Pre-mature New Year’s

It’s such a mood to be finally doing this. Listening to ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’, the Simple Minds setting up the stage for impulsive get-your-life-together moments. Constantly trying to recreate a good scene from a movie. The one where the hot mess picks up the broom, puts on a high ponytail and makes an enormous planner — her detailed and intimidating Yellow Brick Road to Success. Is this my Yellow Brick Road? Will anyone ever read this? Is this Julie and Julia and will people recognize this? Will this catapult me into literary fame? A book deal? Or is this just another whim that would die out just as softly as it was loud when it crackled into life?

Based on many legit-looking but probably unquotable articles, I have decided that any successful New Year’s Resolution is made ahead of time. And started ahead of time too? After a long walk along a cold desolate street, I finally came home to a piece of paper and a black pen. I made three lists— a list of what I needed, what I wanted and one of what I thought I wanted but didn’t actually need. And honestly, even though I have probably talked about it a million times, there was something peaceful about putting it all out on paper. It took two minutes to make them because I had known what to write for the past five years.

Every year is the same and every week has a breakdown-Monday and a we-can-do-it Sunday which doesn’t work. Never did and never had. I keep telling myself that I work really well under pressure but honestly, I’m pretty sure it’s like denial for ace procrastinators. So I decided on a Pre-mature New Year’s which is just as arbitrary as the actual New Year’s— a hyped event only useful for statistical purposes but celebrated because it bears the conferred value of hope. We are defined by created symbols and in the end, metaphors dominate our lives, phone backgrounds, and cars. But the point is that some impulsive low-pressure goals have a higher mortality rate than New Year’s Resolutions. Because the moment you say “resolution” you are encouraged to fail. Also, has anyone noticed that we live in a culture which really coaxes us and tells us that its okay to fail? My depressing experiences are validated and molly-coddled by meme templates and pop culture. So now there is this ironic narcissistic-self hate chain where I know I suck but I can tell myself that its all good because everyone can “relate” and my failures are a “big mood”. I don’t know if I hate this yet.

Fuck, I haven’t reached the point yet. Okay, so basically I made the three lists and blogging was a big part of it because I need to start writing every day and create a practice and a discipline if I want to be ambitious and take myself seriously. Because someone who wants to be a writer must write and doesn’t just get there. Also, I need to not think as much about what people think about me. My ex once said that many of my blog posts were lame and the others were extra and beyond him. Fuck that guy. Also, fuck anyone who doesn’t get you— they were toxic for you in the first place. And no one’s opinion should dominate your own. The point is — I deleted half of my blog after that. And even though I didn’t create it for him but for myself, and knew that he would never get it even if he tried (which he clearly couldn’t), it’s just not really worth it because you think deleting something would actually delete something even though it will always exist in your mind. You don’t really escape anything if you actively try to escape it. It’s like that really sick thing they say—the only way is through? But yeah that’s true. So the Pre-mature New Year’s is about seeing things through. All my goals are so fucking doable and I have just enough time to get it together. I don’t know if I should make a mood board yet. I have affirmations and they work because if you actually trust something and try to consciously believe in something faith is easy. I just need to learn how to not be pessimistic and cynical, and how to get out of my head, because it hasn’t done much good. I might as well be positive and do the entire emanate-the-energy-you-hope-to-attract thing?

So many of these are questions. Do you also have that inbuilt faceless fuck sitting in your head judging everything you do and saying things like “who are you addressing this to? Fuck you’re sad” or “he will read this and mock you” or “someone will find this and pass it around to prove your worth which really amounts to nothing”. I hope you do too. It would somehow be more peaceful if you have him too. I love how it’s a “him” right now. It is also a “her” sometimes, if that balances things out. And the best part is that their criticisms are highly stereotypical and gender-conforming. Like the chick would comment on how I look and how useless I am and the guy would tell me that I’m undesirable. But really both of them agree about how I’m undesirable so why does it even matter?

