Prose before hos

Last year, this time, I was stuck in a hospital bed, about to be sedated on a cocktail of antibiotics and painkillers. I'd been told that they'd decide in 24 hours' time whether they'd have to chop my arm off (I can assure you it was a lot more graceful than that). 

Keeping this bit of a tradition alive with my last day of writing and out with the old business. There ought to have been a catch-up, year-end review bullshit but really, haven't you had enough with my year and the details that you didn't sign up for and yet got? This is meant for everyone in the world except that one solid cunt sitting somewhere in Europe, keeping her eyes on my movements and hoping to see if I tap the next dude or speak to the other ten and then call those dudes and their entourage and the rest of the English speaking world to ask/check on me, despite not having seen my face in over half a decade, in hope that she can ruin my fucking life and call it a "misunderstanding". Oops.  

To you, I say, go fuck yourself. 

As much as I know resting is for the dead, I am all up for it. 

Bring it on, 2021. But just don't fuck me over like 2020. k? 

My point being, I have no idea how I'm supposed to get on with it or get my shit together when I'm so far away in pieces, disintegrated and crumbled. A part of me just wants to stop, switch my phone off, and switch my life off. The show's over and the curtain's closed, good night and good luck. I have admitted this a few times now, had it not been for F1 this year, I'd have positively tried something drastic. There's nothing keeping me alive barring fucking F1. 

The other part wants to get closure; get the pending payment, send the invoice, fix that PayPal account, ask that cunt, why he's gone off the face of the Earth. 

There's peace in seeking closure, despite the immediate pain in attempting to gain it; there's a curiosity in shutting yourself off. Is that man who was so into me this past Summer still into me? Should I write a long, elaborate personal essay and send it out to him explaining why I couldn't give him all that he offered to give me? Is that selfish? Perhaps it is. 

Curiosity never ends well, hence I play dumb and walk past so many instances of when I should perhaps ask out loud and get some sense of an ending. I don't cause mostly it's not worth it. People leave crumbs for you to pick and when they don't, it's often not worth the effort. 

Case in point, someone who I was madly into and his patterns, and the little tryst we had today after months. He reached out to me and my first guess was that this was a result of his drunken night that led to relatively early morning and thus his sloppiness. It seemed like no time had passed between us, except I wasn't in the same time zone and thus, quite aware of the antics. I asked him and he answered just the same. He was drunk from the night and had an early morning, which led him to this and to me. 

People are easy, foolishly so. They let themselves out and all you have to do is observe. Observe until you know what makes and breaks them. 

God forbids you meet one of your own kind, someone like me if you're me. Then there's immense negging and immediate personal attacks to break you down. I know this because when I meet my own kind, I come undone. I've lived through it a few times and I'm not proud of how sloppy I get in the company of those where they're playing the same fucked up game as me. 

I've learned a lot and there's more to learn. On priority is how to avoid people like me, set up a PayPal account without wanting to go bald a la Britney Spears from 2007, and not writing a 1200 word essay to seek apology from a person whose heart I seemingly broke this Summer. Enough for him to abandon a passion project he was most excited about. I blame myself every minute of the day. 

The most love I experienced this year was via a window on Instagram. 

I parted with a TV show suggestion that moved me. A few months later, as near strangers, he parted with one that he thought would move me. 

I waited a while to hear from him again. Perhaps, anticipation. 

Would he enquire on how I liked it or would there be silent confidence, in having read me like a book and knowing what would work and what wouldn't, despite never having seen my face in person. 

His confidence won. The show got me. Enough for me to know it was definitely worth a shot, that I missed on. 

I'm convinced, there's no greater love language in this world than pleasing someone with what they'd like to see on screen. 

Someone recently asked me what stage of grief I am in after I discussed the seven stages with them. 

Denial, I told them. Still processing all that's been going on, and still trying to make sense of all that's happened. 

Except, I think, I may have moved on to the second stage. Anger. 

I was supposed to travel, starting today. I don't know what really transpired (I know exactly what did) but this was going to be my reclaiming my life trip, with a near stranger for two days. 

Covid (in his case) and a minor accident (in my case) prevented that plan from happening and I couldn't be more glad, at this moment, to admit that it didn't happen. Perhaps, it is my anger or PMS (due date 7 days later) or whatever else, but everything right now is amplified. All my emotions are charged and I am really fucking angry. 

Angry at people, who don't care for my wrath or me. Angry at friends, who do not understand what it's like to grapple with the loss of someone, angry at over-friendly pals, who want to help with good intentions and yet are not understanding of what I've gone through and going through, and then with those, who haven't been there at all. 

There's nothing but a lot of aggression and hate for one and all and I'm living with all of it, compressed and packed for it to be preserved like a vial of bitterness, to be slowly injected over time, over months and years, and I'm afraid, it might never change. 

