Anecdotes from the sleep deprived...

At times I wonder, just how badly I have screwed up my life.
Cut shot, 7th December 2007. Seated towards the tail of the Singapore Airlines flight, in the middle row (ever since then I have never missed doing an e check in early, to get an window seat in the side) - with an elderly Bengali couple coming from the US. They loved my name, kept telling each other, really a nice name...the man was a little fussy, actually scolded the chief steward for delay in bringing up his dinner. The lady was telling me, we are going to a marriage. Since they won't allow gold jewelry in the luggage, see, I have worn most of them. I being a patient listener as always, nodded on and listened. And then came my dinner. All other food, + a gulab jamoon. I gave it a glance, and started crying. What with the security lady throwing away most of my gift items (perfumes and all - as the rule had just come in that you can't carry these things in cabin baggage), and then that very same suitcase getting checked in (due to overweight issue) - and then, then entire day's tension, the rain swept exist from my home of 9 months, the extra charge due to overweight baggage, the last few words with bossie, everything had as if drained me. The gulab jamoon was the last nail in the coffin. I still remember how terribly lonely I felt then.

One more situation when I feel lonely is the rare, very rare occasions when I happen to chase my lovers. Like, that day towards end of February (if my memory doesn't fail me, it was 26th February), 2008. He was returning to India. Presumably to me, or so the stupid me thought. Because he had sent out his last day mail just the night before, and then forwarded it to me, asking, jyada senti to nahi hogaya? I had vented out some long pent up emotions, ending with, at times it is good to emote. I felt and knew that he is coming back to me. Still when I called him in the middle of the night, to ask if he has reached, his voice was not as pleased. Later he said, he was irritated carrying 3 bags and was looking for a cab when I called, so couldn't reply properly, but then, I should have known right then - this man doesn't love me as much as I love him.

One day, I just came out of my flat, and Andy's window was open. He was lying on the bed, curled up in the blanket (which was one of the first gifts I had given him), and singing some song. His pain took me by storm, I couldn't help myself, I rushed to his flat. As the window closed, as the curtains stretched on the glass, as that blanket covered me up, I remember silently praying to my bossie, let this not happen. I belong to you...let this not happen...

I never prayed that when Boo kissed me for the first time. I belonged to nobody anymore. I knew him for almost 10 months by that time, I had gone through every kind of emotion for him, I knew in my mind that this relationship is a gift from God. I never had any doubt about my Boo Boo. I never paid heed to the intense pain I suffered from, the absolute lack of care he showed, I just had faith in my God. This man knows all my ordeals, this man...has told me, he never kisses someone on the lips because he'd get mentally involved with the person, and this man has kissed me, loved me, cooked for me, fed me, combed my hair - he can't do injustice to me. If I see it practically, I should have never let this situation come up. For God's sake, I have been trying to dump him since January, only I was never able. Jab tak hai jaan, jab tak hai jaan, jab tak hai jaan...and he was able to do it in a moment.


me: no...not in office then  
I want to talk about a lot of things...
u know I can't hold back anything from u 
he: i want to be specific man. 
me: I have been going against myself n trying it for the past few days 
he: u want to talk as friend yes.. 
me: I want u to be natural  
n talk to me
he: ha.. that i am 
me: I can't say specific or what...  
if I talk I have to talk about our entire two years of relationship  
u know that doesn't involve only friendship  
so don't impose that condition
let us talk n be clear to each other  
it will help both of us
u shd have given me this chance earlier only
and best option was a face to face discussion
I don't know what made u so skeptical
he: sry man
me: but now...please...
he: i dont want to
me: why boo
u call me friend...ur friend is suffering...she is a nervous wreck
please...
this is all I am asking?
he: yes. i will call.. and try to help.. provided. that doesnt give me a nervous wreck

I kept waiting, and fervently praying that he calls. He never called me that night, never again in all the days to follow. I chased him a little for few days more, then I gave up. Felt very low self esteem during those few days, but still, I thought, it is only him. So I just decided to cling on. I never got to know the reason for his decision. He never cared for our relationship or our friendship. Everything ended in a moment. In a blink. I went through hell for almost a month. Why do I call it a month dammit? Truth is, however much I try to conceal, I am still suffering. I terribly suffered this evening. Having attended a friend's housewarming, and having met other old and new friends there, I had this terribly distinct sense of failure. Oh God, why don't you let me run away from society and social duties?

It all comes back to me. The crushing mishap in 2006. To start with. Then, static life. All around me life moved on. All my friends, who were in love, somehow solved their problems and got married, got babies, got houses, cars - they have something to show off. I have only failure. No, I couldn't save my baby. No, my relationships didn't work. No, I couldn't agree to arranged marriage, something I don't believe in. No, I couldn't adopt a child, because my parents were highly opposed to the idea, and then how will I bring him up? It just seems that I have a job. I know my struggles. How I have simply managed to stick on to my job, knowing always that this might be the last day. You cannot perform in your professional life, until you have a stable personal life. Period.

