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Ladies Compartment

Ass grabbery seems to be a man's favourite pastime when he finds himself in a crowd. I don't know why you people do it, because it gives us no pleasure whatsoever. I don't know why it gives you any satisfaction. You don't see women grabbing mens' bodies, do you? Your sheer insolence disgusts me. I don't mean to attack all males. Only the ones who think they have the liberty, if not the right, to feel random women up whenever the opportunity presents itself. And if the women so much as gives him a dirty look or shouts, he just pretends like it never happened, as does everyone else in the vicinity. At a crowded station, you see the men shout, hurling abuses at each other, a sea of aggressive bodies forcing themselves into a train. I have not seen a more stark contrast between the genders.

Welcome do Delhi Metro's ladies' compartment: keval mahilayen. Here, no one attacks you. Here, young people stand up for older ones. Here, everyone is less irritated and less fearful of a ghost hand coming from somewhere in the crowd for a quick feel. Here, a little nudging doesn't make you as nervous. Here, when a toddler walks across the compartment and is prone to fall, at least five hands reach out to hold him. Motherly instincts come to the fore. Conversation is easier, stares are not so much to antagonise but to tell someone their shoes are pretty (or ugly). A lot of it is because the compartment is less crowded. But to me, our race's gentleness makes it's graceful appearance in the first two cars of every train.

Sure, there are still the odd fights for seats. There are still women who push and shove to get ahead and when the train stops at Connaught Place, you are still going to be squeezed in between bodies and pushed out the door. But all of it is a lot less nauseating in the ladies' compartment.

Unrequited

It's hard, the business of love. I feel like I may be setting myself up for another bout of depression.

You don't hear me. I want to be heard, but I can't seem to figure out how.

You don't see me. You can't look at me for long enough to notice me.

You don't meet my eyes. I fear meeting yours, so I let it go.

When you pick someone else, it rips me apart. I would pick only you.

When you flinch at my touch, I am rejected.

All I want to do is look at you all day. But sometimes I also want you to want to look at me.

I know you're not right for me but I can't help wanting you.

When you laugh at a joke I made, I feel lighter.

I want to run my fingers through your hair over and over again.

I think of you more than I should. Even when I lie down to sleep.

Everything about you fascinates me. I am just another girl to you.

I invent excuses to touch you. It gives me the notion you are mine.

When I hug you, I never feel like letting go. But you pull away.

I wish you'd spend every waking moment with me. I can't get enough.

I miss you even after a minute. Do you even notice?

Won't you choose me? Please?

Inside your head

Emptiness. Even when everything around you is happening faster than ever, you can feel empty and hollow if just one small thing is wrong. Even if you fill your life with things to do so you don't have to think about it, every day it will catch you unawares and creep into the darkness of your mind and take over your thoughts. You wouldn't even know how it got there, when you were blocking it with all your might. But it pokes you, prods you, never gives you peace. Songs play in the air and you can only focus on the pain in them, because you're feeling pain. You'd be smiling and laughing and then suddenly there comes a reminder. You didn't see it coming. It overwhelms you and you turn to jelly. You lock yourself in a room and cry until the feeling passes and the memory hides away to come back later.

He's gone. You can't seem to fathom it. So you go back and sift through the pictures, remembering things about him. His hair. The park. The station. Hugs. Rain. And then it all blurs together. You secretly wish he'd come back. Even though if he did, you might only just push him further away. But you can't stand to be alone. You can't bear feeling unwanted.

No one can know how weak you've become. So you laugh. You make jokes, just like always. No one can know that you're falling apart. You flirt. Meaning stripped away from your words. Because suddenly, no one seems fit to fill the void. Though, when he was there, everyone seemed better than him. What can you do now? Wait until someone comes for you or hope that he will fix it?

No. You only sit in silence amidst the granite walls of your bathroom, a cigarette between your fingers. Your wrist shivers until the ash falls to the floor without a sound. You take a drag, but the feeling you anticipated doesn't come. Instead of a calming buzz, all you feel is nausea. You let the cigarette burn out without smoking it. You watch the orange-red heat eat away at the paper, slowly, quietly, steadily. Like a ring of fire it blackens white. Brown, sweet smelling tobacco burns into a sickly grey ash. Smoke curls like a witch's fingers and rises through the still air. You don't know how to feel inside, so you cry. And once the tears start flowing, the don't seem to stop.

They say that when you cry, you feel better. But you don't. You are dry of tears but the hurt doesn't ebb away. Distract yourself, distract yourself. Put away these thoughts for later. Later comes and the thoughts waterfall over you. You can do nothing but wait for time to bandage you up.

Raindrops are falling on my head

Monsoons are here. Season of the new. Season of plenty. Rain falls sometimes like snowflakes, sometimes in torrents that raise the water to your ankles. Drops hit your face, like kisses from a little child. Your clothes stick to you, cooling you, washing away the city's dirt. Your feet covered in dust, are now covered in a mix of mud and leaves. You jump into a puddle and hear the splash. Rain is my home.

