Stuck

I write lesser and lesser these days. I open microsoft word, type a single word or sentence and then I’m overcome with the expectation of a some brilliant work. Something that’s ‘trademark me’. Something that people read and go ‘I know exactly how you feel’. Or I read it and think ‘I’m a good writer’.

Nothing of that sort happens anymore. I’m scared of expressing my opinion on paper or otherwise. I’m stuck.

My lips are clamped down shut, but every once in a while I feel a crazy urge to open my mouth and laugh like I mean it. Crack a sad joke and then laugh at my lack of sense of humour. I have been shut for so long now, that when I do say something, I want pearls and diamonds to spill out. Nothing else is good enough.

I have that thing; famous novelists call ‘the second book jinx’, or something like that. After an initial masterpiece they are unable to come with something that matches the greatness of the first one. Except I haven’t even come up with a first stroke of brilliance yet.

Everything is pointless. It’s my last year of degree college. And I’m studying journalism. It’s such a joke because I can’t even write anymore without hating myself and wondering where I lost the old me.

Things can never go back to the way they were. That doesn’t happen. And I don’t want it to either.

Maybe I’ll come out through this shining and then years later, I can narrate stories of how I preserved and fought through depression and came out strong.

I’m not very strong.

I read stuff. Stories, books, blogs and for short-lasting moments, I feel inspired. ‘oh, let me write this down’, I think. I have a folder on my laptop, full of such incomplete work. Word documents with just one sentence. Like my brain prepared for a marathon and had sunstroke within hundred meters.

I could make more of such brilliant analogies, but it won’t matter.

I’ve lost. I’ve failed.

Edit: I crossed over my years of 'teenage angst' to the 'despair of the twenties', sometime last week. Happy birthday to me!

Things I feel guilty about today:

1. Yelling at the parent for no reason

2. Locking myself in my room and being supremely anti-social when relatives came over.

3. Eating half a packet of potato chips.

4. Pretending I was busy working when I was actually taking the ‘which sex and the city character are you?’ quiz, on facebook.

5. Enjoying mindless and horrible entertainment like splitsvilla

6. Supporting Chennai Super Kings till the last two overs and then switching loyalties when I realized Royal Challengers Bangalore would win.

My favorite fictional characters

I have very short-term memory.

I visit places but a few months later I don’t remember all the sights I saw. I watch movies; I don’t remember details, actors. I read books; I remember plots but don’t always remember characters and details.

But there are some characters that stay in my head, long after I’m done reading the book.

So here are 10 fictional characters I will never forget.

-Sam Cayhall from The Chamber by John Grisham.
(He changed my perspective on the death penalty completely. I’m still undecided actually)

-Zooey Glass from Franny and Zooey by J. D Salinger.

-Heathcliff from Wuthering heights by Emily Bronte.
(Tall, dark, angry, obstinate, brooding ruthless man. I hate him so much, I love him)

-Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.


-Bertram Wooster from the Jeeves novels by P. G Wodehouse.
(Yeah sure, I love Jeeves, but Bertie Wooster’s my favorite plus who has aunt’s like his?!)

-Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the rye by J. D Salinger.

-Hercule Poirot from the Poirot series by Agatha
Christie.
(I recommend: the murder of Roger Ackroyd and Poirot’s last case. Oh, If I had gray cells like him….)

-Ronald Weasley from the Harry potter series by J. K Rowling.


-Howard Roark from Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
(There is this image I have of him, flaming orange hair and a black shirt on those broad shoulders. In so many ways I hate this book for all it’s preachy-ness, but it is one hell of a book.)

-Don Vito Corleone from The Godfather by Mario Puzo.


And some other characters that didn’t make it to top ten, but I love and remember anyway are
Huckleberry Finn, Fred and George Weasley from Harry potter, Boo Radley from to kill a mocking bird, Gail Wynand from the fountainhead, Harry patridge from the evening news, Frodo Baggins and Gandalf from Lord of the Rings and Jo March from Little women.

Pins and needles

I’m not scared of hospitals or doctors and used to pride myself for not being afraid of the dreaded needle. Life as an asthmatic child was full of inhalers and injections. But one day, almost the beginning of eight standard, I was admitted to hospital after I fell in school, unconscious and clutching my stomach is pain. “Appendicitis” the beefy man with the well-combed moustache said, “almost at the last level, tsk tsk, we must operate immediately, today itself” and I, having never known anyone my age, who had an operation and admitted to a hospital, had flashing visions of sharp knives and long, pointy formidable weapons, and my eyes filled up quickly, with tears. I pretended to look out the window and used the old filmi, “something’s gone in my eye”.

The next few hours were spent getting me ready for my moment. I had to wear green patient clothes and had an IV-drip-thing stuck through the back of my palm. I have vague recollections of the actual operation, though. Just the anesthesia being delivered and the anesthesia specialist (I think) asking me inane questions like, ‘what’s your favourite subject’ and such.

When I woke up next morning, they gave me my tail in a jar.

