She will Conquer

I always hate starting something new, there is always that imminent feeling of where do I begin? As I sit before the computer screen rattling my nearly empty head away, I suddenly realize, well the beginning is always a good place, right?

She joins the Ranks of the Supposed Millions:

Frankly, I have been too depressed to write. I know this is no big great surprise even to me, but without getting too overtly dramatic about it, the last odd month or so has truly been, well how should I put it mildly, aha, yes, a crappy one.

I walked into the office exactly when the clock struck ten, was almost proud of this momentous achievement of punctuality since Mumbai has successfully instilled pathological tardiness into my being. The impending feeling of utter misfortune hovered over the confines of the office space may have vastly contributed towards me quickly hustling out of bed briskly and heading towards my adversity. The box office figures for the weekend were in the previous day, shiny new mass appealing source of entertainment from our factory was a massive box office dud! The air was fraught with unbearable tension and gloom. The honchos pottered around importantly from one cabin to other all day long carrying stacks of papers that divulged the financial state of the organization. I calmly fixed my ass in my chair all day, hopefully looking poised and serene, juggling multiple acts of thinking positive thoughts, performing calming breathing exercises, reading self help articles on the internet, flicking through Vogue and looking for cheap flights to Thailand for a long, well deserved break. Quite proud of this intuitiveness that I have developed over the years, I can somehow always sense when my life is going to come crashing down around me with a deafening thud, then I can effectively start disaster management, well at least a day in advance.

After all despondent discussions were temporarily suspended by all the important people, all the expendable individuals ie. ME were ushered in. The hideous, ugly news was broken, I was getting laid off because the financial state of the company. Oh dear, I groaned in my head, its happening, its happening! I was prepared for it actually, had a damn good inkling of it almost twenty four hours in advance, so I smiled through the long drawn out explanation and almost felt bad for my boss, the man looked genuinely tormented about having to give me up. Small, small consolation, I was valuable, thunderous realization immediately after, well not enough to keep my job.

I would be lying if I said that at very instant, my existence came to a shrilling, screeching halt, but longer the conversation continued, the worse I started to feel. There he was looking at me sadly with large remorseful eyes telling me how incredibly unfair and unstable these times were, that I must not loose hope and channel my talent (yeah right, which one?) in a constructive manner in this time of forced sabbatical. As the level of encouragement in his seemingly hollow words grew, so did the irresistible urge to slump my head on edge of his desk and break into a long, agony wrenched wail that would eventually progress into a full throated sob.

In the end I almost managed to keep my dignity intact by not exhibiting a full fledged reaction to the dreadful news of my unemployment, but instead settled for a small show of hysteria by fleeing from the lunch table in frenzy and locking myself in the bathroom for a whole twenty minutes weeping bitterly, tad bit too worn out to keep up with the one big, happy, work family farce.

A Little Unsettled and Distraught, but doing Alright:

After the initial gloom and doom of professional disaster was somewhat abated, was once again almost back to positive, enthusiastic self. Was actually quite glad, after all it is only the forth month of the year, far too early in the calendar to slip into all too familiar negativity, plus it seemed like such a waste to let months and months of disciplined effort to stay focused and hopeful go all in vain, also seriously excited about a million new possibilities that lie ahead.

The joys of having copious amounts of time and channeling it in the right direction, finally embarking upon a long desired career as a freelance writer, sitting with my laptop on my lap, churning out fantastic stories for distinguished publications around the world, being loved and respected by all, being featured in India Today’s top ten people under twenty five list, okay being realistic, scratch that and make it under thirty list. The possibilities the possibilities, but first very quickly must check Naukri for any interesting job openings, just in case, always good to have a back up plan.

So there I was ready to take the world by storm, a powerful new voice in the literary world, ready to pleasantly shock the nation with maturity reflected through my poignant writing at the tender age of twenty five! Wrote to every single editor I knew and even some I didn’t know shamelessly name dropping in hopes of nabbing any freelance assignment cast my way. Bloody hell, its hard getting writing work in a recession, no one’s hiring, but what’s worse, no one is hiring writers, period. In times of great financial turmoil, the value of the written word is totally annihilated! Should have trained in something valuable when I was younger, but too late to regret stupid decisions made during tumultuous, angst filled teenage years when life of the starving artist seemed glamorous and justifiable. Tried very, very hard to maintain calm demeanor, repeating hay necked quotations like “failure is the stepping stone to success” and “Rome was not built in a day” to self over and over again. Also managed go on a few job interviews on account of dwindling bank balance, very much against own will.

