Once upon a time, in a land all too familiar for comfort, there lived a girl who desperately and hopelessly tried to live her life by following the simple yet seemingly hard to achieve principle of live and let live.
Although cynical and jaded about most things in life, somewhere deep within her heart, she secretly harbored a small but substantial amount of unadulterated hope and optimism that helped her get through life’s seemingly unending, painful and tumultuous phases. With time however, this stream of hope eventually ran dry and what remained of a once flourishing body, was a thin, nearly depleted trickle.
Never once did she believe that she could muster the courage and willingness to abandon her reservations and insecurities that twenty three years of living in fleeting times had thrown her way. Yet there she was out for public display and scrutiny once again, almost ready and willing to possibly impose upon herself great humiliation and heart wrenching failure, all in a desperate attempt to seek a small iota of comfort and solace in an exceedingly over crowded yet terribly lonely city.
After leaving behind a life that she had grown to love and cherish in a land not quite close to the place she once considered home, she felt unsure where to begin once more. Everything had a familiar ring to it, yet when she ventured too close, she couldn’t help but experience an overwhelming sense of alienation and loss. Oh how terribly afraid she was of once again being left to fend for herself alone. In these times, fraught with great unrest and distress, she managed to once again dig deep inside of her and resurrect that thin trickle of optimism and hope that had saved her from utter despondency time and again.
This thing called time is a funny entity; a whole year can go by without you even noticing its passing or it reminding you of its definite and speedy departure. Very little that is monumental or earth shattering takes places in such a finite space of time, yet seemingly inconsequential scenarios snowball into what you later label as ‘another year of your life.’ At the end of it all, you sit back and reexamine your life with false pragmatism and all you are left with is a sour taste of defeat and a possible indigestion from the bad Chinese food you consumed in your drunken stupor the previous night.
So our nameless heroine chugged along through the motions of living, going through periodic cycles of exhilaration and desolation. A very long time ago when she was still young and he was still humane, she had met a boy she grown to understand and eventually love. Unlike most fairy tale love stories however, these two did not engage in a youthful, passionate, all consuming love affair that ravaged and consumed their bodies and minds. Before their love had a chance to blossom into one of the many fantasies that filtered through her head during countless waking and sleeping hours, she boarded a jet plane to peruse a life somewhere else, while he stayed behind.
Unlike many other juvenile romances that would have ended that very night she left the country, these two managed to stay in touch and become better friends over the next six years. Neither of them was stupid enough to think that their love could survive the grueling test of time and distance. Each of them was open about their physical and emotional needs and went through a string of partners in their respective cities to make ends meet. Yet there was a small inkling of hope and longing; at least within heart that one day, if they ever ended up in the same part of the world again, they could possibly rekindle their intimacy once more, this time as adults.
One of the greatest consolations of returning back, after a long and tedious voyage for our nameless heroine was the knowledge that she could see him and possibly be with him, in flesh. They got along wonderfully well, were uncannily similar and terribly attracted to each other, or so she thought. Hectic work schedules and competitive, demanding careers took up most of their time, yet somehow they managed to take time out for each other, one out of longing and desire and the other possibly out of obligation.
This story does not have a happy ending, happy endings start and end in the movies. The more time they spent together, the more they realized how much things had changed over time. This change wasn’t something that her love for him could overcome, for she was the only one that was in love. The painful realization that this was unfortunately a one way street wasn’t the sad tragic end that she expected.
The charade of keeping up the friendship that they both supposedly valued and cherished brought with it a fresh onslaught of unexpected and undeserving pain. Alas, the façade could not last much longer; it had already dragged past its life expectancy. The humiliation, pain and anguish weren’t something that she could stand to ignore any more. All pretenses of nobility and putting their friendship above selfish personal agendas like ‘love’ fell through the roof.
Their friendship that was already treading on a fragile surface cracked completely, when she realized that he had ‘hooked up’ with one of her supposedly good friends and was now riding the relationship high-horse, after only three days of what she assumed was some fairly rigorous copulation .
All this after pointedly telling her time and again that there was no room in his heart for anyone else after his last big romance ended in great tragedy, sometimes right after they had indulged in some steamy foreplay and following it up by sleeping with a sting of women and never seeing them again just to prove his point.
