Category: Diary Entries

.

. And I observe & laugh again!!

We live in a society where we objurgate a liar and at the same time have difficulty accepting the truth. We live with double standards, we live in secrecy. Let’s accept it that somewhere we all have concealed thoughts. Someone may have secret feelings and some may have covert fears. Some may have hidden ambitions and some may have secret faith. What do we say about secret love and admirers? Unseeable memories and emotional pain do exist. We all have them. In the moments of solace, we face our otherwise masked thoughts and keep them intact until another such moment comes.

Well, it does matter; even though I said thousands of time that it doesn’t!

I was about to turn 33 and it made me feel a little strange. Mixed feelings in all veracity! On one hand, I was delighted that I had lived 32 years of my life and had been through a lot, really a lot of experiences. When I see young girls do crazy stuff, I smile and say in my head – I have been there and done that. So I kind of felt accomplished and grateful at the same time. Also, I feel more worthy now for I have a life, oh, two lives to really take care of and they make me feel like a superwoman. But the flip side of the coin is that no matter how lovely a feeling it is to grow old and feel a little more in control of yourself, to feel more confident in being just you, to feel more open and accommodating to everything, to feel more forgiving than before, to feel more choosy about all that you want in life; there is a thump, a stiff blow that pulls down my spirits and makes me feel ‘old’. The Squash court was the first one to make me realize that I was not as ‘energetic’ as I used to be and that my stamina drained a bit as compared to last year. I so disliked my racket and the court at that moment. To be honest – even today! So there I was, perspiring! Sulking! I wanted my ever wandering crazy thoughts to halt for some time and accept that almost half of my life was already lived, I only had (optimistically) half more to go!

Is it right that age is just a number? I don’t think so. Something does change. Something does happen to you. While talking to a colleague at work, I casually mentioned how parched my thoughts were about my approaching birthday. Contrastingly, in yesteryears, I used to start counting the days two months in advance. I looked sleep deprived a week before. The excitement was uncontrollable and my dreamy world had all kinds of plans ready – their execution not decided though; but the surreal ideas existed way before the D day. My birthday dress used to be sorted and the list of people to attend my birthday treat was decided almost a month before. This is how I was until I turned 30.

The number ‘30’ brought an automatic, interesting change in my perception and birthdays to me looked more meaningful, if spent in presence of loved ones. I changed my notion of spending extravagant and glamorous birthdays to a soft private affair. I got attracted to love more than gifts and quality over quantity of birthday calls and messages. It didn’t matter whether I dressed in new clothes, what mattered though was whether someone made me feel special or not. Then by 32, I was a mother and I felt ecstatic when my daughter clapped for me humming the birthday song in her own way. That was special, I believed! So reiterating, something does change with age. Willingly or unwillingly, something does change!

I remember the time when I was young, in the early twenties, or when I was a lass (this sounds better) I looked at ‘women’ in thirties as someone so grown up and mature. Now, that the tables have turned, I am sure I am looked at in the same way by other young girls. Amidst all this, I asked myself, am I happy? ‘Yes’ came a prompt reply from within. ‘Would I want to go back and live the same age again?’ ‘No’ was a swift response. It won’t be exciting to be in the same place or age forever. So, even though I have mixed feelings about growing old, I am absolutely sure that I would not want to stay in the twenties forever. Or in the thirties or forties and so on.

Berthing the assorted emotions at the wharf, for now, I believe that birthdays are always charming. It’s one day of the year that is only yours or someone’s for that matter. 364 days may go unnoticed, but this one day makes one realize how important their existence is to others. How much valued they are! It’s a day to reflect and rejoice. It’s a day to express. It’s a day to speak with the loved ones. So coming back to where I began – if I say that I do not feel excited about my birthdays or if I say that birthdays don’t matter because it’s just a day; within myself, I know, we all know that it does matter. Birthdays are and will always be exceptional.

After all, growing old has its own appeal!

Tired, I looked around. I managed to grasp a couple of more breaths. I had been running since long and wanted to halt for a moment. My perspiring body could stride no longer! I had been running for as fast as I could and for as long as I could. Yet, the finish line was not to be seen anywhere close. I sat on the road, midway, quiescently. I felt heavy. I felt intense.

