Black Holes, Falling Stars

Sometimes…while surfing those odd 93 channels, flipping through old magazines, tossing in odd ingredients into a pot, taking a ride home, staring at the pc, I am caught in an empty place, an empty space – taking a free fall. I have to make a deliberate sense out of time and space, of my own being, in reference to the place I am at. All day dreams, all wanderings end. I paw like a desperate animal to grasp something solid, the wall, the stair case railing, the concreteness, any concreteness to allow my adrift spirit back into the body, not just be alive but actually feel it – wholly, not in parts~ Sometimes the quest of staying alive, while losing it; keeping order amidst the chaos; taking care without the expectations of being taken care of; keeping everyone sane, while losing it yourself; the self gets fragmented, shattered in a thousand pieces! Tatters and shards of ego, dignity, unrequited desires, dreams – the real world is fading fast. I am taking a free fall into the oblivion, the black hole.  

Nietzsche must have been high on something when he said: “One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star.” Coming from an ardent book lover, all this wisdom sounds good in books, but when one finds oneself in the eye of the storm; it feels like shit – a deadness you can’t define, even though your sense of humor still manages to bring the house down. They are interested in your sunshine smile; they don’t see the eclipse around it, even if they do, they don’t care! The inner chaos seems only to give birth to a falling, a fading star, a black hole, that self-destructive energy that sucks everything in; dreams, hopes, prayers, energy till nothing remains. Yet it wasn’t exactly a real black hole that sucked me in, more like being sucked inside a washing machine. It was killer nonsense work regimen, an insane and tiring two weeks, coinciding with a workshop. Ironically enough, the only way to escape this deadness for a while is to work like a donkey. This is what I did till the wee hours of night till early morning, chopping down and rephrasing idiotic, jargon-filled, banal prosaic outpourings of equally boring, stiff and two-faced individuals. Wait! What would you call this? Am I not one of em? Dunnow, they would earn degrees and promotions out of it. Me? Well I got a nice annual increment (performance based). Yups folks that’s the carrot that I ll follow like an ass for another year. Isn’t it cute, this was the very month, supposed to be the time to plan my eventual resignation from work, wind up projects, start the next phase of married life, and here I am, gathering the pieces of self, of my loved ones, managing my deadlines, watching others achieve their dreams, their destinies, bidding some of them farewell….For instance, I bid farewell to my beloved and reliable secretary this February to a pharmaceutical firm, and now her replacement, the volunteer kid to some kind of CA/auditing studies. I would be having a new boss soon enough….changing, fast fading horizons, yet I seem to have a parallel existence, seem to be moving in a black hole…without a sense of time, of space…

Kars, Kats & Men

The cars in my life have been far more cooperative, sturdy and dependable than the men in my life. Sure enough, they have around the same amount of features as a man and sometimes even more! They had been reliable (considering how “regularly” I drive and how much I prefer walking or getting my ass pinched in the public transport). They (cars not men) make you feel protected etc. sure enough, many a times cars chose to throw royal ass tantrums, especially when you are in a strange neighborhood at an ungodly hours, or you might be getting late, or have someone waiting for you. Still, cars are better than men. So my issues with driving owe more to the recent condition of the roads rather than anything else, though want every destination to be linear, no cuts, no twists and turns etc. So I drive like a “dreamer”, rather than a donkey cart racer. And that explains why I opt for the public transport or being on foot. This Saturday, I developed this sudden itch to drive, that and the idea of taking my parents out. Hence, I hit the road and was dodging my way through traffic, when I realized that the car was slowing down and the engine seemed to be running heavy. I was racking my mind as what to do next, until I saw a garage and veered the car towards that. The mechanic took the car on a quick spin and determined that one of basanti’s front tyres got jammed. While the chotaas were fixing that, they pulled up a bench and dad and I sat on that. Meanwhile mom sat on the back seat and lamented the time loss and how her friend must be getting worried about us. Since my cell phone’s battery also decided to die this week as well, I was left with a few minutes power to try her cell, after which the battery sighed and died. The ustaad asked me: “Are these your parents?” I affirmed and then dozed back to my day dreaming, while the cool breeze played havoc with my already fluffy poodle hair cut. Every gush of wind shook off the dried leaves off the tree we were sitting under. So I sat under a hail of dried leaves and nodes. “Chai!” A voice jolted me back to the reality. The choota, an pathan or afghani kid I reckon, with sooty cheeks and hand was balancing two small cups of tea. A major germ freak, I was bemused and looked at my father. He took it and I followed suit, gulping the tea in one go. If I have a choice in hanging on to my quirky habits and rules, and breaking someone’s heart or be rude, I would let go of my rules –any time (as long and as far as  I am able to decipher). After half an hour, we were on our way with the tyres rolling freely. Dodging my way through a forcibly made, half dug single road, i reached by aunt’s place, where her pet dog’s barking and stray cats’ meowing greeted us. Later as we sat down upstairs, her pet cat Lucky, docile 10 pound bacha of a tom cat, came and sat by me, imploring me to rub his head (which I did). Lovely time we had – especially my parents.  We had samoosas, chatni, hot tea, dhai baras and pans, light hearted conversation, musings of the good ol days, thumbing through albums – old pictures and new ones. A long and not so smooth ride, a few hours of happy company. Life seemed good, even for a while, a whiff of fresh air. Even last night’s morbidity and this morning’s panic attack seem bearable now, just thinking about this one evening. Basanti is enjoying the rain today wearing her cover, which still means more body rust.  My cell’s battery is on charging since the past 8 hours. No one is calling me. Friends are way and the freak of my ex fiancé attempted to call me last week –twice. Ofcourse I didn’t pick up. Hate him! Wishn that he doesn’t even remain a memory!   

