Jai Mata Di!

Being a Punjabi, naratey are very important to us just like they are to the Bengalis. I’ve been lucky to witness both very very closely.  As is the ritual of most punjus, naratey start by observing fast on all 9 days to surviving on no onion and garlic food, no alcohol and a whole lot of puja. The nine days of purity is observed along with ghat pujan and khetri beejna, to chowkis and jagratas, garbha and  it all combines to pray to Shakti and reenergize yourself. 

It’s a chaotic time in my household because we follow both the Punjabi rituals as well as Bengali puja along with whatever puja you want to do. How the nine days pass, you are hardly aware and if you are fasting, then all the more tiring. Though one of the best parts is vrat ki thali. That is yummy. You end up gaining weight irrespective of eating out actually but it is soooo yummy.

Now, the popular debate is usually on when one does kanjak pujan. So, some celebrate Ashtami and some do Navmi. We usually do Navmi and the experience is amazing. I always had immense faith in Durga and this festival is pretty important to me. From the days to being a kanjak to doing kanjak puja, life teaches you so much. The smiles on the faces of girls when you give them gifts is priceless. 

Since we follow both styles, the puja usually culminates with the Bengali dashmi ritual sindur khela followed by visarjan, which used to be pretty big deal when we were kids actually. We used to go to the river bank and the entire day was spent there, like a picnic. This usually ends with getting the shanti jal and wishing everyone a very Happy New Year.

 Nine days of celebration comes to a joyous end, till next year. This may seem like a post that I have just skimmed over because I'm heading for a vacation. Time to sin!

The Last Goodbye

Is there a thing as a last goodbye?

I asked when I held memories tight,

Is there a right time to say it right,

When you didn't even know that forever was a lie. 

Is it relief or is it chaos?

Maybe it's untangling of fates entwined,

A string we break as we weep,

Who knew it was such a lonely ride. 

You think you needed prep time to speak,

But you never thought it was the last time to greet,

In a rush you don't notice little things,

All of him becomes a hazy dream. 

Like a roadblock that cuts a path,

Like a knife that snips a string,

Like a melody stuck on a jarring note,

Like a ghost that forgot it was no more. 

To catch one last glimpse of good times,

Before the tears cloud the eyes,
Hopeful dreams hit the ocean tier,

Your sinking heart cannot survive.

So many feelings left unfelt,

So many tears left unshed,

So many sighs left unheard,

So many things left unsaid. 

Image courtsey google

Life's Tutorial!

There is so much love in this world. There are people willing to love you. Life is all about change and growth. When you accept change, you grow. It hurts and you feel the transition within you. As such in life, you compromise a lot of times to maintain peace within any relationship and accept your destiny when you land into situations that seem destined. You accept when you feel that you've been used to the core, and you take all of that hurt and turn it into a lesson. You don't knock for love on doors that partially open at their convenience and shut to reopen for a new stranger. In this fast paced world, there is a distorted view of love. It suddenly begins to matter more for the other party when you stop giving a fuck about it because when you did give a lot of you, it was always taken for granted and squashed. The stars have your destiny wrapped around its finger and you end up dancing to its tune. No matter how much you struggle, it pulls you back unless, you learn to walk towards it. 

If you love someone... wait, let's not even use the word 'love' as of now, when you have intense feelings for someone, you have to accept the fact that the feelings may not be reciprocated, accepted, may be ignored, laughed at, be a ploy to manipulate, play or use you and sometimes may not even culminate into something real and concrete. Any one of these scenarios can play out. The worst feeling though is one when you are interested in someone, they make you believe they are interested too, and just when you begin to hope for something to work out, they act as though they are trying to "save" you from them. See one might perceive things wrong but as you know I like to do my research, it's one of the tactics of reverse psychology. It's a common manipulative technique used by a narcissist to serve their own need. A toxic person like this knows and uses your vulnerabilities, your insecurities, all of it, against you before they know exactly how to reel you in.

