No one had ever asked the ocean to hold its flow,
To indefinitely open its arms, its heart, its water
For passerby who loves the shorelines,
But doesn’t love the tempest in its soul.
The ocean ebbs away until it is safe within itself.
No one has ever asked the ocean to halt its ebb.
So why do they ask that of me?
Don’t be complacent,
Just for complacency’s sake.
What is wrong,
Is wrong,
Is wrong.
And if you cannot say it,
Ask yourself this,
What would it take for you
To see what’s at stake here?
When would you say enough
Is enough,
Is enough?
Listen to the echo of discontent.
Lately, I cannot hear
Anything but the roar
Of eons of suppressed silence
Telling me to speak up,
To speak up,
To speak up,
Especially, when it is the hardest
Especially, when it is needed the most.
Recently, the topic of marriage came up. It’s been coming up for a while now. But I have been shoving it back inside the bottle the best I can. But like a genie, once it’s out, it’s out.
The question I often end up answering is, what am I looking for in a life partner. Does he have to be tall? Well educated? Independent? Employed? And the weirdest thing is, as important as those might be to some, no one seems to ask who do I need to complement who I am?
I am looking for someone with whom I can make this world a better place for my daughters to be. Someone, who acknowledges that the world is not a fair place. Yet. But who wants to work with me to bring changes. Who doesn’t think it’s beyond my means to alter how society is at it’s core, but who knows that the very heart of society lies at home. Who knows, change begins at home. Who doesn’t relegate me to what he considers, or what this society considers, to be a woman’s job. Who doesn’t let gender roles dictate our marriage.
I don’t need someone as educated as I am, I don’t need someone who earns more than me. Or someone who can take care of my bills. Those were necessities of a time when women were not allowed to fend for themselves. When they didn’t have the right to be their own person, cast their own votes, have any say on how to shape the world in which they would raise their family. We do not belong to those times anymore, so why are our expectations tied to the realities of an outdated era?
I want someone who feels this fight in their bones, the way I do. Someone who is willing to accept there is a problem. And then willing to do what it takes, so that the future doesn’t hold the same problems. Who understands that our choices reflect and create the future of our next generation. Someone, who sees that society has an antiquated approach to most things, and doesn’t let the fear of what others will say, to rule over what he knows is right. Who doesn’t need me to help him make up his own mind.
Women don’t have the privilege of not fighting, of ignoring the constraints of this world. There is a saying in Bangla, that roughly translates to this – ghosts’ foot prints are backwards. This world is a ghost foot print, turned backwards. If we don’t push it forward, it will go back on its own. And that is a price we should not accept so easily.
So yes, it will be hard to defy what everyone thinks is acceptable. But I am looking for someone who is not afraid. Someone who knows, that this fight is worth fighting. Who knows, it is so tempting to take the easy way, to let society and it’s norms dictate our lives, to go with the flow. But who also knows that sometimes taking The Road Not Taken is the only way to go to place that has never existed before.
Who we are, is part of where we come from. My mother calls me on FaceTime to show me the icicles formed on her patio this evening. Subhanallah, have you seen anything more beautiful?
I remember the times, growing up, my father would pull down the car windows, point to the golden sky of a leaving sun and say, Mashallah, have you seen a painting more vivid than this?
Or my sister pointing at a tree of million greens and say light illuminates each leaf a little differently.
See a thousand nights later, a full moon captures my attention, the ocean calls to my soul and rainy nights play lullabies for my heart. And I can’t help but think to myself, who we are, is part of where we come from.
These are the people whose world I come from. Alhumdulillah, what more can I ask for?
I am five years old and my mother looks at me, with the tenderness of a mother’s eye and says with an endearment, ‘Tui ei duniyar na – You are not of this world.’ I smile because that means I belong somewhere else. A world more exotic than just this. May be I am of the stars, the constellation and the open skies. May be I belong to deep oceans and endless forests. May be I come from folklore – the possibilities of not being from this world is just endless.
I am ten years old and I have long since perfected the art of being alone. My mother watches over me, as I sit playing with my dolls. She shakes her head and whispers mostly to herself, ‘Tui ei duniyar na – You are not of this world.’ There is a world, she knows, inside of me. A world that doesn’t require other people to bring me happiness. A world that centers around my family and my one best friend. A world with this own gravity and orbit and moon. She doesn’t try to pull me out. What’s the point? I am happy, aren’t I?
I am eighteen and I carry my pen and paper with me, scribbling away words I do not speak. I am not of this world. I don’t know how to accept the bad with the good. I don’t want to embrace the failures of our times as facts of our time. I am not of this world, this world so cruel. This world that wants and wants everything from me, but never gives anything back. What am I supposed to do this world?
I am twenty four years old and my mother looks into my solemn eyes and for the first time she shakes her head regretfully as she says, ‘Keno tui ei duniyar na – Why are you not of this world.’ She doesn’t say the rest. But I have long since learned how to fill in the gaps. This is what she means – Why hasn’t the world made you stronger? Why can’t you accept death as a part of life. Why is it that only you are different. Don’t you know what happens to people who are so different? How will you live in this world when you don’t belong here?
Ammu, hear me, I am not of this world. You have never taught me to be. I don’t belong to this sadness, this transiency. I do not belong to silences and complains. You, who have always polished my wings, never taught me when not to fly. I do not know how not to believe in the best of people, how not to give second chances, how not to take a leap of faith. I do not belong to lies and half spoken truths. I do not belong to calluses and disappointments.
I belong to words that are spoken with honesty. I belong to vulnerabilities and taking my armor off. I belong to tears and grief. I belong to hope beyond what this world is capable of giving. This heart you have given me beats with the woes of this world. This life you have nurtured me into makes me bleed out my pain. You have always seen all the possibilities of not being from this mold. So why are you trying to fit me in a place I don’t belong in?
I still dream of a world in the clouds. Of castles and dragons. Of love and adventure. Of friendship and forgiveness. I still believe there is more to life than just this. Can’t you love enough to believe in those possibilities with me, once again?
Dear A,
Today marks three years since they found you on that lake. What has changed in the last thirty six months, you ask?
One. Two. Three. One Two Three.
Now I know the last place you sat before you walked into the lake. Now I know the place where you used to live, places you loved to visit. Now I know this was not the worst year of my life. I don’t know what’s in store for me, but I do know my past. Losing you was the worst feeling that I have ever felt.
One. Two. Three. One Two Three.
People ask me, isn’t it time enough? When will I become normal again? A, how can you be touched by death and be normal again? I really don’t get it. They ask me, isn’t it time enough to stop romanticizing my grief? Tell me A, why is it okay to stop hurting merely after three years? Who is sitting on their high chair setting a time limit to my grief? Setting a boundary to my friendship? They ask me, who mourns friendship? They confuse it for love. Romantic love. Unrequited love. Isn’t it just sad A that we live in a world where people don’t understand friendship? You are not just someone I met in school or I hung out in the mall. You are my brother. You are my family. You have seen me grow up and you have been there with me every step of the way.
One. Two. Three. One Two Three.
Once someone I knew had said to me, I can see your heart break. I am tired of explaining to people that hearts break all the time even when you are not romantically in love. Isn’t it sad that people just can’t equate love in any other way? I have never run away from this pain. I don’t need your death anniversary to be sad for you. But even if I do take this day to mourn you again, why do I have convince the world that you are worth it? That our friendship is worth it? Why do I have to put up a facade that I am alright?
One. Two. Three. One Two Three.
In case you are wondering, in case you are worried – I am not on a path of self destruction. I study, I drive, I eat, I sleep. I call my family, friends and take care of my social obligations. I go out to movies, shopping and I go to the beach. Everything in my life is going. One. Two. Three. One Two Three. I am content in my own world. But I’ll always miss you. I miss you on days my grades come out. I missed you when my sister got married. I missed you on my graduation day. I miss you on days when so much happens I can’t process it. I’ll always miss my best friend. But other days I will pick myself up and keep on going.
The earth is constantly in motion. I once read a story where the protagonist stopped time by stopping the earth from revolving. However he didn’t take into account Newton’s First Law of motion. Although he stopped the earth from rotating, he forgot to take into account everything on top of earth that was also on motion. So although the earth stopped, nothing on its surface stopped and so everything was destroyed. I should have told you this story sooner A. That way you too would know that you truly cannot stop time, pain, sorrow.
One. Two. Three. One Two Three.
I will not make the same mistake. I know as long as I am in motion, as long as even my grief is in motion, everything else will be fine. Keep the dice turning. I am still dancing. Do you hear that rhythm A. I won’t stop. I promise.
Yours truly,
You have always belonged to yourself. But when he came, you gave him pieces of yourself for safekeeping. He kept them so safe that when he left, he took them with him. But those pieces still belong to you.
Don’t be afraid of the rain. He didn’t take that from you. Rain is when you were six years old and wanted to run to the roof. Rain was when thunder didn’t scare you, when you thought they were the light you were meant to chase. Rain is when you were fifteen and everyone cared more about being sick. But not you. Never you. You held out your hand and called out to your best friend to join you. Rain is you at nineteen, splashing water on the side of the road, uncaring of how insane you probably looked to passerbys. Yes, rain is also you and him. But he didn’t take rain from you. Don’t give up something you love for something that makes you nostalgic. Don’t trade memory for loneliness.
I promise you the first time you go out in the rain, you will remember him. That’s how memories work. But the second time you go, the third, those memories will turn bittersweet until one day those memories will become just stories. But don’t let what you love become another story of the past. Reclaim those pieces. They have always belonged to you.
