She

When the nights are dark

And I hear no one but myself

She steps out into the darkness

And spread her wings of joy

The girl in me

Hopes and expectations galore

Strength, that of a rock

A woman nonetheless

In the stillness of the night

She accepts the vivacity of her dreams

In the morning that she buries

It’s not for all to see

Like the wings she hides

No one will understand

They’ll clip her wings and crush her plans

Even before she flies

She sits next to me

Whispering in my ears

Her insecurities and fears

My eyes becoming the mirror

Reflecting her helplessness in mine

I hold her close by night

And feel her pain pour out

But in the morning she steps out

With sunshine on her face

Her happiness genuine

Her fears and hurt buried

Under the expectations of those around.

Magical

There are moments in your life that are worth experiencing, moments that take your breath away and change how you think. The ones that hit you with the most unexpected emotions and those that build the kind of nostalgia that it feels like having your heart ripped out. No moment however is as magical as the one in which you see two people in love looking at each other across the room. That moment of pure love in which only the two exist and everything else in life comes to a complete halt, a pause, meant only for the two. When the world disappears into the background and dims down in the glow of their lover's presence. They look at each other not to check on each other or communicate but to gloat silently about the fact that in a crowd of people, when they're lost amidst a host of irrelevant conversations and uninteresting details, there is someone who is looking only at them. They rise above the crowd to look into the eyes of someone who looks at them with the kind of love they didn't even know they were capable of receiving, let alone giving. A private moment shared in a room full of people, as they look away, they offer a quiet vote of thanks to the universe for bestowing upon them exactly what they need.
When you have witnessed the strength of such unspoken love, you know in that moment that nothing lesser would ever be enough. Rather, why should it be? To settle for anything less would only be a compromise, a half willed attempt by you to accept consolation for a love you didn’t feel.

Love and Romance

26, single and a through and through 90s kid, I have grown up on a healthy appetite of romantic movies such as Hum Apke Hain Koun, Dil To Pagal Hai, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge, etc. All 90s kids in India know what I'm talking about and if you’ve seen these movies you know I undersell it when I say healthy. For me romance has been just that. Being told I'm loved, mixed with an outward and obvious show of love. That’s the kind of personality I have and I make no excuses for it.

My parents have always been a stark contrast to me. Reserved and extremely conscious, it has always been a big deal if I can steal a kiss or a hug from them. My parents are even less demonstrative with each other and I rarely see them hug or say ‘I Love You’. I have always wondered how this worked and somewhere in my head I decided that when I finally get married, my marriage will not look like that.

My parents had an arranged marriage. My grandmum saw my mother at a function and decided this was the girl who was going to make an honest man out of her son. Stage was set and my parents were engaged without even meeting each other. They were engaged for two years during which my parents respectively finished their CA and MA. They also took these two years to finally meet each other (along with their siblings) and write letters to each other. On Sept 30^th 1984, my parents were married. 30 years on, I see my parents as two friends ambling along life and having as much fun as they can while managing their respective jobs and two over demanding daughters.

Ever so often, there are experiences in your life that make you question everything you know and believe you understand about life. On one of my mother’s innumerable travels to Delhi, she decided she was going to take the train.  Thanks to our miscalculation of the travel time and traffic in Bombay, she was running late and would almost definitely have to make a run for it to catch the train. While I waited for her call to tell me she had reached, I noticed that my dad seemed nervous beyond words. For the one and half hour it took my mum to reach her destination, all my dad did was pace around the living room with the phone in his hand, picking it up in the first ring.

My initial reaction was to laugh it off but then I finally saw it. That was love. For my parents it wasn’t about the demonstration of love. For them, love was worrying whether my dad had had his medicines, or my mum made it in time for a travel. It was what made my mother want to make lunch for my dad despite a back ache and what made my dad drive her for an important meeting irrespective of his schedule.  In that moment my concept of love changed. Just when I believed I knew and understood what I want from life, I realized, maybe what I wanted was something completely different. When all the chemistry and passion has died down and the novelty and excitement is gone, what I really want is a friend. Someone I can talk to about books, music, movies, sports and life in general. Someone I can laugh, cry and be crazy with. In the end, after 20 – 30 odd years, if my daughter was to write this, I hope she’d write it this way too.

Advice

“...Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth...” (Cortesy: Sunscreen song, Baz Luhrman)

The one thing there is never any shortage of, is advice.  We live in times when everyone around you thinks they know the best possible way to deal with a situation and they don’t stop and just revel in the knowledge of their superiority over you. No sir! They will actually sit you down and dispense advice more freely than the Indian government giving out Quota seats. They will tell u exactly how you should deal with the situation and go ahead and also tell you when to sleep, eat, talk, drink, stopping only short of telling you when to poop. Small mercies.

Problem is all the people giving you advice want you to believe they’re in this with you. That somehow the situation affects them as much as it affects you. Truth is, when everything’s said and done, none of them will care. Yes, they might show you sympathy, they might feel bad for you but the truth is they are not in this with you. The situation is yours and yours alone. The battle is yours too. Then why shouldn’t the victory and the battle scars be yours too?

This is not to minimize the importance of the advice people give me. I thankfully accept all your concern, love even, towards me. It reminds me that I have beautiful people who support me and that there are people out there who have possibly been through the same things as me and have a helpful word to say. However, just a suggestion, don’t talk like this impacts you. Give the situation and its impact on my life credit. Treat it with the same respect for privacy as you would my phone; the situation might be a manifestation of my dreams and those are mine alone.

Big Love

I think I finally know why people say they will never forget their first big love. Unrequited or not, first love is like a drug. It’s all consuming and all encompassing. If it doesn't make or break you, it definitely does change you. It trains you, sets expectations and if you're lucky, it shows you not only what you're capable of mentally but also emotionally. And when this love is lost, which happens more often than not, you grow the fuck up. Maybe you’ll leave a part of you behind and maybe you’ll take a part of them with you. But you pick up the pieces, pull yourself together and you move on. And you tell yourself the one universal truth - you will be alright. Tough times don't last, tough people do and you will repeat this to yourself till you actually are all right.