Lesser Thought

I was late to almost everything that is really important. I read my first book outside the school curriculum at 13 and hence never got to reading an Enid Blyton or a Roald Dahl. For the next four years, I read more than a dozen books on women in the Middle East. It angered me. It made me question my place in this big, enormous world. And then I moved to reading what was actually cool at sixteen: a bunch of poetry that was all the rage on a still nascent Instagram. I read religion after that, which made me rethink what I was overtly and covertly taught all my life up until that point. All of that on top of each other, and I was in my sad girl era even before real sadness touched me. Perhaps it has still not fully enveloped me.  And somewhere between this and that, I stopped being angry. I wasn't thinking about all the people that weren't so privileged. I exited rooms where politics was discussed. Not that I ever considered myself apolitical or apathetic. I just didn't think ...

TW- Suicide, anxiety, mental health. A few months ago, I rang up my mother crying, unaware of what that conversation would open up for me. While we were talking, she casually remarked how she had never known me to have cried a lot growing up. A simple observation that didn't seem to strike me for the few seconds and then it did. My mother was unaware of how easily or often I cried growing up. And that opened a Pandora's box of unpleasant memories. It struck me that I had cried almost every day for as long as my memory stood correct and that I had mostly cried before bedtime or after waking up. This meant two things, my immediate family did not always know of the crying and that it was not being triggered by an active element. It was mostly without an argument or fight, without being put in danger or harm's way.  Over the past few years, it is well known among my social circles that I can cry at the drop of a hat. Some people, who've known me for over a couple of years k...

At 22, I didn't think I'd be 23 and then I was. At 23, I didn't think I'd be 24 and then I turned 24. At 24 now, I think I'll most definitely not be 25. But, perhaps, I will be.  Along the way, I've lost so much of who I was at 20 that turning 25 doesn't seem so much a celebration. Dreams have slipped by in the chaos of making it through every night. Ambitions left behind in the ache of not having enough strength to wake up. People have come and gone and while there have been fleeting moments of joy, nothing has ever seemed to last.  Those I grew up around tell me, you're not the same anymore. And I look at myself and don't see the spark I held in my eyes. Small joys aren't joys anymore. They're chores. Most of them, I'm unable to complete.  I wrote myself a letter at 18, one I was supposed to read at 25. When I read it, I am certain I won't find the girl whom I wrote it for. People I live around now, tell me, I like to suffer. But I...

There's a blue mug amongst the many I have collected over the years. And it's not fancy. None of my mugs are. But there's something about the kind of blue that it is. It makes me want to pick it always. It came with a crack along it's handle that went unnoticed till I picked it up to drink my first cup of tea.  The first time I noticed, I smiled. Not because it was money wasted. But something about that crack reminded me of the people I love. Broken but not enough to fall apart. Now everytime I wash it I can't wash it too hard like I usually would. Scared to break it. And I smile a little every time I wash it too. It'll always make me think of how I've always been made to be more careful than I was made for. I have to wash it at an angle so I don't have it's handle in my other hand by the end of it. It's my life in a moment. Always wondering if I am too much. If there's something in me that makes people want to break.  Like when Tara tells V...

There's two things I want to tell that sweet little boy. I'm sorry and thankyou. Or probably thankyou first.  Thankyou for not making me feel little. Rather any more little than life already did. Thankyou for never bringing it up. In private ot public. For never cracking a joke that could make me seem all those things the world has loved calling me. Perhaps you have good intent, perhaps it's just life unfolding. But thanks nonetheless, because oh if I were to be called desperate one more time, I might have never recovered.  And now the tougher part. I'm sorry for another friendship that could have been. I'm sorry that I have been distant. Cold at times. Sometimes even weirdly nasty. Unsure, whether you've nnoticed or even cared to notice. Perhaps you have but never cared for it. Maybe you have. I walked a few steps back because I don't want to like you more. I don't want to spend another minute noticing how you hold your ciggerate or raise your eyebrows ...

So often I find myself finding an answer to where I see myself in ten years. And since, I can hardly find the right place to spell it out, when someone asks, I say not here. But I see myself in a rather specific way. I am wearing a vintage sari. I have lacquered toes and finger tips. A small round bindi, sindoor red in colour, not blood and not cherry, adorns my forehead. The forehead is creased, partially stress, rest wisdom. I want to be photographed next to my soulmate. We are standing in our porch, him in a contrasting white kurta pyjama. White linen, crisp like it just came from the dry cleaners. He smiles faintly. His forehead creases almost as intensely as mine, for reason quite different. I see myself in my beige bedroom in my chiffon palla that goes across my back on the other shoulder while I read Fountainhead. Probably for the fifth time, while he sits in the other end of the room, reading a silly little book of his for the fifth time too. The casual intimacy of having a par...

 "How have you been?" In the four sessions each month for eleven months straight, I had never answered the question direct.  "The week was disgusting, I'm angry and I resent myself," I said without taking the seat. In twenty four years, I had never felt comfortable having the first word. I was always the one to answer the questions. Shortest possible answers. Perhaps, it was now touching the roof. As soon as I finished my sentence, I was preparing to tell him why the week was "disgusting", instead he asks if I ever resented other people. "No," Possibly the quickest no I've blurted since I could form words.  Now I was sure, he'd ask me the need to resent myself then. I was looking at the water glasses on the table next to us, something green under one of them.  "Maybe resent them a little, sometimes." I looked at him and in true fashion shed a tear. Little value, a tear is always ready to fall, here. I had not resented anyone...