Pandemic Poetry

reading a poem

has lately been difficult

i read a line, the first line

and then the second

and then again the first 

to make sense of it

i still don't hear the poet

i don't get it.

what is she trying to say

the metaphors take

too long to unfold

i feel an itch on the nose

read the second line again

drink a glass of water

come back to the poetry

read the third line

while thinking about 

the image of that hungry man

drinking milk from the road

with the dogs

read the fourth line

about the blossoms

i get that

it reminds me 

of the rain flowers

and the rain and 

the muddy feet

the phone vibrates

and i scroll 

through flowers and skies

and empty roads

some random numbers

talking about death

i come back to the poem

go on to the next stanza

the metaphors ask 

for my attention

but my mind wanders

art heals? it does.

who does it heal, though?

Uniform Does Not Guarantee Safety

A couple of weeks ago I had to go to the hospital at around three in the night because a health supplement that I took after dinner did not suit my body. I went to a good private nearby hospital. Contrary to my imagination, the hospital was not at all crowded. I met two nurses in the casualty and they asked me to sit, saying that the doctor will arrive soon. The doctor came and after listening to me said that he will give me an injection and after that, I can go home. I am not scared of injections but the moment he said that my mind was filled with horrifying thoughts. What if this injection makes me unconscious and the man standing in front of me in the white coat violates me? I created a whole scene and inquired about the injection as much as I could. I googled everything before I let him give me the injection. The doctor and the nurses obviously got irritated but, fortunately, I reached back home (hostel) safe.

Often the white coat or a uniform is not enough assurance for a woman to feel safe because what she sees is not a doctor or a policeman but just a man who could be a potential predator. My previous roommate once told me that she checks the door of her balcony multiple times before going to sleep at night. My classmate says that she becomes restless if she is the only woman in a lift filled with men.  These are not the stories of just one or two women but of all of us who are independently living away from home. According to WHO, the high prevalence of sexual violence to which women are exposed and the correspondingly high rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) following such violence, renders women the largest single group of people affected by this disorder. It’s disheartening that when women meet, today, for a dinner or a sleepover, they end up sharing and discussing the trauma that the everyday banal violence causes.  

What is sad, though, is that all of this is not enough talked about in the mainstream media.  It takes a rape or a murder to happen to bring the attention of the society towards half of its population. It’s not just about the man who abuses but also about the society that acts as a constant enabler. The harder questions are still being brushed under the carpet. It’s easier to blame the night or the darkness or the empty street but what about the harassment that happens in the broad daylight at home by someone who is not even a stranger.  Young girls are raised to be tolerant and empathetic while our boys are raised with such inflated egos that it’s hard for them to understand and accept a ‘no’.  If our answer, as a society, to every question is still “boys will be boys”, if hundreds of people are still clapping on a rape scene in cinema halls and if we are still okay with making and telling rape jokes then I am sorry but our outrage towards this heinous crime really means nothing.

It’s That Time of the Year Again

It’s that time of the year again.

It’s December. It’s Christmas. It’s the New Year.

The other day I heard someone saying that December is a mood. Sure, it is. It’s a mood which constantly makes me feel that everyone in the world is much happier than I would ever be. It’s a mood where people around me are generally planning vacations and I would still be in the middle of my everyday chores. Assignments, college, laundry, job etc. etc.

English films and various other pop culture references have made new years and Christmas a thing for most of us. People often come up to me and ask about my new year plans and I don’t really know what to say. While growing up, I spent my new year’s eve watching random award shows on TV with my brother while everyone at home slept at their usual time.

After joining college, New Year’s Eve for everyone else was all about drinking and forgetting all the worries. But neither I drink, nor do I forget my worries. So while everyone will be giggling and dancing their way to a new year, I will be sitting in a corner thinking that how are they doing this. How are they so happy and I am not.

Now that it’s that time of the year again, I am already anxious about people calling me a bore. People asking me to come to some random party to chill and getting disappointed to hear a ‘no’.

But the thing is that I like quiet. I would prefer going to sleep at eleven than partying all night. I would prefer having dinner with my loved ones than going to a party full of acquaintances and socializing.

I would any day prefer new years to be a normal day where there isn’t so much pressure to be happy.

The Train, Yet Again

Thirty hours is a lot of time to be spent on the train, at least for me. 

My favourite berth is side-lower for it allows me to have minimal interaction with other people. The people occupying lower, middle and upper berth mostly indulge in discussions related to weather or food, sometimes politics too. Side berth gives me the option to just sit back and enjoy the conversation, if it's interesting, or turn around and pretend to be asleep, in case I am bored. Rarely people turn to the person sitting on the side berth to talk unless the person who is supposed to be on the side-upper berth is actually sitting in front of you and is looking at you with a wide smile.