Showing posts with label love city. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love city. Show all posts
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Does it all End so Quickly?
It’s really frustrating and infuriating to see how people give up so incredibly easily, especially about the things they care the most about. I had mentioned in my last post that it is easy to be in a relationship once you have found the one that seems almost right, either by sheer miracle or an incredible stroke of luck. I guess I might just be very wrong about this one, although it’s not really the first time I have completed miscalculated things, as I grow older significant revelations like these make life a tad bit more disconcerting . It’s incredibly frustrating to think that the values, ideals and morals that you have based your whole life upon might just be an antiquated system of thought. Maybe I am stupid and naïve enough to feel that forever and ever might not be such an intangible concept, but as time passes, at every nook and bend I see relationships slowly crumbling away and subsequently with it the people involved.
It fills me with immense sadness and anger to look around and observe that people who claim to be so passionately in love with each other, give up so easily at the slightly sign of trouble and upheaval. I happen to be lucky enough to enjoy an extremely amicable, open and honest relationship with my mother. Although I don’t divulge every single relevant or irrelevant detail of my life to her, over time, we have grown to love, respect and understand each other us adults, with our own set of distinct belief’s that govern our lives and at least be respectful enough to hear each other out, even though sometimes we may not agree at all.
We have spend a lot of time talking about different things over the course of the last two years, in many ways it’s comforting and relieving to know that at the end of the day, when there really is something that truly bothers me and if I am looking for a different perspective and insight I can always go and talk to her. I am filled with immense relief whenever I unburden myself to her, she doesn’t always understand every thought I propose, but that’s secondary, it’s cathartic to talk to her. As independent, forward thinking and liberated I might think and say I am, at the end of the day, I am glad to admit that I find a lot of wisdom in many of the things she says.
A lot of our conversations revolve around the evolution of relationships, be it people specific or a massive generalization on the state of things. We are well above and beyond the rigid confines of the parent-child relationship where the discussion of boyfriends, girlfriends and sex is a taboo or a source of immense awkwardness. With that out of the way, it is much easier to talk about most things. I may not feel comfortable enough to spill the beans on all scandalous, salacious details, but what is important and truly matters I can share with ease and that’s what’s important I suppose.
I have been sad and upset for the last couple of days, every one seems to be falling apart piece by piece and the air reeks with the melancholy born out of the rancor of broken promises. I hate the idea of impermenance, I know that absolutely nothing in life will ever remain the same, in spite of my weak and futile resistance, whether I choose to accept or not, people and the circumstance that they are tied into will evolve over time. Logically all this makes perfect sense, yet on a very personal level I have grown to resent this in more ways than one. I often feel like sometimes people use impermanence as an excuse to get out of a maddening, uncomfortable, difficult, miserable situations without even so much as a feeble attempt to make things right.
Sometimes I really wonder what is wrong with us. What is so terribly wrong with me? My gigantic relationship phobia and subsequent paranoia aside, I really do feel like as a generation we have somehow missed the all important vital lessons on perseverance, understanding, compromise, patience and forgiveness that we could have learnt through mere observation.
Realistically we all know that every relationship that we enter in is bound to hit troubled waters at some point. Yet as soon as we reach that rough patch, instead of working together as a team and navigating it in the right directions, we flail our arms, throw a fit and abandon ship! We frantically swim for a while; cursing and yelling until we are spotted by the nearest life boat (my metaphor for a rebound fling) which takes us to the next safe destination and like a self-fulfilling prophesy the pattern repeats itself. Dock, descent, wait and then get onboard the next attractive liner that offers the best destination.
I am not saying that people should stay together and be miserable in abusive relationships, far from it; in fact such situations warrant strict separation and ultimate abandonment, but to end a relationship that was supposedly based on the foundation of trust, love and commitment for small, frugal, insignificant trivialities is really, selfish and unfair.
Mom tells me time and again that we as a generation have either forgotten or never quite learnt how to love. Although on principle I am forced to defend me and my kind, I can’t help but ponder upon the significance of those words and maybe even see a certain truth in it. To describe love as an expression is to diminish its importance gravely humiliate it. Love for me is a verb; it is a live, tangible, action that binds two people together, not some metaphor, adjective or word which seems almost fickle.
