Constant tendency to puke is a disease or physical uneasiness. Same with constant urge to use the toilet. Even unsatiable hunger and sleep are seen as disorders. How is uncontrollable desire to blog considered then? Must be something like crazy! I am likely to be suffering from that crazy streak. I just cant stop blogging despite running short of words! Nothing can quite quench my thirst. My exams or a sprained palm do not stop me from my mission. Perhaps, I should just sit back and knit or something. Or may be just read and dream. I should just somehow stop this writing business and feel light headed. Could somebody buy me a crochet or an engrossing fiction and save the world from this misery!
The 22fk movie!
After long, saw a movie. And perhaps the right movie to see. Twenty two, Female, Kottayam. The title was promising. So was the whole movie experience. This cant be seen as a movie review. Dont set your expectations high.
We decided to go in a group. Cousins and friends and friends of friends. But finally at the eve of going, I could see my cousin’s little cousin missing. The reason that I got really took me aback! The movie wasn’t “suitable” for a girl of her age it seemed! I grew nervous and sweating, wondering if I’m finally all set for an adult movie. What would I tell my parents? Is this what my friends advocated for? I couldn’t find answers for any of those. Then came a more disturbing question. Wasn’t that girl just two years younger than me? And nobody thinks it is inappropriate for me. She had a brother to stop her from it. Nobody actually bothers with me? Well, that should have been rejoicing for me. It’s that sense of freedom that I always ever wanted. But yet, the question was as disturbing as it initially was. I couldn’t let go of my insecurity.
The movie began. We were late but had reserved seats. So the only difficult part was walking through the aisle in the dark, without tripping. (The most scary part of cinemas, actually!) Settling down at my seat, I didn’t know what to expect. I was prepared for anything and everything. Everything was smooth and running. I rationalised that it cant be an adult movie. It wasn’t to be on show. Ofcourse, there’s a censorship. I was relaxing. Intermission. I was at peace. Not about the movie. But about the initial disturbing questions. I had answers to all of them.
The movie was inappropriate for the girl not because of its sexuality. Censorship cannot be exercised over the inappropriate content either. There wasn’t anything explicit. It’s the theme what shouldn’t be exposed to “kunju manassu”(innocent minds, quoting her). Betrayal and it’s effects are what should be kept away from a child’s innocence. Not sex or sensuality.
Are you a mentally stable and normal person? Or do you scream in the public road? Do you yell out of desperation?
Do you find it difficult to distinguish between pain and no pain? The movie is a normality test. If you can manage to retain as much peace of mind, after the movie, as you had before the movie, then you are probably a very normal person. But any exception might imply otherwise. Lol. I’m not scaring anyone. But reality doesn’t seem far from it.
The fear of being violated. The gripping insecurity. The irreplaceable trust despite the betrayal. The willingness to forget and move on but never forgive. Nobody would define these as normal. And btw normal people could never define abnormality. Vice versa holds too!
Koothara!
So what’s koothara? For a very long time, koothara was a malayalam slang which could simply imply anything from naughty to nasty. I could never bring myself to bother much around the implications, coz there were too many more such incomprehensible words in my expanding colloquial vocab! But suddenly, koothara makes sense to me. Very much enlightened kinda sense. May be it was always meant so only. But just occurred to me that, may be, it is something like “koodiya thara” – Very cheap.
Did you just think that somebody called me “koothara” or very cheap? Or did you even think that I am so cheap to be even writing about this? Seriously. I dont care what you think. But ultimately, its thoughts that matter. So I would like to clarify thoughts here. I may or may not be addressed so..(Yeah, I have no intention of disclosing such info!). The point is…well do you see any point here? Guess not. I can hardly make sense, let alone any point! Why are you still reading? There ain’t any point here. Nothing at all. Its just one of my usual blabbering. Would that have been a better title than “koothara’? I don’t think so. This is absolutely about the ‘koothara’ that I am, or anybody else is. You think otherwise? Like hell it matters!
Adieu! To all koothara-ism that was entertained till moment. I am so fucked by this and that and the umpteen implications.
The moment of death!
Ammu, ingu varu. Vellathina entha thanuppu!. Varam. Thirakal enne vilikkan varum ippo. (Ammu, come over. The water is so cold! – Yeah, coming. Let the waves come welcome me.)