Last week, my therapist had asked me to allow myself to blow off the steam, if I felt the need to, and I told her I'd been doing that. Over tweets, small mentions here and there with friends and strangers. To think, I fully understand her today would also mean to admit that I wasn't quite blowing it off because it's coming over at me like high tide.

I want to howl and I want to break plates and I want to scream and tell people to fuck off. Fuck off with your plans to meet, hang out and fuck off with your fake concerns. And at the same time, I feel absolutely and hopelessly alone, scrambling for someone to talk to, hear from and hold on to. Anyone. Yet, everything and everyone frustrates me. 

That breaks me, minute after minute and day after day. I feel like there's nobody and despite all the noise about help and solidarity and friendship, it's all farce. 

Over a month ago, when my grandfather was first hospitalized, I sported short nails. I had filed them just before Navratra began and painted them Cerulean. It's a shade I don't quite enjoy wearing much and thus reserve it for once a year, and it stays for 6 days, until my next round.  

He stayed in the hospital for close to 10 days and changing my nail paint was the last thing on my mind. When he returned home, the first order of business was getting back to pending work and classes. Mind you, this was the festive season and our biggest reason to celebrate whatever crumbs we could salvage to find was all related to him. He was back, without a trip to the ICU, defying his own premonition, "If I go to the hospital, you'll be coming home with my death certificate and not me."

He had been chanting that for a month. He and I fought each day for a fortnight leading to his appointment. He was sure he wouldn't survive it, and I, that we wouldn't have him with us for long if he evades this trip. He finally agreed to the hospital and the doctor only when I beat him in an argument, "if you are fine, then why are you hesitating to see a doctor?"

Anyway, he came back home after all that drama and the period where I was living from prayer to the next. I celebrated that with half a bottle of gin, diluted in 400 ml tonic. I wolfed down a pack of chips along, all that just to celebrate the little joy, we were going to get through this together. Another Diwali of misquoting bhajans together and giggling through it all, another Diwali with our masked selfies, another year of him fussing over how I need not worry about not being in a capacity to fund anyone but myself. "I'm your Reserve Bank of India." he would say. 

Before I could remove the Cerulean, he was back in the hospital again. 

It started with bloating which was followed by swelling. There was uncontrolled nausea and finally, it was something huge. He couldn't urinate for half a day and we deemed it serious enough to return to the hospital. My dad had sat me down earlier that evening before any of this had happened telling me to be brave and be prepared for anything. I wrote that off as banter, one of those things that people say without thinking much, after-effects of drinking on an empty stomach. 

The night this happened, we had rushed him to the ER. His doctor had told us that this was a minor inconvenience borne out of the catheter and that removal would mean the passage would clear. An hour into the ER trip, I received a call that he has pneumonia and that he couldn't breathe. He needed to be hospitalized. 

I was sick in my stomach and cried for hours straight. Our last interaction before he was rushed to the ER was me trying to rationalize this hospital trip. "You'll be back in an hour. Mom's spoken to the doctor. It's nothing."

The next morning his doctor told us how his recovery won't be easy and that his kidney functioning has been compromised completely. My mom had called me crying and my dad was evading all conversation. "He's not okay."

He was shifted to the ICU soon after and the visits were limited, two people per day, for half an hour each. A day after this, during one such visit, he started sinking and they had to revive him with injections and CPR. My sister saw that happen and she was immediately asked to leave the ICU. I was home alone and it was complete pandemonium. I just remember a lot of crying and insecurity of being left-out and not having met him, not enough, and certainly not at a point where he was swinging between life and death in this motion and I was barely able to comprehend the pace of this. 

From that day up to the day he passed away, there was a terror. A complete and utter horror story that the four of us lived through together. With every ring of the phone to every action, it was stretched, painful, and terrifying, that trauma is something we are all carrying deep in our veins now. 

Naturally, Diwali was nothing like I had imagined. We slept at 9 pm, empty stomach after a brief family ritual that we carried out. It felt like death even though he was alive, very much so, and undergoing dialysis in the renal ICU while being on the ventilator through the evening. 

At some point between this trauma building, I began to normalize my life. When my grandmother was detected with cancer, the trauma we all carried turned into our lives. We all normalized her chemo-cycles and radiation days and our lives were compartmentalized into her pain vs our collective lives. On the days she would be in despair, none of us would really do our jobs well and on other days, we'd scrap through. All of us spent four years in this routine and we got accustomed to living our lives with the burden of seeing our family members go through so much. For the most part, we were alone in our grief and each of us still bears the marks in our personal lives. 

I had imagined our lives to go back to that. We would spend 12 hours in the car parking together and speculate on the dialysis routine or how long it would take for things to go back and fix themselves. During those days, my dad refused to shave and I refused to take my nail paint off. It seemed like a marker for change and we weren't ready to make any change that was to change things radically. Changing my nail paint seemed radical. What if I were to lose him and his last bits, would our last memory be attached to the erased Cerulean? I didn't want to imagine a life where he wouldn't see my nail paint colour of the week. Especially not when things were bleak. 

