Me. My Laptop. My Coffee.

When I was a kid, my mom used to enrol me in summer schools just so I’d be out of her and my grandmother’s collective hair for a couple of hours. On one year, me and my younger cousin went to the same summer school in Good Shepherd. And after summer school, my aunt would pick us up and take us to her place until the evening when my mom would collect me on the way back from work (a lot of picking and collecting I’ve been through I know). So in my aunt’s parents’ place I spent half a summer. It was the kind of house that a kid would love, an old house with a porch swing and a garden and little secrets that only the very young and the very old know. My cousin was lucky in that all of his cousins lived together or atleast close by. I never had that gift/luxury. In summer, they would all play together and sometimes put up little skits or dances for the elders. So this half summer, I got to watch them as they practised. I don’t remember this ‘playing the audience’ being a frequent phenomena but I just remember this one time, sitting on the bed after a nice fattening lunch, watching sleepily with my younger cousin and his other cousin- a girl my age- as the slightly older cousins practised dancing for a Rajnikanth song “Style from Basha” if i remember right. That weekend they would put up their performance for the family, so they needed it to be just right. You might wonder whats with all the cousins and the cousins of cousins in this post. This story is about the other cousin, the girl my age who sat and watched the dance with me.

She was just another extended relative I never thought about, someone on the borders of the well-defined part of your family. I just knew she was around my age. I never realized she was the same age, studying the same grade until both of us joined the same school in 11^th and got put into the same class. It was nice for a while and then fights happened and a lot of bitching until we just stopped being so close. Once a year or so I would visit the old house for Navratri for her grandmom kept an awesome kolu and we would catch up with each others lives. And after that one day, we would go back to our separate ways and not think of each other for another year. I met her just before I was coming to the US and that was the last I saw her.

This May she gets married and all I could remember when I heard of it was the little girl watching the dance sitting next to me. A lot of my not-quite-so-close friends are already married. I wasn’t invited so i would just hear of them after they had happened from some friend or friend of a friend in our girl gossip sessions. But this other cousin is the first from my DAV set to get married and I think the first sorta close friend to do so, so it feels like the end of an era to me, like the day you throw away your first pair of jeans. Marriage has always been something in the distant future, something on the other side, other side of what i cant tell you coz now I am 22 and it is not even the other side of the decade like I would have said 2 years back. But it is still something behind the glass in the fogs of the crystal ball for me, something that comes up only in beaches when some old palmist would pester me and my friends into giving in for a palm reading session and then would voo us with handsome husbands who would bend to our every will and let us rule their hearts and homes. And yet I see it slowly creeping in, my friends suprising me every now and then in conversation with stories of alliances and engagements. It scares me, this change. This is unfamiliar territory now. Where and what would we be if one of us got married? What would be the boundaries? Would we still meet up once in a while to gossip about the people we know, collapsing into giggles every few seconds, snapping supposedly candid pics of ourselves? Would i still be able to walk into my friends’ homes with the same ease, call at all times of the night to crib about my latest heartbreak? I don’t know if guys go through this same feeling of boding when their friends get married. The one guy pal I’ve brought up the topic with is eager to get married as soon as he finds a job, so I assume not as much.

So i sit here on my slept in bed, the sheets still tangled, with my laptop and my coffee and the crumbs next to me of the brownie I ate last night that my friends got for me (awesome friends I have, no?) wondering how our lives would be in a couple of years. It would be odd at first I know, but soon we would ease into our lives with our busy schedules, no time to wonder, except on lazy Friday mornings when we have no work, and all we have for company is a laptop and coffee.

P.S. Whenever I am confused or frustrated about life, there is one person’s blog i turn to. And somehow the latest post on it would reflect the same feelings I am going through. It is nice, in a non-creepy coincidential way, to know I am not the only one going through this process of growing up. This time, it wasn’t one of the latest posts but one of the older ones on the same blog that echoed my state of mind now. The blog is this  and the post is that. I am eternally grateful to Praveen for introducing me to eM's blog. It is one that has seen me through several a tough time. To girl power!

A moment to ponder and eat our words

I’ll go first.