Last vacation, once again, I took a train from Bombay, Lokmanya Tilak Terminal, to home. I got the tickets done early and hence I was relieved to be on the side-lower berth. There was no one on the side-upper berth and so I conveniently took two pillows, plugged in my earphones, and started watching one of the gazillion things that I had downloaded on my phone for this long journey. After a couple of hours of watching and napping, I woke up to this lady sitting in front of me wearing a wide smile. I tried to smile too and sheepishly returned her pillow.

I got up, sat and folded my legs to give her enough space to sit. She smiled again and opened the curtains. The glass of the window of a third-AC compartment is like a sepia-toned blurred wallpaper. You can’t clearly see, but you still like what you see. After a few minutes, she asked me where I was coming from. I got confused if she wanted to know the station that I boarded the train from or about my hometown. So, I told her both. After half an hour of conversation and her showing me pictures of her kids, she offered me a small pack of Bourbon and water. I refused to take the biscuits even though Bourbon is my favourite. I don’t like eating much on the train, especially on a thirty-hours journey. I eagerly took the water though. I had finished my water bottle a while ago and had been waiting for a vendor. No one showed up though; they are not very frequent in AC compartments.

She got down after a couple of hours. I envied her for my destination was still quite afar. After her, I saw a lot of people coming and going while I was still curled up inside the sheets. I have taken uncountable train rides to home. Faizabad, my home, doesn’t have an airport. The nearest one is Lucknow though, which is used in case of urgencies and emergencies. Earlier I used to take an overnight train from Delhi to Faizabad. It used to be the best. I would sit at around seven in the evening, eat the burger that I got packed from the station MacDonalds and sleep, only to wake up to the hustle-bustle of Faizabad station. My father would be trying to see through the window glass and I would wave at him only to realize that he can’t see me. Delhi to Faizabad is only twelve hours. Twelve hours in a train is warm and cosy and even better if you decide to watch a film like Highway, which I used to do quite often.

The days of loving the train rides have become a thing of past since I have shifted to Mumbai. Now it’s more about convenience and feasibility. This time I was very eager to get down from the train, so as soon as I overheard someone saying that Faizabad is just an hour away I started taking out my bags. I also checked the sheets and the pillow and the entire berth to be honest. I did not want to forget my earphones or charger in a hurry. I came out and stood at the gate. The train went right past my father and then stopped a few seconds later. I saw him following the train and me. As soon as I got down, he kissed my forehead and I touched his feet and then gave him an awkward hug.

I reached home and saw my grandmother standing at the gate waiting for me. After meeting her, I walked straight into the kitchen only to find my mother preparing my favourite breakfast. Later in the day, I was telling my brother, who is still in school, about the train journey and the lady I met. He instantly said, “But don’t you know that we shouldn’t take food from strangers. What if she stole your stuff or did something bad?” I had no answers so I just apologized and promised to be more careful next time.

Not Knowing Is Okay

This article was supposed to start with the names of a few famous people who have changed their career multiple times or very late in life and have still managed to make it to the top. So I did a google search and found a lot many of them. But you can find that list yourself right? Also, when I was going through the list, I realized that I don’t need these names to make my point. Even if the list had no names I would still believe that shaming people who are not sure about their lives is quite hypocritical. Because, really, who is sure? What we want in life at a particular moment is mostly about what we feel at that point in time. And voila, feelings change!

In a world where even the waiter expects you to choose from ten different kinds of coffee, there is an incessant pressure to always know what you want. Most of us have gotten used to it. We have gotten so used to it that we expect everyone around us to be sure all the time. In pursuit of stability and success, one is expected to choose a path and then stick to it, no matter what. In a society that fancies commitment and glorifies it to the extent that women are asked to stick to their spouses’ even when the marriage is not working out, it is difficult to admit that what you chose, maybe, five years ago is not what you want to choose today.

There are so many examples in our everyday lives where people are shamed by their family and friends when they decide to change a path. It’s not difficult to find that 43-year old who wants to leave his job and start a business or a 22-year old engineering graduate who wants to pursue arts or a 50-year old who want to get rid of a toxic marriage or a 17-year old who doesn’t know what to do in life. These people are all around us. Some of them have made the decision and have gotten past all the discouragement and flak but some are still on this side struggling to make their way through.

   

Denial is easy. Not admitting that you made a wrong choice or just that you made a choice that worked for you then but is not working now is easy while admitting it is not. It takes an immense amount of courage to admit to yourself and to others that you want to change the course of your life.  The law of inertia, given by Sir Issac Newton, states that it is the tendency of an object to resist a change in motion. That is, an object at rest will stay at rest or an object in motion will stay in motion, unless it is acted on by an external force. If one looks closely this is as true for human beings as it is for an object. It’s easier to stay in a toxic marriage than to call it out; it’s easier to continue that 9 to 5 job than to leave it for a venture that you want to start on your own. Even when the destination is changed in your head, it’s easier to go with the flow than to stop and turn.

Instead of calling these people courageous and appreciating them to be able to choose better for themselves, we, as a society, shame them. We call them unstable and indecisive and make them feel guilty about taking too many turns. We discourage them by saying that not sticking by to your previous decision means running away. We, as a society, make them believe that their brave choice is an act of cowardice. And we all do it, without realizing, in our everyday lives.

