Rolling in the sand and other fun things.

So, all I am saying is, that I want to be a lovable person. And not just to my mom or the mildly bothersome acquaintance who keeps flirting with me and wondering if this perfectly innocent marshmallow will go out with him for coffee. 
I want to be lovable for myself. Secretly, also for you. I know I once was, and I know I destroyed it. I also know that you still haven't taken me down from that sickening pedestal you put me on. I am still standing there in your memories- An epitome of perfection.


Can't you see that all I wanted to do was goof around with you and spill sauce down my shirt and then crib about it? Or not finish work on time and run to you in panic at the last moment? Or wake up one day and go to a place where I've never gone, even if it is far and makes me tired? 
Perfect people don't do that. Perfect people plan things, and then get them right. BAM! Ridiculously foolish people do all the things I was dying to do. 


And I feel ridiculously foolish today. I feel selfish. 
Maybe I was made this way? Maybe the higher being designed me this way, so it's not really my fault in the end that I ran away from that pedestal. 
Please tell me that I was not just a selfish person who wanted to have fun. Because that is all I hear at night. All those voices are your friends. They feel bad for us. They berate me. They don't let me fall asleep too quick, or eat guilt free at that restaurant you loved so much; Yesterday, I told my friend it has the most terrible food in the city, to avoid going there. I can still remember the delicious taste though.
The voices look down upon me when I laugh. A few days ago, I wanted to lie down in the sand. I know you hated it. But I lied down that day and loved it. I looked at the sky and laughed till I had tears in my eyes. I played with it till I lost all sense of decorum. And then, the voices looked down upon me. Like a conservative parent would look down upon their drunk child, and I felt ashamed. I got up, dusted myself and left. I came back home and cried. 


I wish I was made differently. Because I really did love you. I wish I could be patient and rational, so that I would fit on to the pedestal you had built for me and not shame you with my stupidity. I know you sat with me in my fits of absurd crying, attempting to make sense of it all. I know you tried a lot. I wish I had lesser opinions. 
But I had to choose between loving you and loving myself, and I chose myself.
Does that make me selfish? 


I met you the other day and you looked so dull. It killed me.
I always wanted to be able to look into the mirror and love myself. And that very thing, I now cannot do. 

Wiping the slate clean- Letter to self.

[How do you begin writing when you're writing after an abnormal break of two years? It's like you're under an enormous pressure by the unhappy troll of blogdom who looks at you dismally. As if you were that challenged child in class who was capable, but never lived up to the expectations. *Tch tch... you could have become a doctor, no! What is this? Art?* But that is besides the point. If you are confused, you can just start by writing how you are under pressure by the unhappy troll of blogdom...

After so much chatter, you might be compelled to think that the writer of this blog is in a terribly happy chatter-y mood. Chatter can be misleading though, as you'll find soon enough.]


I sit under my blanket at 5:48 am with a hot (not sexy hot, but hot hot) laptop (P.S.- also sexy) on my lap, wanting to attempt writing all that has been going on in my head for the past two days. Of course if you are one of those people who aren't interested in what goes on in other people's heads in 48 hours, you might want to leave.

Two days ago, I was a very happy person.
Very much the "Mere paas gaadi hai, bungla hai, bank balance hai aur Ma bhi hai" types happy.
And here I am, in such a short span of time, wanting to move away from everything and everyone I know, to a land where I can start my life with a clean slate. So what changed?

I didn't know! All I know is that I woke up one day and wanted to get up and leave everything. I tried attributing this massive pendulum shift to more comfortable and soothing solutions like PMS, Piscean mood swings, overactive imagination and the likes. Didn't work.
It was just a giant and pressing need to run away to a small town in Europe (my fascination returns, for those who know), maybe even get a name change, and spend my life happily as a Ms. Rasia Kasparowicz (yes, I Google searched for an appropriate Greek name) incognito!

