderful family; travels around the world; fame and money; and then came the irreparable and sudden loss of her husband and only daughter within a span of less than two years. The anxiety, sense of foreboding, grief and the subdued nihilism in her words made me realize how flippant most of us are towards the “ordinary blessings“.

I have everything I need; a late-blooming yet deep and strong bond with my parents, a sibling who knows me inside out and loves me despite it, seven ‘soul sisters‘ who creates unmeasured joy and camaraderie, a job that enables me to pay my bills comfortably and brings in a sense of making a direct and real difference in the lives of others (in whatever small way), a cosy home resounding with love and laughter; good health of my near ones, and here I use the term loosely to denote just the absence of any major illnesses; a sense of wanderlust, wonder and stubborn hope that (now) fails to get marred even by the dreariest of circumstances; stacks and stacks of books overspilling from every shelf in my room; and the love of a kind man.

Yet, not so long ago, I was drowning in the dark and turbulent waters of mourning about what I want and didn’t (yet) get. And no one wants to be ordinary. The hopelessness that stems from the knowledge that one has not yet achieved the universally accepted cornerstones of ‘success‘ in their specific profession, negates every little achievement and joy that were present at the beginning of the career. Tangled in self-doubt and an unfulfilled and misplaced sense of entitlement, the thought of settling for less pained me to the very core. My parents are quite supportive and happy with the very fact that I am the first and only doctor in the entire extended family including the past generations. But it meant nothing to me, because I had failed my own expectations owing to reasons that varied from circumstantial to self-sabotage or being just lazy. Anxiety didn’t help as much as ruined my confidence every passing moment. My whole worth as a person began to be centred around my academic performance. Nothing else mattered.

I remember my little cousin once asked me the reason behind the suicide of a movie star and I replied that it was allegedly due to depression, which many speculated was over a stagnant career. My cousin failed to understand why an actor who had surpassed thousands of people struggling to get not just a role in a movie and had attained world-wide fame and recognition had killed himself. How was he a ‘failure‘? I struggled to explain to my cousin that success is a subjective term, rooted deeply in comparison to others, and that happiness and well-being is centred around it to varying degrees.

Today I have reached a point in my life where I am thankful for every blessing I had been given unasked for; but I know the helplessness that many people might have due to failed expectations and the vicious thoughts it spurs about the absence of any way out, the complete oblivion of hope, the negligible sense of self-worth and the highly exaggerated delusion of what others will say. I had been trapped in that web of negativity and depression a few years ago for long enough to toy with the idea of embracing death in a bid to escape living. It was the result of a cumulative despair, feeding on certain untoward incidents in my life, that tipped me over the edge when I was challenged with a a period of stagnancy in my career.

While I was battling such negativity, a childhood friend passed away due to post-operative complications following a minor surgery. The day after she died the sun shone brightly in a brilliant blue sky, the bougainvillea was a riot of colour, my mother prepared my favourite dish, my father broke through my wall of gloom with his booming laughter; my sister kicked me in the butt and grinned impishly when I wanted to borrow something from her wardrobe; the television blared upcoming movie trailers, a few friends sent me a postcard from a holiday in Ladakh (because they knew how much I loved the mountains); I read an Alice Munro story; and I had an overwhelming realization that my friend will never experience these ordinary and mundane blessings again.

The world will go on, will bring in the new and hold on to the nostalgia of the past, and she won’t be there to know any of it.

Happiness is being alive. That’s it. Everything else is a bonus. And I had, a decade ago, let the fleeting thoughts of ending it all creep in to my mind; I don’t regret those thoughts, nor am I ashamed. I am immensely relieved to pry myself away from the clutches of such hopelessness and despair. Even now, my life is devoid of the ‘certain things that I want‘, but I am ready to work for them, strive towards them, wait for them. I realize that I will never have all the things I want; but I have everything I need, a wider focus of what this world has to offer and yes, I am alive to enjoy it all.

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Pandemic Musings

This post might not make much sense. I just want to share how I feel right now. It might seem too preachy, the kind of post I would have skipped reading too, but today the value of these words has been reinforced in my life.

Treasure every moment. Treasure every person in your life. Count every single blessing; from the ability to go to a normal day at work, to quietly eat a meal without any huge worries looming in the horizon. It’s highly disturbing and scary how easily one stands to lose everything they hold dear in life, somtime all it takes is a mere second. A pandemic is ruthless.

.I face every hurdle; yet plan expectantly towards a future, the next week or the next decade of my life; hope for miracles; work towards the dream career, the love of my life, the books I want to read, the places I want to see, the children I want to have someday, confess the secrets I carry in my heart, do the things I had been holding back, putting them off for a distant day or letting them go too easily, and oh, the dreams, so many dreams! And a mere gust of wind can carry everything to the edge of a cliff, threatening to topple me and my dreams over, and I hang precariously, not knowing what to do.

Such gusts of wind can be quite unpredictable and blow into anyone’s life. What happens then to the career you fret about, the love you have, the dreams you nurtured, the children you wanted to have, the places your feet never tread on? What then? Only one word comes to my mind. Unfair. But who had said it would be fair?

So, I treasure everything I have, even that petty colleague, the extra kilos, a broken heart, the windswept hair, my books with dog-eared pages, that tiny chunk of blue sky I see from my window. I won’t put off anything till tomorrow. I will hold my dear ones near. I will do only what I love. And not waste my time worrying about petty setbacks. Every blessing we have is palpable during COVID times. Especially the ordinary, everyday ones.

Intuition

I never really relied on the (in)famous “intuitive” power women claim to be gifted with. Till recently I used to believe people unquestioningly, and was of the general opinion that all people have an inherent “goodness” in them, and since I don’t want to hurt anyone, why would anyone ever hurt me? Dumb reasoning, I know.

I was taken on many a ride by friends, acquaintances and strangers alike because my reputation of being the “ever-trusting” fool preceded me everywhere I went! I used to unquestioningly believe each and every word the people I loved and cared about said to me. Not a very wise decision as I ended up hurt quite often. Sense got drilled into my head much later. I finally have begun not to take everything at face value and trust my intuition after neglecting it for too long. I did follow my intuition when it came to all things except for when it came to judging people. If I had not done that, I’d have saved myself a couple of heartbreaks.

I am a firm believer of the fact that a lie would be caught sooner or later, in ways we least expect of. Every time I’ve lied about something, my family came to know about it sooner or later, even when I had made sure no one can ever detect it. So they came to know of each time I’d made excuses of bunking class, or had met my ex secretly, or made excuses about not completing a chore assigned to me…just about anything. They will come to know, sometimes as late as a decade! Sometimes I confess and sometimes they come to know because I goof up and forget what I’d lied about!! It’s easy to tell the truth…you don’t have to make an effort to remember something that hadn’t happened, but for a telling a lie you need to be on constant alert for the rest of your life and remember what story you’d made up. It can be very taxing. My mother takes one look at me and immediately knows if I’m making excuses or fibbing about something.

So, I’ve experienced it myself in a small scale, and my belief that lies get caught sooner or later only got stronger. My mother intuitively knew every time I fibbed. And so did I, every time someone cheated me or lied to me. It took time, sometimes years…but I eventually come to know. ALWAYS! I find it difficult to explain, because it’s hard for me to ever doubt the ones I love, but sometimes an intuition gets so strong and it inevitably turns true when I follow it. Every time.

If something doesn’t sit right with you, think and question why it is so. Don’t just ignore that voice. Don’t become suspicious of everything, but don’t take every word and emotion at face value either.

Stormy Seas

Some nights things swoop in. Unexplained dread. Cold sweat. Insomnia. Restlessness. Panic. Loneliness. An army of fears. Veiled vulnerabilities. Teetering at the edge of this gaping dark hole of consciousness, arms flail helplessly towards an anchor of comfort, an anchor of the familiar. And it becomes the perfect hour to shatter delusions and realize that there is no anchor, and never will be. I sail my own stormy seas.

I am not brave. But I can endure. A decade ago if anyone had forewarned me of the hurdles that laid in store for me, I wouldn’t even have had the courage to get out of bed. I would have just remained motionless petrified of the calamities that would befall me.

It astounds me that I had been through it all-career setbacks, broken and bruised heart, grave illnesses or loss of loved ones, abuse, several medical emergencies, drifting apart from the people who mattered, really bad decisions, financial errors-and I had survived it, accepted responsibility for it, learned few lessons, misted the unpleasant memories, wiped the dust and blood off my fallen self and moved on. Moving on. The next step. That is all that matters.

I still get scared, so very scared of the problems at hand, and at the nadir of distress I just want someone else to live my life for me. Sometimes I miss a re-assuring grip on my hand and the words, “Don’t worry. I am here for you“. It would neither dismiss problems, nor drive away fears. Just be a source of steady comfort and encouragement. The lack of it disheartens, but never detains the journey.

