I believe I may be on my way to becoming a blog-aholic. Innumerable times through the last week I have thought about how blog-worthy my current circumstances are but by the time I get to spend "quality time" with my laptop, the happenings of the day seem either too personal or too trivial.
I really don't know at this point what I'm going to write about today. I do know I need to write. Just get some words out there. They may not be the words I need to shout out loud but they will have to do for now.
Far away lands and fairy tales do come true, if only for one in a dozen. Unfortunately I'm not one of them. With this in mind, I took a decision recently and as they say - with great decisions come great doubts, or something like that. (Yes, yes we all saw spidey, we all know the line... just humor me won't you?!). All the same it was something I needed to do, so, to hell with the consequences I guess. I only hope the collateral damage is minimal.
Someone read my previous posts recently and commented on how cryptic most of them were. Like it was an inside story meant to be understood by only those who know whats going on in my life. For everyone out there who agrees... I'm sorry. I can only share so much, I guess, without sounding like a total nut case bordering manic depressive :)
However on a lighter note, I do need to make a confession! I started a new job last month and I absolutely love it! There! It's out in the open now! My boss is not a mean bastard, my work does not bore me to death, I do not count the hours before I can run away and I do not get through each day surfing the net at work. Miraculous as it sounds, I'm still a programmer! I think I'm probably one of the rare few who can actually be both ... a software engineer and a happy person!
Note to self - From now on I shall fixate on the positives in my life for the moment and leave the rest behind. (Very good advice form a very good friend :D)
So that's my contribution to blog-land for now. Now all I have to think of is a random end to a very random post ... and I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep* :)
so... Goodnight!
* Song - Feelin' Groovy by Simon and Garfunkel
Divorce... Or something like that.I have a friend who has been living with her partner for over twenty-five years now but they're still not married. The way she put it is, when you've been living together for this long, whatever name you give it, it's still a marriage.
She is also a strong supporter of gay marriages since, according to her, there is really no good reason for gays to be spared the distress of being married! (Sounds good to moi :D !)
I, on the other hand, have been living with my room mates for a little over a year now and, while ours isn't quite a lesbian menage a trois (sorry to disappoint you guys!), we're still family. We're sisters from different parents. We fight, we bitch, we gossip and we cry. There are times we hate each other, but no matter what, we always stand by each other. This post is really not about my relationship with them and the past year that we have spent together. The innumerable testimonials on Orkut and at least a dozen older posts on this blog and others like it have already documented our friendship and consigned it to posterity.
This post is about what happens after.
Over the last year, we have made this dump (which our landlord calls an apartment) our home. We painstakingly picked out bathroom fittings and bedroom curtains. Most students wouldn't have changed a light bulb in their apartments. We have had everything, from blinds and window screens (which some of us call window meshes... err... "Where did you learn your English?!") to kitchen counter tops set in before us. With our limited means, we did up the place to make it our personal space.
Next month we're moving out and moving on.
We're not going to be living together any more. Though we'll always be friends we'll never be "roomies" again. To me it feels like a divorce of sorts. Last week we had our first conversation of how we're going to divide the kitchen effects. Who keeps what coffee mug. I know its just the first of many to follow. Its really not that bad since it will be amicable, by mutual consent. Yet I look around and wonder how we're going to lay claim on the million memories that beautify our living room.
Fridge magnets of the various trips we took together, shoes we bought together 'coz we share the same size (and, surprisingly, the same taste as well!), walls of photographs, of common friends and wonderful times spent together. Our extended family of stuffed toys, the lion co-existing with cows and the dolphin, the dog on the book shelf with the ridiculous pair of stoned teddy bears. The DVDs and the books, fact and fiction. I look at my room, my things, and I wonder how I'm going to decide what t-shirt to wear every morning. What would it be like to not have to worry about one of them wearing the same color that day?!
So much shared. So much forgotten. We make connections with the most mundane routines. Making three different kinds of tea, two different kinds of Maggi. We have to have something vegetarian and substantial with every meal (and no, daal does not count :-) ). Where we go, what we do, when we eat, it has to be unanimous. No one gets left behind.
I wonder why these connections should be considered any less life-changing than a marriage. And, is it really that unusual to mourn their death, even though it was inevitable?
Divorce. Its an ugly word. All the amicability cannot ease its pain. "We're still friends", they say. "We used to be family", remains unsaid.
This is my tribute to the unsaid. To my family. I wish you the best in the years to come. And no matter where I am, there will always be room for you in my home because you will always be family to me.
Dream a little dream...
As she walked to the departure terminal for her flight back home, everyone around looked at her and smiled. A youngish girl smartly dressed in a business suit with the regular stroller and black laptop bag with a huge bowl of ice cream and a smile of pure joy on her face - it was an amusing sight, she guessed. But it was going to be a long flight home, and the ice cream was necessary she reasoned with her herself and happily dug in.
She settled in to her seat and was dozing almost as soon as the plane began taxiing. It was dark outside and soon she was somewhere far away in her dreams. Was it somewhere she wanted to be?
She dreamed of arriving at an airport, that was not her home. Most unusual she felt someone was there to receive her. She mostly traveled alone to destinations where she knew no one and had to get a cab to the hotel. It was her job and a way of life. She didn't expect him to be there waiting to pick her up. She walked out and saw him standing there and realized what airport she was at. And suddenly a fear gripped her. She looked into his face, searching for some sign to tell her he was happy she was there and this was going to be OK. It was not another one of her crazy whims and it was not something she had built up in her head. But his face was blurred and her memory of him, even in her dreams, was not too strong any more.
It had been too long she told herself with a small sigh, as the sleep drifted away for a little while before overtaking conscious thought again. And she thought of what she had searched for in that face she couldn't see. It had come to her, years earlier, as if in another dream and at a time when she needed a reason to hope. A reason to believe that if she worked harder things would get better. A reason to live. And in that desperation she had foolishly pinned all her hopes on that face. It had oddly enough helped her get by when moments of despair hit hard.
Her friends had not understood her quest at the time. Her search for a new reservoir of strength. It was one of them who had said - "Humans are nothing more than parasites, who leech off each other to get the strength to fight their daily battles. This is a relationship they call friendship, and the strongest in the group is often the loneliest". She had agreed and realized she was the biggest leech of them all at that moment and it was still not giving her the strength she needed. So she had tried to stay away rather than taint them with her weakness, and found solace in this dream of her guardian angel. In her dream she saw the black of the airplane window as a gap between her friends and herself, and she saw it widening into this infinite space till she could see them no more.
The lady at the back moved, nudging her awake and then by mistake brushed the top of her head with her fingers. It was a small gesture that transported her back to the room of her childhood, at home, where her mother would wake her up every morning, by patting her on the head and murmuring softly. It was still her favorite way to wake up. In her half-sleep she smiled. Thinking of her mother always made her smile.
As the plane hit the runway she woke up, just as easily as she did seconds before the alarm by her bedside ran every morning and sighed. Life, in some aspects, was still a dream to her. She had got all she ever wanted, the corner office at the multi national consultancy firm headquarters, the apartment in poshest sky scraper in the heart of the city, her space... all hers. Alone, by choice. Living her life by the day and doing everything her way. So she sighed her dream away and got ready to disembark. As she walked to the line of taxis outside, she stopped for a second and gave in to the temptation to look over her shoulder at the crowd of people waiting to pick up their loved ones and go home. Dreams could only be indulged in within the safety of the night. Gently chastising herself in her head she shook her head and turned away.
Dreams. Sigh.
