Furry little pink slippers of envy

“Pitter-patter” sings the rain-drops

Beauty chase me down that alley

And slay down all my green hopes

First I am not and  then I am not again.

And the things spin out.

and questions old and musty

come tumbling out of that closet.

she crept along that once yellow road
and one by one her bread crumbs flew away
she became her own leftover
she stopped for a song, never walked again.

My Fault I'm Female

A couple of years ago, my sister and I were walking down the street to go get an auto rickshaw to go join our parents at a cultural program they were at. Basically, we had wanted to skip the ‘cultural’ bit, with all the dancing and singing and were trying to time our arrival with the community dinner which is to die for. We started from our house, and we had to walk about 3 minutes to reach the main road where the auto rickshaw stand was. This was about 11 in the night. Two guys on a bike passed by, and as expected (for in India, “mild” eve-teasing is norm of the day) they commented something. I was expecting the usual “Hi Sexy!” and was horrified and pissed off to hear from these two guys, “Good Morning!” We ignored them and kept walking, mostly cos that’s the norm and also cos there was no one else on the road and I wanted to be closer to the auto rickshaw stand before lashing out. And I was going to lash out. I was seething! These two young men (must have been mid-20’s, about my age) wished us Good Morning at 11 in the night thus reminding us the weaker and vulnerable sex that it was nighttime and that we should  not be here walking on the streets. Well, they could, cos they were male but for my sister and me, the 3 minute walk was blasphemy…OFWF.

Well we reached the rickshaw stand as they were returning for the third time to wish us morning, when I turned around and maniacally screamed at them to ‘FO.’ I screamed and screamed the same thing again and again as if the next thing I was going to do was to fly to them and crush them to death. I screamed like a demon.

They fled without a backward glance.

Good Morning to you too sirs!

A letter to a friend who I didn't know was a friend and who was miraculously there when I needed it

6/8/09

Aami jaanina re, why I want to write. However, it’s the only thing I know to do. To do well. To want to do well. I miss not having to write, not needing to. One day I will write my story, one day I will write my stories and publish them. But first I need to start writing. So that I start writing. So that I remember what it is to write. To have to write, to need to…

I don’t have an answer to these questions. “how will ur life decide that it wants to be a writer? what will ur writing be aimed at? what will it achieve?” probably cos I don’t understand them.

And what do I want to write? Preferably Novels (someday someday), poetry, short stories. But I will settle for anything. Yes anything, my employer asks me too. I will write as long as I am allowed to include my view points. Write a story, a feature, from my point of view. I want to to hone my style. Ekhon all I have is imagery. I want to get this fluency. I want to try out different styles. And I won’t be able to all this till I am not writing for a living. What I write is not so important. That I write is. I will be writing for writing’s sake.  What do you think?

I hope you had fun on your birthday. How old are you now? I’ll be turning 27, July 25. Looking forward to the rest of my life, at last. I quit Google today. As in I resigned. Last day June 26^th. I feel no regret yet. Now I have to keep myself motivated to being happy, not comfortable.

I am making other changes too. Getting in touch with people I lost in the 3 years. Severing ties with people who make me unhappy. My upcoming birthday and Roshni’s death anniversary, is making me utterly emotional and I keep going into these bouts of loneliness and anxiety and depression. I have in the past, withdrawn more into myself. This time I want to be involved with good people. Good friends. Tor kaemon obostha? Emotionally kaemon aachheesh tui? Tor okhaankaar bondhura kaemon?

I have been trying to picture your house. I want to visit you and your house and the lake behind it. I have to now start making my resume and start looking for a job.

Wish me all the best.

Love,

Arunlekha.

Excerpt from a letter I once wrote to a boy.

..........Believe me. I understand what you are saying. And I hope you understand, What I say, when I say "You and i are very similar somewhere, except that i am accepting of the way the world is moving. I have come to terms with the fact that, I cant change anything but me." 

I can't change anything. I wish I was zealous and filled with energy and focused. I used to die cos I would not be able to sustain interest long enough to write a petition even, for example. I grappled with myself long enough. I was/am lazy. I tried to fit in like mad and all. Right now, I am making changes to me. I am making a change in the most basic way I can. That is to be fucking honest with myself. 

