2am: What are you doing? Talk to me na..

Circa - 2014

I was young, full of fiery quotes, rebellious and extremely dreamy - my ears would buzz with nightmares if I sat in a boring class for a long time.

I was in a Media Science course, first year - when this internship dropped. I got called in - an institute of Public Relations (not taking names because my professors in media taught me right - no promotion is bad promotion). Everything was super easy to start with. They named the internship Public Relations, but the whataboutery went on to interviewing musicians - basically I learnt everything except Public Relations in there. 

The real problem started when the manager (or secretary? can't remember his designation, but I clearly recall his face) started to be extra friendly. I had two other friends from the internship programme; we would hang around together. When the manager couldn't get through my phone, he would try the other friend's phone for me. He did vice versa to get through to other people as well.

I was young, scared and most importantly, thought it was normal. No one told me then. I'd play along.

2am, 3am, the calls started getting to midnight - when I slept off, I'd wake up to calls next morning asking why I didn't receive. Same, exactly same, for all the other female members in that internship. Sadly, the guys didn't get his 'affectionately overwhelming' attention.

It lasted two months. And I gave up. I stopped taking his calls - I gave a fuck that time because my internship was getting over. Oh, before I forget, there was a not-so-mild threat of not giving me the internship certificate because, apparently, 'I was being inattentive.'

Right after my internship ended, I closed doors. I blocked the contact, stopped the calls, texts and social media.

Circa 2015 - One of my acquaintance was interning with the next batch - same institute, same secretary. She told me one day, the secretary 'specially' works with her - sometimes the calls start around 3am, goes on till 5am. She didn't sleep for days..

The Other Side Of The Wall - Brick 4

You ever feel like time's running out? And when it does, everything you hold too dear, too close slips off?

Weird. I have never ever felt like it. Maybe with this lockdown, I have too much time, maybe with my work sabbatical, I have time to stretch my eyes off the digital lights of the damned laptop and stare and gape at the sky longer - and I can consider things a lot better, little longer.

I have been living my best life without work. I wake up in afternoons, I am watching films I have kept stalled since forever, I am reading pieces off the internet, cooking, laughing while sipping homemade wine and what not!

But hell starts to break loose when I check the time. 1.30pm.. I'm getting my heartbeat faster. 3.30pm.. I am count-downing. 5.30pm.. I want to run to the balcony and let the last air of the lit sky hit me. 7pm.. It's getting dark and my panic attacks come back to invade. 9pm.. I officially lose it. What follows, is choked up cries, howling behind my palms pressed to my face while I watch my dinner boil on the pan. 11pm.. I feel helpless and by 2am, I sleep on a pool of tears.

I don't know what brings it - I have spent afternoons decoding my own behavior, helplessly scurrying through plans to feels better, trying to search for a pattern, trying to talk it out - but it all returns.

Sometimes when I am in my balcony at 6pm and the sun has already set, the lights are getting dim, the people from the adjacent terraces start to descend their stairs - I want to bit my lips and press my nose to stop it from pinching my skin. I want to grab the sun by its head and bring it back to the sky; right on top of my head and buy more time. I can't stand it getting dark. I can't stand the balconies and the terraces getting empty. And most importantly, I feel I am losing out time.

Weird. I have never ever felt like it. Now all I can think of is this.

(Rest for another day..)

The Other Side Of The Wall - Brick 3

I have been living on realisations now.

I took a sabbatical from work. Crazy, you'd think! Specially when the world economy is all over the place, the biggest of the corporates are firing their force over petty Zoom calls, when companies are shutting down, salaries are getting deducted, people are 'asked' to stay home without money - Why on earth, I, someone who just trashed her one and half years of experience in a field to start afresh as a writer, take a sabbatical. Why I, a petty writer, making a life out of writing drafts for people noone cares about, make my employers see the vulnerable part of not needing me in their job? Why me, someone who is not good at her job for starters, would make myself more useless?

The answer is, peace of mind.

I had dreamt of a vacation, not because I need to be those hashtag wanderlust kinda Instagram picture-perfect influencers talking about climate change while sipping coffee in Santorini, but someone who can sleep peacefully. Someone who wants to sit in her locked up house and watch the sun rise and have the luxury of running to the terrace to let the first chirp of birds hit my eardrums, the first cold wind of the day before it starts to get unapologetically hot to hit the face, and come back to my bed to my well-lit room and find a cover for my eyes and sleep off till afternoon. Without alarm is the word you're looking for.