No, fairy tales don't happen. No, miracles don't happen. Even if they happen, they just happen to destroy you. You cling on to them, you do a big mistake. For there is nothing called everlasting love. There is nothing like, someone somewhere is made for you. Today's world is very very torturous. There is no place for a girl's stupid romantic dreams. I have lived through my near 33 years of life, just thinking, that happiness will come. It has never come. Except for some rare days, won't even add up to one full year, I am sure. Grass is always greener is just for the sake of proverbial wisdom. My achievements are a big hoax. Given the circumstances, I might not be able to sustain this job for 2 more weeks. Yes, my savings might last for a while, and then I am reduced to the very people, whom you used to show me, and tell, see...they have to fight for their survival, to earn their daily food, and you blame God for your romantic mishaps. You know what, even that will happen. And I am even prepared for that. I am prepared to lose every single friend I have, to lose even the rest 4 of the 5 people I feared to lose, and my every single penny of savings. And I won't flinch. For I'd remember the person, whom I gave my life, thinking he will not hurt me. And he killed me. All these time we kept arguing, who would kill whom. And I couldn't kill, I couldn't destroy, I couldn't make any trouble. He finished me.

Boo Boo, it doesn't hurt that you left me.
It hurts that I still love you, and I cannot understand how I could love such a wrong person?

Feeling better...

If there was a way of labeling blog posts or setting reminders, I'd have done that with this post. For I really want my husband to read it. So that he'd know and laugh - about just how much obsessed I am with my freedom.

Ahh, I indeed feel good. It has been such a tumultuous time all these 1.5 years. You get so jailed when there is something to look forward to. If I hadn't gone out with him for the first time and enjoyed that outing so so much, I'd never have lived my weekends in such a subdued way, missing that fun ever since. Will he call me? Shall we go out? Shall we laugh aloud and be merry or we'll end up quarreling? I just had apprehensions, never saw the opportunism in the person who was once a true friend.

Those few chats when both of us were very lonely and living all on our own, had they not been so endearing, I wouldn't have sought the endearment time and again from a guy who had long since turned insensitive.

Had the sparks not flown wild that October evening, I'd never gone looking for them in the person who had become frigid for a long time.

People cling to the past. One good thing happens, and people perpetuate the goodness. But it is so true that change is the only constant. I didn't know I have been changing myself. Letting go everything for this one mission of mine. Yes I am like that. Faithful, focused and positive, but I shouldn't have allowed these qualities to blind me from the obvious negativity that has been developing.

Now what? With a toddler's step I am walking back to my real life. The real life which I had ignored so much that it now is totally malnourished. And my mind is also terribly tortured. The scars are healing, but it will take time. So I read a page or two, surf a little internet, ponder on the recent books I have read, especially Atlas Shrugged. John Galt. I felt I am in love with a John Galt. Who sees only truth and nothing but the truth. And in actuality I was giving all my precious love to a mere Peter Keating.

So, another prospective Barney Livingston having proved his worthlessness, does Laura Castellano live? I guess she will. She is very weak right now, but yes, her morality is intact. That will help her heal herself. And if ever a Mr. Husband comes up, beware, do whatever, never make me too happy with your lovey dovey words, that I give up being myself and lose my freedom. I need it. Above everything else.

I miss my best friend. And the freedom he had given me. I curbed it, he didn't. If only he'd give me a last bit of freedom, in letting me be with him while he took his decision. For me, he'd always be the upright guy who wanted to throw stones at my tormentors. The guy with whom I got drunk when I told I wanted to marry him. The guy who knew just how much love he is capable of, how much love I am capable of, and what we are losing. Boo Boo you are happy today? We just lost each other. It is not scary I tell you. I feared I will die without you, see I haven't. I am already recovering steadily. Things are never that much worse, we just fear them. And we have to stand up, with our courage and give it a try. Hope you will stand up from now on, in coming stages of your life.

Ohh yes, those words from my friend still kept bothering me. But I am very sure she is wrong. This relationship is not my failure. But yes spying is not a good thing. But then, even John Galt spied once on Hank Rearden, to see what kind of person he is. I am trying to stop spying. And I am actually getting detached from Karthik and disinterested about him. He only said, everyone has a life to live. I am also going to live my life. 

An open letter...

Yes I also need time. And I also take time to open up and unwind. So I have taken a month's time.

I am not angry right now. For somehow all these incidents have given me a kind of crystal clear insight into everyone's mind. The most predominant trait on this earth is a tendency to blame, and to pass on the baton. No sir, not me. It is not my responsibility.

