http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NDuj-MyVyA
In my defence, I did make a pathetically feeble attempt to tell you.
Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t, considering it isn’t a big deal, anyway.
P.S. It always tears me apart to listen to Norah Jones. I feel so ambivalent – I both envy her on the piano and adore the songs. I wonder if that’s because she’s a contemporary and not too much older. I don’t think I’d ever feel the same way about Billie H, or Joni M or Nina S, for instance. Hmmm.
I wonder if the reason why Suite Judy Blue Eyes resonates so hugely with me these days is because it captures a bit of the ambivalence that I now feel about work.
Shugo Tokumaru has been such a solace in the midst of these blues. Parachute has been the equivalent of a warm hug, a hot jalebi, my honey-scented soap, reading an old note from my lover all rolled into one big bundle of mellow sunshine.
I know you’re mad at me for being headstrong,paatti. And think I’m being needlessly unreasonable. And uncaring of Ma’s plight. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be all that and more. It breaks my heart even more to know that I’ve managed to wear even your legendary patience down.
And of all the people I know, it hurts me so much more to see you disapprove of me now and attest that I have become the polar opposite of the adorable kid I used to be. You, who convinced a reluctant me that I was cut out for, and capable of achieving so much more, are now trying to fetter me.
I wish you had never told me that 13A story [1] and let me dream.
I hope you know that I still adore you. I listen to you, even if you believe that I don’t listen to anything anyone says, and only do my own thing. I know we all take so much advantage of you. And I hate to see age catching up with you, you who I always looked upto as Wonder Woman. Even if only subconsciously.
I hope we all get past this and that you will get back to remembering me as that 13A kid, and not the insensitve, stubborn, uncaring, person that you now think I have become. There’s too much of you in me for that to happen.
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1.That even as a two year old, I could make out from a distance the red 13A bus that we needed to take to the creche you put me in for three months, because, as I explained it, it had a distinct shape from all the other buses on the road.
It must be someone with a really ironic sense of humour who christened this gym, considering how much it sounds like a morgue. Body count, indeed :p
… beam playing on your face, the window of your rented white Ambassador down, the cool gritty wind crackling your just-bought newspaper (and messing up your by-now-greasy-and-limp hair even more) as you read a Beatles tribute article (titled Happiness is a Warm Gun, no less) in the Indian Express, while your parents and sister, overcome by the exertions of the temple trip, are quietly sleeping and the miles to go before you return home are speedily whooshing by.
Utter contentment recollected, even three whole days after the moment. Ess was happy on 3rd May 2008, at approximately 4 32pm.
According to people in the know, the easiest way to knock someone’s socks off when you have to perform a song for them, is to belt out a power ballad. I firmly bought into this theory after participating in a ‘talent show’ in eighth standard, where a petite, waily, waify girl walked away with top honours after warbling out ‘Nobody’s Child’ and inducing one of the judges to weep (guilty conscience, maybe? :p).[1]
Anyway, people somehow seem to think that more effort goes into a diva-like performance of an emotionally fraught song (think Unbreak my Heart) , than in a hearty rendition of a pretty lil’ ditty (Sunrise), and that the former therefore deserves more of a reward. I guess this is music’s version of the typically patriotic, preachy or emotionally distant oscar winners versus the fly-under-the-radar-and-stay-with-you Indie stunners. [2]
Getting back to the point, ever since, I have preferred to sing sadder songs, when pushed into a public display of my singing ‘abilities’. The last time I did so was back in twelfth, when I sang My Lover’s Gone [3] to a hushed all-girls’ class, who then proceeded to get all teary eyed.
My Lover’s Gone just turned up on my playlist now. An eerily appropriate time for it to have done so, too. Ah nostalgia, how brutally you stab me in the back now, blood-red memories oozing out of me.
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1. I placed third :p
2. Like when they chose Cimarron over City Lights, bah.
3. Incidentally, an appropriate song for someone named Dido to have sung, don’t you think? :p
In the course of meals over the last four days, I have managed to consume all the varieties of rasam that paatti knows to make (excepting pineapple rasam, which I think is more of a bastard variety, anyway). The upside of being unwell is the pampering you are subjected to, with even the sister speaking out in your defense, against the mother’s attempts to make you do anything ‘constructive’ 
I can be an irritatingly cheery person when mildly ill, though. Especially when feverish, or bogged down by a cold. Not one of those grumpy, oh-I’m-miserable-so-how-can-you-be-cheery guilt-trip induction-attempting patients begging for some TLC. And I stay stubbornly in denial about being unwell,until I can delude myself no longer, much to everyone’s exasperation.
Perhaps the annoying cheeriness is a remainder (reminder?) of being allowed to gulp down sips of brandy as a child, whenever I got sick during Delhi winters. An early starter, indeed :p
Like all effective knock-out punches, this one struck me right out of the blue. Astrologers have told my parents that according to my horoscope, the time is now opportune for me to get hitched. And that they can now start looking out for suitable matches. Compound this with some planet-alignment issue that indicates a possibility of my being the black widow for the poor chap who agrees to wed me (unless his horoscope makes up for the flaw) and you can fairly imagine how the parents have started hyperventilating. And being the sticklers that they are, they have taken no half measures. Having happily interpreted the astrologers’ can as a should, they’ve submitted my horoscope and circulated my details out to various brahm matchmaking agencies, apart from setting up my profile at various matrimonial websites. Thankfully, as the parents of the girl in question and minus photographs, so far. Thank god for small mercies. Nevertheless, I feel so exposed. And betrayed. And so,so,so frustrated.
I am not ready to be married so soon. I’m only just twenty x, for chrissake, and want to wander, know myself, fix upon my career, basically live a bit, before I go down that well-worn path. Go around sowing my wild oats? (Or getting my wild oats sown :p) Maybe, maybe not. But I sure as heck want the option around.
And I have repeatedly told the parents of my unreadiness. And it has fallen on deaf, or unwilling ears. They’re consoling (deluding!) themselves that every girl protests when her parents start trying to fix her up,but that later, she is thankful to them for it. And protesting that it isn’t as if they’re choosing that I get married soon, but that it is what’s in my fate, and that they’re only doing their duty as good parents by looking out for me. And of course, resorting to emotional blackmail whenever I protest. Bah! Never have I liked the idea of destiny less. I’m a firm believer in free will, now :p
It also doesn’t help matters that I ooze tears whenever they talk to me about this. I’m just so frustrated at not being heard, I’m unable to express myself properly. My crying has now become an expected outcome of every such discussion, and is therefore discounted as something that I always do, and so devalued.
I do listen to them, but just cannot subscribe to their point of view. Taking decisions fearing bad outcomes is something they have always done. They have always played it safe, tying me down, and never letting me experiment with my life, and soar. They’ve at least had circumstances to blame in the past, but that excuse has long since expired.
I am just exhausted. Tired of not being listened to. Tired of crying in bathrooms. Annoyed at having to allow them to give into irrational fears and play with my life. But I’m going to keep on resisting. For more than two decades, I have been a spectator in my own life, going with the flow, watching as things happen to me, and putting up with it all. No more. The stage is mine now, and I’m stepping up. As the lead, and not her shadow. And I will live my life on my own terms now. Even if it means making mistakes. They will at least be my mistakes. I hope I have the strength to stay true to myself, and the people I love, and not hurt the people who love me so much that it cripples me. For all our sakes.
Today’s chance discovery: debug & death are textonyms (Okay,okay. Paragrams, to be more precise) . Sadly appropriate, for the way this day has whooshed by.