The next step has to be taken, another day has to be lived, problems have to be solved, fears have to be faced. Expectations can often weaken and delude. Sail your own stormy seas.

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Ultimately…

I am meant to survive on my own through everything.

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The One That Escaped the ‘Drafts’ Folder

To You (yes, you),

 

I always feared that someday my little world will sprout wheels and flee when I am looking the other way. And exactly a month ago, I realized that there is nothing half so distressing in the world than having your worst fear come true. My father was diagnosed with cancer. The shock of it unsettled and scared me more than I could ever express to anyone. There was no time for sadness, anger, denial. Actions and decisions-prompt, deliberate-was the priority. The next 48 hours were the busiest I had ever been; running necessary medical investigations, researching probable hospitals for treatment, talking to oncologists, making travel arrangements, sorting out finances, applying for leave at work, haphazardly packing a slice of my life into a brown suitcase and backpack (completely unaware that I won’t be coming back for at least a year), and flying to Delhi. In an instant, an ordinary instant, the giant hand of fate scooped me up from my carefree, pampered existence and landed me with a thud with the entire responsibility of my family on me. No longer could I go on being taken care of, and banking on the security of having parents who will make everything alright. I had moments of indecisiveness and worry about whether I was making the right choices, but there wasn’t anyone I could share my anxiety with. I realized that the concern of relatives and friends will be restricted to well-meaning queries and minor tasks. Mostly, I am on my own. And will always be. This sky-rocketing of responsibility and worries about what the future held kept me up many nights, and I desperately wanted to talk to you; but that would have been preposterous and unduly imposing of me. So, I wrote you letters that never left the drafts folder. A week into the sudden upheaval in my life, my father’s treatment started and the next chaos followed.

I got a post-graduate seat in a town in Gujarat that is on the diametrically opposite corner of the country from my home. In the past, I would have been ecstatic at the opportunity to study in an institute renowned for its pathology curriculum and expertise. But torn between the desire to take care of my father and the allure of further studies in a good institute, the circumstances resembled a cruel joke. I decided to give up the seat and try again the next year, but my family and certain other people whose opinions I valued and respected repeatedly encouraged me to work out the dilemma by joining the college and monitor my father’s treatment details over phone, and if possible plan short trips to see him frequently. When I weighed my options, I realized that any further delay of a valuable academic year would have far-reaching implications on my career, finances, my plans to look after my family, and certain social obligations that come with being a female on the wrong side of her twenties. So, I had lengthy talks with my father’s doctors, taking re-assurances from them about the pace and quality of the treatment, booked travel tickets, packed my bags again and was off again after less than a week’s stay in Delhi.

The flight to Ahmedabad was frightfully early. The last thing I saw through the blur of my tears, as I entered the Terminal 3 airport, was my father and sister waving at me. I am a quick learner, and by then I had learnt not to dwell on the sickening pangs of sadness that welled up inside me at times. Soon, I was lost in the queues of fellow travelers. I sat next to an elderly NRI who watched me gingerly take a bite of the sandwich that we were served during the flight and piped up, “Don’t worry. In Gujarat, they serve only vegetarian food.” I was to realize soon enough that it in fact was an agonizing truth for even ones like me, who don’t eat meat but thrive on eggs and prawns and fish fried in mustard sauce. I reached Ahmedabad just as the sun flushed the early morning sky a mellow orange.

By then the jolly, old man had regaled me with anecdotes about his son’s perpetual confusion in amalgamating the suave yet detached lifestyle of the west and the slightly clingy yet familiar comfort of his Indian roots. His monologue didn’t cease even as we drove through Ahmedabad to the bus stand in the taxi we shared and left me with little time to soak in the sights and sounds on my first moments in Gujarat. I took a bus to Rajkot where I had some work at the university. The conversation around me was a vague, alien blur of ‘su’ and ‘che’ sounds. A lone well amidst a vast green field; languid stares of the cattle on the road; heavily wrinkled old women sitting in a huddle to soak up the sunshine; rows of giggling school girls with pig-tails, riding their bicycles were sights reminiscent of the ones I had encountered during my rural posting a year ago. Rajkot is an emerging city, with a splatter of high-rises, multiplexes, expensive cars; and yet homely and familiar to someone like me who has travelled from a similar town. By five in the evening, my work at the university was over and my shoulders drooped under the weight of the heavy backpack. But I slugged on to the nearest bus stand to catch a bus to the town that would be my home for the next few years. Having been chauffeured around town all throughout school and college, my experience of commuting on public transport is zilch apart from the occasional autorickshaw rides. As the next day was Raksha Bandhan (the enthusiasm of celebrating which is nearly comparable to Durga Puja in Assam), none of the private buses were available; and I found myself in a restless crowd of unfamiliar faces waiting for the one or two free seats in each of the public buses plying on the highway. On my left stood a hefty man with a bush for a moustache, and sitting dangerously close on my right was a cow with horns capable of tearing open a man into two neat halves without any effort. I wasn’t street-savvy enough to push my way through the crowd and hop onto any of the buses. I felt zillions of miles out of my comfort zone. I managed to get into a bus at last, paid the fare and waited for the conductor to miraculously produce my seat in the jam-packed bus. But he grinned at me, showing his paan-stained teeth, and said, “Uppa uppa”. After a few seconds of confused silence, I realized that I was supposed to hang onto the bus rail and stand all the way up to my destination, with the agonizing burden of the backpack that weighed more than all the rocks on earth (or so it seemed). I reached my destination just as it was bathed in the soft blue light of dusk. I took an auto to the nearest hotel and checked in. Having never stayed alone in a hotel, that too one with gaudy pink bed-sheets and eerily quiet at night, I was bit apprehensive and was overwhelmed about adding yet another experience to the ‘firsts’ in my life, all in the span of a day. My paranoia of the unknown made me push a heavy chair against the locked door of my hotel room. But after a refreshing shower and pushing some dinner down the gullet, sleep overpowered my fears; and as I woke up the next day and watched the bustling town through the window, my irrelevant fears dissipated.

The next couple of days were spent in a whirlwind of settling down in this new place- setting out early in the morning to college to compete the admission paperwork, orienting myself to the department and getting introduced to the seniors and the faculty, utilizing the hectic lunch hour to get a local phone connection and transfer bank accounts, getting scared by the tornado that is duty at the blood bank, shopping in the local bazaar, returning back to the hotel with arms laden with buckets and clothes clips, eating Gujarati thali or greasy ‘kadhai paneer’ dinners, updating myself on my father’s treatment, and drifting off into a dreamless sleep. I filled the hostel form for temporary accommodation and the warden directed me to the girl’s common room (a dormitory reserved for freshers). So, at seven in the morning of the next day, I checked out of the hotel and dragged my luggage into the first floor of the hostel I was supposed to stay for the next ten days. A boy answered it, sleepily rubbing remnants of sleep from his eyes with his knuckles and looking just as confused as I felt. Turned out that all the girls who were allotted the common room were either staying out of campus or shifted into rooms of senior residents. A frantic few phone calls later, I found a senior’s room to store my luggage and attend my classes meanwhile. The college was set up in 1955, five years before our college was built. The architecture is Gothic, with high ceilings and ragged stone walls and pigeons roosting in every possible corner you can name. The campus is huge and I still haven’t seen it all. The hospital, medical college, trauma centre, faculty quarters, the innumerable hostels, 24 hour canteens and library, wide grounds, tree-lined roads, archways; all in one campus, and not separated by a long road uphill like ours was. It is slightly shabby but nice. I like it.

The Pathology department is on the first floor of the medical college, and the long flight of stairs leading up to it has an old world charm. There are five sub-sections in it- Central Clinical Laboratory (CCL), Histopathology, Cytology, OPD and the (dreaded) Blood Bank. The intensity of duties of a pathology resident here is comparable to that of pediatrics or orthopedics residents back home, with 36 hour shifts at least once a week and 15-hour shifts on most days. My hope of it being a soft option (so that I could concentrate on writing) was brutally shattered in the first week itself. But being a creature of habit, I am used to resent things that I am secretly glad to have chosen. This academic course is one of them. The seniors were cordial and co-operative and a bunch of them went out of their way to make the hapless first year residents feel at home. I teamed up with two girls from Punjab and at midnight, after duty at the blood bank and a dinner of Marie biscuits, we shifted into a vacant room in the PG hostel for a couple of days, arranging a cot and mattress and light-bulb from seniors. We planned to live out of our suitcases till permanent quarters were allotted. Then we were in for the next shock. It was a co-ed hostel. First jolt, but we tried to mask our discomfort and awkwardness. The second jolt came at seven in the next morning when I came out of the shower cubicle to find a guy, wearing nothing but a towel and brushing his teeth on the sink in the same bathroom. As I relayed this news to my room-mates, it dawned on us why the hostel accommodation was free. It had common bathrooms, no maintenance, and lack of water in the washrooms at times of dire need. That was it. We vowed to find off-campus living quarters that very evening. And we did. Two days later, I shifted into a quaint little house, a half an hour walk away from college. There is a single room with an attached bath atop the wide terrace.