It was some form of morbid fear that internalized over those long afternoons and walks around the hospital ground. My hands carried with me the last of his memories and I did not want to tamper with them in any way. 

It took a week and lots of individual breakdowns for me to convince my dad to shave. Consequently I decided to take things in my hand, change my nail paint and visit him in the ICU. I'd sit meters away from the ICU door and not have it in me to see him in the state he was in. 

The day before he passed away, I visited him in the ICU with fresh nail paint—lavender and gold. It occurred to me later how I'd worn the same on his birthday and we have photographs together with me wearing that colour. There was no planning, no thought. I just wanted to break out of my stupidity, my dumb thoughts about holding the last of him in my skin and my memory in this way. Doing a change would mean that his memory would be above all this cursory shit. 

We held hands and I felt like things were in control. It was heartbreaking to see him like that but he'd been a fighter all his life through adversities and some dumb kidney couldn't break this man down. He was active and conscious and I told myself later how he would fight through it. 

The most unfortunate bit of all of this is, he was right. We did come back without him, we did leave him there and instead got a death summary back. 

There is so much on the cursory level that seems to have settled—immersion of the last of him and the phone calls that no longer mean anything—and yet there is that unending grief, a sense of vacuum and the feeling where your chest tightens with sorrow when you realize how hopelessly alone you are in all of it. Everyone and everything is meaningless and how we are all counting our time down until our end. 

And yet, I can't get myself to change my nail paint and lose the last of him. 

Over a week ago when my grandfather got on the ventilatory support, and we thought we were losing him, I revisited a friend's beautiful ode to her mother. She had penned that two years after her mother's demise, it was heavy and heartbreaking, at the time. I re-read that in the dead of the night (as I do with most of my reading) and howled until I couldn't anymore. 

Somehow next day, I remember texting her out of the blue and sharing with her the details of my grief and his sickness and how reading the ode about her mother was hitting in a different way than the other time when I did. This was the first time I shared this with anyone, most of which I had skipped from my friends or anyone else who was enquiring. She was gentle and graceful and offered me the sanest bits to hold on to. I recall her telling me details of the prayer ceremony that followed and shared her ways of expressing herself, including how she held tight to the things her mother was fond of, from the colour of her nail paint to others. 

One of the most beautiful things she shared was her experience of leading her mom to the end of her life. She told me that when it's time for him to go, I should hold his hand and communicate to him, to be brave and that he will be loved forever. She gave me the analogy of going to the school for the first time and being dropped by a parent. Both the entities are scared and terrified of parting and yet they must. That's how I should take it and send him off with all my love. 

Somehow, each time that week I thought of this, I ended up crying. It was the only thing and the way I could cry other than listening to certain numbers. 

During the week, things looked up, perhaps the one time he came off the ventilator. Even if it was for 12 hours, it was a ray of hope, a sign that he wasn't ready to give up just yet and I held my belief that he will pull out of it. 

Except he didn't. 

He would tell me daily, over evening tea, how my grandmom entrusted my responsibility to him before parting and how it was on him to be responsible for me and take care of me. My grandmother passed away years ago, and I feel, I have grown leaps and bounds since, as things ought to be. Yet, there was this sense, this burden he carried about being there for me. 

This hasn't been my year, for anyone who knows me, and somehow, he didn't know or understand the magnitude of grief and trauma I have been carrying for a while. I spent the majority of the year cooped up alone and only met him once a day at best, only when forced out to meet him when he'd summon for me. He would say the same things, "Did you eat breakfast? You should not starve yourself for so long. How is Ph.D. coming? When is your freelance payment expected?"

I remembered all this and more, when I saw him for the first time in the ICU, a day before he passed away. Literally, 24 hours before it happened, I went inside the ICU and howled infront of him. I  begged him to get better and fight his kidney failure. He was conscious, oriented, and communicating via his eyes and shrugs. He was restless and expressed how he wanted me to remove his tubes and the injections and he wanted water. He wanted to be home and did not want to be in the ICU. He held my hand as tightly as possible and pinched me hard every 30 seconds. It didn't hurt, instead, it felt like a disservice on my part. How much he wanted to get out of where he was and how hard he pleaded for me to make it happen. I held his hand during the duration and cried throughout and managed to tell him that he has to be brave and continue to be my inspiration so we could enjoy the treat I owed him from my first international byline. He had been waiting for that and would follow up daily until he was home. 

None of that happened. 

Instead, 24 hours later, I held his hand and stared at the monitor when his heartbeat was dipping. I told him to be brave and to go to his new abode lovingly, that he will always live through me and the name I carry. It was time for us to part in this life and if we were lucky, we would meet again, in a world where there are no calories or sugar content and an uninterrupted television with a cable connection that we could stream. I thought of the things he wouldn't know, from the minute he shut his eyes and wondered if he'll ever know how much he meant to me, something I felt I never communicated enough, despite the world knowing all about it. That's the big problem with me, I can't ever let anyone know what they mean to me, not even after they're gone. Only, everyone else will hear me rave all about it. 