Most of us don't even realise when we become targets for someone because we are way to busy getting charmed by them. Suddenly one fine day you find yourself falling for a person without using an ounce of wisdom you have, not realising that it's all going down too fast. You end up believing that may be the universe has finally listened to you and brought love to your doorstop. You open your heart and decide to give love another shot. He seems to be everything you ever wanted and just when you get this taste of love, you want it bad and then it is just taken away. The relationship, no matter how long, leaves you confused, in agony and in ambiguity. It shatters your heart completely, they break you down like you are nothing. The healing this sort of relationship needs a lot of hard work and a lot of time which you no longer have.

The hardest thing is to work your feelings of missing them, of wanting them. Of all the things that could have been but aren't. Of all the drunk nights when you stay up crying, of all the times memories just hit you and you take a step back. When you miss them and you remember all that has happened, thatwhen it hits you like a boulder. When you crave them, in all the ways possible, knowing that it can never be. When your feelings are real, when you know the reality too, it's exactly like being stuck in between a rock and a hard place. You are the rule. Remember that and drive yourself to forget and heal your heart. Your love never existed, you need to change paths and you have to be okay about it.

How do you get over nostalgia and the hurt? There is no easy way. You need to just do whatever works for you. Also, do not depend on another person to make it okay. If one thing you should learn from you being heartbroken is NOT to use another person as a shield. Take a break from all the dating and focus on yourself. Whoever will come close to you next deserves the best of you. Not a broken or a damaged you, who at this stage is like an active volcano just waiting to burst. Rebounds may successfully culminate into full time commitment but then what happens when you are healed. You look for what you really need then and no one should be at the end of that search after investing themselves in you. Let the hurt leave for good and you need to find your way back to life. Stop questioning why they hurt you, because the reality is that they did. Just let them go because there is no reason to find those answers anymore. 

I thought you'd love me always!

Image courtesy Illustrats

The love I gave you will always be yours,

Forever it will lay hidden in my heart,

Because it felt so right,

Even though it was built on all lies.

I wanted to share my love with you,

Hoping you’d want me too,

I wanted you to stay,

Hoping you’d love me always.

Through the joy and the pain,

Through all the dreams and complaints,

Through all the days and the nights,

I carry the love you left behind.

Your eyes, your hands, your embrace,

Finally told me that you never cared,

I thought that you’ll be my endless love,

Two hearts that beat just like one.

Our love ended before it even began,

Buried in the ground, before it lived,

You meant the world to me,

I just wasn’t part of your plan.

I guess I believed in forever,

Your presence was just another illusion,

I dared to recreate my broken dreams,

You don’t know just how my heart bleeds.

I wished that maybe fate was kind finally,

A favour that it offered to me,

Gift of tears and ache was all you gave me,

Here I thought you’d never be the one to hurt me.

Now being without you,

Takes a whole lot of getting used to,

Should learn to live with it again,

I thought you’d love me always.

The Absence!

I miss who you were,

I miss who I thought you were,

I miss how you brought a smile to my face,

I miss how you made my heart sway,

I miss how you made me dream,

I miss how I felt with you by my side,
I miss your frame,

I miss your moans,

I miss your cocky grin,

I miss who I was when I was with you,

I miss my heart beating loudly too,
I miss your words,
I miss our minds,

I miss all the things,

I miss it more every night,

I miss you so much that I want to forget you tonight.

Image courtesy Illustrats

Reminders!

I’m waiting for the day when this date, this day just becomes any other passing day of every year that is yet to come. It took a whole lot of time to get over one date only to be branded by another. As if constant ticks in your head aren't the only reminders you have to get over, you have to survive this one day. This one day, where you tried so hard once to make it a special event for someone.

It’s like the anxiety starts a day before, you know what’s coming and you know you have to survive it. You have to preoccupy yourself because you know the onslaught of the memories will end up in a blood bath. If you think this is harsh, along with it comes a lot of anger towards yourself because you still end up praying and hoping for that person’s well being, the one incidentally who never bothered about yours. 

