Prose before hos

 I returned home yesterday after a day trip to Rajasthan for a little something. Apparently, there's an embargo on that subject so you'll have to imagine the purpose. Anyway, the first thought I had when I walked in from the porch towards the door is to meet my grandfather, say hi and tell him all about my day. Except, it only occurred to me when I stepped in...

Other than that, I haven't had much energy to be upset over other things. I'm on autopilot which means 6 out of 7 days I spend in my room, working on my projects and doing my thing. In some ways, this reminds me a lot about being 13-14 all over again. I'm reconnecting with hobbies, brooding inwards and spending time filling that cup that needs tender love and care and all that in between. I've nothing to complain about the process. It's stimulating to consume things that I know will build me up to be a force to reckon with. I've always gained from this. 

Other than that, I feel fucking fantastic. Spring is upon us, which means it feels like fucking Summer day in the face and a chilly Winter night and I love this contrast. It feels like fucking magic each year and I feel on top of the fucking world, the best of both, if I may. 

I fucking love re-writing things, change of season when we move towards the Summer and all things that come back after a long fucking time. I love myself in the light of everything I have seen, been a part of and done and after a long fucking time I feel great about being myself. Nothing might be going my way but I'm fucking invincible. 

I'm tired of being a fuck up on the regular.

If my 28 year old saw me today she'd jump off a building. Sure, I have all these cool bylines and a fancy new life that treats me to being broke more than usual but fuck up? I don't think I ever found that cool and now that I am one, I don't know how to bounce back. 

I think I'd cope better today if I was fucking up shit when I was younger, I told ziggy earlier today. He came back with a wholly rational explanation to that and we went in a loop. My point being the same, if I'd experienced being a failure say in grade 8, I wouldn't be breaking down about my professional life blowing apart today*. 

This today* has lasted two years, and we'll be entering the third in under a week. Come February and I'm reminded of how all the grand plans ended and I thought it'd be a temporary funk that I'd crawl out of shortly. To be fair, everyone around me thought the same. Until a month passed, then two, then six and all of a sudden it's been two fucking years of the same shit. 

Sometimes I think would it be easier to start again. Imagine being born as a child in an orphanage with no access to healthcare or education and trying to figure out life from scratch. The burden of expectations and failure rate would be different, I'd probably turn out to be more of burnout and less of an overthinker like I am. Or maybe, I need a day out in the Sun. A day in a park with sunlight would do me good if I managed to get out in time. 

Maybe 9 months ago, the struggles were making my body work. A month ago struggle was making things with a man work. Today the struggles are questioning if being alive as a whole is worth an exercise and somehow I'm struggling to find any reason in support of that. 

I was not cut out to be a failure and yet every step of the way I am being called out as one. I am at a point where hanging out with friends is a constant reminder that everyone has their shit together and me? I'm just touching the grass. They have sorry faces on when they hear me talk. "It'll change, things will get better." follows silence. Their personal stories are radically different. Someone's getting a spouse, a baby, a house and I know they have worked very hard and invested a lot of their life and time and this is a reminder to me. A call out that sometimes it's okay to follow the beaten road and get results handed than going down the road less taken and encountering a dead end and stopping there and crying after kicking the wall and breaking your foot. That's where i'm at. I've kicked the dead end, cried alone and my friends can hear my sobs from the other side of the road. They're sorry for me. Thank you for hearing me out, I tell them, knowing fully well their sorry can't change my life and my gratitude serves nobody. I serve nobody. 

I think failure kicks in when you realize you're out of people to blame. Where do I trace this? My family's lack of initiative in putting me through paid hobby classes to cultivate things other than what I know? Being a failure with numbers? Being introverted to a large extent? Opting degrees that are one worse than the other? That's not true cause friends with the same degrees are doing well and being introverted has nothing to do with being a failure and hobbies that I cultivated without any external stimuli are the only ones that are somehow saving my ass. Do I complete that degree? No. 

Even for simpler things- I can trace back. Wordle, you know that word game everyone's wanking to? Yeah, so, suppose the word is "light", my first five guesses will be "adieu", "right", "might", "sight", "tight" until the sixth is "light" and by then it's too fucking late. Everyone on my feed is talking smack. "oh my god, I got in the first guess!!!!" You can all shove it up yours. I even suck at the fucking word game now, even when the word is simple. Then people think I know words. 

