The Old Friend I Miss...

One year in Chennai, and the only friend I miss today is the Sea. When I first met him(Yes the Sea was more than just a natural water body.), he was very apprehensive may be. He made me walk for about 15 minutes before I actually saw his waves glittering in the moonlight. It was a full moon night, and I was in Marina Beach (There are three beaches in Chennai, that I know of: Marina, Eliots and Thiruvanmayur.). That was my first and last visit to Marina Beach. Being the lazy person I am, I was not ready to walk so much on the sand, to get to the Sea.

During my 2^nd semester, I was suddenly over taken by an urge for exercise. I remember someone saying that, cycling on the sand makes you really really fit. I decided to go cycling on the Eliots beach. That was just 15 minutes away from my college campus.

I regularly went there before sunrise, but never cycled on the sand. I sat there on the sand and watched the Sea. That was the beginning of our relationship. I remember walking close to the water, and he, came gently near me and kissed my feet. It was such a pleasant and welcoming gesture that I went closer, and then he threw himself all over me. I was drenched to the bone but I was smiling gladly. That was his acceptance.

I was solely dependent on Him, since then. I would go to Him, when I was sad. I would sit by him and  just talk. Looking him in the eye, I would just talk. Sometime in my mind, sometimes aloud (more often than not I would get stares from annas and Akkas for they probably thought I have lost my mind.).

He was my friend, lover and confidant. I would go visit him everyday, tell him everything that was bothering me. Plunge myself in his arms, and just let go off myself, going up and down with the waves. I would pick up shells, with the kids selling raw mangoes. I would run on the beach, chasing the stray dogs. And on some rather lonely day, I would just sit there looking at the vastness and think nothing.

He had his mood swings too. Some days, the Sea would just retreat. Go far away from me and sulk and frown. I just couldn't connect with him on those days. He just won’t listen to me, and I couldn't talk. He behaved like one of those best friends, who would be annoyed with you, but won’t tell you what you have done to annoy him. He just drove me away from him, on those days.

Then came Neelam (The cyclone that had hit the southern coast of India.). My old friend was at his majestic best that day. I had sneaked out of the college, bribing the security anna, with a packet of smoke. As I stood on the road, I saw a different avatar of the Sea. I have never seen anything more beautiful and scary than that. The waves rose almost 6 ft. high and crashed down with graceful anger. The sky was black and the wind blew all the sand up in the air. My friend was in a fury. One of those anger fits when you feel like destroying everything that comes in your way and just establishing your power. Such was the anger of the Sea. That day, I knew, I have seen my friend in all his forms. Calm, annoyed, upset and finally angry.

The Sea was a great teacher to me as well. He taught me first to accept. To accept people in your circle the way they are. Without judging them. He taught me to listen. Patiently. Without interrupting the thoughts of another person. He taught me to take in every word because it was important to listen. He taught me to love selflessly, without expecting anything in return. Loving by just being there.

He taught me to give till it hurts. He gives so much to so many people. He is a means of livelihood for some. Means of entertainment for many, and for the likes of me, a friend, a shoulder to cry on. He just gives, endlessly. He taught me to take a stand. To make myself heard, and to bow down and accept my fault when I am wrong.

When I was leaving Chennai, I knew that If I would miss anyone, it would be the Sea. After one year of leaving Chennai, I still miss my old friend when I am sad, or happy or just need someone to talk to.

The first time I met him on a moonlit night. (Marina Beach)

Before leaving Chennai. (Eliots beach)

The Neglected Blog and two Old Blog Posts.

‘People laugh at me’ this is one of the major problems of us, the teenagers. We seem to worry a lot about what people will say. How our peers will react if we did this. Won’t this seem to be funny? How can I wear this dress? How can I protest against the usage of ‘cool’ slang? Above all if someone laughs at us, the first thing we feel is embarrassment. We become depressed, stop speaking and contract ourselves in the shell. Being a teenager, even I used to think like this. I was not an exception to this rule.

But recently I realized that I am living in such a world were people only care about themselves. They come here to take things and not to give. They are selfish. If we think a bit we will see that we have contributed almost nothing to this beautiful planet. What use are we to this earth if we can’t give anything in exchange for what it is giving us? It was then that I realized that if people want to laugh at me what is wrong in that? I should be proud of myself that at least I am contributing something to the inhabitants of this earth. May be to a minority but still to some people I am giving something. If people can laugh only for sometimes forgetting all their worries and if I am the reason behind it… what’s wrong in that? I stopped caring about it. I laughed with them and surprisingly two things happened.

First my peers understood that there was no use laughing at me because they were not getting the fun as they could not anger me. And second, I became more confident, I knew what to do. I followed my conscience. I did what I thought was right and this rose my self-esteem to a very high level.