I bid him goodbye and hoped he is happy in his new home and that it was loving and comfortable and right up his alley. 

I am so proud to be his granddaughter and so lucky to have been named by him and raised by him and carry his blood in my veins. He was the most fantastic father-figure, a role model I grew up with and I am incredibly honoured to have been chosen to carry his legacy forward, till however long it lasts. 

I just hope and wish he knows this, where ever he is today. 

There's a lot to be grateful for. It's never too late to express your gratitude, even in the worst of times. 

I saw a call to action post on social media, by a former classmate, I'm assuming for a loved one in her family. Her friends/our other classmates were sharing it all around—requesting anyone who has any information about an available bed for COVID. Breaks my heart every time I see someone struggle to get medical attention, especially as someone who's spent half her life in and out of the hospital. There's nothing more frustrating than seeing the lack of resources for people, everything else including your personal politics and bitterness, etc aside, nobody should have to deal with seeing someone suffer. I have seen people plead, beg and cry for a hospital bed, for ICU and ventilatory support these last few days and while my grandfather may never come out of there alive, I hope people realize what we are signing up as individuals to live in a city where the diseased have no hope to seek treatment, regardless of a pandemic or not. 

Around the same, I saw a middle-aged gentleman climb a tree, in front of us. What started as a giggle, "oh look he's chasing a squirrel", soon turned into watching him scramble to pluck branches off the Neem tree. People use it for medicinal properties and as someone who's had a friend drop a giant branch of Neem tree leaves when I had chicken-pox, I understand more than ever. Someone once did that for me and I'm eternally grateful for that gesture. But more than anything, I don't want to imagine what his circumstances must have been to have walked all the way to a hospital parking compound and do this. In fact, I felt pathetic for texting a friend at the moment, while live-updating her my state of being.

I'm grateful to every single motherfucker who has abandoned my family and us in these trying times of dealing with immense pain and shock. You realize the magnitude of damage as you grow older, no matter, how many times you've seen people repeat their patterns. There's a very good reason my family raised us to be independent, even in times of grief and despair, for they have dealt with it themselves on numerous occasions. The variables may change but in the end, the conclusive result remains the same, people are massive arseholes, cunts of the highest order.  They are invested for as long as there is a spectacle to watch and treats to enjoy. Everyone wants a free meal, a glass of whiskey, or whatever else. Nobody wants you to hold you when you are bawling alone or watching a person die infront of your eyes. I've been there and much as I want these fuckers to perish in hell, I don't want to wish these trying times on anyone, not even those who have done us and my family wrong. We are living through hell and this, I hope, nobody ever gets to see this in their lives. 

Nobody can save your life and nobody can rescue you from living through the grief, but what people can do is have your back. There are a few people I am grateful to, especially this time when everything is difficult anyway. They have stood with us like rock and been family to my parents, more than the actual fuckers we are related to by blood. I hope the latter rot in hell, regardless of what becomes of my grandfather. 

My grandfather was orphaned at age 5 and he would tell us all daily, how nobody in the family has achieved the success he did, despite not being given 2 rupees to buy books. I wish he could have given every one of these motherfuckers a piece of his mind if he were conscious to see the shit we are dealing with. I truly wish he could see the vultures we have been living among, or hope he gains health for him and I to bond over this conversation. 

Every phone call seems like a thousand needles pricking inside my body, every minute. 

I don't know when this started but I became paranoid about death and the inevitability of it when my grandfather was escorted to the ICU with code blue a few years ago. He was sitting with us and chatting and the next minute he collapsed, his vitals dimming and the staff rushed him to the ICU infront of our eyes. It's an experience that takes a lot out of you, and I can't say I haven't been lucky to see him get out of it. 

He fought through it and many other similar dips and episodes. Each of these had one thing in common, the intimation was a phone call. That's the only thing my grandfather managed to learn using his cell phone despite our collective efforts. He has called us in the dead of the night, only for us to learn his glucose level is dipping and he needed to be fed something. 

On a good day, he could read an SMS and delete but he was very comfortable with phone calls. So much so, he would summon us by calling on our respective phone. I've had a few scares during dinners and other outings when I'd receive a call from him, despite my family being there, only to learn he dialled accidentally while trying to call someone else. 

Over the last few years, I stopped taking phone calls from most people. I think I was saturated after having spent my school and two colleges talking on the phone, and living through this hell didn't help. I stopped taking calls on the landline as well, the only mode of communication that works inside our residence. This was far more shocking to process because as a kid I was massively fond of reading our phone book, or any phone book in my access just about every minute of the day. I remember when I was allowed to use the landline to answer calls and protocols were set about how to greet people and how to wish them and handle calls. I was enthusiastic and I remember how eagerly I would wait for the phone to ring so I could perform all that I had learned. It was a responsibility my family bestowed on me, and as a first-born I knew I had to ace it. 

