Conquering fear

"Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains... But it can put mountains where there are none."
~ Neitzche

Tonight as I fumbled my way through butchering a chicken, my very first, my eyes feverishly trailed the blood and sinew till they could no more tell which was what. Despite the plethora of recipes and my reputation as a cook (okay, I can't help but be a narcissist here!), I had never ever dared touching raw flesh. That was always Sam's job. But tonight I had to, for the husband was 'busy'. Making my way through the wobbly carcass, I realised it's no big deal. What was I so afraid of? It's just meat and it's dead. There!

And so sprung up a string of incidents that have remained singularly unforgettable in my inconsequential life thus far...

I was barely ten then, when I had once returned home from my regular evening recreation before the helplessness of 'homework time' would kick in. How I had straight gone into the bathroom to hide the gaping wound on my thigh that had resulted from a bad bicycle fall. Lest the parents see it and give me a good piece of their mind, which I was anyway quite used to in those days. Lest I am rushed to the hospital for that much dreaded shot. But like all mothers do, mine too discovered the wound after a day or so and what followed should better be left out. Let's just say the lesson thrived well inside me, for years. Because the next time I had tumbled off and bruised myself, I had just cycled on briskly with a bleeding knee to the hospital. Shot time!

Three winters back during a rafting adventure, when almost drowning in the glacial waters of the Teesta, I had seen it looming large like a green monster. Fear. Little did I know that the life jacket would fail me when the then daredevil in me had decided to take an impulsive plunge into the tempting Himalayan waters. I was already doing the goodbyes in my mind, and all this when I was just a month-old newly wed. How supremely unreal the moment felt! Suddenly, something inside me had silenced the howling tears and strangled that sneering monster. And there I was, streamlined (what if a creature from the deep pulled me into the fathomless depths!), holding on to the boat and actually using my head. Of course, I was rescued back into the boat. Of course I cried, wailed in fact, but not before I was snug and secure in one of the changing huts.

One afternoon, when words had been whispered and blames had been hurled inside closed doors. When judgement was sung callously, the notes of which still ring deep in my ears. When I learnt that it takes only a handful of days for some people to stab you right in the heart. Just like a spell, the mirror of illusions had broken. And how I was reborn, stripped of doubts and fear. And a little respect, too. Fate lets you have only one choice (which I proudly have) and keeps the rest for herself - perhaps the most important of all lessons I've learnt.

It starts from some point. How we carry some fears with us all along and then one day we just drop it, like clothes from a tired body. One fine day, just nothing matters. Absolutely nothing.

Just once

Pull down the fence

"It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth, that other people are as real as you."

~ Ian McEwan, Atonement

Once, just once walk out of the confines of your narrow thoughts and you'll see how big-hearted the world is, its people are. It is a lovely place to be, this earth. Made of love, meant for love. Let not your little games scar its childlike sinlessness.

Squeeze your toes into someone's shoes. Feel every pinch, understand every bite, talk to every sore. Ask why they are there, how they were born. Others get hurt too, you know.

Do a little jig in the rain. Let your rigid pretensions run down and be one with the humble wet earth. Shove your twisted head out of that dark clammy cocoon. Breathe. Listen. Feel.

There is a truth of much more consequence and character than blood. Humanity. Everyone can't be bad. Or wrong. Cross that barbed fence of your suspicions, strip down your prejudices.

When it is so simple and so much more fun to be single-faced, why complicate your existence with two faces???

Summer lessons

Our oldest mango tree back home, laden with beautiful blossoms

I'm back from my month long euphoria of mangoes and monsoons, with a bagful of memories. It was freakishly hot, there were too many errands that kept us on our toes throughout and ultimately viral fever marked the end of our woes. As I steered my way past prejudices and illness, a swarm of thoughts caught me unawares. Sam feels I've become the 'complaining type' and in my defense I can only say, it is not completely false. Could it be age catching up? Anyway, I shall jot down neatly, like a meticulous kid doing her holiday homework, life's lessons learnt during my Indian summer.

1. "Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't." Eleanor Roosevelt was right during her time and for the times to come as well. Do your bit and stop dreaming of the pretty laurel crown.

2. Never, ever kill these blessed days with bratty arguments with your parents. For once it is over it feels terrible. Also, it goes on to haunt you the most when you are thousands of feet up in the air watching your country recede into a vast blurry mass.

3. One cannot change the way people think, therefore it would be wise to change oneself. But again, wisdom has always been an elusive little elf with me.

4. Try to sense one's humour vein before dishing out yet another of your classic sarcasm coated jokes. Some people just don't have it in them.

