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.

Random

You're someone. You're no one. You're a bit of everyone. You're an amalgam of fragments of hearts that I keep, counterparts of the fragments I have given away.

Your hands are not soft. They graze my skin. Roughly. Making their presence known. You are not prince charming. Your hands make the difference. They hurt my fingers when you squeeze them. But somehow, even through the hurt, their roughness attracts me, pulls my fingers closer to yours. Under a bench, hidden in a little shadow, behind a bag our searching hands, rough and sensitive at the same time find each other.

You laugh. Your eyes crinkle. Deep throated, honest, warm. It wraps me in its caress. We share our laughter under the blankets. Little giggles erupting from our sneaky tickles. Jokes that make no sense and were never there now exist because we laughed. This joy I freeze in my mind. I lock it inside an ice cube and put it away from the sun and heat. I preserve it and only in silence and loneliness, I shake it like a snow globe and let the tinkle of laughter fill my ears.

Under the covers our legs intertwine. We mould. Whispers. Sweet somethings that have fragmented meanings. Noses touch. Not like new lovers that do not know the way around each others' bodies. Instead, like one that has treaded my skin a million times before, a single finger traces the arch of my back. The same rough finger giving me goosebumps. It travels down my face and tucks my hair behind my ear. And we just lie there. We look at the ceiling and then at each other and without a sound, we speak. Knowing everything and saying nothing.

Who are you? Where do I find you?

Ode to a Third Year

When I began college, I hated it. I hated the Spirit of Stephania. I hated the Cafe. I hated Societies. I hated my classmates, my batchmates, my seniors. I just wanted to go back home. College grows on you. It give you the comfort of weedy lawns and red brick. And the faces in college grow on you too. And there's a particular chocolate-face that I will terribly miss.

I'm trying to remember when I first met Miss Palakkad Iyer (PI. or Pie. or ∏.). I have a feeling it was for the first yearbook meeting. Or it could have been before that. I can't seem to figure it out. But I did meet Pi. One day for the first time. And it was normal. Another third year. Another face. I liked her.

Shobhna has turned into my favourite third year. The one I'm going to most miss stumbling into college. Because she loves to dig. Because she's the best goddamn editor the yearbook will ever have. Because she puts her heart and soul into everything. And yes, she hates college. And yes, she scares the shit out of me when she says "God, I can't wait to get out of this hell". And yes, she hates Mallus with a vengeance. But Shobhna, without knowing it gave me something to do that I loved: editing. And then she laughed at all my jokes and brought out the cartoonist in me. And then she told me her stories and I found myself telling her mine. Heart wrenching ones, embarrassing ones, funny ones, they all poured out. I found myself caring about the yearbook. I found myself missing her when she disappeared to sniff out dirt and rocks. I found myself standing in the middle of the cafe hugging her while she cried. I found myself giving her the details of my love life -even the ones that hurt me most- easily. There isn't a single third year apart from her that I can honestly say, is my friend (Well, of course there's Ess but that's another story altogether). There's not a single third year besides her who doesn't make me feel like a damn Fucch.

Shobhna, thank you. The hugs, full frontal. The little bits of gossip. The photographs of your life (gory and otherwise) that you managed to share with me this year. The love (that came endlessly). The giggles. So so much more that if I started listing all the things out, I'd develop insanely strong finger muscles. You effortlessly swept away the low self-esteem I had when I stepped into college. You, with your advice and your facebook stalking. You. God, it's crazy how much I'll miss you. Yearbook to me, will always be Shobhna.

Oh and, though you know this already, I love you, Shobhna. I love you, Choco. I love you, Palakkad. I love you, Editor.

I love you.

PS : Sorry for the lack of grammar, coherence and general sensibility.

Fears.

She broke him today. It hasn't hit him yet. I know it will.