And these four days of sabbatical made me look into so many things that I have taken granted ever since. I see my partner waking up before me to get me the first tea of the day, I see him staying awake to massage my feet because second day of menstruation, I see the opposite terrace has a guy - worn out hair, always with a kite and talking in sign language to another girl on the terrace to his right - that other day I saw him tendering to a pegion. He slowly took it out of the cage, rubbed something on its wings and kept it back. I see how the ever polluted grey skies of Delhi is invaded by kites now. And whoever doesn't have a kite, they tie strings to a plastic bag and let it fly to the direction of the wind. This other day I went to the balcony and saw a huge textured cloud, my partner beside me stared at it and said, "You know people of Delhi only get to see such beautiful clouds on flights, and here we are, not paying a fare and looking out of the balcony."

The balcony to my right has all the access to a sunset, this other day I saw a whole family sitting on their terrace and staring at it - I wonder when was the last time I did that, get my whole family to the terrace and make them silently stare at a fleeting sunset.

I am cooking, exploring, and watching movies so much more. Cliche, you'd say. Well, not for me. I, who wakes up half hour before my shift starts and shakes at the thought of work, gets into a panic attack till I need my back to be rubbed to get my normal breathing back, this sabbatical of doing unimportant and unimpactful things isn't a cliche for me, it's a breather.

So here I am, putting my job and my earnings to a risk, because I need to sleep without alarm. And I will, always, do that again in a heartbeat.

(Rest for another day...)

The Other Side Of The Wall - Brick 2

I am facing a lockdown, for the first time in life. It has done a lot of changes:

My mother, who always thought she has my back, is paranoid for the first time. For starters, I have never ever seen that woman paranoid. She is independent, fully financially stable, takes care of the whole house all by herself, takes the decisions, she can come home from work at 9 in night, wash her face and wrap a saree again to go to the market because, I wanted brinjal fry and we have run out of brinjals - that woman is shaking and calling every day and asking me if there is some way I can come home. She is a healthcare professional and she knows the better - I guess we all ditch logic for the ones we love.

My father - a fiercely liberal man who can make some phonecalls and arrange for eggs for my home in Delhi, sitting in Durgapur, Bengal is helpless. Last time he called me, he spoke about how much he hates the Government. He spoke about his helplessness because what if I run out of satinisers now, how will he arrange. He spoke about how he thinks we will get a cure soon - how can humans reach the moon and still not come up with a cure. Crazy! But most of all, it makes him mad to think he doesn't have the option of arranging a ticket for me to go home. Classic dads!

My grandmother smiles the most when I call. When I video call her, she cries the most, too. She wants to tell me all that she knows - how in the recent storm, the neighbour's tree fell on our terrace, how she wants to play ludo with me but she can't find the dice, how badly she wants me to go home and cook for her. This woman who spent all her life either feeding her kids or her grandchildren, and now her grabdchildren's dog, has no clue where to put her anger. But she wants to - so she cries. She wants me to 'video casette' her every night, because she can hear my voice and see my lips moving. God I miss her and how! I ardently remember, everytime my grandmother used to cook fish, she'd smell of this stench of fish from her saree. I'd be asleep by the time she'd come to lie down beside me, and the stench would wake me up. I, who can't take that stench and also didn't want to hurt her saying that, would tell her to play ludo with me instead. Afternoons, I'd let her win. Night, she'd win it herself. My grandmother, who spend all her life feeding kids and her grandchildren, waits for me to go home and cook french toast for her. She says, 'Your mother makes them fine, but nothing like you.' 

I, stuck in an unfamiliar city that's slowly settling on me, try to take things one day at a time. The affected cases crossed the 20,000 mark. I made a mental note recently, the day the official records show 4,000 deaths in India, I'll lose faith. I'll finally settle for the fact that India has officially come to the road to Italy.

__________

I can't stop dreaming though. Sometimes my work gets tougher than usual. I cry more than I work, on days. I live for the weekends, I love for the time outside work, I can't think of shutting my laptop when I start to work. And I can't stop dreaming. This other day, I had a major daydream attack - it's a thing.