Lately, I haven't had the strength to pull through and take the news of any kind and face reality. I needed my time to process things, despite my stoic sense of being. Everyone at home raves about how nothing affects me and I can live through the phone ring all my life, but nobody knows the intensity of horror I live through each time the phone rings. 

The past week has been my version of personal hell. Every phone call meant information about something going wrong, whether it was directly from my parents or the hospital. We have been either informed as a family unit or as an individual about each time something went wrong; a dip, another dip, yet another dip. Yesterday, I was informed about putting him on ventilatory support through a call, when I was home alone and everyone else was at the hospital. My heart sank when I was told that they had to revive him using CPR and whatever little my sibling could convey between her sobs. If there was no phone, I wouldn't live with the constant anxiety of what next. I managed to cry, howl infact, first time in two days. It sunk in how I may never get a call about my grandfather's health and how he may never come home. 

There has been that sense of unrest, that anxiety for as long as I remember gaining consciousness, and each time I hear someone losing someone they love immensely but when push comes to shove is when you realize how deep the scars run and how some wounds are more septic than the other. 

Between the news update about his health, there have been non-stop phone calls between concerned few extended family members that my parents are gracefully handling. Left to my device, I'd not answer even one but I'm grateful to them for setting examples like these where they have outperformed their perseverance, so far. It's another topic for another day to discuss how and what happens when you see a family crumble under the weight of societal obligations and the lack thereof, and dealing with grief. That's a can of worms I don't want to go near today when I'm a fucking wreck. 

The order of phone calls has been peculiar-

Receive information first hand- convey to the family members by a phone call- convey to the rest of the family members after the members of the house have been informed- repeat. 

Despite this disco routine for nearly a month now, none of this has normalized, none of this is easy. Each time the fucking phone rings, I can hear the deep breathing my dad has to do to calm himself, I can feel my mom palpitating and my sister and I taking turns to console one another whenever the other breaks down. Every phone call so far has been a letdown, snatching hope until we are down to none. For the last few mornings, every phone call has brought a new horror story. The day starts on a note, a fresh page and then it's filled with the ringing of doom. 

We were all huddled in the car parking this evening as the waiting area at the ICU has been cordoned off due to Covid. We had each other's support, and yet, my grandfather wasn't around. 

All we had were his sinking updates, one phone call at a time. 

 I have this toothpaste that a friend got back from Italy. She brought other things too—egg pasta, truffles, limoncello, a shot glass—but the toothpaste, that was my favourite. When she got me the package home I got curious about her peculiar choice, why'd you ferry a toothpaste back? 

"Cause I know you like this stuff. I know you like toothpaste and oral hygiene."

She wasn't wrong, that is the best fucking toothpaste I have ever used in all these years. It was spicy and fragrant and fresh, enough to make you feel like you acquired a new mouth. 

I dug deep on the internet and looked out for ways to purchase that. Turns out, despite all the multiculturalism arguments and globalization policies, we still can't afford to buy toothpaste from Italy and they still won't sell that here. 

I did the most me thing I could come up with, I decided to save it. 

I told myself I'd only use it before a hook-up or a date, y'know, why waste such a thing? 

As luck would have had it, the opportunity to do that never came. When it did, I wasn't anticipating it and I never got to use the toothpaste from Italy. 

Earlier this year, the world was Covidized. When the outbreak in Italy became serious and the country came under a lockdown, I was concerned about the supply of Marvis. Would the locals finish it up? Would I ever get a chance again to get another tube? I was hoping to ask a friend and her husband to bring me two packs back, as a souvenir from their trip over the Summer. 

Their trip, like this year, was cancelled. 

Life's funny because of the timing of these episodes. About a week ago, the said friend who introduced me to Marvis lashed out and surgically removed me from her life. There were all these decaying thoughts and tangible memories in the form of presents and things we had exchanged over the years that languished around me and I didn't know what to do with, including Marvis. The miniature toothpaste stared at me, day after day. It was nestled between the bedside lamp and a box of hairclips that I store for easy access. I could have put it in the washroom, but somehow, it was too precious and too perfect to be relegated to space where you defecate. 

Last night, when I couldn't stare at my laptop any longer and my sensibilities were drained enough for me to physically move two steps, I went to brush my teeth and found no toothpaste next to my toothbrush. My sister had taken our regular supply to the hospital, where she was staying as an attendant with my grandfather who is hospitalized at the moment. 

I decided to use the toothpaste to finish it off. At 4 am I drew a pea-sized serving and brushed my teeth, and went to bed. It was finally the time to use Marvis, the miniature I was keeping for a good day to become better. 

"Do you think these men know how much we talk about them or like them?"

"No. Let's hope they never do."

"What do you think will happen if they do ever find out how much we like them?"

"It won't go down well."

