Monthly Archives: June 2020

She’s back

Posted on by

‘Jump, let’s do this today!’ tells Sb to SC. She’s fuming, her head and eyes are hurting with all the crying SC has been doing. ‘In any case this whining of yours is going to get us killed, heart attack, cancer, kuch to nonsense ho jayga. Maar chalang, kar naki! Mummy chahiye, mummy! 41 fucking years old, so many people loose their parents at a much younger age! Itna pyaar ho raha he, maar jump adha khandaan upar he. Mummy kyaa karti? You would have put your head on her lap and wept. Would that have helped?’she’s yelling within my head, as I walk over the railway track.

SB is like a raging bull, my brother would call this avatar, ‘ wild boar’. She’s egoistic, practical, a total control freak and quick to show anyone the finger. Also little bit of a tapori. ‘Kyaa hogaya dusri mummy dhund raha he?’ she says to any man who stares at her. ‘Then there are the pet dialogues that only God knows how, they roll off her tongue! ‘Abbé mammu hum tumhare bas ki baat thodi na he!, ‘Tujh se pehle bohat aye he, tere baad to aur bhi ayeenge’ ‘ Tu nahi to koi aur sahee, koi aur nahin to koi sahi!’ SC is super embarrassed by her but she keeps both of them alive and kicking.

For the past few months their conversations go like this-

SC (crying perpetually) Everyone will die, I will be all alone. What will I do, then?

SB – White kapde pehnege, biliyaa rakhenge. Bhooto ki tarah upar neeche ghumenge. Then we’ll convince people the house is haunted, what fun. Don’t like this option? Okay, we’ll make this into a hostel and keep really hot boys. Na, okay, four kids and four dogs or last option, which is my dad’s idea, practice polygamy!

SC- I need a hug, a shoulder to cry on.

SB- Come, I’ll give you. Mein he hu, hero baby tera. Yeh jo tu dhundti he, woh apni story ke hero to ban nahi paye, tere bare banenge. In any case we all have to rescue ourselves, no one and nothing can do it.

SC- Now I have to get married!

SB- What are you going to tell your kids? My mom died I felt scared, so I got married. So romantic, wow. Marriage is a social contract in which economics plays a big role. It has nothing to do with love and everything to do with attachment. Shadi chahiye ya epic love story, with twists and turns, like mom’s and the brother’s? By the way, room and bed share karna parta he. You can’t sleep in the same room, with a pet, you’ll share it with a man? Kar beta, I’ll give you a month, tops.

SC- I want to make babies!

SB- Wow, what an original idea! Not narcissistic at all!! Such amazing genes, no chances of depression getting triggered with pregnancy. Einstein ka dimaag aur Aishwarya Rai, ki looks to waise hi koi adopted bacche mein nahin hongi, jo apparently tumhare mein he? Amazing.

They go on and on and on and on!

41

Posted on by

So, how much can change in a year? Turns out a lot! Last year, on the eve of my birthday, I was with the boys. Hammered and hysterical…worried my mother would die. ‘What will I do, if she dies?’ asked this drunk woman as she sat on the staircase of a restraunt, weeping as the boys tried to pacify her.

She’s dead, I’m alive so the question becomes redundant, doesn’t it? The answer to which it seems is, I would be a little lost without her. Did I love her? Who knows? I do have a strange way of loving and of expressing it, if I ever do, stranger. Let’s just say, I hate coming home and my eyes it seems have forgotten to smile. What the men stated as ‘dard’ in my akhiyaan has turned into an emptiness.

Other than that? Well, I got to know today, what I dreaded the most, is about to happen. The fat lady is about to sing! The good thing about pain is, when you feel an excruciating amount in any case, a little more won’t kill you. Timing is perfect. But the men I know, are thrilled to bits. My main reason to avoid a commitment will soon cease to exist. Atleast, the promise I made to myself at 25, I stood by that. Feelings? Well, there’s a reason only two have had the privilege of getting tattooed on the body. Nothing will change those.