I was writing a story, and in the middle, I couldn't shake off a scene from the hills. I kept walking in the cold studded roads of Lava, extremely uphill, panting, the snow-cold air hitting my face, my teeth shivering and flushing my face of the cold red, I kept walking uphill. I was out of breath, I could see the Buddhist colourful flags swaying in the wind from far, some dimly-lit souvenir shops open on my both sides, like the smell of rain on a summer night the smell of pork thupka kept hitting my nostrils, I kept walking uphill.

I can't stop dreaming of Kolkata. My well garbaged lanes, the vegetable vendors screaming out the rates, the sun hitting the top of your heat and making the sweat drip from your eyebrows, men and women pushing you out from the sidewalk, the rickshaws blaring their honks, the cars stuck in a jam, I kept walking. Through that vegetable market, the smell of well crushed wheat from a nearby mill hit my senses, the traffic signal gets more confusing, the buses come and stop right next to me, I kept walking.

I can't stop thinking. I can't freaking stop dreaming in this pandemic.

(Rest for another day..)

The Other Side Of The Wall - Brick 1

I shifted to Delhi in the heat of a moment. I was done with Bangalore, its rush, its no old world charm, its busy traffic, hustle and its food. I was done. I would have shifted long back if I wouldn't have fallen in love.

It was beautiful for a while. This guy, I knew from an University entrance day, where neither of us got through - but we got through to each other.

2016- I tried for this University and failed. In the sturbborn-est of decisions, I ended up for a waiting list call, far off in Hyderabad. I didn't get through, though I walked till the last 4 people to have got rejected. But I met this guy, a nice guy from Kerala - literally the first Malayali I ever befriended. Though the years we kept in touch.

I enrolled myself in Santiniketan while he got through another University in Kerala. I fell in love here, another Malayali. And it was so intense, I rose in that love for a while. But sometimes, things get better only to get worse. It fell apart. Thats for another day!

Anyway, jump to 2018. I had just finished my Masters, I was struggling in an unfamiliar city, unfamiliar people, a start-up job where people didn't know basic things like 'modesty', 'respect' and everything that comes with it. And we met again, this University guy. We have ever since been together.

I had this old friend in Bangalore, literally a stone throw distance from my house. Like at midnight, I'd call him up to lend me his toothpaste. When my boyfriend moved out of Bangalore, me and my school friend would always hand around together. Midnight coffee shops, long walks, smokes, complain about bad South-Indian dinner. I guess he was the worst hit when I moved to Delhi. I remember he came to drop me off to the bus station and for once he didn't smile. I was his only friend there. That guy worked like an animal the whole day, only took a break to walk to a teashop with me. I think he was the worst hit.

When I moved to Delhi, I loved it for a while. All touristy, finger smacking oily food, huge monuments whose top we could see from our terrace, I struggled with the language though, I still do.

2020- I joined a new job - for the first time ever, my parents were happy. I moved on from Public Relations finally. I joined journalism. Now either you can say I'm whining or you can hear me out. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, stuttered by my nightmares - I dreamt of my office.

(Rest for another day..)

Little girl in that wooden house

The last time I went to the Himalayas was in 2017.

With a lover I don’t call mine anymore, with friends I don’t talk to anymore, with a camera I didn’t touch for a year now, with a love for frames that is choked by its throat in my small corporate desk now.


Last time I went to the Himalayas was in 2017.


The first time I went there, I was a kid, trading the age of 5-6, on my father’s lap, in the seat beside the driver of the jeep that snaked to the top. I vaguely remember.
I vaguely remember the hairpins, the rocks, the cliff that I hung my head out of the window to, the never-ending rocks on the other side with mosses, plants and flowers, the clouds that would just enter on the way and turn the view from the windsheild white. Perfect surrender to nature.

I vaguely remember the car would stop once in a while for the driver and my father needed a smoke and I would hold my mother's hand and walk near the cliff. We had a old reel camera then, my mother would pose with me, I'd smile.

I vaguely remember we passed localities, wooden houses half made, the dwellers walking with huge logs, sometimes a gang of goats would crowd the road ahead, the car would go slow following them till they dispersed. Perfect surrender to situation.