I think CBSE adjudged me fine when they did. Maybe I am not all that bright or sharp and I don't actually shine. I have no interest in being mediocre at anything and that explains why I abandoned everything that requires practice, maybe except the bass. That's still a part I blame on my family. If they'd invested any money on my hobby there, maybe today I'd be a hit bass player act somewhere in the MENA or something. That wasn't on me that I had outgrown my bass and for years I was asked to work with the same one. 

That's another thing with my family and my fucking growth as a professional. They'll invest in skills or resources if the "family can use it". Oh, a professional camera? Let's get you, so we can have birthday shots. Do you need an iPad? Next time your mom wants to play music on the go maybe we can use it. There's never been an approach towards working on "you" as a person. The goal was always "us" and never the children. Most Indian families go all out on their kids. Everything common between most success stories today is ruthlessness from Indian parents in making their kids shine through. Oh, you need a partner? Here's our sanction, go marry. Okay, you need a house to work from? Here, take these keys and start. I've had my share of things granted to me- most of them were edible and lasted less than 20 minutes on the dining table. The focus of providing for things worked differently, perhaps cause of the family background. You can't fight your roots, you have to accept them. 

I've never been a fan of January or February, well not in the last 18 years at least and that's more than enough to claim "never". I can't wait to cry my eyes out all of this month and to mark the celebration, I'm posting this big announcement of being a fucking failure on 2/2/22. I hope everyone who reads this breaks their arm and crashes their car today. If it's not evidently clear, leave this blog alone.

I know Adam Levine sang that Summer's gonna hurt like a motherfucker, but man, did he not take into account the Winter that will suck balls? 

Let me explain. 

It's gone on for so long that I've had a break-up, a rebound, a whole misunderstanding when I realized the rebound was not required and the break-up wasn't a break-up cause were we even official? It's gone on long enough for me to adjust working on a smaller screen and hammer out 8 different pitches in a day. It's for another time that 7 of those got rejected and I am currently dragging the only accepted pitch to as a sliver of Sun in these gloomy days. I'm putting in more work than I need to and hurting my sentiments when my brain has to process the beautiful relationship stories I'm offered. "Did you guys have arguments at that stage when you weren't official?" "no, we never had arguments." 

V tells me we need to meet and pounce on each other so we know it's just frustration. We should plan a vacation. Does he even want to meet? Am I wasting my time with someone who cares too little but claims he cares too much? I won't know until we see each other and feel the blood rush to different parts and dull our brain. I think we should pull the band-aid and get it out. It's hard and it's gonna hurt but we are hurting even now and who's to say we won't get better. The bleeding stops, eventually and the blood clots for us to reflect on the wounds. 

The Winter's gone on for too long. I can't remember the last time I was happy with him. I only remember the bits of intimacy. "I'll be busy through November with work and then there's the death anniversary. I'll need space. Will you be okay with that?" was once a deal-breaker for me in my head when I assumed he would flip if I disappear without any intimation. He said he'd be there throughout and the response freaked me out. I had hoped for a violent reaction to my sentiments of needing space but he stood strong through it. 

A week later, I went as far as saying I'm out of love and I feel nothing just so he'd understand it's not him and give me the space and the hate for us to get out of it. I can't believe that was something I did. Reflecting back, I wish I'd stuck my ground over those months when I knew this would end badly. Of course, we got back and we got back stronger than ever. Now, it is ending badly cause we could hold our stance. But not the Winter. This Winter isn't ending. For a season with shorter days, the whole fucking lifeform is moving so damn slowly, that it feels like I've lived a lifetime in the last two weeks. It really does. Is this how it feels like when you are forced out of your comfort zone? I've lived without it for so long that this brief support felt like a lifetime of love and I can't seem to wrap my head around the trick that oxytocin's pulling on me. 

I stare at the bed blankly, nearly three times a day, and wonder each time if I felt the same in the Winter of 2019 when I'd returned after losing my savings or in Winter 2020, after a freak medical episode followed by a family wedding followed by a grand disaster in a different city followed by getting out of full-time employment. It's that same sight, the same angle of the bed and the same question. How was Winter of 2021? I don't remember much. There were restless periods of grief and lots of silence. We didn't talk and whatever social interactions we were forced to carry out were all as a family, another reality I had to cope up with. What was a family going to be in the light of death? None of us knew. There was uncertainty and silence. It feels unbelievably similar this time around, except it's my personal weight. This is why I hate the winter. It brings out everything from backburner— emotions, grief, neediness and stench of moth balls in our clothes. 

