Homework

I search for a crack in your armour so that I can feel I know you a sliver more than everyone else does. More than you want me to know.

I look for those words and try finding an origin to them. As if they aren’t for anyone else to use, and that you must have been the only one wise enough to coin them.

I scour the pages day in and out, of all the clues I have of your existence. Just so that when we meet- if we meet, I have a surprise trivia answer if you ask me to guess something about you, so that I can pretend that I had no clue how close I was to the real answer and not tell you the answer itself. So that I surprise you by guessing so much about you that you’re flattered, and so that you’re overwhelmed.

I look for a face every day- a face you refuse to show me, but my mind refuses to stop imagining and my imagination tries to fit with the people around me; knowing that somewhere, we are connected. That a link exists between the two of us before I stumbled on to your turf, and before I refused to leave.

In every image you put up, so that I catch a glimpse of your skin. So that I can wonder even more about how you must have felt that paper in your hand as you held it up to click a photograph of or how your fingers crease at points that I’d love to be familiar with when I hold them.

Every time you send out words into the world, I hope to be the one interpreting them the way you hear yourself say them. I want to hear you scream, to hear you whisper and I want to hear you state blandly that this is what you think, because I want to be your mind and your words someday. At least the subject of them.

All this, when I still wonder what your name must be.

An essay without agenda, a party without purpose.

A faceless, nameless lover’s mark.

Pangs

It’s hunger that drove me to knock your door. A hunger I never knew existed. Such a ridiculously imposing word, ‘hunger’. It rises from the darkness of somewhere inside you- maybe from the stomach, maybe from the heart- and sometimes from even lower. But when it does, it wipes away conscious thought. It diminishes you to a creature that knows only one feeling that’s sounding from somewhere right inside.

I couldn’t stop myself from eating. I still can’t. There’s a peace in eating that no sleep has given me yet. It’s mechanical and it guarantees some flimsy satisfaction that I cannot express. I’ve just suddenly stopped eating. I come home and something about this house makes me reject anything edible here. It’s been 21 years, and I haven’t felt this dejected. 

5 days and counting. Subway sandwiches are alright, buy I haven’t swallowed a bite beyond. This is scaring me.

That hunger from the down below? That craving for the touch of bare skin? Satiated for a bit, almost- and diminished now. Strange isn’t it? I thought I’d like to live that way. Nothing stays. Except a memory that gives a little bit less of a jolt every time there’s a new message on the phone, and a name in class reduces you to inexplicable tears that you never knew existed. The lip-biting has stopped, only to give way to gnawing at the knuckles. 

This doesn’t scare me. I have seen the yearning reduce and one day it’ll be a memory that nothing will remind me of. No signs will bring him to mind and no scars will have a name to them.

It’s the third kind that scares me.

This need for conversation that I have grown into. This constant itch for making someone spill out a bit of them to me. Their arrogance, their way with words, their disappointments and a trail of knowing. It isn’t that kind where you make a connection, talk about a word and keep in touch for years later. Mine are volatile. Because I fear the proximity and the exposure that bringing someone close risks. I will put my world down into as many words as I can, but to have someone stand there and expect a reply from me is a new thrill, and a fear.

Which is also a feeling that doesn’t  leave me, forgive me. It stays, lingers like a memory in the phone inbox or the DM tab- and suddenly, I’m lonelier because I know that someone had tried to talk to me and had to eventually give up.

 

My rules (Dated Jan 30, 2009)

A little note for starters. I’m copying notes from my FB account to here, not only because I have run out of things to write- which I thought was an impossibility- but mostly because I need to delete the weight on my FB account. 

On reading this one, I realised how time had eroded my mind and how words have made me delusional. I hope to by my 18 year old self again- if not by age, then by ideas, hopes and beliefs.

I follow these self-made thingies consistently. No kidding. If there’s more suggestions you wanna add, just add them in the comment box. I need to be a better person tomorrow. My rules

1. I’m me. No one on the planet can replace me.

2. Every moment can be enjoyed, whatever be the circumstance. Enjoying doesn’t mean being happy. It means living it with all your heart.

3. You’ll probably die before anybody you know. But make sure you’ve lived more, if not longer.

4. Believe in love at first sight. It can take you places.

5. Never be embarrassed of any decisions you’ve taken, or any action you’ve followed. Be proud of yourself.

6. Better over-confident than submissive.

7. The only people whose opinion matters are your parents. Never let them down.

8. If your mum tells you something you don’t want to hear, it’s probably the best thing you’re being told.

9. Hold your friend’s hand when he/she’s upset.

10. If you’re asked to choose between a hotel and mum’s cooking, the latter’s tastier, more nutritious, less fattening and made exclusively for you. You know what to choose.