She waited. With her overpowering adamance, she willed the waves to come kiss her feet and grace her path by their transient silvering. The sea shimmered out of defiance that she failed to notice. The yellow glow was mesmerising and the sun turned a bright red of anger. She was obsessed by the sea and the sight that adorned her evenings. Little did she know to care about the uneasiness that her adamance created in the sea and the waves and the sun and her evening bounty! “Ingane anangathe avida thanne nikkano nee beach ennum paranju njangale koode kootiyathu?”. “Aswadikkan ellavarkum oro karanangal. Ennalle?” (Did you bring us over to the beach to simply stand by the shore? – Everybody have their means of joy, don’t they?) She said, laughing out to her companions. The turbulence always took out a calm facade over her, thoughts buried at abysmal depths. The sea has now turned a charming red. She inched forward to the sea and stared at the waves killing eachother to reach the shore. Jumping over one another, slowing others down, rising high in the air, they are rushing to hit ashore and lick the feet of umpteen adamant bitches and bastards, washing away their sins and ignorance. She was composed for one moment, and the next moment saw
her dashing into the waves to thaw in them. Death was charming; as much as the red evening sky and the expanse of the water and waves. She was so drawn into death that she’d let him ride on her. As if shaken from a trance, she crawled backed to the shore. Waving at her awestruck companions, she was whispering to herself. An inaudible utterance from the brain to the conscious self. “This is the moment of death. And he’s arousing me!”
“Amma, aa phone ingedukkuvo?” “Enthinappo ammu! Athinoode pani pidippikkano?” (Amma, could you get me the phone? – Why now? You want to make it sick too eh?) Bathing in public is too far fetched a desire for a girl of her age. But getting wet in the rain doesn’t seem too wrong. Relishing every drop of rain that hit her face, she went on a dancing spree, forgetting the warning stares from her dad. Splashing water with her legs, it was a coming back of her childhood, heralded by the cheer of the downpour. Craning her neck upwards, she was looking at the beginning of the silver threads that came down from the white expanse above. The fine drops at the end of every silver line, caressed her cheeks and kissed her lips, melting into her. The wind was blowing hard shaking every tree she could see. “Current povuo entho!”, (Would there be a power cut?) “Thamassalle sughapradam achamme” (Wasn’t darkness always the better company grandma?). She wanted to say but her mom was quicker. “Illamme. Inverter undallo.” Yeah. There’s an alternate source. More questions popped in her mind. How long would the inverter last? What if the power never returns? What if the sun fails or the earth stops to rotate? Darkness would prevail all over; omnipresence! Eyes were shut close as something was thrusted against them. She felt them to be heavy rain drops and willed to open her eyes. Water was still showering upon her, forcing her eyes to be shut. Fear engulfed her as death lingered in the corners of her shut eyes. She feared to move. She feared to touch anything. She feared death. The moment of
death. His powerful embrace that could rape and banish her existence. The moments count down. Till the moment of death!
The growth!
I’ve grown. I dont know how big. But I do have grown. May be a bit. Or a bit more. Or a bit less. It doesn’t count as long as I actually have grown. Growth is gradual. Biological, mental, psychological. Whatever may growth be relative of, growth is slow but irreversible.
How to define growth here? Sleeping in between parents and then moving on to sleeping alone is growth to me. Moving on from us to me. From home to ‘my’ room. From tv to computers. From mail to chat. From friends to ‘a’ friend. Dosas to pizza. ‘Boost’ to coffee. Salwar to jeans. From reading to writing. Crying to yelling. Truth to lies. Trust to betrayal. Living to existing. Memories to reality. Orkut to Facebook.It’s all growth to me. Moving on is growth.
Did I get confused between change and growth? This was all about change. So much about growth too. May be it suggests growth and change coincide. May be. May be not. Growing to change and changing to grow. From what you are to what you should be. From what you want to what you deserve. That defines it. I’ve grown. And changed. From a calm docile creature to a woman who can reap comments like, “Ee penkutti entha ee cheyyunne!”. (What the heck is this girl doing!)
Growth from sleep to sleeplessness.
Chachummai!
My mom is employed. I have never thought anything about it. She goes to office every morning. And comes back home every evening. That was all about it. But suddenly, I’m extremely grateful that my mom has got a job. That she was busy and couldn’t stay with me all the time. I missed my mom. A lot. But never beyond compensation. She used to come home with hot samosas and ice candy. Whatever time she had, she always spent it with me. I was a happy kid. Just the usual happy happy childhood. But then, was I just plainly happy or was I more?
This is not about my mom. This is about my chachummai (Sarswathi ammai, shortened by a kid’s accent). She was ammaammai (mother’s mother) to my cousins and my sis, but always chachummai to me. After long, I felt an instant intimacy brewing between us. Or may be, only within me. We sat together. My chachummai, my twin cousin lechu and me. She was with a new assignment for both of us. Testing our Tamil vocab and language skills, she was reciting verses from the SriMurugan calendar (her trademark, if I may add). She wanted us to explain them to her, in senthamizh! It was a come back for me. From a dark vicious episode of mental imbalances and my innate insanity, I felt all normal and peaceful.
