and the Road goes ever on

I had the strangest experience recently: we were at rehearsal, and the play on stage was ‘A Movement, a Folder and some Tears’ by the Tamil writer Ambai. It’s a heart-wrenchingly sad story that really makes you want to scream, because there’s nothing else you can do against the injustice that we’re all, as women, subjected to everyday.

We’ve all studied the concept of catharsis, and heard of cathartic experiences. But for a moment, just as Shreya was Sakina, describing the sight of a poor Muslim woman trudging along with her two children, clutching a tricolour flag in her hand as a talisman; as Pradipti was Selvi consigning the effects of their women’s organization to a warehouse that “rarely sees the light of day”; as we all sat there, watching them play their roles, I wanted to weep.

The story is deeply bitter about the circumstances of women, but it is also painfully realistic in how devoid of idealism it is. Watching them there, as women, as people I know playing roles like those of Sakina and Selvi was just… beyond anything I’ve ever felt. It’s like all the pent up anger and frustration from all those times that being a woman was brought home to me in the worst sense of the phrase…just bubbled to the surface.

How can it be so? How can an entire half of the population of human beings on this planet be so maligned, misjudged, mistreated and misrepresented? Over centuries?

Sometimes, especially when we’re discussing stereotypes or gender roles in Women’s Writing class, I just want to throw everything away and give in. I feel so defeated – we’re up against centuries of prejudice and indoctrination; I know that my own penchant for strong, masculine men in the vein of Mr Darcy or Mr Rochester or Lord Worth is a tribute to the fact that I have been indoctrinated to believe that I need a man to take care of me. To protect my naive, innocent self from the evils of the big bad world.

It’s disgusting, but it’s true. And every time I watch Ambai, I feel helplessly angry because as much as I am aware of how wrong it all is, I’m very much a part of the same world, and I think along the same lines every single day.

release me from this curse

Sunday again.

Boredom is the most tiresome of all states to be in. Nothing suffices, nothing will do but to remain in a state of disenchanted thought.

And when you’re trying not to think, being in such a state certainly doesn’t help.

Sometimes, I want to switch my brain off. I can’t deal with the demands of intelligence, ego or pride.

I could be peevish and go on about how nothing in my life ever seems to come with a possibility of perfection…

…but the fact that there are flaws makes them the more precious, perhaps?

falling away with you

The more you try to convince yourself that something is the same, the more you know, in your heart, that what it was can never be recovered.

It’s gone. And the hollowness that remains is what makes you want to cling, crawl into the vacuum to hold on to nothing, tenacious, desperate, crazed… until you realise you’re losing yourself.

But then, who cares? You’d give yourself, you’d give your heart and soul for it.

It’s only in the warm sunlight that beats down, always relentlessly cheerful, that you realise what you’re doing to yourself is unnecessary.

Holding on is acceptable when there’s something to hold on to – but when do you know how to let go?

a disease of the mind

Sometimes, it feels like all the thoughts in my head come tumbling in at the same time, in a wave of uncontrolled chaos and, crashing against everything I believe in, throw me far, far away from where I want to be.

There are days when everything seems pointless, where life itself is a question of coffee-induced mornings of feather-touch emotion and blank staring out of car windows. Nothing better follows than sitting in a darkened room half-listening to what I ought to be loving, wondering about things that won’t matter five days from now.

Food, people, conversation, laughter, companionship – and in the midst of all, I’m still searching, still looking, still needing, still wanting. Still wishing I could find perfection and every day, I only learn how impossible the dream I’m chasing is.

It seems so easy when its put into words. Perfection rests in the mind of my author, in the words her pen chooses to assign to sway my life this way or that. One stroke, and I could die, I could fall in love, I could be betrayed, I could win a lottery, I could beg, I could starve, I could be a hero, I could live my life as an utter nobody.

And at least then I’d be able to excuse my actions because hey, I don’t control them.

Unfortunately, the responsibility for the things I do can’t be brushed away…

…. and the consequences make themselves felt anyway.

cross your heart and hope to die

There’s nothing worse than feeling disillusioned about something you thought was perfect.

Of course, you realise first that perfection is nothing more than the veriest whim.

You go on then, to understand how expectation is what leads to your downfall.

To your heart crumpling into this balled-up screw of paper that can be blown about by the wind.

Ugh, look at me, going on again about disappointed expectations and love and seeing things for what they are and not what they seem to be – I wish, sometimes, these extremes would mellow into a sightless, numb indifference.

I can’t feel anymore.

I’m too tired, too jaded, too disappointed, too powerless.

Nothing’s going to change my world.