एक कविता माँ के नाम

Image

जब आँख खुली
भुने मसाले की खुशबू
और मेरी माँ
मुझसे कह बैठे
सो जाओ
अभी दोपहर ही है ।

चश्मा नहीं था
पर नज़र आया वही,
जैसे बचपन में कहीं सो जाने पर
खुद को मैं बिस्तर पर ही पाती थी ।

एहसास तेज़ हुआ
माँ धुंधली ही रह गई
अब यहाँ से फिर लौट जाने को
जी नहीं करता ।

Sitting Alone, Thinking About Companionship!

My friends have always complained that I think too much. It can't be helped, thoughts consume me! When I'm not introspecting, I'm wondering about other people, their behaviour, what motivates them to act the way they do...

Is that why I've always been comfortable being alone? I have never felt lonely. To me, solitude equals solace.

In the past few weeks, however, my thoughts have largely hovered around companionship. I'll squarely blame my friends for this! All of a sudden, they seem to be marrying or at least getting engaged. Now how is that supposed to make a single girl feel?

Like a pendulum, I fluctuate.

While I feel relieved for still having many years ahead of me that are mine, I also crave someone who I can chew off in times of need. (Statement open to all forms of interpretation!).

But, it's only natural. Remember how as kids we were taught that human beings are "social animals"? We just aren't meant to live alone. Unlike tigers, who only mingle with their kind in the mating season, humans find it absolutely comforting to be surrounded by loving, caring friends and family. Now, I do have all of that, but the I need more; and I'm pretty sure when I do have more, I'll wish for something else!

Help!

Sometimes I Wish It Never Happened

You haven't truly learnt anything until you share your knowledge and experiences with others.

So I share.

Yesterday night I was chatting with a friend of mine and he asked me a rather uncomfortable question. Well, the question itself wasn't as uncomfortable as the answer.

He asked me whether there was anything I wanted to erase from my life. A question that I have always answered with a boring, "There's always something to learn from unpleasantness"; but this time, I paused and thought.

It did not take me long to figure out exactly what it was that I wanted to discard from my life like an unwanted weed.

I was about eight years old and not very different from other girls my age.

I was also a victim of sexual abuse.

It lasted a couple of years.

Now, you might be having a rather sorry image of mine in your head where I'm little, scared and crying. Thankfully though, that wasn't the case. My age came to my advantage. When you're that young, you don't fully comprehend what's happening to you. I happily sailed through my life and apart from those few tense moments, I was a content, smiling child who laughed the loudest among her friends. 

The real problems arose many years later, when I was in my mid teens. There was a growing awareness within me that I had been sexually abused. My unconscious was always buzzing with what had happened and that resulted in many behavioural and psychological problems. I became a bitter, rude and condescending person. I would frequently get into fights with boys and often went to the extent of beating them up. I was unsympathetic to the needs of others and often made cruel jokes at their expense. I felt disconnected with the other girls. Their supposed emotional and physical weakness disgusted me no end. I ridiculed them for not being able to handle their stupid problems and wondered how they could dwell for so long over insignificant matters.

Of course, with time I realized that I just couldn't continue with such behaviour and thoughts. I tried my best to become more emphatic, developed a softer attitude towards others and worked towards developing a calmer and more mature disposition. After all that hard work, I began to see that my anger had subsided and I had become a more pleasing person to be with. By the end of my teens, I was once again like any other person my age.

However, I was still troubled deep inside. I decided that the best way to get rid of all these teeming thoughts would be to share them with someone. I decided to confide in my closest friend. We talked a lot and came to the conclusion that I would only feel at ease once I revealed everything to my mother.

So, travelling in an autorickshaw one cold winter night, I decided to tell her everything. I started at the very beginning and poured my heart out. By the end of it, I finally felt at peace. From that day forth, I have never had a single unpleasant thought in my head regarding my abuse. It is done and in my past. I do not carry it forward with me.

Of course, I did confront the person in question about his actions. He broke down, apologised and wished he could take it all back.

Well, he can't.

And that is why I sometimes wish this never happened. It would have been a different life.. a different me..

(Anti)Social Networking

Image by ° ρЯίтΛм ° [busy] via Flickr

A former classmate of mine who is on the verge of completing her Journalism degree (that I too had joined but later left, as regulars to my blog might know) recently uploaded a questionnaire to her Facebook account and requested everyone to take time off and fill it up. All for research purposes. Well, this is exactly the kind of thing I love doing.. filling up forms and all that! So I quickly clicked a few buttons and reached the questionnaire. All about social networking sites, how much time I spend online, what I do online etc. Pretty interesting, eh?

Now after answering sixty odd questions, my mind was buzzing with Facebook, Blogger and Youtube. My mind went back to the times when internet was more like a distant reality. Then I thought about the day I got my first computer (class III), the day that computer got an internet connection (class V), the day I created my first email address (again in class V, not to mention the long hours I took to cook up a funky name so that I could appear ten times cooler in front of my friends that I actually was!), the day I joined my first social networking site (Hi5) and so on and so forth. Since then, I have come a long way and so has the internet.

From Hi5, I graduated to Orkut. Hi5 became a thing of the past and it started being looked upon as a site for bacchas. Now, I kinda felt sorry for it. I would imagine a tiny person with "Hi5" instead of a head, sulking away in a corner, sniffing and shedding tears (I have this thing of feeling very sorry for inanimate things. When I was little, I would pick up a spoon to eat with and feel really sorry for the rest, imagining that they would become sad and lonely, and thinking, "Sorry guys, I'll definitely pick you up next time.").

Orkut became all the rage for quite some time. Soon, everybody was battling a silent war, an unspoken war. Everyone wanted more "fans" than their friends, people were obsessed with who visited their profiles, there was competition to be the proud owner of thirty thousand scraps. Of course, I too was taken in by this madness. Luckily, I regained composure quite soon and quit the site the moment reality hit me. Orkut drove many people to their virtual nervous breakdowns.

Life was beautiful after that. I could bask in the sunshine once more and smell the fragrant flowers. The world appeared to be much more pleasant with much less pretence. But BAM! Good things don't last forever! Requests from friends filled my mailbox, asking me to join this "Facebook". I got tired of deleting these godforsaken mails and finally decided to check out the site. A few awkward moments of signing in later (the site was at that time too full of itself, asking totally pointless questions and giving too much importance to all kinds of years like year of birth, year of graduation blah blah..), I was in! Well, I didn't really use the so called "book" for a long time, not until it was amended to become more friendly, warm and approachable (words that were till now used only to describe people!). What do I say now? I am hooked! Yes, I took to "farming" for a while, but then my "plants" died and I started getting withdrawal symptoms (for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, all I can say is you're better off not knowing!). But now I think I have finally found my grey cells and learnt to maintain a delicate balance between real and virtual.

But hey, there are times when the scale tips just a little...

How NOT To Take Care Of Your Mobile

Stupid eh? Yeah, I'm Stupid. Stupid like a fox!

Today I am going to tell you what happens when your brains take a walk.

Time : Early Morning (10 am, haha)

1. Get up

2. Go to the bathroom

3. Place mobile on sink (stupid thing no. 1)

4. *brush* *brush* *brush*...

5. Mobile slides into the sink and mingles happily with the water

6. Grab mobile and fish it out

7. Notice toothpaste stain on mobile

8. Put it back in water and rinse (stupid thing no. 2)