Ten Things I want to Do Before I Die…

 

Ok this was long due, as I was tagged by FQ. However, as you can see, it’s hard for mwe to think of all ten. I don’t have many goals or die hard wishes in life.

 

1. I want to master all the techniques of the pillates exercise program.
2. Want to learn to play an instrument; a violin.
3. I want to have a cottage by the sea, or a small shack of my own somewhere, anywhere.
4. I want to have a family, my own – not a biological bond…something else…I don’t know what.
5. I want to be able to cook really good food (I am an ok cook right now).
6. I want to be able to recite Quran regularly, with meaning.
7. Still thinking…
8. Still thinking…
9. Still thinking…
10. Still thinking…

laoug kea kahein gaey – the Circus of Life

I realize and acknowledge that I am the master (mistress) of writing super sucky posts. It hardly means that I am depressed, i am just a lil bit misbegotten and a tiney weany bit out of love with everything around me. I interact, mingle around, go along the routine of my daily life, dispense my duties quite routinely, but by the time I sit down to write a post, my introspections take a bleak turn. I just feel overwhelmingly empty; all wrung out from the effort of staying sane and functional, when the desire is just to throw down the glove hence, the sucky posts. Last week had me worried about the stupid birthday party, which I was attending for my parents’ sake. Yups I went there with a dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach. What else can you expect from a place full of relatives (all the chacies, mamees and taees) falling all over each other to be the first ones to “congratulate” me on ….obviously on my “engagement”? The stifling hugs and the duas and the inquisitions kept coming: “When is the wedding?”, “What does he do?” And I was like: “give me a fucking break! I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!”  My parents have decided to keep a mum about this for the moment. It’s ironical how my parents have always given lots of space and shown so much tolerance to the relatives, and have chided me always for giving preference to my friends. Yet, right now, the family friends are the ones, whom they have confided into regarding my “situation” and not the relatives. It’s not that I abhor the relatives’ attention just because the situation is normal right now. What I hate is their double standards. I don’t count as long as I am single, my opinion, my existence, my aspirations, my achievement; none of them count that way. The last time I was being pressurized into a faulty match just on the pretext: “laoug kea kahein gaey?” I am tired of these lougs who always want a say in my life, whose happiness I am expected to consider before mine own.

Coming back to the birthday party out of hell, as soon as we entered the hall, my parents disappeared from my side and didn’t appear before mid night. So I was on my own to handle to throngs of relatives I encountered and their irritating interrogation. By the time the “lougs” were through me, I was sitting in a corner with a splitting head ache and my morale down in the drain. The children – the kiddies in odd sizes and shapes began to look like evil goblins to me. They were jumping up and down the balloon castle in the most dangerous way. They were shoving and pushing around a sorry looking clown (who was a kid himself), and terrorizing the magician’s rabbit and the alley cats loitering around for food. They popped out every single balloon in the hall, one too many close to my ear. In fact it was their parents who enjoyed the magic show more than their kidlets. The stereo was playing a really conked out version of “Jangal mein Mangal terai he dum Say” and “lakri ke Kathi” from the 70’s – over and over and over again. On our protest, this acoustic assault later shifted from the 70’s towards a more contemporary singer (crappy sounding) a hamesh something’s  crooning a Tum Nazar Mein, Tum Jigar Mein. Sighhhhhhhhhhh.  I could have eaten his liver out or of somebody else. Didn’t feel like eating and ended up dousing down my disgust and boredom with a Pepsi. The bad mood that this birthday party from hell induced on me lasted all week and I ended up acting all sullen and withdrawn at home and at work. Queries of what’s wrong made me shed tears all the more. It’s hard to explain why the heart sometimes feel like a wounded animal, one that wants to cower away from human touch and from sunlight.  But ironically and (luckily), you can’t follow your heart’s desire and lay low when you have responsibilities. I have got work to do, a name, reputation and expectations to live up to , parents to take care of, and a household to run. Sanity is in survival, sanity is in routine, sanity is in minute details, carrying out the basic rituals life – the pre-functions of eating, sleeping and taking care of those around you. My parents need me, as much as I need them. The benign tumor on my mom’s back has started bothering her again. And when I look at my dad, it seems that every day he is physically stooping . Is it age or are they hardship that are catching up with them? Last night when I couldn’t sleep, I recalled how ex-mom in law used to make it a point to address my mom as “aunty” and dad as “uncle”. Last night, the memory seemed so outrageous that I was huffing and puffing and pacing away in my room, but right now, it seems macabre funny. But then, this what life is…right?  And who is the sad clown being pushed around?