I believe, that most things we have a problem with is out of our hands. Can I change India's sexuality issues? I can only be myself and do whatever I want to. I come from the middle-class and I grew up imbibed with such morals. Me becoming more Human (doing what I feel like, and not reacting out of/because of my social-conditioning) is in itself a big task. I have to then find a balance between what I aspire to become and what petty thing I feel like doing. I want to be completely unconcerned about money and not be chasing it, but I love to shop. I want to not be affected by desires but I love eating. So, I try instead to change how I look at food. When I was diagnosed with Diabetes, it was like I dint even register it. I didn't. I took me 5 years to be considerate to my body. I am very self-destructive, but now I am learning to take care of myself instead.  I am hovering between being good and just being me. I aim at being a good me. 

Coming to petty things, I go to 10d, for I've been going there for 10 years now. Cos, it was the closest thing to my college in the summers. When it is 45'c, we needed an A.C.  We'd go to Lifestyle to hang and then slowly moved to 10d. I feel at home there. The food is cheap. I don't go there to make a statement or not make one. I don't feel like making a statement anymore. I used to. I grew up. 

I am not rich. Neither is my father. I spend my own savings to live my life. (I know I know, I can be disdainful about money cos I can afford to be, but, which family I was born into is also my honesty and I cant pretend to be poor cos it's more polite. You are white, you can't pretend to not be, just so you can speak againest racism. You can speak againest it. But you will still be white which is nothing to be proud of (or not proud of), but it's your honesty [I hate the word reality]) 


Moreover, the petty thing I feel like doing, makes me a human being. No? I love drinking. Cos, It's one of the things that make me happy. Along with food and sex. Sad. I know. I am trying to find peace of mind instead of looking for happiness or dwelling on sadness. But that I falter, I don't hate. I accept and then move on. ..............

pet that horse

I haven’t been able to write much for quite a while now. Either I was too busy or sad or just too happy to. I started work today, after a hiatus of 3 months or so and now I am sleepy and tired. I will get off in another 10 minutes or so. All you people who have been irritated with me for not updating my blog at all. Hold on to your horses.

:)

My Rules of life or just everyday Arunlekhaisms - 1

1. Have empathy for everyone. Everyone.
   [ It makes every bitching session very long winded as you end up switching sides because you feel like you understand the motives and that had you been at their place, you wouldnot have done anything too different]
2. Don't be ashamed of the truth. Truth will set you free.
   [No matter what we have become and how much society has conditioned us at being average and have homogeneous aspirations. Truth remains the same. However, Any sentence beginning with “According to me” is not the absolute Truth. It is your opinion. Truth is that CO2 is a pollutant.]
   p.s: If you have a low self-esteem, admit it. To yourself. That will help stop you from hating others who seem to have high self-esteem]
3. Apologize for your mistake.
   [It feels great. And not only for altruistic reasons. Make your apology in clear words and sentences. Say what exactly what you are sorry for. And what you are not sorry for and if you want to dicuss things further, you should. You will feel strong and completely in charge of your own actions.]
   p.s: It's O.K to apologize to yourself if you are the person whom you have let down
4. Don't make the same mistake twice.
   [You will be embarrassed about all the apologies you will be making to others and mortified about the ones you will be making to yourself. Learn from your mistake and resolve to never repeat them again. Analyze your mistake and learn about yourself from it. Make a note of the patterns and try to change them if you can't live with them]
5. Listen to yourself.
   [All of us who can afford it, have a prickly soul. We cry and get upset or depressed or alienated. Take time out of the things you have to do, like, study, work, eat and the like and get to know yourself. Check for your instinctive reactions. Don't be alarmed if your natural reactions are very different from that of the societal norms. That is your truth and we can't be ashamed of it. Never let your conscience stay guilty. Never. Never. Do whatever you have to to make amends and then make peace with the situations and promise yourself, to never let your conscience feel like this again.]
6. Remember in Minute details.
   [In order to learn. You have to remember your life in details. Plus, your life is worthy of being made into a movie or a sitcom at least, wont do you good to forget]

To be continued...

Relatively Dark

I was about 5 when I realised that I was darker than my younger sister. And immediately my 5-year old me deduced that darker probably also meant coarser, uglier.....

I would go around comparing the colour of my skin to that of my mother's and my grandmother's and would still come up with the same answer. I was clearly a brown skinned little girl whereas my sister, my mother, and my grandmother were yellow, cream and almost peach, respectively.