Don’t be afraid of landmarks. Don’t be afraid of finding reminders. When you let people in, sometimes that means expanding your comfort zone. The more you make space for, the more memories, places and moments will fit in. And when he is gone, you will be tempted to throw everything out and shrink back. You will be tempted to ignore coffee shops and bookstores, cafeterias and balconies. But remember, you feed your fears every time you avoid it. I promise you the landmarks will fade in time.
I promise you they will become milestones, but just one of the many, only if you give it a chance. Balconies too can have more stories, if only you give them a chance. So walk into places that flood your memory gates, have a rendezvous with everything that poses as a reminder. Say the words, say the name, say it out loud. I promise they flow out much smoother as you try. I promise it gets easier with time.
Don’t be afraid of your story. Don’t be afraid that it makes you less of a hero. Don’t be afraid that you will see yourself differently. We were never meant to be static. We grow and we make mistakes and evolve all the time. Your story was never meant to be perfect. Neither were you. Acknowledge all that you have done. Take your blame when they due. Take your bow. You are the protagonist of this story and you better live it with all you’ve got.
I promise that you will find yourself in places you never imagined. You will fall from your own pedestal and you will disappoint yourself more than just this once. But the story never ends if you keep getting up. I promise you that your flaws make you just as worthy. Flawlessness has never been a quality. I promise you will rise again. You may not see yourself the same again, but reflections change all the time. Stories change all the time. So reclaim your mistakes. Integrate them into your life. Every chapter doesn’t get a happily ever after. But don’t ever let him make you give up on the story. This has always been yours.
You have always been yours. You have always belonged to your sadness and your joys. So never be afraid to reclaim all that makes you – you! Remember he doesn’t need those pieces anyways. He was just a moment in time, but you are all of time. Reclaiming yourself in not selfishness, it is self preservation. Learn the difference. And know the pieces you get back will never be the pieces you gave out. So set out to create the unique mosaic that’s you. That capability has always belonged to just you!
When I started writing this blog, I didn’t believe for a minute that anyone would read it. For me, it was a personal dare. Was I brave enough to let the world see the words that I put together.
But Amar Shobdo has surpassed my expectations of it. And along they way it has reached out to some people. Some people, readers, I don’t know and I will probably never meet, found something in my words to connect to. Sometimes my readers leave behind comments that move me too. It humbles me to know that someone, somewhere out there knows the best and the worst parts of me.
For a self-proclaimed writer, I have never been very good at responding to these beautiful words people leave for me. I can’t always express, without sounding a bit hollow, how much their encouragement means to me. I fall back to platitudes, not because I don’t acknowledge their words, but because too often I am at a loss of those myself.
So this post is for all my readers. When I had said that if my words reach you, leave me a shobdo or two, I was not really expecting any response. But thank you anyways for doing so. Thank you for taking the time to pause and say how my words made you feel. My sister is a painter and she tells me she doesn’t know how people see her art. I realized while doing this blog, that I don’t know how people see my words either. So when I see even one person getting something out of it, that makes me content.
I haven’t done a lot of things in my life. But now because of all of you who read my work, I can say that I have reached out to people. May be for one day, one moment my words was in perfect sync with your worlds, worlds I know nothing of.
When I started Amar Shobdo, I thought it was my shobdo I was putting out in the cosmos. But my wonderful readers, thank you for teaching me that it is your shobdos that reach back to me and motivate me, console me, and even comfort me. Thank you for imparting this beautiful lesson to me!
Dear A,
Fall is here. Soon it will be winter again. This will be my third winter without you. You know, time doesn’t fly; it gallops. Every time it thuds it’s hooves, a million stories go by that you will never know.
Once, my younger brother had said to me, “In a few years I’ll be older than you.” I told him that in a few years I’ll be older too and so he will never be older than me. I thought he was naive. But I think now, it was me who didn’t know. This winter I will become older than you. I will live to celebrate a birthday you never saw. I will go on to reach milestones you never reached. Do you hear the hooves of time, thumping, rushing forward, marching me to a place I didn’t know existed?
You know, I have a car now. A beautiful red car. Sometimes, when I am driving I think of you. Would you have liked driving? I guess we will never know. Do you remember I taught you how to ride a bicycle once? I recall I couldn’t believe that you didn’t know how to ride one. So I marched you downstairs and made you sit on my pink, bunny bicycle. I remember you looked around to check for training wheels and realized there weren’t any. But I told you, remember? I got your back! I steadied the bicycle as you learned to paddle. I ran across the street, holding it from the back so you wouldn’t fall down. And we laughed. We laughed when you bicycled by yourself for 15 seconds straight. Even when we were young, we knew when to take our victories. I think time has taken our ability to take our victories over the mundane things.
I have a copy of a cover song you did of, “Hey there Delilah.” Can I tell you a secret? Sometimes when I need to hear you talk, I play the cover you sang. I swear it feels like you are talking again. I had forgotten how you sound… until I heard you sing. Time is galloping again, A. I cant’t hear you over this thudding anymore. Time is a taking me further away from who we were.
I miss the comfort of friendship. You know, its funny that I thought all those years ago that I was holding you steady. A, you never told me, you were holding me too. You were my training wheels, teaching me how to paddle through life. You left a while ago, but this sure feels a lot longer than 15 seconds.
Tell me A, how am I doing? Am I falling down and I have yet to see it? Or am I learning to go on without you?
I remember that night
The winds touched me by
Taking pieces of me away
Leaving traces behind
Did the wind carry me to you?
Could you find me in the pieces that blew?
Were you there to hold me down?
That night my world turned around?
I whispered your name brokenly
Hoping beyond hope you’ll hear me
Only you knew how to bring me back
Without you there was no way back
Did the winds carry my voice?
Could you hear what I ever said?
Were you there to help me pick up my life?
That night I so earnestly cried?
You lied
How could you never try?
Why did you put me aside?
You broke
Whatever was left inside
Whatever that made you mine
I can picture it in my head: a wall lined up with shelves of books I collected, a chair facing the window with a lap blanket neatly folded on top of it, and a coffee table angled right next to it. On a rainy day or may be just a cold evening, I would randomly pick a book off my shelf to read. It wouldn’t matter which one – all of them had been, at one point or the other, my favorite. And then I would run my thumb slowly over the well worn out pages until I make a small indent with my finger. I would ponder for a moment, why I had stopped there. But there really wasn’t any answer. I know so much of it already, it wouldn’t matter where I start from. Forgoing the internal debate I would open the page where I had stopped. I would wrap my fingers around its cover, settle down on the chair with a steaming mug of coffee, and start to read.
The hustle of the city I loved growing up in would just be a thick, plain glass sheet away. If I could take my eyes off the book I was being woven into, I would look outside the four paneled window and enjoy perhaps the raindrops thrashing against it, threatening to break into my sanctuary. I might enjoy the cool wind blowing the hair off my face and leaving a trail of goose bumps on my flesh as I hastily reach out for my lap blanket placed near my foot stool.
But on days I just couldn’t stray, I would sit beside the busy city racing through the alleyways of its life as I was being leisurely captivated into a world of my choosing. I would love that quietness of the world I reveled in contrasted by the noise of the world I would eventually come back to. But then, it would not be that time. For then, I would sweep through the pages erecting a virtual world where I came in contact with the characters I learned to embrace. All the while, the bitter coffee, the warm coffee would linger its taste in my mouth, keeping me alert and keeping me going.
Ah what a blend of aroma – old paperbacks, newly bound novels and flowing smell of coffee would be a treat to my olfactory senses.
Woman,
Who have you become?
Where have your feather footsteps led you?
Who burned your feathers to ashes
And ignited that fire in you?
Woman,
That fire is glorious to the rest of the world.
To you,
That is a burning stake
With your heart embalmed.
Woman,
Where has the thoughts behind your eyes gone?
On which corner of your mind
Have you locked your pins and needles
That you used used to stitch
Your mind back together.
You know right, the scars can be seen.
Woman,
Why are your palms bloody
From holding onto the kite of regrets?
Let it fly,
No kite stays threaded to you.
Why have you turned your hands into a prayer
For those you won’t stay?
Woman,
You know better.
All they ever want is to turn you
Into a beautiful marble statue
They want to write about your beauty and elegance,
Dedicate poetry to your woes,
Write songs, legends of everything you would be.
But they don’t want to see the molten lava
Spilling from your lips every time you want to cry.
They don’t want to see smoke rising,
Instead of tears.
They don’t want your softness;
They are too busy turning you to stone.
You have never been stone.
Woman,
You are all the things pretty and all things ugly.
You are war and peace song merged into one.
You are jaded and cynical and optimistic.
How could you not be?
You have never needed them anyways,
You still made space, didn’t you?
You wanted them to stay
But want is not need, is never need.
When they all sink into the darkness,
Don’t let them take your light.
Woman,
Let your heart be your guide,
Let your mind be your ally.
Let it be known,
You are a Phoenix on the verge of dying.
But you shall always rise from the ash.
After all, not everyone can burn the same way you do,
And come back more innocent than ever.
Stop.
I know how that goes.
I know how that ends.
I have written that story a thousand times
I have spoken those same words again and again.
Stop.
I don’t need you to tell me I am strong.
I know where I have been,
I know all that I have done.
I know strength brought me here.
I don’t need you to tell me how much more I can take.
I know better than anyone,
How much I can grasp and mould.
So you can stop.
I don’t need to hear reassurances.
Those words have been my mantra.
I don’t need you to whisper them back at me.
When I need it most, I know where to find it.
Stop.
I know what distance will do.
I know how to forget.
I am a pro at missing people.
I have had years of experience –
Years to teach myself how to convince myself
Lost people don’t come back.
Stop.
I have made peace with death.
But I will not make peace with the dead.
If my anger, my questions fade away,
Will I not lose the last piece of them?
Don’t,
Tell me, to forgive and forget.
You don’t know how I have expanded my heart
To hold all my hurt.
