Finding home

What do you think of on hearing the word home?

My mind wanders to the noisy Polytechnic Lane with children playing in the school across from our house, reciting poems and math tables. Funny how I found it so annoying then but now sets the backdrop of my beautiful memories. I think of my Mom, in the kitchen, cooking our favorite meals, instructing the helper on his next tasks. I think of my Dad returning from work, his brows furrowed, the helper runs to open the gate. We quickly check his hands, what has he brought today? Bakery? Ice cream? Any new snacks that we could nibble while Mom asks to save some for potential guests.

Arguing with my brother and not wanting to talk to him but not having any other option and bonding over a good head massage from him. Grandfather scrutinizing the newspaper, grandmother making phone calls to keep herself uptodate on what's going on in everyone's life, hollering for the helper to get her snacks or a cup of tea all the while playing loud kashmiri songs or news on the TV.

Me, in my room, reading a book or watching a TV series not wanting to interact with anyone. Wanting to get away from the noise... I did get away. And the noise stopped. That home, stopped being the home I remember. It stopped being a home at all. 

Sometimes I think if it was just one person holding it all together? How could we not see... 

Is there a home in the people we know? Do some people become home to us? 

I think the answer for me is yes. When you leave the home you grew up in and the idea of the home that existed for you does not match the new reality that has slapped you in the face and knocked air out of your lungs, you look for it elsewhere. It will never be the same again. But you'll start finding many new homes. Small pieces scattered all over the world. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. Someone's arms, that spot by the ocean where you watch the waves splash against the rocks on the shore, that apartment with the lousy couch on which you crash when you are exhausted, that place in the library where you always go when your mind is racing, that friend you can call at any time of the day or night... You can live with this, until something triggers your memory of what once was and you feel your gut clenching. Terrible pangs of grief wash over you leaving you paralyzed.

But you are an adult now and need to function so you suck it up and move on.

Home is a feeling. It's a feeling of safety and comfort. It's the space to unwind. Where you put your guard down. Where you can be whoever you want to be. Home is peace and you may even travel miles to find it... Or you may have to find it over and over again... Just know what you are looking for.

Your zest for life and its little joys

There are days when I feel like everything is pointless, nothing really matters, we are insignificant specs in this giant, ever-expanding universe, that 100 years from now no one will remember us, or care for what we did or didn't do, what choices or blunders we made. And then there are days when I forget that one day we have to die.

Then there was you Mamma. With this zeal for life, yet so aware that one day it will end. Did the ardor come from remembering that our time in this world is limited? That even though people won't care for us 100 years from now, do we really have to care about that? That our life needs to be defined for us, it needs to be meaningful for us, that everyone is different and what others want may not be something we want and that's ok... as long as you are not harming anyone in the process. 

I miss the way you would live vicariously through me and celebrate my joys or success that no one else seems to care about. I miss the songs you would sing out of excitement, your beautiful smile that would light up my world. I also miss your obsessive worrying that annoyed me when you were around. Sometimes when I am alone in my apartment, I wish you would ask me every night if I locked all the locks on the door. When I walk by the ice cream aisle, I avert my gaze from the snickers ice cream that you so loved. It is the little things you enjoyed that constantly remind me of you. And it is those little things that I can't appreciate anymore... Please know that I am trying like you said I should.

"Mehak, what is the purpose of my life? Is it only to serve others? Maybe God has made some people in this world who do important things or live a happy and healthy life. Maybe He made people like me to serve those people."
I remember not knowing what to say. I remember asking God if He would give me a chance to change this perception. That I would spoil you with comforts and everything that you ever wished for.

I also remember my last trip home when I knew it would be goodbye. What could I get for you that you would like? There was nothing but my presence that I could bring to you. I made promises that I don't know how to keep.

Now that you have left, I want to tell you that you were 'the' life and all the joys in it. That you were home. That since you have gone, all we do is exist. 

I hope you have crossed over to a beautiful world on the other side. Where there is no pain, no sorrows. Where you don't have to care for anyone else but yourself. Where the cool breeze plays with the gorgeous locks of your silky hair. I hope angels come to keep you company and that the tinkle of your laughter echoes through heaven. I hope you get to eat all your favorite things and that your footsteps light up the hallways of paradise. I hope that you will look for me when my time here comes to an end. I may not be worthy of paradise, but if you just come visit, I will feel like I am in one.

Comfort Space

You know what it feels like to be lonely in a crowd? It feels like being me.

A swarm of well meaning people with good intentions and poorly framed questions that prod and poke and bruise you... sometimes make you bleed. Why are people so stupid?

