That Month in Kashmir

In the month of June, for one month straight, I stayed away from my house, my family, my books, my pretty room to go and work in Kashmir. Although I derive a lot of energy from my parents, as is the norm- they have started to get on my nerves with their curfew timings, constant talks about marriage and making me feel like I’m not doing enough, like I’m doing something wrong by trying to enjoy my life, etc. Despite all the love that I have for them, I think I need to stay away from those two for my own sanity.

If we talk about Kashmir and its beauty, this post will become a never ending appreciative note of unending beauty akin to paradise- so, let’s not do that. I just want to talk about my inner journey of living away from home for a month in Kashmir.

Well, first of all- I had a room of my own, all to myself, only to myself. For somebody who has forever shared their room with not one but two younger siblings, it is but a heavenly feeling to have a room to oneself. You are solely responsible for whatever happens in the room. Nothing moves from its place unless you move it. Nobody eats your food without asking. The bathroom is clean. The bed is as you leave it.

Apart from the petty satisfaction of having a room to myself for its physical reasons, another philosophical reason is the privacy. Well, you sleep when you want to. You can call over whoever you want to. You can touch yourself if you feel like. You can have a smoke as and when you please. You can wear shorts and not have a man, a father figure tell you to go and change and make you feel like a slut. You can go out in the balcony naked (well, most of the night) and smoke.

Now, coming to the most important of all things, having no curfew. Oh my god. What a feeling it is to not have somebody constantly monitor what you are doing with your life, nobody to ask questions, nobody to answer to, nobody to keep you from going out in the name of safety or “log kya kahengey?” etc.

Now let’s come to the room I was staying in, back in Kashmir. The weather, despite it being June, was cool enough for me to cover myself with a quilt at night. The balcony of my room overlooked Dal lake, and offered a beautiful sighting of the lights of hundreds of houseboats arranged in an arch. In terms of proximity, it was next to my office, so I didn’t have to wake up in advance and get ready for work. In fact, most of the times, I would work from my room rather than the office.

I made full use of not having a curfew. Since I was staying in a prime location of Srinagar where a lot of tourists frequented, there was always a market around the place. Street markets. Little things set up on footpaths. Just how I like it. So I got out every single night before my dinner for a round of the market, along with a walk beside Dal Lake before I went to sleep.

It was a transformational month of my life, and I have realized that I need such spaces more often in my life.

Love in the Time of Millennials

She was unlike anybody I had ever met. She had this air about her which made her seem sort of impossible. You couldn’t just ask to spend time with her, you would have to earn it. She dressed in bright and bold colours, shades that would make anybody around her seem plain. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, yet you would have to spend hours beautifying yourself to match up to her confidence. That is what made her beautiful. Her dusky complexion was content in itself. Her dark eyes with just the right amount of dark circles. Her sound, that would make the whole place around stop and listen as she spoke.

Yet she did not carry any arrogance around. Or she did, but it was the right amount. And when she wore earrings, they would dangle around her face as if stars were dying and shooting into different directions. And oh my god she made me feel like a prize every time she touched me. She would definitely qualify for the role of wonder-woman, only if there existed a more badass version.

On rare occasions, she would spend nights with me. We would sit on the balcony and smoke late at night, gazing at the Delhi sky trying to spot any romance amid the lights and smoke in which it was covered. I once asked her if she thought of me at all. She snatched the cigarette from my hands and put it in her mouth, looking at the sky taking a full hard drag for complete mystery before she spoke again. Throwing the cigarette on the ground, she held my hand and kissed me on the lips with force. I stopped thinking and kissed her back with all I had, assured and secure for the whole night.

The Girl on the Metro

Saw a very beautiful woman on the metro today. By the look on her face, I think she might say the same about me. Or maybe I just read it wrong. Every once in a while, I would look at her and catch her glancing at me. By her clothing, I could tell that she had a similar taste like me. She was wearing a silver nose-ring & one…two…three…four earrings in her ears. Only, that I have now given up my nose-ring & have started wearing a stud on my nose (for experimental purposes) now and the extra piercings on my earlobes mostly remain empty (because…I’m too lazy). Anyway, let’s come back to her. Her skin was brown, the composed, kind brown. Her nose-ring was the first thing I noticed about her. It made her look like a bold woman, like an unforgiving goddess who wouldn’t mind burning cities to the ground. Maybe it was the book I was reading, “Ms militancy” that had put ideas in my head- but man did that chemistry feel real!