In 11^th grade, i had a frenemy whom everyone loved to hate. I think our problem was that she was this exotic creature, so different from all of us, and so much more difficult to understand. So what we couldn’t understand, we termed as dangerous, bad, ‘unculturely’, thus following the footsteps of so many before us who name the unfamiliar as opposed to culture. Her family was one of the cool ones. Her dad would let her drink a little if he and his friends were having a party and she was around. She would wear the real hot dresses we could only dream about what with our awkwardly teenage bodies. She would hang out with guys, she would do a lot of stuff that we weren’t allowed to. So in our jealousy and narrow mindedness, we thought being one of the familiar majority gave us the right to sit on our high chairs and declare that she was not really a nice person. Maybe she really was not nice. Or maybe that had a lot to do with the way we treated her. But a few years hence, when i was on the other side of the pub door and i was making my choices and discovering the ones i wanted to keep and the ones i felt not so comfortable with, and while this adventure of novelty was going on, people decided it would be in the best utility of their time to judge me, i realized i didn’t like it so much. I realized i was doing the same things that i had dissed a couple of years back. The same and more, maybe. Atleast i was old enough to know my way around people. But that only made me feel more guilty for the cruelty we indicted when we were school kids.

I loved school. I loved being one of the popular girls. I loved people loving me and knowing my name and teachers showing me off and generally being nice to people. I really was nice. And i tried a lot to be nice because before i became one of the popular girls, i was this super shy, super sensitive girls who always ended up getting hurt. I swore i’d never do that to another person. But then despite my best intentions, i did ended up hurting a lot of people. Sometimes just by standing by. To my defense though, there were times when people a lot older than me and who should have a lot more sense but didn’t were the ones inflicting the cruelty. And there wasn’t much i could do in cases like that. Like the time 4 girls got caught cheating on an exam (i think it was a second time offense for one of the girls) and after giving up on advising them, my class teacher decided it would be best to make sure their evil spread no further. So she made the 4 of them sit in the very last row and moved everybody else’s benches away from them so they formed a little island to themselves. Soon 3 of the girls jumped ship and it was just this one girl, the 2 time offender all alone. None of us knew anything about her. We’ve seen her talk to boys (the one cardinal evil in a girls school), mostly friends of her elder brother but a sin never the less. We knew the teachers hated her because she always was this firebrand they never could get to. She wasn’t particularly friendly so none of us ever felt the compulsion to stand up for her. Atleast i didn’t. I didn’t even know her so i wasn’t going to go out of my way to vouch for her/ give her a makeover/turn her into a new leaf shit they show on movies. So i just stood aside and watched the drama. The girl left school. I have no idea where she is now. And i don’t know what prompted me to remember her after so many years. I hope what my very Catholic school did, left no scars behind.

People who know me know i hated the 2 years of DAV and loved my high school. But while my high school was great, they weren’t above this judgementalism, if that is even a word. All these years later i wonder if there was ever a point to moral science classes, if not a lot of non-practical bull shitting. I still remember being taught how a girl should be modest, how you should never show off and if your work is good enough you will be recognized for it. No good has ever come to me from being modest. In fact it is one moral that has been nothing but harmful to me all these years. But that deserves a post by itself. Anyway, to cut a long story short, all these years later i wish we’d been taught an entirely different set of values and not judged so much on how we dressed or who we spoke to. Those were probably dangerous lessons to teach to kids in high school- that you had the right to decide how people should behave and the right to punish them if they weren’t to your liking.

Over the years, i’ve done my share of criticizing the things i didn’t understand- NRIs, my classmates who want to get married early, Vijay's acting skills, Indian education system... You only have to read my old posts  to realize how much ranting I've done on this blog. And yeah you can go ahead and call me a hypocrite. Even my mom, who is the one person i admire the most and who is probably the most tolerant person i’ve ever seen, isn’t above her share of prejudices. And while i don’t begrudge you your prejudices, most of which probably arise from gross generalizations of painful personal experiences, i will hate you if you try to enforce them on me. Life has this tendency of making you eat your own words and i don’t think any of us ‘are in a position to diss anything without having tried it first.’ (courtesy: The Mad Momma)