My so called lover (whom I never called my lover, thinking he will get disturbed if I say this before he makes up his mind) never really thought that if not 100% then 50% of the responsibility of this relationship lies with him. My friend in office, who has always always been convincing me about him at the worst of times, when I was on the verge of losing faith in him and moving on, said today,

1. It is my fault that I trusted him without reason.

2. I should have been more patient with him.

3. I shouldn't have spied on him and been too choking on him

Dear friend, if you are reading this,

1. My trust was based on my basic faith in humanity and truth. 

2. He'd have left anyways, responsibility is not initiated by patience.

3. I have never ever spied on anyone else in my life, except him and my brother. Both were too much held up with a single relationship of past and had stopped living. If intent and not action is important, then my intent was only to understand them better so that I am able to help them more. My brother, thankfully hasn't used an antidote to the poison, I unknowingly acted as the antidote to my lover. And yes, to me, action is equally important, and so I owned up to both of them. And as for choking him, yes I choked him, because he needed choking love to be able to live again. He demanded it from me, and I kept giving it. That was the antidote.

And sweetheart, if you are reading this,

1. I still call you Boo Boo. I never told you, apart from your eyes and the smell of your hair, I love your name equally as much. And I am still an idiot. I still love you.

2. I have been on the receiving end of blows for the last one month. I won't give anything back. Only thing I'd tell is, apart from me, if anyone else knows the full truth, it is you. And it is you who has decided that I should face this situation, that too alone. My friends lash out at me. Your friends come and celebrate with me as if it is my joy as well. I have to take both silently. For your sake.

And my dear God, if you are listening,

1. If this is the way you want to run your world, devoid of logic and reason, only duty and no desire, FINE. Who can deny you. Only you become a God with a 'y', not a 'Y'. Only God you are, no more my friend. Yes I am a bad girl. I am proud to be a bad girl. I don't accept your dictat.

Being a live ticking bomb...

Why this suicidal decision is what I need to explain. I was so so protected in my home. Mostly locked up inside one of the bedrooms in the first floor (my parents and grandma stay downstairs, and because of old age, they seldom climb the stairs and come upstairs)...I don't know if I was curing my wounds, at least there was no way the world would inflict more wounds on me. Yes I did check Facebook regularly, but I braced myself and prepared for the worst, every time I did it. I told him I won't be an ostrich, I'd take his blows, and I kept my word.

See I am doing this once again, because I feel I have to do this. I must do this. It is not a decision I am taking post his engagement. This is a decision I had taken, a month back, when I genuinely felt that he loves me and he needs me. I remember telling my friend and neighbor in office, very proudly, that...you keep telling you'll kill him if you get to know who he is, if I don't return to him, he'll die anyways. And so, when these  words sound like a big joke today, I am coming back to Bangalore, because this was a decision taken in good and honest faith.

Do I expect anything out of it? NO. I just need to prove what I have always tried convincing him about. You should never ever give up without giving yourself a chance to try. Right now, I am very weak, extremely vulnerable and damn scared. There is 90% chance that I will fail in the my social and professional interactions. But how can I be sure unless I try. I am going back just to try it once. To see my elasticity level up to my yielding point or breaking point (wow do I sound like I still remember school physics?)

I am just trying to practice what I preach :) Come on...I shall be me right? If you cut me into two, it is just a matter of bringing the pieces together and praying that I return to my original self. If  I don't even attempt that, I am never gonna be whole again in this lifetime.

Being a nobody...

I don't know what to write. It was my conscious decision after all. To go through this without protest. See, one argument might have been, that, I could have reacted. I had every right to react. To be mad on him, to shout, to take revenge. What would I have got out of all that? The selfish me asks. What am I getting through this? The selfish me asks again. I don't have answers.

Or, rather...the selfish me wants to see myself in pain. Masochism? Who knows. I feel numb and nervous. He had said...if he wants to run, he knows how to run. But if we start bothering about what all he had said, there would be no end to this confusion. It has to be driven from my end. And there is basically nothing to drive. A 29th October comes. If he goes home, things get settled then. If he doesn't, we have to wait. December, January, February, March...don't know how long. Ya, the fear will be there, don't know how long I have to live with it. But I have chosen to live with it. So I shouldn't complain.

I have lost the right to complain. That pains more than anything else. I had a right once in this relationship. Now I don't have it anymore. It might sound terrible coming from me, but perhaps the truth is that the relationship has died, all I am trying to do is to give it a decent funeral. It shouldn't be said that nobody cared for this dead relationship. I did, I do.

There are two flip sides to the coin. As opposed to this saga of self torture. The guy who was termed as sadist and irresponsible suddenly undergoes a transformation. And then, the other guy comes. The other guy. I start laughing deliriously at this point. The other guy. Who has let me become this even though he lived on this earth. Ha ha ha...the other guy.