But my ‘condition was still unstable’, so I had to stay 6 days in the hospital, a maternity one at that. It was actually not that bad. I had my own room with a television and the hospital food was so tasty! It wasn’t your typical bland roti-sabzi, it was good dal and pulav and dessert and stuff. They gave me sponge baths and this one nurse brushed and tied my hair up in this really nice style, I still haven’t been able to figure it out myself. I told everyone who would listen that the appendix was so infected that the smallest delay and I could die.

But the only downfall was that it made me hate the injection. They gave me 10 a day for 6 days, people, you do the math! That was torture! After that I was simply averse to the idea of sharp things going into my veins or arteries. But, when I went back to school, I did tell everyone that I was given sixty, ‘SIX. ZERO.’ injections a day, and I didn’t complain once and that the nurses said I was the bravest girl they had ever met.

I still have scars of stitches from the operation. And if I ever want to show it to anyone, I have to heave up fat layers on my tummy, and there it is, a memento from the only time I was admitted in a hospital.

My first kiss

My first kiss came too late in life; almost by the time I was resigned to wearing a big L on my head forever or truly contemplate my sexual orientation.

Bu it did come. Not in a dark alley or drunk in club and I really don’t have anything to say when girls discuss the song that played during their first kiss. I had no song playing; I don’t even remember what I was wearing or what he was wearing. I was lying on a bed with green and gold sheets in Munnar, Kerala (we were on a college trip), enjoying being someone’s girlfriend for the first time while a friend was lying sprawled out on a mattress on the floor. We had been together for a whole 4 days then.

I was just lying and holding hands and talking and thinking, ‘awww, this is so sickly sweet’ then there was a complete five second blank in my mind, and then the next thought was, ‘oh, that’s tongue’. Ugh, and I painfully remember that stupid expression on my face. I looked like a fish. (I’m still convincing myself that the expression was because I heard my friend on the floor stir. But it wasn’t)

Then I spent the next day preparing not to look like a deranged woman if my second kiss happened, which I was starting to doubt after I saw the fish face in the mirror a couple of hundred times. I would stand on tiptoe and put my hand on his chest and close my eyes slowly and elegantly, my eyelashes would flutter…

It didn’t happen exactly happen the same way. I didn’t stand on tippy toes because he lifted me off the ground, my hands had to be around him, holding tight, else I would fall a good six inches (!!), but it was so perfect.

Every time I think of my first kiss, I feel like I’m forgetting another small detail, another little thing that makes that picture in my head complete. I don’t remember what room it was, or what we wore, or what he said after, etc. but I do remember the moment pretty clearly and it was so special and it always will be.

You don’t ever forget your first kiss, do you?



P.s. - I can write even when I’m drunk, see!

If my mother was on facebook…

..she would definitely expect me to be her ‘friend’ and I would have to mind my P’s and Q’s online and things would have to change. I’m not sure how effective adding people on limited profile works, but all she has to do is go to my profile to know my deep, dark cyber activities.

The first thing to change would obviously be my relationship status. She knows I have a boyfriend but she conveniently chooses to smiles and assumes that I’m a naïve little girl and boyfriend means, someone to hold hands with.

The next big change would be language. No cussing like a sailor or a sixteen year old. No ‘where the fuck are you’, or ‘I’m so mindfucked’ or ‘she’s such a bitch’ or vodka.

Status updates must be controlled. Nothing to let on that I drink or get depressed (topics to which my status updates are normally related to), she hasn’t yet come to terms that I’m have ‘feelings’. Because when she was my age, there was no time for all this, she used to only study, help her mother in making dinner and have fun, in moderate quantity.

And then of course, the visual proof of all teenage ways, the photos! Photos with alcohol, boys, in a club, when I was supposed to be ‘working’ on a project all night, wearing clothes she said I could wear in public only if I wore a jacket, etc. God, that would be embarrassing.

And what’s more embarrassing is that she would beat me on geo challenge and word challenge.

Plus I don’t want to see what my mum talks to her friends about, (I’m hoping it’s her kids, computer programming i.e. her job, recipes and bollywood gossip, I hope) I don’t want to know who my mum’s celebrity crush is, or which of the seven deadly sin, she is.

My mum’s quite cool but I so don’t want her to raid on my facebook world. Because apart from everything else, I link my blog to FB and I don’t want her to read my blog.
Plus what if she has more friends on her list than me?

People watching

I was out at a club with my girl friends last night, and we are drinking and talking and doing our thing, with about fifty other people doing just about the same thing. There’s music and food and a general air of cheerfulness and congeniality. And amidst all of this is a couple; I’m sneaking glances at. They just stood close to each other and kept talking. The girl did a few mini jigs and he just kept smiling at her. He drew small patterns on her back with his finger as he pulled her closer towards him. He didn’t even notice when someone bumped against him, like they had a little bubble around them that sheltered them from the happy drunk people around. I had a super great time and I really don't know why, but I couldn’t help feeling a teeny-bit jealous.



I remember reading a similar post on the mad momma's blog, but unfortunately, I can't seem to find the link anymore.