What got me started on this post? I was reading this awesome note on FB by a friend of a friend on why he hates V-day. And everything was great until he said something along the lines of V-day is a western phenomenon and it is only the west that needs days to honor relationships because they really don’t respect and value relationships otherwise. Since it is not part of rich culture, we must refrain from making a big deal out of mother’s day, father’s day and various other assorted commercialized days. Culture talk again! And this time from a guy closer to my age than the orange toting, badly dressed, Shiv Sena members. (Yeah I do not understand the values Shiv Sena stand for and so i diss them. This can be counted as hypocricy. But I would love to sit down and have a debate with you if you agree with their ideals and maybe you could convince/convert me.) Anyway, ever since I started talking about going to the US, I have been hearing shit about the wild ‘wests’ dangerous ways and their lack of culture, not so much from my family since half my family is actually here, but from other random people who are by no means authorities in the field of culture. One person, a person i really liked and still like, told me i should be careful late at night (very good advice indeed) and i should not try and emulate the Americans because they have no culture and so they really wont care what happens to them but i will. That was the stupidest thing i have ever heard in my life and trust me i have heard a lot of stupid stuff. America has been one of the most ‘culture-ful’ places I have ever seen especially from my vantage point inside a university in California. No other place can be such a melting pot of cultures. And trust me, they value their relationships, sometimes a lot more than i value mine. Solitude does not equal loneliness.

I would love to write more but my crazy neighbours are blasting music through the wooden walls. I have to go now. Damn Americans and their love for bad music. This country has no real taste!

With love

In a different place and a different time, we were friends. We were close. We laughed at the same people together. We shared ipod headphones. We made mistakes together. And we got caught together. How readily we made promises as we departed, how sure, how certain we were in a future together! How we swore we would be there for each other, how much we believed that even as different people with different lives, together we would always be the same! And, but, months have passed and we have already made our first few mistakes apart, laid the groundwork for paths away from each other. We build our little shells of protection, to keep us from getting hurt, and we walk away before we even try.

What are we so scared of? Why did i refuse to come to India in spring when I could have? Why would you refuse to go to your own convocation? Why are you so scared to call the ones you spent 4 years sitting next to? Why did you not tell me that you were in trouble? Why would you not take the time? What, again, are we so scared of? Seeing that the present is not as the past was? That you might be the only person who is the same? But are we ever the same? Havent we done the same things at other times to other people? We are friends with the people we are friends with for a reason. Are we truly so different from them? How easy it is to cast blame and move on. Are we the people we want others to be?

Why must we be so afraid of rejection? Or rather the prospect of rejection? Why must it be a shadow, whispering doubt in our ears, fears of possibilities, of events that may never come to pass? Why are we so ready to dismiss the people we knew, the people we came to love, the promises we made together, the dreams we dreamt together, over a few months of silence? How easy it is to race our thoughts to conclusions and to convince ourselves that we are not wanted in the new lives our friends have.

In my life, more friends have been lost for what they didn’t do than what they did. She didn’t call often enough. He didn’t remember. She didn’t ask me first. I look back on the friendships lost and i cant remember why i lost them most of the time. I speak to an old friend and i walk away and i wonder why i decided to just let go and i try and i try but i seldom can remember. All i can come up with is a vague memory of a conviction that she wasn’t trying hard enough, that she was no longer interested in being friends, that she probably had new people in her life. How easily we can twist the giving past into the shape we want it, contort it so we are now sure that she always was that way. She never really cared. How easy to give in to the tendency!

If we talk, we’d probably realize that even our new lives aren’t so apart. That our days probably intersect in a thousand different ways through a thousand different people. If we talk more and listen more, maybe we’d realize that we live the same problems and share the same troubled thoughts, that the same songs make us smile, and the same nightmares keep us up, that we both have the worst boss possible on the face of the earth, that we both cant stand the vending machine coffee, that we both hate the dress code, that we both have changed the dreams we dreamt together, modified and added to it and that the more we change, we never change too fast for the other person. Maybe we’d realize that we were never really alone at all and that we have someone who’d listen to us and be there for us, all over again. That the person who sat with you when you cried after losing your first mobile phone will sit with you through a lot more. And maybe we will find a place to meet in the middle, a place that is still common to both our lives, where we can go just to remind ourselves of the strong people we were and are when things get overwhelming, a place where a person can remind us that if we passed Cryptography in 6^th sem without knowing a word of it, we can survive this quarter life crisis. If only we tried, we’d know.

