In my head

Am I honest with this blog? Can we ever be completely honest outside of our heads?

There are thoughts that cross my mind all the time and are so strange that I don't even want to document them anywhere or say them aloud. They are not things I want or think about, but somehow the fleeting thought doesn't care about that. It comes, if it has to. 

Think about the weirdest thought you had today? What is it? Can you say it out aloud to someone?

On my way to the office, in the auto-rickshaw, I often think about me rolling down or stumbling and falling out of the rickshaw. Sometimes I also imagine my head flying out of the rickshaw (something like what Alia Bhatt did in Brahmastra). If we are ever on a quiet road, I think about the driver taking me somewhere else and violating me. When I see an ambulance on the road, I think about the urgency of the siren, of the person whose loved one is on the stretcher. 

The other day I saw a guy standing across the bus stop and it seemed like he was smiling at me. I wanted to smile back but I didn't because I imagined him running towards me and sitting right beside me in the auto. The thought was scary and hence no smile!

Yesterday I saw a young girl holding a man's finger and walking on the road. It took me back to this childhood memory when I was on a bus ride with my father. I don't know where we were going or coming from. Just this image of me having my head on his lap and sleeping. I see construction workers and think about their lives. How do they manage to do such a tiring job? 

I think about my future. What will it look like in five years? Will I be in India? I imagine living in a cold country with no access to Indian food and then coming and telling Purvash to not think about moving to Canada. I think about my fears and how I have so many now. 

I am scared of driving a scooty. I am scared of travelling alone. If I have to, I will. But I don't want to. I think about adventure sports and how at some point I would have wanted to do them. But I don't know anymore. I don't know if I will be able to do it even if I have the opportunity.

I am scared of doctors and hospitals. The thought of falling sick gives me anxiety. I think about death a lot. I imagine who will read this blog after I die and what will they discover. I think about the death of my loved ones and how will I be without them, what would my life look like without them. Would I cope or would I collapse?

Sometimes I get scared of my thoughts. It seems like if I will allow myself to even give a moment to this thought, I will manifest it and then I will be the one responsible for my miseries. 

I have kept secrets all my life and still continue to do. I think about the lives of people who completely fit in and hence don't have to hide anything. 

In Fleabag she says, would I be a feminist if I didn't have smaller tits? I also wonder would I be a writer if I didn't have secrets?

Sunshine

I always take too long to come to this. I don't know if it's the fear of a blank page or just the usual habit of procrastinating everything. Even the feeling of accomplishment and the so-called 'joy of writing' which I genuinely feel every time I write is not enough to push me to be here sooner. I had dinner, switched off the tv, cleaned the house a little bit unnecessarily, played music, scrolled through my phone, and a couple of blogs that I follow and when finally there was nothing more to look at, I decided to open the blog.

It's been a weird day. Work was tough, although I was working from home which always makes it better. I have told you how much I like the sunlight. My work desk at home is near a window and the light was falling on my face while I was on a video call. It was making me look a little better haha. There is also a mirror right beside my work desk so I was peeping and looking at myself in between and what that sunlight was doing to me. I know my description of work right now does not seem that bad. But it was bad. I think nostalgia just makes everything slightly better. The toughest part of work is not often work though, it's the people.

I watched a really nice interview after a very long time. Linking it here and won't talk about it much. It's just nice to see someone being so honest about their work and life. It also hits you differently now because of how rare it is. I am obsessed with Bollywood, no doubt about it. But art and artists have also always inspired me. And now that I know what cultural capital is and what 'low brow' and 'high brow' art is, I am unapologetic about the kind of things I like. 

I remember as a kid, there used to be this dance reality show on TV, and Isha Sharvani was a participant. Every week she would come on the stage and get the maximum points (often 30 on 30) from all three judges. She was perfect. Extremely hard working and so good at what she was doing on that stage. I remember as a young girl I was inspired by her. Not in the sense that I wanted to dance like her or be in a reality show. But just be better in life, at school. Maybe I am justifying my obsession with all things Bollywood, who knows?! 

I like the flashbacks though. These old childhood memories crawl back on the surface from somewhere deep down and leave you with a strangeness. Honestly, my biggest realisation of growing up has been that we don't really grow up, at the core we all are still the same 12-year-olds with a lot more battle scars. 

I am reading Mason Currey's book. It's unimaginably exciting how someone could write exactly what I am always seeking. The book is a day-to-day account of women artists. What they did, their routine, how they worked, how was their life, the mundane things. I can't obviously have a vlog of Louisa May Alcott's life but I am glad I got this book. :)

My life right now - yes the one that I am living - is a dream that I imagined and lived and aspired for growing up. To be able to live in a home with lots of sunlight, plants, freedom, safety, space, and love. I feel free here like I have never felt before. Thank you, universe!

sunshine on my sunshine

Sun-Day

 I was watching an interview series yesterday that talked about violence and cinema and was hosted by Varun Grover. At some point, Grover said that all Indian parents want their kids to make Baghban. 