Are we just a weak imprint of our culture? Are our anxieties and standards beyond our control and just an imprint of societal standards and anxieties? Are the Post Modernists right in their assumption of everyone being a ‘pastiche’? Do you feel that rush of determination when you watch an empowering film? Does that prove that we are slaves to our culture and easily led? Or does that mean we are empathetic? Is anything about this good or bad? Will the Pre-mature New Years thing go as planned? Does anything ever fucking go as planned? Has anyone ever had the perfect year and a completely ticked-off checklist?

 

I think this is it for this post. I hope this actually amounts to something because I have written many similar posts before.

Why are there so many question marks all over this garbage?

Cornflower Blue

Roshanara was moving through the street, striding across the pavement confidently. Thinking as she paced, contemplating to the proud sound of her sandals slapping the cement.

Delhi had reached the fag end of August, and the rain settled into its avenues like an ignorant guest. Leaves floated on, adrift on temporary streams, and the wind, pregnant with sticky humidity, assaulted all that walked against its tide. The sky was a cornflower blue, with white whispers fading in and out across its skin. Her cream cotton dress clung onto her, her body wrapped in a film of perspiration and a faint pungency that mixed into her jasmine attar. Her cocoa tresses, alight with golden tips, pirouetted along the current.

 

It was just after class. She had plugged in her music and listened to ABBA as she walked towards the metro station. The songs fit in as if soundtracks to a scene in a rose-tinted film. The pop romance of the 70s almost transported her into another world. She often thought about these things. Looking at the trees, the sky, the roads, the smoke from the cigarette perpetually between her long wan fingers; gazing with glazed eyes to the sounds of the patterned melody, she would imagine herself being somewhere else. Somewhere foreign and expensive. A place with cleaner air, prettier people, colorful sweaters and sunset autumns. A place with a river walking along its streets, adorned with old cafes strung with sophisticated women talking slowly and loftily in an indecipherable tongue, being scooped out by juveniles on bicycles as they lazily rode on into the lilac evening. She would imagine walking like that beautiful lonely girl in all the films she watched. She could be running to catch a tram. She could be dancing. In all these scenes, Roshanara would imagine herself being better than she was. The Roshanara of her daydreams was iridescent. Luminous. She was beautiful. She was the object of envy, lust, admiration, joy, bliss. She was bliss. She was carefree. Unbothered. Happy, like the pixie girls in the movies. The Roshanara of her daydreams wasn’t alone. No. The better Roshanara was thin enough for that phased out aesthetic the real her saved on Pinterest boards. She was reading great literature, stuff too hard for the real her to commit to. She was flirting unabashedly, having a copious amount of sex. She was living and breathing all that the inhibited libido of the real her fantasized about. The Roshanara of her daydreams was listening to ABBA too, she was also walking along the same street, in the same rain, against the same wet sky. The Roshanara of her daydreams, however, wasn’t coming from anywhere or going anywhere. The Roshanara of her daydreams lasted till the chorus and then evaporated.

 

It was calming, this disassociation from the present. Calming for the brief ethereal moments where she forgot everything but the song and the dream. Brief. These moments only lasted until the chorus. After that, the song became routine, predictable, sung-out, tired. The second time around, she would nod to the chorus unconsciously, the tune now fading out in the wake of new thoughts and trepidations spilling in. It was the same typical shit of yesterday and tomorrow. Time slavery, loneliness, failure, dying alone, ex-flames and living someone else’s life. It was the same cycle. Chorus after chorus. Like a retarded song with three lines and a beat like a venereal disease.

 

Roshanara, though constantly depressed by the vicious loop, would muster her best efforts to escape. It seemed like escape was the only exit from her mind. She thought about that a lot too, how she’d escape far too often. She would escape into mindless conversations with people she swore she loved. She knew her promises and declarations were superficial. She was only grateful for the momentary release they offered. Which is why all her relationships failed. Once her gross deformed insecure self had successfully captured the goose, she would fuck it and drop it immediately. She would say it’s boredom. She would even blame it on its shortcomings. But she knew on the last day, just as she knew on the first, as well as after every time she promised she loved it— she was wasting time, and would eventually waste more with someone else once they had dried up and shriveled like a grape sucked of its resin. She would watch films, shows, plays. She would read. She would visit. She would swim, run, walk, masturbate, sleep, starve, eat. Sometimes, she would even study. But that loop would continue to play in the background.