I may be idealistic, but I certainly don’t feel like I am unrealistic. My observations and derivations come from having front row seats to the spectacle called my parents marriage. Maybe because they had such a stellar- relationship- so imperfect and humane, fraught with unhappiness and hardships, misery and regret that it some how made them stronger and learn to appreciate what truly mattered and ultimately hone their skills at loving and persevering. My parents didn’t stick it out till the very end out of compulsion or apathy either, that would be my uncle and aunt’s genuinely terrible marriage, where they stopped caring so entirely about each other that even getting a divorce seemed like too much trouble. No, my parents for all their imperfections, insecurities and hassles (and believe me they had a lot of those) genuinely loved each other wanted their marriage to work. With time, effort, infinite patience, and understanding and in due course of time they were lucky enough to share a warm, amicable, truly tender relationship. I wistfully and desperately hope to one day share kind of relationship that my parents had with someone else. But every where I look and see, all I observe is callousness, insensitivity and a general decease in patience and understanding. I know times have changed and the world that I inhabit in is driven at an incredibly maddening pace which tests the best of souls. But the world that I live in also houses the people of my parents generations and if they have managed to some what successfully preserve and cherish what’s important, is it so damn difficult for me?
It fills me with immense sadness and anger to look around and observe that people who claim to be so passionately in love with each other, give up so easily at the slightly sign of trouble and upheaval. I happen to be lucky enough to enjoy an extremely amicable, open and honest relationship with my mother. Although I don’t divulge every single relevant or irrelevant detail of my life to her, over time, we have grown to love, respect and understand each other us adults, with our own set of distinct belief’s that govern our lives and at least be respectful enough to hear each other out, even though sometimes we may not agree at all.
We have spend a lot of time talking about different things over the course of the last two years, in many ways it’s comforting and relieving to know that at the end of the day, when there really is something that truly bothers me and if I am looking for a different perspective and insight I can always go and talk to her. I am filled with immense relief whenever I unburden myself to her, she doesn’t always understand every thought I propose, but that’s secondary, it’s cathartic to talk to her. As independent, forward thinking and liberated I might think and say I am, at the end of the day, I am glad to admit that I find a lot of wisdom in many of the things she says.
A lot of our conversations revolve around the evolution of relationships, be it people specific or a massive generalization on the state of things. We are well above and beyond the rigid confines of the parent-child relationship where the discussion of boyfriends, girlfriends and sex is a taboo or a source of immense awkwardness. With that out of the way, it is much easier to talk about most things. I may not feel comfortable enough to spill the beans on all scandalous, salacious details, but what is important and truly matters I can share with ease and that’s what’s important I suppose.
I have been sad and upset for the last couple of days, every one seems to be falling apart piece by piece and the air reeks with the melancholy born out of the rancor of broken promises. I hate the idea of impermenance, I know that absolutely nothing in life will ever remain the same, in spite of my weak and futile resistance, whether I choose to accept or not, people and the circumstance that they are tied into will evolve over time. Logically all this makes perfect sense, yet on a very personal level I have grown to resent this in more ways than one. I often feel like sometimes people use impermanence as an excuse to get out of a maddening, uncomfortable, difficult, miserable situations without even so much as a feeble attempt to make things right.
Sometimes I really wonder what is wrong with us. What is so terribly wrong with me? My gigantic relationship phobia and subsequent paranoia aside, I really do feel like as a generation we have somehow missed the all important vital lessons on perseverance, understanding, compromise, patience and forgiveness that we could have learnt through mere observation.
Realistically we all know that every relationship that we enter in is bound to hit troubled waters at some point. Yet as soon as we reach that rough patch, instead of working together as a team and navigating it in the right directions, we flail our arms, throw a fit and abandon ship! We frantically swim for a while; cursing and yelling until we are spotted by the nearest life boat (my metaphor for a rebound fling) which takes us to the next safe destination and like a self-fulfilling prophesy the pattern repeats itself. Dock, descent, wait and then get onboard the next attractive liner that offers the best destination.
I am not saying that people should stay together and be miserable in abusive relationships, far from it; in fact such situations warrant strict separation and ultimate abandonment, but to end a relationship that was supposedly based on the foundation of trust, love and commitment for small, frugal, insignificant trivialities is really, selfish and unfair.
