The Storage Room

Sitting in that very room that defines my understanding of loneliness in life as much as it describes the birth of the untamed dreamer in me, it's like an emotional ride of being myself. I was probably in eighth or night standard, on the thresh hold of my puberty, both sexual as well as emotional,  and we had moved on the new furnished first floor residence from the second floor where we were initially living for many years. It was then when I started finding my recluse hours here. No one questioned me, I never questioned myself. It was like my dug out from the outside world. I try to think, think real deep, why I first thought of this room as my saving grace but I never get it. It was just that this was available, empty and I just wanted an escape from everyone around me. There have been umpteenth times when I have wished had there been someone to sit with me and talk to me about being the recluse, but it never happened and this past has only been stuffed into a similar figurative room that has piled up to a clustered storage room.

I remember coming in my room of comfort and escape just after having my lunch on returning home from school. It had the old bed (which is now sold), the old study table (which is still here), the old Almira of my mother (which still finds a space here) and me. The empty walls were being used to design crazy simple stuffs I like, from stars and balloons to (in huge scribble) VIVA!. It was 2002, about 12 years ago!!

My school days were routine - come back from school by 2:15 in afternoon, eat lunch, change, move upstairs, stay here, go down in evening for milk, return upstairs, stay here, go back down again for dinner and sleep. This started changing to taking my school bag upstairs and doing home work here and then studying for tests in the room, then bringing that rickety old transistor to the new audio-cassette-CD-radio player to upstairs and dancing like a lost but free soul in the confines of this hollow rectangular room. I even shagged for the first time here; not to mention the mute cries I screamed my heart out. The number of times I dream designed and redesigned this room's architecture is unparalleled.

It's been 12 years since. I may have moved out, but the stuffs still lay piled and even many new memories and unsaid thoughts that never let me go and grew from the sapling sown in this room. And the dreams that once made me live through my loneliness have now started to tie, bog me down so hard that its difficult to watch my favorite television shows, movies and music videos.

I don't remember when I last went through a normal TV viewing time at home, alone or with someone from the family, when while watching it I did not rush back in my mind to my dreams and how perfect they were, compared to the imperfect life being flashed in front of me. A work colleague had remarked in jest to me that how nothing is good for me when I was talking about Finding Fanny movie. Now the film is not perfect, per-say, but how a rank stranger who has little idea about my personal life is able to catch my trait so minutely does makes me cringe.

I do not say I want to be mysterious, someone no one can decipher. That is long over in the past and I have moved on to just wishing being simple, living simple. But I surely does not want to be a cynic. Being simple, now it feels, is easy. I really don't know if it was initially difficult as I am not able to jog those old thoughts right now. But how do I not be a cynic without losing the sight to see how things can really be perfect? I am finding it difficult; even more as I write it down that I seem to have turned towards pseudo perfection, a word I feel I am the first in the world to coin and not a good thing about it.

This pseudo perfection is crippling me even more rampantly ever since I got promoted to the post of a trainee employee in my first job in my dream career of journalism. It makes me sniff smile as much as it amuses me my level of thinking. From no more pocket-money (the stipend I was getting as a paid intern was like a pocket monthly allowance only) to having to withdraw money from my salary in my saving's account in the bank to thinking about savings for the future and maintaining proper documents for the income tax returns, life seems to have turned around so much in just one promotion that it is is unbelievable. Sweet but something even I never thought is possible to feel. Two months over as an employee and the change has yet to settle in for my every week-off has been fucked up in thoughts surrounding it and no one to share it. Thereby all these fears are piling up in that old storage room.

However, a first among many firsts is how I would like this road to my life journey be. I have to stop piling secrets, especially with most being completely unwarranted. Every new moment I will live will be a virgin and it can be be fucked up or made love to - all by my own actions. For past is a journey we travel to live in present all the way to a future that lies in out own actions. How many times I have moved randomly thinking about this day and now a little bump in acceptance is making to regret the dream. This is so not done. The storage room is to be cleared and by my own actions.

 

I'm gonna give all my secrets away...

Khoon Chala...

Few days ago, over a casual desk conversation, a friend in my department at work remarked what his father told him about success and failure. He said that failure is not having to succeed in delivering the required effort." The sentence may be very simple and straight forward but so was my remark. After acknowledging the truth in the sentence, I added that the definition of failure is different for different people. What may be failure for one, just might be a learning experience for the other.

I have always, as far as I can recall, tried, if not fully-confident, stuck with "every so-called failure is an experience to improve and succeed" statement. It have never been easy. To be brutally honest, a part of me dies with every failure. I try to 'rise from the ashes' and get back to a new beginning but it has never been easy. Its heartbreaking and there have been so many painful heartbreaks that I have lost the ability to cry over it now.

I try to begin anew, looking to find omens for that new beginning time period. It is sometimes reminiscent of an old history, or with an aim to achieve a particular number of days a goal or just about anything amusing I can film so that I can "equate" that new beginning as "written in destiny". But despite hundreds of such "omens", every failure (read, FAILURE) is killing for exactly one reason - TIME LOST, HISTORY RECORDED and TOO MANY INSANELY AMBITIOUS GOALS STILL HANGING IN PERPETUAL SUICIDAL UNCERTAINTY.

I do know that I am so not the only one facing this dilemma but then again my ambitions are also just that - MY! So I have no right to compare myself with anyone else; lest I am okay with the current state of life that success fails to entice me. That is so never going to be.