I love my room. It doesn’t contain a single piece of essential furniture. Clothes are in the suitcase, the mattress is on the floor, the groceries and toiletries are on two tiny plastic shelves, books are stacked in two high piles on the floor, clothes and bags hang on the wall hooks. The walls are bare, but thankfully the bathroom is spotlessly clean. Even with the negligible furnishings and bare possessions in my room, it feels like home every time I stride in tired late at night and flop down on my bed. Finally I am living alone; doing my own laundry, keeping stock of groceries, dusting and cleaning, and God forbid, even encountering my nemesis, cooking! I don’t own a gas stove, and am forced to experiment every dish on the electric cooker. I can eat only so much of North Indian food or Gujarati thalis at the college canteen or hostel mess on a regular basis. So, despite my non-existent cooking skills, I am experimenting, devouring and surviving on my own cooking. The joy of rice hitting my palate! I have a new found respect for the time-saving boons of the hot tiffincase; and most of all, my mother, whose cooking I miss terribly.

The day starts early for me. I wake up at four-thirty and study for an hour or two. Then I brew myself some coffee and walk out into the terrace and up the rusty stairs leading up to the roof; soaking in the warm aroma of the coffee, the sunrise, the slow awakening of the town, the numerous birds of all shapes and sizes silhouetted against the orange sky, the magic wind, thoughts of what the day will bring, thoughts of home and my family and thoughts of you. It is the favorite time of my day, a quiet space to wonder about the new life and reminiscence the one that I had left behind. I can’t write though; the delightful chaos in my mind and the urge to sort it out in words has deserted me. I don’t want to linger on anything, just live from moment to moment. The herd of cows gathering in a nearby field and mooing in unison works as my alarm clock and I wake up from my stupor of thoughts and memories, and get ready for the day ahead. Sometimes I forget to tiptoe down the stairs and run into the landlady and get trapped for a good half an hour as a reluctant audience to her religious sermons and neighborhood gossip. She is a good woman, but the sort who would be blissfully unaware if her audience fell like dominoes and dropped dead at her feet.

I pack my lunch bag, try to tame my unruly hair in the miniscule mirror hanging on the wall, get dressed in less than five minutes, and walk out of home sometime before eight. The auto fares are ridiculously low here, a pittance compared to the ones we have back home, but I prefer to walk to college in the morning. I pass by a sign called ‘Department of Lighthouses’ on my way. It makes me smile; I find the solitude of lighthouses and the waves crashing all around it very romantic. I eat buttered toast and gulp down a cup of Bournvita at the college canteen for breakfast. Sometimes I have a fluffy, melt-in-the mouth omelette, and it feels like an oasis of non-vegetarian heaven in the midst of people who don’t even eat onions and garlic. I am still clueless about where to buy fish. The morning passes by in the rush of OPD or blood bank. And then comes the much looked forward to lunch hour, which can vary from two hours to half an hour. I eat my lunch in the dining section of the common room, nap for twenty minutes (in the library!), and then revise notes etc. On the days when my duty gets over at six in the evening, I explore the surrounding area. I have discovered tiny shops in nooks and corners that are treasure troves of reasonably-priced commodities. The local bazaar is teeming with vibrancy and colour. I love the energy and earnestness of the people here. I like the way people welcome outsiders into their lives so warmly. Within a week, like Barney Stinson, I had a guy for every possible chore. The only difference is that here we address them as ‘bhai’. My phonebook is peppered with a string of ‘bhais’ that includes the property broker, my landlord, the bottled water delivery guy, the milkman, the washer-man, the grocery store shopkeeper, the auto driver, the Xerox shop guy etc. I took time getting used to addressing people as bhai or ben. It sounded funny in my mouth. But now I use them with a confident and familiar drawl. I am perpetually scared that I’ll slip into my Assamese ways and address senior female residents as ba (elder sister in Assamese, but grandmother in Gujarati!)

It’s a relatively safe place for women; I don’t feel anxious to travel alone after work in an auto at midnight. We even travel to the city outskirts to watch the late night movie shows in groups of three to four girls, and it doesn’t intimidate us. There are ice cream parlours, bakeries and patisseries in every block.  A big black dog with a lazy eye sits curled up o the first floor corridor of the hospital on most days. I have become friends with most of the residents from the other departments too. I haven’t found anyone from Assam though. But it is a good place to live, and I love it here.

Ten days after my arrival, my father’s chemotherapy started and he became severely nauseous and weak. I longed to be beside him. Talking over the phone with him, hearing my new friends exasperatedly but endearingly discuss their fathers, thinking of how carefree I was just a few days ago with no greater worries than a PG seat, all of these welled up embarrassing tears in my eyes. I had to visit him anyhow, even if for a day. A good friend booked my tickets and after fifteen long hours I was next to my father. He was coping well with the treatment but the radiotherapy induced mucositis in his throat caused excessive pain while swallowing food. He kept up his hour-long jogging routine six days a week. His stamina and determination to beat the disease astounds me. I spent four days with my family, and sooner than I had wanted it, I was back to work and my new life.

And here I am now, writing you this letter, that I know I will never send and you will never read. But I love writing these long letters, as in my mind you are always near and eagerly listening to my ramblings. I think of you at small pockets of time throughout the day. When I come back home each night, dead tired, I check if you are online. I won’t ever talk to you or cause you any unease, but it delights me that you are there, only a phone call away. It’s the modern equivalent of one taking comfort that the person he/she loves can see the same night sky and the same sliver of moon on it. It is a barely visible thread of connection and of naked, innocent hope; but a connection nonetheless. I will always hold onto it. It makes me forget my worries. Just the very fact that you are out there somewhere and that I love you is enough to sustain me through many a difficult day or mishaps.

I no longer wonder though if I ever cross your mind. It is laughable. And yet-yes, yet-in the middle of a busy day, you enter my thoughts and I get an inexplicable courage that eventually things will be alright. Why is it so is beyond me. The idea of you calms me down. And how I treasure it! My love for you is no longer restricted by hopes of reciprocation, it is just there…buoyant, carrying me away from everything that is wrong in my life for a precious few moments every day, and consuming me whole.

Love,

Me

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playing dead

retreating, going incommunicado, discovering the slow joy of anonymity, retreating, cutting off the superfluous, losing self in the routine, hearing the whispers and sounds that constitute a silence, modifying memories *obliviate*, retreating, curling up on a cold floor and going to sleep, not dwelling, never saying, retreating, playing dead.

The Price of Resilience

When I was a child, I used to accompany my parents to visit a family whom they had known for more than a decade. The couple had lost their elder daughter, then aged four, in a road traffic accident a couple of months before their second child was born. Both their present children, a boy and a girl, had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Even as a child, I could comprehend the graveness of the adversities faced by them. But no one in their family sulked about the apparent unfair and cruel blows life had dealt them. The whole house was a riot of laughter and activity. Sketchbooks, crayons, plastic trucks, glass marbles, frisbees, half-eaten packets of potato chips and a football were always strewn around the living room. Since the children were the biggest fans of Michael Jackson, they often used to rev up the music volume and give impromptu performances. They continued to quietly celebrate the birthday of their departed daughter, just the four of them, huddled around a chocolate cake baked at home, and the kids were oddly solemn in the remembrance of the elder sister they had never known.

There was none of the expected shadow of gloom hovering over their home; in fact often we could hear their laughter from the street as we turned into their home. But I was not convinced that not even a shred of anger, disappointment or sadness lingered in the lives of their parents; and was always on the lookout for hidden signs. But they were no more exasperated about their children than my parents were about my sister and I. I was suddenly disappointed about the hue and cry my parents raised about the glass of milk we refused to drink at bedtime or procrastinating on homework. I couldn’t contain my curiosity and bewilderment at their amazing coping mechanism and asked aunty how she managed to accept whatever life had brought her so uncomplainingly. Didn’t she ever get angry that this wasn’t exactly the life that she might have envisioned when she was young? Wasn’t she scared of what the future held?

They weren’t sticklers for religion, but they believed in the presence of a higher being who would look out for them, as they continued to make the best of whatever life brought them. She told me that the slightly detached overseer of our lives brought such obstacles into the lives of only those who had the strength to tackle them. She grew angry a thousand times every day but over the same causes that every parent frets about; untidiness, temper tantrums, excessive TV hours etc. And yes, she had found everything that she had always wanted in life; a loving husband, two happy children, a wonderful job, good health and lots of laughter. It is all about perspective. The journey was tough, and peppered with losses and obstacles; but the destination more than made up for that. She was content with what she had made of the sufferings life brought her. She was proud of it. As for the future, who can say what it held; it is useless worrying about the things we haven’t come to yet and giving up the pleasures of the present. She preferred to spend her days equipping her children with life skills, good education, ensuring they were healthy and happy rather than worrying about how they would cope in the world later.

