Turning 30...and the perils associated with being single at 30.

It has been exactly 10 days since the dreaded 3-0 birthday happened. I slept being 29 one night, only to emerge the next day as a 30 year old. And while I wept at the loss of my so called 'youth', a part of me was serene, calm even. Being 30 makes me feel a little wiser, with a better grip on my future. I am the woman who has challenged convention. Who refused to be paraded in front of suitable suitors & their families like cattle, to be looked up and down, and sneered or whose weak points would be pointed out and worse made into some sort of dowry bargaining chip. I am the person who has loved, lost, loved some more and then lost again. That I am proud of what I have achieved thus far is an understatement. I am a financially independent girl who is doing well in her career in an MNC and professionally I have reached my goals. However, not being married and being nowhere close to finding that significant other leaves you feeling empty. While I do not care much for what the society or my own community has to say about my being unmarried at 30, when all other women in the community do not cross 25 without marriage, it does put considerable pressure on me and my family. My family has been wholly supportive, if a little worried. I don't blame them for being worried, it is what families do. And yet, somewhere, the emptiness of not having that one relationship which you can count upon to be there when you need someone is overwhelming. I am waiting for serendipity to happen...and hoping that the wait wont be too long. So cheers to being 30 and fabulous!

Never look back....and yet we do.

The other day I reached out to someone who I had known for some time on a social media platform, and who like me was at a crossroads in life. Over coffee and advice on how to plan my future, we realised that we had been living parallel lives. He like me had had an extremely long relationship that did not work out and both of us had been left to pick up the pieces of our lives. What was ironical was that we both had laid out these plans of how our lives were going to be and in my case, 10 years later I had seen it all unravel like a spool of wool. By this time I was supposed to have done a second MBA, gotten married and started planning kids. And here I was, alone and without the person I had imagined a life with, mulling over whether it was the right time for the second MBA and wondering how I was supposed to prepare for the toughest test of my life (in my head). 

While this conversation ensured that I left with a conviction of where I was headed, it also brought back a flood of memories. Memories of moments spent charting out a future. Of shared dreams, destinies and best laid plans. Plans that were now empty of a direction. Plans that spoke of moments of togetherness. 

And then I did something I shouldn't have. I went back and looked at my past. Looked at where they were and what they were upto. For the ones who were married, I looked at the life they now led. Possibly happy and possibly content. The feeling of sorrow and emptiness that filled me was overwhelming. I was overcome with the feeling of sadness and loss. It felt like a death. And in so many ways it was, the death of a relationship/s. The death of bonds that held me here. In this place, all this while. 

In a way this journey also gave me a sense of release. Because I can now truly move on. The path before me is laid out once again and I have a purpose. A goal to achieve, another life to live.

Stop this madness, god.

In a country that follows 300 crore different gods, religion is a sensitive topic at the best times. Write something that is deemed even a little controversial and you are sure to be censured by all and sundry. Self proclaimed keepers of the faith pounce upon those they feel are 'derogatory' to their notion of absolutism. And every religion/sect/cult/society is hell bent (ironical eh?) in shouting hoarse about its supremacy over others. In all of this fish-mongering, it is ironical to note that the gods have allowed such wide-spread destruction of the very planet that they supposedly protect, led by their worshippers and their delusional notion of worship.

At the very heart of it all is Hindu-ism. As a Hindu by birth, this is a religion that I have seen up close and personal, having practiced its rituals for a large part of my life. It is also the predominant religion of this country and hence the reason why I speak about it first. Over the years, I grew to be discontent with religion when most of my questions remained unanswered. When I asked my parents why we needed to burn firewood in the middle of the house to cleanse it (Havan- as I am an Arya Samaji), and why were we not worried about the smoke it generated, I was told to keep quiet and not get in the way of rituals.Every Ganesh Utsav, I looked at the state of all our water bodies and the sheer destruction of the flora & fauna and wondered whether the Elephant god would approve. Diwali brought with it widespread air pollution and filthy streets as we burst crackers by the car-load, on streets which bore the brunt for days. And while we confessed to being animal lovers, our house-hold animals suffered with the crazy noise levels that the crackers generated. Holi brought with it immense amounts of water wastage, with chemical colours that reacted with our skin and more often than not gave us a rash. Today is Makar Sankranti which means that hundreds of birds will be injured by glass covered maanja and possibly die. The Maha Kumbh is round the corner and thousands of people will dip themselves into the Ganges- by far one of our most polluted rivers due to the sheer amount of garlands, diyas, ashes, etc that are submerged into it in the name of our religion. The pollution of the Ganges has now reached cancerous levels and yet we carry on, doing what we must, because it is the way things are done.