"They're not capable of understanding. It will hurt us even more,"

 There's a very good reason, I'm writing this when I'm writing—at 7 minutes past 5 am— a whole day and a few hours since I actually slept. I'm running on serotonin and some other stuff (is that adrenaline?) and honestly, it doesn't quite matter, these details, cause in the next few minutes you'll know why. 

I've not had the easiest or the best year. Hands down, this has been one of the more difficult ones. I have had to do the task of living with the idea of doing "nothing" and making "something" out of it, without my consent whatsoever. It didn't help that we're all going through a global pandemic and somehow, everyone sort of went cuckoo around the same time. 

I've been in therapy for close to 40 days and while I was reluctant to give that a try, it's been a ride. I've learned more about myself than I ever did. I learned what broke me earlier this year and then over the years and then some more about the patterns I've been falling prey to. This is not to say it won't happen again, the troubles and the situations I've been in with loved ones and acquaintances but more to say, I acknowledge yes, and now, onwards growth. That growth is not linear, I'm told. For now, we are good but maybe in time to come we won't. Hence, I'm accounting for it right now.

It only got worse when I went off. I called spade a spade, lost very close friends. Friends who I thought had my back and wouldn't betray my trust. There were those who intentionally chose to hurt me in ways unimaginable and those who were insensitive. Between these spectrums, I brutally slashed each and everyone out and really felt light as a feather. It's been a heck of a ride around the sun and I have to say, quite a mental adventure. 

Anyway, today, I think I spoke to close to 100 people over texts, voice and video calls. It was something. I don't think I've spoken to so many people in a year, not even last year, when I was prancing around town. To each and everyone who called, attempted to reach out, drop a text and just dropped a wish, thank you. I may have replied in a rush and I may have overlooked at the time but believe me, it means a lot, especially in the light of everything I have written above. 

I met my best friend Sinner for the first time this year since February. She and her partner (who is better friends with me than our other friends, yay!) surprised me last night with a home-baked cake in one of my favourite dessert flavours. More than anything, just seeing her show up out of nowhere and drive all the way from across another city was overwhelming. I can't explain what it feels like to hug someone you've shared so much of your life with when you've been deprived of contact. We've not exactly had the easiest year with each other and for her to keep up with me and being there for me, I'm going to be eternally grateful. I told her last night how she has a thing for assholes, in the light of one of her favourite motorsport drivers and me and she agreed. 

My family has had to deal with a handful with me. Especially this year, from my mental and physical health both, they've kept up with everything and had my back, even when I believed they did not. I don't think words can do justice to what I owe them, to be here and writing this and doing this. It means the world. For everything today, yesterday and all these years, I can't thank them enough. I'm too proud to admit I love people but I'll make an exception here. I love them, each of them to bits, even when I say I don't. 

My friends who I haven't listed here—Ud, Mad, AJ, Kneeps, Pal, T-Dogg, Sloth, Mia K, SSA, US, AGN, Nyk, Pup,—have kept up with my erratic behaviour this past year. You have seen me through so much that ideally if things were okay (aka non-Covid) I would be completely embarrassed to resurface, but here we are. I have no shame whatsoever in owning to up the wild, wild cycle I've had with many breakdowns, nights of staying up and crying, and sometimes even talking to one or more than one of you and letting you in on my deepest, darkest demons. It's been a heck of a journey together and while it's not been easy, I'm forever at awe of each of you. Thank you for having me in your life and taking my shit, whether it's the frosting of the cake-related essay or ranting about the man I like who won't like me back (aka all of them, ever). 

I am superstitious about writing about people and giving whole dedications so like this entire piece cancels itself out but if I'm risking it, I have to thank May. It's not easy to have me as your best friend and deal with my birthday tantrums. From literally coaxing me for days to talk about cake flavour to taking my F1 memes and hearing me talk shit 16 hours a day, she should be awarded a lifetime achievement already. However, we have a long way to go so maybe we'll talk awards posthumously. But really, for someone who's so painfully introverted and positively hating on birthdays of one and all, May goes out above and beyond to make me feel otherwise, whether I want it or not. She's sorta tied all my rhizomatic group of friends together and honestly, as social as I am, I would never tag my friends' other friends (especially those who I personally dislike and do not approve) but she went ahead, did that. There are other unmentionables that will be discussed on another, perhaps a more private platform. However, for now, I am out of words to thank May and tell her how much I miss her. I only hope she knows that. It's been the hardest setback about the year (yet).

Here's hoping to be a better sister, daughter, friend, date, student, colleague, and maybe even a girlfriend to people in my life, Whether you've been named here or not, you know who you are and how you've been instrumental in my life. You all deserve a better version of me.

It's quarter past six in the morning and I've cried a fair bit writing this. That's the thing about love. It hits you, unlike any other thing. Thank you for showing me how much you love me in acts, words, gestures, and in edibles. Here's looking forward to tying the last loose end of the 20s in a tight ribbon with all of you (if the universe grants us all that). 