I noticed that she had tied her hair in a bun only when I got up to step out of the train. It was too late, and I wondered how dare I miss such an important detail about somebody I had been practically staring from across the seat. Anyway, the train had reached the station and the gates were just about to open. It seemed too impractical in my head, to look at her one last time before leaving the metro, so I skipped it. Closed my eyes, took a photo of her in my head & stepped out of the metro without looking back.

And that was the end of a modern day non-heterosexual romance.

Delhi’s Pride in Photos

 

 

 

A Random Page From My Diary

Dear self,

Coming back home from a vacation usually means returning to the monotony and schedule that you call life. It means resuming all the duties you thought you could leave behind, as if these worldly and material worries are something you could ever bargain with. Timely work, sleep and meals; only one cup of coffee to keep your anxiety at bay but taste buds satisfied, the morning paper with tons of distressing news…

Being in the same bed where you have spent sleepless nights contemplating sometimes major life decisions and sometimes easy ways to die. There is a certain comfort in knowing that you can put an end to your life whenever you please, isn’t there?

Very much like this note, life becomes just a combination of many unrelated events that are threaded in the same string.

But not for too long- the dissatisfied soul that you are, you pull out a bead every now and then and replace it with a new sea shell you might have picked up at the beach as a child, or a shiny pebble you found on the street and thought too pretty to be just a stone. Or a tiny flower your little sister picked up for you from the park. You, my dear, break monotony every day without even realizing it.

And when this necklace is done, I know you will want to break it soon, only to repiece it differently and start to make a new one, a little more sparkly than the last.

Love,

I.

The Sun Melts Away

My ideal day consists of an evening scene in my room. I am sitting with a book on my bed and some nice music is playing in the background. The lyrics distract me from the book every now and then. I have made myself some warm coffee, with full cream milk and adequate sugar without worrying about how many calories it might contain- just as I like it. For a while, the room becomes my happy place and I forget that the whole world exists unchanged outside these four walls. My little sister comes in and goes out in between, disturbing me every now and then- but since I am so used to it, I would be more disturbed if that ceased to happen. It’s only 6:30 pm, I can imagine the sun slowly setting outside, melting away. I have a lot of time to do the things I need to do before the day gets over.

Imagine

A Sunday morning where you are bound by no restrictions yet wake up at 7 am even without an alarm clock. An unusually quiet beginning to the day, where you make yourself some hot coffee and rest across your bed once again getting inside the comfort of the kambal only to write while you drink it. One sip for every witty expression you use. A Sunday morning without solid routine yet plans to get through the day without finding yourself in the desperate grip of loneliness that feeds on your self-esteem…

Imagine.

It doesn’t take much.

Breathe

There are times when all the excitement of life takes a backseat, and leaves us sour only with our despair, existentialism & unticked To-do lists. These days can be hard…but remember, all you need to do is, take a step back. Leave all the work you’ve been caught up with, and give yourself a break you deserve. Breathe. Do something unique. Or do something normal but with full awareness. Have your breakfast for dinner. Have dessert for breakfast. Go out cycling. Go for a walk in the park. Look at flowers. The grass. These things might usually look stupid and/or extreme to you, but do give yourself this break. Your life will not get sorted after this, I know, but this will help you untangle one of the many knots in your heart. Let me be a cliché once again and remind you to do little things for yourself more often.

ON LOVE, MARRIAGE AND FILTER COFFEE

After an unsettling discussion she had with him over a cup of filter coffee that evening, she found it extremely difficult to sleep. And how could she, after breaking somebody’s heart? And especially when she held it so close to her own?

So she asked him to write her something that night.

And what he wrote to her, gave way to a series of emails from the both of them…a terrible mix of random things half in sleep and half in despair, with only one thread that tied it all together: filter coffee.

And thus it began…

 

HIM, 12:59 AM:

 

“Do you like filter coffee? I do. I even like people who like filter coffee. I had one today with a special person. We talked about some things that are going to define/change our lives — at least mine. I was deeply sad, but I wanted to smile. I wanted to smile because I wanted to see her smile. I wanted to see her smile because when she smiles and laughs unarmed, she takes me away with her too. How nice it would have been if she never was sad, and always smiled, even if she was away from me. Maybe, she too was forcing a smile — who knows! Who knows! But I want to have a filter coffee with her every day. With her, and no one else. I am a calm person, increasingly now, but she brings an energy that I think complements my demeanour. I love her, I do love her. She completes me, but she says she will never be mine — and that’s why I want to hate her now, really hate her.” 

 

HER, 1:23 AM:

 

“Do you like filter coffee? I do. I absolutely love how you can have serious, life changing conversations over a tiny cup of coffee.

A marriage proposal? A casual interview? Turning down a marriage proposal? A break-up?