Finally some success, have been hired to write play for eighth graders by an education company. Only problem, must write it in contemporary language, also must incorporate geography, science and math syllabus into the historical setting of the formation of the East India Company. Right, did the James Lanchester use compound interest to do the math when trading with the natives?

Also writing and editing and some politician’s mini-biography to make some much needed bucks on the side, have realized though well conducted research and much contemplation that it is indeed ironic that these so called ‘civil servants’ and ‘social workers’ have unfathomable and I’m sure unaccountable amounts of money. While they rally as the ‘common man’ and ‘for the common man’ their kids travel in Mercedes and BMW’s, study at ridiculously expensive private schools and all of them have a freaking MBA from some university in the U.K. Obviously intelligence and merit do not serve as valid prerequisites for a top-notch foreign education in their case. Seriously, where do these so called ‘aids of the masses’ get massive quantities of wealth to fill their own coffers and secure the bright future of their children? More importantly how fair is it that they get everything that I want with such relative ease, when I am busting my ass in spite of repeated failure and get nothing I desire even though I am actually quite worthy and deserving?

Speaking of repeated failure, I totally messed up my GRE, big surprise! Actually, to be honest and fair, I did really work hard, assiduously pouring through the books over the last few months. I am not one of those frazzled, nervous test takers, I don’t loose my poise and composure while writing examinations, after the initial jitters have settled, I manage to easily slip in the flow of things and do what is required, only this time around it happened to be a really hard test. I walked out of the examination room shell shocked, thanks to instant scores I knew what I had earned, too stunned to speak, I headed home zombie like. I had scored lower than any of my mock tests. I had done dismally, my months and months of efforts and my hard earned money all down the drain.

At the moment I really did feel like a catastrophic failure, after everything that had gone terrifically wrong over the last year or so, I really did so badly want this to work in my favor, me, God or fate messing up something that was so incredibly important to me did feel like a cold, hard smack on the face. I spent two whole days rethinking my career goals. Maybe this was a sign for the universe that my academic life is officially over and I should not harbor dreams of a higher education. I also kept mulling over my subject matter, after all, there are numerous talented writers around the world, what is the chance that I am going to be picked among the hundreds that have applied. Oh dear God, I have to now invent twenty pages of poignant, startling, prose, which will be my ticket into a writing program. But art is so subjective, how can I possibly fathom what will work where?

Mommy and I:

Who ever said that unemployment is bad is a stark, raving lunatic. After the initial discomfort with free day time hours has passed, things do eventually metamorphosis into ‘jolly good.’ Have developed a highly productive schedule, which entails waking up post ten, writing until late noon, lunch, nap, tea, writing, exercise, dinner, reading and bed, of course not strictly in that order. The beauty of now ‘working’ from home is fact that blossoming friendship between mom and I has now officially reached its zenith! We are fantastic together! The perfect house companions! She is warm and caring and incredibly supportive of my ambitions. She cheers me up whenever I feel like the universe is conspiring against me, relentlessly plotting my doom. She makes me delicious lunches and hands me pillows when I whine in my mid-afternoon stupor for one. We both stay awake till all odd hours of the night reading our respective books; sometimes my head rests in her lap. My heart bursts with great love and admiration each time I glance in her direction, but sometimes she really does look so old and tired. I compensate for being less useful around the house and expressing my sincere, heartfelt gratitude but buying her expensive things that she can totally afford but will never indulge in. We make one hell of a mother-daughter team and truly are happy together. Sometimes I day dream about this lovely arrangement continuing forever, I feel so cherished in the company of my mum, she loves me in spite of the fact that I don’t have a job, my prospects of a bright professional life are dismal so far, I am horrible at taking standardized tests, I don’t have a whole lot of money and no man loves me and wants to marry me! Only the most unselfish, saintly, divine creature can unconditionally love so rubbish of an offspring.

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?

At the brink...