Mom tells me time and again that we as a generation have either forgotten or never quite learnt how to love. Although on principle I am forced to defend me and my kind, I can’t help but ponder upon the significance of those words and maybe even see a certain truth in it. To describe love as an expression is to diminish its importance gravely humiliate it. Love for me is a verb; it is a live, tangible, action that binds two people together, not some metaphor, adjective or word which seems almost fickle.
I may be idealistic, but I certainly don’t feel like I am unrealistic. My observations and derivations come from having front row seats to the spectacle called my parents marriage. Maybe because they had such a stellar- relationship- so imperfect and humane, fraught with unhappiness and hardships, misery and regret that it some how made them stronger and learn to appreciate what truly mattered and ultimately hone their skills at loving and persevering. My parents didn’t stick it out till the very end out of compulsion or apathy either, that would be my uncle and aunt’s genuinely terrible marriage, where they stopped caring so entirely about each other that even getting a divorce seemed like too much trouble. No, my parents for all their imperfections, insecurities and hassles (and believe me they had a lot of those) genuinely loved each other wanted their marriage to work. With time, effort, infinite patience, and understanding and in due course of time they were lucky enough to share a warm, amicable, truly tender relationship. I wistfully and desperately hope to one day share kind of relationship that my parents had with someone else. But every where I look and see, all I observe is callousness, insensitivity and a general decease in patience and understanding. I know times have changed and the world that I inhabit in is driven at an incredibly maddening pace which tests the best of souls. But the world that I live in also houses the people of my parents generations and if they have managed to some what successfully preserve and cherish what’s important, is it so damn difficult for me?
Saturday, August 16, 2008
When memories beckon
I haven’t blogged in a really long time; well there is a reason for it. For a while everything seemed to have lost its significance and time and again I wondered why. It’s not like I didn’t have anything to write about well I did, a lot, but nothing truly, really mattered anymore. I hate when I get into one of these ‘life doesn’t make any sense, what’s the point of it all?!’ phases in my life. It leads to more complacency than I want and have bargained for. I slowly but surely seep into a personal hell hole where all my dreams, thoughts, contemplations and musings lead to an utmost state of self-pity followed by deep personal loathing for daring to once again go into the same mental and emotional state that I told myself time and again I will not go into.
A semi-famous friend once wrote that every day she wakes up in the morning hoping, wishing and praying that something truly wonderful and magical would invade her world, opening a chasm of never ending delightful possibilities, making life once again truly worth living, but shit nothing really ever happens, then you crawl into bed at the end of exhausting day filled with the same monotony that make it well just that, another exhausting day, bitterly disappointed, sad and well alone.
The loneliness sadly doesn’t bother me anymore, I take solace and comfort in it, and I have managed to make a demon into a friend. Only in my weakest moments to I really truly wistfully and desperately long for the warmth and comfort of someone else, not friends and mates and people that understand and get me, well thank God I at least I have that much, which I am most eternally grateful for, no I am talking about the innate knowledge that at the end of the day, in spite of all my eccentricities and imperfections there is someone waiting for me curled up under the sheets warm and welcoming, who loves me anyways, just for who I am. I miss that feeling of belonging for better or for worse, I am okay most of the time, but sometimes in this crazy, awful, wonderful, mad, fast-paced city, when I catch a small glimpse of the things that I secretly long for, I can’t but help but feel both wonderful and terribly sad. Everywhere I look around me, there is a great sadness, none the less, it isn’t all despair, tears and sorrow, this I am most certain off. Every once in a while I catch that small glimpse of hope, whether it is a middle aged couple, harrowed and harassed by the burdens of matrimony and parenthood sharing an all knowing, warm and cherishing smile as the cart their noisy annoying spawns into an auto or a young couple lip-locked in a passionate embrace in a club somewhere, that’s when I know, that well shit, there is love, somewhere.
I’m twenty four years old, yes I turned a year older almost two months ago, yes I suppose you could have called it a significant moment of my life, except the fact that there was nothing significant about it, I had a grand boozed out weekend with close friends, followed by a quick, wild, again boozed filled trip to Goa, but all of it seems so far away now, locked in some unknown memory bank in the recesses of my mind, waiting for me to reminisce fondly on some latter day, while I work on creating new memories. I know that I shall look back upon it fondly, as I do often of the great wonderful memories that I have stored, on the darkest of days, while I desperately work on creating many such fond moments that will comfort me through lives many tumultuous times ahead.