When I come to you, broken.
Please don’t be inclined to put me back together.
You won’t know how I build myself,
So you will probably build me wrong.
And I will have to undo all your hard work.
When I come to you, broken,
I Just want you to know –
That’s how comfortable I feel to fall apart in front of you.
I trust you won’t take a piece of my soul
For your own benefit.
I trust you won’t use my broken shards
To wound me.
I trust you to see me at my worst.
Stop.
I don’t need your pity.
I don’t need empty words.
I don’t even need you to hold me.
When I come to you, broken
Just let me be broken for a while.
All I need is a respite, a little breather.
All I need is a stopping place.
I will pick after myself,
So just find me a place to remain shattered until I am ready.
When I come to you, broken
Show me your brokenness too.
Tell me of the places you’ve been.
Tell me what you have had to do.
Tell me how you’ve been strong
And how you wish you didn’t have to be.
Stop.
I don’t need you to be strong for me.
I am not going to use your strength to stand.
When I come to you, broken,
I am not trying to break you as well.
Know,
I have never let myself down.
I am my own champion,
I am my own warrior.
When I come to you, broken,
I just need to take off my armour,
Lift the weight off my shoulder, for a while.
And there is no one I would trust more than you,
To see me with my defenses down.
I stopped cutting myself the day I realized I couldn’t turn my body into a memorial. I could’t force it to remember pain. Bodies were meant to heal, to forget. I was meant to heal, to forget. I couldn’t turn my body into an alarm clock, a trigger warning. I couldn’t force myself to remember betrayal, and the sting of stigma. I couldn’t carve the heart ache out of me. My body was not a chalk board. I couldn’t write myself a cheat sheet to avoid pain. I will hurt easily. I will scar easily. But lessons were not meant to be hammered into the skin. Blood was never meant to be the price of mistakes. I stopped cutting, stopped hurting when I realized some hurt marks you, penetrating more than your skin. Some hurt owns you, and there is no amount of cutting to cut that out.
There is a world inside my head. A world of my making, a world catering to my happiness. Every night when I close my eyes, I go there.
In that world, I am exactly who I want to be. I have everything I need, and everything I want. In that world I meet people, all the people I have ever lost. I go up to them and talk to them – tell them everything that is bothering me. I vent out, until I find the peace that is so elusive in this real world. I see people whose names I have long since forgotten. I ask how they are doing, I tell them all that’s happening in my life.
I go back to places I have not gone back in years. Home. My school. Every time I close my eyes, I can almost trace all the places I have always loved. I can visualize walking through those roads, past my favorite restaurants and haunts.
In my world, I go back to my regrets. I go in search of making different choices, hoping may be then the regret will wash away. Sometimes I go in search of possibilities, to walk through the ‘what ifs’ of life. Sometimes I go looking for people I have yet to meet. I go looking for ghosts, whose voices don’t reach my reality. In that world, I am not limited, helpless.
Some days I go there when the reality is too much to bear. When losses cling to my bones and weigh down my soul, I go in search of oblivion. When I am sleeping, hours pass away. Sadness can’t scratch me. This world of mine becomes a bubble, protecting me from my own demons. Sometimes I feel that if I stay there long enough, may be sadness will stop knocking at my door.
But I have come to know that’s a slippery slope. Once I start escaping there, I may never come back to this reality. There are people on this side of who needs me. So I think of them and wake up. Every morning. I fight the urge to crawl into bed and stay there. I fight the urge to stare into the distance and lose myself to my thoughts. I fight the urge to close my eyes and keep sleeping.
You would think, fighting everyday would make me strong. But the truth is this daily fight weakens my resolve. Some days I even lose the fight. Those days I push away everything and give myself into the world inside my head. The wonderful world where I don’t have to fight. Some days I dread coming back to reality. Because coming back always hurt more than the escape.
The first time someone I loved said to me that I have depression, I almost laughed. All this while, I thought I went into my own world to find happiness. Who would have ever guessed, that the very pursuit of happiness would turn out to be a symptom of all that is wrong with me?
Why do you do this to yourself?
Why do you stand and ask the girl in the mirror who you are?
Why do you ask the numbers if you are worthy?
Do you not know,
They do not know
How to label you appropriately.
If you ask strangers to define you,
They will cut you up until they can fit you in the norm.
You are never just the norm.
Your mother did not stand straight
For nine months she carried your weight,
So that one day you can walk without your spine folding.
So why do you let others,
Shame you into silence?
Neither priceless nor worthless have any real value.
So who gets to decide if you are one over the other?
Why do you ask your poetry to bleed for you?
Why do you ask your art to cry over you.
Why do you lie to yourself every night?
This world doesn’t need anymore lies.
You have turned your voice hoarse
Defending people you know nothing about,
Defending emotions.
Why have you let the world turn your heart into a battlefield.
Since when have you become so defenseless?
You were not born to justify your existence.
You don’t have to prove your beliefs.
And ever time you explain yourself to others,
You let them know they have a right to those questions.
Your life is not a comprehension test to the world.
You don’t have to make sense to others
At the cost of your sanity.
So every time they come bearing tags,
Tell them you mother did not name you unique
So that they can turn you into something ordinary.
Tell them you are ballad, a song
Written in a language long forgotten.
Tell them your story is carved in stone,
In a city now lost underground.
Tell them you have built monuments
For every tear you let fall.
Tell them you can’t be loved so easily.
And that’s okay by you.
Tell them the next time they come to box you up,
You will tear apart the seams
Every time.
She asks me, with all the innocence of her nine whole years, Are you homesick?
I consider my answer for a moment, Yes.
For what? She questions back.
This time I have no simple monosyllables for her. How can I explain to her what home has always been to me and how many different degrees I miss what it represents.
I want to tell her, may be, I am homesick for the place I have grown up in. That place doesn’t exist anymore. How can it remain unchanged through these years, when nothing has remained the way it once used to be? Is it fair for me to even consider asking the same of a place I love so much? I am homesick for all the people I have loved there, and in all the other places I have been to since then. If love is supposed to stay, why do some people leave? How am I to love people who don’t love me enough to stay?
I am homesick for who I used to be. A little childish, a little unaware of the world around me, taking the kindness towards me for granted. She was more at peace with herself than I ever would be. I am homesick for days when the weight of the world couldn’t chain me to my bedside, days when dreams used to be light enough to carry me through the day.
How can I tell her that I am homesick because I am lost on this journey. I was meant to head somewhere different, but all the detours and shortcuts, falls and failures have set me on a different path. I am not sure where my destination is anymore, so here I am, taking each day as it comes. But some nights I lay awake, frightened, knowing that every step I take, takes me away from home.
I am homesick for the past, because let’s face it, the nostalgia of the past always makes me smile. The past was a good place to be, although I didn’t realize that until it passed away. Now I look back at those bygone moments and know, it will never come to be again. I am not just homesick; everywhere I go I feel less at home. May be I have never had a home.
Perhaps, I am endlessly waiting for something that would never be. Perhaps, I am working towards building my home, the one I never had. I am homesick for something to be. I am homesick for days when the four walls of my home would protect me, not just shelter me. I am homesick for a place where happiness would stay, not just come to visit. How can I ever tell her what homesickness really feels like?
So instead I wish in my heart, with all my heart, please, let her never find out what it is.
I know people are not places. We can’t build our home in other people’s city and then complain when we get evicted. I know people are not possessions. We can’t ever own someone’s essence and merge it with ours. I know people are not anchors. We can’t sink the very things we love, hoping it would hold us steady. I know all that so well.
So believe me when I tell you this. When I love you I will not make you my destination. I will not make you a detour. I will not make you my home. I have left far too many places behind. And I am never going to leave you. I will carry you the way I carry my demons mixed together with my sadness, the way my skin clings to my very bones, holding my heart, my aloneness in place. You will never be just a forgotten place.
When I love you I will belong to you as much as I belong to myself. I will love you with as much courage as I can muster. I will not put you back together to make sense of your mess. I will not let you piece me back together. We are not possessions and we don’t have to be pretty. I will love the chaos you bring, and I will love the calmness we will create. I will not be afraid to call you mine.
When I love you, you will not tie me down. I will not settle for you, or settle to be with you. I will love you like the tide, the ebb and flow, the high and low. I will love like the ocean itself.
So if you come near me intending to pull me apart brick by brick, be warned. You can’t break apart a dam and complain when you get flooded by water. I will not love you by the shallow measures of this world. I will love you with the depth, the vastness of my soul. When I love you I will pour myself into you. I will not be scared that loving you will leave me empty.
Growing up, I had often heard my father say that broken mirrors should be thrown out. After all, they bring bad luck. Which by the very laws of nature meant, I was fascinated by it.
Over the years I had heard so many superstitions, that every time I came across one, I wanted to test it out for myself. See what happenned when I invite bad luck. But somewhere beyond the rebellious nature of my age, I began to notice how beautiful a broken mirror actually was.
No two mirrors ever break the same. Some chip away at the edges. Some break, as someone had drawn a neat fault lines for the break. Some shatters. Some mirrors have jagged edges that would cut you in a second if you are not careful. Others have such clean breaks that you wouldn’t know it’s broken unless you flash light on it. People, I think, are like mirrors too in that respect. So many ways they break…
May be everyone we meet in life are just broken mirrors and we go on reflecting on to others until we find those people with whom our brokenness aligns. May be, love is about looking into another mirror and not seeing the places where either of you are broken.
I don’t believe in superstitions. But I don’t keep broken mirrors with me either. What’s the point? They don’t reflect anything anyways. I can’t discard people that easily though. Sometimes futilely I try to make room for every broken people I meet, hoping at least some of those pieces might fit to make me whole again. But no two people are broken the same way.
