To the city I love

11th January 2009: I wake up a little unsure of my surroundings. I turn and look out the large window and see, from my 13th floor perch, the hustle and bustle of a familiar city below. I’m groggy from the exhaustion of the last few days spent in relocating, depressed about leaving the place I called home in Bangalore, missing the few close friends I made over the past four years, the friendly neighbours, everything. Yet, there is this unmistakable spark of excitement growing within me as I look out the window. A thousand memories flood my thoughts. College, hostel, friends, family, journalism, meeting Gowhar, tears, laughter, regrets, lessons learnt, fears overcome, friendships cemented, reality checks, and much more - so many powerful moments packed into the three wonderful years I spent here. This is where I spent some of the most important years of my life, a city I missed immensely and craved to go back to. A place I wanted to embrace and make my own. Mumbai.

Though I had been meeting you briefly throughout my life, I only got acquainted with you in 1999 when I joined college. Within the first month I was hooked. I never knew a city could be alive and take a personality of its own. As months passed we developed a bond, an unspoken and nameless bond. You accepted me for who I am and helped me find my identity. Far from restricting me, you gave me wings to fly, let me learn from my mistakes and gave me friends and family to cushion my falls. Despite the polluted air, choked streets, poverty, and slums that make you unhappy, you gave me the air of freedom to breathe, ample space to run and play, obstacles to make me strong and opportunities to find success and of course, even love.

I’m looking out the window and smiling. I had my doubts about coming back to you. Today, I am not the same girl who reluctantly left you in 2002. I’m married, I have a daughter, my priorities have changed, my ambitions and dreams are not the same. I’m a bit wiser, I don’t trust that easily, and I’m over cautious. But I’m still over sentimental about things, I still love Juhu beach morning walks, pani-puris, linking road haggling, the monsoon rains, the adrenaline rush of travelling in the local trains. Sigh. I’ve missed you. But now I’m back. Back against my will. I didn’t know how badly I needed this. I should learn to stop questioning destiny. I’m being taken care of. Your streets may look different, parts of you may have got a facelift, but its still you. The same embrace I left years ago. Thank you, Mumbai. Thank you for being you.

Change is the only constant

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned my fear of change. Well, it’s happening. Change is happening now! It’s staring me in the face I am not sure if I should run and hide or look at it in the eye and face what it has in store for me. I am not entirely sure I can face it. I’m too fragile right now. I’m ready to break into a million glass pieces that can be swept away into the trash.

Change can be good. It can come as a pleasant breeze that gives things a little swirl, making things exciting and even better than they were. But change can also be harsh. It can be a strong wind that tosses things up in the air and has them twisting and turning, without will, in the melee. Then when done with the torment, it stops and lets them fall back down to the ground. But never will they be the same again. The damage is done.

It is not just change that I’m terrified of, it is the attached unpleasantness that this change is bringing along with it. Or is that just a figment of my imagination? Have I just conjured it up to be an ally to my pessimism?

Stop. Think. Breathe. Tomorrow, when the tide of emotion has calmed, and I can think with a clearer head, I know it won’t look this bad. It will be some time before I truly embrace it. But at least tomorrow I think I will be able to accept it. Accept it for what it is – inevitable and unrelenting. Change.

The Glass Globe

I suddenly realise that I am alone. Not literally. But I have become conscious of the fact that I sometimes walk a few steps away from the other people in my life. Standing outside and analysing a tiny glass globe of people who happen to be my dear family and friends. Figuring out what everyone is really about and where I stand in the hullabaloo. It’s a lonely feeling.

As a kid, I was always an extension of my family. No matter how much I would have wanted to break free and be an individual at that point, there was no escaping the fact that my life revolved around the family boundaries. As kids, our thinking is moulded by what we see and hear, and we are conditioned to behave a certain way. As a teenager, we might have argued and rebelled hard enough to create our own persona, even if it was a façade. Yet the strings remain, more for a sense of security and a kind of default identity.