So to my friends who have no time for me and whom i have no time for, shall we introduce ourselves, test the boundaries and try to be friends all over again?  You have changed and i have changed and our lives are busy and time is expensive but i still want to know you, the new you and the old, and if you would care for a cup of coffee together, maybe in that new coffee shop we pass in the company bus, or maybe in your home and mine over a skype call, i would love to talk. 

With love,

Divya

Sliding doors

You were wondering how different your life would have been without me here. Well, I have wondered the same. And I cant speak for you, but I can for me.

·        The day of my visa interview, I would have had one less person to pray for and one less reason to be happy about . No one would have called a few minutes before I joined the queue to tell me “I got mine. I am sure you’ll get yours. Try and go to the fat Chinese looking lady on the left if possible.”

·        I would have had one less person to make plans with of what we were gonna do in the US of A.

·        I would have had one less person to say “SD… Adaki vaasi”

·        No one would have told me to go to Express Avenue Lifestyle for awesome discounts.

·        I wouldn’t have had someone to exchange shopping notes with.

·     I wouldn’t have walked into a shop playing a song that would carry me through all my doubts and crying jags for the coming few months.

·        That song would have remained just another Bryan Adams song that I listened to in school instead of the memory it is now.

·        I would never have listened to Owl City Fireflies. Probably.

·        No one would have played a song for me on an instrument we both love.

·        I wouldn’t have had someone to crib to about how doing yoga in low waist jeans is probably a wrong idea in a dumb networking workshop we went to.

·        One less person in my last lunchJ

·        Fewer funny ‘last lunch’ photos to laugh over.

·      One evening when I was wondering if I’d made a decision I would regret for a long time, I would have had no one to call and no one to tell me ‘It happens. Just be careful about your choices.’

·       For the coming few months there would have been no one to be the only person I could tell everything to.

·      Three days after I landed, when I was sitting in a deserted busstop, thirsty, tired from all the walking, yearning for a dose of home, I wouldn’t have gotten a call from an unknown number with a known voice saying “Hey man!”

·      One random day when something someone told me would cause me to completely break down and overcome by doubts, crawl into the egg chair in the Engineering Lounge, turn the opening to the wall and start crying, there would have been no one to be the only person to answer my call, listen to everything I had to say and then tell me to “take 5, listen to an A R Rahman song and then go home and study”.

·       My day would have been complete without any need for a phone call in the night to recap the events of the last 24 hours.

·        One less alarm clock.

·        No one to wish me before every test.

·        No one to stop Anjana and me going for each other’s throats in Chicago.

·        No reason to go to Chicago.

·        No sexy new handbag for my birthday.

·       No one to call after my shopping trip and say “Hey I got a new dress. I am figuring out how to walk in this and I’m probably gonna get arrested for flashing”

·        No one to say “This is US. Shut up and flash.”

·        No one to reminiscence about Saarang with.

·        No one to talk to about sisters and families.

·        No one to remind me that I was not the only one having problems and some people’s lives were even more messed up than mine.

·        No one to tell me to take my time to mope and then chuck him and move on.

·        No one for me to reminiscence school days with.

·        No on to regret the mistakes of said school days with.

·        No one to keep me grounded if I got a little too many likes on some pic/status/post in FB.

·        No one to suffer through the internship process with.

·        No one to decipher the ‘sounds our stomachs make’ with.

·        No reason to look forward to the evening. No reason to jump when the phone rings.

·        No one to understand my mood swings.

·        No one to share my mood swings.

·        No one to call when I had the hottest piece of latest gossip and am bursting to tell.

·        No one to give me even hotter gossip.

·     On an evening when I was walking home from college, when the sky was darkening and the lawns were lit up with candlelight for some special event, and I managed to get myself lost but I wasn’t worried because everything around me was beautiful and my ipod was dying, I would have had no one to call when I was so happy and wanted to share my happiness with.

·        No one for me to admire the second most.

·        No one to be part of my past, my present and most probably and hopefully my future.

·        A thousand fewer memories. Several moments that would have passed mundane.

For the last couple of months I’ve been meaning to write this. Today just happened. To one of my best friends, for when she finally does manage to find her way to my blog, nanbaen da! J