A lot can happen over a short period of time, the clock ticks at its own leisurely pace, making you ache with untold agony for a moment far better than today and yet the cruel hands of the chiming time-piece work at its own accord. You spend each day in humdrum monotony and yet before you know it a long span has passed before you, unknown to your conscious mind. You are somehow in the same place where you first started your frustrated contemplation, yet so much has changed, something’s more subtle than the rest, others enter your life like a force to reckon with.
I have been insanely busy with work, for the first time in a long time; I am actually satisfied in more ways than one. One of my life long dreams may just shape into a lucid reality and I am absolutely stunned and awed at my good fortune. I know that people actively work long and hard to get to a place that I am at. Every conscious moment and effort single handedly focused on his or her dreams and aspirations. I am not strong enough to possess that fierce determination, in fact I am rather frightened to exhibit or even contemplate such fervor. I float in an out of my dreams and nightmares, often lost in thought, spinning tales of a glorious satisfied existence, yet too weak to make it a stark reality. Yet here I am, at this very moment, at brink of a fantastic break that other would kill for. It almost seems unfair to those poor bastards that have tried so hard and yet struggle incessantly. I almost feel like I am unworthy of it, that the success and satisfaction that may come my way at the end of it all seems undeserved. I want to run away from it all, give up mid-way for a continued existence of mediocrity, believing that I don’t deserve better, yet every cell of my being throbs for it.
Although the opportunity was unexpected, I have struggled with it, spending every waking moment shaping a tale that may metamorphoses into a spectacle that may bring unfathomable joy or great shame. Right now I almost disregard the consequences of my actions, they almost seem irrelevant, the process excites it, it gives me the confidence that I have lacked for a while. I know for sure, that I am capable nurturing my desire for story telling, whether it is something that the whole world may marvel some day, or a few indistinct scrawls that may remain hidden in an aging note book away from prying eyes of the world is secondary. I have the capacity to write, that’s good enough for me, at least for now.
Maybe one of the reasons I am so afraid is somewhere deep down within I feel like I don’t really deserve to be happy. Be it love, life or career. I have enough skeletons hidden in my closet that make me shudder in my quietest moments. Acts of intolerable cruelty exhibited on my part under a façade of goodness. For all my lack of faith in God and the universe, I am a firm believer in Karma. Whatever I do be it good or bad is going to affect my existence, in this life. I fear that I have cashed out on my karmic balance and all that remains ahead is great darkness. Every time I close my eyes I can almost imagine being alone forever, it’s frightening and yet somehow comfortable, it’s as if I have almost accepted its inevitability. It’s my punishment for abandoning dad when he got sick, instead of sitting by his bedside and comforting him in his moments of excruciating pain, I selfishly ran away in the arms of “H” to seek my own solace and peace, unsuccessfully. At the end of it all, I managed to ruin two relationships, one that mattered the most and the other that mattered significantly. I was so caught up in my own grief and misery that I failed to notice the misery that I had caused to those around me. Mom was at her bravest, never giving up hope, doing the best that she could to keep him alive, I did not contribute one bit to ease her suffering. I don’t even know what “Mits” was going through, I never bothered to ask, I always thought she was too young to fully comprehend that her father was slowly dying. After all she was only 12, do children really understand these things at such a tender age? I wouldn’t know, I honestly can’t remember what it were like to be 12 once. I was so glad when he moved in with grandma; it was a relief not to have him around all the time, always so angry and melancholy. I was guilty at my relief but glad he was out of sight, yet he always lingered in my mind, still does, after all these years.
I wasn’t there when he died, college has whisked me away to America, I remember walking into my dorm after my uncle gave me the news, I forced a few tears out of me, it seemed like the right thing to do. I felt hollow and empty; my roommate “L” gazed at my ashen face and immediately knew something was wrong; I shed a few more tears as I told her the news. We went to Joe’s room to seek distraction; I stayed for a while but couldn’t sit around for long. I stumbled to the swing outside Adam tower and sat there for a long time, slightly swinging back and forth, my mind completely numb. I walked to the library around midnight, the campus was deserted, I stood in front of the giant gothic entrance admiring the magnificence of its structure in the hue of the tungsten lights. I crawled into bed fifteen minutes later, after setting my alarm clock for my seven thirty class. It was the longest walk that I have ever taken in my life.
I don’t think I ever properly grieved for my father, yet I grieve for him every single day. When I sit across a cute guy at the café, I turn the other way because I don’t feel like I deserve to be attractive to someone else, when I fail to peruse the men that show interest because I don’t think I deserve to ever be loved, when I occasionally kiss my best friend who does not love me, I feel like unrequited love is all I should ever get, when I loose a job or an assignment and meet with failure professionally I almost see it as divine justice. Sometimes I wish so desperately to have just a few more moments with him, just so that I could tell him how much I love him and how incredibly sorry I am.
When I occasionally hear stories of how miserable he was with grandma how she slowly but surely zapped his morale and will to live, I simmer with anger, yet back then I didn’t so much as bat an eyelash in question or protest when he left, relieved that he was out of here.
I am so damn close to almost getting what I want; I am scared that things will fuck up because of my past mistakes, I will once again be punished for my cruelty.
I wish so desperately to know that I am forgiven, that he still loves me, that I deserve all the happiness and success in spite of the errors of my ways, a few answers that I will never get.