I was always jealous. In every way. More than I would admit, even to myself. But now I shall. I was jealous. I am jealous. When it took me a day or more to build up his self esteem again, she'd come and in a split second he would crumble. The days that I couldn't get into the core of what was really bothering him, she'd appear out of hibernation, leave him with a five minute phone call and he would be on cloud eleven. That's all she needed, and the power she had over him made me jealous. And angry. I was outraged that she would let him be so weak with her. I was outraged that she didn't see how, bit by bit she was pulling him apart. I was outraged that he wouldn't just leave her already. But he wouldn't, couldn't. Love is so fucking irrational. And then came more jealousy, that she controlled him, the one i was trying to protect. And all the barriers i had constructed to keep him from harm's way, she brought down with a little tiny breath. She kept saying, "I'm not good enough for him" and she wasn't. No one is. He's the most loving, caring, considerate person with her, and she just decides to take his heart out and step on it, over and over. She didn't know what she had, and she'll never know how much he loves her.

If ever, i get her in my hands this is what I shall do. I will grab her by the wrist and stand her in front of me. I will slap her with all the might i have inside me across her face. And again. Again. Again. Until it become blue. And then I will shout out to her a million reasons why she isn't good enough for him. And between each reason, i'll slap her again. And when that's over, i will drag her by the hair and bang that head of hers on a stone wall. And then I will break her neck. That's all.

And now, I'm going to make sure he never falls in love with her again. Twisted, mind bended, confusing, irrational, dishonest bitch. And now i feel guilty. Because if he reads this, he'd not approve. And would not make him feel any better. Only worse, only angry at me.

I'm the best friend. And all I want is for him to be happy. I am selfless as I ever could be with him. I worry for him, I hurt for him, I cry for him. It makes me worry what he is to me. Friend, best friend, more? I worry what would happen if i let that possibility become real. Everything would change. Every move of ours would be different. And what once was, fifteen years ago can't be relevant anymore, right? But I push these fears away and focus on the one at hand: the fear that he will be irreparable, like i have become. I will stay close. And fix him. I'm the best friend.

How I wish, how I wish you were here.

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,

Running over the same old ground.

What have you found? The same old fears.

Wish you were here.

Frail

I feel sometimes like I have lost the passion to write. I used to write so much before, and now it feels like a river that has dried up into a stream. I'm so preoccupied with feeling inferior that I no longer have the confidence to write. My thoughts get stifled inside my head, with no paper to pour them out to. My vocabulary seems inadequate when I read the writings of my peers, my knowledge stunted, my imagination just a flickering candle in the wind. I want to write freely like I used to. Without worries of whether it was good enough. I want to write for me, and no one else.

Kelly. Anie.

Some people you just click with. Some people, you meet them the first time and you know that they are going to stay.

I met you that day. Dusty room. We laughed and we raised our hands to a scandalous question. We had that little rainy outing on the road. And it happened, just like that. We laughed then... and without any possible reason, we laugh now.

Inside secrets that made Facebook a cryptic treasure house. (That some wall stalkers would figure out in an instant) Fruit jokes that no one else on the planet could find funny. Stupid, very stupid things that I did in unstable states that you entertained. Boy stories that perpetually ended with a whole hearted "Awie". Memories like infinite cello tape.

And now roommates. The prospect gives me little inside giggles. The ones that are tiny and don't come out loud but they sit inside you and warm you all day. We'll make that room the most insane, the most lived in, the most eclectic room imaginable. And always always, we shall laugh. MUCH.

Empty

Things have been so dead lately. Exams and the winter have slowed down life almost to a standstill. The short days are made even shorter because i wake up so late. Instability was the theme of my mind when i got here. Unsure of doing well in exams on one hand, and unsure of Wolvy keeping in touch over the new term. Unstable because i didn't have Amit's voice everyday and because i was pulled away from my family. Confused with everything that was going on, and just not bothered to deal with it. It just lay there like a quiet snake. And it still hasn't bitten me. I'm still empty of all these feelings. It's not that they don't matter anymore. It's simply that my mind doesn't allow itself to process these things. I am left with a hollowness that just won't go away.