May be it’s her age. May be it’s her calm self. May be it’s her drawing charm. May be it’s just nothing but the closeness I have with her. When with her, the inner turmoil may not vanish. But it definitely stays away and gives me room to breath.
Back to where I started. I was a bit more than the usual happy happy kid. All my Mom’s absence was filled with my fonder chachummai! Absence makes the heart fonder indeed!
Writing on..
Why am I not sticking to my new year revolution? I should be posting something everyday. But I am not. Not alternative days. Not even once a week. This is absurd. I should be writing often. I have readers. And I have things to write. Why not then! Recently, I’ve been pushing my friends into blogging as well. And what they keep telling me is something like, writing always demands a drive. Something like a strong and extreme emotion or mental state that stirs the uneventful existence. They tell me nothing of that sort happens in their lives and hence they cant write. In a nutshell, they tell me they aren’t as sorrowful and as pathetic as I’m right now.
Is my depression mode the drive to my writing spree? I dont assume so. I always wrote. And I always will write. The past was successful and the future is promising. It’s the present that I’m uncertain of. I dont know if I actually want to write this. I dont even know if I’m actually writing this or just imagining that I’m typing this. Was I not just discussing about file pointers and object oriented programming a while before? But now am I writing? Or typing? I’m confused. It cant be me writing. I am not supposed to be writing. Writing needs a drive and at the moment, I’ve none. I’m not crying my heart out. Not laughing my heart out either. I’m not particularly at the height of my emotions. Practically feeling nothing other than the stink and damp in the room.
Looks like I can still write. Feeling ecstatic about the idea of not feeling anything, I can still narrate a million stories and sing a million verses. I’d never grow enough to grow tired of them. I may go blank. But never emptied. I may be out of my mind. But never out of words. I’m on with writing. Writing on..
Repentance
Blog has become my new mode of communication. So here I share a thought. A thought of extreme repentance and guilt that I feel about things I did today. This specific day, whoever interacted with me and my obstinance, just know this. I’m deeply regretting everything I did to all of you today. If there’s anything in my power to undo anyone of them, I’d have priced it more than my life and change my actions of cruelty. I’m extremely sorry for the day and the pain. And the grief. And the trouble I caused. But there’s no power at all. I beg for forgiveness and mercy.
Seasoned!
I may not be a seasoned writer. Ah! That’s never the point here. That was so randomly stated just to go along with the title.Seasons are just so praised and so visualised as if they were the nature’s most true essence. Truly though, they indeed are something so. Poetry and literature, as I’ve always seen dearly embraced seasons and the change they symbolise. From summer to monsoon. To spring. And to winter. (I bet I got the order wrong!) The transition has been ever so slow and steady. The blunt curves of temperature and drooping scale of humidity. Seasons always mesmerise, with the awesome relativity we tend to establish with human lives. So much so, I’ve fallen in love with the word ‘rithu’ (In Malayalam, meaning season). Seasons are long. And take large radius curves to never let us feel the abrupt change. Truly a process of gradual transition. And hence it feels awkward human lives are compared to seasons.
People dont change so gradual. The sharp edges of moving on with things pierce everything around us. People are like weather. Short lived, miniature of seasons. The transience is so much similar to people and their contrasting thoughts, that change over an year, a month, even over a single night. Ah! That’s why you have fair weather friends and not fair seasoned ones!
These are a lot more about seasoned. I am really loving those yummy yummy seasoning over my double cheese pizza. I’m planning on making it something like my staple food or so! Rotflol. But idiotically, the primary seasoning that I was referring to, here, was the one that I caught recently in Hindi soap operas. However though, I dont follow the language and yet the ‘season’ was so obvious! Well the season was just about how romance blooms between the protagonists and how that ends up in the usual Indian style dimming of lights and kissing dolls!
The double decker!
A double decker bus doesn’t fascinate people much these days. Or may be I’m wrong about that. I dont see my sister or my little cousins desperate for a double decker ride. Compare to what it used to be for me or people of my generation, it’s not much wrong to say that people in the present dont find it enough interesting to travel a level above others on the road. And I wonder why! Come on people! Doesn’t that feel (or atleast sound) really cool? But then, it’s not completely right when I say people, as a whole, aren’t fascinated by the idea of it. There are still people, may be of a different generation, who still find it scary, (and funny), when someone shouts that there’s no driver in the upper deck! Why not? I’m still there!
My double decker experiences are as few as to count by fingers. But, every single one of them are cherished and relived as the most precious segments of my travelogue!(if ever written :P) The best part of it is, obviously, the journey on the upper deck. Ironically, that’s just once in my constrained memory. The most memorable!
The Last Straw 