All of my unwanted baggage was still there, intact. The pain, the hurts, and the melancholy were ubiquitous in my mind, thoughts, and soul. I presumed to have dropped them on the way, but I was so mistaken. I realized that there were chapters of my life that I didn’t go through very often; what it didn’t mean that they don’t exist anymore. They were right there, buried in a minuscule yet important corner of my heart and very seldom though, I would stumble on them and start my memory trip.

”What did I answer then?” I asked

“Why that tone of authority?” replied a friend of mine.

Even after many years, these words rattle in my mind, with abated frequency though. “Tone of authority…” an intense accusation! I didn’t mean what I was misread and misheard for. Ever since that day, I have so wished that the text messages had a voice that could convey the right tone and flavor in which something is said.

Busy our lives are! The old school ways of keeping in touch with people through meeting and talking are now replaced by text messages. We choose to use chat messengers over everything else. Come on, give it to it. It’s convenient and I agree. But incidentally, in the background, it takes away a lot from us. Like many others, I have been at both, the sending and receiving end. And I know how smoggy it feels when you are misunderstood or when you misconstrue.

“oh, I didn’t mean to say this”.. “You are taking it in a wrong direction” etc. etc. It’s funny to think that the aeons old saying “words once spoken cannot be taken back” should now be rephrased as “words once typed and sent cannot be taken back”.

Some days ago, I received a text from a friend that said “you are sooooooo wrong!” and this sentence was followed by two smileys like this 🙂 :). I stood muddled – How do I interpret it as? Was it a mere casual mention or something severe? Was she upset or not? It took me a while to ‘assume’ what she meant. And as Benjamin Franklin has said ‘despair ruins some, presumption many’, I preferred to have a dialogue than just live with an ambiguous thought about the situation and myself. Trust me you, it helped! We both laughed at the end of the chat and I had a good sound sleep that night.

I have seen associations getting dismantled, gradually, because, somewhere they couldn’t sustain the digital ways – texts and emails. And I wonder, how much can one express through texts, how much can one write? What about the words that want to mean something but are taken for a different meaning? What about the words that never get a chance to come out only, for not everyone can write what they want to say? I am an old school girl, I believe all problems exist in the absence of a good conversation. So my dear friends, dare to start a vocal dialog that matters because it will be worth it in the end. Sometimes, there’s a lot beyond what our minds can perceive!

So… I usually have long travel hours… many people pity with my situation and sometimes I myself feel how hectic my days have become but most of the times I take this as a blessing in disguise as this travel, is a forced ‘Me’ time, where I can choose to either work, read a book, listen to music, look outside the window or just take a power nap. And I seldom complain about these travels.

Today, I had an early start of the day. I braided my hair, grabbed a quick snack from the kitchen and enthusiastically boarded the bus. The reason I explicitly mention all this is because I ‘thought’ I was energetic. Luckily, my favourite seat in the bus was not occupied, which is the one in the second last row. I sat, all attentive, with a mind-set of preparing a rough draft of my busy day. I wanted to sort the to-do list, prioritize it and be constructive right at the start of the day.

But there I was, sliding in the seat every minute. Within no time, I dozed off. The bus continued to halt at every stop, only as if that made any difference to my slumber. There was one moment when I opened my eyes, my brain still asleep though. I saw a man staring at me from the other seat. He carried a confused look. I slept again.

When the bus reached office, the man was still observing me. I was like that baby who was woken up in front of the house after a school picnic – tired and disheveled. My hair was everywhere. My eyes looked swollen, I think. I rubbed my eyes, and even though I didn’t want to, I yawned. Sounds so ‘imperfect’, right? Well, yes, it was.

Washroom and coffee was all I needed. But what made me think about this whole journey throughout the day was the fact that I think I was being judged. The man probably couldn’t understand what made me so sleepy… and I do not complain. So friends, if you ever see someone like this, please don’t be an arbiter. The person might be a parent!!! I wish I could tell that man that I was one 😉