Maybe

Seema quietly tiptoed into the living room, after an evening of mindless gallivanting within the limited confines of the suburb she called home; with the people she called friends. The comforting silences that pervaded her living room was interrupted by the obscene chime of the wall clock which screamed that an hour still remained before she was accosted by yet another day.
Her eyeballs hurt from the strain of attempting to fervently look beyond the parameters of her vision, for in her harried state to reach her destination on time she had carelessly left her spectacles at home. Seema slowly and deliberately massaged her shut eyelids in circular rotations to ease away the strain that was assaulting her senses when suddenly the room got bathed in a burst of ugly, fluorescent light with the definite click of a button. Seema winced at the unwarranted intrusion upon her private exercise of relaxation, but did not rebel openly.

Mother started intently from a sharp corner, adjacent to the light switch that divided their shared living quarters in a definite square. They exchanged a silent greeting with the flutter of their eyelids, acknowledging each others commanding yet reassuring presence with least awkwardness. Seema wiped her kohl smudged fingers on the front of her jeans, which were tainted by some of the smoky blackness that had been transferred onto her tips while she rubbed her eyes vigorously. She flopped upon sofa as she carelessly tossed her bag in the corner and gazed at mother with a warm stare that could possibly initiate the dawn of an interaction, the mood and tone of which unfamiliar to both.

“How was your evening?” She enquired.

“It was alright, coffee and dinner, the usual.” She quipped.

“I really wish you would stop wasting money eating and drinking out almost everyday, especially when there is food at home.” She muttered. Her decibels and irritation heightened with each passing word.

Seema stretched out on the sofa and shuffled around for the television remote, only half listening to her mothers rants that she was rather impervious to by now. After a long, lazy and a rather boring Saturday, she was ready to indulge in a good few hours of dreamless slumber that would refresh her senses and comfort her aching body that was fatigued from the week’s activities.

“I visited the astrologer today.” Mother said nonchalantly.

Her unexpected, matter of fact declaration invaded the empty thoughts that were beginning to wander into the deeply hidden barren wastelands of Seema’s mind. Her left kneecap twitched from the goose bumps that emanated from its epicenter and quickly coursed through the remainder of her limb. Her sprawled stance ended when she drew her knees to her chest and sat upright in one swift motion, now completely alert.

Encouraged by Seema’s minor show of curiosity and lack of dismissal in her belief that the seemingly miniscule twinkling celestial beings, nestled far away in some remote corners of this galaxy, held the ultimate power to unabashedly chart the course of our destiny, without so much as a passing thought towards our hopes and desires, mother continued almost uninterrupted for the next few minutes.

Seema sat horrifically mesmerized as mother unraveled the mystery of impending future meticulously and chronologically.
“December is a good month for you.”

“For what?”

“The stars are in your favor, a new phase unfolds.”

“Yeah?” She questioned with some hopeful caution.

“It’s an auspicious month to start something new.”

Seema brightened a little, the past year had been some what of a disappointment, largely due to her incapacity to finish anything she started or begin anything she wished to start. She wasn’t too deeply dejected though, the cold winter months always brightened her spirits, the tail end of the calendar year always brought with it the hope that the terrible waste she has subjected her being to would officially come to an end and the new year always brought with it possibility of a brand new beginning, something she embraced with childlike ardor.

“The starts favor your marriage prospects in the near future.” Mother added brightly.

Seema sat utterly still, paralyzed by the unwanted bulletin; her heart lurched forward with a deafening thud, while her lips parted wordlessly. Was this the news that she has secretly hoped to hear after all? Seema furrowed her brows in concentration neither encouraging nor dissuading mother to reveal further more.

“There is a good possibility that this maybe a love match. The stars are in its favor.”

The prospect of spending the rest of her life with someone she cared about, whomever it maybe cheered Seema more than she had ever anticipated. Her heart did a dainty summersault once again, thrilled by the prospect of being in love, again, hopefully for the last time this time around.

“Well, she asked me if you were in love in the past, the charts indicated that there was a phase like this once before.” Mom questioned, trying rather unsuccessfully to mask her peaking interest.

“Nah…” Seema replied with the nonchalance of a unseasoned liar as she smirked a little in amusement.

“I told her frankly that my daughter and I are friends and she tells me everything.” Mother said with uncertain finality as she stared at Seema pointedly hoping to fish out some of the truth carefully masked under an air of nonchalance.