May be one of these days, I’ll keep a broken mirror. May be then, if I stare at my reflection, it wouldn’t show all the cracks, hollows and volcanoes I carry within me.
They say what doesn’t kill you, makes your stronger. I don’t know why people think that is a good thing. Strength is not about winning against death. It means you were on the brink of dying in the first place and for whatever reason you came through. It means you have been through hell.
Fighting against demons don’t make you stronger. Fighting demons gives you scars that don’t often heal. Fighting drains your energy and shows you the worst version of yourself. Fighting your demons, makes you a little of what you have been fighting. Or else, how could you win?
To all the people I love, I do not wish you strength. I wish you contentment with the direction your life takes you. I wish you dreams to carry you through your darkest nights. I wish you compassion, and passion and all things good. But you don’t have to be strong all the time. Strength comes from struggle and sacrifice. And I wish the harshness of the world never seeps into who you are. I don’t wish you a steel backbone to carry the world’s burdens. Too often they make you bitter. I don’t wish your shoulders to be concrete, nor your heart to turn to titanium. Strength sometimes can make you cold. And you are nothing but warmth, bones and muscle and love. I wish you to hold onto the brightness you carry within you.
I wish a world where you wouldn’t need strength. I wish you a world that wouldn’t scorn you when you cry, or force you up before you are ready. Being human means breaking down every now and then. Being human means you heal. So I would never wish you strength that turns the best of you into something so much less than that.
If strength is bouncing back from rock bottom, then I wish you never hit that low in life. Because no matter what they say, when you fall that down, that fast, it chips something essential of you away. And yes, that hurts like hell. And yes you might come back stronger than before, but what they don’t tell you is, that strength comes from replacing what you have lost with something foreign. Fall too often, and there wouldn’t be enough left of you in you anymore.
Being angry at the dead doesn’t help, they say.
But when I ask what does,
They all look away.
I am making and remaking myself, hoping one day I’ll find who I am meant to be.
I am the girl with the purple hair. Once, the very thought, would have given my entire family palpitations. But now, they are okay with me trying to see, if this is who I want to be. The girl with the purple hair sounds brave, and may be a little brash. Brash is good, right?
I am the girl with the nose piercing. Not the rebellious kind, but the kind of piercing that is culturally accepted from where I come. I like wearing my nose ring, even in places where I am not allowed. It is part of my tradition, my roots and it is about me honoring them.
I am the girl with red ombré now. Because I didn’t like the girl with purple hair. She made stupid choices and she was too brave for her own good. May be the girl with red hair would be more cautious. I like to think my hair is red like Erza. But just the other day my baby sister compared it to Ariel’s hair. I don’t mind the comparison, because may be like Ariel I will learn to walk in a new land, on my next journey.
I am the girl with henna. I have never much cared for tattoos, but henna smells of home. It smells of hope, and celebrations and dreams. It’s intricate patterns, pattern of color – all hold memories of past and thoughts of future. And I like that it is transitory. I can change it, redo it. It’s not set in stone like mistakes. Henna is forgiving. I think I am forgiving.
I am the girl switching from glasses to contacts and hating it. I love how my glasses feel, but I also want to experience how it feels to not have them on me. I am not sure which one I want more, though. It’s still an on going debate in my mind. But it’s okay. I don’t have to decide everything all at once.
I am making and remaking myself, hoping I’ll find something I can stick with. I am not sure I like who I am right now. But the good thing is, I am always changing. Every day I am a little different, than who I was the day before. I am hoping I’ll have it all figured out by the end. And I like that I am a process. As long I am a process, I can always morph into something more.
And I definitely want to be something more, much more than just this.
And quiet is the world in which we live
With protests that never make it pass our lips
Silent as the tears we shed through the night
No noise to show how much we hold inside
Who says pain have to have a sound
For all the ignorant world to hear?
Who has ever listened to the suppressed sighs
That fills up the air?
Why does pain have to be displayed
To draw attention of people who never care?
And for those who dare to open up their senses
Pain is just everywhere.
Walking with the crowd wherever they go
Yet every step we have to take alone
Even when we’ve got a hand to hold
There’s no guarantee it will lead us home
Empty words from empty hearts
Fading are promises meant to last
Aren’t we trapped with no way out?
And you still seem to ask what pain is about?
When my best friend died, I started wearing a headscarf. Growing up in a Muslim household, I had heard only too often my mother remark on how prayers were answered more swiftly when we covered our hair. Never had I ever had a wish so strong in my heart than for my friend to go heaven. So on the first day back to college, before heading out the door, I grabbed a scarf.
Honestly, I didn’t even analyze my decision. Usually, I make a pros and cons list, then I weigh what I would regret more – only then I make my choice. But in that moment I didn’t hesitate, didn’t ponder if it would make me happy or miserable. It felt right and so I started covering my hair.
A week later when my parents came to see me, I saw my dad raise his eyebrows when he saw my headscarf. He hadn’t been too fond of it when few years ago my mother started wearing one, and his opinion didn’t change when he saw me. However he held his tongue, and so did everyone else. I think my family thought it was a phase I was going through that would soon pass. Over the next few months, they waited for me to finally get tired and take it off. But a year later when it became apparent to them that I was comfortable in it, they accepted it. Or so I thought.
Yesterday, while helping my mom, I started talking about my scarves and she said the one thing I never expected her to say. She expressed she doesn’t like me wearing scarves. Not yet. She said, I was young and she she wanted me to enjoy my life, look pretty and have fun. Hearing my religious mother speaking out against headscarves, I started laughing. In my head I could count of the numerous times she had defended her wearing a headscarf to my father. It was funny and endearing at the same time.
I was about to ask her why she never said anything before, that’s when it hit me. I never gave my parents an opportunity to say anything. At some point in my life, I started making my own choices, without taking their preferences into consideration. Thinking back I remembered, even as a child when I said I wanted to cover, my mother always said the same thing – when you are old enough to decide for yourself and stick by it. I realized I reached that age without anyone noticing.
I could have explained to her then and there that I didn’t start wearing one, because she wore one. Or the endless religious talks we’ve had. True, I started because of my friend, but somewhere along the way it became something about me. It was a choice I made all by myself and I did it because it felt right to me. No other reason would be sufficient enough for me to continue wearing it.
But looking at my mothers face, I couldn’t make myself say any of that. Instead I whispered to her, ‘It’s okay ma, your daughter looks pretty with this too.’
I know all about being an island. I know why walls exists, why fortresses becomes stronger with time. I have built those all my life, so how can I not know?
But I have never been on the other side, staring at a wall that wouldn’t cave in. I don’t know how to climb walls, or how to break barriers or build bridges to that island. I do not know how to make people trust me. You see, in order to breach your castle, I would have to break free from mine. I don’t know, if I am strong enough, brave enough to do that.
It’s been so long since I have let my walls collapse, that I don’t feel safe out there anymore. I am scared of getting hurt. I am scared I will get used to the presence of those who would leave. I am scared that I have to return to this castle all by myself. I am scared I will be lonely here, once I come back.
So I am battling my fears, and I am fighting to break down your walls. And I don’t know if I will ever succeed in doing either, or both or none. I don’t even know how or where to begin from. All I know is – I am trying with all I have. Because for the first time, there is something worth more than perhaps this fear of mine.
Mr. Humayun Ahmed,
I want to know what happened to those girls? I have read again and again the stories you have written – Kothao Keu Nei (There’s no one anywhere), Lilaboti – and they all end the same. There she stood alone. But I need to know what happened after that. You see, these days, I feel like I have been left behind by life as well.
I have heard that when one of the main leads, Baker Bhai, was falsely accused and sentenced to death, the people of Bangladesh cried. They took the streets and marched protesting the death of a fictional character. Twenty years later as I sit reading, I am crying as well. But my heart doesn’t break for Baker Bhai alone. He died, a terrible death, but Mona stayed alive all alone. She lived on and on in that shell of a body and no one seemed to ask what happened to her after that? How did she live? How did she keep on walking all that path by herself?
Surely those stories can’t end there? No story ends so unfinished. I need to believe that because I don’t know how else to go on living in this world without hope. Right now it feels as if, my story had come to such a standstill. I refuse to live the shadows in my own life; but I can’t take control either. All the people I have trusted pieces of myself with had gone away and now I am left holding these eroded, marred pieces that don’t fit. I read in search of happy endings. But if Mona doesn’t get her happy ending, if Lilaboti lives alone, how can I find hope?
And yes, I know, writing to an author who had passed away with a plea for a happy ending wouldn’t do me any good. So in my head I am taking the liberty of writing those unfinished endings.
All those characters who had been left behind, learn to live again. They love again. They smile again. They do not forget their pain, ever. But they do not linger over it every day. They must be happy. Because that’s one thing fiction should guarantee. They all must always have happy endings.
Dear Baby Bundle,
I can already see you crinkling your nose at me, thinking why on earth I would call you that. But the first time I saw you wrapped tightly, that’s the only thing I could think of. I remember when my aunt transferred you into my arms, you didn’t even wake up to look at me. I, on the other hand, couldn’t look away. I had of course seen your pictures before I met the twenty-eight-day-old you in person. But I fell in love with you a week later when holding you safely sleeping in my arms, I closed me eyes. I could feel my arms growing heavy, but there was a peace in my heart I just wasn’t ready to relinquish. But then I had to leave to go back to school, and I thought I was leaving something so precious behind.