2 A.M.

I wish I wasn't in love with you. I really, REALLY do. And maybe some part of me isn't in love with you anyway. But even now, after all this time, sad songs make me cry because they remind me of you. Even now, when you don't call, it hurts the deepest of my insides with a hurt that none of your sorrys could ever really fix. And maybe it's all my fault, for expecting too much. Maybe i'm just a horrible person to be with. Maybe you just don't FEEL like having me around every second of every waking moment. I still, with all my heart, wish you would just lie to me and call me anyway. I don't think I ever wanted to be the center of your world, I just needed to have that illusion, and I thought you could at least do that for me. But then, that makes me a horrible person to be with, doesn't it? In fact, it just makes me a horrible person, period.

Some part of me just wants to settle for this. For this feeling of being loved, but not loved enough. I can't believe I'm saying this, and this is the first time I've ever thought about it. The tears are streaming down my cheeks as this feeling overwhelms me. I WISH I HAD JEET BACK. Not the Jeet I know now. The Jeet I knew when I was sixteen. The Jeet to whom, there was noone else but me. The Jeet that made me feel like I was good enough for him and for everyone else on the planet. The one who I didn't have to talk to for him to know what I was feeling. The one who I'd do ANYTHING for, because he'd do ANYTHING for me. But you wouldn't. Not anything. Only some things. I want to go backwards in time and be in love with that person. The one who wasn't going to leave me for his parents. Before all that drama and all that bone crushing pain. Before he told me all those little truths that meticulously sliced my heart into pieces. The one who made promises only when he meant it. The one who didn't care if I was wearing a skirt, or glasses or my hair down. I was the center of his world. I was his everything.

Was I ever that to you? Was I ever the only thing that mattered, like you were to me? Or is that something that is just not possible for you? And when you ask me if you were just a rebound guy, I feel like breaking your bones. Because no one cries over rebound guys. No one tries THIS hard to make it work with a rebound guy. No one picks a boy going half way across the world to be their rebound guy. I know it's awful to want all this. to want you to be mine, and only mine. I know it's selfish and I am fully aware of how crazy this sounds to other people. And in any other circumstance, I would be okay with it and be able to deal with it, and just accept that you are "like this only". But there WAS someone who could handle this who didn't make me feel unwanted for a really long time (until everything got effed up). And knowing that there was someone in my life like that, knowing that you were the center of MY universe and most of all knowing that I would never be yours, killed me. It kills me now.

So I listen to sad songs and cry in my room and wait for you like a sorry, pathetic loser.

The Child

I sit down to write. Words have coagulated inside me like a blood clot. They do not flow as freely anymore. But now, if not out of passion, out of sheer boredom, I write.

When do we stop being a child and become a man, a woman? When is our coming of age? Is there one at all? I don’t think there is. Here I am, 19 years old, going on 20. Does the big two-oh make me a woman? Or was I one at 18? I can’t imagine myself as a woman. I am a child. It’s not to say that I haven’t grown up, because I know I have. But I am not an adult. I hope I never become one. I’m a peter pan. Or a wannabe peter pan. I never ever want to lose the child that lives inside me. I have seen adults that are dead in the eyes. Burdened by work, pressure, stress. Money torments their nights. The thought of earning it, losing it, making enough of it, making too much of it; everything about money kills innocence. It makes you responsible, it takes away your freedom and all the while if gives you the illusion of freedom. These adults, with these adult problems, seem alien to me. I dread the part of my life where I would turn into that. I never want to forget what it is like to be a child. I never want to lose the buzz I get when sitting on a swing. I don’t want to lose the love I have for hide and seek. I want to enjoy a chocolate cake with the ecstasy it deserves. I want to feel the rain on my face and be grateful instead of curse it for wetting my clothes. I see adults that run a rat race and forget these tiny things that children find so magical. I see adults with no sense of imagination or wonder. And it frightens me that there’s always a chance that the girl in me that finds magic in things around her, that laughs for no apparent reason, that dances only because she feels like it, would be lost somewhere in the rush of life.

But I am reassured. Parents have this way of being there without being there. Mine give me the confidence that this playfulness will never leave me. I listen to my father make horribly bad jokes and the twinkle in his eye when he says them. I watch him get tipsy and dance. I listen to his deep throated laugh that is never a rarity in my home. He has pressures that weigh him down at the shoulders. He thinks about money too. But I am inspired that he can take his family to the beach and feel the waves at his feet and remember how it was to be a child. I watch my mother too. How she hugs without reason. How she giggles uncontrollably when we crack a dirty joke. How she squeals and jumps like a three year old when she sees me after months. Her eyes, though lighter with age, have a glitter to them. Even now when we talk about my days in college, she contributes and laughs and relives her days as a child.

When I descend from this boy and girl at heart, how could I suddenly grow up? Impossible. I come from a family of children and it explains why I could never let the careless, wide eyed child go from inside me. I settle with peace. I have hope. All is not lost, and shall not be, as long as the little girl lives within.