I once read somewhere that if you run into assholes all day, maybe you are the asshole. It makes me think that if I am unable to make that deep connection with anyone, if I can't fit, maybe there is something off about me. Maybe something went wrong and shaped me into this being who keeps distancing herself from  almost everyone.

Yet, it is me, excusing their bad behavior, their insensitive remarks, their accusations, their disappointments. Swallowing my caustic come backs, smiling, apologizing, yet holding my ground. 

"Talk to us" they say. I feel dissociated from myself, a part of me is observing my interactions with the world and it laughs till it can't breathe. It's like talking to a wall... if you stare hard enough you can see your words bouncing back. You can talk all you want, they will never understand. Or even try to understand. Your perspective. What made you so bitter. What made you so inert. What made you so fragile, so sensitive and what made your heart turn to stone. 

 I think I found my comfort space. It's that world that you blur into where no one can reach you... zoned out. You nod yes and no, but don't comprehend. They obviously don't understand you. You pretend to understand them. You wear your best smile, try to be the ideal girl from a brown household. They don't know how dead you feel. After a painful few minutes, you have your apartment to yourself... your things strewn all across the floor. The chair with a mountain of clothes piled up that threaten to topple over if you add as much as a sock to it, stares at you. Your blinds are shut and the sunlight begs to come in, it flirts with the horizontal gaps between the slats. You turn your back to the window and toss in bed staring at the phallic stain that rain water left on your roof and chuckle as tears wet your pillow. After the heart numbs again you will plan how to make your upcoming week productive. You'll make a task list on your phone. It's so comforting to check boxes off and hear the phone go 'ting'!

You close your eyes and slip back to nothingness. Silence. Peace. You'll make it through today and 'live' another day.

A blurr

 Do you ever feel like your life is on hold... Things around you are moving fast, progressing. In the big picture, you are evolving too, things are changing for you too - but in a way that makes you feel like they are spinning out of control. Does it ever feel like your heart is stuck in this vacant place where no one ever visits - or you don't allow them to visit.

Why me? Why anyone else? Why ... why ... why... The existential dread sets in.

Sleep knocks my eyelids, begging them to close. Sleep is a friend I need, a spell of nothingness, like dying without there being heaven or hell, or angels waiting with questions. I embrace it, it envelops me back.
I pray we meet again in my dream and I pray that I remember it when I wake up.
A glimmer of hope, before the descent to oblivion.

Loss and resilience

Sometimes losing something or someone whom you value the most, makes you feel invincible.

No matter how shattered you are or how dead you feel inside, you lived. You survived what you never thought you would.

It does feel like 'the you' that existed will never come back - but at times when life tries to beat you down again, you tell yourself, I have been through worse and lived.

I lived 6 months without hearing my mother's voice, I watched her when she breathed her last. Maybe I was hallucinating but at that moment it felt like she locked her gaze with mine. Like she wanted to tell me something.

I lived through that, I will live through anything. 

Grief and Guilt

 The world is a lot less brighter. All its colors are bleached out. The myriad of hues in the sky that would make me stop in my tracks to behold its beauty, does not even affect me anymore. How can a world in which you don't exist be beautiful? It never will be.

When a child loses a parent, he becomes an orphan, when a person loses a life partner he becomes a widower/widow. They say that there is no word for a parent who loses a child because the pain is unbearable. I do not believe that not naming a situation gives it more depth. Because the grief feels unsurmountable to me. Like I will never know true happiness again.

They say that it passes, that the grief goes away. That is where is my guilt comes in. Should it go away?

How can a world in which you don't exist be beautiful? It should never be.

It feels like a disservice to you and the memory of you - to not feel excruciating pain when I think of you, to not tear up. I know you would have wanted me to be happy, to move on, but what are we chasing in life? This life seems too long to live without you around. You went away too soon. You were my everything and I love you beyond measure. Sometimes I want to freeze in my tracks and melt away, seep in to the earth that took you.

Spring is here in all its glory, blooming with colors. 

But in my heart there will be no spring. There will always be a winter - my heart will always be buried 6 feet under the ground. 

The letters

I remember when he used to write to us. An altogether different dimension to him --- something I had never imagined.
I felt lucky to be given a window to his real self, somewhere beneath his hard exterior resided a man who understood us all, loved us more than everything he had and didn't have, who found joy in little things and strived hard for peace of mind. He too like us took little trips down the memory lane--- they made him sad and brought him joy.

He felt different to me but wasn't so different deep down. He too like me wanted simple things in life. He too in this quest made things complicated for himself and for us.
I just wished these intricacies of life would vanish, become intangible so that we give up on them, and he would come back home and just be with us; even if it meant no visits to his heart, no letters, no windows...