Seema looked at mother with an equally challenging look of her own, almost daring her to prod her further, her silent smirk quietly tormenting her with the notion that there maybe many salacious revelations about her daughters life that she may possibly never be a spectator to.

The small and large hand of the clock in near perfect synchrony landed on the number twelve almost simultaneous, just when the breathing space between the two had begun to turn almost rancid with defiance and hostility.

“Tong” chimed the clock singularly, denoting the advent of another day.

*To be continued, maybe*

This is How the World Turns

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.

So where exactly is the Happy Ending again?

So where is the ‘happy ending’ Bollywood style I ask myself time and again?
I have been delirious with a mind numbing headache and a fever that refuses to go away. Being sick has it’s advantages of course, lying in bed all night wrapped in a blanket, shuddering from the unwarranted and uncalled for chills, on an exceedingly warm October night gave me the time and space to think and contemplate about the many complexities of life. I absolutely love the fact that everyone leaves you alone when you are sick! A terrible temperament and general frumpiness are discounted as bad, lingering side effects of your so called appalling suffering and you can almost get away with anything!
It seems sort of unfortunate that even though your limbs refuse to cooperate and your body rebels at the slightest movement, your mind is most active and alive than ever. Last night I desperately tried to put myself to sleep. At first I gently rocked myself back and forth as I sat hunched in bed propped against a couple of mismatched pillows. When this didn’t have the desired effect, I moved on to restlessly tossing back and forth in short, unstable jerky movements desperately trying to cling on to the smallest glimmer of sleep, only to come really close and then see it slip away, my eyelids drooping in exhaustion, but my mind alive and more awake than ever.

Once upon a time in a familiar looking suburb of big city there lived a girl named Sheila. Sheila was the perfect child next door types. Being extremely average has its benefits, thanks to this; Sheila for a good portion of her existence lived a very ordinary life. She always had a really difficult time waking up in the morning and getting to school on time. It’s not that Sheila didn’t enjoy the benefits of a rather mediocre education system, which she realized much later on doesn’t really prepare you for life at all. Quite the contrary, Sheila just didn’t find the morning hours very conducive towards her personal growth and learning. At the end of the day Sheila skipped home from school and then spent a good portion of the evening doing homework with great gusto and enthusiasm, a rather uncanny trait in a ten year old, but little Sheila liked to study and was indeed a rather odd child.

Summer was Sheila’s favorite season of the year. Apart from the obvious joys of not having school for three whole months and the sheer bliss and luxury of loitering and loafing around that the season offered, Sheila also loved summers because this was the only in the year that she got to see Ridhi.

Ridhi was a distance cousin, she spent the summers with the family that lived next door, who were coincidently were related to them both. Sheila and Ridhi were destined to be the best of friends, age and time being on their side helped speed up the process considerably. People smiled fondly as the watched the two girls skip together hand in hand on numerous occasions, apparently their mothers were good friends too and did exactly the same when they were their age.
Childhood, suddenly without so much as a slight warning gave way to those difficult teenage years. It brought along with it many joys and angst’s, but most importantly the painful realization and discovery of the opposite sex.

Sheila was younger than Ridhi by nearly a year and a half. To her Ridhi was almost a woman, all worldly and wise. They spent many a night, with their heads tucked under the same blanket, quietly and futilely fretting about the nature of men in low, almost inaudible whispers. They were always afraid of waking up the grownups with their scandalous talks. They were overjoyed to discover that each of them more or less wanted the same things in life. Ridhi was pretty and smart and all the boys seemed to like her, although a tad bit jealous Sheila enjoyed this and vicariously lived through her. When she finally got some attention of her own, Sheila emulated Ridhi’s ways to the tee to garner the same effect her friend seem to have on men.