This is the pain you have to deal with when you really care for a person and even though they hurt you every single time, you still end up being their well-wisher. Agree with me now that it sucks to be a ‘good person’. 

A Writer's Quill!

I sat down today with a bottle of whiskey and drowned my thoughts in it. Candle's lit. Hands ready to type. Gearing up to write, and of all the emotions that urge you to write, pain and love motivate you more than anything. More than two hours of staring at the blinking cursor, I thought I should give up. Then panic sets in because your mind chokes, your fingers pause and there is this immense swell of emotion in your heart, that is overwhelming, it feels like you cannot breathe, and you want to run. You need to be out, you need air to breathe. As I sat with my glass of neat whiskey under the colossal blanket of universe, I gazed on to the dark skies and negotiated a little with the stars for inspiration. I said to them, "You and I, need to make an arrangement". It's funny though that inspiration does come to you when you least expect it. I've been undergoing a writers block because my mind becomes cloudy and turbulent, I cannot write anything other than pouring my heart out because that's what I know, that's how I deal. It isn't easy to recover from a battle with your heart and mind. The soul is like the filling that is sandwiched in between two rocks. When something inspires me now, I lose the thought along the day as I don't have a paper and pen or my phone on me 24X7. 

So, here I sit, beneath the open sky and I wonder. You know it's indescribable, the feeling when your heart is fluttering between erasing your love and adjusting to being without it. You don't know how to be in the moment when your heart feels empty. This does take a while to get used to. Erasing that part of you, the way you felt, is what the heart wants to hold on to. It's like you watch from a distance when a memory turns to a scar, slowly. That's an experience that alters the way you let your heart feel free ever again. You watch yourself transform from a person who was free of baggage for a while, who took a chance, felt love, got hurt and then to a person who stretches and pulls herself to forget everything in between and then again to get back to the person who is free from holding onto her baggage. Tough journey, not for people who don't have a conscience because, or lack empathy. 

It's easy to trip and fall back sometimes, I won't deny that, and it's so hard to manoeuvre your heart into releasing all that load of feelings in one go. The heaviness of it alone is enough to kill you without any additional verbal and emotional abuse from the person you care about. Knowing that you were so close to getting a chance at togetherness finally and then watching it fly out of your hands is a game changer. It's like you are starving and you get a whiff of nourishment or just a taste of it. So, you wait till the time that everything, every memory becomes numb.  Convincing yourself that all the things you did for a person or all the shit you took because you thought that somewhere maybe there was a 1% chance that the other cared and then knowing the fact that you got played a 100% percent is a 360 degree turn and unbelievable math that I can't even twist my head around. The things we do for that 1% hope. That's the hardest to get over. 

It's like when your favourite TV show finishes. It's almost like a heart break all over again, right. You love it and it's no longer there. All the possibilities, all the laughs, the cries and the moments you cherished and the memories that you have made during the entire run of a season are all gone. You may look back at them and rejoice or be sad but the anticipation of it coming again seems so slim. It has been with you for long, been a part of you, you quote it, you relate to it, you share anecdotes from it, you have your favourite moments, you have your favourite characters and then one day it ends. It pretty much leaves you with some closure of all the loose ends that are tied but still it ends. Season per season it changes, you grow together but then you also see the same actors as different characters with their roles predefined to play another part in another story. Sometimes you watch that story seeing hoping for a connect there but then sometimes you just want to remember them. So, even if your favourite character stars in some other story, you tend to keep them fresh in your memory so that one day when its not painful enough, you can look back and watch it again and reconnect on some level. That's exactly what a heart does too when it ends one season. All of it, in our lives our hearts are broken so many times and in so many ways and yet we still call it fragile. I haven't seen a more sturdier thing in decades. That's our hearts. Worn down, over and over till one day it stops. So, keep watching till that day because even though it hurts and there are nights when there is no sound and the thud of your heart is so loud that it's the only thing you hear, tears are then worthwhile. 

At midnight now as I sit here, talking to the stars, I realise that I may write whatever I write but I write best when I write from my heart.