Some things remain as they were. Unfathomable. Slowly time passes by, a few more hair turn grey. A few wrinkles appear but no great wisdom dawns on one. Cynicism, yes! More than ever.

But an obsession keeps one afloat. A 34 year old boy, scares me in a way, only my mother and my own darkness could. His death shows me exactly what the ugly outcome of a suicide can be. It pricks my ego, the drama and the fakeness of this world. I watch on repeat, his interviews- the unknown, unknowns and know unknowns, I understand. His introversion, madness and his aloneness, are what are etched on my skin. For the first time, other than my mum, I hear someone speak my language and his tragic end, scares the living daylights out of me.

‘ I meet people, I try to be like them but after a while they can figure out I am not. I’m boring, I like my books.’ sounds familiar. One of my favourite quotes is so true for him, ‘ people who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds they are eager to talk about!’ But are not comprehensible, is what the quote should have ended with. I promise to write down my fifty dreams. Imitation is the best form of flattery. One has plenty to learn from his life, what to do and what not to do, irrespective of how dark it gets , within.Alas, I have a man who can rescue me from myself. So what if he’s a dead one!

Chalte chalte

Posted on by

Chalte chalte khyaal aata he, ‘ Jee ke kyaa ukhad lenge?’ aur phir khayaal aata he, ‘ mar ke bhi kyaa badlega?’

Kuch he unn rail ki patrion mein, kabhi dur tak chalne ke liye bolti hein.

Aur kabhi marne ko.

Roz iss kashmakash se dil guzarta he,

Phir koi khyaal aata he, koi yaad aa jata he.

Kabhi hava chu leti he, kabhi pate.

Kabhi kas kar apna hi haath thaam lete he

Kissi tarah se dil aur dimaag ko kabu mein laate he.

Dard kabhi aansuo mein beh jata he,

Kabhi halak mein, ek phasi hue cheek ban kar chup jata he.

Asmaan aur andhere ka sahaara he. Kabhi dusra tara dekh, ek muskurahat, hoton pe aati he.

‘Shayad dono saath he, shaayad mujhe dekhten honge.’ Shayad, shayad karte, dil behel jata he, ek aur din kat jata he.

S.S.R

Posted on by

A 34 year old actor, commits suicide and the stupidity of humans, becomes so obvious to me. On every platform, I read the same hypocritical nonsense, feigning shock and asking a question that drives me crazy-‘ do such people not think about their parents?’. What a myopic view of the world, we all have! The assumption that everyone’s relationships are the same as our’s, that everyone deals with pain, angst , frustration, failure exactly as we do.

I came back home to a burnt, Jaipuri kurta. My brother and I had been dropped back home, we had spent the day at a relative’s place. The maid picked it up dramatically and showed the nine year old me, what my mum had worn, when she sprayed perfume on it and lit herself on fire. My mum came from a large family, was married and had two kids but in that moment, nothing stopped her. That was the first time she tried to kill her self but the permanent scars she was left with, didn’t stop her. She remained masochistic her, entire life. The means changed but the inherent loneliness, she suffered from always haunted her.

Did people not love her? They did! But no one saw her, not even I, for the longest time. Anyone can love the idea of you but to be seen for who you are and be accepted, that is the tough part. Especially, when you are not run off the mill and woh, was she made of a different grain, or what? I think, other than one sister and her son, I never really saw her, be totally at ease with anyone, despite her jovial nature. I saw her struggle with people her whole life, always wanting to return to her aloneness. I’ve struggled with people my entire life, forever feeling, like being an ‘outsider’, not belonging to anything or anyone.

That feeling got so amplified after my mum’s death that, now, I wonder how I survived. Everyday, I wanted it to end, feeling totally lost. To feel like an outsider in your own house, is not a nice feeling. To be alone, in your grief is almost as heartbreaking as the the grief itself. People are mean, the sooner we accept it, the better it is. It is in your weakest moments, that they will say and do the harshest things. They will judge you, your life, your choices, your personality and have discussions about it, then, because they can. Jab waqt burra ho, to har kissi ne PHD kari he aap pe. But shine and they will shut up…nothing succeeds like success.