Memories are really truly a wonderful entity; they probably are in my top five favorite things in life. They remind of the great times gone by, which are important, but more importantly, they remind me of the person that I was, what I was capable of and of who I am. They reassure me of things that I may or may not have forgotten about myself in my crazy attempt to just be and also of the truth that nothing ever will be the same anymore. Things always change, they will, they must, they have to and I must learn to accept it, even if it well hurts a lot.
My best friend from high-school moved back to Bombay at the beginning of the week, I have seen her for all of twenty minutes for a quick snack at a cheap fast-food restaurant, which later gave me a stomach ache. Between her trips to the doctor and mother care and my erratic work schedule we have found very little time for each other. I could have called her over the long holiday weekend, but somehow I just couldn’t get myself to reach for the phone and press ‘Call’. The life that we once shared has become a memory of the past and it depresses me to no end. All the crazy promises that we once made to each other as young wide eyed girls seem just that, promises. Life worked out so differently for us, it’s not suppose to be this way I thought to myself, what happened to always being there for each other and being a significant part of each other existence and that solitary moment on Carter Road all those years ago where we promised to each other that we will let nothing get in between us ever? Now I desperately try to understand her but I can’t, our existences are so vastly different; I don’t know what it’s like to have a husband that is alone back in some alien country, while she is here scared shit-less about having a baby. I just feel like I missed that train a long time ago. This is not how things are suppose to work out, what happened to all those promises that we had made to each other? How we would get married together someday, preferably in the same alter, how our gorgeous children would someday fall desperately, madly in love with each other and we would become sisters by marriage. We shared the most significant moments of our youth we each other, she was the first person that I called when I got my shiny new bicycle on my twelfth birthday that I so desperately wanted. The first person I confessed to about how madly I was in love with ‘H’ when I was sixteen and how bitterly disappointed I was when my first real kiss, with my first real boyfriend was so, well wet and clammy.
I helped her buy candles when she decided it was time she lost her virginity, we poured over the Kamasutra together turning to left, right, up and down figuring out what the hell they were really doing, giggling endlessly like the little school girls we were, while we ignored the stern disapproving looks for the adults in the store. I was the first person she called when things didn’t go according to how we had both imagined it would be and sex was then well just that, sex.
We easily assimilated each others experiences into our own sphere of knowledge, learning and vicariously living through each other, promising and knowing that this is how it would always be, until now. Why is it so difficult for us to share the most significant moment of our adulthood, just like we once did as children? Are we oh, so different right now as we once were, and will our friendship be stored in the back of my mind someday, in the memory box labeled ‘X-my best friend from high school’ its importance faded with time?
A semi-famous friend once wrote that every day she wakes up in the morning hoping, wishing and praying that something truly wonderful and magical would invade her world, opening a chasm of never ending delightful possibilities, making life once again truly worth living, but shit nothing really ever happens, then you crawl into bed at the end of exhausting day filled with the same monotony that make it well just that, another exhausting day, bitterly disappointed, sad and well alone.
The loneliness sadly doesn’t bother me anymore, I take solace and comfort in it, and I have managed to make a demon into a friend. Only in my weakest moments to I really truly wistfully and desperately long for the warmth and comfort of someone else, not friends and mates and people that understand and get me, well thank God I at least I have that much, which I am most eternally grateful for, no I am talking about the innate knowledge that at the end of the day, in spite of all my eccentricities and imperfections there is someone waiting for me curled up under the sheets warm and welcoming, who loves me anyways, just for who I am. I miss that feeling of belonging for better or for worse, I am okay most of the time, but sometimes in this crazy, awful, wonderful, mad, fast-paced city, when I catch a small glimpse of the things that I secretly long for, I can’t but help but feel both wonderful and terribly sad. Everywhere I look around me, there is a great sadness, none the less, it isn’t all despair, tears and sorrow, this I am most certain off. Every once in a while I catch that small glimpse of hope, whether it is a middle aged couple, harrowed and harassed by the burdens of matrimony and parenthood sharing an all knowing, warm and cherishing smile as the cart their noisy annoying spawns into an auto or a young couple lip-locked in a passionate embrace in a club somewhere, that’s when I know, that well shit, there is love, somewhere.