Alas the long, starry, sultry nights filled with endless jibber couldn’t last forever. Today Sheila and Ridhi remains friends, they see each on rare occasion and thankfully sort of even share the same amicable feelings of warmth they once did for each other, sadly the similarity ends there. Riddhi now appears to be particularly tired and engrossed all the time. What seems like a never ending day is spent chasing after a hyper active but ridiculously adorable two year old and catering to her ever whim and fancy. Somewhere in the last five odd years or so, Riddhi had managed to snag herself a husband and produce a child. Sheila had been busy as well; only her days are filled with chasing after seemingly impossible, nonsensical, idealistic dreams, which had absolutely very little foundation in reality and unstable but interesting men she thought she was in love with, who ended up breaking her fragile and all too eager heart time and again. Riddhi basked in the glory of supposed marital bliss while Sheila reveled in her liberated, strong, independent woman of the 21st century existence. Both were seemingly content in their own right; yet felt that other lived a delusional, highly unfulfilled existence.
A couple of days ago, unexpectedly, Riddhi showed up at Sheila’s doorstep. After both got over the initial excitement and joy at each others sight, the conversation took a very sour turn. Riddhi pondered rather loudly on Sheila’s husbandless state and how incredibly unfortunate it seemed. The worldly and wise Ridhi lamented in great agony on how a life without the joys of marital bliss and snot nosed brats to run after was one badly lived. Sheila sat in utter silence as a feeling of loneliness and isolation slowly enveloped her, no words dared escape her lips.

“You are being selfish and horrible. Think about your mother, she isn’t getting any younger; doesn’t she deserve to see you happy?”

*eerie silence followed by a slightly throaty, awkward cough*

“You have some strange, funny ideas about space and relationships, what do you mean you aren’t quite ready to incorporate someone else into your life just yet? I haven’t heard anything more ridiculous!”

“Hmm.”

“What’s wrong with an arranged marriage? Not everyone is destined to meet each other and fall madly in love like Harsh and I did.”

“Yeah, thanks for rubbing salt on my nearly healed bruises.”

You must listen to your mother and meet some of these guys she is trying to introduce you to.”

“They sound like losers who can’t get a date on their own…” Sheila muttered softly.

“You think you are smart, mature, all knowing and wise but you are NOT! Have you heard yourself speak? You want the man to do all the work and make all the compromises, while you don’t give an inch."

“I don’t think that’s how I think or feel you are just misunder…” Sheila’s voice slowly trailed off as Riddhi once again loudly interjected.

“If I had an eligible, marriageable son, I would NEVER want him get marry a girl like you!!”
“Ouch.” Though Sheila.

“Change your ways before it’s too late! Otherwise there is a damn good chance that you might just end up all alone.”

“Fine, Fine!! I will meet some of these losers if you insist!” Sheila yelled, as she huffed out of the room, her composure badly shaken.

“Well NOT calling them losers would be a nice place to begin. Good.” Said Riddhi, with a triumphant humph, a big smile of victory plastered upon her lips.

The next night Sheila met Riddhi and the covered husband for dinner along with another married couple they were once very close too. The evening was fun and ordinary of sorts, the food although not exceptional was rather delectable. They all had a perfectly decently time, making small, individual contributions to the rather inane conversations that took place. Sheila remained silent through the bits where the discussed the triumphs and woes of matrimony due to her obvious lack of expertise on the subject. Now only if this was a discussion on disastrous relationships and terrible taste in men, would I have a thing or five to add, she thought herself in her usual self deprecating humorous manner. The evening ended on a good note with some scrumptious caramel custard that they each polished off with great gusto.

After the tab was paid and the husband packed off home to spend one more night in bed alone, Sheila and Riddhi silently walked homewards. Their private thoughts regularly interrupted by the sound of their sandals crunching against the abandoned gravel on the cemented side walk.

“Well, so tonight was fun!”

“Yes I had a great time. Thank you, wow we haven’t done this in a while.”

“Isn’t my husband lovely?” Riddi asked with a smile.

“Yes, he seems really nice.” Sheila offered.

“Didn’t you feel all lonely and alone tonight, having no one there to take care of you?”

“Not at all, I am quite use to looking after myself.”

Sheila strode ahead with a small yet determined and hopeful smile. She pressed a cigarette in between her parted lips and lit it with a sigh of content, all the while ignoring Riddhi’s look of disapproval and disdain, blissfully puffing away into the muggy October evening air.

Men really are from Mars

Trust a man to enter the picture and ruin the almost perfect beginning to what seemed like a good month after a really long time. I am almost twenty five years old and these constant repetitions of the same stupid mistakes are getting really cumbersome. It’s really; really not suppose to be this way at all, especially not after counseling myself time and again that I will NEVER venture down that path again. I should have my life a tad bit sorted by now. The warning signs were all there, the alarm bells were loudly chiming in my ears and coaxing me to run in the opposite direction, I stupidly ignored them against my better judgment and now I suffer all over again. Sex ruins EVERYTHING. It never is or will be uncomplicated.
I am fuming, at myself more than anybody else. This whole self-destructive existence isn’t all that glorifying as it is made out to be. That’s all I am going to say for now.