Honestly, this should be no big deal. I've hammered my emotions out. Tried to make sense of my grief and what he brought and what he's taking away and all that. It's as good as over barring the intermittent contacts we've made with each other in our moments of weakness. I should be done with this. Winter's what, another month? My grief should outlast the Winter but in the current situation, neither is working. One of them needs to halt and reflect on the damage they're causing. 

We've been talking again. Nothing serious most of the times, but enough to leave me miserable for the remainder of time. Almost, every weekend or every 3rd day after the weekend when one of us feels like our head will explode if we don't reach out, we share a meme that the other will "like". That heart react on a meme, that double click of validation and hoping they smiled looking at it, that is such an upper, man. It's mad. 

I've devised a way out of it, where I send everything to V and tell him it's not for him since he knows exactly who it's for. Except, my brilliant idea forgot that V and I have a certain equation, the one that doesn't involve kink sharing and opening up our lives like partners or anything. I succumbed horribly and ended up sending some in an exchange over the last two days. "Have you made a decision or is this a moment of weakness?" I asked and it was, indeed, a moment of weakness.  

Moments of weakness add to hourly mental damage. Whatever progress I'd have made over 7 days, goes in the trash the minute my phone shows a notification. Yeah, yeah, I know I can mute/unfollow/block, and believe me, I've done each of those, across all platforms and done things I'm not proud of, only for us to go back to it and get hurt all over again. Maybe I'm addicted to my own toxic behaviour. 

We did ask each other if we're toxic. That was exactly the first conversation in probably weeks of being cut-off and I knew at that moment, the ice had thawed. We were willing to look at each other as concerned adults about our own behaviour towards each other and ourselves. Usually, the telltale sign of normalcy is when I'm told it's us against the world. There was none of that this time. It was all different. We take two dialogues seriously, and none of those were uttered this time. That did break my heart a little but mostly it felt like we had it coming. Again, it was unexpected but I guess life happens when we are least expecting it. He says it often, "when we are good, we are very good." 

It's true. The oxytocin that flows in my body knows it's like I'm floating on a cloud and anything is possible. In the last few weeks, I've not been able to do anything. I don't feel like eating and that's the biggest sign of things not working. My system is broken. Winter needs to end. He needs to leave so I can move on with my life and he can focus on his life that he intends on making big. We have no room for each other and dragging each other along like Winter is dragging my bones is truly the worst thing you can do to someone. That's not it. I need to stop clinging on when we've made a decision. I can't go back and have a cry and restart this again. It's more on me than on him. But some problems are out of my control. Like, the Winter. I can't control it. It needs to stop clinging on to me like I cling to him. 

We made it, another year. 

My end-of-the-year playlist has been the same since 2010, with lots of Miles Davis and then more. I've replaced it with Jason Derulo and Lil Nas X. 

That should tell you everything you need to know about me. 

"Prayers, too."

To say anything other than calling this year unimaginably unhinged would be a lie. I'm making the transition in the same way. Five hours with my old bookshelf and I lived through a decade of memories today- books I bought myself, books I was gifted by my (then) beloved, friends, the award(s) from college as books for academic consistency, a handwritten note that my grandfather gifted with the book when he went to the bookstore and put the advance down so I could read Deathly Hallows in time. 

I think looking at my old books was cathartic, and I finally realized when it all went down- when I stopped writing the date of purchase and my name in books. Growth for some, disassociation for others. 

This year I wrote. Not as much as I would have liked and not as much as I could have, but I did put out stories with my name down, felt like I served a purpose in taking a lot of important stories forward, and felt proud of myself, first time in a decade now. It was all me, all alone. No colleague, no partner, no friend, nobody and let me tell you, the feeling is unparalleled. 

For my next year, I want to hustle. I want the grind. I want to pitch harder and write every day of the year. Be aggressive, make a fuck tonne of money and be the best version of myself. 