I’m twenty four years old, yes I turned a year older almost two months ago, yes I suppose you could have called it a significant moment of my life, except the fact that there was nothing significant about it, I had a grand boozed out weekend with close friends, followed by a quick, wild, again boozed filled trip to Goa, but all of it seems so far away now, locked in some unknown memory bank in the recesses of my mind, waiting for me to reminisce fondly on some latter day, while I work on creating new memories. I know that I shall look back upon it fondly, as I do often of the great wonderful memories that I have stored, on the darkest of days, while I desperately work on creating many such fond moments that will comfort me through lives many tumultuous times ahead.
Memories are really truly a wonderful entity; they probably are in my top five favorite things in life. They remind of the great times gone by, which are important, but more importantly, they remind me of the person that I was, what I was capable of and of who I am. They reassure me of things that I may or may not have forgotten about myself in my crazy attempt to just be and also of the truth that nothing ever will be the same anymore. Things always change, they will, they must, they have to and I must learn to accept it, even if it well hurts a lot.
My best friend from high-school moved back to Bombay at the beginning of the week, I have seen her for all of twenty minutes for a quick snack at a cheap fast-food restaurant, which later gave me a stomach ache. Between her trips to the doctor and mother care and my erratic work schedule we have found very little time for each other. I could have called her over the long holiday weekend, but somehow I just couldn’t get myself to reach for the phone and press ‘Call’. The life that we once shared has become a memory of the past and it depresses me to no end. All the crazy promises that we once made to each other as young wide eyed girls seem just that, promises. Life worked out so differently for us, it’s not suppose to be this way I thought to myself, what happened to always being there for each other and being a significant part of each other existence and that solitary moment on Carter Road all those years ago where we promised to each other that we will let nothing get in between us ever? Now I desperately try to understand her but I can’t, our existences are so vastly different; I don’t know what it’s like to have a husband that is alone back in some alien country, while she is here scared shit-less about having a baby. I just feel like I missed that train a long time ago. This is not how things are suppose to work out, what happened to all those promises that we had made to each other? How we would get married together someday, preferably in the same alter, how our gorgeous children would someday fall desperately, madly in love with each other and we would become sisters by marriage. We shared the most significant moments of our youth we each other, she was the first person that I called when I got my shiny new bicycle on my twelfth birthday that I so desperately wanted. The first person I confessed to about how madly I was in love with ‘H’ when I was sixteen and how bitterly disappointed I was when my first real kiss, with my first real boyfriend was so, well wet and clammy.
I helped her buy candles when she decided it was time she lost her virginity, we poured over the Kamasutra together turning to left, right, up and down figuring out what the hell they were really doing, giggling endlessly like the little school girls we were, while we ignored the stern disapproving looks for the adults in the store. I was the first person she called when things didn’t go according to how we had both imagined it would be and sex was then well just that, sex.
We easily assimilated each others experiences into our own sphere of knowledge, learning and vicariously living through each other, promising and knowing that this is how it would always be, until now. Why is it so difficult for us to share the most significant moment of our adulthood, just like we once did as children? Are we oh, so different right now as we once were, and will our friendship be stored in the back of my mind someday, in the memory box labeled ‘X-my best friend from high school’ its importance faded with time?
Friday, May 23, 2008
Ode to the Spirit of Love
In our search and quest for meaning and affirmation we often look so far ahead that we forget to have a closer look at what lies around us. It has been my experience that courage, magnificence, beauty, strength and love, which we all so desperately seek is just around the corner, we just forget to observe what lies the closest in our belief that the exotic and the eternal lies in a place unknown to us, beyond our grasp.
I always felt that idea of eternal love, that epic romance, which servers as an inspiration to one and all has been lost in the annals of time, unknown to modern civilization. We all lament about it, cry, bitch and moan of how it eludes us as a generation caught up in our pursuit for material possession and self-indulgent gratification, well at least I know I do, we seek to vicariously live a small piece of it, in the reassess of our imagination, through film and literature, yet I have only just realized that ‘love’ may not after all be such a fictional entity.
Even though we might fail to see and recognize it, the ordinary men and women that we ignore for their plainness and mediocrity carry forth this flame of eternal love and carefully and tenderly spread it around, to their children, their friends, colleagues and sometimes even perfect strangers. If just for once we can push aside our ignorance and just learn to listen, we might just realize that there is still hope, everywhere.