My even fairer mashi would come to visit Kolkata every winter with my rosy-cheeked boy cousins and the four of us would play and have our pictures taken and I stood out as the darkest and I felt almost unclean. I would try to scrub out the 'moila' but I still remained as brown as ever. A day in the sun would turn me coffee-coloured and them red.

Looking back, I saw that I was well-loved, pampered and almost spoilt by my parents and grand-parents. There were never any direct negative comments from them regarding the difference in skin colour. Looking back, I saw that my family tried to never make me feel bad about being dark. My grandmother would sing 'Krishnokoli Aami Taare i boli' to me all the time. 'Kalo ee jogoter aalo,' was a oft-repeated line. There was an anecdote about how the Doctor who delivered me told my mother that she now has a 'Pauroma Shundori' daughter. And then with their faces etched in difficult-to-hide disappointment, my mother or her mother would lament how I then grew darker because of the hot-oil massages they'd given me as an infant. I would then joke, saying good for those encounters with Hot oil, for I was a much healthier kid than my sister, and I rarely caught the sniffles. No, there were never any negative comments.

I was positively taught to consider being dark beautiful. But, sadly, if not for that I would have never known I was dark.

They tried too hard to make me accept myself, whereas, at 5, I had not yet looked at the mirror then and had not had any notion of the beautiful or the not.

With all the love and all positive reinforcements in my childhood, despite them, I grew up feeling ugly and coarse and ungainly (till I was about 11 or 12 when a very dear friend's casual comment about how pretty I am, made me relook in the mirror)

Of course, this is not a linear story. It has circular repurcussions. Since, I was not as good-looking as my sister (it's not only the skin tone – She is prettier), it was again and again said, how I was smart, and how I was such a precocious reader and the like, and my sister grew up believeing she is stupid.

Anyway. One day I grew up, after years of hearing my family debate about whether I was Shyamla or wheatish or just a bit 'moila,' I relooked in the mirror at 11 or 12 and realised what an attractive -looking girl I was and how I was barely even dark. Especially in Hyderabad, my home-city. 

Pedophobia

And it may hurt me, I suppose. It may hurt my individuality I suppose, to realise that I am not unique. And that the life I have just lived, which in reality I have not yet finished living is not just my life, but that myriads of children like me, have had the exact same childhood. Parents arriving in their lives from the same stock of 'culture' and 'value.' Diluted by the 'beliefs' and 'education' of similar grandparents. Peppered by similar 'cunning,' 'benevolent,' or simply 'indifferent' aunts and uncles and smeared with same cousins. Cousins who are exactly what I am, or exactly what I could have been had I been born in their family instead of mine. And my childhood plays out like a film I suppose. Colourful, rich, filled with pathos and irony, all seen through my vulnerable, powerless, 9-year old eyes. My childhood plays on and and on in a loop. I change. For I have grown up and moved away from the film of my childhood. But there is still a multitude of similar children stuck in the film that is my childhood, that is also their childhood. Childhood, wherein, no thought sticks out (or it does, but you have to quash it in order to fit in, and you will want to fit in, for you are still a child) and you live in fear. No No, there is Joy! Joy, happiness, surprise, but there is an underlying patina of fear – Of helplessness – Of rightlessness – of not knowing how to fight back (in a world filled with stupid stupid adults). And as soon as you perceive some strengths, some height, some rights within yourself, you rebel. And the adult world will label you, 'Rebel without a cause.' But of course, there is a cause. An umbrella of causes. For everytime someone was unfair to you. And someone was. Most of the time, it was your benign, loving mother or your silent, reserved but adoring father who wronged you. They wronged you by simply being themselves. They wronged you by the virtue of not being perfect. By being parents without really being God. By just being Good, which simply wasn't good enough, when it came to raising a child. Any child. Every child. Me. Everytime, an adult in power said something stupid, something casually, something lightly, without realising that it is going to stay with me my whole life, for I heard it as a child and my clean slate of a mind, simply absorbed it like a sponge.

And then one day I grew up. I learnt to tell the truth even at the cost of not being liked by my peers, I learnt to tell the truth even at the cost of sounding exactly the same as my peers. I resisted the urge to fit in. I resisted the urge to stand out. And I grew up. And for all my failures in life. I try to chase every thought and analyse everything that enters my ears and my mind and what comes out of my mouth, for I never want to do what my adults did to me. To create false ideals and then not living up to them.