Those who know me will also know that I am hardly the kind of person who would want to live incognito. I have a compulsive desire to be heard! To speak! I will also speak about the latest thing I ate, if it's interesting enough. Or if it's not, I will make it sound interesting till you either salivate or appreciate my wit.
So I did what all modern day youths do, in order to retreat in a shell. I deactivated my Facebook account. (Trust me, it does feel better)

After two days of listening to people talk and talk and talk on TED (Entertainment while working, in the absence of Facebook, and I thank God for it!), I started to introspect. (Crucial piece of information- I listened to talks on Psychology, so yeah, that's the influence)

I started tracing where this desire to retreat originated.
One would imagine it stemmed from a deep routed psychological scar I received as a child, or explain an innate hatred of society I might have as a rebel, or go Freudian and come up with multiple perverse complexes which have now surfaced to haunt me.

The answer I found was shockingly bland and non-classy; Someone had criticised me. My networking frequency!

There, as crass and boring as it could get. The only complexity to this, being, that that someone was someone I hold in high regard.

It takes certain courage to admit to even your own self that you are influenced by something as simple as a stray opinion. It goes to show how fragile you are. And it is definitely something that needs to be changed.
I do not know how many of you reading this are also like me. Not one to be extremely happy about grand praise, but tremendously affected by sharp criticism.
If I had to play shrink on myself (which is what I eventually did), I realised that I placed my sense of self-worth in what others thought of me. To be precise, a few crucial others. I am reminded of Rand's Peter Keating, and his need for admiration by his peers, and I remember thinking even 7 years ago, how similar we all are, sadly, to Keating.

The moment this epiphany dawned on me, I cringed at myself, took one hard look, and decided it was time to start fresh. And not by running away to a scenic locale (which you anyway must do; urban life is highly overrated), but by changing how you perceive yourself. By realising that only you can appraise your own worth. That a contradicting opinion is just that- a contradicting opinion! 

An awesome person stays awesome and a crappy person stays crappy- even if someone thinks contrary to that. Cabbage doesn't turn to Tandoori chicken no matter how much you wish it to. Ask me, I've tried.

The one thing you cannot change though, is that some people will always be more important than others, and hence their opinions significantly more effective.
Be that as may, do not make the mistake of holding them up as mirrors for you to see yourself in.

Also, for over-thinkers like me, here is a fabulous quote by poet John Milton which I came across in one of the TED talks:

The mind is its own place,

And in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell,

A Hell of Heaven 

On this note, I'd like to tell everyone to wipe their slates clean, paste a broad grin on their faces and order that darned Tandoori chicken! :D

Time Travel

A whiff is all it takes. Not a fraction more and she was there. Back where she never wanted to go again. For the same reason you hate looking at plastic chocolates when you are hungry.

Begging the memory to last a moment more...begging the aroma to linger a fragment more. Long enough to take it all in. But it never does, does it?

What exasperated Albert and led him to a point of no hope, the Olefactory senses did. Time travel.

The stinging aroma of a Clove flavoured facewash.

The smell of the water there, as she splashed it on her face..erasing the signs of a late night.

The bathroom and its memory of the disinfectant.

White bedsheets. The smell of them. The smell of them when she hid underneath. They were never meant to smell so good...

The artificial room freshener, and it stirs a brilliant image.

The curtains long out of use. Unmoved, dusty, memorable.

Damp towels and they smell of him. They were never meant to smell so good...

And a jolt from the dream. Lather on my hands. Of the Clove flavoured facewash.

Time Capsule

Happiness with a backward ticking clock can be a real pain in the ***. Nevertheless, if it is happiness like you've seldom experienced before, you can't but thank the lord!

Looking at him waiting for me at the station, and I knew in a moment that my lone journey for 17 hours was worth it. Worth the time and worth the lies.

Humans though, tend to focus almost involuntarily on something dperessing even in the most blissful of moments. And so did i. 'Only 38 hours and this will be over' kept playing in a morbid tune in my head even as i hugged him at what was only the beginning of the best 38 hours of my life.

What followed can be best described as surreal. An eerie time warp. The moments seemed to move slowly, sometimes even stopping and suddenly out of nowhere, a day had passed.

*Think about the glass half full...half full...half full*

Endless laughs, priceless smiles, a tear here n' there and a content soul.