His comment took me back to the day when I watched this film with everyone at home. As I grew up, and my parents grew older somehow their interest in cinema deteriorated. Maybe adulthood and responsibilities did that. I am not sure. However, the memory of watching certain films is still fresh in my mind. Like it happened yesterday. Baghban is one of them. Amma, papa, mummy everyone was crying by the end of it, as expected. I don't remember how I felt exactly after the movie. What I remember is that my father (being his very own self) asked both Prakhar and me to write a movie review of sorts. 

I wrote a three-page essay I think. However, I remember wanting to write a lot more. I was reading a story at that time (I think it was a comic book). In the story, a girl was asked to write an essay by her class teacher and she wrote a long 300 pages essay or something. When she submitted it, the teacher asked her to reduce the number of pages because she can't read so much. The girl went back and reduced the essay to some 100 pages and submitted it again. The teacher again politely asked her to reduce the number of pages further as it was still a lot for her to read. The girl went back, wrote a one-line essay and submitted it. That's it. That was the story. Somehow the younger me loved it so much that I wanted to be this girl (from the story) and write a 300-page essay on Baghban. Obviously, that didn't happen but yesterday when I remembered this, it made me realise (once again) that my desire to write and my fascination with writers isn't new. It's been there for a while.

We didn't travel much as kids. There was enough money for the needs but it was never enough for the indulgences. Whenever I travelled though, my father always asked me to write about it, and I did. I still have some of those writings in my diary. I wrote in Hindi at that time and these writings are titled as - Yatra Vrittant. 

I listen to Amit Varma's podcast and often wonder how privileged these folks are. They grew up reading. Their grandmothers read, and they published poetry in magazines. I don't come from such a family. My grandmother was struggling to make ends meet. She did pretty well, but reading and writing were a luxury that she could never afford. My parents also had a similar life. However, if I recall carefully, my father liked to read (at least when we were young). He encouraged us to read and write and archive. He encouraged me to cut and save snippets of newspaper articles, the ones I liked. 

Maybe I don't give my folks enough credit. They did well and I didn't become a reader and writer out of nowhere.

***

It's a sunny Sunday. Sunlight is good for my mental health, I think. I can never get enough of it. I love to watch clothes drying in the sun. A weekend like this has come after a long while. There is no rush. I could wake up leisurely. We had idli for breakfast. Ghee podi idli is the usual Sunday breakfast here. It's easy and comforting. 

The instinct is always to keep yourself occupied. Last month passed by in a blink. I was consumed by work and then GoT. There was no space to think or be. Then we went home for ten days. 

After a long time today, I am sitting and my mind is blank. There is no agenda. I am not binging on anything. As much as, having this space makes me restless, I also like it. I am not great at it though. I am too eager to quickly fill in the blanks. It's hard for me to be by myself. It's hard for me to be with my thoughts. How do writers cope with this? How do they learn to be okay with the emptiness and the loneliness? I hope I figure it out. 

I plan to write more regularly from hereon. Wish me luck!

Unfinished

I leave drafts unfinished

Sometimes I don't find the words

to write the story

that's been coming to me for months

Often, I get scared

and delete the four lines that I wrote

I hated the four lines anyway

How does it matter

The idea still lives

in my head, it doesn't leave

I moved on to something else

Something that's easier, that's passive

in a hope that I will come back someday

and write without the fear of a blank page

and without deleting the beginnings

Bad days are too bad 

I can only manage to finish work 

and eat and sleep, sleep a lot

Good days are too good

make me happy and jumpy 

takes away the motivation to write

how do I find the medium ones, 

the days I can write on?

I remain restless with words

still struggling to come out

Bad Dreams

 [7:05]

I have been up since 6:30. A bad dream mimicking the past reality woke me up. My full bladder didn't let me go back to sleep. 

My past, my childhood never leaves me. I often wish there was an antagonist there. Someone I can blame, who had no context, no backstory and neither a good intention. It would have made my story easier and simpler. I would have had someone to blame for the bad dreams.

I wish I found it easier to blame people without looking at their context. I always end up thinking about their context, how did they grow up, what they didn't have, and why they behave as they do.  

I have a fear of people screaming and yelling. When I see someone yelling, my mind automatically starts imagining the far worst things and situations possible. I don't know how I am able to imagine those situations because I have never really seen them unfold. I might have seen them on TV or imagined them while reading/watching the news. News is the worst.

I remember the term dushkarm used in the Hindi daily that came to my house. For the longest time, I didn't know what it meant. But there was a pattern in how those columns were headlined or their placement or size in the papers. It somehow normalised it. It seemed like it wasn't a big deal for the people writing it, or for the folks who were reading it.  It did become a big deal for me though. The childhood me vividly imagined those stories when she read them.

There is a woman who used to live right in front of my childhood home. She lives in a joint family with a lot of people. I remember her as a regular timid homemaker as a child. I moved to Delhi in 2013. And somehow in the years after I moved something changed. I started hearing that she isn't mentally okay. I heard someone say Itna daba diya unko. People whispered about how her husband is violent to her. There were also whispers that her sisters-in-law aren't good to her. I don't know what happened. What appalls me though is that it isn't a big deal. It does not make anyone's heart ache to see her like that. Her husband still has a social life. He isn't questioned. No one asks him what happened to his wife.