Birthday photographs, cake images and all the rest of it will follow soon over personal messages. 

I don’t want to write about that actor who died. 

I don’t want to write about the girl who’s allegedly helped her late boyfriend score “drugs”. 

I don’t want to write about the state machinery fueling hate. 

I don’t want to talk about minority witch-hunting, smashing the patriarchy with fifteen others.

I know, they’re coming for me. They’ve come for me in the past too. 

I definitely don’t want to talk about the GDP, job loss, administration. 

I don’t want to discuss the elections in a state and how the dead actor is being used as an icon.

Or that actress, people can’t stop talking about. 

Did she win a Grammy? 

There’s that scumbag running a media house, I don’t want to bring up. 

Then another, then another, then another,

Then another, then another, then another.

What do I talk about, when you tell me, 

You don’t want to hear me rant about the boy trouble in my life. 

 To Whoever It May Concern

Sucking on a dick is far nicer an experience than digging posts on this page from 2008. I would rather you leave a comment, an email, or a line; if you may, and just try and talk to me instead of stalking the living daylights out of me.

There are newer posts; some with my birthday wishlist and all that. It's a lot recent in comparison to the person you're trying to dig from 2008 (I'd unpublished posts from 2007; good luck hunting those). 

Effectively, my point being, get a life. 

Love,

Snobster

I'm not particularly uppity about my birthday and while I can speculate from a list of reasons why, it's important I focus. 

Unlike every year, this year I've prepared a list of things I don't absolutely want. This has come up after weeks of deliberation, stock checking of the existing items, and general well-being. 

SHIT I DO NOT WANT 

Cake

Chocolates

Edibles

Food (pretty sure people don't read)

Stuff Toys

Bed Linen, cushions and so on

Glasses

Mugs

Cups

Cutlery

Saucers

Pop culture paraphernalia

F1 related gifts

Custom T-shirts

Body Creams and Moisturizers

Band/TV/Film related gifts

Posters/Wall Art/Frames

There's a helpful shortlist of things I am accepting from and either way I'm not fully averse to. This was drawn after much deliberation so it's still rough around the corners insofar as the specifics are concerned but I'm happy to delve into detail provided I don't absolutely hate you and then some more. 

SHIT I DON'T QUITE MIND

Diet Coke Pack of 24

Mubi/Caravan/Other subscription

Fall Guys/ Other games on Steam

Body Shower Gel/ Bath Cream from Marks and Spencer

Gym Wear (please discuss for size)

Cast Iron Cookware (please discuss)

Playlists/Handwritten cards

Stickers (luggage/laptop)

Sepoy & Co Ginger Ale

Sepoy & Co Mint Tonic Water

Bedside Table Lamp (please discuss in detail)

Sneakers (please discuss for size)

Body Mist (Victoria's Secret ideally but please don't order it off Amazon or else other brands could do too including Bath and Body Works, Fab India, Forest Essentials, Bodyshop)

I think it would be great if you could take part in the birthday gift budget you have allocated and donate it to one of the few independent news outlets in the country or content creators who are doing a service to us all by doing the things they are doing. A part is good, yeah. 

 God has a new address. It's the internet. 

God lives in your cellular network on your mobile device, in cloud backup, greeting you on Facebook walls, Instagram stories, Twitter fleets, and in your digital history. God is ever pervasive, it's looking at you while you stare at your mobile phones and God's definitely observing you while you meander between tabs looking to switch to VPN to stream erotic couplings. God is watching over you from its new home, the internet. 

Sorry, Nietzsche. It was a tough one, mate. 

If someone had told me at age 8 that my desktop screen is where I'd find God, I'd have asked them to fuck right off. Why yes, I used the word "fuck" for the first time at age 8 during a game as a screen name, "fuck off". It wasn't my fault. I was a curious kid, who was big into reading and that was the first time I had encountered the word on a pre-loaded game. The same people responsible for letting me play aggressive, violent game at age 8, became utterly bewildered when they saw me play the game on screen with the said name. 

"Do you know what it means?"

Thereby, adding another layer to destroying the past time that sexual intercourse could be, in addition to my school. 

Anyway, the internet to me has always been representative of the vices and the excesses. Between these two concentric circles, we exist and consume. We engage with strangers, with lovers, with friends and then with algorithm. We navigate to make this space our own, we curate our choices with clicks and taps and feed data, almost as taxation to make this our own. To buy mileage online, to have our real-estate fixed at likes and dislikes and comments. The internet is our home. 

To say caste, colour, creed, sex lines blur here wouldn't be a stretch of the truth. It wouldn't, until God arrived. 