These words had stayed with me and I still find them oddly consoling. Even now when I want to scream my lungs out, every time a cascade of new obstacles flow into my life and wonder if there will ever be any respite; I think of her words. I remind myself that I am resilient enough to handle this. Last night I had another health scare as the word cancer sprung up again, barely one and half months after I had lost my elder sister to it. I had lost three family members in quick succession in the past five years to cancer. And frankly, I am tired of it. I am tired of people dropping dead, when they are young and full of dreams, leaving the rest of us to battle the loss. All I crave for is a life where all my near and dear ones are healthy and happy; and I can get to worry only about things like what to wear for an evening out, long hours at work, the bad food at cafeteria, and get adequate time to lament about and pine for a lost love.

Sometimes I feel envious of those people whose lives had run such smooth courses, but then I remind myself that I haven’t been singled out, every one has their own private sorrows; and into each life some rain must fall, some more than the others. It has taught me to treasure the apparently mundane, everydayish things where nothing much happens; and revel in the infrequent but real joys that come my way.

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Being The Proverbial Ostrich

Sometimes I am the proverbial ostrich which sticks its head in the sand and feels smug that no one can see it. It amazes me how often I defy the ceiling effect of idiocy, reaching newer heights each time, and chuckle quietly about continual attempts to outdo my own records of bad decisions and self-delusions.

I get into these dangerous moods, battling an impulsiveness that provokes me to do things that I would surely regret. I contemplate giving meditation a chance. But then I am too young to visualize a field of daisies or the calming aura of self-styled gurus with creepy smiles to rein in my mind. I have a few more restless years in me.

It might not always be wise, but I am used to speaking out what is on my mind. So it is positively a  torture when I have to give consequences a thought and settle for writing letters that would never leave the drafts folder. Or keep my face composed not to betray the slightest bit of emotion. Or resist the urge to kick something really hard. Or plaster a huge grin on my face and listen to a couple so in love it is almost  nauseating. Or overlook an inner void. Or quietly allow sleep to overpower me and wake up to another day.

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The One About Skinned Knees, Distractions and Absent Lovers

Two decades ago I barged into a class and under the scrutiny of fifty pairs of eyes that had turned towards the door, I tripped and fell. I didn’t pause for a single second on the ground, and dashed towards my desk, trying to overlook the classmates who sniggered. And it was only when the teacher shrieked ‘Your socks are soaked with blood!’ I looked down at my bloodied knees. The wounds gaped wide enough to require sutures but I was too preoccupied with my embarrassment to feel even the slightest stab of pain. As everyone fussed over my injury, caressing my head, and offering me a glass of water, I felt the pain in my legs explode. That’s what I remember from that day. If you don’t dwell on it, the hurt is negligible. I took to suppression as a coping mechanism against injuries and setbacks; I don’t conceal or run away from hurt, but face it with an essential detachment, like events unfolding in the life of a close acquaintance where I have a ringside view of everything but I am spared the pain. I don’t dwell on the ground to look at my bleeding knees.

February was tough. I lost a sister, an important plan fell through, a close friend disintegrated into depression, and I witnessed (and still witnessing) a career-related legal drama. If I allow myself to take it in all, the chaos would choke me. But over the years, my mind had adapted to detach and distract itself from the dreams that crumble, the people I lose or the ennui of everyday existence, filing them away in neat little cabinets. Life is too short to mourn about what happened and what didn’t. I am yet to be loved; I am yet to achieve my goals. There are so many places I haven’t visited yet; there are so many books I haven’t read yet. I go from one day to the next, concentrating on what is and what would be. The past can’t be crammed into my life.

I extrude the unpleasant by replacing it with small moments of pleasure. A day after my elder sister died, I felt guilty about the happiness that bubbled up in my chest on seeing the new and vivid bougainvillea blossoms near my home. On the days when love disheartens me, I write about love. I read wherever and whenever possible. The calming monotony of laps in the pool or feet pacing on a long walk is something else that I look forward to. My ambition had blunted in the recent years, and I am trying to revive it; but all the while reminding myself that it is just a job. I am not one of those revoltingly joyous and perky individuals brimming with optimism, but I refuse to drown in despair too. Life is just normal; sometimes I create my own happiness, and sometimes it creeps in unexpected.

 

I take solace in the unusual; even the absent lover has a peculiar charm. It can sometimes morph into a constant and subtle longing for him to witness the world with me, to witness me, to let me witness him. These are the moments when I walk about interposing minutiae of my idea of him into the world around me, blending the two seamlessly. Today I drove to IITG and spent few delightful hours walking the large green grounds and catching up with old friends. All throughout I carried him around to hear that song on the car radio, to see that lone black bird on a tree with red blossoms, to be enthralled by that sunset over the vast river, to hear the conversations I had, or to laugh over my hair fanning out weirdly in the wind. Sometimes an intangible absence makes me feel more alive to the world than the tangible objects that crowd it.

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8th January, 2013

The nights are foggy and cold. But Asaram Bapu (or whatever he makes his motley of brain-dead followers call him) made sure that many fumed with anger last night. His opinions aren’t even worth of being spat on; but there are hordes of people who drink every word of his as the elixir of enlightment, and who will implement these absurd beliefs and suggestions in their own homes. That’s what worries me. Girls would be asked to fall at the feet of their brothers and call for mercy, to spare their honour (which we are told resides in a thin membrane; one’s thoughts, deeds and the way one leads their life hardly matters, it’s all about that membrane!). They would be asked to recite a prayer when a brother-in-faith cum closet rapist leers and hovers over her. He might drop dead or miraculously recognize the sister in the woman he wanted to rape. Who knows? In the world of all-knowing godmen, the women who get raped had obviously forgotten to invoke a few Gods in her daily prayer, or crossed the threshold of her home with the left foot first, walked under a ladder, wore black, forgot to fast, or worse were atheists who jiggled cleavage, ate spicy chowmein (this was suggested by the Khap not long ago as the cause of untamed libido!), roamed the streets after dark, and basically did everything to deserve being raped! Last night I watched in dismay that woman trying to defend Asaram’s comments the News Hour debate. How can one expect a safe world for women when there exists such members of their own gender who follow the derogatory discourse of self-styled, rogue godmen as the absolute truth?

The nights are still foggy and cold. I am buried under three layers of woolens. I drink umpteen cups of chai. I have upped the capsaicin intake. I don’t want to leave the gym, and its central heating. I asked a (married) friend in Delhi how she had been surviving the nights, when the mercury drops to record lows. Her answer embarrasses me and I shut up. Every morning I feel distressed to read the news of people dying in the cold wave in North India. Lives lost just because of the lack of access to a warm blanket! I had asked another friend, who has the authority of being a part of the government, if/ and how he tackles these sad loss of lives in his district. He replied that they had arranged for large fires being lit at public places and had even distributed a few thousand blankets to the people who don’t have access to the bare necessities of life. It made me feel so proud of him; not just because I heard of these measures being taken to combat the problem, but because I have complete faith in their implementation. We, as citizens, too can aid such efforts by donating woolen clothes and blankets to clothing drives and NGOs. We often wonder whether such small steps would ever make a real difference. It would, at least to a few lives; and continuous and collective efforts will make a much greater impact.

I’m on a rough patch emotionally; on the verge of losing a loved one forever; learnt embarrassingly late that the one I had (stupidly) pined for so long, is in love with someone else; books don’t interest me enough, nor does writing; uncertainties about my future haunt me; my simple dreams clash with the ambitious expectations of others. Stubborn hopes cling to me even when I’m fully aware of their absurdity. I write when I feel like. I connect with only the people who matter. Early mornings and a good part of the day are spent in studying for an exam in February. Today I listened to ‘Always on My Mind’ in a loop. In the evening I read a few pages of Boredom by Alberto Moravia. I am trying to learn the importance of letting things follow its own course. Sometimes expectations weigh things down. Nonchalance makes every little development a pleasant surprise. I’m learning about life.

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Shame

Last year, I was on night duty in the obstetrics& gynaecology department of a hospital and towards the early hours of morning, when all the babies that were supposed to be born sometime in the night were born and lying snugly against their mothers, and the doctors were enjoying a rare moment of calm, a young girl of fifteen and an EMT wheeled in a girl who was completely drenched in blood from her waist down.