Among other goals, I want to be able to binge eat less, cut back on processed food and sugar, and really pace myself to get back to the body I had in December 2018, jaw-dropping hot and unapologetically sexy. I don't know how that will be possible given the raging pandemic ensured I was on steroids and couldn't even cut back on my food with the medicines but I'd really, really like to be able to do that.

Basically, I got goals, newfound determination (courtesy an "I'm out" and lots of gaslighting) in being ten times more hard-working, sexier and competitive. There's a lot of anger and grief and I'd like to do nothing more than to transform that into tangible results about my life, my body, my self and my personal life. 

If you're an old-timer, you'd know I do a year-ender and write on the last day of the year. But tomorrow night I plan to be in the hottest outfit I own, best make-up and hair done. Gotta bid a solid goodbye to the year that was 2021 and honestly, it deserves. 

Jason Derulo tells me to talk dirty to him. Brb, more later. 

This *is* the first thing that I am typing from my new laptop. Made it into a momentous occasion by recording it here by typing it out. 

I've never had maternal instincts but given how I was shying away from using this machine all evening makes me believe it's been a good idea to be aware that I don't think I'll opt in to be a mother, if ever. I don't think I adjust well to embracing any new addition, and losing my old work machine felt like I'm putting a part of my heart to rest.

There was something on those lines I wrote a few months ago— losing a part of your life and hoping for it to come back before it's too late. That, somehow, did turn around the last time, but not for long. 

This time for real, it's been a goodbye to this machine and a few others along the way. 

Am I dealing well with this parting? Not really. PMS, hangover and yesterday's race results did not help at all. Heck, I'm not even making sense here and I don't think I like the feel of working on this new machine. The screen's smaller, the keypad too feels too condensed and then there's that emotional trauma of losing a machine that's seen you grow from a graduate student to someone who's been burnt out with work and PhD all together. 

There's a breakup, and there's break up; neither addressed, neither processed. 

I should be celebrating but the congratulatory messages feel like someone piercing through my skin. I'll never be a 22 year old looking at my first MacBook Pro feeling like I've achieved the world, everything I ever wanted was granted via that machine- first trip to Europe for research paper, first diploma film, PhD proposal, grant applications, first major byline, my grandfather's obit, my job application— everything came was via that machine. 

A few hours ago, I had the strongest urge to cry. I asked myself if speaking to someone would help, but truly couldn't think of one person who would hear me out howling about the people I've lost and the laptop crashing. It's not a big deal- Lewis losing his eight, me blocking out folks who don't match my energy and my adjustment in a world where a new work machine came out of inheritance/savings of a man I loved most dearly. And yet, sometimes, all you need is an excuse. 

MacBook Pro M1 14" is the reason tonight. Tomorrow, it might be you. Who knows? 

Probably the first time in over a decade, I've lost the urge to write here. Yet, here I am. 

My laptop died last evening. For the first time in over eight years, this bit went down, and I've got to say, it caught me off guard. I've lost touch on how to handle an unprecedented travesty and how to be prepared for those, mostly cause my laptop's been entirely reliable for such a long period now that I believed this is far from gone and has another decade to offer. 

Truth is, this was also my worst nightmare. Along with a few others, I've been keeping this thought on the back burner to the point, I didn't want to contest my cynicism with the reality that it is working for now and when push comes to shove, we'll see it. 

Push came to shove on a night I was PMSing beyond belief and had procrastinated big work deadlines. 

Big work achievement? I've been commissioned to write for one of the more prestigious fashion magazines in the world, one I didn't think I'd ever land, cause I never thought I'd be good enough to make it to the other side. I read those magazines for years, saw the author's name and wondered what would it be like to be one of them.

Cut me some slack, I was young and fed on SATC bullshit. Still, it holds value when you romanticize something and it happens. Never mind, the payment isn't great and that you're quite unhappy yourself with the style you need to follow. 

I can rant later, but for now, back to the crashed laptop and smashed dreams. I am also scheduled to give a masterclass to other writers/creators next week, which is also coinciding with the deadline, so a lot is riding on my laptop and the fact that it decided to die on me freaked the fuck out. 