God arrived on the backfoot, like a sneaky little puppy who ran away from the pack. Almost too weak to survive by itself. Until it was discovered by a neighbourhood full of good samartians. The way people proliferate puppy pictures, God received the same treatment. On chain emails, through astrology and the divinity related discourse and then through viral forwards. It was unintentional but it happened. It happened because the internet real-estate was cheap and easy to buy. If you had a modem and a desktop and you possessed the wit of an Edenic Serpent, you could rule the internet. God, switched sides, and chose to enter through 0s and 1s. On screens. 

We could now view this on the internet. On a screen. Outside of real bodied lives, from edified inside marbled statues to now in your bedroom. From live sculptures and calendar shots to now in your screen. God was truly great and now everywhere. 

It wouldn't be incorrect to say, God made the internet great. Much like Trump's doing to the US. 

It's been twenty long years since God's first appearance on a desktop on a web page infront of me and this morning as I opened my Instant Messaging app to check on what I'd missed in the last twelve hours, I found a particular image enchanting. It was a photograph of a home-God. An image shot from a home temple on an extended family member's instant story. 

Ordinarily, I wouldn't have thought even more than a second about it. But, God. The sneaky creature. Showed up the first thing on my feed and in my thought and I truly thought of his real-estate value, its humble abode. God doesn't exist in live temples that people are fighting to build and killing others for. God is only around on the internet. God is in war cry chants that a religious sect uses to decimate the others; God is in thought when we want to show supremacy, an act of hegemony, when the warriors yell, "we are superior beings" because our God is the greatest God of all times. 

God may have occupied the internet and grabbed land out of turn, but can it persist for long? 

I was watching a competitive show recently where a losing team candidate made this observation, on how good times and bad times don't often last forever. They may last long but not forever, 

I'd like to imagine, like Nietzsche (my near-namesake) that God's time is up. Maybe not today, and maybe not in my lifetime. However, there's only so much left to be taken over and so many of us to kill before those who believe in God or God itself can call it a victory. 

I had a spectacular weekend. It feels like Kimmy Schmidt with the world except it's SnobO learns about the existence of F1 content outside of the sport and begins wondering the future of content creation. Also, fucking great community and why did she never take to that considering this level of game and pace is something she digs and how. 

Also, how has the world hidden Toto Wolff for so long from her eyes? 

Anyhow, to recall-

I recovered from cold, possible fever (not COVID, yay?) and got done with my period. 

I spent every spare minute, which is to say, in sickness and in health some 16-18 hours daily watching and reading F1 content, more specifically the highlights of old races and radio box commentary. 

I have also decided the final speech of what I'm gonna tell the 18-year-old me if I ever have a chance to revisit that idiot,

"Bro,

---x-----x------

Anyway, I don't know how much of life coach bit did I mention here, but I did manage to get my sleep cycle in check courtesy an old friend, who also in '13 helped me get over the said guy I'm leaving my 21-22 year old that fucking note for. The said friend (who shall remain unnamed or alternatively you can dig 2013-2014 posts to know more about him) has helped me recover from the trauma that was not getting the US tourist visa, not getting a thesis topic of my choice ("Dude film sounds interesting."— "NO, YOU MAKE THE FUCKING FILM IF IT SOUNDS INTERESTING!")

As a part of his advice slash what started this was the act of disconnecting and switching off. 

No, box-box. Only beer and champagne on the yacht.

However, since my industrial-grade anti-anxiety (the kind celebs OD on) does not permit drinking, I brewed a batch of Man Friday special Green Tea. Man Friday specifically requested his identity to be withheld, thus previous posts/tags are never going to be hyperlinked, not since his colleagues got hold of this page and it became a bit of a cover issue for him. 

I digress, but the day involved Vettel's radio commentary over glasses of Iced Green Tea, some vegetable cutlets I prepped earlier today just in time for race dinner and topped it with ice cream from the jar while watching Saif being exceptionally charming in Agent Vinod (2012; dir Sriram Raghavan).

Another note for my 20 yo ass, 

"Please don't diss that number. You'd be making notes about how happy it makes you for your next therapy session, only to check with your therapist with you indeed self-sabotage. Also, bitch, you like Saif. Why are you hating on the men you like?"

The answer to self-sabotage is no. I don't need an external agency telling me that. For if it weren't, I'd be chugging whiskey shots with ice cream right now and singing out of context lyrics to my crush over audio messages (about that) from Munni Badnaam Hui (cinema hall hui, darling tere liye— highly inaccurate cause the man hates films among other things—hella sexy). What can I say, I have a personal Kimi Raikkonen to fuss over. Or so I hope. 

I finally got around to doing what homework my therapist gave me, or well started so that's some progress. Also, learned that you can't hate people who like ice cream. You just can't. 

Tomorrow is a new day and we gotta take one step at a time. Baby steps, baby. Until then, some reading, little more disconnection (and all that crush missing cause no texting). 

My two moods on and off anti-anxiety, an illustrated representation. 

Not illustrated: current life status. If anyone's wondering, it's Vettel in 2020 with Ferrari. Literally, the last time something good happened to me was September 2019.