So my dear blog readers, if from now onwards, you see people laughing at you, don’t be sad, feel proud that you have contributed something to the world. Perhaps the most precious thing­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­… A beautiful smile on someone’s lips.

Post script: I would like to tell you that I would not have realized this without the help of my respected teacher Suvro sir.(Mr. Suvro Chatterjee.) Thank you sir. I would be always grateful to you.

2. what A society We Live in (March 1st, 2008)

Today morning I got a phone call from a distant cousin of mine. After the general formalities of how do you do and the rest, she asked me about my future plans. When I told her about my plans of taking a LLB course for 5 years and then specialising in environmental law( Thoughts on 19th december 2013:Jesus, I had high hopes back then. I think I sat for CLAT and the results were no doubt miserable.), she exclaimed in horror as if someone have just announced that she is going to die within a few minutes. her point was when am I going to get married if I study for so long!

Surprising isn't it? And still women of this society complain of male supremacy, fight for women rights. Do they really have the right to do so? a woman who can't think anything beyond getting married and adding to the useless population of India, have no right to complain of the patriarchal society.

I think the lower class women are much more independent and self sufficient. Maybe they don't have the sugar coating of morals and etiquette but they are the bread earners of their family. Unlike the so called educated middle class women they don't ask for money from their husbands.

Why shouldn't the men declare themselves to be superior? It is them who work day in and day out to bring the hard earned money and the wives just spend it on kitty parties and shopping.

Though we declare ourselves to be in the age of mini skirts, the range of a women is still to the backyard. They only admire women like Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams from a distance because they are 'extraordinary'. Really what a society we live in where women at the same time complain about male supremacy but are not willing to stand superior to men.Who have stopped them from taking up jobs and leading an interesting life where they can declare themselves as equals to men?

P.S. Probably now I know why I am not a feminist. 

19th December, 2013: People visited my old blog and commented on my posts. I wonder what were my PR skills back then. I have started to think, that may be this blog is just a figment of my imagination. 

A thought on Hemingway

I have just started reading Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not". Hemingway has been my favourite since I was in Class 11 and He has never disappointed me. He is so lucid yet dramatic. The opening chapter of this book, made me wonder, that why haven't any of his novels been made into movies? You can almost imagine the scenes visually as you read through.

Or is it that there are movies made from his stories and I am not aware of it? please do let me know if there are any.  

HOO-AAAH!

That expression tops my list of most-used-word-when-elated for the past few days. I picked it up from the character of Col. Frank from the movie The Scent Of a Woman. The part is played by whom else but Al Pacino.

It’s not the actor or the movie(though the acting is wonderfully flawless and the movie now tops the list of my favourites), but about  the character. The Colonel is a retired army officer, after serving the country for 26 years, and losing his vision. He sits in a room these days, in his niece’s house and drowns himself in about 40 pegs of his favourite “John Daniels”(Jack Daniels whiskey. As he claims, he is an old friend so he lovingly calls him John.).

The first impression of the man is someone very rude. He looks down upon people for being even slightly weak and judges them by their skin. Poor little Charlie, who had come forward to baby sit the blind man on a weekend job for easy money realises within the first 30 seconds of his interaction with the colonel, the money is not going to be really easy.

As we get to know the man better through Charlie’s eyes, we realise that he is really a man of feelings and one with a good heart down there. He puts up this mask of his harsh presence to cover up his shortcoming. To cover up the fact, that he messed it up real bad, when he was at service because he was standing up. Because, he had some principles.

Besides having a strong personality, he has, as he says, a strong liking for women. And a very far second one is Ferraris. He has a talent of telling what perfume the woman has used very accurately. He says he likes all kinds of women: Ones with long hairs, ones with short, and how he would do anything to bury his face in those long curls and sleep forever. He likes women with “big tits as well as small” and he doesn't mind even if the legs are like “Greek Columns” because there is “heaven In between them”. He almost objectifies women, until we get to know the real yearning down his heart: “you know Charlie, what gets me going? The hope that someday I will find a woman, who would wrap her arms around me, and wrap her legs around me, and still be there, smelling like fresh grass, the next morning.”

That changes my perspective of the man. All his life, he has been looking for company. For partnership of that one woman, who is perfect and who will be his. That says something about the man. He could get any woman he wants with that charming powerful personality of his. But if only…

That made me brood about things around me. I have seen people around me who are happily married for over 25 years now. Have they really found their perfect muse? The one with whom they can be perfectly happy? Or is it just another compromise to make themselves believe that they can’t do better? Or have they just given up the hope of getting their dream love and just surrendered to the reality?