The Perfect Relationship

Sometimes the best, most unexpected relationships in life come from places you thought you would never venture too and people that you least expect to ever encounter, only to wonder in the end ‘ Am I seriously capable of anything remotely normal and functional?’

Of the zillion dates and relationships and random hook-ups that I tortured and subjected myself too, the most satisfying, gratifying and fulfilling relationship I have EVER had has been with my ex- roommate ‘N’. Fate brought us together in the most mysterious of ways, I had no idea she was that weird chick that never closed her blinds and walked around naked in her dorm room until I started living with her and observed some striking similarities between the two. A whole three years later she still pranced around naked in our very messy apartment, albeit minus my sense of awkwardness, discomfort and sense of initial shock. Thank you ‘N’ for making me forget my unnecessary and trite sense of modesty. You go around thinking and feeling, imagining and concocting the premise of the perfect romance that will make you truly blissfully only to much later realize that you are actually living it, ironically with someone of the same sex that unfortunately neither consider being in a relationship with or are attracted to.

So ‘N’ and I lived in semi picture-perfect domestic bliss. I cooked and cleaned; she walked the dog and brought the groceries. At the end of each day I would come home from work or class, drop my keys on the table by the door and go ‘Hey Hun how was your day?’

She picked me up from class whenever it was late; we would either listen to love lines on the radio or sing to what ever tape she had in the cassette player on our way back home as we chomped down chicken quesedias from Taco Bell. She was probably the only person I knew, that actually used a cassette player circa 2005. One day we spent hours store hopping around the city looking for a place that sold blank cassettes just so that she could make another one of those god damn mix-tapes that littered the dash board and floor of her old station wagon.
We spend hours being in the same room without saying a word to each other, blissfully occupied in our individual activities, but knowing and aware of each others presence and more importantly being comforted by it. There were no awkward silences between ‘N’ and me, just silences.

I am not ashamed to admit that she made me incredibly happy. We perfectly balanced each other out, my hyper, over-worked and over-anxious self needed someone laid back, happy and content like ‘N’ around to remind me of all the good things in life and once again be encompassed by a sense of quiet satisfaction for no apparent reason. She needed someone motivated and ambitious like me around to encourage her to push herself and always work towards doing better. How do I know this? Well, she told me so.

I would come back from my ballroom dancing class and try to teach her everything new that I had learnt. I would squirm and shriek every time she touched me because it would make me feel ticklish all over. We would giggle like school girls every time our breasts bounced off each other and almost never managed to finish the routine as we were both laughing so hard by then.

We bonded over books and movies and sometimes over common thoughts, ideals and dreams while we let life happen somewhere along the way. We cried together, laughed together, sang together, danced together and lived together, going through all of life’s great and not so great moments with each other somewhere in the vicinity willing to lend a helping shoulder if need be.
Every thing I wanted from my ideal relationship with a man, I got from my relationship with my roommate. Now only if we were attracted to each other or for that matter even the same sex, things would have been hypothetically perfect!

I have always wondered why is it so that the when two women become good friends, the bond that they might share with each other runs a lot deeper and stronger than what we may ever hope to share wit someone of the opposite sex. Is it solely because we happen to share the same gender and therefore by proxy the same organs and hormones that makes us tick, that we are inherently bound together and therefore capable of understanding each others needs and wants a lot better? I have never felt the level of comfort and ease that I had developed with ‘N’ around any of my previous boyfriends, not even the ones that I supposedly loved. Is this because when two women make a committed choice to indulge, include and incorporate each other into their individual lives they are much more willing and able to see the beauty and extraordinariness amongst the most banal and simplest of things?

I just got a really long email from her the other day filled with fond recollections that plastered a nice big smile on my face which was difficult to wipe off at least for a good few hours.
Why I reminisce about ‘N’ after a good two years since we went our separate ways? I don’t know, I just don’t think I need to have any logical and pragmatic reason fondly reflect upon the most sincere, honest, enriching relationship of my life, minus the earth shattering, toe curling sex of course.