She worked in a call center. A cab dropped her at the gate of her house every night. That morning she had told the driver that he needn’t take the trouble to turn into the her lane, he can drop her there, which was just a minute away from her home. Hers was the second house to the right. I keep repeating this sentence in my mind. How many times I had said it myself. It’s okay, I can walk from here. It’s okay, you can drop me here. But that night sixty seconds away from her home someone gagged her, pulled her into the bushes and raped her. When she didn’t reach home at her usual time and her phone turned unreachable, her younger sister called the cab. When the cab driver replied that he had dropped her half an hour ago, she called her neighbour and they went out into the street, already fearing the worst. They found her unconscious and bloodied right in the middle of the road. 

I saw her injuries. Her vagina didn’t stop spurting blood. Her blood pressure was barely measurable. I had witnessed so many emergency medical scenarios at the hospital. But this stumped me. I was too shocked to react. If this can happen a few metres away from your home, where can you be safe anymore? She had an emergency surgery to arrest the bleeding. She regained consciousness later that morning. She didn’t emote. She didn’t even cry. Her parents arrived later that day. The police came in for questioning. The matter was hushed up at the family’s insistence, who will marry their daughters! It never made it to the papers.

Nor did the case of the seven year old girl who was raped while she playing near the brick kiln where her mother worked. Professional ethics and humane responsibility don’t allow us to discuss about the rape victims even among ourselves, so as not to threaten revealing their identity and ordeal to the public. So we quietly watched as they got discharged after a week or two. I have no idea whether the criminals got caught and convicted. What shocked me is that the staggering number of rape cases that are reported is just the tip of the iceberg, so many go unreported and hushed up due to a collective shame of the victim’s family. That realization was hard.

I did it too, when I was molested in broad daylight in a shared auto while coming home from my college. I didn’t go to the police, I went to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist nervously laughed, “so the lesson is never to get into a shared auto. Think about the bright side, you weren’t raped“. I didn’t know how to react to what was being said to me. It’s been four years now and I am in a position where I can talk about it with some detachment and without any suffocating and nauseating disgust. I no longer re-create the various scenarios I could have come home that day without getting into that auto, I wasn’t in hurry whatsoever. The only remnant is an intense fear for letting my sisters roam around in this world.

A few months earlier of what happened to me, a friend of mine was stopped on that same lonely stretch of road on the way to our college by a man, who took out his penis and ejaculated on her dupatta. When he heard a car approaching, he escaped into the surrounding forest. The police was informed. They came three days later, and searched the forest for a ‘supposedly‘ madman (because in this ideal world only a madman holds up a young girl and shows her his penis? Ya, right; keep telling yourself that!) and didn’t find anyone.

When a Manipuri girl was raped a few years ago, near DU (or was it JNU), even my cousin and his father had raised questions about her character and then at her carelessness instead of anger at the heinous crime of which she was the victim. And I am ashamed to admit that I had nodded in affirmation then.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I don’t know what is the solution to all these. It’s just that fast track courts and death penalty are only solutions for the aftermath. How to prevent it? It’s our mindset, our upbringing, our thoughts, our perceptions that needs changing. While growing up, I was told of the bad things a man can do to a woman; and it was passively accepted that if I will ever be careless enough not to abide by certain precautions, I will have brought upon myself the consequences of whatever might happen to me. I walk alone at night in skimpy clothes, obviously a man will rape me! That is what we are warned about at home and at schools and colleges.

No one warns the men. What about teaching them to respect women? I was aghast recently when I heard from my thirteen-year old cousin that the new girl in their class had taken a mid-term transfer to their school, because she was raped by her boyfriend in her previous school! I don’t how much of it is the over-active imagination of hormone-ridden teenagers, and how much of it is the truth; I am afraid to probe. I did ask my cousin how and what did he know about the word ‘rape‘? He sniggered as if it was a joke. They don’t even understand the ugliness of the word. And if they aren’t taught about it at this stage, they will be the one leching at women in a few years.

It’s all very distressing when you think about where to start, even the attempts seem so futile. But small changes at home and school, if each parent/teacher made genuine efforts to inculcate a mutual respect among the genders, without any discrimination, without any one feeling  that they are powerful enough to do whatever they want with the other, maybe things will change few generations from now. But as of now, it all looks very glum.

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Step-by-Step Guide of Having A Stroke.

This article is meant for medical PG aspirants, but everyone is welcome to read their plight.

There’s a new cause of stroke that I am contemplating to request for inclusion in the next edition of ‘Harrison’s Principles of  Internal Medicine’. The cause is rare, affecting only people of ages ranging from 24-27 years, who are bound by a common variable of ‘dreams of attaining a post-graduate medical seat’. It’s ‘The Deccan Chronicle‘ newspaper.

How?

Let me elaborate.

Picture a girl diligently burning the midnight oil for six days a week, surviving on catnaps and caffeine shots. Sometimes the words blur and amalgamate into a lumpy mass in the middle of the page and she rubs her eyes. The clock strikes 3am. She yawns and curls up on the little space available on the bed (which she prefers over a study desk), strewn with books and a laptop, only to be awakened three hours later by the weirdest alarm clock ever: a rude rooster, a (what seems to be a) gurgling cow and the synchronized wing flapping of three scary pigeons, all of whom the universe has conspired to allocate within ten meters of her window.

This is her bed, her books, her pillows and a giant yellow turtle.

She has an exam in three and half months, the same exam that she got through last year, but in a move of sudden boldness, decided to give up the allocated seat for a better subject the following year. She had taken a risk, and that’s the strongest motivation to force herself through the grueling schedule, just so that her risk doesn’t translate into foolishness! So, she studies. She had sketched out a routine that would enable her to complete her syllabus by the end of November and devote the next one and half months for mock tests and revisions. The routine strives to include time for indulging in her love for blogging, reading novels and watching obscure foreign films.

She is perpetually tired and people, who hadn’t seen her in a while, ask her if she had been ill. But she is satisfied that she has a chance at scoring a good rank if she continues to work hard, and that too without giving up the things that she finds enriching. A lot is riding on her exam performance; her career, gaining back the time she had lost, marriage (that her parents keep dropping subtle hints about) and just ‘moving ahead‘. It doesn’t help that she is eligible only for the nation-wide exam, and that she belongs to the unfortunate batch of guinea-pigs the examining authority had decided to test with an entirely new pattern of exam, the sacred details of which is religiously guarded by them! She has no option but to indulge the speculations of the coaching centers who are cashing in on this panic among students.

She had been a good girl throughout the week and had abstained from all online social networks. So as a reward, she logged on to Zuckerberg’s money-making enterprise yesterday evening (irony?).

This is where the stroke comes in!

There is an article ‘liked’ by few hundred PG aspirants and a string of comments longer than she ever got in any of her photo albums. She is a curious creature, have always been so, and she clicks on the link. The article is from ‘The Deccan Chronicle‘ and as her eyes read the first few sentences, she suffers a stroke. Everything blacks out for a moment, or maybe it was eternity. She tries to move her eyes away, but all voluntary movements had come to a standstill.

The article stated that the exam that was supposed to be held in January second week, and based on which she had carefully chalked out her study routine to complete her preparations, has been scheduled for November third week instead. Seven weeks preponed and informed just two months prior to the exam! She is a ruined woman.

This is “Zor Ka Jhatka” on steroids! She is still experiencing episodes of residual absence seizures every few hours every time she contemplates the news. By today evening, she has gained some composure and is back to pursuing the only thing that is in her control: studying!

The coaching center is placating the mass hysteria among the students by assuring that it is just a rumour but, why take chances? Laboratory guinea pigs can’t afford to do so!

(Note: 1) Observation: Blog Updated. Inference: The above news is a rumour, and she’s ecstatic!
            2) Observation: Blog updated only in December. Inference: The above news is true! She barely managed to scrape through the ordeal.
             3) Observation: Blog never updated again! Inference: She’s dead. Or rearing llamas in Peru.)

———————————————————————————————————-

Other Updates (non stroke-inducing):

Books:  I’m reading ‘The Marriage Plot‘ by Jeffrey Eugenides. I’m in love with the narrative. On page 52 now. Other books on the nightstand are Hanif Kuireshi’s ‘The Black Album‘ and Dorothy Parker’s ‘Complete Stories‘. I loved reading Nora Ephron’s breezy essays in ‘I Feel Bad About My Neck‘ so I read another collection of essays last week, ‘I Remember Nothing‘. It doesn’t live up to the preceding volume of essays but there were things that caught my interest, like ‘My Aruba‘ (which is the name Ephron had given to the particular arrangement of hair strands on the back of the head that gets clumped sideways at the slightest provocation of a mild breeze or a bus ride, and it appears to be a bald spot or a sign of never owning a comb. It is named after the trees in Aruba, that are all bent to one side owing to strong winds. Now I have a name for it!). I found it hilarious and painfully familiar.

Movies: I watched Shyam Benegal’s ‘Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda‘. The language was a constraint, and I am not sure the subtitles were accurate enough. But I enjoyed the story-telling, the gradual unfolding of stories within stories. It’s about what love is NOT. It highlights the various socio-economic factors that come into play when we pursue love. The characters were flawed, and hence believable. They break your heart, especially Neena Gupta‘s character. Planning to watch Pestonjee next week.