My maternal grandmother is also not mentally okay. She also does not have anyone to blame. There are no antagonists. The antagonists are also now good and kind people taking care of her. Maybe because they were never the antagonists and their situations were. My mother tells me that nani was the first graduate in her village. She wanted to become a teacher but couldn't because she was married off in a joint family. She liked wearing watches. She told my mother to not get me married until I start earning my own money. People only talk about how difficult she is to live with. No one really bothers to talk about what happened to her and why did it happen. 

I often wonder if this is my mother's future too. Does she also have a lot inside her that needs healing? I also wonder if this could be my future as well. I mean it's not like I am taking therapy or doing anything actively to let it out. I don't know. 

Someone said the other day that patriarchy does not affect women like me like it affected our mothers. How do I explain to him that it haunts me? How do I explain to him that I have lived with the fear of violence all my life even though I have never really seen it unfold? How do I tell him that the unhealed traumas of women who came before me are inside me too? Can I just hate men? It would have been easier to do that. On some days I do. But mostly it's hard for me because my mind starts understanding their context too. 

A couple of years ago, when I was home for the holidays I heard the aunties gossiping on a cold winter morning. She got some from her husband today. I heard it. The news or the gossip didn't make anyone sad or alarmed. It seemed normal. Like they have heard it before, might have gossiped about it before. It might have even happened to them before. It seemed like a normal regular thing.

--------------

Seems like I only come to writing when I have had a bad dream. 

I have had weird past 3-4 days, and have been struggling to keep it together both mentally and physically. Yesterday evening was good though. We bought a few plants and I couldn't stop staring at them after. Especially the one that's right outside my kitchen. Hmm, so I don't know its name. But it's big and so beautiful. I also kept a small plant on my work desk and suddenly it looks so much better. I really like the house that I am living in now.

If I really like it so much, why can't I just live here forever? Because I will find something better. It's always about finding something better and no feeling is final. I sometimes wish though I could pause life on a good feeling. My head immediately tells me that it won't be a good feeling any longer if you pause life on it. Ah. Whatever.

Have a good day! (I am telling this to me, in case you were wondering)

Distracted

Shampooing my hair seems to be one of the biggest struggles in life. Some women shampoo alternate days, some twice a week, I wait for the entire week to wash my hair. I wait till it becomes greasy and unbearable. I have thought about breaking this pattern but I am not sure if I have made enough effort.

Yesterday while watching someone's vlog, I suddenly decided to spend (or waste?) some money on a fancy conditioner, hair oil and a face mask. I am not a face mask person. I have never used it. But it seems like a good idea suddenly. I was happy when it got delivered. I have not used it till now though. It claims to remove blackheads and whiteheads and help with acne-prone skin. I mean why not! I hope I start using the hair oil I have bought.

I haven't been able to write. That half-written piece will choke me it seems but I still won't be able to finish it. Let's see.

After two days, yesterday I woke up not feeling tired. My throat was feeling better suddenly. The day went quite well but suddenly something happened in the evening. An argument, and an unnecessary phone call both of which were not a very big deal. But somehow it triggered me. I came to bed and I was feeling so exhausted from life in general. It felt like I have no control over things. Life seemed pointless at that moment. 

In moments like this, P's intervention annoys me at first but ends up making me feel better. That's what happened yesterday too. He did make me feel better. 

I also did something which was very unlike me. I don't regret it though. At least for the first time, I did something about how I was feeling so it's okay.

This week seems longer than others. 

I get easily distracted and this picture is a reminder of that. I had sat down to write, it was a quiet moment, but then puff it was gone just like that and I could only write two sentences. 

Mundane & Banal

 [11:12]

I can't believe there is a dear diary situation going on here. I maintained many diaries growing up. Didn't know will end up replicating something similar in an online blog.

The Sunday evening dread has set in. I have to go to work tomorrow. I feel tired thinking about it.

There are a couple of blogs I visit every day in a hope that there might be a new post. I like reading about other people's anxieties and the mundane details of their everyday life. It's comforting.

I had a dream last night. I was in my in-law's place. My mother-in-law's mother had come to meet me and I didn't have sindoor in my bag. I was freaking out. I don't remember what happened after.

This phrase was ringing in my head after coming back from work on Friday - The banal worries of a woman's life.

In the auto, while coming back from work, I was thinking about how will I dress up when his folks come to my place here, how will the routine look like, what will we eat, and what will they think about me if I do this etc etc. Many many thoughts on similar lines.

I spend a lot of time thinking about people, friends family. Mostly family. It bothers me that I can't be myself with most of my family members. It's also extremely sad that so much of my mind space goes into things that in an ideal world shouldn't matter. 

I don't feel like writing anymore. I am sad that I am not able to finish my article. More anxious than sad. Writing is fucking hard. I don't know why I want to write so badly when clearly I am also not able to. 

P is sitting in front of me reading. He is finally reading again, and I am happy about it. I am grateful for his existence.