Incapable of socializing...

I don't know after just how many days, I cried, I was able to cry. I remember the teary eyed me, who existed last October, and for about 1 year previous to that time...but afterwards, tears had dried up. There was no trouble or pain you see...everything had ended and the death blow had been struck. Only thing is, I didn't die. Ya, last  time I cried was when that kid in my team had insulted me, though unintentionally. That time I had let the matter settle down, taken few days, then told him just how bad I felt, and openly said, I don't consider him a friend any more. The kid had written me a sorry mail afterwards, to which I gave an official reply. So that was that.

What triggered off the tears this time was Anitha's mail. Anitha...used to be my best friend in my previous company. It was a friendship coupled with mutual admiration, I was awestruck with this beautiful girl who is actually more well read that me and has what we call in Bengali, নিজস্বতা। It took very little time for us to become wonderfully close buddies, and then started the first ever girlish phase of my life - girl night outs, jewelry shopping, eating out, chatting, bitching - what not.

I don't blame her ever, she's always been there for me, and she's perhaps the only person on earth who showers me with lavish gifts...gifts which I'd never care to buy for myself. Expensive foreign cosmetics and jewelry, things which I might get for others (not for Ani, may be, but definitely for my mom - in fact I know the cost of the brands she gets for me, because I get the same for my mom) - but there it ends...to me, I am someone who does not deserve...

But then people do get their own lives you see...so did Ani...she got her own life, got married, went abroad, started her master's degree, made new friends....and here I was....with no change in my life...

Ya, I too got a new job, went to see a couple of new countries, but that didn't change my life. I had no new story to offer, which would be remotely entertaining to my friends. Read up my blog entries, I am sure you can't manage more than a couple...you'd groan and stop right away, saying, "My God, what a sick, cribbing girl..." you see...I am intelligent enough to know the reaction. People want to stay happy...they already have enough on their own plates, if at all they would care for sweets from others' plates, may be some spicy tit bits, but never the bitter ones...

And then Ani writes to me, saying she wants to talk. I am apprehensive, oh, I don't want to bother anybody. You see, as much as I'd pretend, the wound is still very very raw indeed. I tell myself, that I don't need to do this to myself, still I stare at the guy giving smiling poses with his wife in their honeymoon shots uploaded in FB, and wonder, God, if he is able to do this, it must be true that he actually used me without ever having loved me? And yet, like the stupid idiot that I am, I try to find whether the wide smile on his face actually has a hint of faking in it...I wonder, why, in our snap, his smile was much more livelier, yet, I don't have the courage to dig in my mobile photos and take a look at the picture, I feel I'd definitely throw up if I see that photo ever again....

You see, in such a turmoil, I can hardly reach out to a friend and tell my agony. No....it is entirely my problem that I have made a mess of my life, and why should anyone be troubled with these stories....so I write back to Ani that I will try to get online some weekend, but somehow I never manage to make it. Today, she finally reads through my pretensions, and writes back saying she's disappointed, the way I have never reached out to her in the last four months....

4 months? I didn't even realize it has been 4 months. I won't realize even if it is 4 years. Because you see, I just exist, I don't live. I am a money making machine and care taking machine for my immediate family. I have no dream or ambition left for myself. I will never be able to do another mistake in my life - lest my Boo Boo gets a scope to say once again, see it is not my mistake...she was this way before, she has again become this way.

I wrote her a long mail...explaining all these. Hope she understood. But somewhere she touched a cord...I don't know where...it causes a lot of turmoil...when you give up on someone, and then discover...the person still cares...

The burden called life...

I sit alone in my sparsely furnished room, late at night, as memories keep coming back to me, mostly memories of my struggles in the previous two occasions when I visited home. It was not so sultry then, in October, winter was just setting in, and in December, it was even more pleasant. The windows, wide open as they are now, letting the night breeze in, that has finally started cooling down, and would again be mercilessly heated up at the very outset of tomorrow morning, was not at all an option then. And I didn’t have that much calm that time, that I could sit on a chair and look out of the window and feel the soothing wind on my skin. Mostly I’d pace the entire first floor, almost till 3 or 4 in the night, not really thinking anything, just for the heck of walking about, which would keep me engrossed and stop me from breaking down.

Nowadays, it doesn’t pain to that extent. But still, the warm way in which I still call out to him when I miss him, remains the same. The strange silly little things I’d remember about us, whenever I’d reading a new book, kind of boggles me down. Why is he everywhere?

