The Minor Fall/The Major Lift

Wednesday, September 06, 2017

Couple of years ago, I got into a whim of getting a line tattooed on my body. It seemed harmlessly personal, insofar as the longevity of the design/idea was concerned.

I truly thought that I'd live by the words and in good faith, they'd live back with me. I can't quite pin the circumstances that lead to this whimsical thought but it had something to do with a bit of a mix, personal upheavle with some manchild and professional inability to sustain a job.

Those were the days when I'd fail no job interview and kick all jobs in a fortnight. The days prior to getting the wretched research degree which makes everyone question, "Sorry, you're overqualified (On paper, bitch). Why do you want this job again?"

x

Where were we? Skin.

I suppose what prevented that tattoo was costing. An odd similarity I share with my workplace (where I've been at for close to a year now). All life decisions boil down to whether or not it's "worth" the money. I used to think my parents are strange for drilling that idea in me, and probably because their parents were strange for drilling that idea in their head.

It took me one year at a massive Art and Design firm in the country to realize, it's all our parents and probably a very Punjabi thing in practice. "Is it worth it to skip office and stay at home for your mental health?", "Is it worth it to pay INR 23000 for an image when you can send someone from your organization with a camera, who's on a monthly pay roll of INR 20000. Imagine the number of images he can click while making the sale pitch at the bookstore?". Everything is always equated in contrast with a commodity, service or even a situation which will be created, just to be able to satisfy your question, "Can I?", "May I?", "Shall I?"

The answer is always no.

x

There's this urge to get a tattoo again. This time, I'm clear I want no text, and probably hold that for life. While I love words and only ever know what to do with them, I wouldn't want to get that on my body. I used to be very blasé about the tattoo idea/design and would want to go with the first instinct but never reached that far (which monetary factor prevented- a thing I can be thankful to my parents and work place for). On the other hand, I was extremely protective of how my skin is, whether it has marks or lines or wounds or vestiges of scars so deep, which I no longer am.

I recently read something which boiled down to the idea of why would you want to take the same body back to Earth after you die? Wouldn't you rather show it the years it's lived with their marks, their signs and their strokes? You should, if you didn't already. Stop with the facials and the creams and fussing. It's great to get down and dirty and wounded and carry them proudly because they're all yours to claim. Every inch is yours to proudly own and customize, so to say.

That thing hit home. I knew two things instantly-

1) My body physically no longer belonged in the set up of "it has to be the same, au naturel, no marks, wounds or tan". Since then, my body is multiple shades of Sun, crow feet, faded and smudged tattoo and many, many wounds deep. I wear it all proudly, hoping to take the most last updated version to the grave whenever the day comes.

2) I no longer wanted words on my body.

I live words. I breathe them. I know them inside out. Do I want a blue print on my body or do I want them to go with them? The latter, cause I can't discriminate. I want every word I know on my body, I want every inch to be covered in statements I stand for. Can I physically get it tattooed and trivialize them? Probably not.

When today, another one of the groundbreaking things went down, the line played in my head. I knew why that tattoo wasn't meant to go on my skin.

It's been a year of minor falls and I'd rather wait to live them than to take them skin deep with me to my death bed. Maybe, it's a life time of minor falls and major lifts are only in comparison, a contrasting value to how minor the incident is. Yet, it's not worth it to mark the skin with words. Not on me. Not for me.


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