The next time I saw you again, you were a one and a half year old boy with a mission. You wanted to walk everywhere, hold the world on the tips of your finger. Your eyes were wide, taking the world in, and you ran as if the world wouldn’t wait for you to grow up. I loved seeing you run – I have never seen kids run on tiptoes. But you woke up every day and showed me something new. The last time you were just a baby. But now I can totally see the baby boy in you. You fearless, fearless little guy. I loved hearing you laugh. Oh, how you would laugh when I twirled and tickled you. I tried to hold onto you, but you were never the one to sit quietly on my lap. In fact the only time I got to hold you was when you woke up from sleep and was groggy. But as soon as your grogginess left, you were back on your feet, chasing anything and everything and most often nothing at all.
In the few weeks I was with you, I gave up trying to take a partially decent picture of the both of us. I have started making videos instead. I hope when I go back, these would make me laugh. I know they are not enough. Nothing can capture your vivacity, or mischievousness or your perfect smile. On a side note, though, I do love watching you cry. You have actual tears! And beautiful eyelashes. Oh my baby brother, you wait. There would be jealous girls around the world when they would look at your long lashes. My aunt laughs when I say that, but I am quite serious.
Although I have been teaching you to say SaSa or Sabu, the closest you have come to call me is nothing. I don’t think you even know your own name. I am trying to teach that to you as well. The last part is not going as smoothly as I would like. The only thing you love to say is your ABCs. I bet you would be the son my aunt would boast of. Has anyone ever seen a kid who loves alphabet? In fact the only way to feed you is to play the ABC song or Super Why. I am learning to zone out the episodes. As much as I love you, there’s no way I am subconsciously memorizing Super Why dialogues.
My mother tells me I am fascinated by every mundane thing you do because you are the first baby I have seen grow up. May be she is right, may be not. All I know is, Bundle, you are this perfect package of a baby and I love you. I am writing this in hopes that someday you will be old enough to read this and know what a special baby you are in my life. But I am also writing this to offer you some of my observations.
First I want you know, the life you live is a privileged one. Do not begrudge or even take this life for granted. Embrace the opportunities you have, but remember Baby Bundle to be considerate of those who do not share your fortune. Be aware of the world, the society you live in and be a participant to bring positive changes. Always know what you stand for and what you stand against. Bundle, its easy to raise your voice or fists, but first learn to raise yourself from the constrictions your own thoughts. Learn to open your mind to possibilities and risks. All the best things in life come from taking a leap. Remember, don’t judge people for there is so much you don’t know and don’t ever attach labels. People are so much more than just mere labels. Always Bundle, talk to little girls with care and young ladies with respect. Everyone you meet will tell you to not carry your heart on your sleeves, but don’t listen to them baby brother of mine. Rather be trusting, giving than callous and cold. Never be domineering. Apologize when you are wrong, apologize for the wrongs done to others around you. You won’t go wrong with apologies; they do not make you weak. Love with all your heart Bundle, and do everything you do with passion. Be sensitive. Be realistic. Don’t let the world step on you and don’t step on others on your way to grasp power. Be the kind of boy, this sister of yours can be proud to raise.
I will always love you,
Your affectionate sister.
Hey do you know remember that day? That day, we spent hours looking through the Kaleidoscope making up stories of the future?
The other day while thinking I have nothing of you, I found that Kaleidoscope lying at a forgotten place. I picked it up and looked through the patterns until I had to look away from the memories that started to stare back at me. As I turned it around to lock it away once more, I saw the broken glass on the other side of the Kaleidoscope. How could it have a broken glass and yet keep making these mesmerizing patterns? Shouldn’t the brokeness distort the beauty?
Do you know, lately I have been thinking, I have become a broken Kaleidoscope myself. On one side I am broken along the fault lines – not shattered, but broken irreparably – while on the other I form patterns. All those who look at me see the beads arranged so meticulously, not knowing the cracks only mimics the glass. They don’t see that I am just a soul filled with broken mirrors, dazzling people by reflecting a sheer array of lights.
I have learned since your death that people see what they want to see. Nobody likes to focus on the fault lines of their soul. May be you didn’t either. I liked to think that when you looked through the Kaleidoscope that day, you skipped all the landmines of sorrow and focused on the distant future, a place where you would be happy. As for me, I never learned to look far in search of friendship. May be that’s why when I picked up the Kaleidoscope again, I focused on the cracks closest to the surface. I don’t see the intricate patterns of beads anymore; instead, I keep trying to find a piece of you to anchor myself again.
There is no art to fear that I can show you or tell you about. Being afraid is not pretty, or simple.
Fear sets you on the edge without dropping you. You are there everyday, every moment holding your breath, knowing things change in a moment, not knowing if or when they ever would. Fear blocks your perspective, colors the way you observe the world. Not all fear paralyzes you though. Sometimes it sets you on automatic motion where you go through days and watch life pass you by.
Fear is like the fire. It can warm you, it can consume you, it can turn you into ashes. Fear can chase you to the end of the world. Fear can make you stay in the same place always. Some fear in set not in your heart, but in your bones. They engrave into you, marking you a known territory. Some fear seals your heart. It puts up a wall of your making, but not in your power to break.
Sometimes fear becomes adrenaline pushing you towards things that make your heart beat fast. Of course fear can be good. Of course fear can tear you apart.
But if you want the truth, once you let fear control you, you are no longer your own. It is as if you are sharing yourself with something else. Something that takes up most of you.
So I don’t know how to put my fear into words. I don’t know what face to put on my fears. I don’t know how to contain it or how to let it flow. So for now I sit with my fears. May be someday I’ll unravel it completely. May be it will always be a mystery. Who knows, may be one day this fear of mine will be my comrade. But for now it haunts me. What would it like to be not afraid again??
Sometimes I think if I could hold myself a certain way, I could make myself disappear. If I turn out the lights one by one, tiptoe a little more softly across the room, if I could only stop taking up space and time, stop leaving myself in memories, may be I’ll grow inwards. May be then I’ll get to go to that place where you are.
I have heard tales where they say, death is life in another realm. The only way to cross realms is to stop being in one of them. Isn’t that how you left? You came into this life, taking your time, and then just eroded away into nothing. Nobody noticed the time when you stopped being here, until the day you were physically gone. In my mind, this is how I picture it all the time: it’s not that you disappeared suddenly one day. You left bit by bit, siphoning off pieces of your dream, your pain, your restlessness. May be if I start doing the same, we can meet again.
If I could fold myself neatly into nothing, may be I can go in search of that realm, find out that place where you have chosen to live again. If I could wrap my smiles in boxes, pack my tears into ice, if only I could learn to live in sighs, may be this wouldn’t be any harder. Sometimes when I am running fast and my heart beat thunders, I will it to cease it’s presence from being known. Only if the ebb and flow of blood stops, the rise and fall of breath ceases, may be you would come to see me again.
I tell myself, if I could be a little close to where you are, I’ll pull you right back into this life. I will trade you my dreams, shed all your bitterness and I’ll chain my soul to yours, if that is what it takes. Perhaps that’s why you never come. You know, as the tale goes, once you cross the realms no one can bring you back. The only thing I could do is follow.
So you erase the ifs, put a lock on time, and put so much distance between us, that even my soul can’t travel. You leave this life, leaving me with memories alone, making me question all the time: were you even real? Was my life where I have known you more real, than this life without you?
Sometimes, more often than not these days, I tell myself a story. It’s a story of little boy who lived next door. He loved climbing trees, photography and music. There weren’t that many things to his life, but before he died he changed the life of a little girl next door. He left her with a piece of paper, asking her to write reasons to be happy. She has not filled up that page yet. She figures that is what he wanted her to do with her life – find reasons to be happy. So she holds onto his words sprawled over that paper as proof that he existed.
Though her heart tells her to just stop, she takes a deep lung full of breath. She is not done living, unless she covers that entire page with reasons enough for the both of them to be happy. His legacy was his friendship in her life, and she couldn’t just leave without passing it someone else. So she lets herself breathe without holding her breath in. She lets her heart race, her dreams fly, her hopes crash. She walks with footsteps that echo all the way across the hall, she cries as the pain pierces her soul; she even laughs. Someday, she will though, walk through the realms and he would be there for her.
Because that’s what friends do, don’t they?
Beautiful you,
I know the mirror doesn’t whisper to you that you are the fairest of them all, but here’s what I want to tell you. Mirrors don’t have the capacity to judge the fairness of your heart. So don’t let a piece of inanimate glass tell you who you are.
Beautiful you,
I know you’ve been told all your life that scars are ugly. But here’s the thing, too often beast is not who we see, but in our very hearts. What they don’t tell you is the scars have character; they have stories. So do not shy away from signs of pain and history. Love every piece of you, everything you have been through. They make you.
Beautiful you,
I know you think love only happens with glass slippers on. But you don’t have to put yourself through such pain to gain someone’s attention. If love is as beautiful, daring, overwhelmingly perfect as you’ve been told all your life, then there’s no need to force yourself in the corsets of bodies and personalities that do not resemble you. Remember, love is suppose to celebrate you. So please don’t comprise yourself to get that love.
Beautiful you,
I know it’s easier to believe that there are heroes out there to save you. But sometimes what needs saving is yourself from falling into those stereotypes. Remember you can be someone else’s hero. You have the courage it takes, the commitment to see to it till the end. Heroes are not titles; so first be your hero. Tell yourself you are beautiful. Tell yourself your past – both the good and bad – helped build you. Tell yourself you deserve your kind of love. Once you save yourself, saving the world becomes easier. You see, you come to that role with experience.
Beautiful you,
Keep whispering that to yourself. I know those two words sound like a chore now. But someday, believe it in your heart, you wouldn’t have to go out of your way to convince yourself how beautifully worthy you are. Someday you would know from within the cracks of your scars to deep inside your bones, what a wonderful treasure you are. So even though it sounds silly right now, every morning when you wake up, remember to greet the beautiful you…
I have been thinking these days, more often than not, what I am truly seeking. What am I heading off to do and most importantly where did I start? Once there was definite sense of what I wanted from life. But the more I ponder, the more I realize I won’t ever get those things because a part of me is actually blocking me from it.
