karwatein badalte rahe, saari raat hum
filing this year under "filler season" and shoving it in the lowermost drawer
I want to thank you all for indulging me, until now. This is my version of scrapbooking, playing with dolls, knitting. Next year, I will find another hobby along with it. Bachata? Teaching kids? Or as my naani would say, a husband? I have read The Beauty of The Husband (and watched both the Scenes From a Marriage) this year, I am ready. Anyways, hello again.
The year’s end is here as we know it. I look back and there’s a giant emptiness reeling towards me. Hold on for two more days, I tell myself, and then you can step in the other room, and these moments will be memories. And don’t you know, memories can’t hurt you from the outside. Seal up your heart, lock away your unbridled emotions. Throw on a jacket and walk around with frozen fingers. That’s what I like to do. I love to walk. When I am not doing that in real life, I am doing it in my head. Are we talking right now? No, you are talking, I am walking my walk in my favourite park. Sometimes I walk in Rome, in Kolkata, inside a Basu Chatterjee film, in Scorsese’s New York. But wherever I am, I am walking home to you (oh, a poem idea! Nobody steal it).
December was full of omens and coincidences for me. You know, life is all about that. My mother mentioned a new favourite song of hers, and I decided to take a midnight bath a while ago and my neighbor was listening to that song (I can listen to a lot of things from my bathroom - children crying, our neighbour’s guitar, tv, arguments - I will remember this wherever I will go). It has rained in December, on quite a few occasions. A pigeon died on our balcony, mid-flight. I was listening to a song randomly and it turned out to be the caller tune of someone my mother was calling, like a minute after the song got over. I will consider them all omens, but they are all so complete and well rounded in themselves, entirely reduced individual events that I possibly can’t connect them all together to form a string theory for my life. 1
Every year I treat December as a wooden box with velvet insides, I step in it and lock myself inside. This year I did not do it. More like, I couldn’t do it. I have obligations now, grown up stuff to do, relationships to maintain. I am grateful for how life is unfolding itself in front of me, even though it’s kind of painful, but like, it drives you crazy getting old. I wish my mom and dad would let me stay home forever,2 I wish my mom was okay with me staying here for another year or two.3 I just don’t want to grow up I guess. And as you can see, I am not doing a good job at it either, throwing this sick little tantrum in front of you. It is not a tantrum, I am voicing my emotions - that’s a grown up thing to do. Speaking of that…
How do you ask people for things? How to ask someone to do whatever is the virtual equivalent of holding your face, kissing your cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear? How to deal with loneliness and emptiness and a constant state of missing? Coming back to the original question, it is especially hard when you have learnt to make peace with things as they are, whatever they may be. I have been struggling with this a lot lately, like a wild animal who has tasted blood for the first time but is fucking stuck in a house full of vegetarians. I want a few things from someone but I just don’t know how to ask. How do you ask? How do you tell? How can you be a good person if you have always lied?
Maybe I will eat this house up if I am not loved properly soon. Well, self fulfilling prophecy (inside joke with my father, the definition of a joke does not apply here).
But here’s a lesson I am trying to internalise (funny how the word lesson always leaves a negative aftertaste in my mouth, all the lessons I have learn in life have been the hard way) - I am not a product of my circumstances but they sure do act like a hurdle whenever I try to make a move. All I am left with is chanting “it’s okay it’s fine it’s alright it’s fine you are fine it’s okay why are you like this it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay it’ll be okay it’ll be fine” to myself over and over out loud like a maniac. Sometimes, you are a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown, but you have to stuff it back in and walk on (note to self - WALK MORE IN 2022).
I kept putting off writing this issue because I was obsessed with this idea that something significant and meaningful was going to happen to me in December. I wanted to walk in your inbox and be like, hey guys, good things do come to those who wait.
Why am I like this? Why am I trying to please you, my invisible (but supportive) (but passive)(but lovely) audience inside my own home - where one’s only job is to entertain their guests (Are you entertained? Are you bored yet?). But I have always been like this.
When someone asks me what are you doing? I try to answer in the most digestible way possible. Most of the time I am doing nothing these days, but I don’t say that all the time. I am not a teenager anymore, I cannot say edgy things like - “sitting and wallowing in self pity.” I still do that, but it’s all internal now. So I say hyper specific things - reading this essay, drinking water, thinking about how everything converges at some point, how memory is a graveyard, etc.
It has been the same with my parents. When good things stopped happening to me in school and beyond, I stopped telling them stuff. Maybe this distance is my fault.
But then again, it’s okay it’s fine it’s alright it’s fine you are fine it’s okay why are you like this it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay it’ll be okay it’ll be fine.
Today I bring you a song written by Anand Bakshi from the movie Aap ki Kasam. He is one of my favourite lyricists.
I also recommend that you watch this movie. It has a beautiful story, and beautiful people (my grandmother’s favourite actor Rajesh Khanna and my grandfather’s favourite actress, Mumtaz) in it. Safe to say I have let it leave an imprint on me. A well rounded story - something you wouldn’t expect from bollywood films majority of times especially when it’s aiming to be a blockbuster - it also has some of the best songs there are.
This song is how I have been feeling these days, because I learned from movies how love ought to be.
Karwatein badalte rahe, saari raat hum, aap ki kasam
I have spent my sleepless night, tossing and turning, I swear by you
Gham na karo, din judai ke hai bahut kam, aap ki kasam
Do not fret my love, these days full of distance are growing less in number,
I declare in the name of our love
Yaad tum aate rahe, ek hook si uthati rahi
You were the only alive memory last night,
this distance made my heart twinge
Rooth jaayein hum to tum humko mana lena sanam
If I am vexed, please pacify me
Door hon to paas humko tum bula lena sanam
If there’s some remoteness to us, I am counting on you to pull me closer
Kuchh gila ho to gale humko laga lena sanam
If there’s some reproach I hope we can sort it in a loving embrace
Toot na jaaye kabhi yeh pyaar ki kasam
I hope this promise of love is never broken
Aap ki kasam
I promise you from my side that it won’t
(note - I have not translated the entire song because, I did not want to)
I wanted to write an ode to Joan Didion, but it would have made no sense. I just want to remember her always, and I want to be more honest as a writer in my own works. It is tough to see one of your strongest influences go, but she lived a glorious and remarkable life. I have to be more adamant and honest, I have to get better at placing myself in front of people, not letting their perceived timidness of me turn into reality.
I think that’s all for today. This year in fact. Do you have any resolutions? I do.
Here’s a mini list -
Pick a fat book, read only five pages every day.
Walk inwards.
Get a tattoo. Or two.
Be honest and good.
Give as much as possible.
Next year this newsletter is going to be more cohesive, and I am going to be a rockstar. So will you. I am holding your face and feeding these words to you. You are going to do so many things and you are going to have a lot of fun. Trust me.
Okay, clocking out. Tomorrow I will write emails to people and drink a lot of coffee.
Goodnight, शब-ब-ख़ैर,
Deewana
String theory proposes that the fundamental constituents of the universe are one-dimensional “strings” rather than point-like particles. What we perceive as particles are actually vibrations in loops of string, each with its own characteristic frequency. Now you see why that entire statement is funny? A never ending loop of events and quarks.
Ribs - Lorde
Class of 2013, Mitski. Watch this.
goodnight ... folding this into my pocket. love u.
wrapping this around myself like a blanket. Love u <3