You can take little breaks in between to kill the severity of the whole thing- here my coffee arrives, here’s putting in sugar, here’s mixing it with a steel spoon for a whole minute, here is taking one small sip while the other person is speaking, here is another sip just to add some mystery before you start speaking…and who knows when I might need to add some more sugar? The uneasiness of the conversation wholly dissolves in the sweetness of the coffee. At least for a while.

I had one such difficult conversation today. And I survived, along with my cup of coffee. At least for a while.”

 

HIM, 1:54 AM:

 

“The last time I had filter coffee outside Delhi was when I was travelling in the South, primarily Kerala. Over these coffees, and on the sidelines, I bumped into some interesting people, and had some very interesting experiences. I met a man who runs more than 50 educational institutes in the region, a Mexican-American girl who was then living in Korea and teaching English there — she was there with her BF but for some reason she said he was gay. I met a person who was producing Malayalam version of Coke-Studio.

It was raining that day, so I went for a long drive with a friend on some fancy bike, and could see Arundhati’s ‘God’s Own Country’ – and were brought back from the fantasy only after being challaned for not wearing a helmet. There was one person who took me on a tour in a small rural district, which has a majority of Muslims, and till recently was one of the most backward districts in India, but is now one of the most innovative one and perhaps the first fully-digital district. I met some smart young men who eventually got into AIIMS and IIT. (And I stayed once in a Jamat rest house). I met two kids, one of them was married with a kid and was back to college because her husband and in laws were supportive, which would have been unthinkable just a decade back in the district. I watched football world cup match with rowdy, but affectionate, young locals in the middle of the night. I lost my way once in the darkness of the night in a tribal area with rain falling badly and no one to ask for directions — wrongly entered someone’s private complex, and got chased away by dogs 🙂 I went to a village where the villagers were so mad about football that the world’s highest football body, FIFA, sends them world cup replica and souvenir before every World Cup. I went to their beaches every evening and sat there for long hours, reading or thinking or just listening to nature’s music. I lived in Fort Kochi for a few days; it was quiet cheap but I realised that people were more receptive towards goras 🙂 I spent a day in the end of India — Kanyakumari– where seas start, and I watched sunset from a tower. It was a windy evening, and I was alone — had one of the most serene evenings of my life, with my favourite songs playing on my phone. And returned to Thiruvananthapuram the same evening by bus, with a drizzle throughout the journey (I was supposed to see wind power machines along the way, but fell asleep). 

 

I would love to go back to these places again with someone I enjoy spending my time with — of course, it would be livelier; her presence is bound to make it so. Throughout the journey, filter coffee and beef and parantha’s at Indian Coffee House were my sole companions” 

 

HIM, 1:57 AM:

 

“Also, someone took me to a boy who was a second topper of AIIMS. He had a younger sister who was studying for BDS. They thought I am her boyfriend and have come to do a reccee. It was an interesting evening but was uncomfortable in the beginning. I pretended I was fasting — it was Ramzan– and also had to go for Namaz with them.”

 

HER, 2:22 AM:

 

“On one of his online shopping sprees, my father accidentally ordered a huge pack (considering my addiction to coffee) of filter coffee, without a filter, of course. It was lying in a shelf in my kitchen, unattended and unwanted for almost a year until I randomly came across an article on Facebook with super easy tricks of making filter coffee without a filter (coffee, just like the universe must have its way). Now how could I resist a solution to the decaying coffee like that? I took it out, thinking I’d better experiment with it rather than letting it rot. So I did. First a paper napkin, then a towel and finally after trying a handkerchief as a potential filter for the coffee- I succeeded in making a good cup of coffee after the first few days of the experiment. My disapproval for going out to have coffee and this quick fix came together and I began work on perfecting the art of coffee making. It was therapeutic, the process of filtering coffee, only letting the essence of it in the cup…

Soon, filter coffee became routine. I would fix myself a cup of coffee almost everyday and read. Sometimes I watch Netflix while having coffee, but mostly I read. Drinking a warm cup of coffee and reading- it feels as if you are in the pages of an old classic novel, doesn’t it? I make much better filter coffee now. I am even planning to get a real filter for my coffee. Anyway, enough of plain old banter. It’s time for a confession now. Since I met you, I have had a slight change of heart. How bad is a couple hundred bucks if it allows you a few hours of utmost peace with overflow of conversations? Expensive, capitalistically marketed to maximize profits, overrated and exploitative coffee at a coffee shop in exchange for a few words of love?

Excellent deal, if you ask me.”

 

 

And wasn’t it, a beautiful deal…and an even more beautiful night?