Feels a Little bit like Stupidity

I have been absolutely insufferable lately. I have been mean, grumpy, angry, frustrated and hopelessly depressed. Yes, I admit I haven’t been good company. In fact, I have been absolutely intolerable. The worst part about being this way is to absolutely know how incredibly unfair you are to yourself and those around you, but yet be completely incapable of changing the way you think and feel. It’s a really frustrating, hopeless, lonely rut to be stuck in. I could easily blame my lack of amicability upon my hormones; yes to a certain degree they do hugely contribute to my volatile, tumultuous state of mind, but that would only partially be the truth. I have been generally cross with the world recently and most of it has been no ones fault but my own, I most certainly can’t blame it on my period. Sure I cannot control the way people act and behave, but it is certainly in my power to control the way I feel and react to things and it maddening to sometimes contemplate that this is the least I have control over.

My general frumpiness isn’t all a concoction of my overactive imagination. I have been genuinely sad and troubled; the worst part is my complete incapacity to discuss it with anyone, not even close friends and family. I perhaps unfairly and wrongly think that they don’t care enough or are simply incapable of understanding what I am going through. Yes, I know this might be unreasonable on my part, but I simply can’t stop feeling this way. I know the whole I am so alone, no one really gets me and the world is such a shitty place to live in bullshit is a little cliché and that I should have left my teenage angst behind a long time ago, exactly six years to be precise when I stopped being a teenager, but what the hell, I can label this my mid-life crisis and call it a day!

My dad passed away precisely six years and five days ago. I thought that things would get better with time, all wounds nicely healed and scabbed, but I guess in many ways it was some solid wishful thinking on my part. Some things never really become a distant, less painfully memory, even after all the time that has gone by. I would be lying and exaggerating if I said that my life came to a screeching a halt, a painful standstill and any other metaphors I can think off after my dad died. But with him I feel like I lost a little bit of myself too, that little something that I haven’t quiet managed to find yet. I wish I really knew what it was, things would be a lot easier if I did, all I feel time and again is this over whelming sense of loss, which no matter what I do never really seems to go away. Just when I think I am alright, I feel this crushing urge to just see him and be with him one more time, just so that I can ask him if I turned out alright. I know it’s a little sick to need this kind of validation, but when you are as confused and lost as I feel I am it’s comforting to know that you are on the right track, especially when nothing makes any sense at all. It is unbelievably painful to miss and want someone so terribly and know that they are really truly gone forever.

The gloom and doom of my father’s death anniversary and the subsequent onslaught of nostalgic recollection had made me less than friendly in the last couple of weeks. I use ‘had’ because I think I am slowly getting out of my funk, but in the process I have very successfully managed to alienate the people I care the most about. A lot of my friends have stopped calling me, just because I have been so damn difficult to deal with. Worst of all, I feel like I am growing further and further apart from my closest friend and this has been the hardest to deal with.

He was the one person I always looked forward to seeing, one I felt I could always count on, someone who got me, well at least a little. Now he is one I have successfully managed to push the furthest away. I know it’s no ones fault but my own, but it would be really, truly nice and comforting if just once he would pick up the phone and ask me if I was alright. Maybe with a little patience and perseverance cajole the truth out of me. We never spend time together anymore, not as a group, we do plenty of that, I’m talking about just him and me. Now every chance he gets he runs away, acting like my presence and company is the source of great annoyance, I really hate and resent that, only because I miss him so damn much. I know I am not fun and chirpy all the time, but to be abandoned by your closest friend at what seems like the most vulnerable time in your life, feels a little bit like betrayal.

A bunch of us were hanging out late last night and as usual the conversation took a serious turn. ‘T’ told me that I should really stop being so damn moral, judgmental and idealistic all the time. Apparently someone wise once said that ‘A high moral ground is a very lonely place.’ I forgot who it was. Yeah I guess I do agree, but I am also obstinate enough to think that what precious, few morals that I do have in possession are the guiding principals of my life and if I didn’t have them, I would be left with almost nothing. If it’s a choice between being alone and letting go of my ideals then I stubbornly choose to stick with my morality. Well at least for now anyway, when I feel like I am strong enough live with the consequences of my decision. They advised me time and again that I need to cut myself a slack and give the world a break. Don’t they think that I already know this? I mean pragmatically and logical it all makes absolute perfect sense, but making something that seems so simple into an actual living, breathing reality is a whole different ball game. Sweeping, life changes don’t really happen over night.

I am probably the stupidest human being on the planet. I am stupid because I realize that I am doing idiotic things and yet continue to do them because all I have is my idiocy.

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?