all that you can’t leave behind

Another Saturday night, and a better one than most.

The bluish haze of the bar, the alcohol drumming beats in our veins as we dance around each other’s public selves. We are so beautiful, so young, so in love and hate with the people that we think we are.

The beer is cold, the air throbbing with human excesses; drowning, drowning, drowning everything.

I’m losing my words again, and it’s not your fault.

We are young women, on the brink of something always but we don’t know what it is and it kills us. Every morning I wake up not knowing and it frightens me. It frightens me to think that we will all go away soon, that this will soon be a memory glossed over by the sepia tones of nostalgia.

This immediacy, this urgency of attachment provokes theatricality: we cry, we hug, we kiss and we forget all our faults.

The picture always belies the truth: we sit, the six of us in front of the camera. Tall, short, large, small, frowning, smiling, eyes shut, eyes too wide-open, a set smile or a bubbling laugh or a hesitant giggle.

the more things seem to change, the more they stay the same

Turned 20 yesterday!

As I said to more than one person last night, in an alcoholically mellow state of mind (the tears came pouring down soon after, of course) I’m always terrified of endings. Because change means the end of comfort and complacency; like an artist who keeps chiseling the same block of stone, each time achieving a different result and then erasing it all to start over. But revisioning something that many times cannot possibly leave the stone itself untouched.

And now I’ll stop sounding like a pseudo-literary person to just say I had fun all day, was astonished at the number of people who remembered (yay for Facebook, eh?), was quite touched by the number of things people did for me and ended the night satiated with a large quantity of beer and a little whiskey, having smoked enough cigarettes to make me wake up with no voice and feeling like I’ve got the best friends I could ever have asked for.

I’ve spent fifteen years in a stupor, two more attempting to find my feet and finally, three vividly intense years that changed more about myself than I would have deemed possible. But now, at twenty, all I can say of myself is that I simply dare to feel, think and accept more about myself and the people around me than I ever dared to before.

I don’t suppose anyone can ever be completely satisfied. But right now, I feel like I have more to be thankful for than regretful of and I’m happy :)

[I can't find the words to thank you all, you mean more to me than I've ever let on!]

you’re the only one i ever believed in

I think I have a tendency to use my blog to thank the people who make my life livable. As tacky and exhibitionist as that may be, it remains the only way to tell some very wonderful people just how important and irreplaceable they are.  And especially since I’m fast earning a reputation as an anti-social, boyfriend-obsessed ditcher, there has to be some way for me make amends, and this is it!

When I entered the ugly gates of Stella Maris College two summers ago, with a sinking heart and absolutely no expectations [not to mention an unaccountable disgust at the sight of "fruit preservation" as an optional subject listed in the handbook] I was very sure I wouldn’t find a single kindred spirit to make things better. Luckily for me, this was to be proven emphatically wrong. Sitting in a dingy little classroom waiting for my farce of an interview, there was this one girl who kept sending these beaming, sunny smiles at me. As usual, my interfering mum tried to nudge me into talking to her but I kept my DAIS-snooty air and barely smiled back.

How was I to know then, that this person who seemed indecently happy to be at Stella, would become one of the funniest, nicest, strangest people I’ve ever come across? And I haven’t even started on the mood swings, the foodiness, the “i’m-so-depressed-with-life” phases and the never-ending patience to deal with my inanity.

Soumya Poduval [yes, picture me pronouncing it in my non-Mallu way] deserves a blog entry that is a thousand pages long but since I’m sure she’ll stop reading mid-way and fall asleep, I’ll keep it short. I can’t deny, I used to be terribly jealous of Sou – she’s sort of like this ideal I used to aspire to be with a whole bunch of quirky traits added just to make her a lot more intelligent and interesting :p

If there’s anyone I can count on, it’s you. I can never properly tell you how much I owe you or how important you are to me – it’s just these stupid little things like blog entries [and good food at my house!] that attempt to tell you how much I am in your debt.

Yes, I’ll stop being melodramatic, but really, thank you. For the intellectual debates, the sarcasm, the endless boy-conversations, the after-work coffee jaunts at Ispahani Centre discussing you-know-what, the crying, the drunk nights, the whining, the pining, the teacher-worshipping, the annoyedness, the hyperness, the ten-rupee movies, the FOOD and above everything for you, you, you.

Much love, now and always.

this strange, psychotic feeling

What an interesting Thursday night. Karaoke night at Ten Downing Street [and we thought we knew everything about what it had to offer!] is definitely a well-kept secret. Soumya and I discovered it last night with a bunch of Corporate Sector new recs [fun, fun]. Of course, yours truly just had to imbibe more than the necessary quantity of alcohol, throw up and generally feel a bit sick, but hey! it passed.

This visiting-the-beach-after-drinking thing that happens here is incredibly fun. Though as expected the Parent was not amused at my being three hours late, bringing a large quantity of sand with me. Managing to keep Soumz in a good mood all night though, was an achievement I can be proud of.

Conversation, conversation, conversation: about circumcision, Iranian women, reservation policies, the Real nature of romance, attraction, life, crappy life and lots of laughter and idiocy. What better way to spend a night with people one doesn’t know too well, with some noteworthy exceptions?

This has just been the latest in a series of out-of-character things I’ve been doing lately: talking to people I wouldn’t have, thinking seriously of things I wouldn’t have even imagined, going places I wouldn’t normally go. Altogether, the stage seems set for a rather extraordinary summer, I must say :)

This strange, psychotic feeling of abandon is stuck in my head. It’s like a weight lifted, it’s like a… wierd kind of freedom that I didn’t know I could find. Perhaps I want it and perhaps I don’t – at this point the phrases “go with the flow” and “take it as it comes” don’t even need to be thrown at me as warnings. I’m quite happily holding back, seeing it all play out in front of me.

All we can do is play along and hope, just hope that things turn out the way they’re meant to in the end.

the last page

Closing time, open all the doors
And let you out into the world
Closing time, turn all of the lights on
Over every boy and every girl
Closing time, one last call for alcohol
So finish your whiskey or beer
Closing time, you don’t have to go home
But you can’t stay here

The book’s been read, the pages are thin under your hand and you are suddenly lost. Everything that you had taken for granted; mannerisms and words and looks that had ingratiated themselves into your mind are suddenly swimming out with the tide. And taking their owners with them. There’s a sudden twist of sadness in your stomach, a sudden lurch of fear in your chest as you see the great swathes of uncharted, unworded, un-felt territory loom before you. The weariness of having to accustom yourself to another “you” overcomes you and you never want to leave the lingering taste of your memory.

Perhaps I’ve written in this vein a lot, but that’s only because the word “end”, to me, is the most frightening word in the English language.

The sepia of memory turns everything beautiful, softening the anger, blurring the hurt and removing everything but the warmth, the friendliness and the love that made the memory possible in the first place. Eyes close and you sweep yourself into visions of the smallest of moments, made greater by the fiction that your mind chooses to create around it. People change into demi-gods, lovers, villains and heroes with a flick of the imagination’s wand. And you find yourself doing everything to clutch the fantasy closer to your heart because you cannot bear the truth.

I’m in love with a year, with a group of people, with an attitude, with a niche that has made me more myself than anything else. In my eighteen years of existence.

Tearing myself away from the past has been one of the hardest things I have ever done, but moving on is inevitable in this life, which is as it should be.

The last page was turned last night. But the comfort of it all is, the book can be re-read, the pages revisited any time. You just have to look inside you.