So from this very moment - will I rise to the success?? will I make omens instead of trying to find ones?? will I absolutely stop to sound whinny in my thoughts and I writing??

Its all in my mind. Why must I even get myself to be struck at cross-roads of failure and success when there has absolutely not a single moment in my ambitious life I can remember when I did not know I will get struck at such crossroad if I move ahead with A particular thing!!!

This memoir, this rambling of whining thoughts just has to end here. Sit up, accept the face of truth and start making omens. Stop thinking who I want to be, start believing what I want to do. The destination is just future but its the journey that is present.

कुछ कर गुज़रने को खून चला, खून चला..
आंखों के शीशे मे उतरने को खून चला..

बदन से तपक कर.. ज़मीन से लिपट कर..
गलिओं से रास्तों से उभरकर.. उमड़कर..
नये रंग भरने को खून चला, खून चला..

खुली सी चोट लेकर.. बड़ी सी टीस लेकर..
आहिस्ता.. आहिस्ता..

सवालों की उंगली.. जवाबों की मुठ्ठी..
संग लेकर.. खून चला..

Listening Chinese Whispers

My childhood is full of games, outdoor yet bored games, that I used to play with the neighborhood kids - no matter our age difference. It was not about the gender pressure, nor about any competitive status quo of group type. All of us from a group of adjacent houses; we were all in it together. These childhood memories include hop-scotch (aka stapoo), piththoo, maaram-pitti (aka ball-the-opponent), gilli-danda, chhupan-chhupai (aka hide and seek), nariyal pani, ghar-ghar (aka house), vish-amrit and many more.

One such game, whiich was mostly played when we tired to run, just wanted to sit yet laugh together was Chinese Whisperer, or as we called it growing up - KAANA PHOOSI.

It was one game where we deliberately made up sentences to confuse the other, one that would even more confuse the last-in-line participant. The more the confusion, the crazier we would all laugh and laugh inhibited. However, the main rule of the game was - words once spoken, won't be repeated again, even if its to correct oneself.

Life is like being in a 'chinese whisper moment' when travelling in Delhi Metro. And I travel in it very frequently. So I, or for that matter everyone, especially those traveling by themselves, are always participant to our childhood game every moment in Delhi Metro. Some whispers amuse you, some keep you smiling all along and yet few times it does irritate or even disgust you.

Like just now (as I write this memoir), this guy (probably in his college and definitely straight) standing next to me with his friends just randomly sang a line from a song to himself - a song which for me is my song for my latest crush.

"zindgi de dite tenu saare hakk ve.."

And he has repeated it once, apart from singing few more lines, again during the metro ride. Both these moments will definitely keep me smiling to my heart's content. *bliss* :)

However, these unsolicited chinese whisper in metro unknowingly also helps one grow and mature.

As an individual, I have been the most wreck when it comes to my physical being. Not that anyone challenged me on same course, just that I have too many dreams and goals to threaten me. Yet, I am no quitter. I maybe emulating tortoise walk but I am walking good.

This post holds its sapling from this conversation between a girl and a guy I 'overheard' in metro on way to office. Both, dressed sharply in white shirt and black trousers, seemed like first year students of MBA, who just started their post-grad classes and, as my imagination psyched, they seemed on returning back from one of the many MBA colleges in Rohini. Oh and yes, both were very good looking - the girl had this neat and long hair, perfectly tied over her head and then let lose behind and the guy, very attractive body, not cut but definitely healthy and toned, and face and very simple yet sexy hair, wavy up the front, a style I would have loved to have my hands feel. Very MnB, not dark but everything and both the guy and girl together surely looked a picture couple. (Oh, I am being so sane. :p )

Despite their features, which as I stated in the beginning how much appearance mattered to me, it was their conversation that took me to deep thinking. They were talking about making friends in class - for the guy!

For the vane me, I would have blindly thought of the guy to have made good friends easily, but he was talking about not finding 'the' guy classmate with whom he can bond as friend. The girl suggested a guy, whom she had interacted few times and he replied back with a dishearten sigh as if he was questioning his own 'friendship' capabilities.

Being a chinese whisperer aide to the two's conversation really held my mind. As to how much of my run for vanity justified and whether my social need for friendship really needs matching the high standard of physical looks.

In school, the looks part never did matter. In fact in college, where I liked shopping for clothes and bags and footwear, I did it all because I my heart liked it. If I have to strongly analyse my first run towards vanity, it was when I joined PG course in Media, because it was all about camera, and looks and achieving that perfect frame. In a sense, I was of the same (visualised) age as the two I was over hearing. Hmm..

But as I think about it now, it was the very same time, i.e. joining Media industry, when I became all-on-my-own. No family support, except financially which again I only took to the extent as I was dependent. I sacrificed every shopping need, every flamboyance and maybe my fun personality.

Was I right in going the path I went. I did struggle a lot, mostly emotionally and psychologically and everything I really never wanted and would have hoped for a edit in past.

Yet I can never let go that it is my this struggle that has shaped what I am right now. I don't really like all things from my past but I must never regret it. Friendship is very important, in every relationship, and I am sure my being a chinese whisperer aide ain't that bad, even if it was the twos look that caught my attention.

I did grew mature from my habit to being a non-welcome participant in kaana-phoosi, a childhood game which become even more dearer now. Who would have though my sneaky nasty habit would mature me someday. :p O:)