11. Never lie to your mum about where you are.

12. Lying is pointless if you’re a sleep-talker.

13. If you’re bankrupt, accept it.

14. Be objective. Challenge opinions, not people.

15. Listen- it’s the best you can do to be a good person.

16. Love with all your heart. Never underestimate your feelings. Give them the respect they deserve.

17. Nothing’s impossible unless you’ve tried it and mum’s not liked what you did.

18. Television’s for news and comedies. Movies aren’t any good on TV.

19. Hate yourself for the times you’ve had to back-answer.

20. Apologise for your mistakes, but only if you really feel you’re in the wrong.

21. Never miss getting drenched in the first rain.

22. Never stop smelling mangoes when you pass by stalls selling them.

23. India is my country and if I don’t work for making it a country to trust, no one will.

24. Call at least one friend for a good conversation daily. Sometimes they need to hear more than you need to speak.

25. Never hesitate from complimenting, or appreciating.

26. However big a compliment you receive, the best reply is ‘Thank you’.

27. Shake hands with your palm, not your fingers.

28. Keep your space reserved for yourself.

29. People misunderstand you all the time. Be sure you don’t mess up with what you really meant.

30. Acquaintances are very different from friends.

31. Read when you can.

32. Teachers are the same ones that taught you at school: criticise them, do not be cruel.

33. How many ever INXS songs you listen to, never run out of Hemant Kumar’s collection.

34. Do not refuse to take money you’ve lent out in the exact change unless you’ve earned it.

35. The best way to tackle challenges and walk away happily is to look it in the eye and speak what’s true, or right. That way, you’ll probably scare the poor fellow.

36. Walk with your shoulders squared and chin tilted upwards. You’re a confident person.

37. Have a look at your school building every time you pass by.

38. Never get mad first thing in the morning. It ruins your day.

39. If there’s anyone who can spoil your day for you it is you.

40. If you really want to do something, go do it.

41. Having regrets is the worst waste of time.

42. Chocolates aren’t necessary evil, they’re just too evil.

43. Do not do something only because everyone’s doing it. You have the choice of either not doing it, or doing it differently.

44. Do not critique movies before you watch them.

45. Use the Vodafone movie schemes and buy the Rs.20 pass.

46. Never stop singing.

47. It doesn’t matter who’s right, it’s what is right.

48. Acknowledge the presence of everyone in a room.

49. If you have an opinion, make it heard.

50. Fight for yourself, your space and your dignity. Only then can people trust you to fight for them

Loyalties

Reluctance gets the best of us. Or the mediocre, at least. Like this blog. I think I am showing symptoms of giving in to peer pressure with this WordPress move. 

No, my blogpost blog is still alive and that’s how I intend to keep it. 

So why the reluctance?

Because after 5 years of hanging on to Blogsopt, it drains a girl of her beliefs to be convinced into shifting base- or in my case, inaugurating new base. A lot of adjustments have to be made, and if I’m taking this domain move so seriously, imagine what life’s mundane decisions do to me. 

At 21, which is now- life is changing. Constantly. The constants have disappeared, changed themselves (hence disqualify from the ‘constant’ tab) or are suffering from extreme mood swings. All you look for is one person/place/electronic appliance to behave like it did yesterday, but honestly- it’s a lost battle against what reality is.

Change brings along a lot of things. I’ll be unfair to a world of possibilities if I claim that change is good or bad. Because it changes so often that just as you begin to form an opinion about the little street it has walked you down, you realise that the lane in that street is very different. Get the gist? No? Never mind.

Change also means deciding whether or not you want to flow with it, stay adamant or simply format your mind with every new decision so you can sway either way and no, I did not use the word ‘swing’. You were looking for it, weren’t you?

Back to change. 

A lot has been written about it, a lot will be written about it- it’s the equivalent of a lover’s touch or the sea or a Google Doodle. It will never not be talked about.

All I want you to do, is keep calm and congratulate yourself that you aren’t me, while I congratulate myself on the fact that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be you.

So this will (also) be a platform for you to see what goes on up there and I’m talking about my ample brains there.

I plan to move all my Facebook notes here, so give me a bit and I will. Not the ones I’d written on Blogspot. though, that’s exclusive stuff.