Doodling on a post-it.

 And I’m still in love with Barfi! Main kya karoon?

Travels: Does the gym count?

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They Haunt Me In The Shower

Five sentences crowded in the left column of the newspaper jolted me this morning. I read about earthquakes, bombings, accidents, murders and cardiac arrests everyday; newspapers make sure we wake up to witness the end of lives in solemn obituaries or gory details or just few indifferent words. But these are snippets of wars in foreign lands or riots nearer home or a bespectacled old woman lovingly remembered by her sons and grandchildren, and even though these deaths aggrieve me, their anonymity cushions the blow and makes it only a fleeting presence in my memory.

How does the death of someone you know affect you?

I don’t mean the intimate circle of family, friends and loved ones or the innocent victims in distant, war ravaged lands. I’m writing about those in between, the people one might have known, met at some point in their lives and maybe had talked about the weather.

A good friend of mine from high school traced me through an online social network and we ended up sharing the latest gossip, reliving old memories and promises to meet soon. She used to ask the weird questions and when we were in the eight standard she made me choke on a burger when she asked out loud ‘Does pubic hair turn gray?’! She spelled it ‘trigonometry’ but pronounced it ‘trikonometry’. Her hands were never tired by the animated gestures that accompanied every sentence she spoke. Every night her mother shook her curly hair to drive out any mosquitoes before she got inside the mosquito net. Time and distance had faded her from being a close friend into the sphere of a mere acquaintance and I forgot about her in pursuing the mundane activities of my life. And one day I received a text message informing me that she had died following complications of a regular cholecystectomy! I wasn’t devastated or cried throughout the day. I envy people who can do that. I was sad, and profoundly so, but I didn’t shed a single tear. I was amazed at my own calm and strength in handling the emotional blow. Two years on, I avoid any conversation that brings her up. The grief refuses to ebb away in a gush of tears.

My pehi (paternal aunt) died two nights after I had scolded her about eating potatoes. She was a diabetic who never comprehended the seriousness of her ailment. She gulped down rosogullas in secret, as if discreetness would shield her from the ravages of diabetes. Her feet had sores which she hid in the folds of her saree. She thought it was a game her body would win as long as she plunged a syringe into her abdomen twice a day. She got hospitalized frequently, but always recovered in a few days and the family breathed a collective sigh of relief. Five years ago she didn’t even have the time to reach the hospital. She died on her bed in our ancestral home in the village. I had called up to know if she got admitted in the hospital yet and I was informed that my aunt had expired a few minutes ago. It is this phone call that will haunt me all my life; how my heart had stopped beating for a few moments and it was momentarily difficult to move my mouth to form words.

Today the newspaper told me that another life had ended and it threw up a familiar name. I sat transfixed for a few moments, then rationalized that it might be a namesake and called up few people who might help refute the newspaper claim, but the news only got confirmed. He was an acquaintance who I had worked with nearly two years ago. Through the little interaction I had with him, I knew him to be a good-hearted, calm, intelligent, unassuming, hard-working, sincere, sober and kind person with a wit that took time to get used to. He had warned us about the futility of a doctor trying to advise family members regarding health issues. He had said, “Ghar ki murgi daal barabar!” and all the interns had laughed. He had once admonished me for rushing into the NICU with my shoes on. We drank piping hot cups of tea on a winter night and talked about treatment protocol of asthma! I remember him with the ubiquitous muffler around his neck and a brown jacket. He wasn’t a friend or a close acquaintance, just someone I had known fleetingly. But I am distraught by this sudden end to a young life full of so many hopes and dreams, a life that had just started out, a life which was backed by achievements and a life so gentle. Tongues have started wagging about the cause of death, but is it necessary to know how, where, why or who drove him to the ends of despair and end his life? It’s a sad enough fact that we lost such a good person from amidst us.

The melancholy of young lives cut short by untimely deaths haunt me every moment till they merge into the subconscious only to erupt in moments of solitude. I am scared to close my eyes in the shower, for the thought of the dead haunt me in the claustrophobic, hazy cloud of steam. In morbid moments I feel guilty to be alive and breathing when someone my age, someone I had known, someone who might be more deserving of a place on this beautiful earth is no more. I am disturbed by the unpredictability and the abruptness of death, of dreams and hopes remaining unfulfilled or fading from the memories of loved ones.

Today the sky was the bluest blue and the sun had cast a golden glow and a pleasant breeze had rustled the leaves of the tree outside my window. The traffic continue to harass, new books are getting penned, movies will release this weekend, iPad5 is yet to release, fuel prices continue to rise, people will continue to fall in and out of love, the ruins of Atlantis might be discovered and Venice might sink; but the lost lives will no longer witness them. 

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The Dirty Word

I visited the Sunday Book Bazaar at Daryaganj recently, and I felt faint with excitement at the awe-inspiring treasures in front of me, rows and rows of books scattered in the pavement, waiting to be picked up by readers for less than the price of a cup of coffee. I did what any self-respecting book lover would do, ignored the mortified glare of the people who accompanied me, and sat down at the pavement next to a huge pile of books that included New York Times best-sellers, rare editions with yellowed, well-thumbed pages, translated works from all over the world. I looked sadly at the size of the two totes my sister and I carried; and considered dialling a taxi to take a greater haul home. I added twenty new books to my library that day. And one of them was Joyce Carol Oates’s ‘We Were the Mulvaneys‘.

It’s the saga about a perfect American family; a Dad with a flourishing roofing business, a cheerful Mom who was more of a friend to her children, three talented sons, an angelic daughter, a quaint farmhouse, adorable pets, a bustling social life, devout God-fearing hearts and the happiness of making a perfect little world for themselves, the perfect world of the Mulvaneys. Then ‘it’ happened. The incident. That dirty word. And the world sided with the ‘rapist’. The Mulvaneys fell apart, the family disintegrating gradually, time playing a cruel trick of engraving the hurt deeper each day, the knife turning in their hearts a little more each day. Each individual of the family, Mom, Dad, the three brothers and Marianne Mulvaney herself, the angelic girl to whom ‘it’ happened; were a ‘casualty’ of the incident. They didn’t crumble immediately, but the helplessness and the frustration of justice denied, falling prey to social stigma, disappointment at each other’s reaction to ‘it’; the failure to protect the lovely Marianne, their world, ‘The Mulvaneys’. How it breaks your heart! Knowing the Mulvaneys at such close quarters, having been handed such an intimate view of their lives, their goodness, their love, their perfect life; and the slow destruction of everything they treasured, the love fading behind uneasiness and their misery. Oates’s is at her finest, describing the trauma of this family, turning to obscurity. But time heals the scars, or at least makes them strong enough to endure it.  There is reconciliation, triumph of hope and compassion at the end. But, why? At what cost? Why them? Why anyone at all? It’s fiction, yet it can be anyone. It can be about me, about you. I couldn’t help the tears brimming in my eyes, as I leafed through the final pages of this remarkable book, this moving account of human emotions, flaws and redemption.

And in the evening, I watched Barkha Duttinterview a rape victim of the 2002 Gujrat riots and sat listening to the trials of her family. It’s a ten year old trial of her family fighting for justice, fighting for survival, fighting to bring up two daughters unscathed. The husband’s eyes gleaming with tears as he talked about the troubles they had to face, the threats they had to endure and how they kept it all aside for what is right, what is just.

I remembered the various accounts of sexual abuse I’ve heard through the years. A friend’s sister, who had a problem of bed-wetting till the age of 23, was a victim of incest at the age of 3 years. A neighbour was a victim of marital rape every time she had an argument with her husband. A classmate was groped by few men during a Durga Puja crowd.

Many women. Many stories. A dirty word in their lives; Abuse, Incest or Rape.

It had been coming for a while. I couldn’t see it outright, but the signs were there; creeping along the subconscious, an occasional peek now and then; the dirty word glaring at me from the front page of the newspaper as I nervously flip it over to the light-hearted page 3 gossips, a scene from a TV show-the girl running, thinking ‘will she escape?’ and the helplessness of knowing she won’t; the muted paranoia of letting my sisters go out into the world where unknown dangers lurk at every corner and I’m not there to watch over them every moment; the constant efforts to ‘blend in’, worried of being singled out, of sending any wrong signals, not ‘too quiet, too shy’ any more, as I try being social, to blend in. My mind tries to remind me of ‘it’. There had been too many signs recently; a newspaper headline, TV shows, this book. And I unconsciously shut out these triggers, not dwelling on them out of habit. My memory is remarkable, not in retaining, but in ‘forgetting’, in ‘undoing’, in convincing myself ‘It never happened’, congratulating myself on moving on so effortlessly, dreams and hopes in life still intact, nothing ravaged. My memory saved me, burying unpleasant details, hushing out any voices from the past, those words in the newspaper, that helplessness of the girl running, that muted paranoia.