I am in no way trying to say that any one religion is to blame. I would instead place the blame squarely on each and every one of our shoulders. Everytime we go ahead and throw bread into the nearest lake to feed the "fishes", or garlands due to the idea that the gods will be happy, or immerse idols into waterbodies that feed the life force of a city, we are killing ourselves a little more. Think about it, the 5 elements that we are supposedly supposed to worship- Earth, Fire, Water, Wind, Sky have all been polluted by the very practices used to venerate them. And yet we continue unabated, blinded by practices and rituals that should no longer apply. Stop this madness, god.

Why women are their worst enemies...

Recently I met one of my oldest friends who had come down from the states, after a gap of nearly two years. She was attending another common friend's wedding at my insistence. I had asked her to be part of the wedding since she was here anyway. Now my friend is someone who is profoundly beautiful in her simplicity. She is genuinely the nicest person I have ever come across and very rarely criticises anyone else, always seeing the good in every situation. She is also someone who suffers from low self esteem about her own body image and has struggled with her weight gain for some time. That she had put on a few kilos since the last time we had met had not even registered with me since I was just so happy to meet after such a long time.

And then we met this snarky classmate of ours at this wedding, and the first thing she had to say after meeting my friend was "Look at you, you have inflated like a balloon!" This classmate is someone who herself suffers from a weight problem and has nothing going for her in the looks department. And yet, the only way she can think of making herself feel good is by pulling down someone else. My friend was extremely hurt by this careless comment and will carry the effects of that stinging remark for a long time. And this brings me to the point I am trying to make. Women in general can be extremely vicious to one another. In our quest for perfection, we try and point out flaws of everyone we meet, just so we can compare how we are doing in comparison. We revel in someone else' misfortune and feel secretly happy when someone else fails. We delve into our enemies lives and try to guage whether they are miserable or not, and if not, try and add to their misery with bitchy statements and careless remarks. I have seen my share of such women, and I have only one thing to say to the likes of you:

Remember that you are your worst enemy. You are the reason why you failed- that you will fail is an inevitability and when you do, there will be someone else in the world who will laugh and rejoice at your failure. But you brought this on yourself. Everytime you knowingly went ahead and spoke against someone else, belittled someone, or compared lives with those you think are less fortunate than you are, you challenged fate into bringing the same upon yourself. And when fate deals you that final blow, I hope that you take one moment to think about what this makes you- a pathetic, desperate loser.

Your true worth lies in the mirror.

I have spent years in self doubt. Treading the path of righteousnous and of what was expected of me as a 'good' daughter/ sister/ girlfriend/ lover. Of trying to live up to the expectations of the people around me. And somehow I have never truly lived up to the one person who should be most important- Me.

When I look into the mirror I find myself looking at only flaws- miniscule lines appearing on my forehead, that one half white hair on the crown of my head, a new spot or blemish, or the extra fat pockets on my cheek, waist or arms. I am never really satisfied.

People see an extremely confident person in me, someone who holds her head up high and is not afraid to state an opinion. But when that person looks in the mirror, the confidence falls away like a veil. All the self doubt and nervousness creeps in and makes me question myself and my life. And all of this stems from the fact that I belong to a family whose expectations can never be matched. Being a perennial disappointment because of how I look, how I behave or what I have achieved chips away at the carefully constructed self image. That every disappointment in my life is attributed as a failure and a picture of bleakness is painted for my future does not help.

In fact, it makes me question the intention of everyone who ever compliments me. When someone says "You are pretty" I look at them with disbelief- because surely this person must exagerrate or overlook my very obvious flaws. Or when someone says "They admire my confidence" I roll my eyes because they have no idea where that confidence stems from- from the basic need of self preservation. My friends have for years tried to reason with me- counselling against putting myself down at every juncture. But then, 29 years of conditioning does not disappear overnight.