 

When it got too loud she would cry and break. It got loud in the mornings. It got loud when she was in her car. It got loud when she was smoking alone. It got loud when she stared at her naked ugly body in the mirror. It got loud when she ate too much. It got loud when she stepped on the scale. When she embarrassed herself. When she was confronted or insulted. Sometimes, it was loud randomly. Like a surprise boner, it would come out of the blue, when she was unprepared and had nowhere to go. Most times, when it happened publicly, people could see it play. Her face often gave it away. Or her hunger. Or her rare silence. But when it got loud, their consolation couldn’t drown the base. No. It would only fade when she would distract herself. Escape. She thought about that a lot. She thought about ways to escape, almost as often as she would think about all the possible deaths offered to her at that moment. It was a fun game she played.

 

She tore her headphones out of her ears and stuffed them hurriedly into her backpack. It was raining again. She walked faster and stood under a tree, staring at its foliage, amazed at its efficiency. It was pouring, but only the occasional droplet found its way through the green leaf umbrella. She zipped her bag open lazily and felt around for her pack. Her wet fingers placed the thin cigarette between her teeth as the other brought out the blue lighter close to the tobacco tip. Ignition. A pull and a cloudy sigh. It was a comfortable routine. The taste of the smoke sat in her throat and she licked her lips dry. She couldn’t calculate the wait, rain being unpredictable. How the once perfect panorama had now rudely descended into being a loud nuisance. Loud, she smiled.

 

In class earlier, they had talked about how the word ‘husband’ came from ‘animal husbandry’. A husband, therefore, was essentially the caretaker of the pack. The one who sheltered, fed and bred the animals. Many marriages did have a husband. The Caretaker. In a patriarchal prototype, it was the male. In a conventional setup, it could still be the male. In a progressive unit, one could argue that there was no husband. Or that both of them were the husbands. But for single people, single women, for Roshanara, everyone had to be their own husband.

A woman who was her own husband.

She smiled as she took another drag. Her face was a little numb now. Her fingers trembled. The nicotine was cutting off the synapses.

 

A woman who became her own husband.

 

What an empowering sentiment. A craftily worded sentence for independent people. A craftily worded sentence to make lonely people feel better about themselves. Pigeon shit is lucky, so is the abnormal birthmark tainting your skin. White lies for lonely people. Lonely. Yes, lonely. A word she could empathize with. Roshanara was her own husband. Had been for quite some time now. Ever since they moved to the big city. Peeled away from the comforts of a small town and a close-knit family, thrown to the wolves—left to fend off for herself. She could’ve involved her parents. But could she? It was much too embarrassing to confess what she was going through. The bullying in the new school. The sadness. The isolation. The loop. All gifts of the city. But she was proud of her silent struggle. It had made her who she was. She now knew how to escape. How to use people like she couldn’t before. She was her own husband, yes. The more she thought about it, the clearer it became.

 

Roshanara imagined herself being in a controlling relationship with the typical abusive husband, just like she was with herself. A husband who would fuck her almost every night, but cringe at the sight of her nudity. A husband who would taunt her with every meal, every ensemble, every poem, every question, every vulnerability. Her husband didn’t care about what she felt. He wasn’t one to censor his words. No. He had dreams. He hoped she would be a certain way. He didn’t like her, it was a loveless marriage. But they had grown accustomed to each other’s voices and couldn’t remember the pre-marital silence.

 

She laughed out loud now. Yes, she was her own husband. She was his property.

 

It had stopped raining now. She threw away the bud in a puddle and pulled her phone out of her bag. The Kinks played Waterloo Sunset and the sky was a cornflower blue again.

Outstation

We went like we came

With loud speed and uncertainty

But long walks and daybreak took us in

And with the sun we rose

Finding each other in the mountain air

And calm lakes from another time

Suspended in moments etched within rocks darker than night

We floated home on a cloud

And closed our eyes