As an adult also, especially in Indian societies, we are always attached to family. Yet there are those who gravitate towards standing outside the glass globe. Some like to look away and live their life the way they want. And some look in and make their lives miserable wishing, wanting, hoping, regretting, rebelling, antagonising and sometimes yielding. I belong to the latter.

As most teenagers would, I have given my parents their share of angst and regretted it later. But generally I think I’ve done okay and been a good girl. At what point in life did I realise that I was free to have my own opinions? Those that did not conform to what I was taught. When did I decide that it was okay to not always agree with the people around me even if it meant standing on a lonely opinionated island? I don’t know. But what I do know is that having that opinion, arguing my point of reason, caring enough about something to fight it out is what makes me ME. And this means I have to sometimes walk alone, look at the glass globe and wonder if differences put cracks in relationships.

Introspection

Year ends make me a wee bit nostalgic. And I think a lot of you will agree with me here. The end of a year is a time to think back to moments spent, moments lost, moments that zipped by. A time to walk backwards in your own footsteps and relive, albeit hazily, what you did and didn’t do. Year ends can bring on a whole lot of regret and embarrassment, for things you feel you should have done differently. Fortunately, they can also bring pride and a glimmer of hope for the coming year.

2009 was a year brimming with opportunity for me. I began the year with the decision to quit working as an employee and do my own thing as a freelancer. The start was rocky, and I wanted to rethink my decision. But I’m glad I didn’t, because way past mid-year I found out what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. This brainwave didn’t come about as a eureka moment one fine day. It came in the form of my business partner Kavita Machiah.

Kavita and I struck the right chord from day one. We’ve been working together for 4 months now and I have enjoyed every moment of the journey. I don’t think I fully understood the meaning of teamwork till we started on our venture. As freelance writers we have been kicking up our own little storm from the cosiness of our homes. We both love the independence and freedom that working from home and working for ourselves has given us. If you know us you’d agree we are different as chalk and cheese. But when it comes to ambition and work methodology, I have yet to meet anyone else who is so like me.

So as I draw the curtains shut for the last time in 2009, and I think back on yet another year that rushed by too quickly, along with a lot of other introspection I’m going to be thankful for what I got this year - business partnership, life long friendship, and several other ships to keep me afloat during the years to come.

It’s what’s written for you.

I stole the above line from a friend’s google talk status message. She’s been displaying it for a few days now and every time I look at it, it gets me thinking. I love the way the line seems to resonate when I read it. I can imagine hearing it being said in a hushed yet firm whisper and yet it echoes in my ears.

I am a firm believer in destiny. I accept that our life’s story has been written by a higher power and that who we are is decided by this plot. Is the plot decided by who we are? Yes, I think this holds true as well.

I know there are no such things as coincidences. Actually I’ve seen coincidences happening so often that they have seized to be classified as coincidences. I believe there is a reason behind incidences, happenings, meetings, gains, losses, successes and failures. Everything leads to something else. Some occurrences have the capacity to be complete life-altering events. Some are so discreet that we might not even notice the events they unfold. So we don’t always get the drift of why something happened. But it has a purpose behind it nevertheless.

That sentence got me thinking about all this. Even though I believe in destiny, it is so much easier to let emotions get the better of you, to get caught up in the moment and forget the wisdom of your beliefs. So when I looked at the line today I said to myself that I need to say this out loud to myself when things are beyond my control. The sooner we learn to accept the things we have absolutely no control over, the more successful we will be in handling our emotions as well as the challenges life throws up.

Preoccupation with change

What is it about change that scares me? The fear of the unknown perhaps. Unpredictability, unfamiliarity and uncertainty. These are what my nightmares are about. How do I explain these fears to anyone? Do I need to? I’m not entirely sure. I’m swinging between hope and despair and wondering where to land.

I think I don’t give myself enough credit. I’m tougher than I think. I know I can will myself to look forward and carry on without delving on the past too much. I know I have it in me to embrace change, and to take each day as it comes. I’m desperately looking around for inspiration. For some manifestation that makes me realize the finiteness of my worries. I haven’t found it yet but I know it will arrive soon. And the sun will shine soon enough.

