Had a rather disturbing session with the analyst, today. Starting from the beginning- when that itself isn’t fabulous, the recollection of it can throw a person off balance. I understand the theatrics of the process are what makes the mind aware. After months of running from pillar to post one has started to feel, that this going to take much longer than one suspected. Healing is a rather tedious and painful process.

Of course, they want me to start the medication. Had a heart to heart with the father today, who insisted (surprisingly) that one should at least take one pill. ‘Look up the medication on the net’. The side effects ( which one saw with the mother ultimately) include high blood pressure, insomnia, lightheadedness and a drop in libido and decreased chances of having orgasms. Considering my non existent love life one should be okay with it but after Covid, I’m going on a dating spree to make up for the uneventful past decade. So, thanks but no thanks.

There’s a new thing they’ve come up with. Some alternative method to alter the brain waves. A person who won’t trust a lab technician with her print, what are the chances of that person trusting a machine? Slim. One thankfully got Covid and has antibodies. This is going to sound ignorant but wild horses will have to drag me to get my shot once they wear off because one is absolutely unconvinced about the efficacy. Am I taking too many chances? Yes, not feeling dead before you actually die, is risky!

I have to wonder, if this whole shenanigan is going to help. Do you think we really change or we just keep accumulating layer after layer of borrowed knowledge, bitterness and fear? Every time I look around or at myself, I see that constant pattern playing out, repeatedly. The only thing that definitely makes a person change, more than any deliberate efforts, I find – is money. For better or worse is debatable.

But mostly we become some version of our parents, inspite of the education, exposure and opportunities. The choices we make, the partners we find has so much do with nurture and parental approval. Unfortunately our children too carry our burdens and pay for our sins! But one is a flaky by nature- so these thoughts pop up and I make excuses, each time someone tries to make me recall things one has locked up and put away. This time I got to stay still for a while. I don’t know how to but I got to learn.

Amma,

It’s almost a year and half since you passed and it seems like the joy has been sucked out of this house. It’s been too long since anyone’s sung ‘oyeee meri gudiyaa, oyee oyee oyee!’ while simultaneously dancing in the cutest manner. You’re (were, na!) hilarious!

All my life, I was afraid I would become exactly like you and bingo! it’s here. My mother…myself, in more ways than one. Anyhow, no biggie! It’s helped me to make a decision, one’s been leaning towards, since the craziness. No kids through artificial means, no can do! Ever since you’ve passed, people have been trying to convince me to have one. This just drove the nail in the coffin. Of course these days your husband is obsessed with the idea of me, marrying the Wall ( so that he can move into the house). Eye roll! I feel like a commodity, that’s to be bartered. Forget living here, that poor soul, is always shocked out of his wits when he talks, to the love of your life.

‘Now that the boy is getting married as well, why don’t you?’ he enquires. ‘ I have you to fight with, what do I need a man for? Life’s dramatic enough without one, so no issues. He glares at me when I say that. Don’t haunt me, okay, but I think he should get married. He needs it more, men are frailer, they need people to constantly talk at. Plus, I will not have to listen to conversations about his past escapades, there will be someone else he can have these inappropriate conversations with. They trigger me, the humour is completely lost on me in any case and I’m told I should abstain from getting agitated, right now. Otherwise, we’re doing fine, we’re like two peas in a pod.

Marriage is a solution for a number of problems… that’s what people keep advocating …so it will work better for him, since he was at it for years. I told him to get on Tinder, otherwise, Second Shaadi is a good option…anyone he’s been seeing would also do. I can’t even wrap my head around a few dates, at the moment and especially due to the frame of mind, one’s been in, for the past year and half, one needs no other entanglements. Plus, I’ve been around married people the past few days and that’s made me realize I will have to make the sacrifices the men make in a marriage, not the women. I will have to inform someone about my whereabouts, about my conversations, about my aspirations. You know I answer such questions with why, silence or I’ll lie through my teeth or better still give a blank expression as if I don’t understand the question itself, if I find the line of questioning to be invasive. I’ve pulled all of this on you, my entire life. I’ll have to give up my freedom of speech, will have to shove my past under a carpet and pretend to be someone’s idea of ‘normal’. What the hell am I going to do with people? Till date they’re raking up all my skeletons because they can’t find anything new! Imagine exposing a partner to all this! I could but what’s the need?

So I think there should be a wedding in the house. Just not mine! What fun Amma! It will open up all my options. I could pack up my bags, wander around like a gypsy, six months, in one city then another. Go like that for years. Just my camera, my car, lots of books, all sorts of music. I could disappear from social media, just post on this blog, no one would know who I am, who I know, no one would be able to meddle in any way. Then I could ultimately settle, I’m suspecting somewhere down South ( unfortunately Kashmir is too volatile) where I could just find my tribe. If I don’t I could finally build the small little cabin, I always dreamt of having as a kid, somewhere in a remote place, with puppies and then eventually ( by fifty I’m thinking ) babies! If I miraculously find someone with a touch of madness and an erect spine, maybe in time I’ll stop pushing, with all my might. I’ll try.