I want love, the kind of love they write about in books. I want friendship to guide me all my life. I want a family and a home to belong in. I want to have purpose, the fulfillment of a life lived to the fullest. But the more I want, the more I close myself in my own sphere. A part of me fears these wants of mine. What if they don’t come true? What if I don’t find the fulfillment I expect from them? What if I am left with a broken heart or worse – a broken trust? Isn’t it easier to just imagine a world where everything neatly falls into place? Isn’t it harder to actually go and make it happen?
May be it is just me or may be not. May be everyone I meet has this one thing they want above all others and yet their fear is stopping them from reaching for it. May be we all go around pretending we are not bothered by how much that fear controls us. But do any of us truly know how to let that fear go?
When I looked at you, I didn’t see bewilderment staring back at me. May be that’s why we became friends. For the first time I saw myself reflected through your eyes. We knew, perhaps even then, that although the world saw us as different, we were both the same. So when day after day I showed up at your doorstep, you not only welcomed me, you became a part of my bizarre world.
You made sense, when nothing or nobody else did. You made a place for me that didn’t mock my very existence. I was quiet, shy, bursting out with stories I didn’t know how to tell. You didn’t play sports. Once I was telling you how at school when I have to play, I recoil from an oncoming ball for the fear of getting hit by it and instead of the laughter that I had come to expect, you looked at me as if I wasn’t an enigma. You knew what I meant. You have been there.
Your world had always been inside of you. So was mine. But in retrospect I guess you never did allow me into your deepest thoughts. Even with me, even with everything we had in common, you were still alone.
I grew up knowing you. You were the center around which I built everything. But you had no gravity of your own, nothing to hold you down and pin you to this crazy place called life. So one day you just left. I guess I was never expecting to you just leave. I have become so used to seeing the world with you, that now it feels unreal to be that weird girl again. You have left me behind to roam through these alleys of life, knowing I’ll never fit into the “conventions” again.
When people ask me if I loved you. I just can’t explain that even though I didn’t love you romantically, I loved you with all I had. They all look at me as if I had lost it when I phrase is like that. But the thing is, if you were here, you would have understood. May be that’s why it hurts so much. I never thought you wouldn’t be here to translate all these thoughts of mine so other people can understand. It feels like you have condemned me to live life knowing, no one will ever know me like you. They won’t understand my thoughts, my words, my actions. They won’t know where I come from or where it is I want to go. It hurts so bad because once you get used to someone listening to the language you speak, it’s hard to live in a world where no speaks that language anymore.
I am no longer angry at you. I am trying to understand the words you have left behind. May be you felt no one understood your words too. So I am trying really hard to listen and interpret the language of your heart. But the silence you left behind is echoing only the sorrow I carry in my soul.
‘Nana…how come being happy and making your dreams come true are two different things? Even now, I still don’t know why…”
I once read this manga called Nana and ever since I have read this line, it has been resonating in my mind. We all chase our dreams as if it the end of the world and catastrophe would befall if a time ever came when we didn’t reach them. And yet when we reach our dream, it seems as if it was the most ordinary place to be in the world. The heart didn’t have the satisfaction of making it to the dream. Why is happiness so elusive? Isn’t dreams and happiness supposed to go hand in hand?
A long time ago, when I was a world away, sitting in a foreign cafe seemed such a long stretch of imagination. It seemed like it would be another life, another world, another realm of reality. Yet today sitting in a unknown land, drinking coffee in an small cafe seems too ordinary. It doesn’t feel like I have accomplished something, traveled to something or even made something happen. True, it is but a small part of the big picture of my dream. But shouldn’t there be some happiness in being able to come this far? Why is happiness so very fickle? Is it just the chase then – a hopeless, endless, mindless run to something greater than what we all had in mind? And if that is true, then will I keep running through life in search of that oasis called happiness?
He had a beautiful name. His mother once told me that she loved how precisely I enunciated each syllable of his name. I could not explain it then to her, that growing up, there was nothing more beautiful to me than the name she had granted him. Because when I called him, it was a call of friendship.
Children grew up and made friends, but friendship grew up with me. He lived next door, three years older than I was, his company went back as far as my memory went. It did not matter that social norms indicated I play with dolls and he played with trains. Every afternoon, we would sit across from each other and learned to build tracks on which our lives would one day unfold.
My mother has all these amusing stories of us, most of which I do not remember, no matter how much I sift through my mind in search of them. I do not remember crying if he went somewhere and wasn’t available to play with me when I was four years old. I do not remember the rainy days, the nostalgic incidents that still make our parent’s smile. My memories begin with him on that balcony on Road Nineteen. I remember sitting in the shades of the creeper plant that covered most of the netted balcony, as he dug out something he had planted in one of the potted plants. Apparently when he became bored, he buried things there, thinking one day it would all turn into hidden treasures. I remember that when our mothers would sit and drink tea, resting their feet against the railing, they would not let us sit in the crook of their knees. And I remember being seven years old, moving blocks away into a new apartment, for the first time realizing I didn’t know how to make friends. His was the only face I knew and the concept of walking up to a group of people to introduce myself seemed alien. Didn’t friends knew each other all their lives?
Friendship, he taught me, was the ability to slip back into each other’s comfort zone, despite how long or far we were from each other’s lives. Even though we met less often, had different lives, we went so far back that these never kept us apart. I remember the first time I got a cell phone and I could talk to him anytime, from anywhere I wanted. These phone conversations bridged whatever differences life had thrown our way. With him, I could laugh at my foibles and family dramas. Friendship, he taught me, was acceptance. When I told him I loved the rain, he didn’t ask me why. The first time I walked alone on the streets, he didn’t state the exact reasons a fourteen year old girl should never walk alone in our hometown. Once I called him because I wanted to ride on the rickshaw. He traveled all the way across the city to sit next to me. He bought me jhalmuri (Bengali snacks) and walked with me around the park, as I explained how much I craved the mad rush of adventure. When I invited him to join two of my other friends on a trip to the mall, where he was mercilessly teased for being the only guy present, he became friends with them. And one day when out of the blue I invited him to my friend’s solo dance performance, he showed up with a smile and his signature humor. I realized that day that I only had to ask, and he would be there. Always.
As I was preparing for some educational milestones, he had once said to me, think of it like a maturity test. That’s how adults gauge how old we’ve become. I remember one day he popped out of nowhere in front of my math tutoring and we spent one whole hour just talking. He gave me a small stuff toy bear, that I have yet to name, for friendship’s day and as I walked out of the building, without going to my class at all, I realized how much his present meant to me. When I had said to him that I was scared to disappoint my parents, he had explained one day I would have to learn to spread my wings. He laughed when I said I never shopped for myself and laughed some more when he saw me serve him food. According to him, I was a chemistry lab (so much for being cautious with food), electronically illiterate (still guilty as charged) and a bookworm (he was one too!)
When I moved to the other side of the world, he was the first person I called. Never had I headed towards something without hearing his counsel. He knew, I was getting my adventure, knew the fears I didn’t voice. He gave me a card about our past, a book for the journey and a blank piece of paper to write things that made me happy. The first thing I wrote on that paper was his name. A year later when he came here, he brought with him pieces of my life long gone. I recall he would call me every week to hear me complain, never giving up on me. He believed everything would be okay for me and sometimes his beliefs were enough to give me hope again. Friendship, he taught me, meant showing up again and again, for he never left me alone.
He was there for every call, every email, every broken dream and a whisper of sorrow. Now I wish, he knew, I was there too. He died. A month ago, he took his own life as he sunk into a freezing lake, leaving my world without so much as sigh of goodbye. He didn’t know how to swim. I wish I could go back in time and teach him the basic trick to stay afloat. I would tell him, see it doesn’t take much. You just have to stop fighting so hard to stay on top of the water. It’s all about a little balance. I wish I could teach him to drive through the treacherous crossroads of life; that way he would know where he was going. I would murmur to him, it’s all about reading sings and following directions. You have taught me the same all my life, so how could you not know? I would tell him, the phone works both ways you know. You just have to pick it up and say the word; you see I never left. Now it seems I am the only one holding onto a call that no one seems to answer anymore.
I still love stuff toys, handmade presents, cards, books. I still look for hidden treasures he must have buried along the way. I still find them tucked into corners of memories I didn’t seem to think I possessed. Sometimes I feel he didn’t leave me enough, and other times I get overwhelmed by every moment we shared. Friendship, he taught me, meant life. I wish I could breathe my friendship into him to bring him back to life again.
His name meant the forest. When I call him now, it seems my call is lost in the vastness. I still keep calling though, knowing he won’t answer back, knowing he perhaps can’t hear me, knowing some pleas are forever lost in the wilderness. But when you know a name from the bottom of your heart, you cannot, not call it anymore.
We have been taught
That fairy tales aren’t true.
And don’t get me wrong;
They probably aren’t
Not the way you have been taught to think,
Especially if you have been looking
Through the spectroscope of the world.
Nobody gets to sleep a hundred years,
Or wear glass slippers.
And princess do not marry paupers,
Neither do princes, for the record.
May be that’s all there is to fairy tale, for you.
But what about the time,
When you disobey the rule
And reach for something that makes you happy?
What about when you go
Out of the society for a while,
To live in peace?
And you stand next to people you love,
Stand for them against the odds?
When you have the power to do some good,
Aren’t these fairy tales that do come true?
I won’t tell you what to believe,
Believe what you will,
But I hope someday you find,
Everyday fairy tales to make you smile.
Suicide.