I stepped out of the train at Matunga station at around 10.20 am. I was later than usual; well this has sort of turned into a nasty habit lately that I must get rid off soon. I love traveling by train, on most good days, encountering something amusing, unexpected and engaging becomes its highlight. I absolutely love observing the various species of human beings that share the crowded Mumbai public transportation system with me. I was never much of a TV watcher, with the exception of a random craving for something funny or dramatic every once in a while, for the most part I have been pretty detached from the idiot box. Amazingly enough, I have now completely lost the occasional longing for mindless mass entertainment ever since I moved to Mumbai and started traveling by train! Seriously, who needs a TV set when all the ingredients for great entertainment are around you! Bombay and its over crowed public transportation system has become my window of entertainment!
Yeah so anyways, I have this tendency of going off into these random tangents and completely postponing the point that I am trying to make. It was a scalding day and I was late for work. I was sweating profusely in the oppressive heat. (Seriously, I think I sweat more than anyone that I know and have ever seen. I have observed women looking their freshest and prettiest, with incredible Zen like expressions lining their faces in the midst of the Bombay heat while the sweat on my countenance glistens like hot oil sputtering on a frying fan.)
My head was stuck in my book. (I cherished my last few moments of literary gratification as I marched along the platform towards the exit, expertly avoiding all possible occurrences of a collision between myself and some unsuspecting stranger.)
“You shouldn’t do that you know.” I heard someone whisper really close to my ear.
I turned around some what startled, it was “A” one of the senior managers at work. Oh great, now I have to walk with him and make small talk along the way, I groaned a little within.
I am painfully shy when it comes to having a friendly chat with most people I work with. I mostly speak when I feel there is a purpose I need to interject. I suck at small talk, it gives me a headache.
A friendly, nonchalant chat about the weather and all things meaningless isn’t really my cup of tea. I really envy the people that do manage it, getting friendly and comfy with the senior members of an organization never really hurt anyone. I wish I can do it with the ease and grace that some people manage to pull it off with.
So yeah, “A” and I were walking to the office, luckily I didn’t really need to say much, God bless his talkative soul. I don’t exactly remember how it started; I think I wasn’t even really paying too much attention to what he was saying. Suddenly, somehow the conversation veered towards his family. “A” is not a young man by anybodies standards. For someone who is fairly middle-aged, his son is awfully little. Now I can understand that this is not all that exceptional in this day and age, but some 20 odd years ago, getting married or having children in your late 30’s was unheard of.
“We had an inter-caste marriage, my wife is Hindu, we ran away from home. It was utter chaos in the beginning. We lived in fear for a long time. There were death threats and police complaints. All we had was each other and the clothes on our back.”
“A” straightened his shirt cuff as he went on reminiscing.
“She use to live in my colony, back in the day, we had the scoop on all the girls that lived in the neighborhood. It was something we were utterly proud of, me and my friends. She was the only one that I didn’t know, although her family stayed there, she had mostly grown up at her grandmothers house. I was completely awestruck when I first saw her, who is that girl? I asked my friend.”
“A” said that it was love at first sight. He knew that their union would never be accepted by those around them. A country that has been plagued and tortured by the ugly shadow of religious hatred would never let a Muslim man and a Hindu woman come together.
In an essentially secular country, religion has been the point of contention that has divided people, generation after generation. The passion and fervor of religious fundamentalism has turned men and women against each other, making them forget all empathy that they might share amongst themselves.
In spite of these seemingly impossible circumstances, here they are some twenty years later sharing a life together.
“It was a while before we had our son, having absolutely nothing in our pockets made it difficult to have a child. No complains, we are very happy.”
By then we had reached the office entrance and went our separate ways. I was completely awed by “A’s” story, in this crazy eccentric world that we live in love might just conquer it all. Well at least for this one lucky couple anyways.
More to follow…
I always felt that idea of eternal love, that epic romance, which servers as an inspiration to one and all has been lost in the annals of time, unknown to modern civilization. We all lament about it, cry, bitch and moan of how it eludes us as a generation caught up in our pursuit for material possession and self-indulgent gratification, well at least I know I do, we seek to vicariously live a small piece of it, in the reassess of our imagination, through film and literature, yet I have only just realized that ‘love’ may not after all be such a fictional entity.