It’s been a strange few days. Only on days like these, one wishes there was someone around to hold my hand, as I walked into spaces that are full of judging eyes. Marriage my dear, is the only thing that abjugates women from their supposed sins. Marrying a rich man will absolve me from real ones.

Am I going to? Fuck, no! That’s just the price that women have always paid for living life on their own terms. Look at the brighter side. In another lifetime, they would have hung me for being a witch. In this one, well, it’s so much easier. You get shunned and spoken about…you fall down, pick yourself up…build a new life. The version of your past that’s convenient and skewed is talked about and is shoved at you again…you fall.. you pick yourself up and you start again. You keep doing it, till you’re alive and when you’re dead you can become a story.

But at some point, you got to do the ungraceful thing. Sometimes between respecting other people and yourself, you got to prioritise yourself. No one can do that for you. You got to say ‘that’s enough!’ at some point. The dragging through the gutter, doesn’t work for my ‘bad girl’ image, that suits nice people better but unfortunately it’s a dog eat dog world and when you’re bottom dog, you got to crawl your way up. The thing that you wanted to avoid for years because you knew by doing it you will loose the chance of giving respect to the two people who mattered then and will continue to matter till eventually my memory fails me. Those feelings didn’t make sense a decade ago to anyone, how would they make sense now? But we continue loving our dead relatives…we also continue loving, our lovers from dead relationships. That’s just how we’re built. Hating requires too much effort and one can only be indifferent when one when will be dead!

One believes, the foundation of love is laid by respect and friendship. I guess that’s why after my brother, who was my buddy and confidant, my lovers have been my closest friends and my closest friends have seemed like lovers, to most people, as they’ve usually been from the opposite sex.

The collision of two random souls that choose to, for some inexplicable reason- trust each other, remain vulnerable in front of one another, protect each other from life’s bitterness is a strange, yet wonderful phenomenon. Friendships can be a boon or bane, though, depending on how well your life is going.

To hold on to people who you knew when you were so little, you could barely spell your own name and to continue cherishing that, with a sentimentality is a bit strange, no? But that’s what most long lasting friendships are based on, sentimentality, the need for a witness, a person who remembers things about us, even we have forgotten about ourselves!

One has no such emotional attachments, though. It’s a terrible thing to say, especially today but it is true. I know writing this would make me sound like a bitter monster but I’m not here to sell my goodness to you! One has been in touch with various people, from the past four decades- from school friends, to colony friends, to my brother’s friends to ex lovers, to various professional acquaintances…if I pop it you can piece my existence together from Facebook, most of them are there, barring the one’s who’ve chosen otherwise. With some the relationship has grown stronger and other’s have become mere acquaintances but nevertheless most of them thankfully haven’t grown too bitter.

Yet, I don’t take any of it too seriously, anymore. I saw my mother being completely heartbroken in the last few years of her life, when over forty years of friendship, were albeit forgotten as she became inconvenient for most people to know. I still have those messages on my phone, that I sent to all the people she knew, ‘she misses you please come and see her’ and yet most people didn’t. Sabh time ka kamaal he! Unlike my father and I, she was a loving and forgiving person. Yet, she died a very lonely death and I’m okay dying lonely but not shocked. So, no I feel absolutely no deep rooted attachments to old friends, new friends or any relationships for that matter. It helps being like this, not expecting anything, makes you not feel betrayed or too alone, when the darkness surrounds you and there’s no one there. You got yourself, your faith and that will make you survive. I’ve really started to believe that, when the time is right, your enemies will turn into friends and when your time is bad, your closest friends can cause you the greatest harm.

Having said that, one cherishes the moments I’ve spent with a lot of my buddies. I invariably end up smiling when I hear ‘Yaaro dosti badi hi haseen he!’and one still ends up calling some friend or the other each time one hears it on the radio. My female friends, though adorable, have always been a bit too proper for me to end up spending too much time with. Once in a couple of months, is the amount of time, I’ve met them, through the decades. One’s always been like one of the boys thanks to the rebellious streak, the love for street food, bike rides, nocturnal drives and spitting competitions from on top of flyover’s to appreciating women’s beauty to long discussions on all kinds of random crap. One tends to sit like them, has a sailor’s mouth and one definitely has a male ego. Plus, over the years, they’ve all known the best time to get me to talk is in the middle of the night. So one’s spent more time chatting with them or driving around Delhi, discussing their love lives or mine. My female friends are usually scandalised by me, my male friends amused, so most of my cherished memories with buddies, have been with the latter. Like one of them whose known me since my teenage years, said to me recently, ‘aise mat bol ke tu sudharne walli he, Moti!’ Not in this lifetime, I reassured him. Otherwise, how will I sing, ‘ bigade hue insaan the, shaithan ke santan the….woh din bhi kyaa din the!’