You can either learn from it, somehow, learn to totally count on yourself or succumb to the pressures! What that young boy, must have struggled with, only he knew. How did his struggle play on his mind? How his mother’s death impacted him, only he must have known! When people talk about how brilliant he was, I’m reminded of what my mum’s shrink said. ‘ Only a person whose mind works more than other’s can be depressed. Her intelligence is the cause of her depression! ‘ I’m sure in his case too, it was because he was so sharp that he was depressed. The burden of being different, is a heavy one, to bear. Some carry it better than other’s. Sone try to fit in and some just bow out. Sushant Singh Rajput’s death doesn’t shock me. The hypocrisy of this society does.

P.S- I have to wonder though, how do we know, how much our mind and body can take? Sometimes we survive the biggest things and sometimes, the smallest things make us feel helpless. Maybe suicide is just the fault in our stars! We go when we have to and exactly how we are meant to.

Sher Singh and Mogambo

Posted on by

So, Sher Singh returned to the den, after much coaxing and fuming. After the drinking partner left, Mogambo and she coexisted, by staying out of each other’s way.

It didn’t last very long. Mr Mogambo’s excessive drinking and no eating landed him infront of a doctor this morning. Sher ( her father’s nickname for her) sat next to him growling, as he threw a fit about something or the other. ‘I don’t need anyone. You go to work and I will go to the doctor, myself. The driver will take me,’ he started the previous night and continued with yelling about something or the other, at Medanta, the next day. ‘I don’t want to live, how can you force me to? It’s my life!’ He went on and on.

SC just hid through it all, peeping from behind SB, to see what was happening. She hardly ever comes out infront of the Father, he hurts her way too easily, so SB stands between them, for protection. SB handles him like a pro- with an aggression and a tone, the Kochar men are famous for. After a junior doctor checked the BP ( which was high) and the stomach, we were sent to meet the one we had an actual appointment with. The senior doctor checked him out and said that there is a problem with the liver and there’s a possibility there may be some water in it (fyi that means the person may die very soon) and we should immediately get an ultrasound done.

SB listened as coldly as she could. As they walked for the ultrasound she looked at the Father and said, ‘ what were you thinking? If you go with your drinking partner and buy alcohol from shady people during a lockdown and sit and drink, day in and day out, what else is going to happen?’ ‘No one can force me to quit. It’s my life, I will not quit drinking!’ pat came the reply.

As they took him inside for the ultrasound and I waited outside, there was no stopping SC. She just started weeping inconsolably, as the other patients glared at her, sniffing. Crying while you’re wearing a mask and sitting in a hospital, not a good idea. But she wouldn’t stop. She woke up at 5.30 with a premonition. Now, sitting there, in front of her eyes, was the recurring nightmare of her childhood. She would see this dream, it started after her mum burnt herself. She was in a dark room (some place as big as her basement) sitting in one corner on the floor, clutching her knees and sobbing inconsolably because everyone she knew had left. It always made her wake up, feeling intensely lonely. The recurring dream became less frequent when it started turning into a reality.

SB tried to calm her down but to no avail and so she just got pissed. ‘God only puts us through as much as we handle’ some message like that, one received after the mother’s passing. SB remembered that, ‘Fuck you God! Really fuck you! You think, do you really think I can handle this, right now?’ she started fuming at the Creator. Right on cue, she heard her Father laughing and thanking someone.

‘Why are you crying? I only have gas! Go ask them!’ he said. Of course he didn’t mention he also has an enlarged liver and the fact that they were asking him to cut down drinking. A few more tests are required as the GGTP is very high but Mogambo had only one thing to say-‘ itna he farak pad rahaa he baap ka to, apna liver de de. Peena to mein chodunga nahin! ‘ For today he’s drained out SC, tomorrow SB will handle everything, like she always, does.