I too had been through it. I was led to believe I had been lucky. I was ‘only‘ molested. Once that tricky portal of thoughts open, the sentences from my past escape and crowd in, vying for my attention. “Only molested”. “Not raped”. “It could have been worse”. “It happens to every woman at some point of her life”. “Girls get molested in crowded buses every day: a pinch, a rub”. “If you don’t dwell on it, it’s like it never happened”. There are rare times when I wonder how I got so close to being another Marianne Mulvaney, but I didn’t. I escaped; from the bad things that a man can do to a woman. But I had a narrow escape. Was I lucky? Hell, yes. I thank God for sparing me the trauma, and my life. But the questions like “Why did it even have to happen?”, “What could have been?”, “How can my parents not protect me?” still haunts me when I lessen my guard over my subconscious.  Family support and therapy can go a long way, I have heard. I can’t imagine what rape victims must go through; their feelings towards self, towards family and friends, towards society at large, and towards the unfairness of being singled out, disrupting their life’s course; the life that wasn’t supposed to include ‘it’.

My family had supported me through my jittery nervous existence, through the bouts of depression that followed, but I was disappointed that nothing could be done to punish the guilty. I consulted a psychiatrist and all she said was, “so, the lesson is to be cautious. And never to use a shared auto.” And nervous laughter. As if it was a joke. As if we are discussing a trivial matter, as if it was a moral science class in school with a ‘Lesson’ at the end. I knew she couldn’t help me, only I can heal myself and move on. Only I can trick my memory, bring my life back on track, and make up for lost time. I have done it, I don’t think about it anymore. I can write about it now, even though I don’t bring it up in conversations. I can watch the scene of a girl being molested on TV without wincing. I can watch my reflection in the mirror and not feel self-disgust. I can talk to people, chat with friends, fall in love, and enjoy life every moment. Sometimes I am aware of it being a little forced, this determination of mine for an untainted memory. Few aspects will take time to get used to; like to trust someone.

 

It’s still taboo in our society. Sex in movies, live-in relationships, homosexuality etc is being accepted gradually. But the uneasiness of society when dealing with sexual abuse is still prevalent. My heart goes out to those women who have suffered ‘it‘. Not just the street hooligans, there can be a beast lurking in that friendly neighbour, that teacher you idolize, that man sitting next to you on a flight. Who knows? Who can say? Where can a woman be safe? In homes where incest is “not seen”, wife swapping among brothers still prevalent in certain communities, and maintaining family relations triumphs over moral justice? In offices where lewd remarks, sexual harassment-outright or suggested, uncomfortable male gazes prevail and again “not seen”? In a society where news of ‘a woman raped at 1am after a party’ gets out and all one hears is the contempt for the careless woman staying out so late at night and questions about her character? On the streets where a young school girl returning from school is stared down from head to toe by road-side loafers who comment on her breasts and thighs?

  

Who has given men right to abuse a women at whatever time of the day it might be, at however lonely a place it might be, and however skimpy her clothes may be? How can one say ‘she had it coming for her’? How can one violate another person in such a brutal way just because she’s a woman, correction, she has a vagina? Who defines these moral codes? I know I am being too hopeful in wanting a society where a woman’s dignity is never unduly violated just because she’s there, within reach of groping hands.

The best we can hope for now is looking after ourselves and being cautious, fighting for justice, and support victims of such crimes-be it incest, sexual harassment of any sort, molestation or rape.

I pray for a world when this dirty word vanishes from the surface of the earth.

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Holiday from Hell

I took a sudden decision to go on a short vacation to Bangalore in the second week of May. My sister had a medical entrance exam there and I decided to accompany her and my dad and hoped to explore Bangalore while they were busy with exams. We set off to Bangalore on the fourteenth of May. We stayed over at my brother’s place and my brother and bhabhi went out of their way to make our stay in Bangalore quite enjoyable. Good food, shopping, sight-seeing, and just enough time off to curl up with a good book. It was bliss! It was also quite wonderful to watch the young newly-weds, my brother and bhabhi, run their home so efficiently.

And then things went horribly wrong. After a humongous shopping spree on 16th, we decided to have lunch in a restaurant on MG road. Pa along with the rest in the group ate seafood, while I being vegetarian stuck to typical North-Indian fare. Pa had slight indigestion the next day. But after I gave him some OTC medicines; he felt quite okay. On 18th we had an early morning flight to Mumbai and from there an evening flight to Guwahati.

After reaching home on 18th night, Pa felt seriously ill and had to be admitted to the hospital. at 10pm. He was shifted to the ICU that midnight. Everything was so sudden, that we were at a loss of what to do. He collapsed and his vital organs began to fail. He had food poisoning which spread in his entire body in a matter of few hours, aided by the fact that he is a diabetic. He was diagnosed with sepsis and multi-organ dysfunction. He was slipping away and doctors said that he had very little chances of survival, but they were fighting hard against controlling the infection. All our relatives from every nook and corner of the country gathered in the hospital. My mother who had recovered from a recent myocardial infarction was another great worry, and I had to make sure she was able to cope with whatever the outcome was.

And then on the third day in the ICU, my father’s spontaneous breathing stopped. I felt my whole world had collapsed. Nothing mattered and nothing will matter ever again. All I could think of was how four days back we were happily discussing the national election result and making guesses about the likely cabinet ministers, and then on the flight back home how I was busy reading a novel and hardly checked on him. I vomited in the corridor outside the ICU. I can’t describe in words how I felt. My sister fainted and I had to take care of my mother too. This can’t be happening to us, this wasn’t how it was all supposed to be. And then my uncle came running to us, and said that the doctors had been able to successfully resuscitate Pa. He was breathing again. I immediately ran to the ICU, forced my way in despite visitor restrictions and confirmed what my uncle said. I, who was never so much of a religious person, began praying day and night after that moment. After ten harrowing days of battling for life in the ICU, my father was finally out of danger. He was shifted to the ward. Two days after that, he was back home. But he needs to be on complete bed rest for a month. So, here I am, thankful for every moment to God, and the amazing critical care specialists in the hospital, esp Dr.Vandana Sinha. I will always be indebted to her for the miracle of my father’s surviving sepsis at the age of 59yrs and with the complicating co-morbidities of diabetes and hypertension. I’m thankful to all my relatives, near and far, who made every effort to decrease this ordeal for us through comforting words and actions. The help my dad’s office colleagues offered is something I will always remember and be thankful for.

It was a bad time for our family; fear, tension, anxiety and pain. Fear of losing the most important person in our lives. Time stood still for us, as we waited day and night outside the ICU, praying for his recovery, dreading every time the doctor called us in for an ‘important‘ talk. But they fade into oblivion when I see Pa at home now, reading the morning newspaper and watching cricket. So many times I’ve taken this man for granted, his very presence as something I would have for life. But this incident, least expected and so sudden, shook me up completely. Never ever I would give my parents a reason to worry or grieve because of me.

A lot of things have changed for me in the past month. My whole life was on the verge of coming to a standstill and picked up at the last minute. At times like this, we realize the true value of family, relatives and friends. And the need to believe in a higher being with the power to drive away all your troubles. I started believing in God instinctively, when I saw Pa in the hospital bed.

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Riches to Rags- the shortest trip ever

MONEY! CASH! BUCKS! MOOLAH! PAISA!

I don’t crave for billions or a 60 storey residence or even a luxury jet on my birthday. I’m talking about having a fortune enough to lead a life of comfort by my family and myself, and enough savings to overcome any unexpected crisis. In today’s world money is the most important requirement for survival. “Roti, Kapda aur Makaan“- is too outdated. If you don’t have enough savings to see you and your family through bad times, it’s going to be a very difficult life ahead.

I do crave for and are accustomed to a few luxuries- a car at my disposal, frequent travels, indulging in my love for buying books etc. That’s it. Nothing fancy. No addiction to extravagant expenses of jewelery and designer apparel shopping. I come from a regular middle class family, and have led a comfortable enough life without having to experience the want of something essential. It’s all about how much you crave for, and fortunately my needs are few. But even though I’ve never faced a financial crisis, growing up in India made me a spectator to poverty right from my childhood. You can’t help but see it on the streets, in villages, and it is even rampant in urban India.

I’ve grown up hearing, “Money can’t buy you happiness“. But it sure can buy a sense of security and comfort to a family. Education, pursuing your dreams, looking after your loved ones; money is not the only criteria in achieving them, but it is the only basis. Recently I’ve been a close witness to how even family and friends tend to distance themselves from the one on whom bad times have befallen. No matter how close a person is to his family, once he becomes financially dependent on them, resentments tend to develop in a scale varying from “you better be thankful that I’m providing for you and be happy about whatever you receive without voicing any opinion” mindset to downright alienation.