I am trying, I truly am and I can finally say that I have learnt to love myself a little- flaws and all.

Reflections of a restless mind

Days fade in and out. And yet nothing seems normal anymore. The routine fails to inspire even a modicum of emotion, until you realise you are not 'living' life, but just existing. Existing to just get through each day. Only to face another one. A life without meaning.

Touched by death

You never expect it, most often fear it, and do not know how to deal with it, but death always hits you like a force to be reckoned with. My companion and love for the last 7 years, Tiramisu died yesterday. Her death was painful and a release, so relief was one of the foremost emotions I felt when I heard the news. We had her admitted at the animal hospital at Parel since a week and each day was a struggle to try and delay the inevitable. Dogs are fragile, Labradors more so, and her kidneys had given out. There was very little hope but we still fought, battled against all consuming blackness till the very last day. Hope is such a treacherous emotion, it betrays you into believing the impossible. And that is what we did. Hope against hope that her Creatinine & Ammonia levels would go down. That she would stop seizing and start eating food. And that she would come home soon with us. 

13 hours a day at the Animal hospital takes a toll on you mentally, physically and emotionally. It plays with your mind and makes you as fragile as a fruitcake. I no longer cared for how I looked or what anybody thought. I did not care for what I ate or whether I slept or not. People who met me in these 7 days will know how different I was. Not normal for sure. But when someone you care about the most in the world is in distress, very little matters. 

By the end of the 7 days the senior doctors had told us that there was nothing that could be done and that we needed to take a decision. The junior doctors still wanted to fight, but we pondered over how much more pain we could let her go through. The day she died is the day we would have made the hardest decision ever. And she saved us from that too. The guilt that would have inevitably creeped up and made us wonder whether we were killing her and whether it was too soon. By going away on her own, she saved us from potentially blaming ourselves. That was Tiramisu. Gracious in life and in death. The gentlest of souls with an elegance that was uncanny. I hope she is in a better place now. And I know that I will miss her forever. 

Touched by death, lets live now.

Let it be.

Another day goes by and the feeling of missing the bigger picture grows within me. All my life, I have lived by ambitions. They have driven me to strive for more than just mediocrity. To rise above and challenge my limits each day. And yet, somewhere the fire to achieve has dimmed. Replaced by a complacency that is extremely scary. Because to become complacent would mean giving up. Letting go. Fading away.

Love in the times of cynicism.

So there we have it. A world full of cynics. Determined to run down the virtues of everyone they meet and focus on the minute-est  of flaws. I wonder whether this pursuit of perfection will lead to the downfall of the human race as we know it? Maybe not. But then again, everything is transient these days anyway. So how does 'love' or the grand notion thereof, stand a chance?

The value of human life.

Its funny how a chance remark can get you thinking. A friend just mentioned that a funeral in Mumbai costs Rs. 250/- and triggered a train of thought which questioned the value of human life. We are so engrossed in our daily lives that we do not stop to ponder over how meaningless life and death has become in India. Everyday, scores of people die on our streets. Some are victims of disease, hunger and poverty. Some are victims of chance. But the worst are those that are victims of fate and apathy. I remember seeing a hunchbacked old lady at a signal I passed everyday, on my way to work. I was well aware that the beggars of Mumbai are a nexus and a well-oiled machine working with clockwork precision, and usually I would never give any of them any money. However, this lady was always an exception. Just the sight of her old, frail, hunchbacked self sitting in the sun and approaching cars slowly was enough to move me. I admit to giving her more than just mere change. And a part of me always wished that I wouldn't see her there the next day. That she would be allowed to rest and live rather than beg. But come sunshine or rain, she was always there. As time passed, it almost became a routine for me to hand over a Rs. 20/- to her, if only to elicit a toothless grin from her weather-beaten leathery face. At times she would preen and bless me, at other times sulk and ask for more. Whatever the case, I developed a strong affection for that hunchbacked old lady at the traffic signal...

Months passed and suddenly, I stopped seeing her at her usual perch by the signal. I waited for a few days before asking some of the other beggars about her. Was told that she had passed away and the BMC had taken the body away because they didn't have money for her funeral. As tears rolled down my cheek I wished I had been there to give her that Rs. 250/- for a dignified death.