"My grandfather died on me the same way. One day he was fine, at home, and the next day he was hospitalized, and soon after he got on life support and we never spoke again." I told a former Tinder man turned good friend at 3 something in the morning when I was panicking. He assured me there's no correlation and at best it might be a simple part replacement issue but my head decided to go down the anxiety route and pick on my insecurities. "M's laptop died this way and it never got back." I tried to get my anxiety to thought and he insisted on letting go of these comparisons for the sake of my sanity. Not to forget he was juggling with power outage himself and his concerns were slightly different than mine. 

My concerns are where I think the universe is conspiring against me and all the shitty things are aligned to be in my platter, one after the other. Just when I'm done dealing with one, the other explodes in my face.

I went to bed at 5 and continued to toss and turn for an hour, all the while thinking of the unwritten pieces my laptop contained, and the journey we were supposed to be on. From negotiating first job offer to writing tart over 6-page doc to men to sending a pitch to this fashion magazine while flirting with a man two continents away— the machine has seen it all with me. It may not hold memories but it has helped me make so many of them, my life is inconceivable without this.

I woke to the sound of religious processions twice, and twice again to my mother trying to locate the spare charger and giving me the call to start the day to fix the laptop. It felt like I was reliving the mornings when my grandfather was in the hospital. 

Around this time last year, I got my first international byline and I met my grandfather for the first time on life support. That moment plays in my head through the nights when I can't fall asleep and go back to reddit or some dumb game to shut off. All of that went through my head over and over, and how I lost him and how my laptop's the next one giving up on me. 

In what was a really long and uncertain episode at the service centre later in the day, my dad managed to get some temporary fix for the system. I'm writing using it, but the days of this machine in its present form are dated. I'm infact terrified to even think when and how this is going to give up and where will I be, work-wise, when that happens. 

The best way possible is to record my emotions in real-time and see if I can compensate fuelling my brain with 3000 calories but not the most frugal idea. 

In other, cheerful updates, I've felt more like myself, than I did in the last month. I attended a wedding, survived a week of the wedding without getting covid and without anyone in my family dying (no wait, someone actually passed away in the extended family). I ate more than my stomach could hold and drank a wee bit, things I have not done in a while and found myself realizing that it's possible to simulate normalcy if you convince yourself you're safe.

I felt safe all these days until my laptop gave up. 

I'm in my personal hell and I need an out. 

One of the nagging thoughts that haunted me for weeks after my grandfather died was the immediacy of separation between him and the material objects. Of course, it's a tale as old as time; material objects as we are constantly reminded, don't accompany us in our afterlives and yet we make all our lives around them. 

By material objects here and the separation, I mean day-to-day items and the memories or associations we have with each of those. I found myself thinking about the most benign things, from how he held my hand when I last met him and the nail paint I wore, and for weeks following, I couldn't remove that off because that carried the last remains of his touch on my life. Even when he was hospitalized for weeks and we were all trying to make sense of our lives without him among us physically, I often wondered if this immediate material world we are surrounded within is the last of what we shared mutually. My mind wandered to the most basic items at home- plastic water bottles, cell phone devices, souvenirs, television, even the news, and the current affairs on the television; everything at home had his touch or remarks and yet, we were aware of how it was a matter of time before change sweeps over. 

Surprisingly, it hurt me the most when I saw the old bottles were disposed of and donated despite initiating the much-needed order of change. These bottles had seen the hospital rooms far too many times. Who's to say the new ones won't but with these, there was a pre-pandemic life, pandemic life and the life that was taken away- all the transition lived through one. I've been working towards cutting people and things off but I found myself upset at the idea of retiring reusable plastic so clearly, I'm struggling within. 

If that's enough, I took the plunge towards a new phone. Unlike the water bottles, the phone has almost been an extension of my body (barring Covid), pretty much every living moment since 2018. It has travelled to countries, seen me hurt and seen me through many many things and trying times. It carries my life of a desk job, then another, then trying to make sense of the pandemic world, then finding myself hopelessly glued to begging for my grandfather's life via each telephonic update and finally, cutting contact from everyone when I thought it was it for me. I don't come from the school of thought where I replace a phone when the device is working fine and hasn't broken in smithereens and I did that, earlier this evening. 

Perhaps, there are few things as valuable as the device and the connection between the living and the dead. Somehow giving the most important part away doesn't sit right with me but life moves on. Re-sale value depreciates and you realize the world doesn't pause and mope with you. It's a lot to process and in other ways, it isn't much.