A distant uncle, my chaachi’s brother, who was suffering from cancer expired yesterday. He was a distant relative, but had been an important part of my life while growing up. He lost his job about a decade back, lost all his savings and house to deceitful and conniving siblings, and since then he and his family had been surviving on odd jobs and occasional financial help from relatives. But gradually, even the relatives used to dread his visit because he’d obviously ask for money. My father used to give him money whenever he visited. I used to resent the fact at times about my father offering help to every person in need of money. I felt people took Pa’s generosity for granted. He draws a fixed salary every month and is the sole earning member of the family. So, the fact that he spends nearly half of it in helping others and supporting two additional families in our Jorhat home every month, irritates me no end. Because I am scared of lack of savings for my sister’s and my education, and having a tough time in case some calamity befell on our family. But my father comes from a very, very poor family and he and his siblings had struggled very hard in life to reach the positions they are in now. Therefore, Pa can’t tolerate to see anyone struggling for the basic amenities in life. Moreover, he is a firm believer of the fact that if you help others, God would see to it that you won’t be in need of anything ever. Sure enough, despite Pa’s habit of financially helping others by giving away more than half of his income, our family had never been in a severe cash crunch. Somehow, we always manage to sail through any crisis. So, I can’t even argue that my father’s belief is irrational!

My uncle, who expired yesterday, were avoided by relatives because of his compulsive borrowing and to be honest, even I resented his visits at time. He was a good man, had always helped people around him, adopted a girl child, and was liked by all…when he wasn’t financially dependent on others. But within two years of unemployment, his very existence became a burden for his brothers and he was out in the streets with his family. He did odd jobs to support his family. But recently when he fell ill, I realized the importance of money and its value not only to sustain life but also it’s power to dilute and distance even blood relations. He was diagnosed with cancer and was looked after by his wife and two daughters who stayed in the hospital, as they had no other place to live. My father footed only the medical bills, as it was all he could afford to spare at that time. But for daily expenses, his wife had to take up the job of a sweeper in the hospital! This is a woman who comes from a well-to-do family but had been alienated over the years. I shuddered to think how times change. This is what happens in real life. And until now, I used to think such things happens only in Bollywood formula movies. His own sister, my chaachi, offered to pay only a measly 1000 rupees because that was the only amount her husband could spare! His other siblings refused to even visit him in the hospital, in fear of having to financially help him out. Our family, even though distant relatives, were the only contacts of them at this hour because Pa considered him as his younger brother.

When it was diagnosed that he had terminally ill, the hospital told the family about the futility of any further treatment. So, they shifted to a lodge awaiting his final days. His wife called my mother at 3am yesterday and told that my uncle was on his deathbed. My mother rushed to the place where they were staying, but by the time she reached there he had already expired. She called us from there to inform us about it. None of his relatives visited him, except for his wife’s brothers. The cremation was done by his youngest daughter, hardly twelve years old. His siblings inquired about his death only after the cremation was over, because they didn’t want to bear the expenses of it!

By the time he was diagnosed with cancer, he was past the stage of getting cured. Money wouldn’t have helped to save him. But it would’ve ensured he died a peaceful death, satisfied of his family being financially secure after his death. But he died a difficult death and has left his family in a very bad financial situation with no job and no home. My father would help them in any way he can, but having a fixed income puts restrictions in his ability to help their family only to a certain extent. Pa and I had a long talk yesterday, about the importance of money. He emphasized on the importance of savings, helping others in need, and also warned me about how lack of cash can reveal the true identities of people around me, an ugly side I may not be prepared for. He told me the most important thing in life is financial independence and the capacity to take care for self and loved ones. Money can buy happiness after all, just like the lack of it can make life a living hell. Sad, but true.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.targetwoman.com/image/money-saving-tips.jpg

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Losing Self-Respect

“Self respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself”

—Abraham J. Michael

That’s where she failed. In saying “no” to herelf. It’s not that she hadn’t tried. But the resolve faded out soon enough.

It wasn’t like this always. She valued her self-respect. And never compromised it for anyone. Her parents were proud of the way she carried herself. People were careful about saying anything wrong or offensive to her. And she never gave anyone the opportunity of treating her badly. She was happy that despite any adversities she faced she’d managed to maintain her self-respect and dignity. She was proud that she was in full control of her emotions.

And then the worst happened. She fell in love. That was 5 yrs ago. She was 20 at that time. She loved, trusted and respected the person completely. And it delighted her when her feelings were reciprocated.  Gradually emotional dependence increased and her vulnerability lay exposed in front of the person. That was the worst mistake of her life. Her first regret in life. Letting the one she loved know that he had the ability to hurt her. Slowly the “occasional differences in opinion” became “full-fledged quarrels”. But she always apologized and made up if it was her fault. What was unsettling that it was her again who had to soothe his wounded ego even if it was his fault. She wasn’t looking to settle scores. She was in love, and convinced herself there shouldn’t be any ego hassles between partners. Apart from it slowly becoming a regular occurrence, another trend started. Blame game. She was always at the receiving end. If he verbally abused her, she should be the one apologizing because she provoked the outburst and brought it on herself. That was his twisted logic. Why did she give him a chance? He never ever apologized to her. She still didn’t feel something was amiss in their relationship. A slow but sure stab on her self-respect had occurred, but once again she was too much in ‘love’ to notice that. There were moments when she saw reason, when she detested this downfall; but the fear of losing him was too overshadowed everything. She had invested a lot of love in the relationship, and she was determined not to let it go unrequited. The denial to see the extent to which she’d become emotionally dependent on him brought out a whole new side of her. An ugly side that she wasn’t aware of earlier. She became a clinging, emotionally insecure person who was ready to bear anything to save the relationship, even at the cost of losing her self-respect. Every time he used to hurl abuses at her and not talk to her for some time, she started reminiscing the good memories, often glorifying the past. She used to call him up later, trying hard to hear the love in his voice, which had long ceased to exist. ‘One day he would realize how much I love him, and he would be back to his old self’, the thought she slept on every night. It was no surprise that he never did.

He broke up with her saying that his family won’t agree to their relationship.She accepted his decision, and was too naive to understand why he got into the relationship in the first place if he didn’t had the guts to stand up against his family for the girl he loves. But she still nearly begged him whether they could remain friends. He was reluctant. But eventually agreed. She used to count the minutes ticking by till she heard from him next. As obvious, she was the one who did most of the “keeping in touch” part. Life continued. And all along she nurtured the secret hope that he would one day be back with her.

She came to know later that he was with someone else by the time they had their break-up. It angered her and an ugly confrontation followed. He admitted to this ‘lapse’ but adopted the policy of offense being the best defense. He once again hurled abuses at her. She stopped all contact with him.

Her inability to say “no” to herself when it came to matters of the heart got better of her. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him from her life completely. The very fear that made her lose her self respect in the first place. She managed to curb her desire to keep him as a part of her life and contact him, even though it took her an year and half. To let go of someone you love and accept that they no longer want to be with you can be a very difficult to cope with. But her heart healed; it just took a little longer than others.

She hated this particular aspect of her life. The whiny, clingy girl ready to go to any extent to save her “love”. When the love faded away, and sense prevailed in her life,  she couldn’t fathom why she was ready to settle for a guy that abused her trust and love, and in all certainty would repeat it. Her friends and family too were shocked at the person she’d become. They always knew her to be a very balanced, emotionally strong person. And then they saw her when she was in love. The damage was done. She’d failed them too. But she tried hard to re-build her self-esteem, she resolved never to compromise her dignity for anyone. Ever. She had seen herself during her worst and was scared of ever being in that place again.

Life was good. And then..

She has fallen in love again.. She considered the risks involved, but love had slowly begun its hypnotic effect on her.  She told him  He didn’t find her worthy of any response. She is trying her best not to repeat her earlier mistake of putting her self-respect at stake again. She tries not to ring him or text him. She’d failed again. She started doing the opposite, and called him up when she knew she shouldn’t have. She’d tried various ways to distract herself, and her failure popped up on his inbox. But she can’t get him out of her head. She is scared she would lose her self-respect again. Friends and family point that out to her too. But she still nurses that damn ‘hope’!

How does one walk away from the person one loves? She doesn’t want to let him go. Her mind knows that she must. But her heart longs to stay. The logical and the best advice would be to let go. Let time fade him away.

The indecisiveness continues.

They say “no one can make you feel inferior and hurt you without your consent”. She had given the consent to someone. And she is hurt. And she does feel inferior as a person. It just took 5yrs. And she can’t look in the mirror without feeling ashamed of the person she has become. If only she had the sense to stop herself from giving the right to hurt her that first time. She is scared now. It’s a sort of addiction. She has paid a heavy price for it. The one thing she valued the most A sense of dignity.

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