Not knowing is okay. Making a change does not always mean that one is incapable of commitment. Terri Trespicio in her Ted talk “Stop searching for your passion” says that the idea that one has to know what one is supposed to do is dangerously limiting. She says that “she is leery of passion for a few reasons. One of them is that passion is not a plan, it’s a feeling and feelings change. You can be passionate about a person one day, a job, and then not passionate the next. We know this and yet we continue to use passion as the yardstick to judge everything by.”

So, the next time when someone comes to tell you that their childhood dream is not something that they want to pursue anymore, try and not judge them immediately. Try and not tell them that they are fickle-minded and that they need to be certain about their choices. Try and hear them out maybe?

ईस्ट-वेस्ट

कुर्ला उतारना है क्या?
नहीं।
कुर्ला उतरेगी क्या?
नहीं तो।
पीछे जाओ फिर...
ओह ठीक है।

कुर्ला आया और मैंने दरवाज़े के किनारे वाले खंबे के पास वाली जगह लेली। सीट ना मिले तो खड़े रहने के लिए सबसे अच्छी जगह होती है वो। बाहर आसमान दिखता है। किसी को कविता या साहित्य में दिलचस्पी ना भी हो तो भी वहां खड़े होकर वो तमाम कविताएं और कहानियां याद आने लगती है जो बरसों पहले आपने पढ़ी या सुनी थी।

इतने दिनों के बाद आसमान नीला था आज। बिलकुल साफ, ऐसा लग ही नहीं रहा था कि पिछली रात बारिश हुई है। वडाला उतर कर ट्रेन बदलनी थी मुझे, पर जिस गेट से उतरना था, मैं उसके ठीक उल्टी तरफ खड़ी थी। बड़ी मुश्किल से धीरे धीरे भीड़ के बीच से निकल कर इस तरफ आयी।

वडाला से सांता क्रूज जाने वाली ट्रेन में चढ़ना इतना मुश्किल नहीं था। भीड़ कम थी। सीट भी मिल गई। इस ट्रेन का डिब्बा भी पिछली वाली ट्रेन से बहुत अलग था। लोग भी अलग ही थे। सब एक जैसे थे। जैसे एक ही जगह से आएं हो और एक ही जगह को जा रहे हो।

बांद्रा स्टेशन पर काफी लोग उतर गए। ट्रेन और भी खाली हो गई। अगले से अगला स्टेशन मेरा था। फोन निकालकर घर का पता एक बार दोबारा देखा।

स्टेशन पर उतरी तो ईस्ट-वेस्ट पता करने की जद्दोजहद फिर से चालू हो गई। और हर बार की तरह इस बार भी स्टेशन से बाहर निकली तो ऑटो वाले भैया ने बताया कि मै गलत तरफ से बाहर आ गई।

The Ephemerality of Friendship

Memories die of old age too. They become old and blur and then they are lost, in an abyss. But then on a gloomy rainy day, when you wake up from your afternoon nap, a part of it sweeps its way back. You feel lost. You don’t know what to do with it. It makes you feel a little too much, and sometimes too old too. 

I was reminded of my kindergarten friend today. I don’t remember a lot about her or our times together. Her name used to start with ‘J’. I don’t remember how we became friends or how did we drift apart. But I remember her telephone number; it used to end with triple eight.  In those days, we used to have landlines. I remember her father picked me up from school, once, when papa was not in town. One day, I started crying in front of the school and refused to go inside because someone told me that she is sick, and won’t be coming today. These random reminders overwhelm me for the ephemerality of friendship is more visible to me, today, than it ever was.

Everyone says that you meet a lot of ‘temporary’ people in your twenties. I am not sure, though, if ‘temporary’ is the right word to describe these relationships. I miss an old friend. Some friends drift apart because they move to different cities and find new people and make new homes.  But this friend is not one of them. We chose to stop talking to each other. We made a choice to not be in each other’s lives for it seemed like the best option. I still miss her sometimes. And when I do, I go back and read the letters and postcards that we sent to each other in good times and also the emails that we shared in the times that weren’t that great.

I am not a hoarder, in fact, the opposite of it. I delete old WhatsApp chats just so that I can forget whatever good or bad happened in the past. But I still have her letters and emails. The weird thing about memories is that even the good ones make you sad because they are all in the past, and no matter how much you want you can’t go back to them.  There was a lump in my throat while I was scrolling through the pictures in my gallery. When I was living these moments, I thought they are going to last for forever. We made plans of attending each other’s wedding and now we don’t even call to ask each other’s well being

. 

These friends come into our lives and for a brief period of time, a few months or years, become a part of us and we become a part of them. We pick on each other’s words and habits and it all happens just very organically, without any effort. We miss them even if we don’t want to be with them anymore. By the time they leave, we become different people with the experiences that change us for forever.

There is nothing temporary about these friendships. They stay with you even after the people leave.