Yes, I want to talk about it. Too long we have hidden as a country, as a culture under its shadows, afraid to question it. Suicide is not a stigma, and it is time we open our worlds, our conversations and our minds to it. Doing the opposite is what gets people killed usually.
Throughout history we have seen people distance themselves from things they do not understand. As if by not talking about it, they would miraculously make it disappear. Too often we stamp labels when faced with our incapability to accept something out of the norm. Not too long ago, it was sex, tobacco, alcohol, drugs that we considered taboo. Someone had to once break those unutterable s to educate people. If we don’t know what we are fighting against, how can we hope to win?
Our adamant stance in avoiding it, is unhinging our youth today. Looking away is not stopping it from happening. Keeping razor blades and pills locked in a cabinet is not stopping them. Assuming they do not have access to guns, or ropes or rooftops or ceiling fans is not keeping them safe. Telling them to stay away from the water, is not saving them. Putting them in a box is not freeing them from the bondage of their thoughts. And if we have been failing, that must mean we are doing something very wrong. So yes, I do think we need to break away from those silences and talk about it.
When someone dies of suicide, it is not their death alone that we mourn. We mourn our failures as a society from preventing it from happening. We mourn our inability in sighting those signs. We mourn not knowing the right things to say, the people to reach out to. We mourn knowing we erred and someone innocent, brave paid the ultimate price for our mistakes.
Too often we brush suicides aside saying, the people who killed themselves were weak. It is the explanation that absolves our part in it. But think about it – weakness is not an attribute that would encourage them to bleed the life out of them. It takes a lot of courage to do the unthinkable. And it takes a long way to reach that unthinkable conclusion. People suffer a lot to reach the tipping point. But our uneducated eyes do not follow their path.
We put life above everything. But imagine the hurt, the pain it would take for someone to put death above that. They are not scared of dying, but rather of living. And that is our failure. It’s not that we couldn’t instill the value of life in them, but rather we did nothing to stop the value of life from falling in their eyes.
People who commit suicide go through immense depression over a long period of time. We need stop laughing at depression. It is fatal, considering some people end up killing themselves from it. Instead of making fun, or ignoring people who suffer from depression, we need to acknowledge their pain. Making light of the matter, makes them eventually think they do not matter. But we all know that everybody matters. If we cannot communicate that small information to them, then we need to learn how to communicate better.
When someone close dies of suicide, our society pressures us not to ask why. They say the why does not matter. It will not bring them back, will not give them peace. Forgive and forget. But we need to ask why. Why did we let them down? Why did they think death was better than life? Why did we miss the signs? Why did they feel no one would care? Or think they had no one to confide in? Without asking the why we will never figure out where we went wrong. We won’t be able to save the next person. The why may not bring our loved ones back, but it surely will put a stop to someone else’s loved one from following that path.
We have been taught through religion, through social beliefs and customs to ostracize people who commit suicide. We have been taught to say they would not go to heaven or suffer for eternity. We need to stop preaching that bullshit. Instead of putting punishment and fear in the hearts of people, we need to open our eyes and ears. Because obviously those antiquated words are not helping everybody. Obviously some people are falling through the cracks. And since we are so bent in ostracizing suicide, nobody is willing to be associated with it anymore.
When we talk about suicide we are not condoning it, but we are giving a chance to those who suffer to speak up. We are giving them the opportunity to talk to us, to ask for help. We are giving them hope.
So let’s break the taboo. Let’s burn the stigma. Let’s talk about suicide.
If I couldn’t save you,
What right do I have to say I can save others?
If I couldn’t save you,
Who would I rather save?
If friendship was beautiful,
It was you who made it as such
If life seemed bearable,
You carried so much of my burdens.
But if friends don’t save friends,
If you thought I couldn’t save you,
What good’s saving?
What’s good without you?
I can’t make friends again,
Knowing I can’t make a difference
If I don’t make their life a little better,
What good are friends?
If my memory did not appease you,
Convince you not to take the step.
If my friendship couldn’t make you call me,
What was the point of me being there,
When in truth you thought you never had me?
If I couldn’t give you a reason to live,
What good is a smile that we shared?
If couldn’t make you love life,
What good is the world you left behind.
Someone teach us to free our feelings, because we do not know how to live like that. We do not know how to word our feelings out, or express them through action. We are stuck wanting someone to read our silences. But silences are unreadable. We do not know how to think positive, because really, what is truly positive? We know that the negatives accompany every good thing and we are afraid. We are so afraid to let our hopes soar. It doesn’t take that long to fly, but we know when hopes crash, everything breaks into pieces.
Call us cynical if you must, but what can we really say? We do not use cynicism as our armor. Please don’t think so. It is but our savior. As long as we know something will go wrong we will not end up shattered. We call it the reality.
So we need someone to teach us how to let go. We need to learn to love, to dream, to be an optimist. But optimism is not something that we are familiar with. We need to trust in something so bad. We do not know how to let all our thoughts show. Instead we pack them in boxes, wrap them in fairy tales and tuck them away.
Now that box is lost and we need help to find it again. Someone please help us find it again. That box holds so much of us. But we do not how to ask for help. We do not know how to say that we need support. We do not understand how we can find someone who sees us, even without the box of feelings in our hands.
So please. We know, it is hard to find people you cannot see, hear them when they don’t speak. But our eyes are speaking, our hands are speaking. We are asking for help. Will you help us to find ourselves again?
It feels funny to realize that all the people I once grew up with are forever going to be world’s apart from me. I wish it was just the physical distance. But in reality they are a world of opportunities away, possibilities, lifestyles and choices away.
I’ll never grow up to think like them again. I’ll never see the world through their perspective. I’ll never walk the same path as them. Even if I end up in the same room, I would still be different. They would only be responsible for their happiness. But people here rely on me for their happiness. Their responsibility is to study, dream and accomplish something in life. My responsibility is to earn for my education, dream only within my abilities and keep swimming until I sink. I hope to reach stability before I sink. They get to be only twenty. I am already twenty and sometimes it’s hard to catch the irony.
There are times I am so jealous of them; there are times I am so proud of myself. And then there are these times when I stop to compare myself to them. Just because we started at the same place, doesn’t mean we will end up that way. So I close my eyes and pray that someday these differences be worth nothing.
Sometimes I scroll down the social network page and look at all the people I used to know.
There’s the brother who played sports and stayed away from girls when I left. Now he calls me for advice regarding girls. There’s the picture of my extended family, all huddled together in the frame that holds faces I haven’t met yet. There are the people I used to know in high school. Some I have always talked to, some barely said enough words. I see them married, engaged to people I don’t even know. I see some of them making plans that I never got around to hear. I see pictures of how they look and try to find a similarity I can trace back to.
And sometimes I can, but those don’t happen very often. Often I just reach across the screen and touch the pictures, the messages, the stories they share and wish to know them once again. Instead I fist my hands and pull away, close my eyes and stop to wonder. It doesn’t matter anyway. Lives go on and that is true for me as well.
And then I wonder again, do they think the same thing about me? Do they look at my picture and see someone different? Do they wonder if I still sound the same, smile the same, cry the same? Do they feel that my life had taken me so very far from them that the only thing they can do now is gaze at someone who used to be?
But then, I guess no one likes to word their grievances. So we all go back to our social networks, scroll through endless names and go on pretending, avoiding how very separate we have all become. Perhaps even forgetting, the very things that once connected us all.
Sometimes this loneliness hits me like a strong wave. It knocks the breath out of me with the sheer force of it. I am gasping, drowning. I know the wave will pass and I will be okay. Tomorrow I will love the ocean again. But in that instant it hits me so hard that all I want to do is curl into a ball. Or hold someone until the wave passes. As always, the only thing holding me in place is myself.
Loneliness is the echo of my screams. Reaching out only to grasp the endless waters. Loneliness is crying, but no one can see because in that moment the tears on my face looks like the waves that had washed me over. And no one stops to see my eyes are not red because of all the water that had gone in, but because of the ones that had flown out. Loneliness is watching my patience run out and bitterness take its place. I want to rant, to let someone know that I am giving up. Loneliness is knowing no one really cares even if I do.
And I know, I can’t be the only one going through this. So many people, perhaps this very second, is getting hit by this same wave. But when I am getting the breath knocked out of my body, I am not thinking about saving the others.
I am not the victim, the white knight, the damsel is distress here. I am just suffering for a moment. Tomorrow it will pass. It always does.
Tonight I am nothing; tomorrow this night will be nothing.
So if you ask me, know this, the thing about waves is it recedes. It goes back, away… away until the ocean swallows it whole. So tomorrow I will pick up the seashells left at its wake. After all, there is beauty to be found even in the tread of pain.
Love is of course the best place to start writing
For how can a mere heart hold all that you have to say?
But Love is also the easiest time to stop writing,
You have things to say, but no words anymore.
You grow older,
Replace paper with people
You forget the pen
And pack your favorite lipstick instead
That’s not love for you; that’s life
And you are happy without the words
You are happy not writing about why you no longer believe in love
Happier not trusting others to keep their word
Happy to just exist in moments
Fairy tales are best left at home, under pillow cases
And kisses that curl your toes are tucked away in dreams
You are all grown up now and love is just another expression
And poetry is for people with things to say
And you have concerns of your own
Problems to which there are no solution
Relationships that are more like entanglements
You don’t have time for paper
Paper didn’t heal you then; paper wouldn’t make you believe again
So you forget to hold your thoughts
Time is of essence
And you stop to write, stop to love
It’s time to open your eyes and live again.
One day you get a glimpse from behind the glass window of your car
Of a small cafe by the road
Where young lovers crowd
You see a girl sitting at a table
She’s writing away all her sorrows
You could have just easily been that girl.
But you chose to toss the diary out the window
And walked out of that cafe so along ago
So you sit behind glass windows in cars and to drive to work
And think to yourself, you could have been that girl.