Thanks but no thanks is all I can say. I am better off alone. Boo...had once written me a poem:

Alone he is better,
Don't put butter.

This guy turned out to be a bigger mystery than was ever stated in any Agatha Christie novel. So much so that I have given up all attempts to solve him. And perhaps there is nothing to solve. He is following the forever trodden normal path only. Who can ever read human mind. I am just doing, what is the decent thing to do. The humane thing to do. No...correction. I am doing, what my mind wants to do. My mind, wants to just be with him. Be this a difficult or an easy hour for me or him or both of us, I must do, what I feel like doing, for a person who is very close to me. The fact that I am not able to understand him doesn't really matter now, I still don't have a choice. Trust me, I am not doing this with the faintest hope of miracle in my mind. That's why I feel, I just might be able to tolerate whatever is in store for me in the future. I know I am crazy, but this is my last chance to be crazy in life :)

My friends and my extended Punjabi family...

Well...Punjabi has always been my next most favorite Indian language after Bengali and Bihari Hindi...all thanks to the Yash Chopra movies may be (Tussi ja raheho? Tussi na jao...Ek gal dassan?) - whatever it is, there is a certain sweetness and mitti ki khusboo in the language (way you find in the East Bengal version of Bengali, i.e. Bangal Bhasha).

Well, there are times when you don't see any light in any direction. It is sheer darkness that engulfs you. Yes, the last couple of weeks have been like that...

So what did I get from my difficult time? Unrelenting support from my friends. I saw them break down more than me during my crisis period. Trust me, never thought it is humanly possible in today's selfish era. Oh a Sagittarian never takes it lightly when her dreams are crushed, when a person she has trusted, breaks her heart. Somehow, since I know Boo and his idiosyncrasies only too well, I could take the blows better than my Sagittarian friend. The Cancerian was devastated in a way, and unable to put up with my still hopeful nature, she decided to leave me alone. But the Scorpio surprised me. She literally stood like a rock beside me. The poor soul, with a 1 year old kid and her own marriage in jitters, she never let me be on my own even for a moment - comforted me and let me cry more, took me to play with her kid and celebrated with me October 15, the one year anniversary of our sweet miracle. Not only she, her entire family helped me out as if I were one of them. "Nahi beta, aisa nahi karte...Salman Khan ne kaha hai...dil se nahi dimaag se kaam lena chahiye" - Salman Khan said it seems :) :)

I call them now my extended Punjabi family. Her dad scolded me, her sister tried to drill in sense in my head, her mom was always welcoming, her aunt tried to give me courage...and the little kid was God personified...his smile and touch would allow me to face the next day.

And on my last evening in Bangalore, I went to the temple with them, saw the aarti and consulted the astrologer. An astrologer who is supposedly a scientist too. And a priest as well. What he told - let it remain with me. Oh when has this girl listened to anybody other than herself?

Whatever has to happen will happen. I know all of that and even then I have taken this decision. Yes I have this immense urge to live. And yes, he IS my life. I have chosen to accept his decision - and I shall be doing that with a smile. I am sure I'd be able to do it...

Truth hurts...

It gets too difficult when you know someone too well. And forget about someone else, let us talk about myself. I am too tired, scared and cold...in fact, I can't take this anymore, this constant vulnerability, hugging myself and sitting in the corner of the bed...shivering with fear and apprehensions. Oh how many suicidal moments have I faced since January? Just how many? And it will all end up in an instant? My hopes, my faith, these things don't matter at all, is it?

It is so so difficult to love someone and hold him responsible for your broken faith. This man is my best friend. Is he really going to break me in this way? The questions don't get answered. Even God doesn't show light.

That day near Aranya returns to me. He with all his faith and trust, telling me about that doctor lady whom he was going to see the following week. And my sudden realization, that I love this person. I can't let him marry someone else. But from that day, haven't we moved on to a great extent? Oh why on earth did he have to love me back? And now why does he deny? Is it fair to torture your loved one to this extent? I don't know how I'd have taken it that time, but over the last year and a half, things have drastically changed. I won't be able to take it now. If he gets married to some other girl, that will be the end of me. I can see...may be I will live, but I can see myself right now...how I will be living. Like a complete vegetable. If he crushes my faith in this brutal a way, then there is no other way left for me.

I don't know...these words from him scared me to hell. One interpretation makes my life, the other breaks me forever...


me: it is not that...u wl listen to me for 1 min?  
I know...it doesn't matter to u.... 
he: see.. now..a days.. i am not listening to my wife only..
me: boo... 
he: ohh... 
me: can u...stop hurting me once in while? 
he: but .. that was true.. ok forget

I know it will all be over in few more days. After that I leave for my home town. If this is to happen, I can wither away with some dignity I guess. Still, I am writing this in the middle of the night. It has really shaken me...