I remember the whole trip vaguely, but there was this small girl, perched on top of one of the wooden house's half made first floor, I saw her through the bamboos placed straight, waiting to be made into a room, with her sister or maybe mother with a book and laughing. Somehow our jeep slowed down there infront of her house, I saw her face distinctly. A small girl of most likely 1 or 2 years, still growing her mouthful teeth, her dangerously straight  hair sticking out of her two polytails on both sides, wearing a frock that had wild flowers printed, small hands holding the book, laughing with the women beside. I remember her eyes, small eyes with big eyelashes, hardly visible through ber wide eyelids. And in that wisp of the moment when my car passed and she looked up, she smiled. By the time I could smile back, the jeep has picked up speed again, and I lost her. And in my heart of a 5 year old, it brought a surge of sadness. Then we went places, villages, we came back, I grew up, I went to the hills many a times, but she stayed in my head.

I passed that roadway to the top some three times from the first year I visited, I never saw that house, or maybe I did. Maybe the house has changed it’s colour, maybe the first floor was no more a makeshift of bamboos but a room, maybe she grew up and looks different. Or maybe she left.

I vaguely remember, but she never left my mind.

I passed people cutting logs of wood, and wondered, is that her father?

I passed sheep crowding the way ahead, and wondered, does she own them?

I passed houses, hairpins, sunsets, cities and she never left my head.

Eighteen years from then I went to the hills, and made newer memories. I lost the people, passion, the love, the friendship. Two years from losing everything that I once went to the hills with, it still doesn’t affect as much as that little girl does.

What happened to that little girl in that wooden house?

Inter-caste

In this country of imposed Hinduism, I was fiercely in love with a Muslim.


I have got nothing against Hinduism. I have got nothing against religion.
I have, however got everything against the vandalism circling it.

I had just joined a course where I chanced upon this guy. A muslim, an announced anti-nationalist who'd been through prison only because he refused to stand up for national anthem in a movie theatre; because patriotism is real, only when it is shoved down your throat.
A muslim, I didn’t realise when I fell in love with.
A human, who the world doesn’t realise the Muslims to be.

We were in our own world, a room in Santiniketan, a roof with windows on all sides when it rained.
I was trying to stare at the rainclouds when he brushed my hair off my face and said, ' You know what our love is like?'

I said, 'Rain?'

He smiled, 'No. Petrichor. Rain is usual. Petrichor is the smell that the soil gives out as a thank you for saving it from breaking down. Rain saves the soil. Petrichor is the announcement.’

I smiled.

He murmured randomly, 'Can we name our daughter, Petrichor?'

I sat, jumped up on the bed,' Are you thinking of..?'

He cut me short, 'A future? Yes. So?'

And I remember I broke down. I cried and told him, 'We can't. Maybe in a parallel universe where there is no religion, where there is no riot when a Hindu and a Muslim marries, there we will have a petrichor and let her thrive.’

He didn’t say anything. He held me and kept staring at the rain.
________________________________

I had just joined as an intern in a company, a friend of mine worked there. We had been friends for a long time and she knew of my lover; she knew all the insecurities I was trespassing on to be in love.

It was my first day in that office. She took me out with her colleagues to a coffee shop, and dare me call that a mental abuse, made me say the name of my lover, and repeat his surname like thrice, so she can ridicule me infront of her colleagues; people I was meeting for the first time in my life.


This same friend, called me on my birthday, and even before wishing me, asked, 'Is your lover with you? Will your father get a heart attack when he comes to know of him?'

Now I don’t know if I am patient or self demeaning, I still didn’t cut her off from life, only before a month.
______________________________

I still remember the first night I stayed at my lover's place. We were sloshed, very close and I remember he pressed my face into his chest and cried.

When I asked, he said, 'Why did you have to be from another religion? Why can’t we be together?'

I don’t remember what I said, only that I pressed my face deeper into his chest and cried.

______________________________

I had a classmate, the kind of guy who’d say I'm sinful if I had pork, who'd say I'm going to go hell, if I fancied having beef.

That same classmate, I hated with all my might, not for being ridiculously religious, but for priding upon his pea-sized mentality; he told me once I'll die painfully if I am in love with a Muslim, being a Hindu.

When I asked him to give me a elaborate explanation on his stupidity, he couldn’t.
Mind you, he holds a Masters degree from the same Central University I studied in.

Guess you can’t judge education in degrees or universities.

_____________________________

In this country of failed Hindus who preach of the religion and don’t even understand any bit of its meaning, I was fiercely in love with a Muslim.