Even though we might fail to see and recognize it, the ordinary men and women that we ignore for their plainness and mediocrity carry forth this flame of eternal love and carefully and tenderly spread it around, to their children, their friends, colleagues and sometimes even perfect strangers. If just for once we can push aside our ignorance and just learn to listen, we might just realize that there is still hope, everywhere.
I stepped out of the train at Matunga station at around 10.20 am. I was later than usual; well this has sort of turned into a nasty habit lately that I must get rid off soon. I love traveling by train, on most good days, encountering something amusing, unexpected and engaging becomes its highlight. I absolutely love observing the various species of human beings that share the crowded Mumbai public transportation system with me. I was never much of a TV watcher, with the exception of a random craving for something funny or dramatic every once in a while, for the most part I have been pretty detached from the idiot box. Amazingly enough, I have now completely lost the occasional longing for mindless mass entertainment ever since I moved to Mumbai and started traveling by train! Seriously, who needs a TV set when all the ingredients for great entertainment are around you! Bombay and its over crowed public transportation system has become my window of entertainment!
Yeah so anyways, I have this tendency of going off into these random tangents and completely postponing the point that I am trying to make. It was a scalding day and I was late for work. I was sweating profusely in the oppressive heat. (Seriously, I think I sweat more than anyone that I know and have ever seen. I have observed women looking their freshest and prettiest, with incredible Zen like expressions lining their faces in the midst of the Bombay heat while the sweat on my countenance glistens like hot oil sputtering on a frying fan.)
My head was stuck in my book. (I cherished my last few moments of literary gratification as I marched along the platform towards the exit, expertly avoiding all possible occurrences of a collision between myself and some unsuspecting stranger.)
“You shouldn’t do that you know.” I heard someone whisper really close to my ear.
I turned around some what startled, it was “A” one of the senior managers at work. Oh great, now I have to walk with him and make small talk along the way, I groaned a little within.
I am painfully shy when it comes to having a friendly chat with most people I work with. I mostly speak when I feel there is a purpose I need to interject. I suck at small talk, it gives me a headache.
A friendly, nonchalant chat about the weather and all things meaningless isn’t really my cup of tea. I really envy the people that do manage it, getting friendly and comfy with the senior members of an organization never really hurt anyone. I wish I can do it with the ease and grace that some people manage to pull it off with.
So yeah, “A” and I were walking to the office, luckily I didn’t really need to say much, God bless his talkative soul. I don’t exactly remember how it started; I think I wasn’t even really paying too much attention to what he was saying. Suddenly, somehow the conversation veered towards his family. “A” is not a young man by anybodies standards. For someone who is fairly middle-aged, his son is awfully little. Now I can understand that this is not all that exceptional in this day and age, but some 20 odd years ago, getting married or having children in your late 30’s was unheard of.
“We had an inter-caste marriage, my wife is Hindu, we ran away from home. It was utter chaos in the beginning. We lived in fear for a long time. There were death threats and police complaints. All we had was each other and the clothes on our back.”
“A” straightened his shirt cuff as he went on reminiscing.
“She use to live in my colony, back in the day, we had the scoop on all the girls that lived in the neighborhood. It was something we were utterly proud of, me and my friends. She was the only one that I didn’t know, although her family stayed there, she had mostly grown up at her grandmothers house. I was completely awestruck when I first saw her, who is that girl? I asked my friend.”
“A” said that it was love at first sight. He knew that their union would never be accepted by those around them. A country that has been plagued and tortured by the ugly shadow of religious hatred would never let a Muslim man and a Hindu woman come together.
In an essentially secular country, religion has been the point of contention that has divided people, generation after generation. The passion and fervor of religious fundamentalism has turned men and women against each other, making them forget all empathy that they might share amongst themselves.
In spite of these seemingly impossible circumstances, here they are some twenty years later sharing a life together.
“It was a while before we had our son, having absolutely nothing in our pockets made it difficult to have a child. No complains, we are very happy.”
By then we had reached the office entrance and went our separate ways. I was completely awed by “A’s” story, in this crazy eccentric world that we live in love might just conquer it all. Well at least for this one lucky couple anyways.
More to follow…
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