Channelling Negative Energies towards Creativity

For a few days now, my mind has been preoccupied with a number of things. Hopes, desires, wants, needs, family, work, lifestyle, ambition, future. Everything has been getting intertwined and is causing much consternation. The easy way, or the more appropriate terms would be ‘the loser’s way’ would be to mope about, frown, get bugged with everything and generally have a negative attitude about what is happening around.

But I don’t want to be like that. Too many times in life I have already chosen this wrong way of looking at things. Today I want to be different. I want to approach the New Year with a positive outlook. I want to absorb positive energies as well as emanate them. Despite things falling apart, I want to pick up pieces of hope and create something brilliant. Something that I believe will give me the power to succeed. After all, it is all a matter of attitude. We are only as happy as we allow ourselves to be.

Memories of Kashmir

Liv­ing in the urban jun­gle that Ban­ga­lore has become, get­ting lost in the daily grind, and never hav­ing the time to stroll through the now few and far between gar­dens that were once the pride of the city, I have been lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively miles away from nature’s true beauty. But a recent trip to Kash­mir changed all that. When I looked through the images we cap­tured, those mag­nif­i­cent snow peaked moun­tains, the rush­ing ice cold white streams, the graz­ing cat­tle led by peo­ple whose liveli­hood and liv­ing have been frozen in time — I’m over­whelmed with emo­tion. Today, I’m back to the grind. But I have these images to remind me of a world where time stands still.

Prejudice, Paranoia or Protocol?

News channels had a field day as they shifted focus from swine flu and created a hue and cry about a rather unpleasant situation. The incident ruffled feathers and got the claws out in all classes, from the elite, the ‘aam junta’ and babudom too, more so, because it revolved around a huge iconic figure - Shah Rukh Khan, no less.

Shah Rukh Khan was detained and interrogated for two hours at an American airport, apparently due to his last name. Ironically, the star will soon be seen in a film titled ‘My Name Is Khan’. How apt. Anyway, this provoked such indignation in India (and among Indians across the world) that the Indian Government has decided to take the matter up with the US. Quotes are flying left, right and centre.

For us, the name Khan is synonymous with Bollywood, but for the paranoid angrez it spells terrorism and security concerns. Now, keeping aside our outrage at what happened to our beloved movie star, what the incident really brought to light is how the common Muslim is viewed in America every single day. Granted that after 9/11 things have changed drastically and such protocol is just part of national security. But the fact that anyone with a Muslim 'name' is put under the scanner, is quite disturbing.

Have we reached a point where Muslims, including myself, should accept that we will always be looked upon with suspicion and never whole-heartedly be welcomed in some countries? I have never been to the US, but if and when I do, will I be meted out the same treatment as Shah Rukh? At the heart of all this, lies a very sensitive issue, as things like prejudice, paranoia, or protocol for that matter, are not easy to alter.

Fear in its Present Form

Fear is an all-consuming thing. It overtakes our senses much like anger does, and hampers our activities. It seems like every other day we are consumed with a new fear. It could be a personal fear – money shortage, family issues, health concerns, or mass panic – like the virus that has been dominating headlines lately, with grim news of victims succumbing to it everyday.

Like the earlier viruses, we joked about swine flu too. That was when it seemed far, far away. But right now the fear in major cities like Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi is palpable. In fact, the virus seems so close that I fear if I stretch my hand out the window there are chances I could catch it. I’m too afraid to take my daughter with me while I shop for groceries. As I write this, 4 lives in Bangalore have already been claimed by it. Children seem to be the most vulnerable to the virus, making parents worry sick about them going to schools and the possibility of them getting infected through someone. Every cough, every rise in body temperature, every ill person is looked upon with fear and dread.

Fear paralyses people into either inaction or drives them towards the wrong kind of action. While several people choose to shelter themselves by being cooped up at home, many are hitting the drug stores for the anti-virus or the diagnostic centres to give samples for testing. Fear is blinding them from the fact that this is putting an enormous strain on the fragile infrastructure present to handle the virus, and many ‘deserving’ patients have to unnecessarily wait their turn to be tested.

As the world waits for this particular wave of swine flu to blow over, I wonder what manifestation fear will take on next?