My only possible means to wriggle out of such situations is to either rant and whine about my unfair share of luck in my diary or just blog out my flustered self or be a perfect nagging wife to Sam. Once I have found a cathartic vent, within moments my steely resolute self crumbles into airy nothingness. I could never make a good student of life's teachings. Baah!

In letting go...

To leave and be left behind are perhaps the two ruthless wheels on which the world strides. We have all left someone or have been left by someone at various unfortunate phases of our lives. What is it with me that keeps pushing me to the boundaries till I break? Years after a much cherished bond, one day it just falls out. Just like that. For a bunch of stupid misunderstandings, for reasons so trivial that they were able to toss years of love and laughter into a puzzled silence. It feels so supremely foolish to have had trusted someone with your life and its every little worthless detail. Sure I have lived through times when I would hang on to things that at some point would have hurt me or angered me. But the resentment would not last forever. Somehow things would patch up and the differences would be stocked up for a good nostalgic laugh. This time it is different and much more difficult, probably because we are adults now and the carefree air of childhood that shielded our blunders is no more there. We are all caught in an inescapable domestic quagmire of our own. There are so many new worlds in which we try to fit in and fail miserably. There are people whom you just don't understand, whose remorseless deeds tear you to shreds every time and in spite of all this life has to go on. Therefore this time I have not been able to pick up the shattered pieces and glue them together. May be because I can still see the fractured portions which are too loud to be ignored. Or may be it lacked the togetherness that such timeless relationships stand for. Or may be I am just plain tired.

Since I could neither forgive nor forget, the only other way left was a difficult but wise one. To let go of what is eating you, to get over the lingering gloom. I had never been able to understand the art of letting go because I loved wallowing in self pity. I was, and perhaps still am, obsessed with glorifying my grief. The free spirited child in me could never appreciate the subtle and uninvolved state of stoicism. Sure, I have quit wearing rose-tinted glasses long, long back but still I am a romantic at heart. But perhaps things are changing, and definitely for the better. The wide chasm of the deep rooted sorrow seems to be melting away. When something is just not meant to be perhaps it should be left that way. Although it is difficult to erase attachments that have gone strong for decades, I do feel healed of the anger and the hurt. May be this is a momentary feeling but it does feel light headed and wholesome. Whatever this feeling is, I want it to stay and nourish my weary mind. Because in spite of lugging the emotional baggage people do move on and so must I. After all the world has no time for clingy souls.

A singular tale

I often hated being an only child when I was a kid. I secretly wished for a younger sister, so that together we could weave innumerable tales of childhood and growing up. But alas, this was not to be! And to add to the woes of my solitary existence, my parents manipulated me into following a long list of dos and don'ts. They worked hard to inculcate the virtues of sharing and kindness in me so that I grew up with a humble head on my shoulders. Sometimes I grudged them for my so called single syndrome in spite of my mother's countless attempts in making me see the glamour of being the 'special' one. But it was very obvious that she never meant a single word of it even though she tried hard to be sincere and tactful at it. Her sternness would always give her away at the end. And I was to follow the wheel ruts again, and behave. But technically I was a single child and so I would anyhow retain certain single child traits. My juvenile thoughts often turned to how my parents wanted me to suffer alone, especially when my friends had siblings. While I befriended people effortlessly, I also loved cocooning up in a shell of my own. As I grew up, I realised I was a failure when it came to handle comparisons in a positive way. My father, who happens to be my worst critic, discouraged my complacence which was growing in leaps and bounds during my adolescence. I would get lost in an emotional maze and would take aeons to come out of it. Quite often I would get touchy about my 'situation', most often just so because teenage angst was always in vogue! Like any other belligerent teenager, I too loved to bask under a rebellious halo. Now, years later when I look back at my foolhardiness, I can't help laughing at myself!

The world has always been a little prejudiced regarding the only child. We are often stereotyped as spoiled, selfish and bratty. But this is just a twisted truth like the patchy outline of a story. Time and again I have been complimented by my close friends for having a flair for understanding people and their plight. Ah! God bless the friends! Contrary to the universal belief of we being apathetic, I have always been a concerned ear for my friends, no matter what the day or hour is. Strangely, the world loves to operate in contradictions. I have come across certain people who possess the temperament of a single child in spite of having siblings. But the trauma does not end here! When the "oh she's the only child" tag gets carried over to one's matrimonial realm, it results in more than one pair of raised eyebrows. The air swells with questions of adjustment, acceptance and tolerance. At such hapless times I have found it alarmingly difficult to fight these preconceived notions which are mostly groundless.

This eternal urge to make oneself understood and unscrambled sometimes takes away the cream from one's life. But as they say, certain things about the world hardly change. It's an old, stubborn place after all, strewn with age-old customs and dead conventions. And so the battle continues...