I read Endless Night and felt, is that a similar urge he felt to kill me? I read Secret Wishlist, and went upto the bikini part, and remembered our chat…

me: good na

  I wl also stay up

1:46 PM we'll chat

 he: where r u now ?

 me: like owls

  man owl..lady owl

  at home

  man...m sad

  dint get my bikini :(

 he: non sense.

 me: when me n u come to prague

1:47 PM then I wl get ok?

  bt then man..I wl be 90

 he: idiot of india

 me: imagine me - all wrinkled skin...n wearing bikini...n coughing...n on stick...

  bt u wl watch me n wink...ok?

  :D

1:48 PM he: non sense. u r .

I feel like crying aloud and telling the world, please don’t give me a crap about arranged marriage. You introduce me to marriage profiles where guy proudly states that he is a chain smoker and heavy drinker, and when it comes to partner preference, he wants, no smoking, no drinking. I want to shout out to the world and say, hello, I once had a boyfriend, who’d let me get drunk, he won’t ever stop me from doing anything, and I could tell him everything that came to my mind, even this “m shy abt writing this...bt who else can I tell...hey here...in the nearby mall there's a bikini sale going on...bright colored and nice printed ones...I am like...too much attracted towards buying one...a bright pink one with floral prints (its almost magenta in color)...and liked a yellow one and sky blue one...wish I cd buy....u remember...once I told u..I like to go to the sea side...I asked u to take me...n u kinda agreed also...said we'll see...its ok abroad...india it's a problem...everyday I come to office...I see the sale and sigh to myself...wish I cd buy man...day when sale ends...I'd really really be sad :( :(” and he’d reply “he he.. ok…who is stopping u from buying things which u want to buy.. go and buy”

I have never held back a single thing from my Boo, even to the day when I told him this and he scolded me back – but did he ever have any doubt about whether I meant it?

me: ok...all I can say is...

  u r telling this...to ur wife...that u r going for another girl...

 he: STOP

 me: I believe u r my husband...now do whatever u want

1:06 PM I shall trust you till the last moment...and even beyond that

 he: STOP

 me: I trust you

 he: u crosed the limit now.

 me: I just said the truth

 he: THIS IS IT.. GET LOST

1:07 PM me: If my husband decides to abandon me...for whatever reason, I have nothing to say

I often remember the last day we talked. I really didn’t know that it is going to be the last day. It was around 6:30 in the evening, when the car dropped me at office and drove him away. Did he say bye? Mostly he did. I didn’t know that is the last time we’d talk without hating each other. Even if it happens again, it would be so full of hatred and unbridgeable gap, that I’d rather it didn’t happen.

I feel ashamed at how I have failed as a girl to sustain my relationship. Surely there was something lacking in me that I was not accepted? Whatever it be, I’d never have any doubt that I had found my dearest person in the man who finally chose to abandon me. Not that I do not remember Andy, or for that matter didn’t like that evening that I spent with yet another of my ex boyfriends. I do. But they don’t mean as much to me as my best friend does…you know, it is not always the same thing, when something is stolen from you, or you have lost something, when it is compared to the gaping hole your chest has because your heart has been charred.

I remain the hero for independent minded girls around me. They feel this extreme awe at what I have been able to achieve, and what they don’t know if they’ll ever be able to do. For you see, it is not easy to hurt your parents and turn against the society and remain single till the age of 33 and not give in to the institution of marriage, that has almost eaten up India’s female population. Trust me, even I fall victim at times. I give in to my parents’ whims, but then, guys are such psychos man. And this entire arranged marriage fiasco makes me squirm in loathe. Such a pathetically one sided and lopsided affair it is.

So perhaps, to accept truth, this is my life. But then isn’t there any way to make it slightly better? Can I not do something for myself, so that I start loving life a little more. You know why I love Boo? Because 60% he turned out to be the lesser beings that my opposite sex usually happens to be, but 40% he was genuinely a man. If only he could be a little more selfless and balanced, he’d be the ideal person on earth. But that Boo Boo is a thing of past. The Boo I see these days, is a broken shell of his former self. I don’t feel love or pity for him. That day I saw a dead street dog on the bus stop, with an open wound, there was no blood or gore, only its skin had burst open to show the layer of muscle and its legs jutted at an unnatural angle. As much as I felt like screaming, I took it calmly enough and said a silent prayer for it - life has got me that much seasoned. May be I won’t care to say even that small prayer for the person my Boo Boo has now turned into…