Blink of an eye and its already 37 hours. Last minute dinner at the same place as the breakfast when I arrived. The cycle is completed.

Anyone who has said goodbye from the window of a moving vehicle knows that there is no greater sorrow...

Love in the afterlife

Raindrops on my face,

I drank them yesterday,

The raindrops made me smile all day.

They mask my tears now.

I hate the rain today.

It smells like a monsoon 6 years back... the high, oh the high of happiness! The indescribable joy of innocent love.

The memory of a loving look and a gentle caress is all it takes to make the world come crashing down. The thought of that warm embrace...and it will kill me today.

And crashing down it came..the world.

Check my pulse. I'm dead.

I hate the rain today.

The Benevolent Pain

Destiny is a bratty child with a twisted mind. You know, the ones that give you the creeps in horror movies, twisting their dolls' heads and performing amputations on Bambi.

Game plan #1 of twisted child destiny (not to be confused here with destiny's child): Not giving you a thing you really wish for and then throwing it in your lap when you are in the process of getting a lap dance; who wants wishes on their laps then!

2000: It is a childhood crush. Strong enough that had she been 22, she would have mistaken it for love (not very unlike most people that age). But she is 13 and sensible enough to recognize it as a mirage. Nevertheless, it hurts. (The hurt part is the side dish of twisted child destiny's 7 course meal)
One wish of that phase of her life, "I want to talk to him". Twisted child makes sure she doesn't. She pines and dreams until there is no line between the real and the virtual. She has built up endless conversations with him in her head. That keeps her happy until she is past the mirage. Chapter over.

2009: She is sitting across him on a couch, laughing with him, content in knowing that he is one of the closest friends she has today. Without realising, she has started walking down the famed memory lane, thinking back to the day she was standing in the canteen, waiting for him to talk to her. "I can't find anything to watch on t.v. and now I've finished surfin-- Hey, are you even listening? I am talking to you!" he says.
Talking! Twisted child sure has a sense of humour!

But she is in love today with someone else, and happier than she could ever expect. Would she have found this love then, had he talked to her in the canteen back then?

"Why am I hated so?" wept the poor child destiny, "when all I want, is to do good?"

Rufus the Stubborn

"NO, NO, NO, you don't understand! The Earth is round! R.O.U.N.D.!" said Christopher Baba Columbus to his friend Rufus the Stubborn. "I know because I've been around it!"
"Hogwash!" said our Rufus [here, Mister Christopher suffered a mild heart attack]. "So long as my porridge doesn't spill from its bowl, i will believe the Earth is flat, thank you." And he continued munching on his apple pie.
Until the day he decided to take a night-time stroll to the edge of the earth after a particularly heavy meal. That day changed everything for Rufus the Stubborn and he went to being called Rufus the Scared for the rest of his life.

But this story is about Rufus the Stubborn and not Rufus the Scared.

"Never invest too much of affection and hope in any relationship. You are not strong enough to grapple with the debris, lest it falls." Rufus was told by a person much beloved to him. Incidentally, since he was stubborn, he just pooh-poohed the advice and went on loving unconditionally, his friends.
Medulus was a new friend Rufus made one day. Days changed to months and years and Rufus did not realise how Medulus became his best friend. He shared all his secrets with Medulus [whom he called Meduloo, when he was tipsy with all the ale]. Ale, and girls and his favourite apple pie, they bonded over. Medulus was the person who understood him the best, he said to his beloved advisor. "Why, i think he is my closest friend. And so it shall be forever!"

A year later, Rufus was sitting at his mahogany desk, his nib shivering, as he wrote about the wounds of his heart. The advisor was silent. Medulus no longer drank ale with Rufus. He went horse riding with Thomas, who claimed to care about Medulus the most. 'Med' and 'Tom' enjoyed a lot. Rufus never bothered to argue, because he knew nothing would affect his companionship with dear ol' Med.

His dear ol' Med.
Like his dear ol' Earth.

How wrong he was then. How wrong he is now.
He is Rufus the Scared.

I am Rufus the Scared.