A few days back, I was sitting beside the small lake at Lodhi gardens(I often do that because it gives me a certain peace of mind), and I watched two ducks swimming together till the middle of the lake. They seemed like some of the couples who were walking hand in hand on the soft grass ahead of me. And then suddenly, one of the ducks, turned back and started swimming back to join the others, leaving the other one in the middle of the lake. The duck left alone, seemed quite lost.

 It turned it’s head left and right wondering what just happened and then looked at the duck swimming away and gave out a cry, as if saying: “what happened? Why are you leaving me out here?” The other duck just looked back gave a shake of it’s head and continued swimming, as if saying, “you are not the one I was looking for. Move on  buddy.”

It is sad how trivial companionship means these days, or was it always like that? Do my generation really understand the meaning of promises and giving your word to someone? Or is it that my dad’s generation took it too seriously because they knew they had no other choice but to stick to the woman, he has married?

I came across this new term, “casual sex” when I was doing my post graduation from a journalism school. 

Everyone seemed to be or at least appeared to be quite “cool” with having a casual bout of hormones running through them, and they would jump on bed with some random person of the opposite sex, have some “fun” and the next morning they would be strangers. I often wondered is it that easy to just have sex (I would call it intercourse though) with someone without any emotions being involved? Or is it only me who is too back dated to not being a robot? I mean not that I haven’t had sex with people, whom I had no intentions of even dating, but there were emotions involved. I liked the men I took to bed, and we obviously were more than just strangers the next morning.

I always thought that I was not meant for this planet. I have been quite different from most of my peers, (gladly so) and have often been called unhinged or weird. But then as I think about it, alone, but not lonely, staring at the red-orange glow of the cigarette, I just smile and say, HOO-AAAH!! Yes I am different from most of you, and yes I am better.

P.S. this was written originally on 5.6.2013. On reading it now, it seems like I had started it with the intentions of writing a review of the movie, but I ended up just rambling about the thoughts boggling my mind. 

Living With The Black Dog

I recently came across this video issued in public interest by WHO. It is an animation video, talking about how to deal with depression. Depression is the result. Result of what we are going through everyday. What we need to do is find the source, which brings the black dog sniffing back to us. For me, it was the constant fear of living with the fear. The fear of being judged, the fear of facing the truth, the fear of admitting my faults. 

When the black dog, comes to us, it takes away all the happiness that we ever had. It is like a dementor sucking away the last bit of the happy memory left in our mind. And of course we are not that strong to cast a charm to push the black dog away. We let him stay. The black dog is a very possessive and demanding animal. If you let him in  once, he would stay there forever hanging around you and making you believe that he is the only one that you have in your life.

This dog doesn't feed on bones and meat. It feeds on your self-confidence and soon reduces you to a small being who hates him/herself. But he is not selfish, he give something in return, no doubt. He gives you loneliness, dark rainy days and a vision which makes you think everyone but you are happy. Quite a lot I must say.

You slowly start loving that big black animal. So much so that you won’t like to show him to anyone. You are very secretive and possessive about your pet. You start thinking how people might not like your pet and how they would judge you for keeping that pet, so what you do is pretend throughout that you don’t have a pet like that. Little do you realise that you are just making things difficult for yourself. How long can you hide such a huge animal in your own house? The constant emotional lies you tell others and yourself, drives people away from you. You lose your friends, and the people who really love and care for you.

All through this the Black dog is really happy because he is getting all the attention. The loss is all yours. But one day you need to realise that you can’t live your life with a huge black dog, who feeds on your happiness. The sooner you do that the better for you. You should realise that if you had brought home a stray unruly dog and can’t probably throw him back to the streets, you need to tame him. Make him hospitable so that he doesn't take a toll on you. And to do that you need to talk to someone.

I realised that quite late. And of course not by myself. I thought like many others that I did not need to involve any one in to this and I can manage the black dog by myself. But clearly I couldn't.  I was ashamed of a lot of things I have done in my life, but I was never ashamed of admitting that I needed help. I did not seek any help earlier because I thought I was strong enough to tame my black dog.

Now that I have got people to help me and talk to, my black dog is slowly becoming calm and gentler. He has learnt to behave himself, and he now lets me go out with the few friends I have and lets me do stuff I enjoy doing. He is not always sitting over my head these days. There are still days when he becomes the old unruly pet, but I have learnt to deal with that too. After all there will be rainy days.

Many of us have such black dogs taking over our mind. There is nothing to be ashamed of them. They are just a part of our lives and there are ways to control them. The black dogs of our minds are just like the physical difficulties we face sometimes. If you get a fracture, you would go to a doctor to fix it right? In the same way if the black dog visits you too often and starts feeding on you, do visit a counsellor or a psychiatrist. Don’t be ashamed of your black dog. There are ways by which you can tame that huge unruly pet and not let him take over you. Do talk to people and help them help you.