In this world of ours, everything is broken. In pieces. Be it relationships, trust, or mere things, everything has something to mar their perfection. Is it a wonder then why people have scars?
It’s not because they want to let their pain out, get their insecurities out of their system. It’s not because they want to stand out. They have scars because it’s the only way to blend in.
In a world, where everything is broken, why do people alone need to be whole?
Beauty was skin deep or so I was told. I grew up with the notion that beautiful was not something to be achieved, but something to be perceived. I was aware at all steps of my growing years that I wasn’t beautiful. It didn’t make people love me less, or like me less. In fact I could give a series of adjectives they would easily use to describe me. But I had been aware for as long as I could remember that I didn’t fall in the conventional category of beautiful.
The realization wasn’t always so easy to accept. After all, I wanted just as much attention as the next girl. So I set out to achieve the things that could be achieved, not merely perceived. If I didn’t have the looks, I wanted to hone the things that would garner me attention I desired. I worked hard, I studied, made my share of friends and then left the home to search out what else life had to offer to me. And somewhere along the way, being beautiful, ceased to matter.
Just when I thought I had really left it behind, I was given a glimpse of what I chose to forgo. This summer I held a part time job where I met scores of people. But for the first time in my life polite, shy or kind weren’t the words they used to describe me.
Instead they said I had a beautiful smile. What were smiles worth indeed? Nothing if you asked me. But they told me it was gift I could freely bestow or withhold and my beauty was in the fact that I chose to share it and brighten a moment of someone’s day. They said I had pretty hair. So what, I wondered out to myself. Hair, they said, took a long time to grow and the time I took to grow mine out showed how I nurtured things that mattered to me. They said the clothes I wore were gorgeous. Most of my clothes were from back home and they were faded. But they said it didn’t matter because when they looked at how I dressed they saw not only me but where I came from. And it was beautiful of me to represent my homeland. When they heard me speak, they said I had a vibrant voice and they thought that the effort I took to speak their language was what made me beautiful.
I was non pulsed. How did they change the context of the word and apply it so strongly to me? The girl in the mirror was no exotic beauty. Yes I could dress up pretty, but that didn’t make me one, did it?
Then I realized what was wrong with my definition of beautiful. It could never be just skin deep or about appearances. It’s what I chose to show off to the world outside that reflected the measure of beauty. Wit, grace, and manners were all some form of beauty. It was something to be felt, not just seen. May be the reflection would never be the ideal of it, but that didn’t mean a person couldn’t be beautiful.
This summer I didn’t receive just compliments, shallow and soon to be forgotten. I received a lesson. I learned to feel beautiful.
And let me say this, the world’s a very different place from the perspective of someone who is confident in the beauty they possess.
Sometimes you ask yourself why did you choose yourself?
The you in you, once, would never have done so. That you would have sacrificed everything for the people you loved then. That you was always secondary to you. So how did that you disappear so completely? Why did you let that you get replaced? And does that make this you, the bad you?
At some point you have all come to this and wondered where the line dividing the old and new you began or ended. You wondered why you changed, why your priorities shifted, why you became so self centered. But what nobody would tell you is, It’s okay to choose yourself.
Then, you were young. And naive. And idealistic. Then you had dreams that were only growing, desires you had only learn to comprehend. You had known the people in your life longer than you had perhaps known your true self. So then, it was easier to choose others above yourself.
You have changed since then. You have grown in a world different than the one you knew, the people around you had left and entered your sphere and you had seen reality. You have, by now, measured how much you can take before you break. You know how far to push yourself to reach where you want to be. You have redefined your dreams and goals and given more time to being yourself. Everybody matters, but you are your priority now. There’s a time in life when it’s okay to be your own priority. If you keep putting yourself on hold, others would learn to do the same to you.
You had to cut some people out of your life because they spell trouble in every way. Because living with them is like a smooth road that ends in nowhere. So you walk out. Leave.
It’s okay to be cautious of who you let in. The older you get the harder it is to let people go, even the wrong ones. You have to protect yourself. You don’t want to be broken beyond measure and cure, so you put your wit on display, wear your armor of sarcasm and tell them truths to scare them away. If they are meant to be, they’ll find away in.
Don’t think the world will let you be. Epithets will follow, disdain will echo and the world will hate your guts. But the last time you were lost, the world couldn’t have cared less. So don’t let the world make you feel guilty.
Remember, though, there’s a time for everything. True, at some point in your life you have to choose yourself to find yourself and to find your happiness. But if you keep choosing yourself again and again, all that will remain is yourself. And the world’s a lonely place to be without somebody. So once you have found some measure of footing, start caring for the world beyond you. Because sooner or later you would have to come back and live in it.
We all pretend it didn’t happen yet. Disaster didn’t strike our world and tip us off the balance. We all turn to do the things, the usual things we always do. It’s as if we believe that if we pretend long enough we can convince ourselves we are still safe. That everything is the way it used to be. We sit down to dinner, turn the music up, pick up the novel placed face down on the table and start reading from the last page.
Then one of us says something ambiguous, as if slowly breaching the silence we had erected. We all know we can’t close our eyes forever. But a little but longer wouldn’t hurt, would it? We all opt to ignore it. Not yet. Let the normalcy rule for a bit more. We go our separate ways and try, as hard as we can, to show others we are busy, immersed in our own world. But the truth is, we aren’t really. All of us keep thinking back to what had already come to pass. We try to distract our mind for few more hours. Let tonight be peaceful. But then we carry our thoughts to bed and sleep on it. And wonder about it.
Next morning we gather and slowly bring up the topic we have been dreading. The Question. Hell, bring it out in the open. We hope, we pray, once we have stopped avoiding it would stop haunting us. But it never happens like that. Instead we are drowned as the barge is opened. We fight to stay alive, to keep breathing. We fight our pride and accept help from others, because surviving is all that’s important isn’t it? We don’t know how to swim, how to stay afloat. But we learn, we take support and sometimes support others to keep them from going down. Something, anything to get us through this. It goes on and on, until we are exhausted.
We keep thinking if only we somehow survive this, we can make it to the safe haven. The place where nothing goes wrong. And the lucky few, determined few of us do reach that. We think it’s The Plateau and we’ll be able to rest. There’s a breathing room, a tiny window to exhale our breath, to sigh. But then the Next Big thing happens. And once again we are going down, down.
Our fight for normalcy, for stability wages on, but it’s an oasis that doesn’t exist. We are fools for believing in it. But then again, without such foolish belief, there would be no hope and no reason to keep fighting at all, would there?
Materialistic. Does that one word sum up my whole entity to you?
You say, those who love things, cannot love people. I love my things, so does that mean that I don’t love people? That there is a space in my heart taken up by the love of things that deprives the people, who rightly deserve, to be loved in my life?
Things are not merely substances that perish with time. Things are solid. They are touchable, they are present, they are stable. People give people things to remember them by. While memories fades, becomes faulty with time, things remain. They hold a moment in time.
So don’t tell me I am materialistic. That one word doesn’t do me justice, doesn’t justify the existence of these so called things I have. That guitar I have been carrying around since I was 16, but I have yet to learn to play, is not my love of the guitar. It is my love for a friend who understood what I wanted, even when I didn’t. Those diaries that I have written since I was 13 are not just pages of papers, but the memory of the only boy I have ever loved. That broken shell I can’t throw away is my burden that I have borne for over five years. My ipod, that seems so worthless to you, that’s the first thing I have given myself as a treat, the first time I have treated myself the way I want others to treat me. And all those books are dreams I haven’t vocalized, but lives on within me.
So I’ll cry when my diary tears, or guitar string breaks,or when my shell snaps in two, or when the ipod screen breaks. These are not just things to me. They are all they connect me to the people and moment I treasure above all.
But then again, you won’t understand that, would you?
Who do we blame when everything goes wrong? Do we, or not, blame anybody at all? What is the true basis of that blame and who is the true recipient of it all? Haven’t we ever wondered how we are all stuck at this endless cycle of blame and mistrust?
We pass blame onto each other at every chance we get. Whenever a situation arises that didn’t go as planned, we find a scapegoat to take the fall. There are times the blame doesn’t justify, but it doesn’t matter, does it? Something went wrong, so someone has to get the brunt of it. But isn’t the system all too unfair? Some circumstances are beyond the control of anyone or anything. Call it destiny, or just pure bad luck! So why do we put so much time and effort to hold someone responsible?
The truth is, when we are blaming someone else… we are not blaming ourselves. We often try to outrun the wrong we have committed or the part we’ve played in that wrong. All we want to do is cut all association with it and the fastest way to do that is by passing the blame to someone else. That way we are not responsible for it. This distance makes it possible for us to think objectively about it; we can pass judgement, measure the degree of that wrong and weigh the best way to counter it.
This society of ours is so divided. Nobody likes to consider that we are also a part of the society that wronged. Rather we like to distance the culprit in any way we can and not take any responsibilities for our misdeeds. The truth, however, stands that the culprit was once raised in our society, by our standards and morals and through the system we created. What a narcissistic bunch of people we are, aren’t we?
We adopt a simple policy to hold the illusion of perfection alive in our hearts. Our motto remains, ‘When everything goes wrong – Blame and outcast.’ But is it fair? Fair to those who were once a part if our society? Fair to those who will be born and raised in it? Fair to the ones who make the decisions at all?
The palate of blame is a composition of the darkest color of human nature. The only way we can prevent this cycle from going on is by not giving in, not passing it on. We shouldn’t give ourselves the opportunity to rub our darkness out of ourselves and ruin the few stuck at the center of it. In time, we may not alone be able to fade the darkness of it all. But one less darkness is one shade less dark on the palate..
Amar Shobdo 